23
APR
APR
0
Fisheries
March 16, 2020
In February, several Washington Sea Grant (WSG) staff attended the 2nd annual Seafood Day in Olympia, where over 300 state representatives and their staff sampled a wide variety of local Washington seafoods between sessions. This event, organized by Dale Beasley, president of the Coalition for Coastal Fisheries, along with many other fishermen, showcased shrimp cocktail, fresh-caught crab, oysters on the half shell, steamed clams, clam chowder with razor clams, and baked and smoked salmon — all harvested or caught just off ...
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16
MAR
MAR
March 11, 2020
By Bobbie Buzzell, WSG Science Communications Fellow
Ocean food webs are complex and often difficult to study — but breaking down every connection is important to understanding all predation pressures acting on a single species. These pressures often butt heads with commercial and recreational fisheries, and Pacific salmon have a history of such contention. Off the coast of Washington, salmon are predated on by Steller sea lions, harbor seals, and endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales (SRKW). Previous research on ...
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11
MAR
MAR
October 17, 2019
Fisheries managers typically strive to strike a delicate balance between two, often competing, types of needs: the needs for fishermen’s profits and the needs for the planet. But in 1994, entrepreneur John Elkington posited that true sustainability requires consideration of a third “P” — the needs of the people. In making this argument, he coined the term “the triple bottom line.”
In a new study, an interdisciplinary group of researchers used Pacific herring in Haida Gwaii, British ...
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17
OCT
OCT
In the 1990s, the endangered status of the short-tailed albatross catalyzed efforts to reduce the number of birds accidentally killed as bycatch in Alaska, home to the country’s biggest fisheries. Marine fisheries scientist Ed Melvin, at Washington Sea Grant at the University of Washington, and research associate Kim Dietrich, an independent contractor, were at the forefront of a collaborative research effort that led to Alaska’s longline fisheries adopting streamer lines in 2002, a technology that is towed behind vessels ...
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20
FEB
FEB
December 18, 2018
The ability to smell is critical for salmon. They depend on scent to avoid predators, sniff out prey and find their way home at the end of their lives when they return to the streams where they hatched to spawn and die.
New research from the University of Washington and NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center shows this powerful sense of smell might be in trouble as carbon emissions continue to be absorbed by our ocean. Ocean ...
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18
DEC
DEC
October, 2018
This month, Washington Sea Grant joins in on Seafood Month celebrations with weekly stories from our programs that support fisheries, aquaculture and the people who are at the center of them.
Week One: Fisheries and People
The theme of the week is fisheries and people. Read about WSG’s partnership with Olympic Coast tribes to study their social and ecological vulnerabilities to ocean acidification: https://wsg.washington.edu/partnering-with-indigenous-communities-to-anticipate-and-adapt-to-ocean-change/
Week Two: Seafood Safety
In honor of this week’s theme – seafood safety – read about the ...
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11
OCT
OCT
July 26, 2018
In 2016, Washington Sea Grant marine fisheries scientist Ed Melvin published a study on whether laser light can prevent seabird bycatch in North Pacific fisheries. Since then, Melvin has encouraged and supported researchers at Purdue Universtiy to study the risk of injuries to birds when lasers are used to deter brids on farms.
Read more about their study and Melvin’s research in the NW News Network.
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26
JUL
JUL
March 1, 2018
The Sea Grant programs in Alaska and Washington are releasing a new, updated edition of the popular Fishermen’s Direct Marketing Manual. As the business climate of the seafood industry evolves, many fishermen are choosing to directly market their catch in hopes of capturing more of its value so the publication’s release is timely.
Hard copies of the 5th edition of the manual, edited by Terry Johnson, are now available through Alaska Sea Grant’s online bookstore. The ...
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19
APR
APR
January 3, 2018
Commerical fishermen, don’t sacrifice sleep to bring in a good catch. Fatigue increases your risk of vessel incident. For one man, fatigue cost nearly $70,000.
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21
DEC
DEC
October 4, 2017
A new paper suggests using streamer lines and fishing at night are good albatross bycatch prevention options for longline fishermen in California, Oregon and Washington
Longline fishing is a technique that involves deploying a long line with baited hooks attached at intervals behind a boat. It’s a common technique used to catch many high-value species including halibut, tuna and sablefish. However, those fish are sometimes caught along with unintended targets—known as bycatch—including about 160,000 seabirds a ...
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4
OCT
OCT
October 1, 2016
“When we appreciate and understand all of the benefits of our locally produced seafood, we’ll be motivated to ensure that future generations can enjoy them as well.”– Deb Granger, SeaFeast General Manager
The first inaugural SeaFeast event in Bellingham aimed to introduce the community to the thriving, but little-known seafood industry and culture of Bellingham Bay.
To that end, organizers of Bellingham SeaFeast 2016 unveiled a variety of events, including seafood sampling, boat rides on Bellingham Bay, cooking demonstrations, contests and ...
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21
OCT
OCT
May 20, 2015
WSG senior fisheries scientist Ed Melvin, together with research scientist Troy Guy and colleagues at NOAA, Oregon State University, the Oregon and California Sea Grant Programs, and other federal, tribal, and fishing-industry partners, has received the 2015 Presidential Migratory Bird Stewardship Award, honoring a federal program for outstanding efforts on behalf of bird conservation. Ed has pioneered, proven, and refined the use of streamer lines to protect endangered albatrosses and other bait-chasing seabirds from getting hooked and drowned in longline fisheries. ...
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20
MAY
MAY