Saving Seafood

Saildrones join NOAA’s West Coast fleet for experimental fisheries surveys

June 27, 2018 — NOAA Fisheries’ two West Coast Science laboratories are joining forces with the Alameda, Calif., company Saildrone Inc. to test the first use of autonomous, wind and solar-powered vehicles to gather essential data on West Coast fish populations, including commercially valuable species such as hake, sardine, and anchovy.

Two saildrones will launch from Neah Bay, Wash., and three will launch from Saildrone’s home base in Alameda in late June. The drones will undertake different missions, all related to improving the efficiency and accuracy of fisheries stock assessments off the West Coast. Stock assessments make estimates of fish populations, which the Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries use in setting fishing rules and limits for the commercial fishing industry.

Four of the saildrones will duplicate the path of the NOAA Fisheries ship Reuben Lasker as it collects data on populations of sardine, anchovy and other small fishes, to also survey hake, a deep-water species that is one of the West Coast’s most valuable commercial fisheries. Two of these drones will launch from Neah Bay and two from Alameda. Scientists from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) in Seattle and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) will work with Saildrone to manage the research. Scientists can adjust the drones’ assignments in real time.

“This a real opportunity for us to test new and likely better ways of collecting data that informs some of our most important decisions on fisheries management,” said Larry Hufnagle, a NWFSC research scientist who will help direct the mission.

Read the full story at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center

New study reveals cost of 2017 salmon fisheries closure

May 7, 2018 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Last year’s closure of the commercial ocean salmon troll fishery off the West Coast is estimated to have cost $5.8 million to $8.9 million in lost income for fishermen, with the loss of 200 to 330 jobs, according to a new model that determines the cost of fisheries closures based on the choices fishermen make.

Scientists hope the model, described for the first time this week in Marine Policy, will help policy makers anticipate the economic toll of fisheries closures. Such foresight may be especially useful as conditions in the California Current off the West Coast grow increasingly variable, leading to more potential closures, said lead author Kate Richerson, a marine ecologist with NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the University of Washington.

“We’re probably only going to see more of these closures in the future,” she said, “so being able to predict their effects and fallout for coastal communities puts us ahead of the curve in terms of considering those impacts in planning and management decisions.”

The new model estimates the future losses associated with fisheries closures based on the way fishermen reacted to previous closures. It anticipates, for instance, that many fishermen will simply quit fishing rather than shift their efforts to another fishery instead. In this way, the model accounts for the difficulty fishermen face in entering other fisheries with limited permits, Richerson said.

The research is the first attempt to predict the effect of fisheries closures before they happen, said Dan Holland, an economist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center and coauthor of the study. The model, developed prior to the 2017 closure, also can help identify the most affected communities.

For example, Coos Bay and Brookings, Oregon, and Eureka, California, were among the hardest hit by the 2017 salmon closures because they are geographically located in the center of the closure that stretched from Northern California to Oregon. The closure led to the estimated loss of about 50 percent of fisheries-related employment in Coos Bay and about 35 percent declines in fishing-related income and sales. Predicted percentage declines in overall fishing-related income are lower than declines in salmon income, since many fishermen were predicted to continue to participate in other fisheries.

The study estimated that the closure led to a loss of $12.8 million to $19.6 million in sales. Richerson noted that the model estimates only the economic consequences of the closure to the commercial ocean salmon fishery and does not include the toll on recreational fisheries or in-river fisheries, which would make the total losses even higher.

The closure recommended by the Pacific Fishery Management Council and adopted by NOAA Fisheries was designed to protect low returns of salmon to the Klamath River in Northern California.

Learn more about NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center here.

 

New model looks to predict economic impacts of fishing closures

April 12, 2018 — Getting ahead of the economic impacts that tend to accompany fisheries’ closures is the basis of a new predictive model put together by a team of scientists from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NFSC) and the University of Washington.

When fisheries shut down, entire communities suffer, the scientific team recognized, and oftentimes, funds doled out to help fishermen weathering rough patches arrive months after they are needed. The new predictive model, which was published recently in the journal Marine Policy, is designed to help mitigate some of this damage, explained Kate Richerson, a marine ecologist at NFSC and the University of Washington, and the lead author of the model.

To develop their predictive standard, Richerson and her team focused on the 2017 closure of the U.S. West Coast’s salmon troll fishery, collating fish ticket data as a starting point.

“We looked at a pretty broad cohort of vessels and found that some of these vessels are almost entirely dependent on salmon, while others are almost entirely dependent on other fisheries,” Richerson said. “Then we looked at their predicted behavior and revenue under the conditions of a closure and under the conditions of an average year. And we used that in combination with this economic input-output model, which links fishing revenue to jobs and sales, to make a sort of back-of-the-envelope prediction of what the impacts of the 2017 closure might have been.”

They estimated the closure, leveled to protect struggling Chinook runs on the Klamath River, would cost trollers anywhere from USD 5.8 million (EUR 4.6 million) to USD 8.9 million (EUR 7.2 million), along with 200 to 330 jobs and USD 12.8 million (EUR 10.3 million) to USD 19.6 million (EUR 15.8 million) in sales. The numbers were confined to trollers, and would have likely been far higher with the inclusion of other fisheries, such as gillnetting and recreational fishing.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

West Coast Waters Returning to Normal; Some Fisheries Remain Disrupted

March 13, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Ocean conditions off most of the U.S. West Coast are returning roughly to average, after an extreme marine heat wave from about 2014 to 2016 disrupted the California Current Ecosystem and shifted many species beyond their traditional range, according to a new report from NOAA Fisheries’ two marine laboratories on the West Coast. Some warm waters remain off the Pacific Northwest, however.

The Southwest Fisheries Science Center and Northwest Fisheries Science Center presented their annual “California Current Ecosystem Status Report” to the Pacific Fishery Management Council at the Council’s meeting in Rohnert Park, Calif., on Friday, March 9. The California Current encompasses the entire West Coast marine ecosystem, and the report informs the Council about conditions and trends in the ecosystem that may affect marine species and fishing in the coming year.

“The report gives us an important glimpse at what the science is saying about the species and resources that we manage and rely on in terms of our West Coast economy,” Council Chairman Phil Anderson, of Westport, Wash., said in a press release. “The point is that we want to be as informed as we can be when we make decisions that affect those species, and this report helps us do that.”

Unusually warm ocean temperatures, referred to as “the Blob,” encompassed much of the West Coast beginning about 2014, combining with an especially strong El Nino pattern in 2015. The warm conditions have now waned, although some after-effects remain.

Warmer waters were blamed for increased growth of Pseudo nitzschia, which produces domoic acid. The domoic acid interrupted several fisheries, including Dungeness crab, rock crab and spiny lobster.

Read the full story with a subscription at Seafood News

 

Scientists Send Letter to Washington Legislature Urging Delay on Legislation to Ban Net Pens

March 1, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Four prominent scientists have sent a letter to the Washington State Legislature urging them to stop House Bill 2957, which “would essentially halt Atlantic salmon aquaculture in this state forever.”

The scientists include the former 40-year director of the Manchester, Washington, laboratory; two former directors of the national aquaculture program run by NOAA; a former Director of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center; and the former president of Stolt Sea Farms Washington, Inc.

“We call on our esteemed elected representatives to delay any decisions regarding the future of salmon farming in Washington until the scientific community, represented in this state by some of the world’s leading aquaculture and fisheries scientists and researchers in the fields of fish culture, genetics, nutrition, and fish behavior, has had an opportunity to present science in a clear and objective light—rather than in a climate fueled by fear and propaganda,” the letter states.

The authors offer to present research that responds to the legislature’s fears on four areas of concern for Atlantic salmon farms in the event of a pen failure or escape.

Interbreeding — the authors point out that interbreeding has been encouraged in a scientific setting, and all attempts for the past f40 years have been unsuccessful.

Competition for food — Peer-reviewed studies have shown convincingly that “captive” or pen-reared salmon have not learned how to “hunt” for food, simply because they are used to being fed on a regular timetable.

Competition for habitat —  Scientists to date have found no evidence of Atlantic salmon spawning on the West Coast of North America.

Disease transmission — the authors say “No example of disease transfer from farmed salmon to wild fish has ever been documented by any regulatory agency in the state of Washington.”

Finally, they strongly urge legislators to not “throw out the baby with the bathwater”—salmon farming—that is now producing millions of metric tons of nutritious salmon, worth billions of dollars, around the world.

The letter is signed by Linda Chaves, former Senior Advisory on Seafood and Industry Issues; Dr. John Forster, former president of Stolt Sea Farm; Dr. Robert Iwamoto, director of the office, management, and information at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA; and Dr. Conrad Mahnken, former NOAA National Aquaculture Coordinator, director of the NOAA Manchester Laboratory, and Washington Fish and Wildlife Commissioner.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Warm waters off West Coast has lingering effects for salmon

September 18, 2017 — SEATTLE — The mass of warm water known as “the blob” that heated up the North Pacific Ocean has dissipated, but scientists are still seeing the lingering effects of those unusually warm sea surface temperatures on Pacific Northwest salmon and steelhead.

Federal research surveys this summer caught among the lowest numbers of juvenile coho and Chinook salmon in 20 years, suggesting that many fish did not survive their first months at sea. Scientists warn that salmon fisheries may face hard times in the next few years.

Fisheries managers also worry about below average runs of steelhead returning to the Columbia River now. Returns of adult steelhead that went to sea as juveniles a year ago so far rank among the lowest in 50 years.

Scientists believe poor ocean conditions are likely to blame: Cold-water salmon and steelhead are confronting an ocean ecosystem that has been shaken up in recent years.

“The blob’s fairly well dissipated and gone. But all these indirect effects that it facilitated are still there,” Brian Burke, a research fisheries biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Seattle P-I

NOAA Fisheries: Ocean surveys show poor conditions for Columbia salmon

September 13, 2017 — Ocean conditions for salmon headed to sea this year are very poor, according to recent NOAA Fisheries research surveys, and have a high likelihood of depressing salmon returns to the Columbia River in the next few years.

The outlook is described in a recent research memorandum from NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center, which has been studying the ecology of young salmon entering the ocean for more than 20 years. The research has helped reveal how conditions in the ocean affect salmon survival and, ultimately, how many salmon complete their life cycle to return to their home streams and spawn a new generation of fish.

NOAA Fisheries researchers regularly survey ocean conditions off the Pacific Northwest Coast, focusing especially on factors known as “ocean indicators” that can serve as barometers of salmon survival.

They also assess the number and condition of juvenile salmon along the Oregon and Washington coastlines, since the survival of the fish during their first months at sea helps predict how many are likely to survive over the longer term.

Read the full story at the Chinook Observer

West Coast Groundfish Electronic Monitoring Pending NMFS’ Approval

May 1, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Pacific Fishery Management Council has recommended regulations governing the use of electronic equipment to monitor at-sea discards of target, non-target and prohibited fish for certain West Coast groundfish fisheries. If approved by National Marine Fisheries Service, this will mark the culmination of a four-year process to develop and implement regulations for electronic monitoring system use in West Coast groundfish fisheries.

“For many fishing operations, electronic monitoring will provide a more cost-effective way to meet 100 percent monitoring requirements,” Council Member Dorothy Lowman said in a press release. “This will allow fishermen the flexibility to choose the monitoring method that makes the most sense for them while maintaining full accountability.”

Under the West Coast catch share program, every vessel must carry a human observer to help monitor catch that is allocated to each vessel owner, including discards that happen at sea. Each owner has a share of the total catch allocation and the program requires that each vessel have quota to cover its catch of nearly all groundfish species. The catch share program relies on at-sea monitoring to ensure that discards are accurately identified with an estimated weight so that vessel quotas are properly tracked.

However, fishermen must pay as much as $500 per day for an observer and must schedule deployment of an observer when a vessel is ready to fish. The electronic monitoring program is expected to increase flexibility while reducing operating costs for fishermen.

An electronic monitoring system collects video images of fishing activity with cameras, uses gear sensors to trigger recording and monitor use, and includes a global positioning system to collect location data. It stores the information on a computer hard drive for review at a later date at a mainland facility, where a person reviews the video to monitor the fishing activity. Under the West Coast electronic monitoring program, the video images will be used to verify the species and amount of discarded fish that is recorded in a fisherman’s logbook. Observers may still be deployed on vessels to collect scientific data such as fish length measurements, interactions with protected species such as marine mammals and seabirds, and other data to support fisheries management.

The use of electronic monitoring systems would be voluntary and could apply to the midwater trawl fishery for whiting, the midwater rockfish trawl fishery, the bottom trawl fishery, and the fixed gear fishery.

The Council’s decisions were informed by several years of collaborative work with the seafood industry, managers and others to test electronic monitoring systems using exempted fishing permits. An exempted fishing permit allows exemptions from some regulations in order to study the effectiveness, bycatch rate, or other aspects of experimental fishing methods.

“I want to thank the industry and other stakeholders, NMFS West Coast Region, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, and Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission for their help in developing and testing this program, and especially NMFS headquarters for their policy and financial support for establishing the first large scale electronic monitoring regulatory program for U.S. fisheries,” Council Executive Director Chuck Tracy said in a statement.

Some electronic monitoring proponents are urging the expansion of the system beyond groundfish, to the highly migratory species sector, such as in the swordfish deep-set buoy gear proposed EFP. On a national scale, NMFS is exploring the use of EM in New England groundfish and herring/mackerel fisheries, Alaska small boat fixed gear fisheries and some party and charter boat fisheries in the Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico areas.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Acidic ocean could soon cost us lots of crabs

January 18, 2017 — Dungeness crab fisheries on the West Coast—valued at about $220 million annually—may face a strong downturn over the next 50 years.

The acidification of the ocean expected as seawater absorbs increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will reverberate through the West Coast’s marine food web in unexpected ways, say researchers.

Dungeness crabs, for example, will likely suffer as their food sources decline. But pteropods and copepods, tiny marine organisms with shells that are vulnerable to acidification, will likely experience only a slight overall decline because they are prolific enough to offset much of the impact, finds the study published in Global Change Biology.

Marine mammals and seabirds are less likely to be affected by ocean acidification, the study found.

“What stands out is that some groups you’d expect to do poorly don’t necessarily do so badly—that’s probably the most important takeaway here,” says Kristin Marshall, lead author of the study who pursued the research as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington and NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center. “This is a testament in part to the system’s resilience to these projected impacts. That’s sort of the silver lining of what we found.”

Read the full story at Futurity

Studies Focus on Acidic Ocean Impact on Dungeness Crabs

September 23, 2016 — Millions of pounds of Dungeness crab are pulled from Pacific Northwest waters each year in a more than century-old ritual for commercial and recreational fishermen.

But as marine waters absorb more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, federal scientists are worried that the ocean’s changing chemistry may threaten the sweet-flavored crustaceans.

So scientists with the NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center are exposing tiny crab larvae to acidic seawater in laboratory experiments to understand how ocean acidification might affect one of the West Coast’s most lucrative fisheries.

Research published this year found that Dungeness crab eggs and larvae collected from Puget Sound and exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide — which increases ocean acidity — grew more slowly and larvae were more likely to die than those in less corrosive seawater.

Now, researchers are taking the experiments a step further to study how the crabs respond to multiple stressors during various growth stages. They also plan to analyze the sublethal effects: Even if the crabs don’t die, are they affected in physiological or other ways by ocean acidification?

“They’re so economically and ecologically important here on the West Coast,” said Paul McElhany, a research ecologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center north of Seattle, who is leading the current experiments.

Crab larvae are valuable food for small salmon and forage fish like herring that are eaten by salmon. Dungeness crabs are also the top revenue-fetching fishery in Washington and Oregon. In 2014, nearly $200 million worth of crabs were harvested along the West Coast.

Read the full story at ABC News