Saving Seafood

Can kelp help protect shellfish from ocean acidification?

February 27, 2020 — Marine scientist Susie Arnold of the Island Institute will discuss research about kelp farming and ocean acidification Monday, March 9 at 5 p.m. at the MDI Biological Laboratory, as part of the laboratory’s Science Café series.

Maine’s scenic coastlines and long-established fisheries contribute to the state’s economy, making Maine vulnerable to the effects of ocean acidification from both an environmental and socio-economic perspective.

To address this vulnerability, Maine was the first East Coast state to convene a legislatively established commission, tasked with understanding increased ocean acidification and the potential impacts on commercially important species.

Arnold has been part of a joint research effort, undertaken by Island Institute, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and aquaculture industry collaborators, to better understand the role of growing and harvesting macroalgae in capturing carbon, and to determine potential benefits of co-cultivating kelp or other macrophytes alongside farmed shellfish.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Abnormally Warm Years Caused a Sea Change in Coastal Alaska Ecosystems

February 27, 2020 — Rapidly warming Alaska is already a poster child for climate change, from its vanishing sea ice to its thawing permafrost. But over the last three years, the state’s northwestern coast has experienced a series of unusual climate-related changes—remarkable even for the long-altered Pacific Arctic.

Beginning in 2017, a combination of abnormally high temperatures and unusually strong, southerly winds swept the Bering and Chukchi seas. An alarming cascade of ecological consequences ensued—record-low sea ice, shifting algae blooms, migrating fish populations and sudden seabird die-offs were just a few.

“Most of my own research is with people living in the coastal communities, so talking to them and hearing about what they’re seeing,” said Henry Huntington, an independent Alaskan researcher and consultant. “And they saw some very unusual things, and things that struck them.”

“Ridiculous” water temperatures and unstable sea ice were among the most common complaints raised in interviews with coastal residents, Huntington noted.

“Adding to that, what we’re hearing from folks on the research cruises, it just became apparent that things were really a lot different from what any of us expected,” he said.

Read the full story at Scientific American

Ad Hoc Climate and Communities Core Team to hold a webinar on March 20, 2020

February 26, 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 a webinar, which is open to the public. The webinar will be held Friday, March 20, 2020, from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, or when business for the day has been completed.

Please see the CCCT webinar notice on the Council’s website for participation details and the purpose of the webinar.

For further information:

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

‘Grand Challenge’ review stresses global impact of microplastics

February 25, 2020 — Professor Rob Hale of William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science is lead author of a new “Grand Challenges” paper commissioned to mark the 100th anniversary of the American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest association of Earth and space scientists with more than 60,000 members in 137 countries.

The paper, “A Global Perspective on Microplastics,” is co-authored by VIMS doctoral student Meredith Seeley and senior research scientist Dr. Mark LaGuardia, along with Drs. Lei Mai and Eddy Zeng of Jinan University in Guangzhou, China.

“Microplastics” are  fabricated for products like facial scrubs, or produced when physical, chemical, and biological forces break down larger pieces of plastic debris. There has been widespread concern among scientists and the public that these minute synthetic fragments are impacting .

AGU Executive Director/CEO Chris McEntee says the Grand Challenges “represent a special collection of open-access review papers with the shared goal of transforming Earth and space science to meet the challenges of today and the opportunities of tomorrow. They explore where major research and discovery are needed to address fundamental questions in our understanding of Earth and the solar system.”

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Researchers examine nations losing fish species due to climate change

February 25, 2020 — As ocean warming causes fish stocks to migrate toward cooler waters to maintain their preferred thermal environment, many of the nations that rely on commercial fish species as an integral part of their economy could suffer.

A new study published in Nature Sustainability from the University of Delaware, the University of California, Santa Barbara and Hokkaido University, shows that nations in the tropics—especially Northwest African nations—are especially vulnerable to this potential species loss due to . Not only are  at risk for the loss of  stocks, the study found there are not currently any adequate policy interventions to help mitigate affected countries’ potential losses.

Kimberly Oremus, assistant professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy in UD’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, explained that when the researchers looked at , including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, they found no specific text for what happens when fish leave a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), a zone established to give a country national jurisdiction over a fishery resource.

That means countries could be vulnerable to economic losses, and those potential losses could make the fish populations themselves vulnerable as well.

“We realized there was an incentive for countries when they lose a fish or anticipate that loss to go ahead and overfish before it leaves because otherwise, they don’t get the monetary benefits of the resource,” said Oremus.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

New Study Shows Pacific Cod Eggs are Highly Vulnerable to Changes in Bottom Temperature

February 21, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The 2013 to 2016 marine heatwave—known as “The Blob”—is the largest warm anomaly ever recorded in the North Pacific. In the Gulf of Alaska, scientists have connected low numbers of Pacific cod larvae, juveniles, and adults to loss of spawning habitat. This occured during and immediately following the heatwave. Compounding the ecological loss is the significant economic impact on the second most valuable commercial fishery in Alaska. The fishery experienced large reductions in their annual catch limits in 2018 (a 58 percent cut) and a fishery closure in 2020.

“We combined results of laboratory studies, stock assessment model output and survey data to help us better understand what happens to Pacific cod in warm and cold years,” said Benjamin Laurel, NOAA Fisheries biologist and lead researcher for this new study. “We found that the recent three-year heatwave and return to similar conditions in 2019 potentially had the greatest effect on spawning habitat for the years we had available data (1994 to 2019).”

Water temperature is an important component of fish habitat. Temperature influences every stage of a fish’s life. During the first year of life, fish eggs are particularly sensitive to changes in environmental conditions.

Laurel and colleague Lauren Rogers determined that Pacific cod eggs have a narrow optimal range for hatching success, only 3-6º C. This is much narrower than other related species like walleye pollock and Atlantic cod.

“Early life stage distribution and survival may set biogeographic boundaries and limit productive capacity for fish stocks,” added Rogers. “Pacific cod are unique among cod species; they only spawn once in a season and have eggs that adhere to the seafloor. Pacific cod females can actually place their eggs in habitats with temperatures that optimize hatch success. However, during these warm years, it may have been more challenging to find suitable habitat because the warmer water temperatures extended into the ocean depths.”

Read the full release here

Feared return of ‘The Blob’ fizzles as storms churn, chill Pacific Ocean

February 20, 2020 — It looked big. It looked bad. But the marine heat wave that threatened much of the West Coast in the fall of 2019 has mostly dissipated, at least at the surface.

The Northeast Pacific Marine Heatwave of 2019, or NEP19, lasted 225 days and at its peak covered about 3.2 million square miles. It was the second longest-lasting and second-largest such event ever recorded in the northern Pacific Ocean over the past 39 years, according to a blog post by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The disturbance decreased below the agency’s classification threshold for a heat wave as of Jan. 5, said Chris Harvey, a fisheries biologist at the agency’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, on Tuesday.

But while NEP19 is mostly gone, it’s not forgotten: Scientists caution that it is not clear the heat wave is entirely dissipated, or that it will not return. The deep ocean is still retaining significant amounts of heat. Monitoring of sea surface temperature readings from multiple platforms, including satellites, ships and buoys will continue.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Can You Eat Fish and Still Care About the Planet? We Talked to an Expert to Find Out.

February 20, 2020 — As someone who works on environmental policy issues for a living, I’m often asked by my friends and family what they can do that’s “better” for the planet. Drive an electric vehicle? Buy a reusable coffee mug? Bike to work? Eat veggie burgers? Recycle?

Most of the time, I don’t have a satisfactory answer; the answers I have aren’t always that straightforward, helpful, or even desired. If you care about climate change, eating more plants is great, but we also need a comprehensive and aggressive federal climate policy. If you care about plastic pollution, reusable mugs can cut down on single-use plastic, but they need to be used for a long time (several years) to make up for the energy used to make them.

One area that I have no reservations about, however, is seafood. It’s delicious; it’s a great source of micronutrients and omega-3s; and if you know how to shop for it, it can indeed be an environmentally responsible choice for dinner.

Make no mistake: The ocean is in dire need of protection. Overfishing, climate change, and pollution are major threats to the ocean and its ability to sustain human life.

The good news is that there are organizations working to turn those threats around — and you can help by voting with your dollars and choosing sustainable seafood at the grocery store. For example, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an international nonprofit organization that has developed a science-based standard for environmentally sustainable fishing. If a wild-capture fishery meets those standards, its seafood products can be packaged with the MSC blue fish label.

Read the full story at Kitchn

Climate Change Is Reshaping Atlantic Fisheries and Sending This Fluke Fight to Court

February 19, 2020 — By his own account, Anthony DiLernia is a guy who can make friends with any angler. For 45 years he’s run a fishing charter boat out of New York Harbor, and he’s served as a member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishing Council on and off for almost as long.

But get DiLernia on the subject of Paralichthys dentatus, aka summer flounder, aka fluke, and his voice gets territorial in a harbor kind of a way. What steams him are the wide variances in the amount the fish the federal government permits each state to catch. The uneven allocations are the reason that Southern fishermen routinely travel hundreds of miles to the waters off Long Island to trawl for fluke that local fishermen are forbidden to catch.

These state quotas, which are meant to prevent a species from being fished out of existence, are based on patterns of where the fish were brought in to docks in the 1980s. Back then summer flounder were clustered off Cape Hatteras, which explains, in part, how Virginia and North Carolina together get more than 50% of the annual quota, whereas New York gets only a little more than 7%.

But anyone who spends any time with a net knows warming waters have been pushing fluke steadily north. “You know all those critters who used to live down South? Guess what? They’ve moved to the Bronx,” DiLernia said.

“Our guys will be fishing right along their guys 80 miles off Long Island,” he said with indignation rising in his voice. “We catch more than a couple hundred pounds, and we have to throw the rest back—which is a total waste. Meanwhile, they are filling their freezer and driving back to North Carolina. With diesel fuel. What do you think that does to the environment?”

Read the full story at Bloomberg

Study: Ocean fish farming in tropics and sub-tropics most impacted by climate change

February 13, 2020 — Diners may soon find more farmed oysters and fewer Atlantic salmon on their plates as climate change warms Canada’s Pacific coast.

In a study published in Global Change Biology, researchers at the University of British Columbia looked at how  could impact 85  of fish and mollusks that are most commonly farmed in seawater. They found that certain species like Atlantic salmon, European seabass and cobia, and certain areas like the tropics and the Arctic, could be particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Take Canada’s Pacific coast: by the mid-21st century, the region is projected to lose between 60 to 84 percent of area currently suitable for Atlantic salmon farming under a strong mitigation, low greenhouse gas emissions, and no mitigation, high emissions scenarios, respectively.

In contrast, the region would gain 46 percent more area for Pacific cupped oyster farming under the high emissions scenario by the 2050s, while Norway and Sweden could respectively see gains between 48 and 100 percent in areas suitable for Atlantic salmon farming.

Read the full story at PHYS.org