Though higher now, reflecting a more accurate statistic, there seems to be no affect in limiting pollution
By Andrew Gobin, Tulalip News
Today, Governor Jay Inslee met with tribal leaders before holding a briefing on Washington’s Fish Consumption Rate (FCR) and water quality. The new FCR, now set at 175g per day, comes with the compromise that increases allowable pollution 1000 percent.
Originally set at 6.5g per day, Puget Sound tribes, with the support of the public minority, have been pushing to reexamine the FCR, seeking a number that more accurately reflects the amount of fish consumed by Washington residents per capita. The rate of 6.5g per day specifically included a section that mitigated the high consumption of seafood by tribal communities, allowing for a low number to be reached. The new rate of 175g per day is a more realistic representation of the seafood consumed by all Washington residents.
The FCR is a measurement used to gauge the impacts of water pollution on the public. Former standards stated that the acceptable level of toxins allowed could only lead to one in one million people to develop cancer. The FCR that was set at 6.5g was intended to allow for a tenfold increase in pollution and water toxin levels.
Although Washington’s FCR is now almost 30 times higher than what it was, the agreement to increase the FCR was achieved through a compromise, bargaining to increase the acceptable persons to get cancer from one in one million, to one in 100,000. That means that the acceptable level of pollution would be ten times higher.
In the NWIFC statement Lorraine Loomis, vice chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission and fisheries manager for the Swinomish Tribe, said, “This is a political decision, not one based on sound science. While a toxics control effort is needed, it is not an effective replacement for strong water quality rules and standards. We cannot continue with a pollution-based economy.”
“We’ve been working with the state on this issue for more than 20 years. We need action,” she added.
Tribes will be meeting with the EPA to review the proposed changes and evaluate their next move.
Andrew Gobin is a staff reporter with the Tulalip News See-Yaht-Sub, a publication of the Tulalip Tribes Communications Department. Email: agobin@tulalipnews.com Phone: (360) 716.4188
Washington’s clean-water regulations to ensure the safety of eating fish from local waters are indefensibly lax, everyone agrees. That’s about to change, but without broader cleanup, water will still be polluted.
New proposed water-quality standards expected to be issued soon by the state are intended to more accurately reflect how much fish people eat. These fishermen were trying their luck for salmon running in the Duwamish River last September. MARCUS YAM / The Seattle Times, 2013
Eat only as much fish as the state assumes you do every day, and you’d starve, for sure: It’s a chunk not much bigger than a Starburst candy.
But that could be about to change, under new regulations in the works at the state Department of Ecology. Washington seems likely to follow Oregon’s lead and set a water-quality standard for daily fish consumption at 175 grams, or about 6 ounces, per day.
The level is set not to regulate how much fish people eat, but how clean water needs to be. The standard sets pollution cleanup and control limits for industry, municipal sewage plants and other dischargers to local waters.
While it sounds like a modest step forward, implementing more realistic fish-consumption standards — Washington’s current standards are based on an outdated national average — has been a battle, chewing up years of effort and the political capital of two governors.
That’s because municipal sewage plants, pulp mills and other dischargers fear the cost of tighter pollution standards. Boeing famously entered the fray last year in widely reported warnings about the potential effect of unreasonable standards on its continued business operations.
“We support a water quality standard that protects human health and the environment, while at the same time, allows for the growth of our business and the state’s economy,” Boeing spokeswoman Megan Hilfer wrote in a statement to The Seattle Times in an email July 1.
No one contests that the new levels will in some cases result in setting pollution-discharge limits too tiny even to measure with existing technology.
Gov. Jay Inslee and the state Department of Ecology are expected to announce the new proposed standard Wednesday and to work toward issuing a draft rule after that. The regulations will go through a lengthy public-comment period and be finalized only with the approval of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, probably sometime next year.
The importance of water-quality standards to human health is well known, especially to people who eat a lot of fish. Because pollutants find their way from the uplands to the water, ultimately everything, for better or worse, winds up in the tissues of fish. Pollutants such as mercury and PCBs can cause a variety of serious illnesses and impairments, from cancer, to permanent IQ reduction in children. Pregnant women, the young and the frail are most at risk.
As the state develops commercially, the abundance of healthy fish from the state’s home waters has been slipping away. Toxics are just part of the problem. Habitat, every scientific report on salmon recovery shows, is the most important thing to securing abundant runs of fish for people and wildlife.
Yet the state is losing ground, literally, in runoff caused by development of uplands and cutting of forests.
And even as Seattle and King County water and sewer ratepayers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up Puget Sound, the city of Victoria, B.C., continues to spew untreated sewage directly into the Salish Sea — prompting a dust-up with Inslee, but still no resolution of the problem.
Inslee inherited the fish-consumption wrangle from former Gov. Chris Gregoire, who failed to implement new regulations amid scorching opposition from businesses. As the struggle to get the standards updated roils behind the scenes in Washington, regulators in Oregon, and business leaders, are carrying on with that work behind them.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has issued dozens of discharge permits since updating its standards in 2011, including permits for more than a half-dozen municipalities, a meatpacking plant and other industrial users. The path forward in Oregon required implementation of flexibility in setting timelines for compliance and variances, said Jennifer Wigal, water-quality program manager at the department.
A similar approach is in the works in Washington. Kelly Susewind, director of Washington Department of Ecology’s water-quality program, charged with drafting the regulations, said he wants to take the five-year time limits off compliance schedules and variances, to give regulators and dischargers a way to work out realistic solutions under new, more exacting standards.
Dennis McLerran, regional administrator for the Region 10 office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, whose approval is required for Ecology’s regulations, said he backs flexible implementation.
“We are interested in working with the state on a package of implementation tools that includes compliance schedules, variances, intake water credits, even how you look at some chemicals. But we want to make progress. Otherwise, why do it?”
One place he is not inclined to budge, though, McLerran said, is cancer risk, because implementing a higher risk would allow bigger inputs of some pollutants to local waters. That could put people who eat a lot of fish at higher risk — and compromise treaty-protected fishing rights.
“Some of our high fish consumers when they signed on to transfer (their) lands, signed on to continue to harvest and eat fish, and when and if they can’t, then the treaty right is a bit vacuous,” McLerran said.
“From my perspective we want a standard that is protective, and protective of all people.”
A daily consumption standard of a little over 6 ounces of fish as set forth by Oregon — the highest standard in the country — is less than a typical half-pound filet an adult would have for dinner. And it’s a snack, compared with the estimated 2.2 pounds a day that the ancestors of Washington tribes were counting on when they signed the treaties with the U.S. government ceding tribal lands for non-Indian settlement.
People shouldn’t be afraid to eat fish now, Susewind said. The increased risk of cancer from eating fish today is almost zero — compared with a background risk of cancer from all causes of about 1 in 2 for men, or 1 in 3 for women.
And many common foods, from butter to chicken to tuna, have more PCBs in them than Puget Sound coho, according to an Ecology analysis.
The ubiquity of pollution is one reason Christie True, director of King County Natural Resources and Parks, said she hopes new state regulations don’t just crank down on pollutants at tiny levels in sewage discharges and other so-called point sources, but instead go after bigger sources of trouble in Puget Sound, including stormwater.
Just making compliance schedules workable doesn’t address the problem if the regulations misdirect spending and effort, she said.
“We want to make sure whatever investments we are making make a substantial improvement in water quality,” True said. “If we just focus on the point-source discharge, we are missing huge opportunities. All of these things, arsenic, PCBs, dioxins, those are coming through our watershed through street runoff and rain runoff, these are getting washed into our water without any kind of control.”
Dianne Barton, water-quality coordinator for the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, which pushed Oregon to get started on updating its standards, and is deeply involved with other Washington tribes in setting new standards in Washington, said tribes want progress, but not at any price.
In many rural and suburban areas of the Northwest, tribes are among the largest employers, running all kinds of industries themselves, and they want cost-effective solutions that make a true difference too, Barton said.
“The tribes have always believed that this is not something we are going to achieve overnight,” Barton said. “We can get creative.
“Whether as we move forward that includes variances or resources we haven’t developed yet, we are committed to being actively engaged so we can move the (Columbia) Basin forward.”
A new DHM Research survey of Northwest residents finds that support for coal exports through the Northwest is up from where it was last year, when the issue was the subject of public debate and news coverage. | credit: Heidi Nielsen/GoodWorks
More people in the Northwest support coal export terminals than oppose them. Those are the results of a new survey. But people who took the survey didn’t feel very strongly about why they supported coal exports.
For the third year in a row, a public opinion poll for EarthFix asked Northwest residents how they felt about transporting coal through the region. That coal would then be exported to Asia.
DHM Research surveyed 1,200 residents in Washington, Oregon and Idaho from June 25-30. The poll found 47 percent of Northwest residents say they support coal exports. That’s up a little bit from last year’s survey, which showed 41 percent or respondents supporting coal exports. 34 percent opposed Northwest coal exports, and 19 percent didn’t know.
John Horvick, DHM Research director, said many people who responded didn’t have very strong opinions about why they support coal terminals. Those reasons include supporting local economies and more property tax revenue.
“These arguments aren’t quite as persuasive as they were in the past. Maybe people are becoming a little bit more cynical, they’ve heard them before, or they’re asking some questions, or the landscape has changed on the issue,” Horvick said.
The survey also found many people aren’t paying close attention to the issue, Horvick said, another possible reason they don’t feel very strongly about why they support coal export terminals.
One survey respondent who felt strongly about opposing coal export terminals was Robert Schuman. The Pullayup, Washington, resident is a 32 year old truck driver. He said he’s not necessarily opposed to coal, but he doesn’t like it being shipped to Asia.
“I don’t like the coal going over there mainly because they don’t have any environmental controls. It’s getting pumped out in the air over there without even basic scrubbers or anything like that. It’s just pumping ash in the air,” Schuman said.
Environmental groups look at less intense support as good news to their cause. They say as people learn more about coal exports, they start to support them less.
Kerry McHugh, Washington Environmental Council spokeswoman, said exporting coal would harm communities along the railroads and where terminals are built.
“It just really starts to add up that it’s not worth it,” McHugh said.
Over the past three years surveys have shown public support for exporting coal dipped as state agencies hosted large meetings and reviews about the terminals.
Fewer meetings took place this year. Support has risen. Opposition has stayed about the same.
By John Metcalfe, Cross-posted from CityLab, Source: Grist
It’s not a good time to be living in the ocean. Aside from oil spills and the scourge of plastics pollution, the seas are becoming ever more acidic due to humanity’s CO2 flooding the atmosphere. The altered PH of the water makes for a bevy of problems, from making fish act in really weirdways to dissolving the shells of creatures critical to the marine food chain.
But a group of scientists from the University of Vermont and elsewhere think the ocean’s future health has one thing going for it: the restoration of whale populations. They believe that having more whales in the water creates a more stable marine environment, partly through something called a “whale pump” — a polite term for how these majestic animals defecate.
Commercial hunting of great whales, meaning the baleen and sperm variety, led to a decline in their numbers as high as 66 percent to 90 percent, the scientists write in a new study in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. This mammalian decimation “likely altered the structure and function of the oceans,” says lead author Joe Roman, “but recovery is possible and in many cases is already under way.”
The researchers — who are whale biologists — present a couple of arguments for how these animals help secure the climate-threatened ocean. The first is their bathroom behavior: After feeding on krill in the briny deep, whales head back to the surface to take massive No. 2s. You can see the “pumping” process in action amid this group of sperm whales off the coast of Sri Lanka:
Tony Wu/University of Vermont
You have to feel for the person who took that photo. But these “flocculent fecal plumes” happen to be laden with nutrients and are widely consumed by plankton, which in turn takes away carbon from the atmosphere when they photosynthesize, die, and wind up on the ocean floor. A previous study of the Southern Ocean, to cite just one example, indicated that sperm-whale defecation might remove hundreds of thousands of tons of atmospheric carbon each year by enhancing such plankton growth. Thus, these large whales “may help to buffer marine ecosystems from destabilizing stresses” like warmer temperatures and acidification, the researchers claim.
The other nice thing whales do for the climate is eat tons of food and then die. In life, they are fantastic predators. But in death, their swollen bodies are huge sarcophagi for carbon. When the Grim Reaper comes calling, whales sink and sequester lots and lots of carbon at the bottom of the sea, like this dearly departed fellow:
While there’s no exact measurement of how these “whale falls” impact global carbon sequestration — and some argue it can’t have that big of an effect — Roman thinks it’s worth keeping in mind when thinking about protecting these vulnerable creatures. As he told an Alaskan news station last year, “This may be a way of mitigating climate change, if we can restore whale populations throughout the world.”
Tar-sands extraction isn’t just turning swaths of Canadian land into postapocalyptic film sets. New research shows it’s also contaminating the wild animals that members of the Mikisew Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations have traditionally relied on for food.
We already knew that the tar-sands operations have been dousing northern Alberta with mercury and other forms of pollution. Now university scientists have collaborated with the First Nations to test the pollution levels in hunted animals found downstream from the tar-sands sites. Here are some lowlights from their findings, which were included in a report published on Monday:
Arsenic levels were high enough in in muskrat and moose muscle; duck, moose, and muskrat livers; and moose and duck kidneys to be of concern for young children. Cadmium levels were again elevated in moose kidney and liver samples but also those of beaver and ducks … Mercury levels were also high for duck muscle, kidneys, and livers as well as moose and muskrat kidneys, especially for children. …
Total levels of PAHs [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons] and levels of carcinogenic and alkylated PAHs were very high relative to other food studies conducted around the world.
The First Nations members aren’t shocked to hear this. Some have already started avoiding their traditional foods because of worries about contamination, they told researchers. More from the report:
Participants were concerned about declines in the quality of [traditional] foods, in the greatest part because of environmental pollutants originating from the Oil Sands. It was notable how many participants no longer consumed locally caught fish, because of government-issued consumption advisories and associated human health concerns. Muskrat consumption had also declined precipitously, along with muskrat populations, a decline that was attributed to changes in hydrology and contaminant levels associated with the WAC Bennett Dam and the Oil Sands. The only effective alternatives to traditional foods are store-bought foods. …
All participants were worried about ongoing declines in the health and wellbeing of their community. They generally viewed themselves as less healthy than their parents, who rarely got sick. Neurological illnesses (e.g. sleeping disorders, migraines, and stress) were most common followed, in descending order of frequency, by respiratory illnesses (e.g. allergies, asthma) as well as circulatory (e.g. hypertension, coronary) and gastrointestinal (e.g. gallbladder, ulcers) illnesses. Yet, everyone was most concerned about the current and escalating cancer crisis.
A documentary about the research — One River, Many Relations — will be released in October. Here’s a trailer:
A small town in Ontario, Canada will be receiving $28,200 from energy company TransCanada Corp. in exchange for not commenting on the company’s proposed Energy East tar sands pipeline project, according to an agreement attached to the town council’s meeting agenda on June 23.
Under the terms of deal, the town of Mattawa will “not publicly comment on TransCanada’s operations or business projects” for five years. In exchange for that silence, TransCanada will give Mattawa $28,200, which will ultimately go towards buying a rescue truck for the town.
“This is a gag order,” Andrea Harden-Donahue, a campaigner for energy and climate issues with the Council of Canadians, told Bloomberg News. “These sorts of dirty tricks impede public debate on Energy East, a pipeline that comes with significant risks for communities along the route.”
The terms of the agreement did not specifically mention the controversial Energy East pipeline, which would carry more than a million barrels of tar sands crude oil across Canada each day. However, the deal is being widely seen as a way for the company to avoid obstacles that may get in the way of the pipeline’s approval — especially considering the obstacles that have long plagued the approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline in the United States.
The Energy East pipeline, though, is bigger than Keystone XL — in fact, it’s the most expensive pipeline project TransCanada has ever proposed. If approved, Energy East would carry about 1.1 million barrels of tar sands crude across Canada each day. That’s more than Keystone XL, which would carry 830,000 barrels per day from Canada down to refineries in Texas.
Despite the company’s apparent attempt to avoid obstacles, the Energy East pipeline proposal has already gotten some push-back in Canada. A February report from the Pembina Institute, for example, found Energy East would have an even greater impact on the climate than Keystone XL, with the potential to generate 30 to 32 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year. That’s the equivalent of adding more than seven million cars to the roads, and more than the 22 million metric tons that the think tank predicts Keystone XL will produce.
Still, representatives from TransCanada insist that the agreement with Mattawa was not intended to avoid or impede public discourse.
“The language in the agreement was designed to prevent municipalities from feeling obligated to make public comments on our behalf about projects that did not impact them and about which they had no experience or knowledge,” TransCanada spokesman Davis Sheremata told Bloomberg. “We are looking at amending our contract language to ensure communities know they and their staff retain the full right to participate in an open and free dialogue about our projects.”
Representatives from Mattawa’s town government have not yet publicly commented on the decision.
As of now, the process for approving the Energy East pipeline is still in its early stages, with TransCanada filing its project description for the pipeline with the National Energy Board in early March. About two-thirds of the Energy East pipeline infrastructure already exists, meaning a major part of the project will be converting that existing line — which currently carries natural gas — into a tar sands crude oil pipeline.
Tar sands oil is controversial because of its unique, thick, gooey makeup. Because of this quality, producers must use what is called “non-conventional” methods of getting the oil out of the ground. Those methods are more carbon-intensive, meaning they emit more greenhouse gases.
Tar sands production also causes a great deal of physical pollution. In Alberta, where the sands are mined, federal scientists have found that the area’s deposits are now surrounded by a nearly 7,500-square-mile ring of mercury.
In June, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said, “we’re in the forever business; our charge in national parks is to preserve them unimpaired for future generations.”
Published in PLOS One Journal, the report confirms that climate change is underway in America’s treasured national parks. The science is clear that the parks are changing in fast-moving and highly concerning ways.
“This report shows that climate change continues to be the most far-reaching and consequential challenge ever faced by our national parks,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. “Our national parks can serve as places where we can monitor and document ecosystem change without many of the stressors that are found on other public lands.”
Using climate data from the last three decades for 289 national parks and comparing it to historical variability, the researchers found that temperatures are currently at the high end of the range of temperatures measured since the turn of the 20th century.
They corroborated certain regional patterns already present in climate change literature. Parks in the desert southwest are warmer and drier. Parks in the northeast are warmer and wetter. Parks in the Midwest are warmer, and parks in the southeast shows signs of a warming hole, where temperatures have remained mostly flat.
With the impacts of climate change often lacking in immediate and powerful imagery aside from extreme weather events, annual trips to national parks can be one way for people to notice the slower changes over time.
“Whether or not you choose to think about the causes of climate change, all you have to do is open your eyes and look around you to see that climate change is real,” said Jewell in June, admitting that maintaining national parks in the long-term means incorporating some adaptation measures. “So we can no longer pretend it’s going to go away. We have to adapt and deal with it.”
Grand Canyon National Park has recently experienced temperatures far above historical norms. Not only does this weigh heavily on the millions of visitors who frequent the sprawling Arizona park every year, but it is also a direct threat to the wildlife in the area. Joshua Trees are dying in Joshua Tree National Park in California due to drought and heat. In the east, parks are getting hotter and wetter for the most part, threatening infrastructure and increasing the chances of devastating storms.
Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana may end up glacier-less in the next couple decades as only about 25 of the 150 glaciers around at the park’s founding in 1910 remain. One of the larger glaciers, Grinnell Glacier, has lost 90 percent of its ice. A visit to Glacier National Park is already in many ways an homage to the former landscape rather than a trip through a timeless one.
The National Parks Service (NPS) was created almost 100 years ago in 1916. Going forward, climate change will present a number of obstacles to the agency’s mission of preservation.
“The new century brings new challenges in terms of stewarding park resources in the face of environmental drivers that operate beyond park boundaries,” write the scientists. “Climate change further challenges us to develop new, ecologically viable desired conditions to guide the preservation of park resources in this new era of change.”
Around 275 million people visit National Parks every year. The NPS cannot reverse climate change or even manage the best adaptation measures without the help of the public and elected officials. While education is one means of progressing the conversation, it will take a coordinated effort to get in front of the problem.
Interior Secretary Jewell was formerly the CEO of REI. She compared her responsibilities there to those as leader of the NPS.
“People accuse businesses of having a short-term mentality, but I’ll tell you, businesses do strategic planning, and they think forward,” she said. “This is very difficult to do in Washington. We are funded lurching from continuing resolution to continuing resolution.”
However she sees the Obama administration’s Climate Action Plan as a step in the right direction.
“Beyond benefiting public health and the economy, the President’s Climate Action Plan and other Administration efforts to cut carbon pollution will greatly benefit the parks, refuges, other public lands and cultural resources entrusted to the Department of the Interior on behalf of all Americans,” she said.
Note: Being Frank is the monthly opinion column that was written for many years by the late Billy Frank Jr., NWIFC Chairman. To honor him, the treaty Indian tribes in western Washington will continue to share their perspectives on natural resources management through this column. This month’s writer is Ed Johnstone, treasurer of the NWIFC and Natural Resources Policy Spokesperson for the Quinault Indian Nation.
By Ed Johnstone, Quinault Indian Nation, NWIFC Treasurer
OLYMPIA – Our planet is talking to us, and we better pay attention. It’s telling us that our climate and oceans are changing for the worse and that every living thing will be affected. The signs are everywhere. The only solution is for all of us to work together harder to meet these challenges.
We are seeing many signs of climate change. Our polar ice caps and glaciers are melting and sea levels are rising. Winter storms are becoming more frequent and fierce, threatening our homes and lives.
It is believed that we are witnessing a fundamental change in ocean and wind circulation patterns. In the past, cold water full of nutrients would upwell from deep in the ocean, mix with oxygen-rich water near the surface, and aid the growth of phytoplankton that provides the foundation for a for a strong marine food chain that includes all of us.
The change in wind and ocean patterns is causing huge amounts of marine plants to die and decompose, rapidly using up available oxygen in the water. The result is a massive low oxygen dead zone of warmer waters off the coasts of Washington and Oregon that is steadily growing bigger, researchers say. Large fish kills caused by low oxygen levels are becoming common, at times leaving thousands of dead fish, crab and other forms of sea life lining our beaches.
Low oxygen levels and higher water temperatures are also contributing to a massive outbreak of sea star wasting syndrome all along the West Coast. It starts with white sores and ultimately causes the star fish to disintegrate. While outbreaks have been documented in the past, nothing on the scale we are seeing now has ever been recorded.
We are also seeing basic changes in the chemistry of our oceans. Our atmosphere has been steadily polluted with carbon dioxide for hundreds of years. When that carbon dioxide is absorbed by the ocean, those waters become more acidic and inhospitable to marine life. Young oysters, for example, are dying because the increasingly acidic water prevents them from growing shells. Researchers say that ocean acidification could also amplify the effects of climate change.
Because we live so closely with our natural world, indigenous people are on the front line of climate change and ocean acidification. That is part of the reason that native people from throughout the Pacific region will gather in Washington, D.C. in July for our second First Stewards Symposium. Tribal leaders, scientists and others will examine how native people and their cultures have adapted to climate change for thousands of years, and what our future—and that of America—may hold as the impacts of climate change continue.
President Obama’s commitment to addressing adaptation to climate change in a real and substantive way is encouraging. Tribes stand ready to partner with the Administration and others any way we can to protect our homelands and the natural resources on which our cultures and economies depend. Only by all of us working together – supporting one another – will we be able to successfully face the challenges of ocean acidification and climate change.
Uncertainty best sums up the mood as fishermen and processors await the world’s biggest sockeye salmon run at Bristol Bay. In fact, it’s being called the riskiest season in recent memory in the 2014 Sockeye Market Analysis, a biannual report done by the McDowell Group for the fishermen-run Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association.
As presaged by buyer pushback at seafood trade shows earlier this year in Boston and Brussels, for the first time since 2010 the starting price for the first sockeyes from Copper River took a $0.50/lb dip. At an average $3.50/lb, it was down 13 percent for fishermen from 2013.
“Probably more so than any recent year, processors are having pressure from both the buying side with more competition for fish in Bristol Bay, and on the selling side there is a very large sockeye forecast from the Fraser River (in British Columbia). And that fishery takes place in August well after Alaska’s sockeye fisheries are done,” said Andy Wink, seafood project manager at McDowell Group.
“If buyers hold off and there is a big Fraser run, it could leave Alaska processors holding some high-priced sockeye inventory. We’ll have to wait and see what happens with wholesale prices, but in general, there are more downside risks this year,” he added.
The expected catch at Fraser River is about 10 million sockeye, but it could be double that if fishermen and processors have the capacity to handle it.
Of course, farmed salmon remains a big market competitor – and in play this summer is red salmon from Russia. That fish is making big inroads into markets where it hasn’t been before.
“It wasn’t till 2013 when we really saw Russian sockeye going in any significant volume to markets outside of Japan,” Wink explained. “As our sockeyes become more expensive, Japan has been buying more from Russia. But last year we saw Russian sockeye exports outside of Japan go up 580 percent!”
On the upside, Wink said Alaska sockeye is an ever more popular brand, especially in the U.S.
“There is still a lot of demand, especially for fresh and frozen products, and there is strong demand from salmon smokers in Europe, and a growing market in the U.S. market. That’s really supported the entire Bristol Bay fishery over the last several years,” he said.
Sockeye salmon are Alaska’s must valuable species by far, usually worth two-thirds of the total statewide harvest. The 2014 Alaska sockeye harvest is projected at 33.6 million fish; roughly 18 million of the reds should come from Bristol Bay.
Find the easy-to-read 2014 Salmon Market Analysis at www.bbrsda.com.
Worker relief
Alaska seafood processors will soon get relief from worker shortages with the reinstatement of the J-1 Visa Summer Work/Travel Program. The J-1 program allows companies to recruit workers from outside the US when they can’t find enough Alaskans or workers from the Lower 48 during the busy salmon season. The State Department dropped seafood industry workers from the J-1 program two years ago.
Sens. Murkowski and Begich were successful in getting seafood workers added back into the J-1 Visa program. On Friday, the measure passed as part of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill, and it now heads to the full Senate.
Salmon skin cream
A chance discovery by farmed salmon hatchery workers has spawned a line of skin care products that keep skin softer and younger looking.
“Aquapreneurs” in Norway became curious several years ago after they noticed that hatchery workers who spent long hours handling salmon fry in cold seawater had softer, smoother hands. Researchers at Norway’s University of Science and Technology discovered the skin-softening component came from the enzyme zonase, found in the hatching fluid of the salmon eggs. The enzyme’s task is to digest the protein structure of the tough egg shells without harming the tiny fish. The scientists hailed this dual ability as the secret behind the beneficial properties for human skin.
Now, Norway-based Aqua Bio Technology, which develops marine based ingredients for the personal care industry, has launched the zonase-infused product as Aquabeautine XL. Another personal care product using salmon hatching fluid is set to be launched at the end of the year, according to ABT’s website.
Death by sunscreen
All that sunblock being slathered on beachgoers around the world is causing major damage to ocean coral. A study funded by the European Commission revealed the mix of 20 compounds used to protect skin from the harmful effects of the sun causes rapid bleaching of coral reefs.
The World Trade Organization reports that 10 percent of world tourism takes place in tropical areas, with nearly 80 million people visiting coral reefs each year. The WTO estimates that up to 6,000 tons of sunscreen is released into reef areas each year – and that 10 percent of the world’s coral reefs are at risk of ‘death by sunscreen.’
While Alaska’s deep-sea corals face threats from ocean acidification, they are safe from sunscreen. Unlike tropical varieties, Alaska corals don’t form reefs – they grow into dense gardens and can live for hundreds of years. The waters surrounding the Aleutian Islands are believed to harbor the most abundant and diverse cold-water corals in the world.
Laine Welch has been covering news of Alaska’s fishing industry since 1988. She lives in Kodiak. Visit her website at www.fishradio.com
The Department of the Interior has reaffirmed its commitment to restore bison to “appropriate and well-managed levels on public and tribal lands” by working with states, tribes and other partners.
“The Interior Department has more than a century-long legacy of conserving the North American bison, and we will continue to pursue the ecological and cultural restoration of the species on behalf of the American public and American Indian tribes who have a special connection to this iconic animal,” said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell in a June 30 statement announcing the release of a report, DOI Bison Report: Looking Forward, which outlines plans to work with tribes, states, landowners, conservation groups, commercial bison producers and agricultural interests to restore the bison population to a “proper ecological and cultural role on appropriate landscapes within its historical range,” the DOI statement said.
“This report reaffirms our commitment to work with many partners to ensure healthy, ranging bison contribute not only to the conservation of the species, but also to sustainable local and regional economies and communities,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks Rachel Jacobson in the statement.
A key component of the report addresses recent developments regarding brucellosis quarantine that could allow for the relocation of Yellowstone bison outside the Greater outside the Greater Yellowstone Area, if they are quarantined and determined to be brucellosis-free. A new protocol developed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and introduced in February strongly suggests that this is indeed possible.
“The results of this study indicate that under the right conditions, there is an opportunity to produce live brucellosis-free bison from even a herd with a large number of infected animals like the one in Yellowstone National Park,” said Dr. Jack Rhyan, APHIS Veterinary Officer, in a WCS statement in February. “Additionally, this study was a great example of the benefits to be gained from several agencies pooling resources and expertise to research the critical issue of brucellosis in wildlife.”
The new information “raises the potential that for the first time in over a half century, Yellowstone bison could once again contribute to the broader conservation of the species beyond the Greater Yellowstone Area without spreading brucellosis,” the DOI said in its statement. “When evaluating whether to implement a brucellosis quarantine program in the future, Interior will follow all necessary processes to ensure full involvement by states, tribes, and the public.”
As such, the department said it was unwaveringly committed to working with tribes to restore bison on public and tribal lands “because of its cultural, religious, nutritional, and economic importance to many tribes.”
The American buffalo, which numbered an estimated 40 million when Europeans first arrived on Turtle Island, had been reduced to 25 by the late 19th century, Interior noted. Since then many parties have worked hard to bring them back from the brink of extinction and reintroduce them to tribal lands.
“Interior lands now support 17 bison herds in 12 states for a total of approximately 10,000 bison over 4.6 million acres of Interior and adjacent lands, accounting for one third of all bison managed for conservation in North America,” the department said.
