Saving Seafood

Food security starts at sea

November 13, 2019 — By 2050, global food production must increase by 70 percent to keep up with population growth. The pressure to grow, harvest and create more protein from America’s resources will be immense. Yet, America owns vast wealth in and near our coastal communities that permeates across state lines. This wealth must be protected for businesses, community survival and our nation’s food security.

Every summer, the wealth of our fisheries is seen coast to coast. Wild salmon return to pristine Alaskan waters, striped bass reappear near New England’s shores, and red snapper congregate in the Gulf of Mexico. As leaders of the Seafood Harvesters of America and lifelong fishermen, we shared stories like these — the story of the American fisherman — during the summer’s Capitol Hill Ocean Week.

Like any robust American resource, fisheries connect businesses, communities and families across the nation around hard work and resiliency. Renewable and sustainably managed, it has the capacity to help feed us in perpetuity.
But does it?

In 2017, U.S. commercial fishermen landed an astounding 9.9 billion pounds of seafood. Americans love the idea of eating American seafood. We celebrate it on menus and grocery store banners, devour dramatic fishing documentaries, and honor its heritage in our coastal towns. As a nation we’ve prioritized sustainability through laws like the Magnuson Stevens Act, which is why 91 percent of America’s fishery stocks are not overfished today — and that number is only improving.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Save Our Seas 2.0 tackles global marine debris crisis

November 12, 2019 — We may have plenty of political differences, but we come from coastal states. That means we have a front-row seat to the peril of plastic waste and marine debris flowing into our oceans at the rate of around 8 million metric tons per year. We understand what it will mean for our fishing and tourism industries when the weight of plastic in our oceans equals the weight of fish in the sea — something projected to happen by mid-century. We don’t have a moment to lose in confronting this problem.

That’s why we built a coalition in Congress and gathered input from environmental and industry stakeholders alike. Despite a divided Washington, that work resulted in a bill that won broad, bipartisan support. When the Save Our Seas Act became law last October, it was a moment of bipartisan progress on a vital issue — one to be celebrated.

Before the president’s ink on Save Our Seas was dry, our bipartisan trio of senators began developing the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act. We sought to harness the momentum behind the first bill to up the ante on combatting the global marine debris crisis. Marine debris requires multifaceted, multisector solutions with a global reach, and the United States ought to be driving these solutions.

Read the full story at Roll Call

The climate chain reaction that threatens the heart of the Pacific

November 13, 2019 — Lined up along the side of their boat, the fishermen hauled a huge, heavy net up from swelling waves. At first, a few small jellyfish emerged, then a piece of plastic. Then net, and more net. Finally, all the way at the bottom: a small thrashing mass of silvery salmon.

It was just after dawn at the height of the autumn fishing season, but something was wrong.

“When are the fish coming?” boat captain Teruhiko Miura asked himself.

The salmon catch is collapsing off Japan’s northern coast, plummeting by about 70 percent in the past 15 years. The disappearance of the fish coincides with another striking development: the loss of a unique blanket of sea ice that dips far below the Arctic to reach this shore.

The twin impacts — less ice, fewer salmon — are the products of rapid warming in the Sea of Okhotsk, wedged between Siberia and Japan. The area has warmed in some places by as much as 3 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times, making it one of the fastest-warming spots in the world, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the nonprofit organization Berkeley Earth.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Marine Heatwave in the Pacific Shrinks from “Blob” in Size, Retreats Farther Offshore

November 11, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The vast marine heatwave that spread warm temperatures across the northeast Pacific Ocean late in the summer and fall of 2019 has declined in size and pulled back from the West Coast, possibly reducing its immediate impacts on coastal ecosystems.

It has declined to about half the size and intensity it displayed in August. However scientists caution that the heatwave designated MHW NEP19a remains two to three times the size of Alaska and still retains enormous amounts of heat in the upper layers of ocean. It remains one of the top four or five largest heatwaves on record in the North Pacific in the last 40 years.

“What we are seeing now is a smaller heatwave that is farther offshore, but there is still a very large span of the Pacific Ocean that is much warmer than usual,” said Andrew Leising, a research scientist at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC) in La Jolla, California. Leising has developed criteria to detect and gauge the size and magnitude of marine heatwaves. “The question is, where does it go from here? That’s what we’re watching now.”

The edge of the heatwave is now about 1,500 kilometers (about 930 miles) from the West Coast, but still envelops much of the Gulf of Alaska. It no longer so closely resembles the enormous earlier marine heatwave known as “the Blob” that affected much of the West Coast through 2014 and 2015, causing reverberations through the food web.

Low salmon returns to many West Coast rivers in the last few years have been linked to the Blob, which reduced the availability of food when the salmon first entered the ocean as juveniles.

Read the full release here

Climate change and overfishing are boosting toxic mercury levels in fish

November 11, 2019 — We live in an era—the Anthropocene—where humans and societies are reshaping and changing ecosystems. Pollution, human-made climate change and overfishing have all altered marine life and ocean food webs.

Increasing  temperatures are amplifying the accumulation of neurotoxic contaminants such as organic mercury (methylmercury) in some marine life. This especially affects top predators including marine mammals such as fish-eating killer whales that strongly rely on large fish as seafood for energy.

Now the combination of  pollution, climate change and overfishing are conspiring together to further contaminate marine life and food webs. This has obvious implications for ecosystems and the ocean, but also for public health. The risk of consuming mercury-contaminated fish and seafood is growing with climate change.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Rep. Joe Cunningham: A healthy ocean in 2050? We need to act now.

November 8, 2019 — The ocean is the lifeblood of our planet. It covers three quarters of the globe, produces more than half our oxygen, supports a wide range of marine fisheries that feed the planet, and absorbs 30 percent of the carbon dioxide we emit and 90 percent of the heat caused by those emissions.

In short, the ocean plays a critical role in our lives and livelihoods. And it’s just as critical that we do everything we can to protect it.

By 2050, the global population is expected to reach 9.7 billion people. While the projections regarding the impact that this population and their actions and emissions will have on the ocean may vary, none of them are good. Without definitive action now, scientists predict that by 2050:

• World fish stocks will be driven to collapse;
• Average sea levels will rise by 30-34 centimeters, increasing coastal erosion and exacerbating storms, flooding cities and coastal communities like Charleston;
• The ocean is expected to contain more plastics than fish (by weight); and
• The world’s coral reefs will be wiped out, increasing threats to coastal communities from storm surges and a loss of fish stocks that rely on corals for survival.

Read the full story at The Charleston City Paper

Climate change reports point to eating more seafood as a way to help save the planet

November 8, 2019 — The United Nations’ Climate Action Summit in New York, which kicked off Climate Week at the end of September, may be long over, but the activities that took place around the world – and the strong messaging about the need to find solutions to save the planet from global warming – reached an unprecedented number of people this year.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a post-summit special report which outlined the major changes being observed in the earth’s oceans and frozen regions. The report concluded that the negative effects of warming oceans, melting ice, and rising sea levels already being experienced will accelerate in future decades.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Hundreds of scientists gather in Portland to address climate change in the Gulf of Maine

November 5, 2019 — Several hundred scientists, conservationists and government leaders from New England and the Canadian Maritimes are gathering in Portland to discuss the rapid ecological changes in the Gulf of Maine and how the region should respond.

The Gulf of Maine 2050 International Symposium will focus on the science of sea level rise, ocean acidification and warming ocean waters, as well as how those climate-related changes will affect the regional economy, environment and population over the next three decades.

“Preparing for 2050 is a major challenge, but it is one that we won’t face alone,” said Theresa Torrent of the Maine Department of Marine Resources Maine Coastal Program and the state’s coordinator on the international Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment. “The purpose of Gulf of Maine 2050 is to activate the talents of people around the Gulf of Maine and build a safe and productive future.”

The conference – hosted by the Gulf of Maine Council, the Portland-based Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews, New Brunswick – comes at a time when New England’s waters and forests are already experiencing dramatic changes.

Read the full story at The Portland Press Herald

Global Warming Is Already Destroying New England’s Fisheries

November 5, 2019 — To wake up in the Northeastern United States—as California blazes and Japan digs itself out of typhoon damage—is to experience an uneasy gratitude for all that is not burning, battered or underwater. Seven years out from Superstorm Sandy, we know not to get cocky, but there’s a relief in being able to worry about work and more pedestrian finances instead of evacuation plans, or ordering the right kind of smoke mask. It’s a small luxury in climate-didn’t-come-for-me-today compartmentalization.

But deep down, we know better. And if the national discussion hasn’t moved to climate change in the Northeast yet, it soon will. The effects are already profound—they just happen to be underwater.

Fourth-generation fisherman Al Cottone holds no illusions of being spared climate impacts in 2019.  He captains one of the 15 fishing boats still active in the waters around Gloucester, Massachusetts. Not a decade ago, there were 50. To fish in the Gulf of Maine—the ocean inlet spanning from Cape Cod up to the southern tip of Nova Scotia—is to navigate one of the fastest-warming bodies of water on the planet. “It’s not something you see with your naked eye,” Cottone told me. “But fish are definitely reacting differently, and I’m attributing it to climate change. We’re seeing them in deeper water—they’re trying to get the right temperature at depth.”

Read the full story at The New Republic

Rising sea level, flooding risk threaten Northeast ports

October 30, 2019 — Sea surface temperatures along the Northeast U.S. Atlantic coast have risen faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans since 2004, and the accompanying change in sea level rise is putting the region at increasing risk from tidal flooding and storms, according to a new report from climate researchers.

Released on the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Sandy’s Oct. 29, 2012 landfall, the report “New Jersey’s Rising Coastal Risk” by the Rhodium Group’s energy and climate team, with contributions from scientists at Rutgers University, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Chicago.

Sandy hit land as an post-tropical system after shedding some hurricane characteristics ­— its sustained windspeed at landfall did not even qualify as Category 1 on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity — but it delivered a storm surge not seen since the great hurricane of 1821.

That surge, later estimated at 14.4 feet at Sandy Hook, N.J., inundated neighborhoods all around the New York Harbor complex, including the commercial fishing port of Belford, N.J. The port’s fleet survived the storm, but its infrastructure was heavily damaged, losing electrical and refrigeration equipment, and the Belford Seafood Cooperative’s restaurant.

Read the full story at National Fisherman