Alaska Archives - Page 224 of 284

House passes US Coast Guard bill with Jones Act exemption for America’s Finest

November 29, 2018 — The US House of Representatives has passed a US Coast Guard reauthorization bill that includes provisions allowing Alaska’s Amendment 80 fleet to finally gain the use of one of its newest vessels while also protecting shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico from being fined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for cleaning off their decks.

The Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018, S. 140, was passed by a unanimous voice vote late Tuesday, moving the two-year, $10 billion bill named after a retiring New Jersey congressman to president Donald Trump’s desk for a signature. The action happened with just a few weeks to spare in the 115th Congress.

The legislation passed the US Senate back on Nov. 14 by a 94-6 tally, as reported by Undercurrent News.

Included in S. 140 is a long-anticipated Jones Act waiver for America’s Finest, a 264-foot catcher-processor built by Dakota Creek Industries in Anacortes, Washington, for Kirkland, Washington-based Fishermen’s Finest at a cost of about $75 million. More than 7% of the ship’s hull contains steel from the Netherlands, which violates the Jones Act requirement that US fishing vessels be made of no more than 1.5% foreign steel.

The provision, which allows Fishermen’s Finest to use the vessel to replace American No. 1, a 39-year-old, 160-foot vessel, was fought for by senator Maria Cantwell and representative Rick Larsen, both Washington state Democrats, with cooperation from senator Dan Sullivan and representative Don Young, both Alaska Republicans

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

As oceans heats up off Northwest Alaska, the fishing does too

November 28, 2018 — Alaska fishermen haven’t been having an easy time with the changing climate.

The cod population in the Gulf of Alaska is at its lowest level on record. Officials have declared disasters after the failure of multiple Alaska salmon fisheries.

So what’s happening farther north in Alaska might surprise you: Fishermen there have been landing huge catches, in numbers that haven’t been seen in decades.

Seth Kantner is one of them. He was raised in a sod igloo 150 miles from the Northwest Alaska hub town of Kotzebue, and has been commercial fishing for chum salmon in Kotzebue Sound for decades.

He’s also a writer, and in an interview from his pickup truck looking out over the sound, he said he’s a little apprehensive about some of the changes he’s been seeing in the region — particularly in the weather and the seasons.

Some of those changes, Kantner said, have fed into the fishing, which has been booming. In the summer of 2017, he fished to the last day of the season to try to hit 100,000 pounds of salmon for the year, which he said is “far and away the most I’d ever caught.”

This past summer, he added: “I broke 200,000 pounds, which is still — I can’t believe it.”

Just to be clear — Kantner said that two summers ago, he caught more fish than he’d ever caught before. And then this summer, he caught twice that much again.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Expedition planned to better understand Gulf of Alaska salmon stocks

November 27, 2018 — Richard Beamish, a scientist recently retired from Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, is planning an expedition across the Gulf of Alaska to better understand changes in salmon stocks.

Beamish, who is being financially supported by fish farm operators, said that scientists do not fully comprehend the rising and falling of wild salmon stocks. Beamish said the contract for the expedition had not yet been signed but that funding for his proposal had been recently secured. Beamish declined to specifically name which salmon farmers were backing the project.

“We still don’t know the mechanisms that allow us to accurately forecast salmon,” Beamish said during an aquaculture industry conference in Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada.

Beamish proposes a group of scientist trawl for salmon in the Gulf of Alaska and take and use DNA samples to determine the salmon’s origin, allowing them to estimate their abundance in the region.

“No one has ever done this in the Gulf of Alaska, where the bulk of our salmon are in the winter,” he said.

Because the study would involve a huge area of ocean which is vital to British Columbia salmon stocks, the project has the support of the Canadian government as well as other governments. Beamish indicated that a teams of scientists from nations including South Korea, Japan, Russia, The United States, and Canada would be involved. A Russian vessel would be used for the survey, at a cost of USD 900,000, (EUR 785,719) he said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Ghost gear a growing threat

November 26, 2018 — KAPAA, HI — There’s more haunting the humpback whale migration from Alaska to breeding grounds in Hawaii than shipwrecks — ghost gear also litters the 6,000-mile journey.

These lost or abandoned nets, lines and traps can get caught on migrating whales and other marine animals, causing drag and exhausting them or cutting into their bodies after becoming wrapped around tails or fins.

Dozens of organizations worldwide work to reduce ghost gear in the ocean and Surfrider Kauai has spent the last two years partnering with federal, state and nonprofit organizations to remove more than 369,393 pounds of marine debris from circulation.

The Hawaii Nei Marine Debris Removal Project just wrapped up and, since 2016 team members and volunteers have conducted 137 community cleanup events and 668 derelict net recovery patrols to remove line, plastic, nets and other debris from Hawaii oceans.

Read the full story at The Garden Island

ALASKA: Researchers work on better model for impact of fishery closures

November 21, 2018 — Fisheries managers are faced with a firestorm every time they decide to close a fishery because of poor returns or low population numbers. A new economic model is trying to help them see into the future to understand the effects of a closure before it happens.

Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington worked together on the model, finished in 2017 and published in the journal Marine Policy this past September.

It takes into account items like fishery participation, the amount of each vessel’s annual revenue that comes from the affected fishery, which vessels participate in other fisheries and the value of the fishery; the aim is to calculate the total impact when managers have to limit or close a fishery.

The origin of the idea came after a disastrous broad closure in salmon fishing on the West Coast in 2008. The closure, caused by poor salmon returns correlated to unfavorable ocean conditions, resulted in a federal disaster declaration and a $170 million relief distribution.

Had officials and fishery managers been able to estimate the impact better, relief funds might have been distributed sooner, said Kate Richerson, a marine ecologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the lead author of the study.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Only way is up for pollock prices in 2019

November 20, 2018 — The prices for all forms of pollock look set to continue to increase next year, sources in the US, Russia, China and Europe told Undercurrent News.

Prices for pin-bone out (PBO) blocks, double-frozen fillet blocks, and the headed and gutted (H&G) raw material the latter is based on, all look set for higher levels in 2019, having already firmed in 2018, the sources said.

During the China Fisheries & Seafood Expo, held Nov. 7-9 in a venue close to Qingdao, ex-warehouse prices of around $3,500 per-metric-ton were being discussed for PBO blocks for A season. Prices for B season of 2018 were done around $3,350/t. Also, double frozen fillet block prices of around $3,200/t are also being discussed for next year.

“We see the price of $3,500/t reached and confirmed and we will take it up from there,” Fedor Kirsanov, CEO of Russian Fishery Company (RFC), told Undercurrent at the show, of the situation with PBO. US suppliers and also a large European buyer confirmed this level.

The level in the A season of 2018 was around $3,000/t (see image below and use the Undercurrent prices portal for interactive data), a leap from the very low level of around $2,350/t hit in the B season of 2017, as the price bottomed out. The pace of the increase has shocked buyers, but producers have been quick to point out this is only a return to a historical norm.

“We felt the fall was pretty quick. Now, it’s going more back to normal. It’s also not like pollock has gone off the charts. It’s back to a level where everyone can make money. It’s going back to a level where producers can make investments,” Tom Enlow, CEO of UniSea — a pollock, cod and crab processing plant in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, which is owned by Japan’s Nippon Suisan Kaisha (Nissui) — told Undercurrent.

The speed of the price increase has been driven by new markets taking the fish, he said.

“When the prices were very low, the producers looked at new markets. There has been more focus on deepskin for Asia and also surimi. Demand for surimi has been very strong, due to the shortfall in warmwater surimi,” the Nissui executive said. “The shortage in warmwater is the reason Thailand is so hot at the moment for surimi. Also, Japan is stable, but they take almost half of the surimi the US produces.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Pebble launches post-election outreach campaign in Alaska

November 20, 2018 — The proposed Pebble Mine in Southwest Alaska has been back in the news after this month’s elections, and now it’s also back in Alaskans’ mailboxes.

The Pebble Limited Partnership, the company behind the project, has launched a new marketing campaign following Alaska voters’ defeat of salmon-habitat preservation initiative Ballot Measure 1 and Republican Mike Dunleavy’s victory in the race for governor.

As a candidate, Dunleavy said he’s in favor of allowing the proposed mega-mine to work through the federal permitting process. Ballot Measure 1, the “Stand for Salmon” initiative, was largely seen as an anti-development initiative by the resource development industry.

“We’re very encouraged by the election of the governor-elect and of the results from the ballot measure campaign, really as a validation that Alaska has process, a fair process for reviewing projects,” Mike Heatwole, a spokesperson for the partnership, said Monday.

Read the full story at KTVA

Keep your cool: Bristol Bay touts new ice totes at PME

November 20, 2018 — Quality is king these days in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Well, so is quantity, especially after the bay tallied its biggest run in 125 years this season. But back to the quality thing. The Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association has spearheaded a push for colder, less traumatized fish, working with fishermen, processors and buyers to get more and better fillets to consumers around the world. And it all starts with keeping fish cold from the moment they come out of the water.

“Chilling fish is about storing value, because you increase shelf life, and there’s a definite mathematical relationship between the value of the fish and how much shelf life it has once it’s processed. That all starts on the grounds with the chilling, and it goes right down the chain of custody into retail,” said Mike Ficcero, BBRSDA’s board president.

To that end, BBRSDA was at Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle this week, promoting new ice totes they hope will allow them to get more and better ice to Bristol Bay’s fleet, especially in remote districts on the east side of the bay like Egegik.

“We knew we needed to get more ice around the bay. It’s so important, a lot of boats take it, and chilling is critical the quality of the fish. Ice obviously melts on the tenders, and these insulated bags will allow us to have more efficient ice delivery,” said Andy Wink, the new executive director at BBRSDA.

Cameo Padilla, BBRSDA’s program manager, worked with Seattle Tarp and others to make the first bags, which will be rolled out in 2019.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Next steps to protect the industry from Pebble Mine

November 19, 2018 — Stakeholders in Alaska’s Bristol Bay have watched the federal and state regulatory landscape heave and buckle with the shifting sands of federal oversight.

Fishermen invested in other watersheds threatened by mining waste and potential mine development have watched this battle, as well. But the lessons to be learned shift at every turn. Join me and a panel of insiders on Monday at Pacific Marine Expo for a public meeting on Pebble Mine, where we will discuss next steps for the industry.

The Trump administration breathed life back into the prospects for Pebble Mine.

Pebble CEO Tom Collier wasted no time in penning a January 2017 editorial praising his company’s efforts to address the concerns of Alaska residents, the thousands of fishermen who make their living in the shadow of the potential mine and its caustic byproducts, and the millions of consumers who rely on Bristol Bay’s pristine rivers to welcome back the world’s largest wild salmon run year after year.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Orcas thrive in a land to the north. Why are Puget Sound’s dying?

November 16, 2018 — Bigger and bigger, with a puff and a blow, the orca surfaces, supreme in his kingdom of green.

Northern resident orcas like this one live primarily in the cleaner, quieter waters of northern Vancouver Island and Southeast Alaska, where there also are more fish to eat. They are the same animal as the southern residents that frequent Puget Sound, eating the same diet, and even sharing some of the same waters. They have similar family bonds and culture.

The difference between them is us.

Read the full story at the Bristol Herald Courier