Saving Seafood

June 2021 PFMC (online) meeting notice and agenda now available

May 24, 2021 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC or Council) and its advisory bodies will meet June 21‐26 and 28‐30, 2021 by webinar only, to address issues related to groundfish, coastal pelagic species, highly migratory species, salmon, and administrative matters.

Please see the June 2021 Council meeting webpage for further updates and details regarding webinar participation; schedule of advisory body meetings, our E-Portal for submitting public comments, and public comment deadlines. There will be no meetings scheduled Sunday June 27th, however, the meeting will continue daily on Monday, June 28 at 8 a.m. through Wednesday June 30, 2021. Meetings of advisory bodies will also be conducted by online meetings based on the schedules in the agenda.

Instructions for how to connect to the online meetings will be posted on the Council’s June 2021 meeting webpage prior to the first day of the meeting.

For further information:

The U.S. government is buying $40 million worth of pistachios and $70 million of seafood

May 21, 2021 — Pistachios are my favorite nut. I can house a whole bag of those in no time at all. Apparently the American government is into them too, because they’re not buying just a bunch, but a massive amount. During times of crop and product surpluses, the USDA will buy up extra to keep America’s food banks stocked; in 2016, it bought $20 million in cheese. Now, Food & Wine reports, the government is buying up millions of dollars of pistachios, among other delicious bounties.

It’s obvious that COVID-19 has mucked up all sorts of farming supply issues, and plenty of Americans are having a hard time getting by. So the USDA is currently making big buys to help those that produce food and those who need it. Last week the Biden administration announced that the USDA would be purchasing $159.4 million worth of seafood, fruits, legumes, and nuts. Of that, $70.9 million will be spent on seafood, the largest government seafood purchase ever.

“The impacts of COVID-19 reverberated from our farms to our oceans,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “U.S. fisheries and the American seafood industry were dealt a heavy blow…. These healthy, nutritious food purchases will benefit food banks and non-profits helping those struggling with food hardship as the Biden Administration works to get the economy back on track for American families.”

Read the full story at The Takeout

Number of overfished stocks in US on the decline

May 21, 2021 — The number of US fisheries deemed “overfished” declined in 2019, with 22 stocks subject to overfishing versus 2018’s status of 26 stocks — a sign some rebuilding efforts are showing results.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Report to Congress on the Status of US Fisheries, released Thursday, surveys fisheries in US territorial waters annually to determine the status of stocks deemed troubled under NOAA’s management guidelines.

In its report, NOAA designates fisheries under excessive pressure as either “overfished” or subject to “overfishing.”

Read the full story at IntraFish

Community Steps Up to Continue Yukon River Salmon Research During Pandemic

May 20, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

On the Yukon River, Chinook salmon are woven into the fabric of life and culture. They are a resource that indigenous people have harvested for more than 1,000 years. But over the last 20 years or more, the Chinook populations have declined dramatically. Fewer Chinook are returning to the river each year, and those that do are smaller and younger than they have been in the past. This has created hardship for the people who rely on this resource. It is nurturing a strong desire to understand and contribute to solutions to address the dwindling returns.

Ragnar Alstrom, Executive Director of Yukon Delta Fisheries Development Association, explains it this way: “We want to be a part of figuring out why our Chinook aren’t returning. Instead of standing by and waiting for someone else to figure it out, we want to be engaged in the science.”

So began a special partnership between NOAA Fisheries, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and local fishermen from the villages of Emmonak and Alakanuk. Starting in 2014, the Yukon Delta Fisheries Development Association (YDFDA) worked with scientists to identify nine permanent sampling stations on the three main lower Yukon distributaries. Each summer, local fishermen and NOAA Fisheries biologists work together. They set and retrieve salmon sampling nets, identify and count the catch, and measure water temperature and depth. They send salmon samples to the NOAA Fisheries Auke Bay Laboratories where their diet and body condition are analyzed.

Read the full release here

Global Salmon Initiative publishes annual sustainability report

May 20, 2021 — The Global Salmon Initiative has published its annual sustainability report and launched a resource hub designed to offer data and materials to document the impact the organization is having upon the industry.

GSI was created in 2013 as a collaborative effort by many of the world’s largest farmed salmon producers to push for collective efforts on sustainability initiatives. The group, which now includes 13 companies comprising 40 percent of the world’s total salmon production, has established goals including minimizing its environmental footprint and continuing to improve its social contributions.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MAINE: Army Corps review of salmon farm requested

May 19, 2021 — Frenchman Bay Conservancy has formally requested that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conduct an environmental review and issue a statement under the U.S. Environmental Policy Act before any final decisions are made on American Aquafarms’ plan to raise 66 million pounds of Atlantic salmon annually at two sites in Frenchman Bay.

Frenchman Bay Conservancy has preserves totaling 8,000 acres in a dozen Maine towns and townships, including seven Hancock County communities.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) is currently reviewing for completeness American Aquafarms’ March 3 lease applications to grow salmon at two 15-pen sites northwest of Long Porcupine Island and northeast of Bald Rock Ledge in Frenchman Bay. The Norwegian-backed company is expected to file by month’s end its wastewater discharge permit application to discharge a total of 4 billion gallons daily with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The company is proposing to release 2 billion gallons daily (23,775 gallons per second) at each of the 15-pen sites.

Sent to the U.S. Army Corps’ Senior Project Manager and Team Leader Jay Clement in Augusta, Frenchman Bay Conservancy’s May 17 letter also was signed by Hancock’s Crabtree Neck Land Trust, the Downeast Salmon Federation, the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries in Stonington, Friends of Acadia, Friends of Frenchman Bay, Friends of Eastern Bay, Friends of Schoodic Peninsula as well as Springtide Seaweed LLC, Frenchman Bay Oyster Co. owner Graham Platner, Maine Coast Sea Vegetables proprietors Shep and Seraphina Erhart, Hancock fishermen Zach and Tyler Piper, MDI Biological Laboratory senior scientist Jane Disney and College of the Atlantic biologist Chris Peterson.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

Salmon Group scraps plans for grasshopper feed produced by startup Metapod

May 19, 2021 — Bergen, Norway-based Salmon Group has announced it has scrapped its deal with Metapod to develop a locally-produced protein source featuring insects.

Under the original agreement, Metapod was going to produce insect flour from grasshoppers and crickets, to be used in the Salmon Group’s network of salmon and trout farms. The process was also going to use refined food waste, with an overall goal – Salmon Group said when the deal was announced last year – of reducing the company’s carbon footprint.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Cannery workers document the Chinese history of Alaska’s fishing industry

May 19, 2021 — Like other parts of the country, Asian immigrants have a long history in Alaska. Besides building railroads and working in mines, they also played a major role in the cannery industry.

As Alaska Public Media’s Jeff Chen reports, the Chinese immigrants who arrived before statehood helped grow Alaska’s wild salmon industry into the international, multi-billion-dollar economy that it is today.

Watch the video here

For more information on the historical documentation projects discussed in this video, check out the links below.
https://nncanneryproject.com/
https://chinesecannerylaborers.home.blog

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

The PNW is a leader on forage fish management — but it needs better data

May 18, 2021 — Endangered species like salmon and orca get lots of attention in Washington. We painstakingly track their numbers, and each new baby, individual death or a population crash has the potential to spur international reactions. But some species they rely on rarely achieve recognition.

These small, silvery creatures — herring, anchovies, euchalon and more — shuttle energy through the food web between primary producers, like microscopic plants and algae, and bigger aquatic predators.

“They’re small fish that most people don’t typically see but that really make the marine food web go round for larger organisms … that pay attention to where those things are and where they’re not,” says Dr. Jen Zamon, a research fishery biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center who works on forage fish. “And if they’re moving around, that’s going to change the distribution of everything else that’s feeding upon them.”

“Pretty much anything in the water that has a mouth big enough to fit a forage fish in it eats forage fish,” says Phil Dionne, a research scientist with the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife who specializes in forage fish.

Read the full story at Crosscut

ALASKA: OBI donates first Copper River salmon sale to nonprofit supporting restaurants

May 18, 2021 — The highly anticipated Copper River salmon season, which opens Tuesday, 18 May, has chefs, seafood retailers, and consumers paying top-dollar for the first fish to be caught and sent to the mainland United States from Alaska.

Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based OBI Seafoods opted to donate some of its first fish to the Seattle nonprofit We Got This Seattle, which supports frontline workers and Seattle restaurants.

Read the full story at Seafood Source