Saving Seafood

Invasive species exploit a warming Gulf of Maine, sometimes with destructive results

October 28, 2015 — Until two years ago, if you had walked down to the shore of Maquoit Bay at low tide, you would have seen a meadow of eelgrass stretching nearly as far as the eye could see across the exposed seafloor. Here near the head of the bay, the sea grass stretched for two miles to the opposite shore, creating a vast nursery for the shellfish and forage species of Casco Bay, of which Maquoit is a part.

Now there’s only mud.

Green crabs took over the bay in the late fall of 2012 and the spring and summer of 2013, tearing up the eelgrass in their pursuit of prey and devouring almost every clam and mussel from here to Yarmouth. Fueled by record high water temperatures in 2012 and a mild winter in 2013, the green crab population grew so huge that the mudflats of Casco Bay became cratered with their burrowing, and much of the Maquoit and adjacent Middle Bay bottom turned into a lunar landscape.

Eelgrass coverage in Maquoit Bay fell by 83 percent. With nothing rooted to the bottom, the seawater turned far muddier, making life hard on any plants or baby clams that tried to recolonize the bay.

“We were astounded,” says Hilary Neckles of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, who linked the destruction to the green crabs. “The ecological ramifications really reverberate throughout the ecosystem, because sea grass is the preferred habitat of so many fish and shellfish species.”

Over the past decade, the Gulf of Maine has been one of the fastest-warming parts of the world’s oceans, allowing warm-water intruders to gain a toehold and earlier invaders such as the green crab to take over. Coupled with declines of the cold-loving species that have dominated the gulf for thousands of years, the ecological effects of even more gradual long-term warming are expected to be serious, even as precise forecasting remains beyond the state of scientific knowledge.

Scientists say the 2012 “ocean heat wave” was an unusual event, and that the 10-year accelerated warming trend is likely part of an oceanographic cycle and unlikely to continue. But the gulf has been consistently warming for more than 30 years, and long-term forecasts project average sea surface temperatures in our region could reach 2012-like levels by mid-century. The events of 2012 and the nearly as warm year that followed likely provide a preview of things to come, of a gulf radically transformed, with major implications for life on the Maine coast.

Genevieve MacDonald, who fishes for lobster out of Stonington, was standing on the dock at Isle au Haut one morning that summer, looked in the water, and couldn’t believe her eyes. There, swimming around the harbor like mackerel, were dozens and dozens of longfin squid, temperate creatures rarely seen in the chill waters of eastern Maine. “If you had a cast net you could have brought in a whole basket full of squid,” she recalls.

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

RICHARD SPINRAD & IAN BOYD: Our Deadened, Carbon-Soaked Seas

October 15, 2015 — Ocean and coastal waters around the world are beginning to tell a disturbing story. The seas, like a sponge, are absorbing increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, so much so that the chemical balance of our oceans and coastal waters is changing and a growing threat to marine ecosystems. Over the past 200 years, the world’s seas have absorbed more than 150 billion metric tons of carbon from human activities. Currently, that’s a worldwide average of 15 pounds per person a week, enough to fill a coal train long enough to encircle the equator 13 times every year.

We can’t see this massive amount of carbon dioxide that’s going into the ocean, but it dissolves in seawater as carbonic acid, changing the water’s chemistry at a rate faster than seen for millions of years. Known as ocean acidification, this process makes it difficult for shellfish, corals and other marine organisms to grow, reproduce and build their shells and skeletons.

About 10 years ago, ocean acidification nearly collapsed the annual $117 million West Coast shellfish industry, which supports more than 3,000 jobs. Ocean currents pushed acidified water into coastal areas, making it difficult for baby oysters to use their limited energy to build protective shells. In effect, the crop was nearly destroyed.

Read the full opinion piece from Richard W. Spinrad and Ian Boyd at The New York Times

NOAA Fisheries unveils climate science strategy

September 4, 2015 — As ocean conditions continue to change, putting ocean ecosystems and the communities that rely upon them at risk, NOAA took a first step in providing regional fisheries managers and stakeholders with information they need to reduce the effects of climate change and build resilience.

“NOAA just announced that for the globe the month of July — and actually, the entire year so far — was the warmest ever recorded, driven largely by record warm ocean temperatures,” said Eileen Sobeck, assistant NOAA administrator for fisheries.

“Those warmer waters – along with rising seas, coastal droughts and ocean acidification – are already putting people, businesses, and communities at risk. With this strategy, we’re taking a proactive approach in providing information on current and future conditions to try and reduce impacts and increase our resilience,” pointed out Sobeck.

The NOAA Fisheries Climate Science Strategy identifies seven key steps to increase production, delivery, and use of climate-related information to support the management of fish stocks, fisheries, and protected species. The steps focus on how a changing climate affects living marine resources, ecosystems, and the communities that depend on them, and how to respond to those changes.

Read the full story at IFFO

NOAA’s new Climate Science Strategy outlines efforts to build resilience

August 25, 2015 — As ocean conditions continue to change, putting ocean ecosystems and the communities that rely upon them at risk, today, NOAA took a first step in providing regional fisheries managers and stakeholders with information they need to reduce the effects of climate change and build resilience.

“NOAA just announced that for the globe the month of July—and actually, the entire year so far—was the warmest ever recorded, driven largely by record warm ocean temperatures,” said Eileen Sobeck, assistant NOAA administrator for fisheries. “Those warmer waters – along with rising seas, coastal droughts and  – are already putting people, businesses, and communities at risk. With this strategy, we’re taking a proactive approach in providing information on current and future conditions to try and reduce impacts and increase our resilience.”

The NOAA Fisheries Climate Science Strategy identifies seven key steps to increase production, delivery, and use of climate-related information to support the management of fish stocks, fisheries, and protected species. The steps focus on how a  affects living marine resources, ecosystems, and the communities that depend on them, and how to respond to those changes.

Read the full story at Phys.org

MARK BITTMAN: What oysters tell us about ocean acidification

July 21, 2015 — MARK BITTMAN — This is kind of the good news/bad news department, as so many things are: The good news is that terrific oysters are being farmed in several locations in California; the bad news is that ocean acidification — the absorption of carbon dioxide into the sea, a direct result of high levels of carbon in the atmosphere — is a direct threat to that industry.

I saw both when I visited Hog Island Oyster Co. in Marshall, an operation north of San Francisco on Tomales Bay. (Actually, I’ve eaten at and of Hog Island dozens of times, and even shot video there for a PBS series more than 10 years ago.)

Read the full story and watch the video at The New York Times 

 

Lessons for Alaska: Oregon Shellfish Hatchery Tackles Ocean Acidification

July 13, 2015 — A recent NOAA study pegged 2040 as the date for the potential end of Alaskan shellfish hatcheries. That is, unless serious mitigation efforts are put in place to combat ocean acidification. Last week we reported on the research, done at the Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery in Seward. Now, we’ll take a look at what a hatchery on the Oregon coast is doing to deal with these harmful changes in ocean chemistry.

The Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery is located in the small town of Tillamook, Oregon.

“This hatchery was started by Lee Hanson,” says Sue Cudd, who owns the hatchery now. “It was really the first shellfish hatchery that was commercial in operation. It started in 1978.”

She studied biology in school, worked for an oyster company for a while, and then came on with Lee Hanson to learn about the hatchery world. From the 1970s until 2006, there were natural ups and downs, but overall, things ran relatively smoothly.

“Then all of a sudden, in about 2006, we started seeing some pretty major problems. Then from the end of 2007 to the end of 2008, we couldn’t produce larvae anymore,” says Cudd.

Inside the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery – Photo courtesy of ceoas.oregonstate.edu

For a year and a half, they tried to produce. Even when they did manage to get some larvae, they wouldn’t survive and develop. It was a financial nightmare for the business.

“We lose money really fast because the production cost is the same without having any production. So, it was tough,” says Cudd. “We got help from some customers. The oyster growers association [helped] and one of our state senators got us some community development money, so we had time to be able to try to solve this problem. Without that, I don’t know what would have happened because we just lost money so fast.”

Read the full story and listen to the audio at Alaska Public Media