Science

March 16, 2012 – As ocean scientists probe what ails some of the largest creatures in the sea, a wave of new research is urging them to look at the little things — specifically the tiny schooling fish that make up the cornerstone of ocean food webs.

Species like herring, smelt, sardines and squid are the food of choice for many of the ocean's top predators. But there is increasing pressure globally to harvest marine "forage fish" for everything from hog feed and fertilizer to fishmeal in tuna pens or as bait for recreational or commercial fishing.

And these creatures are often the fish scientists understand the least.

"The idea that forage fish are important isn't new," said Phil Levin, a biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle. "But if you take the fish out of the system … what are the costs if those fish are no longer there to be eaten by birds or mammals or other fish? That's what we're talking about now."

Read the complete story from The Republic.

 

 

 

 

The Northeast Cooperative Research Program has prepared a report “A Mid-Course Review of the Strategic Direction for the Cooperative Research Program in the Northeast” based on input from regional workshops with the Mid-Atlantic and New England Councils and five public outreach meetings held in 2011.  Workshops and outreach meetings were held to gather recommendations to assess and evaluate progress made on the Cooperative Research Strategic Plan for 2010-2014.

The following themes were articulated during the review of the cooperative research  strategic plan and they reflect the current needs identified by stakeholders:  

 The fishing industry desires a greater understanding and role in the stock  assessment process. Fishermen would like to meet with scientists in small fishery-specific working groups early in the stock assessment process.  They need to become  familiar with the stock assessments, understand how data that they provide are used, and  be invited to take a more proactive role in the stock assessment improvement plan.   

 Communication and outreach with the industry requires continual attention.  The  industry wants to know more about how to get involved in cooperative research, what  research is being done, and, most importantly, how the results are incorporated into  fisheries management plans.  

 – Stakeholders are concerned about the accuracy of discard estimates and fishermen  continue to seek ways to avoid by-catch. The institution of ACLs and sector  management has increased the incentive to avoid by-catch species while maximizing catch  of healthy species. Many fishermen expressed concern about discard estimates and NCRP  was encouraged to move beyond gear work and assist the industry with by-catch  avoidance strategies. 

 – Stakeholders encouraged NCRP to focus its efforts on data poor stocks, schooling  semi-pelagic species, high volume fisheries, protected resources (turtles, sturgeon)  and species of concern (river herring). Fishermen raised concerns about a variety of  specific species.  The ideas ranged from predator/prey considerations to additional gear  work to information on the effectiveness of closed areas.   

 – Highly Migratory Species (HMS) has specific research needs that should be  addressed by HMS managers. There were a series of recommendations by stakeholders  in the Mid-Atlantic specific to HMS.  

– The Henry B. Bigelow trawl survey is not well understood by the industry and  additional outreach is needed. The NEFSC fishery-independent trawl survey continues  to receive significant attention by the fishing industry as the information is considered a  critical component in determining the status of fish stocks.  There remains a high level of  frustration among some industry members regarding the survey methods and costs  associated with running the new vessel. 

 – There is an increased interest from the recreational community to be involved in the  cooperative research process. The 2010-2014 Cooperative Research Plan noticeably  lacks specific recommendations for engaging with the recreational fishing community  and this was seen as a major oversight, particularly in the Mid-Atlantic where there is a  greater recreational fishing presence.  

 – Community leaders are interested in designing socioeconomic and community  development programs to support fishing communities. Determining the social and  economic health of the fishing communities, especially in light of recent management  changes, was raised as an important issue for NCRP to consider. 

 – There continues to be a need to foster upfront conversations among researchers,  fishermen, and managers to align their expectations and to foster use of cooperative  research results in management actions.  In addition, concerns were raised about the  capacity of the scientific community to engage with the fishing industry on research of  relevance to fisheries management. NCRP was encouraged to become more proactive in  promoting the review of cooperative research results within the management process. 

 – The fishing industry would like NOAA Fisheries to play a greater role in supporting  marketing and public relations. Although perhaps beyond the scope of cooperative  research, there were participants who expressed concern regarding marketing of catch  and NOAA Fisheries’ role in improving the public’s perception of US fisheries.   

 – Stakeholders raised concerns regarding the NCRP programmatic issues, but these  were not the primary focus of the discussions at the meetings. The Pate report  highlighted the issue of transparency with the grants and contract process, especially with  regard to RSAs, yet these issues received surprisingly little attention during the  cooperative research meetings. However, some suggestions were made to explore new  methods of distributing research set-asides and improve the process.  Permitting issues  and concerns about the Letter of Acknowledgement process were also raised, but to a  lesser extent.   

Read the final draft.

 

 

 

 

NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center has issued a new report in its Reference Document Series: Updates for 13 Northeast Groundfish Stock Assessments. This report updates 2008 assessments, including those for Georges Bank cod and haddock, Gulf of Maine haddock, and Cape Cod-Gulf of Maine yellowtail flounder.

Read the complete report from NOAA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

March 13, 2012 – The marine nutraceutical industry is booming in Europe and Asia, and it has taken off in recent years in Canada as well. While the industry is still in its infancy in the United States, University of Rhode Island researcher Chong Lee says that with a little federal research support, it could become a growth industry.

Lee, a professor emeritus of food sciences, describes nutraceuticals as a cross between pharmaceuticals and nutrition, something that "provides health benefits above and beyond traditional nutrients. The nutraceutical market is dominated by terrestrial sources, like cranberries that provide antioxidants. Marine nutraceuticals are something new, and now it is getting a lot more attention," he said.

The URI food scientist says that the "big ticket item" among marine nutraceuticals is fish oil, which contains omega 3 fatty acids that provide cardiovascular disease risk reductions, immune function improvements, brain health, and reductions in inflammation from rheumatoid arthritis. Most fish oil products are derived from anchovies and sardines caught in the waters off Peru and Chile.

In Rhode Island, seaweed could play a role in the nutraceutical industry, as some varieties are a source of compounds beneficial to human and animal health. One species of seaweed called rockweed (Ascopyllum nodosum) that Lee is studying is abundant along the coast of New England and is already being used as an agricultural fertilizer and as an additive to animal feeds. Lee says it also has bioactive components that are useful in managing weight, lowering cholesterol and slowing the digestion of sugars and carbohydrates.

Read the full article here.

 

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—7 March 2012 – Pacific Coast fishermen can start gearing up for what's expected to be the best salmon fishing season in years.

Federal fishery managers are forecasting robust populations of chinook and coho salmon off the Pacific coast and in California and Oregon rivers.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council on Wednesday approved several options for managing West Coast salmon fisheries this year. All of them give sport and commercial anglers plenty of time to fish later this spring and summer.

The regulatory council plans to hold public hearings in California, Oregon and Washington to get feedback on the alternative fishing plans over the next few weeks before choosing a final plan when it meets in Seattle in early April.

Read the complete story by The AP from The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Digital cameras make it easy to take a lot of photos – so many, in fact, that they can be difficult to sort through.

Try having more than 250,000. That is how many images researchers took of the ocean floor last summer as part of a new approach to estimating the mid-Atlantic sea scallop population. Now they are tasked with examining each photo, searching for scallops within the frame and counting exactly how many and what size.

It’s a big job, and one in which they hope to enlist the help of science-minded volunteers. Art Trembanis, associate professor of geological sciences in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, is developing a website where citizen scientists can log in, pull up individual photos and click on the small, sandy circles indicating scallops.

“We are excited to have the public assist in this,” Trembanis said.

Read the complete story from the University of Delaware.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It may not look particularly appealing to the likes of you or me, but the robot fish  is so cool that real ones will follow its lead.

Researchers from Polytechnic Institute of New York University designed their fish to mimic the tail propulsion of a real swimming fish, and tested it out with a variety of tail beat frequencies and flow speeds.

In nature, fish at the front of a school beat their tails more frequently, creating a wake in which their followers gather. The followers' tails swish noticeably more slowly, leading researchers to believe that they're getting a hydrodynamic advantage from the leaders’ hard work.

Read the complete story from TG Daily.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW YORK, March 1, 2012 – Probing the largely unexplored question of what characteristics make a leader among schooling fish, researchers have discovered that by mimicking nature, a robotic fish can transform into a leader of live ones.

Through a series of experiments, researchers from Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) aimed to increase understanding of collective animal behavior, including learning how robots might someday steer fish away from environmental disasters. Nature is a growing source of inspiration for engineers, and the researchers were intrigued to find that their biomimetic robotic fish could not only infiltrate and be accepted by the swimmers, but actually assume a leadership role.

In a paper published online in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Stefano Marras, at the time a postdoctoral fellow in mechanical engineering at NYU-Poly and currently a researcher at Italy's Institute for the Marine and Coastal Environment-National Research Council, and Maurizio Porfiri, NYU-Poly associate professor of mechanical engineering, found conditions that induced golden shiners to follow in the wake of the biomimetic robot fish, taking advantage of the energy savings generated by the robot.

Read the complete story at Science Codex.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Russell W. Brown has been named the Deputy Science and Research Director at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) and Director of the Woods Hole Laboratory.  The Woods Hole Laboratory, the original laboratory of today’s federal marine fisheries service established in 1871, is one of the Center’s six research facilities in the Northeast and is also the administrative home for the NEFSC Directorate. 

Brown has served as Ecosystems Surveys Branch chief at the Center for the past decade.  No stranger to his new position, Brown served as Acting Deputy Director for several months last year after Frank Almeida announced his plans to retire at the end of December 2011 following 36 years of service to the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Russ Brown grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland and attended Cornell University, where he received a B.S. degree with honors and distinction in natural resources (fisheries) in 1986. He pursued graduate studies in fisheries science at Michigan State University, earning a M.S. degree in 1991 and a Ph.D. in 1994.

He began his career at NOAA Fisheries Service in 1994 as a research fishery biologist, involved in conducting groundfish stock assessments for Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine haddock and Georges Bank winter flounder.

Between 1999 and 2002, Brown lead research efforts to investigate growth and survival dynamics of hatchery-reared Atlantic salmon stocked into the Penobscot River in Maine.  He also coordinated U.S. participation in an international program to sample Atlantic salmon captured at West Greenland, and served as a scientific advisor for the U.S. delegation to the North Atlantic Salmon Convention (NASCO) and as one of two North American representatives on the NASCO Standing Scientific Committee.

In 2002 he was named chief of the NEFSC’s Ecosystems Surveys Branch, which is charged with conducting long-term and broad-scale offshore surveys of finfish and invertebrate resources from Cape Hatteras to the Scotian Shelf.  The Ecosystems Surveys Branch is responsible for conducting three multispecies bottom trawl surveys, a northern shrimp bottom trawl survey, scallop and clam dredge surveys, and an Atlantic herring acoustics survey.

“Russ Brown is well-known to everyone at NEFSC and to others who work in NOAA’s Fisheries Service and in the broader community. He is well-respected for his scientific work, his leadership and his administrative skills,” said Acting NEFSC Science and Research Director William Karp.  “Since joining the NEFSC staff in 1994, Russ Brown has taken on increasingly complex and challenging responsibilities and has demonstrated an ability to work well with staff and stakeholders and to advance the science of NEFSC and the Fisheries Service.”

Brown was one of the first NEFSC staff members to respond to the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  He served as chief scientist aboard the NOAA ship Gordon Gunter in May 2010 on one of the initial research cruises to study the impact of the Deepwater Horizon MC 252 oil spill.

Richard Langton, who had served since October as Acting Deputy Science and Research Director for the Center, has returned to his research and administrative duties as head of the Center’s Coastal Ecology Branch.

Read this story from NOAA.

 

 

 

 

 

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — If research being conducted at the University of Alabama at Birmingham pans out, you may soon be a lot more likely to get the fish you order in restaurants and at the market, instead of getting a cheaper species being passed off as the real thing.

A group of UAB graduate students working in a university program designed to take biotechnology research to market is developing a genetic test that may enable the seafood industry to quickly identify species of fish.

A study by the nonprofit organization Oceana found that a quarter to a third of all seafood is fraudulently labeled, and government studies have reached similar conclusions. Fish sold as red snapper, wild salmon and Atlantic cod most often is mislabeled. Catfish, tilapia and rockfish often are passed off as other, more expensive species, Oceana and federal regulators have found.

Read the complete story from Alabama Live.