September 3, 2024 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded contracts for seafood from the Pacific Northwest worth more than USD 17 million (EUR 15 million), following requests from politicians and seafood organizations to do so.
Clackamas, Oregon, U.S.A.-based Dulcich, which owns Pacific Seafood, snagged the largest portion of the contracts – USD 9.3 million (EUR 8.4 million) for Pacific whiting.
August 30, 2024 — The federal government says it will hold Oregon’s first-ever offshore wind energy lease sale in mid-October to auction two areas where developers can build floating wind turbines.
The announcement by the U.S. Department of the Interior on Thursday cements the development of offshore wind in Oregon despite vehement opposition from coastal communities, the state’s fishing industry and local tribes who say the process was rushed and ignored local input.
August 23, 2024 — Senators Wyden and Merkley are announcing some major funding to support salmon recovery in Oregon.
The two U.S. Senators announced Wednesday that both Oregon and the Klamath Basin are receiving more than $35 million from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund. The federal grant program helps to restore Pacific salmon and steelhead.
The money will be distributed between the Klamath River Inter-Tribal Fish and Water Commission and the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board.
Senator Merkley says Oregon’s salmon population is critical in sustaining the state’s commercial and recreational fisheries as well as being a crucial part of the cultural heritage of Oregon’s Indigenous Tribes.
August 14, 2024 — Oregon’s fishing scene in 2023 was a bit of a mixed bag. While the state’s commercial fishing industry landed 301 million pounds of seafood, up from the previous year, the total revenue didn’t quite hit the high notes of the past few years. The amount of crab harvested nearly doubled compared to 2022, but low prices kept the revenue from making this season something special for the fishermen. Salmon landings took a hit, and the pink shrimp market saw a price drop despite better landings. Overall, it was a year of contrasts, with some fisheries thriving and others struggling.
The report shared by the State of Oregon Employment Department examined individual fisheries and employment in each state county. The industry landed a total of 301 million pounds, which was worth $178 million in 2023. Though it was more pounds than in 2022, it was below the average landings and revenue from 2018 to 2022, which was 319 million pounds worth $189 million.
Crab harvests in 2023 were 37.2 million pounds versus 4.9 million pounds the year before. Typically, the state’s crab season begins in December. However, the season didn’t fully open until Feb 1, 2023, making the 2022 crab harvest drastically lower than the historical trends. The 2023 harvest was twice as large as the five-year average of 18.3 million pounds. The year’s total revenue sat at $104 million due to the low crab prices. Dungeness crab’s average landed price per pound was $2.80 in 2023, the lowest seen since 2013’s $2.74 per pound.
Salmon landings significantly dropped 18% in 2023, totaling 1.7 million pounds. This was more than the five-year average, which was 1.4 million pounds. The average price also dropped, leading to a decrease in total landed value of 32%, totaling $5.2 million. The U.S. Secretary of Commerce issued a disaster declaration for the 2023 Oregon ocean troll salmon fishery due to the long-term trend of low levels of salmon harvests.
July 26, 2024 — The U.S. government will invest $240 million in salmon and steelhead hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest to boost declining fish populations and support the treaty-protected fishing rights of Native American tribes, officials announced Thursday.
The departments of Commerce and the Interior said there will be an initial $54 million for hatchery maintenance and modernization made available to 27 tribes in the region, which includes Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska.
The hatcheries “produce the salmon that tribes need to live,” said Jennifer Quan, the regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region. “We are talking about food for the tribes and supporting their culture and their spirituality.”
Some of the facilities are on the brink of failure, Quan said, with a backlog of deferred maintenance that has a cost estimated at more than $1 billion.
June 17, 2024 — A recent report out of Oregon State University paints a picture of how ocean oxygen levels have decreased in the Pacific Northwest over the years.
The report found near-bottom levels of dissolved oxygen in the waters off of Washington, Oregon and Northern California in 2021. JPR’s Roman Battaglia talked to Jack Barth, professor of oceanography at OSU, about his report and what these low oxygen levels mean for marine life.
Roman Battaglia: One thing I noticed in this study was that the levels seem pretty different in different parts of the coast. For example, in northern California and the southern Oregon coast, the oxygen levels seem much higher than they are in southern Washington and the northern Oregon coast. But why is there so much variability?
Jack Barth: That was the second big outcome of the paper, is that there really are regional differences. And importantly, we can explain them by oceanographic processes. So that higher oxygen level off southern Oregon, that’s because the continental shelf is relatively narrow. So it can flush water on and off pretty effectively from the deep ocean and flush out that low oxygen water so it stays high. And it looks like a pretty good area for fisheries. As you get into the wider continental shelves off central Oregon and Washington, the water sticks around longer; it doesn’t get flushed off as effectively. So that keeps those low oxygen waters near the bottom on those wider shelves.
June 14, 2024 — The state’s seafood commodity commissions have expressed concerns to Governor Kotek, urging them to prioritize that states own planning process and utilize it as a guide for responsible offshore wind energy development. According to Oregon Trawl, Oregon Dungeness Crab, Oregon Albacore and Oregon Salmon, the alternative would be following a rushed federal process; keeping impacted communities from having a voice.
According to the seafood commodity commissions should the state follow the federal process the viability of the state’s seafood industry and the health of the ocean would not be prioritized.
“Being situated in the middle of one of the world’s four most productive marine regions, Oregon is blessed with its healthy abundant fisheries, which are known to be among the top well-managed fisheries in existence today,” said Yelena Nowak, the executive director of the Oregon Trawl Commission. “It is critically important for Oregon to step up our efforts in ensuring Oregon’s impacted communities and the pristine natural environments are respected and protected in the pursuit of offshore wind energy development.”
June 12, 2024 — About half of the water near the seafloor off the Pacific Northwest coast experienced low-oxygen conditions in 2021, according to a new study.
And those hypoxic conditions, which are expected to become common with global warming, threaten the food web, the study found.
The study from Oregon State University, published in Nature Scientific Reports, used data from 2021 to map out oxygen levels across the bottom 32 feet of the Pacific Northwest continental shelf.
The research illuminates how the planet’s warming has fundamentally changed the ocean’s annual cycles and ecosystems, endangering culturally and economically valuable species like the Dungeness crab, which was worth an annual average of $45 million from 2014 and 2019.
June 11, 2024 — Last year, Oregon’s seafood industry got a much-needed boost from the federal government. But it continues to struggle and still needs help.
That’s the message from five Democratic members of Congress from Oregon, who’ve written to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to request aid for West Coast seafood fishermen, processors and distributors. U.S. Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden and U.S. Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, Val Hoyle and Andrea Salinas asked USDA Administrator Bruce Summers to again include Oregon seafood in its commodity purchases. Summers oversees the agency’s Agricultural Marketing Service, which buys U.S. products for nationwide food assistance programs.
June 11, 2024 — Agroup of U.S. senators and representatives from Oregon are urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to increase government purchases of seafood originating from the West Coast.
The USDA made USD 52 million (EUR 48 million) in seafood purchases from the U.S. West Coast in 2022 at the legislators’ urging but, previous to that, had not requested Pacific Coast seafood in its commodity-purchasing programs, according to a letter sent to USDA Administrator Bruce Summers from U.S. senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden and U.S. representatives Suzanne Bonamici, Val Hoyle, and Andrea Salinas