Andrew Pershing Archives - Saving Seafood

MAINE: Ocean temps full of ‘surprises’ – and not the good kind

October 2, 2019 — Maine fishermen face plenty of challenges including proposed whale protection rules, depredation of the state’s softshell clam stock by invasive green crabs, restrictions on seaweed harvesting and rising operating expenses.

It isn’t only the cost of running a fishing operation that’s rising, though.

Two new, recently published studies report that marine ecosystems around the world are experiencing unusually high ocean temperatures more frequently than researchers previously expected. These warming events, including marine heat waves, are disrupting marine ecosystems and the people who depend on them.

Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, led the study “Challenges to natural and human communities from surprising ocean temperatures,” published in early August. Working with him on the project were researchers from several Maine-based institutions as well as scientists from laboratories in California and Colorado.

Pershing previously identified the Gulf of Maine as one of the most rapidly warming ecosystems in the global ocean. This time around, Pershing and his colleagues examined 65 large marine ecosystems between 1854 and 2018 to identify the frequency of “surprising” ocean temperatures, which they defined as an annual mean temperature substantially above the mean for the previous three decades.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Study: Maine Fishermen Should Plan For Accelerated Ocean Warming

August 6, 2019 — Climate change is triggering more and more surprise variations in temperatures in the world’s oceans, including off Maine, and those spikes are changing ecosystems in ways that looking at the past wouldn’t predict.

That’s one of the conclusions of a new study out Monday from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, which finds that the bigger-than-expected temperature swings are benefiting some species while hurting others, and that has effects that can be felt up the food chain by the humans that depend on those ecosystems.

Dr. Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at GMRI and the lead author of the study, spoke with All Things Considered Host Nora Flaherty about the changes.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Webinar Recording Available: Crafting Guidance for Adapting to Shifting Fish Populations

May 13, 2019 — The following was released by Lenfest Ocean Program:

What lessons can be learned from the management practices in other regions and nations to inform allocation strategies for shifting stocks along the U.S. Northeast and Mid-Atlantic coasts? On Tuesday, April 23, the Lenfest Ocean Program hosted a webinar featuring Dr. Andrew Pershing and his colleagues from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to discuss their project characterizing different fishery allocation systems from around the world and their potential for application in the U.S.

The recording for the one-hour webinar is now available online and can be accessed on the Lenfest Ocean Program website. To share your own experience with fishery allocation issues under climate change, or if you have questions, comments or suggestions on the study, please complete this survey. Feel free to email Willy Goldsmith (wgoldsmith@lenfestocean.org) with any further questions.

Changing climate to put further pressure on New England, federal report predicts

November 26, 2018 — New England’s forests, fisheries and cultural traditions are already experiencing significant disruptions from a changing climate and will face additional transformation over the coming decades, according to a federal report released Friday.

Northeastern states are seeing some of the largest changes in the nation, yet conditions are shifting even faster in New England than the region as a whole, in some instances. Annual average temperatures in New England, for example, rose by roughly 3 degrees since the beginning of the last century compared to 1.8 degrees in the contiguous United States.

Those temperature changes – combined with shifts in precipitation levels and rapid warming in the Gulf of Maine – will continue to impact the health, economy and aging infrastructure of the region.

“For example, because much of the historical development of industry and commerce in New England occurred along rivers, canals, coasts, and other bodies of water, these areas often have a higher density of contaminated sites, waste management facilities, and petroleum storage facilities that are potentially vulnerable to flooding,” reads the report from 13 federal agencies.

“As a result, increases in flood frequency or severity could increase the spread of contaminants into soils and waterways, resulting in increased risks to the health of nearby ecosystems, animals, and people – a set of phenomena well documented following Superstorm Sandy,” the report says.

While the political debate over climate change continues, there is little doubt among fishermen or the scientists who work with them that the Gulf of Maine is changing. Maine fishermen now routinely see species once found only in southern or mid-Atlantic states while stocks of northern shrimp and cod have been depleted or moved north to cooler waters.

The report cited numerous examples of New England fishermen attempting to adapt to those changes and acknowledged that the arrival of new species will create new opportunities. But the authors also warned that markets, shoreside infrastructure as well as regulatory restriction on what fishermen can catch are often slower to respond.

Scientists also predict that species particularly important to New England face a bleaker future because of rising acidity levels as the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Why Is the Gulf of Maine Warming Faster Than 99% of the Ocean?

