October 29, 2019 — The results from recent US government trawl surveys of the Bering Sea are in and they estimate the biomass of pollock and Pacific cod have risen relative to previous years.
Two vessels — Alaska Knight and Vesteraalen — completed summer surveys of the eastern and northern Bering Sea from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Alaska Fisheries Science Center.
The AFSC said in a presentation that the trawl surveys led scientists to estimate the pollock biomass at 5.46 million metric tons for the Eastern Bering Sea, a 75% year-on-year rise and 1.17m metric tons for the Northern Bering Sea, compared to the last major survey, which was performed in 2017.
For Pacific cod, the surveys led to an increased biomass estimate of 517,000t in the Eastern Bering Sea, a 2% y-o-y rise and an estimate of 368,000t for the Northern Bering Sea, up 30% from 2017.