University of Rhode Island Archives

Warming R.I. marine waters force iconic species out, disrupt catch limits

August 9, 2021 — For generations, winter flounder was one of the most important fish in Rhode Island waters. Longtime recreational fisherman Rich Hittinger recalled taking his kids fishing in the 1980s, dropping anchor, letting their lines sink to the bottom, waiting about half an hour and then filling their fishing cooler with the oval-shaped, right-eyed flatfish.

Now, four decades later, once-abundant winter flounder is difficult to find. The harvesting or possession of the fish is prohibited in much of Narragansett Bay and in Point Judith and Potter ponds. Anglers must return the ones they accidentally catch to the sea.

Overfishing is easily blamed, and the industry certainly bears responsibility, as does consumer demand. But winter flounder’s local extinction isn’t simply the result of overfishing. Sure, it played a factor, but the reasons are complicated, from habitat loss, pollution and energy production — i.e., the former Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Mass., pre-cooling towers, when the since-shuttered facility took in about a billion gallons of water daily from Mount Hope Bay and discharged it at more than 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Read the full story at The Westerly Sun

Study: Most Of The Plastic Found In Seabirds’ Stomachs Was Recycleable

October 22, 2020 — The great shearwater is a seabird commonly seen off the New England coast. It’s not particularly striking — to the untrained eye, it looks like a brown seagull with long wings. It eats by diving underwater, grabbing prey and then returning to the surface to swallow it down. The birds aren’t rare or endangered, but they can live for decades, and this makes them especially interesting to scientists who study long-term environmental pollutants.

“Because they’re long-lived and are eating at similar food web levels as where a human might eat, they’re great indicators of the environment, and they really tell us a lot about the health of this Atlantic system,” says Anna Robuck, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography.

Humans dump an estimated 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic into the ocean each year, and some of it gets eaten by fish, marine mammals and seabirds like great shearwaters. Though scientists have done a bunch of studies looking a how much plastic animals eat, very few have examined what type of plastic they eat. And knowing where the plastic came from could help us keep it out of the ocean.

Read the full story at WBUR

Rhode Island Oyster Farmer Leads the Way in Aquaculture

September 25, 2020 — Nearly 20 years ago when Perry Raso leased a 1-acre piece of Potter Pond in South County to farm oysters, aquaculture was in its infancy in the Ocean State.

Raso, then in his early 20s, was only the 15th person to obtain a lease from the state and called himself a stockholder in the pond where he spent part of every day.

Today, the entrepreneurial owner of the Matunuck Oyster Farm and the Matunuck Oyster Bar nurtures 16 million oysters in different stages of growth on 7 acres in the saltwater estuary a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean.

His farm is now one of 70 similar aquaculture operations across the state.

The farmed oysters mature slowly under about 4 feet of water in polyethylene bags that are open to the sea at one end of the pond.

The oysters extract algae from the water that flows through the baskets on the rising and falling tides, said Raso, 39.

He has about 2,000 bags of oysters growing in the pond at any one time. The farm crew tends the operation daily and passes the oysters through a tumbler apparatus frequently to separate them by size in the growing process.

Read the full story at Lancaster Farming

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Seeking Rhode Island Climate Action

September 1, 2020 — Last week Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Melissa Darigan dismissed a complaint filed by Nature’s Trust Rhode Island against the Department of Environmental Management (DEM). On behalf of 13 young Rhode Islanders and the Sisters of Mercy Ecology, the group filed suit after DEM had rejected an attempt that would have forced the state to address, systematically and meaningfully, the climate crisis and to take responsibility for its share of greenhouse-gas emissions.

Peter Nightingale, president of the Nature’s Trust Rhode Island board, said the judge’s recent ruling “makes it clear that the Rhode Island courts shirk their responsibility to protect the environment.”

The University of Rhode Island physics professor pointed to House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello’s statement at the beginning of this year that “there’s nothing Rhode Island can do to address climate change in a way that is real or impactful” as perhaps the most vivid example of political negligence.

Read the full story at ecoRI

Researcher to Map Commercial Fishing Activity to Reduce Fishing, Wind Industry Conflict

July 29, 2020 — A natural resource economist from the University of Rhode Island will document where commercial fishing is conducting in southern New England waters to help reduce the conflict between the region’s fishermen and the wind industry.

“I’m exploring a new way of improving spatial planning for offshore wind,” said URI Associate Professor Thomas Sproul. “One of the biggest sources of delay in the regulatory process for offshore wind has been because of the conflicts with commercial fishing.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

JOB OPENING: CFRF Research Associate

July 29, 2020 — The following was released by the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation:

The CFRF is seeking a motivated and qualified individual for the position of Full-time Research Associate to start September 2020. Applications are due by August 12, 2020.

A full description of this job opening and application instructions are available HERE.

Overview of Position: Full-time position focusing on leading the communication aspects of CFRF’s research portfolio. This includes leading two projects focused on the communication of environmental change to fishing communities.

Timeframe and Compensation: The position will last for one year, beginning in September 2020. The Research Associate will maintain an average of 35 hours of work/week, will receive compensation at a rate of $48,00-$52,000/year, depending on qualifications, and benefits of paid holiday and vacation time.

Scope of Work: The qualified applicant will be responsible for helping CFRF Research Biologists and the Executive Director communicate project results and CFRF’s mission to a variety of stakeholders. All CFRF projects have an outreach component that this position will assist in. The individual will also lead two projects that seek to communicate the impacts of ocean acidification on the scallop fishery and changes on the New England shelf related to intrusions of warm, salty water.

Location: : The Research Associate will work from the CFRF office located in the Commercial Fisheries Center of Rhode Island building on the East Farm Campus of the University of Rhode Island (Kingston, RI) as well as from their home office.

Qualifications: See full position description for minimum and preferred qualifications.
To Apply: Email a cover letter, CV, and contact information for three professional references to twinneg@cfrfoundation.org by August 12, 2020.

Questions: Contact Teresa Winneg at twinneg@cfrfoundation.org or 401-515-4890. Please visit here for additional background information www.cfrfoundation.org.

URI researcher to map commercial fishing activity to help reduce conflict between fishing, wind industries

July 27, 2020 — The following was released by The University of Rhode Island:

A University of Rhode Island natural resource economist has been awarded a $250,000 grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to create a new way of documenting where commercial fishing is conducted in southern New England waters. The project is aimed at reducing conflict between the fishing industry and offshore wind farm developers.

He said that while the National Marine Fisheries Service collects a variety of data about the fishing industry, limited information is available about where commercial fishing occurs.

“There isn’t a consensus map of the ocean that says, for instance, if you put a wind turbine here, it affects 30 percent of the squid fishery,” Sproul said.

He will be taking a novel approach to the problem by combining existing data from numerous sources, including the Automatic Identification System, which identifies the location of every fishing vessel over 65-feet long every minute of every day it is at sea. It will be combined with the government’s vessel monitoring system and vessel trip reports, along with seafood dealer reports, Coast Guard registry records, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ship-board observer program.

Read the full release here

How Rhode Island’s Shellfish Industry is Innovating During Coronavirus: RI Sea Grant on LIVE

July 16, 2020 — The Rhode Island aquaculture industry has been hit hard by the coronavirus — loss of sales, but also forced to reinvent their business models fast.

Azure Cygler, Fisheries and Aquaculture Extension Specialist at the RI Sea Grant at the University of Rhode Island appeared on GoLocal LIVE, and talked about how the aquaculture industry in the state is adapting due to coronavirus restrictions — and innovating.

Cygler joined GoLocal LIVE as part of an ongoing partnership between the Rhode Island Food Policy Council and GoLocal.

“In terms of our seafood industry, we have some of the best and most amazing innovators you could imagine,” said Cygler. “So at the University of Rhode Island, I work with Rhode Island Sea Grant and the Coast Resources Center — I’ve been working with these folks for years and I just wanted to kind of zero in on the shellfish industry, which is part of the bigger seafood system.”

Read the full story at Go Local Providence

New England looks to Europe to assess environmental impacts of offshore energy facilities

June 24, 2020 — Rhode Island is still the only state in the country with an offshore wind farm, but that will change in the coming years as wind farms are built along the entire Eastern Seaboard, from Virginia all the way up to Maine.

Now five years old, the Block Island wind farm, consisting of just five turbines, has been the subject of considerable study as scientists determine what impacts, if any, the construction of the facility and the turbines themselves are having on the ecosystem. Researchers are also looking to the future, when thousands of wind turbines will be coming online.

At the second of four webinars in the 17th annual Ronald C. Baird Sea Grant Science Symposium, scientists from the University of Rhode Island and elsewhere heard from researchers in Europe, where offshore wind power has been commonplace for decades.

Entitled “Offshore Renewable Energy — Changes in Habitats and Ecosystems,” the June 15 symposium focused on the impacts of individual turbines and larger-scale wind energy installations on the diversity and interactions of marine species.

Emma Sheehan of the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom and Jan Vanaverbeke of the Royal Institute for Natural Sciences in Belgium presented some of the findings of their research on the environmental impacts of large-scale commercial wind and wave energy farms.

Read the full story at The Westerly Sun

Offshore Wind to Fund New Study of Right Whales

January 28, 2020 — Ørsted is funding a project to study and protect endangered North Atlantic right whale during surveys, construction, and operation of its U.S. offshore wind facilities such as Bay State Wind and Revolution Wind.

Using data collected from an aerial, unmanned glider and two sound-detection buoys, researchers from the University of Rhode Island, Rutgers University, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will examine the habitat and behaviors of right whales in the wind-lease areas awarded to Ørsted.

An estimated 400 North Atlantic right whales remain, fewer than 100 are breeding females.

The oceanographic data will help studies of additional fish species and improve forecasting for severe storms and other weather, according to Ørsted. The three-year initiative is called Ecosystem and Passive Acoustic Monitoring (ECO-PAM).

Read the full story at EcoRI