USDA Seek Pollock for School Lunch

US Department of Agriculture officials are seeking pollock products for use in the national school lunch and other federal food and nutrition assistance programs.

Acceptance of bid offers will be announced by midnight on Feb. 2, with deliveries to be made between April 1 and June 30.

Offers are required to be submitted electronically via the Web-Based Supply Chain Management System. USDA’s commodity procurement staff cautions that bidders should bid only quantities they can reasonably expect to produce and deliver.

Purchase award descriptions released by USDA following its June 2015 solicitation now that Trident Seafoods was the most successful bidder in that round, with USDA awarding bids worth millions of dollars for millions of pounds of pollock products processed by Trident’s plant at Akutan, Alaska.

The bids called for deliver of the pollock products to Gloucester, New Bedford, and Peabody, Massachusetts; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Newport News, Virginia; and Anacortes, Washington. Order qualities ranged from 4,165,000 pounds for one bid to be delivered to Anacortes to many totaling 39,984,000 pounds.

Trident bid successfully against three other Seattle-based competitors, including Glacier Fish Co. LLC, Golden Alaska Seafoods and Gasllc Limited Liability Co.

More information is online at USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service website, www.ams.usda.gov by clicking on “reports” and “commodity purchasing.”

Setnet Initiative Off Ballot in Alaska

Alaska’s highest court has reversed a lower court ruling, declaring unconstitutional a ballot initiative that would have banned set nets in Cook Inlet, Anchorage, Fairbanks, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, Valdez, Juneau and Ketchikan.

In a ruling handed down on New Year’s Eve, judges on the Alaska Supreme Court found that “set netters are a distinct commercial user group that deserve recognition in the context of the constitutional prohibition on appropriations.”

The court said that the proposed ballot initiative backed by sport fishing advocates from the Kenai Peninsula “would completely appropriate salmon away from set netters and prohibit the Legislature from allocating any salmon to that user group”

The initiative, the judges said in their 22-page decision, “would result in a give-away program of salmon stock from set netters to other types of fishers, and it would significantly narrow the Legislature’s and Board of Fisheries’ range of freedom to make allocation decisions.”

The Kenai Peninsula Fishermen’s Association, and Resources for All Alaskans, both of whom advocated on behalf of commercial set netters, applauded the decision.

“We are thankful the court saw this initiative for what it really was: a not so veiled attempt to eliminate more than 700 family run set net fishing businesses in Upper Cook Inlet, said Jim Butler, president of Resources for All Alaskans.

“Alaskan families who comprise Cook Inlet’s century-old East Side set net fishery are both elated and relieved that Alaska’s Supreme Court has ruled the anti-set net initiative unconstitutional,” said Andy Hall, president of the Kenai Peninsula Fishermen’s Association. “As a result of this decision, hundreds of Alaskan families will go into the new year without the threat of losing our businesses, our incomes, our investments and our way of life hanging over our heads.”

Alaska Fisheries Conservation Alliance, which collected some 43,000 signatures to put the initiative on the ballot, expressed disappointment.

AFCA contends that set nets have the highest rate of incidental catch of fish not targeted of any fishing method allowed in Alaska and unacceptably high rates of mortality for fish that escape the netting.

2015 Safe Year for AK Commercial Fishermen

For commercial fish harvesters in Alaska, it’s been a very safe year.

An article published online this month in Alaska Fish & Wildlife News notes that the US Coast Guard recently announced a milestone: No one in Alaska died commercial fishing in a vessel-related incident in the past year, for the first time.

That’s the federal fiscal year, Oct. 1, 2014 through Sept. 30, 2015, writes Riley Woodford, an information officer with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Although six commercial fishing boats sank in the summer of 2015, no one died. Between 1980 and 1988, an average of 31 fishermen died in Alaska each year.

Scott Wilwert, a fishing vessel safety expert with the Coast Guard, told Woodford that management practices have made fishing safer, the end of the famous derby-style halibut and crab fisheries in particular.

