Science

February 4, 2015 — Deep beneath the surface of the Gulf of Alaska an extraordinary marine crime has been taking place.

Sperm whales, the ocean’s largest predators, have been targeting the boats of black cod fishermen and swiping their catch off their lines.

This giant animal’s deft trick was filmed for the first time by a group of scientists based in Alaska, US, and is shown in the BBC Two programme Alaska: Earth’s Frozen Kingdom.

It shows a sperm whale using its long jaw to create tension on the line, which in turn snaps fish off the hooks. This feeding behaviour is called depredation and experts think it is learned by the whales.

I don’t know how to quantify their intelligence but their effectiveness is almost perfect,” says Stephen Rhoads, a boat skipper who has been fishing in the area for 20 years.

“That they’re getting better at this every single year and it’s less work for them to hang out with us and take our fish than it is to dive down and get them off the bottom.
“There’s no doubt that these creatures are very smart.”

Long-line fishermen fish on the sea bed using hook-and-line equipment that can be up to five miles long.

Read the full story and watch the video at the BBC

January 27, 2015 — Schools of fish may be common things to see, but watching some fish school high school students from a basement in Manhattan’s West Side is a different experience altogether. Cathie Woteki, USDA’s Chief Scientist and Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, observed such a program recently during a visit to Food and Finance High School in New York.

There on West 50th Street, Cornell University operates laboratories that represent the latest in scientific technology to raise fresh, clean fish in addition to garden produce in a sustainable urban setting. Renowned Cornell scientist and educator Philson Warner developed a system for continuously re-circulating and reconditioning water to raise more than 10,000 tilapia and other fish at a time in the basement lab.

Read the full story from the USDA Blog

January 26, 2015 — The gradual warming of the Arctic Ocean over the next century will weaken a natural barrier that has separated fish from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for millions of years, leading to a mixing of species that could make life difficult in fishing communities from Alaska to Norway.

A new study by scientists in Denmark combined current models of climate change, and the biological water temperature and food requirements for 520 fish species native to the two oceans. The report forecast changes in the range of these fish in five-year increments from now until 2100, when the world’s oceans are expected to heat up globally by an average 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit).

"There will be an interchange of the fish communities between those two seas," beginning as soon as 2050, said Mary Wisz, lead author on the report in Nature Climate Change and a senior ecosystem scientist at Aarhaus University in Denmark. "We know from historical examples that this kind of interchange, when biotas have been separated over long evolutionary time scales, can have huge consequences."

In this warmer future, fishermen based in Kodiak, Alaska, could be pulling up Atlantic cod, a prized species normally caught off New England and Northern Europe. A similar change has already started off the coast of Greenland, where fishermen in the last five years have been catching larger numbers of Atlantic mackerel, which prefers more temperate water.

Wisz and colleagues say that by 2100, up to 41 species could enter the Pacific and 44 species could enter the Atlantic, through Arctic water passages over Canada or Russia. This interchange will have ecological and economic consequences to ecosystems that at present contribute 39 percent to global marine fish landings.

Read the full story and watch the video from Discovery News

January 21, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) requests commercial shark fishermen who would like to participate in the 2015 shark research fishery and are fishing or plan to fish in the Gulf of Mexico fishing region to submit both a completed shark research fishery application and the required vessel information to the HMS Management Division by February 5, 2015.

Shark research fishery permits authorize participation in the shark research fishery and the collection of sandbar, other large coastal sharks (LCS), small coastal shark (SCS), and pelagic sharks from federal waters in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea, for the purposes of scientific data collection, subject to 100 percent observer coverage.  On October 31, 2014, NMFS published a notice requesting applications for participation in the 2015 shark research fishery from commercial shark fishermen.  From that notice, NMFS has selected six qualified applicants to participate in the 2015 shark research fishery among four fishing regions:   North Carolina, east coast of Florida, the Florida Keys, and South Atlantic.  However, none of the qualified applicants were located in the Gulf of Mexico fishing region.  Given the need to collect information that will both aid future stock assessments and management measures in the Gulf of Mexico fishing region, NMFS is providing a second notice requesting applications from commercial shark fishermen who fish or plan to fish in the Gulf of Mexico region for participation in the 2015 shark research fishery.

NMFS will select a limited number of qualified applicants to participate in the 2015 shark research fishery in the Gulf of Mexico region based on the temporal and spatial needs of the research objectives, the available quota, the availability of observers, and the availability of the qualified applicants.  These selected applicants will be issued shark research fishery permits and will be subject to 100 percent observer coverage on all shark research fishery trips.  The shark research vessels may fish without an observer when not on a shark research fishery trip.  A shark research fishery permit will only be valid only for the calendar year 2015 and only for the specific vessel and owner(s) listed on the permit, subject to the terms and conditions listed on the permit.  The shark research fishery permit(s) issued to the fisherman fishing in the Gulf of Mexico region will have the same permit conditions as those issued in the other fishing regions.  Those conditions will be discussed in a mandatory permit holders meeting to be held in early January 2015 and announced in another notice.  Potential applicants from the Gulf of Mexico fishing region are encouraged to call in and listen to the discussion.  Once the selected participant(s) from the Gulf of Mexico region has been issued a 2015 shark research fisher permit, NMFS will contact the permit holder(s) to discuss the research objectives and protocols of the 2015 shark research fishery to minimize any delays in collecting information in the Gulf of Mexico fishing region.

NMFS will review the submitted applications based on the selection criteria as described in the Federal Register notice and information provided on the application form to determine which applicants are qualified to participate in the shark research fishery.

Qualified applicants are those that:

– possess a valid directed or incidental* commercial shark permit;
– possess a valid United States Coast Guard (USCG) safety inspection decal when the application is submitted;
– have not been charged criminally or civilly (e.g., issued a Notice of Violation and Assessment (NOVA) or Notice of Permit  Sanction) for any HMS-related violation;
– have complied with NMFS observer programs and are able to take a NMFS-approved observer **; and,
– submit a completed application by 5 p.m., local time on February 5, 2015.

Only vessels that meet all of the above qualifications and will be fishing in the Gulf of Mexico region will be considered for the shark research fishery during this second round of consideration.  * While incidental permit holders may apply, please note that for 2015, priority will be given to qualified directed permit holders to meet the research objectives.  **Priority will also be given to vessels with past participation in the NMFS observer program.    

Completed Shark Research Fishery Permit Applications that include all information required must be received no later than 5 p.m., local time on February 5, 2015, in order to be considered.  For copies of the application, please write to the HMS Management Division, 1315 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910 or call (301) 427-8503 (phone), or (301) 713-1917 (fax).  Copies of the application are also available at the HMS Management Division’s website at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/index.htm.  Please submit completed applications to the HMS Management Division at the address listed above or by fax.  Final decisions on the issuance of a shark research fishery permit will depend on the submission of all required information, and review of applicant information as outlined in the Federal Register notice.  Additionally, please be advised your application may be released under the Freedom of Information Act.   

This notice is a courtesy to individuals interested in HMS fisheries activities to keep you informed about the fishery.  Official notice of Federal fishery actions is made through filing such notice with the Office of the Federal Register.  For further information, contact Karyl Brewster-Geisz, Delisse Ortiz, or Guý DuBeck at (301) 427-8503.

Read the release here

January 26, 2015 — Researchers drilling through a half mile of ice in west Antarctica came upon a surprising discovery: a population of fish and other invertebrates living deep beneath the ice sheet in extreme cold and perpetual darkness.

It's the farthest south that fish have ever been found, scientists said. The discovery was made earlier this month by researchers with Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling, or WISSARD. The National Science Foundation-funded team is investigating the "grounding zone" — the place where Antarctic ice, land and sea all converge — of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, roughly 530 miles (850 kilometers) from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica's Ross Sea.

Using a specially designed hot-water drill, the team bored through nearly 2,500 feet (740 meters) of the Ross Ice Shelf — the world's largest body of floating ice, the size of France. They became the first ever to reach and sample the grounding zone. Submersible cameras sent down the drilling hole on Jan. 16 revealed fish and marine crustaceans living under the ice in dark, 28-degree Fahrenheit (-2 Celsius) waters, NSF said.

Read the full story from NBC News

January 21, 2015 — New findings from research in the Seychelles provide further evidence that the benefits of fish consumption on prenatal development may offset the risks associated with mercury exposure. In fact, the new study, which appears today in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggests that the nutrients found in fish have properties that protect the brain from the potential toxic effects of the chemical.

Three decades of research in the Seychelles have consistently shown that high levels of fish consumption by pregnant mothers – an average of 12 meals per week – do not produce developmental problems in their children. Researchers have previously equated this phenomenon to a kind of biological horse race, with the developmental benefits of nutrients in fish outpacing the possible harmful effects of mercury also found in fish.  However, the new research indicates that this relation is far more complex and that compounds present in fish – specifically polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) – may also actively counteract the damage that mercury causes in the brain.

“These findings show no overall association between prenatal exposure to mercury through fish consumption and neurodevelopmental outcomes,” said Edwin van Wijngaarden, Ph.D., and associate professor in the University of Rochester Department of Public Health Sciences and a co-author of the study. “It is also becoming increasingly clear that the benefits of fish consumption may outweigh, or even mask, any potentially adverse effects of mercury.”

“This research provided us the opportunity to study the role of polyunsaturated fatty acids on development and their potential to augment or counteract the toxic properties of mercury,” said Sean Strain, Ph.D., a professor of Human Nutrition at the Ulster University in Northern Ireland and lead author of the study. “The findings indicate that the type of fatty acids a mother consumes before and during pregnancy may make a difference in terms of their child’s future neurological development.”

Read the full release from the University of Rochester

January 22, 2015 — This time of year, thousands of gray seals are drawn to the Cape and Islands to breed and give birth: So are researchers who converged last week on Muskeget Island, a remote scrap of sand and scrub brush off Nantucket, and the largest pupping site in the U.S.

This time of year, thousands of gray seals are drawn to the Cape and Islands to breed and give birth.

So are researchers, 30 of whom converged last week on Muskeget Island, a remote scrap of sand and scrub brush off Nantucket, and the largest pupping site in the U.S.; and on Monomoy Island off Chatham, where a large seal colony now produces hundreds of pups.

This was the third year of a long term study on the health, behavior and habitat of the local gray seal population. The study is meant to help answer questions posed by scientists and others about the effects of an expanding seal population on natural resources, fish stocks and other seal species. Others would like to know the upper limit of the seal population's explosive growth, since seals attract great white sharks to beaches also used by humans.

“What is happening with the population growth rate? How is it expanding? What is their ecological impact on fishery resources? These are some of the things we have placed a high priority on,” said Gordon Waring, the head of the seal research program at the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole. Collaborators from aquariums, universities, conservation groups and federal agencies worked at the two sites.

Additionally, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been looking at the flu virus and other infectious diseases in seals to study how diseases are transmitted from animals to humans.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

January 22, 2015 — Decades passed and family members largely moved on with their lives. But a relatively new federal database, known as the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, holds out promise for many families hoping to finally know the fate of loved ones gone missing, including the hundreds annually across the country who drown at sea and whose bodies may have been found, but never identified.

In 1990, the U.S. Coast Guard rescued 4,407 people nationwide.

On March 25, 1990, however, William Hokanson Sr. and his 19-year-old son William Hokanson Jr. went down off Martha’s Vineyard with the elder Hokanson’s commercial fishing vessel Sol E Mar and were never seen again.

“All the Coast Guard report I have says is ‘Presumed dead. Lost at sea,’ ” said Ellen Oullette, the elder Hokanson’s ex-wife and Hokanson the younger’s mother.

Decades passed and family members largely moved on with their lives. But a relatively new federal database, known as the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs, holds out promise for many families hoping to finally know the fate of loved ones gone missing, including the hundreds annually across the country who drown at sea and whose bodies may have been found, but never identified.

NamUs began with a 2003 National Institute of Justice decision to fund the increased use of DNA technology in the criminal justice system. With over 40,000 unidentified bodies or body parts in medical examiner and coroners offices nationally, a task force recommended creating an interactive database that allows the public access to what had been the domain of law enforcement.

Read the full story from the Cape Cod Times

January 22, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and NOAA Fisheries announced today they are awarding approximately a quarter of a million dollars to two research projects.Information generated from these projects supports the continued development of a coastwide river herring (i.e., alewife and blueback herring) conservation plan.

Click here to read more.

 

January 19, 2015 — A new Vancouver athletic wear company has developed a new technology that will keep your gym clothes from smelling like, well, gym clothes.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had that one shirt that you wash and wash and wash and it’s still a little bit funky,” says Meghan Conyers, one of the founders of Strongbody Apparel.

That malodorous smell comes courtesy of Micrococci, bacteria that are particularly fond of synthetic fabrics like polyester, the stuff much of today’s exercise gear is made of. Some manufacturers attempt to reduce the problem by permeating their products with antimicrobials like triclosan or silver chloride.

Read the full story and watch the video from Global News