Saving Seafood

Research reveals strongest predictors of menhaden growth in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic

April 9, 2020 — New research suggests that large-scale environmental factors influence the size of one of the ocean’s most abundant forage species. Recently, scientists from LSU, NOAA, the University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science evaluated large-scale ecosystem dynamics influencing growth of menhaden in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. They found that anthropogenic influences affected menhaden in the Atlantic more than in the Gulf, where environmental factors were the more dominant predictors of growth.

Menhaden are used primarily for the production of fishmeal and , and small quantities are used for bait. According to NOAA’s 2018 Fisheries of the United States report, menhaden ranked number two by volume, after Alaska pollock, on the list of major U.S. domestic species “landed,” or caught and brought to port. More than 1.5 billion pounds of menhaden were landed in that year. Menhaden ranked number 10 by value of the landings, totaling more than $160 million. In addition to their commercial value, menhaden are critically important components of their food webs.

According to Steve Midway, lead author and assistant professor in LSU’s Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences, “They’re sort of the classic forage species—meaning they provide a really important link in marine food webs. They are not exerting any kind of population pressure on any other fish species because they’re not eating any other fish species. But, other fish species eat them. So, they support the higher levels of the food web and ecosystem.”

Read the full story at PHYS.org

LSU AgCenter, Louisiana Sea Grant aim to help struggling seafood industry

April 6, 2020 — The LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant are working to help the seafood industry, which is struggling with a massive financial challenge created by the coronavirus pandemic.

Restaurants that use large amounts of seafood are only offering carryout service, and they have drastically scaled back their seafood purchases.

“I’m sure it’s less than 10% of its previous quantity,” said Rusty Gaude, LSU AgCenter and Louisiana Sea Grant fisheries agent in the New Orleans area.

A seafood marketing program, Louisiana Direct Seafood, is one way of helping fishermen and dealers by connecting them directly with consumers.

The Louisiana Direct Seafood program helps consumers buy seafood from fishermen and vendors.

Fishermen in Cameron, Delcambre, Lafourche-Terrebonne and Southshore New Orleans areas post their fresh catch messages on a website. Customers are able to visit the site and see in real time who has fresh product ready for sale, where they are located and their contact information. Consumers can then contact the sellers directly to establish a price, place orders and arrange pickup at the docks or other locations.

Read the full story at The Houma Times

Coronavirus: Struggling Louisiana fishermen, shrimpers look for new ways to sell catch

April 3, 2020 — Louisiana’s fishermen and shrimpers are struggling to sell their catches as the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, has severely depressed demand from buyers.

The drop in demand largely comes from the state’s shutdown of restaurants, aside from carryout and delivery options, to prevent further spread of the virus. Gov. John Bel Edwards issued an order closing dine-in operations March 16.

With low demand, processing plants’ freezers and inventories are full, leaving most fishermen with nowhere to sell their catches, said Thomas Hymel, a marine extension agent with the LSU AgCenter and the Louisiana Sea Grant.

Read the full story at the Lafayette Daily Advertiser

‘A major punch in the gut’: Midwest rains projected to create near-record dead zone in Gulf

June 11, 2019 — As rain deluged the Midwest this spring, commercial fisherman Ryan Bradley knew it was only a matter of time before the disaster reached him.

All that water falling on all that fertilizer-enriched farmland would soon wend its way through streams and rivers into Bradley’s fishing grounds in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Mississippi coast. The nutrient excess would cause tiny algae to burst into bloom, then die, sink and decompose on the ocean floor — a process that sucks all the oxygen from the water, turning it toxic. Fish would suffocate or flee, leaving Bradley and his fellow fishermen nothing to harvest.

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Louisiana State University confirmed Bradley’s worst fears in forecasts published Monday, predicting this spring’s record rainfall would produce one of the largest-ever “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico. An area the size of New Jersey could become almost entirely barren this summer, posing a threat to marine species — and the fishermen who depend on them.

“It’s just a major punch in the gut,” said Bradley, a fifth-generation commercial fisherman from Long Beach, Miss. Bradley is executive director for Mississippi Commercial Fisheries United, a nonprofit that supports the state’s fishermen.

Bradley said he plans to travel to D.C. this month to ask federal lawmakers to declare a fisheries disaster, making relief funds available to affected fishermen. “To have a total wipeout,” he said, “which is what we’re going to have here now, I don’t know if our guys are going to be able to make it.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Fish shrinking as ocean temperatures rise

October 4, 2017 — One of the most economically important fish is shrinking in body weight, length and overall physical size as ocean temperatures rise, according to new research by LSU Boyd Professor R. Eugene Turner published today. The average body size of Menhaden—a small, silver fish—caught off the coasts from Maine to Texas—has shrunk by about 15 percent over the past 65 years.

Menhaden make up about one-half of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico fish harvest and had a dockside value of about $129 million in 2013. They are coastal species that spawn offshore and move to estuaries where juveniles grow to one- and two-year old fish. The air and off the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico has steadily increased, especially in estuaries, where heat exchange occurs efficiently between air and sea. Adult menhaden return offshore where they are harvested with purse seine nets.

Read the full story at Phys.org

Why This Year’s ‘Dead Zone’ in Gulf of Mexico Is Bigger Than Ever

August 7, 2017 — Right now, in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico, lies an area the size of New Jersey that’s so oxygen-deprived it’s void of almost all marine life.

The so-called “dead zone” isn’t a new phenomenon: It appears in the Gulf, and other bodies of water, every summer. But what makes this year’s Gulf dead zone unique is its magnitude: At 8,776 square miles, it’s the largest ever since tracking began in 1985, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced this week.

Its size is projected to affect local fishing economies and is raising questions over the amount of pollutants that flow into our water — particularly nutrients from excessive use of nitrogen fertilizers.

“It’s a symptom of an ecosystem that’s not functioning,” said Dr. Nancy Rabalais, a professor in oceanography and coastal science at Louisiana State University who has been leading survey missions of dead zones since NOAA started tracking them.

What causes dead zones

The dead zones occur as a result of nitrogen and phosphorus flowing into water from farmers using nutrients on crops as fertilizer, and those nutrients getting washed into streams and rivers by rain.

Once it gets to the Gulf of Mexico, the nutrients stimulate the growth of algae. The algae then sinks to the bottom of the ocean and bacteria start decomposing the organic matter in the algae. That process uses oxygen, drawing it from the water.

Read the full story at NBC News

Oil From BP Spill Has Officially Entered the Food Chain

November 17, 2016 — Researchers in Louisiana have found carbon from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the feathers and digestive tracts of seaside sparrows, proving for the first time that oil from the disastrous 2010 spill has entered the food chain.

The study, published today in Environmental Research Letters, was conducted by scientists from Louisiana State University and Austin Peay State University in Tennessee. They found oil carbon signatures consistent with the Deepwater Horizon event in each of 10 birds tested.

These marsh-dwelling sparrows inhabit an area known to have been contaminated by the spill. Sediments from the site also tested positive for oil with the same fingerprints as that found in the tested birds.

The Deepwater Horizon accident followed the blowout of the wellhead at the Macondo oil rig and lasted for 87 days. Eleven workers died and 4.9 million barrels of oil flowed into the Gulf of Mexico. It became the largest oil spill in U.S. history and was called the “worst environmental disaster the U.S. has faced” by White House Energy Adviser Carol Browner.

Oil sheens continued to be seen as much as three years after the event. The source of many were never discovered, but the containment dome failed and had to be plugged in 2012.

The immediate effects of such major spills are readily apparent. Oiled birds, dead fish and beaches covered in crude-oil sludge are often the first, horrific results. Disasters like Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon and the Santa Barbara oil spill damage critical wildlife habitat and destroy fisheries.

Longer-term, the pernicious oil enters the food chain.

Read the full story at EcoWatch

LOUISIANA: Urgency in rebuilding coastal wetlands stressed in master plan discussion

October 25th, 2016 — Louisiana’s senior coastal official on Monday (Oct. 24) called the upcoming approval of the 2017 rewrite of the state’s master plan for coastal restoration and storm surge protection “the issue of a lifetime” because of the urgency surrounding the need to begin building major restoration projects.

“The coastal crisis will affect every aspect of the economy and every constituency, and yet this plan is not political or devised to give something to every interest,” Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Chairman Johnny Bradberry told dozens of participants in a roundtable on the plan sponsored by CPRA and the America’s WETLAND Foundation. “Instead it is a plan for our collective future and for the common interest. The stakes are extremely high.”

“Everyone wants their needs met immediately, and with so much money on the table, many have come to this table for a piece of the action,” Bradberry said.
“But the governor and I are truly dedicated to keeping this money safe and using it for its intended purposes as defined by the master plan. We will fight to make sure that the coastal trust fund is not raided, swept, redirected, co-opted or compromised in any way.”

Sitting around a circular set of tables in the Lod Cook Convention Center at Louisiana State University were key scientists who have assisted in writing the still-incomplete master plan rewrite, along with state legislators and representatives of many of the interest groups that Bradberry referred to in his introductory remarks.

Read the full story at The New Orleans Times-Picayune

 

Marine Protected Areas: are they conservation measures?

October 28, 2015 — Billionaire philanthropist Richard Branson recently composed a brief article on his website to applaud recent efforts to expand marine protected areas (MPAs) around the world and to call for widespread no-take MPAs (marine reserves) on the high seas and in the exclusive economic zones of the developed world.

Of the efforts Branson highlights as positive steps forward, he cites The Bahamas efforts to protect at least 20% of its marine environment by 2020, the recent and controversial Ross Sea MPA proposal, and recent efforts by Pacific Island nations like Palau to fully protect upwards of 80% of its waters. Branson explains that, “science suggests we need to fully protect very large areas of ocean from destructive and extractive activities, so that at least 30% of the global ocean is fully protected,” but only 3% is currently marine reserve.

Branson believes the, “combination of overfishing, pollution and warming and acidifying seas,” can be alleviated by widespread, internationally agreed upon marine reserves:

“Now is the time for a massive groundswell that reflects the realities of the 21st century. So instead of destroying life in the sea, we must regenerate and rebuild it. Marine Protected Areas across the globe are the key to making sure this happens. From small to large, from the tropics to the icy frontiers, we need protection and we need to get moving on all fronts.”

Comment by James H. Cowen, Louisiana State University

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have become, in the eyes of many scientists, NGOs and lay people (most recently Richard Branson, CEO and owner of the Virgin empire), a solution for the overexploitation of fish populations and other marine aquatic animals (corals, sponges, gastropods, etc.) that are contained within their boundaries (Protect Planet Ocean) Many supporters of MPAs rightly acknowledge the many threats to the ocean, including climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, land based runoff, plastics, and overfishing. Then as a solution to these problems MPAs are proposed when, in fact, they impact none of these except legally regulated fishing, especially in the developed world where most fisheries are well managed. It is also important to note that most MPAs exclude commercial fishing, while recreational fishing is permitted. A Sciences paper published in 2004 indicated that recreational fishers account for 23% of the total US landings of the most relevant species (snappers, grouper, sea basses, several species of drums, etc.). Given the likelihood that recreational fishing mortality has increased since 2004, and is higher in MPAs the relevant species groups listed above are again indicative of poor planning.

Read the full story at CFOOD