One Of Biden’s Biggest Climate Change Challenges? The Oceans

A few years ago, marine biologist Kyle Van Houtan spotted an online video that he couldn’t quite believe. It showed a young great white shark, about five-feet long, swimming just off a pier in Central California.

“Our initial reaction was that it can’t be true,” Van Houtan says. “We know that they’re in Southern California and Mexico, not in Monterey.”

Juvenile white sharks, like this one near Aptos, Calif., are moving into new ecosystems as water warms.  Eric Mailander

When they’re young, white sharks typically live in the warm waters of Southern California, hundreds of miles from the cold, rough surf up north off Monterey.

Still, the shark in the video wouldn’t be the only one to appear. Since 2014, young white sharks have been arriving off Monterey in greater numbers.

The sharks were simply following the water temperatures they’re adapted to. The ocean was warmer, shifting the sharks’ habitat from where it’s normally found. Similar shifts are being seen around the world, just one of the ways that climate change is hitting the oceans hard.

Ocean scientists say the Biden Administration is taking office at a critical time. Sea levels are rising, fish are migrating away from where they’re normally caught, and the water itself is becoming more acidic as it absorbs carbon dioxide that humans emit.

While the administration has appointed climate change advisors throughout the federal government, a key role remains unfilled: the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency that oversees everything from fisheries policy to marine sanctuaries.

Environmental advocates are hoping the oceans play a central role in Biden’s climate agenda, including post-pandemic recovery plans. Restoring coastal marshes and mangroves creates jobs, as well as brings back crucial habitat for marine life and buffers coastal communities against rising seas and storm surges.

“The ocean is not just a victim,” says Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center fo American Progress. “The ocean can also be a hero. The ocean can protect us from the climate change that’s already underway.”

As waters off California warmed during a marine heat wave in 2014, young white sharks moved north, outside their normal habitat.  Eric Mailander

White sharks move in

The arrival of the young white sharks in Central California coincided with another unusual event, known as the “blob.” A marine heat wave was spreading across the waters of the north Pacific Ocean.

“That was some of the warmest water we’ve ever had in recorded history off the West Coast of the U.S.,” Van Houtan says, who is the chief scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In Monterey, water temperatures were as much as 10 degrees above average.

Thus far, the oceans have literally been taking the heat from climate change. Over the last 50 years, they’ve absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat in the atmosphere from human-caused warming.

Young white sharks congregate in Southern California for its warmer water. Only later, when they bulk up considerably, do they move into cooler waters, eventually growing to 15 feet. As the marine heat wave spread, the sharks followed their patch of warm water as it moved north up the coast, according to a new study. Overall their available habitat shrank, since the temperatures to the south and west were no longer tolerable.

Scientists John O’Sullivan of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Chris Lowe of California State University release a tagged juvenile white shark off Southern California, part of an effort to track their movement. Monterey Bay Aquarium

While the water has cooled a bit recently, the white sharks have stuck around. Scientists still aren’t sure how it could affect the overall ecosystem as new species come into contact with the established native species.

“Predators and prey are now crowded into smaller spaces,” Van Houtan says. “If I’m a prey species, there’s just fewer places to hide. And that is a big concern when you’re thinking of the overall picture and you’re thinking of commercial fisheries and sardines and salmon.”

But Van Houtan cautions that the sharks themselves are not the problem. Marine heat waves are expected to become hotter and last longer due to climate change.

“This is not a story about sharks,” he says. “This is a story about climate. The sharks are following their temperatures and their habitat. They’re following their home as it moves up the coast. Our emissions are the problem.”

Oceans in crisis

Similar shifts are happening across the oceans. On the East Coast, lobsters are moving north, one of the reasons that fishermen in southern New England are increasingly finding their traps empty. The fishing fleet in North Carolina is having to travel farther and farther north to find their catch.

Most fishery regulations weren’t written with these dynamic changes in mind. Some rules are controlled by states, even though fish move across state lines. Others limit fishing to fixed areas, governed by lines on a map that may mean little as species move elsewhere.

Climate change is also making ocean waters more acidic, potentially harming shellfish like oysters.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“Our management system has not caught up,” Goldstein says. “So we need to look at what it will take to help these fishing communities, fishermen, processors adapt to what unfortunately is the new reality.”

In addition to warming, the ocean is also becoming more acidic because it’s absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, posing a significant threat to oysters and other shellfish.

As a result, scientists say that cutting overall heat-trapping emissions will be crucial for ocean health, a policy the Trump Administration rolled back. Trump also sought to expand offshore oil and gas leasing in the oceans and removed protections for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a unique underwater canyon ecosystem off the coast of New England.

“I think it’s fair to say that the last four years were pretty rough for the environment and they were certainly rough for the ocean,” says George Leonard, chief scientist at Ocean Conservancy.

Without a new leader appointed at NOAA so far, the Biden Administration’s ocean agenda hasn’t been spelled out yet, aside from the agency’s recent request for feedback about how to make ocean policy resilient to climate change. The goal with the biggest potential impact is Biden’s 30×30 commitment, which aims to conserve 30% of the land and oceans by 2030.

“The ocean needs a lot more protection,” Leonard says. “We have a biodiversity crisis in the ocean and that’s being driven by climate change and overexploitation. Process really matters with 30×30. This isn’t just about fish. It’s about people too. There are a lot of people and communities who can get hurt if establishing protected areas isn’t done in a just and equitable way.”

Traditionally, fishing groups have largely fought ocean conservation, since it can limit access to valuable fishing grounds. But some say the effects of climate change mean the conversations need to start now.

Fishing fleets, like lobster boats in New England, are beginning to find their catch is migrating in a warming climate.  Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“Everybody I talk to, everybody I work with is seeing things change,” says Eric Brazer, deputy director of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, an association of Gulf Coast fishermen. “They are the ones who often see and experience these changes before anybody else does.”

Brazer says if the Biden Administration wants to be successful, it will need to work with local groups from the outset. Recently, NOAA tripled the size of Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Texas and New Orleans. Even though it limited fishing, Brazer says his colleagues were ultimately supportive since they had been involved in the conversations from the beginning.

“Fishermen’s businesses are going to be impacted by this,” Brazer says. “That’s why it’s especially critical for us to be at the table, be at the podium, have access to the managers and start to answer these questions that are unanswered at this point.”

Original post: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/18/975782053/

New study shows Arctic Ocean rapidly becoming more corrosive to marine species

Chukchi and Beaufort Seas could become less hospitable to shelled animals by 2030

New research by NOAA, University of Alaska, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the journal Oceanography shows that surface waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas could reach levels of acidity that threaten the ability of animals to build and maintain their shells by 2030, with the Bering Sea reaching this level of acidity by 2044.

“Our research shows that within 15 years, the chemistry of these waters may no longer be saturated with enough calcium carbonate for a number of animals from tiny sea snails to Alaska King crabs to construct and maintain their shells at certain times of the year,” said Jeremy Mathis, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and lead author. “This change due to ocean acidification would not only affect shell-building animals but could ripple through the marine ecosystem.”

A team of scientists led by Mathis and Jessica Cross from the University of Alaska Fairbanks collected observations on water temperature, salinity and dissolved carbon during two month-long expeditions to the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas onboard United States Coast Guard cutter Healy in 2011 and 2012.

These data were used to validate a predictive model for the region that calculates the change over time in the amount of calcium and carbonate ions dissolved in seawater, an important indicator of ocean acidification. The model suggests these levels will drop below the current range in 2025 for the Beaufort Sea, 2027 for the Chukchi Sea and 2044 for the Bering Sea. “A key advance of this study was combining the power of field observations with numerical models to better predict the future,” said Scott Doney, a coauthor of the study and a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

A form of calcium carbonate in the ocean, called aragonite, is used by animals to construct and maintain shells.  When calcium and carbonate ion concentrations slip below tolerable levels, aragonite shells can begin to dissolve, particularly at early life stages.  As the water chemistry slips below the present-day range, which varies by season, shell-building organisms and the fish that depend on these species for food can be affected.

This region is home to some of our nation’s most valuable commercial and subsistence fisheries. NOAA’s latest Fisheries of the United States report estimates that nearly 60 percent of U.S. commercial fisheries landings by weight are harvested in Alaska. These 5.8 billion pounds brought in $1.9 billion in wholesale values or one third of all landings by value in the U.S. in 2013.

The continental shelves of the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are especially vulnerable to the effects of ocean acidification because the absorption of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions is not the only process contributing to acidity.  Melting glaciers, upwelling of carbon-dioxide rich deep waters, freshwater input from rivers and the fact that cold water absorbs more carbon dioxide than warmer waters exacerbates ocean acidification in this region.

“The Pacific-Arctic region, because of its vulnerability to ocean acidification, gives us an early glimpse of how the global ocean will respond to increased human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, which are being absorbed by our ocean,” said Mathis. “Increasing our observations in this area will help us develop the environmental information needed by policy makers and industry to address the growing challenges of ocean acidification.”

University of Alaska researcher Jessica Cross tests water samples during Arctic research cruise on USCG cutter Healy. (Mathis/NOAA)

 

The crew lowers sensors that measure water temperature, salinity and dissolved carbon in the Arctic Ocean. (Mathis/NOAA)

Read the original post: http://research.noaa.gov

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

El Niño forecast is up in the air for Southern California

With the summer winding down, weather officials say the winter forecast is wide open.

While a mild-to-moderate El Niño weather pattern is widely expected to develop in the fall, forecast models have “projected many different outcomes,” said Eric Boldt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“The odds of drier than normal winter are just as high as a wetter than normal winter,” he said in a video released Tuesday.

Last month, climatologists downgraded the chance of El Niño forming this fall from 80% to 65%. But the latest three-month outlook for January to March shows a potential for above-normal precipitation in Southwest California, Boldt said.

Forecasters are in El Niño watch mode, noting that sea temperatures along the equatorial Pacific have warmed, a possible signal that the storm-producing weather system is strengthening, Boldt said.

In the last four weeks, sea surface temperatures were also above average along the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.

El Niño winters in Southwest California have been historically wet, which would be a welcome reprieve for a region parched by a prolonged drought.

Nearly 60% of the state is experiencing “exceptional” drought conditions, the harshest on a five-level scale as measured by U.S. Drought Monitor.

For breaking news in Los Angeles and throughout California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA. She can be reached at veronica.rocha@latimes.com.

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

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What seafood guzzles the most gas?

CWPA note: California’s wetfish fisheries are the most efficient in the world (2,000 pounds of protein for 6 gallons of diesel).

Please download ‘Fishing Green‘ from our website californiawetfish.org — (under the Fast Facts link).

More Big Whales in Ocean Could Mean More Fish, Scientists Find

New study reveals how scientists and fisheries managers underestimated the massive mammals.

The return of large whales—such as sperm (pictured), blue, right, and gray—could help ocean fish populations recover.

Photograph by Stephen Frink, Corbis

Brian Clark Howard
National Geographic
Published July 10, 2014

Scientists and fisheries managers have long underestimated the valuable role large whales play in healthy ocean ecosystems, a new study suggests. And, scientists add, those commercial fishermen who complain that whales steal fish from their nets have it wrong.

An increase in the number of large whales—like blue, sperm, right, and gray—around the world could lead to a healthier ocean and more fish, a team of scientists report in a review study published this month in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

The underestimation occurred because “when oceanographic studies were started, large whales were largely absent from the ecosystem—because we had killed most of them,” says the study’s lead author, Joe Roman, a biologist at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

Large whales were heavily hunted until the 1970s. At that point an estimated 66 to 90 percent of the animals had been removed from ocean waters.

But since then, great whales have been slowly recovering. There are now more than a million sperm whales, and tens of thousands of gray whales.

Yet blue whales—the largest animal ever known to have lived on the planet—have been slower to rebound. In fact, they remain at about one percent of their historic range in the Southern Hemisphere. Roman says scientists think their absence may have altered the ecosystem in a way that made it harder for all life to survive there.

In recent years, as whale numbers have increased and technology has advanced—especially the ability to tag and track seafaring animals—we’ve begun to gain a better understanding of how important cetaceans are, says Roman.

“Whale Pumps and Conveyor Belts”

The scientists report that when whales feed, often at great depths, and then return to the surface to breathe, they mix up the water column. That spreads nutrients and microorganisms through different marine zones, which can lead to feeding bonanzas for other creatures. And the materials in whale urine and excrement, especially iron and nitrogen, serve as effective fertilizers for plankton.

Many great whales migrate long distances to mate, during which time they bring those nutrients with them. When they breed in far latitudes, they make important nutrient contributions to waters that are often poor in resources. Even their placentas can be rich sources of feedstocks for other organisms, says Roman, who calls whale migration a “conveyor belt” of nutrients around the ocean.

Whale deaths can be helpful too. When one of the massive mammals dies, its body sinks to the sea bottom, where it nourishes unique ecosystems of scavengers, from hagfishes to crabs to worms. Dozens of those scavenger species are found nowhere else, says Roman.

“Because [humans] took out so many whales, there were probably extinctions in the deep sea before we knew those [scavenger] species existed,” says Roman, who adds that he’s working on a new study to estimate how many of those scavenger species were lost.

Maddalena Bearzi, a marine biologist and president of the California-based Ocean Conservation Society who was not affiliated with the study, calls the paper “a great and interesting piece” that could help us better understand the role marine mammals play in the ocean ecosystem.

Fishers vs. Whales

For decades some commercial fishermen have complained that whales eat the fish that they’re trying to catch. Japan’s government has been particularly vocal, going as far as to say that whaling is necessary because “whales are threatening our fisheries.” (See “Japan’s Commercial Whaling Efforts Should Resume, Says Prime Minister.”)

Masayuki Komatsu, one of Japan’s international whaling negotiators, famously told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2001 that “there are too many” minke whales, calling them “the cockroach of the ocean.”

Roman disagrees.

“It’s far more complicated than that,” he says, referring to the whale pump and the conveyor belt. “Our new review points to several studies that show you have more fish in an ecosystem by having these large predators there.”

The next step, he says, is to conduct more field studies on those processes. That could help scientists better understand exactly how plankton and other organisms respond to the presence of whales.

Read original post and view the videos at: news.nationalgeographic.com

Intense El Nino seen likely to be developing this fall

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SCOM] – May 15, 2014 –

New NASA satellite images seem to show that El Niño conditions seem to be developing in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, data from satellites and ocean sensors indicate.  The ocean temperature profile in May 2014 appears very similar to that of 1997, when an intense El Nino cycle formed.

A natural climate cycle that brings abnormally toasty temperatures to the Pacific Ocean, El Niño occurs when winds pile up warm water in the eastern part of the equatorial Pacific, triggering changes in atmospheric circulation that affects rainfall and storm patterns around the world.

Sea-surface height can reveal if such heat is being stored in particular regions of the ocean, since water expands as it warms. Above-normal sea-surface height in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, in turn, can suggest an El Niño is developing, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.

That’s what is showing up right now, as satellite images taken from the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2 satellite reveal sea-surface height, averaged over a 10-day period centered on May 3, is above normal. A similar anomaly showed up during May 1997 — which coincided with one of the strongest El Niños ever experienced. That year North America saw one of its warmest and wettest winters on record; Central and South America saw immense rainstorms and flooding; and Indonesia along with parts of Asia endured severe droughts, the Earth Observatory noted.

“What we are now seeing in the tropical Pacific Ocean looks similar to conditions in early 1997,” said Eric Lindstrom, oceanography program manager at NASA headquarters, in an Earth Observatory statement. “If this continues, we could be looking at a major El Niño this fall. But there are no guarantees.”

A network of sensors in the Pacific Ocean reveals a deep pool of warm water shifting eastward, supporting the satellite data, according to the Earth Observatory.
Model predictions issued on May 8 by the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center forecast that the chances of an El Niño developing during the summer are more than 65 percent. “These atmospheric and oceanic conditions collectively indicate a continued evolution toward El Niño,” the alert read.

This event may be just the beginning of more intense El Niños to come, according to research detailed Jan. 19 in the journal Nature Climate Change. That study suggested the most powerful El Niño events may occur every 10 years rather than every 20 years, due to rising sea-surface temperatures overall in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

Republished with permission of SeafoodNews.com

View the original article here.

Vital part of food web dissolving

Scientists have documented that souring seas caused by CO2 emissions are dissolving pteropods, a key marine food source. The research raises questions about what other sea life might be affected.

It didn’t take long for researchers examining the tiny sea snails to see something amiss.

The surface of some of their thin outer shells looked as if they had been etched by a solvent. Others were deeply pitted and pocked.

View the article here. — SeattleTimes.com
Story by
CRAIG WELCH

Giant squid escapes icy tomb

The giant squid has been thawed and preserved for public display at the Queensland Museum for the first time. (ABC Multiplatform:Lucinda Kent)

 
A giant squid that was found frozen in a block of ice has been thawed and meticulously preserved by scientists for display in the Deep Oceans exhibition.

See more photos at the 612 ABC Brisbane Facebook page.

Mollusc expert Darryl Potter says the squid on display may seem large at around seven metres long, but the species can grow all the way up to 13 metres in length including their ‘club tentacles’ used for killing prey.

Giant squid live in some of the deepest parts of the ocean and were thought to be mythological creatures until around 100 years ago, but the first sighting of a live giant squid in the ocean was in September 2004.

“They were spotted by mariners in early days and that lead to the tales of monsters from the deep,” Mr Potter said.

“That of course led to all your science fiction movies with grossly distorted facts about the size of these things and what they ate.”

Mr Potter says the giant squid on display in the Deep Oceans exhibition, is known as Cal, short for calamari, is one of the best preserved specimens in the world.

Breaking the ice

Cal the squid had previously been on display at Underwater World on the Sunshine Coast, where it was kept frozen in the block of ice it was found in, which kept the creature intact before museum scientists used professional preservation techniques.

“We brought it back to the museum here and it took about three days of chipping through the ice very carefully because you didn’t want to damage any of the appendages,” he said.

“Not only just chipping through it but there’s a lot of ice that was inside it that had to thaw, it sat around for about a week completely thawing.”

Museum workers had to don protective ‘spacesuits’ while they applied chemicals that keep the animal’s skin, tentacles, and head permanently fixed.

The squid has been kept in the museum laboratories for the past 5 years and can be seen for the first time out of the ice at the Deep Oceans exhibit at the Queensland Museum from 28 March to 6 October 2014.

Assessing the Vulnerability of Fish Stocks in a Changing Climate

What is the Fish Stock Climate Vulnerability Assessment?
NOAA Fisheries, in collaboration with the NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research – “Earth System Research Laboratory, is finalizing a methodology to rapidly assess the vulnerability of U.S. marine stocks to climate change. The methodology uses existing information on climate and ocean conditions, species distributions, and species life history characteristics to estimate the relative vulnerability of fish stocks to potential changes in climate.

Climate change is already impacting fishery resources and the communities that depend on them.  Scientists are linking changes in ocean temperatures to shifting fish stock distributions and abundances in many marine ecosystems, and these impacts are expected to increase in the future.

To prepare for and respond to current and future changes in climate and oceans, fisheries managers and scientists need tools to identify what fishery resources may be most vulnerable in a changing climate and why certain fish stocks are vulnerable.  By providing this information, the methodology will be able to help fisheries managers and scientists identify ways to reduce risks and impacts to fisheries resources and the people that depend on them.  These kinds of climate change vulnerability assessments are increasingly being used to help assess risks to terrestrial and freshwater natural resources and man-made structures such as buildings and bridges.

Read the full article here.