Science

Months after celebrating its 50th anniversary, the storied federal fisheries laboratory at Sandy Hook is now marked for closing in the Obama administration’s budget plan, its 38 jobs to be reassigned at other National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sites in 2013, according to agency officials and White House budget papers.

Named the James J. Howard Marine Laboratory after the late Democratic congressman from Monmouth County — the lab’s longtime political patron — the facility is a center for research on coastal marine fish species and NOAA’s ecosystem studies.

Rep. Frank J. Pallone Jr., D-N.J., said he was “totally opposed” to closing the lab and would fight to keep it open.

“It’s a mistake on the part of the administration because that lab is very important,” said Pallone, a Long Branch Democrat whose district includes Sandy Hook. “There is a lot of research done there that is very important not only to New Jersey but to the whole northeast coast.”

Read the complete story from The Asbury Park Press

 

 

 

 

 

The cod stock on the Eastern Scotian Shelf (the 4VsW management area) collapsed in the early 1990s, and has experienced high natural mortality since then, while the abundance of grey seals foraging in the area has doubled about every seven years since the 1960s. The causes of the high cod natural mortality are not well understood, but seals are not considered to have played a significant role. This study takes a fresh look at the impact of seals on 4VsW cod abundance. Abundance trends of the Sable, Eastern Shore and Gulf seal herds which forage on the Scotian Shelf are estimated to 2020.

The Sable herd is projected to stabilize at about 350,000 individuals. If their exponential growth continues, the Eastern Shore and Gulf herds could in aggregate reach about 200,000 individuals. However, density dependent processes are likely to slow population growth of these two herds sometime in the coming decade. Total annual food consumption of the three herds is estimated. In 2010, in excess of 550,000 t of fish are consumed annually by the Sable and Eastern herd, with the Gulf herd consuming about 138,000 t.

The literature on seal diets is summarized and three scenarios of type II predator–prey functional response are defined. In an ADAPT analysis of the 4VsW cod stock, seals are treated as an additional fishing gear sector under two scenarios: respectively a “flat-top” and “domed” partial recruitment vectors. Model results infer that seals have contributed to increases in natural mortality since the late 1980s, and have contributed to the lack of recovery of the stock since 1993. However, predictions by the functional models are not consistent with estimate of recent increases in abundance of cod in trawl surveys. Present levels of grey seal abundance have not occurred on the Scotian Shelf since at least the 1800s.

Read the complete study from Robert O'Boyle and Michael Sinclair on Sciencedirect.com

 

 

 

 

 

What you probably didn’t get was a good explanation of why the two assessments were so different. Have cod stocks really evaporated in the past three years? Or was one of the assessments in error? And, if so, which one? A few articles referred to the fact that there were differences in the data and computer model used. But the details I crave were sorely lacking.

There’s actually some good news to be found in the 2011 assessment. Both Brooks and Palmer are of the professional opinion that the actual status of the cod stock has not changed dramatically over the past three years, and that it definitely hasn’t crashed. In fact, they think it has been slowly rebuilding over the past several years – the latest three included.

Yep, you read that right. Gulf of Maine cod is rebuilding, recovering from decades (if not centuries) of overfishing. It’s been doing that steadily for several years. That’s the good news.

But, and this is a big BUT, it’s doing it a lot more slowly than the 2008 numbers suggested … so slowly that there’s no way Gulf of Maine cod will make it all the way to an official designation of “rebuilt” by 2014, a target date suggested by the federal legislation that mandates fisheries management. That’s the bad news, and the reason that fishermen are worried. Federal mandates to end overfishing as soon as it’s detected and rebuild fish stocks as quickly as possible could drive regulators to severely cut back cod fishing quotas. The idea of shutting down the Gulf of Maine cod fishery even surfaced.

Read the complete story from Climatide

 

 

 

 

 

Most saltwater fish may have evolved from a freshwater ancestor, according to a new study that traces the family tree of both marine and freshwater fish.

The finding may seem topsy-turvy given that life originated in the oceans, but the results could help explain why the sea is relatively low in diversity compared with the land. The ocean takes up 70 percent of the Earth's surface, but contains only 15 percent to 25 percent of the Earth's total estimated species.

"It's a striking pattern that we haven't really explained yet," said study researcher John Wiens, a professor of ecology and evolution at Stony Brook University in New York.

Read the complete story from MSNBC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the world of sustainable best practices, good intentions are no longer good enough. Sustainable projects with funding must be monitored and held accountable to meet compliance and business needs. Problem is, most sustainable projects work from shoddy data sources, or in many cases, have no data to work from at all.

A very recent and unfortunate example of bad data hampering sustainability projects involves the state of New Jersey’s environmental officials shutting down the state’s river herring fishery. Are the herring fisherman of New Jersey abusing the river or overfishing? Hardly. According to the Associated Press, the decision was made in part because the state doesn’t have the necessary personnel or funding to collect the data needed to prove the fishery is sustainable. The restriction also bars recreational anglers from targeting the herring, and if they happen to catch one, they must throw it back immediately. Officials say New Jersey was one of several states that didn’t meet the deadline.

Brandon Muffley, who leads the state’s Bureau of Marine Fisheries, said, “We don’t have the data. We don’t know what river herring’s abundance is or what our fisheries are taking. We haven’t had the resources to do the work.”

Inadequate data gathering methods can lead to the “irrelevant data, unsubstantiated claims, gaps in data and inaccurate figures,” a Leeds University team reported in its examination of more than 4,000 corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and company surveys.

Read the complete story from Thomas Net News

 

 

 

 

 

While fishmeal is favoured by farmers because of its protein content, other protein sources are challenging its place as an animal feed.

Protein rich substitutes

Farmers and feedstuff producers value fishmeal mainly because of its high protein content and health enhancing nutrients. These characteristics are however not only found in fishmeal, but to different degree also in vegetable based products like rapeseed, soybean, corn and gluten. It is also possible to use terrestrial byproducts like meal from meat, blood, bone and feathers. Alternative marine-based substitutes from crustaceans, krill and algae are also useable as substitutes, and these sources may become more important in the future (Tacon 2008).

The common denominator of all of these organic substances is that they have a high content of protein and some contain omega-3 acids. Soybeans have a particularly high protein content and also contain favorable acids which have made it a very common substitute and complement to fishmeal. Since soybean meal is the most fitting and widespread vegetable alternative to fishmeal, I will in the statistical examinations in this paper focus on the relationship among fishmeal and soybean meal. A qualitative discussion of other vegetable substitutes will follow in chapter 6.

Production of soybeans

Soybean meal is the most used vegetable protein feed in the production of animal feeds. The production process is similar to that of fishmeal: The beans are crushed and then cooked to approximately 60°C. The beans are then squeezed to remove any liquids, then toasted and subsequently cooled. Depending on whether the hulls removed prior to cooking are added back to the mixture or not, the soybean meal will have a protein content of 44 to 47 per cent.

The US has historically been the largest producer of soybean meal in the world followed by China and South American countries. In the 2009/2010 harvest7 the total world production was 165 million tons of soybean meal, which is about 25 times the global fishmeal production. The US and China were each responsible for 23 per cent of total world production in the 09/10 season, and it is estimated by the USDA that China will surpass the US in the forthcoming years as the leading producer of soybean meal to meet its increasing demand for protein (USDA 2007). Brazil and Argentina each had 16 per cent of the 2009/2010 global harvest while the EU, India and Mexico produced 6, 3 and 2 per cent respectively. This means that the top four producers of soybean meal hold nearly 80 per cent of the global production.

Read the full article at TheFishSite.com.

 

Ecologists may have captured the first deep-sea fish sounds, hidden among the sounds of dolphins and humpback, fin and pilot whales, they report in a new study.

More than 50 years ago, researchers hypothesized that sound production in deep-sea fish is common, based on the fact that many of the species have the anatomy needed to produce sound. Most fish make incidental noises as a byproduct of chewing and swimming, but for deep-sea fish, which live in perpetual darkness, communicative noises might be important for survival and reproduction.

"But just because they have the anatomy to make noises, doesn't mean they necessarily do it," said Rodney Rountree, a marine ecologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "In terms of communicative sounds, we don't know what proportion of the fish do it."

Few studies have ever reported recording possible deep-sea fish sounds, so scientists know little about these sounds, Rountree explained. It's not as simple as putting the fish in a tank and listening in on their conversations.

Read the complete story at MSNBC

 

 

 

 

 

Friend of the Sea, the major sustainability certification for products from sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, has also become the international reference standard for producers of fish oil, fishmeal and Omega-3.

Thirty-two companies (list below) from 11 countries (Australia, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Morocco, Norway, Sweden, UK and USA) have relied on Friend of the Sea's assessment to verify the sustainable origin of their products.

The Antartic krill, the Atlantic menhaden and the Peruvian anchovies fisheries are among those approved according to Friend of the Sea sustainability requirements. These fisheries are considered among the best managed fisheries worldwide, with historical catch and biomass data collected and interpreted over the past decades and enforcement of strict regulations.

Most of these fisheries are pelagic fisheries with no impact on the seabed and very high selectivity. Some of the certified products originate from selected seafood processing bycuts or trimmings, thus optimizing use of marine resources.

Producers know that Omega-3 consumers care for conservation and ecology.
Friend of the Sea has been selected by Omega-3 producers worldwide as the most independent and reliable sustainability certification.

The ecolabel also provides an effective way to communicate environmental performance to their customers.

"Friend of the Sea aims at promoting those Omega-3 products which originate from sustainable and well managed fisheries" said Dr Paolo Bray – director of Friend of the Sea, "for this reason we will participate to the International Omega-3 tradeshow – VitaFoods Geneva – and we will also increase our communication to the Omega-3 consumers."

Read the full article at fishupdate.com

 

Many in the aquaculture industry are dependent on fishmeal, according to the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration.

Production of fishmeal

The fishmeal production process and value chain

Fishmeal is a brown powder obtained after cooking, press drying and squeezing fresh raw fish or trimmings3 from food fish. IFFO has estimated that in 2009 pelagic fish was used in 75 per cent of all fishmeal production, while the remaining 25 per cent came from trimmings. Pelagic species are ocean fish that swim in schools and live in the upper sea levels. Their source of food is mainly plankton and most pelagic species are considerably fattier than other fish species. Historically, landings of fish have been around 90 million tons p.a. and about 1/3 of this has been converted into fishmeal and fish oil4, while the remaining 60 million tons are marketed as fresh, frozen and canned fish.

Fishmeal contains typically 60 to 72 per cent protein, 10 to 20 per cent ash, 5 to 12 per cent fat and has a high content of the fatty acids EPA and DHA; more commonly referred to as omega-3 (IFFO 2011).

Fishmeal in its basic form has been produced for centuries and usage has varied from production of fertilizers to salmon feed. Nowadays, fishmeal is used primarily in feed production. Fishmeal and fish oil production has become a very thriving industry as both fishmeal and fish oil prices have soared (see figure 5.1 for fishmeal price data).

The Peruvian fishmeal and fish oil producer Copeinca has illustrated how the value chain in the industry is formed.

Global production

Global production of fishmeal is concentrated around a few top producers; top ten manufacturers in 2007 made up approximately 80 per cent of the global production. Today Peru is the largest producer, China the second, Chile the third and then the Nordic countries Norway, Denmark and Iceland follow as the most important producers. There are approximately 300 dedicated plants worldwide that produce about 6.3 million tons of fishmeal and 1.1 million tons of oil annually from roughly 33 million tons of whole fish and trimmings (FIN 2010). The species used in production vary from region to region, but generally speaking it consists of small, bony, pelagic fish that has little or no commercial value as fish for direct consumption5 (FAO 1986). It is estimated that about 90 per cent of the fish species used to make fishmeal is “presently unmarketable in large quantities as human food” (Bose et.al 1991). See table 2.1 for an overview of the different species used around the globe.

The global fishmeal output has remained at 6 to 7 million metric tons p.a. for the last 20 years, while world trade has averaged around 3 to 4 million tons. Fluctuations in output and export level are naturally linked to variations in landings of fish used for fishmeal production. Overfishing and unsustainable fishery management has caused some of this variation, but the large deviations are mainly due to the El Niño phenomena.

Read the full article at TheFishSite.com

Today, NOAA released recalculated recreational catch estimates for the Atlantic and Gulf coasts going back to 2004 using an improved estimation method. As we've reported to you previously, this new method is a fundamental part of our overall work to improve the accuracy of the recreational catch data we collect and report. The improved methodology addresses a key issue identified in the 2006 report by the National Research Council, which identified a mismatch between the way we gather information from anglers and how we use those data to generate estimates.

We've developed a suite of outreach materials to help you answer questions and facilitate discussion about the new methodology and its impacts. The materials include:

    •    A fact sheet that explains the new methodology, analyzes its effects on four species in a series of case studies, and outlines NOAA Fisheries' strategy for transitioning to the improved numbers.

    •    A video in which NOAA Fisheries representatives, regional partners, stakeholders and outside experts offer a more in-depth look at the process of the re-estimation, what it will mean for the recreational fishing community, and what will come next.

    •    A presentation to read over and share with others that explains the new estimation work and a schedule for future improvements.

    •    A data query tool to allow for user-friendlycomparisons of the improved MRIP estimates and previously reported MRFSS numbers. Just select "MRFSS/MRIP Comparisons" from the drop down menu.

This suite of materials is now available on MRIP's website . Please let us know if we can help answer questions or provide additional information by contacting Forbes Darby at forbes.darby@noaa.gov or (301) 427-8528.

View the Marine Recreational Information Program Update from NOAA