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

By Clare Leschin-Hoar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the original post: www.kplu.org

Ocean investigators set their sights on Pacific Ocean ‘blob’

By Kerry Klein kklein@mercurynews.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the original story: mercurynews.com

Sea lions not leaving Port of Astoria anytime soon

by Stephanie Yao Long

Click here for:  Photos | Video

The saga continues for Port of Astoria officials in what to do with the dozens of sea lions that are lounging around on their docks.

In case you missed it last week, a motorized fiberglass orca was brought down from Bellingham, Washington in an attempt to scare away the barking beasts.

First, mechanical problems halted its use, then it was tipped over in the wake of a passing ship and started taking on water.

The fake orca is gone now, but the sightseeing humans are still flocking to the area to watch the sea lions basking in the sun.

The tolerance for the invaders varies. Some neighbors don’t mind the animals’ noisy communication. Fishermen see the sea lions stealing up to 75% of their catch according to an earlier account.

The Associated Press says:

“Sea lion numbers along the West Coast have grown sharply since they were protected under a 1972 federal law. The sea lions that have been taking over docks at the Port of Astoria are attracted by runs of a fish known as smelt, federal biologists say.”

Officials have tried just about everything to keep the sea lions away — including beach balls, colorful tape, chicken wire and electrified mats.

Read the original post: oregonlive.com

Recovering predators create new wildlife management challenges

California Sea Lion rookery: Many California sea lion pups at rookeries in the Channel Islands are underweight, NOAA Fisheries researchers found during visits this winter. Credit: NOAA Fisheries/Alaska Fisheries Science Center

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Global warming may cause largest ocean species migration in 3 million years

If greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed soon, then global warming may bring about the most sweeping re-arrangement of ocean species in at least 3 million years, according to a new study.

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that by the end of the century, the polar regions may be have some of the most abundant and diverse sea life of anywhere on the planet, while the tropics, which are currently the crown jewel of marine species richness, may be drained of much of its iconic marine life.

The stakes involved in which ocean species live where are high since, globally, we depend on proteins derived from fish, crustaceans and mollusks for up to a quarter of our animal protein intake, according to the World Health Organization. In 2010, fish provided more than 2.9 billion people with almost 20% of their intake of animal protein, according to the Marine Stewardship Council, and 4.3 billion people with about 15% of such protein. In some countries, these figures are higher.

The study, which attempts to quantify the shifts in biodiversity that may occur during this century throughout the global ocean, offers a stark warning ahead of global climate talks in Paris in December.

It finds that global warming may not alter the oceans in a profound way if emissions are cut sufficiently to meet the globally agreed upon temperature target of 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to preindustrial levels. Some policymakers now consider that goal to be nearly impossible, given the continued rise in planet-warming greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

Emissions over next few years determine ocean’s destiny

If warming is held at the 2-degree target, says study co-author Richard Kirby, the changes that will occur throughout the global ocean “will be relatively benign for the ecosystem.” Kirby is affiliated with the Marine Biological Association in the U.K..

Study coauthor Grégory Beaugrand, a senior researcher at an ocean laboratory in Lille, France, and a consultant at the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in the U.K., says that tropical regions would see a net loss in biodiversity with average global warming of 2 degrees Celsius, while polar areas could see a 300% increase in biodiversity as species seek out more hospitable areas.

A tuna fish swims in the large tank at the Tokyo Sea Life Park in Tokyo on March 25, 2015. Image: TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images

However, if emissions stay on their current, high path, then in just the span of one century, there could be a larger biodiversity shift than the global oceans saw since the mid-Pliocene period more than 3 million years ago.

This would be a staggering amount of change in such a short time period, which could result in many surprises that scientists don’t yet anticipate. It would also present unprecedented challenges for the fishing industry, which is locally adapted to catching present-day species, including the rapidly-growing global aquaculture industry.

As species migrate toward the poles, fishing fleets will have to be remodeled to hunt for a new mix of species. This has occurred already in Newfoundland and parts of the northeast U.S., where the cod fishery has collapsed, giving way to more of a lobster and crab fishery. This shift is not an easy one to make, since crab fishing requires totally different gear than hunting groundfish species like cod and haddock.

“The transition period will have a devastating impact on fisherman and from a socioeconomic point of view,” Beaugrand told Mashable.

Even a moderate warming that is less than a worst-case scenario could yield a major reorganization of marine biodiversity over large oceanic regions by the 2081-2100 period. These changes may be at least three times greater than the shifts observed between the years 1960-2013, the study found.

Exceeding the 2 degrees Celsius target, Beaugrand said in an interview, would mean that “between 78 and 95% of the ocean will show substantial changes” in biodiversity by the end of the century.

Species are already packing up and heading away from the equator

Unlike terrestrial species, marine creatures can and already are migrating in search of more suitable environments once temperatures exceed their tolerable ranges. This has been seen in several studies of the North Sea in particular, where shifts in the amount and types of plankton and other foraminifera as well as commercially-prized fish have been observed.

In the northeast Atlantic, for example, plankton, which are organisms that produce oxygen through photosynthesis and form the foundation of the marine food web, have already shifted northward by 10 degrees of latitude due in part to ocean temperature increases in that region.

Kirby says that people tend to forget that humans depend on temperature-sensitive organisms as tiny as plankton. “The rest of life on earth lives where the temperature suits it. If that changes, it moves, in sea it tends to move because it can,” he said. “It’s those movements, especially lower down in the food web, that underpin the whole marine food chain upon which we depend.”

When looking at changes between 1960 and 2013, the study found that 30% of the area of ocean already showed substantial changes in biodiversity, “which is six times higher” than changes due to natural variability alone, Beaugrand said.

“Climate change already has an impact on marine biodiversity,” he says.

A severe global warming scenario featuring continued emissions growth through the end of the century could cause between 50 to 70% of the world’s oceans to experience a change in marine biodiversity comparable or more extensive that those that occurred since the mid-Pliocene and today, as well as since the last glacial maximum — when thick ice sheets covered areas from Washington, D.C., to Seattle and northward.

“It’s really worrying, because this is the whole ocean that will change,” Beaugrand says.

The mid-Pliocene is of interest because it was the last time that climate conditions are thought to have been similar to what is projected for the end of the century. At that time, global carbon dioxide concentrations were about 400 parts per million, which is where it stands now, and global average temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than today. Global sea levels were about 66 feet higher than today, as well.

An Indian fisherman cleans fish in the river Brahmaputra in Gauhati, Assam state, India, Sunday, April 19, 2015. Image: Anupam Nath/Associated Press

The last glacial maximum lasted from about 26,500 to 20,000 years ago. During this time period, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air was just 190 parts per million, according to the study, and the average sea level was 425 feet below current levels.

Between the last glacial maximum and today, about 85% of the global ocean area showed substantial modification in marine biodiversity, Beaugrand said, while between the mid-Pliocene and today, 75% of the global ocean showed substantial changes. Yet this all played out over thousands to millions of years, not in just a century, which is the timeline we’re looking at with regards to manmade global warming.

In other words, there’s no precedent in all of human history for what may be about to happen, which is extraordinarily risky given that we depend on the oceans for ecosystem services from food to oxygen production and heat storage.

Generating ‘pseudo species’

The study used a theoretical model that relies upon fundamental ecological principles and previously known findings of how biodiversity changes with temperature fluctuations to come up with, essentially, “pseudo marine communities,” as the study refers to them. The authors compared the modeled biodiversity patterns to observed patterns based on previous studies, and found that there was a statistically significant amount of agreement.

The study allowed tens of thousands of modeled species, each with different biological properties including temperature ranges, to colonize the ocean. The researchers used data from deep sea sediment cores to look at how plankton groups have changed through time in order to fine-tune their modeling results.

One drawback to this study, as well as others that focus on global ocean species, is that we know more about Mars than we do about much of the ocean. So far, Beaugrand says, we’ve only described the characteristics of about 200,000 marine species, which is about 10% of the marine biodiversity that scientists think is out there. We have an incomplete knowledge of marine biology and spatial distribution — that could limit the reliability of studies like this to some extent.

Another wild card is exactly how ocean acidification, which is also caused by climate change, will alter marine biodiversity and functioning of marine ecosystems. Such studies are currently in their infancy.

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Read the original post: www.mashable.com

Fishing Industry Feeling the Pain After Refugio Oil Spill

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the original story: independent.com

Beach balls the latest weapon against sea lions in Astoria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Willy coming after Goonies

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

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

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

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

Mixed welcome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the original post: www.dailyastorian.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the original post: www.outsideonline.com

Researchers discover world’s first warm-blooded fish

The opah, or moonfish, a large colourful fish living across the world’s oceans, has been found to have a warm heart and maintain a high body temperature, according to a report in the journal Science. It’s a zoological curiosity and a remarkable evolutionary development for fish.

In the cold darkness of the deep sea there is a clear advantage to being warm-blooded and able to move faster than all the other creatures in order to hunt them down or to avoid being eaten. Mammals such as seals or whales exploit this to great effect. They take a big breath and dive down, insulated from the cold by a thick layer of blubber, to snatch live food such as squids, fish and shrimps from the depths.

Until now it was thought that fish couldn’t keep warm in this way because instead of breathing air they extract oxygen directly from the water through their gills. The advantage of this is obvious: fish can stay underwater indefinitely. However, although their blood may be warmed by muscle activity on every circuit of the body as it comes gushing out of the heart it goes directly into the gills and is instantly cooled to ocean temperature.

The gills are intricate oxygen exchangers. A tiny membrane one thousandth of a millimetre thick is all that separates the blood and the sea, which ensures instant transfer of oxygen into the red blood cells. Heat flows faster than oxygen, so no matter how much heat the fish might be generating, its blood is automatically chilled with every heart beat.

The opah (Lampris guttatus) has evolved a unique solution to this problem. A team from the NOAA SouthWest Fisheries Science Center in California, led by Nicholas Wegner, discovered the fish has a special insulated network of blood vessels between the heart and the gills. These vessels act as a heat exchanger in which warm blood from the heart reheats oxygenated blood leaving the gills before it goes to the body. In this way heat is retained and not dissipated into the ocean.

This enables the opah to maintain a body temperature 5°C higher than the surrounding water and to dive 500 metres below the surface without cooling down. An insulating layer of fat in the skin keeps the heart, brain, muscles and vital organs warm.
Hiding in plain sight

This discovery is surprising since the opah is large and conspicuous; indeed, it’s already a favourite in fish markets and restaurants. Wegner and his colleagues deserve great credit for recognising and describing in detail the specialised gill heat exchangers that have been hidden right under the noses of fishermen and chefs for centuries.

The opah is shaped like a flattened disc with bright red fins. It grows up to two metres long and can weigh up to 80 kilograms. It’s a solitary fish, never caught in large numbers and is found in all oceans except polar seas. It swims by continuously flapping its pectoral fins in a similar way to the wings of a bird — and it is the energy from these muscles that provides most of the heat.

It has long been known that certain high-performance fishes such as sharks, tuna and swordfish can warm some muscles, the brain or their eyes using a dense web of warm and cold heat exchanging blood vessels around the area in question. However their blood is still cooled to ocean temperature each time it passes the gills, as in all other fishes. With its heart and all its vital organs working at an elevated temperature, the opah is the first fish that can be regarded as truly warm-blooded.

It is intriguing to speculate whether this is a new evolutionary trend for fish that in future might emulate the warm-bloodedness of birds and mammals. For most fishes living in tropical seas this adaptation is not necessary; the warm water temperature is ideal for life. But for the opah, which wants to stay down deeper for longer in order to hunt squid in cold waters, the warm-blood adaptation helps it outcompete partially heated rivals like the Albacore tuna.

The mechanism can only work for large-bodied fish with space for insulation, meaning heat loss to the surroundings can be controlled. Even with specialised heat-retaining gills like the opah has, a small fish the size of a mouse would quickly cool down, the heat absorbing capacity of water is too great for any small animal to retain body warmth.

Even the opah is not able to compete with warm-blooded diving foragers such as penguins and seals, or whales in the polar seas. The fish is a zoological oddity belonging to a group that appeared in the last 100m years at the same time as mammals and birds evolved. We cannot know if the fossil species were warm-blooded and if we search further we may find other species with similar adaptations.

Read the original story here: http://fox21news.com

“Deadliest catch”? Not even in the top three

“Deadliest Catch” (Credit: Discovery Channel)

 Cod, scallop & Dungeness fisheries have Bering Sea crabbing beat as far as risk — but they’re all getting safer
Nick Rahaim

In the 11th season of Discovery Channel’s flagship show “The Deadliest Catch,” the title’s fallacy still goes largely unnoted. Crab fishing on the Bering Sea isn’t the deadliest fishery in the United States, and it hasn’t been for the entire run of the show; it’s not even in the top three. Two East Coast fisheries are the ones where fishermen are most likely to become fish food.

Groundfish—including cod and flounder—on the East Coast was the deadliest fishery in the U.S. from 2000 to 2009, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, followed by Atlantic scallops. The third, with which I have personal experience, is Dungeness crab fishing on the Oregon and Washington coasts. Data from 2010 to 2014 shows the trend continuing through this decade. The rankings are based on workforce estimates and their full-time equivalents.

Aside from an inaccurate title for a “reality” program, we should cheer the fact that fishing in an inhospitable environment is becoming safer by the year. Far fewer people are dying so vacationers in Las Vegas and affluent businessmen and bureaucrats in China can gorge themselves on what appear to be overgrown spiders. Commercial fishing is becoming safer. From 1990 to 2014 there was a 74 percent drop in commercial fishing fatalities in Alaska, according to NIOSH. Furthermore, in 2013 commercial fishing dropped to No. 2 — behind logging — in the list of deadliest occupations, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This is not to take away from the intensity of crab fishing on the Bering Sea: High seas, subfreezing temperatures, sleepless nights and heavy gear can fuck you up quickly. While I’ve never made my way to the Bering Sea for crab fishing, I did use those large, 7-by-7-foot, 700-pound traps while fishing for Pacific cod off the Alaskan Peninsula one March. As a trap swung from a picking boom above, I attempted to stabilize what seemed to be a gentle swing and was thrown back and sandwiched against another trap on deck, likely cracking one of my ribs — an injury that only added to the misery of the following weeks.

We, as audiences, love the death defiers, the risk-takers who throw themselves in harm’s way whether for a big payday or just an illusory and fleeting sense of glory. From the well-born Victorian adventurers to the modern-day action sports icons, those who needlessly put their lives in danger have captured the imagination and intrigue of the coddled, comfortable classes. The more danger, and the more inherent risk that’s displayed — deceptive or not — the more viewers tune in.
I once worked with a man who was on “The Deadliest Catch” for a season, a man infamous for getting fired on camera and then crying about it. From him and others I’ve heard that when the sea and wind come up and it gets too dangerous to fish, the show’s producers ask the crew to stay on deck and scurry around to get shots of “working” in big weather. I’ve also heard that some “dangerous situations” actually occur when the boat is safely tied up to the dock. Fishing stories perhaps … perhaps not.

More than half of the deaths in the commercial fishing industry, 51 percent, are caused by vessel disasters: flooding, instability and rogue waves. The second leading cause of death is falling overboard, coming in at 31 percent. Of the 178 people who died from overboard falls from 2000 to 2009, not one was wearing a portable floatation device. Another unsubstantiated bit of fishing lore: Most of those found dead in the water have their fly unzipped — relieving oneself over the side of the boat can be pretty dangerous if no one’s looking. In the golden age of Bering Sea crabbing, paychecks were big and lives were cheap. Crab fishing in the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands was likely once the deadliest fishery in the United States, but data on commercial fishing deaths were not recorded nationally until 2000. In the 1990s an average of more than eight people a year died on the Bering Sea fishing for crab.

“There were people dying left and right in the 1970s and ’80s,” says Scott Wilmert, a commercial fishing vessel safety manager with the United States Coast Guard. In 1999 the Coast Guard stepped in and began mandatory annual safety and stability checks on the crab boats. In the years since there have been a total of nine deaths, compared to 50 deaths in the Atlantic scallop fishery over the same time period. But fear not, human life has no bearing on the ecological health of a fishery so Atlantic scallops are in the process of being listed as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council and are currently listed as a “Good Alternative” by Seafood Watch.

Crabbing on the Bering Sea went through a drastic change in management after the first season of “The Deadliest Catch.” In 2005, crab fishing was rationalized, where the chaotic, derby-style management was replaced with an individual fishing quota. Instead of having just a few weeks to catch all the crab they could, causing boats to fish around the clock, often in dangerous weather, under the quota system boats have months to catch their limit and can avoid working in the most dangerous conditions. Rationalization has also shrunk the fleet from more than 250 boats in the early 2000s to roughly 85 well-capitalized and better-maintained boats. This also caused hundreds of deckhands to lose their jobs and made millionaires of captains overnight.

Commercial fishing in the U.S. is one of the last bastions of laissez-faire self-regulation. There has been no significant labor law in the industry since the Jones Act of 1920, and that only allowed seamen to make claims for damages if the captain was negligent or the vessel was unseaworthy. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has no jurisdiction over most boats fishing in U.S. waters, and until this year the United States Coast Guard didn’t perform mandatory vessel inspections on fishing boats.

The vast majority of captains have understood the value of having properly functioning safety equipment: immersion suits, life rafts, electronic emergency beacons and high-water alarms. Those who have ignored basic safety — going by the tired trope, “I’ve done more with less” — have at times caused themselves and their crew to lose their lives on the water.

Nevertheless, commercial fishing will always carry an inherent risk that cannot be fully mitigated by regulation and safety protocol. It is that very risk that will continue to draw some people to the profession and capture the imaginations of audiences with romanticized stories of life at sea — true or not.

Read the original post here: www.salon.com