Saving Seafood

In surprising move, Bering Sea snow crab fishery to reopen after 2 year closure

October 7, 2024 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Friday afternoon that Bering Sea fishermen will be allowed to harvest a total of about 4.7 million pounds of opilio, also known as snow crab, for the first time in two years. According to Fish and Game, estimates of total mature male biomass are above the threshold required to open the fishery.

The announcement comes as a surprise to many fishermen, after roughly 10 billion snow crabs disappeared from the Bering Sea over a span of four years, and Fish and Game closed the fishery in 2022. Recently, scientists have learned that the disappearance was likely due to ecological shifts, and there’s been little hope within the industry that stocks would recover anytime soon.

Read the full article at KUCB

Can Japan sustain the rebound of its ‘phantom fish’?

October 7, 2024 — Around the room are different pieces of equipment used in Yoichi over a century ago. Black and white photos of the fish meal fertilizer process line the walls. He points to a poster showing the herring catch in Hokkaido from 1870 to the 1950s.

“So in the high peak, there were close to 1 million tons of herring being caught, like 970,000 tons,” he says. “But you know, herring catch declined over the years and in the mid-1950s the herring fishery collapsed.”

In recent years, the fishermen have tried to manage the fishery themselves, to avoid another collapse in the future. Hatcheries aided in the recovery, but some co-ops and processors are taking the charge to conserve the herring population seriously, with strict fishing management. Ikuo Wada, who leads the Ishikari Fishing Co-Op in Hokkaido, says the shorter fishing period and wider nets made a big difference. And they’ve even secured a sustainability certification from the Japanese government.

But Kouta Fukuhara, a dried herring processor I spoke with in Yoichi, is skeptical.

“The current structure of Japanese fishing is not sustainable. Let me compare with Alaska. Alaska Department of Fish and Game regulates all kinds of commercial fishing — when it starts, how much fish to be caught… In Japan, we don’t have a such a legal structure,” Fukuhara says. “And the fishermen catch a lot of herring, bring it back and take the fish to the market. And the market is saturated with herring. Too much herring in the market, and the price goes down and they don’t make much money.”

Read the full article at KCAW

ALASKA: Bering Sea bottom trawlers reduce killer whale take this year as new gear shows promise

October 7, 2024 — Trawlers targeting flatfish in the Bering Sea deployed underwater web fences this summer to try to keep killer whales from getting entangled in their nets pulled along the ocean bottom. During a season that stretched from May to September, one killer whale was caught, an improvement from last year when nine whales were accidentally taken.

The web fence stretches across a wide swath of the net mouth, acting as a barrier to whales while not blocking fish passage into the net. And this year’s reduced killer whale toll has left industry officials cautiously optimistic that the fences, when fitted properly to different net designs, can keep the whales from being brought aboard the vessels as bycatch.

“We’re hopeful that we have come up with a good solution here. But these whales are really intelligent. They’re adaptive. And what works one season may not work the next,” said Chris Woodley, executive director of the Groundfish Forum, an industry trade association representing five companies with a fleet of 19 bottom trawlers that catch, process and freeze fish off Alaska.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Red king crab fishery to reopen despite uncertainty

October 3, 2024 — Alaska’s red king crab industry has been used to riding the highest highs and lowest lows. After years of closures, Bristol Bay’s fishermen were cautiously optimistic about the 2023-2024 season. While the reopening after the two-year closure brought relief, the overall picture for the stock remains complicated.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) recently revised the 2024-2025 season with an acceptable biological catch of over 4,000 metric tons, and the season is set to open mid-October. That comes after data showed a slight increase in mature male biomass. The stock has seen some signs of life, but the long-term health of red king crab is still in question. ADF&G’s preliminary model points to a better-than-expected female abundance, higher than thresholds seen in previous years, though still far from historical highs.

The closure of the fishery in 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 was a necessary pause after mature female biomass plummeted to concerning lows. However, some scientists insist that the recovery isn’t happening fast enough. They have noted that recruitment, a key to the stock’s future, has remained frustratingly low over the last decade.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: While local herring are more affordable and accessible in Japan, some still look to Alaska for eggs

October 3, 2024 — It’s another fiercely cold March morning, and a dozen or so local fish processors are pacing back and forth in an icy, cavernous warehouse in Otaru. It’s Saturday, usually a day off for the folks who work at the Otaru Fishing Co-Op, but since it’s herring season they’re hosting an auction this morning. Every minute counts with herring, so they have to move these fish quickly.

The buyers circle each pallet stacked high with styrofoam boxes. One man lingers over a fish box, a cigarette dangling between his lips, trying to discern the quality. When the buyers are done looking, they go to a heated room next door with sofas and vending machines and wait.

Read the full article at KCAW

OPINION: Loopholes allow some trawlers to drag bottom, harming Alaska fisheries

October 3, 2024 — Most people would agree: a bottom trawler is a trawler that drags the ocean bottom.

Apparently, to those who make the rules, it’s more complicated than that.

Trawlers that drag the bottom between 40% and 100% of the time, depending on vessel type, are currently allowed to trawl in sensitive areas closed, for conservation, to both bottom trawlers and directed fishermen such as crabbers. In the process, these trawlers destroy the ocean floor, molting crab, and the slow-growing cold-water coral habitat essential for healthy ocean ecosystems, halibut populations and crab populations.

The hangup? The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which is tasked with regulating trawlers and their impact on communities but whose voting members are mostly trawl industry representatives, does not define bottom-dragging trawlers as trawlers that drag the bottom. Instead, these particular trawlers are defined as midwater, or “pelagic” trawlers, since while their net may drag bottom, the mouth of their nets hovers above the ocean floor.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

US government allocates USD 40 million in financial relief for Alaska’s Bering Sea snow crab fishery

October 1, 2024 — The U.S. Department of Commerce has allocated USD 40 million (EUR 36 million) in financial relief to fishers and businesses impacted by the 2023/2024 Alaska Bering Sea snow crab fishery.

“As climate change continues to have severe impacts on the fisheries and ecosystems that are vital to Alaska’s economy, the Department of Commerce remains committed to providing disaster relief across the state,” U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo said. “This funding will help Alaskans recover from the Bering Sea Snow Crab Fishery disaster, support the community’s efforts to prevent future disasters, and keep jobs, recreation and cultural connections thriving.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Federal permit for massive Alaska gold mine fails in court challenge

October 1, 2024 — A federal judge on Monday ruled that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Land Management should have considered a far more catastrophic spill of chemical tailings before approving the Donlin Gold Project in Alaska.

Chief U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason agreed with a group of Native American communities, who challenged a final environmental impact statement that the two federal agencies prepared and that only looked at the possibility of a failure involving 0.5% of the total capacity of the 2,351-acre tailings storage facility to be constructed as part of the mining operation.

“The court finds that federal defendants violated [the National Environmental Policy Act] by failing to consider a larger tailings spill and by characterizing a catastrophic spill as a ‘worst case’ and declining to assess such a scenario on that basis,” Gleason wrote. “A spill of more than 0.5% of the tailings volume is reasonably foreseeable because a person of ordinary prudence would take one into account in reaching a decision.”

The judge didn’t agree that the final environmental impact statement fell short in evaluating the project’s potential impact on human health or the impact of river barges on rainbow smelt subsistence fisheries, as the plaintiffs argued, but agreed with them that it violated the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act by not considering the possible impact of a larger tailings spill on subsistence resources.

Read the full article at the Courthouse News Service

‘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