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Tag: fishermen
Study: This Commercial Fishing Technique Is a Climate Catastrophe
Mother Jones: This Commercial Fishing Technique Is a Climate Catastrophe. Globally, it releases as much CO2 as 320 million cars, a new study estimates.
Bottom trawling, a common fishing practice where large nets are dragged along the sea floor, is exacerbating the climate crisis, a new study has found.
Centuries of dead plankton, fish and marine mammals lie on the sea floor, their decomposed bodies locking vast amounts of carbon in the sediments beneath the waves. When those sediments are moved by giant trawl nets, the carbon they contain is released back into the ocean and atmosphere, say the team behind the research.
There’s quite a bit more carbon in the sediments than we (first) thought, said Boris Worm, professor of marine conservation biology at Dalhousie University and co-author on the study. “It’s, in fact, more than (is stored) on land—we did not know that.”
“We want to move away from protected areas as a feel-good measure to protect areas that actually do something for people and for nature, and, yeah, the west coast of Vancouver Island would be the region,” he said. The study also looked at how marine protected areas (MPAs) could bolster biodiversity and food production.
Yale Climate Connections, February 12, 2021
Study: As Warming Oceans Bring Tough Times to California Crab Fishers, Scientists Say Diversifying is Key to Survival
Inside Climate News: As Warming Oceans Bring Tough Times to California Crab Fishers, Scientists Say Diversifying is Key to Survival. A study of the 2014 marine heat wave suggests that fishermen who turn to other species will fare better in future climate disruptions.
California’s Dungeness crab fishermen have had a rough year. Poor meat quality, endangered whales migrating too close to shore and price disputes with wholesalers kept crab pots on boats for nearly two months. The delays left families without their cherished holiday centerpiece and fisherman without the funds that normally pay their bills the rest of the year.
But as rising ocean temperatures threaten to make fishery closures routine, it will be even harder to count on crab for holiday meals—or livelihoods. Over the past decade, warming sea waters have produced harmful algal blooms that contaminate crab meat with domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can cause seizures, memory loss and other serious symptoms and has been blamed for poisoning and stranding scores of sea lions in California every year. State officials delayed three out of the last six crab seasons to protect public health after an unprecedented multiyear marine heat wave, dubbed “the blob,” hit the north Pacific Ocean in 2013.
Flexibility, scientists reported in the study, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, was key to adapting to a disastrous heat wave.
Marine heat waves have already become 20 times more frequent under climate change, and scientists expect harmful algal blooms to become more common on the West Coast.
Study: A Farewell To Ice Fishing? Climate Change Leads To Less Lake Ice
WBUR discusses A Farewell To Ice Fishing? Climate Change Leads To Less Lake Ice.
Max Holmes grew up near the shores of Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay. He recalled playing on the frozen lake as a kid — ice skating, which he hated, and ice fishing with his family, which was a lot more fun.
But as the world warms, winters on Grand Traverse Bay — and many other lakes — aren’t what they used to be. The bay recently had two ice-free years in a row, a change that Holmes — now a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Woods Hole, Mass. — called “dramatic.”
“This isn’t just happening in one lake in the northern United States,” said Alessandro Filazzola, lead author of the new study. “It’s happening in thousands of lakes around the world.”
2 articles on the problems facing salmon.
The Narwhal discusses how the Yukon River salmon count comes up 20,000 short, halting First Nations fisheries. Warming, disease and high waters blamed for disappearance of thousands of Chinook salmon that entered river in Alaska but never made it across Yukon border. Almost 20,000 Chinook salmon expected to cross the Alaska border into Yukon this summer likely won’t make it — a situation that has prompted an advisory committee to urge nearly all First Nations in the territory to refrain from fishing the species for the rest of the year.
Reuters discusses how Alaska’s salmon are shrinking, and climate change may be to blame. Alaska’s highly prized salmon – a favorite of seafood lovers the world over – are getting smaller, and climate change is a suspected culprit, a new study reported, documenting a trend that may pose a risk to a valuable fishery, indigenous people and wildlife. The study, led by University of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF) scientists, found that four of Alaska’s five wild salmon species have shrunk in average fish size over the past six decades, with stunted growth becoming more pronounced since 2010. [No study link provided.]
The muddy waters of US ocean protection
The Daily Climate discusses the muddy waters of US ocean protection. The century began with a great deal of optimism around marine protected areas as tools to protect the oceans. Two decades later, conservation goals and fishing interests remain at odds.
More than half of the United States is underwater: a sunken landscape of canyons, volcanic ranges, coral reefs, and kelp forests.
That’s been true since 1983, when then-President Reagan proclaimed national sovereignty over the ocean within 200 miles of the coastline, and banned foreign fishing fleets from fishing them.
The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which provides guidelines for the management of U.S. fisheries by eight regional councils, aims to protect species from overfishing so the U.S. can derive the maximum economic benefit from them year to year. That mandate doesn’t always fit with conservation goals, which are pursued through a matrix of federal agencies and programs that work with, and sometimes parallel to, the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
Trump lifts limits on commercial fishing at ocean sanctuary off New England
The Washington Post discusses how Trump just lifted limits on commercial fishing at ocean sanctuary off New England. Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is the first in the Atlantic. Trump said a prohibition against fishing hurt Maine’s commercial fishing industry.
A coalition of fishing groups sought unsuccessfully to overturn the designation, made under the 1906 Antiquities Act, in federal court. They lost in both federal district court and in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and said they might seek to push the case to the Supreme Court.
Trump allows commercial fishing in marine conservation area
AP News discusses how Trump allows commercial fishing in marine conservation area.
President Donald Trump rolled back protections Friday at a marine conservation area off the New England coast, signing an order to allow commercial fishing in a stretch of water environmentalists say is critical for endangered right whales and other fragile marine life.
“We are reopening the Northeast Canyons to commercial fishing,” Trump told a roundtable meeting with fishing industry representatives and Maine officials. “We’re opening it today.”
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the New England coast, created by former President Barack Obama, was the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean, and one of just five marine monuments nationwide.
Reevaluating fish consumption advisories during the COVID-19 pandemic: Analysis
Environmental Health News discusses reevaluating fish consumption advisories during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our current crisis reaffirms the importance of weighing the health benefits of eating fish against chemical exposure risks.
Even in the best of times, spring’s long days, warming temperatures, greening landscapes, and sunshine represent a time of growth and optimism—a time to open windows, go outdoors, perhaps even try one’s hand at gardening or fishing.
This spring, during a moment in history that will be remembered for its uncertainty, the arrival of spring feels especially welcome and fishing is among the activities that people will be engaged in as the weather warms.
For some, fishing is a means of outdoor recreation. For others, it is a livelihood. And for others, it represents an affordable way to meet their nutritional needs—especially pressing now, given the economic hardship and potential supply-chain disruptions brought on by the novel coronavirus virus.
Since the pandemic began, grocery store fish and shellfish sales in the United States have risen and the consumption of self-harvested fish and shellfish may also increase as a result of this pandemic.