Saving Seafood

Researchers identify behavioral adaptations that may help Antarctic fishes to adapt to warming Southern Ocean

November 30, 2021 — At first glance, Antarctica seems inhospitable. Known for howling gales and extremely cold temperatures, the continent is blanketed with a mile-thick ice shelf. Occasional elephant seals and seabirds fleck the glacial shorelines.

Yet dipping below the waves, the Southern Ocean teems with biodiversity: vibrant swaths of sea ice algae and cyanobacteria, swarming krill and crustaceans, bristling kelp forests, gigantic polar sea spiders and sponges, whale pods, and abundant Antarctic fish fauna.

These fishes play a vital role in the Southern Ocean’s food web of 9,000 known marine species, yet their subzero haven may be at risk. A 2021 climate analysis posited that by 2050 some areas of the Antarctic continental shelf will be at least 1 degree Celsius warmer.

Researchers from Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC have published a new study in PLOS ONE describing how two species of Antarctic fish – one with hemoglobin in its blood cells and one without – respond to acute thermal stress.

The research team, directed by Virginia Tech Vice President for Health Sciences and Technology Michael Friedlander, observed that both species responded to progressive warming with an elaborate array of behavioral maneuvers, including fanning and splaying their fins, breathing at the surface, startle-like behavior, and transient bouts of alternating movement and rest.

Read the full story from Virginia Tech

 

NOAA, groups back adding climate mandates to fishing law

November 18, 2021 — The following was released by the office of Rep. Jared Huffman:

NOAA’s top fisheries official yesterday endorsed a plan that would require the agency for the first time in its history to add climate change requirements to its management of the nation’s fish stocks.

“Fisheries management must continue to adapt as our ocean ecosystem faces unprecedented changes due to climate change,” Janet Coit, the head of NOAA Fisheries, told a House Natural Resources panel.

Testifying before the Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife, Coit said NOAA appreciates “the overarching climate focus” of a proposed overhaul of the nation’s primary fishing law, the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

Coit weighed in as the subcommittee heard testimony on a bill, H.R. 4690, sponsored by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), that would reauthorize the law and require NOAA to create plans for “climate ready fisheries.”

If approved, it would mark the first time that climate change received a mention in the federal fishing law, which Congress last reauthorized in 2006.

Read the full release from the office of Rep. Jared Huffman

How the Pacific Protects Its Fisheries

November 3, 2021 — The challenge of achieving sustainable ocean governance is growing in the 21st century, as the negative impacts of environmental destruction, over-exploitation, and climate change place a high degree of stress on marine ecosystems.

The framework convention for ocean governance, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), was negotiated in the 1970s and ‘80s. At the time, its provisions on environmental protection, common resource ownership, and the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) were novel and radical additions to global commons governance. The so-called “Constitution for the Oceans” established the basic rights and obligations of different groups in the international community, including coastal states, flag states, port states, and landlocked states. UNCLOS covers all major ocean activities, and divides ocean space into global commons and national zones of control. The negotiation and entry into force of UNCLOS represented a major accomplishment for the international community, and the larger project of global governance. The principles, norms, rights, and duties enshrined in UNCLOS serve as a guide for the collective management of common resources by states.

Read the full story at The Diplomat

Ecuador to expand protected area around Galapagos Islands

November 2, 2021 — Ecuador will increase the area protecting the Galapagos Marine Reserve by 60,000 square kilometers, Ecuador President Guillermo Lasso announced at the United Nations COP26 climate summit taking place in Glasgow, Scotland.

The reserve will grow nearly 50 percent in size from its current 130,000 square kilometers, Lasso said. Ecuador’s newly created reserve would expand northward to include the Cocos Ridge and would completely ban industrial fishing in the reserve, as well as subsistence fishing in some areas. The move would be financed by a “debt-for-conservation swap,” according to Lasso, whereby Ecuador’s external debt could be forgiven in exchange for local investment in conservation programs. He did not provide further information. The South American nation’s external debt is nearly USD 46 billion (EUR 39.7 billion), equivalent to 45 percent of the country’s GDP.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Maine relies on its marine life, but climate change will alter what that means

October 28, 2021 — Steve Train used to finish work by 1pm. In those days, Mr Train—who has worked as a lobsterman in Maine for more than 30 years—didn’t have to travel far to find the critters. Now he sometimes wraps up closer to 4pm. Some lobsters are still close to shore, but rising temperatures have pushed many of them into deeper, cooler waters that take longer to reach. Where Mr Train will find the creatures has turned into something of a guessing game. “More of us are hunting all the time,” he says, as he sips a mezcal margarita from Luke’s Lobster, a waterfront restaurant in Portland’s historic Old Port. This is where he docks his boat, sells his catch and, three or four days a week, stops in for lunch (often a lobster BLT, lobster roll or fried haddock bites). Lobstering is more than a job, he says. “It’s a culture.”

Warming waters have done more than change lobstermen’s schedules—they have disrupted entire ecosystems, the Gulf of Maine among them. The Gulf of Maine’s waters have warmed faster than 99% of the world’s ocean over the past 30 years. Experts attribute some of that to changing currents. The effects of the Gulf Stream from the south have grown stronger and have begun to constrict the flow of the Labrador current, which delivers cold water from the North Atlantic to the Gulf of Maine. “The magnitude of change is really going to be dependent on how much water temperatures change,” says Kathy Mills, a research scientist at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. So far, the heat has altered the patterns of the state’s two most profitable species, lobsters and soft-shell clams, with some experts and industry folk worried about the potential for further population declines. Maine’s overall commercial landings brought in more than $500m last year, but maintaining those profits will require flexibility—at the least, it means acknowledging the gulf may look vastly different in years to come.

Read the full story at The Economist

 

NSF Funds Texas A&M Research On West Coast Fisheries Management

October 27, 2021 — Climate change is posing new threats to West Coast communities dependent on fisheries. A new National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator-funded research project led by Texas A&M University scientists is tackling those challenges using cutting-edge modeling and decision-making technologies.

The project is a large multi-institutional endeavor, led by Piers Chapman, research professor in the Department of Oceanography, and brings together scientists from academia, federal agencies and industry.

NSF’s Convergence Accelerator Program aims to produce tangible solutions to national-scale societal challenges that cannot be solved by single disciplines but require innovative ideas, approaches and technologies from a wide range of sectors and expertise. Aligned to the program’s 2021 cohort, the project will last for one year and is funded at $750,000. If successful, the team will be eligible to compete for an additional two-year project funded at up to $5 million.

Read the full story at Texas A&M Today

 

Wind farms blew jobs to the heartland. Will offshore wind do the same in Massachusetts?

October 21, 2021 — Before he worked for American Clean Power, Jeff Danielson was an Iowa state senator for 15 years, representing Black Hawk County, the state’s fourth most populous region, and a Democratic stronghold. But most of Iowa is rural and Republican. In 2020 residents voted wholesale for former President Donald Trump, an outspoken opponent of clean energy.

So it was a surprise, Danielson said, that in a 2017 vote on a redesign of the state license plate, the public chose to include an increasingly familiar feature on Iowa’s rural landscape.

“The license plate that won was a landscaped picture with silos, smokestacks — traditional manufacturing strength and farming — right alongside a wind turbine,” Danielson said. “If you drive around Iowa today, that is the license plate you see.”

What was once controversial has now become an accepted feature in the heartland. In 2019, wind energy generated more electricity than coal-fired plants for the first time in Iowa state history and now accounts for 57% of the state’s electric power generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

It is the highest percentage of electrical production by wind power of any state and it happened fast. Five years ago coal-fired plants generated 53% of the state’s electricity, according to EIA, but as of 2020 only accounted for 24%.

It’s a matter of economics, wind power advocates say, not politics.

The U.S. is second only to China in terms of installed wind power. China has 288 gigawatts compared to the U.S., which has 122. But China is way ahead of the U.S. when it comes to offshore wind installations. This year, China displaced the U.K. as the top offshore wind country with 11.1 gigawatts of power installed. The U.S. has only one, a 55-megawatt, five-turbine offshore wind installation off Block Island, Rhode Island. 

Last year, the Biden administration set a goal of generating 30 gigawatts of offshore power along the East Coast by 2030 as part of its strategy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the energy sector. Massachusetts’ recent update of its climate change plan set a goal of 5.6 gigawatts of offshore wind as an integral part of its plan to achieve a 50% emissions reduction target by 2030, and net-zero emissions from the energy sector by 2050.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

We May Know Less About The Deep Sea Than The Moon. Should It Be Mined?

October 21, 2021 — Much remains unknown about the long-term effects of deep-sea mining in the Pacific and its role in the greater climate crisis. Given that, activists, governments and the private sector support a 10-year moratorium on deep-sea mining.

Yet the Republic of Nauru has made its intentions clear: Within two years, it will start mining the deep sea of the Clarion Clipperton Zone.

The CCZ — between Hawaii and Kiribati, extending eastward towards Mexico — is just one area of interest for mining outfits, covering 4.5 million square kilometers of the Pacific.

The area is filled with seamounts and deep-sea mountains, home to minerals including manganese, cobalt and several other elements integral to batteries that power smartphones and electric vehicles, among other things.

Governments, such as the Cook Islands, along with private mining outfits, are also looking to do exploratory work in their own waters, which has caused concern due to the unknown fallout.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

 

Scientists want to use artificial intelligence to save Maine’s coast

October 13, 2021 — Forecasting isn’t just for weather. A new center at Bigelow Laboratory is using cutting-edge artificial intelligence algorithms to forecast ocean activity, from toxic algal blooms to right whale migration, with the hopes of benefitting both coastal industries and the environment.

“There’s a big demand for forecasting. People are expecting forecasts of all different kinds now, from COVID forecasts to political forecasts,” said Nick Record, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay. “We’re trying to tap into this societal need and demand for forecasts and apply it to ocean systems that we live in and rely on.”

The ability to accurately forecast complex ocean dynamics alone, such as temperature and salinity, is useful for the industries that use the coastline and the scientists that study it. With artificial intelligence, though, these forecasts will be constantly improving in accuracy even as the climate changes — and, with it, Maine’s ability to adapt to the changing coastline will improve as well.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News