Saving Seafood

Don’t endanger aquatic ecosystems in the name of solving climate change

June 20, 2022 — In New England, too, we are being told that jeopardizing fishery-supporting ecosystems is the price we must pay to solve climate change. Here, the argument is coming from offshore wind proponents, who are working hand-in-glove with the Biden administration to set a course to install 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 — from a baseline of almost zero in just eight years — and 110 gigawatts by 2050, with most of the initial development taking place off New England and the mid-Atlantic and limited environmental review taking place prior to the issuance of leases.

What would this scale of development look like? With today’s technology, 110 gigawatts would be almost 8,500 turbines — 137 times the size of the Vineyard Wind facility planned for south of Cape Cod. It would mean near-continuous construction on the continental shelf for three decades. While no one knows what the ecological impacts of such construction might be (and that’s precisely our point), evidence suggests they may include alterations of the acoustic and sensory environment, electromagnetic fields, and current and wind patterns, affecting a variety of species whose survival depends on these aspects of the underwater world.

Offshore wind off New England and mining in the Bristol Bay watershed are linked by more than just spurious ultimatums invoking climate catastrophe as the inevitable consequence of keeping these wild places wild. It also happens that offshore wind, which requires hundreds of miles of electrical cables measuring up to 11 inches in diameter, is the most copper-intensive of all renewable energy technologies. Every mile of cable laid across the ocean floor will spur greater pressure to mine copper in precious, irreplaceable places like Bristol Bay.

Read the full op-ed at The Boston Globe

Scientists point to climate change as likely cause for Alaska snow crab decline

June 17, 2022 — Even as scientists are still trying to figure out why the Bering Sea snow crab stock crashed in 2021, federal managers are working on a plan to help rebuild it.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council last week voted to accept alternatives for analysis on its snow crab rebuilding plan — a middle step before implementing an actual plan that will change fishing regulations or openings. The council is on track to approve a final plan for action in December, which would then go to the Secretary of Commerce and through the federal regulation process before becoming official.

Data from last year’s survey at this point seems to confirm that there was a massive decline in the number of young snow crab in the Eastern Bering Sea — something like 99% fewer female snow crab showed up in the survey from 2021.

There’s no complete consensus about why the stock crashed in the first place. Increasingly, however, the models seem to indicate that it’s due to temperature increases linked to climate change.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Fishery managers call for deeper look at salmon bycatch, but decline to tighten rules

June 16, 2022 — Western Alaska villagers have endured the worst chum salmon runs on record, several years of anemic Chinook salmon runs in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, harvest closures from the Bering Sea coast to Canada’s Yukon Territory and such dire conditions that they relied on emergency shipments of salmon from elsewhere in Alaska just to have food to eat.

Many of those suffering see one way to provide some quick relief: Large vessels trawling for pollock and other groundfish in the industrial-scale fisheries of the Bering Sea, they say, must stop intercepting so many salmon.

Advocates for tighter rules on those interceptions, known as bycatch, made their case over the past several days to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the organization that manages fish harvests in federal waters off Alaska.

‘Like fishing in the desert’

“The numbers are really low. There’s nothing out there. It’s like fishing in the desert,” Walter Morgan, of the Yup’ik village of Lower Kalskag, said in online testimony to the council, which met in Sitka.

Read the full story at the the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman

 

NOAA Launches New Season of Discovery in Alaska’s Deep-Sea Coral and Sponge Ecosystems

June 10, 2022 — In the cold dark depths of the North Pacific Ocean, corals and sponges create living habitat for an abundance of life—including some of Alaska’s valuable commercial fish and shellfish.

This summer, Alaska Fisheries Science Center researchers and partners will embark on three expeditions to explore deep-sea coral and sponge habitats in the Gulf of Alaska. Advanced sampling technologies like stereo cameras, ROVs and environmental DNA (eDNA) will make it possible to survey vast areas in a noninvasive and cost-effective manner. The team will discover where corals and sponges are diverse and abundant. They will also learn about coral and sponge early life stages and growth. This knowledge will fill critical information needs for ecosystem-based management of Alaska’s fisheries in a rapidly changing ocean.

“The overarching goal is to conserve and protect unique habitats,” said project lead Christina Conrath, NOAA Fisheries Alaska Fisheries Science Center. “The first step is learning where important habitats are and how important they are to supporting fish and the ecosystem. That’s what we’re doing now.”

Deep-sea Coral and Sponge Ecosystems

Corals and sponges form complex habitat for a multitude of animals. This structure offers protection, feeding opportunities, and nursery areas for commercial species like rockfish, spot prawns, and golden king crab. Some fish deposit their eggs in sponges where they are not only protected from predators, but may also benefit from the sponge’s natural antifungal and antibacterial activity.

Read the full story from NOAA Fisheries

 

ALASKA: Salmon bycatch, electronic monitoring on the table at Sitka meeting of North Pacific Fishery Management Council

June 9, 2022 — The bycatch of chinook and chum salmon is on the agenda, as the spring meeting of the North Pacific Management Council gets underway in Sitka this week (June 9-14).

In addition to hearing how much salmon is being intercepted in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea by the trawl fisheries, the council will review a proposal to supplement the human observer program with electronic monitoring.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council regulates the so-called “federal fisheries” which take place outside the three-mile limit of Alaska’s state waters, and within the exclusive economic zone of the United States which extends 200 miles offshore.

Read the full story at KCAW

Scientists examine Gulf of Alaska sea floor to see effects of bottom trawling

June 8, 2022 — A group of researchers is hoping that data collected from the Gulf of Alaska’s sea floor will shed new light on the effects of bottom trawling.

Scientists from the conservation group Oceana, which is based in Juneau, spent eight days aboard a research vessel circumnavigating the Kodiak archipelago late May. Jon Warrenchuck is a senior scientist and fisheries campaign manager with Oceana.

“The Gulf of Alaska is a very special place and a very productive ecosystem,” Warrenchuck said. “Our timing of our survey here in the spring means we saw just an abundance of life, from the phytoplankton to the fish to the birds feeding at the surface.”

The focus of the trip, though, was to document life at the very bottom of the sea to better understand the impacts of commercial trawling, Warrenchuck said.

Read the full story at KTOO

Terry Haines: American Fisheries Advisory Committee Act Will Identify The Needs of the Industry

June 3, 2022 — Alaska’s senators are proudly touting a recently passed law that creates an American Fisheries Advisory Committee.

After its passage Sen. Dan Sullivan, who introduced the bill, said “… our fishermen will again have a seat at the table to offer appropriate input and oversight of the Saltonstall-Kennedy grant process …” But what’s the big deal? Why do we need another committee? And what the heck is a Saltonstall-Kennedy grant process?

Well, it’s all about pots of money.

The United States imposes tariffs on imported fish products. These tariffs are on imported “… fish, shellfish, mollusks, crustaceans, aquatic plants and animals, and any products thereof …” Interestingly, most of these products are not destined for the dinner table. In 2017, approximately 77% of revenues from these tariffs were from duties collected on imports of non-edible marine products, including jewelry, ink, various chemicals, and skins. The remaining 23% of revenues were from duties on imports of edible seafood products.

The Saltonstall-Kennedy Act of 1954 requires the secretary of agriculture to transfer 30% of the money from these tariffs into NOAA‘s Promote and Develop American Fisheries Products and Research Pertaining to American Fisheries Fund, also known as the P&D account. This account is what is known in government-ese as a “pot” of money. This is how public entities keep track of the public’s money to be sure it is used as intended. Every different pot of money has its own rules limiting and specifying the use of the money that goes into it. So, for instance when your local government has tax dollars going into the road maintenance account, it has to be used to fill potholes, not to fix pilings in the harbor.

Read the full opinion piece at Seafood News

ALASKA: Bristol Bay advocates pushing EPA to do more

June 2, 2022 — Groups united in opposition to the proposed Pebble Mine say they will marshal a big turnout to press the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to go even farther with its proposed protections for the Bristol Bay headwaters.

Advocates outlined their plan at a June 1 press conference in Dillingham, Alaska, with public hearings on the EPA proposal coming up June 16-17 – along with a projected record-setting sockeye season for the $2.2 billion summer fishery.

The EPA’s newly proposed determination under Clean Water Act Section 404(c) “is a milestone, it is a starting point, but we have a long way to go,” said Daniel Cheyette, vice president lands and resources for the Bristol Bay Native Corporation.

Biologists anticipate 75 million sockeye could return this season, underscoring Bristol Bay’s status as the most productive salmon habitat, said Katherine Carscallen, director of Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

EPA could kill mining project in the Bristol Bay watershed

June 1, 2022 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will hold public hearings next month on a proposal to restrict mining in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed and possibly kill a large project. 

The move “would help protect the Bristol Bay watershed’s rivers, streams, and wetlands that support the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery and a subsistence-based way of life that has sustained Alaska Native communities for millennia,” officials said on its website. 

Any changes could kill the proposed “Pebble Mine,” called “one of the greatest stores of mineral wealth ever discovered, and the world’s largest undeveloped copper and gold resource,” by Northern Dynasty Minerals, which is in charge of the project. The National Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups have opposed the project, saying it would damage wildlife there.

Read the full story at KPVI