Saving Seafood

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

Some of Earth’s oldest creatures thrive in the dark off coasts of Carolinas, Virginia

December 9, 2019 — Some of the oldest living things on the planet are centuries-old corals growing in perpetual darkness along Mid Atlantic states like Virginia and the Carolinas, according to NOAA’s Office of Exploration and Research.

Photos of the most bizarre of the corals were shared this week on Facebook, revealing them to be bony looking, brightly colored and filled with legions of cowering shrimp.

“Some individual corals live for several hundred years and reefs can be several thousands of years old,” NOAA officials wrote.

A video shows the coral’s growth is dense enough in some spots to form “a wall of coral” that fish can’t penetrate.

“Look at the size of that. I am in awe now,” one NOAA researcher says in the video. “These organisms have been growing down here in the deep sea for longer than our country probably has been a country… It is astounding.”

Read the full story at The State

New regulations to expand protections for seafloor habitats, reopen fishing grounds off US West Coast

December 5, 2019 — New regulations for essential fish habitat off the West Coast of the United States that go into effect in 2020 will extend protections for deep-sea habitats and corals while reopening fishing grounds where fish populations have rebounded.

The new rules were finalized by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service (known as NOAA Fisheries) last month, and will go into effect on January 1, 2020. The updated regulations were recommended to NOAA by the Pacific Fishery Management Council and enjoy broad support from the fishing industry and environmentalists alike. The changes will be implemented via an amendment to the Fishery Management Plan for groundfish off the US West Coast.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council is responsible for minimizing impacts of human activities on essential fish habitat (EFH), which are habitats deemed vital to maintaining sustainable fisheries. In 2005, the Council established area closures in groundfish habitat that limited the use of bottom trawling and other types of fishing gear that come into contact with the ocean floor.

According to NOAA Fisheries, groundfish fisheries contribute $569 million to household incomes in West Coast communities, from the state of Washington down to Southern California. About 3,000 square miles that had been closed to bottom trawling for groundfish will be reopened when the changes take effect, including 2,000 square miles of a Rockfish Conservation Area off the coasts of California and Oregon that have been off-limits to bottom trawling since 2002.

Read the full story at Mongabay

Plan would protect 21 coral hot spots in Gulf of Mexico

November 15, 2019 — A plan to protect corals in the Gulf of Mexico is close to becoming a law, drawing cheers from environmental groups who believe leaving the corals alone would help vulnerable ocean ecosystems to grow.

The plan would create 21 protected areas off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Thirteen of the areas would carry new commercial fishing restrictions, and that has attracted the attention of fishing groups, who want the government to take a cautious approach.

Pew Charitable Trusts has characterized the plan as a way to protect nearly 500 square miles of slow-growing coral “hot spots,” and is championing the protection plan as a way to spare vulnerable corals from fishing gear. The proposal would prohibit gear such as bottom trawls and dredges that can disrupt the corals.

Sandra Brooke, an oceanographer and coral ecology expert at Florida State University’s Coastal and Marine Laboratory, said it’s important to spare the corals because of their importance to the marine environment and because they can have value for the development of new medicines.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WRAL

Half the World’s Coral Reefs Already Have Been Killed by Climate Change

October 11, 2019 — The oceans have long been the biggest buffer for humankind’s dangerous greenhouse-gas emissions. Around a quarter of all the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere since the 1980s—from driving cars, running factories and churning out electricity with fossil fuels—has ended up sunk into the waters. As the planet has warmed from mounting emissions, the oceans warmed first and fastest, absorbing 90% of that excess heat. A report released last month by the UN-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the foremost scientific authority on the subject, warned that damage to the oceans is accelerating and may be at the point of irreversibility.

That makes delicate coral reefs around the world something of a leading indicator for the collapse of the ocean ecosystem. Half of all reef systems have already been destroyed, putting a quarter of marine life at risk. Even if global warming is limited to the 1.5 degree Celsius target outlined in the 2016 Paris Agreement—a longshot goal, at the current rate of emissions—the IPCC now concludes that “almost all warm-water coral reefs are projected to suffer significant losses of area and local extinctions.”

In a perverse consequence, lost reefs will leave nearby coastlines even more vulnerable to erosion and storms, as well as from accelerating sea-level rise, which could go up by as much as two feet this century as a result of glacier melt.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

Trump Sued For Failing To Protect Hawaii’s Cauliflower Coral

October 11, 2019 — The Center for Biological Diversity said Thursday that it is suing the Trump administration for failing to protect cauliflower coral around the Hawaiian Islands.

“The bushy, shallow-water coral species has been devastated by ocean warming triggered by human-caused climate change,” according to a press release.

The warming is due to a “marine heat wave … now hitting Hawaii’s coral reefs hard, and researchers predict massive coral bleaching and death.”

The coral species is estimated to have declined by 36% from 1999 to 2012, and conditions are expected to worsen.

“Cauliflower coral is like the canary in the coal mine of our warming oceans. Marine life around Hawaii will suffer without bold actions to protect coral reefs,” said Maxx Phillips, the center’s Hawaii director. “Hawaii’s coral reefs are dying and they need our help. Letting colorful corals bleach white and die indicates an ocean becoming less bountiful and biodiverse.”

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

How A Tough New England Coral May Help Its Tropical Cousins

August 26, 2019 — Koty Sharp emerges from the ocean off the coast of Fort Wetherill, Rhode Island, and walks onto the rocky beach. She’s wearing scuba gear and carrying a red mesh bag. Sharp is an ecologist at Roger Williams University in nearby Bristol, and the red bag holds a treasure.

She opens it for inspection. “This what a coral colony looks like, here in Rhode Island,” says Sharp, gazing fondly into the bag. Inside there are about 30 small gray rocks, each about the size of a quarter. The rocks appear to be covered with snot.

“It’s not as charismatic as tropical corals, we will definitely accept that,” says Sharp. “But these stand to tell us a lot of basics about corals.”

Read the full story at WBUR

Maine Scientist: Climate Change Is Driving Corals To Cooler Waters. Will They Survive?

July 12, 2019 — Climate change is causing a significant shift in coral reef populations as warmer ocean waters drive them away from the equator, a new scientific study has found.

The study, published this month in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, found that young corals on tropical reefs have declined 85 percent over the past four decades, while they have doubled in subtropical waters.

Climate change is the “greatest global threat” to coral reefs as mass coral bleaching and disease outbreaks become more common as the ocean warms, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But as the coral reefs come under increasing pressure from climate change, they are finding new opportunities to thrive in a changing ocean environment.

“Climate change seems to be redistributing coral reefs, the same way it is shifting many other marine species,” said Nichole Price, a senior research scientist at Maine’s Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and the lead author of the paper. “The clarity in this trend is stunning, but we don’t yet know whether the new reefs can support the incredible diversity of tropical systems.”

Read the full story at Maine Public

Place-Based Management Can Protect Coral Reefs in a Changing Climate

April 30, 2019 — Researchers from the state Department of Health and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa have developed and applied a new technology in Hawai‘i that identifies where coral reef ecosystems and associated fisheries are vulnerable to human activities and where to focus management actions to minimize anthropogenic impacts.

The authors of the newly published study in the journal Ecological Applications identified specific locations on land where improved wastewater management and landscape practices would yield the greatest benefits for downstream reefs in terms of mitigating harm to coral communities and associated reef fish populations.

Expansion of coastal development, along with wastewater discharge and fertilizers, can harm coral reefs and their fisheries through increases in sediment and nutrient runoff. Consequent reef degradation directly affects ecological resilience, food security, human well-being, and cultural practices in tropical island communities around the world.

The researchers focused on the ahupua‘a (land divisions) of Hāʻena on Kaua‘i and Ka‘ūpūlehu on Hawai‘i Island, at opposite ends of the main Hawaiian Islands, where native Hawaiian communities are taking action to manage their resources through a place-based management approach.

Read the full story at Big Island Now

Cauliflower Coral Could Be Listed as Endangered

September 25, 2018 — Officials say endangered or threatened species protection may be warranted for cauliflower coral across its entire range — not just Hawaii.

The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reports the National Marine Fisheries Service issued last week its 90-day finding on a March petition seeking Endangered Species Act protection for the coral.

The coral, Pocillpora meandrina, is found in Hawaii and on most shallow reefs in the Indo-Pacific and Eastern Pacific. It has been devastated by habitat changes, disease and predation, lack of protection and other natural man-made factors.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which raised the petition, says in Hawaii alone, there was a 36.1 percent drop in coverage from 1999-2012.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News