Saving Seafood

Shellfish and seaweed farms are a growing industry in Alaska

August 28, 2019 — Underwater and out of sight are the makings of a major Alaska industry with two anchor crops that clean the planet while pumping out lots of cash: shellfish and seaweed.

Alaskans have applied for over 2,000 acres of new or expanding undersea farms, double the footprint from two years ago, ranging from .02 acres at Halibut Cove to nearly 300 acres at Craig.

Nearly 60% of the newest applicants plan to grow kelp with the remainder a mix of kelp and/or Pacific oysters, said Cynthia Pring-Ham, aquatic farming coordinator at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which issues the permits. Fish and Game partners with the state Department of Natural Resources, which leases the tidal and submerged lands for farms.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Pink salmon payout

August 28, 2019 — Applications should now be in the hands of Alaska salmon fishermen and processors hurt by the 2016 pink salmon fishery failure.

NOAA Fisheries last month approved $56.3 million in relief funds at Kodiak, Prince William Sound, Chignik, Lower Cook Inlet, South Alaska Peninsula, Southeast Alaska, and Yakutat.

Funds are being distributed by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC).

Salmon permit holders who show losses from the pink bust will split $31.8 million based on average dockside values over even years from 2006 to 2014.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Detecting Fish from Ocean-Going Robots to Complement Ship-Based Surveys

August 23, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The ocean is vast, and fish swim.

These are challenges for scientists who need to find out when, where, and how many, fish are found in Alaska’s marine waters. They also want to know which species and what ages are found there—all information essential to managing Alaska’s valuable commercial fisheries sustainably.

Recent advances in autonomous vehicle and fish finders or echosounder (sonar) technology may help overcome those challenges. A new NOAA Fisheries study demonstrates that unmanned surface vehicles can expand the range and duration of ship-based acoustic fish surveys.

“This opens a window in time and space that we didn’t have using ships alone,” said Alex De Robertis, the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center scientist who led the study. “Ship-based surveys are limited because they are short, and mostly done in summer—we don’t know what happens the rest of the time. Our results show that oceangoing robots such as saildrones now make autonomous long-term acoustic measurements possible.”

Read the full release here

ALASKA: Drought and dry conditions impacting salmon across state

August 22, 2019 — This summer has been hot and dry in Alaska — so hot, in fact, that even the fish are feeling it.

All over coastal Alaska, temperatures have hovered significantly greater than normal. The state began sweltering in mid-June and crested on July 4, with Anchorage hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit and Bethel reaching 91. The bright, sunny days brought Alaskans out to swim and recreate, but they also left the waters where salmon were returning exposed to the direct, unforgiving heat.

Shallower lakes and rivers across Southcentral and Southeast Alaska were the first to heat up. In the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, lakes like Larsen and Judd, where the Alaska Department of Fish and Game operates weirs for sockeye salmon, reached 80 degrees. The Kuskokwim River in western Alaska registered water temperatures about 10 degrees greater than normal, likely contributing to a reported salmon die-off as the fish headed upstream.

On the lower Kenai Peninsula, the Anchor River hit its warmest temperature on record on July 7: 73 degrees. It’s dropped since then to about 66.2 degrees, but the spike was troubling, said Sue Mauger, a scientist with Homer-based conservation nonprofit Cook Inletkeeper. The lack of rain has contributed to the temperature increases too.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

US government completes big wild salmon buy, seeks more pollock

August 21, 2019 — The United States government continues to support Alaska’s wild fisheries with a USD 3.1 million (EUR 2.8 million) purchase of wild salmon and a bid for nearly 400,000 pounds of Alaska pollock.

The United States Department of Agriculture awarded its most recent wild salmon contract to Trident Seafoods, for federal child nutrition and other domestic food assistance programs.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Warm, dry weather causing abnormalities in Bristol Bay’s salmon runs

August 21, 2019 — The world’s largest sockeye fishery, Bristol Bay, Alaska, clocked its second-largest harvest ever this season, with a haul of more than 43 million fish. The big catch, combined with a robust base price – most of the fishery’s major processors have posted an initial ex-vessel buying price at USD 1.35 (EUR 1.20) per pound – should make 2019 among the most lucrative years in the fishery’s history. This season’s historic catch comes after a string of abnormally large runs, including last season’s 62.3 million salmon, the largest in Bristol Bay’s history.

But despite a string of productive runs that have surpassed forecasts, some biologists and fishermen are concerned about warm, dry weather that has pumped up water temperatures in the region.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

The water is so hot in Alaska it’s killing large numbers of salmon

August 20, 2019 — Alaska has been in the throes of an unprecedented heat wave this summer, and the heat stress is killing salmon in large numbers.

Scientists have observed die-offs of several varieties of Alaskan salmon, including sockeye, chum and pink salmon.
Stephanie Quinn-Davidson, director of the Yukon Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, told CNN she took a group of scientists on an expedition along Alaska’s Koyokuk River at the end of July, after locals alerted her to salmon die-offs on the stream.

She and the other scientists counted 850 dead unspawned salmon on that expedition, although they estimated the total was likely four to 10 times larger.

They looked for signs of lesions, parasites and infections, but came up empty. Nearly all the salmon they found had “beautiful eggs still inside them,” she said. Because the die-off coincided with the heat wave, they concluded that heat stress was the cause of the mass deaths.

Read the full story at CNN

Blooms, beasts affected as Alaska records hottest month

August 19, 2019 — Alaska has been America’s canary in the coal mine for climate warming, and the yellow bird is swooning.

July was Alaska’s warmest month ever, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Sea ice melted. Bering Sea fish swam in above-normal temperatures. So did children in the coastal town of Nome. Wildfire season started early and stayed late. Thousands of walruses thronged to shore.

Unusual weather events like this could become more common with climate warming, said Brian Brettschneider, an associate climate researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center. Alaska has seen “multiple decades-long increases” in temperature, he said.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Commercial Fishermen, Indigenous People Unite to Fight Mine in Alaska

August 15, 2019 — In the sleepy and remote village of Dillingham in southwestern Alaska, there has historically been tension between the indigenous populations, who take a subsistence approach to catching salmon, and commercial fishermen, who take in half a billion annually by trawling one of the world’s most productive fisheries at Bristol Bay.

Both groups, however, are united against a potential mining project that they believe would devastate their way of life.

The Pebble Mine is a large deposit of gold, copper and molybdenum located at the headwaters of Bristol Bay. The deposit was first discovered in the 1980s and multinational corporations began seriously pursuing its development in the 2000s.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Study: Hatchery-raised Alaskan pinks compete with sockeye for food

August 13, 2019 — Some scientists who study the food web in North Pacific Ocean waters off the US state of Alaska are beginning to fear that hatchery-raised pink salmon are posing overly stiff competition to sockeye when it comes to their common food source, zooplankton, the Associated Press reported.

The news service quoted biological oceanographer Sonia Batten who has studied zooplankton abundance and found it to wax and wane, which she attributed to the odd- and even-year cycle of pink salmon.

“The only thing that we have in this whole area with an up and down, alternating-year pattern is pink salmon,” Batten, who works for Canada’s Marine Biological Association, said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News