Wilwert also said fishermen in other fisheries in Alaska today are better equipped and better prepared, and there are also fewer people fishing, especially in what were traditionally the most dangerous fisheries.

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, crab and halibut fishing were two of the most dangerous occupations in America, with short openers, harvesting in bad weather, overloaded boats and crews working to exhaustion.

Coast Guard dock inspections of crab boats, crab rationalization legislation and individual fishing quotas have helped change all that. A lot of problems in the derby-style crab and halibut fisheries were related to instability and overloading, but pre-season stability checks by the Coast Guard have improved safety.

When the Commercial Fishing Industry Vessel Safety Act of 1988 was implemented between 1990-and 1995, things like immersion suits and life rafts became required equipment and safety drills and first aid training were required for crewmembers.

And on Oct. 15, 2015, dockside exams became mandatory for all commercial vessels fishing beyond three miles from shore.

Credit also goes to the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association, which teaches mariners how to deal with emergencies, use their gear, and assess risks, and that, said Wilwert, is making a difference.

The complete article is online at www.adfg.alaska.gov

Wrangell Fishermen Sentenced

A father and son from the Southeast Alaska community of Wrangell, Alaska have been fined and sentenced to five years probation for violations of the Lacey Act while fishing for halibut in the Gulf of Alaska.

Charles “Chuck” J. Petticrew Sr., 70, and Charles “Jeff” J. Petticrew Jr., 42, had previously been charged with violating the federal Lacey Act, said US Attorney Karen L. Loeffler, in an announcement Jan. 5. Both men admitted their crimes and pled guilty in October before Chief US District Judge Timothy H. Burgess.

According to Assistant US Attorney Jack S. Schmidt, the Petticrews conspired between June 28, 2010 until May 20, 2013, to falsify fishing locations in their longline fishery logbook entries for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, as well as on individual fishing quota landing permits and ADF&G halibut tickets.

They indicated they fished in management area 3A, when in fact they had fished only in management area2C, Schmidt said.

The Petticrews illegally caught halibut in management area 2C valued at over $23,000 and falsified IFQ records.

The elder Petticrew pled guilty to a single felony count of conspiracy to falsify IFQ records and was sentenced to pay a $90,000 fine, along with probation. His son pled guilty to a single misdemeanor count for violating the Lacey Act by falsifying IFQ records and fined $10,000, along with probation. Both men agreed to install and pay for a vessel monitoring system for the vessel they used and for any other vessel fished on behalf of the family corporation.

The investigation into the Lacey Act violations was conducted by NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement, Alaska Enforcement Division.

Business Size Standard Established

The National Marine Fisheries Service has issued a final rule to establish a small business size standard of $11 million in annual gross receipts for the commercial fishing industry, for Regulatory Flexibility Act compliance purposes only.

For purposes of this final rule, published in the Federal Register at the end of December, NMFS identified a commercial fishing business as a business primarily engaged in commercial fishing, the commercial fishing industry as composed of all such businesses, and said the $11 million standard only applies to this industry.

The standard does not apply to businesses primarily engaged in seafood processing, seafood wholesale activities, or any other activity within the seafood industry.

NMFS said the $11 million standards would be used in RFA analyses in place of the Small Business Administration’s current standards of $20.5 million, $5.5 million and $7.5 million for the finfish, shellfish and other marine fishing sectors respectively of the US commercial fishing industry.

NMFS said establishing a single size standard of $11 million for the commercial fishing industry will simplify the RFA analyses done in support of NMFS’ rules, and better meet the RFA’s intent by more accurately representing expected disproportionate effects of NMFS’ rules between small and large commercial fishing businesses.

The new rule will also create a standard that more accurately reflects the size distribution of all businesses in the commercial fishing industry, and allow NMFS to determine when changes to the standard are necessary and appropriate.

The purpose of the Regulatory Flexibility Act, as amended by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, is to provide small entities with an expanded opportunity to participate in the development of certain regulations. The RFA defines “small entity” as a small business, small organization or small governmental jurisdiction.