Saving Seafood

Warming waters ‘key culprit’ in Alaska crab mass die-off

October 20, 2022 — Climate change is a prime suspect in a mass die-off of Alaska’s snow crabs, experts say, after the state took the unprecedented step of canceling their harvest this season to save the species.

According to an annual survey of the Bering Sea floor carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimates for the crustaceans’ total numbers fell to about 1.9 billion in 2022, down from 11.7 billion in 2018, or a reduction of about 84 percent.

For the first time ever, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the Bering Sea  crab season will remain closed for 2022-23, saying in a statement efforts must turn to “conservation and rebuilding given the condition of the stock.”

The species is also found in the more northward Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, but they do not grow to fishable sizes there.

Erin Fedewa, a marine biologist with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, told AFP the shocking numbers seen today were the result of heatwaves in 2018 and 2019.

The “cold water habitat that they need was virtually absent, which suggests that temperature is really the key culprit in this ,” she said.

Historically an abundant resource in the Bering Sea, their loss is considered a bellwether of ecological disruption.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

1st lease sale to be held for offshore wind on West Coast

October 20, 2022 — The Biden administration will hold the first-ever lease sale for offshore wind energy on the West Coast, officials said Tuesday.

The Dec. 6 sale will target areas in the Pacific Ocean off central and northern California— the first U.S. auction for commercial-scale floating offshore wind energy development. The administration hailed the upcoming sale at at a conference for offshore wind developers and experts in Providence, Rhode Island.

“We’re not just committed to the country’s transition to a clean energy economy, one that combats climate change, creates good-paying jobs and ensures economic opportunities are accessible to all. We’re actually taking action and driving results,” Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Director Amanda Lefton told the group.

The final sale notice for the auction will outline the details and lease terms for five areas off California, enough for 4.5 gigawatts of offshore wind to power more than 1.5 million homes and create thousands of new jobs, she said. The notice will include lease stipulations to promote a domestic supply chain and create union jobs.

Read the full article at Associated Press 

Researcher discusses climate-related perils facing migratory fish and the changes needed

October 19, 2022 — Persistent drought in the West has helped bring climate change to the forefront of the public consciousness. Indicia of a warming planet—relentless heatwaves, drained reservoirs, and raging forest fires—have applied pressure to humans and their environment, prompting discussions about the long-term sustainability of a fossil fuel-based economy.

What may be forgotten in these discussions is how climate change affects fish and aquatic ecosystems. Warming rivers and streams,  and diversion practices, and other impacts have led to a decades-long decline that threatens the survival of many Western fish populations.

Water in the West visiting researcher Eric Palkovacs is writing a book that explores the challenges associated with balancing water needs of fish and people, and how the West can move toward a more sustainable water future. Below, the University of California Santa Cruz professor of ecology and  discusses existential threats facing migratory fishes and why it’s important to save them from extinction.

Can you describe your research interests?

My work focuses on the intersection between people,  in populations, the evolutionary responses of populations, and how we can use our understanding of ecological and evolutionary theory to help us manage and conserve populations. I study coastal freshwater and estuary systems, particularly anadromous fishes—migratory fishes that spawn in , migrate to the ocean to mature, and then return to freshwater to spawn. I’ve worked on salmonids, sturgeon, and other migratory fishes.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

Warming oceans likely to shrink the viable habitat of many marine animals—but not all

October 19, 2022 — Brad Seibel still remembers the headlines from 20 years ago that sounded like a B-rated sci-fi movie: “Invasion of the jumbo squid in Monterey Bay” and the like. He was a postdoctoral scholar at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) at the time.

It was anything but fiction. The voracious eaters, which historically live in more tropical latitudes, showed up off central California in record numbers—fattening their bellies with hake, rockfish, and other commercially important species to the dismay of local fisherman. Scientists figured their arrival had to do with a combination of climate change and overfishing, but the details were fuzzy.

Now a professor and marine physiology expert at the USF College of Marine Science, Seibel recently published a paper in Nature Climate Change that sheds light on those long-ago headlines. It connects the dots pertaining to animal metabolism that he’s collected over 20 years and seven research cruises in the Gulf of California, Mexico—and adds a new chapter to the story of how some animals may respond to the warming oceans.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

As offshore wind plans grow, so does the need for transmission

October 18, 2022 — “With the amount of megawatts that we anticipate [from offshore wind] over the next decade, we need to be thinking in terms of optimizing how we are sending that electricity to where it’s needed,” says Paula García, senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “And that’s one of the pieces of the equation that I think is changing the conversation right now.”

What García is describing is the growing consensus among federal and state leaders, industry experts, and environmentalists that the U.S. should build an offshore transmission grid.

Power strips for the ocean

The idea is fairly straightforward. Rather than every individual wind farm running a cable to land, they could plug into a network of high-capacity subsea power lines that come to shore in strategic places. There are many different ways this so-called “ocean grid” could be configured, but instead of “extension cords,” think of “linked power strips.”

An ocean grid wouldn’t entirely alleviate the need for onshore upgrades, but it would reduce what’s needed. It would also require putting fewer cables in the ocean, which means fewer potential environmental impacts and conflicts with fishermen. And, experts say, building it could help boost electric reliability for all coastal states.

Offshore transmission isn’t necessarily a new idea. A little over a decade ago, Google got involved in a $5 billion effort to build an “offshore backbone” to link future mid-Atlantic wind projects. At the time, the prospects for U.S. offshore wind looked promising, but as those fizzled, so too did the backbone plan.

Since then, the idea has surfaced from time to time among industry experts, but it’s really only in the last few years that the concept has started gaining traction in the U.S.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management are assessing various offshore transmission technologies and looking at what some northern European countries are doing. They’ve also held public meetings to help inform the Atlantic Offshore Wind Transmission Study report they plan to issue next year.

Work is happening at the state and regional levels too. New Jersey is considering building its own offshore transmission network, and New York has taken the step of mandating that all offshore wind projects be “mesh ready,” meaning built with the capacity to connect to each other offshore.

Here in New England, the states are also looking to move away from the project-by-project approach and toward a planned regional “paradigm.” To this end, five out of the six states recently issued a request for information about how they can take advantage of federal dollars to plan and build some sort of offshore transmission system.

“We’ve really reached a tipping point where I think the benefits and the logic of shifting to an offshore grid are increasingly understood and agreed upon,” says Peter Shattuck, New England president for Anbaric, a Massachusetts-based company that specializes in building transmission for renewable energy.

With only two large offshore wind projects fully approved, and many more in various stages of planning, “we’ve got a natural opportunity now to focus on building out the ocean grid,” he says.

Read the full article at wbur

Floating wind farms are planned for the Gulf of Maine to tap huge amounts of potential wind power far off shore

October 17, 2022 — It seems like an insurmountable engineering feat: Tow concrete hulls weighing 12,000 tons far offshore, erect towers atop them that rise hundreds of feet above the ocean with rotor blades the span of a football field, and somehow get them to produce significant amounts of wind energy despite the violent seas and notorious weather of the North Atlantic Ocean.

All that without embedding the colossal structures into the seafloor, because unlike traditional offshore wind turbines, these will float.

And that’s exactly what Habib Dagher intends to pull off in the Gulf of Maine, with the first of these monumental structures planned for a location a few miles off the coast of Monhegan Island in 2025.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

NEW JERSEY: Brigantine residents express concerns about offshore wind projects

October 13, 2022 — Having clean energy as a renewable resource may sound nice, but residents still have questions and concerns about the offshore wind projects planned just off the island’s coast, which is why the mayor held an informational meeting last weekend.

Nearly 100 residents, second homeowners and public officials attended the forum Saturday at the Brigantine Community School to discuss the projects and their potential impacts on the barrier island.

Ørsted’s offshore wind farms, which are expected to have 98 wind turbines roughly 15 miles off the coast, are scheduled to be completed by 2024. Meanwhile, 111 Atlantic Shores offshore wind turbines are expected to be operational 10 miles off Brigantine by 2027.

“There are good things that are going to come about this, as well as the negative impacts that we’re going to talk about today,” Mayor Vince Sera said at the meeting.

Read the full article at The Press of Atlantic City

Fishing regulators fear wind turbines could threaten spawning area for Atlantic cod

October 11, 2022 — Scientists identified spawning cod in a large area currently leased for offshore wind development, prompting fisheries regulators to declare the habitat a “high priority” and raising concerns that some projects could derail the decade-long effort to rebuild the struggling commercial fishery.

The designation by the New England Fishery Management Council was submitted to the federal NOAA Fisheries in August and is now pending final approval. Those involved say it is the most declarative action taken by the regional council in its approach to the emerging wind energy industry, highlighting its “concern over potential adverse impacts from offshore wind development.”

“We want to make it very clear that there are important fishery resources in this area,” said council spokesperson Janice Plante. “We hope that it creates an extra layer of consideration as these projects go forward.”

The boundaries of the designation, which is called a Habitat Area of Particular Concern (HAPC), is roughly 3,000 square miles and spans all nine wind-energy lease areas in federal waters off Southern New England. It includes a buffer zone beyond the lease areas, “recognizing that some types of development activities can generate impacts at scales of tens of kilometers beyond the site of construction and operations.”

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

Defining terms: What does ‘sustainable seafood’ mean?

October 10, 2022 — The term “sustainable seafood” gets used a lot with regard to the fishing and aquaculture industries — it’s a phrase that varies in meaning and is used everywhere from policy directives to marketing strategies. But what does it really mean?

Colloquially, the term “sustainable” is often in reference to environmental impact, with regard to overfishing and making sure that meeting human demands doesn’t destroy ocean ecosystems. Commercial fisheries in the United States are regulated against overfishing, but that doesn’t mean it is not a problem — a growing demand for seafood coupled with climate change related pressures put a lot of strain on the ocean’s capacity to keep producing fish for people to consume.

Meanwhile, the world’s population continues to grow. It is currently at 8 billion and estimated to be 11.2 billion by the end of the century. This growth puts additional pressure on the ocean. Paired with limitations faced by land-based farming, researchers have pointed to the ocean as a possible venue for growable food in light of this trend. In 2020, the United Nations released a report saying that aquaculture had already improved food security globally. Still, this conversation is not without an important caveat — farming seafood is not a panacea solution, and there are many forms of aquaculture that can harm both the environment and local communities instead of benefiting them.

Read the full article at CostalReview.org

Seafood industry to play critical role in feeding growing population as climate change hits harder

October 7, 2022 — The world’s human population is expected to surpass 10 billion by 2050. How to feed that many people, especially as the effects of global warming continue to worsen, was the subject of a 5 October panel at the Global Seafood Alliance’s 2022 GOAL conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

University of Washington Professor of Fisheries Science Ray Hilborn, University of Stirling Aquaculture Professor Richard Newton, Environmental Defense Fund Senior Manager of Climate Resilient Food Systems Willow Battista, and Wittaya Aqua CEO Evan Hall reviewed statistical evidence linking changes in climage to global output of fishing and aquaculture production and debated the industry’s impact on the environment.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource