Saving Seafood

Impacts of ocean heat wave found off SF Bay Area coast

July 12, 2024 — The ocean is no place to escape a heat wave. According to a recent condition report from the Greater Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries, the effects of a 2014 to 2016 marine heat wave had a cascading effect with impacts that echoed from deep sea krill to shoreline restaurants.

The domino effect began with the tiny shrimp-like critters that feed the biggest animals on earth, blue whales. Looking at data collected between 2010 and 2022, scientists with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration found that the heat wave caused a notable decline in nutritious krill, and a proportional increase in less nutritious, gelatinous zooplankton in the sanctuaries off the Northern California coast.

Read the full article at Chesapeake Bay Magazine 

California’s latest bid to bolster its economy? Releasing 17 million fish into the San Francisco Bay.

June 10, 2021 — California is rolling out a fresh strategy to keep its economy afloat — releasing 17 million salmon into the San Francisco Bay.

Millions of Chinook salmon raised in hatcheries will bypass California’s drought-stricken riverbanks to be released directly into colder, downstream sites in the San Francisco Bay, in an attempt to maximize their survival rate amid some of the most extreme environmental conditions the state has ever faced.

By the end of June, around 16.8 million young adult salmon, also called smolt, will travel more than 30,000 miles by truck from hatcheries to direct release sites around the coastline.

At the release sites around the San Francisco, San Pablo, Half Moon, and Monterey bays, the salmon will be set free to make their way into colder ocean waters.

Read the full story at Business Insider

Sea Otters Could Get New Home in San Francisco Bay

December 29, 2020 — Once hunted to the brink of extinction for their luxuriant pelts, California sea otters rebounded after protections were put in place in 1911. Their population grew steadily for much of the last century, but now the still threatened species is stuck at about 3,000 otters. The problem is that they are boxed in at both ends of their current range, along the state’s central coast, by a sharp (and so far unexplained) rise in shark attacks. Hoping to reintroduce breeding populations elsewhere in the otters’ historical range, wildlife managers have been looking at certain coastal estuaries, which are sheltered pockets of water.

It turns out that the largest estuary on the West Coast—San Francisco Bay—could potentially provide an excellent home for sea otters, despite being in the middle of a major urban area, according to a study published last month in PeerJ.

“I was surprised,” says lead study author Jane Rudebusch, a spatial ecologist at San Francisco State University’s Estuary & Ocean Science Center. “The bay is intensely urbanized. You can tell it’s a busy place just by looking at it.” Tanker ships deliver crude oil to shoreline refineries every day, and high-speed commuter ferries constantly zoom between San Francisco, Oakland and other waterfront cities at up to 50 miles per hour. Sediment in parts of the bay is laced with methylmercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, toxic chemicals that accumulate in the clams, crabs and other animals that sea otters eat.

Read the full story at Scientific American

Explaining California’s sudden humpback entanglement surge

April 22, 2019 — Every year, humpback whales make their annual trek from tropical calving grounds to feed in the cold, nutrient-rich waters off the coast of California. Historically, they arrived to feast in June just as the Dungeness crab fishery was closing and gear was being pulled in for the season. But in 2012, they arrived a few weeks earlier than normal. In 2014, they were a month early. By 2015, the humpbacks arrived in April, a full two months earlier than the norm.

That shift has been dangerous for the whales. In March, it was the subject of a lawsuit settlement that prompted an early end to the Dungeness crab season. Some of our own research has determined the cause: climate change.

Humpback sightings from the Golden Gate Bridge are a hallmark of summer in San Francisco. The whales come to feed where the narrow straits of the Bay meet the ocean. Marine life abounds here, where nutrient-dense water feeds blooms of phytoplankton. They are then eaten by zooplankton, including krill, tiny reddish shrimp-like crustaceans which are a favored food for whales. Seasonal blooms of these tiny animals support the ecosystem bottom-up, producing a massive marine buffet for fish, birds and other marine mammals. Predators gorge themselves in the summer and fall when this area supports the most amount of food.

Where there are high concentrations of fish, there are people catching them, and the whales’ earlier arrival has driven more interactions with West Coast fisheries. Since 2014, the number of whales entangled in Dungeness crab pots has escalated dramatically, with 129 cases reported between 2015 and 2017, compared to around 10 each year in previous decades.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Examiner 

Thousands of Sharks, Other Sea Life Mysteriously Die in San Francisco Bay

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife isn’t dedicating any funding toward determining the cause, says resources are needed elsewhere

October 5, 2017 — As many as 2,000 leopard sharks have mysteriously died in the San Francisco Bay over the past few months. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife says determining the cause is not a priority for the state since the sharks are not threatened or endangered, however, scientists say additional research and resources are crucial since the threat is now believed to be preying on other marine life.

“This year is unusual in that there has been a large number of other species that have also been dying,” said Dr. Mark Okihiro, a research scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “This pathogen can tackle a variety of different species … we’ve had a much more diverse group of fish that have been found dead in the San Francisco Bay.”

At least 500 bat rays, hundreds of striped bass, 50 smooth-hound sharks and about 100 halibut died in the bay between February and July, according to Okihiro’s estimates.

Tiny Organism Blamed for Massive Shark Die-Off

Similar shark deaths in the area date back 50 years and have gone unexplained. Okihiro, however, now believes a parasite may be behind the mysterious die-off that has plagued the Bay Area.

“We’re pretty confident at this point,” Okihiro said. “It’s called Miamiensis avidus … it’s a small single celled organism. It’s very similar to the common amoeba.”

Okihiro regularly performs necropsies on stranded sharks found along the bay and says researchers at UC San Francisco helped him identify parasite DNA in a large number of those shark samples.

Read the full story at NBC Bay Area

Pelagic Data Systems teaming with Alan Lovewell, Real Good Fish to install vessel tracking systems in California

May 26, 2017 — A new partnership between Pelagic Data Systems and Alan Lovewell’s Real Good Fish will place vessel tracking systems onboard commercial fishing boats in California.

Pelagic Data Systems makes lightweight, solar-powered vessel tracking technology. Real Good Fish is a community supported fishery that makes weekly deliveries of locally caught seafood to about 1,500 shareholders in the Monterey and San Francisco Bay areas. The partnership will provide Real Good Fish’s members detailed information about where, when and how their seafood – including black cod, dungeness crab, king salmon, lingcod, rockfish, and sanddabs – was caught, via a weekly email newsletter.

“From fishermen to seafood lovers, we’re working together to explore the intersection of seafood and technology in the interest of solving some of the toughest problems that face our oceans and plates,” Lovewell, who founded Real Good Fish in 2012, said. “I would like to see how this technology helps our fishermen and consumers work more closely together to provide a more enriching, empowering, and collaborative experience for our community.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Singing fish mystery solved melatonin triggers night humming

September 23, 2016 — The singing fish mystery has finally been solved – the night humming is triggered by a hormone that tells most animals, including humans, when it is time to go to sleep – melatonin. For humans and most other living creatures, melatonin anticipates the daily onset of darkness. Not for the singing fish, in his case – it affects the males only – it tells him to start his courtship humming.

For much of the animal kingdom, melatonin, which regulates our body clock, is involved in the synchronization of the circadian rhythms of physiological functions including blood pressure regulation, sleep timing, seasonal reproduction, and several others.

About thirty years ago, houseboat dwellers in San Francisco Bay were puzzled by a humming sound that started abruptly in the late evening and would suddenly stop in the morning.

Rumours were rife among the local human population – perhaps the droning hum came from some sinister underwater military exercise, the shifting of the tectonic plates under the sea, or maybe even some enigmatic alien that was communicating with others of its kind.

Read the full story at Market Business News