Saving Seafood

College Students Head to Woods Hole for Summer of Science

May 17, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Sixteen students from colleges and universities around the country will arrive in Woods Hole on June 1 for the summer. All will be members of the 11th class of the Woods Hole Partnership Education Program (PEP), which was started in 2009.

PEP is a project of the Woods Hole Diversity Initiative, founded in 2004 by the six scientific institutions in Woods Hole to attract and retain a more diverse workforce, one that reflects the changing demographics of the nation and the world. This year PEP is also celebrating its 10th anniversary with a workshop and weekend of activities June 27-29.

“We’re starting our second decade this summer, and we’re really excited about the students who are coming to join us,” said George Liles, director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s academic programs and PEP. “Once again, we have students coming from every corner of the country, from large research universities and small liberal arts colleges, and from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. PEP brings a diversity of talent that makes the Woods Hole community a better place to live and work.”

Each year PEP staff travel to campuses and conferences during the winter months to meet and talk with students from minority groups that are under-represented in marine and environmental sciences. The program recruits college juniors and seniors who have had some course work in those sciences, and provides housing, a food allowance, a stipend, and intensive mentoring and career-building opportunities.

PEP students earn four college credits from the program’s academic partner, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Students first complete a four-week course focused on global climate change, taught by research scientists from the Woods Hole science institutions. Then for the next six weeks they work on individual research projects under the guidance of a research mentor from one of the PEP member institutions, culminating in a public presentation of their research results on August 9.

Outside of their academic pursuits, students spend five days aboard the Sea Education Association sailing school vessel Corwith Cramer. At sea, students are both scientists and crew members, learning oceanographic research techniques, sail handling, and ship’s navigation. A variety of career and social activities are also offered, often in the company of other college students spending the summer at laboratories in the village.

Read the full release here

North Atlantic Ocean productivity has dropped 10 percent during Industrial era

May 7, 2019 — Virtually all marine life depends on the productivity of phytoplankton — microscopic organisms that work tirelessly at the ocean’s surface to absorb the carbon dioxide that gets dissolved into the upper ocean from the atmosphere.

Through photosynthesis, these microbes break down carbon dioxide into oxygen, some of which ultimately gets released back to the atmosphere, and organic carbon, which they store until they themselves are consumed. This plankton-derived carbon fuels the rest of the marine food web, from the tiniest shrimp to giant sea turtles and humpback whales.

Now, scientists at MIT, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and elsewhere have found evidence that phytoplankton’s productivity is declining steadily in the North Atlantic, one of the world’s most productive marine basins.

In a paper appearing today in Nature, the researchers report that phytoplankton’s productivity in this important region has gone down around 10 percent since the mid-19th century and the start of the Industrial era. This decline coincides with steadily rising surface temperatures over the same period of time.

Matthew Osman, the paper’s lead author and a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, says there are indications that phytoplankton’s productivity may decline further as temperatures continue to rise as a result of human-induced climate change.

“It’s a significant enough decine that we should be concerned,” Osman says. “The amount of productivity in the oceans roughly scales with how much phytoplankton you have. So this translates to 10 percent of the marine food base in this region that’s been lost over the industrial era. If we have a growing population but a decreasing food base, at some point we’re likely going to feel the effects of that decline.”

Osman and his colleagues looked for trends in phytoplankton’s productivity using the molecular compound methanesulfonic acid, or MSA. When phytoplankton expand into large blooms, certain microbes emit dimethylsulfide, or DMS, an aerosol that is lofted into the atmosphere and eventually breaks down as either sulfate aerosol, or MSA, which is then deposited on sea or land surfaces by winds.

Read the full story at MIT News

Equinor to support New York Bight whales monitoring

April 10, 2019 — Offshore wind power developer Equinor Wind US is entering a joint project with conservationists and scientists to deploy two new acoustic buoys to expand detection and monitoring of whales in the New York Bight.

To be operated with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts, the buoys will provide near real-time monitoring of species including sei, fin and humpback whales, and the extremely endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The buoys will become a broader network with a previously deployed acoustic buoy, funded by the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and the Flora Family Foundation, now on station about 22 miles off New York.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

WHOI Releases Report on Right Whale Threats, Solutions

April 1, 2019 — A new report has been released by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution which details the major threats facing critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The population for the species is estimated to be just over 400 and has suffered in recent years from high mortality rates with very few births.

The report indicates the whales are most threatened by fishing gear entanglements, vessel strikes and noise pollution.

WHOI Marine Biologist Michael Moore, who was a co-author of the report, says there has been a dramatic shift in the number of deaths caused by entanglements over the last decade.

Before 2010, 45 percent of right whale deaths were due to vessel strikes with 35 percent attributed to entanglements. Since 2010, entanglements have resulted in about 85 percent of right whale deaths.

“The entanglement rate has gone up and become more severe,” Moore said. “It used to be the animals would get entangled and scarred up and then be able to wiggle out of it or get disentangled, but now the entanglement mortality rate has also increased.”

Whale researchers are also concerned with the non-lethal effects of getting caught in fishing gear.

“Eighty-plus percent of the species show entanglement scars and 25 percent of them get new scars every year,” Moore said. “So the majority don’t die but they do have sub-lethal impact and really it comes down to stress of being entangled and pulling the rope through the water and traps too if they are involved.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

WHOI Scientists Studying Phytoplankton to Improve Satellite Operations in Space

November 26, 2018 — WOODS HOLE, MASS. – Researchers from Woods Hole are working to improve the quality of data collected by satellites over 500 miles above the ocean.

The goal is to determine how microscopic algae, also known as phytoplankton, absorb and scatter light, and how the colors of the phytoplankton can be better identified and measured.

For the next three years, researchers from NOAA Fisheries and colleagues at the University of Rhode Island, NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will look into the ocean to help improve the quality of data collected by satellites more than 500 miles above.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: New commission created to study ocean acidificaton

October 18, 2018 — David Ryan and Al Suprenant have a lot invested in their business.

The co-owners of Cape Cod Oyster Co. in Marstons Mills have eight full-time employees working 54 acres of ocean bottom on three sites; a 4,000-square-foot processing plant, two truck drivers, two bookkeepers, a fleet of refrigerated box trucks and five 28-foot vessels.

It takes careful planning, and a steady supply and demand for their product to keep it all rolling. They dread the reversals of fortune nature can dole out, such as occurred during a sudden onslaught of ocean acidification in the Pacific Northwest a decade ago that caused a 70 percent to 80 percent die-off of oyster larvae in Washington state hatcheries. One-quarter of the carbon in the atmosphere is absorbed by the ocean, forming an acid that inhibits shell building, particularly in larvae. Since the beginning of the industrial era 525 billion tons of carbon dioxide has been absorbed by the ocean, 22 million tons per day, according to a Smithsonian report.

“The West Coast was taken completely by surprise,” Ryan said Tuesday.

Washington was the largest aquaculture industry in the country with over 3,000 jobs but half the state’s production and hundreds of employees had to be relocated to Hawaii to avoid the acidic water that was delivered to the coastline by a slow-moving current.

Avoiding that kind of surprise in Massachusetts — where the aquaculture industry produced $28 million of oysters and other shellfish in 2017 — and in Barnstable County — with 270 licensed growers who produced over $12 million worth of shellfish — is why Ryan and Suprenant supported state Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Truro, and state Rep. Dylan Fernandes, D-Woods Hole, in their pursuit of legislation to create an Ocean Acidification Commission in the Bay State.

The commission is intended to foster research as well as legislative and other solutions to a problem often described as the evil twin of the global warming caused by climate change. On Tuesday, Cyr and Fernandes chose Cape Cod Oyster Co. headquarters to announce the official launch of the acidification commission, which was authorized under the latest state environmental bond bill this summer.

“This is a real challenge for our burgeoning aquaculture industry,” Cyr said, promising to leverage the power of state agencies, the wealth of research being done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, and the fishing industry to offset the effects of ocean acidification.

It’s not just aquaculture in state waters, but larger federal fisheries that are potentially in peril, including sea scallops and lobsters. Massachusetts harvested 29.2 million pounds of sea scallops in 2016 worth over $350 million. State lobstermen caught 17.7 million pounds of lobster worth $82 million.

The problem has not been well publicized because the effects occur out of sight, said Laurence Madin, WHOI vice president of research.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Scallop fishery may be imperiled by acidic seas

October 16, 2018 — Increasingly acidic seas pose a serious threat to the sea scallop fishery, a recent collaborative study by the University of Virginia, the Ocean Conservancy, the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) concluded.

“As levels of carbon dioxide increase in Earth’s atmosphere, the oceans become increasingly acidic — a condition that could reduce the sea scallop population by more than 50 percent in the next 100 years under a worst-case scenario,” the study states. Models from the study, which were published recently in the journal PLOS One, combine existing data with several factors that impact the fishery: “future climate change scenarios, ocean acidification impacts, fisheries management policies, and fuel costs for fishermen.” Those factors were modeled out into 256 different possibilities.

