Saving Seafood

Changing Ocean Topic Draws Record Crowd

March 30, 2016 — ROCKPORT, Maine — More than 350 fishermen and others attended a Maine Fishermen’s Forum session, March 3, that focused on the changes fishermen are seeing in the water.

The three-hour event featured a panel of nine speakers and a standing-room-only audience, one of the largest in the 41-year history of the forum. Topics ranged from water temperatures to migrating species. Participants ranged from fishermen with 50 years on the water to marine scientists with the latest data on a changed ocean in the Gulf of Maine. Organizers titled the event “Changing Oceans” and encouraged discussion to revolve around how fishermen might deal with a changing reality.

Cutler lobsterman, and one of the organizers of the program, Kristen Porter said, “We wanted to focus attention on what we can do about working in a changed ocean, rather than debate the causes and who is at fault.” Scientists presented data to verify what fishermen have reported seeing.

Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) scientist Andy Pershing said, “Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.”

Pershing said there has been a lot of variability in the weather since 1980 and the Gulf of Maine has been the most variable water body on the planet. Water temperatures warmed in 2012 and took off. And the Gulf of Maine is experiencing changes in air, salinity, and Gulf Stream currents as well, according to NOAA ecosystem data.

Read the full story at Fishermen’s Voice

Narragansett Bay temperature extremes signal trouble below

February 6, 2016 — Aboard the Cap’n Bert — A harbor seal pokes its mottled head out of the water, soulful eyes visible above a bristly mustache, before diving back down to snatch fish from the net being winched aboard the trawler.

“Gettin’ a free meal,” Captain Tom Puckett remarks with a shake of his head.

As the otter trawl net is hoisted up on the A-frame across the boat’s stern, it’s clear that it’s nowhere close to full. But it doesn’t matter. The Cap’n Bert is not a commercial fishing trawler. It’s a research vessel owned and operated by the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography.

The 53-foot stern trawler is out on Narragansett Bay on this winter day carrying out its weekly ritual of testing the water temperature and other indicators and taking samples of marine life.

Doctoral student Joe Langan pulls open the net, spilling fish and shellfish unceremoniously onto the deck. He sorts the catch, just as he has done every week since September and as others have done before him, stretching back more than five decades as part of one of the oldest continuous marine research projects in the world.

From the wet and writhing pile, he picks out sea robin and skate, silver hake and red hake, rock crabs, spider crabs and lobsters — all species that are normally found in the Bay this time of year.

But when Langan gets to the bottom, he carefully picks up a flat, light-brown fish and pauses to study it.

“A Gulf Stream flounder,” he finally says. “Which should not be here.”

The little flounder is a warm-water species that shows up in May but would usually be gone by the time the temperature drops in December.

It is of course only one fish, but its presence here in the waters off Whale Rock on this January morning is yet another sign that Narragansett Bay is changing.

“And we’re seeing it happen,” Langan says.

Read the full story at Providence Journal

Invasive species exploit a warming Gulf of Maine, sometimes with destructive results

October 28, 2015 — Until two years ago, if you had walked down to the shore of Maquoit Bay at low tide, you would have seen a meadow of eelgrass stretching nearly as far as the eye could see across the exposed seafloor. Here near the head of the bay, the sea grass stretched for two miles to the opposite shore, creating a vast nursery for the shellfish and forage species of Casco Bay, of which Maquoit is a part.

Now there’s only mud.

Green crabs took over the bay in the late fall of 2012 and the spring and summer of 2013, tearing up the eelgrass in their pursuit of prey and devouring almost every clam and mussel from here to Yarmouth. Fueled by record high water temperatures in 2012 and a mild winter in 2013, the green crab population grew so huge that the mudflats of Casco Bay became cratered with their burrowing, and much of the Maquoit and adjacent Middle Bay bottom turned into a lunar landscape.

Eelgrass coverage in Maquoit Bay fell by 83 percent. With nothing rooted to the bottom, the seawater turned far muddier, making life hard on any plants or baby clams that tried to recolonize the bay.

“We were astounded,” says Hilary Neckles of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, who linked the destruction to the green crabs. “The ecological ramifications really reverberate throughout the ecosystem, because sea grass is the preferred habitat of so many fish and shellfish species.”

Over the past decade, the Gulf of Maine has been one of the fastest-warming parts of the world’s oceans, allowing warm-water intruders to gain a toehold and earlier invaders such as the green crab to take over. Coupled with declines of the cold-loving species that have dominated the gulf for thousands of years, the ecological effects of even more gradual long-term warming are expected to be serious, even as precise forecasting remains beyond the state of scientific knowledge.

Scientists say the 2012 “ocean heat wave” was an unusual event, and that the 10-year accelerated warming trend is likely part of an oceanographic cycle and unlikely to continue. But the gulf has been consistently warming for more than 30 years, and long-term forecasts project average sea surface temperatures in our region could reach 2012-like levels by mid-century. The events of 2012 and the nearly as warm year that followed likely provide a preview of things to come, of a gulf radically transformed, with major implications for life on the Maine coast.

Genevieve MacDonald, who fishes for lobster out of Stonington, was standing on the dock at Isle au Haut one morning that summer, looked in the water, and couldn’t believe her eyes. There, swimming around the harbor like mackerel, were dozens and dozens of longfin squid, temperate creatures rarely seen in the chill waters of eastern Maine. “If you had a cast net you could have brought in a whole basket full of squid,” she recalls.

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

Changing coastal ocean affects Cape Cod economy

October 26, 2015 — The coastal ocean and its fisheries have played a huge role in the cultural and economic development of Cape Cod. Yet recent changes in the atmosphere and deep ocean threaten the natural rhythms that govern the ecosystems of the shallow waters surrounding Cape Cod.

One factor affecting the coastal ocean in the northeastern United States is a change in the motions of the atmospheric jet stream. We felt the effects during the past winter, which was exceptionally cold and snowy. In recent years, the north-south movements of the jet stream have been increasing. However, the eastward motion has been stalling, resulting in more persistent weather patterns — cold or warm — that affect the temperature distribution in the coastal ocean.

In early 2015, the jet stream dipped well southward of its normal position and stalled, bringing a steady burst of storms moving along the coast and cooling the coastal ocean. By contrast, the jet stream remained well north of its normal wintertime position in the winter of 2011-2012 so that warm air remained over New England for much of the winter. As a result, spring water temperatures were much warmer than usual, 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal over a six-month period, and as high as 10 degrees Fahrenheit for short time periods.

Research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found temperatures of continental shelf waters in 2012 off New England were the highest they’ve been in 150 years of measurements.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times