Saving Seafood

OBI Seafoods won’t be processing salmon at Southeast Alaska cannery this summer

April 6, 2021 — OBI Seafoods will not process salmon at its cannery in Excursion Inlet this summer. The Haines Borough is preparing for a dramatic reduction in raw fish tax revenue as a result.

OBI Seafoods will continue to buy salmon from local fishermen for its plant in Petersburg.

Last year, weak salmon returns and the pandemic led to a quiet summer at the Excursion Inlet plant. This year, they won’t be processing salmon at all.

OBI Seafoods public affairs manager Julianne Curry said the decision was made based on forecasted salmon returns for this summer.

“The company took a really careful look at the State of Alaska salmon run predictions for the 2021 season and we made the really difficult decision to shut down salmon buying at our Excursion Inlet facility this year,” Curry said.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has forecast a return of 28 million pink salmon to Southeast Alaska. That’s a little bit lower than the 10-year average but better than the most recent years.

Read the full story at KTOO

Seafood tech companies demonstrate a leap forward in freshness monitoring using sensors and blockchain

April 6, 2021 — The following was released by Seafood Analytics:

Sustainable seafood company Envisible is teaming up with Certified Quality Foods, Inc. (dba Seafood Analytics) to capture product quality data on Envisible’s blockchain-enabled Wholechain traceability system. The initiative is starting with sockeye salmon coming from Northline Seafoods in Bristol Bay, Alaska, demonstrating an innovative commitment to transparency in seafood supply chains.

Northline is capturing product quality metrics at the point of harvest using Seafood Analytics’ handheld Certified Quality Reader (CQR), which measures the salmon’s electrical properties. Electrical properties are measured at the cellular level and are related to degradation, heat abuse and quality. The resulting quality data is then seamlessly uploaded into Wholechain, which logs this and other supply chain data on Mastercard’s provenance blockchain from the source all the way to grocers nationwide under a private label brand available at over 12 regional stores.

While the entire line of Envisible’s Frozen Seafood launched in 2019 is fully traceable and sustainably sourced, Northline’s sockeye salmon is the first of its kind to take traceability a step further with transparent quality readings. In fact all three companies – Seafood Analytics, Envisible and Northline Seafoods – have been recognized for their leadership in sustainable seafood at the Fish 2.0 Global Innovation Forum held at Stanford University.

About Northline Seafoods. Northine Seafoods, which is Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified, has been lauded for innovations such as ultra-low freeze technology used on its floating processor directly on fishing grounds, and began utilizing the CQR method in 2019. Seafood Analytics feeds the objective quality measures into a customized data dashboard for its customers, enabling food companies to take actionable steps to improve their products and processes. The method has been implemented beyond seafood in poultry cultivation, and in many cases allows companies to bypass expensive and inefficient lab testing.

About Envisible. Envisible brings this technology and story to market with its robust distribution channels and focused mission of bringing traceability and transparency to traditionally opaque food systems. In addition to the Quality Index, Envisible has also committed to capturing Key Data Elements outlined by the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability, an industry-wide standard launched in 2020 to eliminate environmental and labor abuse in seafood supply chains. Not only does the technology ensure responsible sourcing, but Wholechain’s storytelling feature means a QR-code at the point of sale educates consumers about the sustainability and quality initiatives behind their seafood.

About Seafood Analytics. Seafood Analytics provides state of the art technology to measure and monitor seafood quality. The objective, science based technology measures science based technology measures fish quality instantly and provides a cloud based data platform that enables users to track quality and build supplier report cards. Seafood Analytics is based in Dallas Texas. For more information – info@certifiesqualityfoods.com.

ALASKA: Big sockeye runs and struggling kings leave Bristol Bay managers with a complicated balancing act

April 2, 2021 — Fifty-one million sockeye are forecast to return to Bristol Bay this summer.

If that holds, commercial fishermen will be able to harvest around 37 million reds. That’s 13% more than the average harvest of the past decade.

But concerns remain about the numbers of chinook salmon in the Nushagak District on the west side of Bristol Bay — which leaves the biologists who manage the fishery with a complicated balancing act.

Faced with another huge sockeye run this summer, managers in the Nushagak District say they will try to allow fishermen to harvest the sockeye and also conserve chinook.

Tim Sands, the district’s area management biologist, describes the job as trying to walk a fine line between “getting as many kings up the river as we can, but still provide opportunity to harvest sockeye salmon.”

For years, biologists around the state have wrestled with declining numbers of chinook, fish that are central to subsistence ways of life across Alaska, and also targeted by sport fishermen. Since 2007, the state’s chinook runs have consistently declined, forcing managers to restrict or close fishing in certain areas.

Read the full story at KTOO

2020’s Southeast salmon harvest among worst on record, according to Alaska Fish & Game data

April 1, 2021 —  Last year’s salmon harvest across all species in Southeast Alaska was one of the worst in 50 years. Here’s what Southeast’s regional commercial fishery supervisor had to say about the terrible season, and about his hopes for the coming year.

A special report released in March paints a stark picture of 2020’s salmon harvest in Southeast Alaska.

“Overall, it was one of the lowest harvests we’d seen, I think since the ’70s,” says Lowell Fair. He’s the Southeast regional supervisor for the commercial fisheries division of Alaska Department of Fish and Game. It was already clear from preliminary reports that last year’s salmon season was a rough one. But just how rough?

For sockeye, the harvest was the second lowest since 1962 — that’s just a couple of years after the Department of Fish & Game was formed and started collecting data.

King harvest was in the bottom five harvests since the early 1960s as well.

Coho and pink harvests came in stronger than kings and sockeye, but were still among the lowest years in recent memory, ranking 48th and 53rd since 1962, respectively.

Read the full story at KNBA

ALASKA: ADF&G Commissioner Addresses Disaster Relief, Cook Inlet Closure, Large Salmon Forecast for 2021

April 1, 2021 — Alaska’s Governor Mike Dunleavy has received 11 requests for fisheries disaster declarations, said Doug Vincent-Lange, Alaska’s Commissioner of Fish and Game, in an update at the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce’s ComFish Expo.

Noting the good news of over half of Alaska’s population now vaccinated, and shots now available for anyone over 16, Vincent-Lange said, “I don’t see why you wouldn’t all be able to fish this year.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

PFMC: Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Coho Workgroup to hold online meeting May 12, 2021

March 31, 2021 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Southern Oregon/Northern California Coast (SONCC) Coho Workgroup will host an online meeting that is open to the public.  The meeting will be held Wednesday, May 12, 2021 from 9 a.m., Pacific Daylight Time, until 5 p.m., or until business for the day has been completed.

Please see the SONCC Coho Workgroup online meeting notice on the Council’s website for purpose and participation details.

For further information:

  • Please contact Pacific Fishery Management Council staff Robin Ehlke at 503-820-2410; toll free 1-866-806-7204, extension 410

Warm Water Important for Cold-water Fish Like Salmon and Trout, Study Finds

March 26, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Warm river habitats appear to play a larger-than-expected role in supporting the survival of cold-water fish, such as salmon and trout. This information was published today in a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The research has important implications for fish conservation strategies. A common goal among scientists and policymakers is to identify and prioritize habitat for cold-water fish that remain suitably cool during the summer. This is especially important as the climate warms.

Potential Blind Spot

“Prioritizing cold-water habitat devalues seasonally warm areas, even if they are suitable for fish most of the year,” said Jonny Armstrong, lead author of the paper and an ecologist at Oregon State University. He called this a “potentially severe blind spot for climate change adaptation.”

A huge challenge for conservation is to figure out how to help these fish survive a warmer future. Typically, efforts focus on saving the coldest places, such as high mountain streams, which are already the most pristine parts of basins. This approach often neglects the places that are warm in summer, forgetting that these places are optimal for much of the year.

“We’re talking about a subtle shift in how we think about these thermal habitats,” said Aimee Fullerton, a fisheries biologist at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and a study co-author. “Of course, we want to protect the high-quality cold-water habitats. But we need to expand our definition of high-quality habitat to include some warmer waters.”

Read the full release here

That Salmon on Your Plate Might Have Been a Vegetarian

March 25, 2021 — Twenty years ago, as farmed salmon and shrimp started spreading in supermarket freezers, came an influential scientific paper that warned of an environmental mess: Fish farms were gobbling up wild fish stocks, spreading disease and causing marine pollution.

This week, some of the same scientists who published that report issued a new paper concluding that fish farming, in many parts of the world, at least, is a whole lot better. The most significant improvement, they said, was that farmed fish were not being fed as much wild fish. They were being fed more plants, like soy.

In short, the paper found, farmed fish like salmon and trout had become mostly vegetarians.

Synthesizing hundreds of research papers carried out over the last 20 years across the global aquaculture industry, the latest study was published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Atlantic Sapphire suffers mass salmon mortality at its Florida RAS farm

March 24, 2021 — On Tuesday, 23 March, Atlantic Sapphire suffered a mass mortality event at its recirculating aquaculture system salmon farm in Miami, Florida, U.S.A.

In a press release issued via the Euronext Market, where the company’s stock is listed, Atlantic Sapphire said it expected a loss of 500 metric tons (MT), or around 1.1 million pounds, of head-on, gutted salmon. The company said the average weight of the deceased fish was one kilogram, or 2.2 pounds, meaning an estimated 500,000 individual salmon died due to the accident. The total represents around 5 percent of its phase-one harvest volumes.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

AMERICAN AQUAFARMS CEO: Aquaculture can play a big role in Maine’s economy and climate change response

March 23, 2021 — Maine is setting the stage with its response to climate change, the need for greater sustainability and environmental stewardship.

Aquaculture plays an important role in all three.

The United States imports about 90 percent of the fish eaten in the country. Those imports ship consumer dollars out of the country, while also having a direct impact on the environment from the transportation required to deliver the food.

With wild fisheries under pressure from overfishing and warming oceans, aquaculture provides an opportunity to produce food closer to the people who will eat it and in a controlled and sustainable way.

That’s why American Aquafarms has proposed a new aquaculture facility along the working waterfront in Gouldsboro with pens located in Frenchman Bay.

We believe that this project will produce salmon safely and sustainably, while helping to fight climate change and creating good jobs for Maine people.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News