Conservation & Environment

January 20, 2015 — “One by one, they became Maryland’s most-ambitious offshore artificial reef project to create homes for fish and an underwater playground for divers,” The Sun reported in May 2008, as a massive front-end loader wrestled more than 40 stainless steel New York City subway cars off a barge, swinging them one by one over the gray, choppy water before releasing them with a splash.

For the Ocean City Reef Foundation and local officials, the deployment of the retired subway cars at a once-popular fishing spot known as the “Jackspot” has been nearly a decade in the making. False starts and modest financial contributions limited efforts to a series of much smaller projects.

Read the full story from The Baltimore Sun

January 15, 2015 — A team of researchers reported Wednesday that the ocean did not rise quite as much as previously believed in the 20th century. They proposed a seemingly tiny adjustment that could make a big difference in scientific understanding of the looming problem of sea-level rise.

Instead of rising about six inches over the course of the 20th century, as previous research suggested, the sea actually rose by approximately five inches, the team from Harvard and Rutgers Universities found. The difference turns out to be an immense amount of water: on the order of two quadrillion gallons, or enough to fill three billion Olympic-size swimming pools.

If the findings stand up to scrutiny by other scientists, they could help resolve a longstanding conundrum in climate research. For years, when experts added up their best measurements of melt water from land ice and of other factors causing the sea to rise, the numbers fell a bit short of the rise that had been recorded at harbors around the world.

If the harbor measurements were right and the ocean really had two quadrillion gallons of extra water, where was it coming from? The discrepancy set off an intensive search for additional ice that might be melting from glaciers and ice sheets, or extra heat that might be causing ocean water to expand, and so on. To some scientists, the answers that emerged were never entirely satisfactory.

Now, in a paper published Wednesday by the journal Nature, the Harvard and Rutgers scientists applied advanced statistical techniques to the measurements taken at harbors. They found that previous research on that record had slightly overestimated the amount of sea-level rise in the 20th century. With their downward revision, the harbor record now matches the other records rather neatly.

Read the full story at the New York Times

January 15, 2015 — Long after commercial fishers have pulled into dock, their lost and abandoned gear continues fishing – threatening marine wildlife and habitats around the world. Some call it “ghost fishing."

A recent NOAA study found that abandoned and lost fishing gear has “persistent and pervasive” impacts on U.S. waters. It also found that these impacts are largely reversible.

A good case study is the recovery of derelict crab pots on the Washington coast, a comprehensive effort involving Tribal and non-tribal commercial fishers, scientists, agencies and organizations like The Nature Conservancy.

The bottom line: collaborating on crab pot removal benefits both fish and fishers.

The Ghosts of Crab Pots

The Dungeness crab is one of the most important fisheries in Washington, with an average of 14 million pounds of the crustaceans harvested annually.

The crabs are captured in wire traps, called crab pots. About 90,000 to 100,000 of these pots are set in Washington waters annually.

Crab pots are not inexpensive; each one costs about $225. Still, heavy winds and other harsh conditions mean that about 10 percent of the pots are lost each year.

That’s a lot of pots in the water. Still fishing.

There are the direct impacts: crabs and other wildlife continue to be caught. As they die, the traps become what NOAA calls “self-baiting” – continually attracting new predators until the trap is buried.

Read the full story from Cool Green Science – The Nature Conservancy Blog

 

January 15, 2014 — When we think about climate change, we tend to think of it in terms of future impact. The commonly accepted target among scientists and climate activists is that society must keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. The U.S.-China Joint Announcement on Climate Change and Clean Energy Cooperation issued in November 2014 hinges on our reducing emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, while China will level off its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Projections of sea-level rise as a result of climate change vary widely but are typically discussed in terms of 50- to 100-year outcomes.

As a result, the narrative of what to do about these changes is driven not by current observations but by future projections—an inconvenient truth for climate hawks but an entirely convenient one for those with an interest in maintaining our current reliance on fossil fuels. The resulting political conversation is shaped by entities, primarily those—such as the coal and oil lobbies—with a vested financial interest in the status quo, which are allowed to establish a strong case for doing nothing based on a few uncertainties and doom-and-gloom economic projections. They claim that limiting carbon pollution will put miners out of business from West Virginia to Wyoming. They claim that electricity costs will skyrocket and that service will be spottier to boot.

But for commercial fishermen,* climate change is not a future economic problem: It is a problem right now, and it is costing fisherman both income and jobs. While the fossil-fuel lobbies and their political allies craft predictions of certain economic doom if meaningful limitations on carbon pollution should someday find a firm foothold in public policy, those who make their living from the ocean are already bearing the cost of delaying such action.

The profession of fishing is often multigenerational, with knowledge typically passed down from parent to child to grandchild. The combination of constant exposure to all kinds of weather; the consistent logging of data in the form of catch totals and locations; and a seemingly imperceptible understanding of life over, on, and beneath the waves puts fishermen collectively in a unique position to assess the ecosystems that sustain their livelihoods and that, in turn, nourish the rest of us.

Spend time on the bridge of a boat from which people still hunt giant tuna with harpoons, and you’ll observe a captain who can sense a ripple on the surface of the ocean almost before he sees it, practically intuiting the telltale sign of a bluefin. Watch a lobsterman turn off her GPS and navigate to her buoys by memory of wind, waves, and currents alone. Sit in a waterfront diner and listen to the fish stories. They’re not all about the ones that got away; these days, they’re all too frequently about the ones that disappeared and never came back. These stories can help illuminate the challenges we all face as a result of runaway carbon pollution and global climate change.

Read the full story at the Center for American Progress

January 15, 2015 — New England fishermen believe climate forces such as ocean warming and acidification threaten their businesses, a new Center for American Progress report shows. The report is based on polling—conducted by Edge Research—of fishermen who are part of the northeast multispecies fishery, better known as the groundfishery, as well as the Maine and Massachusetts lobster fisheries.

While well-recognized historic threats to these industries include overfishing and water quality, fishermen are concerned that ocean warming could leave them “unable to profit” or “forced out” of their business. And although two-thirds of the fishermen identify politically as “conservative” or “moderate,” those who recognize the existence of climate change outnumber deniers by four-to-one, among other key findings.

“As we discuss the economic and employment impacts of climate policies, it is critical to note that entire industries are at risk right now as a result of our changing climate,” said Michael Conathan, CAP Director of Ocean Policy. “From southern New England lobster to northern Gulf of Maine shrimp, ocean warming and acidification are taking money out of fishermen’s pockets and keeping food off our plates. Deepening our understanding of how climate change affects coastal ecosystems will protect fishermen’s livelihoods, our economy, and Americans’ access to seafood.”

Read the full release from the Center for American Progress

January 12, 2015 — Sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine remained unusually high this fall, according to the newly released Gulf of Maine Region Quarterly Climate Impacts and Outlook. Warmer temperatures in the Gulf have ripple effects throughout the marine ecosystem, and the latest issue of Outlook describes some of the impacts that scientists are seeing on phytoplankton and fisheries.

This quarterly snapshot of recent weather events, anomalies and impacts is issued by the binational Climate Network of the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment. Outlook incorporates meteorological data generated by Environment Canada and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It's the product of an ongoing collaboration between the two agencies sparked by the Gulf of Maine Council, a regional partnership that has worked for 25 years to sustain the environmental health of the Gulf of Maine and its watershed.

For December through February, Environment Canada is predicting an increased chance of above-normal temperatures for Nova Scotia.

Read the full story from The Yarmouth County Vanguard

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — January 9, 2015 — Scientists who have reported that the Great Lakes are awash in tiny bits of plastic are raising new alarms about a little-noticed form of the debris turning up in sampling nets: synthetic fibers from garments, cleaning cloths and other consumer products.

They are known as "microfibers" – exceedingly fine filaments made of petroleum-based materials such as polyester and nylon that are woven together into fabrics.

"When we launder our clothes, some of the little microfibers will break off and go down the drain to the wastewater treatment facility and end up in our bodies of water," Sherri "Sam" Mason, a chemist with the State University of New York at Fredonia, said Friday.

The fibers are so minuscule that people typically don't realize their favorite pullover fleece can shed thousands of them with every washing, as the journal Environmental Science & Technology reported in 2011.

Over the past couple of years, Mason and colleagues have documented the existence of microplastic litter – some too small to see with the naked eye – in the Great Lakes. Among the particles are abrasive beads used in personal care products such as facial and body washes and toothpastes. Other researchers have made similar finds in the oceans.

A number of companies are replacing microbeads with natural substances such as ground-up fruit pits. Illinois imposed a statewide ban on microbeads last year. Similar measures were proposed in California and New York.

Read the full story from The Associated Press at The New Jersey Herald

January 7, 2014 — The overall health of the Chesapeake Bay is improving, but runoff from farm and urban areas continues to be a trouble spot in ongoing restoration efforts, according to a new report from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

In Virginia, especially, the CBF is urging Gov. Terry McAuliffe and other state leaders to hasten efforts to reduce agricultural and urban/suburban pollutants as well as help strengthen and rebuild the oyster fishery.

Overall, the group says, it gives bay health an index score of 32 out of a possible 100, or the equivalent of a D+. It's the same ranking from the last bay report in 2012.

"While we can celebrate water quality improvements, we must also acknowledge that many local rivers, streams and the Chesapeake Bay are polluted," CBF's president William C. Baker said in a statement releasing the report Monday. "They remain a system dangerously out of balance."

To compile the 2014 State of the Bay Report, CBF scientists examined data for 13 indicators in three broad categories: pollution, habitat and fisheries.

Read the full story at the Newport News Daily Press

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