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Commercial fishermen who participate in the groundfish fisheries in Alaska sent a release today thanking Alaska Governor Sean Parnell for taking a strong position on the Endangered Species Act in regard to Steller sea lions. “The Pacific cod fisheries of the Aleutians should not be closed based on the fact that sea lion populations are increasing. This fishery is important for Alaska and we greatly appreciate that Governor Parnell has been so responsive in reviewing and opposing the federal government’s plan to close waters where the fisheries occur,” said Linda Kozak, a Kodiak based fisheries consultant.Governor Parnell has petitioned the federal government to remove the eastern stock of Steller sea lions from the endangered species list as a result of a strong population growth. The east...

More than a ton of fresh, whole troll-caught albacore was sold between two Whole Foods Markets on the 12th and 13th of August. The tuna, supplied by Western Fishboat Owners Association (WFOA)-member Pacific Seafood, was sold as part of the 3rd Annual Albacore Truck Sale coordinated by Whole Foods Select Fish in the Northwest.At Portland, Oregon’s Whole Foods Market Fremont, 1,000 lbs of whole tuna was sold in just 56 minutes and by noon, seafood was at 18.18% of store sales.The event surpassed everyone's expectations. It was so huge says Regional Seafood Coordinator, Mark Curran "In all my years, I have never seen anything like this!"In celebration of the local albacore season, Whole Foods Market brings fresh, line-caught, sustainably managed tuna to the West Coast. The natural and organic...

A coalition of 31 consumer, animal welfare and environmental groups, along with commercial and recreational fisheries associations and food retailers submitted a joint statement criticizing an announcement last week by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that it will potentially approve the long-shelved AquAdvantage transgenic salmon as the first genetically engineered (GE) animal intended for human consumption.The engineered Atlantic salmon being considered was developed by AquaBounty Technologies, which artificially combined growth hormone genes from an unrelated Pacific salmon, (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) with DNA from the anti-freeze genes of an eelpout (Zoarces americanus). This modification causes production of growth-hormone year-round, creating a fish the company claims grows ...

University of Alaska Fairbanks divers have gathered nearly 200 recently settled juvenile red king crabs, using artificial collectors. The collectors were deployed in May 2010 off Indian Point near Juneau by boat, and retrieved in late July using scuba and other methods. The collectors have an outer skin of tubular plastic netting stuffed with conditioned gillnet or artificial seaweed.It took one week to retrieve and process nearly 60 collectors with the help of University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate students Ben Daly, Miranda Westphal, Jodi Pirtle, and Jon Richar, and laboratory technicians Jaspri Sylvan and Melissa Rhodes-Reese.The purpose of the study was to determine the best method for collecting early juvenile king crabs. Similar studies were conducted in 2008 and 2009 near Juneau to...

On August 9th, NOAA Fisheries adopted a catch-share program for West Coast trawl fishing that for the first time will make a major shift in how groundfish are managed, one that can benefit both fish and fishermen and lead to economic efficiencies that are difficult to obtain under traditional management schemes.The new approach does away with the conventional practice of setting a fleet-wide quota of how many fish can be caught and then letting fishermen compete with each other to catch as much of that quota as possible before the fishery is closed. Instead, the new system divides the total quota into shares controlled by individual fishermen. Those shares can be caught whenever the fisherman wants, ideally more efficiently and at more profitable marketing times.The new system has the supp...

What do you get when you cross an Atlantic salmon with a northern pike? We may soon find out, as the Atlantic salmon species is one step closer to having its genome fully sequenced.Vancouver, BC-based Genome BC has partnered with the Chilean Economic Development Agency, InnovaChile, Norwegian Research Council, Norwegian Fishery and Aquaculture Industry Research Fund to form an international co-op to sequence the Atlantic salmon genome, and claim they are well underway on a multi-million dollar project that will identify and map all of the genes in the Atlantic salmon genome, and can act as a reference/guide sequence for the genomes of other salmonids, including Pacific salmon, rainbow trout and more distantly related fish such as smelt and pike.Therein lies the problem. With a map of the g...

By Dan Bacher On August 17, the Partnership for Sustainable Oceans (PSO), a coalition of conservation and fishing industry organizations, announced that it "fully supports" the request by Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro to delay the implementation of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative on the North Coast.Chesbro recently asked California Resources Secretary Lester Snow for a six-month delay in the controversial process to allow more time to develop a plan that balances marine conservation with access for the public and traditional user groups. To date, Snow has not responded to Chesbro's request."I have met with Resources Secretary Lester Snow and strongly urged him to slow down the process and that no action be taken by the Blue Ribbon Ta...

Salmon Feedlots in the Broughton Archipelago are operating on Crown Land tenures that have been expired for years. Last week biologist Alexandra Morton applied for these licences to return them to their natural state to grow wild fish to the much greater benefit of British Columbians and the BC economy.Crown Land is public land that the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL) leases to people and companies. MAL is also in charge of regulating the salmon feedlots.“I don’t know how these foreign companies can be in full production for years on expired tenures, but these sites are the fishiest places in the Broughton where we once found the highest concentrations of herring, salmon, prawns and other species,” says biologist Alexandra Morton, “I have made detailed application to MAL to use the...

A NOAA scientist, Dr. Bill Lehr, last week told a group of Congressional staff investigators on a conference call that a controversial National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report claiming that nearly three-quarters of the oil from the Gulf oil spill has already been addressed was released by White House officials and not scientists at NOAA. The NOAA scientist told congressional investigators that the data backing up the assertions made in the report is still unavailable and that peer review of the report is still not complete. Officials at an August 4 White House press briefing had said that the report had been thoroughly peer reviewed. “This is yet another in a long line of examples where the White House’s pre-occupation with the public relations of the oil spill has sup...

Chris Goldblatt, Gold Leaf SustainableTo set the record straight, I do not represent the commercial fishery or any other interest. I am acting solely out of my deepest sense of right and wrong. The Marine Protected Areas (MPA) will not remove the existing, complex fishing regulations; they will be in addition to them.I recently attended a meeting at the Double Tree in Santa Barbara, California. The Department of Fish and Game-assisted meeting was technically public and formally intended to field ideas about how the marine protected areas were to be monitored once they were established.My wife and I showed up bright eyed and bushy tailed. It was just us, two former abalone divers looking down the barrel of 30 or so hard core pro MPA people, most of them scientists, university heads and Pack...