Saving Seafood

Unalaska Considers Joining DOC Program That Employs Inmates At Fish Plants

October 1, 2018 — This winter, Unalaska’s seafood plants could host a handful of prison inmates — if the community joins a work release program run by the state Department of Corrections.

DOC Commissioner Dean Williams proposed the idea to the City Council this week, citing interest from at least one local processor that he declined to name.

Williams said he’d like to start with four or five inmates, who would go through a thorough vetting and selection process. They’d work at plants and live at bunkhouses under strict rules and electronic surveillance.

“We’re going to pick people whose behavior behind the walls has been exemplary,” he said. “People who we’ve provided training to — carpentry, HVAC, refrigeration, and welding. Companies would love to have these guys.”

In return, Williams said the inmates would find purpose, develop skills, and transition back into society. His goal is to chip away at Alaska’s high rate of recidivism.

“My department releases 12,000 sentenced people every year,” said Williams. “The problem is that 4,000 end up back in prison within the first six months, because they don’t have a job and they don’t have a place to live. You just can’t cut the cord.”

Williams said the program is already succeeding in Kenai and Cordova, where more than 20 inmates have worked at Pacific Star Seafoods and Trident Seafoods. A few were returned to prison for drug offenses, but he said most have become reliable workers.

In Unalaska, the proposal met with a mixture of open-mindedness and reservations.

City officials and residents raised concerns about how local police would be affected, whether the island has sufficient addiction and behavioral health services, and whether sex offenders would be allowed to participate.

Read the full story at KUCB

ALASKA: Heavy nets, and wallets, for Bristol Bay and Norton Sound fishermen

September 28, 2018 — Despite poor salmon runs dominating the news across the Gulf of Alaska, fishermen in Bristol Bay and western Alaska brought home heavy nets and wallets this year.

Salmon runs in Bristol Bay and Norton Sound arrived in force and smashed records — again. It’s the second year in a row that runs have come in exceptionally large in the two areas.

Bristol Bay measured an inshore run of 62.3 million sockeye, the largest run since 1893 and more than 69 percent greater than the 20-year average run of 36.9 million. It’s the fourth year in a row that Bristol Bay inshore runs have topped 50 million, and this year came in far above the preseason forecast of 51.3 million fish.

Set and drift gillnet fishermen brought in a total harvest of 41.3 million, the second-highest harvest on record, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s year-end season summary for the area. On top of that, prices stayed significantly higher than usual as the supply flooded the market, bringing in a record ex-vessel value for the area as well— more than double what fishermen have made in the history of the fishery.

The preliminary ex-vessel value of $281 million is more than 242 percent above the 20-year average of $116 million, and 39 percent above the previous record of $202 million, set in 1990.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Alaska snow crab stock assessment bodes well for coming TAC

September 27, 2018 — The US state of Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) could announce catch limits for its Bering Sea crab fisheries as soon as next Tuesday. And, based on the latest stock assessments delivered to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC), the snow crab harvest looks to be a big improvement.

But catch limits for red king and Tanner crabs aren’t likely to be so great.

ADF&G staff have been meeting this week via teleconference to discuss the recommendations contained in the 43-page “Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation (SAFE) Report for the King and Tanner Crab Fisheries of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Regions”. The paper, which addresses the health of 10 different Alaskan crab stocks, was compiled by the NPFMC’s 14-person crab plan team, a group that includes a combination of federal and state agency officials as well as some academics.

The NPFMC is set to begin meeting early next week in Anchorage, Alaska, where its Science and Statistical Committee (SSC), a similarly composed group, will make its recommendations, which can be expected to closely follow those of the SAFE report, Mark Stichert, ADF&G’s regional shellfish management coordinator, told Undercurrent News.

It’s unusual for the NPFMC to disagree with its SSC, though it will also likely hear from an industry panel, he said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Alaska crab report: King and tanner crab stocks drop as snow crab rebounds

September 27, 2018 — It was a mix of good but mostly bad news for Bering Sea crabbers at this month’s North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting. The results from the summer trawl surveys showed “substantial” drops in numbers of king and tanner crab. Conversely, the snow crab stock appears to be on a big rebound.

The news was presented last week in the annual Stock Assessment and Fishery Evaluation Report for the North Pacific council.

For red king crab in Bristol Bay, numbers of mature males dropped more than 40 percent from last year, and mature females were down 54 percent. Even worse, the survey continued to show no sign of younger red king crab coming into the fishery.

“We haven’t seen recruitment in years,” said Bob Foy, director of the NMFS lab at Kodiak and leader of the council’s crab plan team.

In the report, the team noted that “it feels that the rather unusual environmental conditions in the eastern Bering Sea this year (e.g., elevated bottom temperatures, lack of a cold pool) and the model’s poor fit to the 2018 survey data increase the uncertainty associated with this stock and warrant additional precaution.”

The red king crab catch last year at Bristol Bay was 6.6 million pounds, a 20 percent drop from 2017.

For tanner crab, the number of mature females dictates the fate of a fishery and those numbers declined 70 percent in the eastern fishing district, continuing a trend over several years.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Federal officials promote aquaculture, or fish farms, as next big thing in seafood production

September 26, 2018 — Offshore fish farms could soon dot the seascape along with those oil and gas platforms being proposed for U.S. waters by the Trump administration.

The fish farms, which would be installed from 3 to 200 miles out, are being touted as a way to boost seafood production, provide jobs and reduce the nation’s $16 billion trade deficit due to America’s importing nearly 90 percent of its seafood favorites.

The U.S. Commerce Department is holding meetings around the country through November to talk about its strategic plan for getting aquaculture off the ground. At a recent session in Juneau, NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator Chris Oliver said that wild harvests simply can’t keep up with global demand.

“Aquaculture is going to be where the major increases in seafood production occur, whether it happens in foreign countries or in U.S. waters,” Oliver said.

“Aquaculture would seem like an ideal industry for the country, since it has the second-largest exclusive enterprise zone in the world — meaning it has proprietary marine resource rights over an area totaling roughly 4.4 million square miles in three oceans, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico,” wrote Seafood Source.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

China tariffs hit Alaska Amendment 80 fleet in midst of $285m recap effort

September 25, 2018 — US president Donald Trump’s 10% tariffs that went into effect Monday for nearly 6,000 Chinese goods are bad news for all of the US harvesters of seafood sent to China for processing, but they come at a particularly unfortunate time for the five companies with flatfish-catching vessels in Alaska’s Amendment 80 fleet.

Those harvesters have spent more than a combined $285 million over the past six years to replace or significantly improve their 19 ships, according to Chris Woodley, executive director of the Groundfish Forum, the trade group that represents them.

Woodley told Undercurrent News on Friday that he doesn’t know how the tariffs will immediately impact his members or if any of the additional cost might make them want to hit pause on their recent recapitalization effort.

“As far as specific business arrangements with individual companies, each A80 [Amendment 80] company has got its own supply chain and its own buyers,” he said. “It’s not a monolithic block. So, all we know right now is that the fish products harvested by the A80 fleet are on the list to have tariffs imposed, and that’s where we are.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ALASKA: Southeast hatchery chum run wrapping up five times larger than forecast

September 25, 2018 — A new run of hatchery chum salmon south of Sitka looks like it will wind up about five times what was forecast to return. And a larger run could be returning next year.

There are still more purse seine openings planned this month at Crawfish Inlet, about 40 miles south of Sitka. The run is in its second year of adult returns. And it’s produced by the Sitka-based private non-profit Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association, or NSRAA. The hatchery organization estimates seiners caught at least 100,000 pounds during an opening September 20th. Earlier in the month a one-day opening set a record with over 900,000 chums landed by the fleet.

NSRAA general manager Steve Reifenstuhl expects the run will finish up around 3.4 million fish. The forecast was 680-thousand chum.

“You know I’m thrilled that this came in a year that seiners and trollers really needed a break and I’m glad to be part of NSRAA that it created that opportunity for ‘em,” Reifenstuhl said.

The fall-run hatchery enhanced fish provided late season fishing for the troll fleet in a year with big reductions in king salmon opportunity and a boost for seiners who stayed out fishing into September after the lowest pink salmon catch in over four decades.

Reifenstuhl thinks a couple of factors probably factored into the unexpected big return. He thinks young salmon, or fry, were not intercepted by whales and other predators that maybe impacting other hatchery returns.

Read the full story at KFSK

Tariffs could harm NW fishing industry in markets on both sides of the Pacific

September 24, 2018 — First, it was Washington wheat farmers and apple growers. Then it was regional wineries. And now, Pacific Northwest seafood companies are getting sucked into the escalating trade war between the Trump administration and China.

The fleet that fishes in the North Pacific, much of it based in Puget Sound, was first caught up in the fight in July, when China imposed sweeping sanctions on many U.S. imports, including virtually all seafood. The immediate risk was clear: China’s tariffs threatened to block access to what many believe will become the world’s largest consumer market for seafood products.

But now there’s a new risk: a Trump administration trade policy that was meant to punish the Chinese, but which could end up making American seafood more expensive for American consumers — a bizarre outcome that could expose the Northwest’s seafood industry to trade-war damage both at home and abroad.

That risk became clear on Monday, when Robert Lighthizer, the United States Trade Representative, released a list of some 5,700 imported Chinese food products that will be hit by heavy new tariffs. Among them, roughly $2.7 billion in imported Chinese seafood items—everything from salmon and flounder to sole and snow crab.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Tentative deal reached on renewal of Pacific Salmon Treaty

September 21, 2018 — American and Canadian negotiators have successfully brokered a deal to renew the Pacific Salmon Treaty. The compromise agreement has now been sent to Ottawa and Washington, D.C., to be approved and ratified by their respective national governments.

The Pacific Salmon Treaty is renegotiated every decade between the two countries to govern salmon catch, research, and enhancement in Alaska, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The treaty expires on its own terms on Dec. 31, 2018. The current negotiations have taken place over the course of two years by two teams seeking to renew the treaty for the next decade, from Jan. 1, 2019, through Dec. 31, 2028.

Aspects of the expiring plan will carry over. Among them, the use of an abundance-based management regime for king salmon, as opposed to hard caps. This should result in harvest rate indices and quotas that will rise and fall depending on abundance of the fish.

Pacific Salmon Commission Executive Secretary John Field praised the negotiators for working out amendments to the treaty, including harvest rate reductions of king salmon when it comes to mixed-stock ocean fisheries.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

NOAA marks second annual whale count

September 21, 2018 — Citizen scientists of all ages turned out on Sept. 15 to help NOAA Fisheries count endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales and learn more about the importance of healthy marine habitat.

The second annual beluga whales count drew over 2,000 people to 14 scientist-manned viewing stations along Cook Inlet from Homer to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley in the morning and the afternoon beluga festival at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage.

Both events were free and open to the public as part of NOAA Fisheries’ effort to increase public awareness and stewardship of Cook Inlet belugas, who were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 2008.

Participating educators at the zoo included Rick Rowland, land and natural resources manager for the Tyonek Native Corp., who said the corporation’s presence there was to remind people that there is still an interest in subsistence hunting, but that won’t happen again until the beluga population increases. The tribe decided 14 years ago to cease those subsistence hunts because of the low population of whales, Rowland said. More research is needed to determine why the population is so low and what needs to be done to assure recovery, he said.

Read the full story at The Cordova Times