Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Hatchery debate wages on as research continues

July 13, 2018 — A conflict is intensifying over hatcheries in Prince William Sound.

For the second time this year, Alaska’s Board of Fisheries will weigh an emergency petition to block a Solomon Gulch Hatchery from increasing its production.

This is the latest skirmish in a battle over whether pink salmon hatcheries are causing more harm than good.

“This is the incubation room in here, and what we’re having here is stacks of incubators,” Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association executive director Gary Fandrei said, pointing toward stacks of incubators that look like the drawers to a really large tool chest. “We actually have a total of 359 incubators that we have available to us in here.”

Fandrei gives a tour of the Tutka Bay Lagoon Hatchery near Homer.

The facility will harvest up to 125 million pink salmon eggs this summer. Depending on survival, most of those eggs will hatch in the fall.

Like other pink salmon hatcheries, the one at Tutka Bay has attracted scrutiny in the past couple of years over growing environmental concerns.

Read the full story at KTOO

Some Alaska seafood exports escape China’s retaliatory tariffs

July 13, 2018 — It appears the blowback from President Donald Trump’s trade dispute with China will fall on some but not all of Alaska’s seafood exports to the country.

The Trump administration’s 25 percent tariff on an estimated $34 billion of goods imported to the U.S. that took effect July 6 prompted Chinese leaders to respond with their own 25 percent tariff on U.S. goods headed for their country, including seafood, Alaska’s primary export.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Director of International Affairs John Henderschedt said June 28 that seafood products destined to be reprocessed and re-exported from China will be exempt from the tariffs after agency officials discussed the issue with the U.S. Embassy there.

While a positive development for Alaska fishermen and processors, the cumulative impact the tariffs could have on the commercial fishing industry in the state is still unknown, Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute Technical Program Director Michael Kohan said in an interview.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

MSA Today: House approves Magnuson reauthorization

July 13, 2018 — The House of Representatives passed its version of the latest Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization on Wednesday, July 11.

H.R. 200, the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, sponsored by Alaska Rep. Don Young, passed primarily on party lines at 222-193. Support from the industry, however, came from all coasts as well as onshore and offshore businesses.

One of the most controversial aspects of this reauthorization has been the elimination of a 10-year rebuilding timeline for rebuilding fish stocks.

The 10-year guideline, however, is an arbitrary goal. Some fisheries recover in 2 to 3 years, and some take decades, regardless of restrictions on fishing effort. Even more to the point, regional administrators always had some flexibility in forcing managers to adhere to the rebuilding guideline or allowing for some leeway. This change is critical for fisheries managed as if there were no flexibility, like East and West coast groundfish stocks. It simply spells out the flexibility that has always been implied.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Don Young’s bill to revise Magnuson-Stevens fishing law passes in the U.S. House

July 13, 2018 — A bill amending the Magnuson-Stevens Act, sponsored by Alaska Rep. Don Young, passed the U.S. House on Wednesday.

The 1976 Magnuson-Stevens bill, authored in part by Young and named for Sens. Warren Magnuson of Washington and Ted Stevens of Alaska, was created to manage and sustain fish stocks in U.S. waters and keep foreign fishermen out. It created regional management councils that still manage local waters today.

Young’s new bill eliminates limitations on the councils that were added later, which Young says the councils need to keep fisheries stocked and support fishing communities. The bill gives the management councils more control over no-fishing timeframes to rebuild fish stocks and aims to provide more input to outside groups.

The bill passed 222-193. It goes to the Senate next, where its path for passage is unclear.

But the bill is not without controversy: Some scientists and environmental groups say Young’s revisions to the law would be damaging and result in overfishing. The Natural Resources Defense Council said the bill “threatens to unravel those four decades of progress.”

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Reprocessed state seafood exports exempted from Chinese tariffs

July 12, 2018 — It appears the blowback from President Donald Trump’s trade dispute with China will fall on some, but not all of Alaska’s seafood exports to the country.

The Trump administration’s 25 percent tariff on an estimated $34 billion of goods imported to the U.S. that took effect July 6 prompted Chinese leaders to respond with their own 25 percent tariff on U.S. goods headed for their country, including seafood, Alaska’s primary export.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Director of International Affairs John Henderschedt said June 28 that seafood products destined to be reprocessed and re-exported from China will be exempt from the tariffs after agency officials discussed the issue with the U.S. Embassy there.

While a positive development for Alaska fishermen and processors, the cumulative impact the tariffs could have on the commercial fishing industry in the state is still unknown, Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute Technical Program Director Michael Kohan said in an interview.

Overall, Alaska exported more than $4.9 billion of goods in 2017, of which more than $2.4 billion was seafood, according to the state Office of International Trade.

China bought $1.3 billion worth of Alaska’s exports last year, including $796 million — nearly a third — of the state’s total seafood exports.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

 

Alaska fisheries ballot battle becomes more expensive

July 12, 2018 — This year’s fish fight is already half as expensive as the 2014 ballot battle over Alaska’s oil and gas tax system.

According to new filings from the Alaska Public Offices commission, mining firms Teck Alaska and Donlin Gold have donated an additional $1.2 million to a group whose mission is to campaign against Ballot Measure 1 in this fall’s election.

According to the report filed July 6 by “Stand for Alaska — Vote No on One,” contributors have now provided $6.3 million to the opposition’s cause.

A July 10 report filed by “Yes for Salmon,” which is backing Ballot Measure 1, shows just over $989,000 in contributions.

“Stand for Salmon,” which is also backing the measure, reported about $105,000 in contributions in a report filed July 7.

The Washington, D.C.-based New Venture Fund and Trout Unlimited also have reported a few thousand dollars in expenses supporting the ballot measure.

In 2014, Alaskans spent more than $14 million backing and opposing a ballot measure that aimed to repeal an oil tax cut known as Senate Bill 21. More than $13 million of that tally was spent on “vote no” efforts backing the tax cut, and less than $1 million was spent by “vote yes” proponents.

Teck Alaska is the operator of the Red Dog zinc and lead mine in the Northwest Arctic Borough. Donlin is developing a gold mine on a tributary of the Kuskokwim River in southwest Alaska. If approved, the mine would be one of the largest open-pit gold mines in the world.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

US House approves Young’s Magnuson-Stevens update after sticky provision cut

July 12, 2018 — The U.S. House of Representatives voted 222-193 Wednesday to pass HR 200, Alaska representative Don Young’s update to the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), but only after he removed the most controversial provision in the bill.

The legislation, called the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, now awaits a companion in the Senate with which it can be conferenced.

In a statement celebrating his victory, Young boasted that his state is the nation’s leader in commercial fishing.

“The North Pacific is the gold standard of fisheries management, and in Alaska the fishing industry is crucial to our local economies and livelihood,” said Young after the vote. “…My bill will update MSA to ensure a proper balance between the biological needs of fish stocks and the economic needs of fishermen and coastal communities.”

The vote broke down almost along partisan lines, with 212 Republicans and just nine Democrats voting for the bill, while 15 Republicans and 178 Democrats voted against it.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ALASKA: Why Rep. Young wants to change a beloved law

July 12, 2018 — The U.S. House on Wednesday passed a revision of the Magnuson Stevens Act sponsored by Alaska Congressman Don Young. The original 1976 Magnuson Stevens is almost universally praised. It’s the law that keeps foreign fishing fleets off America’s shores and established regional management councils to rebuild fish stocks and ensure sustainable harvests. But Young’s renewal of the law is not without controversy.

Young always says the Magnuson Stevens Act was misnamed.

“I like (to) take pride in that bill. It’s my bill, the Magnuson Act,” Young said in an interview in his office before the vote. “It went over to the Senate and the Senate did what they usually do, they named it, the Magnuson Stevens Act. And it shouldn’t have been named that. I won’t go into what should have been named.”

Rightly or wrongly, the bill is named for the late Sens. Warren Magnuson of Washington and Ted Stevens of Alaska. But Young’s larger point is that he considers the law his baby and insists he would never do anything to undercut it. Young said his latest bill, H.R. 200, builds on the original idea that fisheries management should be built on sound science

“That same goal is there but times evolve,” Young said. “Technology improved and we think it’s time the councils that are doing their jobs have a little more flexibility.”

Adding flexibility to the law is important, Young said, because the management councils know the facts of their fisheries better than Congress does.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Another Magnuson Stevens update heads to crucial vote

July 11, 2018 — The US House of Representatives is set to vote Wednesday afternoon on HR 200, Alaska representative Don Young’s update to the Magnuson Stevens Act (MSA).

The action was expected to get underway a little after noon eastern time with the reading of 11 amendments and was to move next to nearly two hours of debate. The vote on the amendments and the bill itself won’t happen until the end of the day, based on the latest schedule.

Young’s bill, the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, would reauthorize MSA for the first time in more than a decade and make some of the most significant changes in the legislation’s 42-year history.

In an opinion column published by The Hill, a news service popular among lawmakers and staff, Young, a Republican, asked his fellow lawmakers to put “partisan rancor” aside on Wednesday and reminded them how the original legislation – which created eight regional fishery management councils (FMC) — was passed in 1976 with bipartisan support.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Seafood processors continue to grapple with H-2B visa shortage

July 11, 2018 — On June 30, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and the Alaskan Congressional delegation traveled to King Salmon to meet with seafood processors and transportation companies from Bristol Bay and around the state.

“I’ve always heard you don’t have the population to staff these up,” Acosta said. “Flying in, I have a different view of whether or not you have the population to – it is literally impossible.”

As the meeting got underway, it became clear that one issue was on everyone’s mind: H-2B visas.

Finding people willing to work long, grueling hours in remote locations is challenging. Many companies recruit year-round. They start by reaching out to Alaskans and workers from the lower 48. But while 65 to 70 percent of industry workers in Bristol Bay are domestic, processors can’t hire enough people from the U.S. alone. So, they turn to workers from abroad.

Glenn Reed is president of Pacific Seafoods Processors Association, which represents many Bristol Bay processors. He said that recruiting begins on a state and national level.

“We do start our recruiting with job fairs and working with the state of Alaska seafood employment program to hire Alaskans. We always get a few people out of Alaska, but not a very large number. I would say that fifty out of job fairs and the state employment program would be a large number. We always hire whatever workers we can out of Alaska first, and we’re quickly in the need for quite a few more workers than that – thousands.”

Read the full story at KDLG