National Research Council study finds rebuilding timelines for fish stocks inflexible, inefficient

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) September 6, 2013 -- A new study from the National Research Council of the National Academies, "Evaluating the Effectiveness of Fish Stock Rebuilding Plans in the United States," examines the ability of US fisheries management to reduce overfishing. Among other conclusions, the study, currently in pre-publication, finds that current stock rebuilding plans, which are based on eliminating overfishing within a specified time period, are not flexible enough to account for uncertainties in scientific data and environmental factors that are outside the control of fishermen and fisheries managers. It concludes that basing rebuilding on a timeline diminishes consideration for the socioeconomic impacts of the rebuilding plans.The study was originally requested by Senator Olympia Snowe and Congressman Barney Frank in 2010, who wrote to NOAA asking them to fund the National Research Council's work. The following are excerpts taken from pages 179 and 181 of the report:The tradeoff between flexibility and prescriptiveness within the current legal framework and MFSCMA guidelines for rebuilding underlies many of the issues discussed in this chapter. The present approach may not be flexible or adaptive enough in the face of complex ecosystem and fishery dynamics when data and knowledge are limiting. The high degree of prescriptiveness (and concomitant low flexibility) may create incompatibilities between singlespecies rebuilding plans and EBFM. Fixed rules for rebuilding times can result in inefficiencies and discontinuities of harvest-control rules, put unrealistic demands on models and data for stock assessment and forecasting, cause reduction in yield, especially in mixed-stock situations, and de-emphasize socio-economic factors in the formulation of rebuilding plans. The current approach specifies success of individual rebuilding plans in biological terms. It does not address evaluation of the success in socio-economic terms and at broader regional and national scales, and also does not ensure effective flow of information (communication) across regions. We expand on each of these issues below and discuss ways of increasing efficiency without weakening the rebuilding mandate.Read the full article here.

Ocean Acidification Will Make Climate Change Worse

Given that they cover 70% of the Earth’s surface—and provide about 90% of the planet’s habitable space by volume—the oceans tend to get short shrift when it comes to climate change. The leaked draft of the forthcoming coming new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change highlighted the atmospheric warming we’re likely to see, the rate of ice loss in the Arctic and the unprecedented (at least within the last 22,000 years) rate of increase of concentrations of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. But when it came to the oceans, press reports only focused on how warming would cause sea levels to rise, severely inconveniencing those of us who live on land.Some of that ignorance is due to the out of sight, out of mind nature of the underwater world—a place human beings have only seen about 5% of. But it has more to do with the relative paucity of data on how climate change might impact the ocean. It’s not that scientists don’t think it matters—the reaction of the oceans to increased levels of CO2 will have an enormous effect on how global warming impacts the rest of us—it’s that there’s still a fair amount of uncertainty around the subject.But here’s one thing they do know: oceans are absorbing a large portion of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere—in fact, oceans are the largest single carbon sink in the world, dwarfing the absorbing abilities of the Amazon rainforest. But the more CO2 the oceans absorb, the more acidic they become on a relative scale, because some of the carbon reacts within the water to form carbonic acid. This is a slow-moving process—it’s not as if the oceans are suddenly going to become made of hydrochloric acid. But as two new studies published yesterday in the journal Nature Climate Change shows, acidification will make the oceans much less hospitable to many forms of marine life—and acidification may actually to serve to amplify overall warming.The first study, by the German researchers Astrid Wittmann and Hans-O. Portner, is a meta-analysis looking at the specific effects rising acid levels are likely to have on specific categories of ocean life: corals, echinoderms, molluscs, crustaceans and fishes. Every category is projected to respond poorly to acidification, which isn’t that surprising—pH, which describes the relative acidity of a material, is about as basic a function of the underlying chemistry of life as you can get. (Lower pH indicates more acidity.) Rapid changes—and the ocean is acidifying rapidly, at least on a geological time scale—will be difficult for many species to adapt to.Corals are likely to have the toughest time. The invertebrate species secretes calcium carbonate to make the rocky coastal reefs that form the basis of the most productive—and beautiful—ecosystems in the oceans. More acidic oceans will interfere with the ability of corals to form those reefs. Some coral have already shown the ability to adapt to lower pH levels, but combined with direct ocean warming—which can lead to coral bleaching, killing off whole reefs—many scientists believe that corals could become virtually extinct by the end of the century if we don’t reduce carbon emissions.Read the full article here.

Study finds eating salmon weekly can cut rheumatoid arthritis risk in half

Eating fish such as salmon at least once a week could halve the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis, a new study has claimed.The findings stem from a study of more than 32,000 Swedish women and offer another reason to follow the established dietary advice of regularly consuming fish for good health.Researchers said the benefits of fishy diet are because it is rich in omega-3, which is said to protect both the heart and the brain.A research team at Sweden's Karolinska Institute analysed the dietary habits of 32,000 women, all of whom were born between 1914 and 1948 and were followed from 2003 to 2010.Participants provided information on their diet, height, weight, parenthood status and educational achievements, as well as recording the frequency and amounts of various foods they ate, including several types of oily and lean fish.A total of 205 women were diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis during the follow-up period and the researchers discovered that a high dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids - which are found in fish such as salmon and fresh tuna - was associated with a reduced risk of the autoimmune disease.Read the full story here.

New grant to “fill gap” in sardine stock assessment

New aerial surveys of sardines off Southern California will address fishermen’s concerns that sardine abundance estimates are effectively “missing California fish.”Collaborative Fisheries Research West has awarded a $16,000 grant to a California sardine industry group to help pay for two spotter-pilot surveys. The first survey is being flown this summer and the second will occur in the spring of 2014.The project’s leaders hope to use digitally enhanced photos of fish schools taken during the flights to develop a scientifically rigorous method for calculating sardine abundances. If this can be done, they will ask the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages the Pacific sardine fishery with NOAA Fisheries, to consider including California aerial survey data into its future stock assessments, from which harvesting limits are set.Read the full article here.

Environmental cost of conservation victories

In recent years, Marine Protected Areas (MPA), where fishing is severely restricted or not allowed, have become the Holy Grail of marine conservation for both nongovernmental organizations and governments. In the United States, the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the NW Hawaiian Islands became the first large-scale reserve closed to fishing in 2006 (1). This reserve is 90% the size of California and was followed by the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, about half the size of California, in 2009 (2). In total, the United States has established MPAs 19-times the size of California or roughly the area of the Continental United States.The United States is not alone. The South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands Marine Protected Area in British sub-Antarctic waters is roughly 2.5-times the area of California, and most recently Australia has declared its economic zone in the Coral Sea a no-take area of 3.1 million square kilometers, an area eight times the size of California. All of these areas are heralded as great conservation victories and the Convention on Biodiversity has set a target of 10% of the ocean protected by 2020.Are these indeed victories? Not necessarily. I suggest it is likely that the world’s environment is actually worse off once such victories are evaluated globally.Read the full article here.

New Posters Highlight Local CA Seafood

Many of us may be pretty clueless about what fishermen catch off our coast, the gear they use, or the species that are farmed.To help educate the public, California Sea Grant has created four regional posters that highlight local, commercially caught and farmed marine seafood.The posters are available free for download and printing at Discover California Fisheries.

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A convenient truth: 90% of the tunas are gone!

Last week, I had the privilege of presiding over the defense of the Ph.D. dissertation of Maria José Juan-Jordá in La Coruña, Spain. Maria José is a bright young researcher and has already published several chapters of her dissertation in the peer-reviewed literature.The first chapter in her dissertation(1) is the last in a series of peer-reviewed scientific papers that demonstrate that the combined biomass of large oceanic predators (mostly tunas) has not declined by 90% as stated in another scientific paper ten years ago.The 90% decline figure came from an analysis published in 2003 which concluded that “large predatory fish biomass today is only about 10% of pre-industrial levels” [Myers and Worm, 2003(2)].  Those analyses relied heavily upon catch rates from a single fishing gear type (longline) and aggregated catch across species to estimate trends in “community biomass”. The paper quickly became high-profile in the tuna world. Many environmental groups embraced it as proof that all tunas, not just the bluefins, were in serious trouble. On the other hand, tuna scientists who were actually conducting stock assessments, especially for tropical tunas knew immediately that the 90% number was totally wrong.Over the next few years, a number of peer reviewed publications(3,4,5,6,7,8) showed that the conclusions in Myers and Worm (2003) were fundamentally flawed. Two of the most important reasons for this are: The aggregation of data, and the use of data from a single fishing method. The end result is that the 90% decline is an overestimate. This process of rebuttal is a natural part of the way science develops. Sometimes scientists reach conclusions that are wrong, for whatever reason, and other scientists discover flaws and point to them. A paper, once published, is not necessarily immortal.Nevertheless, the notion of 90% global demise of tuna populations is still out there. It is repeated in many consumer guides published by various environmental groups that want to influence market preferences. It also pops up elsewhere: Earlier this year, I visited the web site of a newly-formed commission that aims to improve governance of ocean resources, and I was surprised to see the 90% number mentioned there. A colleague of mine who also noticed it said he was “disappointed that one of the most rebutted fisheries paper of all time continues to raise its head.”Read the full story here.

Study reveals mechanism behind squids' and octopuses' ability to change color

Color in living organisms can be formed two ways: pigmentation or anatomical structure. Structural colors arise from the physical interaction of light with biological nanostructures. A wide range of organisms possess this ability, but the biological mechanisms underlying the process have been poorly understood.Two years ago, an interdisciplinary team from UC Santa Barbara discovered the mechanism by which a neurotransmitter dramatically changes color in the common market squid, Doryteuthis opalescens. That neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, sets in motion a cascade of events that culminate in the addition of phosphate groups to a family of unique proteins called reflectins. This process allows the proteins to condense, driving the animal's color-changing process.Now the researchers have delved deeper to uncover the mechanism responsible for the dramatic changes in color used by such creatures as squids and octopuses. The findings –– published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, in a paper by molecular biology graduate student and lead author Daniel DeMartini and co-authors Daniel V. Krogstad and Daniel E. Morse –– are featured in the current issue of The Scientist.Read the full article here.