Saving Seafood

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Declares Commercial Fishery Disasters for West Coast Salmon and Sardines

September 28, 2018 — The following was released by NOAA:

Today, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced that commercial fishery failures occurred between 2015 and 2017 for salmon fisheries in Washington, Oregon, and California, in addition to the sardine fishery in California.

“The Department of Commerce and NOAA stand ready to assist fishing towns and cities along the West Coast as they recover,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “After years of hardship, the Department looks forward to providing economic relief that will allow the fisheries and the communities they help support to rebound.”

Between July 2016 and March 2018, multiple tribes and governors from Washington, Oregon, and California requested fishery disaster determinations. The Secretary, working with NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), evaluated each request based on the available data, and found that all but one (the California red sea urchin fishery) met the requirements for a fishery disaster determination.

The determinations for West Coast salmon and sardines now make these fisheries eligible for NOAA Fisheries fishery disaster assistance.  The 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Act provided $20 million in NOAA Fisheries fishery disaster assistance. The Department of Commerce is determining the appropriate allocations of these funds to eligible fisheries.

Read the full release here

Commerce Department Makes Several Fishery Failure Determinations for West Coast Fisheries

September 27, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Salmon and sardine fisheries off the West Coast have been closed or severely curtailed in the years since The Blob — an unusual mass of warm water — stuck around for most of 2014 and 2015. While not the only odd ocean change, it was blamed for many fisheries problems.

Now, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross has determined those salmon and sardine fisheries are indeed fishery failures due to natural resource conditions, the department said in a press release and letters released Tuesday. Those fisheries will now be eligible for $20 million in fishery disaster aid in the 2018 Consolidated Appropriations Act.

““The Department of Commerce and NOAA stand ready to assist fishing towns and cities along the West Coast as they recover,” Ross said in a statement. “After years of hardship, the department looks forward to providing economic relief that will allow the fisheries and the communities they help support to rebound.”

About a dozen fisheries are included in the determinations, a mix of several tribes and state fisheries from all three West Coast states. Only one, the California red sea urchin fishery, was not included.

“The recent five-year average revenue (2011-2015) from the California red sea urchin fishery was $8,538,815,” Ross’ letter to California Gov. Edmund G. Brown said. “In 2016, California red sea urchin fishery revenues were $7,255,593, which is a 15 percent revenue loss as compared with the previous five-year average. Compared to the previous five-year average, this percentage loss in revenue is substantially lower than the 35 percent revenue loss minimum called for in the NMFS Policy Guidance to justify a determination of a commercial fishery failure, serious disruption, or harm.”

However, the 2015 and 2016 Pacific sardine fishery did meet the requirements for a fishery failure. A large biomass decline in sardines, resulting from unfavorable ocean conditions, was beyond the control of fishery managers, the letter to Gov. Brown stated.

“We are deeply grateful to Secretary Ross and Assistant Administrator for Fisheries Chris Oliver, as well as to West Coast NMFS officials and Governor Brown, for acknowledging that our sardine fishery closure met the legal requirements for designation as a fishery resource disaster,” California Wetfish Producers Association Executive Director Diane Pleschner said in an email. “This determination now makes our sardine fishery eligible for NMFS fishery disaster assistance. We look forward to learning the level of disaster assistance that the Department of Commerce will determine. The fact that relief is coming is very good news.”

NMFS has not determined the allocations for the $20 million in disaster assistance yet, but the final divisions will be pretty small for each entity compared to similar disasters in years past.

For example, the 2016 and 2017 California and Oregon ocean troll Klamath River fall Chinook salmon fisheries were included in the determinations. A similar scenario in 2005 and 2006, in which commercial troll seasons were partially or fully closed due to poor returns of Klamath River fall Chinook, $60.4 million in disaster aid was made available to fishermen, processors and related businesses. Now, those fisheries will have to share part of the $20 million — barring additional funding appropriated by Congress.

Other determinations include the 2017 Yurok and 2016-2017 Hoopa Valley tribes’ Klamath River fall Chinook fisheries; the 2016 Makah ocean coho and Chinook salmon troll fishery in Washington; the 2015 Hoh, Suquamish, Nooksack and Stillaguamish tribes’ coho fisheries in Washington; the 2015 Muckleshoot and Upper Skagit tribes’ coho and pink salmon fisheries in Washington; and the 2015 and 2016 Quileute Tribe coho salmon fisheries in Washington.

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

Disasters declared for salmon fisheries along West Coast

September 26, 2018 – SEATTLE — Federal officials have determined that commercial fishery failures occurred for salmon in Washington, Oregon and California, making those fisheries eligible for federal disaster assistance.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross on Tuesday also announced a commercial fishery failure for the sardine fishery in California but not for the state’s red sea urchin fishery.

The governors from Washington, Oregon and California and multiple Native American tribes had requested the determinations between July 2016 and March 2018. Their requests noted unusually warm and poor ocean conditions that affected fish.

Read the full story from at the Associated Press

 

Washington Governor’s task force releases draft plan to save local orcas

September 26, 2018 — A state organization dedicated to protecting the area’s endangered orcas is one step closer to fulfilling its mission.

Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee’s Southern Resident Killer Whale Task Force released a draft plan on Sept. 24. The public can comment on the report until midnight, Oct. 7 at governor.wa.gov/orcareport. Members will review comments at their Oct. 17-18 meetings and their final plan is due by Nov. 16.

The draft plan states that the organization’s “goal is to ensure the ecosystem is healthy and resilient enough to support a thriving Southern resident orca population.” Members are coordinating with an orca recovery plan created by the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2008, which strives to create an average population growth rate of 2.3 percent per year for 28 years.

Read the full story at The San Juan Journal

 

Tariffs could harm NW fishing industry in markets on both sides of the Pacific

September 24, 2018 — First, it was Washington wheat farmers and apple growers. Then it was regional wineries. And now, Pacific Northwest seafood companies are getting sucked into the escalating trade war between the Trump administration and China.

The fleet that fishes in the North Pacific, much of it based in Puget Sound, was first caught up in the fight in July, when China imposed sweeping sanctions on many U.S. imports, including virtually all seafood. The immediate risk was clear: China’s tariffs threatened to block access to what many believe will become the world’s largest consumer market for seafood products.

But now there’s a new risk: a Trump administration trade policy that was meant to punish the Chinese, but which could end up making American seafood more expensive for American consumers — a bizarre outcome that could expose the Northwest’s seafood industry to trade-war damage both at home and abroad.

That risk became clear on Monday, when Robert Lighthizer, the United States Trade Representative, released a list of some 5,700 imported Chinese food products that will be hit by heavy new tariffs. Among them, roughly $2.7 billion in imported Chinese seafood items—everything from salmon and flounder to sole and snow crab.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Tentative deal reached on renewal of Pacific Salmon Treaty

September 21, 2018 — American and Canadian negotiators have successfully brokered a deal to renew the Pacific Salmon Treaty. The compromise agreement has now been sent to Ottawa and Washington, D.C., to be approved and ratified by their respective national governments.

The Pacific Salmon Treaty is renegotiated every decade between the two countries to govern salmon catch, research, and enhancement in Alaska, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. The treaty expires on its own terms on Dec. 31, 2018. The current negotiations have taken place over the course of two years by two teams seeking to renew the treaty for the next decade, from Jan. 1, 2019, through Dec. 31, 2028.

Aspects of the expiring plan will carry over. Among them, the use of an abundance-based management regime for king salmon, as opposed to hard caps. This should result in harvest rate indices and quotas that will rise and fall depending on abundance of the fish.

Pacific Salmon Commission Executive Secretary John Field praised the negotiators for working out amendments to the treaty, including harvest rate reductions of king salmon when it comes to mixed-stock ocean fisheries.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Salmon preservation plan to impact Alaska and Canada over 10-year span

September 19, 2018 — PORTLAND, Ore. — Alaska and Canada would reduce their catch of endangered Chinook salmon in years with poor fishery returns under an agreement that spells out the next decade of cooperation between the U.S. and Canada to keep various salmon species afloat in Pacific waters.

Members of the Pacific Salmon Commission recommended a new 10-year conservation plan to the U.S. and Canadian governments Monday that would run through 2028 and involve Canada, Alaska, Washington, Oregon and a number of tribal nations in both countries.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KTUU

 

‘What extinction looks like’: A young orca’s presumed death cuts endangered whale population to 74

September 17, 2018 — Ever since birth, she had to fight to live.

The deep scratches along her back and dorsal fin not only earned her the nickname “Scarlet,” but may also indicate that the young female orca, J50, came into the world through harrowing means: Pulled out of her mother by other whales using their mouths.

Still, she survived, and for a while restored hope that she could help her pod — part of an embattled population of southern resident killer whales known to frequent the waters near Washington state — to rebuild their numbers.

But Thursday, researchers announced grim news.

“J50 is missing and now presumed dead,” according to a news release from the Center for Whale Research, a group based out of San Juan Island that has studied the southern resident killer whales for more than 40 years. The last known sighting of the 3-year-old orca was on Sept. 7, researchers said.

Without J50, the population is now down to 74 members — their numbers reached nearly 100 in 1995 — and many of its existing female members are nearing the age where they will no longer be able to reproduce, Ken Balcomb, founder and principal investigator of the Center for Whale Research, told The Washington Post in July. The pod has not produced viable offspring in three years.

Read the full story at The Washington Post 

Experts Prepare Plan to Capture Ill Orca as Last Alternative

September 13, 2018 — Federal biologists said Wednesday they are preparing a plan to capture and treat a sick, critically endangered orca if there is no other way to save her in the wild.

Officials said they will intervene and rescue the orca only if she becomes stranded or separated from the rest of her tightly knit group of whales.

They want the 4-year-old orca known as J50 to survive in the wild and contribute to the recovery of southern resident killer whales, without putting the rest of the orcas in her pod at risk.

“We don’t intend to intervene while she’s with her family. If we are presented with a situation where a rescue is the only viable alternative, we will rescue her,” Chris Yates, assistant regional administrator for NOAA’s protected resources division, told reporters during a call.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

Sea Lions And Orcas Battle It Out In Puget Sound

September 12, 2018 — In the early 1980s, a group of recreational fishermen dropping lines near the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in Ballard, Washington, started complaining about a particularly large and wily California sea lion.

The shore anglers had good reason to be annoyed. Each time they hooked a fish, this sea lion would pop up and eat it off their line.

The sea lion, nicknamed Herschel by the fishermen, quickly moved on from taking fish off lines to gobbling up steelhead as they tried to make it over the ladder south of the locks. Here, water sluices down stair-stepped pools and migrating fish jump from pool to pool until they reach the Lake Union Ship Canal and spawning grounds beyond. Herschel found that by hanging out under the fish ladder he could gorge himself on steelhead trying to make it upstream.

Over the next few years, it became apparent that Herschel and a handful of other large male sea lions were seriously depleting the winter steelhead run, putting the population that spawns in Lake Washington’s tributaries at risk of extinction.

California sea lions spend part of the year at breeding sites on the Channel Islands. The bulls that feed at the bottom of fish ladders, where salmon practically swim down their gullets, have a distinct advantage in their battles for mates and territory.

Read the full story at OPB