• Ocean

Climate Change Impacting Fish Spawning, While Not Enough Habitat Is Protected By Fisheries Managers

• #30x30
• climate change
• fish
• fisheries
• fishing gear
• marine protected areas
• ocean warming

We know that rising ocean temperatures are causing fish stocks to migrate to cooler waters, and now we have new evidence as to why.  A study by German scientists found that juvenile fish and fish that are ready to mate are especially sensitive to changes in water temperature, and as a result, up to 60 percent of all species may be forced to leave their traditional spawning areas as waters warm.

Why This Matters:  Fish populations need functional habitat to survive and procreate.

• Water

Some Dams Survive Through Inertia — Time to Take Them Down?

• #30x30
• dam
• dam removal
• fish
• restoration
• river
• wildlife

The removal of legacy dams, which were first constructed dozens to more than a hundred years ago, is proving to be increasingly popular to restore river flows now that they are no longer serving any purpose for generating power or driving industrial uses. 

Why This Matters:  There is no doubt that a free-flowing river is a healthy river.  As has been much discussed recently, the need to do everything we can to restore and conserve the natural world to stave off the next wave of extinctions and to combat climate change.

• Ocean

Moving Toward Electronic Monitoring in U.S. Fisheries – Step by Step

• #IPCC_CH
• climate change
• electronic monitoring
• electronic reporting
• fish

Fishers around the world are increasingly using electronic monitoring (EM) technologies such as cameras, gear sensors, and electronic reporting (ER) to improve the timeliness, quality, cost-effectiveness, and accessibility of fisheries data collection in commercial fishing operations, and the U.S. is working to keep pace.   A strong coalition of industry, managers and other stakeholders called the Net Gains Alliance recently funded four projects to find solutions to overcome specific barriers to greater EM/ER adoption.

Why This Matters:  Its time to bring fisheries management into the 21st century using the best available technology. 

• Water

Fish Kills in Alaska and Indiana Make Headlines

• Alaska
• climate change
• cyanide
• fish
• global warming
• Salmon

As the summer fishing season comes to a close, two recent stories of fish kills made headlines in Alaska and Michigan.  CNN reports that In Alaska, the historic heatwave there is, according to scientists, resulting in the death of at least a thousand salmon because they had to swim through water that was too warm — the die-offs include several varieties of Alaskan salmon, including sockeye, chum and pink salmon — and are an added threat to populations of these commercially valuable fish. 

• Food

Lox From A Lab on the Horizon

• fish
• food security
• lab
• meat
• overfishing
• Salmon
• sustainable

A company called Wild Type is working to create “better meat to address the most pressing challenges of our generation: climate change, food security, and health.” Overfishing is one of the most pressing risks of our generation – dwindling fishing stocks threaten the oceans ecosystems as well as our own way of life – but Wild Type is working towards finding a solution by developing sustainable alternatives.

• Ocean

Marine Life Declines Considerably In Worst Case Climate Crisis Scenario

• extinction
• fish
• greenhouse gas emissions
• ocean
• tropics
• warming

A new study published on Tuesday by the National Academies of Science found that all the marine life in the ocean will decline by one-sixth by the year 2100 under the high emissions global warming scenario but on by 5% if we can stay within the low emissions scenario — with an average 5% decline for every 1 °C of warming. These losses are driven by temperature increases rather than fishing and were more significant in the tropics.