Saving Seafood

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute prepares to protest Trump’s seafood tariffs

August 10, 2018 — The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute will push back against a steep seafood tariff suggested by the Trump Administration.

In a board meeting Thursday morning, ASMI executive director Alexa Tonkovich said the organization is preparing a draft letter to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative about the importance of Alaska seafood.

ASMI’s action comes as the USTR considers a proposal to levy a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. Since that proposal was announced in early July, the USTR has announced that the tariff could be increased to 25 percent.

Among the items on the tariff list is Alaska seafood sent to China for processing.

“We believe there is value in ASMI as an apolitical industry representative (speaking up),” Tonkovich said, and the board agreed to consider the draft.

“I know that other industry groups are kind of looking for ASMI to take the lead because of their connection with (the National Fisheries Institute) and their representation of the Alaska industry,” said board member Tom Enlow, who works for the seafood company Unisea.

“We better do it, definitely,” said board chairman Jack Schultheis of Kwik’ Pak Fisheries.

ASMI is the joint marketing arm for fisheries across Alaska and is funded by a small tax on catches as well as federal grants and state assistance. This year, the Alaska Legislature approved a budget of less than $21 million for the agency.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

U.S. Seafood Industry Vulnerable to Tariffs Aimed at China

August 9, 2018 — The next round of U.S. tariffs aimed at Chinese imports could wind up hurting a major product that initially comes from America: fish.

Proposed 10% duties by the Trump administration last month on $200 billion worth of imports from China included dozens of varieties of fish, from tilapia to tuna. The proposed tariffs, which could increase to 25%, are set to be decided in September by trade representatives.

An estimated $900 million worth of fish and seafood on that list is first caught in the U.S., sent to China for processing into items like fish sticks and fillets, and then imported by U.S. companies to sell to American consumers.

“The value added is in another country, but essentially it’s an American-raised product,” Joseph Glauber, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said of goods like fish sourced in the U.S. that are processed overseas and re-imported. He said the proposed tariffs could cut profits or boost prices throughout seafood supply chains, from fishermen to consumers.

The practice of sending fish to China to be breaded, seasoned, portioned or packaged has grown in the past two decades, according to U.S. fishing groups. Domestic seafood-processing plants have faced high costs and labor shortages, while cheaper facilities have sprung up in China to support its extensive domestic fish-farming industry.

That has helped make China the top source of seafood to the U.S., with the 1.3 billion pounds sent to the U.S. last year double that of second-ranked India, according to market-research firm Urner Barry.

The exposure of U.S. seafood to tariffs aimed at another country highlights how intertwined global supply chains have become. Many pink salmon, for example, are caught by commercial fishermen in southeast Alaska. The fish are transported to processing plants to be headed, gutted and frozen, before being loaded into shipping containers bound for China. Once there, they are thawed, deboned, smoked, filleted or turned into salmon burgers for sale world-wide, including to the U.S.

More than half of Alaskan seafood sent to China is processed and then re-exported, said Garrett Evridge, an economist with McDowell Group, an Alaskan research and consulting firm. The percentage can be as high as 95% for fish like sole, he said. The fishing industry, one of the largest private-sector employers in Alaska, provides about 60,000 jobs, he said, and Alaskan seafood makes up 60% of the nation’s catch.

Some Gulf Coast seafood producers had lobbied for the latest round of tariffs to include fish. In a letter to the Trump administration in May, the Southern Shrimp Alliance trade group said that Chinese-farmed fish tend to be raised with antibiotics, and imports unfairly compete with the group’s members.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

ALASKA: Supreme Court approves Stand for Salmon ballot initiative

August 9, 2018 — The Alaska Supreme Court on Wednesday approved the Stand for Salmon ballot initiative for November’s statewide election, but not before deleting some provisions that violate the Alaska Constitution.

The decision marks only the second time in state history that the Supreme Court has used its power to delete portions of a ballot initiative in order to certify the rest.

“We conclude that the initiative would encroach on the discretion over allocation decisions delegated to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game by the legislature, and that the initiative as written therefore effects an unconstitutional appropriation,” the judges wrote in their ruling, “But we conclude that the problematic sections may be severed from the remainder of the initiative.”

Supreme Court judge Daniel Winfree offered a partial dissent, disagreeing with how much should have been deleted by the court.

The ruling is the latest success for ballot measure proponents, who have been consistently opposed by the State of Alaska and a multimillion-dollar ‘vote no’ effort. Since the measure was suggested in May 2017, state attorneys have raised objections to its scope, which they view as overly broad and a violation of the Alaska Constitution. The Constitution allows ballot measures, but it prohibits those measures from making appropriations of money or resources. After an abortive first attempt, backers withdrew their measure and rewrote it. Despite that, the Alaska Department of Law said it was unconstitutional, and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott refused to certify it for the ballot.

The state argued that the initiative’s eight pages of dense text create legislation that effectively allocates state waters for fisheries, excluding other development that might affect rivers, streams and lakes. Proponents challenged that ruling in Alaska Superior Court, and in October 2017, Judge Mark Rindner ruled against the state, saying the measure did not amount to an appropriation.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

ALASKA: Salmon ‘seized’ by Troopers sold to processors, state holds harvest ticket

August 8, 2018 — The 16 tons of salmon alleged to have been illegally harvested in Lower Cook Inlet were sold to a processor so they wouldn’t be wasted, with the state of Alaska now holding the harvest ticket. Wildlife Troopers say while illegally driving salmon from closed areas to open ones isn’t unheard of, this case is particularly egregious.

Four fishermen were charged for the incident on July 20, in which Troopers say five vessels were used in varying roles to drive the chum and pink salmon from an area closed to fishing toward an open fishing area. The fishermen then delivered 33,328 lbs of the illegally-caught chum and pink salmon to a processor. It was then processed as any legal catch would be, so it wouldn’t go to waste.

State Troopers charged the four men, who live in Homer and Anchor Point, and confiscated the harvest ticket, which tracks the weight and date of a delivery. Processors use the ticket number to pay fishermen from the season, and Fish and Game uses the ticket number to track how many fish were harvested, where, and by whom.

The outcome of the court cases will determine whether the money goes back to the fishermen, or is forfeit to the state.

Eric Winslow, Paul Roth, Robert Roth and Mark Roth were charged with crimes including driving salmon, commercial fishing in closed waters, failure to provide information to a fish transporter, failure to obtain a fish transporter permit, failure to complete fish tickets, unlawful possession of commercial fish, and failure to display vessel license numbers.

Read the full story at KTUU

ALASKA: Golden King Crab Quota Increases for First Time in Twenty Years

August 8, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS –For the first time in 20 years, the small fleet of vessels harvesting golden king crab in the remote waters of the Aleutian Islands can take 3.9 million pounds of golden king crab east of Adak and 2.5 million pounds west of Adak, increases of 18 percent and 11 percent respectively over last year. The 9-month season opened last week under a management system that relies on data from federal observers and fishermen themselves.

This is good news for Adak marketers of golden king crab, who last year shipped live by air directly to Shanghai and this year want to expand the market.

Golden king crab, also called brown king crab, is found throughout Alaska but in highest numbers in the deep water in an 800-mile swath of ocean east and west of Adak, AK. The crab live in deeper waters than any other commercially harvested species in Alaska, and on rocky bottoms. Fishermen use pots that are set on a longline, a hybrid approach not used for any other crab.

The remote location of the fishery, the relatively small stock size, the difficult terrain, and the short window of good weather all made surveys problematic. Historically the fishery used triennial surveys with commercial vessels and commercial gear: crab pots on longlines.

But the cost was prohibitive for such a small fishery, so in 1996 ADF&G adopted a constant catch harvest policy which set a cap that could not be increased, even when catch data, such as Catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) radically increased. The quota dropped occasionally in the past twenty years, but for the most part, it worked.

“It’s been quite successful,” said Mark Stichert, shellfish management coordinator for ADF&G in Kodiak. “We’ve not seen a closure in twenty years, we have a tremendous amount of stability in that fishery. We found a sweet spot; 3.3 million pouds in the east and 3 million pounds in the west turned out to be a pretty good ball park estimation of what we could catch from this stock.”

But when the fishery became rationalized in 2005, moving from a competitive, dangerous effort by 20-some vessels competing against each other in a short season, to a reduced fleet of about five boats, each with their own quota they can harvest over nine months.

Crab rationalization split the management between the federal managers, tasked with setting allowable biological catch (ABC) and overfishing limits (OFL), and the state managers who set the total allowable catch (TAC) and the season dates.

In order to set ABC and OFL limits the federal managers needed a stock assessment, which is usually based on surveys. In this case, the scientists worked on creating a stock assessment of golden king crab with the data they had, calculating the uncertainty limited data gives managers and running the model through the peer review process many times.

Finally last year, stock assessment model was approved by the North Pacific Council last year. The Alaska Board of Fish gave the state managers authority to increase the quota, but didn’t provide specific direction. The state managers needed to set a harvest policy.

“We’re taking a hybrid approach to partner with industry,” explained Stichert. “We have the benefit of working with a small fleet, we can all get in the same room together and find common objectives. What are your priorities? Do you want stability? We’re developing some exploitation rates to be reviewed.

In the process, the fleet has brought in their own stock assessment reviewers.

“We want a strategy that advances the science and allows us to make better decisions, but we don’t want to forget that we don’t know everything. We need a harvest strategy allows management to grow along with the improvements in data,” Stichert said. “It takes cooperation and committment.”

Since 2015, the fleet has worked with the state to conduct a hybrid survey on the eastern stock of golden king crab. The plan benefits both the managers and the harvesters. The first trip of the season will be a data collection effort using smaller mesh gear to catch sublegals, females, and males. The controlled catch will give managers information on recruitment, stock size and demographics.

“We’ll take care of the science if you take care of the gear,” Stichert said he told the fleet.

“On the very first trip you take, we’re going to tell you where to put the gear and we’re going to put out small mesh pots,” he said.

Meanwhile, Stichert said, “They get to sell the legal catch, the scientists onboard will document everything, then they’re off when the trip ends. The second trip they’re on their own.”

This week, the scientists are on crabbers fishing both eastern and western stocks for the first time. With the added information from both areas over time, the fishery could have the most data-rich management in its history.

The state approach will be reviewed by the Board of Fish for final approval later this year.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

ALASKA: Slow going toward the 39M harvest forecast

August 7, 2018 — Commercial salmon harvests in Prince William Sound topped the 15.4 million mark through July 31, up by three million fish over the previous week, compared to 20.4 million delivered by the same time a year ago.

All five species of Pacific salmon are running below the catch rate or the same statistics week one year ago.

The pink salmon harvest has reached nearly 11 million fish, compared to 13 million at this time in July of 2016, and this year’s forecast of 32.7 million humpies.

Deliveries of sockeyes have reached 1.3 million fish, compared to a year-to-date harvest in 2017 of 1.4 million, and the keta harvest stood at 3.2 million fish, compared to a catch of 5.4 million chums through the same time last year.

On the bright side, the Copper River district was opened for commercial fishing on July 26, and deliveries from that district have reached an estimated total of nearly 40 thousand sockeyes, 7,160 Chinooks, 6,093 humpies, 3,220 chums and 753 cohos, according to the latest reports from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. It’s the second lowest harvest to date in half a century for those reds.

Read the full story at The Cordoba Times

Small bones, big impact on fish harvesting regulations

August 6, 2018 — Summer is the season in which many Alaskans look to fill the freezer while scientists spend their days in the field collecting data from some of the daily catches.

“We went out for halibut and we came back with halibut,” sport angler Fred Coffifield said. He, his wife and a few family members spent Thursday fishing out of Homer.

The Alaska town filled with natural beauty proudly promotes itself as the “halibut capital of the world.” But it’s not just anglers looking to win the derby or prepare their best Halibut Olympia who seek the denizens of the deep.

Kerri Foote is a fishery technician with the Department of Fish and Game. Her job is to collect halibut and rockfish carcasses. During her shift, she visits fillet tables on the Homer Spit, takes the donated fish and measures the length, records the sex, and removes the otolith — a bone from the fish’s ear.

“It allows us to ask the question of how many fish we can take from a fishery every given year,” said Martin Schuster, a fisheries biologist with Fish and Game.

Read the full story at KTUU

Women in the seafood work place report discrimination

August 6, 2018 –Alaska appears to be an exception in terms of gender parity at all levels of its seafood industry.

Women comprise roughly half of the world’s seafood industry workforce, yet a report released last week revealed that 61 percent of women around the globe feel they face unfair gender biases from slime lines to businesses to company boardrooms. The women’s overall responses cited biases in recruitment and hiring, in working conditions and inflexible scheduling.

The findings were based on 700 responses gathered in an online survey from September through December of last year. Thirty percent of the respondents were men; 27 percent of the total responses came from North America.

In my view, Alaska doesn’t fit the picture.

Based on “empirical evidence” spanning 30 years as a fisheries writer, I always have encountered women at all levels of seafood harvesting and processing, business, management, education and research, as agency heads and commissioners and in top directorships in industry trade groups and organizations.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

International effort will study salmon populations deep in the Gulf of Alaska

August 6, 2018 –Alaskans will celebrate Alaska Wild Salmon Day on Aug. 10, but plans also are underway for a much bigger celebration: the International Year of the Salmon set to officially begin in 2019.

The theme is “Salmon and people in a changing world,” and a key focus will be a winter salmon study in the deepest regions of the Gulf of Alaska.

Both are sponsored in part by the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, which for 25 years has promoted research collaboration among scientists in its five member countries – Canada, Russia, Japan, Korea and the U.S.

“The main inspiration for development of this project is our awareness of the challenges salmon meet in the open ocean related to the climate and in the coastal areas,” said Dr. Vladimir Radchenko, commission director and one of the world’s leading salmon scientists.

A primary goal of Year of the Salmon is to get more people involved in protecting salmon and “coastal societies.” The aim of the Gulf project, Radchenko said, is to better understand the ocean phase of the salmon’s life cycle. Doing so would improve knowledge to help forecast salmon abundance and carrying capacity of the North Pacific.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Trump tariffs sting farmers, businesses from sea to shining sea

August 3, 2018 —  As President Donald Trump prepares to continue ratcheting up tariffs, the duties he has already imposed on $34 billion worth of goods from China and around $50 billion worth of steel and aluminum exports from around the world are causing pain across the United States.

That’s already prompted Trump to promise $12 billion in assistance to help farmers who have been hit with retaliatory duties on their exports to China, the European Union and other key markets. The aid package has been popular with voters, particularly in rural areas, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. But the same poll also showed that most voters in farm states prefer free trade and better access to markets over subsidies.

Moonlight Meadery, a small business based in Londonderry, N.H., “had a deal effectively killed by the retaliatory tariffs on American wine,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said. “This is a deal that would have doubled their output. For a small business that meant a lot. But what’s happened, they’ve had to lay off employees and they’ve also been hit by the increased cost of aluminum because of the tariffs on steel and aluminum.”

A New Hampshire business, Little Bay Lobster Company, that previously sold 50,000 pounds of lobster to China each week “can no longer find a buyer,” Shaheen added. After the Trump administration slapped a 25 percent duty on $34 billion worth of Chinese exports, China retaliated with a 25 percent tariff that priced New Hampshire lobsters out of the market, Shaheen said.

China’s 25 percent retaliatory tariff on U.S. seafood has “clearly rattled my state,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. The increased duty affects about 40 percent of the state’s salmon exports and 54 percent of its cod exports that went to China last year, she said.

“So this is, this is very, very significant to us. We’re still trying to figure out exactly what this means, not only to our fishermen but to the processors, the logistics industry, all aspects of the seafood supply chain,” Murkowski said.

In addition, Trump’s threat to impose a 10 percent duty on another $200 billion of Chinese exports could boomerang back on Alaska.

“Many of our fish and shellfish that are harvested in the state are then processed in China before re-importing back to the United States for domestic distribution. So in many ways, [Trump’s additional proposed tariffs would impose] a 10 percent tax on our own seafood, which is just a tough one to reconcile,” Murkowski said.

Read the full story at Politico