Saving Seafood

ALASKA: North Pacific Council’s science committee voices concerns over chum bycatch plan

November 1, 2023 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting held at the Anchorage Hilton in October was not just one meeting – it was three meetings. In addition to the council itself, there was a meeting of industry stakeholders called the Advisory Panel, and a meeting of scientists called the Scientific and Statistical Committee – or SSC.

This fall the council tasked the SSC with reviewing a 120-page preliminary analysis of Bering Sea Chum Salmon Bycatch Management, and providing input on the “relative scientific uncertainty of management options.”

As KCAW’s Robert Woolsey reports, the committee of university, state, and federal scientists found a few things that were relatively uncertain.

At its October meeting the North Pacific Fishery Management Council  examined some potential management measures intended to reduce the amount of chum salmon caught by trawlers fishing for pollock in the Bering Sea. Many of those chum salmon – referred to as “bycatch” – may have been intercepted on their way to the Yukon, Kuskokwim, and other large river systems of Western Alaska, where chum salmon populations have crashed.

The council believes broader forces may be at work in causing chum salmon declines. The preliminary analysis prepared by the council’s scientists states that “declines in chum salmon populations appear to be driven by warmer water temperatures in both the marine and freshwater environments.”

Scientific and Statistical Committee member Dr. Ian Stewart, with the International Pacific Halibut Commission, had reservations about relying too heavily on temperature data.

Read the full at KCAW

ALASKA: Alaska’s snow crabs suddenly vanished. Will history repeat itself as waters warm?

October 31, 2023 — Garrett Kavanaugh grabs a fistful of freshly cooked crab and stuffs it into his mouth, a giant smile on his face, as his feet brace against the rolling sea beneath the deck of his boat.

“Oh yeah,” he says. “That’s what it’s all about.”

As the deck of his 58-foot-long boat rolls on the swells of the Gulf of Alaska, Kavanaugh, 24, cracks another crab leg between his tattooed fingers.

Long months of preparation and anticipation have led to this moment, as Kavanaugh and his three-man crew celebrate the first taste of the Dungeness crabs they’ve hauled up about 50 feet from the sandy ocean bottom off Kodiak Island.

In Alaska, last fall’s shocking collapse of the snow crab fishery shows that conditions for sea life can and are rapidly changing, even in ecosystems that have fed Indigenous people for thousands of years.

So far, this Alaska Dungeness crabbing season is off to a good start. But nothing is certain in these warming waters, where a new study concluded the snow crabs died out because the unusually warm water made their metabolisms run faster, causing them to starve. The study also found that many cod, which traditionally prey on young crabs, had left the area for the colder waters of the northern Bering Sea, “which rarely occurs.”

Read the full article at USA Today

ALASKA: High Liner, Ocean Beauty, Trident, E&E Foods enter 2024 Alaska Symphony of Seafood contest

October 31, 2023 — High Liner Foods, Ocean Beauty Seafoods, Trident Seafoods, and E&E Foods are among the competitors entering the 2024 Alaska Symphony of Seafood.

The event, organized by the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation since 1994, is a competition for commercial-ready, value-added products, with the goal of promoting new products made from Alaska seafood. The product entries will compete for prizes in eight categories: the Grand Prize, Salmon Choice, Whitefish Choice, Seattle People’s Choice, Juneau People’s Choice, Bristol Bay Choice, Best Packaging and Best Grab & Go in addition to the categories of Retail, Food Service, Beyond the Plate, and Around the Plate. The first-place winners from each category, plus the Bristol Bay Choice award winner, will receive booth space at the 2024 Seafood Expo North America in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., entry into the SENA Seafood Excellence Awards, and airfare to and from the event.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Alaska Salmon Research Task Force issues progress report, seeks public input

October 26, 2023 — Beset by changing climate, population swings and declining salmon returns in some regions, Alaska salmon are under unprecedented pressures.

The Alaska Salmon Research Task Force is now seeking public comment on an early version of their draft report to help build its work plan.

In an announcement through the National Marine Fisheries Service, task force members said they need advice on “existing knowledge, research gaps, and applied research that is needed to better understand the increased variability and declining salmon returns in some regions of Alaska.”

The task force is especially interested in hearing comments about Indigenous and traditional knowledge that can be applied to the Pacific salmon life cycle framework now under development by the task force.

Comments can be submitted online with this form. People can also comment in person during the November 14-15, 2023 Alaska Salmon Research Task Force meeting in Anchorage. The session will be held at the William A. Egan Civic & Convention Center, Summit Hall (Lower Level), 555 W 5th Ave, Anchorage, AK 99501.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

In search of 10 billion missing snow crabs, scientists eye marine heat waves

October 23, 2023 — About 10 billion snow crabs disappeared from Bering Sea waters between 2018 and 2021, forcing fisheries to shutter in Alaska last winter and threatening the state’s economy. Now, scientists think they know what happened to them.

A study published Thursday in the journal Science suggests that the crabs likely suffered a mass starvation event touched off by seasons of extreme ocean heat.

The population crash — from its highest-recorded level in 2018 — shows how marine heat waves, which are made more likely by climate change, can scramble ecosystems and threaten human livelihoods that rely on ocean life.

Read the full article at NBC News

ALASKA: Bering Sea fishing group grapples with how to invest pollock profits in Western Alaska

October 23, 2023 — Michael Cleveland’s job is resuscitating the equipment essential to village life.

On a morning in late summer, inside a modest engine repair shop, Cleveland was juggling jobs fixing the transom of an aluminum skiff and stripping a four-wheeler down to the guts.

Mechanics here fix snowmachines, boat motors, the occasional car, dirt bikes and anything else with an engine. In a part of Alaska without roads, these are the vehicles vital to everyday life — getting to the airstrip, going hunting and fishing, traveling to other communities across the flat terrain of the Kuskokwim Delta.

Cleveland, 33, grew up in this predominantly Yup’ik part of Southwest Alaska and has been employed at the shop for around two years.

“For me, I’m learning while I’m working,” he said.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News 

ALASKA: Alaska Native leaders call for legal overhaul to protect traditional fish harvests

October 23, 2o23 — The crash of salmon stocks in Western Alaska’s Kuskokwim River has sparked a bitter court fight between the federal and state governments, and now Alaska Native leaders are calling for congressional action to ensure that Indigenous Alaskans have priority for harvests when stocks are scarce.

The conflict has gripped this year’s Alaska Federation of Natives convention underway this week in Anchorage, where delegates expressed anger over state policies and fears for the future of fish and wildlife upon that they and their ancestors traditionally harvested.

A resolution introduced at the convention urges the federal government to “aggressively protect our hunting and fishing rights in court” against a state government that is “actively undermining Alaska Natives’ rights to subsistence.” The resolution also calls for Congress to strengthen federal law to “permanently protect the right of Alaska Native people to engage in subsistence fishing” in Alaska waters.

Subsistence is the term that describes traditional harvests of fish, game and plants for personal and noncommercial use. Salmon has traditionally been a subsistence staple.

For Alaska Natives, subsistence is of cultural as well as practical importance. Within the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, a sweeping federal law passed in 1980, there are subsistence harvest protections for residents of rural Alaska – regions where communities are largely Native – but not for Native people specifically.

It is time to change those terms to explicitly protect Native traditions, convention attendees said. The sentiment was particularly strong among residents of the affected Kuskokwim River area.

“After decades of failed and broken promises, we urge Alaska’s state and federal policymakers to recognize and protect Alaska Native rights to subsistence uses of fish and game. We ask that they act quickly to stop the physical and cultural starvation of our people,” Curt Chamberlain, an attorney for the Yup’ik-owned Calista Corp., said during a three-hour session Friday afternoon on subsistence problems.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

Billions of crabs went missing around Alaska. Scientists now know what happened to them

October 22, 2023 — Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the ocean around Alaska in recent years, and scientists now say they know why: Warmer ocean temperatures likely caused them to starve to death.

The finding comes just days after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the snow crab harvest season was canceled for the second year in a row, citing the overwhelming number of crabs missing from the typically frigid, treacherous waters of the Bering Sea.

The study, published Thursday by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, found a significant link between recent marine heat waves in the eastern Bering Sea and the sudden disappearance of the snow crabs that began showing up in surveys in 2021.

Read the full article at CNN

ALASKA: Alaska Native advocates and leaders call for expanded federal subsistence protection

October 22, 2023 — Advocates for Alaska Native interests say they see an opening to significantly broaden a key federal subsistence protection across Alaska amid a court dispute between the state and the federal government over that protection.

With support from Alaska’s 200-plus tribes, Congress could expand the protection to new swaths of Alaska, say attorneys with the Native American Rights Fund and Alaska Native groups.

They want the protection, which provides a fishing priority in times of shortage for rural residents who are typically Native, to expand beyond sections of rivers associated with federal lands such as refuges, where the law currently applies.

They want it to cover the entirety of rivers, including sections of rivers associated with state lands.

“Up and down the river,” is how it would be applied, not just on part of a river, said Heather Kendall-Miller, a part-time attorney with the Native American Rights Fund.

Also, the priority for rural residents should be expanded to include Alaska Natives, to ensure it benefits Indigenous people living in urban and rural areas, they say.

State officials said Thursday those proposals, if Congress approved, would allow federal authority to supplant state authority on rivers across the state.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News