 |
 |
 |
|
Monday, September 17. 2007 Search Called Off for Missing Crabber PRINCE RUPERT, British Columbia – It was a sad day when the search and rescue mission for an Area B crab vessel crew member was called off. Marine search and rescue resources were called out Sept. 7 around 8:30 p.m. after a mayday call was received from Area B crab vessel Reid Pass, informing authorities that a crew man had gone overboard in the area of Chrismore Pass, located near Porcher Island. The weather was calm with light winds when the deckhand fell into the water. He was followed closely by the vessel's captain who jumped in after him in an attempt to assist him. Unfortunately, the skipper of the 32-foot aluminum boat was unable to reach the man, and it was the last time the deckhand was seen. A large team of boats and one aircraft headed out to search the area upon receiving the emergency call. Rescue resources employed that night included the Coast Guard cutter Point Henry, Point Henry II, the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary vessel Rainbow Responder, Port Simpson Coast Guard Auxiliary Unit 65, the Coast Guard vessel Tanu and her workboat. "It was a pretty extensive search that went out for him," said Geoff Gould, "and it was pretty good search conditions in a fairly defined area with calm waters and clear skies. But if the object you're looking for isn't floating, you're not going to find it." A Buffalo aircraft from Comox dropped flares over the scene for more than two hours to assist the search teams, but after no success, the coast guard search was called off after daybreak on Saturday. The RCMP has taken over the responsibility for the search, and the identity of the fisherman is still being withheld pending the notification of kin. The Reid Pass deckhand was not believed to have been wearing a life jacket at the time he went overboard. Nearly 80 per cent of all drowning incidents in Canada occur within a half mile of shore, and involve the victim not wearing a personal flotation device. "It's just so easy to fall off a boat, just one minute of inadvertence and you're in the water," said Gould. "That's why you've got to wear that PFD all the time." – Daily News, Prince Rupert More California Water Locked Up MONTEREY, Calif. – California's landmark Marine Life Protection Act will go into effect from Pigeon Point to Point Conception on Sept. 21, with establishment of a Central Coast Region composed of 29 state marine protected areas from San Mateo County to Santa Barbara County. Designation of a marine protected area significantly increases protection of marine life, protections that include long-term safe havens for rockfish and other bottom fish, migration corridors for salmon, and a diverse environment meant to ensure survival of abalone, kelp and numerous marine mammals and seabirds. The regulations are designed to maintain the diversity of a marine population that includes mammals, such as otters and whales; crustaceans, such as crabs and abalone; and migrating Coho salmon and steelhead trout. Among the regulations adopted by the Fish and Game Commission for these areas affecting commercial operations in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary are: · Allowing the current leaseholder to commercially harvest kelp by hand only at A-o Nuevo state marine conservation area until the lease expires. · Allowing fishing for finned fish only at the Soquel Canyon and Portuguese Ledge state marine conservation areas in Monterey Bay. · Allowing recreational hook-and-line fishing and commercial kelp harvest within limits set by the state Department of Fish and Game and Edward Ricketts state marine conservation area off Monterey's Cannery Row. · Allowing commercial kelp harvesting by hand only for the current leaseholder at White Rock state marine conservation area in Cambria until that lease expires. The package approved by the commission wasn't all that fishermen had hoped it would be. Some said ending prawn fishing in Soquel Canyon and Portuguese Ledge would put them out of business. Others have repeatedly protested limits on net fishing and contend that there is no basis for claiming that coastal waters are overfished. State officials note that 90 percent of the Central Coast remains open to fishing, though that percentage includes the limited fishing that is allowed within the marine conservation and marine reserve areas as well as the areas outside of them. Department of Fish and Game marine wardens will patrol and enforce the new areas and continue to monitor fishing activities in other open areas of state waters out to three miles from shore. A main goal of the Marine Life Protection Act is to use the marine protected areas as research sites where scientists can gain a greater understanding of the marine and coastal environment and how marine animals and plants interact, with little or no disturbance by people, according to state spokeswoman Chamois Andersen. The Department of Fish and Game and the Ocean Protection Council has provided $2 million to launch a variety of research projects designed to gauge the ecological and socioeconomic effects of the marine protected areas, and scientists are working with recreational anglers to help monitor fish stocks. The 29 protected areas comprise approximately 204 square miles — about 18 percent — of state waters. State Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman said the Central Coast is the first of five regions that will eventually lead to a network of protected areas along the state's 1,100-mile coastline. Implementation of the second phase of the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative, which will cover the North Central Coast from Pigeon Point north to Alder Creek in Mendocino County, is already under way. – Monterey County Herald
Marine Disaster Inspires Safety Device BALTIMORE, Md. – Inspired by one of the worst marine accidents in the history of commercial fishing, engineers at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory have developed a device that could eventually benefit all boaters. The Automated Integrated Distress Device is a cylinder about 1 1/2-foot tall. If a boat sinks the device detaches, floats to the surface, its strobe starts flashing and it automatically initiates a timed-sequence of flare launches. The design can also house an Emergency Positioning Indicator Radio Beacon. The mechanical engineer who invented the device, George Borlase is a former naval architect with the Coast Guard. He used to conduct maritime accident investigations and was inspired to create the device after investigating the worst domestic commercial fishing vessel accident in the last 50 years. "When the Arctic Rose sank in the Bering Sea in 2001, 15 people were killed despite a partnering boat operating nearby," Borlase said. "I'd like to think the crew might have survived had the AIDD been available." The device is currently a prototype. It took a year-and-a-half to develop. The lab applied for a patent for the device and is pursuing licensing opportunities that could put it on the market by mid-2008. -- Daytona Beach (Florida) News-Journal Brave New World: Mackerel Begets Tuna TOKYO – Transplanting reproductive cells between fish may help preserve endangered species or resurrect extinct ones, scientists in Japan say. Researchers at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology injected immature sperm-creating cells from rainbow trout into salmon embryos with abnormal chromosomes to produce normal trout with healthy offspring. They also froze and thawed reproductive cells, known as spermatogonia, as a way to store genetic material of endangered fish. One objective is building "a kind of spermatogonia bank of various fish species,'' said Goro Yoshizaki, who participated in the research, in a telephone interview yesterday. Transplanting the stored cells may enable scientists to revive species that become extinct, he said. Habitat destruction, over-fishing and the introduction of farmed fish to wild populations have caused some species in the U.S. and Japan to dwindle, including bull trout, golden trout and gila trout, Yoshizaki said. The Tokyo researchers are collaborating with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to freeze sperm from a population of endangered sockeye salmon from Idaho, he said. The transplant technique, reported in the journal Science, is being use to produce bluefin tuna, prized in Japan for sushi and sashimi dishes. Rather than farming the tuna, which weigh as much as 600 kilograms (1,320 pounds), Yoshizaki is implanting their reproductive cells in mackerel, which are about 1,000 times smaller and can be farmed in smaller facilities, he said. "If I take spermatogonia from tuna and transplant it into mackerel, that surrogated mackerel can produce tuna egg and sperm,'' Yoshizaki said. "Then we could save a lot of cost and space and labor for tuna seed production.'' – Bloomberg Kodiak Welcomes New Cutter KODIAK, Alaska - After being dry-docked all summer and polished for service in Alameda, Calif., the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Munro is finally in Kodiak and ready for service. The Munro arrived in Kodiak on Sept. 4 with its 150-member enlisted crew and 20 officers. The Munro replaces the well-known cutter Storis, now sitting in Suisan Bay near San Francisco where it has been since decommissioning in March. There is a possibility the Storis will have a new berth in Juneau as a museum in 2008. "This is our official homeport changeover. We are finally here to stay," said Cmdr. Stephen Rothchild, second in command and executive officer of the Munro. The Munro's commander is Capt. Craig Lloyd. "We are here to replace the Storis. We know the Storis left with some heartache. It was a good ol' ship, but it was just her time," Rothchild said. Commanding officer Lloyd is formerly executive officer of the cutter Alex Haley, homeported in Kodiak. Rothchild said the duties of the Munro will remain the same as when it was homeported in Alameda patrolling the Pacific, except more patrols will be made in Alaska waters, including the Bering Sea. Unlike the Storis, the Munro has a helicopter pad. Munro's missions are primarily search and rescue, fisheries patrols and law enforcement. Rothchild said the Munro's schedule is generally 90 days in and 90 days out, but due to seasonal weather conditions in Alaska waters, trips are more likely to average 60 to 90 days. "A good one-third of the crew has never been to Alaska before. There will be a lot of new faces and people from the ship in town," Rothchild said. "As we mature, there will be more families here than we already have," he said. The Munro is a high-endurance cutter, 378 feet in length. The Munro was the first of 10 of 378-foot cutters to be named after a Coast Guard hero. The others had been named after former secretaries of the Treasury, a tradition that began in 1830 when a cutter was named after Alexander Hamilton. Signalman 1st Class Douglas Munro received the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism at Guadalcanal, where the Coast Guard's first major participation in the Pacific war during World War II occurred. As the war went on, from 1941 to 1945, the Coast Guard manned more than 350 ships and hundreds more amphibious-type assault craft. It was in these ships that the Coast Guard fulfilled duties of getting the men to the beaches. In August 1942 Munro had been transporting Marines all day near Point Cruz when he noticed a group of Marines grounded on the beach. Munro freed the grounded crew but ran into Japanese machine-gun fire. He took a single bullet in the head and died before reaching the operating base. He had saved many lives while losing his own. – Kodiak Daily Mirror <<<•>>> Tuesday, September 18. 2007 Canada Official Wants More Aquaculture SHELBURNE, Nova Scotia — Aquaculture produces close to 50 per cent of the marketable fish and seafood produced in Nova Scotia, Canada’s top fish-producing province, says a provincial representative. "Here in Nova Scotia we have a very well developed and a world famous commercial fishery. Our aquaculture industry has that potential as well," Greg Roach, assistant deputy minister of the Fisheries Department, said Saturday in Shelburne at the annual aquaculture harvest festival. "We have to grow that industry and we have to do it in a very responsible and sustainable manner. Canada is lagging behind other developed countries like Scotland and Norway and even emerging countries like Chile in aquaculture development." This province wants to help change that. Nova Scotia Fisheries Minister Ron Chisholm awarded two $1,000 bursaries Saturday to high schools in Lockeport and Shelburne. The schools will give them to graduating students who plan to pursue careers in aquaculture or a related field. Today the aquaculture industry is worth about $45 million provincewide in market-ready products. That’s way up from the $5-million level recorded about 15 years ago, Mr. Roach said. "We have roughly 300 sites in Nova Scotia," he said. "About half of those are active." About 900 people are directly employed in the industry, and 75 per cent of fish farm owners and workers are under the age of 40, Mr. Roach said. Since the populations of many coastal communities are aging, aquaculture operations may help rejuvenate them. Salmon, trout, mussels and oysters are traditional fish farm species, but newer ones include halibut, marine plants like Irish moss, and abalone and bloodworms. Cod and haddock may be farmed in the future too, he said. Some people continue to worry that fish farms may pose environmental risks to picturesque coves. "We often get letters, e-mails (and) phone calls from concerned people, and we try to address them," Mr. Chisholm said. "We have one of the best (environmental) monitoring programs. . . . It’s very comprehensive." He said the industry is very particular about cleanliness, health and safety. "They can’t have a bad farm because on a bad farm fish don’t grow. Dead fish are no good to an aquaculturalist." – Chronicle Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia Latest Aquaculture Feed: Manure-spawned Maggots BOISE, Idaho – Cow manure and fish guts and maggots. It could all soon be dinner — if you are a rainbow trout. University scientists here are working on a new maggot-based feed capable of fattening rainbows for the dinner table, while simultaneously helping slash growing mounds of manure and fish entrails. Aquatic species veterinarian Sophie St. Hilaire suggested there was a way the two industries could help one another — with dairies using a slurry of cow dung and trout intestines to grow maggots rich in fatty acids that make fish better for humans. First, manure is gathered in buckets, then seeded with fly eggs imported from a commercial insect grower. About 70 days later, fish guts are added to help enrich the maggots with heart-healthy omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. The resulting maggots eventually wriggle up specially built ramps — only to drop through holes into waiting buckets. The maggots are then washed, frozen and ground up to be fed to rainbow trout at the test station along the Snake River. The next step is to raise fish to harvestable size, then in taste tests to determine if they are comparable in flavor and texture to trout raised on traditional commercial fish food. — Associated Press as printed in India’s The Hindu
Latest in Seafood Tracing: Species Bar Codes WASHINGTON — To help shoppers avoid mislabeled toxic pufferfish and pilots steer clear of birds, federal agencies are starting to tap into an ambitious project that is gathering DNA "barcodes" for the Earth's 1.8 million known species. A consortium of scientists from almost 50 nations is overseeing the building of a global database made from tiny pieces of genetic material. Called DNA barcoding, the process takes a scientist only a few hours in a lab and about $2 to identify a species from a tissue sample or other piece of genetic material. David Schindel, a Smithsonian Institution paleontologist and executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, said the purpose is to create a global reference library — "a kind of telephone directory for all species." The government's interest in the project stems from a variety of possible uses. The Food and Drug Administration has begun eyeing it as a tool to ferret out hazardous fish species and to confirm a type of leech used in some surgery. In May, the FDA used it to warn that a shipment labeled monkfish from China might actually be a type of pufferfish that could contain a deadly toxin if not prepared properly. The Federal Aviation Administration and Air Force hope it will help them identify birds prone to collide with aircraft. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sees it as a means to track commercial fish and reduce killing of unwanted species also caught by nets. A growing collection of feathers and other remains of birds that collided with planes has provided "operational" information for the FAA, said Scott Miller, a scientist at the Smithsonian Institution who chairs the consortium's executive committee. "They have an almost complete reference database for the North American bird species," Miller said. "It is a routine tool that they use." Elsewhere, the Environmental Protection Agency is testing species barcoding to identify insects and other invertebrates that indicate how healthy rivers and streams are. The Agriculture Department is contributing genetic data it has compiled on fruit flies in an effort help farmers control pests. Among the agencies experimenting with the database, EPA has found that as it grows in size it is becoming "more and more useful as a practical tool for identifying species," EPA spokeswoman Jessica Emond said. Scientists call it barcodes to compare it to the supermarket scanner codes that are indecipherable except to machines. But with plants and animals, the scanners look at the specific order of the four basic building blocks of DNA to identify the species. Users gain free access to a repository of archival genetic material run jointly by U.S., European and Japanese facilities. About 30,000 species have been logged in the database so far, but scientists hope to reach 500,000 within five years. A two-year goal is to have sequenced 2,800 — or about 80 percent — of the 3,500 different species of mosquitoes. Yvonne-Marie Linton of the Natural History Museum in London, said efforts to reduce mosquito populations blamed for up to 500 million human malaria cases and 1 million annual deaths each year are consistently hindered by misidentifying the species responsible. The consortium is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History. – Associated Press Arctic Ice Disappearing Faster than Thought PARIS - Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane. The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978. The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels has already opened up a slim summer window for ships. Leif Toudal Pedersen, of the Danish National Space Center, said that Arctic ice has shrunk to some 1 million square miles. The previous low was 1.5 million square miles, in 2005. "The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected," Pedersen said in an ESA statement posted on its Web site Friday. Pedersen said the extreme retreat this year suggested the passage could fully open sooner than expected -- but ESA did not say when that might be. Efforts to contact ESA officials in Paris and Noordwik, the Netherlands, were unsuccessful Saturday. A U.N. panel on climate change has predicted that polar regions could be virtually free of ice by the summer of 2070 because of rising temperatures and sea ice decline, ESA noted. Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the North Pole. A U.S. study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area. Environmentalists fear increased maritime traffic and efforts to tap natural resources in the area could one day lead to oil spills and harm regional wildlife. Until now, the passage has been expected to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multiyear ice pack -- sea ice that remains through one or more summers, ESA said. Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway's Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said for now, the new opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport. "Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved, and a stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions," he said by phone. But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues to melt, it will take years for such routes to be regular, he said. – Associated Press Proposed Ban on Kamchatka Crab Fishery VLADIVOSTOK – Russian scientists have proposed putting a five-year ban on the commercial crab catch near Kamchatka, in Russia's Far East, where the crab population has fallen by 40 percent in two years. The officially permitted crab catch in Russia is 57,000 metric tons, but the real take amounts to some 350,000 tons a year. "For two years since the latest trawling research of the western Kamchatka shelf [since the summer of 2005] the number of Kamchatka crab has dropped by 40.6 percent," the spokesperson for the Pacific scientific research centre of fisheries and oceanography said. Scientists said the ban should apply to the industrial catch of Kamchatka crab, and limit the catch of blue crab on the western Kamchatka shelf. The initiative was announced earlier this month by the Russian Federal Fisheries Agency chief, Andrei Krainy, at a news conference held by RIA Novosti. January 2, a Cambodian fishing boat was detained near the Kamchatka Peninsula for alleged poaching of some 25 metric tons of crab on board. In August 2006, the captain of a Japanese vessel was arrested near the Kuril Islands, off Russia's Pacific Coast, suspected of illegally fishing for valuable crab in Russian waters. Kamchatka crabs live in the Sea of Japan and Okhotsk and in the southern part of the western shore of the Kamchatka Peninsula. – RIA Novosti, Russia <<<•>>> Wednesday, September 19. 2007 Lawmaker Alleges Bribery by Pebble Mine Backers FAIRBANKS, Alaska - A Fairbanks legislator is asking the state's attorney general to investigate allegations of bribery by the developer of the hotly debated Pebble Mine project in Western Alaska. Rep. Jay Ramras, a Republican, sent a letter to Attorney General Talis Colberg containing what he said is information from Dillingham-area residents that Northern Dynasty Mines Inc. has paid local officials to support the project. "In conversation after conversation, I heard disturbing stories of money and influence being inappropriately plied to influence this important policy decision," Ramras wrote. Ramras said the company paid for villagers from the region to fly to Anchorage for a meeting on the project, paid for their hotel rooms and gave them $600 apiece in cash. He also said local elected officials and directors of Native corporations received payments from the company. Ramras asked the attorney general to investigate the allegations during upcoming legislative hearings in the region. Northern Dynasty spokesman Sean Magee told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that the allegations are baseless and said money for the trips and meetings is all above-board. Magee said Northern Dynasty has paid dozens of community leaders to attend educational meetings in Anchorage and generally compensates them $200 per day for their time away from home and work. "All this is fully disclosed," he said. "This is not money that is passing under the table." Northern Dynasty and its subcontractors have also employed elected officials for work related to the project, such as site services or transportation services, he said. Positions in local government are not full time, and many of the officials have found additional work with Northern Dynasty. Northern Dynasty employed more than 100 people from the Bristol Bay area last year and spent more than $4 million on contracts with local companies. The company employs four "community associates" to share information about the mine to locals, he said. "We won't apologize for those things," he said. The Alaska Native corporation in Iliamna has expressed frustration with Ramras. "We are personally offended by the accusations being made by a legislator from urban Alaska," Lisa Reimers, general manager of Iliamna Development Corp., said in a statement. Ramras has long opposed development of the mine and said he believes it would pose a hazard to subsistence fisheries. The open-pit mine would be the largest in North America and would be positioned near the headwaters of rivers that are crucial to millions of spawning salmon each year. Ramras is co-sponsoring a bill that would raise significant hurdles for Northern Dynasty by making it illegal to disturb certain salmon streams in the Bristol Bay region. – Anchorage Daily News Will Supreme Court Hear Exxon Case? (In the Counting-Chickens Department, check out the next Pacific Fishing magazine for no-nonsense advice about how you can spend the money.) NEW YORK - The last piece of major litigation surrounding the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill may next move to the Supreme Court, as the nine justices consider whether to rule in what's been a long and bitter fight over billions of dollars in punitive damages in a suit brought by thousands living and working in the Alaskan fishing region. Lawyers for the roughly 33,000 plaintiffs plan to file an opposition opinion within days in response to Exxon Mobil's Aug. 20 petition arguing that the Supreme Court should hear the case, said plaintiff attorney Brian O'Neill of the Minneapolis-based law firm Faegre & Benson. Exxon Mobil could be forced to pay at least $2.5 billion in punitive damages plus another $2 billion in interest if the nation's high court refuses to hear the case and bumps it back to a judgment handed down by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, O'Neill said. Lawyers working on the suit said the earliest that the Supreme Court could be expected to decide on whether to take the case is later this year. As for major legal cases surrounding the spill some 18 years ago, "this is about it," O'Neill said. The spill of nearly 11 million gallons of oil when the Exxon Valdez supertanker ran aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound ranks as the worst ever to occur in U.S. waters. Exxon Mobil said it's already paid $2.1 billion to clean up the area and $300 million to compensate commercial fishermen, seafood processors and others. All told, the oil giant says it's spent about $3.4 billion as a result of the spill. "Exxon Mobil maintains that no punitive damages at all are warranted in this case," spokesman Tony Cudmore said in an e-mail. "Plaintiffs were fully compensated for their injuries long ago. Punitive damages serve no sensible purpose in circumstances where compensatory damages and other expenses are more than sufficient to deter and punish anyone for anything." Plaintiffs include Alaska fishermen, cannery workers, real-state owners, tribal groups, local governments and businesses that have been waging a legal battle with Exxon Mobil through some 13 years of appeals in federal and state courts. In a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court, the plaintiffs said the spill caused extensive environmental harm and disrupted the lives and livelihood of thousands of people in the Prince William Sound area for years. The spill also damaged 1,300 miles of coastland, closed the 1989 fishing season in the region, reduced harvests in later years, and caused fish prices to drop, the plaintiffs said. A jury in the case found that Joseph Hazelwood, captain of the Exxon Valdez, and the company "had been reckless, which allowed for the possibility of imposing punitive damages against them." The current appeal fight dates back to 1994, after a jury verdict assessed $5 billion in punitive damages against Exxon. After a 13-year fight at the federal appeals court level, the Ninth Circuit cut the size of the punitive damages to $ 2.5 billion. Moving to recover punitive damages, the Alaskan plaintiffs over the summer filed a cross-petition asking the Supreme Court to restore the $5 billion awarded in the original suit. While $5 billion remains a significant pile of money, it amounts to about 1% of Exxon Mobil's market capitalization. – Dow Jones
Anglers Complain about Coho Season ABERDEEN, Wash. – The traditional mid-September opening for anglers was pushed back to Oct. 1 this year — the day after tribal gillnetters are allowed to set their gear at the mouth of the river and less than two weeks before non-tribal gillnetters will do the same. The delayed opening was announced in April at the end of the season setting process, but some anglers said they were surprised when they realized their opening coincided with the gillnetters’. – Grays Harbor World Escaping Salmon Threaten Disaster LONDON – They are an identical species, but while one is lean and incredibly fit, the SAS of the fish world, the other is an obese, idle creature, a couch potato with fins. When the two interbreed, the results can be a genetic disaster. Such a disaster looms, according to experts, after the escape of more than 100,000 farmed Atlantic salmon over the past six months on the West Coast (of Britain). In the latest incident, at the end of last week, 30,000 maturing 2.5kg (5.5lb) fish escaped from their cage in West Loch Roag, off the coast of Lewis, after a seal attack. The escape, which was detected four days ago, comes at a time when wild salmon are approaching the rivers to spawn, meaning that there could be intermingling and genetic dilution of the wild fish. These are extremely fit creatures, swimming thousands of miles across oceans, then battling their way upstream. If they spawn with the flabby, cage-reared fish, it is claimed that the offspring can be genetically weak and the wild salmon population, which is recovering after some very bad years, could be threatened. The Association of Salmon Fishery Boards and the Rivers and Fisheries Trusts of Scotland are now preparing a formal complaint to the European Commission. Andrew Wallace, of the association, said: “This could not have happened at a worse time for us, or in a worse place. The escape comes at the end of a long summer of discontent on the escapes front.” There have now been four escapes from fish farms in the Western Isles within the past six months. The first was in March, when 18,500 fish escaped in East Loch Tarbert, off Harris, as a result of equipment failure. It is believed that a cage sank and another 25,000 fish died. In May, 52,000 fish escaped near Lochportain, on North Uist, through a hole in a net; and in July more than 1,000 escaped from West Loch Roag. Mr Wallace said: “How sophisticated multinational companies can afford to lose such valuable stock and continue to play Russian roulette with wild stocks is beyond comprehension. This is the fourth escape from salmon farms in the Western Isles since May and the sheer numbers involved – this latest escape being over 30 per cent of the entire Scottish rod catch – means that these incidents must be viewed with utmost seriousness.” The escape marks the low point in a relationship which has always been uneasy. The salmon farming industry is an important part of the Scottish economy, supporting 8,500 jobs in remote areas. Scotland is the third largest salmon producer in the world, with approximately a 10 per cent global market share, and the industry puts more than £197 million into the economy every year. But for the salmon fishing industry, itself worth £113 million a year and the employer of 2,800 people, such success can come at too high a price. The wild salmon population is much smaller than it used to be, but is on an upward trajectory. – Times of London Lynn Canal Herring may be Threatened JUNEAU, Alaska – Federal scientists are studying Pacific herring stocks in Lynn Canal to see if the fish should be listed as endangered or threatened, a move that could add more regulatory hurdles for the Kensington gold mine and other proposed developments in Berners Bay. The review by the National Marine Fisheries Service is a response to a petition filed by the Sierra Club in April. The service says there is enough evidence that the fish population might be in trouble to warrant a review under the Endangered Species Act. The only remaining spawning ground for the herring in Lynn Canal is in and around Berners Bay, close to where the Kensington Mine is under construction. A vital permit for the mine that allows it to dispose of tailings has been hung up in court, so the mine is not in operation yet. Tailings are ground waste rock from which metal has been extracted. The listing also could have implications for the proposed Juneau Access Road, which would run north out of town and around Berners Bay. Any projects proposed within the habitat of an endangered species have to go through additional regulatory requirements, said Erika Phillips, a biologist who is coordinating the review for the fisheries service. "We would have to conclude whether it would place the species in jeopardy and then recommend conservation measures," she said. Herring stocks in Lynn Canal have declined 85 percent since the 1970s, the fisheries service said in its federal register filings. Commercial fishing of herring has been closed in the area since 1982, but stocks have not rebounded, the service said. These factors contributed to the decision to review the fish's status, in addition to "proposed development activities in Lynn Canal, including Berners Bay, that threaten to further modify or curtail the population's habitat and spawning range." Tom Crafford, acting large mine permitting coordinator for the Department of Natural Resources, said any listing under the act would make mining operations more expensive. "It doesn't necessarily mean the project would be stopped," Crafford said. "It doesn't mean that at all. It would mean they would have to have plans and procedures for how those species would be protected." Tony Ebersole, spokesman for mine operator Coeur Alaska, declined to comment because he has not had a chance to review the filing. The fisheries service expects to make a recommendation by April 2008 on whether the herring should be listed. The secretary of commerce would then make a final decision. – Juneau Empire <<<•>>> Thursday, September 20. 2007 New market for...salmon sperm? CINCINNATI-- Professor Andrew Steckl, a leading expert in light-emitting diodes, is intensifying the properties of LEDs by introducing biological materials, specifically salmon DNA. Electrons move constantly — think of tiny particles with a negative charge and attention deficit disorder. It is through the movement of these electrons that electric current flows and light is created. Steckl is an Ohio Eminent Scholar in University of Cincinnati’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He believed that if the electrons’ mobility could be manipulated, then new properties could be revealed. In considering materials to introduce to affect the movement of the electrons, Steckl evaluated the source of materials with an eye to supply, especially materials that do not harm the environment. “Biological materials have many technologically important qualit |