Saving Seafood

Salmon to lose sense of smell as CO2 levels rise

December 19, 2018 — As atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide will be absorbed into the ocean. New research suggests rising CO2 levels in the ocean could disrupt the olfactory abilities of coho salmon.

Salmon rely on their sense of smell to track prey, find mates and navigate their way back upstream to spawn. According to the new study, published this week in the journal Global Change Biology, a compromised sense of smell would pose a serious threat to the health of salmon populations.

Lab experiments showed rising acidity levels caused by elevated CO2 levels inhibits salmon’s already vulnerable sensory-neural system.

“Our studies and research from other groups have shown that exposure to pollutants can also interfere with sense of smell for salmon,” Evan Gallagher, a professor of toxicology at the University of Washington, said in a news release. “Now, salmon are potentially facing a one-two punch from exposure to pollutants and the added burden of rising CO2. These have implications for the long-term survival of our salmon.”

Read the full story at UPI

Report finds seafood mislabeling “rampant” in New York

December 18, 2018 — The New York Attorney General’s office may take enforcement action against some supermarket chains after it found “rampant” seafood mislabeling at grocers across the state, according to a recent report.

The report, from New York Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood, found that around a quarter of the seafood sampled at New York grocery retailers was mislabeled. These findings are the result of the first major U.S. government investigation of seafood fraud at supermarket chains.

The incidence of mislabeling popular species was “rampant” among New York retailers, the Underwood’s office said in statement. For example, 27.6 percent of species sold as “wild” salmon were mislabeled, oftentimes being substituted for farmed salmon.

A significant 67 percent of red snapper samples were mislabeled, the report found. Approximately 87.5 percent of lemon sole was also discovered to be mislabeled.

“The substitutes were often cheaper, less desirable, and less environmentally sustainable species,” the AG office statement said. “This includes farm-raised salmon sold as wild salmon, lane snapper sold as red snapper, and swai sold as lemon sole.”

Ray Hilborn, a professor of marine science at the University of Washington and a member of the International Fisheries Innovation Network steering committee, said the report showed the mislabeling was at times intentional and at times accidental.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

From skiing to salmon runs, the national climate report predicts a Northwest in peril

November 27, 2018 — Climate change’s effects – among them, increasing wildfires, disease outbreak and drought – are taking a toll on the Northwest, and what’s to come will threaten and transform our way of life from the salmon streams to ski slopes, according to a new federal climate assessment released Friday.

The 1,000-plus-page report, produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is the most comprehensive evaluation to date of climate change’s effects on the nation’s economy, human health, agriculture and environment. Thirteen federal agencies contributed to the report, which was required to be published by Congress.

The federal report’s stark, direct and largely negative projections are at odds with President Donald Trump’s skeptical view of climate science. But federal officials, like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher David Easterling, left little room for ambiguity about whether climate change was real and who was causing it.

Temperature data, Easterling said, provided “clear and compelling evidence that global average temperature is much higher and rising more rapidly than anything modern civilization has experienced and that this warming trend can only be explained by human activities …”

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

ALASKA: Researchers work on better model for impact of fishery closures

November 21, 2018 — Fisheries managers are faced with a firestorm every time they decide to close a fishery because of poor returns or low population numbers. A new economic model is trying to help them see into the future to understand the effects of a closure before it happens.

Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington worked together on the model, finished in 2017 and published in the journal Marine Policy this past September.

It takes into account items like fishery participation, the amount of each vessel’s annual revenue that comes from the affected fishery, which vessels participate in other fisheries and the value of the fishery; the aim is to calculate the total impact when managers have to limit or close a fishery.

The origin of the idea came after a disastrous broad closure in salmon fishing on the West Coast in 2008. The closure, caused by poor salmon returns correlated to unfavorable ocean conditions, resulted in a federal disaster declaration and a $170 million relief distribution.

Had officials and fishery managers been able to estimate the impact better, relief funds might have been distributed sooner, said Kate Richerson, a marine ecologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the lead author of the study.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

 

As the guilty pleas pile up in tuna case, will consumers ever get anything back?

November 6, 2018 — First, Chicken of the Sea came forward as a whistleblower. Last year, Bumble Bee Foods pleaded guilty, followed by StarKist Co. in October.

The big three tuna companies — familiar names on the shelves of your nearest grocery store — have been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for keeping the price of canned and pouched tuna artificially high.

It’s a high-level antitrust case involving lots of big companies, but it’s also the kind of case that reaches all the way down to the grocery store checkout and family budgets.

Thomas Burt, an attorney with the law firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz, said with consumer cases like this, “Psychologically, these hit home in a way that others don’t.”

“If a group of companies fix the price of basic industrial chemicals or computer chips that we use in the devices around us, the psychological distance is further. We don’t feel it as directly,” Mr. Burt said. “This is a product that people have a relationship with. They know this brand. They’ve eaten it since they were kids.

“It’s a kick in the pants for consumers,” he said.

It remains to be seen if consumers will be directly compensated in some way, and, if so, how.

The packaged seafood market, which also includes salmon, shrimp, clams and the like, is a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States. Tuna represents about 73 percent of the market and generates about $1.7 billion in annual sales, according to court documents.

Read the full story at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Is a Splashy Fishing Statistic Misleading?

September 10, 2018 — How much of the world’s oceans are affected by fishing? In February, a team of scientists led by David Kroodsma from the Global Fishing Watch published a paper that put the figure at 55 percent—an area four times larger than that covered by land-based agriculture. The paper was widely covered, with several outlets leading with the eye-popping stat that “half the world’s oceans [are] now fished industrially.”

Ricardo Amoroso from the University of Washington had also been trying to track global fishing activity and when he saw the headlines, he felt that the 55 percent figure was wildly off. He and his colleagues re-analyzed the data that the Global Fishing Watch had made freely available. And in their own paper, published two weeks ago, they claim that industrial fishing occurs over just 4 percent of the ocean.

How could two groups have produced such wildly different answers using the same set of data? At its core, this is a simple academic disagreement about scale. But it’s also a more subtle debate that hinges on how we think about the act of fishing, and how to measure humanity’s influence on the planet. “I think this discussion really shows how little we know about the world’s oceans and why making data publicly available is so important for stimulating research,” says Kroodsma.

As ships traverse the oceans, many of them continuously transmit their position, speed, and identity to satellites. This automatic identification system was originally developed to prevent collisions, but by training Google’s machine-learning tools on the data, the Global Fishing Watch (GFW)—an initiative led by the nonprofits Oceana and SkyTruth—can identify different kinds of fishing vessels, and work out where they’re dropping their lines and nets.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

 

Trump’s pick to head White House science office gets good reviews

August 2, 2018 — The long wait for a White House science adviser is over. President Donald Trump announced today that he intends to nominate meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier, a university administrator and former vice-chair of the governing board of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The OSTP director traditionally, but not always, also holds the title of the president’s science adviser.

The move caps a search process of record-setting length—nearly 560 days, double the longest time taken by any other modern president to name an OSTP director. Many in the research community had lamented the delay. But the wait may have been worth it: Droegemeier, a respected veteran of the Washington, D.C., policymaking scene, is getting positive reviews from science and university groups.

“He’s a very good pick. … He has experience speaking science to power,” says environmental policy expert John Holdren, who served as science adviser under former President Barack Obama and is now at Harvard University. “I expect he’ll be energetic in defending the R&D budget and climate change research in particular.”

Maria Zuber, a planetary geophysicist and vice president for research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, agrees that Droegemeier will stand up for climate science. “He always has. I see no reason why he wouldn’t now.” But she says his style is not confrontational. “He’s a good old boy. He wears cowboy boots. … He’s a personable guy.” She adds that “he’s got solid conservative credentials,” noting that his web page is emblazoned with “God Bless America!!!”

“He is an excellent choice,” says Tobin Smith, vice president for policy at the Association of American Universities in Washington, D.C. “He has a strong understanding of issues of concern to research universities.”

“Kelvin is a solid scientist, excellent with people, and with deep experience with large bureaucracies,” says Cliff Mass, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle. “A moderate voice that won’t politicize the science.”

Droegemeier, who has served on the faculty of The University of Oklahoma (OU) in Norman for 33 years and been the school’s vice president for research since 2009, has long been rumored to be in the running for the OSTP job, which entails advising the president on technical issues and overseeing coordination of federal science policy. He is no stranger to Washington, D.C.; then-President George W. Bush named him to the National Science Board, which oversees NSF, in 2004, and Obama reappointed him in 2011. He served as the board’s vice-chair from 2014 to 2017.

Read the full story at Science Magazine

 

Alaska Fisherman May Have Higher Rates of Hearing Loss, New Research Shows

June 21, 2018 — Alaska salmon fishermen have a significantly higher rate of health problems than the general population, according to a new study conducted by the University of Washington School of Public Health in partnership with Alaska Sea Grant, the Sea Grant program affiliated with the University of Alaska Fairbanks published on its website. The health issues include noise-induced hearing loss, upper extremity disorders, and fatigue possibly associated with sleep apnea.

The study began in early 2015 when Torie Baker, Alaska Sea Grant marine advisory agent in Cordova, and members of Cordova District Fishermen United invited 600 salmon gillnet permit holders to answer health questions before and during the fishing season. Dr Debra Cherry, a physician and injury prevention and treatment researcher with the University of Washington Department of Epidemiology, led the effort.

The research is one of the first of its kind in the United States, according to the study’s authors. The peer-reviewed study was published April 2018 in the Journal of Agromedicine.

Evidence of noise-induced hearing loss in the study is striking. About 80% of physical exam participants had hearing loss, compared to the 15% norm for Americans. In addition to engine noise while fishing, most fishermen reported exposure to noise during off-season activities, such as snowmachining, hunting, and construction jobs.

Read the full story at The Hearing Review

Industrial Beef, Farmed Catfish Worst Foods For Environmental Impact, Study Finds

June 12, 2018 — Not all foods are created equal, especially when it comes to the environmental impact of meat production. Industrial beef and farmed catfish take the biggest toll on the environment, while small fish caught in the wild and farmed shellfish and mollusks cause the least damage, a study had found.

Researchers used the standard of producing 40 grams of protein — the daily recommended protein serving — as the base for looking at four different metrics of how various types of production of different foods impact the environment. The four metrics were the amount of energy used, emissions of greenhouse gases, the potential for contribution of excessive chemicals — in the form of nutrients, such as fertilizers — to the environment, and the potential to contribute to acid rain by emitting specific substances.

They looked at all stages of the food products’ lives, called “cradle-to-grace” analysis. There are about 300 different assessments for such analyses when it comes to animal food production, and the study’s authors selected 148 of those, choosing ones that were comprehensive and not too specialized.

Livestock farming at the industrial scale had the worst impact in the acid rain category, due to the emission of methane from manure. It also scored poorly when it comes to excessive nutrients being released into the environment. Industrial beef production, as well as aquaculture catfish, produce about 20 times more greenhouse gases than producing chicken, or salmon and mollusks that have been farmed. Seafood aquaculture, including catfish, tilapia and shrimp, used the most energy, even more than livestock production.

On the other hand, producing mollusks like oysters, mussels and scallops in aquaculture absorbs excess nutrients that would otherwise harm the ecosystem. It also emits fewer greenhouse gases. Catching fish in the wild requires no fertilizers of any sort, and the biggest environmental factor there is the fuel used by the fishing boats. The exact amount of fuel consumed varies greatly, depending on the type of fishing method used.

Read the full story at the International Business Times

Choice matters: The environmental costs of producing meat, seafood

June 11, 2018 — Which food type is more environmentally costly to produce—livestock, farmed seafood, or wild-caught fish?

The answer is, it depends. But in general, industrial beef production and farmed catfish are the most taxing on the environment, while small, wild-caught fish and farmed mollusks like oysters, mussels and scallops have the lowest environmental impact, according to a new analysis.

The study will appear online June 11 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, and its authors believe it is the most comprehensive look at the environmental impacts of different types of animal protein production.

“From the consumer’s standpoint, choice matters,” said lead author Ray Hilborn, a University of Washington professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “If you’re an environmentalist, what you eat makes a difference. We found there are obvious good choices, and really obvious bad choices.”

The study is based on nearly a decade of analysis, in which the co-authors reviewed hundreds of published life-cycle assessments for various types of animal protein production. Also called a “cradle-to-grave” analysis, these assessments look at environmental impacts associated with all stages of a product’s life.

Of the more than 300 such assessments that exist for animal production, the authors selected 148 that were comprehensive and not considered too “boutique,” or specialized, to inform their new study.

As decisions are made about how food production expands through agricultural policies, trade agreements and environmental regulations, the authors note a “pressing need” for systematic comparisons of environmental costs across animal food types.

“I think this is one of the most important things I’ve ever done,” Hilborn said. “Policymakers need to be able to say, ‘There are certain food production types we need to encourage, and others we should discourage.'”

Broadly, the study uses four metrics as a way to compare environmental impacts across the many different types of animal food production, including farm-raised seafood (called aquaculture), livestock farming and seafood caught in the wild. The four measures are: energy use, emissions, potential to contribute excess nutrients—such as fertilizer—to the environment, and the potential to emit substances that contribute to acid rain.

The researchers compared environmental impacts across food types by using a standard amount of 40 grams of protein—roughly the size of an average hamburger patty, and the daily recommended protein serving. For example, they calculated how much greenhouse gas was produced per 40 grams of protein across all food types, where data were available.

Read the full story at PHYS.org