Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska Bycatch Review Task Force final report: more rules and research are needed

December 14, 2022 — Created in 2021 to review bycatch issues impacting salmon, crab and halibut in Alaska, the Alaska Bycatch Review Task Force delivered its final report to Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy in December.

“It’s imperative that the state’s fisheries are managed in a way that ensures their success for future generations,” said Dunleavy when the Alaska Bycatch Review Task Force was formed in November 2021 to help better understand unintended bycatch of high value fishery resources in State and federal waters.

The final report is now published, and it recommends, among many other things, the introduction of measures as the firm cap of chum salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery and 10 percent observer coverage, for a period of three years, on non-pelagic trawl vessels in the Gulf of Alaska.

Read the full Article the National Fisherman

With hope and frustration, Bristol Bay awaits the EPA’s final verdict on Pebble

December 14, 2022 — The Environmental Protection Agency has recommended a ban on mining activities in the area around the Pebble deposit. People across Bristol Bay are now waiting for a final decision on the future of the controversial copper and gold prospect.

“I think it sends a real strong message that the science is there; that it’s going to have unacceptable adverse effects on our watershed,” said Gayla Hoseth, the second chief of the Curyung Tribal Council and the natural resources director for the Bristol Bay Native Association.

Hoseth welcomes the move. She said those opposed to the mine have wanted this decision for a long time.

The EPA wants to prohibit the discharge of mining materials in the North and South Fork Koktuli River watersheds, as proposed in Pebble’s permit application. The agency cites its authority under the Clean Water Act to do so. It would extend that prohibition to any future proposals to develop a mine at the Pebble deposit that could result in a similar loss of aquatic resources. The action would effectively kill the mine.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NOAA Fisheries seeking comments on plan for abundance-based management of halibut

December 12, 2022 — NOAA Fisheries is seeking public comment on a proposed rule that would implement Amendment 123 to the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) management area.

If approved, the proposed rule would put into place abundance-based management of Amendment 80 trawl sector prohibited species catch limit for Pacific halibut.

Amendment 80’s sector is a fleet of nearly 20 trawl catcher-processor vessels that target Pacific cod, Pacific Ocean perch, Atka mackerel, and Rock, Yellowfin, and Flathead, solely in the Bering Sea.

Read the full article at KINY

ALASKA: Alaska tribes join with Lower 48 allies to seek protections from impacts of Canadian mines

December 12, 2022 — A delegation of tribal representatives from Alaska, Washington state, Montana and Idaho traveled to Washington, D.C., this week for meetings on Wednesday that pushed for action to regulate downstream effects of mines in British Columbia.

The meetings Tuesday and Wednesday were with Biden administration officials and officials at the Canadian embassy, said a statement from the National Wildlife Federation.

Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson, president of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, has a representative attending the meetings.

Read the full article at KINY

ALASKA: Alaska task force’s final report calls for new rules and more research to address seafood bycatch

December 12, 2022 — New controls on how fish are commercially harvested and more research to understand the effects of climate change in the ocean and in freshwater spawning grounds are some of the key recommendations of an Alaska task force examining ways to address bycatch, the term for capture of untargeted species in commercial seafood harvests.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who created the task force a year ago, released the group’s final report late Thursday.

“I look forward to working with task force members and stakeholders to do everything we can to get more fish to return to Alaska’s waters,” Dunleavy said in a statement.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Pacific Halibut Fishery Closes; Commercial Catches Come Up Short

December 10, 2022 — The Pacific halibut fishery closed Wednesday (Dec. 7) after nine months of fishing.

The overall halibut removals came up just 7% short of the 2022 catch limit of  42.4 million pounds, an increase of 5% over the previous year.

That includes takes by commercial, sport, subsistence users and as bycatch in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California and Alaska.

Alaska’s commercial halibut fishery produced nearly 19.3 million pounds, 10% under the Alaska catch limit.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

Northline Seafoods CEO Ben Blakey floats new business model for Alaska seafood processing

December 5, 2022 — Ben Blakey is the CEO of Sitka, Alaska, U.S.A.-based Northline Seafoods, which announced on 30 November, 2022, it is planning to build a floating salmon-processing platform to operate in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

SeafoodSource: What is your background in the seafood industry and why did you pursue this project?

Blakey: I grew up working in Bristol Bay. My family had a processor, Snowpack Products, that operated from the early 1980s until it was sold to Icicle [Seafoods] in 2012. So basically, since I could walk, I’ve been involved in Alaska’s fishing industry. I grew up from mending nets to buying and operating fishing boats. I’ve worked in fleet management. Then I did some work in processing. My life’s work has been in Bristol Bay’s fishing industry.

SeafoodSource: How does Northine Seafoods’ new vessel, the Hannah, fit into Bristol Bay’s salmon supply chain?

Blakey: It’s a floating fish-processing platform, primarily focused on quickly freezing the fish. We won’t do any value-added processing in Bristol Bay, we will just buy fish from fishermen and take fish from tenders and then we’ll freeze them immediately in whole, round form. We’re not heading or gutting them, we’re just trying to stabilize them as quickly as possible, so that when they are thawed out that they’re in as fresh of a state as possible. What that means is we’re going to have a smaller labor footprint. We will be able to do 750,000 to a million pounds of fish a day with 23 people working on the floor. So it will be extremely efficient from a labor perspective. In addition, we won’t use standardized container transport. Currently, the vast majority of frozen salmon leaving Alaska end up in 40-foot frozen containers. We will instead just store them inside of our barge, which can carry north of 14 million pounds of frozen product. So those will be shipping costs that we don’t have to pay. Instead, we will just haul the entire barge south back to the Pacific Northwest after the salmon season, meaning the barge will act as a consolidated or integrated shipping option. We will store the fish on the vessel until we plan to have them processed or they go to market. With the barge acting effectively as a cold storage facility, that will mean there’s far less movement of the product – we won’t have to transport it on trucks through ports, forklift them around or tuck them into cold storage.

SeafoodSource: Are you going to be contracting with tenders or local fishermen?

Blakey: No, we will have our own dedicated fleet. And we will hire and utilize our own tenders to help serve the fleet and provide buying access.

SeafoodSource: With the uptick in fish being caught in Bristol Bay in recent years, is this additional storage and processing capacity necessary there?

Blakey: There is a need for it. Last year was an extremely large run, which saw an excess of capacity and an excess of what existing processors could freeze. But aside from the run size, there were issues with other parts of the supply chain, including a shortage of containers, and there’s been a shortage of cold storage nationwide, and trucking fees have gone up substantially since the start of the [Covid-19] pandemic.

Beyond there being a need for it, we are simplifying and making the supply chain more efficient. One major part of that will be our use of integrated ultra-low temperature facilities, freezing and story all of our products at negative 25 degrees Fahrenheit, which allows it to be extremely fresh when it’s thawed out and reprocessed in the lower 48 [U.S. states]

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Alaska governor threatens to sue Biden EPA over state land development halt

December 6, 2022 — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy says he’s prepared to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency if it blocks the development of over 300 miles of Alaska-owned land.

EPA Region 10, which covers Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and hundreds of Tribal Nations, recommended the agency finalize its decision to prohibit development of the Pebble deposit in the Bristol Bay area, the governor said. The EPA has 60 days to make a final determination.

The governor said he was concerned it could set a “dangerous” precedent by laying the foundation that unelected officials could stop the state from doing development projects in areas with wetlands and fish-bearing streams.

Read the full article at The Center Square

The EPA is now one step away from a veto that would ban Pebble mine

December 6, 2022 — Federal regulators are one step away from action that would protect the Bristol Bay watershed and crush the dreams of those who want to see a mine developed to extract ore from the massive Pebble deposit in Southwest Alaska.

Casey Sixkiller, the Region 10 administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, on Thursday announced he sent a recommendation to EPA headquarters to protect the area by vetoing the proposed mine.

“If affirmed by EPA’s Office of Water during the fourth and final step, this action would help protect salmon fishery areas that support world-class commercial and recreational fisheries, and that have sustained Alaska Native communities for thousands of years, supporting a subsistence-based way of life for one of the last intact wild salmon-based cultures in the world,” he said in a written statement announcing the action.

The announcement is the latest in a long string of setbacks for the Canadian-owned company that wants to mine gold and copper from the Pebble deposit.

Read the full article at KTOO

EPA proposes restrictions to block proposed Alaska mine

December 3, 2022 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday proposed restrictions that would block plans for a copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region that is home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon run.

A statement from the regional EPA office said discharges of dredged or fill material into the waters of the U.S. within the proposed Pebble Mine footprint in southwest Alaska would “result in unacceptable adverse effects on salmon fishery areas.”

“This action would help protect salmon fishery areas that support world-class commercial and recreational fisheries, and that have sustained Alaska Native communities for thousands of years, supporting a subsistence-based way of life for one of the last intact wild salmon-based cultures in the world,” regional EPA administrator Casey Sixkiller said in a statement.

Read the full at the Associated Press