Saving Seafood

Assessing El Niño’s impact on fisheries and aquaculture around the world

April 27, 2020 — While considerable resources are invested in seasonal forecasts and early-warning systems for food security, not enough is known about El Niño’s impact on the fisheries and aquaculture sectors, even though its name was given in the 1600s by fishers off the coast of Peru.

To remedy that, FAO is publishing, in partnership with French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD France), the report El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) effects on fisheries and aquaculture. This report captures the current state of knowledge on the impacts of ENSO events across sectors, from  to safety at sea, from fish biology and fishing operation to management measures.

El Niño is widely known as a climate pattern that begins over the Pacific Ocean but wreaks havoc on ecosystems in land and water far away from its origin. Its consequences include droughts and major harvest shortfalls in large swatches of Africa and Indonesia, forest fires in Australia, and serious flooding in South America.

ENSOs are often simplified to reflect two main phases: El Niño, an anomalous warming phase in the central and/or eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, and an opposite cooling phase called La Niña.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Climate warming promises more frequent extreme El Niño events

October 22, 2019 — El Niño events cause serious shifts in weather patterns across the globe, and an important question that scientists have sought to answer is: how will climate change affect the generation of strong El Niño events? A new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by a team of international climate researchers led by Bin Wang of the University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), has an answer to that question. Results show that since the late 1970’s, climate change effects have shifted the El Niño onset location from the eastern Pacific to the western Pacific and caused more frequent extreme El Niño events. Continued warming over the western Pacific warm pool promises conditions that will trigger more extreme events in the future.

The team examined details of 33 El Niño events from 1901 to 2017, evaluating for each event the onset location of the warming, its evolution, and its ultimate strength. By grouping the common developmental features of the events, the team was able to identify four types of El Niño, each with distinct onset and strengthening patterns. Looking across time, they found a decided shift in behavior since the late 1970’s: all events beginning in the eastern Pacific occurred prior to that time, while all events originating in the western-central Pacific happened since then. They also found that four of five identified extreme El Niño events formed after 1970.

Wang and his co-authors focused on the factors that seemed to be controlling these shifts, including increased  in the western Pacific warm pool and the easterly winds in the central Pacific, and found that with continued , those factors may lead to a continued increase in frequency in extreme El Niño events.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

West Coast Fisheries Worried El Nino Likely to Return in 2018-19

August 31, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — As salmon and tuna seasons wind down and Dungeness crabbers start thinking about the winter fishery on the West Coast, some wonder: Will El Niño return?

Recent news articles have reported a 70 percent chance of warm waters in the equatorial Pacific will affect the West Coast.

On land, that could mean a dry winter coming after a summer and fall in which smoke from wildfires filled the skies in the West. On the ocean, it could mean warmer waters that may temporarily disrupt an environment that is accustomed to cooler waters. Some fisheries could benefit months or years after an El Niño. Others — some the most commercially important — may have difficult seasons ahead.

“In summary, there is ~60 percent chance of El Niño in the Northern Hemisphere [of] fall 2018 (September-November), increasing to ~70 percent during winter 2018-19,” the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center wrote in an El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion earlier this month.

However, each El Niño and warm water period is different and creates effects to varying degrees. The extreme warm water period in 2015-16, “The Blob,” proved disastrous to Dungeness and rock crab fisheries because harmful algal blooms thrived. It also hampered the ocean survivability of coho salmon. In years past, pink shrimp populations plummeted but then bounced back after El Niño events.

“When El Niño is developing … short-term fluctuations in the near-surface winds [in the Pacific] can have substantial effects,” Emily Becker wrote on a Climate.gov blog in early August. “A period of weaker trade winds can help build El Niño’s warmer surface waters, while a period of stronger trade winds can cool the surface and impede El Niño’s growth. It appears that the trade winds are currently weakening, and may continue to do so through the next week, likely helping push things in the El Niño direction.”

Weather forecasters caution that making any predictions beyond a week to 10 days is uncertain. The Climate Prediction Center will make its next El Niño report and update in mid-September.

This story originally appeared on Seafood News, it is republished here with permission.

 

CALIFORNIA: Threat of El Niño has Pacific squid fleet on edge

August 7, 2018 –All eyes and ears were on water temperatures and foreign trade tariffs as seiners hit their strides in the West Coast squid season. Cooler ocean temperatures last fall fostered hopes that the environmental pendulum had begun swinging in favor of squid production. But as the summer of 2018 ensued, the threat that El Niño conditions may be returning set fishermen and processors on edge.

“We’re watching the inklings of an El Niño,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, in Buellton. “It’s an interesting season. It started well, and it’s still going… better than when we were in the throes of El Nino.”

In late June, Oregon had posted healthy landings, and Pleschner-Steele said harvest numbers had begun picking up in California. The commercial squid season runs from April 1 to March 31 of the following year, and seiners fish on a quota of 118,000 short tons. Pleschner-Steele says the fleet hasn’t caught the quota in recent years, given oceanic conditions and other factors, and that the set quota is an optimal harvest number.

As of June 28, the seiners had landed 9,931 tons of squid.

On July 3, Pleschner-Steele said it was unlikely the fleet would catch the quota this year. The pending shortage in the harvest might be a good thing, in terms of curbing volumes headed to troubled markets in China.

The recent trade fracas between China and the United States predicated a stiff tariff on U.S. squid products shipped to China, one of the West Coast industry’s primary markets.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Aniello Guglielmo: Fishermen know the truth about sardines

May 29, 2018 — Listen to what fishermen know about sardines

Reporter Anne Roth quoted me in her article “When will sardines return? Not any time soon say scientists.” But she misunderstood what I said.

I’m one of the fishermen Diane Pleschner-Steele quoted in her comment, “Fishermen are seeing more sardines, not less.” I’ve been fishing for 60 years, and I’ve seen sardines come, go and come back again. But the government surveys that assess the biomass don’t come into coastal waters where the fish are now. In fact, we began seeing an abundance of small sardines right before the 2015 El Niño.

The government now admits they’re missing fish in their stock assessments. We know they’re missing a lot of fish, and we’ve offered to help document the abundance inshore of their surveys. But that’s going to take time, and the bureaucracy moves slowly. When I said, “Unless something drastic happens, I don’t think, I’ll ever fish sardines again,” I also explained that it may take years for government surveys to account for sardines in the nearshore area where sardines are, and I only have a few years of fishing left. But I hope I do fish sardines again in my lifetime.

Fishermen know better than scientists how many fish are in the ocean. It’s time they start listening to us.

Read the full letter to the editor at the Monterey Herald

 

West Coast Waters Returning to Normal; Some Fisheries Remain Disrupted

March 13, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Ocean conditions off most of the U.S. West Coast are returning roughly to average, after an extreme marine heat wave from about 2014 to 2016 disrupted the California Current Ecosystem and shifted many species beyond their traditional range, according to a new report from NOAA Fisheries’ two marine laboratories on the West Coast. Some warm waters remain off the Pacific Northwest, however.

The Southwest Fisheries Science Center and Northwest Fisheries Science Center presented their annual “California Current Ecosystem Status Report” to the Pacific Fishery Management Council at the Council’s meeting in Rohnert Park, Calif., on Friday, March 9. The California Current encompasses the entire West Coast marine ecosystem, and the report informs the Council about conditions and trends in the ecosystem that may affect marine species and fishing in the coming year.

“The report gives us an important glimpse at what the science is saying about the species and resources that we manage and rely on in terms of our West Coast economy,” Council Chairman Phil Anderson, of Westport, Wash., said in a press release. “The point is that we want to be as informed as we can be when we make decisions that affect those species, and this report helps us do that.”

Unusually warm ocean temperatures, referred to as “the Blob,” encompassed much of the West Coast beginning about 2014, combining with an especially strong El Nino pattern in 2015. The warm conditions have now waned, although some after-effects remain.

Warmer waters were blamed for increased growth of Pseudo nitzschia, which produces domoic acid. The domoic acid interrupted several fisheries, including Dungeness crab, rock crab and spiny lobster.

Read the full story with a subscription at Seafood News

 

California Acting Governor Gavin Newsom Requests Disaster Relief for Sardine, Urchin Fisheries

September 13, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Sardine and sea urchin closures in California have prompted Acting Gov. Gavin Newsom to request fishery failure declarations for both.

Newsom noted in his Sept. 5 letters to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross that ocean conditions caused the closure for sardines and affected the kelp forest ecosystems on which red urchins depend.

The California Wetfish Producers Association lauded Newsom’s request to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to approve a declaration of a commercial fishery failure for California’s Pacific sardine fishery. His action was precipitated by La Niña’s cold-water oceanic conditions that are believed to have caused sharply reduced sardine recruitment and the closure of this commercial fishery since 2015.

“This declaration is very important as it will enable California’s historic sardine fishery and its participants to seek federal disaster relief to offset the economic harm fishermen and processors have suffered since the fishery closure,” California Wetfish Producers Association Executive Director Diane Pleschner-Steele said in a statement Tuesday.

The Pacific sardine fishery has been managed under the federal Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery Management Plan (CPS FMP) since 2000. The CPS FMP established a harvest cutoff, prohibiting directed fishing if the sardine population falls below an estimated 150,000 metric tons. Due to low stock assessments, the fishery was closed in 2015 and 2016, and will remain closed in 2017 and possibly even 2018, although sardines have returned to abundance in the nearshore area, where fishing normally takes place.

Certain thresholds have been established that help the National Marine Fisheries Service and Secretary of Commerce make a determination of whether a commercial fishery failure has occurred. One of these involves an analysis of the economic impact and states that revenue losses greater than 80 percent are presumed to be a commercial fishery failure. This is determined by comparing the loss of 12-month revenue to average annual revenue in the most recent five-year period.

“This fishery is historically one of the top 10 highest valued commercial fisheries in California,” Newsom said in his letter regarding the iconic sardine fishery. “Statewide, the commercial closure in 2015 resulted in a total value of $343,148, which is 90 percent less than the 2010-14 average of $3,504,098. That dropped to $95,657 in 2016, which was 96 percent less than the 2011-15 average of $2,711,679.”

The figures for the urchin fishery, particularly in northern California and Orange County, were dire as well.
“The impacts to the regions are evident in the fishery landings data,” Newsom wrote. “In 2016, the northern California fishery ex-vessel revenue fell by 77 percent compared to the 5-year average from $2,587,419 to $604,440, Orange County ports fell by 93 percent from $85,382 to $6,045, and San Diego County ports fell by 48 percent from $574,526 to $297,594.”

Newsom’s letter noted the initial estimates for both fisheries are based on the average ex-vessel value of commercial landings but do not account for additional impacts to seafood processors or related industry businesses that rely on the either or both fisheries.

The sardine fishery is the foundation of California’s wetfish industry, which for decades has produced 80 percent or more of annual statewide commercial fishery landings, until recent years, the CWPA statement said. While fishermen and markets may harvest and process other species in the coastal pelagic species complex, sardines have been the historic mainstay of this industry, and the loss of fishing opportunity has created severe economic impact to both fishermen and processors.

The urchin fishery has been a staple for small-boat fishermen throughout the state for a number of years — until recently.

“Persistent warm ocean conditions that began in 2014 in northern California and 2015 in southern California has affected the fishery in these two regions,” Newsom’s letter said. “In northern California, the warm water event devastated kelp production (93 percent loss of surface kelp canopies compared to 2008 levels), a primary food source for urchins that created persistent starvation conditions. Starvation has led to reductions in the food value of the urchins targeted by the fishery in northern California.

In addition, a population explosion of the less marketable purple sea urchin continues to overgraze the recovering kelp beds, adding further stress to the fishery. In southern California, urchin mortality increased in response to warm El Nino conditions and disease in 2015. This has reduced the numbers of healthy red sea urchins in southern California available to the fishery.”

The Governor’s request for federal declaration now opens the door for fishermen and processors in California’s fisheries to pursue a federal disaster declaration from the Secretary of Commerce and appeal to California’s congressional delegation to pursue legislation allocating funding for disaster relief. Such funds would help alleviate the economic and social harm suffered as a result of these disasters.

Funds could also be used for cooperative research projects, Pleschner-Steele said, such as the collaborative aerial survey of the nearshore area that CWPA participates in with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in efforts to improve the accuracy of stock assessments.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Tough times for tilapia persist due to oversupply, low prices

January 19, 2017 — Tilapia producers faced a tough year in 2016, with an oversupply of product and the lowest prices seen since 2011.

A panel of premium finfish experts speaking at this year’s National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Market Conference in San Francisco, California, debated tilapia’s latest challenges, including a softening in demand related to a lack of species promotion. Such hurdles have prompted many fresh tilapia producers to gravitate toward frozen product offerings, and tilapia producers in Ecuador have started to veer in the direction of shrimp production, which has become more lucrative in the region recently.

“2016 has been a challenging year for anyone producing tilapia,” the panel surmised. “A little too much fish in the market.”

Despite these difficulties, the outlook for tilapia heading into 2017 and 2018 is positive, the panel said. Honduras continues to dominate tilapia production, even with a devastating El Nino drought to contend with, and is expected to maintain its reign in the sector. Meanwhile, Colombia will look to capitalize on its new free trade agreements and Brazil has growing potential to transform into a major tilapia exporter to the United States, the panel agreed. However, given the volatility of tilapia, it may still be a while yet before Brazil reaches its potential as a tilapia exporter, the panel concurred.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Warmer Global Ocean Pushes Fish to Extremes

August 15, 2016 — The opening lyrics in Bob Dylan’s classic tune “The Times They Are A-Changin’” told us to acknowledge that the waters around us were quickly rising. And while Dylan was surely referring to the sociopolitical climate of the day, those words still ring true in the physical sense as well. Climate change and global warming — or whatever phrase you use for our planet’s current ecological ailments — have generated much debate for the last several decades. These topics just seem to make some people, well, hot and bothered. Some choose to reject the notion that we’re seeing fairly, if not very, rapid changes in climate, but unfortunately, the data say otherwise. And this phenomenon we’re witnessing is directly linked to, if not driven by, what’s going on in the earth’s oceans.

In reality, the world’s oceans comprise a single large, connected entity called the global ocean. This expansive mass of water churns with currents, both visible and hidden, that not only exert control over marine ecosystems but also create profound effects on terrestrial ones.

The Long Term

Most anglers have heard plenty of talk over the last year or so about the record-breaking water temperatures in the Pacific, brought on by the last El Niño. Indeed, last year’s event ranked as the most significant ever recorded. No matter how severe the episode, however, El Niño events typically linger only a year or so. And although these ephemeral conditions seem to garner a lot of press, bigger problems have been unfolding for some time. Many environmental scientists agree that ocean temperatures are rising on a long-term, global level.

Read the full story at Sport Fishing Magazine

Farmers Pitted Against Fishermen in House

July 13, 2016 — The plan to buoy historically low salmon populations imperiled by California’s historic drought made for a contentious hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill. House Republicans accused federal agencies of depriving farmers of water while the Golden State’s reservoirs sit full.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Maine Fisheries Service teamed up for the drought proposal debated at this morning’s hearing of the House Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans.

Though recent El Nino storms have left the state’s largest reservoirs full, the contentious plan calls for less water to be pulled from California’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, to preserve cold-water supplies needed to keep the Sacramento River at or below 56 degrees this fall.

Warm water in the Sacramento River has contributed to devastatingly high mortality rates of juvenile winter run Chinook salmon over the last several years, but the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has complained that the plan could block federally contracted water deliveries without much warning.

Jeff Sutton, manager of the Tehama-Colusa Canal Authority in Northern California, told Congress the move would cripple harvests.

This year’s wet winter encouraged the planting of additional crops, Sutton said, with farmers expecting to receive their full-contracted water allotments for the first time in several years.

Read the full story at Courthouse News