Ben Fisher

Reporting from Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

Ben Fisher is a Seattle-based freelance writer. Previously, he worked as night and copy editor at the Jerusalem Post, Israel’s largest English language newspaper, and as digital editor of Jewish Quarterly. He is fluent English, French, Hebrew, and Arabic.


Author Archive

Published on
December 7, 2023

Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based fishing and seafood processing company Arctic Storm is set to launch a brand new vessel ahead of the Alaskan pollock fishing season kicking off in January 2024.

Fellow Seattle-based processing company American Seafoods is also finishing restorations on a vessel it purchased earlier this year from Phoenix Processor Limited Partnership to ensure it can also take advantage of the traditionally lucrative first

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Published on
October 15, 2020

In the past year, the Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP) trade group has made a concerted push to expand the market reach of Alaska pollock both domestically in the United States and globally.

Since enlisting a new board of directors and expanding its annual budget to USD 4 million (EUR 3.4 million) in 2019, the organization has built awareness and demand for its marquee product through the use of the “wild Alaska pollock”

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Published on
October 5, 2020

More than 300 Dungeness crab traps and four vessels were seized last month by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), who said they were illegally placed in American waters, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Canada’s Dungeness crab season begins at the end of July and the American season begins in December. Toward the end of the Canadian season, fishermen sometimes illegally place traps south of the border,

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Published on
September 29, 2020

The amount of mercury contained in fish from Alaska’s Yukon River could exceed the standards for human health set by the Environmental Protection Agency by 2050 if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed, according to new research financed in part by NASA.

Under a high emissions scenario, the mercury content in the Yukon River could double by 2100.

The results, published earlier this month in Nature Communications, found that mercury

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Published on
September 28, 2020

The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (WPRMFC) has suggested actions to the Trump Administration in order to “promote seafood competitiveness and economic growth and to provide regulatory relief to support economic recovery for the offshore fisheries of Hawai’i, American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and eight Pacific Remote Islands (PRIAs),” according to a WPRFMC press

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Published on
September 22, 2020

The Alaska Symphony of Seafood, scheduled to be held this November, has been postponed until spring 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a press release from the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF), which organizes the event.

The program has been hosted since 1994 and allows Alaskan value-added seafood products to compete against each other, which “encourages companies to invest in product development, helps them

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Published on
September 22, 2020

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport will be the recipient of a USD 21 million (EUR 17.9 million) federal transportation grant that will help fund a large cold-storage facility at the site, the U.S. congressional delegation from Alaska announced last Monday.

Plans for the site itself had already been announced, but the grant, which was awarded to the Alaska Energy Authority, was made public last week.

The facility is projected to be

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Published on
September 18, 2020

Alaska plans to stop providing state funding for hatcheries that produce king and coho salmon, according to a KFSK radio report.

The state of Alaska has in the past provided millions of dollars to king and coho hatcheries from money collected via a surcharge on sport fishing licenses, along with allocations of federal sport fishing money.

However,  the surcharge was created explicitly to fund construction costs of hatcheries in Anchorage

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Published on
September 9, 2020

Fishery closures and the subsequent rebuilding of stocks could lead to long-term economic gains for the majority of Canadian fisheries, a study by the University of British Columbia found …

Photo courtesy of Gareth

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Published on
August 25, 2020

The Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF) has issued a call for products for the organization’s 2020-2021 Alaska Symphony of Seafood program.

The program has been hosted since 1994 and allows Alaskan value-added seafood products to compete against each other which “encourages companies to invest in product development, helps them promote those new products and competitively positions Alaska Seafood in national and global

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