Greenpeace files complaint about UW fishery professor

Greenpeace takes aim at high-profile UW fishery scientist in a complaint alleging he has not properly disclosed industry funding in his academic articles.

Ray Hilborn, a prominent University of Washington fishery scientist, is under attack from Greenpeace for sometimes leaving out mention of industry funding he receives in articles published in academic journals and elsewhere.

In a letter sent Wednesday to university President Ana Mari Cauce, Greenpeace filed a complaint against Hilborn’s research practices, and asked for an investigation.

Hilborn, over the years, has been a critic of Greenpeace as well as other environmental groups and researchers he accuses of overstating the impacts of fishing on marine resources.

In the letter to Cauce, Greenpeace unleashed a broadside against the scientist.

“The failure of Dr. Hilborn to fully disclose his ties to industry put both scientific knowledge and the reputation of the University of Washington at risk,” wrote John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA’s ocean campaigns director.

Since 2003, Hilborn has brought in more than $3.55 million in industry dollars to the University of Washington, representing about 22 percent of the total outside funding he obtained from all sources during that period, according to documents released to Greenpeace under a public-disclosure request.

Hilborn reviewed Greenpeace’s complaint and issued a response. He said his research threatens the repeated assertions by the environmental group that overfishing is universal and that the oceans are being emptied.

“Obviously they are getting desperate because they haven’t been able to mount any type of attack on the quality of the science that I and this large group of collaborators have produced,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “So they got to attack the messenger.”

Hilborn, 68, said he has not felt obligated to disclose industry funding unless it was specifically for the research that is the focus of an academic journal article. Hilborn said he has never deliberately left out mention of such funding.

Some of the biggest industry funding came from groups in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska helping pay for salmon research. The money also flowed from Washington-based seafood companies, a trade association called the National Fisheries Institute, and the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council.

Much of the money is used for staff and student salaries, Hilborn said.

Altogether, the documents obtained by Greenpeace indicate Hilborn drew research funding to the university from at least 69 different industry sources, as well as consulting payments from others.

Greenpeace’s Hocevar, in his letter to Cauce, cites more than a half-dozen specific examples of papers published by Hilborn that allegedly failed to include full disclosure.

This represented a “significant departure from the accepted practices of his research community,” Hocevar wrote.

Greenpeace’s complaint also criticizes an online fisheries-information service that reaches out to the media: cfooduw.org. Hilborn helped launch cfooduw.org last fall with financial help from the seafood industry that is not noted on the website.

A UW spokesman said the Greenpeace complaint involves matters “we take very seriously.”

“We will be looking into the issues raised by Greenpeace to determine if problems exist and what steps might need to be taken to address them,’’ said Norm Arkans, the UW spokesman.

Money and disclosure

Amid shrinking public funding, university researchers often reach out to private industry to fund their work. Researchers also may do outside contract work, which at the UW requires prior approval.

The potential for industry funding to influence research has long been a topic of debate and controversy, and major journals have developed disclosure policies that attempt to lay out an author’s potential conflicts of interest.

For example, the journal Science asks authors “to reveal any financial relationships that could be perceived to influence the research,” according to a statement released by Science.

Hilborn has been published in many major academic journals, including Science, and is widely quoted in the media.

His research at the UW School of Aquatics and Fishery Sciences has focused “on how to best manage fisheries to provide sustainable benefits to human societies,” according to his website. He has helped to launch a global database of fish stocks, and his awards include the 2006 Volvo Environment Prize and, this year, the International Fisheries Science Prize.

He also has obtained funding from environmental organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council.

But Hilborn, over the years, has spoken out against what he portrays as the unwarranted gloom and doom pushed by some environmental groups, which he accuses of pushing bad news about fisheries to boost fundraising.

In a 2011 New York Times opinion piece headlined “Let Us Eat Fish,” Hilborn denounced “apocalyptic predictions about the future of fish stocks.” On his website and elsewhere, he has sought to debunk what he calls “myths” that include that most fisheries are overfished and that all fish stocks could be gone by 2048.

“On average, fish stocks worldwide appear to be stable, and in the United States they are rebuilding, in many cases at a rapid rate,” Hilborn wrote.

And in 2013 testimony submitted to Congress, he declared: “The major threat to sustainable jobs, food, recreational opportunity and revenue from U.S. marine fisheries is no longer overfishing, but underfishing.”

Critics and supporters

Greenpeace is attempting to label Hilborn an “overfishing denier,” comparing the professor to so-called climate-change deniers who are a minority in a scientific community that overwhelmingly accepts that fossil-fuel combustion contributes to global warming.

“This issue is analogous and no less important,” said Hocevar, who accuses Hilborn of downplaying the effects of overfishing.

Other researchers dispute Greenpeace’s comparison. They say Hilborn has been a leader over the decades in a wide range of important research projects in the North Pacific and globally.

“I think that in general Ray’s work has been highly acclaimed by many scientists. He is not sitting way on the edge,” said Gunnar Knapp, a University of Alaska-Anchorage fishery economist who has collaborated on research with Hilborn.

But some marine scientists have been at odds with him.

They include Daniel Pauly, a University of British Columbia marine biologist who shared the 2006 Volvo prize with Hilborn. Pauly has authored numerous papers about the global decline in fish stocks that have been attacked by Hilborn as lacking creditability.

In an interview, Pauly criticized Hilborn as an industry-friendly scientist who has failed to properly disclose his funding.

“We all are certainly affected by where we get money from, and certainly have to make that available for discussion,” said Pauly whose own affiliations include an unpaid seat on the board of Oceana, a major marine-conservation group.

Hilborn said he draws money from a wide range of sources, and rejected the notion that he has been swayed by industry money.

That money is not a problem “but a natural part of working on solutions,” Hilborn said. “They (industry) should be paying part of the bill.”

Read the original story: http://www.seattletimes.com/

Greenpeace Attacks Ray Hilborn as ‘Overfishing Denier’ as He Receives Major Int. Science Prize

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

Copyright © 2016 Seafoodnews.com

After suffering a series of defeats in which US government Science bodies demolished Greenpeace claims of overfishing and habitat destruction in US waters, Greenpeace has turned on Univ. of Washington Professor Ray Hilborn. Hilborn is the foremost scientific advocate of fisheries stability and has contributed to worldwide understanding that when fisheries quotas and habitat protections are enforced, stocks recover and can be fished sustainably.

Greenpeace lost a major battle and public relations campaign recently over Bering Sea Corals when a huge scientific effort undertaken by NOAA decisively showed the claims of habitat destruction by Greenpeace were unfounded. This embarrassed Greenpeace in front of its retail partners— to whom it had described the Bering Sea Coral campaign in apocalyptic terms as a do or die mission to preserve the Bering Sea.

In two weeks, Prof. Hilborn will receive the International Fisheries Science Prize at the World Fisheries Congress in Busan, South Korea. This prize is awarded every four years by a consortium of international fisheries science organizations.

The award to Prof. Hilborn is in recognition of the profound impact he has had in a 40-year career where he has applied research and scientific investigation to the ever-changing problems of fisheries management and conservation.

Hilborn has been the leading voice that has changed public and government perception that overfishing was an environmental disaster that could not be controlled. instead he and his colleagues have documented time and again where fisheries management is successful and have compiled the most detailed global database on fish stocks and catch history to show that in many of the developed areas of the world, fisheries sustainability has been achieved.

This message is anathema to Greenpeace, whose fisheries activism depends on maintaining a continuous atmosphere of crisis.

The latest attack is a letter to the University of Washington questioning the funding Ray Hilborn has received from 2003 to January 2016.

Greenpeace tries to smear Hilborn with the same charges used against Climate Science deniers, who have concealed funding sources in published papers. The difference is 1) that Hilborn represents mainstream fisheries science, not radical extremes beyond scientific consensus, and 2) Hilborn fully discloses his financial backing.

Of the $3.55 million in industry funding identified by Greenpeace, over $2 million has gone to support the University of Washington field program in Bristol Bay Alaska, a program that is widely acknowledged to be the premier science program working on salmon ecosystems. This is funded partly by Alaskan CDQ groups.

The best approach is to let Ray speak in his own words. I think most readers will agree with him that this is a sign of desperation on the part of Greenpeace, as Hilborn is successfully countering its message of imminent destruction of all fisheries.

Ray Hilborn:

I would like to thank Greenpeace for offering this opportunity to advertise our research and its results.

Greenpeace is unable to attack the science I and my collaborators do; science that threatens their repeated assertions that overfishing is universal and that the oceans are being emptied. On the contrary, it is clear that where effective fisheries management is applied, stocks are increasing not declining, and this is true in North American and Europe as well as a number of other places. Overfishing certainly continues to be a problem in the Mediterranean, much of Asia and Africa.

This prize is awarded every four years by fisheries science organizations from a number of countries including the U. S., Australia and Japan. In my plenary address I will be showing where overfishing is declining or largely eliminated, as well as where it remains a problem. This is a message Greenpeace seeks to discredit.

Instead of focusing on the science, Greenpeace has alleged that I failed to disclose “large amounts of money from the fishing industry and other corporate interests. ”

The essential issue is conflict of interest. Greenpeace seems to believe that industry funding is tantamount to a conflict of interest, regardless of its purpose. Thus, any time I discuss fisheries I would need to disclose each and every grant or contract I have ever received as a conflict of interest. Taking that approach I would also have to disclose funding from all of the environmental NGOs that have also helped to fund our research and education efforts, including the Society for Conservation Biology, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Perhaps I would also need to disclose the numerous private foundations and government agencies that have funded our work every time I discuss fisheries. The list of funders would be as long as some of the papers.

I, like all reputable scientists, take conflict of interest seriously. This is one reason we acknowledge all funders of the research work discussed in each paper at the end of the document.

The other, of course, is to give credit where credit is due. The fishing industry, like environmental NGOs, government agencies, and public and private foundations, are actively involved in funding our research and education efforts that help create and sustain fisheries nationally and globally. In fact, it is in the financial interest of fishing communities and industries to find solutions that are sustainable and provide for healthy stocks into the future. And funding from these groups should be considered part of an inclusive, transparent and honest research process.

According to Greenpeace’s calculations, industry funding constitutes 22% of the research funds received by the University of Washington to support research and education efforts I lead. Those monies support staff and students and pay for field expenses.

During the period Greenpeace collected data on my grants and contracts, I received $16.1 million in research funding, of which Greenpeace classified $3.5 million as industry.

The top three “industry” groups they list are community groups in small Alaskan communities where fishing is the source of survival. These are not big industrial interests but small communities.

Of the total industry funding, over $2 million has supported our field program in Bristol Bay Alaska, a program that is widely acknowledged to be the premier science program working on salmon ecosystems.

Fisheries issues are contentious because natural resources are limited, directly affect the lives of many, and everybody has, or wants, a stake. My belief is that all voices need to be heard, and all stakeholders need to be at the table.

Copyright © 2016 Seafoodnews.com

University of Washington Study: Pacific “Blob” Likely to Return in Five Years Time

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

Copyright © 2016 Seafoodnews.com

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Peninsula Daily News] By Chris McDaniel – April 22, 2016

The so-called “warm blob” that emerged in 2013 and 2014 off the Pacific Northwest and just recently dissipated is a recurring phenomenon — known as a marine heat wave — expected to return in five-year intervals, according to a recently released University of Washington study.

Unusually warm oceans can have widespread effects on marine ecosystems, scientists say.

Warm patches off the Pacific Northwest from 2013 to 2015, and a couple of years earlier in the Atlantic Ocean, affected everything from sea lions to fish migrations to coastal weather.

The study — published in March in the journal Geophysical Research Letters — reviews the history of such features across the Northern Hemisphere.

Happen at sea surface 

“We can think of marine heat waves as the analog to atmospheric heat waves, except they happen at the sea surface and affect marine ecosystems,” said the study’s lead author Hillary Scannell, a doctoral student in oceanography.

“There are a lot of similarities.”

Co-authors of the study are Andrew Pershing and Katherine Mills at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Michael Alexander at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Andrew Thomas at the University of Maine. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Land-based heat waves, Scannell said, are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change.

Scannell and her collaborators’ work suggests this also might be happening in the north Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Marine heat waves 

Their study found that marine heat waves have recurred regularly in the past but have become more common since the 1970s, as global warming has become more pronounced.

The new paper looks at the frequency of marine heat waves in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific since 1950.

Scannell did the work as a student earning a master’s degree at the University of Maine, where she was inspired by the 2012 record-breaking warm waters off New England.

“After that big warming event of 2012 we keyed into it and wanted to know how unusual it was,” Scannell said.

Warm blob 

The study also analyzes the “warm blob” that emerged in 2013 and 2014 off the Pacific Northwest.

The authors analyzed 65 years of ocean surface temperature observations, from 1950 to 2014, and also looked at how these two recent events stack up.

In general, the results show that the larger, more intense and longer-lasting a marine heat wave is, the less frequently it will occur.

The study also shows that the two recent events were similar to others seen in the historical record, but got pushed into new territory by the overall warming of the surface oceans.

An event like the northwest Atlantic Ocean marine heat wave, in which an area about the size of the U.S. stayed 2 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for three months, is likely to naturally occur about every five years in the North Atlantic and northwestern Pacific oceans, and more frequently in the northeast Pacific.

The blob in the northeast Pacific covered an even larger area, with surface temperatures 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for 17 months, and is expected from the record to naturally happen about once every five years off the West Coast.

El Niño years 

In the northeast Pacific, the record shows that marine heat waves are more likely during an El Niño year and when the Pacific Decadal Oscillation brings warmer temperatures off the west coast of North America.

The blob likely got an extra kick from a possible transition to the favorable phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, as well as from the overall warming of the ocean.

“The blob was an unfortunate but excellent example of these events,” Scannell said.

“As we go into the uncharted waters of a warming climate, we may expect a greater frequency of these marine heat waves.”

Scannell also is a co-author of an earlier study published in February in which the authors define the term “marine heat wave” and specify the duration, temperature change and spatial extent that would meet their criteria. That study was led by researchers in Australia, who were curious about a warm event from 2010 to 2011 in the Indian Ocean.

Streamlined definition 

“We’re working towards a more streamlined definition so we can more easily compare these events when they occur in the future,” Scannell said.

Better understanding of marine heat waves could help prepare ocean ecosystems and maritime industries, she said.

At the University of Washington, Scannell currently works with Michael McPhaden, an affiliate professor of oceanography and scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looking at air-sea interactions along the equator and other factors that might create marine heat waves.

Copyright © 2016 Seafoodnews.com   |  Subscribe to Seafoodnews.com

Status of Stocks 2015: U.S. Fisheries Continue to Rebuild

April 20, 2016

Professor Ray Hilborn wins 2016 International Fisheries Science Prize

April 11, 2016 — SAVING SEAFOOD — Professor Ray Hilborn, of the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, was recognized by the World Council of Fisheries Societies for his contributions to fishery management science.

“Professor Hilborn has had an extremely impressive career of highly diversified research and publication in support of global fisheries science and conservation. Throughout his 40-year career, Ray has been a model of dynamic and innovative science, and in the application of this work to the ever-changing problems of fisheries management and conservation in both marine and freshwater ecosystems. Professor Hilborn’s Prize will be awarded at the World Fisheries Congress in Busan, South Korea in late May.”

In recent years, Professor Hilborn has been one of the organizers of the Ram legacy Database at the University of Washington, which is the most complete global database on fish stocks, biomass surveys and catch history ever assembled.  The resulting analysis and modeling from this database have not only united many fisheries scientists around the world who had been portrayed by the media as opposing each other in terms of fisheries conservation issues, but the database has also served to highlight a road map for fisheries conservation efforts over the next twenty years.

As a result of these efforts, Hilborn has been instrumental in changing the perception that fish stocks were being fished to extinction and instead has shown that when fisheries management principles are properly applied, strong stock recoveries take place.

Frustrated by the public misperception about the actual state of major fisheries, Hilborn and other colleagues have created cfood a website scientists use to communicate with journalists and the general public about fisheries science issues.  The database, and website, have been particularly helpful in countering organizations who use distorted or outdated fisheries science to alarm regulators and the public.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

New NASA Study Shows Lessening El Nino Impacts This Spring

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

Copyright © 2016 Seafoodnews.com

A new NASA study documents the current El Nino impact on the marine food chain, hoping to show where recovery may begin this spring.  The preliminary conclusions are that a recovery from El Nino is underway and that in Chile and Peru, impacts were less devastating than the 1998 super El Nino.

An El Nino, in which masses of warm tropical water slosh eastward to the coast of South America, has a huge impact on primary marine production, which NASA scientists are currently studying.

El Nino’s mass of warm water puts a lid on the normal currents of cold, deep water that typically rise to the surface along the equator and off the coast of Chile and Peru, said Stephanie Uz, ocean scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In a process called upwelling, those cold waters normally bring up the nutrients that feed the tiny organisms, which form the base of the food chain.

“An El Nino basically stops the normal upwelling,” Uz said. “There’s a lot of starvation that happens to the marine food web.” These tiny plants, called phytoplankton, are fish food — without them, fish populations drop, and the fishing industries that many coastal regions depend on can collapse.

NASA satellite data and ocean color software allow scientists to calculate the amount of green chlorophyll — and therefore the amount of phytoplankton present.

The ocean color maps, based on a month’s worth of satellite data, can show that El Nino impact on phytoplankton. In December 2015, at the peak of the current El Nino event, there was more blue — and less green chlorophyll — in the Pacific Ocean off of Peru and Chile, compared to the previous year. Uz and her colleagues are also watching as the El Nino weakens this spring, to see when and where the phytoplankton reappear as the upwelling cold water brings nutrients back to the region.

“They can pop back up pretty quickly, once they have a source of nutrients,” Uz said.

Researchers can also examine the differences in ocean color between two different El Nino events. During the large 1997-1998 El Nino event, the green chlorophyll virtually disappeared from the coast of Chile. This year’s event, while it caused a drop in chlorophyll primarily along the equator, was much less severe for the coastal phytoplankton population. The reason — the warmer-than-normal waters associated with the two El Nino events were centered in different geographical locations. In 1997-1998, the biggest ocean temperature abnormalities were in the eastern Pacific Ocean; this year the focus was in the central ocean. This difference impacts where the phytoplankton can feed on nutrients, and where the fish can feed on phytoplankton.

“When you have an East Pacific El Nino, like 1997-1998, it has a much bigger impact on the fisheries off of South America,” Uz said. But Central Pacific El Nino events, like this year’s, still have an impact on ocean ecosystems, just with a shift in location. Researchers are noting reduced food available along the food chain around the Galapagos Islands, for example. And there has been a drop in phytoplankton off the coast of South America, just not as dramatically as before.

Scientists have more tools on hand to study this El Nino, and can study more elements of the event, Uz said. They’re putting these tools to use to ask questions not just about ocean ecology, but about the carbon cycle as well.

“We know how important phytoplankton are for the marine food web, and we’re trying to understand their role as a carbon pump,” Uz said. The carbon pump refers to one of the ways the Earth system removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When phytoplankton die, their carbon-based bodies sink to the ocean floor, where they can remain for millions of years. El Nino is a naturally occurring disruption to the typical ocean currents, she said — so it’s important to understand the phenomenon to better attribute what occurs naturally, and what occurs due to human-caused disruptions to the system.

Other scientists at Goddard are investigating ways to forecast the ebbs and flows of nutrients using the center’s supercomputers, incorporating data like winds, sea surface temperatures, air pressures and more.

“It’s like weather forecasts, but for bionutrients and phytoplankton in the ocean,” said Cecile Rousseaux, an ocean modeler with Goddard’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. The forecasts could help fisheries managers estimate how good the catch could be in a particular year, she said, since fish populations depend on phytoplankton populations. The 1997-1998 El Nino led to a major collapse in the anchovy fishery off of Chile, which caused economic hardships for fishermen along the coast.

So far, Rousseaux said, the phytoplankton forecast models haven’t shown any collapses for the 2015-2016 El Nino, possibly because the warm water isn’t reaching as far east in the Pacific this time around. The forecast of phytoplankton populations effort is a relatively new effort, she said, so it’s too soon to make definite forecasts. But the data so far, from the modeling group and others, show conditions returning to a more normal state this spring.

The next step for the model, she said, is to try to determine which individual species of phytoplankton will bloom where, based on nutrient amounts, temperatures and other factors — using satellites and other tools to determine which kind of microscopic plant is where.

“We rely on satellite data, but this will go one step further and give us even more information,” Rousseaux said.

Subscribe to SeafoodNews.com 1-781-861-1441 | Copyright © 2016 Seafoodnews.com

North Coast crab boats finally head out to sea

BODEGA BAY — Long-idled fishermen settled Tuesday on an opening price for Dungeness crab, transforming Bodega Harbor into a beehive of activity as they streamed out to open waters to begin the commercial crabbing season at last.

Radiating relief and even cheer as they stocked up for the sleepless days and nights ahead, captains and deckhands wasted no time leaving the docks once stakeholders at the state’s major ports reached agreement on a price.

Crab should hit local markets by the weekend, lured by thousands of traps baited with chunks of squid and mackerel cut up while still frozen on the docks Tuesday.

“We’re just happy to go to work,” said Mark Gentry, a 30-year veteran of the fishery, who had only to finish pumping fuel into the tank of his boat, Rampage, before he and his crew could depart Spud Point Marina on Tuesday afternoon.

“Ready to go play,” said Sean Amoroso, captain of the Donna Mia. “Ready to play and get a paycheck.”

The state’s Dungeness crab catch is typically valued above $60 million, peaking in 2011-12 at $95.5 million. Crabbers make the vast majority of their income in the season’s first few weeks. The opening price agreed to Tuesday is $2.90 a pound, just under the $3 at which they started the 2014-15 season.

Many of the fisherman and, especially, their crews have been through desperate times in recent months as an unprecedented delay in the opening of the commercial season dragged on week after week, caused by an outbreak of harmful algae and a related neurotoxin called domoic acid.

The season normally opens Nov. 15 south of the Mendocino County line and Dec. 1 in waters north of there. The closure meant crabbers missed out on the lucrative Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s markets, with months still to go before the fishery would reopen — though they didn’t know it at the time.

When state regulators earlier this month finally notified commercial crabbers they could begin harvesting the succulent crustaceans last Saturday, the delay had cost them 4 1/2 months.

They waited at dock several days more while test crabs were fetched, cooked and measured to ensure they met the threshold of 25 percent meat. Crabs from different ports came in above the mark, North Coast Fisheries President Mike Lucas said Monday.

Fish processors and fishermen in Bodega Bay, Half Moon Bay and San Francisco all agreed by late Tuesday morning to start the season at $2.90 a pound, inciting a mad dash to acquire bait, fuel, groceries and other necessities no one wanted to buy until they could be sure of covering their costs.

By afternoon, dozens of boats had motored from the harbor out to open ocean as those remaining hustled to join them.

“This is what we love to do,” Annabelle deck hand Merlin Kolb, 45, said as he cut bait and loaded it into plastic containers.

His crew mate, Diego Quiroz, grinned. “We’re going to try to get some money,” Quiroz, 52, said. “Been working for $10 an hour just to make it.”

It’s unclear what can be salvaged of this year’s season before the crab shed their shells and fishing is no longer feasible without harming future generations. Many local crabbers said they hoped to eke at least several weeks out of the fishery, if not a month or two.

Read the original story: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/

Ocean acidification takes a toll on California’s tide pools at nighttime

A new study, based on the most extensive set of measurements ever made in tide pools, suggests that ocean acidification will increasingly put many marine organisms at risk by exacerbating normal changes in ocean chemistry that occur overnight. Conducted along California’s rocky coastline, the study shows that the most vulnerable organisms are likely to be those with calcium carbonate shells or skeletons.

Ocean acidification is occurring as the oceans absorb increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, where carbon dioxide concentrations are steadily rising due to emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Absorption of carbon dioxide changes seawater chemistry, pushing it toward the lower, acidic end of the pH scale, although it remains slightly alkaline. A small decrease in pH affects the chemical equilibrium of ocean water, reducing the availability of carbonate ions needed by a wide range of organisms to build and maintain structures of calcium carbonate, such as the shells of mussels and oysters.

Kristy Kroeker, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, is a coauthor of the new study, published March 18 in Scientific Reports. “There is a lot of concern about how ocean acidification is going to affect marine species in the future, but most of our understanding comes from laboratory studies where a single organism is exposed to acidified seawater under very controlled conditions for a short period of time,” Kroeker explained. “In reality, every organism is embedded in a complex community that experiences dynamic environmental conditions that will gradually change over time.”

Calcifying organisms

In the new study, researchers closely monitored conditions in tide pools along California’s rocky coast, which are isolated from the open ocean during low tides. During the daytime, photosynthesis—the mechanism by which plants use the sun’s energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar, giving off oxygen in the process—takes up carbon dioxide from the seawater and acts to reverse ocean acidification’s effects. At night, however, photosynthesis stops, while the respiration of plants and animals takes up oxygen and releases carbon dioxide. This adds carbon dioxide to the seawater and exacerbates the effects of ocean acidification, increasing the risk to calcifying organisms.

“Tide pools are home to lots of different species that regularly experience daily swings in chemistry,” Kroeker said. “Tide pools can experience particularly corrosive seawater during nighttime low tides, when all of the animals are ‘exhaling’ carbon dioxide into the water that has been cut off from the ocean.”

The research team, led by scientists at the Carnegie Institution of Science, used these natural nighttime spikes in corrosive conditions to examine how entire communities of marine species respond to natural acidification. Observing a variety of California’s natural rocky tide pools near the Bodega Marine Laboratory, they found that the rate of shell and skeletal growth was not greatly affected by seawater chemistry in the daytime. However, during low tide at night, water in the tide pools became corrosive to calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. The study found evidence that the rate at which these shells and skeletons dissolved during these nighttime periods was greatly affected by seawater chemistry.

“Unless carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly curtailed, we expect ocean acidification to continue to lower the pH of seawater,” said lead author Lester Kwiatkowski of the Carnegie Institution of Science. “This work highlights that even in today’s temperate coastal oceans, calcifying species, such as mussels and coralline algae, can dissolve during the night due to the more acidic conditions caused by community respiration.”

These results highlight the vulnerability of marine species in even the most dynamic conditions to the global process of ocean acidification, Kroeker said.

According to coauther Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, “If what we see happening along California’s coast today is indicative of what will continue in the coming decades, by the year 2050 there will likely be twice as much nighttime dissolution as there is today. Nobody really knows how our coastal ecosystems will respond to these corrosive waters, but it certainly won’t be well.”

The study was a collaborative effort by the Carnegie Institution for Science, UC Davis, and UC Santa Cruz. This work was funded by the Carnegie Institution for Science, UC Multi-campus Research Initiatives and Programs, and the National Science Foundation.

Read the original post: http://news.ucsc.edu/

Dungeness Crab Fishery

Recreational Dungeness Crab Fishery Open South of Sonoma/Mendocino County Line, Commercial Fishery to Open in Seven Days

Closure of the recreational Dungeness crab fishery south of the Mendocino/Sonoma county line has been lifted, and opening of the commercial Dungeness crab fishery – delayed since November – is set for March 26 in the same region.

Recent test results show that domoic acid levels in crabs off the California coast south of the Mendocino/Sonoma county line no longer pose a significant human health risk, according to notice given today to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and the Fish and Game Commission (Commission) by the director of the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), after consultation with the Director of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH).

As a result, the director of OEHHA recommends opening the Dungeness crab fishery in this area. Under emergency closure regulations, CDFW will provide commercial Dungeness crab fishermen at least seven days’ notice before the re-opening of the commercial fishery south of the Mendocino/Sonoma county line. The fishery will open at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, March 26. The presoak period, during which commercial fishermen may begin setting gear in place, starts at 6:01 a.m. Friday, March 25.

Closures remain in place north of the Mendocino/Sonoma county line for the Dungeness crab commercial and recreational fisheries. The commercial and recreational rock crab fisheries are closed north of Piedras Blancas Light Station near San Simeon, and in state waters around San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz islands.

The unusually high domoic acid levels off the coast this fall and winter wrecked a Dungeness crab fishery worth as much as $90 million a year to California’s economy. Domoic acid is a potent neurotoxin that can accumulate in shellfish, other invertebrates and sometimes fish. At low levels, domoic acid exposure can cause nausea, diarrhea and dizziness in humans. At higher levels, it can cause persistent short-term memory loss, seizures and may even be fatal.

“This has been a very difficult season for hardworking Californians who have suffered significant financial hardship due to this natural disaster,” said Charlton H. Bonham, Director of CDFW. “We thank the affected communities for their patience and fortitude as we have worked with our partners at CDPH and OEHHA to open a portion of the commercial fishery along a traditional management boundary as recommended by the industry.”

Both the commercial and recreational Dungeness crab seasons are scheduled to end June 30 in the newly opened area, although the CDFW director has authority to extend the commercial season.

In February, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker seeking federal declarations of a fishery disaster and a commercial fishery failure in response to the continued presence of unsafe levels of domoic acid and the corresponding closures of rock crab and Dungeness crab fisheries across California. Should a federal determination be made to declare a disaster and failure, the state and federal agencies will work together to determine the full economic impact of the disaster and, upon appropriation of funds from Congress, provide economic relief to affected crabbers and related businesses.

Despite several weeks of test results that showed crab body meat samples below alert levels, one sample of viscera was slightly above the alert level. Because of this, CDPH and OEHHA strongly recommend that anglers and consumers not eat the viscera (internal organs, also known as “butter” or “guts”) of crabs. CDPH and OEHHA are also recommending that water or broth used to cook whole crabs be discarded and not used to prepare dishes such as sauces, broths, soups or stews. The viscera usually contain much higher levels of domoic acid than crab body meat. When whole crabs are cooked in liquid, domoic acid may leach from the viscera into the cooking liquid. This is being recommended to avoid harm in the event that some crabs taken from an open fishery have elevated levels of domoic acid.

With the upcoming partial opening of the commercial fishery in the state, CDFW recommends that all people fishing for crab refer to the Best Practices Guide, a resource providing tips on how to use crab trap gear in a manner that reduces incidences of whale entanglements. This guide was produced collaboratively by commercial crabbers, agency staff and staff from non-profit organizations during two meetings of the Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group that took place late last year.

Pursuant to the emergency regulations adopted by the Commission and CDFW on November 5 and 6, 2015, respectively, the current open and closed areas are as follows:

Areas open to crab fishing include:

• Recreational Dungeness crab fishery along mainland coast south of Sonoma/Mendocino county line – 38° 46.1′ N latitude, near Gualala, Mendocino County

• On March 26, 2016 commercial Dungeness crab fishery along mainland coast south of Sonoma/Mendocino county line – 38° 46.1′ N latitude, near Gualala, Mendocino County

• Commercial and recreational rock crab fishery along the mainland coast south of 35° 40′ N latitude (Piedras Blancas Light Station, San Luis Obispo County)

Areas closed to crab fishing include:

• Recreational Dungeness crab fishery north of Sonoma/Mendocino county line – 38° 46.1′ N latitude, near Gualala, Mendocino County

• Commercial Dungeness crab fishery north of Sonoma/Mendocino county line – 38° 46.1′ N latitude, near Gualala, Mendocino County

• Commercial and recreational rock crab fisheries north of 35° 40′ N latitude (Piedras Blancas Light Station)

• Commercial and recreational rock crab fisheries in state waters around San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz Islands.

CDFW will continue to closely coordinate with CDPH, OEHHA and fisheries representatives to extensively monitor domoic acid levels in Dungeness and rock crabs to determine when the fisheries can safely be opened throughout the state.

# # #

Why are so many sea lion pups starving? Scientists find the answer off the Central California coast

An emaciated and sick sea lion pup at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro in 2013. New research blames a lack of nutritious fish off California’s central coast for the rise in starving pups in Southern California. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

Government scientists say there’s a simple explanation for the surge in starving sea lion pups along the Southern California coast: Their mothers can’t find enough nutritious food.

The high-fat, high-calorie fish species that female sea lions prefer to eat have been harder to come by in their usual hunting waters around the Channel Islands breeding colonies, according to researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As their preferred sardines and anchovies became less plentiful, they’ve had to settle for rockfish and market squid instead.

The decline in sardines and anchovies and corresponding increase in less nourishing fish explains 81% of the change in sea lion pup weights between 2004 and 2013, the NOAA scientists reported Tuesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

California sea lions have had a precarious existence since the late 1800s, when humans began hunting them for their fur, meat and oil. Many of them also became casualties of fishing operations. By the 1970s, the number of sea lions had dwindled to around 50,000, experts estimate.

The animals’ fortunes began to change in 1972, when President Richard Nixon signed the Marine Mammal Protection Act. With federal protection, the population of Zalophus californianus grew about 5% per year, reaching 340,000 in 2014.

Hunger drove sea lion pups ashore in Southern California in record numbers in 2013. These rescued pups were cared for by the Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

That progress hasn’t always been steady. In El Niño years, anchovies and sardines became scarce and sea lions switched to rockfish, squid and hake. Previous studies have found that when sea lion mothers eat more rockfish and squid (as determined by analyzing their scat), the pups they nurse have lower body weights.

A team from NOAA’s Fisheries Service wondered whether the effects were limited to El Niño years.

To find out, they needed to know where pregnant and nursing sea lions liked to hunt. They estimated a likely foraging range based on the movements of six female sea lions from San Miguel Island that were tagged by researchers in the 1990s. The data from those tags showed they liked to hunt off the California coast between Big Sur and Malibu.

Next they had to figure out what kinds of fish were available in those waters. For more than 30 years, researchers from NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center have been taking a census of young rockfish and other fish species in central California. Data for the area they needed was available from 2004 to 2014.

Finally, they looked up the average weight of 14-week-old sea lion pups from San Miguel Island for each year between 2004 and 2011. During that period, the average weight ranged from 14.8 kilograms to 20.9 kg for female pups and from 17.5 kg to 23.6 kg for male pups.

The pattern they found was clear: When sardines and anchovies were abundant and rockfish and squid were scarce, sea lion pups weighed more. Conversely, when rockfish and squid were plentiful and sardines and anchovies were not, sea lion pups weighed less.

The NOAA scientists weren’t able to study the “composition or quantity” of milk produced by sea lion mothers, so they couldn’t make a direct link between the types of fish in the sea and the nutritional value of their milk. Still, the results amount to “compelling evidence” that the pups are starving because their moms can’t produce enough milk for them, the scientists wrote.

At least 375 sea lions have stranded themselves on Southern California beaches so far in 2016, according to NOAA. The study authors said this trend could continue for quite some time.

“We expect repeated years with malnourished and starving sea lion pups,” they wrote.

Read the original post: http://www.latimes.com/