Conservation & Environment

After three decades of disappointing numbers, New Hampshire is moving away from its tradition of releasing millions of baby fish into the Merrimack River watershed in hopes of restoring the state’s Atlantic salmon population.

Under a federal restoration program, salmon fry have been released in the Merrimack River watershed each year since 1976 in an attempt to bring back a population that was wiped out by overfishing, pollution and dam construction in the 1800s. Using eggs from returning salmon, the National Fish Hatchery in Nashua produces millions of juvenile salmon that are stocked through the watershed each spring.

The work involves carrying the inch-long salmon fry to release points along rivers and streams, where they grow for about two years before migrating to the ocean. Ideally, the salmon return to the rivers to spawn when they are about four years old, but that hasn’t often been the case.

In the program’s early days, officials hoped to see thousands of fish return each year, but achieving a sustainable salmon run has remained elusive, with an average of 121 adult salmon returning to the river each year. Until 2011, when a record 402 returning salmon were counted at a fish lift downstream in Massachusetts, the project met its annual target of 300 fish just once, in 1991.

Read the complete Associated Press article in The Boston Globe

 

 

 

 

 

 

SEATTLE — As ocean scientists probe what ails some of the largest creatures in the sea, a wave of new research is urging them to look at the little things — specifically the tiny schooling fish that make up the cornerstone of ocean food webs.

Species like herring, smelt, sardines and squid are the food of choice for many of the ocean's top predators. But there is increasing pressure globally to harvest marine "forage fish" for everything from hog feed and fertilizer to fishmeal in tuna pens or as bait for recreational or commercial fishing.

And these creatures are often the fish scientists understand the least.

"The idea that forage fish are important isn't new," said Phil Levin, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle. "But if you take the fish out of the system … what are the costs if those fish are no longer there to be eaten by birds or mammals or other fish? That's what we're talking about now."

Read the complete Seattle Times story in The Standard-Times

 

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — Representatives of a green group, regarded with suspicion by many in the fishing industry, came to New Bedford Friday with an offer of support for commercial fishermen still struggling to adapt to the quota system of fishery management.

In a meeting with The Standard-Times editorial board, Johanna Thomas, regional director for the Environmental Defense Fund's Oceans Program on the East Coast, said her organization wants New Bedford groundfishermen to succeed and stay in business.

EDF's advocacy for the catch share system now governing the groundfishery in New England has convinced many in the industry that the EDF agenda is hostile to commercial fishing. Thomas said that is a perception she wants to change.

EDF scientist Jake Kritzer is already working with UMass Dartmouth's School for Marine Science and Technology to study the role closed areas play in the management of fish stocks and EDF wants to do more.

Read the complete article from The Standard-Times

 

 

 

 

 

BOSTON — Federal regulators are now requiring boats that dredge for Atlantic scallops to use new gear that protects sea turtles by deflecting them out of the way.

On Friday, the National Marine Fisheries Service approved the new "turtle deflector dredge," which scallopers must install within a year. Regional regulators approved the change late last year.

In the new dredge, the cutting bar — which runs along the sea floor — is moved forward so it looks like a train's cowcatcher. That bumps turtles clear so they don't get trapped or crushed by the dredge's heavy chain bag.

The gear was tested to ensure it still effectively catches scallops.

The environmental group Oceana said it was relieved by the change, which it advocated for a decade. It said it expects sea turtle deaths to drop 56 percent.

Read the Associated Press article in The Wall Street Journal

 

 

 

 

 

The following was released by Oceana:

BOSTON–April 6, 2012 – Oceana, the largest international advocacy group working solely to protect the world’s oceans, applauded the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) today for approving new regulations for the Atlantic scallop fishery that will require modified fishing gear in areas and during times when threatened and endangered sea turtles are known to be present. The new fishing gear, called a Turtle Deflector Dredge (TDD), is shown to push sea turtles out of harm’s way. In fact, TDDs are expected to reduce sea turtle mortality by at least 56 percent when compared to former dredges that force them into heavy chain bags where they were dragged and often drowned.

“Oceana is relieved that after 10 years of requests, NMFS has finally taken action to reduce the scallop fisheries deadly interaction with threatened sea turtles,” said Gib Brogan, Oceana’s Northeast representative. “We support TDD’s as a solution to sea turtle bycatch in the scallop fishery and commend the industry and its research partners for their work to develop this new gear.”

Today’s decision will go into effect on May 6, 2012 and will be required from May 1 to October 31 in all waters West of 71 degrees W. longitude (near Dartmouth, MA), including the entire Mid-Atlantic (see image below). The Atlantic scallop fishery will have one year to meet these requirements after they go into effect.

“The government’s job does not end by approving these new regulations,” said Brogan. “NMFS must remain vigilant in making sure that TDD’s are used properly and that they are successful in decreasing sea turtle mortality.”

Read the release here.

 

Gloucester, VA, April 5, 2012 — Judging from the nests occupying various man-made structures around Hampton Roads — including cell phone and stadium lighting towers, channel markers and bridges — the osprey has made a resounding comeback in the Chesapeake Bay region.

Osprey populations have been increasing in the Chesapeake Bay region and other U.S. water bodies since the late 1970s, said a Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences spokesman. Osprey populations began recovering in the region following the ban on DDT use in 1972.

Chesapeake Bay is home to the largest concentration of breeding ospreys in the world; the area is the home nesting area to a quarter of the population of ospreys in the contiguous United States, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program. Breeding pairs typically return to the same nest site and remain together for years.

On the Peninsula, osprey populations around Gloucester, and particularly Mobjack Bay, struggled as recently as about five years ago, when many of the osprey chicks were starving due to low food availability, said an expert on the raptors. Bryan Watts, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William & Mary, said he would like to conduct a follow-up study to the one in 2007 that noted the problems of Mobjack Bay osprey populations.

"Gloucester is doing fine," Watts said. "The whole Mobjack Bay is doing fine."

In the mid-2000s, the ospreys' productivity on Mobjack Bay was fairly poor, Watts said. That was in stark contrast to the James River, where ospreys were doing great, he said.

Part of the problem on Mobjack Bay was likely diet-related. About 70 percent of the ospreys' diet had been menhaden, but by 2007 that percentage had dropped to 26 percent. Ospreys were still bringing in food, but it wasn't the oil-rich, nutrient-packed quality of menhaden, Watts said.

The difference on the James River, where ospreys rebounded from zero in the early 1970s to 500-600 pairs now, is not only the ban on DDT, but also the presence of blue catfish, Watts said. Blue catfish were introduced to the James River in 1968.

Ospreys are "exploiting a resource," Watts said. "They're moving up tributaries into fresher and fresher water."

Read the full article at the Daily Press.

 

April 5, 2012 – The bridge of the Gateway Endeavor, a support vessel that plies Boston Harbor, is crammed with large, plastic navigational charts and sophisticated sonar and radar displays. Now Captain Ronald Lee Hatch has added another device to his array: an Apple iPad loaded with a new app called Whale Alert, which tracks the location of North Atlantic right whales around the area’s most popular shipping lanes.

The free app is designed to reduce the risk of collision between ships and the endangered whales by displaying real-time data from, among other sources, acoustically sensitive buoys that pick up calls from the marine mammals. The data are relayed via satellite to the shipboard device.

Hatch, who said he sees whales regularly as his ship guides LNG tankers through the outer harbor, was monitoring his iPad Wednesday morning, shortly after a press conference to introduce the app. He pointed out two bright yellow icons about 20 miles offshore.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 1, 2012 – The smallest fish in the sea are more than twice as valuable when they’re eaten by bigger fish than when they’re caught by humans, according to a report released Sunday by a scientific task force.

The 120-page analysis by the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force — a group of 13 scientists specializing in everything from fish ecology to marine mammals and seabirds — underscores the growing concern researchers have about the fate of forage fish, including anchovies, mehaden, herring and sardines that serve as food for bigger fish, sea birds and marine mammals.

Forage fish account for 37 percent of the world’s commercial fish catch, with an annual value of $5.6 billion. (Only 10 percent of forage fish caught are eaten by humans; the remaining 90 percent are processed into fish meal and fish oil, which feed livestock and farmed fish.)

But the team of scientists, who worked for three years on their analysis, concluded that forage fish support $11.3 billion worth of commercial fish by serving as their prey. In the North Sea, for example, sand eels help sustain cod, and tuna in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean feed on sardines.

The group’s economic analysis did not include the value forage fish provide to sea birds and marine mammals, many of which are highly dependent on them. University of Washington conservation biologist Dee Boersma, one of the task force’s members, has conducted studies showing that the breeding success of Magellanic penguins is directly related to how far they had to forage for food. If they could find fish between 30 and 50 miles of their colony they produced two chicks; if they had to travel more than 90 miles away, they had one; and if they had to go 125 miles, they had none.

In an interview, Boersma said that with fewer forage fish, seabirds were having to travel farther for less food. “Suddenly, instead of 90 percent, you’re settling for 10 percent. That’s what’s happening to seabirds. When fish is not there, they don’t do as well.”

Read the full story at the Washington Post.

 

April 2, 2012 – An international group of marine scientists is calling for cuts in commercial fishing for sardines, herring and other so-called forage fish whose use as food for fish farms is soaring. The catch should be cut in half for some fisheries, the scientists say, to protect populations of both the fish and the natural predators that depend on them.

“The message is, if you cut back on harvesting of forage fish, there will be benefits,” said Ellen K. Pikitch, director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University and chairwoman of the task force that produced a report on the issue that was released Sunday.

The report, “Little Fish, Big Impact,” financed by the Lenfest Foundation through the Pew Charitable Trusts, details how fishing has increased for these fish, which now account for 37 percent, by weight, of all fish harvested worldwide, up from about 8 percent half a century ago. The consumer market for forage fish is relatively small; most of the fish are ground and processed for use as animal feed and nutritional supplements and, increasingly, as feed for the aquaculture industry, which now produces about half of all the fish and shellfish that people eat.

Forage fish are an important link in the food chain, eating plankton and being consumed, in turn, by large fish like tuna and cod, as well as by seabirds and dolphins and other marine mammals. The task force estimated that as a source of food in the wild for larger commercially valuable fish, forage fish were worth more than $11 billion, or twice as much as their worth when processed for aquaculture and other uses.

“Sometimes the value of leaving fish in the water can be greater than taking it out,” Ms. Pikitch said.

The report cites several cases in which overfishing of forage fish has led to the collapse of populations of larger fish or other predators, and suggests that such cases could increase unless catches are reduced.

Read the full story at the New York Times.

 

April 1, 2012 – The catch of small, schooling fish such as sardines and anchovies should be cut in half globally and the amount left in the ocean doubled to protect the ecologically vital species from collapse, scientists say in a new report.

The silvery species known as forage fish are harvested in huge numbers worldwide and are easy for fishermen to round up because they form dense schools, or "bait balls." But wide fluctuations in their numbers make them especially vulnerable to overfishing, according to the report released Sunday by the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, a 13-member panel of scientists from around the world.

The report urges wildlife managers to take more precautions to prevent future declines. The analysis estimates that small fish such as herring and menhaden are twice as valuable in the water as in a net because so many larger fish, including tuna, salmon and cod, rely on them for food.

"As the forage fish decline in abundance, so go their predators," said Ellen Pikitch of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at New York's Stony Brook University, the head of the panel, which is funded by a nonprofit grant.

The findings are the latest to raise concerns about the harvest of the little, oily fish, given their role as food for the ocean's bigger fish as well as dolphins, whales and seabirds.

Forage fish account for more than one-third of catches globally, the report says, with most of the yield ground into meal and fish oil to feed farmed fish and livestock and to produce nutritional supplements.

Read the full story at the LA Times.