Saving Seafood

Marine Scientist Follows Hot Fish as They Move to Cooler Waters

November 30, 2016 — Warming oceans have fish on the move, and one man is in hot pursuit.

That man, Rutgers University marine biologist Malin Pinsky, has tracked fish species all over North American waters to learn where they’re headed in search of cooler conditions.

Recently, he’s seen lobsters nearly disappear from Long Island Sound, driven out by disease and a series of warm summers. The delicacies are thriving in the cooler Gulf of Maine, but that may be temporary: Water temperatures there are rising faster than anywhere else in the North Atlantic. Pinsky has also observed Black sea bass, traditionally plentiful off Virginia, start to relocate to the Gulf of Maine and the waters off the New Jersey coast. And out west, Pacific halibut and arrowtooth flounder in the eastern Bering Sea off Alaska have shifted north toward the Arctic.

“It’s not one species in one place or a few species in a limited area,” Pinsky says of the moving populations. “It’s actually hundreds of species in North America shifting toward cooler waters, and that’s significant.”

The changes pose major questions for fishermen and fishery managers. As species move, will fishermen relocate their businesses to follow? How do fishery managers set rules when fish have moved to new areas where they may be more susceptible to overfishing? And will species such as lionfish, which are invasive in the Atlantic Ocean and thrive in warm Southern waters, suddenly appear in force farther north along the Atlantic coast? Even more confounding is the effect of temperature changes on species such as corals that have difficulty relocating to a more suitable place.

Read the full story at National Geographic

RHODE ISLAND: Fisheries Face Climate Peril, Aging Fleet

November 23, 2016 — As the guest speaker at Seamen’s Church Institute’s annual meeting on Monday, Nov. 14, Newport’s David Spencer, a lobsterman and president of the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation, reviewed the state of the commercial fishing industry in Rhode Island.

Spencer has run his 85-foot lobster boat Nathaniel Lee out of Newport’s State Pier since 1973, and graciously supplies free lobsters for Seamen’s annual Rock the Docks fundraiser.

“Back then, this was a vibrant fishing port, from south to north. It had many boats that docked here,” he said. “It was a good place to fish out of.”

Spencer said that all three Newport fish houses at that time had traps off Ocean Drive, near mooring docks that would be “awash in fish” with an almost daily, intricate choreography of dockworkers sorting and loading them all into trucks. “It was something to behold,” he recalled.

According to Spencer, present-day fleets gather quahogs, lobster, crabs, conch and a little known kind of shrimp in these waters. “It’s been a good opportunity for fishermen with smaller 20-foot boats,” with trawlers catching squid, butterfish, flounder, herring, black sea bass, and more. Improved netting allows turtles, cod, and other illegal species to escape.

Working “out front” in Rhode Island Sound waters and beyond, the lobster and crab fishery becomes one, “with an explosion of Jonah crabs, which has been a godsend for much of the fleet,” said Spencer. “There is a tremendous demand for these crabs,” which augment a depleted annual lobster catch.

Read the full story at Newport This Week

Lobstermen, scientists concerned about sea level, temperature rise

November 10, 2016 — PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Lobstermen and scientists are concerned about rising sea temperatures and sea level rise in the state’s Seacoast region.

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-New Hampshire, went out on a lobster boat out of Portsmouth harbor Aug. 30 to talk to fisherman about concerns they have for the potential for temperature rise in the waters and how it could impact the state’s prized, $23 million a year fishery.

Waiting for her on the dock as she returned were officials from the Rockingham County Planning Commission to discuss a related issue: sea level rise and its impacts on the seacoast.

The two go hand in hand because they are both linked to climate change.

The largest high tide of the year, the King Tide, is expected on New Hampshire’s seacoast Nov. 15.

It will give residents a glimpse into the future, where high water could be the norm. Hopefully, there will not be a weather event late that morning which would possibly impact low-lying structures.

Scientists predict that the average high tide in New Hampshire could rise by two feet in the next 35 years and be six feet higher by the year 2100 due to climate change.

These tides could damage homes, infrastructure and the tourist economy of the state.

Both Shaheen and her Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-New Hampshire, together worked successfully last month to fight off an effort by Sweeden to ban the import of the American lobster. The European Union rejected Sweden’s request on Oct. 14.

Read the full story at WMUR

The oceans are suffocating: Climate change is causing low oxygen levels

November 3, 2016 — Global climate change produces many effects — warming air energizes the atmosphere and intensifies storms; warmer water expands and raises sea level; storage of more carbon dioxide in the oceans is acidifying large realms. Now it is becoming clear that another, profound result of human activities is underway: lower oxygen levels in our oceans.

The world’s oceans, coastal seas, estuaries, and many rivers and lakes are experiencing declines in dissolved oxygen. Long known as an issue associated with sewage discharges and fertilizer runoff, the problem now is exacerbated by climate change, often independent of nutrient loads, and is global in scale.

If left unchecked, this decline will result in losses of fisheries and biodiversity, poorer water quality, and knock-on effects ranging from falling tourism to reduced marine ecosystem services.

In 2015, scientists from around the world formed an IOC (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission)-UNESCO working group called the Global Ocean Oxygen Network or GO2NE, of which I am a member. Our goals are to raise awareness about this problem, called deoxygenation, and stimulate research and policy to understand and mitigate it.

The how and why of oxygen in water

The aquatic environment holds dissolved gases; oxygen is one of them. Add in aquatic plants, a CO2 source, nutrients and light, and the resulting photosynthesis creates biomass and oxygen. Add more nutrients, and more photosynthetic production occurs. Consumers of the plant matter also use oxygen in the process and recycle the nutrients and carbon from organic to inorganic forms. This simplified cycle describes most aquatic ecosystems.

Read the full story at Salon

Climate Change Projections Can Be Used To List A Species As Threatened, US Court Rules

October 25th, 2016 — In a landmark ruling Monday, a U.S. appeals court said that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) — a federal agency — had acted reasonably when it proposed to list certain populations of bearded seals in Alaska as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The decision, which reverses a 2014 ruling by a lower court, could pave the way for other species being accorded protections based on their vulnerability to projected changes in climate.

“This is a huge victory for bearded seals and shows the vital importance of the Endangered Species Act in protecting species threatened by climate change,” Kristen Monsell, attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity — which had, in 2008, filed a petition to list the species as threatened, said in a statement. “This decision will give bearded seals a fighting chance while we work to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions melting their sea-ice habitat and keep dirty fossil fuels in the ground.”

The Pacific bearded seal is one of the two subspecies of bearded seals. Although it is currently listed as “Least Concern” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Center for Biological Diversity and the NMFS estimate — based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — that the seals’ winter sea-ice habitat in the Bering and Okhotsk seas off Alaska and Russia would decline by at least 40 percent by 2050, and that the subspecies would be endangered by 2095.

Read the full story at the IBT Times 

Economic impacts of climate change on global fisheries could be worse than we thought

October 17, 2016 — Marine fisheries have been estimated to support the livelihoods of 10 to 12 percent of the world’s population and generate an average of $100 billion in revenue every year. But global fisheries are facing a number of challenges: changes in markets, demographics, and over-exploitation will significantly impact global fisheries in the near future, while climate change is expected to pose a major challenge over the longer term.

A study published last month in the journal Scientific Reports explores the potential economic impacts of climate change as it affects the amount and composition of fish in marine fisheries and leads to decreased catches. Previous research has shown that global warming will cause changes in ocean temperatures, sea ice extent, salinity, and oxygen levels, among other impacts, that are likely to lead to significant shifts in the distribution range and productivity of marine species, the study notes.

“Warmer temperatures may also lead to decreases in maximum body sizes of marine fishes,” write the authors of the study, a team of scientists from the University of British Columbia (UBC). These changes will be regionally specific, as predicted species distributional shifts and changes in ocean productivity due to climate change are expected to result in increases in maximum catch potential in high latitudinal regions but decreases in the tropics. The researchers add that “These changes have large implications for people who depend on fish for food and income, and thus the contribution of fisheries to the global economy.”

In all, the UBC researchers found that global fisheries could lose approximately $10 billion in annual revenue by 2050 if climate change continues unchecked — a 10 percent decrease, which is 35 percent more than has been previously estimated.

Countries that are most dependent on fisheries to feed their populations will experience the biggest impacts, according to the study. The largest average decrease in maximum catch potential will occur in small island countries like Tuvalu, which is expected to see a 79 percent drop in annual catches in its waters, and Kiribati, which is projected to see a 70 percent decrease.

“Developing countries most dependent on fisheries for food and revenue will be hardest hit,” Vicky Lam, a postdoctoral fellow at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “It is necessary to implement better marine resource management plans to increase stock resilience to climate change.”

On the other hand, some developed countries, such as Greenland and Iceland, could see revenue increases as fish move into cooler waters.

Read the full story at Mongabay

Eelgrass and Ocean Acidification: California Takes Action

October 4, 2016 — What do eelgrass, the California state legislature, crabbers, and Ocean Conservancy have in common? They are all part of the solution in California’s remarkable actions this past week to address the threats that ocean acidification presents to California’s healthy fisheries, marine habitat and coastal jobs.

Governor Jerry Brown just signed into law a pair of bills that will address the concerns over ocean acidification raised by oyster growers, crabbers and others who make a living off of the ocean.

The two pieces of state legislation were crafted by Assemblymember Das Williams and Senator Bill Monning, as tailored place-based solutions to what amounts to a global problem. SB 1363 will protect and restore eelgrass habitats, increasing carbon sequestration amongst the roots of this coastal vegetation.

Read the full story at the Ocean Conservancy

BP oil disaster might have hurt Bluefin tuna rebuilding, study says

October 3, 2016 — The release of 4 million barrels of oil in the 87 days following the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion in April 2010 occurred just as Atlantic bluefin tuna had returned to the Gulf of Mexico to spawn, and a small but significant percentage of the adult fish and their eggs and larvae were likely exposed to the toxic oil, according to a new study announced Friday (Sept. 30).

The study led by scientists with NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service and Stanford University concludes that the oil cumulatively covered 3.1 million square miles where fish, eggs and larvae were present in the weeks immediately after the accident.

When combined with other stressors affecting this species of tuna — including overfishing and warming seas caused by climate change — the addition of the oil’s impact “may result in significant effects for a population that shows little evidence of rebuilding,” the study published in Nature: Scientific Reports concluded.

The study, funded by the Natural Resource Damage Assessment for the BP spill required under the federal Oil Pollution Act, made use of computer modeling based on information gathered from 16 years of electronic tagging of 66 tuna that kept track of individual fish locations, temperatures and oscillating diving patterns. The information was compared with satellite observations of the breadth of oil from the spill on the surface of the Gulf to estimate the potential impacts.

Barbara Block, a Stanford professor of marine scientists and expert on Atlantic bluefin tuna, said in a Friday interview that the tagging program took advantage of earlier tagging information that indicated many of the Gulf-spawning tuna migrate back and forth from the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. Researchers captured adult tuna in Canada and installed the tags. When the fish returned to Canada a year later, the tags dropped off and were collected, and their data was added to a long-term database on fish movements.

The information collected from the tags helped the scientists confirm their theories about the spawning habits of the huge fish, which can weigh as much as 1,000 pounds at maturity, and begin reproducing about 10 years after birth.

Read the full story at the New Orleans Times-Picayune

California is cracking down to prevent illegal fishing off the coast

September 28, 2016 — California is embarking on a new effort to shield ocean waters from overfishing.

Law-enforcement officials have embraced a statewide ticketing system aimed at poachers and unwitting anglers who illegally catch bass, yellowtail, lobsters and other types of marine life within these zones, which are commonly called MPAs.

California’s continued push to police its network of underwater state parks comes as government officials and scientific leaders from around the world gathered in Washington, D.C., last week for a conference on a wide range of marine issues, including climate change, pollution and restoring diversity of sea life.

Initially spearheaded by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in 2014, the Our Ocean conference has since drawn commitments to expand or form new preservation zones in sensitive ocean habitats from more than a dozen countries, including Morocco, Thailand and Canada, as well as the European Union and the United Kingdom. Most recently, the Obama administration expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off the coast of Hawaii — now the world’s largest marine protected area.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

Warmer waters might prevent baby lobsters from surviving

September 26th, 2016 — Baby lobsters might not be able to survive in the ocean’s waters if the ocean continues to warm at the expected rate.

That is the key finding of a study performed by scientists in Maine, the state most closely associated with lobster, followed by Massachusetts. The scientists, who are affiliated with the University of Maine Darling Marine Center and Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, said the discovery could mean bad news for the future of one of America’s most beloved seafood treats, as well as the industry lobsters support.

The scientists found that lobster larvae struggled to survive when they were reared in water 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the temperatures that are currently typical of the western Gulf of Maine, a key lobster fishing area off of New England. Five degrees is how much the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expects the Gulf of Maine’s temperature to warm by the year 2100.

The paper appears this month in the scientific journal ICES Journal of Marine Science. It could serve as a wake-up call that the lobster fishery faces a looming climate crisis that is already visible in southern New England, said Jesica Waller, one of the study’s authors.

“There has been a near total collapse in Rhode Island, the southern end of the fishery, and we know our waters are getting warmer,” Waller said. “We are hoping this research can be a jumping off point for more research into how lobsters might do over the next century.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Gloucester Times