Oceans absorb vast quantities of carbon dioxide. Fossil fuel emissions exacerbate what the oceans take in, further acidifying the water. “That acidity can corrode the calcium carbonate shells that are made by shellfish like clams, oysters, and scallops, and even prevent their larvae from forming shells in the first place,” the study states.

“[The scallop fishery is] healthy and valuable today in part because it is very well managed,” says Scott Doney, a co-author from WHOI and the University of Virginia. “We also used the model to ask whether management approaches could offset the negative impacts of ocean acidification.”

It couldn’t. In every scenario, elevated carbon dioxide levels created acidiferous ocean water. The culprit, the study concluded, was “unabated carbon emissions.”

Read the full story at the MV Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Falmouth and New Bedford Battle Across Buzzards Bay for NOAA Headquarters

October 15, 2018 — A dispute across Buzzards Bay may break out between Falmouth and the City of New Bedford.

The Falmouth Board of Selectmen has been working to keep the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole.

Other elected officials in the area have also been lobbying for NOAA to keep the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole for weeks.

In late September, Falmouth selectmen teamed up with Barnstable County state representatives and state senators, area chambers of commerce, directors from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the Marine Biological Laboratory, and the Woods Hole Research Center to pen a letter to the federal agency urging them to stay put in the small section of Falmouth.

Operations Chief of the NOAA Fisheries Science Center Garth Smelser responded to that letter, and met with Falmouth and Barnstable County officials on Friday to discuss the possible move.

“For almost 150 years we’ve been studying fish, marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds and the marine environments that sustain them, and right here in Barnstable County we have over 300 employees and contractors that complete that work. The Fisheries Commission started right here in our community. We’ve been doing wonderful marine science for those 150 years,” Smelser told elected officials. “Yes, we are very proud of our presence in Woods Hole, but we’re much bigger than just Woods Hole. We have 225 federal staff and 165 contract staff spread around the east coast from Orono, Maine all the way down to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The majority of our folks are centered in Woods Hole, but we’re just as proud of our other people.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

New Study Shows Climate Change Could Reduce Scallop Population

October 3, 2018 — Researchers in Massachusetts say under the worst case scenario, climate change could reduce the scallop population by more than 50 percent in just a few decades, which could be bad news for New Bedford’s lucrative fishing port.

In 2016, commercial fishermen landed more than $300 million worth of fish at the Port of New Bedford, and 85 percent of that value came from scallops.

A new study from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows as carbon emissions in the atmosphere increase, so does the acidity in the ocean.

Jennie Rheuban, lead author of the report, said that could affect how well scallops can grow.

“Adults may actually be growing slower and calcifying less quickly under these acidified conditions because it’s more difficult for them to lay down calcium carbonate as a shell,” Rheuban said.

Rheuban said ocean acidification could also cause scallops to become more vulnerable.

“They aren’t able to swim quite as well when they’re experiencing acidified conditions, and so we hypothesize that under acidification, scallops may be more susceptible to predation,” she said.

Read the full story at Rhode Island Public Radio

New model looks at ocean acidification and sea scallop population drop

September 28, 2018 — Scientists at the University of Virginia and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have created a new model looking at ocean acidification.

According to a release, fishermen harvest more than $500 million worth of Atlantic sea scallops each year off the East Coast, but this model predicts those fisheries may be in danger.

It says, as the levels of carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere, the oceans become increasingly acidic, which could reduce the sea scallop population by more than 50 percent in the next 100 years, as a worst-case scenario.

The researchers say strong fisheries management and efforts to reduce CO2 emissions might slow or potentially even stop the trend.

“Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels pose a threat to many types of marine life, particularly shellfish,” said Scott Doney, an environmental sciences professor at UVA. “The ocean removes about a quarter of the carbon dioxide humans release to the atmosphere each year from fossil fuel use and deforestation. The resulting acidification of seawater makes it more difficult for shellfish like scallops and clams to build and maintain their shells.”

There are currently no studies that have been published showing the specific effects of ocean acidification on the Atlantic sea scallop, so to estimate the impact, Doney and his colleagues used a range of effects based on studies of related species.

The release says the new models lets scientists explore how plausible impacts of ocean acidification may change the future of the scallop population.

The researchers tested four different levels of impact on each of four different factors in the model, creating 256 different scenario combinations.

Read the full story at WCAV