November 13, 2018 — Late last month, four endangered sea turtles washed ashore in northern Cape Cod, marking an early onset to what has now become a yearly event: the sea turtle stranding season.

These turtles—in last month’s case, Kemp’s ridley sea turtles—venture into the Gulf of Maine during warm months, but they can become hypothermic and slow moving when colder winter waters abruptly arrive, making it hard to escape.

“They are enjoying the warm water, and then all of a sudden the cold comes, and they can’t get out fast enough,” said Andrew Pershing, an oceanographer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine.

Thanks to record-breaking summer water temperatures that quickly transition to cooler conditions, an expanded sea turtle stranding season is just one facet of a new normal for the Gulf of Maine, Pershing explained. And this new normal is a striking contrast to prior conditions.

This year, the Gulf of Maine has experienced only 45 days with what have not been considered heat wave temperatures. Such persistent warmth, scientists warn, can set off a series of other cascading effects on the marine life and fisheries that have historically defined the culture and economy of this region’s coastline.

Read the full story at Earth & Space Science News

Study: Maine’s lobster population will drop but fishery ‘not doomed’

January 26, 2018 — The lobster population in the Gulf of Maine could decline by nearly two-thirds by 2050, according to a scientific study released this week.

As bad as that sounds, scientists and industry representatives say the demise of the most valuable single-species fishery in the country is unlikely.

“It doesn’t mean Maine’s lobster fishery is doomed,” said Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer at Gulf of Maine Research Institute and a co-author of the study.

The predicted decline was included in the results of a study conducted by GMRI and other research groups about the effect of conservation measures on lobster fisheries in the Gulf of Maine and off the southern New England coast.

The lobster population could decline between 40 percent and 62 percent over the next 32 years, depending on how much waters continue to warm in the Gulf of Maine, researchers found. The total stock of lobster for the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank is in the neighborhood of 300 million lobsters, according to the most recent stock assessment by Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

The study found that lobster conservation measures in Maine aimed at protecting reproductive females and oversize adult lobsters in general, which date back to the early 20th century, have helped amplify the temporary benefit of warming seas to the lobster population in the gulf, which is warming more quickly than 99.9 percent of the world’s oceans.

In comparison, the lack of similar measures in southern New England hurt the lobster population south of Cape Cod now that waters there have become too warm to help support the growth of juvenile lobsters.

“Maintaining measures to preserve large reproductive females can mitigate negative impacts of warming on the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery in future decades,” researchers wrote in the study, which was published Jan. 22 in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If the gulf’s lobster population does drop by 40 or even 60 percent over the next 32 years, the decline will be more gradual than the boom that preceded it. At that decrease, the gulf’s average lobster populations would be “similar to those in the early 2000s,” GMRI officials said.

From 1997 through 2008, Maine’s annual harvests fluctuated between 47 million and 75 million pounds. It is only within the past 10 years, since Maine lobstermen harvested 64 million pounds in 2007, that statewide landings have doubled.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Research Concludes Maine Conservation Technique Helped Drive Lobster Population Boom

January 24, 2018 — Lobster conservation techniques pioneered by Maine fishermen helped drive a population boom that’s led to record landings this century. That’s the conclusion of new, peer-reviewed research published today.

The paper also finds that lobstermen in southern New England could have used the same techniques to prevent or at least slow the collapse of their fisheries — even in the face of climate change — but they didn’t.

Cape Elizabeth lobsterman Curt Brown has been hauling traps since he was a kid. He says he quickly learned that when he pulled up a female lobster, covered in eggs, he was looking at the fishery’s future.

Maine lobstermen throw back lobsters like these, which produce eggs at a high rate, but other lobstermen do not

“You get used to seeing lobsters and then you see a lobster with eggs and it’s whole new animal,” he says. The underside of the tail is just covered with eggs.”

Since 1917, Maine lobstermen like Brown have used a technique known as “V-notching”: when they found an egg-bearing female in their traps, they would clip a “V” into the end of its tail, and throw it back. The next time it turns up in someone’s trap, even if it’s not showing eggs, the harvester knows it’s a fertile female, and throws it back. Later, the lobstermen also pushed the Legislature to impose limits on the size of the lobster they can keep — because the biggest ones produce the most eggs.

