Saving Seafood

NOAA Fisheries introduces new net design for integrated US West Coast survey

November 27, 2024 — NOAA Fisheries says a new, innovative net design will help the agency improve and streamline its fisheries surveys along the West Coast.

Developed together with Ocean Gold Seafoods and Seattle-based net manufacturer Swan Nets, the Multi-Function Trawl net allows NOAA research vessels to harvest fish at different depths. That enables a research vessel to set the net for midwater depths to catch Pacific hake during the day, and then adjust the net for surface level trawling to catch sardines and anchovies at night.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Conservation Group, Ocean Gold Get S-K Funding for Nearshore Pelagics Study

May 22, 2020 — Casual conversation over coffee has turned into fully-funded collaborative sardine research project between the seafood industry and fishery scientists.

Ocean Gold Seafood, based in Westport, Wash., received word this week it received a $295,800 Saltonstall-Kennedy grant on behalf of the West Coast Pelagic Conservation Group. The collaborative study will help inform sardine stock assessments and improve the understanding of other pelagic species such as herring, anchovies and mackerel.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Grant funding takes West Coast sardine study to next level

May 21, 2020 — The following was released by the West Coast Seafood Processors Association:

A research project started by a Pacific Northwest seafood company and a nonprofit group over coffee with researchers will get $295,800 in federal funding to continue its work. The collaborative survey data will help inform sardine stock assessments and improve the understanding of other coastal pelagic species such as herring, anchovies and mackerel.

Ocean Gold Seafood, based in Westport, Wash., was awarded a Saltonstall-Kennedy grant on behalf of the West Coast Pelagic Conservation Group to continue a collaborative project that will benefit the seafood industry and scientific data collection process. The grants, commonly referred to as S-K grants, are used to fund projects that address the needs of fishing communities, optimize economic benefits by building and maintaining sustainable fisheries and increase other opportunities to keep working waterfronts viable. The survey includes industry vessels and National Marine Fisheries Service and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife researchers and personnel.

“We learned a lot though this collaborative process,” Ocean Gold Chief Operations Officer Greg Shaughnessy said. “The survey itself is an intricate and energized dance of scientific procedures all happening in real time and at once. The team is professional. I have fished over 50 years, but I learned more about the sardine and other coastal pelagic species than I ever imagined.”

Shaughnessy said the survey was necessary to access some areas nearshore.

“The coastal pelagics industry realized we needed a boat on the water to help assess the shallower areas that the deeper draft federal research vessels couldn’t access,” Shaugnessy said. “We all had open minds and worked together with state and federal scientists to acquire the best available data for the sardine stock assessment.”

The project, “Utilize an Industry-Seine Fishing Vessel to Enhance Data Collection and Improve Assessment of Pacific Coast Coastal Pelagic Species for the Benefit of the Fishing Industry and Fishing Communities,” builds on past proof-of-concept research projects in which the West Coast Pelagic group started to help assess the nearshore stocks. These shallower areas are habitat for large volumes of sardines and other pelagic fish.

Read the full release here

Ocean perch stock rebuilt, could lead to more commercial fishing opportunities in 2019

December 21, 2017 — Federal restrictions designed to protect Pacific ocean perch from overfishing have worked well enough for the Pacific Fishery Management Council to consider the fishery “rebuilt,” meaning it will relax restrictions. Once the new rules take effect in 2019 it should have significant economic value to the coast, experts say.

“It’s a big deal for fisheries along the coast,” said Phil Anderson, who works with Ocean Gold Seafood in Westport and serves as chairman of the Pacific Fishery Management Council. “It’s another one in the line of species that were determined to be overfished here about a decade ago that has since been rebuilt.”

Pacific ocean perch have been overfished since the mid-1960s when foreign fleets targeted groundfish stocks, in particular Pacific ocean perch, off the U.S. West Coast. The mandates of the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary law governing U.S. fisheries management, eventually ended foreign fishing within 200 miles of the coast. The first Federal trip limits to discourage targeting and to conserve a U.S. West Coast groundfish stock were implemented for Pacific ocean perch in 1979. Rebuilding plans for Pacific ocean perch were adopted in 2000 and 2003.

Pacific ocean perch is one of many species of groundfish, managed and regulated by the Pacific Fishery Management Council. The fish, which live near the bottom of the ocean, mingle and protection of the perch has constrained the West Coast trawl fishery for decades.

Read the full story at The Daily World