Science

October 3, 2014 — A review of over 500 research outputs analysing fishers’ knowledge shows that their experience is not regularly being given due consideration by fisheries scientists. This is despite a growing number of researchers believing that referencing fisher experience might help them to facilitate improved ecological and socio-economic outcomes for marine and freshwater fisheries.

For nearly a century, amateur and professional researchers with experience in ethnography, applied social science, and fisheries biology have conducted research with commercial and artisanal fishers from Canada to Kiribati in order to understand how their knowledge of marine ecosystems and fishery operations could supplement or complement the work of practicing fisheries scientists.

These researchers have disseminated what they consider to be the important knowledge acquired by fishers on the status of fish stocks and marine habitats – including fisher-generated ideas for ensuring fishery sustainability – in books, at conferences, and via peer-reviewed academic journals.

International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) Journal of Marine Science

October 9, 2014 — The Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund, in association with the Science Center for Marine Fisheries and the University of Southern Mississippi, has announced it will be funding research into the development of a sex-specific population assessment model to be applied to summer flounder stocks off the Atlantic coast.

The research is being undertaken in cooperation with the scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service.

"One of the challenges of summer flounder is that it is sexually dimorphic," said Dr. Patrick Sullivan of Cornell University who will be developing the model

"Females are a different size than the males at the same age. That difference in size in is not taken into account in the current model."

Dr. Sullivan is an associate professor of Population and Community Dynamics in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University.

He has an M.S. in Fisheries Biology and a Ph.D. in Biomathematics and Biostatistics from the University of Washington and his research focuses primarily on assessment and management of marine and freshwater fisheries

The model now in use is the Age Structured Assessment Program (ASAP) that forecasts fishing mortality by year and age to estimate population sizes.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

October 8, 2014 — Researchers have found that killer whales can engage in cross-species vocal learning: when socialized with bottlenose dolphins, they shifted the sounds they made to more closely match their social partners.

From barks to gobbles, the sounds that most animals use to communicate are innate, not learned. However, a few species, including humans, can imitate new sounds and use them in appropriate social contexts. This ability, known as vocal learning, is one of the underpinnings of language.

Vocal learning has also been observed in bats, some birds, and cetaceans, a group that includes whales and dolphins. But while avian researchers have characterized vocal learning in songbirds down to specific neural pathways, studying the trait in large marine animals has presented more of a challenge.

Now, University of San Diego graduate student Whitney Musser and Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute senior research scientist Dr. Ann Bowles have found that killer whales (Orcinus orca) can engage in cross-species vocal learning: when socialized with bottlenose dolphins, they shifted the types of sounds they made to more closely match their social partners. The results, published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, suggest that vocal imitation may facilitate social interactions in cetaceans.

Killer whales have complex vocal repertoires made up of clicks, whistles and pulsed calls — repeated brief bursts of sound punctuated with silence. The acoustic features of these vocalizations, such as their duration, pitch and pulse pattern, vary across social groups. Whales that are closely related or live together produce similar pulsed calls that carry vocal characteristics distinct to the group, known as a dialect.

Read the full story from Science Daily

 

October 9, 2014 — Amanda Brewer, 25, an art teacher from New Jersey, took the snapshot with a GoPro camera in Mossel Bay off Seal Island.

A schoolteacher from New Jersey has returned from her trip to South Africa with a remarkable up-close photo of a great white shark that has been making waves on social media.

Amanda Brewer, 25, an art teacher from Gloucester County, traveled halfway across the world to volunteer as a scientific data collector for White Shark Africa – an organization dedicated to animal conservation and eco-tourism.

Brewer, a lifelong shark enthusiast and amateur photographer, was enjoying cage diving in Mossel Bay off Seal Island one day hoping to catch a glimpse of the much-maligned sea creatures – and she didn’t have to wait long.

The daredevil teacher had her new GoPro trained on the surface of the water when a hulking female shark appeared directly in front of her, its enormous maw bristling with razor-sharp teeth open wide.

In Brewer's photo, which has since become a viral sensation, the steel-grey beast emerges from emerald-colored waters, lured by a pair of fish heads tied to a rope as bait.

Read the full story, view the photos, and watch the video from The Daily Mail

 

SEAFOODNEWS.COM by Peggy Parker — October 8, 2014 — NOAA, NASA and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) have joined together to support three demonstration projects that will lay the foundation for the first national network to monitor marine biodiversity at scales ranging from microbes to whales.

The projects, to be funded at approximately $17 million over the next five years, subject to the availability of funds, will demonstrate how a national operational marine biodiversity observation network could be developed. Such a network would serve as a marine resource management tool to conserve existing biodiversity and enhance U.S. biosecurity against threats such as invasive species and infectious agents.

The three demonstration marine biological observation networks will be established in four locations: the Florida Keys; Monterey Bay and the Santa Barbara Channel in California; and on the continental shelf in the Chukchi Sea in Alaska.

Marine biodiversity is a key indicator of ocean health and critical to sustaining natural resources such as fisheries. The three projects, selected from 19 proposals, will be established in different marine environments in U.S. waters to integrate existing observations ranging from satellite observations to DNA sampling and fill data gaps with new observations.

This joint effort supports the U.S. National Ocean Policy to "protect, maintain, and restore the health and biological diversity of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems and resources." An integrated picture of what is happening to marine biodiversity enhances the ability of policymakers and natural resource managers to devise effective strategies to address ecosystem threats from pollution and climate change.

The pilot research program is sponsored under the National Oceanographic Partnership Program, which facilitates joint funding of projects of mutual interest to different institutions in an effort to avoid duplication of research efforts.

"We now have large amounts of biologically relevant information on marine ecosystems, including global observations of ocean color and sea surface temperature from space," said Woody Turner, manager of NASA's Biodiversity Research Program. "But we need a more effective way of combining different types of information to get a better picture of how marine ecosystems are changing if we are to sustain these important ecosystem resources."

The networks will integrate data on large-scale sea surface conditions observed by NASA, NOAA, and U.S. Geological Survey satellites with observations made in the ocean and the laboratory. They will build partnerships with existing long-term biodiversity monitoring efforts, explore innovative uses of new in situ observations and genomic techniques, and improve access to integrated biodiversity data.

“BOEM is pleased to continue its long history of monitoring offshore areas as part of its mission to assess environmental risk and develop mitigation measures to protect coastal and marine ecosystems,” said BOEM acting director Walter Cruickshank. BOEM plans to contribute financially to the Santa Barbara Channel and Alaska projects.

The U.S. Arctic continental shelf off the northwest coast of Alaska is the focus of the project lead by Katrin Iken, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The Arctic is experiencing the most dramatic temperature increases taking place in the ocean, leading to significant changes in marine ecosystem structure and function. This Arctic marine biodiversity observing network will continue recent efforts to extend much-needed long-term monitoring data and fill gaps in coverage. The partnership also includes funding from the Shell Oil Company for some of the Alaska research.

Biodiversity within two NOAA national marine sanctuaries in Florida and California is the focus of the project led by Frank Muller-Karger of the University of South Florida, and Francisco Chavez of the Monterey Bay Aquarium REsearch Institute. The Florida Keys and Monterey Bay national marine sanctuaries encompass a wide range of marine environments, including deep sea, continental shelves, estuaries, and coral reefs.

The third sanctuary in the project, Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, which surrounds California's Channel Islands off the Santa Barbara coast, is the focus of the project led by Robert Miller of the University of California, Santa Barbara. The Channel Islands are one of the most monitored marine areas in the world.

“NOAA’s marine sanctuaries are an ideal setting to test and evaluate a biodiversity network prototype,” said NOAA’s Zdenka Willis, director of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System. “These areas encompass a wide range of marine environments as well as nearby coastal communities that depend on the ocean for business and recreation. By linking federal and non-federal partners, we hope this network will help us better understand these ecosystems and serve to inform emergency response systems for environmental threats such as invasive species.”

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

October 2, 2014 — Looking at the abundance and size of Louisiana white and brown shrimp before and after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a scientific paper published Wednesday said the amount of shrimp actually increased in local estuaries through 2011 and that the size of that shrimp remained unaffected.

By 2012, the authors wrote, the amount of shrimp in the once heavily-oiled areas they monitored had returned to normal levels.

The study, published in the online scientific journal PLOS One, was conducted by Joris L. van der Ham and Kim de Mutsert, scientists with George Mason University's Department of Environmental Science and Policy.

De Mutsert and Van der Ham began studying Louisiana shrimp immediately following the oil spill as postdoctoral researchers in Louisiana State University fisheries professor James Cowan's lab.

Van der Ham and De Mutsert's study compared abundance and size of shrimp in estuaries that were heavily impacted by the spill with minimally-impacted estuaries, both before and after the spill.

It found that shrimp actually was more abundant in areas heavily impacted by the oil spill.

Read the full story from The Times-Picayune

SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton — October 8, 2014 — In a highly significant letter to the Board of the Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative, the FAO has called into question some of the draft work the GSSI has done on establishing a benchmarking process for seafood eco-labeling schemes.

Lahsen Ababouch, Director of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy and Economics Division, which created the series of FAO documents that represent the FAO responsible fisheries standards and their eco-labeling guidelines, said that FAO cannot support a benchmarking scheme that attempts to go beyond the FAO established sustainability standards.

In a letter sent September 19th, the FAO wrote:

“We have some concerns about additions and modification to indicators above and beyond those derived from the [FAO] Guidelines to produce the GSSI baseline. .. Unless it is backed by its Members, FAO cannot support additions or modifications above and beyond the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fishing and Certification Guidelines, which are rigorous and remain the leading international instruments for promoting sustainable fisheries and aquaculture management. ”

“Another concern for the FAO is the potential for the GSSI benchmarking tool, given the proposed application rules, to block new certification schemes and developing country exporters from access to their traditional markets. We would like to encourage the GSSI Steering Board to adopt inclusive processes that do not favor large existing certification schemes and well-advanced operations…. we believe some of the processes for being benchmarked by GSSI need to be re-evaluated, .. [as they are] likely to exclude national certification schemes from GSSI benchmarking. “

This intervention from the FAO goes to the heart of a fundamental disagreement about the benchmarking process GSSI has been attempting to develop.

When it was first modeled on the Global Food Safety Initiative, the aim of the GSSI was to provide a mechanism similar to the way GFSI benchmarks minimum standards for global food safety. These standards are accepted by major buyers, so no matter what plant inspection scheme is used, whether BRC, Safe Quality Food, or any other standard, they are all considered as interchangeable for food safety requirements if they pass the GFSI benchmark. The GFSI system is pass / fail. A plant either meets global food safety standards or it doesn’t. There is no possibility for it to meet the safety standard 65% of the way.

From the very beginning of the GSSI process, the NGO’s, including WWF who supports both the MSC model and the ASC model for aquaculture, argued that a minimum standard would mean no continuous improvement, and that unless the standard had a ranking roughly analogous to the existing MSC scoring of fisheries, there would be stagnation, not improvement.

Left unsaid was that in a world with a pass-fail standard, the role of the NGO guiding major retail buyers would largely be eliminated.

The GFSI pass / fail model has a tremendous amount of continuous improvement. If you look at any the various technical sectors there is a series of improvements incorporated into the standard by consensus based on new science and better measurement practices.  This has resulted in significant improvements over the years. The FAO standards also provide for consensus updates to take into account new science, developments in ecosystem management, etc. The difference between the pass/fail measuring system used by GFSI and the current GSSI draft is that for GFSI improvements are first arrived at by consensus, then incorporated into the standard, as opposed to starting with a sliding aspirational scale that emphasizes not whether a certification unit meets the standard, but where it ranks on the scale of all those schemes that meet the same standard.

As FAO points out, and as was also pointed out to GSSI in the public comments, many of the goals for having three tiers – a kind of good, better best -are in fact aspirational, go far beyond the guidelines published by the FAO, and in many cases are not even possible for a large proportion of global fisheries.

This is a recipe for blocking market access, rather than expanding it.

The requirements put forward in the draft of the GSSI would disqualify certification schemes that met the FAO guidelines for eco-labeling and responsible fishing, and would potentially exclude 60% of global fisheries from ever meeting GSSI standards.

This is a recipe for blocking market access.

For example, the FAO says that the GSSI proposed requirement that the certification scheme have documented clients for several years and auditing requirements, are likely to exclude national certification schemes from GSSI benchmarking. The use of ISEAL rather than the more widespread ISO standards would in effect prevent government bodies from developing a certification scheme that could meet the GSSI guidelines, as ISEAL’s requirements exclude government’s role as sponsor.

This is a very relevant issue, as was brought up today in the Global Aquaculture Alliance GOAL meeting being held in Vietnam. Mr. Le Van Quang, Chairman of Minh Phu which is the largest shrimp exporter in Vietnam, said that they are spending huge amounts of money on trying to comply with a plethora of buyer sustainability standards. He said this adds 5% to 10% to their total cost, and requires as much as 30% of their staff time to prepare for visits and provide documentation to meet different scheme requirements. This is because there is no standardization among the different schemes.

For example, he said that Vietnam was attempting to develop its own standard, VietGap, but this is not recognized abroad. Further, even though he is a 4 star BAP company, the highest possible rating, this is not accepted by all buyers.

For companies like Minh Phu, having a global standard that could correlate Viet GAP and BAP with FAO aquaculture sustainability guidelines, would in fact reduce costs by 10%, would improve use of staff time, and result in much more production efficiency, while making the same continuous improvements in sustainability of shrimp aquaculture.

The FAO letter suggests that the GSSI program would exclude a national scheme like VietGap not on the basis of its rigor, but on the fact it does not meet the ISEAL requirements. This is directly contradictory to the FAO program to improve the sustainability of all global aquaculture, while not creating trade barriers or artificial impediments to international trade.

The letter commends the GSSI for the work done so far, but makes it very clear that a benchmark that is tiered, as has been insisted on the the NGO’s, and which is not similar at all to the GFSI scheme, would be contrary to the spirit and purpose of the FAO guidelines for responsible fisheries and their eco-labeling guidelines, and thus could not be supported.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

October 7, 2014 — “Many marine fish species change sex during their lifetimes, and many of them are targets of commercial and recreational fishing,” the grant said.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a total of $727,798 in federal funds for a three-year study on the impacts of size-selective mortality on sex-changing fish.

“Many marine fish species change sex during their lifetimes, and many of them are targets of commercial and recreational fishing,” the grant said. “The timing of sex change in these animals is often related to body size, so populations typically consist of many small fish of the initial sex (usually female) and few large fish of the other sex (usually male).”

According to the grant, smaller fish face greater mortality risk from predators, but fishermen usually seek larger fish.

“Thus, fishing that targets larger individuals may skew sex ratios, removing enough of the larger sex to hinder reproduction. However, the extent to which size-selective mortality affects sex-changing fishes is poorly understood,” it said.

Read the full story from CNSnews.com

 

COPENHAGEN — October 6, 2014 — The following was released by the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea:

100 years ago, Johan Hjort wrote his seminal fisheries science work, Fluctuations in the great fisheries of northern Europe, which featured new conceptual ideas about the formation of strong year classes based on age determination techniques from fish scales. Hjort’s research still receives 40–50 citations every year, making it an exceptionally influential study that continues to drive fisheries science to this day.
 
To commemorate the centenary of Hjort’s work, the ICES Journal of Marine Science (IJMS) has published a special issue of thirty-two articles that demonstrate the deep influence he has had, and continues to have, on fisheries and marine science. The articles take up questions addressed by Hjort, whether through the use of new innovations in sampling and analysis, the application of mathematical models, adding climate change as a context, or with a slightly new spin.
 
The Norwegian scientist, one of the giants of fisheries biology, already considered during his time the managerial and societal implications of fisheries research. In addition to his research, he was an advocate for international cooperation and one of the founding fathers of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES). Hjort served as ICES President from 1939—48 and helped launch joint research activities, for example those in the North Sea, as well as extensive cruise programmes.
 
The works of Johan Hjort will continue to interest, influence, and challenge fisheries scientists globally. As he himself predicted: “…the object can never be fully attained; new questions will constantly arise, as the knowledge obtained creates the demand for new, and it will always be possible to increase and intensify our comprehension of the vital conditions affecting the organisms in question.”
 
The entire IJMS issue is now freely available for download on the IJMS website.
 
View this press release online

 

 

 

October 3, 2014 — Not catching fish is more complicated than catching them these days, but UMass Dartmouth Professor Pinnguo is hoping to change that with new gear he is developing.

He, who works at the School for Marine Science and Technology, recently received a $205,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Service to help develop a bottom trawl that would avoid catching heavily regulated flounder.

"We looked at fish behavior and how they react when they are approached by fishing gear and now are confident our gear can distinguish between the species," He said.

Trawls for groundfish have two major components: the net, which catches the fish, and large metal doors that spread the net open horizontally.

Regular bottom trawls drag the net, weighed down by the multi-ton doors, along the seabed floor. In doing this, they trap fish indiscriminately, simultaneously catching the desirable haddock and prying up flounder and skates that fishermen either don't want or can't take due to fishing regulations.

He's idea to change the trawl is fairly simple. His new design slightly changes the size and hydrodynamics of the trawl doors so they can float just above the seabed, not dragging on it. If all goes well, the trawl will still catch haddock but will dig up fewer flounder and have less of an environmental impact on the seabed itself.

Read the full story from the New Bedford Standard-Times