Saving Seafood

Murkowski Introduces Updated Legislation to Require Labeling of GE Salmon

March 3, 2016 — The following was released by the Office of Senator Lisa Murkowski:

Today U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) continued her fight against “Frankenfish” by introducing legislation to mandate labeling of genetically engineered (GE) salmon. The Genetically Engineered Salmon Labeling Act, co-sponsored by Senators Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA), changes the acceptable market name for any salmon that is genetically engineered to include the words “genetically engineered” or “GE.” The bill also requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to ensure a third-party scientific review of the FDA’s environmental assessment of AquaAdvantage salmon, focusing in particular on the effects that GE salmon could have upon wild stocks and ecosystems. Congressman Don Young (R-AK) introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives.

“We have had success in in the fight against Frankenfish, but I won’t let up until it is mandatory to make clear to consumers whether they are purchasing Frankenfish or the wild, healthy, sustainably-caught, delicious real thing,” said Murkowski. “I still adamantly oppose the FDA’s approval of GE salmon, for the health of both consumers and fisheries. But at least with this legislation, Alaskans and consumers across the rest of the country won’t be deceived and will be aware of what it is they are seeing on store shelves.”

Background:

  • November 2015: In response to the FDA’s decision to approve GE salmon for human consumption, Murkowski announced that she would block the confirmation of Dr. Robert Califf to be FDA Commissioner until her concerns regarding labeling guidelines for GE salmon had been resolved.
  • December 2015: Murkowski successfully inserted a provision in the omnibus bill that blocks the FDA from introducing GE salmon into the market until it publishes labeling guidelines so consumers are aware of what is contained in the product they are purchasing.
  • January 2016: Murkowski officially placed a hold on Dr. Califf’s confirmation after he advanced out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
  • January 2016: In direct response to Senator Murkowski’s efforts, the FDA announced an import ban on GE salmon until labeling guidelines had been published.
  • February 2016: The FDA provided Senator Murkowski with technical drafting assistance on legislative language that would effectively mandate labeling of GE salmon, and in response Senator Murkowski lifted her hold on Dr. Califf’s nomination.

View the release online

West Coast Sardine Populations, Long Sinking, Look Even Worse in Forecast

February 26, 2016 — Sardines off the West Coast have continued on a steep decline, with populations this summer forecast to be down 93 percent from a 2007 peak, according to a draft assessment from the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The sardines are a key forage food for sea lions, salmon and many other species, as well as a source of income for commercial fishermen.

In some years, sardines have been worth from $10 million to more than $20 million annually to a West Coast fleet.

Last year, the sardine implosion was so severe that the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to call off the season that was scheduled to start in July for West Coast fleets, including those in Washington state.

This year, as the council meets this spring, it will have more bad news on sardines to review.

The stocks of sardines aged one year or older are forecast to be 64,422 metric tons, about a third lower than the 2015 assessment.

“Pacific sardines are an incredibly important economic and ecological ocean resource,” said Geoff Shester, a fishery scientist with Oceana, a marine conservation group. “Fishermen with lost income will suffer financially, and marine animals like California sea lion pups will face another year of fighting starvation.”

Albert Carter, of Ocean Gold Seafood in southwest Washington, said sardines are a significant part of the company business when populations are strong.

Carter, who serves on a Pacific Fishery Management Council advisory committee, said he has not had a chance to review the new sardine assessment. But he said if populations have continued to decline, he does not expect a 2016 season.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

California DFW to Host Public Meeting on Ocean Salmon Fisheries

February 18, 2016 — SANTA ROSA, California — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) invites the public to attend its upcoming annual Ocean Salmon Information Meeting. A review of last year’s ocean salmon fisheries and spawning escapement will be presented, in addition to the outlook for this year’s sport and commercial ocean salmon fisheries.

The meeting will be held Wednesday, March 2 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Sonoma County Water Agency, 404 Aviation Blvd. in Santa Rosa (95403).

Anglers are encouraged to provide input on potential fishing seasons to a panel of California salmon scientists, managers and representatives who will be directly involved in the upcoming Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) meetings in March and April.

Read the full release at San Diego Newscape

Maine Seafood Company Shut Down For Food Safety Violations

February 14, 2016 — A high-end Hancock seafood company has been shut down for repeated unsanitary conditions and food safety violations, including manufacturing in the presence of rodent excrement, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

U.S. District Judge Jon D. Levy on Friday signed a consent decree of permanent injunction against Mill Stream Corp., which does business as Sullivan Harbor Farm, and its owner, Ira Joel Frantzman.

The action followed more than a decade of warnings to the company by the Food and Drug Administration, which found the company’s smoked fish products were being prepared, packed and held under unsanitary conditions so that the products may have become contaminated with filth or rendered injurious to health, says a complaint filed by the Justice Department in U.S. District Court in Maine.

The company, founded in 1992, has annually made about 75,000 pounds of ready-to-eat smoked fish and fishery products, such as smoked salmon, trout and char, which are sold across the country. Customers include Legal Sea Foods in Boston and Dean & DeLuca of New York. The company’s smoked fish products have received a number of food industry awards.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Climate change poses threat to fish stocks, study finds

February 3, 2016 — Over the coming decades, dozens of marine species from the Carolinas to New England will be threatened by the warming, changing currents and the increased acidity expected to alter the region’s waters, according to a new study by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Atlantic salmon, winter flounder, bay scallops, ocean quahogs, and other species may face the kind of trouble from climate change that has been linked in previous research to the decline of Atlantic cod, which has lost an estimated 90 percent of its population over the past three decades, the study found.

The authors of the study, released Wednesday by the journal Plos One, found that half of the 82 species they evaluated along the northeastern coast are “highly” or “very highly” vulnerable to the effects of climate change, meaning their populations and ability to reproduce are likely to decline.

“The results show that climate change presents significant challenges to the region’s fishery management and to its ability to sustain fishing communities,” said Jonathan Hare, a NOAA oceanographer who was the lead author of study.

The study also found that 80 percent of the species studied are likely to move beyond their normal habitats.

Read the full story from the Boston Globe

 

These Fish Species Are Most Vulnerable to Climate Change

February 3, 2016—Scallop and salmon are among the species of fish most vulnerable to the warming of ocean waters due to climate change, according to new research.

The study, conducted by researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and published in the journal PLOS One, evaluated how more than 80 species will respond to their rapidly warming environment in the waters off the coast of the Northeastern United States. Species that can consume a wide variety of prey and survive in many different habitats tended to be less vulnerable to warming than their counterparts confined to one area and to a few sources of sustenance.

Some species, like anchovies, black sea bass and Spanish mackerel, may even benefit from climate change. But species whose populations will be negatively affected—including mussels, shrimp and pollock—far out number those whose standing will improve, according to the study. Others will be left largely unaffected. The results show 17% of the 82 species examined will benefit from climate change, while 83% will either be hurt or not affected by warming.

The research, which evaluated waters from North Carolina to Maine, is the first of several planned by NOAA to assess how vulnerable fish in the U.S. are to climate change. The results provide little indication about when the fish populations will begin to feel the pressure of climate change.

Read the full story at Time

 

Ensuring a Future for American Seafood and Fishermen

February 2, 2016— America’s commercial fishermen provide the public with some of the world’s best seafood: Alaska salmon and halibut, Maine lobster, Gulf red snapper, New England cod – names that make your mouth water. These are the fishermen who support our coastal economies and contribute to our food security, and continue to do so in the face of a growing number of challenges.

Increasingly, commercial fishermen face vast uncertainty about changing ocean ecosystems, complex state and federal management systems, and the staggering costs to enter America’s fisheries. These factors have contributed to a new challenge: declining numbers of young fishermen entering the commercial fishing industry. As a coastal community loses its next generation of fishermen, it also loses access to economic opportunity, food security, and its heritage.

As we work together to ensure the health of America’s incredible marine ecosystems, we must also find ways to sustain the next generation of fishermen tasked with putting that food on our nation’s table. Rather than see fishermen’s role in our food system further isolated and diminished, we should equip young fishermen to be successful food producers, responsible marine stewards and valuable additions to their local economies.

Farmers and ranchers had concerns for their own future generations, inspiring Congress to create a number of programs to support this next generation of agriculture, including the Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Development Programand the Individual Development Accounts. Young farmers and ranchers have benefitted enormously from this federal support, ensuring a future generation is in place for this part of the U.S. food system.

Unfortunately, not a single federal program exists to provide support and resources to young commercial fishermen – the young men and women critical to the preservation of the culture, economy, community health, and food security in coastal America. This lack of support puts this important part of our food system in jeopardy, especially at a time when more consumers are looking for healthy protein sources that are locally sourced and sustainable. It reflects a massive oversight and a lost opportunity.

Read the full opinion piece at The Huffington Post

A Canadian Threat to Alaskan Fishing

January 23, 2016 — SITKA, Alaska — From fall through spring, the fleet of commercial fishing boats here in the panhandle of Alaska stalk winter king salmon. In the mornings prisms of ice sparkle beneath the sodium lights of the docks, where I live on a World War II tugboat with my wife and 8-month-old daughter. This winter I’ve been out a few times fishing on the I Gotta, catching pristine wild salmon, torpedoes of muscle. But the work is slow, five fish a day, and my skipper recently traveled down to Reno, Nev., for knee surgery.

Carpeted in rain forest and braided with waterways, southeast Alaska is among the largest wild salmon producers in the world, its tourism and salmon fishing industries grossing about $2 billion a year. But today, the rivers and the salmon that create these jobs — and this particular way of life, which attracted me from Philadelphia to Sitka almost 20 years ago — are threatened by Canada’s growing mining industry along the mountainous Alaska-British Columbia border, about a hundred miles east of where I now write.

At least 10 underground and open-pit copper and gold mining projects in British Columbia are up and running, in advanced exploration or in review to be approved. These operations generate billions of tons of toxic mine tailings stored behind massive dams, creating an ecological hazard at the headwaters of Alaska’s major salmon rivers — the Stikine, Unuk and Taku, which straddle the border with Canada.

Despite being subjected to the environmental and health risks of these upstream mining projects, Alaskans have no say in their approval. Which is why fishermen, Alaska native tribes, local municipalities, tourism businesses, our congressional delegation and thousands of individual Alaska residents have been clamoring for the State Department to refer this issue to the International Joint Commission, an American and Canadian advisory body established in 1909 to ensure that neither country pollutes the waters of the other.

Read the full opinion piece at The New York Times

To Save Its Salmon, California Calls in the Fish Matchmaker

January 15, 2016 — HORNBROOK, Calif. — On a frigid morning in a small metal-sided building, a team of specialists prepared to orchestrate an elaborate breeding routine. The work would be wet and messy, so they wore waders. Their tools included egg trays and a rubber mallet, which they used to brain a fertile female coho salmon, now hanging dead on a hook.

Diana Chesney, a biologist, studied a piece of paper with a matrix of numbers, each one denoting a male salmon and potential match for the female coho.

“This is the bible,” she said of the matrix. “It’s what Carlos says.”

John Carlos Garza, a geneticist based a day’s drive south in Santa Cruz, has become a key figure in California’s effort to preserve its decimated salmon stocks. Using the latest genetic techniques, he and his team decide which individual fish should be bred together. At several major state conservation hatcheries, like the coho program here at Iron Gate, no two salmon are spawned until after Dr. Garza gives counsel — a “salmon mating service,” he jokingly calls it.

His painstaking work is the latest man-made solution to help fix a man-made problem that is about 150 years old: dams, logging, mining, farming, fishing and other industries have so fractured and polluted the river system that salmon can no longer migrate and thrive. In fact, today, owing to the battered habitat, virtually all salmon in California are raised in hatcheries.

Traditionally, the practice entailed killing fertile salmon and hand-mixing eggs and male milt, or sperm, then raising the offspring packed in containers or pools. When they were old enough to fend for themselves, they were released to rivers or sometimes trucked or ferried to release points to find the ocean on their own, a practice that gave them a necessary transition before they hit saltwater and a semblance of the quintessential salmon experience of migrating to the sea and back. To that end, they eventually swam back to hatcheries, where they became the next breeders in the cycle.

While hatcheries have helped propagate the species, they have also created new problems. The salmon they produce can be inbred and less hardy through domestication, hurting their chances for surviving and thriving in the wild.

Read the full story at The New York Times

California temporarily curbing water to spare vanishing fish

January 15, 2016 — SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Saying current water conditions pose particular peril for the state’s tiny, disappearing Delta smelt, federal officials moved Thursday to temporarily reduce water deliveries for farmers and millions of other Californians.

Especially muddy water from winter storms is among the factors that risk sweeping some of the world’s few remaining Delta smelt off course and into giant water pumps that draw water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin river deltas, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials said.

The pumps are part of federal and state water projects that provide water for up to 25 million Californians. Wildlife experts believe the pumps are one of the main threats to native fish, including the once-plentiful Delta smelt, now nearly extinct, and endangered runs of native salmon.

The federal wildlife service’s determination on Thursday means federal authorities will reduce water flows temporarily starting Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said.

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