Saving Seafood

The Secret Life of Krill

October 19, 2016 — SYDNEY, Australia — On an August morning aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel floating at the bottom of the world, Christian Reiss was listening for acoustic signals bouncing off krill, a pinkish, feathery-limbed crustacean that is the lifeblood of the Antarctic ecosystem.

It was the last month of the Southern Hemisphere winter, and conditions were good: There was no thud from sea ice pancakes bumping together to distort his tests in the clear waters of the South Shetland Islands, about 500 miles south of Cape Horn.

Dr. Reiss, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and his team were studying where krill live in winter.

Low levels of sea ice gave them access to bays that in previous winters were closed. They wanted to know if a lack of sea ice, where krill gather to feed off the algae that live on the underside, was threatening the ocean’s largest biomass. Krill form schools that can be miles long and miles deep.

Whales, sea birds, penguins, squid and seals all feed off krill. And they compete with commercial fisheries in the same waters, who sell the tiny creatures to be used as fish food or to make omega-3 fish oil for human use.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Fishery council says no to river herring and shad plan

October 7, 2016 — A call to put river herring and shad in the same fishery management plan as mackerel, squid and butterfish was voted down by the Mid-Atlantic Marine Fisheries Council.

Incidental bycatches in ocean trawl fisheries was a main reason behind the consideration, but the council will stick with a plan already in place for dealing with it.

American shad, hickory shad, alewife and blueback herring — a quartet of anadromous fish that are at historic low population levels — often mix with mackerel in the ocean.

They get scooped up incidentally in commercial trawl nets meant for mackerel. The MAMFC said the amount may be substantial enough to negatively impact their populations.

The plan had the support of many sport fishermen, environmental and conservation groups on the Eastern seaboard who said the it would’ve led to more aggressive stewardship on the species.

Tarr: Marine monument punishes fishermen

September 16, 2016 — Creating the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine national monument is a needed response to dangerous climate change, oceanic dead zones and unsustainable fishing practices, President Barack Obama said Thursday.

But state Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, said the designation “singled out commercial fishing for more punishment.”

The new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument consists of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains about 150 miles southeast of Cape Cod.

Gov. Charlie Baker said he is “deeply disappointed” by Obama’s designation of an area off the New England coast as the first deep-sea marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, a move the Swampscott Republican’s administration sees as undermining Massachusetts fishermen.

The monument area includes three underwater canyons and four underwater mountains that provide habitats for protected species including sea turtles and endangered whales.

Fishing operations

Recreational fishing will be allowed in the protected zone but most commercial fishing operations have 60 days to “transition from the monument area,” according to the White House. Red crab and lobster fisheries will be given seven years to cease operations in the area.

Tarr said the designation marked a missed opportunity to “balance conservation and support for commercial fishing.”

“In New England, we have one of the most highly regulated fishing industries in the world, and we have had a steady decline in the amount of area available to fish, and it should be a last resort to take away more area as opposed to trying to carefully draw the lines of this monument area,” Tarr told the State House News Service.

The marine protections will hurt red crab, swordfish, tuna, squid, whiting and offshore lobster fisheries, according to the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, which said industry representatives offered White House aides alternative proposals that would have protected coral habitat while still allowing fishing in some areas.

“The Baker-Polito Administration is deeply disappointed by the federal government’s unilateral decision to undermine the Commonwealth’s commercial and recreational fishermen with this designation,” Baker spokesman Brendan Moss said in an email. “The Commonwealth is committed to working with members of the fishing industry and environmental stakeholders through existing management programs to utilize the best science available in order to continue our advocacy for the responsible protection of our state’s fishing industry while ensuring the preservation of important ecological areas.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Obama designates the first-ever marine monument off the East Coast, in New England

September 15, 2016 — President Obama declared the first fully protected area in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean on Thursday, designating 4,913 square miles off the New England coastline as a new marine national monument.

Obama’s previous marine conservation declarations have focused on some of the most remote waters under U.S. jurisdiction, including last month’s expansion of a massive protected area in Hawaii. But the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is more accessible, lying 130 miles off the southeast coast of Cape Cod.

Several regional fishing associations lobbied against the creation of a new monument, on the grounds that the federal government could reconcile environmental protections and ongoing fishing operations by regulating activities there under an existing fisheries management law.

Trawlers as well as offshore lobster and crab boat operators currently catch a range of species near the underwater canyons, including squid, mackerel, butterfish, lobster and Atlantic red crab. According to industry estimates, these fisheries are worth more than $50 million in total.

In an effort to lessen the economic impact, the administration will give lobster and red crab operators seven years to exit the area. Recreational fishing can continue around the three deep-sea canyons and four seamounts that are now protected, but seabed mining and any other extractive activities are banned.

Administration officials estimated there were six lobster boats operating in the area that will be protected, along with 20 other fishing vessels that move in and out of the area.

“The only user group that’s going to be negatively affected by this proposal is the fishing industry, period,” said David Borden, executive director of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, noting that the new protections will not affect oil tankers moving through the area or telecommunications cables lying on the seabed.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Obama’s Atlantic Monument Hurts Lobster, Red Crab, and Other Fisheries

September 15, 2016 — President Obama will designate a national monument Thursday covering thousands of square miles in the Atlantic Ocean, pleasing environmental groups but flying in the face of opposition from state officials and fishing organizations.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument will cover 4,913 square miles off the coast of New England — an area nearly the size of the state of Connecticut — the White House announced Thursday. It will include “three underwater canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon, and four underwater mountains known as ‘seamounts’ that are biodiversity hotspots and home to many rare and endangered species,” it said.

Robert Vanasse, executive director of fishing advocacy group Saving Seafood, slammed the declaration, saying White House officials never seriously took the concerns of locals into account.

“It’s just really obvious that the fix was in from the start,” Vanasse told BuzzFeed News. “I believe the sound waves hit their eardrums but I don’t believe they were actually listening.”

Though the exact parameters of the monument were not available late Wednesday, Vanasse said the designation could potentially cost the offshore lobster community $10 million a year. He also said red crab, squid, and other fishing industries could take significant hits by a monument designation.

According to the White House, fishing within the monument will be phased out; red crab and lobster fisheries will have seven years before having to leave, and other commercial fishers will have a 60-day transition period.

Vanasse praised the gradual change — because it’ll give the industry time to fight the designation.

“The fact that they have some time is going to be a good thing because we can fight this and we’ll be fighting it with a different administration,” he said. “I imagine that we will see a legal challenge.”

Read the full story at BuzzFeed News

First US off-shore wind farm to start generating power

September 7, 2016 — The first off-shore wind farm in the U.S. is nearing completion off the coast of Rhode Island. In the past there’s been opposition to these ventures. But this one, which has been planned as a demonstration project, has managed to go forward.

A Rhode Island company, Deepwater Wind, is behind this nearly $300 million project. The five turbines were recently finished after more than a year of construction.

“The first off-shore wind farm in America will be ready to start spinning its blades, and that’s a momentous occasion, believe me,” said Jeffrey Grybowski, Deepwater’s CEO and a former chief of staff for Rhode Island Gov. Donald L. Carcieri.

But there is another constituency which isn’t so keen on these off-shore wind farms: commercial fishermen. In this part of the Atlantic they catch squid and cod, and there’s a scallops fishery, which alone generates a half billion dollars a year. They’re worried that their livelihood will suffer. And in fact, in Rhode Island commercial fishing was disrupted during construction and one operation had to be relocated.

Read the full story at WBFO

Beautiful deep sea corals are being protected by Mid-Atlantic Council

August 31, 2016 — When people think about coral and coral reefs, they usually think about crystal clear, warm waters with hundreds of fish and aquatic animals, all of which live in or on brightly colored corals. These coral reefs are usually in some tropical locale, just off the pristine white sand beach of some isolated island.

