Saving Seafood

Alaska legislators discuss bycatch concerns ahead of critical regional halibut meeting

November 26, 2021 — An Alaska legislative committee heard from state and federal fisheries officials earlier in the month prior to a critical regional meeting on halibut bycatch.

The three-hour meeting centered on bycatch concerns with chinook and chum salmon, crab and halibut. Commissioner Douglas Vincent-Lang of the Department and Fish and Game spoke first about catastrophic chum salmon returns in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers. Bycatch is the unintentional harvest of non-target species while commercial fishing.

According to state data, the Yukon alone was down this year by roughly 1.5-2 million chum salmon from pre-season projections. Chum salmon bycatch by trawlers, which has been rising in recent years, cannot alone explain those reduced numbers, Vincent-Lang said, and the state will now try to determine what caused the historic Western Alaska salmon failures.

But, it was halibut bycatch limits for trawlers that target pollock and cod in the Bering Sea that proved more controversial.

Read the full story at Alaska’s News Source

 

OREGON: West Coast Salmon Trollers Get Federal Support for Disaster Request

November 2, 2021 — Oregon’s coastal delegation is going to bat for the state’s salmon fishermen.

Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, with Reps. Peter DeFazio, Kurt Schrader and Suzanne Bonamici, all democrats, are urging the U.S. Department of Commerce to grant a catastrophic regional fishery disaster declaration for Oregon, the lawmakers said in a press release. Three consecutive years of challenging weather and conditions have hit salmon populations particularly hard, they said.

“The value of salmon to Oregon cannot be overstated. In addition to the economic activity generated by this industry, salmon are an important part of the cultural heritage of Pacific Northwest tribes, generate recreational activity, and are a treasured natural resource across the state,” they wrote in a letter to Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo last week. “However, the challenging impacts of climate change, increased drought, and changing ocean conditions complicate the recovery of salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

 

OREGON: State regulators rushing to catch up on market squid fishery

October 26, 2021 — If Joe Mulkey could fish for market squid year-round, he would.

The emerging Oregon fishery ticks a lot of boxes for the commercial fisherman from Reedsport: the use of seine gear and electronics, and, of course, the recent profitability.

In the past five years, the market squid fishery has moved from almost nonexistent to booming. Now boats that would normally fish for squid in California’s Monterey Bay have headed north and Oregon fishermen are seeing new opportunities in local waters, hunting the small, short-lived animals.

Last year, the fishery saw the highest participation yet in Oregon and fishermen landed more than 10 million pounds. Before fishing took off in 2016, fishermen had only landed 4.5 million pounds in Oregon since 1980.

But as market squid surges forward, state fishery managers are rushing to catch up.

Read the full story at The Astorian

 

Genetic Analysis Shows Beluga Whale in Puget Sound Likely Arrived from Arctic Waters

October 26, 2021 — Scientists have collected genetic material from the beluga whale that was first sighted in Puget Sound in early October. It indicates that the whale is likely from a large population of beluga whales in the Beaufort Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska.

The whale appears to have traveled thousands of miles south around Alaska through the Bering Sea and south to Puget Sound. It was last sighted on October 20 near Tacoma. The whale does not appear to be from the small and endangered Cook Inlet beluga population near Anchorage, Alaska.

The genetic analysis involved sequencing DNA extracted from a water sample collected near the beluga whale in Puget Sound earlier this month. This material is known as environmental DNA, or eDNA, because it comes from skin, fecal, or other cellular debris found in the environment near the animal.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

 

WASHINGTON: Puget Sound tribe uses aquaculture to counter salmon shortages

October 18, 2021 — A new video from the Washington Policy Center (WPC) highlights the efforts of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe in the Puget Sound area to develop an aquaculture program to provide economic opportunity and a food source for its community.

“As we work to restore the salmon population in Puget Sound, tribes are finding creative ways to feed their members and become more self-sufficient,” said Todd Myers, environmental director at the WPC. “Tribes have the local control and flexibility that allows them to follow good science to manage aquaculture that is sustainable and provides good food.”

The late Kurt Grinnell, who was a tribal council member and general manager of the aquaculture program, explains in the video that just a few generations ago the local rivers and tributaries were filled with an unending supply of salmon. It got to the point though, that he shut down his fishing business because he was catching so few fish that selling them did not bring in enough money to even pay for the gas for his boat.

Read the full story at The Center Square

 

Navy steams ahead with sonar testing despite state opposition, orca impacts

October 4, 2021 — Over the objections of Washington state officials and orca advocates, the U.S. Navy is steaming ahead with a plan for seven more years of testing sonar and explosives in waters off the Northwest coast.

The Navy says the piercing noise from its tests and training activities could harm eight species of whales listed under the Endangered Species Act.

But Navy officials, backed up by the National Marine Fisheries Service, say the occasional, temporary disturbances won’t threaten the orcas’ or any other species’ survival.

“At this time the Navy intends to proceed over the objection of the State of Washington,” the Navy’s Record of Decision document, published Friday, states.

Read the full story at KUOW

 

Low oxygen levels along Pacific Northwest coast a ‘silent’ climate change crisis

September 29, 2021 — Nearly two decades ago, fishers discovered an odd occurrence off the coast of Oregon. They were pulling up pots of dead or lethargic crabs.

At first they suspected a chemical spill or a red tide. But instead, they learned, dangerously low levels of dissolved oxygen in the ocean water were to blame.

The crabs had suffocated.

These swaths of hypoxic areas have surfaced every summer on Pacific Northwest shores since it was first recorded in 2002. They are spurred by naturally occurring coastal upwellings and algae blooms, exacerbated by climate change, said Francis Chan, director of the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies at Oregon State University.

Akin to fire season, hypoxia season arrived earlier this year – the earliest start in 20 years, according to Chan. But unlike wildfire, or other visible climate emergencies, it’s gone largely unrecognized.

“It’s kind of a silent problem happening out there,” said Chan. “This year, I can look out and see trees with one side burnt because of the heat wave. As I’m driving on McKenzie highway, I can see Mount Jefferson has no snow on it. But when you drive out to the ocean, it looks exactly the same as last summer.”

Read the full story at the Spokesman-Review

 

Learning from gorillas to save killer whales

November 9, 2018 — In 2018, the southern resident killer whale population in the Pacific Northwest’s Salish Sea was at its lowest ever. The world watched in September as an orca named Scarlet, or J50, wasted away and died, leaving just 74 of her kind left. Some wondered if this was “What extinction looks like.”

Meanwhile, endangered mountain gorillas in Africa hit a milestone in the opposite direction. Their population climbed to more than 1,000—the highest in nearly a century.

Building on work begun by primatologist Dian Fossey of Gorillas in the Mist fame, Gorilla Doctors, a program led by the University of California, Davis, has been providing personalized veterinary care to these animals in the wild since the late 2000s. The gorillas have their own long-term health records, and the international team of veterinarians that observe and treat them know each one as they would their own family members and friends—down to the individual.

Read the full story at Phys.org

Judge rules EPA must protect salmon from rising water temperatures in Washington

October 29, 2018 — A U.S. Federal Court in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. has issued a ruling that is intended to protect salmon and steelhead trout in the Columbia River basin from rising water temperatures.

In the mile-long lakes created by hydropower dams on the rivers, the water temperature has often exceeded 70 degrees Fahrenheit for days at a time, though the Clean Water Act bars the temperature in the river from exceeding 68 degrees. Cold water species such as sockeye and steelhead become stressed at temperatures over 68 degrees and stop migrating when the temperature exceeds 74 degrees.

The ruling instructs the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the species. The EPA will, within 60 days, come up with a “comprehensive plan to deal with dams’ impact on water temperature and salmon survival,” according to Columbia Riverkeeper Executive Director Brett VandenHeuvel, one of the plaintiffs of the case, which was initially filed in February 2017. Other conservation and fishermens’ groups were plaintiffs in the suit as well: Idaho Rivers United, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Snake River Waterkeeper, and The Institute for Fisheries Resources.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Environmental groups sue U.S. Army Corps over Willamette dams, say salmon and steelhead at risk of extinction

March 14, 2018 — Three environmental groups followed through on a threat to sue the federal government Tuesday over the decline in wild salmon and steelhead in the Upper Willamette watershed.

The groups say the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and National Marine Fisheries Service have failed to take required steps to improve conditions for the threatened fish.

The lawsuit targets the Willamette watershed’s system of dams and its negative impact on fish habitat.

“Federal dam operators in the Willamette River basin must act now to protect our native fish,” said Mark Sherwood, executive director of the Native Fish Society.

The lawsuit is derived from a legal agreement, called the Biological Opinion, issued in 2008, that essentially requires the Corps to modify dams to improve fish habitat.

Read the full story at the Statesman Journal