Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Mariculture industry has vast potential

August 21, 2018 — As Gov. Bill Walker prepares to sign a bill this week enacting the Alaska Mariculture Development Plan, 16 new applicants hope to soon begin growing shellfish and seaweed businesses in just more than 417 acres of tideland areas in Alaska.

The new growers will add to the 35 farms and six hatchery/nurseries that already are producing a mix of oysters, clams, mussels and various seaweeds. Eventually, sea cucumbers, scallops, giant geoduck clams and algae for biofuels will be added into the mix.

Most of the mariculture requests in Alaska are located in Southeast and Southcentral regions and range in size from 0.02 acres at Halibut Cove to 292 acres for two sites at Craig.

Data from the state Department of Natural Resources show that two farms have applied at Kodiak totaling nearly 37 acres, and one Sitka applicant has plans for a 15-acre plot. Other communities getting into the mariculture act include Seldovia, Port Chatham, Juneau, Naukati, Cordova, Ketchikan and Gustavus.

In 2017, Alaskan farms produced 11,456 pounds of clams, 1,678 pounds of mussels, 16,570 pounds of seaweeds and 1.8 million oysters.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Alaska seafood industry braces for China tariff pain

August 15, 2018 — Alaska fishermen are used to coping with fickle weather and wild ocean waves. Now they face a new challenge: the United States’ trade war with China, which buys $1 billion in Alaskan fish annually, making it the state’s top seafood export market.

Beijing, in response to the Trump administration’s move to implement extra levies on Chinese goods, last month imposed a 25 percent tariff on Pacific Northwest seafood, including Alaskan fish, in a tit-for-tat that has engulfed the world’s two largest countries in a trade war.

The results could be “devastating” to Alaska’s seafood industry, the state’s biggest private-sector employer, said Frances Leach, executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska, the state’s largest commercial fishing trade group.

“This isn’t an easily replaced market,” she said. If the tariff war continues, she said, “What’s going to happen is China is just going to stop buying Alaska fish.”

For Alaska’s seafood industry, the timing could not be worse. The state has worked for years to attract the Chinese market, and just two months ago, Governor Bill Walker led a week-long trade mission to China in which the seafood industry was heavily represented.

Read the full story at Reuters

Alaska’s Pebble Mine Project Review Proceeds Over Governor Walker’s Doubts

July 30, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS, JUNEAU, Alaska — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is proceeding with an environmental review of a proposed copper and gold mine located near a major salmon fishery in Alaska, despite a request from the state’s governor that the review be halted.

Gov. Bill Walker, in a letter co-signed by Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott last month, said the company behind the proposed Pebble Mine had yet to show that the project is feasible or realistic. They argued that, at a minimum, a preliminary economic assessment should be conducted to help inform the corps’ work.

But Shane McCoy, the corps’ program manager for the Pebble review, told reporters Thursday that an economic analysis is not required for the corps to do its work.

There are limited situations in which a review would be halted, including cases in which an applicant itself asks to stop, or if an applicant fails to provide the corps requested information, McCoy said. Walker’s request was not one that the corps could grant under its rules, he said.

The Pebble Limited Partnership, which wants to develop the Pebble Mine, has given no indication that it wants to suspend the process, McCoy said.

The corps’ position was explained to Walker directly by the commander of the Alaska district, Col. Michael Brooks, he said. Austin Baird, a spokesman for Walker, confirmed that Brooks and Walker spoke and Brooks indicated that he “would not honor the governor’s request.”

Tom Collier, CEO of the Pebble partnership, last month said the company believes it can “successfully and responsibly” operate the mine. “This is what the Corps will evaluate and we can either meet this expectation or we cannot,” he said in a statement.

Collier called Walker’s request to suspend the review a stall tactic.

The Pebble project is located in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region. Bristol Bay produces about half of the world’s sockeye salmon.

Debate over the project has been politically charged, with critics contending it is the wrong place for a mine and supporters urging the project be vetted through the permitting and review process.

In a statement earlier this year, Walker, an independent, said the Bristol Bay region “has sustained generations and must continue to do so in perpetuity.”

Baird said Thursday that Walker “continues to believe that the Bristol Bay watershed is unique” and that the proposed mine “must be held to an extraordinarily high standard.”

Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who chairs the Senate energy committee, has said she expects “a fair, rigorous and transparent process” that will help Alaskans understand “the impacts and risks, as well as the potential benefits associated with this project.”

The Pebble partnership is owned by Canada-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., which has been looking for a partner since Anglo American PLC announced it was pulling out in 2013.

First Quantum Minerals Ltd. was courted as a potential investor but backed away from the project in May.

The corps has no opinion on the financial status of the Pebble partnership, McCoy said.

This story is by the Associated Press and published by Seafood News. The full story is published here with permission.

 

‘This is worrisome,’ Murkowski on Chinese sanctions to Alaska seafood

July 3, 2018 — China is slated to impose a 25 percent tariff on U.S. seafood — including Alaska’s — by the end of this week, as part of increasingly heated trade negotiations between the two nations.

According to a recent report by the McDowell Group, seafood is Alaska’s second largest employer — with 41,200 jobs created by the $2.1 billion industry. China is the state’s largest trading partner.

“This is worrisome, we’ll work this through with the administration,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said of the sanctions, set to take effect on Friday, July 6.

Murkowski was in Anchorage Monday with U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, as part of his tour around the state.

While worried about seafood, Murkowski said she is encouraged that China isn’t going after natural gas. In April, Gov. Bill Walker’s administration hoped the state’s potential partnership with China on a natural gas pipeline project could protect the state in a national trade war. But this latest threat to seafood indicates that may not be the case.

“It does raise a question about how they view what Alaska has available in terms of trade,” Murkowski said.

While in Alaska this weekend, Acosta visited a fishery in King Salmon.

Read the full story at KTVA

ALASKA: Gov. Walker urges Army Corps to suspend environmental review process for Pebble

July 2, 2018 — Gov. Bill Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott on Friday asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to suspend the environmental review process for the proposed Pebble mine project, citing the “unique” environment of the Bristol Bay region.

Pebble Limited Partnership has proposed the copper and gold prospect for a site that straddles the Bristol Bay salmon fishery headwaters.

Bristol Bay is the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world. Without at least a preliminary economic assessment, Walker and Mallott said in the letter, the Army Corps would be “unable to take a hard look at all reasonable alternatives” in the draft environmental review.

“Given the unique characteristics of the region, the mine proposed by Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP) must be held to an extraordinarily high standard,” the letter said.

There are “too many unanswered questions” for the review to advance further, a statement from the governor’s office said Saturday afternoon.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Alaska won’t support Pebble Mine, unless it can prove ‘zero impact’

July 2, 2018 — Gov. Bill Walker wants to press pause on the controversial Pebble Mine project in Southwest, Alaska. Pebble is seeking federal permits on a smaller mine proposal, about half the size of the one it began pursuing more than a decade ago.

But in a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers on Friday, Walker urged suspension of a critical piece of that process — the environmental impact statement — calling for proof of a “feasible and realistic” project first.

“This is something that we’ve looked at very carefully, and we feel like even the project proponents are unsure of the size of this project,” said Andy Mack, Commissioner of the Alaska Dept. of Natural Resources. “It’s impossible at this point I think for an agency, we believe to really credibly understand what’s going on when just a month ago, the size of the project was actually changed. And it was made larger within the parameters of the scoping period which is designed to start talking about what the parameters of a project might be.”

Mack said the project would have to prove “zero impact” on the Bristol Bay Watershed in order to earn the administration’s support. The region is home to the most valuable wild salmon fishery in the world.

Read the full story at KTVA

Tariffs ding commercial fishing industry

June 27, 2018 — Fishermen and seafood harvesters may take a major trade hit with the announcement of new tariffs from China, though the details still aren’t clear.

The country announced new tariffs on a broad cross-section of American seafood products on June 15 in response to a U.S tariff hike on imported Chinese products. If the tariffs are approved, China will apply a 25 percent tax to items like Pacific salmon, cod, Alaska pollock, flatfish, crab, shellfish and other commonly exported seafoods.

China is a major trade partner for the Alaskan seafood industry. Processors regularly ship salmon that have been headed and gutted to China to finish the processing and packaging before being re-exported to the rest of the world. China is also a major consumer of seafood products within its borders, and a 25 percent tariff could push down imports.

It’s possible the tariffs won’t be implemented at all, or there may be exceptions, said Garrett Evridge, an economist with the McDowell Group.

“At this point, there’s a lot of outstanding information that we’re still trying to get our fingers on,” he said. “It’s actually unclear as to whether re-exported seafood is going to be excluded.”

According to an announcement from the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, multiple contacts in China have indicated that customs officials would exclude products intended for reprocessing and export.

“It is not yet clear how product entering China will be differentiated between export and domestic consumption upon entry or at what point a tariff and/or credit will be applied,” the June 22 announcement states. “This is a developing situation and ASMI will continue to provide updates as information becomes available.”

The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute has maintained a Chinese office in Hong Kong since 1997. On a recent trade mission to China, Gov. Bill Walker took several representatives of the seafood industry with him specifically to build relationships between Chinese and American companies for seafood trade.

Read the full story at the Peninsula Clarion

Years later, Alaska receives $56 million for salmon fishery disaster

June 22, 2018 — Almost two years after Gov. Bill Walker requested federal funding to counterbalance a devastating blow to Alaska salmon, the government answered, to the tune of over $56 million in disaster relief money.

As to who will actually be on the receiving end of that money, however, is not yet known.

That disaster was the 2016 Southest Alaska Pink Salmon Fishery, which came under average of more than 4 million salmon, racking up losses of an estimated threshold of 35 to 80 percent.

Back in 2016, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said that due to the salmon tanking and a 36 percent loss in total revenue, it allowed the National Marine Fisheries Service to consider disaster relief funding.

The full amount, $56,361,332 in disaster funding, will go to the affected fishermen and stakeholders. The money is taken from a $200 million pool in the budget nine fisheries disasters declared across the country and neighboring areas partially as a result of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

The last time Alaska got money for such disasters was back in 2014, when it took $20.8 million damaged by low Chinook salmon runs in the Yukon and other areas during 2012.

There still remains the question of who among those affected by the fishing disaster will actually get a share in the $56 million, and just how big that share will be.

Wednesday, Alaska’s delegation celebrated the news of that relief payout in a news release, saying, “These dollars are vital to Alaskans and their families who were hit hard by the 2016 pink salmon fishery disaster.”

Read the full story at KTUU

ALASKA: Cook Inlet salmon task force off to bumpy start

June 14, 2018 — The fisheries group established to try to defuse some of Cook Inlet’s salmon wars is off to an uncertain start.

Gov. Bill Walker issued Administrative Order 291 forming a Cook Inlet Salmon Task Force on June 4, meant to address some of the notoriously fraught salmon allocation political issues in the Cook Inlet region, the most densely populated area and heavily used fisheries in the state. However, the group had already met twice before the administrative order was issued, and at the last meeting, the group suspended meetings for the summer because of the busy fishing activities of the summer in Alaska.

A variety of people attended the initial May 9 meeting, noted as “work group members” in the notes published on Fish and Game’s website. Among them were multiple United Cook Inlet Drift Association members, commercial set gillnet fishermen, sportfishermen and representatives of the Mat-Su Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission. The 18 attendees were split up into three working groups to discuss fishery issues, according to the notes made by consulting firm Professional Growth Systems, which facilitated the meeting.

The mission statement and the membership aren’t pinned down yet, though, said Walker’s Press Secretary Austin Baird in an email.

“Formation of the task force has been postponed until after the fishing season to enable broad stakeholder participation. Exact dates have not yet been determined for meetings, and membership has not been finalized,” he said. “The task force itself will determine what observations or recommendations to make, and any suggestions will then go through more formal boards and advisory committee processes.”

Read the full story at the Peninsula Clarion

Alaska seafood industry hopes to triple exports to China after trade mission

June 7, 2018 — Seafood is Alaska’s largest commodity, and China is the state’s largest trading partner. In 2017, the Alaska Office of International Trade reports Alaska exported about a billion dollars worth of seafood to China, a figure Governor Bill Walker would like to triple.

“Nothing happens quick,” said Walker. “But I think as a goal, as we grow our seafood market opportunity, that’s something we sit down with the seafood processor and say ‘How do we grow this opportunity for increased exports out of Alaska?’ ”

Although increasing seafood exports to $3 billion might seem ambitious, Jeff Welbourn, Sr. Dir of China Business for Trident Seafood Corp., says an evolving Chinese economy could make it possible.

“China has been a manufacturing, reprocessing sector,” said Welbourn. “We’re kind of excited because we see opportunity for higher value products coming into this market.”

Those higher value products include black cod, halibut and sockeye salmon. In the past, byproduct and headed and gutted fish sold to China included items like wild Alaskan pollock and pink salmon.

“All these products here for reprocessing to a consumer market has been the real prize,” said Welbourn. “And it could triple in size pretty easily.”

In recent years, Welbourn says the Chinese consumer has moved away from lesser products. Today, they’re demanding more transparency and higher quality– a value added, premium market, which the Alaska seafood industry is poised to serve.

Read the full story at KTUU