Saving Seafood

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

A Dwindling Catch Has Alaskans Uneasy

August 22, 2018 — After just a few hours of letting the current comb through his net in the Copper River, Shane Cummings knew that something wasn’t right.

Dr. Cummings, a sports medicine specialist, had driven 250 miles east of Anchorage with a seasoned fishing party, including a few men who had gone to the river every summer since the 1960s. They motored between sandbars to a familiar spot, and slid the wide hoops of their nets into the steel-colored water.

In a good year, they could pull 70 or 80 red salmon from the river, which they would later brine in sugar and salt and bathe in alder smoke, their Little Chief smokers puffing in their driveways. They would carry Ziplocs of fish to the neighbors and set long tables in their backyards, pulling fillet after fillet off the grill.

But as the hours passed on this day in early June, nobody on the river netted a red, or even saw one. “It wasn’t usual at all,” Dr. Cummings said.

Read the full story at The New York Times

ALASKA: Mariculture industry has vast potential

August 21, 2018 — As Gov. Bill Walker prepares to sign a bill this week enacting the Alaska Mariculture Development Plan, 16 new applicants hope to soon begin growing shellfish and seaweed businesses in just more than 417 acres of tideland areas in Alaska.

The new growers will add to the 35 farms and six hatchery/nurseries that already are producing a mix of oysters, clams, mussels and various seaweeds. Eventually, sea cucumbers, scallops, giant geoduck clams and algae for biofuels will be added into the mix.

Most of the mariculture requests in Alaska are located in Southeast and Southcentral regions and range in size from 0.02 acres at Halibut Cove to 292 acres for two sites at Craig.

Data from the state Department of Natural Resources show that two farms have applied at Kodiak totaling nearly 37 acres, and one Sitka applicant has plans for a 15-acre plot. Other communities getting into the mariculture act include Seldovia, Port Chatham, Juneau, Naukati, Cordova, Ketchikan and Gustavus.

In 2017, Alaskan farms produced 11,456 pounds of clams, 1,678 pounds of mussels, 16,570 pounds of seaweeds and 1.8 million oysters.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

ALASKA: Fraser Sockeye Season Gearing Up; Landings of 1.3 Million Salmon So Far

August 20, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Fraser River sockeye season has netted landings of about 600,000 sockeye in the U.S. and 735,000 sockeye in Canada as of early this week. In Canada there have been three separate openings and an updated announcement on openings just this week, indicating a ramping up of a fishery that will peak in the coming few weeks.

This year’s return to the Fraser is estimated to be 14 million sockeye, within a wide range of possibilities. The return is made up of four distinct runs: Early Stuart, Early Summer, Summer, and Late runs. More than half — about 7.4 milion sockeyes — are estimated to make up this year’s Late run.

Once escapement, test fishing, and other management adjustments are taken off the total return, the TAC is calculated, currently at 6.2 million sockeye. Of that, the U.S.’s share is 1.02 million sockeye.

So with the landings as of last Tuesday, the U.S. season is about half over. For Canada, the bulk of the return is still ahead.

Mike LaPoint, chief biologist for the Pacific Salmon Commission, said stock assessments of the four different runs are being made as they come in. This week, assessments of Early Summer and Summer-run sockeye abundance are being calculated as test fishing results and data on age, origin, and other components of the different populations are analyzed. Updated run-size estimates could be available as early as later today, after this afternoon’s meeting of the Fraser River Panel.

“It is important to note that that TAC continually changes through the season as data on abundance, etc. are updated,” LaPoint said. “So far this season, the only change has been to the Early Stuart Run size – pre-season was 84,000, now 125,000. All other stock groups are being actively assessed right now and so far no changes from pre-season.”

The Fraser has seen three years in a row of low sockeye returns. “2016 was actually the lowest return since we started to keep records in 1892, about 700,000 fish,” Lapointe told Undercurrent News last month.

Fraser sockeye, for the most part, are four year fish. The 2014 return was over 20 million sockeye. While the returning salmon, and the subset of successful spawners in the return, is important, more focus in recent years has been on conditions the salmon face after that. Sockeye spend a year in the lake, then outmigrate as juveniles through the Fraser basin, and go north for a few years of feeding in the Gulf of Alaska before returning. In 2016-17, when these young salmon were feeding, temperatures in the Gulf were still above average from the 2014-16 warm water event referred to as The Blob.

Conditions in the Fraser River itself, according to Tuesday’s announcement from the Fraser River Panel, continue to show low volume of water and higher temperatures than historically normal, although in recent years these numbers have been similar.

“On August 13, the Fraser River water discharge at Hope was approximately 2,801 cms, which is approximately 20% below average for this date. The temperature of the Fraser River at Qualark Creek on August 13 was 19.5 degrees C, which is 1.5 degrees C above average for this date. Fraser River water temperatures are forecast to decrease to slightly to 18.9 degrees C over the next few days.

“Sustained water temperatures in this range can cause severe stress to migrating sockeye and may lead to significant en route mortality. Migration conditions for Fraser sockeye will be monitored closely over the next several weeks and appropriate management actions will be taken,” the announcement read.

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

ASMI to comment on impact of proposed tariffs

August 17, 2018 — Board members of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute are keeping watch on the trade war between the U.S. and China and plan to submit formal comments in advance of the Sept. 6 deadline, says Jeremy Woodrow, ASMI’s communications director.

“We are going into this with the assumption that this is an opportunity to educate the U.S. trade representative on the importance of Alaska fisheries to the U.S. economy and Alaska workers,”

Woodrow said. “While we understand the reasons behind the proposal, the intended impact doesn’t achieve the goal. Instead of having consequences to Chinese consumers, this negatively impacts us consumers and products and U.S. fishermen and companies,” he said.

Woodrow said ASMI’s understanding at this time is that seafood products going from Alaska to China would be subject to these proposed tariffs only if consumed in the Chinese domestic market. If that seafood is being reprocessed to ship elsewhere, it would not be subject to tariff, but if it is being shipped back to the U.S., there is potential that it will be subject to the tariffs because of the proposal by Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative.

The proposed U.S. tariffs came under consideration in the wake of China’s decision to implement an additional 25 percent tariff for exported products destined for China’s domestic market. The proposed tariffs could impact the bottom line for Alaska companies that sell black cod, rockfish, flatfish and salmon roe into Chinese domestic markets.

Read the full story at The Cordoba Times

ALASKA: PWS salmon harvest nears 24M

August 17, 2018 — Commercial salmon harvests in Prince William Sound are edging closer to the 24 million fish mark, with the catch to date still way behind the season’s forecast.

Preliminary harvest results posted by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game through Aug. 14 were up by about two million fish from a week earlier, with deliveries of some 19 million humpies, 3.3 million chums, 1.8 million sockeyes, 35,000 silvers and 7,000 Chinooks.

The bulk of the chum catch to date, 1.8 million fish, were captured by drift gillnetters in the Coghill District, and the bulk of the pink salmon – more than 10 million humpies – were taken by purse seiners in eastern Prince William Sound, followed by other purse seiners in southwestern and northern areas of the sound.

Purse seiners in eastern Prince William Sound have led the coho harvest with some 12,504 silvers, followed by other purse seiners in southwestern Prince William Sound, with 9,366 fish.

Drift gillnetters in Eshamy Main Bay led in the catch of sockeyes with an overall seasonal catch to date of 956,622 reds, and Copper River drift gillnetters had some 7,164 kings, far and away more than any other Prince William Sound district.

Still the overall harvest of sockeyes and Chinooks to date compared with a forecast of 1.8 million reds and 14,000 kings for the sound fisheries.

Read the full story at The Cordoba Times

Woods Hole Researchers Combine Fisheries and Acoustics for Sea Project

August 17, 2018 — A research project led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is underway off the coast of Alaska.

The Beaufort Shelf Break Ecology Cruise will combine oceanography, biology and fisheries science to learn more about the shelf’s nutrient rich waters.

Researchers will measure ocean temperatures and currents, collect plankton and fish and use sonar systems to look at fish distribution and what they are eating.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

ALASKA: Small processors carve out a market in Bristol Bay

August 17, 2018 — The majority of processing seafood companies in Bristol Bay are small Mom and Pop shops who are essentially the roadside farm stands of the Bristol Bay sockeye fishery selling sockeye directly to customers. But these businesses only sell a fraction of the sockeye caught in the region.

Standing in a shipping container that’s been converted into essentially a salmon butchery. Sandy Alvarez is filleting a sockeye. People regularly admire her technique but she said the secret behind it is practice.

“Well you know people who comment they wish they could do that I usually laughingly tell them. ‘Try doing 1,500 fish for 10 years you probably can!’”

Almost a decade ago Alvarez and her husband, a commercial fisherman, set up a little processing plant near their summer home in Naknek. Alvarez’s husband fishes for sockeye and drops off a bit of his catch to his wife who then processes it.  Then he sells the rest of his salmon to a larger seafood company. That is pretty typical for small seafood processors in the region.

Read the full story at KDLG

US fishmeal producers left exposed by China’s 25% tariff blow

August 16, 2018 — US fishmeal producers — including the US’ largest fishmeal producer Omega Protein — are “certainly in some trouble” after China announced last week it would impose 25% tariffs on imports from the country, said a fishmeal industry analyst.

Jean-Francois Mittaine, an analyst with 30 years’ experience in the sector, told Undercurrent News Omega Protein and others in the sector will struggle to find new markets as Chinese importers turn to alternative sources. This will hit both the menhaden fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico and the pollock fishmeal industry of Alaska.

“For the Americans it is a problem,” said Mittaine. “I don’t see what they’re going to do with their fishmeal.”

Last Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it would impose an additional tariff on imports of US fishmeal of 25% (HS code 23012010). The ingredient used in animal and fish feed was among 333 US goods worth $16 billion in annual trade targeted.

The Chinese counter-move will take effect immediately after the US imposes tariffs on the same amount of Chinese goods on Aug 23.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

The mysterious case of Alaska’s strange sockeye salmon returns this year

August 16, 2018 — There’s something unusual going on with the sockeye salmon runs returning to Alaska this year. In some places — like Bristol Bay — the runs are strong. In others, like the Copper River or the Kenai River they’re unexpectedly weak. In some places, there are sockeye that are unusually small. In others, sockeye of a certain age appear to be missing entirely.

It’s a mystery.

In Southeast Alaska, one of the first Fish and Game staffers to notice an unusual trend was Iris Frank, a regional data coordinator and fisheries technician.

Frank’s lab is on the first floor of Fish and Game’s Douglas Island office that looks like it hasn’t changed much in the 32 years since she got there.

Frank has been looking at blown-up images of sockeye salmon scales for decades. She pops one onto the machine and dials it into focus to show that salmon scales have ridges, called circuli. They look a lot like fingerprints.

Circuli carry a lot of information about what a salmon has been doing since it hatched.

“So if you think about a fish being out say, in a lake in the summertime, it’s warmer there. There’s more feed around. So these circuli are probably going to be bigger and more widely spaced apart,” Frank said.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media