Saving Seafood

Judge upholds decisions of federal trawl fishery managers amid Bering Sea salmon crisis

March 17, 2025 — Federal fisheries managers did not mishandle trawl fishing rules amid Alaska’s ongoing salmon subsistence crisis, a federal judge in Anchorage has ruled.

In a 45-page order published Tuesday, Judge Sharon Gleason ruled against the Association of Village Council Presidents and the Tanana Chiefs Conference, which sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2023 over its management of Bering Sea trawl fisheries in the years since a marine heat wave.

“This suit arises from the apparent tension between federal defendants’ management of the fishery and the needs of Alaskan communities in times of significant change in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region,” Gleason wrote.

Read the full article at the Anchorage Daily News

New study shows impact of ocean acidification on Bering Sea red king crab

February 27, 2025 — Ocean acidification appears to be a driver in the decline of Bristol Bay red king crab, a highly value wild Alaska seafood that has for years been threatened by climate change.

“There’s always been a high demand for Alaska crab,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, in October 2024. “It’s a matter of having the crab to harvest.”

The red king crab fishery was closed in 2021 and 2022, then reopened in 2023 with 31 vessels fishing down from 47 vessels, she said.

The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery experienced record landings every year from 1977 to 1980, peaking in 1980 with a record total harvest of 130 million pounds. Then the fishery collapsed in 1981 and 1982, leading to closure in 1983.

A new report published on Feb. 7 in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science said that negative effects of acidification explained 21% of recruitment variability of Bristol Bay red king crab between 1980 and 2023, and 45% since 2000.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

ALASKA: Fishery managers start a process to tighten salmon bycatch rules in Alaska’s Bering Sea

February 13, 2025 — Federal fishery managers took steps on Tuesday to impose new rules to prevent Alaska chum salmon from being scooped into nets used to catch Bering Sea pollock, an industrial-scale fishery that makes up the nation’s largest single-species commercial seafood harvest.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council advanced a suite of new protections intended to combat the pollock trawlers’ salmon bycatch, the term for the incidental catch of unintended species. Proposed steps in the package include numeric caps on total chum salmon bycatch, with varying allocations for different sectors of the pollock fleet; protective limits in corridors known to be used by salmon migrating through the ocean back to Western Alaska freshwater spawning areas; and provisions that would link new limits in the ocean to real-time salmon counts and conditions in the rivers.

The action followed years of complaints about ocean bycatch of chum salmon at a time when runs in Western Alaska rivers have dwindled, becoming so low at times that no fishing was allowed.

The council’s meeting in Anchorage, which started on Feb. 3 and wrapped up with the vote on Tuesday, was devoted almost exclusively to the problem of bycatch and its effects of chum salmon runs in the Yukon and Kuskokwim river systems.

The vote to advance the protective package followed days of sometimes-emotional testimony from residents of rural Western and Interior Alaska villages who have long depended on chum salmon – one of the five species of Pacific salmon – as a food staple.

Residents who testified described the anemic salmon runs as a crisis threatening family well-being, local economies and Indigenous cultures and identities.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Bering Sea snow crab season kicks off for first time in three years

January 29, 2025 — Earlier this month, commercial snow crabs started hitting Unalaska’s docks again, for the first time in nearly three years.

The Bering Sea snow crab fishery reopened in mid-October, after billions of the crab disappeared and the fishery was shut down in October 2022. This season’s first catch was delivered on Jan. 15. Opilio, or snow crab, is generally fished in the new year and into the early spring. The season runs through May.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game Area Management Biologist Ethan Nichols said nine vessels are actively participating in the Bering Sea commercial fishery.

“The fleet is just getting started, for the most part,” Nichols said. “Fishing so far — the reports from the grounds — there seems to be good numbers of nice, new shell, large snow crab on the far northern portions of the grounds.”

Nichols said right now the number of keepers per pot, also known as CPUE or catch per unit effort, is somewhat low coming in at 134, but that will increase as the season progresses.

“That’s only coming from a handful of our first deliveries, and that includes some prospecting by vessels early on in the season,” he said. “So far, the highest CPUEs are being seen on the northern portion of the grounds. And as vessels get more dialed in on those hot spots or those productive areas of fishing, they’ll be coming with full loads of crab that are more reflective of the hot spots on the grounds.”

Read the full article at KYUK

Alaska cities reach agreement on Bering Sea snow crab harvest

January 9, 2025 — The cities of Unalaska and St. Paul in the U.S. state of Alaska have reached an agreement to share revenue collected from the processing of 1.6 million pounds of Bering Sea snow crab.

After two years of closures, NOAA Fisheries announced in October 2024 that it would be opening up the Bering Sea crab fishery for a limited harvest with a 4.7 million pound total allowable catch (TAC). Around 1.6 million pounds of that TAC was designated for the North Region, which, according to a framework agreed to by harvesters and processors in September 2024, had to be processed in St. Paul.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Federal judge dismisses Bering Sea trawl fleet’s challenge to stricter halibut bycatch limits

November 18, 2024 — A federal judge in Alaska has dismissed a legal challenge filed by the Bering Sea bottom-trawl fleet against stricter halibut bycatch limits.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council approved a new halibut bycatch quota system in December 2021 based on annual surveys of the valuable flatfish. Instead of fixed limits, the new abundance-based system means that when halibut stocks are low, bycatch caps can be cut by up to 35%.

The lawsuit challenging those caps was filed by Groundfish Forum Inc., a Seattle-based trade association representing five companies and 19 bottom-trawl vessels. The association argued that it was unfairly targeted, and that the new bycatch limits could result in significant economic losses.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

In surprising move, Bering Sea snow crab fishery to reopen after 2 year closure

October 7, 2024 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Friday afternoon that Bering Sea fishermen will be allowed to harvest a total of about 4.7 million pounds of opilio, also known as snow crab, for the first time in two years. According to Fish and Game, estimates of total mature male biomass are above the threshold required to open the fishery.

The announcement comes as a surprise to many fishermen, after roughly 10 billion snow crabs disappeared from the Bering Sea over a span of four years, and Fish and Game closed the fishery in 2022. Recently, scientists have learned that the disappearance was likely due to ecological shifts, and there’s been little hope within the industry that stocks would recover anytime soon.

Read the full article at KUCB

Snow crab comeback? Signs of recovery in the Bering Sea

September 20, 2024 — After the marine heat wave that hit the Bering Sea for years, billions of snow crabs disappeared in 2021. The following year, the state decided to close the fishery, which regularly has an annual harvest worth more than $200 million. According to a recent study, the long-term outlook for the fishery remains gleam, but with the water cooling, the younger crab population is growing once more.

Snow crabs are known to do better in non-subarctic climates. Their ideal water temperature varies depending on their stage of development. Still, they typically thrive in colder waters while they are immature and migrate into slightly warmer habitats as they mature. They can be found in the northeastern Atlantic, the Barents Sea, and the eastern Bering Sea, which is as south as the species will range in the North Pacific.

The study shared that the abrupt collapse of the Bering Sea snow crab stock can be explained by rapid borealization (the transition from an arctic physical state to subarctic), which is less than 98% likely to have been human induced. While strong Arctic conditions are now expected in only 8% of years to come, researchers have told stakeholders to accelerate adaptation planning for the complete loss of Arctic characteristics in the traditional fishing grounds.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Scientists have more evidence to explain why billions of crabs vanished around Alaska

August 21, 2024 — Fishermen and scientists were alarmed when billions of crabs vanished from the Bering Sea near Alaska in 2022. It wasn’t overfishing, scientists explained — it was likely the shockingly warm water that sent the crabs’ metabolism into overdrive and starved them to death.

But their horrific demise appears to be just one impact of the massive transition unfolding in the region, scientists reported in a new study released Wednesday: Parts of the Bering Sea are literally becoming less Arctic.

Read the full article at CNN

ALASKA: A new nominee to the Bering Sea fisheries management council would tip its balance toward tribes and away from trawlers

March 27, 2024 — Tribal and environmental advocates calling for a crackdown on salmon and halibut bycatch are set to gain a new ally on the federal council that manages Alaska’s lucrative Bering Sea fisheries.

Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee last week nominated Becca Robbins Gisclair, an attorney and conservation advocate, to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

If U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo accepts Inslee’s recommendation, Gisclair, senior director of Arctic programs at the environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy, would assume one of the council’s 11 voting positions.

She would replace Anne Vanderhoeven, a previous choice of Inslee’s who works at Seattle-based Arctic Storm Management Group. Arctic Storm’s parent company owns vessels that participate in the trawl industry, which sometimes accidentally scoop up salmon in their nets while they’re trying to catch pollock, a whitefish that goes into fish sandwiches sold by McDonald’s and other companies.

Inslee’s choice comes amid an intense fight at the council about tighter regulation of bycatch, and after what advocates described as a last-minute flurry of lobbying in an effort to convince Inslee to pick an ally of one side or the other in that dispute.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News