Saving Seafood

Gulf of Maine sees second-hottest year on record, report shows, ‘getting to the edge of habitability’

February 27, 2023 — Already one of the fastest-warming bodies of water in the world, the Gulf of Maine recorded its second-hottest year ever in 2022, another ominous indicator of how global warming threatens the rich marine world off New England.

The Gulf of Maine Research Institute reported recently that average annual sea surface temperature for the sprawling ocean waters clocked in at 53.66 degrees Fahrenheit last year, more than 3.72 degrees above a 30-year average measured earlier this century. In 2021, the average annual sea surface temperature was even slightly higher, at 54.09 degrees.

The rapid rise in water temperatures has dire consequences, such as the loss of marine species, some of which are major sources of food and commercial fishing activities, and rising sea levels that can damage coastal communities.

“It’s part of a multidecadal trend that … has profound implications for not just people who rely on the Gulf of Maine for their livelihoods and well-being but also for coastal communities,” said Dave Reidmiller, director of the Climate Center at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Home to more than 3,000 aquatic species and birds, the gulf is “one of the most biologically productive marine ecosystems” in the North Atlantic, according to the Gulf of Maine Association. It covers a 36,000-square-mile area from the tip of Cape Cod to Cape Sable in Nova Scotia, and its historically cold waters are a key reason why the gulf is such a viable environment for marine life.

The temperature of the gulf has been rising rapidly for more than a century, at a rate more than three times that of the world’s oceans, according to the institute’s report released last week. It surpassed the average temperature of the global oceans in the 1990s.

Rising gulf temperatures are also, in large part, why New England itself is warming faster than the planetary average, scientists say.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

“Blue foods” Can Tackle Global Malnutrition, Disease and Climate Change

February 27, 2023 — A new study has shown that foods that come from the ocean or freshwater, known as “blue foods,” have the potential to address several important global issues, including nutritional deficits, disease, and climate change.

The Blue Food Assessment is a worldwide collaboration of more than 100 scientists whose focus is on using blue foods to evaluate and develop healthy, equitable and sustainable food systems.

Blue foods are an incredibly diverse food source, with more than 2,200 wild species caught and over 600 farmed. Often, blue foods are more nutrient-rich, generate lower greenhouse gas emissions, and have less of an impact on land and water than many types of meat derived from land animals. But a new study has found that countries overlook the benefits of blue foods when developing nutritional, socioeconomic, and environmental policies.

“Even though people around the world depend on and enjoy seafood, the potential for these blue foods to benefit people and the environment remains under-appreciated,” said marine ecologist and member of The Blue Food Assessment, Ben Halpern.

In a new study, scientists at The Blue Food Assessment examined how blue foods were being accessed, produced and consumed globally, how production impacted the environment, and how they impacted nutritional and socioeconomic factors. The study highlighted four ways that blue foods improve food systems.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Countries gather to thrash out U.N. ocean protection treaty

February 21, 2023 — Delegations from hundreds of countries will meet in New York this week in an attempt to hammer out a new legally binding ocean protection treaty that green groups believe will decide whether efforts to safeguard global biodiversity can succeed.

Last August, an earlier round of talks on the new United Nations ocean conservation treaty were suspended, with countries unable to reach an agreement on financing. Sharing the proceeds of “marine genetic resources” and the establishment of ocean environmental impact assessment rules for development were also major sticking points.

Experts familiar with the negotiations said major parties have now moved closer together on key issues as new talks begin, though compromises were still being sought.

Read the full article at Reuters

Waters off New England had 2nd warmest year on record in 2022

February 16, 2023 — The waters off New England, which are home to rare whales and most of the American lobster fishing industry, logged the second-warmest year on record last year.

The Gulf of Maine, a body of water about the size of Indiana that touches Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Canada, is warming faster than the vast majority of the world’s oceans. Last year fell short of setting a new high mark for hottest year by less than half a degree Fahrenheit, said scientists with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, a science center in Portland.

The average sea surface temperature was 53.66 degrees Fahrenheit, more than 3.7 degrees above the 40-year average, the scientists said. The accelerated warming is changing an ecosystem that’s host to numerous important commercial fishing industries, especially for lobsters, they said.

One implication is that the warming is driving species more associated with southern waters into the Gulf of Maine and altering its food chain, said Janet Duffy-Anderson, chief scientific officer with the institute. That includes species such as black sea bass, which prey on lobsters.

Read the full article at wbur

BOEM Releases Environmental Plan for Next Offshore Wind Farm

February 14, 2023 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is moving forward with the next key step for the development of one of Massachusetts’ offshore wind farms even as the project has sought to renegotiate the key part of its plan. The federal government continues to push forward on its efforts for renewable energy from offshore wind keeping its focus on deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030.

“BOEM continues to make significant progress toward achieving this Administration’s vision for a clean energy future – one that will combat climate change, create jobs to support families, and?ensure economic opportunities are accessible to all communities,” said BOEM Director Elizabeth Klein. “In our review of offshore wind projects, we are committed to working collaboratively with our tribal, state, and local government partners as well as using the best available science to avoid or minimize conflict with existing users and marine life.”

Today, February 13, BOEM announced the availability of the draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed SouthCoast Wind (formerly Mayflower Wind) energy project offshore Massachusetts. It begins a process of a 45-day comment period as part of the review by BOEM as the project moves into the final stage of permitting and approvals.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

Gulf of Mexico has warmed at twice rate of global oceans

February 7, 2023 –A new study says sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico have warmed about twice as much as global ocean waters since 1970.

Those findings indicate the Gulf of Mexico may be one more U.S. region where higher sea surface temperatures are outpacing global averages. Another is the Gulf of Maine, where the rate has been nearly triple of the world’s other oceans since the early 1980s.

The latest research comes from a joint effort between scientists at the National Centers for Environmental Information and the Northern Gulf Institute (NGI), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Cooperative Institute.  It quantifies the warming trend in the Gulf of Mexico’s ocean heat content over the past 50 years.

The study, published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate, shows that waters closest to the surface in the Gulf of Mexico have increased at a rate approximately twice that of the global ocean in the decades between 1970 and 2020.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Offshore wind energy plans in the Gulf take a back seat to oil drilling under new law

February 6, 2023 — President Joe Biden’s administration is tapping the brakes on offshore wind energy development in the Gulf of Mexico to make way for a new fast-tracked effort to open more federal waters to oil and gas drilling.

The move, which runs counter to Biden’s ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and speeding the growth of renewable energy, will delay the first-ever auction of wind energy lease areas in the Gulf by at least six months.

Wind energy companies had been lining up to bid on a 174,000-acre area south of Lake Charles and a 508,000-acre area near Galveston, Texas in late December. The two lease areas have the potential to generate enough power for almost 3 million homes, according to the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. But Biden’s signing of the Inflation Reduction Act put those plans on hold, likely until sometime this summer, federal regulators confirmed this week.

Read the full article at nola.com

MAINE: Researchers seek statewide changes to save clam fishery from climate-driven collapse

January 30, 2023 — The Harraseeket River recedes slowly but steadily around Chad Coffin’s metal skiff, until the boat is beached on a partly exposed mudflat. Coffin and his daughter, Bailey Pennell, are already out of the skiff, rakes in hand and rubber boots sinking deep into the gray-brown muck.

They begin to dig — but not for soft-shell clams, also known as steamers, belly clams or Ipswich clams, a prized Maine commodity that Coffin has harvested here in Freeport for decades. Instead, he and Pennell are scrounging for quahogs, or hard clams. They fetch a lower price, but the part of these flats where any soft-shells might be found is closed to harvest after a recent rain.

“This used to be all clams when I started clamming,” Coffin said. “I would have been able to dig right there, where the mud’s showing already. And now we can’t. There’s nothing there.”

This is becoming a typical struggle for some Maine clammers. Though the soft-shell fishery is typically Maine’s second-most valuable after lobster, statewide landings for the clams are near all-time lows — down from close to 40 million pounds a year in the 1970s to fewer than 10 million pounds a year for most of the past decade.

Coffin and some researchers are confident they know the main reason: green crabs. This invasive species eats clams voraciously, and warming waters are causing the crabs’ population to explode.

“Climate change is just that piece of dynamite that’s been thrown into that room,” said Brian Beal, a professor of ecology and longtime clam researcher with the University of Maine at Machias. “That has just changed everything.”

Beal and Coffin are among the clammers, scientists and other observers who believe the problems facing the fishery are clear. But the solutions they’re calling for have been slow to gain traction at the state level.

Read the full article at The Maine Monitor

Transition into El Nino could lead to record heat around globe

January 30, 2023 — When the world’s largest and deepest ocean basin warms, satellites will be busy over the Pacific Ocean detecting analogous water temperatures but also, if history repeats itself, landmasses across the globe will have to deal with heat that could be record-breaking.

Since reliable technology started keeping track of world temperatures in the 1950s, the warmest year of any decade were periods dominated by an El Niño event, and the coldest were from La Niñas.

“During El Niño, unusually warm sea surface temperatures in the central/eastern tropical Pacific lead to increased evaporation and cooling of the ocean. At the same time, the increased cloudiness blocks more sunlight from entering the ocean. When water vapor condenses and forms clouds, heat is released into the atmosphere. So, during El Niño, there is less heating of the ocean and more heating of the atmosphere than normal,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration experts wrote in a 2022 ENSO blog.

Read the full article at Fox Weather

Climate modelers add ocean biogeochemistry and fisheries to forecasts of future upwelling

January 27, 2023 — A handful of hyper-productive fisheries provide sustenance to a billion people and employ tens of millions. These fisheries occur on the eastern edges of the world’s oceans—off the West Coast of the U.S., the Canary Islands, Peru, Chile, and Benguela. There, a process called upwelling brings cold water and nutrients to the surface, which in turn supports large numbers of larger sea creatures that humans depend on for sustenance.

A new project led by researchers at Texas A&M University is seeking to understand how changes to the climate and oceans will impact fisheries in the U.S. and around the world.

“We’re interested in how is going to alter upwelling and how the sustainability of the future fisheries will be impacted,” said Ping Chang, Louis & Elizabeth Scherck Chair in Oceanography at Texas A&M University (TAMU). “It turns out that when we increase the resolution of our , we find that the upwelling simulation becomes much closer to reality.”

Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the project aims to develop medium to long-term fishery forecasts, driven by some of the highest-resolution coupled climate forecasts ever run. It is one of the 16 Convergence Accelerator Phase 1 projects that address the ‘Blue Economy’—the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth. Convergence projects integrate scholars from different science disciplines.

Read the full story at Phys.org