Sardines are gone, long live the mackerel, with six recipes

Mackerel baked with bay and lemon | Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

 *corrected figures of jack mackerel catch

There will be no California sardines in the market this summer. But, as much as we’ll miss them, that’s probably a good thing.

Monday the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the group responsible for setting catch limits for California fishermen, closed the sardine fishery completely, citing a 91% drop in sardine population. Beginning July 1, there will be no sardines caught from Mexico to British Columbia.

Although this may conjure up visions of Cannery Row and earlier sardine collapses, this closure could actually be a blessing in disguise. So rather than mourning it as a disaster, use it as an opportunity to expand your fishy horizons.

Unlike many fisheries, which remain relatively steady from year to year if managed properly, sardines have always been extremely cyclical — even before fishermen started catching them. Scientists analyzing ocean bed sediment have found evidence of sardine population collapses dating at least 1,700 years.

The most famous of these, of course, came in the 1940s and 1950s and drove the many Monterey Bay sardine canners out of business (inadvertently paving the way decades later for a terrific aquarium and tourist enclave).

In the 1930s, California fishermen caught as much as 700,000 tons of sardines; by the mid 1960s that had plummeted to only 1,000 tons. But just as people began talking about possible extinction, the fish came roaring back. As recently as 2012, there were nearly 100,000 tons caught.

The difference between then and now is that today there is a strong enough fisheries management program to at least minimize the human influence on this natural cycle. Sardines may come and go, but if fishermen keep catching them, they can turn a downturn into a disaster — as happened in Monterey. Closing the fishery is a way to let the population recover.

If you’re a sardine lover, though, what are you to do? First, you may still see imported sardines at Japanese fish markets such as Mitsuwa and Marukai, though they’ll probably be a little more expensive.

Perhaps a better solution is to swing with the cycle. Fish folk have long known that sardine and mackerel populations ebb and flow complementarily — when sardines are plentiful, mackerel tend to be scarce, and vice versa.

And sure enough, just as the jack mackerel catch off California crashed a couple of years ago (in 2011, only 60 tons were caught), the last few years have seen a tremendous rebound. In 2013, the last year for which statistics are available, almost 900 tons were caught.

Mourn the sardine, certainly, but take this opportunity to embrace the mackerel. Here’s six recipes to get you started.

Read the original post: www.latimes.com

Ray Hilborn: Analysis Shows California Sardine Decline Not Caused by Too High Harvest Rate

Posted with permission from SEAFOODNEWS — Please do not repost without permission.

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SeafoodNews]  (Commentary) by  Ray Hilborn April 22, 2015

Two items in the last weeks fisheries news have again caused a lot of media and NGO interest forage fish. First was publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of a paper entitled “Fishing amplifies forage fish population collapses” and the second was the closure of the fishery for California sardine.  Oceana in particular argued that overfishing is part of the cause of the sardine decline and the take home message from the PNAS paper seems to support this because it showed that in the years preceding a “collapse” fishing pressure was unusually high.

However what the PNAS paper failed to highlight was the real cause of forage fish declines.  Forage fish abundance is driven primarily by the birth and survival of juvenile fish producing what is called “recruitment”.  Forage fish declines are almost always caused by declines in recruitment,  declines that often happen when stocks are large and fishing pressure low.  The typical scenario for a stock collapse is (1) recruitment declines at a time of high abundance, (2) abundance then begins to decline as fewer young fish enters the population, (3)  the catch declines more slowly than abundance so the harvest rate increases, and then (4) the population reaches a critical level that was called “collapsed” in the PNAS paper.

Looking back at the years preceding collapse it appears that the collapse was caused by high fishing pressure, when in reality it was caused by a natural decline in recruitment that occurred several years earlier and was not caused by fishing.

The decline of California sardines did not follow this pattern, because the harvest control rule has reduced harvest as the stock declined,  and as fisheries management practices have improved this is now standard practice.  The average harvest rate for California sardines has only been 10% per year for the last 10 years, compared to a natural mortality rate of over 30% per year.  Even if there had been no fishing the decline in California sardine would have been almost exactly the same.

In many historical forage fish declines fishing pressure was much higher, often well over 50% of the population was taken each year and as the PNAS paper highlighted, this kind of fishing pressure does amplify the decline.  However many fisheries agencies have learned from this experience and not only keep fishing pressure much lower than in the past, but reduce it more rapidly when recruitment declines.

So the lesson from the most recent decline of California sardine is we have to adapt to the natural fluctuations that nature provides.  Yes, sea lions and birds will suffer when their food declines, but this has been happening for thousands of years long before industrial fishing.  With good fisheries management as is now practiced in the U.S. and elsewhere forage fish declines will not be caused by fishing.

Ray Hilborn is a Professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington specializing in natural resource management and conservation.  He is one of the most respected experts on marine fishery population dynamics in the world.

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Environmental changes stress West Coast sea lions

Sardine Assessment Shows Cyclic Decline in Population

Pacific sardines are known for wide swings in their population: the small, highly productive species multiplies quickly in good conditions and can decline sharply at other times, even in the absence of fishing. Scientists have worked for decades to understand those swings, including a decline in the last few years that led to the Pacific Fishery Management Council‘s recommendation on April 13th to suspend commercial sardine fishing off the West Coast for the first time in decades..

An updated stock assessment by NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC) was the basis for the Council’s action. Stock assessments are research tools that estimate the status and size of the sardine population. The Council uses the assessments to set fishing quotas.

Models that support the sardine assessment combine NOAA data on past and current abundance of sardine eggs, larvae and mature fish with other data on sardine biology and fishery catches. The data on sardine abundance come from two SWFSC research vessel surveys conducted off the West Coast each year.

These surveys employ two methods to estimate the current size of the sardine population. They use underwater acoustic equipment (like sonar) to estimate the size of fish schools, followed by the use of trawl nets to verify the species comprising the schools. Additionally, the surveys employ devices that measure the density of sardine eggs in the water as a gauge of sardine spawning. Scientists can then calculate how large the spawning population must be to produce the measured density of sardine eggs.

These data feed a computer model to estimate sardine population trends and provide the foundation for projections of the total population of sardines off the West Coast in the next fishing year.

“The assessment produced this year suggests that cool ocean water temperatures off the West Coast beginning around 2007 may have reduced the survival of juvenile sardine resulting in a population decline”, said Kevin Hill, a fisheries biologist who oversees the stock assessment for the SWFSC. The number of surviving young fish appears to have dropped to the lowest levels in recent history and has likely remained low in 2014. This has led to a steady decline in the fishable sardine stock biomass, which is defined as the total volume of sardines at least one year old. This is the measure the Council relies on when setting fishing quotas.

“The environment is a very strong driver of stock productivity. If ocean conditions are not favorable, there may be successful spawning, but fewer young fish survive to actually join the population,” Hill said. “Small pelagic fish like sardine and anchovy undergo large natural fluctuations even in the absence of fishing. You can have the best harvest controls in the world but you’re not going to prevent the population from declining when ocean conditions change in an unfavorable way.”

The current decline adds to a series of ups and downs that illustrate the boom-and-bust nature of sardine populations. The sardine biomass rose from about 300,000 metric tons in 2004 to a high point of more than 1 million in 2008 and is predicted to decrease to an estimated 97,000 metric tons by this coming July.

Because of these swings in sardine populations, the Council’s management framework for sardines includes built-in mitigation measures and safeguards to exponentially reduce fishing pressure as the stock declines.  One of these Council measures is a cessation in directed fishing on sardines when the biomass falls below 150,000 metric tons. “The fishing cutoff point is included in the guidelines adopted by the Council and is designed to maintain a stable core population of sardines that can jump-start a new cycle of population growth when oceanic conditions turn around,” Hill said.

In the course of reviewing the 2015 updated assessment, it became evident that the final model used in the 2014 assessment did not correspond to the best fit to the data. The data were reanalyzed and a better fit to the 2014 model was achieved. This re-examination resulted in a lower 2014 biomass estimate of 275,705 metric tons, down from the previous estimate of 369,506 metric tons, which is still above the fishing cutoff value of 150,000 metric tons.

The revised model applied to the 2015 assessment resulted in a biomass estimate of 97,000 metric tons, which is below the fishing cutoff.  As a result, the Council decided to close the 2015-2016 sardine fishing season and requested that NOAA Fisheries close the remainder of the 2014-2015 sardine fishing season. The sardine population is presently not overfished and overfishing is not occurring; however, the continued lack of recruitment observed in the past few years could decrease the population, even without fishing pressure.

The NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada is currently conducting a new sardine survey off the West Coast to collect updated information on the size and location of the sardine stock. In addition, a large-scale 80-day survey this summer will collect data on sardine and whiting (hake) populations from the Mexican border to Canada. This new information will support the next stock assessment SWFSC prepares for the Council and NOAA fisheries managers.

Learn more:

Pacific sardine stock assessment
Executive summary
Full report 

In the Field: Spring Sardine Survey 2015
Pacific Fishery Management Council Coastal Pelagic Species
California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI)
Video – Coastwide Sardine Survey

Green Seas Blue Seas – Interactive Guide to the California Current 

For more information, please contact: Michael.Milstein@noaa.gov or Jim.Milbury@Noaa.gov (West Coast Regional Office Public Affairs), Dale.Sweetnam@noaa.gov (Southwest Fisheries Science Center) and Joshua.Lindsay@noaa.gov (West Coast Regional Office)

Read the original post https://swfsc.noaa.gov

Humpback Whales: An Endangered Species Act Success Story?

A humpback breaches, catapulting nearly its entire body out of the water. Credit: Amy Kennedy/NOAA

Are humpback whales still endangered, or have their populations recovered enough since whaling ended that they can now be taken off the Endangered Species List?

NOAA Fisheries scientists have spent several years researching this question, and their answer is not a simple yes or no. Instead, the Agency identified 14 distinct population segments of humpback whales, 10 of which we identified as not warranted for listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The other four still appear vulnerable to extinction currently or within the foreseeable future and require the continued protection of the ESA.

Humpback Whales Make a Comeback

NOAA Fisheries believes humpback whales have rebounded in many areas, with high abundance and steady rates of population growth. This determination is based on a recent review of the best available scientific and commercial information by an expert group of scientists.

We also identified 14 distinct population segments of humpback whales. A distinct population segment is a term coined in the 1978 amendments to the Endangered Species Act that allows species to be divided into distinct subgroups or populations based on a number of characteristics.

Of the distinct population segments identified, 10 appear to no longer be in danger of extinction or likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future. For instance, the West Indies population is growing at a modest 2 percent a year and the East Australia population is growing at an average rate of almost 11 percent a year.

Changing Status, But Not Protection

We determined the abundance and growth rates are high enough and threats low enough for 10 distinct population segments that they are no longer threatened or endangered. This prompted us to propose changing the status of these humpback whale populations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Under the proposed rule, we recommend not including these populations on the ESA list.

This doesn’t mean humpback whales are left unprotected. The other four distinct population segments that still appear vulnerable to extinction will remain under ESA protections as a result of our proposal to extend the protections that automatically apply to the endangered populations to the threatened populations also. In addition, the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) provides substantial protections to all marine mammals in U.S. waters, including humpback whales. This protection exists regardless of whether each distinct population segment is listed under the ESA. And for those populations outside of U.S. waters, the International Whaling Commission provides protection from whaling.
Humpback whales still have blankets of protection.

Adding Management Flexibility

The changes we propose are significant because they are recognition that the species is doing well and most populations are growing as a result of the Endangered Species Act protections. And moving forward, having identified these distinct population segments, we now have the flexibility to focus our efforts where they are needed the most, on those specific populations that are in danger of extinction or likely to become so.

Humpback Whale. (Megaptera novaeangliae) Credit: NOAA NEFSC.

Read the original post here. The proposed rule is open for public comment through July 20, 2015.

Editor’s View: Pacific Sardine Closure Shows Management Works, but Oceana and Pew Won’t Accept That

Posted with permission from SEAFOODNEWS — Please do not repost without permission.

UW and NOAA Researchers Say ‘Warm blob’ in Pacific Ocean is Linked to Weird Weather Across The U.S.

Posted with permission from SEAFOODNEWS — Please do not repost without permission.

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [WUWT] By Anthony Watts – April 10, 2015

The one common element in recent weather has been oddness. The West Coast has been warm and parched; the East Coast has been cold and snowed under. Fish are swimming into new waters, and hungry seals are washing up on California beaches.

A long-lived patch of warm water off the West Coast, about 1 to 4 degrees Celsius (2 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, is part of what’s wreaking much of this mayhem, according to two University of Washington papers to appear in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

“In the fall of 2013 and early 2014 we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn’t cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year,” said Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the UW-based Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, a joint research center of the UW and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Bond coined the term “the blob” last June in his monthly newsletter as Washington’s state climatologist. He said the huge patch of water – 1,000 miles in each direction and 300 feet deep – had contributed to Washington’s mild 2014 winter and might signal a warmer summer.

Ten months later, the blob is still off our shores, now squished up against the coast and extending about 1,000 miles offshore from Mexico up through Alaska, with water about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal. Bond says all the models point to it continuing through the end of this year.

The new study explores the blob’s origins. It finds that it relates to a persistent high-pressure ridge that caused a calmer ocean during the past two winters, so less heat was lost to cold air above. The warmer temperatures we see now aren’t due to more heating, but less winter cooling.

Co-authors on the paper are Meghan Cronin at NOAA in Seattle and a UW affiliate professor of oceanography, Nate Mantua at NOAA in Santa Cruz and Howard Freeland at Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The authors look at how the blob is affecting West Coast marine life. They find fish sightings in unusual places, supporting recent reports that West Coast marine ecosystems are suffering and the food web is being disrupted by warm, less nutrient-rich Pacific Ocean water.

The blob’s influence also extends inland. As air passes over warmer water and reaches the coast it brings more heat and less snow, which the paper shows helped cause current drought conditions in California, Oregon and Washington.

The blob is just one element of a broader pattern in the Pacific Ocean whose influence reaches much further – possibly to include two bone-chilling winters in the Eastern U.S.

A study in the same journal by Dennis Hartmann, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences, looks at the Pacific Ocean’s relationship to the cold 2013-14 winter in the central and eastern United States.

Despite all the talk about the “polar vortex,” Hartmann argues we need to look south to understand why so much cold air went shooting down into Chicago and Boston.

His study shows a decadal-scale pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean linked with changes in the North Pacific, called the North Pacific mode, that sent atmospheric waves snaking along the globe to bring warm and dry air to the West Coast and very cold, wet air to the central and eastern states.

“Lately this mode seems to have emerged as second to the El Niño Southern Oscillation in terms of driving the long-term variability, especially over North America,” Hartmann said.

In a blog post last month, Hartmann focused on the more recent winter of 2014-15 and argues that, once again, the root cause was surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific.

That pattern, which also causes the blob, seems to have become stronger since about 1980 and lately has elbowed out the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to become second only to El Niño in its influence on global weather patterns.

“It’s an interesting question if that’s just natural variability happening or if there’s something changing about how the Pacific Ocean decadal variability behaves,” Hartmann said. “I don’t think we know the answer. Maybe it will go away quickly and we won’t talk about it anymore, but if it persists for a third year, then we’ll know something really unusual is going on.”

Bond says that although the blob does not seem to be caused by climate change, it has many of the same effects for West Coast weather.

“This is a taste of what the ocean will be like in future decades,” Bond said. “It wasn’t caused by global warming, but it’s producing conditions that we think are going to be more common with global warming.”

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Mystery blob in the Pacific messes up US weather and ecosystems

An unusual threat is looming off the Pacific coast of North America from Juneau in Alaska to Baja California.
Read the story here: NewScientist.com

Status of Stocks 2014 Report to Congress: Overfishing and Overfished Stocks Hit All-Time Lows

Today, NOAA Fisheries is pleased to announce the release of the 2014 Status of U.S. Fisheries report to Congress and the regional fisheries management councils. The number of stocks on the overfishing and overfished lists dropped to an all-time low, and we continued to rebuild stocks.

In 2014, six stocks cam off the overfishing lists and 2 stocks are no longer listed as overfished. Additionally, stock assessments show three stocks have rebuildt–bringing the total number of stocks rebuilt since 2000 to 37.  This progress demonstrates that our science-based approach to determining stock status and managing for sustainability is working. We continue to look for ways to strengthen the fishery management process and address the role of complex ecosystems and climate implacts on U.S. fisheries. We look forward to working with you to build on our efforts and identify opportunities to further strengthen the long-term biological and economic sustainability of our nation’s fisheries.

Visit the NOAA Fisheries website for more details and the report. Additional supporting data is available online through the Office of Sustainable Fisheries.

Warm Regards,

Laurel Bryant
Chief, External Affairs
NOAA Fisheries Communications
Laurel.Bryant@noaa.gov
www.nmfs.noaa.gov

Feds lower boom: no sardine fishery next year

By Jason Hoppin, Monterey County Herald

Rohnert Park >> For the first time in 30 years, boats operating along the West Coast will be banned from pursuing the fish that helped build Cannery Row: sardines.

Meeting Sunday in Rohnert Park, federal fishery regulators canceled the 2015-16 sardine fishery, which was set to begin July 1. For the first time since 1986 — when the sardine fishery was nurtured back to life following an 18-year fishing ban that stretched back to the collapse of Monterey Bay’s fishing industry — fishermen will have to make their livelihoods elsewhere.

“We know boats will be tied up, but the goal here is to return this to a productive fishery,” said David Crabbe, a Carmel fisherman and member of the Pacific Fishery Management Council who voted in favor of the ban.

On Wednesday, regulators will also vote on an emergency closure of the remaining sardine season through June 30, a vote that would largely impact Oregon fishermen.

The moves are a sign the West Coast sardine population, which rises and falls with natural cycles, has reached a nadir. Fishery regulators estimate there are less than 97,000 metric tons of sardines off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington, far below the minimum of 150,000 tons needed to sustain even a modest fishery.

Sardines have become a flashpoint in an ongoing debate between environmentalists, regulators and commercial interests in how to best manage the ocean’s resources. Since they are prey for larger fish, such as salmon and tuna, not to mention birds and marine mammals, they have taken on a much greater role in debates about the ocean’s ecosystem than their lowly status would seem to warrant.

Sunday’s vote was a victory for environmental groups, which have been adamant for years that more needs to be done to manage a fish that is critical to the ocean’s food chain.

“It turns out the sky was falling,” said Geoff Shester, California program director for Monterey-based Oceana.

Fishing interests weren’t happy about the vote, which had been expected after initial sardine assessments showed the numbers are very low. But they supported it.

“This is a harvest control rule that we support,” said Dianne Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association. “It is doing exactly what it’s intended to do.”

Area fishermen hauled in more than 820 tons of sardines in 2013, according to state figures. It is Monterey Bay’s second-largest fishery, far behind market squid.

Despite closing the fishery, the council will allow 7,000 tons of sardines to be fished by native tribes, taken for recreational bait or taken by boats seeking other species, such as anchovies or mackerel.

Paul Shivley, Portland, Oregon-based project manager for The Pew Charitable Trusts, said he was pleased overall with the council’s action but disappointed it allowed so much “incidental” fish to be caught.

“What they’ve created is a situation where the rebound will inevitably be slower because how much they left for incidental fisheries,” Shivley said.

That catch allows fishermen to continue fishing other fish, with nets often scooping up a number of species at once. If the 7,000-ton limit is reached, other fisheries could be shut down as well to protect sardines.

“The council, thankfully, is allowing a small incidental catch so that we can at least do our other fisheries,” Pleshner-Steele said, later adding: “It’s going to be a hard year for the fleet. There’s no doubt about it.”

Pew is also urging the council to take a closer look at anchovies, which can also be abundant in Monterey Bay. He is concerned sardine boats would turn their attention to that fishery, which is monitored by regulators but not capped.

“What we’re asking the council to do is update their stocks assessment and get a better handle on anchovies before it becomes a free-for-all,” Shivley said.

Oceana maintains that sardines have been overfished for years, citing a council recalculation that lowered the maximum amount of sardines that could be sustainably fished.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Shester said of the fishery closure. “But irreversible ecosystem damage has already occurred that will persist for decades.”

Pleshner-Steele strongly rejected the overfishing allegation, saying sardines rise and fall naturally.

“Fishing has a minimal impact. It does have some. In the long term, this fishery is managed excruciatingly precautionary,” she said.

Fishermen maintain there are more sardines in the sea than federal assessments show, an argument Shester rejects.

“The reality is, neither scientists nor fishermen nor all those starving sea lion mothers can go find them,” Shester said. “Show us the fish, if that‘s the explanation.”

For months, starving sea lion pups have washed up on California beaches, with no signs of slowing. Federal scientists blame changes in ocean conditions, and Pleschner-Steele said El Niño and overpopulation is to blame, not fishing.

“Sure, there’s (no fish) in the water for those young pups to eat. But that doesn’t mean the fishermen took them,” she said.

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