Saving Seafood

WA Clean energy project clashes with important Yakama site

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.

Read the full article at KPVI

Did salmon actually use the Skagit River before the Seattle dams were built?

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.

Read the full article at High Country News

Crabbers, fishermen seek US aid after disaster declaration

December 19, 2022 — The U.S. Department of Commerce’s disaster declaration for certain salmon and crab fisheries in Washington and Alaska opens the door for financial relief as part of an omnibus spending bill being negotiated by U.S. lawmakers.

The declaration Friday covers Bristol Bay king crab harvests suspended for two years, and the snow crab harvest that will be canceled for the first time in 2023. Also covered are 2021 salmon harvests from Alaska’s Kuskokwim River and 2019 and 2020 Washington salmon fisheries, The Seattle Times reported.

Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe Files Lawsuit Against Department of Natural Resources Over Flawed Administrative Action Banning Marine Net-Pen Aquaculture in Puget Sound

December 16, 2022 — The following was released by the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe:

Today the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe took legal action to protect our Sovereign rights in response to the recent ill-informed and overreaching decision by Commissioner Hillary Franz and the Department of Natural Resources to ban sustainable marine net-pen aquaculture in Puget Sound waters.

“As a Tribe, we have always been conscientious stewards of our natural environment and look seven generations ahead in all that we do,” said W. Ron Allen, CEO and Tribal Chairman of the Jamestown S’Klallam. “Modern, well-regulated aquaculture is the environmentally responsible solution for producing seafood and exercising our Tribal treaty rights – now and into the future.”

“Tragically, population growth, pollution, poor environmental protections and development activities in the Pacific Northwest have negatively impacted our wild fish stocks,” said Allen. “We must have options available to take pressure off wild fish stocks through sustainable aquaculture which will aid listed stocks to regain sustainable levels and prevent their extinction.”

A vast array of scientific studies have repeatedly shown that well-regulated aquaculture is not an ecological threat to the Puget Sound marine environment. In March 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service released an extensively researched biological opinion that studied marine finfish aquaculture in Puget Sound and found little to no negative impact on Puget Sound marine ecosystems, including native species such as endangered salmon, Orcas, or their habitat.

Farmed seafood requires the lowest energy demand of any sourced protein, a fraction of what is required to farm chicken, pork, or beef and produces far less greenhouse gas emissions than land-based agriculture. It seems only natural that Washington would embrace aquaculture as an industry that complements its own natural stock fisheries and allows our State to be a global leader in feeding the planet, and sourcing locally grown seafood in the most climate friendly way possible.

In addition to refusing to respect the science about marine net-pen aquaculture, this decision was highly undemocratic. Commissioner Franz has mistakenly usurped the authority of our Washington State Legislature to make public policy decisions, like the bipartisan bill passed in 2018 which allows native species marine net-pen farming in Washington waters.

Fish and shellfish have always been an integral part of S’Klallam culture as subsistence, as well as for the traditions associated with harvest, preparation, and celebration. For millennia, S’Klallam people fed their families with fish and shellfish, and traded their abundant harvest with other Tribes, devising methods for holding fresh catch, and preserving the harvest for future consumption. Our Tribe is desiring to take advantage of 21st century technology to advance this industry.

Food sovereignty, the ability to grow and provide one’s own food sources, builds self-reliance, independence, and confidence in our youth and community. That is all in jeopardy now due to Commissioner Franz’s announcement to end marine net-pen aquaculture in Puget Sound.

By taking legal action today, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe is strongly defending its sovereign right of self-governance and self-reliance by utilizing marine net-pen aquaculture to provide traditional sustenance and guarantee Tribal food security from our established fishery in our Usual and Accustomed Treaty Area in Puget Sound and the Salish Sea.

 

‘Ignoring science’: Suit targets Washington fish farming ban, seeks stay for 300,000 trout

December 14, 2022 — Cooke Aquaculture on Wednesday morning filed a complaint in Washington State Superior Court to appeal the state’s decision to deny renewal of the Canada-based company’s fish farming permits for its Hope Island and Rich Passage farms.

In the 42-page complaint, Cooke also seeks a preliminary injunction to secure a reasonable period of time to safely harvest the 300,000 fish in the farms and remove the equipment at the sites.

The complaint is in response to the Nov. 14 announcement by the state that the last two remaining Puget Sound fish farming leases, held by Cooke, would not be renewed. Four days later, state Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz announced by executive order an end to net pen fish farming in state waters managed by the Department of Natural Resources.

Read the full article at The Center Square

WASHINGTON: Fishing Washington’s urban wilderness

December 14, 2022 — Muckleshoot tribal fisherman pursue chum salmon along the heavily industrialized Duwamish River  

Clouds blanket Puget Sound and the rain starts at dawn. “Do you have oil gear?” Leeroy Courville asks as we sit in the wheelhouse of his boat, the High Liner.

“Just this Red Ledge.”

Leeroy laughs and digs out some Grundens gear for me. It’s a good thing too, because the rain starts to beat down.

The High Liner lies tied to the Muckleshoot tribal dock in a heavily industrialized stretch of the Duwamish River. A pair of 454 Mercruiser gas engines power the 32-foot by 11-foot bow picker, but one is broken down. Nonetheless, one is enough to get us out to Elliot Bay, where Courville hopes to gillnet a few more chum salmon before the Tribe closes the season.

“This could be the last day,” he says. “I might just make one set and come in. But if I get 40 fish, I’ll make another set. A hundred fish is $2,000.”

Leeroy bought the boat from his father. “I had that one over there,” he says pointing at a nearby bowpicker. “I sold it and my father gave me this one. I just bought that gray bowpicker over there for my kids.”

Leeroy’s son Kobe arrives with a skiff, and I get into the open boat with him to follow his father out to the fishing grounds. “Only people from the Muckleshoot Tribe can go on our boats,” Leeroy has informed me. The Muckleshoot are among the tribes whose ancestral fishing rights were recognized by the 1974 Boldt decision, a federal court ruling that upheld Washington tribes’ treaty fishing rights.

“My father was fishing before that,” Leeroy says. “And he has some stories.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

WASHINGTON: Commissioner Franz must explain her ‘political’ aquaculture decision

December 12, 2022 — Pressure is mounting onWashington Public Lands Commissioner, Hilary Franz, to explain her “political decision” to ban commercial net pen aquaculture in the state.

A broad range of US national, state, and species-specific trade associations, fisheries scientists, resource economists, and veterinary medicine professionals, have sent Franz a letter saying they are concerned at the lack of peer-reviewed science and historical data that would support the ban.

“We believe that a third-party review is needed to show that Franz’s order has no basis in scientific fact and is, in essence, an unsupported action by a government agency,” the letter stated, adding; “Most of the US seafood industry believes the order to be just plain wrong.”

Read the full article at SeaWestNews

Fish farming in WA goes back millennia — how will it survive?

November 29, 2022 — A seed-grading machine whirred obnoxiously as tiny oyster shells shimmied through three levels of screens and were shot out into empty buckets last week.

The contraption separates baby oysters by size, helping seafood workers determine which are ready to be “planted” off Littleneck Beach in Sequim Bay, sold to other shellfish farmers or plunged back into metal buckets full of cool harbor water to grow.

The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe relies on shellfish for sustenance, said Chair Ron Allen. And they have for millennia — it just didn’t always look like this.

Across the Salish Sea, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s clam garden was tucked within a grayish high tide. Raindrops sent ripples across the water off the shore of Kiket Island.

Traditional cultural ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest have long included forms of aquaculture, like clam gardens, where people create optimal habitat for the mollusks in hopes of boosting productivity. Today, it’s one piece of the complex, ever-evolving picture of fish farming in Washington state. But the commercial finfish farming of today shares little in common with the traditional Indigenous methods that long preceded it.

Read the full article at The Seattle Times

Alaska, Washington senators team up to seek disaster declaration for closed crab harvests

November 18, 2022 — Alaska’s two Republican U.S. senators joined with Washington state’s two Democratic U.S. senators on Thursday to request an immediate disaster declaration to help fishers and fishing-dependent businesses and communities cope with an unprecedented shutdown of Bering Sea crab fishing.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington sent the request to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. The senators asked the secretary to act “as quickly as possible” to invoke the disaster declaration provision of the primary law governing marine fisheries, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

“Many of these fishermen and businesses hail from both Alaska and Washington, and the impacts of these fishery disasters extend far beyond our states to consumers across the United States and the world,” the senators’ letter said.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News 

WASHINGTON: NFI, aquaculture groups demand independent review of Washington’s decision to cancel Cooke leases

November 16, 2022 — The National Fisheries Institute, the National Aquaculture Association, and the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance are calling for an independent review of a decision by the U.S. state of Washington to cancel two net-pen leases for steelhead farms operated by Cooke Aquaculture.

Washington’s Department of Natural Resources made the lease-cancelation announcement on 14 November, 2022, citing a determination the leases “continued operations posed risks of environmental harm to state-owned aquatic lands resulting from lack of adherence to lease provisions and increased costs to DNR associated with contract compliance, monitoring, and enforcement.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource