Saving Seafood

Was 2015 a peek at dismal future commercial fishing in the Pacific Northwest?

November 3, 2016 — For fishing communities, NOAA Fisheries’ annual publication about commercial landings makes great reading. As we’ve observed in the past, “Fisheries of the United States” is interesting here in much the same way crop reports are a topic of fascination for farmers.

Analysis of multi-year trends points out some concerning news about the strength of commercial fisheries on the Lower Columbia. The 2015 edition of the annual fisheries compendium from the National Marine Fisheries Service (tinyurl.com/2015FishReport) finds Lower Columbia River landings at something of a low ebb.

With crabbing delayed into 2016 due to a marine toxin bloom, Ilwaco/Chinook landings dipped to their lowest level in at least half a dozen years. It remains to be seen whether the same problem recurs this December — a possibility, considering the ongoing toxin-related delay in razor clam season.

With about 92 million pounds of landings, Astoria area ports were in 13th place nationwide in terms of volume in 2015. Reflecting the relatively low price of some local harvests — such as hake and sardines — the south shore ports were in 27th place nationwide in the value of landings — about $38 million. South-side ports were far behind Westport in terms of value of the 2015 catch — Westport was 12th in the U.S. with a 2015 total of $65 million. Ilwaco/Chinook fell off the top-50 list.

More important than annual “horse race” statistics between ports is how well fishing fleets succeed over time. Current trends are worrisome.

The largest worry in terms of fishing trends are the ways in which the northeast Pacific Ocean’s productivity was hammered from 2013 to 2015 by the ocean heatwave called the Blob, along with an associated surge in toxic algae. The Blog showed some initial signs of coming back to life this fall, but thankfully has now faded again. Scientists have little doubt it will return, adding to problems in a generally warmer and more acidic ocean in coming decades. These changes will be a permanent damper on a long-vital economic sector.

Read the full story at the Chinook Observer

Pacific Northwest fishing industry took big hit in 2015

November 1, 2016 — ILWACO, Washington — Demonstrating links between ocean health and the economy, the definitive annual federal report on U.S. fisheries released last week showed a plunge in some West Coast catches in 2015.

Washington state’s total commercial catch in 2015 was 363 million pounds valued at $274.2 million, a decline of 35 percent by volume and 23.5 percent by value from 2014, according to “Fisheries of the United States 2015,” published last week by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

But all was not gloom and doom: For example, West Coast landings of shrimp and albacore tuna were up, despite the warmer and less-nutritious waters associated with the ocean heat wave dubbed the Blob. This patch of warm water off the Pacific Northwest began forming in 2013 and persisted for two years before temporarily dissipating.

Oregon’s commercial landings also were down, falling to about 195.5 million pounds last year, 33 percent less than in 2014. That catch was sold for $115.7 million, 26.6 percent less than 2014.

How ports compare

Ports on the U.S. Pacific mainland experienced downturns in 2015 compared to 2014.

The ports of Ilwaco and Chinook reported landings of 15 million pounds in 2015, down 44.5 percent from 2014 and less than half 2013’s total. Ilwaco/Chinook 2015 landings were the lowest since at least 2010 and dropped the ports out of the U.S. top-50 list.

Astoria was the mainland West Coast’s largest fishing port in 2015, with landings of 92 million pounds, down 24.6 percent from 2014. Westport was second, with 84 million pounds in 2015 landings, off 16 percent from 2014. Newport was in third place, with 65 million tons in 2015, 47.6 percent less than 2014.

Read the full story at the Chinook Observer

Warm Pacific Ocean ‘blob’ facilitated vast toxic algae bloom

September 30, 2016 –SEATTLE — A new study finds that unusually warm Pacific Ocean temperatures helped cause a massive bloom of toxic algae last year that closed lucrative fisheries from California to British Columbia and disrupted marine life from seabirds to sea lions.

Scientists linked the large patch of warm ocean water, nicknamed the “blob,” to the vast ribbon of toxic algae that flourished in 2015 and produced record-breaking levels of a neurotoxin that is harmful to people, fish and marine life.

The outbreak of the toxin domoic acid, the largest ever recorded on the West Coast, closed razor clam seasons in Washington and Oregon and delayed lucrative Dungeness crab fisheries along the coast. High levels were also detected in many stranded marine mammals.

“We’re not surprised now having looked at the data, but our study is the first to demonstrate that linkage,” said Ryan McCabe, lead author and a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean. “It’s the first question that everyone was asking.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WSBT

More than 80 percent want new safeguards against seafood fraud and mislabeling

September 28, 2016 — WASHINGTON — A new survey by Oceana finds more than 4 of 5 Americans want new regulations to eliminate seafood fraud and mislabeling of fish in the United States.

The survey found that support for traceability requirements – like documenting how and where various types of fish were caught or farmed – was high among registered Democratic voters – 87 percent and Republicans – 81 percent.

The national survey by Oceana, an international ocean conservation group, queried 1,000 registered voters from September 15-19.

It found 71 percent believe seafood fraud is a problem, 76 percent would pay more to know their seafood products are legally caught and labled correctly, while 88 percent feel it’s important to know the kind of seafood they’re consuming.

Read the full story from McClatchy DC at the Miami Herald

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