Science

October 21, 2014 — Stone Age hunters didn’t need to tell fish tales—the fish they caught really were whoppers, according to a new study.

Remains of prehistoric fish dinners from caves in northern Spain suggest that Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and brown trout (Salmo trutta) have shrunk significantly in size over the past 20,000 years—from a combined average of up to 5 pounds (2.2 kilograms) to about a pound (0.4 kilogram).

What’s more, it’s because of our ancient ancestors’ fishing skills that rivers in the region today are populated with much smaller fish, according to a team of scientists from the University of Oviedo in Spain. (See “Hot Stew in the Ice Age? Evidence Shows Neanderthals Boiled Food.”)

That’s because the scientists suspect that the Stone Age fishers deliberately targeted larger specimens.

“Bigger fish will be more valuable as food,” said archaeologist Pablo Turrero, who led the study. “They would only have caught the small fish if they absolutely had to because there was nothing else.”

Over time, prehistoric hunters’ preference for catching big ones caused salmon and trout to downsize, because proportionally more small fish survived to breed and pass on their genes.

A trend for shrinking sizes starts to show up in the cave fish fossils about 10,000 years ago, “but size selection had been going on all the time,” said Turrero.

Read the full story from National Geographic 

 

October 14, 2014 — It is like a scene from an old wives' tale about the giant, tentacled kraken dragging shipping vessels to their doom — two Humboldt squid, flashing an angry red, attack a Dual Deep Worker submersible containing two Greenpeace USA divers on an expedition in the Bering Sea.

In a Vine video shot by one of the divers, the two large cephalopods, also commonly referred to as “jumbo squid” or “red devils,” rush at the submersible while spewing vision-obscuring clouds of ink. 

The video feeds the perception that the large mollusks – smaller than the elusive giant squid, but still weighing up to 100 pounds and measuring as long as 6.2 feet — are aggressively violent and dangerous to humans. The creatures typically range from 660 to 2,300 feet below the surface of the water, and roam off the coasts of British Columbia all the way down to Chile. In fact, its name is derived from the Humboldt Current off the western coast of South America.

Read the full story from Fox News

October 20, 2014 — Scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have been studying the waters in the Gulf of Alaska and found that the warmer than normal temperatures are averaging one to five degrees warmer than the September average of 55-57 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Seward Line is the long-term monitoring site in the Gulf of Alaska.  It helps scientists understand the details of what is happening in the waters over the Alaska shelf.

Professor at UAF Russ Hopcroft is the chief scientist studying the waters.  He says his group is studying and monitoring the waters in the Gulf because, just like on land, fluctuating temperatures have interesting and possibly influencing affects.

Read the full story from KDLG – Public Radio for Alaska's Bristol Bay

 

October 20, 2014 — Scientists studying fossils have discovered that the intimate act of sexual intercourse used by humans was pioneered by ancient armored fishes, called placoderms, about 385 million years ago in Scotland.

In an important discovery in the evolutionary history of sexual reproduction, the scientists found that male fossils of the Microbrachius dicki, which belong to a placoderm group, developed bony L-shaped genital limbs called claspers to transfer sperm to females.

Females, for their part, developed small paired bones to lock the male organs in place for mating.

Placoderms are the earliest vertebrate ancestors of humans.

"Placoderms were once thought to be a dead-end group with no live relatives, but recent studies show that our own evolution is deeply rooted in placoderms and that many of the features we have — such as jaws, teeth and paired limbs — first originated with this group of fishes," said John Long, a paleontologist at Flinders University in South Australia who led the research.

Read the full story from Reuters at the New York Daily News

October 19, 2014 — The following was released by the Gulf Seafood Institute:

World aquaculture is at a crossroads regarding one of its largest issues, fish in for fish out ratios. Approximately one third of the world’s fish catch is used to produce fishmeal and fish oil used as feedstock in the aquaculture industry according to World Wildlife Fund. An international team of scientists and fishermen in the Southern Gulf of Mexico are working to find environmentally safe solutions to the growing need for aquaculture feedstock.

“Phycology is the scientific study of algae,” explained Karen Tal a project leader for Fycology who oversees branding and marketing. “Our team is working on developing breakthrough biotechnology advances in the field of aquaculture. The importance of creating a sustainable fish feed is the first step in establishing sustainable fish for our consumption and the preservations of our oceans. After all it is clear our survival is dependent on the survival of the oceans and the life it contains.

Fish feed is one of the most important items on any aquaculture farm. Quality protein is vital to the quality of the feed, and fishmeal and even soy are unsustainable options. If the quality of the feed is not ideal, then various health problems, as well as growth complications, can result in the fish.

