Saving Seafood

Not Just a Boys’ Club: Women Hooking Into Fishing Industry

April 28, 2017 — “At the beginning of my fishing career, all the world told me that the trade was for men,” says Chrifa Nimri, “but now all my colleagues respect and call me captain.”

The 69-year-old Tunisian fisherwoman is one of a very small female minority in a very male-dominated profession – commercial fishing.

Around the world, the dangerous work of hauling in the catch at sea is overwhelmingly performed by men. But if you expand the definition of fishing to include processers and marketers of seafood, workers in small-scale and artisanal fisheries, and collectors of clams and other shellfish, women account for a substantial part of the global industry.

Sara Skamser has worked in or around commercial fishing for nearly her entire adult life. In her early 20s, she arrived on the Oregon coast and collected her first paychecks salmon fishing and crabbing in local waters. Then Skamser asked for jobs on bigger boats home-ported in Newport — better pay and bigger adventure and all. But, she recalls, none of those skippers would hire her.

“No. They said no.” She mimics them. “’Uh, I know you could do the job. Gosh, you’re probably stronger than me. Uhhh, but I don’t think my wife would like it.’ Or, ‘Uhhh. I would feel terrible if you got hurt on my boat.'”

Read the full story at Voice of America

Oregon Sea Grant funding in the crosshairs

March 7, 2017 — A budget proposal reportedly being floated by the Trump administration would end Oregon State University’s Sea Grant program and could potentially gut other OSU programs as well.

The proposal calls for a 17 percent budget reduction to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which funds research on climate change, ocean conditions, weather patterns and other aspects of earth science. Among the NOAA programs targeted for elimination is Sea Grant, a research and education initiative at 33 U.S. universities, including Oregon State.

The proposed cuts were reported on Friday by the Washington Post, based on a four-page budget memo that has not been made public by the administration.

Oregon Sea Grant Director Shelby Walker said the funding cuts, if approved, would devastate her program. Currently, Walker said, Oregon Sea Grant gets about $2.4 million of its annual budget of $5 million from the federal agency, with another $1.2 million in matching funds from OSU tied directly to NOAA dollars.

“It would basically eliminate the program,” she said of the White House budget proposal.

Read the full story at the Corvallis Gazette-Times

Trump’s administration causes concerns at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium

January 27, 2017 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Dozens of scientists are meeting this week in Anchorage to talk climate change, fisheries, marine mammals and more, during the annual Alaska Marine Science Symposium; however, this year the climate is a little bit different.

“There’s a palpable fear that scientists are concerned about the way that this administration views science in general,” said Sean McDonald, who is attending the conference from the University of Washington. “We think of science as important.”

During President Donald Trump’s first week in office, he has signed an executive order to shrink the federal workforce – a move that prospective scientists say could hamper their careers.

“Last week, I was actually looking at several federal jobs,” said Shea Steingass, a student at Oregon State University. “I’m planning to complete my Ph.D., in December. And with the hiring freeze, that completely shut that aspect down of my ability to apply for those.”

Read the full story at KTUU

Life on the Line: OSU scientists track effects of a changing ocean on tiny sea life

July 22, 2016 — NEWPORT, Ore. — In a cold mist under gray skies, the Pacific Ocean heaved against the boat as two scientists from Oregon State University pulled a net full of life from the deep.

It was a July day, but it felt like a day in December.

In the net life swarmed, much of it too small to be seen with the unaided eye. The net held the keys to help scientists unlock how creatures of the sea are affected by changing ocean conditions and those effects on the aquatic food chain. And more specifically, the effects to salmon, a fish of much importance to humans.

For 20 years scientists have made bi-monthly trips on what is called the Newport Hydrographic Line, which takes them to the same seven sampling stations along a 25-mile path perpendicular to the coast. The stations are physical points on a map. There are no buoys or other structures that mark their locations. The scientists find them using GPS.

They launch their research vessel, the R/V Elakha, from a dock in Yaquina Bay that sits along a jagged bulge of land on which OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center resides. The trips have amassed an extraordinary amount of data about the sea and the life within it. The data is routinely posted on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center website and is used primarily to help forecast salmon runs. But the data has also told the story of changing ocean conditions and its impact on the food chain.

“We can also look at the changes in the bioenergetics of the food chain across the whole 20-year time series,” says OSU research assistant Jennifer Fisher. “It doesn’t just relate to salmon; it relates to sardines and (other) fish. It gives us an idea of ocean acidification, toxic algae – lots of things.”

Fisher has been going on these trips to sea for five years aboard the 54-foot research vessel owned and operated by OSU.

On this day, Fisher, OSU lab technician Tom Murphy and deckhand Dave Weaver use two different cone-shaped nets to capture organisms that live in the sea and that form the basis of the oceanic food chain.

Fisher’s primary interest in the day’s catch is in a tiny crustacean called a copepod. These creatures feed on the sea’s phytoplankton. Copepods are animals with large antennae and are only a millimeter or two in length. Under a microscope their bodies are an elongated oval protected by an exoskeleton. But they are nearly transparent. And inside their bodies scientists have discovered a lipid sac, or stored fat.

Read the full story at KVAL