Ecosystem Issues
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...
The Bear Necessities
Blue herons hunting for fish, bald eagles swooping on seabirds, river otters diving for crabs: links between animals and the ocean are common in the Pacific Northwest. These dependencies go much deeper than previously thought.
Seadoc’s Joe Gaydos and Scott Pearson (WDFW) recently compiled the first list of every bird and mammal species that uses our inland sea and its 16,925 km2 ecosystem – a huge task that involved tracing the web of life from forest to marsh to ocean.
Counting species is basic science, but without a baseline we would have no way to know how we’re doing in the battle to keep our ecosystem healthy enough to support both ourselves and wildlife. In making their list, Joe and Scott discovered some surprising facts:
The Economics of Ecosystem Resoration
On January 12, 2011, SeaDoc's Chief Scientist, Joe Gaydos, went down to Olympia to address the Washington State Senate Natural Resources and Marine Waters Committee.
His basic message: Our natural resources translate directly into money for Washington State.
- 47% of Washington residents participate in wildlife watching.
- Watchable wildlife accounts for a total economic output of $1.78 billion.
- Watchable wildlife generates or maintains nearly 22,000 jobs.
To put that in perspective, 22,000 jobs is just slightly less than Boeing, the state's largest employer, and 5 times the number of jobs at the next largest employer, Microsoft.
Joe makes a compelling argument that protecting our natural resources is more than just tree-hugging. It's a requirement for our future economic prosperity.
Get Joe's full presentation by downloading the narrative as a PDF.
It's a fast read, and it's entertaining.
You can also watch a video of the event (opens in a new window).
Watershed Restoration bills pass Senate committee
In the United States Senate, the Environment and Public Works Committee has passed a suite of restoration bills that will authorize needed funding for seven different areas around the country, one of which is Puget Sound. The bill creates investments in ongoing restoration projects. One of the interesting points raised in an article about these watershed restoration efforts is that they can have a clear economic return on investment: a study of efforts in the Great Lakes region determined that for every dollar spent on restoration there were two dollars' worth of economic benefits. See more information at Waterworld.com or read about the Great Lakes study at The Brookings Institution.
July 1, 2010
Urban Orca: killer whales in Puget Sound
Rockfish Recovery Plan: Your Opportunity to Comment
Vermillion Rockfish by J. Nichols
[Comments are now closed on this plan. We will update the site with information on the final plan when it's available.]
Rockfish populations are in trouble, and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife is writing the first Puget Sound Rockfish Conservation Plan.
This is a major step in protecting rockfish. Like the killer whale and salmon recovery plans, it creates a coordinated plan for recovery.
The plan is currently a draft, and comments are being accepted until January 4, 2010.
Species of concern within the Salish Sea Marine Ecosystem: changes between 2002 and 2008
When Food Can Kill: Salmon and Killer Whale Populations
A study published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry explains the process by which threatened and endangered killer whales in the waters of northwestern North America become contaminated with persistent organic pollutants, particularly polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), that are present in chinook salmon, their primary food source.
Two years of this study were funded as part of the SeaDoc Society's competitive grants program.
Two main observations were made. First, nearly 100% of the contaminants in chinook salmon were acquired while they lived in the ocean. Second, southern killer whales are contaminated with higher concentrations of chemicals because 1) they eat more salmon than their northern counterparts and 2) southern salmon have higher levels of contaminants than northern salmon because the southern waters are more contaminated than the northern waters. In fact, PCB concentrations in southern salmon were almost four times those in northern salmon.
It is known that salmon can lose as much as 80% of their lipid (fat) stores as they journey back to their natal streams. Salmon stop eating during this time and draw energy from their lipid stores. Thus, they are less nutritious to whales than they would be otherwise. Furthermore, southern salmon were found to have lower lipid content than northern salmon. Whales therefore eat larger amounts of salmon and consequently are exposed to larger amounts of chemicals in the salmon. Southern whales, in particular, consume as much as 50% more salmon to compensate for the fact that their food is, per unit, less nutritious.
Salmon paradoxically help killer whales (food) and harm them (contamination). This study is important because it illustrates the increasing amount of damage to fragile ecosystems that occurs as industries continue to dump waste into rivers and oceans.
To read the entire review, Persistent Organic Pollutants in Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha): Implications for Resident Killer Whales of British Columbia and Adjacent Waters (Vol. 28(1):148–161), visit http://www.allenpress.com/pdf/ENTC_28.1_148.pdf
Scientists try to uncover the dangers to Killer Whales
When seven resident killer whales that frequent inland waters of Washington went missing this year, there was no shortage of suspects.
