Cross-border/International issues
Species of Concern within the Salish Sea: Changes from 2002 to 2011
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...
Rockfish Workshop: June 2011
The SeaDoc Society is helping to organize an important workshop on Rockfish Recovery in the Salish Sea: Research and Management Priorities.
The workshop takes place on June 28 & 29, 2011 at the National Marine Fisheries Service Regional Office on Sand Point Way in Seattle. Attendance is free, but pre-registration is required.
Missing Marine Birds Lecture: Audio and Video
On March 8, 2011, Dr. Ignacio Vilchis presented an overview of his Salish Sea Marine Birds project, along with some preliminary results.
Listen to the audio of the presentation:
Download for your computer or iPod: Right-click here.
Streaming in your web browser: Click here to open up a page with the streaming player.
Video coming soon.
Salish Sea Marine Bird Project 2010-2012
In 2010, SeaDoc hired Nacho Vilchis as a postdoctoral fellow to do a two-year investigation into marine bird populations in the entire Salish Sea ecosystem.
Get an audio recording of Nacho Vilchis's March 8, 2011 lecture here.
Birds don't care which side of the international border they're on, but most government and non-governmental organizations in the Salish Sea work only in one country. SeaDoc, however, has a mandate to do transboundary work. We're pulling together the best science done on both sides of the border to understand what's happening in the entire ecosystem.
Species of concern within the Salish Sea Marine Ecosystem: changes between 2002 and 2008
Salish Sea Science Prize awarded
Salish Sea Science Prize Award
February 8, 2009
Seattle, Washington
Award speech delivered by Joe Gaydos of the SeaDoc Society
Although Congressman Dicks has always been a big fan of science-based policy and we are now fortunate to have a President of the United States who has pledged to restore integrity to US science policy, our government has not always been known for valuing science or for basing important decisions on scientific information. As we all look at the huge task before us to design a healthy Salish Sea, it is clear that many of the untold thousands of decisions that we need to make must be based on science.
The SeaDoc Society created the Salish Sea Science Prize to recognize the importance of science in providing a foundation for designing a healthy Salish Sea ecosystem. Every two years this prize will be given to a prominent scientist or team of scientists whose work has resulted in the marked improvement of management or policy related to the conservation of marine wildlife and the Salish Sea marine ecosystem. A $2,000, no strings attached prize comes with this prestigious and one of a kind award, which is given in recognition of, and to honor the spirit of Ms. Stephanie Wagner, who loved the region and its wildlife.
Among many worthy individuals and groups that were nominated for consideration by the Award committee this year, the life work of this year's winner embodies the essence of the prize. This person's work has been collaborative and transboundary, drawing on the help of both US and Canadian Scientists. It also has been scientifically rigorous and the results have changed the way we think about, manage and protect marine wildlife.
Although the first live capture of a killer whale occurred in 1961, the development of a netting technique and large-scale commercial demand led to large increases in capture efforts in Washington and British Columbia in 1967. Before the captures ceased in 1977, more than 300 whales were likely captured, of which 55 were transferred to aquaria, while many others died.
During this time period this year's winner, collaborating with Canadian colleagues, pioneered the use of photo identification to study and individually identify killer whales. This work provided many new revelations:
• That killer whales could be individually identified
• That the Salish Sea was not home to unlimited killer whales free for the taking for display
• That Salish Sea killer whales belonged to 2 ecotypes – fish eaters and marine mammal eaters
• That resident fish eating whales had a non-dispersing matrilineal society
While many of these ideas were not initially accepted by the scientific community, this person's persistence in conducting an annual census of the Southern Resident killer whale population, one of the only true censuses conducted on any wildlife population, has come to make these facts known by school kids and citizens throughout the region and the world.
This annual census, conducted since 1975 and usually with little financial support, has become the basis of the population assessments that ultimately led to the Canadian and US listing of the Southern Resident Killer Whale community as endangered. Additionally this person's work has served as a foundation for our understanding of resident killer whale longevity, toxics loading in killer whales, and the implications of disease on the long-term viability of this population. This person's work formed a critical foundation for both the US and the Canadian killer whale recovery plans, as well as for new legislation such as that which creates a no-vessel zone around these animals to minimize anthropogenic impact on these animals as they feed and communicate.
Without a doubt, this person's long-term research and commitment to documenting the killer whales of the Salish Sea has contributed substantially to conservation initiatives and policy in the Salish Sea, and has served as an example for the world on why science is important for designing healthy ecosystems. It is with great pleasure tonight, that the SeaDoc Society awards the prestigious Salish Sea Science Prize to Mr. Ken Balcomb.
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.
