Top Story: ADF&G issues very upbeat Bristol bay Salmon Forecast
News Summary: ADF&G has released a very upbeat Bristol Bay sockeye salmon forecast for next year, with the harvest up 34% over last year. In 2014, the run was much larger than expected, exceeding projections by 53%. The 2015 forecast is 45% over the ten year mean. Wild salmon is plentiful in many areas - with the Columbia, Fraser, Southeaster Pinks, and Yukon Chum all having excellent years. The resurgence of favorable ocean conditions is likely the cause, but the benefit is to support a heavy consumer interest in wild salmon. It looks like it will be a winner again in 2015.
Sablefish is selling for record prices in Japan, over 2000 Yen per Kg., as the season in Alaska has closed. Quotas were down in Alaska this year, and some Japanese analysts say strong restaurant demand for sablefish in the US as a less expensive alternative to toothfish helped spark demand. Also the weak Japanese yen meant they had to compete on these prices.
The fall lobster season has started on Grand Manan, with prices falling, heavy landings, evidence of some lobster that shouldn’t be shipped, and processors seeing signs of plenty of lobster to process. This should help build lobster tail production, and may be a sign that more of the LFA 34 landings, the largest lobster fishery in Canada, will go to processing this year when it opens the last week in November.
George Rose, the foremost authority on Newfoundland Cod, sees many parallels between the situation in Newfoundland in the early 1990’s and the current situation in New England. He says that in both cases, cod reacting to overfishing and climate stress hyper-aggregated in small areas, leading harvesters and surveys to falsely believe the stocks were healthier. How should the fishery be managed if what New England is seeing is actually climate change. Throughout the world, cod is a species that appears to be rapidly increasing due to global warming opening up favorable habitat. But it is retreating from areas that are too warm, like New England.
In India, some exporters don’t buy the idea that shrimp production can increase to many times its current size. Instead they suggest farmers are meeting resistance to go beyond 400,000 tons of vannamei, partly due to constraints of broodstock, some disease outbreaks, and limits on density. They also think farmers will feel pressure as other shrimp countries recover from EMS, and this may make further growth less attractive.
With recreational fishing data likely to be a hot topic given changes in Magnuson, NMFS is moving to update how it collects recreational fishing data with some pilot studies of mail in cards, rather than random phone surveys. They think the mailer is better. Whichever method is chosen, the results are likely to get a lot of scrutiny.
Have a good Weekend.
John Sackton, Editor And Publisher , Lexington, Massachusetts
Seafood.com News 1-781-861-1441
Email comments to jsackton@seafood.com
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