Science

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — October 2, 2014 — Despite their elusiveness in a recent trawl survey in Maine, evidence shows that there is no shortage of spiny dogfish in the federally regulated waters around Gloucester, where the July and August landings for 2014 eclipsed all of the landings from 2013.

According to figures from NOAA, Gloucester landed 721,536 pounds of spiny dogfish in all of 2013, with a value of $129,955.

In July and August of 2014, 830,059 pounds of the species were landed in Gloucester, with a combined value of $193,038. Fishermen brought in 625,601 pounds of the species in July, with a value of $146,022, and 204,548 pounds, with a value of $47,016, were landed in August.

According to NOAA catch and landing figures, spiny dogfish stock remain abundant and healthy four years after NOAA declared the stock rebuilt. In Massachusetts, the Division of Marine Fisheries considers the dogfish stock near an all-time high in abundance and health.

Dogfish landings are closely tied to the stock’s migration, with peaks occurring from May through October when they reside along the southern end of Georges Bank, the Gulf of Maine and the waters off Massachusetts. 

The diminutive sharks, which occupy a habitat that stretches from Canada to Florida, are considered one of the under-utilized species that fishing advocates believe might help fill the consumer void created by the demise or scarcity of traditional species such as cod and haddock.

The most recent NOAA figures show a steady flow in the amount of dogfish being caught in states along the Eastern Seaboard, with Massachusetts producing the most landings.
In the week ending Sept. 20, more than 655,000 pounds of spiny dogfish were landed nationally, with about 615,500 pounds, or 94 percent of that amount, coming into Massachusetts ports. New Hampshire was second with about 33,500 pounds.

For the year to date, U.S. fishermen have landed more than 8.7 million pounds of spiny dogfish, or about 18 percent of the stock’s 48.79 million pound landings quota.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

 

October 1, 2014 — Icelandic firm Codland – a joint venture between fishers and processors Visir and Thorbjorn – is planning a collaborative venture between the country’s top processors to turn cod skins into highly profitable collagen supplement.

Headed up by the daughter of Visir CEO Petur Palsson, Erla Osk Petursdottir, Codland already ships the skins from its parent processors to Spain, where specialist firm Junca turns them into collagen products for the health and cosmetics markets.

“Rather than keep shipping them out, we want to be able to use that material here and bring that value to Iceland,” Petursdottir told Undercurrent News during a visit to Visir’s office in Reykjavik last week, prior to theIceFish exposition.

In order for an Icelandic plant to be financially viable, it would need to be of a capacity approaching 5,000 metric tons – meaning it would need to use the majority of the cod skins from all processing in the country, she said.

“I’ve been out and spoken to some of the big processors like Samherji. I think we’d need perhaps five on board, and then we’d look to buy the skins from the rest of the plants,” said Petursdottir.

Currently collagen products have a small but profitable market at the high end of the health supplements market. A tasteless powder which dissolves into drinks, it apparently prevents skin from aging.

The best-priced market at the moment is Japan, though this can be hard for a new product to enter, she said. The first target for a Codland product will be Europe, and the top rung of consumers who are willing to pay for all-natural skincare.

Codland’s deal with the Spanish company has seen two containers of collagen produced so far, in a partnership which sees the Icelandic firm gain an inside look at the creation of the collagen product, while Junca markets it.

Production had halted in the summer, but should start again in October or November, and cod skin collagen should be on the market by the end of the year, hopes Petursdottir.

“It should be huge for Iceland’s recycling of waste products,” she said. “The traditional value of a 5 kilogram cod was ISK 2,200, for split and salted fillets. With the sort of side-products already in production, that increases by ISK 1,100, and by a further ISK 1,800, we hope, in the future. So the value of each cod should be up significantly.”

Read the full story from UndercurrentNews

SEAFOODNEWS.COM by Peggy Parker — Oct 1, 2014 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Extensive scientific research on Bering Sea corals by NOAA has shown that Greenpeace’s advocacy for special coral protections are not supported by evidence, and that there is no ‘crisis’ regarding coral protection in the Bering Sea Canyons.

Instead, an extensive $2.5 million study has produced over 225,000 digital images of Bering Sea canyon and slope floor, and this is being used by NOAA to refine an understanding of where coral concentrations are, and where they may need special protections.
 
Seafood buyers who have written the N. Pacific Management council about Corals should be proud of the process that has unfolded.
 
Images from the first ever, large-scale survey targeting corals on the Bering Sea Slope are in. The more than 225,000 digital images are being examined by coral experts and fisheries biologists from the Alaska Fisheries Science Center to ground truth a predictive model for the presence or absence of corals in the canyons of the Bering Sea.
 
Preliminary assessments will be given to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) in early October. Over the next several months, the images will be scrutinized for coral location, size, density, fish affiliation and fishery impacts to the corals and presented in more depth in spring of 2015. 
 
A survey this large and systematic had never been attempted before. The results are expected to validate and refine AFSC’s predictive model on coral, making a more accurate and fine-tuned assessment of the underwater colonies possible. If areas of high-density corals are found, protection measures can be more focused and precise.
 
Two of the Bering Sea’s five canyons, the centrally located Pribilof and Zhemchug, which may be the largest undersea canyon in the world, have attracted media attention lately because of a Greenpeace campaign aimed at closing the canyons to all commercial fishing.
 
Not a lot of commercial fishing takes place in the canyons. Less than three percent of all the pollock landed in the Bering Sea comes from these areas. These very wide, shallow-sloped, sandy-bottomed canyons are the source of less than six percent of all the fish caught in the Bering Sea.
 
Regardless, in 2007, Greenpeace sent a submersible down into the Pribilof Canyon.  Along with their own scientists and observers, they invited NOAA coral expert Bob Stone. A few years earlier, Stone authored the most comprehensive study of coral gardens in the Aleutian Island area.

Stone’s work, along with the extensive analysis, research, and public comment that makes up the process through which Council management decisions are reached resulted in a 2006 decision to prohibit commercial fishing in some of the most magnificent coral areas of the Aleutian Islands.
 
“The conditions in the Aleutian Islands that make the coral gardens possible,” says Stone, “are really quite rare in the world. Maybe unique.”
 
When the Greenpeace invitation to study the canyons came along, Stone was ready.
 
“I’d read all the trawl surveys, bycatch data, all the reports on the canyons and the slope,” Stone says. “I wanted to see the area, and I wanted to make sure the study was done scientifically.
 
“The study results were pretty close to what I’d expected, which was far more areas where there was no coral than there were areas that had some. I explained it to Greenpeace carefully, but they didn’t want to hear it.
 
“In my opinion,” Stone says, “Greenpeace just went too far in how they characterized the results.”
Canyons
When Greenpeace set up a second cruise in 2012, they invited Stone again. This time Stone declined. “I was pretty busy and really had no extra time. When I have extra time, I want to be studying corals on the ocean floor,” Stone says.
 
John Olson, fisheries analyst for NMFS said the Greenpeace cruises were “very expensive and couldn’t cover much ground.” But he acknowledges that Greenpeace and other environmental groups who participated in the Council process had some effect.
 
Management decisions made at the regional fisheries councils must be grounded in “best possible science.” The data Greenpeace gave to the Council helped, but it was not extensive or rigorous enough to merit management changes.
 
More studies were done, including a 2012 NOAA Fisheries project that looked at corals, sponges, crabs, and fishes in the Bering Sea slope. Researchers found that species composition varied mainly with depth and latitude. But at a given depth and latitude, species composition was similar both inside and outside the canyons.
 
Near the western slope of the Pribilof Canyon, for instance, coral densities spilled over to the slope floor. There, coral densities were about one-fourth those found in the Aleutian Islands area generally, and about one-twentieth those found in the Aleutian Island coral gardens.
 
