Saving Seafood

Study shows impact of climate change on fishing economy

December 26, 2019 — With the Gulf of Maine warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, it makes sense there would be impacts on fish stocks and the fishermen who depend on them for a living.

While several studies have demonstrated that marine inhabitants are on the move trying to find cooler water, the data on how climate change is affecting fishermen has been hard to come by. Other factors — cuts to fish quotas, the closing of more areas to fishing, and gear changes to rebuild fish stocks or protect endangered species such as the right whale — also could affect the fishing industry and disguise the impact of ocean warming.

But a new study by Kimberly Oremus, a researcher at the University of Delaware, used existing data to show that fishing jobs in New England’s coastal counties declined by an average of 16% between 1996 and 2017 due to climate variation.

Oremus focused her research on what is known as North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the relative pressure differential between massive oceanic high pressure and low pressure systems in winter.

When the subtropical high pressure off the Azores is stronger than usual, there is a greater pressure differential with a low over Iceland. That means stronger winter storms crossing the Atlantic to Europe, and mild, wet winters in the eastern United States.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

New study looks at impact of ocean acidification on sea scallops

December 23, 2019 — Shannon Meseck, a research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stood in a T-shirt, jeans and fishing boots as winter sunlight streamed in through the greenhouse windows of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy aquaculture lab. A couple of steps beyond the windows, the Cape Cod Canal raced by, a flat gray sheet of swirls and eddies.

Eight weeks of vital research on ocean acidification were drawing to a close, and Meseck was relieved and pleased. She’d already completed similar research on oysters and surf clams, but analyzing Atlantic sea scallops, the region’s preeminent fishery, was a tougher task.

The seawater at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s lab in Milford, Connecticut, was too warm for scallops, and filters on the water pumped into the lab stripped out the plankton and algae the scallops feed on. Milford Laboratory director Gary Wikfors, who had done some consulting with the academy when it set up its aquaculture lab years earlier, contacted the academy about a partnership. The research is being funded by a three-year NOAA grant of $172,000 annually.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Ocean Acidification Could Mean Smaller Scallops, Threatened Industry

December 19, 2019 — In a new experiment, scientists working at the Mass Maritime Academy in Bourne are finding that ocean acidification may have a profound effect on juvenile sea scallops.

Scientists at the Academy, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), are exposing sea scallops to three different levels of acidity, to see how they adapt to changing ocean chemistry.

Over the last 25 years, oceans have become increasingly acidic and that trend is expected to continue, as the water absorbs greenhouse gases produced by human activity.

“Research has shown that other bivalves [like oysters, clams, and quahogs] are affected by ocean acidification,” said Shannon Meseck, a research scientist at the NOAA Fisheries Millford Laboratory. “But to date, there’s no published research on the sea scallop, which is surprising because it is the second most important fishery in the Northeast. Second, to lobster.”

When Meseck started working toward her PhD more than two decades ago, she said, she learned the pH of the ocean—which measures its acidity—was 8.15. Today, the pH has dropped to 8.1, and in the next 100 years it could be as low as 7.8.

Read the full story at WCAI

Alaska salmon permit trade sluggish amid high prices, uncertainties

December 18, 2019 — Trade on permits in Alaska’s salmon fisheries has been generally sluggish, as high prices in booming fisheries, warming waters, and market uncertainties are giving fishermen pause.

Fishermen are still looking to get into Bristol Bay after consecutive seasons of robust runs have coincided with strong prices, culminating in a 2019 season that was the most lucrative in history. Last year’s record-breaking preliminary ex-vessel value of USD 306.5 million (EUR 275.7 million) in Bristol Bay was nearly 250 percent of the 20-year average, and permits prices reflect the recent boom.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Why climate emergency declarations matter for Maine

December 18, 2019 — On the evening of Dec. 2, the Brunswick Town Council joined Bar Harbor, South Portland, and Portland in declaring a state of climate emergency. Compared to the climate rally that followed on Dec. 6, this was a quiet affair — but a resounding one nonetheless. With unanimous approval, council members passed a resolution drafted by members of Bowdoin Climate Action, naming the urgency of the climate crisis and committing Brunswick to developing an action plan to potentially eliminate carbon emissions by 2030.

At first, such municipal action might seem nominal or unnecessary. Why bother to come out with a statement or engage with a massive, global issue on the scale of local government?

As it turns out, Maine’s towns are hardly the first to make the move. As early as December of 2016, the city of Darebin, Australia, a Melbourne suburb, declared a state of climate emergency. Since then, more than 1,200 local governments in 25 countries have followed suit, translating to nearly 800 million people globally represented by governments that have declared a climate emergency. Eight hundred million — that’s a lot, and it’s a number that will only continue to grow.

Let’s face it: in a time of crisis, where 2019 marks the end of the warmest decade on record and the number of billion-dollar climate disasters each year continues to rise, our federal government has effectively chosen to ignore this. We have no choice but to build power from the bottom up, tackling the climate crisis from our hometowns and city halls. A municipal climate emergency declaration isn’t an empty statement — it’s a bright red flag on the map. Enough of these, and state governments would be hard put to ignore the demands of their constituents.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

100 years of tiny seashells reveal alarming trend threatening West Coast seafood

December 17, 2019 — Roughly 100 years worth of tiny shells resting on the Southern California seafloor have revealed an alarming trend that could spell trouble for the West Coast seafood industry, a new study says.

The research, published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, suggests that the Pacific Ocean along California is acidifying twice as fast as the global average, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a news release on the findings.

Acidification is a serious threat for the seafood industry, researchers said, explaining that “California coastal waters contain some of our nation’s more economically valuable fisheries, including salmon, crabs and shellfish. Yet, these fisheries are also some of the most vulnerable to the potential harmful effects of ocean acidification on marine life.”

Researchers said the findings looked at “the progression of ocean acidification in the California Current Ecosystem through the twentieth century.” That ecosystem extends from southern British Columbia in Canada to Baja California in Mexico, encompassing the Washington and Oregon coasts, according to NOAA.

Read the full story at The Sacramento Bee

Waters Off California Acidifying Faster Than Rest of Oceans, Study Shows

December 17, 2019 — California’s coastal waters are acidifying twice as fast as the rest of the oceans, a study published Monday shows. And some of California’s most important seafood — including the spiny lobster, the market squid and the Dungeness crab — are becoming increasingly vulnerable.

The carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to the planet’s rapidly warming climate are also changing the chemistry of the world’s oceans, which have absorbed roughly 27 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted worldwide.

Ocean water is ordinarily slightly basic, or alkaline, but is becoming more acidic as it absorbs carbon dioxide. This can harm marine life, especially shellfish, because they struggle to make their shells in acidic waters.

Emily Osborne, a scientist in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ocean acidification program, with her colleagues studied the fossil record of planktonic foraminifera — tiny simple organisms which, like shellfish, build their shells from calcium carbonate. They have been around for millions of years, but each individual organism only lives for roughly a month.

Read the full story at The New York Times

2025 global salmon growth forecasts overestimated, new paper argues

December 17, 2019 — Global salmon growth forecasts to 2025 could be overestimated by 6 to 8 percent, according to a new briefing paper from financial think tank Planet Tracker. The culprit is global warming, the paper argues.

In “Salmon Feels the Heat,” researchers analysed reported fish losses attributed to recurring environmental shocks over the past nine years, as reported by the 10 largest publicly listed salmon producers in Norway, Chile, and the United Kingdom. They found that the aggregated production and earnings losses relative to forecast production reached 5 percent for the period between 2010 to 2019.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fishermen get scant mention in ‘Blue New Deal’

December 16, 2019 — We here at FishOn are simple folk and we live by some pretty simple rules. Rule No. 1 is why stand when you can sit. Rule No. 2 is that any meeting that lasts more than 15 minutes and involves more than three people generally is a colossal waste of time for everyone.

The same principle, of course, can be applied to the various pledges, promises and plans issued by anyone running for elective office. And that brings us to our own Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her seemingly bottomless capacity, in her quest for the presidency, for issuing plans to cure everything but the common cold.

Warren’s campaign last week released its most recent plan — a Blue New Deal for Our Oceans — and let’s just say this is not the most fishing-friendly document on the shelf.

The 15-page document touches on many issues. It addresses expanding offshore renewable energy and building climate-ready fisheries. It talks about expanding community-based seafood markets and investing in regenerative ocean farming and building climate-smart ports.

It urges the protection of ocean habitats and the restoration of marine ecosystems. It calls for the end of offshore drilling and makes the case for that old environmental crowd-pleaser, expanding protected marine areas that would be closed to commercial fishing.

And on and on and on. It’s a Utah lake. About a mile wide and an inch deep.

But nowhere in those thousands of words spread across 15 pages does the plan directly address the plight of the commercial fishing industry and the fishermen who have as much at stake in the blue economy as anyone.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

A ‘Strange’ New England Coral May Hold Secrets To Combating Climate Change

December 13, 2019 — When we think about animals that inhabit the cold New England ocean, sharks, seals, or lobsters may spring to mind. But there’s another critter lurking in the deep off our coast, and it’s one that may hold valuable secrets that could help its tropical cousins.

And you may not have even known that it’s actually an animal: coral.

“The coral that exists in Connecticut is called Astrangia poculata,” said Sean Grace, a biologist at Southern Connecticut State University. Grace said the name Astrangia captures the surprise scientists felt when they observed this coral centuries ago.

“You can imagine back then, they pulled it up and looked at it and went, ‘Well, that’s a strange thing to see off the coast of New Jersey, the mid-Atlantic,’” Grace said.

Today this species of Astrangia, also known as the “northern star coral,” is dispersed widely. From southern New England, it goes down the Eastern Seaboard into the Gulf of Mexico.

Corals are invertebrates. They’re not plants. They’re definitely not rocks. Instead, corals are related to jellyfish and anemones.

Read the full story at Maine Public