Saving Seafood

Few California sea lions from Willamette Falls euthanized, but program continues

February 15, 2019 — Only five California sea lions have been trapped at Willamette Falls and killed since the state received permission to launch the program to protect threatened winter steelhead and spring Chinook salmon.

The permit is for 93.

It was issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service after nonlethal methods, like relocating the mammals to the Oregon Coast, failed.

The sea lions simply swam back.

Euthanasia continues to be debated by advocacy groups and scientists alike, but the dire situation for the fish rarely is.

Last winter, a record-low 512 wild winter steelhead completed the journey past Willamette Falls, according to state counts. Less than 30 years ago, that number was more than 15,000.

Read the full story at the Salem Statesman Journal

Can fish evolve to handle climate change? Scientists tested it on these oddball fish

February 14, 2019 — The grunion is a weird little fish.

Grunion are perhaps best known for washing up on California beaches — from Baja California all the way up to Monterey Bay — several times a year to spawn en masse for hours, starting on a night with a full or new moon, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The creatures travel as far up a beach as waves will carry them, and then females dig nests and lay thousands and thousands of eggs. Males come ashore, too, and fertilize the eggs — and then males and females alike return to the ocean, sometimes in less than a minute, the state fact page on the species says.

But it turns out those fish — bizarre as they might seem — can teach scientists something about sea creatures’ ability to adapt to climate change. That’s according to a new study from scientists at Long Beach State University in Southern California.

Read the full story at The State

Seafood Industry Harvests Success with Ongoing Pilot Program

February 12, 2019 — The following was released by the West Coast Seafood Processors Association:

An exempted fishing permit (EFP) program allowed West Coast trawl fishermen and processors to test changes in the fishery that increased their catch by more than 14 million pounds of fish in 2018 – an increase of 300 percent from 2017.

NOAA Fisheries issues EFPs, exempting vessels from certain regulations on a trial basis to promote the testing of new gear types or methods, allow industry to work cooperatively with the government and contribute to the scientific knowledge of the fishery and potential changes in regulations. Participating fishermen are able to harvest millions of pounds of delicious and abundant rockfish, allowing processors to stock retail markets and provide consumers with fresh, sustainable product – all with minimal bycatch of sensitive salmon stocks and certain fish species that aren’t as robust. Fishing under the EFP brought in about $5.5 million in additional revenue in 2018, according to National Marine Fisheries Service statistics.

The EFP program built on success from a similar permit in 2017, and we are off to a running start with this year’s EFP: More than 1 million pounds of groundfish have been landed under the EFP in January. Last year, non-whiting groundfish landings, at more than 66 million pounds, were the highest since the 2000 groundfish disaster when roughly 68 million pounds were landed. The average in the intervening years was around 45 million pounds and the low point was around 38 million pounds. When whiting is included, 2018 landings are the second highest on record, eclipsed only by 2017.

The EFPs follow NOAA Fisheries’ 2011 adoption of a catch share program for the West Coast groundfish fishery that substantially reduced discards of fish. Catch limits for several rockfish species have also increased dramatically. NOAA Fisheries and the Pacific Fishery Management Council worked with industry to identify regulations on the use and configuration of trawl gear that were no longer necessary under catch shares.

The seafood industry was anxious to remove gear restrictions as the health of groundfish stocks improved, and because it would help assess potential impacts to salmon and other protected species. Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association; Brad Pettinger, former director of the Oregon Trawl Commission; Shems Jud, Pacific Regional Director, Oceans Program, Environmental Defense Fund; and Mike Okoniewski of Pacific Seafood; first applied for the EFP in 2016.

“We were eager for groundfish vessels to take advantage of healthy stocks and high quotas as quickly as possible while being sensitive to the need to minimize interactions with salmon and other protected species; NMFS stepped up and helped us design this EFP to provide fishing opportunities and collect important information the agency needed,” Steele, also the EFP coordinator, said.

NOAA Fisheries was amenable to developing an EFP that would allow the industry to catch more fish while also providing insight into how regulatory changes would actually work with a subset of vessels before they were implemented throughout the entire fishery. NOAA Fisheries used data gathered from the 2017 and 2018 EFPs to permanently revise the trawl gear regulations for the start of the 2019 fishing year.

“The EFP provided the fishing community the flexibility to benefit from the rebound in many West Coast rockfish stocks, while continuing to protect those stocks and other vulnerable species such as salmon that need it,” said Ryan Wulff, Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries in NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region. “The results were just as we hoped: a more productive fishery, increased revenue, and improved regulatory flexibility for the fleet.”

Now, with the third year of the EFP program just getting under way, more than a dozen groundfish fishermen are filling their fish holds, processors are hiring workers and the government is getting much-needed information about the impacts of adjusting gear regulations. While the seafood industry worked hard to regain its foothold in markets and provide the public with fresh West Coast rockfish on menus and in stores, it was possible only because NMFS worked with industry to issue the EFPs. It’s a win-win-win-win. And based on the EFP results thus far, the future is looking bright for the groundfish fishery.

“This EFP has been a remarkable success – millions of pounds of sustainable rockfish landed with almost no bycatch,” Jud said. “NMFS’ recent adoption of changes to trawl gear regulations will enshrine some of the benefits of the EFP, securing greater revenue for fishermen and processors and more abundant rockfish on menus and in seafood markets for consumers to enjoy.”

Of course, big projects like this one aren’t done in a vacuum. The applicants credit both NOAA Fisheries and the West Coast lawmakers for getting the EFP approved.

“This EFP shows the value of diverse collaboration for solving complex issues,” Okoniewski said. “The genesis for the EFP originated in a conversation among [NMFS West Coast Regional Administrator] Barry Thom, Shems Jud, and me. Brad [Pettinger] became the data expert and adviser. The professional construction of the EFP itself was done by Lori who drove it across the finish line.”

The support of 13 lawmakers was instrumental in getting the project started. Reps. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore.; Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash.; Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.; Jared Huffman, D-Calif.; Derek Kilmer, D-Wash.; Denny Heck, D-Wash.; Greg Walden, R-Ore.; Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.; Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore; and Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, D-Wash.; and Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., all signed a letter supporting the trawl gear changes.

“This EFP is a collaborative success amongst processors, fishermen, an ENGO and National Marine Fisheries Service that added millions to our fishermen’s incomes, created processor jobs, and brought a great U.S. seafood item to the American consumer,” Okoniewski said.

After ruling in anchovy case, future stock assessment method under debate

February 8, 2019 —  The federal government has about 10 weeks before it must establish a new catch limit for an anchovy fishery in northern California, and as time winds down, discussions about the fishery’s future are ramping up.

However, the talk regarding the future of the northern anchovy’s central sub-population isn’t just about a new limit.

“It’s time to bring anchovy management into the 21st century by updating catch limits each year to reflect real-time abundance data rather than a decades-old guesstimate,” Andrea Treece, a lawyer for Earthjustice, said in a release announcing U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh’s decision. Treece represented Oceana, which filed a lawsuit in November 2016 and claimed the government relied on a 25-year-old model that set the annual quota at 25,000 metric tons had become outdated.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Thousands of pounds of Vietnamese catfish recalled

February 7, 2019 — A United States importer is recalling more than 55,000 pounds of catfish from Vietnam.

City of Industry, California-based Richwell Group, Inc. – doing business as Maxfield Seafood – is recalling around 55,300 pounds of frozen Sheat catfish products that were not presented for import re-inspection into the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) said in a press release.

The catfish products, imported from Vietnam on various dates from April 2018, through December 2018, were distributed to retailers nationwide.

The recalled products include Maxfield Seafood SHEAT FISH CA TREN KET and 14-ounce clear bag packages labeled Maxfield Seafood SHEAT FISH CA TREN RANG.

The problem was discovered on 30 January, 2019, during FSIS surveillance activities of imported products at the distributor’s facility, FSIS said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Dungeness crab season opens across Oregon coast

February 6, 2019 — Commercial Dungeness crab fishing has opened along the entire Oregon coastline after delays for low meat yields and domoic acid postponed the start of the season.

According to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), crab samples from the Cape Blanco area and those taken in southern regions all the down to the US state’s border with California show biotoxin counts are within safe levels.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Big sea, bigger data: How analytics are making peace between fishermen and turtles

February 5, 2019 — The ocean is complicated. Our tools to manage it are blunt.

We often approach the ever-changing ocean as if it were a stationary valley in a national park. We close entire coastlines and restrict fisheries to protect single species. We’re flummoxed by wide-ranging mobile marine life and unprepared for climate change.

But a new generation of data-driven tools balances the needs of fish and fishermen and adapts automatically as the environment changes.

With the government’s towering stockpiles of ocean data, scientists can use weather and ocean chemistry to predict where fishermen are likely to catch their intended targets, including swordfish or tuna, and avoid protected species, such as marine mammals, sharks or manta rays.

Google and Facebook analyze data to predict our behavior with unnerving precision. With dynamic ocean management, scientists use similar strategies to protect the areas where turtles, albatross or whales are most likely to congregate in a given day or hour.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

California wildlife agency denied in bid to delay lawsuit over whale, sea turtle entanglements

February 5, 2019 — A San Francisco judge has rejected the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s bid to delay a lawsuit that claims the agency has fallen short in preventing the state’s commercial Dungeness crab fishery from entangling whales and sea turtles.

U.S. District Court Judge Maxine Chesney, on Jan. 25, denied the department’s motion to delay the case by 2 1/2 years while it secures a federal “incidental take permit” that would allow the agency to operate in a way that addresses and minimizes the threat to whales and sea turtles, while acknowledging some risk.

The Center for Biological Diversity sued Fish and Wildlife in October 2017 after the total number of whale entanglements from all fishing industries broke records for three straight years.

“The Dungeness crab fishery is the biggest entanglement culprit in California, by far,” said Steve Jones, a spokesman for the center. “Most entangling gear can’t be identified, but of the identified gear, it is mostly crab lines.”

Read the full story at The San Jose Mercury News

IPHC agrees on halibut catch limit after 2018 impasse

February 4, 2019 — The International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) has set 2019 catch limits slightly higher than last year’s levels, it announced.

The body, which sets halibut catch limits in the US and Canada, set the 2019 limit at 38.61 million pounds (17,513 metric tons) for the 2019 season, which should March 15 and must cease on Nov. 14.

In 2018, the IPHC was not able to agree on a catch limit. In a move called both “inevitable” and “disastrous”, the IPHC could not come to an agreement on the catch limits for the seasons in the US, off the coast of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California, and British Columbia, Canada. So, the US and Canada set limits independently, which totaled 37.2m lbs, a 9% decrease overall.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

California has a weird new desert. It’s in the Pacific Ocean.

February 4, 2019 — Six years after it was stricken by a wasting disease off the northern California coast, the sunflower sea star — one of the most colorful starfish in the ocean — has all but vanished, and the domino effect threatens to unravel an entire marine ecosystem.

The cause of the sea star’s demise is a mystery, but it coincided with a warming event in the Pacific Ocean, possibly tied to the climate, that lasted for two years ending in 2015. It heated vast stretches of water in patches, and likely exacerbated the disease, according to a new study released Wednesday.

“I’ve never seen a decline of this magnitude of a species so important,” Drew Harvell, the lead author of the study, published in the journal Science Advances, that documented the sunflower sea star’s retreat into possible extinction off California and Oregon.

If the study had a purpose, she said, it was to call attention to the sea star’s demise so that federal officials would take action to list it as endangered and work to save it, possibly with a breeding program using sunflower stars that are surviving in parts of Washington, Alaska and Canada.

Read the full story at The Washington Post