Saving Seafood

On the Water in Alaska, Where Salmon Fishing Dreams Live On

April 19, 2021 — My camera lens is pressed against the window of the small floatplane as it flies below a thick ceiling of clouds. The mist clings to the hillsides of a temperate rainforest that descend steeply to the rocky coastline of southeast Alaska.

The plane banks, and a tiny village comes into view. A scattering of houses are built on stilts on the water’s edge. We circle and I see fishing boats tied up next to a large dock and a floating post office. The pilot throttles down and the pontoons skim across the glassy water inside the bay. We taxi to the public dock and I step out in front of the Point Baker general store.

Life along the Alaska coast is economically and culturally dependent on fishing. Each summer, millions of salmon — after maturing in the ocean — begin their journey back to the rivers in which they were spawned. Fishermen, along with whales, eagles and bears, share in the abundance.

Alaska is home to five species of Pacific salmon. These fish are anadromous; they begin their lives in freshwater rivers and lakes and eventually make their way down rivers and into the ocean. Depending on the species, salmon may spend between about one and seven years in the ocean before beginning their journey home to the freshwater where they were born.

The ability of salmon to find their way home is one of nature’s greatest miracles. Among other navigational aids, salmon can detect a single drop of water from its home stream mixed in 250 gallons of saltwater.

Read the full story at The New York Times

ALAKSA: Digitizing Quality Monitoring in Bristol Bay Enters its Second Year

April 16, 2021 — The following was released by the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association:

Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association (BBRSDA), Certified Quality Foods (dba Seafood Analytics) and Digital Observers are teaming up for a second year to provide digital quality monitoring for the 2021 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon season. In 2020, despite of COVID challenges that infiltrated the region, the monitoring program was successfully completed. Quality measurements from over 6,000 sockeye salmon, off 200 boats, were taken by Digital Observers on five tenders through-out Bristol Bay. The Certified Quality Foods (CQF) cloud-based business intelligence platform analyzed the data and allowed for key takeaways around trendlines, comparisons between regions, seasons, boats, tenders etc. Generic reports were shared with leading industry professionals, while a detailed report with individual boat and tender names is available to the customer. A generic example of one of the reports can be seen here (https://mkcox.clicdata.com/b/bbrsdageneric).

Having a robust amount of data from the 2020 Bristol Bay sockeye season provides a valuable baseline for comparison of salmon quality and salmon fat content harvested each year.

During the 2021 fishing season, Quality Control technicians working on 15 tenders across Bristol Bay will measure the quality of salmon at the point of delivery using the noninvasive ‘Certified Quality Reader,’ a device that uses electrical currents to measure cell degradation of the salmon. It is a fast and objective way to measure the freshness of salmon that accounts for more than just temperature.

2021 is going to be a great year. The program is tripling its measurement capacity, and expanding from paper entry to digitized apps so other metrics such as odor, visual, temperature and whether the fish has been bled can be tracked in conjunction with quality measures. For an example of how a digital datasheet is used click here (https://youtu.be/rAQC0VZ1IEg).

Read the full release here

Investors call on EPA, Congress for ban on development in Alaska’s Bristol Bay

April 8, 2021 — On Wednesday, 50 investors representing $105 billion sent a letter calling for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Congress to permanently protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay against large-scale mining.

The signatories are concerned about the long-term social and environmental impacts of the Pebble mine, a massive open-pit gold and copper project in the Bristol Bay headwaters proposed by Canadian junior Northern Dynasty Minerals (NYSE: NAK).

On Tuesday, Northern Dynasty announced it had written to the recently confirmed Administrator of the EPA Michael Regan with a status update on the Pebble project and had urged the new Administrator to support a full and fair process for the project.

The investors said that while recognizing the importance of natural resource development to support economic growth, they are concerned waste from the proposed mine would threaten the world’s largest wild salmon fishery, located in the Bristol Bay area.

Read the full story at Mining.com

Tech-forward seafood firms join forces to upload product quality data to blockchain

April 7, 2021 — Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, U.S.A.-based Envisible has joined forces with Juneau, Alaska, U.S.A.-headquartered Certified Quality Foods, Inc., which does business as Seafood Analytics, in a push to capture quality product data on the former’s blockchain-enabled Wholechain traceability system.

The initiative will initially focus on sockeye salmon sold by Northline Seafoods in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Utilizing Seafood Analytics’ handheld certified quality reader (CQR) device, Northline will gather product quality metrics and measure the electrical properties of its salmon at the point of harvest.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ALASKA: Investors Say No to Pebble Mine, Yes to Bristol Bay—Again

April 7, 2021 — The following was released by the Natural Resources Defense Council:

Fifty investment firms representing more than $105 billion called on EPA and Congress to permanently protect Alaska’s invaluable Bristol Bay from the destructive Pebble Mine.

Led by Trillium Asset Management, investors released a letter urging EPA to “use its authority under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to immediately restrict mine waste disposal in wetlands, rivers and streams within the Bristol Bay watershed.” The letter also urged Congress to “enact legislation to establish a National Fisheries Area to provide permanent federal protection against large-scale mining within the Bristol Bay watershed.”

The letter echoes the formal requests from United Tribes of Bristol Bay (UTBB), Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay (CFBB), and Representatives Peter DeFazio and Jared Huffman asking EPA to use its Clean Water Act 404(c) authority to protect Bristol Bay from the threat of the proposed Pebble Mine. NRDC also sent a letter to EPA urging permanent protection.

Read the full release here

Seafood tech companies demonstrate a leap forward in freshness monitoring using sensors and blockchain

April 6, 2021 — The following was released by Seafood Analytics:

Sustainable seafood company Envisible is teaming up with Certified Quality Foods, Inc. (dba Seafood Analytics) to capture product quality data on Envisible’s blockchain-enabled Wholechain traceability system. The initiative is starting with sockeye salmon coming from Northline Seafoods in Bristol Bay, Alaska, demonstrating an innovative commitment to transparency in seafood supply chains.

Northline is capturing product quality metrics at the point of harvest using Seafood Analytics’ handheld Certified Quality Reader (CQR), which measures the salmon’s electrical properties. Electrical properties are measured at the cellular level and are related to degradation, heat abuse and quality. The resulting quality data is then seamlessly uploaded into Wholechain, which logs this and other supply chain data on Mastercard’s provenance blockchain from the source all the way to grocers nationwide under a private label brand available at over 12 regional stores.

While the entire line of Envisible’s Frozen Seafood launched in 2019 is fully traceable and sustainably sourced, Northline’s sockeye salmon is the first of its kind to take traceability a step further with transparent quality readings. In fact all three companies – Seafood Analytics, Envisible and Northline Seafoods – have been recognized for their leadership in sustainable seafood at the Fish 2.0 Global Innovation Forum held at Stanford University.

About Northline Seafoods. Northine Seafoods, which is Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified, has been lauded for innovations such as ultra-low freeze technology used on its floating processor directly on fishing grounds, and began utilizing the CQR method in 2019. Seafood Analytics feeds the objective quality measures into a customized data dashboard for its customers, enabling food companies to take actionable steps to improve their products and processes. The method has been implemented beyond seafood in poultry cultivation, and in many cases allows companies to bypass expensive and inefficient lab testing.

About Envisible. Envisible brings this technology and story to market with its robust distribution channels and focused mission of bringing traceability and transparency to traditionally opaque food systems. In addition to the Quality Index, Envisible has also committed to capturing Key Data Elements outlined by the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, an industry-wide standard launched in 2020 to eliminate environmental and labor abuse in seafood supply chains. Not only does the technology ensure responsible sourcing, but Wholechain’s storytelling feature means a QR-code at the point of sale educates consumers about the sustainability and quality initiatives behind their seafood.

About Seafood Analytics. Seafood Analytics provides state of the art technology to measure and monitor seafood quality. The objective, science based technology measures science based technology measures fish quality instantly and provides a cloud based data platform that enables users to track quality and build supplier report cards. Seafood Analytics is based in Dallas Texas. For more information – info@certifiesqualityfoods.com.

ALASKA: Big sockeye runs and struggling kings leave Bristol Bay managers with a complicated balancing act

April 2, 2021 — Fifty-one million sockeye are forecast to return to Bristol Bay this summer.

If that holds, commercial fishermen will be able to harvest around 37 million reds. That’s 13% more than the average harvest of the past decade.

But concerns remain about the numbers of chinook salmon in the Nushagak District on the west side of Bristol Bay — which leaves the biologists who manage the fishery with a complicated balancing act.

Faced with another huge sockeye run this summer, managers in the Nushagak District say they will try to allow fishermen to harvest the sockeye and also conserve chinook.

Tim Sands, the district’s area management biologist, describes the job as trying to walk a fine line between “getting as many kings up the river as we can, but still provide opportunity to harvest sockeye salmon.”

For years, biologists around the state have wrestled with declining numbers of chinook, fish that are central to subsistence ways of life across Alaska, and also targeted by sport fishermen. Since 2007, the state’s chinook runs have consistently declined, forcing managers to restrict or close fishing in certain areas.

Read the full story at KTOO

A Rising Tide Lifts All Fishers

April 1, 2021 — In the summer of 2013, a male captain was accused of raping and assaulting a female fisher multiple times during their week-long isolation in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

This horrific encounter points to a sobering problem for female fishers: the specter of sexual assault. Harassment and abuse aren’t necessarily more common in the fishing industry, but several factors make the situation on boats unique. For one thing, fishing involves spending weeks in a confined workplace, often in remote regions with no cellphone service. For another, many fishing vessels constitute their own small businesses, with no human resources department or codified policy that workers can turn to. And as with workers in other rural industries such as forestry and agriculture, who have fewer support systems to access than employees in urban areas, fishers tend to experience and grapple with abuse on their own.

That’s why Bristol Bay, Alaska, fisher Elma Burnham is asking her colleagues to sign a safety pledge that she created in 2017. To date, more than 500 captains, deckhands, processors, and tenders have signed the pledge, promising to uphold an understanding of consent and to work toward abolishing abuse in the industry; to intervene against harassment; to provide a safe place to work; and to pay, teach, and actively promote fishers who aren’t cisgender men.

Burnham grew up in an oystering family off Long Island Sound in Connecticut and now works as a Bristol Bay set-netter, fishing for sockeye salmon during the summer. She started developing her pledge after the 2016 US presidential election, which for her felt like a symbol of entrenched misogyny. She wanted to see what she could do on a local level, so she started Strength of the Tides, a group that brings female, transgender, and nonbinary fishers together to network, support one another, and ask for boat owners to sign the pledge. Although organizations like this are more common in commercial fishing, shipping, and other maritime sectors, says Burnham, they are rare to nonexistent in the world of small-scale fisheries.

Although Burnham says that she’s never faced harassment or abuse on the job, she knows “that’s not the case for everyone.”

Read the full story at Hakai Magazine

New Economic Study: 2.2 Billion Reasons to Protect Bristol Bay

March 22, 2021 — A report titled “The Economic Benefits of the Bristol Bay Salmon Fishery” shows the fishery’s economic benefits exceeded $2.2 billion in 2019, generating more than 15,000 jobs while feeding hundreds of thousands of people. Produced by McKinley Research Group and released by the Bristol Bay Defense Fund, the recently gathered data will help quantify the importance of protecting Bristol Bay from the proposed Pebble Mine.

Bristol Bay produces 57% of the world’s sockeye salmon catch and is a $990 million economic engine in Alaska alone. Economists estimate the induced impacts for the Pacific Northwest at $800 million.

Read the full story at Seafood News