Saving Seafood

NOAA: Dungeness crab in peril from acidification

May 19, 2016 — The Dungeness crab fishery could decline West Coastwide, a new study has found, threatening a fishing industry worth nearly a quarter-billion dollars a year.

Scientists at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle found that pH levels likely in West Coast waters by 2100 at current rates of greenhouse-gas pollution would hurt the survivability of crab larvae.

Increasing ocean acidification is predicted to harm a wide range of sea life unable to properly form calcium carbonate shells as the pH drops. Now scientists at the NOAA’s Northwest Fishery Science Center of Seattle also have learned that animals with chitin shells — specifically Dungeness crabs — are affected, because the change in water chemistry affects their metabolism.

Carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, is pumped into the atmosphere primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. Levels of atmospheric C02 have been steadily rising since the Industrial Revolution in 1750 and today are higher than at any time in the past 800,000 years — and predicted to go higher.

When carbon dioxide mixes with ocean water it lowers the pH. By simulating the conditions in tanks of seawater at pH levels likely to occur in West Coast waters with rising greenhouse gas pollution, scientists were able to detect both a slower hatch of crab larvae, and poorer survival by the year 2100.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

Study: Program To Protect Fish Is Saving Fishermen’s Lives, Too

February 16, 2016 — A program used in many U.S. fisheries to protect the marine environment and maintain healthy fish populations may have an immensely important added benefit: preserving the lives of American fishermen.

That’s according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers found that catch share programs (where fishermen are allotted a set quota of the catch) reduce some of the notoriously risky behavior fishermen are known for, such as fishing in stormy weather, delaying vessel maintenance, or heading out to sea in a boat laden with too much heavy fishing gear.

Traditional fishery-management programs open and close fishing seasons on specific days. By contrast, catch shares work on a quota system, under which fishermen have a longer window to harvest their predetermined share. That gives fishermen the luxury (and perhaps the life-saving option) of time.

The findings don’t surprise Scott Campbell Sr., who spent most of his 35-year career fishing the Bering Sea for king crab the way it used to be done: derby-style. Crab season would open, and regardless of weather, Campbell and his crew would be on the water, hoping to nab enough crab during the season’s brief window to keep his business afloat.

“If you can picture a four-day season for crab — and that’s the only four days you’re going to get — and a 50-knot storm blows in for 24 to 48 hours of that four days, well, a lot of boats didn’t stop fishing, because that was their only revenue stream for the whole year,” says Campbell. “It forced us to take unnecessary risks for financial survival.” (His son, Scott Campbell Jr., is a former star of Discovery Channel’sDeadliest Catch, about the hazards of the fishing industry.)

That kind of risk-taking has historically made fishing one of the nation’s most dangerous professions, with a fatality rate more than 30 times the U.S. average, according to the new report.

Today there are approximately two dozen state and federal catch share programs in the U.S. Most launched in the last decade. However, derby-style fishing still exists in many U.S. regions, including the Pacific and Atlantic swordfish fisheries, the Northeast’s monkfish and herring fisheries, and the West Coast dungeness crab fishery.

Plenty of studies have looked at the environmental benefits of catch share programs — such as the reduction of bycatch, the ability to maximize the value of the catch, and direct impacts on the way fisheries are managed. But what makes this paper innovative is that it’s looking at actual risk-taking data, says the study’s author, Lisa Pfeiffer, an economist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Pfeiffer examined the impact a catch share management program had on fishing safety by looking at the particularly data-rich West Coast sablefish fishery.

Read the full story at National Public Radio

Scientists Link Oil Exposure to Reduced Survival of Fish

September 8, 2015 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Federal scientists may have found a link between the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and a decline of herring and pink salmon populations in Prince William Sound.

In a study published Tuesday in the online journal Scientific Reports, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that embryonic salmon and herring exposed to even very low levels of crude oil can develop heart defects.

Herring and pink salmon juveniles that were exposed to crude oil as embryos grew slower and swam slower, making them vulnerable to predators, said John Incardona, a research toxicologist at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, in a prepared statement

“These juvenile fish on the outside look completely normal, but their hearts are not functioning properly and that translates directly into reduced swimming ability and reduced survival,” Incardona said. “In terms of impacts to shore-spawning fish, the oil spill likely had a much bigger footprint than anyone realized.”

The 986-foot Exxon Valdez struck a charted Bligh Reef at 12:04 am March 24, 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. At the time, it was the largest spill in U.S. history. Oil extensively fouled shoreline spawning habitat of herring and pink salmon, the two most important commercial fish species in Prince William Sound.

Read the full story at The New York Times