Large Pelagics Research Center Archives

In her garage lab, a scientist looks for answers about skinny tuna

September 27, 2019 — Molly Lutcavage is standing on the State Fish Pier in Gloucester, watching a crane hoist a giant bluefin tuna off the back of a fishing boat.

“Look at how skinny she is,” the fisherman, Corky Decker, yells up to her. “That’s how they’ve all been — long, ugly things like you’d catch in June.”

Lutcavage nods at the fish, which is 74 inches long but weighs just 174 pounds — very skinny indeed for a tuna — then looks down at the plastic bag in her hands, which is what she’s come for. It contains the tuna’s ovaries, and Lutcavage, director of the Large Pelagics Research Center, hopes it can support a theory she first proposed two decades ago — one that would be good news for the health of the tuna population as a whole, and help explain the bad news that has plagued commercial tuna fishing this season, with poor-quality meat fetching record low prices.

Lutcavage believes that younger tuna have been spawning off the coast of New England, an idea that runs counter to the accepted belief that tuna in this part of the world spawn only in the Gulf of Mexico, and only when mature.

If Lutcavage is right, it would mean there are more tuna contributing to the population, and thus the population is larger and healthier than fishery managers and conservation advocates believe.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Massachusetts: UMass placing sustainable fisheries professor at Hodgkins Cove

December 21, 2017 — The University of Massachusetts at Amherst embarked on recasting the role of its Gloucester Marine Station at Hodgkins Cove by hiring Gloucester resident Katie Kahl to serve as the liaison between research elements at the school and the Cape Ann community.

The university’s School of Earth and Sustainability is set to formally announce the appointment of Kahl on Thursday to the newly created position of extension assistant professor in sustainable fisheries and coastal resilience.

“I’m really excited and can’t wait to start,” Kahl said Wednesday. “This is really a great opportunity for the university to re-imagine its role at the Gloucester Marine Station.” Kahl’s mission, which begins Jan. 2, is a new one for the university’s research facility.

The university announced last January that it was establishing a permanent, full-time extension faculty position at the Gloucester Marine Station as the focal point for determining the future role of the facility.

Most recently, it housed the university’s Large Pelagics Research Center, which was nicknamed the “Tuna Lab.” Under the guidance of Molly Lutcavage, the center did internationally groundbreaking research on giant bluefin tuna and other highly migratory pelagic species.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Riding with sailfish to Northwest Atlantic Ocean hotspots

December 2nd, 2016 — Captain Mendillo notices the increased excitement among the frigate birds, a sure sign that the mass of predators and prey is moving towards the surface. A respected and successful sailfish captain, Anthony is accompanied by Dr Molly Lutcavage of the Large Pelagics Research Center and Dr Guy Harvey of the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation. Together, they hope to initiate an exploration into the migration patterns and ecological preferences of sailfish. Each fish will be outfitted with a popup satellite tag (PSAT), a device that will allow researchers a prolonged glimpse into the habits of this species.

Below the surface the sailfish circle the sardine mass, charging through the center and picking off individuals that stray to the outskirts. The predators use their bills to slash the six-inch long prey, stunning and swallowing the mangled baits. The entire attack is coordinated not chaotic, with each move communicated through a complex array of fin postures and body coloration. Before rushing the sardines, each sailfish lights up with streaks of iridescent blue, gold, silver and green flashing down its flank. They charge with fins recessed along the body, perfectly streamlined, until hitting the school when their dorsal and pectoral fins snap open, scaring the sardines into a tighter mass.

The baitfish are now within reach of the surface. Frigate birds crash through the sardines looking awkward and distressed diving underwater. Caught between the sailfish and the surface, there is no chance of escape. The onslaught methodically continues until the last sardine has been consumed.

Read the full story at Medium

Environmental Bullies: How Conservation Ideologues Attack Scientists Who Don’t Agree With Them

March 11, 2016 — The following is an excerpt from a commentary from Dr. Molly Lutcavage, the head of the Large Pelagics Research Center in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It was originally published on Medium :

Back in the 90s, bluefin fishermen said that spotter pilots could see, in a single day, as many adult bluefin that were supposed to exist in the entire western Atlantic in just a few surface schools in the Gulf of Maine alone. No federal fisheries scientists would fly to validate the fishermen’s observations, so Dr. Scott Kraus, director of the right whale research group and whale aerial surveys, stepped in to find out. And he hired me to run the surveys after an inquiry about his sea turtle data. I’d completed an oceanography PhD, two postdocs, and recently left a job in the Dept. of Interior as an endangered species scientist to get back to research, which I loved. I had been studying leatherbacks, a warm bodied turtle, and bluefin tuna were a warm bodied fish. And incredibly interesting. My UBC postdoc supervisor, Dr. David R. Jones, was an expert on their blood. And there were huge gaps in biological understanding – in other words, a scientific frontier to explore!

In his clumsy communication to discredit our survey work, Carl Safina made no attempt to confirm the scientific credentials of the scientist running the study (me), nor her highly respected collaborator, Dr. Scott Kraus. In fact, by doing our job as scientists, using aerial survey methods to investigate real-time, surface abundance of bluefin schools, we were disrupting the ocean conservation group’s efforts, especially that of Safina, to list Atlantic bluefin tuna as an endangered species. Apparently, by whatever means necessary. The published spotter survey results eventually provided independent observations that rebutted Safina’s portrayal of western Atlantic bluefin as an endangered species down to a few thousand individuals. The study established the local assemblage as larger than one hundred thousand giant bluefin, at the surface alone.

Since our first research projects over 25 years ago, my lab and our collaborators and students have built a diverse body of peer reviewed science covering extensive aspects of the biology, life history, physiological ecology, reproduction, diet, oceanographic associations, and fisheries dynamics of Atlantic bluefin tuna. We published over 75 research studies on western bluefin. Most of it was new, or challenged the status quo of bluefin biology used in stock assessment. We documented a lower age at maturity, extensive, Atlantic-wide mixing, complex annual migration patterns, and effects of prey dynamics and ocean conditions on their movements. This holistic body of research showed the western Atlantic bluefin population to be far more resilient and larger than that being represented by some NGO’s. Yet this substantial scientific body of evidence, most of it noted by historic studies by Frank Mather and Peter C. Wilson, has been conveniently ignored by those with ideological agendas, even today.

Enviro Bullies rarely confront their targets face to face. Since the 1990’s, they’ve made pretty impressive attempts to mislead about bluefin science. And to influence US fisheries managers, politicians and the direction of research funding, all the way up to the White House. We stuck to our research goals, but when Congressional earmarks funding the Large Pelagics Research Center (LPRC), and its role model, the Pacific Fisheries Research Program, went away, we faced vastly downsized research budgets. Actually, just when the Centers had amassed a substantial body of credible, cutting edge fisheries science, and established their true worth, both pelagic fisheries science Centers went off the cliff, into real extinction. Meanwhile, major funding began streaming in to some ocean-focused NGO’s, and their spokesperson scientists.

In 2013, former students, collaborators and I witnessed the Pew Oceans Campaign and partners mislead, in their press releases and statements to US and Canadian fisheries managers, experts’ consensus regarding the status of the Atlantic bluefin population in Pews Fact Sheet representation of Best Available Science. And more specifically, that LPRC’s peer reviewed research that challenged their take away message, that the Atlantic bluefin population trajectory was downward, and that they were in danger. They labelled our work as well as consensus science from the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), as “unsubstantiated hypotheses”. Amanda Nickson, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Bluefin Campaign, phoned from Vancouver to berate my colleagues and I for responding to the Pew Fact Sheet, which dramatically misrepresented science. We had corrected it with our own fact sheet, and they were not happy to be called out by credentialed bluefin experts.

Maybe it’s because National Geographic’s Wicked Tuna reality show, on roll out, put me up against Safina’s video blurb about the overfished, endangered bluefin on the show’s website. What can you do when a lauded environmental writer, one with a PhD in seabird ecology, that receives accolades and is often the go to authority on Atlantic bluefin for the New York Times, National Public Radio, high media profile journals Science and Nature (even though he’s not exactly running a research lab, is he?), lacks the ethics most of us practice when we conduct science. To claim to be an expert where you are not, to mislead the public, to falsely disparage those that don’t support your ideology, to repeatedly and falsely allude to a woman scientist being bought by fishermen, “in their pockets”, whatever works, when his ideology or views expressed in books or blogs or lectures are shown to be false. Is this what conservation leadership has become? Incidentally, another blatant attempt to disparage and mislead was accomplished by Pew and their scientists in Quicksilver, by Kenneth Brower, published in National Geographic Magazine March 2014 story on Atlantic bluefin tuna.

The quotes looks pretty familiar:

Tuna science, always politicized, has recently become much more so. As it is no longer possible for ICCAT to simply ignore scientific advice, there is now an effort to massage the science. “There are inherent uncertainties about these stock assessments,” Amanda Nickson, director of global tuna conservation at the Pew Charitable Trusts, told me. “We’re seeing a mining of the areas of uncertainty to justify increases in quota.”

Industry-funded biologists propose that there might be undiscovered spawning grounds for Atlantic bluefin. It is possible, of course, but there is no real evidence for the proposition. The idea seems awfully convenient for an agenda favoring business as usual.

Wow, “awfully convenient for an agenda”, in this Nat Geo story repeating Pew’s positions and only their scientists that support it, Drs. Barbara Block and Safina. So now we have even more evidence that their representations are wrong. Jee, National Geographic Society Research and Exploration had actually funded two of my research projects. Let’s see if they print a correction.

Here we are again, Carl Safina. Yes, you’re certainly not the only enviro bully out there, not the only one wrong again, but this time, I’m calling you out. Let the ocean conservation community represented by Pew tuna campaigns and their chosen scientists see the latest, peer reviewed science finding on Atlantic bluefin tuna spawning areas in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, early edition on 7 March 2016 “Discovery of a new spawning ground reveals diverse migration strategies in Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus)” by Richardson and coauthors.

Read the full opinion piece at Medium

How In Trouble Are Bluefin Tuna, Really? Controversial Study Makes Waves

March 9, 2016 — Bluefin tuna have been severely depleted by fishermen, and the fish have become a globally recognized poster child for the impacts of overfishing. Many chefs refuse to serve its rich, buttery flesh; many retailers no longer carry it; and consumers have become increasingly aware of the environmental costs associated with the bluefin fishery.

But a group of scientists is now making the case that Atlantic bluefin may be more resilient to fishing than commonly thought — and perhaps better able to rebound from the species’ depleted state. In a paper published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers suggest that fishery managers reassess the western Atlantic bluefin’s population, which could ultimately allow more of the fish to be caught.

The 10 co-authors, most of whom are scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, say they’ve all but confirmed that bluefin tuna spawn in an area of the Atlantic Ocean previously suspected but not known to be a breeding ground. Not only that; the tuna spawning in this area off the Atlantic Coast are much younger and smaller than the age and size at which it was previously believed the fish become sexually mature, according to the scientists.

This, their paper claims, would make the western Atlantic bluefin tuna “less vulnerable to overexploitation and extinction than is currently estimated.”

But the study is controversial. Several tuna researchers we spoke with warned that the results are preliminary, and it’s much too soon to use them to guide how fisheries are managed

Read the full story from NPR

Scientists Find Possible New Spawning Area for Western Atlantic Bluefin

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SeafoodNews] By Peggy Parker — March 8, 2016 — Scientists from NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) and the University of Massachusetts Boston have found evidence of Atlantic bluefin tuna spawning activity off the northeastern United States in an area of open ocean south of New England and east of the Mid-Atlantic states called the Slope Sea.

The findings suggest that the current life-history model for western Atlantic bluefin may overestimate age-at-maturity. If so, the authors conclude that western Atlantic bluefin may be less vulnerable to fishing and other stressors than previously thought.

Prior to this research, the only known spawning grounds for Atlantic bluefin tuna were in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea. The evidence for a new western Atlantic spawning ground came from a pair of Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) research cruises in the Slope Sea during the summer of 2013.

“We collected 67 larval bluefin tuna during these two cruises, and the catch rates were comparable to the number collected during the annual bluefin tuna larval survey in the Gulf of Mexico,” said David Richardson of NEFSC, lead author of this study. “Most of these larvae were small, less than 5 millimeters, and were estimated to be less than one week old. Drifting buoy data confirmed that these small larvae could not possibly have been transported into this area from the Gulf of Mexico spawning ground.”

Larvae collected during the cruises were identified as bluefin tuna through visual examination and genetic sequencing. To confirm the identification, larvae were sent to the Alaska Fisheries Science Center laboratory in Juneau, where DNA sequences verified that the larvae were Atlantic bluefin tuna.

A single bluefin tuna can spawn millions of eggs, each of which is just over a millimeter in diameter, or the size of a poppy seed. Within a couple of days these eggs hatch into larvae that are poorly developed and bear little resemblance to the adults. Larval bluefin tuna can be collected in plankton nets and identified based on their shape, pigment patterns and body structures.

High-value Atlantic bluefin tuna has a unique physiology that allows it to range from the tropics to the sub-arctic. As a highly migratory species, Atlantic bluefin tuna is assessed by the Standing Committee on Research and Statistics (SCRS) of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) as distinct eastern and western stocks separated by the 45 degree west meridian (or 45 w longitude). The U.S. fishery harvest from the western Atlantic stock is managed through NOAA Fisheries’ Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Fishery Management Plan.

For many years, global overfishing on this species was prevalent, resulting in substantial population declines. Recent international cooperation in managing catches has contributed to increasing trends in the abundance of both the eastern and western management stocks. The western stock, targeted by U.S. fishermen, is harvested at levels within the range of the SCRS’ scientific advice.

This research may change the long-held assumption that bluefin tuna start spawning at age 4 in the Mediterranean Sea and age 9 in the Gulf of Mexico. Electronic tagging studies begun in the late 1990s showed that many bluefin tunad, did not visit either spawning ground during the spawning season, despite being large enough to be of spawning age. This led some to say that these larger fish were not yet spawning, and that the age-at-maturity for western Atlantic bluefin tuna was 12-16 years, rather than 9 years, as was assumed in the stock assessment.

A consistent supporter of an alternate hypothesis was Molly Lutcavage at the Large Pelagics Research Center of the University of Massachusetts Boston. She believed tuna that did not visit the Gulf of Mexico and Mediterranean Sea were spawning elsewhere. Her research team used electronic tagging data from the Lutcavage lab to present an alternate model of western Atlantic bluefin tuna spawning migrations.

Only the largest bluefin tuna, those over about 500 pounds, migrate to the Gulf of Mexico spawning area. After these fish exit the Gulf of Mexico, they swim through the Slope Sea rapidly, on their way to northern feeding grounds. On the other hand, smaller bluefin tuna, ranging in size from 80 to 500 pounds, generally spend more than 20 days in the Slope Sea during the spawning season, a duration consistent with spawning. Lutcavage is a co-author on the study.

“Last year, we demonstrated using endocrine measurements that bluefin tuna in the western Atlantic mature at around 5 years of age. That study, and ones before it, predicted that these smaller fish would spawn in a more northerly area closer to the summertime foraging grounds in the Gulf of Maine and Canadian waters,” Lutcavage said. “The evidence of spawning in the Slope Sea, and the analysis of the tagging data, suggests that western Atlantic bluefin tuna are partitioning spawning areas by size, and that a younger age at maturity should be used in the stock assessment.”

Researchers also found that individual tuna occupy both the Slope Sea and Mediterranean Sea in separate years, contrary to the prevailing view that individuals exhibit complete fidelity to a spawning site. Reproductive mixing between the eastern and western stocks may occur in the Slope Sea and the authors contend that population structure of bluefin tuna may be more complex than is currently thought.

“Past analyses of Atlantic bluefin tuna population structure and mixing between the western and eastern Atlantic stocks may need to be revisited because they do not account for the full spatial extent of western Atlantic spawning,” Richardson said. “So much of the science and sampling for Atlantic bluefin tuna has been built around the assumption that the Gulf of Mexico and Mediterranean Sea are the only spawning grounds. This new research underscores the complexity of stock structure for this species and identifies important areas for future research.”

The authors expect these findings could potentially lead to a lower estimated age-at-maturity, a critical component of the stock assessment, and could reopen consideration of the nature and level of mixing between the western and eastern Atlantic populations. This new information will be considered along with other pertinent research as part of the regular ICCAT SCRS stock assessment process.

The findings were published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientific team for this study comprises researchers from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC), the Large Pelagics Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston, the School of Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO). The sampling for this study was supported by NOAA, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and the US Navy through interagency agreements for the Atlantic Marine Assessment Program for Protected Species (AMAPPS).

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission