Saving Seafood

California: Bill would allow crab season to close temporarily for whale entanglements

February 21, 2018 — North Coast state Sen. Mike McGuire is looking to make changes to the state’s Fish and Game Code with the Fisheries Omnibus Bill, SB 1309, which he introduced Friday.

Several of the provisions in the bill would impact local fisherman and local practices. And, according to McGuire, several of the changes were introduced at the request of fishermen.

Specifically, one provision would update what McGuire called “antiquated regulations” for the Humboldt Bay anchovy fleet.

The bill would establish one 60-ton limit on anchovies taken from Humboldt Bay between May 1 and December 1 each year, rather than two 15-ton limits for specific time periods each year.

“Humboldt Bay has always been subject to its own anchovy fishery regulations,” he said. “The Fishing Omnibus Bill brings the Humboldt Bay regulation in line with the rest of the state.”

Several provisions of SB 1309 deal with the Dungeness crab fishing industry — one would allow the director of California Department of Fish and Wildlife to temporarily close a crabbing season in the event of a whale entanglement, another would create new regulations for lost crabbing gear.

“This bill would authorize the director, upon the unanimous recommendation of the California Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group, as defined, to, on an emergency basis, close Dungeness crab season in any waters due to whale entanglements, or reopen Dungeness crab season in those waters if the risk of whale entanglements has abated,” the proposed bill states.

The working group is made up of commercial and recreational fishermen, environmental organization representatives, members of the disentanglement network, and state and local agencies, according to the Ocean Protection Council website.

“Two seasons ago there was an entanglement in Monterey Bay,” McGuire said Monday. “The director of Fish and Wildlife didn’t have the authority to close crab season even though there was an entanglement. The crab fleet came to the committee and asked us to change this provision in law, which is why we are advancing this fix in the omnibus bill.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, which filed a lawsuit alleging Fish and Wildlife violated the Endangered Species Act by allowing crab fishing, said McGuire’s bill does not go far enough.

Read the full story at the Eureka Times-Standard

 

Industry Responds to Erroneous Reports about Dungeness Fishery

February 21, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The fact that many boats stopped fishing dungeness crab over the weekend spurred confusion in the market place, as some buyers heard that the fishery was halted due to a price dispute.

Our story yesterday focused on one report of a sale below the $2.75 price that has been standard along the coast since the season opened.

Buyers were quick to correct the mistaken impression about prices.

Many processors were plugged with crab, and needed the long holiday weekend to catch up and the crabbers took a ‘long overdue’ break due to weather as well.

According to Michael J Freels, of Caito Fisheries, Crescent City, “We  all needed time to catch up on processing, freezing and packaging  of our crab.  The crab fleet offered to stop fishing over the weekend, to allow most processing plants to get caught up.

“It was not a price dispute, the way SeafoodNews mistakenly characterized it yesterday.”

“Monday was a holiday and most of the unionized public cold storages were closed, so we couldn’t transfer frozen crab from our holding freezers” said Freels.

He says that packers “need a little breathing room” to catch up. We want to continue to put out a good quality product, and that entails slowing down the offloading”

Now, after the weekend things are back on track, boats are fishing, and crabbers are getting paid.

Dungeness remains the best value among all the crab species right now, and with the fishery on track, everyone hopes to see crab sales strengthen.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

D.B. Pleschner: Is court the right place to determine ‘best available science’?

February 12, 2018 — A U.S. District Court judge recently ruled that the federal government’s catch limit for California’s central stock of anchovy — currently 25,000 metric tons — is far too high.

But instead of weighing all the facts, the judge ignored them, shunned the established precedent of deference to federal agencies’ scientific determinations and instead endorsed the flawed arguments of the advocacy group Oceana.

So what happened?

It’s a well-accepted fact that the anchovy population on the West Coast has extreme natural variations in abundance, even without fishing. To account for these wild swings, scientists reduced the overfishing limit of 100,000 tons by 75 percent, setting the annual catch limit at 25,000 metric tons. The Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Science and Statistical Committee approved the numbers as “best available science” and the National Marine Fisheries Service agreed, recognizing that the anchovy resource ranges from peaks of more than two million tons to orders of magnitude lower and quickly jumps back up again.

In California, the anchovy fishery declined in the 1980s due to adverse market conditions and landings have averaged less than 10,000 tons a year ever since. But this fishery is still important because it keeps the local fleet on the water and processing plant doors open when no other fish are available.

Regardless, environmentalists began lobbying the council in 2015 to curtail California’s anchovy catch limit after one advocacy group funded a new research paper that reassessed the basis for anchovy management — a 1991 study based on egg and larval data that represented long-term average biomass abundance, not a single-year stock assessment. Because the reassessment had virtually no adult anchovy biological data from recent years to correlate, the authors had to make assumptions. They concluded that the anchovy population had collapsed, with current biomass estimated at only about 15,000 tons coast-wide.

But other scientists challenged the findings, in part because the new estimate excluded Mexico where a substantial portion of the stock resides, and it also omitted nearshore waters where fishermen were reporting masses of anchovy.

Richard Parrish, retired from NMFS after decades of experience with anchovy, critiqued the paper and stated, “The biomass estimates in the paper cannot be used to estimate the 2016 biomass of the northern stock of anchovy…” He continued, “Clearly, with northern anchovy a five-year-old biomass estimate is not significantly better at estimating current biomass than a 25-year-old biomass estimate.” That statement was included in the Administrative Record (AR) for the Oceana lawsuit, but the judge ignored it.

In 2016, the council sponsored a data-poor workshop where internationally recognized scientists reviewed the new egg-larval analysis along with other available data and also rejected the study’s findings. As one member said, “The estimate did not pass the straight face test.”

Here’s why: the new assessment did not consider anchovy fishery landings, which in 2015 totaled about 64,000 tons, only 17,000 tons in California (still under the 25,000 ton catch limit) and the rest from Mexico. As Parrish pointed out, “Clearly, the absolute minimum biomass estimate for 2015, assuming that the fishery caught every last anchovy in the population, would be 64,114 tons. If fishermen took 50 percent of the biomass, based on recorded landings, the estimate would be 128,000 tons and if they took only 20 percent of the biomass, the estimate would be 320,000 tons, massively above the study’s assertions.”

Read the full opinion piece at the Santa Cruz Sentinel 

 

California says will block crude oil from Trump offshore drilling plan

February 9, 2018 — SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California will block the transportation through its state of petroleum from new offshore oil rigs, officials told Reuters on Wednesday, a move meant to hobble the Trump administration’s effort to vastly expand drilling in U.S. federal waters.

California’s plan to deny pipeline permits for transporting oil from new leases off the Pacific Coast is the most forceful step yet by coastal states trying to halt the biggest proposed expansion in decades of federal oil and gas leasing.

Officials in Florida, North and South Carolina, Delaware and Washington, have also warned drilling could despoil beaches, harm wildlife and hurt lucrative tourism industries.

“I am resolved that not a single drop from Trump’s new oil plan ever makes landfall in California,” Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, chair of the State Lands Commission and a Democratic candidate for governor, said in an emailed statement.

The commission sent a letter on Wednesday to the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) urging the bureau’s program manager Kelly Hammerle to withdraw the draft proposal, saying the public did not have an adequate opportunity to provide input on the plan.

”It is certain that the state would not approve new pipelines or allow use of existing pipelines to transport oil from new leases onshore,” the commission wrote in the letter seen by Reuters.

California has clashed repeatedly with President Donald Trump’s administration over a range of other issues since last year, from climate change to automobile efficiency standards to immigration.

The Interior Department last month announced its proposal to open nearly all U.S. offshore waters to oil and gas drilling, sparking protests from coastal states, environmentalists and the tourism industry.

Read the full story at Reuters

 

CALIFORNIA: Search suspended for Eureka fisherman missing after falling overboard

February 6, 2018 — The North Coast commercial crab season had an “alarming” start for the Coast Guard this past weekend, with two search-and-rescue missions in Humboldt Bay being conducted including one where a search was suspended for a missing crabber who fell overboard.

“Essentially we’ve had two search-and-rescue cases in two days of the crab season,” Coast Guard Petty Officer Sarah Wilson said Monday morning. “That’s always alarming for us.”

The first hauls of the North Coast crab season began Monday morning.

Eureka crab fisherman Aaron Newman of the vessel Maria Isabel was heading back to the Humboldt Bay jetty on Monday afternoon to unload at Caito Fisheries, one of the local processing facilities in Eureka.

“It appears to be kind of spotty,” Newman said describing the first day’s catch. “Not everyone is catching crabs, but there definitely are some spots.”

Read the full story at the Eureka Times-Standard

 

Attorneys general urge offshore drilling plan’s cancellation

February 2, 2018 — The top lawyers for a dozen coastal states want the U.S. Interior Department to cancel the Trump administration’s plan to expand offshore drilling, warning it threatens their maritime economies and natural resources.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and her fellow attorneys general, all Democrats, wrote Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday about his agency’s proposed five-year oil and gas leasing plan that opens new ocean waters.

“Not only does this irresponsible and careless plan put our state’s jobs and environment at risk, but it shows utter disregard for the will and voices of thousands of local businesses and fishing families,” said Healey in a prepared statement. “My colleagues and I will continue to fight this plan.”

Healey first announced her opposition to the plan in an August 2017 letter to Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association agreed with her that the Interior Department’s plan to expand offshore drilling threatens Massachusetts’ $7.3 billion commercial fishing industry — the third largest in the country — and more than 240,000 jobs in the state.

The plan also could devastate the state’s robust recreation and tourism industries, according to Healey, as well harm the state’s coastal environment and protected endangered species, including the Northern Right Whale, which feeds in the waters off of Cape Cod and Nantucket, according to the comment letter. There are only about 460 critically endangered Northern Right Whales remaining worldwide.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Two bears were badly burned in wildfires, and fish skin helped heal them

January 26, 2018 — When Jamie Peyton first examined the bears’ paws last month, she figured they might take six months to heal.

Peyton, a veterinarian at the University of California at Davis, had treated cats and dogs with burns before, and she knew these were severe. The two female black bears in her care had survived the Thomas wildfire that swept through Southern California in December, but both suffered third-degree burns that had caused their paw pads to slough off. They could hardly stand due to pain.

Instead of six months, the bears’ injuries healed in a matter of weeks — a quick recovery Peyton attributed to a treatment never before tried on human or animal burn victims in the United States: fish skins applied as bandages.

Using fish skin wasn’t Peyton’s first instinct when state wildlife authorities enlisted her help. They had found one bear huddling on Dec. 9 in a backyard aviary near the town of Ojai and the other two weeks later in a nearby wooded area. A third patient, a 5-month-old male mountain lion with burned paws, was discovered in the woods shortly before Christmas. Kirsten Macintyre, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said officials determined the three were candidates for rehabilitation, which meant transferring them to a state wildlife investigations lab near Sacramento. A vet there suggested calling on Peyton, chief of the Integrative Medicine Service at the UC Davis veterinary teaching hospital.

Peyton said she first tried the usual care: cleaning the burns, removing dead tissue and applying ointments. But she knew two very important steps — covering the burns and providing pain control — would be tricky with these unusual patients, which needed to stay a safe distance from people when not sedated.

There was no guarantee they’d gulp down pain pills hidden in their food, Peyton said. “And we couldn’t put on any type of bandage material they would eat,” because that might cause intestinal obstruction. Also, she said, “if a bandage comes off, you can’t really go into the cage to get it.”

A fast recovery was imperative, especially for the second bear. Peyton’s team had discovered the bear was pregnant during an ultrasound exam, and they feared the stress of giving birth in captivity would cause her to reject the cub.

Then, the veterinarian said, she remembered a news story she had read about scientists in Brazil successfully using sterilized tilapia skin on human burns. Like the pig and human tissues that have long been applied to burns, the fish skin is moist and transfers collagen, a protein that helps healing. But it’s cheaper and widely available, because it’s a byproduct of tilapia sold as food. The Brazilian researchers told Reuters last year that it hastened recovery in their patients and reduced the need for pain medication.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

 

California sea lion population rebounds

January 24, 2018 — California sea lions are doing just fine. Thanks for asking.

More than fine, actually.

Sea lions have fully rebounded with an estimated population of more than 250,000 in 2014, according to a recent study by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1975, the population was estimated at less than 90,000.

The study reconstructed the population’s triumphs and trials over the past 40 years.

“The population has basically come into balance with its environment,” co-author Sharon Melin, a research biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, said in a statement. “The marine environment is always changing, and their population is at a point where it responds very quickly to changes in the environment.”

NOAA’s declaration that California sea lions have fully rebounded does not mean a “delisting” as it would if the sea lion was listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.

“Although there is no provision in the Marine Mammal Protection Act (which protects sea lions) to delist a species, there is a provision that allows states to ask NOAA Fisheries to take over management of species that have reached carrying capacity (in the law it is called Optimum Sustainable Population or OSP) and potentially do more to control their numbers,” wrote NOAA spokesperson Michael Milstein when announcing the report’s findings.

The goal now, Melin said, is to keep the population balanced between 183,000 and 275,000 individuals.

The rebound is a victory for the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. But as in other instances of animal populations beating the odds — wolves, for example — it’s a success story that comes with challenges.

As the California sea lion population has grown, the animals have expanded their range, bringing them into conflict with humans and endangered fish.

Where you sit’

In Astoria, male California sea lions have taken over an entire stretch of docks at the Port of Astoria’s East Mooring Basin. Port employees have attempted numerous deterrent tactics over the years, everything from fluttering wind dancers to a fake killer whale. Nothing has really worked.

Upward of 1,000 pinnipeds were recorded in a single daily count at the mooring basin in 2015. While fewer sea lions returned this spring, plenty showed up in the fall and many have stuck around through the winter instead of leaving like they have in the past, said Janice Burk, marina manager.

The port plans to install more low railing fabricated by students from Knappa along the docks in the spring. It has proved to be the one deterrent that seems to work. Sometimes.

Read the full story from the Columbia Basin Bulletin at the Chinook Observer

 

Oceana wins lawsuit against feds over anchovy quota.

January 22, 2018 — Anchovies may have fallen out of fashion as a food for humans, but they are a key food source for whales, dolphins, pelicans and a host of other creatures that make Monterey Bay one of the richest marine ecosystems in the world.

And Jan. 18, that ecosystem scored a huge victory: Oceana, a marine environmental nonprofit, and Earthjustice, an environmental law nonprofit that represented Oceana, won a lawsuit in the U.S District Court Northern District of California against the federal government. Their argument: that the National Marine Fisheries Service set the anchovy catch limit off the California coast at illegally high levels in October 2016.

The crux of Oceana’s case was this: In October 2016, NMFS set the catch limit at 25,000 metric tons annually for the California subpopulation of anchovies when the latest available science suggested the total biomass of that population was between 15,000-32,000 metric tons.

In other words, the annual catch limit was set within the estimated range of the total population.

Read the full story at the Monterey County Weekly

Saving Seafood covered Oceana’s legal challenge in a story posted November 29, 2016. It’s available here.

The full ruling is available here.

The following was released today by Oceana:

MONTEREY, Calif. — In response to a lawsuit brought by Oceana, as represented by Earthjustice, a federal judge struck down a decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service (Fisheries Service) to set a 25,000 metric ton (mt) catch level for the central population of northern anchovy for violating the nation’s fishery management law. The court rejected the Service’s reliance on decades-old data to manage this fishery off the California coast. The court found that the government’s annual catch limit was not based on the best scientific information available, and that the Fisheries Service did not adequately consider whether its management prevented overfishing. Instead of basing catch limits on the most recent scientific data showing that the anchovy population had reached a historic low of less than 32,000 mt, the Fisheries Service set the limits based on pre-1990s population estimates assuming a population of more than 733,000 mt.

“The law is clear: the agency can’t sweep inconvenient facts under the rug and rely on a bureaucratic preference to “set it and forget it” for the most ecologically critical fish on the West Coast,” said Andrea Treece, Staff attorney for Earthjustice. “The agency must develop modern, reality-based management measures that reflect the actual status of the anchovy population and ensure that enough of them stay in the ocean to feed pelicans, sea lions, salmon, and other marine predators.”

“This decision holds the Fisheries Service to fundamental standards intended by Congress, which require the government to sustainably manage our nation’s fisheries for the benefit of both fishermen and dependent species,” added Mariel Combs, Pacific Counsel for Oceana.

The decision strikes down the rule currently in place. Now the agency must promulgate new management limits based on the best available science.

“This decision is a huge victory for the ocean’s little fish, and in turn the larger fish and wildlife, that depend upon them,” said Geoff Shester, California campaign director and senior scientist for Oceana. “An abundant anchovy population also supports California’s coastal economy including sport fishing and whale watching. The court delivered an important win for science, marking a turning point that will force fishery managers to safeguard some of the most important fish in the sea.”

 

Southeast Alaska squid fishery shot down

January 18, 2018 — Declining king salmon stocks are playing a role in the Alaska Board of Fisheries decisions for other commercial fisheries.

On Sunday, the board voted down a proposal for a new fishery in Southeast Alaska for market squid.

The proposal sought to allow purse seining for the squid, a species that can grow to 7-and-a-half-inches long and ranges from Mexico to Alaska.

Salmon seiner Justin Peeler of Petersburg told the board he’s also fished for squid in California.

“As somebody that had a background in fishing squid I got reports from other fishermen during various times of the year of seeing squid, biomass is showing up, water temperature is warming a little bit and we’re seeing changes of that in our other fisheries and after seeing it grow and kind of more and more sightings and the density of the schools and the sightings growing I decided well I should put this proposal in,” Peeler said.

Peeler thought the fishery could be opened to other gear types as well. He saw squid as an opportunity for fishermen but also a potential threat to other species.

“They’re eaters,” Peeler said. “In a short period of time they have to eat grow and spawn and that’s the fear I have is that these could move in in a very rapid rate and we could see a huge change in some of our other fisheries due to us not realizing that this is somewhat of an invasive species as oceans warm. Our local inside waters may stay cool enough that they might hold ‘em off a little bit but if it’s warm out in the deep they’re gonna come up and they’re going to spawn and they’re going to be in our waters as their population booms.”

Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued what are called “commissioners permits” in 2014 and 2017 to Peeler and others interested in testing whether they could catch squid.

Read the full story at KTOO Public Media