Saving Seafood

Study: Hatchery-raised Alaskan pinks compete with sockeye for food

August 13, 2019 — Some scientists who study the food web in North Pacific Ocean waters off the US state of Alaska are beginning to fear that hatchery-raised pink salmon are posing overly stiff competition to sockeye when it comes to their common food source, zooplankton, the Associated Press reported.

The news service quoted biological oceanographer Sonia Batten who has studied zooplankton abundance and found it to wax and wane, which she attributed to the odd- and even-year cycle of pink salmon.

“The only thing that we have in this whole area with an up and down, alternating-year pattern is pink salmon,” Batten, who works for Canada’s Marine Biological Association, said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

CNN: EPA reversal on Pebble Mine came after Trump met with Dunleavy

August 12, 2019 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency changed its position on the Pebble Mine project after Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy met with President Donald Trump, according to a CNN report.

Although the EPA’s decision not to oppose the mining project was made public on 30 July, staff scientists at the agency learned of the decision a month before, soon after the meeting. Dunleavy met with Trump while Air Force One was in Alaska on 26 June on the way to the G20 summit in Japan.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Mexico becomes top US trade partner one year into China conflict

August 8, 2019 — It’s been one year, so how’s that trade war with China working out for the nation’s seafood industry?

As with farmers, there’s not much winning and ongoing tweeted skirmishes have global fish markets skittish.

The quick take is the 25 percent retaliatory tariff imposed by China on U.S. imports last July caused a 36 percent drop in U.S. seafood sales, valued at $340 million, according to an in-depth analysis of Chinese customs data by Undercurrent News.

“Chinese imports of US seafood fell from $1.3 billion in the 12 months prior to tariffs (July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018), to $969 million in the 12 months after (July 1, 2018-June 30, 2019), underlining the heavy impact of weaker demand for U.S. seafood subject to tariffs, while poor catch of U.S. wild-caught seafood was also to blame,” the News wrote.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Trump’s trade war with China takes a big bite out of Alaska and US seafood sales

August 7, 2019 — It’s been one year, so how’s that trade war with China working out for the nation’s seafood industry?

As with farmers, there’s not much winning, and ongoing tweeted skirmishes have global fish markets skittish.

The quick take is the 25 percent retaliatory tariff imposed by China on US imports last July caused a 36 percent drop in US seafood sales, valued at $340 million, according to an in-depth analysis of Chinese customs data by Undercurrent News.

“Chinese imports of US seafood fell from $1.3 billion in the 12 months prior to tariffs (July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018), to $969m in the twelve months after (July 1, 2018-June 30, 2019), underlining the heavy impact of weaker demand for US seafood subject to tariffs, while poor catch of US wild-caught seafood was also to blame,” the News wrote.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: In boost to Pebble Mine promoters, EPA withdraws Clean Water Act protections

August 1, 2019 — The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will withdraw protections implemented by in 2014 under the Clean Water Act that could have posed a hurdle to the proposed Pebble Mine development, which many salmon harvesters say threatens Alaska’s Bristol Bay fishery.

The EPA said in a July 30 statement that it will withdraw section Clean Water Act 404(c) provisions that would have restricted the use of “certain waters in the South Fork Koktuli River, North Fork Koktuli River, and Upper Talarik Creek watersheds in southwest Alaska as disposal sites for dredged or fill material”.

Under the administration of president Barack Obama, the EPA implemented the provisions in 2014. Three years later after the election of president Donald Trump, the agency’s then-head, Scott Pruitt, began the process to withdraw the protections. However, following an investigative report from CNN that claimed that Pruitt made the decision to withdraw the protections only an hour after meeting with the CEO of mine developer Pebble Limited Partnership, Tom Collier, Pruitt stopped the withdrawal process.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Alaskan native group still set to buy US Pacific cod catchers if DOJ approves merger

August 1, 2019 — The merger of the two largest US Pacific cod longline catching companies is under review by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), sources familiar with the deal told Undercurrent News.

If the DOJ approves the merger, the combined company will be renamed Blue North Clipper (BNC) and then, around 30 days later, acquired by the Bristol Bay Native Corporation (BBNC), the sources said. BBNC is set to take 75% of BNC, with the existing shareholders of both companies owning the rest.

It’s thought BNC will be relocated to the offices of Clipper, which is seen as being the driver of the deal, they said. It’s also thought Dave Little, the main shareholder in Clipper, will ultimately head up the combined company. Patrick and Michael Burns, the brothers who founded Blue North, will also remain involved, sources said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ALASKA: Sockeye salmon continue to surge into Kenai River

July 30, 2019 — Sockeye salmon continue to pour into the Kenai River, where biologists have increased personal use fishing hours and sport bag limits to deal with the flood of fish.

On Friday, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued emergency orders allowing personal use fishermen more fishing time at the mouth of the river and increasing the sport limit to six fish per day downstream of Skilak Lake as the river’s escapement approached 1 million sockeye.

Nearly 100,000 fish were counted past the department’s sonar site at river mile 19 on both Saturday and Sunday, capping a week that saw more than half a million sockeye swim upriver.

As of Saturday night, dipnetting is now allowed 24 hours a day in the open area at the mouth of the Kenai River. The personal use fishery is open to Alaska residents only with a valid sportfishing license and personal use permit. The fishery runs through Wednesday.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

In hot water: How warmer years might affect salmon populations

July 29, 2019 — There is a lot of worry and speculation about hot weather affecting sockeye runs on the east side of Bristol Bay this summer. But despite some of the hottest air and water temperatures on record, every district is meeting — or exceeding — expectations, both for escapement and harvest.

As the water temperature trends continue to rise over the years, the question at the fore is how warming water will impact salmon health, and whether it shapes the runs from year to year.

Jerri Bartholomew, Director of the Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory at Oregon State University, set the baseline for a discussion on the long-term effects of heat on salmon.

“When you try and predict what’s going to happen in an ecosystem, things just get complicated,” she said.

Trying to peer into the future of Bristol Bay salmon is a bit of a shot in the dark. Without actual data, it’s a lot of guesswork: trying to find places with ecosystems similar to the bay, then extrapolating conclusions based on what we already know.

Still, there are three pressing questions when it comes to salmon in warmer waters.

The first, basic question, is how temperature affects the fish — in both the short and long term.

Read the full story at KTOO

Locked in and off-loaded: Quotas stifle diversity and stability in fishing

July 25, 2019 — As any commercial fisherman knows, fishing is a risky business. Fluctuations in markets, regulations, fish populations and the weather — not to mention the climate’s growing volatility — can result in fluctuating income that can threaten a fisherman’s livelihood.

Buffering against these fluctuations might mean taking a page from another risky business: the stock market.

A growing body of research is showing that, in most cases, fishermen are more likely to have stable year-to-year incomes if they diversify their fishing portfolios, much like an investor would diversify a stock portfolio, giving them a safety net to weather whatever the year brings.

“It can really pay for fishermen to diversify,” said Anne Beaudreau, a fisheries professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

But there’s a surprising and troubling hitch to the promise of diversification. Alaskan fishermen are trending in a different direction — fewer people are fishing, and they are fishing fewer types of fish.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Advancing Innovative Technologies to Modernize Fishery Monitoring

July 24, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Thanks to recent technological advances in computer processing hardware, machine vision cameras, and open source software tools, fishery researchers at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center are now taking the next steps in developing electronic monitoring systems and image processing applications that would automate data collection from images captured onboard vessels. Eventually, the goal of real-time image processing is to support scientific data that provide greater certainty in managing ocean resources and sustainable fishing practices.

In 2018, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries implemented an electronic monitoring program to provide a monitoring alternative for longline vessels, where accommodating an observer can be logistically difficult.

“This program’s integration of electronic monitoring data directly into the catch estimation data stream marked a milestone,” explains Farron Wallace, former senior research fisheries biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and now director of the Southeast Fisheries Science Center Galveston Laboratory. “However, the systems are not yet able to collect detailed data on individual fish length and weight as an observer does—data that are critical to support stock assessment modelling and catch estimation.”

Additionally, although useable observer data in the North Pacific are either uploaded to a database several times daily via satellite or uploaded at the end of a trip, vessels using electronic monitoring systems store imagery on hard drives, which are then mailed after the trip to video reviewers who process and extract key information. This time-consuming procedure can significantly delay data upload, a concern when data timeliness is essential for fisheries management—particularly for those management programs that have prohibited species catch limits, maximum retainable allowances, or other in-season quota restrictions.

Read the full release here