Viewpoints: The state of sardine populations

Sardines have been a hot news topic in recent weeks. Environmental groups and others have trumpeted that the sardine population is collapsing like it did in the mid-1940s.The environmental group Oceana has been arguing this point loudly in order to shut down the sardine fishery. That’s why it filed suit in federal court, in a case now under appeal, challenging the current sardine management.So what is the truth about the state of sardines? It’s much more complicated than environmentalists would lead you to believe.In fact, it’s inaccurate and disingenuous to compare today’s fishery management with the historic sardine fishery collapse that devastated Monterey’s Cannery Row.In the 1940s and ’50s, the fishery harvest averaged 43 percent or more of the standing sardine stock. Plus, there was little regulatory oversight and no limit on the annual catch.Today, the allowed annual U.S. catch totals roughly 5 percent and coastal sardine exploitation averages less than 15 percent of the northern stock.Read the full story here.

El Niño may make 2014 the hottest year on record

Hold onto your ice lollies. Long-term weather forecasts are suggesting 2014 might be the hottest year since records began. That's because climate bad-boy El Niño seems to be getting ready to spew heat into the atmosphere.An El Niño occurs when warm water buried below the surface of the Pacific rises up and spreads along the equator towards America. For nine months or more it brings rain and flooding to areas around Peru and Ecuador, and drought and fires to Indonesia and Australia. It is part of a cycle called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.It is notoriously hard to make a prediction before the "spring barrier" as to whether there will be an El Niño in a given year. "The El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle more or less reboots around April-May-June each calendar year," says Scott Power from the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne, Australia.The problem is that there is so much background variability in the atmosphere and ocean that it is hard to see any signal amidst the noise, says Wenju Cai from the CSIRO, Australia's national research agency in Melbourne. "Even if there is a developing El Niño, it is hard to predict."Read the full article here.

Global Fish biomass may be 10 times higher than thought says acoustic survey

According to a paper produced by Carlos Duarte for the Spanish National Research Council, fish biomass in the ocean is 10 times higher than estimated.  The 6 million euro project consisted of a series of acoustic transects that detected mesopelagic species like lantern fish.  These fish are generally found in the open ocean between 200 and 1000 meters, and the rise to the shallower depth at night, and retreat deeper during the day.  They also detect nets and can flee from trawls.Mesopelagic fishes, are fish such as lantern fishes (Myctophidae) and cyclothonids (Gonostomatidae), who live in the twilight zone of the ocean, between 200 and 1,000 meters deep. They are the most numerous vertebrates of the biosphere, but also the great unknowns of the open ocean, since there are gaps in the knowledge of their biology, ecology, adaptation and global biomass.With a stock estimated at 1,000 million tons so far, mesopelagic fish dominate the total biomass of fish in the ocean.However, a team of researchers with the participation of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has found that their abundance could be at least 10 times higher. The results, published in Nature Communications journal, are based on the acoustic observations conducted during the circumnavigation of the Malaspina Expedition.During the 32,000 nautical miles traveled during the circumnavigation, the researchers of the Malaspina Expedition (a project led by CSIC researcher Carlos Duarte) took measurements between 40°N and 40°S, from 200 to 1,000 meters deep, during the day.Duarte states: "Malaspina has provided us the unique opportunity to assess the stock of mesopelagic fish in the ocean. Until now we only had the data provided by trawling. It has recently been discovered that these fishes are able to detect the nets and run, which turns trawling into a biased tool when it comes to count its biomass".Read the full article here. 

Sardines may help to slow aging of your brain

Eating sardines may slow the brain's aging and protect against Alzheimer's disease.Eating oily fish such as mackerel and sardines may ward off Alzheimer's disease and can delay elderly people's brains' aging by two years, a study suggests.Research of more than 1,100 elderly women found that those who consumed high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which are found in oily fish, had larger brains.Read the full article here.

Squid vs. fish: Camera captures epic undersea battle on video

Thanks to its sharp beak, a small red squid emerged victorious after an epic hourlong battle with a much bigger owlfish, all caught on video last November in Monterey Bay, Calif.The black-eyed squid paralyzed the owlfish by cutting through the fish's backbone, according to Bruce Robinson, a senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Robinson narrates a video of the fight between invertebrate and vertebrate, captured by MBARI's remotely operate vehicled Doc Ricketts on Nov. 11, 2013.The Doc Ricketts discovered the struggling marine creatures at about 1,475 feet (450 meters) below Monterey Bay as the vehicle was rising toward the surface, said Susan von Thun, an MBARI senior research technician. Scientists watched the scene play out for 50 minutes before the ROV had to continue its journey, Von Thun told LiveScience. [See video of the squid-fish tussle.]"They were sinking rapidly the whole time, and we think that's part of the squid's tactic," Von Thun said. "We see a lot of feeding events, and oftentimes the squid gets startled and lets go, but this guy held on for the whole time that we watched it."By the time the ROV left, the squid and owlfish had dropped to a depth of 1,970 feet (600 meters), Von Thun said.Read the full article here.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IumiGIM26wc

From ancient fish, insight into origin of limbs

A fish with legs? It sounds preposterous, but ancient fossils unearthed in the Canadian Arctic reveal a fish that had skeletal features similar to animals with legs, researchers said Monday.The find challenges the widely held view of evolution that hind limbs did not begin to form until creatures left the oceans and began living on land.And it provides a powerful insight into the pivotal episode when creatures emerged onto land: If the authors are right, we can trace our arms — and our legs — to fish fins.“That wrist you use to write with, the neck you use to move your head around with, the lungs you’re using to breathe . . . all derive from parts in the bodies of fish. Your hands and arms derive from parts of the fins,” said Neil Shubin, a professor of anatomy at the University of Chicago who was one of the leaders of the work. “What the fossil record tells us is how deeply we are connected to life on the rest of the planet. In this case, this tells us how closely we are related to fish.”Read the full article here.

As sardines vanish from Southern California coastal waters, fishermen rely on squid and anchovy

Larry Derr was as prepared as any longtime Southern California bait fisherman for the disappearance of the Pacific sardines he has pulled up by the ton since the 1980s.He can fish anchovies instead and, if those become scarce, there's been a local surge in market squid to keep him in business.But the fickle sardines have been so abundant for so many years - sometimes holding court as the most plentiful fish in coastal waters - that it was a shock when he couldn't find one of the shiny silver- blue coastal fish all summer, even though this isn't the first time they've vanished.And the similar, but smaller, anchovies have proven a poor replacement since sardines became scarce. Fortunately, a boom in market squid has propelled Derr and other coastal pelagic fishers.In three days of nighttime fishing last week, Derr barely cleared a measly 20 scoops of anchovies to sell."A couple days ago we caught a ton of anchovies," Derr said, keeping a vigilant eye for the telltale red mass on the In-Seine's sonar during a predawn hunt Saturday. The screen remained black with irregularly dispersed green dots representing schools too small to fish. "We want this to be solid red."Though sardines aren't as valuable as tuna or rockfish, they're an important food source for larger fish, marine mammals like sea lions, dolphins and whales, and sea birds that can spot them from the air and dive for them.Some have attributed recent rashes of sea lion pup and pelican deaths to the sardine population decline, which began a few years ago and was officially recognized in December when the fishing quota was dropped to just 5,446 metric tons for all of California, Oregon and Washington from January to June. In the same time period last year, the quota was 18,073 metric tons.The Pacific Fishery Management Council lowered the quota in November after years of sardine stock decline from 2006, when 1.4 million tons were estimated to be swimming around the north Pacific. This year, their numbers are believed to be less than 400,000 metric tons.Read the full article here.

Giant squid caught by net fisherman off Japan

A story published Thursday about a monstrous radioactive squid discovered on a Southern California beach was an obvious hoax.But this past week off Japan, an actual giant squid was captured in a fisherman’s net and died after it was hauled to the surface.The squid in the hoax story was said to be 160 feet long and its immense size was blamed on radiation being leaked into the Pacific in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.“Alarms sound over radioactive gigantism,” screamed a headline above a story that featured a photoshopped image and quoted experts who do not exist.Though some believed the story, fabricated by the Lightly Braised Turnip website, it was easily debunked.But the capture of an actual giant squid Wednesday off Sadogashima Island is more believable, even though squid captures are exceedingly rare.According to the Japan Times, the male specimen measured about 12 feet and weighed about 330 pounds. The accompanying Japanese-language video shows the creature on display and being measured by scientists (footage of the squid being pulled to the boat begins at the 1-minute mark).Giant squid are elusive creatures that occupy the dark ocean depths. They’re believed to have spawned sea monster myths among ancient mariners, and have been featured as predatory beasts in novels and films.They can measure to about 40 feet and weigh nearly a ton.Read the full story here.