Pacific Council Declares Petrale Sole and Canary Rockfish Now Rebuilt to Sustainable Level

— Posted with permission of SEAFOODNEWS.COM. Please do not republish without their permission. —

Copyright © 2015 Seafoodnews.com

SEAFOODNEWS.COM  By Peggy Parker  –  June 22, 2015

The Pacific Fishery Management Council announced last week that two formerly overfished West Coast groundfish stocks—canary rockfish and petrale sole—have now been rebuilt ahead of schedule.

The stocks have been the subject of strict rebuilding plans that severely constrained West Coast fisheries for more than a decade. Managing groundfish fisheries in the last 15 years, under the canary rockfish rebuilding plan in particular, has been an immense challenge for the Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service and has caused significant disruption of fisheries.

“This is a huge achievement and reflects many hard decisions made by the Council and its advisors, as well as difficult sacrifices by the fishermen and communities that depend on groundfish,” said Council Chair Dorothy Lowman. “While five groundfish stocks are still rebuilding, the Council looks forward to new fishing opportunities based on the fact that these two stocks have completely recovered.”

Canary rockfish, prized by both recreational and commercial fishermen, were declared overfished in 2000 and a rebuilding plan was put in place in 2001, affecting groundfish fisheries off Washington, Oregon, and California Because canary rockfish coexist with so many healthy groundfish stocks, they have been known as a “bottleneck species” limiting many fisheries.

Canary rockfish are a long-lived, slow-growing species, making them difficult to rebuild. Under the plan, catch quotas were dramatically reduced and large area closures put in place, and the stock was expected to rebuild by 2057.  However, the new 2015 canary rockfish assessment adopted by the Council last week shows the coastwide canary stock has already been rebuilt. The managers credit strict protections and good ocean conditions.

“This a big deal,” said former council chair Dan Wolford. “We now have six times more canary rockfish than when we scaled back so many fisheries. This shows the Pacific Council’s conservation policies work.”

Petrale sole, an important species for commercial fisheries, were declared overfished in 2010 after an assessment showed that the stock had fallen below the overfished threshold. Beginning in 2011, a rebuilding plan was put in place to rebuild the stock by 2016. The petrale sole harvest limit was cut by half, and fisheries in which petrale sole could be caught incidentally were also reduced and area closures were implemented. A stock assessment conducted this year shows that the rebuilding plan was successful and the stock has increased over the target level.

“Petrale sole is known as our Cadillac flatfish,” said Ralph Brown, a long-time commercial fisherman from Bookings, Oregon. “Restaurants will love that these fish are now back so strongly.”

The petrale sole and canary rockfish assessments were developed by scientists at NMFS and the University of Washington (in the case of petrale) and were reviewed by the Council’s scientific advisory bodies. The recommendation to declare these stocks rebuilt will be forwarded to the National Marine Fisheries Service for approval.

New harvest specifications and regulations informed by these assessments are expected to be put in place beginning in 2017.

Subscribe to seafoodnews.com

Red crabs swarm Southern California, linked to ‘warm blob’ in Pacific

La Jolla, California, June 11, 2015. (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego)

Red crabs, by the thousands, have invaded Southern California beaches, washing ashore from San Diego to Newport Beach.

Sea surface temperatures some 4-7 degrees warmer than normal, possibly connected to a radical change in a Pacific ocean weather pattern, are likely driving the crabs northward away from their typical habitat.

“Experts said the crabs … haven’t been seen in the area for decades,” reported the Orange County Register.

The crabs, resembling miniature lobsters too small to eat, are known as tuna crabs or pelagic red crabs.

“Typically such strandings of these species in large numbers are due to warm water intrusions,” said Linsey Sala of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.

The crustaceans usually inhabit the west coast of Baja California, the Gulf of California, and the California Current (spanning from offshore the U.S. West coast down to southern Baja California), a Scripps news release said.

In addition to the crabs, the warm Pacific coastal waters have drawn northward a number of other creatures seldom or never previously seen, which last fall included: a live ocean sunfish and warm-water blue shark in the Gulf of Alaska, mahi mahi off the coast of Oregon, a Pacific sea turtle common in the Galapagos near San Francisco, and marlin in the waters off Southern California.

“In recent weeks, blue, jellyfish-like creatures known as ‘by-the-wind sailors’ have been spotted, and tropical fish like yellowtail and bluefin tuna are showing up earlier than normal this year,” the Orange County Register said.

The warm plume of water developed in the spring of 2014.

Sea surface temperature difference from normal June 15, 2015 (NOAA)

Nick Bond, a climatologist at the University of Washington, dubbed it “the blob” and published a study exploring its origins. “[The study] finds that it relates to a persistent high-pressure ridge that caused a calmer ocean during the past two winters, so less heat was lost to cold air above,” explained a University of Washington news release. “The warmer temperatures we see now aren’t due to more heating, but less winter cooling.”

The blob has been linked to the weather pattern that has led to drought in California, and much colder than normal conditions during winter in the eastern U.S. the past two years.

Read the original post: www.washingtonpost.com

New study shows Arctic Ocean rapidly becoming more corrosive to marine species

Chukchi and Beaufort Seas could become less hospitable to shelled animals by 2030

New research by NOAA, University of Alaska, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the journal Oceanography shows that surface waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas could reach levels of acidity that threaten the ability of animals to build and maintain their shells by 2030, with the Bering Sea reaching this level of acidity by 2044.

“Our research shows that within 15 years, the chemistry of these waters may no longer be saturated with enough calcium carbonate for a number of animals from tiny sea snails to Alaska King crabs to construct and maintain their shells at certain times of the year,” said Jeremy Mathis, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and lead author. “This change due to ocean acidification would not only affect shell-building animals but could ripple through the marine ecosystem.”

A team of scientists led by Mathis and Jessica Cross from the University of Alaska Fairbanks collected observations on water temperature, salinity and dissolved carbon during two month-long expeditions to the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas onboard United States Coast Guard cutter Healy in 2011 and 2012.

These data were used to validate a predictive model for the region that calculates the change over time in the amount of calcium and carbonate ions dissolved in seawater, an important indicator of ocean acidification. The model suggests these levels will drop below the current range in 2025 for the Beaufort Sea, 2027 for the Chukchi Sea and 2044 for the Bering Sea. “A key advance of this study was combining the power of field observations with numerical models to better predict the future,” said Scott Doney, a coauthor of the study and a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

A form of calcium carbonate in the ocean, called aragonite, is used by animals to construct and maintain shells.  When calcium and carbonate ion concentrations slip below tolerable levels, aragonite shells can begin to dissolve, particularly at early life stages.  As the water chemistry slips below the present-day range, which varies by season, shell-building organisms and the fish that depend on these species for food can be affected.

This region is home to some of our nation’s most valuable commercial and subsistence fisheries. NOAA’s latest Fisheries of the United States report estimates that nearly 60 percent of U.S. commercial fisheries landings by weight are harvested in Alaska. These 5.8 billion pounds brought in $1.9 billion in wholesale values or one third of all landings by value in the U.S. in 2013.

The continental shelves of the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are especially vulnerable to the effects of ocean acidification because the absorption of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions is not the only process contributing to acidity.  Melting glaciers, upwelling of carbon-dioxide rich deep waters, freshwater input from rivers and the fact that cold water absorbs more carbon dioxide than warmer waters exacerbates ocean acidification in this region.

“The Pacific-Arctic region, because of its vulnerability to ocean acidification, gives us an early glimpse of how the global ocean will respond to increased human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, which are being absorbed by our ocean,” said Mathis. “Increasing our observations in this area will help us develop the environmental information needed by policy makers and industry to address the growing challenges of ocean acidification.”

University of Alaska researcher Jessica Cross tests water samples during Arctic research cruise on USCG cutter Healy. (Mathis/NOAA)

 

The crew lowers sensors that measure water temperature, salinity and dissolved carbon in the Arctic Ocean. (Mathis/NOAA)

Read the original post: http://research.noaa.gov

Update on toxins in seafood

MONTEREY PENINSULA >> A warning issued earlier this month urging consumers not to eat recreationally caught mussels or clams in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties was expanded Tuesday to include the internal organs (viscera) of scallops.

California Department of Health officials say dangerous levels of domoic acid,­ a natural occurrence related to a “bloom” of a particular single-celled plant, ­ have been detected in various sea life.

The department also amended its previous warning for consumers to avoid eating recreationally and commercially harvested finfish, such as anchovy and sardines, which originally stated that the entire body of those fish could be contaminated. Updated information indicates that only the viscera of the fish is affected, and said anchovy and sardines are safe for consumption if de-headed, gutted and thoroughly rinsed.

The warning to avoid consuming the internal organs of commercially or recreationally caught crab taken from Monterey and Santa Cruz counties remains unchanged.

Originally posted in the Monterey Herald

El Niño continues to build, raising chances of wet winter

 

By Paul Rogers, Bay Area News Group

In a promising trend that increases the likelihood of steady storms this winter that could ease California’s historic drought, federal scientists on Thursday reported that El Niño conditions in the Pacific Ocean are continuing to grow stronger.

The probability of an El Niño — defined as warmer water at the equator and shifting winds that can bring major weather changes — being present through the end of 2015 is now 85 percent, up from 80 percent last month, and 50 percent three months ago, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The big takeaway is that obviously El Niño has strengthened,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director for NOAA’s climate prediction center in College Park, Maryland.

“We are more confident that it is going to last through the rest of the year, and at this point, we’re slightly favoring a strong event.”

