March 21, 2o23 — The Northwest Aquaculture Alliance (NWAA) has initiated a concerted campaign to battle the U.S. state of Washignton’s commercial finfish net-pen aquaculture ban.
The ban, issued November 2022, was made via an executive order issued by Washington Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz. In previous comments, NWAA called that decision “unscientific.”
March 20, 2023 — Congressional Republicans say they will hold Capitol Hill hearings on the Biden administration’s offshore wind policy – and potentially call in federal ocean and energy planners as witnesses, along with wind power developers.
“It is time we examine the process,” said Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-NJ, as he opened a first public hearing March 16 in Wildwood, N.J., centered on objections raised by critics of offshore wind projects, especially their allegation that 12 Mid-Atlantic whale strandings this winter are tied to survey work, and demands for a moratorium.
“A dozen have died and there’s no interest at all in finding out what’s going on,” said Van Drew, who has promised legislation to suspend all work on wind projects in federal waters.
He compared the strandings of humpback whales on New Jersey beaches, some of them victims of ship strikes, to the federal response for protecting the highly endangered right whale from fishing gear entanglements, which has led to gear restrictions on the New England lobster fleet.
March 16, 2023 — The following was released by the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance:
In a new campaign launched today, Washington fish farming workers, who have grown affordable, high-quality fish in Puget Sound for over 40 years, are speaking out for the first time to expose the pain they and their families have endured as the result of DNR Commissioner Hilary Franz’s unilateral and unscientific decision to ban fish farming in state waters.
“Franz’s blatantly political action last November not only forced fish farmers out of work, but also ended the availability of affordable, nutritious, sustainable, and locally farmed fish for Washington consumers,” said Jeanne McKnight, Executive Director of the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance (NWAA), the organization behind the campaign. In its new www.stophilaryfranz.com grass-roots advocacy campaign, NWAA appeals to Washington citizens, asking them to send a letter to state legislators requesting an examination of Franz’s actions. Click here to watch and share the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLkxXMW3KtM
“This unscientific ban on commercial net pens shows that Hilary Franz is playing politics with your dinner plate—at the expense of hard-working, dedicated people who have made the production of nutritious seafood their life-long career,” McKnight said. “It’s outrageous that Franz ignored multiple peer-reviewed scientific studies proving the ecological safety of farming fish and completely disregarded a unanimous Supreme Court decision affirming the legality of farming native steelhead in our state waters. We are outraged that she completely ignored the multi-year comprehensive study, conducted right here in Puget Sound, that gave rise to the recent biological opinion from NOAA showing no significant adverse impacts on endangered species by fish farms operating in the state.
Hilary Franz needs to act like a true leader and explain to our farmers who lost their livelihoods, just what science she used to make this harmful decision. She refuses to do that,” McKnight said.
“As the video reveals, Washington fish farm workers first learned about the Franz decision from a news story. This is unconscionable. This is NOT the kind of transparent leadership we should expect from our elected public servants.” McKnight said. She added, “We applaud these dedicated farm workers for making a public appeal, and on their behalf, we are pleading with Governor Jay Inslee and the Washington state Legislature to take a closer look at the devastating consequences of the Franz decision by hearing directly from the farmers who lost their livelihoods with no warning. It is important to question whether this unilateral decision runs counter to the letter and spirit of Washington law.”
In 1985, the legislature passed SB 3067, the “Aquatic Farming Act,” which declares that “aquatic farming provides a consistent source of quality food, offers opportunities of new jobs, increased farm income stability, and improves balance of trade.” The Act also declares, “It is therefore the policy of this state to encourage the development and expansion of aquaculture within this state.” This legislation is still Washington law, although it was modified by the passage of HB 2957 in 2018, calling for the end of farming of non-native species in state waters, but legalizing the farming of native species in state waters. The farmers who lost their jobs because of Franz’s actions were successfully farming native steelhead.
NWAA believes the Franz decision to ban fish farming in commercial net pens represents egregious government over-reach on the part of a politically ambitious agency head, and in its campaign, NWAA urges the legislature to take back its definitive authority to establish state policy around this critically important issue.
Farmers across the state consider it shameful that Commissioner Franz, flanked at a celebratory press conference by well-known anti-aquaculture and anti-commercial fishing activists, would gloat over destroying an important food production sector and killing the jobs of Washington farmers just one week before Thanksgiving last Fall. It’s clear that Hilary Franz was trying to score political points with activist groups, but without the courtesy of first notifying the employees whose jobs she killed. She refused to meet with the employees who attended her press conference and had asked to speak with her. Instead, she sent a political fundraising appeal within hours, bragging about what she had just done. This is not the type of leadership we expect from Franz or other Washington elected officials, especially at a time when food prices are at an all-time high and good jobs are scarce in rural communities.
After the last farmed steelhead was harvested in Puget Sound last month, a USDA-funded study revealed the Seattle-Tacoma market has the highest per capita consumption of farmed steelhead of any other metropolitan region in the country. With local fish farmers banned from producing such in-demand fish, Commissioner Franz’s actions will lead to higher prices and less availability of fresh, local, sustainably farmed, affordable fish.
February 21, 2o23 — When you hear about a “market correction,” here it is in a dramatic display: a plunge of two-thirds or more in the price of Washington Dungeness crab.
There are plenty of reasons why.
One is that you, the consumer, are willing to pay only so much for what one industry insider says “is probably looked at like a luxury item.” Well, time to party on, consumers.
“They’re really loving it. They’re super happy that they can get an awesome product,” says Michael Fodness, meat and seafood director for the six-store, locally owned Town & Country Markets.
Those stores are charging $5.99 to $7.98 per pound for Dungeness, but the higher price is for “premium 2-ups,” meaning each crab weighs at least 2 pounds, with a higher meat-to-shell ratio.
February 14, 2023 — Kirkland, Washington, U.S.A.-based Fishermen’s Finest has lost an appeal challenging fishing limits contained in a Jones Act waiver it received for its newly-built America’s Finest vessel.
The ruling, delivered 8 February, 2023, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, found against Fishermen’s Finest’s contestation its rights under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution were violated by the limits, or sideboards, contained in the Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018, which was signed into law in 2018. The law gave Fishermen’s Finest a waiver to the Jones Act, which would have prohibited its newly-built vessel, the USD 75 million (then EUR 65.9 million) America’s Finest, from operating in U.S. waters due to the fact that it was constructed with 10 percent foreign steel.
January 11, 2023 — The key Dungeness crab harvest areas from Klipsan Beach, Washington, to Cape Falcon, Oregon, will not open until Feb. 1 because surveys found legal-sized males still lacked enough recoverable meat in their shells.
A policy group that includes the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife made the announcement late last week, The Seattle Times reported.
January 10, 2023 — Katherine Maslenikov carefully plucked a young walleye pollock specimen from a glass jar full of ethyl alcohol. The critter’s eye and insides were missing, some carefully packed in a nearby vial labeled “inner organs.”
Maslenikov is the steward of the millions of fish specimens dating back to the 1800s neatly organized in a massive library of jars hidden in the basement of the University of Washington’s fisheries teaching and research building.
In their flesh are thousands of parasites — worms and other critters that lived off their host — that could reveal a hidden effect of climate change. Researchers fished out more than 17,000 parasites of the nearly 700 fish they studied. But as they moved to newer samples, they found fewer and fewer of the passengers.
In a study published Monday, scientists concluded that warming water may have caused some parasite populations in Puget Sound to plummet. The research suggests parasites may be especially vulnerable to global warming.
“It’s really our first peek into what parasites have been up to over the past couple of decades,” lead researcher Chelsea Wood said. “It’s a warning. It suggests that there might be more loss of parasite biodiversity than we previously anticipated.”
The loss of parasites could have implications for the long-term stability of Puget Sound ecosystems, according to the study, now the world’s largest and longest data set of parasite abundance.
January 9, 2023 — A court has ordered Hilary Franz, the Commissioner of Public Lands in Washington State to rein in her “unscientific and politically motivated” push to shut down Cooke Aquaculture’s fish farming operations in Puget Sound.
The Superior Court of the State of Washington granted the motion, which was filed by Cooke, yesterday. The original deadline of Jan. 14 has now been moved to April 2023.
Cooke, which raises native Steelhead trout in partnership with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, sought the preliminary injunction to secure a reasonable period of time to safely harvest the fish, and remove the equipment remaining at the Puget Sound sites.
Franz, in a pre-Christmas move abruptly issued notices to Cooke to stop its operations, and followed it up with an executive order to ban the State’s 40-year tradition of fish farming in Puget Sound.
She also refused to allow Cooke more time to harvest the fish in the pens – representing 2,656,000 meals – and the requested period to shut down the sites safely.
December 30, 2022 — Each spring Yakama Nation families head to Pushpum, a towering ridge above John Day Dam in Klickitat County. There, on the south-facing slope dotted with juniper bushes, grasses and shrubs, they gather Indian celery, one of the first food plants of the season.
“It’s a really important First Food gathering area,” said Elaine Harvey, environmental coordinator with Yakama Nation Fisheries and a member of the Kamiltpah Band. “It’s our sacred site. It’s a legendary site for the Yakamas.”
The whole area is known to the Yakamas as “the mother of all roots,” or a natural seed bank, Harvey said. It also holds archaeological and ceremonial sites. Now, a portion of it is slated for a proposed pumped-water storage project intended to generate a supply of hydropower to complement transitions to renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
December 20, 2022 — Beneath the city of Seattle’s Gorge Dam an unnatural silence reigns. This stretch of the Skagit River, known as the bypass reach, is a sacred gateway to the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe’s Valley of the Spirits. But now it’s completely dry, as the city diverts the river into a three-mile-long tunnel through a mountain to a power-generating facility below. Gorge Dam is the lowermost of the three large dams in the Skagit River Hydroelectric Project; the other two, Diablo and Ross, lie upstream. Together, they form the Skagit hydroelectric project and provide 20% of the energy Seattle City Light, the city’s public utility, produced in 2021.
The utility is applying for a new license to operate the dams which, if granted, could remain in effect for the next 50 years. But the process has come up against a seemingly simple question with huge implications: Did salmon, steelhead and trout ever actually use the river above these dams? If they did, the city may be required to provide access to the fish habitat above.
Seattle City Light, which has had a monopoly on energy in the city since 1951, has argued that the fish never accessed the stretches of the river where its dams and reservoirs now stand, at least not in significant numbers, and that because of this, the utility should not be required to take on the major infrastructure work of adding fish passage. However, a chorus of people, from federal agencies to tribal nations and their biologists, have offered up formidable evidence to the contrary, citing historical records, tribal histories and research, federal agency findings — even newspaper stories from the time the dams were being constructed in the early 1920s — which suggest fish did ascend the river, and that today they may need access to that habitat in order to survive.
If the dams were taken down or fish passage installed, Indigenous nations could see fish return to traditional fishing grounds and endangered species that rely on the river could be restored.