Saving Seafood

Massachusetts Cold-stunned Sea Turtles: A Sign of Climate Change?

June 19, 2024 — Four species of sea turtles—Kemp’s ridley, loggerhead, green, and leatherback—are seasonal residents of New England. They arrive in May and June, feeding in our coastal waters through the summer and early fall. When temperatures drop in mid-fall, these reptiles need to migrate south into warmer waters for the winter. However, sometimes their migration is affected by geographic barriers: The hook shape of Cape Cod can trap them within Cape Cod Bay for weeks to months. This puts turtles at risk of being exposed to waters that are too cold for them.

Cold-stunned Turtles Need Rescue

Since they are cold-blooded, sea turtles’ body temperatures mirror those of surrounding waters. When turtles have a low body temperature, they stop feeding; their body systems slow down; their immune systems become suppressed. This is all part of a condition called cold stunning. When cold-stunned turtles wash up on local beaches, they need immediate rescue or they will not survive. Luckily,the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network collects sick, injured, and cold-stunned turtles from beaches and brings them to rehabilitation facilities for medical care.

In Massachusetts, Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary rescues cold-stunned sea turtles off Cape Cod beaches. They bring live turtles to two Massachusetts rehabilitation facilities: the New England Aquarium and the National Marine Life Center. There, turtles are slowly warmed up, given medical care, reintroduced to swimming and feeding, and stabilized. It can take weeks to months for these debilitated turtles to be healthy enough to be released again into the ocean.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

How a microscopic coastal creature may become deadlier in our changing climate

June 18, 2024 — Between 2014 and 2015, a “blob” of record-breaking warm water traversed the west coast of the U.S., gaining media attention as the warm temperatures wreaked havoc on the bottom of the food chain, causing fisheries like sockeye, pink, and coho salmon to collapse and thousands of sea lions and sea birds to starve.

However, amid this devastation, one microscopic creature thrived or “bloomed”—a neurotoxin-producing diatom called Pseudo-nitzschia—causing devastating multi-million dollar losses for many West Coast commercial and tribal crab and shellfish fisheries that had to shut down due to the risk of toxin-contaminated seafood.

The toxin produced by Pseudo-nitzschia, domoic acid, can cause amnesic shellfish poisoning in humans, with symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea, headache, loss of short-term memory, motor weakness, seizures, and irregular heart rhythms.

Beyond the clear ecological and economic devastation, this 2015 blob-associated harmful algal bloom also left the scientific community in shock. The prevailing understanding was that toxic Pseudo-nitzschia blooms were associated with nutrient-rich, cold-water pulses of water seasonally brought up or “upwelled” from the depths along the Pacific west coast.

With the massive hot blob of water hovering over the coastline in 2015, there was little to no upwelling. So how did a toxic bloom occur during this massive heat wave?

Read the full article at PHYS.org

Climate change is causing low-oxygen levels in Pacific Northwest ocean, report says

June 17, 2024 — A recent report out of Oregon State University paints a picture of how ocean oxygen levels have decreased in the Pacific Northwest over the years.

The report found near-bottom levels of dissolved oxygen in the waters off of Washington, Oregon and Northern California in 2021. JPR’s Roman Battaglia talked to Jack Barth, professor of oceanography at OSU, about his report and what these low oxygen levels mean for marine life.

Roman Battaglia: One thing I noticed in this study was that the levels seem pretty different in different parts of the coast. For example, in northern California and the southern Oregon coast, the oxygen levels seem much higher than they are in southern Washington and the northern Oregon coast. But why is there so much variability?

Jack Barth: That was the second big outcome of the paper, is that there really are regional differences. And importantly, we can explain them by oceanographic processes. So that higher oxygen level off southern Oregon, that’s because the continental shelf is relatively narrow. So it can flush water on and off pretty effectively from the deep ocean and flush out that low oxygen water so it stays high. And it looks like a pretty good area for fisheries. As you get into the wider continental shelves off central Oregon and Washington, the water sticks around longer; it doesn’t get flushed off as effectively. So that keeps those low oxygen waters near the bottom on those wider shelves.

Read the full transcript at OPB

The warming ocean is leaving coastal economies in hot water

June 12, 2024 — Ocean-related tourism and recreation supports more than 320,000 jobs and $13.5 billion in goods and services in Florida. But a swim in the ocean became much less attractive in the summer of 2023, when the water temperatures off Miami reached as high as 101 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius).

The future of some jobs and businesses across the ocean economy have also become less secure as the ocean warms and damage from storms, sea-level rise, and marine heat waves increases.

Ocean temperatures have been heating up over the past century, and hitting record highs for much of the past year, driven primarily by the rise in greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Scientists estimate that more than 90 percent of the excess heat produced by human activities has been taken up by the ocean.

That warming, hidden for years in data of interest only to oceanographers, is now having profound consequences for coastal economies around the world.

Understanding the role of the ocean in the economy is something I have been working on for more than 40 years, currently at the Center for the Blue Economy of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Mostly, I study the positive contributions of the ocean, but this has begun to change, sometimes dramatically. Climate change has made the ocean a threat to the economy in multiple ways.

Read the full article at the New Hampshire Bulletin

ALASKA: Climate change disruptions to Alaska marine fisheries scrutinized at Kodiak workshop

June 12, 2024 — In the marine waters off Alaska’s coast, climate change is triggering disruptions that can be dramatic and sudden. For fishery officials, that presents a quandary: How can that be suitably addressed by a fishery management system that is legally required to be cautious and deliberate and for which policy changes can take several years to carry out?

That was the question presented at a two-day climate scenarios workshop held Wednesday and Thursday in Kodiak by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The workshop was in conjunction with the council’s June meeting.

There were repeated calls among workshop participants — fishers, fishery managers, scientists and others involved in the Alaska seafood industry — for more extensive and frequent federal data collection. But there were also calls for the way data is collected to change.

Surveys used to set seafood harvests in the federal waters of the Bering Sea, around the Aleutiansand in theGulf of Alaska are conducted by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries service.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

PNW coast suffers from low oxygen, study finds. It’s becoming the norm

June 12, 2024 — About half of the water near the seafloor off the Pacific Northwest coast experienced low-oxygen conditions in 2021, according to a new study.

And those hypoxic conditions, which are expected to become common with global warming, threaten the food web, the study found.

The study from Oregon State University, published in Nature Scientific Reports, used data from 2021 to map out oxygen levels across the bottom 32 feet of the Pacific Northwest continental shelf.

The research illuminates how the planet’s warming has fundamentally changed the ocean’s annual cycles and ecosystems, endangering culturally and economically valuable species like the Dungeness crab, which was worth an annual average of $45 million from 2014 and 2019.

Read the full article at The Seattle Times

A fast-warming Gulf of Maine is rising faster than ever

June 6, 2024 — The fast-warming Gulf of Maine is rising faster than ever, with average monthly sea levels in Portland, Bar Harbor and Eastport breaking record after record over the last two years and driving storm surges and king-tide flooding higher and farther inland.

“The rate of sea level rise is increasing,” said Maine State Geologist Steve Dickson. “It’s no longer an inch per decade. It’s more. The tides now are about 7 to 8 inches above what they were when my grandfather was a kid playing on the shores of Jonesport.”

On Wednesday, during a Maine Climate Council briefing, Dickson said that future generations will be dealing with a few more feet, not inches. It was the third in a series of scientific updates in advance of the second edition of “Maine Won’t Wait,” the state’s climate action plan.

About 90% of global warming is occurring in the ocean, causing the water’s internal heat to increase, according to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Heat stored in the ocean causes the water to expand, which is responsible for one-third to one-half of global sea level rise.

The last 10 years were the ocean’s warmest decade since at least the 1800s, and 2023 was its warmest recorded year, according to NASA. In the Gulf of Maine, sea surface temperatures in 2021 and 2022 were the warmest on record. The Gulf of Maine was in a marine heat wave for 97% of 2022.

Read the full article at Yahoo News!

Climate change forces 3rd gen fisherman to rethink this year

June 6, 2024 — Every June, fisherman Scott Hawkins and his small crew set sail from a marina in San Diego and travel hundreds of miles, scouring the water, hoping for a good catch of albacore tuna. It can take hours or days to stumble upon a school of them.

But when they do, everyone springs into action at once.

The men grab fishing poles taller than they are, stand in a row on the edge of the boat and cast their lines into the water. Every few seconds, one of them pulls up a fat, two-foot-long albacore tuna and hoists it over his shoulder onto the pile. Every thud is another one landing atop the dozens already flapping on deck.

Read the full article at KCRW

White House Releases New Strategies to Advance Sustainable Ocean Management

June 5, 2024 — The following was released by the White House:

This National Ocean Month, the White House announced three new federal strategies that advance President Biden’s commitment to conserving and protecting our ocean, and harnessing its power to strengthen our economy and address the climate and nature crises. A thriving ocean holds immense benefits for all life, and President Biden has made clear that preserving this natural resource is key to protecting our livelihoods. Since Day One, the Biden-Harris Administration has advanced America’s leadership in ocean health and resilience, environmental justice, and policies that strengthen research opportunities. Today’s announcements reflect the President’s push to address critical challenges that threaten the ocean’s future, including overfishing, warming from climate change, increased acidity due to carbon emissions, and loss of biodiversity.

“Earth’s ocean make life possible. It hosts vibrant ecosystems, feeds billions of people, sustains livelihoods, and connects us all,” said Arati Prabhakar, President Biden’s chief advisor on science and technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). “These reports point the way to work with this precious natural resource to address inequities and injustice, and to meet the challenges of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss.”

“President Biden has been leading the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in history while accelerating locally-led conservation efforts, creating good paying jobs, and enhancing coastal community resilience to the effects of climate change,” said Brenda Mallory, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). “The reports announced today help us better understand how to achieve our shared conservation and ecosystem restoration goals, and integrate climate action and environmental justice into a sustainable ocean economy.”

Each of today’s strategies outlines a whole-of-government approach that will lead to effective ocean-based solutions by:

Achieving a sustainable ocean economy

The U.S. National Strategy for a Sustainable Ocean Economy will guide U.S. ocean policies to conserve healthy ecosystems, support resilient communities, and advance sustainable economic development. This strategy focuses on how to build a sustainable ocean economy that will increase the quality of life for all communities and allow ecosystems and economies to thrive while prioritizing the effective creation, management, and dissemination of knowledge and information, including Indigenous Knowledge, basic and applied research, and ocean data.

Protecting and restoring ocean life

The National Ocean Biodiversity Strategy will expand and use biodiversity information to help protect and conserve marine ecosystems and maximize the ocean’s benefits to people. This strategy aims to understand and restore ocean life, which provides food, clean air and water, climate regulation, and cultural identity to people across the country.

Using environmental DNA (eDNA) technology to study ocean life

The National Aquatic eDNA Strategy will advance fast, low-cost, and effective eDNA technologies to understand life in the ocean and how it’s changing. Analyzing the DNA in a body of water to identify the species present is much more efficient than conducting traditional censuses of different species. The strategy outlines opportunities to improve and deploy eDNA processes to inform the development of more effective ocean policies.

These three new strategies complement actions taken previously by the Biden-Harris Administration to achieve a healthy ocean that supports people and the economy: The Ocean Climate Action Plan (OCAP), the first-ever comprehensive national strategy to harness the power of the ocean and coasts to address and respond to the climate crisis, and the Ocean Justice Strategy,  which identifies barriers and opportunities to fully integrate environmental justice principles into the federal government’s ocean activities. Since its release, federal agencies have advanced ocean actions across the government to accelerate nature-based solutions and enhance community resilience to changes in the ocean environment, including ones driven by climate change.

Read the release here

Environmental groups file new challenge to yet-unbuilt Alaska LNG export project

June 3, 2024 — Two environmental groups filed a new legal challenge to the Biden administration’s approval of a yet-to-be-built project that would send the Alaska North Slope’s vast reserves of natural gas to markets.

In a petition filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club argued that federal agencies failed to properly consider harms that the massive natural gas project would cause to Endangered Species Act-listed animals living in the affected marine areas: polar bears, Cook Inlet beluga whales and Eastern North Pacific right whales.

The petition was filed against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, along with the agencies’ parent departments, the Department of the Interior and Department of Commerce.

The Biden administration last year renewed an approval of exports from the project, which has been pursued in various forms since the 1970s but never built. The current plan is being promoted by the state-owned Alaska Gasline Development Corp. It proposes a 42-inch-diameter pipeline running about 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope to tidewater at Cook Inlet, where a new facility would convert the product to liquefied natural gas and load it onto tanker vessels for export to Asian markets.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon