Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Sockeyes are silver lining in an otherwise miserable year for Alaska salmon

August 22, 2016 — Alaska’s 2016 pink salmon fishery is set to rank as the worst in 20 years by a long shot, and the outlook is bleak for other salmon except sockeyes, too.

“Boy, sockeye is really going to have to carry the load in terms of the fishery’s value because there’s a lot of misses elsewhere,” said Andy Wink, a fisheries economist with the Juneau-based McDowell Group.

The peaks of the various salmon runs have passed. The pink salmon catch so far has yet to break 35 million during a year when the forecast called for 90 million fish. Last year, 190 million were harvested.

Weekly tracking through Aug. 15 shows:

— The king salmon harvest (341,000) down 42 percent from last year in net fisheries (though the troll-caught catch is strong);

— Silvers (fewer than 2 million) down 20 percent;

— Chums (12 million) down 25 percent. “We’re probably looking at the second-worst harvest in the past 10 years,” Wink said.

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

ALASKA: Requesting Letters of Intent for Project Funding

August 18, 2016 — The following was released by the Pollock Conservation Cooperative Research Center:

The Pollock Conservation Cooperative Research Center (PCCRC) is requesting Letters of Intent for projects to receive funding in 2017.

PCCRC has $500,000 available to fund projects that will begin in 2017. PCCRC projects must include a PI who is associated with one of the University of Alaska campuses but may include co-PIs from other institutions or organizations.

Click here for details on how to apply and all other relevant information. The deadline for submission is September 26, 2016.

Alaska Fish Factor: New Programme Allows Fishermen to Share Information on Salmon Stocks

August 1, 2016 — Who knows more about local salmon and their habitats than Alaska fishermen? That’s the impetus behind a new information-gathering project spawned by United Fishermen of Alaska (UFA) that aims to provide useful and timely news about the health of the state’s salmon runs.

The Salmon Habitat Information Program (SHIP) launched last week with an online survey to provide commercial fishermen with a way to share their local intelligence.

“We are asking people what issues they are most concerned about in their region,” said SHIP manager Lindsey Bloom.

“We also ask what sources they use to get habitat related information, such as newspapers, websites, or social media, and who they trust and are listening to for information as well.”

UFA wants to recognize and tap the wisdom and knowledge of Alaska’s 10,888 current salmon permit owners in 26 distinct fisheries to ensure that the SHIP information is useful and relevant. Bloom said the survey results also could be helpful in shaping fishery rules and regulations.

“Fishermen are some of the smartest and best equipped people to guide fish policy,” Bloom asserted.

“With the multi-generational nature of salmon fishing in Alaska, they are grounded in community and family and sustainability and stewardship. We believe that by working together, fishermen can be powerful advocates for pro-salmon policies that ensure commercial fishing jobs remain strong for generations to come.”

Read the full store at The Fish Site

46 people rescued from sinking vessel off Alaska

July 28, 2016 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Latest on the rescue of 46 crew members who abandoned a fishing vessel in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands on Tuesday (all times local):

9 p.m.

Officials say two Good Samaritan vessels have rescued 46 people who abandoned a fishing boat in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Lauren Steenson says there were no reports of any injuries as the crew members were transferred from life rafts to the vessels in a fairly calm Bering Sea.

She says the ships then embarked on a 13-hour voyage to Adak, Alaska, a port in the Aleutians.

The Good Samaritan ships Spar Canis and the Vienna Express rushed to the scene as did two other merchant vessels, all responding to a Coast Guard’s emergency broadcast for help.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

New and rare whale species identified from carcass found in Pribilofs

July 27, 2016 — A stroll on the beach of a remote Bering Sea island two years ago has produced a scientific breakthrough — the discovery of a previously unidentified species of beaked whale that dwells in the deep waters of the North Pacific Ocean.

The conclusion, described in a study published in the journal Marine Mammal Science of the California-based Society for Marine Mammalogy, stems from the 2014 discovery of a beached whale carcass by a local monitoring program called Island Sentinel. Karin Holser, a teacher on St. George Island in the Pribilofs, alerted authorities, and Michelle Ridgway, a Juneau-based biologist involved with a Pribilof science camp, responded quickly.

“She was the one who said, ‘This looks like a Baird’s beaked whale, but it doesn’t,'” said Phillip Morin, a research molecular geneticist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and lead author of the new study.

The whale was about two-thirds the size of a Baird’s beaked whale, which typically grows to 35 or 40 feet, Morin said. It was clearly not a juvenile, as its teeth were worn and yellow, “so they were not baby teeth,” he said. Its skull had a distinct slope and its dorsal fin was different from that of the typical Baird’s beaked whale.

Tissue samples were sent to the Marine Mammal and Turtle Division of NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in California, where Morin works and where the world’s most extensive collection of cetacean tissues is kept. The whale’s skull was sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington — and students from the Pribilofs visited the lab there to take part in the examination.

DNA analysis showed it was a species different from the 22 previously known species of beaked whales in the world and the two known to swim in the North Pacific.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

Rescue Ships Arrive After 46 Abandon Fishing Vessel in Alaska Waters

July 27, 2016 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Latest on the rescue of 46 crew members who abandoned a fishing vessel in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands on Tuesday (all times local):

Officials say two Good Samaritan vessels have rescued 46 people who abandoned a fishing boat in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Lauren Steenson says there were no reports of any injuries as the crew members were transferred from life rafts to the vessels in a fairly calm Bering Sea.

She says the ships then embarked on a 13-hour voyage to Adak, Alaska, a port in the Aleutians.

The Good Samaritan ships Spar Canis and the Vienna Express rushed to the scene as did two other merchant vessels, all responding to a Coast Guard’s emergency broadcast for help.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Bloomberg

ALASKA: Court sides with state, dismisses lawsuit challenging Gov. Walker order

July 25, 2016 — A Juneau Superior Court judge has sided with the state, dismissing a lawsuit that challenged Gov. Bill Walker’s administrative order to reorganize the Alaska Commercial Fisheries Commission, an autonomous state agency that’s been under fire the past few years.

“… the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the matter. At this current time, any alleged conflict between the (administrative order) and the CFEC is purely hypothetical,” Judge Louis Menendez wrote in a decision Thursday and sent to attorneys representing the plaintiffs and the state Friday.

Administrative Order 279, issued in February, would transfer functions of the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. CFEC was established in 1973 by the Alaska Legislature to limit how many people can participate in the state’s commercial fisheries.

Commercial fisherman and lobbyist Robert Thorstenson Jr. and commercial fishing trade organization United Fishermen of Alaska filed a lawsuit against Walker and the state calling the administrative order invalid.

The plaintiffs claimed the order “unconstitutionally takes authority from the Alaska Legislature to amend statutes and policies related to the operation and management of the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission.”

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

AL BURCH: Governor should recognize value of Alaska groundfish industry

July 25, 2016 — My brother and I were some of the pioneers of the trawl fishery here in Kodiak. We started from scratch when the United States claimed a 200-mile zone. I remember the foreign fleets off our shores, and once they were replaced by U.S. vessels like ours, I remember how the trawl fishery for pollock and cod helped put the town back on its feet after the collapse of the crab and shrimp fisheries in the late 1970s. I am proud of the fact that the fishery I helped pioneer now supports a year-round fishing economy here in Kodiak.

Although I am retired now, I continue to follow how the fishery is run. And I am concerned.

In the past, when we were struggling to build the fishery, the state of Alaska was on our side. We worked hard together to build a fishery that was managed by scientific principles and research, with no overfishing. We pioneered putting observers on U.S. vessels, and unlike a lot of other fisheries here in Alaska we have had observers for roughly 30 years. We worked alongside the state and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to meet conservation and management challenges together, to ensure practical solutions that ensured an economically sustainable fishery for Kodiak and other Alaska coastal towns.

But now it seems that the state of Alaska is not concerned about the impacts of its decisions on the hard-working participants in this fishery and communities like mine that are dependent on groundfish.

Read the full opinion piece at Alaska Dispatch News

ALASKA: State to argue for dismissal of suit over governor’s commercial fisheries order

July 19, 2016 — JUNEAU, Alaska — A judge is set to hear arguments in a case brought by the Alaska Department of Law that seeks the dismissal of a lawsuit against the state regarding the management of the state’s commercial fisheries.

The case is scheduled to go before Juneau Superior Court Judge Louis Menendez on Tuesday, according to The Juneau Empire.

At the center of a case is an administrative order issued by Gov. Bill Walker in February that calls for several functions of the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission to be transferred to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Walker’s administration has said moving administrative and research functions, like licensing and permitting, to Fish and Game could save the state more than $1.3 million a year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

ALASKA: Sea Share steadily expands donations of fish to the needy

July 18, 2016 — The decades long “bycatch to food banks” program has grown far beyond its Alaska origins.

Today, only 10 percent of the fish going to hunger-relief programs is bycatch — primarily halibut and salmon taken accidentally in other fisheries. The remainder is first-run products donated to Sea Share, the nation’s only nonprofit that donates fish through a network of fishermen, processors, packagers and transporters.

Sea Share began in 1993 when Bering Sea fishermen pushed to be allowed to send fish taken as bycatch to food banks — instead of tossing them back, as required by law.

“Back then, that was the only thing that we were set up to do, and we are the only entity authorized to retain such fish. It became a rallying point for a lot of stakeholders, and from that beginning we’ve expanded to the Gulf of Alaska, and grown to 28 states and over 200 million fish meals a year,” said Jim Harmon, Sea Share director.

Some seafood companies commit a portion of their sales or donate products to Sea Share. Vessels in the At-sea Processors Association have donated 250,000 pounds of whitefish each year for 15 years, which are turned into breaded portions. Sea Share’s roster also has grown to include tilapia, shrimp, cod, tuna and other seafood products.

Over the years, Sea Share has ramped up donations in Alaska, where halibut portions from Kodiak fisheries are used locally, in Kenai as well as being flown to Nome and Kotzebue, courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard. A new freezer container has been stationed at the Alaska Peninsula port of Dillingham, holding 8,500 pounds of fish, and several more are being added to hubs in Western Alaska, Harmon said.

“I think we’ll probably do 250,000 pounds in the state this year,” he added.

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News