Saving Seafood

The West Coast Groundfish Recovery: The Best Fish News You Haven’t Heard Yet

December 16, 2015 — Monterey, California, used to be an epicenter in the West Coast commercial fishing industry. But these days the city’s waterfront is full of restaurants serving shrimp and tilapia imported from China. And it’s not the only place doing so.

Many small ports around the United States have fallen into disrepair as more Americans consume imported, often farmed seafood. But there’s also an evolution taking place in commercial fishing in some small port towns that might just bring them back to life.

Cities up and down the West Coast once relied heavily on local “groundfish,” such as rockfish, sand dabs, and petrale sole. But the groundfish fishery saw a dramatic decline by 2000, and although many of the fish themselves have come back, the industry hasn’t recovered. Now, a public-private partnership is working to bring access to local fish in small port communities. And it’s a change that could benefit fishermen and women and the environment, and help small port towns rebuild more robust, stable, and diversified economies.

The Dark Days

Guiseppe “Joe” Pennisi, a third generation Monterey fisherman, has been running a boat since he was 18. He saw the West Coast ground fishery begin to grow in 1987 and balloon to hit 11,000 vessels by 2000. That was the year the federal government declared the coast of Oregon, Washington, and California an “economic disaster” due to groundfish stocks collapsing.

At the time, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program moved most species of West Coast groundfish on to their red “Avoid” list, and by 2005, the nonprofits Oceana and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service for failing to protect groundfish.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

Finding Refuge for Salmon, Cold Water Preferred

December 11, 2015 — PORTLAND, Ore. — When Lewis and Clark first encountered the Columbia River in 1805, they wrote about nearby streams so thick with salmon that you could all but walk across on their backs.

Last summer, those streams looked very different. As a torrid heat wave settled over the Pacific Northwest, the salmon heading up the Columbia River from the ocean in their ancient reproduction ritual started dying en masse, cooked in place by freakishly hot water that killed them or made them vulnerable to predators. Sockeye died by the hundreds of thousands.

“It was a peek at the future,” said Jim Martin, a former chief of fisheries for Oregon, who now works on conservation issues for a fishing tackle company, Pure Fishing. “This is exactly what is predicted by climate-change models.”

Other salmon experts, though, said the future was not that clear. Even as the sockeye here were dying, they said, pink salmon were exploding in number, especially in the Puget Sound area around Seattle. Alaska, which actually supplies most of the wild-caught salmon eaten in Portland, Seattle and other coastal cities that have their identities tied to fish, had its own good-news story this year, with a near-record harvest.

Read the full story at the New York Times

New nationwide coalition seeking to unify commercial fishing interests

November 16, 2015 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group with strong New Bedford ties is creating a national coalition of commercial fishing interests to boost outreach and communication for the industry, which supporters claim often can be overmatched by unified environmental groups that promote competing interests.

“America’s fishing communities and seafood industry have been maligned by special interest groups working in collusion, who have slandered hard-working Americans with outrageous claims and misrepresentations,” Bob Vanasse, a New Bedford native and executive director of Saving Seafood, said in a Monday news release. “We’re aiming to bring the entire supply chain of fishermen, shoreside businesses, processors, markets and restaurants together to join this effort to move the national conversation in a positive direction.”

The Saving Seafood release said the nonprofit, formed in 2009, is conducting a membership drive for its new National Coalition of Fishing Communities (NCFC). Vanasse said the coalition, so far, has about 60 members across the country, including New Bedford’s Harbor Development Commission.

The NCFC will formally launch in Washington in January, during the next U.S. Conference of Mayors event. Vanasse said New Bedford Mayor Mitchell will be chairman of the coalition’s mayors’ group, reaching out to municipal leaders in Seattle, Honolulu, Atlantic City and other cities with strong commercial fishing ties. Coalition members already include commercial fishing associations from Hawaii, Oregon, North Carolina, New Jersey and more.

“I believe there needs to be a stronger voice for fishing communities in the halls of Congress,” Mitchell said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard -Times

 

Crab season: Fishermen scrambling to pay bills

November 16, 2015 — This was supposed to be the winter Braeden Breton finally realized his dream of running his own crab fishing boat. After putting down $7,500 in April toward a commercial permit, he was counting on earning enough money as a deckhand this fall to pay off the rest and begin setting his own traps after the new year.

Now the indefinite postponement of the commercial Dungeness crab season has thrown that plan into disarray. Like hundreds of other fishermen in the Bay Area, Breton finds himself scrambling to pay the bills.

Breton, of El Granada, and a partner must make monthly payments on the $20,000 they still owe for the permit. He may head north this month in the hope of finding work on a boat in Oregon, where the Dungeness crab season is tentatively slated to open Dec. 1 on the northern half of the coast.

“It’s hard on everyone around me, and it’s hard on me as well,” Breton, 23, said of the delay. “I have to keep up with my payments or I’ll lose my permit.”

More than a week after the California Department of Fish and Wildlife shut down the commercial season because of high levels of neurotoxins in the crab, the outlook for California fishermen is as murky as the ocean depths where the prized crustaceans scuttle and scavenge.

Read the full story from the Santa Cruz Sentinel

In the Dry West, Waiting for Congress

November 6, 2015 — KLAMATH FALLS, Ore. — Drought in the West is an ugly thing. Rivers trickle away to nothing, fires rage, crops fail, ranchers go broke, tribal people watch fish die. As Westerners fight over the little water left, tempers crack, lawsuits fly and bitterness coats whole communities like fine dust.

As the climate warms, the West gets meaner.

The Klamath River begins in southern Oregon and meets the Pacific Ocean among the redwoods in Northern California, draining nearly 16,000 square miles. Until recently, who got water and how much had been deeply contentious issues. In particular, the irrigators and the Indian tribes were angry at one another, and the users in the river’s upper basin were angry with users in the lower basin.

But in recent years, something changed. Hostility gave way to compromise. Just about everybody who wants some of that precious river flow has made nice, given and taken, sat down and compromised.

Three major agreements have been wrapped up in Senate Bill 133, introduced by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, and several colleagues. The bill is supported by tribes that want to protect the fish; ranchers who want to feed their cattle; farmers who grow alfalfa and potatoes; fly fishermen and duck hunters; ecologists; a power company; and many local politicians of various ideological stripes.

Toxin Taints Crabs and Kills Sea Mammals, Scientists Warn

November 4, 2015 — The authorities in California are advising people to avoid consumption of crabs contaminated by a natural toxin that has spread throughout the marine ecosystem off the West Coast, killing sea mammals and poisoning various other species.

Kathi A. Lefebvre, the lead research biologist at the Wildlife Algal Toxin Research and Response Network, said on Wednesday that her organization had examined about 250 animals stranded on the West Coast and had found domoic acid, a toxic chemical produced by a species of algae, in 36 animals of several species.

“We’re seeing much higher contamination in the marine food web this year in this huge geographic expanse than in the past,” Ms. Lefebvre said.

She said that the toxin had never before been found in animals stranded in Washington or Oregon, and that there were most likely greater numbers of contaminated marine mammals not being found by humans.

The California Department of Public Health recently advised people to avoid consumption of certain species of crabs because of potential toxicity. Razor clam fisheries in Washington have been closed throughout the summer for the same reason.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the California department said that “recent test results” indicated dangerous levels of domoic acid in Dungeness and rock crabs caught in California waters between Oregon and Santa Barbara, Calif.

Read the full story at The New York Times

EL NINO AND ‘BLOB’ CREATE MASSIVE WARM POOL OFF OREGON, POSING CHALLENGE TO FUTURE FISHERIES

August 4, 2015 — The massive pool of warm water stretching from the Pacific Coast of the US to Alaska is currently affecting only a few fisheries, but has the potential to impact more next year.

For the last month, in the area stretching from Southern California to Alaska, sea surface temperatures have been 1 to 3 degrees Celsius above normal (1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

This has resulted in changes in plankton blooms, and a change in species. Scientists with Oregon State University say that tropical copepods have now been found in the Northwest, and native plankton are fewer in number. Fish and birds that would normally eat native plankton are shying away from the newcomers, as they are less nutritious.

Sardines which are known to have large cyclical changes in population have been among the most vulnerable to this change, and the sardine fishery on the West Coast has been closed this year after numbers declined below the management’s precautionary threshold.

But other fisheries are doing fine. Brad Pettinger, director of the Oregon Trawl Commission, says that through June, shrimp catches were running 50% higher than last year. However, “Ordinarily, when a el nino hits this coast, the following year’s shrimp production isn’t effected to the extent the next year’s production is. Basically, the el nino puts the hurt on the spawn and that isn’t seen until a year and a half later.”

The whiting fishery is also proceeding well. With a total quota of around 267,000 tons, about 94,000 tons has been landed in all three sectors: mother ship, catcher processor, and shore side.

Read the full story at SeafoodNews.com

 

Lessons for Alaska: Oregon Shellfish Hatchery Tackles Ocean Acidification

July 13, 2015 — A recent NOAA study pegged 2040 as the date for the potential end of Alaskan shellfish hatcheries. That is, unless serious mitigation efforts are put in place to combat ocean acidification. Last week we reported on the research, done at the Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery in Seward. Now, we’ll take a look at what a hatchery on the Oregon coast is doing to deal with these harmful changes in ocean chemistry.

The Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery is located in the small town of Tillamook, Oregon.

“This hatchery was started by Lee Hanson,” says Sue Cudd, who owns the hatchery now. “It was really the first shellfish hatchery that was commercial in operation. It started in 1978.”

She studied biology in school, worked for an oyster company for a while, and then came on with Lee Hanson to learn about the hatchery world. From the 1970s until 2006, there were natural ups and downs, but overall, things ran relatively smoothly.

“Then all of a sudden, in about 2006, we started seeing some pretty major problems. Then from the end of 2007 to the end of 2008, we couldn’t produce larvae anymore,” says Cudd.

Inside the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery – Photo courtesy of ceoas.oregonstate.edu

For a year and a half, they tried to produce. Even when they did manage to get some larvae, they wouldn’t survive and develop. It was a financial nightmare for the business.

“We lose money really fast because the production cost is the same without having any production. So, it was tough,” says Cudd. “We got help from some customers. The oyster growers association [helped] and one of our state senators got us some community development money, so we had time to be able to try to solve this problem. Without that, I don’t know what would have happened because we just lost money so fast.”

Read the full story and listen to the audio at Alaska Public Media