El Nino predicted to return this year with implications for weather and fisheries

A warming of the central Pacific Ocean this year will change weather worldwide, US forecasters predict.

The warming, called an El Nino, can mean an even hotter year coming up and billions of dollars in losses for food crops.

Australia and South Africa should be dry while parts of South America become dry and parts become wet in an El Nino. Peru suffers the most, getting floods and poorer fishing.

But it could bring good news for some parts of the planet, leading to fewer Atlantic hurricanes and more rain next winter for drought-stricken California and southern US states. It could also bring and a milder winter for the frigid US north next year, meteorologists say

The National Oceanic Atmospheric and Administration issued an official El Nino watch today. An El Nino is a warming of the central Pacific once every few years, from a combination of wind and waves in the tropics. It shakes up climate around the world, changing rain and temperature patterns.

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El Niño may make 2014 the hottest year on record

Hold onto your ice lollies. Long-term weather forecasts are suggesting 2014 might be the hottest year since records began. That’s because climate bad-boy El Niño seems to be getting ready to spew heat into the atmosphere.

An El Niño occurs when warm water buried below the surface of the Pacific rises up and spreads along the equator towards America. For nine months or more it brings rain and flooding to areas around Peru and Ecuador, and drought and fires to Indonesia and Australia. It is part of a cycle called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

It is notoriously hard to make a prediction before the “spring barrier” as to whether there will be an El Niño in a given year. “The El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle more or less reboots around April-May-June each calendar year,” says Scott Power from the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne, Australia.

The problem is that there is so much background variability in the atmosphere and ocean that it is hard to see any signal amidst the noise, says Wenju Cai from the CSIRO, Australia’s national research agency in Melbourne. “Even if there is a developing El Niño, it is hard to predict.”

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Global Fish biomass may be 10 times higher than thought says acoustic survey

According to a paper produced by Carlos Duarte for the Spanish National Research Council, fish biomass in the ocean is 10 times higher than estimated.  The 6 million euro project consisted of a series of acoustic transects that detected mesopelagic species like lantern fish.  These fish are generally found in the open ocean between 200 and 1000 meters, and the rise to the shallower depth at night, and retreat deeper during the day.  They also detect nets and can flee from trawls.

Mesopelagic fishes, are fish such as lantern fishes (Myctophidae) and cyclothonids (Gonostomatidae), who live in the twilight zone of the ocean, between 200 and 1,000 meters deep. They are the most numerous vertebrates of the biosphere, but also the great unknowns of the open ocean, since there are gaps in the knowledge of their biology, ecology, adaptation and global biomass.

With a stock estimated at 1,000 million tons so far, mesopelagic fish dominate the total biomass of fish in the ocean.

However, a team of researchers with the participation of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has found that their abundance could be at least 10 times higher. The results, published in Nature Communications journal, are based on the acoustic observations conducted during the circumnavigation of the Malaspina Expedition.

During the 32,000 nautical miles traveled during the circumnavigation, the researchers of the Malaspina Expedition (a project led by CSIC researcher Carlos Duarte) took measurements between 40°N and 40°S, from 200 to 1,000 meters deep, during the day.

Duarte states: “Malaspina has provided us the unique opportunity to assess the stock of mesopelagic fish in the ocean. Until now we only had the data provided by trawling. It has recently been discovered that these fishes are able to detect the nets and run, which turns trawling into a biased tool when it comes to count its biomass”.

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Sardines may help to slow aging of your brain

Eating sardines may slow the brain’s aging and protect against Alzheimer’s disease.

Eating oily fish such as mackerel and sardines may ward off Alzheimer’s disease and can delay elderly people’s brains’ aging by two years, a study suggests.

Research of more than 1,100 elderly women found that those who consumed high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in oily fish, had larger brains.

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Squid vs. fish: Camera captures epic undersea battle on video

Thanks to its sharp beak, a small red squid emerged victorious after an epic hourlong battle with a much bigger owlfish, all caught on video last November in Monterey Bay, Calif.

The black-eyed squid paralyzed the owlfish by cutting through the fish’s backbone, according to Bruce Robinson, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Robinson narrates a video of the fight between invertebrate and vertebrate, captured by MBARI’s remotely operate vehicled Doc Ricketts on Nov. 11, 2013.

The Doc Ricketts discovered the struggling marine creatures at about 1,475 feet (450 meters) below Monterey Bay as the vehicle was rising toward the surface, said Susan von Thun, an MBARI senior research technician. Scientists watched the scene play out for 50 minutes before the ROV had to continue its journey, Von Thun told LiveScience. [See video of the squid-fish tussle.]

“They were sinking rapidly the whole time, and we think that’s part of the squid’s tactic,” Von Thun said. “We see a lot of feeding events, and oftentimes the squid gets startled and lets go, but this guy held on for the whole time that we watched it.”

By the time the ROV left, the squid and owlfish had dropped to a depth of 1,970 feet (600 meters), Von Thun said.

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From ancient fish, insight into origin of limbs

A fish with legs? It sounds preposterous, but ancient fossils unearthed in the Canadian Arctic reveal a fish that had skeletal features similar to animals with legs, researchers said Monday.

The find challenges the widely held view of evolution that hind limbs did not begin to form until creatures left the oceans and began living on land.

And it provides a powerful insight into the pivotal episode when creatures emerged onto land: If the authors are right, we can trace our arms — and our legs — to fish fins.

“That wrist you use to write with, the neck you use to move your head around with, the lungs you’re using to breathe . . . all derive from parts in the bodies of fish. Your hands and arms derive from parts of the fins,” said Neil Shubin, a professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago who was one of the leaders of the work. “What the fossil record tells us is how deeply we are connected to life on the rest of the planet. In this case, this tells us how closely we are related to fish.”

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As sardines vanish from Southern California coastal waters, fishermen rely on squid and anchovy

Larry Derr was as prepared as any longtime Southern California bait fisherman for the disappearance of the Pacific sardines he has pulled up by the ton since the 1980s.

He can fish anchovies instead and, if those become scarce, there’s been a local surge in market squid to keep him in business.

But the fickle sardines have been so abundant for so many years – sometimes holding court as the most plentiful fish in coastal waters – that it was a shock when he couldn’t find one of the shiny silver- blue coastal fish all summer, even though this isn’t the first time they’ve vanished.

And the similar, but smaller, anchovies have proven a poor replacement since sardines became scarce. Fortunately, a boom in market squid has propelled Derr and other coastal pelagic fishers.

In three days of nighttime fishing last week, Derr barely cleared a measly 20 scoops of anchovies to sell.

“A couple days ago we caught a ton of anchovies,” Derr said, keeping a vigilant eye for the telltale red mass on the In-Seine’s sonar during a predawn hunt Saturday. The screen remained black with irregularly dispersed green dots representing schools too small to fish. “We want this to be solid red.”

Though sardines aren’t as valuable as tuna or rockfish, they’re an important food source for larger fish, marine mammals like sea lions, dolphins and whales, and sea birds that can spot them from the air and dive for them.

Some have attributed recent rashes of sea lion pup and pelican deaths to the sardine population decline, which began a few years ago and was officially recognized in December when the fishing quota was dropped to just 5,446 metric tons for all of California, Oregon and Washington from January to June. In the same time period last year, the quota was 18,073 metric tons.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council lowered the quota in November after years of sardine stock decline from 2006, when 1.4 million tons were estimated to be swimming around the north Pacific. This year, their numbers are believed to be less than 400,000 metric tons.

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Giant squid caught by net fisherman off Japan

A story published Thursday about a monstrous radioactive squid discovered on a Southern California beach was an obvious hoax.

But this past week off Japan, an actual giant squid was captured in a fisherman’s net and died after it was hauled to the surface.

The squid in the hoax story was said to be 160 feet long and its immense size was blamed on radiation being leaked into the Pacific in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

“Alarms sound over radioactive gigantism,” screamed a headline above a story that featured a photoshopped image and quoted experts who do not exist.

Though some believed the story, fabricated by the Lightly Braised Turnip website, it was easily debunked.

But the capture of an actual giant squid Wednesday off Sadogashima Island is more believable, even though squid captures are exceedingly rare.

According to the Japan Times, the male specimen measured about 12 feet and weighed about 330 pounds. The accompanying Japanese-language video shows the creature on display and being measured by scientists (footage of the squid being pulled to the boat begins at the 1-minute mark).

Giant squid are elusive creatures that occupy the dark ocean depths. They’re believed to have spawned sea monster myths among ancient mariners, and have been featured as predatory beasts in novels and films.

They can measure to about 40 feet and weigh nearly a ton.

Read the full story here.

They’re back – the bay’s herring hordes return

Sea lions, porpoises and tens of thousands of birds are jockeying for position with fishermen this week as the annual herring run splashes into San Francisco Bay, a spectacular marine wildlife showcase that conservationists say is one of the largest in North America.

The schools of herring, which surge into the bay in several waves, have attracted as many as 70,000 birds to the region, particularly to Richardson Bay in Marin County, a spawning hot spot for the squiggling hordes.

The fish arrived en masse beginning last week to lay and fertilize eggs, or roe – a delicacy for a wide variety of species, including sushi-loving humans. Fishermen are rushing out every morning to cast their nets before the menagerie of honking, squawking ducks, pelicans and diving birds can devour all the good stuff.

“We’re the last predators to get a crack at those fish. Everyone else has come to the table, and we get the leftovers,” said Nick Sohrakoff, a herring fisherman and chairman of the local herring advisory committee. “There’s a lot of fish in the bay, and they seem this year to be a little bit bigger than they were in the past few years.”

The riotous reception is a good sign that the bay’s once-thriving herring runs, which collapsed four years ago, are returning to glory. The San Francisco run – the last urban fishery in the United States – is the only big-time fishing operation where spectators can actually sit on shore and watch commercial boats haul in the catch.

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California fishers say quota system is all wet

The skipper of a fishing boat that has trawled Monterey Harbor for decades says he’s been docked since spring, unable to earn a living.

Jiri Nozicka says a federal quota system enacted to protect both fish and the commercial fishing industry has problems that he can’t navigate.

“How do I plan anything?” he asked, recently standing on the deck of the San Giovanni. “I can’t. It’s impossible.”

He’s not alone in criticizing the “catch shares” system and calling for changes. Commercial fishers, industry experts and government officials are among those who say that while fish populations are recovering, too few people in California are benefiting from that rebound in part because there aren’t enough qualified monitors to oversee the program.

“Financially, I can only say that multiple trips have been cancelled due to a lack of availability of these monitors, millions of pounds of fish have not been caught, processed and sold to markets and this is a loss of millions of dollars,” said Michael Lucas, president of North Coast Fisheries Inc., in a letter to federal regulators.

After Pacific Coast groundfish populations dropped dramatically in 2000 a federal economic disaster was declared, leading to the strict new quota system. The goal was to boost populations of black cod and dover sole and to revive the flagging industry.

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