Seattle Archives - Saving Seafood

New technology could help salmon swim over hydroelectric dams

July 16, 2019 — A Seattle company called Whooshh Innovations has developed a creative way for fish to swim over hydroelectric dams. This product creates a pressure difference around the salmon, sucking the fish up a long tube and releasing it at the top of the dam.

“We do introduce a little bit of water to keep them moist and keep their gills moist and all those kinds of things for the few seconds it takes them to get through the system,” said Mike Dearan, Whooshh’s chief engineer.

The Whooshh system also takes pictures of salmon and sorts the fish as they travel, dividing up wild and hatchery fish. If there was a constant stream of fish, 86,000 salmon could move through just one of these Whooshh systems every day.

Read the full story at KATU

WASHINGTON: Salmon merging onto new ‘highway’ in Seattle, complete with rest stops and restaurants

June 4, 2019 — Next time you’re visiting Seattle’s downtown waterfront and gazing out across Elliott Bay toward the majestic Olympic Mountains, look down. You might see a shoal of silvery baby salmon, each about 3 inches long.

You might also see a snorkeler counting fish, because University of Washington researchers are studying habitat improvements built along the city’s $410 million new seawall, which stretches 3,100 feet between the Seattle Aquarium and the Colman Dock ferry terminal.

Their observations are preliminary — yet promising. Since the wall was completed in 2017, the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences researchers have repeatedly witnessed juvenile salmon swimming under the wooden piers that extend out over the waterfront, where they almost never ventured before.

During the wall’s construction, workers added shelves and grooves meant to help algae grow and critters like mussels take hold. They laid rock beds below the wall because young salmon prefer to forage and hide in shallow-water nooks. They even installed translucent glass panes in a cantilevered sidewalk between the wall and the piers to allow light through, down to the water.

Juvenile salmon prefer swimming and eating in sunlight, and the improvements are meant to act like a migratory highway, complete with rest stations and restaurants. Taken together, they represent what might be the most sweeping seawall habitat-restoration project anywhere.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Port of Seattle would sink without Alaska’s fisheries

May 24, 2019 — If not for Alaska’s fisheries, the Port of Seattle would not be what it is today.

How important is Alaska to its bottom line?

An economic report released this month by the Port of Seattle reveals that Seattle is home to about 300 fishing vessels and of those, all but 74 make their fishing living in Alaska. The Seattle-based boats harvest Alaska pollock, Bering Sea crab, flounders, salmon and many other high value species, and they vary in size from huge, 150 crew catcher-processors to much smaller seiners and trawlers.

In 2017, fishing vessels that moored at one of Seattle’s three terminals and operated in the Alaskan fisheries generated gross earnings of more $455 million, or nearly half of the gross earnings from Alaska’s fisheries. That represented 44% of all gross earnings from the North Pacific fisheries.

Boats fishing in Puget Sound and other Washington areas earned $26.6 million at the Seattle docks.

An estimated 7,200 jobs were directly associated with commercial fishing at the Port of Seattle in 2017. Of that, 5,100 jobs were on fishing vessels, of which all but just 200 operated in Alaska fisheries.

Read the full story at Alaska Fish Radio

Alaskan halibut, caught by a century-old Seattle boat, provides a glimpse of Amazon’s strategy with Whole Foods

April 28, 2019 — From the deck of his 106-year-old halibut schooner, undergoing a seasonal overhaul at Fisherman’s Terminal in Seattle, skipper Wade Bassi has better insight than most into what’s happening at Amazon-owned Whole Foods Market, at least as pertains to the product he knows best.

While he doesn’t buy halibut much — he’s got a freezer full of it — Bassi, 43 years a fisherman, keeps an eye on how it’s handled and presented in the grocery stores and fish markets.

“When you look at nice halibut, I mean it is pure white,” he said. “And it is flaky-looking, and it is beautiful. It’s translucent. If you’ve got that in the fish market, people are going to buy it.”

A few days earlier, Whole Foods touted a rarely seen promotional price for halibut as part of its ongoing campaign to revise the grocery chain’s high-cost reputation while maintaining its image for quality and sustainability.

“Whole Foods is one of the better ones, to be honest with you,” Bassi said. “But you know, Whole Foods, whole paycheck. … They usually do charge way more for everything than anywhere else. Which really surprises me that they’re selling this for $16-something a pound, because they’re not making anything on it.”

Whole Foods’ halibut deal opens a window into Amazon’s grocery strategy as it seeks to combine the defining characteristics of each brand, leverage its juggernaut Prime membership program and take a larger share of the grocery business from competitors such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Seattle Shrimp & Seafood Company Joins GSSI

March 26, 2019 — The following was released by the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative and Seattle Shrimp & Seafood:

The Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative is pleased to announce that Seattle Shrimp & Seafood Company has joined the GSSI Global Partnership as a Funding Partner.

Seattle Shrimp & Seafood Company is a global supplier of shrimp and shellfish. Seattle Shrimp & Seafood Company works with GSSI recognized schemes BAP and MSC.

“Seattle Shrimp & Seafood Company is proud to be partnering with the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative and its supporters as an acting member and Funding Partner. We are extremely excited for the opportunity to collaborate with organizations from industry and NGO sectors that are committed to the long-term preservation, sustainability and growth of global fisheries,” said Atsushige Amano, President of Seattle Shrimp & Seafood.

West Coast Whiting Industry Apprehensive About Shutdown’s Effect on Pacific Hake Season, Treaty

January 9, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A recent report by KING-5 TV News in Seattle picked up on NOAA Stock Assessment Scientist Ian Taylor’s recent Tweet about his frustration with the government shutdown and how it could affect the Pacific hake fishery.

“I love my U.S. federal job at @NOAAFish_NWFSC but it’s immensely frustrating to have #shutdown be such a common disturbance,” Taylor said in a Dec. 21, 2018 tweet. “Last time it was short, science got done, and U.S. #pacifichake catch was ~300,000 tons in 2018. Now 2019 assessment needs to happen yet here we go again.”

The U.S. whiting fishery caught more than 266,000 mt last year for a value of close to $50 million, about half of the overall West Coast groundfish fishery value.

Taylor is one of the U.S. scientists who works collaboratively with Canadian scientists to develop the hake stock assessment, scheduled for a draft release and review by Feb. 6, 2019. Without the stock assessment on which to base 2019 regulations, a number of options could occur: the season could be delayed or it could be managed very conservatively. The assessment may rely solely on the Canadian scientists’ work, with limited input already done by U.S. advisers. It’s unclear at this point exactly how the season will proceed, but the treaty process is continuing without the scientific input from the U.S.

However, the series of dominoes that make the whiting fishery work starts with getting the assessment done.

Sarah Nayani, Director of Compliance for Arctic Storm Management Group LLC, based in Seattle, said she’s watching the issue closely.

“We are concerned about the impact the government shutdown may have on the hake assessment and the timing of the Pacific Whiting Treaty process,” Nayani said in an email. “We hope that the U.S. scientists and managers may resume their work soon so that our 2019 fishery won’t be impacted or delayed.”

Taylor and other scientists discussed the pending assessment during a Joint Management Committee conference call in early December. The JMC includes industry and managers from both countries. On the call, U.S. scientists told participants that NMFS was prioritizing other species for stock assessment work; Pacific hake was just lower on the list at the time but still scheduled for completion. It’s likely nobody suspected a government shutdown would happen two weeks later, or that it would drag on into the New Year.

The predicament now is that the only new data for an updated stock assessment from the U.S. side is fishery-dependent data, such as age classes, length-at-age data, volumes, etc. Fishery-independent data, in the form of a NOAA Fisheries acoustic research survey, is done once every two years (2018 was an off year). Therefore, complete data from the 2018 U.S. fishery is essential to developing a scientifically-robust stock assessment for managing the 2019 fishery. This data is currently incomplete because of the government shutdown.

Beyond the stock assessment, the seafood industry frequently relies on preliminary scientific data to make business plans and update customers on volumes and product availability.

“What do we tell our markets?” Pacific Seafood’s Mike Okoniewski said. “Our customers want to know that as far in advance as they can. It can have a detrimental effect on our business side, too.”

For Okoniewski, Nayani and others involved in or watching the whiting process, the politics of the government shutdown are frequently secondary to their business considerations. It’s more frustrating to not have access to scientific information that affects the bottom line.

“They’re [scientists/researchers] considered to be nonessential, but they compose the bulk of the work force that we consider essential,” Okoniewski said.

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

Commercial season opening, China tariffs could bring price relief for Washington delicacy

January 4, 2019 — The commercial crab season opened off the Washington and Oregon coasts this week, with fishers allowed to pull their pots beginning Friday.

The start of the Dungeness season — combined with a possible dip in demand from China — will likely mean prices will come down locally.

That’s welcomed news for customers who saw near record-high prices over the holidays, said Jon Speltz, owner of Wild Salmon Seafood Market in Seattle.

“It might have been at a historic high,” Speltz said of the prices, which sit at about $14.99-per-pound right now.

Fresh Dungeness crab over the holidays was in such high demand, Speltz said they “were just happy to get live crab.”

The fishery off the coast was delayed this year after tests showed crab had not filled out enough. It can start as early as Dec. 1, but has been pushed back to January over the past few seasons to allow crabs to become meatier, a spokesperson with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife said.

Despite a late start, the season has remained strong over the last few years. More than 23 million pounds (10 million kilograms) of crab were landed in the 2017-18 season. That brought in a record $74.2 million in ex-vessel value.

Read the full story at KCPQ

Orcas thrive in a land to the north. Why are Puget Sound’s dying?

November 16, 2018 — Bigger and bigger, with a puff and a blow, the orca surfaces, supreme in his kingdom of green.

Northern resident orcas like this one live primarily in the cleaner, quieter waters of northern Vancouver Island and Southeast Alaska, where there also are more fish to eat. They are the same animal as the southern residents that frequent Puget Sound, eating the same diet, and even sharing some of the same waters. They have similar family bonds and culture.

The difference between them is us.

Read the full story at the Bristol Herald Courier

Judge rules EPA must protect salmon from rising water temperatures in Washington

October 29, 2018 — A U.S. Federal Court in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. has issued a ruling that is intended to protect salmon and steelhead trout in the Columbia River basin from rising water temperatures.

In the mile-long lakes created by hydropower dams on the rivers, the water temperature has often exceeded 70 degrees Fahrenheit for days at a time, though the Clean Water Act bars the temperature in the river from exceeding 68 degrees. Cold water species such as sockeye and steelhead become stressed at temperatures over 68 degrees and stop migrating when the temperature exceeds 74 degrees.

The ruling instructs the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the species. The EPA will, within 60 days, come up with a “comprehensive plan to deal with dams’ impact on water temperature and salmon survival,” according to Columbia Riverkeeper Executive Director Brett VandenHeuvel, one of the plaintiffs of the case, which was initially filed in February 2017. Other conservation and fishermens’ groups were plaintiffs in the suit as well: Idaho Rivers United, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Snake River Waterkeeper, and The Institute for Fisheries Resources.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Disappearance of wild salmon hurts local economy

November 20, 2017 — SEATTLE — Salmon and the Pacific Northwest used to go hand in hand, right? Not anymore. Back in the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of naturally spawning salmon and steelhead could be found in Puget Sound each year. Today there are only tens of thousands. This is an alarming change, for our environment and local economy.

“I started at Pacific Fish in August, 1977,” says Bob Simon, general manager of Pacific Seafood. “In those days my job was to drive the waterfront, picking up fish. The Seattle waterfront was much different then.”

Simon remembers a string of seafood companies on the waterfront. “New England Fish Company around Pier 58. Salmon Run Seafood around Pier 54. Booth Fisheries around Pier 45. Olympic No. 2 under the viaduct. Olympic No. 3 under the viaduct. Seattle Seafoods around Pier 45.”

“These are all gone,” Simon says.

Puget Sound Partnership numbers indicate that chinook salmon populations have dropped to as little as 10 percent of their historic numbers.

This year, scientists also noted a record-low number of juvenile salmon in the Columbia River. For the first time in 20 years, some nets came up empty, showing no wild chinook salmon.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times