Saving Seafood

ALASKA: New quota system to start for trawl harvests of cod in Bering Sea and Aleutians

August 21, 2023 — Commercial fishermen netting Pacific cod from the Bering Sea and Aleutians region will be working under new individual limits starting next year designed to ease pressure on harvests that regulators concluded were too rushed, too dangerous and too prone to accidentally catch untargeted fish species.

The new system will require fishers who harvest cod by trawl – the net gear that scoops up fish swimming near the bottom of the ocean – to be part of designated cooperatives that will then have assigned quota shares. The fisheries service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it has notified eligible participants and is asking for applications.

The cod-trawling program, to start next January, is the first new fishery quota system started since 2012 in federal waters off Alaska, according to NOAA Fisheries.

The Pacific cod harvest is the second-biggest commercial groundfish catch in the waters off Alaska, after pollock, according to NOAA Fisheries. The 2021 commercial harvest totaled 330.4 million pounds and was worth $86.5 million, according to NOAA Fisheries.

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: Alaskan city looks to join tribes’ Bering Sea groundfish lawsuit

August 8, 2023 — The city of Bethel, Alaska, U.S.A., wants to join a federal lawsuit against NOAA Fisheries led by two major tribal organizations.

In April, the Association of Village Council Presidents (AVCP) and Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC), which together represent around 100 Alaskan tribes, filed a lawsuit challenging NOAA Fisheries’ management of industrial trawl fisheries in the Bering Sea. The tribes, along with the nonprofit environmental law group Earthjustice, claim that the amount of salmon bycatch allowed in the pollock trawl fishery is reducing the king salmon and chum salmon populations, leading to restrictions on subsistence fishing in the Yukon and Kuskokwim regions.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: In the aftermath of the Bering Sea snow crab collapse, a ‘cultural, social, and economic emergency’

July 10, 2023 — My small turboprop plane whirred low through thick clouds. Below me, St. Paul Island cut a golden, angular shape in the shadow-dark Bering Sea. I saw a lone island village — a grid of houses, a small harbor, and a road that followed a black ribbon of coast.

Some 330 people, most of them Indigenous, live in the village of St. Paul, about 800 miles west of Anchorage, where the local economy depends almost entirely on the commercial snow crab business. Over the last few years, 10 billion snow crabs have unexpectedly vanished from the Bering Sea. I was traveling there to find out what the villagers might do next.

The arc of St. Paul’s recent story has become a familiar one — so familiar, in fact, I couldn’t blame you if you missed it. Alaska news is full of climate elegies now — every one linked to wrenching changes caused by burning fossil fuels. I grew up in Alaska, as my parents did before me, and I’ve been writing about the state’s culture for more than 20 years. Some Alaskans’ connections go far deeper than mine. Alaska Native people have inhabited this place for more than 10,000 years.

As I’ve reported in Indigenous communities, people remind me that my sense of history is short and that the natural world moves in cycles. People in Alaska have always had to adapt.

Even so, in the last few years, I’ve seen disruptions to economies and food systems, as well as fires, floods, landslides, storms, coastal erosion, and changes to river ice — all escalating at a pace that’s hard to process. Increasingly, my stories veer from science and economics into the fundamental ability of Alaskans to keep living in rural places.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

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

The bottom of the Bering and Chukchi seas could become too warm for some important species

December 1, 2022 — There is danger lurking on the floor of the Bering and Chukchi seas for mussels, snails, clams, worms and other cold-water invertebrates, according to a new study led by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists.

If climate change continues its current trajectory, the Bering and Chukchi seafloor areas will be too warm for those creatures by the end of the century.

In turn, that means trouble for walruses and other marine species. Snails and mussels are particularly important to commercially harvested fish like halibut and yellowfin sole, along with being prey for the Pacific walruses that gather in the summer in the northern Bering and southern Chukchi seas. The Bering Sea is part of the North Pacific Ocean south of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia, while the Chukchi Sea is part of the Arctic Ocean just north of the strait.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Disaster requests for Bering Sea crabbers highlight difficulty of getting financial relief to fishermen

November 21, 2022 — Gov. Mike Dunleavy requested $287 million from the federal government last month for fishermen impacted by the Bering Sea snow crab and Bristol Bay red king crab fisheries closures. The current process of getting financial relief to fishermen is cumbersome and takes a long time, but Bering Sea crabbers are hoping the plight of the snow crab population might change the way financial relief is delivered to fishermen.

Gabriel Prout is a second generation Bering Sea crab fisherman from Kodiak; he owns the F/V Silver Spray with his dad and brothers. He said there’s one big problem with the current process for handing out fishery disaster funding.

“If you’re going to have a fishery disaster request program, you should be able to make it so the money is getting into the hands of those affected very quickly,” said Prout.

Right now, it takes years for money to reach skippers and their crews.

After a governor requests a disaster declaration, it needs to be approved by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce – and Congress needs to appropriate funding. The money goes through several agencies on its way to fishermen, who have to apply for a slice of it. And most fishermen have to figure out how to stay in business years before the money hits their bank accounts.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers Launch GoFundMe After Snow Crab Closure

November 15, 2022 — Non-profit trade association Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers has launched a GoFundMe following the Alaska snow crab closure announcement.

“No one ever wants to face the day you’re on the verge of losing the job you love that shapes your identity, supports your family, and gives you purpose,” the fundraiser reads. “Unfortunately, Bering Sea crab fishermen are facing that day. Alaska’s Bering Sea snow crab fishery is closed for the first time in U.S. history and Bristol Bay red king crab is closed for the second year in a row.”

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) announced the cancellation of the snow crab season and Bristol Bay red king crab season in mid-October. The decision stemmed from trawl survey results, which found that the stock was estimated to be below the regulatory threshold for opening a fishery.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

Did climate change really kill billions of snow crabs in Alaska?

November 7, 2022 — The disappearance of billions snow crabs from the Bering Sea has captivated the world’s attention since Alaska shut down the fishery for the first time in October 2022. But where exactly did these snow crabs go? And what caused them to vanish so quickly?

Scientists are still grappling with these questions, but climate change is the most cited hypothesis for the species’ retreat. Erin Fedewa, a research fisheries biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said the decline of the species, Chionoecetes opilio, coincided with a marine heat wave that swept through the Bering Sea between 2018 and 2019, which possibly caused the species to experience starvation, increased disease or predation.

Some fishers and crab experts put forward a different idea: They’ve suggested that fishing, particularly the unintentional capture of crabs in fishing gear known as trawls, also contributed to the loss of the snow crab, or at the very least, impeded the species’ recovery from low population levels.

The snow crab fishery’s closure has amplified a chorus of concerns around Alaska’s trawling industry — mainly from within the fishery sector itself — and the knowledge gaps around its potential impact on fisheries.

Read the full article at Mongabay

Bering Sea crabbers’ emergency action plea opens for public comment

October 31, 2022 — The National Marine Fisheries Service has opened a review and is taking public comment on Bering Sea crabbers’ request to take emergency action to close the Red King Crab Savings Area and the Red King Crab Savings Subarea to all fishing gear that comes into contact with the ocean bottom.

The request from the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers is dated Sept. 29, after the association failed to sway the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to take new steps for setting aside crab habitat and further reducing bycatch from other fisheries.

Warning signs months before pointed toward declining snow and king crab numbers, and on Oct. 10 Alaska state officials announced sweeping closures in response to dismal survey results. Crab fleet advocates predict direct revenue loss of $500 million from losing the 2022-2023 season and possibly twice that in broader economic impact.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Fisheries disaster declaration sought in Bering Sea crab fishery

October 25, 2022 — With a virtually complete shutdown of Bering Sea crab fishing at hand, fishermen, and Alaska communities are seeking an expedited fishery disaster declaration from the federal government.

The emergency is felt acutely on St. Paul Island, where the largely Aleut community of about 400 live on an economy dependent on the now-closing snow crab fishery.

“We’re predicting a 90 percent loss from two years ago and 85 percent of revenue from last year, said Ray Melovidov, chief operating officer of the Central Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association based in St. Paul.

Other revenue streams come in from pollock and cod fishing, but crabbing carries the freight for St. Paul. The money pays for fully funded preschool programs, home heating aid for residents, and community-wide broadband internet access among others said Melovidov, who serves on the city council.

Revenue from the big boats help maintain a local halibut fleet of 15 boats and about 80 crewmembers, a subsidy to buy their catch at prices competitive with other ports, said Melovidov.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman