August 27, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — It’s no secret that salmon is an important market and they’re going to get the spotlight at the Global Fishery Forum & Seafood Expo 2018 where an opening ceremony will be held for the International Year of Salmon. A global community of scientists and ecologists has established the International Year of Salmon. The year will include a series of events aimed at addressing, reducing, and resolving the various problems of maintaining global salmon stock.

According to a TASS press release Deputy Minister of Agriculture and head of the Federal Agency for Fishery Ilya Shestakov, NASCO President Jóannes Hansen, NPAFC President Suam Kim, NPAFC Executive Director Vladimir Radchenko, Director of the Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO) Kirill Kolochin and Director of WWF Russia Igor Chestin will attend the International Year of the Salmon opening ceremony.

The opening ceremony for the International Year of the Salmon will take place in St. Petersburg on the third day of the second annual Global Fishery Forum & Seafood Expo which is being held from the 13 through the 15 of September at the Expo Forum Convention and Exhibition Complex. The Global Fishery Forum & Seafood Expo is being organized by the Federal Agency for Fishery and the operator is the Roscongress Foundation.

The TASS press release also highlighted that the International Year of Salmon has been a long time coming stating: Specialists first spoke of the need for this project over ten years ago. Co-operation between countries will create an opportunity to clarify many aspects of the ecology of salmon, the study of which requires considerable resources considering the salmon’s extensive natural habitat and their complex life cycle.

Within the scope of International Year of the Salmon, from autumn 2018 to the end of 2019, it is planned to implement a complex of measures base on proposals made by the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission (NPAFC) and the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization (NASCO).

The program includes scientific expeditions and other events designed, among other things, to popularize research and ecological education, to develop exchange of information about the state of popularization and the industry. An important component of the project remains the fight against the illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and to control the fish catch.

According to the NPAFC, the global catch of Pacific salmon, has no, since the drop in the 1950s–1970s to 400 thousand tonnes, risen to almost one million tonnes. ICES statistics indicate a drop in the global catch of anadromous Atlantic salmon from 12 thousand tonnes in the 1970s to 1.2 thousand tonnes in 2017. This is connected with a cut in the numbers of salmon and restrictions on the industry. A large part of the Atlantic salmon catch in 2017 was taken from rivers (64%), though a significant number of fish are still caught in the sea on migration routes in the countries of the South East Atlantic. The biggest sea catch in 2017 was registered by Norway – 290 thousand tonnes, including 138 thousand tonnes declared in the province of Finnmark, where salmon of Russian origin are caught.

This story originally appeared on Seafood News, it is republished with permission.