Saving Seafood

Federal judge rules FDA must reevaluate effects of potential GE salmon escape

November 9, 2020 — AquaBounty Technologies is facing another legal battle over its AquAdvantage salmon, as a California court ruled last week that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) violated core environmental laws in approving genetically engineered salmon for sale and consumption.

On 5 November, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled the FDA ignored serious possible environmental consequences by approving genetically engineered salmon, and was also violating the National Environmental Policy Act. The judge also ruled the FDA approval was in violation of the Endangered Species Act, as the agency did not consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service before taking an action that “may affect” a listed or endangered species.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

CALIFORNIA: Thanksgiving crab won’t be on the menu this year — Monterey Bay Area crabbers face delayed season

November 6, 2020 — Commercial crabbers in the Monterey Bay area and beyond will have to wait until December to set their pots — the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has delayed the opening of Dungeness crab season from Nov. 15, to Dec. 1, citing a risk of whale entanglements occurring.

Humpbacks are still actively feeding in the Monterey Bay, and north into Santa Cruz waters, according to Ryan Bartling, a senior environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Marine Region. The agency has been conducting aerial and ship surveys from the Humboldt coast, to the California-Mexico border.

“There are a large number of humpback whales still foraging off our coast,” Bartling said. “If we were to allow the fishery to proceed as planned, there’s conceivably a great risk of entanglement.”

Even still, there are potentials for further delays in the season. In mid-November, the agency will reassess whale entanglement risk and evaluate if the now scheduled Dec. 1 opening date is feasible.

Read the full story at the Santa Cruz Sentinel

Safeguards for whales delay California’s commercial crab season for second straight year

November 5, 2020 — Whales feeding in abundance off the California coast have delayed the commercial Dungeness crab season for the second consecutive year, the result of new rules intended to protect whales and other marine wildlife from entanglements in fishing gear — and any additional restrictions that arise in such cases.

Chuck Bonham, director of the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, on Wednesday postponed the season opener until at least Dec. 1, pending further aerial surveys and signs that whales had begun migrating from fishing grounds.

The commercial crab season traditionally starts Nov. 15 in waters south of the Sonoma-Mendocino county line, early enough to put fresh, succulent crab on the Thanksgiving menu.

The holiday season is when most California crabbers earn the bulk of their income for the year, harvesting $51.8 million worth of Dungeness in 2019 in one of the state’s most consistently lucrative fisheries. Landings in Bodega Bay reached $5.6 million in 2019, according to state data.

Read the full story at The Press Democrat

CALIFORNIA: CDFW Works with Commercial Dungeness Crab Industry and Environmental Community to Implement New Regulations to Protect Whales from Entanglement

November 5, 2020 — The following was released by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife:

The commercial Dungeness crab season in the central management area, which was scheduled to open Sunday, Nov. 15, will be delayed due to the presence of whales within fishing grounds and the potential for entanglement. In mid-November, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) Director will re-assess entanglement risk in the central management area and evaluate risk in the northern management area, which is scheduled to open Tuesday, Dec. 1.

Following increased numbers of large whale entanglements in 2015 and 2016, CDFW worked with the Dungeness crab fleet and partner organizations to develop the Risk Assessment and Mitigation Program (RAMP). After substantial review and input from industry and the environmental community, the RAMP regulations became effective on Nov. 1, 2020. The risk assessment conducted by CDFW this week, in consultation with the Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group, is the first assessment conducted under the new RAMP regulations.

“While no one wants to delay the season, CDFW and the Working Group feel a delay is necessary to reduce the risk of entanglement,” said CDFW Director Charlton H. Bonham. “The fleet has gone to great lengths to be more nimble in order to protect whales and turtles, and the results are promising. This year for the first time in a long time it looks like we don’t have to worry about domoic acid, which is good news.”

In collaboration with Working Group advisors, agencies and other partners, CDFW is committed to collecting real time data regarding presence of Humpback and Blue whales, and Pacific leatherback sea turtles in Dungeness crab fishing grounds. Combined with an improved and consistent process for information sharing and decision making with the Working Group, CDFW is able to provide more certainty to the fleet as to the timing of potential delays and openings. When the whales migrate out of the fishing grounds in coming weeks, CDFW stands ready to open the commercial season.

Read the full release here

CALIFORNIA: The Pacific sardine war hits a lull, but the tides are rising

November 4, 2020 — With catch limit regulations staying at the status quo, the commercial fishing industry has apparently landed a victory in the fight over Pacific sardine management.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, which oversees fishing of Pacific sardines, voted unanimously in September to maintain the current sardine fishery management process that calls for reassessments after each year’s stock assessments.

At the moment, the direct commercial sardine fishery is closed. Sardines may only be harvested in the live bait fishery, small-scale fisheries (or operations), as incidental catch, and with exempted permits approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service. These open sardine fisheries are subject to an annual catch limit of about 16% of the sardine population measured in 2019, or 4,514 metric tons.

Conservationists had hoped the council would tighten catch limits for fear of the sardine population collapsing further.

Read the full story at The Mercury News

California rolls out new Dungeness crab regulations to reduce entanglements

October 28, 2020 — California officials on Monday, 26 October, announced new Dungeness crab fishing regulations designed to reduce encounters with several endangered species.

The new regulations, which will take effect on Saturday, 1 November, call for fishermen to lower the number of traps in areas where a higher number of whales or sea turtles are present. The state also reserves the right to close an area if an entanglement occurs.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

BEN PLATT: Close to Home: Ropeless fishing gear won’t save whales

October 27, 2020 — If you live in one of California’s historic fishing communities like Bodega Bay, you’ve probably heard the term “ropeless” crab fishing gear. That’s the new buzzword for equipment being promoted by environmental groups to solve the perceived problem of whale interactions with fishing gear.

These groups have convinced the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to adopt onerous new regulations that will force crab fishermen to adopt expensive, impractical and unproven fishing gear that will put most of us out of business. It will economically devastate — to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars annually — many coastal communities that rely on the fishing and seafood industry. And unfortunately, these regulations are set to go into effect on Sunday.

But the action these environmental groups are promoting isn’t based on the best available science. In fact, it isn’t based on any science or data at all. They claim that the number of deaths of humpback whales caused by entanglements are now high enough for the population to slip into decline.

The truth, however, is something different.

Whale population numbers are soaring. John Calambokidis and Jay Barlow from the Cascadia Research Collective, a respected marine mammal study center, recently released a report titled “Update on blue and humpback whale abundances using data through 2018.” The researchers concluded that current estimates for the California-Oregon humpback whale population is 5,612 and 1,593 for the Washington-Southern British Columbia humpback whale population. This results in a new estimate totaling 7,205 for the California-Oregon-Washington humpback stock. This figure shows that whales are abundant and not in danger. It’s far higher than the previously thought 3,500 figure.

Read the full story at The Press Democrat

Dungeness crab: Despite shutdowns, Oregon fleet fares well; live market spikes prices to $6.28 per pound

October 20, 2020 — Oregon crabbers had landed 20.07 million pounds of Dungeness as of August. Ex-vessel price negotiations and meat fill issues delayed the opening of the season until Dec. 31. And like other fisheries, the arrival of covid-19 put the stops on product flow to preferred markets.

As for the resource, the good times continue to roll for the crabbers. Based on average ex-vessel prices of $3.64 per pound this year’s revenues crunch out to $73.06 million. According to data from PacFIN, the Oregon fleet averaged $3.58 per pound for revenues of $66.7 million in the 2019 season.

Elsewhere along the West Coast, California fleets posted landings of 8.37 million pounds for revenues of $30.09 million, and Washington’s production hit 10.93 million pounds (no ex-vessel revenue available), according to data from PacFIN.

Though Oregon crabbers received an average $3.64 per pound for the entire season, some buyers drove high-end offers to $6.28 per pound in May.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Marine heat wave ‘blobs’ are becoming more severe as oceans warm

October 20, 2020 — Off the coast of California this August a sea monster of record size was spotted: a patch of warm water that grew to the size of Canada, 9.8 million square kilometers simmering up to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than usual. “It’s off the chart,” says Andrew Leising, a fisheries oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who is mapping the marine heatwave on his website, nicknamed the Blobtracker. By Leising’s reckoning, in September, the unglamorously-named “NEP20b” became the biggest-yet-spotted blob of warm water there since satellite records began in the early 1980s.

Researchers are now scrambling to chart or anticipate the impacts of the NEP20b blob on marine life, tracking how the step change in temperature throws ecosystems out of whack.

The phenomenon of a patch of abnormally warm water off the west coast of North America gained notoriety in 2014, when the first such “Blob” was spotted and given that name, after the horror movie creature that devoured everything in its path. That first Blob lasted years, from 2013 to 2016. It has been blamed for slicing some forage fish populations in half; starving seabirds; triggering a collapse in cod; shifting tuna as far north as Alaska; pushing whales into the path of crab fishing lines and ships; and allowing exotics, including glowing tropical sea pickles, to arrive in northern waters.

In 2019, a second blob emerged. With record-warm waters appearing again this year, some scientists believe the 2019 event, known as Blob 2.0, may have just never gone away. If NEP20b is now big enough and hot enough, Leising says, it may do what the 2013-2016 version did, creating its own microclimate that perpetuates the heat, forcing the warm water to stick around for years yet to come.

Read the full story at PBS

Offshore Wind Research Buoys Float into California’s Waters

October 19, 2020 — The following was released by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory :

Two offshore wind research buoys managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) were deployed recently off the coast of California. This marks the first time the buoys have been launched to gather meteorological and oceanographic measurements off the West Coast.

The pair of buoys were deployed by DOE’s Wind Energy Technologies Office, with this research funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management—or BOEM. BOEM is gathering data to support decisions on potential leasing of wind energy sites off California’s coastline that will bring a new renewable energy source to the state.

One buoy is stationed in approximately 625 meters (more than 2,050 feet) of water off Humboldt County along the northern coast. The second buoy is deployed in about 1,000 meters (more than 3,280 feet) of water off Morro Bay along the central coastline.

“The buoys are stationed off the coast of California in deep water and will gather wind measurements for 12 months,” said PNNL’s Alicia Gorton, who oversees the buoys and the deployments. “The measurements they obtain will provide BOEM and offshore wind stakeholders with the most accurate and detailed information needed to make solid decisions regarding wind energy development, such as siting and design considerations.”

Read the full release here