Saving Seafood

NOAA Fisheries Adopts New Plan for West Coast Ecosystem Science and Management

June 18, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

When an unusually strong marine heat wave warmed the ocean off the West Coast from late 2014 to 2016, the effects reverberated through the marine ecosystem.

One of the telltale changes was in copepods, tiny crustaceans that provide essential food for juvenile salmon as they first enter the ocean. Instead of energy-rich copepods that help the fish grow quickly, leaner copepods with less energy began to dominate. That left young salmon facing tougher odds in the ocean.

In the following years, salmon returns fell to some of their lowest levels in a decade.

Deciphering, and even anticipating such ecosystem-level effects is a goal of a new plan produced by NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region. The Western Regional Implementation Plan for Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management provides steps for helping West Coast fishermen and fisheries managers make sustainable business and conservation decisions that maximize the value of fisheries while protecting the ecosystems they depend on.

Read the full release here

Emergency measures introduced to protect UK salmon stocks

June 18, 2019 — An emergency bylaw to protect salmon in the River Severn and its estuary has been introduced by the United Kingdom’s Environment Agency after a review of recent data showed a significant reduction in the stock.

Under the new measure that took effect on 15 June, 2019, draft-net and putcher fishing in the Severn estuary is prohibited, while lave-net fishing is to operate on a catch-and-release basis only. The bylaw also makes catch and release for rod-and-line fishing compulsory on the whole of the Severn for the remainder of the current rod season, which lasts until 7 October.

The move to protect this salmon population comes after figures on the stock levels for the Severn, Wye, and Usk showed numbers were extremely low.

“This has not been an easy decision to take. We have looked at other options, such as reduced catch limits for both net and rod fishermen and voluntary catch and release for lave-net and rod fishermen, but felt that stopping any salmon being taken on the Severn this season through a byelaw was necessary to protect salmon in the river,” David Hudson, environment manager for Gloucestershire, said.

Hudson explained that fishing was only one of a number of factors that have led to the fall in salmon stocks in the Severn, and highlighted that environmental factors at critical times in the salmon’s life cycle also play a part.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US senators take aim at Canadian mines’ impact on salmon

June 17, 2019 — A bipartisan group of US senators has written to the premier of Canada’s British Columbia province, airing concerns about the effects the country’s mines are having on salmon populations in four US states.

The eight senators, from Alaska, Idaho, Washington and Montana, asked John Horgan, the province’s premier, to undertake “dedicated efforts to monitor transboundary water quality”.

“While we appreciate Canada’s engagement to date, we remain concerned about the lack of oversight of Canadian mining projects near multiple transboundary rives that originate in B.C. and flow into our four US states,” the senators wrote.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

WASHINGTON: Northwest States, Tribes Apply to Feds For OK to Kill More Columbia Sea Lions

June 14, 2019 — The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), along with a consortium of state and tribal partners, today submitted an expanded application to lethally remove California and Steller sea lions preying on threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead runs in the Columbia River and its tributaries.

California sea lions — and increasingly, Steller sea lions — have been observed in growing numbers in the Columbia River basin, especially in the last decade. These sea lions prey heavily on salmon and steelhead runs listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), including thousands of fish at Bonneville Dam each year.

The impacts come at a time when many Chinook salmon runs are already at historic lows.

The recovery of sea lions since the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) in 1972 is a success story, said Kessina Lee, Region 5 director with WDFW. But that recovery has also brought challenges.

“The vast majority of these animals remain in coastal and offshore waters, but several hundred have established themselves in upriver locations,” Lee said. “Where salmon and steelhead numbers are low, any unmanaged increase in predation can cause serious problems.”

Predator management is a key part of a multi-faceted effort to restore salmon and steelhead populations in the Pacific Northwest.

Read the full story at Northwest Sportsman

Season of uncertainty: Alaska braces for seafood tariffs

June 14, 2019 — Fisheries are always fraught with uncertainties, but there is an added element this year: trade tariffs on Alaska’s largest export: seafood. “The industry is accustomed to dealing with uncertainty about harvest levels, prices and currency rates. The trade disputes just add another layer to that,” said Garrett Evridge, an economist with the McDowell Group.

