Saving Seafood

Alaska Halibut Season Opens March 14

March 18, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

From Southeast Alaska to the Bering Sea, Alaska fishermen are heading out to catch halibut with the March 14 opening of the 2020 halibut season.

This season’s regulations were adopted at the annual meeting of the International Pacific Halibut Commission last month and are included in a Final Rule NOAA Fisheries filed with the Federal Register. They go into effect immediately.

Included in this season’s federal regulations are the catch limits established by the IPHC, and basic regulations for the commercial and sport halibut fisheries. Overall, the 2020 catch limits for the combined commercial and charter halibut fisheries in Alaska are 9 percent lower than the 2019 limits.

This final rule also implements management measures for the charter halibut fisheries in Areas 2C and 3A. These measures are necessary to keep charter harvests to within their respective allocations under a catch sharing plan with the directed commercial fishery.

Charter management measures in Area 3A (Gulf of Alaska) are more restrictive than 2019. All Tuesdays and Wednesdays will be closed to halibut retention in Area 3A. There is a daily bag limit of two halibut, but one fish must be no greater than 26 inches.

In Area 2C (Southeast Alaska), charter anglers are restricted to one halibut per day, with a reverse slot limit where retained halibut must be less than or equal to 40 inches, or greater than or equal to 80 inches.

Unguided halibut sport fishers in Alaska will continue to observe a daily bag limit of 2 fish of any size per person per day.

Alaska commercial IFQ halibut season dates are March 14 through November 15, 2020 for all IPHC management areas in Alaska.

Endangered Cook Inlet belugas continue to decline, scientists aren’t sure why

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.”

Read the full story at KNBA

In Bristol Bay, America’s largest salmon fishery, preparations begin for coronavirus prevention ahead of the season

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.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

NOAA Fisheries Part of International Team to Study Salmon in Gulf of Alaska Under Continuing Warm Conditions

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.”

Read the full release here

ALASKA: RFM Certification for Gulf of Alaska Cod Remains, While MSC Certification is Suspended

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.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Helping Scientists Protect Beluga Whales with Deep Learning

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.

Read the full story at Medium

Are You Prepared: Coronavirus and the Alaska Economy

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.

Read the full story at KTUU