Saving Seafood

MAINE: Lobster season proves successful

October 20, 2015 — Maine’s 2015 lobster season is experiencing a boom this year, which according to biologists, stems from factors such as careful fishery management, dropping populations of predators like cod fish, and warming temperatures in the Gulf of Maine.

Experts in the field also point to the fact that lobstering is regulated by a number of federal laws, and that Maine fisheries and governments cooperate with the help of the University of Maine Lobster Institute.

In addition, lobstermen also take an active part in conservation by marking egg-bearing female lobsters, Smithonian.com reported.

Another factor benefitting the industry has been the growth in supply. Exports of the state’s lobsters to China grew from almost nothing five years ago to around 2.7 million pounds last year, with South Korea and Hong Kong showing similarly large increases, according to WISERTrade, which tracks exports.

Read the full story at FIS World News

 

 

China Is Turning Its Fish Breeding Grounds Into Smartphone Factories

October 21, 2015 — A sixth of the globe’s fish catch comes from waters off China’s coasts. Yet the nation’s industrial push is imperiling that 15 million-ton annual haul. Fully 60 percent of the China’s wetlands have been paved over for development projects—and much of what’s left is under threat of more of the same.

That’s the conclusion of a jarring new report (hat tip to the New York Times) by the US-based Paulson Institute, the Chinese State Forestry Administration, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Coastal wetlands are the breeding and feeding grounds for fish, migratory birds, and other creatures. They also buffer coastal cities from the sea’s caprices by absorbing energy from storm-roiled waves—an increasingly important function as climate change proceeds apace. Over the last half century, the report found, China has developed more than half of the coastal wetlands in its temperate northern regions and nearly three-quarters of the mangrove forests and 80 percent of coral reefs along its southern coast. Losses accelerated between 2003 and 2013—in that time frame alone, China’s total coastal wetlands shrank by about 23 percent.

Read the full story at Mother Jones

 

Chesapeake waters are warming, study finds, posing challenges to healing bay

October 14, 2015 — The Chesapeake Bay’s waters are warming, in some places more rapidly than the region’s air temperatures, researchers from the University of Maryland say. If unchecked, scientists say, the trend could complicate costly, long-running efforts to restore the ailing estuary, worsen fish-suffocating dead zones and alter the food web on which the bay’s fish and crabs depend.

Drawing on remote sensing by satellites, researchers at Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science found that water temperatures have risen since the 1980s across more than 92 percent of the Chesapeake and its river tributaries. The study appeared in the October issue of the journal Remote Sensing of Environment.

The increase averaged nearly 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, according to Andrew J. Elmore, co-author of the study and a geologist at the center’s Appalachian laboratory in Frostburg.

Baltimore and other parts of the bay showed up as “hot spots,” with warmer water than surrounding areas. Elmore and his co-author, Haiyong Ding, a visiting scholar from China, say the heat anomalies appear to be linked to spreading urbanization and to warm-water discharges from power plants.

“In the case of power generation, we’re deliberately increasing the temperature of water,” Elmore said. “With urbanization, it’s not intentional, but it’s an effect.”

Read the full story at the Baltimore Sun

 

The enigma behind America’s freak, 20-year lobster boom

October 6, 2015 — Drizzled in butter or slathered in mayo—or heaped atop 100% all-natural Angus beef, perhaps? The question of how you like your lobster roll is no longer the sole province of foodies, coastal New Englanders, and people who summer in Maine. American lobster has gone mainstream, launching food trucks from Georgia to Oregon, and debuting on menus at McDonald’s and Shake Shack.

Unlike almost anything else that gets eaten on a bun, Maine lobster is wild-caught—which typically makes seafood pricier. So how has lobster gone from luxury eat to food-truck treat?

The reason boils down to plentiful supply, plain and simple. In fact, the state’s lobster business is the only fishery on the planet that has endured for more than a century and yet produces more volume and value than ever before. And not just slightly more. Last year, Maine fishermen hauled ashore 124 million pounds of lobsters, six times more than what they’d caught in 1984. The $456 million in value those landings totaled was nearly 20% higher than any other year in history, in real terms. These days, around 85% of American lobster caught in the US is landed in Maine—more than ever before.

Even more remarkable than sheer volume, though, is that this sudden sixfold surge has no clear explanation. A rise in sea temperatures, which has sped up lobster growth and opened up new coastal habitats for baby lobsters, is one likely reason. Another is that by plundering cod and other big fish in the Gulf of Maine, we’ve thinned out the predators that long kept lobster numbers in check. Both are strong hypotheses, yet no one’s sure we really understand what’s going on.

Read the full story at Quartz

Many Young Fish Moving North with Adults as Climate Changes

October 2, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Numerous studies in the Northeast U.S. have shown that adult marine fish distributions are changing, but few studies have looked at the early life stages of those adult fish to see what is happening to them over time. A new study by NOAA Fisheries researchers has some answers, finding that distributions of young stages and the timing of the life cycle of many fish species are also changing.

Most marine fish have complex life histories with distinct stages, much like frogs. Marine fish spawn small planktonic eggs, approximately 1/20 of an inch in diameter, that move at the whim of ocean currents. These eggs hatch into larvae that have non-functional guts, un-pigmented eyes, and often don’t yet have a mouth. Over a period of weeks to months, while drifting in the ocean, larvae develop and grow until they reach a point where they transition into juveniles recognizable as a fish. This complex life history is similar to that of frogs, which grow from eggs to tadpoles to adult frogs.

The distribution of larvae in the sea is determined by where adult fish reproduce and by currents that move these small early life stages around the ocean. In a study published September 23 in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center used long-term survey data to compare the distributions of larvae between two decades, from 1977-1987 and from 1999-2008. They also used long-term survey data to compare distributions of adult fish over the same time period.

Read the full release from NOAA fisheries

Many Young Fish Moving North with Adults as Climate Changes

October 2, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Numerous studies in the Northeast U.S. have shown that adult marine fish distributions are changing, but few studies have looked at the early life stages of those adult fish to see what is happening to them over time. A new study by NOAA Fisheries researchers has some answers, finding that distributions of young stages and the timing of the life cycle of many fish species are also changing.

Most marine fish have complex life histories with distinct stages, much like frogs. Marine fish spawn small planktonic eggs, approximately 1/20 of an inch in diameter, that move at the whim of ocean currents. These eggs hatch into larvae that have non-functional guts, un-pigmented eyes, and often don’t yet have a mouth. Over a period of weeks to months, while drifting in the ocean, larvae develop and grow until they reach a point where they transition into juveniles recognizable as a fish. This complex life history is similar to that of frogs, which grow from eggs to tadpoles to adult frogs.

The distribution of larvae in the sea is determined by where adult fish reproduce and by currents that move these small early life stages around the ocean. In a study published September 23 in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center used long-term survey data to compare the distributions of larvae between two decades, from 1977-1987 and from 1999-2008. They also used long-term survey data to compare distributions of adult fish over the same time period.

Read the whole story on the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s website.

Questions? Contact Shelley Dawicki, Northeast Fisheries Science Center, at Shelley.Dawicki@noaa.gov or 508-495-2378.

CONNECTICUT: Managers consider how to save southern New England lobsters

October 2, 2015 — OLD LYME, Connecticut (AP) — An interstate regulatory committee is set to meet to discuss new management possibilities for southern New England’s imperiled lobster population.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Southern New England Lobster Subcommittee is meeting in Old Lyme on Friday. The group will consider potential management tools to help preserve the species, which has crashed to record low levels.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Herald

 

Northeast Fisheries Science Center Releases Strategic Science Plan 2016-2021

September 28, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

After an extensive development and review process, NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center is proud to release our new Strategic Science Plan. The plan reflects our strategy for ecosystem-based science supporting stewardship of living marine resources under changing climatic conditions. Collaboration and partnerships are cornerstones of the plan, and were essential to its development. 

We would like to extend our sincere thanks for the input and participation of hundreds of partners, stakeholders, and staff in its formulation. In the coming years, this Plan will guide us as we build on a strong foundation of excellence in marine science. 

We now turn towards implementation, with an intention to increase organizational efficiency, reduce research gaps, and work more effectively with partners and stakeholders to meet our collective needs. 

Questions? Contact Nicole Bartlett, Northeast Fisheries Science Center, at 508-495-4723 or Nicole.Bartlett@noaa.gov.

Credit: NEFSC/NOAA

HARTFORD COURANT: Cost of Outdated Rules? Millions Of Dead Fish

September 21, 2015 — This is utterly crazy. Hundreds of thousands — perhaps even millions — of pounds of edible and valuable fish are being wasted every year, thrown overboard from commercial fishing boats off the Connecticut coast, due to long-outdated federal regulations that have not kept up with a changing climate and shifting fish populations.

The problem, as The Courant’s Gregory Hladky has reported, is that catch quotas for some species are based on where the fish were when regulations were created decades ago, not where they are today.

Take, for example, summer flounder or fluke. Catch quotas to protect and rebuild the species were set in 1990, based on data gathered in the 1980s. The concentration or biomass of the species was then off the mid-Atlantic coast, so North Carolina and Virginia fishermen got large quotas, 30 percent and 20 percent respectively, while Connecticut got 2.25 percent.

So too with black sea bass, for which Connecticut fishermen are limited to 1 percent of the commercial catch, about 22,000 pounds of black sea bass this year, while boats from North Carolina get to 11 percent of the total and Virginia fishermen get 20 percent.

Read the full editorial at Hartford Courant

NOAA Fisheries unveils climate science strategy

September 4, 2015 — As ocean conditions continue to change, putting ocean ecosystems and the communities that rely upon them at risk, NOAA took a first step in providing regional fisheries managers and stakeholders with information they need to reduce the effects of climate change and build resilience.

“NOAA just announced that for the globe the month of July — and actually, the entire year so far — was the warmest ever recorded, driven largely by record warm ocean temperatures,” said Eileen Sobeck, assistant NOAA administrator for fisheries.

“Those warmer waters – along with rising seas, coastal droughts and ocean acidification – are already putting people, businesses, and communities at risk. With this strategy, we’re taking a proactive approach in providing information on current and future conditions to try and reduce impacts and increase our resilience,” pointed out Sobeck.

The NOAA Fisheries Climate Science Strategy identifies seven key steps to increase production, delivery, and use of climate-related information to support the management of fish stocks, fisheries, and protected species. The steps focus on how a changing climate affects living marine resources, ecosystems, and the communities that depend on them, and how to respond to those changes.

Read the full story at IFFO