Fishing regulators and the seafood industry are grappling with the possibility that some once-profitable species that have declined with climate change might not come back.

Several marketable species harvested by U.S. fishermen are the subject of quota cuts, seasonal closures and other restrictions as populations have fallen and waters have warmed. In some instances, such as the groundfishing industry for species like flounder in the Northeast, the changing environment has made it harder for fish to recover from years of overfishing that already taxed the population.

Officials in Alaska have canceled the fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest and winter snow crab harvest, dealing a blow to the Bering Sea crab industry that is sometimes worth more than $200 million a year, as populations have declined in the face of warming waters. The Atlantic cod fishery, once the lifeblood industry of New England, is now essentially shuttered. But even with depleted populations imperiled by climate change, it’s rare for regulators to completely shut down a fishery, as they’re considering doing for New England shrimp.

The Northern shrimp, once a seafood delicacy, has been subject to a fishing moratorium since 2014. Scientists believe warming waters are wiping out their populations and they won’t be coming back. So the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is now considering making that moratorium permanent, essentially ending the centuries-old harvest of the shrimp.

It’s a stark siren for several species caught by U.S. fishermen that regulators say are on the brink. Others include softshell clams, winter flounder, Alaskan snow crabs and Chinook salmon.

Exactly how many fisheries are threatened principally by warming waters is difficult to say, but additional cutbacks and closures are likely in the future as climate change intensifies, said Malin Pinsky, director of the graduate program in ecology and evolution at Rutgers University.

“This pattern of climate change and how it ripples throughout communities and coastal economies is something we need to get used to,” Pinsky said. “Many years are pushing us outside of what we have experienced historically, and we are going to continue to observe these further novel conditions as years go by.”

While it’s unclear whether climate change has ever been the dominant factor in permanently shutting down a U.S. fishery, global warming is a key reason several once-robust fisheries are in increasingly poor shape and subject to more aggressive regulation in recent years. Warming temperatures introduce new predators, cause species to shift their center of population northward, or make it harder for them to grow to maturity, scientists said.

In the case of the Northern shrimp, scientists and regulators said at a meeting in August that the population has not rebounded after nearly a decade of no commercial fishing. Regulators will revisit the possibility of a permanent moratorium this winter, said Dustin Colson Leaning, a fishery management plan coordinator with the Atlantic States commission. Another approach could be for the commission to relinquish control of the fishery, he said.

The shrimp prefer cold temperatures, yet the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most of the world’s oceans. Scientists say warming waters have also moved new predators into the gulf.

But in Maine, where the cold-water shrimp fishery is based, fishermen have tried to make the case that abundance of the shrimp is cyclical and any move to shutter the fishery for good is premature.

“I want to look into the future of this. It’s not unprecedented to have a loss of shrimp. We went through it in the ’50s, we went through it in the ’70s, we had a tough time in the ’90s,” said Vincent Balzano, a shrimp fisherman from Portland. “They came back.”

Another jeopardized species is winter flounder, once highly sought by southern New England fishermen. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has described the fish as “significantly below target population levels” on Georges Bank, a key fishing ground. Scientists with University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management wrote that the fish have struggled to reach maturity “due to increased predation related to warming winters” in a report last year.

On the West Coast, Chinook salmon face an extinction risk due to climate change, NOAA has reported. Drought has worsened the fish’s prospects in California, at the southern end of its range, scientists have said.

Fishermen on the East Coast, from Virginia to Maine, have dug softshell clams from tidal mud for centuries, and they’re a staple of seafood restaurants. They’re used for chowder and fried clam dishes and are sometimes called “steamers.”

But the clam harvest fell from about 3.5 million pounds (1.6 million kilograms) in 2010 to 2.1 million pounds (950,000 kilograms) in 2020 as the industry has contended with an aging workforce and increasing competition from predators such as crabs and worms. Scientists have linked the growing predator threat to warming waters.

The 2020 haul in Maine, which harvests the most clams, was the smallest in more than 90 years. And the 2021 catch still lagged behind typical hauls from the 2000s, which were consistently close to 2 million pounds (907,000 kilograms) or more.

