Saving Seafood

Gulf of Maine waters warmed to highest fall temperatures on record

January 13, 2022 — The Gulf of Maine – which has been warming faster than 96 percent of the world’s ocean areas – experienced its warmest fall surface water temperatures on record last year in what scientists tracking it call a “distinct regime shift” for the ecosystem.

The Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland announced its findings Wednesday in its seasonal warming report, which showed average sea surface temperatures in the gulf hit 59.9 degrees, or more than 4 degrees above the long-term average.

Last fall’s figures exceeded even those in the infamous “Northwest Atlantic Ocean heat wave” of 2012, which triggered a two-year explosion in green crabs that devoured clams and eelgrass meadows and led to the starvation of puffin chicks. That warming cycle also triggered the early shedding of Maine lobsters, which fueled armed confrontations between Canadian lobstermen and truckers trying to carry the soft-shell boon to New Brunswick processing plants at the height of Canada’s own lobstering season.

Read the full story and listen to the audio at the Portland Press Herald

 

Heat, no food, deadly weather: Climate change kills seabirds

December 2, 2021 — The warming of the planet is taking a deadly toll on seabirds that are suffering population declines from starvation, inability to reproduce, heat waves and extreme weather.

Climate-related losses have hit albatrosses off the Hawaiian islands, northern gannets near the British Isles and puffins off the Maine coast. Some birds are less able to build nests and raise young as sea levels rise, while others are unable to find fish to eat as the ocean heats up, researchers have found.

Common murres and Cassin’s auklets that live off the West Coast have also died in large numbers from conditions scientists directly tied to global warming.

With less food, rising seas that encroach on islands where birds roost and increasingly frequent hurricanes that wipe away nests, many seabirds have been producing fewer chicks, researchers say.

And tern species that live off New England have died during increasing rain and hailstorms scientists link to climate change. Some species, including endangered roseate terns, also can’t fledge chicks because more frequent severe weather kills their young, said Linda Welch, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Read the full story from the Associated Press

Scientists solve mystery of where puffins go in the winter

February 17, 2016 — PORTLAND (AP) — Researchers say they’ve found an answer to the long-standing question of where Maine’s Atlantic puffins spend the winter: far off New Jersey and New York.

Puffins are the colorful seabirds of the auk family that are graceful in the water and awkward on land and air. The birds spend the spring breeding season and summer in coastal areas before heading out to open ocean waters in the autumn and winter.

The National Audubon Society has described the exact winter locations of Maine’s puffins as “long a mystery” to scientists. But the organization said Tuesday that locators recovered from 19 puffins in recent years show the birds spent a chunk of the winter several states away from Maine.

The area most frequented by puffins in the winter was about 200 miles southeast of Cape Cod, said Stephen Kress, the director of the Audubon Seabird Restoration Program. Kress said the data showed puffins winter over underwater canyons and sea mountains in the Atlantic.

Read the full story at the Associated Press at Portland Press Herald