Saving Seafood

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

Impacts of ocean heat wave found off SF Bay Area coast

July 12, 2024 — The ocean is no place to escape a heat wave. According to a recent condition report from the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries, the effects of a 2014 to 2016 marine heat wave had a cascading effect with impacts that echoed from deep sea krill to shoreline restaurants.

The domino effect began with the tiny shrimp-like critters that feed the biggest animals on earth, blue whales. Looking at data collected between 2010 and 2022, scientists with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration found that the heat wave caused a notable decline in nutritious krill, and a proportional increase in less nutritious, gelatinous zooplankton in the sanctuaries off the Northern California coast.

Read the full article at Chesapeake Bay Magazine 

Indian Ocean heading toward near-permanent marine heat wave, report warns

July 12, 2024 — By 2050, marine heat waves are likely to last between 220 and 250 days per year in the Indian Ocean, a new study has warned.

The study, titled “Future Projections for the Tropical Indian Ocean” and released in April of this year, emphasized the impacts of a near-permanent marine heat wave that are placing highly populated areas in such countries as India directly in danger.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Scientists plan climate engineering experiment in ocean off Cape Cod

July 11, 2024 — Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are seeking a federal permit to experiment in the waters off Cape Cod and see if tweaking the ocean’s chemistry could help slow climate change.

If the project moves forward, it will likely be the first ocean field test of this technology in the U.S. But the plan faces resistance from both environmentalists and the commercial fishing industry.

The scientists want to disperse 6,600 gallons of sodium hydroxide — a strong base — into the ocean about 10 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. The process, called ocean alkalinity enhancement or OAE, should temporarily increase that patch of water’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the air. This first phase of the project, targeted for early fall, will test chemical changes to the seawater, diffusion of the chemical and effects on the ecosystem.

If successful, the team plans to conduct a larger trial next year in the Gulf of Maine.

Dan McCorkle, co-principal investigator of the project and a recently retired Woods Hole researcher, said the team chose a part of ocean that would minimize impact on marine life, and that they will stop the release of sodium hydroxide if marine mammals are present. The chemical will likely be detectable in an area a couple miles in diameter and should dissipate within five days.

Read the full article at wbur

Study projects major changes in North Atlantic and Arctic marine ecosystems due to climate change

July 10, 2024 — New research predicts significant shifts in marine fish communities in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans as a result of climate warming.

The Nord University-led study projects a change in key  biomass and suggests that Arctic demersal fish will be at risk of local extinction by the end of the century if no  refugia is available at eastern latitudes.

The international team of experts, involving Newcastle University experts, analyzed data from 16,345 fishery-independent trawls conducted between 2004 and 2022, focusing on 107 marine fish  in the northeast Atlantic, including the Barents Sea. They used advanced modeling techniques to project changes in species distribution and biomass under three future climate scenarios for the years 2050 and 2100.

Read the full article at phys.org

Massachusetts Cold-stunned Sea Turtles: A Sign of Climate Change?

June 19, 2024 — Four species of sea turtles—Kemp’s ridley, loggerhead, green, and leatherback—are seasonal residents of New England. They arrive in May and June, feeding in our coastal waters through the summer and early fall. When temperatures drop in mid-fall, these reptiles need to migrate south into warmer waters for the winter. However, sometimes their migration is affected by geographic barriers: The hook shape of Cape Cod can trap them within Cape Cod Bay for weeks to months. This puts turtles at risk of being exposed to waters that are too cold for them.

Cold-stunned Turtles Need Rescue

Since they are cold-blooded, sea turtles’ body temperatures mirror those of surrounding waters. When turtles have a low body temperature, they stop feeding; their body systems slow down; their immune systems become suppressed. This is all part of a condition called cold stunning. When cold-stunned turtles wash up on local beaches, they need immediate rescue or they will not survive. Luckily,the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network collects sick, injured, and cold-stunned turtles from beaches and brings them to rehabilitation facilities for medical care.

In Massachusetts, Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary rescues cold-stunned sea turtles off Cape Cod beaches. They bring live turtles to two Massachusetts rehabilitation facilities: the New England Aquarium and the National Marine Life Center. There, turtles are slowly warmed up, given medical care, reintroduced to swimming and feeding, and stabilized. It can take weeks to months for these debilitated turtles to be healthy enough to be released again into the ocean.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

How a microscopic coastal creature may become deadlier in our changing climate

June 18, 2024 — Between 2014 and 2015, a “blob” of record-breaking warm water traversed the west coast of the U.S., gaining media attention as the warm temperatures wreaked havoc on the bottom of the food chain, causing fisheries like sockeye, pink, and coho salmon to collapse and thousands of sea lions and sea birds to starve.

However, amid this devastation, one microscopic creature thrived or “bloomed”—a neurotoxin-producing diatom called Pseudo-nitzschia—causing devastating multi-million dollar losses for many West Coast commercial and tribal crab and shellfish fisheries that had to shut down due to the risk of toxin-contaminated seafood.

The toxin produced by Pseudo-nitzschia, domoic acid, can cause amnesic shellfish poisoning in humans, with symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea, headache, loss of short-term memory, motor weakness, seizures, and irregular heart rhythms.

Beyond the clear ecological and economic devastation, this 2015 blob-associated harmful algal bloom also left the scientific community in shock. The prevailing understanding was that toxic Pseudo-nitzschia blooms were associated with nutrient-rich, cold-water pulses of water seasonally brought up or “upwelled” from the depths along the Pacific west coast.

With the massive hot blob of water hovering over the coastline in 2015, there was little to no upwelling. So how did a toxic bloom occur during this massive heat wave?

Read the full article at PHYS.org