Saving Seafood

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

Fishing groups sue federal agencies over latest water plan for California

December 4, 2019 — The fracas over California’s scarce water supplies will tumble into a San Francisco courtroom after a lawsuit was filed this week claiming the federal government’s plan to loosen previous restrictions on water deliveries to farmers is a blueprint for wiping out fish.

Environmental and fishing groups sued the the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Monday for allegedly failing to protect chinook salmon, steelhead trout and delta smelt.

They believe the voluminous government proposal, known as a biological opinion, sacrifices protections for the imperiled fish without adequate justification so that Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities can have more water.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charges that the government’s plan to boost agricultural deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is an arbitrary and capricious failure to uphold the Endangered Species Act.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle

Why are so many whales washing up on West Coast beaches?

July 9, 2019 — The past year and a half has been harrowing for the world’s largest mammals, as an unusual number of gray whales have stranded on West Coast beaches this year, following excessive whale entanglements in 2018.

Gray whales have been washing ashore with alarming regularity, particularly in the San Francisco area and the Los Angeles and Long Beach Harbors, but also at some beaches in San Diego.

On March 29, San Diego lifeguards found a 30-foot-long dead whale off the shore near Mission Beach, just a day after another whale carcass was towed away from the coast off Torrey Pines.

As of June 27, a total of 171 whales have stranded on West Coast beaches off North America, with 85 of those turning up on the U.S. coastline and 37 beaching in California alone. Since most whales that die either sink or float out to sea, the beached whales represent just about 10 percent of total mortalities.

Gray whale deaths hit a peak in May, and continued through June. With whale carcasses drifting on shore, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on May 31 declared an “unusual mortality event,” which triggers heightened investigation and response to the strandings.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune

Explaining California’s sudden humpback entanglement surge

April 22, 2019 — Every year, humpback whales make their annual trek from tropical calving grounds to feed in the cold, nutrient-rich waters off the coast of California. Historically, they arrived to feast in June just as the Dungeness crab fishery was closing and gear was being pulled in for the season. But in 2012, they arrived a few weeks earlier than normal. In 2014, they were a month early. By 2015, the humpbacks arrived in April, a full two months earlier than the norm.

That shift has been dangerous for the whales. In March, it was the subject of a lawsuit settlement that prompted an early end to the Dungeness crab season. Some of our own research has determined the cause: climate change.

Humpback sightings from the Golden Gate Bridge are a hallmark of summer in San Francisco. The whales come to feed where the narrow straits of the Bay meet the ocean. Marine life abounds here, where nutrient-dense water feeds blooms of phytoplankton. They are then eaten by zooplankton, including krill, tiny reddish shrimp-like crustaceans which are a favored food for whales. Seasonal blooms of these tiny animals support the ecosystem bottom-up, producing a massive marine buffet for fish, birds and other marine mammals. Predators gorge themselves in the summer and fall when this area supports the most amount of food.

Where there are high concentrations of fish, there are people catching them, and the whales’ earlier arrival has driven more interactions with West Coast fisheries. Since 2014, the number of whales entangled in Dungeness crab pots has escalated dramatically, with 129 cases reported between 2015 and 2017, compared to around 10 each year in previous decades.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Examiner 

Many California Crabbers Switching to Chinook Trolling as Salmon Seasons Are Set

April 18, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — From San Francisco to Crescent City, Calif., crab pots were being loaded onto trailers and stacked in port lots for storage as Dungeness crabbers were forced to stop fishing Monday.

But there may be a little light at the end of the tunnel: Many crabbers also fish for salmon, and California salmon trollers will have more than 25 percent additional opportunity this year.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council announced the final West Coast salmon seasons Monday at its meeting in Rohnert Part, Calif.

“Although some salmon stocks are returning in stronger numbers than last year, balancing fishing opportunities with conservation is always a challenge for the Council, its advisors, fishery stakeholders and the public,” Council Executive Director Chuck Tracy said in a press release. “The seasons this year continue to protect stocks of concern, including Puget Sound Chinook, Washington natural coho, and Sacramento River fall Chinook.”

In addition to recommending salmon regulations for 2019, the Council developed a plan to work collaboratively with NMFS on southern resident killer whales, which are listed under the Endangered Species Act. Conservation groups have sued to force NMFS to take action to provide more salmon to orcas.

“This year’s package was adopted after careful consideration and analysis in order to meet our conservation objectives, consider impacts on the prey base important to southern resident killer whales, and consider in-river and Puget Sound fisheries,” Council Chair Phil Anderson said in the statement. “The Council also established a workgroup that will be working closely with the National Marine Fisheries Service to assess on a longer term basis the ocean salmon fisheries’ effect to the prey base of southern resident killer whales.”

However, for now, many California crabbers will be taking the crab blocks off their vessels and putting on their salmon gear. This year’s seasons open in some areas in May.

“It’s the best season we’ve seen in a while, though it’s still not wide-open fishing,” Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Executive Director Noah Oppenheim was quoted as saying in the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s important there are opportunities spread throughout the coast. They’re going to need to operate in this fishery after having lost crab fishing time in the spring.”

Between Horse Mountain and Point Arena (Fort Bragg), Calif., the area will be open June 4-30, July 11-31, and August 1-28. From Point Arena to Pigeon Point (San Francisco), the area will be open May 16-31, June 4-30, July 11-31, August 1-28, and September 1-30. From Pigeon Point to the Mexico border (Monterey), the area will be open all of May, June 4-30, and July 11-31. There will also be a season from Point Reyes to Point San Pedro, a subset of the San Francisco area, on October 1-4, 7-11, and 14-15.

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