Lucrative crab industry in danger
Lucrative crab industry in danger | Sea Change: Ocean acidification | The Seattle Times
DUTCH HARBOR, Alaska — For decades, the crab piled up in fishing boats like gold coins hauled from a rich and fertile sea.But the very ocean that nursed these creatures may prove to be this industry’s undoing.New research earlier this year shows that Bristol Bay red king crab — the supersized monster that has come to symbolize the fortunes of Alaska’s crab fleet — could fall victim to the changing chemistry of the oceans.Barring a hasty reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions — or evidence that the creatures could acclimate to changing sea conditions — a team of scientists fears Alaska’s $100 million red king crab fishery could crash in decades to come.That grim possibility also raises alarm about the crab fleet’s other major moneymaker, snow crab.“With red king crab, it’s all doom and gloom,” said Robert Foy, who oversaw the crab research for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Kodiak, Alaska. “With snow crab, there’s so little known we just can’t say. But we don’t see anything from our experience that’s good for any of these crab. Some is just not as bad as others.”
Potential impact on Alaska’s red king crab industry
Source: NOAA, Alaska Fisheries Science Center
Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times
Said Mark Gleason, director of the Seattle-based industry trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, “From my perspective, the chemistry is pretty clear-cut.”For decades, these storied crustaceans have drawn men and women from Seattle to the far reaches of the North Pacific. There, adventurers wrestled 800-pound steel cages amid raging seas and aprons of pack ice, hoping to strike it rich on a bounty of flaky meat and accordion legs.The emerging issues with Alaska’s crab underscore a predicament that stretches beyond the North Pacific. It gets to the difficulty of trying to comprehend the depth of fallout from ocean acidification.For reasons scientists don’t always understand, similar species, even those living side by side, often respond to changing water chemistry in remarkably different ways.“The real issue here is unpredictability,” said Richard Aronson, a Florida-based marine scientist who has tracked king crab in Antarctica. “There are all these unanticipated collateral impacts. The problem is, most of them are nasty surprises.”
‘We’re scared to death’
Certainly the threat to king crab was unexpected.As humans pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a quarter of it gets absorbed by the seas. That lowers the water’s pH and alters the availability of carbonate ions, which crab rely on to build their exoskeletons.Many crab species appear hardy in the face of souring seas, or at least not so frail. Exceedingly corrosive waters actually pump up Maryland blue crab to three times their size and turn them into voracious predators. Sour waters kill Dungeness crab, but far less often than Alaska red king crab.When Foy and his colleagues exposed baby red king crab to CO2 levels expected by midcentury, the young died more than twice as often as crab raised in normal water. When researchers boosted CO2 to levels expected decades later, red king crab died in far larger numbers.“The overall survival at the larval and juvenile stage is extremely low,” Foy said. “It decreases to a point that is likely to affect the population of the crab.”Such a loss would exact quite a toll.“You say king crab, and most people associate that with Alaska,” said longtime crab-boat captain Kale Garcia, who lives outside Kent. “So, for it to go away, that’s a huge part of the identity for Alaska. I think it’d be devastating. I know it’d be devastating for me.”Red king crab is the showboat of the Northwest’s billion-dollar fishing industry. It is a television sensation and a marketer’s dream, its image emblazoned on bumper stickers, mugs, caps and T-shirts throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
It is even a tourist attraction: Cruise-ship passengers stopping in Ketchikan pay $159 for a half-day ride to watch crews haul marine life aboard a 107-foot crab boat that appeared on Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch.”Alaska’s commercial crabbers also catch small loads of golden king crab and Tanner crab, but the real cash comes from just two species — red king crab and snow crab. The 54 million pounds of snow crab caught in 2011 brought the fleet $115 million dockside. But a mere 14.8 million pounds of red king crab brought nearly as much — $92.5 million. And it can fetch $39.99 a pound at Pike Place Market.Crabbing attracts tough adrenaline junkies who disappear for weeks into the storm-buffeted frontier of the Bering Sea. They lounge in cramped quarters watching bad movies and wait for crab to fill their cages. Then workers scramble day or night on icy decks through stomach-churning swells, amped on coffee and nicotine.“A lot of people that are involved in the industry, it’s something they’ve been in forever,” Garcia said. “People like that don’t plan an exit strategy out of the fishery. There is no exit strategy. They’re like ‘This is what we do. We fish.’ ”NOAA researchers are using Bob Foy’s research to develop models and a timeline that charts the potential collapse of king crab. But things are changing quickly.“Bob reared those crabs under conditions that we thought were some time off in the future,” said Jeremy Mathis, a NOAA oceanographer who specializes in Alaska and the Arctic. “And what we actually found is that in certain times of the year, the conditions near the bottom in the Bering Sea were actually worse than the conditions that Bob was raising his crabs under.”There’s no evidence that souring seas have yet altered wild populations — the most corrosive seas now occur at times when red king crab aren’t as susceptible. But Alaska’s crab industry has followed the science closely.“All of us in the fishing industry are looking at each other and going ‘This sucks,’ ” said Ed Poulsen, former science adviser to the crab industry group. “I can tell you right now I’m doing all I can to get into other fisheries. I’m diversifying. With these changes in the environment, I think things are probably not going to get better.”Still, Jim Stone, of Lakewood, Pierce County, co-owner of the Bering Sea crab boat Arctic Hunter, is trying to remain optimistic.“We’re scared to death,” Stone said. “But we’ve heard a lot of horror stories before.”
Adaptation possible, but uncertain
The research comes with plenty of caveats. No laboratory setting can ever properly approximate what happens in nature. Scientists are still conducting genetic tests to see if king crab might have the ability to adapt.“It’s not unreasonable to assume, for example, that they might move, that some form of rapid evolution will occur, that they may become somewhat more robust,” said Andre Punt, a University of Washington professor who worked on the research and assesses crab for fishing regulators.But the situation also might be worse than first thought. Souring seas could hit crab at several additional stages of development or attack their food.“They could be impacted in other parts of the water column,” Punt said. “The prey that they’re eating could be impacted.”Ocean acidification is also not the only marine-world change under way. Warming seas, also caused by carbon emissions, could compound crab’s troubles.“Anytime you’re working with an organism at the edge of its threshold and you add another stressor, that’s going to be an issue,” Foy said. “When you’re working in the subarctic environment like we are in the Bering Sea, these animals are always living at the edge of their tolerance in one season or another.”And while king crab’s future has everyone scrambling, the future for snow crab, which brings in more money, could be equally disconcerting.
No two crab species react same way
No two Alaskan crab species have responded to CO2 exactly the same way. They seem to react differently depending on where they live at certain stages of their lives.Golden king crab, for example, live extremely deep, below 1,000 feet, where waters already are naturally rich in CO2. That appeared to make them highly tolerant of sea-chemistry changes.Meanwhile, baby Tanner crab exposed to high CO2 died at a higher rate than normal — but nowhere near as often as king crab. Foy suspects that’s because young Tanner crab live in water that already experiences vast swings in pH, depending on tides, time of day and photosynthesis.Tanner crab probably are used to more variations than king crab, which remain on the outer continental shelf.While snow crab are genetically similar to Tanner crab, their young spend more time at moderate depths.But with snow crab, scientists have struggled to perform extensive tests. The animals are just too hard to keep alive in the lab.It’s also hard to know how Foy’s results will translate to other species in other waters.A related king crab species has recently been seen by the millions in Antarctica, where it is devouring shellfish and starfish. Scientists are debating whether or not the crab is native.Will more acidic conditions kill these creatures or drive them out? Since they often occupy far deeper water, does that mean they instead might thrive?
“There’s a lot of ifs, ifs, ifs,” said Aronson, who documented Antarctica’s crabs during a cruise in 2010. “I’ve found that the number of times the surprise with carbon-dioxide emissions has been undesirable far outweighs the times it’s been desirable.”The weird purgatory for these signature creatures unnerved Brett Robinson, who captains Stone’s Arctic Hunter.“It’s scary as hell, if something doesn’t get figured out,” Robinson said. “I don’t know.”“I guess you won’t have to fish for them” in the future, he added. “They’ll figure out how to grow these things in an aquarium or something.”
Hatchery may be part of future
Scientists in Seward, a thousand miles from the fishing grounds, are working toward just that.For years, a shellfish hatchery has been learning how to raise baby king crab from scratch. The program started as an experiment to see if baby crab could be transplanted near Kodiak Island, where massive crab populations crashed in the 1970s and 1980s. But the rising threat from acidification has insiders closely watching their work.Crab are most susceptible to corroding seas as babies, when a mere fraction of young survive even in perfect conditions. At the Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery, survival can be 500 times higher.Still, no one expects this operation could ever replace wild king crab. The orders of magnitude required to get enough crab to populate the Bering Sea would be ridiculous.But perfecting the science could provide options, such as the ability to repopulate a few previously devastated areas.“We’re hoping that it never gets to the point that they rely on the hatchery for that kind of work,” hatchery manager Jeff Hetrick said. “If we get to that point I think we’re in trouble. But it is a possibility.”The idea that crab might be partially grown in a lab instead of the ocean frustrated Mizrain Rodriguez, another Arctic Hunter crewman. But it also saddened him to think that humans could be doing such damage to the sea.“Every single animal on this planet lives in balance with its surroundings except us,” Rodriguez said. “We see it. We understand it. But we don’t want to do anything about it. It seems like we are on this destructive path.”
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Fishing Fleets Search for Squid Off Santa Barbara Shores
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A brightly lit commercial fishing vessel hunting for squid sits just offshore from Santa Barbara on a recent night. (Mike Eliason/Noozhawk photo)
Market squid are spawning in more places than normal, including in local watersBright lights seen off the shores of Santa Barbara signify the return of squid-fishing fleets locally, a common occurrence in recent years but still a bit unusual, experts say.Santa Barbara isn’t typically a popular squid-spawning locale. But cooler surface temperatures in nutrient-rich Pacific Ocean waters the past four years have caused smaller California market squid to spawn like crazy everywhere, according to Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of California Wetfish Producers Association.A market squid usually grows to eight inches long with its eight legs and two feeding tentacles— sometimes up to a foot — and lives about nine months, she said.The animals are one of the smallest of all 300-plus species of squid, and die after laying eggs in sandy, shallow water, which is where fishermen come in.Most squid are caught with help from light boats, which shine bright lights at the water to attract the animals to the surface. When they do, fishing boats catch the squid in nets and share about 20 percent of profits with their helpers, Pleschner-Steele said.She said squid-fishing season lasts nearly year-round, from April 1 through March 1, but closes whenever fishermen reach the statewide cap of 118,000 tons — a rarity.Boats usually follow squid from one spawning ground to the next, starting in Monterey and then heading south, sometimes netting near the northern Channel Islands and Ventura.Pleschner-Steele, who lives in Buellton, said La Niña effects have spurred squid to spawn near Santa Barbara and Carpinteria for unknown reasons, and fishermen hit the state’s tonnage quota in 2010.
“Squids are a fascinating animal,” Pleschner-Steele said. “We are learning more about them, and we’re learning how much we don’t know about them.”The California Wetfish Producers Association was founded in 2004 to promote sustainable fishing and to foster collaborative research with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The nonprofit also governs other so-called “wetfish,” such as sardines, mackerel, anchovies and coastal tuna.Although the squid fishery is the state’s largest in terms of volume and revenue, Pleschner-Steele said fishermen haven’t seen such solid production since the last La Niña effects in the late 1990s.The boom is likely nearing its end, however, she said.“We’ve just had four banner squid seasons,” she said. “The conditions were so ripe in so many places. These are small little animals but they are sure tasty.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Gina Potthoff can be reached at gpotthoff@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
Squid Fishermen Find Massive Schools Near Santa Barbara Shores
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -
A parade of boats powering bright lights at night is showing up between Carpinteria and Santa Barbara, very close to shore."We have a squid run going on right out in front of Santa Barbara," said Santa Barbara Harbor Operations Manager Mick Kronman.Squid fishermen who normally find their catch by the Channel Islands, Monterey, Gaviota or Malibu, have located a massive population just a few minutes off the coast between Ventura and Santa Barbara."This is a highly sustainable fishery. It's regulated by quotas even though 118 thousand tons a year seems like a lot this is a massive volume of fish they are fishing on," said Kronman.What's caught the public's eye at night are the bright lights off each boat. They bring the squid to the surface, and the haul is caught in large nets. Then it's off to the markets, and not necessarily close to home."It is big business. The fishermen are paid about $650. a ton for squid. A great percentage of it goes to China, they have a great appetite for squid and about 30 percent stays in the U.S. or it is sent over seas, and repackaged and brought back to the U.S.," said Kronman.During the day you can see some boats "holding" the spots they believe will be good fishing locations at night.They also have to keep from crowding the same fishing area."They do have rules to abide by and some times the squid will be congregated but they have to maintain an eighth-mile distance from net to net. It's a gentleman's fishery, most of the time. Most folks abide by the rules, but as you see, once you get an area of fish, the boats will be strung very close to each other," said Kronman.Fishing has been extremely good, and already many fisherman have reached 80 percent of their quota.
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Paul Greenberg misses the boat in his push for local California squid; fails to understand market
D.B. Pleschner is Executive Director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, a nonprofit designed to promote sustainable wetfish resources.Photo Credit: The Smelly Alley Fish Company
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, CorbisBrian Clark HowardNational GeographicPublished July 10, 2014Scientists 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. WhalesFor 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.
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Peru downplays El Nino chances, as waters begin to cool
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SCOM] July 8, 2014
Photo Credit: Instituto del Mar del Peru
John Sackton, Editor And PublisherSeafoodNews.com 1-781-861-1441Email comments to jsackton@seafood.comCopyright © 2014 Seafoodnews.comStory Posted: 7/8/2014 9:45:13 AM
Unraveling the Mystery of the Great White Shark
Sharks have swarmed the media this summer and it’s not even Shark Week yet.
A great white shark swims off the coast of Massachusetts. Studies show the predators' population is returning to the waters in great numbers.
When men are caught taking selfies with a great white shark right outside of New York City, you know something’s a little fishy.Fisherman Steve Fernandez said he and his friends were not far from 116th Street when they caught a baby white shark. They took pictures before releasing it back into the water about a mile off Rockaway Beach June 22, Fernandez told the New York Post.“As soon as we saw it, there’s no mistaking it. It’s basically a miniature version of the shark you seen in the movie ‘Jaws,’” he said.This wasn't the only great white shark caught swimming just a little too close to the Big Apple.In another recent spotting, a photographer used a drone to film a young great white greeting paddle boarders in Manhattan Beach in June. But a recent study provides some insight into these occurrences: After years of decline, the great white shark population is finally on the rise.The study, conducted by researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and published June 11 by PLOS ONE, analyzed shark records from 1800 to 2010 and found the abundance of great whites has increased about 42 percent in the northwest Atlantic Ocean since its predicted lowest point around 1990, according to lead author Tobey Curtis.Curtis tells U.S. News researchers think there may be a white shark nursery in the waters off New York, which could explain why the city seems to be a hangout spot for young sharks. Conservation efforts are largely to thank for the predators’ return over the past couple of decades, he adds.But while the great white shark population is rising, other shark populations are dropping, Curtis says. Their decline is partly due to lack of conservation efforts, but some species also fall victim to fisherman more easily than white sharks because they are less resilient. Larger white sharks are able to escape and survive nets and hooks more easily than other sharks, such as hammerheads, he says.A separate study published by PLOS ONE in June suggests the great white shark population is also surging in California waters.
The recent research contradicted a previous study published in the journal Biology Letters suggesting there were only 219 mature and sub-adult white sharks in “central California” and only about 438 in the entire eastern North Pacific Ocean. After finding such low numbers, the researchers tried to get the sharks protected under the Endangered Species Act, which would help prevent the species from being traded, sold, captured or disrupted, according to the National Wildlife Federation.The newest research published in PLOS ONE suggests there are actually 2,400 white sharks just in California waters, meaning that the species is not in danger of extinction.“That we found these sharks are doing OK, better than OK, is a real positive in light of the fact that other shark populations are not necessarily doing as well,” George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research and the study's head author, told The Los Angeles Times.
Among the great white sharks dominating the waters is a 14-foot, 2,300-pound fish dubbed “Katharine” by the scientists who are tracking her, reported ABC News.
Greg Skomal, a program manager and senior biologist at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, says Katharine is one of 39 great white sharks he and other researchers are watching in the Atlantic Ocean.Sharks like Katharine, who was tagged off Cape Cod last August, provide critical information about great whites' breeding habits so people can learn how to protect them, says Chris Fischer, another one of the scientists tracking her.Skomal says they began the study in 2009 and for a while they believed they had figured out the sharks’ migratory pattern: In the summers, they moved north and in winters, back down south.But some, like Katharine, have broken this rule: Instead of moving north this summer, Katharine traveled to the Gulf of Mexico. Skomal says roughly 25 percent to 30 percent of the great white sharks they are tracking have more complex behaviors and follow more dynamic movements than once thought.
“I just felt like something bumped into my back,” she said.One day later, a 16-year-old boy was reportedly bitten by a shark at Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware.According to the International Shark Attack File, directed by Burgess at the Florida Museum of Natural History, Texas and Delaware are not common states for shark attacks. Of the 47 unprovoked attacks in the U.S. last year, almost half occurred in Florida. Most of the others took place in Hawaii and South Carolina, according to the research.
Despite the odd locations of the attacks, Burgess says there seem to be fewer attacks worldwide this year compared to last year.He says there have been 26 attacks so far this year, with two fatalities, one in South Africa and one in Australia. Sixteen of the attacks were in the U.S., with no fatalities. The ratio of attacks each year is low compared to the amount of times humans and sharks are near one another.Humans and sharks are actually very close to each other on a regular basis, says Burgess.“Certainly anyone whose spent any time in the sea, just recreationally in the surf zone, has been within 10 or 15 feet of a shark at some point in their lifetime,” he says.At any given time, "hundreds or perhaps thousands" of people are that close to a shark, he adds.In fact, statistics show that sharks have a lot more to fear than humans do.Burgess says humans are killing about up to 37 million sharks per year, while sharks only kill around four or five humans each year. Most sharks are dying when fisheries aiming for another type of fish catch them by mistake and have to throw them overboard, he says.However, Burgess warns that if people do not learn more about shark safety, the number of shark attacks on humans are sure to increase. Naturally, a larger population, increased tourism and water activities means more bites, even if the shark population remains the same, he says.
Humans are not a normal part of a shark's diet, he says, but sharks can mistake people for fish in certain situations.One way of avoiding an unexpected encounter is to stay in a group. Sharks, like other predators, look for the weak stragglers in the pack who linger behind, and tend to attack prey that looks to be alone, Burgess says.And if your parents have ever told you not to take a midnight swim in the ocean, they were right. Sharks feed the most from dusk until dawn – and you don’t want to end up being a midnight snack.The last bit of advice Burgess provides is to ditch your rings and bracelets before hitting the waves. To sharks, shiny jewelry can look like fish scales, reflecting light as you move in the water. Burgess urges people to remember that, when they enter the ocean, it’s like entering the wilderness. Most people don’t think about it, he says, but they are invading other species’ territory.“Can you imagine walking into the Serengeti in your bikini, barefoot and not worrying about the big animals that can do you harm?” he asks.Still, he adds, the ocean is a “pretty nice host.”“Although we wander in their naked and stupid, most of us come out just fine,” he says.
Original story: www.usnews.com
Vampire squid spotted in Gulf of Mexico depths
Rare sighting of deep-water denizen, which does not actually feed on blood, is documented via remotely-operated vehicle
A group of scientists exploring the depths of Gulf of Mexico on Friday videotaped a rarely observed vampire squid.Watch the video here.The sighting was made via remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) and documented by the crew aboard EVNautilus. The footage (posted here) shows the vampire squid moving slowly, yet gracefully, in the gentle current.Stated Nautilus Live on its Facebook page: “We had a surprise visit from a Vampire Squid last night, perfect timing for the end of #Cephalopod week. Check out this eerie video as it drifts into the cameras of the ROV Hercules. Beautiful!” According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which last month acquired one of these amazing critters, vampire squid are an ancient species that possess characteristics of a squid and an octopus.
Its Latin name, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, translates to “vampire squid from hell.”Contrary to its name, however, the vampire squid does not feed on blood. Rather, it scavenges largely on marine snow—organic detritus falling through the water column—and decaying animal carcasses. The richly colored critter boasts incredibly large eyes and can turn itself inside out to escape predators.Vampire squid are thought to reside at lightless depths between 2,000 and 3,000 feet.Aside from the Gulf of Mexico, they’ve been observed in the Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez) and off Monterey Bay.The EVNautilus is studying the impacts of oil and gas inputs into the Gulf of Mexico.
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