Saving Seafood

Two Trawl Surveys in Northern Bering Sea Show Overall Decline in Many Species

November 30, 2021 — Results from two annual surveys in the northern Bering Sea this summer, one using bottom trawl and one using a surface trawl, show a decline in sea temperatures since the 2019 survey. Last year’s surveys, conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations’ Fisheries branch, were cancelled due to Covid-19. This year’s surveys showed the precipitous drop in snow crab and “large declines in the Bering Sea include walleye pollock, saffron cod, and various types of jellyfish.”

The presentations, reported by KNOM.org on November 10 and November 19, were part of the Strait Sciences program presented via Zoom reported Marion Trujillo of KNOM.

The surveys cover a grid from Cape Wales, the westernmost point on the North American mainland in the Bering Strait south to Nunivak Island, west of Bethel, AK.

“At this moment we’ve been in a very long stanza for warming. But we’ve dropped down a little bit. Both not only on the bottom temperatures but the surface temperatures. And I think there’s kind of a hope that maybe we are going to see us go into a cold stanza for a while, and start to cool down the Southeastern Bering Sea. But, this might also just be a little bit of variation, and (it will) jump back up. Next year is going to tell us a whole lot about what is happening,” NOAA research scientist Lyle Britt said in the presentation.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Surface Trawl Survey Reveals Shifting Fish Populations

November 23, 2021 — Researchers are predicting low fish runs in the Norton Sound and Northern Bering Sea region again next year, according to research biologist Jim Murphy.

Murphy, who works with the Salmon Ocean Ecology and Bycatch Analysis Group at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Juneau, presented the findings of the recent 2021 surface trawl survey during a Strait Science event. The survey, which tracks marine life across the surface and midlevel of the northern Bering Strait, was conducted in September this year. Researchers studied salmon, seabirds, shrimp, zooplankton and several other marine species.

The surface trawl survey has been conducted every year for almost two decades, and Murphy says when the survey is conducted is crucial. “The timing of the survey was established at the beginning to match the timing of marine entry and dispersal of juvenile salmon from estuarine habitats, and we’ve attempted to keep the timing of the survey as consistent as possible.”

Though the primary purpose of the surface trawl is to track pelagic fish, or species found in the middle and upper water columns, and invertebrate populations, researchers also collect zooplankton and sediments, as well as bottom-dwelling fish, crab and invertebrates.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: Dunleavy administration announces formation of bycatch task force

November 22, 2021 — Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office recently announced that it’s setting up a task force to tackle the thorny issue of trawler bycatch.

Bycatch is what fishermen catch unintentionally — fish they aren’t targeting that get caught up in their nets, anyway. Federal bycatch data shows trawl fisheries in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska this year have caught tens of thousands of chinook salmon, millions of pounds of halibut and hundreds of thousands of crabs.

Meanwhile staple species like chinook salmon, red king crab and halibut have been on the decline, forcing subsistence, sport and commercial fishermen to pack up nets or reduce harvest.

“We’ve had a reduction in or closure of the crab fisheries in the Bering Sea. The [North Pacific Fishery Management] Council is discussing how to deal with halibut bycatch, and I think there’s a lot of perception that there are bycatch issues associated with what’s happened with salmon in Western Alaska systems,” said Alaska Fish & Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

Alaska crab population crash blamed on mysterious mortality event

November 5, 2021 — A crash in crab populations in the U.S. state of Alaska is being partially blamed on a mortality event scientists cannot fully explain.

A catastrophic drop in Alaska’s snow crab population led the state to set a much lower quota for the upcoming season. Along with a significant drop to the Bering Sea bairdi crab quota and the closure of the winter Bristol Bay red king crab fishery, Alaska’s overall crab fishery could lose up to USD 100 million (EUR 86.5 million) or more in value in the 2021-2022 season, according to the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Dungeness emerges as Alaska’s top crab fishery

November 4, 2021 — It’s hard to believe, but Dungeness crab in the Gulf of Alaska is now Alaska’s largest crab fishery — a distinction due to the collapse of stocks in the Bering Sea.

Combined Dungeness catches so far from Southeast and the westward region (Kodiak, Chignik and the Alaska Peninsula) totaled over 7.5 million pounds as the last pots were being pulled at the end of October.

Ranking second is golden king crab taken along the Aleutian Islands with a harvest by four boats of about 6 million pounds.

For snow crab, long the Bering Sea’s most productive shellfish fishery, the catch was cut by 88% to 5.6 million pounds this season.

The Gulf’s Dungeness fishery will provide a nice payday for crabbers. The dungies, which weigh just over two pounds on average, were fetching $4.21 per pound for 209 permit holders at Southeast who will share in the value of over $14 million.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

As tribal leaders, we urge collective action for Western Alaska salmon now

November 1, 2021 — This past summer, fish racks, smokehouses and fish camps across the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers and Norton Sound region in the western part of our state stood empty. Chinook and chum salmon are critical to the lifeblood of our nearly 100 regional tribal communities and are central to our cultures. However, they did not return this year throughout much of our regions. Our people are now facing a winter without this essential food source and missing an essential part of our traditions and way of life.

While tribes along our rivers were not allowed to harvest a single salmon or were severely restricted in their harvests last summer, the largely out-of-state industrial Bering Sea pollock trawl fleet is allowed to catch vast quantities of salmon as bycatch. In 2021 alone, 12,000 Chinook salmon and over 500,000 chum salmon thus far have been caught as bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery. Wasting is not acceptable according to our cultural values, which guide us to take only what we need and use everything we take. This level of bycatch – viewed by the industry as discarded salmon – is disrespectful and should not be allowed.

Tribes and communities have been doing our part to help protect and restore our salmon runs by foregoing our subsistence harvests, engaging in research, and testifying about our experiences amid this salmon collapse. Earlier this month, we called on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council to do their part by reducing this bycatch to zero for 2022 and taking strong steps towards a long-term solution to eliminate salmon bycatch and restore salmon runs to abundance.

Read the full op-ed at the Anchorage Daily News

Study Finds Growing Potential for Toxic Algal Blooms in the Alaskan Arctic

October 6, 2021 — Changes in the northern Alaskan Arctic ocean environment have reached a point at which a previously rare phenomenon—widespread blooms of toxic algae—could become more commonplace. These blooms potentially threaten a wide range of marine wildlife and the people who rely on local marine resources for food. That is the conclusion of a new study about harmful algal blooms of the toxic algae Alexandrium catenella published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Microscopic algae in the ocean are most often beneficial and serve as the base of the marine food web. However, some species produce potent neurotoxins that can directly and indirectly affect humans and wildlife. 

Dormant Cysts Could Seed a Toxic Bloom

The study was led by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in collaboration with colleagues from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center and researchers in the United States, Japan, and China. It looked at samples from seafloor sediments and surface waters collected during 2018 and 2019. Samples were taken in the region extending from the Northern Bering Sea to the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas north of Alaska. The sediment samples allowed the researchers to count and map Alexandrium cysts. The cysts are a seed-like resting stage that lies dormant in the seafloor for much of the year, germinating or hatching only when conditions are suitable. The newly hatched cells swim to the surface and rapidly multiply using the sun’s energy. This produces a “bloom” that can be dangerous due to the family of potent neurotoxins, called saxitoxins, that the adult cells produce.

When the algae are consumed by some fish and all shellfish, those toxins can accumulate to levels that can be dangerous to humans and wildlife. In fish, toxin levels can be high in digestive and excretory organs (e.g., stomach, kidney, liver), but are very low in muscle and roe.  Although fish can be potential toxin vectors, the human poisoning syndrome is called paralytic shellfish poisoning. Symptoms range from tingling lips, to respiratory distress, to death. The toxin can also cause illness and death of marine wildlife such as larger fish, marine mammals, and seabirds. This is of particular concern for members of coastal communities, Alaskan Native Villages, and Tribes in northern and western Alaska who rely on a variety of marine resources for food.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

 

 

ALASKA: With low stocks and closures looming, Bering Sea crab fleet braces for another blow

September 23, 2021 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced earlier this month that all major crab stocks are down. And for the first time in over 25 years, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed.

The species is world-renowned and was largely made famous by the popular reality tv show “Deadliest Catch.” In the glory days of king crab fishing, locals describe hundreds of boats rushing into the cold Bering Sea to harvest millions of pounds of the crab worth even more millions of dollars.

The commercial fishery has been around since 1966. In the 55 years since then, there have been just two other closures: once in the 1980s and again in the 1990s.

Now, the Bering Sea crab fleet and fishing communities around the state and the Pacific Northwest are bracing for another blow to their industry and are calling for new conservation efforts.

“It’s big news, and it’s hitting our industry really hard,” said Jamie Goen, executive director for Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association representing commercial crab harvesters. “We’re disappointed and deeply concerned.”

Read the full story at KNBA

 

Valuable crab populations are in a ‘very scary’ decline in warming Bering Sea

September 22, 2021 — Federal biologist Erin Fedewa boarded a research vessel in June in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and journeyed to a swath of the Bering Sea that typically yields an abundance of young snow crab in annual surveys.

Not this summer. At this spot, and elsewhere, the sampling nets came up with stunningly few — a more than 99% drop in immature females compared to those found just three years earlier.

Biologists also found significant downturns in the numbers of mature snow crab as they painstakingly sorted through the sea life they hauled up.

“The juveniles obviously were a red flag, but just about every size of snow crab were in dramatic decline,” Fedewa said. “It’s very scary.”

This collapse in the Bering Sea snow crab population comes amid a decade of rapid climatic changes, which have scrambled one of the most productive marine ecosystems on the planet in ways that scientists are just beginning to understand. The changes are forcing them to reconsider how they develop models to forecast harvest seasons.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times

 

With low stocks and closures looming, Bering Sea crab fleet braces for another blow

September 16, 2021 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced this month that all major crab stocks are down. And for the first time in more than 25 years, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed.

The species is world-renowned and was largely made famous by the popular reality TV show “Deadliest Catch.” In the glory days of king crab fishing, locals describe hundreds of boats rushing into the cold Bering Sea to harvest millions of pounds of crab worth even more millions of dollars.

The commercial fishery has been around since 1966. In the 55 years since then, there have been just two other closures: one in the 1980s and the other in the 1990s.

Now, the Bering Sea crab fleet and fishing communities around the state and the Pacific Northwest are bracing for yet another blow to their industry and are calling for new conservation efforts.

“It’s big news, and it’s hitting our industry really hard,” said Jamie Goen, executive director for Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association representing commercial crab harvesters. “We’re disappointed and deeply concerned.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media