Most important: Trade winds are shifting in ways consistent with prior big El Niños, and sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean near the equator are now 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average in all five zones that El Niño researchers study, a trend not seen since 1997 when a California was hit was drenching rains and floods the following winter.

To be sure, there are still six months before California’s winter rainy season. Many of those are expected to be brutally dry and hot summer months, with high fire risk. And scientists say promising El Niños have fizzled out in the past, most recently last year.

“El Niño is a bad boy, and sometimes he disappoints. He could abandon us at the altar. It’s not a sure thing at this point,” said Bill Patzert, a research scientist and oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

“But it’s probably a good idea to clean out the flood control channels in preparation for January.”

Water Warning

California water officials have worried that news of a building El Niño could cause state residents to ease off water conservation. That could cause emergency shortages next year if El Niño doesn’t deliver a very wet winter, they note, given the state’s low reservoirs, depleted groundwater, rainfall deficits and non-existent snowpack after four years of historic drought.

“Very few of us would empty our bank accounts today on the hopes of hitting the lottery next winter,” said Doug Carlson, a spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources. “And in the same vein, we can hope for rain, but we have to continue to conserve today.”

In recent months, unusual weather patterns have been linked by some researchers to the growing El Niño in the Pacific.

Two weeks ago, torrential storms battered Texas, killing more than 20 people, sending rivers raging over their banks and trapping thousands of people in flooded cars around Dallas and Houston. On May 25, Houston received a stunning 11 inches of rain in one night. By comparison, San Jose has received 13 inches in the past eight months, and Los Angeles 8 inches over the same time period.

That series of storms, which largely ended an ongoing drought in Texas, was caused when the sub-tropical jet stream moved north from Central America, a condition consistent with strong El Niño conditions, experts say.

“You are seeing flooding in Northern Mexico, which is normally very dry, and extreme drought in Nicaragua, which is normally very wet, which are characteristics of El Niño,” Patzert said.

Researchers stress that not all El Niño years bring big rains to California.

Ocean Water

Generally speaking, the warmer the ocean waters are during El Niño years, the greater the likelihood of heavy winter rains in California. During mild El Niño years, when the ocean water is only slightly warmer than historic averages, there are just as many dry winters in California as soaking ones.

Since 1951, there have been six winters with strong El Niño conditions. In four of them, rainfall from the Bay Area to Bakersfield was at least 140 percent of the historic average, according to studies by Saratoga meteorologist Jan Null.

But in the 16 winters since 1951 when there was a weak or moderate El Niño, California experienced below-normal rainfall in six of them, average rainfall in five and above-normal rainfall in the other five.

The term El Niño — or “little boy” in Spanish — was originally used by fishermen off Ecuador and Peru to refer to “the Christ child” because the warming ocean conditions appeared around Christmas every three to eight years.

Typically, El Niños begin when trade winds that normally blow westward, toward Asia, weaken, and then blow the other way. That allows warm ocean water near the equator to spread east, toward South America. Rainfall follows the warm water, which can mean wet winters for California, Peru and other areas, and droughts in Australia.

The opposite, or cooling ocean water, is a “La Niña.”

Projections

With each month that draws closer to California’s winter rainy season, forecasts become more reliable.

Currently, an ocean area that scientists call the “3.4 region” along the equator near South America that is considered a key indictor of El Niño trends is 1.2 degrees Celsius, or 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit, above the historic average. That departure from normal is twice what it was a year ago.

And the trend is expected to keep growing.

Supercomputers at NOAA, NASA and other world-leading scientific institutions are projecting the temperatures in that ocean region to hit 1.6 degrees Celsius, or nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit, on average by September. The last time temperatures there reached that level in a September was in 1997, when they hit 2.3 degrees Celsius, or 4.1 degrees Fahrenheit, above average.

What followed was among the wettest winters in California history, similar to another strong El Niño year, 1982-83, with California receiving twice as much rain as normal. In February 1998, four weeks of storms and powerful winds led to mud slides and widespread flooding that killed 17 people and caused 35 California counties to be declared federal disaster areas from the Napa Valley to the Southern California coast.

“Be careful what you wish for,” said Patzert.

View the original post: www.marinij.com

Why Is This Fisherman Selling Threatened Bluefin Tuna For $2.99 A Pound?

By Clare Leschin-Hoar

Pacific bluefin tuna for sale for $2.99 per pound at the fish market in San Diego. That shockingly low price does not reflect the deeply threatened state of the bluefin population.

Twenty minutes before the San Diego Tuna Harbor Dockside Market was set to open, the line was 75 people deep and starting to curl past the pier. The crowd here last Saturday didn’t come for the local sand dabs or trap-caught black cod. They were bargain hunters looking to score freshly caught, whole Pacific bluefin tuna for the unbelievably low price of only $2.99 a pound.

That’s less per pound for this fish — a delicacy prized for its fatty flesh, whose numbers are rapidly dwindling — than the cost of sliced turkey meat at a supermarket deli.

It’s a low price that doesn’t reflect the true state of Pacific bluefin: Scientists and environmentalists say the species is in deep trouble. According to population estimates, stocks of Pacific bluefin tuna are at historic lows, down 96 percent from the levels they’d be at if they weren’t fished.

But commercial fishermen like David Haworth, who brought this pile of small, steely gray bluefin to market, say that assessment doesn’t match up with what they’re seeing in the water: a record-smashing abundance of Pacific bluefin tuna.

“Our spotter pilots that have been fishing with us for up to 40 years here say they’re seeing the most bluefin they’ve ever seen in their lifetimes, and our government is not documenting any of it,” says Haworth.

Haworth, 52, is the last purse-seine tuna fisherman in San Diego — a city once heralded as the tuna capital of the world. Making a living isn’t easy for commercial fishermen like Haworth. For much of the year he fishes for squid, but El Nino patterns have changed fishery patterns, making squid harder to find. And forget about the sardine fishery — crashing stocks have triggered its closure until 2016.

At the same time, warmer ocean conditions have brought an abundance of bluefin tuna into the region, shifting Haworth’s focus.

Historically, he says, “there was never really a quota on bluefin, and we could go out and catch plenty and sell them. Or we could catch sardines, or mackerel, so we’d have something to do when [ocean] conditions changed” or when the species that Haworth depended on for his income became less reliable. “Now, we’re just so restricted.”

Bluefin tuna has long been listed as a species to “avoid” by influential groups like the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. It’s a warning that many seem to have taken to heart. And it means the higher prices fishermen like Haworth used to count on for bluefin are no longer a sure thing.

Haworth says wholesalers who used to clamor for his bluefin now pass on it, preferring yellowfin tuna instead. Supermarkets and chefs that once eagerly purchased bluefin have pledged not to carry it. Fellow San Diego fisherman Tory Becker tried to sell some of Haworth’s bluefin tuna at a local farmers market last week and was publicly scolded by a customer.

Haworth says that the buyer he had originally lined up for his haul backed out of the sale, then later offered him a mere $1-$2 a pound — too low for him to break even. Instead, he took his catch and headed for San Diego’s fledgling fishers market to sell directly to local foodies.

“If you have a 30-pound fish, and you’re selling it to a consumer for $2.99 a pound, it’s $90 for one fish. I was trying to get to the price point where we’re going to make decent money, but one where every family could come down and grab a fish if they want one,” says Haworth.

But the bounty of bluefin that California fishermen like Haworth report seeing is not what it seems, scientists say.

“It’s a very difficult task to count animals as elusive as tuna,” says Craig Heberer, the West Coast regional coordinator for recreational fisheries for NOAA Fisheries. “The increase in the number of bluefin spotted by Southern California fishermen likely [reflects] a change in the percentage of migrating fish, not the overall population numbers.”

Pacific bluefin off the coast of California and Mexico aren’t counted in current stock assessments. That’s because spawning grounds for Pacific bluefin are located in the western Pacific Ocean, near Japan. Some, but not all, of those fish then migrate to the U.S. West Coast and Mexico to feed. Counting them where they spawn, rather than where only a portion of them migrate, is how regulators say they get the most accurate information.

The migration to the U.S. side of the Pacific happens when bluefin are between 1 and 3 years old, which also explains why the tuna Haworth caught were so small — just 20 to 30 pounds each. They’re technically still juveniles that haven’t had the opportunity to reproduce and help replenish bluefin numbers. Mature Pacific bluefin can reach 1,200 pounds, and don’t typically reproduce until they’re closer to 5 years old. By that point, they would have already migrated back to their spawning grounds on the other side of the Pacific.

Theresa Sinicrope Talley, a coastal specialist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, says local fishermen like Haworth are simply catching what’s plentiful and pricing it to local demand.

“They’re trying to make this business work. They’re aware,” she says. “They don’t want to harm the environment, either — their livelihood depends upon it.”

“From their perspective,” she says, “they’re abiding by the law.”

In recent years, Haworth and other commercial fisherman in the U.S. have seen the amount of bluefin they’re allowed to catch slashed drastically as part of international agreements. Bluefin were once reliably lucrative for Haworth, but the cuts have affected his ability to make a living, he says. And he feels strongly that in the larger scheme of things, the amount of bluefin he catches is so small, it doesn’t negatively impact global stocks.

“Mexico now has a quota of 6,000 metric tons of fish over two years,” he notes, while the quota for U.S. commercial fishermen is just a tenth of that. “How could our 600 metric tons not be sustainable, when you think about it in the picture of the whole world? We’re only catching 600 tons,” says Haworth.

Haworth says he often feels villainized by environmental groups for fishing for this vulnerable species. But not everyone blames small fishermen like him for declining stock levels. Some are pointing the finger at the very organizations that oversee bluefin fisheries and set the world’s catch limits.

Andre Boustany, a research scientist and bluefin expert at Duke University, faults the agencies that manage the fishery for failing to conduct a full assessment of Pacific bluefin stock until 2012 — “well after massive damage had already been done.”

“While Pacific bluefin tuna are not currently listed as endangered in the U.S., that could change if the stock maintains its current trajectory. And I say that as a scientist that is most definitely not an alarmist,” Boustany says.

The Pew Charitable Trusts plans to call for stronger measures to protect Pacific bluefin later this month, when the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission — the agency responsible for setting international catch limits — meets in Ecuador.

“We would disagree that the quotas, as they are currently set, are sustainable,” says Jamie Gibbon, a tuna expert with Pew.

But there’s still hope for the Pacific bluefin — and for fishermen like Haworth. For years its cousin, the Atlantic bluefin, was also experiencing rapidly declining stocks, garnering lots of headlines and hand-wringing. All that attention now seems to be paying off: This year, for the first time since 2006, stocks are healthy enough that catch quotas were actually increased by 20 percent. Gibbon says it’s not too late for the Pacific bluefin, either.

“This is a population that can recover, and can recover in a relatively short amount of time,” he says.

Read the original post: www.kplu.org

Ocean investigators set their sights on Pacific Ocean ‘blob’

By Kerry Klein kklein@mercurynews.com

A huge swath of unusually warm water that has drawn tropical fish and turtles to the normally cool West Coast over the past year has grown to the biggest and longest-lasting ocean temperature anomaly on record, researchers now say, profoundly affecting climate and marine life from Baja California to Alaska.

Researchers remain uncertain what caused the mass of warm seawater they simply call “the blob,” or what it’ll mean long term for the West Coast climate. But they agree it’s imperative to better understand its impact, as it may be linked to everything from California’s drought to record numbers of marine mammals washing up on Northern California shores.

The blob — that’s the technical term — first appeared in late 2013 as a smudge of warm water near Alaska. It then expanded southeast and merged with warm waters farther south, growing into an anomaly that extended from the Aleutian Islands to Baja California and stretched hundreds of miles west toward Hawaii.

“Just the enormous magnitude of this anomaly is what’s incredible,” said Art Miller, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla. He was among nearly 100 scientists from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico who gathered recently at Scripps for the first time to share research about the warm-water mass.

The warmest ocean temperatures in the blob now are around 5 degrees Fahrenheit above average.A huge swath of unusually warm water that has drawn tropical fish and turtles to the normally cool West Coast over the past year has grown to the biggest and longest-lasting ocean temperature anomaly on record, researchers now say, profoundly affecting climate and marine life from Baja California to Alaska.

Researchers remain uncertain what caused the mass of warm seawater they simply call “the blob,” or what it’ll mean long term for the West Coast climate. But they agree it’s imperative to better understand its impact, as it may be linked to everything from California’s drought to record numbers of marine mammals washing up on Northern California shores.

The blob — that’s the technical term — first appeared in late 2013 as a smudge of warm water near Alaska. It then expanded southeast and merged with warm waters farther south, growing into an anomaly that extended from the Aleutian Islands to Baja California and stretched hundreds of miles west toward Hawaii.

“Just the enormous magnitude of this anomaly is what’s incredible,” said Art Miller, an oceanographer at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla. He was among nearly 100 scientists from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico who gathered recently at Scripps for the first time to share research about the warm-water mass.

The warmest ocean temperatures in the blob now are around 5 degrees Fahrenheit above average.

“They’re just so far off the mean that they’re shocking,” Miller said.

The blob continues to evolve. In the last month, seasonal upwelling of cooler water in Northern California has split it into two separate masses once again. And 2015 is shaping up to be an El Niño year, marked by unseasonably warm waters off the coast of South America. What researchers don’t know is if El Niño will exacerbate or neutralize the blob.

Researchers agree that unusually slack winds are to blame for the warming ocean off the West Coast, though they don’t know what drove the drop in wind. Stronger winds typically cause deep, cooler water to rise to the surface.

“If you don’t blow the wind as much, you don’t stir the ocean as much,” Miller said. The same mechanism, he said, also may be preventing rainfall from reaching California.

In August, a temperature sensor in Monterey Bay picked up its highest temperature reading ever recorded, said Francisco Chavez, a physical oceanographer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. On land, 2014 was the hottest year on record in California and temperatures remained higher than average until spring of this year.

Less ocean stirring also reduces upwelling of nutrient-rich deep water to the surface, which researchers think is directly related to die-offs in some marine mammals and declines in sardine fisheries. The dearth of nutrients cascades up the food chain through the ecosystem, resulting in less phytoplankton and hungrier sea lions and seals.

A California sea lion pup recovers at The Marine Mammal Center. Researchers say the phenomenon of the so-called ‘ocean blob’ of unusually warm Pacific Ocean water is causing a decrease in the food available to the pups’ mothers, and increasingly, they are abandoning their offspring because they can’t feed them. Credit Pat Wilson © The Marine Mammal Center

Sea lion pup Percevero (center) is one of more than 200 patients at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California. Researchers say the phenomenon of the so-called ‘ocean blob’ of unusually warm Pacific Ocean water is causing a decrease in the food available to the pups’ mothers, and increasingly, they are abandoning their offspring because they can’t feed them. Credit © The Marine Mammal Center

Volunteers from The Marine Mammal Center release California sea lions at Chimney Rock in Point Reyes National Seashore in 2014. Researchers say the phenomenon of the so-called ‘ocean blob’ of unusually warm Pacific Ocean water is causing a decrease in the food available to the pups’ mothers, and increasingly, they are abandoning their offspring because they can’t feed them.Credit Conner Jay © The Marine Mammal Center

In 2014, the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito saw more stranded California sea lions and northern elephant seals than average, according to center marine scientist Tenaya Norris, and record numbers of dying Guadalupe fur seals have washed up so far in 2015. Norris said that only about 60 percent of the mammals they rescue recover enough to be returned to the wild.

This year, sea lion pups in particular are stranding much earlier than usual, a sign that their mothers are abandoning them — an alarming indication that there’s just not enough food in the water.

“It’s a failure on the mothers’ part to adequately provision the pups,” Norris said. “They’ve been successfully foraging for years, so they should be able to find food if it’s out there.”

Paradoxically, Chavez said, 2014 in Monterey Bay was a “bonanza” for many species of birds, dolphins and whales. He hypothesized that nutrient upwelling didn’t disappear; it just shifted into cooler water closer to the coast, condensing an ecosystem that typically stretches tens of miles to only a few miles offshore. It’s unclear, however, whether the warm-water blob has played a role in the unusual number of dead whales — a dozen so far this year — that have washed ashore along Northern California beaches.

With still so many unknowns, the researchers in La Jolla agreed to meet again this coming fall. Until then, they all have homework: run climate models and dig deeper into data for patterns in weather, ocean chemistry and marine life.

“I don’t think that we found the smoking gun at the meeting,” Chavez said.

Read the original story: mercurynews.com

Fishing Industry Feeling the Pain After Refugio Oil Spill

The recent closure of 138 square miles of fishing grounds impacted by the Refugio oil spill has prompted commercial fishermen based at Santa Barbara Harbor to initiate claims against Plains All American Pipeline, the owner of the faulty infrastructure that dumped more than 100,000 gallons of crude along the Gaviota coastline on May 19.

Several commercial fisheries — including lobster, crab, shrimp, halibut, urchin, squid, whelk, and sea cucumber, among others — have grounds in the closed area, according to lobsterman Chris Voss, president of Commercial Fisherman of Santa Barbara (CFSB), a nonprofit advocate for economically and biologically sustainable fisheries. “These guys have pretty significant, legitimate claims,” he said.

As of midday last Thursday, six of 51 total claims were submitted by commercial fishermen, according to a spokesperson with the Refugio Response Joint Information Center. Voss expects that number to climb as fishermen carefully assess the value of their lost time and take. “We would advise fishermen to be slow and deliberate when it comes to filing a claim,” he said. To field and facilitate claims, Plains All American Pipeline has a hotline at refugioresponse.com.

Voss said he was aware of two instances of game wardens warning fishermen for harvesting within the closed area. In both cases, neither boat was cited, according to Alexia Retallack, an information officer with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, but a shrimper was forced to dump his catch back into the sea, as a public-health precaution. “Nobody has been cited as of this time,” Retallack said. “[Any contact between wardens and fishermen] is educational — we’re just letting fisherman know the boundaries and to pull their gear and leave the area. It’s not punitive.”

Citations would only add insult to injury, and while CFSB’s first concern is that the impacted marine environment return to health, Voss said, fishermen who target that region want to get back to work as soon as possible. “The intertidal area looks to have been hit the hardest,” he said, referring to the area between the low- and high-tide lines. “But the amount of oil in the open ocean appears limited. We’re interested in modifying the duration of the closure and its overall footprint. We’d like access to fishing grounds farther offshore.”

When that might happen is a matter of public safety. Using the omnipresent California mussel as the proverbial canary in a coal mine, biologists with the state’s Office of Spill Response and Protection need at least six weeks to harvest and test the edible bivalve mollusk for contaminants. Such analysis can reveal what’s happening in and around the surf line, but not so much in terms of deeper offshore waters, contends Voss, who’s hoping for a coordinated effort between scientists and fisherman for more comprehensive testing.

In the meantime, CFSB is also attempting to alleviate any concern that local seafood markets are stocked with fish and shellfish contaminated by the spill. They’re not, said Voss. “The closed area is adequate to protect the public from consuming contaminated seafood.”

The fisheries closure — which prohibits commercial and recreational harvesting, both offshore and from the beach — initially went into effect on May 19, shutting down an area two miles wide and half a mile seaward. On May 21, it was amended by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Office of Spill Prevention and Response to its current expanse, which runs six miles out to sea between Coal Oil Point to Hollister Ranch’s Cañada de Alegria.

For precise boundaries, visit the Fisheries Closure Map at refugioresponse.com.

Read the original story: independent.com

Beach balls the latest weapon against sea lions in Astoria

Beach balls are fun for seals, but apparently scary for sea lions.

Visitors lined up Sunday along the Port of Astoria’s East End Mooring Basin causeway to watch the sea lions on the docks below. Among them moved Jim Knight, the Port’s executive director, clutching a string of twine attached to a small, multicolored beach ball, the latest and possibly weirdest weapon used to evict the stubborn pinnipeds.

Knight scaled the barriers set up on P Dock, followed by Robert Evert, his permit and project manager, and Bill MacDonald, a Cannery Lofts resident who had suggested the beach balls.

“The idea is to just tie up some of these cheap things along the docks,” MacDonald explained, comparing the practice to putting milk jugs on fences to keep deer out.

Unlike seals, who like to play with beach balls, MacDonald said he discovered that sea lions are frightened of the inflatable toys.

Sea lions scattered Sunday at the sight of the beach balls, whether tossed off the causeway or carried out onto the docks by MacDonald and Port staff.

“They’re only a buck apiece,” Knight said. “So for $20, I can get a couple docks covered.”

The Port has tried several methods to evict the sea lions, from the brightly colored surveying tape and pennants lining a couple of the docks near the basin’s breakwater to lightly electrified mats being designed by Smith-Root Fisheries Technology and the chicken wire fencing erected at the foot of P Dock.

By Tuesday evening, beach balls bobbed in the moorages up and down the finger piers of P Dock, almost entirely emptied of sea lions except for one or two stragglers.

Willy coming after Goonies

If beach balls are not a quirky enough sea lion deterrent, a fake, fiberglass orca will soon join the party at the basin.

Knight said the 36-foot fiberglass whale, used as an advertisement and parade gimmick by Island Mariner, which runs whale-watching trips out of Bellingham, Wash., will arrive around June 12, the weekend after the “The Goonies” 30th anniversary extravaganza.

In the meantime, Island Mariner owner Terry Buzzard is making the whale remote-controlled.

“It accidentally was used in Bellingham,” Buzzard said of the whale’s effectiveness. “We were playing with it, and it seemed to scare the sea lions away. They left, but we don’t have any reason why. That’s why I told Jim, ‘I’m not making any promises.’”

Mixed welcome

Sea lions at the basin continue drawing visitors, despite creative attempts by the Port to remove them from the docks and possible retaliation by people not so enamored with the fish-eating pinnipeds. The sea lion population has boomed since their protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act started in 1972.

Reports have been coming in from people finding dead sea lions on the beach and along the Astoria waterfront, some with possible bullet wounds. The Sea Lion Defense Brigade, which for years has monitored sea lions from Astoria to Bonneville Dam, reported finding 11 shell casings from a .44-caliber weapon at the basin last week, along with a sea lion with a serious eye wound.

The finding comes more than a month after the group reported finding 19 casings from a .306-caliber weapon at the basin. After the discovery, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Law Enforcement in Portland launched an investigation.

The discoveries are somewhat of a mystery. Sean Stanley, a federal officer with NOAA who confirmed in April his office had opened an investigation, would neither confirm nor deny the most recent discovery of shell casings. Meanwhile, there were no reports of gunfire to the police around either time the Sea Lion Defense Brigade said it discovered shell casings.

The Port turned over security footage to investigators after the first discovery. Members of the brigade and other watchdogs have also asked for the footage, which the agency has so far declined to provide.

“They’re surveillance tapes, and I don’t want people to know what our capacity for surveillance is,” Knight said, adding the light at the basin is not good enough for useful nighttime footage. “We talked to our lawyers, and it’s excluded from public records.”

Knight said the basin is not the place for sea lions to live, with health and safety issues from the high concentration of them in close proximity to people. Evert has said the natural environment for sea lions is the rock breakwaters surrounding the basin. Letting them live on docks, he added, is akin to domesticating them.

Knight said he has talked with Veronica Montoya, a member of the brigade who said she has discovered (gun) shells and sea lions that look like they have been shot, about the Port’s need to get sea lions off the docks.

Montoya, watching Tuesday as the Port laid out the beach balls, said she understands the agency’s position. But she added the Port needs to do more to protect the animals, and people need to look beyond their hatred of sea lions to see their benefit.

“I guess if it works, it’s OK; as long as it doesn’t hurt the sea lions,” Montoya said of the beach balls. “But I think that they should leave these animals alone, because they’re such a huge draw.”

Read the original post: www.dailyastorian.com

This Smart, Data-Collecting, Wave-Predicting Surfboard Will Save Our Oceans

It maps waves, predicts conditions, turns surfers into citizen scientists, and could be the data-collecting tool climate scientists need to study our rapidly acidifying oceans.

As the Internet of Things inches its way into every corner of our lives, no one would blame you for rolling your eyes at the suggestion that even a surfboard should be embedded with sensors and smartphone connectivity.

Don’t. That surfboard is real. And it’s helping scientists better understand the impact climate change is having on our oceans.

In 2010, Andrew Stern, a former professor of neurology at the University of Rochester who’s now an environmental filmmaker and advocate, realized that surfers could serve as citizen scientists. Simply based on how much time they spend in the ocean, they could help collect data while on the water.

One of his filmmaker friends had recently met Benjamin Thompson, a surfer pursuing a PhD in structural engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Thompson was studying fluid-structure interactions, research that involved embedding sensors into boards. “It was mostly about tracking the performance of board,” he says. Thompson’s goal: to help the surfboard industry make better boards, and maybe use sensors to help surfers better understand (and improve) how they surf.

But after meeting Stern, Thompson realized he could use sensors as mini data loggers, collecting information about water chemistry as well as wave mechanics. He’d embed the electronics into a surfboard’s fin. Thus the project, named Smartphin, was born.

“My intention with this was to use it as a tool to inform people about the environment and specifically the oceans,” says Stern, who provided a home for Smartphin at the Lost Bird Project, his environmental filmmaking organization. “So I made a map with 17 surf spots around the world and said we’ll deploy to these places as many sensors as the scientists say we’ll need there [to collect] data.”

Their original intent was to embed sensors to track water temperature, salinity (conductivity), and acidity, an important metric for climate scientists. Oceans have absorbed about a third of the carbon dioxide we’ve emitted since the dawn of the industrial age, making them around 25 percent more acidic than they were then. That lower pH (higher acidity) impedes the growth of calcium carbonate and is already harming shellfish fisheries and coral reefs. “But pH is hard to track, so we tackled temperature and conductivity first, and then planned on adding a pH sensor later,” Stern explains.

Earlier this year, the team competed in a $2 million competition hosted by the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE to inspire innovation of accurate, durable, and affordable pH sensors to help scientists better track and study ocean acidification. They suddenly found themselves not only in the running for the top prize but also in the company of a gaggle of climate scientists and technologists who could help Thompson design a pH sensor for the fin. Smartphin even made it all the way to the semi-finals, where it competed against teams of scientists from universities and research centers all over the world, before being eliminated before the final round.

Stern and Thompson are now looking for a way to get the Smartphin into surfers’ quivers.

Though no formal agreements have been made, Intel is interested in joining the project to provide its chip and sensor acumen to the effort. And starting in November, the first Smartphin pilot project will begin, with 50 scientists and researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego screwing Smartphin prototypes into their boards and taking to the waters outside their workplace.

The scientists will compare the data—on water temperature, salinity, and acidity—that they collect from the Smartphins with data collected from the same types of sensors affixed to a pier, Stern explains.

Of course, to better understand acidification along coastlines, scientists need to collect as much data in as many places as possible. And that raises the question: How do you get millions of surfers to swap out their fins for Smartphins? And why would they buy a Smartphin if, say, a nonprofit couldn’t cover the costs?

Thompson says he’s built some extra technology into Smartphin that will compel surfers to use it for their own selfish reasons: To know where and when waves are good and to track their own surfing performance.

Motion sensors integrated into the fin will generate high-resolution tracking data that a smartphone app, which the fin communicates with via Bluetooth, will turn into reports similar to those surfers get from using the Trace sensor, Thompson asserts. Here’s the real kicker: the fins will also collect wave characterization data, or what he calls wave signatures.

“In Southern California, from Point Conception to Tijuana, there are probably a dozen buoys in the water that characterize waves,” says Thompson. These basically size the wave potential, based on the swells, and project that all the way to the shore. “And then Surfline says, ‘This is what we think the waves are doing,'” he says.

But by culling data from sensors that are actually inside the waves and all around a break, Smartphin can generate a more accurate signature for the waves at any given time that people are surfing, says Thompson.

“A lot happens between the deep water and the break zone. You can use models to predict it but you don’t have the best [granularity],” he says, “We’ll remove that by recording what is actually happening.”

Read the original post: www.outsideonline.com