Science

Study of ocean migration indicates that local management of the population may be insufficient and supports recently proposed listing for Atlantic sturgeon under U.S. Endangered Species Act

STONY BROOK, N.Y., Oct. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A first-of-its-kind study that tracked the oceanic migrations of adult Atlantic sturgeon that were caught and tagged in the Hudson River discovered that these fish move vast distances in the Atlantic Ocean, traveling as far south as Georgia and as far north as Nova Scotia, Canada. The findings indicate that recovery of Atlantic sturgeon fisheries will need to address long-range oceanic threats to the species in addition to local measures closer to spawning grounds. These results are particularly timely given the announcement on October 5 by NOAA's Fisheries Service, proposing that five populations of Atlantic sturgeon along the U.S. East Coast, including the population examined in this study, receive protection under the federal Endangered Species Act (http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/press_release/2010/News/NR1025/index.html).

The researchers used pop-up satellite archival tags (PSAT), which were affixed to sturgeon in their freshwater spawning grounds in the Hudson River. This relatively new technology enabled researchers to track fish movements over a larger area, and without the bias that can occur with other commonly used methods such as fixed acoustic arrays or fishery-dependent observations.

Read the complete story from PRNewswire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scientist to whelk fishermen: "Please throw back the marked ones … for now."

Press Release:

North Dartmouth, MA – A former University of Massachusetts Dartmouth marine scientist is calling on whelk fishermen to help with his tagging study … by throwing back the tagged animals.
 
Working with local lobsterman Jarret Drake, Professor Bradley Stevens and graduate student Bhae-Jin Peemoeller landed, marked and released 4000 whelk in Buzzards Bay in August.  But they don't want them back just yet.
 
"We're asking fishermen to release any whelks they trap this season that are marked with numbers between 1 and 4000; we'd rather not see them again until next year or the year after," said Stevens.  "That way, we can collect meaningful growth data."
 
Last year, as a Professor at the UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology, Dr. Stevens was awarded $220,000 in Saltonstall-Kennedy funding for a two-year study to improve the conservation of the New England channeled whelk, a large, edible sea snail, locally known as a "conch."  Now at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Stevens returned to SMAST in August to collect specimens and launch his study in New England waters.  Interim Dean John Farrington provided space and seawater holding tanks, Mr. Drake provided the boat, and the work was underway.  In addition to marking whelks, the researchers also dissected more than 220 whelks to determine the size at maturity and sex structure of the population.
 
"This is an opportunity to study a fishery before it is significantly depleted," said Stevens.  "There are currently 166 conch-pot permits in Massachusetts, but only about 40 of those are actively fished.  If the remainder were to be fully utilized, landings could increase significantly, which could seriously deplete the whelk population.  We need to anticipate the effects of such an expansion."
 
At about $3 million in landings per year in Massachusetts (2007 estimates), the whelk fishery is small compared to fisheries such as lobster and scallops, and it operates with few regulations and virtually no biological information, so the population's degree of vulnerability is a question mark. However, what little is known about their life history—and what is inferred based on studies of related species—does not suggest a population that could bounce back readily from overexploitation.
 
Stevens noted that the whelk fishery has been moving northward for decades.  Directed fisheries for whelks developed in the 1970s in the Carolinas, the 1980s in Virginia, and the late 1990s in New England.
The Massachusetts whelk fishery was a small bycatch fishery until about a decade ago, just as lobster populations were showing the most dramatic drop.  Lobster fishermen have long found whelks in their pots, but as the lobster catch declined, the lobstermen began to target the whelks as an income source.
 
"Wherever such fisheries have sprung up, they started as bycatch fisheries, expanded rapidly as fishermen sought alternative income after sudden declines in other fisheries such as shrimp and lobster, and then just as rapidly began to decline within a few years," Stevens said.
 
Working in cooperation with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and the Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association, Stevens and Peemoeller will investigate life history, growth rates, age distributions, and size/age of sexual maturity in channeled whelks.  The information will be provided to managers to improve the conservation of whelks in a sustainable manner.  “We hope to return next year, mark a similar number of whelks, and start recovering some of those we released this year,” Stevens said.
 
The Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program is a competitive program administered by the National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce, to provide financial assistance for research and development projects to benefit the U.S. fishing industry.

Click here to learn more about this research.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

London, England (CNN) — The planet's seas and oceans are richer and more diverse than scientists suspected, the biggest survey of marine life has revealed — but many mysteries remain.

The Census of Marine Life, which announced its full findings Monday, has taken 10 years to complete, employing 2,700 scientists from 80 nations. The $650 million study surveyed from the coldest waters to the warmest lagoons, from the smallest microbes to the largest cetaceans.

It even looked at life 10,000 meters (6.2 miles) down in the Marianas Trench southeast of Japan.

Scientists tagged and tracked marine creatures in order to gain insight into their migratory habits and populations as well as how they breed and what they eat.

Read the complete story from CNN.

 

 

 

 

 

Maryland fishermen and scuba divers may soon have a new destination just 30 miles off Ocean City as the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife prepares to turn a 563-foot Navy destroyer into a fish reef.

The decommissioned warship, the former USS Arthur W. Radford, is now at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, where it is being cleaned and prepared for scuttling this fall. The $800,000 cost of preparation, towing and sinking is being shared by New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, according to the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife.

"We're shooting for deployment in the mid-October to mid-November range," said Lawrence Hajna, spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

Read the complete story from The Baltimore Sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will it happen? Will the king of fish, the noble, glamorous salmon become another commercially-available genetically modified (GM) species? And if so, will you eat it?

The GM salmon grows twice as fast as its wild relative. Its genes have been artificially modified to include DNA from the Pacific Chinook and from an eel-like species so that the resulting fish keeps growing all year long. AquaBounty Technologies, the Massachusetts company behind the project, has waited over ten years for this. On Monday, the FDA held a public consultation on how to label the GM salmon so that the public is aware of what kind of fish it will be buying. A detailed scientific review didn’t find anything detrimental to human health or to the environment. It seems to be just a matter of time before we can buy GM salmon in the supermarket.

Critics fear that if the GM salmon escapes the confines of their farms, they may breed with wild salmon causing havoc in the natural food chain. Salmon feeds an enormous variety of animals, from humans to grizzly bears and eagles. Those fears are unfounded. The farms are inland, far from river ways. And even if they do escape or are placed in wild waters (ecoterrorism?), the GM salmon won’t interbreed since its eggs have been designed to develop into sterile females. So, no GM offspring is possible.

Read the complete story from NPR.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the center of a controversy over whether genetically modified salmon should be sold for consumption is a tiny Waltham company that has spent 15 years and $60 million working on the project.

AquaBounty Technologies, using a growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon, has created an Atlantic salmon that grows twice as fast as the conventional fish. It reaches full size in about 18 months, rather than the standard three years.

The company calls it AquAdvantage salmon. Concerned groups declared it “Frankenfish.’’

Earlier this month, the US Food and Drug Administration proclaimed the fish safe to eat, and public hearings took place this week. Opposition was swift and vocal. Critics say it poses risks to consumer health and the environment. They rallied in front of the White House, and a coalition has gathered more than 170,000 signatures in protest.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

by Jonathan Hemmerdinger
Special to Saving Seafood

WASHINGTON – September 23, 2010 –  The commercial fishing industry and environmentalists continue to disagree about the state of menhaden stocks after the release of data showing a significant uptick in the pace of 2010 menhaden landings.

According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, menhaden landings in the Atlantic Ocean—including the Chesapeake Bay—between May and the end of August were 45 percent higher than landings during the same period in 2009, and 32 percent higher than five-year average landings.

During the period, Atlantic purse seine vessels—most owned by Omega Protein—caught some 121,000 metric tons of menhaden, compared to some 83,000 metric tons in 2009. Omega operates a fleet of menhaden fishing boats and a menhaden “reduction” plant in Reedville, Va., where the oily fish are processed into omega-3 fish oil and livestock and aquaculture feed, among other products.

"Really good numbers are coming out of Reedville," said Ben Landry, Omega's director of public affairs'.  "Menhaden are out there in impressive numbers … The sky is not falling."

Landry, who said Omega has fished with the same number of boats and in comparable weather conditions as last year, added that the "doom and gloom" predicted by environmentalists "have so far shown to be exagerated"

Continuing saga

For years, Omega has sparred with environmentalists and recreational fishing groups, who say heavy menhaden landings have hurt the health of the already ailing Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States. They say low menhaden stocks have impacted species such as striped bass and sea birds, which eat menhaden, and they say the models used by scientists to assess menhaden stocks inadequately account for the dietary needs of other species.

The debate intensified in May, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission released its most-recent stock assessment.

The report said the menhaden fishery "is not overfished, nor is it experiencing overfishing," and that menhaden reproduction "appears to be adequate to produce the target number of eggs."

But the agency cautioned that menhaden fishing is "close" to the maximum rate at which the species can still replace itself and that the population of young menhaden has been low for decades. The report also said menhaden abundance has declined "steadily" since the early 1980s and that recruitment (the number of surviving offspring) is "relatively low."

Greenpeace reacts

Greenpeace ocean campaigner Phil Kline attributes Omega's strong landings not to health stocks, but to the efficiency of the company's vessels, guided by spotter planes.

The landings indicate "they were fishing in a body of water where the fish were very catchable," Kline said.

Kline said declaring the stock healthy based on recent landings requires "some pretty big extrapolations, especially given the most recent [stock] assessment."

He added that now is the perfect time to restrict fishing. Doing so would allow two-year-old fish to "grow and spawn and regrow the population."

The environmental factor

Government scientists say menhaden stocks are far more influenced by environmental factors—weather, for instance—than by commercial harvest.

"If you look at history of the stock, there is weak relationship between number of spawners and the number of young that are produced each year," said Joseph Smith, a fisheries biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Services.

Smith said some sixty percent of this year's catch have been 2-year old fish, which is in line with the agency's belief that menhaden reproduction was strong in 2008.

That suggests "that the 2008-year class is strong" and that menhaden are "generally abundant," Smith said.

Still, Smith concedes far more scientific study is needed before drawing definitive conclusions. He said his agency hopes to one day conduct coast wide air surveys of menhaden stocks.

Spotting more fish

Monty Deihl, general manager of Omega's Reedville reduction plant, said Omega's fishing spotter plane pilots and captains, some of whom have 40 years of fishing experience, have reported seeing "an ever increasing abundance of menhaden" this year.

"Our captains are seeing more fish in the lower portion of the Bay and outside the Bay," he said.

Deihl thinks the fishery continues to "look positive."

"Some people cry bleakness. I don't know if anyone here has seen that. It's the opposite."

Smith at NMFS said he has examined three years of flight logs from Omega's pilots.

While the information is anything but a "rigorous survey," pilots do seem to be "seeing more fish than in recent years."

NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) Northeast Fisheries Science Center is sponsoring guided public tours of the NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow on Friday, September 24th from 2:00 until 5:00 p.m. in Woods Hole, Mass.

The 209-foot, $54 million ship was built to meet the research requirements of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service and operates principally in the Northeast, supporting the research mission of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC.)

This is the first time since coming into service in 2007 that the vessel has made a port call in Woods Hole, where the NEFSC is headquartered. The vessel currently operates out of Newport, R.I. It replaced the NOAA Ship Albatross IV, which conducted fisheries research cruises in the Northeast from 1962 until her decommissioning in the fall of 2008.

Friday’s guided tours will include the ship’s main science and support labs, state-of-the-art fish handling station, and bridge. The ship will be accessible on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s pier, accessed by using the entrance between the Smith and Bigelow Laboratories on Water Street.

Scientists, technicians, and ship’s crew will be on hand with displays and demonstrations and ready to answer questions about the ship’s special design features such as its “quiet” hull, and its recent cruises. In addition to biological and oceanographic sampling, these cruises include work to develop new acoustic survey techniques, to better understand the stresses on marine mammals in an increasingly noisy ocean, and to track oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico during this summer's deepwater Macondo well blow-out.

Visitors to the ship must wear closed-toed shoes and adults need to bring a photo ID. Bags, backpacks, large purses and similar items may not be carried aboard. Secured storage will be provided for these items. Photography is allowed. Children must be accompanied by an adult. The ship is not wheelchair accessible. Visitors will board and debark over railed gangplanks. Doorway hatches have 15-inch thresholds that must be stepped over. Public parking in Woods Hole is limited to on-street, metered spaces.

The Henry B. Bigelow’s commanding officer is Commander Anne K. Lynch, a NOAA Corps officer. The NOAA Corps is one of the nation’s seven uniformed services. Officers, who are also trained scientists or engineers, command many of the agency’s research and survey ships and aircraft, and serve in assignments on shore, bringing their operational expertise to NOAA programs. The ship’s civilian crew includes highly skilled wage mariners.

In December 2008, a $2.3 million dredging project in the Woods Hole outer harbor was completed, sufficiently deepening a shoal area to allow safe passage of the Bigelow as well as other deeper-draft research vessels bound for science institution piers in the village. Sand from that dredging project was donated to the Town of Falmouth for nourishment of Menauhant Beach in Falmouth.

The Henry B. Bigelow was named for the pioneering Boston-born oceanographer in a NOAA –sponsored naming contest won by a team from Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, N.H. Although Bigelow‘s connection to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he was the founding director, is well known today he was also deeply connected to the federal fisheries service, which originated in Woods Hole in 1871.

Bigelow’s studies in the Gulf of Maine, considered landmarks, were supported and published by the federal fisheries service. The field work on which they are based was conducted aboard federal fisheries service research vessels including the steamer Albatross, the schoonerGrampus, and the Halycon.

 

 

 

 

They may have one of the toughest and most romanticised occupations on the blue planet, but many people are “suspicious” of those who make their living from the sea, a leading US marine scientist has said in Galway.

It may be due to a dearth of knowledge about the marine environment – but technology tends to be trusted more than the people who actually work the grounds, Dr Steve Murawski, chief science adviser with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), has suggested.

Murawski, who was Noaa’s adviser on US president Barack Obama’s Ocean Policy Task Force, was keynote speaker at an international conference hosted last week by the Marine Institute in Galway on fishery- dependent information.

Read the complete story form Irish Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In responding to the growing furor over the public release of a scientifically dubious and overly rosy  federal report about the fate of the oil that BP spilled in the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA director Jane Lubchenco has repeatedly fallen back on one particular line of defense — that independent scientists had given it their stamp of approval.

Back at the report's unveiling  on August 4, Lubchenco spoke of a "peer review of the calculations that went into this by both other federal and non-federal scientists." On Thursday afternoon, she told reporters on a conference call: "The report and the calculations that went into it were reviewed by independent scientists." The scientists, she said, were listed at the end of the report.

But all the scientists on that list contacted by the Huffington Post for comment this week said the exact same thing: That although they provided some input to NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), they in no way reviewed the report, and could not vouch for it.

Read the complete story from The Huffington Post.