News Bites

Niina Heikkinen, E&E reporter Published: Thursday, December 24, 2015 The U.N. General Assembly this week formally decided it will hold a conference in 2017 on how to take better care of the world’s oceans and seas. Ninety-five countries co-sponsored the resolution to hold the conference, which was first proposed by the governments of Fiji and Sweden. It will be held June 5-9, 2017, in Fiji and is intended to help countries make progress toward the 14th of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources. Participants will focus on five main subject areas or clusters: marine pollution, ecosystems, fisheries, the effects of climate change and oceans governance. The discussions are meant to hold countries accountable for their efforts to further ocean conservation and sustainable management. Countries will determine how well they are progressing toward targets and what areas still need work. They also will identify potential partnerships that can help them stay on track with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, according to a June 24 statement from Fiji’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Peter Thomson. “If SDG14 is going to succeed, and succeed it must, we have to harness the best knowledge, solutions, energies, economic resources and political will that humanity can put forward,” Thomson said. In addition to member states and U.N. entities, intergovernmental organizations, civil society organizations, nongovernmental organizations, businesses and others within the ocean community will also take part. Depending on how this meeting goes, the conference could convene again every three years until 2029, the year before countries are supposed to meet the U.N. SDGs. Those goals, which were established by the General Assembly in September, set ambitious targets for global action on issues ranging from eliminating poverty and hunger to reaching gender equality. Navigating a fragmented system Thomson noted that there are already conferences on oceans held each year, including a number of formal and informal meetings within the United Nations. “The Triennial Oceans and Seas [Global] Conferences will be the central process by which all of these strands are weaved together, in one place at one time, to allow the global oceans community to assess the totality of SDG14. The conferences will benchmark the progress of all the interconnected strands of SDG14 to monitor and guide the overall implementation of our oceans goal,” Thomson said. Holding this conference is especially important for meeting targets because there is no single U.N. organization that covers ocean governance, fragmenting efforts to change ocean management, he added. His statement drew on a 2014 report by the Global Ocean Commission. In it, the report’s authors discussed the need for closer management of the high seas, an area making up most of the world’s oceans that lies outside coastal countries’ exclusive economic zones. The decision to hold the conference drew praise from the Global Ocean Commission’s co-chairman, José María Figueres. “The high level U.N. Conference on Oceans and Seas — Fiji 2017 — can provide the first accountability moment all ocean lovers and conservationists have been waiting for, to assess what we are really doing to and for the ocean,” he said in a statement. CREDIT: EENews.net

Emily Yehle, E&E reporter Published: Monday, January 4, 2016 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is considering moving its Northeast fisheries lab away from Woods Hole, sparking concern in the Massachusetts community that has grown around the facility over the past 130 years. The Falmouth Enterprise first reported on Dec. 23 that NOAA was “exploring the possibility” of relocating the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. But NOAA officials emphasize that such a move would be far in the future — and may not happen at all. Paul Doremus, the deputy assistant administrator for operations at NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, said the agency is conducting a study, to be competed this spring, that “will evaluate all of our options for upgrading the Woods Hole complex.” Such studies are routine and consider numerous options, he said. “At this point, NOAA has not made a decision to relocate the laboratory and will only pursue a recapitalization option after extensive analysis and consultations with the Administration and Congress,” Doremus said in a statement. But he also added that the condition of the Woods Hole facility is making research “increasingly difficult.” “Fisheries will continue to work with NOAA and the Department of Commerce to ensure they have everything they need to evaluate our options, including information on potential community impacts, costs and benefits to our mission, and the ability for our Agency to continue to do our scientific work in the Woods Hole area,” Doremus said. Moving the fisheries lab would spark controversy, thanks to its contribution to the area’s economy and scientific community. The current facility was built in the 1960s and sits on the water, down the street from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which collaborates with the lab. NOAA also works with the Marine Biological Laboratory, a nonprofit affiliate of the University of Chicago located on the same street. Space is one of the lab’s challenges, according to The Falmouth Enterprise. William Karp, the science and research director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, told the paper that the facility was not built to hold as many employees as it does today. NOAA also has other fisheries laboratories in the Northeast that it may one day want to consolidate. For example, a cluster of trailers makes up a lab in Narragansett, R.I. Other satellite locations are in New Jersey, Connecticut and Maine. CREDIT: EENews.net

Emily Yehle, E&E reporter Published: Monday, January 4, 2016 President Obama’s second term has been good to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The administration has made oceans a priority, putting NOAA in the midst of a governmentwide push to protect more marine area and expand climate change research. The agency’s weather satellites are more or less back on track, after years of delays and cost overruns. And Congress just unexpectedly funded a sorely needed ocean-survey vessel and backup polar-orbiting satellite. Over the next year, NOAA officials will have to make good on a few promises — such as creating new marine sanctuaries — and put in place a road map to continue on the same path in the next administration. Here are five officials who will help make it happen: Richard Spinrad NOAA’s portfolio is diverse — ranging from weather prediction to fisheries regulation to ocean research — and Spinrad is tasked with figuring out a way to prioritize it all. As the agency’s chief scientist, he spends his time on strategy: What research should NOAA fund first? If its budget is cut, what is the first to go? How should the agency ensure cutting-edge research is actually applied in its operations? Among his achievements so far: pushing for NOAA to categorize research by its “readiness level,” a strategy he picked up while working as a research director with the Navy. Spinrad said he draws his ideas from a 30-year career that included stints in federal agencies, academia and the private sector. “One advantage of having such a diverse background is I can pick some of best approaches and best practices I’ve seen,” he said. Spinrad, 61, is a familiar face at NOAA. From 2005 to 2010, he was the agency’s assistant administrator for research, and before that, he led its oceans and coastal zone programs. When Spinrad retired from the agency in 2010, he moved into academia, becoming the vice president for research at Oregon State University. But in 2014, NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan persuaded him to return to the agency as its first chief scientist in a decade. Richard Spinrad. Photo courtesy of NOAA. While he plays a big role behind the scenes, Spinrad is also the face of NOAA’s scientists — a role that has become more pronounced as House Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) pressures the agency to hand over scientists’ emails on a landmark climate study. With the support of the scientific community, NOAA has refused to release them to Smith. In an interview, Spinrad emphasized the caliber of NOAA’s scientific workforce, which includes more than 100 Nobel laureates. NOAA, he said, encourages scientists to serve in elected positions in scientific society and to give lectures on research. Spinrad has been vocal about the need to federally fund research, penning a column in The Huffington Post with chief scientists from other agencies that emphasizes the role of basic research in American innovation. “There’s an important need to strengthen public perspective on federal research,” he said in an interview. “Our nation having become the technological leader that it is is a result of the science that’s been done.” John Armor The Obama administration has made new marine sanctuaries part of its focus on ocean conservation, and Armor heads the NOAA office in charge of making that a reality. John Armor. Photo courtesy of NOAA. NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries manages 13 sanctuaries and two marine national monuments. It’s poised to add two more sanctuaries to its network, after reopening the public nomination process last year. Obama announced the proposed sanctuaries in October. This year “was just a huge year for this program,” said Armor, who is acting director of the office. In addition to the sanctuary proposals, NOAA doubled the size of the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank sanctuaries off California’s coast. And last month, the United States and Cuba entered an agreement that set up sister sanctuaries between the two countries. Armor, 40, has been involved in all of it, first joining the office in 2000. He got his start in Florida, overseeing permits for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. He holds a bachelor’s degree in marine science from the University of South Carolina and a master’s degree in environmental science from Johns Hopkins University. In a normal year, his office oversees research, public awareness campaigns and resource management in all its sanctuaries. The biggest challenge, Armor said, is “to be relevant to the communities we’re serving.” “Managing these special areas effectively really does require community involvement, partnership and support, and that involvement really has to be from all corners of community,” Armor said, adding that every sanctuary and every community is different. “There’s really no formula at all.” Next year comes with added responsibilities, jugging the usual tasks with orchestrating the public process for creating sanctuaries and developing a work plan for the agreement with Cuba. “We’re going to be spending a lot of time making good on promises and building on the foundation we made in 2015,” Armor said. Roger Griffis Earlier this year, NOAA released its first-ever climate science strategy for fisheries, providing guidance on how to tackle fishery management as a warming and increasingly acidic ocean affects marine life. The move made a statement — and angered a few Republicans, such as House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop of Utah. It also set an ambitious schedule that rests on the shoulders of Griffis, the climate change coordinator for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). Roger Griffis. Photo courtesy of NOAA. Over the next year, Griffis will work with scientists and stakeholders in NMFS’s seven regions to create individual plans that lay out how each region will address the climate strategy’s objectives. Among the long-term goals: project future conditions and provide early warnings for changes. “I’m very confident we can develop these plans,” Griffis said. “Not only with the teams developing them but also with the positive response and support we’ve gotten with the partners that we hope

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter Published: Tuesday, January 12, 2016 More than half of the threatened and endangered species in the United States are in decline, according to a new report from a diverse team of scientists. The wide-ranging report published this month in Issues in Ecology also recommends improvements, urging federal wildlife agencies to improve how they allocate recovery funds and better leverage partnerships with states and private landowners. Some of its core findings will give wildlife advocates pause. Out of 1,292 species that are protected under ESA, roughly one-third of them are considered “stable” and 8 percent were improving, with most of the rest in decline, according to the report, which cited biennial reports submitted between 1990 and 2010 to Congress by the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, the two agencies that administer ESA. Three percent of the listed species were presumed extinct, but at least half of them were probably extinct at the time they were listed, the report noted. Moreover, many listed species are now considered “conservation reliant,” which means they will require “consistent interventions” to ensure adequate habitat; genetic diversity; and safety from predators, invasive species or parasites. These include the Kirtland’s warbler, whose young forested breeding grounds in Michigan must be maintained by humans now that fire no longer plays its historical role. Recovery challenges will increase in the face of funding shortages and climate change, the report concludes. “ESA is one of our country’s strongest environmental laws, but it has only partly fulfilled its conservation promise,” said Daniel Evans, who led the report while serving as a policy fellow at the Forest Service. “Climate change will continue to shuffle the mix of species in ecosystems, increasing both extinction risk and management uncertainty.” The report was funded by the Forest Service, the Ecological Society of America and Resources for the Future. The 18 co-authors represented universities, conservation groups, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service. The findings and recommendations are notable given the broad backgrounds of the authors, said Ya-Wei Li, senior director of endangered species conservation at Defenders of Wildlife and a co-author. “It’s quite rare to see such a broad group of folks agree on ESA issues,” he said. A key finding was that recovery investments that have been made have been unevenly distributed. Over the last 15 years, more than 80 percent of all government spending went to 5 percent of all listed species. Critics say those investments disproportionately targeted charismatic species at the expense of less iconic ones, namely plants. Since passage of the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1966 — when there were 78 listed species — the number of federal protected species has grown more than twentyfold, the report notes. Thirty-two species have recovered sufficiently to be removed from that list. “Recovery for most species officially protected by the ESA — i.e., listed species — has been harder to achieve than initially envisioned,” the report says. Threats rising Human activities are largely to blame. Since ESA’s passage 42 years ago, the U.S. human population has grown by more than half while gross domestic product has grown more than tenfold, the report notes. Recovery plans indicate the greatest threats species face are habitat loss and degradation as more lands are farmed, mined and developed and as historical wildfire regimes are thrown out of whack, the report found. Other top threats include competition with and predation from other species as well as pollution, particularly for fish and freshwater mollusks, and off-highway vehicle use that can trample animals and plants. While climate change was listed as a threat in 26 recovery plans, Fish and Wildlife has identified it more frequently since 2010 and it “almost certainly threatens more species than recovery plans indicate,” the report notes. Recovery spending has increased notably from 1998 to 2012, rising from $547 million to nearly $1.4 billion when adjusted for inflation. Yet roughly 80 percent of the funding came from sources other than Fish and Wildlife, namely NMFS and the Department of Defense. FWS expenditures did double from $77 million to $156 million per year, the report found. Still, much of the recovery spending did not go directly to on-the-ground habitat improvements but rather to agency staff, law enforcement, listings and consultations. Research indicates that recovery investments over the past 15 years were about one-third what’s needed to recover listed species, the report says. Also, the majority of recovery spending has gone to 15 species of fish, the report notes. While nearly $200 million has been spent annually on chinook salmon, the median annual investment for species managed solely by FWS was $2,686. For FWS, which primarily manages land-based species, investments ranged from less than $200 annually for the seven least-funded species to $2 million per year for bull trout, the report says. “The degree to which funding is skewed appears to far exceed reasonable expectations for what is required,” the report says. While several species received more than 10 times the recovery dollars called for in their recovery plans, more than a dozen others received less than 10 percent of their annual funding needs. Amid tight budgets, there are no easy answers, the report notes. “Due to insufficient funding, tradeoffs are necessary, and the services must decide what recovery actions take priority,” it says. “Investing in habitat restoration for a threatened mammal might delay reintroduction plans for an endangered fish, and surveying populations of an endangered bird might mean postponing a seed germination project for imperiled orchids.” Recommendations The report makes several recommendations for making ESA work better. They include establishing a system for prioritizing recovery funding “to maximize strategic outcomes for listed species” and to continue leveraging partners, including states and private landowners, to assist in species recovery. State wildlife agencies can provide “boots on the ground” for research and management, and state legislatures can pass funding and laws that provide flexible recovery options, the report says. Federal agencies, it notes, can also take steps to make voluntary partnerships with landowners

U.S. boats are slated to be locked out of the world’s best tuna-fishing waters after the nation went back on a deal with 17 Pacific states, in the midst of a decline in prices for canned fish throughout the country. A conglomeration of Pacific Island states — including Tuvalu, Tokelau and the Marshall Islands — along with New Zealand and Australia are not issuing fishing licenses to about 36 U.S. ships after company owners refused to meet agreed-on payments in August last year. The move means U.S. boats will not be able to access waters where about half of the world’s skipjack tuna is caught every year. The standoff means U.S.-owned fishing boats — often based in American Samoa, a U.S. Pacific territory — risk losing roughly 300,000 tons of catch, most of which is made up of skipjack. It could also mean a decrease in revenue streams for some of the world’s poorest nations, with more than a quarter of their $350 million annual fishing license revenue generated from U.S. companies. A U.S. State Department official said, “The best way forward for all parties would be for the Pacific Island parties to revise the terms for the U.S. fleet for 2016.” “It is a huge concern for us that our boats can’t fish in their traditional fishing areas and deliver fish back to American Samoa,” said Joe Hamby, chief operating officer at Tri Marine Management, which produces tuna brand Ocean Naturals and supplies tuna to supermarket chain Costco (Lucy Craymer, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 12). — AK CREDIT: EENews.net

By Emily Yehle, E&E reporter Published: Tuesday, January 12, 2016 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is opening federal waters to commercial aquaculture, releasing a final rule yesterday that will allow companies to set up fish farms in the Gulf of Mexico.The rule is central to NOAA’s push to expand the role of aquaculture in the nation’s seafood supply (Greenwire, Nov. 20, 2014). The Gulf will serve as the first step, signaling the agency’s intention to take a more central role in regulating an industry still in its nascent phase.In a press release, NOAA emphasized that the plan could “open the door” for other regions. “As demand for seafood continues to rise, aquaculture presents a tremendous opportunity not only to meet this demand, but also to increase opportunities for the seafood industry and job creation,” NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan said in a statement. “Expanding U.S. aquaculture in federal waters complements wild harvest fisheries and supports our efforts to maintain sustainable fisheries and resilient oceans.” The Gulf plan comes after years of false starts. The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council first approved an aquaculture plan in 2009 and sent it to NOAA to implement. But NOAA did not propose regulations until 2014. Yesterday’s final rule allows the council to manage aquaculture as it does fish stocks. Environmental groups have objected to the idea in the past, voicing concerns over allowing regions to test out aquaculture rather than releasing a nationwide framework. Critics also worry that such farms could compete with fishermen or affect the wild species they harvest. But opposition has waned in recent years. Today’s most vocal critics come from food safety groups that assert that standards aren’t strong enough. In announcing the final rule, NOAA emphasized the environmental precautions it will take. Farms are prohibited in marine protection areas and coral reef habitat. Permits require ongoing monitoring and inspections, and farmers will only be allowed to raise native species such as red drum, cobia and almaco jack. The rule also prohibits genetically engineered fish. Up to 20 farms will be able to set up giant cages in federal waters, each with a 10-year permit that is renewable in five-year increments. Permit holders will be allowed to also maintain a hatchery. The aim is to prove that such farms can be environmentally sustainable. In 2013, NOAA released a technical paper that provided guidelines for minimizing negative effects. Limiting farms to native fish, for example, reduces risk if fish escape. And putting farms in deep, well-flushed waters can prevent buildups of nitrogen and phosphorus from cages that contain tens of thousands of fish. NOAA’s final rule also puts in place a regulatory structure that hasn’t existed before. Until now, commercial farms that wanted to set up shop in federal waters had no blueprint. The Army Corps of Engineers approved three offshore mussel farms last year, but a recent report warned that the agency does not have adequate expertise to consider competing ocean uses and environmental impacts (Greenwire, June 5). The corps and U.S. EPA are now considering a fourth application for a fish farm in federal waters off California, according to NOAA. Currently, no farm has begun to operate in federal waters. States host the nation’s aquaculture, generating $1.4 billion in value in 2013. “This is all about managing and expanding seafood farming in an environmentally sound and economically sustainable way,” Michael Rubino, director of NOAA’s Office of Aquaculture, said in a statement. “The permit process we’ve laid out accounts for the region’s unique needs and opens the door for other regions to follow suit.” CREDIT: EENews.net