Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Fish and Game hiring too many environmentalists, says Alaska state senator

August 6, 2015 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Sam Cotten is defending the recent hire of a former employee of the environmental group Oceana following a complaint from a Republican state senator that Cotten’s department is picking new employees from the “injunction industry” — a sarcastic reference to lawsuits filed by advocacy organizations.

Anchorage Sen. Cathy Giessel sent a letter to Cotten last week referring to a “steady stream of personnel changes” at Fish and Game, with replacements coming “overwhelmingly from the conservation advocacy sector.”

“It is my sincere hope that the arrival of individuals who have dedicated a part of their lives in an antagonistic relationship with the state of Alaska is not a reflection of a new philosophy in policy on the part of the department,” said the letter from Giessel, who chairs the Senate’s resources committee and is a mining- and oil-industry booster.

Cotten said in a phone interview Wednesday that he’d been hearing concerns about his department’s recent hiring of Chris Krenz, a former senior scientist at Oceana who worked on the group’s campaign opposing Shell’s oil drilling program in the Arctic.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News 

 

Bering Sea Crabbers Issue White Paper on Measures to Deny IUU Crab Entry to US

The Bering Sea Crabbers along with Frequentz – a traceability company – have released a white paper on IUU crab.

The group has argued that large amounts of IUU crab entering the US have cut into the market value of Alaskan crab, although the amounts vary considerably from year to year.

The white paper supports three solutions that would cut back IUU crab even further.

The first is for the Senate, which has ratified the Port States Treaty, to pass the implementing legislation, which is necessary before the US ratification can be official. Ultimately, this would bring the policing practices of the rest of the world much closer to the standards that already exist in the U.S. and make it more difficult for illegal product to enter the supply chain and diminish the value of product caught by U. S. fishermen.

Secondly, the crabbers want to see country of origin labeling required on cooked king crab. Although many retailers disclose whether their king crab is a product of USA or Russia, because it is a cooked product normally sold unpackaged it does not fall under the same Country of Origin labeling rules as other seafood. Crabbers would like mandatory country of origin requirements on all forms of crab.

Read the full story at SeafoodNews.com

 

With court date on ballot measure looming, Kenai setnetters ponder their future

August 2, 2015 — KENAI, AK — This summer, just as they have done for generations, setnetters are working the shores of the western Kenai Peninsula, stringing out nets and hauling in hundreds of thousands of fish from the abundant sockeye salmon runs of Southcentral Alaska.

But along with those sockeyes, the setnetters also pull thousands of king salmon from the waters of Cook Inlet. And it’s those kings — Alaska’s best-known, most-marketable fish and one that has seen increasingly troublesome declines in recent years — that have made setnetters the target of a statewide ballot initiative that could eliminate the longtime fishery.

Last month, the Alaska Fisheries Conservation Alliance submitted 43,000 signatures to the Alaska Division of Elections to certify an initiative that would ban setnets in Alaska’s urban areas. If approved by voters, the initiative would outlaw setnets in the five designated urban areas of Alaska, including Valdez, Ketchikan, Fairbanks — and the Kenai Peninsula.

At its heart, the ballot initiative is about the same thing that most fishery disputes are about in Alaska: the merits of sport-versus-commercial fishing, and how fish that both of those groups target are managed. Sport fishermen say it’s the setnetters threatening the kings of Southcentral; setnetters say it’s the other way around.

In the case of the declining kings, as the runs dwindle, both sides of the debate are losing something. And if the setnetting ban passes in 2016, one group says they stand to lose everything.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

Flashback: Hillary Clinton fired from fish processing job

July 29, 2015 — Hillary Clinton says that cleaning Alaskan salmon helped prepare her for the White House.

In an interview on Thursday with theSkimm, a daily newsletter that focuses on women aged 22-34, Clinton said, “One of the best jobs I had to prepare me to be president was sliming fish in Alaska.”

She described the attire for the job as hip boots, an apron and a spoon. Clinton said the salmon would be brought in and slit open, the caviar would be taken out — and then, it was her time to shine.

“My job was to grab them, and these are big fish, and to take a spoon and clean out the insides … best preparation for being in Washington that you can possibly imagine,” Clinton said.

“They were purple and black and yucky-looking,” she said in a 1992 New York Times article.

What Clinton didn’t mention in theSkimm, though, was that she was fired from the job within a week after asking too many questions, according to the Times. (“I found another job,” she told the paper.)

Read the full story at Politico 

JUNEAU EMPIRE: Foundation plans to censor Ted Stevens’ legacy

July 21, 2015 — Sen. Ted Stevens was a towering figure.

So is his legacy.

Five thousand boxes, filled with his life’s work and stored in the basement of the University of Alaska Fairbanks library, catalogue that legacy. Unpacked, the papers within those boxes could form a column six feet wide and six feet long — and taller than the Juneau Federal Building.

Unfortunately, Stevens’ legacy now appears in jeopardy.

Earlier this month, historian, author and Alaska Dispatch News columnist Dermot Cole revealed that Stevens’ family and the Ted Stevens Foundation are pulling the senator’s records out of the university library. The records will be trucked to Anchorage, where they will be reviewed by archivists hired by the foundation. The foundation has said the papers will be available to the public some day. We don’t know when that day will be and what will be missing when that day comes.

Read the full editorial at the Juneau Empire

 

Lessons for Alaska: Oregon Shellfish Hatchery Tackles Ocean Acidification

July 13, 2015 — A recent NOAA study pegged 2040 as the date for the potential end of Alaskan shellfish hatcheries. That is, unless serious mitigation efforts are put in place to combat ocean acidification. Last week we reported on the research, done at the Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery in Seward. Now, we’ll take a look at what a hatchery on the Oregon coast is doing to deal with these harmful changes in ocean chemistry.

The Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery is located in the small town of Tillamook, Oregon.

“This hatchery was started by Lee Hanson,” says Sue Cudd, who owns the hatchery now. “It was really the first shellfish hatchery that was commercial in operation. It started in 1978.”

She studied biology in school, worked for an oyster company for a while, and then came on with Lee Hanson to learn about the hatchery world. From the 1970s until 2006, there were natural ups and downs, but overall, things ran relatively smoothly.

“Then all of a sudden, in about 2006, we started seeing some pretty major problems. Then from the end of 2007 to the end of 2008, we couldn’t produce larvae anymore,” says Cudd.

Inside the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery – Photo courtesy of ceoas.oregonstate.edu

For a year and a half, they tried to produce. Even when they did manage to get some larvae, they wouldn’t survive and develop. It was a financial nightmare for the business.

“We lose money really fast because the production cost is the same without having any production. So, it was tough,” says Cudd. “We got help from some customers. The oyster growers association [helped] and one of our state senators got us some community development money, so we had time to be able to try to solve this problem. Without that, I don’t know what would have happened because we just lost money so fast.”

Read the full story and listen to the audio at Alaska Public Media

 

Fisheries Board Member Cited for Fishing Three Minutes Past Closure

July 6, 2015 — A member of the Alaska Board of Fisheries was cited by wildlife troopers in the commercial fishing hotbed of Dillingham last week for continuing to fish in an area after it had been closed.

Frederick “Fritz” Johnson was fishing for salmon using a drift gillnet with Gust McCarr, his fishing partner of six years, when he was cited.

The two men thought fishing closed at 6:30 p.m., when the actual closure happened at 6 p.m., Johnson told Alaska Dispatch News on Monday. They noticed an Alaska Wildlife Troopers plane circling overhead shortly after 6.

“We were attracting a lot of attention and weren’t sure why,” Johnson said. “It turns out we were three minutes over.”

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

 

Bristol Bay Sockeye Run Either Late or Over-estimated: Stay Tuned

SEAFOODNEWS.COM By Peggy Parker — July 6, 2015 — All eyes are on Bristol Bay today as fishermen and processors look for a surge in sockeye landings marking the peak of the run today or at the latest, tomorrow. That peak did not come on the traditional day of July 4.

Cumulative landings as of yesterday totaled 8.5 million fish, short by more than half for this time in a six-week season with a forecast of 37.6 million reds.

That means the run is either late, will come in this week in a compressed fashion, or was significantly over estimated. Over the weekend some processors said the travel time from Port Moller, which is still showing a strong return, is longer than anticipated and the bulk of the run may be as much as 4-5 days late.

If so, today and tomorrow’s landings will be critical indicators.

The implications of a drastically reduced run will have impacts throughout the world’s salmon markets, as Bristol Bay is the largest supplier of wild salmon in the world.

Dr. Scott Raborn of the Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute studies the Port Moller test fishery, used as a precursor to Bristol Bay return sizes and timing.

“The migration this year has been very odd,” Raborn reports. “By now, the run will have to be (1) several days late to come in at the pre-season forecast and/or (2) be very compressed.

“The first possibility would mean our estimates of travel times [from Port Moller to each Bristol Bay river system] are 3-4 days longer than we thought, and/or there is considerable strength left at Port Moller. The second could occur if fish are milling outside the districts causing a pooling effect. The rate of compression would be determined by how long it takes to “drain the pool”, which would be anyone’s guess,” Raborn says.

“However, at this point we must consider the possibility of a smaller run,” he adds.

Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game ordered openings in the three largest districts for this morning and afternoon.

The first began at 2 a.m. for Egigik setnetters, an eight-hour opening followed by a second eight-hour opening from 3:15 – 11:15 p.m. Gillnetters began fishing at 6 a.m. today, closing at 10 a.m. and opening again from 3:30 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. today.

Total harvest in Egigik has been 2.8 million fish with escapement at 834,000 sockeye, just above the lower forecasted range. Forecasted total harvest for that river system is 10.64 million sockeyes with 1.4 million escapement.

The second district to fish today is Ugashik, a 10-hour period from 12:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Cumulative harvest is 930,000 fish in the Ugashik District with escapement at 250,000, just over 25% of expected escapement of 940,000. Forecasted harvest for Ugashik this year was 2.61 million sockeyes.

Finally, The Naknek-Kvichak District will open for a 4-hour period from 4 p.m. until 8 p.m.

Pre-season forecasts for the Naknek/Kvichak district was 18.03 million sockeyes with an escapement of 9.71 million. Cumulative totals as of July 4 are 1.94 million sockeye harvest and 1.28 million reds escapement.

ADF&G will make another announcement at noon Alaska time today regarding the Egegik and Ugashik districts, and a 3 p.m. announcement on the Naknek/Kvichak fishery.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

Commercial Fisheries Generate $1.2 Billion to South Central Alaska Economy

SEAFOODNEWS.COM By Peggy Parker — June 24, 2015 — A landmark study released earlier this month calculates the economic impact from commercial fisheries in Alaska’s central coast, including Anchorage west to Homer and east to Cordova.

Key findings in the “The Economic Impact of the Seafood Industry in Southcentral Alaska” by the McDowell Group show that commercial seafood generated $1.2 billion in total economic output in the region. This figure includes $685 million in first wholesale value of seafood products and $501 million in gross value added to the region through secondary impacts.

Nearly 11,000 direct jobs were created in the area by the seafood industry in 2013, including resident commercial fishermen and processing workers, hatchery employees, and commercial fishery management staff.

In addition, the industry draws more than 1,000 fishermen from outside the Southcentral region who participated in the area fisheries in 2013.

Labor income generated by the seafood industry contributed $411 million to this area’s economy. That includes an estimated $247 million in direct labor income plus an additional $164 million in multiplier impacts.

The Alaska Salmon Alliance (ASA) commissioned the McDowell Group to examine how Southcentral communities, and the region as a whole, benefit from Alaska’s seafood industry.

“Southcentral is a well-known hub for oil, gas, and tourism. The region also plays a critical role in maximizing the value of commercial fishery resources,” said Paul Dale, ASA Board of Directors president. “This report clearly documents the importance of the seafood industry in Southcentral Alaska’s regional and local economies.”

The 100-page report documents inputs to local economies in Cordova, Homer, and the Kenai region, where each received more than $50 million in total annual labor income. More than 1,000 full-time equivalent jobs in each community/area are linked to the seafood industry.

Major processors are expanding in Valdez; Seward is adding new capacity to service large vessels; and Whittier, in addition to hosting a processing plant, is a key part of the region’s transportation network. Over 100 million pounds of seafood products passed through Whittier in 2013 destined for Anchorage port facilities or Lower 48
markets.

Southcentral was home to 2,168 active commercial permit holders in 2013, each acting as a small business and having the same impact in the economy as other independent locally-owned businesses. The region has 35 primary seafood processing plants and three non-profit salmon hatchery associations.

Salmon is the foundation of the region’s seafood industry, accounting for 85 percent of total first wholesale value produced in Southcentral.

Commercial fisheries in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound accounted for the majority (57 percent) of gross fishing earnings, but Southcentral residents also have a significant presence in commercial fisheries outside the region.

Commercial fisheries create hundreds of millions of pounds of backhaul for cargo carriers. This backhaul lowers the cost of living for all Southcentral residents by offsetting northbound freight rates. It is conservatively estimated that seafood backhaul saves Southcentral households at least $70 per year.

ASA is a trade organization comprised of regional seafood processors and commercial fishermen with the mission of promoting science-based salmon management and policies in order to preserve the long-term opportunities for all salmon user groups in Cook Inlet.

A copy of the full report and additional information about ASA is available online: http://www.aksalmonalliance.org [2].

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

Citing an “Issue of Fairness” Alaska Governor Walker Contacts MSC on Salmon Certification

SEAFOODNEWS.COM By Peggy Parker — June 25, 2015 — Alaska’s Governor Walker urged “fairness” from the Marine Stewardship Council in the certification of Alaska salmon, in a letter sent to MSC executive Rupert Howes.

“It is my understanding that the mediation attempt by the parties has failed,” Walker wrote, “and few options remain. The commercial harvest of Alaska salmon is well underway, adding a sense of urgency.

“It is extremely difficult for the State to apply financial resources, working with the assessment team, and a compliance audit team, if the resulting certificate is denied to 75 percent or more of the resulting participants.

“This is an issue of fairness for fishermen and coastal communities in Alaska, even for Alaska herself.”

Howes responded on June 18, characterizing the problem, as the non-profit group has in the past, as “a  commercial negotiation between the two parties.”

The current client for MSC’s Alaska Salmon Certification is the Alaska Seafood Processors Association, a group that includes half a dozen processors. They have refused to allow other processors — group of 20 Alaskan salmon processors, including legacy companies that have been at the forefront of Alaska salmon processing and marketing for fifty years — to join their certificate, even refusing a generous offer to cover fees from previous years. At this point, ASPA violated the MSC guidelines, which require that other groups may join if they agree to share costs. The issue went to mediation with no movement from ASPA to comply with MSC’s guidelines.

Howes now says binding arbitration may be the only answer. “…MCS’s board believes that the only workable solution is time bound, binding arbitration. Both parties expressed their confidence and trust in their mutually selected mediator, Lou Peterson…. [we] urge both parties to consider requesting Lou Peterson to complete this assignment as an arbitrator.”

Lou Peterson, a partner with Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson Law Offices in Seattle, often serves as a mediator, arbitrator, special master or judge pro tem in cases covering a wide variety of industries.

Walker addressed the possibility of the larger processor group forming a second client group, which would require a full (and redundant) certification process. That process requires massive time and effort of Alaska state fisheries managers, who are now intensely involved with in-season management of the state’s salmon fishery. This year is expected to be one of the highest returns in recent years.

“If the current situation is not resolved, it is my understanding that the parties seeking entry into the the Alaska Salmon Certification will likely form a second client group,” Walker wrote. “From the State’s perspective, this is unacceptable, as it will mean that we will have two individual processes to oversee for the same fishery in a time of severe fiscal restraints.”

Given the onset of the state’s largest salmon return begining in Bristol Bay in the coming weeks, a resolution of some sort is likely before July.

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