Archive for the View from the Ocean Category

Nov 25 2017

Biggest Chinook Salmon Haul Going to Sea Lions, Seals & Killer Whales

A young resident killer whale chases a chinook salmon in the Salish Sea near San Juan Island, Washington, in September 2017. Oregon State University, Flickr Creative Commons

 

It’s been a long haul, but West Coast seal and sea lion populations have recovered over the past 40 years. All those extra predators may be eating more chinook salmon than people are catching, according to a new study.

Increasing numbers of marine predators could be bad news for chinook salmon — and for critically endangered Southern Resident killer whales.

In a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers used models to estimate how many salmon marine mammals are eating.

“The reality is, if (marine mammal) population numbers are increasing, undoubtedly their consumption and predation is also increasing,” said Brandon Chasco, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate at Oregon State University.

Turns out, sea lions, harbor seals, and growing populations of killer whales in Alaska and Canada are consuming almost 150 percent more chinook salmon than they did 40 years ago. That’s compared to a 41 percent decrease in the amount of chinook salmon fisheries are harvesting.

“This sort of thing has been documented around the world — recovery of seals and sea lion predation on fish that lots of people care about and harvest,” said Isaac Kaplan, with NOAA Fisheries Northwest Fisheries Science Center and study co-author. “But really putting the diet information together and doing the sort of careful accounting … it really emphasizes the strength of that impact on the chinook salmon population.”

As the juvenile salmon swim out to sea, they get eaten by seals and sea lions. Then some salmon swim clear up the coast to Alaska, where booming populations of killer whales take a bite out of the chinook numbers.

As the salmon then migrate back to spawn in Northwest streams, there are fewer fish for the southern resident killer whales in Washington’s marine waters.

The researchers said all that means chinook salmon could be doing better than previously thought — they’re just getting gobbled up before returning home and getting counted.

“There is a conflict. There is a trade-off here,” Kaplan said. “To some extent, it means that recovery of chinook salmon populations has been more successful than we realized — it’s just that some of that success is going towards feeding marine mammals.”

The sea lions and seals are protected by the U.S. Marine Mammals Protection Act of 1972. At the same time, the Endangered Species Act protects chinook salmon.

Columbia River tribes of Native Americans have recently fought to protect salmon runs from the pinnipeds, asking for authorization to kill more of the sea lions that feast on the fish.

The study, funded by the Pacific Salmon Commission, found that sea lions and seals are eating more individual fish, while killer whales are eating more biomass, or weight, of fish. It’s unclear, right now, which number has a bigger impact on salmon numbers, Chasco said.

The researchers said salmon recovery efforts must take into account all the different challenges salmon face, including these increasing marine mammal predators studied.

Right now many salmon survival models focus more on ocean conditions and commercial and recreational fisheries. Taking more of an ecosystem approach to managing salmon might be a better way to go, the researchers said.

“There’s more than just fishing to the story (of salmon recovery). There’s also predation,” Kaplan said. “This study helps us understand that there are multiple pressures acting on salmon.”

But there’s still much more to study, Chasco said.

For example, he said, “Is this an additive effect, or is it these predators simply taking fish out of the mouths of other predators?”

Originally published: http://www.opb.org/news/article/salmon-haul-seals-sea-lions-killer-whales/

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Nov 20 2017

As Oceans Warm, the World’s Kelp Forests Begin to Disappear

Kelp forests — luxuriant coastal ecosystems that are home to a wide variety of marine biodiversity — are being wiped out from Tasmania to California, replaced by sea urchin barrens that are nearly devoid of life.

By Alastair Bland

A steady increase in ocean temperatures — nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit in recent decades — was all it took to doom the once-luxuriant giant kelp forests of eastern Australia and Tasmania: Thick canopies that once covered much of the region’s coastal sea surface have wilted in intolerably warm and nutrient-poor water. Then, a warm-water sea urchin species moved in. Voracious grazers, the invaders have mowed down much of the remaining vegetation and, over vast areas, have formed what scientists call urchin barrens, bleak marine environments largely devoid of life.

Today, more than 95 percent of eastern Tasmania’s kelp forests — luxuriant marine environments that provide food and shelter for species at all levels of the food web — are gone. With the water still warming rapidly and the long-spine urchin spreading southward in the favorable conditions, researchers see little hope of saving the vanishing ecosystem.

“Our giant kelp forests are now a tiny fraction of their former glory,” says Craig Johnson, a researcher at the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. “This ecosystem used to be a major iconic feature of eastern Tasmania, and it no longer is.”

The Tasmanian saga is just one of many examples of how climate change and other environmental shifts are driving worldwide losses of giant kelp, a brown algae whose strands can grow to 100 feet. In western Australia, increases in ocean temperatures, accentuated by an extreme spike in 2011, have killed vast beds of an important native kelp, Ecklonia radiata. In southern Norway, ocean temperatures have exceeded the threshold for sugar kelp — Saccharina latissima — which has died en masse since the late 1990s and largely been replaced by thick mats of turf algae, which stifles kelp recovery. In western Europe, the warming Atlantic Ocean poses a serious threat to coastal beds of Laminaria digitata kelp, and researchers have predicted “extirpation of the species as early as the first half of the 21st century” in parts of France, Denmark, and southern England.

Routine summertime spikes in water temperature in eastern Tasmania have pushed kelp forests over the edge.

And in northern California, a series of events that began several years ago has destroyed the once-magnificent bull kelp forests along hundreds of miles of coastline. A brief shutdown of upwelling cycles left the giant algae groves languishing in warm surface water, causing a massive die-off. Meanwhile, a disease rapidly wiped out the region’s urchin-eating sea stars, causing a devastating cascade of effects: Overpopulated urchins have grazed away much of the remaining vegetation, creating a subsurface wasteland littered with shells of starved abalone. Scientists see no recovery in sight.

A 2016 study noted a global average decrease in kelp abundance, with warming waters directly driving some losses. But the researchers said that a characteristic of kelp forest declines is their extreme regional variability. Some areas are even experiencing a growth in kelp forests, including the west coast of Vancouver Island, where an increasing population of urchin-hunting sea otters has reduced the impacts of the spiny grazers, allowing kelp to flourish. Ultimately researchers say, warming ocean waters are expected to take a toll on the world’s kelp forests. The 2016 paper, coauthored by 37 scientists, concluded that “kelp forests are increasingly threatened by a variety of human impacts, including climate change, overfishing, and direct harvest.”

In eastern Tasmania, sea surface temperatures have increased at four times the average global rate, according to Johnson, who along with colleague Scott Ling has closely studied the region’s kelp forest losses. This dramatic environmental change began in the mid-20th century and accelerated in the early 1990s. Giant kelp — Macrocystis pyrifera — does best in an annual water temperature range of roughly 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Johnson. He says routine summertime spikes into the mid-60s pushed the kelp over the edge. First in Australia, and subsequently in Tasmania, the kelp forests vanished. The Australian government now lists giant kelp forests as an endangered ecological community.

The progression of the destruction of a kelp forest in Tasmania by urchins, from left to right. The Australian island state has lost more than 95 percent its kelp forests in recent decades. Courtesy of Scott Ling

As waters warmed, something else also happened. The long-spine sea urchin, which generally cannot tolerate temperatures lower than 53 degrees Fahrenheit, traveled southward as migrant larvae and established new territory in Tasmanian waters. Lobsters — which prey on urchins — had been heavily fished here for decades, and consequently few predators existed to control the invading urchins, whose numbers boomed.

Since the 1980s, long-spine urchins — Centrostephanus rodgersii — have essentially taken over the seafloor in southeastern Australia and northeastern Tasmania, forming vast urchin barrens. An urchin barren is a remarkable phenomenon of marine ecology in which the animals’ population grows to extraordinary densities, annihilating seafloor vegetation while forming a sort of system barrier against ecological change. Once established, urchin barrens tend to persist almost indefinitely.

“For all intents and purposes, once you flip to the urchin barren state, you have virtually no chance of recovery,” Johnson says.

In some places, like the southwestern coast of Hokkaido, in Japan, and the Aleutian Islands, urchin barrens have replaced kelp forests and have remained for decades.

This bodes poorly for eastern Tasmania, where expansive areas in the north have already been converted into barrens. Urchins have not yet overrun southeastern Tasmania. “But we’re seeing the problem moving south, and we’re getting more and more urchins,” says Johnson, who expects roughly half the Tasmanian coastline will transition into urchin barrens. “That’s what we have in New South Wales.”

Warm ocean temperatures, a sea star disease outbreak, and a boom in urchin populations decimated several major kelp beds in northern California between 2008 and 2014. California Department of Fish and Wildlife

A similar scenario is unfolding in northern California, where local divers and fishermen have watched the area’s bull kelp forests collapse into an ecological wasteland. As in Tasmania, the change has resulted from a one-two punch of altered ocean conditions combined with an urchin boom.

The problems began in 2013, when a mysterious syndrome wiped out many of the sea star species of the North American west coast. Sea stars — especially Pycnopodia helianthoides, the sunflower sea star — eat urchins. With the predators abruptly absent in the region, the population of purple sea urchins — Strongylocentrotus purpuratus — began growing rapidly.

By coincidence, a simultaneous onset of unusual wind and current patterns slowed the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich bottom water, which typically makes the waters of the west coast of North America so productive. Kelp forests, already under attack by armies of urchins, disappeared.

The upwelling cycles have since resumed. “But the system just can’t recover, even with a shift back in water temperature,” says Kyle Cavanaugh, an assistant professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles who has studied global kelp ecosystems. “The urchins are just everywhere.”

Divers surveying the seafloor have seen purple urchin numbers jump by as much as 100-fold, according to Cynthia Catton, a biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife who has been surveying the environment since 2002. Urchins  — dozens per square meter in places — continue to gnaw away the remnant scraps of the vanishing kelp forests, 95 percent of which have been converted to barrens, Catton says.

Urchins — dozens per square meter in places — continue to gnaw away the remnant scraps of the vanishing kelp forests.

Other animals also depend on kelp, and the region’s red abalone are now starving in droves. The population has collapsed, and the recreational harvest could be banned in the coming year, Catton says. Juvenile fish use kelp as nursery habitat, and certain species of rockfish may see declines in the absence of protective vegetation. Predatory fish, like lingcod, may move elsewhere to hunt. Populations of the commercially valuable red urchin, Mesocentrotus franciscanus, are also being impacted as their gonads — finger-sized golden wedges listed on sushi menus as uni — shrivel away, making the urchins no longer worth harvesting.

An urchin barren is considered to be an “alternative stable state” to the kelp forest ecosystem and is almost invincibly resistant to change. Johnson says that while it takes relatively high urchin densities to graze a kelp forest down to a barren, the animals must be almost eradicated entirely to allow a shift back to a kelp forest. In other words, he says, “The number of urchins needed to create a barren is much greater than the number of urchins needed to maintain it.”

Part of the reason urchin barrens are difficult to reverse is the hardiness of the urchins themselves. Foremost, they are almost immune to starvation, and once they’ve exhausted all vegetation will outlive virtually every other competing organism in the ecosystem. In the urchin barrens of Hokkaido, which formed roughly 80 years ago for reasons that remain unclear, individual urchins have lived in the collapsed environment for five decades, according to a 2014 analysis.

What’s worse, the hungrier urchins get, the more destructive they become. Research has shown that the calcite deposits that form urchins’ jaws and teeth enlarge when the animals are stressed by hunger — a rapid adaptation that allows them to utilize otherwise inedible material.

A bull kelp forest as seen from the surface of Ocean Cove in northern California in 2012 and 2016. Kevin Joe and Cynthia Catton, California Department of Fish and Wildlife

“They’re now eating through barnacles, they’re eating the calcified coralline algae that coats the rocks, they’re eating through abalone shells,” Catton says of the purple urchins in northern California. “The magnitude of their impact increases as their food supply diminishes.”

They become aggressive, too. Whereas urchins in healthy kelp ecosystems tend to dwell in crevices for much of their lives and wait for drifting kelp to come their way, in a barren state they exit their hiding places and actively hunt for food. “They form these fronts, and they graze along the bottom and eat everything,” says Mark Carr, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In the kelp forests of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands chain, urchin barrens began forming in the 1980s, causing local declines in various fishes, bald eagles, and harbor seals. The transition began when the population of sea otters started to decline, possibly because of increased predation by killer whales. Green urchin numbers skyrocketed, and the animals destroyed the kelp forests along hundreds of miles of the archipelago. “The densities are getting ridiculous,” says Matthew Edwards, a San Diego State University biologist who has studied the region. “In some places we have hundreds of urchins per square meter.”

In Tasmania, Johnson and Ling are leading an effort to protect areas that haven’t yet been overwhelmed by the long-spine urchin. The best chance they see is to boost localized populations of predatory rock lobsters. Fishery officials are on board with the plan, Johnson says, and have tightly restricted lobster harvest in order to help increase their numbers. Johnson and Ling have also been directing the translocation of large lobsters into test site barrens.

“It’s like seeing a forest you once knew turn into a desert,” says one scientist.

But the measures have been only moderately successful. Ling is currently re-surveying dozens of study sites first assessed in 2001, and he says urchin density has more than doubled in some locations. On relatively small barrens surrounded by healthy reef ecosystems, the scientists have seen progress as translocated lobsters knock down urchin numbers sufficiently to allow some vegetation to grow back.

“But on those extensive barrens, you can pour in as many large lobsters as you like, and they will eat hundreds of thousands of urchins, but they cannot reduce the urchins enough for any kelp to reappear,” he says. “Even if you turned all those urchin barrens into marine protected areas tomorrow, you could wait 200 years and you still wouldn’t get a kelp forest back.”

In central California, kelp forests are still thriving, a fact Carr credits to one animal.

“We have sea otters down here, and they’re voracious predators of urchins,” he says.

Carr, both a research diver and a recreational abalone diver, says he has watched the decline of northern California’s kelp forests with great sorrow.

“It’s like seeing a forest you once knew turn into a desert,” he says. “Not only do you lose all the trees, but all the smaller plants around them die, until there’s nothing left.”

Originally published: http://e360.yale.edu/

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Nov 9 2017

Several hundred tons of squid offloaded in Ventura

Ventura Harbor saw a haul of around 300 to 400 tons of squid Tuesday morning, which harbor officials say is a good sign. TYLER HERSKO/THE STAR

 

The smell of squid filled the air Tuesday morning at Ventura Harbor, where workers were bustling to offload hundreds of tons of it.

The morning’s activities represented one of the largest squid hauls the harbor has seen in recent history. Approximately 300 to 400 tons of squid were brought into the harbor, representing a positive turn of events, said Frank Locklear, manager of commercial fisheries and technology at the Ventura Harbor Village Marina.

Locklear noted that squid season typically begins in April and the harbor saw squid through June. That said, Locklear added that squid numbers were practically nonexistent from July through September, which forced the harbor’s fishing companies to carefully save their resources until squid returned. Beyond that, the past three years have been particularly difficult for squid fishing due to poor weather conditions.

While the harbor prefers to receive around 500 to 600 tons on an average day, Locklear was confident that Tuesday’s haul represented a change of fortune. Squid fishing is one of the leading factors in the harbor’s success, according to Locklear.

“The harbor is a huge economic ball that is supported by the fishing industry,” Locklear said. “Fishing is the lifeblood of this harbor, and squid is the key.”

