Saving Seafood

New app lets Alaska mariners report real-time changes in the marine ecosystem

July 7, 2021 — Fishermen are the ears and eyes of the marine ecosystem as a changing climate throws our oceans off kilter.

Now a new phone app is making sure their real-life, real-time observations are included in scientific data.

The new Skipper Science smartphone app, released June 18, comes from the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea as a way “to elevate the thousands of informal-yet-meaningful environmental observations by fishermen and others into hard numbers for Alaska’s science-based management,” said Lauren Divine, director of ecosystem conservation for St. Paul’s tribal government whose team created and owns the dataset for the app.

“How do we take what has historically been called anecdotal and create some structure around it that is rigorous and has scientific repeatability?” Divine told KCAW in Sitka.

“There is a vast body of deep knowledge that fishermen hold from their experience on the water, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, that they use for decision making and risk evaluation and to execute a likelihood on the water. And we have very much underutilized that knowledge for years, especially here in the North Pacific,” she added in a phone interview.

The free app, which works on or off the internet, is an offshoot of an Indigenous Sentinels Network started 16 years ago at St. Paul Island to monitor wildlife and the environment in the Bering Sea.

To broaden its reach, St. Paul partnered with advocacy group SalmonState’s Salmon Habitat Information Program. Through its surveys and other outreach, SHIP quantifies what’s regarded by scientists as fishermen’s “informal observations” and shares the information with managers and decision makers.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

With help from a new app, fishermen can track changing ocean conditions in real time

June 25, 2021 — A new smartphone app hit the market last week (6-18-21), with the potential to transform the debate over Alaska’s ocean resources.

“Skipper Science” will allow users along Alaska’s entire coastline to contribute observations about changes in fish and animal populations, which can then be collected and quantified as data for Alaska’s science-based resource management.

Anywhere the Alaska Board of Fisheries meets, there is always a certain amount of frustration among some of those who testify, because their years of experience — sometimes over many generations — doesn’t seem to carry much weight in management decisions, which tend to be driven by data.

In Sitka this is particularly acute around herring season, where subsistence harvesters have noted drastic declines in the abundance of the species over many decades, while 40-odd years of data collection by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game suggests everything is okay.

Skipper Science was created for exactly this purpose. Developed by the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, it’s a way for Alaska’s harvesters and managers to at least speak the same language.

“How do we take what has historically been called anecdotal and create some structure around it that is rigorous, has scientific repeatability?” asks Lauren Divine. She’s the Director of Ecosystem Conservation for the Aleut Community of St. Paul, the tribal government of St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea.

Read the full story at KCAW

ALASKA: Council’s Swift Action on BSAI Cod Shuts Down Efforts to Restore Adak’s Seafood Economy

June 24, 2021 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council moved quickly to adopt a preliminary preferred alternative (PPA) to rationalize the last major race for fish in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands — trawl-caught Pacific cod — which also relegated Adak’s state-of-the-art seafood plant to the bottom of the pile in terms of access to the resource.

“I am announcing today that, based on the Council’s preliminary preferred alternative in the CV [catcher-vessel] trawl package, Peter Pan Seafood Company is suspending all further work in Adak,” said Steve Minor, Manager of Business Development for Peter Pan, on the day after the Council approved the motion.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Surveys Will Collect Data Crucial for Managing Alaska Fisheries and Monitoring Alaska Marine Ecosystems

May 28, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Scientists from NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center and partners have begun another busy survey season off the Alaska coast. Eight surveys are planned in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, and Chukchi Sea to monitor fish, crab, marine mammals, and marine ecosystems.

“Information collected as part of these surveys and other available data on oceanographic conditions, fisheries, and protected species are integrated to provide a more comprehensive understanding of Alaska marine ecosystems to support sustainable resource management and conservation,” said Robert Foy, science and research director, NOAA Fisheries, Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

During surveys, NOAA scientists sort, weigh, and count species collected by longline or trawl. They will also collect specimens and data on various species, as requested by cooperating scientists, agencies, and institutions.

Longline Survey of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska

The annual longline survey is an important data source for producing timely resource assessments for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The 2021 survey continues a 44-year time-series of sablefish and other groundfish species stock trends. The survey is being conducted from May 28 to September 1 aboard the F/V Alaskan Leader, which is a 150-foot freezer longliner.

The 2021 survey begins in Dutch Harbor and makes port calls in Ketchikan, Yakutat, Cordova, and Kodiak. The survey samples the Gulf of Alaska every year, the Bering Sea in odd-numbered years, and the Aleutian Islands in even-numbered years. It surveys at depths from 200 to 1,000 meters. The survey produces catch rates, species compositions, length, and age data for:

  • Sablefish
  • Pacific cod
  • Several rockfish species
  • Shortspine thornyhead
  • Sharks
  • Grenadiers
  • Greenland turbot

The survey also tags and releases a subsample of sablefish, shortspine thornyhead, and Greenland turbot for studying movement behavior and life history. The survey operates on a cost-recovery basis: proceeds from the catch are sold to offset the cost of the vessel charter.

Read the full release here

North Pacific Council’s New Public Comment Policy Triggers Intense Reactions

May 6, 2021 — Personal attacks and profanity laced five of the 250 written comments submitted to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council last month on just one of the half dozen issues before the Alaska fisheries management panel. Council staff pulled the comments after they’d been live for a few hours and reached out to each author to ask them to resubmit their comments without the offensive language. Only one did.

The issue was abundance based management (ABM) of halibut in the Bering Sea, where far more halibut is taken as incidental bycatch in bottom trawls than by halibut quota holders with their longline gear, and salmon bycatch in mid-water trawls in an area that has seen precipitous drops in Chinook returns. Public testimony during the meeting was intense but for the most part civil. ABM and bycatch is one of a few lightning-rod issues — like the on-shore/off-shore fight over the Bering Sea/Aleutian Island fisheries and others — that the council has faced in the nearly half century it has managed Alaska’s federal fisheries.

Read the full story at Seafood News

NOAA Fisheries releases new video looking at environmental conditions in the Gulf of Alaska in 2020

May 4, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

More than 90 researchers and local community members contributed knowledge and information to help NOAA Fisheries scientists generate an ecosystem status report for the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem last year. This new video captures some of the high points of that report.

“We are excited to offer another way of sharing what we learned about ecosystem conditions in the Gulf of Alaska last year,” said Bridget Ferriss, Gulf of Alaska Ecosystem Status Report editor. “This video is a nice complement to our other communications products.”

For decades, scientists at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center have been pulling together data for numerous indicators of ecosystem health including water temperature, plankton abundance, and seabird reproductive success. NOAA Fisheries and other scientists from other organizations monitor these indicators for the four marine ecosystems that surround Alaska–the Aleutian Islands, the Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska, and the Arctic.

Every fall, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council sets catch limits for groundfish and crab in federal waters off Alaska for the upcoming fishing year. They base these decisions on scientific research and analysis including fish stock assessments, economic information on the commercial fishery, and these annual ecosystem assessments.

“Ecosystem assessments help us understand the context by explaining, among other things, how changes in the ecosystem might affect present and future abundance of commercially important fish and crab stocks,” said Ferriss.

For each of the Alaska Ecosystem Status Reports, a variety of indicators are evaluated annually. All of this information helps fisheries managers to determine what steps to take to ensure sustainable fish and crab fisheries while preserving the health of the overall ecosystem.

The goal of this video is to communicate our updated summary of ecosystem information beyond the Council, to the broader community.

Read the full release here

ALASKA: Commercial and subsistence harvesters speak out against trawler bycatch of Chinook salmon

April 22, 2021 — Alaska’s commercial fishermen have been speaking out against big trawlers for years, complaining that the large vessels in federal waters are scooping up mature and juvenile fish. The regional council that manages federal fisheries recently heard from hundreds concerned about the number of salmon and other species that end up as bycatch in trawl nets.

For Alaska’s troll fleet, king salmon is their money fish. In state waters, small crews on these 40 to 50-foot boats — or even small skiffs — will catch a fish at a time, and it’s worth it: Chinook salmon can fetch $6 a pound from a processor.

But there’s another big-money fish in Alaska: Pollock. It’s the white fish found in a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish® or an imitation crab stick. And the factory trawlers that ply the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska in search of pollock and other groundfish scoop up Chinook salmon and other species in their wide nets.

Federal fisheries data show trawlers in the North Pacific took about a tenth of the Chinook — or king salmon — caught by Alaska’s commercial salmon fleet last year. And those numbers are tracking the same this year. But none of that catch happens on purpose.

Preliminary ADF&G data show about 263,000 kings were commercially harvested last year statewide. As of last week (April 15), bycatch in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska areas for 2021 was around 16,000 fish, over six percent of last year’s statewide commercial harvest. Last year’s trawler bycatch was 26,000 kings, or about a tenth of the 2020 commercial Chinook harvest in-state.

Read the full story at KSTK

King salmon in Western Alaska are getting smaller, and research suggests predators could be the reason

April 15, 2021 — The size of king salmon returning to Western Alaska rivers to spawn has been decreasing over the past few decades. Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks think that they’re closer to understanding why.

Peter Westley and Andrew Seitz are fisheries scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who helped publish new research on king salmon in February. To answer why these salmon are getting smaller, researchers attached tags to the fish that can record the depth and temperature of the water around them. Seitz said that many of the tags on the salmon were recording temperatures above 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

“And we thought, ‘Well, where is it, you know, in the high 70s in the winter in the Bering Sea, even at depth?’ And the only place that we can infer that is that warm is in the belly of a salmon shark,” Seitz said.

Westley and Seitz’s research indicates that returning king salmon are getting smaller because the bigger ones are getting eaten. They said that predators, like salmon sharks, may target the older, larger kings because they stand out. Seitz said that predators’ preference for larger fish may have always existed, but there could just be more predators now than in the past.

Read the full story at KTOO

Abundance-based Management of Halibut Bycatch Draws Focus of NPFMC This Week

April 15, 2021 — For six years the North Pacific Fishery Management Council has grappled with shifting the management of halibut bycatch in the Bering Sea trawl fleets by limits set with no correlation to halibut abundance to pinning the limits — and therefore the use of halibut as bycatch — to an abundance-based policy.

The stakes in the fundamental question are high: can the Amendment 80 (A80) fleet catch their annual allotment of flatfish in the Bering Sea throughout the year without exceeding abundance-based limits? The A80 fleet is one of the jewels in the Council’s crown of fisheries management, perhaps second only to the pollock fleet that makes up more than half of the 2 million metric ton sustainable harvest of the Bering Sea. A80 has built a fishery and a market for Bering Sea flatfish as well as other species, but when they are on schools of yellowfin sole and northern rock sole, they also inadvertently catch high levels of halibut, a prohibited species catch (PSC) that they must throw back. However, in the 13 years since A80 was implemented, the fleet has never exceeded their halibut PSC limit.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Cod stocks creep back up for Gulf of Alaska, but remain down for Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands

April 15, 2021 — Pacific cod stocks have begun to rebound in the Gulf of Alaska, but the total allowable catch (TAC) for 2021 remains low at 17,321 metric tons. Last year, managers curtailed the fishery in federally managed waters after stock assessments put the biomass near the bottom of the threshold for conducting the fishery.

Though recruitment of younger cod and uncaught fish from last year have added to the abundance in most recent assessments, full recovery of the stock could take years. The warm-water “blob” of 2014 has been blamed for the crash.

Read the full story at Seafood Source