Saving Seafood

MAINE: This Atlantic salmon has returned to the Penobscot more than once. Here’s why it’s special.

June 4, 2020 — Atlantic salmon are returning to the Penobscot River at a steady pace thus far. Fisheries staffers from the Maine Department of Marine Resources said the 176 salmon that have been counted thus far are the fifth most to have reached the counting facility by May 29 in the 42 years that salmon have been counted on the river.

Among those fish was a rarity: A male that was making a return trip to the river to spawn.

Jason Valliere, a fisheries resource scientist for the DMR’s Division of Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat, said not many salmon are able to head to the open ocean twice and return to the Penobscot successfully, and called the fish “extra special.”

“We previously captured this fish on June 10, 2018, when we tagged him and sent him to Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery [in Orland] as a brood fish to support the smolt stocking program, a program that he is a member of. He was stocked out as a smolt in 2016,” Valliere said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Conservation group removing barrier to salmon on Maine river

January 6, 2020 — A salmon conservation group plans to remove an old hydropower station straddling the Dennys River in Maine so more alewives and Atlantic salmon can make their way upstream into Meddybemps Lake.

The abandoned hydroelectric station, built in the 1940s, sits over an artificially narrowed bottleneck in the river in Washington County.

Work on removing the structure, which does not impound any water, is expected to begin Monday, the Bangor Daily News reported.

The project is expected to allow hundreds of thousands of alewives to repopulate the lake and to support a commercial alewife fishery in the river, as well as to help sustain the river’s ecosystem, according to the Downeast Salmon Federation.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

MAINE: Record number of Atlantic salmon eggs reported in Washington County river last year

January 6, 2020 — A record number of Atlantic salmon eggs were laid in the East Machias River last year, an indication that an eight-year effort to restore the endangered species in the river is paying off.

Biologists counted 61 redds, or nests that fish build for spawning, buried in several inches of river gravel spread between Crawford and East Machias. That’s six times the number of redds counted in the East Machias River since the Downeast Salmon Federation began tracking salmon egg nesting patterns there 20 years ago, said Dwayne Shaw, the federation’s executive director.

“This is just huge,” Shaw said. “A number like this hasn’t been seen in the river in decades.”

The federation counted 12 redds in 2016, four in 2017 and 10 in 2018. Over the past 20 years, the East Machias River on average has yielded about 10 redds a year.

With each redd containing about 4,000 eggs, the 61 redds are carrying about 240,000 eggs — enough, given the rigors of nature and the presence of predators, to produce about 2,000 salmon that will survive in the river over the next two years and become smolts, fish mature enough to go to sea, Shaw said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Global salmon production set to rise 6.5% in 2019, the highest increase since 2014

December 6, 2019 — Global production of farmed Atlantic salmon is expected to rise by around 6.5% this year, to approximately 2.6 million metric tons, which would be the highest year-on-year increase since 2014.

This was pointed out by a new report produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The bullish scenario could be offset, however, by a mounting challenge with sea lice in Chile, the report predicted.

For 2020, the FAO foresees Atlantic salmon supply to grow around 4–5% year-on-year, but it noted that the ability of the Chilean industry to bring the biological situation under control will be an important consideration.

In the longer-term, the inherent growth limitations of traditional open net-pen aquaculture will continue to drive the development of alternative regions and methods for salmon production, the FAO said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

MAINE: Nearly 1,200 Atlantic salmon returned to Penobscot this year

November 21, 2019 — When fish lifts in Milford and Orono closed for the season Nov. 13, the Maine Department of Marine Resources reported that a tentative total of 1,196 Atlantic salmon had been counted at those facilities this year — the largest number counted in eight years.

Jason Valliere, a marine resource scientist for the DMR’s Division of Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat, said that 1,152 salmon were captured at Milford and 44 were captured in Orono. The trap counts do not reflect the exact total of fish that returned to the river, he said, because some simply did not move into the fish lifts and avoided capture.

“Please note this is the estimated trap return to the Penobscot and not the final estimated return to the river,” Valliere said. “[Salmon] redd count data will be added this winter and the final estimate will be reported in the 2020 U.S. Salmon Assessment Committee Report.”

That report will be released early in 2020.

Salmon redds are depressions in the river bottom made by female salmon during the egg-laying process and serve as further evidence of actual spawning salmon.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

US launches investigation into Mowi price-fixing allegations

November 14, 2019 — Salmon farming giant Mowi has announced it is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice regarding allegations of price-fixing in Norway’s farmed Atlantic salmon market.

The move by the U.S. DOJ stems from an ongoing investigation by the European Commission into “concerns that the inspected companies may have violated E.U. antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices.” That investigation became public in February, when the E.C. carried out unannounced inspections at the premises of several Norwegian firms involved in the farmed Atlantic salmon sector in Europe.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maine Aquaculture Association’s Sebastian Belle forecasts bright future for industry in state

September 20, 2019 — In 2017, the governor of Washington State ordered all agencies to ban salmon farming in state waters after a net-pen failure at a Cooke Aquaculture-owned Atlantic salmon farm caused a fish escape into the surrounding Pacific.

That event in the Northwest became an obvious opportunity for the Northeastern U.S. state of Maine, which was once home to an Atlantic salmon fishery. While the wild fishery has been nonexistent for years due to wild populations of Atlantic salmon being deemed endangered in the state, aquaculture operations continue to see results.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Salmon Farmers Are Already Transparent About Escapes

September 13, 2019 — The following was released by the Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association:

Statements made this week by the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF) about the transparency of reporting farmed salmon escapes and the potential risks involved with escapes cannot go unchallenged.

Salmon farmers do not want to lose a single fish. Their fish are their livelihood. When escapes do happen, they are largely a result of extreme weather events. Occasionally escapes are due to equipment malfunction or human error when fish are being handled (i.e. harvesting, fish health inspections). Salmon farmers are already transparent about escapes. When escapes happen, New Brunswick salmon farming companies voluntarily report it to the provincial regulator, who in turn notifies numerous groups, including the ASF, that are members of the NB Aquaculture Containment Liaison Committee. Other members include the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the NB Department of Agriculture, Aquaculture and Fisheries, salmon producers, the NB Conservation Council and the NB Salmon Council. The NB Aquaculture Containment Liaison Committee communicates regularly. This week, the group discussed adding other groups on a case-by-case basis that may wish to be informed of an escape for a specific reason.

ASF spokesperson Neville Crabbe stated in the media this week that: “When you have spawning that’s occurring between aquaculture escapees and wild fish, you are wiping away potentially 10,000 years of evolution in a single spawning event.”

We reject that hyperbole. ASF knows full well that farmed salmon are very poorly suited to survival in the wild or reproductive success. Fearmongering about potential evolutionary disaster after a small escape does a disservice to the collaborative efforts between salmon farmers and the members of the NB Aquaculture Containment Liaison Committee. Mr. Crabbe’s comments also conveniently ignore any potential impacts of over 100 years of Atlantic salmon enhancement efforts, including ASF’s own sea ranching project in the 1970s and 80s that saw large releases of a variety of salmon strains into rivers and estuaries.

Salmon farming began – with ASF as a partner – as a way to address the decline of the commercial and recreational fishery for Atlantic salmon. Salmon farming is a responsible, sustainable and innovative means to provide adequate food supply to meet the world’s population growth while helping to reduce the pressure on wild fish stocks. Our farming practices and technology continue to evolve. Fish containment will always be a top priority as will our wild salmon conservation and enhancement efforts. Farmers work with a wide variety of partners, including First Nations, as part of the innovative Fundy Salmon Recovery project that is now seeing inner Bay of Fundy salmon return to one river in Fundy National Park in unprecedented numbers. (fundysalmonrecovery.com)

The Last Presidential Salmon

August 7, 2019 — For almost a century, the first Atlantic salmon caught each season was delivered to the President of the United States. The first of these fish, an eleven-pound silver, was sent by Karl Andersen, a Norwegian house painter in Bangor, Maine, to President William Howard Taft, in 1912. Andersen had caught the fish in the Penobscot River, on April 1st, when the water would have been flush with ice, and cold enough to numb his legs. He used a pliant bamboo rod, and sent the fish as a gift from Bangor; he hoped it would “contribute to the city’s need of honor and respect.” (His bet didn’t pay off: Bangor is now best known as the model for Stephen King’s Derry—a fictional town populated by cannibalistic clowns and reanimated zombie pets.) On April 12th, he packed the salmon with straw and ice and placed it on an overnight train to the capital. Taft ate it poached whole, with cream sauce and a garnish of parsley.

The Penobscot River had long been famous for its salmon runs. But by the time Andersen landed his fish the salmon population was already in freefall. Hundreds of dams were installed on New England’s rivers during the industrial revolution, presenting unnavigable walls for the migratory fish. As early as the nineteenth century, the Penobscot begged the governor of Maine to address the falling salmon numbers, but the condition of the waterways only worsened. Kenduskeag Stream, which in the language of the local Penobscot Nation means “eel weir place,” runs through Bangor and into the river. It was also the site of some particularly questionable, and illustrative, environmental practices. A 1960 report by the city’s health department claimed that Bangor was using “the same sewage treatment facilities as that given to the crewmen of Samuel de Champlain’s ship in 1604.” It described “sewage solids” accumulating on the Kenduskeag’s banks, children and animals playing in a mixture of feces and “thick green scum,” and, strangest of all, a city program that drew water from a particularly sewage-heavy section and sprayed it on I-95—apparently in an effort to control dust.

Read the full story at The New Yorker

MAINE: Penobscot salmon returns top 1,000 for the first time since 2011

July 23, 2019 — River-watchers had a reason to celebrate last week as the unofficial total of returning Atlantic salmon reached 1,000 for the first time in eight years.

As of July 14, that total stood at 1,059, according to Jason Valliere, Marine Resources scientist for the Maine Department of Marine Resources’ Division of Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat.

Only 671 salmon were counted at the Milford Dam fish lift a year ago. The last time more than 1,000 fish were documented as returning to the Penobscot River was in 2011, when 2,915 fish were counted at the Veazie Dam, which has since been removed from the river.

Atlantic salmon are listed as “endangered” under the federal Endangered Species Act in all Maine rivers, and fishing for them is not allowed.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News