Coastal & Marine Conservation

Driven by concerns about food safety and illegal fishing, major seafood companies are working to improve how they trace fish through the industry’s complex supply chains. But in many parts of the world, fish are caught by artisanal fishers, not by massive trawlers. For these small-scale fishers, existing tracing technologies are often too cumbersome, complex, or expensive to use. This means they are often ineligible for sustainability certification (and the economic benefits that entails), because they can’t prove where, when, and how their fish were taken.

Five distinguished scientists and conservationists from Costa Rica, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and the United States are the 2016 recipients of the Pew fellowship in marine conservation. The fellowships support research to improve ocean conservation and management. ...

Manta rays, which are among the bigger and more charismatic animals in the ocean, have captured humans' imagination for generations. And yet scientists still have many unanswered questions about rays' behavior. Why do they dive so deep? What do they eat in each season? Why do they congregate in certain areas?

The Climate Science Alliance under Fellow Amber Pairis has won a competitive NOAA Coastal Resilience grant with its partners.

A first-of-its-kind analysis of the impact of 20 ocean trash items on seabirds, marine mammals and sea turtles conducted using expert elicitation was published today in Marine Policy by Ocean Conservancy and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO). Until now, the impact of marine debris items, such as plastic bags and fishing gear, to populations of these animals has been far less clear. ...

The ocean off Cape Cod is warming at a rate more than double what prior modeling predicted, according to a report released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The finding by researchers at the federal agency matches what has already been recognized locally over the past ten years, said the report's lead author, fisheries scientist Vincent Saba.

Beal’s project was funded at $200,000 and builds on his award-winning soft-shell clam research. “Using Applied Research to Support Development of Intertidal Aquaculture of Soft-Shell Clams” focuses on wild clam recruitment in the Harraseeket River system at Freeport. Read more

Andrea Bogomolni, a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said satellite tracking is changing the understanding of seals’ resilience and their role in the ecosystem. “These large animals that are able to come back again, that in itself is telling us the ecology role,” Bogomolni said. “That this system can sustain this growth of large, top predators.” Read more

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Beal and a team based at the university’s Marine Science Field Station at the Downeast Institute are putting their aquaculture innovation skills to work. The team’s goals are to diversify the U.S. market for shellfish and increase the number of jobs in that market. The researchers are focused on two types of shellfish with the potential to bring more jobs and dollars to the area: blue mussels and Arctic surfclams.