Saving Seafood

EDITORIAL: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Strategy to Reintroduce Sea Otters is Flawed

August 12, 2022 — The USFWS study fails to estimate costs to taxpayers; impacts to key local fisheries such as Dungeness crab and sea urchin; neglects to fully examine the impacts to local port and harbor activities and fishing communities and fails to directly clarify to impacted Tribal Nations that no ceremonial and subsistence uses – or control of otter populations negatively impacting other important Tribal resources – are permitted under current Federal law.

For Oregon and California coastal communities dependent on Dungeness crab, sea urchin, and other shellfish, reintroducing sea otters in an area where they have been absent for more than 100 years will spell big trouble. Yet, a recent report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) concludes it is “feasible” to reintroduce them to Southern Oregon and Northern California. In June 2022, the USFWS report, Feasibility Assessment: Sea Otter Reintroduction to the Pacific Coast, was released in response to a largely-unvetted Congressional mandate. In this report, the Agency lays out the potential benefits of reintroducing sea otters to new areas of the West Coast. It identifies some – but not all – significant areas of concern.

When plentiful, shellfish and crabs account for a most of a sea otter’s diet. Their voracious feeding activity, especially related to the almost certain impacts to the West Coast heritage Dungeness crab fishery and sea urchin harvests, alarms West Coast fishermen and processors. Otters eat 23% to 33% of their body weight daily. Just 169 otters weighing an average of 50 pounds each, feeding full time on urchins, would consume an amount equal to the entire annual commercial catch, making a commercial fishery not viable. Dungeness crabs are caught near small ports from Oregon to Central California, and the sea urchin fishery operates in Oregon and California.

Read the full article at Seafood News

Bringing sea otters back to Oregon faces ideological challenges

August 9, 2022 — If asked to choose between the environment and commercial interests, most environmentalists would naturally side with the former. But the reality is more complicated, particularly when Indigenous tribes — long left out of the conversation on how the federal government navigates issues concerning natural resources and commercial interests — are brought to the table.

In the case of mitigating climate change by reintroducing sea otters to habitats where they once thrived, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife is faced with such a dilemma. Particularly so because bringing sea otters to the Northern California and Oregon coasts sounds promising to everyone except those who are already living near the endangered species.

Known by some local tribes as the Elekha, sea otters are a small marine mammal of the family Mustelidae, characterized by their furry, weasel appearance and their hallmark tendency to float on their back while using a rock to open hard-shelled invertebrates. The animal is objectively cute, with its furry white face that pops over the top of the ocean to stare out like a teddy bear with tiny eyes and an extra wide nose.

The southern and northern sea otters, Enhydra lutris, are distinct by geography and marginally by their DNA, as fur traders nearly hunted the animal to extinction during the 18th and 19th centuries. Southern sea otters live in small pockets along the Southern California coastline while northern sea otters live from northern Washington state to southeastern Alaska — the latter a direct result of preservation and reintroduction.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

OREGON: Offshore wind proposals worry fishing industry

July 11, 2022 — From her home overlooking Yaquina Bay, Kelley Retherford can watch as commercial fishing boats arrive at the nearby Port of Newport, delivering their catch to one of several seafood processors that line the waterfront.

Saltwater is in her family’s blood, she said. Along with her husband, Mike, and their four adult children, they own and operate four fishing trawlers, harvesting everything from Pacific whiting to pink shrimp to Dungeness crab.

That way of life, however, may be disrupted by a growing interest in offshore wind generators to help achieve ambitious government-mandated zero-carbon energy goals.

Earlier this year, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management identified two call areas off the southern Oregon Coast — one near Coos Bay and the other near Brookings — to assess potential wind energy leases in federal waters.

The push to harness wind energy in the Pacific Ocean has raised concerns within Oregon’s $1.2 billion commercial fishing industry, with families such as the Retherfords worried it will limit access to highly productive fisheries and impact the marine ecosystem.

A 60-day comment period ended in June for developers to nominate locations within the two areas that would be best suited for wind projects.

Deep Blue Pacific Wind is a joint venture between Simply Blue Group, an offshore wind developer based in Ireland, and TotalEnergies, a French energy company with U.S. headquarters in Houston. In January, the venture hired Peter Cogswell as director of government and external affairs.
Rather than being fixed to the seabed, turbines in the Pacific would have to be built on floating platforms to capture wind where it blows the hardest. Cogswell estimated it would take between 50 and 60 turbines to generate 1 gigawatt of energy.
John Romero, a spokesman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said the call areas are meant to identify where offshore wind “may be safely and responsibly developed,” while soliciting feedback from the public.
Losing fishing grounds inside the call areas could be harmful to fishermen along the Oregon Coast, said Heather Mann, the executive director of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative.
The areas are particularly bountiful due to the California Current, which provides a strong upwelling of water and nutrients for seafood. Mann estimated more than 25% of Pacific whiting harvested in the last decade has come from the two call areas proposed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

 

The drive for 100% clean energy in Oregon has raised the stakes for building new renewable energy projects statewide — including offshore wind generators.

House Bill 2021, signed into law by Gov. Kate Brown in 2021, requires retail electricity providers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electricity sold to Oregon consumers by 80% by 2030, 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2040.

Several state and federal lawmakers are also urging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to slow down and fully consider impacts on coastal communities before moving forward with leasing.

Further limiting fishing grounds in the call areas “could spell economic disaster for these towns,” the letter continued.

Kelley Retherford said the fishing industry will continue to push back against the call areas, fighting for their livelihoods.

Read the full story at the Astorian 

Our View: We must have a say in offshore wind plans

June 30, 2022 — Few dispute the need to develop alternative ways to generate electricity that don’t produce greenhouse gases, but our response to a proposed floating offshore wind farm in Washington state isn’t a straightforward “yes.”

Similar complications arise regarding floating wind turbines off the southern Oregon Coast. These prompted the Astoria City Council and the Port of Astoria Commission to recently ask the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Oregon Department of Energy to take their time before granting permission. Local officials want a demonstration project before grander plans are authorized, along with a full-scale environmental impact analysis.

In Washington state, the development being pursued by Seattle-based Trident Winds is generating misgivings among some users of offshore waters, who fear the wind farm located about 45 miles west of the mouths of Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor — and the cables linking it to the shore — could be one more blow to fisheries and the environment.

To put these concerns in a historical context, hydropower development in the 20th century in the Columbia River watershed came with many promises about preserving salmon runs and small-town economies. We all know how that turned out.

Read the full story at The Daily Astorian

 

OREGON: Coastal Leaders Push Back Against Location of Wind Energy Plants

May 24, 2022 — There is little doubt that floating offshore wind farms are coming to the southern Oregon coast. The region’s small, ocean-reliant communities are worried about potential damage to sea habitat and the loss of fishing grounds.

In February, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) designated 2,100 square miles of federal water for potential development of floating offshore wind as part of the Biden administration’s goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. On the day of the announcements regional stakeholders started pushing back, asking why BOEM would consider placing hundreds of 980-foot-high wind turbines in a globally productive ecosystem.

On April 7, in a rare display of unity, 27 conservation groups and fishing organizations wrote  BOEM asserting, “Siting of wind energy facilities is the single most important decision that will be made for wind development off Oregon’s Coast.”

The following week, Nick Edwards, a southern Oregon fisherman, addressed Oregon’s U.S. Senator Ron Wyden on behalf of Oregon’s seafood industry during a virtual Town Hall meeting.

“Senator, I’ve been a commercial fisherman for 43 years and a board member of the Oregon Wave Energy Trust in Portland for seven. If there ever was a fisherman involved with ocean renewable energy, I would be that person.

I’m here to tell you the current BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Management) process for siting offshore wind in Oregon waters is extremely flawed. [In January] Governor [Kate] Brown sent a letter to BOEM providing a list of parameters to develop offshore wind in Oregon. She stated, ‘This is an opportune time to move these Wind Energy Areas offshore to 1300 meters (4265 feet) in depth and beyond. This would essentially protect the NW upwellings providing one of the most sustainable ecosystems in the world.’ Instead, BOEM is doing the opposite.

Senator Wyden, for the sake of our ocean resources, are you willing to sit down with a small advisory group to discuss these important issues with sighting OSW (offshore wind) in Oregon waters?”

Representatives of the fishing industry, environmental groups, and civic organizations have stated that offshore wind-energy production should be sited in waters deeper than 1,300 meters to protect the region’s coastal upwelling, which is vital to southern Oregon’s sea habitat.

Susan Chambers, deputy director of West Coast Seafood Processors Association, stated in an interview with me:

“It’s infuriating. Yes, we need to transfer away from fossil fuels to clean energy, but I’m not sure if anyone has thought through the damages this technology could do to our oceans. Everyone has been full steam ahead. Until now. We have no bargaining power except to keep pushing in the media, pushing to our congressmen, to our local legislators, to our governor. We just keep pushing.”

Read the full story at the Daily Yonder

Klamath Dam Removal Could Offer Promise for Oregon Commercial Salmon Fishery

May 19, 2022 — The final hurdle is in sight and expected to be overcome, in the decades-long fight to remove four dams from the Klamath River and hopefully allow restoration of the river’s Chinook salmon population which was once the third-largest in the country, but in recent years has plummeted by as much as ninety-eight percent. The four dams were built between 1903 and 1967 as part of PacifiCorp’s Klamath Hydroelectric Project and are now obsolete. Removing them will provide native migratory fish, like Chinook salmon, access to larger spawning grounds. It will also help restore the natural flow of the river, providing innumerable benefits to the entire ecosystem.

The repercussions that an exhausted river system with a dramatically declining salmon population can deliver are far-reaching and staggering. The slow-moving, warm water gives rise to parasites, like Ceratonova Shasta, which reaches unhealthy levels in this environment and begins to infect and kill the salmon. In addition to parasites, the higher water temperatures are also a deadly threat to the salmon that are necessary for the overall health of the river. After salmon return to the river to spawn and die their bodies provide key nutrients to other organisms in the river. This includes the trees that grow along the riverbanks whose roots help to prevent erosion and to maintain the structural integrity of the riverbank. The Native American Tribes in the Klamath Basin are also heavily dependent on the Chinook salmon, both culturally and for sustenance. Subsistence salmon fishing is a way of life for tribes like the Yurok and the Karuk. Along with the salmon and the river, their way of life is dying.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Commercial fish and seafood workers rally against wind farms on the Oregon coast

May 12, 2022 — Commercial fish and seafood workers rallied along the Coos Bay boardwalk on Tuesday taking a stand against proposed wind farms that are slated for the Southern Oregon coast.

The rally was hosted on the second day of an “Offshore Wind Industry Fly-In” held just down the street at the Mill Casino. The industry conference, hosted by three non-profits with missions dedicated to developing energy along the pacific and Oregon coast, is described as an event that “will bring leadership from the floating offshore wind industry to the coast of Oregon for direct engagement with state and local leadership,” with the goal of “charting the course for Oregon’s first 3 gigawatts of offshore energy.”

This comes less than two weeks after the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced its call areas in Brookings and Coos Bay for offshore energy projects it has been in talks with Oregon about. Tickets for the five-day fly-in event were sold for between $1000 and $1500.

One of the rally’s organizers, Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association said the event was, at least in part, held as a way to show energy companies and leaders at the conference that “there’s already a very, very big industry here for seafood and fishing,” and that “we are here to stay.”

Read the full story at KMTR

US West Coast lawmakers want USDA to buy more seafood from their states

May 11, 2022 — A group of Democratic U.S. senators and representatives from West Coast states have written a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack calling on his agency to spend more on seafood purchases from producers in their states.

The letter notes that California, Oregon, and Washington state produce more than USD 500 million (EUR 473.6 million) worth of seafood annually, more than an eighth of total domestic production in the U.S., and 25 percent of the country’s processing and wholesale jobs are located in the three Pacific Coast states.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

2 areas off Oregon Coast targeted for offshore wind development

April 29, 2022 — The U.S. Department of the Interior announced Wednesday that it’s considering two areas off the Oregon Coast for offshore wind energy production.

The agency has identified locations about 12 nautical miles offshore at Coos Bay and Brookings that could potentially host wind farms. The two areas comprise about 1.1 million acres in total.

The Biden administration is hoping to create 30 gigawatts of electricity-generating capacity through offshore wind by 2030. It’s already approved large projects off the coasts of Massachusetts and New York.

Read the full story at OPB

 

Progressive and export-dependent: Oregon is a test for Democrats on trade

April 25, 2022 — Democrats’ conflicting impulses over the future of U.S. trade policy are playing out here in the nation’s Pacific Northwest.

Oregon, in particular, embodies the tension: The state’s economy is highly dependent on free trade and yet its progressive-leaning voters are typically skeptical of its benefits. That tug-of-war is vexing both parties as lawmakers weigh how much to push for more foreign market access for U.S. companies and investors despite the potential for political backlash.

In his visit to Portland late last week, President Joe Biden touted his administration’s investments in ports, airports and other infrastructure projects to speed the movement of goods, while at the same time acknowledging that snarled supply chains have sparked historic inflation.

“All across Oregon, we’re sending the message: These ports and airports are open for more business,” Biden told the crowd at Portland International Airport.

While back home in Oregon last week, [Sen. Ron] Wyden joined [U.S. Trade Representative Katherine] Tai and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on tours of a commercial fishing vessel and semiconductor development facility. The trio heard from seafood industry groups who say they’re being bested on the global market by Chinese rivals who have been accused of overfishing waterways, taking government subsidies and using forced labor.

“On a good day, we struggle to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace,” said Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association. “Our days have not been good lately.”

Read the full story at Politico