March 17, 2020 — Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) called the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska “a major threat to Pacific salmon” at a hearing in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, 11 March.
Cantwell’s comments came while questioning Neil Jacobs, who has been nominated to serve as the next administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
March 17, 2020 — Cook Inlet beluga whales are continuing to decline in number, according to a NOAA abundance estimate released last month. From Alaska’s Energy Desk, Kavitha George has the story of how the decline in belugas is both controversial and largely unexplained.
The decline of the white whales in the inlet in view of Anchorage has been going on for decades. In the 1970’s they numbered around 1400. In 2008, Cook Inlet belugas were listed as endangered, and still numbers continued to drop. With new analysis methods today there are even fewer whales than previously thought — less than 300, and steadily declining from there.
Still, the reasons why Cook Inlet belugas are disappearing are still largely a mystery to researchers.
“It’s such a frustration to not be able to really understand why the population is not recovering,” said Paul Wade, a NOAA researcher who has done aerial surveys of Cook Inlet belugas since the 1990s. “So we are just stuck with hypotheses that we really cannot yet prove or disprove.”
March 17, 2020 — Around Bristol Bay, community leaders, health facilities and local entities are working to coordinate their preparations for the coronavirus.
Thousands of fishermen, processors, and cannery workers will travel to Bristol Bay in the coming months to participate in the commercial fishery. As of Thursday afternoon, no one in the region had been tested for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Alaska’s first known case of the disease was announced Thursday afternoon.
The Bristol Bay Area Health Corporation can now send Q-tip swabs to commercial labs to test for the disease. Dr. Cathy Hyndman is the clinical director for BBAHC.
“Once again, you still have to get the Q-tip in the viral juice to keep it alive until it gets down to the testing center,” Hyndman said. “And there are time limits on how quickly the thing must get there. It seems to be within 72 hours of obtaining the sample. Which is a challenge in the bush.”
Hyndman said they are discussing ways to get the swabbing materials needed for testing out to village clinics if necessary. BBAHC is holding continual education meetings with health aides on prevention, who needs to get tested, and how to administer the test.
March 13, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
NOAA Fisheries scientists are part of an international team that set sail on April 11. They are studying the impacts of continued warm ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska on Pacific salmon survival. It has been estimated that one-third of all Pacific salmon spend the winter in the Gulf of Alaska. While reduced in size compared to previous years, the current marine heatwave affecting the Gulf remains one of the top five largest heatwaves on record in the North Pacific in the last 40 years.
“Salmon affect more people culturally, economically, and recreationally than any other fish in the world,” said Doug Mecum, Deputy Regional Administrator for NOAA Fisheries Alaska Region. “This International Year of the Salmon expedition in the Gulf of Alaska expands international salmon research on the high seas to build understanding of how a changing climate may influence salmon ocean habitats, distributions, and productivity.”
Scientists suspect young salmon that can find sufficient food and experience enhanced early marine growth are those that best survive their first winter at sea. The survival of these fish largely determines the size of subsequent adult salmon populations. So, scientists think that environmental conditions have the greatest influence on salmon survival during their first year at sea.
“We know that ocean and climate conditions play a major role in regulating salmon abundances,” said Wess Strasburger, who will serve as chief scientist on the first leg of the survey. “But we don’t have a good understanding of the mechanisms regulating salmon abundances in the ocean.”
March 11, 2020 — For the next 33 days, Alaska processors who sell Pacific cod from the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) under the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification program will be switching from packaging and promotions that use the MSC logo to those that don’t.
But the state’s other certification program, Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM), will not be suspended on April 5, 2020. Pacific cod from the GOA, no longer certified as sustainable by MSC, continues to be labeled sustainable under RFM without interruption.
March 11, 2020 — In the U.S., there are five populations of beluga whales, all in Alaska. Of those five, the Cook Inlet population is the smallest and has declined by about seventy-five percent since 1979. Subsistence hunting contributed to this initial population drop, but this practice was regulated starting in 1999, with the last hunt in 2005. Still, the beluga whale population in Cook Inlet has yet to recover. This population was listed as an endangered species in 2008, with hopes that the population would begin to recover in the near future, but more than a decade later they continue to decline, with a current population estimate of 328 whales.
Like other toothed whales, beluga whales rely highly on sound. They produce acoustic signals to find prey and to communicate; consequently, scientists can use acoustic recordings to study beluga populations and behavior. In 2008, the NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) Alaska Fisheries Science Center, in partnership with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, put together an acoustic research program to continuously monitor beluga whale habitat. This program has two main objectives: (1) studying beluga whale behavior and population size, and (2) understanding the extent to which human-generated noise is disrupting beluga populations.
In the past, with raw audio recordings collected by underwater moorings, NOAA scientists used a very basic detector — based on energy levels in certain frequencies — to detect acoustic signals from beluga whales. This detector was tuned toward high recall, i.e., it was tuned to make sure that it didn’t miss any beluga sounds, but consequently allowed many sounds to pass through that were false positives, i.e. uninteresting background noise. Consequently, manual validation was required for each of those detections. This validation process is very time-consuming and labor-intensive, which limits the number of sensors that the team can deploy, and also limits the speed with which the team can provide answers to critical conservation questions.
March 9, 2020 — Alaska’s major economic sectors are trying to find the best way to monitor and respond to the impact of the global spread of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus first documented in Wuhan, China, in December.
While China is a significant trade partner with Alaska, regardless of whether the virus shows up in Alaska, it could disrupt the state’s most significant financial drivers. With billions of dollars at stake, Alaska’s fishing, tourism, and oil and gas industries are in an awkward position between knowns and unknowns as they prep for how the virus will impact their businesses.
The Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport is staying ready with round-the-clock mopping, wiping, and scrubbing.
“Our materials and our methods that we use here are designed to stop the spread of communicable disease in the airport. Whether it’s coronavirus or influenza or rotavirus or norovirus — all of those — we are always trying to keep the airport clean and safe,” airport manager Jim Szczesniak told KTUU.
The cleaning work is an investment in keeping goods and people moving through the airport, a global hub. Eighty percent of all air cargo from Asia to North America stops at the airport, and just under six million people pass through its terminals each year, many over the summer.
Vacationers bring about $4.5 billion into Alaska each year.
Among them: 1.4 million cruise ship passengers.
March 9, 2020 — The Marine Stewardship Council has suspended its certification of Pacific cod from the Gulf of Alaska.
The suspension will become effective on 5 April, 2020, according to an Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation press release.
March 6, 2020 — Alaska’s Atka mackerel and rockfish fisheries have achieved Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM) certification.
The Alaska RFM was created by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) in 2010, and in 2016, the scheme became the first to be benchmarked by the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative.
March 4, 2020 — Bristol Bay fishermen, tribal leaders and fisheries advocates once again offered their testimony on the value of protections for the world’s most productive sockeye salmon habitat.
On Monday, March 2, members of the Bristol Bay Defense Alliance testified in federal district court in support of a lawsuit the group filed against the Environmental Protection Agency in October.
The suit asserts the EPA’s withdrawal of proposed Clean Water Act protections was arbitrary and unlawful, and runs counter to the scientific and public record. The plaintiffs now await a ruling from Judge Sharon Gleason on whether the suit will move forward.
“Although we are now waiting for the judge’s ruling in this case, our primary goal is unchanged: protecting and promoting the Bristol Bay fishery,” said Andy Wink, executive director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association. “The science still supports 404 protections in Bristol Bay, and we will continue working to secure them.”
In 2010, six Bristol Bay Tribes requested the protections and soon were supported in the effort by commercial and sport fishing groups.