Saving Seafood

Alaska: Salmon ballot measure proponents fight back after legislative hearing

July 26, 2018 — Proponents of the pro-fisheries Ballot Measure 1 are fighting back after a Friday legislative hearing that saw state officials discuss the costs and consequences of the proposal.

“It was just a way for industry and for a state government that doesn’t approve of this initiative to kind of torpedo it,” sponsor Mike Wood said by phone about the hearing. “That kind of bums me out.”

Wood, who was filleting salmon strips, spoke three days after the Alaska Senate State Affairs Committee held a four-hour meeting discussing the measure. During the presentation, state officials said Ballot Measure 1 would cost millions of dollars, lengthen the permitting process for some construction projects, and make larger projects impossible.

The measure would “make it nearly impossible to permit the Alaska LNG project,” Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Andy Mack told the Senate State Affairs Committee, referring to the proposed trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline.

“That is total bull—-,” Wood said.

Asked whether he thought the presentations were overly pessimistic, he said, “absolutely, without a doubt.”

Lindsey Bloom, a Juneau-based commercial fisherwoman and state policy director for SalmonState (a group supporting the intiative), said by email that Alaska’s seafood industry, particularly the salmon industry, is a multibillion-dollar per-year industry worthy of protection and preservation.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

 

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

Alaska salmon catch down by a third in most regions

July 25, 2018 — Alaska’s salmon fisheries continue to lag alarmingly in several regions, with overall catches down by a third from the same time last year.

The single exception is at the unconquerable Bristol Bay, where a 37 million sockeye catch so far has single-handedly pushed Alaska’s total salmon harvest towards a lackluster 60 million fish.

It’s too soon to press the panic button and there is lots of fishing left to go, but fears are growing that Alaska’s 2018 salmon season will be a bust for most fishermen. Worse, it comes on the heels of a cod crash and tanking halibut markets (and catches).

State salmon managers predicted that Alaska’s salmon harvest this year would be down by 34 percent to 149 million fish; due to an expected shortfall of pinks. But with the exception of Bristol Bay, nobody expected fishing to be this bad.

Catches of sockeye, the big money fish, are off by millions at places like  Copper River, Chignik and Kodiak, which has had the weakest sockeye harvest in nearly 40 years.

The weekly update by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute said that coho and Chinook catches remain slow, and while it is still way early in the season, the “bread and butter” pink harvests are off by 65 percent from the strong run of two years ago.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

JOHN McMANUS: Close to Home: Stop efforts to kill salmon and fishing jobs

July 23, 2018 — Today, many Northern California commercial fishermen sit in harbors along our coast worrying about their bills and waiting for another disastrously shortened salmon season to begin. Many businesses that serve the normally robust sport salmon fishery also have suffered because of the delay. River fishing guides have lost half their season as well.

Salmon numbers are predicted to be down from the lingering effects of the last drought and the damaging water allocation decisions that put salmon fishing families last. Meanwhile, San Joaquin Valley congressmen are hard at work tilting the balance of water in California toward valley agricultural barons.

These House members are acting like this is their last, best chance for a huge water grab. There are four separate riders in House budget bills aimed at seizing more Northern water at the expense of salmon and fishing families. None are responding to a crisis in agriculture. The past decade has seen record harvests, revenue and employment for California agriculture.

For salmon, it’s another story. During the past decade, California salmon fishermen have seen the two worst crises in state history. Our fishery was shut down entirely in 2008 and 2009 following record siphoning of Bay-Delta water. The Golden Gate Salmon Association and other fishing groups are seeing a second crisis today as salmon try to fight their way back from the drought.

Read the full opinion piece at The Press Democrat

Technavio report: Global aquaculture market’s growth accelerating through 2022

July 23, 2018 — The global aquaculture market is experiencing robust growth, which is likely to accelerate through the year 2022, according to a report from the market research firm Technavio.

The report, “Global Aquaculture Market 2018-2022,” presents an analysis of the global aquaculture market based on end-users (commercial and residential); by product (freshwater fish, crustacean, mollusks, diadromous fish, and others); by environment (freshwater, marine water, and brackish water); by culture (net pen culture, floating-cage culture, pond culture, and rice field culture); by geography (the Americas, APAC, and EMEA); and by market, organized by distribution channel.

The report attributes aquaculture’s rising success to the world’s growing human population, its hunger for seafood, and the decline of the captured fish industry.

“Globalization, which has led to improved logistics systems and trade facilities, provides a favorable environment for the growth of the aquaculture market,” the report said. “The growth of the retail sector also drives the market.”

The report predicts a compound annual growth rate for the global aquaculture industry of 4.46 percent for the five-year period between 2018 and 2022. In 2018, the report predicts a CAGR of 3.72; a CAGR of 4.12 percent in 2019; 4.50 percent in 2020; 4.83 percent in 2021; and 5.15 percent in 2022.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ALASKA: Federal council names 5 commercial fishermen to committee

July 20, 2018 — A committee of five fishermen, four of whom live on the Kenai Peninsula, will help provide advice to the council that will write a new management plan for Cook Inlet salmon fisheries in federal waters.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the federal board that regulates fisheries in federal waters in of the North Pacific Ocean, announced the membership of a Cook Inlet Salmon Committee at its June meeting in Kodiak. The committee will provide feedback to the council on the formation of a new plan to manage salmon fisheries in the federal waters of Cook Inlet.

The council passed an amendment to its fishery management plan in 2013 that delegated management of salmon fisheries in federal waters in Cook Inlet, the Copper River area and part of the Alaska Peninsula to the state, but Cook Inlet drift gillnet fishermen objected. The United Cook Inlet Drift Association, which represents the drifters, sued over the decision, and in September 2016, a federal court overturned an earlier court decision in the state’s favor and sided with UCIDA. The council began the process of revising the plan in April 2017.

Read the full story at the Peninsula Clarion

SEATTLE TIMES: Congress must choose threatened salmon over sea lions

July 20, 2018 — State, federal and local governments have spent too much time and money restoring fish runs in the Columbia River Basin to let those efforts go to waste.

The U.S. House recognized this reality last month by passing legislation to make it easier to kill sea lions that feast on threatened salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River and its tributaries.

Now, the Senate must step up and push the bill through to the finish line.

Northwest senators must be unified in their support for this common-sense measure, which aims to safeguard the billions of dollars invested in preserving fish that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Regional spending to protect and restore salmon runs in the Columbia River Basin easily tops $500 million every two years, according to the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. That estimate doesn’t include the additional millions spent annually by federal wildlife officials, the state of Oregon, local governments and tribes.

But a few hundred hungry sea lions that have made their way upstream are putting those investments in jeopardy. Federal researchers estimated that a quarter of last year’s spring Chinook inexplicably disappeared on their way from the mouth of the Columbia River to Bonneville Dam, with sea lion predation most likely to blame.

Read the full opinion piece at the Seattle Times

Alaska Board of Fish Finds for Salmon Emergencies in Chignik and the Yukon

July 19, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Alaska Board of Fisheries declared the low Chignik sockeye return an emergency yesterday, as well as a situation in the Native villages of Grayling, Anvik, Shageluk, and Holy Cross on the Yukon River triggered by years of low chinook salmon returns.

The petition brought to the Board by the Kenai River Sportfishing Association to reverse the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s decision to allow increased production of pink salmon at the Valdez Fisheries Development Association’s hatchery in Prince William Sound was voted down 3-4. KRSA was concerned with straying into Cook Inlet and ocean capacity issues.

Their concerns will be addressed in the regularly scheduled cycle of meetings later this year. Yesterday’s meeting was whether several petitions — including one that was submitted the evening before the Board meeting — met the standard of an emergency.

Three petitions asked the Board to issue a “finding for an emergency” on the Chignik sockeye run, two concerned about the early run and one on the late run to Chignik. All asked for additional conservation measures in waters outside of the Chignik Area L management district to protect those sockeye heading to Chignik Lake.

In a 5-2 vote, the Board found for an emergency on all three petitions. ADF&G has already executed conservation measures in the adjacent Area M management district to protect sockeye in transit to Area L. Yesterday’s decision extends the restricted measures in a subsection of the Dolgoi Islands, an outer area that traveling sockeye move through on their way to Chignik, until August 8 or “unless and until escapements for the late run to Chignik improve.”

Board Chair John Jensen and Robert Ruffner voted against the finding.

“I’m happy to take this up in the regular cycle rather than create regulations now,” Jensen said during the discussion. The management of Area L and Area M are among others the Board will discuss during their meetings later this year.

With the finding, additional conservation measures will be taken, but already the department is managing the South Peninsula salmon runs with “outside the box” protections for traveling Chignik salmon.

ADF&G Commercial Fisheries Director Scott Kelley noted “For Chignik and for the South Peninsula fisheries, we are keeping a close eye on the Chignik weir counts, we have daily communications on that, the WASSIP (Western Alaska Salmon Stock Identification Program) data for traveling Chignik salmon, we are literally going hour to hour, day after day. It’s a balancing act, but we are using the best biological data to base our decisions on and taken some ‘outside the box’ management actions at Chignik.”

The Board also found for an emergency in the four Native Villages on the Yukon, referred to as GASH: Grayling, Anvik, Shageluk, and Holy Cross.

The Board agreed in a 7-0 vote to amend regulations for the lower portion of Subdistrict 4A on the Yukon River to allow for drift gillnet subsistence fishing after August 2.

Low king salmon returns on the Yukon River in the past 5 years have forced fishermen to supplement subsistence harvests of kings with chum salmon. The change allows fishermen to use gillnets to harvest a biologically allowable surplus of fall chum salmon moving through the district.

Two other petitions, one from the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe and Yakutat Fish and Game Advisory Committee of Yakutat to close all areas of the Situk River, and one from the Upper Cook Inlet setnet group, were not acted upon. Those petitions were not denied, but rather failed for lack of a motion.

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

Here’s how the trade war with China is affecting the outlook for Alaska seafood

July 17, 2018 — Trump’s trade war now includes tariffs on seafood going to and from China.

China is Alaska’s biggest seafood buyer, purchasing 54 percent of Alaska seafood exports last year valued at $1.3 billion. On July 6, a 25 percent tariff went into effect on U.S. imports to China, including all Alaska salmon, pollock, cod, herring, flatfish, dungeness crab, sablefish, geoduck clams and more.

Then on July 11 Trump added a 10 percent tariff on all seafood sent from China to the U.S.

According to market expert John Sackton of Seafoodnews.com, it includes products that are reprocessed in China and sent back for distribution in this country.

The total value of the 291 seafood products China sends to the U.S. each year is $2.75 billion. Sackton called the 10 percent tariff “a $275 million dollar direct tax on Americans.”

It will hit 70 percent of imports of frozen cod fillets. Likewise, 23 percent of all frozen salmon fillets come into the U.S. from China, including pink salmon that is reprocessed into salmon burgers and fillets.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Salmon scales tell researchers a lot about the fish returning to Bristol Bay

July 16, 2018 — Across Bristol Bay, scales from fish are being picked, licked, and stuck on cards to be sent to researchers. The reason? To figure out the ages of the salmon making their way up the rivers during the run. One researcher has spent almost 30 summers examining scales and figuring what fish are head where.

Cathy Tilly puts a thin sheet of plastic over a paper card with rows of fish scales on it and then places it into a hydraulic press.

She described the process, “then I can start pumping the pressure up and we go up to 25,000 psi and count to 15.”

It takes that much force to make imprints of the scales in the plastic.

She continued, “Okay and then we use a dump valve to lower the clayton. Pull these metal plates out. Peel it up and what you are left with is an impression of the fish scales.”

After pressing the scales, Tilly takes the small card with the impressions and examines it underneath a microfilm reader.

She said, “Most people describe them as looking like a thumbprint or as tree rings.”

Tilly is figuring out the age of a salmon. Like trees, salmon have rings on their scales that show how old they are. Tilly looks at these markings that indicate the fish’s growth to figure out how many years they spent in freshwater rivers where they were born and how many they spend in the ocean.

Tilly and one other person age all the scales collected from the Bristol Bay sockeye run. That means they each look at tens of thousands of scales in a summer.

Read the full story at KDLG