March 22, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
The Alaska Fisheries Science Center was able to accomplish a lot in FY 2020 despite the need to cancel some important field research and fish, crab and marine mammal surveys due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was a year of perseverance, creative thinking, and flexibility.
Our scientists took major steps to adjust the way we do business, protecting staff, communities and research partners while delivering critical science to support resource management and conservation efforts in FY20-21.
Some Highlights:
- Set up makeshift, home-based labs to conduct critical process studies to provide age and diet information to inform fish and marine mammal stock assessments.
- Employed innovative technologies to collect and more efficiently analyze data safely (e.g., sea going and aerial drones, artificial intelligence, remote camera and underwater acoustic monitoring systems, and sophisticated camera systems that simultaneously collect color, infrared, and ultraviolet images, etc.)
- Substantially overhauled standard operating procedures to work with fisheries observer provider companies to deploy Federal fisheries observers on fishing vessels and in seafood processing facilities to collect needed data so fisheries could continue to operate and provide seafood to the nation and the world throughout the pandemic
- Designed new modeling approaches to estimate fish and crab abundance to account for data limitations due to some cancelled surveys and research activities
- Provided critical socio-economic analyses of COVID-related impacts on the commercial and recreational fishing industries
- Increased collaboration with research, co-management and industry partners to monitor and collect data safely for bowhead whales, humpback whales, harbor seals, gray whales, Steller sea lions, northern fur seals, California sea lions, and commercially valuable pollock, red king crab and sablefish
- Organized and safely supported a major ecosystem survey in the Bering Sea and Chukchi Sea during the pandemic
- Completed a successful environmental DNA (eDNA) proof of concept in the inshore waters around Juneau, AK
- Enlisted the help of state and academic scientists, Alaska Indigenous communities, private companies and others to collect ecosystem information and provide critical context for resource management decisions this year