Saving Seafood

Rhode Island’s Warming Marine Waters Force Iconic Species Out, Disrupt Catch Limits and Change Ecosystem Services

August 2, 2021 — For generations, winter flounder was one of the most important fish in Rhode Island waters. Longtime recreational fisherman Rich Hittinger recalled taking his kids fishing in the 1980s, dropping anchor, letting their lines sink to the bottom, waiting about half an hour and then filling their fishing cooler with the oval-shaped, right-eyed flatfish.

Now, four decades later, once-abundant winter flounder is difficult to find. The harvesting or possession of the fish is prohibited in much of Narragansett Bay and in Point Judith and Potter ponds. Anglers must return the ones they accidentally catch to the sea.

Overfishing is easily blamed, and the industry certainly bears responsibility, as does consumer demand. But winter flounder’s local extinction isn’t simply the result of overfishing. Sure, it played a factor, but the reasons are complicated, from habitat loss, pollution and energy production — i.e., the former Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Mass., pre-cooling towers, when the since-shuttered facility took in about a billion gallons of water daily from Mount Hope Bay and discharged it at more than 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

The climate crisis, however, is likely playing the biggest role, at least at the moment, by shifting currents, creating less oxygenated waters and warming southern New England’s coastal waters. These impacts, which started decades ago, have and are transforming life in the Ocean State’s marine waters. The changes also impact ecosystem functioning and services. There’s no end in sight, as the type of fish and their abundance will continue to turn over as waters warm.

Rhode Island’s warming water temperatures are causing a biomass metamorphosis that is transforming the state’s commercial and recreational fishing industries, for both better and worse. The average water temperature in Narragansett Bay has increased by about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1960s, according to data kept by the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography.

Locally, iconic species are disappearing (winter flounder, cod and lobsters), southerly species are appearing more frequently (spot and ocean sunfish) and more unwanted guests are arriving (jellyfish that have an appetite for fish larvae and, in the summer, lionfish, a venomous and fast-reproducing fish with a voracious appetite).

Read the full story at EcoRI

Shark Sightings Off New York Coast Linked To Climate Change: Scientists

August 2, 2021 — Repeated shark sightings off New York’s Atlantic coastline are causing concerns this summer, especially after another sighting at Long Island’s popular Jones Beach State Park on Thursday morning. Scientists say warming waters, caused by climate change, are helping to drive the sharks farther north.

Just a day before a shark was spotted at Jones Beach, a neighboring beach was closed after multiple sharks were seen about 20 yards off the coast.

“Our guards spotted numerous — not just one, but numerous blacktip reef sharks,” said Hempstead town supervisor Don Clavin. “These are really unique sharks…they’re Caribbean sharks. They’re known to come close to the shoreline in feeding areas. So the concern is obviously with swimmers.”

Read the full story at WSGW

Dead zones, a ‘horseman’ of climate change, could suffocate crabs in the West, scientists say

July 30, 2021 — As the Pacific Ocean’s cool waters hugged Oregon’s rugged shore, Nick Edwards, a seasoned commercial fisherman, could not believe his eyes. Stretching over at least 100 yards, he said, were the carcasses of hundreds of Dungeness crabs piled in the sands of a beach south of Cape Perpetua.

The remains of what Edwards deemed “the crème de la crème of seafood” — also one of the state’s most prized fisheries — are the most visible byproduct of a process that usually goes unnoticed by most beach-dwellers: hypoxia, or the emergence of swaths of low-oxygen zones in marine waters.

Hypoxic areas in Oregon, researchers found, have surfaced every summer since they were first recorded in 2002 — leading scientists to determine a recurring “hypoxic season,” akin to wildfire and hurricane ones.

However, climate change has exacerbated its effect, said Francis Chan, the director of the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies at Oregon State University, resulting in increasingly frequent and extensive hypoxic areas that can morph into “dead zones,” where the total lack of oxygen kills off species that cannot swim away, much like the Dungeness crabs.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Climate change threat to ‘tuna dependent’ Pacific Islands economies

July 30, 2021 — Climate change-driven redistribution of key commercial tuna species will deliver an economic blow to the small island states of the Western and Central Pacific and threaten the sustainability of the world’s largest tuna fishery, a major international study has found.

The study combines climate science, ecological modeling and economic data to provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of climate change on Pacific tuna stocks and on the small island states that depend on them. It is published today in Nature Sustainability.

A consortium of institutions and organizations from across the Pacific, North America and Europe contributed to the research, including the University of Wollongong, Conservation International, the Pacific Community (SPC), the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), and the Parties to the Nauru Agreement Office (PNAO).

The 10 island states of the Western and Central Pacific—Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tokelau and Tuvalu—are so reliant on their tuna fisheries for economic development and food security that they are considered “tuna dependent.”

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Alaska’s Bristol Bay sees record return of sockeye salmon. The warming climate may have helped.

July 30, 2021 — Amid a fierce June storm that whipped up 8-foot waves, Robin Samuelsen told his four young crew members to let out the gillnets behind his 32-foot boat in the Nushagak district of Bristol Bay.

For the 70-year-old, a veteran of more than a half-century of fishing, this was a tough day to start the 2021 sockeye salmon harvest. But soon the crew, all of them his grandsons, were dancing on the back deck as they spotted splash after splash made by sockeye hitting the net’s mesh in a surprisingly strong display of abundance so early in the season.

In the weeks that followed, storms often returned to make fishing miserable, and at times dangerous. Through it all, the salmon kept surging back from their ocean feeding grounds in what — by this week — developed into a record return of more than 65.5 million sockeye to the Bristol Bay region.

“It was pretty rough out there. It was really rough out there,” Samuelsen said. “But it was a fabulous year here in the Nushagak.”

The massive return once again demonstrated Bristol Bay’s stunning sockeye productivity at a time when these fish are struggling in other parts of North America, in part due to climate change, which can increase the temperature of the rivers adults must navigate to their spawning grounds. It can also reduce food for them in the ocean.

Read the full story from The Seattle Times at the Anchorage Daily News

The Effects of Climate Change on Sharks

July 29, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Climate Solutions Start with Research

Understanding the effects of climate change on sharks and other fish populations is an emerging area of study and a priority for NOAA Fisheries. Climate change is causing warming seas, acidification, rising sea level, and other long-term shifts in the environment. It is already affecting numerous marine species in complex ways. Sharks are no exception. The impacts of climate change on marine life are expected to continue into the future, potentially resulting in:

  • Shifts in the distribution of fish populations
  • Changes in migratory patterns
  • Changes in the availability of suitable habitat
  • Shifts in population sizes
  • Changes in the availability of prey

We are conducting research on many species and across fisheries to find ways to characterize such ecological shifts and address climate vulnerability and resilience.

The Range of Change

A climate vulnerability assessment for 82 fish species, including some sharks, off the northeastern United States found that impacts are likely to vary by species. In general, sharks may have lower overall vulnerability than other marine organisms (e.g., shellfish, salmon, or eels). They are less likely to experience changes in abundance. However, because of their extensive range, sharks have a high likelihood of shifting their distributions or expanding into new habitats to follow preferable ocean conditions.

In Atlantic and Pacific U.S. waters, many fish species are shifting northward as the oceans continue to warm. For example, species like the thresher shark, which are common off southern California, are expected to become more common off Alaska along the Pacific coast. Along the northeastern United States, smooth dogfish may actually gain suitable habitat, whereas thorny skate (a shark relative) may lose habitat as the region warms. Some species are also shifting to deeper, cooler waters as shallow coastal environments warm.

Read the full release here

White House nominates Jainey Bavishi, climate adaptation expert, to key NOAA post

July 29, 2021 — The White House has picked Jainey Bavishi, a leading expert on responding to the challenges of climate change, to a top leadership position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Bavishi will serve as one of the two top deputies to NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, an ocean scientist, who was confirmed by the Senate last month after being nominated by President Biden in April.

The Biden administration has made confronting climate change one of its top priorities, and the appointment of Bavishi is fitting at an agency responsible for environmental prediction and monitoring and protecting the nation’s coasts, oceans and fisheries.

Bavishi most recently served as the director of the New York Mayor’s Office of Climate Resiliency, where she led a team that prepares the city for impacts of climate change. The office is working on several initiatives to protect the city’s structures and inhabitants, including installing a 2.4-mile flood protection system consisting of flood walls and floodgates and improving underground interior drainage systems in Manhattan.

“The Biden administration has picked a tremendous climate champion to serve the American people,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said in an emailed statement. “Jainey’s leadership and vision has transformed New York City’s coastline and has helped to protect New Yorkers from destructive flooding and deadly heat waves.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Shasta River Habitat Restoration Builds Salmon’s Resilience to Rising Temperatures

July 28, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Many species, such as salmon, rely on cool waters to survive during the hot summer months. But with temperatures rising due to climate change, these cold-water habitats are being threatened. In California’s Shasta River, a NOAA-supported habitat restoration project is helping to keep waters cool for salmon.

The Shasta River is an important tributary of the Klamath River, which was once the third largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast. Historically, the Shasta River supported more than 80,000 salmon each year. Today, however, only up to a few thousand adult salmon return to the river each year.

One of the issues facing Chinook salmon, steelhead trout, and threatened coho salmon in the Shasta River is a lack of healthy habitat. In particular, high water temperatures and poor water quality during the hot summer months can lead to lethal conditions for salmon.

Juvenile salmon need access to cool water to survive warm summer temperatures. In healthy habitats, trees and other vegetation growing along the banks of rivers and streams provide shade that keeps the water cool. Deep, fast-moving waterways also stay cooler than shallow, slower-moving ones. As water temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, maintaining these cold-water habitats for salmon becomes more crucial.

On Big Springs Creek, a tributary to the Shasta River, water temperatures were heating up as high as 77 degrees Fahrenheit—too warm for salmon to tolerate. These high temperatures were caused in part by uncontrolled livestock grazing. Cows were eating the vegetation that otherwise would have provided shade and kept the water cool. They were also trampling the streambed, creating a shallower, wider river channel that was more easily heated by the sun’s rays.

Read the full release here

Tracking trends and ocean temperatures could give R.I. fisherman an edge

July 27, 2021 — Tony Eliasen and Brian Amaral, the co-founders of Newport, Rhode Island-based Ocean State Sensing, are focused on sensing and mapping temperatures in the water to be able to observe and track events. (Amaral is not related to the Boston Globe reporter.)

In real time, they are able to measure and plot water temperature from the sea bed to the surface, a tracking system that they say reveals connections within the biosphere that are otherwise unknown.

Q: What does Ocean State Sensing do?

Eliasen: We are a temperature sensing services company focused on the maritime environment. We provide high-resolution, continuous, in-situ sensing services. Our goal is to improve the understanding of the dynamic shifts in our climate and oceans to affect positive change and stewardship of the marine industries and the planet.

Q: Are you conducting sensing and mapping temperatures just off Rhode Island’s coastline, or elsewhere?

Amaral: At the moment we are [focused on Rhode Island], but we have plans to conduct data collection events in multiple places. We are actively seeking collaborators, partners and funding to help us grow our services and applications. One event we are excited about is partnering with a local fisherman to tow our gear behind the boat and measure the entire water column temperature at once as the boat drives up and down Narragansett Bay.

Q: What is the difference between satellite and point-based measurements?

Amaral: Satellites provide temperature data of the surface of the ocean which for many places in the world is accurate only for the first few feet of water. It does not provide data beyond the surface. To get this data, a temperature probe is lowered into the water, and the probe records the temperature of the water touching it. This is a point-based measurement, because it is measuring the temperature at a single point in water depth, at the latitude and longitude it was lowered into the water.

We are able to measure the entire water column at once, and when we tow the equipment, we can measure swaths of data, all of which is measured continuously and in real time.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Warming rivers in U.S. West killing fish, imperiling industry

July 27, 2021 — Baby salmon are dying by the thousands in one California river, and an entire run of endangered salmon could be wiped out in another. Fishermen who make their living off adult salmon, once they enter the Pacific Ocean, are sounding the alarm as blistering heat waves and extended drought in the U.S. West raise water temperatures and imperil fish from Idaho to California.

Hundreds of thousands of young salmon are dying in Northern California’s Klamath River as low water levels brought about by drought allow a parasite to thrive, devastating a Native American tribe whose diet and traditions are tied to the fish. And wildlife officials said the Sacramento River is facing a “near-complete loss” of young Chinook salmon due to abnormally warm water.

A crash in one year’s class of young salmon can have lasting effects on the total population and shorten or stop the fishing season, a growing concern as climate change continues to make the West hotter and drier. That could be devastating to the commercial salmon fishing industry, which in California alone is worth $1.4 billion.

The plummeting catch already has led to skyrocketing retail prices for salmon, hurting customers who say they can no longer afford the $35 per pound of fish, said Mike Hudson, who has spent the last 25 years catching and selling salmon at farmers markets in Berkeley.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at NBC News