| From: Jon Koplik | 9/24/2021 4:38:21 PM | | | | | | Bangor Daily News -- 600-pound bluefin tuna will feed hungry Mainers at Belfast soup kitchen ................
Sept. 24,2021
600-pound bluefin tuna will feed hungry Mainers at Belfast soup kitchen
 by Abigail Curtis
Doug Shartzer of Somerville, who has fished for bluefin tuna recreationally, begins breaking down a 600-pound fish that was accidentally caught by seine fishermen last week in Belfast Harbor. The fishermen donated the fish to the Belfast Soup Kitchen. Credit: Courtesy of Doug Shartzer
BELFAST, Maine -- Atlantic bluefin tuna is one of the most prized fish in the world, and on the open market, a 600-pound fish might sell for as much as $10,000.
But in Belfast, patrons of the Belfast Soup Kitchen will dine next week on locally caught bluefin tuna steaks for free after Maine fishermen donated an accidentally caught fish to the nonprofit organization.
That’s thanks to a turn of events that still boggles the mind of Jamie Steeves of Rockland’s J&J Lobster. The crew of his commercial fishing boat were off Belfast last Friday morning, using a seine net to fish for pogies, a fish used as bait for the lobster industry. Suddenly, though, the smaller fish disappeared and the net started dancing.
They had caught a 600-pound bluefin tuna in the net, completely by mistake.
“What happened shouldn’t have happened. What we did was definitely an accident,” Steeves said Thursday.
A crew fishing for pogies to use as lobster bait last week in Belfast accidentally caught a 600-pound bluefin tuna in a seine net. They donated the fish to the Belfast Soup Kitchen. Credit: Courtesy of Jamie Steeves
The fish was undeniably impressive, he said.
“It’s beyond wildest dreams. It’s probably the biggest one landed in the state this year,” he said. “What we saw, a person could fish five lifetimes and it wouldn’t happen.”
But the bluefin tuna, which died before it could be released from the net, also posed a problem for the fisherman and his crew. In order to prevent overfishing, there are strict regulations that govern how Atlantic bluefin tuna can be harvested. Commercial and recreational fishermen must have a permit to fish for it. Rules that govern bycatch mean that almost everything that was unintentionally scooped up in a net must be thrown overboard.
While the fish was still in the net, Steeves reached out to Maine Marine Patrol officers to tell them about his dilemma and ask for guidance.
“Obviously our biggest concern is that bycatch isn’t exploited for personal gain. There isn’t a great mechanism in place to handle those situations,” Capt. Matt Talbot of the Maine Marine Patrol said. “It certainly would be a waste to throw that over the side.”
Because it was obvious from the outset that the fishermen had caught the fish by accident -- meaning that it didn’t have to be seized as evidence -- they immediately got the green light to find it a new home at a soup kitchen or somewhere similar, Talbot said.
For help, Steeves reached out to Doug Shartzer of Somerville, a friend who has experience recreationally fishing for tuna and was willing to make some phone calls. Shartzer said that the tuna had likely followed the schools of pogies, also called menhaden, which come closer to shore in the fall in search of warmer water.
“There’s a lot of sea life up there right now,” he said. “We still think there are tuna there.”
Shartzer called five area soup kitchens and other charitable organizations to ask if they would be interested in the fish. Other people called other places, asking the same question. But all were closed on Fridays. Finally, the Belfast Soup Kitchen answered the phone.
“He cold-called, asking ‘Can you use a 600-pound tuna?’” Cherie Merrill, the executive director of the Belfast Soup Kitchen, said. “I never say no to anything, but all I could picture was dropping this 600-pound fish off at the door.”
Fortunately, that’s not what happened.
Shartzer had broken down the fish at the dock in Rockland. Marine patrol officers brought it up to Belfast in coolers, where Merrill, bemused but delighted, was trying to figure out what to do with it next. She knew the fish would be a hit at the soup kitchen, a busy place that has served more than 300 guests a day this month. All the people who have heard about it, guests and volunteers and others in the community, think the gift was amazing, she said.
“It was just a highly unusual donation,” she said. “Everybody was thrilled.”
