Monday Fisheries Headlines 7/23

Imports Fuel Push for U.S. Ocean Fish Farms. What I know about fish farming you could scratch on the back of a dime, even though my dad's secretary prophesied that I'd go on to run a fish farm. She was doing the high school class prophecies in Petersburg back in '67 and knew dad was helping develop a fish feed pellet for Dr. Donaldson at the U. of Washington.

The lighthouse at the entrance to Coos Bay, Oregon. Great camping right nearby at Sunset Bay State Park.

As far as I know this was ground zero for the whole salmon farming movement. Or, I should say trout farming, since that is what an Atlantic salmon really is. The pellets I threw into Chris Dahl's homemade lake at his house in Seattle in '68, were to feed a ravenous school of brook trout, or some such species.

RFID still brings more questions than answers for inbound logistics There are a variety of models that are emerging to resolve questions such as who pays for the Radio Frequency ID tags. There are some RFID pilot projects for inbound supply taking place that supply chain and logistics professionals should be keeping track of. RFID has gained a much stronger foothold in manufacturing for tracking works-in-progress, for several reasons. First of all, the investment made is returned within the four walls—it's not being diluted or shared with suppliers or customers. Secondly, the return is tracked more easily because the RFID tags can be applied to bins or pallets that don't leave the plant floor.

Hearing on Dick Cheney's Role in Klamath Fish Kill Set for July 31 in D.C.
Dan Bacher reports that, "As reported in the Washington Post article, “Leaving No Tracks,” by Jo Becker and Barton Gellman on June 27, Cheney's intervention in the development of a 10-year water plan for the Klamath River resulted in a September 2002 die-off of an estimated 68,000 to 80,000 adult salmon in the lower Klamath - the largest fish kill in U.S. history." For several years, Karl Rove was being fingered as the culprit in this fiasco. Maybe he's off the hook as the fall guy, maybe not. If every year the economic damage from run failure is $60 million, what is a generation of a dead run worth, or several generations?

In these hearings, they might as well look back up the migration route to the rest of the king salmon carnage this Administration is perpetuating on the American people. The "dumping" of hundreds of thousands of king salmon every year under the Magnuson-Stevens Act didn't start with Bush, but continues full bore that's for sure. The value of these is another $60 million a year at least, not including the multiplier effect. But I forgot, Washington D.C. operates in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Who cares about chump change when you got Rep. Senators to support, eh Dick? The one in Oregon cost the Klamath it's king salmon, and the ones in Alaska cost the whole Pacific Rim lots, lots more king salmon, every year. Let's do a little more math. How much has it cost America to wipe out the Rogue River king salmon for example?(Just one of hundreds of dead salmon streams, albiet, a large one, including Alaska streams.) A news article from 1902 warned of the demise of the Rogue king run because of the Hume family cannery at the mouth. The original run of maybe a conservative one million kings a year is, for the sake of math, all gone. A few thousand come back every year now is all. Dams have just prevented the run building back up.

So, for a hundred years, Southern Oregon has been deprived of maybe a half billion dollars to it's economy every year, just to make one man rich for a few decades in the 1800s. In earlier years all the numbers are smaller, but the effect on the economy relative. This insanity continues to this day and supports the notion that the homo sapein brain doesn't evolve much, if any.

Assessing the risks posed by marine aggregate extraction If you type Central Point into Google Earth, and look a few miles north to where Bear Creek enters the Rogue River, you'll see where they used to get gravel right out of the river and creek beds. On the Klamath, a monstrous gold dredge used to sit in the middle of the river and dredge away. This isn't kosher anymore, but it still happens in salt water and other sensitive places. Several Southern Oregon gravel companies have been trying to get permits lately in some fishy places. The above referenced article provides a framework for assessing those risks.

Picking a mean pin bone
This pin-bone removal machine of the University of Alaska's has a lot of potential to get a lot of small processors into supplying high priced salmon fillets. If the U of A can keep control of the licensing process, the machine will get better, the cost will stay down, and every interested processor will be supplied on time. And it sure wasn't Tony Knowles that started the race for the best pin-bone removal machine, it was Ray Wadsworth.

Flying fish find fast route to high-end plates in Lower 48
I don't know what Deanna means by "silver fish over six pounds" getting the premium treatment. Maybe she means "silvers," which are the larger coho salmon, or she might mean very large, ocean run pink salmon, of which there aren't many six pounders. In any event, it sounds like everyone is happy and that's all that matters. Hats off to the setnetters for working together. There are some that say fishermen working together is an oxymoron.

The Olga/Moser Bay fishermen again demonstrate that it's not about fishermen leaders, but individual efforts. It's about fishermen combining their talents in a commercial venture. The politics will fall into line with commercial fishermen's success. Notice I didn't say, "people-that-prey-on-fishermen"'s success.

These Kodiak fishermen discovered the formula that I saw in the Kibbutzim in Israel, that was developed over the last 100 years. It's called self-reliance for the sake of survival.

Bill looks to preserve fishing heritage
The idea is to preserve access to the waterfront by the public to preserve the maritime heritage of the community. "But the proposal could cost some coastal communities money because it includes deep property tax discounts for working waterfronts used by commercial fishermen."