Saving Seafood

California proposal to raise fish landing fees 1,300 percent worries processors

March 29, 2017 — California wants to raise commercial fishing landing taxes 1,300 percent, or USD 12.4 million (EUR 11.5 million) – a tax hike commercial fishermen and seafood processors are unsure they can survive.

Fishermen “are very concerned, as are their crews, as are primary processors and the plant workers,” Rob Ross, the executive director of the California Seafood and Fisheries Institute, told SeafoodSource. If fees rise as high as proposed, “many will not fish, as there will be no margin.”

The proposal issued by Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife aims to make up for a departmental budget shortfall that has been growing more severe for years.

Revenues collected by the department have held steady in the last decade, but costs for staff salaries, drought response activities and additional law enforcement personnel and equipment have all risen, forcing the department to dip into and erode reserves. Other costs not initially planned for, such as endangered species management, are also rising.

Money from the state’s general fund has supplemented, but is inconsistent year to year.

Commercial seafood landing taxes, which are set by the legislature, haven’t risen since 1992, and are currently generating revenue that is 0.5 percent of the value of the fishery. While other license fees and taxes collected by the department automatically increase with inflation, commercial seafood landing taxes don’t.

Current taxes range from USD 0.01 to USD 0.05 (EUR 0.01 to 0.04) per pound. Adjusting them to compensate for the inflation of the last quarter-century would require raising them roughly 80 percent, or about USD 750,000 (EUR 694,000) – far less than the 1,300 percent proposed increase.

The department’s main fund, called the Fish and Game Preservation Fund, pays for 400 wildlife law enforcement officers, land management, wildlife conservation, fisheries management and the Fish and Game Commission, which establishes regulations.

Read the full story at Seafood Source 

CALIFORNIA: Capitol Tracker: Area reps take stand on landing fee hikes

March 28, 2017 — Both of the state’s North Coast legislators, Sen. Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Jim Wood, are vocal in their opposition to a proposal put forward by the governor to increase fishing landing fees.

The plan from Gov. Jerry Brown to fill a $20 million shortfall in the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife budget would increase landing fees for the state’s commercial fishing fleet. The increases would raise an additional $12.4 million.

“Currently, revenue from the commercial fish landing fees support less than one quarter of the Department’s program costs,” the budget summary states, adding that landing fees have not been adjusted for 20 years.

According to McGuire, the increase in the fees “exceeding 10,000 percent” is “simply unacceptable.”

“We have to protect and preserve California’s fisheries, and we’re deeply concerned about the future based off of threats from the federal government and the exorbitant fees being proposed by the Governor’s Office,” McGuire said in a statement.

Wood reacted similarly.

“As Vice Chair of the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture and a member of the Assembly who represents nearly one-third of California’s coastline, I am adamantly opposed to the Governor’s proposal to increase landing fees on commercial fisheries,” Wood said in a statement.

He added that the fishing industry has not had it easy the past few years with toxic algae blooms halting the crab fishing season on the North Coast last year and salmon populations declining significantly.

“Exacerbating the financial hardships of an industry that has so recently suffered these crises in order to address the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s budget concerns is unconscionable,” Wood wrote in a letter to the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture, which he co-chairs.

Read the full story at The Times-Standard News

Congress to consider relief funds for California crab fleet

March 24, 2017 — Long-awaited federal funds to alleviate California’s crabbing fleet after last year’s dismal season could be approved by Congress as early as the next few weeks, according to California 2nd District Rep. Jared Huffman.

Huffman (D-San Rafael) said Congress is set to vote on a supplemental budget appropriation to prevent a government shutdown in the coming weeks. He said he and a bipartisan group of legislators have signed on to a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urging them to include fishery disaster funds in this budget bill.

“I don’t want to say ‘mission accomplished’ at this point,” Huffman told the Times-Standard on Wednesday. “I think the fact that we’ve got a nice bipartisan request in and that it’s not tied to President Trump’s budget is a good thing.”

Meanwhile at the state level, local legislators and fishing organizations are protesting Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to increase commercial fishing landing fees by as much as 1,300 percent in order to help close a $20 million shortfall in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife budget.

North Coast Assemblyman Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg), who also serves as the vice chairman on the Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture, stated Wednesday that he is “adamantly opposed” to Brown’s proposal.

“I recognize that the department’s budget is unsustainable and a solution must be found, but not on the backs of the men and women in California’s commercial fishing industry,” Wood said in a statement.

Read the full story at the Times-Standard

Commercial disasters declared for nine West Coast fisheries

March 21, 2017 — The Commerce Secretariat determined that nine salmon and crab fisheries in Alaska, California and Washington experienced commercial failures, which will enable fishing communities to seek disaster relief assistance from Congress, NOAA Fisheries Division reported.

The decision was taken by US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker due to the fact that in recent years, each of these fisheries experienced sudden and unexpected large decreases in fish stock biomass due to unusual ocean and climate conditions.

The fisheries deemed to have experienced commercial failures are the following:

  • Gulf of Alaska pink salmon fisheries (Alaska/2016)
  • California Dungeness and rock crab fishery (California/2015-2016);
  • Yurok Tribe Klamath River Chinook salmon fishery (California/2016);
  • Fraser River Makah Tribe and Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe sockeye salmon fisheries (Washington/2014);
  • Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay non-treaty coho salmon fishery (Washington/2015);
  • Nisqually Indian Tribe, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, and Squaxin Island Tribe South Puget Sound salmon fisheries (Washington/2015);
  • Quinault Indian Nation Grays Harbor and Queets River coho salmon fishery (Washington/2015);
  • Quileute Tribe Dungeness crab fishery (Washington/2015-2016);
  • Ocean salmon troll fishery (Washington/2016).

“The Commerce Department and NOAA stand with America’s fishing communities. We are proud of the contributions they make to the nation’s economy, and we recognize the sacrifices they are forced to take in times of environmental hardship,” said Samuel D. Rauch III, deputy assistant administrator for regulatory programs, NOAA Fisheries.

Rauch stressed their commitment to helping these communities recover and achieve success in the future.

Read the full story at Fish Information & Services

California faces another bleak salmon-fishing season, a holdover from the drought

March 6, 2017 — California salmon anglers are looking at another bleak fishing season, despite the remarkably wet winter – a lingering impact from the state’s five-year drought.

This week, state and federal fisheries regulators released their estimates for the numbers of adult fall-run Chinook salmon swimming off California’s coast. The news was even more grim than the drought-weakened numbers of fish last year.

An estimated 54,200 adult fall-run Chinook salmon reared in the Klamath River are swimming off the Pacific Coast – among the lowest number on record and down from 142,000 in 2016. Of the adult fish reared in the Sacramento River and its tributaries, biologists estimate there are 230,700 in the Pacific Ocean – 70,000 fewer than last year.

The reason for the declines? The adult fish set to return to Central Valley rivers to spawn were hatched two to four years ago, during the peak of California’s record-breaking drought when river and ocean conditions were abysmal.

Salmon from the Sacramento and Klamath river systems account for the vast majority of salmon caught by anglers in California’s rivers and along the coast. They’re considered critical to the state’s commercial and recreational salmon industries, which account for an estimated $1.4 billion in annual economic activity.

Downstream from the stricken Oroville Dam, the Feather River Fish Hatchery manages to save millions of fish

February 22, 2017 — On Friday, the staff at the Feather River Fish Hatchery, just downstream from the stricken Oroville Dam, took stock of their losses, gave thanks for their victories and girded for a long, hard recovery after being inundated with debris-laden water the color of chocolate milk.

A few thousand Chinook salmon fry didn’t make it. But millions of others survived, as did 1 million federally endangered steelhead trout eggs.

The dirty water had been spewed from a jagged crater in the dam’s main, concrete-lined spillway discovered after California Department of Water Resources officials increased releases of reservoir water a week ago to offset inflows of rainfall. By the time they halted the releases to inspect the damage, the Feather River below had been transformed into a torrent of fouled river water.

“Our hatchery, which rears salmon and steelhead, draws all of its water from the river,” said facility manager Anna Kastner, 52, wincing at the memory. “Suddenly, it was awash in liquid mud.”

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

CALIFORNIA: Morgan Hill restaurant fined over fish labeling

February 16, 2017 — Something fishy was going on at Odeum in Morgan Hill, Santa Clara County officials suspected.

The upscale restaurant — a big fish in the Morgan Hill restaurant scene, helmed and owned by a chef with a Michelin star — was serving tilapia in place of the petrale sole listed on the menu for a period of more than a year, an investigation by the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office alleged. A spokesperson for Odeum declined to comment.

Now, according to a civil judgment announced Wednesday, the restaurant must pay $120,000 — $30,000 in restitution and $90,000 in civil penalties — and offer a $30 gift card to any customer who ordered sole at Odeum between October 2014 and March 2016 and files a claims form by May 31, the Santa Clara district attorney’s office announced Wednesday.

Read the full story at SFGate.com

2015/2016 California Dungeness crab season ‘a fishery resource disaster’

February 1, 2017 — A long-awaited declaration by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker defines the 2015 to 2016 California Dungeness crab season as a fishery failure.

A Jan. 18 press release from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) states that under fishery management laws, the secretary of commerce can make the declaration “due to a fishery resource disaster.”

That opens the door for – but does not guarantee – congressional approval of disaster relief funding.

“If Congress appropriates funds to address these fishery failures, NOAA will work closely with members of Congress … to develop a spending plan to support activities that would restore the fishery, prevent a similar failure, and assist affected communities,” the release states.

Last year’s season was delayed by several months due to the presence of domoic acid, a naturally-produced toxin related to algae blooms.

The Dungeness season’s off-the-boat crab landings revenue amounted to $37.6 million, far less than the $60 million or so that each season has yielded in recent years. If the revenue loss had equated to 80 percent of an average season’s total, a disaster declaration would have been automatic.

Read the full story at the Mad River Union

New Fish Hub Hopes to Rebuild Demand for Monterey Fish

February 1, 2017 — Once a major source of local fish in California, the coastal city of Monterey is now filled with restaurants serving farmed salmon and imported Asian shrimp. But a conservation group there wants to change that fact. Borrowing a marketing and distribution idea from its land-based counterparts, the Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust is planning to launch a “fish hub,” designed to market and sell products from a variety of local producers in one central location.

Still in the planning stages, the Monterey fish hub could take many forms—it could be a facility, entirely virtual, or simply shared marketing. But the idea is a transparent business that brings Monterey fish, identified by the region and by the name and practices of fisherman who caught it, to both individual customers and large institutions in the area.

“Fishermen need a place where we can actually meet the public and introduce our products, and it can’t just come from one source—it needs to be a community effort,” says third-generation fisherman Giuseppe “Joe” Pennisi, who first generated the fish hub idea with Fisheries Trust Executive Director Sherry Flumerfelt back in January, 2015. Based out of the port in Monterey, Pennisi says he has no local market for his catch.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

Chris Oliver Supported by Industry to Lead NOAA Fisheries

January 25, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — An industry letter signed by more than 50 companies and fisheries groups to Vice President Pence and Secretary of Commerce nominee Wilbur Ross, urges the appointment of Chris Oliver to the post of Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries.

Oliver is the executive director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, a position he has held for 16 years. Prior to that, he worked as staff for the council for another ten years.

The letter, which is signed by most major processors and industry organizations from Unalaska to southern California, national groups such as National Fisheries Institute, and recreational users of the marine resource, points out that NOAA Fisheries oversees a marine economy of $214 billion in sales that supports 1.83 million jobs.

“However,  the industry faces tremendous pressure from overseas competition — 90 percent of the seafood we consume is imported and our country has a trade deficit of $13.2 billion (mostly with China.),” the letter says.

“We need a leader of NOAA Fisheries who is committed to the economic productivity of American waters, and we are confident that Mr. Oliver is the right choice.”

The letter notes Oliver’s experience over three decades “promoting economic prosperity in our nation’s largest and most productive fishery” and “balancing competing interests among communities, fishing sectors, and environmentalist to become the most sustainably managed and productive fishery in the world” makes him uniquely well qualified to hold the post.

Oliver has worked closely with all eight regional councils through the Council Coordination Committee, successfully building consensus on controversial issues that restrict efficient fishing practices in the industry.

“Chris Oliver understands the regulatory framework of U.S. fisheries,” the letter’s authors say. “He supports easing regulatory burdens” while supporting conservation practices for long-term sustainability.

His advocacy for streamlining the rule-making process and decentralizing fisheries management are key recommendations for his appointment to the post.

Oliver has experience working with international groups to resolve fisheries issues and promote research initiatives. A native of Texas, he also has a track record of working closely with the recreational sector, and successfully balanced both sectors need when he worked with the council on the halibut catch sharing plan in Alaska.

There are also reports of other candidates from other regions who may not have the same level of experience with the commercially important fisheries.   The signers make clear that Oliver is a consensus choice that would unite the US seafood industry.

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