Category Archives: fisheries

Oregon floods: fish should fare better than people

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Calapooia River flooding near Albany, Jan. 20, 2012Heavy rain and melting snowpack that flooded Western Oregon last week turned creeks and rivers into broad, brown torrents that might look like bad news for fish. But an Oregon Sea Grant fisheries specialist says his research suggests the opposite.

Guillermo Giannico, a research professor in Oregon State University’s Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, has conducted studies showing that fish – especially native species – can find refuge and food in flooded grass-seed fields.

Giannico’s research grew out of a project by fellow OSU researcher Stan Gregory to map the historic path of the Willamette River. The Willamette and its many tributaries once were more complex, braided streams. Multiple channels dispersed the impact of flooding, but dams, housing developments and forest transition have since funneled many rivers into single channels that run fast and furious during floods.

Giannico and others wondered how fish adapted to the change. Floods have happened for thousands of years, he said, and fish traditionally escaped high water in the main river stems by moving to off-channel habitat.

Turns out they still do. During seasonal floods, researchers took a look at ditches, low-lying farmland and other spots that are above water most of the year. To their surprise, they found 14 fish species — 11 of them native.

“That’s high diversity for this area, more than I would have bet we were going to get,” Giannico said.

Giannico noted a couple implications from the findings. Salmon, steelhead and other native fish, he said, are keenly tuned to changes in light and water temperature, and move to sheltering habitat — even if it turns out to be a flooded grass seed field. Invasive fish, often warm-water species, don’t get it. They’re unable to respond to the clues. As a result, native fish get a temporary break from predation and competition for food.

“Floods have always been a dynamic part of the system, much the same way that snow is for elk in Yellowstone,” said Giannico  “Over time, animals will adapt to get the most out of their habitat. We have found that native fish have adjusted their behavior to use these floodplains, mostly in agricultural lands, to great benefit.”

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Funding Opportunity: Sea Grant Aquaculture Research Program 2012 Request for preproposals

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NOAA Sea Grant has announced a funding opportunity for its Aquaculture Research Program 2012 to support the development of environmentally and economically sustainable ocean, coastal, or Great Lakes aquaculture.

Priorities for this FY 2012 competition include: Research to inform specific regulatory decisions; Research that supports multi-use spatial planning; and Socio-economic research targeted to understand aquaculture in a larger context. Proposals must be able to express how the proposed work will have a high probability of significantly advancing U.S. marine aquaculture development in the short-term (1-2 years) or medium-term (3-5 years).

To view the full announcement Go to www.grants.gov and perform a basic search using the Funding Opportunity Number: NOAA-OAR-SG-2012-2003249.

This is a two-stage competition, with preproposals and full proposals. Each stage has specific guidance and deadlines, stated in the announcement, with Preliminary Proposals due 2/7/2012, and Full Proposals due 4/17/2012. Applicants must submit a preproposal in order to be eligible to submit a full proposals. Preliminary Proposals are to be submitted directly to the National Office via e-mail.

Pay careful attention to the instructions and contact Sarah Kolesar, Research Coordinator for the Oregon Sea Grant Program (sarah.kolesar@oregonstate.edu, 541-737-8695) as soon as possible to discuss proposals.

Rising ocean temperatures: More male fish, fewer females?

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Warming oceans could cause some fish species to produce too many males – and too few females – to sustain their populations, say scientists in Spain and Oregon.

Time magazine reports that Francesc Piferrer and other scientists working at Barcelona’s Institute of Marine Sciences have proved that rising water temperatures caused some species of fish to produce a disproportionate ratio of males to females, through a mechanism called epigenesis.

Unlike humans, whose sex is determined at fertilization by combinations of chromosomes from their parents, sex differentiation in most fish occurs during embryonic development. And in some species, the trigger that causes some fish to develop ovaries (and thus become female) turns out to be temperature-linked. Piferrer’s research suggests that a 3°C or 4°C temperature increase (roughly 37-39°F) could cause those species to go from a roughly 50-50 male-female ration to 80 percent male – bad news for the species’ survival.

Oregon State University fish biologist Scott Heppell, who studies rockfish and other species with Oregon Sea Grant support, reports that some canary rockfish populations are already showing more males than females. Although there are too many variables, thus far, for scientists to pinpoint the cause, Heppell says “The data shows a skew toward males, and the modeling shows that if this skew is real, then the population is in more trouble.”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2103333,00.html#ixzz1iPhKVdNS

 

Fish sanctuary takes shape off Port Orford

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China RockfishPORT ORFORD  – As a new marine sanctuary takes shape off the coast of this southern Oregon town, researchers are using the area to study the life cycles and feeding patterns of rockfish and other species, in an effort to understand how much space a fish population needs to thrive.

Public Radio International’s Living on Earth looks at the work of OSU biologist and graduate researcher Tom Calvanese, who’s getting assistance from local fishermen as he works to learn more about the fish and their needs.

This unusual alliance between fishermen and scientists is becoming more common on Oregon’s coast, thanks in part to Oregon Sea Grant’s decades-long efforts to bring the two groups together to benefit from each other’s knowledge.

Read and listen to the Living on Earth episode.

(The episode was originally produced for Ocean Gazing, an ocean-science podcast produced by Ari Daniel Shapiro for COSEE NOW (the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence – Networked Ocean World.)

Graduate Fellowships available in Population Dynamics and Marine Resource Economics

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The Oregon Sea Grant College Program is seeking applications for two fellowship opportunities available to graduate students through the 2012 National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)–Sea Grant Joint Graduate Fellowship Programs in Population Dynamics and Marine Resource Economics.

These are national competitions, and applicants should contact the Sea Grant program in their state (or closest to them). See www.seagrant.noaa.gov/colleges for locations of Sea Grant programs and contact information. Oregon applicants may apply through the Oregon Sea Grant Program in Corvallis.

The award for each fellowship is contingent upon the availability of federal funds and will be in the form of a grant or cooperative agreement of $38,500 per year.

Formal announcements of the fellowships have been published in the Federal Register and the complete Federal Funding Opportunity can be accessed through the links provided on the Oregon Sea Grant website.

National Marine Fisheries Service–Sea Grant Joint Graduate Fellowship Program in Population Dynamics
The Graduate Fellowship Program awards at least two new Ph.D. fellowships each year to students who are interested in careers related to the population dynamics of living marine resources and the development and implementation of quantitative methods for assessing their status. Fellows will work on thesis problems of public interest and relevance to NMFS under the guidance of NMFS mentors at participating NMFS Science Centers or Laboratories.

* Applications are due 5 p.m. PST, January 20, 2012

National Marine Fisheries Service–Sea Grant Joint Graduate Fellowship Program in Marine Resource Economics
The Graduate Fellowship Program generally awards two new Ph.D. fellowships each year to students who are interested in careers related to the development and implementation of quantitative methods for assessing the economics of the conservation and management of living marine resources. Fellows will work on thesis problems of public interest and relevance to NMFS under the guidance of NMFS mentors at participating NMFS Science Centers or Laboratories.

* Applications are due 5 p.m. PST, January 20, 2012

If you wish to apply through Oregon Sea Grant, please contact Sarah Kolesar (sarah.kolesar@oregonstate.edu, 541-737-8695) or Eric Dickey (eric.dickey@oregonstate.edu, 541-737-2715) for more information.

Oregon Sea Grant on YouTube: Buying fresh tuna

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Kaety Hildenbrand of Oregon Sea Grant Extension shows how to buy an Albacore tuna directly from a commercial fisherman: what questions to ask, what to expect, and what you need to bring to get your fish home safely. Fresh, nutritious seafood is widely regarded as a good dietary choice to promote health, and visitors to coastal docks often see signs for fisher-sold catch. The 5-minute video puts fish, fishers, and consumers together.

The video is one of 13 short  subjects on the Oregon Sea Grant YouTube channel.

Sea Grant-funded historian’s book on fisheries management published

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Carmel Finley, an instructor in the OSU History Department, is receiving positive attention for her new book published by University of Chicago Press, All the Fish in the Sea – Maximum Sustainable Yield and the Failure of Fisheries Management. One reviewer commented that the book “explodes the myths around MSY” (maximum sustainable yield) — a significant consideration since MSY is at the heart of modern American fisheries management. Another reviewer noted that “fisheries science and management are ripe for study by professional historians” and praised Finley’s book.

Locally, public radio station KLCC interviewed her, which was a role reversal for Finley, who was the Oregonian’s coastal correspondent for  years prior to graduate school and her doctorate at UC San Diego (where she received support from Sea Grant). Back in Oregon, OSG supported her to develop the Pacific Fishery History Project web site. She also contributed an article in OSG’s new salmon book, Pathways to Resilience, on “The Social Construction of Fishing, 1949.”

Oregon Sea Grant publishes book about sustaining salmon ecosystems

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The following publication may be purchased from Oregon Sea Grant.

Pathways to Resilience: Sustaining Salmon Ecosystems in a Changing World.

“Resilience holds the key to our future. It is a deceptively simple idea, but its application has proven elusive.”
—Jane Lubchenco, administrator of NOAA

Fishery management programs designed to control Pacific salmon for optimum production have failed to prevent widespread fish population decline and have caused greater uncertainty for salmon, their ecosystems, and the people who depend upon them. Strengthening salmon resilience will require expanding habitat opportunities for salmon populations to express their maximum life-history variation. Such actions also may benefit  human communities by expanding the opportunities for people to express diverse social and economic values.

The 11 essays in this book represent the most-forward thinking about resilience and Pacific salmon collected to date, and they point to new ways we may consider and interact with this iconic fish. It should be of interest not only to those active in fisheries but also to policymakers—and, by extension, to those interested in the resilience of other ecological and social systems.

By linking theory with practice, the authors of this volume have made a quantum leap forward in understanding how to manage critical populations. A must read for resilience scholars and practitioners.
—Lance Gunderson, Professor of Environmental Studies, Emory University

All too often, our attempts at conservation fail because we think too small. We fail to see connections, the broader context, and longer-term processes. The authors of this volume think big. Pathways to Resilience is just what we need for animals that migrate thousands of miles and cross ecosystem and political boundaries at will. This is worth reading and taking good notes.
—Jack E. Williams, Senior Scientist, Trout Unlimited

OSG Specialist Named to Important Role in Fishery Management

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Jeffrey N. Feldner has been appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to the Pacific Fishery Management Council for a three-year term that starts in August. Feldner, an Oregon Sea Grant Extension faculty member based in Newport, will serve as an “at-large” member of the Pacific Council—and does not officially represent Sea Grant nor Oregon State University. The Council, one of eight regional councils established by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, prepare fishery management plans for marine fish stocks in their regions.

Jeff Feldner (photo: Lynn Ketchum, EESC)

Feldner has been an Oregon commercial fisherman since the 1970s and a Sea Grant fisheries specialist since 2006. He takes his council place along with other members from Oregon, California, Idaho, and Washington. NOAA’s Fisheries Service annually solicits nominations from the governors of fishing states and oversees the annual appointment process. The Secretary must select council members from the list of nominees provided by the governors to fill council seats that have become available due to an expiring term, a resignation or other reasons.

Sea Grant’s Jeff Feldner on seafood and Fukushima radiation

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Oregon Sea Grant Extension fisheries specialist Jeff Felder is interviewed by Russia’s RIANOVOSTI news about US concerns for seafood safety in the aftermath of the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactors. Jeff’s assessment: While it’s likely detectable increases in seafood radiation levels will eventually show up in Pacific Northwest waters, it’s too early to tell how soon it will happen or how high the levels will be. The research he’s seen suggests the radition is unlikely to reach levels dangerous to consumers.

Watch the interview: