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ALASKA: Fishermen say Bristol Bay protections must be stronger

June 20, 2022 — One of the oldest Bristol Bay fishing associations came out strongly against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new limits on the potential Pebble Mine, reflecting unease that the much-heralded move does not go far enough.

“The Bristol Bay Fishermen’s Association regrets that it cannot support the EPA’s weak and watered-down 2022 PD (proposed determination),” said David Harsila, a spokesman for the association in a statement this week.

“The watershed will not be protected, and a large-scale mining operation could still be permitted. We demand that EPA do more to protect the Bristol Bay drainages.”

Under the Obama administration, the EPA in 2014 proposed a declaration under section 404 (c) of the Clean Water Act to protect headwaters of Bristol Bay salmon streams from pollution generated by mining for gold, copper and other metal ores in the Pebble Deposit.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Salmon bycatch, electronic monitoring on the table at Sitka meeting of North Pacific Fishery Management Council

June 9, 2022 — The bycatch of chinook and chum salmon is on the agenda, as the spring meeting of the North Pacific Management Council gets underway in Sitka this week (June 9-14).

In addition to hearing how much salmon is being intercepted in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea by the trawl fisheries, the council will review a proposal to supplement the human observer program with electronic monitoring.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council regulates the so-called “federal fisheries” which take place outside the three-mile limit of Alaska’s state waters, and within the exclusive economic zone of the United States which extends 200 miles offshore.

Read the full story at KCAW

The Hail Mary Hatcheries

June 3, 2022 — The Russian River represents one possible future—perhaps the most likely one—for many other rivers on the west coast of North America: they will have hatchery salmon or no salmon at all. In this heavily developed watershed, climate change is already escalating droughts, fires, and floods, providing a preview of what may be in store for other regions. As wild stocks decline due to environmental change and other pressures, the hope is that facilities like Warm Springs, often described as “conservation hatcheries,” can keep salmon runs intact until their habitats are restored. It’s a task that sometimes verges on the impossible. As Mariska Obedzinski, who has led California Sea Grant’s coho monitoring program in the Russian River for almost 18 years, puts it, “It can feel like one step forward and five steps back.”

Hatcheries hold up a mirror to the stubborn belief that salmon can exist without intact habitat. On the west coast of North America, they have been used for over a century to supplement wild salmon in places where logged, dammed, and developed watersheds can no longer support abundant runs. But can salmon raised in captivity really replace wild ones? It’s a question I’ve been pondering for years, and, full disclosure, I once coauthored an opinion editorial with a consortium of salmon conservationists encouraging the British Columbia government to restore fish habitat, rather than build more hatcheries.

By the mid-20th century, scientists were finding evidence that artificially propagated fish were struggling to survive in the wild. “There is something wrong with hatchery trout,” a US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist wrote in 1948, suggesting that the fish—close cousins to salmon—were becoming domesticated. Today, hatchery salmon are generally bigger, bolder, and more combative than wild salmon; when produced by the tens or hundreds of thousands, they can outcompete wild fish. Paradoxically, though, nearly all hatchery salmon die quickly from poor life skills—failure to avoid predators or to successfully find food—or succumb to stress in the strange new environment. One facility manager told me that his coho had consumed bits of wood after release, likely mistaking the fragments for commercial feed pellets. “Hatchery fish are animals that are dressed in the skin of the salmon, but they’re missing most of what makes a salmon a salmon,” says Jim Lichatowich, a retired fish biologist and author of Salmon Without Rivers. “They don’t have that 10,000-year study of one place.”

Read the full story at Hakai Magazine

 

MAINE: American Aquafarms says, “We’re not going anywhere”

June 2, 2022 — American Aquafarms has appealed a recent decision by the Maine Department of Marine Resources to terminate two lease applications for a proposed salmon farm in Frenchman Bay.

The DMR terminated the Norwegian-back company’s applications to grow 66 million pounds of Atlantic salmon annually at two sites near Bald Ledge and Long Porcupine Island because American Aquafarms “failed to fulfill its legal obligation to demonstrate an available source of fish to be cultivated at its proposed salmon farms in Frenchman Bay,” according to a statement released by DMR on April 20.

American Aquafarms is asking the court to vacate the DMR’s decision and send the applications back to the department for continued consideration. The DMR, in a statement, said it stands behind its decision to terminate the lease applications.

The reason for termination, according to the DMR, lies in the proposed egg stock that American Aquafarms had listed in its application. “The source of Atlantic salmon proposed by American Aquafarms, AquaBounty of Newfoundland, Canada, did not meet the criteria for a ‘Qualified Source/Hatchery’ as defined in DMR regulations,” and that the company “failed to provide documentation demonstrating that the proposed source of fish/eggs could meet genetic requirements in law.”

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

ALASKA: Bristol Bay advocates pushing EPA to do more

June 2, 2022 — Groups united in opposition to the proposed Pebble Mine say they will marshal a big turnout to press the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to go even farther with its proposed protections for the Bristol Bay headwaters.

Advocates outlined their plan at a June 1 press conference in Dillingham, Alaska, with public hearings on the EPA proposal coming up June 16-17 – along with a projected record-setting sockeye season for the $2.2 billion summer fishery.

The EPA’s newly proposed determination under Clean Water Act Section 404(c) “is a milestone, it is a starting point, but we have a long way to go,” said Daniel Cheyette, vice president lands and resources for the Bristol Bay Native Corporation.

Biologists anticipate 75 million sockeye could return this season, underscoring Bristol Bay’s status as the most productive salmon habitat, said Katherine Carscallen, director of Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Chilean President Boric planning reconstruction of country’s fishing laws

June 2, 2022 –Chile will look to replace its existing fishing laws, while also strengthen environmental stewardship in the ocean, President Gabriel Boric, who took office in March, said in his first address to the nation on 1 June 2022.

“In terms of fisheries and aquaculture, we will fulfill our commitment to advance in a new law, which will be free of corruption and the result of an open and transparent debate. One that delivers clear, fair, and sustainable rules, both at an industrial and artisanal level,” Boric said during the televised speech from Chile’s Congress.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Multi X mortality event revised downward by 50,000 fish

June 1, 2022 — Puerto Montt, Chile-based salmon farmer Multi X, which reported the death of 300,000 fish at one of its farms on 22 May, has revised the number downward to 250,000 fish totaling 1,075 metric tons (MT), Chile’s National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service, Sernapesca, reported.

The mortality was associated with a decrease in dissolved oxygen content affecting Atlantic salmon at the farmer’s San Luis center in the concession group ACS 1, located in the Reloncaví Estuary in the Los Lagos region. The extraction of all mortality was completed on 22 May and subsequently sent to the Fiordo Austral Holding’s Salmonoil and Los Glaciares reduction plants in Puerto Montt.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

EPA’s Pebble ‘veto’ won’t stop all mining in Alaska’s Bristol Bay

May 31, 2022 — EPA’s move to ban mining the Pebble deposit in the Bristol Bay watershed this week set off a swirl of questions about whether the proposed Clean Water Act veto could have broader implications for mining in one of the world’s premier salmon habitats.

But a close look at the agency documents explaining the decision makes it crystal clear: The Pebble veto won’t stop mining in Bristol Bay, much less the rest of the Last Frontier.

EPA’s proposed veto Wednesday only targets efforts to mine the Pebble deposit. It was based on a mine plan Pebble LP and its backer Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Clean Water Act permitting process two years ago.

That mine plan specifically affected three watersheds, the South and North Forks of the Koktuli River and the Upper Talarik Creek, where it would permanently damage 99 miles of stream habitat and more than 2,000 acres of wetlands. EPA says it is vetoing the project because it would result in four “unacceptable adverse effects” on aquatic life and habitat, including the loss of salmon habitat and negative effects on the genetic diversity of salmon in the watersheds.

The veto is limited to certain headwaters of those watersheds, and includes approximately 309 square miles surrounding the 2020 mine plan. There are other mine claims within that restricted area, however the veto documents are clear that the restriction only applies to mining the Pebble deposit, specifically.

Read the full story at Greenwire

 

Frenchman Bay salmon farm developer sues Maine for spiking its lease application

May 31, 2022 — The company behind a controversial plan to build an industrial-scale salmon farm in Frenchman Bay is taking its case to court after the Maine Department of Marine Resources terminated its lease application last month.

American Aquafarms filed a complaint against the state in Cumberland County Superior Court last week. The Portland company, funded by Norwegian investors, proposed raising 66 million pounds of Atlantic salmon annually at two closed, 15-pen sites in Frenchman Bay, between Bar Harbor and Gouldsboro, with each pen encompassing 60 acres. The company also proposed operating a fish processing plant in Gouldsboro.

In its complaint, American Aquafarms alleges that the department’s decision was not supported by evidence. It also claims that the department spoke with a third party without its knowledge just days before the decision, violating American Aquafarms’ right to due process.

The state’s marine regulatory body terminated the application April 19. There were two major issues with it, said Jeff Nichols, department spokesperson.

First, the company failed to find a proper source for its fish eggs, according to Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the department. The hatchery listed in the application, AquaBounty in Newfoundland, is not on Maine’s list of qualified egg sources.

American Aquafarms also failed to show that the proposed hatchery satisfied genetic requirements mandated by state law, Keliher said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

As EPA moves to block mining at the Pebble deposit, mine supporters and opponents look to details

May 31, 2022 — In late May, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it wants to veto development of the Pebble Mine — a vast deposit of copper and gold at the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

The proposal is a step toward permanently blocking development of the proposed open-pit mine in the Bristol Bay watershed. Mine opponents have pursued a veto for more than a decade.

The EPA said mining the Pebble deposit would result in unacceptable loss of salmon habitat, both at the site and further downstream. Using its authority under the Clean Water Act, the agency proposes to prohibit the discharge of mining materials in waters and wetlands at the Pebble site. That could make it impossible to extract minerals from the deposit.

The executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, Alannah Hurley, opposes the mine and said the EPA’s move is a step in the right direction.

“Today is a really big day for Bristol Bay — for us to get back on track in this process, and for the Biden administration to be committed to finishing the job to stop Pebble Mine once and for all is very exciting,” she said. “But we’re not there yet. We definitely need to get through the rest of this process.”

Read the full story at KTOO

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