Louisiana shrimpers back on the water after three day tie up failed to raise prices After just three days, Louisiana’s shrimpers went back to fishing after a proposed week long tie-up was unable to raise dock prices. We reported last week that processors had lowered their offerings to $1.80 per pound, about 40 percent less from the $3.00 per pound dock price that opened up the season. However, reports indicate some shrimpers were back out trawling as early as last Tuesday saying they could not afford to stay tied-up. In other news warming waters sent Fraser River’s sockeye farther north than usual, keeping the fish on the Canadian side of the border. This has shut out US fishermen and processors from getting the catch they had expected to see this season. As of Friday, the latest tallies found Washington’s fishermen landed just 440,000 sockeye out of an allotted quota of 1.8 million fish. Biologists said the sockeye stayed out of warmer-than-usual US waters; instead the fish migrated down the east side of Vancouver Island via the Johnstone Strait. Ken Coons reports on some positive takeaways from a fisheries focused Hamilton Project meeting at the Brookings Institution that highlighted US progress made in sustainable fishing practices under Magnuson. The meeting also featured a proposal that would amend MSA to “design and adopt fishery management approaches that significantly improve fishery value, recovery and security for fishing communities as well as ecological outcomes.” The top four “fishing intensive” local economies identified were: Petersburg Alaska census area; Knox County, Maine; Hoonah-Angoon Alaska census area and Pacific County, Washington. Finally, a couple of Pacific tuna companies warn that ongoing IUU fishing and an increase in licensed foreign fishing activity could upend the PNA’s otherwise healthy tuna stocks. Both Fiji Fish and Tri-Marine say increases in Chinese and other foreign fishing activities could tax healthy skipjack stocks the way bigeye populations have been reduced. "We wonder how much further this can go and whether or not the scientific advice will soon change from everything's fine to 'Whoah!' we got a problem here,” said Tri-Marine’s Phil Roberts.