Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Gov. Dunleavy announces members of new fisheries bycatch task force

January 10, 2022 — Gov. Mike Dunleavy has named 11 people to a new task force set to study fish bycatch happening in Alaska waters.

In November, Dunleavy issued an administrative order to establish the Alaska Bycatch Review Task Force, with the aim of “exploring the issue of bycatch and providing recommendations to policymakers with the goal of improving the health and sustainability of Alaska’s fisheries.”

Bycatch is the incidental harvest of fish like salmon and halibut by commercial operators that cannot be processed or sold. The practice remains a target of criticism by subsistence and personal-use fishermen, particularly at a time when stocks of a number of species are collapsing around Alaska.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Off Washington state’s coast, crabbers get early start to season, haul in bounty of Dungeness crab

January 6, 2022 — Some 60 vessels in Washington’s oceangoing crab fleet worked through a stormy December to bring in more than 4.69 million pounds of Dungeness in a strong start to the annual harvest.

For fishers, processors and retailers, this is a welcome change from the past six years when the season hasn’t started until Dec. 31 or later due to the lack of meat in the crabs or the presence of domoic acid, a marine biotoxin.

The Dungeness crab, as well as shrimp and razor clams, have benefited from improved ocean conditions of the Northwest coasts with strong cold-water upwellings of the past year bringing nutrients and helping to strengthen the base of the marine food web.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

 

NMFS Revises TAC Amounts For Gulf of Alaska Pollock, Pacific Cod

January 6, 2022 — The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) revised the 2022 total allowable catch (TAC) amounts for pollock and Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska. The changes, which increases the pollock TAC and decreases the Pacific cod TAC, were put into effect at 12 noon Alaska local time on January 1, 2022.

According to NMFS, the pollock TAC will increase from 99,784 metric tons (mt) to 141, 117 mt. The TAC for Pacific cod decreased from 27,961 mt to 24,111 mt.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: Fisheries board member steps down, citing workload and bout with COVID

January 5, 2022 — Indy Walton of Soldotna has resigned from his seat on the state Board of Fisheries, the seven-member board that makes decisions about fish allocation and management in Alaska’s waters.

Walton said he’s dealing with a confluence of health issues that have been exacerbated by stress and a bout of COVID-19. While he thought he could balance those issues when he accepted Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s nomination in September, he said he has since had to reconsider.

“I hoped when I accepted the position that things would be different and change as far as my schedule, and I didn’t realize some of the health issues that I was being faced with until doing some tests,” he said. “And I know now I’ve got to alleviate some of the stress and lighten my load a little bit.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Best and Worst in Alaska Seafood: Laine Welch’s Picks and Pans for 2021

January 5, 2022 — Since 1991, the weekly Fish Factor column has highlighted Alaska’s seafood industry with its annual Picks and Pans — a no holds barred look back at some of the year’s best and worst, and my choice for the year’s biggest fish story.

Here are the choices for 2021, in no particular order:

Most business potential — Seaweed mariculture. The market value of U.S. seaweed is pegged at $41 billion by 2031. Driving the demand is increased use in pharmaceuticals, health supplements, as a natural thickening agent and in animal feeds.

Best fish invention — Lightweight, collapsible slinky pots for catching black cod that solve the problem of whales stripping as much as 75 percent of the pricey fish from longline hooks.

Biggest fish booster — The pandemic continues to push record sales of all seafood with no end in sight. Pre-covid, most Americans only ate fish and shellfish at restaurants. Now they are buying seafood to cook at home. Online sales also have soared and are expected to grow.

Best fish fighters — Reps. Sarah Vance of Homer, Kevin McCabe of Big Lake, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins of Sitka. They’ve put partisan politics aside to protect Alaska’s fishery resources.

Best fish knowledge builders — Alaska Sea Grant

Read the full story at National Fisherman

New NOAA reports on Alaska’s oceans highlight disruptive warming trends

December 27, 2021 — The annual Ecosystem Status Reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collect a wide range of data to better assess maritime trends and help steer fisheries management.

Elizabeth Siddon, who edited a report on the eastern Bering Sea, called the annual documents “anthologies of the ecosystems as we know them” — collaborative efforts pulling information from scientists, community members and industry groups, among others. The reports released this week also cover the Gulf of Alaska and Aleutian Islands.

If there’s any theme in this year’s detailed surveys of Alaska’s marine systems, it’s heat. The three areas assessed all involve “sustained warm conditions” that are affecting environment dynamics like sea ice and water columns, as well as the composition of animal stocks thriving and failing in recent years. The assessments factor into harvest policies set by the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council and touch any Alaskans who depend on sea animals, whether for work or food.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

First round of coronavirus relief funding distributed to Alaska fisheries

December 23, 2021 — “The check is in the mail” for Alaskan fisheries approved for the first round of funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Securities Act, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G).

Eligible participants should receive their checks in a few weeks, the ADF&G said in a news release Wednesday.

Alaska received $50 million of the $300 million of CARES Act funding set aside for the U.S. fisheries industry. The approved Alaskan applicants will split $49,371,189 of the funds after administrative costs. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) received $349,700 for the “assessment on federal grants,” the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission received $201,121 for administrative fees and ADF&G received $68,900 in administrative fees, according to information on ADF&G’s website.

Read the full story at The Center Square

Fishery council adopts tighter Bering Sea halibut bycatch limits based on stocks

December 22, 2021 — The governing body in charge of regulating halibut bycatch limits in the Bering Sea has adopted a new management system based on stocks of the valuable groundfish.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council adopted the policy earlier in the month on an 8-3 vote. It’s set to go into effect in 2023.

Currently, there is a static cap on halibut bycatch for the Amendment 80 trawl fleet. If the fleet hits that cap, the fishery would close.

Advocates of tighter bycatch limits have said the current cap is too high. Since 2015, when the council last amended bycatch regulations, they have pushed for them to be lowered.

Read the full story at KTUU

 

Prime Time: Alaska native community proposes co-managed marine sanctuary

December 21, 2021 — Citing observable and worrisome marine ecosystem changes, the Unangax̂ (Aleut) community of St. Paul Island has proposed co-management with the federal government and the community of St. George Island of a new marine sanctuary around the Pribilof Islands of Alaska, “encompassing 100 nm centroid boundaries around the two inhabited islands of St. Paul and St. George,” according to an official nomination proposal that was released Monday, Dec. 20.

For now, the sanctuary would be named Alaĝum Kanuux̂* (pronounced ahl-ah-GOOM ka-NOH), meaning Heart of the Ocean, and encompass nearly 53,000 square miles of waters, excluding a quarter-mile buffer zone around the St. George and St. Paul Harbors and all shoreside and submerged industrial facilities on both islands. The shoreward boundary would be the mean high tide line.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

NOAA Releases 2021 Ecosystem Status Reports for the Eastern Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Aleutian Islands

December 21, 2021 — These reports are a compilation of inputs from our own research and the work of many contributors from fishing, coastal and Alaska Native communities, academic institutions, the State of Alaska and other federal agencies.

Today, NOAA Fisheries released three key reports on the state of Alaska’s marine ecosystems. For more than two decades, Alaska has been using this ecosystem information to inform fisheries management decisions. To assess the status of Alaska’s marine ecosystems, scientists look at a variety of indicators.

For instance, they monitor oceanographic conditions. These include sea surface temperatures and temperatures near the sea floor, plankton, and wind and weather patterns in the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Aleutian Islands annually and over time.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries