Saving Seafood

Study predicts alarming krill drop by end of the century

August 30, 2016 — Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) habitat is undergoing a continuous deterioration process, which could lead to a reduction of up to 80 per cent by the end of the century.

Given the key role that this small crustacean plays in the marine food chain, its decline would cause other problems for species that depend on it as a food source, such as whales, penguins, seals, squid and fish, among other marine organisms.

This dark forecast comes from a study performed at Yale University by Andrea Piñones, a researcher at the Research Centre for High Latitude Marine Ecosystem Dynamics (IDEAL) and the Advanced Study Centre in Arid Zones (CEAZA), along with Alexey Fedorov, a researcher at Yale University.

Piñoness explains that the krill population has already fallen between 80 and 90 per cent since 1970, a situation that has generated a broad scientific debate on the causes of this decline.

In this regard, many believe that this is related to the changes in the environment, particularly with warming Antarctic waters.

To carry out the study, whose results were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers combined climate simulations — based on the projections of the international panel of climate change –, with a krill growth model. Thus, they determined that with an increase in water temperature and sea ice melting, its habitat could reduce up to 80 per cent by 2100.

Read the full story at FiS United States

Navy’s submarine hunts are too disturbing for marine life, California court rules

July 20, 2016 — They came as a wave, some 150 to 200 melon-headed whales churning into Hawaii’s Hanalei Bay like a single mass. It was a strange sight for the Kauai islanders to behold. Melon-headed whales live in the deep ocean, feasting on squid. But here they were, swimming in the shallows no more than 100 feet from shore.

Over the course of July 3 and 4, 2004, volunteers and rescuers shepherded the animals back to sea, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s account of the mass stranding. The Washington Post reported at the time that it was the largest event of its kind in 150 years of Hawaiian history. Almost all the whales made it back out into the open water. But not the entire pod.

A young calf, split off from the rest of the herd, perished the next day.

A year later, 34 whales died when they were stranded at North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Three years after that and half the world away, 100 melon-headed whales were again stranded en masse, this time on the shores of Madagascar. The reasons why whales beach themselves are not always clear — strandings have been likened to car crashes in that the causes are myriad but the conclusion is never good. With the melon-headed whales, however, something was different. The events were unusual enough, and involved such large numbers, to prompt scrutiny. In both cases, a prime suspect emerged: sonar.

Controversy over these sound waves continues today. And in the latest skirmish over oceanic noise pollution, a victory went to the whales. On Friday, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that the Navy violated marine mammal protection laws, reversing a lower court’s decision that allowed military vessels to use a type of loud, low-frequency sonar approved in 2012.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

SUSAN POLLACK: Fishing For Progress: Saying No To ‘No Women On Board’

June 10, 2016 — In 1982, as supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment fought claims that that the proposed amendment to the Constitution would destroy the American family, I confronted an older mythology: Women are bad luck on boats.

I was a young maritime reporter for The East Hampton Star on Eastern Long Island. I loved boats and the sea, and I’d always loved adventure. That summer, I planned to join local fishermen aboard a state-of-the-art Japanese squid ship. This was several years after the United States enacted its 200-mile limit, but before American fishermen had fully developed a squid fishery of their own. In exchange for sharing their technical know-how, the Japanese would be permitted to catch squid in our waters.

I was game.

But as I was readying my boots and gear, I received an unexpected warning from the American sponsors of the U.S-Japan venture: no women on board.

Surely, something must be wrong: I’d spent the previous five years in gurry-soaked oil skins reporting on life at sea on American draggers, lobster boats, bay scallopers, gillnetters, long-liners and clamming rigs. I’d photographed the sun rising over the stern of a dragger hauling its catch of yellowtail and blackback flounders, cod, haddock and scup. I’d spent bone-chilling winter days in an open skiff, culling bay scallops – separating the delicate fan-shaped bivalves from whelks, rocks and seaweed. I’d danced on the boat, not for joy, but to keep warm.

On summer evenings, I’d helped my neighbor lift his gillnets, gingerly plucking out sharp-toothed bluefish and the occasional striper. And I’d finally succeeded in filleting a flounder without mangling the fragile flesh.

Read the full story at WBUR

Oregon’s Forage Fish Management Plan available for public comment

June 15, 2016 — SALEM, Ore. — The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is asking for public comment on the Oregon Forage Fish Management Plan, which will establish protections for forage fish through new fishing regulations, and guide resource management decisions.

Forage fish are small, schooling fish which serve as an important source of food for other fish species, birds and marine mammals. There are forage fish species that are currently tracked and managed individually, such as sardine, herring and mackerel; in some years, these species are caught in large numbers.

In contrast, the Forage Fish Management Plan applies to a grouping of forage fish species that are not currently caught in significant numbers, such as sand lance, smelt, and squid. These species are caught in commercial and recreational fisheries.

Read the full story at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

Toxic Fish in Vietnam Idle a Local Industry and Challenge the State

June 8, 2016 — NHAN TRACH, Vietnam — Since a devastating fish kill blighted the waters along 120 miles of coastline in central Vietnam, hundreds of people are believed to have fallen ill from eating poisoned fish. Here in the fishing village of Nhan Trach, the squid that sustain the local economy have virtually disappeared. And a fishing ban has left hundreds of traps sitting unused on the beach and dozens of small fishing boats idle.

“We are so angry,” said Pham Thi Phi, 65, who operates a fishing boat in Nhan Trach with her husband and three grown sons. “If we knew who put the poison in the ocean, we would like to kill them. We really need to have an answer from the government on whether the ocean is totally clean and the fish are safe to eat.”

While the immediate cause appears to have been toxic waste from a nearby steel mill, fury over the episode has exploded into a national issue, posing the biggest challenge to the authoritarian government since a spate of anti-Chinese riots in 2014. Protesters demanding government action have marched in major cities and coastal communities over the past six weeks, escalating what had been a regional environmental dispute into a test of government accountability and transparency.

But two months after the fish started washing up on beaches here, the government has yet to announce the cause of the disaster or identify the toxin that killed marine life and poisoned coastal residents.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Spiny lobster and squid lead California’s fishing economy, says new report

May 27, 2016 — While California’s seafood sales overwhelmingly relied on imported animals, commercial fisheries landed nearly 360 million pounds of fin- and shellfish in 2014, according to a federal report released Thursday with the most recent figures on the nation’s fishing economy.

The state’s seafood industry, including imports, generated a whopping $23 billion — more than 10 percent of the nation’s $214 billion total sales in 2014 from commercial harvest, seafood processors and dealers, wholesalers and distributors, and importers and retailers.

As such, most of California’s nearly 144,000 industry jobs came from the import and retail sectors, according to NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service Fisheries Economics of the U.S. 2014 report. Nationally, 1.83 million jobs are supported by the fishing industry.

California shellfish were the most lucrative product in the state’s home-grown seafood market, with crabs and spiny lobsters native to Southern California getting the most money per pound of all the species fished, at $3.37 and $19.16 per pound, respectively.

But market squid were overwhelmingly the most commonly landed species, with 227 million pounds caught.

“In California, shellfish have always been more important, at least in terms of value,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association. “This includes squid and Dungeness crab — usually the top two fisheries in value, and spiny lobster, which was an $18 million fishery in 2015.”

California fishers relied heavily on healthy market squid stocks in 2014 but, as El Niño weather conditions entered the following year, squid landings dropped significantly, Pleschner-Steele said.

“We’re now just starting to see squid landings, but at low volumes,” she said.

Read the full story at the Long Beach Press-Telegram

Squid Are Thriving While Fish Decline

May 24, 2016 — The squids are all right — as are their cephalopod cousins the cuttlefish and octopus.

In the same waters where fish have faced serious declines, the tentacled trio is thriving, according to a study published Monday.

“Cephalopods have increased in the world’s oceans over the last six decades,” Zoë Doubleday, a marine ecologist from the University of Adelaide in Australia, and lead author of the study, said in an email. “Our results suggest that something is going on in the marine environment on a large scale, which is advantageous to cephalopods.”

Read the full story at the New York Times

CALIFORNIA: Monterey Bay squid season basically a bust

May 13, 2016 — MONTEREY, Calif. — If Monterey had a signature restaurant dish, cioppino and fried calamari would battle it out for the top spot. But the common ingredient in each is squid, those prehistoric looking cephalopods (scientific name loligo) that school in the cool, nutrient-rich waters of Monterey Bay.

In August a worldwide television audience tuned in for “Big Blue Live,” a BBC-PBS production that showcased our marine sanctuary teeming with sea life, from tiny shrimp to giant blue whales.

Then “the boy” arrived.

“Once El Niño showed up things started to look different in the bay,” said Sal Tringali, president of Monterey Fish Company, who oversees a five-boat fleet that provides local restaurants with most of their fresh seafood, including squid.

Not to panic; our shared “Serengeti of the Sea” is still a pristine habitat. But warming waters along the West Coast have changed the waterscape — at least for now. For example, local squid fishermen have turned out their bright boat lights because the season is basically a bust.

Read the full story at the Santa Cruz Sentinel 

Survey delay might hurt fish population research

May 12, 2016 — The following is an excerpt from a story published today by the Boston Globe.

NEWPORT, R.I. – Even before mechanics found deeply pitted bearings near crankshafts in its generators, problems that could have led to catastrophic engine failure, the Henry B. Bigelow was running more than a month behind.

Now, the government research vessel is embarking on its annual spring voyage later than ever before, a delay that could have serious consequences for scientists’ ability to assess the health of some of the 52 fish stocks they survey, from the waters off North Carolina to the eastern reaches of the Gulf of Maine.

Fish migrate and change their feeding patterns as waters warm, which might make it difficult for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists to compare this spring’s survey of fish populations with previous counts.

The prospect of skewed data could complicate efforts for policy makers to set proper quotas, potentially leading either to overfishing or unnecessarily strict catch limits.

“I worry that this will create statistical noise and more uncertainty,” said Gary Shepherd, a fishery biologist at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, where he and other scientists recommend quotas based on what the Bigelow catches, along with other data.

As the waters warm, some of the fish, such as herring, migrate out of the survey area and into the region’s rivers. Other species, such as squid, which are short-lived, might not survive in representative numbers through June, when the Bigelow is now scheduled to finish its survey.

“If the survey had started at its normal time, it would have found squid on the continental shelf,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington-based group that represents the fishing industry. “But now it won’t because the survey doesn’t sample Nantucket Sound.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe