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CALIFORNIA: Commercial crab season delayed again, set to start Dec. 1 north of Sonoma County

November 24, 2021 — An abundance of endangered whales still feeding off the California Coast has forced the continued delay of commercial crabbing off the shore of Monterey, San Francisco and Bodega bays, at least until Dec. 15.

The delay will help ensure marine animals don’t become entangled, according to state Fish and Wildlife Director Chuck Bonham.

The season will open Dec. 1 north of Sonoma County, allowing the harvest of North Coast Dungeness crab there to proceed on time, furnishing fresh crab for winter holiday feasts and an opportunity for some commercial crabbers to get some action even if they usually fish in areas that remain closed.

Read the full story at The Press Democrat

 

Safe Catch charts rapid growth, earns plastic neutral certification

April 21, 2021 — Safe Catch, which tests its tuna and salmon for mercury, is seeing high demand for its products in the U.S. and has plans to expand throughout the country and abroad.

The San Francisco, California-based supplier recently became the first rePurpose Certified Plastic Neutral seafood company via a partnership with rePurpose Global. The organization funds the collection, processing, and reuse of as much plastic waste as it uses across its packaging and operations, Safe Catch said in a press release.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

California salmon season delayed and shortened, angering North Bay fishermen

March 17, 2021 — San Francisco Bay Area grocery stores and fish markets aren’t expected to be stocked with salmon this year, as fishery officials chose to delay the start of the season last week and restrict the time fishermen have on the water.

What’s the reason? It appears adult king salmon numbers from the Sacramento River fall run are projected by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council to be much smaller than last year’s. The state wants to protect more of the salmon navigating the rivers to spawn by shortening the season that they can be caught in the Pacific Ocean.

Expected to be decided within the next few weeks, there are three proposals on the table, all shorten the season considerably. The closest start may be May 1, instead of April.

Whatever decision is made, it is expected to be greeted with disappointment from commercial and sport fishing enthusiasts, tackle shops and other businesses reliant on this $1.4 billion industry that employs 23,000 people statewide, according to the Golden State Salmon Association. The group hosted a virtual conference to discuss the matter on March 12.

Attendee Tim Ely, who runs the Outdoor Pro Shop retailer in Cotati, estimates his store will lose $500,000 this year.

Read the full story at The North Bay Business Journal

CALIFORNIA: The San Francisco Bay Once Teemed With Oysters. What Happened?

March 5, 2021 — Oysters are a controversial food.

Some people slurp them down by the dozen, while others would rather go hungry for days than be forced to eat a single slimy specimen.

As one KQED staffer put it: “No matter how fresh they are, no matter where they come from, no matter what is put on them, it reminds me of being congested and having snot just slide down my throat.”

Bay Curious listener Joseph Fletcher falls into the first category: The San Francisco resident loves oysters and has been wondering if he’ll ever get the chance to eat one grown in San Francisco Bay.

“Will oysters ever make a comeback in the bay and return to the numbers they had back in the days before the Gold Rush?” Fletcher wanted to know.

There’s one type of oyster that’s indigenous to the San Francisco Bay, and that’s the Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida). It’s named after Olympia, Washington, though these small, tangy oysters can be found up and down the west coast from Alaska all the way down into central Mexico.

Read the full story at KQED

CALIFORNIA: San Francisco area crabbers end holdout, move to “organized start”

January 12, 2021 — First came whales, then came a price most West Coast Dungeness crabbers deemed too low to fish for, but after nearly two months of having their gear at the ready, San Francisco area fishermen finally set their pots Monday, 11 January, at 8 a.m. They will begin hauling on Wednesday, 13 January, at the same time, under an “organized start” – agreed to by fleets out of Half Moon Bay, San Francisco, and Bodega Bay – to prevent a mad dash, shotgun start once a price had been agreed to.

“Holy Christ has this season been a mess,” Dick Ogg, who runs the F/V Karen Jeanne out of Bodega Bay, said. “But the fleet has really come together. If this works, which it looks like it will, it will be pretty amazing and will have a lasting imprint on the fleet.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

In a rare outcome, former Bumble Bee CEO will be sent to prison for price-fixing

June 17, 2020 — The former chief executive officer and president of Bumble Bee Foods, LLC, one of the world’s largest producers of canned tuna and other seafood products, has been sentenced to 40 months in jail for his leadership role in a three-year antitrust conspiracy to fix the prices of canned tuna. Christopher Lischewski’s sentence, which also includes a $100,000 criminal fine, comes after a San Francisco jury found him guilty in December of helping to orchestrate the scheme, which also involved the StarKist and Chicken of the Sea companies.

“The conduct was deliberate, it was planned, it was sustained, over a three-year period,” said Judge Edward M. Chen, according to reporting from Seafood Source. “This was not a rash act of having to commit a crime under distress, under episodic circumstances as we see sometimes, this was a contemplated and deliberate plan.”

Moreover, he said, the scheme targeted poor people.

Read the full story at The Counter

CALIFORNIA: Wharf fire in San Francisco causes millions in damages, gear losses

May 26, 2020 — A fire broke out on Pier 45 at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco early Saturday morning, 23 May, destroying a warehouse and as much as USD 4 million (EUR 3.6 million) worth of commercial fishing gear inside. The four-alarm blaze shot flames more than 100 feet into the air, with plumes of smoke rising high above the San Francisco Bay, before being contained by the afternoon.

At least 150 firefighters responded and were able to keep the flames from spreading to other commercial fishing facilities on the wharf, San Francisco Fire Department spokesman Lt. Jon Baxter said. The World War II-era SS Jeremiah O’Brien ship tied up alongside the warehouse was also saved.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

The Extinction Crisis Devastating San Francisco Bay

April 22, 2020 — Larry Collins is a big, gregarious man with tobacco-stained teeth, a salty tongue, and the commanding presence of a sea captain. For 40 years he has earned his living as a commercial fisherman, slinging wild-caught seafood from a bustling warehouse on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Collins loves his profession; it has put enough money in his pocket to raise kids, buy a home, and save up for retirement in one of the most expensive cities in America. Sitting in his cramped office, with the smell of fresh fish wafting in from the docks, he talked about the days when more than 4,000 boats would head out from California’s ports each season and ply the waters of the Pacific Coast, trapping crabs and netting huge runs of Chinook salmon.

“I will give you the best salmon year in my whole career. It was 1988. We caught 1.4 million salmon in California, and another 800,000 escaped up the river,” he said with obvious nostalgia.

That era, though, is long gone. These days, the local fishing industry is a withered remnant of its former self. In 2018 “we caught maybe 175,000 salmon, and 80,000 went up the river,” Collins told me. “Fifty-three boats delivered 50 percent of what was caught.” While some salmon seasons have been much better than others, such as the robust 2019 season, “the fishery has probably been reduced to 5 or 10 percent of what it used to be.” Cut off from their ancestral breeding grounds by enormous dams, preyed on by invasive species, and deprived of the freshwater flows that are crucial to sustaining their populations, the salmon have suffered long-term decline and face an increasingly grim future.

Read the full story at The Nation

CALIFORNIA: Coronavirus upends San Francisco’s fishing industry

April 3, 2020 — Fisherman’s Wharf looks like an unused movie set, a shadow of its pre-pandemic self. Most businesses are closed.

One of the few signs of life is a wholesaler who has quickly adapted to the new challenges the fishing industry faces with a huge loss of sales.

Tucked towards the back of Pier 45, Joe Conte, owner of Water 2 Table, found a new way to keep his doors open.

He showed a KTVU crew halibut and black cod, fresh catch from local fishermen. Conte normally sells solely to Bay Area restaurants. But with the shelter-in-place order, they closed and the market was suddenly gone overnight.

“I’m pretty scared that we lost all our restaurant business,” said Conte, “We immediately pivoted to home deliveries we reached out to our email contacts.”

He started building a new clientele: the retail customer. First, it was a dozen orders.

Read the full story at KTVU

Sea lions are cash cows in the Bay Area. Farther south, fishermen say, ‘Shoot ‘em’

January 13, 2020 — Sea lions are increasingly living in parallel universes along the California coast, a disparity best observed amid the noisy, stinking spectacle that rolls out daily at San Francisco’s Pier 39 shopping center.

There, hundreds of these enormous, mostly male California sea lions bark, defecate, urinate and regurgitate, but are immensely popular with tourists. As a result, the blubber boys are treated like royalty.

“The sea lions are a godsend: a natural attraction that’s phenomenal for business,” Sheila Chandor, Pier 39 harbormaster, said on a recent weekday as tourists snapped selfies against a backdrop of sea lions piled up like cordwood on docks.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

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