Saving Seafood

New NSF-funded program will train future leaders in the face of rapidly changing oceans

August 26, 2023 — With Earth’s oceans facing rapid climate and ecological change, University of Maine faculty will use a $3 million award from the National Science Foundation to create a new training program for graduate students that will support the next generation of marine science and conservation professionals.

Over the next five years, Joshua Stoll, an associate professor of marine policy, and his colleagues will design and implement a new traineeship program for master’s and doctoral students focused on ecosystem science amid rapid ocean change. Their work will support members of coastal communities throughout the Gulf of Maine region, particularly those dependent on fishing and other natural resources, to adapt to climate change.

This new graduate education opportunity, which is funded through NSF’s Research Traineeship program, will support at least 45 master’s and doctoral students, including 23 NSF-funded trainees, in the fields of marine ecology, oceanography, genomics, computational and social sciences. The training will incorporate an emerging discipline called ecosystem-based management.

When will the next ocean heat wave strike? Scientists develop early warning systems

August 24, 2023 — When heat waves began to sweep the world’s oceans in June, Alistair Hobday was not surprised. The biological oceanographer had foreseen the coming temperature spikes in forecasting models he’d helped develop. The massive pool of hot water in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, the coral-killing warmth in the Caribbean Sea, and the sweltering sea in the north Pacific Ocean had all appeared months earlier as orange and red patches on his computer screen at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The forecasts, which weren’t widely disseminated beyond fisheries managers and those in the fishing and aquaculture industry, proved to be a prescient warning of what was to come.

As the global climate continues to warm, scientists around the world have been working to develop models that predict when and where marine heat waves are likely to hit. CSIRO, an early leader, began to produce “experimental” forecasts for Australian waters in 2020. A separate forecast for all of the world’s oceans by CSIRO and Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology arrived last year. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) unveiled its first global marine heat wave forecast in June. And Chinese scientists are working to develop predictions for their coastal waters. “I think it won’t be more than a year before we’ve got five or six groups forecasting heat waves. This is moving really fast,” Hobday says.

Scientists hope that as the models are fine-tuned, their predictions will be robust enough to alert people 3 months in advance or more, informing decisions for fisheries, aquaculture, and marine conservation. An alarming forecast, for instance, might help a regulator decide to temporarily close fishing for a heat-sensitive species.

Read the full article at Science.org

More marine heat waves could spell disaster for ocean life

August 24, 2023 — Marine heat waves are becoming more frequent under global warming and this is having a significant impact on species’ ability to recover.

Since April, the world has seen record high ocean temperatures and that’s bad news for the plants and animals that call the ocean home.

Longer and more frequent bouts of extreme temperatures can cause the exodus of some species and the invasion of others, with potentially devastating impacts on the resident ecosystem.

Global warming manifests as a gradual increase in temperatures over time around the world, caused by increased greenhouse gas emissions.

However, scientists are finding that the most important impacts come from short-term spikes in temperature.

In the ocean, these discrete periods of extreme temperatures, lasting weeks to months, are called .

Marine heat waves can be generated by either the atmosphere or by ocean processes.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

Ocean off California’s Central Coast may be ‘thermal refuge’ from climate change, study says

August 23, 2023 — In an otherwise warming planet, new research shows that the ocean off California’s Central Coast may be a thermal refuge for marine wildlife.

Cal Poly associate professor Ryan Walter, who teaches physics, and fourth-year physics student Michael Dalsin analyzed temperature data gathered from 1978 through 2020 at a site just north of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

They found that while other areas of the world see sharp rises in ocean temperatures and more frequent and more intense heatwaves, the Central Coast hasn’t seen such intense trends.

The region still experiences marine heatwaves and cold spells brought on by factors such as the ocean-wide climactic patterns of El Niño and La Niña, but cold current upwelling brought on by strong local winds helps maintain the marine ecosystem along the Central Coast, according to a study by Walter and Dalsin published on July 31.

Read the full story at the Merced Sun-Star

Climate Change Likely to Reshape West Coast Fisheries by Sending Fish Farther Offshore

August 21, 2023 — Shifting ocean conditions associated with climate change will likely send high-value sablefish into deeper waters off the West Coast, new research shows. That could make the fish tougher to catch and force fishing crews to follow them or shift to other, more accessible species.

The research led by scientists at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center provides a glimpse of West Coast fisheries with climate change. Fishing crews must always balance the value of different commercial species against the distances involved in catching them, but climate change could alter that equation in new ways.

Scientists studied how four species of West Coast groundfish commonly caught together may respond to climate change. The four species accounted for 53 percent of bottom-trawl groundfish revenue off the Pacific Coast over the last decade. They include sablefish, the most valuable groundfish species, as well as Dover sole; shortspine thornyhead; and longspine thornyhead.

“Together, these are a large proportion of the groundfish caught off the West Coast, so they provide some indication of how things may change and the choices those changes present for the fishing community,” said Owen Liu, a research scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. “This may not be good news for the fisheries, but it hopefully provides some foresight into how distributions may shift and gives fisheries and managers time to consider how to adapt to these changes.”

The research published in Science Advances can help the commercial fishing fleet and fisheries managers prepare for changes climate change may bring to the ecosystem, researchers said. Climate models predict warming temperatures and declining oxygen levels in waters off the West Coast, which is dominated by the California Current. Temperatures and oxygen levels are known to affect the distribution of fish species.

Offshore Shift Goes Deep

The forecasts anticipate declines in the abundance of sablefish and shortspine thornyhead and increases in longspine thornyhead, with mixed forecasts of the abundance of Dover sole. All the species except longspine thornyhead are expected to move farther offshore into deeper waters. The steep offshore drop beyond the continental shelf, which on the West Coast is 20 or more miles offshore, can lead to substantial increases in depth for groundfish species that inhabit the sea floor.

As the species shift farther offshore, the increased depths and distances mean that fishing vessels must travel farther to reach their target species. They may also find that standard bottom trawl gear becomes less efficient at catching fish at such depths. Greater proportions of sablefish and shortspine thornyhead may also descend below 700 fathoms, depths where the groundfish management plan that governs fishing off the West Coast currently prohibits fishing.

The findings also highlight the challenge fisheries managers may face in keeping fishing sustainable even as conditions change and species move.  That may mean rethinking regulations so fishing can continue while protecting enough fish and habitat so species can maintain themselves long-term.

“If a significant proportion of target species moves deeper, as our results suggest for some species, there may be an incentive for industry and management to overcome technical and policy challenges to enable fishing at greater depths to follow target species to their new habitats,” the researchers concluded.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

Warmer Seas Grow Hardships For US Commercial Fishing Industry

August 21, 2023 — Climate change is forcing shifts in the American fishing industry as animals, fishermen and policymakers adjust to rising sea temperatures.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association said in a release earlier this week that July was the fourth-consecutive month of record-setting ocean surface temperatures. The month was also the first time the average July temperature was greater than 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average.

“Globally, July 2023 set a record for the highest monthly sea surface temperature anomaly … of any month in NOAA’s climate record,” the agency’s release said.

Shifting ocean temperatures force changes big and small for U.S. fishery. Some species benefit from warmer ocean temperatures while others suffer. While the catch isn’t significantly changing, the livelihoods of the men and women employed by the fishing industry and those in their communities are changing rapidly.

Read the full story at the International Business Times

Rising ocean temperatures could threaten sharks, tuna and other predators: Study

August 17, 2023 — By the year 2100, the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico could experience a rise in temperature that could impact sharks, tuna and other predators, according to a study led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), San Diego State University and NOAA Fisheries.

”What we’re seeing is this rise, a linear increase in ocean temperature,” Rebecca Lewison, a biology professor at San Diego State University, and co-author of the study, told NBC 7 Wednesday.

Using three decades of satellite and oceanographic modeling, researchers found that temperatures across these oceans could be 1-6 degrees Celsius warmer by 2100 because of climate change-driven shifts. The study, funded by NASA, has taken a deeper dive into what the future might look like in these oceans.

“By combining satellite data, like NASA’s satellite data, that we use with the information that we have on animals in the ocean, we know so much about the changes that are happening, so we don’t want to create a sort of one-size-fits-all approach,” Lewison said. “The science is really there to support dynamic management in all oceans.”

Read the full article at NBC

The ocean is shattering heat records. Here’s what that means for fisheries.

August 14, 2023 — Scientists first spotted the Blob in late 2013. The sprawling patch of unusually tepid water in the Gulf of Alaska grew, and grew some more, until it covered an area about the size of the continental United States. Over the course of two years, 1 million seabirds died, kelp forests withered, and sea lion pups got stranded.

But you could have easily missed it. A heat wave in the ocean is not like one on land. What happens on the 70 percent of the planet covered by saltwater is mostly out of sight. There’s no melting asphalt, no straining electrical grids, no sweating through shirts. Just a deep-red splotch on a scientist’s map telling everyone it’s hot out there, and perhaps a photo of birds washed up on a faraway beach to prove it.

Yet marine heat waves can “inject a lot of chaos,” said Chris Free, a fisheries scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It’s not just gulls and sea snails that suffer. Some 100 million Pacific cod, commonly used in fish and chips, vanished in the Gulf of Alaska during the Blob. In British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, salmon runs – and the fishing industry that depends on them – floundered. The acute warming also triggered a toxic algal bloom that disrupted the West Coast’s lucrative Dungeness crab business.

Read the full article at the Grist

LOUISIANA: A billion-dollar coastal project begins in Louisiana. Will it work as sea levels rise?

August 10, 2023 — Nearly $3 billion in settlement money from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster that devastated the Gulf Coast and killed hundreds of thousands of marine animals is now funding a massive ecosystem restoration in southeastern Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish.

The flat, sparsely populated land divided by the Mississippi River delta is marbled by bayous and bays. Farms, fishing camps and shrimp boats share the region with oil rig supply vessels and industrial storage. And it’s about to host a vast undertaking meant to mimic Mother Nature: Enormous gates will soon be incorporated into a flood protection levee.

The aim is to divert some of the river’s sediment-laden water into a new channel and guide it into the Barataria Basin southeast of New Orleans.

If it works, the sediment will settle out in the basin and gradually restore land that has been steadily disappearing for decades. State coastal officials call it a first-of-its-kind project they are certain will work, even as climate change-induced rising sea levels threaten the disappearing coast.

Read the full article at Associated Press

Predatory fish could lose 40 percent of habitat by 2100, with Northwest Atlantic a hot spot, study finds

August 11, 2023 — It’s been a record year for ocean warming, with a months-long marine heat wave in the Gulf of Mexico and another heat wave that just arrived off the West Coast.

But ocean warming is not without consequences, especially for the marine life beneath the surface.

A new study has found that highly migratory fish predators in the rapidly warming Northwest Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico could lose around 40 percent of their suitable habitat — nearly 70 percent for some — by the end of the century.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe