Saving Seafood

New study shows impact of ocean acidification on Bering Sea red king crab

February 27, 2025 — Ocean acidification appears to be a driver in the decline of Bristol Bay red king crab, a highly value wild Alaska seafood that has for years been threatened by climate change.

“There’s always been a high demand for Alaska crab,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, in October 2024. “It’s a matter of having the crab to harvest.”

The red king crab fishery was closed in 2021 and 2022, then reopened in 2023 with 31 vessels fishing down from 47 vessels, she said.

The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery experienced record landings every year from 1977 to 1980, peaking in 1980 with a record total harvest of 130 million pounds. Then the fishery collapsed in 1981 and 1982, leading to closure in 1983.

A new report published on Feb. 7 in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science said that negative effects of acidification explained 21% of recruitment variability of Bristol Bay red king crab between 1980 and 2023, and 45% since 2000.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

The fight to preserve America’s working waterfronts

February 26, 2025 — The National Working Waterfront Network (NWWN) Conference brought together policymakers, industry leaders, and community advocates to tackle the challenges facing working waterfronts across the country.

Through many panel discussions, attendees explored the pressures of development, workforce retention, climate adaptation, and policy roadblocks threatening the waterfront’s future.

While each waterfront is unique, the speakers agreed that these spaces share common challenges, including regulatory hurdles, rising property values, and conflicts between economic development and cultural preservation. The panelists included Janelle Kellman, former mayor of Sausalito, California- who is running for lieutenant governor and Maine House of Representative; Morgan Rielly; and Imani Black, founding and CEO of Minorities in Aquaculture.

Kellman highlights her city’s maritime history and difficulties maintaining its working waterfront. “We have a real problem regarding what the market will allow. Inventors or fabricators cannot afford to start when hedge fund managers and landscape architects see the value in our maritime infrastructure. They want to repurpose it for high-end development.”

Rielly pointed to the diversity of working waterfronts in Maine, ranging from small-scale fishing docks to large industrial harbors. “There’s no one bill that will be able to solve all different issues, and there will be no one budget that will be able to solve those issues.” He went on to emphasize the need for tailored solutions for each individual region.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Can Fish Farms Sequester Carbon Permanently?

February 24, 2025 — As a data scientist and geochemist, Mojtaba Fakhraee has spent much of his career investigating and strategizing unusual methods of carbon capture. His most recent project, developing a safe model for increasing iron sulphide on fish farms, may be the most

Fakhraee, an assistant professor at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Connecticut, recently published the results of his research. He and his team argue that iron sulfide enhancement in aquaculture could help sequester hundreds of millions of tons of CO₂.

Adding iron to low-oxygen environments such as fish farms, the study says, reacts with the accumulated hydrogen sulphide in the sediments found in the water, and increases alkalinity. This sets off increasing carbon saturation levels, enhancing the capture of the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.

The researchers believe this will help the aquaculture industry offset its carbon footprint, which currently amounts to 0.49% of global carbon emissions or 245 million tons of CO₂. Fakhraee says this model could work especially well in places like China and Indonesia, which have an abundance of fish farms.

Read the full article at Ambrook Research 

Scientists seek approval for geoengineering project in Gulf of Maine

February 20, 2025 — A controversial geoengineering project is seeking a permit from EPA to conduct research in the Gulf of Maine — including experiments some scientists say could help the world meet its global climate goals.

Known as LOC-NESS — short for Locking away Ocean Carbon in the Northeast Shelf and Slope — the project is spearheaded by Adam Subhas, a marine scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. If approved, the experiments would help scientists test the possibility of using the ocean to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — offsetting human emissions of greenhouse gases and combating climate change.

The ocean naturally sucks up CO2 on its own. But scientists say that adding alkaline substances, or materials with a high pH, can cause the water to soak up even more of the climate-warming gas. LOC-NESS proposes to release small amounts of sodium hydroxide alongside a special dye used to trace the material’s movement through the water.

Read the full article at E&E News

Climate change is robbing Pacific islands of another resource: Tuna

February 19, 2025 — Fourteen Pacific island nations will receive $107 million to adapt their tuna-dependent economies as climate change pushes the fish farther from their shores, the Green Climate Fund announced Tuesday.

The fund’s largest grant-only project to date, the money will be used to create an advanced warning system to enable Pacific island nations to track changes in tuna migration and potentially pursue compensation when warming waters drive the fish from these countries’ exclusive economic zones.

“These are the countries that contribute the least to the climate crisis and now are going to lose a resource that they have collectively stewarded better than any other ocean basin,” said Jack Kittinger, senior vice president at Conservation International, the Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit environmental organization that led the research behind the grant. “This is the ultimate climate justice issue.”

Read the full article at The Washington Post

WHOI Resets Ocean De-Acidification Test for This Summer

February 13, 2025 — With the federal government following a blueprint to deter climate research at agencies like the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a private marine research nonprofit, are hoping to forge ahead with an experiment to explore how ocean waters might be used to absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

WHOI is awaiting approval from the Environmental Protection Agency on a permit to continue work initially scheduled for last summer off Martha’s Vineyard. It involves releasing 16,500 gallons of sodium hydroxide into the ocean to gauge its ability to improve the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

The experiment is now set to take place in an area called Wilkinson Basin, about 38 miles northeast of Provincetown. The period for public comments on the permit closes on Feb. 14.

The technique, known as ocean alkalinity enhancement, or OAE, has been the subject of laboratory experiments for decades, but this field test will be the first of its kind in U.S. waters. It aims to validate WHOI’s experiments that suggest OAE can effectively absorb carbon without harming the local environment.

A similar test that was set to take place off Martha’s Vineyard last fall was postponed when permitting was slowed by questions and additional monitoring requirements from the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to an August report in the Boston Globe. By the time the WHOI researchers got the green light, the U.S. Academic Research Fleet vessel needed for the experiment was not available, according to WHOI associate scientist Adam Subhas, the principal investigator of the project.

The Provincetown Independent

Economically, culturally important marine species vulnerable to changing climate, new study shows

February 13, 2025 — Dungeness crab, Pacific herring, and red abalone are among the marine species most vulnerable to the changing climate’s effect on California’s coastal waters, a new study led by UC Santa Cruz researchers finds. In a paper published on February  in the journal PLOS Climate, the team seeks to help the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) in its efforts to develop and implement climate-ready fisheries management strategies that adapt to challenges such as rising ocean temperatures, acidification, and deoxygenation.

The study, “A Collaborative Climate Vulnerability Assessment of California Marine Fishery Species,” was led by Timothy Frawley, an assistant project scientist at UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of Marine Sciences, and Mikaela Provost, an assistant professor in UC Davis’s Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology. The study was done in close collaboration with CDFW, fisheries scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and individuals from the Nature Conservancy and California Ocean Protection Council.

“The results are striking,” Frawley said. “Some of California’s most economically and culturally important fisheries are assessed as being among the most vulnerable to projected future environmental changes.”

Read the full article at UC Santa Cruz

Plenty of Space to Flex on Mussel Beach

February 10, 2025 — The presence of freshwater mussels is indicative of high water quality and a healthy ecosystem. Their absence tells a different story, and the latter is the more-familiar tale in southern New England. Their populations in this three-state region have been degraded by a long history of damming and pollution.

University of Rhode Island research associate Elizabeth Herron noted these overlooked creatures are a critical part of the region’s aquatic systems.

“They help reduce nutrients and algae by filtering out things. They can reduce things like bacteria, so they’re important,” said the program coordinator for URI Watershed Watch. “They’re an important food source. I have a dock on a pond, and I can tell you every spring, when we put the dock back out, there’s a giant pile of empty, freshwater mussel clams that the muskrats feasted on over the winter.”

These bivalves are sometimes called “livers of the river,” because they filter particles such as algae, E.coli, and fungi out of the water. They also provide habitat for other invertebrates and fish, and they deposit nutrients into the benthic layer for other creatures to eat.

Read the full article at ecoRI

VIRGINIA: Halftime at the General Assembly: Here’s the environmental legislation that made it through so far

February 6, 2025 — Proposals approved so far touch on topics including “virtual power plants,” data centers and environmental justice.

Virginia lawmakers are quickly moving through this year’s General Assembly session.

Tuesday marked “crossover” day, meaning all bills that made it through the House of Delegates are now sent to the Senate, and vice versa.

Dozens of proposed bills impact the future of the Commonwealth’s climate, environment and energy policy. Here’s a (non-exhaustive) look at where they stand.

Read the full article at WHRO

ALASKA: Aleut community pivots from fishing to research, education as climate change threatens its economy

February 3, 2025 — As warming waters threaten traditional fishing economies in the Bering Sea, the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island (ACSPI) is building a new future focused on research and higher education.

Plummeting populations of snow crab and halibut in the Bering Sea have cost ACSPI roughly $2.7 million a year in lost harvest revenue, according to the tribe’s president, John Melovidov. The federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say the losses will worsen, with a 2024 report projecting the conditions supporting snow crab are 200 times more likely to disappear compared to the pre-industrial era.

“Fishing isn’t always what it used to be,” Melovidov told Tribal Business News. “Outlooks aren’t so great, but we can’t sit here and hope that things come back. We have to do something different.”

The community has begun diversifying its fishing-based economy through partnerships. In July 2024, ACSPI signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with Iḷisaġvik College, an Iñupiaq tribal college on Alaska’s North Slope, to establish a satellite campus and research station on the island. The agreement builds on a partnership that began with workforce training in 2018 and expanded to MOAs in 2022 and 2023 that focused on educational opportunities and dual-credit programs for high school students.

Read the full article at Tribalism Business News