What’s killing west coast kelp and what we stand to lose.
In the latest episode of Changing Waters, Global Ocean Health’s Deputy Director Julia Sanders interviews kelp guru, Dr. Tom Mumford from the Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington in Seattle. From Northern California to Southern Oregon, kelp is undergoing devastating losses, with 95% of kelp forests transformed into urchin barrens. Tom explains what happened and the miraculous benefits kelp provides as an ecosystem engineer and as a source for new scientific discoveries. From kelp-derived plastic you can eat, to wound care, from rediscovering how kelp can help farmers, to a critical contributor to biodiversity and marine food webs, there is much to be gained from kelp. Catch this episode of Changing Waters and open your eyes to a miracle macroalgae and the struggle to keep it thriving in changing ocean conditions.
Lauren Bell (photographed in March 2020) kneels over one of her many seaweed plants growing in the basement of the Sitka Sound Science Center. Bell spent the last two winters in the center’s basement, studying how warmer, more acidic waters may affect marine organisms in Sitka Sound in the future (KCAW/Rose)
Predicting the future is hard, unless you’ve got a crystal ball. In the basement of the Sitka Sound Science Center, a researcher has designed an experiment to study the future of ocean acidification, and her “crystal ball” is herring.
In Part 2 of KCAW’s two-part story on the 2020 herring season in Sitka Sound, Katherine Rose visits the lab of doctoral researcher Lauren Bell, as she explores possible futures for our oceans, and one of its most important resources.
Lauren Bell stands in about an inch of water, hovering over one of over twenty tanks in the basement of the Sitka Sound Science Center. The equipment used in this experiment is loud, and artificial sunlight bounces off Bell’s face as she tells me about the different types of seaweed she’s growing.
“The seaweed have grown a lot, they’ve been sitting in these conditions for about a month now,” she says.
Bell is a PhD student at UC Santa Cruz, and for the last couple of years she’s been doing her research in the center’s basement. She’s been trying to replicate what Southeast Alaska’s waters will look like when our grandchildren are getting up there in age.
“The projected change in Sitka Sound due to climate change, these added carbon emissions that are coming into our atmosphere, is that we’re going to see a gradual warming of our waters throughout the year,” she says. “At any time of the year they expect that within 80 years we’re going to see about a a 7 degree increase Fahrenheit in water temperature.” The excess carbon means nearby waters will become more acidic- the phenomenon known as “ocean acidification.”
Bell uses hot tub heaters to simulate future temperatures and then bubbles in carbon dioxide, creating acidified water. Then researchers can put any marine organism from Sitka Sound into those conditions and see how they respond. This spring, they looked at two different kinds of seaweed.
“We’re seeing how that impacts their growth, their productivity, how they photosynthesize in different light, their chemical defenses,” Bell says. Seaweed may or may not do better under some of these conditions. She doesn’t have results for this experiment yet- that takes a little while.
But last year, I visited her in the same basement, where she was monitoring herring roe to see how climate change could affect Pacific herring, and she now has the preliminary results from that study. Bell compared herring eggs from fertilization to hatch in four different conditions. She looked at how they were affected by warmer temperature, more acidic conditions, and water that was both warmer and more acidic. Bell found significant differences between herring eggs grown under those future conditions, and those grown in today’s conditions.
“It seemed like warming and acidification had very different impacts on actually what they looked like, how big they were and how well they could use their yolks,” Bell says. “And they had opposite effects.”
Bell says the fish that were exposed to only higher temperatures were shorter with larger yolks. And when you looked at ocean acidification they were actually longer with smaller yolks.
“So clearly these two different things that are stressing them out are stressing them out in different ways,” she says.
But here’s the really interesting thing: When Bell examined herring in future conditions, raised in both warmer temperatures and more acidic waters at the same time, the herring didn’t look much different from the herring raised in today’s conditions. Bell says it was like the two factors cancelled each other out. The fact that they were raised in harsher conditions was invisible to the naked eye…and the scale.
But when you looked at them at the molecular level, at the RNA to DNA ratio, Bell says the eggs raised under future conditions were compromised.
“It hides the fact that they’re stressed because they almost cancel each other out, but they’re still affected,” she says. “You look at their molecular level, they’re still not in good condition. That’s kind of terrifying. Like, okay, well maybe in the future look at them and we go ‘Oh, they’re fine, they look fine!’ but actually if you look at their protein expression they’re not functioning as well as they used to.”
Bell says she doesn’t know exactly why the two factors would cause this reaction, but the effects are hard to ignore.
“There’s something going on, they’re stressed out, and we need to be very careful about what we’re using to determine how stressed they are in order to say whether they’re going to be compromised in the future,” she says.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game doesn’t take the RNA:DNA ratio into account when it’s monitoring Sitka’s herring population, although it does keep tabs on average weight and age classes. ADF&G biologist Sherri Dressel says the department takes climate change into account in its model by keeping tabs on temperature.
“If temperature changes for a block of years and that affects herring survival, we are able to estimate a survival during blocks of similar temperature,” says Dressel. “If there is long-term climate change, and the temperature continues to go up, this model allows us to estimate estimates, frankly of temperature over time.”
She says modeling takes ocean acidification into very broad account because there haven’t been many studies of the effects of ocean acidification on Pacific herring. She’s excited to see Bell’s results.
“With research like Lauren is doing- when we learn sort of the trigger points, or how ocean acidification affects certain life stages, then we may be able to incorporate it more effectively and more narrowly.”
July 2nd, 2020, by Annie Hawkins, NationalFisherman.com
By now, you have probably seen quite a bit about offshore wind energy development planned for multiple regions of the United States. Fishermen and related businesses understandably run the gamut from bewildered (“That would never happen where I fish”), to overwhelmed (“There’s too much else going on to pay attention”), to laser-focused (“Leases are on my fishing grounds”). Here are seven key reasons you should get involved now.
1. Wind is big
Just a few years ago, pilot or demonstration projects were the name of the game in U.S. offshore wind energy, but times have changed. Qualified companies are large and almost exclusively foreign-owned. Many or most are linked to governments and national oil and gas companies. They work closely with highly active trade associations, embassies, and investment firms.
The projects themselves are no less extraordinary. Current generation offshore wind turbines are three times the height of the Statute of Liberty, and the blades are among the largest composite human-made structures in existence. In the North Sea, Denmark even plans to build two artificial islands to house the large amount of offshore wind infrastructure there and export the power.
2. Conflicts are complex
There are so many aspects of interactions between offshore wind and fisheries that will be better understood the more the fishing industry brings its knowledge to the table. Offshore wind projects are not simply a series of “sticks in the water.”
In deeper waters of the Pacific, Hawaii and Gulf of Maine, floating platforms will be connected through a series of suspended cables. Inter-array cables run between turbines, and scour protection and mattressing extend far beyond the bases. The southern New England lease area alone is 1,400 square miles in area and transit distances around installations could be significant if adequate safety corridors are not required.
When viewed in conjunction with strict fisheries management measures, everything from interactions with protected resources to changes in port traffic and access will affect fisheries in ways that those outside the industry aren’t well-suited to understand without your involvement.
3. Early projects will set precedent
Just because the current projects are not located in your area doesn’t mean they won’t affect you. A relatively small group of developers own the leases, and the federal permitting process is being tested and tweaked in real time.
Even states are following closely in the footsteps of others, as was recently seen when Massachusetts largely followed a Rhode Island-developed process for compensatory mitigation for the Vineyard Wind project. The developer stated its intent for that process to set precedent for every project in every state. What’s more, practices for fisheries mitigation and conflict reduction are often being imported wholesale from Europe, and we’re seeing that trend in everything from the regulatory process to Coast Guard recommendations to the army of wind consultants developing “stakeholder” outreach plans.
While that can be positive where early lessons have been learned, it can also interfere with a full ability to address location-specific issues. The key point: for better or worse, we’re not starting from ground zero.
4. The process is nothing like fisheries management
Those familiar with the regional fishery management councils are used to transparent, inclusive decision making: whether you love or hate the outcome, you know where to go to be heard. Regardless of BOEM’s ultimate jurisdiction, in practice offshore wind planning is highly decentralized among federal agencies, and most design decisions are driven through state processes that also include multiple agencies and private sector groups.
A lot happens behind closed doors before any public announcements, particularly when it comes to the studies that determine siting locations. Public comment periods are very specific to given project decisions and phases, but there has been no early, comprehensive review of fisheries impacts.
5. Projects aren’t necessarily isolated
Project siting isn’t limited to areas with large coastal electricity markets and adequate shoreside transmission capacity. It also is, or will be, used to power remote industrial uses too — even oil and gas platforms! Entire conferences in Europe have been convened for years around topics like co-location of other activities in offshore wind arrays and the role of oil and gas in offshore renewables.
There is also evidence that a surge in renewables could require expansions in seabed mining for battery and technology components and offshore gravel extraction for materials. Regional planning approaches have linked these uses and the broader offshore wind community with MPA designations and large-scale ocean exploration and research efforts. The fishing industry is historically not great at tracking and engaging in these efforts.
6. Limited research exists on effects to fish
Although offshore wind has been in Europe for over a decade, there are very few peer-reviewed studies on its impacts to fisheries and fish stocks (a 2019 NMFS meta-analysis showed only 11 in total). Much of the known research is generated by wind companies and consultants, and the data they collect is often considered proprietary.
A newly released comprehensive Puget Sound Kelp Conservation and Recovery Plan was released in May 2020, with participation from leading experts, organizations, agencies, and tribes. Kelp are a foundation species critical to the health of marine biodiversity, including important commercial fisheries. Devastating losses have occurred on the West Coast since the advent of the Warm Blob, and continuing marine heat waves are taking their toll. Puget Sound is feeling the loss as well, and this newly released plan provides background information and a roadmap to kelp conservation and recovery.
Background information: Extensive bull kelp losses in South and Central Puget Sound, along with localized declines throughout the region, are cause for concern for the health and stability of bull kelp and understory kelp forests in Puget Sound. Kelp forests provide a variety of direct and indirect services for nearshore marine habitats and human coastal populations. Kelp forests of Puget Sound are ecosystem foundations, like coral reefs and tropical rainforests, which supports diverse and productive communities. Like eelgrass, kelp ecosystems provide critical habitat that increases overall biodiversity and are important for many economically valuable threatened salmon species and endangered rockfish.
Initiated in 2016 as part of the Puget Sound rockfish recovery effort, scientists and resource managers used a collaborative approach to review local science and policy relating to kelp forests. Coordinated action is needed to reverse downward trends in kelp populations by addressing both longstanding and emerging stressors. The Puget Sound Kelp Conservation and Recovery Plan provides a research and management framework for coordinated action to better understand kelp population dynamics and drivers of declines while also working to strengthen implementation and enforcement of protective measures. Successfully achieving kelp conservation and recovery will require a collaborative effort between our community of Tribes, managing entities, and stakeholders in Puget Sound.
On this episode of our Changing Waters podcast, host and GOH Director Brad Warren sits down with Dr. Margaret Leinen, the Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Margaret Leinen, a highly distinguished national leader and oceanographer, was appointed the eleventh director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego in July 2013. She also serves as UC San Diego’s vice chancellor for marine sciences and dean of the School of Marine Sciences. She joined UC San Diego in October 2013.
Leinen is an award-winning oceanographer and an accomplished executive with extensive national and international experience in ocean science, global climate and environmental issues, federal research administration, and non-profit startups. She is a researcher in paleo-oceanography and paleo-climatology. Her work focuses on ocean sediments and their relationship to global biogeochemical cycles and the history of Earth’s ocean and climate.
Despite worrying signs of ocean change impacting Dungeness crab, the West Coast’s prolific coastwide crab fishery just keeps on giving—and lately, even increasing. Credit sound fishery management, but don’t doze off.
– Brad Warren, Executive Director of NFCC
March 4th, 2020 NOAA Fisheries
The West Coast Dungeness crab fishery doesn’t just support the most valuable annual harvest of seafood on the West Coast. It’s a fishery that just keeps on giving.
Fishermen from California to Washington caught almost all the available legal-size male Dungeness crab each year in the last few decades. However, the crab population has either remained stable or continued to increase, according to the first thorough population estimate of the West Coast Dungeness stocks.
“The catches and abundance in Central California especially are increasing, which is pretty remarkable to see year after year,” said Kate Richerson, a research scientist at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. Richerson is the lead author of the new study published in the journal Fisheries Research. “There’s reason to be optimistic that this fishery will continue to be one of the most productive and on the West Coast.”
Other recent research has suggested that the West Coast’s signature shellfish could suffer in the future from ocean acidification and other effects related to climate change. That remains a concern, Richerson said, but the study did not detect obvious signs of population-level impacts yet.
Fishing Regulation Success
The secret to the success of the Dungeness crab fishery may be the way fishing regulations protect the crab populations’ reproductive potential. Male Dungeness crabs mature and begin reproducing one to two years before they can be caught, so crabs can reproduce even with heavy fishing pressure. Female Dungeness crab can store sperm for more than a year, allowing them to reproduce even in the absence of numerous males. Fishermen must also return females to the water, further protecting the reproductive capacity of the population.
“The management system that is used for Dungeness crab seems to be a perfect fit for their life history because it allows the population to reproduce and grow even with the intensive harvest,” Richerson said.
Natural Variability
Crab numbers and reproduction rates do vary from year to year, mostly because of ocean conditions. That also may have contributed to the increasing numbers in Central California. They have risen over the last two decades and now average nearly five times abundance estimates from 1970 to 2000.
Central California crab numbers have increased enough that they are now closer to the size of populations in Northern California, coastal Washington, and Oregon. Those populations do not show the same growth trends as those in Central California, but remain stable overall.
However, a previous increase in the Central California landings from the 1930s to the late 1950s was followed by a dramatic crash about 1960. Catches remained low until the 1980s and then rebounded. Researchers believe those fluctuations likely reflected changing ocean conditions, and could happen again.
“If this is true, the recent increase in Central California crab abundance may be reversed when the system again shifts to a period of later spring transitions,” the scientists wrote. “This is likely to have a large impact on the fishery, as well as other interlinked fisheries in the area.”
This is a useful synthesis of current knowledge on ocean alkalinity enhancement, an approach to carbon removal that could have far-reaching effects (both positive and negative) on the ocean and coastal communities. This amounts to capturing carbon dioxide and trapping it back in mineral form. Getting the CO2 to stay put, maximizing its benefits, and managing its potential risks will require close attention. We believe people who depend on healthy oceans for food and livelihood should have a seat at the table.
Brad Warren, Executive Director of National Fisheries Conservation Center and its Global Ocean Health program
Here’s a salute to Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, who today broke a legislative logjam to cut carbon emissions (see AP article below). Unchecked carbon pollution is emerging as the largest looming threat to fisheries, which supply tens of thousands of jobs and millions of meals from waters of the Pacific Northwest, and more than a million jobs nationwide.
A bitter, drawn-out fight in Oregon’s legislature saw minority Republicans twice block a quorum on climate legislation by walking out instead of getting outvoted. So today Gov. Kate Brown busted a new move: Cutting carbon pollution by executive order.
Will it stick? That’s an open question. But win, lose or draw, Gov. Brown’s action shows a willingness to experiment in tackling a vital problem for the future of Oregon. That’s a win for all of us who produce or enjoy seafood. It’s even a win for those who don’t, but who are just grateful to be breathing.
Turns out the ocean provides half our oxygen, not just seafood for billions of people worldwide. Carbon pollution acidifies seawater, robs its oxygen, amplifies fish-killing heatwaves, and aggravates toxic algae blooms. We’ve seen enough.
Innovation and courage have been a hallmark of state leadership to clean up carbon pollution for more than decade. States on both the east and west coasts are doing their job as America’s civic laboratories: they are steadfastly chipping at the carbon crisis that Congress has been unable seriously to address, and that our current president derides as a hoax. Thankfully, we have state leaders who know better.
GOH Executive Director Brad Warren was present as Maine Gov Janet Mills spoke about her state’s vulnerability to changing ocean conditions and her commitment to acting on it. He writes:
“Vowing to tackle climate change and ocean acidification head-on, Maine Gov. Janet Mills delivered a rousing opening talk at the Gulf of Maine 2050 Symposium in Portland. The Symposium is designed to help attendees learn how the Gulf of Maine is expected to change in the next 30 years in the face of a changing climate. The governor noted that climate change and shifting ocean chemistry are already harming fisheries in Maine, noting effects on shellfish, lobsters, cod, and other parts of the state’s $2 billion seafood economy. Gov. Mills stated that she has committed Maine to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. She also noted that Maine has joined the US Climate Alliance, a coalition of states representing 55% of the nation’s population and $11.7 trillion in GDP, saying, “We committed to upholding the Paris climate accord no matter what happens in Washington.”
Stay tuned for a new “Changing Waters” podcast coming from Global Ocean Health/National Fisheries Conservation Center, featuring Governor Janet Mills interviewed by Brad Warren. And please donate to help support these great podcasts (past interviewees include former President of Ireland and climate justice advocate Mary Robinson and fisheries legend Ray Hilborn!). Every dollar counts, and we stretch them farther than any other organization.
~Protecting seafood at the source~
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Bill Ruckelshaus: Two-time Director of the EPA and influential environmental leader
Bill was one of the sharpest, kindest minds in the room in the Washington Blue Ribbon Panel on Ocean Acidification. When we proposed it and worked with the governor’s staff to organize it, a palpable thrill moved through the whole team when Bill agreed to serve as co-chair. His clear eye on the long view helped to ensure that the panel’s recommendations did not gather dust on a shelf. His efforts helped to make Washington’s approach a compelling example that other states were quick to embrace.
One outcome: some coastal states became important funders for critically needed research to understand this problem and test potential interventions. I distinctly remember one meeting that consumed most of a day and left all the panel members drained. In his 80s, Bill was the eldest of all, but he was the only one who thought to thank the kid who brought coffee to the table—and he remembered his name. We are fortunate to have had such good company and excellent leadership.
Brad Warren, Executive Director, Global Ocean Health/NFCC
In the latest episode of Changing Waters, Global Ocean Health’s Deputy Director Julia Sanders interviews kelp guru, Dr. Tom Mumford from the Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington in Seattle. From Northern California to Southern Oregon, kelp is undergoing devastating losses, with 95% of kelp forests transformed into urchin barrens. Tom explains what happened and the miraculous benefits kelp provides as an ecosystem engineer and as a source for new scientific discoveries. From kelp-derived plastic you can eat, to wound care, from rediscovering how kelp can help farmers, to a critical contributor to biodiversity and marine food webs, there is much to be gained from kelp. Catch this episode of Changing Waters and open your eyes to a miracle macroalgae and the struggle to keep it thriving in changing ocean conditions. 
