Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Drought and dry conditions impacting salmon across state

August 22, 2019 — This summer has been hot and dry in Alaska — so hot, in fact, that even the fish are feeling it.

All over coastal Alaska, temperatures have hovered significantly greater than normal. The state began sweltering in mid-June and crested on July 4, with Anchorage hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit and Bethel reaching 91. The bright, sunny days brought Alaskans out to swim and recreate, but they also left the waters where salmon were returning exposed to the direct, unforgiving heat.

Shallower lakes and rivers across Southcentral and Southeast Alaska were the first to heat up. In the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, lakes like Larsen and Judd, where the Alaska Department of Fish and Game operates weirs for sockeye salmon, reached 80 degrees. The Kuskokwim River in western Alaska registered water temperatures about 10 degrees greater than normal, likely contributing to a reported salmon die-off as the fish headed upstream.

On the lower Kenai Peninsula, the Anchor River hit its warmest temperature on record on July 7: 73 degrees. It’s dropped since then to about 66.2 degrees, but the spike was troubling, said Sue Mauger, a scientist with Homer-based conservation nonprofit Cook Inletkeeper. The lack of rain has contributed to the temperature increases too.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

US government completes big wild salmon buy, seeks more pollock

August 21, 2019 — The United States government continues to support Alaska’s wild fisheries with a USD 3.1 million (EUR 2.8 million) purchase of wild salmon and a bid for nearly 400,000 pounds of Alaska pollock.

The United States Department of Agriculture awarded its most recent wild salmon contract to Trident Seafoods, for federal child nutrition and other domestic food assistance programs.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Warm, dry weather causing abnormalities in Bristol Bay’s salmon runs

August 21, 2019 — The world’s largest sockeye fishery, Bristol Bay, Alaska, clocked its second-largest harvest ever this season, with a haul of more than 43 million fish. The big catch, combined with a robust base price – most of the fishery’s major processors have posted an initial ex-vessel buying price at USD 1.35 (EUR 1.20) per pound – should make 2019 among the most lucrative years in the fishery’s history. This season’s historic catch comes after a string of abnormally large runs, including last season’s 62.3 million salmon, the largest in Bristol Bay’s history.

But despite a string of productive runs that have surpassed forecasts, some biologists and fishermen are concerned about warm, dry weather that has pumped up water temperatures in the region.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

The water is so hot in Alaska it’s killing large numbers of salmon

August 20, 2019 — Alaska has been in the throes of an unprecedented heat wave this summer, and the heat stress is killing salmon in large numbers.

Scientists have observed die-offs of several varieties of Alaskan salmon, including sockeye, chum and pink salmon.
Stephanie Quinn-Davidson, director of the Yukon Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, told CNN she took a group of scientists on an expedition along Alaska’s Koyokuk River at the end of July, after locals alerted her to salmon die-offs on the stream.

She and the other scientists counted 850 dead unspawned salmon on that expedition, although they estimated the total was likely four to 10 times larger.

They looked for signs of lesions, parasites and infections, but came up empty. Nearly all the salmon they found had “beautiful eggs still inside them,” she said. Because the die-off coincided with the heat wave, they concluded that heat stress was the cause of the mass deaths.

Read the full story at CNN

Blooms, beasts affected as Alaska records hottest month

August 19, 2019 — Alaska has been America’s canary in the coal mine for climate warming, and the yellow bird is swooning.

July was Alaska’s warmest month ever, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sea ice melted. Bering Sea fish swam in above-normal temperatures. So did children in the coastal town of Nome. Wildfire season started early and stayed late. Thousands of walruses thronged to shore.

Unusual weather events like this could become more common with climate warming, said Brian Brettschneider, an associate climate researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center. Alaska has seen “multiple decades-long increases” in temperature, he said.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Commercial Fishermen, Indigenous People Unite to Fight Mine in Alaska

August 15, 2019 — In the sleepy and remote village of Dillingham in southwestern Alaska, there has historically been tension between the indigenous populations, who take a subsistence approach to catching salmon, and commercial fishermen, who take in half a billion annually by trawling one of the world’s most productive fisheries at Bristol Bay.

Both groups, however, are united against a potential mining project that they believe would devastate their way of life.

The Pebble Mine is a large deposit of gold, copper and molybdenum located at the headwaters of Bristol Bay. The deposit was first discovered in the 1980s and multinational corporations began seriously pursuing its development in the 2000s.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

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