Saving Seafood

From Problem to Plan: Restoring Migratory Fish in the Merrimack

August 11, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries has developed a comprehensive management plan for the Merrimack River watershed aimed at restoring these important fish, and the habitats on which they rely.

The Merrimack River watershed is the fourth largest in New England, and historically supported great runs of migratory fish. Over the past 200 years, their numbers have dramatically declined, negatively impacting the ecology of the watershed and coastal waters. Along with our partners, NOAA Fisheries has developed a comprehensive management plan for the watershed aimed at restoring these important fish, and the habitats on which they rely.

Dams, Fish, and Why They Don’t Mix

Diadromous fish spend part of their life in freshwater, and part in saltwater. Prior to pervasive dam construction in the late 18th and early 19th century, they were abundant in the Merrimack River watershed.

Read the whole story on our website.

Read the full release here

Northeast groundfish: Some popularity for pollock as market sorts out from covid

August 10, 2021 — In 2019, Maine’s total commercial groundfish landings were valued around $4 million. In 2020, fleets in Maine landed just 58,730 pounds of cod, averaging  $2.55 per pound at the dock valued at $149,844, whereas 15.2 million pounds had been landed a decade before.

A 2021 NOAA status update reported that in New England, 13 commercial species are currently considered “overfished” including: Atlantic cod (considered collapsed), yellowtail flounder, Atlantic halibut, winter flounder, and Atlantic herring. 

“One problem is that there are so many dogfish out there, and they’re having trouble getting groundfish, over the whole Eastern Seaboard,” says George Parr, a longtime fishmonger at Upstream Trucking in Portland, Maine. In recent years, dogfish have been showing up earlier and earlier in the Gulf of Maine. While dogfish rarely prey on Atlantic cod, studies have looked into whether dogfish populations may be limiting cod, by competition or predation.

“For every hundred pounds of [other] fish they bring in, they bring in 500 pounds of dogfish,” says Parr. “They get 10 cents a pound for it.” 

At the Portland Fish Exchange in Portland, Maine, large haddock was $2.26 per pound, while pollock was averaging $1.69 for small, $2.54 for medium and $2.66 for large in early July.

“But right now, large pollock is getting around $3 for whole fish,” adds Parr. “Twenty years ago, you’d be lucky to get 40 cents per pound.” Early July average auction prices for cod were $3.01 for market size and $5.10 for large.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Multi-Year Effort to Observe Seafloor Habitats and Learn More about Deep-sea Corals and Sponges in Alaska

August 10, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

To learn more about deep-sea communities in the sub-Arctic waters of Alaska, NOAA Fisheries is implementing a four-year science initiative. Research teams will collect new information that will contribute to the management and protection of deep-sea coral and sponge ecosystems throughout Alaska.

Corals and sponges are found throughout Alaska’s rich marine waters—the Aleutian Islands have some of the densest and most diverse coral and sponge communities in the world. However, their full geographic extent is still unknown.

This is due in part to the vastness of Alaska’s exclusive economic zone. These offshore waters encompass an area greater than the combined EEZ of all the other U.S. continental states. As a result, approximately 72 percent of Alaska’s waters have yet to be thoroughly mapped with sonar.

“It’s really important that we conduct this research now. So much of the sub-Arctic and Arctic is changing due to climate change and we know so little about these seafloor communities and valuable fish and crab habitats,” said Jerry Hoff, the lead scientist for this effort, who is based at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

Read the full release here

Climate change ‘double whammy’ could kill off fish species

August 10, 2021 — New research suggests that fish like sardines, pilchards and herring will struggle to keep pace with accelerating climate change as warmer waters reduce their size, and therefore their ability to relocate to more suitable environments.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, also provides the first evidence to counter the scientific theory that decreased movement will result in more species, by suggesting the opposite is true. This means many species will also be less able to evolve to cope with warmer temperatures, increasing their risk of dying out.

Professor Chris Venditti, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, and co-author of the study, said: “Warming waters are a double whammy for fish, as they not only cause them to evolve to a smaller size, but also reduce their ability to move to more suitable environments.

“Our research supports the theory that fish will get smaller as oceans warm under climate change, but reveals the worrying news that they will also not be able to evolve to cope as efficiently as first thought. With sea temperatures rising faster than ever, fish will very quickly get left behind in evolutionary terms and struggle to survive.

“This has serious implications for all fish and our food security, as many of the species we eat could become increasingly scarce or even non-existent in decades to come.”

The study, led by the Center for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones (CEAZA) in Chile and the University of Reading in the UK, used statistical analyses of a large dataset of globally distributed fish species to study their evolution over the past 150 million years. The study provides first solid evidence of how historical global temperature fluctuations have affected the evolution of these species.

It focused on Clupeiforms — a highly diverse group of fish found all over the world, which includes important species for fisheries, such as anchovies, Atlantic herring, Japanese pilchard, Pacific herring, and South American pilchard. However, the findings have implications for all fish.

Fish have thus far only had to deal with a maximum average ocean temperature rise of around 0.8°C per millennium. This is far lower than current warming rates reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of 0.18°C per decade since 1981.

Read the full story at Science Daily

Maryland is awarding $3.4 million in relief funds to seafood industry

August 10, 2021 — Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources on Monday, Aug. 9 opened a grant application process for the commercial seafood and aquaculture industry, with plans to distribute a total of $3.4 million in direct payments to businesses and operations in the sector this fall.

The application portal is available via Maryland Onestop: onestop.md.gov. The deadline to apply is Aug. 27.

DNR will award the money to commercial, for hire, aquaculture and seafood processing businesses and operations that can show in the application that they have suffered a loss of greater than 35% in generated revenue because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The grant money comes through the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, passed by the U.S. Congress in late 2020 for economic assistance to Americans during the pandemic.

In a statement, Gov. Larry Hogan said he was “proud” to invest in the seafood industry, which is particularly vibrant on the Eastern Shore where many of the watermen work and seafood plants and operations are located.

Read the full story at My Eastern Shore

Huffman-sponsored bill seeks grant funding to restore kelp forests

August 10, 2021 — A bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman to protect marine ecosystems in northern California recently got its first hearing in a subcommittee he chairs.

The California Democrat included H.R. 4458, the Keeping Ecosystems Living and Productive (KELP) Act, before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife during a 29 July hearing. The bill calls for creating a new grant program within NOAA to fund projects to restore kelp forests. It calls for USD 50 million (EUR 42.6 million) in funding annually from the 2022 fiscal year, which starts on 1 October, 2021, through fiscal year 2026.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Speeding ships in the Chesapeake Bay endanger rare right whales, environmentalists report

August 9, 2021 — Most ships moving through the Chesapeake Bay don’t slow down as required to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale, environmentalists said in a new report.

About 64% of vessels in the area don’t comply with speed rules designed to allow boat drivers to see and veer around the whales susceptible to strikes — sometimes going up to four times the required speed, according to the report released recently by conservation nonprofit Oceana. Cargo ships were the worst offenders.

There are fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales left, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, making them one of the most endangered marine mammals on the planet.

They were named for being the “right whale” to kill during the whaling era, said Whitney Webber, Oceana’s campaign director. They were easy to pursue and their thick layer of blubber — used for oil — kept them afloat after killing, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

Ambrose Jearld, Jr.: Researcher, Educator, Mentor and Advocate for Diversity and Inclusion

August 9, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Ambrose Jearld, Jr. has spent his life around animals and water—both freshwater and seawater. He was born in 1944 into a Navy family in Annapolis, Maryland, and grew up on the family farm in Orrum, North Carolina. He attended elementary school there, but returned to Annapolis in sixth grade and graduated from Wiley H. Bates High School in 1961. He credits his high school biology teacher and the Boy Scouts for encouraging his interests in science.

He graduated from Maryland State College, now the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, with a degree in biology and a minor in chemistry in 1965. He was just one course away from a double major when he graduated. “My family wanted me to go into teaching, but I wanted to do research and instead went straight into science,” he recalled recently. With a brother and sister heading to college soon, he took a few years off after college to work at “a good-paying job” as a chemist at Publicker Industries Inc. in Philadelphia.

A Fateful Meeting

Meeting Bradford Brown changed the course of Jearld’s career. Brown was a fisheries scientist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Woods Hole Laboratory from 1962 to 1965 and from 1970 to 1984. In He had taken a position as assistant leader with the newly established Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program at Oklahoma State University-Stillwater to complete his Ph.D . The Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program in the United States Geological Survey is a joint effort between federal and state governments. It is also a host university offering graduate students research opportunities in fisheries and wildlife sciences.

Brown was recruiting black graduate students to the program. He met two of Jearld’s former professors, who were also completing their Ph.D.s at OSU. They recommended he speak with Jearld. Although some people were skeptical about Jearld heading to Oklahoma given the civil rights climate in the country, Jearld accepted the full ride offer. That meant a research assistantship award that covered all expenses.

Less than a week after he arrived in Stillwater Jearld was headed to his first scientific meeting as a graduate student with Brown and three other white men whom he did not know. The 1967 meeting was for the Southern Division of the American Fisheries Society in New Orleans. The meeting was part of the annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Game and Fish Commissioners. They had to deal with the intense heat and driving hours in a packed station wagon with no air conditioning. More importantly, they had not discussed safety or how to deal with segregated facilities en route to the meeting. The trip was memorable for many reasons.

Read the full release here

Gulf of Mexico ‘dead zone’ has grown larger than Connecticut

August 9, 2021 — A “dead zone,” or an area of low to no oxygen, in the Gulf of Mexico has grown larger than Connecticut, creating an uninhabitable environment for some commercial marine life, and scientists are saying the sparse amount of tropical activity has played a role.

An hypoxic zone, also referred to as a dead zone, is formed when excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from agriculture and sewage from cities and farms upstream wash into the Gulf. Algae then feeds on these nutrients during the warmer months, and when that algae dies and sinks to the Gulf’s floor, the bacteria that then eats away at the large tangled masses depletes the oxygen in the surrounding water.

The resulting area of low oxygen is called a hypoxic zone, or a dead zone as it becomes unable to support marine life, and it forms in the Gulf every year. Not only can it harm local wildlife, but it can also financially impact fisheries.

Hypoxic waters have been found to alter fish diets, growth rates, reproduction, habitat use and availability of commercially harvested species such as shrimp, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Now, fisheries along the coast of Louisiana will have to deal with a larger-than-average dead zone.

“Basically half of the Louisiana coast for several miles, many miles off shore, the oxygen was too low to support the occurrence of penaeid shrimp, which is one of our biggest economic fisheries in that area,” Dr. Nancy Rabalais, professor at Louisiana State University and LUMCON, and also the principal investigator, told AccuWeather. “So that area was basically lost as available and suitable habitat to those shrimp. How that’s going to convert to catches in money in the next month or so, I can’t really say.”

Read the full story at AccuWeather

Climate Change Scenario Planning: Input Needed to Prepare for Uncertainty in Ocean Conditions and Fisheries

August 9, 2021 — The following was released by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

On the East Coast of the United States, some species of fish are already experiencing climate-related shifts in distribution, abundance, and productivity. Although the future is uncertain, a continuation or acceleration of climate change has the potential to strain our existing fishery management system and alter the way fishermen, scientists, and the public interact with the marine environment.

In order to begin preparing for this possibility, management bodies along the entire Atlantic seaboard have teamed up to launch a new project called East Coast Climate Change Scenario Planning. Scenario planning is a way of exploring how fishery management may need to evolve over the next few decades in response to climate change. You can find additional details in the introductory brochure.

Weigh In! Stakeholder Input is Key to Effective Scenario Planning

The initiative is being organized by a Core Team of representatives from the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and South Atlantic Fishery Management Councils, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and NOAA Fisheries. The team has lined up three kick-off webinars:

  1. Monday, August 30, 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
  2. Wednesday, September 1, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.
  3. Thursday, September 2, 10:00 – 11:30 a.m.

Please register at the links above. The webinars will introduce stakeholders to the overall initiative, explain the benefits of participating in the process, outline additional ways to become involved, and begin collecting stakeholder input.

An online questionnaire will be available soon to serve as an additional tool to collect input. Watch the Scenario Planning webpage for updates.