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

Oceans might take 1,000 years to recover from climate change, study suggests

Sea urchins disappeared for thousands of years during ancient warming periods that could be a model of future climate change, a new study shows. Here, the shells of modern sea urchins lie in a tide pool in Corona del Mar. (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)

By Geoffrey Mohan

Naturally occurring climate change lowered oxygen levels in the deep ocean, decimating a broad spectrum of seafloor life that took some 1,000 years to recover, according to a study that offers a potential window into the effects of modern warming.

Earth’s recovery from the last glacial period, in fact, was slower and more brutal than previously thought, according to the study, published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers deciphered that plotline from a 30-foot core of sea sediments drilled from the Santa Barbara Basin containing more than 5,000 fossils spanning nearly 13,000 years.

“The recovery does not happen on a century scale; it’s a commitment to a millennial-scale recovery,” said Sarah Moffitt, a marine ecologist at UC Davis’ Bodega Marine Laboratory and lead author of the study. “If we see dramatic oxygen loss in the deep sea in my lifetime, we will not see a recovery of that for many hundreds of years, if not thousands or more.”

Studies already have chronicled declines in dissolved oxygen in some areas of Earth’s oceans. Such hypoxic conditions can expand when ocean temperatures rise and cycles that carry oxygen to deeper areas are interrupted.

As North American glaciers retreated during a warming period 14,700 years ago, an oxygen-sensitive community of  seafloor invertebrates that included sea stars, urchins, clams and snails nearly vanished from the fossil record within about 130 years, the researchers found.

“We found incredible sensitivity across all of these taxonomic groups, across organisms that you would recognize, that you could hold in your hand, organisms that build and create ecosystems that are really fundamental to the way ecosystems function,” Moffitt said. “They were just dramatically wiped out by the abrupt loss of oxygen.”

That highly diverse community soon was replaced with a relatively narrow suite of bizarre and extreme organisms similar to those found near deep-ocean vents and methane seeps in modern oceans, Moffitt said.

Evidence of that transition was confined to such a narrow band of sediments that the turnover could have been “nearly instantaneous,” the study concluded.

Then, beginning around 13,500 years ago, the seafloor community began a slow recovery with the rise of grazers that fed on bacterial mats. Recovery eventually was driven by a fluctuation back toward glaciation during the Younger Dryas period, a cooling sometimes called the Big Freeze.

“The biological community takes 1,000 years to truly recover to the same ecological level of functioning,” Moffitt said. “And the community progresses through really interesting and bizarre states before it recovers the kind of biodiversity that was seen prior to the warming.”

That relatively brief freeze also ended abruptly around 11,700 years ago, virtually wiping out all the seafloor metazoans, the study found. They were gone within 170 years and did not appear again for more than 4,000 years, according to the study.

The climate changes chronicled in the study arose from natural cycles involving Earth’s orbit of the sun, and the oxygen declines that ensued were more extreme than those that have occurred in modern times, the study noted.

Still, the abrupt fluctuations offer a glimpse at the duration of the effects of climate change driven by human activity pumping more planet-warming gases into Earth’s atmosphere, Moffitt said.

“What this shows us is that there are major biomes on this planet that are on the table, that are on the chopping block for a future of abrupt climate warming and unchecked greenhouse gas emissions,” Moffitt said. “We as a society and civilization have to come to terms with the things that we are going to sacrifice if we do not reduce our greenhouse gas footprint.”

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

Feds likely to shut down sardine fishing on West Coast

Please read the CWPA: Comment to PFMC.

JEFF BARNARD Associated Press Apr 4, 2015

West Coast fisheries managers will likely shut down sardine fishing this year as numbers decline, echoing a previous collapse that decimated a thriving industry and increasing worries that other species might be withheld from the commercial market.

Fishermen are resigned to not being able to get sardines, but they hope the Pacific Fishery Management Council will not be so concerned that it sets the level for incidental catch of sardines at zero, shutting down other fisheries, such as mackerel, anchovies and market squid, which often swim with sardines.

Sardines were a thriving fishery on the West Coast from World War I through World War II, and the cannery-lined waterfront in Monterey, California, became the backdrop for John Steinbeck’s 1945 novel, “Cannery Row.” The fishery industry crashed in the 1940s, and riding the book’s popularity, Cannery Row became a tourist destination, with restaurants and hotels replacing the canneries.

The industry revived in the 1990s, when fisheries developed in Oregon and Washington waters. Today, there are about 100 boats with permits to fish for sardines on the West Coast, about half the number during the heyday. Much of the catch, landed from Mexico to British Columbia, is exported to Asia and Europe, where some is canned, and the rest goes for bait. West Coast landings have risen from a value of $1.4 million in 1991 to a peak of $21 million in 2012, but are again declining.

“The industry survives fishing on a complex,” of species, said Diane Pleschner-Steele, director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, which represents 63 California-based fishing boats. “Sardines, up until this point, have been one very important leg of a three- or four-legged stool…. Now we don’t have sardines. Our fleet is scrambling.”

The latest estimates of how many Pacific sardines are schooling off Oregon, California and Washington have fallen below the mandatory cutoff line. The council cut harvests by two-thirds last year, and meets April 12 in Rohnert Park, California, to set the latest sardine harvest.

The conservation group Oceana is urging the council to immediately shut down sardine fishing, and not wait until the new season starts July 1. The group wants incidental catch limits set at zero, leaving as much food as possible in the ocean for sea lions and other wildlife, and speeding the rebuilding process for sardines.

Ben Enticknap of Oceana acknowledged that sardines naturally go through large population swings, but he argued that fishing since 2007 has exceeded their reproduction rate, exacerbating the numbers collapse.

“Previous stock assessments were way too optimistic and weren’t matching up with what was observed on the water,” Enticknap said. “The sea lions and sea birds have been starving since 2013, pelicans since 2010. Everyone knew something was going on because there wasn’t enough food to eat for these predators. Now this stock assessment comes out saying that the sardine population is much lower than they had previously expected.”

David Crabbe, a squid fishing boat owner and council member, said he would expect the council to allow incidental catch to reduce the impact on the fleet.

The latest stock assessments vary between 133,000 metric tons, and 97,000 metric tons, both below the 150,000 metric tons cutoff, and less than 10 percent of the 2006 peak of 1.4 million metric tons.

The stock assessment is conducted by boat. As the research boats cruise the water, an acoustic signal is emitted, which bounces back with information on what kinds and how many fish are nearby. Stock assessors also estimate how many sardine eggs are floating in the water, and how many sardines are spawning off California, said Kerry Griffin, a staff officer for the council.

Fishermen are unhappy with the stock assessments, Pleschner-Steele said. They say the acoustic gear is too deep in the water and misses fish on the surface, where they feed.

Read original post: utsandiego.com

VIDEO: Ray Hillborn Comments on What Makes a Sustainable Fishery

CWPA preamble: Our Coastal Pelagic Species fisheries all account for environmental variability in fishery management.  Our sardine fishery is the poster fish for ecosystem-based management —  perhaps the most precautionary management in the world.

Published  by permission

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SeafoodNews] March 25, 2015

In our latest video segment the ongoing series profiling the history  of fishery management in Alaska and the US, produced by Steve Minor, renowned professor of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington Ray Hilborn offers his opinion of what fishery sustainability means from a scientific perspective.  He is critical of simplistic arguments that use changes in stock- such as is happening with sardines in California – as any kind of sustainabiity metric.

According to Hilborn fishery sustainability shouldn’t solely depend on catch volumes on a year-to-year basis. Hilborn says the volatility of fish stocks can skew data. Rather, Hilborn highlights a multitude of factors that should be considered before a fishery can be labeled sustainable. Hilborn says how a fishery is managed over time and what motives are driving that particular scheme should largely be considered before an ecolabel is approved.

Watch the video here.

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Warm waters off Pacific coast upsetting biological balance, researchers say

PC:Morsel, a male California sea lion, had to be force fed at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Tuesday, February 3, 2015. The Marine Mammal Center is getting in a lot more sick and abandoned young California sea lions. (Crista Jeremiason / The Press Democrat)

“Unprecedented changes” that have warmed the ocean off the west coast of North America may portend a dramatic decline in the biological productivity of coastal waters, explaining recent strandings of emaciated sea lion pups and a mass die-off that began last fall of small seabirds called Cassin’s auklets.

That’s the word from fishery experts and ecologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who say populations of tiny organisms at the base of the marine food web already have diminished and could take a toll on everything from salmon to seals because of especially intense variability in regional weather patterns.

Scientists remain in “wait and see” mode, but, “Our guess is the primary productivity of zooplankton and phytoplankton will probably be reduced this year,” and perhaps even longer, said Toby Garfield, director of the Environmental Research Division at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla.

A shift in atmospheric winds and the flow of unusually warm waters south from the Gulf of Alaska have raised ocean surface temperatures between 2 to 6 degrees along a band of Pacific Ocean from Alaska to Mexico, according to Nate Mantua, leader of the landscape ecology team at the science center’s Santa Cruz facility.

“Right now, the ocean is very warm, and we have lots of indicators pointing to low productivity and low availability of some of the more normal prey items for things like seabirds and marine mammals, including seals and sea lions,” he said.

In addition, an extended period of winds from the south and weak winds from the north has depressed the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water that would normally fertilize the surface waters and stimulate a more productive food web, he said.

But there are mixed signals in the wind and water, including some indication that north winds and ocean upwelling may be beginning from Cape Mendocino, in Humboldt County, north to southern Oregon, Mantua said.

Whether it continues, grows in strength and spreads southward is still in question, but it could help mitigate “food stress” to some degree, he said.

On the other hand, NOAA has recently declared development of a weak El Niño at the equator.

If it strengthens and spreads, “we’re potentially getting warm conditions from two directions,” Garfield said.
That could be good for fish species like sardines and anchovies, which tend to thrive in warm conditions, scientists said.

For cold water fish, like salmon, the reverse is true.

“The patterns that we’re seeing,” Garfield said, “are part of the natural variability that we expect to see. But in this particular instance, it’s been much stronger than in past instances.”

Mantua said strong upwellings and cold water conditions in 2012 and ’13 suggest the current trend reflects regional atmospheric conditions rather than long-term climate change, which is expected to become more dominant in years to come.

But the rapid warming that began last year and continues now could easily persist through next year, he said.

Scientists warned of implications for the marine food web as early as last fall.

When emaciated juvenile Cassin’s auklets began showing up dead along the California Coast in early November, wildlife biologists said it was likely because krill, their usual forage prey, had disappeared from the warm waters near their breeding colonies.

In December, focus shifted to very young, undernourished sea lion pups who began washing ashore, especially in the southern part of the state, well before they should have left their mothers’ sides. The pups are apparently unable to get the nourishment they need.

Insufficient food supplies are likely exacerbated by exponential growth in sea lion populations over the past few decades, Mantua said.

More than 1,800 stranded sea lions have since been recorded, though that number reflects only those that have been admitted to marine mammal rehabilitation facilities such as the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito. That facility had 220 sea lion pups in its care Thursday, a spokeswoman said, and has cared for 568 so far this year.

Many pups have died before they could be admitted to care or have been euthanized upon arrival, said Justin Viezbicke, coordinator of the California Stranding Network.

Those that have been released back to the wild still face the same challenging ocean conditions that sent them ashore in the first place, as well, he said.

“We don’t believe we’ve peaked yet,” Viezbicke said.

Read the original post: http://www.pressdemocrat.com | By Mary Callahan | March 19, 2015

Things to Know about California’s sea lion crisis

Volunteer Brennan Slavik carries a just-rescued sea lion pup into a holding pen after feeding the pup, Monday, March 2, 2015, in Laguna Beach, Calif. Since January, more than 1,100 starving and sickly sea lion pups have washed up along Californiaís coast. Rescue centers have taken in about 800 but are stretched thin by the demand. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — More than 1,800 starving sea lion pups have washed up on California beaches since Jan. 1 and 750 are being treated in rescue centers across the state, according to updated numbers released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Scientists with the federal agency believe the crisis hasn’t reached its peak and sea lions could continue to arrive on beaches sick and starving for at least two more months.

Here are a few things to know about the sea lion crisis unfolding in California:

Waters off North America’s Pacific Coast are about 2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average. That could be pushing the fish that sea lions eat — sardines, market squid and anchovies, for example — further north. The majority of sea lions give birth in rookeries on the Channel Islands off the Southern California coast and mothers are leaving their pups alone for up to eight days at a time as they are forced to travel further in search of food. The pups aren’t eating as much or as frequently and they are weaning themselves early out of desperation and striking out on their own even though they are underweight and can’t hunt properly.

Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say an El Nino weather pattern is to blame. North winds, which stir up the coastal waters in the spring and bring colder, nutrient-rich swells to the surface, are just now starting to materialize off California and might bring some relief over time. The warming off California is likely the result of regional weather patterns rather than a direct effect of global warming, said Nate Mantua, a NOAA research scientist based in Santa Cruz, California.

Yes. In 1998, a strong El Nino weather pattern led to significant warming in Pacific coastal waters and 2,500 sea lion pups were found washed up on California beaches. A large number also washed ashore in 2013. Current numbers are on track to surpass the 1998 record but have not done so yet, said Justin Viezbicke, coordinator for NOAA’s California Stranding Network.

It’s unclear. This year’s crisis probably won’t have any immediate effect but several years of such big losses could reduce the sea lion population in the future. Currently, there are about 300,000 sea lions and the numbers of dead pups represents less than 1 percent of the total population, said Viezbicke. The number of pups born each year in the past few years is also much greater than during previous episodes of coastal warming in the 1990s.

Many of the sea lion pups are beyond help by the time they are reported to authorities. Some die at the rescue centers and others are euthanized. Those that do survive are tube-fed until they regain their strength and then released back into the wild. NOAA doesn’t have a tally of how many have been successfully treated and released. The ones being released are tagged with a number but placing satellite trackers on all of them is too costly so scientists aren’t sure how many are making it.

People who live in California can volunteer at a rescue center. Most centers are now running at full capacity and aren’t able to take many new sea lion pups in but they still need extra hands. Another alternative is to donate money. A map showing the marine rescue centers helping sea lions, along with contact information, can be found here: http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/protected_species/marine_mammals/2013_ca_live_mmstranding_contact.pdf

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

Sea lion pup strandings may hit 2,000, but don’t blame climate change (yet)

California sea lion pups keep washing up on the state’s coastline at abnormally high numbers: more than 1,800 starving pups have been brought into rescue facilities already this year, officials reported Tuesday.

The average yearly intake for stranded pups is about 200.

Justin Viezbicke, California Stranding Network coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, said that he’s asking the public to be patient when it comes to rescue attempts for emaciated pups.

He said that the network won’t be able to rescue all pups and efforts to do so would hurt its ability to treat animals already in house. About 750 sea lions are being held for treatment in facilities right now.

“If we go over too many animals, the care really is lessened for all of those animals, and they all have decreased chances of survival,” Viezbicke said “Whereas, if we can focus on the ones we know we can give the best care and have the best chance of survival, we at least are giving them the best shot.”

Even reaching treatment centers is no guarantee of survival for the pups. Some are judged to be too far gone and are euthanized. Others die while undergoing treatment.

Even the ones that are successfully treated and released face difficult survival prospects. Unusually warm water off the coast holds less prey for the sea lions to forage.

“The reality is we’re putting them back into a very challenging situation, so there’s no guarantee that these animals that are being rehabbed are going to survive. It’s something we’ll be watching and monitoring for the future,” Viezbicke said.

The warm water is believed to be the cause of the high number of strandings in the first place.

As nursing mothers spend more time away on hunting trips seeking out that ever elusive prey, starving young leave their rookeries far earlier than they normally would.

Scientists said that the population of California sea lions is still strong, with estimates of total size at around 300,000 individuals.

The population has doubled from decades ago and the increased competition may be contributing to the poor feeding conditions, according to Nate Mantua, a climatologist with NOAA Fisheries.

Climate change not culpable … yet

He said the warm water isn’t likely caused by global warming because its development was too recent and too regional.

“It doesn’t look to me like a global warming pattern. It’s a direct response to the regional wind patterns that have been so persistent — including the pattern that brought us drought,” Mantua said. “I don’t really see the hallmarks of a global warming signature.”

A lack of winds from the north has kept surface water from being pushed out from the coast. That has lessened the amount of nutrient-rich upwelling of colder water.

The sea surface temperature map shows the unusually warm ocean water encompassing the West Coast. Darker red indicates temperatures farther above average. Credit: NOAA Fisheries/Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

No end in sight

Mantua said the northerly winds that normally accompany the start of spring are beginning to appear in Northern California. If they persist, he said some colder water could emerge nearer to land. That could help.

But he said the effect would be localized and that a recently declared El Niño appears to be strengthening — a combination that means the warm water could last for another year.

“The bigger picture, you step back and look at the whole broad region of the Northeast Pacific Ocean, it’s likely to stay warm for much of this year,” he said.

“Unless we get a winter next year that’s more normal and a lot stormier,” he added, “I think that it might persist. And if the El Niño develops, then it becomes even more likely to persist all the way to the end of the year and to next spring.”

Even though climate change isn’t a large factor in the current water temperature rise, Mantua said models predict it will become the major cause for future warmer water.

“When we get towards the middle of this century, human-caused climate change is going to be equal and then dominant for the warming trends along the West Coast,” Mantua said.

2013 was bad, too

This is the second time in a few years that California sea lion pups have stranded at abnormally high rates. In 2013, NOAA declared an unusual mortality event for the species.

Viezbicke, of the California Stranding Network, said it would take several years of similar mass deaths to reduce numbers to a threatened level because sea lion populations are so big right now.

In fact, events like this may even strengthen the remaining population.

“Even in naturally occurring situations like this, Mother Nature can kind of control the population size out there, and those that are doing well — that are currently in this warm water situation — will probably continue to do ok,” Viezbicke said. “And those that don’t, will kind of be weeded out from the gene pool.”

Read the original post: www.scpr.org

Proposal for new Central Coast marine sanctuary is rejected

By David Sneed | dsneed@thetribunenews.com

A gray whale comes to the water’s surface as it passes Morro Bay on its way south.
JOE JOHNSTON — jjohnston@thetribunenews.com

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has rejected a proposal to create a new National Marine Sanctuary on the Central Coast.

The proposed Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary would have stretched from Cambria to near Gaviota in Santa Barbara County. The agency said the nomination by the Northern Chumash Tribal Council was insufficient.

“It really just boiled down to the fact that some of the management considerations needed more detail,” said Lisa Wooninck, policy coordinator with the NOAA Sanctuaries regional office in Monterey.

Andrew Christie, director of the Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the Chumash can resubmit the nomination with additional details. The club supports the formation of the sanctuary.

“We always knew this was one of the potential outcomes,” he said. “The Chumash will submit an amended nomination in response.”

The proposed sanctuary would be sandwiched between two existing marine sanctuaries: the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary to the north and the Channel Islands Sanctuary to the south.

The proposal drew the support of the California Coastal Commission, San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Bruce Gibson and State Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Calabasas.

National Marine Sanctuary guidelines include restrictions on dumping, altering the seabed and disturbance of historic and archaeological sites. Oil and gas drilling and exploration are also restricted.

“Designation of the proposed California Central Coast Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary will ensure the continued protection of one of the most important, culturally and biologically diverse, unique and ecologically rich coastlines in the world,” wrote Fred Collins on the Northern Chumash Tribal Council in the nomination letter.

Successful marine sanctuary nominations typically take two to four years to complete. NOAA recently opened the marine sanctuary nomination process for the first time in two decades.

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

NW scientists discover Pacific fish surviving dead zones

Some species of Pacific Ocean rockfish have been found to survive in low-oxygen dead zones off the West Coast, while other species struggle significantly, researchers in Oregon and Washington reported in a recent study. (Cindy, Oregon Coast Aquarium)

GRANTS PASS — Scientists say they have found that some fish can survive in low-oxygen dead zones that are expanding in deep waters off the West Coast as the climate changes.

While the overall number and kinds of fish in those zones are declining, some species appear able to ride it out, according to a study published this month in the journal Fisheries Oceanography.

The study focused on catches from 2008 through 2010 of four species of deepwater groundfish — Dover sole, petrale sole, spotted ratfish and greenstriped rockfish.

Catches of ratfish and petrale sole both declined in low-oxygen areas, while catches of greenstriped rockfish and Dover sole showed no changes. Dover sole are well-known for being adapted to low oxygen, but greenstriped rockfish are not.

Oregon State University oceanographer Jack Barth, a co-author, says commercial fishermen will likely start taking oxygen levels into account as they decide where to tow their nets.

“It’s rearranging that ocean geography,” Barth said of the low-oxygen conditions. “If you go out to a spot where you’ve always gone before commercial fishing, and you don’t catch what you expect, is it because the oxygen has gone low and things moved someplace else?”

Dead zones were first noticed off Oregon in 2002, where they peaked in 2006, and have since spread to Washington and California waters.

Some, such as where the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico, are caused by agricultural runoff. On the West Coast, scientists have demonstrated they are triggered by climate change.

North winds cause the ocean to turn over, drawing cold low-oxygen water up from the depths. Conditions get worse as tiny plants, known as phytoplankton, are drawn to the surface, where sunshine triggers a population explosion. As they die, they sink and use up more oxygen as they decompose.

Underwater videos have shown crabs and other slow-moving bottom-dwellers in shallow waters die, but scientists from NOAA Fisheries Service and Oregon State wanted to know what happened to fish.

NOAA Fisheries was already chartering fishing trawlers to do annual surveys of groundfish populations off the West Coast. They equipped the nets with oxygen sensors.

Lead study author Aimee Keller, a fisheries biologist for the NOAA Fisheries Service’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, said scientists ultimately want to see whether fish forced out of preferred habitats grow more slowly, are less successful reproducing, and whether other species adapted to low-oxygen conditions move in.

The next step, she said, is to expand the surveys to include more commercially important species.

Tim Essington, professor of fisheries at the University of Washington, was not part of the study but said it was significant for covering a large geographic area, and was consistent with what has been seen in estuaries. He added he expects fish to congregate along the edges of low-oxygen zones, where predators will be able to feed on less active fish inside the zone.

NOAA oceanographer Bill Peterson, who was not part of the study, said there was no doubt that low-oxygen waters were expanding, but it was a slow process that would take decades to be felt.

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

West Coast waters shifting to lower-productivity regime, new NOAA report finds

State of the California Current report highlights record-warm conditions and effect on fisheries

NOAA Fisheries/Alaska Fisheries Science Center

Many sea lion pups in California’s Channel Islands are underweight and are washing up on beaches starving are dead. Biologists suspect unusually warm ocean conditions are reducing marine productivity, causing female sea lions to struggle to find sufficient food to nurse the pups. For further details http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/News/CA_sea_lions.htm

Large-scale climate patterns that affect the Pacific Ocean indicate that waters off the West Coast have shifted toward warmer, less productive conditions that may affect marine species from seabirds to salmon, according to the 2015 State of the California Current Report delivered to the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

The report by NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Southwest Fisheries Science Center assesses productivity in the California Current from Washington south to California. The report examines environmental, biological and socio-economic indicators including commercial fisheries and community health.

“We are seeing unprecedented changes in the environment,” Toby Garfield, Director of the Environmental Research Division at the SWFSC, told the Council when presenting the report, citing unusually high coastal water and air temperatures over the last year. Climate and ecological indicators are “pointing toward lower primary productivity” off California, Oregon and Washington, he said.

That could translate into less food for salmon and other marine species, added Chris Harvey of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center. High mortality of sea lion pups in Southern California and seabirds on the Oregon and Washington coasts in recent months may be early signs of the shift.

Among the highlights of the new State of the California Current Report:

• Record-high sea surface temperatures combined with shifts in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, North Pacific Gyre Oscillation and weaker upwelling of deep, cold waters indicate declining productivity in the California Current.
• After several productive years the biomass of tiny energy-rich organisms called copepods, which support the base of the West Coast food chain and provide important food for salmon, has declined significantly.
• California sea lion pups and seabirds called Cassin’s auklets found dying and emaciated in large numbers in recent months may reflect the transition to less productive marine conditions.
• Although commercial fishery landings have remained high in recent years, the fishing fleet has become more specialized in terms of targeting specific fisheries. That may expose the vessels to more fluctuations of catch and revenue if those fisheries decline.

“This year’s report is very useful,” said Council Chair Dorothy Lowman. “We’re looking forward to working with the science centers to find ways to integrate this information into management.”

Scientists produced the report as part of NOAA’s Integrated Ecosystem Assessment Program, which tracks conditions across coastal ecosystems to provide insight into environmental and human trends and support decisions on fisheries and other activities. The California Current Ecosystem is one of seven U.S. ecosystems monitored by the program.

“We’re seeing some major environmental shifts taking place that could affect the ecosystem for years to come,” said John Stein, Director of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center. “We need to understand and consider their implications across the ecosystem, which includes communities and people.”

In recent years the California Current Ecosystem enjoyed highly productive conditions, with strong upwelling of deep waters from the north flush with energy-rich copepods that supported high salmon returns and high densities of juvenile rockfish, sanddabs and market squid. In 2014 waters off Southern California and in the Gulf of Alaska turned unusually warm, and these so-called warm “blobs” have since grown and merged to encompass most of the West Coast.

The coastal warming includes an influx of warmer southern and offshore waters with leaner subtropical copepods that contain far less energy and are often associated with low productivity and weaker salmon returns. Overall the warm conditions off the West Coast are as strong as anything in the historical record. The tropical El Niño recently declared by NOAA could extend the warm conditions and reduced productivity if it persists or intensifies through 2015.

“We are in some ways entering a situation we haven’t seen before,” said Cisco Werner, Director of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif. “That makes it all the more important to look at how these conditions affect the entire ecosystem because different components and different species may be affected differently.”

For example, warmer conditions in the past often coincided with increases in sardines and warmer-water fish such as tuna and marlin and drops in anchovy and market squid. Salmon also fare poorly during warm conditions. Cooler conditions in contrast have often driven increases in anchovies, rockfish and squid. Anchovy and sardines have both remained at low levels in recent years, the report notes.

NOAA researchers will continue tracking how species respond to the shifting temperatures and conditions.

Salmon face the potential “double jeopardy” of low snowpack in the Northwest and rivers and streams shrunk by drought in California, plus reduced ocean productivity when juvenile salmon enter the ocean this year looking for food, Harvey said. However the impacts on salmon may not become apparent until a few years from now when the fish that enter the ocean this year would be expected to be caught in fisheries or return to the Columbia and other rivers as adults.

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