Saving Seafood

ALEXIA AKBAY: Building A Post-COVID Oceans Economy For Hawaii

July 13, 2020 — The impact of COVID-19 is leading localities around the world to rethink their economies. With a record-high 39.4% of the workforce unemployed, Hawaii is no different.

As a global pandemic dries up tourist dollars and a climate crisis lurks in our future, it is clear that Hawaii’s economy, like our ohia forests and coral reefs, is a fragile ecosystem vulnerable to disruption.

A growing number of calls for a new economic model are gaining traction but they forget Hawaii’s crown jewel: 143,000 acres of mariculture-ready ocean and centuries of indigenous ocean stewardship knowledge.

As we consider Hawaii’s post-COVID economic future, we cannot miss this chance to build a blue economy that restores Hawaii’s self-sufficiency while bringing it forward to a climate-resilient future.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Lobsters, sea scallops are moving out of southern New England

July 13, 2020 — Researchers have projected significant changes in the habitat of commercially important American lobster and sea scallops along the Northeast continental shelf. They used a suite of models to estimate how species will react as waters warm. The researchers suggest that American lobster will move further offshore and sea scallops will shift to the north in the coming decades.

The study’s findings were published recently in Diversity and Distributions. They pose fishery management challenges as the changes can move stocks into and out of fixed management areas. Habitats within current management areas will also experience changes — some will show species increases, others decreases, and others will experience no change.

“Changes in stock distribution affect where fish and shellfish can be caught and who has access to them over time,” said Vincent Saba, a fishery biologist in the Ecosystems Dynamics and Assessment Branch at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and a co-author of the study. “American lobster and sea scallop are two of the most economically valuable single-species fisheries in the entire United States. They are also important to the economic and cultural well-being of coastal communities in the Northeast. Any changes to their distribution and abundance will have major impacts.”

Saba and colleagues used a group of species distribution models and a high-resolution global climate model. They projected the possible impact of climate change on suitable habitat for the two species in the large Northeast continental shelf marine ecosystem. This ecosystem includes waters of the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, the Mid-Atlantic Bight, and southern New England.

Read the full story at EcoRI

Smooth Handfish Extinction Marks a Sad Milestone

July 10, 2020 — For centuries humans believed the ocean was so vast that it was impossible to do it measurable harm. But we now know human activities can destroy critical marine habitats, dangerously pollute seawater and make sea environments more acidic. Overharvesting has disrupted food chains and directly pushed many ocean species into the critically endangered category—and has driven some animals, including Steller’s sea cow, into total extinction. This past March the smooth handfish, Sympterichthys unipennis, officially became the first modern-day marine fish to be declared extinct.

Handfish are a family of 14 unusual bottom-dwelling species related to deep-sea anglerfish. Unlike most other fishes, they do not have a larval phase and do not move around very much as adults; these traits make them sensitive to environmental changes, according to Graham Edgar, a marine ecologist at the University of Tasmania. “They spend most of their time sitting on the seabed, with an occasional flap for a few meters if they’re disturbed,” Edgar says. “As they lack a larval stage, they are unable to disperse to new locations—and consequently, handfish populations are very localized and vulnerable to threats.” In 1996, he adds, another species called the spotted handfish was the first marine fish listed as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

The smooth handfish was once common enough to be one of the first fish species described by European explorers in Australia. Now none has been reported in well over a century, despite frequent scientific sampling in its known range (including by Edgar and his colleagues). Red List guidelines officially define “extinct” as meaning “there is no reasonable doubt that the last individual has died.” Edgar and the members of Australia’s National Handfish Recovery Team were forced to that conclusion earlier this year, and the Red List placed it in the extinct category. Scientists are unsure exactly what finished off the species, but others in the region are threatened by trawl fishing, pollution and climate change.

Read the full story at Scientific American

Ocean Acidification Threatens Bivalve Industry

July 9, 2020 — Worldwide, ocean levels are rising at an accelerated pace. Cape May County is feeling the effects of exacerbated weather events, as a result.

Yet, there is another drastic change affecting the oceans – a decrease in the water’s pH levels. This is a change that industry leaders and scientists fear will drastically affect the county, namely its bivalve (aquatic invertebrates with a hinged shell) industry that is, as marine and coastal sustainability expert Dr. Daphne Munroe said, “At the heart of the economy in this region.”

As carbon is released into the atmosphere, it was once speculated that the ocean’s tendency to absorb emissions would be a net positive, as it spared the Earth’s atmosphere from the worst of the emissions. Dr. Feely, senior scientist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said, “[It’s] a huge service the oceans are doing that significantly reduces global temperature.”

However, scientists are coming to realize that the ocean’s absorption of carbon emissions comes at a great cost, and that the long-term effects of an ocean that has absorbed great amounts of carbon emissions mean that ecosystems will ultimately suffer.

Read the full story at the Cape May County Herald

Aggressive new seaweed is killing coral reefs in remote Hawaiian island chain

July 8, 2020 — Researchers say a recently discovered species of seaweed is killing large patches of coral on once-pristine reefs in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and is rapidly spreading across one of the most remote and protected ocean environments on Earth.

A study from the University of Hawaii and others says the seaweed is spreading more rapidly than anything they’ve seen before in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, a nature reserve that stretches more than 1,300 miles north of the main Hawaiian Islands.

The study was published Tuesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

The algae easily breaks off and rolls across the ocean floor like tumbleweed, scientists say, covering nearby reefs in thick vegetation that out-competes coral for space, sunlight and nutrients.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Los Angeles Times

Fish More Vulnerable to Warming Water Than First Thought

July 2, 2020 — Global warming looks like it will be a bigger problem for the world’s fish species than scientists first thought: A new study shows that when fish are spawning or are embryos they are more vulnerable to hotter water.

With medium-level human-caused climate change expected by the end of the century, the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes will be too hot for about 40% of the world’s fish species in the spawning or embryonic life stages, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science. That means they could go extinct or be forced to change how and where they live and reproduce.

Until now, biologists had just studied adult fish. For adult fish, around 2% to 3% of the species would be in the too-hot zone in the year 2100 with similar projected warming. So using this new approach reveals a previously unknown problem for the future of fish, scientists said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New York Times

Reviving the Gulf Dead Zone Is Worth it: Our New Report Shows the Benefits of Action

June 30, 2020 — Earlier this month, NOAA forecast that this summer in the Gulf of Mexico an area the size of Delaware and Connecticut combined would have so little oxygen that marine life flees from it or dies in it. In 2017, this “dead zone” was the size of New Jersey, the largest one ever recorded.

On the heels of this year’s forecast, acting director of NOAA’s National Ocean Service, Nicole LeBoeuf, noted that the Gulf dead zone doesn’t just hurt marine life—it “puts a strain on the region’s living resources and coastal economies.”

The annual dead zone has shown no signs of significant shrinking over the last three decades, despite years of research and investments in analyzing the problem and identifying solutions. Yet, a winning and achievable solution has been staring us in the face all along: farming practices that are good for the soil, good for our waterways, and quite possibly better for addressing the climate crisis.

Our team decided to tackle the dead zone problem head-on in our new report “Reviving the Dead Zone: Solutions to Benefit Both Gulf Fishers and Midwest Farmers”. Our analysis in the report reveals that shrinking the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, by providing Midwest farmers with more support to use science-based healthy-soil practices, could yield large economic, environmental, and social returns for the Gulf. Our analysis starts to put a dollar value on these returns.

Read the full story at the Union of Concerned Scientists

MAINE: MCFA’s Statement on today’s Climate Council Meeting

June 17, 2020 — The following was released by the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association:

“Today, the Energy Working Group proposed the development of offshore wind as a solution to address our state’s energy needs,” said Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association. “The industrialization of the Gulf of Maine, through the development of offshore wind, is something the fishing community is increasingly concerned about. We hope that a real and robust outreach effort to fishermen is undertaken before any decision is made as to how to achieve our state’s goals for carbon reduction.”

Martens added, “Fishermen have been stewards of Maine’s marine environment for generations and they want to be included in discussions that have the potential to impact not just their livelihood but the environment that they love and depend on. Because of the lack of industry representation on the council and because of the poor precedent set by Aqua Ventus, we are worried that once again Maine’s fishermen will be last to be invited to the table.”

Ad Hoc Climate and Communities Core Team online meeting July 1, 2020

June 10, 2020 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council’s (Council) Ad Hoc Climate and Communities Core Team (CCCT) will hold an online meeting, which is open to the public. This meeting will be held Wednesday, July 1, 2020, from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, or when business for the day has been completed.

Please see the CCCT meeting notice on the Council’s website for details.

For further information:

  • Please contact Pacific Fishery Management Council staff officer Dr. Kit Dahl at 503-820-2422; toll-free 1-866-806-7204.

Global Deals to Save Oceans Were In Reach. Then Covid-19 Hit

June 9, 2020 — Before 2020 became the year of Covid-19, it was set to be the “year of the oceans.”

With only a small portion of them protected by law or agreement, expectations were high that bold steps to preserve biodiversity, rein in overfishing and bolster social responsibility were within reach. Then the coronavirus arrived, and high-profile meetings from the High Seas Treaty (the first global agreement to police and manage international waters) to the United Nations Climate Change Conference were postponed.

The oceans are critical to any effort to slow global warming. Delay in global agreements, given how little time is left to avoid catastrophe, has only made matters that much more desperate.

Waters more than 200 nautical miles from national shores are of critical importance to both fisheries and climate mitigation. The Global Ocean Commission estimates the high seas account for up to $16 billion in annual gross catch and between $74 billion and $222 billion in annual carbon storage. As the world struggles to cut emissions to zero by 2050—a goal scientists say is required to avoid massive planetary shifts—the ocean’s ability to store CO₂ will increasingly diminish, according to new research published last week in the journal AGU Advances.

Read the full story at Bloomberg