Saving Seafood

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

 

ALASKA: All major Bering Sea crab stocks are down alarmingly this season, surveys indicate

September 14, 2021 — Alaska’s Bering Sea crabbers are reeling from the devastating news that all major crab stocks are down substantially, based on summer survey results, and the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed for the first time in over 25 years.

That stock has been on a steady decline for several years, and the 2020 harvest dwindled to just 2.6 million pounds.

Most shocking was the drastic turnaround for snow crab stocks, which in 2018 showed a 60% boost in market-size male crabs (the only ones retained for sale) and nearly the same for females. That year’s survey was documented as “one of the largest snow crab recruitment events biologists have ever seen,” said Bob Foy, director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Crab Plan Team.

Again in 2019, the “very strong” snow crab biomass was projected at over 610 million pounds, and the catch was set at a conservative 45 million pounds for the 2020 fishery. No Bering Sea crab surveys were done that year due to the COVID pandemic, but the 2021 results indicated the numbers of mature male snow crab had plummeted by 55%.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Winter red king crab fishery in Alaska’s Bering Sea canceled

September 9, 2021 — Low stocks have prompted the U.S. state of Alaska to cancel the red king crab fishery in Alaska’s Bering Sea for winter 2021-2022 season.

After a review of the final bottom-trawl survey by the National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) ADFG made the announcement Friday, 3 September, saying the stock was “below the regulatory threshold for opening a fishery.” ADFG said more details about the closure will be provided during the TAC meeting in early October.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

US House bill would add tribal seats to North Pacific Fisheries Management Council

July 27, 2021 — A key Democrat in the U.S. House introduced a bill Monday to renew the Magnuson Stevens Act. Magnuson Stevens is the primary law that covers fishing in federal waters. Past bills have languished in Congress, in part because many in the industry were generally happy with the law as it is.

But Jared Huffman, D-Calif., included a few provisions in his bill that certain Alaska groups have been requesting for a long time. Huffman chairs the Oceans subcommittee of the House Resources Committee.

The bill emphasizes the need to consider the impacts of climate change on marine resources. It would, for the first time, recognize the importance of subsistence fishing. It would also put two tribal representatives on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council — the committee responsible for fisheries in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media