Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

 Coastal sense of place among recreational fishers and its influences on environmental attitudes and behaviors (Diamond and Treviño-Peña)

• Hired two graduate research assistants and an undergraduate research assistant (Science and Engineering Fellow) during the summer of 2021, and continued funding one GRA through AY 2021-2022, to assist our research team collect 201 intercept surveys and 29 phone interviews with coastal resource users and fishers.

• A paper accepted to be presented at the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences Annual Conference (June 2022).

• Three working papers are being prepared for submission on the role of coastal place attachment in informing fisher conservation behaviors.

 Electrofishing for blue catfish (Scheld)

• Survey out now to approximately 800 commercial fishers and are organizing interviews with seafood processors.

 Cultivating demand for unfamiliar and underutilized species (Uchida)

• Completed seafood restaurant field experiment.
  • 10 restaurants participated for a total of six weeks.
  • Provided one fish/seafood item per week to experiment. Species included are Spanish mackerel, red drum, triggerfish, and blue crab.
  • These species were provided free of charge to restaurants and served to their customers.
  • Pre- and post-experiment surveys to restaurant chefs are completed.
  • Customer feedback surveys were also collected (over 200 responses).

 Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod fishery closure (Miller)

Recent marine heatwaves in 2014-2016 and 2019 in the Gulf of Alaska and the subsequent closure of the Pacific Cod fishery highlight the need to understand how ocean warming affects reproduction, growth, and recruitment. We determined that the marine heatwaves affected both the phenology and growth of juvenile Pacific Cod in the GOA. Hatch dates were notably earlier during and after the prolonged marine heatwaves - an average of 23 d earlier since 2014. We estimated, based on laboratory-derived developmental rates, that the direct effects of warmer temperatures on embryonic development during the heatwaves could account for ~28% of the shift in juvenile hatch dates. Therefore, other factors, such as changes in the timing of spawning or selective mortality, also contributed to the observed shifts in hatch timing. Such large shifts in hatching phenology can lead to mismatches with prey, influence subsequent growth, expose larvae to different predator communities, and lead to earlier settlement or settlement at larger sizes. However, hatch dates have remained earlier, including in recent years that were not classified as marine heatwaves. In fact, the earliest mean hatch date observed, March 1, occurred in 2018. Additionally, in 2021, the juveniles collected in Kodiak Island nurseries displayed a bimodal size distribution with a greater range of fish sizes than observed in any previous year. These persistent shifts in hatch timing and juvenile size-at-settlement suggest that population-level responses to the marine heatwaves may include temporal shifts in spawning behavior and/or changes in the mechanisms regulating early mortality.

Columbia River interior spring Chinook salmon survival (Miller)

Completed a project funded by the Bonneville Power Administration to determine factors regulating the survival of spring Chinook salmon from the Columbia River.  In anadromous fishes, the transition from freshwater to marine habitats is considered a critical period regulating population abundance due to high and variable mortality rates. During this period conditions experienced in freshwater may influence size- and growth-selective mortality in the ocean. We determined that early marine survival and survival to adulthood were higher in individuals that were growing faster immediately prior to marine entry in 2017 but not 2016. This study underscores the importance of processes occurring both prior to and after ocean entry and calls for the incorporation of knowledge on ocean conditions in freshwater salmonid management strategies.

• Successful five-year renewal of Living Marine Resources Cooperative Science Center, which is a NOAA-funded Center focuses on the recruitment, training, and retention of students from under-served communities in n marine fisheries (2021-2026: $30M, $1.8M to OSU/Miller).
• Proposal recently funded by the North Pacific Research Board “Pacific Cod growth and metabolic responses to temperature derived from ancient and modern otoliths” (2022-2024: $299,988). This project will evaluate mechanisms regulating survival of Pacific Cod during recent marine heatwave and provide information on Pacific Cod performance and regional population persistence in current and future predicted environments.
• Presentation on the impacts of marine heatwaves on coastal fishes to the Nehalem Watershed Council, May 2022, virtual, 10 attendees
• 2022 Hatfield Marine Science Center’s Marine Science Day, virtual displays for all projects in the lab. ~2500 attendees.

Supporting Direct Sales of Farmed Fish in Illinois and Indiana (Quagrainie)

• Project completed.

Analysis of Seafood Market for North Central Region Fish species (Quagrainie) 

• Project completed.

Awards and Recognitions

• Kevin Fitzsimmons was awarded the World Aquaculture Society Fellow, recognizing many years of service to the Society and the aquaculture industry, at the World Aquaculture 2022 meeting in San Diego, CA, on Feb 28th.
• A publication Andrew Ropicki co-authored (Evaluating the regional economic contributions of U.S. aquaculture: Case study of Florida’s shellfish aquaculture industry) in Aquaculture Economics & Management was awarded a 2022 UF/IFAS High Impact Research Publication Award.