Saving Seafood

Salmon’s Getting More Expensive. Blame Bloodsucking Sea Lice.

July 23, 2024 — Health-conscious consumers who covet its brain-enriching Omega-3 have helped make salmon one of the fastest-growing food sources on the planet. Victoria Beckham told The Wall Street Journal last year she considers it a dietary staple. She’s not alone. In America, salmon is the second-most popular seafood after shrimp.

The fish frenzy has driven prices higher and spawned new billionaires, such as Gustav Magnar Witzøe, a 31-year-old Norwegian heir to a salmon fortune and a fashion model who made a splash at this year’s Met Gala in a salmon-colored Versace cape.

Norway’s fjords and coasts are the farmed fish’s top habitat, with around 500 million salmon swimming in the chilly waters—a ratio of roughly 90 Norwegian salmon to every Norwegian human.

Atlantic salmon farming, introduced as overfishing and river pollution shrank the wild salmon population, increased 74 times from 1985 to 2022. Salmon are bred in tanks on land, then moved into the ocean, where they swim in giant ring-shaped nets until they’re ready for human consumption.

But these days, the industry is swimming upstream.

Read the full article at Wall Street Journal

Fish are shrinking around the world. Here’s why scientists are worried.

May 6, 2024 — There’s something fishy going on in the water. Across Earth’s oceans, fish are shrinking — and no one can agree why.

It’s happening with salmon near the Arctic Circle and skate in the Atlantic. Nearly three-fourths of marine fish populations sampled worldwide have seen their average body size dwindle between 1960 and 2020, according to a recent analysis.

Overfishing and human-caused climate change are decreasing the size of adult fish, threatening the food supply of more than 3 billion people who rely on seafood as a significant source of protein.

As fish get smaller, there is less meat to cook per catch. So scientists are working to piece together why exactly fish respond to rising ocean temperatures by getting smaller.

“This is a pretty fundamental question,” said Lisa Komoroske, a conservation biologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “But we still don’t understand why.”

Read the full story at the Washington Post

$7 million to be distributed for Oregon salmon disaster relief

May 6, 2024 — The Oregon Spend Plan will designate over $7 million in disaster funding for commercial fishermen, processors, and others in the fishing community after the salmon fishery’s value declined by millions between 2017 and 2020. The relief is now ready for public review. The disaster funds are in response to the 2021 disaster declaration for the fishery for 2018, 2019, and 2020.

In Oct. 2021, Oregon’s then-Governor Brown submitted a meticulous request to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce for a catastrophic regional fishery disaster declaration under section 315 of the Magnuson-Stevens Management Act. The request was based on a comprehensive analysis of the poor performance of Oregon’s Ocean commercial salmon fisheries south of Cape Falcon, which resulted from reduced allowable catches of Klamath and Sacramento fall Chinook, anomalous ocean conditions, and spatial shifts in ocean distribution of these migratory species.

Finally, on Oct. 10, 2023, the Secretary of Commerce decided on eligibility for the 2018-2020 Oregon ocean chinook salmon fishery. The funds were appropriated through the 2023 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. The funds are intended to be used for activities that restore the fishery or prevent a similar failure in the future and assist fishing communities affected by such failure.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

US federal government takes over Cook Inlet salmon management from Alaskan state oversight

May 3, 2024 — NOAA Fisheries will take over management of commercial and recreational salmon fishing in the Cook Inlet from the U.S. state of Alaska in June, the agency announced this week.

The action follows more than a decade of legal maneuvering, beginning with the United Cook Inlet Drift Association (UCIDA) suing NOAA Fisheries for not developing a management plan for the Cook Inlet exclusive economic zone.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

NOAA issues final ruling on Cook Inlet federal fishing waters

May 2, 2024 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a final ruling on a disputed commercial salmon fishing area in Cook Inlet.

The Cook Inlet Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ, starts three miles off shore and is where drift gillnet fishermen catch the majority of fish. In 2020, commercial fishermen sued over management of the fishery. Courts and fishermen went back and forth, and a year ago, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council was tasked with choosing a new management plan. In an unprecedented move, the council took no action, which turned the decision over to NOAA Fisheries.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Salmon populations are struggling, bringing economic woes for California’s fishing fleet

April 6, 2024 — On the docks at Pillar Point Harbor, fishing crews have been arriving with loads of freshly caught Dungeness crab.

The season is almost over, and this time of year the harbor would typically be bustling with crews preparing their vessels and gear for catching salmon. But this year, those in the fishing fleet of Half Moon Bay — as well as other California marinas — expect to catch very few, if any, of the popular fish.

The season typically runs from May to October, but California Chinook salmon populations have declined so severely in recent years that fishery authorities are considering whether to adopt severe restrictions this season or impose a ban on fishing altogether for the second consecutive year.

For those whose livelihoods revolve around catching salmon, the shutdown has brought hard times and widespread frustration.

“It’s devastating. It’s absolutely devastating,” said commercial fisherman Chris Pedersen. “They’re literally killing the salmon fleet.”

Pedersen, who is 64 and has been fishing for salmon since he was a boy, turned to other work over the past year to make ends meet. He has fiberglassed boats, delivered meals and built sheds at a horse ranch.

“You’ve got to do whatever you can to live,” he said.

As he prepared to unload the day’s catch from a 50-foot boat, Pedersen said that selling crab has brought him income but can’t make up for the loss of salmon.

Like other salmon fishers at Pillar Point, Pedersen lays much of the blame on California water managers, who he says send too much water to farms and cities and deprive rivers of the cold flows salmon need to survive. When salmon suffer, he said, “you’re robbing us as fishermen.”

Read the full article at The Union Democrat

Just How Healthy Is Salmon?

January 8, 2024 — Salmon is good for you — that part we know.

“Fish is one of the few animal foods consistently linked to health benefits, and salmon is at the top of my list when I recommend fish to people,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a distinguished professor and the director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.

But choosing which type to eat for your health — sockeye or coho, wild or farmed — isn’t so obvious. Researchers have found that the nutritional value of salmon can vary depending on the species. And there is a consumer perception that farmed and wild-caught salmon differ in terms of their nutrients and levels of contaminants — beliefs that research partly supports.

From healthy fats to heavy metals, here are answers to all your salmon-related questions.

Read the full article at The New York Times

Merry seafood outlook expected for US retailers this holiday season

December 21, 2023 — Consultants and grocers are anticipating higher sales of seafood in U.S. retail stores over the holidays, as research points to many Americans wanting to cook at home more during the year-end break.

“We expect seafood sales to continue their positive trends throughout November and December,” Fresh Thyme Meat and Seafood Sales, Merchandising, Marketing, and Procurement Lead Jason Resner told SeafoodSource. “It might not be [the increase] of 35 percent or more we saw last year, but we still expect double-digit sales comps in fresh seafood such as salmon, as well as crab and shrimp.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource 

More Alaska groups join salmon bycatch lawsuit

December 8, 2023 — Alaska Native and fisheries conservation organizations have gone to federal court in support of a lawsuit challenging how the National Marine Fisheries Service manages North Pacific trawl fisheries.

The amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief is a response to the lawsuit brought by the Association of Village Council Presidents, Tanana Chiefs Conference, and city officials of Bethel, Alaska, against federal fisheries managers. The lawsuit alleges that NMFS has “violated the National Environmental Policy Act by authorizing large-scale industrial fishing companies to catch billions of pounds of fish without appropriately considering the impacts in light of rapid environmental changes, ongoing species collapses, and closures on in-river salmon fisheries,” according to the supporters.

The new brief was filed by the groups Native Peoples Action, Ocean Conservancy, Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, SalmonState and Alaska Marine Conservation Council in United States District Court in Alaska.

It’s the latest legal maneuver in the ongoing fight between the trawler fleet and other advocacy groups over salmon bycatch and environmental effects.

“If successful, the litigation could lead to better consideration of the impacts of industrial fishing and precautionary measures designed to minimize bycatch and killing of species like salmon, herring, crab and halibut,” according to a joint statement by SalmonState and the allied groups.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Canadian anti-salmon farming billboards removed for false claims about U.S. operations

December 7, 2023 — Anti-salmon farming billboards in Canada have been removed for falsely claiming that “open-net pen salmon farms are banned in the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, California, and Alaska.” The following was released by the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance:

Anti-salmon farming billboards around Ottawa have been removed for false advertising. The false statements included claims from eco-activist group Wild First that “Open-net pen salmon farms are banned in Washington, Oregon, California, and Alaska.” Based on this inaccurate information, the ads called on Ottawa to “remove all salmon farms from B.C. waters.”

The letter of complaint filed by the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA) has provided clear evidence that the farming of finfish (including salmon) is not banned in California, Oregon, or Washington. In Alaska, net pens are commonly used to raise salmon for commercial purposes.

“In an age of misinformation, we are pleased that the right thing happened – false ads that did not stand up to the truth test were removed,” says Tim Kennedy, CAIA President and CEO. “Activists with deep pockets who don’t live or work where our salmon farmers live and work are trying to drive policy decisions in Ottawa that would cancel people’s livelihoods using a storyline based on old data and false information.”

“These anti-salmon billboards included statements by the activist group Wild First that were both false and potentially economically harmful to British Columbia businesses and organizations and their employees that the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance represents. Modern, sustainable, in-ocean salmon aquaculture is the second biggest agri-food export in British Columbia and key to the blue economy future for people living in rural, coastal and Indigenous communities.”

Read the full release from the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance