Page 12. MAINE COASTAL NEWS August 2013


Groundfi sh closed areas proposed reopening


Commercial Fishing News MISCELLANEOUS COMMERCIAL FISHING NEWS


As part of an overall effort to help


To ease impact of quota cuts on New En- gland groundfi sheries, NOAA proposes opening long-time closure areas Safeguards also proposed to protect habi- tat and vulnerable species during opening


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fi shermen adjust to new quota cuts for groundfi sh implemented last month, today, NOAA Fisheries announced a proposal to open some areas to groundfi sh fi shing that have been off limits for nearly 20 years. The proposal also includes protections to ensure that habitat, vulnerable groundfi sh stocks, and other species, such as whales and harbor porpoise, are not put at risk. In April, based largely on advice from the New England Fishery Management Council, NOAA Fisheries announced its fi - nal management measures for the Northeast groundfi sh fi shery, including much lower quotas for some key stocks. Those measures went into effect in May. NOAA Fisheries has been working for months to lessen the effects of these cuts on fi shermen and fi shing communities, including increasing quotas and approving use of various gear and fi sh- ing methods to help fi shermen better target healthy groundfi sh and other stocks prior to today’s announcement. “We’ve been working with fi shermen, state managers and others to fi nd creative ways to help fi shermen identify sustainable fi shing opportunities this year,” said John Bullard, NOAA Fisheries northeast regional administrator. “Today’s action is another step in our overall effort to help transition fi shing effort to healthy, more abundant fi sh stocks, while we work to rebuild cod and other stocks in poor condition and protect important habitats that are crucial for the overall health of our marine ecosystems.” The three offshore areas under consid- eration lie to the south and east of Cape Cod. NOAA Fisheries does not propose to reopen these areas in their entirety; specifi c sections will remain closed based on the Council’s recommendations to protect habitat. Also, catch of stocks that are in poor condition, such as Georges Bank yellowtail and cod stocks, or are spawning, will be minimized through seasonal restrictions and the use of selective trawl and hook gear.


While these areas have been closed to


groundfi shing, other fi shing activities have occurred in portions of these areas includ- ing lobster fi shing. NOAA Fisheries also proposes to enact an agreement negotiated between groundfi sh and lobster fi shermen, and recommended by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which limits groundfi shing to times of year when lobster fi shing is not as prevalent to minimize the potential for confl ict between gear types. “When year-round closures were put in place, our main goal was to reduce ground- fi sh catch. However, now that fi shermen are operating under annual catch limits, we no longer need year-round closures to control total catch but some areas still need to remain closed to protect habitat and those that we


open must be opened in a responsible and sustainable way,” continued Bullard. In areas that NOAA Fisheries is pro- posing to reopen, the agency is proposing to require monitoring on all fi shing trips to gather data on fi sh caught and possible interactions with whales, harbor porpoise, and other animals. Fishing vessel operators wanting access to these areas will be re- quired to cover the cost of monitoring. NOAA Fisheries is also proposing to keep inshore year-round closures in place. This decision is due to the poor condition of Gulf of Maine cod and haddock and con- cerns expressed by a number of commercial and recreational fi shermen and members of the environmental community. NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter and our other social media channels at http://www.noaa.gov/ socialmedia/.


Scientists solve a 14,000-year-old ocean mystery


At the end of the last Ice Age, as the world began to warm, a swath of the North Pacifi c Ocean came to life. During a brief pulse of biological productivity 14,000 years ago, this stretch of the sea teemed with phytoplankton, amoeba-like foraminifera and other tiny creatures, who thrived in large numbers until the productivity ended—as mysteriously as it began—just a few hun- dred years later.


Researchers have hypothesized that iron sparked this surge of ocean life, but a new study led by Woods Hole Oceanograph- ic Institution (WHOI) scientists and col- leagues at the University of Bristol (UK), the University of Bergen (Norway), Williams College and the Lamont Doherty Earth Ob- servatory of Columbia University suggests iron may not have played an important role after all, at least in some settings. The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, determines that a different mechanism—a transient “perfect storm” of nutrients and light—spurred life in the post-Ice Age Pa- cifi c. Its fi ndings resolve confl icting ideas about the relationship between iron and biological productivity during this time period in the North Pacifi c—with potential implications for geo-engineering efforts to curb climate change by seeding the ocean with iron. “A lot of people have put a lot of faith into iron—and, in fact, as a modern ocean chemist, I’ve built my career on the impor- tance of iron—but it may not always have been as important as we think,” says WHOI Associate Scientist Phoebe Lam, a co-author


of the study.


Because iron is known to cause blooms of biological activity in today’s North Pa- cifi c Ocean, researchers have assumed it played a key role in the past as well. They have hypothesized that as Ice Age glaciers began to melt and sea levels rose, they sub- merged the surrounding continental shelf, washing iron into the rising sea and setting off a burst of life.


Past studies using sediment cores— long cylinders drilled into the ocean fl oor that offer scientists a look back through time at what has accumulated there—have repeatedly found evidence of this burst, in the form of a layer of increased opal and calcium carbonate, the materials that made up phytoplankton and foraminifera shells. But no one had searched the fossil record specifi cally for signs that iron from the continental shelf played a part in the bloom. Lam and an international team of col- leagues revisited the sediment core data to directly test this hypothesis. They sampled GGC-37, a core taken from a site near Rus- sia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, about every 5 centimeters, moving back through time to before the biological bloom began. Then they analyzed the chemical composition of their samples, measuring the relative abundance of the isotopes of the elements neodymium and strontium in the sample, which indicates which variant of iron was present. The isotope abundance ratios were a particularly important clue, because they could reveal where the iron came from—one variant pointed to iron from the ancient Loess Plateau of northern China, a frequent source of iron-rich dust in the northwest Pa- cifi c, while another suggested the younger, more volcanic continental shelf was the iron source.


What the researchers found surprised them.


“We saw the fl ux of iron was really high during glacial times, and that it dropped during deglaciation,” Lam says. “We didn’t see any evidence of a pulse of iron right before this productivity peak.” The iron the researchers did fi nd during glacial times appeared to be supplemented by a third source, possibly in the Bering Sea area, but it didn’t have a signifi cant effect on the productivity peak. Instead, the data suggest that iron levels were declining when the peak began.


Based on the sediment record, the re- searchers propose a different cause for the peak: a chain of events that created ideal conditions for sea life to briefl y fl ourish. The changing climate triggered deep mixing in the North Pacifi c ocean, which stirred nutrients that the tiny plankton depend on up into the sea’s surface layers, but in doing so also mixed the plankton into deep, dark


DELA


From the Director's Continued from Page 11.


teach our visitors about our tradition and how we are working to maintain it for our future generations. We want to wish everyone in the Lobster Boat Racing Association and participants the best of luck with this year’s racing season. Please stay safe and have a good time.


Please don’t forget, we welcome new


members! Contact us at downeastlobstermen. org for a membership form. We are self supporting and proud to be “By the Fishermen for the Fishermen.” See you around, Sheila


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