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Fish Factor: 2019 Alaska Seafood Industry's "Picks & Pans" By LAINE WELCH - Every year since 1991 Fish Factor has selected “picks and pans” for Alaska’s seafood industry - a no-holds-barred look back at some of the year’s best and worst fishing highlights, and my choice for the biggest fish story of the year.

Here are the 2019 picks and pans, in no particular order: 

Best fish scientist – Dr. Bob Foy, director of science and research at NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center/Juneau – No one explains science better or with more passion.

Biggest new business potential: Mariculture. Alaska is acting on plans to grow a $100 million seaweed and shellfish industry in 20 years, and that could be far short of its potential. Along with food makers, the U.S. Energy Department has its sights on Alaska for biofuels from macroalgae.  

Biggest fish sigh of relief: Governor Dunleavy’s backing off from taking 100% of raw fish taxes from fishing towns.

Biggest fish challenge: Getting whaled. Fishermen say they can lose 75% or more of their sablefish catches when whales strip their lines. Many have switched to pots, but most smaller boats can’t handle that heavy gear and hydraulics.

Best fish fighter: Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak

Best fish fact – Most fishing vessels are independent small businesses that support many families. Coastal harbors can be likened to malls in a marina!

Best fish knowledge builders: Alaska Sea Grant.

Best fish feeder of many: Sea Share, with over 220 million fish servings to U.S. food banks since 1994. 

Trickiest fishing conundrum: Balancing sea otters versus crab and dive fisheries in Southeast Alaska.

Biggest fish missed opportunity: Using Alaska’s three billion pounds of fish heads, skins, guts and other “wastes” for nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, pet foods, etc. A report by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute shows using “specialty products” could be worth $700 million or more to the industry.

Most earth-friendly fishing town: Kodiak, for generating nearly 100 percent of its electricity from wind and hydropower, and for turning its fish wastes into high-quality oils and meals instead of grinding it up and dumping it into the water, as in most Alaska fishing towns. (see above)

Best fish helper: Rick Green, special assistant to the ADF&G commissioner.  

Scariest fish stories: Ocean acidification and warming oceans.

Best daily fish news sites: SeafoodNews.com,  UndercurrentNews, SeafoodSource

Best fish watchers: Cook Inletkeeper, SalmonState           

Best fish economist: Garrett Evridge/McDowell Group, again. Weekly salmon reports, industry updates, always has the facts and figures.

Best fish mainstream push:  Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP)  On a well-planned mission to make Alaska pollock (“cod’s smaller cousin”) the world’s favorite whitefish. 

Best go to bat for their fishery: Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association; the fishermen-funded/operated group generated over $3 million in 2019 by a 1% tax on their catches to enhance/protect/promote their fishery. (Why other fishing regions don’t form state-sanctioned RSDAs is beyond me.)

Best blue economy motivators:  Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association with its Alaska Ocean Cluster Initiative, Ocean Tuesday Virtual Speaker Series

Biggest fish broadside: The continuing 25 percent trade tariffs on U.S. seafood products going to and from China. 

Best “mom and pop” entrepreneurs: Barnacle Foods of Juneau – kelp salsas, pickles, hot sauce and jams! 

Best eco-friendly fish expansion: Net Your Problem by Nicole Baker. One woman’s quest to mobilize AK to remove old fishing nets, lines and gear expanded from Dutch Harbor and Kodiak to Naknek, Dillingham, Haines, Petersburg and Juneau. The plastic gear is shipped to Europe and recycled into new products.

Biggest fish fake: Genetically modified salmon, or manmade “Frankenfish.” 

Best emerging fish writer:  Sarah Lapidus, Kodiak Daily Mirror

Worst fish travesty: Cuts to commercial and sport halibut catches while bycatch rates (“non-directed commercial discard mortality”) remain fixed for trawl fisheries (6 million pounds in the Bering Sea).  Time for those big, out of state fishing boats to share in halibut conservation. - More...
Sunday PM - January 05, 2020

Alaska: Alaska's Minimum Wage Increases in 2020 By MARY KAUFFMAN - A total of 26 states and the District of Columbia will raise the minimum wage in 2020, with 22 of those states implementing the increases on January 1, 2020.

The Alaska minimum wage increased from $9.89 to $10.19 in 2020. Voters passed a ballot initiative in 2014 to adjust the minimum wage annually for inflation.

Quoting a news release from the Alaska Department of Labor, Alaska Statute 23.10.065(a) requires the Alaska minimum wage to be adjusted using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, formerly the Anchorage CPI, for the preceding calendar year. The CPI-U increased 3.0 percent in 2018, from 218.873 to 225.545. As a result, the minimum wage will rise from $9.89 to $10.19, effective Jan. 1, 2020. By law, Alaska’s minimum wage must remain at least $1 per hour over the federal minimum wage.

The Alaska minimum wage applies to all hours worked in a pay period, regardless of how the employee is paid: whether by time, piece, commission, or otherwise. The least an employer can pay an employee is equal to all actual hours worked in a pay period multiplied by the Alaska minimum wage, unless an employer can demonstrate a specific exemption.

In Alaska, tips do not count toward the minimum wage. Further, under Alaska law, public school bus driver wages must be no less than twice the current Alaska minimum wage. Also, certain exempt employees must be paid on a salary basis of not less than twice the current Alaska minimum wage, based on a 40-hour work week, to maintain their exempt status.

The highest rates in the nation are found at the municipal level. Seattle has the highest minimum wage rate at $16.00 per hour for large employers and $15.00 for small employers. New York City's minimum wage is set at $15.00 per hour for all employers. 

California will raise the minimum wage rates by $1 on January 1 ($12.00 per hour for employers with 25 employees or less, and $13.00 per hour for employers with 26 employees or more), while the highest state rate will remain in Washington at $13.50 per hour. A few states' wages remain on the lower end of the spectrum, with some state minimums coming in below the federal wage rate, and others with a slower incremental increase.

The lowest minimum wage rates of $5.15 are in Georgia and Wyoming. However, most employers and employees would be subject to the higher federal minimum wage rate of $7.25 per hour. 

"The increases indicate a move toward ensuring a living wage for people across several states," said Barbara O'Dell, JD, an Employment Law Analyst for Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.

O'Dell said, "Some of the new rates are the result of previously approved incremental increases to reach a specific amount that is considered to be a living wage such as California, Colorado, Maine, Washington, whereas other states' increases reflect an annual cost-of-living adjustment, such as Alaska, Florida, Minnesota, Montana."

Those states following the step-up approach tend to have higher minimum wage rates than those taking a cost-of-living adjustment approach.

The trend towards regional minimum wages, such as those in New York and Oregon, also reflect lawmakers' recognition that costs of living are higher in large metro areas than they are in other parts of the state. - More...
Sunday PM - January 05, 2020

Alaska blackfish in a world of its own
By NED ROZELL
An Alaska blackfish swims in a tank at the Fairbanks office of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Photo By NED ROZELL

Alaska: Alaska blackfish in a world of its own By NED ROZELL - North of the village of Hughes, in frigid, sluggish water, dim blue light penetrates two feet of lake ice. The ice has a quarter-size hole, maintained by a stream of methane bubbles. Every few minutes, a brutish little fish swims up, turns to sip air, and peels back to the dank.

The Alaska blackfish is an evolutionary loner that fins through lakes and tundra ponds across much of the state. It exists nowhere else, except just across Bering Strait in Siberia. Not much larger than a banana, the fish is different from others in the state because, in addition to gathering oxygen through its gills, it can pull oxygen from free air.

tropics. The Alaska blackfish’s ability to gulp the same air as you and me has allowed it to occupy stagnant northern pools that kill other fish. When ice seals off small lakes and the stocked rainbow trout goes belly up, the blackfish guts it out.

Just how tough is the blackfish? A rural legend is of a blackfish being chipped from a frozen mass of its brethren and fed to a sled dog. The fish thaws and revives in the dog’s stomach, where its wriggling causes the dog to vomit. There on the snow, a live fish writhes, resurrected. This story has persisted since Lucien Turner, writing about Alaska natural history in 1886, first documented it.

Per Scholander was skeptical about Turner’s “colorful” report. Scholander was a physiologist interested in how creatures and plants survive extreme cold. Along with Laurence Irving, who later founded the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Institute of Arctic Biology, Scholander traveled to Barrow in 1948 to study plants and animals. In their journal writeup of that work, they devoted the final chapter to “Experiments on Freezing the Blackfish.”

From Barrow lakes, the scientists captured eight blackfish and froze them into a block of ice. When they thawed the fish, none were alive.

“However,” Scholander wrote, “the blackfish, like man and other animals, can survive being partially frozen.” - More...
Sunday PM - January 05, 2020

Analysis: With the US and Iran on the brink of war, the dangers of Trump's policy of going it alone become clear By KLAUS W. LARRES - President Donald Trump’s policy toward Iran is in deep crisis. The president’s approach has the support neither of America’s allies nor of its strategic rivals, China and Russia. And his policy – made even more confrontational by the shooting of a high-ranking Iranian official – has boxed him into a situation where, short of dramatic reversal, Washington and Tehran are edging close to war.

By failing to forge policies in cooperation with allies, the U.S. was robbed of advice and expertise in how to tackle the problems posed by Iran. Above all, it led to the dangerous deterioration of relations between the U.S. and Iran after the U.S. became the sole country to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. That deal was painstakingly negotiated by the Obama administration in cooperation with five other world powers.

Instead of Trump’s harsh policy imposing maximum pressure on Iran, Iran has turned the tables and has put pressure on a freshly impeached U.S. president whose reelection is by no means assured and whose international diplomatic isolation and weakness is no secret in the region.

And once again, Trump took unilateral action early on Friday morning. The killings of Iran’s revered and powerful military commander, General Qassem Soleimani, and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a U.S. drone strike on Baghdad airport has further escalated tension in the region.

The killings immediately caused huge anti-American protests in Iran and led to the rise of global oil prices and the fall of stock markets around the world. On Sunday, Iran announced it would no longer heed the restrictions in the 2015 nuclear deal that restricted its development of nuclear weapons. Iraq’s lawmakers voted on a bill drafted by Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to expel U.S. forces from the country. The bill must be signed by the prime minister to take effect. - More...
Sunday PM - January 05, 2020

Analysis: Why the race for the presidency begins with the Iowa caucus By STEFFEN W. SCHMIDT - The first and most visible test of candidate support in the 2020 presidential election is the Iowa presidential caucus, which takes place on Feb. 3.

While Iowa does not control who becomes the candidate of each party, Iowans’ choices almost always end up matching the rest of the nation.

One of the architects of the modern Iowa caucuses, which began in 1972, wrote that the significance of the caucus was unanticipated.

“Never in our dreams did we realize we would be ‘first in the nation,’ nor did we ever expect anyone outside Iowa would pay much attention,” retired Iowa State University engineering professor Richard Seagrave wrote.

Seagrave said that it wasn’t political calculation that led to the choice to run the caucus early in the election year. It was the “immense amount of paperwork” needed to document caucus proceedings with only a slow mimeograph machine that led to the choice of such an early caucus date.

“Remember that we had no ‘user-friendly’ computers or high-speed copy machines in 1972,” wrote Seagrave.

The significance of first-in-the-nation placement did not become clear until a barely known governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, came to Iowa in 1976 to test the waters for a presidential run.

That year “Uncommitted” got 14,508 votes (37%). Carter came in with 10,764 votes (27%, but was declared the winner. He went on to get the nomination and win the presidency. The fact that a relative unknown – spending little money but lots of time and face-to-face campaigning – could win was surprising. - More...
Sunday PM - January 05, 2020

TOM PURCELL: Don't Take Cyber Scammers' Bait in 2020 - One of 2019’s biggest stories will be bigger in 2020: Cyber scams are on the rise.

“As people increasingly conduct business and live their lives online, more and more criminals are leveraging the internet to steal,” reports Forbes’ Stu Sjouwerman.

The dirty rotten scammers continue to evolve, too, targeting businesses, government organizations and individuals alike with increasingly sophisticated schemes.

One is ransomware – malicious software that blocks access to computers until money is paid.

Scammers also send phony “phishing” emails – often spoofing emails from big retailers – with fraudulent links or attachments that, when clicked, give scammers unfettered access to computer users’ data.

Google “ransomware attack” and you’ll see a sizable list of big companies and entire cities that have been completely shut down by scammers.

They also spoof text messages. Apparently from reputable companies, such as banks, these messages trick individuals into revealing passwords or credit card numbers.

Scammers continue to succeed with the good old telephone, too. I received a call this year from a man claiming he was from the Social Security Administration, who told me my account was blocked and he would help me reactivate it.

Aware that Social Security never makes phone calls (unless you’re having a legitimate conversation with it), I knew what the scammer was after: my full name, birthdate, address and Social Security number.

I asked him how he could sleep at night, knowing he was hurting innocent people. He cussed at me and hung up. - More...
Sunday PM - January 05, 2020

Political Cartoon: Soleimani's Wheels
By Gary McCoy ©2020, Shiloh, IL
Distributed to paid subscribers for publication by Cagle Cartoons, Inc.