Saving Seafood

‘Environmental Nightmare’ After Thousands Of Atlantic Salmon Escape Fish Farm

August 24, 2017 — Commercial fishing boats are scrambling to catch as many Atlantic salmon as they can after a net pen broke near Washington’s Cypress Island. Fishers reported thousands of the non-native fish jumping in the water or washing ashore.

A fish farm’s net pen failed Saturday afternoon when an anchor pulled loose and metal walkways twisted about. Onlookers said it looked like hurricane debris.

The pen, in the state’s northwestern San Juan Islands, contained about 305,000 Atlantic salmon. Now, owner Cooke Aquaculture and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife are trying to determine how many escaped.

Kurt Beardslee, the director of the Wild Fish Conservancy Northwest, called the escape an “environmental nightmare.”

Department officials blamed the structure failure on high tides caused by the eclipse — but that explanation is being questioned because tidal waters had been higher in July.

“Our understanding is with the solar eclipse came some pretty severe tidal exchanges, and within the San Juan Islands themselves, those currents are pretty strong at times,” Ron Warren, the department’s assistant director, told KUOW’s The Record.

A statement on Cooke Aquaculture’s website said that “exceptionally high tides and currents coinciding with this week’s solar eclipse” caused the damage.

Read the full story at New England Public Radio

How Ocean Aquaculture Could Feed the Entire World – and Save Wild Fish

Marine researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, mapped out the potential of the open ocean to support farmed fish and came to some surprising conclusions.

August 21, 2017 — About five out of every six fisheries worldwide has reached or passed the limit of what it can sustainably produce, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Drought, dams, agricultural runoff and other pressures have depleted wild salmon populations in the Eastern Pacific, while on the east coast of North America, wild Atlantic salmon exists mainly in the memories of the Greatest Generation. Bluefin tuna, the preferred delicacy of the world’s finest sushi chefs, is at 2.7 percent of its historical population – about the same as the Bengal tiger.

Meanwhile, seafood farmed in coastal regions has been infected with sea lice, pollutes neighboring ecosystems with waste, sometimes produces fewer nutrients than are fed into the system, often destroys carbon-sequestering mangroves and can require large amounts of antibiotics to stave off disease.

But according to a new study from the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, aquaculture could feed a global population expected to grow to nearly 10 billion by 2050. Lead author Rebecca Gentry, a newly minted PhD in marine ecology, and her colleagues wrote that the open ocean “is largely untapped as a farming resource,” representing “an immense opportunity for food production.” In the study published August 14 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, they found that the entire world’s current output of wild-caught seafood could be farmed in areas that in total would comprise just 0.015 percent of the ocean’s surface area, if grouped together in a way that the authors note would not be realistic or recommended. That’s the equivalent to the size of Lake Michigan.

“People assume the oceans are big but no one had quantified it,” Gentry said. “There’s not that much broad-scale ecological research on marine aquaculture, so we needed a base of information to get an idea of where we can do it.”

Read the full story at Aquaculture Magazine

NOAA Fisheries Announces Initiation of Atlantic Salmon Status Review

July 7, 2017 — NOAA Fisheries is initiating a five-year review of the Gulf of Maine distinct population segment of Atlantic Salmon, as required by the Endangered Species Act.

The Gulf of Maine DPS of Atlantic Salmon is listed as endangered by NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

In a five-year review, NOAA evaluates the best scientific and commercial data available to review the current status of listed species.

They will use the reviews to ensure that listing classifications are accurate.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Celebrating Efforts to Restore Endangered Atlantic Salmon

June 22, 2017 — The following was released by NOAA:

On a bright June evening, a group of people who care passionately about the plight of Atlantic salmon gathered at the Veazie Salmon Club on the banks of the Penobscot River.

Researchers, academics, fisheries managers, non-governmental organizations, and members of the local salmon club came together to recognize the hard work that has gone into restoring the Penobscot River’s habitat for sea-run fish. The Penobscot River Restoration Project removed two dams and improved passage around two others. As a result, critically endangered Atlantic salmon, as well as river herring, shad, American eel, and other sea-run fish have improved access to hundreds of miles of their historic habitat.

“Rivers like the Penobscot are where we make fish. Sea-run fish are indicators of the health of our estuaries, our groundfish stocks, and our communities,” said John Bullard, regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region, who was there to present the awards. “It’s amazing to hear about the signs of ecosystem recovery that we are seeing. While we haven’t seen strong returns of Atlantic salmon yet, the results of the restoration project for other sea-run fish are encouraging. To go from fewer than 3,000 river herring in 2013 to more than 1.2 million returns in 2016 is awe-inspiring.”

The evening’s festivities included recognition of the efforts of two individuals, Claude Westfall and Andy Goode, who have been instrumental in helping to restore this population of endangered fish. 

Read the full release here

2016 fishing review highlights monitors —human and electronic

April 24, 2017 — NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Office released its annual year in review for 2016 and nowhere does it mention the ever-churning debate over Gulf of Maine cod and the yawning divide between scientists’ data and the primary-source observations of fishermen.

For the most part, the report is a four-color chronicle of what officials at Gloucester-based GARFO — which manages the nation’s federal fisheries from the Gulf of Maine south to Cape Hatteras and west to the Great Lakes — consider the agency’s most tangible accomplishments in 2016.

Still, the review gives some insight into some of the agency’s management priorities and policy areas where it may marshal its resources in the future.

It specifically mentions the office’s work in drafting a recovery plan for endangered Atlantic salmon and a five-year action plan for the species. It highlights its work with commercial groundfishermen — many of them from Gloucester — on potential changes to the small-mesh whiting fishery.

The report also highlights the agency’s transfer of the cost of of at-sea monitoring to permit holders.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

NOAA Fisheries Announces Funding Opportunity for Atlantic Salmon and Their Ecosystems

April 21, 2017 — The following was released by NOAA:

NOAA Fisheries announces a federal funding opportunity  to promote recovery actions and support engagement activities for critically endangered Atlantic salmon and their ecosystems.The typical funding awards will range from $50,000 to $300,000.

The application deadline is Friday, May 19, 2017.

We are seeking project proposals that will support:

  • International Year of the Salmon, including the development and implementation of new education/outreach and engagement tools such as interactive displays, exhibits, kiosks, etc., or activities highlighting the biology, status, and threats faced by Atlantic salmon and their ecosystems.

We anticipate that the funding would not exceed $600,000 and is contingent on FY 2017 Federal appropriations. There is no match requirement.

Questions? Contact Julie Crocker at julie.crocker@noaa.gov or 978-282-8480.

Researchers help salmon farmers confront threat to their industry

February 3, 2017 — It’s a mystery that has puzzled University of Maine assistant professor of marine biology and aquaculture Heather Hamlin and the salmon farming industry in New England: the decline in egg survival.

The survival rate of fertilized salmon eggs had been as high as 80 percent. But beginning in 2000, salmon embryos began dying in large numbers and the average survival rate fell to around 50 percent.

Previous studies have shown that a range of factors can negatively impact egg quality and production, including nutrition, stress, temperature and the endocrine status of the female. Until recently, businesses such as New Brunswick-based Cooke Aquaculture, which runs farming operations at several sites in Maine, knew little about why some of its eggs were dying and others were surviving, despite having come from same strain females, cultured under similar conditions.

Now a UMaine study has found that two hormones may play significant roles in achieving an 80 percent embryo survival rate. Hamlin and LeeAnne Thayer, a UMaine Ph.D. candidate in marine sciences, wrote about their findings in the journal Aquaculture Research.

Read the full story at Phys.org

MASSACHUSETTS: Fish column debuts

January 16, 2017 — There’s a whole, wide world of fishing and maritime stories taking place outside the realm of Cape Ann and New England, stuff that doesn’t necessarily merit full stories here in the Gloucester Daily Times, but still is worth knowing.

And that brings us to FishOn, a new weekly roundup column that will feature fishing-related briefs and items from around the globe, as well as serving as a forum for advancing important public meetings and events related to commercial and recreational fishing.

The column is scheduled to run in print and online on Mondays and public submissions are welcome. The column is strictly for the purposes of entertainment and information. So, no wagering.

Slow down, enjoy the spawning

You think it’s easy being a salmon? Think it’s all just swimming around, searching for a little nosh and nookie? Well, think again.

In a study produced at Sweden’s Umea University, researchers claim that human anti-depressants that make their way into salmon habitats are having a debilitating effect on young Atlantic salmon.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MAINE: Taking Down Dams and Letting the Fish Flow

October 24, 2016 — BANGOR, Maine — Joseph Zydlewski, a research biologist with the Maine Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit of the United States Geological Survey, drifted in a boat on the Penobscot River, listening to a crackling radio receiver. The staccato clicks told him that one of the shad that his team had outfitted with a transmitter was swimming somewhere below.

Shad, alewives, blueback herring and other migratory fish once were plentiful on the Penobscot. “Seven thousand shad and one hundred barrels of alewives were taken at one haul of the seine,” in May 1827, according to one historian.

Three enormous dams erected in the Penobscot, starting in the 1830s, changed all that, preventing migratory fish from reaching their breeding grounds. The populations all but collapsed.

But two of the dams were razed in 2012 and 2013, and since then, fish have been rushing back into the Penobscot, Maine’s largest river.

“Now all of a sudden you are pulling the cork plug and giving shad access to a truckload of good habitat,” Dr. Zydlewski said. Nearly 8,000 shad have swum upstream this year — and it’s not just shad.

More than 500 Atlantic salmon have made the trip, along with nearly two million alewives, countless baby eels, thousands of mature sea lamprey and dozens of white perch and brook trout. Striped bass are feeding a dozen miles above Bangor in waters closed to them for more than a century.

Nationwide, dam removals are gaining traction. Four dams are slated for removal from the Klamath River alone in California and Oregon by 2020.

Just a few of these removals have occurred on such large rivers, which play an outsize role in coastal ecosystems. But the lessons are the same everywhere: Unplug the rivers, and the fish will return.

Read the full story at the New York Times

FDA finds Listeria in facility; fish company recalls salmon

September 27th, 2016 — A New York company is recalling an undisclosed amount of smoked salmon from retailers and restaurants because federal inspectors found Listeria monocytogenes at the company’s production facility.

Mt. Kisco Smokehouse of Mt. Kisco, NY, recalled two lots of whole Atlantic smoked salmon and four lots of sliced Atlantic salmon Monday, according to a notice posted by the Food and Drug Administration.

The company distributed the implicated fish to retailers and restaurants in two states, New York and Connecticut, between Sept. 6 and 16.

No illnesses had been reported in relation to the recalled fish as of Monday.

“The potential for contamination was noted after routine testing by the FDA inspection revealed the presence of Listeria monocytogenes in floor drains and cracks in the floor,” according to the recall notice.

“The production of the product has been suspended while FDA and the company continue to investigate the source of the problem.”

Read the full story at Food Safety News