Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Locals catch and chow down on invasive species in Kodiak

August 28, 2018 — An informal sport fishery has popped up in Kodiak. For crawdads.

They’re crustaceans that look like little lobsters, and they’re native to the Pacific Northwest, but not Alaska. In 2002, they were found scuttling along the bottom of a popular fishing area near Kodiak, in the Buskin River watershed, mainly in the lake.

Now, a local tribal organization is studying their movement, distribution, and diet.

They are concerned the crawdads could be snacking on salmon and disrupting their natural environment.

In a parking lot next to Buskin Lake, four guys pull on neoprene wetsuits and snorkeling masks. They’re gearing up for the hunt.

“Man, I’m ready to slay some frickin’ crawdad right now.”

That’s Ryan Gabor. He and some friends have put aside the day to snorkel for the mud-colored crustaceans.

They’re called a variety of names throughout the world including: crawfish, crawdads, and crayfish.

Read the full story at KMXT

Alaskan man stole $85,000 worth of frozen fish and crab

August 28, 2018 — A Homer man faces two felony charges after Alaska State Troopers say he stole around $85,000 in frozen fish and crab from a fish processing business on the Kenai Peninsula.

Garrett Shaw Fitzgerald, 53, was charged Friday with first-degree theft and second-degree burglary, troopers said. Troopers say that Fitzgerald broke into Tanner’s Fresh Fish Processing in Ninilchik at 2:50 a.m. Wednesday.

Owner Jason Tanner said the door to his business was kicked in and $400 dollars was stolen before the suspect went into the commercial freezer.

Surveillance footage showed the thief spent an hour walking back and forth between the freezer and a vehicle outside. He carried box after box of frozen salmon, halibut, king crab and smoked fish.

“Every time I saw him, I go, ‘Oh, there’s a thousand bucks,'” Tanner said.

Troopers say about 3,000 pounds in frozen seafood was stolen from the business. Investigators believe an accomplice helped Fitzgerald, and that a second vehicle was also used to load up the stolen product, said spokeswoman Megan Peters.

All told, the frozen seafood was worth about $85,000 at retail prices, Tanner said.

Fitzgerald was arrested Friday in Soldotna, troopers said. Some of the stolen fish was recovered, but nearly all of it is unusable, Tanner said.

“He was cutting it open and repackaging it,” Tanner said. Fish was found in loose bags, some thawed. None of the king crab has been recovered, he said.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

US senator from Alaska speaks out against Trump tariffs

August 27, 2018 — If the Trump administration is serious about putting “America First,” then it must consider what the proposed 25 percent tariff on Chinese products will do to the Alaskan seafood industry. That was the message U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan delivered last week at a public hearing held by the U.S. International Trade Commission.

The Alaska Republican testified his state is currently caught in the crossfire as the world’s two largest economies consider hiking levies on goods imported from each other.

Sullivan said nearly USD 1 billion (EUR 859.4 million) in U.S. seafood ultimately destined for American consumers is being targeted by these tariffs. That’s because frozen fish, after it’s initially processed in the States, is sent to China to be filleted because it is more cost-effective. Most of that is caught by Alaskan fishermen.

Sullivan likened the fish to an American car made in the U.S. by local workers, only to have the final detailing performed in China before its sent back to dealerships here. The Trump administration wouldn’t consider increasing tariffs on those automobiles, Sullivan said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Seafood marketing group says fish meal included in tariff changes, calls for comments

August 27, 2018 — Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute recently received clarification about tariff changes, which went into effect on July 6, for Alaska seafood products going into the Chinese domestic market, an organization spokesperson said.

The public-private marketing organization promotes Alaska’s seafood industry.

“We previously thought that fish meal would not be included and we now know that fish meal products will be included in those proposed tariff increases from China,” communications director Jeremy Woodrow said.

Woodrow says $69 million in fish meal products — mostly used in animal feed — were exported to China last year.

Woodrow said one of the largest generators of fishmeal is the Alaska pollock industry.

The fishmeal market is important to Alaska because it ensures full utilization of seafood and helps generate revenue.

“The more that you can get out of the fish, the more everybody benefits,” Woodrow said. “That’s right down to the fishermen, to the processors, as well as the communities.”

Many fishing communities rely on a variety of fish taxes.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

Citing failed sockeye runs, Alaska Gov. Walker declares economic disaster for Chignik fisheries

August 24, 2018 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Citing a preliminary harvest count of 128 sockeye salmon and rapidly declining escapement counts, Gov. Walker declared an economic disaster for the Chignik fisheries region Thursday.

According to a Thursday release, the governor’s decision is a result of harvest numbers that pose a threat to communities in the region that rely on subsistence and commercial salmon fishing, including Chignik, Chignik Lake, Chignik Lagoon, Ivanof Bay and Perryville.

“Chignik is used to catching more than a million sockeye every year. This year, they caught 128 fish,” Gov. Walker said in the statement. “Salmon is the economic and subsistence staple in these communities and the failure of this year’s fishery is a one-two punch. It is critical that we do what we can to support them as they work to recover: that’s what we’re here for.”

Read the full story at KTUU

 

ALASKA: Roundtable discussion focuses on salmon sustainability, culture

August 24, 2018 — With participants from a broad swathe of the salmon spectrum, the Kenai River Sportfishing Association’s Classic Roundtable discussion Wednesday focused on new research and management tools to preserve troubled salmon returns in the state.

Part of the Soldotna-based sportfishing association’s annual Classic event, the roundtable discussions invite experts and stakeholders to address various issues related to fishing and fisheries management. This year, the panelists focused on science related to recent changes in salmon size and age, the cultural and economic impacts of the declines and market-based strategies to change salmon fishery allocation.

Presiding as the keynote speaker was National Marine Fisheries Service Assistant Administrator Chris Oliver, who previously lived in Alaska for 27 years and served as the executive director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Since taking the role as the head of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which among other functions regulates fisheries in federal waters and enforcing the Marine Mammal Protection Act, he said he’s made a few adjustments to overall identified goals and gotten a broad perspective on issues in fisheries nationwide.

Read the full story at The Peninsula Clarion

For small boat fishermen in Alaska, the business can be boom or bust

August 23, 2018 — The Alaskan seafood industry is one of the many industries with its eyes on the back-and-forth between the U.S. and China. Seafood was one of the U.S. exports to get slapped with a retaliatory tariff from China, and that’s an issue for Alaska seafood producers because a lot of their seafood exports are sent there.

But in this installment of our on-going series My Economy, we’re looking beyond the news headlines to see how people are actually doing. And there are a variety of things that might be on an Alaskan fisherman’s mind right now, as fisherman Hannah Heimbuch describes from Homer, Alaska.

My name is Hannah Heimbuch. I’m a commercial fisherman from Homer, Alaska. My brother and I are drift gillnetters. We fish for sockeye salmon. We grew up deckhanding with our dad on his boat in a couple different areas in Alaska. And two years ago we decided to invest in our own operation. You know we’re in our early 30s and kind of looked at each other and were like, well, I guess we’re in this together.

Probably our biggest annual investment is our boat payment. That runs about $11,000. We also have permit payments, that’s another $5,000. And then after that you have the basic maintenance. You know we spend a few thousand dollars upgrading. So we have a boat that’s in tip top shape, but we needed to make more than $20,000 to breakeven this year. We did not come close to that.

Read the full story at the Marketplace

Cool ocean temps, reduced salmon bycatch likely to boost Alaska groundfish catches

August 22, 2018 — Reduced salmon bycatch and increased catches of rockfish bode well for Alaska’s groundfish trawlers in 2018. As of July, most of the boats had off-loaded their dragging gear and switched over to massive deck pumps to fill out salmon tendering contracts in Bristol Bay and elsewhere around the state.

That’s typical for many of the Kodiak-based catcher boats in the off-season, but the kicker in their year (so far) began during fisheries directed for arrowtooth flounder and various rockfish species months earlier.

“Things have been off in recent years, in the way that the fisheries have been functioning,” said Julie Bonney, executive director of the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, in Kodiak.

Incidental catches of king salmon and halibut during the 2017 season caused closures that not only put a crimp in the potential harvest of the groundfish quotas but caused an unfavorable pulse of supplies in markets that favor a steady flow of fish to end consumers.

But 2018 brings hope of a turnaround. Ocean conditions seem to have gifted the trawlers in terms of distribution and density of rockfish. As of July 1, the fleet had harvested 68 percent of the rockfish quota compared to 2017 when they caught 43 percent.

Better yet, the incidental take of king salmon was down. Bonney reported on June 28 that the fleet in the Gulf of Alaska logged 6,200 salmon of a total allowable 32,250 salmon.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

“Strength of the Tides” pledge promotes safety of women who fish

August 22, 2018 — A little over a year ago, the project “Strength of the Tides” launched a website with a mission to help women working in fisheries find safe places to work. You may have spotted the tees and tank tops around the boatyard—black with the simple message: “The strength of the tides is hers also.”

It is no secret that fishing is a male-dominated industry. But increasingly, women are becoming skippers, joining crews, and working on tenders.

Elma Burnham is one among them, and she wanted to make sure there was an organization looking out for them.

She said, “’Strength of the Tides’ is a community organization to empower women who work on the water.”

For seven years, Burnham has been coming to Bristol Bay in the summer to fish for sockeye. This year she was based in Pilot Point. She is the main person behind “Strength of the Tides,” which she founded a little over a year ago.

The organization uses Instagram to profile women involved in fisheries. It also hosts gatherings to build community and offers a pledge for people to sign to hold them accountable for how women are treated on the water.

Burnham said the pledge is really the heart of the organization’s mission.

“I basically published this pledge that asked people who work in the industry to declare and sign on that they will respect women.” She continued, “There is a list of different criteria of what that means while in this unique workplace we are in.”

Everyone who signs the agreement also can list the vessel they are on and where they fish. It is posted on the website, and Burnham said this is a helpful resource for women trying to get on a boat because they can see if the skipper has signed the pledge. So far over 200 people have signed.

Read the full story at KDLG

Alaska seafood organization seeks comments on US tariffs

August 22, 2018 — An Alaska seafood organization is encouraging industry members to comment on the proposed U.S. tariffs on products imported from China that could negatively affect the state’s seafood industry.

The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute is asking members to comment before the September deadline on the proposed increases to tariffs that include seafood products from China, the Peninsula Clarion reported Sunday.

About $2.7 billion in U.S. seafood is processed in China and sent back to the U.S. annually with most of that coming from Alaska, according to the organization that promotes the state’s seafood industry.

In response to U.S. tariffs, China levied a 25 percent tariff on U.S. seafood imported for consumption, including Pacific salmon, cod, Alaska Pollock, and other commonly exported products. The tariffs went into effect last month, but China excluded seafood shipped into the country that is intended for re-export after processing.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative proposed increasing tariffs last month from 10 percent to 25 percent on Chinese products, including seafood. The U.S. seafood processed in China could be hit with tariffs upon re-entering the country.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Daily-News Miner