October 3, 2013 — State officials believe extreme natural changes are to blame for millions of dead fish in two major river systems here in Eastern Carolina.
The dead Menhaden are turning up in both the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico river basins.
October 3, 2013 — State officials believe extreme natural changes are to blame for millions of dead fish in two major river systems here in Eastern Carolina.
The dead Menhaden are turning up in both the Neuse and Tar-Pamlico river basins.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — October 1, 2013 — An estimated 10,000 walrus unable to find sea ice over shallow Arctic Ocean water have come ashore on Alaska’s northwest coast.
Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Friday photographed walrus packed onto a beach on a barrier island near Point Lay, an Inupiat Eskimo village 300 miles southwest of Barrow and 700 miles northwest of Anchorage.
The walrus have been coming to shore since mid-September. The large herd was spotted during NOAA’s annual arctic marine mammal aerial survey, an effort conducted with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency that conducts offshore lease sales.
An estimated 2,000 to 4,000 walrus were photographed at the site Sept. 12. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency that manages walrus, immediately took steps to prevent a stampede among the animals packed shoulder to shoulder on the rocky coastline. The agency works with villages to keep people and airplanes a safe distance from herds.
Young animals are especially vulnerable to stampedes triggered by a polar bear, a human hunter or a low-flying airplane. The carcasses of more than 130 mostly young walruses were counted after a stampede in September 2009 at Alaska’s Icy Cape.
Read the full story by the Associated Press at The Boston Globe
September 26, 2013 — The Texas-based company presented its innovations in water conservation at the Virginia Industrial and Environmental Conference this month. With Chesapeake Bay operations based out of Reedville, Va., Omega’s crews harvest menhaden to produce fish oil and fishmeal products.
Bill Purcell, the company’s environmental manager, explained how the plant has reconfigured its process to reuse both seawater and the water that comes from the processed fish to propel fish from the fishing vessels or to wash down the plant floor.
Instead of using ground water (which could soon require a permit in Virginia), crews pump filtered seawater into the fishing vessels, which helps keep the fish cold and can be used to convey them into the plant for processing.
The plant also reuses the water that is squeezed off the fish when they are turned into oil and fishmeal products. The Reedville plant uses a waste heat evaporator — the same kind that’s used to make orange juice concentrate — to extract about 300,000 gallons of water per day.
That water can be reused to wash down the plant floor, bail fish from the boats and operate several large machines. The measures save the company from using more than 18 million gallons of water per year that would have otherwise come from the ground.
September 29, 2013 — It sounds too good to be true: There are so many fish that Seattle-based boats haul in more than a million metric tons of them every year without depleting the population. "It still boggles my mind how much is a million tons of fish," says David Fluharty, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. "To actually catch that much protein . . ."
The fish is the unfortunately-named walleye pollock. One probably won't see walleye pollock, caught in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska by vessels dragging midwater trawls, on a bed of ice beside the ahi and Copper River king in a fish store display case. But one may well have eaten it in the form of fish sticks or pre-breaded fillets or, perhaps, McDonald's fish sandwiches.
By volume, Alaskan pollock support the world's largest food fishery. All by itself, the Alaska fishery represents about 1 out of every 100 pounds of fish from the entire world's oceans.
In terms of seafood export value Alaskan pollock shipped through Puget Sound probably trail only Alaskan salmon, says Andy Wink of the Juneau-based McDowell Group. Overall, the pollock fishery "likely creates the largest impact on Seattle of any Alaska species," Wink says. He explains, "Alaska pollock generates the largest amount of wholesale value of any Alaska species and all the boats that fish for pollock homeport in Seattle. Likewise, the crews on pollock ships are often made up of Washington residents or they at least get on the boat in Seattle."
Although pollock fetch little more per pound than the humble anchovy, the annual catch is worth more than that of any other U.S. fishery except salmon, lobster, shrimp or crab. In 2011, pollock were worth $374 million, compared to $618 million for salmon and $650 million for crab.
Read the full story at Crosscut
September 28, 2013 — The ideas, he says, had been germinating for a while — big-picture ruminations on alternative and sustainable energy sources, with the future of the oceans and their fisheries serving as a backdrop to the more tightly focused attention on Gloucester and its harborfront and fishing issues.
But it wasn’t until this summer, when Camron Adibi took part in a research trip by the Gloucester-based Ocean Alliance to the Gulf of Mexico to study the toxicity of sperm whales after the BP Oil disaster, that it finally crystalized in his mind.
“The thing that nobody wanted to talk about were the dispersants that were used to clean up the oil spill,” Adibi said. “Those were possibly more toxic than the oil itself.
“I got to see it. I got to see the ocean pollution that no one seems to want to talk about, how it’s affecting our groundfish.”
Upon returning to Gloucester, Adibi, an enviromental engineer with particular interest in developing sustainable communities, started raising the issue with friends and colleagues.
“Why isn’t this being talked about more?” Adibi said, citing examples such as the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan and the proliferation of other ocean-going pollutants, such as the gigantic floating dumps of discarded plastics now seen in the waters off Asia.
The product of those discussions is Sea Commons, a newly formed Gloucester-based citizen-action group that hopes to raise the level of debate not only on ocean pollution, but the ways that discussion dovetails with many of the waterfront and fishing issues currently being debated in Gloucester.
Included in that, he said, is the growing debate on the concept of ocean management, particularly on the escalating influence and benefits being reaped by corporate interests while the interests of the fishing community generally are ignored.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times
September 27, 2013– A report released yesterday by a panel of scientists, conservation organizations and government agencies have positively linked a mass stranding of whales to sonar used by Exxon/Mobile during an offshore survey. In this case, the whales fled the area prior to the seismic phase of the survey, which shows that even this type of sonar (also used by military and research vessels) is devastating to whale and dolphins.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare reports:
An independent scientific review panel has concluded that the mass stranding of approximately 100 melon-headed whales in the Loza Lagoon system in northwest Madagascar in 2008 was primarily triggered by acoustic stimuli, more specifically, a multi-beam echosounder system operated by a survey vessel contracted by ExxonMobil Exploration and Production (Northern Madagascar) Limited.
WCS and IFAW support these conclusions that add to a mounting body of evidence of the potential impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals," said Dr. Howard Rosenbaum, Director of the Ocean Giants Program for WCS. "Implications go well beyond the hydrocarbon industry, as these sonar systems are widely used aboard military and research vessels for generating more precise bathymetry (underwater mapping). We now hope that these results will be used by industry, regulatory authorities, and others to minimize risks and to better protect marine life, especially marine mammal species that are particularly sensitive to increasing ocean noise from human activities.
Read the full story at The Huffington Post
PORTLAND, Maine– September 27, 2013 — Fish commonly found in warm ocean waters to the south have become more common in New England as ocean temperatures rise.
Over the past two years, fishermen in southern New England have seen an increase in croaker, cobia and spot, species more commonly found in waters off the mid-Atlantic. Certain types of skates and blue crabs are also becoming more numerous, fishermen say.
In the colder Gulf of Maine waters north of Cape Cod, black sea bass have become more prevalent the past two summers. Longfin squid, which are found primarily south of Cape Cod, were present in Maine waters during the 2012 summer, resulting in new fisheries and markets being developed for the season.
Before last year, lobster fisherman David Cousens of South Thomaston, Maine, had seen only one ocean sunfish in nearly 40 years of pulling traps. This summer he's seen a bunch of them, sometimes days in a row.
Cousens even found some sea horses in his traps last summer. Scientists say there have also been reports of triggerfish and filefish — colorful species that look more suited to an aquarium — and juvenile snowy grouper, which is normally found in the Caribbean or off the southern U.S.
Read the full story by the Associated Press at The Washington Post
September 27, 2013 — The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) issued a five-page statement today, lashing out at its critics, including the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) and some of the seafood industry media, for what it called “negative and inaccurate statements.”
The MSC has been at odds with ASMI for years, but the statement comes on the heels of a 24 September hearing by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard that examined the need for third-party certification programs like the MSC’s.
In the statement, described as an “open letter and fact sheet,” Kerry Coughlin, regional director for the Americas for the MSC, described the hearing as a “particularly egregious example of biased and inaccurate discussion,” and blasted the committee’s chair, Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, for keeping the MSC out of the hearing.
“With due respect to Chairman Begich, exclusion from the hearing of the MSC, the world’s leading seafood sustainability certification program and a main subject of the hearing, suggests the purpose of the hearing was not to gather informative testimony on the subject but to posit a particular position based on misinformation,” Coughlin wrote.
Coughlin also challenged Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who also made headlines this week in her criticism of the involvement of third-party certification programs in government activities. On 24 September, Murkowski praised a decision by the U.S. General Services Administration to confirm it will not let third-party groups such as NGOs influence its definition of sustainable seafood. The senator has also proposed legislation that would further prohibit federal agencies from using third-party certification programs.
Read the full story from Seafood Source
Read MSC's open letter addressing recent criticism
September 27, 2013 — An online video campaign designed to build consumer confidence in sustainable seafood has sparked outrage in the B.C. and Alaska fishing industry.
While a song titled Happy Go Lucky Me plays, the animated video features a tractor pulling an enormous net that captures farm animals, uproots trees and causes widespread destruction on the property. The marketing spot carries the tag line: “We don’t farm like this. Why do we fish like this?”
World Wildlife Fund Canada agreed to remove the 75-second video from its website and YouTube last week at the request of the Marine Stewardship Council, a London-based group that certifies wild-caught sustainable seafood.
The group’s blue MSC eco-labels are placed on retail products, after they pass scientific standards and meet guidelines for best practices for catching seafood.
Representatives of the B.C. and Alaska fishing sector are still seething, saying the video appeared for one week on WWF Canada’s website and YouTube, and also the Facebook page of the Loblaws grocery chain. The video had been intended to generate buzz on social media in a joint campaign by WWF Canada and Loblaws.
Read the full story from The Globe and Mail
Read more of Saving Seafood's coverage of this video
PORTLAND, Maine — September 26, 2013 — Atlantic cod and many other commercially valuable fish in New England have been shifting northeast from their historical distribution centers in recent years because of warming waters. Warm water was blamed for lobsters shedding their shells far earlier than usual last year, leading to a glut that created havoc within the industry.
At the same time, species that normally live in warmer waters are showing up with greater frequency off New England, scientists say, largely because of rising ocean temperatures. Other factors, such as fishing pressure and environmental changes including increased acidification and lower salinity levels, are believed to be at play.
Third-generation fisherman Rodman Sykes, who fishes out of Point Judith, R.I., said he’s been catching more barndoor and clear-nose skates and torpedo rays. And dockside workers have reported seeing mahi mahi swim by.
The fish aren’t abundant enough yet to make money from. But in time, he said, fishermen in southern New England could benefit financially from the newcomers.
‘‘But I'm more fearful for the guys down south who might be losing some of their opportunities,’’ Sykes said. ‘‘Maybe something will replace them, or they'll become more spread out. Or maybe they'll come up here and go back down there for the winter.’’
Many of the warmer-water species that are now becoming more common have been coming to New England for years but in smaller numbers, said Mike Fogarty, chief of the ecosystem assessment program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass.
Those that made it to New England would typically die in years past when the waters got cold in the winter, he said, but more of them are now surviving because of the temperatures.
A study written by Fogarty and other researchers that appeared in the journal Science this month concludes that climate change has resulted in shifts in where and at what depths many marine species are found throughout U.S. and Canadian waters. The shifts have not been uniform and are most likely caused by local climate conditions.
Read the full story by Clarke Canfield of the Associated Press in The Boston Globe