Saving Seafood

Protecting Fish Habitat Helps Put Food on Your Table

May 22, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Healthy habitats are productive habitats. They provide food and shelter for fish and help to maintain sustainable fish populations and fisheries that produce the seafood that we all love and depend on. Everyone benefits when marine habitats are protected from the effects of fishing.

Fish Rely on Healthy Habitats for Growth and Survival

Fish that live on or near the bottom of the ocean need food and places to hide from predators in order to survive and grow large enough to reproduce. Rocky habitats, especially those with lots of attached plants and animals like sponges, mussels, and anemones, are ideal habitats for many species of fish. These habitats are also the most vulnerable to impacts from commercial fishing gear. Nets and dredges that are towed over the bottom of the ocean can disturb bottom habitats, removing and damaging plants and animals that live there. Disturbed habitats provide fish with less food and less shelter from predators. Some habitat organisms grow and form very slowly. Once they are removed or damaged, it can take years for them to be replaced. As a result, if these vulnerable bottom habitats are fished too heavily they may never fully recover from the effects of fishing and are no longer healthy habitats for fish.

Types of Towed Fishing Gear

In New England and the Mid-Atlantic, fishermen use three primary types of towed commercial fishing gear: bottom trawls, scallop dredges, and clam dredges. Other gears such as lobster traps remain in place while fishing and have very little effect on bottom habitats.

Read the full release here

NOAA selects Univ. of Washington to host regional institute for climate and ocean research

May 22, 2020 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has selected the University of Washington to host a Pacific Northwest research institute focusing on climate, ocean and coastal challenges, supported by a five-year award worth up to $300 million.

  • The Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies, or CICOES, will be a collaboration involving UW as well as the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and Oregon State University. It’ll build on the 42-year history of UW’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, under the continued directorship of UW marine biologist John Horne.

Read the full story at Geek Wire

Reminder: Scientific and Statistical Committee Webinar on Scenario Deepening, May 26

May 22, 2020 — The following was released by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council:

As part of its Climate and Communities Initiative (CCI) the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) is sponsoring a series of webinars with its advisory bodies, which are open to the public.

The May 26 webinar (SSC) will be held on the following date:

  • Scientific and Statistical Committee: Tuesday, May 26, 1:30-4:30 p.m.

Please see the CCI “Scenario Deepening” SSC webinar notice on the Council’s website for materials and public participation 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.

Warming Oceans Choke Fish as Habitats Get Less ‘Breathable’

May 20, 2020 — The cool, nutrient-rich water of the California Current supports a variety of marine life, including invisible phytoplankton, economically important salmon, rockfish, and Dungeness crab, and majestic orcas.

For the study in Science Advances, researchers used recent understanding of water breathability and historical data to explain population cycles of the northern anchovy. The findings for this key species could apply to other species in the current.

“If you’re worried about marine life off the west coast of North America, you’re worried about anchovies and other forage fish in the California Current. Ultimately it’s what underpins the food web,” says lead author Evan Howard, a postdoctoral researcher in oceanography at the University of Washington.

Read the full story at Futurity

FAO report analyzes climate patterns’ impact on the seafood industry

May 15, 2020 — Climate patterns across various ocean regions have impacted the production, survival, and performance of fish, fisheries, and aquaculture – which in turn directly impacts the populations that rely on the resource for a living.

A new report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), in partnership with French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD France), says the events of El Niño and La Niña – which are recurring climate patterns made of warm and cool phases across the tropical Pacific, popularly known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) – “generally worsen the effects of climate change on fish, fisheries, and aquaculture.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

‘A risk for the future’: How warming oceans are disrupting America’s seafood supply

May 13, 2020 — Recorded temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean are increasing at an “alarming” rate, according to one scientist, and forcing fisherman to confront a seafood industry primed for disruption.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts recorded 2017 as the warmest year on record for water temperatures in the Northeast. Glen Gawarkiewicz, a senior scientist at the institution, said 2019 was equally “disturbing,” adding that over the past seven years, water temperatures off southern New England have increased by nine degrees Fahrenheit, faster than any region outside of the Arctic.

“The ocean is changing pretty rapidly,” Gawarkiewicz said. “Typically temperature variations might be two degrees Fahrenheit there, and fish are probably sensitive at about one degree Fahrenheit there. So it’s almost an order of magnitude more that you normally need to get some kind of change.”

Read the full story at Yahoo Finance

Oceans should have a place in climate ‘green new deal’ policies, scientists suggest

May 6, 2020 — The world’s oceans play a critical role in climate regulation, mitigation and adaptation and should be integrated into comprehensive “green new deal” proposals being promoted by elected officials and agency policymakers, a group of ocean scientists suggests in a new paper.

“The ‘green new deal’ has been the headline, but very few have been talking about the oceans in those conversations,” said Steven Dundas, an environmental and resource economist in Oregon State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences and the Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station in Newport, Oregon.

“We think it’s important to add a touch of ocean blue to this conversation because the oceans play an important role in efforts to mitigate effects of climate change,” he said. “Our proposed ‘teal deal’ is an integrated approach that is more likely to generate cost-effective and equitable solutions to this global threat.”

Dundas is one of three senior authors of the paper, which was published recently by the journal Conservation Letters. The other senior authors are Arielle Levine and Rebecca Lewison of San Diego State University. Additional authors include OSU’s Angee Doerr, Ana Spalding and Will White.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

A Flood of Catastrophe: How a Warming Climate and the Bonnet Carré Spillway Threaten the Survival of Coast Fishermen

May 1, 2020 — On a warm, sunny September morning, bait salesman Roscoe Liebig scanned the harbor’s vacant piers and shook his head in disgust. Liebig recalled his usual surroundings: a full parking lot, a line of fishermen hooking their bait, and oysters peaking out in a low tide. That day, all of it was gone.

In a typical year, he’d be outside peddling his shrimp and croakers, a type of bait fish, to fishermen passing by.

“This is catastrophic,” he said. Referencing another historic disaster, Liebig put 2019 in perspective: “BP could blow up a well and you’d do better than this. It’s a dying freaking industry, and this is just the icing on the cake.”

Inside “Roscoe’s Live Bait Works,” sitting on a barge in the Mississippi Sound, Liebig grows restless as he reviews his finances. Sales are down sharply from the previous year, and he worries that making even a small repair or upgrade to his boat could break the bank.

Read the full story at the Pulitzer Center

CCI “Scenario Deepening” webinar series; various dates May 20 through June 5

April 30, 2020 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

As part of its Climate and Communities Initiative (CCI) the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) is sponsoring a series of webinars with its advisory bodies, which are open to the public.

The series of webinars will be held on the following dates and times:

  • Highly Migratory Species Advisory Subpanel and Management Team: Wednesday, May 20, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
  • Scientific and Statistical Committee: Tuesday, May 26, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
  • Groundfish Advisory Subpanel and Management Team: Thursday, May 28, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
  • Coastal Pelagic Species Advisory Subpanel and Management Team: Monday, June 1, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
  • Salmon Advisory Subpanel and Technical Team: Tuesday, June 2, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
  • Habitat Committee: Friday, June 5, 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.

Please see the CCI “Scenario Deepening” webinar series notice on the Council’s website for the purpose of the webinars and participation 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.

Assessing El Niño’s impact on fisheries and aquaculture around the world

April 27, 2020 — While considerable resources are invested in seasonal forecasts and early-warning systems for food security, not enough is known about El Niño’s impact on the fisheries and aquaculture sectors, even though its name was given in the 1600s by fishers off the coast of Peru.

To remedy that, FAO is publishing, in partnership with French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD France), the report El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) effects on fisheries and aquaculture. This report captures the current state of knowledge on the impacts of ENSO events across sectors, from  to safety at sea, from fish biology and fishing operation to management measures.

El Niño is widely known as a climate pattern that begins over the Pacific Ocean but wreaks havoc on ecosystems in land and water far away from its origin. Its consequences include droughts and major harvest shortfalls in large swatches of Africa and Indonesia, forest fires in Australia, and serious flooding in South America.

ENSOs are often simplified to reflect two main phases: El Niño, an anomalous warming phase in the central and/or eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, and an opposite cooling phase called La Niña.

Read the full story at PHYS.org