Saving Seafood

Feds inch closer to approving Alaska mining project seen as a threat to Pacific Northwest

March 11, 2019 — Over the past several decades, fishermen, business owners, Alaska Native organizations and environmental groups have protested a proposed open-pit copper and gold mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay — a pristine salmon habitat.

Now the federal government is inching toward approving the mining project.

Nestled in southwest Alaska, Bristol Bay is home to the world’s largest wild salmon run. The watershed supports a teeming ecosystem of eagles, grizzlies and beluga whales.

It’s also an economic engine for the Pacific Northwest. Each year, the fishery contributes thousands of seasonal fishing and processing jobs and millions of dollars in economic activity to Washington, Oregon, and California, according to the University of Alaska Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Bristol Bay is where the Pebble Limited Partnership, the company developing the mine, plans to build a 10.7-square-mile open-pit mine to dig up copper, gold, molybdenum, and other minerals. The mine would require new infrastructure, including roads, a port and a 188-mile-long natural gas pipeline.

Read the full story at McClatchy DC

Vanishing ice in the Bering Sea drops to lowest level since 1850

March 8, 2019 — For the second straight year, the Bering Sea — a turbulent and bountiful stretch of the northern Pacific Ocean — is virtually ice free at a time of year when it should be gaining ice.

Why it matters: The ice pack’s ebb and flow each year has far-reaching consequences for the broader Bering Sea ecosystem, including determining the reach and abundance of prized fish species such as Alaska pollock and Pacific cod. This is the richest fishing ground in the U.S., featured in the Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch.”

The big picture: Scientists who keep close tabs on this region say the ice’s early melt is upending life in the Last Frontier. It also portends consequences for the Lower 48 states and beyond. In a new study published in Earth’s Future on Thursday, scientists warn that Arctic climate change is already reverberating far outside the region.

  • By the end of February, Bering Sea ice extent was lower than it has been since written records began in 1850.
  • The March 6 departure from the long-term average shows that an area of ice equivalent to California and Montana combined is missing from the Bering Sea.

Read the full story at Axios

Sen. Murkowski warns climate change ‘directly impacting’ Alaska

March 6, 2019 –Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on Tuesday said climate change is “directly impacting” her home state’s way of life.

“It’s impacting subsistence. It’s impacting food security. It’s certainly impacting our economy with our fisheries,” Murkowski, the chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said at the panel’s first hearing this year devoted to climate change.

“Clearly the effort here is to get a bipartisan conversation going,” she added. “I think that the rhetoric surrounding the issue of climate and climate change can be so heated and so animated and so, often times, just a very toxic discussion that you can’t get to focusing on the solutions.”

The Senate panel heard from experts on how climate change was impacting the electricity sector. Murkowski and the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), highlighted their energy-producing states in their remarks, though.

Murkowski said her state is seeing diminishing sea ice and a change in wildlife migration patterns. And she expressed concerns that rural communities throughout her state aren’t using green energy.

Read the full story at The Hill

 

Predicting marine heatwaves can have economic implications

March 6, 2019 –The Gulf of Alaska is once again experiencing a marine heatwave. This follows the infamous warm-water event known as the “blob,” that formed back in 2014, which scientists have tied to seabird die-offs and declining Pacific cod stocks.

Scientists around the world are trying to predict these events, but there are economic implications to forecasting the future.

Scientists around the world are working to understand the impacts of marine heatwaves as they become more common. They also want to predict when and where the world’s oceans will heat up.

“If I gave you this information about the future, what would you possibly even do with it?” Alistair Hobday said. “And people’s first reaction is, ‘nothing, I don’t know what I would do.’”

Hobday is a research scientist with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Hobday said the predictive models for marine heatwaves are about 60 percent accurate currently, slightly better than a flip of a coin.

He wants to boost that number to 80 percent, and he said marine heatwave forecasts have practical applications.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

 

NPFMC Considers Rationalizing Bering Sea Pacific Cod Fishery

March 5, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council is considering rationalizing the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands trawl pacific cod fishery after voting to take action on the fishery at its February meeting. A number of alternatives for management changes to the fishery have been released for public review; the council will be considering final actions during upcoming meetings.

The fishery is facing a number of issues, including decreasing stocks, an increase in participation and an increasingly shortened season. Among the actions that the council is considering to address these issues is the introduction of a catch-share system, in which quota would be allocated.

The council is also weighing up its options to address the increasing prevalence of catcher/processor vessels — also known as motherships — which is resulting in a loss of deliveries to shore-based processing facilities. The council is looking at various ways to limit the participation of certain vessels acting as motherships.

At its June 2018 meeting, the council adopted a purpose and need statement, which acknowledged recent increases of motherships and a decrease Pacific cod deliveries to shoreside processors.

“The council is concerned about the impacts of the recent increases and potential for future growth in offshore deliveries of Pacific cod to … vessels operating as motherships, and the potential impacts those increases could have on shoreside processors, communities and participating catcher vessels,” the statement reads.

The statement also notes that the race-for-fish management system has resulted in a “decreased ability to maximize the value of the fishery … negatively impacting fishery participants,” as well as discouraging fishing practices that can minimize bycatch.

“Additional entrants could exacerbate these issues and threaten the viability of the fishery,” the statement reads. “The council is considering options to improve the prosecution of the fishery, with the intent of promoting safety and increasing the value of the fishery.”

TAC for the fishery has been reduced in recent years. While the cod fishery in the gulf of Alaska has fared worse, with its TAC being cut by 80 percent, the TAC for the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands fishery was cut by nearly 50 percent last year.

At the council’s February meeting, Darral Brannan, a consultant for the NPFMC, noted that the 2019 Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands trawl Pacific cod A season was the fishery’s shortest ever.

“In 2018, the A season for the trawl CV sector closed on February eleventh. This year, the fishery closed February first. It was 12 full days of fishing. It covered 13 calendar days, but it was noon to noon,” he told the council. “It was the shortest ever A season that we’ve had.”

According to Brannan, in 2018, 18 percent of the Pacific cod from the fishery was delivered to motherships, rather than shoreside processors. Comparatively, in 2019, mothership deliveries rose to 30 percent.

The council is considering a number of different options to limit activity in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Pacific cod trawl fishery, which are outlined in six alternatives.

At its February meeting, the council voted on a motion to bifurcate alternatives two, three and six in order to address concerns around motherships separately from issues surrounding higher levels of participation in the fishery. (Alternative one is for the council to take no action). Alternatives two, three and six specifically address the issues with increased mothership participation in the fishery, and these have now been released for public review.

Respectively, these alternatives would involve: limiting the number of motherships that can take Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Pacific cod deliveries; limiting the total amount of Pacific cod that can be delivered to motherships; or prohibiting certain vessels from participating in the fishery as motherships.

The council received several letters urging it to take action on this issue — including one from the Pacific Seafood Processor Association, a nonprofit trade association comprised of nine processing companies, located in 18 communities throughout Alaska. Pacific Seafood Processor Association has members that operate processing facilities in Dutch Harbor, King Cove, Sand Point, Akutan and others. The letter urged the council to expediently address the issue.

“This issue continues to have meaningful impacts for BSAI coastal communities, who rely heavily on volume fisheries like pollock and cod,” the letter states. “All of these local governments levy local raw fish taxes on the value of fish landed at local processing facilities and inshore floating processors.”

The council also received public comment requesting that it take a more mediated approach to limiting motherships.

In a letter to the council Matthew Doherty, president and CEO of United States Seafoods, which operates the catcher processor Seabreeze Alaska, argued that the Seabreeze Alaska has an “extensive history in the fishery” and that United States Seafoods depends on the ability of its catcher vessels to deliver cod offshore.

Doherty argued that the United States Seafoods has been “a good citizen” in the fishery by coordinating with other stakeholders — even suspending its operations in the Aleutian Islands cod fishery in 2018 in an attempt to aid the Adak plant’s success.

“The SEAFREEZE ALASKA’s participation in the fishery is NOT part of the ‘recent increases . . . in offshore deliveries’ noted as problematic in the Council’s purpose and need statement for this action,” the letter states. “If the Council restricts offshore cod processing, we recommend the action be narrowly focused on recent problematic changes in the fishery.”

While this item was originally scheduled for final action at the council’s June meeting, according to the most recent draft of the council’s upcoming meeting schedule, the item has been moved up to the council’s next meeting, which is in April.

The issues surrounding increasing participation in the fishery are being addressed as a separate agenda item. The council also voted on a motion to develop a scoping paper, which may be used to develop a comprehensive Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands cod trawl catcher vessel management program.

The scoping paper will analyse the possibility of introducing Pacific cod endorsements for trawlers with LLP licenses, which would rationalize the fishery.

A NPFMC Advisory Panel, which is made up of various fishery stakeholders, offered the council both arguments for and against this action. Meetings from the AP’s February meeting noted that some of the panel argued that a catch share program would the best solution for protecting stock levels and giving harvesters, processors and their communities the chance to maximize the value of the fishery.

Other fisheries have been rationalized in the past, including rockfish in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands crab.

“The problems currently being faced by the BSAI trawl CV cod fishery are similar in nature to problems previously faced by other fisheries that now operate under a catch share program,” the AP minutes state. “The multiple successes achieved under these varying programs established in the North Pacific now lead the participants in the BSAI cod trawl fishery to believe that the development of a cooperative-based program for BSAI Pacific cod is the best solution.”

However, not all of the panel was onboard. The minutes state that a catch share program for Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands trawl cod may make it harder to enter the fishery.

“Catch share programs that allocate quota to LLPs can make access to the fishery more expensive for new entrants and have potentially negative impacts on communities,” the minutes state.

Some public comments reflected a concern that, should the council establish a catch share program in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands fishery, it could negatively impact other fisheries. Among them was a letter from Patrick O’Donnell, the owner and operator of the F/V Caravelle, a trawler homeported in Kodiak. O’Donnell expressed concern that an action on the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands fishery could have an impact on the Gulf of Alaska cod fishery and requested that the council postpone further action until it can ensure that Gulf of Alaska fishermen wouldn’t be affected.

“GOA trawlers have asked for a catchshare management plan, with tools to better manage bycatch in the Gulf, and I would like to see that program move forward at the same time as any changes to the (BS cod fishery),” the letter states. “Any action that moves the cod TLAS fishery closer to a rationalized program has the potential to create spill-over effects in the GOA.

“It will create advantages for boats that have a guaranteed share in the BS, and give them an incentive to race for fish in the GOA first, then go harvest their share in the Bering Sea.”

The scoping paper is scheduled for council discussion at its October meeting.

All the alternatives that the council is considering, along with staff analysis and public comments can be found on the NPFMC’s website. Those looking to provide public comment prior to the council’s April meeting can do so via the NPFMC’s online comment portal, or at the meeting itself.

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

ALASKA: Fishermen’s group calls Corps’ analysis of potential tailings dam failure at Pebble ‘woefully inadequate’

March 4, 2019 — A new study commissioned by a Bristol Bay seafood marketing group paints a doomsday scenario if the bulk tailings dam at the proposed Pebble mine ever suffered a catastrophic breach, an outcome the U.S Army Corps of Engineers has called very remote and one the mine developer has taken steps to avoid.

Billions of gallons of mud would smother valley bottoms, covering vast stretches of salmon habitat, according to an executive summary released Friday. Finely ground-up waste material from mining would travel downstream and spill into Bristol Bay more than 200 river miles from the mine site, threatening the valuable salmon fishery.

“Given the fine-grained nature of the material, it is extremely likely that these tailings would continue to Bristol Bay, where they would eventually settle out in the Nushagak River estuary,” the summary says.

Read the full story at Anchorage Daily News

Alaska lawmakers are moving away from Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s budget proposal

March 4, 2019 — Leaders of the Alaska Senate and the Alaska House of Representatives said Friday it appears there is growing support for state budget proposals that include fewer cuts than proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy in February.

Dunleavy’s plan to address a $1.6 billion deficit without new taxes or cuts to the Permanent Fund dividend has drawn opposition from supporters of the state’s public education system and state residents who use government services.

The governor’s proposal must be approved by the legislature to become law, but Senate President Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, and Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, say that lawmakers in each body are considering smaller cuts to the state budget, even if the Permanent Fund dividend must be reduced in response.

“We are going to cut the budget, but it’s going to look different from what’s been proposed by the governor,” said Rep. Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage and chairman of the House Rules Committee.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

2018 Alaska Fisheries Science Center Year in Review

March 1, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

More fish come through the Alaska fishing port of Dutch Harbor than anywhere else in the Nation. In fact, Dutch Harbor and Kodiak, Alaska, are the top two U.S. fishing ports in landed volume. These same two ports rank No. 2 and No. 3 in U.S. economic value.

We collect biological, ecological, and environmental data during long-term, standardized research surveys, from fishing catches, and through other research activities. In the laboratory and in the field we study what fish and crabs eat, where they live, and how fast they grow. We input these data into sophisticated computer models to generate estimates of fish abundance (number of fish in the population), determine the potential impacts of environmental change, and recommend sustainable fishing limits. We also collect socio-economic data on fisheries and coastal communities, and other ecosystem data. Resource managers use this information to develop sound management measures ensuring healthy fisheries over the long term with ecological, economic, and socio-cultural benefits for the nation.

Our primary responsibility is to provide scientific data, analyses, and expert technical advice to marine resource managers (i.e., the NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Regional Office, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the State of Alaska, the International Pacific Halibut Commission, and the Pacific Salmon Commission), Alaska tribal governments, public stakeholders, and U.S. representatives participating in international fishery and marine mammal negotiations. The work of monitoring and assessing fish, crab, and marine mammal populations, fisheries, and marine ecosystems is mandated by legislation, which includes the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the U.S Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

Read the full release here

Alaska’s seafood industry says the U.S.-China trade war is costing it dearly

March 1, 2019 — The trade war with China is impacting Alaska’s seafood industry. Alaska seafood exports to China have dropped by a fifth compared to last year.

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute’s Jeremy Woodrow told the Alaska House Fisheries Committee Wednesday that the industry blames Chinese tariffs. That’s according to a recent industry survey.

“Of the members that responded back to us, 65 percent reported they had immediate lost sales from the increase of these tariffs, 50 percent reported delays in their sales, and 36 percent reported that they lost customers in China just due to these tariffs” Woodrow explained. “Another 21 percent reported that they had unanticipated costs because of the trade conflict.

Alaska sold nearly $800 million of seafood to China in 2017. Not all Alaska seafood is bound by the Chinese tariffs imposed in retaliation to the Trump administration’s own tariffs on Chinese goods. Flatfish like flounder are subject to tariffs though Alaska pink salmon processed in China and re-exported are not.

But Woodrow said poor relations between the two countries makes some Chinese buyers reluctant to buy Alaska seafood anyway. China is Alaska’s largest foreign market and Woodrow warned that finding new outlets will take time.

Read the full story at KBBI

Matt Tinning to join At-Sea Processors Association as Gilmore retires

February 28, 2019 — After 30 years with the At-Sea Processors Association (APA), Jim Gilmore, director of public affairs, will retire this summer.

The APA is a trade association representing six member companies that own and operate 16 U.S.-flag catcher/processor vessels that participate principally in the Alaska pollock fishery and U.S. West Coast Pacific whiting fishery.

Gilmore, who will retire 30 June, will be replaced by Matt Tinning, currently the associate vice president for oceans at the Environmental Defense Fund, a United States-based non-profit that pursues collaborative, market-based solutions to environmental problems.

APA currently has offices in Juneau, Alaska and Seattle, Washington, and Tinning said he will open an APA office in Washington, D.C.

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

For almost two decades, Gilmore has also led the Alaska pollock industry’s effort to become the largest certified sustainable fishery in the world,” APA said a press release. “By achieving and maintaining certifications of the fishery under both the Marine Stewardship Council and Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management programs, his work has solidified Alaska pollock’s reputation as one of the world’s best managed fisheries.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source