“King Tides” Illustrate Vulnerability of California Shoreline

On Monday, some of the year’s highest tides will hit California shorelines, providing a glimpse of what the state can expect as sea levels rise in the coming years. These “king tides” – as the highest winter tides are called – will be captured by citizen imagery through the California King Tides Initiative.

The California Ocean Protection Council estimates more than one foot of sea level rise by 2050 and four to five feet by 2100 along the California coast. The initiative is getting the public involved by asking residents to photograph high tides in their neighborhood, highlighting the way homes, harbors, and other infrastructure, as well as beaches, wetlands, and public access to the coast may be affected by sea level rise in the future.

The final winter king tides well occur from Monday, February 6 through February 8. These February king tides mark the third of three winter king tides events, following earlier king tide events on January 20-22, 2012 and December 23-24, 2011.

Visit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website for tide charts with specific information about the timing and location of tide levels.

Where to view and photograph King Tides:

North Coast/Humboldt – Eureka: Woodley Island; Indian Island; Del Norte St. Pier; Halvorsen Park/The Adorni Center. Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary. King Salmon Beach. New Navy Base Road in Manila/Samoa.

San Francisco Area Outer Coast: Ocean Beach; Stinson Beach; Pacifica: Beach Blvd. Sea Wall near the municipal pier; Laguna Salada. City of Capitola. City of Santa Cruz.

Inner SF Bay: Proposed Treasure Island development site. South Bay: Redwood Creek and proposed Redwood City dev. site, Dumbarton Bridge. Marin: Corte Madera, Richardson Bay, Gallinas Creek (North of China Camp).

Santa Barbara Area: Isla Vista beaches, Goleta Beach County Park, Leadbetter Beach, Butterfly Beach, Miramar Beach, Padaro Lane, Carpinteria Salt Marsh, Hobson State Beach, Faria, and Emma Wood State Beach.

Santa Monica: Broad Beach, Malibu shoreline homes, Marina del Rey, Port of Long Beach, Port of Los Angeles.

Orange County: Seal Beach/Sunset Beach Oceanfront (City of Seal Beach), Huntington Harbor (Huntington Beach), Newport Beach islands and peninsula (Newport Beach).

San Diego: San Diego Bay, Oceanside Beach, San Elijo Lagoon, Del Mar Dog Beach/San Dieguito Lagoon Entrance, Torrey Pines (where Penasquitos enters the ocean), La Jolla Shores, and Mission Beach.

Fish, Mercury, and Nutrition: The Net Effects

Documentary

What Obama’s Government Reform Proposal Means for Our Oceans

Making Sure NOAA Stays Strong During Federal Reorganization

The Oscar Dyson, an NOAA vessel, headed to summer feeding grounds off the Alaskan coast to study whales that have been teetering on extinction for decades. - AP/ NOAA

By Michael Conathan | Director of Ocean Policy

On January 13, President Barack Obama announced his plan to implement a sweeping reorganization of the Department of Commerce by consolidating six agencies involved in trade and economic competitiveness. One unintended consequence of this reshuffling is that by redesigning the Commerce Department, we now must find a home for the agency that comprised more than 60 percent of its budget—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, our nation’s primary ocean research agency.

In a December 2010 report, “A Focus on Competitiveness,” John Podesta, Sarah Rosen Wartell, and Jitinder Kohli detailed why President Obama’s proposed restructuring makes sense for America. But it’s worth taking a closer look at how such a move would affect NOAA and in turn affect how we manage our oceans.

The president’s plan would relocate NOAA to the Department of the Interior. In his remarks, President Obama went so far as to suggest that the Department of the Interior was a “more sensible place” for NOAA, and that it only ended up at Commerce at its inception in 1970 because then-President Richard Nixon was feuding with then-Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickle, who had publicly criticized President Nixon’s handling of the Vietnam War.

While this storied example of Beltway pettiness has circulated among ocean policy wonks for years, the reality is rather more complex. In fact, when NOAA was established in 1970, 80 percent of its budget and more than two-thirds of its employees came from the Environmental Science Services Administration—an agency that included the Weather Bureau, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and Environmental Data Services—which was already housed at the Department of Commerce.

Since the announcement, many environmental groups have decried the move as potentially compromising NOAA’s scientific integrity by shifting the agency to a department that has developed a reputation for being industry friendly. Certainly, degradation of NOAA’s science-first attitude is to be avoided at all costs. Yet there is no reason the agency’s mission can’t be maintained under the auspices of Interior provided the agency retains its structural integrity and its budgetary clout.

Plans Set for March National Fishing Rally in D.C.

By Richard Gaines | Staff Writer

Where do you think your food comes from?

In this 2008 file photo, a Vietnamese woman works at a fish market in Nha Trang, Vietnam. About 85 percent of the fish Americans eat is imported.

Written by Christina Rexrode | AP Business Reporter

Americans are finding some surprises lurking in U.S. government information about where the food they eat comes from.

One food revelation came when low levels of a fungicide that isn’t approved in the U.S. were discovered in some orange juice sold here. It was then revealed that Brazil, where the fungicide-laced juice originated, produces a good portion of the orange pulpy stuff Americans drink.

While the former may have sent prices for orange juice for delivery in March down 5.3 percent last week, the latter came as a bombshell to some “Buy American” supporters.

Overall, America’s insatiable desire to chomp on overseas food has been growing. About 16.8 percent of the food that Americans eat is imported from other countries, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up from 11.3 percent two decades ago. Here are some other facts:

Not all juices are treated the same. About 99 percent of the grapefruit juice Americans drink is produced on U.S. soil, while about a quarter of the orange juice is imported; more than 40 percent of that is from Brazil.

About half of the fresh fruit Americans eat comes from elsewhere. That’s more than double the amount in 1975.

Some 86 percent of the shrimp, salmon, tilapia and other fish and shellfish Americans eat comes from other countries. That’s up from about 56 percent in 1990.

Read the rest of the story from Associated Press.

Turning the Corner on Ending Overfishing 2012 – Annual Catch Limits Now in Place for Most Federal Fisheries

Everyone – commercial and recreational fishermen, NGOs, Councils, Congress and NOAA – knew it would be a heavy lift to put accountability measures and catch limits in place for all federally managed fisheries. Five years ago this week the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act reauthorization was signed into law and required just that – catch limits for all federally managed fisheries. Well, 2012 is here and we are almost fully over the goal line. Yes, there are a few stragglers, but I can report that all federal fisheries will have catch limits in place in time for the 2012 fishing season.

Signed into law on January 12, 2007, the reauthorized Act called for all federal fisheries to be managed under annual catch limits and enforced through accountability measures by the end of 2011. Over the last five years, NOAA Fisheries, fishermen, the councils, our partner organizations, the science community and many others have been actively engaged and dedicated to achieving this goal.

Reaching this milestone represents a historic achievement and I want to particularly recognize the tremendous amount of effort and sacrifice on the part of our nation’s fishermen and fishing communities to get us here. Catch limits and accountability measures to rebuild stocks and ensure sustainable fisheries represent a collective investment in the future of fishing. And while these benefits will accrue for generations to come, in many cases they do require short-term cost. In addition to fishermen around the country, our eight Regional Fishery Management Councils deserve special recognition. Finally, the men and women of NOAA must also be recognized for their unflagging commitment to this effort and hard work in helping the nation turn the corner in our efforts to end overfishing and rebuild stocks.

Bold goals are difficult, and we all have weathered challenges, controversy and economic difficulties in pursuit of this one. But even as we stand here today with so much work behind us, we know that ending overfishing is not something that is accomplished as a discrete end point. Rather, it is a step in an ongoing and evolutionary process. The science and management of federal fisheries will continue to evolve, change and strengthen to support the needs of our commercial and recreational fisheries and our coastal and ocean resources.

As we begin 2012 and a new leg of this journey, I invite you to reflect on the importance of our collective accomplishment and the strength it provides us to move forward and tackle other issues still in front of us. Some current challenges include working to further refine our management approaches to better meet the needs of fishermen and coastal communities, building on our world class science to better understand trends in fish populations and ecosystem considerations, and taking stronger steps to preserve protected resources like endangered species and marine mammals. Other challenges on the horizon include addressing habitat loss, pollution and environmental change and their effects on our living marine resources. We also must continue to deal with global challenges like pirate fishing.

We have come a long way since 1976 when our nation’s fisheries were being decimated by uncontrolled overfishing by foreign fleets. Thirty-five years later, we now stand at a point in history when the U.S. model of fisheries management has evolved to become an international guidepost for sustainable fishery practices. Still, we have much work ahead. So, on behalf of NOAA Fisheries, I’m proud to congratulate all of you who have been dedicated to achieving this goal and thank you for your involvement and dedication to helping evolve and build the science-based management that has become the signature of U.S. fisheries.

Eric C. Schwaab, Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries

See article: U.S. Tightens Fishing Policy, Setting 2012 Catch Limits for all Managed Species.

House panel eyes Magnuson reform

By Richard Gaines 

Growing chorus against catch shares

Written by

John Oswald | Staff Writer

A number of U.S. legislators are voicing their growing displeasure with NOAA’s catch shares program by asking the federal government to abandon the controversial fisheries management measure.

Simply, catch share programs take the total allowable catch for a fishery and divide it up into shares which are then bought by individuals, associations, communities or corporations. A main concern among those raising the cry against catch shares is that the policy consolidates the fishery in the hands of a few large operations to the detriment of individual fishermen.

On Oct. 6, Congressman John Runyan (R-NJ) sent a letter to President Obama urging him to reconsider the use of catch share programs for commercial and recreational fishermen. In his letter, which was also signed by Representatives Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Frank Guinta (R-NH), and Sandy Adams (R-FL), Runyan wrote,

“Excessive government regulations have played a large role in our continued economic crisis. One of these excessive regulations is the catch share programs for fishermen. These programs have proven to decrease the number of fishing boats, which can have long lasting unintended economic consequences, including the loss of jobs in the fishing industry.”

Less than a week later, U.S. Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Scott Brown (R-MA) introduced the Saving Fishing Jobs Act of 2011 which would require, among other things, that the Secretary of Commerce terminate new and existing catch share programs that result in a 15 percent or more reduction in the total number of fishermen in the program.

“Catch share programs are driving New Hampshire’s fishermen out of business. Five months after federal catch shares were implemented in New England, 55 out of the initial 500 boats in the fishery controlled 61 percent of the revenue, and 253 of the boats were sitting at the dock, unable to fish without quota,” Sen. Ayotte said.

And as recently as Wednesday, an article in the Gloucester Times of Gloucester, Mass, reports that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) has requested that NOAA administrator, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, declare the catch shares program a disaster.

Read the rest here.

NOAA Fisheries Releases 2010 Fisheries of the U.S. Report

Today, NOAA Fisheries released its Fisheries of the United States 2010 report.

Fisheries of the U.S. is an annual snapshot of the landings and value of U.S. fisheries. This year it contains some good news – landings were up and the value of those landings was up. U.S. commercial fishermen landed 8.2 billion pounds of seafood valued at $4.5 billion in 2010, an increase of 200 million pounds over 2009 and an increase in value of more than $600 million from 2009.

Today’s report also highlights the top U.S. ports including our leader for the 22nd consecutive year, the Alaska port of Dutch Harbor-Unalaska.  And, for the 11th consecutive year, New Bedford, Mass., had the highest valued catch, due in large part to the sea scallop fishery.

Another aspect of the report is seafood consumption. In 2010, the average American ate 15.8 pounds of fish and shellfish, a slight decline from the 2009 figure of 16 pounds.  On a global scale, the U.S. continues to be third-ranked for consuming fish and shellfish, behind China and Japan.  Imported seafood continues to increase to help fill consumer demand – about 86 percent of the seafood consumed in the U.S. was imported from overseas.

As Eric Schwaab, NOAA Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, said in our announcement today:

These increases in fish landings and value are good news for our nation’s fishermen and for fishing communities, where jobs depend on healthy fish stocks. We know fishermen are making sacrifices now to rebuild fish populations, and these efforts, combined with good science and management, support sustainable jobs for Americans.

Read the full report online.

Department of Commerce submits plan to comply with Obama regulatory review