70% Of Our Seabords Have Starved To Death

Today, there are 300 million fewer seabirds in the world than there were in 1950, a population decline of 70 percent.

These magnificent birds such as Atlantic Puffins, Least Terns, and Black Skimmers rely on small fish known as forage fish as their primary food source, but they often can’t find enough to eat.

A bill in Congress would help these essential fish populations to rebound and become more stable for the seabirds and other marine wildlife, people, and economies that depend on them.

WASHINGTON, DC – Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Brian Mast (R-FL) introduced bipartisan legislation to strengthen key protections for fisheries and promote responsible management of forage fish. The Forage Fish Conservation Act of 2021 improves protections for forage fish – including herring and shad – that support marine ecosystems as well as other recreationally and commercially important species such as tuna, salmon, and cod. These populations have experienced cataclysmic decline because of human activity, which threatens the viability of marine ecosystems as well as opportunities for recreational fishermen. Currently, there are few management measures in place to address this decline.

“Safeguarding fish stocks from further decline is critical to protecting the marine ecosystem and strengthening coastal economies,” said Dingell. “This legislation’s science-based conservation framework for forage fish will both help promote sustainable fisheries and preserve marine wildlife for the enjoyment of future generations.”

“Responsible management of our marine ecosystems is crucial not just for the health of our environment, but for the wellbeing of our coastal economies,” Mast said. “I appreciate Congresswoman Dingell for her leadership on this legislation and look forward to seeing it signed into law.”

“Conserving forage fish is already bringing positive changes – such as the reappearance of whales off of Manhattan – in marine ecosystems around the country,” said Joseph Gordon, project director of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ initiative on conserving marine life in the United States. “This bipartisan bill builds on these successes and follows the latest science on how best to manage fish at the bottom of the food web. Coastal communities, businesses that depend on healthy ecosystems, and all those who support restoring marine life have much to gain from abundant prey fish along our coasts.”

“The American Sportfishing Association is grateful to Rep. Dingell for her leadership on forage fish conservation,” said Mike Leonard, Vice President of Government Affairs for the American Sportfishing Association. “In addition to all the Michiganders who travel to the coasts to go fishing, the state is home to many businesses who make fishing equipment used in saltwater. This legislation, which establishes a framework for ensuring forage fish are not over-exploited, is critical for all those who depend on healthy marine resources.”

“This bill prioritizes management strategies to preserve our nation’s fishing economy,” said Whit Fosburgh, CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “Sportfishing depends on healthy forage fish populations, who serve as prey for species like striped bass, speckled trout and tuna. This bill will use science-based strategies to address forage fish management gaps to help maintain sustainable populations. We appreciate Representative Dingell working with a broad coalition to advance conservation efforts and healthier ecosystems across the country.”

“This fall, seabirds like the Black Tern are taking flight from the Great Lakes marshes where they built their summer homes, to travel thousands of miles over the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico towards their winter homes. But they can only make this strenuous migration journey if there are abundant ocean fish for them to eat along the way,” said Michelle Parker, Vice President and Executive Director of Audubon Great Lakes. “This bill will protect seabirds’ primary food source, to help safeguard them from the dramatic population declines we’ve seen in recent decades. We are grateful to Congresswoman Dingell for her conservation leadership, which recognizes the benefits that forage fish provide to wildlife and the local economies that depend on them to thrive.”

“As our ocean ecosystems confront the stressors of climate change, it is more critical than ever that marine food webs have a strong foundation,” said Jessie Ritter, Senior Director of Water Resources and Coastal Policy. “Managing forage fisheries in a manner that accounts for the dietary needs of fish and wildlife farther up the food chain is common sense for ensuring the long-term sustainability of wildlife and the fisheries and coastal economies that rely on these resources. We thank Congresswoman Dingell for continuing to champion protections for fish and wildlife and ensuring a future where our marine ecosystems can thrive.”

The Forage Fish Conservation Act builds upon the successes of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary federal law governing marine fisheries management. To improve the conservation of forage fish and strengthen the marine ecosystem, the legislation:

Requires the Secretary of Commerce develop a science-based definition for forage fish in federal waters;

Assesses the impact a new commercial forage fish fishery could have on existing fisheries, fishing communities, and the marine ecosystem prior to the fishery being authorized;

Account for predator needs in existing management plans for forage fish;

Specifies that managers consider forage fish when establishing research priorities;

Ensures scientific advice sought by fishery managers includes recommendations for forage fish;

Conserves and manages river herring and shad in the ocean; and

Preserve state management of forage fish fisheries that occur within their jurisdiction.

In addition to Dingell and Mast, The Forage Fish Conservation Act is cosponsored by Reps. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), Billy Long (R-MO), Jared Huffman (D-CA), Fred Upton (R-MI), Ed Case (D-HI), Tom Rice (R-SC), Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Richard Hudson (R-NC), Austin Scott (R-GA), and Earl “Buddy” Carter (R-GA).

Text of the legislation can be found here.

May 8, 2022May 8, 2022

Atlantic Salmon Racing Toward Extinction

Conservationists Horrified As Imperiled Atlantic Salmon Decline Worsens

In spite of many decades of conservation and protection efforts that were expected to save them Atlantic Salmon numbers are sinking.

Salmon are clearly starving at sea, only restoration of their vital ocean pastures can save them.

BANGOR, Maine (AP) — So few of North America’s Atlantic salmon are making it back to rivers to spawn, their demise portends extinction in the near future for the imperiled fish, an international conservation group says.

Atlantic salmon were once abundant in the rivers of New England, Atlantic Canada, and Northern Europe but they are now endangered or have disappeared in parts all of these areas. The salmon are hatched in rivers and promptly swim to their North Atlantic ocean pastures where, like all livestock, they must successfully graze on the grass/phytoplankton of those pastures if they are to survive, thrive, and return to their natal river to spawn.

UPDATE: 13 July 2017 Canadian authorities have just announced that Atlantic Salmon are being counted numbering only 1/5th their recent 5-year average, already dismally low.

“On the Exploits River as of the ninth of July, we only had 2,500 fish pass through the Bishop’s Falls fishway. The corresponding five year average for that facility is 12,700.”

“Similarly low numbers have been reported in Salmon Brook, near Gander, Campbellton on the road to Lewisporte, and Middle Brook”, fisheries managers stated.

Atlantic Salmon stocks already down to just a few percent of historic numbers take another hit.

Calls for more mere conservation, protection, and policing while refusing restoration of ocean salmon pastures is certain doom, click to read more

The Atlantic Salmon Federation released a report this month that says total estimated returns of the young fish known as grilse to North America in 2016 was a little more than a half-million salmon. That is a 27 percent decrease from the previous year.

The group says young salmon who come back to their home rivers years before they reach adulthood when they come home to spawn often revisit their home streams after having spent only one winter at sea. Last year small numbers of returning grilse proved they had suffered a near-apocalyptic starvation at sea.

The salmon federation warns that signs show 2017 is looking like another poor year, said spokesman Neville Crabbe.

“What do we do? We’ve asked people to choose to kill fewer salmon,” Crabbe said. “The long term solution is government to government agreements.”

But Crabbe’s and the Salmon Federation comments are nothing short of a senseless cry to find and punish ‘the usual suspects’ while avoiding the politically impolitic proper observation that decades of calling for more study, conservation, protection, and talk, talk, talk has utterly failed the Atlantic Salmon. Similarly, Atlantic Cod which received aggressive fishing prohibitions and limits in the early 1990’s have continued to decline as they share the same dying ocean pasture with the Atlantic Salmon.

The Atlantic salmon pundits acknowledge that the fish face a number of challenges in the wild, ranging from the presence of river dams to continued fishing pressure throughout the North Atlantic. But most of all the scientific truth that remains forbidden from the professional and conservationist agenda is that the Atlantic Salmon are simply starving at sea.

Walt Whitman, the English writer, once said in describing the vital importance of healthy pastures,

“All beef is grass.”

That truth has never been questioned nor has it ever been more evident with regard to the livestock of the oceans.

I say, “All fish is plankton.”

While Crabbe and the Atlantic Salmon Foundation did acknowledge a role for the changing environment of the North Atlantic that has also impacted populations. They demurred from pointing the scientific finger of blame at the real and simple cause which is the clearly demonstrated collapse of the North Atlantic Ocean Pastures which in turn means the Atlantic salmon simple are starving at sea.

No significant numbers are caught at sea so it’s NOT overfishing that is the cause of their plight. They are simply lost at sea, but is it an unsolvable mystery, or do we know full well how to restore them to historic abundance?

Here’s a trailer for a video title Atlantic Salmon – LOST AT SEA, aka starving at sea.

Read more at the film site http://atlanticsalmonlostatsea.net

The plight of the Atlantic salmon as well as all of Atlantic fish is not something we can do nothing about. We can and we must restore Atlantic Salmon ocean pastures and bring back the fish. This can be accomplished in just a few years at a trivial cost.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released a militarized policing and recovery plan for Gulf of Maine salmon that calls for restored habitats, removal of dams and the use of hatchery programs to try to rebuild the population. The Gulf of Maine’s Atlantic salmon was listed an endangered in 2000 and has fallen sharply in population since the 19th century.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center includes an Atlantic Salmon Ecosystems Research Team that tracks and studies the population. Tim Sheehan, a research fishery biologist with the team, said it’s important to keep an eye on long-term trends in salmon population and not put too much stock in one year.

But Atlantic salmon are “still in pretty rough shape,” said Dan Kircheis, a fisheries biologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

We can, and therefore we must restore the Atlantic Salmon ocean pastures.

Many people have asked if the Atlantic Salmon might benefit from restoration of their ocean pastures. Absolutely yes and recovery will likely be dramatic within 2-4 years.

Like Pacific Salmon, Atlantic’s put on 90+% of their body weight in the ocean. When their ocean pasture is in a vibrant state of abundance all of sea life there enjoys high survival rates and grows large and healthy.

Tragically the North Atlantic ocean pastures are suffering dramatic productivity declines as one of the many deleterious effects of high and rising CO2 in the world’s atmosphere. We can replenish and restore them to bring back the fish.

Here’s how it simply works.

Today’s high CO2 in the air is helping plants grow on land. Good plant growth on land is called “good ground cover.” That ground cover prevents dust from blowing in the wind and that missing dust was the primary source of mineral micro-nutrients for ocean pastures. Just as we know rain arriving in the wind nourishes and makes a pasture on land grow grass, dust from the wind nourishes and makes the plants of the ocean pasture grow. Without ocean pastures plant life, phytoplankton, they cannot sustain life, including the Atlantic Salmon.

Atlantic ocean plant life, the phytoplankton, has been observed to be in tremendous decline. International science teams have measured more than 26% lost in the last 30 years. How bad is 26%? Remember when we destroy just 1 in 10 of any form of life we say that we have decimated that life! It’s bad. Very bad. And the starvation and disappearance of both Atlantic Salmon and Atlantic Cod stand as testimony to the collapse of the Atlantic Ocean Pastures.

Here’s a link to a scientific paper about the starvation at sea being reported in Atlantic Salmon.

Just as our work to restore ocean salmon pastures of the NE Pacific has been successful there is every reason to believe the same simple, immediate, and successful ocean pasture restorations can take place in the North Atlantic to the benefit of Atlantic Salmon. Our restored NE Pacific ocean salmon pasture of 2012 brought back stupendous returns of salmon to Alaska last fall (2013).

sitka news salmon story — My 2012 ocean pasture replenishment and restoration work in the NE Pacific returned the ocean to life as seen in the largest catch of salmon in all of history in Alaska the next year.

Where 50 million Pink salmon were expected, instead having been nurtured and sustained on our replenished and restored ocean pasture 219 million Pink Salmon returned to SE Alaska. Just now salmon boffins are forecasting that instead of a repeat of last years return of barely 2 million Sockeye Salmon to the Fraser River of British Columbia 72 million of the bright red Sockeye are expected. It will be the largest number in all of history, dwarfing the famed Bristol Bay Sockeye runs in far North Alaska.

It just works with North Pacific salmon, surely it will just work with North Atlantic salmon! And more Atlantic Salmon and Atlantic Cod have always shared the same ocean pastures as we replenish and restore those ocean pastures all fish indeed all of ocean life will benefit.

Join me to ‘bring back the fish.”

Note: That great salmon face at the top of this post comes from a fabulous artist. https://www.derekdeyoung.com/gallery/species/atlantic-salmon-and-sea-trout

May 6, 2022May 8, 2022

Welcome OPR New England – Bringing Ocean Pastures Back To Life

OPR NewEngland, Inc., is a US company created by and for both fishermen and all NewEnglanders who are in love with and treasure its legendary and extraordinary Nature.

We are pioneer ‘good shepherds’ of the world’s ocean ecosystems, its ocean pastures, and more. Our innovative ‘nature based’ solutions deliver proven, immediately deployable, and profitable large-scale ocean eco-restoration. Being good shepherds regenerates the oceans to the state of health, productivity, and biodiversity that existed centuries ago.

Our privately financed ‘public-private-partnership business’ is ‘good news for the planet.’ As a for-profit enterprise, we intend to become major tax payers not just another greenwash scheme that plans to feast at troughs of public tax money.

Ocean pastures nourish and sustain life on 72% of this blue planet, and they are in desperate trouble as evidenced by catastrophic declines of fish, seabirds, whales, and almost every form of ocean life.

Collapse of the oceans green phyto-plankton, responsible for the vast majority of global photosynthesis, is turning what once were lush green ocean Gardens of Eden into clear blue lifeless ocean deserts.

The OPR NewEngland team of fishermen, scientists, and business people are now working to repeat our dramatic success of ocean pasture restoration to bring fish back to New England to historic levels of health and abundance every year.

Our Previous Success: The Gulf of Alaska

Referencing the chart below, the arrow points to where we labored to restore our first Gulf of Alaska ocean pasture, about 5,000 sq. miles in size, a small fraction of the 600,000 sq. miles that makes up the Gulf of Alaska. The circle shows the result in the form of hundreds of millions of additional fat Pink Salmon that survived, thrived, came back and were caught in Alaska because of our work.

Our work in 2012 clearly and repeatedly produced the largest catches of salmon in Alaskan history! These bountiful catches injected upwards of a billion dollars of economic stimulus into the Alaskan economy.

In our new series of ocean pasture restorations in new England we will prove that we can safely, sustainably, and profitably regenerate and return New England’s vital ocean pastures to historic health and abundance. The salmon and cod will once again fill New England’s waters with more fish than we can catch.

As an intended co-benefit, our restored New England ocean pastures will provide healthy safe feeding pastures where whales and seabirds will find the food they need. Those pastures will be easy for ships to know to steer clear.

May 6, 2022May 7, 2022

Restoring Ocean Pastures Brings Back The Fish

Restoring ocean pastures is vital to sustain fish in the world’s oceans, indeed all of ocean life.

Ocean plankton blooms, like the one in the image above of a spring bloom in the Gulf of Alaska, have been diminishing and disappearing dramatically for more than 50 years. The deadly toll of lost ocean plant life is 100 times greater than the toll of global deforestation. Plankton is the grass of ocean pastures. It feeds all of ocean life, from the tiniest copepod and krill to the largest whale.

Poet Walt Whitman wrote,
“All beef is grass.”
We remind you,
“All fish is plankton.”

The oceans plankton is dying because humanity’s CO2 has made the grass that covers pastures on land grow more abundant. While this greening is good news for the land, it is terrible news for the oceans.

More grass growing, means less dust blowing.

It is the dust from the land that blows in the wind that nourishes ocean plant life. The world’s cataclysmic drought of dust is starving ocean life to death.

Our work is to replenish some part of the oceans vital missing mineral dust and in doing so sustainably restore this blue planets oceans to health.

Mineral dust spread over a vast area of ocean, approximately 10,000 km2, spreads out and replenishes vital mineral nutrients without which the ocean plants, phyto-plankton, cannot thrive. When the plankton blooms, fish find food and in turn thrive.

It Just Works! Some unexpected benefits.

Alaskan all-woman boat ‘ Cricket’ lands their share of the 2013 largest catch of salmon in history.

The state of Alaska has reported the additional catch delivered more than half a billions dollars of economic stimulus, a blessing to the state economy. So much fish was on hand that the U.S. Department of Agriculture started buying large amounts of the “surplus” salmon to make space in the fish processing industry to handle more fish.

Beginning in 2014 part of that bountiful “surplus” of salmon went to American children in US Domestic Food Aid programs, 300 million meals of nutritious Alaskan salmon were served to those American kids in need. To this day that news still brings tears to our eyes in gratitude that our second miracle of the fishes was such a blessing to those children.

The fish kept coming back as the following news story reveals, again because the vital ocean dust was replenished at the right place and time.

In 2014, projections throughout the ocean and fisheries science venues are advising another miracle is in the offing.

From our archives: This year’s 2014 Fraser River Sockeye Salmon runs will be the all-time historic high, twice the previous record of 1900.

Canadian Television News Reports On Historic Run

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While our restored ocean pastures deliver fish that become our food, jobs, and money, they also sustain many other natural ocean values.

Below, continue to read about how our work to bring back the fish also led to an Orca Whale baby boom in the Lower 48!

This newborn Orca baby is one of a miracle of many newborn Orcas whose barren mothers, well fed by our bounty of salmon, once again began to deliver healthy calves.

April 2015 : News media in Seattle make note of a delightfully unusual Orca baby boom in the NE Pacific just now, 9 new babies.

The gestation period of an orca, at 17 months, is the longest known of all whales. All these new baby Orcas, following years of declining births, says something wonderful must have already happened in 2013 to bring the mother Orcas back to healthy fertility so they could deliver their new babies into their/our world.

Mother Orcas may bear a single calf in the best of times only every 3 to 5 years; tragically, in recent times, more than a decade has passed between even one Orca birth.

Orca Baby Number 9 born this week ~Jan 20 aka calf j-55. Being well cared for by the extended family!

Orcas, aka “killer whales,” roaming the ocean pastures of the NE Pacific are experiencing a joyous Orca whale baby boom with a fourth baby orca now seen in the waters of the Salish Sea, making this a winter of record births. The latest healthy newborn was spotted Monday by whale-watching crews and a naturalist in the waters of British Columbia, according to the Pacific Whale Watch Association, which represents 29 whale-watching operators in Washington and British Columbia.

The new baby Orca, seen above, was swimming with other members of the J-pod, one of three families of Orcas that are protected in Washington and British Columbia. Ken Balcomb, a senior scientist with the Center for Whale Research at Friday Harbor, confirmed the birth to the Associated Press on Tuesday. The center keeps the official census of endangered southern resident killer whales for the federal government.

With so many new baby Orcas being seen in the tiny region covered by the whale-watching tourist fleet, a great many more are sure to be born in the vastly larger and remoter regions of the west coast of North America.