Conservation & Environment

April 26th, 2012 – An invasion of giant cannibal shrimp into America's coastal waters appears to be getting worse.

Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday that sightings of the massive Asian tiger shrimp, which can eat their smaller cousins, were 10 times higher in 2011 than in 2010.

“And they are probably even more prevalent than reports suggest, because the more fisherman and other locals become accustomed to seeing them, the less likely they are to report them,” said Pam Fuller, a USGS biologist.

The shrimp, which can grow to 13 inches long, are native to Asian and Australian waters and have been reported in coastal waters from North Carolina to Texas.

Read the complete story from CNN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW ORLEANS—A big increase in reports of Asian tiger shrimp along the U.S. Southeast coast and in the Gulf of Mexico has federal biologists worried the species is encroaching on native species' territory.

The black-and-white-striped shrimp can grow 13 inches long and weigh a quarter-pound, compared to eight inches and a bit over an ounce for domestic white, brown and pink shrimp. Scientists fear the tigers will bring disease and competition for native shrimp.

Shrimp are all bottom feeders, eating detritus and small animals. Bigger shrimp would eat more and these get so big they also eat small shrimp and fish, marine ecologist James A. Morris said.

Reports of tiger shrimp in U.S. waters rose from a few dozen a year — 21 in 2008, 47 in 2009 and 32 in 2010 — to 331 last year, from North Carolina to Texas.

"That's a big jump," said Pam Fuller, who keeps a federal invasive species database at the U.S. Geological Survey's Southeast Ecological Science Center in Gainesville, Fla.

And those are just the numbers reported to the government.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe

 

 

 

 

 

April 27, 2012 – on April, 18, 2012 the American University Center for Environmental Filmmaking production of The Most Important Fish in the Bay was broadcast on Maryland Public Television. The film examamines the economic and ecological role the fish plays in the Chesapeake Bay. It interviews many different industry stakeholders, including commercial and recreational watermen and environmental advocates.

Watch the film here.

Analysis: American University’s Center for Environmental Filmmaking provides a thorough, well-made, and well-balanced examination of the menhaden fishery in the Chesapeake Bay and the potential impact on the community that proposed fishing regulations would entail. The documentary interviews a variety of sources, from members of the menhaden industry to environmental activists, and gives equal time and consideration to the economic and environmental issues surrounding the menhaden fishery. While the documentary itself is fair and well-balanced, two of the interview subjects, author H. Bruce Franklin and the Director of the Chesapeake Bay’s Fisheries Program Bill Goldsborough, make several incorrect assertions about menhaden.

In the film, the English professor and author, H. Bruce Franklin states, “Menhaden are almost like a giant vacuum cleaner. Sucking from the entire Bay all kinds of excess phytoplankton, each individual menhaden filter four gallons of water a minute, so menhaden play a huge role, by just clarifying the water.” However, there are several scientific studies, including a recent 2010 study from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, that have found that menhaden have a negligible impact on phytoplankton. These studies found that adult menhaden, rather than vacuuming up phytoplankton as Franklin claims, mostly consume zooplankton. Juvenile menhaden do have the ability to filter phytoplankton, but their efforts do not lead to a significant improvement in water quality.
 
Bill Goldsborough of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, when discussing menhaden, says, “they are at their lowest point on record. And that’s an over 50 year-long record. They are down to less than 10 percent of what they once were.” Franklin makes a similar claim.
 
While this statistic is often cited as a reason for sharp reductions in the commercial menhaden harvest, other factors likely play a greater role. Menhaden spawning is much more influenced by environmental factors than by the amount of fish removed by commercial fishing. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) noted in its 2010 stock assessment that it was likely that the changes in the menhaden population “are almost entirely driven by non-fishery sources” (pg. 91). The ASMFC also concluded that the stock was currently not overfished. This means that the fecundity rate (the estimation of reproductive potential based on number of eggs) has been maintained at a high enough level to ensure sustainability. The lower population levels of menhaden are thus likely not to be the result of lack of available spawners, but of the poor water conditions in the Chesapeake Bay or other environmental factors.

 

 

April 22, 2012 – More than 2,000 scientists from 67 countries urged Arctic leaders, in an open letter released today by the Pew Environment Group, to develop an international fisheries accord that would protect the unregulated waters of the Central Arctic Ocean. New maps show that the loss of permanent sea ice has opened up as much as 40 percent of this pristine region during recent summers, making industrial fishing viable for the first time.

"Scientists recognize the crucial need for an international agreement that will prohibit the start of commercial fishing until research-based management measures can be put in place,” said Henry Huntington, the Pew Environment Group’s Arctic science director. “There’s no margin for error in a region where the melting sea ice is rapidly changing the marine ecosystem.”

More than 60 percent of the scientists who signed the letter, released on the first day of the International Polar Year 2012 science conference in Montreal, are from one of the five Arctic coastal countries—Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway, and Greenland/Denmark.

Read the full story at the Pew Environment Group.

 

 

April 26, 2012 – The New England Fishery Management Council Wednesday grappled with pending implementation of a NOAA decision to give Atlantic sturgeon the extreme protection of the Endangered Species Act all along the Atlantic coast.

Although there is not even a rough outline of the protective action, the development is destined to come at a heavy price paid by commercial fishermen, especially gillnetters, whose gear can snare the ancient giant that swims along the inshore waters and breeds in rivers.

Ron Smolowitz of the Fishery Survival Fund predicted an impact on commercial fishing that rivals the listing the "spotted owl" had on logging in the Pacific Northwest, making "protected habitat" of millions of acres.

NOAA estimates the survival rate of sturgeon hauled up in fishermen's bycatch — collateral fish pulled up when fishermen are targeting other species — is remarkably high, at roughly 80 percent from gillnets, 95 percent for sturgeon hauled up in trawl nets.

"I've probably caught two sturgeon in 35 years," said Richard Burgess, who owns and operates multiple gillnet boats based in Gloucester. "This year alone, our 36 boats (in the Gloucester gillnet sector) have released four to five alive."

Burgess said the last time he caught one was 2001.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times.

 

 

April 26, 2012 – It’s not easy counting river herring. Occupational hazards include eye strain from staring at the same spot of water for 10 minutes, boredom when the fish aren’t there, and panic when they surge past in such high numbers that counting seems impossible. There’s also the occasional aggressive swan or swooping seagull to contend with.

Being a herring is no piece of cake, either. Bowing to nature’s imperative, the fish migrate in the spring from the ocean back to their birthplaces in freshwater ponds up and down the East Coast – a course studded with such obstacles as hungry striped bass and cormorants, low water, trawlers’ nets, human poachers, manmade dams, and pollution.

“It certainly is a gantlet they have to run through,’’ said John Sheppard of the state Department of Marine Fisheries. “It’s almost like a war of attrition just to get to the spawning grounds.’’

This year, however, the herring are winning that battle, with record numbers of counters reporting thousands of fish.

At Weymouth’s herring run in Jackson Square, for example, the count was up to 200,000 as of April 20, and the season has weeks to go, according to town Herring Warden George Loring.

While far lower than the peak of 860,000 fish recorded in 1995, the count is on track to overtake last year’s approximately 260,000, he said. And that number was up from 80,000 in 2005.

“There have been some spectacular pulses of fish coming through [in Weymouth]. It’s just been shoulder-to-shoulder fish, if fish had shoulders,’’ said Scott Dowd, a freshwater biologist at New England Aquarium and member of the Weymouth Herring Committee.

The high numbers in Weymouth and elsewhere along the coast south of Boston are welcome news to those who have been watching the river herring population dwindle in years past.

While there have been some fluctuations, the number of herring declined so much that the state has banned river herring fishing and sales since 2006 to allow the stock to rebuild, according to Sheppard.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe.

 

 

April 18, 2012 – Have you had your menhaden today? No?

Well, you probably have – you just didn’t know it. Don’t worry, you’re not alone! Most of us know nothing about this little guy, but he’s been in our daily lives for well over a hundred years now…

The problem is… you guessed it! Overfishing. Menhaden is actually America’s second largest fishery, just behind Alaska Pollock – which was on the verge of collapse but is thankfully starting to rebound. Or not! Turns out it depends on who you listen to – but this PDF report shows that while production is down pollock is still not listed as ‘overfished’.

The Omega Protein company harvests thousands of tons of menhaden every year. They literally vacuum them out of the water with specialized ships – entire schools at a time. To their credit, they have abided by (and even extended!) harvesting limitations to provide the menhaden time to rebound… but is it enough?

The problem with overfishing in this case is that menhaden are forage fish – bigger fish eat them. Basically, menhaden are a vital part of the food chain. They eat algae and tidbits of phytoplankton, and are in turn eaten by the fish WE eat.

Read the full story here.

Analysis: While the article states that overfishing is currently a problem with Atlantic menhaden. However, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the body that oversees the Atlantic menhaden fishery, determined in its 2010 stock assessment that menhaden were not overfished, and that overfishing had occurred only once in the last 10 years. They also concluded that it is most likely environmental, not fishery-related, factors that have the most influence on the size of the menahden population.

 

 

April 2012 – With your help, our work to conserve menhaden—a fish critical to the Chesapeake and Atlantic coastal ecosystems—continues.

The process for increasing protections for this important fish is now in phase two. Last fall in phase one, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) adopted new standards for managing the menhaden fishery that will require cutbacks in the catch in an attempt to more than triple menhaden numbers coastwide. Phase two involves drafting a new fishery management plan laying out how to achieve the new standards. Next fall in phase three, the ASMFC will formally adopt the new plan, which will describe the catch restrictions that will take effect in 2013.

Once the subject of a book entitled, The Most Important Fish in the Sea, menhaden play a key role in the Chesapeake and Atlantic coastal ecosystems. Much like oysters, they feed by filtering the water and removing plankton which are often overabundant in polluted estuarine waters. Somehow the menhaden converts this input into biomass rich in omega-3 oils which makes them in turn highly nutritious prey for a wide range of marine fish, birds, and mammals.

Striped bass, for example, normally feed heavily on menhaden, but the amount in their diet has gone down dramatically as menhaden numbers declined over the last 20 years. Lack of menhaden in their diet may be a primary reason why Chesapeake stripers suffer from the disease Mycobacteriosis. Similarly, ospreys' success in finding menhaden to feed their young has gone down sharply in recent decades, and the survival of nestlings in the lower Bay is now less than during the DDT era.

New scientific advice in 2010 drove ASMFC to act after 10 years of slow progress protecting menhaden. The science indicated that numbers of menhaden population had been overfished in 32 out of the previous 54 years and was at its lowest level on record. The ability of the coastwide population to reproduce was only 8 percent of what it had once been. Even a panel of independent scientists advised that this was too low and called on ASMFC to better protect the stock and increase the spawning potential.

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Analysis: The Chesapeake Bay Foundations states, "menhaden population had been overfished in 32 out of the previous 54 years and was at its lowest level on record." However, as the most recent stock assessments from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) show, overfishing has only occurred once in the last 10 years, and the menhaden population is currently not overfished. Environmental factors, rather than commercial fishing, are also much more likely to influence the size of the menhaden population, with the ASMFC concluding that "non-fishery sources" are likely responsible for fluctuations in population (pg. 91).

The CBF also writes, "much like oysters, they feed by filtering the water and removing plankton which are often overabundant in polluted estuarine waters." The results of several recent studies have cast doubt on this claim. These studies have shown that adult menhaden do not consume most kinds of phytoplankton, and instead consume mostly zooplankton. And while juvenile menhaden do consume phytoplankton, they do not do so at a rate that contributes to improving water quality in a significant way.

Finally, the CBF writes, "lack of menhaden in [striped bass] diet may be a primary reason why Chesapeake stripers suffer from the disease Mycobacteriosis." There is no widely agreed upon answer for what causes mycobacteriosis in striped bass. However, the answer is just as likely to be the result of environmental factors in the Bay as a result of dead zones. These dead zones, caused by algal blooms fueled by excess nutrient runoff in the Bay, create low-oxygen (hypoxic) areas in the water that bass usually inhabit. They are forced instead into warmer, shallower waters for which they are ill-suited. As a result of the thermal stress this causes, the bass are not able to feed properly, making them more susceptible to diseases.

 

 

The following was released by the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers:

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -­‐ April 23, 2012 — From the floor of the 2012 European Seafood Exposition, the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers and the Alaska Crab Coalition join the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute in welcoming the news that the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands crab fishery has been

certified to the standards set forth in the United Nations FAO-­‐Based Certification Model for Responsible Fisheries Management. Alaskan crab will now stand alongside Alaska salmon, halibut, black cod, and pollock, each of whom has previously been certified by the independent, third-­‐party organization Global Trust as adhering to the FAO standards.

While today’s announcement is certainly welcomed by the Alaskan crab industry, sustainability is not a concept we are just now embracing. Alaskan fisheries have been at the forefront of sustainable fisheries management since it was mandated in the State Constitution over 50 years ago. Longtime Bering Sea crab fisherman Kale Garcia, in accepting the certification, noted “sustainability is not new to Alaskan Bering Sea crabbers and our families. We support it. We have lived it for many years under Alaska’s cutting-­‐edge management and we are the ones who pay the direct cost when quota reductions are necessary to ensure the health of the resource. We are also the ones who gain long term by having a renewable resource that will provide a livelihood for generations. The FAO sustainability certificate does not change anything in practice or management, but it does help tell the world what we in Alaska already know about sustainability. Now our buyers in the marketplace can have one more layer of comfort knowing the Alaskan crab they are buying is from a sustainable, well-­‐managed source.”

Alaskan crab is managed jointly by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Annual quotas are set very conservatively and reflect the need to manage the fishery for long term sustainability, rather than short term gain. Today’s modern crab gear incorporates the latest in conservation technology. And crab fishermen coordinate their harvest activities to make sure the crab is harvested at the peak of its quality and with minimal environmental impact! This is what sets Alaskan crab apart from other crab fisheries around the world. All Alaskans can take comfort in knowing that their resources are being managed with future generations in mind. And crab lovers everywhere can take comfort in knowing that genuine, certified Alaskan crab will be there for them to enjoy now and into the future.

 

April, 2011 – Reedville, Virginia is like most small fishing villages along the Atlantic Coast. The town has a couple churches, some bed and breakfast inns, an annual fishing contest, and even a fishing museum. However, Reedville is strikingly different than most other fishing towns. It is completely dependent on one fish and one fishing company – the menhaden and Omega Protein, Inc. Despite the town’s quaint appearance, Omega Protein’s dominance over the menhaden fishery  “reduction” industry has led Reedville to become the second largest port in the country in terms of total poundage. At one point, the menhaden industry made Reedville the wealthiest town in the country per capita, but today the historic Victorian mansions that line Reedville’s main street are the only surviving testaments to the heyday of the once vibrant fishing town.

To understand the ecological significance of the menhaden, it is important to have a basic understanding of the Bay ecosystem. The Chesapeake Bay is the country’s largest estuary and is home to over 350 species of fish, shellfish, and plants. However, their survival is threatened by the declining water quality of the Bay. The poor health of the Bay ecosystem is mainly contributed to the excessive levels of nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorous. These nutrients come primarily from discharged wastewater, air pollution, and urban and agricultural runoff from fertilizer and livestock waste. As the Bay region’s population has increased over the years, the land surrounding the Bay has been transformed from forests to farms and residential areas. These forests that once prevented excessive levels of these nutrients from reaching the Bay are now gone, and the menhaden is now one of the Bay’s last natural defenses.

The menhaden’s filtering capabilities enable them to consume large amounts of these excess nutrients. According to the Chesapeake Ecological Foundation, a single menhaden can filter one million gallons every 180 days, and the entire Atlantic menhaden population has the potential to remove 25% of the Bay’s nutrients in one year through its consumption of plankton. By consuming such vast quantities of these microscopic plants, menhaden help to prevent the growth of algae blooms and allow sunlight to reach plants growing at the bottom of the Bay. As these bottom-dwelling plants grow, they increase the water’s oxygen levels, making conditions healthier for the rest of life in the Bay.

Read the full story at Penn Elements.

Analysis: While the article discusses menhaden's role as a filter feeder in the Bay, the amount of phytoplankton that menhaden consume is not universally agreed upon. There are several studies, including a recent 2010 study from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, that conclude menhaden have little, if any, net impact on improving water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. These studies have found that adult menhaden, rather than consuming phytoplankton, consume mostly zooplankton. While juvenile menhaden consume phytoplankton, the amount they consume is not enough to significantly influence Bay water quality, especially considering the amount of nutrient imputinto the Bay, one of the causes of excessive phytoplankton growth.