Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am grateful today to be joined by Senator King, from the great State of Maine, to speak about the troubling changes that we are seeing in the oceans and how climate change is reshaping our States' fisheries.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations recognizes that ``climate change imperils the structure and function of already stressed coastal aquatic ecosystems.'' For the record, Maine and Rhode Island are indeed aquatic.

The oceans have absorbed approximately 30 percent of the excess carbon dioxide that we have pumped into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began. That is changing the ocean's chemistry. The oceans have also absorbed roughly 90 percent of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by those greenhouse gases. As a result of that excess carbon dioxide and that excess heat, our oceans are warming, and they are rising. They are losing oxygen, and they are growing more acidic. This puts marine life, coastal communities, and the global ocean economy all in jeopardy.

Commercial fishing is an important economy in the United States, and both Maine and Rhode Island celebrate our longstanding fishing traditions. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, over 9.6 billion pounds of wild seafood, valued at $5.3 billion, was commercially landed in the United States in 2016.

Across New England, American lobster was our most valuable fishery. We had lobstermen bringing around $663 million--two-thirds of $1 billion--worth of lobster to shore. Sadly, Rhode Island's lobster fishery is badly knocked down by warming ocean waters. NOAA notes: ``The lobster industry in New York and southern New England has nearly collapsed.'' Maine dominated the catch, bringing in nearly 85 percent of the lobster landed in the region.

According to NOAA, from ``1994 to 2014, Maine's landings surged 219 percent to more than 124 million pounds.'' The lobster population is shifting north, away from Rhode Island, New York, and Connecticut, as waters warm, leaving Rhode Island and other southern New England lobster traps empty. But Mainers are taking notice, too, as warming waters are driving lobster even farther north along their rocky coast. A recent study of 700 North American marine species predicted that lobster populations could move 200 miles northward by the end of the century as waters continue to warm. Senator King can report what 200 miles does to the coast of Maine.

Lobster is not the only fishery feeling the heat in New England. A 2017 study of global warming found that the greater Northeast region is anticipated to warm faster than other regions of the world. According to the ``Climate Science Special Report,'' a Federal report that will form the scientific basis of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, ``the Northeast has warmed faster than 99% of the global ocean since 2004.'' We have a global ocean hotspot off our coast. The Northeast is also expected to see higher than global average sea level rise, putting our ports, fishing docks, and coastal infrastructure all at risk.

Fishermen have noticed. They are keenly aware of the myriad ways climate change is altering the waters that generations of their families have fished, and they see the difference. Fishermen in Rhode Island have told me: ``Sheldon, things are getting weird out there.''

``Sheldon, it's not my grandfather's ocean.''

They share anecdotes of catching increasing numbers of tropical fish early in the summer season and seeing fish that rarely frequented Rhode Island waters until recent years. As new fish move in and traditional fish move out, fishermen are left with more questions than answers.

In Southern New England, black sea bass has become the poster fish for shifting stocks. As we can see in this graphic, the 1970s had a hub of black sea bass here, with this as the center and then a slight reach upward but basically off the mid-Atlantic coast. This is 2014. The center of activity has moved up closer to Rhode Island. We are right here. Of course, black sea bass populations in our region have increased concomitantly.

This commercially valuable fish, the black sea bass, can help Rhode Island fishermen replace traditional species that are growing more scarce, like winter flounder--the fish my wife studied for her graduate work--which has crashed as winters warm.

The current fisheries' management structure, however, forces Rhode Island fishermen to toss the increasingly abundant and valuable black sea bass overboard. NOAA scientists saw this northward transit of the sea bass coming years ago, but regulatory catch limits did not keep up. They are generally based on historical catches. And States are hesitant to give up quota even after the fish have moved northward and left their shores, so State-specific quotas badly lag the changing distribution of the fish.

A former Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council scientist acknowledged that fish like summer flounder are moving north and told NPR that ``some of the Southern states are having trouble catching their quota, and states to the north have more availability of fish.''

Dave Monti is a friend who is a charter boat captain out of Wickford Harbor in North Kingstown, RI. Dave said:

There's no doubt the waters have warmed and black sea bass have moved in. The quotas haven't done a good enough job at figuring in climate change yet.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we have to fix this. To use the black sea bass example, the species is comanaged by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. Rhode Island only has a seat on the Atlantic States Commission; it does not have a vote on the Mid-Atlantic Council. That means that my State is not fully represented in the decision-making process, and perfectly good black sea bass keeps being thrown into the sea by fishermen who ought to be able to bring that catch home.

In 2016, NOAA scientists assessed the vulnerability to the effects of climate change of over 80 commercially valuable species in the Northeast. So this is not just a story about black sea bass or about lobsters; this Northeast climate vulnerability assessment ranked species based on climate risk and sensitivities to changing ocean conditions.

Here is the climate risk factor graph. As we see, all 80 species scored in the high or very high risk of climate exposure categories. All 80 commercially valuable species they studied faced high or very high risk. This is a red flag for our fisheries.

Maine is the place for lobster. In Rhode Island, squid is king. In 2016, 56 percent of the longfin squid caught on the east coast was landed in Rhode Island. According to NOAA, this catch was valued at over $28 million, accounting for nearly 30 percent of our landings value in 2016. But climate change is putting our calamari at risk. Warm waters may actually open more habitat for the species, but its carbon cousin, ocean acidification, is the hazard. Like its shellfish brethren, squid require calcium carbonate--for squid, it is to grow the hard beaks they use to feed. Acidic waters decrease the availability of this necessary compound in the seawater and can even dissolve calcium carbonate organisms' shells under extremely acidic conditions.

On the west coast, shellfish farmers have been dealing with ocean acidification since the mid-2000s. Dr. Richard Feely is the researcher who first identified ocean acidification as the cause for oyster spat failures in the Northwest back in 2005. He noted in a recent NPR article that the acidification problem is only going to get worse. ``The acidification water welling up from the ocean floor now contains carbon dioxide gas emitted 50 years ago.'' Carbon emissions are worse since then. Some hatcheries in the Northwest are already moving operations to less acidic waters off Hawaii, and others are looking to buffer the water with seagrasses to absorb carbon and lower acidity. Shellfish farmers in Rhode Island are facing the challenge of acidifying waters as well.

At the same time, marine species are also facing deoxygenation, increased harmful algae, and other consequences of a warming and acidifying ocean. The symptoms of climate change in the ocean are everywhere.

A recent study in Global Change Biology warned that reduced oxygen availability could limit the growth of fish and other species. Fishermen can't make a living off sick and tiny fish.

California's lucrative Dungeness and rock crab season was cut short in 2015 to 2016 due to a harmful algae bloom.

Our Great Lakes have been hit too. I went out on Lake Erie after the horrible algae event there, and the fishermen who took me out sounded like Rhode Islanders. One of them said: ``Everything I've learned from fishing a lifetime on this lake is worth nothing now, because it's all changing so fast.''

If we have an opportunity to have an open, bipartisan debate on a strong Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization, I urge my colleagues not to overlook the toll climate change is taking on our fishing industry. The changes that are happening in our oceans do not care whether you believe they exist. The physics, chemistry, and biology driving these changes will happen anyway, and our fishermen are depending on us to give the scientists and the managers the tools and resources they need to meet the challenges climate change is bringing to our shores.

I now yield to my friend from Maine to give the perspective from his rocky shores.

First, let me thank him for joining us. Second, with Senators present here from landlocked States, let me make the requests to both of you that, when we come before this body with concerns about what is happening to our ocean economies, which I think are shared by every coastal Senator who is seeing these changes, that you view our pleas with the same courtesy and respect that we show you when wildfires burn through Utah and we come to make sure that there is adequate emergency response or when Oklahoma faces hurricanes or cyclones and tornadoes and the Federal Government and the Senate rally to the response of those who are experiencing the pain of that in your States. Our fishing communities and our coastal communities have a very different distress, but I hope you will see it as an equal distress and pay us the courtesy of your due consideration.

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