Just In: Emergency closure of fishery along entire West Coast — Almost no babies surviving since 2011

http://enenews.com/emergency-closure-fishery-along-entire-west-coast-practically-babies-survived-2011-population-decimated-catastrophic-crash-collapse-severe-latest-series-alarming-die-offs-along-west-coast-mas

Just In: Emergency closure of fishery along entire West Coast — Almost no babies surviving since 2011 — “Catastrophic crash… Population decimated… Crisis… Collapse so severe” — “Latest in series of alarming die-offs… mass reproductive failures… strange diseases” — Official: “A lot of weird things out there”

Published: April 16th, 2015 at 9:02 am ET
By ENENews

NY Times, Apr 15, 2015 (emphasis added): [Regulators] approved an emergency closure of commercial sardine fishing off Oregon, Washington and California… Earlier this week, the council shut down the next sardine season… [R]evised estimates of sardine populations… found the fish were declining in numbers faster than earlier believed… [Stocks are] much lower than estimated last year… The reasons are not well-understood.

Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting, April 13, 2015: Ben Enticknap, Oceana senior scientist (1:08:00 in) — “We’ve seen a significant change in recruitment [Recruitment: The number of new young fish that enter a population]. There’s been practically no recruitment in recent years, and this was not expected.”

Undercurrent News, Apr 14, 2015: [A]ccording to the report on the emergency action from the PFMC… “the total stock biomass of Pacific sardine is declining as a result of poor recruitment“… [A California Wetfish Producers Association official said] “little recruitment was observed in 2011-2014.”

Oregonian, Apr 13, 2015: Pacific coast sardines are facing a population collapse so severe [fishing] will be shut down… [The] downward spiral in spite of favorable water conditions has ocean-watchers worried there’s more to this collapse than cyclical population trends. “There are a lot of weird things happening out there, and we’re not quite sure why they aren’t responding the way they should,” said Kevin Hill, a NOAA Fisheries biologist… Fishery managers are adding it to a list of baffling circumstances off the West Coast… NOAA surveys indicate very few juvenile fish made it through their first year. “The population isn’t replacing itself,” Hill said.

SFist, Apr 14, 2015: [T]he population appears decimated… As the Council writes, “temperatures in the Southern California Bight have risen in the past two years, but we haven’t seen an increase in young sardines”… Sardines typically spawn in warmer waters, with cold water decreasing their numbers.

SF Chronicle, Apr 14, 2015: Sardine population collapses… [There's] evidence stocks are going through the same kind of collapse [seen in the 1950s]… The sardine population along the West Coast has collapsed… Causes of crisis — A lack of spawning… was blamed for the decline… Severe downturn… things recently took a turn for the worse… because of a lack of spawning due to poor ocean conditions in 2014… The collapse this year is the latest in a series of alarming die-offs, sicknesses and population declines in the ocean ecosystem along the West Coast. Anchovies… have also declined [due to] a lack of zooplankton… Record numbers of starving sea lions… Brown pelicans, too, have suffered from mass reproductive failures and are turning up sick and dead… Strange diseases have also been proliferating in the sea…

Monterey Herald, Apr 13, 2015: For the first time in 30 years [sardine fishing] will be banned.

KPCC, Apr 1, 2015: The first time that sardine fishing has been banned since federal management of the fishery began… Many are worried a… catastrophic crash is happening.

Full recording of the PFMC meeting here

Quote :

Almost no babies surviving since 2011

Misleading!


What's the first thing that comes to your mind reading the statement above? Well, they are really talking about SARDINES not human babies. Just so we got that straight.



ENENEWS should be ashamed of themselves for such a misleading comment.


Should have read; "Almost no baby sardines surviving since 2011".

I guess the clue is in the head line... "fishery" unless maybe one assumes mermaids or something.

Some additional information

http://www.prisonplanet.com/food-chain-catastrophe-emergency-shut-down-of-west-coast-fisheries-populations-have-crashed-91-percent.html

Food Chain Catastrophe: Emergency Shut Down Of West Coast Fisheries: “Populations Have Crashed 91 Percent”


Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com
April 17, 2015
Earlier this week Michael Snyder warned that the bottom of our food chain is going through a catastrophic collapse with sea creatures dying in absolutely massive numbers. The cause of the problem is a mystery to scientists who claim that they can’t pinpoint how or why it’s happening.
What’s worse, the collapse of sea life in the Pacific Ocean isn’t something that will affect us several decades into the future. The implications are being seen right now, as evidenced by an emergency closure of fisheries along the West coast this week.
On Wednesday federal regulators announced the early closure of sardine fisheries in California, Oregon and Washington. According to the most recent data, the sardine populations has been wiped out with populations seeing a decline of 91% in just the last eight years.

Quote :

Meeting outside Santa Rosa, California, the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to direct NOAA Fisheries Service to halt the current season as early as possible, affecting about 100 fishing boats with sardine permits…
…
The action was taken based on revised estimates of sardine populations, which found the fish were declining in numbers faster than earlier believed…
The council did not take Wednesday’s decision lightly and understood the pain the closure would impose on the fishing industry, said council member Michele Culver, representing the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. She added that it was necessary because a new assessment of sardine stocks showed they were much lower than estimated last year, when harvest quotas were set.
Source: New York Times via Steve Quayle / ENEnews

Sardines, like honey bees, don’t seem important to the casual observer. But just like honey bees, which are experiencing their own colony collapse, they are critical to the propagation of the global food chain. The immediate effects can be seen on the creatures next in line:

Quote :

… 90 percent of this year’s class of sea lion pups were starving for lack of sardines to eat.
“The sardine populations have crashed 91 percent since 2007,” he said after the vote. “We would have liked to see this happen much sooner, but now we can start to rebuild this sardine population that is so important to the health of the ocean.”

(Courtesy: The Seattle Times)
But even closing of commercial fisheries may not be the solution. As Snyder points out in the aforementioned report, there are some unexplained phenomena occurring in the Pacific ocean and either scientists don’t have a clue what is happening, or someone is keeping a gag order on researchers.

Quote :

According to two University of Washington scientific research papers that were recently released, a 1,000 mile stretch of the Pacific Ocean has warmed up by several degrees, and nobody seems to know why this is happening.  This giant “blob” of warm water was first observed in late 2013, and it is playing havoc with our climate.  And since this giant “blob” first showed up, fish and other sea creatures have been dying in absolutely massive numbers.

The issue could potentially be one of climate change – but not the kind of climate change we hear from politicians who just want to put carbon tax credits in their pocket. Rather, we could be talking about cyclical climate shifts that have occurred regularly throughout the course of earth’s history. And with those shifts come massive migrations and species die-offs.
Or, as one contributor at ENEnews.com suggested, the answer to why this is happening should be obvious:

Quote :

We have three cores melted out of their reactor buildings, lost in the mudrock and sandstone, which we have failed to locate and mitigate.
We have an underground river running under the ruins, which we have failed to divert around the reactors.
We have three empty reactors, containing nothing but corium splatter left when they blew up and melted out.
We have the Pacific Ocean Ecosystem, which we have stressed beyond endurance, through ocean dumping, over fishing, agricultural runoff, and now unrestricted radiation.
We have the sudden collapse of the Pacific Ocean Ecosystem, with a threatened collapse of the biosphere.
We continue to allow corporate and governmental inaction.
What in hell did you think was going to happen?

Something is wrong with world’s food chain and one Harvard Professor suggested last year that recent signs, namely with the die-off of honey bee populations, are a prelude of things to come:

Quote :

But he now warns that a pollinator drop could be the least our worries at this point.
That it may be a sign of things to come – bees acting as the canary in the coalmine. That not only are we connected to bees through our food supply, but that the plight that so afflicts them may very well soon be our own.

Could it be that the collapse of honey bee colonies, mass sea life die-offs, and changing climates in once lush growing regions are all the result of the same underlying phenomena?
If so, then we can soon expect not just higher food prices, but a breakdown in the food chain itself.
And though none of us can truly prepare for a decades’ long (or longer) food disaster and the complexities that would come along with it (like mass migrations and resource wars), we can take steps to make ourselves as self sustainable as possible, while also preparing emergency plans to respond to the initial brunt of the force should it hit.


This article was posted: Friday, April 17, 2015 at 5:23 am