Fairground Is Venue for Salmon In School Lunches Test

Nutritionists seeking the public’s opinion on how to include wild Alaska salmon in school lunches are weighing the results of a state fair taste test of three fish entrees that could eventually be served up to students in rural Alaska.

More than 300 men, women and children attending the Tanana Valley Fair in Fairbanks in early August sampled salmon patties, salmon patties with sauce and sweet and sour salmon balls with brown rice, then offered their opinions to researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The taste test is part of a much larger effort under way to determine future rural school lunch plans. It could also potentially improve local markets for commercial harvesters and processors.

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.

New Technology for Finding Fish

By Kathy A. Smith

As today’s technologies continue to be developed in many industries and for personal use, they are finding their way into marine electronics and making the job of catching fish easier.

One item that’s new on the horizon for navigation products is NavNet TZtouch from Camas, Washington-headquartered Furuno USA, Inc. the first multi-touch-based system in the industry. “It comes as a standard chart plotter, and you can add as many features as you want like radar, fish finders and AIS components,” says Jeff Kauzlaric, Advertising & Communications Manager.

The multi-function display allows users to easily scroll charts and move between screens. A unique RotoKey can be turned to zoom in and out, and when depressed, a touch screen menu appears. The “pinch-to-zoom” function is similar to the movement used on a smart phone or IPad. Moving through the chart and adding or deleting waypoints or creating a completely new route can be done quickly with a high degree of accuracy. “One of the things with traditional chart plotters that has been cumbersome to do is enter in routes and waypoints. You have to get into menus to do that kind of thing. With TZtouch, now you can just touch the screen and it becomes active,” he says.

And building on the NavNet 3D multi-function display (the difference is the keypad control), the user can view a chart in 3D mode by simply taking two fingers and swiping up on the display. It also has built-in WIFI for downloading, for instance, weather forecasts which are overlayed on a chart in the weather screen. The system can also be connected to smart phones and tablets and comes in a 9-inch or 14-inch design. “If you’re on the back of the boat and you want to take a look at what you’re going over right now, you can actually pull up the fish finder screen on your phone,” Kauzlaric adds.

The company’s MaxSea TimeZero PC charting software product can also be connected to the NavNet TZtouch and NavNet 3D products. “If you wanted, you could begin planning a route on a chart at home and put in different waypoints and then when you’re on the boat, you can transfer the information through your laptop’s Ethernet system and then start up the MaxSea software and it would transfer it over. It also has a personal bathymetric generator so you can take the information that’s coming in from the sounder and it will draw the seafloor surface in 3D. That’s really useful for finding out where the fish are.”

Furuno’s BR500 BNWAS, Bridge Navigation Watch Alarm System is an alarm/alert system that will sound various alarms on the bridge or in navigator staterooms and living quarters if it senses inactivity on the bridge for a predetermined period of time. “The only way you can turn it off is if you go up onto the bridge,” says Kauzlaric. “It eliminates somebody falling asleep or somebody getting hurt who is unable to operate the vessel and it warns the crew to come up to the bridge and deal with the situation.”
Kauzlaric say’s it’s mandatory on larger vessels like tankers, “but we’re starting to see the commercial fishing industry take note. They’re out there working for hours at a time and, as they’re motoring back, they need to make sure they’re staying awake.” The device can be hooked up several ways, for instance with a toggle switch that when hit, automatically resets the timer or it can be hooked into the radar system or to a motion sensor.

When it comes to electronic navigation product trends, Erik Sundholm, Vice President of Seattle-headquartered Harris Electric, Inc., a marine electronics dealer and electrical contractor, says, “In our region, Electronic Charts Co. (ECC) has been the industry standard for more than a decade. It offers navigation software with special features such as terrain building by interfacing with a depth sounder, has a 3D module and specialized updates like the Yearly Alaskan Rookeries. Olex, a Norwegian software program that is distributed by Simrad Fisheries, is a bathymetric chart plotter that has gained popularity and market share over that past few years. In addition, we see Nobeltec and Furuno’s MaxSea on a lot of our customers’ vessels. The most popular radar model for our fishing customers is the Furuno FR 21x7 series.”

Besides its Seattle location, the company also operates year-round out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska and seasonally out of Naknek, Alaska, where they operate stores for those fishing for crab, Pollock and salmon. “It’s not as busy as it has been but in Alaska, they are starting to build new vessels, so capital investment is starting to occur.”

Sundholm says over the years, he has seen electronic equipment become more sophisticated. “It reflects what is happening with technology in our world,” he says. “Think about how much more sophisticated an iPhone is compared to a mobile phone of 10 years ago. The equipment is integrated much more than it used to be.”

Simrad Fisheries’ Olex 3D Bathymetric plotter includes traditional navigation features like waypoints, ARPA, AIS, routing, autopilot interface and sequencing along a route. As Michael Hillers, General Manager of the Lynnwood, Washington company says: “Simrad Fisheries is primarily focused on fishing acoustics and navigating toward the fish. This is accomplished in two ways; a sonar detects fish targets up to several thousand meters away and the vessel advances towards them; or bottom data is collected on the Olex, which allows a fisherman to navigate towards the fish based upon the bottom contours and bottom hardness. This puts the fishermen in the proper location to target fish or shellfish based upon the Olex’s recorded fish or shellfish habitat.

The ability to map the seafloor for both contours and habitat exists as does the ability to determine the length of the fish and the biomass in an area. This is due to the ES70 echosounder and the ES70-Olex interface. In fisheries acoustics, the long-term goal is species identification. The ability to target the right species and the right size of the target species is the key to sustainable fisheries. These tools and the ability to implement these tools into a system that allows only the right fish to be caught is the goal.”

Trawl monitoring is the next step to sustainability. For that purpose, Simrad has developed a unique camera system called the FX80 that allows real-time video of the activity in and around the trawl to be viewed in the wheelhouse. In 2007, the company first introduced a series of sensors to measure distances between points of a deployed trawl. This allowed trawl manufacturers to measure excluder flaps; to show the flap opening and how far they open. In conjunction with depth, the sensors and a recording camera placed strategically on the net, an idea of how the net was “flying” could be determined. However, the camera footage could only be viewed when the camera was retrieved, hindering gathering real-time data.

There were two critical design issues, explains Hillers. “No fisherman would be willing to lose his third wire trawl sonar picture, so the camera needed to work simultaneously with the trawl sonar, and we needed the video to come up 3,000 meters of existing coax cable and through a set of sliprings. In initial tests in 2010 we hoped to achieve five frames a second, however we achieved 25 frames per second.”

Hillers reports the first commercial use of the FX80 on a commercial fishing vessel will take place in August in the Bering Sea. In addition to the initial installation on a Bering Sea Pollock trawler, additional units are being installed on ground fish vessels fishing in the Gulf of Alaska this summer.

“The FX80 concept has been very well received by fishermen as well as the door and trawl manufacturers who are very anxious to have the ability to actually see what’s going on underwater,” he says. “There is no shortage of ideas being proposed for trawling regarding capturing the target fish and leaving the by-catch in the water alive and unharmed. Real-time video is going to have an explosive impact upon implementation of these ideas. This product continues our philosophy of promoting green fishing by using technology to leave the non-target species and the over or undersized of the target species in the water intact and healthy.”

Wild Salmon Harvest at 71 Million Fish, With Pinks Coming In

Alaska’s wild salmon harvest for the 2012 season stood at 71.3 million fish in early August, up 12.6 million fish over the previous week’s survey, but well below the projected harvest of 132.1 million fish.

But the salmon fisheries, pink salmon in particular, have a ways to go, says Geron Bruce, deputy director of commercial fisheries for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

“It can happen fast with pink salmon,” Bruce said in an interview Aug. 7, referring to the fisheries in Prince William Sound, Kodiak and Southeast Alaska.

The pink salmon numbers are looking like the forecast, he said. “They are looking decent, maybe a little bit stronger. It is down from the five-year average and down from last year, but we expected that going into the season.”

Sockeye harvests are also down a bit, but not that far off from last year, and the chum harvest is actually looking pretty good, he said. As for pink salmon, “we are just hitting our stride,” he said.

Harvest totals compiled by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game through Aug. 3 showed a total of 34,305,000 sockeyes, 22,405,000 pink, 13,512 chum, 881,000 coho and 204,000 Chinook salmon delivered to processors. The biggest jump came in pink salmon harvests in Southeast Alaska, where the catch of pinks rose from 1.2 million to 3.4 million fish.

State biologists said earlier they expected 2012 harvest of some 132.1 million salmon of all species, a decrease in commercial salmon caught in 2012 due to the projected decrease in pink salmon harvests. The projection was to include 120,000 Chinook salmon in areas outside Southeast Alaska, 38.4 million sockeye salmon, 4.3 million coho salmon, 70.2 million pink salmon and 19.1 million chum salmon.

The projected sockeye harvest was about 4 percent lower than the harvest of 2011, and the projected chum harvest was expected to be 12 percent higher than that of the 2011 chum harvest.

Of the 204,000 kings caught commercially statewide through Aug. 3, only 65,000 of them had been netted outside of Southeast Alaska.

Coast Guard Says It’s Ready for Offshore Drilling in Arctic

Operation Arctic Shield 2012, now under way, is part of the Coast Guard’s plan of expansion, in preparation for planned offshore oil industry activity in Alaska’s Arctic waters, says Commandant Robert Papp Jr.

“This summer we are preparing for Arctic activity driven by the oil industry’s planned drilling operations in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas,” Papp said in remarks to a US Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee in Kodiak Aug. 6.

US Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., chaired the hearing at Air Station Kodiak, at the request of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to discuss the need for a robust Coast Guard presence as global warming melts sea ice, opening the area to more ship traffic, tourism and possibly commercial fishing.

Much concern has been voiced over whether offshore oil exploration and increased ship traffic pose potential environmental concerns, how to guard against them, and how to deal with them, should they occur.

Shell Oil is planning to drill exploratory wells this summer in both the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Murkowski said that Shell has made clear and the Coast Guard has made clear the obligation for Shell to handle any spill occurring as a result of their operations as a company.

“Partnering closely with federal, state, local and tribal government partners, and working with industry as the regulated parties, the Coast Guard is ready for operations… with Operation Arctic Shield,” Papp said.

“The lessons we learn this year will inform our planning and strategy, to ensure we remain always ready to ensure the safety, security and stewardship of the emerging maritime frontier of the Arctic.”

Arctic Shield 2012, said Papp, is a three-pronged interagency operation consisting of outreach, operations, and assessment of capabilities from February through October of this year. It will include delivering education, awareness and health services for Arctic communities and outlying Native villages. It will involve deployment of major cutter forces, air assets, communication equipment, and mission support to conduct the Coast Guard’s missions, Papp said.

In addition, an oil spill contingency exercise in Barrow will test Coast Guard and Navy skimming equipment launched from a 225-foot Coast Guard buoy tender. “Arctic shield 2012 has been carefully tailored to deliver the appropriate set of capabilities to this remote area,” Papp said. “I am very proud of our team in the 17th Coast Guard District for bringing the Arctic Shield plan to fruition.”

Papp said the Coast Guard has deployed the Coast Guard vessel Bertholf, the first national security cutter, to the southern Arctic region, to provide an operational presence, and command and control, in areas where the Coast Guard lacks the permanent infrastructure of a coastal sector. 

Oregon Resident Convicted of Commercial Fishing Crimes

An Oregon man convicted of two counts of falsely reporting where he caught fish in Alaska waters faces a maximum of five years in prison, a fine of $250,000, or both.

Freddie Joe Hankins, 47, of Cove, Oregon, is scheduled for sentencing on Oct. 12 by U.S. District Court Judge Russel H. Holland.

The US Attorney’s office in Anchorage said Aug. 3 that Hankins was convicted by a jury of two counts of falsely reporting which regulatory area in the Gulf of Alaska he caught his individual fishing quota halibut.

Specifically, in 2007, Hankins caught halibut in an area where he was not authorized to fish, because he did not have quota in that area, and he falsely reported that he caught the halibut in a regulatory area where he did have quota, said Assistant US Attorney Stephen Cooper, who prosecuted the case.

Veteran commercial fisherman Arne Fuglvog, a former fisheries aide to Sen. Lisa Murkowski now serving time for his fisheries convictions, testified that he had fished with Hankins and it was Hankins’ practice to falsely report where he fished for IFQ halibut because the fishing was better in the regulatory area where Hankins did not have quota.

The jury acquitted Hankins on two other counts of false reporting.

Peer Review of Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment Gets Under Way

A public peer review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Bristol Bay watershed assessment got underway Aug. 7 in Anchorage, with more than 100 people testifying on the pros and cons of the document.

John Shively, chief executive officer of the Pebble Limited Partnership, led off the testimony, calling the EPA’s assessment a “fantasy mine that EPA uses to measure the potential impacts on this very large watershed,” one that “has no basis in reality in the 21st century.

Shively’s remarks were echoed by others, including Michael Satre, executive director of the Council of Alaska Producers, who called the draft assessment “a classic case of garbage in, garbage out.”

Dennis McLerran, Region 10 administrator for the EPA in Seattle, speaking with reporters during a break in the meeting, said the EPA doesn’t see the document as fantasy. “We think it’s based on what’s been put forward by actual mining companies,” he said.

Many others who testified supported the EPA document, including Kendra Zamzow, a geochemist with the nonprofit Center for Science in Public Participation. “The waters are so pure there is no room for error in collection or wastewater treatment,” she told the panel.

Bonnie Gestring of Earthworks, an environmental group, spoke of a new study of copper mines, which showed a record of pipeline spills and other accidental spills of toxic materials.

Several Alaska Natives from Bristol Bay, including commercial and subsistence fishermen, also addressed the panel, in support of the EPA document.

The peer review began just two days after the end of Salmonstock, a celebration of wild Alaska salmon and the people who depend on them, Aug. 3-5 at Ninilchik, on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.

Well over 5,000 supporters came to mingle in the rain and support the cause.

That was more than double the number of people who turned out for the first Salmonstock a year ago, drawing Alaskans from all over the state, said Anders Gustafson, executive director of the host Renewable Resources Coalition.

A lot of new people came for the music and went away a little more knowledgeable about issues facing wild salmon, Gustafson said.

Event planners used the music of many bands to draw crowds to get their message out, including Leftover Salmon of Boulder, Colorado, which describes its music as "polyethnic Cajun slamgrass," or a blend of Cajun/Zydeco, bluegrass and rock.

Rain clouds and temperatures in the 50s that prevailed over much of the event failed to dampen the spirits of the crowd of people of all ages, who danced to the music or rocked with Hula-Hoops, and mingled at food and educational booths.

"The bands themselves have been very educated and are taking the message with them to the Lower 48,” Gustafson said.

Today's Catch - Put a Salmon in your Tank

A deadly fish virus has forced a Bainbridge Island, Washington (USA) salmon farm to destroy its entire stock and has put state wildlife experts on alert for additional outbreaks.

The Kitsap Sun reported last month that more than a million pounds worth of Atlantic salmon had been cleared from infected net pens in Rich Passage to the south of the island.

The Infectious Hematopoietic Necrosis virus, or IHN virus, can be carried by other fish, including herring, which sometimes pass through the farm’s net pens. The same virus recently appeared in two British Columbia fish farms, requiring the destruction and disposal of 560,000 fish. The virus had never been recorded in Washington waters until it was found at the Bainbridge Island farm last month.

The Bainbridge farm is owned by American Gold Seafoods, affiliated with Icicle Seafoods of Seattle. The company is also concerned about another batch of net pens about a half-mile away. The nets from two acres worth of pens will be removed and disinfected, and in four months the farm will be back in operation.

The dead and dying fish will be composted, although the living fish will still be processed and sold for food, in spite of most not having grown to the preferred market size.

South of the border, Chile knows a thing or two about salmon farm diseases. In 2010 the country’s salmon aquaculture industry saw production cut in half by outbreaks of the Infectious Salmon Anemia virus (I.S.A.) that spread through the fish farms in the southern part of the country. The Chilean farmed salmon industry suffered more than $2 billion in losses, saw its production of Atlantic salmon fall by half and the farms are still battling the disease.

But a novel new technology is revealing a silver lining to the cloud of massive farmed fish die-offs:

Biogas.

Equipment manufacturers Global Fluid S.A. and Landia have developed a line of pumps, seals and choppers to process the infected fish into fish silage, preventing further contamination, but also producing valuable, protein-rich fats and oils for use in biogas plants and paint manufacturing. The salmon are macerated in custom-engineered silage processing units, which comprise a stainless steel tank, chopper pump, control panel, recirculation pipe and valves.

When they enter the Silage Processing Unit, dead salmon weighing as much as 18 lbs. are successfully macerated into slurry by an aggressive chopper pump. Propeller mixers are used to agitate the silage during storage, which can be held in tanks for several months or even up to a few years when correctly produced and handled.

Biogas can be compressed, much like natural gas, and used to power motor vehicles, and as a renewable fuel, Biogas qualifies for renewable energy subsidies in some parts of the world. While not the ideal solution to the world’s energy problems, at least the diseased Chilean fish aren’t making it to the dinner table.

Chris Philipseditor@fishermensnews.com