Predicting what the clam harvest will look like in 2022 is difficult, but the industry remains threatened by the growing presence of invasive green crabs, said Brian Beal a professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine at Machias. The crabs, which eat clams, are native to Europe and arrived in the U.S. about 200 years ago and have grown in population as waters have warmed.

“There seem to have been, relative to 2020, a ton more green crabs that settled,” Beal said. “That’s not a good omen.”

One challenge of managing fisheries that are declining due to warming waters is that regulators rely on historical data to set quotas and other regulations, said Lisa Kerr, a senior research scientist with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine. Scientists and regulators are learning that some fish stocks just aren’t capable of returning to the productivity level of 40 years ago, she said.

Back then, U.S. fishermen typically caught more than 100 million pounds (45.4 million kilograms) of Atlantic cod per year. Now, they usually catch less than 2 million pounds (907,000 kilograms), as overfishing and environmental changes have prevented the population from returning to historical levels.

The future of managing species that are in such bad shape might require accepting the possibility that fully rebuilding them is impossible, Kerr said.

“It’s really a resetting of the expectations,” she said. “We’re starting to see targets that are more in line, but under a lower overall target.”
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For web: Descendants of the Alabama steamship owner responsible for illegally bringing 110 African captives to America aboard the last U.S. slave ship have ended generations of public silence, calling his actions more than 160 years ago “evil and unforgivable.”

In a statement released to NBC News, members of Timothy Meaher’s family — which is still prominent around Mobile, Alabama — said that what Meaher did on the eve of the Civil War “had consequences that have impacted generations of people.”

“Our family has been silent for too long on this matter. However, we are hopeful that we — the current generation of the Meaher family — can start a new chapter,” said the statement. Two members of the Meaher family didn’t respond to messages seeking additional comment Friday.

The statement came amid the release of “Descendant,” a new documentary about the people who were brought to the United States aboard the slave ship Clotilda and their families. The film was acquired by Netflix and Higher Ground, the production company of Barack and Michelle Obama.

The Meaher family has started meeting with leaders of the community in and around Africatown, the community begun by the Africans in north Mobile after they were released from slavery at the end of the Civil War in 1865, the statement said.

Darron Patterson, a descendant of Clotilda captive Pollee Allen, said he met twice last month with a Meaher family member who contacted him through an intermediary. The discussions were cordial but didn’t delve deeply into details of their shared history, he said.

“Our conversations were just about who we are as people,” he said. “I think it’s important that we begin there.”

Patterson was president of the Clotilda Descendants Association at the time. The current president, Jeremy Ellis, said the organization had been in contact with the Meaher family by email since the NBC story aired on Sunday Today, and members hoped for face-to-face talks.

“I am interested in learning and seeking answers from the Meaher family about historical documents, artifacts and oral histories that can bring clarity to descendants,” Ellis said.

The Clotilda, a wooden schooner, was the last ship known to bring captives to the American South from Africa for enslavement. Decades after Congress outlawed the international slave trade, the Clotilda sailed from Mobile on a trip funded by Timothy Meaher, whose descendants still own millions of dollars’ worth of real estate around the city. A state park in Mobile Bay bears the family’s name.

The Clotilda’s captain took his human cargo off the ship in Mobile and set fire to the vessel to hide evidence of the journey. The people, all from West Africa, were enslaved.

Remains of the ship were discovered mostly intact on the muddy river bottom about four years ago, and researchers are still trying to determine the best way to preserve what’s left of the wreck, which many in Africatown hope will become part of a resurgence of their community.

The statement said Meaher family members “believe that the story of Africatown is an important part of history that needs to be told.”

“Our goal is to listen and learn, and our hope is that these conversations can help guide the actions our family takes as we work to be better partners in the community,” it said.

The statement “falls short” because it fails to mention two other Meaher brothers who conspired with Timothy Meaher and the family’s decision to lease land to paper companies responsible for pollution around Africatown, Ellis said.

While some members of the Africatown community have advocated for reparations for Clotilda descendants, the family’s statement made no mention of that topic. The fact that the family has started a conversation with slave descendants could be a lesson to other families whose ancestors were involved in the slave trade, Patterson said.

“I hope that what the Meaher family is showing here rubs off on the families of other enslavers,” he said.
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U.S. President Joe Biden will travel to Egypt to participate in the COP27 U.N. climate change summit on November 11, where he will call on the world to act “in this decisive decade,” the White House said Friday.

Biden will then be in Cambodia November 12-13 to participate in the annual U.S.-ASEAN summit and the East Asia Summit, the White House said in a statement. After that, Biden will visit Indonesia November 13-16 to participate in a summit of leaders from the Group of 20 major economies, it added.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog first disclosed Biden’s visit to Egypt during a meeting with the U.S. president in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden would use COP27 to “build on the significant work the United States has undertaken to advance the global climate fight and help the most vulnerable build resilience to climate impacts.”

In Cambodia, Biden will reaffirm the United States’ enduring commitment to Southeast Asia, while underscoring the importance of U.S.-ASEAN cooperation in ensuring security and prosperity in the region, Jean-Pierre said.

In Bali, Indonesia, Biden will work with G-20 partners to address key challenges such as climate change; the global impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine, including on energy and food security and affordability; and a range of other priorities important to the global economic recovery, the White House said.

Vice President Kamala Harris will also travel to Asia and North Africa, following the president’s visit, the White House said.

Harris will travel to Bangkok to attend the November 18-19 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders meeting, underscoring Washington’s commitment to economic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

She will also travel to Manila, where she will meet with government leaders and civil society representatives, the White House said. 
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An evacuation order has abruptly forced out residents of a 14-story oceanfront building on the same avenue where a condominium collapse killed nearly 100 people last year.

The city posted an unsafe structure notice Thursday evening at the Port Royale condominium, Miami Beach representative Melissa Berthier said in an email.

A structural engineering report prompted the evacuation of the 164-unit structure, which is in the process of undergoing a required recertification. An engineer discovered that a main support beam identified for repair 10 months ago had shifted and that a crack in the beam had expanded, and other structural supports may need repair as well, the report said.

One resident, renovation contractor Marash Markaj, who lived in the building for more than six years, said the damage extends beyond a single support beam.

“I’ve seen the issues for many years,” Markaj told The Associated Press. He said he tried to report the issues – including cracks in a column and water standing in the garage area for weeks at a time – to the building management and to the city’s building department.

“I was never able to get a response,” he said, adding that he was feeling “unsafe” living in the building and with the way the building’s maintenance was handled.

nspection Engineers Inc. said in a letter to the city that it’s working to obtain a city permit so that “comprehensive shoring” can be installed within 10 days. That will be followed by another inspection of the building, which was constructed in 1971.

During an inspection about 10 months ago, engineers found “areas of concern that we designated as a priority to be repaired,” Arshad Vioar said in an email sent to the Miami Beach Building Department.

The building’s association selected a contractor and the repairs started about four weeks ago. The firm that inspected the building was asked to supervise the work and this week “noticed that one of the main beams in the garage had experienced a structural deflection of approximately ½ inch and also the existing crack that was marked for repair had extended,” Vioar said in the email.

The handful of condo residents who returned to the site Friday morning to see what was happening included Felicia Flores, 71, who lived in the building 15 years, and now has gone to stay with her daughter. She said work was being done on the building for a few weeks but that something changed Thursday.

“It appears there was something more serious, so we had to leave all of a sudden,” Flores said.

Miami Beach officials said condo owners who rented out their units were on the hook under local laws to cover temporary housing for renters for up to three months or until the building was habitable again.

Samy Bosch, who lived in the building for nine years, said the residents were given very little time to move out. They were told at 5 p.m. Thursday that they had to be out by 7 p.m.

“We don’t know exactly what’s going on inside there but we can’t stay. That’s it,” Bosch said, as he returned to observe the scene Friday morning.

The Port Royale is about 1.3 miles (2 kilometers) south of the Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Florida, also on Collins Avenue, where 98 people were killed in a June 2021 collapse.

The disaster at the 12-story oceanfront condo building in Surfside drew the largest non-hurricane emergency response in Florida history, including rescue crews from across the U.S. and as far away as Israel to help local teams search for victims.

Other buildings in South Florida have been evacuated amid similar safety concerns since the Surfside collapse.

The disaster focused scrutiny on the structural integrity of aging condominium towers throughout Florida, especially along its coastlines, and the state has since moved to strengthen laws requiring inspections and the periodic recertification of buildings.

Miami-Dade County had required the first recertification only after 40 years and the Surfside building was undergoing that recertification process when it collapsed.

New state rules signed into law in May require buildings to have their first recertification after 30 years, or 25 if they are within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of the coast, and then every 10 years thereafter.
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A commission of independent U.N. experts examining rights violations and atrocities in the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region says that without an end to the fighting, the risk of further atrocity crimes is growing.

“Atrocity crimes are imminent unless there is a cessation of hostilities,” commission member Radhika Coomaraswamy told reporters Friday at the United Nations.

The U.N. International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia warned in their report delivered Thursday to the General Assembly committee that deals with human rights, that Ethiopian, Eritrean and Tigrayan forces have all committed violations in the hostilities that began two years ago. Commission Chair Betty Murungi said several of these violations rise to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The report outlines the dire humanitarian situation in the northern Tigray region, where 6 million people have been cut off from supplies and services by the federal government’s blockade.

“We focused first on the dire humanitarian situation in Tigray and found that the widespread denial and obstruction of access to food, medicine and basic services amounted to a crime against humanity, as well as the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare,” said commission member Steven Ratner, an American law professor.

The three-member commission created by the Human Rights Council last December also found that the federal government targeted civilians in Tigray with shelling, air strikes and drone attacks.

Addis Ababa has rejected the commission’s report.

Ethiopia’s U.N. ambassador, Taye Atske Selassie, told the General Assembly committee Thursday the report is “incoherent and sketchy” and is intended to intensify political pressure against his government.

“The commission is merely an instrument that will later serve as justification for intervention and sanctions,” Selassie said.

The commission found that Tigrayan forces also committed serious crimes, including large-scale killings of Amhara civilians, rape and sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, torture, looting and destruction of civilian property.

“To the degree that there have been allegations of isolated wrongdoing by Tigray forces, the Government of Tigray takes those allegations seriously and will ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice,” the regional authorities said in a statement when the U.N. commission’s report was first published in September.

The report says rape “has been perpetrated on a staggering scale” since the fighting began in November 2020. Survivors in Tigray have implicated the Ethiopian National Defense Force, Eritrea Defense Forces and the Amhara militia, Fano. Women were raped, gang raped, held as sex slaves and violated with objects.

Sexual violence by Tigrayan forces was documented in areas of neighboring Amhara, where some survivors testified that their rapists told them they were avenging the rape of Tigrayan women and girls.

While the commission said grave violations of international law have been carried out, they did not go so far as to deem it a genocide.

“We didn’t have a pattern in which we could at this point say that genocide was happening or could not be happening,” said Coomaraswamy, a lawyer who has investigated atrocities in her native Sri Lanka and in Myanmar.

“But we do say that because of the indicators that are now present at this particular moment in Ethiopian history, and with what is going on at the moment, that there is a possibility that atrocity crimes — that could include genocide — can happen unless the international community, the African Union, stop the cessation of hostilities,” she said.

On Tuesday, African Union-mediated peace talks began in South Africa between the federal government and Tigrayan leaders. The commission welcomed the talks, saying it hopes they will lead to an end to the fighting, the resumption of humanitarian access and the return of peace and security for the people.

The commission spent a week in Addis Ababa in July and hoped to receive permission for “unfettered access” to Tigray, which regional authorities support. But the Ethiopian federal government so far has not granted their request.

“A war without witnesses, as you know, can be terrible,” commission member Coomaraswamy emphasized.
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