Saving Seafood

With ‘slim chance’ to change Magnuson-Stevens Act, Peltola favors ‘workaround’

May 24, 2023 — Alaska’s subsistence fishing advocates want to change the nation’s primary fishing law to crack down on the accidental catch of salmon by the Bering Sea trawl fleet. Changing the law is looking increasingly unlikely, but there might be another way.

Congresswoman Mary Peltola focused on revising the Magnuson-Stevens Act since the start of her campaign. But she said it’s not in the cards now.

“I think everybody recognizes that there’s a very slim chance that Magnuson-Stevens will be authorized this year” or next, Peltola said in a recent video call arranged by a public affairs firm called Ocean Strategies.

Rather than change the law, the new strategy is to change a set of guidelines for the law that’s already on the books.

It’s a fallback position. It’s not likely to yield quick results. But this year is shaping up to be another grim one for chinook and chum runs on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers.  Peltola and other salmon advocates say it’s important to take some kind of action now to preserve the possibility of a return to salmon abundance.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Record-low quota caught as Bering Sea Tanner crab season wraps up

April 18, 2023 — The fishing season has ended for Bering Sea Tanner crab. Crabbers caught the record-low quota of 2 million pounds just before the end of March.

Seventeen vessels went out for tanner across the fishery’s east and west districts, said Ethan Nichols, the assistant area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Unalaska.

“Some boats caught their quota in the fall. Some caught it in the spring,” Nichols said. “Overall, the fishery performance was pretty good.”

Nichols said the average size of the crab caught was smaller than in seasons past. That could be because buyers agreed to accept crab they would’ve previously turned away.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Proposed Bering Sea marine sanctuary draws pushback from fishing industry

April 18, 2023 — A proposed marine sanctuary in the Pribilof Islands has drawn major pushback from the commercial fishing industry, ever since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration accepted the nomination last June.

The Aleut Community of St. Paul — the tribal government for the Pribilof Island community of around 500 people — says the sanctuary designation would give it greater authority to protect the region’s vast ecosystems and resources, including rich fishing grounds and habitat for the federally protected northern fur seal.

The national marine sanctuary would be named Alaĝum Kanuux̂, or Heart of the Ocean — and if approved, it would be the first of its kind in Alaska, possibly creating a new precedent for resource management in the state.

Lauren Divine is the director for the tribe’s ecosystem conservation office. She said the sanctuary designation would make the tribe a co-manager for the region’s resources, which are currently managed by the State of Alaska and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

“That co-management aspect is really important because it’s a step towards self determination, sovereignty,” Divine said in an interview. “It really speaks to going back to Indigenous stewardship of lands and waters, which have operated successfully and sustainably since time immemorial.”

Divine also said the sanctuary would act as a spotlight, bringing tourism, research, and education dollars to the region.

Read the full article at KYUK

Alaska’s Bering Sea crab crisis is a sign of big changes in the future, scientists warn

February 9, 2023 — The first-ever cancellation of Alaska’s Bering Sea snow crab harvest was unprecedented and a shock to the state’s fishing industry and the communities dependent on it.

Unfortunately for that industry and those communities, those conditions are likely to be common in the future, according to several scientists who made presentations at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium held in late January.

The conditions that triggered the crash were likely warmer than any extreme possible during the preindustrial period but now can be expected in about one of every seven years, said Mike Litzow, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric scientist based in Kodiak. By the 2040s, those conditions can be expected to occur one out of every three years, he said.

Blame “borealization” for the disaster befalling snow crab, which is an Arctic species, Litzow said. That term refers to an ecosystem becoming boreal, with groups of organisms – called “taxa” by scientists – that have been south of the Arctic until recently.

“If we think about an Arctic animal at the southern edge of its range that’s exposed to really rapid warming, that leads us sort of inevitably to the concept of borealization,” said Litzow, director of NOAA Fisheries Kodiak laboratory and shellfish assessment program. “As you warm Arctic ecosystems, those systems become prone to a state change, where Arctic taxa such as snow crab become replaced by subarctic taxa that are better able to tolerate ice-free and warm conditions.”

Snow crab are dependent on the winter sea ice and the cold conditions created even after the seasonal melt, he said. While they are widely dispersed through the Bering Sea, the sweet spot for the commercial harvest – the place where the crab are big enough to be commercially valuable – is in the southeastern Bering Sea.

Read the full article at Arctic Today

Feds deny Bering Sea Crabbers’ request for emergency area closure

January 23, 2023 — The National Marine Fisheries Service denied a request for emergency action to close red king crab habitat areas to all fishing gears, ruling that “available evidence does not support a finding that the proposed emergency regulations would address the low abundance and declining trend of mature female Bristol Bay red king crab.”

The Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers association filed the emergency petition Sept. 28, days widespread fishery shutdowns were ordered in response to declining red king and opilio. The crabbers sought closures in red king crab savings areas, “to protect Bristol Bay red king crab and their habitat at a time of historically low crab abundance,” according to NMFS’ announcement Friday that the petition was rejected.

The red king crab savings area was established in 1996. It is permanently closed to bottom trawling but is open to pelagic trawling, pot fishing, and longlining. The crab fleet, facing a virtually complete shutdown, asked for a Jan. 1 to June 30 closure to keep away all gears, contending that all bycatch and habitat impacts need to be addressed.

In a response Friday afternoon, the Bering Seas Crabbers said NMFS is discounting the effects of other gear types

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Bering Sea crab crash puts St. Paul emergency medical services in jeopardy

January 20, 2023 — The collapse of the Bering Sea crab fisheries has put St. Paul Island at risk of losing some of its essential services.

The city’s economy is about 90% dependent on the harvest of snow crab, which closed for the first time in the fishery’s history in October. Without Bering Sea snow crab or Bristol Bay red king crab — which has been closed since 2021 — the City of St. Paul is estimating a roughly $2.7 million hit.

In light of those anticipated losses, St. Paul’s city government declared a cultural, economic and social emergency in late October following the fishery closures, and subsequently implemented budgetary cuts, hiring freezes and other measures.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Bering Sea cod fisherman fights for better catch price amid slow fishing seasons

January 10, 2023 — What was once the bread and butter for many Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands fishermen now rests like a distant memory among Alaska’s commercial fishing industry.

The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery has been closed for two years, and along with it, Bering Sea snow crab have abruptly disappeared, causing another complete closure.

Together, the fisheries generally bring in millions of dollars to the fleet and the coastal Alaska communities that rely on them. Since 2021, when king crab closed and snow crab saw a huge decline in harvest numbers, fishermen have taken an estimated $287.7 million hit.

Without those fisheries and without that revenue, more and more boats are relying on other work like fishing for cod and small amounts of bairdi crab or summer tendering gigs just to make ends meet.

So when a group of Bering Sea fishermen recently heard they’d be getting paid less than they hoped for cod this winter season, they figured they couldn’t afford to just sit by. But that’s exactly what they did. When the season opened, they didn’t go out to fish — and it worked.

Read the full article at KTOO

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

Alaska crab fishery collapse seen as warning about Bering Sea transformation

December 20, 2022 — Less than five years ago, prospects appeared bright for Bering Sea crabbers. 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 a catch. 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 seafood species’ 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.”

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Bering Sea crabbers make online appeal for support

November 11, 2022 — The Bering Sea crab collapse has thrown fishermen and their trade association into survival mode. A new online appeal is raising money to push for new crab conservation measures and federal fishery disaster aid to fishermen.

The Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers Association started a GoFundMe web page this week, aiming for $50,000 in contributions to support “the small non-profit trade association advocating for crab fishermen who fish for king, snow, and bairdi crab,” the group wrote on the page.

“Since our formation in 2009, we have been funded by our fishermen directly. Now that our fisheries are closed, our fishermen do not have an income to support their own fishing businesses, let alone the trade association that represents them. This is why we are asking for your help.”

The emergency appeal is aimed at three priorities: maintaining the association’s advocacy role on science and conservation measures, working to secure federal fishery disaster assistance, and helping crab captains and crews idled by the shutdown.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman