National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Archives - Page 201 of 260

Divers haul in large amount of debris from marine monument

November 13, 2018 — A team of divers hauled in nearly 165,000 pounds (75,000 kilograms) of abandoned fishing nets and plastic waste during a cleanup expedition at Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, federal officials said.

The 18 divers left Sept. 19 and returned Oct. 29 from a trek to the chain of isles and atolls located 1,200 miles (1,931 kilometers) northwest of the main Hawaiian islands, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the expeditions.

The divers hauled in about 82 tons (74 metric tons), which is comparable to the weight of 45 mid-sized cars or one space shuttle, NOAA said.

The team of divers from NOAA Fisheries and University of Hawaii’s Joint Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Research sorted out the debris Friday.

The group split the debris into categories such as plastic laundry baskets, fishing nets, tires, buoys and smaller personal-care items such as plastic toothbrushes and combs.

Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument is uninhabited by humans. But due to its central location in the system of circulating currents called the North Pacific Gyre, the debris has been carried by currents to its shores for decades.

NOAA’s marine debris team has been going on expeditions to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands almost yearly to survey and remove litter since 1996. Cumulatively, including the last mission, teams have collected about 2 million pounds (0.91 million kilograms) of debris.

The litter does ecological damage at Papahanaumokuakea, said NOAA’s Kevin O’Brien, who served as chief scientist for the mission this year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Hawaii Tribune-Herald

Veterans get foothold in marine science through NWFSC internship

November 13, 2018 — The following was released by NOAA:

Two veterans will mark this Veterans’ Day as part of research teams at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC), one focused on the ecological response to dam removal and the other on the effects of ocean acidification on Dungeness crab and krill.

Katherine Rovinski, who served seven years in the Navy as a surface warfare officer, and Shawna Worley, an Army intelligence analyst for six years, just began NWFSC’s internship program for veterans, known as the Washington Veterans Corps Fisheries Program. The program offers veterans a foothold towards a career in marine science, while also supplementing the Science Center’s research staff.

“This is the perfect opportunity for me to learn more about the science, and what it’s like to work at NOAA,” said Worley, 33, who is working with NWFSC researcher Sarah Morley’s team tracking changes in the Elwha River system following the removal of two large dams that once blocked it. “This is exactly what I’m interested in studying and learning more about.”

NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region and the NOAA Restoration Center created the internship program in 2016 in partnership with NWFSC, Washington’s Department of Veterans Affairs and Veterans Conservation Corps. This is its third year. Barney Boyer, the first veteran to complete the program, started graduate school in fisheries last year on a full scholarship.

Rovinski, 29, said she is impressed at how widely NOAA Fisheries staff share information in all directions, avoiding silos that otherwise can form. She noted regular webinars and cross-division meetings that help employees learn more about science and the surrounding issues. “There is a lot of cross-pollination going on,” she said.

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Maine Maritime Academy and a master’s from the University of Washington, Rovinski spent last summer aboard Sound Experience’s Adventuress, a tall ship that sails the Salish Sea on educational trips for schools and other youth groups. She heard about the NWFSC’s internship program, and immediately thought, “That’s what I’m looking for.”

“I’ve known about NOAA since the first time I looked at charts,” so it didn’t need much explaining, she said.

Rovinski is working out of the Mukilteo Research Station, just across the water from Whidbey Island, where she lives. She is assisting with research looking at the effect of ocean acidification on Dungeness crab, a staple of coastal life in the Northwest, and krill, the tiny, plankton-like organisms that support much of the marine food chain including salmon, steelhead, and other key species.

One of the first challenges is keeping the krill alive in the laboratory environment. “We’re trying to recreate the conditions in the environment so they will eat,” she said.

Worley has spent the first few weeks of her internship cataloging samples collected from the Elwha River, where NWFSC scientists are documenting ecological changes following dam removal. She is particularly interested in how marine nutrients move from fish into the environment, fertilizing its productivity.

She is also reading everything she can on the Elwha.

“I cannot say how great it is to have someone so engaged, so dedicated, and so sharp to help support our work,” said Morley, who leads the lab at NWFSC’s Montlake campus where Worley is based. “It’s been a great fit.”

Read the full release here

Warm temps hurt shellfish, aid predators

November 13, 2018 — Valuable species of shellfish have become harder to find on the East Coast because of degraded habitat caused by a warming environment, according to a pair of scientists that sought to find out whether environmental factors or overfishing was the source of the decline.

The scientists reached the conclusion in studying the decline in the harvest of four commercially important species of shellfish in coastal areas from Maine to North Carolina – eastern oysters, northern quahogs, softshell clams and northern bay scallops. They reported that their findings came down squarely on the side of a warming ocean environment and a changing climate, and not excessive harvest by fishermen.

One of the ways warming has negatively impacted shellfish is by making them more susceptible to predators, said the lead author of the study, Clyde MacKenzie, a shellfish researcher for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who is based in Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

“Their predation rate is faster in the warmer waters. They begin to prey earlier, and they prey longer into the fall,” MacKenzie said. “These stocks have gone down.”

MacKenzie’s findings, the product of a collaboration with Mitchell Tarnowski, a shellfish biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, appeared recently in the journal Marine Fisheries Review. The findings have implications for consumers of shellfish, because a declining domestic harvest means the prices of shellfish such as oysters and clams could rise, or the U.S. could become more dependent on foreign sources.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Express

New protections for herring but lobster bait crunch imminent

November 12, 2018 — Fishing managers are considering extending new protections to Atlantic herring, but catch quotas for the important bait fish are still likely to plummet before the end of the year, which is bad news for the American lobster industry.

Herring is the most important bait source for the lobster fishery, which is one of the most lucrative marine industries in New England. A recent scientific assessment of the herring population says the fish’s population has fallen in the past five years.

An arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted last month to initiate changes to try to better protect spawning herring off of New England.

The new protections are coming at a time when the lobster and herring fisheries are expecting a dramatic cutback in herring quota. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is expected to propose new rules about herring fishing this month and implement them by early 2019, when next year’s herring fishing season starts.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bradenton Herald

Key US Shellfish Quotas Will Remain the Same Next Year

November 8, 2018 — A couple of the most significant fisheries for shellfish on the East Coast will have the same catch quotas next year.

Fishermen harvest surf clams and ocean quahogs from the Atlantic Ocean every year for use in chowders, fried clam dinners and other popular seafood dishes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the quota for the two species will be unchanged in the new fishing year that begins on Jan. 1.

The quota will be 5.33 million bushels for ocean quahogs and 3.4 million bushels for surf clams. The quota for Maine ocean quahogs will be limited to 100,000 Maine bushels, which is also the same as the current year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Study says ocean oscillation changes reduced shellfish landings

November 6, 2018 — For years, Maine shellfish harvesters have been complaining that there are fewer softshell clams while arguing that the diggers who go out on the mud flats aren’t the cause of the problem.

A recent study by researchers from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources backs them up on both counts.

According to Clyde L. MacKenzie Jr. of NOAA and Mitchell Tarnowski from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, between 1980 and 2010, documented landings of the four most commercially important inshore bivalve mollusks along the Northeast coast — eastern oysters, northern quahogs, softshell clams and northern bay scallops — dropped by 85 percent.

The principal cause, they say, was warming ocean temperatures associated with a shift in the North Atlantic Oscillation which resulted in damaged shellfish habitat and increased predation from Maine to North Carolina.

“My first response is that the article confirms what I have been seeing with soft-shell clams over at least the last decade or so,” Brian Beal, a professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine Machias and director of research at the Downeast Institute on Great Wass Island, said last week.

The North Atlantic Oscillation is a fluctuation of atmospheric pressure over the North Atlantic that affects both the weather and the climate along the East Coast, especially in winter and early spring.

According to NOAA, shifts in the oscillation can affect the timing of a species’ reproduction and growth, the availability of microscopic organisms for food and predator-prey relationships.

Over a period of several years, MacKenzie and Tarnowski interviewed shellfish wardens and harvesters along the New England coast, as well as examining landings records and other research in an effort to determine the “true causes” of the precipitous drop in shellfish landings.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

MASSACHUSETTS: Losing lobster lines

November 6, 2018 — Scientists from the New England Aquarium will spend much of next year testing ropeless lobster gear as part of the escalating effort to mitigate entanglements with right whales and other marine species.

The research project, funded with a $226,616 grant recently received from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will involve co-operative research with active lobstermen, possibly including some from the state’s most lucrative lobster port in Gloucester, according to one of the aquarium’s chief scientists.

“We want to get good technology in the hands of fishermen so they can evaluate its potential,” said Tim Werner, the aquarium’s senior scientist and director of its Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction. “They need to be able to use it and find out what it needs to be functional.”

Werner said researchers already have begun to develop various types of ropeless traps, using different technologies to achieve the same goal of drastically reducing or eliminating entanglements of leatherback sea turtles and whales in the forest of vertical lines stretching from fishing gear on the ocean floor to the ocean’s surface.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA releases data on illegal striped bass poaching ring

November 5, 2018 — Over the last couple years, news came out of North Carolina of arrests of fishermen involved in an illegal striped bass poaching ring.

Thirty co-conspirators were part of the illicit activity, but only 12 subjects were charged and sentenced in connection to this case, which saw 52 charges in 13 indictments.

This week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released data on the results of the investigation and court proceedings.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

Researchers identify causes of decline in shellfish harvests

November 5, 2018 — NOAA researchers studying the 85 percent decline between 1980 and 2010 of the four most commercially-important bivalve mollusks — eastern oysters, northern quahogs, softshell clams, and northern bay scallops — have identified the causes.

Along with the sharp decline in commercially important bivalves, there has been a corresponding decline in the numbers of fishermen (89 percent) who harvested the bivalves, said researchers with NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service.

The bivalve declines are in contrast to the previous three decades (1950–80) when the combined landings of the same bivalves were much higher and the trend in each of their annual landings was nearly level, decade by decade.

The only exceptions to the declines were seen in the harvest of northern quahogs in Connecticut and American lobsters in Maine. However, the numbers of American lobster landings have fallen precipitously – as much as 98 percent – from southern Massachusetts to New Jersey.

The researchers also found during the course of the study that a number of groups of marine and land animals have also experienced large shifts in abundance since the early 1980’s.

Read the full story at Digital Journal

JOHN FIORILLO: A Retraction is Not Enough

November 1, 2018 — The following editorial was originally published by IntraFish. It was written by IntraFish Executive Editor John Fiorillo:

Patience may be a virtue but how long must we wait for a scientific journal to decide if it is going to retract a controversial paper that the US government, eminent fisheries scientists and industry executives say is a bunch of crap?

It has been more than a year – yes, I said a year – since US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Assistant Administrator for Fisheries Chris Oliver requested a retraction of the controversial scientific paper published in the journal Marine Policy that alleges a significant portion of Alaska salmon, crab and pollock is entering the Japanese market from illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fisheries.

Last October, Oliver challenged the veracity of the scientific paper and asked that it be retracted to avoid damaging the reputation of the US fishing industry and its fisheries management. In December, a team of top US fisheries scientists, led by preeminent fisheries researcher Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, joined the US government in demanding a retraction of the paper. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), under which the fisheries are certified sustainable, also came out in support of the industry.

In June, Hance Smith, editor of the journal Marine Policy, told IntraFish: “The status is simply that we have been waiting for additional reviews of the paper. I expect we shall be able to progress shortly.”

Shortly?

On Monday, I asked Smith again for an update on the status of the paper and its possible retraction. I was told: “We are still waiting for a response from the corresponding author.”

Umm. OK. What?

Anyway, this is about more than getting a retraction. This is a scientific paper, that critics — bonafide critics, not crackpots — say is fundamentally flawed. And if that is not bad enough, it is eerily similar to a 2014 paper by the same researchers — Tony Pitcher, Katrina Nakamura, and Ganapathiraju Pramod — that provided estimates for IUU fish entering the US market. This report has been cited at least 59 times in academic reports and countless times in government and NGO reports. In other words, repeat the story enough times and it becomes unquestioned gospel.

The 2014 study was cited regularly by those supporting the creation of the US Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), which was indeed launched in January and requires a new level of record keeping by US importers aimed at eliminating IUU fish from the US seafood supply chain.

Made up

Hilborn, in December, said the paper at the heart of the current controversy cites several dozen published papers as sources yet none have any mention of IUU fishing. “The paper also lists a number of ‘sources’ of IUU such as ‘unreported catch in artisanal fisheries’ which do not exist,” said Hilborn. “As near as we can tell, the paper made up all of its results without any data on IUU fishing.”

NOAA’s Oliver, in his October 2017 letter to the report’s authors, said the “allegations made in the paper, are absent of transparency regarding the data, and assumptions supporting them are irresponsible and call into question the authors’ conclusions.”

The Japan study claims that an estimated 15 percent of the US pollock entering Japan is from IUU fisheries. Further, the study says between 10 and 20 percent of the salmon and crab coming from Alaska fisheries is IUU. In the paper, Pitcher and the other authors argue for the creation of a seafood traceability program in Japan to thwart what they claim is the importation of seafood produced by IUU fishing activity.

The paper was funded by the Walton Foundation, which has largely skirted the fray. “Independently, we are reaching out to talk with all of the parties to ensure we fully understand the issues,” Barry Gold, director of Walton’s Environment Program, said a year ago.

But Pitcher told me Tuesday in an email that “neither the Walton Foundation nor the Marine Stewardship Council has been in touch with us to ascertain the truth of the matter.”

He also said he has a revised table showing “only 2 percent IUU from that US pollock fishery,” and he says that the revised table “has been waiting to be inserted [into the paper] for almost a year now.” In other words, the original 15 percent IUU estimate is wrong.

“The editor wants us to retract and then resubmit to include the new table, and despite our arguing that is not necessary as they can easily insert a correction, Ray Hilborn in Seattle has queered the pitch by a ridiculous letter accusing us of data fraud and absurd unprofessional threats that the journal will be ‘exposed on his blog,'” Pitcher said in his email to me.

“My co-author has been travelling extensively (earning his living!), and so have I, so neither of us have had the time required to deal with this. We are aiming to get it done before Xmas.”

What a mess.

Look, we need to be able to trust science, especially in this Trumpian era where science is dismantled, devalued and dismissed.

It’s time for the editors of the Marine Policy journal to settle this issue so we don’t allow flimsy science to contribute to the potentially unnecessary creation of another new traceability program in Japan, as it did for the new SIMP program in the US market.

Marine Policy editors need to retract the report, and while they are at it they need to look at the authors’ 2014 report. And stop being careless with fisheries science.

Read the editorial at IntraFish