Saving Seafood

Celebrate International Year of the Salmon with Us on February 28 in Bangor, Maine

February 22, 2019 — The following was published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

In partnership with NOAA Fisheries’ Maine Field Station and the Maine Discovery Museum, the Maine Science Festival is hosting a pop-up event called Salmon in Maine as part of the International Year of the Salmon.

We hope you will join us at the Maine Discovery Museum on Main Street in Bangor for a special after-hours event featuring artist Karen Talbot’s Maine’s River Run Fish. Karen’s exhibit features 15 beautifully created paintings of 12 diadromous fish (those that spend part of their lives in both fresh and saltwater) along with three other important river run fish in Maine.

Details
When: Thursday, February 28, 7-9 p.m. The talks will begin at 7:45 p.m.

Where: Maine Discovery Museum, 74 Main Street, Bangor, Maine.

What: The Museum, in partnership with NOAA Fisheries, will open its Main Street Gallery for this special after-hours gallery event, featuring artist Karen Talbot’s Maine’s River Run Fish.

In addition to the art exhibit, the event will include brief presentations on the history of salmon in Maine by Catherine Schmitt from the Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park, words from retired biologist Ed Baum about salmon recovery efforts, and information from Karen Talbot about her work melding the scientific with the artistic to tell the story of Maine’s river run fish, and salmon in particular.

The event is free and open to the public, and you are encouraged to bring guests.

We hope to see you there!

Questions? Contact Sarah Bailey, Maine Field Station, 207-866-7262

ALASKA: U.S. Army Corps releases draft report on Pebble Mine

February 21, 2019 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released Pebble Mine’s draft environmental impact statement on Wednesday, one of the biggest stepping stones in the permitting process for the proposed copper-and-gold mine near the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

The purpose of the draft EIS is to analyze the project’s proposal and present alternative plans. The environmental review, totaling more than 1,400 pages, the Army Corps proposes multiple actions including an analysis of permitting the mine, alternate transportation corridors and rejecting the mine proposal altogether.

A 90-day public comment period will begin March 1, allowing stakeholders to give their thoughts on the report before a final version is delivered to federal agencies. Opponents of the mine are pushing back against the comment period, claiming in isn’t a long enough timeline for thorough feedback.

“A 90-day comment period is far too short of a time period to review and comment on the recently released Draft Environmental Impact Statement,” said Andy Wink, executive director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association. “The speed at which insufficient materials are being pushed through this mine’s permitting process is irresponsible given that the Bristol Bay salmon ecosystem is a biological wonder of the world. This region contains the world’s largest wild salmon runs, which have supported a rich culture for millennia and sustained a thriving commercial fishery for more than 130 years.”

“A 270-day comment period on the Draft EIS is the first – and necessary – step in holding the Pebble Limited Partnership accountable during the permitting process,” said Bristol Bay Native Corporation CEO Jason Metrokin. “Bristol Bay cannot become a laboratory to test unproven and unprecedented mining practices.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

European price-fixing investigation focused on Norwegian salmon industry

February 21, 2019 — A European Commission investigation – which was announced yesterday after E.C. officials raided Scottish and Dutch corporate offices of several seafood companies – is focused on anticompetitive practices in the Norwegian farmed salmon sector, according to SeafoodSource sources and public statements issued on Wednesday, 20 February.

European Commission investigators, along with U.K. and Dutch national competition authorities, took part in raids on Mowi’s facilities in Rosyth, Fife, Scotland and in Sterk, The Netherlands; at Grieg Seafood’s plant in Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands; and a facility in Stirling, Scotland that is operated by Scottish Sea Farms, which is jointly owned by SalMar and Lerøy Seafood.

On Tuesday, 19 February, Mowi, Grieg, and SalMar issued public statements responding to the raids; Lerøy Seafood issued its own on 20 February.

“E.U.’s competition authorities (European Commission Director General Competition) has conducted an inspection at the premises of Scottish Sea Farms Ltd. – a company owned 50 percent by Lerøy Seafood Group ASA (LSG). The purpose is, according to the competition authorities, to investigate accusations of anti-competitive cooperation in the salmon market,” the company said. “In connection with the inspection, the E.U. competition authorities [have] also requested for information from the shareholders in Scottish Sea Farms Ltd. LSG will assist the authorities in order to facilitate an efficient completion of the investigations.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Multinational salmon research trip underway in Gulf of Alaska

February 20, 2019 — The International Gulf of Alaska Expedition 2019 is underway, according to the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, with the chartered 62-meter Russian research vessel Professor Kaganovskiy having departed Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on Saturday, 16 February.

The expedition is setting out to study salmon while they are at sea, rather than when they journey back to rivers and streams to spawn at the end of their lives. The study is the first comprehensive winter study of Pacific salmon in the Gulf of Alaska. According to a press released provided by the NPAFC, the study will visit 72 stations in the Gulf and will return to Vancouver next month on 18 March.

Researchers hope the study will provide information and understanding of the abundance, condition, country of origin, and location of stocks from Pacific salmon-producing countries.

The NPAFC is comprised of the five Pacific salmon producing countries: Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United States of America. The expedition is comprised of 21 researchers from those five countries.

The project, expected to cost USD 1.3 million (EUR 1.2 million), has received funding from multiple sources including government, industry, NGO, and private contributions.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

European Commission investigating potential price-fixing in European farmed salmon sector

February 19, 2019 — The European Commission has confirmed it carried out unannounced inspections on the morning of Tuesday, 19 February at the premises of several companies involved in the farmed Atlantic salmon sector in Europe.

In a statement, the E.C. said it “has concerns that the inspected companies may have violated E.U. antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices.”

The E.C. did not say what sparked its investigation, nor did it identify which companies are being investigated or which sites its investigators visited. However, Mowi (formerly Marine Harvest) and Greig Seafood confirmed to SeafoodSource their facilities were among those visited on Tuesday. Additionally, a Scottish Sea Farms facility jointly owned by SalMar and Leroy Seafood was also inspected, SalMar CEO Olav-Andreas Ervik confirmed to Reuters.

“We have been informed that The European Commission DG (Director General) Competition is exploring potential anti-competitive behavior in the salmon industry. They have performed an inspection today at Grieg Seafood Shetland,” Grieg Seafood Global Communications Manager Kristina Furnes told SeafoodSource in an email. “The salmon market is very competitive and we are not aware of any anti-competitive behavior. We are co-operating with the European Commission DG Competition’s investigation.”

Furne referred further questions about the investigation to the European Commission DG Competition.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Those of us who fished Atlantic salmon may never have another chance in our lifetimes

February 15, 2019 — Conservationists on Wednesday said the final recovery plan for Atlantic salmon in Maine rivers didn’t contain many surprises. State and nongovernment agencies had already seen previous drafts of the plan, after all, and were much more involved in its formation than anglers (and newspaper columnists).

For those of us who weren’t in the rooms where various conversations have taken place over the past 10 years — ever since the salmon in the Penobscot River joined other Maine waters on the federal “endangered” list — the plan was much more shocking.

Most stunning, to me, was this passage near the end of the report’s summary section.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

Few California sea lions from Willamette Falls euthanized, but program continues

February 15, 2019 — Only five California sea lions have been trapped at Willamette Falls and killed since the state received permission to launch the program to protect threatened winter steelhead and spring Chinook salmon.

The permit is for 93.

It was issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service after nonlethal methods, like relocating the mammals to the Oregon Coast, failed.

The sea lions simply swam back.

Euthanasia continues to be debated by advocacy groups and scientists alike, but the dire situation for the fish rarely is.

Last winter, a record-low 512 wild winter steelhead completed the journey past Willamette Falls, according to state counts. Less than 30 years ago, that number was more than 15,000.

Read the full story at the Salem Statesman Journal

Ambitious new plan to save Atlantic salmon has big price tag

February 15, 2019 — The federal government outlined an ambitious, potentially costly new plan to restore Atlantic salmon in the United States, where rivers teemed with the fish before dams, pollution and overfishing decimated their populations.

The Atlantic salmon has declined in the U.S. to the point where the last remaining wild populations of in the U.S. exist only in a handful of rivers in Maine. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are offering a new recovery plan to bring back those fish, which are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The plan would take decades to fully implement, and it focuses on strategies such as removals of dams, installations of fish passages and increasing the number of salmon that survive in the ocean. It states that the estimated cost is about $24 million per year, not including money federal departments already spend on salmon recovery work.

How that money would materialize at this point is unclear. But the plan gives the species a roadmap to recovery, said Peter Lamothe, program manager for the Maine fish and wildlife complex for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“It gives all of the partners involved in this what to shoot for — what we collectively need to achieve to recover the species,” Lamothe said. “It gives us a path forward.”

Atlantic salmon are readily available to seafood consumers because of extensive aquaculture, but the wild fish have been declining in the Gulf of Maine since the 19th century.

Back then, 100,000 adult salmon returned annually to Maine’s Penobscot River, which remains the most important river for the species in America.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Maine’s Atlantic salmon likely to be on ‘endangered’ list for another 75 years

February 13, 2019 — A decade after the Penobscot River was included in the expansion of Endangered Species Act protection for Atlantic salmon originating in Maine, federal officials have released the final recovery plan for those fish. The news isn’t good. Federal officials estimate that it will take 75 years — about 15 generations of fish — for Gulf of Maine Atlantic salmon to be delisted entirely.

That news dims hopes that any angler who enjoyed fishing for salmon in Maine rivers in the past will live long enough to do so again.

Additionally, the plan estimates that the annual cost of implementing recovery actions will be $24 million per year on top of recovery-based efforts covered by regular federal budgets.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on Tuesday released their plan for the recovery of Atlantic salmon within the Gulf of Maine distinct population segment. The document will serve as the foundation for conservation and recovery efforts moving forward.

According to the plan, recovery efforts must focus on rivers and estuaries until threats salmon face at sea are better understood. In addition, the continued effort of fish hatcheries in the conservation is an essential piece of the recovery puzzle. Eastern Maine has two such hatcheries — Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery in Orland and Green Lake National Fish Hatchery in Ellsworth.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

 

NOAA and USFWS Release Atlantic Salmon Recovery Plan

February 12, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries and USFWS released a joint Atlantic Salmon Recovery Plan today. The Recovery Plan is the primary tool for guiding the species recovery process. The plan outlines needed actions, criteria for determining when the necessary level of conservation has been achieved, and time and cost estimates for meeting these criteria.

Atlantic salmon were once found in North American waters from Long Island Sound in the United States to Ungava Bay in northeastern Canada. Atlantic salmon are anadromous fish, spending the first half of their life in freshwater rivers and streams along the East Coast of North America and the second half maturing in the seas between Northeastern Canada and Greenland. Today, the last remnant populations of wild Atlantic salmon in U.S. waters exist in just a few rivers and streams in central and eastern Maine.

Atlantic salmon have been listed as “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act since 2000, having declined from hundreds of thousands returning to New England rivers to around 1,000 individuals returning in 2017.

Through this recovery plan, NOAA Fisheries together with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is committed to giving Atlantic salmon their best chance to recover.

The recovery plan and a web story that explain more about Atlantic salmon conservation and our role in their recovery are available on our website.

As 2019 is the International Year of the Salmon, this Recovery Plan comes at the perfect time.