Saving Seafood

CALIFORNIA: Half Moon Bay fishermen reeling from lost income amid salmon fishery closure

September 21, 2023 — Commercial salmon fishing season has been closed in the state of California for the past several months and fishermen in Half Moon Bay are feeling the impacts.

At Half Moon Bay’s Pillar Point Harbor, it’s so quiet even the sea lions are bored.

“It’s quiet, you look at this harbor and it’s just empty, there’s no activity,” Porter McHenry, a commercial fisherman said.

McHenry says at this time of the year, from May to October, he would typically rely on salmon.

“There’s going to be nothing until crab season,” he said.

Back in March, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the drought from recent years limited salmon’s ability to breed and that there weren’t enough to open the commercial season this year.

Read the full article at ABC 7 News

California’s floating wind lead threatened by fast-rising Maine

September 17, 2023 — The U.S. has allocated its first floating wind leases and aims to install 15 GW by 2035 but participants warn the first large-scale arrays may still be a decade away.

Development activity is growing on East and West coasts but transmission grids, ports and supply chains must be expanded to achieve commercially viable projects.

California and the East coast state of Maine have set out floating wind targets but different strategies towards the scaling up of floating wind could see their trajectories diverge.

In the U.S.’ first floating wind auction, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) allocated five floating wind projects in California for a total 4.6 GW capacity.

The state of California aims to install 2 to 5 GW of floating wind capacity by 2030 and 25 GW by 2045 but market observers do not expect the first projects to come online before 2035.

The deep waters of the Pacific Coast mean that, unlike on the East Coast, developers will not benefit from infrastructure built earlier for conventional fixed-bottom offshore projects. Ports must be expanded and adapted to assemble huge components and regional supply chains must be built out to achieve economies of scale.

Read the full article at Reuters

CALIFORNIA: Commercial crabbers worry bringing sea otters back to San Francisco Bay could hurt industry

August 26, 2023 — There is a push by conservationists to reintroduce threatened sea otters to San Francisco Bay waters, but local crab fishermen are concerned the move could hurt their already struggling industry.

Federal wildlife officials say it’s possible, but haven’t made a decision whether to green light the move. Those efforts worry fishermen like Dick Ogg because of the sea mammals’ voracious appetite for crustaceans like Dungeness crab.

“I don’t feel like it’s our place to pick them up and relocate them. Yes, there could be impacts to the fishery,” said Ogg.

The fur trade era in the 19th century nearly wiped out the now-endangered species. Marine biologists are trying to determine what’s best for conservation, fisheries like the Dungeness crab industry and the marine environment.

“Sea otters tend to promote the resilience of kelp and sea grass. And those habitats provide habitat and food for hundreds upon hundreds of species,” explained U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Lilian Carswell, who specializes in sea otters.

Read the full article at CBS News

Ocean off California’s Central Coast may be ‘thermal refuge’ from climate change, study says

August 23, 2023 — In an otherwise warming planet, new research shows that the ocean off California’s Central Coast may be a thermal refuge for marine wildlife.

Cal Poly associate professor Ryan Walter, who teaches physics, and fourth-year physics student Michael Dalsin analyzed temperature data gathered from 1978 through 2020 at a site just north of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

They found that while other areas of the world see sharp rises in ocean temperatures and more frequent and more intense heatwaves, the Central Coast hasn’t seen such intense trends.

The region still experiences marine heatwaves and cold spells brought on by factors such as the ocean-wide climactic patterns of El Niño and La Niña, but cold current upwelling brought on by strong local winds helps maintain the marine ecosystem along the Central Coast, according to a study by Walter and Dalsin published on July 31.

Read the full story at the Merced Sun-Star

World’s largest dam removal project gets approval

August 4, 2023 — In a historic move, U.S. regulators have given the green light to a groundbreaking plan to demolish four dams on the lower Klamath River in California, paving the way for the largest dam removal and river restoration project in the world.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s unanimous vote on the proposal represents a major milestone for the $500 million demolition plan, which has been ardently supported by Native American tribes and environmentalists for years. The ambitious initiative aims to restore the lower half of California’s second-largest river to its natural free-flowing state, effectively opening up hundreds of miles of critical salmon habitat.

For Native tribes that have relied on the Klamath River and its salmon for their way of life, the dam removal represents a long-awaited victory. Situated in a wild and remote area straddling the California and Oregon border, the dams’ presence has hindered the migratory routes of salmon for over a century. With the removal of these barriers, the salmon’s path to their spawning grounds will be restored, reviving not only the ecological health of the river but also preserving the cultural heritage of the tribes.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Alliance of Historic California Squid Producers Achieves MSC Certification

August 2, 2o23 — California’s historic market squid fishery is making history again: It has achieved Marine Stewardship Council certification.

The premier market squid fishery in California has a long history, dating back to the mid-1800s, when Chinese immigrants fished out of skiffs in Monterey Bay, using torches of burning fat pine to attract squid. Now, an alliance of six historic California squid processors recently announced that California’s market squid fishery has achieved MSC certification, the recognized pinnacle of sustainability in fishery management.

The California market squid purse seine fishery also is being evaluated under a different certifier, for a different client group.

The Alliance of California squid processors includes Cal Marine Fish Company, Monterey Fish Company, Southern Cal Seafood, Southern Coast Trading, Neptune Foods and J. DeLuca Fish Company. The group represents multiple generations of fish buyers and fishermen, dating back 80 years or more, who have produced the lion’s share of the market squid landed in the Golden State, according to a press release from the group.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

Warmer ocean temperatures spawn California market squid boom

July 23, 2023 — U.S. West Coast fishers are enjoying a monumental season for California market squid.

A cool, wet beginning of the year has helped created ideal spawning conditions for the squid (Doryteuthis opalescens), which grow around eight to 10 inches and live six to nine months. With a geographic range stretching from Alaska to Mexico, California market squid spawn from April to November off the coast of California. Fishermen target the squid shortly after they spawn to ensure the health of the population. However, little is known about their population abundance as no study has ever been carried out by NOAA.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

CALIFORNIA: California’s Salmon Are Teetering on the Brink

July 12, 2023 — Arron Hockaday Sr. remembers fishing for salmon with his father in the late 1970s. Back then, it wasn’t just the number of salmon running up Northern California’s Klamath River that impressed him. It was the size.

“Back then, gosh, it was amazing to see the fish when the fish ran during the fall,” says Hockaday, a traditional fisherman and council member of the Karuk Tribe. “The salmon were huge.” On average, he says, you could catch fish ranging from 40 to 50 pounds—although members of his grandparents’ generation were known to catch 100-pound Chinook salmon at Ishi Pishi Falls, the tribe’s sacred fishing grounds. “Nowadays, our average is anywhere from 15 to maybe 25 pounds. We catch a 30-pounder and that’s a hog, that’s a big fish.”

A slow-motion disaster for tribes, commercial fishermen and conservationists, the decline of California’s once-abundant salmon population has been unfolding for decades. The crisis has its roots in decisions about the state’s water use made a century ago and, like so many stories of water wars in the West, it has pitted stakeholders against one another in a seemingly zero-sum contest over a dwindling natural resource.

The outlook is grim, but there are bright spots. As a future of increasingly hot and dry weather hangs over the state, can change come quickly enough to save the imperiled salmon from extinction?

Read the full article at Modern Farmer

CALIFORNIA: California commercial fishermen set to receive second oil spill settlement in September

July 12, 2023 — California commercial fishermen and seafood processors as well as other coastal property owners and businesses could be awarded a second settlement as a result of an oil spill near Huntington Beach in October 2021.

In October 2021, approximately 25,000 gallons of crude oil were discharged from a cracked pipeline owned and operated by Amplify Energy and its subsidies near Huntington Beach, according to a federal grand jury indictment against the oil company. The jury accused Amplify of acting negligently by “operating the pipeline with an understaffed and fatigued crew” and failing to properly respond to multiple alarms.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource