Saving Seafood

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

An ocean of noise: how sonic pollution is hurting marine life

April 12, 2022 — We were whaling with cameras, joining a flotilla of a dozen other tourist boats from harbours all around the Salish Sea. It was one of my first trips to the area, in August 2001. The fuzz and beep of ship radios stitched a net over the water, a blurry facsimile of the sonic connections of the whales themselves. Every skipper heard the voices of the others, relayed by electromagnetic waves. The quarry could not escape. “Whales guaranteed” shouted the billboards on shore.

We motored on, weaving around island headlands. A sighting off the south-west shore of San Juan Island. Through binoculars: a dorsal fin scythed the water, then dipped. Another, with a spray of mist as the animal exhaled. Then, no sign. But the whales’ location was easy to spot. A dozen boats clustered, most slowly motoring west, away from the shore. We powered closer, slowing the engine until we were travelling without raising a wake and took our place on the outer edge of the gaggle of yachts and cruisers.

A sheet of marble skated just under the water’s surface. Oily smooth. A spill of black ink sheeting under the hazed bottle glass of the water’s surface. Praaf! Surfacing 15 metres ahead of the boat, the exhalation was plosive and rough.

The pod of about 10 animals came to the surface. Part of the L pod of orcas, our captain said, one of three pods that form the “southern residents” in the waters of the Salish Sea between Seattle and Vancouver, often seen hunting salmon around the San Juan Islands. Others – “transients” that ply coastal waters and “offshores” that feed mostly in the Pacific – also visit regularly. The L pod continued west, heading toward the Haro Strait. Our engines purred as the U-shaped arc of boats tracked the pod, leaving open water ahead of the whales.

We dropped a hydrophone over the boat’s gunwale, its cord feeding a small speaker in a plastic casing. Whale sounds! And engine noise, lots of engine noise. Clicks, like taps on a metal can, came in squalls. These sounds are the whales’ echolocating search beams. The whales use the echoes not only to see through the murky water, but to understand how soft, taut, fast or tremulous matter is around them.

Mixed with the staccato of the whales’ clicks were whistles and high squeaks, sounds that undulate, dart, inflect up and spiral down. These whistles are the sounds of whale conviviality, given most often when the animals are socialising at close range. When the pod is more widely spaced during searches for food, the whales whistle less and communicate with bursts of shorter sound pulses. These sonic bonds not only connect the members of each pod, but distinguish the pod from others.

Today, ocean waters are a tumult of engine noise, sonar and seismic blasts. Sediments from human activities on land cloud the water. Industrial chemicals befuddle the sense of smell of aquatic animals. We are severing the sensory links that gave the world its animal diversity. Whales cannot hear the echolocating pulses that locate their prey, breeding fish cannot find one another amid the noise and turbidity, and the social connections among crustaceans are weakened as their chemical messages and sonic thrums are lost in a haze of human pollution.

Read the full story at The Guardian

California Seeks to Modify Coldwater Pink Shrimp Management

March 31, 2022 — Rules that Oregon and Washington pink shrimp trawlers are already accustomed to may be implemented in California soon.

The California Fish and Game Commission will consider changes to its pink shrimp fishery management plan when it meets in June.

“The effort to develop and implement this FMP began in 2017, and the adoption of the FMP by the Commission is expected in April 2022,” the Notice of Proposed Regulations reads, although the Commission calendar now has the action scheduled in June. “The purpose of the FMP and its implementing regulation is to update the management of California’s pink shrimp fishery to be in line with Oregon and Washington. Updating the fishery’s management would also assist the fishery in obtaining the Marine Stewardship Council certification. This effort is expected to result in a more sustainable and less environmentally impactful fishery.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

Oregon State researchers create tool to help protect native fish from hybridizing with non-natives

March 8, 2022 — Oregon State University researchers have created a tool to assess the risk of hybridization among native and non-native fish, a development that could aid natural resource managers trying to protect threatened or endangered freshwater fish species.

The introduction of non-native species poses challenges to native species, including competition for resources and habitat, exposure to diseases carried by the introduced species and the risk of hybridization, which occurs naturally in wild populations as part of the evolutionary process.

The Oregon State research, just published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science, focused on two species: bull trout, a fish native to western North America that is protected under the Endangered Species Act; and brook trout, a native to eastern North America introduced in the West more than 100 years ago for recreational fishing purposes.

Bull trout were once abundant in Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Idaho and Montana but today are found in less than half of their historic range, and no longer exist in California. They are threatened by habitat degradation and fragmentation, blockage of migratory corridors, poor water quality, the effects of climate change and fisheries management practices, including the introduction of brook trout.

Read the full story from Oregon State University

Catching Crabs in a Suffocating Sea

March 7, 2022 — The crab pots are piled high at the fishing docks in Newport, Oregon. Stacks of tire-sized cages fill the parking lot, festooned with colorful buoys and grimy ropes. By this time in July, most commercial fishers have called it a year for Dungeness crab. But not Dave Bailey, the skipper of the 14-meter Morningstar II. The season won’t end for another month, and “demand for fresh, live crab never stops,” Bailey says with a squinting smile and fading Midwestern accent.

Most marine animals don’t breathe air, but they need oxygen to live, absorbing it from the water as they swim, burrow, or cling to the seafloor. But lately, bouts of dangerously low oxygen levels—or hypoxia—have afflicted parts of the North American west coast, affecting critters from halibut to sea stars. These “dead zones” cause ecological disruption and economic pain for fishers like Bailey, who can’t sell crabs that have suffocated in their traps.

The phenomenon offers a preview of what climate change holds for many other parts of Earth’s oceans, which are already stressed by human impacts. As seawater warms, it holds less oxygen. Warmer surface water also acts like a cap that prevents the gas from mixing from the atmosphere down into the deep. And rising air temperatures can shift weather patterns in ways that worsen the problem.

It’s a subtle but significant change. While well-oxygenated water contains about eight milligrams of oxygen per liter, hypoxic water holds less than two and can sometimes approach zero. Overall, the world’s oceans have lost up to two percent of their total oxygen content over the last 50 years, and scientists estimate that they could lose another two to four percent over the next century. By 2100, some amount of climate-related oxygen loss could affect more than three-quarters of the ocean’s area, inflicting widespread damage to marine ecosystems and the billions of people who depend on them.

Read the full story at Hakai Magazine

Cooke gets two wins, advancing Salish Fish steelhead project in Washington

March 1, 2022 — Cooke Aquaculture Pacific has won two victories allowing its plan to farm steelhead in the U.S. state of Washington to advance.

In a unanimous, 9-0 decision, the Washington Supreme Court upheld a decision by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) to allow Cook to convert its idle Atlantic salmon net-pen farms to raise steelhead. The move was precipitated by Washington’s ban on farming of non-native species in its waters.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

BOEM Identifies Three Potential Wind Lease Areas Off Oregon

February 28, 2022 — The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has selected three areas off the coast of southern Oregon for potential offshore wind development, and its picks have attracted immediate opposition from fishermens’ advocacy organizations.

According to BOEM, the planning for the three call areas has been under way since late 2019. The initial call for information is a request for comments from stakeholders and the general public, and it is a prelude to the designation of specific lease areas. BOEM’s objective is to identify enough space for three gigawatts of near-term offshore wind power capacity.

The northernmost call area is located just off Coos Bay, Oregon, one of the largest commercial fishing ports in the region. It is also the largest of the three areas – about 1,360 square miles – and the area with the greatest total potential for energy generation. The southernmost call area, near Brookings, has the highest average wind speeds and the lowest levelized cost of energy.

Read the full story at the Maritime Executive

Seafood industry reacts to BOEM offshore call areas in Oregon

February 28, 2022 — The following was released by the West Coast Seafood Processors Association:

Offshore wind energy is coming to Oregon, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, but the seafood industry says it’s an oncoming windstorm.

BOEM plans to announce Friday, Feb. 25, 2022, three proposed “call areas” off Oregon. BOEM identifies these ocean areas with high wind potential as places companies might want to develop to harness the energy of offshore wind. These massive areas, covering 2,181 square miles, already are utilized by the fishermen to harvest nutritious, sustainable seafood proteins.

As part of its process, BOEM will solicit interest from wind energy developers before doing a basic environmental assessment of the areas. Comprehensive environmental studies will be completed later, after leases are already issued and enormous investments are already made.

“The effect of offshore wind development on fisheries, the habitat and the California Current is unknown. Placing giant turbines and anchors in a current system that is largely free-flowing and structure-free could cause irreparable harm to seabirds, marine mammals, fisheries management regimes and more,” Southern Oregon Ocean Resource Coalition (SOORC) Chair Susan Chambers said. “Robust environmental analyses need to be completed before areas are identified and leased, not after. Our productive California Current must be protected.

One area, known to commercial fishermen as “the mud hole” is known to be a highly productive shrimp bed, as well as a key area for sole harvested by groundfish fishermen. It is also recognized as an important feeding area for seabirds.

Fishermen already are questioning the value of placing turbines in areas off Morro Bay and Humboldt Bay, Calif. The early environmental analyses and area identification memos of those areas included very little socio-economic data regarding the potential effects on the seafood industry and no consideration of the cumulative impacts of potential additional wind farms off the U.S. West Coast.

“These turbines are going to blow me off the water,” Fishermen’s Marketing Association President Travis Hunter said. Hunter and his family have fished for years off southern Oregon and northern California and in the Humboldt Wind Energy Area. “These areas will displace hard-working fishermen.”

The seafood industry recognizes the value in renewable energy, but at what cost? Fishermen and processors have their roots in coastal communities. Displacing them in favor of large out-of-town – and frequently out-of-country – companies is a net loss.

“Developers are largely funded by foreign companies. Most of the profits, at Oregon taxpayers’ expense, will be funneled overseas. This is not ‘the Oregon way,’” Shrimp Producers Marketing Cooperative Secretary Nick Edwards said.

The future of several Oregon commercial fisheries, processors, fishery-related businesses, and the economic development coastal communities derive from those industries, hang in the balance.

“This is what results from government agency lip service versus authentic engagement,” said Heather Mann, Director of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative. She was speaking in response to last night’s revelation that the Bureau of Energy and Management’s Oregon (BOEM) call areas for offshore wind energy development cover more than 2,000 square miles of productive fishing grounds in Southern Oregon. “BOEM has essentially chosen prime fishing areas for turbines threatening not just Oregon harvesting and processing jobs, but food security as well.”

Fishing groups all along the West Coast have been pleading with BOEM to have a seat at the table, not be a mime in the check-the-box outreach that often happens with government agencies.

“The importance of where these gigantic, floating wind farms are placed cannot be under-emphasized. If we do not get this decision absolutely correct, the fallout could have a dire domino economic effect on all Oregon commercial fisheries, including the vitally important Oregon Dungeness crab fishery,” Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission Executive Director Hugh Link said.

Read the release here

US resumes bilateral mollusk trade with EU after 10-year ban

February 4, 2022 — The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced on 4 February that the U.S. and European Union will resume bilateral trade of live, raw, and processed bivalve molluscan shellfish.

The negotiated agreement marks the first time bilateral trade of mollusks between the E.U. and U.S. will be allowed since 2011. The new agreement will allow producers in the U.S. states of Massachusetts and Washington to send mollusks to the E.U., and will allow producers in Spain and the Netherlands to send products to the U.S.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Cool Ocean Waters, Abundant Nutrients Provide Rosy Outlook for Washington Salmon

February 1, 2022 — Scientific markers used to predict the health and productivity of marine species such as juvenile salmon were positive in 2021, the second most favorable since 1998, according to analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Fisheries biologists are cautiously optimistic that those conditions will persist into the near future, supporting the health of juvenile, ocean-run salmon off the coasts of Washington and Oregon.

The report looked at a number of oceanic health markers: atmospheric conditions, water temperature, salinity, oxygen levels, current movement, and biomass of Chinook and Coho salmon, along with food sources such as plankton and small crustaceans. Many of those indicators were more favorable than every year in the last 24, outside of 2008.

“Every once in a while, things are in alignment. … In 2021, everything from water temperatures to phytoplankton, zooplankton, and larval fishes were pointing in the same direction,” Brian Burke, a fishery biologist with NOAA, told MyNorthwest.

Burke attributes those conditions to a strong upwelling in the Pacific along the 45-degree parallel north, a term which refers to atmospheric and ocean conditions that bring cold, nutrient rich water from the deep ocean toward the surface.

Read the full story at Seafood News