Saving Seafood

Map Reveals Fish-Killing ‘Dead Zone’ Size of New Jersey in Gulf of Mexico

August 5, 2024 — Scientists have announced that the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone”—where there is so little oxygen that the ocean becomes unsurvivable—is now the size of New Jersey.

Around 6,705 square miles of potential habitat has been wiped out from fish, sea plants, and other ocean life due to water being “hypoxic.” This makes it the 12th largest dead zone recorded in the past 38 years of record-keeping.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says its size is larger than predicted for 2024. NOAA and its partners monitor the area annually to track its size and impact, informing mitigation efforts.

“It’s critical that we measure this region’s hypoxia as an indicator of ocean health, particularly under a changing climate and potential intensification of storms and increases in precipitation and runoff,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, assistant administrator of NOAA’s National Ocean Service in a statement.

Read the full article at Newsweek

Public can help fight climate change with new grants for citizen science projects

August 5, 2024 — The public can now help even more in the ongoing climate change battle after the Biden-Harris Administration and NOAA unveiled hundreds of thousands of dollars available in grants for citizen science projects.

On Monday, the Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced $600,000 in grants is being made available to members of the public to conduct science experiments that help fisheries and fishing communities prepare for climate change.

NOAA Fisheries will offer funding between $75,000 and $200,000 for three to eight projects during 2025/2026 chosen from applications that are now open to the public. The deadline to apply is Nov. 4, 2024.

NOAA says they are seeking proposals for citizen science projects in an effort to find gaps in data on the health of marine fish stocks and/or how fisheries and fishing communities could be impacted by changing environmental conditions.

Read the full article at Sustainable San Diego

NOAA Fisheries grappling with fisheries management in the face of climate change

August 3, 2024 — The impacts of climate change are already being felt in fishing communities across the U.S. – to sometimes devastating results.

In January 2024, two massive storms in the northeastern U.S. region of New England sunk vessels, damaged docks, and flooded coastal communities. Janet Mills, the governor of the U.S. state of Maine, claimed in a request for federal aid in the wake of the storms that the weather caused USD 70.3 million (EUR 64.3 million) in public infrastructure damage in the state of Maine alone.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Biden-Harris Administration announces more than $105 million for West Coast and Alaska salmon

August 2, 2024 — The following was released by NOAA:

Today, the Department of Commerce and NOAA announced more than $105 million in recommended funding for 14 new and continuing salmon recovery projects and programs. Located along the West Coast and in Alaska, these state and tribal efforts will be funded through the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF). The funds include Fiscal Year 2024 annual appropriations as well as $34.4 million under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and $7.5 million under the Inflation Reduction Act, and will aid programs and projects in Alaska, California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington that include habitat restoration, stock enhancement, sustainable fisheries and research and monitoring.

“This $105 million investment, made possible thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration’s Investing in America agenda, will build on decades of salmon recovery work, while helping Pacific coast Tribes and Alaska Natives sustain their communities and cultural traditions in the face of climate change,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “This is a result of the most ambitious climate agenda in history, and I am proud that nearly half of all funds in this announcement are being awarded to Tribal applicants.”

These investments will supplement state and tribal programs that provide demonstrable and measurable benefits to Pacific salmon and their habitat. They will aid in the recovery of 28 Endangered Species Act (ESA)-listed salmon and steelhead species, as well as non-listed ESA salmon and steelhead that are necessary for native subsistence or tribal treaty fishing rights, and for those in the Columbia River Basin, these efforts will help meet the President’s goal of restoring healthy and abundant salmon, steelhead and other native fish in the Basin.

“The PCSRF program has benefited fish populations and their habitats in so many ways,” said Janet Coit, assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries. “The value of these investments goes far beyond recovering Pacific salmon and steelhead and their habitats, to also provide community and economic benefits, such as jobs and climate resilience.”

Read the full release at NOAA

William & Mary receives $100 million donation for school of marine sciences to study climate change

July 25, 2024 — One of Virginia’s top universities will dedicate a $100 million donation to revamping its marine science school and attracting researchers to help students understand the evolving impacts of climate change.

The College of William & Mary announced Wednesday it i received the gift from philanthropist Jane Batten to rename its School of Marine Science at the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences to the Batten School of Coastal & Marine Sciences and bolster its resources to study a range of topics including sea level rise, increased storm intensity, loss of agricultural land and impaired water quality, issues that especially impact Virginia.

“This gift propels us forward toward great promise and progress,” Batten said in a statement. “I am confident that this will spark significant change, building resilience in coastal communities in the Commonwealth and across the globe for generations to come.”

Read the full article at the Virginia Mercury

NEW JERSEY: Jersey Shore is seeing a rapid rise in ocean temps.

July 23, 2024 — The legendary Fish Alley in Sea Isle is humming on a sticky afternoon as Eric Burcaw Sr. navigates Townsends Inlet and drifts the “Heather Nicole” slowly into port. The 35-foot vessel is laden with a colossal catch of black sea bass not seen a generation ago.

As soon as Burcaw’s ship hits the dock, the crew gets to work — stapling together cardboard boxes, pouring caches of ice, plopping fish onto scales. The smell of steamed mussels wafts over from the Oar House Pub as a noisy, floating tiki bar glides past. But Burcaw, who has owned his own boat since he was a teen, is all business.

After today’s trip, he will process 3,700 pounds of black sea bass. The fish will be shipped off for tabletops from Baltimore to Manhattan.

“This time of the year the black sea bass are running very heavily,” says Burcaw, closing out a grueling day that began at 4 a.m. Burcaw is one of many New Jersey fishermen reaping a bounty precipitated by a rapid rise in sea temperatures. The Atlantic Ocean in the northeast has warmed by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 15 years — much faster than the global average, said Malin Pinsky, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at Rutgers University.

Read the full article at NJ.com

Study finds climate change, antimicrobial resistance increasing prevalence of vibrio in seafood

July 23, 2024 — A recently released study has determined that the prevalence of vibrio bacteria in seafood will increase globally due to climate change and antimicrobial resistance.

The study, performed by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), carried out an assessment of the public health aspects of vibrio related to the consumption of seafood products. Vibrio, which includes the species Vibrio vulnificus, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, and Vibrio cholerae, is a waterborne bacteria which can cause gastroenteritis or severe infections when consumed via raw or undercooked seafood or shellfish.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Warming Waters Will Cause Serious Declines in Regional Fisheries

July 22, 2024 — Global fish catches are likely to plunge if the planet warms by just a few degrees, according to one of the most comprehensive attempts to model this understudied topic.

The projections are based on the quantity of fish in the sea, rather than focusing on catches. But the finding raises serious concerns for commercial fishers and coastal communities who rely on fish to feed themselves and their families.

Nearly 50 countries and territories face a reduction of 30% or more in their exploitable fish if warming reaches 3 to 4C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, according to a report launched by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) last week.

Holding warming to 1.5 to 2C by achieving net-zero emissions around 2050 would stabilize losses to less than 10% for most countries and territories.

If every nation achieves its climate action targets, the world would still be on track for a global average temperature rise of 2.5 to 2.9C, according to a UN report from 2023.

The FAO research lead, Julia Blanchard, says fishers with effective management could adapt to likely losses under the 1.5-2C low-emissions scenario. But it would become “quite frightening” with the 3-4C high-emissions scenario.

Blanchard hopes her latest work will build an even stronger case for cutting emissions when policymakers update their climate action plans and targets, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Nations are due to revise their NDCs by early 2025 under the Paris Agreement.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive 

Record salmon migration runs into hot water

July 18, 2024 — A persistent heat wave gripping parts of Washington state could spike temperatures as high as 105 degrees this week, prompting warnings from the National Weather Service to drink plenty of fluids, avoid the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors.

There’s no mention of what to do, however, if you’re a salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

As air temperatures hit records in recent weeks, Native American and state fisheries experts and environmentalists are warning that water temperatures in the Columbia River Basin are similarly on the rise.

Those warming waters — in major tributaries like the Okanogan River and the Snake River — come at the same time as annual migrations of sockeye salmon from the Pacific Ocean, complicating a spawning ritual that spans hundreds of miles and is already peppered with human-made obstacles. Although salmon populations in the region have benefited from efforts to improve their spawning habitat, restore river flows and remove barriers from their travels, fisheries managers worry long periods of hot water could ruin it all in the years to come.

“Those water temperatures are warmer than ever this year,” said Tom Iverson, regional coordinator for the Yakama Nation Fisheries. “Literally, they’re almost too warm to swim in.”

That’s because the fish — including a record run of nearly 740,000 sockeye past the Bonneville Dam at border of Washington and Oregon as of Sunday, nearly 235 percent above the 10-year average — prefer a water temperature below 68 degrees.

The Okanogan River, which will be traversed by the majority of those fish during the final leg of their journey into British Columbia and a series of four chain lakes, has reached temperatures of nearly 83 degrees in recent days, according to U.S. Geological Survey data.

Reservoirs along the Lower Snake River, which are home to endangered Snake River sockeye, similarly crested to 69.53 degrees, according to the nonprofit Save Our Wild Salmon, which tracks water temperatures.

Read the full article at E&E News

Cape Cod scientists want to dump 60,000+ gallons of sodium hydroxide into ocean in climate change experiment

July 16, 2024 — Environmentalists and fishermen are pushing back against a plan from a group of scientists who want to dump more than 60,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide, more commonly known as lye, into the ocean off Cape Cod to gain an understanding of how to slow climate change.

Scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Falmouth are seeking a federal permit for their project, which would start sometime this summer with a field trial program that would disperse roughly 6,600 gallons 10 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

Woods Hole says there are two central goals to its so-called LOC-NESS project, short for “Locking away Ocean Carbon in the Northeast Shelf and Slope.”

The first is to “understand potential environmental impacts of using ocean alkalinity enhancement to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.” The other is to “verify and report the amount of carbon dioxide this method might realistically remove if deployed at scale.”

“While emission reductions are key to minimizing human impact on Earth’s climate, it has become clear in recent years that drastic emission reductions must be supplemented by efforts to actively remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” Woods Hole scientists wrote in their application to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Environmentalists and fishermen are not taking kindly to the proposed experiment which would continue next summer at a more drastic scale of roughly 60,000 gallons in the waters northeast of Provincetown, in the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full article at the Boston Herald