Saving Seafood

Scientists Identify Ways to Account for Effects of Climate Change on Fish Stock Estimates

February 10, 2024 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Climate-driven changes in the timing of pollock spawning and migration can affect the timing of when fish aggregate in areas where surveys are conducted to monitor their abundance. This can affect survey estimates. It also complicates efforts to assess pollock stock status and sustainably manage fisheries because survey estimates are a data source for preparing annual stock assessments. However, NOAA Fisheries scientists have developed a new method to address climate-driven mismatches in survey timing and when fish gather to spawn. This has helped to improve the accuracy of Alaska pollock population estimates.

“Climate change is causing fish and other species to shift their distributions and behavior in response to warming ocean conditions all around the world,” said Lauren Rogers, fishery biologist and lead author of a new paper published today in ICES Journal of Marine Science. “We now have a new tool to support climate-ready fisheries management.”

Collaboration Across Scientific Disciplines Led to Success

From 2017 to 2019, scientists saw different trends in the pollock estimates collected in Alaska Fisheries Science Center surveys in the Gulf of Alaska. Some surveys showed declines in biomass, while one other—the Shelikof Strait acoustic-trawl survey—showed a steep increase. This annual winter acoustic-trawl survey is designed to measure pollock abundance when the fish gather to spawn.

Rogers teamed up with survey scientists and the scientist who produces the annual Gulf of Alaska pollock stock assessment. They explored what may be causing the differences in abundance trends in the surveys.

“We got talking and wondered if changes in spawn timing could be affecting the Shelikof Strait survey estimates,” said Rogers. “Together, we explored how to account for these changes and what could be done to ensure the accuracy of the assessment.”

This involved pulling together information about how spawning changes across years. The scientists looked at spring larval surveys and observations of spawning state in mature female pollock. They found that changes in spawn timing relative to survey timing explained a significant portion of recent and historical discrepancies between survey and model estimates of biomass.

They also found that estimates of biomass from the survey tended to be relatively higher when the survey was closer in timing to estimated peak spawning. From there, they were able to develop a time series of relative timing that could be incorporated directly in the stock assessment. In doing so, the assessment model fit to the winter acoustic survey data was significantly improved.

This work was informed by Rogers’ previous studies examining data collected during larval fish surveys over the past 30 years. She found that the timing of pollock spawning varies by as much as a month depending in part on ocean temperatures. For instance, when temperatures are warmer, spawning happens earlier.

“It’s particularly exciting to demonstrate the value of having long-term surveys to assess the abundance of larval and juvenile fish,” said Rogers. “As we are faced with challenges posed by ocean warming and marine heatwaves, having an understanding of fish abundance, trends, and climate-sensitivity across their life stages is invaluable for helping us proactively plan and prepare for an uncertain future.”

New England marshes and seagrasses have huge potential to combat climate change

February 8, 2024 — As states across New England rush to meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, a massive carbon reservoir sits just below the tide: reed marshes and seagrass beds.

Scientists call these coastal habitats “blue carbon,” because the plants, and importantly, the sediment underneath them, can sequester a lot of carbon — several times more than a terrestrial forest, for example.

At least 7.5 million metric tons of carbon are held beneath New England’s salt marshes and eelgrass meadows, tall grasses that grow beneath the water, according to a first-of-its-kind report published by the US Environmental Protection Agency last year.

The EPA’s findings were highlighted at an event celebrating a new temporary exhibit at the New England Aquarium on Wednesday. Massachusetts has by far the most blue carbon habitats in New England — more than 112,000 acres, or about half of the region’s total salt marshes and seagrass beds.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Reinforcing the diverse ways people access seafood can ensure healthy communities in the face of change

February 8, 2024 — As climate change affects the oceans, coastal communities—particularly those at the front lines of ocean warming and sea level rise—are facing pressures that could threaten their access to aquatic foods.

“Climate change and other economic shocks are impacting how people access seafood, and typically households that are most reliant on seafood, such as those in Pacific Island countries, are most at risk,” said Jacob Eurich, a research associate at UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute, and a fisheries scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund. Which is why, he added, it is necessary to increase food system resilience in the area, which entails—among other things—the ability to maintain high levels of seafood consumption.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

Senators support fisheries in the face of climate change

Janurary 30, 2024 — U.S. Senators Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced legislation to modernize outdated regulations governing commercial fishing along the Atlantic Coast. Even with fish locations changing drastically in response to warming ocean temperatures, the restrictions on species and the number of fish caught in Atlantic waters have not been updated in decades.

According to the release, commercial fishermen have been forced to travel further distances to access fish populations and are often forced to throw landings back, which results in higher mortality rates. The Supporting Healthy Interstate Fisheries in Transition Act (SHIFT) will require the Department of Commerce to consider changing geographic ranges of fish populations as it oversees federal fishery management plans and quota allocations for Atlantic states.

Senator Murphy of Connecticut has focused on job creation within his state, and in May 2023, he was a proponent of increasing federal and state spending on the cleanup of Long Island Sound to help restore commercial and recreational fishing in the state. Murphy also helped increase federal funding for aquaculture to $19 million in 2023.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

NEW JERSEY: Fish mortalities up in New Jersey waters due to low oxygen levels

January 26, 2024 — Dead fish, lobster, and crab were found in the ocean off the U.S. state of New Jersey in the summer of 2023, and the suspected cause of death was low oxygen and pH levels, according to a report by Rutgers University researchers.

Lower dissolved oxygen levels alone are not uncommon in summer months, as they are a natural part of the seasonal stratification of warmer and cooler waters off the U.S. Mid-Atlantic, but 2023 was notable for both lower than usual oxygen and a drop in pH – the measure of relative acidity in the water – the study found.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Canada lags behind on efforts to address human rights abuses in seafood supply chains

January 26, 2024 — Seafood has become a source of concern for consumers who pay attention to the environmental and social impacts of what they buy. Climate change is adversely affecting ocean ecosystems, and a series of widely publicized scandals have exposed widespread illegal fishing and awful working conditions in both fishing and seafood processing.

Seafarers in fishing often work 18 hours a day in what is widely considered to be the world’s most dangerous profession. Many are at sea for months or even years at a time, and most have no access to Wi-Fi. They are often excluded from labour laws and all are paid very low wages, despite producing food for high-income consumers.

Similarly, those working in seafood processing are also poorly paid, and many are migrant workers who lack basic labor rights.

In response to these concerns, governments in many seafood importing countries have taken action. The European Union and Japanese government have banned imports of seafood produced by illegal fishing, while the United States’ program to ban imports produced by forced labour includes seafood.

Read the full article at SALON

Climate change could critically harm $253 billion US fishing industry, experts tell senators

January 25, 2024 — Climate change has caused ocean temperatures to steadily rise, which, experts warned senators Wednesday, could significantly harm the fishing industry.

Andrea Dutton, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said burning fossil fuels primarily drives climate change, which could cause widespread economic and environmental problems.

Fossil fuels generate high levels of carbon dioxide, which, in oceans, could cause heat waves and create acidic seawater that could harm anything living in the ecosystem.

Rashid Sumaila, a University Killam professor and research chair at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, said fisheries catch about 120 million tons of fish annually, generating about $240 billion in worldwide revenue.

Read the full article at The Hill

Seafood industry well-positioned to meet challenges of climate change

January 25, 2024 — Climate change is undeniably having an impact on where certain seafood species are located, and its exact effects are still being researched.

Research being done in how stocks are shifting varies. Some NOAA studies have predicted high-value groundfish species will migrate toward deeper offshore waters on the west coast of the U.S., while others are pointing out the risks it poses to global blue food production. Despite those risks, a panel covering seafood sourcing amid climate change at the Global Seafood Market Conference – which ran from 23 to 25 January in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. – said the seafood industry can meet the challenges and even weather them better than other protein industries.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Marine heat waves found to trigger shift in hatch dates and early growth of Pacific cod

January 24, 2024 — Marine heat waves appear to trigger earlier reproduction, high mortality in early life stages and fewer surviving juvenile Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska, a new study from Oregon State University shows.

These changes in the hatch cycle and early growth patterns persisted in years following the , which could have implications for the future of Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod, an economically and culturally significant species, said Jessica Miller of OSU’s Coastal Oregon Marine Experiment Station at Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport and the study’s senior author.

“We found that the  were hatching two to three weeks earlier. To see that dramatic of a shift in hatch dates of a species due to a one- or two-year event is pretty remarkable,” Miller said. “That those changes continue to persist suggests that marine  might be having long-lasting impacts that also influence the likely trajectory of the species under .”

Read the full article at PHYS.org

MAINE: How the Maine coast will be reshaped by a rising Gulf of Maine

January 23, 2024 — Extreme weather made more frequent and ferocious by climate change has walloped Maine in the last year, and the coastal devastation wrought by recent storms is causing many Mainers to realize that climate change is happening right now.

From Kittery to Eastport, climate change came to life. Mainers could do little but watch as storms rushed in on seas elevated by climate change, buckling roads, scouring beaches and washing away our working waterfronts.

“People aren’t just waking up to climate change, but these storms have made theory into a pretty scary reality,” said Hannah Pingree, co-chair of the Maine Climate Council. “People thought we’d have more time to change, to prepare. This was our wake-up call. We’re running out of time.”

Between the two storms that hit the coast on Jan. 10 and 13, and the Dec. 18 storm that wreaked at least $20 million in damage to 10 Maine counties, there’s almost no way a Mainer could have missed the impact of this extreme weather, which can be traced back to climate change.

Read the full article at the Portland Press Herald