Saving Seafood

Researcher discusses climate-related perils facing migratory fish and the changes needed

October 19, 2022 — Persistent drought in the West has helped bring climate change to the forefront of the public consciousness. Indicia of a warming planet—relentless heatwaves, drained reservoirs, and raging forest fires—have applied pressure to humans and their environment, prompting discussions about the long-term sustainability of a fossil fuel-based economy.

What may be forgotten in these discussions is how climate change affects fish and aquatic ecosystems. Warming rivers and streams,  and diversion practices, and other impacts have led to a decades-long decline that threatens the survival of many Western fish populations.

Water in the West visiting researcher Eric Palkovacs is writing a book that explores the challenges associated with balancing water needs of fish and people, and how the West can move toward a more sustainable water future. Below, the University of California Santa Cruz professor of ecology and  discusses existential threats facing migratory fishes and why it’s important to save them from extinction.

Can you describe your research interests?

My work focuses on the intersection between people,  in populations, the evolutionary responses of populations, and how we can use our understanding of ecological and evolutionary theory to help us manage and conserve populations. I study coastal freshwater and estuary systems, particularly anadromous fishes—migratory fishes that spawn in , migrate to the ocean to mature, and then return to freshwater to spawn. I’ve worked on salmonids, sturgeon, and other migratory fishes.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

Warming oceans likely to shrink the viable habitat of many marine animals—but not all

October 19, 2022 — Brad Seibel still remembers the headlines from 20 years ago that sounded like a B-rated sci-fi movie: “Invasion of the jumbo squid in Monterey Bay” and the like. He was a postdoctoral scholar at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) at the time.

It was anything but fiction. The voracious eaters, which historically live in more tropical latitudes, showed up off central California in record numbers—fattening their bellies with hake, rockfish, and other commercially important species to the dismay of local fisherman. Scientists figured their arrival had to do with a combination of climate change and overfishing, but the details were fuzzy.

Now a professor and marine physiology expert at the USF College of Marine Science, Seibel recently published a paper in Nature Climate Change that sheds light on those long-ago headlines. It connects the dots pertaining to animal metabolism that he’s collected over 20 years and seven research cruises in the Gulf of California, Mexico—and adds a new chapter to the story of how some animals may respond to the warming oceans.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

As offshore wind plans grow, so does the need for transmission

October 18, 2022 — “With the amount of megawatts that we anticipate [from offshore wind] over the next decade, we need to be thinking in terms of optimizing how we are sending that electricity to where it’s needed,” says Paula García, senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “And that’s one of the pieces of the equation that I think is changing the conversation right now.”

What García is describing is the growing consensus among federal and state leaders, industry experts, and environmentalists that the U.S. should build an offshore transmission grid.

Power strips for the ocean

The idea is fairly straightforward. Rather than every individual wind farm running a cable to land, they could plug into a network of high-capacity subsea power lines that come to shore in strategic places. There are many different ways this so-called “ocean grid” could be configured, but instead of “extension cords,” think of “linked power strips.”

An ocean grid wouldn’t entirely alleviate the need for onshore upgrades, but it would reduce what’s needed. It would also require putting fewer cables in the ocean, which means fewer potential environmental impacts and conflicts with fishermen. And, experts say, building it could help boost electric reliability for all coastal states.

Offshore transmission isn’t necessarily a new idea. A little over a decade ago, Google got involved in a $5 billion effort to build an “offshore backbone” to link future mid-Atlantic wind projects. At the time, the prospects for U.S. offshore wind looked promising, but as those fizzled, so too did the backbone plan.

Since then, the idea has surfaced from time to time among industry experts, but it’s really only in the last few years that the concept has started gaining traction in the U.S.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management are assessing various offshore transmission technologies and looking at what some northern European countries are doing. They’ve also held public meetings to help inform the Atlantic Offshore Wind Transmission Study report they plan to issue next year.

Work is happening at the state and regional levels too. New Jersey is considering building its own offshore transmission network, and New York has taken the step of mandating that all offshore wind projects be “mesh ready,” meaning built with the capacity to connect to each other offshore.

Here in New England, the states are also looking to move away from the project-by-project approach and toward a planned regional “paradigm.” To this end, five out of the six states recently issued a request for information about how they can take advantage of federal dollars to plan and build some sort of offshore transmission system.

“We’ve really reached a tipping point where I think the benefits and the logic of shifting to an offshore grid are increasingly understood and agreed upon,” says Peter Shattuck, New England president for Anbaric, a Massachusetts-based company that specializes in building transmission for renewable energy.

With only two large offshore wind projects fully approved, and many more in various stages of planning, “we’ve got a natural opportunity now to focus on building out the ocean grid,” he says.

Read the full article at wbur

Floating wind farms are planned for the Gulf of Maine to tap huge amounts of potential wind power far off shore

October 17, 2022 — It seems like an insurmountable engineering feat: Tow concrete hulls weighing 12,000 tons far offshore, erect towers atop them that rise hundreds of feet above the ocean with rotor blades the span of a football field, and somehow get them to produce significant amounts of wind energy despite the violent seas and notorious weather of the North Atlantic Ocean.

All that without embedding the colossal structures into the seafloor, because unlike traditional offshore wind turbines, these will float.

And that’s exactly what Habib Dagher intends to pull off in the Gulf of Maine, with the first of these monumental structures planned for a location a few miles off the coast of Monhegan Island in 2025.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

NEW JERSEY: Brigantine residents express concerns about offshore wind projects

October 13, 2022 — Having clean energy as a renewable resource may sound nice, but residents still have questions and concerns about the offshore wind projects planned just off the island’s coast, which is why the mayor held an informational meeting last weekend.

Nearly 100 residents, second homeowners and public officials attended the forum Saturday at the Brigantine Community School to discuss the projects and their potential impacts on the barrier island.

Ørsted’s offshore wind farms, which are expected to have 98 wind turbines roughly 15 miles off the coast, are scheduled to be completed by 2024. Meanwhile, 111 Atlantic Shores offshore wind turbines are expected to be operational 10 miles off Brigantine by 2027.

“There are good things that are going to come about this, as well as the negative impacts that we’re going to talk about today,” Mayor Vince Sera said at the meeting.

Read the full article at The Press of Atlantic City

Fishing regulators fear wind turbines could threaten spawning area for Atlantic cod

October 11, 2022 — Scientists identified spawning cod in a large area currently leased for offshore wind development, prompting fisheries regulators to declare the habitat a “high priority” and raising concerns that some projects could derail the decade-long effort to rebuild the struggling commercial fishery.

The designation by the New England Fishery Management Council was submitted to the federal NOAA Fisheries in August and is now pending final approval. Those involved say it is the most declarative action taken by the regional council in its approach to the emerging wind energy industry, highlighting its “concern over potential adverse impacts from offshore wind development.”

“We want to make it very clear that there are important fishery resources in this area,” said council spokesperson Janice Plante. “We hope that it creates an extra layer of consideration as these projects go forward.”

The boundaries of the designation, which is called a Habitat Area of Particular Concern (HAPC), is roughly 3,000 square miles and spans all nine wind-energy lease areas in federal waters off Southern New England. It includes a buffer zone beyond the lease areas, “recognizing that some types of development activities can generate impacts at scales of tens of kilometers beyond the site of construction and operations.”

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

Defining terms: What does ‘sustainable seafood’ mean?

October 10, 2022 — The term “sustainable seafood” gets used a lot with regard to the fishing and aquaculture industries — it’s a phrase that varies in meaning and is used everywhere from policy directives to marketing strategies. But what does it really mean?

Colloquially, the term “sustainable” is often in reference to environmental impact, with regard to overfishing and making sure that meeting human demands doesn’t destroy ocean ecosystems. Commercial fisheries in the United States are regulated against overfishing, but that doesn’t mean it is not a problem — a growing demand for seafood coupled with climate change related pressures put a lot of strain on the ocean’s capacity to keep producing fish for people to consume.

Meanwhile, the world’s population continues to grow. It is currently at 8 billion and estimated to be 11.2 billion by the end of the century. This growth puts additional pressure on the ocean. Paired with limitations faced by land-based farming, researchers have pointed to the ocean as a possible venue for growable food in light of this trend. In 2020, the United Nations released a report saying that aquaculture had already improved food security globally. Still, this conversation is not without an important caveat — farming seafood is not a panacea solution, and there are many forms of aquaculture that can harm both the environment and local communities instead of benefiting them.

Read the full article at CostalReview.org

Seafood industry to play critical role in feeding growing population as climate change hits harder

October 7, 2022 — The world’s human population is expected to surpass 10 billion by 2050. How to feed that many people, especially as the effects of global warming continue to worsen, was the subject of a 5 October panel at the Global Seafood Alliance’s 2022 GOAL conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

University of Washington Professor of Fisheries Science Ray Hilborn, University of Stirling Aquaculture Professor Richard Newton, Environmental Defense Fund Senior Manager of Climate Resilient Food Systems Willow Battista, and Wittaya Aqua CEO Evan Hall reviewed statistical evidence linking changes in climage to global output of fishing and aquaculture production and debated the industry’s impact on the environment.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

VIRGINIA: Offshore wind project “at a crossroads” Dominion argues

October 3, 2022 — Dominion Energy is arguing that it may “be forced” to pull the plug on its proposed offshore wind project if a performance guarantee remains imposed on it by the State Corporation Commission.

On Aug. 5, the SCC approved a rate adjustment clause, or rider, attached to consumers’ power bills so Dominion can recover costs associated with its proposed offshore wind project. The SCC order also included a performance guarantee to protect consumers from potential extra costs if the wind turbines don’t perform as well as expected.

The $9.8 billion wind farm— planned for 27 miles off Virginia Beach— is the largest energy project ever undertaken in the state and would be the largest wind project in the country.

But Dominion challenged the performance guarantee and the SCC agreed to reconsider it — kicking off a window in which both the utility company and other parties have responded.

“It is the regulator’s job to balance monopoly profit motives by adopting common and reasonable standards that will protect Virginians,” Laura Gonzalez, a policy manager with Clean Virginia said in a statement.

Clean Virginia is one of the environmental groups that responded.

But Dominion objected to the guarantee, asserting it could create uncertainty for its investors and hold the company responsible for things outside of its control — citing extreme weather as example.

Read the full article at the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Sustainable Seafood? It’s A Question Of Data

October 3, 2022 — The following was taken from an transcript from NPR:

AARON SCOTT, HOST:

Do you remember as a kid what you wanted to be when you grew up? Maybe an astronaut, soccer star, veterinarian, the president? Well, Alfredo Giron – he remembers.

ALFREDO GIRON: When I was 7, in second grade, my mom got for me a book about marine mammals. And it was about seals, sea lions and walruses. And I just was in love with it. I was like, I’m going to be a marine biologist.

SCOTT: But as he grew up in Mexico City, he grew out of that childhood dream.

GIRON: I started thinking, no, maybe engineering in something. And eventually, I settled down for engineering, bioengineering. I was lucky enough to get into a lab where they allowed me to do all sorts of techniques that bioengineering professionals will do. And it was not my thing.

SCOTT: But the college admissions clock was ticking, and he needed to decide where to apply.

GIRON: And suddenly this ray of light illuminated that old book in the bookshelf. I opened it, and I was like, you know what? I wanted to be a marine biologist. And I remember I loved it. So I looked up online, where can I study this in Mexico, and when is the deadline to do it? The deadline was, like, one week away.

GIRON: So I just jumped for it.

SCOTT: Alfredo went on to get a Ph.D. at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Since then, he’s focused on using data and science to make fishing more sustainable. He’s co-founded a science-based conservation initiative called dataMares and an early career oceans professionals program at the U.N.

And he now works at the World Economic Forum, an organization that cultivates leaders to influence political objectives. There, he leads the Ocean Action Agenda, with the goal of making sure the world’s fish populations thrive for years to come. It’s a huge task considering the state of the ocean and its fisheries.

GIRON: When we think about the ocean, there’s two big things to highlight. The first one is there’s a lot of degradation that has happened over the last several decades. We can see that in fisheries in some populations literally collapsing, some species shrinking over time.

SCOTT: So not just shrinking in population, but literally, the fish are getting smaller over time?

GIRON: Yes. Yes because you select for the larger ones, and they are basically removed from the population, and you keep the smaller ones but also because as you run out of big ones, you start fishing them before they can grow that big. We have also seen a lot of plastic pollution. We have seen a lot of impacts from climate change in many different ways – increased storms, coral bleaching…

SCOTT: But Alfredo sees hope, too.

GIRON: But let me stop there with the doom and gloom. Some countries have been very successful in replenishing their fish populations. We have seen an increase in the number of countries that are pledging to protect their oceans and actually, also an increase in action. We have seen a lot of companies making commitments to make sure that their supply chains are actually free of illegal activities, free of forced labor, which, surprisingly, is still an issue in this century.

SCOTT: So today on the show, finding hope in the ocean despite all of the challenges. We track Alfredo and his collaborators’ ongoing efforts to conserve the global fish population in a tale of ingenuity on the high seas. I’m Aaron Scott, and you’re listening to SHORT WAVE, the daily science podcast from NPR.

SCOTT: Alfredo, I want to start with a basic question. What makes a fishery sustainable? How do you determine the right level of fishing so that the population will continue to thrive?

GIRON: There’s a concept known as the maximum sustainable yield. Basically, how much can you extract of a population without reducing it for future catch? And this concept is based on the idea that when you have a number of fish, you expect them to reproduce at a certain level.

It’s very difficult to implement in reality because, of course, environmental variability plays a big role in how many of those newborns are successful and can join the population. Different countries, different agencies use different exact methods to estimate these things. But in the end, this is about extracting without decreasing the total number of the population.

SCOTT: Which is complicated almost beyond comprehension. I mean, we’re talking the entire ocean here, which means all the countries and the companies and the individual boats have to basically work together to make sure they’re not fishing beyond that maximum sustainable yield you mentioned. And so one of your main focuses right now is on illegal, unregulated and unreported catch, which is a whole basket of things from boats fishing in protected areas to fishing without authorization to taking more fish than they report – things that potentially mean they’re catching beyond the sustainable limits. Would you give us a sense of what sort of problem this is globally?

Read the full article at NPR