Saving Seafood

Bipartisan Bill to Protect Endangered Fish Species in Pacific Northwest Heads to President Trump for Signature

December 12, 2018 — The following was released by the House Committee on Natural Resources:

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed S. 3119, the Endangered Salmon Predation Prevention Act. This bipartisan bill provides states and tribes with the necessary tools to humanely manage sea lions that have migrated outside their historic range and pose an imminent threat to fish species listed under the Endangered Species Act.

“The habitual Washington D.C. knee-jerk defense of the status quo is harming endangered species instead of protecting them. Existing regulations are leading to the decline in endangered salmon in the Pacific Northwest, a key source of ecological vibrancy in the region. This bipartisan bill corrects the problem by giving states and tribes the tools to humanely manage sea lions and prevent further destruction of endangered fish and the region’s economy.” — Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah)

“Today’s passage of our bill to control sea lions was a hard-fought victory – it’s a personal victory for each of us who treasure our Northwest salmon runs and want to see them preserved for generations to come. I’m grateful for the partnership of my colleague Kurt Schrader, and for Senators Risch and Cantwell for shepherding this through the Senate. I’m so pleased we are able to give Northwest fish managers this critical tool to help save our salmon and steelhead runs.” — U.S. Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.)

“This has been an issue that I have worked on since first coming to Congress nine years ago. I want to thank everyone – Rep. Herrera Beutler, Senators Risch and Cantwell, and our states, tribes, and local communities – for the exceptional work to get this bill over the finish line this year. In the last few years especially, we’ve seen a record number of sea lions in the Columbia River from Astoria to Bonneville Dam. Ratepayers and my constituents are paying hundreds of millions of dollars annually towards the largest mitigation program in the country for threatened and endangered salmon. These sea lions, whose population has become totally inconsistent with their historic range, have been undoing all of that work by feasting on the endangered species. Our legislation will provide a great step forward in eliminating this threat to our iconic Oregon salmon that are struggling to survive once and for all.” – U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.)

“Eastern Washington believes in both supporting clean, renewable hydropower and protecting our endangered salmon, a species so unique to the history of our region. Over the past 80 years, we’ve seen steady increases in salmon recovery rates on the Columbia and Snake Rivers, largely due to increased technology and innovation at our dams. This bill is another important step in protecting our endangered salmon. By mitigating sea lion predation we can increase fish recovery without costing Washingtonians hundreds of millions of dollars.” – U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.)

“Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on salmon recovery in the Pacific Northwest only to see invasive sea lions take a bite out of the population. I applaud colleagues in the House and Senate who have worked together in our bipartisan effort to improve management of pinnipeds threatening our salmon with this legislation.” –U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.)

Read the full release here

U.S. Senate passes bill making it easier to kill sea lions on Columbia River

December 10, 2018 — A bill that would make it easier to kill sea lions that feast on imperiled salmon in the Columbia River has cleared the U.S. Senate.

State wildlife managers say rebounding numbers of sea lions are eating more salmon than ever and their appetites are undermining billions of dollars of investments to restore endangered fish runs.

Senate Bill 3119, which passed Thursday by unanimous consent, would streamline the process for Washington, Idaho, Oregon and several Pacific Northwest Native American tribes to capture and euthanize potentially hundreds of sea lions found in the river east of Portland, Oregon.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KATU

Why some Maine coastal communities are up in arms about aquaculture

December 10, 2018 — From oyster farms to cultivated seaweed and farm-raised salmon, aquaculture is often described as essential to the economic future of Maine’s fisheries in the face of a changing ecosystem. Warming waters from climate change are pushing lobster farther Down East and have shut down the shrimp fishery, and threats such as ocean acidification and invasive green crabs are harming Maine’s natural fisheries.

But opposition to several proposed projects suggests the hardest part of getting into aquaculture might be getting past the neighbors. All along the coast, neighbors argue that pending aquaculture ventures will create too much noise, use too much energy, attract too many birds and obstruct their opportunities for boating or lobstering. One questioned whether an oyster farm would make it hard for deer to swim from one point of land to another.

In Belfast, abutters to the land where Nordic Aquafarms hopes to put in a giant land-based farm to raise salmon have filed a lawsuit against the city, which they say hastily and secretly approved a zoning change the company needed to move forward.

In Brunswick, opponents of a proposed 40-acre oyster farm have hired not just attorneys, but a public relations expert, Crystal Canney, in the hopes of persuading the Department of Marine Resources not to approve the lease.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

NOAA Announces Another Buyout for Southeast Alaska Purse Seiners to Remove an Additional 36 Licenses

December 5, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — NOAA announced that a second buyout would take place in the Southeast Alaska salmon purse seine fishery.

In 2011, Congress approved loans of up to $23.5 million for a buyout program, and existing permit holders voted to support a loan of $13.1 million to buyback 64 licenses.

In 2018, the Southeast Revitalization Association submitted a request to NOAA to use the remainder of the funds, $10.4 million, to fund another buyout round.

NOAA will hold a referendum among the 315 existing permit holders, who will have to gain majority approval to take on the additional loan.  If the plan is approved, NOAA would retire an additional 36 licenses.

Those remaining in the fishery agree to repay the loan through a landings tax, administered by NOAA.

The voting period is scheduled to begin January 15, 2019, and end 30 days later on February 14th.

The Southeast Alaska purse seine fishery harvests primarily pink salmon and some chum salmon.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

ALASKA: Poor pink runs forecast again; return to ‘normal’ in Bristol Bay

November 29, 2018 — Next summer may be a slow one for Southeast and Bristol Bay salmon fishermen.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s annual salmon forecasts for the Southeast and Bristol Bay regions predict weaker runs for the 2019 season. In Southeast’s case, it’s the pink salmon predicted to come up short compared to recent averages; in Bristol Bay, it’s the sockeye.

About 18 million pink salmon are predicted to be harvested in Southeast Alaska in 2019, placing the run in the weak range, or between 20 percent and 40 percent of the 59-year average in the history of the fishery. The forecasted number is about half the recent 10-year average of 36 million pinks, according to the ADFG forecast. If the forecast holds true, it will be the lowest odd-year harvest since 1987.

The low number of juveniles in 2018 was unexpected, as the previous year’s escapements met goals.

“This indicates that brood year 2017 pink salmon likely experienced poor freshwater and/or early marine survival,” according to the forecast.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

As oceans heats up off Northwest Alaska, the fishing does too

November 28, 2018 — Alaska fishermen haven’t been having an easy time with the changing climate.

The cod population in the Gulf of Alaska is at its lowest level on record. Officials have declared disasters after the failure of multiple Alaska salmon fisheries.

So what’s happening farther north in Alaska might surprise you: Fishermen there have been landing huge catches, in numbers that haven’t been seen in decades.

Seth Kantner is one of them. He was raised in a sod igloo 150 miles from the Northwest Alaska hub town of Kotzebue, and has been commercial fishing for chum salmon in Kotzebue Sound for decades.

He’s also a writer, and in an interview from his pickup truck looking out over the sound, he said he’s a little apprehensive about some of the changes he’s been seeing in the region — particularly in the weather and the seasons.

Some of those changes, Kantner said, have fed into the fishing, which has been booming. In the summer of 2017, he fished to the last day of the season to try to hit 100,000 pounds of salmon for the year, which he said is “far and away the most I’d ever caught.”

This past summer, he added: “I broke 200,000 pounds, which is still — I can’t believe it.”

Just to be clear — Kantner said that two summers ago, he caught more fish than he’d ever caught before. And then this summer, he caught twice that much again.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Expedition planned to better understand Gulf of Alaska salmon stocks

November 27, 2018 — Richard Beamish, a scientist recently retired from Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, is planning an expedition across the Gulf of Alaska to better understand changes in salmon stocks.

Beamish, who is being financially supported by fish farm operators, said that scientists do not fully comprehend the rising and falling of wild salmon stocks. Beamish said the contract for the expedition had not yet been signed but that funding for his proposal had been recently secured. Beamish declined to specifically name which salmon farmers were backing the project.

“We still don’t know the mechanisms that allow us to accurately forecast salmon,” Beamish said during an aquaculture industry conference in Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada.

Beamish proposes a group of scientist trawl for salmon in the Gulf of Alaska and take and use DNA samples to determine the salmon’s origin, allowing them to estimate their abundance in the region.

“No one has ever done this in the Gulf of Alaska, where the bulk of our salmon are in the winter,” he said.

Because the study would involve a huge area of ocean which is vital to British Columbia salmon stocks, the project has the support of the Canadian government as well as other governments. Beamish indicated that a teams of scientists from nations including South Korea, Japan, Russia, The United States, and Canada would be involved. A Russian vessel would be used for the survey, at a cost of USD 900,000, (EUR 785,719) he said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

DON CUDDY: Seafood comes in many forms — how fresh is yours?

November 27, 2018 — We live, as we are often reminded, in the top grossing fishing port in the United States and have some of the planet’s most productive fishing grounds right off our shores. So for those among us who enjoy and appreciate the harvest of the sea, and its clean, healthy, wild-caught protein, there is no better place to live than New Bedford. Lately however I have begun to wonder just how many people around the SouthCoast are fish eaters and include our excellent seafood as a regular part of their diet? Apart from perhaps ordering fish and chips or fried scallops in a restaurant on a Friday night that is. That counts certainly but what I have in mind is selecting some seafood at the market and bringing it home.

I regularly enjoy eating all kinds of great seafood at my house. In the past couple of weeks, I have bought, prepared and eaten swordfish, yellowfin tuna, haddock, scallops and oysters, all of it fresh and of surpassing excellence. On the other hand I have read that the vast majority of seafood consumed in the USA is confined to just three varieties — shrimp, salmon and canned tuna. I’m not a fan of shrimp nowadays as most of it is imported, farmed in Southeast Asia under dubious conditions, and I find the end product to be devoid of flavor. Decades ago when I lived in Miami, I would catch shrimp, one at a time, using a dip net and lantern as they entered Biscayne Bay via Government Cut so I know what wild shrimp tastes like.

Salmon fares a little better chez moi although wild salmon runs have all but disappeared on the East Coast and the commonly used marketing term ‘Atlantic salmon’ means that it is raised in pens, predominantly in the Canadian Maritimes and Norway. Both of these items enjoy great popularity in the restaurant trade and you will frequently find salmon and shrimp on seafood menus where even such New England staples such as cod and haddock are absent. But even at the local fish counter there is a high probability that the cod and haddock on offer, while fresh, is not caught or landed here.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

ALASKA: Researchers work on better model for impact of fishery closures

November 21, 2018 — Fisheries managers are faced with a firestorm every time they decide to close a fishery because of poor returns or low population numbers. A new economic model is trying to help them see into the future to understand the effects of a closure before it happens.

Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington worked together on the model, finished in 2017 and published in the journal Marine Policy this past September.

It takes into account items like fishery participation, the amount of each vessel’s annual revenue that comes from the affected fishery, which vessels participate in other fisheries and the value of the fishery; the aim is to calculate the total impact when managers have to limit or close a fishery.

The origin of the idea came after a disastrous broad closure in salmon fishing on the West Coast in 2008. The closure, caused by poor salmon returns correlated to unfavorable ocean conditions, resulted in a federal disaster declaration and a $170 million relief distribution.

Had officials and fishery managers been able to estimate the impact better, relief funds might have been distributed sooner, said Kate Richerson, a marine ecologist with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the lead author of the study.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

 

Man overboard cases down by half; still No. 2 killer

November 20, 2018 — Overboard deaths have declined 47 percent in the fishing industry since 2000, possibly as result of better training, awareness and equipment.

But falls overboard are still the second leading cause of death among fishermen, with solitary operators at the most risk, according to studies by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

“By far we see the highest numbers in the Gulf of Mexico shrimp fishery,” followed by the Maine lobster fleet and Northwest salmon gillnetters, said Samantha Case, an epidemiologist with NIOSH who summarized researchers’ findings at Sunday’s opening of the annual Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle.

A session titled “Throw Me a Rope” was the first of several PME safety seminars, where Case and NIOSH colleague Theodore Teske talked about how fishing captains can better protect themselves and their crews.

The good news is overboard falls have declined steadily since the turn of the century. That year marked a major commercial fishing safety push by the Coast Guard, after a series of accidents off the East Coast that killed 10 fishermen in early 1999.

That brought renewed pressure for safety examinations, proper equipment and safety training and drilling for crews. Anecdotally, industry culture has appeared to shift, with better equipment and preparedness evident on the boats, the NIOSH workers said.

Read the full story at National Fisherman