Saving Seafood

Pacific Fishery Management Council Chooses Options 2018 Salmon Season

March 19, 2018 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

ROHNERT PARK, Calif. – The Pacific Fishery Management Council has adopted for public review three alternatives for the 2018 salmon seasons off the West Coast of the United States. The Council will select a final alternative at their next meeting in Portland, Oregon April 6-11. Detailed information about season starting dates, areas open, and catch limits for all three alternatives are available on the Council’s website at www.pcouncil.org.

Fisheries north of Cape Falcon (in northern Oregon) are limited by the need to reduce catch of lower Columbia natural tule Chinook and coho stocks of concern. Additionally, three stocks of coho (Queets River, Strait of Juan de Fuca, and Snohomish) currently meet the criteria for overfished status, which is also a concern when structuring 2018 fisheries. The Council also provided guidance to structure ocean fisheries so that the ocean escapement of Columbia River upriver bright fall Chinook is at least 200,000 fish, which will allow more access to that healthy stock in Columbia River treaty Indian and non-Indian fisheries.

Fisheries south of Cape Falcon are limited by the need to reduce catch of Oregon Coast natural coho, Klamath River fall Chinook, Sacramento River fall Chinook, and Rouge/Klamath coho.  Klamath River fall Chinook and Sacramento River fall Chinook contribute significantly to ocean harvest, but both met the criteria for overfished status as a result of poor returns over the past three years.  However, the forecast for Klamath River fall Chinook is substantially improved over last year, and both stocks are projected to meet their spawning escapement objectives under this year’s management alternatives.

“Although some abundance forecasts are improved over last year, the 2018 salmon runs still present a challenge for ocean fishermen and managers throughout the west coast,” said Executive Director Chuck Tracy. “In the north, low returns of some Puget Sound and Washington coastal coho runs and lower Columbia River natural tule fall Chinook will constrain fisheries. In the south, the conservation needs of Sacramento River fall Chinook and Rogue/Klamath coho will constrain fisheries.”

“Once again, the Council adopted a range of management alternatives for public review designed to conserve and rebuild a broad range of Chinook and coho stocks of concern. Commercial and recreational fisheries will face restrictions in areas along the entire west coast in response to the Council’s conservation efforts” said Council Chair Phil Anderson.

Northern Oregon and Washington (north of Cape Falcon)

Sport season alternatives

Ocean sport fishery alternatives north of Cape Falcon in Oregon and off the Washington coast include Chinook recreational quotas ranging from 22,500 to 32,500, a decrease from 2017. For coho, recreational quotas range from 16,800 to 42,000 hatchery coho, compared to 42,000 in 2017.  Starting dates range from June 23 to July 1, and in all alternatives, recreational fisheries are scheduled to run through early September. Both coho and Chinook retention are allowed in all alternatives.

Commercial season alternatives

Non-Indian ocean commercial fishery alternatives north of Cape Falcon include traditional Chinook seasons between May and September. Chinook quotas for all areas and times range from 22,500 to 32,500, compared to 45,000 in 2017. Coho quotas in the commercial fishery alternatives range from 3,200 to 5,600 marked coho, similar to 2017.

Read the release in its entirety here.

 

Not Too Late To Save Critically Endangered Orcas Say State Leaders And Feds

March 15, 2018 — The Pacific Northwest’s beloved orcas will not survive unless humans do more to ensure adequate food and cleaner, quieter waters. That was one of the messages at a crowded signing ceremony in Seattle convened by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee.

The population of genetically-distinct resident orcas has dwindled to a critically low level. Deaths outpace births. Only 76 remain as of the last count.

“This is a dangerously low number for a species that is already endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act,” Jeff Parsons of the Puget Sound Partnership said at a legislative hearing in Olympia earlier this month.

”We’re at a critical juncture with orcas and we need to act now if we’re to save the species,” added Bruce Wishart, a Sierra Club lobbyist.

The resident killer whales face three main threats topped by lack of prey. Their favorite food is Chinook salmon, which is also dwindling. Then there’s disturbance from vessels and underwater noise. A third threat is toxic pollution in the water and marine food chain.

“If they’re not getting enough food, they’re going to use their blubber where contaminants can often be stored,” said Lynne Barre, the federal orca recovery coordinator at NOAA Fisheries. . “But once they’re using that blubber and they circulate, it can cause immune dysfunction and that may be affecting reproduction as well.”

So is this dwindling population doomed?

“I don’t think it’s doomed,” Barre said. “We have seen the whales be at an even lower level in the past but that was following removals for public display and aquariums. So following those removals and low numbers we’ve seen in the past, we have seen this population be resilient and be able to grow—and even at a pretty high rate of two percent or more per year.”

That’s what Barre is hoping happens again now that the federal and state governments have complementary recovery plans. Inslee on Wednesday signed an executive order directing seven state agencies to take a wide variety of short and long-term actions.

Read the full story at NW News Network

 

This Is Why You Don’t See People-Size Salmon Anymore

March 13, 2018 — While the orcas of Puget Sound are sliding toward extinction, orcas farther north have been expanding their numbers. Their burgeoning hunger for big fish may be causing the killer whales’ main prey, Chinook salmon, to shrink up and down the West Coast.

Chinook salmon are also known as kings: the biggest of all salmon. They used to grow so enormous that it’s hard to believe the old photos now. Fishermen stand next to Chinooks almost as tall as they are, sometimes weighing 100 pounds or more.

“This has been a season of unusually large fish, and many weighing from 60 to 70 pounds have been taken,” The Oregonian reported in 1895.

Now, more than a century later, “it’s not impossible that we see individuals of that size today, but it’s much, much rarer,” University of Washington research scientist Jan Ohlberger says.

Ohlberger has been tracking the downsizing of salmon in recent decades, but salmon have been shrinking in numbers and in size for a long time. A century’s worth of dam-building, overfishing, habitat loss and replacement by hatchery fish cut the size of the average Chinook in half, studies in the 1980s and 1990s found.

Dam-building and fishing have tailed off, but Chinooks have been shrinking even faster in the past 15 years, according to a new paper by Ohlberger and colleagues in the journal Fish and Fisheries. Older and bigger fish are mostly gone.

Read the full story at KUOW

 

These Chinook almost went extinct during California’s drought. Can this $100 million plan save them?

March 9, 2018 — During the worst of California’s five-year drought, thousands of eggs and newly spawned salmon baked to death along a short stretch of the Sacramento River below Shasta Dam.

The winter-run Chinook, already hanging by a thread, nearly went extinct.

Hoping to avoid a repeat of that dire scenario, fisheries officials announced Thursday the launch of a plan — nearly 20 years and $100 million in the making — they say would expand the spawning range of the fish to include a cold-water stream called Battle Creek. The idea is that the stream could keep the fragile winter-run alive as California’s rivers get hotter because of a warming climate.

The stakes are high and go well beyond the fate of the fish. Concerns about this run of salmon have a major impact on how water is distributed to farms and cities across California.

During the drought, for example, farmers experienced cuts to their water supply as dam managers held water in Shasta, the state’s largest reservoir, in a frantic effort to ward off extinction of the Chinook.

Read the full story at the Sacramento Bee

Salmon seasons off S. Oregon coast in jeopardy

March 6, 2018 — MEDFORD, Ore. — Continued problems with Sacramento River salmon survival means there likely will be very little, maybe even zero, sport and commercial salmon fishing this summer off the Southern Oregon coast.

The Medford Mail Tribune says preliminary stock assessments estimate only 229,400 Sacramento River fall Chinook will be in the ocean. That’s 1,300 fewer than last year’s small run, whose protection shut down sport and commercial Chinook fishing off Southern Oregon.

Salmon managers heading into the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s March 8-14 meeting say they think the council will be able to propose at least possible sport and commercial seasons with as little impact to Sacramento stocks as possible.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KTVZ

 

No more ‘Kings of the Columbia’: Chinook salmon much smaller, younger these days, study finds

March 1, 2018 — They used to tip the scales at 80 pounds: June Hogs they were called. The kings of the Columbia River.

But the big chinook that used to lumber up and down the Columbia and cruise the northeastern Pacific from California to western Alaska have dwindled away over the past 40 years, researchers have learned.

Published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, researchers have documented a trend in decreasing body size in chinook over the past 40 years. The trend was remarkably widespread, affecting both wild and hatchery fish in the northern Pacific from California to western Alaska.

“It is a quite grand phenomenon, not just observations here and there, it is the signature we see along the coast,” said Jan Ohlberger of the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, lead author on the paper.

Chinook are the biggest and most prized species of salmon in North America — and the most sought-after, whether by killer whales, eagles or bears. And certainly by every fisherman, whether commercial, recreational or ceremonial.

But big isn’t what it used to be.

Both wild and hatchery chinook are smaller and younger today, researchers have found, examining 85 chinook populations along the West Coast of North America.

The big chinook that stay out in the ocean four and five years before returning home to spawn have decreased both in numbers and in size — as much as 10 percent in length, and substantially more in weight.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

 

Alaska: Fish Board cuts king salmon fishing

January 24, 2018 — The Alaska Board of Fisheries has passed an “action plan” to help conserve struggling king salmon stocks on Southeast rivers during their last day of deliberations Tuesday in Sitka.

The plan will keep troll, sport and gillnet fishermen on the docks for significant parts of the fishing season. Commercial trollers, who made about half of their money fishing Chinook, had their pocketbooks significantly affected.

It was the best and most equitable solution the board and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game could come up with under dire circumstances for Chinook stocks on the Unuk, Chilkat, Taku and King Salmon rivers.

All six of the voting board members voted for the plan.

“Nobody is going to be happy with the end results, I am not happy with it. Everyone is feeling the crunch and the pain,” board member Israel Payton said.

The board heard three days of public testimony on finfish proposals. A majority of that testimony was heard on controversial herring proposals, but salmon came in close second.

Public testimony prompted changes to the action plan and the board held the vote until the last day of the meeting to allow public review of those changes.

The action plan combines ideas in several other proposals aimed at conserving Chinook stocks.

Troll fishermen will have their fishing areas and dates significantly cut back and won’t be allowed to fish the last six weeks of winter king salmon fishing.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

 

Disappearance of wild salmon hurts local economy

November 20, 2017 — SEATTLE — Salmon and the Pacific Northwest used to go hand in hand, right? Not anymore. Back in the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of naturally spawning salmon and steelhead could be found in Puget Sound each year. Today there are only tens of thousands. This is an alarming change, for our environment and local economy.

“I started at Pacific Fish in August, 1977,” says Bob Simon, general manager of Pacific Seafood. “In those days my job was to drive the waterfront, picking up fish. The Seattle waterfront was much different then.”

Simon remembers a string of seafood companies on the waterfront. “New England Fish Company around Pier 58. Salmon Run Seafood around Pier 54. Booth Fisheries around Pier 45. Olympic No. 2 under the viaduct. Olympic No. 3 under the viaduct. Seattle Seafoods around Pier 45.”

“These are all gone,” Simon says.

Puget Sound Partnership numbers indicate that chinook salmon populations have dropped to as little as 10 percent of their historic numbers.

This year, scientists also noted a record-low number of juvenile salmon in the Columbia River. For the first time in 20 years, some nets came up empty, showing no wild chinook salmon.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

LED Lights Show Promise for Decreasing Salmon Bycatch in West Coast Whiting Fishery

November 10, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Light-emitting diodes – LEDs – are proving effective for lowering bycatch in fisheries besides West Coast pink shrimp.

A study by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission and the Northwest Fisheries Science Center shows that LEDs are very effective in directing Chinook salmon to escape windows in Pacific hake trawl nets, according to a statement from the National Marine Fisheries Service. Chinook salmon bycatch in the hake fishery, the largest groundfish fishery on the West Coast, can be an issue; if too many Chinook salmon are caught, management measures may be implemented to conserve salmon stocks.

NMFS requested an Endangered Species Act Section 7 re-consultation on the take of salmon species in the West Coast groundfish fishery in 2013. Now, four years later, the biological opinion or “BiOp” and accompanying incidental take statement is scheduled to be completed in December.

However, avoiding salmon bycatch is an ongoing issue for the whiting fishery and the midwater rockfish fishery. The use of LEDs on the nets, similar to how they are used in the pink shrimp fishery to channel eulachon smelt out escape holes, may prove useful in the future. The LEDs researchers and fishermen used for this project were developed for use on longlines, designed for rugged use in the ocean environment.

The development of efficient, cost-effective LED technology has led to a growing list of innovative residential and industrial applications, according to the statement from NMFS. With NOAA Fisheries’ Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program funding, researchers found LEDs can play an important role in productive and sustainable fisheries as well.

Data show that Chinook salmon are much more likely to exit the nets where lights are placed—86 percent of escaped salmon used the well-lit, LED-framed openings. While further research is underway, the data suggest the LEDs can increase the salmon’s escapement overall, NMFS said.

Mark Lomeli, a researcher at the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, said the challenge was to develop a salmon excluder design to lower incidental salmon bycatch. He and other researchers worked with fishermen to use two sets of large, open escape windows that allowed salmon to swim out.

“Our data and video observations indicate that at deeper, darker depths where trawl nets go, light from the LEDs are enhancing the salmon’s ability to perceive the escape areas and the areas outside the nets,” Lomeli said in the NMFS report.

The key to keeping hake in and guide Chinook out is fish behavior. Salmon are stronger swimmers and can escape. By the time the whiting get to part of the net where the excluders are positioned, they are too fatigued to swim out.

Researchers said the technology could also be adapted for other fisheries, such as for reducing salmon bycatch in the Alaska pollock fishery.

“Many fishermen are aware of this technology now and use it if they think Chinook bycatch will be an issue,” Lomeli was quoted as saying in the statement. “It’s easy to use, relatively cheap, and widely available. You can easily clip the lights to the webbing of the net around the escape openings. With these research results in hand, the lights are on the shelf for them when they need them. We think these LEDs are low-hanging fruit for contributing to the recovery of this species, and can also play an important role in the stability of this fishery.”

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

 

Oregon, California senators step up pressure on Trump administration to approve salmon emergency cash

October 5, 2017 — Oregon and California’s four senators, all Democrats, stepped up the pressure on the Trump administration Wednesday to approve disaster assistance for salmon fishermen along 200 miles of coastline.

In April, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages coastal salmon seasons, recommended closing coastal and commercial salmon fishing entirely along an area equal to roughly half of Oregon’s coastline. Govs. Kate Brown of Oregon and Jerry Brown of California requested emergency funding relief in May, to no avail.

The fall chinook fun on the Klamath is the biggest and is important for recreational and tribal fisherman as well as commercial fisheries. The Yurok tribe, which has preference along the waterway, also had its allocation severely curtailed this year, to roughly 650 fish. Management officials estimated returning salmon to be roughly 12,000.

Oregon has had success in securing emergency assistance for salmon fishery disasters under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Emergency funds were approved in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, and their California counterparts, Sens. Diane Feinstein and Kamala Harris, sent a letter Wednesday to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division urging action before the end of 2017.

Read the full story at The Oregonian