Saving Seafood

Study finds existing forage fish management is working

July 9, 2021 — Efforts to ratchet down fishing effort on species like herring and menhaden in the name of “extra precautionary management” in most cases are unlikely to bring additional benefits for stocks of predator species that eat them, according to a new study.

“Our results indicate that predator productivity was rarely influenced by the abundance of their forage fish prey,” wrote authors Christopher Free of the University of California-Santa Barbara, Olaf Jensen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington. “Only 6 predator populations (13 percent of the total) were positively influenced by increasing prey abundance and the model exhibited high power to detect prey influences when they existed,” according to their paper titled “Evaluating impacts of forage fish abundance on marine predators,” originally published in the journal Conservation Biology.

“These results suggest that additional limitation of forage fish harvest to levels well below sustainable yields would rarely result in detectable increases in marine predator populations.”

The findings were released July 6 through the Science Center for Marine Fisheries, a cooperative effort to improve sustainability of fisheries and reduce uncertainty in biomass estimates with work by university partners led with the University of Southern Mississippi Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, as academic sites.

“Our work suggests that the sustainable limits that we already employ are sufficient for maintaining forage fish abundance above the thresholds that are necessary for their predators,” Free of UC Santa Barbara in a statement describing the findings. “Predators are highly mobile, they have high diet flexibility, and they can go and look for forage fish in places where they’re doing well, switch species for species that are doing well, and have often evolved to breed in places where there’s high and stable forage fish abundance.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

New Study: Precautionary Catch Limits on Forage Fish Unlikely to Benefit Predators

July 6, 2021 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

A newly released study finds that, for many predator species, extra-precautionary management of forage fish is unlikely to bring additional benefits. How to manage forage fish sustainably, both by themselves and for the rest of the ecosystem, has become a much-discussed topic in fisheries management, with regulators of several forage fisheries beginning to adopt precautionary strategies on the premise that they will better provide for the needs of predator species including seabirds, marine mammals, and fish.

The study, from Drs. Chris Free of the University of California-Santa Barbara, Olaf Jensen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, examines decades of historical abundance data of both forage species and their predators, and uses mathematical models to determine to what extent predator populations benefited from increasing abundance of their forage fish prey. Of the 45 predator populations examined, only 6, or 13 percent, were positively influenced by extra forage.

“Our work suggests that the sustainable limits that we already employ are sufficient for maintaining forage fish abundance above the thresholds that are necessary for their predators,” said Dr. Free. “Predators are highly mobile, they have high diet flexibility, and they can go and look for forage fish in places where they’re doing well, switch species for species that are doing well, and have often evolved to breed in places where there’s high and stable forage fish abundance.”

The results have important implications for how strictly to manage forage fisheries. The study finds that, at least in forage fisheries that are already being well managed and are closely monitored, adopting additional precautionary measures will “rarely” provide any additional benefits to predator population growth. However, fishery managers who deal with less well-monitored fisheries may consider more precautionary strategies.

“In places of the world where we already have really strong, very effective fisheries management, additional limitations on forage fish catch are not likely to benefit their predators,” said Dr. Free.

“Management of forage fish populations should be based on data that are specific to that forage fish, and to their predators,” said Dr. Jensen. “When there aren’t sufficient data to conduct a population-specific analysis, it’s reasonable to manage forage fish populations for maximum sustainable yield, as we would other fish populations under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

According to the models used in the study, other environmental factors, such as water temperature, are more likely to influence predator populations. These results are consistent with previous efforts to examine the relationship between predator and prey populations.

“What we’ve done here that’s different from previous analyses is try to control for some of the other factors that influence predator population dynamics,” said Dr. Jensen. “In this case, we included in the models a covariate representing ocean temperature.”

SCEMFIS produced a video of the authors and independent experts discussing the results of the paper. Watch it here.

Read the full release here

Impacts of fishing forage fish on the fish that feed on forage fish

June 7, 2021 — Small pelagic fish that school in open water—think sardines or anchovies, are eaten by all kinds of predators. Seabirds, marine mammals, and bigger fish feed on these small pelagics giving them the moniker “forage fish.”

Forage fish support several fisheries, particularly “reduction fisheries,” where fish are caught and reduced into fishmeal and fish oil for livestock and aquaculture. The anchoveta fishery off the coast of South America is the largest in the world, and nearly all catch is reduced. From a food production perspective, reduction fisheries turn fish that humans don’t like to eat into other kinds of meat that humans do. That isn’t to say forage fish aren’t fished for human consumption—they are and have one of the lowest carbon footprints of any food, but the majority of catch is reduced. Eat more anchovies and sardines, people!

However, forage fish also play a foundational role in many ocean ecosystems. They buoy the diets of marine birds and mammals like whales, puffins, albatross, and other vulnerable species while also indirectly supporting valuable fisheries, e.g., salmon and tuna feed on forage fish. Their role in the food chain has led to some calls to limit forage fish fisheries to boost the populations of their higher-value predators. This makes intuitive sense, but new research out this week by Free et al. shows it’s more complicated than simply “more prey, more predators.”

In 2012, a prominent forage fish paper was published that advised a highly precautionary approach to commercial fishing of forage fish. They suggested that to be as conservative as possible, even fisheries currently considered well-managed should be reduced by 50% to enhance and maintain predator populations. It kicked off a decade of forage fish population modeling and scientific discussion. The major criticism of the 2012 paper was that the ecosystem model used in the paper assumed that commercial fishing had an outsized impact on forage fish populations and did not account for ocean conditions. However, forage fish populations are highly sensitive to environmental conditions. For example, long before humans were fishing them, the Pacific Sardine went through periods of significant population boom and bust. This environmental sensitivity complicates the understanding of fishing impact, especially because the predators eat far more forage fish than are taken via fishing. Surly overfishing is bad, but would further reducing fishing below sustainable levels benefit the broader ecosystem?

Scientists did more research. In 2017, a paper by Hilborn et al. showed little correlation between forage fish populations and their predators. The authors argued that if forage fish have natural boom and bust cycles, their predators should have the resilience to find other kinds of prey in times of bust (and indeed, most marine predators that forage on small pelagic fish have a broad diet and are highly mobile). Hilborn et al. challenged the 2012 paper’s recommendations for a highly precautionary approach to forage fish fisheries. However, it was still a relatively simple analysis—the authors used population data to show correlations (or the lack thereof) between the abundance of forage fish and changes in their predator populations. They found that just 5 of the 50 predators examined in that study showed a positive correlation to forage fish population.

The 2017 paper showed correlation but not causality—the paper published this week gets closer to causality by controlling for possible confounding factors, namely by using a predator dynamics model that accounted for forage fish boom and bust cycles. This hadn’t been in previous models. Further, the 2017 paper only looked at U.S. ecosystems; this paper included ecosystems in Europe, South Africa, and the Humboldt Current off South America, giving a more global view of forage fish ecosystem dynamics.

Read the full story at Sustainable Fisheries UW

Bipartisan bill in US Congress aims to better protect forage fish

April 30, 2021 — Two U.S. senators on Thursday, 29 April, filed a bill that calls on the federal government to increase protections for smaller fish that serve as an essential food source for ecosystems across the country.

U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) have filed S.1484, called The Forage Fish Conservation Act. The legislation would amend the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to mandate that that the U.S. Secretary of Commerce come up with a definition for forage fish as well as take steps to improve monitoring and management for fish that serve as prey to larger fish, birds, and other mammals.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Surface Slicks are Pelagic Nurseries for Diverse Ocean Fauna

February 5, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

To survive the open ocean, freshly hatched tiny fish larvae must find food, avoid predators, and navigate ocean currents. Their experiences during these great ocean odysseys have long been a mystery, until now. We have discovered that a surprisingly dense and diverse array of marine animals find refuge in so-called “surface slicks” during early life. To view an immersive, interactive version of this story, check out our story map: Hidden World Just Below the Surface.

Surface slicks are home to the larvae of at least 112 marine fish species, including commercially and ecologically important fish such as mahi-mahi, jacks, and billfish. Serving as makeshift nursery habitats, surface slicks are meandering lines of smooth surface water that collect plankton and shelter-providing debris. They are formed from the convergence of ocean currents, tides, and variations in the seafloor.

“These ‘bioslicks’ form an interconnected superhighway of rich nursery habitat that accumulate and attract thousands of young fish, along with dense concentrations of food and shelter,” says Dr. Jonathan Whitney, a research marine ecologist for NOAA and lead author of the study, published today in Scientific Reports. “The fact that surface slicks host such a large proportion of larvae, along with the resources they need to survive, tells us they are critical for the replenishment of adult fish populations.”

That  larvae hosted in slick nurseries grow up and radiate out into neighboring ecosystems. There, they join adult fish populations from shallow coral reefs to the open ocean to the bottom of the deep sea.

What’s more, many forage (prey) fish, like flying fish, spend their larval and juvenile life stages in surface slicks. “These biological hotspots provide more food at the base of the food chain that amplifies energy up to top predators,” says study co-author Dr. Jamison Gove, a research oceanographer for NOAA. “This ultimately enhances fisheries and ecosystem productivity.”

Read the full release here

SFP report indicates key to reduction fishery sustainability lies in Southeast Asia

June 4, 2018 — The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership released its Target 75 (T75) Reduction Fisheries Update on 31 May, and it indicates that the key to reaching the organization’s sustainability goals lie in increased engagement in Southeast Asia.

The report outlines the various reduction fisheries and separates the global fishery into two distinct categories: Atlantic/Pacific reduction fisheries and Asian reduction fisheries. The Atlantic/Pacific primarily utilizes small pelagic species like anchoveta, sandeel, and sardine, as well as blue whiting, Antartic krill, and crustacean. The Asian reduction fishery includes trawl fisheries of a large variety of species.

“The rationale for splitting the global sector into two sub-sectors is that almost all Atlantic/Pacific reduction fisheries are for small pelagics, and are quite similar in terms of trophic level, gear, ecology and management, as well as engagement in FIPs,” the report said. “In contrast, the levels of FIP engagement in Asia are much lower, and only 50 percent of Asian sourcing comes from small pelagic fisheries, while the remainder comes from multispecies trawl fisheries (sometimes described as ‘Trash Fish’), which face fisheries management and sustainability challenges that are unique among sources of fishmeal and fish oil.”

According to the report, roughly 41 percent of reduction fisheries can meet the T75 goal, i.e. having either certifications or a FIP that indicates the fishery is moving towards sustainability. Of the sustainable fisheries, 99 percent are located in the Atlantic/Pacific fishery sub-sector.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

California Wetfish Producers Association Statement: West Coast Sardine Fishery Management Action

April 9, 2018 — The following was released by the California Wetfish Producers Association:

On Sunday, the Pacific Fishery Management Council approved the management measures for the West Coast sardine fishery that were recommended by the CPS management team. The decision provides for 7,000 Mt for all uses, allowing fishermen a reasonable set aside for incidental take.

“We are very thankful to the Council for applying the best available common sense in making its decision, especially in light of the concerns expressed during the recent ATM methods review and the earlier problems voiced about last year’s sardine STAR panel review.

“And we are especially grateful to NOAA Assistant Administrator Chris Oliver, who took the time to address the Council in support of sustainable fishing communities, as well as resources, saying in part, ‘We have to combine that scientific underpinning with practicality and common sense.’

“This is especially topical given the ongoing forage fish discussion and its relationship to California’s historic wetfish industry, which has been the foundation of our fishing economy for more than a century. All too often, that importance is largely ignored or dismissed with pleas to ‘leave most of the fish in the water for other predators.’ Our precautionary catch rules already do that.

“In sum, a big thank you to the Council for doing the right thing for sardine fishery management and for fishing families and communities up and down the West Coast.”

Diane Pleschner-Steele, Executive Director

California Wetfish Producers Association

About the California Wetfish Producers Association

The California Wetfish Producers Association is a nonprofit dedicated to research and to promote sustainable Wetfish resources. More info at www.californiawetfish.org.

 

Read more about forage fish management here

New England Fishery Management Council Sends Atlantic Herring Amendment 8 to Public Hearing

December 6, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — On Tuesday the New England Fishery Management Council voted to send “Draft Amendment 8” to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan public hearing. The Council has no preferred alternatives and will be receiving feedback on the controversy about localized depletion and use of herring as forage fish.

The amendment features two major components: Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC) control rule and potential localized depletion and user conflicts. The ABC Control Rule is supposed to be used to set specifications and annual catch limits. The Council has 10 options and did not select a preferred one at their September meeting in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Similarly, the Council also has a list of alternatives to address potential localized depletion and user conflict. Alternative options range from “no action” to a year-round prohibition on using midwater trawl gear in specific Atlantic Herring management areas.

The Council will make a final decision in 2018 after receiving feedback at the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management plan public hearing. Attendees will be presented with a fill list of likely costs and benefits associated with each option.

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

 

Atlantic Menhaden Board Votes Against Ecological Management Plan For Fishery

November 17, 2017 — The Atlantic Menhaden Board voted earlier this week to stick to the status quo when managing the menhaden fishery and made slight changes to the annual catch limit. However, Saving Seafood, a group that represents the commercial fishing industry, has mixed feelings about those changes.

Menhaden are a forage fish found across the Atlantic Coast. The Board was considering implementing a new ecological-based management plan that was designed for forage fish.

The plan would have required fishermen to leave enough fish in the water for it to replenish itself and enough for predators to eat. However, the board voted no for the plan because it’s not specifically designed for menhaden.

Bob Vanasse, executive director at Saving Seafood, said the group agrees with the board’s decision.

“I think this was a strong statement that moving forward science needs to prevail, data needs to prevail and we need to look at this complex system in its complexity and not try apply a rule of thumb in every circumstance,” Vanasse said.

The menhaden board also voted to increase the annual catch quota by eight percent.

Read the full story at WNPR

 

Menhaden Fisheries Coalition Thanks ASMFC For Adopting Best Science on Menhaden Ecological Reference Points

WASHINGTON — November 14, 2017 — The following was released by the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition:

The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition (MFC) thanks the Commissioners of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) Atlantic Menhaden Management Board for following the best available science in setting reference points for Atlantic menhaden.

As part of Amendment 3 to the Atlantic Menhaden Intestate Fishery Management Plan (FMP), the Commission voted 16-2 to continue current management measures for Atlantic menhaden until its Biological Ecological Reference Points (BERP) Workgroup finishes developing menhaden-specific ecological reference points (ERPs). These ERPs are supported by the MFC, and would manage menhaden based on its role in the ecosystem as forage for predator species.

The best science shows that managing forage fish according to general biological principals, as advocated by various environmental and sportfishing groups, is not the correct approach. Earlier this year, Dr. Ray Hilborn and a team of top fishery scientists released a study that recommended forage fish be managed on a case-by-case basis, based on the unique biological and ecological factors affecting individual forage species. The BERP Workgroup is following this advice in its work developing a menhaden-specific management model.

While these reference points are being developed, current menhaden management has led to a healthy stock. The ASMFC’s 2015 and 2017 stock assessments of Atlantic menhaden found that menhaden is not overfished and not experiencing overfishing.