Saving Seafood

Trawl overhaul? Alaska fishermen go to bat for kings and crabs

October 8, 2021 — Animosity toward Alaska’s trawl fleet reached a fever pitch over the summer. In most parts of the state, where salmon fishing would have kept stakeholders busy, lackluster returns and some closures instead gave thousands of fishermen more time to mull over answers to where the fish may have gone.

Although Alaska’s overall salmon returns have been strong this year, the results are stratified. King salmon returns, specifically, have been in a long and steady decline. Statewide, king landings — by number of fish — have declined by more than 70 percent in the last 40 years, from a high of 875,630 fish in 1982 to 265,081 in 2020. The harvest so far for 2021 is about 212,000 fish.

When accounting for landings by weight, the reduction is almost 85 percent over the same period, from 16.9 million pounds in 1982 to 2.9 million in 2020, according to the Alaska Department of Fish & Game.

As council meetings went virtual during the pandemic-induced shutdowns, participation and feedback from local stakeholders increased significantly.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

In one place, for one fish, climate change may be a boon

October 7, 2021 — On a mid-July afternoon, when the tide was starting to come in on the Naknek River, the Bandle family’s commercial fishing nets lay stretched across the beach, waiting for the water to rise. With the fishing crew on break, Sharon Bandle emerged from a tar-paper-sided cabin that serves as kitchen and bunkhouse with a plate of tempura salmon and a bowl of cocktail sauce. Everyone dug in.

Here in southwestern Alaska’s Bristol Bay, the Bandle family has fished by setnet for nearly 40 years, anchoring nets hundreds of feet long on the beach, then stretching them perpendicularly into the river’s current. The webbing hangs like a curtain from a line of softball-size corks, intercepting sockeye salmon as they swim upstream to their spawning grounds. Crews of two or three in small aluminum skiffs pick the salmon from the nets; processing plants on the far side of the river head and gut the catch, then ship the bulk of it to China and elsewhere for additional processing.

Bristol Bay’s sockeye harvest has long made up about half of the global catch of this species, in a seasonal blitz as short as it is enormous: The fishery lasts a mere six weeks. Each summer, 15,000 seafood processors, boat-based fishermen, and setnetters—including families such as the Bandles—gather here to support an industry worth more than $2 billion in 2019. Some fishermen will net enough cash to live on until the fish come back the next year. And this year, Bristol Bay outdid itself, notching the largest sockeye run in the region’s recorded history with an astonishing 66 million returning fish. Even more astonishing, this season capped nearly a decade of extraordinarily high salmon returns in Bristol Bay, where sockeye harvests have reached more than 50 percent above the most recent 20-year average.

But such riches are localized. Outside of Bristol Bay, salmon fisheries are failing, including those on British Columbia’s famed Fraser River, on Alaska’s Chignik and Copper Rivers, and in Cook Inlet. Five hundred miles north of Bristol Bay, Yukon River salmon runs have totally collapsed.

Scientists believe that climate change is boosting salmon numbers here in Bristol Bay, even as warming temperatures and other factors seem to be driving the fish to extinction elsewhere. For salmon and humans across the North Pacific, rapidly warming temperatures are creating both winners and losers. As fish totes fill to bursting in Bristol Bay, people elsewhere are left holding empty nets.

But even as more salmon are returning to Bristol Bay, some fishermen here worry that it might be time for a bust.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

 

Study Finds Growing Potential for Toxic Algal Blooms in the Alaskan Arctic

October 6, 2021 — Changes in the northern Alaskan Arctic ocean environment have reached a point at which a previously rare phenomenon—widespread blooms of toxic algae—could become more commonplace. These blooms potentially threaten a wide range of marine wildlife and the people who rely on local marine resources for food. That is the conclusion of a new study about harmful algal blooms of the toxic algae Alexandrium catenella published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Microscopic algae in the ocean are most often beneficial and serve as the base of the marine food web. However, some species produce potent neurotoxins that can directly and indirectly affect humans and wildlife. 

Dormant Cysts Could Seed a Toxic Bloom

The study was led by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in collaboration with colleagues from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and researchers in the United States, Japan, and China. It looked at samples from seafloor sediments and surface waters collected during 2018 and 2019. Samples were taken in the region extending from the Northern Bering Sea to the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas north of Alaska. The sediment samples allowed the researchers to count and map Alexandrium cysts. The cysts are a seed-like resting stage that lies dormant in the seafloor for much of the year, germinating or hatching only when conditions are suitable. The newly hatched cells swim to the surface and rapidly multiply using the sun’s energy. This produces a “bloom” that can be dangerous due to the family of potent neurotoxins, called saxitoxins, that the adult cells produce.

When the algae are consumed by some fish and all shellfish, those toxins can accumulate to levels that can be dangerous to humans and wildlife. In fish, toxin levels can be high in digestive and excretory organs (e.g., stomach, kidney, liver), but are very low in muscle and roe.  Although fish can be potential toxin vectors, the human poisoning syndrome is called paralytic shellfish poisoning. Symptoms range from tingling lips, to respiratory distress, to death. The toxin can also cause illness and death of marine wildlife such as larger fish, marine mammals, and seabirds. This is of particular concern for members of coastal communities, Alaskan Native Villages, and Tribes in northern and western Alaska who rely on a variety of marine resources for food.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

 

 

Bristol Bay salmon fishery is generating big revenue this year, but most of the money will leave Alaska

October 5, 2021 — The preliminary value to fishermen of the nearly 41 million salmon caught this summer at Alaska’s largest fishery at Bristol Bay is nearly $248 million, 64% above the 20-year average. That figure will be much higher when bonuses and other price adjustments are paid out.

But as with the fish bucks tallied from Alaska’s cod, pollock, flounders and other groundfish (a .78 share), the bulk of the Bay’s salmon money won’t be circulating through Alaska’s economy because most of the fishing participants live out of the state.

In 2017, for example, 62% of gross earnings from the Bristol Bay driftnet fishery and 40% from the setnet fishery left Alaska as nonresident earnings.

That’s due to the region experiencing an overall 50% decline in local permit holdings since Alaska began limiting entry into commercial salmon fisheries in 1975. Combined, residents of the Bristol Bay region now hold less than one-quarter of the region’s salmon permits.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Low King Salmon Runs In Western Alaska Trigger Bering Sea Bycatch Caps

September 29, 2021 — Unofficial estimates of this summer’s king salmon run in Western Alaska rivers show a lower than average return, which will trigger stricter limits on the Bering Sea pollock fishery’s bycatch caps for king salmon next year.

State biologists said that about 129,000 king salmon returned to the Kuskokwim River this year. Of those, the state estimates that about 28,000 were harvested, and 101,000 made their way upriver to spawn.

The state’s escapement goal of 65,000 to 120,000 kings was met, but federal and tribal managers’ escapement goal of 110,000 king salmon was not. This year’s king salmon run is slightly higher than last year’s estimated run size of 116,000 king salmon, but much lower than the 2019 run of 233,000.

Read the full story at KYUK

ALASKA: Pandemic economy contributes to record Southeast Dungeness crab prices

September 28, 2021 — Southeast Alaska’s Dungeness crab fetched record breaking prices this summer. The size of the harvest was close to average, but the value of the crab was exceptional.

Southeast’s summer Dungeness crab season ended up being worth $13 million. That’s about double the $7.52 million average over the last decade.

The summer fishery brought in just over 3.09 million pounds of Dungeness crab. That’s slightly above the ten year average but well below last year’s near-record harvest of 5.87 million, which was the second highest harvest ever recorded.

Still, the average price paid for Dungeness crab this summer was a record breaker at $4.21 per pound.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

Smart buoys offer hope for reducing environmental and economic damage caused by lost fishing gear

September 28, 2021 — Lost fishing gear — be it nets, lines or pots — continues “ghost fishing” forever, causing a slow death for countless marine creatures and financial losses to fishermen.

Now new “smart buoys” can track and monitor all types of deployed gear and report its location directly to a cellphone or website.

Blue Ocean Gear of California created and builds buoys that also can track ocean temperatures, depth, movement, even how much has been caught. The small, 3-pound buoys are just 7 inches in diameter, don’t require special training to use and are tough enough to handle the harshest ocean conditions.

“All the information is collected in a database,” said Kortney Opshaug, company founder and CEO. “We have both a mobile app that you can access from your phone or a web interface that allows you to see more of the data, charts and things like that. Most of the buoys have satellite transmission, but some also have radio transmission and we’re working more and more with that. They’re slightly more cost effective, and we can create networks out on the water that are talking to one another.”

Opshaug and her Silicon Valley team of engineers and product developers were motivated primarily by the impacts of lost gear on the marine environment and the costs to fishermen.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Alaska Native graduate program aims to elevate Indigenous knowledge in fisheries research

September 24, 2021 — A program focused on bridging the gap between Indigenous knowledge and Western science is entering its second year at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

It’s called Tamamta, a Yup’ik and Sugpiaq word that means “all of us” or “we,” and it’s part of UAF’s School of Fisheries.

Fisheries professor Courtney Carothers is the faculty member in charge. She says the nine Indigenous graduate students starting their fellowships this year are from all over Alaska, but they’re united by a common goal.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. 

Courtney Carothers: The clear message coming out of a lot of different projects was that there’s this sense that the kind of persistent deep inequities that Alaska Native people are facing in fisheries, education, research, governance systems is pronounced.

There’s this real lack of Indigenous people, Indigenous values, Indigenous knowledge systems included in how we teach and research and govern fisheries in Alaska. And we feel like that’s a real gap and problem. And so we can sort of do our fisheries and marine work in a different way, really trying to elevate Indigenous knowledge systems that are in Alaska — 14,000-plus years deep, to really be used alongside Western science in these systems.

Casey Grove: There really is a lot of knowledge there. What does it mean to include Indigenous knowledge and science? What does that look like?

Read the full story at KTOO

 

ALASKA: With low stocks and closures looming, Bering Sea crab fleet braces for another blow

September 23, 2021 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced earlier this month that all major crab stocks are down. And for the first time in over 25 years, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed.

The species is world-renowned and was largely made famous by the popular reality tv show “Deadliest Catch.” In the glory days of king crab fishing, locals describe hundreds of boats rushing into the cold Bering Sea to harvest millions of pounds of the crab worth even more millions of dollars.

The commercial fishery has been around since 1966. In the 55 years since then, there have been just two other closures: once in the 1980s and again in the 1990s.

Now, the Bering Sea crab fleet and fishing communities around the state and the Pacific Northwest are bracing for another blow to their industry and are calling for new conservation efforts.

“It’s big news, and it’s hitting our industry really hard,” said Jamie Goen, executive director for Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association representing commercial crab harvesters. “We’re disappointed and deeply concerned.”

Read the full story at KNBA

 

Valuable crab populations are in a ‘very scary’ decline in warming Bering Sea

September 22, 2021 — Federal biologist Erin Fedewa boarded a research vessel in June in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and journeyed to a swath of the Bering Sea that typically yields an abundance of young snow crab in annual surveys.

Not this summer. At this spot, and elsewhere, the sampling nets came up with stunningly few — a more than 99% drop in immature females compared to those found just three years earlier.

Biologists also found significant downturns in the numbers of mature snow crab as they painstakingly sorted through the sea life they hauled up.

“The juveniles obviously were a red flag, but just about every size of snow crab were in dramatic decline,” Fedewa said. “It’s very scary.”

This collapse in the Bering Sea snow crab population comes amid a decade of rapid climatic changes, which have scrambled one of the most productive marine ecosystems on the planet in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand. The changes are forcing them to reconsider how they develop models to forecast harvest seasons.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times