Deadline Approaching to Comment on Bristol Bay Draft Watershed Assessment

With a peer review panel set to meet Aug. 7-9 in Anchorage to discuss a draft watershed assessment on large-scale mining in Southwest Alaska, the Environmental Protection Agency is receiving plenty of public comment.

Through July 12, the EPA said the agency received some 39,500 public comments.

Comments are being accepted through July 23.

Information on the peer review panel and how the public can sign up to participate is online at https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/07/06/2012-16441/notice-of-the-peer-review-meeting-for-epas-draft-report-entitled-an-assessment-of-potential-mining.

The public is invited to observe the panel deliberations in Anchorage on the first two days, Aug. 7-8, and to make oral comments to the peer review panel on Aug. 7. Anyone planning to comment or simply come to observe these sessions must register online by July 23.

Proponents of the massive copper, gold and molybdenum Pebble Mine at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed had urged the EPA to extend the deadline for comments, saying that there had been enough time given for people to read it and submit comments.

Opponents of the mine, however, praised the EPA for its decision to stay on track with the 60-day pubic comment period.

Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay, a nationwide coalition of nearly 100 fishing industry organizations and support businesses representing thousands of commercial fishermen, has issued a statement of support for the EPA.

The Pebble Limited Partnership, which hopes to submit permit applications to build the mine later this year, issued a statement July 16 urging those involved in resource development in Alaska to object to the draft watershed assessment, which it labeled “this poorly crafted document.” The partnership has also criticized the document as rushed, inaccurate and speculative in nature.”

Oregon Fisheries Net More Value in 2011 Harvest, prices were up for most commercial fishermen

More seafood, far more value.

 That sums up the 2011 season for most Oregon fisheries, according to Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) officials and a consortium of four Oregon seafood commissions.

Nick Furman, director of Seafood Oregon – a consortium featuring the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission (ODCC), Oregon Trawl Commission (OTC), Oregon Salmon Commission (OCS) and Oregon Albacore Commission (OAC) – said the state’s commercial seafood and fishing industry had an outstanding year, in fact the best in 23 years, with overall harvest value exceeding $145 million for all Oregon fisheries.

Both the amounts harvested (285 million pounds of fish and shellfish, up substantially from 216 million pounds in 2010) and dollar value were the best in nearly three decades. But the real key, at least for fishermen’s economic survival, lies in the dollar value.

“We remind fishermen that it’s not the pounds of fish that you take to the bank,” Furman noted. “It’s the dollars you take to the bank.”

The influx gave the state’s struggling coastal communities a much-needed boost, say ODA marketing experts, who have worked diligently for years to promote Oregon seafood in various export markets.

Among them are the researchers with the Oregon State University (OSU) Extension Service, Oregon Sea Grant, and Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC), the university’s campus for research, education and outreach in marine and coastal sciences located in Newport’s South Beach district. With its annual budget of almost $46 million, 300 university, state and federal employees, and 150,000 visitors to the education outreach and free-choice learning center, HMSC plays a key role in Oregon’s coastal economy.

Much of the impact is in the seafood industry, where research efforts aim to keep seafood harvested off Oregon’s shore fresh, safe, plentiful and sustainable.

For example, food technologists developed a thin edible protective film to coat fish fillets and keep them fresh much longer. OSU researcher Jae Park has helped surimi – low-value fish processed into a high-value seafood product used to imitate crab and scallops – become an international commodity, which has helped revitalize fisheries in Oregon and beyond. And the Community Seafood Initiative (CSI) in Newport supports the commercial fishing industry and coastal communities by providing access to applied research and capital via a non-profit organization led by Executive Director Heather Mann and a nine-member board.

“We believe a knowledgeable industry is a powerful industry,” said Mann. “Listening to and providing seafood industry representatives and businesses with access to credible and accurate information allows them to not only better position themselves competitively, it also allows them to make proactive strategic decisions rather than reactionary choices.”

Among other things, CSI helps preserve seafood-related working waterfronts, offers value-added product development services, and operates the FishTrax program – a pioneer effort that uses an electronic fishing information system to deliver essential information to key markets and consumers.

Fishermen must still harvest and the prices must be right to make their efforts worthwhile.

Marketing experts consider the 2011 numbers even more impressive given the fact that Oregon fisheries are harvesting seafood in a widely recognized sustainable way. Four of those fisheries – Dungeness crab, albacore tuna, pink shrimp and Pacific whiting – have earned certification from the international Marine Stewardship Council, indicating they are well managed and environmentally neutral, thus ensuring sustainable harvests.

Many fishermen say Oregon’s territorial sea is the healthiest they’ve seen in years, perhaps decades.

“While the volume of fish coming in has increased, it hasn’t been at the expense of healthy fisheries and the stocks available,” said Furman. “All this speaks well for the health of the ocean, it speaks well for the management schemes presently in place that ensure we have sustainably-harvested stocks. The result is the increase in pounds of fish harvested and dollar value.”

The $145 million gleaned in 2011 easily bested 2010’s $105 million, and stood about 44 percent above the annual average for the past decade.

Most Oregon fisheries netted higher prices and had higher catches.

Pink shrimp fishermen finished with their best season since 1992, hauling in 48 million pounds of high-grade shrimp with a to-the-fleet value of $24.6 million. While the catch benefitted the fishermen and processors, it also supplied a growing demand for exports, bringing added revenue to coastal communities. With about three months still to go in the season, Dungeness crabbers have already netted $44 million as export demand in Asia boosted ex-vessel prices to “unheard of levels,” reaching a record-high average of $3.37 per pound, easily besting last year’s $2.30 average, said Furman.

“The big story right now is definitely price,” he added. “Oregon is doing something right, and it is represented by healthy stocks, good volume and prices that are going through the roof because of the global economy and worldwide demand for seafood.”

Price also boosted the fortunes of the albacore tuna fishery, which brought in an average haul of 9.5 million pounds, but fetched a 33-year high of $18.7 million as high demand drove market prices sky-high.

Not everyone prospered.

At 2.4 million pounds, salmon landings were well below expectations – even somewhat less than 2010, which was another dismal year for salmon trollers. Prices were slightly higher than 2010, but fishermen said they weren’t high enough to make up for lack of fish.

“Everyone was optimistic, but the fish simply didn’t show up as much as expected,” Furman said. “Last year was the first time in several years that trollers got to fish the Oregon coast for salmon.” This year, he noted, looks more promising, with higher harvest quotas and high fish numbers.


The sardine fishery also dropped, as Oregon landings were well below the norm, bringing a harvest value of $3.2 million – well below the $5.3 million in 2010.

Overall, however, 2011 proved quite profitable for Oregon fisheries ports and coastal communities, and Furman said they’re “seeing evidence of the same level of activity” in 2012.

Terry Dillman can be reached at tdwordwright@gmail.com

Bristol Bay Run Harvest Exceeds 17 Million Salmon

Cold, nasty weather in Bristol Bay notwithstanding, the famed run of wild sockeye salmon has arrived and by July 9, the commercial fleet had a cumulative season harvest of more than 17 million salmon.

That was a jump of nearly 6 million fish since July 6, when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game released its weekly preliminary harvest summary, which showed the Bristol Bay catch at 11,772,000 fish.

The Bristol Bay daily run summary showed that for July 9 alone, the harvest was 1,161,000 salmon, with the average sockeye per drift delivery at 677 in the Naknek-Kvichak district, 430 in Egegik, 204 for the Nushagak and 198 for Togiak. Information on the drift delivery in the Ugashik district was not posted.

Statewide through July 6, state biologists calculated the cumulative harvest at 22,249,000 wild Alaska salmon, up from a statewide total of 9,449,00 a week earlier.

The Lower Yukon River, where the commercial fleet is dependent on summer and fall chum salmon runs, was also having a very good week, with a catch of some 79,000 chum salmon, and by July 9, that harvest had jumped to some 155,100 chum.

State biologists said that the Pilot Station sonar summer chum salmon passage estimate through July 9 was about 1.9 million fish, well above the historical median of 1.2 million fish for that date.

Chum harvests also improved on the Kuskokwim River, where the cumulative harvest reached 17,000 chum and 4,000 king salmon.In Cook Inlet, the harvest rose to 230,000 reds, 14,000 chum and about 2,000 kings.

The Copper River harvest increased to 1.4 million fish, the bulk of them sockeyes, but also 23,000 chum and 11,000 kings.

For Cook Inlet, the harvest doubled to 246,000 salmon, the bulk of them sockeyes, while in Kodiak the salmon harvest increased by one million fish, including 3.6 million sockeyes, 720,000 chum, 341,000 pink and 14,000 kings.

In Southeast Alaska the cumulative harvest reached 1.3 million salmon of all species, including 1,037,000 chum, 115,000 reds, 61,000 Chinook, 30,000 pink and 27,000 silvers.

Factory Trawler Hit With Ammonia Leak

A Seattle–based factory trawler that experienced an ammonia leak was undergoing repairs near Alaska’s Dutch Harbor this week after three people were treated for inhalation of fumes of the toxic substance.

The incident occurred aboard the 353-foot Excellence, where two welders and a vessel engine room chief were affected by the ammonia, according to the Coast Guard and the online newspaper The Dutch Harbor Telegraph.

The vessel is owned by Premier Pacific Seafoods of Seattle.

The Coast Guard said the vessel was towed to Wide Bay, some 7 miles from the city of Unalaska, for repairs. Once the repairs are completed, their work will be inspected by the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Detachment at Dutch Harbor.

Officials said an unknown amount of ammonia was released, with a full potential of 20,500 pounds onboard the Excellence. The fire department initially established an exclusion zone around the vessel and sprayed down the vessel with water in an attempt to reduce the fumes emanating from the Excellence.

Veteran newsman James Mason, owner/editor of the Dutch Harbor Telegraph, said a crewmember who he spoke with told him a pipe in the engine room broke just where it entered a valve. Vessel personnel were able to shut that part of the system down, then headed back to Dutch Harbor to unload the catch and get a certified ammonia welder to fix the pipe. Some 135 people on board were safely evacuated.

The vessel tied up at Kloosterboer, an international cold storage firm, and it was there that the three workers suffered effects from inhaling ammonia while trying to repair the vessel.

Concern Over Spill Cleanup Readiness Prompts Lawsuit

As Shell Oil’s drill rigs head for the Arctic, with plans to drill offshore this summer, litigation has been filed in federal court in Anchorage challenging the federal government’s decision to approve oil spill response plans for such drilling programs.

The lawsuit, filed July 10 by a coalition of conservation groups, names as defendants Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and two other Interior department officials.

While critical of the federal government’s decision to approve Shell Oil’s spill response plan, the suit does not name Shell as a defendant.

The plaintiffs, represented by Earthjustice, include the Alaska Wilderness League, Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Oceana, Ocean Conservancy, Pacific Environment and Sierra Club.

“We cannot allow the future of the Arctic Ocean to be risked on the hope that nothing will go wrong,” the conservation groups said in a written statement.

Shell Oil spokesman Curtis Smith said that company remains confident that the process followed to approve their oil spill response plan was extremely thorough and will have no problem withstanding legal review.

“Regulators at the highest level have looked very closely at these plans, they have confidence in the plans and if they did not, we would not be on the doorstep to drilling in Alaska,” he said.

Mike LeVine, an attorney with Oceana, said the lawsuit’s aim is to protect the Arctic Ocean and make sure the law is upheld when oil spill response plans are approved.

The lawsuit alleges that the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act were violated when the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and the Interior Department approved spill cleanup plans for the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

APU Fisheries Science Program Immerses Students In Research Projects

For students immersed in Alaska Pacific University’s marine biology research programs in Anchorage, it may be a long trek to class and their biggest textbook won’t fit in their backpacks.

That’s because their classroom is likely a real beach, far from the Anchorage campus, and that textbook is the ocean.

Just ask graduate student Sarah Webster, who is engaged in Pacific halibut research on the Kenai Peninsula, or Danielle Verna, who is studying ballast tanks in oil tankers in Valdez.

The whole idea, says Brad Harris, assistant professor of marine biology at APU, is to get students directly involved in research projects that directly serve local, state, national and international research needs.

“We work primarily on fishery species life history, stock assessment, age and growth, mortality and recruitment, habitat assessment and fishing gear performance,” said Harris. “We assess the interactions of fisheries regulations on fishing communities and on fishery by-catch conflicts.”

The work of students and faculty at APU’s Applied Fisheries Science Laboratory is supported through a variety of federal, state and private industry grants and partnerships, Harris said. At present these include grants from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the At-Sea Processors Association and partnerships with a broad range of state, federal, academic and private groups, he said. These include the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, NOAA Fisheries, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the University of Massachusetts and the Smithsonian Institute.

The faculty reaches out to build relationships with private industry and government agencies, while teaching students to try to think out how to develop a principle-based framework for research before conflict arises, he said.

APU’s Applied Fisheries Science Laboratory is currently engaged in more than a dozen research projects, partnered with federal and state agencies and other universities.

More information about the APU fisheries program is at http://www.alaskapacific.edu/academics/environment/marine-biology

Anomaly or Harbinger? Massive dock float from Japan, teeming with invasive species, beaches itself in Newport

By Terry Dillman

A dock as big as a good-sized commercial fishing vessel washed shore in Agate Beach near Newport, Oregon on June 4, and has since caused quite a stir among scientists, government officials and curiosity seekers.

It also brought potential implications for Pacific Northwest commercial fisheries.

The 165-ton steel-and-concrete dock float – one of four ripped from their moorings at the Port of Misawa by the massive tsunami that inundated Japan in March 2011 – teemed with non-native plant and animal marine species, known collectively and colloquially as invasive species.

How the gigantic piece of flotsam – 66 feet long, 19 feet wide, and seven feet high – rode the waves and currents for several thousand miles undetected until it neared Oregon’s central coast is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The tsunami marine debris coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said even something that size floating amid the currents, winds and waves of the vast Pacific Ocean is quite difficult to monitor, even with satellites.

Whether it’s an anomaly or a harbinger of what lies ahead for Pacific Northwest shores as an estimated 1.5 million tons of tsunami debris wends its way across the ocean on the whims of wind and currents also remains uncertain. But such debris poses a certain threat for a number of reasons.

Commercial fishery leaders worry about the size and distribution of debris in terms of navigational hazards and equipment entanglement. Other issues are the possibility of radiation (although NOAA officials said the chances are slim to none) and chemical contamination. Then there are the potential costs of cleaning up tons of debris. But the dock’s June 4 arrival focused attention on another clear threat: alien flora and fauna.

The first hint that the dock had journeyed from Japan was found in a species of algae indigenous to Asia, including Japan.

Jessica Miller, an Oregon State University (OSU) marine ecologist, said brown algae commonly known as wakame covered much of the dock. She said the algae is native to the western Pacific Ocean in Asia, and has invaded several regions including southern California. OSU phycologist Gayle Hansen confirmed the species identification.

The examination by scientists uncovered a plaque bolted to the dock commemorating its June 2008 installation. The Japanese consulate in Portland, Oregon traced its origin to the Aomori Prefecture on the northern tip of Japan’s coast. Used for loading fish into trucks, the dock is one of four the titanic tidal wave carried out to sea. Japanese officials say one showed up a few weeks later on an island south of Misawa. The other two are still missing.

Scientists at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC) said millions of organisms hitched a ride aboard the ersatz island that beached on Oregon’s central coast – dozens of species of barnacles, starfish, urchins, anemones, amphipods, worms, mussels, limpets, snails, solitary tunicates and algae.

John Chapman, an OSU marine invasive species specialist, called the organisms’ survival of their trek across the Pacific Ocean “mind-boggling,” noting that the low productivity of open ocean waters should have starved at least some of them. “It’s as if the float drifted over here by hugging the coasts, but that’s impossible,” Chapman said. “Life on the open ocean, while drifting, may be more gentle for these organisms than we initially suspected. Invertebrates can survive for months without food, and the most abundant algae species may not have had the normal compliment of herbivores. Still, it is surprising.”

Chapman said the float “is unlike any transoceanic debris we have ever seen. Drifting boats lack such dense fouling communities, and few of these species are already on this coast. Nearly all of the species we’ve looked at were established on the float before the tsunami. Very few came after it was at sea.”

Full Alert
Invasive marine species are already a major problem on the West Coast, where they usually are introduced from ship ballast water.

Chapman is well aware of the issue, having for many years studied a parasitic isopod infesting and decimating mud shrimp populations in estuaries from California to Vancouver Island, with potentially dire consequences for the health of those estuaries. In 2010, an aggressive invasive tunicate appeared in Winchester Bay and Coos Bay along the southern Oregon coast. It’s on the state’s most dangerous species list and is both an ecological and economic threat because of its ability to spread and choke out native marine communities, said OSU’s Sam Chan, chair of the Oregon Invasive Species Council.

Researchers say it’s difficult to assess how much of a threat the newly arrived organisms represented. And there was no way they could tell if any of the hitchhikers aboard the float had already moved into nearshore waters.

“We have no evidence so far that anything from this float has established on our shores,” said Chapman. “That will take time. However, we are vulnerable. One new introduced species is discovered in Yaquina Bay, only two miles away, every year. We hope that none of these species we are finding on this float will be among the new discoveries in years to come.”

Possibilities are many and varied.

“Among the organisms we found are small shore crabs similar to ours that look like the same genus, but may be a different species,” she said. “There were also one or more species of oysters and small clam chitons, as well as limpets, small snails, numerous mussels, a sea star and an assortment of worms.”

As future debris arrives, it could bring additional species, they noted. Yet this dock could also be unique, because it is debris that was submerged in Japan and had a well-developed sub-tidal community. Researchers say that this situation could prove relatively rare, given the amount of debris that entered the ocean.

“Floating objects from near Sendai can drift around that coast for a while before getting into the Kuroshio current and then getting transported to the eastern Pacific,” Chapman said. The researchers want to find funding to go to Japan to sample similar floats and compare the biological life on them with that on the transoceanic traveler that ended up on Agate Beach.

State officials took no chances, following procedures designed to minimize potential spread of non-native species.

Personnel from Oregon State Parks and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife scraped away all plants and animals from the dock onto a tarp, stuffed them into large plastic garbage bags and buried it all in an eight-foot deep hole beyond the reach of high tides and storm surges. Without saltwater, the plants and animals cannot survive, officials noted. They used propane torches to sear any remaining traces of life still clinging to the dock float.

As of press time, two options were under review for taking care of the dock itself: either towing it off the beach to a nearby port or harbor or demolishing it onsite and disposing the remains in a landfill.

One major question remained. If a piece that size could show up far sooner than scientists expected, what lies ahead?

Flotsam and Jetsam
The Japanese government estimated that the 2011 tsunami washed about 5 million tons of debris into the ocean, 70 percent of which quickly sank. Every year, tons of flotsam coagulate into swirling trash heaps – dubbed “garbage patches” by oceanographers – within ocean gyres (locations where the water spins like a whirlpool without the downward spiral; they just sit and spin). Recent monitoring indicates that at least some of the tsunami debris would pull away and get caught in one of those north Pacific gyres.

NOAA monitored the debris field for about a month before it dispersed too widely for satellites to track. Initial tracking had the 1,000-mile debris trail traversing the sea at a rate of about 10 miles per day.

Scientists aren’t sure how much of the remaining 1.5 million tons is still afloat. Using computer models, NOAA researchers believed that most of the remaining debris wouldn’t reach the Pacific Northwest coast until next year. Using today’s form of “dead reckoning” – computer modeling of winds and currents – scientists say most of the debris that survives the journey would likely strike Oregon and Washington in 2013 and 2014, despite concerns about flotsam invasions as early as autumn 2012. Much of it, they said, might never get here.

Most still stick with that assessment, although winds, currents, tides and waves can alter the equation.

During a briefing in January at HMSC, representatives from NOAA, Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, OSU, local emergency management agencies and others outlined the situation for Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

The unexpected arrival of the behemoth float prompted Wyden to renew his call for NOAA and other federal and state agencies to enhance efforts to track the debris, noting the danger such big pieces pose to sea traffic, including commercial fishermen. Safety at sea and on shore is the primary concern.

It prompted Wyden to urge officials to develop a response plan that “prepares for the worst while hoping for the best” in a letter to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. “Because the potential for damage to Oregon’s fishing, crabbing, shipping and tourism industries is a major concern, it is vital that federal, state and local agencies and outside organizations work together to get ahead of this issue,” he wrote. “This kind of broad-scale cooperation and coordination at every level is crucial to minimizing overlap and ensuring that accurate information is available to everyone who could come in contact with this debris, be it on water or on the beaches.”

The float was the second-largest piece of flotsam to show up from the tsunami. The waves dislodged the 164-foot shrimping vessel Ryou-Un Maru from its mooring in Hokkaido, Japan, where it awaited scrapping. The unmanned vessel drifted across the Pacific Ocean until the US Coast Guard sank it in April in the Gulf of Alaska after deciding it was a threat to shipping and the state’s coastline.

Tragic Reminder
The scientists said the dock float’s arrival is also a sobering reminder of the 2011 tragedy that cost thousands of lives.

“We have to remember that this dock, and the organisms that arrived on it, are here as a result of a great human tragedy,” Miller said. “We respect that and have profound sympathy for those who have suffered, and are still suffering.”