Issue: February 2022

Trident Seafoods is acquiring the 300-foot at-sea processor C/P Starbound from Aleutian Spray Fisheries Inc. for use in its wild Alaska Pollock fishery, the two seafood firms have confirmed. Modernizing Trident’s aging fleet of catcher processors has been a priority for some time, and the Starbound “aligns perfectly with Trident’s values and vision,” Trident CEO Joe Bundrant said. “With this investment, we improve our efficiency and environmental performance in our continuous effort to better utilize wild Alaska Pollock and Pacific whiting resources, while keeping constant focus on health of fish stocks and the role we play in protecting our natural environment.” Bundrant said that Trident and Aleutian Spray, both family-owned companies, share a commitment to annually invest in fisher...

The British Columbia Supreme Court in Vancouver has handed a commercial fisherman a rare lifetime ban against fishing, and a prohibition against being onboard a fishing vessel. This, according to the Canadian government, is the first lifetime ban for a Pacific Region fisherman in over a decade. Fisheries and Oceans Canada announced the penalty against Scott Stanley Matthew Steer, a repeat offender under Canada’s Fisheries Act, on Dec. 20. The lifetime prohibitions are the result of an incident on March 1, 2020 in Vancouver Harbor when Steer was found illegally fishing for crab and was arrested, along with two crew members, when his vessel was boarded after a high speed pursuit. Upon apprehension, an estimated 250 live crabs were on the vessel. They were later released, according to Fi...

A federal grand jury in mid-December indicted three companies involved in a large oil leak that disrupted the Southern California fishing industry for weeks. The three companies, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, are Amplify Energy Corp., Beta Operating Co. LLC  —a wholly owned subsidiary of Amplify doing business as Beta Offshore—and San Pedro Bay Pipeline Co., another wholly owned subsidiary of Amplify. All are accused of illegally discharging oil during a pipeline break in early October by acting negligently in at least six ways, including failing to properly respond to eight separate leak alarms over the span of more than 13 hours and improperly restarting the pipeline that had been shut down following the leak alarms. The pipeline, which was used to transfer crude oil ...

A year into new American ownership of Peter Pan Seafoods, the company has said that it’s looking forward to the upcoming Bristol Bay sockeye fishery, with capacity to handle as much as was harvested in 2021 and more. “We are excited,” said John Hickman, vice president of operations for the seafood company. “The forecast (and harvest potential) are not all that different from last year. We’re looking forward to getting more fish. We have the capacity for what we caught last year and quite a few more,” he said. A large portion of Peter Pan’s 2021 Bristol Bay catch went to domestic fresh markets, fillets as much as possible, fresh and flash frozen, and some H&G (headed and gutted), he said. Markets included smaller fish shops as well as supermarkets, and the company also said that it ...

A total of $50 million in fishery assistance secured through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act was mailed in mid-December to commercial harvesters, sport fishing charters and seafood processors in Alaska. The funding came as a result of efforts by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to make direct assistance available to subsistence, commercial, and charter fishery participants, processors, fishery-related businesses and fishery-dependent communities that have been negatively affected by the economic and other impacts of COVID-19. “Alaska’s fisheries and seafood sector are a critical driver of our state’s economy, employing more than 58,000 people and producing billions of dollars in economic output in our state each year,” Murkowski said. “As I worked to help craft ...

The mature herring biomass forecast for 2022 is 357,536 tons, Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials say, which is the highest forecast since an age-structured assessment model was first used in 1993. Given the 20% exploitation rate, the coming year’s potential harvest is 71,507 tons in all fisheries and 65,107 tons in the Togiak sac roe fisheries, which are harvested with purse seine and gillnet gear. The gear group allocation specified in the Bristol Bay Herring Management Plan is for 80% purse seine and 20% gillnet. Togiak herring are targeted for their roe, but those markets have been declining in recent years. A year ago, the harvest forecast was for 47,348 tons of herring in all Togiak fisheries and 42,639 tons in the Togiak sac roe purse seine and gillnet harvest. “The ...

A plan by the Port of Los Angeles to demolish a long shuttered cannery is drawing fire from area residents who say that a new use should be found for the building, which some consider historic due to its connection to the area’s commercial fishing past. The Port of LA wants to demolish the former StarKist plant to create “a parcel of land that is more marketable for future development,” along with removing safety hazards, according to a late December article in the Daily Breeze newspaper. The article also states that the port’s wish to demolish the long-empty StarKist cannery building, located in San Pedro—an LA area that’s known for its connection to maritime commerce— is bringing objections from those who say a new use should be found for the structure that was a central part of the po...

  New ecosystem reports by NOAA Fisheries offer details of the impact of climate change on Alaska’s marine ecosystems in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands, including heatwave periods and sustained warm conditions. NOAA scientists note that the Gulf of Alaska has been in transition since marine heatwave periods from 2014 through 2016 and again in 2019, with some marine populations decreasing and others increasing. This year was the second consecutive year without marine heatwave conditions. Mixed trends were noted in the prey base in the Gulf, with the abundance of zooplankton that provide food for fish, whales and other marine life below average-to-average overall, and the abundance of forage fish, including herring and age-one Pollock higher than in previous ...

A maritime security proposal within the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act has now cleared Congress and is expected to be signed into law by President Biden. The proposal, as amended by Senators Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, requires the Secretary of the Navy to produce a report on maritime security measures related to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The amendment also requires the U.S. Navy to share information about steps taken to support the dissemination of unclassified information and data to regional partners, best practices learned from public-private and any new authorities or capabilities needed to support counter-IUU efforts in order to guide future legislative efforts. The senators noted that IUU fisheries annually...

Canadian fisheries officials, taking a long-term approach to boosting Pacific salmon stocks, have cut Pacific herring harvest rates for the Strait of Georgia to a 10% harvest rate, with a maximum total allowable catch of 7,850 tons. Joyce Murray, minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, announced the updates in the federal Pacific herring coastwide harvest plan for 2021-22, noting that herring are a forage fish, an important food source to other key species like Pacific salmon, and a critical part of the Pacific coast ecosystem. It is vital, DFO officials said, that Pacific herring are managed with an approach that supports fishing allocation where possible, and one that is consistent with the objectives of stock recovery, and the regeneration of this important speci...