Saving Seafood

Climatic conflict: Is the Mackerel War a model for future trade disputes?

June 20, 2018 — What happens when a fish crosses the border? A new Rutgers University study presents evidence that as fish move with changing water temperatures, their tendency to cross borders will cause political conflicts among nations with varying fishery management authorities.

Fishery regulators write rules “based on the notion that particular fish species live in particular waters and don’t move much,” says Malin Pinsky, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and natural resources in Rutgers–New Brunswick’s School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. “Well, they’re moving now because climate change is warming ocean temperatures.”

“Consider flounder, which have already shifted their range 250 miles farther north,” Pinsky says. “Federal fisheries rules have allocated many of those fish to fishers in North Carolina, and now they have to steam hundreds of extra miles to catch their flounder.”

Because fish are typically more nimble than their management systems, this kind of movement will exacerbate international fisheries conflicts, Pinsky says.

“Avoiding fisheries conflicts and overfishing ultimately provides more fish, more food and more jobs for everyone,” says Pinsky. He and his co-authors cite the “mackerel war” between Iceland and the European Union as an example of the disruption of fisheries causing international disputes.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

The Ocean Is Getting More Acidic —What That Actually Means

June 18, 2018 — Grace Saba steadies herself on the back of a gently rocking boat as she and her crew slide a six-foot long yellow torpedo into the sea. A cheer erupts as the device surfaces, turns on its electronic signal, and begins a three-week journey along the New Jersey coast.

“It’s taken seven years to get this done,” said Saba, who has been working on this experiment since 2011. “I’m so happy, I think I might cry!”

Saba is an assistant professor of marine ecology at Rutgers University, where she is studying how fish, clams, and other creatures are reacting to rising levels of ocean acidity. Acidification is a byproduct of climate change; a slow but exorable real-life experiment in which industrial emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere are absorbed and then undergo chemical reactions in the sea. Rising ocean acidity has already bleached Florida’s coral reefs and killed valuable oysters in the Pacific Northwest.

Now scientists like Saba want to know what might happen to animals that live in the Northeast, a region home to commercially important fishes, wild stocks of quahogs (clams), scallops, and surf clams that can’t swim away from growing acidic waters.

“They are just stuck there,” Saba said.

Saba’s torpedo-like instrument is actually an underwater drone, known as a Slocum glider, that is carrying an ocean acidity sensor. This is the first time that oceanographers have married the two technologies—glider and pH sensor—to get a big-picture view of changes underway in the commercially important fishing grounds of the Northeastern United States.

Read the full story at National Geographic

Climate Change May Be Creating A Seafood Trade War, Too

June 15, 2018 — One of the grand challenges that I find as a climate scientist is conveying to the public the “here and now” of climate change. For many people, it is still some “thing” that seems far off in time or distance from their daily lives of bills, illness, kids, and their jobs. Ironically, climate change touches each of those aspects, but the average person does not often make the connections. People eat seafood and fish, but most people will not make any connections between tonight’s dinner of flounder, lobster or mackerel to climate change as they squeeze that lemon or draw that butter.

A new Rugters University study caught my eye because it is a good example of a “here and now” impact. Climate changes is causing fish species to adjust their habitats at a more rapid pace than the how the world policy’s allocate fish stocks. Many species of flounder, lobster, mackerel and crab are migrating to find colder waters as oceans warm.  The study suggests that such shifts may lead to international conflict and reductions in fish supply. Seafood is a pawn in the trade chess game.

Researchers at Rutgers University say that an obsolete and out-dated regulatory system has not kept pace with how the ocean’s waters are warming and shifting fish populations. I actually wrote a few years ago in Forbes about how warming waters were shifting crab populations in the North Pacific and was affecting fishers as well as one of my favorite TV shows, The Deadliest Catch. This new study published in one of the top scientific journals in the world, Science, has provided new insight that has implications for our food supply and potential international conflict.

Read the full story at Forbes

Your dinner might be swimming North thanks to climate change, Rutgers study says

May 18, 2018 — Climate change is making oceans warmer and the fish are taking flight.

And that could have a big impact on New Jersey’s $7.9 billion fishing industry according to a new Rutgers-led study published Wednesday.

Aquatic life has a narrow tolerance for temperature range, so as the water heats up species populations are shifting northward to find suitable habitat according to Malin Pinksy, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor in Rutgers’ Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources.

By 2100, the Atlantic’s temperature off the Jersey Shore could rise to levels currently seen in Virginia. That could lead to species like black sea bass and summer flounder, both staples of New Jersey’s fishing industry, leaving the area and being replaced by more southern species like Atlantic Croaker.

Pinsky said the most dramatic example of a shifting fishery is the Atlantic Cod. The species could lose 90 percent of its habitat in U.S. waters by 2100 in a worst case scenario.

Read the full story at NJ

 

Warming Waters Push Fish To Cooler Climates, Out Of Some Fishermen’s Reach

May 17, 2018 — The oceans are getting warmer and fish are noticing. Many that live along U.S. coastlines are moving to cooler water. New research predicts that will continue, with potentially serious consequences for the fishing industry.

Fish can be as picky about their water temperature as Goldilocks was about her porridge. Ecologist Malin Pinsky of Rutgers University says a warming climate is heating up their coastal habitats. “Here in North American waters,” he says, “that means fish and other marine animals, their habitat is shifting further north quite rapidly.”

Pinsky studied 686 marine species ranging from bass and flounder to crab and lobster. He projected how much warmer oceans would get over the next 80 years, using various scenarios for emissions of greenhouse gases and the rate of global warming. Then he projected how fish species would probably react to that based on what they’ve been doing already. “And [with] about 450 of those,” he says, “we have high certainty in terms of how far they are going to shift in the future.”

Read the full story at NPR

 

Warming seas may scramble North America’s fishing industry

May 17, 2018 — Get ready, seafood lovers: Climate change may complicate efforts to net your catch of the day. That’s because warming seas will force many of North America’s most valuable fish and shellfish stocks north in coming decades, a major new modeling study finds, potentially creating headaches for the fishing industry and government regulators. Some species could see their ranges shrink by half, whereas others are poised to expand into vast new territories more than 1000 kilometers north of their current homes.

“Basically, climate change is forcing species to move, jumbling up ecosystems,” says ecologist Malin Pinsky of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, who led the study with postdoctoral researcher James Morley, now at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “That’s not necessarily bad news. But we’ve already seen that even much smaller shifts in the distribution of marine species can cause real economic disruption, political friction, and challenges to fisheries managers. And here we are talking about potentially big shifts.”

Researchers have already shown that on land and in the sea, plants and animals are shifting their ranges in response to rising global temperatures. Trees that thrive in warmer climates, for example, are spreading into areas where frigid winters once made survival impossible. And species that need cooler weather are retreating from areas that have become too warm.

Read the full story at Science Magazine

 

Dr. Malin Pinsky: Changing ocean temps and what they mean for fish and people

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — January 17, 2018 — Last Thursday, Dr. Malin Pinsky, a professor of ecology, evolution and natural resources at Rutgers University, gave a Bevan Series lecture on how fish have adapted to changing ocean temperatures, and the implications for fisheries and people. “Fish and Fisheries in Hot Water: (How) Do We Adapt?” was the second of ten planned lectures in the 2018 Bevan Series, which features experts discussing fishery and marine conservation issues. The series is hosted at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Read more about the Bevan Series here

Watch Dr. Pinsky’s lecture here

See more Saving Seafood coverage of the Bevan Series here

A description of Dr. Pinsky’s lecture is below:

The same ecological and evolutionary processes operate in marine and terrestrial environments, and yet ocean life thrives in a fluid environment that is dramatically different from what we experience in air. The ocean is, in effect, a 1.3 sextillion liter water bath with muted thermal variation through time and space and limited oxygen. In this talk, I will trace what I see as some of the important consequences for fish and fisheries, including a number of striking contrasts and similarities to patterns on land. Most marine animals have evolved narrow thermal tolerances and live close to their upper thermal limits, which makes them surprisingly sensitive to even small changes in temperature. I will show that fish and other marine animals have responded rapidly and often quite predictably to temperature change and temperature trends, across time-scales from seasons to decades. Finally, I will link these rapid ocean changes to their impacts on fisheries and on people. The tight feedbacks and lagged responses between fisheries and ocean dynamics create both immediate impacts and complex dynamics that can complicate management efforts. The magnitude and extent of climate impacts on fisheries imply the need for a new era of climate-ready management more fully informed by environmental dynamics and long-term trends.

Malin Pinsky, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow in Ocean Sciences at Rutgers University. There, he leads a research group studying the ecology and evolution of global change in the ocean, including conservation and management solutions. He developed and maintains the OceanAdapt website to document shifting ocean animals in North America, a resource used by governments and NGOs for climate adaptation planning. He has published articles in Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Current Biology, and other international journal, and his research has received extensive coverage in the press, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, CBC, and National Public Radio. He has received early career awards and fellowships from the National Academy of Sciences, American Society of Naturalists, and the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Previously, he was a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow at Princeton University. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford University, an A.B. from Williams College, and roots along the coast of Maine.

 

Warming Waters, Looming Crisis

It’s no fluke: Fish populations are on the move, chasing cooler marine temperatures. At Rutgers, scientists track their alarming migrations.

August 11, 2017 — In Malin Pinsky’s lab, they keep the unicorn blood in the fridge. It sits alongside dozens of small, white boxes, each containing a snippet of fin or other tissue from the clownfish and summer flounder that, together, may help Pinsky and his colleagues determine the answer to a critical question about the world’s changing oceans. In fact, the unicorn blood—so dubbed by lab manager Michelle Stuart because, Pinsky explains, “it’s expensive and it works magic”—is actually a stew of enzymes used to purify DNA from those fish samples.

The DNA helps Pinsky and his team at Rutgers University in New Brunswick track the movement of fish species over time. What they are finding is likely to have major implications for the commercial and recreational fishing industries in New Jersey and around the world.

For decades, scientists have observed a northward shift in the ranges of many land-based animals in response to a warming climate, among them birds and butterflies. In addition, some mountain-dwelling species, like the pika, a cousin of the rabbit native to the Western United States, have moved to higher altitudes, chasing the cooler temperatures to which they have adapted over millions of years of evolution. Among these observations are scattered reports of the same thing happening in warming ocean waters.

As a marine biologist, Pinsky had read the reports. Concerned about how widespread the changes might be, he and his colleagues ran the first stage of an ongoing research project from 2011 to 2013. The results were startling. “Not only are many species of marine animals, from cod to flounder to lobster, moving to new locations,” says Pinsky, “but it’s happening very rapidly, and it’s affecting a wide range of fisheries, both commercial and recreational.”

Analyzing data collected annually by the National Marine Fisheries Service and its partners, Pinsky’s lab launched the website OceanAdapt, which charts the changing ranges of a wide variety of marine species, regionally and nationally. The site’s graphs depict changes in latitude and sea depth. On a species-by-species basis, those changes are not particularly striking; it’s long been known that fish move around a lot from year to year. But when considering the marine life community as a whole, one observes an indisputable trend northward and downward (to greater depths).

Read the full story at New Jersey Monthly

Marine Scientist Follows Hot Fish as They Move to Cooler Waters

November 30, 2016 — Warming oceans have fish on the move, and one man is in hot pursuit.

That man, Rutgers University marine biologist Malin Pinsky, has tracked fish species all over North American waters to learn where they’re headed in search of cooler conditions.

Recently, he’s seen lobsters nearly disappear from Long Island Sound, driven out by disease and a series of warm summers. The delicacies are thriving in the cooler Gulf of Maine, but that may be temporary: Water temperatures there are rising faster than anywhere else in the North Atlantic. Pinsky has also observed Black sea bass, traditionally plentiful off Virginia, start to relocate to the Gulf of Maine and the waters off the New Jersey coast. And out west, Pacific halibut and arrowtooth flounder in the eastern Bering Sea off Alaska have shifted north toward the Arctic.

“It’s not one species in one place or a few species in a limited area,” Pinsky says of the moving populations. “It’s actually hundreds of species in North America shifting toward cooler waters, and that’s significant.”

The changes pose major questions for fishermen and fishery managers. As species move, will fishermen relocate their businesses to follow? How do fishery managers set rules when fish have moved to new areas where they may be more susceptible to overfishing? And will species such as lionfish, which are invasive in the Atlantic Ocean and thrive in warm Southern waters, suddenly appear in force farther north along the Atlantic coast? Even more confounding is the effect of temperature changes on species such as corals that have difficulty relocating to a more suitable place.

Read the full story at National Geographic

Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund Data Proves Anglers’ Concerns

November 28, 2016 — The results of a recent collaborative study between researchers at Rutgers University and Stockton University of New Jersey, the University of Rhode Island, and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, NY and Cornell University may hold the key to bold new management changes in the summer flounder fishery.

The research project, Sex and Length of Summer Flounder Discards in the Recreational Fishery, NJ to RI, spanned the 2016 summer flounder recreational season beginning May 23 and continuing through September 16. Samples were collected aboard for-hire recreational fishing vessels from selected ports in New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island, and were supplemented by a series of back bay, shallow water trips.

Samples were collected from stations ranging in depth from 5 to 95 feet and spanning a latitudinal range from just off the coast of Delaware to coastal Rhode Island. According to the survey results, sex-at-length data was collected for a total of 2,243 discard-sized fish and 842 legal-sized fish.

Researchers say lab analysis findings confirm prior observations that female summer flounder dominate the recreational catch, although it was also demonstrated that this does not hold below the legal size limit where fish smaller than the legal limit were predominately male. On average, across all ports, dates and depths, the sex ratio approximates 50:50 at 15.35 inches in length, with males dominant in the size classes less than that mark and females dominant above the 15.35-inch (39 cm) mark.

Read the full story at The Fisherman