A team of researchers, including Edward Allison from the College of the Environment’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, has evaluated fishery improvement projects designed to bring seafood from wild fisheries to the certified market while promising sustainability in the future. In a policy paper appearing May 1 in Science, the team concluded that these projects need to be fine tuned to ensure that fisheries are delivering on their promises.
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Covering more than 70 percent of Earth’s surface, the oceans act as our planet’s heartbeat, with differences in depths, currents, temperature and salinity marking changes in its pulse. While these measurements are fairly straightforward, the information they relay about Earth’s health is much more complex. As the planet warms, much of the heat is absorbed in the oceans, resulting in rising sea levels and changes to how water mixes and currents move.
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A new study by Tim Essington, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, shows for the first time that fishing likely worsens population collapses in several species of forage fish, including herring, anchovies, and sardines. Some of the largest fisheries in the world target these species, which are also a key food source for larger marine animals like salmon, tuna, seabirds, and whales. Previously, it wasn’t known whether population collapses and other population shifts in forage fish were naturally-occurring or related to fishing.
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Aquatic and Fishery Sciences’ Kristin Laidre and a team from across the globe just published their findings on what the future looks like for Arctic marine mammals, whose fragile habitats are shifting as a result of sea ice loss and warming temperatures. Their recent study, published in Conservation Biology, found that reductions in sea ice cover are “profound” and that the Arctic’s traditionally short, cool summers are growing longer in most regions by five to 10 weeks.
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For more than a century, scientists at UW have utilized Friday Harbor Laboratories’ unique location on the shores of the Puget Sound to study a variety of marine species. With the debut of the Ocean Acidification Environmental Laboratory in 2011, research at Friday Harbor Labs expanded into monitoring the water’s pH and dissolved oxygen levels, total alkalinity, effects of ocean acidification, and strategies for adaptation.
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