Saving Seafood

La Niña may end soon. What that may mean for temperatures and hurricanes.

March 8, 2025 — A long-awaited La Niña finally arrived in the Pacific Ocean in January. But less than two months later, the picture is rapidly shifting.

The World Meteorological Organization announced Thursday that the ongoing La Niña event is expected to be short-lived and that there is a 60 percent chance it will fade by May.

The pattern is the foil of the better-known El Niño and is typically known for cooling a vast swath of the Pacific Ocean. But the phenomenon has done little to break the cycle of excessive global heat that dominated during 2024 and has continued into 2025 — except in the United States. And now, signs are emerging that could spell a coming end to the pattern, raising questions about what could come next — including whether yet another record-warm year for the planet could be in the cards.

Meanwhile, a new and unexpected pattern of warming oceans in the eastern Pacific, west of South America, has sent sea temperatures soaring to more than 5 degrees above average. Called a coastal El Niño, or El Niño Costero, the pattern can affect weather near and far. Coastal El Niño events in 2017 and 2023 caused flooding rains and high rates of dengue fever in Peru.

Read the full article at The Washington Post

Dangerous brew: Ocean heat and La Nina combo likely mean more Atlantic hurricanes this summer

May 26, 2024 —  Get ready for what nearly all the experts think will be one of the busiest Atlantic hurricane seasons on record, thanks to unprecedented ocean heat and a brewing La Nina.

There’s an 85% chance that the Atlantic hurricane season that starts in June will be above average in storm activity, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday in its annual outlook. The weather agency predicted between 17 and 25 named storms will brew up this summer and fall, with 8 to 13 achieving hurricane status (at least 75 mph sustained winds) and four to seven of them becoming major hurricanes, with at least 111 mph winds.

An average Atlantic hurricane season produces 14 named storms, seven of them hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

“This season is looking to be an extraordinary one in a number of ways,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said. He said this forecast is the busiest in the 25 years that NOAA has been issuing in May. The agency updates its forecasts each August.

About 20 other groups — universities, other governments, private weather companies — also have made seasonal forecasts. All but two expect a busier, nastier summer and fall for hurricanes. The average of those other forecasts is about 11 hurricanes, or about 50% more than in a normal year.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Ocean off California’s Central Coast may be ‘thermal refuge’ from climate change, study says

August 23, 2023 — In an otherwise warming planet, new research shows that the ocean off California’s Central Coast may be a thermal refuge for marine wildlife.

Cal Poly associate professor Ryan Walter, who teaches physics, and fourth-year physics student Michael Dalsin analyzed temperature data gathered from 1978 through 2020 at a site just north of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

They found that while other areas of the world see sharp rises in ocean temperatures and more frequent and more intense heatwaves, the Central Coast hasn’t seen such intense trends.

The region still experiences marine heatwaves and cold spells brought on by factors such as the ocean-wide climactic patterns of El Niño and La Niña, but cold current upwelling brought on by strong local winds helps maintain the marine ecosystem along the Central Coast, according to a study by Walter and Dalsin published on July 31.

Read the full story at the Merced Sun-Star

La Niña weather conditions in NW mean healthy coho salmon harvest

September 19, 2022 –Cooler water in the Pacific Ocean leading to rebounding fish numbers means a healthy harvest of coho salmon this year, said state and tribal fisheries officials.

The fish benefited from La Niña conditions out at sea.

“The coho returns this year at Grays Harbor is one of the biggest ones we’re expecting in a long time,” said Mark Baltzell, lead for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Salmon and Steelhead Fisheries Management. “In general, we can chalk it up to good freshwater conditions and good ocean conditions when those fish went out.”

Read the full article at The Oregonian 

D.B. PLESCHNER: Sardines not collapsing, may be in recovery

April 25, 2016 — On April 10, the Pacific Fishery Management Council closed the West Coast sardine fishery for a second straight year. The council followed its ultra-conservative harvest control policy and relied on a stock assessment that does not account for recent sardine recruitment.

But in fact, there are multiple lines of evidence that young sardines are now abundant in the ocean.

In addition to field surveys, fishermen in both California and the Pacific Northwest have been observing sardines — both small and large — since the summer of 2015. And California fishermen also provided samples of the small fish to federal and state fishery managers. During the council meeting, the industry advisory subpanel — comprised of fishermen and processors — voiced concern with the inability of acoustic surveys — on which stock assessments are largely based — to estimate accurately the number of fish in the sea. These surveys routinely miss the mass of sardines in the nearshore, where the bulk of the fishery occurs in California, and in the upper water column in the Pacific Northwest, where Oregon and Washington fishermen catch sardines. The recruitment we’re seeing now seems much like the recruitment event following the 2003 El Niño. The years 1999-2002 were characterized by strong La Niña conditions, similar to the years 2010-2013. And what happened after the early 2000s? By 2007 the West Coast sardine population hit its highest peak in recent memory.

So by all appearances the sardine population is likely on the upswing — not still tanking as many environmentalists and media reports are claiming.

Read the full opinion piece at the Monterey Herald