Saving Seafood

Fear and fishing: Tiny Alaskan village tries to manage influx of commercial fishermen amid COVID-19

June 24, 2020 — “It’s just how the earth is supposed to be,” says third-generation commercial fishing boat captain Katherine Carscallen. She’s talking about her homeland, Bristol Bay, Alaska. Every June and July, more than half of the world’s supply of sockeye salmon are pulled from these waters.

It sounds excessive, but it’s not; in a highly regulated practice, thousands of fish are left to return home and spawn, allowing the industry to support the region for generations.

The yearly salmon fishery brings in an estimated $200 million in direct revenue to the community of Bristol Bay, says Norm Van Vactor, president and CEO of Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation.

“Overall, it’s a multi-billion dollar fishery,” he says of the thousands of fisherman who come from all over the world to fish for salmon. On average, 10,000 fishermen come each year — but oftentimes that number is upwards of 15,000. In addition, 6,000 fish processing workers also descend on the tiny community.

Read the full story at ABC News

What is Nearshore Habitat and Why Does it Matter to Orcas?

June 23, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

There is an especially valuable environment in Puget Sound made up of the beaches, bluffs, inlets, and river deltas: the nearshore. Nearshore habitat matters to Southern Resident killer whales because their primary prey, Chinook salmon, need them to grow and find safety when they are young. Unfortunately, we have been losing these habitats in Puget Sound to industrial and residential development and agriculture.

Southern Resident Killer Whales eat salmon, primarily Chinook salmon. The whales search out and rely upon the ever-changing abundance of many different Chinook salmon runs up and down the Pacific Coast. Puget Sound Chinook salmon are one of the most important of these for the Southern Residents’ recovery. Puget Sound Chinook salmon, however, are themselves threatened with extinction.

Killer whales eat Chinook salmon when the fish have grown into adults three years old and weighing close to 30 pounds. The salmon are headed back from the ocean through Puget Sound to their home rivers to lay their eggs. To make it to adulthood, though, these fish need to survive their adolescence as “juveniles” or “fry.” That’s where the nearshore zone comes in.

Tiny young Chinook salmon emerge from the gravel where they hatched from eggs in the rivers of Puget Sound and the Salish Sea—the Skagit, Elwha, Nisqually, and others. Then the young fish follow one of several different strategies to grow as juveniles before heading out to the ocean. They can rear in the river and freshwater floodplains or head downstream to the great tidal river deltas. They can also head all the way out into Puget Sound looking for safety along the shore in pocket estuaries, kelp and eelgrass beds, coastal creeks, or lagoons.

Read the full release here

150 cannery workers are in forced quarantine at L.A. hotel without pay, suit claims

June 23, 2020 — About 150 seasonal employees hired to work at a salmon cannery in Alaska are instead being forced to quarantine without pay at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport after three of them tested positive for the coronavirus, a lawsuit claims.

The workers, most of them from Mexico and Southern California, were hired June 2 by North Pacific Seafoods to work at its Red Salmon Cannery in Naknek, Alaska, through August, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in San Francisco Superior Court.

Instead, they’ve been stuck at the Crowne Plaza LAX Hotel since June 10, attorney Jonathan Davis said Saturday.

“Tomorrow is Father’s Day,” Davis said. “I have two young sons, and I’d be sick to my stomach if I knew one of my children was being held in this type of situation.”

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

Alaska’s salmon industry contends with a rumor from China that you can get COVID-19 from seafood

June 19, 2020 — China has stopped imports from European salmon suppliers due to fears of a connection between salmon imports and coronavirus, according to a report by Reuters. State-run newspapers in China reported the coronavirus was discovered on chopping boards used for imported salmon at a market in Beijing. The initial cluster of infections came from the same market, and some fear the discovery of virus there indicates a second wave of the coronavirus in China.

Several fisheries organizations are pushing back against those reports. The National Fisheries Institute compiled statements on Tuesday  from health professionals and agencies like the World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration saying there is no connection between seafood and COVID-19.

Fish marketing experts are assessing how the rumors could affect Alaska salmon’s image in the world. If people think eating salmon could put them at increased risk of contracting the virus — even if that information is incorrect — that could harm markets.

“Any time there’s information or misinformation, we have to wait and see how consumers respond to that,” said Andy Wink, executive director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association.

Read the full story at KTOO

Norway Wants To Resume Salmon Sales After China All-clear

June 18, 2020 — Norway said Wednesday it wanted to resume exports of its salmon to China after Beijing appeared to rule it out as a possible source of COVID-19.

Norwegian salmon came under scrutiny after a recently discovered cluster of new coronavirus cases was reportedly traced to the Xinfadi meat market in Beijing and a chopping board used for cutting up imported salmon.

However, Norwegian and, crucially, Chinese health officials appear to have now given the salmon the all-clear.

“We currently have no evidence that salmon is a carrier or an intermediate carrier of the coronavirus,” the deputy director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shi Guoqing, said on Tuesday.

Stressing that no case of contamination by food had been reported, the authorities responsible for food safety in Norway said their salmon was fit for consumption.

Read the full story at the International Business Times

Salmon Farmers Hit by China Boycott After New Virus Outbreak

June 17, 2020 — Salmon farmers have been hit by restrictions in China, where a new outbreak of the coronavirus was blamed on imported fish.

The red-fleshed fish is now being boycotted in China after new infections were traced back to the chopping board of a seller of imported salmon at a market in the capital. Orders have been canceled and “it’s difficult to ship fish to Beijing” in the near term, said Anders Snellingen, manager for global operations at the Seafood Council for Norway, the world’s biggest producer.

China still represents a small share of global salmon demand, making up less than 5% last year, but it’s also one of the fastest growing markets and fish farmers were already feeling the squeeze of pandemic restrictions.

“We had to rebook our shipments to China and direct it toward other markets,” Grieg Seafood ASA spokeswoman Kristina Furnes said by phone. While there is now closer scrutiny of salmon, the same applies to other food imports as well, she said. Grieg doesn’t export large volumes to China and hasn’t had any cases of Covid-19 in its organization.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

Alaska’s Rural Fishing Communities Are The Next Front Line Of COVID-19

June 8, 2020 — In a normal season, the village of Naknek in southwestern Alaska would be bustling by the end of May, with people arriving from all over the world to work Bristol Bay’s renowned salmon run.

The village’s population of around 500 swells as over 13,000 workers come to Bristol Bay to spend about six weeks fishing, canning and cleaning the products of the world’s primary source of wild-caught sockeye salmon.

This year, with the season opening just days away, “it still feels like a ghost town,” said Nels Ure, a second-generation Bristol Bay fisherman. Because of the pandemic, “it’s not business as usual.”

Seafood industry workers are under 14-day quarantine orders once they arrive in Alaska from elsewhere. Cannery workers are being quarantined either in hotels in Anchorage before they arrive at the bay, or with a group of other newly arrived employees at their facility, so they can start work while in quarantine together. Fishermen are expected to quarantine on their vessels, either in the boatyard or on the water ― or they can stay in their seasonal cabins or homes around the bay, as long as they are self-isolated.

Read the full story at the Huffington Post

ALASKA: Bristol Bay Bracing for a Season Like None Other

June 4, 2020 — For millions of wild sockeye salmon returning to Bristol Bay in 2020 it will be the traditional journey, but for thousands of people coming to harvest and process the world’s largest run of red salmon it will be a fishing season like none other.

Veteran harvesters like Robert Heyano of Dillingham, said he plans to fish the Nushagak area of Bristol Bay, just as he has since he was a boy on board his dad’s drift gillnetter. “I’m not looking forward to it this year, not with this virus,” he said. “I’d like to see the fishery conducted in a safe manner.”

Heyano said he had not heard fishermen say outright that they would not fish this year because of COVID-19. “It all depends how safe they feel,” he said. “If we could focus our energy on the safest practices that would go a long way,” he said.

Read the full story at Fishermen’s News

MAINE: This Atlantic salmon has returned to the Penobscot more than once. Here’s why it’s special.

June 4, 2020 — Atlantic salmon are returning to the Penobscot River at a steady pace thus far. Fisheries staffers from the Maine Department of Marine Resources said the 176 salmon that have been counted thus far are the fifth most to have reached the counting facility by May 29 in the 42 years that salmon have been counted on the river.

Among those fish was a rarity: A male that was making a return trip to the river to spawn.

Jason Valliere, a fisheries resource scientist for the DMR’s Division of Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat, said not many salmon are able to head to the open ocean twice and return to the Penobscot successfully, and called the fish “extra special.”

“We previously captured this fish on June 10, 2018, when we tagged him and sent him to Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery [in Orland] as a brood fish to support the smolt stocking program, a program that he is a member of. He was stocked out as a smolt in 2016,” Valliere said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News