Saving Seafood

Alaska fishing communities feared getting COVID-19 from industry. They haven’t.

July 23, 2020 — As this year’s summer fishing season approached, local leaders across Alaska issued dire warnings about the thousands of plant workers and fishermen headed to their communities.

They feared the workers could bring COVID-19 in with them, quickly overwhelming small local hospitals and clinics. In Bristol Bay, home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery, some residents called on Gov. Mike Dunleavy to cancel the season, citing the region’s traumatic experience with the 1918 pandemic flu, which killed at least 30% of its population.

In the month since the Bristol Bay season kicked off, some seafood companies have experienced isolated cases among workers in their processing plants. And other outbreaks have infected dozens of seafood workers elsewhere in the state — most recently, 85 crew members on board a Bering Sea factory trawler.

But midway through summer, with the Bristol Bay season winding down, seafood company executives and public health authorities can point to a remarkable fact: The industry has been almost completely successful in keeping its seasonal workers and fishermen from infecting Alaska residents.

“We haven’t seen any evidence of jumping the fence from the seafood industry to the community,” Bryan Fisher, a top state emergency response official, said in an interview earlier this month.

In the Bristol Bay Borough, home to the region’s largest concentration of fish processing plants, there have been dozens of cases of COVID-19 among nonresident seafood workers — but just one case among residents.

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: A fishing boat docked in Dutch Harbor with 85 COVID-19 cases

July 21, 2020 — More than two-thirds of the crew of a huge factory fishing vessel docked in the Aleutian fishing port of Dutch Harbor has tested positive for COVID-19, local authorities announced Sunday.

The 85 cases are on board the American Triumph, owned by Seattle-based American Seafoods — one of the biggest players in the billion-dollar Bering Sea pollock fishery.

The Triumph arrived in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor on Thursday, with seven crew members reporting symptoms consistent with COVID-19.

All seven were tested for the virus upon arrival, and six of those tests came back positive, officials announced Friday. That prompted staff from Unalaska’s clinic, Iliuliuk Family and Health Services, to test the remaining 112 crew.

All crew members were restricted to either the vessel or their isolation locations while in Unalaska, city officials said.

Read the full story at KTOO

Pollock Survey Begins in Eastern Bering Sea

July 16, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

For the past four decades, a team of scientists have conducted an acoustic trawl survey from a NOAA research vessel in the eastern Bering Sea. They collect acoustic measurements of fish abundance and distribution. They also sample fish by capturing them with trawl nets to groundtruth the acoustic signals to confirm the species. They also are able to learn more about the fish themselves—for example, their age, length, weight, and reproductive state.

Scientists believe using acoustic technology on saildrones to survey in the eastern Bering Sea will provide a reliable estimate of pollock abundance, based on past experience comparing the technology to ship-based surveys. It also helps that pollock are the dominant fish species in this area, minimizing the need to further sample with a trawl net to confirm species.

Since the standard surveys were cancelled this year due to COVID-19, data collected by the saildrones will fill a gap in the survey time series. Scientists use these survey data along with other data to assess pollock population abundance and trends (whether the stock is increasing or decreasing in size). The saildrone survey is expected to take two months to complete.

In late June, after some 40 days at sea, the three saildrones arrived at Unimak Pass, a 20-nautical-mile gap between Unimak Island and Ugamak Island that separates the North Pacific Ocean from the Bering Sea. At this point the saildrones separated. Each saildrone will cover a third of the 600-nautical-mile-wide survey area, which is bordered by Alaska’s Aleutian Islands to the south and the edge of the eastern Bering Sea shelf to the west.

The saildrones will complete a series of north-south transects moving from east to west; the mission is designed to mimic a typical ship survey as closely as possible in the amount of time available. Each vehicle is equipped with a Simrad EK80 high-precision split-beam echo sounder to map fish abundance.

Read the full release here

No COVID-19 cases found on American Seafoods trawler in Alaska

June 18, 2020 — Health officials in Alaska found no cases of COVID-19 aboard an American Seafoods trawler that recently arrived in Dutch Harbor to fish for Bering Sea pollock. The ship, the Ocean Rover, docked in the Unalaska port on Sunday, 14 June, where, according to a press release from the city, local health officials worked together with American Seafoods to screen and test crewmembers.

“In a coordinated effort between the IFHS Clinic, City of Unalaska, State of Alaska Health and Social Services, and American Seafoods, all 121 members on board responded to health questionnaires and were tested for COVID-19 as warranted. Sixteen crew members were found to have possible symptoms of COVID-19 and were quarantined pending test results. All tests returned negative. The Ocean Rover is offloading frozen product and will return to sea,” the press release read.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

COVID-19 forces cancellation of annual Alaska fish and crab surveys

June 10, 2020 — Surveys of Alaska’s fish, crab and halibut stocks in the Bering Sea have been called off or reduced due to constraints and dangers posed by the coronavirus.

In what they called an “unprecedented” move, the fisheries division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in late May that five Alaska surveys will be canceled this summer “due to the uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the unique challenges those are creating for the agency.”

NOAA said in a statement it found “no way to move forward with a survey plan that effectively minimizes risks to staff, crew, and the communities associated with the surveys.”

The annual surveys are the cornerstone of Alaska’s sustainable fisheries management and provide data on how fish stocks are trending, where they are and, ultimately, how much will be allowed for harvest each year.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

New Modeling Approach Provides Valuable Insights into the Important and Complex Role of Environmental Variables in Juvenile Fish Survival

May 29, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Variation in the productivity and sustainability of fish resources is determined, in part, by large changes in juvenile fish production from year to year. This is defined as “recruitment.” Fisheries oceanographers and fish stock assessment scientists have been trying to better understand and predict this variation for more than 100 years.

“We are seeing a lot of changes in the Bering Sea ecosystem. With analytical tools like this, we should be able to quickly identify factors affecting juvenile fish survival in a given year to generate reliable estimates of future productivity. This may help resource managers to more effectively target their management efforts,” said Jim Thorson, Habitat Ecological Processes Research Program Lead, Alaska Fisheries Science Center and lead author for the paper.

For the first time, scientists glimpsed how ocean temperature in different parts of Alaska’s Bering Sea may have influenced juvenile fish survival over the past three decades. They also gained valuable insights into how it may be affected under warmer ocean conditions in the future.

This unique approach combines oceanographic data collected from research surveys (1982-2018) with recruitment data into a single model. It also incorporated end-of-century projections of bottom and sea surface temperatures for the eastern Bering Sea. Scientists then used global climate models to develop regional-scale projections.

The authors see this an important step to understand the complex relationship between fish stock production and long-term climate processes. The ongoing collection of biological and environmental data will help to further improve these predictions.

Read the full release here

NOAA Cancels Five Large-Scale Fishery Surveys Due to COVID-19

May 26, 2020 — NOAA Fisheries announced Friday that it will cancel five out of its six large-scale research surveys in Alaskan waters this year due to COVID-19. The canceled surveys include the Aleutian Islands bottom trawl survey, the eastern Bering Sea bottom trawl survey, the northern Bering Sea bottom trawl survey, the Bering Sea pollock acoustics survey, and the Fall Ecosystem Survey. The Alaska Longline Survey is not affected.

“We determined that there is no way to move forward with a survey plan that effectively minimizes risks to staff, crew, and the communities associated with the surveys. For instance, conducting the key groundfish and crab surveys in a limited timeframe would require extraordinarily long surveys, well beyond standard survey operations,” wrote NOAA Fisheries in a statement. “Extended quarantines for the survey team prior to and following surveys would also be necessary to ensure survey team and public health and safety.”

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

NOAA cancels Alaskan research surveys citing COVID-19

May 26, 2020 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has canceled five of the six large-scale research surveys scheduled to take place in the waters off Alaska this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an NOAA press release.

The release cited the unique challenges and uncertainties posed by the coronavirus crisis, which have resulted in the cancellation of the Aleutian Islands bottom-trawl survey, the eastern Bering Sea bottom-trawl survey, the northern Bering Sea bottom-trawl survey, the Bering Sea pollock acoustics survey, and the fall ecosystem survey. The Alaska longline survey will go ahead as planned.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ALASKA: Bering Sea commercial fleets taking extra precautions during pandemic

April 15, 2020 — Commercial fishermen who have embarked on the Bering Sea for the 2020 season are taking extra precautions in light of the COVID-19 pandemic that has moved much of the world into isolation.

According to a report from The Bristol Bay Times, Bering Sea snow crabbers who are still out working the waters have been confined to their boats while making deliveries to processing plants. They’ve also been urged to avoid contact with plant workers to help prevent any potential spread of the deadly virus, the Intercooperative Exchange’s Jake Jacobson told The Times.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Abnormally Warm Years Caused a Sea Change in Coastal Alaska Ecosystems

February 27, 2020 — Rapidly warming Alaska is already a poster child for climate change, from its vanishing sea ice to its thawing permafrost. But over the last three years, the state’s northwestern coast has experienced a series of unusual climate-related changes—remarkable even for the long-altered Pacific Arctic.

Beginning in 2017, a combination of abnormally high temperatures and unusually strong, southerly winds swept the Bering and Chukchi seas. An alarming cascade of ecological consequences ensued—record-low sea ice, shifting algae blooms, migrating fish populations and sudden seabird die-offs were just a few.

“Most of my own research is with people living in the coastal communities, so talking to them and hearing about what they’re seeing,” said Henry Huntington, an independent Alaskan researcher and consultant. “And they saw some very unusual things, and things that struck them.”

“Ridiculous” water temperatures and unstable sea ice were among the most common complaints raised in interviews with coastal residents, Huntington noted.

“Adding to that, what we’re hearing from folks on the research cruises, it just became apparent that things were really a lot different from what any of us expected,” he said.

Read the full story at Scientific American