Saving Seafood

Maine’s coastal waters are unhealthy from carbon, acidity. Are seaweed gardens the answer?

February 6, 2017 — Seaweed cultivation has been promoted in recent years in Maine as a way to produce local nutritious food and to boost the coastal economy.

Now, seaweed harvesters say their industry provides yet another benefit: environmental protection, in the form of improving water quality.

A new study from Bigelow Laboratory for Marine Sciences in Boothbay indicates growing and harvesting seaweed may be an antidote for increasing carbon and acidity levels in the ocean, which is harming a variety of marine life.

Since January 2016, the lab has been studying the effect of kelp growth on surrounding carbon levels at the Ocean Approved seaweed farm off Great Chebeague Island in Casco Bay.

The early results indicate that sugar kelp absorbs carbon from the surrounding water as it grows. This is prompting the lab to expand its research on kelp and to conduct a separate study on the carbon-absorption abilities of wild-grown rockweed.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Eelgrass and Ocean Acidification: California Takes Action

October 4, 2016 — What do eelgrass, the California state legislature, crabbers, and Ocean Conservancy have in common? They are all part of the solution in California’s remarkable actions this past week to address the threats that ocean acidification presents to California’s healthy fisheries, marine habitat and coastal jobs.

Governor Jerry Brown just signed into law a pair of bills that will address the concerns over ocean acidification raised by oyster growers, crabbers and others who make a living off of the ocean.

The two pieces of state legislation were crafted by Assemblymember Das Williams and Senator Bill Monning, as tailored place-based solutions to what amounts to a global problem. SB 1363 will protect and restore eelgrass habitats, increasing carbon sequestration amongst the roots of this coastal vegetation.

Read the full story at the Ocean Conservancy

CONNECTICUT: Beneath the waves, climate change puts marine life on the move

August 29, 2016 — There was a hefty irony to the announcement by Connecticut’s two U.S. senators earlier this summer that they were joining the sponsorship for a National Lobster Day next month.

The iconic symbol of the state’s fishing industry for years, Long Island Sound was once flush with lobster, traps and people who made their livings from them.

But no more.

Connecticut’s lobster landings topped 3.7 million pounds a year, worth $12 million, in the late 1990s, but by 2014 had diminished to about 127,000 pounds worth a little more than $600,000.

Instead of the picture of fishing success, lobster has become the face of climate change in New England: a sentinel of warming water, ocean acidification and other man-made impacts that have sent them and dozens of other marine animals scurrying in search of a more hospitable environment.

“We’ve found quite dramatic shifts in where species are found,” said Malin Pinsky, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist with the Rutgers University Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources who researches how climate change affects fish and fisheries. He has used data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to create OceanAdapt, which includes animations that regionally show how dozens of marine species have moved in the last 50 years. “Especially here in the Northeast you have something like American lobster about 200 miles further north than they used to be, and other species shifting similar amounts.”

Read the full story at the Connecticut Mirror

REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN & REP. CARLOS CURBELO: We must overcome the threat of growing acidity in our oceans

July 12, 2016 — Our two districts are among the most recognizable in Florida because they are defined by the waters around them. South Florida’s world-famous beaches, delicious seafood, incomparable fishing, boating, and sailing, spectacular marine life, and cultural connections to the Caribbean, can all be traced back to the sea.

Even the limestone bedrock we live on was created over thousands of years, in part, by the rise and fall of the ocean. South Florida’s economy and our very way of life — from the shores of Biscayne Bay to Key West — all depend on a healthy ocean.

However, our coastal waters are facing tremendous challenges from continuing pollution and water quality issues, and now from ocean acidification, as well.

Ocean acidification occurs when carbon dioxide is absorbed by seawater and the resultant chemical reactions increase the concentration of hydrogen ions in the water, making it more acidic. When the ocean becomes more acidic, animals like stone crabs, lobsters, and corals have trouble building their own natural defenses that they rely on for survival. The impacts on these species and our treasured coral reefs can ripple out to touch all our lives.

Read the full op-ed at the Miami Herald

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

Global fisheries: Benefits, trade-offs of alternative approaches to recovering depleted fisheries

May 18, 2016 — The dangers for the world’s seas and oceans are many — from climate change and warming waters to overfishing related to the needs of growing world populations. As a major 2015 paper in the journal Science noted, extinction of many species is a looming reality, given the current decline in quality of aquatic ecosystems. The perils for large marine mammals, sharks and other large fish are well known to the public. But there are many other dangers. For example, the rapid rate of ocean acidification, which appears to be unprecedented in Earth’s history, threatens to decimate shellfish populations.

Of course, debates about overfishing and sustainable management practices rage in virtually every fishery across the world. These policy debates are seldom simple to resolve and involve complex tradeoffs: Traditional fishing rights versus government regulation; short-term profits versus longer-term sustainable growth; local population food needs versus larger ecological and stewardship concerns. Organizations such as the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations keep statistics on the state of fisheries and their relative health. The FAO’s annual The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture provides a comprehensive overview. For U.S. reporters and editors covering these issues on the nation’s coasts, it is worth getting to know some of the long and complex policy and regulatory history in this area, which for nearly four decades has been governed by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

Read the full story at Journalist’s Resource

West Coast fisheries are at risk as climate change disturbs the ocean’s chemistry

April 20, 2016 — The West Coast’s abundant fisheries are at risk as the region’s waters become more acidic, a group of scientists warn.

Researchers from the West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel released a report this month that projects dire changes to ocean chemistry and marine life, and recommends ways to avert it, including restoring kelp forests and eelgrass beds and combating marine pollution.

The panel convened in 2013 to study how global carbon emissions are lowering pH and reducing oxygen levels in the ocean off the West Coast.

“Although ocean acidification is a global phenomenon, emerging research indicates that the U.S.-Canadian West Coast will face some of the earliest, most severe changes in ocean carbon chemistry,” the report says.

Because of the way the Pacific Ocean circulates, the West Coast is exposed to more acidic water than other areas of the globe. Oyster production in the Pacific Northwest has already declined, as changes in ocean chemistry tamper with shell formation, and scientists warn that popular game fish and other species are also at risk.

Read the full story from the Los Angeles Times

Ocean souring on climate change

April 18, 2016 — The West Coast’s famously abundant fisheries are at risk as the region’s waters become more acidic, a group of scientists have warned.

The researchers, with the West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel, this month released a report that projects dire changes to ocean chemistry and marine life, and recommends ways to avert it, including restoring kelp forests and eelgrass beds, and combating local marine pollution.

The panel, including Andrew Dickson, a professor of marine chemistry at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, convened in 2013 to study how global carbon emissions are lowering pH and reducing oxygen levels in the ocean off the West Coast.

“Although ocean acidification is a global phenomenon, emerging research indicates that the U.S.-Canadian West Coast will face some of the earliest, most severe changes in ocean carbon chemistry,” the report states.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune 

Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Threaten Corals and Oysters

April 5, 2016 — Tiny, thin-shelled oysters; crumbling coral reefs; fish unable to make sense of odors; decimated plankton populations. Those are some of the nightmare scenarios conjured by the prospect of a rapidly acidifying ocean caused by unchecked carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning.

Here’s the chemistry: when carbon dioxide and water mix, they form a weak acid, called carbonic acid. Add enough carbon dioxide, and the pH, or acidity, of the water will start to change. Of course, the ocean is a big place with a lot of water, and it naturally contains other chemicals that can help stabilize the pH.

On the other hand, the ocean has absorbed more than a quarter of all human-produced carbon dioxide since the industrial revolution. The result: globally, the pH of the ocean has dropped by an average of 0.1 pH units. That may not sound like much but, since the pH scale is logarithmic, it translates to a 25 to 30 percent increase in acidity. And, as ocean water becomes more acidic, the carbonate that many animals use to build their calcium skeletons and shells becomes scarcer.

Read and listen to the full story at WCAI

Shellfish Farmers Fear Ocean Acidification May Affect Harvests in 2016

January 8, 2016 — Ocean acidification was blamed for the shutdown of the Washington oyster fishery last year and B.C. could be next, partially for the same reason, said Rob Saunders, owner of Island Scallops at Qualicum Beach.

Speaking to TheProvince, Mr Saunders said that Island Scallops, which provides seed oysters and scallops for farmers, lost 90 per cent of its oyster larvae last year.

Acidic water affects the oysters’ ability to grow a hard shell. It takes two years for oysters to mature for harvest, and Mr Saunders said oysters may be in short supply this year.

Read the full story at The Fish Site