“I use my measure right here, right on the measure, at the end of the measure, is a little tool in the shape of a ‘V,'” Brown says. “So you just grab the lobster underside of the tail just like that and it cuts a V-notch right in the tail. Quick, painless, throw her back in and let her do more of her job.”

And those fertile females have been doing that job very well in Maine. Since the 1980s, lobster abundance here has grown by more than 500 percent, with landings shooting up from fewer than 20 million pounds in 1985, to more than 120 million pounds in 2015 with a value of more than a half billion dollars.

Read the full story at WNPR

Gulf of Maine lobster population past its peak, study says, and a big drop is due

January 23, 2018 — The Gulf of Maine lobster population will shrink 40 to 62 percent over the next 30 years because of rising ocean temperatures, according to a study published Monday.

As the water temperature rises – the northwest Atlantic ocean is warming at three times the global average rate – the number of lobster eggs that survive their first year of life will decrease, and the number of small-bodied lobster predators that eat those that remain will increase. Those effects will cause the lobster population to fall through 2050, according to a study by researchers at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.

Looking ahead 30 years, the researchers predict a lobster population “rewind” to the harvests documented in the early 2000s. In 2002, 6,800 license holders landed 63 million pounds of lobster valued at $210.9 million. By comparison, 5,660 license holders harvested 131 million pounds valued at $533.1 million in 2016.

“In our model, the Gulf of Maine started to cross over the optimal water temperature for lobster sometime in 2010, and the lobster population peaked three or four years ago,” said Andrew Pershing, GMRI’s chief scientific officer and one of the authors of the study. “We’ve seen this huge increase in landings, a huge economic boom, but we are coming off of that peak now, returning to a more traditional fishery.”

Industry leaders have been girding themselves for a decline in landings ever since the recent boom began. While not everybody believes the decline will happen that fast or fall so much, most lobstermen admit the impact that warming water has had on their fishery, said Dave Cousens, the president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. It drove up landings by pushing lobsters into the Gulf of Maine, and over time it will drive lobsters out to colder offshore waters or the Canadian Maritimes, he said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Researchers find summer heat’s lasting longer in the Gulf of Maine

The warmer conditions endure two months longer than in the early 1980s, posing threats to the food chain and raising risks from more powerful hurricanes.

September 11, 2017 — New scientific research has revealed that summer temperatures in the Gulf of Maine, the second fastest warming part of the world’s oceans, are persisting two months longer than they were as recently as the early 1980s.

The findings, by a Maine-led team of scientists, have ramifications for marine life, fishermen and the strength of hurricanes, which appear in late summer and are fueled by warm water.

“What we found was quite astonishing in that almost all the warming is in the late summer and the winter is not contributing very much at all,” says the project’s lead scientist, University of Maine oceanographer Andrew Thomas. “You can think of impacts all across the food chain, from animals that have actual temperature tolerances to the distribution of species, their prey, and even their predators, not to mention the bacteria and viruses, which we have no idea how they will react.”

The researchers used daily satellite readings collected between 1982 and 2014 to map changes in sea surface temperatures along the Eastern Seaboard from North Carolina to Nova Scotia, breaking out the data by month to reveal seasonal differences in warming rates. They weren’t surprised to find the strongest warming in the Gulf of Maine and adjacent Scotia Shelf – team members had worked with Andrew Pershing of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland to demonstrate this in a 2015 study – but the profound seasonal differences were unexpected.

The satellite data show warming trends across the Gulf of Maine for every month and very sharp increases during July, August and September, especially off the Maine coast. While the Gulf of Maine warmed by an average of 0.72 degrees Fahrenheit per decade during the 33-year period, the warming rate was twice that in the months of July through September, or 1.44 degrees F per decade.

Read the full story from the Portland Press Herald at Central Maine

Recognition Given to Provincetown Researcher

October 18th, 2016 — The Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown is announcing that one of their researchers has been selected to receive a Fisheries Leadership award.

The recognition, the John Annala Fishery Leadership Award, will be given to Owen Nichols, the Director of the Center’s Marine Fisheries Research Program.

The award honors an early career scientist who is doing research that is relevant to Fisheries in New England is given by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, it was established in 2013.

It is named for the Gulf of Maine’s first chief scientific officer.

The current Chief Scientific Officer at the Maine Institute, Andrew Pershing, says that Nichols’s research on the ecology of squid, an important emerging species, and his commitment to doing collaborative research within the fishing industry are a great example of the kind of work the award was meant to recognize.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com