Author(s) Lee Crockett

Author(s) Description Lee Crockett is director of federal fisheries policy for The Pew Charitable Trusts.

For businesses dependent on high foot traffic, location is everything. It’s much the same out on the water, where finding the right spot can make all the difference for commercial and recreational fishermen alike.

Advances in technology make it easier to target fish more quickly, in deeper water, and more precisely than ever before. This puts new pressures on bottom-dwelling fish that congregate and reproduce only at certain ecological hot spots along the edge of the U.S. continental shelf.

But new technologies also allow us to better understand how marine ecosystems work, giving us the ability to map key spawning areas for marine life. Using these maps, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council recently proposed protections of places where two severely depleted deep-water species—speckled hind and warsaw grouper—live and spawn. An important next step comes in December, when council members are expected to settle on a list of potential marine protected areas that will be the subject of public hearings early next year.

At first glance, speckled hind and warsaw grouper wouldn’t seem to have much in common. The reddish-orange speckled hind, found in waters from North Carolina to the Florida Keys, gets its name from the tiny white spots that cover it from head to tail. Adults can grow to 43 inches and weigh as much as 66 pounds. The warsaw grouper, in contrast, is much bigger: It is one of the largest members of the grouper family. This solitary fish—found from Massachusetts to South America—can grow to eight feet and weigh more than 400 pounds.

Yet despite their distinct differences in appearance and range, these two species share two important ecological traits. They both congregate, feed, and reproduce in deep, rocky offshore areas that can be popular fishing holes. And both species are slow to reach maturity and spawn. This combination makes them especially vulnerable to overfishing.

Rules limiting the catch of warsaw grouper and speckled hind have been in place since 1994, but unfortunately these fish tend to prefer habitat frequented by popular sport and commercial species. As fishermen pursue these more desirable fish—such as vermilion snapper and red porgy—they can accidentally catch the warsaw grouper and speckled hind. This is a problem known as bycatch.

Moreover, when speckled hind or warsaw grouper are unintentionally caught and quickly pulled to the surface, the rapid change in pressure often causes fatal internal injuries, even if they are immediately released.  Such occurrences worsen an already dire situation for these two species.

Although the catch of speckled hind and warsaw grouper has been restricted for 20 years, researchers say the populations have plummeted in the Atlantic waters off the southern U.S., to 6 percent of healthy levels for warsaw grouper and 5 percent for speckled hind. Both species are listed as “Critically Endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and as “Species of Concern” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service.

To more effectively protect the primary locations where these species live and spawn, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council is now considering how to redraw eight marine protected areas—roughly 785 square miles—along the edge of the continental shelf from North Carolina to Florida. The areas are currently off limits to deep-water fishing but only protect a small portion of the habitat these species need to recover. The council also is weighing creating new sites—totaling an additional 308 square miles—to protect these two bottom dwellers while benefiting other species, including  red snapper and red grouper, that are recovering from decades of overfishing.

Fishermen have worked for ages to find the best spots to fish. New technologies have made the process easier, leaving fewer places for imperiled fish to hide. But these advances also provide an opportunity to improve conservation. If used wisely, new science and tools can help federal fisheries managers better protect the real estate that seriously depleted ocean fish populations, such as warsaw grouper and speckled hind, need to recover to healthy levels.

- See more at: http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/opinions/the-bottom-line-protecting-real-estate-for-fish-85899522275?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium&utm_campaign=fed#sthash.C5D27EjT.dpuf
Advances in technology make it easier to target fish more quickly, in deeper water, and more precisely than ever before. This puts new pressures on bottom-dwelling fish that congregate and reproduce only at certain ecological hot spots along the edge of the U.S. continental shelf.

But new technologies also allow us to better understand how marine ecosystems work, giving us the ability to map key spawning areas for marine life. Using these maps, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council recently proposed protections of places where two severely depleted deep-water species—speckled hind and warsaw grouper—live and spawn. An important next step comes in December, when council members are expected to settle on a list of potential marine protected areas that will be the subject of public hearings early next year.

At first glance, speckled hind and warsaw grouper wouldn’t seem to have much in common. The reddish-orange speckled hind, found in waters from North Carolina to the Florida Keys, gets its name from the tiny white spots that cover it from head to tail. Adults can grow to 43 inches and weigh as much as 66 pounds. The warsaw grouper, in contrast, is much bigger: It is one of the largest members of the grouper family. This solitary fish—found from Massachusetts to South America—can grow to eight feet and weigh more than 400 pounds.

Yet despite their distinct differences in appearance and range, these two species share two important ecological traits. They both congregate, feed, and reproduce in deep, rocky offshore areas that can be popular fishing holes. And both species are slow to reach maturity and spawn. This combination makes them especially vulnerable to overfishing.

Rules limiting the catch of warsaw grouper and speckled hind have been in place since 1994, but unfortunately these fish tend to prefer habitat frequented by popular sport and commercial species. As fishermen pursue these more desirable fish—such as vermilion snapper and red porgy—they can accidentally catch the warsaw grouper and speckled hind. This is a problem known as bycatch.

Moreover, when speckled hind or warsaw grouper are unintentionally caught and quickly pulled to the surface, the rapid change in pressure often causes fatal internal injuries, even if they are immediately released.  Such occurrences worsen an already dire situation for these two species.

Although the catch of speckled hind and warsaw grouper has been restricted for 20 years, researchers say the populations have plummeted in the Atlantic waters off the southern U.S., to 6 percent of healthy levels for warsaw grouper and 5 percent for speckled hind. Both species are listed as “Critically Endangered” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and as “Species of Concern” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service.

- See more at: http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/opinions/the-bottom-line-protecting-real-estate-for-fish-85899522275?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium&utm_campaign=fed#sthash.C5D27EjT.dpufSource: http://www.pewenvironment.org/news-room/opinions/the-bottom-line-protecting-real-estate-for-fish-85899522275?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium&utm_campaign=fed

Sandro Contenta
Top marine scientists are denouncing Canada’s management of fish stocks as a commercially driven approach threatening to wipe out species at risk.

The attack comes from two senior members of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) — the body mandated by federal law to advise the government on species at risk.

They note the federal government has consistently refused to list several endangered fish under the Species at Risk Act, which would make their fishing or trade illegal. They include Atlantic cod, cusk and porbeagle shark.

During the act’s 10-year history, “there has not been a commercially exploited fish — assessed as endangered or threatened — that has been included on that list,” says Jeffrey Hutchings, a biology professor at Dalhousie University and member and former chair of COSEWIC.

Commercial interests always trump ecological ones, Hutchings charges. A stark example, he insists, is the porbeagle shark, whose population has declined by at least 85 per cent since the 1960s. It was assessed by COSEWIC as endangered in 2004. The government refused to list it as a species at risk because a handful of Canadians were fishing it.

Today, a dozen fishermen have licences to fish porbeagle in the Atlantic. No one used the licence to fish them this year and only one fisherman did so in each of the last two years. Yet Canada, which fishes more porbeagle than any other country, was roundly criticized last month for blocking a European proposal at an international conference that would have ended porbeagle fishing.

“Our (international) reputation is very poor,” says Alan Sinclair, a COSEWIC expert on fish populations who retired from the federal Department of Fisheries and oceans three years ago.

“We used to be a leader internationally in conservation and protecting our fish resources back in the 1970s and ’80s,” he adds. “Now people look at us and I’m sure they shake their heads and wonder what the heck is going on in Canada.”

Frustration hit a boiling point when Canada pushed for an increase in the bluefin tuna fishing quota at a meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas(ICCAT) in November. At the same time back home, the government was consulting Canadians on whether to list bluefin tuna as a species at risk, a process triggered by COSEWIC’s 2011 assessment of bluefin as “endangered.”

“This risk level,” the government consultation document notes, “indicates that the species is likely to become extinct or extirpated in parts of its range unless something is done to address the threats it is facing.” (Extirpated means found in the wild somewhere, but not in Canada.)

Sinclair and Hutchings point to Canada’s tuna quota push at ICCAT to insist the federal government has already made up its mind: “They won’t list the bluefin,” Hutchings says flatly.

Listing a species under the act would oblige the federal government to set targets for recovery. It hasn’t even done that for Atlantic cod, Hutchings says, despite the collapse of the stock in the early 1990s. COSEWIC concluded certain types of Atlantic cod were threatened or endangered in 2003 and found them in even worse shape in 2010.

Also in worse shape is cusk, a slow-moving member of the Atlantic cod family. COSEWIC, which includes experts from the federal, provincial and territorial governments, described cusk as threatened in 2003. The federal government, citing scientific uncertainty, didn’t list it. In mid-December, the latest COSEWIC report predicted an even bleaker future for the fish, assessing it as endangered.

Jean-Jacques Maguire, who spent 20 years as a scientist in the fisheries department, many of them heading the research division, cautions that COSEWIC assessments “are not gospel.” Still, when it comes to setting recovery targets, Canada lags internationally.

“We’re not ahead of the game,” says Maguire, who left the department in 1996 and now works as an international fisheries consultant. “The U.S. has a considerably more strict management system.”

Faith Scattolon, regional director of Fisheries and Oceans Canada in the Maritimes, insists that Canada’s management of fish stocks is based on peer-reviewed scientific advice. Porbeagle fishing quotas have been slashed. Cusk hasn’t been commercially fished since 1999 and “bycatch” quotas — the amount fishermen can land by mistake — have been cut to 650 tonnes from 900 tonnes annually.

Scattolon headed Canada’s November delegation at ICCAT, a commission of 48 countries and the European Union. ICCAT assesses the size of the Atlantic tuna stock, projects its future health, and sets annual fishing quotas. It rejected Canada’s proposal to boost the annual bluefin quota in the western Atlantic to 2,000 tonnes from 1,750. (For the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, the total allowable catch for 2013 was set at 13,500 tonnes.)

“We’re certainly disappointed with the approach that Canada took at this meeting,” says Amanda Nickson, director of tuna conservation for the PEW Environment Group, a nonprofit conservation group based in Washington, D.C. “Canada was out of step.”

Bluefin tuna is highly prized, especially in Japan, with international prices as high as $1,000 a kilo. In Canada, there are 777 people with bluefin fishing licences. They caught 483 tonnes in 2012 — Canada’s share of the ICCAT quota. Catches are mostly by rod and reel and restricted to one per person each year. (Seventy-eight swordfish licence holders can also keep bluefin tuna they happen to hook on long-lines.)

Even the government’s toughest critics describe Canada’s bluefin fishery as tightly controlled and monitored. The annual value of bluefin tuna caught runs from $8 million to $10 million, according to federal officials. Most of the catch is in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence and around the Atlantic provinces. The largest portion of Canada’s quota — 30 per cent — goes to fishermen in Prince Edward Island.

Michael McGeoghegan, president of the PEI Fishermen’s Association, says his group pushed the government to request a bigger bluefin quota. Tuna numbers are healthy, he says, and fishermen venture no more than 20 minutes from shore before quickly hooking one.

“There would be more money in it if we could catch more than one fish,” he says.

In its May 2011 report, COSEWIC used ICCAT numbers to put the population of mature bluefin tuna in the western Atlantic at about 65,900 – a decline of 69 per cent since the 1970s. It describes continued overfishing as the largest threat to the species and notes it’s unclear how the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, where western bluefin spawn, will impact birthrates.

Scattolon doesn’t dispute COSEWIC’s figures. But she notes that stocks have been relatively stable since the mid-1980s. And she insists the outlook is good.

The last few years have seen a clampdown on illegal bluefin tuna fishing in the eastern Atlantic. As stocks rebuild in the east, so will those in the west because a portion of the Atlantic population mixes, Scattolon adds.

Scattolon insists the 2,000 tonnes Canada wanted to fish would have allowed the bluefin population to increase over time. ICCAT scientists don’t agree. Their assessment report in September states that fishing 2,000 tonnes a year, under the scientific scenario most favourable to Canada’s proposal, would not increase the population by 2019 — the target end date for ICCAT’s 20-year stock rebuilding program.

Predicting future bluefin populations is a guessing game. Scientists use two scenarios: the “high recruitment” one is based on a common-sense prediction — the more tunas mature enough to spawn, the more baby tunas produced. Those who embrace this scenario argue for less fishing.

The “low recruitment” scenario instead argues that environmental conditions, including limited amounts of food, restrict the number of baby tunas that survive no matter how big the spawning stock. So you may as well fish more adult tuna because leaving them to spawn won’t make a difference.

“We don’t have the data to say which hypothesis is the correct one,” says Maguire. “You go on faith.”

ICCAT will be setting up workshops with scientists and government officials to try to resolve what Scattolon calls the recruitment “conundrum.” Until then, critics say Canada should err on the side of caution.

In Canada, Hutchings doesn’t see stock management improving until Canadians become better informed about what he describes as a dire state of affairs.

“There are few if any political costs in this country to making bad ocean management decisions,” says Hutchings, who recently chaired the Royal Society of Canada’s expert panel on marine biodiversity. “If there were political costs, we wouldn’t see these types of decisions being made on an almost routine basis.”

Source: http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1307961--scientists-fear-canada-will-fish-bluefin-tuna-and-other-species-to-extinction#.UOONCLnq_S0.facebook

Asia-Pacific fishing experts on Sunday warned against depleting tuna stocks, saying the region needs to reduce its catch of the vulnerable bigeye species by 30 percent.

Participants at the conference of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) said action must be taken not only to preserve tuna resources but also other marine life that are accidentally caught with them.

Some tuna varieties are overfished while others are near their limits, participants at the meeting said. Additionally, tuna fishers often catch sharks, rays and other fish in their nets, depleting their numbers as well.

The area covered by the WCPFC provides more than 50 percent of all the tuna catch in the world, said Asis Perez, head of the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries.

The commission, which groups over 30 countries and territories ranging from the United States, China and Australia to small Pacific island nations, has a special role in protecting tuna, he added.

Because tuna is a migratory species that moves from one country's territory to another, cooperation is crucial to sustaining the resource.

WCPFC executive director Glenn Hurry said bigeye tuna, one of the most caught species, was reaching its limits and measures must be taken to limit the catching of this species.

"This is the one we're worried about. The catch is too big. We need to find a way to reduce that," he told reporters.

Hurry said the region was producing about 151,000 tonnes of bigeye tuna annually which was too high.

"We need to reduce that catch by 30 percent," he said.

But the catching of the other popular varieties like skipjack, yellowfin and Pacific albacore -- should not increase either, Hurry warned.

Skipjack tuna catch was about 1.4 million tonnes last year, while yellowfin tuna catch was at about 550,000 tonnes in 2010, Hurry said, adding it should ideally be at 450,000 tonnes a year.

"We want to develop a conservation measure for the catching of bigeye, yellowfin and skipjack tuna," he said.

Among the proposed measures is extending controls on "fish aggregating devices"-- floating objects which attract fish in the high seas, making it easier for fishing boats to haul them in.

Such devices often result in the catching of immature tuna as well as other species like sharks, rays and sea turtles, participants said.

The forum will also take up possibly closing the the so-called "high-seas pockets" in the Pacific where tuna fishing is permitted but where there are reports of some fishing boats violating commission rules.

Source: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/overfishing-threatens-pacific-tuna-130646258.html

Posted by Brad Plumer

We’ve written before about “the end of fish.” This is the rather apocalyptic warning, promoted by ecologists like Daniel Pauly, that humans are severely over-exploiting the ocean for fish, and, if we’re not careful, stocks of key species like tuna will soon collapse. Then it’s lumpy jellyfish sandwiches for everyone.

But it’s worth reiterating that the end of fish can be avoided, as even Pauly has pointed out. While plenty of countries are guilty of relentless over-fishing—southern Europe and China often get mentioned as key culprits—there are several nations that have worked hard to improve their fisheries management practices over the years. Iceland. New Zealand. Australia. And the United States. “The U.S. is actually a big success story in rebuilding fish stocks,” says Ray Hilborn, a marine biologist at the University of Washington.

One place to see that progress is in a new annual report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which found that the U.S. seafood catch was at a 17-year high last year, thanks to policies to rebuild domestic fisheries. Commercial fishermen caught 10.1 billion pounds of fish and shellfish, up 22.6 percent from 2010. That haul was worth $5.3 billion. NOAA cited the increase as evidence that U.S. fish populations were slowly recovering.

It’s not all good news. Progress has been uneven. A large fraction of the overall catch increase came from menhaden in the Gulf of Mexico, pollock in Alaska, and hake in the Pacific. At the same time, other U.S. fisheries have been declared disaster zones—particularly the cod fisheries in New England and oyster and crab fisheries in the Mississippi. Populations in those areas haven’t been recovering as expected, and the Commerce Department will likely have to impose stricter catch limits for 2013. In some areas, that will hit fishing communities extremely hard.

Yet despite the ups and vicious downs, recent trends in the United States have been encouraging, say scientists. Many fisheries appear to be strengthening. For that, much credit goes to recent efforts to tighten the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act, says Steve Murawski, a former scientist at the National Marine Fisheries Service. In 2006, Congress moved to end over-fishing by requiring strict new annual catch limits at all federally managed fisheries by 2011. “That tightening of the screw has been the single most important factor in the relative success of the U.S.,” Murawski said in a recent interview.

Different regions in the United States employ different policies to regulate overfishing. Alaska has long used a “catch share” system, in which fisherman are granted a fixed percentage of the overall haul each year. That system gives the industry a stake in ensuring that the overall fishery remains healthy for years to come. (Evidence suggests that catch shares are very effective at preventing fisheries collapse.)

Other regions, such as New England, have put in place overall catch limits—though the success of this system depends on scientists and regulators setting the limits correctly. Make the limits too loose, and fish populations start collapsing, as is now the case with Atlantic cod. Make them overly stringent, and fishermen suffer.

The United States still has plenty of room to improve. NOAA only assesses about 200 of the 532 types of fish under regulation, so it’s difficult to get a full picture of how much progress is being made made. That’s because, Murawski says, “assessing fish stocks is complicated and expensive,” which means that NOAA often has to engage in triage, focusing mainly on protecting the most economically important species.

Even so, some fisheries scientists say that the U.S. success in building its fish stocks could be a model for other parts of the world. In 2006, a study in Science led by ecologist Boris Worm warned that global fisheries were on pace for “collapse” by 2048. But a follow-up study in 2009 by Worm and Ray Hilborn found that this fate was far from inevitable. In some well-managed regions, fish stocks were rebuilding. The question was whether the rest of the world would adopt policies to prevent overfishing.

“In parts of the world, like in the North Atlantic, we’re starting to see reduced fishing pressure after 150 years of being fished hard,” Hilborn told me this summer. “But in parts of Asia and Africa, we don’t have good stock assessments to tell what the trends are. What we do know is that fishing pressure is increasing there.”

Indeed, if the United States wants to make its fish footprint sustainable, it will have to consider the rest of the world, too. The NOAA report found that about 91 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States last year was imported abroad (though a fraction of that was caught by U.S. fisherman, exported for processing and then re-imported).

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/23/can-the-u-s-win-the-battle-against-overfishing/