BY THOMAS SCHUENEMAN, Global Warming Is Real
A moratorium for the 2014 shrimp
fishing season was announced for the US
Northeastern Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery last week as stocks of shrimp for 2012
hit record lows. The last time the shrimp catch was halted was 35 years ago in
1977.
“The Northern Shrimp Technical Committee has
considered the Gulf of Maine northern shrimp stock to have collapsed with very
little hope for recovery in the near future,” Kelly Whitmore, chairwoman of the Atlantic States Marine
Fisheries Commission told
members of a section advisory panel on December 3rd, effectively halting all
shrimping activities for the 2014 season, usually lasting from December through
May. “There are no small shrimp around right now,” added Whitmore, “it doesn’t
bode well for the future.”
“I think everyone was startled by what we
saw in 2012, and there was a lot of pressure to close down the fishery for the
2013 season,” said Chief Scientific Officer John Annala of the Gulf of Maine
Research Institute. “The survey this summer found just 20 percent of the 2012
record low, so it has fallen off incredibly sharply.”
Of particular concern is the fact that no
juvenile shrimp have shown up in any of of the surveys since 2010. Shrimp in
the Gulf of Maine live for only about five years so the lack of any young
shrimp for the past three years portends trouble for the future of the fishery
for many years to come.
Overfishing,
warming ocean waters
The sharp decline in shrimp in the region is
largely attributed to overfishing and warming ocean waters.
“During the last ten years the water
temperature in the Gulf of Maine has been running about 2.5 degrees Celsius or
about 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the previous one hundred year average,”
Annala said. “We don’t know what the thermal threshold of this species is, but
the Gulf of Maine has always been the southernmost extreme of their range, so
we probably don’t have much wiggle room.”
Even if shrimp prove heat tolerant,
which shouldn’t be assumed, the warming oceans of the Gulf of Maine are deadly
to tiny zooplankton, the shrimp’s principal food supply. Warmer water also make
the region more hospitable to predators of shrimp like dogfish and red hake.
Other species upon which the northeastern
fisherman depend are also feeling the heat. The iconic lobster has been heading
steadily northward in recent years in search of colder waters.
For the shrimp, the future remains tenuous.
At this point, nobody is confident that 2014 will be the end of the moratorium.
“Decisions like this one show how
fishermen are on the front lines of the battle against climate change,” said
Michael Conathan, Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.
“This is not a nebulous, maybe-someday-in-the-future problem. This is unchecked
carbon pollution affecting livelihoods here in Maine today.”
Image credit: Doug DuCap,
courtesy flickr