plankton Archives - Saving Seafood

Papers Explore Massive Plankton Blooms with Very Different Ecosystem Impacts

June 8, 2021 — The following was released by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution:

“The big mystery about plankton is what controls its distribution and abundance, and what conditions lead to big plankton blooms,” said Dennis McGillicuddy, Senior Scientist and Department Chair in Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

Two new papers explore this question and provide examples of conditions that lead to massive plankton blooms with vastly different potential impacts on the ecosystem, according to McGillicuddy, co-author of both papers. Both papers also point to importance of using advanced technology—including Video Plankton Recorders, autonomous underwater vehicles, and the Ocean Observatories Initiative’s Coastal Pioneer Array—to find and monitor these blooms.

In one paper, Diatom Hotspots Driven by Western Boundary Current Instability, published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), scientists found unexpectedly productive subsurface hotspot blooms of diatom phytoplankton.

In the GRL paper, researchers investigated the dynamics controlling primary productivity in a region of the Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB), one of the world’s most productive marine ecosystems. In 2019, they observed unexpected diatom hotspots in the slope region of the bight’s euphotic zone, the ocean layer that receives enough light for photosynthesis to occur. Phytoplankton are photosynthetic microorganisms that are the foundation of the aquatic food web.

Read the full release here

Ken Sherman: Plankton Biologist With A Global Perspective

April 26, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Ken Sherman’s long career began with a fascination with fish at an early age. He was born in 1932 and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, where he spent time as a boy with his father at the Boston Fish Pier, watching the fishermen bringing in their catch. Although he intended to get a law degree while at Suffolk University, a mentor steered him toward his earlier interest in marine biology. He graduated in 1954 with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences.

Not long after, he visited Woods Hole and applied for a job at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. While waiting for an opening, he taught science in elementary schools in western Massachusetts for the Audubon Society, taking live animals from school to school. In 1956 he was offered an entry-level biological position at the federal fisheries laboratory in Woods Hole. Turns out his application had been forwarded from the oceanographic institution down the street. His job: interviewing fishermen at the dock and collecting data on fish.

While working at the fish pier he took classes in marine ecology at Boston University, and later applied for an Office of Naval Research fellowship at the University of Rhode Island. He was accepted into the master’s degree program in biological oceanography at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. He worked under mentors Charles and Marie Poland Fish as one of five Navy-supported fellows.

After graduating in 1959 and waiting for a fishery research position to open, Sherman took a position as a biology teacher at Randolph High School. At the end of his first year of teaching, a biological research position with the federal Bureau of Commercial Fisheries opened in Hawaii. He jumped at the chance, and with his wife Roberta, also a teacher, moved to Honolulu for three years.

Read the full release here

Long-Running Plankton Survey to Resume in the Gulf of Maine

November 10, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

A new agreement between NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, England and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will allow a plankton survey to resume. The survey was originally conducted across the Gulf of Maine from 1961 to 2017.

NOAA Fisheries is providing funding for the survey through the NOAA Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region, hosted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The Marine Biological Association manages merchant vessel-based plankton surveys around the world. The association will run and maintain the resumed Gulf of Maine survey through 2024 under this agreement.

“Continuing a long-term time series like the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey is essential to understanding the impact of climate change to marine ecosystems,” said Chris Melrose, a research oceanographer at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s laboratory in Narragansett, Rhode Island and NOAA representative on the agreement.

“Many marine species are shifting their distributions as ocean waters warm,” explained Melrose. “Because plankton are an important food source for many species, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale, knowing about changes in the plankton helps us to understand other changes we see in the ecosystem.”

Read the full release here

Long-running plankton survey to resume this winter

October 28, 2020 — Scientists this winter will revive a long-running survey of plankton in the Gulf of Maine. Plankton, drifting microscopic sea organisms, are food for endangered North American right whales and other marine species.

The Gulf of Maine plankton survey was originally performed from 1961–2017. It is returning under a new agreement between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Northeast Fisheries Science Center, the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, England, and the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

“Many marine species are shifting their distributions as ocean waters warm,” said Chris Melrose, a research oceanographer at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s laboratory in Narragansett, R.I. “Because plankton are an important food source for many species, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale, knowing about changes in the plankton helps us to understand other changes we see in the ecosystem.”

Melrose, who is NOAA representative on the agreement, said continuing the survey “is essential to understanding the impact of climate change to marine ecosystems.”

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

NOAA Fisheries Cancels Four Fisheries and Ecosystem Surveys for 2020

August 4, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Summer Ecosystem Monitoring, Northern Shrimp, Autumn Bottom-Trawl, and Summer/Fall Plankton surveys cancelled for 2020

Due to the uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the unique challenges those are creating for NOAA Fisheries, we are cancelling four research surveys off the East and Gulf Coast of the United States. The cancelled surveys include:

Autumn Bottom Trawl Survey (NEFSC)
Summer Ecosystem Monitoring Survey (NEFSC)
Northern Shrimp Survey (NEFSC)
Summer and Fall Plankton Survey (SEFSC)

These are difficult decisions for the agency as we strive to balance our need to maintain core mission responsibilities with the realities and impacts of the current health crisis. Since March, we have been rigorously analyzing various options for conducting surveys this year and are taking a survey-by-survey, risk-based approach. After much deliberation, we determined that we will not be able to move forward with these surveys while effectively minimizing risk and meeting core survey objectives.

The Cancelled Surveys

The Summer Ecosystem Monitoring Survey run out of the NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center captures seasonal changes in the ocean environment, information used for multiple scientific inquiries. Over its 33-year history, some seasons have been missed and the number of annual surveys has varied, and methods have been developed to bridge these data gaps.

The Northern Shrimp Survey is conducted aboard the R/V Gloria Michelle, a 72-foot ship maintained by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. A major use of survey data is setting shrimp fishery quotas. The shrimp fishery is closed through 2021.

The Autumn Bottom Trawl Survey, also run out of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, has been conducted since 1963. It provides crucial resource and ecosystem data, especially for fishery stock assessments. A future bottom longline survey and new work on industry-based sources of data may help mitigate data gaps.

The Summer/Fall Plankton Survey, run out of NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center covers the entire continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico region from Brownsville, Texas, to Key West, Florida. It is the only fishery independent survey available to measure the spawning capacity of the adult population of Gulf of Mexico King Mackerel and an important supplemental survey for red snapper and several other reef fish.

Next Steps

These cancellations follow similar difficult cancellation decisions of the ship-based work we had planned from April to July. NOAA Fisheries is continuing to assess the status of other surveys in all our regions. We are working through numerous survey scenarios relative to community pandemic safeguards and safe work practices so that we maximize the science available for fisheries management in this challenging year.

Fewer fish may reach breeding age as climate change skews timing of reproduction, food availability

July 25, 2019 — The following was released by the The Princeton Environmental Institute:

Phytoplankton forms the base of the food chain in marine environments, transforming solar energy into plant matter. Their blooms provide vital nourishment to animals further up the food chain, including the larval stages of many fish species.

The researchers recently reported in the journal Global Change Biology that as Earth’s climate continues to warm, the occurrence of phytoplankton blooms have shifted from historic timelines, occurring earlier than normal. Supported by the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI), the scientists found that phytoplankton blooms could start approximately two to four weeks earlier in temperate and polar ecosystems under climate change. This could create hardships for developing fish as they struggle to find the phytoplankton they need to fuel their growth and survive into adulthood.

“Once fish larvae utilize all of the yolk that they received from their parents, they must learn how to hunt quickly — otherwise they risk starvation,” said first author Rebecca Asch, an assistant professor of biology at East Carolina University who began the work as a postdoctoral researcher in Princeton’s Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

“Larvae that do not starve are slow to capture food and also likely to have lower survival because slower-growing fish are more likely to be eaten by predators,” explained Asch, who conducted the research with PEI associated faculty member Jorge Sarmiento, Princeton’s George J. Magee Professor of Geoscienceand Geological Engineering, Emeritus, and Charles Stock, a researcher at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory located on Princeton’s Forrestal Campus.

Fish develop in annual “classes,” with individuals reaching maturity and breeding age at roughly the same time. If enough larvae of a certain year class fail to make it to adulthood, that can affect the species’ future reproductive rates as there are fewer adults available to breed. Successive years of low adult populations could result in tighter fishing quotas that could create food shortages and economic hardship in communities that rely on fishing.

Read the full release here

In the Philippines, Dynamite Fishing Decimates Entire Ocean Food Chains

June 18, 2018 — Nothing beats dynamite fishing for sheer efficiency.

A fisherman in this scattering of islands in the central Philippines balanced on a narrow outrigger boat and launched a bottle bomb into the sea with the ease of a quarterback. It exploded in a violent burst, rocking the bottom of our boat and filling the air with an acrid smell. Fish bobbed onto the surface, dead or gasping their last breaths.

Under the water, coral shattered into rubble.

The blast ruptured the internal organs of reef fish, fractured their spines or tore at their flesh with coral shrapnel. From microscopic plankton to sea horses, anemones and sharks, little survives inside the 30- to 100-foot radius of an explosion.

With 10,500 square miles of coral reef, the Philippines is a global center for marine biodiversity, which the country has struggled to protect in the face of human activity and institutional inaction. But as the effects of climate change on oceans become more acute, stopping dynamite and other illegal fishing has taken on a new urgency.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Cape Cod researchers use robots to monitor red tide

June 4, 2018 — Leaning over the side of a small skiff in Salt Pond, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researcher David Kulis shook the excess water out of a plankton net, then emptied the contents into a water bottle.

The gold tint to the water, he said, was likely Alexandrium, single-cell algae that produce a powerful neurotoxin. When concentrated in shellfish meat that feed on algae, the toxin can paralyze respiratory muscles in humans, a condition known as paralytic shellfish poisoning, which can be fatal.

Kulis and Northeastern University intern Taylor Mannes were using the tools plankton researchers had relied on for decades: a windsock-shaped net, with fine mesh to capture the single-celled organisms, and a Niskin bottle, originally developed in 1894 for polar research to retrieve samples at discrete depths. Lowered by hand to marks on a line corresponding to various depths, its opening is closed by sliding a lead weight down the line.

But with human health and a burgeoning shellfish and aquaculture industry in the balance, red tide research has gone decidedly high-tech. Sophisticated instruments are now deployed offshore in the Gulf of Maine and at inshore sites like Salt Pond in North Eastham.

Salt Pond is a natural laboratory, said Michael Brosnahan, a red tide researcher at WHOI. It already has a native population of red tide cells that survive the harsh New England winter as hardened cysts on the bottom of the pond. The incoming tide also pushes additional cysts from the larger marsh down a narrow creek and deposits them in deeper water in the pond, beyond the reach of the outgoing tide.

Red tide algae produce food through photosynthesis, and when the cysts hatch in the spring, they swim up into sunlit waters between five feet and eight feet deep. They remain at depths below the outlet creek channel, and relatively few of the free swimming cells are swept back out into the marsh by the tide.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

We Know Plastic Is Harming Marine Life. What About Us?

May 16, 2018 — In a laboratory at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in Palisades, New York, Debra Lee Magadini positions a slide under a microscope and flicks on an ultraviolet light. Scrutinizing the liquefied digestive tract of a shrimp she bought at a fish market, she makes a tsk-ing sound. After examining every millimeter of the slide, she blurts, “This shrimp is fiber city!” Inside its gut, seven squiggles of plastic, dyed with Nile red stain, fluoresce.

All over the world, researchers like Magadini are staring through microscopes at tiny pieces of plastic—fibers, fragments, or microbeads—that have made their way into marine and freshwater species, both wild caught and farmed. Scientists have found microplastics in 114 aquatic species, and more than half of those end up on our dinner plates. Now they are trying to determine what that means for human health.

So far science lacks evidence that microplastics—pieces smaller than one-fifth of an inch—are affecting fish at the population level. Our food supply doesn’t seem to be under threat—at least as far as we know. But enough research has been done now to show that the fish and shellfish we enjoy are suffering from the omnipresence of this plastic. Every year five million to 14 million tons flow into our oceans from coastal areas. Sunlight, wind, waves, and heat break down that material into smaller bits that look—to plankton, bivalves, fish, and even whales—a lot like food.

Read the full story at National Geographic

Zero Dollars for Marine Mammals?

February 27, 2018 — The future of marine mammals is at risk in U.S. waters. President Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2019 would eliminate the Marine Mammal Commission. With an annual operating budget of $3.4 million, which comes to just over one penny per American per year, the Marine Mammal Commission has for 45 years been assiduously developing science and policy to protect seals, sea lions, dolphins, whales, dugongs and walruses. Through the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), Congress charged the commission with providing independent oversight of marine mammal conservation policies and programs being carried out by federal regulatory agencies. Obviously, with a proposed budget of zero dollars, it would be impossible to execute the federally mandated objectives of fostering sustainable fisheries (through the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act [MSA]) and protecting endangered species (through the Endangered Species Act [ESA]).

Marine mammals are more than just lovable creatures. They are important components of productive marine and coastal ecosystems that overall generate $97 billion of the gross domestic product. Whales function as ecosystem engineers by cycling vital nutrients between deeper and surface waters in the oceans. Without this nutrient cycling, oceans would produce less plankton and phytoplankton, which would eventually mean less fish. Also, through complex food-web interactions, marine mammals help to regulate fish populations. For example, marine-mammal–eating killer whales (often called “transient” killer whales) will eat seals, a common predator of pelagic fish—enabling fish populations to stay high. This kind of interaction is called a trophic cascade and is very common in marine ecosystems.

Serving as an independent oversight body, the commission has the critical task of assessing the scientific validity and effectiveness of research conducted to meet the federal mandates of the MMPA, ESA and MSA. If we as a country can’t even protect the charismatic species, I worry for all the less adorable parts of nature. So we need to draw a line in the sand. In this era of “fake news,” maintaining this entity to guard against encroachments to science-based policymaking on is more valuable than ever.

Read the full story at the Scientific American