Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Commission staff reports on decrease in halibut

November 30, 2018 — Managers of halibut in the Pacific Ocean are reporting another year of declining stocks in most areas of the coast. The International Pacific Halibut Commission oversees management of the fish along the coast from Alaska to California. The commission held its interim meeting Tuesday and Wednesday, November 27-28 in Seattle and heard about the latest stock assessment of the valuable flatfish.

IPHC scientists do annual survey fishing to come up with the stock assessment, along with information from commercial catches and other fisheries along the coast.

“We estimate that the stock went down until somewhere around 2010 from historical highs in the late 1990s,” said Ian Stewart a quantitative scientist with the commission. “It increased slightly over the subsequent five year period and around 2015 or 2016, the stock leveled out and has been decreasing in spawning biomass slowly since that time period.”

Spawning biomass is the estimated total weight of fish that are old enough to reproduce. The commission’s annual survey showed the numbers of halibut coast-wide dropped by six percent from year before. The estimated weight of fish legal to catch in the commercial fishery dropped by 19 percent from the year before in Southeast area 2C and three percent in 3A, the central gulf.

The commission has been expanding its survey up and down the coast. New survey points were added in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia in 2018.

Stewart told commissioners that there’s a high probability that halibut stocks will continue to drop at the current level of fishing because of less productive years for the fish between 2006 and 2010.

Read the full story at KFSK

Could California’s ocean ranches solve a global food shortage and fix the seafood trade deficit?

November 27, 2018 — The Pacific Ocean is mountain-spring clear here six miles off the coast of Huntington Beach, Calif., where Phil Cruver has been ranching for a few months now.

Dangling between buoys that rise on the occasional swell are sweeps of lines, some strung horizontally, others plunging vertically toward the sea plateau’s floor 150 feet below. The depth drops into oblivion about a mile to the west, and what rises are nutrients that make this prime farming territory. The proof is on the lines — the thick coils of mussel, Cruver’s livestock and his bet that deep-ocean ranching is the future of the world’s food supply.

This 100-acre patch of Pacific is the Catalina Sea Ranch, the first commercially viable aquaculture operation in federal waters. The first mussel harvest was this summer, and it is expanding to a planned 30 times its current size.

As it does, the ranch will take on the scope that the Trump administration envisions for an industry burdened for decades by a confused bureaucracy and a wary view that using the sea as a solution to future food shortages might do more environmental harm than good.

Diving along line No. 38 in the unseasonably warm water, it is easy to see the promise. The clumps of mussels are bulky along the length of the lines, which vanish into cobalt blue about 60 feet down. Schools of small fish swirl around the lines, and tiny scallops grow on the shells of the jet-black mussels.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Trade group takes fuel companies to court over Dungeness crab closures

November 27, 2018 — A trade group representing commercial fishermen on the West Coast of the United States has filed a lawsuit in a California court claiming petroleum companies have significantly harmed the Dungeness crab fishery in that state and neighboring Oregon.

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association filed the suit in a San Francisco, California court last week against 30 fossil fuel makers. They claim actions by the defendants – which include Chevron, ExxonMobil, Dutch Shell, Citgo, ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil – have led to algae blooms in the Pacific Ocean. Those blooms lead to a buildup of domoic acid, a harmful neurotoxin, in the crabs.

The lawsuit states fuel companies have known for a half-century that their products have led to climate change, with the waters for the crab fishery growing warmer. As a result, the Dungeness crab fishery has suffered through repeated closures since 2015.

“We are seeking to implement measures, at the fossil fuel industry’s expense, that will help crabbers adapt to a world in which domoic acid flare-ups will be increasingly common, and also help those crabbers who suffer financial losses as a result,” said Noah Oppenheim, the association’s executive director, in a news release.

Just days before the lawsuit, California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials announced that the Dungeness crab fishery, originally scheduled to open on 15 November, would be suspended indefinitely along the Sonoma County coast, located roughly 70 miles north of San Francisco.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

From skiing to salmon runs, the national climate report predicts a Northwest in peril

November 27, 2018 — Climate change’s effects – among them, increasing wildfires, disease outbreak and drought – are taking a toll on the Northwest, and what’s to come will threaten and transform our way of life from the salmon streams to ski slopes, according to a new federal climate assessment released Friday.

The 1,000-plus-page report, produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is the most comprehensive evaluation to date of climate change’s effects on the nation’s economy, human health, agriculture and environment. Thirteen federal agencies contributed to the report, which was required to be published by Congress.

The federal report’s stark, direct and largely negative projections are at odds with President Donald Trump’s skeptical view of climate science. But federal officials, like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher David Easterling, left little room for ambiguity about whether climate change was real and who was causing it.

Temperature data, Easterling said, provided “clear and compelling evidence that global average temperature is much higher and rising more rapidly than anything modern civilization has experienced and that this warming trend can only be explained by human activities …”

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Trade group takes fuel companies to court over Dungeness crab closures

November 27, 2018 — A trade group representing commercial fishermen on the West Coast of the United States has filed a lawsuit in a California court claiming petroleum companies have significantly harmed the Dungeness crab fishery in that state and neighboring Oregon.

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association filed the suit in a San Francisco, California court last week against 30 fossil fuel makers. They claim actions by the defendants – which include Chevron, ExxonMobil, Dutch Shell, Citgo, ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil – have led to algae blooms in the Pacific Ocean. Those blooms lead to a buildup of domoic acid, a harmful neurotoxin, in the crabs.

The lawsuit states fuel companies have known for a half-century that their products have led to climate change, with the waters for the crab fishery growing warmer. As a result, the Dungeness crab fishery has suffered through repeated closures since 2015.

“We are seeking to implement measures, at the fossil fuel industry’s expense, that will help crabbers adapt to a world in which domoic acid flare-ups will be increasingly common, and also help those crabbers who suffer financial losses as a result,” said Noah Oppenheim, the association’s executive director, in a news release.

Just days before the lawsuit, California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials announced that the Dungeness crab fishery, originally scheduled to open on 15 November, would be suspended indefinitely along the Sonoma County coast, located roughly 70 miles north of San Francisco.

Crab fishing south of the county began on schedule. Crab fishing north of Sonoma County is not scheduled to start until next month. However, in the same statement, state officials did not rule out a delay for that portion of the fishery.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Otter fans float plan to bring sea otters back to Oregon coast

November 16, 2018 — It’s been more than a century since sea otters were hunted to near extinction along the U.S. West Coast. The cute animals were successfully reintroduced along the Washington, British Columbia and California coasts, but an attempt to bring them back to Oregon in the early 1970s failed.

Now a new nonprofit has formed to try again.

“For about 110 years now, there’s been a big hole in our environment,” said Peter Hatch, a Siletz tribal member living in Corvallis. “The sea otter has been is missing from the Oregon coast.”

Hatch recently joined the board of a new nonprofit dedicated to bringing the sea otter back to Oregon waters. The group is named the Elakha Alliance — “elakha” is the Clatsop-Chinookan word for sea otter.

Read the full story at Jefferson Public Radio

Climatic closures: Crabbers file suit over warming waters

November 16, 2018 — On Wednesday morning, Nov. 14, as crabbers in California’s San Francisco Bay prepared for the state’s Dungeness crab opener today, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations filed a lawsuit alleging that 30 fossil fuel companies are to blame for the past four years of delayed Dungeness crab seasons and disastrous economic losses. The reason? Ocean warming as a result of fossil fuel consumption.

“We’re taking a stand for the captains and crew, their families, and the business owners that support the fleet,” said Noah Oppenheim, the association’s executive director. “The fossil fuel companies named in our lawsuit knowingly caused harm, and they need to be held accountable. We are seeking to implement measures, at the fossil fuel industry’s expense, that will help crabbers adapt to a world in which domoic acid flare-ups will be increasingly common, and also help those crabbers who suffer financial losses as a result.”

The lawsuit claims that these fossil fuel companies have been aware for nearly 50 years that “greenhouse gas pollution from their fossil fuel products has a significant impact on Earth’s climate, including a warming of the oceans” and that West Coast crabbers, their families and the communities they support have suffered “substantial economic losses due to those lost fishing opportunities.”

“We’re out fishing all the time, and it’s obvious the oceans are getting warmer,” said Crescent City, Calif., crabber John Beardon. “That’s bad for crabs and other fish, and it’s bad for those of us who make a living on the water. The last three years have been really hard. Our community came together and held a fish fry to help our crew members. But fish fries and disaster relief are no solution to these closures we’re now seeing year after year after year.”

This summer, the government allocated $25.8 million in disaster assistance to those affected by the 2015-16 closure of California’s commercial Dungeness and rock crab fisheries. While that funding was welcome, it certainly didn’t solve the problems of commercial fishing families coming off a series of tough seasons. Oppenheim said that that the 2015-16 closure cost the industry $110 million in lost revenue.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

A new way to fish

November 15, 2018 — For several years, biotech companies have been promising “clean” meat, “cell-based” meat, “cultured” meat — whatever you want to call it — as a way to enjoy the taste of chicken, pork and beef without the brutality of animal slaughter or the environmental damage of big agriculture. But what about fish? What about something as prized as buttery bluefin tuna, a delicacy that has become the forbidden fruit of the sea because of the many threats that have landed the fish on threatened and endangered species lists?

Where are the Silicon Valley start-ups promising to free us from the guilt of gobbling down a finger of otoro sushi, the rich bluefin belly meat, without contributing to the decline of the fish or the decline of our own health via mercury that accumulates in the flesh of this apex predator?

Well, there is at least one scientific pilgrim: Brian Wyrwas is the co-founder and chief science officer for Finless Foods, a Bay Area biotech dedicated to growing bluefin tuna in a lab. He can tell you all about the difficulties of his task, starting with the bone-weary process of securing bluefin tuna samples, the pristine source material for much of the science that follows in this field known as cellular agriculture.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Crab season delayed on the Oregon Coast

November 15, 2018 — The commercial Dungeness crab season will be delayed until mid-December along the entire Oregon Coast as state testing shows crabs are too low in meat yield.

The lucrative fishery traditionally opens on Dec. 1, but has been delayed in recent years for a number of reasons. Last year, the season was delayed by the state twice because of low meat yield, but was then further delayed because of price negotiations and bad weather.

This year, crab quality testing in early November showed crab in most test areas did not meet the criteria for a Dec. 1 opening. The delay will allow crab more time to fill with meat, state fishery managers said.

A second round of testing will occur later this month or in early December. The results will determine if the fishery opens Dec. 16, or if it should be further delayed or split into areas with different opening dates.

Fishermen, cautiously optimistic for a Dec. 1 opener, have already been preparing gear as usual. For them, the delay means even more time before they see a paycheck.

The fishery is Oregon’s most valuable. Last year, commercial fishermen landed 23.1 million pounds into Oregon — about 31 percent over the 10-year average — and saw the highest ex-vessel value ever at $74 million.

Read the full story at The Daily Astorian

West Coast crab fisherman sue 30 fossil fuel companies, citing economic losses due to climate change

November 15, 2018 — The day before commercial fishermen were due to bring the first of the season’s Dungeness crab to Bay Area docks, they made other news.

On Wednesday, West Coast crab fishermen filed a lawsuit alleging that 30 fossil fuel companies are to blame for the past several years of delayed seasons and disastrous economic losses due to ocean warming. Specific complaints include strict liability, failure to warn and negligence.

“The scientific linkage between the combustion of fossil fuels and ocean warming, which leads to domoic acid impacts in our fisheries, is clear,” said Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, which filed the suit in California State Superior Court in San Francisco on behalf of California and Oregon crab fishermen. “We know it, and it’s time to hold that industry accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”

West Coast crab fishermen have experienced significant losses during the past three years, starting in the 2015-16 season when massive algal blooms caused by warm ocean temperatures resulted in a domoic acid outbreak that caused a months-long delay. The season was partially delayed again during the 2016-17 season for the same reason.

In California, Dungeness crab brought in over $47 million in 2017 and $83 million in 2016; the amount was down to $17 million in 2015, during the industry’s first major problem with domoic acid. Oppenheim said that that the 2015-16 closure cost the industry $110 million in lost revenue. There are nearly 1,000 Dungeness crab permit holders in California and Oregon.

Read the full story at the San Fransisco Chronicle