Fishermen who accidentally caught a 600-pound bluefin tuna last week in Belfast Harbor donated it to the Belfast Soup Kitchen. Credit: Courtesy of Jamie Steeves
Still, butchering bluefin tuna is not something she has experience doing. Shartzer offered to come up the following day to help.
“He brought the knives he needed and everything,” Merrill said. “He absolutely knew what he was doing.”
Shartzer and four volunteers spent four or five hours filleting tuna steaks and vacuum sealing usable portions to place in the freezer. They also saved scrap pieces with the intention of making canned tuna fish with it.
“It came out beautiful,” Merrill said.
Shartzer also was able to get 50 pounds of top-quality toro tuna from the fatty part of the fish. This is the most prized part and expensive part of a tuna, and used for sushi.
After the butchering was done, the volunteers did sample some of the fish for lunch.
“The toro just melted in your mouth. It was fantastic,” Shartzer said.
Merrill said the Belfast Soup Kitchen may save the toro to use during a fundraiser dinner, with money raised being used towards the purchase of a walk-in cooler.
Next week, though, the guests at the soup kitchen will enjoy marinated tuna steaks with local bok choy and rice.
“Talk about local,” Merrill said. “We distributed 10,000 pounds of local produce last month. To add fish caught in the ocean to that is very exciting.”
© 2021 Bangor Publishing Company.
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| From: Jon Koplik | 10/18/2022 12:04:09 AM | | | | | | WSJ -- Didn’t Realize Your New Koi [ fish ] Can Live to 80 ? ................................................................
Oct. 13, 2022
Didn’t Realize Your New Koi Can Live to 80?
Call Fish Rescue
Some homeowners installing ponds got more commitment than they bargained for; ‘You’ve got to worry about putting it in your will’
 
Tabb Lemons added a rescue koi to his ornate pond.
By Kathryn Dill
Kevin Varilek figured the police officer who pulled him over thought he was transporting drugs. There were 150-quart coolers in the bed of his pickup with suspicious looking hoses leading to an oxygen canister in the cab.
Where to?
Mr. Varilek told the officer he was transporting live fish. When the officer popped open one of the coolers, he found himself looking at a bunch of orange and white koi. “You weren’t joking,” the surprised officer said.
Mr. Varilek is an expert at rescuing koi, and he has been busy of late. Pandemic lockdowns sparked interest in building koi ponds, while a subsequent surge in home sales left some sellers at a loss for what to do with their orphaned koi.
Finding new homes for koi and moving them is a whole lot more complicated than driving a rescue dog or cat to a new place. It can require wading into muddy waters to try to lure the bashful fish to the surface. It demands gentle transport in carefully packed coolers, then quarantining the fish before introducing them to new ponds.
“Oxygen levels, the heat of the day -- you have to figure all that in,” said Mr. Varilek, who runs Lehigh Valley Koi Rescue with his wife, Jennifer, out of their Northampton, Pa., home. They perform up to 150 koi rescues each year, and calls have increased as the pandemic has subsided.
Mr. Lemons's 1,200-gallon kidney-shaped pond features a waterfall, bonsai trees, bougainvillea and lotus plants.
People have a lot of reasons for giving up their beloved koi, a variety of carp originally bred in Japan and prized for their vivid colors. They retire to warmer climates or assisted living and can’t take their fish with them. New homeowners are overwhelmed when they realize their backyard water feature is a complex ecosystem teeming with fish that can grow to the size of something you might catch while deep-sea fishing. Many simply don’t realize how long koi will live -- from 30 to 80 years.
“You’ve got to worry about putting it in your will, just like a parrot,” said Mr. Varilek.
It isn’t uncommon for koi to grow to nearly 2 feet and as much as 25 pounds. To roam healthily, they require about 10 gallons of water per inch of length. The bigger the pond, the bigger the koi.
Joe Dufresne, a volunteer at Sterling Animal, with a rescue koi.
Sterling Animal Shelter in Sterling, Mass., built a rescue pond several years ago. Adoptions have been rising ever since, said Executive Director Leigh Grady.
Backyard koi ponds range from several feet across to sprawling setups with underwater lighting, cascades and water dyed a darker blue to protect the fish from blue heron. Once a pond is built and mature, the lure to diversify a koi collection can be overwhelming.
When three butterfly koi and an albino catfish grew too big for their 10-by-18-foot pond, one of two in Ron Waldron’s backyard on the north side of Chicago, it was time to find a rescuer.
“They grow up and you get a little attached to them,” he said. “You don’t want to pawn them off on just anybody.”
The steward he settled on was Richard Price of Ohio Fish Rescue, who performs about 200 fish rescues a year, housing them in tanks and an indoor swimming pool at his 8,500-square-foot home in Strongsville, Ohio. He said requests to adopt his rescue fish went way up during the pandemic.
He quarantines them to monitor and treat ailments including fungal infections and “gill flu.” Pressure changes in their environment can create a bloat that can cause koi to float on their side and require rest in an Epsom salt bath, or gently but firmly squeezing their bellies to burp them.
Mr. Price has rescued fish from as far away as Southern California. During the pandemic, he delivered rescue koi to the home of former NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, who had installed an elaborate pond on the grounds of his Atlanta home.
Finding new homes for koi and moving them is a complex process.
Koi enthusiasts say the fish are intelligent enough to recognize the person who feeds them, bobbing to the surface whenever that person gets close. Owners can get emotional about sending them away.
Joe Dufresne, a volunteer at Sterling Animal, recalled standing knee-deep in a pond in a Massachusetts backyard gathering koi while their owner, a man in the process of a divorce, spewed a litany of complaints about his soon-to-be ex. Chief among them: The sale of their home, which forced the liquidation of his koi.
Earlier this year, Mr. Dufresne said, an elderly woman surrendered seven koi after she learned a hole in her pond would cost $10,000 to repair. “It was a very tearful day for her,” he said. “When they did get adopted, I made sure the people shared photos of those fish. I sent them back to her to show her.”
Tabb Lemons is one of the happy adopters. Initially, he was hesitant to introduce new fish into his 1,200-gallon kidney-shaped pond, which features a waterfall, bonsai trees, bougainvillea and lotus plants. He changed his mind after getting a Facebook message about a koi whose owner had died, leaving the fish living in a plastic tub while a caretaker searched for a new home.
“We named it Helen, for the lady who died,” he said. The golden koi is now the largest of the 15 in his pond. “She’s a real looker,” he said.
Write to Kathryn Dill at Kathryn.Dill@wsj.com
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| From: Jon Koplik | 3/18/2023 12:10:24 PM | | | | | | Seaweed blob twice the width of the US is heading toward Florida ...........................
CNN
March 18, 2023
A seaweed blob twice the width of the US is heading toward Florida. Here's what you should know
By Jackie Wattles and Kristen Rogers, CNN
(CNN) A giant blob of seaweed twice the width of the continental United States is headed for the shores of Florida and other coastlines throughout the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to dump smelly and possibly harmful piles across beaches and dampening tourism season.
Sargassum the specific variety of seaweed has long formed large blooms in the Atlantic Ocean, and scientists have been tracking massive accumulations since 2011. But this year's bloom could be the largest ever, collectively spanning more than 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers) from the shores of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.
This year's sargassum bloom began forming early and doubled in size between December and January, said Dr. Brian Lapointe, a researcher at Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. The mass "was larger in January than it has ever been since this new region of sargassum growth began in 2011," he told CNN International's Rosemary Church.
Workers remove sargassum from a beach in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, in June.
Traveling west, the blob will push through the Caribbean and up into the Gulf of Mexico during the summer. The seaweed is expected to show up on beaches in Florida around July, Lapointe said.
"This is an entirely new oceanographic phenomenon that is creating such a problem really a catastrophic problem for tourism in the Caribbean region, where it piles up on beaches up to 5 or 6 feet deep," Lapointe said.
Here's what you should know about why these masses happen and how they affect both humans and ocean life.
What is sargassum?
Sargassum is a catchall term that can be used to refer to more than 300 species of brown algae, although Sargassum natans and Sargassum fluitans are the two species most commonly found in the Atlantic.
When adrift at sea, the algae can have upsides for ocean life.
"This floating habitat provides food and protection for fishes, mammals, marine birds, crabs, and more," according to the Sargassum Information Hub, a joint project among various research institutions. "It serves as a critical habitat for threatened loggerhead sea turtles and as a nursery area for a variety of commercially important fishes such as mahi mahi, jacks, and amberjacks."
Is sargassum safe?
The problems with sargassum arise when it hits the beaches, piling up in mounds that can be difficult to navigate and emitting a gas that can smell like rotten eggs.
Sargassum can also quickly turn from an asset to a threat to ocean life.
It comes in such "large quantities that it basically sucks the oxygen out of the water and creates what we refer to as dead zones," Lapointe said. "These are normally nursery habitats for fisheries ... and once they're devoid of oxygen, we have lost that habitat."
Sargassum can be dangerous to humans, too, Lapointe added. The gas emitted from the rotting algae hydrogen sulfide is toxic and can cause respiratory problems. The seaweed also contains arsenic in its flesh, making it dangerous if ingested or used for fertilizer.
"You have to be very careful when you clean the beaches," Lapointe said.
Why is there a sargassum problem?
Just like plants and crops on the ground, the proliferation of seaweed can shift year to year depending on ecological factors, affected by changes in nutrients, rainfall and wind conditions, said Dr. Gustavo Jorge Goni, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.
Sea currents are also influential on sargassum's growth and how much it accumulates, Goni added. Phosphorus and nitrogen in the sea can serve as food for the algae.
Those elements can be dumped into the ocean from rivers, which gain concentrations of phosphorus and nitrogen from human activities such as agriculture and fossil fuel production, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.
For now, researchers are looking into ways to thwart the seaweed's impact on beaches, possibly by sinking it to the bottom of the ocean or harvesting it for use in commercial products such as soap, Goni said.
Goni cautioned that research into these sargassum accumulations is new, and it's likely scientists' understanding of how the algae grows will shift over time.
"Whatever we believe we know today," he said, "it may change tomorrow."
How does the buildup affect travel?
Before traveling to coastal areas this spring or summer, research whether sargassum is at your destination or might show up there, Lapointe said. Plan ahead so your vacation won't disappoint.
There are sargassum Facebook groups, with members posting about what they recently saw on beaches, Lapointe said.
"It's already affected the travel industry," he said.
Tourists enjoy the beach despite the sargassum algae buildup in Cancun, Mexico, in May 2021.
Unfortunately, sargassum can build up overnight so you might not be able to predict its effects on a trip, Lapointe said.
"This is why we're trying to work on these early warning systems high resolution in coastal areas, which takes higher-resolution satellite imagery to do a better job showing what's actually coming into a beach within the next 24 or 48 hours," he added.
Satellite images from within the last week show sargassum isn't an amorphous mass moving across the ocean, but rather teardrop-shaped blobs trailed by long, thin strands of seaweed.
Within the last week, sargassum blobs have been spotted about 215 miles (346 kilometers) from Guadeloupe, in between the islands of St. Vincent and Bequia, 1,000 yards (914 meters) off Martinique and off the coast of Key Largo, Florida.
How is sargassum cleaned up?
Mounds of algae accumulated on beaches cost millions of dollars to clean up, and removal efforts can also harm marine life, according to the Sargassum Information Hub.
In Barbados, locals were using "1,600 dump trucks a day to clean the beaches of this seaweed to make it suitable for tourists and recreation on the beaches," Lapointe said.
In shallow waters, sargassum can be removed using fishing nets towed by light boats or by hand, according to the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance.
In the US, cleanup is often done with Barber beach rakes pulled by a tractor, Lapointe said. But once there's an accumulation of more than a foot of sargassum, the rakes don't work as well, he added. That's when front-end loader dump trucks can be helpful, but they can be harmful to beach health.
Use of dump trucks to remove sargassum can become problematic.
"Oftentimes you have sea turtle nests on beaches that are being run over by tires of this heavy equipment crushing the eggs," Lapointe said.
What happens if sargassum isn't removed from beaches?
If sargassum isn't cleaned from beaches or is used as fertilizer, the arsenic in its flesh could leach out into groundwater, which could be a health hazard for humans, Lapointe said.
An excessive amount of rotting sargassum can also support the growth of fecal bacteria.
And in 2018, a massive bloom that ended up on the beaches of South Florida coincided with the biggest red tide ever seen on that coast, Lapointe said. Red tides occur when toxin-producing algae blooms grow so out of control they discolor coastal waters. Red tide organisms can live on sargassum and be transported by it.
The toxins in red tides can harm marine life, and sargassum buildup on beaches can prevent sea turtle hatchlings and adults from getting to sea, Lapointe said.
Will this happen every year?
Experts don't know whether a sargassum bloom of this size will happen every year, Lapointe said.
"It's hard to project because we don't know everything we need to know about the drivers (behind this)," he said. "We know it's variable from year to year and that the trajectory is generally going upwards. So based on what we've seen in the past, we're thinking we could continue to see this worsen for years to come. What will it be like in 10 years? Will it be double the size it is now?"
More funding to do the research that could answer these questions is needed, he added.
CNN's Paul Murphy contributed to this report.
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| From: Jon Koplik | 4/17/2023 10:20:22 PM | | | | | | WSJ -- Ocean garbage patch / Anemones and barnacles thrive on toothbrushes and ...................
April 17, 2023
Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch Is Bursting With Life
Anemones and barnacles thrive on toothbrushes and bottle shards thousands of miles from shore
By Nidhi Subbaraman
An 80,000-ton cloud of plastic and trash floating in the Pacific Ocean is an environmental disaster. It is also teeming with life.
Biologists who fished toothbrushes, rope and broken bottle shards from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch found them studded with gooseneck barnacles and jet-black sea anemones glistening like buttons. All told, they found 484 marine invertebrates from 46 species clinging to the detritus, they reported Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The trash patch is the product of circular currents that form whirlpool-like gyres in five stretches of the world’s oceans. Plastic and ocean trash are swept into these spaces. A five-day boat ride from the California coast, where it spans over 610,000 square miles, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the biggest of these aggregations. “Micro-plastic” shards less than 5 millimeters long account for most of the debris, suspended in the water like pepper flakes in soup, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Between November 2018 and January 2019, the team collected 105 pieces of debris including nets, buoys and household items such as buckets and toothbrushes. They photographed and froze the objects before bringing them back to land. Ashore at Smithsonian Environmental Research Center laboratories in California and Maryland, they thawed the cargo piece by piece and scoured it for signs of life.
Most of the hitchhikers they found were coastal species that had found a way to thrive in the salty open ocean, a food desert for marine life that experiences punishing temperature extremes, said Linsey Haram, an ecologist and an author of the study.
Marine ecologists said they would expect most coastal species to struggle to survive outside their shoreline habitats. On the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, animals were found growing and reproducing.
“They’re having a blast,” said study author Matthias Egger, head of environmental and social affairs at the Dutch nonprofit The Ocean Cleanup. “That’s really a shift in the scientific understanding.”
Anemones like to protect themselves with grains of sand, Dr. Egger said, but out in the garbage patch they are covered in seed-like micro-plastics. Squeeze an anemone and the shards spew out, he said: “They’re all fully loaded with plastic on the outside and inside.”
Many of the invertebrates -- Pacific oysters, orange-striped anemones, rag worms -- are native to the coast of Japan. Dr. Haram said she suspects they were sucked into the ocean in 2011 by the tsunami that pummeled the Japan coast.
It is a rare chance to see the impact of a natural disaster on the ocean more than a decade after it occurred, said Rebecca Helm, a marine biologist at Georgetown University who has studied organisms at the gyre and wasn’t involved with the study. “We have a lot of coastal species that wouldn’t have made it to the open ocean living on plastic in the high seas.”
The patch is also a haven for animals that are at home on the open ocean. Such species -- sea snails, blue button jellyfish, and a relative called by-the-wind sailors -- gather more densely where there is more plastic, Dr. Helm and her team said in a study posted online ahead of peer-review.
Removing the plastic would mean uprooting them, Dr. Helm said: “Cleaning it up is not actually that simple.”
Write to Nidhi Subbaraman at nidhi.subbaraman@wsj.com
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