Science

PORTLAND, Maine — August 1, 2013 — Top scientists and commercial fishermen agreed Wednesday that high lobster populations off the Maine coast could set the state’s fisheries up for catastrophe.

Researchers from as far away as California and Washington were expected to converge Wednesday on Portland for a first-of-its-kind two-day conference with academics, fishermen, government officials and lawmakers to discuss climate change and its effect on New England fisheries.

The event was hosted at the Portland Company complex by the Rockland-based Island Institute.

The takeaway message from the conference’s initial presentations: As tempting as lobster is, fishermen must diversify their catches.

In 2011 and 2012, the statewide lobster catch hit successive record highs with 105 million pounds and more than 123 million pounds, respectively. Those numbers carried some bad financial news, however, as the great supply pushed down prices and left lobstermen earning less per pound while still facing rising fuel and overhead costs.

But Bob Steneck, University of Maine marine sciences professor, pointed out an additional downside to the lobster abundance.

“The question is: Is this a socio-economic time bomb?” posed Steneck, who delivered the morning keynote address at the conference. “If this lobster population declines or even catches a cold, how long until we lose our remaining fishing communities to wealthy people who want to live on the coast?”

He said the explosion in population of the crustacean, paired with the disappearance of other species, means the Gulf of Maine is creeping toward becoming “a lucrative monoculture.”

Steneck said the North Atlantic is not historically diverse to begin with, saying the area’s “plus or minus” 100 fish species is half that found near Europe and a small fraction of the more than 2,000 species found near Papua New Guinea.

Over time, Steneck said, the Gulf of Maine has become even less diverse. He said monstrous prehistoric coastal codfish — averaging nearly 3.5 feet in length — whose bones have been found in abundance at 4,000- and 5,000-year-old Indian sites have over history become all but nonexistent in the Gulf waters, driven down by overfishing and increasing water temperatures.

Without the predatory cod and other fish like it around in great enough populations to control lobster numbers, the crustaceans have thrived, he said.

“Big fish are ecologically extinct,” Steneck said of the Gulf of Maine ecosystem. “They’re not absent … but in terms of an ecological presence, they’re extinct.”

The same warmer ocean temperatures that have helped push cod populations north, Steneck said, have provided lobster with a deeper range in which to settle their larva. Sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic were the highest ever recorded in 2012, following years of historically rapid warming.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News 

BOSTON, Mass. — August 1, 2013 — Stock assessment experts convened at The World Conference on Stock Assessment Methods for Sustainable Fisheries (WCSAM) From July 15th through the 19th to discuss the current status and future of stock assessment methods.

Leading the panel:

Mark Dickey-Collas – Professional Officer for Ecosystem Integrated Advice at the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)

Panelists included:

(Left to right)

Clay Porch – Sustainable Fisheries Division Chief at NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center
Cathy Dichmont –  Northern Fisheries and Ecosystems Research Stream at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO)
Laurie Kell – Population dynamics expert at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT)
Mike Sissenwine – Former president of ICES, former Director of Scientific Programs and former Chief Science Advisor at the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)

Links to several videos from the WCSAM panel discussion can be found below:

Watch the WCSAM panelists discuss ways in which fisheries management issues can be more effectively communicated.

Watch stock assessment pioneer and author Sidney Holt stress the importance of clearly communicating fisheries management issues and discuss his views surrounding fisheries management procedures.

Watch the WCSAM panelists give their closing statements.

Watch the WCSAM closing speech given by Dr. Steve Cadrin, Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts School Marine Science & Technology's Department of Fisheries Oceanography.

WOODS HOLE, Mass. — July 31, 2013 — Twenty great white sharks or 31 days — one of those benchmarks will cap the OCEARCH expedition to tag great white sharks off the coast of Chatham.

The crew and scientists who left for sea Tuesday hope it's the former.

Loaded with an array of scientific gear and a state permit, and flying a flag from the world-famous Explorers Club, the 126-foot modified Alaskan crab boat set sail from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Iselin Dock under crisp blue skies. The adventure is being billed as the largest great white shark expedition in the country's history.

"We're going to learn about how this animal lives from day to day," said Greg Skomal, a state scientist and leader of Massachusetts' shark research project, who set sail with the OCEARCH on Tuesday. The vessel is named after the nonprofit ocean-based research organization that spearheaded the trip and got the funding.

"We have remarkable technology, some of which is brand new, that we're going to put onto these sharks," Skomal said. "We're going to get fine-scale movements; we're going to get broad-scale movements. We're going to learn about what it does every second that it's swimming away from this vessel over the course of several days."

For Skomal, the trip is also providing a much-needed boost to his research into the great white sharks that have been showing up with increasing frequency in Cape waters. Now in his fifth year tagging Cape Cod's great whites, he's been struggling to find ways to fund trips with his local partners, Cape Cod Shark Hunters. The OCEARCH trip is being underwritten by a number of corporate partners, the largest of which is Caterpillar Inc.

If they find great whites, Skomal and the OCEARCH crew will have plenty of work to do over the next month.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — July 30, 2013 — For biologists who have been studying birds in East Coast tidal marshes, Superstorm Sandy couldn’t have come at a better time.

Just two months before Sandy pummeled New Jersey and New York last October, a research team completed the field work of a study looking at bird populations at risk due to the loss of tidal marshes from sea level rise. With that pre-storm data in hand, the researchers are now comparing the abundance of marsh plants and birds before and after Sandy in those same marshes, from Maine to Virginia.

Conclusions cannot be drawn yet, but it’s clear that Sandy devastated many marshes, said Brian Olsen, a University of Maine professor and a co-principal of the study, along with professors from the universities of Delaware and Connecticut and a biologist from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

‘‘Some of the places we've gone to, they used to be tidal marshes and now they’re sand dunes or now they’re open water,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s kind of extreme, but there are places where the tidal marshes are gone.’’

The project, funded by a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, will assess how well animal and plant populations in coastal marshes can weather change. The study specifically looks at whether the ability of certain plants and birds to withstand an extreme disturbance, such as a hurricane, is greater or less in marshes that are subjected to other stresses, such as sea level rise, development, pollution and invasive species.

Over the past three months, trained technicians visited 1,700 spots in hundreds of marshes where they listened to bird calls and wrote down their observations. They also used speakers and portable music players to play the calls of birds that don’t sing very often but will do so if they hear their own song. The technicians visited each place three times, and also took vegetation measurements during one of those visits to determine which plant species have been affected.

The data will be analyzed in the coming months, and the findings will become available next year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

July 29, 2013 — NOAA-supported scientists found a large Gulf of Mexico oxygen-free or hypoxic “dead” zone, but not as large as had been predicted. Measuring 5,840 square miles, an area the size of Connecticut, the 2013 Gulf dead zone indicates nutrients from the Mississippi River watershed are continuing to affect the nation’s commercial and recreational marine resources in the Gulf.

“A near-record area was expected because of wet spring conditions in the Mississippi watershed and the resultant high river flows which deliver large amounts of nutrients,” said Nancy Rabalais, Ph.D. executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), who led the July 21-28 survey cruise. “But nature’s wind-mixing events and winds forcing the mass of low oxygen water towards the east resulted in a slightly above average bottom footprint.”

Hypoxia is fueled by nutrient runoff from agricultural and other human activities in the watershed. These nutrients stimulate an overgrowth of algae that sinks, decomposes and consumes most of the oxygen needed to support life. Normally the low or no oxygen area is found closer to the Gulf floor as the decaying algae settle towards the bottom. This year researchers found many areas across the Gulf where oxygen conditions were severely low at the bottom and animals normally found at the seabed were swimming at the surface.

This is in contrast to 2012, when drought conditions resulted in the fourth smallest dead zones on record, measuring 2,889 square miles, an area slightly larger than Delaware. The largest previous dead zone was in 2002, encompassing 8,481 square miles. The smallest recorded dead zone measured 15 square miles in 1988. The average size of the dead zone over the past five years has been 5,176 square miles, more than twice the 1,900 square mile goal set by the Gulf of Mexico / Mississippi River Watershed Nutrient Task Force in 2001 and reaffirmed in 2008.

On June 18, NOAA-sponsored forecast models developed by Donald Scavia, Ph.D., University of Michigan, and R. Eugene Turner, Ph.D., Louisiana State University,  predicted the Gulf hypoxic zone would range in size from 7,286 to 8,561 square miles.

“NOAA’s investment in the Gulf of Mexico continues to yield results that confirm the complex dynamics of hypoxia and provide managers and the public with accurate scientific information for managing and restoring the nation's valuable coastal resources,” said Robert Magnien, Ph.D., director of NOAA’s Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research. “For those who depend upon and enjoy the abundant natural resources of the Gulf of Mexico, it is imperative that we intensify our efforts to reduce nutrient pollution before the ecosystem degrades any further.”

This annual measurement provides federal and state agencies working on the 2008 Gulf task force implementation actions with the real consequences of inadequate nutrient pollution management. The task force’s actions are set for review this summer.

The hypoxic zone off the coast of Louisiana and Texas forms each summer threatening the ecosystem supporting valuable commercial and recreational Gulf fisheries that in 2011 had a commercial dockside value of $818 million and an estimated 23 million recreational fishing trips. The Gulf task force, in its 2008 report, states that "hypoxia has negative impacts on marine resources." It further states that research on living resources in the Gulf show long term ecological changes in species diversity and a large scale, often rapid change, in the ecosystem's food-web that is both "difficult and impossible to reverse." Additionally, there are numerous annual areas of the Gulf where large scale fish kills occur as a result of hypoxia.

Two surveys conducted in June and early July, one of which was led by a NOAA-supported Texas A&M University team, suggested a large hypoxic zone was forming in the Gulf, though the LUMCON July measurement will be the official one as required of NOAA by the Task Force. NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, in conducting its Southeast Monitoring and Assessment Program groundfish surveys, also found large expanses of hypoxia in June-early July. Texas A&M will be conducting a follow-up cruise in mid-August to provide its final seasonal update.

Visit the Gulf Hypoxia web site for additional graphics and information concerning this summer’s LUMCON research cruise, and previous cruises.

NOAA’s National Ocean Service has been funding monitoring and research for the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico since 1985 and currently oversees the NGOMEX program, the hypoxia research effort for the northern Gulf which is authorized by the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act.

Read the release from NOAA

 

 

July 30, 2013 — The following was released by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center:

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) of the NOAA Fisheries Service is soliciting commercial longline vessel quotes for vessels to participate in a Fall and Spring longline survey in the Gulf of Maine. Depending on capacity, up to 4 vessels may be selected to sample a combined 45 hard-bottom stations in the Gulf of Maine during a 20-day period in October/November 2013 and a 20-day period in April/May 2014.

This survey will address concerns about the catchability of specific species collected during bottom trawl surveys for important groundfish stocks, and will immediately enhance data collection for several data poor and depleted stocks that are specifically associated with rocky habitat.  This survey will also provide important information for several species (Atlantic halibut, wolffish, thorny skate, cusk) that are not well sampled in bottom trawl surveys or those that are not caught in substantive numbers by commercial or recreational fisheries to help inform Endangered Species Act (ESA) listing decisions.  This work is designed to build upon previously funded and ongoing cooperative research sampling programs utilizing fixed longline gear that were more restricted in geographic scope.

 The solicitation can be found at this link and the Request for Quotes with a complete Statement of Work and Vessel Requirements is attached.

Vessel quotes are due at noon on August 29, 2013. Quotes will be accepted electronically at the following email address: Roberta.H.Smith@noaa.gov and via facsimile at (757) 441-3786. Questions regarding this solicitation should be addressed to Roberta.H.Smith@noaa.gov.

To submit a Quote, you must submit:

1- Pages 1 and 2 of the attached Request for Quotes with blocks 17a, 30a, 30b, and 30c completed, a daily vessel charter price exclusive of fuel costs entered in the unit price for Line Items 0001, 0003, and 0006.  Fuel costs on the RFQ are estimates only.  Fuel costs will be reimbursed at actual costs at the completion of the survey.  A price estimate for providing squid for bait for a 1000 hook set should be entered in the unit price for Line Item 0005.

2- Attachments I and II of the attached RFQ

3- Photocopies of 

– Stability Information, as required by vessel class

– Insurance Carrier Inspection/Survey

– Licenses held by Captain and Crew

– Current Insurance Policy

– Crew Medical Certifications – First Aid/CPR/AED

– If possible, photos of deck, berthing, and wheelhouse electronics

4- If you are not registered in the System for Award Management (SAM, formerly Central Contracting Registry) you must submit the completed Section # 4 –Pages 23-35 of the attached RFQ –  OFFEROR REPRESENTATIONS AND CERTIFICATIONS–COMMERCIAL ITEMS

Successful quoters must have a DUNS number and be registered in the SAM system.  A QuickStart Guide to obtain a DUNS number and register in SAM is attached.

View the Request for Quotes form

View the Quick Start Guide for Entities Interested in Being Eligible for Government Contracts

July 27, 2013 — If a picture is worth a thousand words, get ready for millions of undersea images  – brought to you by a handmade,  high definition undersea camera.

Alaska Cam Sled is a towed imaging system that takes a lot of high resolution pictures of the bottom of the ocean,” said Gregg Rosenkranz, a state scallop biometrician based in Kodiak.

Rosenkranz and his colleague Rick Shepherd built the cam sled, which lets them experience a live stream of the sea floor while onboard a research vessel. They hail it as a non-invasive way to observe and collect data in real time.

“We found out pretty quickly after we started doing this about six or seven years ago that there is a lot of other stuff down there, for example, a lot of Tanner crabs live in the same areas as scallops do.

“I like to think of it as a really stupid robot that does one job really well, and that is to take high resolution photos,” Rosencranz said, adding:  “It’s easier and cheaper than a lot of other ways, because it is towed. You’re not sending divers down there for example, who get tired out.”

The Alaska Cam Sled will be showcased at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sept. 26-28 in Kodiak. www.aaas.org/ 

Fish cam fast track

Meanwhile, Senator Lisa Murkowski is pressing federal managers for faster action on getting fish cams to monitor catches on small fishing boats.

“With today’s advanced technology, NOAA Fisheries can figure out an electronic monitoring system that works for small fishing businesses,” Murkowski said in a phone interview.

The EMS would replace fishery observers now required on halibut longline vessels during fishing trips.

Read the full story at Stories in the News        

 

Boston (AP) — July 27, 2013  — In an in-depth weekend story, Jay Lindsay of the Associated Press examined the scientific assessments of fish stocks and the significant uncertainty inherent in those estimates.  Despite that uncertainty, Federal law requires regulators to act on the best available information, even if, as recent assessments have indicated, that information might not be good.

What science says about the number of fish in the waters off New England shapes the rules that govern the region's struggling fishing fleet. And lately for key species, those estimates have been way off.

Some federal population estimates for bottom-dwelling groundfish, such as cod and flounder, have swung wildly. That leaves fishermen scrambling to deal with sudden drops or gains in the portfolio of stocks they depend on to make a living. In addition, a pattern has emerged showing the same bad predictions about key fish species are repeated.

Some question how population estimates with such obvious flaws can be used to as a basis for steep cuts in the catches, including massive reductions enacted in May.

''I think it's irresponsible to shut down fisheries based on such inaccurate stock assessments,'' said Steve Cadrin, a former federal stock assessment scientist and a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

Counting fish is notoriously tough. Fishery scientists joke it's just like counting trees in the forest – if the trees were invisible and moving. But stock assessments try to draw as precise a picture as possible.

But if the underlying population estimates are way off, the scientific advice becomes worthless.

Lately, there's no proof the science is capable of giving the accurate advice regulators need, said Gloucester fisherman Vito Giacalone. ''All the proof, really, is that it's not capable.''

The saga of the Gulf of Maine cod offers the prime example of a faulty assessment. Deemed robust in 2008, by 2011 the stock was said to be struggling so badly that huge cuts were needed to protect it. In May, fishermen took a devastating year-to-year cut in their catch allotment of 78 percent. Many fishermen say a cut that steep simply doesn't allow them to catch enough fish to stay in business.

Meanwhile, the assessments of certain flounder, haddock and cod stocks have been plagued by a persistent flaw that causes future populations to be overestimated while projections of how much fishermen will catch are underestimated. So fishermen can be told to catch a certain amount one year, only to learn later it was too much, and a cut is coming for future seasons.

In the midst of the problems, the Groundfish Plan Development Team, a group of fishery analysts and experts, has fretted over the reliability of the assessments.

''If there is no confidence in the projections, then it seems they should not be used to determine if a particular catch will end overfishing or rebuild as required,'' the team wrote last August.

The significant uncertainty doesn't shut down the demands of fishery law, which requires regulators to act on the best available information. That's even if, as recent assessments have indicated, it might not be that good.

The Northeast's top federal scientist, Bill Karp, said the law is asking science to know more about the behavior of some fish stocks in the dynamic New England fishery than it can currently deliver.

''It's clearly not good enough to answer some of these questions,'' he said.

Fishery law also mandates rebuilding troubled fish stocks in 10 years. Tom Nies, executive director of the New England Fishery Management Council, said that assumes regulators know the population of that fish now, what its healthy population looks like and how to get it there. ''We often don't know any of those with any certainty,'' he said. There should be ways for managers to account for that uncertainty, he said, and ensure catch quotas don't spike or plummet based on one assessment.

Giacalone envisions an entirely new way of doing business, with assessment methods that better account for water temperatures, food supply and other environmental factors that make fish move, congregate and thrive.

''I think 15, 20 years (from now) we'll look back at this period as us operating like the world was flat,'' he said.
 
Read the full story by Jay Lindsay of the Associated Press at The Boston Globe
 

July 29, 2013 — The Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) of the NOAA Fisheries Service is soliciting commercial trawl vessel quotes for a vessel to participate in a catchability study of flatfish on Georges Bank.  One trawl vessel will be selected to sample approximately 50-60 bottom trawl stations each on Georges Bank during a 6 day trip to be conducted in October 2013 in conjunction with the R/V Henry Bigelow.

The purpose of the sampling will be (1) develop comparative estimates of  flatfish abundance in a relatively small and productive flatfish area using different vessels and gear; (2) to better understand the relative catchability of the surveying system on the NEFSC R/V Henry Bigelow; and (3) to provide biological sampling of flatfish populations in this area.

NOTE:  THIS IS THE 2nd OF 2 SOLICITATIONS FOR GEORGES BANK FLATFISH WORK AND IS SEPARATE FROM THE FLATFISH INDUSTRY BASED SURVEY SOLICITATION THAT WAS DUE ON JULY 3…   YOU MUST SUBMIT AN APPLICATION PACKET FOR EACH PROJECT.  FOR QUESTIONS OR CLARIFICATIONS, PLEASE CONTACT CAROLYN WOODHEAD AT CAROLYN.WOODHEAD@NOAA.GOV OR 978-281-9197.

This solicitation can be found at this link and the Request for Quotes with a complete Statement of Work and Vessel Requirements is attached.

Vessel quotes are due on July 29, 2013. Quotes will be accepted electronically at the following email address: Roberta.H.Smith@noaa.gov and via facsimile at (757) 441-3786. Questions regarding this solicitation should be addressed to Roberta.H.Smith@noaa.gov.

To submit a Quote, you must submit:

1- Pages 1 and 2 of the attached Request for Quotes with block 17a and blocks 30a, 30b, and 30c completed, and a daily vessel charter price exclusive of fuel costs entered in the unit price for Line Items 0001 and 0003.  Fuel costs are estimated on the RFQ and will be reimbursed at actual costs at the completion of the survey.

2- Attachments I and II of the attached RFQ

3- Photocopies of 

– Stability Information, as required by vessel class

– Insurance Carrier Inspection/Survey

– Licenses held by Captain and Crew

– Current Insurance Policy

– Crew Medical Certifications – First Aid/CPR/AED

– If possible, photos of deck, berthing, and wheelhouse electronics

4- If you are not registered in the System for Award Management (SAM, formerly Central Contracting Registry) you must submit the completed Section # 4 –Pages 25-38 of the attached RFQ – OFFEROR REPRESENTATIONS AND CERTIFICATIONS–COMMERCIAL ITEMS

Successful quoters will need to obtain a DUNS number and register in the SAM system.  A QuickStart Guide to register for a DUNS number and in SAM is attached.

View the Request for Quotes form

View the QuickStart Guide for Entities Interested in Being Eligible for Government Contracts

 

 

July 25, 2013 — A University of Maine experiment sent a young lobster to the sea floor outfitted with a camera to see how the crustaceans are faring against predators. When the footage was reeled up, researchers discovered that Maine lobsters have developed a disturbing new habit, fueled by overfishing and global warming.

View the video from Climate Desk at Slate