The squid fishing businesses that use the harbor export a significant majority of their yields to China, Locklear said.

Most of the squid sold in restaurants is imported from Asia, where squid cleaning and processing is cheaper.

Regardless, Locklear stressed that squid fishing is crucial to the economic well-being of both local fishing companies and the harbor as a whole. The harbor uses part of the revenue it receives from squid fishing companies to send representation to Washington, D.C., to get the funding it needs for dredging, which removes sand and sediment from the bottom of the harbor’s entrance.

Regular dredging is of paramount importance, and squid fishing is the primary thing that makes dredging possible, according to Locklear.

“Ventura Harbor is home to three large recreational marinas that have dive boats, island excursion boats and sport fishermen that need to get out of the harbor to survive,” Locklear said. “Without the funds that we get for our squid, we can’t go to Washington to get the funding we need for dredging. If we don’t dredge yearly, our boats can’t come in and out.”

Read original post: http://www.vcstar.com/

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Nov 3 2017

Why a small, oily, strong-tasting fish is showing up on restaurant menus

You probably didn’t expect to see sardines on the list of 2017 food trends. The small, oily fish have an assertive flavor that can be a turnoff for some. Most people associate them with cans, which runs contrary to our notion that the best food is fresh. They feel like a throwback to an era when people didn’t understand exactly how good food could be.

Americans “weren’t going to embrace grandpa’s can of sardines on the supermarket shelf,” says Elizabeth Moskow, culinary director for the Sterling-Rice Group, a branding agency that put sardines on its trend forecast for the year. But high-quality canned sardines, as well as fresh ones, are making more appearances on restaurant menus. “I think the American palate may be ready for something as strong as sardines,” Moskow says.

Sardines are high in omega-3 fatty acids, which may reduce the risk of heart disease. They’re also environmentally friendly, because they’re lower on the food chain.

“They were considered kind of a trash fish, and not something as prized as they currently are or could be in the future,” says Jon Sybert, chef and co-owner of Adams Morgan’s Tail Up Goat restaurant, which has rotated through several sardine dishes throughout the year. He particularly likes preparing them in a salt crust, which keeps them super moist, and serving them with a chocolate rye bread.

A fisherman uses a hook to bring sardines onto a fishing boat in Matosinhos, Portugal. (Nacho Doce/Reuters)

The sardine’s popularity is benefiting from a recent wave of travel to Portugal, one of this year’s “it” destinations. There, tourists encounter tinned sardines with beautiful packaging, canned in high-quality oils, often with spices, pickles or peppers.

“The reality is you can’t get fresher,” says Kathy Sidell, owner of the Saltie Girl restaurant in Boston, pointing out that the fish are often canned directly off the docks. Saltie Girl has sold sardines fried, grilled, marinated and canned, served with bread and a house-made butter, similar to how the fish are presented in Portugal. “We often say it’s like a charcuterie board, but with seafood,” she notes.

At Mola, a Spanish restaurant in Mount Pleasant, you’ll find a house-cured sardine plate with an aioli and piquillo pepper, a riff on a dish co-owner Erin Lingle had in Madrid, or pan-roasted sardines with paprika vinaigrette and a side of Swiss chard.

The dishes have proved popular, thanks in part to the enthusiasm of her staff.

“People are learning to embrace those aspects of sardines rather then find them off-putting,” Lingle says. “I love sardines because they are an oily, strong-flavored fish that stand up well to bold flavors.”

Originally posted: https://www.washingtonpost.com/

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Oct 31 2017

‘Rule of Thumb’ Management Approach Is Wrong For Forage Fish, Dr. Ray Hilborn Tells U.S. Senate

Saving Seafood interviews Dr. Ray Hilborn about forage fish management ahead of his testimony before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard.

 

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – October 31, 2017 – At a hearing of the U.S. Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard last week, respected fisheries scientist Dr. Ray Hilborn testified that fisheries managers “can do better than a one-size-fits-all” approach to managing forage fish. He also said there was “no empirical evidence to support the idea that the abundance of forage fish affects their predators.”

Dr. Hilborn’s comments came in response to questioning from Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) about whether fisheries managers should manage forage fish according to a “rule of thumb” approach, where fisheries are managed according to a set of broad ecological and management principals, or a “case-by-case” approach, where management is guided by more species-specific information.

Dr. Hilborn, a professor at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, was part of a team of top fisheries scientists that recently examined these issues, as well as what effects fishing for forage fish species had on predator species. Their research indicated that previous studies, like a 2012 report from the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, may have overestimated the strength of the predator-prey relationship.

Before the hearing, Dr. Hilborn spoke with Saving Seafood about his research and his message for lawmakers.

“It’s very clear that there really are no applicable rules of thumb, that every system is independent [and] behaves differently, and we need to have the rules for each individual forage fish fishery determined by looking at the specifics of that case,” Dr. Hilborn told Saving Seafood.

He also discussed his team’s finding that forage fish abundance has little impact on their predators. They looked at nearly all U.S. forage fish fisheries, including the California Current system and Atlantic menhaden, and concluded that predator species generally pursue other food sources when the abundance of any one forage species is low.

“The predators seem to go up or down largely independent of the abundance of forage fish,” Dr. Hilborn said, adding, “For Atlantic menhaden, for their major predators, the fishery has reasonably little impact on the food that’s available to them.”

Another key message Dr. Hilborn had for the Subcommittee was that fisheries managers must determine what they want to accomplish so that scientists can advise them accordingly.

“The time has come to refocus our fisheries policy on what we actually want to achieve because rebuilding is only a means to an end,” Dr. Hilborn told Saving Seafood. “Do we want to maximize the economic value of our fisheries? Do we want to maximize jobs? Do we want to maximize food production?”

In his testimony, Dr. Hilborn praised U.S. fisheries policy that has “led to rebuilding of fish stocks and some of the most successful fisheries in the world.” He attributed this success to a variety of factors, including funding of NOAA, regionalizing fisheries management decisions, and requiring managers to follow science advice. As a result, overfishing should no longer be the top priority for fisheries managers, he testified.

“The major threats to U.S. fish stock and marine ecosystem biodiversity are now ocean acidification, warming temperatures, degraded coastal habitats, exotic species, land based run off, and pollution,” Dr. Hilborn testified. “Overfishing remains a concern for a limited number of stocks but should not continue to be the most important concern for U.S. federal fisheries policy.”

The hearing was the latest in a series examining reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the nation’s supreme fisheries law. It was organized by subcommittee chairman Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), and focused on fisheries science.

Originally posted: Saving Seafood Inc.

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Oct 25 2017

Testimony of Ray Hilborn to U.S. Senate subcommittee

Testimony of Ray Hilborn to U.S. Senate subcommittee.

 

 

Subcommittee to Continue Hearing Series on Magnuson-Stevens Act

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, will convene the hearing titled “Reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act: Fisheries Science,” at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 24, 2017. The hearing is the fourth of the series and will focus on the state of our nation’s fisheries and the science that supports sustainable management.

Witnesses:

– Mr. Karl Haflinger, Founder and President, Sea State, Inc
– Dr. Ray Hilborn, Professor, University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
– Dr. Michael Jones, Professor, Michigan State University Quantitative Fisheries Center
– Dr. Larry McKinney, Director, Texas A&M University Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies

Hearing Details:

Tuesday, October 24, 2017
2:30 p.m.
Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard

This hearing will take place in Russell Senate Office Building, Room 253. Witness testimony, opening statements, and a live video of the hearing will be available on www.commerce.senate.gov.

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Oct 23 2017

Professor has a message for Congress: Overfishing is over

Rob Hotakainen, E&E News reporter
Published: Monday, October 23, 2017
Ray Hilborn. Photo credit: University of Washington

Fisheries scientist Ray Hilborn. University of Washington

 

To his detractors, fisheries professor Ray Hilborn is an “overfishing denier,” a scientist who’s all too eager to accept money from industry groups to pay for his pro-fishing research.

To his backers, he’s a hero, a respected researcher who can always be counted on to challenge environmental groups that want to limit fishing.

Love him or hate him, there’s little doubt that the outspoken Hilborn has attained an international profile and that he has found a way to win big-time attention in fishing circles.

His next stop is Capitol Hill.

Tomorrow, Hilborn, a professor of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington, will appear before a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation panel, getting another chance to argue his case that overfishing is no longer a concern for the United States.

He’s one of four experts scheduled to testify before the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard.

“What I’m going to say in my testimony is that overfishing is no longer the major threat to the sustainability of our oceans or biodiversity,” Hilborn said in an interview. “My first line on Tuesday is going to be that we have really fixed our fisheries by having fisheries management follow science advice — and if you stop doing that, you’re in trouble.”

Hilborn also said it’s time to stop “vilifying” fishing.

“I wrote the book on overfishing, called ‘Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know,’ by Oxford University Press,” Hilborn said. “You know, overfishing is a serious problem in many places. It’s not a very serious problem in the United States now. It was 30 years ago. … And the U.S. has responded, as has Europe. In most developed countries, fish stocks are increasing in abundance, they are not declining in abundance.”

The question of overfishing is a key focus for Congress as lawmakers consider making changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a law passed in 1976 that sets the rules for fishing in federal waters (E&E Daily, July 17).

Backers and opponents alike credit the landmark law for improving the health of U.S. fish stocks, though many worry the Trump administration has moved too quickly to allow more fishing.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees NOAA, heightened those concerns with two key decisions: In June, he extended the season for the Gulf red snapper by 39 days, and in July, he overturned a decision by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission that would have cut New Jersey’s recreational quota for summer flounder, also known as fluke (Greenwire, Sept. 20).

Critics fear Ross’ decisions could lead to overfishing and jeopardize both fish stocks in the long run.

Meanwhile, the president’s fisheries chief, Chris Oliver, told a House Natural Resources panel last month that 91 percent of all fishing stocks assessed by NOAA are no longer subject to overfishing.

Oliver, the head of NOAA Fisheries, told the Subcommittee on Water, Power and Oceans that the U.S. had “effectively ended overfishing,” allowing “room for flexibility” in applying annual catch limits (E&E Daily, Sept. 27).

Those are fighting words for many conservationists who worry the Trump team has already gone overboard in bowing to the demands of fishing groups.

“When they talk about flexibility, they’re really talking about rollbacks,” said John Hocevar, a marine biologist and ocean campaigns director for Greenpeace USA.
An ideal spokesman?

Hilborn has plenty of fans, but he has faced accusations of industry bias.

Last year, he won the International Fisheries Science Prize at the World Fisheries Congress in Busan, South Korea, recognized for a 40-year-career of “highly diversified research” on behalf of global fisheries science and conservation.

“There aren’t many fisheries scientists in the country who can match Ray Hilborn,” said Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “He’s the ideal spokesman for his field to educate Congress about how science informs fisheries management. Anyone who questions Ray’s professional or scientific integrity doesn’t understand how science works, at best.”

But a study by Greenpeace last year found that Hilborn accepted more than $3.55 million from 69 commercial fishing and seafood interests to pay for his research from 2003 to 2015.

“It seems like he uses his genuine scientific credentials to make himself more valuable to industry as a spokesperson,” said Hocevar. “On climate denial, there are a bunch of those guys. But with fisheries, Hilborn is the guy. … He’s the go-to, and there’s really no one else out there like him who will come out and talk about how we don’t need marine protected areas and how the real problem is underfishing, not overfishing.”

Greenpeace gained access to University of Washington documents that showed Hilborn’s long and extensive links to fishing, seafood and other corporate groups by filing a request under the state’s public records law.

After Greenpeace complained that Hilborn had not properly disclosed his affiliations in all his published papers, the university investigated the issue and concluded Hilborn had not violated any of its policies.

But Hocevar said the issue is still relevant.

“He took millions of dollars from industry. … And studies have shown that where you get your funding from does create bias in terms of findings,” Hocevar said.

Hilborn dismissed the criticism from Greenpeace.

“You know, they’re hopeless fundamentally,” he said. “They’re basically a money-raising organization, and they have to scare people to raise money. They’re not interested in science at all. … Greenpeace has sort of put its cards on the table that fishing is a big deal, and they’re not going to raise money if people don’t believe that fishing is a threat.”

Schedule: The hearing is Tuesday, Oct. 24, at 2:30 p.m. in 253 Russell.

Witnesses: Karl Haflinger, founder and president, Sea State Inc.; Ray Hilborn, professor, University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences; Michael Jones, professor, Michigan State University Quantitative Fisheries Center; and Larry McKinney, director, Texas A&M University Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies.

Originally published: E&E Daily

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Oct 7 2017

Coastal Researchers, Fishermen Worried About More Frequent Low Oxygen Zones

Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary research team members, Kathy Hough and LTJG Alisha Friel, recover sensors deployed seasonally off the coast of Washington from the research vessel Tatoosh in July 2017. — S. Maenner / NOAA

 

Scientists in Oregon and Washington are noticing a disruptive ocean phenomenon is becoming more frequent and extreme. It involves a suffocating ribbon of low oxygen seawater over our continental shelf.

The technical term is hypoxia, sometimes called “dead zones,” It’s an unwelcome variation on normal upwelling of cold, nutrient rich water from the deep ocean. When the dissolved oxygen drops too low, it drives away fish and can suffocate bottom dwellers such as crabs and sea worms who can’t scurry away fast enough.

It seemed to marine ecologist Francis Chan like this is happening most every summer lately. So the Oregon State University researcher looked back as far as coastal oxygen readings go—to about 1950—to see if it’s always been this way.

“The ocean starting in 2000 really looked different from the ocean we had between the 1950s and 1990s,” Chan said.

Chan said climate change could affect oxygen levels via disrupted circulation and ocean warming. 
 A September storm flushed away this year’s low oxygen zone by churning Northwest coastal waters. But Chan described the severity of the low oxygen readings recorded this summer as among the worst ever observed locally.

“It’s very much a patchy ribbon,” he said from his post in Newport, Oregon. Marine surveys and fixed instruments recorded notably low oxygen values from south of Yachats up past Newport.

Ten oceanographic moorings deployed by the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary also found very low (hypoxic) oxygen values between Cape Elizabeth and Cape Flattery, Washington, this summer.

“This is not a happy year for organisms out on the coast,” said Jenny Waddell, the marine sanctuary’s research coordinator.

Waddell added that at least one sensor dipped into anoxic conditions, “where there’s literally no oxygen.”

“We had indications of a relatively persistent hypoxia event along the Quinault Reservation coastline,” wrote marine scientist Joe Schumacker of the Quinault Department of Fisheries in an email Friday. “Dead fish and shellfish at various locations and times beginning near the end of July and extending through most of August.”

More frequent and severe near-shore hypoxia concerns fishermen and crabbers. Commercial harvesters face reduced catches and economic losses when crabs suffocate and fish and prawns flee the oxygen-starved waters.

One of the tip-offs to OSU researchers of the onset of low oxygen conditions this summer was when Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists monitoring crab populations noticed crabs dying from lack of oxygen in a research trap. Other observers noted crabs leaving the ocean to seek more oxygenated waters in coastal estuaries and bays.

Earlier this year, researchers and fishery advocates found a receptive ear at the Oregon Legislature when they presented their concerns about silent changes in the ocean. Legislators approved the creation of a new council to be co-chaired by the state Fish and Wildlife director and an OSU leader.

The council is tasked with recommending and coordinating a long-term strategy to address hypoxia as well as ocean acidification.

Originally published: http://nwnewsnetwork.org/

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Sep 13 2017

California Acting Governor Gavin Newsom Requests Disaster Relief for Sardine, Urchin Fisheries

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

Copyright © 2017 Seafoodnews.com

Seafood News

 

Sardine and sea urchin closures in California have prompted Acting Gov. Gavin Newsom to request fishery failure declarations for both.
Newsom noted in his Sept. 5 letters to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross that ocean conditions caused the closure for sardines and affected the kelp forest ecosystems on which red urchins depend.

The California Wetfish Producers Association lauded Newsom’s request to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to approve a declaration of a commercial fishery failure for California’s Pacific sardine fishery. His action was precipitated by La Niña’s cold-water oceanic conditions that are believed to have caused sharply reduced sardine recruitment and the closure of this commercial fishery since 2015.

“This declaration is very important as it will enable California’s historic sardine fishery and its participants to seek federal disaster relief to offset the economic harm fishermen and processors have suffered since the fishery closure,” California Wetfish Producers Association Executive Director Diane Pleschner-Steele said in a statement Tuesday.

The Pacific sardine fishery has been managed under the federal Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery Management Plan (CPS FMP) since 2000. The CPS FMP established a harvest cutoff, prohibiting directed fishing if the sardine population falls below an estimated 150,000 metric tons. Due to low stock assessments, the fishery was closed in 2015 and 2016, and will remain closed in 2017 and possibly even 2018, although sardines have returned to abundance in the nearshore area, where fishing normally takes place.

Certain thresholds have been established that help the National Marine Fisheries Service and Secretary of Commerce make a determination of whether a commercial fishery failure has occurred. One of these involves an analysis of the economic impact and states that revenue losses greater than 80 percent are presumed to be a commercial fishery failure. This is determined by comparing the loss of 12-month revenue to average annual revenue in the most recent five-year period.

“This fishery is historically one of the top 10 highest valued commercial fisheries in California,” Newsom said in his letter regarding the iconic sardine fishery. “Statewide, the commercial closure in 2015 resulted in a total value of $343,148, which is 90 percent less than the 2010-14 average of $3,504,098. That dropped to $95,657 in 2016, which was 96 percent less than the 2011-15 average of $2,711,679.”

The figures for the urchin fishery, particularly in northern California and Orange County, were dire as well.
“The impacts to the regions are evident in the fishery landings data,” Newsom wrote. “In 2016, the northern California fishery ex-vessel revenue fell by 77 percent compared to the 5-year average from $2,587,419 to $604,440, Orange County ports fell by 93 percent from $85,382 to $6,045, and San Diego County ports fell by 48 percent from $574,526 to $297,594.”

Newsom’s letter noted the initial estimates for both fisheries are based on the average ex-vessel value of commercial landings but do not account for additional impacts to seafood processors or related industry businesses that rely on the either or both fisheries.

The sardine fishery is the foundation of California’s wetfish industry, which for decades has produced 80 percent or more of annual statewide commercial fishery landings, until recent years, the CWPA statement said. While fishermen and markets may harvest and process other species in the coastal pelagic species complex, sardines have been the historic mainstay of this industry, and the loss of fishing opportunity has created severe economic impact to both fishermen and processors.

The urchin fishery has been a staple for small-boat fishermen throughout the state for a number of years — until recently.
“Persistent warm ocean conditions that began in 2014 in northern California and 2015 in southern California has affected the fishery in these two regions,” Newsom’s letter said. “In northern California, the warm water event devastated kelp production (93 percent loss of surface kelp canopies compared to 2008 levels), a primary food source for urchins that created persistent starvation conditions. Starvation has led to reductions in the food value of the urchins targeted by the fishery in northern California.

In addition, a population explosion of the less marketable purple sea urchin continues to overgraze the recovering kelp beds, adding further stress to the fishery. In southern California, urchin mortality increased in response to warm El Nino conditions and disease in 2015. This has reduced the numbers of healthy red sea urchins in southern California available to the fishery.”

The Governor’s request for federal declaration now opens the door for fishermen and processors in California’s fisheries to pursue a federal disaster declaration from the Secretary of Commerce and appeal to California’s congressional delegation to pursue legislation allocating funding for disaster relief. Such funds would help alleviate the economic and social harm suffered as a result of these disasters.

Funds could also be used for cooperative research projects, Pleschner-Steele said, such as the collaborative aerial survey of the nearshore area that CWPA participates in with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in efforts to improve the accuracy of stock assessments.

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Sep 6 2017

Why eye-popping whale shows off the California coast are the new normal

Peter Winch, a naturalist with the Oceanic Society conservation group, said whales have been especially visible this year because cold ocean upwellings have sprinkled near-shore waters with plankton. The whales swim close to shore for anchovies, which feed on plankton, he said.

“They are taking advantage of anchovy shoals that are numerous around the coast,” Winch said. “The humpbacks have the ability to pick and choose. They can stay out in deeper water and eat krill or they can come in. In the last few years, they have just really clued in on this abundance of anchovies.”

 

Humpbacks have put on a show this summer inside and outside the Golden Gate — flopping around, waving their flukes and leaping out of the water — a bonanza for whale watchers in tour boats and on dry land that scientists say will remain a regular thing.

The ballet of the behemoths, far from a one-time event, is the result of the humpbacks recovering from near-extinction thanks to an international whaling ban, intense conservation and protection of their breeding grounds.

John Calambokidis, a senior research biologist for the nonprofit Cascadia Research Collective, said the giant cetaceans are swimming off the coast of California in numbers equal to their historic population and extending their range into places where they lived long ago.

“Their numbers reached carrying capacity in the last five years, and that’s when sightings in unusual areas began to occur,” said Calambokidis, who has been studying humpback and blue whales for 35 years.

“It’s a good thing in the sense that it reflects the recovery of humpback whales,” he said. “It’s a bad thing in that some of these coastal areas they are repopulating, like San Francisco Bay, put them in greater conflict with other activities, like noise, ships and recreational boaters.”

Since May, large pods have moved through Monterey Bay, past Pacifica and just beyond the breakers at Stinson Beach. Lucky viewers have spotted humpbacks doing pirouettes and splashing down under the Golden Gate Bridge, near the Channel Islands in Southern California and in Puget Sound in Washington.

The phenomenon is all the more remarkable after record-high temperatures in the Pacific Ocean two years ago unleashed toxic algae that closed down the Dungeness crab fishery and contributed to a huge death toll among seabirds and sea lions.

Peter Winch, a naturalist with the Oceanic Society conservation group, said whales have been especially visible this year because cold ocean upwellings have sprinkled near-shore waters with plankton. The whales swim close to shore for anchovies, which feed on plankton, he said.

“They are taking advantage of anchovy shoals that are numerous around the coast,” Winch said. “The humpbacks have the ability to pick and choose. They can stay out in deeper water and eat krill or they can come in. In the last few years, they have just really clued in on this abundance of anchovies.”

Humpbacks, which have long pectoral fins and distinctive knobby heads, are unique among baleen whales. They are friendly and playful, often interacting with other species, including bottlenose dolphins and right whales, and they have complex vocalizations that sound like singing.

They are known for their acrobatic breaching, in which they lift nearly their entire bodies out of the water before splashing down.

The whales, which can grow to 52 feet long and almost 80,000 pounds, were hunted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, reducing the global population by more than 90 percent.

Before 1900, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 humpbacks lived in the North Pacific. Only about 500 remained in 1966, when the International Whaling Commission finally halted the killing.

Calambokidis said humpback numbers have increased by 7 to 8 percent every year since he began studying them in the 1980s. At least 40,000 of the creatures now live in the world’s oceans — and the North Pacific population is at a historic high.

They have done so well, in fact, that nine of the 14 subspecies that had been listed under the Endangered Species Act since 1970 were taken off the list in 2016 in what one federal official called a “true ecological success story.”

Bay Area residents have been particularly enamored with the species since 1985, when a 40-ton humpback named Humphrey swam through the Carquinez Strait, up the Sacramento River and into a creek near Rio Vista. The Solano County city became the focal point of a whale craze, attracting 10,000 people a day as experts tried desperately to turn around the lost animal — which went back to sea after 25 days.

Whale watchers take photos of the Farallon Islands. Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle
Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle | Whale watchers take photos of the Farallon Islands.

 

The local humpbacks migrate along the California coast past San Francisco on their way to and from their breeding grounds in Mexico and Central America. Unlike gray whales, which generally make a beeline to Alaska, humpbacks move north slowly after giving birth, feeding all along their migration route.

Jared Davis, the captain of the Salty Lady fishing and tour boat, said he and his passengers spotted 50 humpbacks on a trip from San Francisco to the Farralon Islands last month. Boaters there have also seen blue whales, fin whales, orcas, dolphins and porpoises in large numbers this summer.

“When the conditions are good, the whales flourish, and the conditions have been good the last couple of years,” said Davis, who takes people whale watching on the weekend and salmon fishing during the week. “It’s a lot of fun.”

The problem with humpbacks moving close to shore, Calambokidis said, is that boats can hit them or crab pot lines can tangle them up.

A recent study by Point Blue Conservation Science found that ships strike and kill an average of 22 humpbacks a year off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington. About 7,300 vessels pass the Golden Gate every year.

The number of whales entangled in fishing lines off the West Coast has risen sharply in recent years, with 71 cases in 2016 — up from 57 the year before and the most since the National Marine Fisheries Service began keeping records in 1982.

“There has been a dramatic increase in entanglements, particularly in crab pots,” Calambokidis said. The humpbacks, he said, “are arriving earlier in the spring to find prey and feed and that overlaps with the crab fishery.”

 

A humpback whale dives off the coast of San Francisco. Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle | A humpback whale dives off the coast of San Francisco.

Another long-term threat to the whale resurgence is climate change, though all signs indicate the humpbacks will be back again next year in all their glory.

“It’s not unusual anymore,” Calambokidis said. “Sometimes they will be seen closer to shore because prey is closer to shore and sometimes offshore because the prey is out farther to sea, but humpback sightings will be much more common going forward.”

 

Read the original article: http://www.sfchronicle.com/
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