“I was always seeing these little segments of yellow rope,” says Shaw. “We would see thousands of them across the season.”

After asking around, Shaw realized that these little yellow ropes came from longline oyster aquaculture, an off-bottom growing technique that is particularly useful in areas where the bottom can’t support bottom-grown oysters due to the prevalence of burrowing shrimp. After the oysters are harvested, pieces of these ropes can end up back in the water, contributing to the issues of marine debris and microplastics pollution.

In 2019, Shaw called a meeting with the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association and the Willapa-Grays Harbor Oyster Growers Association. He presented the issue, and a discussion ensued about how to solve the problem. Oyster growers such as  Pacific Seafood began introducing processes to address these rope fragments. The industry response had an immediate effect.

In September of this year, Shaw went for a walk down a 2.5-mile stretch of beach that he visits frequently. 

“Prior to [2018 or 2019], I would pick up 500 to 600 pieces of yellow rope in a walk and bring in multiple bags,” says Shaw. On this walk, he found only three or four individual pieces.

“We just saw this immediate decline in the material that was coming out of Willapa Harbor,” says Shaw. “It was stunning.”

Beach clean-ups helped pull tens of thousands of pieces of yellow rope out of the environment. (Photography courtesy of John Shaw)

The Cluster Buster

Beach clean-ups in Washington state resulted in the collection of tens of thousands of pieces of yellow rope. Yellow rope affects beaches in the Pacific Northwest and is one part of a larger issue of marine debris pollution. But unlike things such as water bottles and glass fragments, this yellow rope comes from one specific source.

Longline aquaculture uses yellow polypropylene rope. To grow oysters this way, you have to splice an oyster shell with seed on it into the rope. As the seeds grow, they form a cluster.

“You get this big, almost flower of oysters,” says Kyle Deerkop, Washington Shellfish Farm manager for Pacific Seafood. “One shell can turn into 10 to 15 oysters.”

When harvesting, you cut between the clusters. After the oysters have been harvested, you’re left with softball- or cantaloupe-sized balls of shells. The industry recycles these shells—either new oysters will be set on them in the hatchery or the shells will be spread on oyster beds to catch natural set oysters. The problem has been that these clusters dispersed for natural catch production still held onto their yellow rope segments. That rope would eventually end up floating in the water and washed up on the beach.

After the 2019 meeting, nonprofits such as the Surfrider Foundation and Twin Harbors Waterkeeper also got involved in trying to address the issue. 

“There’s two things when you have a challenge like that. The first is to stop the flow of it to the environment,” says Deerkop. “And then the second is to clean up what’s out there.”

Yellow rope collected during beach clean-ups in southwest Washington. (Photography courtesy of John Shaw)

The industry and nonprofit groups worked to approach the issue from multiple angles—beach clean-ups, education and figuring out what interventions could intercept the yellow rope before it makes it back into the water. Pacific Seafood, with help from college interns from surrounding universities, got to work developing what they would end up calling the “Cluster Buster”—a machine that could take these shell clusters and break them apart, so that the rope within could be removed and disposed of. The Cluster Buster breaks apart the clusters but without damaging the shells. This is important, since the shells are usable for future growing operations. It took some trial and error to get it right.

“You don’t realize how much force it actually takes,” says Deerkop. “So, we were bending shafts, we were having to reconfigure the rollers.”

Left: The Pacific Seafood team picking rope from the “busted” clusters. Right: The team loads shells into the hopper. (Photography by Kyle Deerkop)

After they built their onsite Cluster Buster, they received funding from the Washington State Conservation Commission to develop a mobile version that could be used at the shell piles—not just those belonging to Pacific Seafood but also those of other companies. Longline oyster growers in Oregon and Washington will be able to borrow the mobile Cluster Buster, once processes are established for maintenance and repairs. A chance to use it annually would be sufficient for most growers, says Deerkop. Continued effort will be necessary to keep yellow rope numbers down.

Shaw is satisfied with the industry reaction. “I think that the industry should get kudos for having responded.”

Shared resource

In addition to the Cluster Buster, community engagement has resulted in other alternative endings for yellow rope. In one project, yellow rope collected during beach clean-ups was processed and delivered to Western Washington University, where it was used to make crab gauges, an industry tool to determine if a crab is big enough for harvest. In that instance, the yellow rope was recycled right back into the industry.

For Deerkop’s part, he and his farm team continue to go to beach clean-ups. He says it’s important to have the mindset of being invested in the health of the estuary, as a seafood company. Without clean water, he says, you can’t have clean shellfish.

“It is a shared resource, right? It’s important for our company and it’s important for the community.”

The post Stopping Aquaculture Rope Pollution at the Source appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The colorful packages are trending on Tik Tok and Instagram, (#tinfish has 38.6 million views on the latter platform), with influencers touting high nutrient value, long shelf life and convenience. Cookbooks such as Tin to Table  by Anna Hezel and The Magic of Tinned Fish by Chris McDade feature tinned-fish recipes. In the United States, the tinned-fish industry has been valued at almost $9.5 billion, and a package of tinned fish can range in price from $8 to $27, depending on the brand and the fish species.

That can be a pricey can of sardines. Many brands claim the high price tag is due to their sustainable practices, but in a complex seafood system, that can mean something different for every brand. For each purveyor, sustainable practices can mean different methods of sourcing, canning and labeling tins; there is no universal standard for a product to be labeled as sustainable. 

For some purveyors of tinned fish, sustainability is about the carbon footprint. For others, it’s about recognizing the labor of the fishermen or utilizing bycatch, fish caught unintentionally when fishing for specific species or sizes of fish. “I really try to avoid the word ‘sustainable.’ Food systems are so extractive, to use [the term]) ‘sustainability’ is really complicated,” says Bryan Szeliga, owner of Fishtown Seafood in Philadelphia. 

Bryan Szeliga, owner of Fishtown Seafood in Philadelphia.

 Sara Hauman, chef and founder of the Tiny Fish Co. in Seattle, says she wanted to reduce her carbon footprint by sourcing local fish species and canning locally. Hauman uses bycatch and sells less-well-known species that are caught in the Pacific Northwest, including rockfish, geoduck and black cod. 

“I feel it’s a more responsible decision than throwing them overboard,” says Hauman. She sources her octopus from bycatch and says one 15-kilogram octopus can produce around 100 tins of octopus in butter with lemon and dill. Hauman develops the recipes herself and works with local fisherman and a local cannery to produce her tinned fish. “Historically, canned fish has been a cheap pantry staple, but I feel strongly that fish should be expensive because it is a fleeting food resource,” says Hauman, who wants consumers to view tinned fish as a gourmet item. 

But for every brand that is trying to be transparent, there are also purveyors that may not think twice about greenwashing a seafood product’s labels. “Perfection in labeling might not be possible. With that said, there is some level of responsibility that [seafood sellers] need to take if they want to make a profit off of buying and selling seafood,” says Szeliga, who adds that honest mistakes can be made in a complicated seafood industry. 

Sometimes, tinned fish can be mislabeled, as it was when he placed an order for squid ink and instead received cuttlefish ink. Cuttlefish are much harder to sustainably trace—that is, to know where and when they were caught and if they were ethically sourced. Szeliga says  there is simply not enough information on the stock status of cuttlefish, meaning whether they were overfished or not, and consumers will see the country of origin labeling as where it was processed, not where it is actually from. 

Szeliga has a critical eye for sourcing and wants consumers to be skeptical of labels. “Octopus can be caught in Morocco or Mauritania, but since it is processed in Spain or Portugal, it gets the country-of-origin label from where it is processed.” Szeliga says that aspects of catch composition, species, harvesting methods, transport means and using salt for moisture retention should be considered when discussing seafood sustainability.   

Conditions for fishermen are not always transparent and can be overlooked in the narratives around sustainable fish. “The ocean is a dangerous place—weather can turn bad in an instant and mistakes can be life-threatening when out in the open sea,” says Hauman. She encourages consumers to remember “wild-caught fish” means the fishing crew has risked their lives.  

The tinned-fish industry in Europe has been around for nearly two centuries, with market share continuing to grow. In 2021, it was worth an estimated $4.95 billion. European canneries often support smaller tinned-fish companies and brands that don’t produce at a high volume. In the United States, more canneries are on the West Coast, making it difficult for some purveyors to source fish locally with a low carbon footprint.

FANGST, a tinned-fish company based in Denmark, also uses bycatch, fishes in regional waters and maintains Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) certifications. For MSC certification, the company must fish only healthy stocks, which can be fished for the long term, and must minimize impact on other species and the wider ecosystem. 

“The certifications need to be as transparent as they expect the seafood supply chain to be,” says Szeliga, who is concerned that certifications allow seafood companies to stay certified even when certain conditions lapse. He adds that while certifications have some value, finding compliance standards and company audits are often difficult for consumers. 

“It’s not good enough to say we are sustainable. We are open to work with even stricter certifications if they existed in our region,” says Martin Bregnballe, the founder of FANGST. Bregnballe says he hopes he will one day be able to label his tinned fish with the fisherman’s name, time of catch and the specific area where the fish was caught.

Bregnballe says he hopes that FANGST tinned fish such as baltic sprat and Norwegian sea herring will encourage people to eat more small fish that feed on plankton instead of eating predatory fish, which is better for the environment and provides more Omega-3 fatty acids (than eating predatory fish) instead of turning them into fishmeal and animal feed. “The huge local catch of ‘Brisling’ [sprat] is used for fishmeal. However, calculations show that if we eat the fish ourselves instead of feeding them to the pigs, we could cover one-third of Denmark’s protein needs by this catch alone.” 

As the tinned-fish industry grows, purveyors hope that transparency will help them stand out in a crowded marketplace. “As a chef, I would never write ‘house-made pasta’ on a menu and use dried pasta,” says Hauman. “Maybe I’m not the best business person, but it means more to be honest to consumers.”

The post Tinned Fish is Trending. But Can You Trust the Label? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“Back then, gosh, it was amazing to see the fish when the fish ran during the fall,” says Hockaday, a traditional fisherman and council member of the Karuk Tribe. “The salmon were huge.” On average, he says, you could catch fish ranging from 40 to 50 pounds—although members of his grandparents’ generation were known to catch 100-pound Chinook salmon at Ishi Pishi Falls, the tribe’s sacred fishing grounds. “Nowadays, our average is anywhere from 15 to maybe 25 pounds. We catch a 30-pounder and that’s a hog, that’s a big fish.”

A slow-motion disaster for tribes, commercial fishermen and conservationists, the decline of California’s once-abundant salmon population has been unfolding for decades. The crisis has its roots in decisions about the state’s water use made a century ago and, like so many stories of water wars in the West, it has pitted stakeholders against one another in a seemingly zero-sum contest over a dwindling natural resource. 

The outlook is grim, but there are bright spots. As a future of increasingly hot and dry weather hangs over the state, can change come quickly enough to save the imperiled salmon from extinction?

Salmon are the epitome of endurance and resilience. Spawned in cold, high-elevation mountain streams, they navigate downriver as juveniles, fattening up as they make their way to coastal estuaries, where they undergo a remarkable transformation from freshwater to saltwater fish before entering the ocean. Depending on the species, they can spend years maturing at sea, where commercial fishermen vie for the valuable catch. Then, governed by an unshakeable biological imperative, they reverse the journey, this time propelling themselves against the current to return to their spawning grounds, where they’ll lay their eggs and then die, their nutrients enriching the river ecosystem. 

Or, at least, that’s what salmon have historically done. But ever since white settlers made their way westward, a barrage of man-made challenges has disrupted the salmon’s natural journey. In the late 1840s came the gold miners, whose use of hydraulic mining clogged waterways with sediment. Then, a growing population began to reshape the state’s water systems, building channels and levees to control where water flowed. In the 20th century, ambitious dam projects rose up to store and divert water for cities and farming, cutting salmon off from hundreds of miles of upriver habitat. 

“In a way, it’s amazing we have as many salmon around as we do,” says Peter Moyle, associate director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis and a distinguished professor emeritus in the university’s Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. He estimates that, prior to the Gold Rush, there were one million to two million salmon a year coming up through the Central Valley alone, and another half a million or more in other rivers. But a confluence of factors, including water diversions that erased more than 90 percent of the state’s wetlands and large dams that blocked 70 percent of salmon’s historic spawning grounds, have decimated the wild salmon population.

A mature Chinook salmon. (Photo: Ryan Hagerty/USFWS)

Today, the state’s salmon fishery is reliant on hatcheries that produce millions of fish and release them into the wild. “What we see today, the reason we have as much salmon as we do today, is hatcheries. But the hatchery fish are in decline,” says Moyle. “They keep producing more hatchery fish, and the numbers keep going down, partly because hatchery fish are poorly adapted for life in the wild.” 

Warming waters present another threat, and one that increases in severity during drought, when surface water supplies falter. Warm freshwater can contribute to the proliferation of algal blooms and harmful bacteria, and temperatures above 70 degrees Fahrenheit can be lethal to salmon; ocean acidification and marine heatwaves also imperil the fish. That’s bad news for California, where, despite a winter of heavy rainfalls that refilled reservoirs and lifted the state out of a severe multi-year drought, human-caused climate change continues to accelerate the frequency and severity of extreme heat events and drought conditions.

And those recurrent drought conditions have forced salmon, and the people who rely on them, closer to a breaking point. 

This spring, for just the second time in history, the ocean commercial and recreational salmon fishing season was canceled, impacting a swath of the West Coast, from northern Oregon to the border with Mexico. The decision came after last year’s Sacramento River fall-run Chinook, the principal salmon stock harvested in California’s fisheries, returned to the Central Valley at near-record low numbers—estimated at just 169,767 adults.

“Those numbers were abysmal,” says Glen Spain, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “What happens three years ago determines how many adults come back this year, so what we’re seeing was the worst part of the [2020] drought, which essentially dried up the rivers or created hot water conditions, and that just killed lots of eggs and lots of young salmon before they could even get to the ocean.” 

Without the salmon season, many fishermen are losing their livelihoods. “There are over 1,000 boats out there with permits, and they’re basically in dry dock,” he says, noting that the closure could extend beyond this season, and up to another two years, creating uncertainty in an already challenging industry.

“It used to be that we could rely on a salmon season to buffer us from potentially a slow crab season,” says Dick Ogg, a commercial fisherman who operates out of Bodega Bay. “But with the seasons being compressed and getting smaller and smaller, and opportunities becoming less and less … the impact is significant.” 

Fishing boats in Bodega Bay, CA. (Photo: Shutterstock)

In addition to salmon, Ogg holds permits to fish for black cod, albacore, Dungeness crab and rockfish. The days when a fisherman could rely on just the salmon fishery are “almost a thing of the past,” he says, but the cost of diversifying with multiple permits can become a barrier,  especially for new fishermen entering the business. “The cost of each permit, the cost of owning your own vessel, the insurance that’s required, the slip fees that you have to pay, the taxes that you have to take care of, the crew that you need to maintain … it just is devastating.”

In April, California Governor Gavin Newsom submitted a request to the US Secretary of Commerce asking for a Federal Fishery Disaster Declaration, which would provide relief for businesses and fishermen impacted by the closure of the salmon season. In the meantime, Spain says, “There is the edge of desperation in a lot of our communities.”

“We all know why this is happening … but what we don’t know is how to get around it, at a family-by-family and port-by-port level,” says Spain. “And the sad thing is this was once a billion-dollar fishery.”

The formidable challenges facing California’s salmon population are prompting efforts to get creative with everything from building a controversial “fishway” around the Yuba River’s Daguerre Point Dam to exploring the reintroduction of fish transplanted to New Zealand more than a century ago, as the Winnemem Wintu Tribe has proposed.

In the Central Valley, one project has a particularly grand vision for transforming water management systems to support native fish. Called the Nigiri Project for its fish-on-rice concept, it’s a collaboration between researchers and farmers that floods rice fields in the winter, helping to break down rice straw while offering juvenile salmon and waterfowl conditions that mimic the bug-rich floodplain ecosystems to which they’re adapted. 

It’s a win-win that researcher Jacob Katz hopes proves that a paradigm shift is possible. “We actually have the capacity to manage the Sacramento Valley in a way that is good for both fish and for farms,” says Katz, a senior scientist at California Trout, a nonprofit aimed at restoring waterways and wild fish. “One of the major reasons we’ve so diminished our fisheries resources is not necessarily an inevitable consequence of development but a specific and direct consequence of the way in which we developed.” 

Juvenile Chinook salmon. (Photo: USFWS/Flickr)

Levees that block rivers from adjoining wetlands have benefits, such as flood protection and creating farmland, but they also cut fish off from essential food sources in floodplain wetlands, turning rivers into food deserts. The Nigiri Project, along with a related initiative that drains food-rich fields back into rivers, provides a blueprint for what Katz hopes could be a large-scale reimagining of the system. It’s ambitious, but Katz says that, “if you look at the science, we have no right to expect a population-level recovery of salmon if we aren’t actually changing the real world at landscape scale. To have a postage stamp here and a postage stamp there, why would we expect that to lead to population recovery? That’s not how it works.”

But rethinking the levee model to provide food for salmon would address just one of the two biggest problems facing the fish, says Katz. The other is the large-scale dam infrastructure that blocks salmon’s upstream migration. “The fact that we have essentially dammed all of the [Sacramento] Valley’s rivers, cutting off that critical cold water refuge, is ultimately a death sentence, an extinction sentence, for our salmon if something isn’t done.”

While most dams are built for a 50-year lifespan, the average age of California’s nearly 1,500 dams is 70 years old, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave the state’s dams a grade of C- in its most recent infrastructure report card. But that wasn’t what prompted the Klamath River tribal communities to launch a campaign to remove the four aging dams sitting upriver from them.

In 2002, upwards of 70,000 Chinook salmon died as part of a massive fish kill caused by low flows on the Klamath, the result of low flows caused by water diversions by farmers and ranchers upstream. “Tens of thousands of adult salmon died before spawning and just littered the banks of the river,” says Craig Tucker, a natural resource policy consultant for the Karuk Tribe. “And for tribal communities, that was sort of the breaking point.”

What followed was a grassroots effort by tribes and other advocacy groups to remove the dams, as well as to broker a water-sharing deal between the tribes and Klamath Basin irrigators that required an act of Congress to pass. Ultimately, the arduous, multi-decade campaign was successful: Demolition recently began on the first dam, and the remaining dams are set to come out by the end of 2024 in what’s been billed as the largest dam removal project in history.

Klamath Basin tribes and allies staging a dam-removal rally in 2006. (Photo: Patrick McCully/Flickr)

“These should be easy,” says Tucker of the tortured process. “The Klamath River dams are what we call ‘deadbeat dams.’ They don’t pay their own way, there’s no flood control, no irrigation diversions, they’re not making a lot of money for anybody. They have this devastating impact on fisheries and water quality. It should be a no-brainer. And it’s taken us 20 years to get to dam removal.” 

As most of the state’s dams are approaching or past their engineered life spans, Tucker says we’ve reached a critical inflection point for the future of salmon. “Now is that moment of reckoning: Are we going to have wild salmon or not? If we’re going to have wild salmon, we have to remove some dams.”

The situation reflects the complexity of a system that aims to control and deliver a limited resource—water—that just happens to also be the foundation of life on earth. For farmers, water is necessary for growing crops. For fishermen, it’s essential for supporting fish. And for the Karuk and other tribes, those fish form the basis of their entire cultural identity. “It’s not just a fish, it’s a way of life,” says Kenneth Brink, another Karuk council member and traditional fisherman. “It’s our ceremonies. It’s our cross on top of our church. Some people just look at fish as a food. Some people look at it as money. We look at it as a way of life.”

It remains to be seen whether that way of life—and the fish on which it relies—can continue. But for the people who are fighting for salmon’s survival, the only option is to carry on.

This story is part of State of Abundance, a five-part series about California agriculture and climate change. See the full series here.

The post California’s Salmon Are Teetering on the Brink appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Some have claimed that farmed salmon is naturally gray, suggesting they are malnourished, and consumers should avoid eating it for this reason.

These claims are utterly false and perpetuate a myth that can confuse or scare salmon consumers. The truth is that the color of salmon fillets is red due to naturally occurring molecules called carotenoids, such as astaxanthin. This is part of a natural diet of wild salmon, and is added to the food for farmed salmon.

Carotenoids are common in the natural world among different plants and animals. Salmon have it in their diet from eating algae, krill and other small crustaceans. Carotenoids are essential pigments produced by bacteria, fungi, algae and plants. Animals cannot make carotenoids on their own, so those found in animals are either directly accumulated from food or partly modified through their own metabolic reactions.

The color of salmon fillets is from the same pigment that we see in shrimp, lobsters and even flamingos.

The color of wild salmon’s flesh comes from naturally occurring carotenoids in their diet, which need to be added to the feed of farmed salmon. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Why are salmon red?

The red color of salmon flesh — their muscle tissue — is a unique trait in several types of salmon. It’s an evolved genetic trait that likely occurred as an evolutionary mutation and distinguishes salmon from other types of fish.

While the flesh color is a direct result of carotenoids in their diet, there is also a unique genetic component. The gene beta-carotene oxygenase 1 is responsible for carotenoid metabolism, and most likely explains flesh color variation in salmon.

Carotenoids, including astaxanthin, can be manufactured and added to the diet of farmed salmon. These can be produced synthetically on a commercial scale, or from natural sources, such as algae; the freshwater green microalgae, Haematococcus pluvialis, is a popular source. H. pluvialis is an excellent source of astaxanthin for farmed salmonids like rainbow trout.

More importantly, astaxanthin is a health-sustaining molecule that plays a critical role in fish health and survival, and has benefits for humans too.

Health benefits to fish

Astaxanthin is a potent antioxidant, meaning it prevents some types of cellular damage. Antioxidants have multiple health benefits for both fish and humans.

Astaxanthin’s antioxidant activity is 100 times higher than vitamin E, which is a popular antioxidant in human supplements. In fish, it has many important functions related to immunity and reproduction.

Research has shown that astaxanthin has a significant impact on reproductive performance in many different fish species, like egg production and quality, sperm quality, fertilization rate and survival of newly hatched larvae.

Salmon eggs are red or orange in color because of the accumulation of astaxanthin, which plays a beneficial role in protecting the eggs.

Salmon eggs in the Adams River, B.C.—the carotenoid astaxanthin gives the eggs their distinctive color. (Photo: Shutterstock)

New Canadian research is underway to investigate the role of dietary astaxanthin in inflammatory control and immunity in Atlantic salmon. Overall, studies have consistently found that dietary astaxanthin is an important nutritional factor in stimulating growth and maintaining health and survival of aquatic animals.

Health benefits to humans

In humans, astaxanthin’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects have been shown to protect against stress-associated and inflammatory diseases. There are also potential effects on various diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and obesity.

Additionally, pre-clinical trials predict that astaxanthin may regulate intestinal microbiome and glucose metabolism. People can get astaxanthin in their diet by eating salmon or other salmonids like trout as well as shrimp, crab, krill or supplements.

Astaxanthin in farmed fish feeds is not only for pigmentation, but is also a necessary nutrient for health and reproduction in fish. In turn, it increases the nutritional value of the fish fillets for consumers.

Stefanie Colombo is Canada Research Chair in Aquaculture Nutrition at Dalhousie University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The rules would have required lobstermen to create new seasonal non-fishing zones and further reduce their use of vertical ropes to retrieve lobster traps from the seafloor. Entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with many types of ships are the leading causes of right whale deaths.

Maine’s congressional delegation amended a federal spending bill to delay the new regulations until 2028 and called for more research on whale entanglements and ropeless fishing gear. Conservationists argue that the delay could drive North Atlantic right whales, which number about 340 today, to extinction.

This is the latest chapter in an ongoing and sometimes fraught debate over fishing gear and bycatch—unintentionally caught species that fishermen don’t want and can’t sell. My research as a maritime historian, focusing on disputes tied to industrial fishing, shows the profound impacts that particular fishing gear can have on marine species.

Disputes over fishing gear and bycatch have involved consumers, commercial fishermen, recreational anglers and environmentalists. With conservation pitted against economic livelihoods, emotions often run high. And these controversies aren’t resolved quickly, which bodes poorly for species on the brink.

Photography by Shutterstock.

Millions of tons wasted

Bycatch is difficult to measure. Estimates vary widely, but scientists have calculated that 10% to 40% of total yearly catches worldwide are species that weren’t targeted, including fish, whales, dolphins, turtles and seabirds.

According to the United Nations, global fishery harvests totaled 178 million tons in 2020. Even by the most conservative estimates then, some 20 million tons are likely wasted annually. Advocacy focuses on high-profile species such as sea turtles, dolphins and sharks, but the problem is much more pervasive. Recent studies of U.S. Atlantic fisheries indicate that flounder, herring and halibut are among the species most frequently landed as bycatch.

At the same time, global demand for fish is rising. From 1961 to 2019, world fish consumption grew by an average of 3% annually, while yearly per-capita consumption increased to 46 pounds (21 kilograms) from 22 pounds (10 kilograms). Today, fish consumption is split evenly between aquaculture—or farmed fish—and wild-capture fisheries, where bycatch occurs.

Dolphin-free tuna

Most wild-catch fishing takes place far from shore, so bycatch occurs out of the public spotlight. Sometimes, though, threats to charismatic species make news.

Perhaps the most prominent example is U.S. consumers’ campaign against the tuna fishing industry for killing dolphins. In the 1950s, tuna fishermen adopted the purse seine—a long, rectangular net that hangs vertically in the water. Boats encircled schools of fish with these nets, then cinched them at the top and bottom. Some nets extended hundreds of feet deep and more than a mile from end to end.

Purse seines often swept up dolphins that swam alongside tuna. Using a method called “setting on dolphins,” tuna fishermen would search for pods of dolphin feeding at the surface, which generally indicated that tuna were beneath them feeding as well. By the 1960s, it was estimated that nearly a quarter of a million dolphins were dying every year when they became trapped in nets and suffered traumatic injuries or suffocated.

When Congress held hearings in the early 1970s on a proposed ban on the capture of all species of whales, including dolphins, this practice sparked outrage. The New York Times accused the tuna industry of “wanton slaughter.” Millions of viewers watched televised documentaries with titlessuch as “Last Day of the Dolphins?” and “Where Have All the Dolphins Gone?” Advocacy groups campaigned with slogans such as “Would You Kill Flipper for a Tuna Sandwich?” and boycotted canned tuna.

Under pressure, major suppliers including StarKist, Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee pledged to use only tuna that was not caught using methods that endangered dolphins. In 1990, Congress passed legislation creating a label that identified canned tuna caught appropriately as “dolphin-safe.” Other measures banned tuna imports from countries with dolphin mortality rates higher than those in U.S. fisheries.

Trap doors for turtles

The spotlight next shifted to the U.S. Gulf Coast, where shrimp catches were skyrocketing thanks to gear such as otter trawls—large conical nets towed through the water behind fishing boats. By some estimates, for every 1,000 pounds of fish that these nets gathered, less than 100 pounds was marketable shrimp. Other species— usually dead, dying or injured—were tossed overboard.

Environmentalists and recreational anglers accused the fishing industry of endangering popular sport fish, such as red drum and spotted trout. But sea turtles, which often were found in the same coastal waters as shrimp, became critics’ poster animal. A 1990 report from the National Research Council estimated that shrimping killed up to 55,000 Kemp’s ridley and loggerhead sea turtles yearly.

Federal regulators initially proposed voluntary use of turtle excluder devices (TEDs)—small trap doors in fishing nets that could allow captured turtles to swim free. In 1987, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published mandatory TED usage regulations, which went into effect in 1989 after several years of lawsuits, injunctions and state legal action.

Many fishermen argued that TEDs greatly reduced their shrimp catches and resisted the new regulations, sometimes agressively. Over time, however, shrimpers began working with federal regulators to develop and test TEDs that released turtles and retained shrimp more effectively. Today, sea turtles are still at risk, but there is wide agreement that modern TEDs effectively reduce turtle bycatch. Conservation organizations are working to increase their use worldwide.

A lobster shack in Maine.                       Photography by Shutterstock.

Slow progress

Fishermen often are quick to rebut claims that their methods endanger other species. They typically assert that their fishing has little impact on the broader ecosystem and that new gear and practices will be too costly or ineffective against a minor problem.

Ultimately, public pressure—including lawsuits—can lead to regulation, especially when potent symbols such as dolphins, sea turtles or, perhaps, right whales, are threatened. The Maine lobster fishery has lost several sustainable certifications because of concerns about right whale entanglements.

But regulation isn’t enough. Reducing dolphin and sea turtle bycatch also required extensive engagement between regulators and fisheries to educate fishermen and develop and test gear. It’s not clear whether this will happen fast enough to save North Atlantic right whales.

Across broad swaths of the globe, including much of Africa and Asia, more than 3 billion people obtain from 20% to more than 50% of the animal protein in their diets from aquatic sources. Rising demand for wild-caught fish is likely to increase bycatch. In my view, unintentional capture of any species—whether it’s a winsome spinner dolphin or a bottom-dwelling scavenger such as the hagfish—harms the ocean’s ecological health and threatens communities that rely on the sea for sustenance.

Blake Earle, Assistant Professor of History, Texas A&M University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Could Lobster Fishing Push One Whale Species to Extinction? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

From holding cages to flotation buoys to the packaging that brings oysters from farm to restaurant or shop, much of the gear that makes oyster farming feasible is made of plastics. “Lots of different plastics are used in aquaculture,” says Joel Baziuk, associate director of the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI) at the Ocean Conservancy. “Nets, buoys, piping, mesh containers… It’s basically found everywhere, which isn’t surprising, it’s very useful.”

Yet while plastic may be prized for its ability to offer inexpensive and durable solutions for the aquaculture industry, it’s also problematic. 

“As an oyster farmer, I’m also trying to improve the flavor, to raise the level of taste. Oysters are just like wine; their environment flavors them. It got me thinking—wouldn’t the gear affect the flavor?” says Jennifer Scappatura Harrington, owner of the Rhode Island-based Quonnie Siren Oysters.

RELATED: The Oyster Shuckers Turned Oyster Farmers

Beyond taste, there’s the issue of plastic’s negative impact on the health of people and ecosystems. All that plastic damages the planet, us and other animals. Almost all plastics are made from fossil fuel products, and as the United Nations has warned more than once: If we’re going to avoid the worst of the climate crisis, we have to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels dramatically.

Wildlife can also become tangled in or ingest plastic—especially if it breaks free, which can also be an operational hazard. Then there is the impact of plastics breaking down into microplastics which, in addition to ending up in the water, end up in us, too. Researchers detected microplastics in human blood for the first time in March, which means they’re likely traveling around more than one human body right now.

“The long term effects are not well understood, but I think most people will agree that they’d rather not have plastic in their liver,” says Baziuk.

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Scappatura Harrington.

Removing Plastics From Our Waters

In an effort to reduce their contributions to the global reliance on plastic products, innovative and environmentally conscious oyster farmers like Harrington are looking for alternatives to the plastic gear commonly used in bivalve farming and other types of aquaculture. It has not been an easy feat. 

“Plastics and climate change are tightly connected, and as an oyster farmer who is relying on clean water, I kept thinking, ‘Why would I actively undermine my own ecosystem?’” says Maine-based oyster farmer Abby Barrows of Long Cove Sea Farm.

In addition to being an oyster farmer and mom, Barrows is also a marine scientist. She spent years traveling around the world researching the impact of oceanic microplastic pollution. Now she’s back home raising a family, growing and selling oysters and fighting to make any bit of difference she can.

A few months into a two-year grant from Builders Initiative, Barrows is researching and designing viable alternatives to plastic aquaculture gear. “I don’t know if it’s possible, but we’re exploring it,” she says. A few of the materials she’s looking at include metal, cedar and cork, as well as mycelium-based buoys from Sue Van Hook Mushroom Company. 

RELATED: These Farmers and Ranchers Turn Trash Into Treasure

While Barrows sets out to reduce the amount of plastic used in aquaculture primarily from an environmental standpoint, Harrington is researching what using non-plastic gear means for taste. Right now, she’s trialing the success of wooden holding tanks made out of oak.

“It gives [the oysters] a different flavor, it’s slightly oaky,” says Harrington, who’s thought about how wooden gear could be used for several years. She started the oyster farm in 2014, and after learning about French oyster farmers who use cranberries and lemons to flavor their oysters, started brainstorming. Then, while traveling in the Florida Keys, she noticed farmers using wooden cages for lobsters and crabs; she decided to commit to testing it out herself, but she readily admits it’s not a perfect swap.  

“Oak doesn’t last long [in the water],” says Harrington. “I’m not sure how feasible it will be but I’m also looking at basket weaving materials.”

The plastic problem doesn’t end at the farm. How oysters are packaged and transported is an issue, too. That’s why Eric Oransky of Maine Ocean Farms co-founded Ocean Farm Supply, a company that sells mesh sleeve harvest bags made in partnership with Austrian-based Packnatur. The wood-based packaging is 100-percent compostable and biodegradable.  

“It didn’t make sense. We’re growing these oysters that are improving the ecology and then we’re putting them in a plastic mesh bag to bring them to a restaurant, where that plastic goes in the trash,” says Oransky. “We wanted to create a product that doesn’t require education of the end user, that is just better from the start, and is going to turn into dirt in eight to 12 weeks.” The company is also working on several other products, including a reusable shopping bag that will also be compostable.

The big question is just how feasible swapping plastic equipment for alternatives will be, and how big of a difference one small operation can make on the larger system. When you think about all the plastic in our everyday lives, it can seem like a hopeless endeavor.

“The industry on a whole is moving away from single-use plastics. No one wants to be a part of that problem, but when we’re talking about microplastics and how these species are being affected, it would take the world at large to invest in a strategy to reduce microplastics,” says Doug Bush of The Cultured Abalone, an oyster farm in Goleta, California. “It would be meaningless without a global commitment.”

That might be true, but if oyster farmers like Barrows, Harrington and Oransky don’t try, nothing will ever change.

“These projects are a drop in the bucket,” says Barrows, “but it gives me hope that the ripple-out affects a broader paradigm shift in our materials.”

The post The Oyster Farmers Working to Address Aquaculture’s Big Plastics Problem appeared first on Modern Farmer.

According to the survey, conducted by an organization called Stronger America Through Seafood (SATS), 84 percent of the 1,020 participants found it important for America to expand its seafood production through offshore fish farm growth once learning that many American companies currently build their operations in other countries, taking technology, jobs and revenue overseas.

Aquaculture, simply speaking, is the controlled cultivation of fish or other aquatic life in the water. Aquaculture farmers use large nets in the ocean or, in some cases, freshwater to breed, raise and harvest fish, shellfish, kelp and other organisms. 

RELATED: Bill Seeks to Standardize and Promote Offshore Aquaculture

The organization highlights that America currently imports 85 percent of its seafood, mostly from Europe and Asia, and ranks only 16th in aquaculture production worldwide—facts the organization wishes to see change. SATS’ goal is for the country to have a more clarified policy framework that allows for more American aquaculture production. It says the development of more offshore fish farms would boost not only the country’s supply of sustainable fish but also the economy and labor market. 

“Now is the time for Congress to act and put in place federal policies that would establish an aquaculture industry in US federal waters—and the majority of voters agree,” the campaign manager of SATS, Sarah Brenholt, said in a press release. “According to our recent survey, more than two-thirds stated they would feel more favorable towards a member of Congress who established pathways for offshore aquaculture so the US could benefit from the economic and environmental benefits that aquaculture provides.”

With a 2020 executive order, the Trump Administration supported the idea of increasing aquaculture—currently the fastest-growing sector of the food production industry—in the United States. The order called for “more efficient and predictable” permitting for the offshore fish farms, and it claimed that the inaction of policies within the order would “propel the US forward as a seafood superpower,” increase food security and improve American industries’ competitiveness, according to the NOAA.

RELATED: Where to Look for Climate- and Environment-Friendly Seafood

But not everyone agrees that investing in American aquaculture is the way to go. In fact, advocates for sustainable fishing, fishing industry folks and environmental and Indigenous groups sent an open letter to the Biden administration in April, calling on the president to revoke the Trump-era executive order supporting more aquaculture industry in the country. 

The letter, published through an organization called Don’t Cage Our Oceans, says the expansion of aquaculture would “contaminate our marine waters with drugs, chemicals, and untreated wastes while creating a breeding ground for pests and diseases.” The letter goes on to outline that pollution caused by the farms could potentially harm wild-caught fish populations, and in doing so, effectively decrease seafood production instead of bolstering it. 

Those who signed the letter say that the offshore fish farms may just replace the wild fish population with farms, which they say would not only offer consumers lesser-quality fish but undermine historical fishing communities and their practices.

The post Majority of US Voters Support Offshore Aquaculture Expansion appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Another group is planning to join the fray, beginning on Saturday. The Lennox Island First aNation participates in the commercial lobster season, sending out about 30 boats with licensed fishers. But this year, the Indigenous community also plans to engage its treaty rights to fish for a “moderate livelihood.” This is a right set in place by Canada’s Supreme Court in 1993 and upheld in 1999, known as the Marshall Decision, named after Donald Marshall, a Nova Scotia fisherman at the heart of the case. 

Since that first decision nearly 20 years ago, Chief Darlene Bernard of Lennox Island First Nation says there has been interest in setting up a treaty-protected fishery, and the community has spent the last two years specifically putting together a management plan to present to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), only to be told there was simply not enough room for extra fishing. “Since Marshall, they’ve not created the space for the treaty-protected fishery. They’ve not created that space. They had 20 years to do it,” Bernard says. “Now, it’s time.” 

The management plan that Bernard and the Lennox Island First Nation put together was modeled after similar agreements that DFO holds with other Indigenous fishers in the Maritimes. It indicated that the Lennox Island fishers will abide by all of the DFO’s regulations when it comes to trap size and placement, and they plan to only fish within the approved commercial fishing season. They plan to use their own wharf and their own equipment. And most importantly, Bernard says, they will commit to a maximum of 1,000 traps in the water. She says there are waiting lists of young Lennox Island members who are eager to get fishing licenses, who want to enter the business and can’t. Enacting a treaty-protected fishery is one way to ensure they can fish. “We want to get our young people involved. And we have to ensure that they’re safe and that they can [fish] in peace.”

[RELATED: A Group of Indigenous Fishermen Want to Take the Government of Canada to Court]

The moderate livelihood right asserts that Indigenous fishers have a right to fish without traditional commercial licenses. However, the courts also clarified that the right does fall under some regulations. Federal and provincial regulators have the authority to decide if the treaty fishing would harm conservation efforts. That’s the message the DFO gave to the Lennox Island First Nation—that they would not be allowed to fish for lobster because of concerns regarding conservation. Bernard says that concern doesn’t hold water. 

“No, I don’t agree with that,” she says. “There are poachers all over the place. Go deal with those people. Those are the people who are doing things they shouldn’t be doing. But our 1,000 traps will not have any impact at all on commercial fishing.” 

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans disagrees. In a statement emailed to Modern Farmer, the department states that the DFO has been in conversation with Lennox Island First Nation for several months, with the aim of “reaching an interim understanding” that would allow for a moderate livelihood lobster fishery, but that no such understanding has been reached. 

“The Department’s priority continues to be the further implementation of treaty rights in a way that aligns with conservation objectives and supports a safe, orderly, and peaceful fishery. We firmly believe that respectful, constructive dialogue is the way to achieve this,” the statement goes on to say. “Fishing activity taking place without authorization by Fisheries and Oceans Canada is unauthorized, and may be subject to enforcement action.”

Many commercial fishermen, led by the Prince Edward Island Fishermen’s Association (PEIFA), are also not supportive of additional traps in the water. In a statement, PEIFA says they will continue to work with “First Nations and governments in seeking viable long term solutions that are equitable to all harvesters and protect our valuable ocean resources.” However, at this point, that solution does not include the treaty fishery, which PEIFA notes is unauthorized. “It is the expectation of the association that any enforcement issues related to the fishery are administered in an appropriate, fair and consistent manner.”

Those enforcement actions could include fines, impounded equipment or possibly arrest if, come Saturday, the Lennox Island treaty fishers go ahead with their plans to lay traps. But Bernard says the fishers are prepared to face regulations and enforcement and perhaps even pushback from commercial lobster fishers, as was seen in neighboring Nova Scotia in 2020. Despite all of that, Bernard says her community is tired of waiting for permission from the DFO. Instead, she feels like the government has been trying to avoid new regulations in the hopes that the issue would disappear on its own. “They thought if they ignore us enough, we’ll just go away,” says Bernard. “I feel like it doesn’t matter what we do. They’re never going to accept it.”

This post has been updated to include a statement from PEIFA.

The post Canadian Indigenous Community to Start Fishing Lobster Without Authorization From Government appeared first on Modern Farmer.

As the area heads into another year of extreme drought, the US government recently announced plans to release water from a federally regulated reservoir to downstream farms, in hopes of relieving the water shortage they are facing yet again.

The decision, made by the Bureau of Reclamation, has left the native Klamath tribes in Oregon assessing their legal options to stop the plan. The tribes say giving the water to farms would put two endangered fish species—both the C’waam (Lost River sucker fish) and the Koptu (shortnose sucker fish)—in serious danger of extinction. Even releasing enough water for limited irrigation on the 300 square miles of cropland that rely on Klamath River water would be detrimental to the fish, as the water withdrawal will take place at the height of spawning season, according to Katu News. 

Released in mid-April, the Bureau’s plan involves sending 50,000 acre-feet (one acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre of land with one foot of water) of water to farmers downstream. Even with the water allotment, the 1,000 farmers that would benefit would still only be getting 15 percent of what they’d have in a normal year.

[RELATED: California Wants to Pay Farmers to Not Farm This Year]

The 257-mile Klamath River does not supply enough water in a decent year to meet the needs of both farms and protect the native species. But the region hasn’t seen a “good” year in three years. In fact, the water crisis was so bad in 2021 that the Klamath Reclamation Project’s main irrigation canal ran dry. With no water released from the reservoir, thousands of juvenile salmon died out, and the culturally important sucker fish species were kept from spawning. 

In response to the plan, members of the Klamath Tribal community protested in the Bureau of Reclamation’s parking lot on April 15, where they emphasized that the water release violates the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and called for a stable solution to the water crisis that does not threaten native wildlife.

The ESA requires that Upper Klamath Lake—the body of water in the region with the highest number of the species left—remains at an elevation of 4,142 feet above sea level during April and May so the endangered fish can access the area on the lake where they spawn, a number the Reclamation failed to meet in both 2020 and 2021. This year, the lake is sitting at more than a foot below that required level.

The endangered fish once populated the area’s waterways in the millions and were a primary food source to the Klamath and Modoc people before the region was developed into agricultural land and the natural habitat was drained and subjected to toxic algae blooms, which contributed to the fish dying off. As a result, the native tribes haven’t been able to fish for the species since 1986. 

In a statement, the Klamath Tribes said that the decision to release the water to the farms as part of the agricultural project is “perhaps the saddest chapter yet in a long history of treaty violations.” 

Tired of hearing the decisions are simply a result of “another bad water year,” the statement goes on to contribute the water crisis to greater causes. “This disaster is the entirely predictable and the inevitable consequence of multi-generational mismanagement and poor judgment. Neither the Klamath Tribes nor our downriver tribal brothers and sisters made any of the decisions that brought us here,” the statement says.

The post In Oregon, Klamath Tribes Oppose Water Release for Farmers appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Found in the fibrous exoskeletons of crabs and other crustaceans, chitosan is a compound that pharmaceutical companies have utilized for years to help with everything from high blood pressure to kidney disease to blood clotting. But medicinal uses are just the beginning for the compound. Hammill says there are “endless possibilities” for what chitosan can do, and Tidal Vision is betting big on its future.

[RELATED: The Future of Ocean Farming]

Based in the Pacific Northwest, Tidal Vision is focused on using materials that would otherwise be discarded. Hammill calls that the “circular economy,” and it’s one where he says everyone should benefit. “In the past, there’s always been winners and losers when bringing in new technology,” he says. “With growers, a lot of times when they’re asked to adopt sustainable practices, they’re asked to give something up.” 

Instead, the company is looking at what can be added to current growing practices to make them more sustainable. They work primarily with snow crabs sourced from sustainable fisheries along the West Coast, from Oregon up to Alaska, to make a product called Tidal Grow, which can be used as a soil amendment or fertilizer. The goal, Hammill says, is to take the crab shell, what would be waste, and remove it from the path to the landfill by upcycling it and giving it new purpose. Since millions of tons of crab, lobster and shrimp shells are discarded every year, that’s a lot of potential chitosan getting tossed out. (Hammill won’t say exactly how many pounds of shells Tidal Vision purchases or offsets from the waste system, noting that’s a proprietary figure.) 

Instead, Tidal Vision synthesizes the chitosan for use in other industries, including water purification, textile manufacturing and food preservation. It’s even used by some winemakers as an antimicrobial agent. Hammill is specifically interested in what chitosan can do for agriculture, where it can be used as a direct seed treatment or in dilutions that are sprayed over an entire field.

Chitosan has been shown to help plants absorb fertilizer better, releasing nitrogen and acting as a biostimulant for the crop, leading to increased yields. Coastal gardeners have long known about the benefits of mixing crustacean shells with leaves, bark and other mulch to make fertilizer. Distilling the compound makes a more potent and more easily absorbed version of this traditional technique.  

[RELATED: Can Oyster Farming Save the North Carolina Coast?]

Perhaps it sounds like chitosan is too good to be true—It’s a medicine! A fertilizer! A water purifier!—but Hammill dismisses those claims. Instead, he compares it to other natural compounds that have multiple applications. “Take sulfur, take copper, take phosphate. Everyone thinks of them as plant nutrition, but they’re also a fungicide…every acre of grapes you eat has sulfur on it. We’re so used to these compounds that we forget they have a dual purpose,” Hammill says. “It’s so exciting. And that’s one of our biggest challenges, that there’s so many different opportunities.”

It hasn’t always been so easy to use chitosan. Formulating a liquid or gel-capped product out of the distilled compound isn’t easy to do without access to certain high-tech equipment. However, there are a range of formulations available now, depending on how you want to use it. Chitosan can come in an aerosol spray, a capsule, or even broken down to nanoparticles to inject intravenously (in the case of medicinal use). Hammill says Tidal Vision spent a lot of time coming up with different formulations and application methods to make the product more “user friendly.” Globally, there are other fertilizer brands that take advantage of the compound, and with a wealth of academic research, it’s likely others will jump on board soon.

For Hammill, that’s great news, as there’s more than enough fishing waste to go around. “We’re just trying to help reduce the waste as much as possible one step at a time,” he says. “The more we get this upcycling, this circular economy, the better off we are going to be overall.”

The post Finding New Uses for Crab Shells in Agriculture appeared first on Modern Farmer.