Conservation & Environment

Especially to the Alaska pollock, which NOAA's FishWatch website describes as "one of the largest, most valuable fisheries in the world." Pollock don't like really warm or really cold temperature extremes, and their food source, small shrimp, do not fare well in heat.

The biggest state in America, home to more ocean coastline than all others combined, has just set another record. This one, however, is nothing to cheer.

For the first time in recorded history, temperatures in Anchorage did not drop below zero once in an entire calendar year. In comparison, Alaska's largest city had 14 days below zero in the 2013 calendar year and 32 days in 2012. The average is 29 days.

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For the record

Jan. 3, 10:22 a.m.: An earlier headline on this article incorrectly said Alaska had a record-warm year. The state's largest city, Anchorage, set a record for above-zero temperatures. Seven other cities in the state had record-warm temperatures as well.

At midnight Wednesday, Anchorage closed the book on its warmest year since 1926, according to the National Weather Service. The lowest temperature recorded in 2014 was zero degrees Fahrenheit on Feb. 11.

Sea ice has been disappearing. Polar bear populations have dropped. The state's storied dog race was a musher's mess, spurring headlines that fretted: "Warm weather, treacherous conditions — is the Iditarod in trouble?" The Bering Sea saw its warmest summer on record.

"I didn't put my downhill skis on at all last winter, and at the moment I'm still hoping for this winter, but the prospects are not good so far," said Henry Huntington, who lives in an Anchorage suburb and serves as senior officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts' international Arctic program.

Read the full story the Los Angeles Times

January 5, 2015 — Kingma encourages consumers to “Buy local. We know our fish populations, we know how much we’re taking, and where our fish go. Our fishermen are fishing in an environmentally friendly manner” — which may not be true for imported fish.

It’s 5:30 a.m., the moon is a sliver, and a cool wind is blowing at fifteen knots. We are standing in the thirty-eight-foot Radon Naomi K. as Layne Nakagawa starts up the diesel engines, sending shivers through the boat. My stomach flutters with excitement. Catching fish is one of the purposes for today’s excursion; the other is to change the satellite beacon on a fish aggregation device. Known as FADs, these structures float on the surface, attached by anchors to the ocean floor, creating habitat where small fish tend to congregate — attracting the larger fish that eat them.

“FADs don’t necessarily make fishing easier,” says Eric Kingma, “but they make it more efficient, by reducing search time and trolling costs.” Kingma coordinates the National Environmental Policy Act for the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council (WESTPAC), established by Congress to promote environmentally responsible fishing. In 2011, WESTPAC placed a couple of FADs in the waters off Kahului. One of them is where we’re heading.

Nakagawa reverses the boat into Kahului Harbor and shouts over the engine. “Floyd and Doris are so committed to sustainable fishing. When they asked me to show you the fish aggregation setup, I told them, ‘No problem.’”

Read the full story at Maui No Ka ‘Oi magazine

 

 

December 23, 2014 — The following was released by NOAA:

A record number of sea turtles have stranded after being cold-stunned this fall. The Sea Turtle Stranding Network is bringing them in from the cold.

To learn more, please listen in on this podcast featuring NOAA Fisheries Kate Sampson.  Kate coordinates the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office Sea Turtle Stranding Network.  She shares what she and many others have been doing to help save these vulnerable species.

Sea Turtles Rescued from the Cold

 

December 24, 2014 — Scientists studying the distribution of four commercial and recreational fish stocks in Northeast US waters have found that climate change can have major impacts on the distribution of fish, but the effects of fishing can be just as important and occur on a more immediate time scale.

The four species studied – black sea bass, scup, summer flounder, and southern New England/Mid-Atlantic Bight winter flounder – have varied in abundance and have experienced heavy fishing pressure at times over the past 40 years.

Scientists examined the distribution of the four species using Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) research trawl survey data collected between 1972 and 2008. Generalized additive models were used to determine if the distributions of the four species had changed over time, and if these changes reflect changes in temperature or fishing pressure.

The researchers found that black sea bass, scup, and summer flounder exhibited significant poleward shifts in distribution in at least one season.

The shifts in black sea bass and scup were related to temperature, while the shift in summer flounder was related to a decrease in fishing pressure and an expansion of the population age structure. The southern New England/Mid-Atlantic Bight stock of winter flounder showed no change in distribution.

Read the full story at The Fish Site

December 26, 2014 — If you're still a climate change denier even at this point, it's probably best if you don't talk to anyone with any knowledge of ocean climate and fisheries management in the Northeast.

That's because these researchers are throwing themselves headlong into the questions of what is going on out there and what, if anything, we can possibly do about it. And they are sounding alarms.

Fisheries reporters get a lot of e-mail from NOAA, bringing new research reports to our attention. And to be honest, a lot of that material may get published in science and industry publications rather than in a general interest newspaper.

But let me tell you about one or two of the more recent ones. The first arrived last month about the early spring-late fall phenomenon that has profound implications for the fish, and the second one last week, which stated unequivocally that climate change has indeed messed with the distribution of fish along the Eastern Seaboard.

These two reports from the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole fall broadly in the category of "the more we know, the less we know."

The first of those two declared that monitoring of ocean temperatures at various depths revealed a dramatic warming. This year, the arrival of spring temperatures was among the earliest times recorded in the last 30 years. By 2100, the data point to a consistent three to four week shift in the arrival of the summer season, and the same amount added to the other end. The fall transition that's now in November will shift to December.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

December 22, 2014 — Some of the consequences of climate change are obvious — shrinking polar ice caps, rising sea levels, more damaging floods — and some are subtle. Among the latter, we can now add bad-tasting seafood.

So concludes a team of researchers led by Sam Dupont of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, recently published in the Journal of Shellfish Research. They tested shrimp raised for three weeks in seawater of average pH versus shrimp raised in acidic waters, similar to conditions that may prevail as the continued emission of excess carbon dioxide turns the oceans more acidic.

They found that acidic conditions make the shrimp distinctly less palatable to human tasters. The researchers offered each of a panel of 30 local Swedish connoisseurs a plate of shrimp prepared by a professional chef, and asked them to rank the shellfish. Shrimp from the normal waters were more likely to be judged the best on the plate, while those from acidic waters were more likely to be judged the worst.

Read the full story from the Los Angeles Times

December 16, 2014 — Surface temperatures of the equatorial Pacific Ocean have exceeded El Nino thresholds for several weeks and there is a greater than 70 percent chance of the weather pattern emerging, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) said on Tuesday.

The BOM had earlier projected at least a 70 percent chance of El Nino arriving by February 2015. The weather event occurs every four to 12 years and can trigger drought in some parts of the world while causing flooding in others.

“Typically, after the ocean has exceeded thresholds for an extended period, an El Nino is considered to be underway,” the BOM said in a statement.

Read the full story at Marine Insight

December 21, 2014 —  For 15 years, officials, environmentalists, fishermen and boaters have struggled to put together a plan to protect one of South Florida’s jewels — a national park, almost entirely underwater, where a part of the largest reef tract in the United States lures throngs of divers and anglers who fish its once-abundant grouper and snapper.

Now, with a plan almost in place to tackle decades of deterioration that has left coral sick and fragile, sea grass stripped clean in places by boats, and the fish population dangerously depleted, one bitter issue remains vexing.

The dispute, on one level, seems simple: Should federal officials ban fishing in 10,522 acres, or 6 percent, of Biscayne National Park, to help replenish the snapper and grouper? Or should they do as the state and the powerful marine industry want and try incremental fixes first, toughening existing rules? Saltwater recreational fishing pumps $7.6 billion a year into Florida’s economy, the largest total in the country.

Bubbling over the disagreement, however, is a larger question of fairness and consistency in park policies, federal park officials said. Strict rules designed to protect resources and ecosystems in the most cherished national parks — no hunting in Yosemite, for example — seem to get short shrift when applied to the fish and coral reefs here in the country’s largest marine park, they said.

“Biscayne is a national park,” said Brian Carlstrom, the park’s new superintendent. “If this were national park land” — as opposed to national park water — “there would be no question of what resources can be extracted from here.”

Mr. Carlstrom said the habitat across the 173,000 acres of the park, just off the shore of metropolitan Miami, had visibly deteriorated in the past 15 years, which is why officials have been developing a new general management plan.

Read the full story at the New York Times

December 15, 2014 — The problem of Asian carp invading the Great Lakes and outcompeting local fish populations for food has been an ongoing one, so Friday the US Congress called for a temporary solution to strengthen defenses and protect native fish until a more permanent plan can be agreed upon.

The new measure would use additional structures to control upstream movement of fish at the Brandon Road Lock and Dam, located on the Des Plaines River in Joliet, Ill., just 40 miles from Chicago.

Supporters of the legislation describe Brandon Road as a "choke point," meaning the location would block Asian carp as well as other exotic species from reaching Lake Michigan, and potentially spreading to other Great Lakes.

"This is important work that will develop solutions that can be applied elsewhere in the Chicago waterway system – and throughout the Great Lakes and the nation as a whole – to prevent damaging aquatic species from expanding into other water bodies," Jon Allen, vice chairman of the Great Lakes Commission, which endorsed the bill, said in a statement.

Read the full story from Nature World News

December 14, 2014 — The Gulf of Maine’s waters are warming — faster than almost any ocean waters on earth, scientists say — and fish are voting with their fins for cooler places to live. That is upending an ecosystem and the fishing industry that depends on it.

In the vast gulf that arcs from Massachusetts’s shores to Canada’s Bay of Fundy, cod was once king. It paid for fishermen’s boats, fed their families and put their children through college. In one halcyon year in the mid-1980s, the codfish catch reached 25,000 tons.

Today, the cod population has collapsed. Last month, regulators effectively banned fishing for six months while they pondered what to do, and next year, fishermen will be allowed to catch just a quarter of what they could before the ban.

But a fix may not be easy. The Gulf of Maine’s waters are warming — faster than almost any ocean waters on earth, scientists say — and fish are voting with their fins for cooler places to live. That is upending an ecosystem and the fishing industry that depends on it.


“Stocks are not necessarily showing up in the places that they have in the past,” said Meredith Mendelson, the deputy commissioner for Maine’s Department of Marine Resources, which regulates fisheries. “We’re seeing movement of stocks often north and eastward.”

Regulators this month canceled the Maine shrimp catch for the second straight year, in no small part because shrimp are fleeing for colder climes. Maine lobsters are booming, but even so, the most productive lobster fishery has shifted as much as 50 miles up the coast in the last 40 years. Black sea bass, southerly fish seldom seen here before, have become so common that this year, Maine officials moved to regulate their catch. Blue crab, a signature species in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, are turning up off Portland.

In decades past, the gulf had warmed on average by about one degree every 21 years. In the last decade, the average has been one degree every two years. “What we’re experiencing is a warming that very few ocean ecosystems have ever experienced,” said Andrew J. Pershing, the chief scientific officer for the Gulf of Maine Research Institute here.

Read the full story from The New York Times