July 8, 2024 — Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based pollock- and hake-fishing firm American Seafoods Group has paused its sale process.
In May 2023, Bregal Partners announced it would commence a sale process of its majority holding in the company.
Council appointments delayed until ‘later this summer’
July 3, 2024 — Alaskan and West Coast fishery stakeholders are still in the dark as to who will represent them on their regional fishery management councils.
The appointments of 22 new and returning members to six of eight of the nation’s councils were announced on June 28 by the US Dept. of Commerce. The Secretary of Commerce appoints council seats from state governors’ lists of nominees. Each serves three-year terms.
“Appointments to the Pacific and North Pacific fishery management councils will be announced later this summer,” the Commerce press release said.
“My understanding is that the decision on those appointments have not yet been finalized,” said Julie Fair, Public Affairs Officer at NOAA’s Alaska Regional Office. “The appointments for Pacific and North Pacific Fishery Management Councils will be forthcoming later this summer, and we do not anticipate any lapse in voting during their September/October Council meetings,” Fair added.
Pacific cod can’t rely on coastal safe havens for protection during marine heat waves, study finds
June 28, 2024 — During recent periods of unusually warm water in the Gulf of Alaska, young Pacific cod in near shore safe havens where they typically spend their adolescence did not experience the protective effects those areas typically provide, a new Oregon State University study found.
Instead, during marine heat waves in 2014–16 and 2019, young cod in these near shore “nurseries” around Kodiak Island in Alaska experienced significant changes in their abundance, growth rates and diet, with researchers estimating that only the largest 15–25% of the island’s cod population survived the summer. Even after the high temperatures subsided, the cod have yet to return to pre-heat wave size and diet.
The findings, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, may have broader implications for marine fish populations worldwide, as marine heat waves become longer and more frequent with climate change, the researchers said.
“These coastal habitats aren’t supporting fish in the same way that they used to as a result of marine heat waves,” said lead author Hillary Thalmann, a graduate student in OSU’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences. “That’s a novel finding, because we don’t always look at the nurseries as a place where size-selective mortality could be occurring rapidly.”
Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization back on the docket
June 28, 2024 — A bipartisan group of U.S. Representatives has re-introduced a bill in the latest bid to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).
U.S. representatives Jared Huffman (D-California), who is the ranking member of the U.S. Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries, along with Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Mary Peltola (D-Alaska), and U.S. Delegate James Moylan (R-Guam), reintroduced the “Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act” in a bid to renew the MSA – the law governing fisheries management at a federal level. The law was enacted in 1976 and was last reauthorized in 2006.
Read the full article at SeafoodSource
Climate change is causing low-oxygen levels in Pacific Northwest ocean, report says
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.
Native American tribe wins U.S. waiver to resume hunting Pacific gray whales
June 14, 2024 — After a decades-long struggle, a Native American tribe won the right to resume its hunting traditions off Washington state’s coast when federal regulators granted a waiver on Thursday allowing the Makah people to hunt up to 25 gray whales over a decade.
As part of its 1855 treaty with the U.S. government, the Makah Tribe secured the right to continue hunting whales, a tradition it describes as at the heart of their spiritual beliefs and practices. But the practice was stymied by 20th-century conservation measures.
In 2002, a federal court ruled that the tribe must secure a waiver of a moratorium on whale hunting under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.
CALIFORNIA: Port of Hueneme makes historic announcement during World Ocean Day celebration
June 12, 2024 — Holly Lohuis has made it her mission to tell students the importance of protecting the ocean for future generations.
Part of that conservation conversation includes protecting endangered whales.
The Port of Hueneme and Oxnard Harbor District vowed to make all operations at the Port Of Hueneme zero emissions within the next 6 years— a change that will not only help save marine life and preserve ecosystems, but will also improve public health.
“We want clean air for our community. We want the workers working at the docks to breathe clean air. We want them to have quiet equipment to ensure the best public safety for the workforce on the waterfront,” said Port of Hueneme CEO and Port Director Kristin Decas.
PNW coast suffers from low oxygen, study finds. It’s becoming the norm
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.
OREGON: Oregon U.S. lawmakers seek federal help for West Coast seafood industry
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.
OREGON: Oregon legislators urge USDA to make more West Coast seafood purchases
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
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