Seeing green with California market squid

Originally published in Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch

California’s largest fishery is rated Best Choice

Dig into that calamari with confidence. California market squid remains a Best Choice, but managing the state’s biggest fishery sustainably comes with its fair share of complexities. Learn how managers are helping limit by catch and adapting to manage a climate-sensitive species in a changing world.

Picture this: you’re sitting seaside in Monterey, about to order calamari at your favorite restaurant when you notice fishing boats on the water. What are they fishing for? If it’s spring, chances are it’s squid. You wonder, is that fried squid on your plate sustainable? If it’s California market squid, the answer is yes! In June 2023, we released an updated assessment of California market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens, formerly Loligo opalescens). Last assessed in 2019, California market squid remains a Best Choice. Read on to learn more about the complexities of sustainably managing the largest fishery in the state.

The squid basics

Market squid live in coastal waters and rely on highly productive ecosystems, such as the U.S. West Coast. Given their complex biological needs, market squid are only harvested from wild fisheries, not farmed through aquaculture. Like most squids, market squid have short life spans. They live about a year, spawn, and then die.

Market squid can be found from Mexico all the way to Alaska, with the majority of fishery landings coming from southern and central California. Fishers use purse seines to catch market squid, both during the day and at night. Bright lights are used at night to lure squid to the surface.

Seeing green — in more ways than one

Market squid is the largest fishery in the state of California — both in terms of catch volume and revenue — and is very important to the state’s economy. This fishery brought in over 57,000 metric tons in 2021, representing 66 percent of all landings across California ports. In 2022, it brought in 141 million pounds (about 64,000 metric tons), worth $84 million. Since 2000, market squid has brought in more revenue than Pacific mackerel, jack mackerel, northern anchovy, and Pacific sardine combined.

A majority of this squid is exported to Asia, with over 80 percent heading to China. Some of that is processed overseas and then re-imported to the U.S., where you can find it in restaurants as popular seafood items like calamari.

“From an economic standpoint, it’s pretty consistently the most important fishery in California,” said Eva May, Seafood Watch fisheries scientist. “It brings in the most revenue and has the highest volume of landings. In terms of the jobs it creates in central and southern California and the revenue it brings into the state, it’s important.”

Bye-bye bycatch

A major component of our standards is the impacts a fishery has on other species, including bycatch levels. Bycatch is when other species are accidentally caught while fishing.

“Bycatch numbers in this fishery are really good and kept to a minimum,” May said.

Where bycatch does occur, it’s usually species that school with market squid, like sardine and mackerel. Data show that bycatch of larger species may occasionally occur, but this happens at low enough levels it doesn’t impact species population numbers.

Lights used to bring squid to the surface during nighttime fishing can sometimes also attract seabirds, but this fishery uses modifications to help protect them. For example, the use of attracting lights is prohibited in the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary to protect seabirds. In other areas where lights are allowed, they are limited to 30 kilowatts and must have shields on them. These modifications make it so the lights are only visible underwater; seabirds can’t see them from above, so they aren’t drawn in.

Sea lions and other marine mammals can also be attracted to the squid caught in nets. The government has approved the use of acoustic devices to help deter marine mammals from the area where fishing is taking place.

Collaborating on science-based management

Strong management of fisheries doesn’t happen by accident. It takes effort and a lot of cooperation.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is the lead management agency for California market squid and coordinates with federal advisory bodies and other agencies to set management guidelines and regulations. The regulations prevent fishing during spawning periods, set strict catch limits, and require monitoring by scientists to keep the population at healthy levels.

“It’s important for the public to know that there is a lot of collaboration between the government, scientists, and the industry,” May said.

Part of this management includes updating management plans to include the latest science and input from stakeholders.

“The market squid fishery is critical to the livelihoods of our fishermen and processors. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has developed an effective management structure, and our industry remains committed to continuing our research efforts and working with the State to maintain this sustainable fishery.”

– Mark Fina
Executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association

“The market squid fishery is critical to the livelihoods of our fishermen and processors. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has developed an effective management structure, and our industry remains committed to continuing our research efforts and working with the state to maintain this sustainable fishery,” said Mark Fina, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association. “We’re thrilled that the Seafood Watch program has recognized these efforts by assigning the fishery its Best Choice green rating.”

The fishery management plan for market squid was originally developed in 2005 and involved input from stakeholders. It is currently undergoing review and will be completed in 2024.

Managing squid in a changing climate

Climate change presents wildlife managers with a whole host of new challenges and questions. Squid is no exception.

Market squid are sensitive to oceanic and climatic conditions, and its populations tend to fluctuate alongside other major oceanic temperature fluctuations, such as El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), May said. Because we already see market squid population fluctuations due to ENSO, we may see even bigger shifts based on climate impacts, or we may see the fishery moving farther north because of warming waters.

Currently, California fishery managers and federal counterparts are working together to incorporate the latest climate data and position this fishery for sustainability in the future.

A green rating for California’s biggest fishery

We’re not squid-ing: California market squid is rated a green Best Choice. It serves as a prime example of a fishery that is both environmentally sustainable and economically powerful.

So go ahead, dig into that (California) calamari with confidence.

CWPA WINS SALTENSTALL-KENNEDY GRANT TO INVESTIGATE SEASONAL NEARSHORE DYNAMICS OF PACIFIC SARDINE (Sardinops sagax) IN CALIFORNIA

Pacific sardine has been one of the top ten highest valued commercial fisheries in California. But declining stock assessments precipitated closure of the directed sardine fishery in 2015. In 2019, “northern” sardines were declared “overfished,” sharply reducing the allowed incidental catch rate. This also curtailed fishing for species that school with sardines, such as mackerel, anchovy and even market squid, inflicting serious impacts on California’s wetfish industry.

Stock assessment scientists hypothesize two sardine stocks on the West Coast: northern (NSP) and southern (SSP), which they have separated by a 16.7°C sea temperature (SST) threshold: only sardines found in waters below 16.7° C (about 62° F) are classified as northern sardines (NSP). The Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) manages only the ‘cold water’ NSP, but counts all sardines landed in California as NSP regardless of the SST.

Stock assessments for NSP are based on annual NOAA Acoustic Trawl (AT) surveys, which now omit sardines estimated to be in water temperatures above 16.7° C SST. A report also noted that assessments excluding the nearshore area, an area inshore of about 40 meters depth that is typically not surveyed in NOAA AT surveys, would be negatively biased.

To address this, NOAA and industry initiated a collaborative nearshore acoustic survey using fishing boats to expand acoustic and biological sampling. (See https://californiawetfish.org/sardine-research-update-acoustic-survey for more.)

However, aerial surveys and California fishermen have reported thousands of tons of sardines yearlong inshore of NOAA’s summer surveys, (see more at https://californiawetfish.org/sardine-research-update-aerial-survey). These observations pose questions about NMFS’s declaration of NSP sardines as overfished and the use of 16.7°C to separate NSP from SSP.

In 2022, CWPA applied for and received an SK grant to investigate the nearshore dynamics of sardines in California throughout a full year, with specific focus on the Southern California Bight, where sardines are observed yearlong in a range of water temperatures.

The goal of this project is to collect and analyze historical and current biological and landings data yearlong, including bi-monthly observations and monthly samples from purse seine fishing and live bait catches, to test the hypothesis that NSP and SSP sardines, particularly sardines inshore of NOAA surveys, can be accurately separated by their association with 16.7°C SST using morphological (e.g. length, weight, age, vertebral count) and biological metrics. The outcome will enhance understanding of sardine stock structure and may lead to increased fishing opportunities.

Please visit the CWPA SK Grant webpage for more information about our findings and fishermen’s observations throughout this important research study.

Critique of Sala et al. 2021 Published by Nature

Retraction of Flawed MPA Study Implicates Larger Problems in MPA Science

Source: University of Washington, Sustainable Fisheries
By Max Mossler, UW Sustainable Fisheries Managing Editor
December 9, 2021

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on SustainableFisheries-UW.org, a University of Washington project to better communicate fishery science.

After months of public criticism and findings of a conflict of interest, a prominent scientific paper (Cabral et al. 2020, A global network of marine protected areas for food) was recently retracted by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

A retraction is a Big Deal in science, especially from a prominent journal. What’s strange in this story is how the conflict of interest intersects with the science. The conflict of interest was apparent immediately upon publication, but it wasn’t until major problems in the underlying science were revealed that an investigation was launched, and the paper eventually retracted.

Cabral et al. 2020 claimed that closing an additional 5% of the ocean to fishing would increase fish catches by 20%. That snappy statistic made for a great headline—the paper was immediately covered by The Economist, Forbes, Anthropocene Magazine, and The Conversation when it was published in October 2020. It made its way through the popular press (the New York Times, Axios, National Geographic, and The Hill have all cited the paper)—and eventually into the U.S. congressional record: It was submitted as supporting evidence for a bill by then-Representative Deb Haaland, now the Secretary of the Interior. Cabral et al. 2020’s Altmetric Attention Score, a measure of how widely a scientific paper is shared, is in the top 5% all-time.

But with increased press comes increased scrutiny. Several close collaborators of the Cabral et al. group wrote scientific critiques that PNAS published earlier this year. The critiques pointed out errors and impossible assumptions that strongly suggested the paper was inadequately peer reviewed.

PNAS later determined that the person responsible for assigning Cabral et al.’s peer reviewers, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, had a conflict of interest. She collaborated with the Cabral et al. group and was the senior author on a follow-up paper published in Nature in March 2021. That follow-up paper, Sala et al. 2021, included the authors of Cabral et al. and depended on the same MPA model meant to be reviewed in PNAS.

Shortly after the Nature paper was published, Dr. Magnus Johnson (of the University of Hull in the U.K.) wrote a letter to the editor-in-chief of PNAS reporting the conflict of interest; an investigation was launched, and PNAS decided to retract Cabral et al. 2020 on October 6th, 2021—nearly a year from its original publication.

According to the editor-in-chief of PNAS, the frequent collaboration relationship Lubchenco had with the authors constituted a conflict of interest, as did the personal relationship with one of the authors, Dr. Steve Gaines—her brother-in-law. She should not have accepted the task of editing the paper. These conflicts of interest were clear and apparent from the time Cabral et al. 2020 was first submitted, but it wasn’t until the follow-up paper, Sala et al. 2021, received more press than any other ocean science paper in recent memory that eyebrows were raised.

Now the Sala et al. follow-up paper is being questioned—more potential inaccuracies have been found.

A highly flawed computer model with poor assumptions

Cabral et al. 2020 assembled a computer model out of several kinds of fishery data to predict where marine protected areas (MPAs) should be placed to maximize global sustainable seafood production. The model produced the map below, where the areas in green are high priority for MPAs and the orange areas are low priority.

Figure 2a from the now retracted Cabral et al. 2020, A global network of marine protected areas for food.

MPAs meant to increase food production do so by reducing fishing pressure in places where it is too high (overfishing). Asia and Southeast Asia have some of the highest overfishing rates in the world—reducing fishing pressure there is a no-brainer, but the model determined many of those areas to be low priority for protection.

The map above (Figure 2a from the retracted paper) should have been a big red flag for the peer reviewers of Cabral et al. 2020. Why were MPAs prioritized all around the U.S., where overfishing has been practically eliminated, but not prioritized around India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China?

Clearly, something was wrong with the model.

Several researchers with a long history of collaboration with the Cabral et al. authors noticed the oddity in the MPA prioritization and pointed out a fundamental issue: the model contained biologically impossible assumptions. It assumed that unassessed fish populations were globally linked—in the model, their geographic ranges could stretch across multiple oceans and their growth rates were based on global data rather than more-precise local data.

An “unassessed” fish population means there is no consistent scientific assessment of its status. Data on those fisheries is sparce. They comprise about half of the world’s catch with the other half monitored and assessed. In monitored or assessed fisheries, all kinds of data are consistently collected and stored in the RAM Legacy Database.

With little data, uncertainty about the future of unassessed fish stocks requires assumptions to be made. But the need for assumptions doesn’t excuse impossible ones. The model in Cabral et al. assumed unassessed fish populations could travel and mate across the species’ entire range rather than just within the population. This is akin to assuming North Sea Atlantic cod could interact with Gulf of Maine Atlantic cod who live over 3,000 miles away. There were cases in the model that assumed MPAs in the Atlantic would benefit fish in the Pacific.

Cabral et al. also assumed density dependence was global rather than local or regional, meaning recruitment of new fish to a population (basically a birthrate) depended on its global abundance rather than local abundance. In reality, density dependent effects are only relevant to the specific population of a particular species, e.g. North Sea cod versus all Atlantic cod; the abundance of North Sea cod has no relation to the abundance of Gulf of Maine cod despite being the same species.

The first critique pointing out issues with the model was published in April by Ray Hilborn (founder of this site). Another critique by Dan Ovando, Owen Liu, Renato Molino, and Cody Szuwalski (all of whom did their Ph.D.’s or a postdoc with members of the Cabral et al. group) expanded on Hilborn’s critique by digging into the math. They found that, due to the assumption that species were connected globally, Cabral et al.’s model overestimated the geographic range of unassessed fish by a factor of seventeen, compared to the scientifically assessed stocks.

Perhaps because it is biologically impossible, there is little precedent for modeling the dynamics of a species as one globally connected population. However, there is precedent for modeling unassessed fish populations at regional scales. Hilborn, Ovando, Szuwalski, Cabral, and many other authors of Cabral et al. 2020 were all authors on Costello et al. 2016, Global fishery prospects under contrasting management regimes, a seminal paper that modeled the range of unassessed fisheries on a regional scale. The authors of Cabral et al. 2020 had a path to follow from Costello et al. 2016, but changed assumptions.

Data errors
Since the authors of the Ovando et al. critique had been intimately involved in the Costello et al. 2016 paper, they were uniquely capable of looking at and interpreting the code for Cabral et al. They found two major errors:

1. Cabral et al. inadvertently created and used incorrect estimates of fishing mortality for the world’s assessed fisheries. This resulted in an overestimation of the amount of food benefits that MPAs could produce, and the size of MPAs that would produce those benefits. This error also contributed to the map that incorrectly prioritized areas with good fisheries management for MPA implementation; and

2. They mistakenly included a large (~3 million metric tons) and nonexistent stock from an outdated version of the RAM legacy database. They also placed this stock in the wrong ocean for their analysis.
Ovando et al. corrected the coding errors and reran the analysis. They found that the proposed benefits of MPAs for food decreased by 50% but still produced strange results.

Ovando et al. note (emphasis added):

“Using the corrected [model], Cabral et al.’s food-maximizing MPA network would close 22% of the United States’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to fishing, yet places only 2.5% of India’s, 10% of Indonesia’s, and 12% of China’s EEZs in MPAs… the median F/FMSY (fishing mortality rate F relative to the fishing mortality rate producing maximum sustainable yield FMSY) of fisheries in India, Indonesia, and China is nearly twice that of the United States, creating almost 5 times as much potential food upside from fishery reforms in those regions relative to the United States.”

In their response to Ovando et al., the authors of Cabral et al. acknowledge the model is not particularly realistic:

“The key assumption we made—that populations are well mixed throughout their geographic range—is indeed a heroic one.”

However, in their retraction note, the authors maintain that their conclusions are valid and intend to resubmit the paper.

Connection to Sala et al. 2021
Their persistence may be tied to Sala et al. 2021, Protecting the global ocean for biodiversity, food, and climate, the prominent follow-up paper published this past March in Nature. It presents several computer models that predict that an increase in MPAs to reduce fishing has benefits for biodiversity, food production, and carbon emissions. The food provisioning MPA model used by Sala et al. 2021 is the same one as Cabral et al. 2020 and was justified based on the results of the now-retracted paper.

Indeed, all the Cabral et al. 2020 authors were authors on the Sala et al. paper, including the first four authors of the Sala paper (authors are generally ordered in order of contribution, except for the “senior author,” who is the last listed). The Sala et al. paper was the most prominent ocean science paper of the year with an Altmetric score 4x higher than Cabral et al. 2020—it was covered in nearly every major newspaper in North America and Europe.

The acknowledged outright errors from Cabral et al. 2020 were corrected in the Sala et al. paper, but the biologically impossible assumptions that unassessed fish can travel across oceans, and that density dependence is global rather than local, remain.

The same authors from the Ovando et al. critique of the Cabral paper have responded to the Sala et al. paper, demonstrating that Sala et al.’s estimates of the effects of a global MPA network on food production were unreliable.

In the original Cabral et al. critique, the Ovando et al. authors argue that “omitting distance from MPA models produces results that are not credible.” Before it was retracted, the Cabral et al. authors responded saying their results were “a useful starting point.”

However the Ovando et al. critique of Sala et al. shows why that isn’t true:

Instead of just arguing the assumptions were poorly chosen, the recent Ovando et al. re-ran Sala et al.’s analysis with the assumption that fish stay in their region (defined by the U.N. FAO) and are dependent on local factors (the same, more realistic assumptions from Costello et al. 2016 that they all worked on together and that both Cabral et al. 2020 and Sala et al. 2021 were based on).

“By changing only two assumptions made by Sala et al. 2021 to different and equally if not more plausible assumptions, we produced a starkly different picture of the magnitude of potential food benefits from MPAs, and the location of priority areas for MPAs designed around food security.”

Costello et al. 2016 set a reasonable standard for evaluating unassessed fish stocks. That paper assumed fish live in their FAO region and are dependent on local abundance for population growth rates—about the best assumptions you can make about unmonitored fish populations given available data.

Sala et al. and Cabral et al. modified those assumptions to say that unassessed fish stocks are interconnected around the world and depend on global ecology for population growth rates. Why do this when more realistic assumptions are available and had been previously used by the authors? Both the Cabral and Sala papers used values from the Costello et al. paper as the basis for the model then changed the assumptions to less plausible ones.

Peer review was flawed – how much was due to the conflict of interest?
Cabral et al. clearly suffered from an inadequate peer review. An appropriately thorough reviewer would have seen the map of proposed MPAs, wondered why MPAs were prioritized in the U.S. but not overfished regions in Asia, and pushed the authors to explain why the map seemed “off.” Catching the coding errors would be a difficult task; perhaps only those who contributed to the original code on the earlier Costello et al. paper could have found them, but scrutinizing the map and clarifying the assumptions should have been primary, first principle peer-reviewing steps that should have led to the discovery of errors.

So how did Cabral et al. end up in PNAS, one of the most prestigious journals in the field, then get reproduced in Nature in the most covered paper of the year? The first decision was made by the editors at PNAS who read the paper, thought it was worthy of consideration, then assigned an individual PNAS editor to dive deeper and find peer-reviewers for it. In this case, the editor assigned to Cabral et al. was Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the former NOAA administrator and notable MPA scientist and advocate. She would make perfect sense as a choice to edit and find reviewers for MPA models, but she had a conflict of interest:

Cabral et al. was submitted to PNAS on January 6th, 2020. Notably, the Sala et al. paper was submitted to Nature two weeks prior, on December 19th, 2019. The senior author on the Sala et al. paper was Jane Lubchenco. She should not have been allowed to submit the Sala paper alongside other authors and then assign reviewers for a fundamental part of the paper two weeks later. Her brother-in-law, Dr. Steve Gaines, was also an author on both papers—familial relationships are another conflict of interest.

The editor in chief of PNAS told Retraction Watch both conflicts of interest would have been enough for retraction, even “absent the data errors.”

It will be interesting to see where the Cabral paper is resubmitted and how it is reviewed.

More scrutiny of the other models presented in Sala et al. 2021
You probably saw a headline covering Sala et al. 2021. Most of the press focused on its carbon model that concluded, Bottom Trawling Releases As Much Carbon as Air Travel. Most of the headlines were almost certainly not true.

The carbon model was the first attempt to quantify the global climate change impact of bottom trawling, a type of fishing in which nets are dragged along the seafloor. Bottom trawling kicks up sediment; the researchers tried to figure out how much carbon stored in sediment is redissolved into seawater due to trawling disturbances. More carbon dissolved in seawater means less atmospheric carbon can be absorbed by the ocean, contributing to climate change. Carbon dissolved in seawater also causes ocean acidification.

Sala et al. claimed their carbon model is a “best estimate,” but other scientists disagree and are have pointed out issues in the model that echo the same problems with the Cabral et al. model: impossible assumptions.

A response from Hiddink et al. noted one of the carbon model’s untrue assumptions: that sediment is inert until disturbed by trawling. According to Hiddink et al., this ignores “decades of geochemical research on natural processing of [carbon] in marine sediments.” There are many sea creatures that burrow in the seafloor—nearly all of them cycle carbon back into seawater (most organisms, like humans, respirate carbon).

Hiddink et al. also claim that the Sala et al. model greatly overestimated the amount of sediment that is disturbed: The model assumed all the sediment in the penetration depth is resuspended in the water column, whereas “field observations show that trawling resuspends only [~10%].”

Hiddink et al. say the Sala et al. model overestimates carbon impacts by an order of magnitude or more.

Was this another case of inadequate peer-review? An order of magnitude or more is a substantial error.

The carbon and food models weren’t the only ones with questionable assumptions. The biodiversity model in Sala et al. claimed that with increased MPAs, ocean biodiversity would increase. This is undoubtedly true inside an MPA, but the model assumed fishing rates remain constant outside the proposed MPAs, meaning effort that was inside the MPA disappears, rather than moving elsewhere. This is in direct conflict with the assumptions of the food provision model presented in their primary results which assumed the effort from inside the MPA moved elsewhere.

Not only is this picking and choosing MPA assumptions to present; in real life, this is rarely what happens. When fishermen are told they can’t fish in a particular area, they generally fish harder in other areas. Assuming fishing rates remain the same outside of MPAs probably exaggerates the practical benefits of MPAs for biodiversity.

The picking and choosing of model assumptions in Sala et al. has drawn yet another critique by Hilborn and Kaiser (not yet published on a preprint server). Sala et al. 2021 did report consistent fishing pressure assumptions in secondary results and supplementary materials, however those were not part of the main paper.

When asked about the status of the three known responses to Sala et al. (Ovando et al., Hiddink et al., and Hilborn & Kaiser), Nature had no comment as the review process is confidential.

Predictions need more scrutiny and less press
Regardless of any conflict of interest, the science in both Cabral et al. and Sala et al. is critically flawed, but being used to advocate for public policy. Both follow a recent trend of publishing predictions that use a limited set of assumptions (in a very uncertain world) to produce global maps that get published in high-profile journals and garner considerable media and political attention.

Computer models are essential tools for science and management, but the accuracy of their predictions depends on both the quality of the data and the assumptions they are based on. Often, a problem is so complex that several assumptions may be equally plausible; readers need to be made aware when different assumptions lead to vastly different outcomes.

The Cabral et al. and Sala et al. papers disregard uncertainty in favor of set values for their model parameters. They don’t account for the enormous uncertainty in these parameters and don’t provide strong evidence that their choice of values was correct. The assumptions and parameters produce big headlines, but are fundamentally unhelpful for the future of ocean governance and sustainability. We expect policy-makers and resource managers to make decisions based on the best available science. Inconsistent and unrealistic assumptions are not that.

Original post: https://www.seafoodnews.com/Story/1214154/Retraction-of-Flawed-MPA-Study-Implicates-Larger-Problems-in-MPA-Science

Posted with permission.

Ahead of Magnuson-Stevens Act Hearing, Studies Question Need for Additional Forage Fish Restrictions

November 16, 2021 — Editor’s note: The following was released ahead of today’s House subcommittee hearing on the Forage Fish Conservation Act. Watch the full hearing here.

Today, the House Natural Resources Committee Subcommittee on Water Oceans and Wildlife will hold a hearing on H.R. 5770, the Forage Fish Conservation Act, which would impose new rules on how fisheries managers regulate certain small, schooling, short-lived, pelagic fish and invertebrates that serve as food sources for larger predator species. Two recent studies have raised questions about the need for additional restrictions, and point to existing provisions in the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) that are already ensuring the sustainability of “forage fish” and the species that depend on them.

In addition to the Forage Fish Conservation Act, the subcommittee will consider two bills that would reauthorize and amend the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).  H.R. 4690 is the Democratic Majority’s re-authorization of MSA, sponsored by Subcommittee Chair Jared Huffman (D-California) and H.R. 59, sponsored by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska).

Proponents of the Forage Fish Act point to the need to keep forage fish populations at extra-precautionary levels, above existing overfishing limits, so that they can better provide for the needs of predator species. But a study released this summer in the journal Conservation Biology, and funded by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS), found that, for many predator species, managing forage species at these levels are unlikely to bring additional conservation or environmental benefits. This is especially true in already well-managed and well-monitored fisheries, such as those in the U.S. managed under the existing Magnuson-Stevens Act.

“Management of forage fish populations should be based on data that are specific to that forage fish, and to their predators,” said Dr. Olaf Jensen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the study’s authors. “When there aren’t sufficient data to conduct a population-specific analysis, it’s reasonable to manage forage fish populations for maximum sustainable yield, as we would other fish populations under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

Dr. Jensen and his co-author Dr. Chris Free of the University of California Santa Barbara discuss the results of the paper at greater length in a video released earlier this year. They are joined by scientists Dr. Doug Butterworthof the University of Cape Town, and Dr. Éva Plagányi of CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, who offer their independent assessment of the study and their own conclusions on its findings.

To reach these conclusions, the study examined decades worth of abundance data for 45 different predator species and their prey, and found that only 13 percent of them showed any positive impact from having additional, higher levels of forage. Instead, it found that other environmental factors have a far greater influence.

The results of the study reinforce the conclusions of an earlier 2017 study published in Fisheries Research, which found that the fishing of forage fish species had a much smaller impact than previous studies had indicated, and that forage fish were best managed on a case-by-case basis, rather than on broad rules applied across species.

Original post: https://www.savingseafood.org/news/washington/ahead-of-magnuson-stevens-act-hearing-studies-question-need-for-additional-forage-fish-restrictions/

California Current Fish Surveys Resume with 3-Month Assessment of Sardine, Anchovy, and Mackerel

NOAA Ship Reuben Lasker, a fisheries survey vessel, departed San DIego in early July to assess coastal pelagic species such as sardine and anchovy. Credit: Paul Hillman/NOAA Fisheries

NOAA Fisheries has begun an ambitious assessment of small pelagic fish reaching from the Canadian border to the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula, in cooperation with Mexico, which will help determine how many fish can be caught off the West Coast.

The COVID-19 pandemic had idled surveys for sardine, anchovy, and other species of small coastal pelagic species (CPS) off the West Coast since 2019. Small pelagic species are important ecologically and provide food for larger fish, such as tunas. The new assessment resumes regular CPS  surveys by collecting data from NOAA Ship Reuben Lasker, commercial fishing vessels equipped with acoustic technology, and autonomous Saildrones.

The Lasker left San Diego on July 6, becoming the centerpiece of the 3-month survey. It will cover thousands of miles in U.S., and Mexican waters. NOAA Fisheries scientists are coordinating efforts with federal fisheries agencies in Mexico and Canada, providing a science foundation for future decisions on fishing levels and seasons.

“Organizing and coordinating this survey was a tremendous feat of collaboration,” said Kristen Koch, Director of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, which is leading the survey. “Collecting data across all three countries will provide a valuable foundation for management of these important transboundary species.”

The Lasker will survey coastal pelagic fish along transects in the California Current, quantifying the fish with echosounders. These instruments include an advanced new model that can for the first time also measure the velocities of fish as they swim relative to the ship. The measurements will help to understand whether and how fish respond to survey vessels and if those reactions affect the quality of data on the numbers and distributions of fish.

Combined Vessels Extend Reach

The fishing industry vessels Lisa Marie and Long Beach Carnage will join the survey effort in waters closer to shore and shallower than Lasker can sample. This collaboration with the fishing industry expands sampling nearer the shore, more fully capturing the fish present in shallower waters. Meanwhile, autonomous Saildrones will improve the survey precision and accuracy by increasing sampling in areas with higher fish abundance and allow Lasker to cover a larger area.

“We’re making use of a combination of resources in ways that should yield complementary data and increase the information about seven populations of five fish species,” said David Demer, Advanced Survey Technology Program Lead at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center and Chief Scientist of the survey.

Anchovy are among the pelagic fish species the survey is assessing off the West Coast. Credit: Shutterstock

After surveying U.S. waters, Lasker for the first time will continue south to cover waters around the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. Where Lasker concludes sampling, the Mexican research vessel Dr. Jorge Carranza Fraser will sample the Pacific and Gulf of California coasts of the Baja Peninsula. The two ships will use the same protocols so their data can be combined into more comprehensive analyses. Scientists from Mexico’s national fishery agency, the National Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture, or INAPESCA, will join Lasker to foster cross-training and collaborations.

Dr. Pablo Roberto Arenas Fuentes, General Director of INAPESCA, highlighted that not since the late 1980s has such a combined international effort been assembled. He said this joint survey, using the same methodologies and data analysis between nations, truly represents something never done before on the scale of the California Current.

“The historic collaboration between INAPESCA and NOAA Fisheries represents the first time we will combine research methods to focus acoustic evaluation on the biomass of small pelagic fish,” he said. “This will generate continuous biological and environmental data along one of the most important coastal ecosystems of the North American continent.”

The survey will examine the abundance and distribution of the three subpopulations of Pacific sardine in the California Current, two of which are potentially fished by the United States and Mexico. The northern subpopulation historically occurred largely in Canadian and U.S. waters but declined to such low levels in recent years that the fisheries have been closed since 2015.

Less is known about another subpopulation that principally occupies waters off Mexico and Southern California. U.S. fishermen have shown interest in recent reports of increases in the proportion of the subpopulation in U.S. waters. The survey’s new reach into Mexico and the advanced acoustic technology aboard the vessels should provide more complete information on the distribution of the subpopulation, Koch said.

“The joint analysis will improve our knowledge of the distribution and abundance of these species at the regional level, which will support important fisheries,” said Dr. Pablo Arenas.

Survey Also Includes Anchovy and Mackerel

Additional information will also serve to assess the total abundance and extent of northern anchovy, and the jack and Pacific mackerel populations in the survey area. Anchovy have been extremely abundant in the California Current in recent years. Pelagic fish are known for boom-bust fluctuations in their populations.

A map outlines the survey transects for the vessels surveying small coastal pelagic species. Some of the northernmost transects were canceled but otherwise the solid lines show the course of the survey, with the magenta lines showing nearshore transects and blue lines showing the course of Saildrones. Credit: NOAA Fisheries

“Integrated surveys, such as this one, are essential in helping us understand how these populations change and shift over time so we can ensure that fisheries are sustainable,” said Josh Lindsay, fisheries biologist with NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region.

The Lasker, the Fraser, Saildrones, and the industry vessels all use advanced echosounders emitting sound waves to detect and map fish schools. Each of the crewed vessels then deploy either trawl or purse-seine nets to catch samples of the fish. The net catches identify the species of fish that reflect sound in each area, and their lengths, ages, and reproductive status.

In 2020, NOAA Fisheries’ Saltonstall-Kennedy Competitive Grants Program awarded funding to Ocean Gold Seafoods to help pay for the Lisa Marie to participate in the survey and provide more complete data. “The Coastal Pelagic Species industry feels strongly that it has a stake in robust fisheries management of this complex and dynamic assemblage, which can only be achieved with extensive data collection efforts,” industry supporters wrote in their application for the funding.

The cooperative research that combines NOAA Fisheries science and insight from fishermen provides long-term benefits for both. It is an area of increasing focus for NOAA Fisheries.

“The immense scale and scope of the survey is really significant,” said Joel Van Noord, a biologist with the California Wetfish Producers Association who will join the survey aboard Long Beach Carnage. He said the fishing fleet benefits from high-quality data on fish populations that help ensure they are managed sustainably, providing continuing benefits to fishing communities and the marine ecosystem.

Original post: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/

Oceana sues NMFS over California sardine management

Alleging that U.S. West Coast fisheries managers are repeating mistakes of the past half-century, the environmental group Oceana is suing NMFS over its approval of the latest sardine management plan and demanding more action to rebuild the stock.

“Despite these hard lessons, NMFS repeats these management failures in Amendment 18,” states the group’s complaint, filed by the legal group Earthjustice on 14 July in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, naming U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, NOAA, and the fisheries agency.

Oceana claims NMFS should not have approved the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s amendment to the coastal pelagic species management plan, allowing managers to “chose a suite of already disproven, status-quo management measures that will keep this population at levels too low to support either the ecosystem or the primary fishery that relies on sardine for half a century or more.”

“Basically, we’re dealing with a rebuilding plan that’s not designed to rebuild,” said Geoff Shester, senior scientist and California campaign director for Oceana.

Environmental activists, managers, and fishermen have long been at odds over the U.S. sardine fishery, foundation of the historic California cannery industry that collapsed in the 1950s and stayed closed until 1974. Sardines were found in 2019 to be overfished, but fishing advocates say offshore surveys are missing large amounts of fish.

Managers now recognize that the sardine stock size is primarily driven by environmental factors, and that there is inadequacy of surveys used in assessments, according to Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association.

“Oceana just refuses to acknowledge the reality,” Pleschner-Steele said. “We’ve been arguing for years that the surveys don’t capture the [accurate number] of fish.”

The accusation of “status quo is misrepresenting management,” Pleschner-Steele said. The council and NMFS need flexibility to improve surveys and assessments, monitor environmental factors, and consider the fishing community needs with “the only reasonable rebuilding plan,” she said.

“It’s a balancing act between the biology of the fish and the well-being of the fishing community,” she said.

Managers have been using models based on northern and southern sardine stocks and linking most of the allowable biological catch to the northern stock, said Pleschner-Steele. But she said newer analysis has shown virtually all catches come from the southern stock, which also fuels a robust live-bait fishery supplying the recreational sector.

Shester said the fishery may account for 50 percent or more of the catch and needs a closer look, too. Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, fisheries managers trying to guide a recovery gave wide allowances to the bait fishery, and “that was recognized as a big mistake,” he said.

There’s no question that sardine levels are driven by environmental conditions, but “the question is what does fishing do on top of that?” Shester said. “When the [sardines] move into these low levels, that’s not sustainable.”

Efforts to build cooperative surveys were sidetracked in 2020 with COVID-19, but work is underway again with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife on acoustic trawl and aerial surveys, said Pleschner-Steele. Work so far this year has found large numbers of fish, she said.

“I’m hoping we’ll be coming to an update of the stock assessment by the end of the year,” she said, that could get the fishery “out of overfished jail.”

Original post: https://www.seafoodsource.com/

Reporting by Kirk Moore

Photo courtesy of NOAA

New Study: Precautionary Catch Limits on Forage Fish Unlikely to Benefit Predators

July 6, 2021 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

A newly released study finds that, for many predator species, extra-precautionary management of forage fish is unlikely to bring additional benefits. How to manage forage fish sustainably, both by themselves and for the rest of the ecosystem, has become a much-discussed topic in fisheries management, with regulators of several forage fisheries beginning to adopt precautionary strategies on the premise that they will better provide for the needs of predator species including seabirds, marine mammals, and fish.

The study, from Drs. Chris Free of the University of California-Santa Barbara, Olaf Jensen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington, examines decades of historical abundance data of both forage species and their predators, and uses mathematical models to determine to what extent predator populations benefited from increasing abundance of their forage fish prey. Of the 45 predator populations examined, only 6, or 13 percent, were positively influenced by extra forage.

“Our work suggests that the sustainable limits that we already employ are sufficient for maintaining forage fish abundance above the thresholds that are necessary for their predators,” said Dr. Free. “Predators are highly mobile, they have high diet flexibility, and they can go and look for forage fish in places where they’re doing well, switch species for species that are doing well, and have often evolved to breed in places where there’s high and stable forage fish abundance.”

The results have important implications for how strictly to manage forage fisheries. The study finds that, at least in forage fisheries that are already being well managed and are closely monitored, adopting additional precautionary measures will “rarely” provide any additional benefits to predator population growth. However, fishery managers who deal with less well-monitored fisheries may consider more precautionary strategies.

“In places of the world where we already have really strong, very effective fisheries management, additional limitations on forage fish catch are not likely to benefit their predators,” said Dr. Free.

“Management of forage fish populations should be based on data that are specific to that forage fish, and to their predators,” said Dr. Jensen. “When there aren’t sufficient data to conduct a population-specific analysis, it’s reasonable to manage forage fish populations for maximum sustainable yield, as we would other fish populations under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

According to the models used in the study, other environmental factors, such as water temperature, are more likely to influence predator populations. These results are consistent with previous efforts to examine the relationship between predator and prey populations.

“What we’ve done here that’s different from previous analyses is try to control for some of the other factors that influence predator population dynamics,” said Dr. Jensen. “In this case, we included in the models a covariate representing ocean temperature.”

SCEMFIS produced a video of the authors and independent experts discussing the results of the paper. Watch it here.

About SCEMFIS
SCEMFIS utilizes academic and fisheries resources to address urgent scientific problems limiting sustainable fisheries. SCEMFIS develops methods, analytical and survey tools, datasets, and analytical approaches to improve sustainability of fisheries and reduce uncertainty in biomass estimates. SCEMFIS university partners, University of Southern Mississippi (lead institution), and Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, are the academic sites. Collaborating scientists who provide specific expertise in finfish, shellfish, and marine mammal research, come from a wide range of academic institutions including Old Dominion University, Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, University of Maryland, and University of Rhode Island.

The need for the diverse services that SCEMFIS can provide to industry continues to grow, which has prompted a steady increase in the number of fishing industry partners. These services include immediate access to science expertise for stock assessment issues, rapid response to research priorities, and representation on stock assessment working groups. Targeted research leads to improvements in data collection, survey design, analytical tools, assessment models, and other needs to reduce uncertainty in stock status and improve reference point goals.

Original post: Saving Seafood | Sign up for our Daily News Updates from Saving Seafood.

Impacts of fishing forage fish on the fish that feed on forage fish

Ray Hilborn: MPAs aren’t the answer to ocean biodiversity, sustainability efforts

A global movement to create additional marine protected areas (MPAs) has been steadily gaining traction in recent years, with the initiative picking up milestone victories in the past few months.

In January, newly inaugurated U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order committing to a “30 by 30” goal, whereby the United States would designated 30 percent of its land and territorial waters to conservation by the year 2030. The move heightened the potential that MPAs will be used as a tool to tackle climate change.

A recent study supports the hypothesis that MPAs could be beneficial for climate change, maintaining biodiversity, and boosting the yield of fisheries. According to the study, strongly protecting at least 30 percent of the ocean – primarily in the 200-mile exclusive economic zones of coastal nations – would result in substantial environmental and commercial benefits.

But University of Washington Professor of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences Ray Hilborn told SeafoodSource that the study – and the concept of MPAs – are both flawed. The study, he said, made some assumptions and contains inconsistencies that effectively invalidate the conclusions it reached.

“It’s a classic example of where the peer-review process totally failed to identify inconsistencies, bizarre assumptions, and improper conclusions,” Hilborn said.

The study, he said, made different assumptions on different types of fishing effort.

“It happens that each of the assumptions they made about fishing effort is the one that makes MPAs look better,” he said.

A key example, Hilborn said, is how the study approaches trawling. The study made biodiversity calculations based on fishing effort shifting in geography as MPAs are put in place – which itself poses problems, he said. However, the study assumed that an MPA ban on trawling wouldn’t result in increased fishing effort in other areas.

“When it comes to the impact of trawling and the impacts on biodiversity, they assume when you close an area, the effort disappears,” Hilborn said.

The study found a ban on trawling in designated MPAs would have a carbon benefit – but that is true only if that trawling effort doesn’t move holds, Hilborn said.

“If you move the effort, the carbon benefit disappears,” Hilborn said.

Hilborn said the study also assumes an “instantaneous connection” between different species around the world – when in reality, species in separate oceans aren’t going to interact. And the analysis wasn’t actually global, as South Asia and Southeast Asia were not accounted for in the study.

“This isn’t a global analysis, because they don’t have trawl effort in Southeast Asia,” Hilborn said.

Protecting biodiversity is a key issue that needs to be tackled, and the core motivation behind MPAs and Biden’s 30 by 30 plan are sound, Hilborn said.

“[The] 30 by 30 [movement] is not ambitious enough,” Hilborn said. “We need to protect the biodiversity of 100 percent of our [exclusive economic zone].”

Protecting biodiversity in the oceans is not best accomplished via MPAs, especially in light of climate change, Hilborn said. In fact, while advocates have touted MPAs as a means to fight climate change, in reality, they do little to help, he said.

“They want to see 30 percent of the oceans permanently closed,” Hilborn said. “That’s absolutely the wrong thing to do. With climate change, things are shifting.”

Hilborn used the interactions between fisheries and the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale as an example of how a proposed MPA might not work as intended. In recent years, the species has been the center of an ongoing push for increased protections, and recently NOAA outlined new regulations to protect the species.

Climate change has forced the 400 or so remaining North Atlantic right whales to chase food sources that are now located in parts of the ocean with more fishing effort, primarily in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. That movement highlights how MPAs would struggle to protect species in the ocean, Hilborn said.

“If you had closed areas to protect northern right whales 20 years ago, they’d be in all the wrong areas,” he said.

Protected areas on land, he added, make sense because of the nature of human interaction with the land.

“The reason you want parks on land is that human use is transformative. If you put a city on it, or you farm it, it’s gone,” Hilborn said. “In the ocean, fishing doesn’t really change the structure of the ecosystem. We don’t kill the plants which is what farming does, we don’t harvest the second trophic level, we just harvest the top of the food chain.”

Plus, many of the actual threats to the ocean aren’t coming from the ocean itself, or from fishing.

“If you look at what the threats to the oceans are, they’re ocean acidification, climate change, invasive species, various kinds of pollution, land runoff, and none of those are impacted by MPAs,” Hilborn said.

A great example is the large dead zone that forms in the Gulf of Mexico every year.  The dead zone is created by excess nutrient pollution from agricultural areas – mainly related to fertilizers washed into the gulf through the Mississippi River and other inland waterways. NOAA makes annual predictions for how large the dead zone will be, based on things like rainfall. An MPA in the area to protect that environment, Hilborn pointed out, would have no effect on the biodiversity of the ocean in the region.

“You could make it an MPA and ban everything, you could ban shipping, you could ban mining, you could ban fishing, and you’d have no effect on the dead zone,” he said.

Protecting biodiversity is possible, but MPAs are the wrong tool for the job, Hilborn said.

“You don’t need no-take in order to protect the biodiversity. Again, high profile things, marine birds, marine mammals, turtles, sharks, those are things where there’s very specific – gear specific – things that impact them,” he said. “Closed areas aren’t going to help, because they’re all so mobile.”

The solution for those species, he said, is simple.

“Take sharks or turtles – all you have to do is stop killing them,” he said.

Current fisheries management agencies already serve as a tool for protecting biodiversity, and Hilborn said additional effort can be made using those existing agencies.

“What I would like to see is very explicit targets in what are we trying to achieve in biodiversity, and for each one of those targets, what’s the best tool to achieve it,” Hilborn said. “In almost every case, you’re going to be modifying fishing gear, and how fishing takes place, rather than closing areas to all fishing gears.”

MPAs, he said, are essentially just regulating a few activities in an area, without addressing wider issues.

“Fundamentally, all MPAs are doing is regulating fishing, and maybe oil exploration and mining,” he said. “It’s just the wrong tool. The illusion that you’re protecting the ocean by putting in MPAs, it’s a big lie.”

Original post: https://www.seafoodsource.com/news