Commentary Urges Action on Transboundary Mining Pollution

Commentary published in the journal Science by an international group of science and policy experts calls for immediate action to address damages and risks of Canadian mine pollution floating downstream into the United States.

The commentary calls on the US and Canadian governments to invoke the US-Canada Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 and address British Columbia mine assessments, which are neither adequately based on defensible science nor adequately protect those salmon rich transboundary waters from mine pollution.

According to Jill Weitz, director of Salmon Beyond Borders, and one of the authors of the commentary, British Columbia’s mine assessment process leaves Alaskans unprotected because it underestimates the risk of mine failures and contamination and doesn’t rely on independent science.

The transboundary watersheds of the Taku, Stikine-Iskut and Unuk-Nass are home to world class salmon rivers that originate in northwest British Columbia and flow into Southeast Alaska. These rivers and their watersheds have been centers of culture, commerce and biodiversity for thousands of years, and critical to the economy of numerous Southeast Alaska communities. At the headwaters of these rivers lie over two dozen large scale Canadian mines already in some phase of development or operation.

The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska have also called on the US government to take action under the Boundary Waters Treaty. The Central Council began working to collect baseline water quality data, sediment sampling and water quality surveys on the Taku and Stikine rivers back in 2015. In 2018, the Council expanded their scope to sampling on the Alsek River near Yakutat, and in 2019 added the Chikat and Klehini rivers outside of Klukwan and Haines.

Central Council Environmental Coordinator Raymond Paddock said the commentary validates the concerns of Southeast Alaska tribes as well as their request for increased federal engagement from Canada, the US and indigenous governments, to work together to manage proposed, existing and abandoned mines along shared rivers.

Alaska Mandates New Rules of Conduct

With the start of Alaska’s 2020 commercial salmon season less than three weeks away, the seafood industry is bracing for one like none they’ve seen before, in addition to the huge expense required to keep the fishery safe during a pandemic.

Alaska health officials this past week laid out yet another mandate for upcoming commercial salmon fisheries, designed to keep harvesters, processors and coastal communities safe from the spread of the novel coronavirus. Health mandate 17 covers the conduct of all independent harvesters coming into Alaska’s salmon fisheries aboard independent commercial fishing vessels or arriving to join them in coastal communities.

As of April 29, Alaska has a total of 351 people confirmed to be infected with COVID-19, including 228 who recovered, 37 hospitalizations and a total of nine deaths. The majority of these cases have been recorded in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau. None have been reported in the Copper River and Bristol Bay fisheries areas where health care facilities are very limited.

Those arriving by commercial or chartered aircraft must be wearing face coverings throughout their journey, except when going through security screenings, until they reach facilities where they are to self-quarantine for 14 days.

The city of Cordova on Prince William Sound, where the Copper River fishery opens in mid-May, has mandated a 14-day self-quarantine for everyone upon arrival, including residents returning from elsewhere in Alaska. Fishermen choosing to quarantine on their vessels are required to fly a “Lima” flag or similar yellow and black pennant if any crew on board have not completed their quarantine. They must also comply with all current COVID-19 mandates for the city, which can be found online at covid19.cityofcordova.net, as well as current state mandate available at covid19.alaska.gov.

Several fishermen who will depart Kodiak for Bristol Bay on their own fishing vessels said they and their crew would quarantine before departing and remain on their fishing vessels for the entire fishery. Anyone not planning to do the same while fishing in Bristol Bay this year should just stay home, they said.

The Bristol Bay working group, which represents economic, health, housing and tribal entities in the region, has told state health officials that human health and the safety of residents of their communities has priority over the fishery. The working group is demanding a collaborative effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the region, particularly since many people coming to harvest or process the salmon are arriving from places where there is already a high rate of infection. The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918–1919 devastated the region, leaving hundreds of children orphaned, some of whose descendants now fish commercially or process in Bristol Bay.

Participating processors are bringing their own personal protection equipment for employees and planning on other extensive deep cleaning and security measures throughout the fishery, for the protection of their own workers and the communities where they will be working.

Pandemic Prompts Boost in SeaShare Donations

SeaShare’s effort to provide high quality portions of seafood to food banks nationwide has moved into high gear in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which has left millions of Americans unemployed and struggling to put food on their tables.

The Seattle-based nonprofit, with a growing number of several hundred partners and donors, is able to turn every dollar received into eight servings of seafood for those in need.

In early April, E&E Foods donated 110,000 pounds of nutritious wild Alaska smelt to SeaShare, which helped coordinate the first delivery of 30,000 pounds, or 120,000 servings to the Food Bank of Alaska, with three more similarly sized donations scheduled to address the growing needs.

Transportation logistics contributed by PBX Trucking, D&B Transload and Tote Maritime Alaska made it possible to move the first 30,000 pounds from Puget Sound to Anchorage in early April and another load is scheduled to reach Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula and other coastal communities.

Other recent shipments from SeaShare included 22 million servings of breaded portions of seafood to 16 food banks in 12 states and 500,000 servings of breaded seafood to four food banks in another three states, with the food banks themselves arranging shipment.

In Alaska 50,000 servings of salmon and halibut from Trident Seafoods in Kodiak were shipped to Bean’s Café in Anchorage, with freight costs donated by Matson.

SeaShare shipments to Alaska so far in 2020 have already reached more than 100,00 pounds, including 7,000 pounds of salmon burgers to Dillingham, salmon steaks and Pollock portions to the Juneau food bank and Pollock portions, halibut and salmon steaks to the food bank in Anchorage, according to Jim Harmon, SeaShare executive director.

In mid-March SeaShare sent more than two million servings of family-sized packages of wild Alaska Pollock donated by wild Alaska Pollock producers to 16 food banks in 12 states.

SeaShare started in 1994, when a small group of commercial fishermen in Alaska began donating fish caught incidentally to their directed harvest to food banks. To date more than 200 million servings of seafood have been distributed nationwide. To find out more about SeaShare, its partners and donors and ways to contribute,visit www.seashare.org.

Second Gulf of Alaska Salmon Expedition Returns with New Data

A second International Year of the Salmon and Pacific Salmon Foundation Gulf of Alaska expedition has concluded with new data gathered toward the goal of providing an early measure of the numbers of salmon that will return to North American rivers. Expedition leaders announced in late April that the international team of researchers reached Victoria Harbour, British Columbia, on April 7.

This expedition came in the wake of the 2019 voyage aboard the Russian research vessel the R/V Professor Kaganovskiy that engaged in similar studies.

The second expedition, aboard the Pacific Legacy, set sail from British Columbia on March 11 with a dozen scientists from Canada, Russia and the United States. It visited 51 stations spread over the southern Gulf of Alaska, each distanced approximately eight hours apart. Researchers conducted extensive oceanographic measurements and a trawl net fished at the surface for an hour at each station. Samples were collected from the catch including a tissue sample for DNA analysis to identify the exact spawning location for each fish.

Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, scientists from the US disembarked from the vessel at Prince Rupert as a precaution against the possibility of borders being closed between the two countries. Once the vessel reached British Columbia, scientists from Russia were unable to return home quickly but began working on the expedition report from the home of a Canadian colleague residing in BC.

Researchers plan to make data from both expeditions available to all interested researchers and hold a conference whenever possible to finalize their work and publish their findings.

The second expedition, supported by the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, is part of the International Year of the Salmon. It was privately funded by a number of entities, including Ocean Beauty Seafoods, Leader Creek Fisheries, Trident Seafoods, Icicle Seafoods, Peter Pan Seafoods, UniSea, Silver Bay Seafoods, E&E Foods, Keltic Seafoods Ltd., French Creek Seafood and the Canadian Fishing Co., as well as Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Coastal First Nations’ Great Bear Initiative.

Efforts Continue to Assure Safe Salmon Fisheries in Midst of Pandemic

With the Copper River salmon fishery in Prince William Sound just weeks away and the Bristol Bay salmon fishery coming up in June, plans are still in flux on how to ensure the safety of harvesters, processors and communities in the midst of a pandemic.

To date the areas of the Cordova based fishery and the Bristol Bay region have eluded the spread of the novel coronavirus, and they want to keep it that way. Most communities already have 14-day quarantine requirements in place, as well as restrictions on unnecessary travel.

The city of Cordova, Alaska, has posted a strict set of rules at https://covid19.cityofcordova.net, dictating protocols for everyone, including residents and visitors, to keep the virus at bay. All fishermen and other businesses are required to notify the harbormaster upon their arrival and to immediately isolate, abiding by traveler quarantine requirements. They must also complete a vessel/business assessment form for all employees and file a mutual aid agreement within 72 hours of arrival.

A detailed Covid-19 specific harbor operations plan is in place. The city has volunteers ready to make sure everyone arriving at the harbor or city airport knows the rules and fills out required travel forms. Cordova Mayor Clay Koplin said they don’t want to harass anyone, but they want the tools in place to be used to keep their community safe.

Meanwhile in Dillingham, the Bristol Bay Working Group – representing economic, health, housing and tribal entities – has told state officials what they consider minimally acceptable protocols to protect those engaged in the fisheries and residents from the virus. The protocols, outlined in a letter to the state, range from pre-screenings of those coming to the Bay for the fisheries to weekly health screenings once they arrive.

The working group’s concern is that the fishery attracts people from many areas where thousands of people have already been infected by COVID -19, and the Bristol Bay region is ill-equipped medically to deal with it. They also remember how the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919 killed a high percentage of the adult population, leaving hundreds of children as orphans.

Veteran fishermen like Robert Heyano say if the fishery happens they will be out there fishing, but they want the fishery conducted in a safe manner. Heyano said that if everyone focuses their energy on the safest practices and protocols are in place, it will go a long way toward making the fishery a safe one.

To date each of the participating processors has presented its own plan for safe conduct of the fishery. Some of these plans include pre-isolating workers before bringing them to the Bay and protocols to restrict workers to travel between bunkhouses and processing facilities only. Several Bristol Bay harvesters from Kodiak plan to pre-quarantine themselves and crews before leaving Kodiak, and remain on board for the duration of the fishery. If all the incoming harvesters would do that, Dillingham leaders said, it would give them more assurance of a safe fishery.

Processors Looking to Hire 3,100 Seafood Workers

Seafood processors seeking to hire more than 3,100 workers to process the catch in the upcoming commercial salmon fishery are working with the Alaska Department of Labor to recruit people in a manner that keeps everyone safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

State labor officials, with an emphasis on Alaska hire, are screening applicants via telephone interviews and collecting their resumes, then forwarding to prospective employers those matching processor needs.

In normal times, many processors would have their own representatives at state employment offices to do their own screening, but in the midst of the pandemic, crowding of prospective employees into state labor department offices is not an option. Labor Department spokesman Sal Sasol in Anchorage, Alaska, said his staff is also making direct connection with officials in rural communities where the processing takes place to inquire about the availability of residents to fill those jobs.

Job seekers may view a 20-minute seafood processing orientation video available online at https://jobs.alaska.gov/seafood/processing.html to learn what to expect in these jobs.

Current seafood processing recruitment fliers with self-referral instructions are posted at http://www.jobs.alaska.gov/jobfairs.

Job openings are listed in Alaska’s Labor Exchange system, ALEXsys, at https://jobs.alaska.gov.

More information is available through the Anchorage Seafood Employment Office at 800-473-0688 or 907-269-4746 or via email at dol.seafood@alaska.gov.

The state has issued several health mandates to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and identified critical workforce infrastructure industries, including fish processing.

Final details are still being worked out, but most processors, who offer transportation and room and board benefits for those who complete their contracts, are making special arrangements to quarantine incoming workers for 14-days, plus numerous other precautions to stem the spread of the virus in Alaska.

Special Meeting of NPFMC Set for May 15

Federal fisheries officials will convene a special May meeting to review emergency rule requests regarding the halibut and sablefish in the commercial and sport fishing sectors.

Leaders among the halibut and sablefish sector stakeholders are asking the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) to consider greater flexibility in allowing all quota shareholders temporary transfer of IFQ for the 2020 season while preserving the vessel class and other provisions associated with catcher vessel quota share.

The objectives would also include reduced costs and time burden of mandatory quarantines for individuals traveling to harvest their quota share.

The current quarantine protocol, they told NOAA Fisheries, could result in a time requirement of 30 to 40 days in order to harvest quota share of any amount, when considering a 15-day pre-travel quarantine, in addition to a 15-day quarantine upon arrival at the port of harvest.

The issue arose because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which poses a risk for some harvesters due to underlying health factors ranging from age, asthma or high blood pressure to diabetes, heart disease and pregnancy.

NOAA criteria allowing for a medical transfer of IFQ for quota share holders consider only the IFQ holder and do not more broadly include the health of crew or the communities they fish from as considerations for a medical transfer during this pandemic, stakeholders told Chris Oliver, assistant administrator for fisheries with NOAA. Nor do these criteria consider the increased risk of creating new vectors for the spread of COVID-19 due to travel necessary for quota shareholders to harvest their IFQ, or the cost of the newly imposed travel restrictions and quarantine mandates issued by the state of Alaska, they said. Another concern is that the current interpretation for medical transfers is applied only to individuals who are not otherwise eligible to use hired masters.

A second emergency rule issue to be considered at the May 15 meeting comes from the charter sector, seeking to amend Area 2C and 3A charter angler management measures for 2020 while Alaska COVID-19 interstate travel restrictions are in place. Details of their request are included under the meeting agenda available for review at https://meetings.npfmc.org/Meeting/Details/1463.