July 19, 2022 — The sockeye salmon harvest in the Bristol Bay area of Alaska is expected to be among the largest on record. State officials are reporting a run of 74 million fish, mostly from Bristol Bay, during a season that started on June 1 and continues until early August.
CALIFORNIA: Endangered salmon will swim in California river for first time in 80 years
July 19, 2022 –California’s Chinook salmon haven’t been able to reach the McCloud River since 1942, when the construction of Shasta Dam blocked the fish from swimming upstream and sealed off their spawning areas in the cold mountain waters near Mount Shasta.
After 80 years, endangered winter-run chinook are about to swim in the river once again.
State and federal wildlife officials collected about 20,000 winter-run salmon eggs from the Livingston Stone National Fish Hatchery near Redding and drove them for three hours to a campground on the banks of the McCloud River.
Members of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, who have long sought to return salmon to the river where their ancestors lived, held a ceremony as the eggs arrived in a cooler.
During the ceremony, Sisk and others sang as two women carried the cooler with the salmon eggs, leading a procession around a fire as children followed.
Taylor Lipscomb, the hatchery’s manager, reached into the cooler and lifted out a cup filled with orange salmon eggs, then handed it to one of the children.
Each child participated, lowering a cupful into the water and tipping it until the eggs tumbled out and settled on a metal screen.
Last year, the water flowing from Shasta Dam got so warm that the Sacramento River turned lethal for winter-run salmon eggs. Most of the eggs and young fish died. State biologists estimated that only 2.56 percent of the eggs hatched and survived to swim downriver, one of the lowest estimates of “egg-to-fry” survival yet.
Public reaction to New Bedford fishing industry investigation: ‘This is a disgrace’
July 18, 2022 — New Bedford Light reporter Will Sennott’s deep investigation into how foreign private equity is taking over New Bedford’s lucrative waterfront sparked passionate and often angry responses from ordinary citizens.
The article, written in partnership with ProPublica, uncovers a business model that undercuts fishermen and shifts control of the waterfront out of New Bedford.
Following is a collection of email and social media reaction:
“I always learn so much reading The New Bedford Light. The title really lives up to the name, as it truly sheds a light on issues of importance to our community.
Will Sennott’s article on the fishing industry’s rapid takeover by private equity firms was most informative. This is a development that should concern all of us.
New Bedford’s hard-working, devoted fishermen have been the backbone of our economy for generations. What hurts them and their families, hurts me.
Folks are complaining now about the high price of fish and scallops, but it will only get worse. And, personally, I think putting the squeeze on the very people who do the backbreaking work is unconscionable.
Corporate greed at its best.
The question is, ‘Who has the power to stop this practice, and can it realistically be stopped?’”
— Dawn Blake Souza, retired educator and New Bedford Public Schools principal, via email
“This @willsennott and @NewBedfordLight piece on how private equity firms and foreign investors like the Brenninkmeijer family, living in moated castles in Germany, have taken over much of New England’s fishing industry for @propublica, is something else #fishing.”
— Aleksander @aleksanderrr_, via Twitter
“Private equity owns everything with very little regulatory oversight and extremely generous tax treatment. #TaxWealth.”
— JO @JO_loves_coffee, via Twitter
Read the full article at The New Bedford Light
MAINE: Maine politicians blast ‘unfair’ court decision targeting lobster gear
July 14, 2022 — A federal circuit court has reinstated a ban on lobster fishing gear in a nearly 1,000-square-mile area off New England to try to protect endangered whales.
The National Marine Fisheries Service issued new regulations last year that prohibited lobster fishing with vertical buoy lines in part of the fall and winter in the area, which is in federal waters off Maine’s coast. The ruling was intended to prevent North Atlantic right whales, which number less than 340, from becoming entangled in the lines.
The circuit court sent the case back to the district court level, but noted in its ruling that it does not think the lobster fishing groups that sued to stop the regulations are likely to succeed because Congress has clearly instructed the fisheries service to protect the whales.
Commercial fishing groups have filed lawsuits about new rules designed to protect the whales because of concerns that the regulations will make it impossible to sustain the lobster fishing industry. The industry, based mostly in Maine, is one of the most valuable in the U.S., worth more than $500 million at the docks in 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Conservation groups have called for tighter laws. Tuesday’s ruling is “a lifesaving decision for these beautiful, vulnerable whales,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity who argued the case at the circuit court.
ALASKA: Area M, Where Alaska commercial and subsistence fishing interests collide
July 14, 2022 — There have been clashes over regulating Area M for decades, but the battle heated up after the Yukon-Kuskokwim chum crashes began. This is the first in a three-part series.
Kuskokwim fisherman Fritz Charles grew up in Tuntutuliak, on the lower river. There were so many fish then that his parents would put away literal barrels of them. His job as a child was to pack the dry fish tight in the barrels using a special method.
In 2021, chum runs took a sharp downward turn. It was the worst year on record for them on the Yukon River, and it’s the same story on the Kuskokwim. This year, the runs on both rivers are at their second lowest.
In 2021, 153,497 summer chum salmon swam up the Yukon River. That’s compared to an average of about 1.7 million summer chum. The river was missing about 1.5 million fish.
At the same time, Area M commercial fishermen caught 1,168,601 chum at sea while subsistence fishing on the rivers was closed. In the midst of the smallest chum run western Alaska subsistence users had ever seen, Area M fishermen were catching more than ever before.
Do the subsistence fishermen in the Y-K Delta or the commercial fishermen in Area M have a greater claim to the chum? About a decade ago, a comprehensive salmon genetics study of the Area M fishery confirmed that most of the chum caught in the region, around 60%, are bound for coastal Western Alaska. But when you start to break that number down further, that’s where things get complicated.
OREGON: Offshore wind proposals worry fishing industry
July 11, 2022 — From her home overlooking Yaquina Bay, Kelley Retherford can watch as commercial fishing boats arrive at the nearby Port of Newport, delivering their catch to one of several seafood processors that line the waterfront.
Saltwater is in her family’s blood, she said. Along with her husband, Mike, and their four adult children, they own and operate four fishing trawlers, harvesting everything from Pacific whiting to pink shrimp to Dungeness crab.
That way of life, however, may be disrupted by a growing interest in offshore wind generators to help achieve ambitious government-mandated zero-carbon energy goals.
Earlier this year, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management identified two call areas off the southern Oregon Coast — one near Coos Bay and the other near Brookings — to assess potential wind energy leases in federal waters.
The push to harness wind energy in the Pacific Ocean has raised concerns within Oregon’s $1.2 billion commercial fishing industry, with families such as the Retherfords worried it will limit access to highly productive fisheries and impact the marine ecosystem.
A 60-day comment period ended in June for developers to nominate locations within the two areas that would be best suited for wind projects.
Deep Blue Pacific Wind is a joint venture between Simply Blue Group, an offshore wind developer based in Ireland, and TotalEnergies, a French energy company with U.S. headquarters in Houston. In January, the venture hired Peter Cogswell as director of government and external affairs.
Rather than being fixed to the seabed, turbines in the Pacific would have to be built on floating platforms to capture wind where it blows the hardest. Cogswell estimated it would take between 50 and 60 turbines to generate 1 gigawatt of energy.
John Romero, a spokesman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said the call areas are meant to identify where offshore wind “may be safely and responsibly developed,” while soliciting feedback from the public.
Losing fishing grounds inside the call areas could be harmful to fishermen along the Oregon Coast, said Heather Mann, the executive director of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative.
The areas are particularly bountiful due to the California Current, which provides a strong upwelling of water and nutrients for seafood. Mann estimated more than 25% of Pacific whiting harvested in the last decade has come from the two call areas proposed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
The drive for 100% clean energy in Oregon has raised the stakes for building new renewable energy projects statewide — including offshore wind generators.
House Bill 2021, signed into law by Gov. Kate Brown in 2021, requires retail electricity providers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity sold to Oregon consumers by 80% by 2030, 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2040.
Several state and federal lawmakers are also urging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to slow down and fully consider impacts on coastal communities before moving forward with leasing.
Further limiting fishing grounds in the call areas “could spell economic disaster for these towns,” the letter continued.
Kelley Retherford said the fishing industry will continue to push back against the call areas, fighting for their livelihoods.
ALASKA: New genetic data fuels debate over Bering Sea salmon bycatch
July 6, 2022 — The contentious issue of chinook and chum salmon that are taken as bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock and groundfish trawl fisheries reached a new order of magnitude as the North Pacific Fishery Management Council grappled with concerns over declining salmon fisheries at its June meeting in Sitka.
The council and its scientific committees are no newcomers to the controversy pitting the Bering Sea trawl fleet against commercial and subsistence salmon fishermen along Alaska’s western coastline and the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers.
Genetic sampling and stock composition modeling of salmon caught in the trawl fisheries has been conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service since 2011. Late last year ADF&G released new information to supplement those studies as an ongoing effort to combine state and federal scientific resources. “We want to work in a more unified front in presenting this information,” says Dianna Stram, a senior scientist with the North Pacific council, in Anchorage.
Random sampling of one in ten chinooks in 2021 rendered genetic material from 2,614 fish, of which 52 percent were linked to Coastal Western Alaska. The 52 percent was higher than the previous 10-year average of 44 percent. And of that 52 percent, an estimated 2 to 4 percent were headed to Middle and Upper Yukon River tributaries. Breaking those percentages down to the actual numbers of fish, scientists estimate that 16,796 chinooks were Coastal Western Alaska stocks, and of those, 670 chinooks were stocks bound for the Middle Yukon, with 729 fish headed for the Upper Yukon.
In response to the higher bycatch, the North Pacific council called upon Rachel Baker, who represents the State of Alaska in federal fishery management issues on behalf of ADF&G, to present a list of actions put forth by the council’s science and statistical committee.
Those actions include the implementation of new chum salmon avoidance strategies immediately; formation of a working group of scientists, fishermen and industry and tribal leaders to examine causes of declining western Alaska salmon; updating a 2012 analysis of chum salmon bycatch; and research focused on correlations between seawater temperature, forage species and young salmon.
Gruver and partner John Gauvin, fishery science project director with the Alaska Seafood Cooperative, have been working for years in the development of the salmon excluders used in trawls. Early models destroyed the netting in the trawls, or made the trawls fish incorrectly, which meant starting over on the new prototypes and subsequent test sessions in a giant glass tank made for trawl development in Newfoundland.
Gruver reports that the excluders had an 80 percent success rate in the Gulf of Alaska and ranged from 30 to 50 percent success rates during trials in the Bering Sea.
At the same time, many other salmon-dependent communities beyond 50 miles inland got cut out of the 10 percent allocated to CDQ groups. The seasonal run of chinooks and chums are all they have.
MASSACHUSETTS: How foreign private equity hooked New England’s fishing industry
July 6, 2022 — Before dawn, Jerry Leeman churned through inky black waters, clutching the wheel of the fishing vessel Harmony.
The 85-foot trawler, deep green and speckled with rust, was returning from a grueling fishing trip deep into the Atlantic swells. Leeman and his crew of four had worked 10 consecutive days, 20 hours a day, to haul in more than 50,000 pounds of fish: pollock, haddock and ocean perch, a trio known as groundfish in the industry and as whitefish in the freezer aisle.
As sunrise broke over New Bedford harbor, the fish were offloaded in plastic crates onto the asphalt dock of Blue Harvest Fisheries, one of the largest fishing companies on the East Coast. About 390 million pounds of seafood move each year through New Bedford’s waterfront, the top-earning commercial fishing port in the nation.
Leeman and his crew are barely sharing in the bounty. On deck, Leeman held a one-page “settlement sheet,” the fishing industry’s version of a pay stub. Blue Harvest charges Leeman and his crew for fuel, gear, leasing of fishing rights, and maintenance on the company-owned vessel. Across six trips in the past 14 months, Leeman netted about 14 cents a pound, and the crew, about 7 cents each — a small fraction of the $2.28 per pound that a species like haddock typically fetches at auction.
“It’s a nickel-and-dime game,” said the 40-year-old Leeman, who wore a flannel shirt beneath foul weather gear and a necklace strung with a compass, a cross, and three pieces of jade — one piece for each of his three children. “Tell me how I can catch 50,000 pounds of fish yet I don’t know what my kids are going to have for dinner.”
Leeman’s lament is a familiar one in New Bedford, an industrial city tucked below Cape Cod on the south coast of Massachusetts. In recent years, the port of New Bedford has thrived, generating $11.1 billion in business revenue, jobs, taxes and personal income in 2018, according to one study. But a quiet shift is remaking the city and the industry that sustains it, realizing local fishermen’s deepest fears of losing control over their livelihood.
MISSISSIPPI: Senator Wicker takes on NOAA in Sun Herald Op-Ed
July 6, 2022 — U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-MS, took aim at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in a July 3 op-ed for the Sun Herald.
In the op-ed, Wicker called out NOAA for proposed changes to the catch limit framework used for the Gulf of Mexico red snapper industry.
“Fishing for red snapper is a popular pastime on the Gulf Coast, one that brings together fishermen, boat makers, bait suppliers and restaurant owners,” writes Wicker. “This prosperous industry centers on three months of open fishing during the summer. To my dismay, regulators in Washington are now proposing a rule that could cut Mississippi’s season down to two weeks without any sound science.”
He writes that this is just another disappointing “raw deal” that NOAA has tried to give the state of Mississippi.
“Mississippi will not be alone in bearing the cost of NOAA’s poor methods. Anglers in Alabama stand to lose weeks if not months of their fishing season,” writes Wicker. “No state is ultimately safe from federal rules that disregard the best data. With the proposed rule now listed in the Federal Register, I would encourage all stakeholders to provide public comment on why NOAA got this wrong.”
NOAA’s public comment period ends on July 28, and the rule would take affect Jan. 1, 2023, if passed.
The proposed changes do not affect commercial ACLs, which would increase in 2023.
ALASKA: In victory for commercial fishermen, court orders Cook Inlet fishery to reopen
July 5, 2022 — Cook Inlet drift fishermen can fish the federal waters of the inlet this summer after all.
That’s after a district court judge shot down a federal rule that would have closed a large part of the inlet to commercial salmon fishing. Fishermen said it would have been a death knell for the fishery, which has 500 drift permit-holders.
One of those permit-holders is Erik Huebsch, of Kasilof. He’s vice president of the United Cook Inlet Drift Association, which filed the suit. And he said he’s pleased.
“Opening the EEZ is vital to the fleet,” Huebsch said. “Without opening the EEZ, the drift fishery is really not viable. That’s where we go to catch fish.”
The EEZ is the inlet’s exclusive economic zone. And it’s the federal waters that start three nautical miles offshore, south of Kalgin Island.
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