Science

The Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF) has received funding under NOAA Award # NA10NMF4720480 for a pilot study to develop an up to date profile of the commercial fishing industry in Rhode Island, and is now in the process of accepting applications from prospective Project Research Teams interested in conducting the research. Click here for a copy of the project synopsis, along with a copy of the Request for Applications. (This information is also available on the CFRF’s website at www.cfrfoundation.org.)

The due date for applications is Tuesday, November 30, 2010 – 5:00 PM.  If you have any questions please feel free to contact me, and please feel free to pass this information along to others who might be interested.

Thank you for your interest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — The promise from U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke that he would consider revising catch limits for New England groundfishermen spurred Mayor Scott W. Lang's Ocean and Fisheries Council to furious activity over the past week.

A team of researchers, primarily from UMass Dartmouth's School of Marine Science and Technology, responded to the challenge and this week delivered a report offering a scientific basis for increasing annual catch limits. Their findings were presented at a mayor's council meeting Friday at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Steve Cadrin of SMAST explained that catch limits for each groundfish species are set below what is known as the ABC, or acceptable biological catch. The ABC, in turn, is set further below the "overfishing" limit. "The overfishing limit is estimated with uncertainty, so we're required to have a buffer, and for groundfish that buffer is 25 percent," Cadrin said, meaning fishermen can only target 75 percent of the allowable catch. Reducing that buffer, employing alternative methods to estimate the size of fish stocks and increasing the time line for rebuilding the stocks would all permit the catch limits to increase, according to the report.

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today.

 

 

 

 

 

A new study of the sea floor on Georges Bank may compel fishery managers to dramatically re-evaluate the measures currently employed to regulate the fishing industry there.

A submerged plateau warmed by the Gulf Stream, Georges Bank lies about 60 miles off Cape Cod. Its shallow waters, swept by nutrient-rich currents, provide rich feeding grounds for a wide variety of marine life, making it one of the world's most productive marine ecosystems.

Fishermen have worked these grounds for 400 years, resulting today in the closure of large areas, some of them permanently, to protect fish habitat and stocks. However, the map used to assess the impact of fishing on Georges Bank was compiled using just 190 sample points taken from the entire expanse of the bank, an area totaling more than 25,000 square miles.

Read the complete story from the South Coast Today.

Read the study in it's entirety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Government regulators could boost catch limits for New England fisherman through any of a series of measures without imperiling fish stocks, researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth said today.

Their report urged regulators to alter how they estimate the maximum catch of a particular fish. It suggested using a method that directly estimates stocks rather than the current preferred technique that also takes into consideration a species' ability to spawn in sufficient numbers. Doing so would increase fishermen's yields on such fish as yellowtail flounder and cod on Georges Bank and white hake and winter flounder in southern New England waters.

The researchers, who received help from Massachusetts Marine Fisheries, also said a buffer that regulators build into catch limits might be unreasonably large in New England. That buffer — 25 percent here — is used to account for any uncertainty in measuring a fish's stock. Fisheries in other parts of the nation have used significantly smaller buffers, allowing fishermen's catch to closer approach the overfishing limit.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON – October 22, 2010 – In response to Secretary Gary Locke's recent reply to requests from Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), Steve Cadrin, Kevin Stokesbury, Dan Georgianna, Emily Keiley, and Cate O'Keefe of the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology, together with and David Pierce of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries have drafted a report entitled "Scientific Information Available to Support Increases in Annual Catch Limits for New England Groundfish". Brian Rothschild provided valuable input to the report.

The report was presented today at a meeting of New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang's Oceans and Fisheries Council in the Wattles Family Gallery at the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

The report provides information that can be considered to support Governor Patrick's and Representative Frank's conclusion that increased ACLs can be scientifically justified.

The report argues that scientific information is available to support increased Annual Catch Limits (ACLs) for New England groundfish that do not undermine conservation mandates of the Magnuson Act. A review of scientific analyses used to derive ACLs finds that several decisions favored relatively low ACLs, and scientifically valid alternatives may be available for: 1) direct estimates of FMSY, 2) alternative stock assessment models, 3) smaller uncertainty buffers, and 4) revised rebuilding objectives.    Alternative scientific decisions would support increases in ACLs for all New England groundfish stocks, with substantial increases for 'choke stocks' such as Georges Bank yellowtail flounder, Georges Bank cod, Gulf of Maine cod, Gulf of Maine winter flounder, and southern New England winter flounder. Increased ACLs for 'choke stocks' are expected to allow the fleet to achieve more of their allocation of other stocks, thereby substantially increasing mixed-stock economic yield.

Read the complete report

Continued near-record sea-ice loss and higher-than-normal temperatures are melting the Arctic and these changes may set the stage for a "climate change paradox" of more intense U.S. winters, says a new U.S. report.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's "Arctic Report Card" warns this week that thinning sea ice around the North Pole continues a trend in effect since 2007, reports USA TODAY colleague Dan Vergano. He says NOAA's findings include:

    * Summer sea ice cover was the third lowest extent recorded since satellite measurement began in 1979
    * Snow cover lasted the least time since record-keeping began in 1966

Read the complete story from USA Today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

While scientists continue to monitor fish taken from the Gulf of Mexico for raised levels of chemicals and oil, researchers around the globe are using specific sea species to suck up polluted waters—with a purpose.

Scallops and oysters are being used like proverbial “canaries in coal mines” to warn of the increasing presence of toxins in the ocean and to help clean out the poisons.

In Russia, The Moscow Times reports organic chemists have set up a giant sea scallop garden in Kozmino Bay on the Sea of Japan—seven time zones east of Moscow—near a new, very busy Siberian oil terminal. The sea scallops are being monitored to measure water pollution. Oil discovered in remote Siberia is being delivered to the port by pipeline. Business at the terminal is expected to double this year to 200 million barrels. Nearby in the bay, abandoned Soviet-era ships, pipelines, and old navy infrastructure rot in the saltwater.

Read the complete story from Take Part.

 

 

 

 

 

The scientists tasked with gathering data that will be used to regulate New England fisheries can't help but feel beleaguered. Caught between fishing industry interests suing the government to ease catch limits and environmentalists suing to tighten them, the scientists have been thrust into the political arena.

Last week, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said he would use emergency powers to raise fishing catch limits if it can be demonstrated that communities are suffering economic hardship and if scientific research can show that the health of fish stocks would not be adversely affected.

"We often hear things like, 'We don't agree with the assessment, therefore the bottom trawl survey is giving false information,'" said Russell W. Brown, chief of the National Marine Fisheries Service Ecosystems Surveys Branch in Woods Hole. "But our role is to produce unbiased information on living marine resources."

There is plenty of information out there, according to Brown.

"Our multi-species bottom trawl survey has been conducted every year since 1963 in the autumn and since 1968 in the spring," he said.

Read the complete story from the South Coast Today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW ORLEANS — The National Marine Fisheries Service will study whether the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has depleted the population of Atlantic bluefin tuna to the point that the food fish should be placed on the endangered species list.

The fisheries service will make a recommendation by May 24, 2011 – a year after The Center for Biological Diversity filed its petition. The center provided enough scientific information to warrant protecting the fish under the Endangered Species Act, the fisheries service said on its website in September.

Bluefin begin spawning in the northern Gulf of Mexico in April – when BP PLC's undersea well blew wild and began spewing millions of gallons of oil – and continue through June. By then, more than one-third of federal waters were closed to fishing because of that oil. The only other place bluefin are believed to spawn is the Mediterranean Sea.

"Any eggs or larva that happen to float into the oil would probably die," said the center's attorney, Catherine Ware Kilduff. Mating itself is stressful, so spawning adults would be more vulnerable to harm from the oil, she said.

Read the complete story from MSNBC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

FALMOUTH — NOAA's 208-foot research vessel Henry B. Bigelow was designed and outfitted to improve scientific sampling and provide an accurate assessment of East Coast groundfish populations for the National Marine Fisheries Service. But two of the New England companies that worked together to design and build trawling gear for the $54 million state-of-the-art ship say the nets are too small, which could affect survey results as it gathers critical information about cod, haddock, flounder and other groundfish species in the Northeast fishery.

Net designer Tor Bendiksen, of Reidar's Manufacturing in Fairhaven, who worked on the gear project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said industry input only went so far.

"It's an industry-standard net, and fishermen do use the net they are now set up with," he said. "But I have concerns about the size trawl and the size doors compared to the vessel they are using it on.

"A 100-horsepower boat towing a 100-horsepower net is going to catch more fish than a 1,000-horsepower boat towing a 100-horsepower net. The Bigelow is a 3,000-horsepower vessel, and you could very easily overspread the net. We offered them a bigger net design but they had their own parameters."

Gear designer Bob Taber, of Trawlworks Inc. in Narragansett, who also served on a panel formed to design the trawl gear, agreed that the dynamics with such a large vessel are not the same.

"We tried to talk them into a bigger net or using a bridle to mimic a 400-horsepower tow but they said no," Taber said. "It's a fantastic vessel, but the sea characteristics are totally different and it cannot mimic the package that the net and the doors were designed for.

"There is quite a different action on the whole gear compared to what a smaller vessel would be towing."

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today.