Saving Seafood

Group releases study on fishing, tourism dollars from Southeast Alaska rivers

November 23, 2016 — Three major rivers that flow out of Canada into Southeast Alaska could provide a combined $1 billion in value for tourism and fisheries on this side of the border over the next three decades.

That’s one findings in a new study commissioned by a group seeking to highlight potential impacts to those rivers from the mining industry in British Columbia.

The study puts some numbers to the arguments that Southeast Alaska fishermen, tour operators, tribal leaders and communities have been making about the importance of the Taku River near Juneau, Stikine near Wrangell and the Unuk north of Ketchikan.

Salmon Beyond Borders commissioned the report, written by the McDowell Group.

Commercial and sport fishing activity along with tourism dollars from the waterways are worth a combined $48 million a year in economic activity including the paychecks for 400 people in Southeast, the study said.

“It’s well known to any of us who live in Southeast Alaska know that salmon and commercial fishing have a substantial impact on our region’s economy and that the visitor industry as well,” said Kirsten Shelton-Walker, project manager with the research and consulting business McDowell Group in Juneau. “And so, we were not surprised but it was interesting to find that the impact of these rivers could be as high as almost $1 billion over a 30-year horizon.”

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: Pacific halibut harvest numbers increased this year

November 11th, 2016 — As Alaska’s iconic halibut fishery wraps up this week, stakeholders are holding their breath to learn if catches might ratchet up slightly again in 2017. Meanwhile, prices for hard to get shares of the halibut catch are jaw-dropping.

The halibut fishery ends on Nov. 7 for nearly 2,000 longliners who hold IFQs (Individual Fishing Quotas) of halibut. The Alaska fishery will produce a catch of more than 20 million pounds if the limit is reached by the fleet. Last year, the halibut haul was worth nearly $110 million at the Alaska docks.

For the first time in several decades the coastwide Pacific halibut harvest numbers increased this year by 2.3 percent to nearly 30 million pounds. Along with Alaska, the eight-month fishery includes the Pacific coast states and British Columbia.

The feeling that the halibut resource is stabilizing and recovering after a long decline has upped the ante for shares of the catch. The fact that the dock price again hovered in the $6 to $7 a pound range all season at major ports also has fanned interest. It holds especially true for shares of Southeast Alaska fish.

“Fishermen say they’re seeing some of the best fishing they’ve ever seen in their lives there, bigger fish, better production and you see that reflected in IFQ prices,” said Doug Bowen of Alaska Boats and Permits in Homer.

The quota shares are sold in various categories, and the asking price for prime shares in Southeast waters has reached $70 per pound!

Read the full story at the Petersburg Pilot 

Warm Pacific Ocean ‘blob’ facilitated vast toxic algae bloom

September 30, 2016 –SEATTLE — A new study finds that unusually warm Pacific Ocean temperatures helped cause a massive bloom of toxic algae last year that closed lucrative fisheries from California to British Columbia and disrupted marine life from seabirds to sea lions.

Scientists linked the large patch of warm ocean water, nicknamed the “blob,” to the vast ribbon of toxic algae that flourished in 2015 and produced record-breaking levels of a neurotoxin that is harmful to people, fish and marine life.

The outbreak of the toxin domoic acid, the largest ever recorded on the West Coast, closed razor clam seasons in Washington and Oregon and delayed lucrative Dungeness crab fisheries along the coast. High levels were also detected in many stranded marine mammals.

“We’re not surprised now having looked at the data, but our study is the first to demonstrate that linkage,” said Ryan McCabe, lead author and a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean. “It’s the first question that everyone was asking.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WSBT

LSU researcher, a modern-day explorer, travels to remote parts of world to discover new fish species

September 21, 2016 — Prosanta Chakrabarty travels the world searching for fish that few humans have ever seen.

The LSU researcher wants to learn what these underwater unknowns can teach about evolution and the history of the earth.

He’s a modern-day explorer, swimming through murky waters and diving into caves in search of seldom-seen species.

“It’s such a wonderful job. It’s a great experience to be having,” he said. “Fish let me do that. They let me go to these weird places and discover them in odd areas of the world that most people don’t get to go to.”

And Chakrabarty, 37, uses his adventures — along with his natural ability to captivate an audience — to teach the world about science.

Speaking at the prestigious TED conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, earlier this year, Chakrabarty told an audience that ichthyology — the study of fish — is the only science with YOLO in the name.

“Now, to the cool kids in the audience, you already know,” he said. “YOLO stands for ‘you only live once.’ And because I only have one life, I’m going to spend it doing what I always dreamed of doing — seeing the hidden wonders of the world and discovering new species. And that’s what I get to do.”

Born in Montreal, Quebec — where his family lived after immigrating from India — Chakrabarty grew up in Queens, New York.

“Not the kind of place you would expect for someone who loves nature,” Chakrabarty said. “I think I went fishing once in some dirty pond catching sunfish.”

Read the the full story at The Advocate

Why a Single Crab Has West Coast Researchers Worried

September 8, 2016 — Invasive European green crabs have been swarming up and down both coasts, but because of the flow of ocean currents around the Pacific Northwest, inland waters of BC and Washington State were thought to be relatively safe. Well, on Sept. 2, volunteers announced they’d recently caught a single crab on San Juan Island, in Puget Sound. Although it’s just one for now—and it could have hitched a ride on someone’s fishing gear, or another way—it’s the first confirmed sighting in these inland waters.

Starting next week, a “rapid response team” will be out laying traps and trying to figure out if there are more crabs out there. The aliens pose a threat to the region’s native species.

“I’ll admit, I have a lot of respect for these crabs,” Sean McDonald, a research scientist at the University of Washington, told me. McDonald works with the Washington Sea Grant’s Crab Team, a network of citizen scientists that serves as an early alert for the crustacean’s encroachment. They caught the crab, and will be organizing next week’s response. “They’re tough and resilient,” he continued. “They make a living anywhere they can.”

Read the full story at Motherboard

Strong halibut catches in Alaska leading to higher quotas

July 1, 2016 — After years of slashed quotas, the Alaskan halibut fishery is enjoying a second year of growth in 2016.

The 2016 quota share commercial halibut fisheries opened on 19 March with a fleet-wide quota of 18.16 million pounds. The quota is up from 17.93 million pounds in 2015 and 16.75 million pounds in 2014.

Quota improvements have also been seen in British Columbia, Canada. The 2016 B.C. quota is 6.20 million pounds up from 5.91 million pounds in 2015 and 5.79 million pounds in 2014.

“We’ve been on a bit of decrease since the peak of the halibut stock abundance in the late 1990s, but last year [2015] saw the first year of an increase in quite a number of years,” said Bruce Leaman, the executive director of the International Pacific Halibut Commission, the public international organization responsible for managing the fisheries.

IPHC released its latest landing report on 21 June, 2016, and to that date, catch rates have been similar to last year. Alaskan fishermen have landed 8.8 million pounds of halibut, or 48 percent of the 2016 commercial fishery catch limit. At this same date last year 8.8 million pounds had been harvested, representing 49 percent of the 2015 catch limit.

“[The fishing is] about on par with what we’ve seen other years in terms of how quickly the quota is being caught,” Leaman said.

He went on to predict a lull in halibut landings during the summer as many vessels leave off halibut fishing to pursue salmon and other species caught during shorter management periods.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Alaska asks John Kerry to raise B.C. mine pollution concerns with Canada

May 16, 2016 — VANCOUVER, British Columbia — British Columbia’s downstream neighbours in Alaska have long been concerned about mining pollution flowing across the border.

Now that B.C.’s Auditor-General has confirmed that those fears are well founded, issuing an audit recently that found the province is doing a poor job of regulating its mines, three Alaskan politicians have elevated the issue in Washington.

In a letter sent on Thursday, Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, and Congressman Don Young, urged U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to talk about it with the Canadian government.

“We write to express our continuing concerns about the development of several hardrock mines in British Columbia and their potential effects on water quality in the transboundary rivers that flow from Canada into southeast Alaska,” the letter states.

The Alaskans told Mr. Kerry that he should “utilize all measures at your disposal to address this issue at the international level.”

Read the full story at the Globe and Mail

Warming Oceans Are Turning Sea Stars to Goo and Killing Lobsters, Scientists Say

February 17, 2016 — Warming waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have increased the prevalence of diseases that are turning sea stars to mush and killing lobsters by burrowing under their shells and causing lesions, two new studies say. The outbreaks are so lethal, according to a biologist involved in both studies, that at least one species of sea star has vanished off the coasts of Washington and British Columbia and the lobster fishery, already decimated in southern New England, will likely be threatened in Maine.

In the Pacific, a wasting disease is blamed for the disappearance of the technicolor sunflower sea star. It’s also laying waste to the ochre sea star that scientists at Cornell University, the University of Puget Sound and Northeastern University, as well as other institutions, examined for the latest research. Their reports were published this week.

Numerous climate studies have shown that the oceans are warming. In addition, 30 percent of the carbon released into the atmosphere ends up there, leading to acidification that’s further destroying coral, shell life and other organisms.

The sea-star study was led by Morgan E. Eisenlord, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell, and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Both in a laboratory and at 16 sites on the San Juan Islands off Washington’s coast, researchers determined that ochre sea stars gradually became sicker as water temperatures rose slightly. Conditions simulated in the lab confirmed what the scientists observed in the field.  As temperatures rose, the disease became more prevalent, and adult ochres died within days. The disease, plus death, was more prominent in temperatures between 54 degrees and 66 degrees Fahrenheit. For the adults, the risk of death was 18 percent higher at 66 degrees.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Studies aim to restore habitat of imperiled Northwest fish

February 8, 2016 — BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Scientists in the Pacific Northwest are studying more than a dozen watersheds to develop templates on habitat restoration that could be used in similar streams to bolster struggling fish populations.

The federal government lists 28 populations of salmon and steelhead on the West Coast that need protections due to low numbers despite spending millions of dollars every year on restoration efforts.

 The studies aim to make those efforts more successful. They focus on 17 watersheds in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Northern California and British Columbia and examine the benefit of everything from dam removal to building artificial beaver dams in tributaries.

Creating templates for habitat restoration could save time and money by using strategies known to produce good results in similar habitats in the region, said George Pess, a research fisheries biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The overall goal is to learn enough to be smart about our restoration,” he said, noting that the studies will offer recommendations to private, tribal and government entities but won’t produce any legally binding regulations.

 

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Houston Chronicle

A Canadian Threat to Alaskan Fishing

January 23, 2016 — SITKA, Alaska — From fall through spring, the fleet of commercial fishing boats here in the panhandle of Alaska stalk winter king salmon. In the mornings prisms of ice sparkle beneath the sodium lights of the docks, where I live on a World War II tugboat with my wife and 8-month-old daughter. This winter I’ve been out a few times fishing on the I Gotta, catching pristine wild salmon, torpedoes of muscle. But the work is slow, five fish a day, and my skipper recently traveled down to Reno, Nev., for knee surgery.

Carpeted in rain forest and braided with waterways, southeast Alaska is among the largest wild salmon producers in the world, its tourism and salmon fishing industries grossing about $2 billion a year. But today, the rivers and the salmon that create these jobs — and this particular way of life, which attracted me from Philadelphia to Sitka almost 20 years ago — are threatened by Canada’s growing mining industry along the mountainous Alaska-British Columbia border, about a hundred miles east of where I now write.

At least 10 underground and open-pit copper and gold mining projects in British Columbia are up and running, in advanced exploration or in review to be approved. These operations generate billions of tons of toxic mine tailings stored behind massive dams, creating an ecological hazard at the headwaters of Alaska’s major salmon rivers — the Stikine, Unuk and Taku, which straddle the border with Canada.

Despite being subjected to the environmental and health risks of these upstream mining projects, Alaskans have no say in their approval. Which is why fishermen, Alaska native tribes, local municipalities, tourism businesses, our congressional delegation and thousands of individual Alaska residents have been clamoring for the State Department to refer this issue to the International Joint Commission, an American and Canadian advisory body established in 1909 to ensure that neither country pollutes the waters of the other.

Read the full opinion piece at The New York Times