Saving Seafood

Bering Sea crabbers and communities are struggling with Alaska’s snow crab decline

April 21, 2022 — Bering Sea crabbers and communities in the region are struggling with a steep decline in snow crab this year, likely the result of climate change.

That caused the crab fleet to push farther north than usual and forced places like St. Paul to consider major budget shortfalls, because the Pribilof Island city depends on taxes from fish and crab processing.

The snow crab crash and its impacts are the subject of a recent reporting collaboration between the Seattle Times, the Anchorage Daily News and the Pulitzer Center’s Connected Coastlines reporting initiative.

As part of the “Into the Ice” series, Seattle Times reporter Hal Bernton and ADN photographer Loren Holmes spent two weeks in January aboard a crab boat called the Pinnacle, one of the biggest in the fleet at 137 feet.

Read the full story at KTOO

NOAA showcases new mapping tool for marine species

April 19, 2022 — NOAA Fisheries is launching a new tool to better track the location and movement of marine fish in U.S. waters. The Distribution Mapping and Analysis Portal reveals that the ranges of many marine species are shifting, expanding and contracting in response to changing ocean conditions. The interactive website will improve data sharing and collaboration, facilitate decision-making about fishery management and science and increase overall knowledge of species distribution for stock assessments.

The portal displays data from NOAA Fisheries bottom trawl surveys for five regions (Northeast, Southeast, Gulf of Mexico, West Coast and Alaska) and includes a map viewer and graphing capabilities for over 800 marine fish and invertebrate species caught during the surveys. Understanding how species are distributed in space and time, and the factors that drive patterns, are central questions in ecology and important for species conservation and management.

“Our climate and oceans are changing, and these changes are affecting the distribution and abundance of living marine resources in our waters,” said Rick Spinrad, Ph.D., NOAA administrator. “Changes in fish stocks can have significant economic and cultural impacts for communities and businesses across the U.S. The visualization capabilities of this new tool boost our ability to turn the data NOAA collects into robust decision-making resources for the entire fishery management community, helping build a Climate-Ready Nation.”

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

Climate change could significantly impact commercial fishing, Rutgers study says

April 18, 2022 — Fish such as cod, anchovy and sardines could decline in the future as climate change forces marine species to find survivable ocean temperatures and disrupts predator-prey relationships, according to a new Rutgers University study. The authors say this could have implications for the fishing industry.

Marine species require certain temperatures to survive and reproduce, and they also need to eat. Rutgers researchers evaluated the relationship between survivable ocean temperatures and species’ need to find prey.

They found that climate change could dramatically reshuffle marine food webs (how one species feeds on another), and that predator-prey interactions could prevent marine species from keeping up with the temperatures they need to flourish. The result is fewer productive species that can then be caught by fisheries, and feed the world.

“Marine life, in many ways, is at the frontlines of experiencing the effects of climate change — they’re moving to new locations much faster than species on land, for example,” said study author Malin Pinsky, an associate professor of ecology, evolution, and natural resources at Rutgers.

Read the full story at WHYY

The information age is starting to transform fishing worldwide

April 14, 2022 — People in the world’s developed nations live in a post-industrial era, working mainly in service or knowledge industries. Manufacturers increasingly rely on sensors, robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning to replace human labor or make it more efficient. Farmers can monitor crop health via satellite and apply pesticides and fertilizers with drones.

Commercial fishing, one of the oldest industries in the world, is a stark exception. Industrial fishing, with factory ships and deep-sea trawlers that land thousands of tons of fish at a time, are still the dominant hunting mode in much of the world.

Fishing with data

Changes in behavior, technology and policy are occurring throughout the fishing industry. Here are some examples:

  • Global Fishing Watch, an international nonprofit, monitors and creates open-access visualizations of global fishing activity on the internet with a 72-hour delay. This transparency breakthrough has led to the arrest and conviction of owners and captains of boats fishing illegally.
  • The Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, an international business-to-business initiative, creates voluntary industry standards for seafood traceability. These standards are designed to help harmonize various systems that track seafood through the supply chain, so they all collect the same key information and rely on the same data sources. This information lets buyers know where their seafood comes from and whether it was produced sustainably.
  • Fishing boats in New Bedford, Massachusetts – the top U.S. fishing port, based on total catch value – are rigged with sensors to develop a Marine Data Bank that will give fishermen data on ocean temperature, salinity and oxygen levels. Linking this data to actual stock behavior and catch levels is expected to help fishermen target certain species and avoid unintentional bycatch.

The ocean’s restorative power

There is no shortage of gloomy information about how overfishing, along with other stresses like climate change, is affecting the world’s oceans. Nonetheless, I believe it bears emphasizing that over 78% of current marine fish landings come from biologically sustainable stocks, according to the United Nations. And overharvested fisheries often can rebound with smart management.

For example, the U.S. east coast scallop fishery, which was essentially defunct in the mid-1990s, is now a sustainable US$570 million a year industry.

Read the full story at The Conversation

Nations Promise Billions For Sustainable Oceans At Palau Conference

April 14, 2022 — Nations and philanthropic organizations pledged to redouble their efforts to conserve the world’s oceans this week at the seventh Our Ocean conference in Palau.

The conference spanned two days of speeches, panels and sessions about sustainable fisheries, Indigenous community-led conservation and other topics related to oceans.

Leaders and representatives of nonprofit groups made promises to better address climate change and related issues as advocates pressed for more urgent action.

On Wednesday in Palau, the European Union promised to back 44 ocean-related commitments worth more than $1 billion. The U.S. government announced over 100 commitments worth $2.7 billion, including 16 new sustainable fisheries initiatives worth at least $120 million and a new tool for assessing marine-protected areas.

Read the full story at Honolulu Civil Beat

 

Scientists are tracking the link between pollution, climate change, and rising mercury levels in fish

April 11, 2022 — Eating fish is the most common way people are exposed to mercury — more specifically, methylmercury, a highly toxic organic compound. While low levels of exposure are typically harmless, and fish is a healthy source of protein, its overconsumption can lead to neurological problems, especially for fetuses and young children.

The amount of mercury in the atmosphere has quadrupled since the Industrial Revolution, according to some estimates. The pollution has been largely caused by emissions from coal-fired power plants, but other industries also play a role.

Though mercury levels in water are declining — thanks to decreasing coal use in North America and Europe, and technology that reduces sulfur in smoke stacks — scientists are now discovering that climate change might increase methylmercury levels in fish. That’s because fish are becoming more active with rising ocean temperatures, requiring more food and therefore, ingesting more mercury, according to a 2019 Harvard University study.

Researchers in Delaware and New Jersey are trying to find out where and why mercury levels persist. The research, they say, is part of an effort to manage marine fisheries and inform human health guidelines.

“Understanding how methylmercury accumulates in marine fish will help us identify and control its sources to the ocean, and studying how concentrations of methylmercury vary among fish that people eat will improve guidelines for safe seafood consumption,” said Dr. John Reinfelder, an environmental sciences professor at Rutgers University, who has been studying mercury levels in bluefin tuna populations.

Read the full story at WHYY

Changing Oceanographic Conditions And Environmental Justice Concerns In The Northeast Shelf

April 6, 2022 — Two new reports show the Northeast continental shelf marine ecosystems are experiencing notable ocean warming and changes in oceanography. The reports include new indicators that evaluate environmental justice concerns.

The Northeast shelf extends from North Carolina to Maine and is one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the United States. The annual New England and Mid-Atlantic State of the Ecosystem reports capture the big picture of the biology, climate, physical, and social conditions of the marine ecosystem. The assessments inform fisheries management by showing how the ecosystem is connected and changing. This ecosystem change, in turn, affects the distribution and abundance of marine species from phytoplankton to whales.

“We develop these reports along with the regional fishery management councils to provide information on current social, economic, and environmental conditions and address priority questions on factors affecting their management objectives. Every year, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council uses these reports to update their ecosystem level risk assessment. This gives managers a quick overview of conditions that may affect fisheries,” said Sarah Gaichas, co-editor at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

‘Resilient’ leatherback turtles can survive fishing rope entanglements. Mostly

April 6, 2022 — Leatherback sea turtles run a gantlet of fishing lines and other human impacts during their annual migratory loop from Caribbean nesting grounds to the eastern coast of North America and back. One of the leatherback turtle’s biggest obstacles is entanglement in ropes from lobster pot traps deployed by commercial fisheries in the waters of New England. A recently published report in Endangered Species Research found that while turtles can survive entanglement if reached by rescuers, new approaches in fisheries are needed for them to survive over the long term.

“I was surprised and encouraged by how many of the cases [showed] that the turtles were able to survive these events,” said lead author Kara Dodge, from the New England Aquarium in Massachusetts, who analyzed 15 years’ worth of data collected by the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) based in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The CCS played the dual role of collecting data and coming to the rescue during turtle entanglements with its Marine Animal Entanglement Response Program. Between 2005 and 2019, the CCS saved more than 100 leatherback turtles. The world’s largest sea turtle, the leatherback, Dermochelys coriacea, is currently listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, and is threatened by fisheries, destruction of beaches and climate change.

Read the full story at Mongabay

 

East Coast fisheries ‘climate scenario’ workshop planned

April 5, 2022 — East Coast fisheries managers will host a June 21-23 workshop with fishermen and other stakeholders to develop possible scenarios for how management could adapt to shifting fishing stocks and biological and economic changes coming with climate change.

Since late 2020 the East Coast Climate Change Scenario Planning Initiative, fishery scientists and managers have been “working collaboratively and engaging diverse fishery stakeholders to explore jurisdictional and governance issues related to climate change and shifting fishery stocks,” according to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

The initiative is a joint project of the Mid-Atlantic, New England and South Atlantic fishery management councils, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and NMFS.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Climate Change Scenario Planning: Scenario Creation Phase; Apply by April 18 to Participate in Two-and-a-Half-Day Workshop

April 4, 2022 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

East Coast fishery management bodies are currently engaging in a Climate Change Scenario Planning initiative to explore governance and management issues related to climate change and fishery stock distributions.

The next phase of this work centers around a two-and-a-half-day Scenario Creation workshop to be held June 21-23, 2022 in the Washington D.C. metro area. Anyone interested in participating should fill out the application form by April 18, 2022. Here are the workshop details.

Workshop Overview

Through a series of conversations and exercises, participants will create a set of scenarios that describe how climate change might affect East Coast fisheries in the next 20 years. Each scenario will describe a different way in which changing oceanographic, biological, and social/economic conditions could combine to create future challenges and opportunities for East Coast fisheries.

Read the full release from the New England Fishery Management Council