Saving Seafood

Impossible Choices: The Complicated Task of Saving Both Orca and Salmon

September 10, 2018 — Decades of politics and foot-dragging have stymied the recovery of threatened and endangered Chinook salmon, while an iconic population of killer whales that depends on them veered toward extinction. Now, a last-ditch effort to save the whales may also be what thwarts the recovery of Chinook.

The Southern Resident killer whales are dying. An extended family of 75 orcas living year-round in the sea surrounding the San Juan Islands near Seattle, their numbers never fully rebounded since aquariums that later became SeaWorld captured a third of them in the late 1960s.

And there are other culprits.

Cargo ships and whale-watching boats zip through the Salish Sea, adding noise that interferes with the whales’ ability to locate each other and their prey. The water they live in is toxic. The Puget Sound outside Seattle is tainted with flame retardant, and PCBs and pollutants gush from nearby rivers into the sea.

The Chinook salmon they eat to live are contaminated with mercury, lead and organic compounds like PCBs. The Washington state Department of Health advises humans to limit their consumption of Chinook salmon to eight ounces per week. But Southern Residents eat dozens of the fish per day.

Not only is their food toxic, there’s also less of it than ever before. Five populations of Chinook the whales depend on are listed as threatened; a sixth is endangered. And they’re smaller, declining in size by 10 percent since the late 1970s, according to research published February in the scientific journal Fish & Fisheries.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Scientists Working On Orca Recovery Not Surprised By Recent Tragedies

August 7, 2018 –A multitude of factors are harming Puget Sound’s local population of endangered orcas: water pollution, noise, loss of habitat.

But topping that list right now for many scientists is recovery of their primary food source: Chinook salmon.

The tragic scenes captured on the water over the past week – of the grieving orca J35 incessantly carrying her deceased calf, and of 4-year-old J50 ill and starving –  are sad events, but not surprising to scientists working on orca recovery.

They say they established years ago that when Chinook salmon are scarce, local orcas become sick and unable to effectively reproduce.

“This is just a really conspicuous example of it,” said Sam Wasser, who directs the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington.

He’s part of a team of scientists that has done DNA and hormone analysis of orca scat collected by sniffer dogs. They’ve proved that when pregnant orcas are low on food and start metabolizing their blubber, toxins are released into their bloodstream that cause them to miscarry.

Read the full story at KNKX

Study Shows Importance Of Puget Sound Chinook Production To Starving Orcas

July 26, 2018 –A new analysis is showing the importance of Puget Sound Chinook for the inland sea’s orcas.

Fall kings from the Nooksack to the Deschutes to the Elwha were ranked as the most important current feedstocks for the starving southern residents, followed by Lower Columbia and Strait of Georgia tribs.

For the analysis, NOAA and WDFW sampled orca doots to “assist in prioritizing actions to increase critical prey for the whales.”

Nutritional stress has been identified as among the chief causes of their declining numbers, and the news comes as officials report a newborn calf died off Victoria yesterday. Just half of the 28 reproductive-age “blackfish” have produced calves in the last 10 years, another report said.

“Ramp up the hatchery production. Do it now. It’s the only way,” says Tom Nelson, co-host of Seattle outdoors radio show The Outdoor Line on 710 ESPN.

He was reacting this morning while fishing for coho at Possession Bar to a Seattle Times scoop on the findings.

Read the full story at the Northwest Sportsman

Orca population hits 30-year low in Puget Sound

July 11, 2018 — The Southern Resident orca pods are in a tough spot — literally.

Their primary food source is dying off; the Trans Mountain Pipeline is expanding, which will increase the number of tankers trucking through the orcas’ habitat by seven times, among other exposure risks like noise and spills.

And now comes the latest spot of bad news: For the last three years not one calf has been born to the shrinking pods of the black-and-white killer whales in the Pacific Northwest, resulting in a 30-year low in orca population.

The annual census of Puget Sound’s resident orcas found that just 75 killer whales, across the three Southern Resident pods (J, K, and L), are still swimming through the Pacific Northwest waters. The J pod has 23 members, while K has 18, and L has 34.

In addition to finding no new births of Southern Residents, the census reported two missing and presumed dead members, 23-year-old Crewser (also known as L-92), and a 2-year-old calf named Sonic (J-52).

Read the full story at KOMO News

Mussels test positive for opioids in Seattle’s Puget Sound

May 29, 2018 — Scientists at the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife have found that mussels in Seattle’s waters are testing positive for opioids.

The finding suggests “a lot of people” are taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound, researchers say.

Scientists used mussels as a way to test pollution in Seattle’s waters and discovered high enough oxycodone levels for the shellfish to test positive.

Mussels do not metabolise opioids, but some fish can become addicted.

Mussels are filter-feeders, which means they filter water for nutrients to nourish themselves. In the process, they end up storing pollutants in their tissues, which makes them a prime indicator species.

State researchers distributed clean mussels around the Puget Sound and extracted them months later to test the waters.

Of the 18 locations scientists used, three showed traces of oxycodone. The drug traces were not enough to get any humans high from consumption, but enough to indicate a problem, officials said.

“What we eat and what we excrete goes into the Puget Sound,” Jennifer Lanksbury, a biologist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told CBS News affiliate KIRO.

“It’s telling me there’s a lot of people taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound area.”

Read the full story at BBC News

 

Washington: Some Puget Sound Tribal Dungeness Crab Fisheries Will Remain Closed This Year

May 14, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced Thursday that two marine areas in south Puget Sound will not open for crab fishing this summer to allow Dungeness crab populations to rebuild.

Tribal commercial crab fisheries will remain closed in marine areas 11 (Tacoma/Vashon Island) and 13 (south Puget Sound) this summer. Recreational crab fisheries also will not open in those areas this year.

State and tribal co-managers are developing crabbing seasons for the rest of Puget Sound and plan to announce those later this month.

“We are still working on setting crab seasons but wanted to give people early notice about these closures, which is a change from previous years,” WDFW Puget Sound shellfish manager Bob Sizemore said in a press release. Sizemore said the department will continue working to structure fisheries in each Puget Sound region, but he does not anticipate closures similar to those in marine areas 11 and 13.

The populations of harvestable Dungeness crab are low in both areas 11 and 13, based on pre-season test fisheries, Sizemore said. Additionally, Dungeness crab harvests have fallen 88 percent in Marine Area 11 and 90 percent in Marine Area 13 since the 2014-15 season. Input from recreational crabbers also indicates support for the closures.

“We are taking this step to protect crab in these areas and allow the populations to rebuild,” Sizemore said.

Water currents can carry young crab long distances, making it possible for crab larvae from robust populations to settle and grow in areas 11 and 13, Sizemore said. But it can take several years for a newly settled Dungeness crab to grow and reach the minimum harvestable size of 6-¼ inches.

A variety of factors could be contributing to the declining population of crab in areas 11 and 13, Sizemore said. These include reduced survival of crab larvae, a higher-than-normal mortality rate for juvenile crab, or changing ocean conditions such as elevated surface water temperatures.

This story originally appeared on Seafood News, it is republished here with permission.

 

3 reasons we’re farming Atlantic salmon in Puget Sound

May 1, 2018 — Every time I report on the Great Atlantic Salmon Escape of 2017, someone asks me the same question: Why don’t we just farm Pacific salmon species in Puget Sound?

Listener Michael Hrankowski wrote in recently with that exact question. Well, here’s why not.

First, there’s the business reason.

The difference between farming Atlantic salmon and farming Pacific species is like the difference between raising cattle and raising bison. Atlantic salmon are docile, they don’t get into fights in the pens, and they get fat fast.

In other words, they’ve been domesticated. They’re the cows of the sea.

Second, there’s the historical reason.

In 1971, scientists from the Northwest Fisheries Science Center started to raise Atlantic salmon in the Pacific Northwest with the end goal of shipping the fish back east to restore Atlantic salmon runs in New England. Halfway through the project, fisheries officials back in New England decided they didn’t want the fish because of the possibility that viruses and parasites from the Pacific Ocean might be introduced into the Atlantic.

Read the full story at KUOW

 

This Is Why You Don’t See People-Size Salmon Anymore

March 13, 2018 — While the orcas of Puget Sound are sliding toward extinction, orcas farther north have been expanding their numbers. Their burgeoning hunger for big fish may be causing the killer whales’ main prey, Chinook salmon, to shrink up and down the West Coast.

Chinook salmon are also known as kings: the biggest of all salmon. They used to grow so enormous that it’s hard to believe the old photos now. Fishermen stand next to Chinooks almost as tall as they are, sometimes weighing 100 pounds or more.

“This has been a season of unusually large fish, and many weighing from 60 to 70 pounds have been taken,” The Oregonian reported in 1895.

Now, more than a century later, “it’s not impossible that we see individuals of that size today, but it’s much, much rarer,” University of Washington research scientist Jan Ohlberger says.

Ohlberger has been tracking the downsizing of salmon in recent decades, but salmon have been shrinking in numbers and in size for a long time. A century’s worth of dam-building, overfishing, habitat loss and replacement by hatchery fish cut the size of the average Chinook in half, studies in the 1980s and 1990s found.

Dam-building and fishing have tailed off, but Chinooks have been shrinking even faster in the past 15 years, according to a new paper by Ohlberger and colleagues in the journal Fish and Fisheries. Older and bigger fish are mostly gone.

Read the full story at KUOW

 

Trump Budget Would Zero Out Funding For Puget Sound Recovery, Again

February 14, 2018 — Members of Congress who represent Puget Sound are pushing back against the Trump administration’s budget for 2019 in part because it would zero out all federal funding for cleanup and recovery of the iconic ecosystem.

The proposal cuts all funding for the Environmental Protection Agency’s geographic program for Puget Sound, as well as for a national estuary program and for Pacific salmon recovery through National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries. The administration says it wants local governments to take on the responsibility and continue recovery efforts.

The missing money totals more than $30 million, says Sheida Sahandy, Executive Director of the state’s Puget Sound Partnership, which coordinates cleanup. Those funds are leveraged with money from other state and local sources to get work done, so she says the cuts would be “crippling.”

“We’re at tipping point for, for example, the Orca,” she said, referring to the dwindling population of southern resident killer whales, which has reached its lowest number in 30 years. Only 76 are left in the wild.

“We are fearing extinction around the corner and stopping our efforts at this point in their tracks would essentially mean that we’re giving up on saving them,” Sahandy said, adding that the orcas are only the most obvious example of what’s at stake.

If there’s any silver lining, it’s that her agency has been through this once before.

Last year, the President’s budget proposed nearly identical cuts. Congress ultimately pushed back, reinstating all $28 million in the geographic program for Puget Sound in the 2018 budget.

But Sahandy says it will take a lot of advocacy once again. She says Washington state is so far away from the capitol that many well-meaning members of Congress need to be reminded why their support is critical.

Read the full story at KNKX

 

Washington: Cooke not giving up after state senate votes to finish salmon farming

February 12, 2018 — International seafood producer, Cooke Aquaculture is vowing a fight as it attempts to hold on to its operations in Washington state.

The New Brunswick-based company suffered a major setback Thursday when the state senate voted 35-12 to end Atlantic salmon aquaculture operations as leases on cage sites expire over the next six years.

The bipartisan bill passed despite an all out effort by the company in support of an amendment proposed by one senator that would have allowed Atlantic salmon aquaculture to continue using only female fish. The amendment was designed to ensure non-native salmon could not breed should they escape into the wild.

“We‘re going to just continue to look forward, we‘re going to work with legislators,” said Joel Richardson, the company  vice-president, public relations. “We‘ve been advocating hard on behalf of our employees. We have 180 employees in Washington.

“We believe those employees‘ jobs are worth saving and we‘re going to do everything we can to save them.”

Cooke has found itself on shifting ground since the Aug. 19 collapse of a net-pen farm that allowed tens of thousands of Atlantic salmon to escape into Puget Sound, raising fears they would stress wild native salmon or otherwise contaminate the marine environment.

This photograph of a fouled salmon-cage net was included in a report prepared by a state investigative panel looking into the collapse of the Cooke Aquaculture salmon farm. (State of Washington)

State officials earlier said 160,000 fish escaped, but a report released this month by an investigative review panel concluded the real number is somewhere between 242,000 and 262,000 — numbers that Cooke disputes.

Read the full story at the Kaplan Herald