Saving Seafood

‘It’s still crisis mode’: Will Bering Sea snow crabbing season be canceled for third straight year?

September 30, 2024 — As the Pacific Northwest’s crabbing crisis continues, scientists are still working to determine if this year’s snow crabbing season will be canceled for a third straight year. 

“The reality of the situation is that until we see more recruitment into that large male size class that the fishery targets, it seems in conversations that the industry is preparing for closure,” said Erin Fedewa, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Fedewa studies the species and collects population data that will eventually help determine the quantity crabbers can catch annually. However, the last five years have brought quite a few changes.

In 2019, there were record-high snow crabs in the Bering Sea and industry-wide optimism. In 2020, the annual survey was canceled, so no one knew the status of the crabs. Then, when Fedewa and her team returned to count the population in 2021, millions of crabs seemingly vanished.

What caused the swift decline?

Scientists at NOAA have since identified the main reason for the collapse as “an ecological shift from Arctic to sub-Arctic conditions in the southeastern Bering Sea due to human-caused climate change.”

It was discovered that the warmer water temperatures didn’t immediately kill the crabs, but when the waters got too warm, their metabolism increased. There wasn’t enough food to keep up with their caloric demand.

In addition to temperature changes, the team at NOAA noted other factors that indicate a shift from an Arctic to a sub-Arctic regime. They found a decline in sea ice and an increase in snow crab predators, a disease known to kill snow crabs, and areas of spring algal blooms.

The study also confirmed scientists’ initial beliefs that the population decline was not due to overfishing as the level of mortality was too high.

Read the full article at ABC 10

ALASKA: NOAA Fisheries Releases 2024 Alaska Aquaculture Accomplishments Report

September 30, 2024 — In 2024, the NOAA Alaska Regional Office and the Alaska Fisheries Science Center continued supporting Alaska’s aquaculture industry.

Aquaculture, the process of growing organisms in the ocean, is a relatively young commercial industry that is poised for rapid growth in Alaska. Alaska’s aquaculture industry consists of seaweed and invertebrate farming, with oysters, mussels, sugar, ribbon, and bull kelp being the primary species grown in the state. The NOAA Fisheries Alaska Region Aquaculture Program engaged in projects to support the sustainable development of Alaska’s aquaculture industry. They are outlined in NOAA’s 2024 Aquaculture Accomplishments Report.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

ALASKA: After years-long delay, Alaska receives USD 277 million in fishery disasters relief

September 30, 2024 – NOAA Fisheries has announced it will be providing USD 277 million (EUR 248 million) in financial relief in response to several fishery disasters.

“I’m glad to see this significant batch of federal relief dollars finally being distributed to our hardworking fishermen and coastal communities,” U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said. “These Alaskans should never have had to wait this long to see this relief processed – a frustration I raised with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and NOAA Fisheries Director Janet Coit on numerous occasions in recent months.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Judge in Alaska sets aside critical habitat designation for threatened bearded, ringed seals

September 30, 2024 — A judge in Alaska has set aside a federal agency’s action designating an area the size of Texas as critical habitat for two species of threatened Arctic Alaska seals.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason last week found the National Marine Fisheries Service did not explain why the entire 174-million-acre (70-million-hectare) area was “indispensable” to the recovery of the ringed and bearded seal populations. Gleason said the agency “abused its discretion” by not considering any protected areas to exclude or how other nations are conserving both seal populations, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

She vacated the critical habitat designation, which included waters extending from St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea to the edge of Canadian waters in the Arctic, and sent the matter back to the agency for further work.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Alaska prevails in challenge to critical habitat designation for threatened seals

September 28, 2024 — It’s back to the drawing board for the federal agency tasked with designating critical habitat for ringed and bearded seals in Alaska after a federal judge sided on Thursday with the state, which said the agency overreached in the protections.

In 2022, the National Marine Fisheries Service designated over 160 million acres of water spanning from the Alaska shoreline to the international dateline in much of the Bering Sea, as well as the shelf of the Beaufort Sea and all of the Chukchi Sea, as critical habitat for the seals.

Alaska sued the agency and the Center for Biological Diversity which intervened in the case, in early 2023, describing the designation as unprecedented and accusing the agency of violating environmental laws.

U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason agreed with the state that the National Marine Fisheries Service didn’t act in accordance with the Endangered Species Act when making the designations.

“Simply because NMFS is unable to identify a less extensive, specific geographic location for breeding or molting does not explain why the 160-million-plus-acre areas it identified as critical habitat are ‘necessary’ or ‘indispensable,’” the Barack Obama appointee wrote of ensuring the seals’ survival and recovery.

The service listed both subspecies of seals — the Arctic ringed seals and the Beringia distinct population segment of bearded seals — as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2012. The listing granted the seals more protections, including the designation of critical habitat.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Tribal groups, seeking restrictions on Alaska’s Bering Sea trawlers, get day in court

September 27, 2024 — U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason heard oral arguments Thursday in a lawsuit filed by two of Alaska’s largest tribal groups against federal managers of the state’s groundfish trawl fisheries.

The Association of Village Council Presidents and the Tanana Chiefs Conference claim the federal government has failed to adjust trawling rules in the Bering Sea and off the Aleutian Islands to compensate for the ongoing salmon crisis on Alaska’s Interior rivers.

Victory by the plaintiffs could lead to new restrictions on the world’s largest trawl fishery. If plaintiffs lose, the status quo is likely to continue.

On Thursday, Gleason asked plaintiffs whether they’re seeking a halt to trawl fishing in the Bering Sea.

No, the plaintiffs said.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: SE Alaska Seafood Economy Struggles Amid Expanding Tourism, Retail Trade, and Government

September 27, 2024 — The Southeast Alaska Economic Summit and 66th Annual Meeting, ending today in Ketchikan, offered sobering YOY numbers on the seafood sector earlier this month.

Seafood processing job losses led the sectors that saw YOY drops in July 2024, down 300 compared to losses of 120 in state government, 100 in retail trade, 70 in health care, and 50 in transportation. Meanwhile, job numbers were up in construction and tourism (300 new jobs each this year), while increases were seen in government and financial/professional services.

Statewide job losses are seen along coastal communities across south-central Alaska with a modest overall rise in SE Alaska of 1.2%, while job increases were seen in the north (4.5%), Alaska’s Interior (2.9%), and in the Anchorage area (3%.) Overall job numbers dropped 3.7% YOY in Southwest Alaska, and 1.6% YOY in the Gulf Coast.

In April 2024, 440 Southeast Alaska business owners and top managers from 25 communities responded to Southeast Conference’s Business Climate Survey.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

ALASKA: Two Kodiak trawlers caught 2,000 king salmon. Now, a whole fishery is closed.

September 27, 2024 — Federal managers shut down a major Alaska fishery Wednesday after two Kodiak-based boats targeting whitefish caught some 2,000 king salmon — an unintentional harvest that drew near-instant condemnation from advocates who want better protections for the struggling species.

The Kodiak-based trawl fleet has caught just over one-fourth of its seasonal quota of pollock — a whitefish that’s typically processed into items like fish sticks, fish pies and surimi, the paste used to make fake crab.

But about 20 boats will now be forced to end their season weeks before its Nov. 1 closure, with hundreds of jobs at shore-based processing plants also in jeopardy, to make sure the fleet doesn’t exceed its yearly cap on its unintentional king salmon harvest — some 18,000 fish.

“From a community perspective, it’s huge,” said Julie Bonney, who runs a trade group, the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, that represents the trawlers and processing companies. “Nobody’s happy about the closure, but they understand the reason.”

The incident is sure to draw more scrutiny on the issue of bycatch — the industry term for the unintended harvest, typically of salmon or halibut, by boats targeting other species.

Tribal advocates and conservation groups, for the past several years, have been making increasingly urgent pleas to managers to crack down on bycatch by trawl vessels, which can scoop up salmon in the nets they drag through the water targeting pollock and other lower-value species.

Those groups’ focus has largely been on bycatch by pollock trawlers in the Bering Sea.

The salmon caught Sunday were harvested using the same type of nets used by trawlers in the Bering Sea, but in a different area of the ocean, the central Gulf of Alaska.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Alaskan tribal groups ask federal court to demand review on annual catch limits

September 27, 2024 — Two Alaskan tribal nonprofit groups are asking a federal judge to block the National Marine Fisheries Service’s adoption of annual catch limits for groundfish fisheries, arguing the agency violated federal environmental regulations by omitting analysis on the environmental effects of that decision.

Katherine Glover, an Earthjustice attorney representing the Tanana Chiefs Conference and the Association of Village Presidents, told U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason that the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands ecosystem has declined since the service adopted its 2004 and 2007 environmental regulations.

“Since at least 2014, the Bering Sea has been in a period of turmoil,” Glover told the court at an oral hearing in Anchorage on Thursday.

The National Marine Fisheries Service manages groundfish fisheries in the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands. The tribal groups argue the agency hasn’t taken disruptions like climate change into account in deciding groundfish harvest specifications.

In a lawsuit filed last October, the tribal groups accused the service of relying on outdated environmental impact statements for harvest specifications and groundfish fisheries management. In doing so, the groups argue, the agency did not satisfy its obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

OPINION: Safeguarding Alaska offshore habitat and providing a path forward for trawling

September 27, 2024 — As commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, I often hear concerns about the impacts of trawl gear used in Alaska’s pollock fisheries, most recently related to potential unobserved mortality of crabs and halibut in the Bering Sea. We know that pelagic trawls fishing for Alaska pollock are often operated close to, or in contact with, the seafloor. What we do not know is the extent of this contact or the potential impacts on bottom-dwelling species like crab and halibut and their habitat. These data gaps are concerning to Alaskans, and I want to highlight actions underway to understand and address the unintended consequences on seafloor ecosystems in areas that fishery managers and stakeholders have recognized as needing protection.

Alaska’s marine fisheries are universally recognized as a shining example of both bounty and sustainability. About 60% of domestically caught U.S. seafood comes from Alaska. Science-based management by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, North Pacific Fishery Management Council, and NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has proven to be the key to ensuring that Alaska’s fisheries continue to support good jobs, vibrant fishing communities and a healthy food supply for generations to come. But fishery management must be adaptive to changing biological and economic conditions, and declines in crab, halibut and other important stocks in recent years have heightened concerns about the impacts of bottom trawling.

When considering trawl fisheries, it’s important to distinguish between bottom trawls and pelagic trawls used in the pollock fishery. As the name implies, bottom trawls are specifically designed to catch fish at or near the seafloor. Pelagic trawls are designed to fish higher than bottom trawls and are typically used to target a single species. The best available information indicates that bottom trawls have a greater impact on seafloor habitat than pelagic trawls, and ADF&G, the Council and NMFS have closed large areas of the ocean off Alaska to bottom trawling to minimize these impacts. That said, some key species such as scallops can only be fished with bottom fishing gear.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News