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Extended Slow Zones to Protect Right Whales

March 1, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries announces the extension of three voluntary right whale Slow Zones (1) south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, (2) east of Boston, Massachusetts and (3) southeast of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

On February 26, 2021, the New England Aquarium’s survey team observed the presence of right whales south of Nantucket. The Nantucket Slow Zone is in effect through March 13, 2021.

On February 27, 2021, Rutgers University and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution slocum gliders detected the presence of right whales east of Boston, MA and southeast of Atlantic City, NJ. These Slow Zones are in effect through March 14, 2021.

Mariners are requested to route around these areas or transit through them at 10 knots or less.

Slow Zone Coordinates:

Southeast of Atlantic City, in effect through March 14, 2021

39 25 N
38 44 N
073 44 W
074 36 W

East of Boston, in effect through March 14, 2021

42 40 N
42 00 N
069 57 W
070 52 W

South of Nantucket, in effect through March 13, 2021

41 23 N
40 40 N
069 39 W
070 35 W

See the coordinates for all the slow zones currently in effect.

Read the full release here

As water temperatures rise, Rutgers scientists breed tougher shellfish

February 23, 2021 — Over the last half-century, global sea surface temperatures have been on the rise, but in the last decade they have increased at an accelerated rate.

New Jersey’s coastal waters, both along the Atlantic Coast and Delaware Bay, have been no exception. More alarming, recent research indicates that sea surface temperatures in the Northeast are warming two to three times faster than the global average. For instance, in 2012, water temperatures in the Mid-Atlantic reached the highest levels ever seen in over 150 years of recorded observations.

This rapid increase in water temperature is already influencing New Jersey’s marine species. Breeding habits, ranges and growth rates are adjusting as the environment in which they have evolved to thrive has changed at an unnatural pace. For the commercial fishermen and women whose livelihoods depend on the state’s fishery, particularly those who are only just beginning to experiment with shellfish aquaculture, warmer waters mean higher operational risk.

A new study from the Rutgers University Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory, which has been monitoring New Jersey’s shellfish stocks for more than a century, is working to combat the impacts of climate change by selectively breeding bay scallops and surf clams that can grow faster and tolerate higher water temperatures.

Read the full story at NJ Spotlight News

New Slow Zone off Atlantic City to Protect Right Whales

February 22, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries announces a new voluntary right whale Slow Zone off of Atlantic City, New Jersey, slightly north of the existing slow zone off Atlantic City.

On February 21, 2021, Rutgers University’s slocum glider detected the presence of right whales 46 nm southeast of Atlantic City. This area is slightly north of and overlaps with the slow zone southeast of Atlantic City announced last week.

This Slow Zone is in effect through March 8, 2021.

Mariners are requested to route around this area or transit through it at 10 knots or less.

Slow Zone Coordinates:

Southeast of Atlantic City, in effect through March 8, 2021

38 59 N
38 19 N
073 34 W
074 26 W

See the coordinates for all the slow zones currently in effect.

Read the full release here

New Study: Little Known About How Wind Farms Affect Critical Mid-Atlantic Ocean Feature

February 1, 2021 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

While not often in the spotlight, an oceanographic feature known as the “cold pool,” which stretches from Massachusetts to North Carolina, is critical for the health of many marine species. However, a new study from the Science Center for Marine Fisheries finds that, despite its importance, not much is known about how the growing offshore wind industry could affect the cold pool, and the marine life that depends on it.

The study, from Dr. Travis Miles, Sarah Murphy, Dr. Josh Kohut, Sarah Bosetti, and Dr. Daphne Munroe, all of Rutgers University, reviewed existing literature on how wind farm construction affects ocean environments in Europe, where most offshore wind farm construction has so far taken place, and lays out what can be learned from the European experience, and what aspects about potential interactions remain unknown.

Spanning much of the Mid-Atlantic Bight, the cold pool is a layer of cold water, just beneath warm surface water, extending to the ocean bottom that forms every spring and lasts until the fall. Its annual appearance is a vital part of the life cycle of many marine species.

“It supports some of the most lucrative fisheries in the world, some of the most sustainably managed fisheries in the world,” said Dr. Munroe. “We’ve got species that live off the coast of New Jersey that you wouldn’t expect to live here because they need cold water. And it’s that cold pool that provides that habitat that allows them to live here.”

According to the study, Europe’s experience with wind farms has shown that there is some impact from the placement of wind turbines. Specifically, the study states, “turbines induce downstream impacts on ocean velocities, turbulence, and stratification.” However, the extent of this interference is highly dependent on the site, the size of the wind farm and turbines, and underlying ocean conditions and wind speed.

It is not clear how much the European experience will translate to the Mid-Atlantic. With the cold pool, the waters of the Mid-Atlantic are much more clearly stratified between layers of warm and cold water, and tidal currents are generally weaker than those in Northern Europe. Those two factors may affect whether or not wind turbines disrupt the cold pool and the ocean stratification that is an essential feature for the region’s marine life.

“Understanding how fast the ocean moves in our region relative to how fast the ocean moves in other regions where some of this research is done is super critical,” said Dr. Miles. “Tides in Europe move very fast. In the Mid-Atlantic region we have relatively slow currents unless we have storms come through.”

The study’s authors specifically identify three areas that will require future study: the level of overlap between the cold pool and the areas currently being considered for offshore wind development; the threshold of stratification that will be affected by offshore wind turbines; and how development will impact the seasonal development of the cold pool.

“We understand a bit about the cold pool, we understand a little bit about how offshore wind has impacted seasonal stratification off the European coast, but we don’t know what will happen when wind farms are deployed off the Mid-Atlantic coast in the specific conditions of the cold pool,” said Dr. Kohut.

Watch the researchers discuss their findings here

Webinar Invite: New Research to Identify Climate-vulnerable Stock Assessments

January 26, 2021 — The following was released by Lenfest Ocean Program:

Please join us on Friday, January 29, at 1pm ET for a webinar on “New Research to Identify Climate-vulnerable Stock Assessments”. The webinar will be recorded. Please do forward this invite to other colleagues who may be interested. Webinar registration and project details are below.

Project Background

Regional Fisheries Management Councils rely on stock assessments to help set catch limits. However, climate change can impact the ability to accurately assess a fish stock. For example, it can change a fish stock’s recruitment and natural mortality rates, a species’ range and distribution, and overall stock productivity. In order to support long-term sustainable fisheries management, there is a need to understand which stock assessments are at greatest risk from climate change and how to integrate risk into the stock assessment process. The Lenfest Ocean Program is supporting Dr. Olaf Jensen, University of Wisconsin, to lead a team of researchers to identify and prioritize fish and invertebrate populations that are at greatest risk of stock assessment failure due to climate change.

This project is an outcome of the Lenfest Ocean Program Ideas Lab, a workshop held in October 2019 to identify research priorities for shifting marine species. Learn more here.

Register for the webinar here.

Learn more about the project on our website.

Research Team

  • Olaf Jensen, University of Wisconsin- Madison
  • John Weidenmann, Rutgers University
  • Chip Collier, South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council
  • Roger Mann, Virginia Institute of Marine Science
  • Kathy Mills, Gulf of Maine Research Institute
  • Vince Saba, NOAA Fisheries
  • Rujia Bi, University of Wisconsin

Rutgers Cooperative Extension to Host Introductory Fisheries Science for Stakeholders (IFISSH) Course

January 12, 2021 — The following was released by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

Rutgers Cooperative Extension is offering an introductory fisheries science course for stakeholders of New Jersey’s marine fisheries. The Introductory Fisheries Science for Stakeholders (IFISSH) course covers topics related to fisheries biology, oceanography, surveys of marine fishery resources, collection of commercial and recreational fishery catch data, stock assessments, and fisheries management.

Classes will be held weekly via Zoom on Tuesday evenings (6:30 – 9:00 p.m.) from February 16 through April 20. The program fee is $25.00 per person. Register by February 9 at this link or by contacting Kelly Jurgensen at kjurgensen@co.ocean.nj.us or 732-349-1152.

Visit the IFISSH web page or download the course flyer for additional details.

If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Douglas Zemeckis (County Agent III – Assistant Professor), Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Rutgers University at zemeckis@njaes.rutgers.edu or 732-349-1152.

Survey shows extent of covid-19 impact to East Coast fishermen

December 30, 2020 — Up to 40 percent of fishermen from Maine to North Carolina suspended their operations in spring 2020 as the covid-19 pandemic collapsed the seafood market, according to new findings from a Rutgers University study.

“A lot of what we found was that in the early months of the pandemic a lot of fishermen were not fishing, or waiting it out,” said Sarah Lindley Smith, a post-doctoral research associate in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers, a longtime center of research into the social and community effects of changing fisheries.

An online survey in spring 2020 brought responses from 258 Northeast fishermen and the results are published in the science journal PLOS One. Covering the critical early pandemic weeks of March to June 2020, the researchers also looked at landings reports and found that catches for some species like squid and scallops declined compared with the same time period of previous years.

But some other landings, including black sea bass and haddock, were on par or even higher than earlier years. Alongside their survey results, the researchers say that suggests some fishermen kept fishing hard even as they earned less.

“Groundfishermen were more likely to continue fishing” than those in other fisheries, said Smith. Even as the dominant restaurant market – accounting for 70 percent of U.S. seafood sales – vanished in those early months, local retail demand especially in New England helped keep crews working to find cod and haddock.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Pandemic disrupted commercial fishing in Northeast, study finds

December 21, 2020 — The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted commercial fishing activities in the Northeastern U.S. and Mid-Atlantic, according to a new study.

Though many fishers suffered a decline in income, survey results — published Thursday in the journal PLOS One — suggest many were able to adapt and continue fishing through the market disruptions triggered by the pandemic.

With indoor dining services restricted across much of the country, restaurants have been especially hard hit by the pandemic’s economic consequences. When restaurants falter, those that supply them suffer, too.

Between March and June, researchers at Rutgers University surveyed commercial fishers from Maine through North Carolina to find out how those who make their living on the water were coping as demand for fine dining dried up.

Read the full story at UPI

COVID-19 pandemic had big impact on commercial fishing in Northeast

December 18, 2020 — With restaurants and supply chains disrupted due to the global coronavirus pandemic, two-fifths of commercial fishermen surveyed from Maine through North Carolina did not go fishing earlier this year, according to a Rutgers study that also documented their resilience and adaptation.

Of those who kept fishing, nearly all reported a decline in income compared with previous years, according to the survey of 258 fishers in the Northeast published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The study, which covers March to June, also examined data on fish landings and found that the catch for some species, such as squid and scallops, decreased compared with previous years. But the catch for other species, such as black sea bass and haddock, was on par with or higher than previous years, suggesting that many fishermen fished as much as they had been before the pandemic, while earning less income.

“They may have kept fishing to pay their bills or crew, or to maintain their livelihoods or their quotas until markets rebound,” said main author Sarah Lindley Smith, a post-doctoral associate in the Department of Human Ecology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Most of the fishermen who stopped fishing during the early months of the pandemic planned to resume fishing instead of leaving the industry.”

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Fish More Vulnerable to Warming Water Than First Thought

July 2, 2020 — Global warming looks like it will be a bigger problem for the world’s fish species than scientists first thought: A new study shows that when fish are spawning or are embryos they are more vulnerable to hotter water.

With medium-level human-caused climate change expected by the end of the century, the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes will be too hot for about 40% of the world’s fish species in the spawning or embryonic life stages, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science. That means they could go extinct or be forced to change how and where they live and reproduce.

Until now, biologists had just studied adult fish. For adult fish, around 2% to 3% of the species would be in the too-hot zone in the year 2100 with similar projected warming. So using this new approach reveals a previously unknown problem for the future of fish, scientists said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New York Times

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