Saving Seafood

SHAWN REGAN: Property Rights Help Environmentalists Protect Wildlife

August 7, 2017 — Earlier this year, President Donald Trump announced that his administration would seek to open oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The plan, outlined in Trump’s 2018 budget resolution, has reignited a long-standing debate over the oil-rich Alaskan wildlife refuge.

“Some places are so special that they should simply be off-limits,” Nicole Whittington-Evans of the Wilderness Society said at the time, arguing that the refuge is “too wild to drill” and “has values far beyond whatever oil might lie beneath it.” David Yarnold, president of the Audubon Society, said that drilling in ANWR “would cause irreversible damage to birds and one of the wildest places we have left on Earth.”

Drilling proponents cite the area’s immense energy potential. More than 10 billion barrels of oil could be tapped by developing just a small portion of the 19-million-acre refuge, according to the U.S. Geological Survey – enough to produce 1.45 million barrels per day, more than the United States imports daily from Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration claims that opening ANWR for leasing would reduce the federal deficit by $1.8 billion over the next decade.

How are these conflicting environmental and natural-resource values to be resolved? In the case of ANWR, the answer is politics. The refuge is federal land, so decisions about its management are political by their nature. Debates are often characterized as all-or-nothing decisions – either “save the Arctic” or “drill baby drill” – and when one side “wins,” another side loses.

But what would happen if ANWR were privately owned, perhaps by an environmental group?

Read the full opinion piece at the Foundation for Economic Education

Immigration fight cripples Alaska fishing as foreign help vanishes

August 7, 2017 — Not many Americans want to spend the summer processing seafood in Alaska for 16 hours a day, seven days a week, earning $10 an hour straight time and $15 an hour overtime.

But the prospect of working 112 hours and grossing about $1,400 a week — in a good fishing year — appeals to workers from countries where the pay for unskilled labor is a good deal lower than $10 an hour.

“It’s very hard to work 16 hours a day, but after three weeks you receive your first paycheck,” Danica Spasic, an elementary school teacher from Belgrade, Serbia, said about working for a Valdez fish processor on a temporary visa.

In a video posted on YouTube as a recruiting tool for Serbian workers, she talks about how pleased she was to work for Silver Bay Seafoods in 2015 with weekly summer paychecks of about $1,000.

“You do not want to have day off because in Serbia you cannot earn that amount of money for sure,” she said.

The workday — during good fishing seasons — leaves time for work and sleep but not much else before the long flight home.

She said that the managers of the plant knew that the Europeans wanted the overtime hours and were there to work hard, and “that’s the reason they allow us to work more than the Americans.”

In fact, Americans are free to work those same hours for fish processing companies in remote locations on short-term jobs, but many of them have better opportunities closer to home.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

Congress considers millions in West Coast fishery disaster relief funds

August 3, 2017 — Congressional appropriation committees are considering whether to provide millions of dollars in disaster relief funds to West Coast fishing fleets as part of the 2018 federal budget.

The amount of funding being considered has ranged from $20 million recommended by the House Appropriations Committee to a failed proposal to allocate $150 million to fishermen, according to officials following the proceedings.

California 2nd District Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) said last week that the $20 million proposed won’t make up for the financial losses experienced by the nine declared West Coast fishery disasters in Alaska, California and Washington. The disaster declaration made in January by then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker includes California’s Dungeness and rock crab fishery as well as the Yurok Tribe’s Klamath River Chinook salmon fishery.

“But it’s better than nothing and we’ll keep working on it,” Huffman said of the $20 million proposal. “… We’ll have to take a look at just how inadequate whatever comes out of Congress is. If it’s woefully inadequate to meet the needs, we may need to work on supplemental disaster relief. The Senate will have a say in this, too. I think you can look at it as good news that there is some money in the House bill.”

Huffman and other West Coast representatives had introduced a bill last year that called on Congress to appropriate $130 million to aid the West Coast fleets.

Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Executive Director Noah Oppenheim said Wednesday that there were hopeful signs during the Senate Appropriations Committee budget review in July that the Senate would support disaster relief funds.

Oppenheim said Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in particular advocated for an amendment to the Senate committee’s 2018 budget recommendation that would have added $150 million in relief for the fleets. But Oppenheim said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) did not support the amendment, and it did not make it into the final recommendations.

Read the full story at the Eureka Times-Standard

This small, lowly sponge from Alaska may have special powers: curing cancer

July 28, 2017 — An obscure Alaska sea sponge, unknown to science until about a decade ago, shows promise as a tool to help patients fight pancreatic cancer, a notoriously deadly and hard-to-treat disease, researchers say.

The sponge, first spotted in 2005 on the floor of the eastern Gulf of Alaska off Baranof Island, holds unusual molecules that target and kill pancreatic cancer cells in the laboratory.

The Alaska sponge now shows more promise as pancreatic-cancer fighter than any of the other sea sponges or plants, marine creatures and bacteria that Mark Hamann of the Medical University of South Carolina and Fred Valeriote of the Henry Ford Cancer Institute in Detroit have examined over the past two decades.

“This is certainly, for us, the best and most exciting looking candidate for the control of pancreatic cancer that we’ve come across in that 20-year period,” Hamann said in a teleconference with reporters Wednesday hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, which is collaborating in the research.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to control and spreads rapidly to nearby parts of the body, according to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The pancreas is a part of the digestive system, secreting hormones that enable the body to process sugars.

The Alaska sponge was discovered by Bob Stone, a NOAA Fisheries biologist conducting an ocean-floor survey of coral habitat that fishery managers were interested in protecting.

It immediately stood out for its green color, contrasting with the browns common to Southeast Alaska sea sponges, said Stone, who was in the submersible vessel doing the survey. It looked like a sponge from the faraway Aleutians, he said.

“The second I saw it, I thought I should collect it,” he said.

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

ALASKA: Underwater camera keeps an eye on Atka mackerel

July 27, 2017 — Counting Atka mackerel became really important, according to National Marine Fisheries Service Biologist Suzanne McDermott, when Steller sea lions were declared endangered in 1997.

“We learned that Atka mackerel are their main food item,” McDermott said. “That’s when we really started looking at them in relation to Steller sea lions.”

McDermott knows the mammals face competition for their food — commercial fishermen. In 2016, Alaska fishermen caught and kept 55,000 metric tons of Atka mackerel and discarded another 532 tons as bycatch.

This summer, McDermott and her colleague David Bryan traversed the Aleutian Chain to answer a big question: are there enough fish to support both endangered Steller sea lions and commercial fishermen?

Read and listen to the full story at Alaska Public Media

Fishing boat captain braves rough waters to save crewman

July 27, 2017 — The captain of a fishing boat “didn’t hesitate” and jumped into choppy, 47-degree water to save a crewman after their commercial vessel capsized off the coast of Alaska.

Amid 17-mph winds and 5-foot seas in the Kupreanof Strait near Raspberry Island — about 250 miles southwest of Anchorage — the captain, Christian Trosvig, and three crew members aboard the Grayling starting taking on water at about 3:30 p.m. Monday, according to a statement released Tuesday by the Coast Guard.

A nearby vessel, the Calista Marie, spotted the Grayling in trouble and notified Coast Guard officials — who were nearby on a training mission and arrived just in time to see Trosvig leap into the perilous waters to help an overboard crewman.

“That fisherman didn’t hesitate,” said Lt. Kevin Riley, an MH-60 Jayhawk pilot. “It is a testament to how tough those fishermen are and how far they will go to help fellow Alaskans.”

The captain of the Calista Marie, Dale Pruitt, told the Alaska Dispatch News that he noticed “something was wrong with the Grayling” when its stern sunk below the water’s surface.

Read and watch the full story at the New York Post

ALASKA: Former DNR commissioner tapped for high Interior post

July 20, 2017 — Another Alaskan has found a spot in President Donald Trump’s administration.

The president nominated former Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Joe Balash to serve as assistant Interior Department secretary for land and minerals management on Wednesday.

A native of North Pole, Balash is currently chief of staff to Sen. Dan Sullivan, who preceded him as Natural Resources commissioner under former Gov. Sean Parnell. Balash was a deputy DNR commissioner from 2010 to 2013 prior to leading the department until late 2014.

“It’s been a long time since the (Interior) Department had an assistant secretary from Alaska, and the president’s nomination of Joe Balash further proves his commitment to Alaska and rural America as a whole,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a department release. “Joe is no stranger to the Department of the Interior having worked alongside the department on a number of projects in Alaska. He brings an incredible combination of state and federal experience to the table, and he will be very effective in helping the department work with Congress to do the work of the American people. I look forward to his speedy confirmation in the Senate.”

Zinke visited Alaska over Memorial Day weekend this year, repeatedly emphasizing that the state plays a primary role in the nation’s energy production.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

WASHINGTON: Seattle fishing boat lost since February found on ocean floor

July 20, 2017 — A vessel on a scientific mission has made an important deep sea discovery, officials announced Thursday.

The fishing boat Destination, a Seattle-based vessel that sank in February with six crew members aboard, was found on the ocean floor in Alaska.

The ship that found the 98-foot fishing boat was a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) vessel.

People at Seattle’s Fisherman’s Terminal say the lives there were lost will be forever remembered.

“We want to know what happened,” Judy Hamick, mother of Destination crewman Kai Hamick, said. “This is a good boat. Why did this have to happen? Knowing that they found the boat is relief, but we know we still don’t have any bodies to recover.”

The Coast Guard hopes to provide those answers to the Hamicks and other families since NOAA has helped located the vessel off St. George, Ala. The boat was found not far from where it went missing on February 11 while fishing for snow crab.

Read the full story at KOMONews

Alaska’s Salmon Harvest Nears 48 Million Fish

July 18, 2017 — Preliminary harvest data show the catch in Alaska’s wild salmon fisheries is nearing the 48 million fish mark. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s (ASF&G) count includes 31.6 million sockeyes, 8.4 million chums, 7.6 million pinks, 198,000 silvers and 193,000 Chinook salmon.

More than 25 million of those sockeyes were caught in the Bristol Bay fishery, including 9.6 million in the Nushagak district, 8 million in the Egegik district, in excess of 4 million in the Naknek-Kvichak district and 2.2 million in the Ugashik district.

State fisheries biologist Tim Sands, Dillingham, Alaska, described the sockeye fishery in the Nushagak district as “gangbusters,” as fishermen there brought in a record 1.2 million salmon on July 3. It was the second time this year, and in the history of the Nushagak district, that the daily sockeye salmon harvest exceeded one million reds, Sands said.

Processors on the Lower Yukon have taken deliver of some 331,000 oil rich keta salmon, and another 66,000 keta salmon were caught on the Upper Yukon.

Processors in Prince William Sound have received 7.9 million fish, including 482,000 Copper River reds and another 417,000 sockeyes from the Eshamy District, 51,000 from the Coghill District, 33,000 from the PWS general seine fishery, 2,000 from the Bering River drift and 1,000 from the Unakwik District drift fisheries.

Read the full story at Alaska Native News

NOAA to Deploy Saildrones for Climate Study

July 18, 2017 — During the next four months, NOAA scientists will deploy Saildrone unmanned ocean vehicles to hard-to-reach locales such as the Arctic and the tropical Pacific with the goal of better understanding of how ocean changes affect weather, climate, fisheries and marine mammals.

The Saildrone is wind and solar-powered research vehicle resembling a sailboat, capable of performing tasks at sea such as met ocean data collection, environmental monitoring and fish stock analysis, autonomously or under remote control. For NOAA, the vehicles will soon travel thousands of miles across the ocean, reaching some areas never before surveyed with such specialized technology.

In mid-July, scientists will send off the first unmanned, wind and solar-powered vehicles from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, with two sailing north through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean and another transiting the Bering Sea. Traversing Alaska’s inhospitable waters, the remote-controlled vehicles will track melting ice, measure carbon dioxide in the ocean and count fish, seals and whales.

For the first time, the vehicles will journey through the Bering Strait into the Arctic with a newly adapted system to measure CO2 concentrations.

We want to understand how changes in the Arctic may affect large-scale climate and weather systems as well as ecosystems that support valuable fish stocks,” said Jessica Cross, an oceanographer at NOAA Research’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, who is using the unmanned system to study how the Arctic Ocean is absorbing carbon dioxide.

Read the full story at Marine Technology News