Saving Seafood

Alaska Fish and Game forecasts a 2019 salmon catch of 213.2 million fish

April 10, 2019 — Alaska fishermen could catch 85 percent more salmon this year (nearly a hundred million more) if state forecasts hold true.

That’s good news for fishermen in many Gulf of Alaska regions who in 2018 suffered some of the worst catches in 50 years.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is predicting a total salmon catch of 213.2 million fish for 2019, compared to about 116 million salmon last year. The increase comes from expectations of another big haul of sockeyes, increases in pinks and a possible record catch of chum salmon.

The harvest breakdown calls for 112,000 chinook salmon in areas outside of Southeast Alaska. The catch for the Southeast troll fleet, which is determined by a treaty with Canada, will be 101,300 kings, a 5,600-fish increase.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Groups Lobby Judge for Immediate Fixes to Salmon-Killing Dams

April 5, 2019 — Environmental groups urged a judge to order immediate changes to the government’s operation of a series of dams in the upper Willamette River basin, saying steelhead and Chinook salmon are too imperiled to risk waiting for litigation over dam operations to play out.

The Army Corps of Engineers operates a series of 13 dams in the upper Willamette River and its tributaries. The dams provide flood control, produce electricity and store water for irrigation and for the city of Salem, Oregon. The dams are also the main cause of the precipitous decline of upper Willamette steelhead and Chinook salmon.

But the government hasn’t acted to protect fish, environmental groups say.

In 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a biological opinion finding that the dams were decimating the protected fish by killing the majority of young salmon and steelhead as they make their way past the dams toward the ocean. The dams also torpedo water quality by raising water temperature to deadly levels and force young fish to cross reservoirs filled with predators and parasites.

In its biological opinion, National Marine Fisheries Service said the Corps could continue to operate the dams while reducing impacts to fish if it immediately implemented a slew of measures to improve fish passage and water quality.

But the Corps didn’t do that, and fish populations continued to decline.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

Groups sue to restrict salmon fishing, help Northwest orcas

April 4, 2019 — Federal officials say they may restrict salmon fishing off the West Coast to help the Pacific Northwest’s critically endangered killer whales, but two environmental groups are suing anyway to ensure it happens.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which filed a lawsuit nearly two decades ago to force the U.S. government to list the orcas as endangered, and the Wild Fish Conservancy asked the U.S. District Court in Seattle on Wednesday to order officials to reconsider a 2009 finding that commercial and recreational fisheries did not jeopardize the orcas’ survival.

The National Marine Fisheries Service issued a letter early last month indicating that it intends to do so. Julie Teel Simmonds, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the point of the lawsuit is to ensure they finish the job with urgency, given the plight of the whales, and to take short-term steps in the meantime to help provide more of the orcas’ favored prey, Chinook salmon.

“We have got to figure out how to get them more salmon,” she said. “Since 2009 it’s become much more crystallized just how critical prey availability is to their reproductive success and survival.”

The Endangered Species Act requires the government to certify that any actions it approves won’t jeopardize the survival of a listed species. In the 2009 review, experts found that it wasn’t clear how a lack of prey affected orcas, but that the fisheries were not likely to contribute to their extinction.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Alaska’s Salmon Forecasts for 2019 are Up By 85% Over Last Year as Pinks, Chums Rebound

April 3, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s salmon harvest forecast for the season is 213.2 million fish, some 97.5 million more than last year’s landings of 116 million salmon. The forecast was released late last week.

The increase is mostly due to larger harvests of pink and chum salmon compared to 2018. Harvest levels include:

112,000 Chinook salmon outside Southeast Alaska, 41.7 million sockeye, 4.6 million coho, 137.8 million pink, and 29.0 million chum salmon.

Odd-year returns of pink salmon have traditionally been higher than even-year returns, and this year is no exception. What is different, though, is the high uncertainty attached to this pink forecast, which is almost 100 million more pinks than 2018.

“We note that—except for Southeast Alaska—pink salmon forecasts are generally based on average returns from previous brood years,” notes management biologists who produced the report released last week. “The pink salmon run forecast for 2019 is partly an artifact of this method; there is a great deal of uncertainty in predicting pink salmon returns,” they wrote.

Compared to last year, there will be 8.9 million fewer sockeye or red salmon; 900,000 more coho salmon, and 8.7 million more chum salmon.

If realized, the projected commercial chum salmon harvest would be the largest on record for Alaska.

The phenomenal success in recent years of chum salmon returns in Southeast, Prince William Sound, Norton Sound, and Southcentral Alaska appears now to be a trend.

Very low expected harvests of pink salmon in Southeast Alaska may be offset by higher projected harvests in Prince William Sound. The point estimate for landings of pink salmon in SE Alaska is 18 million. In Prince William Sound nearly 11 million wild pinks and 22 million hatchery pinks are expected to be harvested with another several million coming from the Valdez Fisheries Development Assn.

Sockeye harvest in the Copper River, scheduled to begin in May, are expected to be just under 1 million fish, at 955,000 sockeye. Those red salmon will be augmented by a bumper year at the Coghill River weir of nearly half a million sockeyes, much larger than historical averages.

A modest 3 million sockeyes are expected to be harvested this year in the Upper Cook Inlet.

Kitoi Bay pink harvest is projected at 6.6 million fish.

A total of 40.18 million sockeye salmon are expected to return to Bristol Bay in 2019. This is 10% smaller than the most recent 10-year average of Bristol Bay total runs (44.4 million), and 16% greater than the long-term (1963–2018) average of 34.2 million.

The run forecast for each district and landings prediction is as follows:

Run: 16.12 million to Naknek-Kvichak District (6.95 million to the Kvichak river, 3.97 million to the Alagnak river, and 5.21 million to the Naknek river) for a projected harvest of 7.84 million sockeyes;
9.07 million to the Egegik District with harvest projections up to 7.04 million reds;
3.46 million to the Ugashik District or harvest prediction of 2.38 million;
10.38 million to the Nushagak District (4.62 million to the Wood river, 4.18 million to the Nushagak river, and 1.58 million to the Igushik river) and a total harvest prediction of 7.97 million reds; and
1.15 million to the Togiak District which translates to 870,000 reds.

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

CALIFORNIA: Nearly 400,000 Chinook salmon die in hatchery blunder

April 2, 2019 — Nearly 400,000 fall Chinook salmon died due to a mistake at the Coleman National Fish Hatchery in Anderson, California, U.S.A., last week, according to a source at the hatchery.

Water to one of the raceways was accidentally turned off overnight and the mistake was not discovered until the morning. The salmon were less than half-a-year old and died due to a lack of oxygen, according to hatchery project leader Brett Galyean, speaking to KRCR News.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

‘Mystery of ocean survival’: Experts trying to figure out why salmon are dying at sea

March 28, 2019 — Under the heading of “marine survival” in his slideshow, Phil Richards put a photo of the Grim Reaper walking along a beach and looking out over the ocean.

Richards, the Southeast chinook salmon stock assessment supervisor for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, was presenting to a crowd of about 80 people at a Territorial Sportsmen King Salmon Symposium on Wednesday night. The image of the Grim Reaper looking out over the ocean was reminiscent of what Richards had said at the beginning of his presentation about what to expect from chinook salmon returns.

“For the next one to two years, it looks pretty grim,” Richards said.

Projections for chinook (king) salmon returns in the next couple years continue to be low — the Department of Fish and Game’s forecast for this season is the second-lowest since 1995, but is slightly better than last year’s forecast. Richards said the main problem is that when salmon head out into the ocean, fewer and fewer of them are coming back. This low marine survival rate is baffling and frustrating fish experts.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

Scientists see improved ocean conditions for young salmon

March 11, 2019 — Ocean conditions are improving for salmon entering the ocean this year, several years after The Blob, an unusually warm water event that began forming in 2014, scientists announced Friday.

Research surveys in 2018 confirmed tiny animals that stoke the food chain were nice and fatty. Anchovies, an important forage fish, were increasing in number. Sea lion pups were numerous and growing well, and fish-eating sea birds going strong.

However, subsurface sea temperatures were still warmer than average in some areas. Pyrosomes, a warm-water animal that is not supposed to be in Northwest waters, were still numerous.

Forecasts for chinook salmon in 2019 also were for below-average salmon returns to the Columbia River. Extensive ocean acidification and poorly oxygenated waters off both Washington and Oregon also were predicted for this year.

Read the full story from The Seattle Times at The Spokesman-Review

CALIFORNIA: Fishermen cautiously optimistic for strong salmon season

March 4, 2019 — After three difficult years when Chinook salmon population numbers were down and fishing opportunities were limited, commercial fishermen are hoping that the upcoming season will be better.

“What we’re seeing is a better forecast of salmon in the ocean this year than we saw last year,” said Harry Morse, public information officer for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, following a meeting with about 85 commercial and recreational anglers on Wednesday in Santa Rosa. “We’re cautiously optimistic.”

Commercial anglers who traditionally rely on salmon fishing for their livelihood have contended with three curtailed seasons in a row, a ripple effect of the drought that lasted from 2013 to 2016. Diners and restaurants have also experienced the aftereffects in terms of high prices and scarce supplies of salmon, turning what was once a spring and summer staple into a luxury item.

What’s different for the coming season, which is scheduled to start in May, is that there is a much larger estimated number of salmon in the ocean, meaning that catch limits will likely be somewhat looser when they are announced in April.

“It’s been a tough couple years for commercial fishermen,” said Jimmy Phillips, 37, of Half Moon Bay, who attended the meeting in Santa Rosa. A commercial fisherman for 19 years, he was struck by the fact that sports fishermen, who get a longer season and are allowed to keep smaller fish, were allowed to catch more fish than the commercial anglers. “We just want to see some fairness. We as a whole feel like it really has not been fair.”

Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle

Decline of salmon adds to the struggle of Puget Sound’s orcas

February 26, 2019 — The crew of the Bell M. Shimada hauled in the net, long as a football field and teeming with life. Scientists, off the coast of Washington for a week on this June research trip, crowded in for a look.

Each tow of the net revealed a changing world for chinook salmon, the Pacific Northwest’s most famous fish — and the most important prey for the southern-resident killer whales that frequent Puget Sound.

There were salmon the scientists expected, although fewer of them. But weirdly also pompano, tropical fish with pretty pink highlights, iridescent as a soap bubble, that were not supposed to be there at all.

What the scientists see each year on this survey underway since 1998 has taken on new importance as oceans warm in the era of climate change.

Decadelong cycles of more and less productive ocean conditions for salmon and other sea life are breaking down. The cycles of change are quicker. Novel conditions in the Pacific are the new normal.

“It used to be up, or down. Now, it is sideways,” said physiological ecologist Brian Beckman, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

That’s bad news for endangered orcas that rely on salmon for food. When salmon decline, orcas suffer.

Read the full story from The Seattle Times at Anchorage Daily News

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