Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Bering Sea crab pots drop as season opens

October 16, 2020 — Bering Sea crabbers are dropping pots for king crab, snow crab and bairdi Tanner when the fisheries get underway today, Oct. 15.

As expected, the catch was reduced for red king crab taken in the eastern Bering Sea waters of Bristol Bay — just 2.6 million pounds is a 30 percent drop from the 3.8 million pounds taken last season.

“We’ve heard from scientists in the past that there has not been good recruitment into that fishery for over a decade,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of the trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, which represents harvesters.

For the first time since 2018, there will be a bairdi Tanner crab opener with a catch of 2.3 million pounds.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Murkowski denounces Pebble mine at AFN and says she will take additional steps to protect Bristol Bay

October 16, 2020 — Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, on Thursday denounced the Pebble mine project and said that she will take further congressional action to protect the Bristol Bay region in Southwest Alaska.

“I recognize the need for new economic development in Southwest Alaska, I think we all do,” she said in a speech before the Alaska Federation of Natives.

“But I simply think this is the wrong mine in the wrong place,” the senator said, echoing the words of the late Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.

Murkowski, speaking by video during AFN’s annual convention, said she would introduce report language into the Senate Appropriations Committee next year to help protect the region where the mine is proposed for construction.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Seattle researchers aim to stop the spread of COVID-19 infections in Alaskan fishing industry

October 15, 2020 — As Washington-based fishing companies are heading to Alaska in the coming days and weeks, thousands of their employees will be participating in a project aimed at early detection and control of COVID-19 infections.

With close quarters and crew members sharing cabins, fishing ships are ripe for spreading the disease. This summer, American Seafoods, a leading processor in the North Pacific and Bering Sea, had COVID outbreaks on three of its massive trawlers and some of its workers received care at a tiny clinic in Unalaska.

“Alaska is at high risk of an infected workforce impacting small, mostly Native communities with little resources to deal with an outbreak,” said Joshua Berger, maritime director for the state’s Department of Commerce.

Read the full story at MSN

GAPP’s “Wild Alaska Pollock” marketing campaign hitting huge ROI numbers

October 15, 2020 — In the past year, the Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP) trade group has made a concerted push to expand the market reach of Alaska pollock both domestically in the United States and globally.

Since enlisting a new board of directors and expanding its annual budget to USD 4 million (EUR 3.4 million) in 2019, the organization has built awareness and demand for its marquee product through the use of the “wild Alaska pollock” tagline.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ALASKA: Al Gross and Sen. Dan Sullivan face off on fisheries in U.S. Senate debate

October 14, 2020 — The Kodiak Chamber of Commerce’s U.S. Senate debate is the only Alaska political forum of its kind devoted exclusively to fisheries. Saturday night’s showdown between Sen. Dan Sullivan and his challenger, Al Gross, had some heated exchanges.

“If this was a Nascar race, you would have corporate sponsor patches all over your jacket,” said Gross, who accused his Republican opponent of being beholden to special interests and rattled off a long list.

“The plastics industry. Big pharma. Big oil on your hat, and I’d save this spot right here in the middle for Pebble mine,” Gross said.

“The Pebble Mine is dead, and I’m going to keep it that way,” Sullivan fired back.

Gross referred to a secretly recorded video, in which the head of Pebble Mine claims Sullivan silently supports the mine.

Read the full story at KTOO

Halibut survey success: Pacific scientists make goals despite covid restrictions

October 14, 2020 — A “resounding success” is how scientists summed up this summer’s Pacific halibut survey, despite it being shortened and scaled down a bit because of covid constraints.

The so-called fishery-independent setline survey uses standardized methods to track population trends in the Pacific halibut stock, which ranges from the U.S. West Coast to British Columbia and the far reaches of the Bering Sea.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Sullivan and Gross battled it out on fisheries, Pebble Mine and Outside money in debut U.S. Senate debate

October 12, 2020 — After weeks of attack ads and snipes at each other in the media, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and challenger Al Gross laid into each other in real time during the 90-minute premiere debate in their race for a U.S. Senate seat.

The debate, hosted by ComFish Alaska and the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce, took place over Zoom and was centered around fisheries policy. The candidates early and often folded in central issues of the race, including campaign financing, the federal COVID-19 relief package and Pebble Mine.

Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, repeatedly characterized Gross as a threat to giving Democrats control of the Senate.

“He will … empower the radical left in the Senate, in the Congress,” Sullivan said in his closing remarks. “That has an anti-Alaska agenda. An agenda focused on shutting down fishing opportunities, more monuments, more Endangered Species Act designations. This is a huge threat to our state.”

Gross, standing outside and wearing a camo jacket, talked of his childhood in Southeast Alaska and growing up as a fisherman. He aggressively went at Sullivan for not denouncing the development of the Pebble Mine in Southwest Alaska earlier in the process.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Rep. Don Young says Alaska should be compensated if Army Corps or EPA block Pebble Mine permit

October 9, 2020 — On the Pebble Mine, Congressman Don Young is holding his ground. The state’s sole U.S. House member said Monday that the federal government has no business telling the Pebble Limited Partnership whether it should be allowed to build the proposed copper and gold mine near the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

Rather, Young said he thinks the state should be the one deciding whether or not the mine goes forward. And he says if the Environmental Protection Agency or Army Corps won’t give the mine a federal wetlands permit, the feds should compensate the state for the lost potential.

“I do not like outside influence. This is state land. People forget that — they never mention that, ol’ Tucker [Carlson] on Fox News never said it’s state land. It’s land that was granted to myself and to you and you and you and you and you. And when outside influence takes that land — or the value from the state — they should pay us for it,” Young said at a campaign stop at Ketchikan’s Chamber of Commerce.

His remarks echo what he said in August, when the Army Corps of Engineers announced it would require Pebble to submit plans for extensive environmental mitigation before it would issue a permit.

Read the full story at KRBD

What Happened to the Pollock Born in 2015?

October 9, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

n 2015, NOAA Fisheries scientists saw the lowest number of pollock larvae in the 30-year history of their Gulf of Alaska spring survey. They also observed the lowest number of juveniles in their late-summer survey, which has occurred since 2000. The low abundance in both surveys coincided with a marine heatwave of record ocean temperatures. Scientist Lauren Rogers and colleagues attribute the absence of larval and juvenile fish to environmental conditions that were not ideal for pollock growth and development during the heatwave.

“Marine ecosystems are complex with lots of connections,” said Rogers. “When you are trying to identify what might be behind a decline in abundance of fish at a particular age, it is often a series of factors that are at play.”

That is exactly what scientists found when looking at young pollock survival in 2015. Their survival was affected by:

  • Low-salinity conditions, which affected egg buoyancy and survival
  • Low abundance of prey for larval fish
  • Poor body condition of young-of-the-year (age-0) juveniles

Read the full release here

With new letter, Alaska GOP Gov. Dunleavy stands alone in Pebble’s defense

October 9, 2020 — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration continues to assist the company behind the Pebble mining project as it drafts plans to satisfy federal permitting requirements, and the governor this week rejected calls to condemn Pebble and stop his administration’s work on it.

Since the release of the secretly recorded “Pebble tapes” last month, Alaska’s Republican U.S. senators have distanced themselves from the project, which opponents describe as deeply politically unpopular. But Dunleavy, who’s also a Republican, says he has a responsibility to pursue projects like Pebble — if they can be safely built — to help improve the lives of rural Alaska residents.

Pebble’s proposal, he said in an interview, could unlock hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth for the people of Bristol Bay, the region where the mine would be built.

Read the full story at KTOO