Saving Seafood

Ask a Highliner: Bob Dooley talks fishing, bycatch reduction, safety and more

January 22, 2021 — How much firewood does it take to build a new 52-foot salmon troller? Bob Dooley has the answer to that and just about any other question about West Coast and Alaska fisheries you can throw his way.

When Brian Hagenbuch profiled Dooley as a 2017 NF Highliner, the title of his feature was “Community champion,” and that’s been Dooley’s story through every decade of his nearly 60-year career.

Starting as a deckhand on a salmon troller out of his home town of Half Moon Bay, Calif., at the age of 11, Dooley ended his fishing career on Bering Sea and West Coast pollock and whiting trawlers. In his years on the water, he witnessed the inception of the Magnuson Act and the 200-mile limit, joint-venture fishing, observer coverage, Coast Guard safety regulations, and perhaps the biggest change in fishing in his lifetime — bycatch reduction.

“We went from the wild, wild west of joint ventures to overcapitalization of the fleet with the advent of factory trawlers, particularly in pollock and the West Coast in whiting. And we basically had 200 percent catching capacity with the same amount of fish,” Dooley says, describing technological advancements and government programs that changed the way people went fishing.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Borough to ask feds for fishery disaster declaration

January 21, 2021 — The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly voted Tuesday to ask the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to declare a sockeye salmon fisheries failure and economic disaster in the Upper Subdistrict of the Central District of Cook Inlet in response to a year that saw fewer and smaller fish, as well as lower-priced fish.

According to a memo to the assembly from Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce, the borough has not received a response from the state regarding a request from the assembly last month for Gov. Mike Dunleavy to declare an economic disaster in the Upper Cook Inlet fisheries region.

The same memo says that a provision in the Magnuson-Stevens Act authorizes the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to determine whether or not there is a commercial fishery failure “due to a fishery resource disaster as a result of natural causes” or “man-made causes beyond the control of fishery managers to mitigate,” among others.

Read the full story at The Peninsula Clarion

COVID-19 outbreaks shutter two of Alaska’s biggest seafood processing plants during winter fishing season

January 21, 2021 — COVID-19 outbreaks at two of Alaska’s largest seafood processing plants, both in the Aleutian Islands, are shutting down operations just as lucrative crab and pollock seasons get underway.

The remote Trident Seafoods plant in the tiny community of Akutan, 35 miles east of Unalaska, is reporting four coronavirus cases — three processing workers and a galley employee — prompting concerns about additional infections that could be hard to contain.

A separate outbreak at the UniSea plant in Unalaska has the facility on lockdown after 55 workers tested positive for the virus since January, about two-thirds of them during travel quarantine, which is intended to catch positive cases. Forty-five workers were still considered infectious as of Tuesday.

The Trident outbreak is the first for the company’s closed-campus plant there, officials say.

Industry observers expected the start of this winter fishing season to bring a whole new set of coronavirus challenges compared to this time last year.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Alaska sees nearly half-billion dollar loss in commercial fisheries revenue

January 20, 2021 — A federal agency has put some dollar amounts to the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic on commercial and charter fishing industries nationwide in the first part of last year.

On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report on the economic impact on the seafood catch and recreational fishing nationwide through last summer. NOAA Fisheries deputy assistant administrator for operations Paul Doremus called the report a snapshot of an industry in transition.

“We’re trying to account in great detail with the data and information in this report on the bearing of COVID-19 on the sector as a whole and provide this in a way that can help businesses and communities understand what has happened, where the losses have been concentrated and to inform long-term recovery and resilient strategies,” Doremus said during a conference call with reporters.

Nationwide, the commercial fishing industry started off 2020 with increases in revenue from seafood sales. But as the pandemic hit in March, that income dropped off 19% compared to the most recent five-year average. Those declines swelled to 45% by July.

Read the full story at KTOO

Trident Seafoods reports 4 COVID-19 cases at plant in Alaska

January 20, 2021 — A Seattle-based seafood company has reported that four workers at its Alaska seafood plant tested positive for COVID-19, including one who was taken to a hospital.

Trident Seafoods reported that the four employees were all roommates and have returned to work after undergoing a 14-day quarantine and testing negative, The Seattle Times reported.

The company said in a statement on Monday that it is assessing any potential operational impacts of COVID-19 spreading at the facility. Currently, the company is holding off on sending an additional 365 workers to the plant.

The Trident Seafoods’ plant is a processing center for Bering Sea harvests of pollock, crab and cod in Akutan, about 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage. The plant is the company’s largest Alaska location. It currently employs about 700 workers.

Read the full story at The Columbian

Trident Seafoods scrambling to contain COVID-19 outbreak ahead of pollock A season

January 19, 2021 — Trident Seafoods is scrambling to contain a coronavirus outbreak at a plant on the Aleutian Islands on the eve of the pollock A season.

The Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based company announced on Monday, 18 January, that four roommates had tested positive at Trident’s plant in Akutan, Alaska, a processing center that takes in crab and cod as well as pollock from the Bering Sea fisheries.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Nearly all Alaska and West Coast fishermen badly hurt by pandemic, survey indicates

January 19, 2021 — The single biggest hit to fishermen from the COVID-19 virus is lower dock prices, according to Alaska and West Coast harvesters, and 98% said their businesses have been badly bashed by the pandemic.

That’s based on survey results compiled by Ocean Strategies, a public relations firm that focuses on fisheries that helped profile the Pacific region for a larger federal study.

Nearly 400 fishermen responded to the short, confidential survey launched last November, said senior consultant Hannah Heimbuch of Kodiak.

“NOAA uses any information they collect on economics to report to Congress on how the industry is being impacted, the major trends they are seeing, and then that informs the decisions that Congress or other government agencies might make in response to those trends,” she said.

In the survey, 82% said fishing is their primary source of income and 91% said their revenues have decreased by 15% -100% since January of 2020. A whopping 70% said they stopped fishing last year; 65% stopped for three months or less.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

CARES Act relief funding straggles into 2021

January 19, 2021 — As 2020 drew to a close, one-third of the USD 300 million (EUR 246 million) in aid set aside for the fishing industry through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act remained for delivery as states labored to complete distributions.

Lagging farthest behind were Alaska and Washington state, the nation’s top volume seafood producers, and at USD 50 million (EUR 41 million) each the largest designated shares of the aid package. The states finally released their final draft spending plans on 7 December and 8 December, for approval by NMFS.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Alaska predicts commercial herring harvest will fall short of annual limit

January 15, 2021 — In an unusual move, the Alaska Department of Fish & Game has set a large guideline harvest level for the commercial herring fishing in Sitka this spring, on the understanding that the fleet is not likely to hit that mark.

In a news release Monday, ADF&G announced a guideline harvest level — or GHL — of just over 33,000 tons for the upcoming Sitka sac roe herring fishery.

But that much probably won’t be harvested. In the same news release, Fish and Game predicts that the commercial harvest will likely not exceed 20,000 tons. Area Management Biologist Aaron Dupuis says the state arrived at that number after speaking to processors about the potential market demands.

“Just from our conversations, like what the individual markets want in terms of herring,” he said. “Part of the reason why we put that in the announcement was, I guess just to temper people’s’ expectations for what will likely get harvested in the fishery. “

Dupuis says 33,000 is already a conservative estimate. The GHL is reduced by 20% of what the state would typically allow from the forecasted population of fish, a mature biomass of 210,453 tons. Even so, he says the state is gearing up as usual for a fishery this year.

Read the full story at KTOO

Pebble petition: Alaska governor appeals on mine’s behalf

January 15, 2021 — On 8 January, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy announced the state would take action to appeal the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision to deny a permit application for the Pebble Mine.

The Pebble Limited Partnership submitted its plan for a mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region almost two years ago. The 1,500-page document was immediately and widely panned by scientists, fishery managers, fishermen, and many representatives of Bristol Bay’s Native tribes.

Read the full story at Seafood Source