Alaska’s warming ocean is putting food and jobs at risk, scientists say

Posted on July 4, 2019 by julia

By Jordan Evans, CNN, June 28th 2019

Current sea temperatures around coastal Alaska are pushing 10 degrees above seasonal norms.

The ice around Alaska is not just melting. It’s gotten so low that the situation is endangering some residents’ food and jobs.”The seas are extraordinarily warm. It is impacting the ability for Americans in the region to put food on the table right now,” said University of Alaska climate specialist Rick Thoman.Ocean temperatures in the Chukchi and North Bering seas are nearly 10 degrees Fahrenheit (five degrees Celsius) above normal, satellite data shows.”The northern Bering & southern Chukchi Seas are baking,” Thoman wrote this week in a tweet.

There are immediate local and commercial impacts along the state’s western and northern coastlines, Thoman told CNN. Birds and marine animals are showing up dead, he said, and sea temperatures are warm enough to support algal blooms, which can make the waters toxic to wildlife.

It’s a mounting crisis for many coastal Alaska towns that depend on fishing to support their economy and feed people who live here.”Much of what the people eat there over the course of the year comes from food they harvest themselves,” said climatologist Brian Brettschneider at the International Arctic Research Center. “If people can’t get out on the ice to hunt seals or whales, that affects their food security. It is a human crisis of survivability.”Events like this — when weather patterns align to generate extreme consequences — are also evidence of the growing climate crisis, scientists say.

A perfect storm for warming waters

Ice cover around Alaska normally lasts through the end of May. This year, it disappeared in March, as side-by-side maps showing the same date in March 2013 (left) and 2019 demonstrate, according to the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy.

Atmospheric patterns this year have put Alaska in an unlucky spot, Brettschneider said.The unprecedented warming has been driven by southerly winds in the Bering Sea, with warm air from the south melting the ice at an alarming rate. Ocean temperatures in the region also have never been as warm during the peak of summer, based on seasonal averages. And communities in northern and western Alaska have seen temperatures close to their all-time June records.In short, everything that could have “gone wrong” this year for the ice around Alaska has gone wrong, Brettschneider said.

As the oceans acidify, these oyster farmers are fighting back

Posted on July 4, 2019 by julia

It’s often hard to notice ecological changes, even when they threaten catastrophe. One oyster company in California hopes to change that.

By Amanda Paulson, Christian Science Monitor, June 25th 2019

When visitors to Hog Island Oyster Co. shuck Pacific oysters at picnic tables overlooking Tomales Bay, it’s the final stage in a story that founding partner Terry Sawyer likes to tell about the shellfish, the bay, and all the steps that went into bringing the briny delicacies to the plate just a few hundred meters from where they were harvested.

It’s a story that now also touches on the carbon cycle, climate change, and the ways in which the very chemistry of the ocean is shifting and how small businesses like Hog Island – along with the entire ocean ecosystem – are struggling to adapt.

The oyster farm helps make abstract issues like ocean acidification and climate change concrete, says Tessa Hill, a marine scientist at the University of California in Davis who studies acidification and has developed a partnership with Mr. Sawyer and Hog Island. “It feels incredibly tangible,” she says. “It’s about the food on our plate; it’s about family businesses; it’s about people’s livelihood along the coast. Ocean acidification and climate change will fundamentally change our relationship with the ocean.”

‘A giant sponge’

Ocean acidification is a direct result of increased carbon dioxide emissions. The oceans – “a giant sponge,” as Professor Hill likes to explain it – absorb about 30% of the carbon dioxide humanity emits. As those levels rise, the chemistry of the ocean fundamentally changes, measurably lowering the pH and making it more acidic. For sea life, one of the biggest risks is to creatures – like shellfish, corals, and sea urchins – that need carbonate ions to build their shells or other structures. The shifting chemistry of the ocean makes those key building blocks scarcer.

Europe has had five 500-year summers in 15 years. And now this.

Posted on July 4, 2019 by julia

A continent without air conditioning struggles with 100-degree days in June—and wonders how it will cope with the hotter years ahead.

BY STEPHEN LEAHY, National Geographic, June 28th, 2019

Another deadly heat wave has Europe in its sweaty grip this week. Record temperatures topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius) in parts of France, Germany, Poland and Spain, with hotter days to come. The same thing happened last year—record-breaking heat was responsible for 700 deaths in Sweden and more than 250 in Denmark, countries that have never needed air conditioning before this new era of climate-change-driven extreme events.

Europe’s five hottest summers in the past 500 years have all occurred in the last 15 years, not including this summer. All have been deadly. The 2003 heat wave was the worst, having led to the deaths of over 70,000 people; in 2010, 56,000 died in Russia alone.

These extreme heat events are all connected to a slower jet stream that locks weather systems into place, says Michael Mann of Penn State University. Mann co-authored a study last year that linked the slowdown in the jet stream—the band of high-altitude winds that sweep around the globe from west to east—to last summer’s unprecedented droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and flooding events across the entire Northern Hemisphere. And it is likely behind India’s weak monsoon rains and the widespread flooding in the U.S. Midwest this year.

“My colleagues at PIK (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) have verified that this is what we’re seeing right now in Europe,” Mann said in an email.

Latest episode of our Changing Waters podcast: Brad Warren interviews legendary fisheries scientist Ray Hilborn

Posted on June 11, 2019 by julia

Listen to Global Ocean Health Director Brad Warren interview legendary marine biologist and fisheries scientist Ray Hilborn. This is the second episode in our new Changing Waters podcast.

While outlining the different ecological costs of food, Dr. Hilborn notes that carbon impacts now rank among top threats to ocean health and fisheries.

Enormous Thanks to Everyone Who Came Out to “Keep the Feast Coming”

Posted on May 29, 2019 by julia

We are so grateful to all the wonderful guests, sponsors, volunteers, and generous donors who supported our May 10th benefit. An amazing turn out from people and businesses, on a beautiful spring day!

If you didn’t get a chance to donate on May 10th but would like to, please use this link to donate. There are other ways to contribute as well: Jordan Rabinowe of Pointe3 Real Estate and Proletariat Wine (who kindly contributed the wine for the benefit) will make a generous donation to Global Ocean Health when anyone conducts real estate through him and mentions us! You can also choose to have .05% of your Amazon purchases donated to our organization — at no cost to you — by choosing National Fisheries Conservation Center at this Amazon Smile link.

Thanks again for an amazing evening: we hope to see you next May!

Thank you to everyone who came and helped us celebrate on this special night! Here’s to another 25 years of National Fisheries Conservation Center.

The desperate race to cool the ocean before it’s too late

Posted on April 25, 2019 by julia

Technologyreview.com, By Holly Jean Buck, April 23rd

Holly Jean Buck is a fellow at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. This is an adapted excerpt from her upcoming book After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration (September 2019, Verso Books).

Coral reefs smell of rotting flesh as they bleach. The riot of colors—yellow, violet, cerulean—fades to ghostly white as the corals’ flesh goes translucent and falls off, leaving their skeletons underneath fuzzy with cobweb-like algae.

Corals live in symbiosis with a type of algae. During the day, the algae photosynthesize and pass food to the coral host. During the night, the coral polyps extend their tentacles and catch passing food. Just 1 °C of ocean warming can break down this coral-algae relationship. The stressed corals expel the algae, and after repeated or prolonged episodes of such bleaching, they can die from heat stress, starve without the algae feeding them, or become more susceptible to disease.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef—actually a 2,300-kilometer (1,400-mile) system made up of nearly 3,000 separate reefs—has suffered severe bleaching in the past few years. Daniel Harrison, an Australian oceanographer looking at what might be done to buy more time for the Great Barrier Reef, says the situation is getting dire. “There might be as little as 25% of shallow-water coral cover left from pre-anthropogenic times. We don’t really know, because nobody started surveying before 1985,” he tells me. “You’ve got less than 1% of the ocean in coral reefs, and 25% of all marine life. We’re looking at losing all of that really quite quickly, in evolutionary terms. In human-lifetime terms.”

Coral reefs are not just about colorful fish and exotic species. Reefs protect coasts from storms; without them, waves reaching some Pacific islands would be twice as tall. Over 500 million people depend on reef ecosystems for food and livelihoods. Even if the temperature increase eventually stabilizes at 1.5 °C a century or two from now, it’s not known how well coral reef ecosystems will survive a temporary overshoot to higher temperatures.

The corals are like the canary in the coal mine.

The corals are like the canary in the coal mine, Harrison says: “They’re very temperature-sensitive. I really do think it’s just a harbinger of things to come. You know, the coral ecosystem might collapse first, but I think there might be quite a few more ecosystems that’ll follow it. Life is very resilient, but ecosystems as we know them aren’t.”

Global Ocean Health May 10th fundraiser – join us for oysters, salmon, crab and more aboard the F/V North American

Posted on March 29, 2019 by julia

Join us aboard the F/V North American (as seen on “Deadliest Catch”) for an oyster bar, salmon, crab, beer, wine, and other delicious local foods. Check out the suite of emissions-reducing, fuel-saving technologies onboard and support National Fisheries Conservation Center’s Global Ocean Health program.

National Fisheries Conservation Center and its Global Ocean Health program have been part of the waterfront for decades: spreading the word and exploring how to tackle ocean acidification, harmful algal blooms, warming/species shift, and other changing conditions. This is your opportunity to show that work matters to you.

Hear from seafood leaders about the work of Global Ocean Health in ensuring that the ocean continues to produce the fish and shellfish we love, for our grandchildren and beyond. Enjoy entertainment from Fisher Poets and our own Executive Director Brad Warren! Participate in our silent auction and help the organization grow. We hope to see you there!

Buy your tickets at: https://globaloceanhealth.brownpapertickets.com

Opportunities for sponsorship or donation of food or products are available – reply for more information. If you can’t attend but would like to make a tax-deductible donation, visit: http://globaloceanhealth.org/donate/.

Thank you to our Gold Sponsors:

Alaska Ship Supply, Orca Bay Seafoods, and Wildlife Forever Fund

Thank you for your support — looking forward to seeing you May 10th! The F/V North American is docked at Ocean Beauty Seafoods, at 1100 W Ewing St, Seattle, WA – on the Ship Canal, close to the Ballard Bridge.

Brad Warren, Director

Julia Sanders, Deputy Director

Special thanks to all our generous in-kind donors: Taylor Shellfish, Grand Central Baking Company, Deckhand’s Daughter Seafood, Loki Fish Co, Proletariat Wines, Wild Salmon Seafood Center, Clearwater Resort and Casino, Seattle Sounders, Bakery Nouveau, MoPOP, Anne Kroeker and Richard Leeds, the Seattle Shakespeare Company, the Coca-Cola Company, Optimism Brewing Co, Agua Verde Cafe & Paddle Club, Finnriver Cider, Morning Glory Chai, Chinook’s, Vicki Sutherland-Horton, Holly Hughes, Ethan Stowell Restaurants, Cynthia Blair, The Old Alcohol Plant, Clipper Vacations, and of course Erling Skaar/GenTech.

Ocean Heat Waves Are Threatening Marine Life

Posted on March 6, 2019 by julia

New York Times, March 4th 2019 –
By Kendra Pierre-Louis and Nadja Popovich

When deadly heat waves hit on land, we hear about them. But the oceans can have heat waves, too. They are now happening far more frequently than they did last century and are harming marine life, according to a new study.

The average number of marine heat wave days for the period 1987-2016, compared to the average for 1925-1954. Orange-red range indicates 18-36+ more **marine heat wave days** compared to the mid-20th century.
Source: Nature Climate Change | By The New York Times

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, looked at the impact of marine heat waves on the diversity of life in the ocean. From coral reefs to kelp forests to sea grass beds, researchers found that these heat waves were destroying the framework of many ocean ecosystems.

Marine heat waves are said to occur when sea temperatures are much warmer than normal for at least five consecutive days.

Scientists estimate that the oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the heat trapped by excess greenhouse gases since midcentury. Humans have added these gases to the atmosphere largely by burning fossil fuels, like coal and natural gas, for energy.

An estimated one billion people depend on coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to temperature, for food or income. Credit Gabriel Barathieu/Biosphoto/Minden Pictures

Bleached coral in Kaneohe Bay off Oahu, Hawaii. Credit Caleb Jones/AP

An earlier study by some of the same researchers found that, from 1925 to 2016, marine heat waves became, on average, 34 percent more frequent and 17 percent longer. Over all, there were 54 percent more days per year with marine heat waves globally.

The most severe years tended to be El Niño years. Warmer ocean temperatures are one of the characteristics of an El Niño pattern.

“There’s also some indication that El Niños have been getting more extreme with climate change,” said Eric C. J. Oliver, an assistant professor of physical oceanography at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who was a co-author of the study. But regional marine heat waves can happen even without an El Niño, he said.

Ocean heat waves like the Pacific’s deadly ‘Blob’ could become the new normal

Posted on February 5, 2019 by julia

A fin whale found on an Alaskan beach in 2015 might have been among the victims of The Blob. BREE WITTEVEEN

ScienceMag.org By Warren Cornwall, January 21st, 2019

When marine biologist Steve Barbeaux first saw the data in late 2017, he thought it was the result of a computer glitch. How else could more than 100 million Pacific cod suddenly vanish from the waters off of southern Alaska?

Within hours, however, Barbeaux’s colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Seattle, Washington, had confirmed the numbers. No glitch. The data, collected by research trawlers, indicated cod numbers had plunged by 70% in 2 years, essentially erasing a fishery worth $100 million annually. There was no evidence that the fish had simply moved elsewhere. And as the vast scale of the disappearance became clear, a prime suspect emerged: “The Blob.”

In late 2013, a huge patch of unusually warm ocean water, roughly one-third the size of the contiguous United States, formed in the Gulf of Alaska and began to spread. A few months later, Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, dubbed it The Blob. The name, with its echo of a 1958 horror film about an alien life form that keeps growing as it consumes everything in its path, quickly caught on. By the summer of 2015, The Blob had more than doubled in size, stretching across more than 4 million square kilometers of ocean, from Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Water temperatures reached 2.5°C above normal in many places.

By late 2016, the marine heat wave had crashed across ecosystems all along North America’s western coast, reshuffling food chains and wreaking havoc. Unusual blooms of toxic algae appeared, as did sea creatures typically found closer to the tropics (see sidebar). Small fish and crustaceans hunted by larger animals vanished. The carcasses of tens of thousands of seabirds littered beaches. Whales failed to arrive in their usual summer waters. Then the cod disappeared.

The fish “basically ran out of food,” Barbeaux now believes. Once, he didn’t think a food shortage would have much effect on adult cod, which, like camels, can harbor energy and go months without eating. But now, it is “something we look at and go: ‘Huh, that can happen.’”

Today, 5 years after The Blob appeared, the waters it once gripped have cooled, although fish, bird, and whale numbers have yet to recover. Climate scientists and marine biologists, meanwhile, are still putting together the story of what triggered the event, and how it reverberated through ecosystems. Their interest is not just historical.

Around the world, shifting climate and ocean circulation patterns are causing huge patches of unusually warm water to become more common, researchers have found. Already, ominous new warm patches are emerging in the North Pacific Ocean and elsewhere, and researchers are applying what they’ve learned from The Blob to help guide predictions of how future marine heat waves might unfold. If global warming isn’t curbed, scientists warn that the heat waves will become more frequent, larger, more intense, and longerlasting. By the end of the century, Bond says, “The ocean is going to be a much different place.”

More about the potential effects of ocean waves here

To curb climate change, we have to suck carbon from the sky. But how?

Posted on January 29, 2019 by julia

Once considered a distraction, scientists now say using technology—and nature—to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is not only possible: It’s a must.

By Craig Welch, January 17th, 2019, nationalgeographic.com

At McCarty Family Farms, headquartered in sun-blasted northwest Kansas, fields rarely sit empty any more. In a drive to be more sustainable, the family dairy still grows corn, sorghum, and alfalfa, but now often sows the bare ground between harvests with wheat and daikon. The wheat gets fed to livestock. The radishes, with their penetrating roots, break up the hard-packed surface and then, instead of being harvested, are allowed to die and enrich the soil.

Like all plants, cereal grains and root vegetables feed on carbon dioxide. In 2017, according to a third-party audit, planting cover crops on land that once sat empty helped the McCarty farms in Kansas and Nebraska pull 6,922 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil across some 12,300 acres—as much as could have been stored by 7,300 acres of forest. Put another way: The farm soil had sucked up the emissions of more than 1,300 cars.

“We always knew we were having a sizable impact, but to have empirical numbers of that size is inspiring to say the least,” says Ken McCarty, who runs the farms with his three brothers.

Moves like this are among a host of often overlooked steps that scientists now say are crucial to limiting the worst impacts of climate change.

From planting more trees and restoring grasslands to using sophisticated machines with fans and filters to capture CO2 from ambient air, these far-ranging steps are all aimed at one thing: Sucking greenhouse gases from the sky.

The machines to do that are still cumbersome and expensive. But managing forests and grasslands and farms with an eye toward atmospheric carbon removal is often a matter of doing what we already know how to do, only better.

“We know how to deal with forests; we know how to store carbon in soil,” says Richard Birdsey at Woods Hole Research Center. “These are strategies that are ready right now—things that can basically be deployed immediately.”

A study last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences led by a team from The Nature Conservancy suggests that the right incentives could drive the world to get up to a third of the carbon reductions it needs by 2030 simply by using nature better.