Saving Seafood

Shrinking Salmon in Alaska Will Hit the Global Fish Trade

May 3, 2021 — Climate change and other threats to one of the world’s last bastions of wild salmon are already roiling the food supply chain and could alter U.S. export sales of the widely sought-after fish.

About 40% of the world’s wild salmon comes from Alaska, where fishermen are seeing fish size shrink. Scientists are still delving into the precise causes — it’s complicated because there are five different species of Pacific salmon in North America — but the consensus is that climate change is a main culprit.

The size conundrum could end up disrupting global trade flows. American exporters may soon find they’re selling more to Japan, which typically favors smaller fish. Meanwhile, European markets, especially those with heavy demand for smoked salmon, prefer bigger products, according to Elizabeth Herendeen, marketplace manager at Alaska-based Salmon State, which advocates for the protection of Pacific salmon.

It’s the latest example of how climate change is changing how food is produced and where it gets shipped. Rapidly warming temperatures are forcing some lobster boats to move further offshore, and hotter Midwest summers are a threat to yields. Agriculture futures have surged recently as bad weather makes it harder to grow crops at a time when food inflation is already on the rise.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

Cut off: Council makes sweeping changes on public input

April 30, 2021 — A long with the certainty of death and taxes, fishermen know universally that the council process is a slog. We are often faced with the dual realities that a slow process works to ensure robust stakeholder input as well as sometimes letting fishery oversight slip behind the pace of changing ocean dynamics.

Indeed, by the time a management plan is amended, the council and stakeholders typically get right to work on the next one to address the problems that evolved during the arduous process of making the last one.

Though there are many things one might change about the process, none of them is likely to transform fishery management into that elusive unicorn of efficient bureaucracy.

Earlier this month, however, at the close of its spring meeting, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council moved faster than I’ve ever witnessed in council history by making a series of rule changes in response to something that happened around that very April meeting. This swift action was taken to address the council’s public comment guidelines based on the quality and apparent abundance of input on halibut and salmon bycatch.

I understand that stakeholder input in a blue-collar industry is not always going to be composed in the same language an office dweller might employ. I also appreciate that social media and casual access to industry leadership may encourage less formal and even occasionally uncomfortably personal commentary. I don’t think it’s appropriate for anyone to submit public comments that include personal attacks, profanity or baseless accusations. And ostensibly, that’s what these new rules aim to curb.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

In Alaska Fisheries, COVID-19 May Intensify Gender Inequality

April 30, 2021 — On a sunny afternoon this past summer, several fishing boats milled about in Cordova’s harbor. Rain clouds lingered over the Chugach Mountains, which surround the small Alaskan fishing community. Seagulls called overhead, and the salty smell of fresh salmon was sharp in the air.

The harbor was quieter than usual. Shiny metal hand-washing stations stood at the ready. As a boat approached, crew members wearing face masks prepared to dock. The boat flew a solid yellow flag—no one on the vessel was sick with COVID-19. A black-and-yellow-checkered flag would mean the boat is in quarantine.

From fears about visitors to the state for the fishing season bringing the virus into Alaska’s rural communities, to the logistics of quarantining on boats, fishing looked different in summer 2020.

These new challenges landed particularly hard on a growing subset of fishermen: women.

Although the industry is historically male-dominated, the number of women working in Alaska’s seafood industry is increasing, women fishermen say. Women are not only fishermen, but also work in processing, direct marketing, managerial jobs, and sales positions on the shore.

The International Organisation for Women in the Seafood Industry (WSI) predicts the COVID-19 pandemic will impact women more than men and intensify gender inequalities already present in the industry. Women face barriers such as gender discrimination and carry responsibilities that men typically do not, such as balancing fishing and caring for children.

Read the full story at the Pulitzer Center

Alaska suggests opening part of Kachemak Bay to subsurface gas leasing

April 30, 2021 — Oil and gas leasing isn’t allowed in Kachemak Bay. The state blocked development there after an oil rig got stuck and leaked oil into the bay in 1976.

But legislation proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy would allow the state to sell subsurface gas-only leases in part of Kachemak Bay, so oil and gas companies could drill into undersea reservoirs from miles away.

More broadly, the bill would permit subsurface leasing and drilling where surface drilling is currently prohibited. And the bill’s opponents say that would unravel state restrictions meant to protect wildlife.

Haley Paine, deputy director of the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas, told the House Fisheries Committee the point of the legislation is to capture royalties for the state.

Read the full story at KDLL

ALASKA: Fundraising campaign aims at testing Anchorage salmon streams for toxin traced to tires

April 27, 2021 — Are toxins from road runoff a threat to salmon in Anchorage’s most popular fishing streams? A Go Fund Me campaign has been launched so Alaskans can chip in to find out.

The push stems from an organic compound in tires called quinone that was newly identified by researchers at the University of Washington, said Birgit Hagedorn, a geochemist and longtime board member of the Anchorage Waterways Council.

“The little flakes that rub off of tires, especially larger truck tires, can be transported into the streams via stormwater. And they leach out the compound that they discovered was highly toxic to salmon. They were specifically looking at coho salmon,” she explained.

Hagedorn hopes to raise $5,500 to test the urban waters that run off the Seward and Glenn highways into Ship Creek and Campbell Creek. The Ship Creek salmon sport fishery is the region’s most popular and successful, with anglers targeting stocked chinook and coho salmon. Other stocked coho fisheries have been established in Campbell and Bird creeks, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Fish Sticks Make No Sense

April 26, 2021 — There are many curious facts about fish sticks. The invention of this frozen food warranted a U.S. patent number, for instance: US2724651A. The record number of them stacked into a tower is 74. And, every year, a factory in Germany reportedly produces enough fish sticks to circle Earth four times.

But the most peculiar thing about fish sticks may be their mere existence. They debuted on October 2, 1953, when General Foods released them under the Birds Eye label. The breaded curiosities were part of a lineup of newly introduced rectangular foods, which included chicken sticks, ham sticks, veal sticks, eggplant sticks, and dried-lima-bean sticks. Only the fish stick survived. More than that, it thrived. In a world in which many people are wary of seafood, the fish stick spread even behind the Cold War’s Iron Curtain.

Beloved by some, merely tolerated by others, the fish stick became ubiquitous—as much an inevitable food rite of passage for kids as a Western cultural icon. There’s an entire South Park episode devoted to riffing off the term fish stick, and the artist Banksy featured the food in a 2008 exhibit. When Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 90th birthday, in 2016, Birds Eye presented her with a sandwich that included blanched asparagus, saffron mayonnaise, edible flowers, caviar, and—most prominently—gold-leaf-encrusted fish sticks.

Paul Josephson, the self-described “Mr. Fish Stick,” is probably best at explaining why the fish stick became successful. Josephson teaches Russian and Soviet history at Colby College, in Maine, but his research interests are wide ranging (think sports bras, aluminum cans, and speed bumps). In 2008, he wrote what is the defining scholarly paper on fish sticks. The research for it required him to get information from seafood companies, which proved unexpectedly challenging. “In some ways, it was easier to get into Soviet archives having to do with nuclear bombs,” he recalls.

Josephson dislikes fish sticks. Even as a kid, he didn’t understand why they were so popular. “I found them dry,” he says. Putting aside personal preference, Josephson insists that the world didn’t ask for fish sticks. “No one ever demanded them.”

Instead, the fish stick solved a problem that had been created by technology: too much fish. Stronger diesel engines, bigger boats, and new materials increased catches after the Second World War. Fishers began scooping up more fish than ever before, Josephson says. To keep them from spoiling, fishers skinned, gutted, deboned, and froze their hauls on board.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

Skagway Traditional Council monitors wildlife activity to forecast seasonal hooligan run

April 26, 2021 — The arrival of the hooligan, at one time, meant the difference between survival and starvation at the end of a long hard winter in Southeast Alaska.

Traditionally, hooligan — also known as eulachon, candlefish or saak — provided not only food for the Chilkat and Chilkoot Tlingit people of the Upper Lynn Canal, but also medical, social and spiritual well-being.  Their arrival is often forecasted by the presence of gulls, ducks, seals, sea lions and orca.

Reuben Cash is the environmental coordinator for the Skagway Traditional Council and is working on the Northern Southeast Alaska Eulachon Population Dynamics Monitoring program. The purpose of the program is to learn more about these anadromous fish, their ecology, population dynamics and distribution.

For the last three to four years, the STC has been utilizing a relatively new type of science to study the fish.

“We’ve been using a new methodology using environmental DNA. So every critter has DNA, right, that’s what makes up our, our entire makeup is based on this DNA,” Cash said. “And we’re constantly shedding ourselves. So DNA goes into the environment, so they call it environmental DNA, and you’re able to detect whether or not something is there.”

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: New report estimates at least $5M cost to replace subsistence salmon with other protein sources in Bristol Bay

April 23, 2021 — A third of the state’s subsistence salmon harvest was caught in Bristol Bay in 2017, according to a new report from the McKinley Research Group. The subsistence economy is critical to Bristol Bay’s culture, and it’s the oldest and most continuous use of salmon.

The report, “The Economic Benefits of Bristol Bay”, attempts to quantify what it would cost to replace subsistence salmon with other protein sources from stores in the region.

Bristol Bay subsistence fishers caught over 500,000 pounds of salmon in 2017, according to the latest data available. The research group estimates that it would cost $5-$10 million to replace that catch with other sources of protein. Rebecca Braun is one of the researchers who worked on the report.

“Because the world speaks in dollars, we tried to translate the subsistence harvest into dollars,” Braun said. “And it’s kind of an inherently impossible exercise because subsistence values goes beyond economics.”

Read the full story at KTOO

Juneau judge denies Sitka Tribe’s motion on constitutional grounds

April 23, 2021 — The commercial and subsistence herring seasons in Sitka have drawn to a close. But the legal case between Sitka Tribe of Alaska and the state continues, with a Juneau Superior Court judge recently denying Sitka Tribe’s motion for summary judgement on constitutional grounds.

Last fall, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska won two victories against the state in the fight over its management of the Sitka Sound Sac Roe Herring Fishery. And in January the legal team representing STA made its third case, arguing that the state had not met its constitutional duties in its operation of the fishery. Juneau Superior Court Judge Daniel Schally denied STA’s claim in a ruling issued last month.

Read the full decision here

During oral argument in January, attorneys representing STA argued that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is required under certain clauses of the Alaska State Constitution to use the “best available information” when making management decisions about the fishery. They argued that the state had not used the “best available information” during the 2018-2019 season when it failed to provide a subsistence harvest data report and a scientific study reviewing the state’s model to the Board of Fish.

After the hearing, it took Judge Schally nearly eight weeks to issue a ruling. In his 13 page decision, Schally wrote that the state’s constitution does not require the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to use the “best available information.”

Read the full story at KCAW