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SeaShare donations are in demand at nations food banks and throughout AK:SeaShare’s seafood partners are working harder than ever to keep markets supplied, shelves filled, and families fed. Despite all the challenges, these same partners — fishermen, processors, distributors, and others — have donated over 7 million seafood servings to food banks across the country so far this year. Our collective response to the unprecedented need has been incredible. Together we are supplying the best protein to families who can really use a good meal.
Please consider donations to SeaShare as you finalize your end-of-year donation plans. Just $1 helps provide 8 servings of seafood to hungry neighbors nationwide. We at PSPA and SeaShare hope you have a safe and happy holiday season!
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Alaska
Dungeness crab catch at Southeast AK is the 2nd highest eve
Fis.com - December 14, 2020
Both the catch and number of boats on the grounds were down a bit for Southeast Alaska’s Dungeness fall crab fishery that wrapped up on November 30th.
https://fis.com/fis/worldnews/worldnews.asp?l=e&country=0&special=&monthyear=&day=&id=110816&ndb=1&df=0
Environment/Science
NOAA issues annual Arctic report card
Cordova Times by Margaret Bauman - December 13, 2020
NOAA’s annual report card on the Arctic, released on Tuesday, Nov. 8, notes that average annual land surface air temperature north of 60 degrees north for October 2019 through September 2020 was the second highest on record since at least 1900.
https://www.thecordovatimes.com/2020/12/13/noaa-issues-annual-arctic-report-card/
Planning Ahead for Climate Change Protects Fish, Fisheries; Also Avoids Conflicts
SeafoodNews.com by Susan Chambers - December 14, 2020
Conservation of fish and other marine life migrating from warming ocean waters will be more effective and also protect commercial fisheries if plans are made now to cope with climate change, according to a recent Rutgers-led study in the journal Science Advances.
“Sticking our heads in the sand doesn’t work,” lead author Malin Pinsky, an associate professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, said. “Effective ocean planning that accounts for climate change will lead to better safeguards for marine fish and commercial fisheries with few tradeoffs.”
As the ocean becomes busier with shipping, offshore energy development, fishing, conservation, recreation and other uses, planning efforts that set aside parts of the ocean for such uses have begun on all seven continents. But these efforts typically do not plan ahead for the impacts of climate change, despite establishing plans that can last for many decades.
With ocean waters warming, many commercially valuable fish species could move hundreds of miles northward toward colder water in the years ahead. Such movement is already underway – in some cases dramatically – substantially disrupting fisheries and exacerbating international fisheries conflicts, the authors said in a press release.
Regional fishery management councils have, to varying degrees, begun working on management challenges during future climate change, using techniques such as scenario planning. Some councils also are trying to address offshore energy issues, particularly offshore wind.
Researchers led by Pinsky focused on the costs and benefits of planning ahead for the impacts of climate change on marine species. They simulated the ocean planning process in the United States and Canada for conservation zones, fishing zones and wind and wave energy development zones. Then they looked at nearly 12,000 different projections for where 736 species around North America will move during the rest of this century. They also looked at potential tradeoffs between meeting conservation and sustainable fishing goals now versus in 80 years.
“We were worried that planning ahead would require setting aside a lot more of the ocean for conservation or for fishing, but we found that was not the case,” Pinsky said. “Instead, fishing and conservation areas can be set up like hopscotch boxes so fish and other animals can shift from one box into another as they respond to climate change. We found that simple changes to ocean plans can make them much more robust to future changes. Planning ahead can help us avoid conflicts between, for example, fisheries and wind energy or conservation and fisheries.”
While the study focused on long-term changes, many fisheries decisions are focused on near-term changes – one to a few years ahead, Pinsky said. So the scientists are now testing whether they can forecast near-term shifts in where species are found so fisheries can adapt more easily to species on the move.
While climate change will severely disrupt many human activities and “complete climate-proofing is impossible, proactively planning for long-term ocean change across a wide range of sectors is likely to provide substantial benefits,” the study says.
Scientists at Stanford University, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, East Carolina University and University of Bern contributed to the study.
https://www.seafoodnews.com/Story/1187311/Planning-Ahead-for-Climate-Change-Protects-Fish-Fisheries-Also-Avoids-Conflicts
Labeling and Marketing
3MMI - 2021 Salmon Market Predictions
TradexFoods - December 14, 2020
Globally, 930,000 metric tonnes of Wild Pacific Salmon are estimated to be harvested in 2021 compared to 600,000 this year. 2020 saw an overall increase in consumer demand for Salmon with a particular strain on inventories of Sockeye, Chum, and Coho. The effects of COVID shifted the market from Fresh to Frozen and Canned sales. Looking past the new year - we are forecasting for another year of high demand and a market stretched on supply for Wild Caught Pacific Salmon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPRZzugcm4o&feature=emb_logo
FYI’s
New Ocean Alert app lets Alaskans share whale sightings with scientists
KDLL by Sabine Poux - December 11, 2020
You don’t have to know much about what you’re seeing to make the Ocean Alert app work.
Say you’re driving past Turnagain Arm and you see a beluga.
https://www.ktoo.org/2020/12/11/new-ocean-alert-app-lets-alaskans-share-whale-sightings-with-scientists/
Pacific Seafood Processors Association 1900 W Emerson Place Suite 205, Seattle, WA 98119 Phone: 206.281.1667 E-mail: admin@pspafish.net; Website: www.pspafish.net Our office days/hours are Monday-Friday 8:00 A.M. - 5:00 P.M. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. *Inclusion of a news article, report, or other document in this email does not imply PSPA support or endorsement of the information or opinion expressed in the document.