Saving Seafood

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

Fish farm has 60 days to fix net pens outside Seattle as 1 million Atlantic salmon move in

October 10, 2017 — SEATTLE — Just a week after the state Department of Fish and Wildlife approved shipment of 1 million more farmed Atlantic salmon to Cooke Aquaculture’s fish farm near Bainbridge Island, another state agency says it has found a hole in the nets and corrosion in the structure of the facility.

The Department of Natural Resources on Monday notified Cooke that it is in default of the terms of its lease at its Rich Passage operation. It ordered the facility repaired within 60 days, or the department may cancel the company’s lease for the facility, which operates over public bed lands.

Cooke will proceed with the stocking the fish, company spokeswoman Nell Halse said in an emailed statement. “We are meeting all permit requirements.”

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Scientists survey Pacific Northwest salmon each year. For the first time, some nets are coming up empty

October 10, 2017 — SEATTLE — Scientists have been hauling survey nets through the ocean off the coasts of Washington and Oregon for 20 years. But this is the first time some have come up empty.

“We were really worrying if there was something wrong with our equipment,” said David Huff, estuarine and ocean ecology program manager in the fish ecology division at NOAA Fisheries. “We have never hauled that net through the water looking for salmon or forage fish and not gotten a single salmon. Three times we pulled that net up, and there was not a thing in it. We looked at each other, like, ‘this is really different than anything we have ever seen.’

“It was alarming.”

Moving from Newport, Oregon, to the northern tip of Washington, anywhere from 25 to 40 nautical miles offshore last spring and summer, the survey team began catching fish — but not the ones usually in those waters. Instead, warm-water fish, such as mackerel — a predator of young salmon — and Pacific pompano and pyrozomes — normally associated with tropical seas — turned up in droves. Both deplete the plankton that salmon need to survive.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

Is having a special week in Seattle enough to make Alaska herring cool again?

July 5, 2017 — Last week in Seattle, one kind of Alaska fish was served in dozens of restaurants around the city. It was in everything from pâté to tacos and piled high on open-faced sandwiches. One chef even used a pickled piece as a cocktail garnish. 

But it wasn’t Alaska’s famous wild sockeye salmon or Pacific halibut. It was Alaska herring — a small, oily fish — and it was all part of the third annual Alaska Herring Week in Seattle.

It’s part of an effort by a group of fishermen and the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute to try and revitalize a small Western Alaska fishery, which has been declining over the last decade.

Alaska Herring Week event coordinator Zachary Lyons said 54 restaurants and four grocery stores in the Seattle area participated in Herring Week this year. It started in 2015 with just eight restaurants, and 33 participated in 2016. This year’s event included The Whale and the Carpenter and Bar Melusine, restaurants both associated with Renee Erickson, winner of the 2016 James Beard Best Chef Northwest Award.

Lyons, who spent last week eating herring at up to five restaurants a day, said some consider the fish old-fashioned, destined to be canned or pickled on a shelf at the grocery store. But there are other culinary uses for the fish. Herring flesh cooks into a rich brown color and has a light fish flavor, similar to trout. No two herring dishes he ate during the week were alike, Lyons said.

“It’s really versatile,” he said. “It’s amazing to see what people are doing with it.”

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit packs a sustainable, newsy punch

June 19, 2017 — The 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, which took place 5 to 7 June in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., brought together more than 580 global representatives of the seafood industry, the conservation community, academia, government, and the media for in-depth discussions, presentations and networking around the issue of sustainable seafood.

Here’s a review of the news that was made at this year’s summit:

A major topic of discussion at the conference was pre-competitive collaboration, with several panels and keynotes approaching the issues from different angles. In the pre-conference on Sunday, 4 June, attendees heard from Nira Desai, the director of strategy and learning for the World Cocoa, a key player in the development of CocoaAction, a sustainability movement in the cocoa industry:

Cocoa industry offers seafood a crash course in pre-competitive collaboration

Pre-competitive collaboration will also play a key role in the future of global aquaculture, according to experts at the conference:

Success of “blue revolution” will depend heavily on pre-competitive collaboration, seafood experts say

In other big news for aquaculture, on Monday, 5 June, Seafood Watch upgraded farmed salmon certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council to its “Good Alternative” rating, marked “a watershed moment for the sustainability credentials of farmed salmon”:

Seafood Watch upgrades ASC-certified farmed salmon to “Good Alternative”

Later on Monday, 5 June, the 2017 Seafood Champion Awards were handed out at a ceremony in Chihuly Gardens in Seattle. SeafoodSource profiled each of this year’s winners:

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Ray Hilborn, others launch I-FIN, a new fisheries data network

June 7, 2017 — A new scientific advisory group called International Fisheries Information Network (I-FIN) is refuting a commonly held belief that all fisheries are in decline.

I-FIN believes that there are highly sustainable fisheries in the developed world and that lessons from those fisheries can be used to improve fisheries in the developing world, according to Saving Seafood, a news and advocacy organization for the U.S. domestic seafood industry.

The group is headed by internationally recognized marine scientists, economists, and fisheries managers and launched ahead of this year’s SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

I-FIN has set an ambitious goal of being a global clearinghouse for information concerning how fisheries are managed, which management styles are successful and how those successes can be adopted to create a more sustainable global fishery, according to its mission statement.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Seafood Champion Awards – global winners announced!

June 6, 2017 — The following was released by SeaWeb Seafood Summit:

A fearless fisheries minister who’s led a high-profile campaign against harmful fishing practices, a collective effort to combat large-scale illegal fishing in East Africa, two chefs who step far outside their kitchens to promote sustainable seafood, and a foundation breaking new ground in preemptive protection of Indian Ocean tuna are SeaWeb’s 2017 Seafood Champions.

The annual Seafood Champion Awards, presented at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit, recognize individuals and organizations for excellence in promoting ocean health and responsible practices with honors in four categories: leadership, innovation, vision and advocacy.

“The 2017 Seafood Champions demonstrate that courage and creativity can drive progress on seafood sustainability worldwide,” said Mark Spalding, president of SeaWeb and The Ocean Foundation. “These Champions have made smart use of strategies and tools tailored to their unique situations. Some employed teamwork and diplomacy to patiently overcome resistance. Others took bold actions. All have shown the determination and leadership that are the core qualities of Seafood Champions.”

The Seafood Champion Award for Leadership went to Susi Pudjiastuti, Indonesia’s Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries since 2014. She has banned the use of bottom trawlers and other unsustainable catching devices; led the fight against illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing in her geographically dispersed island nation; and fought against the use of forced labor on fishing vessels.

FISH-i Africa, a partnership of eight East African countries, received the Seafood Champion Award for Innovation for sharing information and taking collective enforcement action to combat large-scale illegal fishing. FISH-i’s string of investigations and prosecutions has created a strong deterrence to illegal activity and promoted legitimate operators.

Matthew Beaudin, executive chef of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, earned the Seafood Champion Award for Vision for leading the shift to local and sustainable seafood within the Monterey Bay restaurant scene. In 2016, Chef Matt visited more than 20 cities to promote Seafood Watch and responsible sourcing. He is a regional and cross-border leader, having also developed aquaponics programs to support HIV-positive orphans in Mexico.

Sharing the Seafood Champion Award for Advocacy were the International Pole & Line Foundation and Ned Bell, Ocean Wise executive chef at the Vancouver Aquarium and founder of Chefs for Oceans. IPNLF earned its place at the top for spearheading Indian Ocean tuna fisheries reform, most notably the adoption of a precautionary harvest strategy by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission—a huge leap forward for global tuna management. Chef Ned has made sustainable seafood his mission. In 2014, he rode his bike 8,700 km across Canada, hosting 20 events alongside some of the country’s best chefs to raise awareness of sustainable seafood.

“This year’s Seafood Champions show an important trend: providing practical and affordable solutions for small-scale fishers and developing nations is now a priority,” said judge Katie Miller, sustainable seafood project lead for UK-based ClientEarth. “I’m looking forward to seeing how these play out on the water.”

The judges chose winners from a group of 16 finalists doing remarkable work in their home waters or in multinational coalitions. They winnowed the finalists from an outstanding group of 115 nominees working in 43 countries, reflecting a sector that is increasingly global, collaborative and distributed throughout the supply chain.

The Seafood Champions were honored June 5 at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit kickoff reception, sponsored by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. Seafood sustainability leaders from around the world attended the event, which was held at Chihuly Garden and Glass.

For more information on the awards, go to www.seafoodchampions.org.

About SeaWeb

SeaWeb accelerates the adoption of sustainable practices and products in the global seafood industry through communication, convening and facilitation. SeaWeb is a project of The Ocean Foundation, and produces the Seafood Summit in partnership with Diversified Communications.

Read the full release here

2017 SeaWeb Sustainability Summit taking place 5 to 7 June in Seattle

May 4, 2017 — The 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, the international seafood sustainability conference, will take pace in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. from 5 to 7 June.

The summit aims to connect the industry’s environmental, social, and economic stakeholders and give them a forum for productive dialogue, partnerships, and solutions, according to a press release from Diversified Communications, which produces the summit in partnership with The Ocean Foundation [Editor’s note: SeafoodSource is owned by Diversified Communications].

The site of this year’s summit will be the Westin Seattle. The program includes a main keynote and daily plenary presentations as well as six breakout sessions, with topics ranging from traceability and transparency to business and management, aquaculture, IUU, and FIPs.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NOAA fishing head: Science, bycatch likely to remain focus under Trump administration

November 30, 2016 — SEATTLE — In a little over a month and a half, Eileen Sobeck will leave her job as the US’s top fishing regulator as the Obama administration appointee leaves to make way for leadership named by incoming president Donald Trump.

Since 2013, Sobeck, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) assistant administrator for fisheries, has led a team of over 4,800 federal employees, one of the major divisions of the  12,000-member agency of the Department of Commerce.

NOAA’s National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS) regulates all US ocean fishing that takes place outside of the three-mile coastal limit that falls to the states. Its legal authority stems mainly from the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act, but other laws also require it to protect marine mammals and endangered species.

In a recent interview with Undercurrent News, Sobeck said that despite the upcoming change in personnel, NMFS’s core objectives — to develop and maintain sustainable fisheries, to safeguard “protected resources, and to achieve “organizational excellence” through improved administration — will remain.

“We will always working on our science that’s needed to translate into management practices. I think we’re going to be focused on bycatch issues,” Sobeck, who will leave her post by Jan. 14, said. “We’ve beat the overfishing monster, but we still could be more efficient in maximizing targeted species and minimizing bycatch. That also goes for protected resource bycatch.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Washington’s fishing fleet due for a big makeover

November 18, 2016 — The fishing fleet in Washington State is getting older, and it’s due for a big upgrade. A new study says that work could bring in billions of dollars for the state. That could help save the region’s struggling shipyards.

But first you’ll have to convince the old fishermen to spend money on their boats.

It’s hard to be a shipyard in Seattle. There’s a lot of competition for the land they’re sitting on. “There was a bunch of other smaller yards around here, and they’ve gone away” said Scott Woodard. He works at Pacific Fishermen Shipyard in Ballard.

He fell in love with working on old boats. He mastered an ancient technique where you push strings of tarred hemp into the seams between planks on a wooden boat.

“This is caulking,” he explained. “But people will say corking. My mentor was kind of a traditionalist. And he called himself a caulker. So in honor of him, that’s what I say. I’m a caulker, not a corker.”

But it’s not caulking or corking that pays the bills at this shipyard. Most fishing boats are metal. The real money is in fixing up those boats, doing things like painting and sandblasting.

Read the full story at KUOW