Table of Contents - July 30th Fish Notes Issue

FEDERAL

1. Seafood Safety Monitoring of Chinese-origin Products, NOAA'S Role, Before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (7/18/07)

2. NOAA.  2^nd Quarter Status of US Fisheries (7/19)

3. Juneau's new marine research institute ready for dedication (7/29)

4. Army Corps of Engineers.  Proposed restricted area in Adak for sea based radar.  Comments due 8/29

5. Not enough kings reaching Canada (7/30)

6. Valdez Star.  Fish tender leaks 3,500 gallons of diesel fuel

7. North Pacific Research Board Review of the 2007 Draft Steller Sea Lion Recovery Plan
STATE

8. Committee asks state to cut Cook Inlet harvest (7/28)

9. Retail prices drop as harvest of wild salmon tops 68 million (7/29)

10. Wrangell.  Seasonal cannery employees grow restless waiting for work (7/26).

11. Alaska suspects merger by Japanese seafood processors is anticompetitive (KMXT Audio) (7/27)

12. ASMI Northern Europe representative visits Petersburg (7/26)

13. Boston Globe.  Lean, light, melt-in-your-mouth Coho Salmon is a late-summer delight (7/29)

 14. Escape and justification in Bristol Bay (7/29)

FEDERAL

1. Seafood Safety Monitoring of Chinese-origin Products, NOAA'S Role, Before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (7/18/07)

2. NOAA.  2^nd Quarter Status of US Fisheries (7/19)

3. Juneau's new marine research institute ready for dedication (7/29).  JUNEAU — The Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute will be opened with a formal dedication ceremony, Aug. 21.

Located 17 miles north of downtown Juneau, the $51 million facility will be the headquarters of the National Marine Fisheries Service's Auke Bay Laboratories.

The guest list for the dedication ceremonies was limited to invitation only. Among scheduled speakers are Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and Vice Adm. Conrad Lautenbacher, who is a retired administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.   With 33,000 square feet of both lab space and offices, the research institute is more than twice the size of the current facility at the Auke Bay harbor, which other federal tenants will continue to use as the dock for National Marine Fisheries Service vessels, according to Phil Mundy, director of the institute. More

4. Army Corps of Engineers.  Proposed restricted area in Adak for sea based radar.  Comments due 8/29. 

5. Not enough kings reaching Canada (7/30).  It remains to be seen whether enough Yukon River king salmon will reach Canada to satisfy Alaska’s border passage requirement as set forth in a treaty between the U.S. and Canadian governments.

According to the Yukon River Salmon Agreement, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is obligated to manage the Yukon king run so that about 45,000 fish reach the border this season — a minimum of 33,000 for escapement and another 12,000 to make up for commercial harvest in Alaska.

It’s going to be close either way, fish managers say.

As of Thursday, 26,500 kings had been counted by a sonar at Eagle, about 50 miles from the Canada border.  More

6. Valdez Star.  Fish tender leaks 3,500 gallons of diesel fuel.  Clean up efforts were still underway Tuesday morning after an estimated 3,500 gallons of diesel fuel poured into the waters around Olsen Bay near Point Gravina when the fishing tender F/V Nordic Viking ran aground of the rocks of a small island on around 10:20 p.m. Saturday night.

The cause of the grounding is still under investigation according to the U.S. Coast Guard, which began conducting aerial surveillance of area Sunday afternoon.  More

7. North Pacific Research Board Review of the 2007 Draft Steller Sea Lion Recovery Plan


STATE

8. Committee asks state to cut Cook Inlet harvest (7/28).  A borough-appointed committee in the Mat-Su is calling on the state to cut the commercial harvest of Cook Inlet salmon in the waning days of the sockeye gillnet season, predicting devastation for Susitna River guides and sportsmen if that doesn't happen.  Commercial fishermen and a state biologist who manages these fisheries reply that Inlet gillnets aren't the reason for the trickle of fish up the Susitna.

The committee, appointed by Matanuska-Susitna Borough Mayor Curt Menard to represent businesses and anglers, on Friday said the state must act in the next few days or risk harming locals who fish to stock their freezers and guides and lodges who host fishing tourists.

"One of our favorite mottos is that the best use of an Alaskan fish is on an Alaskan plate," said Borough Assemblyman Tom Kluberton, who is chairing the committee.  More 

9. Retail prices drop as harvest of wild salmon tops 68 million (7/29).  Retail prices are slipping as the harvest grows, and consumers in late July were finding wild Alaska sockeye fillets at retail markets for $7.95 a pound, while king fillets commanded $9.95 a pound.

Whole sockeyes from all areas of Alaska were selling for $4.95 a pound, and whole kings were $6.95 in Anchorage area markets.

Hundreds of fishermen, from Southeast Alaska, Prince William Sound, Bristol Bay and Cook Inlet continued to bring in the harvest. By July 20, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game calculated a total harvest of nearly 68.3 million wild Alaska salmon of all species. The total included 361,000 chinooks, 38 million reds, 390,000 silvers, 22 million pinks and more than 7 million chums.  More

10. Wrangell.  Seasonal cannery employees grow restless waiting for work (7/26).  On Friday morning around 10 a.m., 40 to 50 seasonal workers gathered in a crowd outside of Wrangell Seafoods, Inc. (WSI) and complained about the lack of working hours. These workers are among 90 foreign seasonal workers (or as WSI referred to them as, “international exchange students”), who are hired through foreign agencies.

According to WSI’s executive administrator Julie Decker, WSI has been having weekly meetings with the seasonal workers to keep them up-to-date and allow them an arena to ask questions and air concerns. “After one of our meetings there was still some disgruntlement and they wanted a guarantee that they would see work at least ten hours a day until they leave and we said we just can’t do that because we’re completely at the whim of the fish,” Decker said.

When workers came into work on Friday at 8:30 a.m. as they had been instructed to do the evening prior, they were told they couldn’t work due to an issue with the city’s water not running. “It didn’t exactly translate to everybody that there’s no work because the water is being fixed and that as soon as the water comes back on, we’ll unload the tender that’s sitting outside,” explained Decker, who cites this misunderstanding as “precipitating” the strike.

Police chief Doug McCloskey was one of two police officers that showed up at WSI. He described the scene of gathered workers as “a lot of them talking amongst themselves” and the function of the Wrangell police as “just standing by to keep the peace.”  More

11. Alaska suspects merger by Japanese seafood processors is anticompetitive (KMXT Audio) (7/27).  The State of Alaska is opening its own antitrust investigation into a proposed merger of two Japanese seafood companies with major processing operations in the state.

MARKETING

12. ASMI Northern Europe representative visits Petersburg (7/26).  Andrew Brown, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute’s Northern European representative recently visited Petersburg to collect new promotional materials. Accompanying Brown was the United Kingdom’s leading food photographer, Steven Lee. ASMI’s Northern European region includes the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Sweden, The Netherlands, Ukraine, and Russia. Brown is based in the U.K.

Brown and Lee were in Alaska to gather new images. “We’ve used the existing images we’ve got so many times that we needed something new,” stated Brown. During their trip they collected pictures of Alaska’s scenery and wildlife as well as seafood and processing. These images will “come together to make the Alaskan experience, which is really of interest to people in the U.K.,” said Brown.

ASMI will use the photos for consumer advertising campaigns, a new Alaska Seafood cookbook, and for posting on regional ASMI websites. The images will also be given to wholesale seafood buyers to educate them about Alaskan seafood. “We’ve been repeatedly asked for images of processing,” Brown commented. “All of these images are of use. Anything we can use to raise the profile of Alaska.”

Instead of competing with farmed salmon, wild Alaskan salmon is marketed in Europe as an alternative product. The farmed salmon market is too large for wild Alaskan salmon to compete directly. Doing so would be risky because it could result in a well-financed onslaught by the farmed salmon companies. “One of the things that we never do is knock farmed salmon. The budgets they have [for marketing] are astronomical,” said Brown, “We make our funds go a long way but we can’t make them go that far.” He reports that in Europe, “Alaskan salmon has done particularly well. It is positioned as a premium product over farmed salmon, often attracting a premium price of up to 60 percent more.”   More

13. Boston Globe.  Lean, light, melt-in-your-mouth Coho Salmon is a late-summer delight (7/29).  While king and sockeye salmon make their way up the glacier-fed Copper River in Alaska's icy spring, it's not until August that their prized coho cousins take on the brutal trek - and are harvested in the process. Coho salmon, also known as silver salmon for their steely silvery-blue sides, are coveted by chefs for their lean meat, lighter color, and melt-in-your-mouth texture, which is superior to farm-raised versions. The wild-caught Copper River cohos are also recommended by Seafoodwatch.org, a program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California California that assesses the environmental consequences of fisheries. 

"People who know their fish want wild," says Jason Johnson, executive chef at Jumpin' Jay's Fish Cafe in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who knows the Copper River firsthand from fishing trips. At the restaurant, he serves the coho "clean" - spiced only with salt and pepper - and usually grilled.  More  

MISC

14. Escape and justification in Bristol Bay (7/29).  PILOT POINT: Greenhorns look for answers while sockeye fishing on Alaska Peninsula. 

Three fishermen from different parts of the Lower 48 huddle on the beach in Pilot Point, a village near the mouth of Bristol Bay. It is 1 a.m. in early July, and the sunset's orange afterglow offers just enough light so the men can see each other's swelled hands.  They see the bright red cuts infected by salmon blood and guts.

They see purple fingernails, ready to fall off.   More