Saving Seafood

The Gulf Of Maine’s Temperature Was ‘Normal’ This Year — Which Is The New Cool

September 19, 2019 — It’s often reported that the Gulf of Maine’s waters are warming faster than 99 percent of the largest saltwater bodies on the planet. But scientists will tell you the trend can be volatile. This year, for instance, surface water temperatures in the Gulf have been their coolest since 2008. That may be providing some relief for some of the Gulf’s historic species, but ongoing climate change means that long-term prospects are still uncertain.

Lobsterman Seth Dube fishes 400 traps from his boat, the Alison Nicole, out of Camp Ellis in Saco.

“Off and on most of my life, and my father did it and my grandfather and now me, hopefully my boy,” Dube says.

This has been a good decade for Dube and the rest of Maine’s lobster fleet, with record catches most years since 2010. But this year, the beginning of the big summer harvest – when lobsters molt, shedding their old hard shells to reveal new, soft shells – was slow. Lobstermen and some scientists associate that with cooler water temperatures earlier this year.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Waters off the coast of Maine vulnerable to changing climate

September 16, 2019 — From the one-lane bridge over the Little River at low water, you can see men hunched over the mudflats, hundreds of yards from shore, flipping the sea bottom with their pitchfork-like hoes to reveal the clams hiding there.

The clams, the basis of livelihood for generations of diggers from Cape Porpoise to Lubec, are back, at least for now, their numbers slowly recovering from a climate-driven disaster that will almost certainly strike again.

Six years ago, after the Gulf of Maine warmed to unprecedented levels, green crabs flooded over these northern embayments of Casco Bay like a plague of locusts, tearing away seagrass meadows, pockmarking salt marshes with their burrows, and devouring most every mussel and soft-shell clam in their path.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Gulf of Maine Research Institute launches virtual climate center

September 9, 2019 — The Portland marine science lab that first told the world the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost any other part of the ocean is launching a virtual climate center that will focus on finding solutions to the challenges related to ocean warming.

Under this virtual banner, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute hopes to leverage its science and educational expertise to help fishermen, policymakers, and coastal communities in Maine and around the world deal with the consequences of rising ocean temperatures.

“We’ve spent the last decade identifying warming trends and associated challenges,” said Don Perkins, a Maine native who has been at GMRI’s helm for almost 25 years. “We’ll spend the next decade identifying solutions to some of those challenges and helping coastal communities adapt to a warming future.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Electronic Monitoring Can Provide Better Data: A Fisherman’s Perspective

August 12, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Jim Ford has been fishing in the Gulf of Maine since he was in sixth grade. Ford’s first job was working as a deckhand on party boats. Later, he began operating a small gillnet vessel and a small trawler, in addition to longlining. He currently owns and operates the Lisa Ann III, a 50-foot dragger. He targets groundfish from his home port of Newburyport, Massachusetts.

In 2018, we issued an exempted fishing permit to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to create a  pilot project to test electronic monitoring in the Northeast. Ford signed up as one of the first project participants, and currently uses electronic monitoring on 100 percent of his trips.

When I met Ford on his boat on a foggy May morning, he showed me the equipment he uses. In the wheelhouse, there’s a monitor with a four-way split screen that shows him the feed from the four cameras on his boat. In order to record all of the catch coming onboard, two cameras are positioned above the trawl net off the back of his boat. Two are above the deck to give a bird’s eye perspective.

Read the full release here

Study: Maine Fishermen Should Plan For Accelerated Ocean Warming

August 6, 2019 — Climate change is triggering more and more surprise variations in temperatures in the world’s oceans, including off Maine, and those spikes are changing ecosystems in ways that looking at the past wouldn’t predict.

That’s one of the conclusions of a new study out Monday from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, which finds that the bigger-than-expected temperature swings are benefiting some species while hurting others, and that has effects that can be felt up the food chain by the humans that depend on those ecosystems.

Dr. Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at GMRI and the lead author of the study, spoke with All Things Considered Host Nora Flaherty about the changes.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Announcing the 2019 Marine Resource Education (MREP) Program Southeast

March 12, 2019 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

The Gulf of Maine Research Institute is pleased to announce the Marine Resources Education Program (MREP) in the Southeast fishery region.

MREP provides fishermen and others with an interest in federal fisheries with an opportunity to gain insight into how fisheries data are collected and how those data lead to regulations.

MREP brings together commercial, charter, and recreational fishermen with scientists, managers, and other marine resource professionals from the South Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean to learn, share insights, and network in a neutral and professional setting. Participants leave the program empowered and better prepared to be a voice in federal fisheries management.

The two-part workshop series is free to selected participants and includes meals, travel, and accommodation. Seats are limited.

MREP Southeast Fishery Science Workshop
May 7-9, 2019
Hollander Hotel
St. Petersburg, FL

MREP Southeast Fishery Management Workshop
November 19-21, 2019
Westin Tampa Bay
Tampa, FL

Applications to participate can be found at: gmri.org/mrepsoutheast
The program principals are available to respond to inquiries about the workshop:

* Bob Gill, Commercial Fisherman and Seafood Retailer, at (888) 833-1844
* Dave Webb, Recreational Angler, at (901) 606-1886

General questions about the program should be directed to Alexa Dayton, MREP Senior Program Manager, Gulf of Maine Research Institute, (207) 228-1645 or adayton@gmri.org.

NOAA Seeking Volunteers in Tagging Tuna

February 8, 2019 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is looking for help in tagging tuna.

The Atlantic Ocean Tropical Tuna Tagging Program was established by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas in 2015 to study key aspects of bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna in the Atlantic Ocean.

As part of the AOTTP, Dr. Walt Golet from the University of Maine and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute will be working with colleagues at the New England Aquarium, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, University of Miami, and NOAA Fisheries to deploy 5,000 conventional tags on tuna in the western North Atlantic Ocean.

The effort will stretch from Canada to Venezuela and also includes the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Those interested in participating in the AOTTP project and would like to volunteer to tag bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna, can contact Dr. Walt Golet at walter.golet@maine.edu.

NOAA says every fish tagged will give participants a chance to win one of 20 individual cash prizes, totaling more than $39,000, to be awarded at the end of the project.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Good Luck Finding Maine Shrimp This Winter

November 28, 2018 — Shrimp from Maine is certainly less well-known than its crustacean cousin, Maine lobster. One of the primary reasons is that over 80 percent of American lobsters caught in the U.S. are from the state; meanwhile, even in a good year, Maine accounted for just a sliver of U.S. shrimp production, which as a whole only accounts for a sliver of the shrimp consumed in America, most of which comes from Asia. But another reason you may not hear much about shrimp from New England is that, this year, literally none will make it to market at all.

According to the Associated Press, the situation for Northern shrimp, also known as Pandalus borealis, is so dire that the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) is even shutting down a research program that had previously allowed a limited amount of shrimp from the Gulf of Maine to make it to market.

Though the shutdown should assure that what little supplies of Northern shrimp were being sold will no longer be available, it’s not like the supply has suddenly collapsed. After years of restrictions, the commission shut down all but the “research set aside” program since the 2014 season. Now, even that program for New England shrimp fishing reportedly won’t be allowed until 2021 when the moratorium is set to end. Even then, extensions of the closure are possible as stocks will be reevaluated year by year.

As recently as 2011, ASMFC data shows that landings were near 15 million pounds, the highest they’ve been since 1997. And Northern shrimp stocks have collapsed and rebuilt before: In 1978, the fishery was closed due to a stock collapse, but grew steadily throughout the ‘80s. However, this time around, the ASMFC appears to worry that things are different due to climate change. No previous closure has ever lasted anywhere near this long, and the commission has noted that “long-term trends in environmental conditions have not been favorable for” Northern shrimp. As Portland, Maine’s Press Herald reported last year, waters in the Gulf of Maine are warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute. The gulf already has the warmest waters these cold water-thriving shrimp can survive in; the even warmer winter waters are making it difficult for the species to spawn.

Read the full story at Food & Wine

Why Is the Gulf of Maine Warming Faster Than 99% of the Ocean?

November 13, 2018 — Late last month, four endangered sea turtles washed ashore in northern Cape Cod, marking an early onset to what has now become a yearly event: the sea turtle stranding season.

These turtles—in last month’s case, Kemp’s ridley sea turtles—venture into the Gulf of Maine during warm months, but they can become hypothermic and slow moving when colder winter waters abruptly arrive, making it hard to escape.

“They are enjoying the warm water, and then all of a sudden the cold comes, and they can’t get out fast enough,” said Andrew Pershing, an oceanographer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine.

Thanks to record-breaking summer water temperatures that quickly transition to cooler conditions, an expanded sea turtle stranding season is just one facet of a new normal for the Gulf of Maine, Pershing explained. And this new normal is a striking contrast to prior conditions.

This year, the Gulf of Maine has experienced only 45 days with what have not been considered heat wave temperatures. Such persistent warmth, scientists warn, can set off a series of other cascading effects on the marine life and fisheries that have historically defined the culture and economy of this region’s coastline.

Read the full story at Earth & Space Science News