Saving Seafood

Washington sends plan to feds to help commercial fishers

December 9, 2020 — The state said Tuesday that it submitted a draft plan to federal officials for how to distribute $50 million in federal COVID-19 relief to members of Washington’s commercial seafood, shellfish and charter industries.

The CARES Act provides $300 million to states to distribute to fisheries participants with Washington and Alaska receiving the highest allocation of $50 million each.

“The pandemic had early and dramatic impacts to shellfish and commercial fishing businesses. These activities play an outsized role in our state, especially in our tribal and natural resources dependent economies,” Gov. Jay Inslee said. “I am pleased that we will soon have more assistance available to help these hurting businesses recover.”

“Submitting this plan for federal review brings us one step closer to getting this funding into the hands of commercial fishing and shellfish industry members who need it most,” said Ron Warren, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) fish policy director. “We applaud Washington’s congressional delegation for securing this relief for members of Washington’s commercial seafood, shellfish and charter industries.”

The draft plan goes to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-Fisheries for review and approval.

Read the full story at The Daily World

24 of 25 crewmembers aboard US Seafoods trawler test positive for COVID-19

December 7, 2020 — United States Seafoods had navigated the coronavirus pandemic with no cases on their vessels until last Thursday, 3 December, its last day of the season. The Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based company’s Legacy trawler pulled into Unalaska to wrap up perch fishing for the season when two people on board tested positive. Further testing by a local clinic found that 24 of the 25 people on the vessel had COVID-19.

A news release from the City of Unalaska said that all the crew members remained on board the 132-foot factory trawler, with the one person who tested negative separated from the rest.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

SEATTLE TIMES: Salmon-rich Bristol Bay deserves permanent protection

December 2, 2020 — After the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ decision last week to reject a key permit for Alaska’s proposed Pebble Mine, it’s clear that federal protection is now needed to permanently preserve this uniquely valuable resource. The project threatened too much destruction to the immense salmon runs of Bristol Bay.

The list of reasons to protect the bay’s watershed is long. Its annual chinook and sockeye salmon runs are the largest on Earth. All five species of Pacific salmon live in Bristol Bay, and its watershed produces about half the world’s annual sockeye harvest. The commercial and recreational fisheries support large portions of the region’s economy, and Bristol Bay’s salmon have sustained Alaska natives for many generations. Thousands of Washingtonians fish those salmon each year, for work and recreation.

The bay’s diverse salmon runs feed other populations, too — from orcas to the thousands of brown bears on the Alaska peninsula. The mine was predicted to disrupt this food chain mightily in the name of extracting rich veins of copper and gold, and potentially molybdenum and rhenium.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Northwest US maritime industry looks to a better 2021

November 27, 2020 — Battered by trade wars and COVID-19, the U.S. Northwest maritime industry is applying lessons learned from both crises, according to leaders who spoke at Pacific Marine Expo’s virtual Maritime Economic Forecast.

With China as its number-one trading partner, the Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle and Tacoma saw immense change as a result of U.S.-China trade disputes, followed by a steep falloff in vessel traffic as COVID-19 reverberated in the world economy.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Fight over Cooke’s steelhead permits in Puget Sound headed to Washington Supreme Court

November 27, 2020 — Earlier this month, conservation groups lost a lawsuit to block Cooke Aquaculture from raising domesticated steelhead in net-pens in Washington’s Puget Sound, but the groups announced on 23 November they will file a second appeal to the state’s Supreme Court.

In January, authorities from Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) granted Cooke a five-year permit to farm steelhead in Puget Sound, and received water quality permits from the state’s Department of Ecology in September. A month later, a coalition of environmental groups, led by the Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC), filed a lawsuit claiming the permitting process was incomplete.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Protecting the Critical Value of Nearshore Habitat

November 11, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

No habitat in Puget Sound is more valuable to threatened Chinook salmon than nearshore habitat. No habitat is more degraded, either.

Nearshore habitat is shorthand for tidal marsh, wetlands, and river estuaries where land and water combine to support life of all kinds, from shorebirds to juvenile salmon and steelhead. Juvenile Puget Sound Chinook salmon spend their first critical months in saltwater feeding and growing in the sheltered water of nearshore habitat.

Their growth in that pivotal window determines in large part whether they will make it back to rivers as adults to spawn. With nearshore habitat dwindling, most do not.

When reviewing projects, NOAA Fisheries is updating its efforts to avoid further losses of nearshore habitat.

“It is important for projects to have a path forward, while we also need to stem the losses of this habitat that we have already lost so much of,” said Kim Kratz, Assistant Regional Administrator in NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region.

More than 95 percent of the most valuable nearshore habitat in Puget Sound is gone and is especially scarce in the south Sound, according to an analysis by the Puget Sound Nearshore Ecosystem Restoration Project. Scientists described it as a “dramatic change in the historic occurrence [of] these once-prominent nearshore ecosystems.”

Fewer than one percent of Puget Sound Chinook salmon juveniles that migrate to the ocean each year survive to return as adults. That means that already imperiled populations continue to decline. There are also repercussions for other species such as en

Read the full release here

NWAA fires back at Patagonia’s anti net-pen aquaculture video

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.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Dungeness crab: Despite shutdowns, Oregon fleet fares well; live market spikes prices to $6.28 per pound

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.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Seattle researchers aim to stop the spread of COVID-19 infections in Alaskan fishing industry

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.

Read the full story at MSN

Video Research Investigates Effects of Shellfish Farming on West Coast Nearshore Habitat

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.”

Read the full release here