Saving Seafood

Scientists Send Letter to Washington Legislature Urging Delay on Legislation to Ban Net Pens

March 1, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Four prominent scientists have sent a letter to the Washington State Legislature urging them to stop House Bill 2957, which “would essentially halt Atlantic salmon aquaculture in this state forever.”

The scientists include the former 40-year director of the Manchester, Washington, laboratory; two former directors of the national aquaculture program run by NOAA; a former Director of the Northwest Fisheries Science Center; and the former president of Stolt Sea Farms Washington, Inc.

“We call on our esteemed elected representatives to delay any decisions regarding the future of salmon farming in Washington until the scientific community, represented in this state by some of the world’s leading aquaculture and fisheries scientists and researchers in the fields of fish culture, genetics, nutrition, and fish behavior, has had an opportunity to present science in a clear and objective light—rather than in a climate fueled by fear and propaganda,” the letter states.

The authors offer to present research that responds to the legislature’s fears on four areas of concern for Atlantic salmon farms in the event of a pen failure or escape.

Interbreeding — the authors point out that interbreeding has been encouraged in a scientific setting, and all attempts for the past f40 years have been unsuccessful.

Competition for food — Peer-reviewed studies have shown convincingly that “captive” or pen-reared salmon have not learned how to “hunt” for food, simply because they are used to being fed on a regular timetable.

Competition for habitat —  Scientists to date have found no evidence of Atlantic salmon spawning on the West Coast of North America.

Disease transmission — the authors say “No example of disease transfer from farmed salmon to wild fish has ever been documented by any regulatory agency in the state of Washington.”

Finally, they strongly urge legislators to not “throw out the baby with the bathwater”—salmon farming—that is now producing millions of metric tons of nutritious salmon, worth billions of dollars, around the world.

The letter is signed by Linda Chaves, former Senior Advisory on Seafood and Industry Issues; Dr. John Forster, former president of Stolt Sea Farm; Dr. Robert Iwamoto, director of the office, management, and information at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, NOAA; and Dr. Conrad Mahnken, former NOAA National Aquaculture Coordinator, director of the NOAA Manchester Laboratory, and Washington Fish and Wildlife Commissioner.

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

No more ‘Kings of the Columbia’: Chinook salmon much smaller, younger these days, study finds

March 1, 2018 — They used to tip the scales at 80 pounds: June Hogs they were called. The kings of the Columbia River.

But the big chinook that used to lumber up and down the Columbia and cruise the northeastern Pacific from California to western Alaska have dwindled away over the past 40 years, researchers have learned.

Published in the journal Fish and Fisheries, researchers have documented a trend in decreasing body size in chinook over the past 40 years. The trend was remarkably widespread, affecting both wild and hatchery fish in the northern Pacific from California to western Alaska.

“It is a quite grand phenomenon, not just observations here and there, it is the signature we see along the coast,” said Jan Ohlberger of the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, lead author on the paper.

Chinook are the biggest and most prized species of salmon in North America — and the most sought-after, whether by killer whales, eagles or bears. And certainly by every fisherman, whether commercial, recreational or ceremonial.

But big isn’t what it used to be.

Both wild and hatchery chinook are smaller and younger today, researchers have found, examining 85 chinook populations along the West Coast of North America.

The big chinook that stay out in the ocean four and five years before returning home to spawn have decreased both in numbers and in size — as much as 10 percent in length, and substantially more in weight.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

 

What Will It Take for Americans to Eat Genetically Engineered Salmon?

February 27, 2018 — One day in 1992, a technology entrepreneur sat down for a meeting with a pair of biologists who were studying the genes of fish. The scientists, Hew Choy Leong and Garth Fletcher, were working on a method of purifying “antifreeze proteins” that would help Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) survive so-called super-chill events in the North Atlantic. Normally these salmon migrate out of the subzero, ice-laden seawater of the far North Atlantic to overwinter in less-frigid waters. Increasingly, though, such fish were being farmed, penned year-round in offshore cages, in near-Arctic waters to which they were not adapted. Fish farmers were looking for a way to keep the fish alive through the winter, and the antifreeze protein seemed like a possible solution.

As the meeting drew to a close, Fletcher and Hew showed Elliot Entis, the entrepreneur, a photo of two fish of equal age. One dwarfed the other. “I sat back down,” Entis recalled recently.

Fletcher and Hew, it turned out, had not just been putting antifreeze proteins into Atlantic salmon. They had also figured out a way to add a growth hormone from Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), plus a fragment of DNA from the ocean pout (Zoarces americanus), an eellike creature that inhabits the chilly depths off the coast of New England and eastern Canada. This genetic code acts like an “on” switch to activate the growth hormone. The result was a genetically engineered super-fish that grew nearly twice as fast, on less food, than conventional salmon.

Those salmon, grown and marketed by a company called AquaBounty Technologies that was founded by Entis, could be coming to U.S. grocery stores next year. And they could offer a way out of the deadly spiral of overfishing that is decimating wild-fish stocks.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

 

New Yorkers rally against offshore drilling plan

February 16, 2018 — ALBANY, N.Y. — Wearing fish-shaped caps and armed with a megaphone, New York state’s leading environmental advocates protested President Donald Trump’s plan to open offshore areas to oil and gas drilling on Thursday as federal energy officials held an open house on the proposal near the state Capitol.

The group, wearing caps shaped like sturgeon, salmon and other vulnerable ocean species, included Aaron Mair, past president of the Sierra Club, and Judith Enck, the regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator under former President Barack Obama. They said Trump’s plan could devastate the environment while leaving potential renewable energy sources untouched. They called on Congress to pass a law blocking the proposal.

“We all remember the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe,” Enck said into a megaphone, referring to the 2010 rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that triggered the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. “We cannot afford that reckless activity in the Atlantic.”

Inside, federal energy officials handed out information packets and briefed members of the public on the president’s decision last month to open most of the nation’s coast to oil and gas drilling as a way of making the U.S. less dependent on foreign energy sources. Several dozen people had trickled through at the midpoint of the four-hour open house. Members of the public were encouraged to submit written comments.

William Brown, chief environmental officer at the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said he welcomed comments from opponents to the plan.

Read the full story from Associated Press at the Seattle Times

 

NW governors urge Congress to act on sea lion predation bill

February 14, 2018 — The governors of Oregon, Washington and Idaho in a letter urged members of the Northwest congressional delegation to support legislation that would help reduce predation by sea lions on salmon and steelhead, sturgeon and lamprey.

H.R. 2083 is sponsored by Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) and Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.). The House bill has cleared the Natural Resources Committee. The federal legislation gives local agencies the ability to better control predation by sea lions in the Columbia and Willamette rivers.

“I am pleased to see bipartisan support for my bill continue to grow,” Herrera Beutler said in a statement. “As the governors stated in their letter, we must act to protect our native Columbia River salmon and steelhead. I am hopeful that the senators from Oregon and Washington will also join in supporting this bill to successfully move it through Congress.”

Gov. Kate Brown (Oregon), Gov. Jay Inslee (Washington) and Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter (Idaho) sent the letter Jan. 25 to the 17 members of Congress who represent the three states, urging them to support legislation ”aimed at reducing sea lion predation on threatened and endangered and other at-risk fish populations.”

“Although several hundred million dollars are invested annually to rebuild these native fish runs, their health and sustainability is threatened unless Congress acts to enhance protection from increasing sea lion predation,” the letter says. “Over the last decade, predation by sea lions on salmon, steelhead, sturgeon, and lamprey in the Columbia River has increased dramatically.”

Read the full story at the Chinook Observer

 

Record Russian Salmon Catch Expected for 2018

February 13, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Russia prepares for a record salmon catch this year, according to recent statements of scientific director of the All-Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO) Mikhail Glubokovsky.

Analysts of VNIRO predict the volume of salmon catch in Russia may exceed 500,000 tonnes this year — a record figure in the modern history of the country. The majority of catch (64 percent) will account for Kamchatka, while the most harvested species will comprise humpback and chum salmon.

Last year, only 353,000 tonnes of salmon were produced in Russia, which was mainly due to poor harvests at Sakhalin and the Amur, caused by the migration of salmon to the north and a high level of poaching. That has resulted in the increase of local prices for salmon and caviar and a shortage of fish among Russia’s largest salmon processors.

In the meantime, despite the increase of production, Russia has no plans to reduce salmon imports, mainly from Chile and Faroe Islands. These supplies are mostly intended for Western parts of the country, as in recent years tariffs for the delivery of fish from the Far East to St. Petersburg and other western regions of Russia have significantly increased. Those increases made imports even more profitable than domestic supplies.

This year, Rosrybolovstvo plans to increase the forecasts for the level of harvests, relying on a unified methodology of observations and trawl surveys.

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

 

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

 

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