Saving Seafood

WASHINGTON: 6.2 million Chinook Salmon fry die after power outage at hatchery

December 18, 2018 — Last week’s windstorm cut the power to the Minter Creek Hatchery in Pierce County, in turn causing 6.2 million Chinook Salmon fry to die. The back up generator failed which caused the pumps that brought water into the tanks to fail.

The fish were kept in incubators at the hatchery. According to a press release from the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), the inventory of fish lost are 4.2 million Deshutes fall Chinook fry, 1.5 million Minter Creek fall Chinook fry and 507,000 White River spring Chinook fry.

“It’s a severe loss. It’s a challenge to try to recover from something like this. This particular species is not as age-class sensitive as other salmon species. But this is going to have a significant impact on adult returns,” said Jim Jenkins, WDFW South Puget Sound Hatchery Operations Manager.

Read the full story at KOMO

Less whale tours, dams: Washington task force returns with guidance on Tuesday

November 13, 2018 — Gov. Jay Inslee first assembled the group in March, inviting representatives from tribal, federal, local and other state governments, as well the private and non-profit sectors, to come together and develop longer-term action recommendations for orca recovery and future sustainability.

The task force’s main goals were to reduce the harm of the three main challenges facing orcas: pollution; lack of access to their primary prey, the chinook salmon; and boat traffic noise.

And though it’s only been about six months since Gov. Jay Inslee created a task force to draw up some guidelines about how to help the local Southern Resident orca population, it feels like a different world for the whales.

The pods had a rocky summer, starting with the latest census data showing that their population had dipped to a 30-year low, having lost 25 percent of the local orcas since the 1990s. Shortly after that, Tahlequah made headlines around the world when she swam with the body of dead calf for a week, covering 1,000 miles.

Later in the summer, the youngest member of the J-pod fell ill. Despite many researchers attempting to help get her back up to fighting weight, her disappearance and assumed death marked another disheartening chapter to the summer of the Southern Residents.

It’s especially discouraging considering that the outlook is a lot sunnier up north — the Northern Resident orca population has doubled since 1974, to a total of 309.

But the end of the summer brings a few bright spots: Multiple Southern Residents appear to be pregnant, and the task force’s guidelines are finally being filed.

“I look at 2018, and I hope this is the low point,” Barry Thom, regional administrator for NOAA fisheries West Coast Region, said a hearing regarding the orcas in Friday Harbor earlier this year. “The clock is running out on killer whale recovery, and it is heart wrenching to see.”

Draft recommendations released for public comment include significantly increasing investment in restoration and acquisition of habitat in areas where chinook salmon stocks most benefit Southern Resident orcas, immediately funding acquisition and restoration of nearshore habitat to increase the abundance of forage fish for salmon, and determine whether the removal of some dams would provide benefits to the Southern Resident orca population.

Read the full story at SeattlePI

Alaska’s Seafood Industry Faces the Blob

November 5, 2018 — Challenging statewide salmon harvests have dominated head­lines, with record-high sockeye production in Bristol Bay being the state’s primary saving grace. However, salmon are not the only fish in the sea keeping the state’s fisheries afloat, with many fishermen relying on groundfish, herring, and miscellaneous shellfish to make ends meet. Some fishermen use alternative fisheries as a way to balance their portfolios, while others focus entirely on a single target species ranging from Dungeness crab to sablefish. “In a typical year, Alaska’s most valuable fisheries [measured by value of harvest] include salmon, pollock, Pacific cod, crab, halibut, and black cod,” says Garrett Evridge, an economist with McDowell Group, an Alaska-based research firm.

In 2017, salmon was the most valuable fish group. Harvest of all five salmon species totaled more than $781 million in ex-vessel value, the amount paid to fishermen for their catch. However, Evridge notes that 2018 has been a disappointing year for many salmon fisheries, a statewide concern.

“Salmon across the state have come in weaker than forecast, particularly in the North Gulf of Alaska,” says Bert Lewis, the Central Region supervisor of the Division of Commercial Fisheries for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG). “In the region I work, we saw some of the lowest returns of sockeye salmon in recent history with the exception of Bristol Bay, where we had the biggest run on record.”

The sockeye salmon harvest is estimated to be 37 percent of the recent ten-year average, making it the smallest since 1975—all other smaller harvests date back to the 1800s.

The “blob”—a warm water anomaly that washed into the Gulf of Alaska in 2015—is thought to be the culprit. With most sockeye salmon spending three years in the ocean, those returning this year initially swam out into warmer waters, which researchers speculate disrupted the food webs that support the salmon, decreasing their survivorship and resulting in poor returns this year.

“That concept is supported by the record return we saw in Bristol Bay, with close to 65 million sockeye returning that, in 2015, came out into the Bering Sea, which did not have this warm-water anomaly,” Lewis says.

However, poor harvests weren’t limited to sockeye: Chinook, chum, and pink numbers all came in low.

“In the Southeast, total salmon harvest will be about 30 percent of the recent ten-year average, due primarily to poor pink salmon run, since pink salmon usually make up most of the harvest,” says Steve Heinl, a regional research biologist for ADFG in Southeast.

“Pink salmon harvest is 19 percent of the recent ten-year average and the smallest since 1976,” Heinl says. “Pink harvest will be less than half of the harvest in 2016 [18.4 million fish], which spurred a formal declaration of disaster.”

Levels are well below ADFG’s forecast of 23 million pink salmon, though only slightly below the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast of 10 million to 23 million.

As of late August, chum salmon harvest to date was 69 percent of the recent ten-year average; Chinook harvest was at 30 percent of recent ten-year average; and coho harvest was on track to be lowest in thirty years, says Heinl.

Though state numbers are low, harvest success varied dramatically among systems. In Southeast, there were excellent Sockeye runs at Chilkoot Lake and Redoubt Lake, which stood in stark contrast to poor runs in places such as Situk River, where the fishery was closed for most of the season.

Read the full story at Alaska Business

 

Brad Warren & Julia Sanders: Washington’s Initiative 1631 will help fight ocean acidification

November 2, 2018 — We write today to announce our support for Washington’s Initiative 1631. As businesses who rely on healthy fisheries for a significant portion of our income, we believe this is a well-designed policy that offers us – and our customers – the best possible chance against an uncertain future fraught with the threats of changing ocean conditions.

It’s become clear that our fisheries need a lifeline. Here in Washington, we are experiencing the worst ocean acidification anywhere in the world. Research has firmly established the cause of this problem: emissions from burning coal, oil and gas mix into the ocean, altering its chemistry. The consequences loomed into headlines a decade ago when the oyster industry lost millions and nearly went out of business during the oyster seed crisis. Temporary and limited adaptation measures in hatcheries are keeping them in business, but in the rest of the oceans, fisheries that put dinner on billions of tables are at risk. Here in the Northwest, harvests are already being eroded and even shut down by the effects of unchecked carbon emissions.

The “warm blob,” an unprecedented marine heatwave off the West Coast, reached its height in 2015 and caused mass fatalities. In the Columbia River, a quarter-million salmon died. The largest recorded toxic algae bloom shut down the Dungeness crab fishery for months. The food web crashed, and marine creatures were spotted farther north than ever before. Sea surface temperatures never returned to their previous norm, and new research indicates another blob is forming.

Summers have become synonymous with a smoky haze from wildfires causing poor visibility and poor health – this summer the National Weather Service warned even healthy adults in some Washington areas to stay indoors due to hazardous air quality. At the same time, our iconic orca whales are starving from a lack of Chinook salmon. The Chinook in turn are suffering from a lack of the zooplankton that juveniles eat.

Research has made it clear that some of our most lucrative fisheries are vulnerable to ocean acidification: king crab, Dungeness crab, and salmon. Scientists also warm that combining stressors – like warming with ocean acidification – makes survival in the ocean all the more precarious.

Read the full op-ed at Seafood Source

 

Alaska salmon hatchery critics call for decreased caps

October 5, 2018 — Salmon that begin their lives in Alaska hatcheries often save the day for thousands of fishermen when returns of wild stocks are a bust. This year was a prime example, when pinks and chums that originated in hatcheries made up for record shortfalls for fishing towns in the Gulf of Alaska.

“This year Kodiak hatchery fish added more than $6 million for fishermen, and also for sport fish, subsistence and personal use fisheries,” said Tina Fairbanks, director of the Kodiak Regional Aquaculture Association, in testimony to the Kodiak Island Borough after one of the Island’s poorest salmon seasons.

But Alaska’s hatchery program, which has operated since the early 1970s, is under assault by critics who claim the fish are jeopardizing survival of wild stocks.

A Kenai sportfishing group said in statements to the state Board of Fisheries that “massive releases of pinks from Prince William Sound hatcheries threaten wild sockeye and Chinook salmon” bound for their region. An individual from Fairbanks is calling for a decreased cap on how many pink salmon some hatcheries are allowed to release to the ocean each year.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Salmon preservation plan to impact Alaska and Canada over 10-year span

September 19, 2018 — PORTLAND, Ore. — Alaska and Canada would reduce their catch of endangered Chinook salmon in years with poor fishery returns under an agreement that spells out the next decade of cooperation between the U.S. and Canada to keep various salmon species afloat in Pacific waters.

Members of the Pacific Salmon Commission recommended a new 10-year conservation plan to the U.S. and Canadian governments Monday that would run through 2028 and involve Canada, Alaska, Washington, Oregon and a number of tribal nations in both countries.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KTUU

 

Impossible Choices: The Complicated Task of Saving Both Orca and Salmon

September 10, 2018 — Decades of politics and foot-dragging have stymied the recovery of threatened and endangered Chinook salmon, while an iconic population of killer whales that depends on them veered toward extinction. Now, a last-ditch effort to save the whales may also be what thwarts the recovery of Chinook.

The Southern Resident killer whales are dying. An extended family of 75 orcas living year-round in the sea surrounding the San Juan Islands near Seattle, their numbers never fully rebounded since aquariums that later became SeaWorld captured a third of them in the late 1960s.

And there are other culprits.

Cargo ships and whale-watching boats zip through the Salish Sea, adding noise that interferes with the whales’ ability to locate each other and their prey. The water they live in is toxic. The Puget Sound outside Seattle is tainted with flame retardant, and PCBs and pollutants gush from nearby rivers into the sea.

The Chinook salmon they eat to live are contaminated with mercury, lead and organic compounds like PCBs. The Washington state Department of Health advises humans to limit their consumption of Chinook salmon to eight ounces per week. But Southern Residents eat dozens of the fish per day.

Not only is their food toxic, there’s also less of it than ever before. Five populations of Chinook the whales depend on are listed as threatened; a sixth is endangered. And they’re smaller, declining in size by 10 percent since the late 1970s, according to research published February in the scientific journal Fish & Fisheries.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Canada proposes more habitat protection for southern-resident orcas

September 6, 2018 — Canada is taking steps to expand habitat protection for killer whales to boost survival of the critically endangered southern-resident population.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada announced Wednesday the department is initiating a 60-day comment period on creating new areas of critical habitat for the whales. One area is off the coast of southwestern Vancouver Island, including Swiftsure and La Pérouse banks (important for both northern and southern residents). The other is in Dixon Entrance, along the north coast of Graham Island from Langara to Rose Spit (important for northern residents).

The move to expand habitat protection comes on top of a reduction by the department of chinook salmon harvest by up to 35 percent for the 2018 fishing season, with a full closure of commercial and recreational fish for chinook in three key foraging areas for the southern residents: the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Gulf Islands and the mouth of the Fraser River. These measures, enacted June 1, will continue until Sept. 30, and include increased monitoring to assess the effectiveness of the closures.

The critical-habitat designations could lead to further fishing reductions as well as restrictions on vessel traffic. The survival of southern-resident orcas — which are actually a large dolphin — is threatened because of underwater noise that disrupts their ability to hunt, as well as toxins and reduced availability of their primary prey, chinook salmon.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Scientists Working On Orca Recovery Not Surprised By Recent Tragedies

August 7, 2018 –A multitude of factors are harming Puget Sound’s local population of endangered orcas: water pollution, noise, loss of habitat.

But topping that list right now for many scientists is recovery of their primary food source: Chinook salmon.

The tragic scenes captured on the water over the past week – of the grieving orca J35 incessantly carrying her deceased calf, and of 4-year-old J50 ill and starving –  are sad events, but not surprising to scientists working on orca recovery.

They say they established years ago that when Chinook salmon are scarce, local orcas become sick and unable to effectively reproduce.

“This is just a really conspicuous example of it,” said Sam Wasser, who directs the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington.

He’s part of a team of scientists that has done DNA and hormone analysis of orca scat collected by sniffer dogs. They’ve proved that when pregnant orcas are low on food and start metabolizing their blubber, toxins are released into their bloodstream that cause them to miscarry.

Read the full story at KNKX

Does California’s Bay Area Have Enough Water for Economic Growth and Salmon?

July 31, 2018 — California’s Economy is thriving and its population is growing. San Francisco County alone added more than 120,000 jobs in five years – a huge leap in economic productivity that owes itself largely to the lucrative worlds of finance, technology and biotechnology. As people from around the country and the world continue clamoring to find their place in one of the most expensive and most congested cities, an important question is emerging in public discussions: Does California have enough water to go around, or will natural resources be sacrificed for economic success?

“That’s a question of carrying capacity and social values,” said Peter Drekmeier, policy director of the environmental organization Tuolumne River Trust, which lobbies to protect the main waterway from which San Francisco receives its water.

Drekmeier is one of many who believe that California can grow as an economic powerhouse while maintaining productive aquatic ecosystems resembling their natural and unimpacted character – if, that is, water is divided fairly and consumed efficiently. Others, however, feel that the state’s economy – including agriculture but also urban elements – will need more water in the future, even if this drives some fish species extinct.

These differing perspectives are at the heart of a current policy battle in California as the State Water Resources Control Board works to finalize a plan that will determine how much water should be left in critical rivers feeding the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. It’s a decision that will impact not just fish and farms, but urban areas like the San Francisco Bay Area where strongly held environmental values may be challenged by economic aspirations.

Trouble for Fish

The Tuolumne River is a major tributary of the San Joaquin River, which feeds into the Bay-Delta, the linchpin for California’s statewide water delivery system. It’s also the place from which the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission draws the majority of its water to serve 2.7 million people in San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

As recently as the 1940s, more than 100,000 fall-run Chinook salmon spawned annually in the Tuolumne. In 2015, a little more than 100 of the fish swam up the river. Today, the river, studded with several dams and heavily diverted for human use, is considered by many to be in critical condition, and scientists and river advocates say what the Tuolumne and its native fishes need more than anything else is increased flows of water.

“Water is just one component of habitat, but it’s a very important one,” said Rene Henery, a biologist with the conservation group Trout Unlimited.

State agencies agree, and early in July the State Water Resources Control Board released its final draft of a plan to increase the amount of water left in the Tuolumne and two other San Joaquin River tributaries to about 40 percent of their historic, or “unimpaired,” winter and springtime flows. This Bay-Delta Plan Update was announced on July 6 and would allow for flows as low as 30 percent and as high as 50 percent between February and June, a key period for juvenile salmon migrating toward the ocean.

“While multiple factors are to blame for the decline [in the Central Valley’s Chinook salmon runs], the magnitude of diversions out of the Sacramento, San Joaquin and other rivers feeding into the Bay-Delta is a major factor in the ecosystem decline,” the board said in a statement.

Read the full story at News Deeply