Fishing News

Why eye-popping whale shows off the California coast are the new normal

Peter Winch, a naturalist with the Oceanic Society conservation group, said whales have been especially visible this year because cold ocean upwellings have sprinkled near-shore waters with plankton. The whales swim close to shore for anchovies, which feed on plankton, he said.

“They are taking advantage of anchovy shoals that are numerous around the coast,” Winch said. “The humpbacks have the ability to pick and choose. They can stay out in deeper water and eat krill or they can come in. In the last few years, they have just really clued in on this abundance of anchovies.”

 

Humpbacks have put on a show this summer inside and outside the Golden Gate — flopping around, waving their flukes and leaping out of the water — a bonanza for whale watchers in tour boats and on dry land that scientists say will remain a regular thing.

The ballet of the behemoths, far from a one-time event, is the result of the humpbacks recovering from near-extinction thanks to an international whaling ban, intense conservation and protection of their breeding grounds.

John Calambokidis, a senior research biologist for the nonprofit Cascadia Research Collective, said the giant cetaceans are swimming off the coast of California in numbers equal to their historic population and extending their range into places where they lived long ago.

“Their numbers reached carrying capacity in the last five years, and that’s when sightings in unusual areas began to occur,” said Calambokidis, who has been studying humpback and blue whales for 35 years.

“It’s a good thing in the sense that it reflects the recovery of humpback whales,” he said. “It’s a bad thing in that some of these coastal areas they are repopulating, like San Francisco Bay, put them in greater conflict with other activities, like noise, ships and recreational boaters.”

Since May, large pods have moved through Monterey Bay, past Pacifica and just beyond the breakers at Stinson Beach. Lucky viewers have spotted humpbacks doing pirouettes and splashing down under the Golden Gate Bridge, near the Channel Islands in Southern California and in Puget Sound in Washington.

The phenomenon is all the more remarkable after record-high temperatures in the Pacific Ocean two years ago unleashed toxic algae that closed down the Dungeness crab fishery and contributed to a huge death toll among seabirds and sea lions.

Peter Winch, a naturalist with the Oceanic Society conservation group, said whales have been especially visible this year because cold ocean upwellings have sprinkled near-shore waters with plankton. The whales swim close to shore for anchovies, which feed on plankton, he said.

“They are taking advantage of anchovy shoals that are numerous around the coast,” Winch said. “The humpbacks have the ability to pick and choose. They can stay out in deeper water and eat krill or they can come in. In the last few years, they have just really clued in on this abundance of anchovies.”

Humpbacks, which have long pectoral fins and distinctive knobby heads, are unique among baleen whales. They are friendly and playful, often interacting with other species, including bottlenose dolphins and right whales, and they have complex vocalizations that sound like singing.

They are known for their acrobatic breaching, in which they lift nearly their entire bodies out of the water before splashing down.

The whales, which can grow to 52 feet long and almost 80,000 pounds, were hunted throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, reducing the global population by more than 90 percent.

Before 1900, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 humpbacks lived in the North Pacific. Only about 500 remained in 1966, when the International Whaling Commission finally halted the killing.

Calambokidis said humpback numbers have increased by 7 to 8 percent every year since he began studying them in the 1980s. At least 40,000 of the creatures now live in the world’s oceans — and the North Pacific population is at a historic high.

They have done so well, in fact, that nine of the 14 subspecies that had been listed under the Endangered Species Act since 1970 were taken off the list in 2016 in what one federal official called a “true ecological success story.”

Bay Area residents have been particularly enamored with the species since 1985, when a 40-ton humpback named Humphrey swam through the Carquinez Strait, up the Sacramento River and into a creek near Rio Vista. The Solano County city became the focal point of a whale craze, attracting 10,000 people a day as experts tried desperately to turn around the lost animal — which went back to sea after 25 days.

Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle | Whale watchers take photos of the Farallon Islands.

 

The local humpbacks migrate along the California coast past San Francisco on their way to and from their breeding grounds in Mexico and Central America. Unlike gray whales, which generally make a beeline to Alaska, humpbacks move north slowly after giving birth, feeding all along their migration route.

Jared Davis, the captain of the Salty Lady fishing and tour boat, said he and his passengers spotted 50 humpbacks on a trip from San Francisco to the Farralon Islands last month. Boaters there have also seen blue whales, fin whales, orcas, dolphins and porpoises in large numbers this summer.

“When the conditions are good, the whales flourish, and the conditions have been good the last couple of years,” said Davis, who takes people whale watching on the weekend and salmon fishing during the week. “It’s a lot of fun.”

The problem with humpbacks moving close to shore, Calambokidis said, is that boats can hit them or crab pot lines can tangle them up.

A recent study by Point Blue Conservation Science found that ships strike and kill an average of 22 humpbacks a year off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington. About 7,300 vessels pass the Golden Gate every year.

The number of whales entangled in fishing lines off the West Coast has risen sharply in recent years, with 71 cases in 2016 — up from 57 the year before and the most since the National Marine Fisheries Service began keeping records in 1982.

“There has been a dramatic increase in entanglements, particularly in crab pots,” Calambokidis said. The humpbacks, he said, “are arriving earlier in the spring to find prey and feed and that overlaps with the crab fishery.”

 

Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle | A humpback whale dives off the coast of San Francisco.

Another long-term threat to the whale resurgence is climate change, though all signs indicate the humpbacks will be back again next year in all their glory.

“It’s not unusual anymore,” Calambokidis said. “Sometimes they will be seen closer to shore because prey is closer to shore and sometimes offshore because the prey is out farther to sea, but humpback sightings will be much more common going forward.”

 

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Read the original article: http://www.sfchronicle.com/

Study negates concerns regarding radioactivity in migratory seafood

Assistant professor Kevin Weng of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science with a dolphinfish or mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus) collected as part of the study of Fukushima-derived radioactivity in large Pacific Ocean predators. Credit: A. Gray aboard FV Aoshibi IV.

When the Fukushima power plant released large quantities of radioactive materials into nearby coastal waters following Japan’s massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami, it raised concerns as to whether eating contaminated seafood might impair human health—not just locally but across the Pacific.

A new study by an international research team shows that those concerns can now be laid to rest, at least for consumption of meat from migratory marine predators such as tuna, swordfish, and sharks.

The team focused on cesium, a silvery metal with a large number of radioactive isotopes. Two of these, 134Cs and 137Cs, form when uranium fuel breaks down in nuclear reactors. The cesium isotopes are of particular concern because they were discharged in large quantities following the disaster, exhibit relatively long half-lives (2.1 and 30 years respectively), and tend to accumulate in the muscle tissues that people like to eat.

However, the team’s sampling of tissues from predatory fishes and other large vertebrates collected across the northern Pacific between 2012 and 2015 revealed no detectable levels of 134Cs, and 137Cs concentrations that were generally consistent with background levels from aboveground nuclear testing during the 1940s and 50s. They collected the animals from waters near Japan, Hawaii, and California.

Lead author Daniel Madigan of Harvard University says, “Our measurements and associated calculations of how much radioactive cesium a person would ingest by eating this seafood shows that impacts to human health are likely to be negligible. For marketed fish to be restricted from trade, the cesium levels would have to be more than 1,600 times higher than in any samples we measured.”

Co-author Kevin Weng, an assistant professor at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science, participated in the study by collecting fish samples in waters around Oahu and a remote seamount. He says, “Go ahead and eat some sushi! Our work shows that radioactivity from the Fukushima disaster is very low in open-ocean vertebrates.”

Assistant professor Kevin Weng of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science with a bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) collected as part of the study of Fukushima-derived radioactivity in large Pacific Ocean predators. Credit: A. Gray aboard FV Aoshibi IV.

Also contributing to the study were Zofia Baumann and Nicholas Fisher of Stony Brook University; Owyn Snodgrass, Heidi Dewar, and Peter Dutton of NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center; Michelle Berman-Kowalewski of the Channel Islands Cetacean Research Unit; and Jun Nishikawa of Tokai University.

The researchers undertook their analysis partly in response to earlier studies by Madigan and colleagues showing elevated levels of radioactive cesium in bluefin and albacore tuna caught off the California coast shortly after the Fukushima disaster—evidence that these fishes had swum almost 6,000 miles in less than two months. (It took ocean currents more than two years to deliver much-diluted cesium from Fukushima to those same waters.)

Although this early work focused on the utility of cesium isotopes as a happenchance tool that could help scientists characterize migratory patterns among a group of heavily exploited commercial fishes, public attention focused on perceived risks to human health.

“The earlier studies showed extremely low risks from cesium to anyone eating these migratory species, but public concern persisted,” says Weng. That concern also expanded to include not only the species of tuna in which cesium had been measured, but to other fishes, marine mammals, and sharks.

“People were very concerned about North Pacific salmon, halibut and scallops off British Columbia, and sea lions in Southern California,” says Madigan. “There was even information on the Internet that ‘the Pacific is dead’.”

“One goal of our study,” he says, “was to put these perceived risks in context by surveying a broad range of vertebrate species across the entire North Pacific for the presence or absence of Fukushima-derived radiocesium. Our results, which show very low or undetectable levels in these animals, are important both for public perception of seafood safety and for scientific understanding of radionuclide transfer.”

The authors suggest that scientists and funding agencies should look for at least one silver lining in any future nuclear or industrial accidents. “We can and should use future point sources of contamination, radioactive or otherwise, to shed new light on migratory dynamics of pelagic species that are poorly understood, heavily exploited, or of high conservation concern,” says Madigan. “But we would need to act quickly, within that narrow opportunistic timespan.”

Originally posted: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-negates-radioactivity-migratory-seafood.html

Bait and Switch: Anchovies Eat Plastic Because It Smells Like Prey

As you bite down into a delicious piece of fish, you probably don’t think about what the fish itself ate – but perhaps you should. Over 50 species of fish have been found to consume plastic trash at sea. This is bad news, not only for fish but potentially for humans who rely on fish for sustenance.

Fish don’t usually die as a direct result of feeding on the enormous quantities of plastic trash floating in the oceans. But that doesn’t mean it’s not harmful for them. Some negative effects that scientists have discovered when fish consume plastic include reduced activity rates and weakened schooling behavior, as well as compromised liver function.

Most distressingly for people, toxic compounds – such as PBDEs – that are associated with plastic transfer to and bioaccumulate in fish tissues. This finding is troubling because it means these toxic substances could further bioaccumulate in us if we consume fish that have eaten plastic. Numerous species sold for human consumption, including mackerel, striped bass and Pacific oysters, have been found with these toxic plastics in their stomachs too.

It is well known that our plastic trash poses a serious threat to marine animals, but we are still trying to understand why animals eat it.

Typically, research has concluded that marine animals visually mistake plastic for food. While this may be true, the full story is likely more complex. For example, in a recent study with colleagues at the University of California, Davis, we showed that plastic debris may also smell attractive to marine organisms. That study focused on seabirds, but now my co-authors and I have found that plastic trash has a similar effect on anchovies – a critical part of ocean food chains.

A school of anchovies. (Wikimedia, Etrusko25)

Sniffing Out the Role of Smell

Olfaction (smell) is a very important sense for marine animals, including fish. Sharks can smell minute quantities of blood over long distances, which helps them find prey. And scientists believe that salmon’s sense of smell helps them navigate up rivers to the specific tributaries where they were born to spawn. Fish may use their sense of smell in behavioral contexts including mating, homing, migrating and foraging.

We tested the idea that plastic debris might smell attractive to the Northern anchovy (Engraulis mordax), a common schooling fish found off the West Coast of North America. Known as forage fish, anchovies are critically important species, ecologically and economically. Unfortunately, they have also been found to eat plastic in the wild.

Working with anchovies is challenging because they require very specific water conditions and school size to behave normally. They need to be in cold, fast-flowing water in schools of at least 100 individuals. When that happens, the anchovies display their contentment by swimming slowly and directly into the flow of water – a behavior known as positive rheotaxis. Luckily, we were able to collaborate with the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco, where they have expertise in keeping these fish happy and healthy.

Anchovies schooling in a tank before being exposed to the odor of plastic debris. (Matthew Savoca. CC BY–ND)

Our Olfactory Experiment

When we started the experiment we did not know whether adult anchovies used their sense of smell to find food at all, let alone whether smell might lead them to consume plastic. To test our hypothesis that it would, we soaked krill (tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that anchovies eat) or plastic debris and clean plastic in seawater for several hours, allowing the water to take on the smell of the material steeping in it. We then filtered our krill or plastic “tea,” presented it to the anchovy schools, and observed their behavior.

When fish are searching for food in groups, their behavior changes in predictable ways: They clump together near the interesting stimulus and dart around, altering their body position relative to the water current. To compare how anchovies responded to the scents of krill and plastic, we hung a specially designed apparatus with a GoPro camera attached over their tank to film the school’s behavior from above.

In addition to analyzing what anchovies did when they detected these odors, we also filmed their anchovies’ behavior while feeding on krill and when they were presented with control treatments of unscented seawater. This gave us baseline information about the schools’ behavior, which we could compare to their responses when they were presented with the different odors.

Using a combination of automated computer analyses and diligent observer scoring, we evaluated how tightly the schools clumped together and how each fish’s body positioning relative to the direction of water flow changed before and after adding an odor solution to the tank. As we predicted, when the anchovies were feeding, schools became more densely clumped and changed their body positioning so that instead of all the fish facing directly into the oncoming current, their bodies aligned more haphazardly as they searched for food morsels. In the control treatments, with no food or food odors present, we did not observe these changes.

When we injected seawater scented with krill into the tank, the anchovies responded as if they were searching for food – which in this case was not there. And, importantly, when we presented them with seawater scented with odors of plastic debris, the schools responded in nearly the same way, clumping together and moving erratically as they would if they were searching for food. This reaction provided the first behavioral evidence that a marine vertebrate may be tricked into consuming plastic because of the way it smells.

The same anchovies displaying feeding behavior after being exposed to the odor of plastic debris. (Matthew Savoca, CC BY–ND)

Reducing Plastic Pollution

This research confirms several things. First, we showed that Northern anchovies use odors to locate food. This may sound intuitive, but before we did this study there was scant behavioral evidence that adult forage fish, such as anchovies, sardines and herring, used smell to find food.

Our main finding was that plastic debris is likely confusing for marine consumers because of both its appearance and its smell. That’s a problem, because if plastic looks and smells interesting to fish, it will be very hard for them to discern that is it not food.

This study also suggests that our consume-and-dispose culture is coming back to haunt us via the fish we eat. The next big question that it raises is whether plastic-derived contaminants can be transferred from plastic-eating fish to fish-eating humans.

One way to mitigate the problem is to figure out why animals confuse plastic for prey so frequently, and our research has helped to do that. However, everyone can do something right now about ocean plastic pollution by avoiding single-use plastic items and recycling plastic upon disposal. There is more work to be done, but we know enough now to make substantial headway on this global environmental issue.

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Read the original article: https://www.newsdeeply.com/

Pelagic survey highlights NOAA’s growing collaborative relationship with industry

Preface: ” The California Wetfish Producers Association and NOAA’s SW Fisheries Science Center are conducting a collaborative survey of the nearshore in Southern CA in 2018. CWPA also partners with the CA Department of Fish and Wildlife to conduct aerial surveys of the nearshore area to document coastal pelagic species now missed in current stock assessments.”

Earlier this year, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used the Lisa Marie, a private fishing boat, to collect data for its annual coastal pelagic species survey. The more was part of an effort to increase collaboration between the public and private sectors.

Earlier this summer as officials with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration completed work on an annual survey of coastal pelagic species (CPS) in the Pacific Ocean, they received some assistance from a new source: the private sector.

Not only were representatives from the West Coast seafood trade industry on board a federal vessel for five days while survey samples were taken, but one fisherman allowed NOAA officials to outfit his boat with equipment to survey more shallow waters near the coastline. The collaborative venture marked a milestone in a public-private dialogue that’s been going on for years.

The CPS survey collects data primarily on Pacific sardines, Koch said, but it also includes observations on other CPS fish such as northern anchovy and jack and Pacific mackerels. Typically, officials use the Reuben Lasker, a NOAA vessel, to conduct the survey. However, private sector representatives felt the government was missing out on some key data in their work.

Government leaders welcomed the idea to get more data to fill in the gaps they also sought to fill.

“Data is like gold to us,” said Kristen Koch, the acting science and research director of NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Service Center in La Jolla, California. “If we can collect more of the kind of data we need, it improves the precision of our assessments of these species.”

Because of its size, the Reuben Lasker can only conduct surveys in deeper waters, around 35 fathoms. Fishermen and processers, who must abide by the survey data that is used to establish catch limits for fisheries, contended that large schools of these fish can be found much closer to the shore, in water roughly seven fathoms deep.

Greg Shaughnessy, chief operating officer for Ocean Gold Seafoods, spent nearly a week on the Reuben Lasker. For the 40-year industry veteran, it was an educational experience for him to see to see the steps NOAA officials take to conduct their surveys. He also said he appreciated being involved in the process.

“We feel that we have something to add to the conversation because we’re out there,” said Shaughnessy, who is also a member of the West Coast Pelagic Conservation Group, a nonprofit industry advocacy group. “We’re looking at the ocean everyday.”

Besides Shaughnessy, Andy Blair, who owns the Lisa Marie, observed the survey on the NOAA vessel. Blair’s boat was also rigged to conduct surveys along the coasts of Washington and Oregon.

The idea for the joint venture stemmed from conversations between current NOAA Chief Scientist Cisco Warner, who was serving as the director of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center at the time; Koch, then the SFSC deputy director; Gerard DiNardo, the Fisheries Resources Division director; Mike Okoniewski, the Alaska operations manager and a fisheries policy advisor with Pacific Seafood; and Diane Pleschner-Steele, with the California Wetfish Producers Association.

Okoniewski said the collaboration and the talks that led up to it indicate an improving relationship between the two sides.

“This has been a real sea level change for the science centers, and they’ve really done a good job reaching out to industry,” he said.

While the survey results won’t be ready for quite some time, both industry and government leaders already hail the project as a success and hope they can do similar endeavors in the near future.

“This is a really positive – experimental, yet, but positive – collaboration that I think we’ve had with this particular group, and we’re looking forward to continuing to work toward jointly getting at more of these observations that help the assessment,” Koch said. “That’s really the bottom line.”

Originally posted: https://www.seafoodsource.com/

Fishermen See ‘Science in Action’ Aboard NOAA Survey Ship

Each spring and early summer, scientists set out along the West Coast aboard NOAA vessel Reuben Lasker to survey coastal pelagic species, or CPS, which includes small schooling fish such as northern anchovy, Pacific sardine, and jack and Pacific mackerels.

This year, with the help of West Coast fishermen, the scientists tested a new approach to extend their reach into nearshore waters to improve the accuracy of the survey results. The collaboration involved the fishing vessel Lisa Marie, of Gig Harbor, Washington, and brought two commercial fishermen aboard Lasker for an inside look at NOAA Fisheries surveys that inform stock assessments and guide decisions on how many fish can be caught by West Coast fishermen.

The idea emerged years before when the then-Director of NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California,  Cisco Werner, along with Deputy Director Kristen Koch and Fisheries Resources Division Director Gerard DiNardo, discussed the potential collaboration with Mike Okoniewski of Pacific Seafood and Diane Pleschner-Steele of the California Wetfish Producers Association.

Werner has since been named Chief Scientist of NOAA Fisheries.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act requires NOAA Fisheries to use the best available science to help managers set catch limits and prevent overfishing. Annual surveys, using echosounders to detect and measure the abundances of CPS populations off the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington, and Canada’s Vancouver Island help fulfill this mandate. NOAA Fisheries also uses trawl catches, and fish-egg samples to help gauge fish reproduction and population trends.

“Acoustic-trawl surveys are our principal tool for monitoring the various species and determining how their abundances, distributions, and sizes are changing,” said David Demer, the Chief Scientist of the survey and leader of the Advanced Survey Technologies Group at Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla. “The surveys are very rigorous because they’re very important to our mission.”

To quantify any CPS in the shallow, nearshore waters off Oregon and Washington where Lasker cannot survey, Demer’s group equipped Lisa Marie, calibrated the instrumentation, and sailed with the fishermen to collect and analyze echosounder and sonar data along coastal transects.

Meanwhile Andy Blair, fisherman and owner of Lisa Marie, and Greg Shaughnessy, Chief Operating Officer of Ocean Gold Seafoods in Westport, Washington, spent five days aboard Lasker, learning how NOAA Fisheries scientists collect information that informs NOAA Fisheries stock assessments and leads to CPS harvest decisions by the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

“I learned a lot, even though I’ve been out fishing for years,” said Shaughnessy. “Now that I’ve been out there and seen how the work is done, I have a much better understanding of the logistics involved and how thorough and rigorous the work really is.”

A spotter pilot flew overhead during parts of the survey looking for and photographing schools of fish from above. The digital images will augment the measurements made aboard Lasker and Lisa Marie.

The vessels and aircraft confirmed each other’s findings when concurrently surveying the same areas.

Okoniewski praised NOAA Fisheries for welcoming commercial fishermen aboard Lasker and explaining the survey methods and science.

“We’ve really opened some new doors with this collaboration,” said Okoniewski, who with Shaughnessy and Blair are members of West Coast Pelagic Conservation Group, a non-profit advocacy and conservation group that represents commercial fishermen and processors. “There’s now a much greater understanding of what we each do and how we do it. It’s kind of a new age in terms of how we see each other.”

Sardine fishing is currently closed off the West Coast because sardine numbers, which are known for boom-bust cycles, have fallen below a protective threshold in a rule that governs harvest. Surveys are essential in determining when the cycle reverses, the population rebounds and, in turn, when fishing for sardines can resume.

“It was a wonderful chance to see science in action,” Shaughnessy wrote in a letter to SWFSC leadership. “From a fisherman’s perspective, the array of acoustic and scientific equipment itself is stunning. However, it was the dedicated men and women that made the real difference. Every crew member was very professional in every sense and yet made us feel included, safe, and at home.”

NOAA Fisheries Vessel Reuben Lasker uses echosounders, sonars, and a trawl net to survey populations of sardine, anchovy, and mackerels. (Photo credit: NOAA Fisheries) 

Fishing Vessel Lisa Marie, based out of Westport, Washington, uses a purse-seine net to fish for sardine and other small fish. (Captain: Ricky Blair; owner: Andy Blair; photo credit: NOAA Fisheries/Scott Mau)

CPS schools (dark patches) in shallow, nearshore water off Washington, and a ship, imaged from an aircraft. (Photo credit: Frank Foode)

Echogram of fish schools (red patches), one near the sea-surface (top of the image), and multiple others deeper. Also visible are plankton (blue layers), individual fish (discrete blue spots), the seabed (jagged red line), and 50- and 100-m depth markers (dotted lines). (Image credit: NOAA Fisheries/Scott Mau)

Read the original post: https://swfsc.noaa.gov/news.aspx?ParentMenuId=39&id=22667

Humpback whales gorge in Monterey Bay

Preface: a huge population of anchovies is drawing whales to feed frenzies in Monterey Bay as well as San Francisco Bay and along the California coast.

A pair of humpback whales lunge feed on a school of anchovies while showing off their baleen in July in the Monterey Bay. (Chase Dekker — Sanctuary Cruises)

MOSS LANDING – For the past few weeks, at least 50 to 75 humpback whales have been gorging on krill and anchovies in the Monterey Bay, delighting boaters and whale-watching groups.

Their feeding frenzy is often visible from shore, from Monterey to Santa Cruz, at hot spots such as Aptos’ Seacliff State Beach and Marina Beach, as well as the Santa Cruz, Monterey and Moss Landing harbors.

Rio del Mar resident Rachel Birns said she’s seen humpbacks from her deck overlooking Beer Can Beach every day since July.

A humpback whale breaches out of the waves in July in the Monterey Bay (Chase Dekker — Sanctuary Cruises)

“Every day, I’m like, are they going to leave? And every day they’re still here,” said Birns, who said she checks for them every morning.

“You just keep looking and you’ll see one. You’ll see a blow and then sometimes they’re breaching. Like, I just had a late lunch and my husband goes, ‘They’re breaching,’ so I ran outside,” she said.

Santa Cruz resident and retiree Steve Lawson kayaks the waters between Capitola and Santa Cruz about five days a week.

A trio of humpback whales work together to feed on an anchovy bait ball in July in the Monterey Bay (Chase Dekker — Sanctuary Cruises)

“What can I say, it’s consistent,” said Lawson. “That is, I’m generally seeing one or two whales a day.”

On Wednesday, he saw a humpback with a distinctive curled dorsal fin, which some call “Captain Hook,” a quarter mile offshore Santa Cruz’s Main Beach, where he sometimes sees humpbacks feed. He also often sees humpbacks feeding near Live Oak’s Corcoran Lagoon and Moran Lake, he said.

The humpbacks near shore are following their food: anchovies, said Kate Cummings, naturalist and captain at Blue Ocean Whale Watching, a Moss Landing-based company.

“It’s not unusual, just very awesome,” Cummings said in an email to the Sentinel.
Cormorants roosting on a section that remains of the Cement Ship at Seacliff State Beach have a front row seat as a Humpback Whale puts on a show nearby. Numerous whales and orcas have been seen recently in the Monterey Bay. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)

“Humpback whales are in the Monterey Bay throughout the spring, summer and fall to feed, but their proximity to shore makes their presence more obvious to people,” Cummings wrote.

Jim Harvey, director of the Moss Landing Marine Labs, said around June or July is when humpbacks switch their diet, from krill to anchovies.

“This is pretty standard fare for this time of year,” Harvey said. “We usually get a fair amount of whale activity early, as in April, May, June — mostly concentrating (feeding) on krill.”

The krill draws both humpback and blue whales.

As the season progresses and the krill are “mowed down,” the humpbacks switch to anchovies and sardines, which brings the whales closer to shore, Harvey said.

Humpback whales have become a common sight in the Monterey Bay from May to November. What’s more rare are the blue, minke and fin whales that have been spotted in deeper waters in recent weeks, said Nancy Black, captain and owner of Monterey Bay Whale Watch, a Monterey Harbor-based company.

Strong northwest winds this spring and early summer have created perfect conditions for krill, since winds generate an upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich waters from the ocean’s depths. About a week ago, the winds stopped and the waters calmed. The krill have begun to accumulate, and so have the whales, Black said.

“We’re seeing blue whales on our trips every day in Monterey. They’re in the bay, on the edge of the canyon, scattered wide. Most of the whale watching trips are seeing blue whales on most of the trips now, because they’re fairly numerous (there),” Black said.

Blue whales are endangered, and tourists fly from all over to the Monterey Bay hoping to see them, Black said.

She has seen fin whales — the second largest whale, next to the blue whale — as well as the much smaller minke whales in the Monterey Bay recently. And on Sunday, she thinks she saw a sei whale, which is the third largest whale, around 20 miles offshore.

“The diversity right now is pretty amazing, to have a chance to see at least three different species of large whales,” Black said. “I wouldn’t say you’re going to see all three for sure on your trip, but they’re out there and conditions are great right now.”

A Humpback Whale surfaces near the pier at Seacliff State Beach Tuesday afternoon. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)

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

Recipe: Grilled Squid With Cherry Tomato Salad & Aioli

Grilled Squid With Cherry Tomato Salad & Aioli

Serves 4

This recipe from Camino’s Russell Moore pairs tender grilled squid with fresh cherry tomatoes dressed in a light vinaigrette. Flare-ups on the grill can impart a sooty taste to squid, so be sure to let the coals burn down until they are covered with ash and no longer flaming.

Squid

2 pounds fresh squid, cleaned

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons freshly grated lemon zest

¼ teaspoon hot red pepper flakes or other hot ground red pepper

Kosher or sea salt to taste

Aioli

1 garlic clove

1 large egg yolk, at room temperature

½ cup extra virgin olive oil

Chard

1 pound chard leaves, ribs removed

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Cherry tomato salad

½ pound cherry tomatoes, red or golden, halved

3 tablespoons finely minced red onion

4 to 6 basil leaves, torn

2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil

1½ teaspoons red wine vinegar, or to taste

To prepare the squid: Toss the squid bodies and tentacles with olive oil, lemon zest and hot pepper. Refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours. Skewer the squid bodies through the tail so that they will lie flat when the skewer is placed on the grill; when you lift the skewer, they should hang like sheets from a clothesline. You may need 2 skewers for the bodies. Thread the tentacles on a separate skewer. Keep refrigerated until ready to grill.

Prepare a charcoal fire and let it burn down until the coals are completely covered with ash.

To make the aioli: Pound the garlic clove and a large pinch of salt to a paste in a mortar, or mince to a paste with a chef’s knife. Put the egg yolk and garlic in a small bowl, add 1 teaspoon of warm water and whisk to blend. Add the olive oil gradually, drop by drop at first, whisking constantly until the mixture visibly thickens and emulsifies. Once you have achieved an emulsion, you can add the oil in a thin, steady stream, whisking constantly. Taste and add more salt if needed.

To make the chard: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the chard leaves and stir them down into the water with tongs or a wooden spoon. Cook until the chard is just tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain and cool quickly under cold running water. Squeeze dry, then chop coarsely. Heat the olive oil in a small skillet over moderately low heat. Add the chopped greens and toss to coat them evenly with the oil. Season to taste with salt. Set aside.

To make the cherry tomato salad: Put the cherry tomatoes, onion and basil in a bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, wine vinegar and salt to taste. Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss, then taste and adjust the seasoning.

To finish and serve: Just before grilling, season the squid with salt. Grill, turning once, until the bodies are white and the interior is cooked through, about 3 minutes per side. Watch for flare-ups and move the squid as necessary to avoid imparting a sooty taste. While the squid cooks, reheat the chard.

Divide the chard among 4 dinner plates. Remove the squid bodies and tentacles from the skewers and arrange over the chard. Spoon the tomato salad over the squid and place dollops of aioli alongside. Serve immediately.

Oceanographic influences on the distribution and relative abundance of market squid paralarvae (Doryteuthis opalescens) off the Southern and Central California coast

Americans Need to Know U.S. Fisheries are Sustainable: Former Senior NOAA Official

July 24, 2017 — Earlier this month, Saving Seafood unveiled our campaign to tell the public that American Seafood is Sustainable Seafood™. A recent paper by Mark Helvey, former NOAA Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries for the Pacific Region, confirms that purchasing U.S.-caught seafood is one of the most sustainable choices consumers can make, and notes that, “Most Americans remain unaware of the high environmental standards by which U.S. federal marine fisheries – and many state fisheries – are managed, in compliance with multiple state and federal laws.”

According to the paper, the standards under which U.S. fishermen operate “conform to or exceed internationally accepted guidelines for sustainable fisheries adopted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.”

The first recommendation made in the peer-reviewed paper is to “increase awareness…of the high environmental standards by which U.S. federal marine fisheries – and many state fisheries – are managed.”

The paper makes the case that, “Sea Grant Extension Programs in U.S. coastal states and territories have conducted education and out-reach, with NOAA Fishwatch and a number of nongovernmental organizations also helping to bridge this gap. However, further efforts to address this lack of understanding are needed.”

This is precisely the goal of our American Seafood is Sustainable Seafood™ campaign.

Mr. Helvey provided the following summary of his paper to Saving Seafood:

• The United States is recognized for its robust seafood appetite and strong commitment to environmental conservation. However, efforts to close or restrict its own domestic fisheries in pursuit of environmental protection are often not considered within the context of seafood consumption.
• Restricting U.S. fisheries comes at the cost of displaced negative environmental impacts associated with the fishing activities of less-regulated, foreign fisheries.
• The authors provide six solutions for addressing this issue beginning with the need for U.S. consumers becoming more aware of the exceedingly high environmental standards by which U.S. marine fisheries are managed relative to many foreign ones.
• While efforts by NOAA’s Sea Grant Extension Program, FishWatch, and a number of nongovernmental organizations are bridging the information gap, the authors stress that more is required for increasing awareness that U.S fisheries are sustainable fisheries.

The paper, “Can the United States have its fish and eat it too?,” was published in the January 2017 volume of Marine Policy and is co-authored by Caroline Pomeroy, Naresh C. Pradhan, Dale Squires, and Stephen Stohs.

What factors play a role in analyzing forage fish fishing regulation?

The interaction of predators, fishing and forage fish is more complicated than previously thought and that several factors must be considered, says researcher.

The group of researchers was evaluating the interaction after results from an earlier report found that fishing of forage species had a large effect on predator population, said the Marine Ingredients Organization (IFFO). Those harvested fish are used in several areas including as feed ingredients.

The new study was initiated because there were some questions regarding the methods used in the initial project, said Ray Hilborn, with the school of aquatic and fishery sciences at the University of Washington and corresponding author.

“When the original Lenfest [Forage Fish Task Force] report came out, a few of us said it seemed that the methods they were using were not up to the questions they were asking,” he told FeedNavigator. The report also offered several policy recommendations, he added.

“It was on our radar screen,” he said. “And one of the things I’ve been interested in looking at is the intensity of natural fluctuation in populations, and forage fish are notable for how much they vary naturally.”

The interaction between forage fish populations and predators is more complicated than may have been suggested by earlier studies tracking that relationship, and several factors need to be considered when analyzing the role that fishing plays on that relationship, he said. “The key point isn’t that there isn’t an impact, but that you have to argue case-by-case,” he added.

Several factors need to be considered when assessing the interaction among predators, forage species, and fishing of those forage species, the researchers said in their study. “We show that taking account of these factors generally tends to make the impact of fishing forage fish on their predators less than estimated from trophic models,” they added.

Study response

The results from Hilborn’s group have seen responses from groups including IFFO.

Previous research based on models suggested that forage fish were more valuable when left in the ocean and recommended reducing forage fish collection rates by 50% to 80%, said IFFO. However, the new paper presents an argument for a more case-by-case basis for management.

“For fisheries management, such a precautionary approach would have a large impact on the productivity of forage fisheries,” the organization said. “As groups such as IFFO have noted, these stocks contribute strongly to global food security, as well as local and regional social and economic sustainability.”

It is important that fisheries are managed with an effort to balance requirements from the ecosystem, coastal communities and human nutrition, IFFO said. The new results provide additional guidance and update conclusions from past reports.

“It is also well-established that forage fisheries provide substantial health benefits to human populations through the supply of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, both directly through consumption in the form of fish oil capsules, and indirectly through animal feed for farmed fish and land animals,” the organization said.

Study specifics

Fishing of low trophic or forage fish has generated interest in recent years, the researchers said. These fish include small pelagic fish, squid and juveniles of many species.

The evidence and theory suggest that fishing can limit the abundance of some fish stocks and can affect predators’ reproductive success by the density of their prey, they said.

“Although it would therefore seem obvious that fishing forage fish would have a negative effect on the abundance of their predators, the empirical relationships between forage fish abundance and predator abundance, or population rates of change, have not been examined in a systematic way,” they said.

In the study, the group examined 11 species of forage fish in the US, including what animals eat them and the role the species play in their predators’ diets, they said.

Species’ predators were identified, estimated fish abundance was analyzed and several models were fit to the data being assessed, they said. A simulation model also used information from fisheries regarding six different species of forage fish to evaluate the potential reduction in food for predators given a 5,000-year timespan.

“The question that they were asking is an important question, but to ask it properly you need to have analysis that includes the important biology,” said Hilborn of earlier evaluations. “We’re just doing a more detailed look at the biology, which you need to do to understand fishing forage fish and what happens to their predators.”

Research findings

The goal of the study was to identify the key factors that should be considered by analyzing the effect of fishing on forge fish, said the researchers. The group found, overall, that the models previously used were “frequently inadequate” for determining the role the fishing of forage fish plays on their predators.

“The most important feature that needs to be considered is the natural variability in forage fish population size,” they said. “Their abundance is highly variable even in the absence of fishing, and creditable analysis of the fishing impacts must consider how the extent of fishing-induced depletion compares with that of the natural variability.”

The research results did offer some unexpected results, said Hilborn.

“I was really surprised that we didn’t see any empirical data showing the relationship between predators and prey,” he said. “We only looked at American fisheries, but didn’t find at any correlation with fish and the predators.”

The majority of cases did not offer an obvious relationship between prey and predator abundance, the researchers said. The size of the fish eaten by predators may play a role.

“While some predators selectively eat small fish (usually not selected by the fishery), others prey on a large range of forage fish sizes,” they said. “The degree of overlap between fisheries and predators is highly variable.”

However, work on the subject is not complete, said Hilborn. Several groups of researchers interested in the area are addressing different elements of the analysis.

“We’re doing more detailed analysis of several of the components,” he said. “A more detailed model of specific places.”

The work includes looking more closely at the interaction of key predators and some of the larger forage fisheries around the world, he said. “I expect in some of these that we’re going to find some impact – overlap between what the fishery takes and the predator takes,” he added.

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