Saving Seafood

Salmon Frenzy in Western Arctic Reaches Historic High

December 18, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The salmon frenzy that started in the western Arctic earlier this year has gone on to reach a historic high.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been studying Arctic salmon populations since 2000, and collects samples every year as part of the Arctic Salmon Project. This year, 2,400 salmon were submitted to the department.

Last year, less than 100 salmon were collected from western Arctic waters.

Karen Dunmall, a biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said they got more salmon from harvesters in the western Arctic and Nunavut this year than in the last 20 years combined.

She said they also found that salmon appeared earlier than normal.

Dunmall said years when they would see lots of salmon were once “exceptional,” but high counts are becoming more of a regular thing.

“So the highs are becoming more high and they’re becoming closer together,” said Dunmall. “This year was an exceptionally high high.”

Dunmall said they heard from people that there was more ice in the water last summer, compared to this year, when there was no ice.

“So the salmon are responding to environmental variability and change,” said Dunmall. “Generally, things are warming up, but there are lots of other cues that the salmon are responding to.”

Dunmall said people caught salmon everywhere in the western Arctic, from Sachs Harbour and Banks Island, to all the way up the Mackenzie River in Fort Smith.

Each community in the Beaufort Delta region offered grocery gift cards in exchange for up to 10 whole salmon samples, as well as an unlimited number of fish heads.

Fisheries and Oceans then evaluates the samples to gather more information about Arctic salmon — including why their numbers are booming in the first place.

‘Pretty Crazy’ Catch In Norman Wells

Norman Wells resident Kevin Kivi has only been fishing for about three years. Last year, he caught no salmon, so it was quite a shock for him catch nearly 100 salmon this summer.

“There was a period where I put my net in for just over a week… and in those eight days it was 73 salmon I caught,” said Kivi.

He said the size of his catch grew over the course of the season, until he was pulling in 17 fish every time. He said catching big schools of fish like that is unusual.

“It was pretty crazy, the amount that were coming,” he said.

Kivi said that usually he catches lots of whitefish, but this year, he only caught about four.

He tends to give a lot of his fish to elders and other community members in town, or keep them for his family.

However, he said he feels it’s important to help Fisheries and Oceans with their research “to find out why they are coming up here.”

Community Helps With Sampling 

The large number of samples meant that the Arctic Salmon Project had to rely on the help of community members to process the whole catch.

The territorial department of Environment and Natural Resources partnered with Mackenzie Mountain School in Norman Wells to help with monitoring.

Kevin Chan, a regional biologist with the department in the Sahtu, said kids at the school played a crucial role in collecting the samples.

The department taught them about the science behind the work of fisheries monitoring and management.

Chan said the students measured the heads, recorded data about where and when the salmon were caught, and collected muscle tissue and bones from the ear of the salmon.

Fisheries and Oceans will be continuing the salmon project next year, and hope harvesters continue to submit salmon samples and inform them if they see anything unusual.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Social unrest in Chile led to USD 656,000 in delayed salmon exports, official says

December 18, 2019 — Social protests and violence that erupted in Chile mid-October, including mobilizations at the salmon-farming area of Quellón and at ports used to move harvested salmon, cost around CLP 500 million (USD 656,485, EUR 589,076) in delays, according to Francisco Muñoz, the economy minister for southern Chile’s Los Lagos region.

The protests caused a 7 percent delay in volume with respect to the contracts that needed to be filled, Muñoz told SeafoodSource. Los Lagos represents 34 percent of all of Chile’s salmon breeding, while the region’s processing plants handle more than 70 percent of the salmon harvested.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

2025 global salmon growth forecasts overestimated, new paper argues

December 17, 2019 — Global salmon growth forecasts to 2025 could be overestimated by 6 to 8 percent, according to a new briefing paper from financial think tank Planet Tracker. The culprit is global warming, the paper argues.

In “Salmon Feels the Heat,” researchers analysed reported fish losses attributed to recurring environmental shocks over the past nine years, as reported by the 10 largest publicly listed salmon producers in Norway, Chile, and the United Kingdom. They found that the aggregated production and earnings losses relative to forecast production reached 5 percent for the period between 2010 to 2019.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Oregon closes salmon fishery after Chinook die-off

December 16, 2019 — The Oregon Department of Wildlife has initiated a total closure of salmon fishing on the state’s North Coast due to a die-off of fall Chinook salmon caused by a parasite, according to The Statesman Journal.

Some two hundred Chinook have been wiped out in the Wilson River by the parasite cryptoba, which was also found in dead salmon in the Nestucca, Trask, and Kilchis river basins. The majority of the salmon were killed before they had the opportunity to spawn. Though the parasite is deadly to fish, it poses no risk to humans.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Can salmon eat their way out of climate change?

December 12, 2019 — Warm waters are a threat to cold water fish like salmon and trout. But a study led by researchers at University of California, Davis suggests that habitats with abundant food sources may help buffer the effects of increasing water temperature.

The study, published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences today, Dec. 10, shows that the availability of food in a natural system—not just stream  and flows—is an essential component of  habitat.

“In the future under climate change, productive ecosystems like spring-fed rivers, floodplains, estuaries and seasonal lagoons will be key links that give  like  and trout a leg up,” said lead author Robert Lusardi, a research ecologist and adjunct faculty at UC Davis and the California Trout Coldwater Fish Scientist.

For the experiment, researchers reared juvenile Coho salmon in a series of enclosures within the Shasta River basin, which is a tributary to the Klamath River. They examined how natural gradients in temperature and prey availability affected summer growth rates and survival.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Report: Europeans eating more seafood, markets importing and exporting more products

December 12, 2019 — There has been a marginal rise in seafood consumption across the 28 E.U. member states, with growth supported by increases in both the domestic supply and imports, the latest analysis published by E.U. fish processors and traders association AIPCE-CEP has found.

According to the “Finfish Study 2019,” total E.U. consumption climbed to almost 12.9 million metric tons (MT) in 2018, equating to 25.1 kilograms per capita. It also calculated that 62.5 percent of the seafood products eaten by Europeans that year were imported.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Endangered Winter-run Chinook Salmon Increase with Millions of Offspring Headed to Sea

December 9, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Biologists have estimated that almost 3.8 million juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon headed down the Sacramento River toward the ocean this year. This is the most offspring in a decade for the highly endangered population.

Typically about 80 percent of the outgoing juveniles have headed for the ocean by this time of year. This year’s total thus far is the most since 2009, when about 5 million juveniles traveled downriver.

The rebounding numbers of winter-run Chinook salmon reflect the critical help of a conservation fish hatchery and balanced water management. More favorable ocean conditions also benefited the parents of this year’s surging crop of juveniles, biologists say. About 8,000 adult fish returned to the Sacramento River to spawn earlier this year, the most since 2006.

“These fish continue to impress us with their resilience and their ability to survive if given the opportunity,” said Maria Rea, Assistant Regional Administrator for NOAA Fisheries’ California Central Valley Office. “By working cooperatively, we can make the best use of our suite of tools to protect and recover these endangered fish.”

Read the full release here

Global salmon production set to rise 6.5% in 2019, the highest increase since 2014

December 6, 2019 — Global production of farmed Atlantic salmon is expected to rise by around 6.5% this year, to approximately 2.6 million metric tons, which would be the highest year-on-year increase since 2014.

This was pointed out by a new report produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The bullish scenario could be offset, however, by a mounting challenge with sea lice in Chile, the report predicted.

For 2020, the FAO foresees Atlantic salmon supply to grow around 4–5% year-on-year, but it noted that the ability of the Chilean industry to bring the biological situation under control will be an important consideration.

In the longer-term, the inherent growth limitations of traditional open net-pen aquaculture will continue to drive the development of alternative regions and methods for salmon production, the FAO said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ALASKA: At Pacific Marine Expo, Pebble worries dominate discussion

December 5, 2019 — Over 500 vendors exhibited at the 2019 Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle in late November. For commercial fishermen, processors and small businesses, it’s the place to be.

The expo was winding down on Saturday morning. But Naknek fisherman Reba Temple was causing a stir with her unusual get-up, made of the mesh netting that salmon tenders use to collect a catch.

“It’s made out of scraps of brailer material. So there’s grommets and mesh brailer material and black straps, and it’s a ballgown,” she said.

Temple said the expo is a great place to catch up with the people and the products in the industry.

“Everyone’s here, you can talk to your processors, you can talk to your friends, see hydraulic pumps cut open so you actually know how they work,” she said.

Stickers and signs saying NO PEBBLE MINE adorned booths, as they have for the past decade. The mine would tap large copper and gold deposits near the headwaters of two major river systems in Bristol Bay. And as the Trump administration breathes new life into the project, many people here are worried.

“Nothing in the world has zero risk — especially when you have a mine of this size with the existing data that show very definitively that there will be impacts,” said Daniel Schindler, director of the University of Washington’s Alaska Salmon Program.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Fishing groups sue federal agencies over latest water plan for California

December 4, 2019 — The fracas over California’s scarce water supplies will tumble into a San Francisco courtroom after a lawsuit was filed this week claiming the federal government’s plan to loosen previous restrictions on water deliveries to farmers is a blueprint for wiping out fish.

Environmental and fishing groups sued the the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Monday for allegedly failing to protect chinook salmon, steelhead trout and delta smelt.

They believe the voluminous government proposal, known as a biological opinion, sacrifices protections for the imperiled fish without adequate justification so that Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities can have more water.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charges that the government’s plan to boost agricultural deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is an arbitrary and capricious failure to uphold the Endangered Species Act.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle