Saving Seafood

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.

ALASKA: Investors are backing Southeast’s largest oyster farms

February 12, 2019 — The largest ever oyster farms in Southeast Alaska could be coming soon. That’s in line with the state’s Mariculture Task Force that sees the potential for a $100 million industry in Alaska.

Silver Bay Seafoods has been buying and processing salmon and herring at its plant in Sitka for the past decade.

The company says it wants to do something new.

“Alaska waters produce the highest quality seafood products in the country, if not the world,” said Tommy Sheridan, a former state fisheries biologist who now works as a company representative. “There is significant demand for Alaska oysters.”

Silver Bay recently chartered a boat to take a group of local business people, academics and seafood industry boosters to see the site of its oyster venture about 13 miles from Sitka’s harbor.

It’s in a cove near rocky shoreline. Not much to see – yet.

“If this were to go through, what you’d see here would be a series of rafts that we’d use to suspend oysters from,” Sheridan tells the group.

Read the full story at KTOO

Climate change is cooking salmon in the Pacific Northwest

February 11, 2019 — Warmer waters in the Pacific Northwest are killing salmon before they can reproduce.

Salmon that have died in Washington’s Wallace River before spawning.

The Tulalip Indian Reservation sits on the east side of the Puget Sound, about 40 miles north of Seattle, Washington, where the change in seasons is marked by the arrival and departure of salmon. At the heart of the reservation is Tulalip Bay, where salmon return every spring and fall before swimming upstream to spawn.

In tribal folklore, the Tulalip people are descended from salmon. As Cary Williams, who works at the tribe’s cultural center, tells the story, the ancient salmon saw people walking on land and wanted to become human. When they asked the grandfather salmon to give them human form, he granted their wish and told them, “I will take care of you, but you must take care of me.”

But it has become increasingly difficult for the Tulalip people to care for the salmon. Since the 1980s, wild Pacific salmon have faced a sharp decline due to overfishing, habitat loss and pollution, leaving several local populations threatened or endangered. Now, climate change is further imperiling the fish.

Read the full story at MSN

Canadian judge says young salmon must be tested before placed in net pens

February 6, 2019 — A Canadian federal judge, in Vancouver, British Columbia, has ruled that fish farms must test their young salmon for contagious viruses before transferring them into open-net pens, StarMetro, a Vancouver newspaper, reports.

In her 199-page decision issued Monday, justice Cecily Strickland gave the Canadian Department of Fisheries an Oceans (DFO) four months to develop a new policy that considers the threat piscine reovirus (PRV) poses to wild salmon and to comply with the country’s preferred precautionary approach.

The ruling addresses two cases brought separately against DFO, the minister of fisheries and oceans and also Marine Harvest. One lawsuit was filed by biologist Alexandra Morton and the other by the ‘Namgis First Nation.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Happy International Year of the Salmon!

February 4, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

While 2019 is the year of the pig in the Chinese zodiac, here at NOAA Fisheries we’re celebrating the International Year of the Salmon with our global conservation partners!

We want to thank all of our partners for their hard work and continued support. We would also like to acknowledge the importance of all salmon leaders and the work you are doing to aid salmon.

The International Year of the Salmon (aka IYS) celebrates how salmon connects scientists, Indigenous Peoples, fishermen, policy makers, resource managers, and people across the globe. During this year we will be focusing on the connections that these remarkable fish have to our culture and environment and we’ll be asking people to become partners in keeping our oceans and rivers healthy to support salmon and people in a changing world.

Please check out the growing number of International Year of the Salmon activities and events. From festivals to scientific symposia, we’ll be celebrating salmon conservation and research all across the northern hemisphere in 2019.

One of the first events in our region will be a Maine Science Festival Pop-up Event: Salmon in Maine on February 28, 2019 at the Maine Discovery Museum in Bangor, Maine.

Did you know that each winter from mid-February to early March, biologists “plant” Atlantic salmon eggs into gravel-bottomed Maine rivers and streams? The egg-planting technique has been used in Maine’s salmon rivers for the past decade to help restore and conserve this endangered species. Read the blog and watch the video!

Read the full release here

Senators file bill to mandate labeling requirements on genetically enhanced salmon

February 4, 2019 — A bipartisan group of U.S. senators from the Pacific northwest filed a bill last week that would require any salmon produced through genetic engineering to be labeled clearly as such on its packaging.

The bill, filed last week, comes a month after the Department of Agriculture published its final rule requiring producers, importers and other entities to reveal information about bioengineered products and ingredients. However, critics panned the measure saying companies could use digital QR codes, which would require a smartphone to scan, or list a toll-free number to meet the obligation.

Among those critics is U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who along with cosponsors U.S. Sens. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) filed the Genetically Engineered Salmon Labeling Act on Wednesday, 30 January.

The two-page bill says the legislation would ensure buyers can make “informed decisions” when buying salmon.

“We have the right to know what we’re eating,” Murkowski said in a statement. “When you splice DNA from another animal and combine it with farmed salmon, you are essentially creating a new species and I have serious concerns with that. If we are going to allow this fabricated fish to be sold in stores, we must ensure there is at least clear labeling. Americans should not become test subjects for this new product without their full knowledge and consent.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source