Saving Seafood

Portion of Washington hydroelectric dam harms salmon and must be removed, federal judge rules

February 21, 2024 — A portion of a dam on the Puyallup River in Washington, operated by the utility company Electron Hydro, must be removed because it harms fish protected by the Endangered Species Act, a federal judge ruled Friday morning.

In December 2020, Electron Hydro attempted to replace a central portion of the dam, which lies on the Puyallup River near Tacoma. A temporary bypass channel was lined with field turf, rubber and other materials. Then it ruptured, spilling its contents into the river.

Once authorities were notified of the spill, Electron Hydro was ordered to clean up the river before continuing any construction on the dam. Where the temporary bypass channel once stood, Electron erected a temporary rock dam which remains in place to this day.

The Puyallup Tribe, a federally recognized tribe in western Washington, sued Electron Hydro in 2020, claiming that the company polluted the river with toxic materials when the the temporary bypass ruptured.

The tribe also claimed the rock dam impeded the upstream travel and spawning of endangered Chinook salmon, bull trout and steelhead trout. This amounts to an illegal taking of the fish, the tribe says, because Electron Hydro does not possess permits to take any of the fish.

In an 11-page opinion, Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour found the tribe presented extensive evidence that the rock dam impedes safe passage for the fish. (Electron Hydro had not argued otherwise.) Since the case is an Endangered Species Act case, he wrote, the tribe needs only to prove that irreparable injury has occurred.

A Reagan appointee, Coughenour pointed to evidence presented by the tribe of “attraction flows” — that is, accelerated water which attracts migrating fish to the rock structure and away from the fish ladder that would allow them to continue upstream.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

WASHINGTON: A company linked to Patagonia’s founder got the edge in Washington’s land-based salmon race. Some wonder why.

February 20, 2024 — An introductory meeting was enough for a little-known Canadian group with links to the founder of outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia to initiate a partnership giving it first crack at revolutionizing the salmon farming industry in the US state of Washington.

Nova Scotia-based Sustainable Blue left that meeting, in January 2023, with agreement to draft a Letter of Intent (LOI) to develop the first land-based salmon farm in the state, according to multiple emails and documents obtained by IntraFish.

Just three months later, Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz – a key decision-maker on aquaculture policy in the state, and a participant in that meeting – announced the partnership to the public.

The unusual speed of the deal between Sustainable Blue and Washington’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has raised questions among established aquaculture companies, several of which say they were excluded from the selection process or consulted only after the LOI was signed.

The agreement has also invited scrutiny of the relationships between Franz, Patagonia and a non-governmental organization by the name of Wild Fish Conservancy, each of which has campaigned on different fronts against farming salmon in netpens.

This month, Franz was a keynote speaker in Reykjavik at the launch of Patagonia’s new film, “Laxaþjóð: A Salmon Nation”, which is part of a campaign to end netpen salmon farming in Iceland.

Read the full article at Intrafish

WASHINGTON: Fishing families strong in the wake of Ilwaco fire

February 7, 2024 — Fire raced across the Ilwaco Landing dock Jan. 22, smoke covering the area like a blanket and destroying 3,700 crab pots next to the Bornstein Seafoods facility. The traps were kept on the dock days before the Dungeness crab dumping day.

It’s critical for fishermen to get their gear in the water on time, as most crabs are caught in the season’s first weeks. The community and other crabbers rallied up and down the West Coast to find replacement gear for the fishermen who lost hundreds of pots. Some groups and businesses set up donations and other assistance to the fishing families affected to ensure fishermen made it out for the season.

Rep. Marie Glusenkamp Perez, D-Wash., who represents southwest Washington in Congress visited the Port of Ilwaco last week to share what support was available to rebuild.

Perez told station KMUN in Astoria “If the government worked half as well as this community does, coming together, we’d be in a much different world.”

Many West Coast fishermen loaned pots for the season to those who lost in the fire. Dungeness pots are upward of $400 new; at that price, it would’ve cost over $1.4 million to replace the total loss.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

WASHINGTON: Invasive European green crabs could devastate local seafood industry

February 5, 2024 — As Washington’s coastal Dungeness crab commercial season opens this week — a mean, green menace continues to threaten to create a “crab crisis” in the Pacific Northwest.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife says European green crabs are continuing to cause issues, despite efforts by the federal government.

KIRO Newsradio’s Kate Stone was invited by a local seafood company to get a firsthand look at the efforts to quell the invasion of European green crabs in Washington waters.

Read the full article at KIRO 7

Contentious Pike Place Fish Market trademark infringement case set for trial

February 3, 2024 — A U.S. federal judge set a trial date of 24 March 2024 for the contentious trademark infringement lawsuit brought against Pike Place Fish Market (PPFM) – the iconic fresh seafood market inside Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. – by the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA).

In a lawsuit filed in September 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, PDA, which manages the market, alleged PPFM breached its lease agreement by illegally using the market’s name to market smoked salmon products across the country.

Read the full article SeafoodSource

WASHINGTON: Fire at Washington seafood facility destroys hundreds of crab pots before season opener

January 24, 2024 — A fire at a port building along the coast in Washington state destroyed more than 1,000 crab pots just ahead of the state’s commercial Dungeness crab season, which opens Feb. 1.

The blaze began around noon on Monday at the Port of Ilwaco, which is near the mouth of the Columbia River and north of Astoria, Oregon, KING-TV reported.

The remote area of the fire made it difficult to get enough water supply to fight the blaze, the Ilwaco Fire Department said in a Tuesday statement. About 8,500 crab pots on the deck surrounding the building made fighting the fire even more difficult, officials said. No injuries were reported.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Salmon, rivers hit hard by recent Washington floods

December 17, 2023 — The atmospheric river that hit the Pacific Northwest in early December took a heavy toll on salmon, biologists working with Puget Sound tribes say.

You might think all the rain that comes with the storm systems known as atmospheric rivers or Pineapple Expresses would be good for fish.

But tribal biologists say major floods have hit salmon-bearing rivers hard two out of the past three autumns, at a time when freshly laid Chinook salmon eggs are incubating in their underwater nests.

“We’ve had two flooding events that, over three years, have hit during this time that we know all the Chinook eggs are in the gravels,” said fisheries researcher Mike LeMoine with the Skagit River System Cooperative, a project of the Swinomish and Sauk-Suiattle Tribes. “It’s right after Chinook complete their spawning.”

Extreme flows can kill salmon eggs in two ways: scouring eggs and their shallow nests out of a riverbed or entombing them in mud.

“A big event will deposit a bunch of sediment over the top of the eggs and smother them, and they call that entombment,” said Jason Griffith, a Stillaguamish Tribe of Indians biologist.

Griffith said a spawning salmon will bury her eggs beneath a few inches of river gravel, enough to protect the next generation from predators but not from the forces unleashed when rivers rage.

“The river will cut down several inches to several feet during one event and could displace those eggs, and that kills them,” Griffith said.

Based on studies of past years’ floods, Griffith said he expected only 2% to 4% of Chinook eggs in the Stillaguamish River to survive this winter, less than a third of the 15% survival rate in a good year.

“High flows basically cause poor survival, especially for Stillaguamish Chinook. So three to five years from now, we will see lower returns of Stillaguamish Chinook,” Griffith said

Read the full article at KUOW

WASHINGTON: The decline of Pacific salmon is ‘death by a thousand cuts,’ expert says

December 14, 2023 — For all the impacts of other endangered species on the human communities they coexist with — owls and timber harvesting, wolves and ranching — there are few species that have affected more people than the decline of Pacific salmon.

And the people who have arguably been hit the hardest: the tribes of the Pacific Northwest.

“Salmon is really the heart of our culture. We’re salmon people,” said Donella Miller, a citizen of Yakama Nation. “When we’re born, we drink our mother’s milk, but salmon was always our first food. That was the first solid food that I ate.”

Miller is also the fisheries science manager for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. She helps evaluate hatchery programs, oversees the commission’s genetics lab in Idaho and manages their river ecology projects.

The threats facing salmon aren’t any one thing — and that’s what makes them so vexing.

“It’s a complex issue and you can’t pinpoint one specific thing,” Miller said. “I refer to it as death by a thousand cuts.”

Read the full article at WITX

EPA to review chemical in car tires known to kill salmon

December 12, 2023 — The ancestral land of the Puyallup tribe, located outside of Tacoma, Washington, is one of America’s most urban reservations.

Their land is crisscrossed by heavy, interstate traffic that has a direct correlation to the dwindling of their most precious resource: salmon.

“All of the pollutants that are discharged along the freeway can end up in this water body, which then flows into Commencement Bay, and this is why it’s a big issue for the tribe, as well as fisheries and fisheries restoration,” said Russ Ladley, the director of fisheries for the tribe.

His team raises and monitors fish populations across the reservation — a resource which its importance is hard to put into words.

For decades, tribal Vice Chair Sylvia Miller says the Puyallup people have watched wild populations of coho and other salmon decrease to a mere percentage of what they have been historically.

“We used to be able to provide for our whole families, for all of our families, be it smoking, canning, and, and providing daily fish to our families, and that’s not so anymore,” said Miller.

Read the full article at KOAA

WASHINGTON: ‘Sustainable Blue’s entry into Washington state far from slam dunk’

December 11, 2023 —  Sustainable Blue, a Nova Scotia land-based aquaculture company, recently
suffered a large die-off at one of its Canadian facilities, with Undercurrent News reporting
100,000 fish killed on November 4. According to Undercurrent, the die-off is one of several
technical problems facing the company, which recently signed a high-profile letter of intent to
operate in Washington state, and the relatively untested field of land-based aquaculture.

Reviewing email correspondence between Sustainable Blue and Washington Department of
Natural Resources (DNR) Undercurrent found several potential technical issues with the plans in
the letter of intent, which would raise up to 10,000 metric tons of salmon per year. Most
notably, there are concerns over the amount of water the project would require, which would
be 264,000 gallons initially, with an additional 8,600 per day once the facilities are operational.

According to Undercurrent, “This high water consumption has been flagged in the DNR emails
as a ‘potential limiting factor.’ This is because the farm would need year- round consumptive
water rights or to be situated within city limits where traditional utilities could be utilized.”

There are also concerns over claims made by Sustainable Blue about its claims to have zero
environmental discharge in its operations. Emails reviewed by Undercurrent found that,
instead, “outgoing effluent contained 25% solid waste and 75% water.

A final concern raised by Undercurrent is the proposed sites for the land-based facilities,
especially given water use requirements. Several of the sites are in Whatcom County,which is
facing a drought.

“This past July, the county was placed under a full drought emergency. One of these sites is also
identified as a forested or wooded wetland, which adds to the concerns,” said Undercurrent.

The Undercurrent report notes that, despite these mounting environmental concerns and
technical issues, the Washington DNR fully supports the project. Undercurrent’s analysis of
available emails concludes that the “correspondence underscores the DNR's concerted efforts
to advocate for Sustainable Blue's arrival and to endorse the concept of land-based salmon
farming, as evident in the allocated staff resources and promotional strategies for the project.”

Read the full article at Under Current News