Countries increase protections for overfished Pacific bluefin tuna

During a meeting of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) this week, the United States, Mexico and Japan developed a joint proposal to reduce the catch limit of Pacific bluefin tuna in the eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO) in 2015 and 2016. IATTC member nations adopted the proposal by consensus, taking a critical step in rebuilding the population of this overfished species.

“With this agreement we will see reduced impacts on juvenile bluefin, which will contribute to rebuilding goals,” said Barry Thom, U.S. Commissioner to the IATTC. “We can only achieve rebuilding of this important species by working together across the entire range of the species and by reducing both juvenile and adult catch.”

Pacific bluefin spawn in the western Pacific Ocean near Japan, and a portion of the population typically migrates to the EPO off of Mexico and the United States for a few years before returning west to spawn. The species is considered overfished and has declined to historic lows, with an estimated 3 to 5 percent of its historic spawning biomass remaining.

Approximately 80 percent of the fishing impacts on Pacific bluefin occur in the western and central Pacific Ocean (WCPO), with the remaining 20 percent occurring in the EPO. Japan’s fisheries account for the majority of the catch in the WCPO, while Mexico’s fisheries account for the majority of the catch in the EPO. Given the greater fishing impacts in the WCPO, reductions in the WCPO catch across all age classes will be critical in allowing the species to rebuild.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission, which manages fisheries in the WCPO, is expected to adopt additional Pacific bluefin catch reductions at its annual meeting this December.

The staff of the IATTC recommended a 20 to 45 percent reduction in Pacific bluefin catches in the EPO.  This week’s agreement by IATTC member countries limits the Pacific bluefin catch in the EPO to no more than 6,600 metric tons in 2015 and 2016 combined, for an effective annual catch of 3,300 metric tons. That represents a roughly 43 percent reduction below the average catch from 2010 to 2012, which matches the IATTC staff scientific recommendations.

“These reductions are not only in line with the conservation advice, but they’re also balanced reductions reflecting where the majority of the fishing impacts occur,” Thom said. “All nations need to do their part in rebuilding this stock and this agreement is a big part of making that happen.”

The agreement also calls for member countries to reduce the catch of bluefin tuna by sportfishing vessels by a proportion similar to the reductions in the commercial catch.

The United States is also considering steps to sharply reduce recreational bluefin catches from a limit of 10 fish per person per day, with possession allowance of 30 fish per multi-day trip, to a limit of two fish per person per day, with a possession limit of six fish total. The U.S. recreational catch limits are expected to be adopted by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council in November and to be effective for the 2015 fishing season.

Read original post: westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov

Coast Marine Mammal Survey Spots Unusual Whales, Dolphins, Turtles and Seabirds

When is a pilchard not a pilchard? When it’s a sardine and “sardine” sales are booming in England

Posted with permission of SeaFoodNews.com

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [The Independent] By Jamie Merrill – November 4, 2014

(The terms sardine and pilchard are not precise, and what is meant depends on the region. The United Kingdom’s Sea Fish Industry Authority, for example, classifies sardines as young pilchards. One criterion suggests fish shorter in length than 6 inches are sardines, and larger ones pilchards.)

Waitrose has reported a 19 per cent rise in sales of the once-forgotten fish, while high-end restaurants have put them back on the menu

Peter Bullock has been fishing the choppy waters off the southern tip of Cornwall for more than 20 years. It’s only relatively recently, though, that the skipper of the St Asthore has started taking the 46ft trawler out at night from Newlyn in search of sardines.

After decades of decline, sales of sardines are booming again; Mr Bullock and his two young deckhands have their work cut out. And it’s during the hours of darkness that the slippery, six-inch fish congregate off St Michael’s Mount in vast shoals.

Waitrose has just reported a 19 per cent rise in sales of the once-forgotten fish, while high-end restaurants from Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen to Duck and Waffle in the City of London and Rick Stein’s Seafood Restaurant have put them back on the menu.

“The chap that started it all about 10 years back was called Nutty Noah. He lived down the coast and bought an old ring net from France and set out to catch pilchards, which he re-branded as Cornish sardines. In the end, he caught so much he actually sank his boat under the weight,” said Mr Bullock, 39, as we left harbour.

Before Nutty Noah came along, the fish was marketed as the pilchard. It was salted and sold in vast quantities during the 19th century, however, tinned salmon imports from Canada and the arrival of Pacific tuna had all but killed the industry by the 1990s. The fisherman admits, though, that the two fish are “essentially the same”: a pilchard is just a sardine that is more than six inches long.

Either way, turning them into Cornish sardines was “a piece of marketing genius, pure and simple”, he says. It was a sales wheeze that would have delighted Charles Saatchi. A few years ago there were no sardine boats at Newlyn; now the St Asthore is joined by five rival boats as we set out to sea. This season is the seventh year he has fished for sardines, and he has often brought in as much as 20 tonnes of fish a night. The fishery is certified by the Marine Stewardship Council and backed by Greenpeace.

“It’s the rebranding that’s made pilchards really popular,” explains the skipper as he spots a shoal on his sonar and prepares his crew to “shoot” the ring net around them. “You just have to think of the romance of a sardine on the barbecue and think of the Mediterranean.”

Bringing in the fish, which come close to the surface at night to feed, is a frantic affair, during which Peter Bullock abandons the cockpit, puts on his waterproofs and joins his crew hauling in the nets. The reward, after 45 minutes of silent working, is a load of about four tonnes.

Watching is Jeremy Ryland Langley, the fisheries and aquaculture manager at Waitrose. He’s the man responsible for taking endangered Atlantic salmon off the shelves of the store in the 1990s. More recently he brought in a sustainability and fish traceability policy that has won plaudits from Greenpeace.

For him this fishery is ideal. “The oceans are vital to our existence as a species and, for most of us, fish is the last truly wild food we’ll eat, so getting this right is crucial. What we love about this fishery and Peter’s boat is that we know the fishermen, we know exactly where they are fishing and we know the fish stocks here are healthy.”

A hundred miles away on the north Devon coast, the story is very different. When the European Commission cut fish quotas, the Government’s Marine Management Organisation imposed a temporary ban on ray fishing which threatens to cost the area £100m a year. In Ilfracombe, a brand new £300,000 trawler has sat idle having never been to sea, while at Appledore the fish dock has closed until at least the end of December.

Newlyn has its problems, including an outdated fish market without an internet connection. But the sardine population has remained strong, as the skipper of the St Asthore explains, because the north Cornish coast “doesn’t have the harbours to support sardine boats”. This means there is a ready-made reserve which acts as a “breeding stronghold” for the species.

And last month an EU-backed study found that smaller fish such as sardines had benefited from the over-fishing of larger predator fish, such as sea bass, ray and John Dory.

For fish buyers like Ryland Langley, “part of [this] problem is that it is easy to buy cheap fish if you don’t care where it comes from. What’s hard for people like me and shoppers, is that it’s really hard to buy ethically sourced, high-quality fish that you can trace exactly to a single fishery. That’s what we have here and that’s what we should all be asking for at the fish counter.”

Read original post: SeafoodNews.com

Warmest sea temperatures in 30 years seen off California coast, but El Nino not a factor

Posted with permission of SeafoodNews.com

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Monterey County Herald] By Paul Rogers  Nov 3, 2014

Hawaiian ono swimming off the California coast? Giant sunfish in Alaska? A sea turtle usually at home off the Galapagos Islands floating near San Francisco?

Eastern Pacific bluefin tuna catch to be cut 40 percent to 3,300 tons

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Jiji Press] – October 31, 2014 — posted with permission of Seafood News.

The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, comprising a total of 21 countries and regions, has decided to tighten controls on bluefin tuna fishing in the eastern Pacific.

The decision was made at a special session of the commission in La Jolla, Calif., on Wednesday, according to Japanese officials.

Bluefin tuna catches in the ocean region will be reduced by 40 percent from the 2014 level to 3,300 tons in both 2015 and 2016.

The commission also set a nonbinding goal of cutting the proportion of young tuna weighing less than 30 kilograms in total catches to 50 percent.

The nonbinding goal was set as a compromise after Mexico opposed a Japanese proposal for halving annual catches of young tuna in and after 2015 from the average level between 2002 and 2004. In the central and western Pacific, including waters around Japan, the halving of young tuna catches has already been agreed.

Mexico has developed a tuna ranching sector dependent on capture of juvenile tuna used for growout.

Read original article: SeafoodNews.com

$quid Inc. 2014 — Video by Jason Crosby

Video by Jason Crosby (YouTube).

Squid fishing in Monterey Ca. Lots of boats, lots of squid.

The joy of sex began 385 million years ago with armored fish, scientists say

Professor John Long has discovered that the earliest example of sex was invented by Scottish amoured fish called placoderms.

An ancient fish with evolutionary ties to humans could have originated intercourse as we know it, which scientists say is ‘nothing short of remarkable.’

Scientists studying fossils have discovered that the intimate act of sexual intercourse used by humans was pioneered by ancient armored fishes, called placoderms, about 385 million years ago in Scotland.

In an important discovery in the evolutionary history of sexual reproduction, the scientists found that male fossils of the Microbrachius dicki, which belong to a placoderm group, developed bony L-shaped genital limbs called claspers to transfer sperm to females.

Females, for their part, developed small paired bones to lock the male organs in place for mating.

Placoderms are the earliest vertebrate ancestors of humans.

“Placoderms were once thought to be a dead-end group with no live relatives, but recent studies show that our own evolution is deeply rooted in placoderms and that many of the features we have — such as jaws, teeth and paired limbs — first originated with this group of fishes,” said John Long, a paleontologist at Flinders University in South Australia who led the research.

This new finding, he added, shows that “they gave us the intimate act of sexual intercourse as well”.

Matt Friedman, a paleobiologist from Britain’s Oxford University who was not involved in the research, described its findings as “nothing short of remarkable” and said they suggested much more could be learned from the fossil fishes.

Long, whose study was published in the journal Nature on Sunday, discovered the ancient fishes’ mating abilities when he stumbled across a single fossil bone in the collections of the University of Technology in Tallinn, Estonia, last year.

The research then involved scientists from Australia, Estonia, Britain, Sweden and China, who analyzed fossil specimens from museum collections across the world.

These demonstrate the first use of internal fertilization and copulation as a reproductive strategy known in the fossil record.

Measuring about 8 centimeters (3 inches) in length, Microbrachius lived in ancient lake habitats in Scotland, as well as parts of Estonia and China.

Long explained that “Microbrachius” means little arms, but said scientists have been baffled for centuries by what these bony paired arms were actually there for.

“We’ve solved this great mystery,” he said. “They were there for mating, so that the male could position his claspers into the female genital area.”

In one of the more bizarre findings of the study, Long said the fishes probably copulated from a sideways position with their bony jointed arms locked together — making them look more as if they were square dancing than having sex.

“This enabled the males to maneuver their genital organs into the right position for mating,” he said.

Watch video

View the original article: NYDailyNews.com | REUTERS Monday, October 20, 2014

Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management

NOAA strives to adopt an ecosystem-based approach throughout its broad ocean and coastal stewardship, science, and service programs. The goal of ecosystem-based management is to maintain ecosystems in a healthy, productive, and resilient condition so they can provide the services humans want and need. NOAA Fisheries refers to the ecosystem-based approach to management that is focused on the fisheries sector as ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM). While EBFM is directed towards fisheries management, a similar approach, accounting for ecosystem interactions and considerations, can be applied in the management of protected and other trust marine species.

EBFM is a new way of looking at the management of living marine resources. The traditional management strategy for fisheries and other living marine resources is to focus on one species in isolation. For example, if a particular species’ population was declining, fishery managers might decide to reduce the annual catch limit the following year in an attempt to reduce overexploitation. However, fishing is only one variable that affects a species’ population. Additional elements come in to play, such as interactions with other species, the effects of environmental changes, or pollution and other stresses on habitat and water quality. To more effectively assess the health of any given fishery and to determine the best way to maintain it, fishery managers should take ecosystem considerations into account.

Videos:

Fisheries in the California Current Ecosystem

Fisheries in the Northwest Atlantic Large Marine Ecosystem

View the original post here.

A Bird’s Eye View: Aerial Surveys of Nearshore Waters Provide Important Information for Managing Coastal Pelagic Fishes

An unretouched aerial photo of a sardine school off Southern California

Since August 2012, CDFW’s Coastal Pelagic Species (CPS) Project and the California Wetfish Producers Association have been working together to develop a nearshore aerial survey program for southern California waters. The valuable data collected by the program may be used to set sustainable harvest limits and prevent overfishing of CPS, including Pacific sardine, Pacific mackerel, and northern anchovy.

A primary focus of the program is developing scientifically rigorous aerial survey methods. Over the first four field seasons, Pacific sardine schools were mostly observed close to shore along either mainland or island coasts. Boat-based groundtruthing confirmed the accuracy of aerial fish identification, and provided critical biological and environmental data.

Starting in summer 2013, other CPS were quantified including northern anchovy and Pacific mackerel. Both aerial and boat survey methods have been refined to improve data collection efficiency and accuracy, and staff have begun integrating all CPS observations into the program. Information from the aerial surveys will help to increase our understanding of the abundance and distribution of CPS in southern California.

CDFW coordinates with NOAA Fisheries and other West Coast agencies through the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) to manage Pacific sardine and other CPS fisheries included in the federal CPS Fishery Management Plan. PFMC uses stock assessments to set sustainable harvest limits that prevent overfishing of CPS populations. Once enough data are collected, CDFW will request that the PFMC include the California aerial survey data in future stock assessments of Pacific sardine and, potentially, other CPS. California aerial surveys would complement other types of surveys currently included in stock assessments, such as the ship-based acoustic surveys and fish egg surveys conducted farther off shore.

For more information about Pacific sardine research and management, please visit CDFW’s Pacific sardine webpage.

View original post: CDFW Marine Management News

Jumbo squids attack Greenpeace submarine

The Greenpeace Dual Deep Diver.

A pair of Greenpeace submariners have had their own “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” experience on an expedition in the Bering Sea — in a scaled down sort of way. Rather than the Nautilus and a giant squid, the pair were in a Dual Deep Worker submersible when the encounter occurred.

And their attackers weren’t a squid of the giant variety, but a pair of Humboldt squids, nicknamed “jumbo squid” or “red devil” for their famed aggression and the red colour the squids turn when in hunting or attack mode.

Although these squids can get pretty big — up to 1.9 metres (6.2 ft) in mantle length and up to 50 kg (100 lb) in weight, these guys are relatively titchy — no longer than a few feet in length, maximum. Their size, however, is no indication of courage: coloured a brilliant red, they have a brave go at the sub before swimming off in a puff of ink.

The Humboldt squid’s tentacle suckers are lined with tiny, sharp teeth that can do some serious damage, so the Greenpeace divers were lucky to be protected by the submarine — though there are some scientists who believe that the cephalopods aren’t usually aggressive, and might have been set off in the first place by flashing or bright lights like the one on the Dual Deep Worker.

WATCH THE VIDEO

View original post: CNET