Saving Seafood

What’s to blame for Alaska’s poor king salmon runs? Submarines, suggests Rep. Young.

August 3, 2021 — Chinook salmon runs are in decline across Alaska, and research suggests a host of factors are to blame, from ocean predators to warmer streams and excess rain. But Alaska Congressman Don Young recently added a novel suspect to the list: nuclear submarines.

“We have to figure this out. Have to work on it and make sure there’s not something going on,” he said of the poor runs. “Is it climate change? Are they moving north? Is there a nuclear sub stuck out there somewhere?”

Young spoke at a subcommittee hearing Thursday, and acknowledged his theory sounds unusual.

“Everybody laughs at me but at one time I counted 64 nuclear subs from Russia,” he said. “We kept track of them as they came off the coast of California.”

A spokesman said Young was referring to matters like those described in a 2020 BBC article on radioactive submarine wrecks.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

 

New paper sheds light on fisher strategies for shifting stocks

August 2, 2021 — New research from Rutgers University has investigated community and fisher strategies for adapting to stocks changing as a result of ocean warming.

The paper, “Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost – Responses of Fishers’ Communities to Shifts in the Distribution and Abundance of Fish,” focused on the groundfish trawl fishery in Northeast U.S., an area that is already seeing warming temperatures and is considered a hotspot for the effects of global warming.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Pacific Northwest heat wave causes vibrio bacteria outbreak in oysters

August 2, 2021 — A heat wave that sent temperatures into the triple digits for three days in the U.S. Pacific Northwest in late June and early July drove up levels of the vibrio bacteria in area oysters, causing record numbers of illnesses from the bacteria and prompting oyster recalls.

The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) reported 75 lab-confirmed cases of vibriosis as of Wednesday, 29 July, and said there are likely many unreported cases. According to figures provided by DOH, the previous record number of vibriosos cases through 28 July was 48 in 2018.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Climate change is causing tuna to migrate, which could spell catastrophe for the small islands that depend on them

August 2, 2021 — Small Pacific Island states depend on their commercial fisheries for food supplies and economic health. But our new research shows climate change will dramatically alter tuna stocks in the tropical Pacific, with potentially severe consequences for the people who depend on them.

As climate change warms the waters of the Pacific, some  will be forced to migrate to the open ocean of the high seas, away from the jurisdiction of any country. The changes will affect three key tuna species: skipjack, yellowfin, and bigeye.

Pacific Island nations such as the Cook Islands and territories such as Tokelau charge foreign fishing operators to access their waters, and heavily depend on this revenue. Our research estimates the movement of tuna stocks will cause a fall in annual government revenue to some of these small island states of up to 17%.

This loss will hurt these developing economies, which need fisheries revenue to maintain essential services such as hospitals, roads and schools. The experience of Pacific Island states also bodes poorly for global climate justice more broadly.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

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