Saving Seafood

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

 

Maine seeks lease for nation’s first offshore wind research site on federal waters

October 5, 2021 — The state of Maine has applied to lease a little more than 15 square miles of ocean for a floating offshore wind research area in what would be the nation’s first such undertaking in federal waters.

In a 143-page application to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Management, the Governor’s Energy Office notes that Maine is uniquely qualified to hold the research lease, which will be limited to 12 or fewer turbines located nearly 30 miles offshore.

The distance is meant to avoid nearshore waters valuable to fishing and recreation, in line with the state’s new moratorium on development of offshore wind in state waters. The moratorium was imposed in response to concerns by Maine fishermen about the potential impact of wind projects on their industry.

Securing a lease to conduct research in federal waters will allow the state to use patented technology developed at the University of Maine and help Maine meet long-term climate change goals through wind energy, which represents a $1 trillion opportunity worldwide by 2040, according to the application.

Read the full story at Mainebiz

 

Study Shows Climate Change Could Be Altering the Marine Food Web

September 28, 2021 — Climate change is redistributing biodiversity globally, and distributional shifts of organisms often follow the speed and direction of environmental changes. Research by scientists at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) reveals that this phenomenon is affecting where large marine mammals are distributed relative to their prey species, which could have important implications for marine food web dynamics. Their findings are published in Scientific Reports.

Marine mammals (endotherms), such as whales and dolphins, are often assumed to shift their movements and distribution in response to warming waters more slowly than their ectothermic prey, such as fish and squid, whose growth and productivity is directly impacted by water temperature. Since marine mammals are large, highly mobile and occur across wide geographic ranges, distributional shifts in these species are difficult to quantify. In this study, data from fisheries bycatch and stranding events is used to examine changes in the distribution of long-finned pilot whales and their prey relative to climate velocity in a rapidly warming region of the Northwest Atlantic.

Read the full story from Stony Brook University

 

Valuable crab populations are in a ‘very scary’ decline in warming Bering Sea

September 22, 2021 — Federal biologist Erin Fedewa boarded a research vessel in June in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and journeyed to a swath of the Bering Sea that typically yields an abundance of young snow crab in annual surveys.

Not this summer. At this spot, and elsewhere, the sampling nets came up with stunningly few — a more than 99% drop in immature females compared to those found just three years earlier.

Biologists also found significant downturns in the numbers of mature snow crab as they painstakingly sorted through the sea life they hauled up.

“The juveniles obviously were a red flag, but just about every size of snow crab were in dramatic decline,” Fedewa said. “It’s very scary.”

This collapse in the Bering Sea snow crab population comes amid a decade of rapid climatic changes, which have scrambled one of the most productive marine ecosystems on the planet in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand. The changes are forcing them to reconsider how they develop models to forecast harvest seasons.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

 

‘Blue Food Revolution’ to Tackle Climate Change and Malnutrition

September 22, 2021 — Doubling of global demand for aquatic foods calls for a ‘blue food revolution’ to tackle climate change and malnutrition, new research argues.

An unprecedented review of the aquatic foods sector has uncovered how fisheries and aquaculture can play a greater role in delivering healthy diets and more sustainable, equitable and resilient food systems around the world.

Five peer-reviewed papers in the journal Nature highlight the opportunities to leverage the vast diversity of aquatic, or “blue,” foods in the coming decades to address malnutrition, lower the environmental footprint of the food system, and provide livelihoods.

“People are trying to make more informed choices about the food they eat, in particular the environmental footprint of their food,” said Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, who with colleagues examined the environmental sustainability of aquatic foods, the potential for the growth of small-scale producers and the climate risks that face aquatic food systems. “For the first time we pulled together data from hundreds of studies on a wide range of seafood species to help answer that question. Blue foods stack up really well overall and provide a great option for sustainable food.”

The research projects that global demand for blue foods will roughly double by 2050, and will be met primarily through increased aquaculture production rather than by capture fisheries.

Investing in innovation and improving fisheries management could increase consumption even more and have profound effects on malnutrition. For instance, a “high growth” modeling scenario showed that increasing supply by 15.5 million tons (8%), causing a drop in prices, would reduce cases of nutrient deficiencies by 166 million, especially among low-income populations.

Read the full story at ECO Magazine

 

US Pacific Fishery Managers Support Climate Change Research to Inform Management Decisions

September 22, 2021 — The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council voted today to approve several plans aimed at improving research and data in the region. The Council’s work relies on robust scientific information for its fishery management decisions. The Council and its advisors developed research priorities with the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, setting the direction for the future.

Climate change is a high priority, in line with the Biden Administration’s efforts to mitigate the impacts and enhance fisheries resilience. Addressing the shift in distribution of stocks and fishing effort due to changes in oceanographic features is a good example.

The Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee Three-Year Plan focused its priorities on science that directly supports fishery management. A major focus is helping fishing communities to understand the value of data for fishery sustainability.

The Council’s five-year regional research plan is mandated by the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The plan covers research priorities for pelagic and island fisheries, protected species, human communities, cooperative research and management strategy evaluation.

The Council also endorsed the Fishery Data Collection and Research Committee’s strategic plan for 2022 to 2026. The overarching goals of the plan are to:

  • Build local agency capacity to improve fishery-dependent data collection.
  • Provide non-peer-reviewed reports and unpublished datasets.
  • Conduct science and research to support ecosystem-based fishery management.

The Council concluded the first day of its three-day virtual meeting today. The meeting continues tomorrow with decisions on the American Samoa bottomfish rebuilding plan and initial action on seabird mitigation in the Hawai‘i longline fishery. Instructions on connecting to Webex, agendas and briefing documents are posted at www.wpcouncil.org/meetings-calendars.

The Council manages federal fisheries operating in waters offshore of the State of Hawai‘i, the Territories of American Samoa and Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and the U.S. Pacific Remote Islands Areas.

 

Climate Change Scenario Planning: Kick-Off Webinars a Wrap; Input Now Needed on Fishery Impacts via Questionnaire

September 20, 2021 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

Climate-related forces such as ocean temperature changes and sea-level rises are certain to shape fisheries on the East Coast between now and 2040. Which forces do you think are most important? What are the unknowns? Do you support exploring how fishery management will be affected by shifting fish stock distributions due to climate-related factors?

These are the kinds of questions being asked as part of the scoping process for the East Coast Climate Change Scenario Planning Initiative. The Core Team overseeing the project recently held three kick-off webinars to introduce fishermen and other stakeholders to climate change scenario planning. Anyone who missed the webinars can watch the videos:

• Introduction to East Coast Climate Change Scenario Planning
• Introduction to Scenario Planning
• Initiative Details
• Process and Participants

The Core Team is now soliciting additional insights, perspectives, and feedback via a questionnaire to help guide future work on this initiative. The 12 questions should take no more than 10-to-30 minutes to complete, and some are short and simple, such as “where are you based.” Commercial and recreational fishermen, as well as others who are out on the water day after day witnessing changing ocean conditions first-hand, are especially encouraged to provide input. However, anyone who has a stake in this initiative is welcome to fill out the questionnaire on this webpage.

Read the release here