Saving Seafood

Alaska lawmakers on guard for new marine national monuments

September 26, 2016 — WASHINGTON — Alaska lawmakers are on the lookout for potential presidential decrees that could block fishing and drilling in the state’s ocean waters.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski and others have introduced legislation that they hope might stop future presidents from using a 110-year-old law — the Antiquities Act — to carve out lands and waters for new environmental protections. But the chance for new federal legislation to curb executive powers during President Barack Obama’s term has all but passed.

Now, with Obama’s recent expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Monument in Hawaii and designation of the first-ever marine monument on the East Coast, worries about a surprise Alaska announcement have arisen again.

“It seems like we read about a new designation every week — that’s probably an exaggeration, but it just seems like that,” Murkowski said Thursday. The Obama administration has used the 1906 Antiquities Act “as a tool to both sidestep and threaten Congress,” Murkowski said.

“I don’t have anyone in my office talking about monuments in Alaska,” Neil Kornze, who heads the Bureau of Land Management, assured Murkowski at a hearing Thursday.

“I can’t tell you what the president is or isn’t thinking, but in terms of my interaction with these issues, I’m not aware” of any potential new monuments in the making, he said.

Asked by Murkowski if he was aware of any “conversations outside of your particular office where there is discussion about designation, either onshore- or offshore-monument designation in Alaska,” Kornze said “no.”

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

Studies Focus on Acidic Ocean Impact on Dungeness Crabs

September 23, 2016 — Millions of pounds of Dungeness crab are pulled from Pacific Northwest waters each year in a more than century-old ritual for commercial and recreational fishermen.

But as marine waters absorb more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, federal scientists are worried that the ocean’s changing chemistry may threaten the sweet-flavored crustaceans.

So scientists with the NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center are exposing tiny crab larvae to acidic seawater in laboratory experiments to understand how ocean acidification might affect one of the West Coast’s most lucrative fisheries.

Research published this year found that Dungeness crab eggs and larvae collected from Puget Sound and exposed to higher levels of carbon dioxide — which increases ocean acidity — grew more slowly and larvae were more likely to die than those in less corrosive seawater.

Now, researchers are taking the experiments a step further to study how the crabs respond to multiple stressors during various growth stages. They also plan to analyze the sublethal effects: Even if the crabs don’t die, are they affected in physiological or other ways by ocean acidification?

“They’re so economically and ecologically important here on the West Coast,” said Paul McElhany, a research ecologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center north of Seattle, who is leading the current experiments.

Crab larvae are valuable food for small salmon and forage fish like herring that are eaten by salmon. Dungeness crabs are also the top revenue-fetching fishery in Washington and Oregon. In 2014, nearly $200 million worth of crabs were harvested along the West Coast.

Read the full story at ABC News

Obama creates the first US marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean

September 16, 2016 — WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama created the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine monument Thursday, protecting an expanse of underwater volcanoes and canyons, along with the creatures that live among them, off the coast of New England.

“If we’re going to leave our children with oceans like the ones that were left to us then we’re going to have to act. And we’re going to have to act boldly,” Obama said during the Our Ocean conservation conference in Washington, D.C.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is an area roughly the size of Connecticut and falls 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass.

There, the steep slopes of the canyons and seamounts meet currents that push nutrient filled water from the depths of the ocean to the surface. Those nutrients mix with sunlight to spur the growth of phytoplankton and zooplankton. The microscopic life forms the basis of the food chain, drawing in schools of fish and the animals that feed on them — whales, sharks, tunas, porpoises, dolphins, sea turtles and seabirds.

Read the full story at Talk Media News 

PT Bali Seafood International announces partnership with Pelagic Data Systems and Global Fishing Watch

September 15, 2o16 — The following was released by PT Bali Seafood:

WASHINGTON — A new pilot program, resulting from a partnership of PT Bali Seafood International (BSI), Pelagic Data Systems (PDS) and Global Fishing Watch, will install lightweight passive tracking devices on approximately 100 small artisanal fishing vessels to provide consumers with boat-to-port traceability of wild-caught seafood. A memorandum of understanding was executed by the parties in Jakarta in July, 2016, at The Economist Regional Ocean Summit, allowing for implementation to begin immediately. Bali Seafood has placed itself on the leading edge of seafood traceability by developing this partnership.

“Vessel location transparency for the global fishing fleet is a game changer. Global Fishing Watch makes it possible to understand catch locations and control harvest, cornerstones of sustainable fishing,” explained BSI President and founder Jerry Knecht. “Now that we are scaling the electronic tracking of the small boat fleet, we can begin to fill in the coastal vessel location and harvest picture, allowing for effective management at all levels of harvest.”

BSI and PDS completed a successful 20-boat pilot tracking Ahi tuna caught off Sumbawa in the Indonesian archipelago in 2015. This program addresses a data gap, as artisanal boats are not typically outfitted with the same tracking technology as the large-scale fishing fleet. Expanding monitoring beyond the initial pilot further improves transparency across the small-boat fishing fleets of the developing world.

By outfitting small vessels with the means to track product from boat-to-port, this program will help increase the value of the seafood harvested by participating small boat fishers, will provide robust data about fishing activity to inform sustainable management practices, and will demonstrate a novel, cost- effective transparency approach that can be scaled globally.

Global Fishing Watch, itself a partnership of Oceana, SkyTruth and Google, will publish the data, free and available to the public with the official launch of the platform today in Washington DC at the Our Ocean conference hosted by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

“We’re excited to see Global Fishing Watch used as a positive market incentive, helping producers move toward greater transparency in their operations,” said Brian Sullivan, Google’s lead on the project.

“This collaboration takes us one step closer to ridding the world of illegal fishing,” said Dave Solomon, PDS’s CEO. “We are fortunate to be at a place where we have the technology, the partnerships and the momentum to make fishing activity as transparent as possible.”

Read the full release here

MAINE: The ‘lobster capital of the world’ faces a crucial question

STONINGTON, Maine — When Deer Isle lobsterman Jeff Eaton peers into one of his traps, he sees a lot more than snappers and selects, hard-shells and shedders.

The part-time boat builder and avid lobster boat racer sees the heart of a $126 million regional economy that supports an even larger network of trap makers, bait dealers, marine supply shopkeepers and boat builders like himself.

That trickle-down shadow economy has transformed the island, which used to be known best for the granite quarries that built New York and Washington, D.C.’s most iconic buildings, into a thriving lobster economy, now best known as the home to a 300-boat lobster fleet and the town of Stonington, the self-proclaimed lobster capital of the world.

“Up here, the lobster business trickles down a lot further than just us fishermen,” Eaton said. “It feeds the whole economy.”

Although postcard-beautiful, with its neat, century-old houses looking out over its blink-and-you’ve-missed-it downtown, Stonington is a fishing village first and a stomping ground for summer people second. It’s the leader of a regional economy that traps more than a third of all lobsters landed in Maine, and an equal percentage of all the dollars earned from their sale. Last year the value of the state’s catch reached nearly $500 million. This stretch of coastline, and the lobstering islands of Vinalhaven, Isle au Haut and North Haven, landed more lobsters than any other managed zone, and has done so for the last four years.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Why a Single Crab Has West Coast Researchers Worried

September 8, 2016 — Invasive European green crabs have been swarming up and down both coasts, but because of the flow of ocean currents around the Pacific Northwest, inland waters of BC and Washington State were thought to be relatively safe. Well, on Sept. 2, volunteers announced they’d recently caught a single crab on San Juan Island, in Puget Sound. Although it’s just one for now—and it could have hitched a ride on someone’s fishing gear, or another way—it’s the first confirmed sighting in these inland waters.

Starting next week, a “rapid response team” will be out laying traps and trying to figure out if there are more crabs out there. The aliens pose a threat to the region’s native species.

“I’ll admit, I have a lot of respect for these crabs,” Sean McDonald, a research scientist at the University of Washington, told me. McDonald works with the Washington Sea Grant’s Crab Team, a network of citizen scientists that serves as an early alert for the crustacean’s encroachment. They caught the crab, and will be organizing next week’s response. “They’re tough and resilient,” he continued. “They make a living anywhere they can.”

Read the full story at Motherboard

Seattle company debuts high-tech, sustainable fishing vessel

September 7, 2016 — SEATTLE — A new commercial fishing vessel, built in Washington, is charting new territory for sustainability and crew safety.

The F/V Blue North is a 191 foot freezer longliner owned by Seattle based Blue North Fisheries. The vessel was designed in Norway and built by Dakota Creek Industries in Anacortes.

“I’m kind of pinching myself – we are finally here – we’ve got it,” said Patrick Burns who is the co-founder of Blue North. “It’s a state of the art vessel.”

The $36 million fishing boat has been under construction for several years. It was delivered last week and has been receiving some final touches at Seattle’s Pier 91 as it prepares to make fishing history in Alaska’s Bering Sea.

“This vessel is a game changer – it’s the greenest, most sustainable and highest tech commercial fishing vessel that’s ever been built in the United State and possibly the world,” said Kenny Down, President and CEO of Blue North Fisheries.

There is no other vessel like it in the Alaska hook and line cod fishery.

Read the full story at KOMO

Salmon Farming On The Rise In Washington

August 22, 2016 — Human travelers have interstates 5 and 90. Salish Sea salmon have the Juan de Fuca Strait.

It’s the route that they all swim on their way to and from the wide Pacific — the salmon from the Elwha and all the rivers of Puget Sound, plus many salmon returning to Canada’s Fraser River, which are the main local food source for Puget Sound orcas and have always formed the bulk of Puget Sound’s commercial catch.

Now, Icicle Seafoods —  recently acquired by Canada’s Cooke Seafood — wants to raise Atlantic salmon in 9.7 acres of salmon net pens in the strait, just east of Port Angeles, Washington.

Although it has its critics, salmon aquaculture isn’t new in Puget Sound — and certainly not elsewhere. British Columbia aquaculture produces salmon worth nearly half a billion (Canadian) dollars a year. And B.C. is a minnow compared to the salmon-raising industries of Norway (where salmon aquaculture is booming) and Chile (where it’s not.)

Icicle already has eight salmon aquaculture operations in the Sound, including one at Port Angeles tucked in behind Ediz Hook. The company’s plan for putting pens out in the Strait has been driven by U.S. Navy plans to expand its base on Ediz Hook, which won’t physically displace the existing pens but will ruin the neighborhood for salmon. Pile driving for the Navy project, scheduled to begin late this year, would actually kill salmon in nearby pens. Icicle has decided to move its operation.

Under Icicle’s planned new development, 14 circular pens, each 126 feet in diameter, would be kept in place by a network of two-to- four-ton steel anchors. The new pens would produce 20 percent more salmon than the old. They would be the first anchored this far offshore in Washington waters.

Read the full story at Oregon Public Broadcasting

Rarely seen Arctic seal spotted in Washington State – 2,000 miles from home

August 19, 2016 — A rarely seen pinniped that inhabits sub-Arctic and Arctic waters – from the Bering Sea north to the Chukchi Sea – has been spotted 2,000 miles from home, on a beach in Washington state.

Biologists spotted a single ribbon seal hauled out on Long Beach Peninsula on Tuesday, and captured a few images before the seal returned to the water.

The extraordinary sighting marks the second time in four years that a ribbon seal has appeared so far south of its typical range. The other was 2012, when a ribbon seal was spotted twice in the Seattle area.

After that sighting, Peter Boveng, leader of the polar ecosystem program with the National Marine Fisheries Service, told the Associated Press, “There are not many people who see these regularly.”

Read the full story at GrindTV

Coral reefs need fish urine to thrive

August 17, 2016 — SEATTLE — Coral reefs offer many fish species camouflage and a variety of nooks and crannies in which to hide. In return, fish offer their urine.

It’s not exactly a symbiotic relationship, but it’s a pretty good deal for both parties. When they pee, fish release phosphorous, a vital nutrient. They also excrete nitrogen in the form of ammonium through their gills, another important food for coral.

New research suggests a lack of fish pee explains the lack of nutrients surrounding coral in waters where commercial fishing is common.

The research was published this week in the journal Nature Communications.

“Part of the reason coral reefs work is because animals play a big role in moving nutrients around,” lead study author Jacob Allgeier, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, explained in a news release.

“Fish hold a large proportion, if not most of the nutrients in a coral reef in their tissue, and they’re also in charge of recycling them,” Allgeier said. “If you take the big fish out, you’re removing all of those nutrients from the ecosystem.”

Read the full story at UPI