Conservation & Environment

RIO VISTA, Calif. — April 18, 2014 — As the Merva W puttered down the Sacramento River, it looked like any other dowdy fishing vessel headed toward the Golden Gate Bridge. But no other boat had as surprising a cargo or as unusual a mission: The Merva W was giving 100,000 young salmon a lift to the Pacific in the hope of keeping them alive.

In an act that is equal parts despair and hope, the government is transporting the salmon by truck and barge, trying to imitate nature so that in three years some fully grown fish will find their way back upstream. For some salmon, “this is a way of sustaining the fishery,” said Peter B. Moyle, a senior biologist at the University of California, Davis. “For an endangered species, it’s a desperation measure.”

This spring, some 30 million salmon will go to sea. In three years, the hope is that tens of thousands will return.

The six-hour, 40-mile boat trip — along with the ride from a hatchery in a tanker truck that transports the small salmon to the boat — takes the place of at least five days of swimming 150 miles, a telescoping of their natural lives. The river’s water is pumped over them during the ride so they can “imprint” on their native water and increase the chances of finding their way back when the time comes.

Read the full story from The New York Times

April 21, 2014 — From Texas to Florida, the number of oysters harvested in the Gulf is at one of the lowest on record. Three years after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, oyster industry experts have no answers on the cause of the steep decline; especially on public grounds relied upon by commercial fishermen.

Oystermen and processors indicate that Gulf oysters are tough to come by. Various Gulf State fisheries are conducting studies on oyster reproduction and growth, but answers have been elusive.

Scientists are studying the spill’s impact on Gulf oysters. Information is being compiled as part of a restoration plan aimed at bringing the Gulf back to pre-spill conditions; the Natural Resources Damage Assessment Act better know as the Restore Act.

Commercial oystermen from across the Gulf fear they are beginning to see the full extent of the 2010 oil spill damage.

Oysters take approximately three years to reach maturity, so the spill’s damage could just now be affecting the industry. Before the spill oyster landings were in a cyclical lull and currently should be trending upwards; but they’re not.

Louisiana Landings Lagging

In Louisiana, reports from industry members indicate fewer oysters are being landed this season than last, consistent with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries recent public seed ground stock assessment of the state’s $300 million industry.

“Areas that once produced abundantly just a few years ago are barren,” said Wilber Collins, owner of Louisiana’s Collins Oyster Company and a member of the Louisiana Oyster Task Force. “I’ve got three boats and only one is working. We just don’t have enough oysters. The demand is unbelievably high, so we are getting a great prices for what we have.”

Collin’s company has been forced to harvest from one spot west of Bayou Lafourche. He hopes there will be enough oysters there to hold him until spring.

“It’s not a decline; it’s zero population,” Steve Voisin, CEO of Motivatit Seafood, whose oyster business has been a part of the Houma area since 1971.“ “I’ve never seen it so low, but remain optimistic because I’ve seen it come back time and time again,” he told HoumaToday.com.

Read the full story from the Gulf Seafood Institute

April 17, 2014 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Part of restoring commercially and recreationally important fish populations happens through restoring the habitat of those species. Repairing degraded fish habitat is the specialty of NOAA's Restoration Center. In our new video, John Catena the Center's manager for the Northeast, explains how fish habitat may have become degraded and how NOAA works to bring it back to the way it was before so fish and other wildlife can thrive and reproduce.

Watch the video: Restoring Fisheries Through Habitat Restoration 

 

April 16, 2014 — BP says it’s so, now round up the party favors: The cleanup efforts to wipe away all memory of the 2010 oil spill that lasted 85 days and sullied some 778 miles of Gulf of Mexico shore when the company’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded is, after exhausting $14 billion and 70 million man-hours, officially over.

Never mind that the U.S. Coast Guard, which has been partnering with and monitoring BP in the cleanup effort, is far from through. What do they know?

The statement from John Minge, BP America’s chairman and president: “Reaching this milestone is the result of the extraordinary efforts of thousands of people from BP, local communities, government agencies and academic institutions working together. Immediately following the Deepwater Horizon accident, BP committed to cleaning the shoreline and supporting the Gulf’s economic and environmental recovery. Completing active cleanup is further indication that we are keeping that commitment.”

But The Hill reports that BP didn’t consult with Coast Guard officials prior to making its announcement. Though the first phase of the shoreline remediation plan has been completed, Coast Guard Capt. Thomas Sparks, the federal coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon Response Team, said the cleanup efforts are merely transitioning to a “Middle Response” phase, in which the focus will now be more tailored to “re-oiling” events and more fine-tuned cleanup using more technologically advanced equipment and specialized staff.

Read the full story from the Inquisitr

April 15, 2014 — International conservation group Oceana is pressing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to reverse a state law that threatens thousands of sea turtles every year off the Louisiana coast.

Oceana sent a letter to the governor this week, in time for the 34th annual International Symposium on Sea Turtle Biology and Conservation, held this year in New Orleans.

U.S. federal law requires shrimp trawlers to use Turtle Excluder Devices, which create an opening in trawl nets to allow trapped turtles to escape, but Louisiana state law refuses to enforce the federal regulation. Louisiana, according to Oceana, is the only state in America that does this, and Louisiana is a major player in the shrimp trawl fishery in the southern United States.

“This technology is required by federal regulations because it has been scientifically proven to reduce sea turtle deaths, does not reduce shrimp yield, and has even been shown to improve the quality of the catch,” Oceana advocates wrote.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

BOSTON, Mass. (AP) — April 12, 2014 — Members of a marine entanglement emergency team have released a minke whale that had become entangled in fishing gear about ten miles outside Boston Harbor

A spokeswoman said experts from the Provincetown-based Center for Coastal Studies released the animal on Friday afternoon. Whale researchers located the entangled whale while in the area earlier in the week.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Boston Globe

April 13, 2014 — Escalating carbon dioxide emissions will cause fish to lose their fear of predators, potentially damaging the entire marine food chain, joint Australian and US research has found.

A study by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, James Cook University and the Georgia Institute of Technology found the behavior of fish would be “seriously affected” by greater exposure to CO2.

Researchers studied the behavior of coral reef fish at naturally occurring CO2 vents in Milne Bay, in eastern Papua New Guinea.

They found that fish living near the vents, where bubbles of CO2 seeped into the water, “were attracted to predator odour, did not distinguish between odours of different habitats, and exhibited bolder behaviour than fish from control reefs”.

The gung-ho nature of CO2-affected fish means that more of them are picked off by predators than is normally the case, raising potentially worrying possibilities in a scenario of rising carbon emissions.

Read the full story from The Guardian

MIDDLEBORO, Mass. — April 10, 2014 — Nothing could have been timlier than Herring Fisheries Commission Chairman David Cavanaugh's annual report to the selectmen Monday night.

The town's most famous seasonal visitors are just now finding their way in large numbers from Narragansett Bay up the Taunton River system to Assawompsett Pond, their summer spawning ground. And this weekend, area residents will celebrate their return with a three-day Herring Festival (see today's Leisure section for details).

There is plenty to celebrate this year, Mr. Cavanaugh told the selectmen, since the numbers of migrating herring were estimated last year at 850,000, indicating the largest herring run in New England has returned to, and perhaps now exceeds, the numbers of fish that moved through the Middleboro-Lakeville fish ladders prior to 2005.

"We have seen the numbers rise over the last several years," Mr. Cavanaugh said, since the state and subsequently the Atlantic States Commission declared a moratorium on catching herring because the numbers had declined so dramatically, Local observers were reporting annual counts in the 300,000-400,000 range.

Mr. Cavanaugh explained that the commission and its volunteer fish wardens and observers are responsible for ensuring that regulations are followed, and for educating the public and the visitors to the herring runs about the history of the fish and their breeding methods.

The commission also works with private and public agencies on research and restocking programs, maintains the fish ladders and the general habitat for the herring, and works with the cities of New Bedford and Taunton to ensure that water levels are sufficient for the spring migration and the return of the herring fry to the sea in the fall as well as keeping a count of the fish.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

April 10, 2014 — A decision last week by state and federal agencies to increase the amount of water being pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta has environmentalists and fisheries advocates outraged.

The move came on April 1 after several politicians—including Sen. Dianne Feinstein and six San Joaquin Valley congressmen—urged the federal government to allow more freshwater than is normally allowed to be pumped from the two large pumps near Tracy and into San Joaquin Valley for use by farmers in that parched region

But critics say the Central Valley’s chinook salmon are seriously threatened by the pumping increase, which has boosted the volume of water being drawn from the Delta from 1,500 cubic feet per second to 6,500.

“[The state’s Department of Water Resources and the federal Bureau of Reclamation] are apparently willing to sacrifice the future of the Sacramento River’s salmon runs for the sake of a few export crops, like lemons and almonds,” said Jim Brobeck, water policy analyst with the Chico-based group AquAlliance.

Brobeck and other environmentalists say the action violates environmental laws that strictly curtail water exports from the Delta during the spring to protect chinook salmon.

“By order of the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act, government water managers are supposed to make sure there’s enough water in the ecosystem before they start sending it away to farmers,” Brobeck said. “That is the priority.

Read the full story at News Review

April 9, 2014 — Several groups dedicated to stopping development of the proposed Pebble Mine are criticizing Alaska’s senior U.S. Senator for supporting legislation that would limit a power the EPA is using to stop development of the mine. KDLG’s Mike Mason reports. Listen to the Audio from KDLG