Saving Seafood

Predator-prey interaction study reveals more food does not always mean more consumption

September 30, 2020 — Scientists at the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center have developed an unusually rich picture of who is eating whom off the Northeastern United States. The findings, published recently in Fish and Fisheries, provide a close look at fish feeding habits for 17 fish species, predators, and their prey.

The predators are divided into 48 predator-size categories, and 14  species. Fish predators included Atlantic cod, Atlantic herring, haddock, goosefish, pollock, spiny dogfish, winter flounder, and yellowtail founder among others. Prey species included forage fish, squid, zooplankton, shrimp-like crustaceans, shellfish, brittle stars, sand dollars, and sea urchins.

“We have the largest, continuous dataset of fish feeding habits in the world at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, and that enabled us to do a study of this scale and scope,” said Brian Smith, a food habits researcher at the center and lead author of the study. “We focused on common and important prey for the many predatory fishes of interest, and hopefully filled in some gaps in information relating prey availability to predation.”

Feeding patterns within and among different groups of fishes vary by the size of the fish, the abundance or density of the prey, and other factors. Researchers who study  need to account for this predation in their models. Few studies, however, have looked simultaneously at the feeding patterns among different groups of predatory fish—fish feeders, plankton feeders, and benthic or bottom feeders. The study also looked at how those groups interact with their prey throughout the water column.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

2020 NEFSC Fall Ecosystem Monitoring Cruise Cancelled

September 24, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is cancelling the Northeast Fisheries Science Center 2020 Fall Ecosystem Monitoring Survey. The survey would have been conducted by the NOAA Ship Henry Bigelow, which is scheduled to begin a required drydock maintenance period on November 23, 2020, in Galveston, Texas. It is an 11-day transit from the ship’s homeport in Newport, Rhode Island, to the maintenance facility in Texas.

The maintenance is scheduled to be completed by February 19, 2021, positioning the ship to start the Spring 2021 Bottom Trawl Survey, as scheduled. Completing the Spring Bottom Trawl Survey is one of the highest priority surveys for the NEFSC in 2021.

The Fall Ecosystem Monitoring Survey captures seasonal changes in the ocean environment, information used for multiple scientific inquiries. Over its 33-year history, some seasons have been missed and the number of annual surveys has varied. Analytical methods have been developed to bridge these data gaps. Assuming surveys occur as planned in 2021, researchers can bridge the gap in 2020 data using these methods.

Read the full release here

Computers Now “See” Animals on the Ocean Bottom

September 8, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s annual sea scallop research survey uses a towed sampling device called the HabCam. It collects approximately 5 million images of the ocean bottom off the Northeast United States. Scientists and volunteers then manually examine an astonishing 100,000 of these images, roughly 2 percent of the number gathered. They focus on identifying just four targets: sea scallops, fish, crabs, and whelks.

So, a wealth of data is going uncollected owing to the sheer volume available and just how labor-intensive pulling it out of images can be.

Researchers have turned toward finding ways for machines to help identify sea life in these images, faster and more efficiently than humans can. This would improve population data for sea scallops. By more thoroughly examining each image, all kinds of information about other sea life and their habitats can also be captured.

Enter Dvora Hart, an operations research analyst at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Hart has been at the forefront of estimating sea scallop populations numbers from images taken by devices like the HabCam. The upcoming 2020 sea scallop assessment will once again use improved population data collected from images.

“HabCam gives us photos of animals in their natural environment without disturbing them; however, much of the information in the images is not collected because human annotators can only mark a small percentage of the available images,” said Hart. “Automated annotators can mark all the images and, given proper training, can identify a multitude of different targets—not just sea scallops, fish, crabs and whelks.”

Hart is part of an interdisciplinary team that developed the world’s first advanced automated image analysis software for the marine environment. The Video and Image Analytics for the Marine Environment, VIAME for short, uses convolutional neural networks—a recent advance in artificial intelligence. These networks  teach computers to recognize species and features of their habitats in the images taken by the HabCam.

The work is so significant that Hart and her team won a 2019 Department of Commerce gold medal for their work. This recognition is the highest honor award offered to department employees.

Read the full release here

NMFS, fishermen partners launch ‘plan C’ survey in Gulf of Maine

September 3, 2020 — With their regular fisheries surveys thwarted by covid-19 precautions, researchers from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and a pair of Massachusetts fishing vessels have embarked on a three-week longline survey to compensate with new technology.

The 50-foot Mary Elizabeth out of Scituate and the 40-foot Tenacious II homeported at East Dennis have carried scientists on the Gulf of Maine longline research survey for six years, collecting data at 45 stations, according to a description of the program from NMFS officials.

The effort targets areas of rough bottom, where fish typically hide and are hard to sample with trawl gear. Covid-19 has complicated fisheries surveys off every U.S. coast, with NMFS cancel\ling many regularly scheduled 2020 research cruises over crew health and safety concerns.

That trend likewise closed the usual spring window for the Gulf of Maine longline survey.

“When it was clear we’d not be able to do our usual spring survey, we looked for ways to make the best of it,” said Anna Mercer, chief of the Center’s Cooperative Research Branch.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Loggerhead Turtles Record a Passing Hurricane

September 1, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

In early June 2011, NOAA Fisheries researchers and colleagues placed satellite tags on 26 loggerhead sea turtles in the Mid-Atlantic Bight. The tagging was part of ongoing studies of loggerhead movements and behavior. The Mid-Atlantic Bight, off the U.S. East Coast, is the coastal region from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to southern Massachusetts. A little more than 2 months later, on August 28, Hurricane Irene passed through the area, putting 18 of the tagged turtles in its direct path. The researchers were able to track changes in the turtles’ behavior coinciding with the hurricane, and found that they reacted in various ways.

“Hurricanes are some of the most intense weather events loggerheads in the mid-Atlantic experience, and we thought it was worth investigating how turtles in our dataset may be influenced by these dramatic environmental changes,” said Leah Crowe, a contract field biologist at the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and lead author of the study published recently in Movement Ecology.  “It was a perfect storm situation in terms of location, timing, and oceanographic conditions. We found that the turtles responded to the changes in their habitat in different ways.”

Satellite tags attached to a turtle’s carapace, or shell, transmitted the turtles’ location and dive behavior. They also  recorded sea-surface temperatures and temperature-depth profiles for approximately 13 months. This enabled the researchers to investigate the movements of 18 juvenile and adult-sized loggerhead turtles and associated oceanographic conditions as the hurricane moved through the region.

Most of the turtles moved northward during the hurricane, aligning themselves with the surface currents — perhaps to conserve energy. Researchers observed longer dive durations after the hurricane for turtles that stayed in their pre-storm foraging areas. Some dives lasted an hour or more, compared with less than 30 minutes for a typical dive before the storm.

The turtles that left their foraging areas after the hurricane passed moved south earlier than would be expected, based on their normal seasonal movements. This change was also more than a month earlier than the typical seasonal cooling in the water column, which is also when the foraging season for loggerhead turtles ends in the Mid-Atlantic Bight.

“Loggerheads experience environmental changes in the entire water column from the surface to the bottom, including during extreme weather events,” said Crowe. “This study was an opportunistic look at turtle behavior during a hurricane. Their behavior makes loggerheads good observers of oceanographic conditions where they forage.”

Read the full release here

Andrew Jones Leads Effort to Apply Industry-Collected Data to Scientific Problems

August 19, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Andrew Jones was deep into an explanation of why pushing the boundaries of knowledge often involves interacting with people who have different ideas. He paused to sip his coffee, then his face changed from affable to deeply serious. He jumped from his chair, and moved out of the video conference frame.

Five seconds later he popped back into view to explain. He had to make a quick course correction for his youngest daughter who is learning to crawl.

“I’m afraid she’s going to flip over backwards on her head. It’s like, just be safe!” he said.

A thoughtful explanation, coffee after a run, and a teleconference baby cameo appearance crammed into these 30 seconds sum up Jones’ daily routine over the last few months. In a way, they’re also indicative of his approach to his new job: kindness and curiosity, led by analytical thinking.

Andrew, who goes by Andy, joined the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Cooperative Research Branch as fishery biologist in March. He now leads the branch’s research projects that depend on working directly with the fishing industry. His goal is to advance the application and usefulness of data the branch collects with commercial fishermen. He also wants to develop new projects that can address scientific and fishing industry needs.

“I am excited to work with Andy to expand our collaborations both within the center, and with the cooperative research community in the region,” said Anna Mercer, chief of the Cooperative Research Branch. “As time goes on, Andy will be an amazing resource to our industry partners—give Andy an observation to explain or a question to answer and he’ll get right on it!”

