5 Things podcast: Climate change upending US fishing industry

On a special episode of the 5 Things podcast: The US fishing industry is in crisis: How are fishers adapting?

Climate change is making oceans hotter, causing many species to flee to colder, deeper waters. And that’s upending our fishing industries on both coasts. Reckoning with this new reality will stretch and stress the U.S. government, the nearly 40 thousand commercial fishermen and the millions of Americans who depend upon seafood as a vital source of protein. USA TODAY has partnered with the Pulitzer Center to document the impact of warmer oceans, heavier rains and shifting deep-sea currents that are affecting fishing in all four corners of the nation: Maine, Florida, Southern California and Alaska. USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes, who led this report joined the 5 Things podcast to share the stories he heard aboard fishing boats from the workers facing these challenges.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below.This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.    

Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to 5 Things. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, November 2nd, and this is a special episode of 5 Things.

Climate change is making oceans hotter, causing many species to flee to colder, deeper waters, and that's upending our fishing industries on both coasts. Reckoning with this new reality will stretch and stress the US government, the nearly 40,000 commercial fishermen, and the millions of Americans who depend upon seafood as a vital source of protein. USA Today has partnered with the Pulitzer Center to document the impact of warmer oceans, heavier rains, and shifting deep sea currents that are affecting fishing in all four corners of the nation, Maine, Florida, South Carolina, and Alaska. USA TODAY national correspondent Trevor Hughes, who led this report, now joins us to share his findings. Trevor, thanks for joining us on the show.

Trevor Hughes:

Hi, there.

Dana Taylor:

Trevor, we know some species are moving farther away from the coast to get to colder water. What's the impact been on small scale fishing?

Trevor Hughes:

So what you're finding is that, as some of these species move to that colder water, which is deeper, the boats are having to go out further. In Maine, for instance, there's a three-mile limit for the permit that many people have, and they are fishing right against that three mile limit out on the ocean, which exposes them to bigger waves, to bigger storms, even to whales. And so it's really changing where people are looking for some of these species.

Dana Taylor:

And how have the changes impacted the availability and cost of seafood here in America?

Trevor Hughes:

In some cases, what you're looking at is, these captains, these fishermen, these fisherwomen are, because they're motoring further offshore, they're burning more diesel. It takes more time, and so it raises the costs. Think about a farmer. A farmer who's driving their tractor around a field is burning a lot of diesel. It's the same thing for fishing. You're burning diesel all the time, and so when you're fishing further and further away from your home port, it raises your costs and those costs have to go somewhere. And in some cases, that ends up on the consumer.

Dana Taylor:

So what are some of the other factors that are impacting the commercial fishing industry?

Trevor Hughes:

It's important to remember that climate change isn't the only thing that's happening here. I mean, there have always been seasonal variations in catches. People have had good years and bad years. What's happening here though is that climate change is stacking on top of other challenges.

So the high cost of diesel, for instance, or labor costs, or even foreign imports of something like shrimp, which are coming from countries that have much laxer environmental standards. So you've got competition from other places where the seafood is cheaper compared to what Americans are able to get for it when they're doing the fishing. So you've got this wide variety of factors that already existed, and then you stack climate change on top of that and it just gets a lot harder.

Dana Taylor:

Well, you've written that there've been species that have just disappeared altogether. What does that do to ecosystems, and what's the financial impact?

Trevor Hughes:

One of the most interesting things to me is kelp. It's a seaweed and it grows in these huge big mats on the ocean floor and it provides an ecosystem for thousands of different species from little fish to bigger fish to sea urchins. And we've seen that in some places hot ocean water, the unusually warm water off the California coast, has led to these massive kelp die-offs. And then that causes this cascading effect on other species, including sea urchins, which eat the kelp. And when there's not a lot of kelp to eat, they'll just eat anything on the ground. And you end up with these barrens. They're functionally rocky deserts at the bottom of the ocean where not much is living.

Dana Taylor:

Well, is there any marine life that benefits from warmer waters?

Trevor Hughes:

It's important to bear in mind that climate change does have winners and losers. What we've seen in some cases is Dungeness crabs, for instance, in Alaska, are doing better it appears than they have been in the past. That may be because their metabolisms are actually running a little faster in the warmer water. Now, that could have some impacts, longer term, in terms of their survival because if they're running faster with their metabolisms, they need more food. If there's not as much food, they'll eat all the food, and then you have a collapse. And that's one thing that scientists think may have happened with the snow crab up in Alaska last year.

Dana Taylor:

I'm in Florida, and I know that one of your reporting trips took you on a shrimping boat in Florida where many have been working in the industry for generations. What did you see and hear?

Trevor Hughes:

One of the real challenges in Florida is that the shrimping industry has been hit really hard by storms, particularly Hurricane Ian most recently. So there's a shrimp boat fleet based in Fort Myers Beach. It's been there for generations. And right now there's eight boats out of several dozen that can fish. And then of those boats, some of them just aren't fishing because diesel prices are so high at the same time shrimp prices are super low. Now you stack that on top of the challenge climate change is causing, which is that the shrimp are further away from shore, and you've got this recipe for a real challenge for keeping that industry going, especially in the face of foreign competition.

Dana Taylor:

When, Trevor, you mentioned kelp, your story on California fishermen, that's what that focused on. What's special about kelp and other seaweeds, and what's happening with its growth there?

Trevor Hughes:

Well, what we're seeing is that as the ocean water off California warms, the kelp is just not growing as well as it used to. It's just like any other plant in hot weather, right? Plants wilt under high temperatures. That's what we're seeing here in the ocean. It's easy to forget that kelp is a plant that is growing in a natural environment, just like any plant on the dry land. And so what's happening is, as the water has warmed, the kelp is struggling. It's not reproducing as well, it's not growing as well.

And then the animals and sea life that eat that kelp sort of mow it down and the kelp doesn't have a chance to grow back. Now, there's, of course, other factors, run off from the land being one of them, and people also commercially harvest kelp as well. But the concern that's happening is that the kelp itself is dying off because the water is so warm and then it doesn't really have a chance to reestablish itself year after year, season after season.

I grew up in a farming area, so I tend to think of kelp more or less as kind of hay, right? It's a feed. It's something that other animals eat, but it's also a place where birds can hide, where deer can hide. That's the hay. And in kelp, you've got this whole ecosystem built around these giant kelp forests. The kelp itself is food, but it's also shelter. And then of course, it brings in a certain number of species which then eat the other species and so on up the food chain. And when you lose that really basic food source and that ecosystem anchor, it really throws everything into question.

Dana Taylor:

You spoke with a lobsterwoman in Maine. What's her biggest struggle right now, and how is she planning for the future?

Trevor Hughes:

Her challenge right now is knowing that the lobster are seeking out that deeper, colder water. It's not that they're looking for deeper water, it's that they're looking for colder water, and deeper water tends to be colder. But at the same time, the water that's close to shore is also less salty because experts tell me climate change is causing more rain. And so more rain, more fresh water running off the land into the ocean decreases the salinity, which messes with the lobster's reproductive cycles.

So her real concern is whether or not this industry will be in existence when her infant son grows up, because she's a third generation lobsterwoman. And so she would love to have her son follow in her footsteps, but she's not sure the industry is going to be there. Her husband works on a fishing boat that catches lobster, but they're way offshore because there's more lobster in those colder, deeper waters than there is close in. She's actually started an oyster farm because oysters are thriving under the current conditions, and so that's something she hopes to be able to pass on to him when he grows up.

Dana Taylor:

And then you also talked to a member of an intertribal fishing commission in Alaska. How do climate change issues surface for indigenous communities in particular?

Trevor Hughes:

A big challenge for indigenous communities is that their cultures are based on particular foods that they have eaten for generations and generations. It's not necessarily the same as just walking into the supermarket and saying, "Oh, there's no beef today. I'll just get pork." If you've built your whole culture around king salmon, then it becomes a real challenge to just survive when the king salmon stocks collapse.

And so for many Alaska native communities in particular, they're facing not just more expensive seafood or having to choose a different kind of seafood, but they're facing the loss of their communal identity. And that's a real challenge, especially for people who would argue they didn't cause this problem. These are folks who are least likely to be contributing to climate change, and they're generally not commercially fishing on a massive scale.

Dana Taylor:

And then throughout your time reporting on this project, Trevor, what stood out to you the most? Was there anything that surprised you?

Trevor Hughes:

One of the things that I love as a reporter is I can just call up experts and ask them questions. I can call up climatologists. I can call up oceanographers. And so perhaps I have an unfair advantage because a lot of folks who are out fishing on the front lines, they don't have the time or the energy or the wherewithal to just call up a PhD oceanographer and say, "Hey, what's going on here?" I can do that.

And so what I found over and over is that a lot of folks I talk to are concerned that climate change is a problem, but they don't see it as this huge crisis that's impacting them today as opposed to diesel fuel crisis, for instance. But all the oceanographers I talk to are saying, "Oh, my goodness, we're seeing changes beyond our wildest dreams." One expert I talked to said, "This is a hair-on-fire kind of moment," which really brought it home to me that the oceans are changing much more rapidly than people realize.

Dana Taylor:

Well, Trevor, thank you so much for joining us.

Trevor Hughes:

Absolutely. Good to be here.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Ray Green for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of 5 Things.