Pirate Fishing Bill Moves to Senate Floor

Legislation to end the multi-billion dollar practice of pirate fishing is headed for the Senate floor, while another measure dealing with genetically engineered salmon has been dropped for now, in hope of stronger support in the future.

The Pirate Fishing Elimination Act, which passed the Senate Commerce Committee on July 31, is sponsored by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii.

“Pirate fishing is a multi-billion dollar industry that mocks law for fisheries conservation and seafood safety, hurts legitimate fishermen in the marketplace, and at its worst, even holds its workers as slaves,” Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, a co-sponsor of the pirate fishing bill. “This legislation is a serious way to fight back.”

S. 1980 enacts measures included in a 2009 international agreement on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing to deny known pirate boats access to ports to offload their catch. It also makes it illegal to knowingly import, export or buy or sell fish caught in violation of marine laws and treaties, or to interfere with or bribe inspectors, and gives the Secretary of Commerce power to enforce those measures through arrests, citations and civil and criminal penalties.

Begich said legislation on genetically engineered salmon – the Frankenfish measure – was pulled when it appeared to be one vote shy of passage, but a third bill supporting the NOAA Corps also was headed for the Senate floor.

S. 1717, an act for the Prevention of Escapement of Genetically Altered Salmon in the United States, would have prohibited sale of such fish unless the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration finds that production of those fish would have no significant impact or were found to be consistent with the National Environmental Protection Act.

The federal Food and Drug Amendments Act of 2006 called for a report on any environmental risks associated with genetically engineered seafood production, including impact on wild stocks, but to date the FDA has not provided such a report. The Senate committee also passed S. 2388, the NOAA Corps Amendments Act of 2012, sponsored by Begich, to give the corps tools to streamline personnel practices, improve its diversity and retain senior female officers. The bill also creates new incentive programs, to be paid for by savings in other sections of the bill.

ERMA Will Increase Readiness for Handling Ship Traffic, Arctic Energy Development

New steps are underway to use a federal interactive online mapping tool to deal with the challenges of increasing ship traffic and proposed energy development in the Arctic.

It’s ERMA – the Environmental Response Management Application – announced July 31 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

Fran Ulmer, who chairs the US Arctic Research Commission, says ERMA is a work in progress that will connect many different data sets.

The Alaska Ocean Observing System, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the University of New Hampshire, along with borough governments in Alaska’s Arctic, are working with NOAA’s Office of Response and Restoration on the effort. The data will include near real-time oceanographic observations and weather data from NOAA, and critical environmental, commercial and industrial data from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, plus other federal and state agencies.

It will include observations of the extent and concentration of sea ice, location of ports and pipelines, vulnerable environmental resources and traditional and local knowledge of cultural and subsistence resources.

Emergency responders for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico used the same type of mapping tool.

The Gulf of Mexico version of ERMA is online at http://gomex.erma.noaa.gov/erma.html.

Kwik’Pak Looks to its Youth to Fill Workforce

By Margaret Bauman

On the Lower Yukon River, where wild salmon have for centuries been key to subsistence survival, teen-agers are learning how this nutritious fish can lead them into myriad employment opportunities and help grow the regional economy.

The youth employment program, in which 141 students earned wages totaling $233,000 during the 2011 salmon run, is the brainchild of Kwik-Pak Fisheries, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Yukon Delta Fisheries Development Association.

YDFDA is one of six community development quota associations formed 20 years ago to boost the economy and quality of life in 65 communities on the Bering Sea Coast, by involving them in the lucrative Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands groundfish, halibut and crab fisheries.

“It has worked fabulously for us,” said Jack Schultheis, Kwik’Pak’s fisheries manager, with one eye to the greying of the fleet, and the other to providing skilled employment to the next generation. “We’re trying to get the younger people more involved in the fishing business, bringing young kids into the business so they can learn what it is all about from the ground up.

“We want to demonstrate to them how important this industry is to the Lower Yukon.”

“We think, we hope this will do it,” he said.

“The whole structure of the fishery is family-oriented,” he said. “They fish with their families and then they come off of the boat and work for us. It’s getting young people involved in the main business that’s out there. It’s the only non-government economy.”

“The benefit for us is that these kids are really good, very reliable workers,” he said. “They take their jobs very seriously. The money means a lot to them, so they are really reliable workers. They are not trouble-makers.”

The students, who start at $10 an hour, comprise about one-third of the workforce at Kwik-Pak’s fish processing plant at Emmonak. During the fishing season, they rotate through jobs every two weeks, to find out where their career interests lie.

Students aged 14-15 years old learn the skills of being administrative assistants, receptionists, custodians, break room store workers, and public relations, sales and marketing skills. The 16 and 17 year olds work as packing room, boxing room and roe house workers.

The program ends each year two weeks before school starts, but quite a few of them come back and work after school. “We really miss them when school starts, Schultheis said. “It gives you a warm feeling that you have a bunch of young people with ambition, who want to work. We’re hoping these kids get more involved in the economics, the business side of it.”

Other students are employed in collecting scientific data about the salmon at the plant for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and at buying stations at Mountain Village, Kotlik and Nunam Iqua.

The whole idea behind the youth training/employment program is to have skilled employees to come back and work for the villages, said Judy Murdock, operations assistant manager for Kwik’Pak. “We had a lot of eager people. We wanted to get them on the job, to get them trained,” she said.

“And we’re not just an employer said Marilyn Charles, employment and training services coordinator. “I work with the school counselor (at Emmonak) to keep tabs on the students. We make sure they are going well in school.

“For people who don’t have consistency in their lives, this gives them a path, a guideline of some sort,” she said. “They see Kwik’Pak coming (during the fishing season) every year and they see they are building a relationship with Kwik’Pak.”

Kwik’Pak actually began employing regional youth in commercial fisheries back in 2001.

By 2010, 105 youths were putting in a total of more than 14,500 hours combined.

Last year the program employed 141 students and this coming summer, Kwik’Pak hopes to employ even more.
Over the years these youth have also participated in other projects led by Kwik’Pak Fisheries, from painting churches and the women’s shelter in Emmonak and Alakanuk to building the fishermen’s store at Kwik’Pak.

They have also become involved in support of suicide prevention efforts, attending conferences led by regional elders and several community entities.

The youth employment program, says Kwik’Pak management, gives the communities a great sense of excitement of what the future holds for the region.

Kwik’Pak also is looking constantly to broaden the perspective of these teen-agers into the vast worldwide competition and potential of commercial fisheries.

In March, the CDQ group took two of its 18-year-old students to the International Boston Seafood Show to work at Kwik’Pak’s booth.

“They were just overwhelmed with the city of Boston itself, and they got a good impression of the competition, how huge in general the seafood industry is,” Schultheis said. “They met customers and talked to them. We had them work in the booth, talked to customers. One wants to go to college and go into marine biology. The other wants to go into fisheries operations. We think it is a really good program.”

In the future, Kwik’Pak is also looking at possibilities of bringing some of the students into Anchorage during winter months, for technical training, college courses and office training. “We are trying to do this so those kids go back to the villages and have jobs there,” he said.

A state Labor Department grant for $150,000 has helped fund wages, training, supplies and administrative services for the youth employment program, and a large career fair is planned for June.

Still, more funds are needed to help the program grow, Schultheis said.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margieb42@mtaonline.net.

Alaska’s Wild Salmon Harvest Climbs to 50 Million Fish

Alaska’s wild salmon harvest rose by more than 10 million fish from July 13 through July 20, to reach the 50 million fish mark, including nearly 31 million sockeye salmon. The bulk of the red salmon catch was harvested in the Bristol Bay watershed, including a cumulative total of more than 10 million reds in the Naknek-Kvichak district, now quiet as harvesters depart for other fisheries.

The Copper River harvest now stands at 1.8 million salmon, a small increase over the previous week, and includes some 1,783,000 reds, plus some 29,000 chum and 12,000 kings. While the fresh Copper River reds are now long gone, Copper River Seafoods, one of several processors of those reds, has joined other marketers of Alaska’s wild salmon online, with gift packages of smoked sockeye salmon fillets on www.Amazon.com, in addition to its own website, www.copperriverseafoods.com

Cook Inlet’s wild salmon harvest rose from 460,000 fish to 1.4 million over the same week ended July 20, with the sockeye salmon harvest alone jumping from 433,000 to 1.3 million reds, but the commercial East Side setnet fleet was basically shut down by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in an effort to protect king salmon swimming up that side of Cook Inlet.

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell has already asked for a federal disaster declaration related to Yukon and Kuskokwim Chinook salmon stocks, and noted in that request there is a similar trend on Cook Inlet stocks. Parnell said in the fall, when the season’s fishery return data is in, he intends to send a follow-up letter to federal authorities to support the disaster declaration request.

Parnell said he has also called for a state Department of Fish and Game comprehensive fisheries research plan. Parnell said he has already requested millions of federal dollars for Chinook salmon research but this was above and beyond that earlier request.

On the Lower Yukon River, a strong run of fall Yukon chums boosted the cumulative harvest from 176,000 to 285,000 fish, but that didn’t make up for the lost harvest during the summer run, when commercial fishermen had to wait to begin fishing until the required number of kings had escaped upstream, heading toward the Canadian border.

In Southeast Alaska, the cumulative catch doubled to 5.6 million salmon, including 4.3 million chum, 595,000 pink, 318,000 red, 232,000 silvers and 132,000 kings.

On the Alaska Peninsula the harvest edged up slightly to 3.3 million fish, including 2.5 million sockeyes, while at Kodiak the cumulative harvest rose from 1.6 million to 2.2 million salmon, including 1.4 million sockeyes.

Salmon for School Lunches Project Begins Taste Tests

Salmon patties, salmon patties with sauce and sweet and sour salmon balls with brown rice will be rated by children visiting the Tanana Valley Fair in Fairbanks in early August, to help researchers determine future rural school lunch plans.

The goal of researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks is to provide healthier lunches with wild Alaska salmon and then measure the health impacts on the kids themselves. Recipes for the taste testing were created by the Cooperative Extension Service in Fairbanks, in collaboration with the Alaska Farm to School Program, and will include a taste test between local and imported vegetables as well.

Andrea Bersamin, the research project’s principal investigator, is a nutrition professor at UAF.

The goal, she said, “is to find a way for more Alaska commercial fish to stay in the state while providing an excellent source of local food for Alaska’s children. Beyond the nutritional values, the project includes an economic feasibility study, curriculum and program development. Some of the grant money will be used to purchase fish for the program from area fishermen and fish processors, once local preferences for how the fish should be prepared are established, so the program could have the added bonus of boosting local economies.

The taste tests began earlier this summer at the Center for Alaska Native Health Research at UAF. The center is part of the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology, which funded the research through a $1.1 million federal Department of Agriculture grant.

Protesters Want Shell Oil to Meet Stringent Requirements for Offshore Drilling

Concerns about potential adverse impacts of offshore drilling of exploratory wells has conservation groups urging federal authorities to say no to a waiver for Shell Oil on air pollution limits required to begin drilling in the Arctic Ocean this summer.

The small group of protesters assembled at the federal building in Anchorage where the Environmental Protection Agency has offices objected July 23 to Shell getting major changes in Clean Air Act requirements. Shell is asking for the EPA to completely do away with its limit on ammonia emissions, to triple limits on nitrogen oxide and to alter its limit for particulate matter, they said.

Shell officials have said that even though they have spent millions of dollars retrofitting one vessel that is cannot meet some emission standards for the permit, so Shell wants the EPA to be allowed to drill this summer while seeking a revised permit.

Colin O’Brien, an attorney with Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, was among those objecting to Shell being allowed to proceed this summer.

“Shell has admitted that it will violate the permit, that it intends to violate the law this summer unless it is given a special waiver, and we think that any company seeking to operate in the Arctic should be held to the letter of the law,” he said.

Commercial, sport and subsistence fishermen have for years voiced concerns about possible adverse impacts to fisheries habitat from offshore exploration drilling.

Proposal to Phase Out Bottom Trawling in Northeast Atlantic Draws Mixed Reactions

A proposal from the European Commission to phase out bottom trawling and bottom gillnetting for deep sea fishing fleets in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean is drawing mixed reactions among fisheries interests in Alaska.

Word of the European Commission’s proposal came from the Pew Environment Group, which praised Maria Damanaki, European Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, for “the bold proposal to finally put an end to these unsustainable and destructive deep sea fishing methods.

“Marine scientists have roundly concluded that deep-sea bottom trawling is the most direct and widespread threat to fragile deep-sea ecosystems,” Pew said in its written statement. “If the commission proposal is adopted, it would transform the EU into a global defender of deep-sea marine life by protecting vulnerable deep-sea species and ecosystems from the harmful impacts of destructive bottom fishing.”

“Globally, bottom trawl fisheries are considered high impact,” said Dorothy Childers, of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council. “Although Alaska fisheries are managed more rigorously to prevent overfishing, account for bycatch and protect certain habitat features, there are areas in our waters still exposed to bottom trawling that are ecologically sensitive and important to community-based small-scale fisheries.”

John Gauvin, a spokesperson for the Groundfish Forum, and Jim Gilmore of the At-sea Processors Association, said, however, that the announcement was not relevant to Alaska.

Gauvin said Alaska’s trawl, and other fisheries in federal waters also, are managed to prevent overfishing and effects on habitats have been studied and protections put in place. These include closed areas to protect coral concentrations and gear modifications, which have reduced bottom contact from flatfish trawls by 90 percent, he said. The European Union proposal is targeted at banning development of new deep-sea fisheries, fisheries that have no management in place, he said.

Gilmore said he found nothing in the announcement relevant to Alaska, particularly the Pollock fishery, which is conducted using mid-water trawl nets. Gilmore added that judging from the announcement, such a rule would affect less than 1 percent of the EU’s annual landings and apply largely to previously unregulated fisheries.