Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Large salaries, small workload for state fisheries commission

July 18, 2017 — Two state commissioners are making big money even though they don’t have much work left to do. That’s the story recently reported by Nathaniel Herz with the Alaska Dispatch News, who investigated the state’s Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission.

“There are some inefficiencies and what some would call dysfunction at this agency that have been very clearly and specifically documented in the past two or three years that no one has been able to fix,” Herz said. “That starts at the top.”

The commission was created in the 1970s in order to limit the number of boats that can participate in certain commercial fisheries and conserve the stocks.

Herz wrote in an article this past weekend that they haven’t limited a fishery since 2004 and have processed fewer than five applications per year since 2012.

“Basically, the core work that the commissioners have done in the past doesn’t really exist anymore at anything near the level it once did,” Herz said.

Despite this, commissioners Ben Brown and Bruce Twomley are each still earning $130,000 per year.

Legislators and Gov. Bill Walker have made attempts to change the structure and cost of the commission and make it more efficient, but Herz reported that their efforts have failed, in part because of steps taken by commercial fishing interests.

“There’s a real concern that you if you just wrap the Commercial Fisheries Entries Commission up under Fish and Game that somehow it could be subject to the whims of the Fish and Game commissioner,” Herz said. “It could lose its political independence, it could become less responsive.”

Read the full story at KTOO

Wasted Fish – What to Make of Recent Data Showing 10% of Fish are Discarded at Sea?

July 12, 2017 — A paper published last week titled, Global marine fisheries discards: A synthesis of reconstructed data, concludes that commercial fishermen have thrown away (discarded) about 10% of catch over the past decade. Researchers, led by Dirk Zeller, used catch reconstructions – estimates of how many fish were caught – to approximate that around 10 million tons of fish are discarded at sea per year. This number is down from a high of 18 million tons in the 1990s.

Zeller et al. 2017  suggest that the decline in discards are a result of declining fish stocks, though they acknowledge that gear and management improvements could also play a role. Indeed, worldwide fish stocks have remained relatively stable since 1990s, indicating that perhaps management and gear technology have played a larger role in reducing discards than researchers propose.

Previously, we have featured an in-depth analysis of discard policy in the EU by Philip Taylor & Griffin Carpenter.

In the below comments we offer 3 different perspectives on fishing discards and the recent Zeller et al. 2017 paper.

Comment by Bill Karp, Affiliate Professor, University of Washington

The recent paper by Zeller et al highlights challenges associated with estimation of discards and interpretation of overall estimates and trends. Their work builds on an extensive body of research, most notably earlier global discard estimates published in 1994 and 2005, and relies heavily on the Sea Around Us database and catch and discard estimation methods outlined by the authors.

Unwanted fish results from almost all fishing . Fishers generally target a species or group of but fishing gear is not perfectly selective for species or size. Regulations may preclude landing of some species and sizes (usually smaller fish), or economic factors may favor retention of larger fish or higher-value species  If the undesired fish are not retained and marketed in some form (e.g. as fish meal for aquaculture feed, or fertilizer) they are generally returned to the sea as discards. This issue is not unique to fishing, waste is a concern in all types of food production. In the United States, roughly 7% of all crops are wasted at the farm (i.e. never harvested), with estimates up to 40% of food waste through the supply chain.

In recent years, waste associated with fisheries discard has become a major public policy issue in some regions, with partial discard bans being implemented in Norway, the European Union, and elsewhere. At the same time, regulatory and operational innovations have resulted in lower discard rates in some fisheries, and demonstrated the potential for broader improvement. Fisheries discard can be reduced by development and use more selective fishing methods, developing markets for unfamiliar species or products, and by regulatory approaches which provide incentives for improved selectivity and/or utilization or even prohibit certain types of discarding.

Zeller et. al. argue that high-grading (discarding of lower-value in favor of higher-value fish) and regulatory discard are major problems and shortfalls of individual transferable quota (ITQ) fisheries. While high-grading and regulatory discarding are substantive causes of discarding, ITQ-type of programs (catch share, rights-based) may include provisions for transferring of quota among participants as well as sharing information that can improve selectivity. These types of programs also reduce or eliminate the race for fish and thereby reduce levels of unwanted fish. They can also encourage accountability, a key to improved catch and discard data. Examples can be found in Alaska and elsewhere.

Read the full report at CFOOD

An Alaska fishing commission has worked itself out of a job. But its commissioners still make more than $130,000 a year

July 10, 2017 — At an obscure state agency in Juneau, two commissioners each earn more than $130,000 a year to oversee fewer than two dozen employees — about the same amount paid to the corrections, health and transportation commissioners, who supervise thousands.

The two political appointees, Ben Brown and Bruce Twomley, are being paid even though they’ve all but stopped doing the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission’s most essential work: They haven’t limited access to a fishery since 2004, and they’ve resolved no more than three permit applications in each of the past five years, down from the dozens that were once processed annually.

A long-running project to upgrade the agency’s obsolete, 35-year-old computer system has stalled. One former employee, who lacked civil service protection, says he was fired after pushing for reforms and providing auditors with information that he said documented the commission’s inefficiency and dysfunction.

Meanwhile, several other longtime employees have been allowed to retire and collect state benefits while continuing part-time work for the commission in temporary positions. One, Doug Rickey — who left the agency last month — said he was doing about 20 percent of his work remotely from Las Vegas, where he lives part of the time.

The commission’s problems were laid out in painstaking detail in a pair of audits released in 2015 — one of which called for the commissioners to be reduced to part-time status. But efforts to fix the commission have gone nowhere, with commercial fishing interests and the commissioners themselves successfully fending off legislation and an administrative order from Gov. Bill Walker to restructure the agency.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

Is having a special week in Seattle enough to make Alaska herring cool again?

July 5, 2017 — Last week in Seattle, one kind of Alaska fish was served in dozens of restaurants around the city. It was in everything from pâté to tacos and piled high on open-faced sandwiches. One chef even used a pickled piece as a cocktail garnish. 

But it wasn’t Alaska’s famous wild sockeye salmon or Pacific halibut. It was Alaska herring — a small, oily fish — and it was all part of the third annual Alaska Herring Week in Seattle.

It’s part of an effort by a group of fishermen and the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute to try and revitalize a small Western Alaska fishery, which has been declining over the last decade.

Alaska Herring Week event coordinator Zachary Lyons said 54 restaurants and four grocery stores in the Seattle area participated in Herring Week this year. It started in 2015 with just eight restaurants, and 33 participated in 2016. This year’s event included The Whale and the Carpenter and Bar Melusine, restaurants both associated with Renee Erickson, winner of the 2016 James Beard Best Chef Northwest Award.

Lyons, who spent last week eating herring at up to five restaurants a day, said some consider the fish old-fashioned, destined to be canned or pickled on a shelf at the grocery store. But there are other culinary uses for the fish. Herring flesh cooks into a rich brown color and has a light fish flavor, similar to trout. No two herring dishes he ate during the week were alike, Lyons said.

“It’s really versatile,” he said. “It’s amazing to see what people are doing with it.”

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

Is the Cook Inlet beluga population stable or in danger? Depends on whom you ask.

June 29, 2017 — Alaska’s most urban whales have yet to show any meaningful increase in numbers, evidence that recovery remains elusive for the endangered population despite numerous protective measures imposed in recent years. On the plus side, the Cook Inlet beluga population has not declined notably in the past two years, scientists say.

The latest survey of the small and endangered white whales estimates the population at 328 animals, within a range of 279 and 386, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports.

That represents barely any change from the previous estimate of 340 animals, from 2014, but far below the 1,300 belugas that scientists say were swimming three decades ago in the silty, salty water between Anchorage and the Gulf of Alaska.

“Cook Inlet belugas are still in danger of extinction because the population is so small,” said Paul Wade, head of Cook Inlet beluga research at NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. “The population trend over the last 10 years has been relatively stable compared to the steep decline seen in the 1990s, but there is some evidence the population has continued to decline slightly. We are concerned that the population is not yet increasing towards its former abundance level,” Wade said in a prepared statement.

The newest population estimate comes from the latest in a series of regular aerial counts conducted by NMFS. The estimate is based on thousands of photographs taken from the air a year ago; analysis of those images is a laborious process, so the count that emerged required a full year of work and review, officials said.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

Prehistoric stone fish trap discovered on Alaska island

June 29, 2017 — Archaeologists have discovered a prehistoric fish trap constructed of rock walls near the mouth of a salmon stream on Alaska’s Kodiak Island.

The trap is in a lower intertidal zone that’s covered by ocean water at high tide and exposed at low tide, the Kodiak Daily Mirror reported (http://bit.ly/2t0of5f) Tuesday.

Archaeologists at the Alutiiq Museum in the city of Kodiak identified the trap. Salmon at high tide could swim into the stream, and when the tide receded, fish would be stranded in one of two corrals, said Patrick Saltonstall, the museum’s curator of archaeology.

Prehistoric fish traps previously have been found in streams on Kodiak, the second largest island in the United States, Saltonstall said. The V-shape devices faced upstream and channeled salmon to a spot where fishermen could spear fish. Saltonstall had not seen an ocean trap on Kodiak before.

“These are the first ones we’ve found in the intertidal zone, and that’s kind of exciting,” he said.

The trap reminded Saltonstall of stone walls of a New England farm.

“They’re pretty big piles. They’re like four or five feet across. They’re stacked,” he said. Wood or netting may have helped capture fish.

One corral was roughly rectangular. Farther from shore was a U-shape corral. Together they stretched about 165 yards (150 meters).

The trap is not in shape to catch fish now.

“The walls have gotten too low and they’re too many gaps,” Saltonstall said, likely from tides knocking down rocks over centuries or silt covering the base. Large rocks anchor the trap but most rocks, weighing around 80 pounds (36 kilograms), would have been carried and stacked by hand.

Read the full story at ABC News

Jellied sea creatures confound scientists, fishermen on U.S. Pacific Coast

June 28, 2017 — Drifting throngs of jelly-like, glowing organisms native to tropical seas far from shore have invaded Pacific coastal waters from Southern California to the Gulf of Alaska this year, baffling researchers and frustrating fishing crews.

Known as pyrosomes, they are tubular colonies of hundreds or thousands of tiny individual creatures called zooids, enmeshed together in a gelatinous tunic roughly the consistency of gummy bear candy.

No relation to jellyfish, they resemble bumpy, opaque pickles in the water, typically a few centimeters or inches long, though some grow 1 or 2 feet (30cm or 60cm) in length.

They feed by filtering microscopic algae, or phytoplankton, as they float with the current, and are known to glow in the dark – a bioluminescent characteristic that gives the organism its scientific name — Pyrosoma, Greek for “fire body.”

Pyrosomes have rarely if ever been seen along the U.S. West Coast until 2012, when first spotted in California waters. Since then, they have gradually multiplied and spread north, before exploding in numbers this spring, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Although harmless to humans, they have been especially troublesome to the commercial salmon catch in Oregon, with large globs of the rubbery critters clogging fishing gear by the thousands in recent months. Some have even washed ashore.

“It gets to a point where they’re so abundant, you can’t even fish out there, so you have to pick up your gear and move elsewhere,” Nancy Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Oregon Salmon Commission, said on Monday.

A single five-minute trawl with a research net by scientists off the Columbia River in late May scooped up roughly 60,000 pyrosomes, NOAA reported.

Fishermen were also hit in southeastern Alaska, where some crews suspended operations earlier this year when pyrosome densities were at their height, said Aaron Baldwin, a fishery biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Read the full story at Reuters

FRI trains the fishery managers of tomorrow

June 26, 2017 — Area management biologists in Bristol Bay are responsible for tracking and maintaining the escapement numbers of multiple salmon species in multiple river systems. Not only are they charged with preserving the health of the run’s biology, but they are often held, at least partly, accountable for the economic viability of the fishery as well. One of the inherent challenges of the job is that the sustainability of the salmon run is not always synonymous with the profit margins of industry entities, and the managers are often the first to be blamed when the catch and escapement don’t go as planned.

The University of Washington’s Fisheries Research Institute is taking on the tall task of training those who hope to one day be fishery managers. Seven grad students—two from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, three from the University of Washington and two from Kamchatka State Technical Institute in Russia—are taking the three week course at FRI’s cabin on Aleknagik Lake.

Professors Milo Adkinson and Ray Hilborn are teaching the course.  “We bring our graduate students in fisheries out to see a real fishery in action,” said Adkinson.

For the class’s main term project, the students will work directly with the three area management biologists in Bristol Bay as the salmon run is going on.

“They get to pretend that they’re managing the fisheries,” said Adkinson. “So I’ve got a group of students that are going be deciding whether to open and close the Naknek-Kvichak district every day.”

The students will simulate making announcements relevant to the current salmon run, allocating when and where sport and commercial fisherman are allowed to fish. They will then be given a math equation which will determine the catch and escapement numbers based on the management decisions they made. The students will receive feedback from the actual area managers as the course progresses.

“We had one year where the students let several million fish escape into the Egegik system. I think the managers got a kick out of that,” said Adkinson.

Tim Sands is the area management biologist for the Nushagak and Togiak districts. He gave a lecture at FRI this week, and is making himself available to answer any questions the students charged with simulating his job might have.

“So there’s rules like what time of the tide you have to open the set nets—it’s all specified in the management plan. They can ask me questions like that, or things about allocation,” said Sands. “That’s what I do. Tell them the rules of the district.”

Read the full story at KDLG

Congressman Young Welcomes Selection of Chris Oliver as Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries

June 20, 2017 — The following was released by the office of Congressman Don Young:

Alaska Congressman Don Young today shared the following statement of support on the appointment of Chris Oliver, Executive Director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, as Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries:

“The Secretary got this one right – it’s the right pick for Alaska and for the country,” said Congressman Don Young. “This decision underscores the leadership and qualifications of Chris Oliver, who has spent his lifetime working to build Alaska and the North Pacific into the gold standard for fisheries management. Chris’ depth of knowledge and experience, as the head of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, will bring much needed expertise to a position tasked with addressing some of the most challenging aspects of fisheries management throughout the United States. I look forward to working with Chris during his tenure as Assistant Administrator – I know he’ll be a huge asset to NOAA.”

ALASKA: In a Bering Sea battle of killer whales vs. fishermen, the whales are winning

June 20, 2017 — In the Bering Sea, near the edge the continental shelf, fishermen are trying to escape a predator that seems to outwit them at every turn, stripping their fishing lines and lurking behind their vessels.

The predators are pods of killer whales chasing down the halibut and black cod caught by longline fishermen. Fishermen say the whales are becoming a common sight — and problem — in recent years, as they’ve gone from an occasional pest to apparently targeting the fishermen’s lines.

Fishermen say they can harvest 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of halibut in a single day, only to harvest next to nothing the next when a pod of killer whales recognizes their boat. The hooks will be stripped clean, longtime Bering Sea longliner Jay Hebert said in a phone interview this week. Sometimes there will be just halibut “lips” still attached to hooks — if anything at all.

“It’s kind of like a primordial struggle,” fisherman Buck Laukitis said about the orcas last week. “It comes at a real cost.”

The whales seem to be targeting specific boats, fisherman Jeff Kauffman said in a phone interview. FV Oracle Captain Robert Hanson said juvenile whales are starting to show up, and he thinks the mothers are teaching the young to go for the halibut and black cod the fishermen are trying to catch.

Hanson, a fisherman who’s worked in the Bering Sea since 1992, said the orca problem has become “systemic” in recent years. There are more pods present, he said, and the animals are getting more aggressive.

In a letter he sent to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council last month, Hanson described a series of challenges he faced in recent years. On a trip to the continental shelf in April he said his crew was “harassed nonstop.” He wrote that they lost approximately 12,000 pounds of sellable halibut to the whales and wasted 4,000 gallons of fuel trying to outrun them.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News