Industry Relies on Fishmeal and Oil

In recent years the industry’s reliance on fishmeal and fish oil has decreased due to increased use of plant-based feed from major agricultural crops like soybean and corn. However, with rising and volatile commodity prices fueled by pressures on agricultural land use and a changing climate, reliance on such crops can prove risky and expensive for the aquaculture industry.

According to Tal, Fycology was established in order to create a sustainable algae fish feed for aquaculture using an alternative such as algae.

Backed in part by the Mexican government, and with research being done at two Mexican universities, the project’s goal is to reduce reliance on captured marine fish proteins and oils for feed. Studies have shown that animals and fish consuming consistent, high quality food sources grow at a healthy rate and contain better overall nutrition, generating higher quality food for humans.

Read the full story at the Gulf Seafood Institute

October 17, 2014 — The available funds for Saltonstall-Kennedy grants will increase to $18 million in fiscal 2014-15, with the deadline for applications set for early December and decisions expected sometime next June, NOAA announced Thursday.

The $18 million funding pool represents a 63 percent increase from the previous year, when only one of the half-dozen Gloucester-based applicants received funding.

Cape Ann Seafood Exchange was the lone successful local applicant in the 2013 round of funding, receiving $391,670 for its project to help build a sustainable fishery for redfish and develop programs to market the currently under-utilized species to seafood consumers.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

 

October 16, 2014 — Predominantly west-to-east movements and geographical concentration – the Equatorial Pacific bigeye tuna’s behaviour is gradually revealing its secrets. This and other findings have been reported in a new scientific paper authored by scientists from SPC and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, published recently in the journal Fisheries Research.

Bigeye tuna: better management through better understanding

Bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) live in temperate-to-tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean. In the 1950s, this species began to be targeted by longline fleets; fishing then intensified in the 1990s as purse seine fishing developed, leading to overfishing in the 2010s.

Since 1977, Pacific Island countries and their development partners have realised that tagging is essential in order to gather information on the state of stocks, growth and tuna movements. Tagging with conventional tags has been providing these data for more than 60 years, while over the past 15 years or so, electronic tags have produced additional information, especially on fish behaviour.

Large-scale tagging campaigns

As the first glimmer of light appears on the horizon, bigeye tuna are being constantly reeled in by the trolling lines of the longliner ‘Pacific Sunrise’. One after the other, these tuna are placed on the tagging tables, where they are measured by the scientists, who insert a tag behind the second dorsal fin and return them to the water, all in under 10 seconds.

Read the full story from the Secretariat of the Pacific Community

 

October 15, 2014 — Senior science and management representatives from leading fishing nations will head to the Gulf of Mexico to discuss the state of fisheries and the sustainability of seafood at the second annual Science and Sustainability Forum.

The 2014 forum to review the status, trends and advancements in seafood sustainability will be held in New Orleans on October 27-29.

The forum features a distinguished list of presenters on fisheries sustainability as well as new initiatives that aim to validate the fishery management systems and the sustainability of seafood managed under those systems.  It is open to scientists, managers, seafood industry representatives and companies, stakeholder organizations and press from around the world.

Read the full story from the Gulf Seafood Institute

October 10, 2014 — Large numbers of fish will disappear from the tropics by 2050, according to a University of British Columbia study that examines the potential effects of climate change on marine life.

Researchers used the same climate change scenarios as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to project a large-scale movement of marine fish and invertebrates. They concluded that changing temperatures will drive more fish toward Arctic and Antarctic waters.

The UBC team came up with a worst-case scenario, in which the Earth’s oceans warm by three degrees Celsius by 2100. In that case, fish could move away from their current habitats at a rate of 26 kilometres per decade. Under the best-case scenario, where the Earth warms by one degree Celsius, fish would move 15 kilometres every decade.

Read the full story from CBC News

October 14, 2014 — The following was released by NOAA:

The first shellfish aquaculture project permitted in federal waters off the U.S. east coast is expected to begin operating next spring.  Scientists and fishermen are partnering on this project to grow blue mussels within a 30-acre area in Nantucket Sound. They hope to create new jobs in the region and satisfy consumer demand for local seafood, without posing risks to vulnerable marine life such as whales and sea turtles.

Click here to read more.

For a chance to ask NOAA staff questions about this project and NOAA's involvement in aquaculture join us today at 3 pm for a tweet chat @NOAANERfish

Tag with: #deepwateraquaculture

Click here for details on today's Tweet Chat.