Read the full release here

COUNCILMAN SCOTT LIMA: Kennedy Will Bring NFSC to New Bedford

August 17, 2020 — As America’s most valuable commercial fishing port, New Bedford should be the site of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NFSC).

Congressman Joe Kennedy III recognizes the need to site the NFSC in New Bedford and as a candidate for the U.S. Senate representing Massachusetts, Kennedy has publicly expressed his willingness to work toward that end.

I’ve personally questioned Congressman Kennedy about his willingness to work toward siting a new NFSC in New Bedford and I’ve personally reminded him of the need to do so. If elected to the U.S. Senate, it is my sincere hope that Kennedy will make this one of his first orders of business.

Here’s why.

The Port of New Bedford is a global seafood hub handling millions of pounds of seafood annually. The net result – no pun intended – positions New Bedford at the forefront of America’s commercial fishing industry.

Read the full opinion piece at WBSM

Mid-Atlantic council calls for extending observer waiver through 2020

August 17, 2020 — On the eve of NMFS resuming at-sea observer coverage, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council asked the agency to again extend its covid-19 waiver on deploying observers in the Greater Atlantic region.

“Given the continued transmission of the covid-19 virus, we do not believe the observer program can be safely operated at this time,” wrote council chairman Michael Luisi in an Aug. 13 letter to NMFS regional director Michael Pentony and Jon Hare, science and research director at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

“According to the Centers for Disease Control, when we last communicated on this issue (June 23, 2020), the 7-day new case average was under 30,000 new cases per day. On August 11, 2020, the national 7-day average of new cases was over 52,000 new cases per day,” the letter states.

“Given the ongoing community transmission of the virus and the particularly high risk of transmission in the close quarters onboard a vessel, we believe that deploying observers on fishing vessels at this time poses an unwarranted risk to fishermen, observers, and associated communities.”

Council members talked about that concern during their online August meeting this week and approved a recommendation to extend the observer and monitor waiver on permitted commercial fishing vessels through Dec. 31.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Pandemic scraps local shrimp study

August 13, 2020 — When NOAA Fisheries recently cancelled four fishery and ecosystem surveys because of pandemic-related health and safety concerns, it was no real surprise that the Northern shrimp survey was one of the casualties.

It’s was just another indication of the star-crossed nature of the once-thriving regional shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Maine.

The imperiled fishery, which has suffered debilitating declines in its ability to sustain biomass and recruitment, has been closed since the end of the 2013 fishing season. Six times, the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission looked at the numbers generated by stock surveys and six times it saw no recourse but to shutter the fishery.

Matters devolved to the point that in late 2019, the ASMFC abandoned the previous policy of single-season closures and closed the Northern shrimp fishery for three years, ending in 2021.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Northeast Offshore Mussel Farming Would Contribute to American Seafood Competitiveness

July 31, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The first environmental suitability study for blue mussel culture in federal waters off New England’s shore was conducted by scientists from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Milford Laboratory. The study revealed great potential for farming. The scientific team has continued this work, furthering the case for offshore mussel farms in a recent perspectives column in Fisheries Magazine. They have also published findings in Ocean & Coastal Management, examining the risks harmful algal blooms pose to offshore aquaculture.

The Case for Mussels

Milford’s Darien Mizuta and Gary Wikfors suggest that a New England offshore mussel farming industry would be environmentally sustainable and beneficial for food security and the economy. The United States is the world’s top importer of seafood, despite having the second largest Exclusive Economic Zone. In May, the president of the United States signed an executive order promoting American seafood competitiveness and economic growth. The order calls for increasing domestic seafood production, including making aquaculture permitting more efficient and predictable and bolstering aquaculture research.

Mussels are the top imported bivalve shellfish in the United States, currently contributing more than $102 million to the $14 billion U.S. seafood deficit. Close to Canada’s mussel-producing Prince Edward Island, New England is the import epicenter for mussel products, including fresh live mussels, frozen mussels, and prepared mussel dinners.

With advances in mussel farming in the 1990s, the United States began importing more mussels, mostly from Canada. “The success of Prince Edward Island mussel farming has created a new market for mussels in the northeast United States that is growing beyond the production capacity of PEI,” explains Wikfors, who is also the director of the Milford Laboratory, where Darien Mizuta was a postdoctoral researcher.

Read the full release here