PFMC Approves Pacific Sardine Fishing Levels for 2021

Conducting its April meeting via webinar, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) approved management measures for the ‘northern’ stock of Pacific sardines for the season July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2022. The conflict over sardine fishery management became painfully apparent after the Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) rejected the catch-only sardine biomass projection, which was the only estimate available because NOAA field surveys were cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The catch for the Mex-Cal fishery (33,000 tons with only about 700 tons from California) was nearly three times larger than the sardine model’s northern sardine catch estimate for the Mex-Cal fishery in 2020. The Mexican catch was actually higher than the entire 2020 biomass estimate. This discrepancy illuminated serious problems with current assessment methods and assumptions.

The SSC recommended several urgent research priorities, including reconsideration of the model and assumptions used to assign sardines to northern vs. southern stocks. The CPS Management Team and Advisory Subpanel also supported the SSC’s recommendation to fall back to the 2020 assessment, and add another layer of precaution to account for the uncertainty, until problems can be addressed in a full stock assessment with independent scientific review. The approved management measures reduced the already low allowable catch by another 25 percent.

“We greatly appreciate the expressions of concern from the SSC, management team and advisory subpanel, and the Council’s action based on those concerns,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, Executive Director of the California Wetfish Producers Association (CWPA). “This conflict is between what fishermen say is out there, based on what they see, and what biologists say, based on insufficient science.”

Both fishermen and independent scientific surveys have documented sardine recruitment and increasing abundance. But assumptions of continued decline and low recruitment caused the directed sardine fishery to be closed in 2015, and ‘northern’ sardines to be declared ‘overfished’ in 2019, which reduced the incidental take of sardine in other fisheries to 20 percent. The Council also was required to develop a rebuilding plan.

The directed fishery has been closed for nearly 7 years, and the model used to predict biomass has not updated the age data from the fishery since 2015. Stock assessment scientists prefer only age data from ‘directed’ fishing, and have not used age data from incidental catches or the live bait fishery, which have both seen an increase in small fish in recent years. The problem is that NOAA’s sardine acoustic trawl surveys, conducted primarily offshore, have not seen it, and those surveys, coupled with assumptions made regarding ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ sardines, have largely driven stock assessments in recent years.

To resolve this Catch-22, CWPA requested and received an Exempted Fishing Permit (EFP) in 2020 and coordinated a closely-controlled directed fishing effort to capture sardine schools throughout the year. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) sampled and aged all the landings. Age data shared with the Council during the meeting showed a spike in young sardines, virtually all captured in water temperatures under about 62 degrees F, assumed to be ‘northern’ sardines.

CWPA is also conducting a nearshore acoustic survey in California this year, in cooperation with the Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC), and has been cooperating with CDFW since 2012 in the Department’s nearshore aerial survey. “There’s a substantial body of sardines (and anchovy) in nearshore waters inshore of NOAA surveys in California. These fish need to be included in stock assessments, and we’re cooperating with the SWFSC and Department to collect the data needed,” Pleschner-Steele commented.

Another frustrating problem that California fishermen continue to face is the current scientific assumption that all sardines above 62 degrees F are assumed to be ‘southern’ stock sardines that have migrated up from Mexico. Those fish are subtracted from the ‘northern’ sardine stock assessment. But for management, all catches are deducted from the ‘northern’ sardine harvest limit, regardless of water temperature. This is a big problem, particularly in summertime in southern California, when the live bait fishery is active. All California coastal pelagic (CPS) fisheries have been impacted by current sardine management policies that restrict the incidental catch of sardine to only 20 percent. This has sharply reduced landings for CPS finfish like anchovy and mackerel, because fishermen must try to find pure schools with no or few sardines. Even the squid fishery has had problems avoiding sardines.

“We strongly support the SSC’s urgent research priorities,” Diane Pleschner-Steele said. “We need to fix the problems with sardine assessments and management as soon as possible.” She added, “we are committed to conduct the research necessary to improve the sardine stock assessment. If the ‘northern’ sardine stock assessment accurately reflected the abundance of sardines reported by fishermen virtually yearlong (in water temperatures below 62 degrees F), northern sardines would not be considered ‘overfished.’”

California fishermen and processors are grateful that the Council considered the issues and uncertainties raised and combined scientific underpinning with practicality and common sense. Balance is a key mandate of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The Council and NMFS are required to consider the needs of fishing communities, not just biology, in developing rebuilding plans. The future of California’s historic wetfish industry hangs in the balance.

One Of Biden’s Biggest Climate Change Challenges? The Oceans

A few years ago, marine biologist Kyle Van Houtan spotted an online video that he couldn’t quite believe. It showed a young great white shark, about five-feet long, swimming just off a pier in Central California.

“Our initial reaction was that it can’t be true,” Van Houtan says. “We know that they’re in Southern California and Mexico, not in Monterey.”

Juvenile white sharks, like this one near Aptos, Calif., are moving into new ecosystems as water warms.  Eric Mailander

When they’re young, white sharks typically live in the warm waters of Southern California, hundreds of miles from the cold, rough surf up north off Monterey.

Still, the shark in the video wouldn’t be the only one to appear. Since 2014, young white sharks have been arriving off Monterey in greater numbers.

The sharks were simply following the water temperatures they’re adapted to. The ocean was warmer, shifting the sharks’ habitat from where it’s normally found. Similar shifts are being seen around the world, just one of the ways that climate change is hitting the oceans hard.

Ocean scientists say the Biden Administration is taking office at a critical time. Sea levels are rising, fish are migrating away from where they’re normally caught, and the water itself is becoming more acidic as it absorbs carbon dioxide that humans emit.

While the administration has appointed climate change advisors throughout the federal government, a key role remains unfilled: the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency that oversees everything from fisheries policy to marine sanctuaries.

Environmental advocates are hoping the oceans play a central role in Biden’s climate agenda, including post-pandemic recovery plans. Restoring coastal marshes and mangroves creates jobs, as well as brings back crucial habitat for marine life and buffers coastal communities against rising seas and storm surges.

“The ocean is not just a victim,” says Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center fo American Progress. “The ocean can also be a hero. The ocean can protect us from the climate change that’s already underway.”

As waters off California warmed during a marine heat wave in 2014, young white sharks moved north, outside their normal habitat.  Eric Mailander

White sharks move in

The arrival of the young white sharks in Central California coincided with another unusual event, known as the “blob.” A marine heat wave was spreading across the waters of the north Pacific Ocean.

“That was some of the warmest water we’ve ever had in recorded history off the West Coast of the U.S.,” Van Houtan says, who is the chief scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In Monterey, water temperatures were as much as 10 degrees above average.

Thus far, the oceans have literally been taking the heat from climate change. Over the last 50 years, they’ve absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat in the atmosphere from human-caused warming.

Young white sharks congregate in Southern California for its warmer water. Only later, when they bulk up considerably, do they move into cooler waters, eventually growing to 15 feet. As the marine heat wave spread, the sharks followed their patch of warm water as it moved north up the coast, according to a new study. Overall their available habitat shrank, since the temperatures to the south and west were no longer tolerable.

Scientists John O’Sullivan of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Chris Lowe of California State University release a tagged juvenile white shark off Southern California, part of an effort to track their movement. Monterey Bay Aquarium

While the water has cooled a bit recently, the white sharks have stuck around. Scientists still aren’t sure how it could affect the overall ecosystem as new species come into contact with the established native species.

“Predators and prey are now crowded into smaller spaces,” Van Houtan says. “If I’m a prey species, there’s just fewer places to hide. And that is a big concern when you’re thinking of the overall picture and you’re thinking of commercial fisheries and sardines and salmon.”

But Van Houtan cautions that the sharks themselves are not the problem. Marine heat waves are expected to become hotter and last longer due to climate change.

“This is not a story about sharks,” he says. “This is a story about climate. The sharks are following their temperatures and their habitat. They’re following their home as it moves up the coast. Our emissions are the problem.”

Oceans in crisis

Similar shifts are happening across the oceans. On the East Coast, lobsters are moving north, one of the reasons that fishermen in southern New England are increasingly finding their traps empty. The fishing fleet in North Carolina is having to travel farther and farther north to find their catch.

Most fishery regulations weren’t written with these dynamic changes in mind. Some rules are controlled by states, even though fish move across state lines. Others limit fishing to fixed areas, governed by lines on a map that may mean little as species move elsewhere.

Climate change is also making ocean waters more acidic, potentially harming shellfish like oysters.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“Our management system has not caught up,” Goldstein says. “So we need to look at what it will take to help these fishing communities, fishermen, processors adapt to what unfortunately is the new reality.”

In addition to warming, the ocean is also becoming more acidic because it’s absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, posing a significant threat to oysters and other shellfish.

As a result, scientists say that cutting overall heat-trapping emissions will be crucial for ocean health, a policy the Trump Administration rolled back. Trump also sought to expand offshore oil and gas leasing in the oceans and removed protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a unique underwater canyon ecosystem off the coast of New England.

“I think it’s fair to say that the last four years were pretty rough for the environment and they were certainly rough for the ocean,” says George Leonard, chief scientist at Ocean Conservancy.

Without a new leader appointed at NOAA so far, the Biden Administration’s ocean agenda hasn’t been spelled out yet, aside from the agency’s recent request for feedback about how to make ocean policy resilient to climate change. The goal with the biggest potential impact is Biden’s 30×30 commitment, which aims to conserve 30% of the land and oceans by 2030.

“The ocean needs a lot more protection,” Leonard says. “We have a biodiversity crisis in the ocean and that’s being driven by climate change and overexploitation. Process really matters with 30×30. This isn’t just about fish. It’s about people too. There are a lot of people and communities who can get hurt if establishing protected areas isn’t done in a just and equitable way.”

Traditionally, fishing groups have largely fought ocean conservation, since it can limit access to valuable fishing grounds. But some say the effects of climate change mean the conversations need to start now.

Fishing fleets, like lobster boats in New England, are beginning to find their catch is migrating in a warming climate.  Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“Everybody I talk to, everybody I work with is seeing things change,” says Eric Brazer, deputy director of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, an association of Gulf Coast fishermen. “They are the ones who often see and experience these changes before anybody else does.”

Brazer says if the Biden Administration wants to be successful, it will need to work with local groups from the outset. Recently, NOAA tripled the size of Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Texas and New Orleans. Even though it limited fishing, Brazer says his colleagues were ultimately supportive since they had been involved in the conversations from the beginning.

“Fishermen’s businesses are going to be impacted by this,” Brazer says. “That’s why it’s especially critical for us to be at the table, be at the podium, have access to the managers and start to answer these questions that are unanswered at this point.”

Original post: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/18/975782053/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking to the Past to Predict the Future

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

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

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

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

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

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

West Coast Fisheries Impacts from COVID-19

In April 2020, NOAA Fisheries prepared its first national report on the regional impacts of COVID-19 on the commercial, recreational and aquaculture sectors.

This report updates that initial assessment, capturing economic changes experienced by the fishing industry as the country began its phased reopening along with infusion of Federal funding through the CARES Act. NOAA
Fisheries will continue to use this information to identify economic hardship where it exists and identify pathways for enhancing the resilience of the U.S. seafood and fisheries industries.

COVID-19-Impact-Assessment

An Open Letter to the 116th Congress from U.S. Marine Fishery Scientists

December 10, 2020

Dear Senators and Representatives:

As scientists engaged in the provision of information to support federally managed fisheries, we are concerned that Title II of the proposed Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act (H.R.8632), which would require the establishment of marine protected areas that ban all commercial fishing activity in 30% of U.S. ocean waters by 2030, is not based on the best scientific information available and would not be the most effective way to protect marine biodiversity. Conservation of marine ecosystems in the U.S. waters is challenged by a rapidly changing climate, but the proposed marine protected areas will not solve climate-related impacts on biodiversity, instead they will decrease flexibility of the fishery management system to adapt to climate change. The most significant impact of marine protected areas is a spatial shift in fishing, which is effectively a fisheries management action. Marine biodiversity is protected by the mandates of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and other legislation. The implementation of those requirements with respect to fisheries impacts is through the regional Fisheries Management Council system to protect target species, bycatch species, protected species, ecosystem components, essential fish habitat and other sensitive habitats.

Although several U.S. fish stocks have been overfished, the fisheries are highly regulated to avoid overfishing and rebuild stocks with a precautionary approach. A large portion of U.S. waters are currently closed to fishing, either seasonally or year-round. A prevalent impact of climate change in the U.S. has been shifting spatial distributions, generally northerly and to deeper habitats. Many fisheries are flexible enough to adapt to such shifts, but the proposed extension of permanent marine protected areas would prohibit many adaptive responses to climate change. Based on our experiences and case studies, marine protected areas that are not based on the best scientific information available, such as the uninformed target of restricting commercial fishing in 30% of U.S. waters, will have unanticipated consequences such as increased bycatch and habitat destruction by shifting the location of fishing effort.

As an example, after over a decade of scientific analysis, the New England Fishery Management Council recently re-designated essential fish habitat for all 28 Council managed species, designated new habitat areas of particular concern, revised habitat and groundfish management areas, and designated deep-sea coral management zones and fishing gear restrictions. We affirm that these management areas are based on the best scientific information available, as required in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. By contrast, we are concerned that establishing new marine protected areas to meet the arbitrary 30% objective stated in Title II of the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act will not be based on the best scientific information available, will have negative unanticipated consequences, and will decrease the ability of U.S. fisheries to adapt to a changing climate.

Title II of the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act is predicated on a view that marine biodiversity in the U.S. EEZ is decreasing but provides no evidence that this is true. It is well established that targeted U.S. fish stocks are rebuilding and on average above target levels. A high proportion of benthic habitat and benthic ecosystems are already protected throughout the U.S. EEZ, and the non-target species of conservation concern are governed by other legislation, including the Endangered Species Act. Title II provides no evidence that biodiversity will be increased by more MPAs and provides no metrics for how the impact of additional MPAs would be evaluated.

Yours sincerely,

The undersigned are all marine scientists who have been involved in providing advice to the Federal or State governments on management of marine biodiversity. These scientists include former NOAA employees, former members of Science and Statistics Committees of Fisheries Management Councils including two chairs of those committees, a director of a NMFS regional center, the Editor in Chief of a major marine science journal and members of government advisory panels including the Ocean Studies Board of the National Research Council.

Recent Events Offer Promise for Protection of Sustainable Domestic Fishing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

String of Marine Heatwaves Continues to Dominate Northeast Pacific

Researchers question whether heatwaves are becoming more common than not.

During the summer of 2020, an area of unusually warm ocean water—a marine heatwave—grew off the West Coast of the United States. It became the second most expansive Northeast Pacific heatwave since monitoring began in 1982. The heatwave eventually encompassed about 9.1 million square kilometers, almost six times the size of Alaska, towards the end of September.

In 2019 a similar heatwave developed slightly earlier in the year. While it was not as extensive as this year’s heatwave, its surface expression was warmer. It lasted 239 days, finally dying out way offshore in January 2020.

The 2020 heatwave was about the same horizontal extent as 2014’s massive marine heatwave known as The Blob. What’s different is the 2020 heatwave extended further south and towards the coast, compared to 2019. It encompassed much of southern California, the Southern California Bight, and into Mexican waters off Baja. Additionally, the 2020 heatwave lingered nearly a month longer into the fall in coastal waters and remained very strong in the far offshore region. However, neither the 2019 nor the 2020 heatwaves reached nearly as deep as The Blob, which warmed the water at least 100 meters deep in places. The last two heatwaves penetrated only 40 to 50 meters.

The largest three Northeast Pacific marine heatwaves on record from 1982 to today, on the day they reached their maximum size. Color represents the sea surface temperature anomaly (departure from normal for that location and time of year). Dark outline differentiates waters classified as a heatwave (e.g., values in the warmest 10 percent of all data, corrected by the variability at that location).

The New Normal?

“It’s notable that in five of the last seven years, the California Current system has been dominated by these large marine heatwaves, which are also the largest heatwaves on record for this area,” said Andrew Leising, a research scientist at NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California. He developed a system for tracking and measuring heatwaves in the Pacific Ocean using satellite data. The California Current Marine Heatwave Tracker automatically analyzes variation from the average sea surface temperature from 1982 to the present. Experts are also tracking and analyzing marine heatwaves across the globe.

“The question we’re asking ourselves is whether these recurring heatwaves are the ‘new normal’ or if we’ll transition back to a previous climate state,” said Leising.

While some studies suggest that the warming oceans are fueling more frequent, stronger, and longer-lasting heatwaves, there are other considerations. Namely, the warming ocean itself is pushing baseline temperatures up, which may make heatwaves reach certain thresholds that exceed historical averages more often. Researchers continue to analyze ocean temperature data. They note that many questions remain about whether and how the ocean, and marine heatwaves, may be changing.

“The last few years have seen some really big marine heatwaves by any measure, but we are still teasing apart the complex factors behind them,” Leising said. “That is a big question going forward: What is changing, and what does it mean for our marine ecosystems?”

What Warmer Conditions Mean for the Ecosystem

These warmer conditions have boosted the odds of harmful algal blooms, shifting distributions of marine life, and changes in the marine food web. For example, the largest and most toxic bloom of Pseudo-nitzschia ever recorded along the U.S. West Coast occurred in 2015, during the 2013–16 marine heatwave. The widespread bloom increased levels of algal toxins that collect in shellfish. That forced the closure of the Dungeness crab fishery, one of the most productive and well known West Coast fisheries.

In recent weeks, Washington authorities have closed the state’s coastline to razor clamming and the central Washington Coast to Dungeness crab fishing because of high levels of algal toxins.

Ecosystem Approach to Monitoring Heatwaves

NOAA’s California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment is an interdisciplinary research effort led by NOAA scientists along the U.S. West Coast. It engages scientists, stakeholders, and managers to integrate all components of an ecosystem, including human needs and activities, into the decision-making process. The marine heatwave tracker was developed as a part of this effort. It helps managers consider the effects of ocean temperature on the ecosystem as a whole.

NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest and Northwest Fisheries Science Centers use this approach and lessons learned from the last heatwave to anticipate and mitigate potential impacts of this new one. Scientists provide fisheries managers and stakeholders with information on how these unusually warm conditions could affect the marine ecosystem and fish stocks.

Original post: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/string-marine-heatwaves-continues-dominate-northeast-pacific?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

Sustainable fisheries are facing a moratorium

© Getty Images

American wild-caught seafood is integral to the nation’s food supply and to American food security. We’ve been working hard to keep it that way in the face of climate change. The people who catch fish for a living experience climate impacts directly. We recognized it early and we’ve responded. In fact, U.S. fishermen have been part of the solution to habitat conservation and climate responses for decades.

Nonetheless, some politicians and environmental organizations have embraced a version of an initiative called 30×30 (“thirty by thirty”) that would damage our nation’s sustainable fisheries and robust fisheries management process. Broadly, 30×30 aims to conserve 30 percent of habitat worldwide by the end of the decade — 2030. The 30×30 approach has been embraced by President-elect Biden’s campaign, and there’s talk he will sign an executive order on his first day in office.

We’re eager to engage with the new administration to address climate impacts and protect habitat. Proactive and durable ocean policy changes need to happen with us, not to us.

Our organizations have advocated for strong ocean conservation for decades, and we’ve built a fisheries management system that will continue to provide enduring protections to ocean habitat while insisting fishermen participate. The results are striking: we’ve established deep-sea habitat protection areas covering over 45 percent of U.S. waters off the West Coast. In 1998 we prohibited trawling off the entire coast of Southeast Alaska. Recently, the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions enacted major deep-sea coral protections that prohibit the use of impactful gear in sensitive areas.

Our work to conserve sensitive ocean spaces has helped make American fisheries the most sustainable in the world. Despite these accomplishments, the most connected and well-financed proponents of 30×30 are seeking to implement no-take marine protected areas in U.S. oceans without serious input from fishing stakeholders. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and his colleagues recently introduced H.R.8632, the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act, which would require “protection” of at least 30 percent of the U.S. ocean by 2030 by banning “all commercial extractive use.”

It’s important to note that the “non-commercial” exemption in the bill was added late and appears to be sanctioned by recreational fishing groups and environmental organizations. This move would be puzzling if not for the politics. In much of the U.S. ocean, commercial and recreational fishermen use similar gear types, and in many fisheries recreational harvest accounts for half, or sometimes more, of catch. But overcoming the objections of the sportfishing lobby is a tall order, and this is a fight 30×30 proponents chose not to pick, biological justification notwithstanding.

Whether you are a sport or commercial fisherman or a seafood consumer, policies that circumvent our fishery management system set a bad precedent and needlessly remove public access to healthy and natural seafood resources. They also contravene biological science, which supports fisheries management’s optimized approach to conservation and social science, which shows us that conservation is enhanced when stakeholders are provided equitable opportunities to participate.

We don’t need an unjustified moratorium on U.S. commercial fisheries in nearly a third of the ocean in order to achieve climate resilience and biodiversity protection. In fact, a ban on all commercial fisheries in 30 percent of U.S. waters would be a giant step backwards for biodiversity and climate change. U.S. fisheries increasingly support local food systems and shorten food supply chains — a climate positive.

It remains possible to fashion a U.S. 30×30 policy that is compatible with our fishery management institutions. Doing so would be relatively simple, but it would require acknowledging the gains fishermen and fisheries management processes have already achieved, while providing an equitable stakeholder role.

Are the proponents ready to engage? If they are, a 30×30 policy could be developed with goals that are directly compatible with biodiversity and fisheries management, while ensuring that serious discussions about climate change do not exclude coastal communities. If they aren’t, Americans will lose another piece of their maritime heritage, they’ll lose access to sustainably sourced seafood and coastal communities will be swept aside in a misdirected effort to address climate change.

Abandoning fishing communities when addressing the climate crisis is a disservice to our world-leading fisheries management system and to the people who risk their lives to feed the nation. But there’s still time for meaningful discussion with fisheries stakeholders. If Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration are serious about supporting working people, they must engage with working fishermen and women immediately, before executive orders issue or legislation passes.

Ocean-based climate solutions cannot be achieved without including the people who work there.

Linda Behnken is a commercial fisherman and executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, an association of small-scale fishermen based in Sitka, Alaska. Mike Conroy is an attorney and executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, based in San Francisco.

Original post: https://thehill.com/

The Value of California’s Market Squid

Market Squid Reproducing. Photo credit: Mark Conlin Photography

Arriving on the heels of the farm to fork movement, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted supply chains and altered product demand, which has inspired businesses to restructure and Californians to pay particular attention to where their food comes from. Many understand that almonds, artichokes or lettuce are grown in their own backyard, mostly in the Central or Salinas Valleys. But when residents are asked about wild-caught food sources coming from the ocean, tuna, salmon or perhaps rockfish might immediately come to mind. While those are indeed popular fisheries, the largest of California’s commercial fisheries actually target invertebrates, not fish!

Invertebrates are animals without a backbone, such as the tidepool favorites, sea stars and anemones. But there are many more invertebrates around the world, both swimming and sedentary, that are highly sought after for food – and their popularity is on the rise. California’s largest marine commercial fisheries in terms of volume and value are market squid and Dungeness crab, with well over 100 million pounds landed and more than $30 million in revenue in a typical year for the squid fishery.

Market squid, the invertebrate known to diners as the popular dish calamari, use ocean currents, jet propulsion and prehistoric instincts to travel up and down the continental shelf of California. These slippery siblings of octopuses live very short lives (less than nine months) and produce heaps of eggs, somewhere on the order of 2,000 to 7,000 per female!

When conditions are right, squid show up in droves to reproduce in coastal waters. After reproducing for just a few short days, they die as a natural part of their life cycle. This means the entire population replaces itself in less than a year. These qualities lend to a high volume of squid available for fishermen, cost-effective management and a sustainable fishery. Squid are also used as bait to catch a wide variety of fish species and can be found at many coastal tackle shops or on live bait barges, mostly in Southern California.

Highest value marine fisheries, 2015-2019

If you see very bright lights from groups of boats on the water at night, it is likely the squid fishing fleet in action. Fishermen have used this technique for more than a century because squid are attracted to the lights, which mimic the moonlight. As described in an historic Fish Bulletin from 1965, the market squid fishery began in Monterey around 1863. The early fishing methods involved rowing a skiff with a lit torch at the bow to aggregate the squid. Then, two other skiffs would maneuver a large net around the school.

In today’s fishery, squid are typically caught using a purse seine, a large circular net which is “pursed” at the bottom to contain the school. Once the school of squid is brought closer to the vessel, a long tube is then used to suck the squid out of the net and onto the boat.

Only a limited number of vessels may fish for squid in California, and during the weekends (from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon) squid fishing is closed to allow for uninterrupted reproduction. In many fisheries, highly sophisticated mathematical models are used to estimate the available population for an upcoming season and ultimately to decide how many fish can be sustainably caught. Because market squid are short-lived, highly responsive to ever-changing environmental conditions and do not behave like most fish, traditional models are ineffective.

Squid fishing fleet near Monterey. CDFW photo by Carrie Wilson

For this reason, the fishery is monitored using the egg escapement method, which is essentially an estimate of how many eggs are released prior to female squid being caught. By comparing the average number of eggs that a female squid will produce to squid samples collected at the docks, biologists can calculate how many eggs were produced each year. This is used to look for trends or major shifts in how the squid fishing fleet is interacting with the stock. Biologists continue to explore ways to pair egg escapement information with population estimates, environmental variables, fishing behavior and economics.

Squid fishing fleet at night. CDFW photo by Carrie Wilson

Fishing for market squid is a long-standing tradition in California and normally provides for a large export market. But a number of recent factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have inspired stronger local markets for many fisheries, such as squid. This means more restaurants, businesses and consumers are buying directly from the docks, shortening the distribution chain. Boat captains, crew, processors, distributors and diners eagerly await the arrival of squid, especially around spring and summer on the central California coast when fishing is generally the most successful. If history repeats itself, vessels will move to Southern California in the fall and winter, where the Channel Islands tend to be the hot spot for squid fishing. But in response to a changing climate, the range for this species is likely to expand northward, forcing the fishing industry and the biologists studying squid to adapt as well!

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Media Contact:
Kirsten Macintyre, CDFW Communications, (916) 804-1714.

Original post: https://wildlife.ca.gov/Science-Institute/News/the-value-of-californias-market-squid

US panel votes to keep options open in Pacific sardine fishery rebuild plan

At least 100 commercial harvesters of sardines on the US west coast as well as lots of processors and many others that count on their landings appear to have escaped last week what could’ve been a painful blow.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) voted unanimously, 14-0, to support a rebuilding plan for northern Pacific sardines that gives it the option to keep the maximum quota at 4,000 metric tons per year or to move it up or down depending on the biomass. It was one of three alternatives recommended by the council’s Coastal Pelagic Species (CPS) Management Team.

One of the other two alternatives, which was favored by conservationists, would’ve instead limited the acceptable catch limit (ACL) to 5% of the biomass, while a third option would’ve allowed zero harvests of the species, essentially shutting down the fishery.

Based on the CPS management team’s estimates, the 5% methodology would’ve resulted in an ACL of just 1,414t during the current fishing season, about a third as much as is currently allowed. However, it’s worth noting that actual landings of northern Pacific sardines off the US West Coast have ranged between 2,063t and 2,505t over the last five years.

Pacific sardines. Photo: NOAA Fishwatch

As many as 63 harvesters are active CPS federal entry permittees and another 40 are state-authorized limited entry permittees in Oregon and Washington, according to Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association (CWPA).

Also, because sardines are commonly landed as bycatch, following the conservationist’s preferred approach could’ve resulted in sardines becoming much more of a choke species and interrupting the harvests of Pacific mackerel, market squid, northern anchovy, pink shrimp and Pacific whiting. Such harvesters now have a 20% per weight incidental catch rate, which was dropped last year from a rate of 45%, Pleschner-Steele noted in a recent email exchange with Undercurrent News.

But most imperiled by the prospect of the 5% approach, she said, would be the west coast live bait industry. It supplies recreational harvesters, accounts for $602 million in annual sales and is credited for providing 5,000 jobs.

What comes next

The move by the PFMC has been anticipated since July 2019. That’s when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) notified the council that the biomass of sardines’ northern subpopulation was found to have fallen below the 50,000t threshold that — under the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA) — triggers the creation of a rebuilding plan within 15 months.

Now that the council has voted, a hew fishery management plan must be implemented within two years and the rebuilding plan must take less than 10 years to reach its goal unless environmental conditions interfere. Shortly after the PFMC sends its recommendations to NMFS, the agency can be expected to publish them in the Federal Register and take comments. It’s rare for NMFS to not follow a council’s advice.

Regardless, harvesters need not worry about the catch limit being changed for the current Pacific sardine season, which began July 1, 2020, and runs until June 30, 2021. Nor is it likely the 2021-2022 ACL will be reduced as a result of the latest action, though the council might be more conservative when that’s set as expected in April 2021, a PFMC staffer advised.

Cannery Row in Monterey, California. The area was renamed after the setting in John Steinbeck’s famous 1945 novel. Photograph on Shutterstock.

CWPA’s Pleschner-Steele, whose group represents both harvesters and processors, was among those pleased with the outcome. She was one of about 17 witnesses to testify in favor of the first alternative during the council meeting, held online because of pandemic concerns.

“The council’s unanimous decision to support the management team’s recommendations shows that they understand reality, the big picture. Our sardine harvest policy already has a built-in rebuilding plan,” said Pleschner-Steele in an opinion article published after the vote, noting how the PFMC closed the main directed fishery in 2015 and sharply reduced incidental harvest rates in 2019.

“Further cuts would drive many fishing businesses out of business, and we appreciate the council’s acknowledgment of that prospect,” she said.

Still from the video “Sardines in California: Fishery in Crisis” by Saving Seafood

The northern Pacific sardines occupy the US Pacific Coast from Southeast Alaska to the northern portion of the Baja Peninsula and are distinguished from two other groups: sardines from the southern Baja Peninsula to southern California and those in Mexico’s Gulf of California. However, Pleschner-Steele argued that many of the sardines being caught are really sardines from Mexico that have migrated north and shouldn’t be counted against the northern sardine cap.

The CPS management team had advised the council also that overfishing was not what was reducing the sardines biomass, putting more of the blame on recruitment.

“Falling below [minimum stock size threshold] triggered an overfished designation; however, overfishing has not been occurring for this stock, as Pacific sardine catch has been well below both the [acceptable biological catch] and the [annual overfishing limit],” the team said.

Learning from the decline of Cannery Row

Three conservation groups testified in favor of the more stringent alternative, including Oceana, Wild Oceans and the Pew Oceans Campaign.  They disagreed with the harvesters, as might have been expected, saying the council has ignored a 2020 study by federal fishery scientists that determined the sardine population has declined 98% since 2006 to instead take a “status quo management” approach.

Credit: Perla Berant Wilder/Shutterstock.com

They noted how the small, oily fish are an important food source for humpback whales, dolphins, seals, sea lions, brown pelicans and larger fish like tunas and sharks. They suggested the council pay more heed to the conservation actions that contributed to the infamous sardine crash that ended the iconic Cannery Row era more than 60 years ago.

“Fishery managers have failed to learn from the mistakes of history, and if they don’t act soon, we’ll be doomed to repeat them and continue on an irresponsible pathway that will devastate the sardine population and its prospects for recovery,” said Geoff Shester, a senior scientist at Oceana, in a statement issued after the vote. “It is disappointing that again California wildlife officials, federal managers, and the fishing industry are disregarding the science in order to avoid making hard choices. Today’s decision is a failure of responsible fishery management.”

Pleschner-Steele countered that the great sardine decline of the late 1940s involved harvesters catching 50% or more of the standing stock, while today’s harvest amounts to only 0.6% of the population.

Also, she noted, NOAA research ships are too large to survey near shore, where most fishing occurs in California. For the past few years, fishermen have testified to a growing abundance of sardines on their fishing grounds yearlong, she said.

In fact, fishery representatives are asking the council for a review of the rebuilding plan in 2021 as soon as possible after the next coastwide sardine survey, which was canceled in 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions. The next survey in 2021 will, for the first time, include nearshore waters, in a collaborative effort using fishing industry vessels, she noted.

Contact the author jason.huffman@undercurrentnews.com

Original post: https://www.undercurrentnews.com/