Saving Seafood

Warming Waters, Moving Fish: How Climate Change Is Reshaping Iceland

December 2, 2019 — Before it became a “Game of Thrones” location, before Justin Bieber stalked the trails of Fjadrargljufur, and before hordes of tourists descended upon this small island nation, there were the fish.

“Fish,” said Gisli Palsson, a professor of anthropology at the University of Iceland, “made us rich.” The money Iceland earned from commercial fishing helped the island, which is about the size of Kentucky, become independent from Denmark in 1944.

But warming waters associated with climate change are causing some fish to seek cooler waters elsewhere, beyond the reach of Icelandic fishermen. Ocean temperatures around Iceland have increased between 1.8 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 20 years. For the past two seasons, Icelanders have not been able to harvest capelin, a type of smelt, as their numbers plummeted. The warmer waters mean that as some fish leave, causing financial disruption, other fish species arrive, triggering geopolitical conflicts.

Worldwide, research shows the oceans are simmering. Since the middle of last century, the oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions. To beat the heat, fish are moving toward cooler waters nearer the planet’s two poles.

Read the full story from The New York Times at The Seattle Times

Lobster Catch Headed for Decline, Not Crash, Scientists Say

December 2, 2019 — A pair of studies by Maine-based scientists suggest the U.S. lobster industry is headed for a period of decline, but likely not a crash.

Lobster fishermen have brought in record hauls this decade, a period in which Maine catches that previously rarely topped 70 million pounds (32 million kilograms) have routinely soared above 120 million pounds (54 million kilograms). The new studies, both published with University of Maine scientists as lead authors, show a fishery in which warming waters off Maine have changed the dynamics of the lobster population.

Noah Oppenheim, author of one of the studies, said his model projects the lobster catch in the Gulf of Maine “will return to previous historical levels.” That means tens of millions fewer pounds of lobster per year, but still enough lobsters to support a robust business and supply hungry seafood lovers.

Oppenheim and colleagues base their opinion on a finding that temperature and the number of young lobsters populating shallow coastal areas allow scientists to predict what lobster catches will look like in four to six years. They published their study in the scientific journal Ecological Applications.

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

A crisis in the water is decimating this once-booming fishing town

November 29, 2019 — His ancestors were Portuguese colonialists who settled on this otherworldly stretch of coast, wedged between a vast desert and the southern Atlantic. They came looking for the one thing this barren region had in abundance: fish.

By the time Mario Carceija Santos was getting into the fishing business half a century later, in the 1990s, Angola had won independence and the town of Tombwa was thriving. There were 20 fish factories strung along the bay, a constellation of churches and schools, a cinema hall built in art deco, and, in the central plaza, massive drying racks for the tons upon tons of fish hauled out of the sea.

Since then, Tombwa’s fortunes have plummeted; Santos’s factory is one of just two remaining. The cinema hall is shuttered. Kids run around town barefoot instead of going to school. The central plaza is overgrown by weeds, its statue of a proud fisherman covered in bird droppings.

Sea temperatures off the Angolan coast have warmed 1.5 degrees Celsius — and possibly more — in the past century, according to a Washington Post analysis of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.

In recent years, multiple studies have identified the waters along Tombwa’s coast in particular as a fast-warming hot spot: In one independent analysis of satellite-based NOAA data, temperatures have risen nearly 2 degrees Celsius since 1982. That is more than three times the global average rate of ocean warming.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Science Café talking sea life and climate change

November 29, 2019 — The next New Bedford Science Café will examine how the changing climate affects marine life.

During “Changing Oceans, Moving Fish: How Can the Science that Informs Fisheries Management Keep Up?” science café guests will be three marine scientists, Mitchelle Agonsi, Ashleigh Novak, and Amanda Hart, graduate students and researchers from UMass-Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science & Technology (SMAST).

Science Café will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 3 at Greasy Luck Brewpub, 791 Purchase St., New Bedford. The event is open to everyone.

The public is invited to come a little early at 5:45 p.m. for the first annual holiday BioMixology Party. Celebrate science and mix-and-mingle with other Science Café goers. Cash bar, free appetizers.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

ALASKA: US Gulf of Alaska cod harvesters running out of time

November 29, 2019 — The North Pacific Marine Fisheries Council is reviewing the state of the Pacific cod population in the Gulf of Alaska and most likely will announce that the fishery is being shut down in just a few weeks, advises Alaska Public Media in a recent article.

The cod, a major driver of Kodiak, Alaska’s winter economy, are now below the federal threshold that protects cod as a food source for endangered Stellar sea lions, and don’t look ready to bounce back any time soon.

From their last peak in 2014, at 113,830 metric tons, the level of mature, spawning cod have lost more than half their number in the gulf, according to stock assessment data noted by the news service. The fishery had 46,080t in 2017.

The article blames the beginning of the decline heavily on the emergence of “the blob,” a massive marine heatwave across the Pacific that caused surface ocean temperatures to rise 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit between 2014 and 2016.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ALASKA: Warmer Bering Sea may benefit an Alaskan flatfish

November 27, 2019 — While the repercussions of climate change are complex and many impacts are unknown, newly published research suggests that one winner in a shifting environment is Alaska’s Northern rock sole.

The Northern rock sole is a flatfish that is commercially harvested, although it is fished significantly less than Pollock and Pacific cod.

Females grow up to 27 inches, while makes grow up to around 19 inches. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council set the acceptable biological catch for the fish in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands at 143,000 metric tons for 2020, yet in 2018 only 60% of the total allowable catch was harvested.

Research by NOAA Fisheries biologists suggest that the fish have higher reproductive success in warmer years, meaning that a higher percentage of eggs laid will grow to become part of the catch-able population.

The investigation started after surveys of juvenile showed dramatically different results in the same location.

“One year we went in this area between Nunivak Island and Cape Newenham offshore and we found very high densities of the animals. We estimated that there were billions and that was in 2003 – a warm year,” said Dan Cooper, a research fisheries biologist with NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

He said it’s the opposite in cold years.

Read the full story at KTUU

Canadian fishery health declining, hamstrung by lack of rebuilding plans, new audit says

November 22, 2019 — The prospect for Canadian fish populations is dim, a new audit says, with fewer stocks healthy today than two years ago and plans in place to rebuild just six of the country’s 33 depleted stocks.

Oceana Canada’s 2019 fishery audit of 194 stocks relied on data from Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It suggests that Canadian fishery managers aren’t working with the speed and urgency necessary to rebuild stocks, as required by amendments to the country’s fisheries act that were passed this summer. The proportion of stocks in a critical state rose from 13 percent two years ago to 17 percent today, while the proportion of healthy stocks fell from 35 percent to 29 percent today.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fish in California estuaries are evolving as climate change alters their habitat

November 21, 2019 — The threespine stickleback, a small fish found throughout the coastal areas of the Northern Hemisphere, is famously variable in appearance from one location to another, making it an ideal subject for studying how species adapt to different environments. A new study shows that stickleback populations in estuaries along the coast of California have evolved over the past 40 years as climate change has altered their coastal habitats.

The study, published November 21 in Global Change Biology, looked at variation in the armoring that protects the  from predators, specifically the number of bony plates along their sides (called lateral plates). Previous research showed that populations in northern California have a more complete set of this armoring than populations in southern California, corresponding to differences in their habitats.

“There’s a gradient from drier systems in the south, where the estuaries are more pond-like, with more vegetation, to increasingly more open, river-like systems as you go north,” explained coauthor Eric Palkovacs, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz.

The new study found that threespine stickleback in some California estuaries are evolving to have fewer lateral plates as their habitats become more pond-like due to a warmer, drier climate. Stickleback populations at some central California sites are now looking more like the low-plated populations typical of southern California.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Warming waters spell more bad news for Maine’s shrimpers

November 21, 2019 — New England shrimp are still in bad shape despite a fishing shutdown that is unlikely to end soon, new data show.

The region’s shrimp fishing industry, long based mostly in Maine, has been shut down since 2013 because of concerns about the health of the population. Recent surveys off Maine and New Hampshire say signs are still poor, scientists with the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said.

A big part of the problem is that the shrimp thrive in cold water and the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most of the world’s oceans. The mean average summer sea bottom temperature was about 42 degrees Fahrenheit from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, and it rose to 45 degrees this year, said Dustin Colson Leaning, a fishery management plan coordinator for the Atlantic States.

That small difference makes it harder for young shrimp to thrive and join the population, he said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bangor Daily News

Louisiana fishing industry suffers USD 258 million in losses

November 20, 2019 — The Louisiana fishing industry suffered an estimated USD 258 million (EUR 233 million) in losses due to historic flooding this year and the opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway, a new analysis said.

The fisheries disaster economic impact analysis, conducted by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, was submitted to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to help the state qualify for its portion of the USD 165 million (EUR 149 million) in fisheries disaster assistance available from the federal government.

Read the full story at Seafood Source