Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Scientists say warming seas helped cause Alaska’s snow crab crash

November 18, 2023 — When scientists estimated that more than 10 billion snow crab had disappeared from the Eastern Bering Sea between 2018 and 2021, industry stakeholders and fisheries scientists had several ideas about where they’d gone.

Some thought bycatch, disease, cannibalism, or crab fishing, while others believed it could be predation from other sea animals like Pacific cod.

But now, scientists say they’ve distinguished the most likely cause for the disappearance. The culprit is a marine heatwave between 2018 and 2019, according to a new study authored by a group of scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Mike Litzow is a co-author of the study and the director for NOAA’s Kodiak lab. He said starvation mediated by increased temperatures caused the collapse.

“Really the crab were not able to get the food they needed,” Litzow said. “They were just outstripping the resources that were available to them.” 

According to Litzow and his fellow researchers, the crab faced a number of compounding factors: First, higher temperatures meant increased metabolism so they needed more food; on top of that, there was less space for the crab to forage that food; and finally, the crab were just smaller than usual.

Researchers took data from the many possible hypotheses for the disappearance and they examined it alongside the data they have on the collapse. They examined possible mortality from a range of sources, including directed fishing from the snow crab industry as well as bitter crab syndrome — a fatal disease among crustaceans caused by parasites — and trawl bycatch.

“The take-home message is really that none of those other proposed mechanisms explains the collapse with the data we have,” Litzow said.

He said it’s tough to know what the collapse from increased ocean temperatures could mean for other species, but it’s safe to say we’ll probably see more marine heatwaves like this, and they’re likely to be bigger and more frequent, as the world continues warming.

Read the full article at KYUK

Sockeye nuggets, breakfast sausage win Alaska Symphony of Seafoods awards

November 16, 2023 — Ocean Beauty Seafoods’ Echo Falls Smoked Wild Alaskan Sockeye Nuggets and Trident Seafoods’ Kraken Stash IPA Beer Battered Wild Alaska Pollock Fillets won the retail and foodservice awards at the 2023 Alaska Symphony of Seafoods.

The Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF) announced the winners at the Pacific Marine Expo on 9 November. The competition, organized by the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation since 1994, is for commercial-ready, value-added products, with the goal of promoting new products made from Alaska seafood.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US Senate holds field hearing on impact of Alaska salmon declines on tribes

November 16, 2023 — U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) held a field hearing in Bethel, Alaska, U.S.A. last week to hear concerns about how declining salmon runs are affecting native communities.

“It is significant and historic to bring the Senate Indian Affairs Committee to Bethel to understand how the salmon crashes in the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region are affecting those of you who live here,” Murkowski, the vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indians Affairs (SCIA), said. “I have heard how the lack of salmon is affecting your ways of life and the need for the federal government to pay attention, to understand, and to act. We brought the committee to Bethel so those in the region and surrounding villages who are most impacted can be heard and offer potential solutions on the official record.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Debate over Pebble mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region moves to dueling Supreme Court briefs

November 16, 2023 — The company trying to build a huge copper and gold mine in the salmon-rich Bristol Bay will keep fighting for the project, despite a decision by the federal government to keep the proposed development site off-limits to large-scale metals mining.

John Shively, chief executive officer of the Pebble Limited Partnership, made that vow in a presentation at the Alaska Miners Association annual convention in Anchorage.

He said the Pebble mine had the potential to transform the economy and improve lives in the rural Bristol Bay region, just as he said the Red Dog Mine, one of the world’s biggest zinc producers, has done in Northwest Alaska.

“That’s why we’re still fighting this. The resources are there. We’re still here. We’re not going anywhere,” he told the convention audience in his presentation on Thursday.

The company’s fight is backed by the administration of Gov. Mike Dunleavy. At his direction, the state in July filed a lawsuit directly to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to overturn a decision by the Environmental Protection Agency that bars permitting for any Pebble-type mine in key areas of the Bristol Bay watershed.

Dunleavy, in brief remarks earlier this week at the miners’ convention, expressed pride in his support of the controversial project.

“I was told if I supported Pebble, I would never win another election. Well, I don’t know. I’m here. I’m still here,” he said on Tuesday, drawing applause from the audience. The Republican governor was handily reelected last November.

The EPA decision invoked a rarely used provision in the Clean Water Act to preclude any wetlands permit for the project. The agency determined that the Pebble mine posed an unacceptable risk to the Bristol Bay watershed, essential to a region with the world’s largest sockeye salmon runs and with major fisheries and wildlife populations that depend on that salmon.

To help reverse that decision, the Pebble Limited Partnership and its owner, Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., in September filed an amicus brief in support of the state’s Supreme Court effort. Filing supportive briefs, too, were the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and numerous Alaska and national resource-development groups.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

Finite supply fuels US market for king and snow crab, defying seafood category dip

November 15, 2023 — Limited availability of king crab and snow crab has boosted U.S. buyer interest, in defiance of a downward sales trend across the seafood category.

On 15 October, the red king crab fishery in Alaska’s Bristol Bay officially opened with a 2.2-million-pound quota, following a two-year closure. As recently as 2016, the total allowable harvest was set at 8.47 million pounds; in 1980, it was 130 million pounds.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Cordova kelp farmers need to process their harvest. A scientist is piloting a solution.

November 16, 2023 — Sean Den Adel and his fiance Skye Steritz live in Cordova and are among a handful of small-scale seaweed farmers in Prince William Sound.

They’ve been harvesting mostly sugar kelp on about five acres of water since 2022. Den Adel said he’s excited about the future of the industry, which he sees as more sustainable – ecologically and economically – than the fisheries that have supported Prince William Sound for generations.

“I really do think it’s going to create a lot more jobs in coastal communities, and it already is doing that,” he said.

But in order to grow the industry, Cordova’s kelp farmers need a way to process seaweed locally.

Prince William Sound has experienced five fisheries disasters since 2016, in part because of climate change. These disasters put a major economic strain on coastal communities. Growers like Den Adel are hoping seaweed can help bolster and diversify the region’s economy.

Cale Herschleb, another Cordova-based kelp farmer with Royal Ocean Kelp Company, has commercially fished for salmon in Prince William Sound for the last 15 years. The fisheries disasters have been challenging and the future of salmon fishing feels uncertain, he said, and growing kelp makes sense as an off-season occupation.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Dozens testify in Bethel during federal hearing on salmon: ‘We bear the brunt of the conservation’

November 13, 2023 — While the “Gathering Place” at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation hospital in Bethel is often bustling with people who have come in from the region’s villages for medical appointments, on Nov. 10 they came to talk about salmon.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, acting as vice chair of the United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, hosted a field hearing and listening session addressing a topic at the core of daily life in the region. The title of the hearing was: “The Impact of the Historic Salmon Declines on the Health and Well-Being of Alaska Native Communities along Arctic, Yukon, and Kuskokwim Rivers”.

Association of Village Council Presidents CEO Vivian Korthuis said that the tribal organization has been pushing for this type of hearing for two years. It’s a chance to gather first-hand accounts from the people impacted the most by the decline in salmon.

Read the full article at KYUK

ALASKA: Battle flares anew over Alaska subsistence fisheries

November 13, 2023 — Abysmal chinook and chum salmon returns to Western Alaska have made the state’s jurisdiction in fisheries management a prominent target on the legal radar again. Though Alaska’s subsistence challenges have been the bane of salmon management in some areas for more than a half century, recent run failures on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers have rekindled arguments in the courts.

Most recently, a case filed in 2022 has gained momentum and will argue whether the State of Alaska and the Alaska Division of Fish and Game, or the federal government, calls the shots in setting subsistence openings and closures on a 191-mile stretch of the river. 

“They’re literally fighting over crumbs here,” says Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola, D-Alaska.  “This is a legal battle over crumbs. All subsistence harvesting captures less than 1 percent of Alaska’s resources. When I was growing up it was 2 percent, which was negligible; now it’s less than 1 percent, and when you’re talking about subsistence on federal land, that’s infinitesimal.”

The case is the latest in court gyrations that promise to test the validity of a landmark court ruling that was never settled to anyone’s satisfaction in the 1990s. That case, commonly referred to as “Katie John,” was named after the woman who challenged a state law of 1964 which prevented her from operating a fish wheel for her winter’s salmon. That ruling was supposed to have defined “subsistence priority” in fisheries management.

The suit, originally filed in 1985 by Katie John and other parties, challenged the state management system in a plea for subsistence rights. What ensued since then has been a fight between state and federal courts in defining what constitutes public lands, submerged lands, navigable waters on those lands and which government (state or federal) has rightful management of those waters to comply with language in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). 

An equally hefty argument has been the definition of who among Alaska residents has rightful access to natural resources – and when. As the Katie John case gained momentum in federal courts, an Alaska state Supreme Court decision in another case, McDowell v. State, had rendered that natural resources are the property of all residents: urban, rural, Native and non-Native, and that relegating rights to specific groups violated the state constitution.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Alaska Fisheries: Separating fact from fiction

November 10, 2023 — The Pacific Marine Expo kicked off its second day with an educational session, “Alaska Fisheries: Separating fact from fiction.” The panel was moderated by Kate Naughten, Director of Communications at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Panelists included Janet Coit, Assistant Administrator at NOAA, Robert Foy, Ph.D., Director of AK Fisheries Science Center (NOAA), and Jon Kurland, Alaska Regional Administrator (NOAA).

Naughten addressed the crowd, “We’re going to start on the present state of Alaska fisheries, the future of the stocks that are in flux, management responses to the changes of climate and markets, how climate change has impacted Alaska’s markets and ecosystems and how that affects fisheries, and the impact of extreme events on stocks that were already in decline and recent increases in recruitment.”

Janet Coit was the first to speak, expressing her sincere appreciation for getting to work with the members of the fishing community who share a love for the ocean. She emphasized NOAA’s national seafood strategy, launched last summer, which is meant to put in one place the administration’s commitment to fisheries and to demonstrate their priorities moving forward. “Events like this are really important to me, and they provide an opportunity for me to hear from and learn from the fishing industry and to talk about our mutual priorities, the challenges, and opportunities before us.” She continued, “The seafood sector supports over 1.2 million jobs, and generates $165 billion in sales in seafood across the broader economy,” Coit said. “Our nation harvests and farms about 10 billion pounds of seafood annually, with a dockside value of over $6 billion.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Salmon are vanishing from the Yukon River — and so is a way of life

November 9, 2023 — Serena Fitka sat in the cabin of a flat-bottomed aluminum boat as it sped down the Yukon River in western Alaska, recalling how the river once ran thick with salmon. Each summer, in the Yup’ik village of St. Mary’s where Fitka grew up, she and her family fished for days on end. They’d catch enough salmon to last through winter, enough to share with cousins, aunts, uncles, and elders who couldn’t fish for themselves.

“We’d get what we need, and be done,” Fitka said, raising her voice above the whir of the outboard motor and the waves beating against the hull. “But now there’s nothing.”

The boat skirted the river bank as Fitka glanced out the window, her face shielded from the mid-July sun. Gray water, thick with glacial silt, lapped against the land’s muddy edge below a summer palette of green: dark spruce needles, light birch leaves, and willows a shade in between. A bald eagle soared 10 feet above the river, scanning the water.

“I thought this wouldn’t happen in my lifetime,” Fitka said. “I thought there would always be fish in the river.”

Read the full article at the Grist