Saving Seafood

Large-scale coral restoration beginning in Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary

April 20, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA:

In the spirit of this year’s Earth Day theme “Restore our Earth,” NOAA and partners are beginning a three-year effort to outplant more than 60,000 fragments of nursery-raised coral at Eastern Dry Rocks Sanctuary Preservation Area off the coast of Key West, Florida. This is the first large-scale endeavor dedicated to Mission: Iconic Reefs, the unprecedented effort to restore seven coral reefs within Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

“Outplanting at this unprecedented scale is one of many immediate actions needed to address the rapid decline in our treasured coral reefs,” said Ben Friedman, acting NOAA Administrator. “The Florida Keys has become a world leader in coral restoration with new techniques for addressing threats and accelerating coral growth, thanks to an unprecedented collaboration between NOAA, our partners, and a community of stewards.”

Eastern Dry Rocks contains a concentration of bank reef habitats that are ecologically and economically important to the Florida Keys. The elkhorn and staghorn corals that are being transplanted across more than nine acres include a high number of distinct genetic strains representing the historical diversity found on these reefs, and genotypes that have exhibited the highest survival and growth rates. Practitioner partners that will assist in the outplanting grew the corals in their respective nurseries over six to eight months.

NOAA and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation awarded a $5 million grant through the National Coastal Resilience Fund to the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, in partnership with Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium and Coral Restoration Foundation™ to restore Eastern Dry Rocks. The grant is the largest one-time investment since the initiative was announced in December 2019.

Scott Winters, CEO of Coral Restoration Foundation, said “Coral Restoration Foundation has already begun a massive expansion of our Coral Tree Nursery in Key West to support the restoration of Eastern Dry Rocks. Since January 2021, we have now replenished the site with more than 1,085 genetically diverse staghorn and elkhorn corals and are well on our way to hitting our target of 7,350 by the end of the year. Knowing that we are not doing this alone, that this work is part of a much larger, coordinated effort, gives us a renewed sense of hope for the future of the Florida Keys.”

“We are excited to press forward with the application of Mote’s innovative science-based coral restoration of genetically-resilient corals on such a broad scale at Eastern Dry Rocks,” said Michael P. Crosby, Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium President & CEO. “Mission: Iconic Reefs is one of the largest reef restoration efforts in the world, and the collaborative efforts of Mote, NOAA, and our partners is unprecedented in this field. Florida’s Coral Reef is vital to our environment and economy, so Mote will continue to maximize our restoration efforts in support of Mission Iconic Reefs whenever possible.”

In later stages of the project, students and faculty of College of the Florida Keys will also help reintroduce thousands of herbivores, like the Caribbean King Crab, to the site to serve as natural grazers that help sustain a healthy ecosystem.

“In many ways, Eastern Dry Rocks serves as a test case for the other six Iconic Reef sites—from research and development on grazers to refinement of methodologies for maintenance and preparation,” said Sarah Fangman, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary Superintendent. “Lessons learned from Eastern Dry Rocks will form the basis for standard operating procedures and implementation plans of future Iconic Reef sites.”

Informed by years of research, successful trials, and expertise from dozens of coral scientists and restoration practitioners, NOAA believes this scientific and collaborative restoration plan will put Florida’s reefs on track for recovery and demonstrate how restoration can support a vibrant, sustainable, local economy and help buffer communities from coastal storms. The reef track in the Keys attracts millions of visitors per year, accounting for more than $2 billion of economic impact.

“Florida Keys’ iconic reefs, including Eastern Dry Rocks, are the basis for thriving ecosystems underwater and the critical tourism economy on dry land,” said Kris Sarri, president and CEO of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. “This project will transform how we approach coral restoration.”

FLORIDA: Key Largo Fisheries Credits Power Of Internet Sales With Their Survival

April 6, 2021 — A little more than a year into the coronavirus pandemic, we’re learning what worked well with some businesses to help them survive.

For Key Largo Fisheries, it was their website.

“We shipped a lot of stone crabs, fresh fish, Key West pink shrimp, whole tails, whole lobsters,” said Key Largo Fisheries’ Tom Hill.

Keeping the iconic fishery, market, and cafe in the northern Keys up and running had a lot to do with the internet sales.

“We were fortunate in that we were able to start serving people via the web, an awful lot of people looked at our website, taking lots of orders online,” said Hill.

Boxes of Key Largo Fisheries seafood shipped directly to their clients’ doorsteps which helped them expand.

Read the full story at CBS Miami

Atlantic Sapphire suffers mass salmon mortality at its Florida RAS farm

March 24, 2021 — On Tuesday, 23 March, Atlantic Sapphire suffered a mass mortality event at its recirculating aquaculture system salmon farm in Miami, Florida, U.S.A.

In a press release issued via the Euronext Market, where the company’s stock is listed, Atlantic Sapphire said it expected a loss of 500 metric tons (MT), or around 1.1 million pounds, of head-on, gutted salmon. The company said the average weight of the deceased fish was one kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, meaning an estimated 500,000 individual salmon died due to the accident. The total represents around 5 percent of its phase-one harvest volumes.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

FLORIDA: Group donates 13,000 pounds of fresh grouper, red snapper to Second Harvest

March 18, 2021 — A special delivery arrived at Second Harvest Wednesday morning. A truck dropped off 13,000 pounds of Red Snapper and Grouper fillets at the food bank.

The donation is worth about $20,000. It’s all thanks to North Florida fishermen and members of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance.

It started after the group signed up for a grant through “Catch Together.” Their goal is to help put fishermen back on the water while also feeding those in need. Second Harvest said they’re grateful to soon be able to offer more variety to people.

Read the full story at WTXL

Study finds significant liver damage in Gulf of Mexico red snapper

March 17, 2021 — A study completed by researchers from the University of South Florida has revealed almost every red snapper studied in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill showed signs of liver damage.

Red snapper is the latest Gulf species studied by researchers at the USF College of Marine Science in the wake of the devastating 2010 oil spill. Erin Pulster, a USF researcher and lead author of the study, said the results give “early warning signs of a compromised ecosystem.” Pulster and her team recently had their findings published in Aquatic Toxicology.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Red Snapper in the Gulf show signs of stress after Gulf oil spill

March 12, 2021 — Nearly 100 percent of the red snapper sampled in the Gulf of Mexico over a six-year period by University of South Florida (USF) marine scientists showed evidence of liver damage, according to a study reported in Aquatic Toxicology.

The study is the first to correlate the concentration of crude oil found in the workhorses of the digestive system — the liver, gall bladder, and bile — with microscopic indicators of disease, such as inflammation, degenerative lesions, and the presence of parasites. The team sampled nearly 570 fish from 72 Gulf locations between 2011 to 2017 in the wake of the historic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“The results add to the list of other species we’ve analyzed indicating early warning signs of a compromised ecosystem,” said Erin Pulster, PhD, first author of the study and researcher at the USF College of Marine Science.

Pulster and the team of researchers studying oil pollution in Gulf of Mexico fishes have previously reported high levels of oil exposure in yellowfin tuna, golden tilefish, and red drum as well.

The Gulf of Mexico not only experiences hundreds of annual oil spills with long-lasting effects such as the historic Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 but is routinely subject to intense shipping traffic and collects pollutants from faraway places that flow in from coastlines and rivers like the Mighty Mississippi and the Rio Grande.

In this study Pulster and the team looked specifically at the most toxic component of crude oil called polycyclic aromatic compounds, or PAHs. PAH sources include old oil and gas rigs, fuel from boats and airplanes, and natural oil seeps, which are fractures on the seafloor that can add millions of barrels of oil to the Gulf every year.

Read the full story at Science Daily

Red Snapper in the Gulf show signs of stress

March 11, 2021 — Nearly 100 percent of the red snapper sampled in the Gulf of Mexico over a six-year period by University of South Florida (USF) marine scientists showed evidence of liver damage, according to a study reported in Aquatic Toxicology.

The study is the first to correlate the concentration of crude oil found in the workhorses of the digestive system—the liver, gall bladder, and bile—with microscopic indicators of disease, such as inflammation, degenerative lesions, and the presence of parasites. The team sampled nearly 570 fish from 72 Gulf locations between 2011 to 2017 in the wake of the historic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“The results add to the list of other species we’ve analyzed indicating early warning signs of a compromised ecosystem,” said Erin Pulster, Ph.D., first author of the study and researcher at the USF College of Marine Science.

Pulster and the team of researchers studying  in Gulf of Mexico fishes have previously reported high levels of oil exposure in yellowfin tuna, golden tilefish, and red drum as well.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Misinformation, polarization impeding environmental protection efforts

March 5, 2021 — A group of researchers, spanning six universities and three continents, are sounding the alarm on a topic not often discussed in the context of conservation—misinformation.

In a recent study published in FACETS, the team, including Dr. Adam Ford, Canada Research Chair in Wildlife Restoration Ecology, and Dr. Clayton Lamb, Liber Ero Fellow, both based in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, explain how the actions of some scientists,  and the public are eroding efforts to conserve biodiversity.

“Outcomes, not intentions, should be the basis for how we view success in conservation,” says Dr. Ford.

Dr. Lamb points to other cases including mass petitions against shark finning in Florida, although the practice was previously banned there; planting a species of milkweed in an attempt to save monarch butterflies, only to ultimately harm them; and closer to home, the sharing of misinformation in regards to the British Columbia grizzly bear hunt.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

World-renowned Mote shark scientist retires

March 5, 2021 — The following was released by Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium:

After more than 40 years of shark science with profound conservation impacts, Dr. Robert (Bob) Hueter retired from his role as Director of Mote Marine Laboratory’s Center for Shark Research in December 2020, becoming a Mote Senior Scientist Emeritus.

Hueter’s shark research has spanned six of Earth’s seven continents, and lately he is best known for trailblazing work in Cuba—including satellite-tagging the first sharks in Cuban waters—and the U.S., where he has combined his roles as Mote Senior Scientist and Chief Scientist for the nonprofit organization OCEARCH to lead groundbreaking studies of great white sharks.

Hueter’s research has produced more than 200 published scientific articles and reports, and his career exemplifies Mote’s mission—conducting world-class research and translating it to benefit the oceans and society. He has testified before the U.S. Congress three times on shark research and conservation and has spearheaded landmark developments—including promotion of the first shark fisheries management regulations in Florida in 1991, and the first international shark fisheries management and conservation conference, held at Mote in 1993, where the first U.S. federal shark fisheries management plan was announced.

Over the years, the exceptional research led by Hueter and his team has included: sweeping surveys of sharks along Florida’s Gulf Coast to document long-term changes in their populations; a satellite-tagging study of record scope with whale sharks, Earth’s largest fish species, that documented their migrations spanning over 5,000 miles; through collaborative expeditions with OCEARCH and partners, successfully tracking 70 great white sharks with satellite transmitters and proposing a model of their life history and migrations in the Northwest Atlantic; leading field research identifying nursery areas for 16 shark species in the Gulf of Mexico; and groundbreaking studies on intensive shark fishing in Mexico’s Gulf of California that documented 160,000 sharks and rays in the fishery over years. He also played leading roles in: providing the first scientific documentation of a shark nursery area in Cuban waters, for the lemon shark; gaining new insights on sharks caught in northwest Cuba’s open-water longline fishery; documenting shark bycatch to support development of fisheries electronic monitoring systems in the Gulf of Mexico; contributing data and expertise to massive, global studies of shark-fishery interactions, reef shark conservation and declines; and more.

Read the full release here

Protecting right whales: Advocates, fishermen say proposal needs more work

March 1, 2021 — A fatal collision that killed a baby whale and injured his mother in waters south of Brunswick is the latest impetus for advocates of whales to respond by the March 1 deadline for public comments on proposed federal rules intended to protect right whales.

The infant and his mother, named Infinity, were struck Feb. 12, off St. Augustine Inlet, Fl. The captain of a 54-foot sport fishing vessel reported that he’d driven over a whale. The boat began taking on water and the captain grounded the boat to prevent her from sinking, according to a report by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute. No human injuries were reported.

The 22-foot-long carcass of the infant whale washed ashore at Anastasia State Park. The mother, known in scientific circles as Catalog #3230, was spotted off the coast of South Georgia on Feb. 16, with “two new cuts on her left side suggestive of a vessel strike,” according to a report from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

This incident helped fuel an attendance of more than 300 at last week’s virtual public hearing on the proposed revision of a federal regulation regarding the protection of whales from commercial fishing gear. Attention to the plight of right whales is increasing as their numbers dwindle. Fewer than 350 of the mammals are thought to exist, according to a report issued Wednesday by the New England Aquarium, which has studied right whales for 40 years.

Read the full story at The Saporta Report