Saving Seafood

West Coast marine life endangered by ‘blob’ heatwave

September 12, 2019 — A “blob” of warm water in the Pacific Ocean could disrupt the marine ecosystem off the coast of California, similar to an event that occurred five years ago, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The patch, designated the Northeast Pacific Marine Heatwave of 2019 and also referred to as a “blob,” is the second-biggest such mass in four decades and, according to experts, is on a similar path to that of one that, from 2014 to 2016, caused toxic algae blooms and killed sea life ranging from sea lions to salmon en masse.

“I am surprised to see something like this develop again so soon after what looked like the end of the marine heatwave in 2016,” Nate Mantua, head of the Landscape Ecology Team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, Calif., told the newspaper.

Read the full story at The Hill

Ocean heatwave known as ‘The Blob’ is warming up the West Coast – and endangering animals

September 11, 2019 — It could be the return of “The Blob” and scientists are worried.

A huge mass of extra warm water extending from Baja California in Mexico all the way to Alaska and the Bering Sea could result in death for many sea lions and salmon, as well as toxic algae blooms that can poison mussels, crabs and other sea life.

When it happened in 2014 it was dubbed “The Blob” and disrupted sea life between Southern California and Alaska. Now it’s back.

The ocean heatwave began to form in June.

“Temperatures are about as warm as have ever been observed in any of these locations. It developed in mid-June and it’s gotten really big really fast,” said Nate Mantua, head of the Landscape Ecology Team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, California.

Read the full story at USA Today

Scientists warn West Coast ocean heat wave could pose major risk to whales, salmon, sea lions

September 6, 2019 — A heat wave forming off the west coast in the Pacific Ocean resembles a 2014-15 phenomenon that led to major disruptions to marine life along the western seaboard, federal scientists said Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wrote in a blog post that a growing belt of warm water that stretches from Alaska to California “ranks as the second largest marine heatwave in terms of area in the northern Pacific Ocean in the last 40 years, after ‘the Blob,’ ” referring to the 2014-15 heat wave.

“It’s on a trajectory to be as strong as the prior event,” said scientist Andrew Leising of NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif.

“Already, on its own, it is one of the most significant events that we’ve seen,”Leising added.

Read the full story at The Hill

Colder waters off West Coast mark end of “the blob”

August 28, 2019 — Record high Pacific Ocean temperatures recorded off the West Cost in recent years have receded to near normal, according to a report on the California Current.

That cool shift marks the end of “the blob,” the mass of warm water that dominated the West Coast, and of the El Nino event that followed. It’s unclear, however, what that means for fish and marine mammals, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stated in the 2019 ecosystem status report for the California Current Ecosystem.

“The big thing is that a lot of the physical conditions of the ocean here off of our coast are beginning to return to normal,” said Elliott Hazen,” a research ecologist with NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “But it is not clear yet whether the ecosystem is as well.”

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune

New Research Reveals Clearer Picture of Upwelling That Feeds West Coast Marine Ecosystem

May 13, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Great volumes of nutrient-rich water welling up from the deep ocean fuel the West Coast’s great diversity of marine life. Now scientists using satellite images, research buoys, ocean models, and other ocean monitoring tools have brought the upwelling into much sharper focus, measuring even the velocity of the water and the amount of nutrients that it delivers.

Scientists described new “upwelling indices,” which represent a breakthrough in understanding the biological engine that drives the West Coast marine ecosystem.

“Upwelling is vital to marine life along the West Coast, but the tools we were using to monitor it hadn’t changed much in almost 50 years,” said Michael Jacox, a research scientist at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center who developed the new indices. “Now we’re bringing state-of-the-art tools and the latest science to bear to help us understand how upwelling supports and shapes the California Current Ecosystem.”

Given the ecological importance of upwelling, scientists and managers are eager for indices that allow them to monitor its variability and understand its impacts on coastal ocean ecosystems.

Jacox, of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center and NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, and other researchers from NOAA Fisheries, and the University of California at Santa Cruz, recently published the new upwelling measurements new upwelling measurements in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans and the indices are also available online. Maps based on the indices reveal through color-coding where upwelling is most pronounced, such as off Cape Mendocino in California.

Upwelling occurs along certain coastlines around the world where winds and the Earth’s rotation sweep surface waters offshore, drawing deep, cold, and salty water full of nutrients up to the surface. These nutrients fuel growth of phytoplankton that form the base of the marine food web, and ultimately nourish the West Coast’s ocean ecosystem from sardines to sperm whales.

Read the full release here

New oceanographic insight pinpoints marine ‘hotspots of risk’

June 27, 2018 — Increased computing power has given fisheries researchers new tools to identify “hotspots of risk,” where ocean fronts and eddies bring together masses of fish, fishermen and predators, raising the risk of entangling non-target fish and protected species such marine mammals, sea turtles and sharks.

Using a novel, high-resolution “Lagrangian Coherent Structures” mapping technique, scientists are able to model dynamic features in surface currents. The capacity for improved, near real-time mapping of and eddies may now help alert fishermen and fisheries managers to the increased risk so they can try to avoid those protected species and better target the species they are after, the scientists wrote in an article published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Understanding how pelagic fish and marine predators interact with the environment can help fishers and managers avoid bycatch of non-target and protected species, while maintaining the catch of commercial species,” said Kylie L. Scales of the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) in Australia, and lead author of the new research. “Our findings give managers information at the broad scales they need, which could help inform development of dynamic ocean management.”

Lagrangian Coherent Structures are known from the field of fluid dynamics and represent areas of mixing, where different water masses meet and tend to concentrate marine life and in turn fishermen. The new approach uses high-resolution ocean modeling to help detect and predict the areas as they form and move through the ocean, and highlight the elevated risk they may present.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

West Coast Waters Returning to Normal; Some Fisheries Remain Disrupted

March 13, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Ocean conditions off most of the U.S. West Coast are returning roughly to average, after an extreme marine heat wave from about 2014 to 2016 disrupted the California Current Ecosystem and shifted many species beyond their traditional range, according to a new report from NOAA Fisheries’ two marine laboratories on the West Coast. Some warm waters remain off the Pacific Northwest, however.

The Southwest Fisheries Science Center and Northwest Fisheries Science Center presented their annual “California Current Ecosystem Status Report” to the Pacific Fishery Management Council at the Council’s meeting in Rohnert Park, Calif., on Friday, March 9. The California Current encompasses the entire West Coast marine ecosystem, and the report informs the Council about conditions and trends in the ecosystem that may affect marine species and fishing in the coming year.

“The report gives us an important glimpse at what the science is saying about the species and resources that we manage and rely on in terms of our West Coast economy,” Council Chairman Phil Anderson, of Westport, Wash., said in a press release. “The point is that we want to be as informed as we can be when we make decisions that affect those species, and this report helps us do that.”

Unusually warm ocean temperatures, referred to as “the Blob,” encompassed much of the West Coast beginning about 2014, combining with an especially strong El Nino pattern in 2015. The warm conditions have now waned, although some after-effects remain.

Warmer waters were blamed for increased growth of Pseudo nitzschia, which produces domoic acid. The domoic acid interrupted several fisheries, including Dungeness crab, rock crab and spiny lobster.

Read the full story with a subscription at Seafood News

 

Pacific Council Gives Preliminary Nod to Two Coastal Sardine and Other Pelagic Species Projects

November 22, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Pacific Fishery Management Council last week approved for public review two exempted fishing permits that should help improve coastal pelagic species stock assessments.

Both projects would add more survey work to nearshore areas. Fishermen have identified schools of sardines, in particular, close to shore but accessing them for survey work has been a problem because the sardine season has been closed and NOAA ships cannot access shallow areas. Additionally, both proposals would build on the use of industry knowledge.

The California Wetfish Producers Association research project intends to sample CPS schools in the southern California Bight using aerial spotter pilots with camera systems to fly surveys close to shore and photo-document schools. At the same time, qualified purse seine vessels would capture a subset of the schools identified in the photographs as “point sets.” This would provide a way to address issues identified in the aerial survey methodology review. The survey period is scheduled for late August 2018.

According to the CWPA application, all fish captured, including sardines, would be processed and sold by participating processors, and fishermen will be paid for their catches at the usual rates. Aside from the sale of fish, processors would not be compensated for the extra labor they will incur in weighing and fully sorting each school individually and documenting species composition by school, rather than the normal procedure of offloading the entire catch and documenting by load.

“We strongly support these EFP projects to improve the accuracy of stock assessments. It should be noted that 70 percent or more of the CPS harvest in California occurs in the area inshore of NOAA acoustic surveys,” CWPA Executive Director Diane Pleschner-Steele said. “We are grateful to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and Southwest Fishery Science Center for their help and recognition that surveying the nearshore is a high priority research and data need.”

Pacific Seafood’s Mike Okoniewski presented the Westport, Wash.-based West Coast Pelagic Conservation Group project to both the Council and the Scientific and Statistical Committee. The project is designed to provide supplementary data collection and additional sampling techniques for areas nearshore of the proposed 2018 NOAA/Southwest Fisheries Science Center acoustic-trawl survey, according to the group’s application. This research off of Washington and Oregon would continue and expand the 2017 collaborative effort in 2018 so that samples of CPS for species composition and individual fish metrics may be obtained through purse seine operations, according to Council documents.

Sampling would be done at the same general time and nearshore areas as the NOAA survey, the applicants stated. The coastal pelagic species (CPS) that will be retained in small amounts (e.g. 5kg to 25kg) for sampling will be dip-netted sardines, anchovies, and mackerel(s). The sample fish will be frozen and retained for identification and biological measurements to be performed by NOAA.

But unlike the southern EFP, no fish will be harvested for commercial purposes. Wrapped schools would be released alive, the applicants said.

“This collaboration will continue to support the already commendable efforts of the scientists, balancing it with industry knowledge of the fishing grounds,” Okoniewski said.

Both EFPs will add to current survey and stock assessment work, providing more robust data for the fisheries in the future. The Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee and Coastal Pelagics Species Management Team supported the EFPs and suggested minor technical changes to each; both applicants plan to incorporate those suggestions prior to the Council’s and NMFS’ final approval in early 2018.

“The CPSMT recognizes the value of the EFP research proposed by both groups to improve CPS stock assessments by obtaining data that has not been attainable by other means,” the CPS Management Team said in its statement.

The Coastal Pelagic Species Advisory Subpanel also supported the projects. “[We are] encouraged that forward progress is now being made to develop effective survey methods for the nearshore area,” the panel said in its statement. “The CPSAS thanks CWPA, WCPCG and especially the SWFSC for acknowledging the data gaps in current surveys and helping to provide support and funding for cooperative surveys that will hopefully improve the accuracy of future CPS stock assessments.”

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

Pelagic survey highlights NOAA’s growing collaborative relationship with industry

August 30, 2017 — Earlier this year, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used the Lisa Marie, a private fishing boat, to collect data for its annual coastal pelagic species survey. The move was part of an effort to increase collaboration between the public and private sectors.

Earlier this summer as officials with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration completed work on an annual survey of coastal pelagic species (CPS) in the Pacific Ocean, they received some assistance from a new source: the private sector.

Not only were representatives from the West Coast seafood trade industry on board a federal vessel for five days while survey samples were taken, but one fisherman allowed NOAA officials to outfit his boat with equipment to survey more shallow waters near the coastline. The collaborative venture marked a milestone in a public-private dialogue that’s been going on for years.

The CPS survey collects data primarily on Pacific sardines, said Kristen Koch, the acting science and research director of NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Service Center in La Jolla, California, but it also includes observations on other CPS fish such as northern anchovy and jack and Pacific mackerels. Typically, officials use the Reuben Lasker, a NOAA vessel, to conduct the survey. However, private sector representatives felt the government was missing out on some key data in their work.

Government leaders welcomed the idea to get more data to fill in the gaps they also sought to fill.

“Data is like gold to us,” said Koch. “If we can collect more of the kind of data we need, it improves the precision of our assessments of these species.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fishermen See ‘Science in Action’ Aboard NOAA Survey Ship

August 18, 2017 — Each spring and early summer, scientists set out along the West Coast aboard NOAA vessel Reuben Lasker to survey coastal pelagic species, or CPS, which includes small schooling fish such as northern anchovy, Pacific sardine, and jack and Pacific mackerels.

This year, with the help of West Coast fishermen, the scientists tested a new approach to extend their reach into nearshore waters to improve the accuracy of the survey results. The collaboration involved the fishing vessel Lisa Marie, of Gig Harbor, Washington, and brought two commercial fishermen aboard Lasker for an inside look at NOAA Fisheries surveys that inform stock assessments and guide decisions on how many fish can be caught by West Coast fishermen.

The idea emerged years before when the then-Director of NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California,  Cisco Werner, along with Deputy Director Kristen Koch and Fisheries Resources Division Director Gerard DiNardo, discussed the potential collaboration with Mike Okoniewski of Pacific Seafood and Diane Pleschner-Steele of the California Wetfish Producers Association.

Werner has since been named Chief Scientist of NOAA Fisheries.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act requires NOAA Fisheries to use the best available science to help managers set catch limits and prevent overfishing. Annual surveys, using echosounders to detect and measure the abundances of CPS populations off the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington, and Canada’s Vancouver Island help fulfill this mandate. NOAA Fisheries also uses trawl catches, and fish-egg samples to help gauge fish reproduction and population trends.

“Acoustic-trawl surveys are our principal tool for monitoring the various species and determining how their abundances, distributions, and sizes are changing,” said David Demer, the Chief Scientist of the survey and leader of the Advanced Survey Technologies Group at Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla. “The surveys are very rigorous because they’re very important to our mission.”

Read the full story from NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center