Climate change Archives - Page 68 of 141

Northwest’s Iconic Salmon Face Tough Conditions During Ocean Journey

March 16, 2021 — Ocean conditions can be integral to salmon survival. And in 2021, the Pacific Northwest’s iconic fish will face a mixed bag: some good and some bad conditions while out at sea.

Salmon survive best when the water is cooler along the coast and warmer farther out. Colder La Niña conditions have also led to higher salmon counts. Right now, that’s exactly what’s happening. But things will likely change over the summer.

“The next few months look pretty good. However, things are expected to change. A lot of the warm water we’ve seen the past couple of years is not gone completely. It’s just not at the surface,” says Brian Burke, a research fisheries biologist with NOAA Fisheries.

The mixed messages the ocean is sending for salmon survival could be frustrating for fisheries managers, who are trying to figure out how many fish will return to fresh waters.

Warm water may come close to the coastline this July through September, which spells trouble for salmon in the ocean.

Read the full story at KLCC

Changes to Earth’s ‘twilight zone’ could cripple the Ocean’s future

March 15, 2021 –Welcome to the Twilight Zone It’s a real place — but under the sea.

The mesopelagic zone, also known as the “twilight zone,” is a mysterious region of the ocean between 200 and 1,000 meters in depth. It’s sandwiched between the sunlit surface and pitch-dark deep ocean.

A new study shines a light on its formation over geologic time scales, revealing the process is intimately linked with global temperature.

Currently, this is a boon to the creatures that live there. But, as anthropogenic climate change heats up the ocean, this finding suggests the twilight zone and its integral role in the carbon cycle may be negatively affected.

This is bad news not just for the animals that live there, but for people too — a twilight zone in balance is essential for keeping billions of tons of carbon out of our planet’s atmosphere.

Read the full story at Inverse

How sea-level rise could affect Pacific nations’ fishing rights

March 12, 2021 — Small island states in the Pacific are opening a new front in the fight against rising seas, to secure rights to an ocean area bigger than the moon and home to billion-dollar fish stocks.

States from Kiribati to Tuvalu are mapping their most remote islands, scattered across the ocean, in a bid to claim permanent exclusive economic zones (EEZs), stretching 200 nautical miles offshore, irrespective of future sea level rise.

As global warming pushes waters higher, Pacific nations fear some of their islands could be swamped, shrinking their EEZs and rights to fishing and mining within their boundaries – so they are trying to lock in existing zones now.

Read the full story at the Christian Science Monitor

Fishers at risk in ‘perfect storm’

March 12, 2021 — Stormier weather will increasingly force fishers to choose between their safety and income, researchers say.

Climate change is causing more extreme weather in many locations. Storms will likely increase around the UK in the future, while many fishers in the UK also face economic insecurity.

The new study—led by the University of Exeter—worked with fishers in Cornwall to understand how they balance the risks and rewards of fishing in varying conditions.

Factors that made skippers more likely to risk fishing in high wind or waves included: being the main earner in their household, poor recent fishing success, and having a crew to support.

“Climate change and economic insecurity create a ‘perfect storm’, putting ever-increasing pressure on skippers,” said lead author Dr. Nigel Sainsbury.

“Fishing is already the most dangerous peacetime profession in the UK, and the combination of more extreme weather and financial challenges will only make this worse.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

NATIONAL LAW REVIEW: Expectations for Offshore Wind Under the Biden Administration

March 11, 2021 — President Joe Biden’s arrival at the White House in January was, as customary for any new executive branch leader, met by outsized expectations on the part of supporters and detractors alike. Among the countless areas of public policy set to be affected by the new administration, perhaps no one issue is more anticipated to be in play than energy and environmental policy.

The heightened set of expectations around energy policy began with the campaign, when Team Biden consistently placed climate change issues among its leading priorities — a trend that noticeably continued with Cabinet picks, as nominees for agencies from Defense to Transportation to Treasury cited climate considerations as key factors affecting their respective portfolios. On January 27, 2021, shortly after taking office, the Biden administration released a series of executive actions that included a stated goal of reaching a “carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.”

Perhaps no single industry would be more critical to the realization of this far-reaching carbon-free goal than offshore wind, which has emerged in the United States over the past several years as a potentially game-changing source of clean energy generation, based on its earlier-moving success in Europe and elsewhere. In fact, along the country’s populous coastal areas, where fifty three percent of US residents reside, offshore wind presents the most viable option to build up renewable energy resources in the foreseeable future.

Read the full story at the National Law Review

OREGON: Crab fishery adapts following climate shock event

March 10, 2021 — An unprecedented marine heat wave that led to a massive harmful algal bloom and a lengthy closure of the West Coast Dungeness crab fishery significantly altered the use of ocean resources across seven California crab-fishing communities.

The delayed opening of the 2015-16 crab-fishing season followed the 2014-16 North Pacific marine heat wave and subsequent algal bloom. The bloom produced high levels of the biotoxin domoic acid, which can accumulate in crabs and render them hazardous for human consumption.

That event, which is considered a “climate shock” because of its severity and impact, tested the resilience of California’s fishing communities, researchers from Oregon State University, the University of Washington, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center found.

The study is the first to examine impacts from such delays across fisheries, providing insight into the response by the affected fishing communities, said James Watson, one of the study’s co-authors and an assistant professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.

Read the full story at the Newport News Times

Give Us Your Input on Making Fisheries and Protected Resources More Resilient to Climate Change

March 5, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA has started an agency-wide effort to gather initial public input in response to Section 216(c) of the Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad (EO 14008) issued on January 27, 2021.

Section 216(c) of EO 14008 directs NOAA to collect recommendations on how to make fisheries, including aquaculture, and protected resources more resilient to climate change, including changes in management and conservation measures, and improvements in science, monitoring, and cooperative research.

The comment period opened March 3, 2021 and will close on April 2, 2021.

For more on this effort and how to submit comments, please visit our new story on the effort.

OSU researcher leads NOAA-funded project to study West Coast response to ocean acidification

March 4, 2021 — The following was released by Oregon State University:

An Oregon State University researcher is part of a new federally supported project investigating how communities along the West Coast are adapting to ocean acidification, with the goal of determining what they need to be more resilient.

Ana K. Spalding, an assistant professor of marine and coastal policy in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts, is leading a team looking into how shellfish industry participants in several towns along the Oregon and California coasts are responding to ocean acidification and where gaps in policy or resources have left them vulnerable.

The $1 million, three-year interdisciplinary project is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through its Ocean Acidification Program. At OSU, Spalding is working with Erika Wolters, assistant professor of public policy, and Master of Public Policy students Victoria Moreno, Emily Griffith and Ryan Hasert.

“The goal of this project is to better align policy responses with the immediate and very local needs of shellfish-reliant communities,” Spalding said. “This is both understanding that vulnerability and proactively thinking, ‘What can we do to respond to better support members of the shellfish industry and their needs?’”

Ocean acidification and its impact on shellfish first became a major concern for West Coast farmers after a 2007 mass oyster larvae die-off at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Netarts Bay, Oregon. OSU scientists definitively linked that die-off to increased carbon dioxide in the water in a 2012 study.

Read the full release here

Small-scale fishermen turn to apps and AI to tackle climate change

March 2, 2021 — From weather predicting apps to using artificial intelligence to monitor the fish they catch, small-scale fishermen and coastal communities are increasingly turning to digital tools to help them be more sustainable and tackle climate change.

Overfishing and illegal fishing by commercial vessels inflict significant damage on fisheries and the environment, and take food and jobs from millions of people in coastal communities who rely on fishing, environmental groups say.

In addition, climate change affects on small-scale fishermen – who account for about 90% of the world’s capture fishermen and fish workers – include fish moving to new areas in search of cooler waters or if their habitat is destroyed, rising sea levels, and an increase in the number of storms.

Launched in January by nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Small-Scale Fisheries Resource and Collaboration Hub (SSF Hub) is a multilingual website that aims to bring together fishermen, their communities and advocacy groups to connect, share ideas and find solutions to the problems they face.

Read the full story at Reuters

Help make fisheries, aquaculture, and protected resources more resilient to climate change

March 2, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Agency announces 30-day comment period to collect information in response to Section 216(c) of the Executive Order on tackling the climate crisis.

NOAA is launching an agency-wide effort to gather initial public input on Section 216(c) of the Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad. This section directs NOAA to collect recommendations on how to make fisheries, including aquaculture, and protected resources more resilient to climate change. This includes changes in management and conservation measures and improvements in science, monitoring, and cooperative research. We invite your input on how best to achieve these objectives. Submit your comments by April 2, 2021 to OceanResources.Climate@noaa.gov.

The input will inform NOAA’s implementation of our relevant authorities and our work with federal agencies, state and tribal governments, and relevant stakeholders and constituents to ensure more resilient fisheries and protected resources due to climate change.

Research has shown that fisheries, protected resources, and their habitats and ecosystems are being affected by climate change. Climate-related changes in ocean ecosystems such as warming oceans, increasing acidification, and rising seas can affect the distribution and abundance of marine species. These changes also impact the people and communities that depend on them. At NOAA, we work with partners to understand and respond to changing climate and ocean conditions to help minimize impacts, adapt to changes, and ensure that future generations can enjoy the benefits of healthy marine ecosystems.

Beyond this 30-day public comment period, we will continue to gather input throughout 2021 through meetings, public listening sessions, and other means. Information gathered after the initial deadline for comments will still be collected and considered.

Read the full release here