Saving Seafood

High temps linked to vanishing snow crabs in Bering Sea

January 9, 2023 — An increase in temperature changes in the Bering Sea is linked to the decline of snow crabs, according to ongoing studies from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Snow crabs are highly stenothermic — only equipped to survive across a narrow range of cold water temperatures. According to NOAA, the species thrive best in waters of temperatures at 2 degrees Celsius and below.

From 2018 to 2019, the administration recorded Bering Sea temperatures at over 3 degrees Celsius. The water temperature spiked from 1.52 degrees in 2017 to 3.5 degrees in 2018. The following year, the warm waters remained with an average temperature of 3.33 degrees, roughly two degrees higher than the recorded average seen over the past two decades.

“In those two years, 2018 and 2019, the Bering Sea was very warm,” Ben Daly, with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said.

Read the full article at Alaska News Source

Fishermen facing climate change: crab crashes and wind power threats

January 9, 2023 — Five thousand miles apart on their own oceans, New England trawlers and Alaska crabbers say they are up against twin threats from climate change: warming waters changing the marine environment, and hasty, risk-filled decisions in response from U.S. policy makers.

“I’m not sure which is going to get me first, climate change or the solution to it,” said Chris Brown, a Point Judith, R.I., captain, president of the Seafood Harvesters of America and a 2022 National Fisherman Highliner.

Brown expressed a general consensus among panelists during a Jan. 5 online webinar hosted by Fishery Friendly Climate Action, an initiative campaign that is organizing fishermen and industry groups to “advocate for robust climate solutions that work for U.S. fisheries and not at their expense,” as coordinator Sarah Schumann says.

“These issues are moving so fast,” said Schumann. “We as an industry have to improve our game.”

A series of winter webinars organized by Schumann aims to bring in fishermen from all U.S. regions to work together on climate issues. The collapse of Alaska’s Bering Sea snow and king crab fisheries –  a potential $500 million loss to the industry and dependent communities –  has snapped the issue into sharp focus.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

New halibut catch-sharing plan included in federal bill

January 6, 2023 — Charter operators in the Gulf of Alaska will soon be able to buy halibut quota from willing commercial fishermen. That’s after funding was included for a new catch-sharing program in the federal omnibus budget bill, passed at the end of last month.

Seward’s Andy Mezirow is on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and has been a champion of the program for a while. He said it’s a long time coming. The program was vetoed by President Donald Trump in his final weeks in office and had to go through the Congressional approval process — twice.

“This language that made it into the omnibus bill has been kicking around Washington D.C. for like six years,” he said.

The plan is designed to fix a problem that can occur when halibut abundance in the gulf is low.

Read the full article at Alaska Public News

ALASKA: Warming waters are driving Bering Sea crashes, but Alaska’s fishing industry is quiet on climate

January 4, 2022 — Billions of snow crab disappeared from the Bering Sea in the past few years — a crash that’s devastated Alaska’s crab fishing fleet and a harvest that just two years ago was worth $130 million.

Bycatch didn’t kill them. But the issue still dominated discussions last month at an Anchorage meeting of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the commission that regulates the huge, lucrative harvests of seafood in the federal waters off Alaska’s shores.

The council and its advisory panel, over the course of 10 days, spent hours listening to fishing industry representatives, tribal leaders and others call for a crackdown on bycatch by Bering Sea trawlers — the big vessels that scoop up millions of whitefish, like pollock, while sometimes accidentally “bycatching” crab and salmon.

The federal scientists who track Bering Sea harvests say there’s no way the trawl fleet could have caused the epic crash in snow crab.

Instead, they say, climate change was a major driver: A marine heat wave, combined with what had been a booming crab population, likely drove the die-off, as the crabs’ metabolism rose with warmer water temperatures and they ran out of food. Warming ocean and river temperatures are also likely driving major declines in chum salmon, which have prompted parallel calls for stricter bycatch limits.

The North Pacific council lacks the power to regulate the carbon emissions that scientists blame for global warming. That’s why participants at last month’s meetings say they’re pushing for bycatch reductions, which they describe as an essential step to help crab and salmon populations adapt and recover.

“We need to focus on things that we do have control over, and that’s really fishing impacts and habitat protections,” Jamie Goen, executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers trade group, said at a public forum that coincided with the North Pacific council meeting. “Even though bycatch may not be what drove this stock down, we do think while it’s at such historically low levels, it could be impeding the recovery.”

But some climate activists, and a handful of climate-focused fishermen, argue that the industry needs to expand its focus to call for bolder policies to reduce carbon pollution and minimize the risk of further damage to fisheries.

“We’re all in this mess because of climate change, and it’s only going to get worse until we do something about climate change,” said Linda Behnken, executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association.

Behnken has publicly endorsed a carbon fee and dividend program, and her organization is currently soliciting comments on a national climate report. But many other big fishing industry groups and companies remain conspicuously silent on the issue.

“It’s been so political, and I think that’s why the big industry has stayed away from it,” Behnken said in a phone interview. “It’s surprising and disappointing, because I really do think the fishing industry has the ability to influence national and state policy.”

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Crab Fishery Collapse Seen as Warning About a Changing Bering Sea

January 4, 2022 — Less than five years ago, prospects appeared bright for Bering Sea crab fishers. Stocks were abundant and healthy, federal biologists said, and prices were near all-time highs.

Now two dominant crab harvests have been canceled for lack of fish. For the first time, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in October canceled the 2022-2023 harvest of Bering Sea snow crab, and it also announced the second consecutive year of closure for another important harvest, that of Bristol Bay red king crab.

What has happened between then and now? A sustained marine heat wave that prevented ice formation in the Bering Sea for two winters, thus vastly altering ocean conditions and fish health.

“We lost billions of snow crab in a matter of months,” said Bob Foy, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, at a public forum held Dec. 12 at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. “We don’t have a smoking gun, if you will. We don’t have one particular event that impacted the snow crab — except the heat wave.”

That heat wave is now over, but its effects linger. A NOAA survey showed an 80% decline in Bering Sea snow crab, from 11.7 billion in 2018 to 1.9 billion this year. It could take six to 10 years to recover, experts told members of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which wrapped up a 10-day meeting in Anchorage on Wednesday.

Snow crab may be the “poster child” of climate change, council member Bill Tweit said during deliberations on a rebuilding program that was ultimately approved at the meeting, but much more will be affected by the long-term changes in the ocean.

Read the full article at the Maritime Executive

ALASKA: Alaska pollock RFM certification reassessment underway

January, 4, 2022 — The Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM) certification reassessment process is underway for the Alaska pollock and cod fisheries.

The public comment period for the assessment opened 19 December, 2022, and runs to 19 January, 2023. The comment period will be followed with the certification determination by the third-party certification body, DNV, which will determine whether the fisheries can be recertified or not.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Debate rages on impact of pollock trawler bycatch on declining stocks in Alaska

January 3, 2022 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council declined to take immediate action to limit pollock trawling that some have blamed on causing declines in populations of chum and chinook salmon, red king crab, opilio crab, and other species that come up in the tows of pollock-fishing vessels.

At the NPFMC meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, during the second week in December, representatives from Indigenous tribes and the crab- and salmon-fishing sectors pushed the council to take immediate action to close down trawling in vast areas of the Bering Sea, but the council deferred any potential action until 2023.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

The fight of the Salmon People

December 29, 2022 — April 2022, early spring Chinook season

Total tribal catch in 2021: 1.605 million pounds, including the worst spring season in 22 years

The salmon were late and the nets were empty.

Two weeks had passed since the Yakama Nation opened its ceremonial and subsistence spring fishing season on the Columbia River. Randy Settler and Sam George had spent $400 on gas for their boats, and had just two fish so far to give to their tribe for ceremonies.

This year’s salmon fishing was forecast to be better than last year’s. But it was the slowest start to a season that Settler could remember. It was also his first season without his mother, Mary Goudy-Settler, who died in October 2021.

Settler was sitting in the riverside house that used to be hers, reflecting on all that had been taken from his family, all his parents had done to claw back what they could. They had fought for their right to fish, a right the U.S. government promised to honor more than 150 years ago and then violated generation after generation through laws, policies and flat-out discrimination. He inherited that fight. Now, with climate change threatening the remaining salmon runs, he thinks about the legacy they left for him, the one he’ll pass down to his nephew, George, and to George’s 10-year-old daughter.

“Áwna sɨ́nwit UllaQut’.” His eyes welled up when he introduced himself by the Yakama name his mother gave him.

“But I’ve never claimed that name,” Settler, 67, later said.

The name, UllaQut’, translates to “frog.” It means more than that.

Mary Goudy-Settler and tribal elders bestowed it in a traditional ceremony when her son was 42, the same year he was elected to the governing council of their tribe.

It is a variant on the name of a famous war chief, one that Settler is tied to through his family’s lineage. To carry that name, he said, “you have to be a big deal in Indian Country.”

He has spent a lot of his life trying to live up to it.

Read the full article at OPB

Bering Sea crabbers welcome disaster relief, seek temporary area closure

December 28, 2022 — The first steps in declaring and funding a fisheries disaster declaration for Bering Sea crab “happened in a record time of only two months,” a hopeful sign for what could be a $500 million setback for the industry, according to the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers association.

“The $300 million  included in the omnibus appropriation package for fishery disasters is a great start for much-needed money to help fishermen and communities pay their bills,” said Jamie Goen, executive director for the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. “We commend the Secretary of Commerce, NOAA Fisheries, and members of Congress, particularly the Alaska and Washington delegations, for their swift action and attention to this issue affecting so many hard-working Americans and family fishing businesses.”

In mid-December U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo issued disaster declarations for several fisheries in Alaska and Washington state, a first step toward delivering both federal relief and science research into the collapses. In a surge of year-end legislation before Christmas,  Congress authorized the funding as part of the annual federal omnibus appropriations law.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

In barrier to Pebble mine, Alaska Native corporation and groups set aside land for conservation

December 28, 2022 — An effort involving an Alaska Native corporation and land conservation groups will permanently protect 44,000 acres in Southwest Alaska and block a key transportation route to the embattled Pebble copper and gold project, the groups announced.

The land, owned by the Pedro Bay Corp., is located off the northeastern shores of Lake Iliamna, the largest lake in Alaska, in an area where project developer Pebble Limited Partnership had favored an access road to the mineral deposit from Cook Inlet.

The Conservation Fund and Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust worked with the Native corporation on the agreement. The Conservation Fund will purchase the easements for $20 million while the Bristol Bay land trust will hold the easements and work with the corporation to enforce their terms.

“They are perpetual easements and this is important primarily because this is prime salmon habitat,” said Tim Troll, executive director of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust.

The mineral deposit is located about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage near Bristol Bay and the headwaters of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

Pebble Limited has pursued development of a mine in the region for more than a decade, but the project has faced strong opposition from tribes, conservation groups and fishermen. Pebble Limited insists the mine can operate safely without damaging the fishery.

The mine faces stiff headwinds from the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed blocking the mine under a special agency action, something mine opponents say could permanently doom the project. The agency is expected to make a final decision by February. A different agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has rejected the project as well. Pebble is appealing that decision, but the EPA decision would trump whatever the Corps decides.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News