(Credit: Robert F. Bukaty, AP)

Fishing is a profession often passed down from one generation to the next. Many lobstermen in Maine fish the same bottom their fathers and grandfathers fished, and the same holds true of fishermen father offshore as well. Yet increasingly, anecdotal evidence has suggested that the old faithful fishing spots are no longer quite so reliable.

In northern regions these shifts could lead to conflicts over fishing rights and access to traditional fishing grounds. In the tropics, the problem could be more dire. As our oceans warm, species may not be able to adapt at all, leaving tropical oceans with severely depleted fish stocks and some of the most vulnerable human populations with a distinct shortage of a vital protein source.

Much of this scarcity of native species can be attributed to overfishing, a practice now largely halted in U.S. waters thanks to strict new science-based management tactics implemented as a result of a 2006 reauthorization of the law that governs our fisheries. But increasingly, both scientists and fishermen have been eying climate change as a reason some fish are showing up in new places and the catch fishermen are accustomed to finding have been surprisingly slow to rebuild.

A new study published this week in the journal Nature puts some peer-reviewed punch behind what up until now was a common-sense theory. Most fish have a preference for a certain water temperature range, and because they are mobile creatures, as water warms due to climate change, fish populations are on the move toward the poles. The study found:

Except in the tropics, catch composition in most ecosystems 
slowly changed to include more warm-water species and fewer cool-water species. In the tropics, the catch followed a similar pattern from 1970 to 1980 and then stabilized, likely because there are no species with high enough temperature preferences to replace those that declined. Statistical models showed that the increase in warm-water species was significantly related to increasing ocean temperatures.

This latest research builds on the authors’ 2009 study that stated:

…climate change may lead to large-scale redistribution of global catch potential, with an average of 30–70% increase in high-latitude regions and a drop of up to 40% in the tropics.

This trend could have dire implications for both fishermen and fish.

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Michael Conathan, Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress

By Michael Conathan and Shiva Polefka, via the Center for American Progress

When President Barack Obama convenes his cabinet in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, one might be left with the impression that defenders of our oceans are rather pointedly underrepresented. The Department of Commerce, which oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, has lacked a secretary since John Bryson resigned last summer. Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta probably pulled double duty as Aquaman in the president’s Hall of Justice; prior to his service in the Obama administration, Secretary Panetta served as a congressman from Monterrey, California, and as head of the Pew Oceans Commission. But now he, too, has left the building, with a shout-out to his trusty sidekick, his dog Bravo.

President Obama is seeking to fill the open seat at Commerce, and to replace Jane Lubchenco, who stepped down last month as NOAA’s administrator. During this transition period, ocean advocates wondered whether domestic ocean issues would struggle even more than usual to find prominence in the West Wing. The problems facing our marine ecosystems and oceans are in serious need of solutions, and each day that passes without mention of these answers means another day of devastating blows to our waters. But a speech last week by Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that he might become the new standard bearer for ocean issues in the White House.

In his remarks, Secretary Kerry discussed a broad range of ocean issues, and the link between ocean health and greenhouse gas emissions was foremost among them. He said:

[I]t is clear that we have an enormous challenge ahead of us … energy policy that results in acidification, the bleaching of coral, the destruction of species, the change in the Arctic because of the ice melt … The entire system is interdependent, and we toy with that at our peril.

With a new blue warrior bringing ocean issues to arguably the most influential group of advisers on planet earth—or, as Kerry put it in his speech, “planet ocean” — let’s take a look at the top five ocean issues the secretary of state can use his position to influence.

Climate change

Secretary Kerry, who was a strong climate hawk as a senator, used pointed words to hammer home the critical need to take proactive steps to address the looming climate crisis. “The science is screaming at us … demanding that people in positions of public responsibility … at least understand what is happening and take steps to prevent potential disaster,” he said last week. These words echoed those that Secretary Kerry delivered in his first major foreign policy speech in February, in which he challenged Americans to “have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren: an environment not ravaged by rising seas, deadly superstorms, devastating droughts, and the other hallmarks of a dramatically changing climate.”

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Rep. Ed Markey speaking on the importance of adequate science funding. (Credit: AP)

By Michael Conathon, via The Center for American Progress

In September 2013 the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which regulates America’s fisheries, will be up for reauthorization for the first time since it was previously amended in 2006. The process that led to the most recent reauthorization took a contentious and laborious seven years of debate in Congress and led to dramatic changes in the law. Perhaps the most ambitious amendment was the addition of a requirement for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to set annual catch limits — caps on how much fishermen can catch of each of the fish stocks that NOAA manages.

Earlier this month the House Committee on Natural Resources formally kicked off the Magnuson reauthorization festivities with a hearing that, according to Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA), was “intended to highlight issues that could provide the basis for future hearings.” A hearing about future hearings: government efficiency at its finest.

Most remarkable about this particular bit of political theater was that peeling back the veneer of partisanship that rules House proceedings these days revealed an almost unanimous agreement that, again in the words of Rep. Hastings, “many of the current challenges may not be due to the Act itself, but rather with its implementation.”

This realization tracks well with a Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, report issued earlier this month. The NRDC found that since the Magnuson-Stevens Act was amended in 1996 to require overfished stocks to be rebuilt within 10 years, nearly two-thirds of all once-overfished stocks have met their target numbers. As a result, revenues from U.S. commercial fishing have increased by 54 percent since 1996 when adjusted for inflation, with fishermen receiving more than half a billion dollars in additional revenue annually.

While this accomplishment is remarkable, it doesn’t extend to all fisheries or all regions of the country. The rising tide of improved fishery management in the United States has not lifted all boats. New England, for example, is still home to 11 overfished stocks — more than twice as many as any other region, according to NOAA’s 2011 “Status of Stocks” report to Congress. And each region of the country has at least one stock of fish on the overfished list.

So if you’re a charter-boat captain trying to get red snapper for your customers in the Gulf of Mexico—where the recreational season lasted just 40 days in 2012 — or if you’re a groundfisherman in New England facing 77 percent cuts to your quota of Gulf of Maine cod, NRDC’s big-picture statistics don’t do a whole lot for your bottom line.

While virtually everyone who spoke at this month’s House hearing agreed that the Magnuson-Stevens Act should remain in place and that the lingering difficulties were due to implementation and not the legislation itself, the question of how to resolve these problems raised a far more contentious debate.

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by Tom Kenworthy

Changing water temperatures and stream flows combined with drought and increasing wildfires from global warming are creating a bleak outlook for trout in the western U.S., according to a new study.

“Despite the best intentions, we will not be able to preserve all populations of native trout in the Rocky Mountains this century,” concludes a paper that has been published in the December issue of the journal Fisheries. The study looked at five river basins in the West and was conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Geological Survey and Colorado State University.

Though the study does not look at the economic implications of these changes, they could be large. Trout fishing is a significant part of the West’s recreational economy. According to a 2006 report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, nearly 1.6 million anglers pursue trout in the Mountain West. Nationally, trout fishermen spent $4.8 billion in 2006 — generating about $13.5 billion in economic activity, sustaining more than 109,000 jobs, and yielding more than $1.8 billion in federal, state and local tax revenues.

Numerous earlier studies have predicted big declines in trout populations under climate change; this most recent one looks at how coldwater fish habitats have already been changing in recent decades in some of the region’s most important river basins, including the Flathead in northern Montana, the Boise in Idaho, the Green in Wyoming, the Rio Grande in Colorado, and the Greater Yellowstone region of northwest Wyoming and southwest Montana.

The warming trend of recent decades — a mean increase in temperatures of .8 degrees Celsius during the 20^th century — has raised stream temperatures and altered normal water flows. For fish like trout that depend on cold water, this has brought on a range of effects: less summer habitat, migrations to higher altitudes and cooler waters, greater competition with non-native species and more hybridization, and less reproduction success.

“Many [trout] populations and species will retain enough flexibility to adapt … but others are likely to be overwhelmed by future changes,” the report concludes.

Tom Kenworthy is a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

by Michael Conathan

At the end of last September, I wrote a column enthusiastically titled “Optimism for the New England Groundfishery.” My theory was that after a history of overfishing, subsequent belt tightening, and implementation of a new management system, the industry was on the cusp of recovery.

The piece came out just days after New England’s beloved Red Sox sealed a historic September swoon, blowing a nine-game lead in just 24 days and losing the last game of the season in excruciating fashion to keep them out of last year’s playoffs. My assumption was that both the Sox and the groundfishery had nowhere to go but up.

Less than a month later, news broke that a new scientific assessment of Gulf of Maine cod, one of the fishery’s keystone species, showed it was in worse shape than scientists previously thought, and even if all fishing was halted, it would not recover by the end of its legally mandated timeline in 2014. As a result, fishermen saw their allowable catch of the fish reduced by more than 20 percent—an outcome all parties knew was just a one-year band-aid on what would have to be far more drastic cuts in 2013.

So much for optimism.

Similar results emerged as the cod assessment’s methodology was applied to other species in the fishery. Looking to 2013 the groundfishery now faces additional allowable catch cuts of 72 percent on Gulf of Maine cod, 70 percent on its cousin Georges Bank cod, 51 percent on yellowtail flounder, and 69 percent on American plaice, commonly known as sole. In the face of these numbers, it’s time to step back and reconceive of what this fishery can and should look like in the future.

As I detailed in my report, “The Future of America’s First Fishery,” the New England groundfishery had a decades-old history of overfishing. In recent years that practice has almost entirely been curtailed as legally mandated catch limits kept total harvest to sustainable levels. But populations left decimated by past overexploitation have been slow to rebuild, as the recent assessments indicate.

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by Michael Conathan

It’s a good time to be a tourist in Maine. While the rest of the country is being ravaged by wildfires, sweltering away setting record numbers of record-high temperatures, or withering in the grasp of a drought that rivals the 1930s Dust Bowl, northern New England’s temperate climes are a welcome relief. And the cherry on top of that cool, soothing sundae is that the state’s signature seafood, lobster, is selling at rock-bottom prices—as little as $3.99 per pound in Portland.

The downside, of course, is that while epicures can sample their favorite crustaceans for less than they typically pay for bologna, most lobstermen are struggling to just break even at per-pound prices as low as $2—about half what they typically receive for their catch. This level is far below the break-even point Maine’s 5,000 commercial lobstermen need to cover expenses of fuel, bait, and wages.

The cause? It’s somewhat hard to pin down, but a major contributor is global climate change. And the lobster fishery isn’t the only one feeling the heat.

Lobsters, like all crustaceans, molt as they grow. Dust the cobwebs off your ninth-grade biology textbook, and you may recall the term “exoskeleton”—the external shell possessed by lobsters, crabs, and most insects. Lobsters typically shed theirs in the late spring and early summer, and for a period of time they are effectively snails without shells—the limpest of which lobstermen refer to as “rags” because it best describes their consistency.

This year, rags started showing up early in traps, and many in the industry, including Bob Bayer who heads the Maine Lobster Institute, trace this to warming ocean temperatures. As Andrew Pershing of the University of Maine and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute asserted at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing yesterday, ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Maine in June were equivalent to average July temperatures. It’s no coincidence then that lobstermen are seeing rags a month early.

When it comes to the price crash, climate may not be the sole cause, but soft-shell lobsters contain less meat than their hard-shelled brethren and can’t be transported as far—you’ll never eat a rag in the Midwest—so their market is limited, and their value is lower.

Other factors that have driven lobster prices down include an unusually high volume of lobster caught in Canada this spring, which glutted Canadian processors’ market and reduced the need for Maine’s product—as much as 70 percent of Maine’s lobster goes to Canada for processing.

One silver lining, however, is that Maine’s lobster stock is healthy too. In 2011 Maine lobster landings set all-time records, surpassing the 100-million-pound mark for the first time ever and grossing lobstermen more than $330 million—more than 80 percent of the value of all fish landings in the state.

There’s still no denying that the marine effects of climate change are already being felt in many of the world’s fisheries. A study published earlier this month in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences found “rapid and consistent decreases” in the populations of sockeye salmon runs from Puget Sound, Washington, to the Yakutat Peninsula in southeast Alaska due to ocean warming. Warmer water provides more favorable conditions for less valuable species, including pink salmon, meaning they are more likely to out-compete sockeye in the ecosystem. And similar to lobster in Maine, salmon is big business in Alaska: In 2010 Alaskan fishermen landed $263 million worth of sockeye, a major component of a fishing industry that creates more than 80,000 jobs in the state. Read more

What caused cod’s dramatic reversal of fortune in the Gulf of Maine?

Trawler crewmen work on rigging while fishing in the Gulf of Maine.  Source:  AP.

by Michael Conathan

When fishermen cast off their lines and leave the dock, they believe their skill, knowledge, and experience will lead them to the fish. They trust that weather and natural forces will not present more of an obstacle than their crafts can handle. And they hope when they return to port, the price they can get for their haul of fish will exceed the investment they have made in gear, crew, fuel, supplies, insurance, and the other countless costs of doing business.

At the heart of these costs and every economic decision fishermen have to make is one fundamental data point: the annual catch limit. In 2006 when Congress reauthorized the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act—the law that provides the framework for U.S. fishery management—it included a requirement that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, or NOAA, must set a cap on the amount of each species that fishermen would be allowed to catch in a given year. This cap is referred to as an annual catch limit. This mandate was further strengthened by another provision of law stating that managers could not set a limit exceeding the level recommended by scientists.

Imposing annual catch limits certainly makes sense. In order to get the best economic return from our fisheries over time, we must catch what we can today while leaving enough in the water to ensure the resource remains solvent for the future. Still, as Eric Schwaab, then-administrator of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, announced at the time, doing so was an incredibly “heavy lift.”

Now, not even a month after NOAA’s announcement, there is reason to wonder whether our current approach to funding and executing the science that produces the fishery stock assessments that underpin the annual catch limits can support the weight of that responsibility.

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AP Photo/Scott Heppell

by Michael Conathan

Last Tuesday, two letters about the New England groundfishery, which includes 12 bottom-dwelling species such as cod, haddock, and flounders, landed on desks in Washington, D.C. One focused on the past, the other on the future. But taken together, they illuminate a disconnect among distinct portions of the fishing industry and some of the politicians who represent them. And while one requested declaration of a “fishery resource disaster,” a much larger potential disaster still looms on the horizon.

A letter from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to Secretary of Commerce John Bryson, supported by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Scott Brown (R-MA), as well as by Massachusetts Reps. Barney Frank, John Tierney, Bill Keating, and Ed Markey, cites both a loss of fishing revenue and consolidation of operations in the groundfishery that left 109 fewer vessels fishing for groundfish in 2010 than in 2009. Patrick’s letter focuses particularly on a group of small-boat fishermen operating outside the major ports of New Bedford and Gloucester, and asks for $21 million to alleviate the disaster.

Gov. Patrick blamed this situation squarely on the transition to a new “catch share”-style management system that regulators implemented in the groundfishery in 2010. This system allocates percentages of the total amount of fish that can be caught to fishermen who join collective groups known as “sectors” based on how many fish each fisherman has caught in the past. They are then permitted to trade allocation to others within or outside their sector. The fear is that such trading will result in excessive consolidation of too many fish in too few hands.

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Our guest bloggers are Michael Conathan, Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress, and Rebecca Friendly, Special Assistant at CAP’s California Office.

In her book Demon Fish, Juliet Eilperin paints a vivid picture of how sharks continue to be objects of obsession worldwide and how this time-old vision could eventually contribute to their extinction. The demand for shark fin soup, a Chinese celebratory dish, has dramatically inflated the price for an ingredient that has no culinary or nutritional value. Shark fin soup can cost upwards of $80 a bowl in restaurants and has vitamin content less than that of a typical vegetable soup. The disproportionately high demand for shark fins has lead to irresponsible poaching, similar to practices used to exploit rhino horn and elephant ivory. More than 70 million sharks are harvested every year for their fins alone; a number equivalent to the population of California, Texas and Pennsylvania combined.

Earlier this year, President Obama signed federal legislation tightening a ban on shark finning in U.S. waters. The sale or trade of shark fins, however, is still legal in the majority of American states. California Assembly Bill 376 (AB 376) , introduced by State Assemblyman Paul Fong, a Chinese-American Californian, and supported in the legislature by Sen. Carol Liu, was overwhelmingly approved by the California state legislature with bipartisan support. The bill now awaits the signature of California Governor Jerry Brown, and would make it unlawful for any person to possess, sell, trade, or distribute a shark fin. If Governor Brown signs it, California will join neighboring Pacific states, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii in banning sale of shark fins.

Because shark fin soup is a customary entrée often served at celebrations and associated with prestige in the Chinese culture, some groups have expressed concern that AB 376 could be considered a discriminatory and offensive law that disregards the customs and preferences of California’s Chinese community. However, it is important to highlight that the picture is not so cut-and-dried. In fact, there has been an outpouring of support for AB 376 from the Chinese-American community itself.

Many prominent Chinese-Americans support the ban and seven legislators of Asian and Pacific Islands descent voted in favor of AB 376. Additionally, a poll conducted last February by the independent opinion research group Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates found that 76 percent of California voters of all ages, regions, political affiliations, and cultures support the ban. Further, the research, conducted for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, shows that 70 percent of California Chinese American voters support legislation to ban shark finning.

Shark fins can sell for up to 60 times the value of other shark meat products—as much as $600 per pound. This discrepancy has led fishermen in many countries to engage in a practice known as shark finning, whereby they cut off the fins of live sharks and toss the remains back into the ocean to die. This practice, illegal in the U.S., allows fishermen to fill their boats with fins, rather than bulky, relatively valueless bodies. In addition to being incredibly cruel, finning has put shark populations on the brink of extinction, with some species declining as much as 90 percent in recent years.

Sharks play a vital role in maintaining the harmony of ocean ecosystems, and their diminishing populations could have severe environmental repercussions. The proposed ban on the sale or trade of fins in California, which is home to the largest market for the shark fin trade outside of Asia, would drastically reduce demand and have an immediate positive impact on the shark population and a long-term effect on safeguarding ocean ecosystems.

There’s also an economic incentive to keep sharks swimming in the ocean rather than steaming in a soup bowl. Recent research from the Australian Institute for Marine Science has shown that sharks have a greater economic value alive than dead. In ocean tourist hubs such as the Bahamas, the Maldives, and Palau, the income garnered from tourist expenditures, values each shark between $30,000 and $2 million over its lifetime—far less than the value they would fetch on at seafood counters.

A proliferation of California community groups, conservationists, and celebrities such as Yao Ming, Richard Branson, and Lisa Ling have joined forces to urge Governor Brown to approve the legislation. Over thirty organizations have come out in support of the ban including the Asian Pacific American Ocean Harmony Alliance, Oceana, Humane Society International, the Asian Law Alliance, and the Center for Oceanic Awareness, Research and Education. Additionally, an online petition hosted by change.org presented Governor Brown with the signatures of over 25,000 Californians in support of the shark fin ban last month.

Governor Brown has not indicated whether he plans to sign or veto the legislation. He has until October 9 to make a decision. We urge the Governor to take a major step in protecting California’s ocean ecosystem and shark populations by signing AB 376.

Contributions made by Katie Wilczak.