Alaska pollock Archives - Saving Seafood

At-Sea Processors’ Jim Gilmore announces retirement

March 1, 2019 — After 30 years with the At-sea Processors Association, Jim Gilmore, its director of public affairs, has announced that he will retire on June 30.

During his tenure at the association, Gilmore directed public affairs and corporate social responsibility programs, which helped to establish the Alaska pollock industry’s leadership position in global seafood sustainability.

“We are very grateful to Jim for his years of staunch advocacy and unwavering commitment to strengthening the Alaska pollock industry, and we couldn’t be happier to announce Matt’s coming onboard,” said Executive Director Stephanie Madsen.

Among Gilmore’s accomplishments are his work to enact the landmark American Fisheries Act, which paved the way for a catch-share program for the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Alaska pollock fishery. The advent of catch-share management enabled the Alaska pollock catcher/processor sector to optimize food production, further minimize fishing effects on the environment, and strengthen the fleet’s international market competitiveness, according to the organization.

“Matt’s been a leader in the NGO community, promoting precautionary, science-based fisheries management. We are excited to have him put his considerable talents to work at APA,” said Madsen.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Farm bill’s untold story: What Congress did for fish sticks

December 21, 2018 — The Farm Bill Congress passed last week will be known for many things. It increases subsidies for farmers and legalizes industrial hemp. But for Alaska, the bigger impact might be what the bill does for fish sticks served in school lunchrooms across America.

The national school lunch program has for decades required school districts to buy American-made food. But that doesn’t always happen when it comes to fish.

“There was a major loophole,” Sen. Dan Sullivan said. “Major. That allowed, for example, Russian-caught pollock, processed in China with phosphates, sent back to the United States for purchase in the U.S. School lunch program.”

Let’s break that down: Rather than buy fish sticks made of Alaska pollock, many school districts buy fish caught in Russian waters that are frozen, sent to China, thawed, cut up, sometimes plumped up with additives, refrozen and sent to the U.S. And it qualifies for a “Product of USA” label because it’s battered and breaded here.

“Literally turns a generation of kids in America off of seafood when they have this as fish sticks in their school lunches,” Sullivan said. Aside from being bad for Alaska’s fishing industry, Sullivan said the twice-frozen Russian pollock is bad seafood and kids won’t like fish day at school.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Feds: US fishermen had good year aided by lobsters, scallops

December 14, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — U.S. commercial fishing generated more than $144 billion in sales in 2016, buoyed by growth in key species such as sea scallops and American lobsters, the federal government reported on Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the total of $144.3 billion in sales from commercial fishing in 2016 was up about $100 million from the previous year. The agency released the figure as part of its annual Fisheries Economics of the United States report, one of two reports about the health of fisheries that came out on Thursday.

The economics report states that the industry was boosted by growth in value of some economically critical species, also including shrimp, but other big-money species such as Alaska pollock and pacific salmon were down from the previous year.

The report shows U.S. fisheries holding steady, and continuing to play a critical role in the economies of states from Maine to California, said Ned Cyr, director of NOAA Fisheries Office of Science and Technology.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Alaska Pollock Spawning Season May be Earlier Under Climate Change

November 16, 2018 — A new study using an unprecedented 32-year data series reveals that spawning time of Alaska pollock– target of the Nation’s biggest fishery– varied by as much as three weeks over the past three decades in the Gulf of Alaska. The new study found clear evidence that the changes were driven by both climate and fishing.

Changes in spawn timing have major ecological and management implications. Timing is critical to survival of newly hatched fish as it determines the conditions they encounter. Many marine fish, like pollock, are adapted to spawn in time for offspring to meet the rapid increase of their plankton prey in spring. If they arrive too early, there may not be enough food; if they arrive too late, the young fish will have less time to grow and will be small compared to their predators and competitors.

Because most mortality happens during the first few weeks of life for pollock, changes in spawn timing that affect larval survival can strongly affect recruitment success–how many fish are available to the fishery two or three years later.

“To effectively monitor and manage pollock populations, managers need to understand what causes changes in spawn timing. With ongoing warming of the world’s oceans,we need to know how changing climate conditions interact with other processes, like harvesting, to influence spawning time,” says Lauren Rogers, the NOAA Fisheries biologist who led the study.

Toward that end, Rogers’ team investigated how pollock spawn timing has shifted over warm and cool periods and large shifts in age structure in the Gulf of Alaska.

“The strength of our study is comprehensive information from an amazing 32-year time series of larval fish size, age, and abundance, validated with maturation data from spawning females, and combined with at-sea process studies, laboratory experiments, and age readings. Using these resources, we were able to test for effects of climate and age structure on both mean spawn timing and duration, and forecast spawn timing under different scenarios of warming and fishing mortality,” Rogers says.

The Study Produced Two Major Findings

Warmer Temperatures Mean Earlier and Longer Spawning–To a Point

Climate clearly drives variation in spawn timing of walleye pollock, with warmer temperatures leading to an earlier and longer spawning period. However, above a threshold temperature, increased warming had no additional effect on spawn timing.

“Because temperatures are projected to be consistently above that threshold with ongoing ocean warming, our results suggest that pollock spawn timing will become more stable in the future,” says Rogers.

Older, Bigger Mothers Spawn Earlier and Over a Longer Duration

An older spawning population started spawning earlier and over a longer duration than a population of predominantly young spawners, highlighting the importance of older mothers.

This is where fishing comes in: harvesting leads to a younger, smaller population over time. In general, increased mortality reduces the mean age of a population, and this effect is strengthened if older individuals are targeted through size selective harvesting. Besides direct effects of harvesting on age structure, fishing may cause evolutionary change by selecting for reproductive maturation at an earlier age or smaller size.

“Our models suggest that changes in pollock age structure associated with sustainable fishing can shift the mean spawning date to 7 days later and shorten the spawning season by 9 days compared to an unfished population, independent of climate conditions.” says Rogers.

That shift could cause young fish to arrive out of sync with their food in two ways: by decoupling the arrival of first feeding fish larvae from temperature-driven changes in plankton production; and by reducing the window over which young fish are delivered into the ecosystem, thus increasing the risk of mismatch with plankton production.

As age of the spawning population increases, spawning begins earlier (a). Warmer temperatures mean earlier spawning to a point around 4 ℃; above that temperature, spawning time levels out (b).

Spawn Timing and the Future

“Our models suggest that climate change will lead to an earlier, stabilized spawning season in the future.” Rogers says. “What we don’t know is how that will affect synchrony of first-feeding larvae with production of their zooplankton prey in spring.”

Rogers hopes future research will answer that question. “We are looking at ways to evaluate match-mismatch with prey by comparing prey and larval fish production.” She also hopes to develop the model into a practical forecasting tool. “If we could use climate and age composition data to predict spawn timing 3-4 months ahead, the forecast could be used to make sure surveys are optimally timed to coincide with peak spawning periods.”

McDonald’s Uses Its Scale for Good to Advance Fish Sustainability ‘Reel It In!’ Card Game Aims to Educate Children on Sustainable Fishing

June 7, 2018 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

McDonald’s is using its size and scale to advance sustainable fish sourcing as the industry standard, helping to protect long-term fish supplies and help improve the health of surrounding marine ecosystems.

Every Filet-O-Fish® sandwich served in the U.S. is made with Alaska pollock from the largest Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified fishery in the world. Located in the Northeast Pacific Ocean, the fishery’s sustainability measures include avoiding capture of non-targeted fish – called bycatch – at one of the world’s lowest rates, one percent. Aside from the filets, the fishery also makes use of the entire fish for other purposes (including oil, roe and bones), resulting in zero waste, according to a report issued by Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers.

In 2018, McDonald’s USA marks five years as the first and only global restaurant company to serve MSC certified fish at every U.S. location.

Nearly half of all American consumers surveyed as part of a recent global consumer perceptions study are concerned about overfishing. Nearly 80% of U.S. consumers agree that we need to protect fish for the future so our children and grandchildren can continue to enjoy seafood. The consumer survey was carried out by an independent research and insights company,GlobeScan, on behalf of the MSC organization.

“The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is proud to be a part of McDonald’s sustainability journey, and its dedication to supporting fishermen and companies doing the right thing,” said Brian Perkins, Regional Director Americas, Marine Stewardship Council. “Supporting communities that depend on fish, promoting sustainable practices, and ensuring traceability along the supply chain through the MSC program help to ensure that our children and grandchildren will be able to enjoy seafood for generations to come.”

To underscore McDonald’s commitment to healthy oceans and fish for future generations, and make the topic accessible for children, McDonald’s, in partnership with the MSC, created “Reel It In!” – the only card game in the sea that teaches the importance of sustainable fishing. The game is available for download online.

In 2011 and 2013, McDonald’s Europe and McDonald’s USA, respectively, elected to certify their more than 20,000 combined restaurants to the MSC Chain of Custody traceability standard. Today all of the Filet-O-Fish® portions served in Europe, U.S., Canada and Brazil bear the MSC certified label. McDonald’s is committed to sourcing 100% of wild-caught fish globally from verified sustainable sources by 2020.

About the MSC

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an international non-profit organization. Our vision is for the world’s oceans to be teeming with life, and seafood supplies safeguarded for this and future generations. Our ecolabel and certification programrecognises and rewards sustainable fishing practices and is helping create a more sustainable seafood market.

The MSC ecolabel on a seafood product means that:
-It comes from a wild-catch fishery which has been independently certified to the MSC’s science-based standard for environmentally sustainable fishing.
-It’s fully traceable to a sustainable source.

More than 300 fisheries in over 34 countries are certified to the MSC’s Standard. These fisheries have a combined annual seafood production of almost nine million metric tons, representing 12% of global marine catch. More than 25,000 seafood products worldwide carry the MSC label. For more information visit www.msc.org

NOAA defends U.S. Fisheries

October 17, 2017 — This week, NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator, Chris Oliver, sent a letter to the editor of Marine Policy that does not mince words. In response to a new report on IUU fishing, Mr. Oliver asks the editor, “to publish a retraction, and to ensure future articles undergo adequate review to avoid publication of misleading information.”

The article in question, “Estimates of illegal and unreported seafood imports to Japan,” claims a portion of IUU seafood coming to Japan include salmon, crab, and Alaska pollock from the United States. However, these three species in particular are considered among the best managed and most closely monitored in the world. (Not to mention, they’re healthy).

A flawed methodology

Mr. Oliver calls the allegations absent of any transparency regarding the data sources and methodology used by the authors to come up with these claims. The letter goes into more detail about data and methodology concerns and then provides ample information about the robust management of U.S. Alaska pollock, salmon, and crab fisheries.

Read the full story at the National Fisheries Institute

Read the letter from Chris Oliver to Marine Policy at NOAA

Walton Foundation Flops As NOAA Demands an Outrageous Paper They Funded on IUU Fishing be Retracted

October 17, 2017 — Seafood News — The Head of NOAA Fisheries, Chris Oliver, has called for a major paper on IUU fishing published in Marine Policy to be retracted in its entirety due to egregious factual errors and misreporting as regards US fisheries.

The paper, Estimates of Illegal and Unreported Seafood Imports to Japan, was funded by the Walton Family Foundation (WFF).The lead author, Ganapathiraju Pramod conceived the design, conducted the study, analyzed information and drafted the paper. He has made a career out of constructing a model of trade in illegal fisheries, and has previously published a paper claiming up to 32% of US Fisheries Imports are from IUU fish.

He used the same basic methodology in both papers. First, he develops estimates for trade flows, including fish processed in 3rd countries. Then he searches for all possible indications of IUU fishing from news accounts, literature citations, government and fisheries association reports, consultants reports, NGO reports, Oral or Written interviews, and finally, peer reviewed academic papers.

He takes the mishmash of sources and assigns a weight to IUU fishing in each major sourcing area.

In the Marine Policy paper, he concluded that 24% to 36% by weight of seafood imported into Japan in 2015 came from IUU fishing.

The reasons NOAA called for the complete retraction of the paper can be seen in his estimates of IUU catches of Alaska Pollock, Crab, and Salmon.

He estimates that out of the 122,280 tons of US Alaska pollock products exported to Japan in 2015, from 15% to 22% (26,901 tons) came from IUU fisheries.

To put this in perspective, his estimate would mean about 20% of surimi destined for Japan is produced from IUU fish. Since US surimi is produced by vessels with 100% onboard observer coverage, or in plants that are meticulously inspected and required to pay tax on all fish landed in Alaska, it seems that the authors are living in some alternate universe where their own perspective replaces hard facts.

