Conservation & Environment

November 15, 2013 — The world's oceans are becoming acidic at an "unprecedented rate" and may be souring more rapidly than at any time in the past 300 million years.

In their strongest statement yet on this issue, scientists say acidification could increase by 170% by 2100.

They say that some 30% of ocean species are unlikely to survive in these conditions.

The researchers conclude that human emissions of CO2 are clearly to blame.

The study will be presented at global climate talks in Poland next week.

In 2012, over 500 of the world's leading experts on ocean acidification gathered in California. Led by the International Biosphere-Geosphere Programme, a review of the state of the science has now been published.

This Summary for Policymakers states with "very high confidence" that increasing acidification is caused by human activities which are adding 24 million tonnes of CO2 to oceans every day. 

Read the full story at BBC News 

WASHINGTON — November 13, 2013 — Oceana announced today the receipt of a grant from UK-based Arcadia Fund. The funding of 5,000,000 US dollars will be paid over a period of five years to support Oceana's campaigns to protect biodiversity in the world's oceans. This grant will enable Oceana to achieve its campaign goals in habitat and marine life protection.

"Arcadia is pleased to be able to continue to fund Oceana efforts to protect and restore the world's oceans. We believe it is critical for the future of our planet to protect the biodiversity of the seas," said Anthea Case, Principal Adviser to the Arcadia Fund.

"Oceana's aggressive conservation goals cannot be realized without the generous support of groups like the Arcadia Fund," said Oceana CEO Andrew Sharpless. "With this help, Oceana can win more victories in Europe, Chile and the United States and protect thousands of miles of seafloor habitat, expand marine reserves, and preserve habitat for sea turtles, sea lions and other creatures. Arcadia's support will also support Oceana's international expansion into new countries like Brazil and South Asia, helping us to gain protections for the large and incredibly productive ocean ecosystems that are managed by these nations."

Read the full story at The Sacramento Bee

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton — November 13, 2013 — The fiasco of the the MSC and Alaska salmon continues, as the Marine Stewardship Council announced yesterday that the “Alaska Salmon Fishery Earns MSC Re-certification.”  This is not the full story.

In fact, the MSC was unable to certify the Prince William Sound fishery for sockeye, pink and chum salmon. This is not a small matter, as this year, PWS represented fully 1/3 of the record salmon harvest of 272 million fish (476,000 tons).
 
Although this was mentioned in the certification announcement, the importance of Prince William Sound to the state’s fishery is understated – with it being referred to as just one of 14 assessment units.
 
Separately, the MSC claimed “No objections were received and the determination therefore holds,” in their initial email. This is of course untrue, as a group of Canadian and Southeast Alaska conservation organizations did file an objection, that was overruled.
 
The press release goes on to say that “This third certification was undertaken by the 400-member Purse Seine Vessel Owners Association serving as the client along with a group of Alaska salmon processing companies, and it establishes a new milestone by becoming the first U.S. fishery to receive a third certification in the MSC program.
 
PSVOA opened the certificate to other companies to voluntarily join and these primary processors have signed on to be part of the client group:  Copper River Seafoods, International Seafoods of Alaska, Ekuk Fisheries, 10th and M Seafoods, Silver Bay Seafoods, Hoonah Cold Storage and one anonymous company.   In order for Alaska salmon to be eligible to make the MSC Claim, it must have gone through one of the members of the client group.”
 
Copper River Seafoods, however, has withdrawn from the client group.  After reading the draft assessment report, the company put out a statement saying:
 
“Copper River Seafoods believes in choice, but cannot support a certification model that fails to certify all fisheries within a state that is a global model for sustainable fisheries management. Therefore, Copper River Seafoods plans to withdraw support for the MSC in 2014. If the MSC chooses to certify all of Alaska’s salmon fisheries, Copper River Seafoods will reassess whether MSC can again be a viable option for customers.”
 
So it is misleading to claim the support of Copper River seafoods as part of the client group without mention of their withdrawal.
 
Over 80% of the Alaska salmon producers have elected to not continue with the MSC, and have endorsed an alternative third party certification.
 
This withdrawal has led to a crisis of confidence in the MSC, to the resignation of the Americas’s director, Kerry Coughlin, and given impetus to the movement to establish an independent global seafood sustainability benchmark by retailers, similar to the benchmarks established for food safety certifications.  Arguments over whether the MSC certification was necessary for retailers to continue supplying Alaska salmon caused both Wal-Mart and Sodexo, along the with U.S. National Park Service and the General Services Administration, to revise their sustainability procurement guidelines, so they could continue to purchase Alaska salmon from all legitimate suppliers.
 
Given the sensitivity of this, it is surprising that the MSC announcements about what they have been able to accomplish in Alaska are so sloppy and riddled with errors.
 
Speaking on behalf of PSVOA Bob Kehoe, executive director for PSVOA, said, “The MSC program has brought sustainability to the forefront, reinforcing 50 years of responsible state management and the unique qualities of Alaska salmon.  This recertification offers a valuable and independent assurance to buyers that the fishery is sustainably managed.”
 
However, there are widespread reports that the PSVOA is not willing to continue as a client for the MSC in 2014, as many board members and harvesters in the group are appalled at the treatment of Prince William Sound salmon, which is one of the organizations principle fisheries.
 
As a final indignity, the MSC says “MSC re-certification of the Alaska salmon fishery comes at the beginning of the important winter holiday season when demand is highest. “
 
This is simply not true – wild salmon demand is highest in the summer, and the certification of the 2013 fishery comes a full 6 and 1/2 months after the first salmon were caught in Alsaks rivers this year.

This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

November 12, 2013 — Once, large predatory cod and other fish were found close to shore in every embayment in New England, chowing down on the plentiful runs of river herring and shad that ran in and out of New England’s rivers. Now, famous coastal fisheries in places like Penobscot Bay have been gone for 50 years or more, despite virtually no commercial finfish fishing during that time.

Rebuilding these inshore fisheries will be a long process, but we can start by restoring critical habitat for their prey species.

As former New England Fishery Management Council member David Goethel has often said, fish are pretty much focused on three things: food, sex, and comfortable surroundings (ocean temperatures, habitats and the like). Without prey like river herring, the most persistent preoccupation of the larger predatory fish—food—has been largely missing from inshore waters. And river herring won’t come back until the dams blocking coastal rivers and estuaries are removed, the damaged spawning sites upriver are restored, and the pollution in the region’s rivers is reduced.

Read the full story from the Conservation Law Foundation

November 13, 2013 — State and federal biologists Wednesday urged boaters to watch out for endangered North Atlantic right whales. The whales migrate close to shore during their calving season, which begins in mid-November and runs through mid-April.

Scientists estimate as few as 400 right whales remaining worldwide, making them one of the most endangered marine mammals.

Every winter pregnant right whales swim more than 1,000 miles from their feeding grounds off Canada and New England to waters of South Carolina, Georgia and northeastern Florida, Tom Pitchford, a biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, explained in a release. "This is where these whales come to give birth and nurse their young," Pitchford said.

Read the full story from Florida Today

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by Michael Ramsingh – November 13, 2013 — A group of NGO's have blasted the MSC for failing to address their objection to the certification of Alaskan salmon in their announcement that the the Council has completed the re-certification process for the Alaskan fishery with the Purse Seine Vessel Owners Association acting as the client. (see: November 13, 2013 Seafood.com News story "MSC Alaska salmon woes continue as they can only certify 2/3rd of this year’s harvest")

Together, The Wild Fish Conservancy, SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, Watershed Watch Salmon Society and Raincoast Conservation Foundation objected to the MSC's certification of Alaskan salmon.  This objection was dismissed by the MSC's independent adjudicator last week.  But in their initial announcement yesterday, the MSC said there were no objections filed to their certifying Alaskan salmon.

Following is the complete statement from the group of NGOs:

In their "MSC Fisheries Update" of November 12, 2013, the Marine Stewardship Council stated that the Alaska salmon fishery has been re-certified after "No objections were received…".

The statement comes as a surprise to many seafood industry watchers who were aware that four conservation groups filed an objection to the controversial certification on Oct. 29, 2013. Wild Fish Conservancy of Seattle, WA, and Watershed Watch Salmon Society, SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, and Raincoast Conservation Foundation of British Columbia, objected to MSC's failure to assess fishery impacts on endangered king (Chinook) salmon runs from BC and the continental US that are overfished as they migrate through Southeast Alaska. While the objection was dismissed by the “adjudicator” retained by MSC to evaluate the objection, the groups say that MSC appears to be whitewashing their process by claiming that "no objections were received".

The report that MSC has accepted from the certifying body acknowledges that over 96% of Chinook salmon caught in the southeast Alaskan fishery originate from rivers outside Alaska, many of which are severely depleted.  The groups objected to the MSC’s decision of March 2013 to designate the non-Alaskan Chinook as ‘Inseparable or Practically Inseparable’ (or ‘IPI’) from the true Alaskan salmon.   The Chinook (or ‘king’) salmon fishery is considered the most problematic, for its impacts on endangered runs. Salmon from these endangered populations are routinely sold in the market as “wild Alaska salmon”.  Even though MSC did not inform stakeholders or the public of their March decision until  releasing the draft report in July, the adjudicator dismissed the groups’ objection on November 5, 2013, saying that an evaluation of the IPI loophole was outside the “objection jurisdiction.”

The conservation advocates also say the MSC statement omits the fact that the Prince William Sound fishery was NOT re-certified, due to outstanding concerns over the massive ocean-ranching aquaculture operations in that region, which pose known risks to wild salmon populations.

The groups are asking the Marine Stewardship Council to immediately correct the misleading statement and issue an apology to any stakeholders and consumers who have been misled by the error and omission.

This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

November 11, 2013 — Can sea life evolve fast enough to cope with changing ocean chemistry? That’s the question researchers like Gretchen Hofmann are trying to answer. The marine biologist is applying her years of experience with sea urchins to determining how marine animals might evolve or adapt to ocean acidification: the lowering of the ocean’s pH due to human-propelled fossil fuel emissions.

Her research is at the center of “Sea Change: Can sea life adapt?”, the latest in a series of articles on ocean acidification, published last week in The Seattle Times.

Hofmann, a scientist at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), was inspired to begin the research by a commercial urchin diver, who contacted her to ask how ocean acidification would affect his livelihood. In the lab, she exposed Pacific sea urchin larvae to more acidic water–water with a higher concentration of CO2 than usually found in most real ocean conditions. As the sea urchins grew, she found, many developed smaller bodies. But some did not.

Read the full story at Salon

WILMINGTON, N.C. — November 11, 2013 — In North Carolina fishing is a multi-million dollar industry, but researchers say climate change is turning into a fishy situation off our coast.

Dr. Daniel Pauly has been studying the effects of global warming on our fisheries for the past decade and says we need to make a change before it’s too late.

“Fish are moving toward the poles because it's getting too warm for them,” said Dr. Daniel Pauly. “Many of the traditional fishing areas of these fish, and also fishing ground, are no longer what they were."

Dr. Daniel Pauly says he first heard the term global warming in 1989. Since that time he has studied its effect on over 30,000 fish species, and has come to a terrifying realization.

Read the full story and watch the video at WWAY 3 News Channel 

November 8, 2013 — The number of dead or dying dolphins that have washed up on New Jersey beaches has dropped significantly in the past few weeks as colder water has led to the animals heading south for the winter.

However, researchers within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warn the number of deaths will continue to increase in southern states as the outbreak of dolphin morbillivirus is expected to travel with the migrating herds.

“That doesn’t mean New York and New Jersey won’t have strandings,” said Teri Rawls, director of NOAA Fisheries’ Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program. “(The northern states) may continue to have strandings of offshore species and stragglers that stay behind.”

As of Friday, 143 dolphins have washed up dead or dying on New Jersey beaches since July 1.

Researchers also are examining whether the same virus preliminarily identified as the cause of more than 750 Atlantic bottlenose dolphin deaths since July is affecting humpback whales and pygmy sperm whales. So far this year, three of four humpback whales tested for the virus and two of three pygmy sperm whales tested for the virus had positive results.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City 

 

PORTLAND, Maine — November 8, 2013 — Researchers are saying the weather has caused unprecedented challenges for commercial fisheries in Maine.

A new study said that the water temperature in the Gulf of Maine is warming, and that warmer water is bringing new fish species, while others are disappearing.

Scientists said cod, for example, have disappeared from some gulf waters, and they aren't sure where the went.

Captain Mike Russo has fished off of Cape Cod since 1984, but this year he moved his operation to Portland.

"I came to Maine this year because the fish have pretty much evaporated from the cape where I fished for a long time," said Russo.

Read the full story and watch the video from WMTW Portland