Saving Seafood

Government shutdown, if it continues, could cost Alaska’s lucrative Bering Sea fisheries

January 2, 2019 — Even if the shutdown does persist, the federal government will allow the Bering Sea fisheries to start as scheduled, with an initial opening for cod Jan. 1, and a second opening for pollock and other species Jan. 20.

But the fisheries are heavily regulated, and before boats can start fishing, the federal government requires inspections of things like scales — for weighing fish — and monitoring equipment that tracks the number and types of fish being caught. And the National Marine Fisheries Service, which regulates the Bering Sea fisheries, isn’t doing those inspections during the shutdown.

Other boats need special permits before they can start fishing, and those permits aren’t being issued during the shutdown, either.

“My understanding is the vessels that have not been certified yet will not be certified until the government opens up again,” said Haukur Johannesson, whose company, Marel, provides scales to the huge factory vessels that work in the Bering Sea. “And if they don’t get certified, they cannot go fishing.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Quotas set for Alaska groundfish, plus Southeast rockfish opener

December 21, 2018 — Cod catches will decline next year in both the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, while catches for pollock could be up in the Bering Sea and down in the gulf. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council set the 2019 quotas this month for more than two dozen fisheries in federal waters.

The Bering Sea pollock quota got a 2.4 percent increase to nearly 1.4 million metric tons, or more than 3 billion pounds.

Bering Sea cod TACs were cut 11.5 percent to just over 366 million pounds (166,475 mt).

In the gulf, pollock totals will be down 15 percent to 311 million pounds, a drop of 55 million pounds from this year.

Gulf of Alaska cod quota will again take a dip to just over 27 million pounds — down 5.6 percent.

Meanwhile, boats are still out on the water throughout the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea hauling up final catches of various groundfish for the year.

The 4 million-pound red king crab fishery at Bristol Bay is a wrap, but crabbers are still tapping away at the 2.4 million-pound Bering Sea Tanner crab quota. Snow crab is open, but fishing typically gets going in mid-January.

Divers are picking up the last 35,000 pounds of sea cucumbers in parts of Southeast Alaska. About 170 divers competed for a 1.7 million-pound sea cucumber quota this year; diving also continues for more than 700,000 pounds of giant geoduck clams.

Southeast trollers are still out on the water targeting winter king salmon.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: NPFMC adopts new management plan for quickly-changing Bering Sea

December 19, 2018 — The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council has adopted a new ecosystem-based plan to manage Alaska’s Bering Sea, where climate change is affecting coastal communities and commercial fisheries.

The Bering Sea is among the world’s most productive regions for seafood, but warming water temperatures and a lack of sea ice over recent years have forced the NPFMC to consider new approaches to its management of the sea’s fisheries.

The result is the Bering Sea Fisheries Ecosystem Plan(FEP), a 150-page document adopted by the NPFMC this month intended to provide a more agile and inclusive framework for the quickly changing ecosystem.

“One of the things that was very important to the council was making sure that we have the tools in place to be able to respond to changing climate conditions by some of our modules that look at evaluating the resiliency of the management framework and different tools that are available to address the bigger-picture more holistic questions,” said Diana Evans, the council’s primary staff lead for the FEP.

Evans and her colleagues worked for four years to develop the new plan, taking in extensive input from stakeholders and local and traditional communities who live on the coastal Bering Sea – the latter a primary focus of the FEP.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

2020 US Pacific cod catch may be lowest since 1983, could drop further

December 18, 2018 — The eastern Bering Sea (EBS) Pacific cod catch could drop again in 2021 and 2022, as scientific forecasts indicate 2020 could see the lowest federal total allowable catch (TAC) since the early-1980s, according to an Undercurrent News analysis of government scientific data.

Data presented in the 2018 stock assessment report from Grant Thompson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist and an expert on the cod fishery, suggests the TAC will bottom out in 2022 and then increase again. However, new models to be developed in 2019 will include alternative methods of accounting for the increased biomass in the northern Bering Sea (NBS) and could see this bleak outlook improve.

In 2018, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) has indicated the federal TAC in 2020 could be cut to 124,625 metric tons, compared to 166,475t in 2019 and 188,136t this year. The TAC for 2019 has been recommended by NPFMC at the meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, last week, but the 2020 level is only provisional and will be reviewed next year in light of new data. The NPFMC went with Thompson’s number for 2019, not a lower one from a team of scientists who take into account the stock assessment report.

Then, Thompson’s report gives various projections for female spawning biomass and catches through 2030. The first is the most relevant, however, he said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ALASKA: NPFMC advisory panel proposes 33,000t hike in Bering Sea pollock TAC, 7,000t drop in cod

December 7, 2018 — The advisory panel to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) voted in favor of a 33,000-metric-ton increase in the eastern Bering Sea pollock total allowable catch (TAC), as well as a 7,000 drop in the Pacific cod TAC.

This draft TAC sheet will then go to the vote at the NPFMC meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday. The supply outlook comes with prices for cod and pollock set firm.

According to an Undercurrent News source, the advisory committee is recommending a pollock TAC of 1.397 million metric tons for 2019, up from 1.364m in 2018. The panel also recommended a Pacific cod TAC of 181,000t, down from 188,136t in 2018. For Pacific cod in the Aleutian Islands, the panel voted in favor of a TAC of 20,600t.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Bleak outlook for Pacific cod could see 2019 US pollock TAC hike, despite reduced biomass

December 5, 2018 — Although the biomass for pollock in the US eastern Bering Sea fishery is coming down, the total allowable catch (TAC) for 2019 could actually be increased, due to the outlook for further cuts to Pacific cod.

The TACs for pollock and cod, especially in light of the gloomy outlook for the latter, will be a major focus of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, this week, which will go ahead, after an earthquake hit the city last Friday. With whitefish prices set high, the Barents Sea cod and haddock fisheries coming down for 2019 and the Russians only increasing their pollock quota for next year marginally, industry players globally are looking to what happens at the meeting.

First, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists present their views on the outlook for 2019, then the council will decide on TAC levels for pollock, cod, yellowfin sole and other fish. There is uncertainty around pollock and cod moving further north, as previously reported by Undercurrent News. 

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Lack of ice in Bering Sea casts uncertainty over future of Alaska fish stocks

November 14, 2018 — Last winter, something unprecedented happened in Alaska. For the first time on record, there was no sea ice in the northern Bering Sea, and biologists are now scrambling to figure out how that will affect scores of area fisheries – from crab to salmon to rockfish to various pelagic stocks – in the coming years.

Because there are few fisheries in the northern Bering Sea, historically it has not been subject to as much surveying as the southeastern Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. But the boundary between the north and south – set at around 60 degrees north – is for research purposes, and stocks migrate freely over that boundary.

According to Diana Stram, a fisheries analyst and management plan coordinator at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council for the past 16 years, warming waters have highlighted the increasing connectivity between the two sides of the boundary.

“We’ve had the warm blob in the Gulf of Alaska, which caused the huge Gulf cod decline, in addition to the extremely warm waters this year in the Bering Sea, and that has caused a lot of species to move north. So we’re seeing these warm water masses pushing fish north and meanwhile increasing metabolic demands in fish and causing higher mortality,” Stram told SeafoodSource.

When fish like cod and pollock head north, it’s the sea ice that pushes them back down, Stram said. Without that ice, biologists are left in the dark, unsure where stocks end up.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

NOAA Appoints Dr. Robert Foy as New Alaska Fisheries Science Center Director

November 1, 2018 — The following was released by NOAA:

Today, NOAA announced the appointment of Dr. Robert Foy as the new Science and Research Director for NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center. In this role, he will oversee the agency’s work to monitor the health and sustainability of fish, marine mammals, and their habitats across nearly 1.5 million square miles of water surrounding Alaska. He will direct scientific research to support and sustain some of the world’s most valuable marine resources, including commercial fisheries for Alaska pollock, red king crab, and sablefish in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. He will also oversee agency research in the Aleutians, a 1,200-mile long island chain full of marine life, and in the Arctic Ocean, home to marine mammals including bowhead and beluga whales, and bearded and ringed seals.

“I am pleased to announce Bob as our new Alaska Fisheries Science Center Director,” said Dr. Cisco Werner, Chief Science Advisor for NOAA Fisheries. “With his unique expertise and strategic mindset, he will easily build on the great work already underway at the Center with a focus on advancing the Center’s fisheries and marine mammal research, and the development of new technologies.”

As Center Director, Dr. Foy will oversee nearly 500 employees and a number of facilities, including:
  • The main facility in Seattle.
  • Research laboratories in Juneau and Kodiak, Alaska, and Newport, Oregon.
  • Field stations in Little Port Walter, St. Paul Island, and St. George Island, Alaska.

Dr. Foy will assume his new role on November 11, 2018. He will work out of the Science Center’s Auke Bay Lab in Juneau.

Dr. Foy is an experienced leader and a recognized expert in Arctic and sub-Arctic issues and research. He was the director of the Alaska Center’s Kodiak Lab for the past 11 years. He has co-authored more than 60 scientific, technical, and stock assessment papers. They focused on the distribution, biomass, and physiological or ecological response of marine species to environmental forcing in the sub-Arctic and arctic regions of Alaska. He also directed the crab data collection on the annual Eastern Bering Sea bottom trawl survey. These data support stock assessments for 10 crab stocks valued at roughly $500 million.

Read the full release here

An act of cod: Alaska-based fleet gets a gift from Board of Fish

October 24, 2018 — Alaska’s inshore cod fishery got a significant upgrade at the state’s Board of Fisheries meeting on Friday, Oct. 19.

The board voted 6 to 1 to increase the fleet’s allocation from 6.4 percent of the total Bering Sea cod quota to 8 percent with an annual increase of 1 percent until it tops out at 15. The Under Sixty Cod Harvesters, a trade group that represents about half of the statewater fleet, had been lobbying to get up to 10 percent and were pleasantly surprised with the 15 percent allocation.

The fishery of pot-cod boats under 60 feet started in 2012 with 1.2 percent of the total Bering Sea cod share. Proponents of the increase argued that the Alaska Constitution mandates development of the state’s resources, prioritizing fisheries with low-impact gear.

“We applaud this board for recognizing how important these open-access statewater fishing opportunities are for our community-based fishermen, and for the young fishermen coming up in the industry,” says Todd Hoppe, president of the Under Sixty Cod Harvesters.

Opponents of the increase largely represent stakeholders in the federal fishery, from which the quota will be siphoned to expand the statewater quota. That includes the freezer-longliner fleet, which has about 50 percent of the quota, and the catcher vessels, which have 21.5 percent.

The move comes at an especially tough time for these historic stakeholders in Bering Sea cod.

“There’s very little recruitment showing up in the stock, and a big chunk of that stock is moving to the north,” says Brent Paine, executive director of the United Catcher Boats, a trade group that represents about 50 trawlers, ranging from about 80 to 130 feet.

Paine expects the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to cut the TAC by 20 percent this year, on top of about 16 percent last year.

“So you get that reduction combined with this statewater increase, and now it’s starting to hurt the federal participants,” Paine says. “It’s tough to get a fair shot [at a state meeting]for federal participants because we’re second-class citizens. The statewater fleet walks into the Board of Fish and says, ‘We’re Alaskans; this is an entry-level fishery… Give us the fish.’ And that’s what happens.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Ups and downs for Alaska cod and pollock

October 19, 2018 — Quotas for next year’s groundfish fisheries reflect ups and downs for Alaska’s key species — pollock and cod — and the stocks appear to be heading north to colder waters.

The bulk of Alaska’s landings come from waters federal waters. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council reviews stock assessments for groundfish each October, sets preliminary catches for the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, and updates them as new data become available.

If the proposals get the go-ahead in December, the Bering Sea pollock TAC will increase slightly to nearly 1.4 million metric tons, or over 3 billion pounds of pollock.

For Pacific cod, the Bering Sea TAC could be reduced to 350 million pounds, a drop of 64 million pounds from this year.

The cod numbers might change as a result of big differences between the 2017 and 2018 survey results in southeastern and northern waters, where large numbers of fish appear to be migrating. Over the year, the cod biomass dropped 21 percent in the southern region but increased 95 percent in the northern area.

Read the full story at National Fisherman