October 20, 2020 — The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council clarified their focus to tie the management of halibut bycatch in the Bering Sea to abundance in a new motion that, after one amendment, was passed unanimously.
The final Council motion revised the purpose and need statement and the alternatives for an initial review analysis that will likely come at the April council meeting, scheduled for April 5-6, 2021.
October 19, 2020 — In response to Last May’s Executive Order 13921, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (NPFMC) submitted a list of prioritized recommendations to “reduce burdens on domestic fishing and to increase production within sustainable fisheries.” At the top of their list is groundfish surveys in the Gulf and Bering Sea, and improved observer coverage and electronic monitoring.
The president’s order “Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness Economic Growth” tasked each of the nation’s eight regional management councils with providing ways to reach four goals and asked them to provide recommendations by November 2. Implementation plans for the changes are to be submitted within a year of the President’s May 7, 2020 order.
October 16, 2020 — Bering Sea crabbers are dropping pots for king crab, snow crab and bairdi Tanner when the fisheries get underway today, Oct. 15.
As expected, the catch was reduced for red king crab taken in the eastern Bering Sea waters of Bristol Bay — just 2.6 million pounds is a 30 percent drop from the 3.8 million pounds taken last season.
“We’ve heard from scientists in the past that there has not been good recruitment into that fishery for over a decade,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of the trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, which represents harvesters.
For the first time since 2018, there will be a bairdi Tanner crab opener with a catch of 2.3 million pounds.
October 15, 2020 — As Washington-based fishing companies are heading to Alaska in the coming days and weeks, thousands of their employees will be participating in a project aimed at early detection and control of COVID-19 infections.
With close quarters and crew members sharing cabins, fishing ships are ripe for spreading the disease. This summer, American Seafoods, a leading processor in the North Pacific and Bering Sea, had COVID outbreaks on three of its massive trawlers and some of its workers received care at a tiny clinic in Unalaska.
“Alaska is at high risk of an infected workforce impacting small, mostly Native communities with little resources to deal with an outbreak,” said Joshua Berger, maritime director for the state’s Department of Commerce.
October 14, 2020 — A “resounding success” is how scientists summed up this summer’s Pacific halibut survey, despite it being shortened and scaled down a bit because of covid constraints.
The so-called fishery-independent setline survey uses standardized methods to track population trends in the Pacific halibut stock, which ranges from the U.S. West Coast to British Columbia and the far reaches of the Bering Sea.
October 9, 2020 — Alaska pollock trawlers were well on track to catch their TAC for the year, and increased demand for seafood during the covid-19 pandemic threw some optimistic twists into market dynamics.
The TAC for the Bering Sea had been set at 1.425 million metric tons, with another 19,000 metric tons coming out of the Aleutian Islands harvest area. While the Aleutian Islands TAC has remained unchanged in recent years, those for the Bering Sea have been nudging upward from 1.345 million metric tons in 2018 and 1.397 million metric tons of last year.
The TAC for the Gulf of Alaska, meanwhile, has also risen slightly from last year’s 112,000 metric tons with 115,930 metric tons for this year, and trawlers in August continued plugging away on their C-season allotments.
The A-season for pollock trawling in the Bering Sea began on Jan. 20 and ended on April 30, with nearly all four sectors (inshore, catcher-processor, mothership, and CDQ groups) catching their allotted percentages of the TAC.
As of August, the four trawl sectors were scattered about the Bering Sea and mopping up quotas for the B-season, which began on June 10 and ends on Oct. 31.
October 6, 2020 — The At-Sea Processors Association (APA) says US military protection of the Bering Sea groundfish fleets should be “non-negotiable” after a spate of incidents involving Russian military vessels in the US Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Bering Sea in August and September.
Recent confrontations initiated by Russian warships and warplanes against US-flagged fishing vessels operating lawfully within the US EEZ have caused fishing boat captains and their crews to fear for their safety, disrupting the business operations of fishing companies at a critical point in a very important fishing season, Stephanie Madsen, executive director of the At-sea Processors Association wrote in a prepared statement for a US Senate hearing, which was postponed at the last minute.
September 30, 2020 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:
The independent assessor will assess stocks of pollock in the West Bering Sea, the environmental impact of mid-water trawling, and the effectiveness of the fishery’s management system. The assessment is expected to conclude in June 2021.
The PCA’s mid-water trawl pollock fishery in the Sea of Okhotsk is already certified to the MSC Standard. It achieved this in September 2013 and was successfully re-certificated in 2018, demonstrating its commitment to sustainability and well-managed fishing operations. The certified fishery represents 43% of all Russian Pollock catch, leaving 57% of Russian catch not MSC certified.
MSC’s Program Development Director, Camiel Derichs said: “I’m delighted that the Pollock Catchers Association’s West Bering sea pollock fishery has now entered MSC assessment, driving the proportion of Russian pollock fisheries engaged in the MSC program to new highs. The improvements the PCA has worked on with other stakeholders in Russia over several years now gives the fishery confidence to be publicly assessed against the MSC standards by an accredited third partly team of experts. We wish PCA all the best during the independent assessment process.”
About The Pollock Catchers Association
PCA members primarily fish for pollock (Theragra chalcogramma / Gadus chalcogrammus) in the Far Eastern seas. PCA enterprises reports it has 63% of the pollock catch (about 1.1 million tonnes in 2019) in Russia, which is about 32% of the catch around the world.
The Bering Sea is the second most significant fishing area for pollock in Russia, after the Sea of Okhotsk. Pollock harvesting is allowed year-round in the Bering Sea, except during the spring spawning period when fisheries are closed. The total allowable catch (TAC) of pollock in the West Bering Sea has been set at roughly 390,000 tonnes for 2020.
The fishery has carried out research on the impacts of marine mammals, and this year will include research on the impact on birds. The PCA fishery has also invested in a project to modernise fishing gears and if successful, fisheries may be able to become even more selective and avoid unwanted catch from the target stocks.
September 22, 2020 — Pink salmon, the most plentiful and cheapest of Alaska’s five salmon species, are finding more hospitable habitat in the warming northern Bering Sea, a new study finds.
There is a clear link between warming temperatures at Nome and better juvenile salmon productivity in rivers that flow into the northern Bering Sea, said the study, published in the journal Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography.
Pink salmon, a species more associated with waters off Alaska’s southern coast, appear to be among those boreal species working their way into more northern waters in response to climate change.
Pink salmon’s short life cycle makes their population more adaptable to these changes in environmental conditions, according to the study. Other salmon species spend up to seven years at sea before returning to freshwater to spawn, but pink salmon have a total life cycle of only two years — counting their time in both saltwater and freshwater — and that relatively quick turnaround gives more chances for succeeding generations to shift their migration patterns.
“Pink salmon are definitely good at straying,” said lead author Ed Farley of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “They definitely want to go seek out other habitat.”
September 16, 2020 — Bering Sea crabbers will soon know how much they can pull up in their pots for the season that opens Oct. 15.
This week the Crab Plan Team, advisers to state and federal fishery managers who jointly manage the fisheries, will review stock assessments and other science used to set the catches for Bristol Bay red king crab, Tanners and snow crab.
Normally, the biggest driver would be data from the annual summer trawl surveys that have tracked the stocks for decades. But this year, the surveys were called off due to the coronavirus, and that has crabbers worried.
“There are certainly some added uncertainties,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of the trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, which represents harvesters.