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.
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The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has released initial season-end figures for the state’s 2017 salmon harvest, which indicate that the fishery had another extremely successful year.
Around 224.6 million wild salmon were caught, worth an estimated USD 678.8 million (EUR 582.4 million) – up 66.7 percent from USD 407.3 million (EUR 349.5 million) in value compared to 2016.
Sockeye salmon accounted for almost half of
… Read MoreEight sustainable seafood businesses won cash prizes at the Fish 2.0 Innovation Forum in Palo Alto, California, U.S.A. last week, beating out a competitive field that had been narrowed down to 22 presenters.
Among the winners were Real Oyster Cult, based in Duxbury, Massachusetts, U.S.A. which delivers fresh oysters to customers with overnight shipping, and EnerGaia, which is based in Bangkok, Thailand, and grows spirulina, an algae superfood,
… Read MoreAlaska has produced more than 169 billion pounds of fish since statehood was granted to the Last Frontier in 1959, and the Alaskan seafood industry brings in enough product annually to feed every person in the world a serving of Alaskan seafood.
These and other statistics relating to the seafood industry in the state can be found in “The Economic Value of Alaska’s Seafood Industry,” a joint report by The Alaska Seafood
… Read MoreCooke Aquaculture, the company that owns the fish nets near Cypress Island, Washington, from which an estimated 105,000 Atlantic salmon escaped from faulty netting in August, offered last month to pay the Lummi Nation, a local Native American tribe, a premium for the escaped non-native fish that they caught, in exchange for the tribe not speaking out against net pen aquaculture.
Tomothy Ballew II, chairman of the Lummi Business Council
… Read MoreAn inspection carried out by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources has revealed structural flaws in salmon fish pens owned by Cooke Aquaculture.
In August, a Cooke pen near Cypress Island, Washington collapsed, allowing the escape of hundreds of thousands of farmed non-native Atlantic salmon into Puget Sound.
A recent inspection of Cooke’s facility at Rich Passage, south of Bainbridge Island, revealed a hole in its nets and
… Read MoreCooke Aquaculture plans to send a million Atlantic salmon to a farm near Bainbridge Island, Washington, drawing the ire of environmentalists and members of the Lummi Nation who have questioned the company’s competence after one of its fish pens in Puget Sound collapsed in August, resulting in one of the largest fish escapes in the industry’s history.
The decision to allow the move of the fish, which are a non-native species in
… Read MorePike Place Market, famous in Seattle and throughout the United States for its salmon-tossing fishmongers and fresh oysters, crabs, and geoducks, is getting a much-needed USD 74 million (EUR 62.8 million) facelift.
Created in 1907 on the waterfront in downtown Seattle, the popular Northwest landmark is being renovated for the first time in 40 years.
Portions of the renovation were already completed this summer with the construction of
… Read MoreFish 2.0, a business competition that connects seafood businesses and investors to grow the sustainable seafood sector, announced last week that 40 companies in the seafood industry will present ideas to investors at the Fish 2.0 Innovation Forum taking place in November at Stanford University in California.
The program bears similarities to the hit television show Shark Tank, and the field of contestants was narrowed from a long list of 184
… Read MoreAfter many months of negotiations, a California Coastal Commission decision will allow Coast Seafoods, the largest producer of shellfish in California, to continue shellfish farming in Humboldt Bay through 2025.
The company is based in Eureka, California, and is one of the largest harvesters of clams and oysters in the United States. Initially, the company had lobbied to expand its operation by 260 acres, but that proposal was denied in
… Read MoreNearly a month after structural damage allowed hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon to escape from a Cooke Aquaculture fish farm on Cypress Island in Washington State, officials estimate that more than 100,000 of the salmon remain in the waters surrounding the island, The Bellingham Herald reported earlier this week.
Although Washington State encouraged fishermen to catch the salmon after the “spill,” telling them that they
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