Saving Seafood

Washington’s Cantwell on the coast to fight offshore oil plan

February 6, 2018 — WESTPORT, Wash. — U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) met with local fishermen, small business owners and other local leaders in Westport on Saturday to “discuss the negative impacts of the Trump Administration’s proposed offshore drilling plan on local jobs and the economy.”

Among those attending were Westport Mayor Rob Bearden, Al Carter of Ocean Gold Fish Processing, Hillary Bearden and Larry Thevik of the Washington Dungeness Crab Fishermen’s Association, Mark Ballo of Brady’s Oysters, Greg Mueller of the Washington Trollers Association, Mike Cornman of Wesport Seafoods, Jonathan Sawin, representing charter boat operations, as well as local business operators Sarah McWhelan, Adrienne Jones, and Port of Grays Harbor representative Molly Bold.

“Our coastal economy, and specifically our maritime fishing economy is so important to our state,” Cantwell said in opening remarks. “That’s why we’re here, because we want to do everything we can to help it grow and to protect it.”

In a letter earlier this week, Cantwell led a bipartisan group of 16 lawmakers from the Pacific Northwest to call on Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to remove the Washington/Oregon planning area from the National Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Oil and Gas Leasing Program for 2019-2014. Zinke in January announced the National OCS Program for 2019-2024, which proposes to make over 90 percent of the total OCS acreage and more than 98 percent of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and gas resources in federal offshore areas available to consider for future exploration and development.

By comparison, the current program puts 94 percent of the OCS off limits. In addition, the new program proposes the largest number of lease sales in U.S. history.

Cantwell has been a leading opponent of the new policy: “Oil drilling and exploration off the Pacific Northwest coastline, or an oil spill from drilling anywhere along the Pacific Coast, poses threats to the fishing, shellfish, and tourism industries at the heart of Washington’s economy,” Cantwell said “The maritime economy in Washington contributes $50 billion dollars to the state economy and supports 191,000 jobs in the state. Other states along the Pacific coast similarly rely on their maritime industries for significant economic output.”

Cantwell told the Westport group she couldn’t understand why the current proposal was made, since oil and gas exploration off the Washington coast has “been considered before and has been rejected.”

Late Sunday, a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management public meeting and citizens forum on the proposal that had been scheduled in Tacoma at the Landmark Catering and Convention Center was abruptly cancelled by what was said to be a “credible threat.”

A news conference — that included Gov. Jay Inslee, Mayor Crystal Dingler of Ocean Shores, Gina James of the Quinault Indian Nation, state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, Commissioner of Public Lands Hillary Franz, and Thevik among the speakers — was moved to Olympia as a result.

Inslee and Dingler both cited the Nestucca oil barge collision of 1988, when 2.8 million gallons of Bunker C oil were spilled near the entrance of Grays Harbor. Inslee noted 4 million tourists visited the state’s beaches last year.

“Oil and gas drilling and the risk it poses — the inevitable risk — is unacceptable for some of the best beaches in the world,” Inslee said.

Dingler noted how the Ocean Shores Convention Center became a marine bird rescue center for oil-soaked birds after the Nestucca incident.

“Despite people’s efforts, we were able to save very few of them,” Dingler said, urging opposition to the drilling and exploration proposal “on behalf of a clean and healthy ocean, which powers our economy and is the bedrock of our way of life.”

The bureau is accepting public comments on the plan through March 9, and Cantwell has made the case for opposition in similar gatherings in Seattle and Vancouver.

“We have tried to prepare what is a response to this proposal in encouraging our various organizations in the state to communicate to the Secretary of Interior that this is a bad idea,” Cantwell said. “But unfortunately, they have continued to move forward.”

“W’re concerned about all sorts of issues,” Cantwell told the Westport group. “We’re concerned about the incidents of oil spills that we know have happened.” She also listed concerns about future earthquakes and tsunamis off the coast.

Mayor Bearden noted Westport late last month passed a resolution opposed to any coastal oil and gas drilling, similar to a resolution also adopted by the city of Ocean Shores.

“I think Westport would turn into a ghost town if we had some drilling and there was a spill,” Bearden predicted. He said mayors of several other Grays Harbor communities were considering similar resolutions.

So many local businesses depend on fishing and the marine environment, Bearden said, noting Westport is the top-producing fishing port on the West Coast and No. 10 nationally for production.

“People would not come, there would be no work” if there was an oil mishap on the coast, he said.

Carter of Ocean Gold, said his company provides about 600 jobs a year locally, with more than a dozen independent boats fishing for the enterprise.

Read the full story at the Daily World 

 

No agreement yet on conservation cuts in halibut harvest

February 2, 2018 — Commercial fishing for halibut opens on March 24 and runs through Nov. 7, with no decision reached by the International Pacific Halibut Commission at its annual meeting in Portland, Ore., on conservation cuts for 2018.

NOAA Fisheries is considering the implications of the IPHC meeting and now trying to determine what steps to take, and some are hoping the impasse may yet be resolved by an additional IPHC meeting soon.

Bob Alverson, general manager of the Fishing Vessel Owners Association in Seattle, and one of three U.S. commissioners, is one of those hoping for another meeting soon.  “I think we have an excellent corps of scientists and the inability of the commissioners to come to an agreement is unfortunate,” he said. “I think it is worth one more shot for the commissioners to try to figure it out. I knew it was going to be difficult going in to it.”

Back in 2014 harvest reductions put in place included 33 percent in Area 3A, 30 percent in Area 3B, 42 percent in 4A, 20 percent in 4B and 20 percent in 2C, but Canada did not take such aggressive reductions, Alverson said.  That done, U.S. percentage reductions are less for this year, while Canada needed almost a 42 percent reduction and it was too much to bite off, he said.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

Environmental impact of salmon decline: This isn’t just about fish

January 29, 2018 — A geologist might not be the first person that comes to mind when you think about salmon experts, but David Montgomery wrote the book on the decline of salmon: “King of Fish” in 2004.

Montgomery, a geomorphologist and professor at the University of Washington, has a unique perspective on why salmon are so important to our region. Of course, there’s the importance to the indigenous people in our area and the delicious food they provide, but they also have a serious impact on our whole ecosystem.

“Juvenile salmon are hatched in their natal home river streams and they’re tiny suckers, so they go out to the ocean and they get big,” Montgomery explains. “They spend most of their life out at sea in a more resource-rich marine environment then they bring their bodies back to the rivers and streams in Washington, and Puget Sound along the way, with these bodies full of nutrients.”

After the salmon return home, spawn and die, those nutrients don’t just go away. “They get recycled,” Montgomery says. Decaying salmon feed tiny organisms in streambeds, which are eaten the next year by juvenile salmon. Salmon also get dragged onto the forest floor by bears and eagles and distribute their nutrients there. “Fully one-third of the nitrogen in those big old-growth trees in our forests swam up river as a fish,” Montgomery says. “When you lose those big runs of salmon, you lose those nutrients and it cascades through the whole system.”

It’s no secret that those big runs are declining in a major way. Historically, adult salmon returns to the Columbia Basin were at least 10 to 16 million fish annually — today, across the Northwest, less than 5 percent of historic populations of wild salmon and steelhead return to our rivers and streams. Fifteen different salmon and steelhead stocks in Washington state are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act today.

As Montgomery notes, the loss of these salmon means a domino effect to the ecosystem. More than 135 other fish and wildlife populations benefit from the presence of wild salmon and steelhead, from southern resident orca whales, which are at a 30-year population low, to eagles, wolves, bear, otter, coyote, seals and sea lions.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

 

California sea lion population rebounds

January 24, 2018 — California sea lions are doing just fine. Thanks for asking.

More than fine, actually.

Sea lions have fully rebounded with an estimated population of more than 250,000 in 2014, according to a recent study by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1975, the population was estimated at less than 90,000.

The study reconstructed the population’s triumphs and trials over the past 40 years.

“The population has basically come into balance with its environment,” co-author Sharon Melin, a research biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, said in a statement. “The marine environment is always changing, and their population is at a point where it responds very quickly to changes in the environment.”

NOAA’s declaration that California sea lions have fully rebounded does not mean a “delisting” as it would if the sea lion was listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.

“Although there is no provision in the Marine Mammal Protection Act (which protects sea lions) to delist a species, there is a provision that allows states to ask NOAA Fisheries to take over management of species that have reached carrying capacity (in the law it is called Optimum Sustainable Population or OSP) and potentially do more to control their numbers,” wrote NOAA spokesperson Michael Milstein when announcing the report’s findings.

The goal now, Melin said, is to keep the population balanced between 183,000 and 275,000 individuals.

The rebound is a victory for the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. But as in other instances of animal populations beating the odds — wolves, for example — it’s a success story that comes with challenges.

As the California sea lion population has grown, the animals have expanded their range, bringing them into conflict with humans and endangered fish.

Where you sit’

In Astoria, male California sea lions have taken over an entire stretch of docks at the Port of Astoria’s East Mooring Basin. Port employees have attempted numerous deterrent tactics over the years, everything from fluttering wind dancers to a fake killer whale. Nothing has really worked.

Upward of 1,000 pinnipeds were recorded in a single daily count at the mooring basin in 2015. While fewer sea lions returned this spring, plenty showed up in the fall and many have stuck around through the winter instead of leaving like they have in the past, said Janice Burk, marina manager.

The port plans to install more low railing fabricated by students from Knappa along the docks in the spring. It has proved to be the one deterrent that seems to work. Sometimes.

Read the full story from the Columbia Basin Bulletin at the Chinook Observer

 

Federal government failing to protect right whales from destruction, lawsuit alleges

January 22, 2018 — The federal government must do more to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from getting tangled up in lobster gear, a leading cause of death for the rapidly declining mammals, a lawsuit filed Wednesday asserts.

A coalition of environmental groups filed the suit in US District Court in Washington, D.C., against officials from the Commerce Department and National Marine Fisheries Service.

According to a 33-page civil complaint, there were only about 455 right whales in 2016, and at least 17 died last year, “pushing the species even closer to the brink of extinction.” Many of the whales have been spotted off Cape Cod.

The complaint says entanglement in commercial fishing gear has been the “primary cause” of right whale deaths in recent years, and the “lobster fishery is a U.S. fishery that frequently entangles right whales.”

In 2014, the complaint states, the fisheries service issued a “biological opinion” finding that the lobster fishery is likely to kill or seriously injure more than three North Atlantic right whales every year, yet the agency also concluded “the fishery is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of North Atlantic right whales.”

The suit alleges the fisheries service “is failing to ensure that its continued authorization, permitting, and management of the American lobster fishery does not jeopardize the continued existence of endangered North Atlantic right whales.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

Oregon: Price talks delay crab season

January 17, 2018 — Crab boats loaded with pots sat at the docks all weekend while fishermen and processors remained in a gridlock over prices.

The commercial Dungeness crab season was set to open Monday in most of Oregon and Washington state, but price negotiations and ocean conditions are keeping boats at home. The fishery is off to one of the latest starts that fishery managers can remember in over a decade.

The season traditionally opens Dec. 1, but was pushed back because crabs did not have shells full of meat.

At one point major processors had offered crabbers $2.30 a pound — not nearly enough to convince them to go out, local crabbers said. The price inched up during the state-sponsored negotiation period in Oregon, but by the time those negotiations ended the processors’ price still remained under last season’s average starting price of $2.89 per pound.

Processors had extended an offer to Coos Bay and Newport crabbers for around $2.75 per pound since crab meat there had already hit the required limit, but argued that crab off Astoria still had not filled out to the required 23 percent meat recovery. The last test in the area had the crab at 22.8 percent, according to John Corbin, chairman of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission. A local boat went out over the weekend to catch more crab for another meat test which revealed they are now at 24.6 percent meat recovery.

Corbin and others planned to go back to the processors Monday afternoon to try to negotiate a price for the whole area. However, fishery managers and crabbers said that with rough ocean conditions expected to follow a warm and sunny weekend, few boats would likely venture out even if they did settle on a price. Bar crossing restrictions were in place Saturday and Sunday on the Columbia River.

If price negotiations had gone differently from the start, fishermen could have set gear out over the weekend and started pulling it Monday, Corbin said. Sea swell and wind are expected to pick up later Monday, settle a bit on Tuesday and then roar back up again on Wednesday.

“Now it creates a different set of challenges,” he said.

The late start has been a blow to the local economy. Crews who spent months preparing pots and loading boats have yet to be paid and restaurants hoping to offer locally caught crab are still waiting. Fish processors are on standby. Fishermen who switch over to fish halibut or cod in Alaska are looking at a smaller and smaller window of opportunity to make some money crabbing.

In Washington’s Pacific County, fuel sales during the commercial crab season and the Buoy 10 summer sport fishing season make up the bulk of the tiny Port of Chinook’s revenue.

Read the full story at the Daily Astorian

 

Washington: Lawmakers consider bill to ban commercial net pens for fish farms after massive spill

January 11, 2018 — OLYMPIA, Wash. — A bill that would ban commercial net pens used for fish farms in Washington State is now being considered in Olympia.

It comes after last August’s massive spill in the Puget Sound where tens of thousands of Atlantic salmon were released near the San Juan Islands, and more than 105,000 remain unaccounted for.

“That is a great concern,” said Sen. Kevin Ranker, (D-Orcas Island), who is sponsoring the bill that would ban Atlantic salmon farms in Washington.

On Tuesday, Ranker testified at a hearing of the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks Committee.

“Having these fish, which are considered – under our own laws – a pollutant in our ecosystem makes no sense if we are going to continue to recover our marine ecosystem,” said Ranker.

Ranker is worried about more fish escaping from net pens in the future and the daily operations of the facilities owned by Canadian-based Cooke Aquaculture.

“Frankly, this bill kills rural jobs,” said Troy Nichols of Phillips Burgess Government Relations who testified on behalf of Cooke Aquaculture.

Cooke Aquaculture employs 80 people at its eight facilities in Washington.

“We do an excellent job raising fish there- here in the Puget Sound, said Tom Glaspie who is the farm manager at Cooke’s Hope Island facility. “We give it our all. We care about the environment. Most of us are fishermen; (our) families have fished, and we’re proud to be Washingtonians.”

Read the full story at KOMO News

 

Cooke Aquaculture Pacific Files Lawsuit to Fight Washington Decision to Cancel Port Angeles Lease

January 9, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — In December Cooke Aquaculture Pacific was ordered by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to dismantle their fish pens at Ediz Hook. Now the company is fighting back.

Cooke Aquaculture announced on Friday that they have filed a lawsuit in Clallam County Superior Court against the Department of Natural Resources. The company says that the government organization’s attempt to terminate their lease is “not supported by the facts and will unnecessarily result in the loss of scarce rural jobs.”

As previously reported, state Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, the elected head of DNR, canceled the aquatic lands lease due to a series of violations. Styrofoam discharges, a defective anchoring system and operating 500 feet outside of the leasehold area were all listed as violations.

“Cooke Aquaculture Pacific acquired the Washington salmon farms when it purchased Icicle Seafoods in 2016,” Joel Richardson, Vice President for Public Relations at Cooke Aquaculture, said in a press release. “The Department of Natural Resources, then led by Commissioner Franz’s predecessor, approved the transfer of those farm leases at that time and raised no concerns or objections to the manner in which Cooke’s predecessor company was managing the leased aquatic area. We can only assume that the recent decision to terminate the Port Angeles lease is based upon misinformation or a misunderstanding of the facts and history related to the site.”

At the time of canceling the lease, Franz said that the decision was non-negotiable and that there is no appeal process in place. However, reps for Cooke say that they hope to meet with Franz to discuss DNR’s decision to terminate the lease and answer any questions that the Commissioner might have about their operations.

“While we regret the need to file suit before meeting with the Commissioner, we are required to do so in order to protect the company’s legal rights,” Richardson said. “Nonetheless, Cooke believes that a fulsome dialogue with DNR, which it regards as a long-standing partner in its recently acquired Washington aquaculture program, can likely resolve any legitimate, substantive factual issues between the parties. If those issues cannot be amicably resolved by dialogue with the Commissioner then we are prepared to assert our legal rights by way of the judicial system.”

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

Coastal governors oppose Trump’s offshore drilling plan

January 5, 2018 — Governors along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts are opposing the Trump administration’s proposal to open almost all U.S. waters to oil and natural gas drilling.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Thursday a draft proposal that would allow offshore drilling for crude oil and natural gas on the Atlantic Coast and in the Arctic, reversing the Obama’s administration’s block in those areas. It also permits drilling along the Pacific Coast as well as more possibilities in the Gulf of Mexico. Under the plan, spanning the years 2019 to 2024, more than 90 percent of the total acres on the Outer Continental Shelf would be made available for leasing.

Zinke said the Interior Department has identified 47 potential lease sales, including seven in the Pacific and nine off the Atlantic coast. That would mark a dramatic shift in policy, not just from the Obama era. The last offshore lease sale for the East Coast was in 1983 and for the West Coast in 1984.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican and ally of President Trump, quickly said no thanks to Zinke’s plan, citing drilling as a threat to the state’s tourism industry.

Read the full story at the Washington Examiner

 

How Fishermen Are Faring In Washington Months After Salmon Spill

December 28, 2017 — Last summer, more than 100,000 farmed Atlantic salmon spilled into Puget Sound, threatening the wild salmon population. Local fishermen scrambled to catch them. NPR’s Ari Shapiro speaks with fisherman Riley Starks about what’s happened since.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

This week we’re checking back in with people we met on the program during 2017. Over the summer, more than a hundred thousand Atlantic salmon escaped from an ocean farm in Puget Sound off the coast of Washington state. Local fishermen feared a complete disruption of the ecosystem. Back in August, I spoke with one of those fishermen, Riley Starks, who was on a hunt for the fugitive salmon.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

RILEY STARKS: Fishermen love to fish, and so there is a certain sort of joy in it. But it’s like a Fellini movie. There’s the overshadowing sort of despair, you know, that underlies it.

SHAPIRO: And Riley Starks is back with us now once again. Welcome to the program.

STARKS: Thank you, Ari – nice to be back.

SHAPIRO: Did you catch all the fish?

STARKS: We did not catch all the fish. We caught – I’m going to say about a third of the fish that escaped.

SHAPIRO: So where’d the other two-thirds go?

STARKS: Well, one-third were scooped up by Cooke themselves.

Listen to the full story at New England Public Radio