May 20, 2021 — An international group of marine scientists have called on G7 countries to prioritize planning ocean protections at the next summit, to take place in Cornwall, England, next month.
The scientists’ statement, dubbed “Seven Asks for the G7,” includes a list of seven actionable steps that could be taken to protect the oceans. Those steps, according to the letter, are central to addressing climate change and supporting “human wellbeing.”
May 19, 2021 — A new study published in Nature has found that protecting key areas of the ocean would increase overall catch, help reduce carbon emissions, and protect biodiversity.
The study, “Protecting the global ocean for biodiversity, food and climate,” found that an increase in protected areas of the ocean could potentially protect biodiversity, increase the yield of fisheries, and secure marine carbon stocks at risk from human activity. The study also found that most coastal nations have areas that, if protected, could “contribute substantially to achieving these three objectives of biodiversity protection, food provision, and carbon storage.”
May 13, 2021 — The White House’s top climate official promised Wednesday that the administration will listen to concerns of the fishing industry as President Biden pushes forward with a major expansion of offshore wind energy.
Gina McCarthy — who led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Obama and is now the first-ever White House national climate adviser — said the administration already took those complaints into account before granting approval Tuesday to Vineyard Wind, the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm.
“We needed to make sure with Vineyard Wind that we paid close attention to the concerns of our fishers,” McCarthy told 12 News in an interview. “Our fisheries industry is important — it’s part of who we stand for — and so we did tremendous outreach.”
She added, “Certainly there remains concerns, and we’re going to be diligent all through the construction process.”
Set to be staged out of the Port of New Bedford, Vineyard Wind is an 84-turbine project off Martha’s Vineyard that is supposed to generate 800 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 400,000 homes — once it’s up and running. Federal, state and local leaders have hailed it as a milestone for Southern New England and the nation as a whole.
May 10, 2021 — The Biden administration issued a conservation plan Thursday called “America the Beautiful.”
At 22 pages, it’s more of a statement of principles. The centerpiece is a goal of conserving 30% of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030, in part to combat climate change.
Republicans in Congress immediately criticized it as vague and an attempt to lock up natural resources.
Meanwhile, conservation groups are eyeing parts of Alaska they’d like to see protected. Their eyes are on salmon.
“It’s hard to think of two better candidates than the Tongass in Southeast Alaska and Bristol Bay in Southwest Alaska,” said Tim Bristol, executive director of Salmon State.
He said conservation measures in the Tongass and Bristol Bay would protect fish, wildlife and save thousands of jobs which depend on renewable resources.
May 10, 2021 — In the last 30 years, overfishing and alterations caused by Climate Change decimated the number of individuals and their fishing fell from 300 thousand tons per year to only 10 thousand
Sardine capture in the Gulf of California has fallen from 300,000 tons per year to just 10,000 tons per year, in four different cycles since 1991. An international scientific study published last Tuesday in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences concluded that radical population declines in sardines, called collapses, are caused by the combination of overfishing and alterations caused by climate change.
May 7, 2021 — When Philip Munday discussed his research on ocean acidification with more than 70 colleagues and students in a December 2020 Zoom meeting, he wasn’t just giving a confident overview of a decade’s worth of science. Munday, a marine ecologist at James Cook University (JCU), Townsville, was speaking to defend his scientific legacy.
Munday has co-authored more than 250 papers and drawn scores of aspiring scientists to Townsville, a mecca of marine biology on Australia’s northeastern coast. He is best known for pioneering work on the effects of the oceans’ changing chemistry on fish, part of it carried out with Danielle Dixson, a U.S. biologist who obtained her Ph.D. under Munday’s supervision in 2012 and has since become a successful lab head at the University of Delaware (UD), Lewes.
In 2009, Munday and Dixson began to publish evidence that ocean acidification—a knock-on effect of the rising carbon dioxide (CO2) level in Earth’s atmosphere—has a range of striking effects on fish behavior, such as making them bolder and steering them toward chemicals produced by their predators. As one journalist covering the research put it, “Ocean acidification can mess with a fish’s mind.” The findings, included in a 2014 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), could ultimately have “profound consequences for marine diversity” and fisheries, Munday and Dixson warned.
But their work has come under attack. In January 2020, a group of seven young scientists, led by fish physiologist Timothy Clark of Deakin University in Geelong, Australia, published a Nature paper reporting that in a massive, 3-year study, they didn’t see these dramatic effects of acidification on fish behavior at all.
May 7, 2021 — On Thursday, May 6, the Biden administration submitted a preliminary report on a national conservation initiative, widely known as 30×30, to the National Climate Task Force.
The 24-page document, “Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful,” sets the stage for the conservation of “at least 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030,” which was initiated by the president’s Jan. 27 executive order, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.”
Since that EO was issued, the departments of Interior, Agriculture and Commerce, and the Council on Environmental Quality have collected stakeholder input to shape this report, which clearly attempts to expand the definition and application of the term “conservation” to include working lands and waters that may be used sustainably while still being allocated to the program’s 30 percent goal.
“Notably,” the report says, “the president’s challenge specifically emphasizes the notion of ‘conservation’ of the nation’s natural resources (rather than the related but different concept of ‘protection’ or ‘preservation’) recognizing that many uses of our lands and waters, including of working lands, can be consistent with the long-term health and sustainability of natural systems.”
May 7, 2021 — In response to climate change, several marine species are moving away from the equator – something that could jeopardize livelihoods on Pacific island nations that depend on tuna fishing revenue.
According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), multiple species studied showed that marine biodiversity on a “global scale” has been responding to the warming climate.
May 7, 2021 — The following was released by the National Fisheries Institute:
Today’s release of recommendations to the National Climate Taskforce illustrates an understanding that simply walling off parts of the ocean, without a science-based fisheries management goal, is not a sound policy. In fact, the report states that, “many uses of our lands and waters, including of working lands, can be consistent with the long-term health and sustainability of natural systems.”
Further, the report bolsters the fundamental underpinnings of the Magnuson Steven Act, that relies on regional councils to manage fisheries sustainability oversight, when it calls for support of, “locally led conservation and restoration efforts of all kinds and all over America, wherever communities wish to safeguard the lands and waters they know and love.”
Locally led, science based resource management is not a catchy slogan but it is a thorough strategy.
May 5, 2021 — At OBI Seafoods, a sprawling operation with outposts throughout Alaska, there’s all sorts of extra machinery for workers to master. At Whole Foods Market, there are new guidelines for purchasing salmon from wholesalers. And at Ivar’s, a fixture on Seattle’s waterfront for eight decades, the chef is sending back skimpy salmon delivered to his kitchen.
Behind all these changes is an alarming trend that’s been building for years: The giant schools of wild Pacific salmon that can turn southeast Alaska’s ice-cold waters into a brilliant orange blur are thinning out, and those that do survive are shrinking in size.
It’s the shrinking part that’s causing the biggest logistical snarl right now. Many salmon are so small they’ve thrown off OBI’s fish-sorting process and no longer meet the purchasing specifications at Whole Foods and culinary demands at Ivar’s. There, head chef Craig Breeden snaps photos of the fish next to his knife to illustrate their diminutive size before shipping them back.