credit – Ocean Conservancy

No matter where you live, if you go outside and start walking north, at some point you’ll reach the Arctic Ocean. A vast expanse at the northern reaches of the planet, the Arctic Ocean supports a dizzying array of ocean wildldife, including the charismatic – and much threatened – polar bear. Most readers of The Blog Aquatic know that summer sea ice has been rapidly melting, caused by human-induced climate change from our ever rising global carbon emissions. Indeed, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere just broke a new record high.

But more poorly understood is that carbon dioxide is beginning to undermine the Arctic ocean itself through a process called ocean acidification. No less than 10 key scientific findings  can be found in a just-released assessment of ocean acidification undertaken by an international group of independent scientists.

Their assessment will be presented to the Arctic Council Ministers in Kiruna, Sweden this week. Called the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), the scientists spent the last three years detailing the effects of ocean acidification on the Arctic, and exploring the consequences for the four million people living there.

The assessment concludes that the Arctic is particularly sensitive to ocean acidification, in part because the especially cold Arctic water absorbs more carbon dioxide than warmer waters to the south. In addition, the region’s ocean food web is also unusually vulnerable because it consists of only a few keys species that are themselves vulnerable to changing ocean chemistry. Most troubling, ocean acidification poses real threats to local indigenous peoples who depend on Arctic resources for sustenance, for their livelihoods, and for their culture.

These new insights into ocean acidification in the Arctic foreshadow similar processes underway in waters south of the Arctic Ocean in the Bering Sea. In these sub-Arctic waters where future Filet-o-Fish sandwiches and California rolls prosper, ocean acidification also is a direct threat to Alaska’s fishing industry. Alaska’s signature catch of cod, salmon, and crab is enjoyed by seafood consumers across the U.S. and around the world. And with over $1.6 billion in revenue in 2010 – and 53,000 jobs at stake – Alaska is rightly worried about how acidification could impact their industry. A new study published by NOAA Fisheries scientist Dr. Chris Long has documented how more acidic waters decimate juvenile red king crabs and tanner crabs, an economically important fishery in Alaska. Along with the AMAP report, Dr. Long’s research is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how ocean acidification may disrupt northern marine food webs, including for economically important species and those of cultural significance.

All this paints a troubling picture of what may lie ahead for the world’s northern-most ocean. But it also underscores the vital role that scientific research and monitoring can play in helping anticipate what is to come, identifying ways to minimize impacts, and equipping seafood businesses and indigenous cultures with the tools to weather future changes. With the right data and information the United States, as a leader among Arctic nations, can help save the species and ecosystems upon which all peoples depend.

Spring has arrived here in Anchorage. This time of year brings a lot of welcome changes: the days are longer, it’s warmer outside, snow is melting and waves of migratory birds are making their way back to Alaska. In recent years, springtime has also signaled the start of something much less welcome: attempts to drill for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

Fortunately, that’s not going to happen this year. As I’ve written about before, Shell’s disastrous 2012 season now has the company sidelined for at least a year as it tries to recover.ConocoPhillips recently decided to postpone indefinitely its plans to conduct exploration drilling on its offshore leases in the U.S. Arctic. Last year, Norwegian oil company Statoil announced that it would not attempt to drill in the Chukchi Sea until at least 2015 and French oil major Total warned that it was too risky for energy companies to drill offshore in Arctic waters at all.

But that doesn’t mean the work is over – far from it.

Companies like Shell, ConocoPhillips and Statoil have not abandoned their quest for Arctic oil. Just last month, the news media reported that Shell was negotiating to extend its contract to use the Arctic drillship Noble Discoverer—a clear signal that the oil giant has not given up its plans for Arctic drilling. In other words, despite the current hiatus in offshore exploration in the U.S. Arctic, oil and gas operations pose an ongoing threat.

This is why now is the time to make meaningful changes in the way that government agencies plan for and manage oil and gas operations in the Arctic, including:

• The Department of Interior (DOI) should follow through on its commitment to identify and protect important ecological and subsistence areas in the Arctic Ocean. Protecting these important areas from future oil and gas operations will help to preserve ecosystem resilience and prevent degradation and fragmentation.

• DOI should also implement the recommendations found in its review of Shell’s 2012 Arctic exploration program, including the call to develop Arctic-specific standards to govern future drilling attempts in the region. Similarly, government agencies should heed the recommendations contained in a recent report released by former members of President Obama’s Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Commission. These proposals include, among other things, development of new regulations for Arctic waters and assessment of Arctic spill prevention and response technologies under adverse conditions.

• Scientists still have much to learn about the Arctic’s rapidly changing marine ecosystem—particularly about the potential cumulative effects of climate change, ocean acidification and increasing industrial operations. It’s time to implement a comprehensive scientific research, monitoring and observation program that will advance scientific understanding of the Arctic and help managers make more informed decisions about whether and under what conditions to allow oil and gas lease sales, drilling, or development in the future.

A season-long break from the threat of offshore drilling in the Arctic is a good thing. No drilling operations means there will be less pollution discharged into the water, fewer emissions spewed into the air, reduced industrial noise and no risk of a catastrophic oil spill.

But real progress will only come when DOI and other federal agencies begin to fully implement the fundamental changes necessary for true Arctic conservation and find alternatives to the extraction of more fossil fuels to meet the nation’s energy needs.

Volunteers mark the data card while throwing away trash at the International Coastal Cleanup at James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge in Kahuku, Hawaii. credit — Elyse Butler

Take your pick: 41 blue whales, 10 Boeing 747 jumbo jets, 5,000 tons or 10 million pounds. Whichever one you prefer, that’s roughly the weight of trash that was collected by volunteers during Ocean Conservancy’s 2012 International Coastal Cleanup (Cleanup). More than 10 million pounds of trash – that’s an astounding amount.

Each year in September, citizen scientists around the world mobilize during the Cleanup to remove plastic trash and other debris from the world’s shorelines, waterways and underwater habitats. Tallies of trash recorded by the more than 550,000 volunteers who participated in the 2012 Cleanup are a snapshot of the persistent and proliferating problem of trash on our beaches and in our ocean.

The most commonly found items of trash plaguing our coastlines are the same products we use in our everyday lives and households: food wrappers, plastic utensils, beverage containers and, as always, the most incessant item were cigarettes with more than two million butts collected. Much like cigarettes, plastics bags have always been atop the list of trash items, and in 2012 they were still unable to elude volunteers. The one million plus (1,019,902) plastic bags picked up were the fourth most abundant item of trash found, bringing the 27 year total to just under 10 million bags. The amount of oil required to manufacture this quantity of bags is in excess of 1,175 barrels, or enough gasoline to drive a car around the Earth three times (approx. 75,000 miles).

The items volunteers find on the beach are not only unnatural to the ocean, but are dangerous to marine organisms that depend on healthy ecosystems. And whether it’s the smallest bottle cap or the weirdest finds, like the 117 mattresses collected, every piece of trash affects the health of our ocean, and subsequently our economy, environment and health.

Every piece of trash that is picked up during the Cleanup should be a challenge for change. Trash simply shouldn’t be in the ocean or on a beach. The items we use – or don’t use – have a lasting impact. Trash doesn’t start and stop at the trash can, and out of sight doesn’t mean out of our ocean. For too long we’ve focused our attention on plastics and other debris by looking at the beach and seaward, when in reality, emphasis should’ve been concentrated between the beach, trash can and beyond.

We have a responsibility all year long to reduce, remove and reinvent – we all have a role to play. The good news is that everyone can be a part of the solution for trash free seas. Here are three things you can do right now to help tackle trash:

1. Pledge to fight trash: What would happen if 10,000 people decided not to make as much trash for one month? We could reduce the trash on Earth by over 1 million pounds. Take the pledge to help turn the tide on trash.
2. Download Rippl Ocean Conservancy’s free mobile application that helps you make simple, sustainable lifestyle choices.
3. Mark your calendar for September 21 so that you can be part of the next International Coastal Cleanup.

Solutions are built on individual actions of people, organizations and companies, but it will take a collective movement to make a lasting difference. Whether it’s by changing our habits to create less trash, pushing industries and governments to find alternative uses or funding innovative scientific research, the time is now for everyone to work together to find a solution to make our beaches and seas trash free.

Pacific Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus orientalis) hunting Pacific Sardines (Sardinops sagax) Pacific / California / USA (Monterey Bay Aquarium)

In Ocean Conservancy and Pew Charitable Trusts’ recent report “The Law That’s Saving American Fisheries”, we make three key recommendations about how to improve the already vital law that governs our nation’s fisheries:

• Minimize the habitat damage and bycatch of indiscriminate fishing.
• Ensure that adequate forage fish are in the water to feed the larger ecosystem
• Promote ecosystem-based fisheries management

That’s why we were so excited when the Pacific Fisheries Management Council (Council) recently reached a long-awaited milestone in transitioning toward an ecosystem-based approach to managing seafood harvest.  The Council’s adoption of a Fisheries Ecosystem Plan (FEP) establishes not only a comprehensive foundation for considering the condition of the California Current Ecosystem  in harvest planning and management, but sets a leading example for modernizing fisheries management across the globe.

How is ecosystem-based management different?  Instead of focusing on an individual ocean issues or species, the strategy shifts to the entire ecosystems in which such species or concerns exist.  So decision-makers then consider the habitats that ocean wildlife require at each stage of life, their roles as predator and prey, the natural variations in populations in different places and at different times, and of course the critical role played by humans—climate change, ocean acidification, demands for food and recreation, etc.

Until now, managing the vast and life-giving harvest of seafood from the world’s oceans has followed a species-specific approach. This has contributed to well-known and tragic consequences, such as collapsed fisheries and the communities that depended on them.

The Fisheries Ecosystem Plan adopted last month gives the Pacific Fisheries Council a dramatically more comprehensive and useful suite of information to consider when making decisions on fisheries policy.  The plan rests on a description of Pacific ecosystem dynamics that affect, and are affected by, Council harvest policy. It also establishes a set of initiatives to gather and assess additional ecosystem data for to use in future management decisions.  Critically, they can guide Council policy within individual fishery Management Plans and also inform effects and tradeoffs between them.  Initiative #1 will develop data and tools for use in managing the food base for Pacific fisheries – called “forage fish”, an essential ecosystem component, and assist in prohibiting fishing for currently unmanaged species of forage fish.  The Council will discuss this critical preventative measure in June.

Though the Fisheries Ecosystem Plan is informational for now, meaning it holds only advisory power, it is a critical step in establishing a foundation for truly ecosystem-based management.  The real effect of the plan will flow from its ecosystem initiatives, and action on the Forage Initiative in June will reveal how much early stock the Council is putting into its important new ecosystem plan.

These first steps taken in the Pacific region will hopefully serve as early indicators for the rest of the country as we work to promote and improve fisheries management.  Read more about the Law That’s Saving American Fisheries here.

Everyone knows dumping trash into the ocean is a bad idea, right? Well, apparently not everyone. At a recent meeting of the International Maritime Organization, the U.S. delegation—led by the U.S. Coast Guard—opposed a proposal to ban the dumping of garbage in the Arctic Ocean.

The Arctic is one of Earth’s most pristine ecosystems, home to some of the world’s largest seabird populations and iconic wildlife like polar bears, belugas and the extremely long-lived bowhead whale. The unspoiled nature of the Arctic doesn’t mean it’s without threats.

In fact, today the Arctic faces unparalleled challenges from oil and gas development and other industrial activity, increasing water temperatures and climate change impacts—all jeopardizing the integrity of the Arctic marine ecosystem. Adding ocean trash to this list of pressures is simply not acceptable.

Ocean Conservancy is working to help employ science-based solutions that will ensure Arctic waters remain healthy and clean. Allowing vessels to deliberately dump waste into the Arctic just doesn’t fit into the equation for a resilient Arctic ecosystem.

Canada and Russia banned ships from dumping their garbage in Arctic waters with no adverse consequences for shipping.  However, this ban applies only to these countries’ territorial waters. The Arctic Ocean is a single ecosystem, and we know all too well that trash does not abide by country boundaries. This means garbage dumped into territorial waters of the United States can endanger wildlife inside and outside of our borders, potentially compromising the Arctic’s entire marine ecosystem.

Arctic summer sea ice is shrinking to ever-lower levels, and more and more vessels are venturing into the open water. As vessel traffic in the region grows, so too does the threat posed by discharging trash and other waste into Arctic waters. Therefore, it’s critical that we put in place strong environmental protection measures for the Arctic now, before the pressures of shipping in the region escalate even more.

We are working hard to keep plastics and trash out of our global ocean, yet the Coast Guard seems OK with allowing ships to litter our Arctic waters. I don’t get it. There’s no good reason for the United States to oppose a garbage ban in the Arctic.

The decision at hand is a simple one: ships simply should not be allowed to dump their garbage in the remote and beautiful waters of the Arctic Ocean. Join Ocean Conservancy in urging the Coast Guard to reverse course and support a ban on the discharge of garbage in the Arctic.

Important questions about the impacts of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster still linger. Some effects could go undetected for years. To fully restore the Gulf, and to make sure the Gulf and its people are recovering, we need to establish a long-term monitoring and research program. While we wait for confidential government studies to become public, little clues are emerging that give us insight into which species were injured and what this might mean for the Gulf ecosystem.

A study reported in Environmental Science and Technology tells us that one species to keep an eye on is the Gulf killifish. Through their ongoing research, the authors (Dubansky et al., 2013) determined that killifish from oil-contaminated marshes in Louisiana were impacted by the disaster. Specifically, they collected eggs from oiled and non-oiled sites before and after the disaster and raised them in a lab. The eggs from oiled sites took longer to hatch than eggs from non-oiled sites. When the late eggs did hatch, the larval fish were smaller and more likely to have heart defects than those from non-oiled sites. This indicates that the developing fish will not be able to survive and reproduce as well as eggs from non-oiled sites.

The researchers concluded that the impacts to individual fish may mean long-term impacts for the Gulf killifish population, and organisms living nearby or in other oiled habitats.

Many questions came to my mind as I read about this study and the impacts to killifish. What do the impacts to individual killifish fish mean for the Gulf population as a whole? Will the population of killifish be significantly reduced, or will other killifish that were less impacted make up for the lag in reproduction? If the killifish population is smaller, what does this mean for the food web? Will the organisms that eat killifish decline as their food declines, or will another animal fill the niche vacated by the killifish?

There are so many questions that we need to answer, which is why it is imperative that we continue to monitor and track fish populations and other marine species in the Gulf. This is another reason why we need a comprehensive long-term, monitoring and research program to measure the full extent of impact, track recovery and restore the Gulf.

Dubansky, B., Whitehead, A., Miller, J., Rice, C. D., & Galvez, F. (2013). Multi-tissue molecular, genomic, and developmental effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident Gulf killifish (Fundulus grandis). Environmental Science and Technology. DOI: 10.1021/es400459p.

A fisherman adds a red snapper to the pile on a dock in Destin, Florida. – Photo: Tom McCann

As fishermen, scientists, policymakers, and other ocean experts from around the country gather in Washington this week to discuss the future of fisheries in America, Ocean Conservancy and The Pew Charitable Trusts are releasing a joint report highlighting many of the stories that show how fisheries management is succeeding.

The Washington Post covered the report over the weekend, focusing on our belief that while fisheries management is working, we must also let it keep on working if we’re going to face global challenges like ocean acidification and climate change:

More complex problems loom, ones that cannot be solved area by area, experts say. “What we need to pay greater attention to is a changing world and a changing climate and what repercussions that will have,” Chris Dorsett, director of the Ocean Conservancy’s fish conservation and gulf restoration program, said in an interview.

“The Law That’s Saving American Fisheries: The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act” is a primer and collection of stories that highlight pioneers of American fishery management as well as innovators who are opening fishing frontiers, revealing:

• How a salmon fishing pioneer’s courage in making sacrifices for long-term sustainability set the stage for Alaska’s success.
• How successful fishermen from Alaska to Florida used discipline to turn around two decades of overfishing.
• How West Coast fishermen found the flexibility to make a living within rebuilding programs.
• How fishing entrepreneurs in Port Clyde, ME, turned leadership into opportunity.
• Why rebuilding important recreational species such as summer flounder, bluefish, and lingcod provides economic as well as enjoyment payoffs.
• What commercial and recreational fishermen believe we get from good stewardship.

Fishing is an important American industry and pastime. According to NOAA’s latest economic report: U.S. commercial and recreational saltwater fishing generated more than $199 billion in sales and supported 1.7 million jobs in the nation’s economy in 2011.

In addition to driving many coastal economies, the stories in this report feature some of the most popular fish to end up on our plates, like salmon, red snapper, and scallops.

Thanks to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, our nation now benefits from dozens of rebuilt fish populations, but even as we have seen remarkable progress made, we have also seen an increase in challenges to this law, in the form of partisan politics and disasters—both natural and man-made.

At the end of last week, NOAA Fisheries released an update on the status of U.S. fisheries showing the continued rebuilding of our nation’s fisheries and a record low number of fish populations subject to unsustainable fishing rates.  Along with being great news and it was further proof  that the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act  is workingto restore our fisheries. This record progress is a win for fish and fishermen. It means a healthier ocean, more fresh and local seafood, greater recreational opportunities, and a bright and prosperous future for our nations coastal communities.

Read the full report here: