April 4, 2023 — The Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) and the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust (ASFT) are hosting a Spring Virtual Fishermen’s EXPO on April 4 and 5, from 9AM-1PM to provide educational workshops to new and experienced local fishermen. ALFA and ASFT welcome those interested in the fishing sector to attend.
CALIFORNIA: “Go fishing or go broke”: North Coast fishermen prepare for salmon season to be canceled
April 4, 2023 — California salmon anglers will be forced to consider other methods of income this year, as the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) plans to cancel this year’s salmon season in the state.
Humboldt fisherman Jake McMaster has had a difficult past few months after a short and unlucrative crab season, and now, the news that salmon season will be cancelled has him in troubled waters again.
“With the crab here that wasn’t the greatest, we would have depended on [salmon] pretty heavily, and we’ll just have to focus our attentions on other fisheries,” McMaster said.
ALASKA: Love at first fish
April 4, 2023 — The Sitka Sac Roe fishery got quite a romantic start on Wednesday, March 29.
Fisherman Pete Feenstra, who fishes on the F/V Noble Provider, hailed fellow fisherwoman and captain Brannon Finney from the F/V Alaskan Girl on the radio to propose.
Feenstra had quite the audience- the entire fleet, ADFG, local processors, and many from the town of Sitka tuned into channel 10 for the proposal.
OREGON: ‘It’s a painful year’
April 4, 2023 — Mark Newell typically buys and processes a lot of salmon and tuna. But this year, he expects that a lack of salmon fishing off Oregon’s southern coast during the spring and summer seasons could wipe out a major chunk of his income.
Newell, based in Newport and a member of the Oregon Salmon Commission, has been a commercial fisherman since the 1970s and, in the past 15 years, a wholesale seafood buyer and processor. Ocean Beauty in Astoria is one of his accounts.
“It’s a tough deal,” he said. “It’s just tough to have no options.”
He is referring to ocean salmon season alternatives proposed by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the entity responsible for setting ocean salmon seasons off the Pacific Coast.
In March, the council unveiled its alternatives for the summer salmon seasons and the picture was bleak.
CALIFORNIA: California Salmon Stocks Are Crashing. A Fishing Ban Looks Certain.
April 3, 2023 — This week, officials are expected to shut down all commercial and recreational salmon fishing off California for 2023. Much will be canceled off neighboring Oregon, too.
The reason: An alarming decline of fish stocks linked to the one-two punch of heavily engineered waterways and the supercharged heat and drought that come with climate change. There are new threats in the ocean, too, that are less understood but may be tied to global warming, according to researchers.
Scientists and fishers had been braced for bad numbers. Conditions were terrible a couple of years earlier, when the salmon were young and tiny in low, overheated creeks and rivers in California. But as the fish counts came in and the models spit out figures, the numbers were even more dismal than expected.
Of all the salmon in California, fall-run Chinook were the last ones robust enough for commercial fishing. But this year, fewer than 170,000 are expected to return to Central Valley rivers. That’s down from highs of over a million as recently as 1995.
CALIFORNIA: California’s salmon fishers warn of “hard times coming” as they face canceled season
April 3, 2023 — Sarah Bates, the captain of a fishing boat in San Francisco, had a feeling something was wrong with the chinook salmon population back in December.
“The fish weren’t coming up the river, and to a certain extent, we were just waiting,” Bates, 46, told CNN. “We thought the run was late. And then at some point, it just became clear that fish weren’t coming.”
But she and other fishermen weren’t sure how bad it could be. It later turned out that catchers along much of the West Coast likely won’t be fishing for salmon at all this year.
“Salmon is my livelihood. It’s my main fishery,” she said. “And it’s the main fishery for a lot of folks in Fisherman’s Wharf. So, I think there are a lot of us that have some hard times coming.”
In early March, West Coast regulators announced that they may recommend a ban on salmon fishing this year. It would be only the second time salmon fishing season has been canceled in California.
CALIFORNIA: It’s a bad year for California salmon. Here’s how it hurts the economy and environment
April 3, 2023 — State officials were supposed to take a conservative approach to approving salmon fishing season this year—and they did.
California’s fishing season had been scheduled to open April 1. Instead, as a result of low salmon projections, the season has been canceled.
Salmon provides more to the state than meets the eye.
“People don’t realize how much California’s a salmon state,” said Micheal Milstein, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spokesman. “The Sacramento River is one of the big salmon rivers off the West Coast.”
As commercial and sport fishing comes to a pause this year, here’s what to know
ALASKA: Alaska Department of Fish and Game releases Kuskokwim Bay salmon fishery announcement
April 2, 2o23 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) released an announcement on March 29, 2023. The advisory announcement notes that ADF&G does not expect to open any commercial gillnet fishing in Districts 4 and 5 of Kuskokwim Bay.
This news may not come as a surprise to commercial gillnetters in that region. Those fisheries have been closed for most years since 2016 because there hasn’t been a commercial buyer.
NEW JERSEY: Van Drew hearing pushes back against offshore wind
April 2, 2o23 — Offshore wind came under congressional scrutiny March 16 when Rep. Jeff Van Drew hosted a field hearing in front of an overflow crowd at the Wildwood Convention Center.
Four Republican members of the House of Representatives heard from six experts, all of whom were critical of the offshore wind farms being developed in three lease areas off the New Jersey coast by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) and the administration of Gov. Phil Murphy.
The hearing was an effort to “develop a legislative solution for the disruptive effect of offshore wind,” Van Drew said.
Marine mammal deaths continue to be the catalyst for offshore wind opposition. Since early December, nine whales have been found dead or dying on New Jersey beaches. Other cetaceans, including porpoises and dolphins, have also been washing ashore at an alarming rate. Counting eight dolphins that stranded on the Sea Isle City beach March 21, that number has reached a combined 23 dead porpoises and dolphins since December according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center.
Although no official cause of death for the whales has been announced, concerns have been growing that they are connected to sonar mapping of the ocean floor being done in preparation for the construction of the Ocean Wind 1, Ocean Wind 2, and Atlantic Shores offshore wind projects.
Testimony by panelists depicted offshore wind as a threat to more than sea mammals. Tourism, commercial fishing, maritime safety and household budgets are all at risk, according to critics.
“If offshore wind industrialization moves forward, it will be the most profound transformation of the Atlantic coast in the history of the United States of America,” said Van Drew, who has introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives calling for a moratorium on offshore wind until answers to the whale death mystery can be found.
Rep. Chris Smith, from New Jersey’s 4th District (Monmouth and Ocean counties), has introduced a bill in the House seeking an investigation into the environmental approval process for offshore wind projects.
“Like the canary in the coal mine, the recent spate of tragic whale deaths has brought new light and increased scrutiny to the fast tracking of thousands of wind turbines off our coast,” Smith said. He called the wind farm approval process “shotty at best.”
Cindy Zipf, executive director of Clean Ocean Action, agreed that something isn’t right.
“This is too much too fast and in a word simply reckless,” Zipf said. “Marine life is being placed at grave risk without scientific due diligence monitoring and protection to ensure the ocean survives this massive industrialization.”
Despite the magnitude of New Jersey’s offshore wind program, the public, especially those from communities most directly affected, feel like they have no say according to Van Drew, who chaired the meeting.
“From communities to stakeholders, it is hard to find a group that feels as though their thoughts and suggestions have been properly examined and/or addressed by ocean wind companies,” the congressman said.
Van Drew said Orsted, the Danish company which is building Ocean Wind 1 and Ocean Wind 2, was given the opportunity to appear at the hearing, but declined, instead submitting a letter that alludes to what they have already put into the public record.
MAINE: More than a job: Can sea scallop help preserve the working waterfront?
March 30, 2023 — At the beginning of Andrew Peters’ first Econ 101 class at elite Middlebury College in 2005, the professor asked students to introduce themselves and share their career interests. “Law,” “technology,” and “investment banking” echoed among the 80 or so in the lecture hall, with one stand-out. “Lobsterman,” Peters stated.
It was a goal the Albany native had fixed on as a 12-year-old during a family sailing trip and, although he eventually worked for several years as a sternman, the profession proved out of reach because of the limited number of commercial lobstering licenses in Maine. A job at Google would have been easier to nab.
But now Andrew Peters is making his way on the water in a role that defines entrepreneurship. He is one of just a handful of ocean farmers growing sea scallops in Maine. If his econ professor were to illustrate his vocation as a Venn diagram, it would lie at the intersection of passion, hard work, and innovation.
Peters’ foray into sea scallop aquaculture comes as the future of Maine’s $730 million lobster industry faces serious challenges, including northward lobster migrations due to warming waters and federal regulations of gear related to right whale entanglements. But at the same time, fisheries are diversifying with bivalve and kelp farming, and the economy has been invigorated with an influx of Millennials, including remote workers who permanently fled cities to Maine’s great outdoors and more affordable real estate during the pandemic. Despite wariness about the lobster fishery, there’s a sparkle in Maine’s Blue Economy.
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