March 12, 2020 — Forecasts for many Chinook and coho stocks on the West Coast are low — lower than last year and some nearing historic lows. Regardless, the Pacific Fishery Management Council and its advisory bodies developed alternatives for sport and commercial ocean salmon fisheries when it met last week in Rohnert Park, Calif.
The alternatives now go out for public review before the Council makes a final decision on salmon seasons at its meeting in Vancouver, Wash., on April 5-10.
March 12, 2020 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:
The Pacific Fishery Management Council met March 4-9, 2020 in Rohnert Park, California. The March 2020 Council Meeting Decision Summary Document contains the highlights of significant decisions made at that meeting. Results of agenda items that do not reach a level of highlight significance are typically not described in the Decision Summary Document.
March 11, 2020 — Almost all Mexican shrimp and fish caught from the northern Gulf of California was barred from U.S. trade March 4, as NMFS invoked the Marine Mammal Protection Act in a bid to stop use of gillnets blamed for entangling endangered vaquita porpoises.
The porpoises’ population had already plunged from an estimated 560 animals in the 1990s to 30 surviving by 2017, when the Mexican government officials banned most gillnets in the area.
“Mexico has no choice but to eliminate the destructive fishing taking place in the northern Gulf of California that is driving the vaquita to extinction,” said Zak Smith, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s the only hope the vaquita has for survival, and it is required if Mexico wants to resume exporting these products to the United States.”
March 11, 2020 — An environmental nonprofit has moved closer to pursuing a lawsuit claiming the Trump administration is not providing enough protection for whales and sea turtles threatened by ship strikes near ports along California’s coastline.
On March 2, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a “notice of intent to sue,” in which it demanded that the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Coast Guard change how they protect marine life within the next 60 days or face legal action.
Ships near the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the nation’s two busiest ports, are on a voluntary slow-down program to reduce the striking of whales and curtail air pollution. But data from marine mammal experts and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicate voluntary compliance has not sufficiently reduced the number of ship strikes.
“Ship strikes kill far too many endangered whales off California’s coast, and the Trump administration can’t keep ignoring a deadly threat that’s only getting worse,” said Brian Segee, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We want good science to determine how shipping lanes are placed and managed. Ships simply don’t need to kill as many whales and sea turtles as they do.”
March 6, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Burgeoning populations of anchovy and a healthy crop of California sea lion pups reflected improved productivity off parts of the West Coast in 2019. However, lingering offshore heat worked against recovery of salmon stocks and reduced fishing success, a new analysis reports.
The California Current Ecosystem Status Report explains that ocean conditions off the West Coast remain unusually variable. This has been the case since the arrival of a major marine heatwave in 2014 known as “The Blob.” NOAA Fisheries’ two West Coast laboratories, the Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Southwest Fisheries Science Center, issue the report each year to the Pacific Fishery Management Council.
“There is not a real clear picture here,” said Chris Harvey, co-editor of the report developed by the two laboratories’ Integrated Ecosystem Assessment approach. The approach integrates physical, biological, economic, and importantly social conditions of the California Current marine ecosystem into the decision-making process. “On the one hand, we have a lot of anchovy out there. On the other hand, we also have a lot of warm water. That is not usually a sign of improved productivity.”
March 6, 2020 — US importers of Mexican shrimp and other seafood should soon be prepared to present documentation certifying that any of the products they are bringing over the border do not match a list of roughly five species caught in the upper Gulf of California using multiple gear types.
The US’ National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announced Wednesday that it will ban the import of virtually all Mexican shrimp and other fish caught in that region of the country over concerns about the endangered vaquita porpoise. An effective date has not yet been set, but it is expected to be within a month and require importers to maintain a “certification of admissibility” that is signed by a Mexican government official establishing that the products being shipped are not from the upper Gulf of California’s:
March 6, 2020 — Bumble Bee has emerged from years of tumult with a splash: A new owner, new product packaging, new product lines, and, perhaps most significantly, an industry-first partnership with a plant-based food producer, Good Catch.
The San Diego, California, U.S.A.-based tuna company’s travails of the past couple years are well-known. The company was fined USD 25 million (EUR 22.3 million) after pleading guilty in a tuna price-fixing scandal in 2017, then entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy this past November. In January, the company was bought by the Taiwanese company FCF Co. for USD 928 million (EUR 826 million), with which it has a 30-year business relationship.
March 5, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
The West Coast Dungeness crab fishery doesn’t just support the most valuable annual harvest of seafood on the West Coast. It’s a fishery that just keeps on giving.
Fishermen from California to Washington caught almost all the available legal-size male Dungeness crab each year in the last few decades. However, the crab population has either remained stable or continued to increase, according to the first thorough population estimate of the West Coast Dungeness stocks.
“The catches and abundance in Central California especially are increasing, which is pretty remarkable to see year after year,” said Kate Richerson, a research scientist at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. Richerson is the lead author of the new study published in the journal Fisheries Research. “There’s reason to be optimistic that this fishery will continue to be one of the most productive and on the West Coast.”
Other recent research has suggested that the West Coast’s signature shellfish could suffer in the future from ocean acidification and other effects related to climate change. That remains a concern, Richerson said, but the study did not detect obvious signs of population-level impacts yet.
March 4, 2020 — West Coast salmon fishermen are facing another grim year, trollers heard last week at state meetings in Washington, Oregon and California.
In Washington, lower numbers of coho are projected to return to the Columbia River and to Washington’s coastal streams. The low numbers will likely constrain both sport and commercial fisheries.
February 25, 2020 — Three years ago, a cargo container purportedly transporting thousands of pounds of pickles from Panama was placed on a Hong Kong-bound ship that stopped at the Port of Oakland on a chilly February night. Hundreds of rectangular containers were stacked on the giant vessel like Lego blocks, but state and federal wildlife agents knew there was something fishy about this one.
Inside, the agents found nearly 52,000 pounds of frozen shark fins, cut from an estimated 9,500 sharks. A cursory inspection revealed that some of the fins were from protected species that require permits to be legally traded. So officials seized the shipment, valued at just under $1 million, making it one of the largest single shark fin seizures in U.S. history.
California may have banned the shark fin trade years ago, but the container is hardly the only one of its kind passing through the state’s bustling ports: A recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council estimated that hundreds of thousands of pounds of shark fins from Latin America transit West Coast and other U.S. ports each year, destined to land in a bowl of shark fin soup in Hong Kong and other Asian cities.
“We think we’ve just found the tip of the iceberg, and it’s a little hard to say how big the iceberg is,” said the report’s author, Elizabeth Murdock, the San Francisco-based director of the environmental group’s Pacific Oceans Initiative.
The wildlife agents and scientists waiting for the container in Oakland on Feb. 10, 2017, had been tipped off by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, whose agents had cracked open the container at the Port of Long Beach. An agency spokesperson declined to comment on what led to the container’s initial inspection, but its contents were a far cry from the “cucumbers/gherkins” listed as the shipment’s tariff code.
The fin trade is driven by the high demand for shark fin soup, a Chinese delicacy that has caused the value of fins to skyrocket to as much as $500 a pound.