Saving Seafood

AquaBounty sends GE salmon samples to customers ahead of first commercial harvest

February 24, 2021 — As AquaBounty nears the first harvest of its genetically engineered AquAdvantage salmon, the company has started sending samples to its first customers this week for a final quality check before orders are finalized.

Seafood experts working with about 10 retail and foodservice companies looking to be the first to carry AquAdvantage salmon will be checking the samples for overall quality, flavor, color, and texture, and selecting which available fish size will work well for their market, according to AquaBounty CEO and President Sylvia Wulf.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Health and wellness playing growing role in seafood purchases, FMI Power of Seafood report finds

February 24, 2021 — Seafood sales at U.S. food retailers ramped up 28.4 percent in 2020 to reach USD 16.6 billion (EUR 13.7 billion), according to a new report.

Sales of the combined category of fresh, frozen, and shelf-stable seafood outpaced sales in the produce, meat, and deli department, according to the newly released edition of the Power of Seafood 2021 report from FMI – The Food Industry Association.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Scientist Profile: A Career Spent Saving Sockeye Salmon in the Pacific Northwest

February 23, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

In the fall of 1991, Snake River sockeye salmon hovered on the brink of extinction. Thousands of the distinctively red fish had once returned more than 900 miles from the Pacific Ocean. They swam up the Columbia, Snake, and Salmon rivers to Redfish Lake in Idaho every year. They passed eight major dams along the way.

Only four made it in 1991.

The dire situation galvanized regulatory and stakeholder groups. That same year,  the Redfish Lake Sockeye Captive Broodstock Program was formed. The program pooled the expertise and efforts of NOAA Fisheries and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. They collaborate with the Bonneville Power Administration, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of Idaho. The program endeavors to help save the signature species by protecting its remaining genetic diversity.

The next step was to revive the species by reproducing them in hatcheries.

Along came Carlin McAuley, a scientist with a rare blend of fisheries experience. For the next 29 years, Carlin led fish culture operations for NOAA Fisheries Redfish Lake sockeye captive broodstock program. He retired in December, but he has left a lasting legacy. While hard work remains, he helped halt the decline and set these sockeye on a path toward recovery. But he wants everyone to know he didn’t do this alone. He played a role amongst a group of very talented, hard-working people at NOAA.

We recently sat down with Carlin to reflect on his career.

Read the full interview here

COVID second wave impacts Bakkafrost’s year-end earnings

February 23, 2021 — Faroe Islands-headquartered Bakkafrost Group saw decreased earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) in the fourth quarter, due in large part to the depressed global market for salmon.

Bakkafrost Group delivered total operational earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of DKK 88.5 million (USD 14.5 million, EUR 11.9 million) in the fourth quarter of 2020, down from DKK 415.3 million (USD 67.9 million, EUR 55.8 million) in the corresponding period of 2019, with large volumes and reduced demand contributing to the downturn.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Warming seas could wipe out Snake River chinook by 2060, scientists predict

February 19, 2021 — Snake River spring-summer chinook could be nearly extinct by 2060 and interventions are “desperately needed” to boost survival in every stage of their lives, scientists warn.

The findings, published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology, modeled survival of eight populations of wild Snake River Basin spring-summer chinook during the ocean phase of their life, under various climate-warming scenarios.

Salmon hatch in rivers, but mature for years at sea before they return to the waters of their birth. It is a perilous life cycle that could become all but impossible for some already fragile salmon populations that make one of the most arduous of all journeys, all the way to Idaho. They travel more than 1,800 miles round trip, climb more than a mile in elevation, and tackle eight dams, each way: four on the main stem Columbia, then four more on the Lower Snake River.

Add just a little ocean warming, and it’s curtains. Populations declined in all eight basin chinook populations for which the scientists ran predictions. Just a little more than 1 degree Celsius temperature increase in sea-surface temperature produced dire effects — with mortality as high as 90% in warmer seas.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Researchers demonstrate new method to track genetic diversity of salmon and trout

February 19, 2021 — Scientists at Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service have demonstrated that DNA extracted from water samples from rivers across Oregon and Northern California can be used to estimate genetic diversity of Pacific salmon and trout.

The findings, just published in the journal Molecular Ecology, have important implications for conservation and management of these , which are threatened by human activities, including those exacerbating climate change.

“There has been a dearth of this kind of data across the Northwest,” said Kevin Weitemier, a postdoctoral fellow at Oregon State and lead author of the paper. “This allows us to get a quick snapshot of multiple populations and species all at once.”

In addition to demonstrating that environmental DNA, or eDNA, can be used to measure , the researchers also made unexpected discoveries about the history of these species, including a connection that links watersheds in northern and southern Oregon.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Washington state salmon report offers warning to Alaska

February 17, 2021 — A report on Washington state’s dwindling wild salmon populations offers a warning to Alaska, where several stocks have registered concerning declines over the past years.

Washington’s 2020 State of the Salmon in Watersheds report chronicled a bleak panorama, with 14 of the state’s species listed as endangered. While conversation efforts have succeeded in revitalizing some salmon runs in Washington, the report said fish stocks in the Pacific Northwest face an uphill battle.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Report claims salmon farming costing economies, society, and the environment billions

February 17, 2021 — The short-term pursuit of profits by salmon producers is creating significant unaccounted environmental and social costs – such as growing mortality rates, damage to local ecosystems, pressure on wild fish stocks, and poor fish welfare – a new report from research organization Just Economics claims.

Commissioned by the Changing Markets Foundation – an organization that “supports NGOs to drive change” – as part of its Fishing the Feed campaign, the “Dead Loss” report calculates the cumulative costs to economies, society, and the environment resulting from the negative impacts of salmon farming at almost USD 50 billion (EUR 41.2 billion) since 2013.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

PFMC: Notice of availability: Review of 2020 Ocean Salmon Fisheries

February 17, 2021 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Salmon Technical Team and staff of the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) have prepared this stock assessment and fishery evaluation document as a postseason review of the 2020 ocean salmon fisheries off the coasts of Washington, Oregon, and California to help assess Council salmon fishery management performance, the status of Council area salmon stocks, and the socioeconomic impacts of salmon fisheries. The Council will formally review this report at its March 2021 meeting prior to the development of management alternatives for the approaching fishing season.

Please visit the Council’s website to get the Review of 2020 Ocean Salmon Fisheries (Published February 2021).

For further information:

Alaskans pursue permanent protections for Bristol Bay

February 16, 2021 — Robin Samuelsen still recalls his first meeting about the prospective Pebble Mine. It was around 2005 or 2006, in Dillingham, Alaska. Listening to an early plan for developing a copper and gold mine in the spawning grounds of Bristol Bay’s abundant salmon, this Curyung tribal chief and commercial fisherman quickly made up his mind. “You’ll kill off our salmon,” Samuelsen remembers saying, adding: “I’ll be up there to stop you.”

More than 15 years later, in November 2020, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) denied the Pebble Mine a key permit, a sharp setback for the mine — though not the first. Already, the mine’s developer, Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP), has filed an appeal challenging that decision. PLP was joined by the State of Alaska, which, in an unusual move, filed its own appeal. Both appeals are currently under review.

Even before these latest developments, however, the people living around the Bristol Bay region had been trying to bring this long-running tug of war to rest once and for all.

Just as he promised at the meeting in Dillingham, Samuelsen is part of a tribally led campaign to garner permanent legal protection for the Bristol Bay region’s thriving wild salmon from large-scale mining proposals — whether that be the Pebble Mine, or whatever comes next. Lindsay Layland, deputy director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay (UTBB), which is involved in the effort, says the goal of the coalition is to find a way to legally prioritize the salmon that mean so much to the people living and fishing in the region.

Read the full story at High Country News