SCUBA diving
2011 Rockfish Recovery Workshop recap
This past week (June 28 & 29, 2011) SeaDoc co-hosted a Rockfish Recovery Workshop in Seattle with the State Department of Wildlife and NOAA Fisheries.
Nearly 100 scientists, fisheries managers, fishers and SCUBA divers attended the 2-day workshop to discuss the current state of knowledge on rockfish and to identify future needs related to recovering depleted rockfish populations in the Salish Sea.
There are 28 species of rockfish in the Salish Sea. Thirteen (13) are listed as species of concern and recently 3 species were listed under the US Endangered Species Act.
In addition to helping organize the workshop, SeaDoc also helped bring in Canadians to share their perspective on what has and has not worked with rockfish recovery on the other side of the border.
A lot of the research SeaDoc funded over the last 10 years was presented and plans were laid for moving rockfish recovery forward. The meeting proceedings will be published soon and will be available here on the SeaDoc website.
In the meantime, here's a recap:
(Please note that this summary is taken from my notes and if there are errors or misstatements they are mine, not the researchers/presenters! -Joe T.)
Historical Context Session
Wayne Palsson spoke on the biology and assessment of rockfishes in Puget Sound. Rockfishes are a diverse group of species with different life histories. They require various habitat during different life stages. They are adapted for slow growth, long survival, late maturity, low natural mortality rates, and high habitat fidelity. These are all factors that make recovery tough. There's a lack of long-term data that makes it hard to create conventional age-structure population models and biomass dynamic models.
Chris Harvey reviewed the ecological history of rockfish exploitation in Puget Sound. Rockfish bones have been found in middens dating back 1,500 years. Much of the fishing pressure on rockfish began after the Boldt decision in 1974, which required that harvests in Puget Sound be coequally managed by the State government and the Treaty Tribes of Washington. It's also been influenced by demographic trends and by the promotion of the fishery by State government. (Unfortunately, as covered in Wayne Palsson's talk, it wasn't until 1982 that scientists learned that rockfish were generally 2 to 3 times longer lived than they'd thought, which meant the existing population models were not accurate.) By the time management efforts were deemed necessary, the greatest harvests had already occurred.
Anne Beaudreau discussed her work to reconstruct historical trends in rockfish abundance. The lack of data on historical populations of rockfish is a major barrier to developing sustainable fisheries. Beaudreau and colleagues interviewed 101 individuals ranging in age from 24 to 90 years to try to derive trends in the abundance of rockfish from 1940 to the present. Of particular interest was the evidence of "shifting baselines." To a statistically significant degree, each age group of respondents interpreted the conditions at the beginning of their awareness as "abundant" and saw declines from there, but what was "declining" to an older person was "abundant" to a younger person.
Benthic Habitat Surveys/Rockfish Abundance Estimates Session
Gary Greene presented the Salish Sea sea floor mapping project, which has produced bathymetric and habitat maps of the San Juan Islands area. Rockfish prefer particular habitat types, and the multibeam echosounders used by Greene and his colleagues allows these potential habitat areas to be identified. (Other participants were very interested in having these maps for other areas in the Salish Sea.
Bob Pacunski spoke on work to use non-lethal methods to survey rockfish populations. Traditional trawl or long-line sampling results in fish mortality, but using a small remotely-operated vehicle has been shown to be effective at providing population surveys.
Stressors Session
Joan Drinkwin of the Northwest Straits Foundation spoke on the threat posed to rockfish by derelict fishing gear, including both nets and traps. The Northwest Straits Initiative has removed 3,860 nets from Puget Sound, all at less than 105 feet deep. There are 950 shallow-water nets still in the water, and at least 70 in deeper water. Based on studies of net mortality by the SeaDoc Society, approximately 1,600 rockfish per year are captured and killed in derelict nets each year in the United States portion of the Salish Sea.
...More coming soon...
How to Report Derelict Fishing Gear: 855-542-3935
If you see derelict fishing gear such as ghost nets or abandoned crab pots, you can report it by calling 855-542-3935.
You can also report gear you've lost.
This is a new toll-free phone number established by the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife to make it easier for boaters and divers to report derelict gear.
You can also report derelict gear at http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/derelict or at the Northwest Straits Conservation Initiative's special website for derelict gear: http://www.derelictgear.org.
Northwest Straits has removed more than 3,800 derelict fishing nets and over 2,000 lost crab pots from Puget Sound since 2002. Over 200,000 animals (fish, birds, marine mammals) were found entangled in the gear.
When reporting lost gear, please indicate the date of sighting, type of gear, approximate water depth, general location, and latitude and longitude if available.
Volunteer fish and invertebrate surveys: what makes recreational SCUBA divers want to participate?
Free fish and invertebrate ID classes gets SCUBA divers involved in marine conservation
Keynote Address
2009 Underwater Photo Contest
2009 contest winner: Longfin Sculpin by Pete Naylor.
Winner announced for 2nd annual SeaDoc Underwater Photo Contest.
About the Winning Photo
The winner of the 2009 Photo Contest is Pete Naylor for this photo of a longfin sculpin. He won a dive for two from Naknek Charters in Friday Harbor.
Longfin sculpins, known as Jordania zonope in the science world, measure between 2 and 6 inches. They are very cryptic and often go unseen by SCUBA divers until they move. Like other fish and invertebrate species currently not considered as food fish or shellfish by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (over 98% of all fish and invertebrates occurring in Washington's waters), mosshead warbonnet populations are not monitored, except by volunteer SCUBA divers conducting REEF surveys.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest.
See other amazing photos that were entered...
Interested in next year's contest?
Amateur photographers may enter by submitting a photo taken in July 2010 while conducting a fish or invertebrate survey for the Reef Environmental Education Foundation's Great Annual Fish Count.
Can Voluntary No-Fishing Areas be Effective?
Dear SeaDoc Society Supporters,
In 1872, Ulysses S. Grant signed into existence the world’s first national park, Yellowstone. Since then, networks of parks and protected areas on land have benefited wildlife and ecosystems. Now work has begun to establish ocean parks and reserves often called marine protected areas, or MPAs.
Creating ocean parks is not without controversy, however; tribal treaty rights to harvest fish and shellfish, the needs of commercial and sport fishermen, and non-consumptive uses like recreational SCUBA diving and boating need to be considered. To effectively create protected areas and reserves, decision makers need sound scientific information that will allow their decisions to stand the test of time. Can Voluntary No-Fishing Areas be Effective?
The SeaDoc Society is providing sound scientific information about marine protected areas in the Puget Sound Georgia Basin region. In addition to funding and driving scientific research we have co-chaired a collaborative science working group, studied tribal perspectives on protected areas, and delivered scientific presentations to the State Fish and Wildlife Commission, the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and the Governor’s office.
In the Puget Sound region and around the world, people are thinking about and creating voluntary protected areas, yet little to no data exist on the efficacy of voluntary MPAs for recovering fish populations. With the help of Eric Eisenhardt and scientific SCUBA divers, the SeaDoc Society just finished collecting data for a first-ever evaluation of voluntary no- fishing areas. Are bottomfish such as rockfish, lingcod and kelp greenling larger or more abundant in voluntary no-fish areas than elsewhere?
Our preliminary evaluation of data collected suggests that in San Juan County there are few to no differences in fish size or abundance between the voluntary no-fish areas studied and similar fished areas. Further analysis this winter will evaluate the data in more detail and the final report will be published and shared with people working to restore and protect marine fish and wildlife populations locally, regionally and internationally. Your support of the SeaDoc Society is helping to secure a healthy future for our marine wildlife, and for our families. For more information on this and other SeaDoc-funded research, please visit www.seadocsociety.org.
With thanks,
Kirsten Gilardi & Joe Gaydos
Why do we need marine fish and wildlife research?
This is a transcript of a talk by Joe Gaydos.
Well the first reason we need marine fish and wildlife research is that scientific information excites us and makes us care; it gives us the information we need to get people excited about marine conservation.
Americans love naming. Maybe it goes back to Adam’s task of naming the animals. Anyway, we feel that if you can name an animal, you know it. But is that really true?
You recognize and can name a harbor seal, but how deep does it dive? How many do we have in San Juan County? What percentage of the harbor seals are estimated to be hauled out at any one time on a very low tide in the summer time? How long can they live? Why has the population rebounded?
Harbor seals can dive to 600 feet with no trouble; then can utilize every foot of our Salish Sea marine ecosystem. We have about 7,000 in San Juan County. We know this because Washington State Fish and Wildlife does aerial surveys in the summer time when we know that about 60% of the seals are hauled out at any one time. Multiply the number counted by a correction factor of 1.6 and you have an estimate for the number of seals. The oldest reported harbor seal was 34 years old. The population has rebounded because of the enactment and enforcement of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Facts like these make an animal much more interesting than its name alone!
It is the same thing with the Southern Resident Killer whales. Why do we care about saving killer whales?
The first reason is because we are emotionally tied to them. We care because they are a matrilineal society with pod leaders that can live to be 90 years old. A female transient killer whale’s first born son will stay with her for her entire life; that makes us care.
The second reason we care about saving killer whales is because our health is intimately tied to their health and the health of the ecosystem. Southern resident killer whales have some of the highest levels of contaminants in their blubber of any marine mammal in the world. What do they eat? Salmon. How many of us eat salmon? Does that give you cause for concern? It should.
Two porpoise species that frequent the Salish Sea provide us with another good example of how human health and well being is intimately tied to the health and well being of fish and wildlife. By studying wildlife and wildlife health, we can learn more about human health. Have you have heard about Cryptococcus gatii, the fungus that is killing people in Washington and BC? This fungus also has killed about 25 porpoise in the region and disease in porpoise has acted as an early warning for human and domestic animal health. We had dead porpoise in Washington before we this disease was killing people or cats.
The third reason we care about healthy fish and wildlife populations is economics. These Steller’s sea lions frequently seen in the Salish Sea during the winter each weigh about 2,000 pounds. How much salmon do you think one Steller sea lion can eat? What is the impact on endangered salmon stocks? What is the economic tradeoff between having sea lions for ecotourism and having salmon for fishing? I tell you: both salmon and Steller sea lions are important. The importance of salmon is obvious. What about of Steller’s Sea lions? People talk about whale watching, but let’s just talk about watchable wildlife in general rather than focusing on one species. In 2001, over 47% of Washington’s residents participated in wildlife watching. In doing so, Washington residents spent $979 million resulting in a total economic output of $1.78 billion, generating and or maintaining 22,000 jobs. Guess where most wildlife watching occurs” In Washington’s Rural Counties like San Juan County.
Let’s go from a 2,000 pound Steller sea lion, which by the way is larger than a grizzly bear, down to an invertebrate that lives of microscopic plankton. Let’s talk anemones. Let’s talk any of the over 3000 invertebrates we have in the region; take the white-lined dirona, which is just a type of sea slug. It is a beautiful sea slug and it is creatures like these that bring people from all over the world to San Juan County to SCUBA dive. The Washington SCUBA alliance reports that more than 15,000 divers are certified to dive here in the Pacific Northwest yearly.
That’s right, despite the cold water the world’s best known underwater explorer and original SeaDoc Jacques Cousteau rated diving in the Puget Sound as second in the world only to the red sea! More than 1,000 dive related businesses exist in the state.
Let’s move up the food chain a bit. We have over 225 species of fish in the region. In the 1970’s lingcod populations in Puget Sound proper were low, prompting an almost complete moratorium on fishing from 1978 to 1982. The same thing happened in the San Juans in the 80s and 90’s. Good science let us know what was happening with the population and good science gave us a simple solution to solve the problem. Shorten the season. A nine-month fishery with a daily bag limit of 2 was restricted to a 6-week fishery with a daily bag limit of 1. Since 2000, ling cod fishing has substantially improved in the San Juans. This is an example of economics and human health and well being; the ability to harvest local nutritious food. And just like with marine mammals, fish research allows us to learn how cool fish are.
Take a tiger rockfish. We have over 26 species of Rockfish in the Puget Sound area. Science gives us information that excites us about these fish. They are all members of the Scorpionfish family and have poisonous spines. Did you know that? Some are schooling, some are loners, some move, some stay on the same rock their entire adult life. Even if you capture them, take them up into a boat and move them several miles away and release them, they’ll be back at that same rock in a day or two.
Science also is helping us to recover rockfish. When salmon stocks went down in the 1980’s people thought, hey, we can get these people to fish rockfish – hence the big spike in harvest in 1987 and 1989. Only, there was a little problem. We thought rockfish might live 30 years. Some species like the yellow-eye actually can live 118 years!
You see, there is a reason for good science beyond interest, it is called economics.
This is a red- urchin. How old do you think it can live? In Washington State we harvest about 475,000 pounds or about ½ million dollars worth of red urchins annually. I think it is important that we know how long they can live so we can design harvest strategies to sustain the fishery for eternity. Red urchins, by the way, can live to be over 100 years old.
And don’t think I’ve forgotten birds. I have not. We have about 160 species of birds that depend on our marine environment and they embody everything I’ve told you today about why we need research. Take surf scoters as an example. Because the population has declined 50% over the last 25 years we needed to figure out where they went when they were not in Puget Sound. We implanted satellite transmitters and watched these bird - Wow - fly all the way to the Northwest Territories and Ninavut to breed, then back to Puget Sound; maybe some went down to Humboldt Bay to molt and then back here again! The satellite track on one animals shows it flew to the Northwest Territories, across the Beaufort Sea to Alaska then back down to BC and then Washington. Amazing!
Science will amaze you and increase your respect for and appreciation of wildlife. Science also tells us about diseases that birds can carry that can impact human health –diseases like HPAI H5N1, Salmonella, and others. And of course, there is economics of bird recovery and having sustainable populations of wild birds. Bird watching is one of the most popular wildlife viewing activities for Washingtonians, who have the fourth-highest participation rating in the country. Did you realize that 36% of Washington residents regularly participate in bird watching activities? As a side note, only 16% fish recreationally.
So when you see or think about amazing fish and wildlife, think about how much science has helped us. It helps use appreciate how magnificent they are; It helps us understand how their health and the health of the ecosystem is intimately linked to our health; and it helps us economically, whether it was through harvest or through tourism and watchable wildlife.
Recreational SCUBA Divers' Contributions to Science
Can private citizens really help conduct underwater research that will benefit the recovery of threatened or endangered species? Yes! For over three years, the SeaDoc Society has been training recreational SCUBA divers to help count and monitor marine fish and invertebrates in the Pacific Northwest.
