Saving Seafood

NPFMC December Meeting – Anchorage

November 5, 2019 — The following was released by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Council will meet December 2-10, 2019 at  the Hilton Hotel, Anchorage, Alaska. The meeting Agenda, schedule and a list of documents for review are posted and will be updated as items are available.

Other meeting information can be found on the Upcoming Meetings webpage.

REMINDERS

For attendees presenting during public comment, or for other presenters, the Council will be uploading presentations in advance to a single, shared, computer.  Please contact a staff person and have your presentation ready to be uploaded before the agenda item is scheduled.

The Council is accepting nominations for the AP and SSC. Nominations, letters of interest, and a resume should be submitted to the Executive Director through our comment portal by November 29th at 12pm Alaska time.

Public comments on all agenda items will be accepted until 12pm (Alaska time) on Friday, November 29, 2019.

Why Are Birds and Seals Starving in a Bering Sea Full of Fish?

November 4, 2019 — The shipment arrived airfreight: 47 seabird carcasses collected by the Bering Strait villagers of Shishmaref.

Marine biologist Gay Sheffield drove to the airport on an August day to pick up the grisly cargo and bring it back to a laboratory just off the main street of this northwest Alaska town.

Inside a cardboard box, Sheffield found mostly shearwaters, slender birds with narrow wings — also kittiwakes, crested auklets, thick-billed murres, a cormorant and a horned puffin. Most were painfully skinny, bones protruding like knife-edged ridges.

“They starved to death,” Sheffield said. “Why?”

The birds should have been able to fatten on small fish, krill and other food that typically abound in the northern Bering Sea, a body of water so rich in marine life that gray whales, after they winter off Mexico, swim more than 5,000 miles north to feed here each summer.

But as climate change warms the die-offs of seabirds and marine mammals have been on the rise. The grim tally includes a nearly fivefold increase in ice-seal carcasses spotted on shore, strandings of emaciated gray whales, and near the St. Lawrence Island village of Savoonga, a discouraging spectacle: auklets abandoning seaside nests as their chicks succumb to hunger.

Read the full story at the Pulitzer Center

Agencies still looking for answers in marine mammal die-off

November 4, 2019 — The National Marine Fisheries Service is still trying to figure out what is causing marine mammals to die at high rates in Alaska.

In September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared an unusual mortality event for three types of seals in the Arctic, including bearded, ringed and spotted seals in the Bering and Chukchi seas.

“Our normal stranding numbers for ice seals is about 20 to 30 a year,” said NOAA Marine Biologist Barbara Mahoney. “So we are dealing with more than five times the dead animals that we’ve had in the past.”

But it isn’t just seals.

In May, NOAA declared an unusual mortality event for gray whales along the West Coast from Mexico to Alaska. As of Sept. 30, the agency reported a total of 121 dead gray whales in 2019.

Read the full story at KTVA

Can crab and fish in Alaska adapt to more acidic oceans? Scientists aim to find out.

November 1, 2019 — Researchers are looking for ways that crab and fish in Alaska may be able to adapt to more acidic ocean water.

With carbon dioxide levels rising on the planet, ocean water absorbs some of that CO2 and water becomes more acidic. That change is already impacting a variety of sea creatures.

Members of the Alaska Ocean Acidification Network gave an update to Alaska’s Board of Fisheries and a public presentation on the topic in Anchorage in October. The network is a group of researchers, managers, and stakeholders interested in the looming problem.

“It’s not that there hasn’t been variability in the amount of carbon dioxide. It’s not that this hasn’t happened before,” said Robert Foy, director of NOAA Fisheries Alaska Fisheries Science Center. “It’s the speed at which it is happening during our lifetime and whether or not the animals and plants in the ocean are able to adapt fast enough given the speed at which it’s occurring.”

Read the full story Alaska Public Media

Alaska fishermen seek solutions as they grapple with the destructive appetites of sea otters

October 30, 2019 — They may be cute, but the voracious appetites of sea otters continue to cause significant damage to some of Southeast Alaska’s most lucrative fisheries.

How best to curtail those impacts will be the focus of a day long stakeholders meeting set for Nov. 6 in Juneau.

“All of the people who have anything to do with the otters hopefully will all be in the same room at the same time,” said Phil Doherty, co-director of the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association based in Ketchikan.

A 2011 report by the McDowell Group showed that otter predation on sea cucumbers, clams, urchins, crabs and other shellfish cost the Southeast economy nearly $30 million over 15 years. And their population has skyrocketed since then.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NOAA trawl surveys estimate more cod, pollock in Bering Sea

October 29, 2019 — The results from recent US government trawl surveys of the Bering Sea are in and they estimate the biomass of pollock and Pacific cod have risen relative to previous years.

Two vessels — Alaska Knight and Vesteraalen — completed summer surveys of the eastern and northern Bering Sea from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

The AFSC said in a presentation that the trawl surveys led scientists to estimate the pollock biomass at 5.46 million metric tons for the Eastern Bering Sea, a 75% year-on-year rise and 1.17m metric tons for the Northern Bering Sea, compared to the last major survey, which was performed in 2017.

For Pacific cod, the surveys led to an increased biomass estimate of 517,000t in the Eastern Bering Sea, a 2% y-o-y rise and an estimate of 368,000t for the Northern Bering Sea, up 30% from 2017.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ALASKA: North Pacific Council Takes Up Amendment 113; Adak Cod Fishery Still Uncertain

October 29, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Earlier this month, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council asked for more information on ways Pacific cod could be managed for the community of Adak and its seafood processing plant, which represents about half of the town’s economy.

Amendment 113 to the Magnuson-Stevens Act was rescinded by a federal judge as a result of a lawsuit brought on by representatives of the largely Seattle-based trawl fleet. The judge agreed with the plaintiffs that the Amendment was poorly worded and encouraged the Council to make changes to comply with the Magnuson-Stevens Act and several of its National Standards.

The unanimous motion began the process by calling for a discussion paper “on management options available to promote conservation of [Aleutian Islands] AI Pacific cod and the sustained participation of AI fishing communities.”

The Council wants “an update to the June 2019 discussion paper, including changes to BSAI Amendment 113 to include the modifications approved by the Council in December 2018” as well as an update on the status of the Amendment 113 litigation, and a discussion of how Amendment 113 addresses the MSA’s National Standards, a point in the judges decision that has been contested by the government. The council also directed staff to submit “a thorough examination of options available under MSA 303A for Limited Access Privilege Programs and outside of 303A to meet these objectives.”

Steven Minor, a spokesperson for the Adak plant Golden Harvest Alaska, said the day after the vote, “Yesterday the Council took action to begin the process of restoring Amendment 113.

“We expect the Discussion Paper outlined in the Motion to be brought back at the December Council meeting. If the Council continues to give Amendment 113 priority, we believe that the Discussion Paper will lead to an expedited process similar to the current Mothership package, which could result in A113 being reimplemented by the 2021 season.”

The Mothership package is one of now two issues the Council is currently addressing about cod in the Bering Sea. The other is the BSAI Pacific cod trawl catcher vessel cooperative style-limited access privilege program. The stranded cod in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea was dropped from further discussion.

Opposition to providing the same protections to Adak as the rescinded AM113 does has changed, with two former plaintiffs now dropping their objections. But opposition remains on at least one front: there is less Pacific cod in the eastern Bering Sea than before, and any apportionment from any management program, regardless of who for or where they are located, should reflect that. AM113 set aside 5,000 mt of Pacific cod for Adak when certain conditions were met.

The current owners of the Adak plant have invested millions of dollars in the facility, equipment, and community infrastructure. It was sorely needed over the years when the plant went through a list of owners that included major seafood companies and cooperative entities created by fishermen themselves.

Now they are facing an uncertain future with the fishery starting early next year.  The Council meets next December 2-10, 2019 in Anchorage.

This story was originally posted on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Bristol Bay Red King Crab Fishery Off to a Bumpy Start

October 28, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery is starting off with an abundance of drama, a near stand-down and tales of a drone scandal, and a paucity of male crab which keep getting bigger and bigger without a baby boom in the water and are the biggest on average in the history of the fishery.

The rationalized fleet is going for the lowest amount of red king crab since 1982, a storm is blowing in, permits not issued until the morning of the starting day, and apparently unfounded rumors of confidential crab data leaked from sailing drones.

The fleet of around 50 boats is targeting 3.8 million pounds of red king crab, the lowest amount since the harvest of 2.9 million pounds by 89 boats in 1982, the year of the great crash when the guideline harvest level was much larger at between 10 and 20 million pounds, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The crabbers won’t be protesting in port and staying off the fishing grounds, since the federal regulators returned to work Tuesday following a three day weekend, and issued the “hired master” permits required by some of the boat captains.

At a pre-season meeting with fishermen sponsored by Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers at the Grand Aleutian Hotel Sunday, Bristol Mariner Capt. Tom Sureyan called for stand-down by members of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange, to avoid legal penalties if a boat was caught without the required permit.

The call for a stand-down reminded some at the Unalaska meeting of the days when fishermen met in hotel conference rooms and voted to go on strike for higher prices, although this was not nearly as emotional.

But despite the process slowed by a federal holiday, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishing fleet finally got all the paperwork in order before the start of the season on Tuesday at noon, the official opener, although some were staying in port awaiting a forecasted storm.

ADF&G shellfish biologist Ethan Nichols said Tuesday that 45 boats were registered red king crab, and more were expected, and would eventually rise to 45 yo 55 vessels, about the same as last year when 55 participated.

Nichols said most of the boats were staying in port Tuesday, with a storm forecasted with 40-knot winds and 30-foot waves on Wednesday. But several vessels had already left and were out on the grounds ready to go fishing he said.

Last year’s average legal male red king crab weighed 7.1 pounds, up from 6.8 pounds the year before and biologists think the reason bigger animals are more common is because small- and medium-size crab are less common. While nobody can say with certainty why the stocks are declining, environmental factors are a leading theory, with deep waters warming up, and he also said it appears Pacific cod are munching more of the shellfish.

According to ADF&G records, 7.1 pounds per average male Bristol Bay red king crab is the heaviest ever, based on data going back to 1966.

Susan Hall, of the National Marine Fisheries RAM division in Juneau, said all the permits were issued on Tuesday morning, hours before the fishery opened, and as required by law. She said there was an “expectation” that the permits would be issued over the weekend, but that didn’t happen with federal offices closed Monday for Columbus Day.

ICE Executive Director Jake Jacobsen said the permits were delayed because of an earlier delay caused by federal computer problems, which slowed the issuance of individual fishing quotas to three days instead of a few hours.

“We’re not very happy about it,” said Jacobsen, saying some fishermen might have left for the grounds a day earlier if they had all their permits. “Almost half of the fleet didn’t have permits,” he said.

“They just ghosted us, they went black, they just didn’t respond” after federal offices closed Friday afternoon for the long weekend, Jacobsen said, adding that when the regulators returned to work Tuesday morning they gave the matter their full attention.

“It was an ordeal,” he said.

Jacobsen said the permit problem affected about half the ICE fleet, so the board of directors sought a voluntary stand-down to give all the boats an equal start. Of the 52 vessels in ICE, 27 boats already had their permits, while 25 did not, he said.

The hired master permits are only required for boats where the captain doesn’t own any IFQs, or individual fishing quotas, according to Krista Milani of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Unalaska. She said captains with a leased quota need the permits.

In a bright note, prices are looking good.

“I’m fairly confident we’ll get more than last year, but you never know for sure until the crab is sold,” Jacobsen said.

Last year’s final price was $10.53 a pound, above the advance price of $8.40 per pound.

Jacobsen doubted a fishery would even have happened with such a small quota in a pre-rationalized era when over 200 boats would compete for crab, and would probably catch excessive quantities. But now, with each boat assigned a specific amount, the fishery is “fairly easy to manage” he said.

At the Sunday hotel meeting and pizza party, ABSC Executive Director Jamie Goen also reported a rumor that confidential data on the location of tagged red king crab had been leaked by the Saildrones studying the crabs’ movement in a joint project of the Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration.

Goen said it sounded like a bogus story, and couldn’t believe a professional company like Saildrone would improperly release the latitudes and longitudes of where crab were found. Saildrone is based in the San Francisco area, founded by Richard Jenkins who set the world record for fastest wind-propelled land vehicle.

The two red unmanned sailing drones were launched recently in Unalaska to track crab tagged this summer by a fishing vessel hired for crab research, the Royal American, according to Leah Zacher of NOAA, based in Kodiak. The drones were set to sail between Sept. 26 and Nov. 10.

The crab were caught in a pot and then tagged over the summer during a survey also involving trawl gear to study a different crab species, Tanners, she said.

The allegedly leaked data might help fishermen find crab faster, instead of wasting time dropping pots into unproductive areas of the sea floor in a lean year, according to one theory, though that would be hard to prove according to Zacher who said an investigation turned up no leaks.

“As far as we can tell, it’s an unfounded rumor, and there’s nothing to this,” according to Zacher.

Jacobsen said he too heard the rumor which supposedly originated in a local bar where a technician disclosed location information, not that it would have done much good. “I don’t think it really would have helped anybody anyway,” Jacobsen said. ABSC is the science arm of ICE.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Sens. Ed Markey and Dan Sullivan introduce bipartisan bill to boost ocean health

October 28, 2019 — Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska on Friday introduced the Ocean, Coastal and Estuarine Acidification Necessitates (OCEAN) Research Act, which boosts investment in research that could improve ocean health and protect the seafood industry.

The senators said in a news release Friday that the bill would lead to greater research and monitoring of ocean acidification, which occurs as a consequence of carbon dioxide forming acids when dissolved in seawater. The process harms shellfish, coral reefs and other marine life essential for healthy ecosystems and coastal economies.

In coastal areas, acidification may interact with warming waters, harmful algal blooms and low-oxygen “dead zones” with severe impacts. Southern Massachusetts and Narragansett Bay have been identified as “acidification hotspots,” jeopardizing the $500 million-plus Massachusetts shellfish industry.

The bipartisan bill introduced Friday would reauthorize the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act, which lapsed in 2012 and provided funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation. The bill calls for engaging with coastal communities and the seafood industry through an advisory board and research grants.

Read the full story at MassLive

JESSICA HATHAWAY: On Pebble: Maybe I’ve had it wrong

October 25, 2019 — I’ve been covering Pebble Mine for my entire career with National Fisherman — coming up on 14 years.

In that time, I’ve pretty consistently hammered home that it’s foolhardy and short-sighted to trade one resource for another. The mine’s long-term risks to biodiversity and healthy, sustainable salmon fisheries in Bristol Bay simply outweigh the short-term benefits offered by the extraction of the Pebble metals deposit. This is based entirely on what we know about mining — not just the process itself, but rather more importantly, the remnants a mine like this leaves behind in perpetuity.

I still believe this, but today I have something else to say.

When I watched Alannah Hurley give testimony about her people, their way of life and that Pebble Mine is a threat to all of it, I had to go one deeper than I have before.

I’ve seen the comments attempting to justify the mine: “Don’t you like your car? Do you like having a smartphone? Then we need mines like this.” It’s true, we may need mines like this to sustain our lifestyles, but that doesn’t mean we need THIS mine.

Read the full story at National Fisherman