And while these coral reefs are certainly important – and very beautiful – they are not the only places to find coral in our oceans.

During the past few decades, scientists have delved deep in search of deep-sea corals, corals that live and grow under hundreds, if not thousands, of feet of water and with almost no natural light at all.

Deep-sea corals are weird, but beautiful, organisms we have discovered hidden in some of the strangest parts of our oceans and with each dive we take to find these corals, we learn a little bit more about them and their environment.

Because of the nature of their environment, searching for deep-sea coral can be painstakingly arduous. However, scientists and researchers have found a plethora of coral and reefs right along the Atlantic Coast of the United States, including off the coast of Maryland.

Most of the larger coral colonies tend to be found in the submarine canyons located off the Atlantic coast, such as the Baltimore, South Vries, Warr and Phoenix Canyons.

To preserve these areas, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council approved a Deep Sea Corals Amendment to the Mackerel, Squid and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan to help to protect areas that are known or highly likely to contain deep-sea corals.

In June 2015, the Deep Sea Corals Amendment was approved by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and is ready to be submitted to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. It is expected to be approved and go into effect in October.

This historic piece of legislation could be key to the long-term health and future of these crucial deep-sea coral colonies.

Read the full story at the Delmarva Daily Times

Study predicts alarming krill drop by end of the century

August 30, 2016 — Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) habitat is undergoing a continuous deterioration process, which could lead to a reduction of up to 80 per cent by the end of the century.

Given the key role that this small crustacean plays in the marine food chain, its decline would cause other problems for species that depend on it as a food source, such as whales, penguins, seals, squid and fish, among other marine organisms.

This dark forecast comes from a study performed at Yale University by Andrea Piñones, a researcher at the Research Centre for High Latitude Marine Ecosystem Dynamics (IDEAL) and the Advanced Study Centre in Arid Zones (CEAZA), along with Alexey Fedorov, a researcher at Yale University.

Piñoness explains that the krill population has already fallen between 80 and 90 per cent since 1970, a situation that has generated a broad scientific debate on the causes of this decline.

In this regard, many believe that this is related to the changes in the environment, particularly with warming Antarctic waters.

To carry out the study, whose results were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers combined climate simulations — based on the projections of the international panel of climate change –, with a krill growth model. Thus, they determined that with an increase in water temperature and sea ice melting, its habitat could reduce up to 80 per cent by 2100.

Read the full story at FiS United States

Navy’s submarine hunts are too disturbing for marine life, California court rules

July 20, 2016 — They came as a wave, some 150 to 200 melon-headed whales churning into Hawaii’s Hanalei Bay like a single mass. It was a strange sight for the Kauai islanders to behold. Melon-headed whales live in the deep ocean, feasting on squid. But here they were, swimming in the shallows no more than 100 feet from shore.

Over the course of July 3 and 4, 2004, volunteers and rescuers shepherded the animals back to sea, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s account of the mass stranding. The Washington Post reported at the time that it was the largest event of its kind in 150 years of Hawaiian history. Almost all the whales made it back out into the open water. But not the entire pod.

A young calf, split off from the rest of the herd, perished the next day.

A year later, 34 whales died when they were stranded at North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Three years after that and half the world away, 100 melon-headed whales were again stranded en masse, this time on the shores of Madagascar. The reasons why whales beach themselves are not always clear — strandings have been likened to car crashes in that the causes are myriad but the conclusion is never good. With the melon-headed whales, however, something was different. The events were unusual enough, and involved such large numbers, to prompt scrutiny. In both cases, a prime suspect emerged: sonar.

Controversy over these sound waves continues today. And in the latest skirmish over oceanic noise pollution, a victory went to the whales. On Friday, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that the Navy violated marine mammal protection laws, reversing a lower court’s decision that allowed military vessels to use a type of loud, low-frequency sonar approved in 2012.

Read the full story at the Washington Post