Saving Seafood

Alaska’s seafood processors hit hard by COVID-19 costs

December 28, 2020 — Overcoming serious doubts, Alaska’s salmon processors managed to squeak out a season this summer – but it came at a cost.

According to a McDowell Group report, processors spent as much as USD 50 million (EUR 42.4 million) on COVID-19 protocol compliance, which included moving workers into Alaska early for quarantine, putting them up in hotels for their quarantine period, flying them on chartered planes, food costs, and paying for significant coronavirus testing and personal protective equipment, as well as security to ensure closed campuses. In a few cases, companies had medical professionals embedded onsite in remote locations to ensure care to their employees (and to limit any potential spread of coronavirus that would have crippled the functionality of the facility).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Alaska fishermen cheer passage of the Young Fishermen’s Development Act through Congress

December 28, 2020 — A new federal act will set aside funds annually to support fledgling fishermen, pending approval from President Donald Trump.

The Young Fishermen’s Development Act passed through both houses of Congress this month with strong support from all three Alaska legislators. If enacted, the act would fund training and mentorship opportunities for commercial fishermen who are just entering the industry.

It would be the first program of its kind for fishermen. The U.S. government already sponsors comparable professional development programs for young ranchers and farmers.

Grants and program funding would come from Congress. But it would be up to local communities to decide how to use funding.

“So local nonprofits or Native organizations can apply and propose projects that make sense for that year,” said Marissa Wilson, executive director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council. The council is one of the nonprofits that brought the idea for the act to Rep. Don Young’s desk five years ago.

Read the full story at KTOO

Pacific cod appears to be rebounding throughout the Gulf of Alaska after long heat wave

December 23, 2020 — Alaska coastal communities will get a bit of an economic boost in 2021 from increased catches of Pacific cod.

The stock, which crashed after a multiyear heat wave starting in 2014 wiped out several year classes, appears to be rebounding throughout the Gulf of Alaska.

No cod fishery occurred at all this year in federally managed waters (from 3 to 200 miles out) where the bulk of the harvest is taken, and a catch of under 6 million pounds was allowed in state managed waters (out to 3 miles).

For 2021, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council set the federal cod catch at just over 38 million pounds and nearly 11.7 million pounds for the state. While it’s a bump up, managers caution that the stock remains very low.

“The state waters GHLs (guideline harvest levels) have gone up about two and half times since last year. While it’s good, we are still at a very low level of abundance, so that should be kept in mind,” said Nat Nichols, area groundfish manager for the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game at Kodiak.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Mine developer to appeal US decision to reject Alaska permit

December 21, 2020 — A mine developer says it will appeal a Trump administration decision denying a permit to build a copper and gold mine in southwest Alaska.

Northern Dynasty Minerals President and CEO Ron Thiessen said in a statement Thursday that the government’s rejection was “without precedent in the long history of responsible resource development in Alaska,” the Anchorage Daily News reported.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied the company a permit in November, saying its plans to develop the mine were against the public’s interest and did not adhere to the Clean Water Act.

The proposed mine would have been built on state-owned land in the Bristol Bay region, near the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon fishery.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

ALASKA: Northern Dynasty to Appeal US Army Corps’ Pebble Decision

December 21, 2020 — Northern Dynasty Minerals (TSX: NDM; NYSE: NAK) said on Thursday its unit, Pebble Partnership, was preparing an appeal after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied a key water permit for the proposed Alaska mine.

The company’s shares cratered nearly 50% last week after its US-based subsidiary received formal notification that its application for permits under the Clean Water Act and other federal statutes was denied.

Read the full story at Seafood News

CATHERINE CASSIDY: Is Alaska open for business? Not from where I stand.

December 18, 2020 — A freak storm descended on Cook Inlet this month. The fallout threatens my family business and hundreds of thousands of dollars in capital investment. Over a thousand other similar businesses around Cook Inlet face the same peril. The disaster? Earlier this month, Gov. Mike Dunleavy made the bizarre decision to effectively shut down the commercial salmon fishing industry here.

At the very end of a four-year process intended to bring the Cook Inlet salmon fishery into compliance with the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the state announced that it would refuse to cooperate with the program and basically forced the closure of federal waters in Cook Inlet to commercial fishing.

Before you conclude that this action was some kind of noble defiance to federal overreach, you should know that the state of Alaska already has multiple collaborative agreements with the federal government on managing numerous other fisheries in Alaska, including crab, cod, rockfish and salmon.

Read the full opinion piece at the Anchorage Daily News

Scientists look for invasive crab ‘fingerprint’ in Alaska waters

December 18, 2020 — Scientists are on the lookout for an invasive crab species expected to move north into Alaskan waters. This year in Southeast Alaska, they added a new tool to the monitoring effort for European green crab, which is a threat to the state’s shellfish and salmon.

European green crab or shore crab have been expanding their range north along the Pacific coast. But this year they were discovered just south of the Alaskan border.

“This Haida Gwaii occurrence last summer puts them very close to us,” said Linda Shaw, invasive species coordinator for the Alaska regional office of NOAA Fisheries. “I really wish I could say we don’t expect them, but prudence dictates that we say, yes, we think it’s a matter of when, not if.”

In July, natural resources managers found male and female adult green crab in Haida Gwaii, formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Read the full story at KTOO

Shareholders file Pebble Mine class-action suit, parent company plans permit appeal

December 18, 2020 — This week, a group of shareholders filed a class action lawsuit against Northern Dynasty, claiming the company and its directors misled shareholders about the viability of the proposed Pebble Mine and that its stock prices were artificially inflated between Dec. 21, 2017, and Nov. 25, 2020.

Northern Dynasty is the parent company of the Pebble Limited Partnership, which owns the mineral rights to the Pebble deposit and has been promoting the mine to investors and engaging in the permitting process with Alaska’s U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

On Nov. 25, the Corps denied the permit application, stating the proposal did not “comply with Clean Water Act guidelines.” The stock took a nosedive of more than 50 percent immediately following the announcement. The permit process had been considered all but dead before the 2016 election of President Donald J. Trump, whose administration allegedly negotiated with Pebble officials to allow the permitting process to run its course.

On Dec. 17, 2020, two days after the class action filing, Northern Dynasty published a press release detailing its plans to file an appeal of the Corps’ decision, citing the quality of its mitigation plan to compensate for the degradation of habitat in the process of mining the deposit’s heavy metals.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: AFDF Announces 2021 Seaweed Farm Start-up Training Program

December 18, 2020 — The following was released by the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation:

The Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF) and partners released the registration for a Seaweed Farm Start-up Training Program to be held for Alaska residents interested in starting their own seaweed farm in Alaska. Registration for the program is now available on the Alaska Sea Grant website and will remain open until February 1, 2021. In 2020, this program was held in Kodiak, Ketchikan, and Sitka as part of Phase 2 of the Alaska Mariculture Initiative. In February of 2021, this program will be held again for a new cohort of participants, and will be conducted virtually via Zoom due to COVID-19 health and safety mandates. This virtual format will allow significant expansion of the training program, from 48 participants in 2020 to over 100 in 2021. Registration for the training program will be completed in two parts: 1) all interested Alaska residents are invited to register for a webinar to be held on February 2, 2021 at 4:00pm-6:00pm AST; and 2) webinar attendees will then be eligible to register for an in-depth series of virtual technical multi-day workshops over one week beginning on February 22 (2-3 hours each session). Participation in the February 2 webinar is required to be eligible for the technical workshop series. Please see below for more information.

Read the full release here

Alaska geoduck biomass is down, but sea cucumbers on the upswing

December 16, 2020 — This year, divers in Southeast Alaska will focus on a guideline harvest level of 523,500 pounds of geoducks and 1.75 million pounds for sea cucumbers, which is down from the 1.9 million-pound guideline harvest level (GHL) they saw in the 2019-2020 season.

Though the GHL appears to have come down from a year ago, the schedule of dive openings in areas that alternate every other year show that biomass is actually on the rise for cucumbers.

Read the full story at Seafood Source