Saving Seafood

Warm ocean could mean early boom in 2016 lobster catch

March 3, 2016 — ROCKPORT, Maine (AP) — Maine’s lobster catches will likely peak early this year, which could mean an abundance of cheap lobster for consumers and bad news for the state’s signature industry, a group of scientists reported on Thursday.

Maine’s busy summer lobster fishing season typically picks up around early July, the same time the state’s tourism industry gets in gear. But scientists with the Portland-based Gulf of Maine Research Institute predict this year’s lobster season will get rolling two or three weeks early.

The scientists, who unveiled their findings during the Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport, pinned the early lobster season on warming ocean temperatures. Along Maine’s coast, temperatures are 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal. That means lobsters are likely to move inshore, shed their shells and become more easily trapped earlier this summer, they said.

An early lobster season can disrupt Maine’s valuable lobster supply chain, which is partially dependent on big July and August catches, and make prices plummet. Prices at the dock fell 16 percent in 2012, a year of early catches, and prices to consumers fell, too. The 2014 haul shattered state value records because of a high-volume catch that arrived on schedule.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at New Jersey Herald

Acidic Ocean Leads to Warped Skeletons for Young Coral

February 19, 2016 — Rising emissions of carbon dioxide create twin threats for coral in oceans around the world: warmer temperatures, which can cause mass bleachings, and ocean acidification, which can hinder the animals’ ability to build reefs.

But a new study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances suggests that ocean acidification may be the bigger worry in some waters.

Studying a chain of remote Australian islands in the Indian Ocean, researchers found that more acidic waters (those that have absorbed more atmospheric carbon dioxide) cause serious skeletal deformities in juvenile coral in subtropical waters.

Using 3-D imaging techniques, they saw that young coral from the Houtman Abrolhos islands developed skeletons that were missing sections or had very porous and fragile surfaces.

Other studies have shown similar effects of ocean acidification, but the researchers also discovered something that had not been seen in earlier studies of tropical coral development — higher temperatures didn’t have a negative effect on coral skeleton formation.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Warmer waters affecting the New England fishing industry

December 9, 2015 — A new study has found the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost every other ocean in the world. For the first time, it links warming sea temperatures to the collapse of cod stocks in the region.

For Portland’s fishing community, the first hours of daylight are the most important. At the town’s fish exchange, boats rush to unload their catch, ready to be sorted, and sold.

They are not just working against time.

Today’s landing at the Portland fish exchange was about 40,000 pounds worth. That’s not considered very much. Out of that, just seven boxes worth of cod; that’s about 500 pounds.”

Cod stocks have been declining here for decades. Federal quotas were slashed by 75 percent back in May, to help the species recover.

Now a new study suggests that intervention may have been too late.

Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute says, “You assume that if you pull back on the fishing, the stock will have the same productivity that it had in the past.  But our work really shows that the productivity in Gulf of Maine cod was declining pretty rapidly as the waters were getting warm and so by not factoring that in they weren’t able to rein in the quotas fast enough.”

Read the full story from CNN at WWLP

 

Moratorium on Northern Shrimp Commercial Fishing Maintained for 2016 Season

December 8, 2015 — PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

In response to the depleted condition of the northern shrimp resource, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Section extended the moratorium on commercial fishing for the 2016 fishing season. The 2015 Stock Status Report for Gulf of Maine (GOM) Northern Shrimp indicates abundance and biomass indices for 2012-2015 were the lowest on record for the 32-year time series. The stock has experience failed recruitment for five consecutive years, including the three smallest year classes on record. As a result, the indices of fishable biomass from 2012-2015 are the lowest on record. 

Recruitment of northern shrimp is related to both spawning biomass and ocean temperatures, with higher spawning biomass and colder temperatures producing stronger recruitment. Ocean temperatures in western GOM shrimp habitat have increased over the past decade and reached unprecedented highs in 2011 and 2012. While 2014 and 2015 temperatures were cooler, temperatures are predicted to continue to rise as a result of climate change. This suggests an increasingly inhospitable environment for northern shrimp. The Northern Shrimp Technical Committee considers the stock to have collapsed with little prospect of recovery in the immediate future. The 2015 Stock Status Report is available at http://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file/5666017a2015NorthernShrimpAssessment.pdf. 

To maintain the time series of data collected from northern shrimp commercial fishery catches, a cooperative winter sampling program was approved with a 22 metric ton research set aside quota. The goal of the program is to continue the winter time series of biological data (e.g. size composition, egg hatch timing) collected from GOM northern shrimp fishery catches in the absence of a fishery.  Four trawl vessels will be contracted to fish four regions with a maximum trip limit of 1,800 pounds, and two trappers with a weekly trap limit of 40 traps and a 600 pound per week limit. Participating trawlers and trappers will be able to sell their catch.  Trawlers will also be compensated $500/trip. 

“Considering survey indices are the lowest on record, with an unprecedented five consecutive years of weak recruitment and continuing unfavorable environmental conditions, the Section maintained the moratorium in 2016,” stated Northern Shrimp Section Chair Mike Armstrong of Massachusetts. “The Section is committed to protecting the remaining spawning biomass and allowing as much reproduction to take place as possible.”

For more information, please contact, Max Appelman, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mappelman@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.             

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

Climate Change a Pervasive Reality on Cape Cod

October 27, 2015 — What if climate change isn’t something that is going to happen in the distant future, somewhere far away? What if it’s happening right here, right now? That’s the question the Cape Cod Times is asking – and answering – all week in a special series on the local impacts of climate change, from shrinking beaches and disappearing lobsters to more aggressive storms.

Cape Cod Times reporter Doug Fraser has been covering Cape Cod since 1993, and photographer Steve Heaslip has been on the beat for thirty four years. Both say they’ve witnessed climate change with their own eyes, and relish every opportunity to shine a spotlight on the issue.

But the picture isn’t a pretty one. Consider:

  • Air temperatures have been rising rapidly. Changes in winter temperatures have been particularly dramatic, increasing an average of 1.3 degrees F per decade between 1970 and 2000. Summer temperatures have risen just half a degree per decade during that same time. Still, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, Massachusetts could see between 3 and 28 days over 100 degrees F by the year 2100; we currently see fewer than two such days.

Read the full story at WCAI

 

Gulf of Maine’s cold-craving species forced to retreat to deeper waters

October 27, 2015 — For 178 years, dams stood across the Penobscot River here, obstructing salmon and other river-run fish from reaching the watershed’s vast spawning grounds, which extend all the way to the Quebec border.

Now, two years after the dam’s removal, the salmon’s proponents fear the fish face a more fearsome threat: a warming sea.

In recent years, the Gulf of Maine has been one of the fastest-warming parts of the world’s oceans, and climate change models project average sea surface temperatures here to increase by another 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2065, a development that could extirpate Atlantic salmon and other cold-loving species, many of which already find Maine at the southern edge of their ranges.

“We’re all for taking down the dams and all the things that are going on to restore habitat, but how much are they looking at the evidence?” asks Gerhard Pohle of the Huntsman Marine Science Center in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, co-author of a study predicting how the changes are likely to affect 33 commercial species over the next 75 years. “Distribution of salmon in the Gulf of Maine would be such that there wouldn’t be many left at all.”

The warming gulf is already presenting challenges to many of its cold-loving denizens. Scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Services, or NMFS, have recorded the steady retreat of a range of commercially or ecologically important fish species away from the Maine coast and into deep water in the southwestern part of the gulf, where bottom water temperatures are cooler.

The retreat, which intensified over the past decade, includes cod, pollock, plaice, and winter and yellowtail flounder. Other native species that once ranged south of Long Island – lobster, sand lance and red hake – have stopped doing so, presumably because the water there is now too warm.

“You can imagine that when you have species at the southern end of their ranges, they will be really sensitive to these changes,” says Michael Fogarty, chief of the Ecosystem Assessment Program at the NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. “They will either shift distribution or their survival rates might change.”

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

Fishermen worry as black sea bass stake New England claim

September 25, 2015 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – As waters warm off the coast of New England, black sea bass are moving north and, fishermen say, threatening the region’s most valuable aquatic species: the lobster.

The influx of sea bass – among a number of species that are appearing in greater numbers off of Maine and New Hampshire as ocean temperatures climb – has some fishermen and lobstermen saying the best solution is to ease restrictions on catching the newcomers.

The sea bass prey on lobsters, a much more economically important commercial species and a key piece of New England’s culture, and quotas that have drifted downward in recent years should be increased, fishermen said.

“What we need is a major increase in the allowable catch, both commercially and recreationally, because black sea bass are wiping out your lobsters,” said Marc Hoffman, a Long Island, New York, recreational bass fisherman.

Hoffman, who sits on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission advisory panel for sea bass, said the time to raise the quota is overdue. He said it is particularly important in southern New England waters, where fishing managers say the population of lobsters has fallen to the lowest levels on record.

Black sea bass are a sought-after sport fish, but they are also popular as food and are growing in commercial value – federal statistics show black sea bass were worth a record of more than $8.5 million in 2013.

Scientists with the commission say more research is needed to determine just how abundant black sea bass are in New England waters. But about a quarter of the black sea bass caught in 2013 came ashore in New England; the fish is more often caught in the mid-Atlantic states, especially New Jersey and Virginia.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at New Jersey Herald

 

Climate change causes timing shifts in fish reproduction

August 10, 2015 — SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Research by Rebecca Asch, a recent graduate of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, shows a strong correlation between warmer ocean temperatures and changes in the timing of fish reproduction.

The study, “Climate Change and Decadal Shifts in the Phenology of Larval Fishes in the California Current Ecosystem ,” was published in the July 9 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. This is the first study to examine the effects of temperature, upwelling, and abundance of zooplankton on fish phenology in the Southern California Current ecosystem.

Climate variability has changed the seasonal cycle of larvae production by fishes in the California Current. Such shifts in seasonal, biological processes are known as phenology. Changes in phenology are studied by scientists as a key way to assess the effects of climate change on a species.

There have been extensive studies on the phenology of terrestrial (land) species, but comparatively few studies on how climate variability affects seasonal behavior of marine species. Existing studies indicate that changes in seasonal cycles are occurring earlier in most terrestrial ecosystems. Climate change may cause the phenology of marine animals to change more rapidly than terrestrial species.

Unseasonably warm ocean temperatures may also affect migration patterns, bringing several marine species usually found in regions closer to the Equator closer to Southern California. In February, a pod of false killer whales were seen from the Scripps Pier; this was the first time these whales have been seen north of central Baja California.

Read the full story at Phys.org