October 27, 2020 — The Northwest Aquaculture Alliance (NWAA) has pushed back against a video by clothing company Patagonia titled “Take Back Puget Sound,” which focuses on net-pen aquaculture.
The new video focuses specially on Washington state, and opens with footage of a net-pen collapse suffered by Cooke Aquaculture, with speakers involved calling net-pen aquaculture “a dirty industry.”
October 20, 2020 — Oregon crabbers had landed 20.07 million pounds of Dungeness as of August. Ex-vessel price negotiations and meat fill issues delayed the opening of the season until Dec. 31. And like other fisheries, the arrival of covid-19 put the stops on product flow to preferred markets.
As for the resource, the good times continue to roll for the crabbers. Based on average ex-vessel prices of $3.64 per pound this year’s revenues crunch out to $73.06 million. According to data from PacFIN, the Oregon fleet averaged $3.58 per pound for revenues of $66.7 million in the 2019 season.
Elsewhere along the West Coast, California fleets posted landings of 8.37 million pounds for revenues of $30.09 million, and Washington’s production hit 10.93 million pounds (no ex-vessel revenue available), according to data from PacFIN.
Though Oregon crabbers received an average $3.64 per pound for the entire season, some buyers drove high-end offers to $6.28 per pound in May.
October 15, 2020 — As Washington-based fishing companies are heading to Alaska in the coming days and weeks, thousands of their employees will be participating in a project aimed at early detection and control of COVID-19 infections.
With close quarters and crew members sharing cabins, fishing ships are ripe for spreading the disease. This summer, American Seafoods, a leading processor in the North Pacific and Bering Sea, had COVID outbreaks on three of its massive trawlers and some of its workers received care at a tiny clinic in Unalaska.
“Alaska is at high risk of an infected workforce impacting small, mostly Native communities with little resources to deal with an outbreak,” said Joshua Berger, maritime director for the state’s Department of Commerce.
October 2, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
The underwater video scene is full of life. A school of sinewy fish darts across the screen while a crab rummages along the seafloor. A flatfish, camouflaged like the sandy bottom, doesn’t seem to mind when the crab crawls over its back to approach an oyster.
Scientists from NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center are collecting this video and more like it. They want to assess how marine life uses, and may even benefit from, habitat in and around farms growing oysters and other shellfish. They are teaming up with Microsoft to use computers and artificial intelligence to scan hours of video within seconds for different species of interest.
This particular video reveals the underwater landscape of Hama Hama shellfish farm in Hood Canal, Washington, one of many partners assisting with the study. Other local shellfish growers and the Pacific Shellfish Institute are also taking part.
“We collected the video as one way to assess how fish and invertebrates use shellfish aquaculture habitats compared to areas of the nearshore that don’t have aquaculture,” said Beth Sanderson, a Northwest Fisheries Science Center research scientist. Researchers collected the video over the past several years to assess the way species use, and feed in, different habitat types.
Shellfish farming is one of the most valuable parts of the Northwest aquaculture industry. It generated close to $100 million annually for the regional economy and provides close to 1,500 jobs prior to the pandemic. Shellfish farms occupy more than 25,000 acres in the Northwest. Researchers and managers want to understand how farming practices affect marine life in the shallow and highly productive nearshore waters where oysters and other shellfish grow.
“We’ve seen basically all of the fish you’d expect in the nearshore—herring and other forage fish, varieties of perch and sculpin, juvenile salmon, along with diving ducks, harbor seals and more,” Sanderson said. “There’s an amazing variety of life in the shallows of the Pacific Northwest, and we are seeing for the first time how many of these species use habitats within and near shellfish farms.”
September 17, 2020 — Between 85% and 90% of all seafood is consumed in restaurants or purchased from retail stores. So when COVID-19 struck in March, the seafood industry went into shock.
Gone were the restaurants that bought millions of pounds of seafood, including our beloved salmon, a mainstay of Pacific Northwest good eating. In 2017, for instance, Washington state’s total commercial catch was 666 million pounds—and that’s just one state’s catch.
Into this desperate situation stepped Max Mossler, ’16, managing editor and developer of Sustainable Fisheries, an entity of the UW School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences that explains the science of sustainable seafood. Mossler developed a Fish Map from information he collated from hundreds of commercial fishing lists. The map is a way for commercial fishing companies to sell their products directly to consumers. Want some fresh fish? Visit the website and tap one of the balloons on the map to see the name of the fishing enterprise and the type of fish on the “menu.”
September 14, 2020 — The C announced this week it will be holding public hearings on Cooke’s draft permits to switch from farming Atlantic salmon to rainbow trout for four existing netpens in the state.
The permits are for Cooke’s Clam Bay, Fort Ward, Orchard Rocks and Hope Island netpens.
Washington state has already held one public comment period where citizens were able to review Cooke’s permit applications to switch species.
“We considered all comments, then evaluated the water quality impacts around the change in species, and developed updated draft permits,” Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Aquaculture Specialist and Permit Coordinator Laurie Niewolny told IntraFish.
September 11, 2020 — Cooke Aquaculture Pacific has received drafted revised water quality permits from Washington’s Department of Ecology, another step forward in its effort to shift from farming Atlantic salmon to steelhead trout in its net-pens in Puget Sound.
Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, Canada-based Cooke has already received a five-year permit from the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WSDFW) to farm steelhead trout in at one site near Hope Island in Skagit Bay and three net-pen in Rich Passage.
September 2, 2020 — Navy and state leaders are at odds over a proposed rule for military testing in Puget Sound and coastal waters of Washington that allows the increased potential to harass and harm marine life, including the endangered and fragile Southern Resident orca population.
The Navy, in seeking approval from the National Marine Fisheries Service, is seeking to conduct testing and training involving a number of activities — firing torpedoes and projectiles, detonating bombs up to 1,000 pounds, using underwater sonar, piloting undersea drones and more. A proposed new rule would allow for the potential “take” — a term meaning “to harass, hunt, capture, or kill, or attempt to harass, hunt, capture, or kill any marine mammal” — of Southern Resident orcas from twice a year to up to 51 times, though federal officials say no conditions that could injure one of the 73 known remaining southern residents would be allowed.
On Friday, the state’s Department of Ecology pushed back with demands to constrict the Navy’s testing, including increasing the whale buffer zones to at least 1,000 yards and ceasing sonar exercises when orcas are spotted. The agency also asked for the Navy to use real-time whale alert systems like those used by the Washington State Ferries.
September 1, 2020 — The National Marine Fisheries Service is failing to develop a plan to rebuild Atlantic cod stocks that have been depleted by overfishing, according to a lawsuit filed in a Washington federal court.
The agency’s failure is arbitrary and capricious and violates the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, under which NMFS has a mandatory duty to rebuild fisheries as quickly as possible, according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
August 25, 2020 — The following was released by The Office of Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA):
Today, Senator Cantwell issued the following statement in response to the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision that the Pebble Mine project in Alaska’s Bristol Bay cannot move forward as proposed due to the substantial adverse environmental impacts the project could have on the Bristol Bay watershed:
“The Trump Administration and the Army Corp of Engineers finally said what scientists, fishermen, sportsmen, Tribal leaders, and restaurateurs have been saying all along — a mine at Bristol Bay would kill too many salmon and is an unacceptable place for mining. There is nothing Pebble Mine can say or do to mitigate an unmitigated disaster.
“I am so glad Alaskan and Washington Senators agree that protecting salmon habitat is critical. Those who care about the northwest economy must be diligent about continuing to fight the Pebble Mine.”
Senator Cantwell has been leading the fight to protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay—one of the largest salmon fisheries in the world—and the fishermen and industries that rely on these salmon. The seafood sector makes up 60 percent of the 30 billion dollar maritime economy in Washington state, which as a whole supports over 146,000 jobs.
Cantwell has been vocal about the disasters that Pebble Mine would bring to the Pacific Northwest, repeatedlycriticizing various members of the administration for downplaying the threat of the mine. In October of 2017, Cantwell and other members of the Washington state congressional delegation urged President Trump to listen to Washington fishermen and businesses before removing protections from Bristol Bay. In May 2018, Cantwellcalled on the Trump administration to hold public meetings in Washington state on the proposal and increase transparency for the permitting process. In July 2019, Cantwell slammed the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw protections for Bristol Bay. And just last month, Senator Cantwell criticized an environmental analysis released by the Trump administration that said the proposed Pebble Mine would not post a serious environmental threat.