Sustainable Seafood

Taking a holistic, ecosystem-based approach to managing small prey species known as forage fish could yield several economic and ecological benefits, a new study has found. The research, which focused on forage fisheries off the coast of California, modeled a management strategy for two forage fish species—anchovy and sardine—while also considering populations of halibut and brown pelicans, both of which feed upon forage fish.

Considered a delicacy around the globe, sea urchins please the palates of the wealthy, showing up on sushi bars and swirled into pasta at fine restaurants. However, these spiny creatures in recent years have plowed through forests of bull kelp along coasts around the world.

Purple sea urchins have laid waste to Northern California coastal zones in recent years, decimating the kelp forest and ruining the habitat of other sea creatures that depend on it.

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It's often hard to notice ecological changes, even when they threaten catastrophe. One oyster company in California hopes to change that.

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Outside Eric Sanford’s office window, foamy waters crash against rocky shores and open up to the expansive blue of the Pacific Ocean. Here, at the Bodega Marine Laboratory, Sanford and colleagues in his lab work to understand how ocean acidification is changing the ecology and evolution of the planet’s marine life.

Read more at the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences