Saving Seafood

TOMORROW–Webinar on Genomics for Fisheries Management: An Application to the Thorny Skate

September 17, 2019 — The following was released by the Lenfest Ocean Program:

Join the Lenfest Ocean Program on Wednesday, September 18 at 10:00 am EDT/2:00 pm GMT for a webinar featuring Dr. Gavin Naylor of the University of Florida to discuss his project on thorny skate genomics in the North Atlantic.

Dr. Naylor and his team are using modern genomic tools to tease out the spatial population structure of thorny skates and to investigate factors that may have contributed to past changes in abundance. The findings could help managers determine the appropriate spatial scale for thorny skate management and lead to the development of effective conservation strategies across the North Atlantic. The project began in 2017.

Download the project fact sheet to learn more.

Register for the webinar here

The North Atlantic right whale will soon be extinct unless something is done to save it, researchers warn

September 13, 2019 — The fate of the increasingly rare North Atlantic right whale has always been left up to humans.

Once hunted nearly to extinction, their population is sharply declining again. Any hope for their survival, researchers say, demands immediate action.

A new report from Oceana, a non-profit ocean advocacy group, says unless protections are put in place, the North Atlantic right whale will die out.

“At some point, if trends continue, recovery will simply become impossible,” researchers wrote.

There are only 400 of them left, and less than 25% of them are breeding females responsible for the species’ survival. At least 28 have died in the past two years, Oceana campaign director Whitney Webber told CNN.

It’s a sharp decline driven by fishing, boating and climate change that impacts their food supply, according to the report.

“We’re really not seeing the whales die of natural causes anymore,” she said. “They’re dying at our hands.”

Read the full story at CNN

Congress could provide $50 million for right whales

September 13, 2019 — Legislation to provide $5 million in annual federal funding for reducing North Atlantic right whale deaths from ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement was introduced in the U.S. Senate Tuesday.

Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) co-sponsor S-2453, dubbed the “Scientific Assistance for Very Endangered (SAVE) Right Whales Act.” The measure would authorize $5 million in annual grant funding over the next 10 years for cooperative projects between state governments, nongovernmental organizations and the shipping and commercial fishing industries.

With a surviving population of around 400 animals, the North Atlantic right whale is one of the world’s most endangered species. Ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement are major causes of mortality. Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence has been particularly deadly in recent summers and Canadian authorities have enforced vessel speed restrictions in an effort to reduce the risk, which has led to 28 deaths in the last two years, according to NOAA.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Groups in Canada, US call for AquaBounty egg boycott

September 12, 2019 — Canadian and U.S. environmental groups are urging the aquaculture and seafood industry to boycott AquaBounty’s Atlantic salmon eggs to eliminate the risk of any accidental mix-ups.

Friend of the Earth U.S., Friends of the Earth Canada, the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN), the Council of Canadians – PEI Chapter, Earth Action PEI, Ecology Action Centre (Nova Scotia), The MacKillop Centre for Social Justice (PEI), and Vigilance OGM all expressed concern that “human error could lead to the inadvertent production of GM (genetically modified) salmon in open net-pens and the resultant environmental risk,” they said in a CBAN press release.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Ocean warming is changing the relationship coastal communities have with the ocean

September 11, 2019 — Climate change has made record-breaking heatwaves all the more likely, both on land and beneath the ocean’s surface. As the world’s ocean sucks up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—as well as most of the additional heat being trapped by global warming—it is undergoing some significant changes.

Marine heatwaves—prolonged periods of unusually —are one of those changes. These  are increasing in frequency around the globe and wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems.

As an oceanographer, I study the many ways oceans change—from week-to-week, year-to-year and, of course, over decades and centuries—to better understand the changes that are underway and the far-reaching impacts they may have on  and the communities that rely on them.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

U.S.-Canada dispute over fishing grounds focus of film

September 6, 2019 — Award-winning Boston filmmaker and journalist David Schwab Abel’s documentary “Lobster War: The Fight Over the World’s Richest Fishing Grounds,” about the conflict between the United States and Canada over waters that both countries have claimed since the end of the Revolutionary War, will be shown at 7 p.m. on Tuesday Sept. 10, in the Moore Auditiorium on the Schoodic Institute campus. Admission is free.

Abel, who was part of The Boston Globe team covering the April 15, 2013, Boston Marathon bombing, covers fisheries and the environment for The Globe.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Upcoming Webinar: How Genomics Can Inform Fisheries Management

September 6, 2019 — The following was released by Lenfest Ocean Program:

Join the Lenfest Ocean Program on Wednesday, September 18 at 10:00 am EST/2:00 pm GMT for a webinar featuring Dr. Gavin Naylor of the University of Florida to discuss his project on thorny skate genomics in the North Atlantic.

Dr. Naylor and his team are using modern genomic tools to tease out the spatial population structure of thorny skates and to investigate factors that may have contributed to past changes in abundance. The findings could help managers determine the appropriate spatial scale for thorny skate management and lead to the development of effective conservation strategies across the North Atlantic. The project began in 2017.

Download the project fact sheet to learn more.

Register for the webinar

Another GBP 1 billion year for UK fishing fleet but profits fall

August 22, 2019 — The turnover achieved by the United Kingdom’s fishing fleet reached GBP 1 billion (USD 1.2 billion, EUR 1.1 billion) for the second consecutive year in 2018, although external factors such as fuel cost, weather, and the political landscape have led to a fall in profits, new figures released by seafood public body Seafish showed.

Seafish’s report, “Economics of the UK Fishing Fleet 2018,” which analyzes the performance of the catching sector and is based on the most recent annual accounts available for fishing vessels, also confirmed that operating costs for U.K. vessels increased by 2 percent last year to GBP 759 million (USD 922.9 million, EUR 832.6 million).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Canada’s Nova Scotia province beefs up aquaculture escape rules

August 20, 2019 — The Canadian province of Nova Scotia is moving forward with aquaculture management regulations intended to make it more difficult for fish to escape from net pens and easier to trace escaped fish to their original farms later, bringing the new rules into effect last week, the CBC reports.

The news service quotes Keith Colwell, Nova Scotia’s minister of fisheries and aquaculture, as saying that the changes approved by his cabinet follow an earlier report by a committee looking at the issue of fish containment.

The tracking options including testing DNA or tagging fish, while other changes include rules on making sure fish pens are strong enough to withstand bad weather, requiring operators have farm management plans and creating separate ocean bottom assessment requirements for shellfish-based aquaculture projects.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Watch as a response team helps partially untangle a right whale

August 8, 2019 — A right whale received some extra help off the coast of Cape Cod as a response team partially disentangled him Aug. 2.

“Despite a horrific entanglement, the whale was highly mobile,” according to the Center for Coastal Studies.

This particular whale, a male, was initially discovered July 4 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. He was spotted again July 19, and a team from the New England Aquarium was able to attach a telemetry buoy to the whale to track his movements, the center said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News