Saving Seafood

Fishers at risk in ‘perfect storm’

March 12, 2021 — Stormier weather will increasingly force fishers to choose between their safety and income, researchers say.

Climate change is causing more extreme weather in many locations. Storms will likely increase around the UK in the future, while many fishers in the UK also face .

The new study—led by the University of Exeter—worked with fishers in Cornwall to understand how they balance the risks and rewards of fishing in varying conditions.

Factors that made skippers more likely to risk fishing in  or waves included: being the main earner in their household, poor recent fishing success, and having a crew to support.

“Climate change and economic insecurity create a ‘perfect storm’, putting ever-increasing pressure on skippers,” said lead author Dr. Nigel Sainsbury.

“Fishing is already the most dangerous peacetime profession in the UK, and the combination of more  and financial challenges will only make this worse.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Illegal trade in shark products dismissed by UK fish and chip industry

February 7, 2019 — University of Exeter researchers, studying the DNA of shark products sold in fishmongers, fish and chip shops, and Asian wholesalers in England, believe they have uncovered serious cases of mislabeling and a potential trade in critically endangered species.

However, their findings have been largely dismissed by the National Federation of Fish Friers (NFFF), which said in a statement that the fish sold in fish and chip outlets is all legally sourced.

The scientists found that 90 percent of products sold at fish and chip shops under umbrella terms such as huss, rock salmon, and rock eel, were actually spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias). Landings of this fish into the European Union by E.U. and third-country vessels have been prohibited from the Northeast Atlantic since 2011 because it is classified as critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species.

Other species identified include blue sharks, Pacific spiny dogfish, nursehounds, and starry smoothounds, most of which are not in threatened categories, but they only made up a small minority of the samples.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Warming seas are robbing some fish of their vital sense of smell

August 6, 2018 — There have been numerous wake-up calls about the effects of climate change on marine life. As ocean waters heat up, they are bleaching corals. Growing levels of carbon dioxide are acidifying seawater, which is degrading the shells and skeletons of sea organisms. The rising temperatures are prompting fish to migrate to colder waters, even causing them to shrink.

Now climate change is starting to affect their sense of smell, a phenomenon that will worsen in the coming years if global warming continues unabated, according to new research. A sense of smell is indispensable to fish. They use it to find food, detect imminent danger and elude predators, to find safe environments and spawning areas, even to recognize one another.

To lose it could threaten their very survival. If this happens, it also would mean big trouble for the fishing industry, tourism and, most importantly, global nutrition, since many of the world’s people — including its poorest — depend on fish for food.

“Future levels of carbon dioxide can have large negative effects on the sense of smell of fish, which can affect fish population numbers and entire ecosystems,” said Cosima Porteus, a researcher at the University of Exeter and author of the study, which appears in the journal Nature Climate Change.

“This can be prevented, but we must reduce carbon emissions now before it’s too late,” Porteus says.

Carbon dioxide combines with seawater to produce carbonic acid, which makes the water more acidic. Since the Industrial Revolution, oceanic CO2 has risen by 43 percent and is projected to be two and a half times current levels by the end of this century, according to the scientists.

Read the full story at Popular Science

‘Storminess’ Could Make Fishing More Risky as Climate Warms

July 2, 2018 — Tens of thousands of people die every year trying to catch fish to eat or sell, and weather is one of the biggest hazards to lives and equipment. The International Red Cross estimates that 3,000–5,000 people, mainly fishers, are killed by intense thunderstorms on Africa’s Lake Victoria each year. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan destroyed some 30,000 fishing boats in the Philippines.

The dangers of fishing are no secret, but a warming planet could make the job even more risky. A team of researchers in England is calling for a closer look at how increasingly stormy weather will affect global fisheries.

In a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, they warn that nastier weather in the future will make fishing more dangerous for millions of fishers and, by reducing catches, could threaten the health and well-being of billions of people who eat seafood. The biggest challenge is that few have studied this question. Although there’s been plenty of research on how ocean warming could reduce fish catch in the next 50–100 years, they said, changing “storminess” could actually be a more immediate, catastrophic issue.

“We really want to encourage more research in this area, because we think it’s really critical for the future,” said lead author Nigel Sainsbury, a scientist at the University of Exeter’s Environment and Sustainability Institute.

Already, scientists have looked at how large storms can damage coral reefs, cause fish to evacuate large areas and flood estuaries with salty ocean water. Some storm systems may also benefit fish by strengthening ocean upwelling that allows phytoplankton and zooplankton – food at the base of the marine food chain – to thrive, according to research led by United States National Marine Fisheries Service scientists.

Read the full story at Oceans Deeply

A Nearly Invisible Oil Spill Threatens Some of Asia’s Richest Fisheries

February 13, 2018 — ZHOUSHAN, China — A fiery collision that sank an Iranian tanker in the East China Sea a month ago has resulted in an environmental threat that experts say is unlike any before: An almost invisible type of petroleum has begun to contaminate some of the most important fishing grounds in Asia, from China to Japan and beyond.

It is the largest oil spill in decades, but the disaster has unfolded outside the glare of international attention that big spills have previously attracted. That is because of its remote location on the high seas and also the type of petroleum involved: condensate, a toxic, liquid byproduct of natural gas production.

Unlike the crude oil in better-known disasters like the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon, condensate does not clump into black globules that can be easily spotted or produce heart-wrenching images of animals mired in muck. There’s no visible slick that can be pumped out. Experts said the only real solution is to let it evaporate or dissolve. Absorbed into the water, it will remain toxic for a time, though it will also disperse more quickly into the ocean than crude oil.

Experts say there has never been so large a spill of condensate; up to 111,000 metric tons has poured into the ocean. It has almost certainly already invaded an ecosystem that includes some of the world’s most bountiful fisheries off Zhoushan, the archipelago that rises where the Yangtze River flows into the East China Sea.

The area produced five million tons of seafood of up to four dozen species for China alone last year, according to Greenpeace, including crab, squid, yellow croaker, mackerel and a local favorite, hairtail. If projections are correct, the toxins could soon make their way into equally abundant Japanese fisheries.

Exposure to condensate is extremely unhealthy to humans and potentially fatal. The effects of eating fish contaminated with it remain essentially untested, but experts strongly advise against doing so.

“This is an oil spill of a type we haven’t seen before,” said Paul Johnston, a scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter in England. “Working out the impact is actually a huge task — probably next to impossible.”

For China, the disaster has become a test of its ambitions as a global and regional steward of the seas, especially at a time when it is reinforcing its territorial claims, including disputed territories with Japan in these waters. Given its proximity, China has taken the lead in investigating the disaster and monitoring the spill, but it has faced some criticism for what some see as a slow and inadequate response thus far.

Officials in Beijing announced on Feb. 1 that samples of fish taken within four to five nautical miles of the sunken ship contained traces of petroleum hydrocarbons, suggesting possible condensate contamination; they pledged to expand the range of testing to 90 miles, and closely monitor fish coming into markets.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Cod Fish Have ‘Regional Accents’ and This Could Mean Trouble for Their Love Lives, Scientist Says

October 6th, 2016 — It’s a tale as old as time: Boy meets girl, but they speak different languages.

However, in this case, the boy and girl are cod fish, and the fact that they can’t speak the same language could mean the demise of their species.

As cod are increasingly moving north due to warming waters, scientists are worried that males from one region may not be able to “chat up” females from another region with a “different dialect” — thus threatening the species’ ability to breed, according to Stephen Simpson, a marine biologist and professor at the University of Exeter in the U.K.

Male cod fish vibrate their swim bladders to produce sounds, or “love calls,” which are meant to “impress females and stimulate them into releasing eggs for fertilization,” Simpson told ABC News today after he presented his findings at the National Environment Research Council’s “Into the Blue” science showcase in the U.K.

But the “accent,” or unique sound of a male fish’s “love call,” depends on what spawning ground it came from, Simpson said.

Underwater recordings have revealed that male cod fish off Maine make “distinctly different” sounds than that of male cod fish off the U.K.

American cod appear to have “higher pitched” and “quite repetitive” love calls in contrast to that of European cod’s “more longer, drawn out rumbling,” Simpson said.

Read the full story at WBT 

Could man-made noise interfere with cod reproduction?

October 6th, 2016 — A new study of Britain’s seas is attempting to determine whether man-made aquatic noise is affecting the communication and breeding of cod.

Led by Steve Simpson, associate professor in marine biology and global change at the University of Exeter, the study will look at how unnatural noise — from shipping, wind farm construction, and oil and gas drilling — has affected the reproductive behavior of fish.

Cod and haddock, for instance, are known to use certain sounds to attract mates.

“We’re interested in whether the human noise we’re making is drowning this out,” Simpson said.

Additionally, the two-year study will seek to determine whether fish — not unlike killer whales and songbirds — have “regional accents,” or mating calls particular to certain areas. Climate change has sent some fish migrating north in search of cooler waters, and the result could be a sort of underwater language barrier, according to the British scientists. (On this side of the Atlantic, warming waters have coincided with a dramatic drop in cod stocks.)

Read the full story at The Boston Globe