Saving Seafood

IFFO’s Andrew Mallison responds to National Geographic article

February 9, 2018 — The following was released by the IFFO:

Following an article published this week in National Geographic, I would like to address a few points on behalf of IFFO, The Marine Ingredients Organisation. The article titled ‘Why Salmon Eating Insects Instead of Fish Is Better for Environment’, published on 5th February 2018, discusses fishmeal and fish oil replacement in salmon feed by a Netherlands based company but quotes information that is both out-of-date and incorrect. Although we agree with the need for additional feed options in aquaculture to ensure the growth of this vital industry, the total replacement of fishmeal and fish oil, as called for in this article, is unjustified and damaging to the fish farming industry.

The practice of feeding fish to fish is labelled as both inefficient and unsustainable in the article, but I would argue that responsibly sourced and used strategically, fishmeal and fish oil are both an efficient and sustainable feed choice. The growing management of wild capture fisheries has ensured that in recent years stocks are in fact steady and not declining (UN FAO State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016). While catches of some small pelagic species used to produce fishmeal and fish oil are volatile, this is due to environmental fluctuation with permitted catches being varied in line with biomass abundance to protect the stocks. These small pelagic species are often not as palatable, spoil quickly and are less popular compared to other local fish, but can be turned into highly nutritious feed. Further evidence of sustainability in the production of marine ingredients is that over 45% of the global production of fishmeal and fish oil is now independently certified as being safe and environmentally responsible, including in its sourcing of raw materials, a figure that far exceeds any other source of feed ingredient.

Regarding the efficiency of the use of fishmeal and fish oil, our latest FIFO ((Fish In:Fish Out ratios) using 2015 data show a conversion rate of 1kg of wild fish used in feed creates 1.22kg of farmed salmon, demonstrating that farmed salmon now produce globally more consumable protein than is used in feed. This ratio is significantly lower than the out-of-date figures quoted in the article and shows how fishmeal and fish oil are now being more strategically used at key points in aquaculture production cycles with a trend towards optimising their nutritional contributions. In fact, looking at the FIFO ratio misses the rationale for the inclusion of fishmeal and fish oil in feeds as their contribution to growth and health of farmed fish goes well beyond the supply of mere protein and energy.

Many fed farmed fish species have evolved to digest fish protein and much of the modern fish farming industry has been built on feeds using fish based ingredients. An increasing amount (currently 35%) of fishmeal is produced from recycled by-product and waste from fish processing.  Fishmeal and fish oil are rich in many of the micronutrients that are required for health, many of which are classed as essential. Even reducing levels of fishmeal in feeds has resulted in feed companies having to supplement with specific materials that are both costly produce, and carry their own environmental impacts. Removing fishmeal as an ingredient to feed could therefore compromise the health of the fish and close an environmentally friendly way of recycling waste products. Production of marine ingredients like fishmeal and fish oil do not require the same levels of fresh water for irrigation, treatment with agricultural chemicals such as fertilisers and pesticides, or use land needed to grow crops. While insect meal may be a theoretical alternative, the production of the millions of tonnes needed to replace fishmeal is currently not viable. When it is clear that the amount of fishmeal and fish oil is not sufficient to meet the growing demand for feed manufacture and, in the best interests of the fish farming industry, the raw material sources for feed should be maximised, it makes little sense to exclude these valuable, responsibly sourced and highly effective ingredients. Although not such a punchy selling message, the reality is that there is an opportunity for alternative ingredients like insect meal without needing to displace fishmeal.

Read the release at IFFO here

 

ALASKA: Hundreds of Commercial Fishermen ask Legislators to Pass Stand for Salmon Bill

February 6, 2018 — JUNEAU, Alaska — Thursday, commercial fishermen in the Stand for Salmon coalition delivered nearly 200 letters from their colleagues to the State Legislature in support of House Bill 199, the Stand for Salmon Bill. The bill, sponsored by House Fisheries Committee Chair Rep. Louise Stutes (R-Kodiak), was reintroduced to the Legislature last week at a hearing that drew a standing-room-only audience.

“Salmon are the icons of Alaska and we are renowned globally for sustainable management of the resource. Fishermen make sacrifices every year to ensure harvesting protects the fish first, and it’s not too much to ask that extractive industries are held to the same standards,” said Art Bloom of Tenakee Springs who will fish his 25th season in Bristol Bay this summer.

HB 199 updates state law governing development in salmon habitat, bolstering protections for salmon – a key player in Alaska’s seafood industry, the largest private-sector employer in the state. Salmon fishing creates more than 32,900 full-time jobs every year in the state, with the seafood industry earning $1.6 billion in annual labor income based on 2013 and 2014 averages, $2.1 billion in total labor income and $5.9 billion in total economic activity.

Read the full story at Alaska Native News

 

Pruitt’s EPA puts brakes on Pebble Mine proposal in Bristol Bay, Alaska

January 31, 2018 — Activists fighting a proposed gold and copper mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska breathed a sigh of relief on Friday, 26 January, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) upheld an Obama-era declaration that the proposed Pebble Mine, which would sit in the watershed for the world’s biggest sockeye salmon run, could cause irreversible harm to area fisheries.

Fishermen, native groups, and conservationists fought against the mine proposal for years, and won a temporary victory with a 2014 EPA ruling that stated mining could lead to “significant and irreversible harm” to local fishing grounds. But after years of eyeing the site, the project’s main backer, Northern Dynasty Minerals, filed for its first federal application in December 2017, just a month after President Donald Trump was elected, and fanned fresh concerns with activists opposing the mine.

EPA head Scott Pruitt issued a statement Friday that the order does not block the mine outright, but does shelve the permitting process until further environmental impact reviews can be conducted.

“It is my judgement at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there,” Pruitt said in the statement. “Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection. Today’s action allows the EPA to get the information needed to determine what specific impacts the proposed mining project will have on those critical resources.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

EPA halts plans to lift proposed mine restrictions in Alaska

January 29, 2018 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday halted plans to withdraw proposed restrictions on mining activity near a major Alaska salmon fishery, drawing praise from opponents of the Pebble Mine project.

Last year, in settling a legal dispute with the Pebble Limited Partnership, which wants to build a copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region, the EPA agreed to initiate a process to withdraw restrictions proposed during the Obama administration.

But in a release Friday, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said based on comments the agency has received, “it is my judgment at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there.”

“Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection,” he said.

About half of the world’s sockeye salmon is produced by Bristol Bay, the EPA has said.

Tom Collier, CEO of the Pebble partnership, said the EPA’s announcement does not deter the project. Pebble recently filed a permit application with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which will trigger an environmental review of the project.

“We believe we can demonstrate that we can responsibly construct and operate a mine at the Pebble deposit that meets Alaska’s high environmental standards,” he said in a release. “We will also demonstrate that we can successfully operate a mine without compromising the fish and water resources around the project.”

The restrictions on development proposed under President Barack Obama were never finalized; a judge had ordered the agency to stop work related to that process while the litigation between Pebble and the EPA played out.

The EPA said Friday’s announcement doesn’t derail the permit application process but said the application “must clear a high bar, because EPA believes the risk to Bristol Bay may be unacceptable.”

The agency said it plans to solicit additional public comment.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, said Pruitt is taking a balanced approach that lets Pebble enter the permitting process but also acknowledges EPA’s duty to protect the region’s fisheries.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald 

 

Environmental impact of salmon decline: This isn’t just about fish

January 29, 2018 — A geologist might not be the first person that comes to mind when you think about salmon experts, but David Montgomery wrote the book on the decline of salmon: “King of Fish” in 2004.

Montgomery, a geomorphologist and professor at the University of Washington, has a unique perspective on why salmon are so important to our region. Of course, there’s the importance to the indigenous people in our area and the delicious food they provide, but they also have a serious impact on our whole ecosystem.

“Juvenile salmon are hatched in their natal home river streams and they’re tiny suckers, so they go out to the ocean and they get big,” Montgomery explains. “They spend most of their life out at sea in a more resource-rich marine environment then they bring their bodies back to the rivers and streams in Washington, and Puget Sound along the way, with these bodies full of nutrients.”

After the salmon return home, spawn and die, those nutrients don’t just go away. “They get recycled,” Montgomery says. Decaying salmon feed tiny organisms in streambeds, which are eaten the next year by juvenile salmon. Salmon also get dragged onto the forest floor by bears and eagles and distribute their nutrients there. “Fully one-third of the nitrogen in those big old-growth trees in our forests swam up river as a fish,” Montgomery says. “When you lose those big runs of salmon, you lose those nutrients and it cascades through the whole system.”

It’s no secret that those big runs are declining in a major way. Historically, adult salmon returns to the Columbia Basin were at least 10 to 16 million fish annually — today, across the Northwest, less than 5 percent of historic populations of wild salmon and steelhead return to our rivers and streams. Fifteen different salmon and steelhead stocks in Washington state are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act today.

As Montgomery notes, the loss of these salmon means a domino effect to the ecosystem. More than 135 other fish and wildlife populations benefit from the presence of wild salmon and steelhead, from southern resident orca whales, which are at a 30-year population low, to eagles, wolves, bear, otter, coyote, seals and sea lions.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

 

Endangered Orcas Are Starving. Should We Start Feeding Them?

January 25, 2018 — Washington state officials have proposed a new tack to save the Pacific Northwest’s critically endangered orca population. Their idea is to boost salmon hatchery production by 10 to 20 million more fish per year to provide more food for the iconic killer whales.

No one wants to see orcas starve, but reliance on fish hatcheries leaves some whale advocacy groups uneasy.

There are just 76 orcas left in the pods that call the inland waters of the Northwest home. That’s the lowest number in more than three decades. Numerous factors take the blame for the dwindling population, but one of the biggest according to biologists is lack of prey. Chinook salmon are the preferred food for these orcas.

Sport fisherman Greg King can relate.

“The science is there. They’re dying,” he said. “We’re on a world stage here right now. The whole world is watching us. Are we going to let these orca whales die and have that blood on our hands? I don’t think we want that.”

King trooped to the Washington Legislature this month to support spending tax dollars to increase hatchery production of Chinook—also known as king—salmon. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife first proposed this idea and the governor is running with it.

State Rep. Brian Blake, D-Aberdeen, independently put forward the concept and is getting traction with both parties in the legislature.

On one level, the idea is pretty simple: rear more salmon at maybe half a dozen or more existing hatcheries throughout the state with spare capacity and release them.

Some of that could happen at the Hoodsport salmon hatchery on Hood Canal.

“We want to see if we can add to that prey base here from Hoodsport,” State Fish and Wildlife Regional Hatchery Manager Rob Allan said.

Asked whether he thinks this will work, that enough of the fish will survive to grow big enough to interest the killer whales, Allan said he hopes so.

“All we know is that we release fish, they go out to the salt (water) and then they come back,” Allan said. “So then it’s up to the whales to go ahead and eat ’em. We think it’s going to help.”

But potential complications abound. The federal government will need to give the OK because both the Puget Sound orcas and many wild salmon runs they used to feed on are listed as endangered.

“Hatchery fish has been identified as a bit detrimental to recovery of wild stocks,” Allan explained. “They want us to put the reins on it a bit.”

That’s because hatchery fish could compete for resources with wild stocks and they might interbreed. So it’ll be a challenge to identify the right salmon stocks, hatchery locations and run timing.

Read the full story at KUOW

 

Brexit may not have desired outcome for UK fishermen, but US could see upside

January 25, 2018 — The exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union – colloquially known as Brexit – doesn’t pose a major threat to American exporters, and it could provide some upside, according to Rabobank Global Seafood Industry Senior Industry Analyst Gorjan Nikolik.

Speaking at the 2018 Global Seafood Marketing Conference on Wednesday, 24 January, Nikolik laid out the three most probable scenarios facing Great Britain in its move away from the E.U.: a hard Brexit, a soft Brexit, or a soft-ish Brexit with a free trade agreement. Nikolik dismissed a fourth option, “Bremain,’ where the U.K. reverses course and decides not to leave the E.U., as doubtful and not likely to cause major change to existing trade.

A “hard” Brexit, in which the U.K. would break off from the E.U. without any negotiated special agreements, would be “the worst outcome for everyone,” Nikolik said. Trade barriers would be high, the price of imported goods would increase by an estimated 11 percent, the total labor force in the U.K. would decline by 1.3 million people by 2030, and the British pound would lose approximately 30 percent of its value, according to economic modeling cited by Nikolik.

On the other hand, a “soft” Brexit would sustain many of the U.K.’s ties to the E.U., potentially including its continued membership in the continent’s single market. Under this scenario, prices of imported goods would rise by an estimated three percent and the British economy would grow by a predicted 1.6 percent annually, as opposed to 1.3 percent under a hard Brexit and 2.1 percent under the “Bremain” scenario.

E.U. negotiators will push back hard against efforts for a truly soft Brexit, Nikolik said, as it gives too much away while clawing back little in return. Nikolik’s pick for the most probable outcome is a soft Brexit with a free trade agreement.  Such an agreement would result in an estimated 700,000 fewer laborers working in the U.K., and hike the cost of imported goods by around six percent, Nikolik said. It would also result in a 1.6 percent expected GDP growth rate, he added.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Seafood industry seeks new value in fish parts

January 15, 2018 — State seafood marketers are rebranding fish parts as “specialty” products and mapping a path for millions more dollars in sales.

Alaska’s fisheries produce more than 5 billion pounds of seafood each year. When all the fish is headed and gutted or filleted and all the crab legs are clustered, it leaves about 3 billion pounds of trimmings. Some is turned into meal and oil, but for the most part, the “gurry” is ground up and discharged into local waterways.

“Whether that’s heads or guts, milt, or meal or oil or something else, it should be held in high regard,” said Andy Wink, a seafood economist formerly with the McDowell Group. “These are products that are out of our normal range but they are specialty items serving niche markets.”

A new Analyses of Specialty Alaska Seafood Products report compiled for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute takes a look at uses for fish heads, oil, meal, internal organs, crab products, roe, herring fillets, arrowtooth flounder, spiny dogfish and skates.

It makes the point that Alaska’s combined seafood catches, valued at roughly $2 billion at the docks and twice that when processors sell to their buyers, could be worth an additional $700 million or more if so called “specialty” products were added to the mix.

Take fish heads, for example. Alaska produces about 1 billion pounds of fish heads per year, which likely account for most of the processing waste, the report said. Just 1 percent is sold as frozen heads, although a single large salmon head can fetch up to $5 a pound at Beijing supermarkets, according to previous reports. Increasing the frozen market alone could add $100 million to processors’ sales, the report said.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Government Scientists Say A Controversial Pesticide Is Killing Endangered Salmon

January 12, 2018 — The federal government’s top fisheries experts say that three widely used pesticides — including the controversial insecticide chlorpyrifos — are jeopardizing the survival of many species of salmon, as well as orcas that feed on those salmon.

It’s a fresh attack on a chemical that the Environmental Protection Agency was ready to take off the market a year ago — until the Trump administration changed course.

Chlorpyrifos is widely used by farmers to protect crops like strawberries, broccoli and citrus fruit from insect pests. In recent years, though, scientists have found evidence that exposure to chlorpyrifos residues can harm the developing brains of small children, even in the womb.

Two years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposal that would have stopped farmers from using chlorpyrifos. The final decision, however, fell to the Trump administration, and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt decided to keep the chemical on the market while the agency continues to study its risks.

This new report, however, examines another danger entirely — the risk that chlorpyrifos and two other pesticides, diazinon and malathion, are washing into streams and rivers and harming wildlife.

The National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that continued use of the chemicals is likely to jeopardize the survival of endangered species of salmon, as well as orcas that eat the salmon. According to the report, use of chlorpyrifos is affecting 38 species of endangered fish, and it’s having negative effects on 37 areas that have been designated as “critical habitat” for endangered species.

Read the full story at New England Public Radio

 

Cooke Aquaculture Pacific Files Lawsuit to Fight Washington Decision to Cancel Port Angeles Lease

January 9, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — In December Cooke Aquaculture Pacific was ordered by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to dismantle their fish pens at Ediz Hook. Now the company is fighting back.

Cooke Aquaculture announced on Friday that they have filed a lawsuit in Clallam County Superior Court against the Department of Natural Resources. The company says that the government organization’s attempt to terminate their lease is “not supported by the facts and will unnecessarily result in the loss of scarce rural jobs.”

As previously reported, state Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, the elected head of DNR, canceled the aquatic lands lease due to a series of violations. Styrofoam discharges, a defective anchoring system and operating 500 feet outside of the leasehold area were all listed as violations.

“Cooke Aquaculture Pacific acquired the Washington salmon farms when it purchased Icicle Seafoods in 2016,” Joel Richardson, Vice President for Public Relations at Cooke Aquaculture, said in a press release. “The Department of Natural Resources, then led by Commissioner Franz’s predecessor, approved the transfer of those farm leases at that time and raised no concerns or objections to the manner in which Cooke’s predecessor company was managing the leased aquatic area. We can only assume that the recent decision to terminate the Port Angeles lease is based upon misinformation or a misunderstanding of the facts and history related to the site.”

At the time of canceling the lease, Franz said that the decision was non-negotiable and that there is no appeal process in place. However, reps for Cooke say that they hope to meet with Franz to discuss DNR’s decision to terminate the lease and answer any questions that the Commissioner might have about their operations.

“While we regret the need to file suit before meeting with the Commissioner, we are required to do so in order to protect the company’s legal rights,” Richardson said. “Nonetheless, Cooke believes that a fulsome dialogue with DNR, which it regards as a long-standing partner in its recently acquired Washington aquaculture program, can likely resolve any legitimate, substantive factual issues between the parties. If those issues cannot be amicably resolved by dialogue with the Commissioner then we are prepared to assert our legal rights by way of the judicial system.”

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