Saving Seafood

Alaska Board of Fish Finds for Salmon Emergencies in Chignik and the Yukon

July 19, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Alaska Board of Fisheries declared the low Chignik sockeye return an emergency yesterday, as well as a situation in the Native villages of Grayling, Anvik, Shageluk, and Holy Cross on the Yukon River triggered by years of low chinook salmon returns.

The petition brought to the Board by the Kenai River Sportfishing Association to reverse the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s decision to allow increased production of pink salmon at the Valdez Fisheries Development Association’s hatchery in Prince William Sound was voted down 3-4. KRSA was concerned with straying into Cook Inlet and ocean capacity issues.

Their concerns will be addressed in the regularly scheduled cycle of meetings later this year. Yesterday’s meeting was whether several petitions — including one that was submitted the evening before the Board meeting — met the standard of an emergency.

Three petitions asked the Board to issue a “finding for an emergency” on the Chignik sockeye run, two concerned about the early run and one on the late run to Chignik. All asked for additional conservation measures in waters outside of the Chignik Area L management district to protect those sockeye heading to Chignik Lake.

In a 5-2 vote, the Board found for an emergency on all three petitions. ADF&G has already executed conservation measures in the adjacent Area M management district to protect sockeye in transit to Area L. Yesterday’s decision extends the restricted measures in a subsection of the Dolgoi Islands, an outer area that traveling sockeye move through on their way to Chignik, until August 8 or “unless and until escapements for the late run to Chignik improve.”

Board Chair John Jensen and Robert Ruffner voted against the finding.

“I’m happy to take this up in the regular cycle rather than create regulations now,” Jensen said during the discussion. The management of Area L and Area M are among others the Board will discuss during their meetings later this year.

With the finding, additional conservation measures will be taken, but already the department is managing the South Peninsula salmon runs with “outside the box” protections for traveling Chignik salmon.

ADF&G Commercial Fisheries Director Scott Kelley noted “For Chignik and for the South Peninsula fisheries, we are keeping a close eye on the Chignik weir counts, we have daily communications on that, the WASSIP (Western Alaska Salmon Stock Identification Program) data for traveling Chignik salmon, we are literally going hour to hour, day after day. It’s a balancing act, but we are using the best biological data to base our decisions on and taken some ‘outside the box’ management actions at Chignik.”

The Board also found for an emergency in the four Native Villages on the Yukon, referred to as GASH: Grayling, Anvik, Shageluk, and Holy Cross.

The Board agreed in a 7-0 vote to amend regulations for the lower portion of Subdistrict 4A on the Yukon River to allow for drift gillnet subsistence fishing after August 2.

Low king salmon returns on the Yukon River in the past 5 years have forced fishermen to supplement subsistence harvests of kings with chum salmon. The change allows fishermen to use gillnets to harvest a biologically allowable surplus of fall chum salmon moving through the district.

Two other petitions, one from the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe and Yakutat Fish and Game Advisory Committee of Yakutat to close all areas of the Situk River, and one from the Upper Cook Inlet setnet group, were not acted upon. Those petitions were not denied, but rather failed for lack of a motion.

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

Alaskans, not Outsiders, oppose Pebble mine

July 19, 2018 — The scoping period for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ review of the proposed Pebble mine permit application concluded on June 29, around the same time that Bristol Bay’s robust commercial salmon fishery was in full swing. Although the purpose of the scoping period is to provide the public with an opportunity to identify the issues the Corps should address in the review process, the period ended with many unanswered questions about the project proposal itself.

The Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP) has yet to answer or is unable to answer some very basic questions about the proposed project, and its permit application lacked the type of information and documentation that would normally accompany an application for a project as complex and controversial as Pebble. It is therefore no surprise that many Alaskans — including all of the undersigned and the governor — asked the Corps of Engineers to suspend its review.

A major reason a suspension is justified is that PLP’s proposed mine plans fundamentally changed during the scoping process. After the Corps’ public scoping meetings had concluded, the Pebble partnership substantially revised its mine plans to increase the quantity of mined materials during the first 20 years by 25 percent, increase the size and change the contours of the proposed open pit, change the layout of the tailings storage facility and increase the power plant capacity, among other changes. It would seem that the project plans are yet still a moving target.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Here’s how the trade war with China is affecting the outlook for Alaska seafood

July 17, 2018 — Trump’s trade war now includes tariffs on seafood going to and from China.

China is Alaska’s biggest seafood buyer, purchasing 54 percent of Alaska seafood exports last year valued at $1.3 billion. On July 6, a 25 percent tariff went into effect on U.S. imports to China, including all Alaska salmon, pollock, cod, herring, flatfish, dungeness crab, sablefish, geoduck clams and more.

Then on July 11 Trump added a 10 percent tariff on all seafood sent from China to the U.S.

According to market expert John Sackton of Seafoodnews.com, it includes products that are reprocessed in China and sent back for distribution in this country.

The total value of the 291 seafood products China sends to the U.S. each year is $2.75 billion. Sackton called the 10 percent tariff “a $275 million dollar direct tax on Americans.”

It will hit 70 percent of imports of frozen cod fillets. Likewise, 23 percent of all frozen salmon fillets come into the U.S. from China, including pink salmon that is reprocessed into salmon burgers and fillets.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Chinese delegation visits Kodiak as Trump administration issues new proposed tariffs

July 17, 2018 — A delegation from China visited Kodiak Island with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, touring fish processing plants in Kodiak and Larsen Bay.

Right in the middle of the visit, President Donald Trump’s administration proposed more tariffs, which doesn’t bode well for Alaska’s seafood trade.

But that didn’t dampen the delegation’s enthusiasm for what Alaska has to offer.

The water is low, so Alaska Department of Fish and Game employees in Kodiak are seining for sockeye salmon at the Buskin River weir.

The Chinese delegation has come to learn about local fisheries management, said Tyler Polum, sport fisheries area management biologist.

“Sometimes when the water is low, we can’t get them to go into the trap at the weir, so we thought that it would be better to beach seine for these fish,” Polum said. “We’ll show them how we sample fish to get age, sex, and length from them.”

Among the delegation, Mingzhen Zhang says Kodiak is a stark contrast to her city.

“I live in Beijing, so the best impression for me is less pollution,” Zhang said.

China’s northern capital city of more than 20 million people is infamous for smog.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Salmon scales tell researchers a lot about the fish returning to Bristol Bay

July 16, 2018 — Across Bristol Bay, scales from fish are being picked, licked, and stuck on cards to be sent to researchers. The reason? To figure out the ages of the salmon making their way up the rivers during the run. One researcher has spent almost 30 summers examining scales and figuring what fish are head where.

Cathy Tilly puts a thin sheet of plastic over a paper card with rows of fish scales on it and then places it into a hydraulic press.

She described the process, “then I can start pumping the pressure up and we go up to 25,000 psi and count to 15.”

It takes that much force to make imprints of the scales in the plastic.

She continued, “Okay and then we use a dump valve to lower the clayton. Pull these metal plates out. Peel it up and what you are left with is an impression of the fish scales.”

After pressing the scales, Tilly takes the small card with the impressions and examines it underneath a microfilm reader.

She said, “Most people describe them as looking like a thumbprint or as tree rings.”

Tilly is figuring out the age of a salmon. Like trees, salmon have rings on their scales that show how old they are. Tilly looks at these markings that indicate the fish’s growth to figure out how many years they spent in freshwater rivers where they were born and how many they spend in the ocean.

Tilly and one other person age all the scales collected from the Bristol Bay sockeye run. That means they each look at tens of thousands of scales in a summer.

Read the full story at KDLG

With grocery supplies dwindling on remote Alaska island, the government opened seal harvest early

July 16, 2018 –Federal managers in June agreed to the early harvest on St. George, which is more than 200 miles from the mainland.

The decision came after a request by the tribal government, which said members needed the meat because the island’s store was running out of food, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Flights to the island are often canceled amid bad weather and because of what airlines say is a poorly-positioned runway.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve called ACE to say, ‘Hey, where are our groceries? Why can’t we get them?’” Mayor Pat Pletnikoff said, referring to the cargo airline that serves the island. “It happens on a regular basis.”

About 60 people live on St. George, Pletnikoff said. Passenger planes only come twice a week, and frequent flight cancellations can make it hard for residents to keep fresh food around.

One thing that’s not in short supply on the island? Meat.

St. George and nearby St. Paul both host massive populations of northern fur seals in summer and fall — about 500,000 between the two. It’s about half the world’s population, said Mike Williams, who works with the fisheries service.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Hatchery debate wages on as research continues

July 13, 2018 — A conflict is intensifying over hatcheries in Prince William Sound.

For the second time this year, Alaska’s Board of Fisheries will weigh an emergency petition to block a Solomon Gulch Hatchery from increasing its production.

This is the latest skirmish in a battle over whether pink salmon hatcheries are causing more harm than good.

“This is the incubation room in here, and what we’re having here is stacks of incubators,” Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association executive director Gary Fandrei said, pointing toward stacks of incubators that look like the drawers to a really large tool chest. “We actually have a total of 359 incubators that we have available to us in here.”

Fandrei gives a tour of the Tutka Bay Lagoon Hatchery near Homer.

The facility will harvest up to 125 million pink salmon eggs this summer. Depending on survival, most of those eggs will hatch in the fall.

Like other pink salmon hatcheries, the one at Tutka Bay has attracted scrutiny in the past couple of years over growing environmental concerns.

Read the full story at KTOO

Some Alaska seafood exports escape China’s retaliatory tariffs

July 13, 2018 — It appears the blowback from President Donald Trump’s trade dispute with China will fall on some but not all of Alaska’s seafood exports to the country.

The Trump administration’s 25 percent tariff on an estimated $34 billion of goods imported to the U.S. that took effect July 6 prompted Chinese leaders to respond with their own 25 percent tariff on U.S. goods headed for their country, including seafood, Alaska’s primary export.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Director of International Affairs John Henderschedt said June 28 that seafood products destined to be reprocessed and re-exported from China will be exempt from the tariffs after agency officials discussed the issue with the U.S. Embassy there.

While a positive development for Alaska fishermen and processors, the cumulative impact the tariffs could have on the commercial fishing industry in the state is still unknown, Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute Technical Program Director Michael Kohan said in an interview.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

MSA Today: House approves Magnuson reauthorization

July 13, 2018 — The House of Representatives passed its version of the latest Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization on Wednesday, July 11.

H.R. 200, the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, sponsored by Alaska Rep. Don Young, passed primarily on party lines at 222-193. Support from the industry, however, came from all coasts as well as onshore and offshore businesses.

One of the most controversial aspects of this reauthorization has been the elimination of a 10-year rebuilding timeline for rebuilding fish stocks.

The 10-year guideline, however, is an arbitrary goal. Some fisheries recover in 2 to 3 years, and some take decades, regardless of restrictions on fishing effort. Even more to the point, regional administrators always had some flexibility in forcing managers to adhere to the rebuilding guideline or allowing for some leeway. This change is critical for fisheries managed as if there were no flexibility, like East and West coast groundfish stocks. It simply spells out the flexibility that has always been implied.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Don Young’s bill to revise Magnuson-Stevens fishing law passes in the U.S. House

July 13, 2018 — A bill amending the Magnuson-Stevens Act, sponsored by Alaska Rep. Don Young, passed the U.S. House on Wednesday.

The 1976 Magnuson-Stevens bill, authored in part by Young and named for Sens. Warren Magnuson of Washington and Ted Stevens of Alaska, was created to manage and sustain fish stocks in U.S. waters and keep foreign fishermen out. It created regional management councils that still manage local waters today.

Young’s new bill eliminates limitations on the councils that were added later, which Young says the councils need to keep fisheries stocked and support fishing communities. The bill gives the management councils more control over no-fishing timeframes to rebuild fish stocks and aims to provide more input to outside groups.

The bill passed 222-193. It goes to the Senate next, where its path for passage is unclear.

But the bill is not without controversy: Some scientists and environmental groups say Young’s revisions to the law would be damaging and result in overfishing. The Natural Resources Defense Council said the bill “threatens to unravel those four decades of progress.”

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News