So how does the paper get from the fact that the US Alaska pollock fishery is one of the cleanest, most transparent, industrialized, and most highly regulated fisheries in the world, to a claim that 20% of their exports are illegal fish.

He does so through the murky process of conflating all his sources where ever any source has mentioned a fisheries problem. So for example, if a source wrote about high grading Alaska pollock, or roe stripping (both activities which would be impossible to hide from the 100% observer coverage), he then applies this to the export numbers and assumes a certain percentage of the charge must be true.

Writing to Marine Policy, Chris Oliver said “the Bering Sea pollock industry has long-established and contractually binding requirements among all vessels to share all catch data with an independent third-party. Discard of pollock is prohibited. Were it to occur, discard and high-grading of pollock would be detected by the numerous monitoring and enforcements provisions in place, and would result in a significant enforcement action.”

On Salmon, Oliver says “The authors’ suggestion that sockeye and coho salmon taken as bycatch in trawl fisheries makes its way to Japan as IUU product is a particularly egregious example of inadequate research and flawed conclusions. Easily accessible and publically available reports indicate that Chinook salmon in Alaska and along the West Coast of the U.S. and chum salmon in Alaska are the predominant species taken incidentally in trawl fisheries. Bycatch of sockeye and coho across all trawl (and for that matter, most other gear types) is de minimis, and occurs primarily in the highly-monitored pollock fishery.”

The paper claims that between 2200 and 4400 tons of Illegal salmon are caught in Alaska and exported to Japan. The authors likely don’t realize that monitoring of salmon bycatch by trawl fisheries is highly developed in Alaska, with vessels reporting bycatch down to the individual fish. These fish cannot be legally sold.

It is quite likely that the authors have confused US practices where bycatch is highly regulated with those in Russia, where the pollock fleet is allowed to keep whatever salmon they catch, and that salmon is subsequently sold in the commercial market. The Russian system does not require that pollock vessels identify the species of salmon; and it assumes all pollock vessel bycatch of salmon is legal.

The authors make a similar mistake with US crab fisheries, once again assuming that because they have heard people talk about IUU crab in some instance, therefore up to 18*% of the US crab exports to Japan represent illegal fishing. As anyone in the crab industry will tell you, this is simply laughable, given the regulatory oversight and close inspection of the Bering Sea snow crab and king crab fisheries.

Furthermore, most of the crab exports to Japan are made by very large exporting companies. None of these major companies would allow their business or their markets to be jeopardized by engaging in illegal behavior. The fact that the authors accept their model output without thinking twice about the real-world implications is the key reason they should withdraw their paper.

In short, this paper has sullied the reputation of all associated with it, because it is such an egregious example of constructing a fantasy world and then justifying it with a numeric model.

There has been a problem of IUU fish imports to Japan, especially in the crab and tuna fisheries.

if the authors had looked at the real world instead of just models, they would have seen that since the Russia-Japanese agreement on documentation for crab vessels, illegal live crab landings in Japan have dwindled to nearly zero. In fact, plants closed, the supply chain shifted, and the market felt a huge impact in the collapse of IUU crab fishing to Japan. But none of this makes it into the paper.

The problem here is that papers such as this one are based on fantasy but they become the basis for NGO claims about generalized IUU fishing, and they take away resources, attention and commitments from actions that actually address some of the problems. These include the Port State Measures agreement, universal vessel registration in the tuna fisheries, US, Japanese, and EU import traceability requirements, all of which have served to dramatically reduce the marketability of IUU fish products.

NOAA is right to demand Marine Policy retract this paper and submit it to additional peer review, if it is ever to be published again.

The Walton Family Foundation also needs to think about its own reputation. Although they do fund many important fishery projects, allowing a paper as misguided as this to result from their funding actually undermines their efforts to promote sustainable seafood, because it sows doubts about their competence and understanding of fisheries issues.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Success of Alaska Pollock Fishery is focus of SeaWeb Seafood Summit Panel

SEATTLE (Saving Seafood) — June 7, 2017 — The success of the industrial pollock fishery in the Eastern Bering Sea, which generally harvests in excess of one million metric tons each year, was the focus of a panel at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit on Tuesday. The panel, “Moving Beyond Fishery Certification: Using Collaboration, Technology and Innovation to Further Improve Sustainability” was moderated by Tim Fitzgerald of the Environmental Defense Fund. Panelists were Allen Kimball of Trident Seafoods, Richard Draves of American Seafoods, and Karl Bratvold of Starbound LLC. Trident Seafoods is a large, vertically integrated company, which processes Alaska pollock at shoreside facilities. Vessels owned by Starbound and American Seafoods harvest and process Alaska pollock at sea.

Panelists discussed the development of the Alaska pollock fishery: from before extended jurisdiction through the period of transition to a fully domestic fishery, to the years before rationalization when catcher-processors and catcher vessels competed in an Olympic-style race for fish, to the advent of an effective and efficient enterprise with the establishment of catch shares under the American Fisheries Act (AFA). Under the AFA, quota share is permanently allocated between the at sea and shoreside processing sectors, and among cooperatives (groups of fishing companies) within each sector. AFA provisions encourage cooperation and collaboration within and between sectors and cooperatives, which has brought about many improvements.

Examples of successful collaboration and cooperation include avoidance of salmon bycatch, which is facilitated by comprehensive observer coverage, daily electronic communication of catch and bycatch information that is shared across the fishery, and binding agreements that require vessels to relocate to avoid bycatch or suffer substantive financial penalties. Similarly, collaboration on development of selective gear, development of gear with reduced drag, and other shared innovations have been effective in reducing bycatch and greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing operating efficiency. All of the panelists highlighted their commitment to science-based management, their support for federal government science, and the extent to which they collectively fund scientific research. They also spoke about the importance and value associated with Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification.

Additionally, the panelists emphasized the extent to which rationalization through catch shares has improved the harvesting and processing processes, as well as increased safety and operational efficiency.

This session told the story of Alaska pollock and illustrated the benefits of a well crafted and well implemented catch share program, as well as MSC certification. Other fisheries can learn from this experience, but it’s important to note that this is not a “one size fits all” solution that is immediately applicable in all types and scales of fisheries.

NMFS Temporarily Closes “A” Season Pollock Fishing in Gulf of Alaska Area 610

February 6, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — National Marine Fisheries Service has issued a temporary rule prohibiting directed fishing for Pollock in Statistical Area 610 in the Gulf of Alaska for the A season.

The action is necessary to prevent exceeding the A season allowance of the 2017 total allowable catch of pollock for Statistical Area 610, NMFS said in the rule published on Jan. 31 in the Federal Register.

NMFS manages the groundfish fishery in the Gulf exclusive economic zone under the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Gulf of Alaska prepared by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

The A season allowance of the 2017 total allowable catch of Pollock for Area 610 of the GOA is 2,232 metric tons, as established by the final 2016 and 2017 harvest specifications for groundfish in the GOA.

After NMFS’ regional administrator determined that the A season allowance for that TAC would soon be reached, NMFS moved to prohibit additional directed fishing for Pollock there during the A season.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Growth in global fish production slows, aquaculture increases

December 8th, 2016 — Growth in global fish production is expected to slow slightly this year, driven primarily by lower catches of major wild species such as Alaska pollock and anchoveta. Production solely from aquaculture continues to increase at a steady rate with a further 5 percent increase in total volume expected in 2016. Driven by higher incomes and urbanization, global consumption of fish is growing at a faster rate than global population, meaning that per capita consumption is rising each year by approximately 1 percent. In 2016, expected per capita consumption is 20.5 kg per year, compared with 20.3 kg in 2015 and 17.6 kg a decade ago in 2006. Another important figure is the proportion of fish produced by the aquaculture sector for human consumption, forecast to reach 53 percent this year, a trend that is only going up in the foreseeable future.

The total value of world trade in seafood products is expected to bounce back this year after a drop in 2015, to US$140 billion, representing a 4.4 percent increase, although this is still well below the 2014 total of US$148.4 billion. This return to growth in value terms is partly due to a stabilization of the US dollar after a sharp increase versus multiple currencies in 2015, but it is also a consequence of improved prices for a number of highly traded seafood commodities. Salmon prices, in particular, have been reaching extreme peaks in 2016, while tuna prices have also risen after a period of sustained lows. Supply constraints are part of the reason for the price gains, but demand growth is also a contributing factor.

Read the full story at Aquafeed.com