Saving Seafood

Close Quarters: Ocean zoning pushes fisheries to the brink

September 23, 2021 — The following is an excerpt from an article published in National Fisherman by Dr. Roger Mann, professor of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science. It is based on an article published by the Journal of Shellfish Research. That paper, “An Ecosystem is Not a Monument, and Other Challenges to Fishing in the 21st Century,” is based on a talk given by Dr. Mann at the annual meeting of the National Shellfisheries Association.

Managing fisheries is no longer simply about [the Magnuson Stevens Act’s] directives to “conserve and manage” a sustainable resource to serve the “social and economic needs of the States.” It is about managing fisheries in a changing landscape of competition for ocean resources, where the environment is changing faster than in living history, and species footprints are on the move.

Part of this changing landscape is the creation of large, no-take MPAs, like the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument off the coast of Cape Cod. Designated by President Obama with the sweep of a pen using the Antiquities Act of 1906, the 4,913 square miles of the monument are now managed by multiple federal agencies under a bewildering patchwork of legislation, including Magnuson, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, the Refuge Recreation Act, Public Law 98-532, and Executive Order 6166. Then there is the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, through which the government can designate and protect marine areas of national significance.

This plethora of confusing legislation lacks uniform definitions. It is not clear on how — or even if — MPA designations are required to be revisited, even when species move. In addition, it does not state who has precedent over whom in the management hierarchy.

Even as questions remain over existing MPAs, activists are pushing for more with a “30×30” campaign to protect 30 percent of our nation’s land, inland waters and oceans as conservation areas by 2030. But what is “protected” in this context? Is a region protected only by excluding fishermen through a no-take MPA? Or does the Magnuson Act directive to “conserve and manage the fishery resources” and “exercise sound judgment in [their] stewardship” rise to the level of protection? If so, then is not the entire exclusive economic zone already protected?

MPAs are far from the only competition fishermen are facing in the ocean. Environmental advocacy, communications corridors, mining, national defense, and shipping all threaten fishermen’s access to ocean resources. Perhaps the biggest incursion of all is offshore wind development: the U.S. East Coast continental shelf already has 1.7 million acres of federal bottom under lease for offshore wind, with the Biden administration seemingly poised to expand such efforts along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts. Offshore wind projects have a projected lifespan of 50 years, with turbine spacing restricting access for both commercial fishing vessels towing mobile gear and federal survey vessels. Stock assessment surveys will be compromised, resulting in reduced quotas for fishermen.

With so many competitors muscling their way into the ocean, who will be the winners and losers? Over what time frames will winners emerge? Where does preservation of the fishing industry sit in the pecking order? At the bottom?

The “space” for fisheries is shrinking. Commercial fishing won’t be the largest economic player as development of our oceans continues, but it is historically an important part of the economic and social structure of coastal communities. Fisheries are based on moving species distributions that do not function well within fixed boundaries, like those being zoned for MPAs and offshore wind.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Ray Hilborn: MPAs aren’t the answer to ocean biodiversity, sustainability efforts

June 1, 2021 — A global movement to create additional marine protected areas (MPAs) has been steadily gaining traction in recent years, with the initiative picking up milestone victories in the past few months.

In January, newly inaugurated U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order committing to a “30 by 30” goal, whereby the United States would designated 30 percent of its land and territorial waters to conservation by the year 2030. The move heightened the potential that MPAs will be used as a tool to tackle climate change.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Marine life worse off inside ‘protected’ areas, analysis reveals

December 27, 2018 — Destructive trawling is more intense inside official marine sanctuaries, while endangered fish are more common outside them, a startling analysis of Europe’s seas has revealed.

It shows that far from conserving sealife, many legal marine protected areas (MPAs) are being damaged by industrial fishing. The work has exposed “the big lie” behind European marine conservation, experts say, with most MPAs completely open to trawling.

The researchers were able to assess the activity of fishing vessels in great detail thanks to satellite tracking equipment that is now compulsory on ships. They compared this with scientific data on the health of sea areas and looked at more than 700 MPAs, covering 16% of Europe’s territorial waters. In total, MPAs cover 29% of Europe’s waters.

This revealed that commercial trawling activity was on average almost 40% higher inside MPAs than in unprotected areas. Furthermore, endangered and critically endangered fish species such as sharks and rays were five times more abundant outside the MPAs.

“It should be the reverse,” said Prof Boris Worm, at Dalhousie University in Canada, who led the research. “When something is called a protected area, it actually needs to be protected. We know that when areas are actually protected they deliver: species recover, biodiversity increases and fisheries benefit as well, as fish become more abundant and spill outside these areas.

Read the full story at The Guardian

Environmental Bullies – Conservationists or Agenda-pushers?

March 22, 2016 (Saving Seafood) – Dr. John Sibert, an emeritus professor at the University of Hawaii, has come to the defense of scientists whose research conflicts with the agendas of conservation ideologues. Dr. Sibert specifically targets Carl Safina and others who have painted recent research by Dr. Molly Lutcavage as “controversial.” Dr. Lutcavage’s research, which appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was featured in NPR, presented evidence that Western Atlantic Bluefin tuna may be more resilient to harvesting than previously thought.

In an article for CFOOD, a University of Washington project chaired by Dr. Ray Hilborn that corrects erroneous stories about fisheries sustainability, Dr. Sibert criticizes environmentalists who resort to personal attacks on researchers whose findings they oppose. Saving Seafood partners with CFOOD to help deliver these facts to the public.

“Instead of attacking the messenger and implying that Lutcavage and her colleagues are industry tools, Safina should have embraced the science, supported tuna conservation, and applied pressure in ICCAT to change its antiquated management. By attempting to smear Lutcavage and her NOAA colleagues, he demeans science in general and those of us who try to apply scientific approaches to resource management in particular,” Dr. Sibert wrote.

Last week, Dr. Lutcavage wrote a piece about her own struggles with environmental bullies.

Dr. Sibert’s full comments are below:

I, like many other scientists, practice my profession with the expectation that my work will be used to improve management policies. However, scientists who choose to work on subjects that intersect with management of natural resources sometimes become targets of special interest pressures. Pressure to change or “spin” research results occurs more often than it should. Pressure arrives in many forms— usually as phone calls from colleagues, superiors, or the media; the pressure seldom arrives in writing.

I have had a long career spanning several fields and institutions and have been pressured to change my views on restriction of industrial activities in intertidal zones in estuaries, on the necessity of international tuna fisheries management agencies, on the limited role of commercial fishing in the deterioration of marine turtle populations, on the lack of accuracy and reliability of electronic fish tags, and on the inefficacy of marine protected areas for tuna conservation.

My most recent experience with pressure came from a stringer who writes for Science magazine. Some colleagues and I had just published a paper that analyzed area-based fishery management policies for conservation of bigeye tuna. Although the paper was very pessimistic about the use of MPAs for tuna fishery management, this particular stringer contacted me about MPAs. We had an exchange of emails in which he repeatedly tried to spin some earlier results on median lifetime displacements of skipjack and yellowfin tuna into an argument supporting creation of MPAs. We then made an appointment to talk “face to face” via Skype. His approach was to play word games with my replies to his questions in order to make it seem that my research supported MPAs. I repeatedly explained to him that our research showed that closing high-seas pockets had no effect whatsoever on the viability of tuna populations and that empirical evidence showed that the closure of the western high seas pockets in 2008 had in fact increased tuna catches. We hung up at that point, and I have no idea what he wrote for Science.

When critics run out of fact, some resort to personal attack. During discussions about turtle conservation in the early 2000s, an attorney for an environmental group told a committee of scientists that we were in effect a bunch of fishing industry apologists with no knowledge of turtles or population dynamics. More recently, my friend and collaborator, Molly Lutcavage was recently subject of a personal attack by Carl Safina after she and her colleagues published an important discovery of a new spawning area for Atlantic Bluefin Tuna. This discovery ought to push the International Commission of the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna to abandon its simplistic two stock approach to management of ABFT. (Whether ICCAT will actually change its approach is another question.) Safina made the outrageously false assertion that the authors’ “… main concern is not recovery, not conservation, but how their findings can allow additional exploitation.”   Instead of attacking the messenger and implying that Lutcavage and her colleagues are industry tools, Safina should have embraced the science, supported tuna conservation, and applied pressure in ICCAT to change its antiquated management. By attempting to smear Lutcavage and her NOAA colleagues, he demeans science in general and those of us who try to apply scientific approaches to resource management in particular.

Read the commentary at CFOOD

 

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

Are “Strongly Protected” MPAs the Future of Ocean Conservation?

November 19, 205 — A new paper in science by Jane Lubchenco and Kirsten Grorud-Colvert discusses the recent progress and advocates for creating and enforcing “strongly protected” marine protected areas (MPAs). For the purposes of this paper, strongly protected MPAs are those that restrict all commercial activity and allow only light recreational or subsistence fishing. Today only 3.5% of the ocean is protected but only 1.6% is strongly protected. The 10% protection goal for coastal marine areas by 2020 decided recently at the Convention on Biological Diversity is too loosely defined and should be specific to strongly protected MPAs or marine reserves. However it should be noted that significant progress has been made in establishing more strongly protected MPAs in the past decade, which, “reflects increasingly strong scientific evidence about the social, economic and environmental benefits of full protection.”

The authors highlight seven key findings suggesting that such MPAs are indeed needed in a greater percentage of global oceans. Successful MPA programs must be integrated across political boundaries but also with the ecosystems they assist – an ecosystem-based management approach is essential. Engaging users almost always improves outcomes. MPAs may improve resilience to future effects of climate change, but there is no question that, “Full protection works,” such that primary ecological goals are almost always met with strongly protected MPAs.

In conclusion, six political recommendations are outlined. An integrated approach is equally important in the political balance for successful MPAs – other management schemes must be considered and dynamic planning is most effective in preparation for changing ecological systems. There is no one-size-fits-all method for MPAs. Top-down or bottom-up approaches have been successful and to determine the right strategy stakeholders should always be involved in the process. Perhaps most importantly, user incentives need to be changed in order to alleviate the economic trauma of short-term losers.

Read the full story at CFOOD

 

 

Marine Protected Areas Increase Survival of Atlantic Cod

November 11, 2015 — Marine fish populations are in decline worldwide. Of the 600 marine fish stocks monitored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 69 per cent are fully or over-exploited.

To rebuild fish populations, MPAs, which ban some or all fishing activities in an area, have become widely used. Under the Natura 2000 network, almost 4 per cent of European waters have been designated as MPAs .

Despite their widespread use, understanding of how MPAs affect harvested fish populations remains poor, especially for areas where some fishing is still permitted (PPAs).

This study investigated the effect of a PPA on Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) along the southeast Norwegian coast of Skagerrak.

In 2006, a 1 km2 PPA was established in the region, where only hook and line fishing and research sampling (which involves fixed nets that do not harm the fish, so they can be captured and released alive) are permitted.

The researchers wanted to know whether implementation of the PPA changed fishing mortality proportions, and also if the protection caused survival rates to increase.

To investigate this, they collected data on live re-captures and dead recoveries of cod before and after its implementation, as well as at several unprotected sites along the coastline. Data was collected from 2005–2013 along Skagerrak.

Read the full story at The Fish Site