Saving Seafood

King salmon in Western Alaska are getting smaller, and research suggests predators could be the reason

April 15, 2021 — The size of king salmon returning to Western Alaska rivers to spawn has been decreasing over the past few decades. Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks think that they’re closer to understanding why.

Peter Westley and Andrew Seitz are fisheries scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who helped publish new research on king salmon in February. To answer why these salmon are getting smaller, researchers attached tags to the fish that can record the depth and temperature of the water around them. Seitz said that many of the tags on the salmon were recording temperatures above 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

“And we thought, ‘Well, where is it, you know, in the high 70s in the winter in the Bering Sea, even at depth?’ And the only place that we can infer that is that warm is in the belly of a salmon shark,” Seitz said.

Westley and Seitz’s research indicates that returning king salmon are getting smaller because the bigger ones are getting eaten. They said that predators, like salmon sharks, may target the older, larger kings because they stand out. Seitz said that predators’ preference for larger fish may have always existed, but there could just be more predators now than in the past.

Read the full story at KTOO

Cod stocks creep back up for Gulf of Alaska, but remain down for Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands

April 15, 2021 — Pacific cod stocks have begun to rebound in the Gulf of Alaska, but the total allowable catch (TAC) for 2021 remains low at 17,321 metric tons. Last year, managers curtailed the fishery in federally managed waters after stock assessments put the biomass near the bottom of the threshold for conducting the fishery.

Though recruitment of younger cod and uncaught fish from last year have added to the abundance in most recent assessments, full recovery of the stock could take years. The warm-water “blob” of 2014 has been blamed for the crash.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Seafarers union looks to Alaska as it seeks hundreds of apprentice workers on contracted vessels

April 14, 2021 — Alaska fishermen displaced by the COVID pandemic are being recruited for seafaring jobs aboard U.S. cargo barges, tankers, towboats, military support vessels, research and cruise ships and more.

The Seafarers International Union is searching nationally for 300 apprentice workers on the vessels they are contracted to crew. Recruiters tout Alaskans as being at the top of their list.

“The reason for that is people from Alaska come with a work ethic already. They’ve been working since they could stand up. And that’s why they’re so good,” said Bart Rogers, assistant vice president at the Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship in Maryland that has trained mariners for the union for over 50 years.

“It’s very appealing to people who live in Alaska because they can sail in a safe environment, earn a very good wage, get benefits and medical coverage for them and their family, advanced training is guaranteed, then they can go back home and spend the money they make,” said Rich Berkowitz, vice president of Pacific Coast Operations at Seattle’s Transportation Institute, who helps recruit and assess potential mariners, adding that it also includes options for veterans and Native hire.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Alaska’s Herring Seasons Winding Down in Sitka, Ketchikan, and Kodiak, Togiak Ahead

April 14, 2021 — Herring sac roe harvests have begun winding down in Southeast Alaska and Kodiak, leaving the remaining fishery in Togiak for what used to be an early shot in the arm for seiners before salmon season started. While herring returns have increased in recent years, the market has fallen in size and value.

This year in Sitka, the herring sac roe fishery began March 27 and closed April 9 at 6 p.m. Preliminary estimates from processors put the total harvest at approximately 16,000 tons of herring. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game continue to conduct surveys as part of their stock assessment research. On April 12, the the cumulative estimate of observed herring spawn in Sitka Sound was 83.2 nautical miles.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: Bering Sea fishermen likely had COVID-19 but still went to Unalaska bar. Now, locals have to quarantine.

April 14, 2021 — Unvaccinated people who visited Unalaska’s Norwegian Rat Saloon late Saturday are being asked to quarantine this week after officials say they shared the space with fishermen who broke their company’s own quarantine plans while they were awaiting COVID-19 testing results.

The fishermen came from a United States Seafoods vessel where COVID-19 cases were suspected, but they still visited the popular bar after 10 p.m., Unalaska City Manager Erin Reinders said Monday.

“There was a vessel that came into town on Saturday, and on that vessel, there’s been 26 confirmed individuals who tested positive for COVID-19 and then two additional presumed positive for COVID-19,” Reinders said. “There was a breach in the company’s isolation plan with some of those positive individuals, and due to that breach, that did cause a community exposure.”

Reinders said the fishing company is working on its plan for isolation and quarantine of its 51-person crew aboard the factory trawler Seafreeze America. She didn’t say whether they are quarantining on or off the boat.

The city, meanwhile, is considering what kind of action it could take against the crew members who knew they may have been COVID-positive and still breached quarantine to visit the saloon, said Reinders.

Read the full story at KTOO

As halibut decline, Alaska Native fishers square off against industrial fleet

April 14, 2021 — Each year in mid-June, Father John, dressed in long black robes, heads to the small boat harbor on St. Paul, a tiny island of 500 souls in the middle of the Bering Sea. It’s the start of the fishing season, and the Blessing of the Fleet is a community affair, an opportunity to give best wishes to the fishermen heading out into the unforgiving northern waters in search of halibut.

The island’s small, independent fishing fleet of only 15 vessels needs all the help it can get: Far offshore, factory trawlers targeting other fish species net and chuck overboard as waste millions of pounds of the valuable fish each year. “They’re killing our halibut,” says St. Paul fisherman Myron Melovidov, who fishes with his grown sons.

Pacific halibut are flat and bottom dwelling, and can weigh hundreds of pounds. About 20 years ago, the population started taking a dive, and St. Paul fishermen—as well as halibut fishermen across Alaska—faced increasing cuts in their harvest limits.

“A lot of people had to fold,” says Jeff Kauffman, a member of the St. Paul fishing fleet whose kids have grown up fishing on his boat.

Read the full story at National Geographic

Key federal fisheries advisory panel loses Alaska Native voice

April 13, 2021 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council often flies under the radar, meeting in dimly lit conference rooms and delving into technical questions about fish stocks and ecosystems. But it has a hugely important job: conservation of species and managing offshore fisheries for species like cod, pollock and crab, which are huge economic drivers for coastal communities on the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.

At the end of last year, the council went into a closed door meeting. When it emerged, it had eliminated two seats on its key advisory panel: Ernie Weiss of Anchorage who had reached his cap for reappointment on the panel, and Natasha Hayden of Kodiak, a vocal advocate for smaller vessels and Alaska Natives, who had been seeking reappointment.

The blowback of Hayden’s ouster was immediate, especially among stakeholders advocating for Indigenous voices in fisheries management.

At the council’s February meeting, more than 20 people — from conservation council representatives, to well established commercial fishermen, to policy directors at Native non-profits — provided public testimony calling for Hayden’s reappointment.

“This is a time when we should be adding more Indigenous voices to council bodies and not less,” Marissa Merculieff, director of justice and governance administration for the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Tribal Government, told the council.

Read the full story at KTOO

Pacific heat wave had lasting impacts on Gulf of Alaska marine species

April 13, 2021 — When a heat wave swept through the northeast Pacific Ocean between 2014 and 2016, it changed the marine makeup of the Gulf of Alaska. The warm water decimated some commercial fish populations.

Some species bounced back right away. But a recent study from NOAA finds others are rebounding more slowly.

NOAA’s study charted the impacts of the heat wave — also known as “the blob” —  on gulf marine species over time, through 2019.

Some of the blob’s impacts on local marine life were immediate. Rob Suryan is a program manager for NOAA in Juneau and the lead author on the study. He said in 2015 and 2016, thousands of common murres were found dead.

“Especially noticeable in the Prince William Sound, near Whittier, actually, a beach was just littered with thousands of carcasses,” he said.

NOAA focused on longer-term trends in this study using data from Gulf Watch Alaska, a group that monitors species recovery in Alaska waters and is funded by the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.

Read the full story at KTOO

Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation cancels this spring’s Symphony of Seafood events

April 12, 2021 — The Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF) is cancelling the rescheduled Symphony of Seafood events planned for this spring due to “ongoing health and safety concerns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,” the organization said in a press release.

Preparation efforts for the next installment of the event are planned to resume later this year, with the call for product to be released in August 2021.

Read the full story at Seafood Source