Science

March 13, 2014 — Loggerhead sea turtles begin their adventure at a very early age. After hatching, they waddle off the beach into the surf and begin a journey that takes them clear across the ocean. Many loggerheads from the U.S. Atlantic coast turn up a few years later in the Canary Islands off West Africa. But how they get there, and what they encounter along the way, has long been a mystery.

Biologists had referred to this period of time as the sea turtles’ “lost years.” But those years are no longer lost to science. Kate Mansfield, who was doing her postdoctoral research at NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center at the time, led the team of university scientists that tracked the turtles’ migrations.

“What is exciting is that we provide the first look at the early behavior and movements of young sea turtles in the wild,” said Mansfield, who is now a biologist at the University of Central Florida.

They did that by attaching satellite tags to 17 young loggerhead sea turtles. The small, solar-powered tags allowed scientists to map the animals’ migrations. The tags also beamed back data on the environmental conditions the turtles encountered along the way.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries 

March 12, 2014 — Climate change is already having a profound effect on life in the oceans. Marine species tend to be highly mobile, and many are moving quickly toward the poles to stay cool as average ocean temperatures rise. These shifts can cause ecological disruptions as predators become separated from their prey. They can also cause economic disruptions if a fish population becomes less productive or moves out of range of the fishermen who catch them.

In addition to getting warmer, the oceans are also becoming more acidic as they absorb about one-half of the CO2 we emit into the atmosphere. This increased acidity can make life difficult for organisms that build shells out of calcium carbonate. This includes not only corals and shellfish, but also tiny organisms like pteropods that form the foundation of many marine food webs.

Read the full story and view other resources on these issues at NOAA Fisheries 

 

March 17, 2014 — With growing needs for timely and accurate data and information on commercial fisheries’ catch and discards, several groups in the region are joining forces to explore how technology can be used better to help collect these data. 

Many see electronic monitoring as a major part of the solution. Electronic monitoring uses onboard computers and video cameras to record catch and discards of fish species and to monitor compliance with regulations at sea.  It has been used successfully to support catch accounting in fisheries outside of the United States and in a more limited capacity to monitor compliance in U.S. fisheries in the North Pacific. 

“We see a lot of potential in the broader application of electronic monitoring,” said John Bullard, regional administrator, Greater Atlantic Region, NOAA Fisheries. “But in order to make widespread use of electronic monitoring a reality, we to need work together to set goals, troubleshoot potential challenges, and identify workable solutions for its use in our regional fisheries.” 

Pilot testing has been ongoing in the New England groundfish fishery for several years, but electronic monitoring has yet to be approved for broad use in day-to-day fishing operations. However, interest remains high among some stakeholders to see electronic monitoring adopted in not only the groundfish fishery, but also other regional fisheries including Atlantic herring and Atlantic sea scallops.

Government agencies, fishery management councils, conservation organizations, and the fishing industry came together for a national workshop in January in Seattle, WA, to discuss taking electronic monitoring from pilot studies to operational programs in U.S. fisheries. The workshop identified ingredients for success and key considerations for implementing electronic monitoring in various regions across the country.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries 

 

(Reuters) — March 13, 2014 — The Food and Drug Administration is still considering whether a proposed genetically engineered fish is safe for consumers, the agency's top official said on Thursday.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said it was examining as many as 35,000 comments about the application on the salmon by Boston-based AquaBounty Technologies Inc, which applied for approval in the mid-1990s.

"We will be moving forward in a deliberate, science-driven way, reflecting all of the important inputs … as we consider this product application," Hamburg told the U.S. Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee during a hearing about the agency's current initiatives.

AquaBounty officials could not be reached for comment. The company has said in the past that it expected a decision from the FDA by the end of 2013.

Hamburg did not say when the FDA would make its final decision.

If the altered fish, known as AdquAdvantage salmon, is approved, it would be the first genetically altered animal product to reach the plates of consumers in the United States.

Read the full story from Reuters

March 17, 2014 — The topic of seafood certification has come up at many meetings of the Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee (MAFAC) over the past decade, and their previous guidance has informed the agency’s current policy. Due to stakeholder requests and increasing public interest, in mid-2012, NOAA Fisheries asked MAFAC to explore the creation of a NOAA certification mark or other acknowledgement that could certify sustainability of domestic wild-caught and aquaculture fishery products. MAFAC agreed and organized a working group to investigate the topic and develop a recommendation. Your assessment of MAFAC's recommendation is welcome. Send comments by e-mail to: nmfspolicy@noaa.gov by April 30, 2014.

Background

In developing its recommendation over the course of the past year, MAFAC invited external experts to present information on the subject at meetings; solicited public input from producers, buyers, and non-governmental organizations; conducted personal interviews; and engaged in extensive internal deliberations.

MAFAC finalized and delivered its recommendation to NOAA Fisheries in December 2013. The recommendation was supported by a majority of, but not all, MAFAC members. The Committee included the alternative points of view in their report.

Results

The full MAFAC report can be found here. In January, the Chair of MAFAC presented a briefing to the Council Coordination Committee (comprised of Regional Fisheries Management Council Directors and Chairs under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Act) outlining the goals, process used, and outcome of MAFAC’s efforts this past year. This presentation is also provided as helpful information.

The MAFAC working group focused on these primary goals:

– Identifying a US seafood certification framework. This included assessing potential program costs where possible, options, and a recommendation for how to pay for it.
– Identifying certification criteria/standards.

The MAFAC recommendation includes a simple business-to-business framework offering value to the seafood industry consistent with the NOAA Fisheries legal authorities and minimizing conflicts with existing third-party ecolabels.

The envisioned approach would initially focus on wild-caught seafood from Federally managed waters, and phase in a process for seafood derived from state-managed commercial fisheries (if/when requested by a state) or aquaculture products at some point in the future.

The core concepts of the MAFAC recommendation are:

– The program should be fee-for-service, not reliant on new appropriated funds or taking funds away from existing programs and services.
– The focus is business-to-business, not consumer-based.
– The framework relies on the 10 National Standard principles in the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
– Existing resources should be used to the maximum extent:
                   – Enhance FishWatch – NOAA’s seafood sustainability web site.
                   – Employ the existing NOAA Seafood Inspection Program.
– Accept limitations on scope/adopt a phased approach: the recommendation does not try to solve everything.

Learn more about how to submit comments at NOAA Fisheries 

 

ST. CROIX, USVI, — March 15, 2014 — Scientists have this week been taking a listen in the waters around St. Croix, seeking out the "hot spots" where reef fish meet up to make babies.

And they have been using technology to help them in that search.

What they are looking for are spawning aggregations: gatherings of large numbers of fish – from tens to thousands – at specific times and places for the purposes of reproduction.

Such gatherings are vital to the life cycle of many reef fish but also leave the fish vulnerable to overfishing while they are aggregating, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Knowing where and when the spawning aggregations happen can be a key piece of information in managing a fishery and keeping it sustainable, NOAA ecologist Chris Taylor said in a phone interview.

"We don't know where these spawning events occur in most cases," Taylor said. "So we're using a glider to remotely record for spawning sounds."

Read the full story at the Virgin Islands Daily News 

March 14, 2014 — A recent news article about a message in a bottle caught my attention. Drift bottles were released during the last cruise of the Albatross IV in November 2008. One of the bottles ended up in the Azores in 2009, another washed ashore in 2011 on St. Lucia in the Caribbean.

But this recent news involved the Albatross III, which conducted 128 fisheries and oceanographic research cruises in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean during its service from 1948 to 1959. Like the finding in 2009 of an Albatross IV drift bottle in the Azores (see related links), there is a fascinating story attached to the Albatross III and this latest drift bottle tale.

As many readers may already know, a drift bottle was found on Sable Island, about 190 miles southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on January 20, 2014. Warren Joyce, a biologist working at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, found the bottle while conducting research on gray seals. The bottle was numbered and inside had a paper and postcard. According to an online article published by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), an internet search by Joyce traced the bottle back to WHOI and to scientist Dean Bumpus, who tracked currents in the western North Atlantic over several decades using surface drift bottles and mushroom-shaped seabed drifters (see related links).

But how was the Albatross III involved in this tale? And were other fisheries research vessels involved in drift bottle studies? With the help of Nancy McHugh of the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Ecosystems Surveys Branch and Jim Manning of the Oceanography Branch, we examined cruise files and drift bottle records and found much more to the story.

The bottle recovered on Sable Island was released on Albatross III Cruise No. 73, which departed Woods Hole on April 17, 1956 to sample haddock eggs and larvae on Georges Bank and in the Gulf of Maine and to also collect hydrographic data. The science party comprised John B. Colton, Jr. as “chief of party” and biologists Donald B. Foster and David Miller, all from the fisheries service.

The bottle was one of 12 launched on April 26, 1956. In all, 800 drift bottles were released from the Albatross III at various locations during cruise 73 before the ship returned to Woods Hole on April 28. If that many bottles were released on one cruise, were drift bottles released on other Albatross III cruises, and if so, for what purpose?

Further investigation revealed that thousands of drift bottles were released from the Albatross III during cruises in 1953, 1955, and 1956 to determine the distribution of haddock eggs and larvae and to identify general circulation patterns of water in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank regions.These cruises revealed that the area of maximum haddock spawning – the northeast part of Georges Bank – coincided with the area of minimum drift bottle returns. Haddock eggs and larvae spawned on the northeastern part of Georges Bank could therefore be transported out of the area by water currents and lost to the fishery (see related links for cruise 73 information).

“Cruise reports and data logs indicated that vast numbers of drift bottles were released over several decades by our ships, primarily the Albatross III, but also several other vessels,” said Nancy McHugh. “Our filing cabinets of data are truly a gold mine of information and provide yet another interesting window to the past.”

Press releases in the cruise files also revealed a joint research project between the Woods Hole Fisheries Laboratory, then part of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and WHOI. According to a March 21, 1957 press release, transponding drift buoys developed by WHOI and drift bottles were to be released from the Albatross III on Georges Bank. Another press release issued April 25, 1957 noted that the buoys would follow the drift of water masses containing developing haddock eggs to be sampled during the annual survey of haddock spawning.

The 1957 project, conducted on the northeast part of Georges Bank, involved both drift bottle releases and the release of four transponding drift buoys in the area of maximum haddock spawning. The spar buoys, 19 feet long and six inches in diameter and painted international orange, were used to study non-tidal currents on Georges Bank by drifting for about nine weeks. The buoys floated vertically and, when triggered, transmitted signals about their location to the Albatross III.  The WHOI research vessel Bear shared duties monitoring the drifting buoys with the Albatross III.

Read the full story from NOAA

March 12, 2014 — Black sea bass exhibit an unusual resilience to trauma, according to researchers.

In a broader study assessing mortality rates in fisheries and what can be done to make them sustainable operations, a team of North Carolina State University fisheries researchers found that black sea bass can survive the physical trauma from being hauled up from more than 60 feet of water then released at the surface.

When fish are hauled up form deep water, the water pressure changes rapidly, causing the fishes' swim bladder to expand. When this happens, pressure is placed on other organs inside the fish, sometimes forcing them out of order. In some cases of so-called barotrauma, a fish's stomach can be partially forced out of its mouth.

The long standing belief on this sort of barotrauma was that the fish would die when thrown back in the water, but the NC State researchers report this is not the case.

They came to this conclusion through testing what's known as the "discard mortality rate" for black sea bass. An understanding of the percentage of fish the die after being harvested form the deep and thrown back in the water is useful for fisheries managers making accurate stock assessments.

Read the full story at Nature World News

March 11, 2014 — Warming oceans aren’t just shifting the migration patterns of some of our favorite fish; scientists say climate change may be stunting fish sizes too.

Widely consumed North Sea species, including haddock, whiting, herring, and others, have shrunk in size by as much as 29 percent over nearly 40 years, as water temperatures have increased between one and two degrees Celsius, researchers from the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland, revealed in a study published in the April issue of Global Change Biology.

Intense fishing pressure or low food supply may also contribute to smaller fish, but lead author Dr. Alan Baudron says concurrent size declines in different schools of fish points to climate change as a smoking gun.

“What is interesting is this was detected across a range of fish species eating different diets, living at different depths, and experiencing different levels of fishing mortality,” said Baudron. “The synchronicity suggests that the one common factor they all experienced—increasing water temperatures—could have been at least partly responsible for the observed reductions in length.”

Baudron and his team analyzed age and length data—collected by the International Councils for the Exploration of the Sea—from commercial fish caught between 1970 and 2008.

Not all species experienced a decline in size. Cod sizes were not affected, and female sole only shrank by 1 percent. Exactly why is unclear.

“Disentangling the effects of these factors can be extremely difficult,” Baudron said.

Read the full story at TakePart 

 

 

March 11, 2014 — Globally significant fisheries take place in the seas surrounding the Arctic Ocean. The pollock fisheries in the Bering Sea and the cod fisheries in the Barents Sea are among the largest in the world. Large fish stocks require large feeding areas. Global warming has brought warmer waters and reduced ice cover in the Arctic, facilitating the northwards extension of fish stocks such as capelin and cod. This has brought speculations that commercial fisheries might develop in the Central Arctic Ocean.

The Arctic Ocean is situated to the north of the landmass of the five coastal states the Russian Federation, USA, Canada, Denmark/Greenland and Norway. In the middle of that ocean there is an area beyond the jurisdiction of the coastal states. That international area is 2.8 million km2, about four times the size of the North Sea. It is ice covered most of the year. It is expected that summer ice extent will continue to be reduced in the years ahead, leaving an increasing part of the high seas area open in late summer and early fall.

For a fish stock to extend its range into new areas, it needs the right water temperatures, it has to find food, bottom topography has to be suitable, and spawning grounds should not be too far away. These conditions are not in place in the deep Central Arctic Ocean for groundfish like cod or haddock. Pelagic species like polar cod, which live in the water column and thrive on cold water conditions, might spread into the deep water areas. This has brought concerns that vessels from distant water fishing nations can initiate an unregulated fishery in the international waters beyond the 200 mile zones. Parts of this area, off Alaska and Northeast Russia, have been ice free in summer in recent years.

These concerns have also brought discussions of how to manage potential future fisheries in the area beyond national jurisdiction. The five coastal states have considered the issue for several years, taking the existing international legal framework for the oceans as their point of departure. The 1982 Law of the Sea Convention as well as the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Convention oblige states to cooperate on resource management in the areas beyond the 200 mile zones. In the North Atlantic regional bodies for the management of fish stocks in international waters exist, the Northeast Atlantic Fisheries Commission being one of them. Its mandate extends all the way to the North Pole.

Read the full story at the Barents Observer