Fishermen’s News Online

A federal district court for the Northern District of California has ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to update regulations on the use of toxic chemical dispersants in oil spill responses. The decision handed down in San Francisco on Aug. 10 by Judge William H. Orrick gives the EPA until May 31, 2023 to take final action on listing and authorizing the chemicals involved. In the interim, the court ordered the EPA to file status reports every 180 days. The lawsuit filed in early 2020 sought to require the EPA to take into account current science on the use of chemical dispersants in response to oil spills. The plaintiffs included Earth Island Institute’s ALERT project, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Cook Inletkeeper, the Center for Biological Diversity, an Alaska...

Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game statisticians say the 2021 salmon harvest, which now tops 125 million fish, has exceeded five-year averages for a fourth consecutive time driven by strong pink salmon harvests. The cumulative statewide salmon harvest is now 12% above the same point in 2020 using 2019 for pinks, said Dan Lesh, who produces the in-season commercial update for McKinley Research Group in Anchorage on behalf of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. With the salmon season more than half over, a clearer picture of the total end-of-season harvest should come into focus in the next week or two, Lesh said. The biggest remaining unknown is the timing and magnitude of peak pink salmon harvests. According to Lesh, the biggest remaining unknown is the timing and magnitu...

Two fisheries conservation entities focused on protection of wild salmon habitat say they will appeal to the federal governments of the United States and Canada for a temporary halt to permitting, exploration, development and expansion of British Columbia mines. Salmon Beyond Borders and the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission (SEITC) said on Aug. 3 that they also are seeking a permanent ban of mine waste facilities. The announcement came on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the Mount Polley mine disaster of Aug. 4, 2014, when a breach in the tailings pond of the Mount Polley copper and gold mine owned by Imperial Metals released water and slurry with years’ worth of mining waste into Polley Lake. The wastes flowed on into Hazeltine Creek and the Quesnel Lake waters...

Officials with the National Maritime Center say the last automatic course and program extensions, based on the COVID-19 pandemic, expired on June 30 and Marine Training Providers should address the need for individual extensions by emailing NMCCourses@uscg.mil. The current inventory of course and program approval requests is high and it is taking 90 days or more for NMC staff to begin reviewing a request, so request for renewals should be submitted early. The NMC says it is proactively reaching out to providers who have already submitted renewal requests in a timely manner to ensure courses do not expire while awaiting evaluation. Those with questions should contact NMCCourses@uscg.mil Coast Guard officials note that they recently transitioned to a Microsoft Office 365 environment, w...

Help has come through for endangered Southern Resident orca whales along the outer coast of Washington, Oregon and as far south as Point Sur, California, in the form of expanded critical habitat areas. The newly designated critical habitat areas finalized on July 30 by the National Marine Fisheries Service span 15,910 square miles of Pacific Ocean waters off the West Coast. This designation encompasses waters where we now know that the Southern Residents hunt for salmon from West Coast rivers and other marine species, NMFS officials said. While the expansion of critical habitat recognizes that the orcas forage across much of the West Coast, the new protections for the whales are unlikely to extensively affect coastal activities like fishing, according to the officials. The environmen...

U.S. Department of Agriculture officials are looking to distribute some 7.9 million pounds of frozen Alaska Pollock products from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 through the National School Lunch Program and other federal food and nutrition assistance programs. According to Craig Morris, chief executive officer of the Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers, that would bring USDA purchases for fiscal year 2021 to nearly 18.3 million pounds of Alaska Pollock, one of the world’s largest commercial fisheries, with the largest concentrations in the Eastern Bering Sea. “We estimate they will spend about $20 million on this contract and that would bring the total (USDA) dollars spent on wild Alaska Pollock this fiscal year to $45 million,” he said. USDA officials said winning bids for bi...

Two fisheries conservation entities focused on protection of wild salmon habitat say they will appeal to the federal governments of the United States and Canada for a temporary halt to permitting, exploration, development and expansion of British Columbia mines. Salmon Beyond Borders and the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission (SEITC) said on Aug. 3 that they also are seeking a permanent ban of mine waste facilities. The announcement came on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the Mount Polley mine disaster of Aug. 4, 2014, when a breach in the tailings pond of the Mount Polley copper and gold mine owned by Imperial Metals released water and slurry with years’ worth of mining waste into Polley Lake. The wastes flowed on into Hazeltine Creek and the Quesnel Lake waters...

Six major processors of Bristol Bay salmon collaborated in late July to gather and transport to Yukon River villages 25,000 pounds of headed and gutted king salmon, a diet staple for hundreds of folks living in subsistence communities along the river. The project came together in the midst of a wildly successful Bristol Bay salmon harvest, with a harvest of over 40 million sockeye salmon, while on the length of the Yukon River all fishing, including subsistence, was banned by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game because of weak runs of Chinook and keta salmon. Officials from Alaska General Seafoods, Leader Creek Fisheries, North Pacific Seafoods, OBI Seafoods (Ocean Beauty/Icicle), Silver Bay Seafoods and Trident Seafoods asked SeaShare executive director Jim Harmon to help with co...

A lawsuit filed on behalf of the environmental entity Oceana against National Marine Fisheries Service contends that a current Pacific sardine rebuilding plan is not working, nor does it take into account the importance of a healthy sardine population to other species. The lawsuit, filed by non-profit public interest organization Earthjustice on behalf of Oceana, notes that Pacific sardine numbers have dropped by over 98% since 2006, and according to a 2020 federal assessment the current population is only 28,276 metric tons. Historically when that population was healthy, its abundance measured in millions of metric tons, the lawsuit contends. Ruth Howell, speaking for NMFS in California, said the agency had no comment at this time. Sardines are an essential food for humpback whal...

California legislators have allocated $35 million for a new coastal research vessel for the University of California-San Diego, for education and research to boost understanding of the California climate change impacts on the coastal ecosystem. The 125-foot vessel, expected to take three years for design, build and commission, would replace the research vessel Robert Gordon Sproul, which has been used for nearly 40 years to educate thousands of UC San Diego students. The vessel is to be operated by the university’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “After a four-decade run, it is high time Scripps built a new research vessel that can keep up with the high-caliber work they continue to churn out, and help our state navigate the troubles waters of sea level rise and our evolving cli...