Tariffs of up to 25 percent on U.S. seafood products going to China went into effect last July and more are being threatened now by the Trump administration. China is Alaska’s biggest seafood buyer purchasing 54 percent of Alaska seafood exports in 2017 valued at $1.3 billion.

“It’s important to remember that a tariff is simply a tax and it increases the prices of our products,” Evridge explained. “As Alaskans we are sensitive to any increase in the price of our seafood because we are competing on a global stage. And right now we have tariffs imposed on seafood from the Chinese side and the U.S. side.”

In terms of Alaska salmon, the new taxes could hit buyers of pinks and chums especially hard. Managers expect huge runs of both this summer and much of the pack will be processed into various products in China and then returned to the United States.

“There is uncertainty as to whether or not those products will be tariffed and the Trump administration has indicated they want to tariff all products from China,” Evridge said.

For salmon, in a typical year Alaska contributes 30 to 50 percent of the world’s wild harvest. But when you include farmed salmon, Evridge said, Alaska’s contribution is closer to 15 percent of the global salmon supply.

The Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game is predicting a total catch of 213.2 million salmon this year, more than 80 percent higher than in 2018.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Working the night shift: Snagging salmon in Seward

June 13, 2019 — It’s midnight, and Seward is getting sleepy. Orange campfire embers smolder along the flat black water of Resurrection Bay as the last bits of midsummer twilight fade from the sky.

A group of men sit near a motorhome speaking Filipino as “No Touch” by the Juan Dela Cruz Band drifts down the rocky beach like campfire smoke. A dozen fishermen stand in the water nearby, their headlamps cutting through the night as they cast comically oversized treble hooks into the black before retrieving them violently in hopes of blindly gouging the belly or back of a big chinook.

“Fish on!” someone shouts, and now everyone is wide awake.

Welcome to Snag City.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

The Beyond Meat of Fish Is Coming

June 13, 2019 — Salmon has become the guinea pig of the seas when it comes to using technology to supplement falling fish populations. Now it’s moved onto land—and into the laboratory.

The fatty orange fish was the second-most-consumed seafood in the U.S. in 2017, after shrimp, and per capita consumption increased 11 percent, to 2.41 pounds per person, from the prior year, according to the National Fisheries Institute, an industry group. Globally, demand for salmon has skyrocketed, along with that for all fish, fueling overfishing and threatening supply.

Industrial-scale salmon farming, once seen as a solution, has its own problems. Massive stocks of smaller fish are depleted to feed farmed salmon, and parasites flourish in salmon pens where farmers use pesticides, contributing to pollution and ecosystem destruction. Sea lice have infested farms in Norway and Scotland in recent years, and a deadly algae bloom killed salmon in Chile, a top farmed-salmon producer. Farmed fish sometimes escape, too, contaminating nearby wild salmon.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

Northern Maine was once home to robust salmon population. Now a new strategy could bring them back

June 12, 2019 — A new generation of Atlantic salmon is getting acquainted with the headwaters of the Aroostook River watershed this spring, as a coalition of organizations works on a long-term effort to restore populations of the fish in northern Maine.

More than 40,000 newly hatched Atlantic salmon were released into tributary streams of the Aroostook River in early June. They are the first cohort of hatches sourced from wild, genetically diverse salmon in the greater St. John River watershed, said David Putnam, a member of the volunteer-run Atlantic Salmon for Northern Maine group.

Most salmon releases have relied on captive-raised fish, and releases over the last several decades in northern Maine and elsewhere have not been successful in establishing new populations of the fish, Putnam said.

These new fish represent a “new strategy,” said Putnam, a long-time natural history and sciences instructor at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. The young salmon come from eggs taken from wild fish that were “selected to get a broad genetic diversity from St. John River salmon,” Putnam said.

