Saving Seafood

ALASKA: ‘Everybody’s worst nightmare’: Bering Sea fishermen on edge after COVID-19 closes second plant

January 25, 2021 — One of North America’s largest fish processing plants is shutting down as a COVID-19 outbreak grows and owner Trident Seafoods struggles to test its 700-person workforce.

The plant, on the isolated island of Akutan, is the second in the Aleutians to shut down this year, just as the billion-dollar Bering Sea pollock fishery was set to kick off.

Now, fishermen and industry leaders are anxious that they might not have places to offload their catch and that their plants might be the next to close down, said Dan Martin, who manages a fleet of nine pollock trawlers for a company called Evening Star Fisheries.

“Any hiccups like this, you really have to reshuffle the deck and try to figure out, ‘Okay, what’s the next step?’” said Martin, a retired skipper. He called the shutdowns “everybody’s worst nightmare.”

The winter fishery for Bering Sea pollock, which goes into products like McDonald’s fish sandwiches, officially opened Wednesday. But two of the region’s largest processors are both shut down: the Trident plant in Akutan, and the UniSea plant located 35 miles to the southwest in the Aleutian port town of Unalaska.

Read the full story at KTOO

Ask a Highliner: Bob Dooley talks fishing, bycatch reduction, safety and more

January 22, 2021 — How much firewood does it take to build a new 52-foot salmon troller? Bob Dooley has the answer to that and just about any other question about West Coast and Alaska fisheries you can throw his way.

When Brian Hagenbuch profiled Dooley as a 2017 NF Highliner, the title of his feature was “Community champion,” and that’s been Dooley’s story through every decade of his nearly 60-year career.

Starting as a deckhand on a salmon troller out of his home town of Half Moon Bay, Calif., at the age of 11, Dooley ended his fishing career on Bering Sea and West Coast pollock and whiting trawlers. In his years on the water, he witnessed the inception of the Magnuson Act and the 200-mile limit, joint-venture fishing, observer coverage, Coast Guard safety regulations, and perhaps the biggest change in fishing in his lifetime — bycatch reduction.

“We went from the wild, wild west of joint ventures to overcapitalization of the fleet with the advent of factory trawlers, particularly in pollock and the West Coast in whiting. And we basically had 200 percent catching capacity with the same amount of fish,” Dooley says, describing technological advancements and government programs that changed the way people went fishing.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Trident Seafoods reports 4 COVID-19 cases at plant in Alaska

January 20, 2021 — A Seattle-based seafood company has reported that four workers at its Alaska seafood plant tested positive for COVID-19, including one who was taken to a hospital.

Trident Seafoods reported that the four employees were all roommates and have returned to work after undergoing a 14-day quarantine and testing negative, The Seattle Times reported.

The company said in a statement on Monday that it is assessing any potential operational impacts of COVID-19 spreading at the facility. Currently, the company is holding off on sending an additional 365 workers to the plant.

The Trident Seafoods’ plant is a processing center for Bering Sea harvests of pollock, crab and cod in Akutan, about 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage. The plant is the company’s largest Alaska location. It currently employs about 700 workers.

Read the full story at The Columbian

Trident Seafoods scrambling to contain COVID-19 outbreak ahead of pollock A season

January 19, 2021 — Trident Seafoods is scrambling to contain a coronavirus outbreak at a plant on the Aleutian Islands on the eve of the pollock A season.

The Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based company announced on Monday, 18 January, that four roommates had tested positive at Trident’s plant in Akutan, Alaska, a processing center that takes in crab and cod as well as pollock from the Bering Sea fisheries.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Distribution and Abundance of Forage Fish in Arctic and Sub-Arctic Waters Affected by Warming Ocean Conditions

January 14, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Pelagic or forage fish species are an important source of food for marine predators in the eastern Bering Sea. This group of fish includes capelin, Pacific herring, juvenile chum salmon, juvenile pink salmon, juvenile sockeye salmon, and walleye pollock during their first year of life.

A new study by scientists at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center shows variable effects on species distribution and abundance. It looked at several warm periods from 2002–2018 when ocean temperatures were warmer than average for four or more consecutive years.

Previous studies by NOAA Fisheries documented a northward shift in age-0 pollock, juvenile salmon, herring, and capelin during the 2002-2005 warm period relative to the 2006-2011 cool period in the eastern Bering Sea.

“However, this is the first study to look at temperature-related changes in the distribution and biomass (total average weight of all fish) of pelagic fishes over multiple warm periods,” said Ellen Yasumiishi, researcher, Alaska Fisheries Science Center and lead author for the study. “Studies like this are also important for understanding factors that may affect juvenile salmon and age-0 pollock growth, development and ability to reach maturity. As adults these fish are targeted by commercial, recreational, and subsistence fisheries in Alaska.”

Read the full release here

Buyout nets coastal Alaska villages first direct ownership of Bering Sea crab quota

January 13, 2021 — Fishing rights and vessel ownership are transferring from a Seattle-based fishing company to two Alaskan regional economic development organizations and 30 communities.

The seller is Mariner Companies, owned by pioneering Bering Sea crabbers Kevin Kaldestad and Gordon Kristjanson. Two Community Development Quota organizations have purchased the company’s crab boats, and 30 communities have formed limited liability companies to purchase the quota, which amounts to 3% of the Bering Sea opilio and red king crab fishery.

The direct ownership of quota by communities is new in the area served by both Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation and the Coastal Villages Region Fund.

The BBEDC and CVRF are two of the six Community Development Program groups in Alaska, which are allocated portions of Bering Sea resources. The groups can then either lease their rights or develop owner-operator businesses themselves, but the proceeds return to the communities they cover through economic development programs.

Although the communities involved are included in BBEDC and CVRF programs, by establishing new LLCs for the communities, each one is able to have more control over how to best use the revenue the quota brings in.

Read the full story at Alaska’s News Source

ALASKA: Some Fishermen on Edge After Rough Year in North Pacific

January 6, 2021 — Some fishermen in the North Pacific Ocean are on edge ahead of a traditionally fruitful winter fishing season, following a rough 2020 that saw catch rates fall below long-term averages.

The coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of some research surveys, making it more difficult to determine how many fish are in the Bering Sea off Alaska, the Seattle Times reported Monday.

The Seattle-based Alaska Fisheries Science Center canceled five of six research missions that help scientists measure fish stocks because of fears of virus outbreaks at sea.

Fishermen have begun their two-week coronavirus quarantines ahead of the Jan. 20 start of the fishing season and aren’t sure what they’ll find once ships largely based in Washington state make their way to the Bering Sea.

“This is the best time of year,” said Kevin Ganley, who captains a 123-foot (37-meter) boat called American Beauty. “If (the fish) are not there, we’re in trouble.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

ALASKA: Bering Sea fishing crews on edge about coming pollock opening after a tough 2020 of small fish and COVID-19

January 5, 2021 — Skipper Kevin Ganley spent most of the summer and fall pulling a massive trawl net through the Bering Sea in a long slow search for pollock, a staple of McDonald’s fish sandwiches. The fish proved very hard to find.

“We just scratched and scratched and scratched,” Ganley recalls. “It was survival mode.”

Ganley’s boat is part of a fleet of largely Washington-based trawlers that have had a difficult year as they joined in North America’s largest single-species seafood harvest. Their catch rates in 2020 during the five-month “B” season that ended Nov. 1 were well below long-term averages. They also encountered more skinny, small fish — fit for mince but not prime fillets — than in a typical year, according to a federal review of the season.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 greatly complicated the essential task of keeping crews healthy as one company, Seattle-based American Seafoods, was hit with outbreaks on three vessels. The pandemic also resulted in the cancellation of some research surveys that help scientists measure fish stocks in a body of water that has been undergoing climatic changes as temperatures warm.

This has added an unwelcome element of suspense as crews start their COVID-19 two-week quarantines before the Jan. 20 start of the “A” season.

Read the full story from The Seattle Times at the Anchorage Daily News

Due to COVID-19, Drone Survey Powers NOAA’s Bering Cod Assessment

December 30, 2020 — Every other year, NOAA Fisheries conducts an acoustic-trawl survey from crewed research vessels to measure pollock abundance in Alaska’s eastern Bering Sea. As a result of COVID-19, many research surveys were canceled, and we weren’t able to conduct our walleye pollock surveys. Data collected from these surveys are critical to manage pollock, which comprise the nation’s largest commercial fishery.

NOAA Fisheries scientist Alex De Robertis at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center developed a contingency plan: conducting the survey with saildrone wind- and solar-powered ocean-going robots. The hope was to collect some data despite the vessel survey cancellation.

For the past several years, De Robertis and colleagues at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center have been working with partners at NOAA Research’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory,  Saildrone and Kongsberg. They use uncrewed surface vehicles equipped with low-power sonar (acoustic) sensors to conduct research in the Bering and Chukchi Seas. The pollock survey contingency plan was an opportunity to apply what they had learned to collect data for resource management.

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

Russian intimidation of Bering Sea fishermen shows gap in Arctic investment, Sullivan says

December 10, 2020 — The second-in-command of the U.S. Coast Guard shouldered some of the blame on Tuesday for incidents in August in which the Russian military intimidated Bering Sea fishermen out of American waters.

Admiral Charles Ray told a U.S. Senate panel the Coast Guard knew Russia was conducting a military exercise in the area and failed to tell the Bering Sea fishing industry.

“This was not our best day, with regards to doing our role to look after American fishermen — the U.S. Coast Guard,” Ray said. “I’ll just be quite frank: We own some of this.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media