Two Council motions in June 2013 authorized AFSC to expand their initial analysis of corals, called for a discussion paper on management measures to conserve coral areas, asked for further research support from the Deep Sea Coral Research and Technology Program, and began a Bering Sea Fishery Ecosystem Plan for both the Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons.
 
In April of this year, the Council adopted a purpose and needs statement justifying potential amendments to the groundfish and crab fisheries management plans to protect significant coral concentrations in the Pribilof Canyon.
 
Four months later, AFSC’s stereophonic camera started snapping underwater images at a rate of one per second.
 
“We based the location of the camera drops on our model,” explains Chris Rooper of the AFSC and developer of the new model. “Inputs to the model were things we knew coral needed, for instance water depth, long term average temperature, general bathymetry, roughness of the bottom, that sort of thing.
 
“We also looked at currents, how food was being delivered to these animals, and all the trawl survey catch and bycatch data,” says Rooper. This became the framework for what’s known as a General Additive Model, or GAM model.
 
“Once the model is made, we lay it over map of the area, and the rest is statistical methodology. The model fit the data pretty well,” Rooper said. “It explained 50-60% of the variability in the data set.”
 
The photos were the final phase of a three-year, $2.4 million coral research program conducted by NOAA in Alaska.

This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — September 29, 2014 — Michigan State University is using a $1 million federal grant to build a better robofish that can observe the feeding and migration habits of trout, walleye, sturgeon and other Great Lakes aquatic species.

The university said the robots will advance the technology from earlier versions, including monitors that can track fish equipped with acoustical transmitters.

"Think about the GPS in your smartphone, which tracks your movement," associate professor Xiaobo Tan, the project's leader, said in a statement. "Basically the robots will form an equivalent of a GPS satellite network underwater, to localize and follow tagged fish in their vicinity."

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

 

September 29, 2014 — NEC will administer $800,000 in research funds from the New England Fishery Management Council and will put out a region-wide request for proposals.

The University of New Hampshire-led Northeast Consortium has been selected to lead a new collaborative research initiative on the groundfish stocks and groundfish fishery in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank.


NEC will administer $800,000 in research funds from the New England Fishery Management Council and will put out a region-wide request for proposals.


While a broad range of projects will be considered, priority will be given to specific proposals that aim to demonstrate how to access closed areas and increase catch of haddock without impacting cod, yellowtail flounder, and windowpane flounder, as well as to studies that develop gear-engineering solutions to minimize bycatch for flatfish. The request for proposals, which are due Nov. 5, is at http://northeastconsortium.org/pdfs/NEC_rfp_2014.pdf.


The work of the NEC has become the standard model for bringing commercial fishers and scientists together in an effort to improve fisheries, but a significant reduction in funds for supporting the research needed to identify strategies and solutions for the sustainability of fishery resources in the region has hampered further progress in recent years.

Read the full story from Seacoast Online

 

September 26, 2014 — The Gulf Seafood Trace, a Mississippi-based software program from the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission running on federal National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration grants, implemented its tracking program.

While the shrimping industry plays a major role in Louisiana's economy and culture, tracing the origin of shrimp to the state or a region has not been an easy task in the past.
The U.S. imports shrimp from various countries, including India, China, Thailand and Vietnam.

However, many local consumers prefer to buy from and support the local seafood industry, and some high-end retailers demand traceability of the products.

In an attempt to resolve this issue, the Gulf Seafood Trace, a Mississippi-based software program from the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission running on federal National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration grants, implemented its tracking program.

Read the full story from Houma Today

 

September 26, 2014 — Invasive tropical species such as the lionfish could be expanding into new areas due to warming water temperatures. This is bad news for Atlantic reefs, as lionfish (native to the Indo-Pacific) have been found to reduce coral cover on coral reefs.

Scientists from National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration and University of North Carolina have analysed the bottom water temperature on the North Carolina continental shelf, and found that the fish in deeper, warmer water were mainly tropical, dominated by lionfish in depths of 122 to 150 feet. They found that tropical species that previously hadn’t been found in certain areas looked at in the study had since expanded into these areas. This hadn’t been possible previously, as water temperatures had been too cool.

Paul Whitfield, research ecologist at NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) and lead author of the study, explains, “Globally, fish communities are becoming more tropical as a result of warming temperatures, as fish move to follow their optimal temperature range.

Read the full story at Wildlife Extra

September 25, 2014 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries' Northeast Fisheries Science Center:

NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Center has posted a report on the final phase of a three-part project that tested electronic monitoring, following work with more than a dozen Northeast groundfish vessels. The study is part of our effort to find more ways to meet the increasing demand for timely, efficient, and cost-effective catch monitoring data. The report is posted here: http://1.usa.gov/1xg3MHR. More information on the electronic monitoring study is located here: http://1.usa.gov/1sXPN2t.

September 24, 2014 — President Barack Obama has moved forward with a plan to vastly expand three remote U.S. reserves in the central Pacific Ocean into a massive national monument.

Tuna species that don’t stray far from the reserve during their lives could see quick benefits. For example, recent studies suggest that more than 90% of yellowfin tuna found around the main Hawaiian Islands remain in the region. (Yellowfin populations are estimated to be at 38% of historic levels.)

The reserve’s immediate impact could be more muted, however, for fish species that routinely travel vast distances, and so spend relatively little time in the new preserve, biologists say. In particular, recent tagging studies suggest that bigeye tuna—prized for sushi and down to just 16% of historic populations—“do not exhibit any prolonged residency in this or any other area of the equatorial central Pacific,” wrote John Hampton, director of the Oceanic Fisheries Programme at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in Nouméa, in an e-mail. (The group advises Pacific states on how to fish sustainably.)

Even within mobile species, however, the reserve could help, researchers say. That’s because fish are like people: Some like to travel, and others are homebodies. For bigeye tuna, the proportion of lazy fish is unknown, but “the point is that some will [stay within the reserve, and] they will produce more offspring during a longer life than those who don’t,” says fisheries scientist Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. The lazy fish may also “pass on their short-travel habits to their offspring, who will grow in numbers.”

Indeed, over many years, modeling studies suggest the reserve could even encourage the evolution of “lazier” but healthier fish populations, says fish geneticist Jon Mee, a former colleague of Pauly’s who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Calgary in Canada. “We have lots of evidence that mobility has a genetic basis and is inherited to a fairly high degree,” he says. And if fish “that move more, die more, you will get evolution.” In simulations that Mee is developing, lazy individuals living in protected areas can have higher reproduction rates than their more mobile—and more vulnerable—relatives, leading to larger but less mobile populations.

Read the full story at Science

September 24, 2014 — The following was released by NOAA:

NOAA's New England Bay Watershed Education and Training Program (B-WET) is an environmental education program that promotes locally relevant, experiential learning for K-12 school students. B-WET administers a competitive funding process that promotes Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences that:

are place-based
are investigative or project oriented
are an integral part of the instructional program
are part of a sustained activity considers the watershed as a system
are enhanced by NOAA products, services, or personnel, where appropriate

New England B-WET focuses on the priorities and challenges facing New England watersheds by helping students and teachers use the tools of science to understand their local watershed system and its benefits. By conducting investigative projects outdoors for their learning experiences, students become more interested in science, technology, engineering and math. And, by focusing on watersheds where they live, students and teachers can become knowledgeable stewards of their local environment.

New England B-WET targets the States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. To be eligible, applicants must work with an audience in the targeted geography, but do not need to be from one of these states. K-12 public and independent schools and school systems, institutions of higher education, community-based and nonprofit organizations, state or local government agencies, interstate agencies, and Indian tribal governments may apply.

Please note that funding is between $25,000 – $80,000 per year.

The New England B-WET program is hosted by the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Gloucester, MA. Please contact Colleen Coogan at Colleen.Coogan@noaa.gov or 978-281-9181 or Deirdre Kimball atDeirdre.Kimball@noaa.gov or 978-281-9290 for additional information.