Saving Seafood

UMaine Orono receives $1.6M grant for sustainable aquaculture

September 20, 2019 — The University of Maine at Orono received a $1.6 million grant to advance sustainable aquaculture in Maine.

According to a release from the university, Maine Sea Grant researchers at the University of Maine were granted the money from the NOAA National Sea Grant to lead four projects in collaboration with the aquaculture industry, management, and community partners.

“Thousands of Mainers rely on marine industries for their livelihoods, and aquaculture is a promising area for growth,” said U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King.

According to NOAA fisheries, the United States imports 85% of its seafood, which has resulted in a $14 billion trade deficit- leading to new opportunities in aquaculture to meet demands of seafood consumption.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

MAINE: NOAA grant will fund certificate program at UMaine aquaculture institute

September 19, 2019 — The University of Maine’s Aquaculture Research Institute has been selected to receive a $123,735 workforce development grant.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant will fund a pilot project creating an aquaculture certificate program, which will be open to all applicants with at least a high school degree, according to a news release. The grant is administered by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

UMaine’s project, “Aquaculture Workforce Development: Certificate in Applied Sustainable Aquaculture,” is designed to address aquaculture industry workforce needs in Maine by facilitating alternative career opportunities for traditional fishing communities.

The project also will incorporate the institute’s internship program, which pilots new internship models to meet hiring needs through industry and academic partnerships.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Scientists See A Hotter, Wetter, Less Snowy Future For Maine

September 17, 2019 — All this week, Maine Public – and more than 250 other news outlets all around the world – are reporting stories on climate change as part of the  “Covering Climate Now” project. In Maine, scientists say that climate change means hot summers, warm winters, more rain, and less snow, along with a warming gulf of Maine, and that will affect the state’s fisheries, its  economy and traditional ways of life.

Professor Ivan Fernandez of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine is one of the authors of the report, “Maine’s Climate Future.”  He told Maine Public’s Nora Flaherty that since the findings came out out in 2015, there have been many big changes in the state and globally, including an acceleration in the pace of change.

FERNANDEZ: What we’ve seen in the last five years is, obviously, a continuation – most of the time, evidence of an acceleration of many of the trends for climate change. We’ve also, obviously, lived through a few years where we have hurricanes and fires, and where we’re witnessing the loss of communities and island nations due to these sorts of climate related disasters. And so the I think the public awareness and the mounting evidence of these extreme events has picked up the pace in the last few years.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Baby lobster numbers spell trouble for shellfish population

July 1, 2019 — Baby lobsters are continuing to appear in high numbers off some parts of Canada while tailing off in New England, raising questions about what the valuable shellfish’s population will look like in several years.

University of Maine scientist Rick Wahle has documented trends in baby lobster density for years, and released new data for 2018 this month. The new data reinforce recent trends about lobsters that show upticks off sites in Atlantic Canada, such as some areas in Nova Scotia, Wahle said. Meanwhile, the Gulf of Maine reported below average numbers from Bar Harbor to Cape Cod, he said.

Young lobsters settle into the ocean bottom, where they take shelter as they grow. Wahle tracks where lobsters are settling in 23 areas from Rhode Island to Prince Edward Island, Canada. This year’s data showed high totals in Canadian locations such as St. Mary’s Bay, Nova Scotia, and the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, but low numbers in Maine fishing areas such as the Midcoast region and Casco Bay.

American fishermen compete with Canada for the same species of lobster, which anchors one of the most lucrative fisheries in either country. Some scientists have said the shellfish appear to be moving north as waters warm.

“It’s as if this wave that has crested in Maine is now increasing in Atlantic Canada,” Wahle said.

New England’s commercial harvest of lobster has been strong in recent years, but it’s dependent on young lobsters growing to maturity. Some New England sites, such as those off Rhode Island, show few baby lobsters at all.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Post

State of the Science Conference set for UMaine-Machias

June 17, 2019 — Big science is coming to Downeast Maine next week.

On Monday and Tuesday, June 17 and 18, the Eastern Maine Coastal Current Collaborative (EM3C) will host a State of the Science Conference at the University of Maine at Machias.

The conference will discuss ecosystem-based fisheries management in eastern Maine and will bring together experts from local governments, fishing, science and academic communities. It is the first step toward producing a comprehensive understanding of the region’s watersheds, intertidal, nearshore and offshore ecosystems, including their governance and socioeconomic factors.

EM3C is a partnership among three fisheries organizations: the Stonington-based, nonprofit Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries; the Maine Department of Marine Resources; and NOAA Fisheries, the federal agency that manages fisheries at the state and federal level.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

MAINE: Two seafood companies team up to fund UMaine lobster research

June 4, 2019 — A $75,000 gift from two seafood companies will fund a fourth field season for a University of Maine deep-water lobster settlement monitoring program.

The deep-water research is an extension of the American Lobster Settlement Index, which was initiated in 1989 by Rick Wahle, a research professor in the School of Marine Sciences who was named director of the Lobster Institute last fall. The index includes collaborators and monitoring sites from Rhode Island to Newfoundland.

The original surveys were conducted by divers, which confined data collection to shallower waters. In 2016, Wahle expanded monitoring to include greater depths with a novel collector deployed from fishing vessels. The addition of this data helps scientists evaluate how temperature affects the nursery potential of seabed for larval lobsters, and subsequent bottom movements by older juveniles.

Maine Sea Grant sponsored the first two years of deep-water monitoring in collaboration with Ready Seafood Co. of Portland and the Maine Department of Marine Resources. When the Maine Sea Grant project ended, Ready Seafood stepped in with a $75,000 gift to support a third research field season in 2018.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

During abrupt warming, lobsters in acidic water have reduced heart function, fewer infection-fighting cells

April 25, 2019 — Ocean acidification and warming may be an unhealthy combination for lobsters, say University of Maine scientists.

The heart rates of lobsters (Homarus americanus) who lived 60 days in water with predicted end-century  pH levels became erratic significantly sooner during an abrupt warming event than those of lobsters in ocean water with current pH levels.

The findings could be “likened to putting people on a treadmill and finding that people exposed to  fell off the treadmill from exhaustion much sooner than those not exposed,” says Heather Hamlin, a reproductive endocrinologist and associate professor in the School of Marine Sciences.

The lobsters exposed to acidic ocean conditions also had fewer cells that fight infection in their hemolymph (similar to blood), says Amalia Harrington, a recent marine biology Ph.D. graduate.

So while lobsters in acidic  may look and act normal, they experience physiological challenges when exposed to multiple stressors, says Hamlin.

She and Harrington tested adolescent female lobsters transitioning to adulthood. Effects of environmental stressors during this stage could have major impacts on the population of the species, say the researchers, who believe this is the first such study of its kind.

“We’re really trying to get at the ‘hidden’  on this understudied but extremely important stage of the American lobster,” says Harrington.

“Most of the previous work exploring climate change impacts on American lobster has focused on early developmental stages (eggs and larvae). While this is helpful for understanding how environmental change might impact the number of baby lobsters that survive their time in the plankton and make it to the seafloor, it doesn’t really tell us what impact that will have on the population as a whole.”

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Scientists hope DNA in water could be way to save rare Maine fish

February 11, 2019 — Scientists in Maine are using DNA to try to preserve the remaining populations of a fish that lives in 14 lakes and ponds in the state and nowhere else in the continental United States.

The scientists are turning their eye to the Arctic charr, which is a species of landlocked fish in Maine that has lived in the state for millennia and is prized by anglers. The charr face threats such as invasive predators and a warming climate. They are also notoriously elusive, making them difficult for researchers to track.

Michael Kinnison, a professor of evolutionary applications at University of Maine, and other scientists are working with the state to make sure the fish keep surviving. Kinnison is working on a project to collect “environmental DNA” from the water bodies where the fish live.

The project involves collecting water samples from the lakes and ponds where the fish are known to live, and studying DNA that they and other organisms shed, Kinnison said. It’ll provide vital information scientists can use to keep charr populations stable, he said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Boston.com

NOAA Seeking Volunteers in Tagging Tuna

February 8, 2019 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is looking for help in tagging tuna.

The Atlantic Ocean Tropical Tuna Tagging Program was established by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas in 2015 to study key aspects of bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna in the Atlantic Ocean.

As part of the AOTTP, Dr. Walt Golet from the University of Maine and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute will be working with colleagues at the New England Aquarium, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, University of Miami, and NOAA Fisheries to deploy 5,000 conventional tags on tuna in the western North Atlantic Ocean.

The effort will stretch from Canada to Venezuela and also includes the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Those interested in participating in the AOTTP project and would like to volunteer to tag bigeye, skipjack, and yellowfin tuna, can contact Dr. Walt Golet at walter.golet@maine.edu.

NOAA says every fish tagged will give participants a chance to win one of 20 individual cash prizes, totaling more than $39,000, to be awarded at the end of the project.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Maine fisheries and blueberries could be at stake due to climate change, report says

November 29, 2018 — Climate change has helped Maine’s lobster yield increase fourfold since the 1980s, as warming waters to the south have propelled lobsters north in search of colder waters. But if summer sea temperatures along Maine’s coast continue rising and cross a potentially perilous threshold, lobsters’ survival in a more temperate Gulf of Maine could be in doubt.

The Gulf of Maine has warmed faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, and the trend is expected to continue. The warming that has taken place so far, as well as the decline of cod, has proven favorable for Maine’s lobster yields in recent years, but if sea temperatures during the summer rise above 68 degrees Fahrenheit, lobster mortality will increase.

That’s one conclusion from a new report detailing the potential effects of climate change on Maine’s coast. The report, released earlier this month by the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, took a close look at how climate change could affect fishing and agriculture. It imagines five climate change scenarios, how they would unfold over the next two decades and the impacts from each one.

The report by Paul Mayewski, the institute’s director, and Maine State Climatologist Sean Birkel predicts an overall trend of warmer, wetter weather with rising sea temperatures, shorter winters, longer summers and more frequent storms.

These predictions are in line with the National Climate Assessment that the Trump administration published the day after Thanksgiving and came a week after Mayewski and Birkel’s report. The national assessment predicts an increase in extreme weather events due to climate change, and major economic losses and heightened health risks as a result.

A global or national climate change assessment might not be applicable to all states or even regions within a state, however, which is why UMaine’s Climate Change Institute has focused on specific regions of Maine, Mayewski said. Mayewski and Birkel used past climate change data collected through Birkel’s Climate Reanalyzer tool to make predictions about coastal Maine’s climate future, and they plan to do the same for other regions in the state.

“Our goal through reports like this is to give people a better idea of how the climate has changed in the past few decades, and understanding what the plausible scenarios are for future climate and how this might impact, in this case, fisheries and blueberries,” Mayewski said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News