Saving Seafood

Scientists Say Black Sea Bass Behavior Could Be Affected by Offshore Wind

October 1, 2018 — WOODS HOLE, Mass. — Scientists from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center say that offshore wind energy construction could affect the behavior of Black Sea Bass.

Black Sea Bass live up and down the east coast from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, providing a significant ecological and economic importance.

The fish are also attracted to structurally complex habitats, often found around rocky reefs, mussel beds, cobble and rock fields, and artificial habitats like shipwrecks.

Scientists, commercial and recreational fisherman have expressed their concerns about how the sounds that come with the development of offshore wind energy overlapping with the natural habitats of Black Sea Bass.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

 

Maine nonprofit awarded NOAA grant to develop green crab market

September 19, 2018 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program has given a grant of USD 267,440 (EUR 229,165) to a Maine, U.S.A.-based nonprofit Manomet in order to work on creating a fishery for invasive European green crabs.

The grant will allow Manomet to expand its project on creating a new economic opportunity out of soft-shell green crabs in New England. The green crab, a species that is invasive to New England, has been present for more than a hundred years and has recently expanded in numbers to the point it is putting pressure on local species.

That pressure has contributed to record low landings of caught and farmed mussels, and also threatens Maine’s softshell clam industry.

Manomet has already launched efforts to galvanize efforts on commercializing green crabs. On 6 and 7 June, the organization hosted a “Green Crab Working Summit” in Portland, Maine, to bring together various experts to discuss commercialization of the species.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

The Anacostia River Is Mussel-ing Its Way To Clean Waters

August 28, 2018 — If you’ve got 5,600 freshwater mussels, you could serve about 280 steaming plates of moules marinières. Or, you could deposit the bivalves in the Anacostia River.

The Anacostia Watershed Society has opted for the latter as part of a larger effort to clean the river and renew the mussel population. Last week, staffers and volunteers with the nonprofit placed the creatures in 28 floating baskets at seven sites along the Anacostia River—six in D.C., and one in Maryland—with varying microhabitat conditions.

Jorge Bogantes Montero, the organization’s natural resources specialist, has already checked on one of the baskets, all of which have swimming pool noodles to keep them afloat and covered tops to protect the mussels from predators.

“They look great,” he says of the mussels in the baskets by the Anacostia Watershed Society’s floating office on Water Street SE.

How does he know? He peeked into the baskets and saw mussels with two little holes, which he calls an innie and an outie (one of which is filtering water and the other is secreting waste). “I could see pairs of holes all over the bottom, so I know they are working,” says Montero. “If you see slits open, that’d be a bad sign.” The next checkup will happen in late September, about a month after their deployment.

Much like oysters, mussels can filter large quantities of water (between 10-20 gallons daily) and they eat bacteria like E. coli. But that’s just one of their benefits to the ecosystem, says Montero. “They are providing a lot of ecosystem services even beyond filtration,” he says, like depositing sediment at the bottom of the river. Other critters also use their shells as places for shelter or nesting.

Read the full story at DCist

Mussels Could Help Make the Anacostia Safe for Swimming

July 11, 2018 — It might be hard to imagine now, but the DC Department of Energy and the Environment says the Anacostia River will be swimmable and fishable in the next 14 years. How will it get there? As part of the ongoing effort to clean up the river and fulfill the promises of the Anacostia 2032 plan, the department, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Anacostia Watershed Society, is attempting to outsource some of the cleanup to an unlikely crew: freshwater mussels.

In June, floating baskets and submerged silos containing dozens of baby mussels from a hatchery—each about as big as a sunflower seed—were placed in the water, from Buzzard Point to Bladensburg, as part of a 10-week study. The team has since been conducting weekly water-quality checks, and the progress so far is encouraging. On Monday, Fred Pinkney, a Fish and Wildlife environmental contaminants specialist, measured some of the mussels under the 11th Street bridge and by a pier at the Yards. Both locations showed promising growth.

If the mussels are thriving, that’s great news for the status of the river.  Mussels are a biological indicator species. When they die off or fail to thrive, it means the water can’t support the ecosystem. In two more weeks—the halfway point of the 10-week study—all of the mussels will get their first official measurement.

Read the full story at the Washingtonian

Mussels test positive for opioids in Seattle’s Puget Sound

May 29, 2018 — Scientists at the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife have found that mussels in Seattle’s waters are testing positive for opioids.

The finding suggests “a lot of people” are taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound, researchers say.

Scientists used mussels as a way to test pollution in Seattle’s waters and discovered high enough oxycodone levels for the shellfish to test positive.

Mussels do not metabolise opioids, but some fish can become addicted.

Mussels are filter-feeders, which means they filter water for nutrients to nourish themselves. In the process, they end up storing pollutants in their tissues, which makes them a prime indicator species.

State researchers distributed clean mussels around the Puget Sound and extracted them months later to test the waters.

Of the 18 locations scientists used, three showed traces of oxycodone. The drug traces were not enough to get any humans high from consumption, but enough to indicate a problem, officials said.

“What we eat and what we excrete goes into the Puget Sound,” Jennifer Lanksbury, a biologist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told CBS News affiliate KIRO.

“It’s telling me there’s a lot of people taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound area.”

Read the full story at BBC News

 

Climate change draws invasive species to the Arctic

February 27, 2018 — The Arctic is changing. Temperatures are increasing twice as fast as the global average and sea ice is retreating quicker than predicted.

It is now just a question of time before the Arctic becomes ice free in summer.

But while we humans react slowly to the problem at hand, evidence suggests that animals are on the move- on land, sea, and in the air. And in the cold Arctic, invasive species are drawn to regions where they could not previously have survived.

But invasive species pose a big problem for native animals, whose numbers can decline to the point of collapse. They also pose a threat to fisheries, with economic consequences on both a local and global scale.

In fact, our recent study showed that blue mussels have become much more common in the Arctic in recent years, just like other exotic species of bluefin tuna and killer whales.

Read the full story at Phys.org

 

New York: Huge scallop harvest, growth in oyster farming boost East End

December 1, 2017 — An abundance of plumped-up bay scallops from waters around the Peconic Bay is giving Long Island’s East End shellfishing industry a vital boost.

With the industry already thriving from a resurgence of oysters, the plentiful scallop harvest is buoying businesses from the East End to Manhattan, where scallops and oysters from Long Island waters are prominent in fish markets and on restaurant menus.

Since the scallop season opened with a strong start in early November, fish dealers have been buying hundreds of pounds a day. The surge in volume is keeping fishermen, shuckers, wholesalers and seafood store owners busy, but it has also pushed prices down. Scallops are selling for less than $20 a pound, in some cases as low as $15, down from around $35 last year.

Some dealers had difficulty keeping up with the harvest at first, advertising for scallop shuckers on road-side signs. Customers who typically buy a pound or two are buying 4 and 5 pounds, shop owners say. Restaurants are finding ways to keep scallops on the menu.

Read the full story at Newsday

 

Oysters remain king as growers race to meet consumer demand

January 23, 2017 — Demand for oysters continues to trend upward heading into 2017, with production capacity expanding to satiate consumer demand.

According to a panel of bivalve and oyster experts speaking at the National Fisheries Institute’s 2017 Global Seafood Market Conference in San Francisco, California, “the number of oyster growers [is] increasing just to keep up with demand.”

The rate of oyster consumption particularly at restaurants, remains strong, with the popular shellfish serving to elevate complementary species such as mussels, clams and scallops, noted the panel.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Warming Oceans Could Make These Seafood Favorites Toxic

January 12, 2017 — In recent years, scientists have warned that climate change could have a disastrous effect on the ocean’s ecosystems as the world’s waters get warmer. But now, a new study suggests that widespread die offs of ocean-going species isn’t the only thing that warmer waters could cause: It might also make some seafood favorites too toxic to eat.

Chances are, most people haven’t heard of domoic acid, but it’s something that could be making more headlines soon enough. That’s because it’s a neurotoxin that can build up in sea creatures that are popular on the dinner table, like Dungeness crab, mussels, clams and anchovies, Clare Leschin-Hoar reports for NPR. And, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, warmer waters lead to algae blooms that can cause elevated levels of this toxin in many of the ocean’s critters.

“When water’s unusually warm off our coast, it’s because the circulation and patterns in the atmosphere has changed, bringing warm water from elsewhere—and this is happening at the same time that we also see high domoic acid in shellfish. It has a very strong mechanistic connection,” Morgaine McKibben, study author and Oregon State University doctoral student tells Kavya Balaraman for Scientific American.

Domoic acid is produced by some kinds of algae, in particular one called pseudo-nitzschia. These microorganisms are the basis of the underwater food chain and thrive in warm waters, but can build up in sea life, causing serious health issues for humans and animals alike. As Leschin-Hoar explains, domoic acid first became known as a health threat in 1987, when an outbreak in Canada killed three people and sickened more than 100 with symptoms including vomiting, diarrhea and cramps. In serious cases, domoic acid poisoning can even cause seizures, numbing and memory loss.

Since then, officials have monitored domoic acid levels along the western North American coastline—and it’s been steadily rising over time. McKibben’s study looked at more than two decades worth of data gathered in the region and found a strong correlation between rising water temperatures and rising domoic acid levels, Stephanie Bucklin reports for LiveScience.

These elevated levels of domoic acid are already starting to affect the seafood business. In 2015, officials shut down Dungeness crab fisheries from Alaska to California for several months because of high domoic acid content, Balaraman reports, and similar shutdowns were enacted in 2016. This left the seafood industry in Washington state $9 million in the hole. To make matters worse, the toxin can linger in fisheries for as long as a year.

Read the full story at Smithsonian

Consultant sees huge growth potential for Maine aquaculture

October 27, 2016 — With its clean, cold waters, its proximity to large markets and its wide open coastline, Maine’s farmed oyster, mussel and scallop industries are poised to more than quadruple in value over 15 years, according to a new report from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Right now, Maine produces $24 million worth of oysters, mussels and scallops a year, 4 percent of the $700 million national market. Aquaculture accounts for about a quarter of Maine’s shellfish, worth about $6.5 million a year, according to state data.

But a market analysis prepared for GMRI by The Hale Group, the Massachusetts-based food and agribusiness consultancy, predicts that Maine’s shellfish aquaculture industry will grow to $30 million by 2030, which gave Maine ocean farmers and groups that work with them, like GMRI, reason to cheer.

“The major finding is the significant room for growth in farmed oyster, mussel, and scallop sectors at a scope and scale that fits with Maine’s working waterfront culture,” concluded GMRI in the report that it unveiled Wednesday.

Mussels and scallops show the most promise, according to the market analysis. Demand for Maine’s mussels is expected to grow faster than the industry average, given their market reputation. The domestic supply of scallops, meanwhile, meets just half the nation’s demand, giving Maine scallops a big opening.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald