October 22, 2019 — Canada’s Liberal Party and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have won national elections that saw them lose their majority, but retain enough support to return to power with a minority government.
The outcome may have significant repercussions for Canada’s fishing and aquaculture sectors, as the Liberal Party platform called for both more marine protected areas and a shift away from net-pen farming to land-based systems.
October 22, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
A vintner in Northern California is upgrading a concrete fish barrier to return native salmon and steelhead to valuable spawning habitat that has been blocked for nearly a century. A cooperative “Safe Harbor” agreement between the landowner Barbara Banke, Chairman and proprietor of Jackson Family Wines, and NOAA Fisheries and other state and local agencies has fostered the improvements. These agreements provide incentives to private landowners who help recover threatened and endangered species.
The story begins in the late 1800s, when two real estate speculators, F.E. Kellogg and W.A. Stuart, bought part of a Spanish land grant in Sonoma County and built a post office, general store, school, cottages, a hotel, and a diversion structure on a nearby stream to provide water for residents and visitors to the town.
Bypassed by the railroads, however, the little town of Kellogg eventually faded away, its remains razed by a wildfire in the 1960s that left only a handful of homes, agricultural buildings, and the water diversion structure and associated water system. Like many such remnant barriers, the concrete barrier reduced stream flow and blocked native fish, such as Central California Coast (CCC) steelhead and CCC coho salmon, a critically endangered species, from reaching their spawning habitat.
October 18, 2019 — A California congressman on Thursday, 17 October filed a bill in Congress that he claims would restore and protect the country’s salmon rivers and watersheds.
By drafting H.R. 4723, dubbed the Salmon Focused Investments in Sustainable Habitats (Salmon FISH) Act, U.S. Representative Jared Huffman in a statement said he wants to make the rivers that support salmon populations more resilient. The Democrat’s bill would call on NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate core abundance areas as “Salmon Conservation Areas” and the purest ones as “Salmon Strongholds.”
October 18, 2019 — More than 9 million acres of Southeast Alaska’s 16.7 million-acre Tongass National Forest could lose clearcutting protections with a proposed repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule.
The U.S. Forest Service will publish its draft environmental impact statement in the Federal Register this week with a preferred alternative to remove all protections for the roadless acres. A 60-day comment period will follow publication.
The statement provides analysis of six alternatives related to the management of the Tongass.
The alternatives range from no action to the removal of the Tongass from the 2001 Roadless Rule (details below). The Department of Agriculture has identified Alternative 6, which is a full exemption, as its preferred alternative. A final decision is expected in 2020.
“As an Alaska salmon troller, I am increasingly dependent on coho salmon reared in the watersheds of Southeast Alaska. Coho live at least a year in fresh water and need the habitat provided by old growth forests,” said 2007 NF Highliner Eric Jordan of Sitka, Alaska. “Meanwhile, the forest service still has a huge list of salmon habitat restoration projects needing funding from the previous era of Industrial clear cut logging in Southeast Alaska. “
October 18, 2019 — The tide is turning for recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) and this emerging technology has the potential to change the face of aquaculture over the next decade, claims a new report from Rabobank.
Analysis in the “Aquaculture 2.0: RAS Is Driving Change” report, compiled by RaboResearch Food & Agribusiness, states that while the “RAS concept is still under development and the future holds uncertainties,” the number of proposed projects to farm seafood species using this technology is increasing day by day, with the majority of ventures focused on salmon farming.
October 17, 2019 — Fishing for wild salmon in British Columbia is what inspired famed Hollywood television writer and producer David E. Kelley to enter the aquaculture industry six years ago.
At the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California on 16 October, Kelley – who is the producer of TV shows such “Big Little Lies” and “Ally McBeal” – explained how he became founder and chairman of Riverence, a sustainable steelhead trout farming operation in Filer, Idaho, as well as a salmon and trout egg producer in Olympia, Washington.
October 17, 2019 — The Pacific Seafood Processors Association (PSPA) successfully transferred the clientship and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certificate for Alaska salmon over to the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF) as of 1 October.
The development brings about the conclusion of “a deliberate and cooperative transfer process,” PSPA and AFDF said in a press release.
October 15, 2019 — Native tribes in the US Pacific Northwest and First Nations in Canada have jointly declared a state of emergency due to diminishing salmon stocks in watersheds that cross the US and Canadian border.
According to a press release from the Lummi Nation, indigenous groups from Alaska, Washington and British Columbia made the declaration due to “rapid rate of destructive resource extraction in the waters and lands these nations have called home for thousands of years”.
The groups have committed “to work together to protect, defend, and assert their human rights by protecting clean water and the health and habitat of the wild salmon stocks”.
October 15, 2019 — The Pacific Seafood Processors Association (PSPA) has transferred the clientship and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certificate for Alaska salmon to the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF), the groups announced Friday.
The MSC certificate for the Alaska salmon fishery remains unchanged, said AFDF.
The Alaska salmon fishery originally received the sustainability certification from the MSC in 2000. In April, the Alaska salmon fishery successfully completed the full 5-year re-certification under MSC. The current certificate is valid through Nov. 11, 2023.
AFDF is also the client for the MSC certification of Pacific cod and the client for the Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM) certification of Pacific cod and Alaska salmon.
October 15, 2019 — In the early 1970s, Alaska’s salmon harvests were at an all-time low. Annual statewide harvests for all salmon species were down to nearly 20 million fish. As all Alaskans trying to fish for their business or sport or to fill a freezer at that time know, the lack of reliable harvests resulted in deep and painful impacts in our state and communities. Selective openings and even complete fishery closures failed to reverse the decline. So, too, did efforts to stop foreign vessels from fishing in state waters. It was a time, as the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner observed in 1970, “dominated by tragedy, disaster, intrigue and double-dealing.”
Undaunted, Alaskans banded together to overhaul state fisheries. In 1969, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game started a rehabilitation program to build fish ladders, stock lakes with smolt, and remove log jams and other obstacles from salmon-producing streams. In 1973, voters amended the state constitution’s “no exclusive right of fishery” clause, putting into place limited-entry and hatchery production. And in 1976, Alaska’s congressional delegation helped pass the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which established a federally managed exclusive economic zone up to 200 miles offshore.
To protect wild salmon stocks from overfishing and to support the sport, subsistence and commercial users whose livelihoods depended on the salmon fishery, the Alaska Legislature expanded the hatchery program. Starting in 1974, Fish and Game enabled legislation providing authority for private non-profit, or PNP, hatcheries to operate and to harvest salmon for brood stock and cost recovery. By 1977, the first hatchery fish had returned from the ocean, relieving harvest pressure on wild stocks.