Saving Seafood

Climate Change Projections Can Be Used To List A Species As Threatened, US Court Rules

October 25th, 2016 — In a landmark ruling Monday, a U.S. appeals court said that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) — a federal agency — had acted reasonably when it proposed to list certain populations of bearded seals in Alaska as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The decision, which reverses a 2014 ruling by a lower court, could pave the way for other species being accorded protections based on their vulnerability to projected changes in climate.

“This is a huge victory for bearded seals and shows the vital importance of the Endangered Species Act in protecting species threatened by climate change,” Kristen Monsell, attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity — which had, in 2008, filed a petition to list the species as threatened, said in a statement. “This decision will give bearded seals a fighting chance while we work to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions melting their sea-ice habitat and keep dirty fossil fuels in the ground.”

The Pacific bearded seal is one of the two subspecies of bearded seals. Although it is currently listed as “Least Concern” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Center for Biological Diversity and the NMFS estimate — based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — that the seals’ winter sea-ice habitat in the Bering and Okhotsk seas off Alaska and Russia would decline by at least 40 percent by 2050, and that the subspecies would be endangered by 2095.

Read the full story at the IBT Times 

Seattle company debuts high-tech, sustainable fishing vessel

September 7, 2016 — SEATTLE — A new commercial fishing vessel, built in Washington, is charting new territory for sustainability and crew safety.

The F/V Blue North is a 191 foot freezer longliner owned by Seattle based Blue North Fisheries. The vessel was designed in Norway and built by Dakota Creek Industries in Anacortes.

“I’m kind of pinching myself – we are finally here – we’ve got it,” said Patrick Burns who is the co-founder of Blue North. “It’s a state of the art vessel.”

The $36 million fishing boat has been under construction for several years. It was delivered last week and has been receiving some final touches at Seattle’s Pier 91 as it prepares to make fishing history in Alaska’s Bering Sea.

“This vessel is a game changer – it’s the greenest, most sustainable and highest tech commercial fishing vessel that’s ever been built in the United State and possibly the world,” said Kenny Down, President and CEO of Blue North Fisheries.

There is no other vessel like it in the Alaska hook and line cod fishery.

Read the full story at KOMO

ALASKA: Crashing Bering Sea crab numbers have fishermen on edge

September 6, 2016 — Bering Sea crabbers were stunned last week when outlooks for the upcoming fall and winter fisheries were revealed.

Results of the annual summer surveys by state and federal scientists showed numbers of mature male and females dropped sharply across the board for the big three:  opilio (snow crab), their larger cousins, bairdi Tanners, and red king crab.

“I don’t think anybody was expecting the numbers to be as low as they ended up. That was a shock,” said Ruth Christiansen, science adviser and policy analyst for the trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers.

Managers use different criteria for setting quotas for the three crab species. For snow crab, the state chooses from what it believe is the most reliable of three data sets. Christiansen said she expects that fishery to be a go, albeit with a smaller catch quota.

“I’m not worried about that one not opening. But given the information we have and the state’s tendency to always be cautious, the catch will be lower than the 40.6 million pounds from last year,” Christiansen said.

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

Rarely seen Arctic seal spotted in Washington State – 2,000 miles from home

August 19, 2016 — A rarely seen pinniped that inhabits sub-Arctic and Arctic waters – from the Bering Sea north to the Chukchi Sea – has been spotted 2,000 miles from home, on a beach in Washington state.

Biologists spotted a single ribbon seal hauled out on Long Beach Peninsula on Tuesday, and captured a few images before the seal returned to the water.

The extraordinary sighting marks the second time in four years that a ribbon seal has appeared so far south of its typical range. The other was 2012, when a ribbon seal was spotted twice in the Seattle area.

After that sighting, Peter Boveng, leader of the polar ecosystem program with the National Marine Fisheries Service, told the Associated Press, “There are not many people who see these regularly.”

Read the full story at GrindTV

New and rare whale species identified from carcass found in Pribilofs

July 27, 2016 — A stroll on the beach of a remote Bering Sea island two years ago has produced a scientific breakthrough — the discovery of a previously unidentified species of beaked whale that dwells in the deep waters of the North Pacific Ocean.

The conclusion, described in a study published in the journal Marine Mammal Science of the California-based Society for Marine Mammalogy, stems from the 2014 discovery of a beached whale carcass by a local monitoring program called Island Sentinel. Karin Holser, a teacher on St. George Island in the Pribilofs, alerted authorities, and Michelle Ridgway, a Juneau-based biologist involved with a Pribilof science camp, responded quickly.

“She was the one who said, ‘This looks like a Baird’s beaked whale, but it doesn’t,'” said Phillip Morin, a research molecular geneticist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and lead author of the new study.

The whale was about two-thirds the size of a Baird’s beaked whale, which typically grows to 35 or 40 feet, Morin said. It was clearly not a juvenile, as its teeth were worn and yellow, “so they were not baby teeth,” he said. Its skull had a distinct slope and its dorsal fin was different from that of the typical Baird’s beaked whale.

Tissue samples were sent to the Marine Mammal and Turtle Division of NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center in California, where Morin works and where the world’s most extensive collection of cetacean tissues is kept. The whale’s skull was sent to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington — and students from the Pribilofs visited the lab there to take part in the examination.

DNA analysis showed it was a species different from the 22 previously known species of beaked whales in the world and the two known to swim in the North Pacific.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

Rescue Ships Arrive After 46 Abandon Fishing Vessel in Alaska Waters

July 27, 2016 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Latest on the rescue of 46 crew members who abandoned a fishing vessel in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands on Tuesday (all times local):

Officials say two Good Samaritan vessels have rescued 46 people who abandoned a fishing boat in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Lauren Steenson says there were no reports of any injuries as the crew members were transferred from life rafts to the vessels in a fairly calm Bering Sea.

She says the ships then embarked on a 13-hour voyage to Adak, Alaska, a port in the Aleutians.

The Good Samaritan ships Spar Canis and the Vienna Express rushed to the scene as did two other merchant vessels, all responding to a Coast Guard’s emergency broadcast for help.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Bloomberg

ALASKA: Sea Share steadily expands donations of fish to the needy

July 18, 2016 — The decades long “bycatch to food banks” program has grown far beyond its Alaska origins.

Today, only 10 percent of the fish going to hunger-relief programs is bycatch — primarily halibut and salmon taken accidentally in other fisheries. The remainder is first-run products donated to Sea Share, the nation’s only nonprofit that donates fish through a network of fishermen, processors, packagers and transporters.

Sea Share began in 1993 when Bering Sea fishermen pushed to be allowed to send fish taken as bycatch to food banks — instead of tossing them back, as required by law.

“Back then, that was the only thing that we were set up to do, and we are the only entity authorized to retain such fish. It became a rallying point for a lot of stakeholders, and from that beginning we’ve expanded to the Gulf of Alaska, and grown to 28 states and over 200 million fish meals a year,” said Jim Harmon, Sea Share director.

Some seafood companies commit a portion of their sales or donate products to Sea Share. Vessels in the At-sea Processors Association have donated 250,000 pounds of whitefish each year for 15 years, which are turned into breaded portions. Sea Share’s roster also has grown to include tilapia, shrimp, cod, tuna and other seafood products.

Over the years, Sea Share has ramped up donations in Alaska, where halibut portions from Kodiak fisheries are used locally, in Kenai as well as being flown to Nome and Kotzebue, courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard. A new freezer container has been stationed at the Alaska Peninsula port of Dillingham, holding 8,500 pounds of fish, and several more are being added to hubs in Western Alaska, Harmon said.

“I think we’ll probably do 250,000 pounds in the state this year,” he added.

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

Surveys off Alaska lead to new types of soft-bodied fish

July 13, 2016 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Federal biologist Jay Orr never knows what’s going to come up in nets lowered to the ocean floor off Alaska’s remote Aleutian Islands, which separate the Bering Sea from the rest of the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes it’s stuff he has to name.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologist is part of a group that uses trawl nets to survey commercially important fish species such as cod in waters off Alaska. Sometimes those nets come up with things no one has seen before.

With co-authors, Orr has discovered 14 kinds of new snailfish, a creature that can be found in tide pools but also in the deepest parts of the ocean. A dozen more new snailfish are waiting to be named. Additional species are likely to be found as scientists expand their time investigating areas such as the Bering Sea Slope, in water 800 to 5,200 feet deep, or the 25,663-foot deep Aleutian Trench.

“I suspect we are just scraping the top of the distributions of some of these deep-water groups,” Orr said from his office in Seattle.

Orr and his colleagues measure the abundance of rockfish, flatfish and other “bottom fish” for the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, the research arm of the NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. The center studies marine resources off Alaska and parts of the West Coast.

Five boats with six researchers each surveyed Alaska waters in late June. The teams trawl on the Bering Shelf every summer and in either Aleutian waters or the Gulf of Alaska every other year.

Their findings on fish abundance are fed into models for managing fish populations.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Miami Herald

ALASKA: North Pacific Fishery Managment Council appointments approved, AP changes upcoming

June 30, 2016 — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker announced the appointments of Buck Laukitis and Theresa Peterson to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council June 27, further strengthening Gov. Bill Walker’s fisheries management position on preserving local fisheries participation in coastal Alaska.

The nominations will go into effect Aug. 11. Governors submit nominations to the Commerce Department, which must then be approved by the secretary.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is the most economically powerful of eight regional councils that oversee federal fisheries between three and 200 miles off the U.S. coast. As of 2014, the North Pacific region accounts for 65 percent of the nation’s total seafood harvest value, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports.

Peterson and Laukitis replace Duncan Fields and David Long, respectively. Fields, a Kodiak attorney and fisherman, finished his third three-year term in June 2016, the maximum terms allowed consecutively under the U.S. fisheries governing regulation, the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

Long, a Wasilla resident and Bering Sea groundfish fisherman, served one three-year term and was not reappointed though he did submit his name for consideration.

Peterson and Laukitis will fill two of six designated Alaska seats on the 11-member body.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Unmanned vessels deployed for Alaska ocean research

June 6, 2016 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Researchers in the Bering Sea off Alaska’s west coast will get help this summer from drones, but not the kind that fly.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and private researchers are gathering data on marine mammals, fish and ocean conditions from two “autonomous sailing vessels” built by Saildrone, an Alameda, California, company.

“Think of a 20-foot outrigger canoe with an airplane wing sticking up from the middle,” said Chris Sabine, director of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, at a press teleconference Friday.

They hold great appeal for researchers because they’re far cheaper to operate than research ships and they can work in dangerous conditions of the North Pacific.

“Imagine the TV series, ‘Deadliest Catch,’ and you can imagine why we would like to remotely gather this information,” Sabine said from Seattle.

Operating by solar and wind power, the vessels can carry 200 pounds of instruments. Two were deployed last week from Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. Part of their payload will be acoustic gear that can pick up the sounds of North Pacific right whales, one on the most endangered animals on the planet.

Read the full story at the New Jersey Herald