Saving Seafood

How Science Can Help Managers Anticipate and Respond to Climate Change to Keep U.S. Fisheries Sustainable

March 28, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Bering Sea ecosystem, which has experienced unprecedented changes in recent years, provides a real-world testing ground for a new strategy to help marine resource managers anticipate and respond to climate change. The new strategy, developed by NOAA Fisheries scientists, is outlined in a paper published this week. It calls for evaluating existing management measures and developing climate forecasts for various marine areas in Alaska, over different time frames, to promote sustainable fisheries under changing environmental conditions.

“We’re talking about responsive science and management. What’s unique about our approach is that we consider interacting climate, biological, and socio-economic changes and how humans are affected by those changes,” said Kirstin Holsman, lead author, and scientist at Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

According to Holsman, this is important because changes in social conditions can influence how people respond to management measures and, ultimately, their effectiveness.

“We wanted to provide resource managers with a strategy to help them better understand environmental and socioeconomic variability over time, to help them balance tradeoffs and anticipate tipping points when the transition to a new ecosystem or social state occurs. At that point, it becomes about adaptation.”

Read the full release here

US shutdown delays NOAA surveys that influence groundfish TACs

February 7, 2019 — Some of the important summer research surveys that the US National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) conducts each year off the shores of Alaska to estimate the health of key commercially caught groundfish stocks like pollock and Pacific cod could face delays due to the recent partial government shutdown, officials said.

In a report to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, said that the shutdown that sent most of its staffers home from Dec. 22, 2018, until Jan. 25 has already affected one research cruise, a winter pre-spawning acoustic survey of pollock stocks in the Gulf of Alaska.

“Unfortunately, due to the delay in starting the survey, the first two legs (in the Shumagin Islands and outer Kenai regions) will not be conducted,” science center staffers wrote in a report to the NPFMC.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Blob 2.0 is bad sign for Gulf of Alaska groundfish

December 11, 2018 — Fish heavily impacted by a three-year marine heatwave in the Gulf of Alaska may be headed for round two. Commonly referred to as the blob, warmer waters between 2014 and 2017 were blamed for a dramatic decline in Pacific cod and are thought to have negatively impacted other species such as pollock.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council set catch limits for several groundfish species in the Gulf of Alaska Thursday afternoon. Before members set those limits, Stephani Zador with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center updated the council on the latest trends in the Gulf.

“Importantly, starting in September, we are officially in another heatwave in the Gulf of Alaska,” she explained.

Pacific cod populations in the Gulf plummeted as their food source decreased during the blob, but after waters returned to somewhat normal temperatures in 2017, Zador said cod body conditions improved.

“All the groundfish in our survey that we sampled, except for cod, had poor body condition. So, they were skinnier per length than average,” Zador said. “That was a sign we saw consistently through the heatwave and indicates that cod were able to pop back up.”

The council slashed the total allowable catch by 80 percent last year and lowered it slightly again this year in order to allow the species to rebound. Pacific cod populations in the Gulf are expected to stabilize in the coming years, but another marine heatwave, or blob 2.0, could hamper any progress.

Pollock have also suffered poor recruitment in recent years, but Zador said larva abundance was above average in 2017. However, much like cod, another heatwave is not a good sign.

Read the full story at KBBI

NOAA Appoints Dr. Robert Foy as New Alaska Fisheries Science Center Director

November 1, 2018 — The following was released by NOAA:

Today, NOAA announced the appointment of Dr. Robert Foy as the new Science and Research Director for NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center. In this role, he will oversee the agency’s work to monitor the health and sustainability of fish, marine mammals, and their habitats across nearly 1.5 million square miles of water surrounding Alaska. He will direct scientific research to support and sustain some of the world’s most valuable marine resources, including commercial fisheries for Alaska pollock, red king crab, and sablefish in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. He will also oversee agency research in the Aleutians, a 1,200-mile long island chain full of marine life, and in the Arctic Ocean, home to marine mammals including bowhead and beluga whales, and bearded and ringed seals.

“I am pleased to announce Bob as our new Alaska Fisheries Science Center Director,” said Dr. Cisco Werner, Chief Science Advisor for NOAA Fisheries. “With his unique expertise and strategic mindset, he will easily build on the great work already underway at the Center with a focus on advancing the Center’s fisheries and marine mammal research, and the development of new technologies.”

As Center Director, Dr. Foy will oversee nearly 500 employees and a number of facilities, including:
  • The main facility in Seattle.
  • Research laboratories in Juneau and Kodiak, Alaska, and Newport, Oregon.
  • Field stations in Little Port Walter, St. Paul Island, and St. George Island, Alaska.

Dr. Foy will assume his new role on November 11, 2018. He will work out of the Science Center’s Auke Bay Lab in Juneau.

Dr. Foy is an experienced leader and a recognized expert in Arctic and sub-Arctic issues and research. He was the director of the Alaska Center’s Kodiak Lab for the past 11 years. He has co-authored more than 60 scientific, technical, and stock assessment papers. They focused on the distribution, biomass, and physiological or ecological response of marine species to environmental forcing in the sub-Arctic and arctic regions of Alaska. He also directed the crab data collection on the annual Eastern Bering Sea bottom trawl survey. These data support stock assessments for 10 crab stocks valued at roughly $500 million.

Read the full release here

Bering Sea Pacific cod move north as survey sees fewer fish in east

October 10, 2018 — As was the case recently with pollock in Alaska’s southeastern Bering Sea, US government scientists found a surprising result when they surveyed Pacific cod stocks this summer: a large number of fish apparently moved north.

Staff at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Alaska Fisheries Science Center are in the process of developing stock assessments that the North Pacific Fishery Management Council will use in making allowable biological catch (ABC) and total allowable catch (TAC) levels for Pacific cod in the Bering Sea for 2019.

However, one key input that will figure into the model that NOAA is making to estimate the Pacific cod biomass — the results of the 2018 southeastern Bering Sea bottom trawl survey — has declined significantly.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Researchers are seeing young cod return to the Gulf of Alaska

August 15, 2018 — Tiny cod fish are reappearing around Kodiak.

Researchers aim to find out if it is a blip, or a sign that the stock is recovering after warming waters caused the stocks to crash.

Alaska’s seafood industry was shocked last fall when the annual surveys showed cod stocks in the Gulf of Alaska had plummeted by 80 percent to the lowest levels ever seen. Prior surveys indicated large year classes of cod starting in 2012 were expected to produce good fishing for six or more years. But a so-called warm blob of water depleted food supplies and wiped out that recruitment.

“That warm water was sitting in the gulf for three years starting in 2014 and it was different than other years in that it went really deep and it also lasted throughout the winter. You can deplete the food source pretty rapidly when the entire ecosystem is ramped up in those warm temperatures,” explained Steven Barbeaux with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.

This summer researchers at Kodiak saw the first signs of potential recovery with beach seine catches of tiny first year cod that are born offshore and drift as larvae into coastal grassy areas in July and August.

“A lot can happen in that first year of life that we would like to learn more about to predict whether or not these year classes are actually going to survive,” said Ben Laurel, a fisheries research biologist with the AFSC based in Newport, Ore., whose specialty is early survival of cold water commercial fish species.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

California sea lion population rebounds

January 24, 2018 — California sea lions are doing just fine. Thanks for asking.

More than fine, actually.

Sea lions have fully rebounded with an estimated population of more than 250,000 in 2014, according to a recent study by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1975, the population was estimated at less than 90,000.

The study reconstructed the population’s triumphs and trials over the past 40 years.

“The population has basically come into balance with its environment,” co-author Sharon Melin, a research biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, said in a statement. “The marine environment is always changing, and their population is at a point where it responds very quickly to changes in the environment.”

NOAA’s declaration that California sea lions have fully rebounded does not mean a “delisting” as it would if the sea lion was listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.

“Although there is no provision in the Marine Mammal Protection Act (which protects sea lions) to delist a species, there is a provision that allows states to ask NOAA Fisheries to take over management of species that have reached carrying capacity (in the law it is called Optimum Sustainable Population or OSP) and potentially do more to control their numbers,” wrote NOAA spokesperson Michael Milstein when announcing the report’s findings.

The goal now, Melin said, is to keep the population balanced between 183,000 and 275,000 individuals.

The rebound is a victory for the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. But as in other instances of animal populations beating the odds — wolves, for example — it’s a success story that comes with challenges.

As the California sea lion population has grown, the animals have expanded their range, bringing them into conflict with humans and endangered fish.

Where you sit’

In Astoria, male California sea lions have taken over an entire stretch of docks at the Port of Astoria’s East Mooring Basin. Port employees have attempted numerous deterrent tactics over the years, everything from fluttering wind dancers to a fake killer whale. Nothing has really worked.

Upward of 1,000 pinnipeds were recorded in a single daily count at the mooring basin in 2015. While fewer sea lions returned this spring, plenty showed up in the fall and many have stuck around through the winter instead of leaving like they have in the past, said Janice Burk, marina manager.

The port plans to install more low railing fabricated by students from Knappa along the docks in the spring. It has proved to be the one deterrent that seems to work. Sometimes.

Read the full story from the Columbia Basin Bulletin at the Chinook Observer

 

Survey shows GOA cod biomass down 71 percent

October 16, 2017 — CORDOVA, Alaska — Surveys and preliminary modeling for the 2018 Pacific cod stock assessment show that Pacific cod biomass is down substantially in the Gulf of Alaska, a NOAA Fisheries research biologist told the North Pacific Fishery Management Council during its fall meeting in Anchorage.

The data for the report by Steve Barbeaux of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle only became available several days before the council meeting and the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee expressed its appreciation of the rapid and extensive investigation that Barbeaux and others made, the SSC said.

The most salient survey result was a 71 percent reduction in the Gulf of Alaska bottom trawl survey Pacific cod biomass estimate from 2015 to 2017, a drop observed across the Gulf and particularly pronounced in the Central Gulf, Barbeaux told the SSC.

Barbeaux also presented additional data sets to the SSC that appeared to corroborate the trawl survey results, including a 53 percent drop in the National Martine Fisheries Service 2017 longline survey, and low estimates in recent years by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game large mesh trawl survey. Barbeaux said Pacific cod fishery data from 2017 indicated slower rates of catch accumulation and lower catch per unit effort over the season, at least in the central Gulf, compared to other recent years, and a change in depth distribution toward deeper waters.

Read the full story at The Cordova Times

‘Fishal recognition’ for better fisheries management

June 29, 2017 — To monitor fish stocks in about 3 million square miles of ocean including the North Pacific Ocean and East Bering Sea, the Alaska Fisheries Science Center turned to facial recognition technology — or more accurately, “fishal recognition.”

Part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, the center is working to get more accurate counts of marine life by applying the same facial recognition techniques that identify people to recognize fish according to their facial features underwater.

The agency began experimenting with this technology several years ago and is now on its second generation of camera-based trawl, or CAM-Trawl. It has worked with ADL Embedded Solutions on hardware improvements, such as small form factor embedded Vision Boxes — the image acquisition computers — a Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor to enable real-time processing of image data and waterproof enclosures and connectors.

Before using CAM-Trawl, the traditional method of measuring fish stocks had been to use trawlers to scoop up all the fish in a particular region of the ocean, bring them on deck, count them and then multiply that number out, according to said JC Ramirez, director of engineering at ADL.  “If you did 10 square miles, multiply that by 10 for 100,” for example, he said.

But that method had several shortcomings, including extrapolation errors, high costs and ecological impacts on fish populations.

“They were looking for not only a more benign way to do that, but also perhaps a way that would allow them to cover more regions and get a little bit more specificity on the variations in the data from area to area,” Ramirez said.

Now researchers can pull a rig outfitted with the cameras that are linked back to ADL’s control computer, which typically resides in the wheelhouse. It monitors external sensors such as location, time, pressure sensors and radio frequency identification tag readings. It then, based on sensor input, communicates with one or more Vision Boxes to do the image capture, managing the remote on/off power, clock syncing, and starting and stopping of image collection.

Read the full story at GCN

Decades of trawl surveys help Bering Sea climate change research

May 9, 2017 — There’s a new tool to help scientists and others interested in monitoring how Bering Sea fisheries respond to a changing climate.

Biologist Steve Barbeaux of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center has created hundreds of graphics mapping where 22 species of fish spend their time during different life stages.

The data comes from annual trawl surveys dating back to 1984, but Barbeaux says that information was hard to analyze as a whole.

“To understand the true impacts of climate change we have to look across all of these life stages to get a true picture of what’s going on,” Barbeaux said. “It potentially could be beneficial at one stage of life, but harmful at another stage of it’s life.”

Barbeaux started small — looking at greenland turbot, a species that is greatly impacted by temperature changes. When the fish develop from larvae to juveniles, they depend on a cold pool in the Bering Sea. But without it:

“You get high natural mortality,” Barbeaux said. “So for [the greenland turbot] the impact really is at that settlement stage. Versus pollock where that impact has more potentially to do with their midlife stage.”

Read the full story at KTOO