Saving Seafood

Climate change has reversed 900 years of cooling in the Gulf of Maine

August 9, 2022 — Nearly a millennium of cooling in the Gulf of Maine has been reversed over the past century.

That’s the finding of a new study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, led by Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, co-written by the University of Maine and funded by the National Science Foundation.

Scientists have long warned that the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most of the world’s oceans — 2021 was yet another year of record warmth — but the lack of long-term records has made it difficult to compare the 20th and 21st centuries to warming or cooling trends for past periods.

The oldest records available come from a station in Boothbay Harbor, where surface water temperatures have been tracked since 1905.

Read the full article at the Bangor Daily News

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘Wicked Tuna’ captain sets sights on selling you tuna

August 8, 2022 — Fans of “Wicked Tuna” often ask Capt. Dave Marciano of Beverly how they might get a taste of the giant bluefin tunas he and his fellow boat captains reel out of the Gulf of Maine on the popular National Geographic reality TV show.

“People have said this to me a hundred times, ‘Where can we get some of the fish that we see you catch on the show?’ I bet I have been asked that a thousand times. and I can’t send them anywhere to get a piece of the fish,” besides a few local restaurants, he said, or maybe a sushi buyer looking for tuna with a high fat for the Asian market.

“We’ve put this name in the households,” Marciano said. “We’ve put the idea of this product in people’s heads. Right now we just can’t send it to them. Well, that’s about to change.”

Starting Sept. 1, Marciano, whose Angelica Fisheries offers fishing charters aboard the fishing vessels Hard Merchandise and Falcon from Gloucester, is casting out his reality show fame to hook customers as he starts a new business called Angelica Seafoods.

The business plans to offer premium fresh seafood products from Gloucester and New England.

Read the full article at Gloucester Times

VESL: one app to make lobster harvest reporting easier

July 27, 2022 — Lobstermen in Maine will have to comply with a new reporting requirement, which will be implemented in 2023, but a free app, VESL, will help fishermen meet their reporting obligations with ease.

Currently only 10 percent of state licensed lobster harvesters in Maine must report their harvest, according to the Department of Marine Resources. However, as part of an update to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission fishery management plan for lobster, 100 percent of state licensed commercial lobstermen will have to report their harvest information, including location of fishing activity and pounds landed, in 2023.

The common notion among the public is that reporting to the government is complicated and time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be so, and that’s where BlueFin Data comes in. The company developed, under a contract with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, the app, called VESL, so lobstermen can meet their reporting obligations with ease. VESL represents the solution to the required increase in the percentage of lobster harvesters who must submit reports.

VESL, which is available for iOS and Android devices and can be downloaded free Apple App Store and Google Play Store, is a hub for collecting quality data with the least amount of effort all in one place, and report it to the government.

Read the full article at National Fishermen

Fisheries groups oppose fast tracking offshore wind development in Gulf of Maine

July 21, 2022 — The health of the ocean is at stake, according to fishing industry advocates who oppose offshore wind development.

A report on the threats posed to commercial fishing was released after an offshore wind conference held in Boston in May.

The Partnership’s Vice President and Executive Director Angela Sanfilippo said her organization is concerned about the health of the ocean, the health of the fish stock, and the health of the industry. She calls plans for fast-tracking wind developments a threat to all three.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

MAINE: Volunteers recover nearly 5,000 pounds of trash from Gulf of Maine

July 20, 2022 — A nonprofit conservation group that works to help remove trash and plastic debris from the world’s oceans along with volunteers from Maine’s coastal communities recently recovered nearly 5,000 pounds of what is known as “ghost gear” from the Gulf of Maine.

The group of local volunteers in collaboration with Ocean Conservancy and the Rozalia Project were able to collect a total of 4,723 pounds of discarded gear and other marine debris from remote islands in the Gulf of Maine during an expedition at the end of June.

Read the full article at Bangor Daily News

Whale activists file objection to Gulf of Maine lobster fishery certification

July 1, 2022 — Conservation groups formally objected to a recent recommendation by MRAG Americas that the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery be recertified to the Marine Stewardship Council standard.

The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery, which covers U.S. landings of the North American lobster was first certified to the MSC standard in 2016, and its current certificate expires on June 30. MRAG Americas has recommended that the certification continue, but groups including Animal Welfare Institute, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Natural Resources Defense Council claim the fishery no longer meets the standards due to complications related to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

“If the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery was certified as sustainable at this time, consumers of MSC-certified lobster could be unknowingly hastening the demise of one of our most emblematic and endangered species,” said Francine Kershaw, senior scientist with NRDC, in a prepared statement. “There could not be a more blatant way to further erode consumer confidence in MSC as a certifying body.”

At the heart of the issue is the reoccurring fight over the lobster industry’s impact on right whales – something the MSC has been involved with once before. In August 2020, the MSC suspended the certification of the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery after a federal court found it was in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

The suspension has since been lifted, and the lobster industry is also under new standards implemented by NOAA Fisheries to comply with Endangered Species Act. Despite the new rules, the NGOs claim that the fishery is still relying on insufficient protection measures and that it is still posing a threat to right whales.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NGOs object to MSC recertification for Gulf of Maine lobster

June 28, 2022 — Conservation groups have formally objected to a recent recommendation by MRAG Americas that the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery be recertified to the Marine Stewardship Council standard.

The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery, which covers U.S. landings of the North American lobster (Homarus americanus) was first certified to the MSC standard in 2016, and its current certificate expires on 30 June, 2022. MRAG Americas has recommended that the certification continue, but groups including Animal Welfare Institute, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Natural Resources Defense Council claim the fishery no longer meets the standards due to complications related to the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

How warming ocean temperatures wiped out Maine’s shrimp industry

June 24, 2022 — Shrimp is one of the iconic New England meals.

Unfortunately, Gulf of Maine shrimp or northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) are a cold-water species and New England is on the very southern tip of their range.

They occur from the Arctic to northern New England and are one species that is so temperature-dependent that we could use them as an indicator to detect climate changes.

Since 2014 fishing for northern shrimp has been banned in the United States. The stock in our area has decreased to the point where they are not reproducing. This is not due to overfishing; it is directly due to the temperature of the water. They have simply moved north to colder Canadian waters.

Read the full story at The Portsmouth Herald

Scientists see long-term hope for Maine’s lobster fishery despite warming waters

June 13, 2022 — Dire predictions about the effects of global warming on Maine’s lobster population may be exaggerated and underestimate the potential that conservation measures have to preserve the fishery into the future.

Rapid warming in the Gulf of Maine and the collapse of lobster fisheries in southern New England have fueled predictions that lobsters will likely move north out of Maine waters in the coming decades. But ongoing research at the University of Maine is revealing a more optimistic long-term view of the Maine lobster fishery.

The UMaine scientists are now projecting that temperatures in Gulf of Maine will likely remain within lobsters’ comfort zone because of the gulf’s unique oceanographic features, though changing ocean currents are harder to predict. The researchers cautioned that the dynamics of global warming are complex and make it difficult to project far into the future with certainty.

Ocean stratification – where water of different densities separates into distinct layers – is keeping the bottom temperatures colder on the Gulf of Maine’s western side, the scientists say, while strong tidal mixing in the eastern gulf and the Bay of Fundy helps moderate the water temperature there during the summer. Because Maine waters have historically been so cold, they say, even a couple of degrees of warming should keep Maine’s bottom waters below 68 degrees, the temperature at which lobsters begin to show signs of stress, according to the Atlantic States Fisheries Management Council.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

New research shows climate change impacts on whale habitat use in the warming Gulf of Maine

June 10, 2022 — New research finds climate change is having an impact on how large whale species, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, use habitats in the warming Gulf of Maine, showing that right whales’ use of Cape Cod Bay has shifted significantly over the last 20 years.

The study, led by the New England Aquarium and including researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the USGS Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center, the Center for Coastal Studies, UCLA, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the Canadian Whale Institute was published this month in the journal Global Change Biology. The authors set out to better understand the impacts of ocean climate change on phenology, or the timing of recurring biological events such as when plants flower each year. Using more than 20 years of data, the scientists measured shifts in whale habitat use in Cape Cod Bay, evaluating trends in peak use for North Atlantic right whales, humpback whales, and fin whales. The study found that peak use of Cape Cod Bay had shifted almost three weeks later for right whales and humpback whales. Changes in the timing of whale habitat use were related to when spring starts, which has been changing as a result of climate change. The study suggested that highly migratory marine mammals can and do adapt the timing of their habitat use in response to climate-driven changes in their environment, with results showing increased habitat use by right whales in Cape Cod Bay from February to May, with greatest increases in April and May.

“The time of year when we are most likely to see right and humpback whales in Cape Cod Bay has changed considerably, and right whales are using the habitat much more heavily than they did 20 years ago,” said lead author Dr. Dan Pendleton, Research Scientist in the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life.

Read the full story at ScienceDaily