Alaska Archives - Page 3 of 79

Adak Groups, NOAA, and Secretary of Commerce Ross Appeal Decision to Rescind Amendment 113

May 22, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — On Friday the City of Adak, its regional development groups, and the Aleut Corporation filed an appeal to reverse a March 21 decision that vacated Amendment 113. Yesterday Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; and the National Marine Fisheries Service joined the Aleut groups to appeal the decision from three months ago.

That ruling was in response to a challenge from the Groundfish Forum to the Secretary of Commerce asserting that Amendment 113 did not meet the standards in the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

Defendant-intervenors in that challenge were the City of Adak and the City of Atka, along with the Adak Community Development Corporation, the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association (APICDA), and the Aleut Corporation.

The May 17 filing by the Adak groups opens a 14-day window for other parties to join the appeal. Briefs from all appealers will be filed later this summer, likely before the end of June.

AM113 included a set-aside of Pacific cod for the plants in Adak and Atka. Golden Harvest Alaska Seafoods, the plant based in Adak, has relied on deliveries of Pacific cod in recent years as a significant part of their annual revenue.

“The Aleutian Islands Pacific cod landed over a few short weeks in February and March has become the economic engine that sustains the local economy and allows Golden Harvest Alaska Seafoods to invest in new products and markets and the development of year round fisheries for the Adak community,” said Steve Minor for Golden Harvest.

“Golden Harvest serves a variety of federal and state water harvesters and species — including pot boats, longliners, trawlers and jiggers operating in the crab, halibut and sablefish fisheries,” Minor said.

“The loss of Amendment 113 puts all of these shore-based fleets and fisheries at risk.”

In the March 21 decision, the judge noted that “Although the Court finds that the Service did not exceed its statutory authority in imposing a harvest set-aside with an onshore delivery requirement, it nonetheless determines that the Service failed to demonstrate that the amendment satisfied the requisite standards for such regulatory measures set forth by the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

“Accordingly, and for the reasons explained below, Plaintiffs’ motion will be granted, and Defendants’ and Intervenors’ motions will be denied,” US District Judge Timothy Kelly wrote.

Kelly asked NOAA Fisheries to reconsider the amendment with some guidance on where changes were needed.

That process, or the work begun within the North Pacific Council addressing the Pacific cod set-aside, will not be done by January 2020, when the plant would be begin taking deliveries for the new season.

Minor noted that at least one of the original plaintiffs in the Groundfish Forum challenge has decided to join the appeal and that “several other entities” are in discussions on filing amicus briefs.

The North Pacific Council will hear a discussion paper at their June meeting, which will include a status report on Amendment 113 litigation, a description of the Council’s December 2018 revision to Amendment 113, and a summary of AI Pacific cod fishery conditions since the implementation of Amendment 113 in November 2016.

The discussion paper will also identify potential regulatory approaches that could be used to provide opportunities for trawl catcher vessels harvesting Pacific cod in the AI delivering to AI shoreplants.

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

ALASKA: Rep. Young fights fish farms

May 21, 2019 — In his 46 years as Alaska’s lone representative in Congress, Don Young helped toss out foreign fishing fleets from Alaska waters with the onset of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act in 1976, and today he is intent on doing the same with offshore fish farms.

The MSA established an ‘exclusive economic zone’ for US fleets fishing from three to 200 miles from shore. Now, a bill introduced by Young aims to stop the Trump Administration’s push to use those waters for industrialized fish farming operations. The fish farms are being touted as a silver bullet to boost seafood production, provide jobs and reduce the $15 billion seafood trade deficit that comes from the nation importing over 85 percent of its seafood.

Earlier this month, Young filed the Keep Fin Fish Free Act which would stop officials from allowing fish farms in US offshore waters unless specifically authorized by Congress.

“The biggest selling power we have in Alaska is wild caught salmon and other fish products, and I don’t want that hurt,” Young said in a phone interview. “If we put in a commercial operation offshore, outside of state jurisdiction, we’d have a big problem in selling our wild Alaskan salmon.”

Young’s effort follows a push that began a year ago by over 120 aquaculture and food-related industries to have lawmakers introduce an Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture (AQUAA) Act, which failed to get any traction. The campaign is organized under a new trade group called Stronger America Through Seafood and includes Cargill, Red Lobster, Pacific Seafoods and Seattle Fish Company.

Read the full story at The News Miner

ALASKA: Corps corrects end date for Pebble project comment period

May 22, 2019 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has corrected the closing date for the extended comment period for a draft environmental review of a proposed copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region.

The corps earlier this month said it was extending the comment period from 90 days to 120 days and said it would end June 29.

However, John Budnik, a spokesman for the corps, said by email Monday that a formal comment period cannot close on a weekend. He says the new close date is July 1.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Judge dismisses lawsuit brought by fishermen and paid for by Pebble

May 20, 2019 — A lawsuit brought by a small group of Bristol Bay commercial fishermen to keep a seafood marketing group from spending money to stop the Pebble copper and gold mine has been dismissed.

Anchorage Superior Court Judge Yvonne Lamoureux said the plaintiffs did not make a valid claim. She dismissed the case on Friday.

Six fishermen, with funding from mine developer Pebble Limited Partnership, had argued that the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association had unlawfully spent $250,000 on efforts to stop the mine from being developed.

The marketing group is funded with a 1 percent tax on the harvest that Bristol Bay fishermen catch. The fishermen who sued — Gary Nielsen, Trefim Andrew, Tim Anelon, Henry Olympic, and Abe and Braden Williams -—said the group should only market seafood. Abe Williams also works for the Pebble projectas a regional affairs director.

Pebble has applied with the federal government for permits to build an open-pit mine. It would be located near salmon-producing headwaters of the Bristol Bay fishery, about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

6 Reasons Why Alaska’s Aleutian Islands are a Hot Spot for Sea Life

May 17, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Aleutian Island ecosystem supports a rich diversity of species found in few other places in the world. Such intense biodiversity, more typically associated with tropical rainforests or coral reefs, is especially rare at high latitudes.
A convergence of seas, storms, and volcanoes create the dynamic environment that supports incredible biodiversity. The Aleutians separate the Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. They are whipped by notorious winds and battered by 50 foot waves. They form the 1,200-mile northern arc of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
NOAA Fisheries scientists continue to discover new species of fish and invertebrates in the Aleutians. Some Aleutian species show promise in medicine, including a potential treatment for cancer.
Whales, porpoises, sea otters, seals, sea lions, and seabirds live and feed in the Aleutian ecosystem. Some islands are important rookeries for seals and sea lions. Passages between islands are critical migration routes for endangered whales.
Not only a great diversity, but a great abundance of life thrives in seas surrounding the Aleutians. Overall Alaska is responsible for more than half of the nation’s seafood harvest.
The Aleutian Islands are home to Dutch Harbor, America’s biggest and busiest fishing port. Alaska Pollock is the highest volume fishery, but other important harvests include halibut, cod, rockfish, and crab.

Read the full release here

Vanishing Bering Sea ice threatens one of the richest U.S. seafood sources

May 16, 2019 — When ice failed to cover much of the eastern Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia in early 2018, oceanographer James Overland chalked it up to a freak chance. Then, it happened again this year, with late-winter sea ice falling to some of the lowest levels seen in at least 4 decades.

Now, scientists are studying whether this is the meteorological equivalent of drawing the ace of spades twice in a row, or another sign of the systemic changes sweeping the Arctic as a result of climate change. “I’m not ruling out that we really have a new regime over the Bering Sea,” says Overland, who works at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) in Seattle, Washington.

A lasting shift could dramatically transform a region with some of the nation’s most valuable fisheries and indigenous communities whose way of life relies on ice. Already scientists have documented changes in algae as well as zooplankton, fish, and seabird populations. The shifts are “a bit of a warning sign that these things can happen rather quickly,” says Robert Foy, the Juneau-based science and research director for NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, which is headquartered in Seattle.

Read the full story at Science Magazine

ALASKA: Optimism abounds in the Bering Sea crab fishery

May 14, 2019 — Bering Sea crabbers saw upticks in crab recruits during a good fishery for the 2018-19 season, along with strong prices.

The crab season opens in mid-October for red king crab, tanners and snow crab (opilio), and while fishing goes fast for red kings in order to fill orders for year-end markets in Japan, the fleet typically drops pots for the other species in January.

Crabbers said they saw strong showings of younger crab poised to enter the three fisheries. Only male crabs of a certain size can be retained for sale.

“For Bristol Bay red king crab, the reports were very positive,” said veteran crabber Jake Jacobsen, director of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange, which represents the majority of Bering Sea crabbers. “I got a lot of reports from people saying they saw a lot of recruitment around, a lot of females and small crab, but some boats didn’t see any. So it depended on where you were. Overall, the catch seemed to go pretty fast and the fishing was good. It wasn’t scratchy at all for most of the boats.”

The price also was good. The red king crab fetched $10.33 per pound, up from $9.20 last season, for a catch of 4.3 million pounds.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Alaska seafood industry making plans for China tariff impact

May 13, 2019 — Alaska’s seafood industry is exploring strategies to reduce damage from the Trump administration’s trade dispute with China, officials said.

The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute plans to explore how Alaska can enter additional markets to expand the state’s seafood brand, The Kodiak Daily Mirror reported Thursday.

The U.S. plans to raise tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese imports from 10% to 25% Friday.

China is the largest export market and re-processor of Alaska seafood, with about $989 million worth of sales to China in 2017 alone. That is more than 50% of the state’s seafood products, the institute said.

The institute is looking at “both traditional and nontraditional markets” for seafood globally, Executive Director Jeremy Woodrow said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KTOO

ALASKA: Study pinpoints trend toward fisheries specialization

May 10, 2019 — Commercial fishermen in Alaska have gotten older in the past three decades. As it turns out, they’ve become more specialized, too.

Fewer permits overall are in the water; between the early 1990s and 2014, commercial fishing permits in Alaska decreased by 25 percent. On top of that, fewer individual fishermen are moving between fisheries.

From 1988-2014, the number of individuals holding multiple permits declined from 30 percent to 20 percent, according to a study published in the journal Fish and Fisheries.

The bottom line: fishermen are increasingly putting all their economic eggs into one basket, and that makes them more vulnerable to the ups and downs of fishing.

The study was born out of a workgroup that met through the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California Santa Barbara, said co-author Anne Beaudreau, an associate professor of fisheries at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The original intent was to study the long-term effects of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, but the data on fisheries specialization arose out of that work, she said.

“As we worked on this, we realized there are so many things that have caused long-term changes in the Gulf of Alaska; in the fisheries, it’s really hard to see the long-term effects of the oil spill,” she said. “A lot of the focus of the working group was on the biological effects … this paper sort of came out of the end of that.”

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Study: Fishery consolidation in Alaska leaves fishermen vulnerable

May 9, 2019 — Alaskan commercial fishermen are specializing more and more, leaving them more vulnerable to the immense uncertainty fishermen have to contend with, according to a new study.

Targeting a diverse array of fish types in different regions can allow fishermen to weather the ups and downs instigated by fish population changes, new regulations, deflating markets and environmental disasters. But fishermen in Alaska are increasingly specializing. Fewer fishermen are on the water than three decades ago, and those who remain are participating in fewer fisheries, according to the study, which was published in Fish and Fisheries.

“Across different fisheries and regions of Alaska, there are fewer people fishing than there used to be and their fishing portfolios have become less diverse,” Anne Beaudreau, the lead author of the study and an associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told SeafoodSource.

Individual fishery quota systems, plus the high cost of permits and other institutional barriers, have made it more difficult for new players to enter Alaskan fisheries, according to the study.

Though fishermen could, in theory, diversify their portfolio of permits, those management restrictions and high costs often prevent them from doing so, leading to more specialization. Permits can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the fishery, Beaudreau said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source