The young salmon “fry” were released without being fed in a hatchery and should have a better chance at long-term survival and adaptation than hatchery-raised offspring, Putnam said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

ALASKA: Feds still working on plan for $56M in disaster relief funds

June 12, 2019 — Alaska fishermen are still awaiting disaster relief funds for the 2016 pink salmon run failure that was the worst in 40 years.

Congress approved $56 million that year for Alaska fishermen, processors and communities hurt by the fishery flop in three Alaska regions: Kodiak, Prince William Sound and Lower Cook Inlet.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game and National Marine Fisheries Service finalized plans and procedures for payouts last August. Since then, the paper push has stalled on various federal agency desks.

NMFS missed a promised June 1 sign off deadline and now says the funds will be released on the first of July, according to Rep. Louise Stutes of Kodiak, who has been tracking the progress.

“It affects all the cannery workers all the processors, all the businesses in the community,” she said. “This has a big trickle-down effect.”

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Canadian Farmed Salmon Will Face Additional Tests for Viruses

June 10, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Fisheries and Oceans Canada will test for two foreign strains of piscine orthoreovirus in young Atlantic salmon before they are transferred to ocean-based salmon farms after being told by the Federal Court to tighten its policy.

Salmon farms will also be required to test salmon in net-pen farms for jaundice and heart and skeletal muscle inflammation, which some scientists believe is associated with a native strain of piscine orthoreovirus, also known as PRV.

“These are two key measures that reflect precaution where there is some debate about the science,” said Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

The Icelandic strain of PRV was found in a Washington state hatchery last year, leading to the destruction of 800,000 smolts. The Norwegian strain has caused harm to farmed and wild Atlantic salmon in Norway, leading to significant production losses.

“We are going to require testing (in hatcheries) for both of those strains because we are concerned about them,” said Wilkinson.

Earlier this year, a federal scientific advisory panel found that the native strain of PRV is widely distributed in B.C.’s coastal waters, but poses a minimal threat to Fraser River sockeye. B.C. PRV is commonly found in farmed Atlantic salmon and wild Chinook salmon, but in laboratory testing its presence is not predictive of disease, they said.

Nonetheless, testing for heart and skeletal muscle inflammation and jaundice will address concerns raised by independent biologist Alexandra Morton that the native strain of PRV is affecting farmed salmon, Wilkinson said.

The Namgis First Nation went to court last year seeking an injunction to prevent salmon from being transferred to farms in their traditional territory without having been tested for PRV. Ecojustice – acting for Morton – sued the federal government for an order to test for the virus.

In February, the Federal Court gave Ottawa four months to come up with a testing regimen, ruling that failure to test for PRV did not comply with the precautionary principle.

“This is absolutely amazing and wonderful news,” said Morton.

“While I am waiting to see who will conduct the tests and what the protocol will be when they find the virus, I recognize this as a bold and important step that no other minister of Fisheries and Oceans has taken.”

These interim measures will be in place while the federal government seeks public input on a pair of policy proposals aimed at reducing the risks of salmon farming.

“Salmon farmers already test for several known pathogens and these new tests will become part of that process,” said B.C. Salmon Farmers Association spokesman Shawn Hall.

“It’s our understanding that the native strain of PRV is in the water naturally and that is it benign.”

Failing to test for B.C. PRV is a missed opportunity to fill in gaps in the science about that strain, said David Suzuki Foundation science adviser John Werring.

“It is heartening to hear that the minister for Fisheries and Oceans Canada acknowledges that there is a great deal of uncertainty concerning PRV and the potential impacts this virus may have on both wild and farmed fish,” Werring said.

The Fisheries Department has also struck three working groups comprised of government scientists, First Nations, environmental groups and the farm industry to provide input on permanent changes to the department’s risk-management policy, specifically the switch to area-based management of aquaculture, land-and oceanbased farm design and fish health.

Results of a study on new and emerging aquaculture technologies – including ocean-based closed-containment systems and land-based farms – are due later this month.

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