Saving Seafood

Climate change is bringing different fish to New England — but can fishermen keep up?

March 5, 2025 — Climate change is warming the oceans off the New England coast and bringing new species of fish. This could bring new opportunities for fishermen. But fishermen and regulators are falling behind.

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

 

The waters off the New England coast are warmer because of climate change. That has brought in new fish and the potential for new opportunities for fishermen. But climate change is happening so fast that fishermen and regulators are falling behind. WBUR’s Barbara Moran has more.

 

BARBARA MORAN, BYLINE: The fishing boat Paladin is off the coast of Nantucket. And on the deck, the flounder are flopping.

 

(SOUNDBITE OF FISH FLOPPING)

 

MORAN: Fisherman Bill Amaru casts a line off the side, reels in another one and shows it off.

 

BILL AMARU: Yeah, that’s a nice fish.

 

MORAN: Yeah. How big is that?

 

AMARU: I’d say, it’ll just be your borderline large, probably about two pounds.

 

MORAN: Amaru has worked as a commercial fisherman for more than 50 years. And this part of the Atlantic Ocean is a lot warmer than when he started out. Sometimes, even fish from the tropics show up, like tarpon or sailfish.

 

AMARU: Nothing is weird anymore out here. Tropical is getting to be fairly common, but I think what we’re losing is way, way in excess of what we’re gaining.

 

MORAN: What scientists say New England is losing are iconic species like cod and lobster. They’ve shifted north or moved to deeper parts of the ocean in search of colder water.

Read the full transcript at NPR

 

Experts and Lawmakers Sound Alarms Over Impacts of NOAA Cuts on Fisheries

March 4, 2025 — After several hundred employees were fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) last week as part of DOGE’s workforce cuts, reporting has focused on how those cuts might threaten critical weather modeling and systems that help predict and warn the public about severe weather events such as hurricanes and tsunamis.

In response to a question asking for more details on the staff cuts, a NOAA spokesperson told Civil Eats that “per long-standing practice, we are not discussing internal personnel and management matters.” But reports suggest staff cuts have happened across all six offices within NOAA, including the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS).

Read the full article at Civil Eats

US lobster catch drops as crustaceans migrate to colder Canadian waters

March 3, 2025 — The US lobster industry’s catch keeps sliding as fishermen contend with the northward migration of the valuable crustaceans.

The industry is based mostly in Maine, where lobsters are both a cultural signifier and the backbone of the coastal economy. The state’s haul of lobsters has declined every year from 2021, when it was nearly 111 million pounds, to 2023, when it was less than 97 million pounds.

That decline extended into 2024, when the haul was about 86.1 million pounds, according to data released by state regulators on Friday. That is the lowest figure in 15 years. A series of major storms that damaged waterfront communities and disrupted fisheries was a key factor in the reduced catch, officials said.

Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, praised the industry for its perseverance.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Rising Temperatures Are Scrambling the Base of the Ocean Food Web

March 3, 2025 — Humans are living in a plankton world. These minuscule organisms are spread across the oceans, covering nearly three-quarters of the planet, and are among the most abundant forms of life on Earth.

But a warming world is throwing plankton into disarray and threatening the entire marine food chain that is built on them.

A year ago, NASA launched a satellite that provided the most detailed view yet of the diversity and distribution of phytoplankton. Its insights should help scientists understand the changing dynamics of life in the ocean.

“Do you like breathing? Do you like eating? If your answer is yes for either of them, then you care about phytoplankton,” said Jeremy Werdell, the lead scientist for the satellite program, called PACE, which stands for “Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem.”

Historically, research from ships has captured limited snapshots in time, offering only glimpses of the ever-changing oceans. The advent of satellites gave a fuller picture, but one still limited, like looking through glasses with a green filter.

“You know it’s a garden, you know it’s pretty, you know it’s plants, but you don’t know which plants,” explained Ivona Cetinic, a NASA oceanographer. The PACE satellite effectively removes the filter and finally reveals all the colors of the garden, she said. “It’s like seeing all the flowers of the ocean.”

These flowers are phytoplankton, tiny aquatic algae and bacteria that photosynthesize to live directly off energy from the sun. They are eaten by zooplankton, the smallest animals of the ocean, which, in turn, feed fish and larger creatures.

It may seem implausible that a satellite orbiting high above the planet’s surface could make out microscopic organisms. But different phytoplankton have unique ways of scattering and absorbing light. PACE measures the whole spectrum of visible color and slightly beyond, from ultraviolet to near infrared, allowing scientists to identify different kinds of phytoplankton. Older satellites measured limited colors and could only reveal how much phytoplankton was underneath them, not what kind.

Phytoplankton form the foundation of the marine food chain, and climate change is shaking that foundation.

Read the full article at the Pulitzer Center

New England ocean warming slows but temperatures remain high

February 27, 2025 — The waters off New England had another warm year but didn’t heat up as fast as earlier this decade, bucking a trend of higher warming worldwide, said scientists who study the Atlantic Ocean near Maine.

The Gulf of Maine, which touches three New England states and Canada, emerged as a test case for climate change about a decade ago because it is warming much faster than most of the world’s oceans. The gulf is home to some of the country’s most valuable seafood species and is critical to the American lobster industry.

The gulf’s annual sea surface temperature last year was 51.5 degrees Fahrenheit (10.8 degrees Celsius), according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland. That was more than 0.88 F (0.49 C) above the long-term average from 1991 to 2020, the institute said in a report released this month.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

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