Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: The San Francisco Bay Once Teemed With Oysters. What Happened?

March 5, 2021 — Oysters are a controversial food.

Some people slurp them down by the dozen, while others would rather go hungry for days than be forced to eat a single slimy specimen.

As one KQED staffer put it: “No matter how fresh they are, no matter where they come from, no matter what is put on them, it reminds me of being congested and having snot just slide down my throat.”

Bay Curious listener Joseph Fletcher falls into the first category: The San Francisco resident loves oysters and has been wondering if he’ll ever get the chance to eat one grown in San Francisco Bay.

“Will oysters ever make a comeback in the bay and return to the numbers they had back in the days before the Gold Rush?” Fletcher wanted to know.

There’s one type of oyster that’s indigenous to the San Francisco Bay, and that’s the Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida). It’s named after Olympia, Washington, though these small, tangy oysters can be found up and down the west coast from Alaska all the way down into central Mexico.

Read the full story at KQED

West Coast Seafood Processors ‘Cautiously Hopeful’ for the Remainder of 2021

March 5, 2021 — The West Coast Seafood Processors Association (WCSPA) said seafood processors are hoping to see improvements in 2021 as the vaccination process rolls out nationwide and restaurants begin to reopen.

Both fishermen and seafood processors are often the backbones of coastal communities, the WCSPA explained. The industries provide economic stability and generate thousands of local year-round jobs.

Read the full story at Seafood News

OSU researcher leads NOAA-funded project to study West Coast response to ocean acidification

March 4, 2021 — The following was released by Oregon State University:

An Oregon State University researcher is part of a new federally supported project investigating how communities along the West Coast are adapting to ocean acidification, with the goal of determining what they need to be more resilient.

Ana K. Spalding, an assistant professor of marine and coastal policy in OSU’s College of Liberal Arts, is leading a team looking into how shellfish industry participants in several towns along the Oregon and California coasts are responding to ocean acidification and where gaps in policy or resources have left them vulnerable.

The $1 million, three-year interdisciplinary project is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through its Ocean Acidification Program. At OSU, Spalding is working with Erika Wolters, assistant professor of public policy, and Master of Public Policy students Victoria Moreno, Emily Griffith and Ryan Hasert.

“The goal of this project is to better align policy responses with the immediate and very local needs of shellfish-reliant communities,” Spalding said. “This is both understanding that vulnerability and proactively thinking, ‘What can we do to respond to better support members of the shellfish industry and their needs?’”

Ocean acidification and its impact on shellfish first became a major concern for West Coast farmers after a 2007 mass oyster larvae die-off at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Netarts Bay, Oregon. OSU scientists definitively linked that die-off to increased carbon dioxide in the water in a 2012 study.

Read the full release here

PFMC: Notice of availability: Salmon Preseason Report I

March 1, 2021 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

This is the second report in an annual series of four reports prepared by the Salmon Technical Team of the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) to document and help guide ocean fishery salmon management off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California. The report focuses on Chinook, coho, and pink salmon stocks that have been important in determining Council fisheries in recent years, and on stocks listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) with established National Marine Fisheries Service ESA consultation standards. This report will be formally reviewed at the Council’s March 2021 meeting.

Please visit the Council’s website to download Preseason Report I:  Stock Abundance Analysis and Environmental Assessment Part 1 for 2021 Ocean Salmon Fishery Regulations (Published March 2021).

For further information:

  • Please contact Pacific Fishery Management Council staff officer Robin Ehlke at 503-820-2410; toll-free 1-866-806-7204.

Pacific Sardine Landings May Shift North as Ocean Warms, New Projections Show

February 25, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Pacific sardines are a small but sometimes numerous fish closely intertwined with California’s fishing history. A new study linking climate change and the northern sardine stock fishery shows that they may shift north along the West Coast as the ocean warms.

A climate-driven northward shift by sardines could cause a decline in landings of the northern sardine stock by 20 to 50 percent in the next 60 years. These changes would affect historic California fishing ports such as San Pedro and Moss Landing, according to the new research published in Fisheries Oceanography. The study did not examine whether southern sardine stock would also shift northward, potentially offsetting this decline in landings. In turn, landings at northern port cities such as Astoria, Oregon, and Westport, Washington, are projected to benefit.

Researchers examined three possible “climate futures.” The warmest had the most pessimistic outcomes, with total sardine landings in all West Coast states declining 20 percent by 2080.

Understanding climate-driven shifts in habitat helps predict impacts on landings

The study translates environmental shifts into possible impacts on fishing communities and coastal economies. Sardines have historically gone through “boom and bust” changes in their population. Their numbers off the West Coast have remained low in recent years, with the West Coast sardine fishery closed since 2015. This research does not project changes in the abundance of sardines. Instead, it shows that climate-driven shifts in their habitat may have a significant impact on landings at historically important ports.

“As the marine environment changes, so too will the distribution of marine species,” said James Smith, a research scientist with the University of Santa Cruz affiliated with NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “But linking future changes in the distribution of species with impacts on the fishing fleet has been challenging. Hopefully our study can provide information about potential impacts in coming decades, and thereby inform strategies to mitigate these impacts.”

Read the full release here

CALIFORNIA: Innovative fishing gear is being tested to reduce impact on whales and sea turtles

February 22, 2021 — A new collaborative project between environmental groups, the state, scientists, and Dungeness crab fishers is testing innovative new gear designed to reduce the impact of whales and sea turtles getting caught in fishing gear.

This is in response to California’s recent state regulations to reduce the risk of endangered whales and sea turtles getting caught in commercial Dungeness crab gear. The regulations went into effect last November, and when high numbers of humpback whales were sighted off the coast near San Francisco and Monterey Bay, the opening of the commercial Dungeness crab season was delayed by about a month.

Since 2014, the number of interactions between whales and fishing gear has been historically high. In 2019, for example, 26 whales were entangled off the West Coast, 17 of which were humpback whales.

“There’s a vertical line attached to the trap that goes to the buoys at the surface,” said Greg Wells of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation who is managing the collaborative gear-testing research project. “That’s the part that poses an entanglement risk for whales and other marine life.”

Read the full story at The Monterey Herald

Researchers demonstrate new method to track genetic diversity of salmon and trout

February 19, 2021 — Scientists at Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service have demonstrated that DNA extracted from water samples from rivers across Oregon and Northern California can be used to estimate genetic diversity of Pacific salmon and trout.

The findings, just published in the journal Molecular Ecology, have important implications for conservation and management of these , which are threatened by human activities, including those exacerbating climate change.

“There has been a dearth of this kind of data across the Northwest,” said Kevin Weitemier, a postdoctoral fellow at Oregon State and lead author of the paper. “This allows us to get a quick snapshot of multiple populations and species all at once.”

In addition to demonstrating that environmental DNA, or eDNA, can be used to measure , the researchers also made unexpected discoveries about the history of these species, including a connection that links watersheds in northern and southern Oregon.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Ropeless gear bill introduced in California statehouse

February 17, 2021 — A bill to require the use of ropeless pop-up gear in Dungeness crab and other trap fisheries by November 2025 was introduced into the California State Assembly on Thursday, Feb. 11.

Dubbed the Whale Entanglement Prevention Act, fishermen say the passage of such a law would be a death knell for the iconic and recently embattled Dungeness crab fishery. But at this point, there isn’t much fear among the fleet, as the bill could be dead in the water.

“I think we’re going to kill it,” said Ben Platt, a Crescent City-based fisherman and president of the California Coast Crab Association. “It’s not going to make it out of committee.”

Assemblymember Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) introduced the bill, AB-534, with two environmental organizations as cosponsors, Social Compassion in Legislation and the Center for Biological Diversity. The latter group filed a federal suit against the state of California in October 2017, arguing an increase in whale entanglements in the Dungeness crab fishery violated the Endangered Species Act.

The spike in whale entanglements from 2015 to 2017 has been attributed to climate change and an extreme marine heatwave that caused ecosystem shifts and habitat compression.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

In the fight to save the vaquita, conservationists take on cartels

February 17, 2021 — From above, the Sea of Cortez is a picture of serenity: turquoise waters lapping against rose-tinted bluffs and soft sand beaches. But down below, beneath the water’s surface, a war is raging.

Each year, typically between late November and May, huge gillnets — some stretching more than 600 meters (2,000 feet), or the length of five and a half football fields — are dropped into the waters to catch totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi). This critically endangered species is illegally fished for its prized swim bladders, which can fetch prices between $20,000 and $80,000 per kilo in China. While gillnets are highly effective at catching totoaba, they also catch just about everything else, including another critically endangered species: the vaquita (Phocoena sinus).

The vaquita is a bathtub-sized porpoise with silvery-gray skin and panda-like eyes that lives exclusively in a small section of the northern Gulf of California, close to the town of San Felipe in Baja California, Mexico. Right now, experts say there may only be about nine vaquitas left, despite the Mexican government spending more than $100 million to aid its recovery.

“The vaquita issue, in my opinion, is an example of epic, epic failure of conservation,” Andrea Crosta, executive director of Earth League International (ELI), an NGO that investigates wildlife crime, told Mongabay in an interview. “I don’t think rhinos and elephants combined have $100 million … and yet the vaquitas went from a few hundred individuals to … nobody knows how many now. Probably 12, 10, maybe less.”

But Crosta says it’s not the fishers deploying the gillnets that are the biggest threat to the vaquitas — it’s the people organizing the illegal trade of totoabas behind the scenes. They’re the ones placing the gillnets into the fishermen’s hands, he said.

Read the full story at Mongabay