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/

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

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

Biden Administration Sees Victory in CA Offshore Wind; Fishermen See Deception

Windmill park green energy during sunset in the ocean, offshore wind mill turbines Netherlands

Photo Credit: fokkebok/iStock/Getty Images Plus

The White House announcement Tuesday of fast-tracking large areas in California to offshore wind brought with it the sharp-edged blade of betrayal to fishermen trying to work with federal agencies to retain their livelihoods.

In Washington, D.C., far away from the areas being discussed, the White House convened National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Under Secretary for Defense for Policy Dr. Colin Kahl for the announcement of the first commercial scale offshore wind energy areas off the Pacific Coast. The Biden administration hailed it as a significant milestone to achieving the goal of creating good-paying, union jobs through the deployment of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, the administration said in a press release. These initial areas for offshore wind development in the Pacific Ocean could bring up to 4.6 GW of clean energy to the grid, enough to power 1.6 million American homes, according to the White House.

Specifically, the Department of the Interior, in coordination with the Department of Defense, identified an area (“the Morro Bay 399 Area”) that will support three gigawatts of offshore wind on roughly 399 square miles northwest of Morro Bay, the White House said. The Department of the Interior is also advancing the Humboldt Call Area as a potential Wind Energy Area, located off northern California.

The White House said the Department of Defense played a critical role in identifying the areas because it engages in testing, training and operations essential to national security off the California coast. The DoD objected to some of proposed areas in the past but was working with the state and Interior in the past.

“Tacking the climate crisis is a national security imperative and the Defense Department is proud to have played a role in this important effort,” Under Secretary for Defense Policy Dr. Colin Kahl said in the press release. “… Throughout this effort, the Defense Department has worked tirelessly with the White House, the Department of the Interior, and the state of California to find solutions that enable offshore wind development while ensuring long-term protection for testing, training, and operations critical to our military readiness.”

But the announcement shocked the seafood industry. The area is larger than expected and effectively negates good-faith efforts to work with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and state agencies. The seafood industry has tried to elevate the importance tof fishing and processing and the need to identify important harvesting and natural resource areas prior to establishing an area for wind turbines.

“The fishing industry has been told these areas work best for offshore wind developers, but no one has asked us what areas would work best for us,” Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Executive Director Mike Conroy said. “There has been no effort to engage with or partner with fishermen, no planning process to evaluate fisheries data and spatial needs to inform this development, nor is there a clear process for how to do that through permitting now that we have missed the opportunity to plan effectively. The areas announced today are large areas; and with additional Call Areas likely to be identified off California and Oregon later this year, a comprehensive, upfront, cumulative effects analysis should be required.”

The administration’s move mirrors those by BOEM on the East Coast with the recent approval of the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project. The pattern of excluding the seafood industry is not new. Fishermen and processors on the West Coast have seen similar BOEM patterns.

Another case in point: BOEM announced this week it would hold a California Renewable Energy Intergovernmental Task Force meeting on June 24 and sent a notice to the seafood industry to join. The public is invited to “listen and attend on June 24, 2021, to discuss both central and northern California offshore wind planning areas considered for future leasing and next steps in the BOEM leasing process moving forward,” the notice said.

However, that’s also the first day of the Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting.

“It is inexcusable that BOEM, who has claimed to engage closely with the Council, would schedule a Task Force meeting during the Council’s meeting,” the PCFFA said. “The fishing community will now have to choose between attending the Council meeting and participating in discussions fostering our sustainable fisheries or attending a meeting where they will be told that dire consequences are possible for the fisheries the Council manages.”

Morro Bay fishermen were particularly angry.

“We’re totally against this,” Tom Hafer, president of the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermen’s Organization, was quoted as saying in a New York Times story. “We’ve been consulting with the Castle Wind people for a long time, and we helped pick the spot and developed a memorandum of understanding on an area that we thought would be sustainable for us. That was about 120 square miles. This is 399 square miles. We’re going to lose a whole bunch of fishing grounds. There will be cables in the water. We don’t know how the whales will react. There are a lot of unknowns. People don’t realize how massive this project will be.”

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance noted the seafood industry’s efforts.

“The California and broader Pacific fishing communities have raised multiple direct requests and concerns to BOEM, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, and others that merit prompt attention,” RODA said in a press release.

These include:

• Expanded fisheries representation on BOEM Intergovernmental Task Forces;
• Greater opportunities for public input;
• Additional resources for fisheries-related research and environmental review;
• Performance of full environmental analyses at the onset of project siting;
• Enhanced interstate coordination;
• Implementation of an inclusive marine spatial planning process prior to lease decisions;
• Advancement of science processes and products that include fishermen’s traditional knowledge; and
• Decisions based on appropriate time series and data sets with sufficient timelines to gather such data, which is largely unavailable at present.

The Pacific Council will likely discuss meaningful engagement with BOEM again at its June Council meeting.

Susan Chambers
SeafoodNews.com
1-541-297-2875
susanchambers@urnerbarry.com

Posted with permission from SeafoodNews

Pacific Sardine Landings May Shift North as Ocean Warms, New Projections Show

Pacific sardines are a small but sometimes numerous fish closely intertwined with California’s fishing history. A new study linking climate change and the northern sardine stock fishery shows that they may shift north along the West Coast as the ocean warms.

A climate-driven northward shift by sardines could cause a decline in landings of the northern sardine stock by 20 to 50 percent in the next 60 years. These changes would affect historic California fishing ports such as San Pedro and Moss Landing, according to the new research published in Fisheries Oceanography. The study did not examine whether southern sardine stock would also shift northward, potentially offsetting this decline in landings. In turn, landings at northern port cities such as Astoria, Oregon, and Westport, Washington, are projected to benefit.

Researchers examined three possible “climate futures.” The warmest had the most pessimistic outcomes, with total sardine landings in all West Coast states declining 20 percent by 2080.

Understanding climate-driven shifts in habitat helps predict impacts on landings

The study translates environmental shifts into possible impacts on fishing communities and coastal economies. Sardines have historically gone through “boom and bust” changes in their population. Their numbers off the West Coast have remained low in recent years, with the West Coast sardine fishery closed since 2015. This research does not project changes in the abundance of sardines. Instead, it shows that climate-driven shifts in their habitat may have a significant impact on landings at historically important ports.

“As the marine environment changes, so too will the distribution of marine species,” said James Smith, a research scientist with the University of Santa Cruz affiliated with NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center. “But linking future changes in the distribution of species with impacts on the fishing fleet has been challenging. Hopefully our study can provide information about potential impacts in coming decades, and thereby inform strategies to mitigate these impacts.”

Maps illustrate projections of how sardine habitat off the West Coast will shift as climate change warms the ocean. Blue shading illustrates where habitat will improve for sardines over coming decades, while red shows where habitat will grow worse. Credit: Fisheries Oceanography.

Looking to the Past to Predict the Future

The estimated shifts illustrate how climate change may alter the traditional fishing economies of the West Coast, as once depicted in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.” The 1945 novel featured historic canneries in Monterey, once supplied by sardine catches delivered to nearby Moss Landing. Sardines helped make Monterey one of the busiest fishing ports in the world until their collapse in the 1950s. Sardines are well known to undergo boom and bust cycles. Their numbers, and landings with them, increased again in the 1990s, but have declined more recently. The new research does not attempt to project changes in sardine numbers, but uses recent numbers as a baseline. It demonstrates how average landings by port may change due to future shifts in sardine habitat.

“We can’t predict how many sardines there will be in 50 to 60 years,” says James Smith, “but we have a much better idea where they will be. And their northward shift [of the northern sardine stock] promises to have a significant impact on the fishery, regardless of how many sardine there are.”

The study aligns with earlier research indicating that many marine species, including sardines, will follow their preferred temperatures north as climate change warms the Pacific Ocean. The new research estimates the northward shift in sardine, and its potential impact on the fishing fleet. These findings emerged from newly developed and very fine-scale projections by climate and ocean models of changes in ocean conditions along the West Coast.

There are three stocks of sardine: northern, southern and Gulf of California. The research examined the northern stock, which can range from southeast Alaska to the northern portion of the Baja Peninsula, not the Gulf of California stock or the southern stock typically found mostly in Mexican waters off the west coast of Baja California but sometimes ranging into Southern California. Researchers noted that a northward shift by the southern stock may help offset the projected declines in landings at southern ports.

The potential impact of a shifting Pacific sardine distribution on U.S. West Coast landings.

Original post: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/pacific-sardine-landings-may-shift-north-ocean-warms-new-projections-show

Recent Events Offer Promise for Protection of Sustainable Domestic Fishing

Interior Dept., BOEM, and Congressional Actions Pave Way to Protect Coastal Economies

December 15, 2020– The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance:

Three significant positive developments affecting fisheries and offshore wind have occurred since Friday. The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) has worked on these issues to ensure the safety and continued viability of our U.S. domestic fisheries, our coastal communities, and seafood consumers in light of offshore wind energy development. These wins were not achieved through high-powered lobbying or well-financed campaigns, but rather by expressing a clear and consistent message based in science and fact, making reasonable requests, and working diligently with elected and appointed officials in the Administration, both parties in Congress, career agency officials, and a multitude of state and private sector entities.

It is reassuring to see reason and logic prevail in government decisions. In addition to the many officials who contributed to these outcomes, we are immensely thankful for the efforts made by our own members, by others in the fishing industry and its advocates, and by those conscientious members of the offshore wind industry.

The Jones Act
What happened: On Friday, the Senate passed the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act that included a version of the “Garamendi Amendment,” which clarifies that all federal laws–including the Jones Act–apply to “all installations and other devices permanently or temporarily attached to the seabed, which may be erected thereon for the purpose of exploring for, developing, or producing resources, including non-mineral energy resources.” President Trump has threatened to veto the NDAA bill, but it is considered to have a veto-proof majority in Congress.

What It Means: A frequently cited benefit of the development of offshore wind energy has been domestic job creation. But the fact is that developers have planned to survey and construct early projects using vessels, equipment, and crew from abroad, with a longer term goal of building out a U.S. supply chain. RODA has submitted comment letters and raised attention to the Jones Act’s application to the offshore wind industry to date, which differed from all other ocean activities. This new statutory language means that many of those contracts and project plans will need to be revised to use U.S. vessels and crew from the start, consistent with all other U.S. industries. Currently, there are no Jones Act qualified vessels that can transport or install offshore wind turbines. Getting the investments required to build them may be challenging, and getting installation vessels in the water will take time. However, ensuring that any economic benefits generated by offshore wind energy accrue to our manufacturers and local communities is the right thing to do.

BOEM Vineyard Wind decision
What happened: The Department of Interior has announced that the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement for the Vineyard Wind project is no longer necessary, and the process is terminated effective immediately. In plain English, this means the federal permitting process for the Vineyard Wind project is canceled. This news will become “official” in the Federal Register on December 16th.

What it means: On December 3, just a week before a final Environmental Impact Statement of its project was to be published in the Federal Register, Vineyard Wind announced that it had “decided to temporarily withdraw its Construction and Operations Plan (COP) from further review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).”  BOEM responded by effectively stating that there is no “pause” option in the regulations, and accordingly “there is no longer a proposal for a major federal action awaiting technical and environmental review, nor is there a decision pending before BOEM,” and the process is “terminated.” RODA and local fishing interests repeatedly requested that Vineyard Wind, neighboring wind leaseholders, the states, BOEM, and USCG modify project designs to lessen impacts to the fishing industry. This led to a re-orientation of planned turbine rows in the dominant fishing direction, but other critical issues such as the addition of transit lanes for the safety of ocean-going fishing vessels were ignored. Now, Vineyard Wind will need to re-apply for its project, but the new timeline may not match supply contracts or the power purchase agreement with Massachusetts.

Department of the Interior internal legal memorandum
What happened: The Department of the Interior (DOI) issued an internal legal memorandum interpreting its statutory mandate to prevent offshore wind energy’s interference with fishing. Previous DOI guidance on the statutory language, which requires “prevention of interference with reasonable uses [including fishing] of the exclusive economic zone, the high seas, and the territorial seas,” indicated that offshore renewable energy projects could not interfere with the legal right to fish. This new memo explicitly changes that guidance, saying “[n]owhere does the statute indicate that the Secretary is only to prevent interference with the legal right to navigate or fish in an area. It is the Secretary’s job to provide for the prevention of interference with those uses.” In short, it states: (1) That the Secretary must ensure that offshore wind energy projects do not unreasonably interfere with fishing operations; (2) That fishermen’s perspectives are part of what determine whether interference is unreasonable; (3) That such interference is considered on a cumulative instead of project-specific level; and (4) If in question it must err on the side of less interference rather than more.

What It Means: This fundamentally shifts the balance of interests toward fishing, a critical provider of food security and low-carbon footprint protein, over offshore wind energy. Under previous guidance the presumption was that wind energy development should take precedence, and proceed in accordance with what developers determined to be optimal, and fishing interests would need to adjust. While a future Administration could revoke or refine the memorandum, it presents a solid legal argument for challenging any such action.

What does the future hold?
These three recent events create a better opportunity for a future in which the interests of all reasonable users of the seas can coexist.

When the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act becomes law, and projects must comply with the Jones Act, this will create a delay in the timeline for construction. It is crucial that the incoming Administration and interested states use that time to invest in science and research to understand—and ultimately minimize—environmental and economic impacts.

• We need to start collecting robust baseline data immediately in all places where offshore wind projects may be considered in the future.
• We need to retool our fisheries and protected resource monitoring protocols so important ecological data that forms the basis of fisheries management is not disrupted.
• We need to understand the environmental impacts that have occurred from rapid large-scale development of offshore wind in places like Europe, which the European Parliament is currently reviewing and finding are largely unknown and possibly much greater than anticipated.
• We need to understand the variations between the ocean and atmospheric environments of the European installations, and significantly different environments of U.S. federal waters, which are unique and contain some of the most productive and ecologically complex benthic environments in the world.
• We need to much better understand the economic interactions between the two industries so we can preserve and promote traditional, historic, and sustainable fishing, while also identifying any possible economic opportunities that may arise for fishing communities from offshore wind energy production when it arrives in the future.
• We need to continue to improve offshore wind energy and other renewable technology, including turbine and cable recycling methods, so that we can thoughtfully and quickly reduce carbon emissions while avoiding serious adverse environmental consequences associated with the large land use and materials needs of current technology.
• We need to prioritize development of regional transmission systems to minimize the amount of structure that is ultimately placed in the water and on or under the seabed.
• We need to build better relationships between fishermen, offshore wind energy developers, states, and federal managers so that information is effectively communicated and innovative solutions can be identified.
• We need to develop decommissioning plans for when offshore wind leases are over that properly mitigate long-term environmental impacts and restore impacted habitats so we don’t create permanent steel graveyards in the ocean.

Most importantly, now that we’ve witnessed a project’s plans collapse due to failure to minimize fisheries impacts, we must work together to improve our planning process — as we in the fishing industry have been requesting for over a decade. Fishermen must be at the table and play a meaningful role in project siting and design. Ways to minimize and mitigate impacts must be identified up front and fully incorporated into all project plans. Although a handful of states and developers have made strong efforts to operate this way, it has never been done effectively on the correct spatial scale. In fact, we need to create new public, transparent, and inclusive regional processes that fully incorporate fisheries science and operational knowledge.

The need for a new planning process has been recognized by fishing interests and by offshore wind energy advocates. This was most recently clearly stated in a December 11th interview by Jeffrey Grybowski, the former CEO of Deepwater Wind, which was acquired by Ørsted in 2019.

“Obviously there are fishing groups in the Northeast that have raised really significant concerns. Those concerns can be addressed, but I also acknowledge they were real concerns. I don’t think anyone is suggesting their concerns should’ve been dismissed and projects just should have been approved.”

Mr. Grybowski went on to note that the problems with Vineyard Wind were not due to political bias.

“…some have said Vineyard Wind’s permit delays are due to some kind of anti-renewable bias within the administration. I disagree with the idea that — I think that view diminishes the nuance and complexity of what we’re all doing. New lease areas are complicated. There are stakeholders out there in favor of new lease areas. And so to simply blame everything on a political viewpoint understates the nuance and complexity of what we’re trying to do.”

The need for change has now been made clear by officials on both sides of the political aisle. Speaking at his annual climate change conference, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) stated

“Right from the very get-go, even before the filing … it should be a requirement of the filing to bring a statement of what work you’ve done with the fishing community, what their concerns have been. … Developers shouldn’t just get to go out there, cut a private deal with their funders, their investors, and then put their stamp down in the public ocean as if they owned it.”

These recent developments will significantly shift the discourse around offshore wind and fisheries to make sure fishermen’s needs and knowledge are afforded greater priority. Taken together, they offer a significant opportunity to fix the broken offshore wind energy planning process. Regardless of political or industry affiliation, we must now work together to properly balance uses of the ocean commons and maintain sustainable fishing practices.