Saving Seafood

ALASKA: A struggle to dodge salmon in pursuit of a massive pollock bounty

October 16, 2023 — Some 400 miles northwest of Dutch Harbor, Bering Sea pollock congregated in spectacular fashion.

In the wheelhouse of this factory trawler, Captain Jim Egaas scanned a sonar displaying a dense red band that represented millions of fish in a school that stretched for miles.

He could see the pollock up close on another screen that relayed images from an undersea camera stitched in the mesh of a quarter-mile-long net. The video feed showed swarms of them deep in the funnel-shaped trap.

Once pulled on board, the tail end of the net bulged with more than 220,000 pounds of tightly packed pollock. A crewman unstitched a seam. Raised by a powerful winch, the net spewed a silver avalanche of fish into below-deck holding tanks to await processing in a plant primed to operate 24 hours a day.

Egaas was in hurry-up mode. Even before the last of this catch was shaken from the webbing, he called for crew members to unfurl a second net from a giant reel.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Scientists observe chum salmon spawning in North Slope rivers

October 11, 2023 — University of Alaska Fairbanks associate professor of fisheries Peter Westley is clear that there’s nothing new about salmon straying into Arctic Ocean waters. Westley says the fish have long been occasionally observed and caught, but their numbers appear to be increasing.

“And we were interested in whether the change in the sort of frequency of salmon being encountered…is that a perhaps indicator that the salmon are not only showing up in the ocean but are showing up in rivers and are potentially working to establish populations in a new region,” Westley said.

Last month, Westley lead a team that aerially surveyed two Colville River tributaries, the Anaktuvuk and the Itkillik, and counted about 100 chum salmon equally split between the two Arctic rivers. He says movement of a species farther north is a clear signal of climate change.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media 

ALASKA: Alaska cancels snow crab harvest again due to population concerns

October 10, 2023 — The Bering Sea snow crab fishery will be closed again this year due to population concerns.

Crabbers from the Pacific Northwest who fish in Alaska had been watching and waiting for recommendations from the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which met Thursday and Friday. Following the meetings, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said Bering snow crab season will be closed for 2023-2024; Bristol Bay red king crab will open. Tanner crab will also be open for commercial fishermen.

Both the snow crab and Bristol Bay red king crab seasons were closed in 2023. Crabbers and industry associations warned of the massive impact the decision would have on many small businesses, prompting calls by Congressional officials for an emergency declaration and federal aid.

Last year was the first time in history the U.S. snow crab fishery was closed. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game said the harvests were closed over concerns about long-term conservation and the sustainability of crab stocks.

Read the full article at KTVB

ALASKA: Alaska fishermen will be allowed to harvest lucrative red king crab in the Bering Sea

October 10, 2023 — Alaska fishermen will be able to harvest red king crab for the first time in two years, offering a slight reprieve to the beleaguered fishery beset by low numbers likely exacerbated by climate change.

There was no such rebound for snow crab, however, and that fishery will remain closed for a second straight year, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Friday.

“The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery for the prior two seasons were closed based on low abundance and particularly low abundance of mature-sized female crabs,” said Mark Stichert, the state department’s ground fish and shellfish management coordinator,

“Based on survey results from this year, those numbers have improved, some signs of modest optimism in terms of improving abundance in Bristol Bay red king crab overall and that has allowed for a small but still conservative fishery for 2023 as the total population size is still quite low,” he said.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

ALASKA: Crabbers get 2 million pound quota for Bristol Bay red king crab

October 10, 2023 — Alaska fishermen will get a brief respite from crab closures, with a modest three-month opening for Bristol Bay red king crab, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said Friday.

Bering Sea crabbers get their shot at Bristol Bay red king crab from Oct. 15 to Jan. 15 under a quota of 2.150 million pounds, 1.95 million pounds of which has been allocated to IFQ holders with the remaining 215,000 pounds reserved for Community Development Quota (CDQ) shares. The Oct. 6 announcement had been predicated upon earlier trawl surveys which indicated a harvestable surplus of crab.

“Based on preliminary review of 2023 NMFS trawl survey and stock assessment results, ADF&G has determined that the estimate abundance of mature size Bristol Bay red king crab exceeds minimum population thresholds established in the state regulatory strategy,” says Ethan Nichols, area management biologist with ADF&G in Dutch Harbor.

The Bering Sea tanner crab population survey also warranted a fishery opening with a quota of 2.8 million pounds. The season opens on Oct. 15 and closes on March 31. 

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Dispute about salmon and whales between Alaska and Washington again before federal regulators

October 10, 2023 — The fishing of chinook or king salmon is back on the desk of the National Marine Fisheries Service, part of the whipsaw rulings this past summer that saw the king salmon season shut down — and then reinstated — as a case brought by environmentalists wound its way through the courts.

NMFS issued a notice Wednesday it is beginning work on an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and a review of alternatives to its incidental take statement (ITS). The ITS is the amount of take allowed to occur in compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

NMFS is accepting public comments through noon on Nov. 20, said Gretchen Harrington, assistant regional administrator for the Sustainable Fisheries Division. The EIS is required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

The case, Wild Fish Conservancy v. Quan, was filed in U.S. District Court in March 2020. Lawyers for WFC argued fishery managers and representatives of the Pacific Salmon Treaty were ignoring their own research by allowing fishing that harmed the endangered king salmon and the southern resident killer whale population, which feeds on them.

Read the full article at Juneau Empire

Trawl catch of killer whales brings new scrutiny to federal science behind Alaska take levels

October 4, 2023 — Up to 19 fish-eating resident North Pacific killer whales can be accidentally killed annually by Alaska fishing fleets or other human activity without triggering a federal effort to reduce this toll.

This take number has received renewed scrutiny in the aftermath of a Sept. 21 NOAA Fisheries disclosure that 10 killer whales were incidentally caught this year by Bering Sea trawl vessels. One was released alive.

It represents a NOAA Fisheries determination of the toll that humans can take each year without impacting the optimum population of resident killer whales off Alaska. Some scientists say it is based on an outdated assessment, and is likely too high to protect smaller genetically distinct populations.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Alaska Federation of Natives sides with federal government in Kuskokwim salmon dispute

October 2, 2023 — Alaska’s largest Native organization has sided with the federal government in its dispute with the state over salmon management in the Kuskokwim River, saying that the state’s position is attacking its interests and those of its members.

On Sept. 26, the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit filed by the federal government over management of fishing in the Kuskokwim River, a place where salmon scarcities have produced hardships.

The lawsuit, filed on May 17, 2022, was aimed at stopping state-authorized fishing in the part of the Kuskokwim River that flows through the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge.

Federal officials had allowed only rural residents to engage in subsistence fishing there, in accordance with the rural preference rule embedded in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. But the state opened subsistence fishing there to all Alaska residents.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

Killer whale deaths in Alaska trawl harvests prompt investigations and spark anger

October 2, 2023 — An unusually high number of whales have died in trawl fishing gear in Alaska waters, spurring a federal investigation and new criticism of the industry that uses big nets to scoop fish from the bottom of the ocean.

Ten killer whales, also known as orcas, were ensnared in trawl gear this year in the Bering Sea and along the Aleutian Islands, and nine of them died, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service. The toll compares to six killer whale deaths in Alaska fisheries documented over the five years spanning from 2016 to 2020, according to NOAA Fisheries records.

While pollock makes up the biggest volume of fish harvested in the Bering Sea and Aleutians, all of the trawlers involved in this year’s killer whale deaths were harvesting different types of groundfish. Those vessels, participants in what NOAA Fisheries classifies as the Amendment 80 trawl fishery, harvest yellowfin sole, Pacific ocean perch and other bottom-dwelling species.

Critics of bottom trawling speculate that the whales are dying after chasing fish discarded as bycatch by the vessels. Bycatch is the incidental harvest of non-targeted species.

It is possible that climate change has disrupted normal food supplies, said Jon Warrenchuk, a senior scientist with the environmental group Oceana.

“The food web is so out of whack in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska,” Warrenchuk said.

That means that orcas are turning to the food they find around trawl ships, he said. “The whales now have been conditioned to be feeding off the discards of the factory trawlers,” he said.

Halibut may be a particularly fatal attraction for the whales, Warrenchuk said.

He cited a relatively new practice called “halibut deck sorting,” which is allowed exclusively for the non-pollock Amendment 80 trawlers through a rule enacted in 2019.

The practice, a response to reduced halibut stocks, is intended to reduce impacts of halibut bycatch. Under the rule, trawlers within a particular fleet are allowed to send incidentally caught halibut back into the sea without penalty as long as certain requirements are met. The halibut must be alive, they must be returned to the water within 35 minutes and the entire process must be monitored by an onboard fisheries observer, according to the rule.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon