Saving Seafood

Alaska asks John Kerry to raise B.C. mine pollution concerns with Canada

May 16, 2016 — VANCOUVER, British Columbia — British Columbia’s downstream neighbours in Alaska have long been concerned about mining pollution flowing across the border.

Now that B.C.’s Auditor-General has confirmed that those fears are well founded, issuing an audit recently that found the province is doing a poor job of regulating its mines, three Alaskan politicians have elevated the issue in Washington.

In a letter sent on Thursday, Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, and Congressman Don Young, urged U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to talk about it with the Canadian government.

“We write to express our continuing concerns about the development of several hardrock mines in British Columbia and their potential effects on water quality in the transboundary rivers that flow from Canada into southeast Alaska,” the letter states.

The Alaskans told Mr. Kerry that he should “utilize all measures at your disposal to address this issue at the international level.”

Read the full story at the Globe and Mail

KARL JOHNSTONE: Federal management of Cook Inlet fisheries would be a step back

May 11, 2016 — Were U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens alive today, he would be shocked to discover Alaska commercial fishermen (see commentary by United Cook Inlet Drift Association President Dave Martin, published by Alaska Dispatch News April 24) want to use the federal legislation he co-authored — the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act — to bring federal overreach to Cook Inlet only miles from the state’s largest city.

The now 40-year-old act booted foreign fishermen out of the 200-mile fisheries zone of the Alaska coast and led to the restoration of depleted fisheries, as detailed in a commentary published by ADN April 12. But the feds continue to struggle with how to manage bycatch in what are now domestic offshore fisheries.

Alaska salmon managers, on the other hand, have been successfully dealing with bycatch problems since statehood. Sometimes facing threats from commercial fishermen, they cleaned up mixed-stock fisheries that had decimated salmon stocks throughout the northern Panhandle.

In Cook Inlet, they wrote the book on best management for mixed-stock, mixed-species management that weighs commercial and noncommercial fishing interests. The reason the feds elected to delegate to the state all authority for salmon management, not only in Cook Inlet but also on the Alaska Peninsula and Prince William Sound, is not what Martin claims, not as some desire to dodge a role in moderating the inevitable fish wars that surround commercial, subsistence, personal use and sport allocations. The reason the feds took themselves out of the picture is they realize the state is already doing a better job than they could do.

Read the full opinion piece at Alaska Dispatch News

Community-supported fish delivered to your door from the fisherman

May 10, 2016 — There was excitement last year on North Haven when fisherman Matt Luck arrived with fresh sockeye salmon. Caught far away in the chilly waters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay, why were islanders cheering?

“If you are going to buy salmon from Maine, it’s farmed salmon. This is very different. Everyone got to meet Matt, which is why people wanted to buy in the first place,” said Cecily Pingree, owner of Calderwood Hall restaurant and market on the island. She purchased enough sockeye to last her all year.

It’s a funny scenario. Fish from Alaska arriving by skiff to a tiny island in Maine by a bearded commercial fisherman from away. In Brunswick, 40 people welcomed Luck in the same fashion.

This year shares of Luck’s catch can be reserved beginning May 18 from his company Pride of Bristol Bay. Buying a 20-pound case of vacuum-packed fillets may sound excessive, but it’s a more sustainable way to shop. You lock in freshness and price, and “it encourages people not to get in their car when they think, ‘What’s for dinner tonight?’” Luck said. “The technology [for flash-freezing fresh fish] allows us to preserve this product.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Extensive Coral Communities Found in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park

April 28, 2016 — On a recent research expedition in Alaska, scientists aboard the R/V Norseman II conducted the first-ever deepwater exploration of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Using both surveys by scuba divers and the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Kraken2, scientists found an abundance of cold-water corals and associated organisms that use these corals as habitat, from the very bottom to the top of the submerged portion of the fjords. Prior to the expedition, little was known about ecosystems in the depths of the fjord and records of corals were sparse. Led by Rhian Waller, Ph.D., of the University of Maine, this project was funded as part of NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research’s 2014 Federal Funding Opportunity.

“This expedition was incredibly exciting. Not only did we find abundant cold-water coral communities at both deep and shallow depths, we recorded species new to this area and abundant life living around these corals, and we documented and took imagery for the first time of cold-water coral ecosystems existing within one of our national parks,” said Waller when asked about the success of the expedition.

Throughout the expedition, scientists were struck by the size of the corals, some estimated to be up to three meters tall, and the amount of corals observed on nearly every ROV dive and the majority of scuba surveys. Stony corals were also observed for the first time within the park, and a species of stoloniferous octocoral – a type of encrusting coral – was found at greater depths than has been observed anywhere else in the world.

Read the full story at Ocean News & Technology

Alaska’s $10 Million Cut to its Fisheries Budget Expected to Ripple Across the Commercial Industry

April 26, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The $10 million cut to Alaska’s fishery budget for the 2017 fiscal year is expected to have widespread ramifications for the state’s commercial industry.  Last year’s budget cuts resulted in 109 fishery projects getting axed. Now another 65 are on the cut list for the upcoming fiscal year that begins on July 1. The slimmer budget means resources are more limited for fishery stock surveys and scientific research in addition to other fishery management needs.  “With cuts of that magnitude, everything is on the table,” said Scott Kelley, director of the Commercial Fisheries Division at the Dept. of Fish and Game.

We ran an opinion piece from D.B. Pleschner, the Executive Director of the California Wetfish Producers, that points to the recent scientific evidence that suggests West Coast sardine stocks are actually rebuilding. Pleschner writes how recent recruitment reports show the fishery’s young fish stocks are trending very close to how they looked prior to the 2007 population peak.  She also discusses how these scientific findings have gained little attention from the media and NGOS, who have instead blamed overfishing and lack of management for the stock’s declines.

In other news, China added lobster, crab and coldwater shrimp imports to a list of E-commerce items that are eligible for expedited cross-border clearance and lower taxes. The list an effort by China to reduce the cross-border tax paid by consumers, and to close a loophole that allowed parcel shipments to avoid taxes when resold, for instance, when they are imported by wholesalers.

Vietnam expects a 12 percent hike in exported shrimp revenues to push its overall earnings in seafood shipments past $7 billion this year. Shrimp is on track to account for about half of this year’s earnings.

Finally, Vinh Hoan will debut a line of untreated, premium pangasius fillets to the market at its booth number 5-553 during the Seafood Expo Global in Brussels this week. “People today want more natural food options with minimal processing and our untreated Premium Pangasius fillets provide that along with a delicious dining experience,” said Nguyen Ngo Vi Tam, Vinh Hoan Sales and Marketing Director. “With Vinh Hoan’s long-established commitment to sustainable practices, it just makes sense we would lead the way with this untreated option.”

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

Warmer Bering Sea will Reduce Future Pollock Harvests but Raise Prices

April 19, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Economic losses from a diminished catch will be partially offset by rising prices for the fish species that supports the nation’s single biggest seafood harvest, according to an analysis by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

The report, by economist Chang Seung and biologist Jim Ianelli and published in the journal Natural Resource Modeling, estimates that the total Alaska pollock harvest in 2050 will be 22.2 percent smaller than it was in 2004. But the dollar value of the harvest – total revenue from sales of raw pollock – will decline by only 9 percent, according to the report’s projections.

Pollock harvests in waters off Alaska generally range between 1 million and 1.4 million metric tons a year, with nearly all of that pulled out of the eastern Bering Sea. The 2012 catch of pollock from waters off Alaska totaled 1.31 million metric tons and brought in nearly $500 million to the harvesting fishermen, according to the report. The total value of the fishery is much greater than that when multiplier effects are considered; it mounts to billions of dollars as the economic activity expands along each step from the fishing vessel to consumers’ meals.

Future consumers will be willing to pay more for pollock  for a variety of reasons, Seung said.

“There is a decrease in supply of pollock. That will increase the price a little bit,” he said.

In addition, the analysis assumes growth in the global population and economy, meaning expanded markets of fish-eaters and a positive shift in the demand curve, he said.

The analysis considers a range of scenarios that are averaged over the long term.

In the short term, Alaska pollock stocks and harvests fluctuate year to year. The gradual warming that is happening and is expected to continue will have effects in coming decades.

Effects of warmer waters on pollock are complicated, according to analysis by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Higher summer temperatures tend to spur growth of more young fish, but those conditions leave much less high-oil prey for them to eat. Though they are more abundant than their cold-summer counterparts, the warm-summer young pollock are low on the fat reserves they need to survive the winter. Since juvenile pollock are a major source of food for a variety of fish and marine mammals, winter survival is critical to stock sizes. Pollock populations can be plentiful if warm and cold years alternate, according to NOAA analysis, but there is concern about several sequential warm years causing big stock declines.

Do the future supply and demand changes mean the lowly pollock might become a more premium whitefish? Could pollock be the new cod?

Don’t count on it, advises Gunnar Knapp, a University of Alaska Anchorage economist with fisheries expertise.

“I don’t see it happening any time soon,” said Knapp, director of UAA’s Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Though groundfish is not his specialty, he said, his “gut instinct” is that pollock faces too many obstacles to become a prized fish like halibut, now considered a delicacy, or even cod, which has niche appeal as food with centuries-old traditions.

Those include competition from other whitefish, like farmed catfish and tilapia, along with the emerging farmed species from Vietnam, Pangasius hypophthalmus, which goes by the newly coined name “swai,” Knapp said. Swai was not even eaten in the United States until about 10 years ago but it is now a strong contender in the whitefish market, he said.

Future marketing of pollock could make a pitch for the product as wild and sustainably managed, Knapp added. Pollock also feeds spinoff markets for roe – generally a Japanese market subject to the changing value of the yen – and the paste known as surimi, making pollock economics a bit more complex than those applicable to other fish, he said.

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

Cook Inlet Salmon is a Prime Example of a Fishery Magnuson Has Not Been Able to Help

April 20, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Magnuson Act 40 Years Later – Promises not kept for all fisheries

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act turned 40 last week and Federal and State fishery managers marked that event with an opinion piece (ADN, April 12) extolling the successes of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and its implementation in Alaska as a “global model of sustainability.”  As the authors point out, the Magnuson-Stevens Act sets up a “transparent governing process” intended to ensure that “science is behind every fishery management decision” in Alaska.  Indeed, the Magnuson-Stevens Act sets up national standards ensuring that all fisheries are managed to achieve “optimum yield from each fishery” with management decisions “based on the best scientific information available,” and guided by carefully considered fishery management plans.

We can all find common ground in recognizing the benefits associated with management under the Act, as well as many of the successes of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (the Council) and NOAA Fisheries in ensuring the long-term stewardship of Alaska’s fisheries.

The problem is that many important fisheries have been left out of the fold of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.  The Cook Inlet salmon fishery is a prime example.  Every year, some 10 to 30 million salmon pass through Federal waters in Cook Inlet, in route to their native streams.  These are some of the largest wild salmon runs in the world, and they go largely unharvested.

But the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries plainly don’t want anything to do with Cook Inlet salmon fisheries, despite their obligation under federal law.  The Council never took an active role in managing the fishery, and in 2012, with approval from NOAA Fisheries, removed Cook Inlet from the Council’s Fishery Management Plan, despite the objections of the commercial fishing industry.

The result is that the benefits of Magnuson-Stevens Act have never come to pass in Cook Inlet.  Cook Inlet does not get the benefit of “drawing on NOAA’s environmental intelligence to improve stock assessments and assess the impact of climate change on fish population.”  Cook Inlet does not get to draw upon the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s “transparent governing process” or the robust “public-private management process founded under MSA.”  Cook Inlet does not get to draw on the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s promises of optimum yield for each fishery, or the promise that “science is behind every fishery management decision” in Alaska.

Instead, Cook Inlet is left with the Board of Fisheries.  Regardless of whether you believe those who claim the Board of Fish “isn’t broken” (ADN commentary March 16, 2016) or others who believe it certainly is broken (ADN commentary March 30, 2016), no one can reasonably argue that the Board of Fish process can match the transparency of the Council, or claim that “science is behind every fishery management decision” made by the Board of Fish.

There should not be any real doubt, of course, why the Council doesn’t want to deal with salmon management in Cook Inlet.  The resource disputes between user groups are contentious and longstanding.  But the need for the scientific rigor and transparency that the Council can provide has never been greater.  The Board of Fish has made no real effort to find solutions to managing Cook Inlet salmon fisheries in light of poor returns of some stocks, the identification of several “stocks of concern,” impacts from invasive species, and growing habitat problems from both urbanization and climate change.  The result in recent years has been sport and commercial fishery closures and restrictions, the loss of millions of un-harvested salmon, the loss of tens of millions of dollars to the regional economy and the loss of millions of dollars to the State treasury.

All Cook Inlet salmon fisheries would plainly benefit from coordinating the State’s long-standing salmon management experience with the Council’s transparent, science-based process.  This is precisely what the Magnuson-Stevens Act contemplates.  Hopefully, the sport and commercial fishermen and the coastal communities in Cook Inlet won’t have to wait another 40 years for the promises of the Magnuson-Stevens Act to be fulfilled.

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

North Pacific Fishery Management Council April 2016 Newsletter

April 18, 2016 — The following was released by the NPFMC:

The Council Newsletter is now available online. Documents, handouts, and motions are still available through links on that meeting’s Agenda.

Our next scheduled meeting will be in Kodiak, Alaska the week of June 6, 2016 at the Kodiak Harbor Convention Center.

For Alaska fisheries, reason to celebrate 40 years of Magnuson-Stevens Act

April 12, 2016 — April 13, 2016, marks the 40th anniversary of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a law that took U.S. fisheries management in federal waters from being virtually non-existent to becoming a global model of sustainability.

Nowhere is this truer than in Alaska, where our fisheries have an international reputation as being among the most sustainable and valuable fisheries on the planet, largely thanks to the collaborative and inclusive management process set up under the Magnuson-Stevens Act. One of the MSA’s authors, our very own Sen. Ted Stevens, had an extraordinary vision for our nation’s fisheries, especially for those in his home state of Alaska. Many elements of the State of Alaska’s fishery management are woven into the fabric of the MSA.

The results? Our state produces 60 percent of all seafood harvested from U.S. waters. The Alaska seafood industry is the number one private employer in the State of Alaska, contributing an estimated $5.9 billion to the Alaska economy, and producing more than $4.2 billion first wholesale value of wild, sustainable seafood annually. For nearly 20 consecutive years, Dutch Harbor has been the top U.S. fishing port in volume of seafood landed. In 2014, Alaska ports took the top three spots in the nation in volume of seafood landed (Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, and Aleutian Islands). Other Alaska fishing ports — Alaska Peninsula, Naknek, Sitka, Ketchikan, Cordova, and Petersburg — ranked in our nation’s top 20 ports by volume.

Read the full opinion piece at the Alaska Dispatch News

Wiki-fishing: How Alaska’s smaller boats compete with vast trawlers

April 11, 2016 — Stephen Rhoads, a commercial longline fisherman in Alaska’s verdant south-east panhandle, fishes by two rules. One is: stay married. Mr Rhoads has seen countless marriages of fellow fishermen sink under the weight of so many days at sea. The second rule is: use fewer hooks. Mr Rhoads works the Pacific halibut fishery, which opened for business on March 19th, using baited hooks strung off lines as long as three miles. Using as few hooks as possible and carefully targeting the desired species, Mr Rhoads explains, helps keep fish stocks healthy and smaller businesses afloat. To do so, he relies on a crowdsourced compendium of fishermen’s tales.

A war between small family fishing operations and Seattle-based companies pushed Alaska to statehood in 1959. The state’s $6 billion commercial fishing industry still suffers from a David-and-Goliath complex. Over the years, Alaskan halibut fishermen have faced big reductions in their harvest limits while factory trawlers dump millions of pounds of dead halibut overboard as by-catch. Quotas are becoming consolidated into fewer hands, and fishing permits are leaving Alaska’s small coastal communities and heading out of state. The average age of a fisherman in Alaska is 50, an increase of a decade since 1980.

Mr Rhoads is a member of a network started by the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA), which aims to do something about this and to reduce by-catch of sensitive species such as rockfish at the same time. Network fishermen, who numbered only 20 at the project’s start, agreed to share data on where and what they were catching in order to create maps that highlighted areas of high by-catch. Within two years they had reduced accidental rockfish harvest by as much as 20%.

See the full story at The Economist