Saving Seafood

Norway Posts Record Fish, Salmon Exports Despite Russian Embargo

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Agence Press France] — January 6, 2016 — Norway registered record fish exports in 2015 thanks to a weaker currency which compensated for a Russian food embargo, an industry body said Tuesday.

Norway’s fish exports totalled 74.5 billion kroner (7.75 billion euros, $8.35 billion), more than double the level 10 years ago and a rise of eight percent from the record year of 2014, according to the Norwegian Seafood Council.

“In a year with trade restrictions in several markets and an import embargo in Russia, the result was better than expected,” director Terje Martinussen said in a statement.

Russia suspended food imports from most Western countries in August 2014 in retaliation for sanctions the West imposed on Moscow over its role in the Ukraine crisis. Russia had until then been one of the biggest markets for Norwegian fish exports.

China, which froze diplomatic ties with Oslo after the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo, has also imposed drastic restrictions on Norwegian salmon imports, officially citing veterinary concerns.

But the weaker Norwegian currency, partly caused by plummeting prices for oil, another main Norwegian export, helped compensate for the Chinese and Russian declines.

In volume, Norway’s exports decreased by 2.2 percent to 2.6 million tonnes.

Salmon, Norway’s star product, and trout, accounted for two-thirds of seafood exports, for a sum of 50 billion kroner which was also a new record.

Two-thirds of exports went to the EU, where Poland, Denmark and France were the main takers.

This opinion piece originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

VIRGINIA: Special Investigation: Big fight over little fish

November 12, 2015 — REEDVILLE, Va. – Small business owners along the Chesapeake Bay are concerned that commercial fishing by Omega Protein is hurting their livelihood. Both rely on catching menhaden, a small bony fish that is valuable to Omega for its oil and bone meal, as well as for bait to charter boat captains and crabbers.

Omega has fished for menhaden out of Reedville since the 1870’s. It hauls in millions of them each weekday during a fishing season that is quota-based and runs roughly from May to November.

10 On Your Side visited the Reedville operation and spoke with several employees about the company’s importance to the community. We also met with a charter boat captain who is convinced that Omega’s large hauls are hurting his business along with hundreds of others – marinas, crabbers, tackles shops, etc.

“Used to be these creeks would just be chocked full of menhaden flipping all over the surface,” said Chris Newsome, owner of Bay Fly Fishing in Gloucester. Newsome’s charter clients fish for striped bass, bluefish, speckled trout and redfish, and they feed on menhaden. “They’ve definitely become a lot harder to find over the years.”

Read the full story at WAVY

North Carolina’s Sunburst Trout Does Farm-Raised Fish The Right Way

October 19, 2015 — Not many 91-year-olds still come to work, especially at a combination agricultural/industrial production business. But Dick Jennings is not like many people. In 1968, Jennings dropped out of engineering school at Yale to return to his grandfather’s homeland in western North Carolina and start up Jennings Trout Farm in the mountain town of Cashiers. Primarily providing fish to recreational fishermen along the Eastern seaboard who would stock their private streams and lakes with trout, Jennings enabled these sportsmen to literally shoot fish in a barrel, if they so desired.

Eventually his business expanded to selling larger volumes of live fish to grocery chains to the point where Jennings was shipping in truckload quantities. He further diversified his business by starting up a processing facility so that he could ship fillets instead of just whole fish. In 1963, Jennings moved his operations to Canton, North Carolina, at the base of Lake Logan in the Pisgah National Forest, high in the Appalachian Mountains. Since a dam was in the process of being constructed at Lake Logan, Jennings was able to negotiate water-usage rights to the flow, a development that has made a tremendous difference in the success of his company.

Because the renamed Sunburst Trout Farms is able to pull water directly from Lake Logan, the operation benefits from the pristine purity of the stream, which has had almost no human contact other than the occasional fisherman in the federally designated wilderness area. Additionally, the extreme 6,000-gallon-per-minute flow rate into the 25 concrete runs where the trout is held allows Sunburst to simulate very natural growing conditions for its fish.

This water volume creates a flow velocity that is twice as high as most other trout farms. The increased flow provides a continuous and vital stream of oxygen across the gills of the fish, while also encouraging healthy metabolic activity and promoting natural development through exercise.

Read the full story at Food Republic

 

West Coast drought affecting trout and salmon

July 9, 2015 — (AP) — Drought and record hot weather are producing lethal conditions for salmon and trout in rivers across the West.

A recent survey released Wednesday of the lower reaches of 54 rivers in Oregon, California and Washington by the conservation group Wild Fish Conservancy showed nearly three-quarters had temperatures higher than 70 degrees, considered potentially deadly for salmon and trout.

Low river flows from the record low winter snowpack, which normally feeds rivers through the summer, combined with record hot weather have created a perfect storm of bad conditions for salmon and trout, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service supervisory fisheries biologist Rich Johnson.

Oregon Climate Center Associate Director Kathie Dello said the entire West Coast saw record low snowpack last winter, leading to low rivers this summer. All three states had record high temperatures for June, with Oregon breaking the record by 3 degrees, and the three-month outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is for continued warmer and drier-than-normal weather made worse by the ocean-warming condition known as El Niño, she added.

Read the full story from Al Jazeera with The Associated Press