Saving Seafood

California opens more coastline to crab fishing, but don’t count on a big haul yet

January 17, 2019 — Woe is the crab lover: More of California’s north coast opened to commercial crab fishing Tuesday, but stormy waters and a shellfish toxin still are limiting the haul and putting a further crimp on the season for the tasty crustaceans.

“It’s not easy to be a crab fisherman in California this year,” said Noah Oppenheim, director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “But they’ll soldier on.”

Crab lovers had hoped for relief this season after several frustrating winters of on-again-off-again crab catching along the California coast. The crab fishery was valued at $67.5 million last season.

Crab fishers began hauling up the tasty crustaceans along the Central Coast south of Mendocino County when the commercial season began in mid-November.

But state authorities kept the fishery north of Sonoma County off limits until Tuesday — the latest date allowed by law — because crabs there were coming in lean and considered not ready for market.

Read the full story at The Mercury News

Chinese processing still dominant, but cracks starting to show

January 17, 2019 — A recurring theme at the 2019 Global Seafood Market Conference, taking place from 15 to 17 January in Coronado, California, U.S.A., has been China’s dominance in the skilled processing sector, and whether rising labor costs would push that processing elsewhere.

A burgeoning middle class in China has steadily driven up the labor costs for skilled processing, particularly in the large groundfish processing sector. The trade for groundfish has historically been dominated by Russian exports to China, and Chinese re-exports to the European Union after processing.

Yet despite the rising labor costs, Chinese importing for processing show no signs of slowing, according to statistics from Rabobank International.

“They’ve had huge wage increases already,” Gorjan Nikolik, a senior industry analyst for Rabobank International, said. “They should not be this competitive, and yet they are.”

Between 2012 and 2017, Russian exports of groundfish to China decreased by more than 50,000 tons. Even with the decrease, the trade between Russia and China was still by-far the largest in the world in terms of volume, and the amount of groundfish exported from China to the E.U. barely slowed.

Those numbers tell the story of Chinese processing still representing a huge portion of the market, given Chinese exports of groundfish to the E.U. are almost exclusively processed.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Shutdown Stunting Oregon Bid to Keep Salmon Alive

January 15, 2019 — Oregon’s effort to prevent California sea lions from feasting on the dwindling winter steelhead at Willamette Falls will not proceed as planned because of the federal government shutdown.

Officials have so far trapped and euthanized four California sea lions that collectively eat about one quarter of the shrinking returns of winter steelhead at Willamette Falls. The water below the falls have become a reliable bonanza for hungry sea lions, along the journey from the ocean back to the headwaters where steelhead were born, and where they will spawn.

Last year, only 512 wild winter steelhead returned from the sea, stymied by poor ocean conditions and a network of dams that crowd the way home. But a relatively new problem threatens to eclipse the first two: the hungry mouths of dozens of sea lions waiting at the falls.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife launched a program to capture and kill the massive marine mammals after attempts to haul them back to the ocean failed. Despite being trucked hundreds of miles to the southern coast of Oregon, the animals promptly swam back – one sea lion made the return trip in three days.

This year could be the third in a row with the worst returns on record, and state biologists aren’t optimistic.

“There’s potential that we’re already past the point where they can recover and we just won’t know it for another decade,” said Shaun Clements, senior policy analyst with Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Oregon begins killing sea lions after relocation fails

January 11, 2019 — Oregon wildlife officials have started killing California sea lions that threaten a fragile and unique type of trout in the Willamette River, a body of water that’s miles inland from the coastal areas where the massive carnivorous aquatic mammals usually congregate to feed.

The state Department of Fish and Wildlife obtained a federal permit in November to kill up to 93 California sea lions annually below Willamette Falls south of Portland, Oregon, to protect the winter run of the fish that begin life as rainbow trout but become steelhead when they travel to the ocean.

As of last week, wildlife managers have killed three of the animals using traps they used last year to relocate the sea lions, said Bryan Wright, project manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s marine resources program.

The adult male sea lions, which weigh nearly 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) each, have learned that they can loiter under the falls and snack on the vulnerable steelhead as the fish power their way upriver to the streams where they hatched.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Pots dropped: Oregon Dungeness season is in full swing

January 9, 2019 — The Tri-State Dungeness Crab Committee, which oversees the northern California, Oregon and Washington Dungeness crab fisheries, opened the season between Cape Arago, Ore., and Klipsan Beach, Wash., after a month-long delay. At 8 a.m. on January 1, 73 hours before the opening, Dungeness crab pots finally splashed into the water off the coast of Oregon and southern Washington.

“They can start to pull pots at 9 a.m. on Jan. 4,” says Troy Buell, the fisheries management program leader at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “But I don’t know about the weather.”

On Jan. 3, Newport, Ore., crab fisherman Mike Retherford headed out. “We’re leaving now because the bar is going to be pretty bad by morning,” he says. “The swell is building.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Whale entanglements on the West Coast rise again in 2018, is this the new normal?

January 2, 2019 — News this month that the number of whales found entangled off the West Coast had decreased in 2017 prompted optimism among some. But, already preliminary numbers for 2018 are headed back toward the record highs of just a few years ago.

While whale entanglements in U.S. waters were slightly above the 10-year average in 2017, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported on Dec. 6 that West Coast numbers were nearly half the 2015 and 2016 stats. Of the 31 entangles whales reported in 2017, 25 were in the waters off California – humpbacks who like to feed on anchovies in the central coast areas fished for crab and prawn led the way, but gray whales were not far behind.

NOAA’s preliminary 2018 numbers report 45 entangled whales confirmed in the waters off Alaska, Oregon, Washington and California; 35 of which were found off California. Many of the struggling whales have been sighted off Orange County and Monterey – two areas that federal officials say are bustling with boaters, fishing and whales. Final numbers are expected in March.

Read the full story at The San Jose Mercury News

CALIFORNIA: Can sustainably caught swordfish make waves on the Central Coast?

December 31, 2018 — Will sustainably-caught swordfish receive a wave of support from Central Coast fishermen, consumers and restaurateurs?

Clean-fishing advocates sure hope so as efforts continue to phase out the use of drift gillnets — the mile-long, 100-foot-wide nets currently used to catch swordfish — which  commonly collect and kill protected species like whales, dolphins, and sea turtles.

On Sept. 28,  Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1017, which requires the state Department of Fish and Wildlife get funding for and enact a transition program that would help fishermen switch to alternative fishing gear.

Under the program, up to $10,000 would be offered for fisheries to turn in their drift gillnet permits, and transition to “clean-fishing” gear.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has until March of 2020 to roll out the drift gillnet “buyout.” However, the department still needs to raise $1 million to trigger the revocation of all drift gillnet permits. The money would have to come from federal funding or private donor sources.

Read the full story at the Monterey Herald

Scripps scientists to study effects of climate change on California coastline

December 27, 2018 — Four researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography have earned state grants to study how climate change is shifting conditions on the Pacific Coast, including cliffs and tide pools.

Together they were awarded $1 million from the California Ocean Protection Council to create maps, models and other data sources that will help chart the changes to California’s coastline, and guide strategies to deal with them.

The council was created in 2004 as part of the California Ocean Protection Act, and works to maintain “healthy, resilient and productive ocean and coastal ecosystems.” The grants of $250,000 to each scientist are part of a larger project to fund research on topics such as sea-level rise and coastal resilience, marine pollution and renewable energy.

Marine biology professor Ronald Burton will use “DNA metabarcoding,” a method of high volume genetic analysis, to identify fish eggs and determine which species are spawning from La Jolla to Santa Cruz. Jennifer Smith, an associate professor of marine biology, is building 3-D images of rocky intertidal zones to study how sea-level rise will affect the wealth of marine life in tide pools.

Scientist Adam Young will map the stability of coastal cliffs and detect “erosion hot spots.” And associate professor Brice Semmens will develop a time series of bass species abundance dating back to the late 1940s in order to guide management of the popular recreational fishery.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

West Coast trawlers on pace to hit annual Petrale sole quota

December 19, 2018 — West Coast trawlers were on pace to land their respectful IFQ shares of Petrale sole for the 2018 season in early November. Trawlers had landed 4.32 million pounds — about 75 percent — of a 5.79 million-pound quota.

Though the stocks have been declared rebuilt, the fleet saw a slight reduction in the quota for 2018. Last year’s 2017 harvest came in at 6.07 million pounds, which exceeded the 6.05 million-pound quota.

“These guys are still catching a little, as they’re still in shallow since summer,” said Scott Adams, with Hallmark Fisheries in Charleston, Ore.

As the season progresses toward winter, the fish congregate into tighter schools, which means more plentiful hauls for the trawlers.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Rockfish make a remarkable recovery off California coast, prompting federal officials to raise catch limits

December 14, 2018 –Locally caught red snapper was once a staple on Southern California menus and a vital part of the state’s fishing industry. But overfishing took its toll, resulting in federal restrictions nearly two decades ago to prevent their extinction.

But with stocks rebuilding faster than anticipated, federal officials on Tuesday boosted catch limits by more than 100% for some species of rockfish in a move they said would help revive West Coast bottom trawlers and sportfishing fleets.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s action is expected to result in anglers taking about 218,000 additional annual trips in coastal waters — about 148,000 of them between Santa Barbara and San Diego.

Officials say the move could generate an estimated 900 jobs and up to $54 million in annual revenue in West Coast states in 2019, including about 630 jobs and $44 million in Southern California. It may also put fresh, locally caught varieties of rockfish commonly sold as red snapper back on dinner plates in Southern California restaurants, which currently rely almost entirely on frozen seafood imported from Mexico and around the world.

“The rebuilding of these stocks also means the rebuilding of West Coast communities and economies that sacrificed for years waiting for the rockfish populations to come back,” said Barry Thom, regional administrator of fisheries for NOAA’s West Coast region. “Now, fleets can catch even more fish because they will be less constrained overall by limits on these stocks.”

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times