Saving Seafood

University of Washington and SFP release comprehensive new FIP database

February 25, 2021 — The Hilborn Lab at the University of Washington and the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) have released an updated version of their Fishery Improvement Projects Database (FIP-DB). UW and SFP, which released the update on Wednesday, 24 February, are calling the database the “world’s most comprehensive resource for current and historical information on fishery improvement projects (FIPs),” with data from all the globe’s 249 FIPs.

Nicole Baker, a research scientist for the Hilborn Lab, said the database will function as a guide to help analyze and implement new FIP measures.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Washington state salmon report offers warning to Alaska

February 17, 2021 — A report on Washington state’s dwindling wild salmon populations offers a warning to Alaska, where several stocks have registered concerning declines over the past years.

Washington’s 2020 State of the Salmon in Watersheds report chronicled a bleak panorama, with 14 of the state’s species listed as endangered. While conversation efforts have succeeded in revitalizing some salmon runs in Washington, the report said fish stocks in the Pacific Northwest face an uphill battle.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Bait and Switch: Mislabeled Salmon, Shrimp Have Biggest Environmental Toll

January 14, 2021 — Seafood is the world’s most highly traded food commodity, by value, and the product is hard to track from source to market. Reports of seafood mislabeling have increased over the past decade, but few studies have considered the overall environmental effects of this deceptive practice.

A study by Arizona State University, the University of Washington and other institutions examined the impacts of seafood mislabeling on the marine environment, including population health, the effectiveness of fishery management, and marine habitats and ecosystems.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Rigorous management practices have led to successful rebuilding of several West Coast groundfish stocks

January 14, 2021 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

A new paper published in Nature Sustainability, “Identifying Management Actions that Promote Sustainable Fisheries,” demonstrates that rigorous management practices have helped rebuild depleted fish stocks worldwide and underscores the fact that greater investment in fisheries management generally leads to better outcomes for fish populations and the fisheries they support.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages commercial and recreational ocean fisheries on the West Coast, was one of two dozen international management and research entities collaborating on this study.

The study was led by Michael Melnychuk, research scientist at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington.  Management practices and outcomes adopted by the Pacific Council to rebuild West Coast groundfish stocks contributed to the study.

“Rebuilding these overfished stocks was a painful process for West Coast fishermen,” said Pacific Council Executive Director Chuck Tracy. “This study shows that their short-term sacrifices paid off in the long run, leading to more sustainable fisheries for future generations.”

“Rebuilding these stocks required collaboration between a lot of different people, from fishermen to scientists to environmentalists,” said Pacific Council Chair Marc Gorelnik. “It was a tough process, but in rebuilding these stocks, we also built long-lasting, valuable relationships. Responsible fisheries management requires sacrifices, but it pays off. This is a really hopeful story.”

Read the full release here

The science of sustainable seafood, explained

January 13, 2021 — The following was released by Sustainable Fisheries UW:

Commercial fishing is vital to global food production. Wild-caught fish contain every essential amino acid, require no land or freshwater, and are a renewable resource when managed sustainably. In addition to providing access to healthy, low-impact protein, the seafood industry is worth over a trillion dollars annually and employs 40 million people—ensuring its sustainability is vital to economies all over the world. We explain seafood industry regulations in our section on fishery management—but first, the fundamental key to understanding sustainable seafood is grasping the science of catching fish.

Fisheries are composed of fish stocks and the fishing fleet that catches them. A fish stock is simply a harvested population. It refers to one specific species in one particular place, like Gulf of Maine cod. A fishery is the intersection of a stock (or group of stocks) and the means of harvest. Fishing fleets can use several different methods to capture fish, each method describes the fishery and guides management.

A fishery is sustainable when the amount harvested does not compromise future harvests.

Fishery science is the process that answers that question, primarily through stock assessments. A stock assessment uses several different kinds of data to understand the health of a stock and determine how much can be fished. You can think of the data as the A,B,Cs of stock assessments – abundance, biology, and catch.

  • Abundance is how many fish are in the population; estimates of abundance are made based on samples that are gathered using various methods.
  • Sampling can also collect biological data such as: age and length from which we can estimate levels of natural mortality and fishing mortality. Together, these data help estimate the reproductive rate of a population, which in turn allows us to predict how many fish will be around next year.
    • During sampling, environmental data like temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and other ecological variables are also collected.
  • Catch data are our historical records of how many or what weight of fish was caught during a calendar year or a fishing season.

Read the full release here

More management measures lead to healthier fish populations

January 12, 2021 — The study, led by Michael Melnychuk of the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, draws upon the expertise of more than two dozen researchers from 17 regions around the world. The research team analyzed the management practices of nearly 300 fish populations to tease out patterns that lead to healthier fisheries across different locations. Their findings confirmed, through extensive data analysis, what many researchers have argued for several years.

“In general, we found that more management attention devoted to fisheries is leading to better outcomes for fish and shellfish populations,” Melnychuk said. “While this won’t be surprising to some, the novelty of this work was in assembling the data required and then using statistical tools to reveal this pattern across hundreds of marine populations.”

The research team used an international database that is the go-to scientific resource on the status of more than 600 individual fish populations They chose to analyze 288 populations that generally are of value economically and represent a diversity of species and regions. They then looked over time at each fish population’s management practices and were able to draw these conclusions:

  • In regions of the world where fish and shellfish populations are well studied, overall fisheries management intensity has steadily increased over the past half century
  • As fisheries management measures are implemented, fishing pressure is usually reduced toward sustainable levels, and population abundance usually increases toward healthy targets
  • If fish populations become depleted as a result of overfishing, a rebuilding plan may be implemented. These plans tend to immediately decrease fishing pressure and allow populations to recover
  • If strong fisheries management systems are put in place early enough, then overfishing can be avoided and large, sustainable catches can be harvested annually, rendering emergency measures like rebuilding plans unnecessary

Read the full story at Science Daily

Use of ocean resources changed as Dungeness crab fishing industry adapted to climate shock event

January 6, 2021 — An unprecedented marine heat wave that led to a massive harmful algal bloom and a lengthy closure of the West Coast Dungeness crab fishery significantly altered the use of ocean resources across seven California crab-fishing communities.

The delayed opening of the 2015-16 crab-fishing season followed the 2014-16 North Pacific marine heat wave and subsequent algal bloom. The bloom produced high levels of the biotoxin domoic acid, which can accumulate in  and render them hazardous for human consumption.

That event, which is considered a “climate shock” because of its severity and impact, tested the resilience of California’s fishing communities, researchers from Oregon State University, the University of Washington and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center found.

The study is the first to examine impacts from such delays across fisheries, providing insight into the response by the affected fishing communities, said James Watson, one of the study’s co-authors and an assistant professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Dungeness Crab Fishing Industry Response to Climate Shock

January 5, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Fishermen contend with regulations, natural disasters, and the ups and downs of the stocks they fish, along with many other changes. As a result, fishing communities are quite resilient. That is, they can withstand, recover from, and adapt to change.

But how much pressure can they stand? The 2014–2016 North Pacific marine heatwave, known as the Blob, led to a harmful algal bloom of unprecedented scale. It necessitated substantial delays in the opening of the 2015–16 U.S. West Coast Dungeness crab fishery. The fishery is vital to West Coast communities. It produces around 26 percent of all annual fishing revenue and supports more than 30 percent of all commercial fishing vessels.

Understanding Impacts from Climate Shocks

Previous studies have documented the devastating economic impacts from the 2015–16 event on Dungeness crab fishermen. Members of affected coastal communities attest that these socioeconomic effects rippled through associated industries and coastal communities. But can changes in fishing practices in response to this significant climate shock be quantified?

“We wanted to examine the extent to which the Dungeness crab fishery delays affected participation in other fisheries, and the duration of those changes,” said Mary Fisher, a doctoral student at the University of Washington. Fisher did the work as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Internship Program Fellow at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Fisher and her colleagues at NOAA Fisheries, University of Washington, and Oregon State University studied the impacts on more than 2,500 vessels across seven California fishing communities. The researchers wanted to see how a climate-related shock (like the heatwave and associated harmful algal bloom) can impact communities’ use of ocean resources.

Read the full release here

US seafood industry flounders due to COVID-19

November 24, 2020 — The global pandemic is hurting the seafood industry, and American fishmongers may flounder without more government aid, according to the largest study of COVID-19’s impacts on U.S. fisheries.

The new study, published Nov. 23 in the journal Fish and Fisheries, found that monthly fresh seafood exports declined up to 43% compared to last year, while monthly imports fell up to 37%, and catches dropped 40% in some months.

Additionally, over the first six months of 2020, total U.S. seafood exports were down 20% and imports were down 6%, compared to the same period last year. Further losses are likely as restrictions increase to address COVID-19.

“Seafood has been hit harder than many other industries because many fisheries rely heavily on restaurant buyers, which dried up when the necessary health protocols kicked in,” said lead author Easton White of the University of Vermont. “Restaurants represent about 65% of U.S. seafood spending, normally.”

For context, over one million U.S. seafood workers regularly produce more than $4 billion in annual exports, much of which is processed overseas and imported back to the U.S.

While seafood data often takes several months — or longer — to compile, the research team, including Trevor Branch of the University of Washington, used pioneering methods to quickly determine the pandemic’s impacts on fisheries. U.S. Congress received preliminary data from the study in September.

Read the full story at University of Washington News

Marine animals live where ocean is most breathable, ranges may shrink with climate change

September 17, 2020 — As oceans warm due to climate change, scientists are trying to predict how marine animals—from backboned fish to spineless jellyfish—will react. Laboratory experiments indicate that many could theoretically tolerate temperatures far higher than what they encounter today. But these studies don’t mean that marine animals can maintain their current ranges in warmer oceans, according to Curtis Deutsch, an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Washington.

“Temperature alone does not explain where in the  an animal can live,” said Deutsch. “You must consider : how much is present in the water, how well an organism can take up and utilize it, and how temperature affects these processes.”

Species-specific characteristics, overall  and water temperature combine to determine which parts of the ocean are “breathable” for different ocean-dwelling creatures. New research led by Deutsch shows that a wide variety of marine —from vertebrates to crustaceans to mollusks—already inhabit the maximum range of breathable ocean that their physiology will allow.

Read the full story at PHYS.org