Table of Contents
            FEDERAL

1.      North Pacific Research Board Makes Decision on 2008 RFP

2.      NOAA 2008 Sustainable Fisheries Leadership Awards

3.      NOAA – transition of GPS user equipment (5/16)

4.      NPFMC.  Items for June Meeting

5.      Coast Guard honors crewman in Alaska Ranger rescue (5/15)

6.      Commerce Committee Passes Marine Mammal Rescue Amendment Cosponsored by Senator Stevens.  Bill Would Help Recover and Rehabilitate Stranded Marine Mammals.  (5/15)

7.      Coasties cruise into town for a little tear and repair (5/15)

8.      Charter halibut operators face one-fish limit (Coast Alaska Audio) (5/15)
STATE

9.      Alaska SeaGrant Fishlines (May 2008)

10.  ADFG.  Bristol Bay sockeye salmon inriver test fishing, 2006

11.  ADFG.  2008 Yukon Area Subsistence, Personal Use, and Commercial Salmon Fisheries Outlook and Management Strategies

12.  ADFG.  Chignik management area commercial salmon fishery harvest strategy, 2008

13.  ADFG.  Annual Management Reports of the 2004/2005, the 2005/2006, and the 2006/2007 Southeast Alaska Commercial Fisheries for Geoduck Clams, Red Sea Cucumbers, and Red Sea Urchins

14.  ADFG.  Kodiak management area harvest strategy for the 2008 commercial salmon fishery.

15.  ADFG.  2007 Bristol Bay area annual management report

16.  Fishing Group Wants Gear Shop On Near Island (KMXT Audio) (5/12)

17.  Watch out: That clam just might kill you (5/16)

18.  A journey into the entrails of the slime line (5/15)
MARKETING

19.  Fishermen head to Copper River -- if the weather will let them (5/13)

20.  Finished with Your Fish? (5/15)

21.  Alaska Airlines Delivers Season's First Copper River Salmon to Seattle at Daybreak.  Airline to transport estimated 20,000 pounds of coveted fish by day's end; high bidder donates 200,000 miles to charity for first fish.  (5/16)

22.  Salmon Caught in the Carbon Net.  Our mania for wild, fresh boutique fish comes at a high environmental cost. (5/14)
MISC

23.  New report says we can have our fish and eat it too.  Global Assessment of Closed System Aquaculture Released Today (5/15)

FEDERAL

1.      North Pacific Research Board Makes Decision on 2008 RFP.  The 2008 RFP garnered 89 proposals totaling $14.2 million. The Science Panel met in Seattle April 15-17 to review proposals and technical evaluations, and presented funding recommendations to the Board at its Anchorage meeting on April 30-May.  The Board has chosen to fund 25 research projects totaling $4.127 million, pending approval by the Secretary of Commerce. Read More

2.      NOAA 2008 Sustainable Fisheries Leadership Awards.  Coastal Habitat Restoration Category.  Winner: Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation (MCAF)
David Benton (Executive Director).  Award Synopsis: Since its inception, MCAF-sponsored cleanup programs have removed a total of 282 tons of debris. In the state with more shoreline than the rest of the Nation and high volumes of debris on remote beaches with high wildlife values, MCAF has produced results. They have demonstrated ingenuity and innovation in working in parts of Alaska that are difficult to access.  Link 

3.      NOAA – transition of GPS user equipment (5/16).  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) seeks comments on a plan to transition the installed base of codeless and semi-codeless Global Positioning System (GPS) user equipment to next-generation equipment utilizing the modernized civil GPS signals known as L2C and L5.  Comments should be submitted by June 16.  73 Fed. Reg. 28433 

4.      NPFMC.  Items for June Meeting. 

Rural Definition Halibut Analysis 

Pcod sector split; fixed gear recency in GOA

Rural Definition Halibut Analysis

Pcod sector split; fixed gear recency in GOA

Halibut excluder EFP 5/08

GOA salmon/crab bycatch discussion paper

5.      Coast Guard honors crewman in Alaska Ranger rescue (5/15).  KODIAK, Alaska (AP) -- The crew of the Coast Guard cutter Munro was honored with the Coast Guard's Unit Commendation award for their roles in rescuing 20 members of the Alaska Ranger.

Rear Admiral Gene Brooks, commander of Coast Guard operations in Alaska, presented the award Thursday. He told crew members the rescue after the ship sank March 23 was something they should never forget.  The Munro was able to rescue 20 of the Alaska Ranger's 47 crew members. The Ranger's sister ship, Alaska Warrior, saved 22.

Brooks said there was a lesson to learn from the five crew members, including the captain, who died, but he said that shouldn't diminish what the rescuers accomplished.

The crews from the HH-60 Dolphin and the MH-65 Jayhawk helicopters that participated in the rescue received similar awards.  Link

6.      Commerce Committee Passes Marine Mammal Rescue Amendment Cosponsored by Senator Stevens.  Bill Would Help Recover and Rehabilitate Stranded Marine Mammals.  (5/15).  WASHINGTON D.C. – The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee today approved a substitute amendment, cosponsored by Committee Vice Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), to the Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Amendments of 2007 (H.R. 1006).  The measure would amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 to update the purpose and authorize appropriations for the renamed John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue and Response Funding Program.  In 2000, the program was established to help defray the high cost of recovery and rehabilitation of marine mammals. The substitute amendment is sponsored by Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii).

“Recovering and rehabilitating marine mammals is vital to species conservation,” said Senator Stevens.  “This legislation will improve the program’s ability to address marine mammal strandings, entanglements, and emergency response needs.  It will also provide important scientific data to help future rescue efforts.”   Link

7.      Coasties cruise into town for a little tear and repair (5/15).  Walking onboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley on April 25 was like entering another world.

There was little color or ornamentation. Everything was compact and narrow. Even the sleeping berths were functional, with scratchy-looking, no-nonsense blankets.
I felt slightly claustrophobic. I worried about emergency exits. I wondered what would happen if I had to go to the bathroom.

But a half hour later, drinking orange juice in the officer’s room with operations officer Glen Moscatello, executive officer Anthony Williams, Seward Coast Guard flotilla representative Sue Lang and Capt. Kevin Jones, the cutter began to make sense. There was something inspiring and slightly romantic about men and women patrolling the Alaska seas and performing rescue operations.  More

8.      Charter halibut operators face one-fish limit (Coast Alaska Audio) (5/15). JUNEAU, ALASKA (2008-05-15) Southeast Alaskas charter halibut season will likely kick off with a major change. A one-fish-per-day limit for customers could be in place by June 1st. 

STATE

9.       Alaska SeaGrant Fishlines (May 2008) 

10.  ADFG.  Bristol Bay sockeye salmon inriver test fishing, 2006. 

11.  ADFG.  2008 Yukon Area Subsistence, Personal Use, and Commercial Salmon Fisheries Outlook and Management Strategies

12.  ADFG.  Chignik management area commercial salmon fishery harvest strategy, 2008

13.  ADFG.  Annual Management Reports of the 2004/2005, the 2005/2006, and the 2006/2007 Southeast Alaska Commercial Fisheries for Geoduck Clams, Red Sea Cucumbers, and Red Sea Urchins

14.  ADFG.  Kodiak management area harvest strategy for the 2008 commercial salmon fishery.  3MB

15.  ADFG.  2007 Bristol Bay area annual management report.

16.  Fishing Group Wants Gear Shop On Near Island (KMXT Audio) (5/12).  A group of local fishermen are looking to construct a warehouse and gear shop on Near Island. But the project hinges on the city council approving the sale of property to them. KMXT’s Casey Kelly has more.

Boat owner Jay Stinson is leading a group that wants to buy a lot on Near Island, on the same road as the Near Island Research Center and the Kodiak Fisheries Industrial Technology Center. At last week’s city council meeting, Stinson said the property would house a warehouse and possibly a retail space for fishermen looking to mend nets and repair gear.

17.  Watch out: That clam just might kill you (5/16).  In February, the Division of Public Health released its assessment of the toxins that have lingered in Unalaska beaches since the Selendang Ayu oil spill in 2004.
This review is likely to be the last because, according state toxicologist Lori Verbrugge, “we really didn’t find anything of concern.”

Not in relation to the spill, anyway.

But the study did turn up something even more disturbing than oil-tainted seafood.
High levels of the naturally occurring toxins that cause Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning, or PSP, were found in blue mussel samples taken from around the island.

“It’s a big concern, and the real worry in eating shellfish,” Verbrugge said. “(Eating) high levels of PSP can kill you the same day.”

Verbrugge’s study was a follow-up to one performed in 2005, which tested a variety of substances, from harbor seal blubber to roe to the island’s abundant bivalves. Initially, scientists were looking for chemical compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are in oil and known to be carcinogenic.  More

18.  A journey into the entrails of the slime line (5/15).  Before I begin this story of my time in Dutch Harbor, I’d like to reveal a few things about myself.

I was a forest firefighter last summer in the Oregon woods. When friends asked why I was going to Alaska to work as a fish processor, I’d throw my hands in the air and exclaim, “From fire to ice,” as if this made perfect sense.

Before working in Oregon, I was a high school English teacher just outside Shanghai, having moved to China largely for the food only to discover I couldn’t breathe, what with the fog coming in daily smelling of rotten eggs and car exhaust.

That’s me, and then I’m standing on a platform, waiting for the train that will take me to certain death in the near-Arctic north, I was convinced, legs solid with the ground, muttering that I’ll never pull a stunt like this again.

Then it was an uneventful train ride to Seattle, where I stayed up all night chain-smoking out in front of the Clarion hotel, the potted plant to my right a graveyard of cigarette butts.  More

MARKETING

19.  Fishermen head to Copper River -- if the weather will let them (5/13).  At 7 a.m. Thursday, fishermen hunting the prized Copper River kings and sockeyes will start letting their nets uncoil into the depths of what is one of the most storied fisheries in the world.  The opener will last 12 hours.

Alaska Airlines announced Monday that a 737 freighter filled with the salmon will be in Seattle by Friday. The plane, flying out of Cordova, will carry about 10 tons of fish.

That's if the fishermen can go out.

Rob Winfree of 10th & M Seafoods said Tuesday morning he heard predictions for 30-knot winds and 7-foot seas. He was listening to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather reports, and it didn't look good.

As for the price of the fish, he said it was hard to tell.

"We won't know until Thursday night sometime as the guys get the fish to the tenders."

Certainly the price of fuel will be a factor.

Winfree laughed: "I wonder if anybody can afford to hire a helicopter this year."  More

20.  Finished with Your Fish? (5/15). When Taras Grescoe declares he will try anything on his voyage around the world in search of ethical seafood, he means it. He eats poisonous pufferfish, morally questionable shark fin soup, and potentially dangerous oysters during months without r's. He even samples fishmeal (yuck). After 18 months of eating his way up and down the marine food chain, Grescoe exits a bottom-feeder -- committed to consuming fish lower on the marine food web, with the exception of farmed shrimp (too toxic) and wild abalone (too rare).

His tome on the subject, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood (Bloomsbury: 2008), will certainly whet any seafood lover's appetite. More

21.  Alaska Airlines Delivers Season's First Copper River Salmon to Seattle at Daybreak.  Airline to transport estimated 20,000 pounds of coveted fish by day's end; high bidder donates 200,000 miles to charity for first fish.  (5/16).  SEATTLE, May 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Alaska Airlines delivered the season's first shipment of Copper River salmon to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport this morning and expects to transport about 20,000 pounds of the coveted fish by day's end. The arrival of Copper River salmon is anticipated every year by seafood lovers in a growing number of U.S. cities and points worldwide.

The high bidder in a special Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan(TM) auction met the flight and received the ceremonial first salmon, along with a travel and prize package plus other amenities. The online auction benefits Alaska Airlines Charity Miles, and the winner chose the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center as his charity.

Alaska Airlines' Boeing 737-400 freighter touched down at Sea-Tac Airport about 6 a.m. Pacific time with some 7,500 pounds of fish from four seafood processors: Ocean Beauty Seafoods, Bear and Wolf Salmon Co., Trident Seafoods and Copper River Seafoods. Three more Alaska Airlines flights today will transport salmon from Cordova, Alaska, to Seattle and Anchorage, Alaska.

"There is so much demand for this wild ocean fish that many of our flights out of Seattle will be carrying Copper River salmon to markets around the country less than 24 hours after it comes out of the water," said Glenn Johnson, Alaska Airlines' executive vice president of airport services and maintenance and engineering.

"Almost 95 percent of the salmon caught in the United States comes from Alaska, and Ocean Beauty is one of the largest processors serving the state," said Tom Sunderland, director of marketing for Ocean Beauty Seafoods. "We are proud to be Alaska Airlines' partner in presenting the first Copper River salmon to the charity auction winner."   More

22.  Salmon Caught in the Carbon Net.  Our mania for wild, fresh boutique fish comes at a high environmental cost. (5/14).  The famed Copper River brand was invented in Seattle 25 years ago--and 1,200 miles south of where the salmon are actually harvested. Wild, fresh, and organic, these king (aka chinook) and sockeye breeds have become the marquee fish in a damaged market. Traditionally the first Alaskan salmon fishery to open each season, the Copper River run is prized for its high omega-3 oil content and lean, pink flesh--the product of athletic, carnivorous fish returning home to spawn after years at sea.  

With the lower West Coast salmon fishery just closed and declared a federal disaster area, the Copper River kings are likely to sell for over $30 a pound when they begin arriving here this week. Yet price is no deterrent among affluent, health-conscious Seattle diners with "Friends don't let friends eat farmed fish" bumper stickers on their hybrids who've been raising their kids to avoid red meat and savor fishy brain food. ("Eat your salmon, sweetie, and you'll get into Yale!") The cult of the Copper River salmon is now a conspicuous form of connoisseurship, like drinking the early bottles of Beaujolais nouveau flown over from France. We want the first and the best and the healthiest, and we're willing to pay for that privilege.

But how green are those precious pink fillets? New awareness of "food miles" and greenhouse-gas emissions means that scientists are starting to measure the carbon footprint from fishing fleets' diesel engines, the factory processing on shore and sea, and—most important in the Copper River case—the air shipping of product from distant fisheries to your Wallingford grocer or Belltown restaurant within 24 hours of harvest. More

MISC

23.  New report says we can have our fish and eat it too.  Global Assessment of Closed System Aquaculture Released Today (5/15).  One year after the Provincial. Legislature’s own Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture recommended a rapid transition to closed-system fish farms, the provincial government continues to support net-pen salmon farming on B.C.’s South Coast.

A new report released today by the David Suzuki Foundation and Georgia Strait Alliance shows that a shift from open to closed-system fish farming is not only a viable alternative to open net cage farming, but is also a vibrant and rapidly developing global industry

“It’s time to move,” said Jay Ritchlin, of the David Suzuki Foundation. “Science clearly shows us that open net fish farming causes considerable environmental damage, including possible extinction of wild salmon in Canada’s Broughton Archipelago.”  More   Full Report