June 26, 2023 — Among the projects Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed from the state budget on Monday was salmon research to help determine the causes of the chinook and chum crisis in Western Alaska.
Dunleavy vetoed $513,000 for research on the origins of salmon caught by accident in the Bering Sea pollock fishery, as well as the origin of salmon intercepted by fishermen off the Alaska Peninsula in what’s known as “Area M.” Dunleavy vetoed the project last year, too.
June 23, 2023 — Among the projects Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed from the state budget on Monday was salmon research to help determine the causes of the chinook and chum crisis in western Alaska.
Dunleavy vetoed $513,000 for research on the origins of salmon caught by accident in the Bering Sea pollock fishery, as well as the origin of salmon intercepted by fishermen off the Alaska Peninsula in what’s known as “Area M.” Dunleavy vetoed the project last year, too.
“You never know what’s going to come of these budgets. But this is quite a disappointment, again,” said Karen Gillis, program director of the Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association. The association was to receive the money and pass it on to a partnership of federal and university scientists.
December 15, 2022 — For people who fish for a living, removing bycatch from nets is a tedious task. It’s expensive, labor-intensive and causes wear to the fishing vessel and gear. For marine animals unintentionally captured, the results are more debilitating — mostly fatal. From an ecological point of view, killing too many animals unintentionally can disrupt entire marine ecosystems and the food chains that keep them balanced. And yet, bycatch comprises as much as 40% of the global fishing catch.
U.K.-based startup SafetyNet Technologies is attempting to find a technological solution. The company deploys LED lights of varying colors and intensities that fishers can attach to their gear to attract certain species. They can change the lights depending on the fish species they want to target.
“Different species can see different lights and are attracted to that,” Tom Rossiter, head of precision fishing and sales lead at SafetyNet Technologies, told Mongabay in a video interview. “It’s those triggers we use to get particular species to move towards the net.”
Surveys with fishers in the U.K. and U.S. who have trialed the lighting technology indicate that it does reduce bycatch, according to Rossiter, but larger trials are needed to show the technology’s effectiveness conclusively. “We need to increase the size of the trial further to build statistical confidence,” he said.
Read the full story at Mongabay
October 17, 2022 — In the search for a solution to the problem of bycatch, the unintended at-sea harvest of non-target species, the stakes in Alaska are high.
Now a special task force is nearing the end of a year-long process to find solutions that satisfy competing interests to the problem of bycatch, which refers to fish that are caught incidentally by commercial fishers who are targeting other fish.
Many of the mostly Indigenous residents of western Alaska who depend on now-faltering salmon runs in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers have said strict rules to reduce at-sea bycatch are needed to help alleviate a crisis. Disasters have been declared for these fisheries.
Serena Fitka, the executive director of the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association who grew up in the Yup’ik village of St. Mary’s near the Bering Sea coast, said she has not been able to harvest river salmon for three years.
June 22, 2022 — Despite hours of testimony from residents of the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers who called for urgent action to curb the salmon bycatch by Bering Sea trawlers, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council decided to approach the problem more methodically.
In a unanimous vote near the end of its five-day meeting in Sitka, the Council recommended further study of salmon declines in the Bering Sea, and a closer look at their connection to climate change.
Salmon abundance in the Yukon River, the third-largest river in North America, has dropped sharply in the past two years.
The forecast is no better this season.
Many Yukon and Kuskokwim River residents voiced concern during last Monday’s call.
“At this point, there should be alarm bells going off all over not only in our communities, but all over the state and federal government agencies,” said Vivian Korthuis, the chief executive officer for the Association of Village Council Presidents, a consortium of 56 federally-recognized tribes on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
June 9, 2022 — The bycatch of chinook and chum salmon is on the agenda, as the spring meeting of the North Pacific Management Council gets underway in Sitka this week (June 9-14).
In addition to hearing how much salmon is being intercepted in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea by the trawl fisheries, the council will review a proposal to supplement the human observer program with electronic monitoring.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council regulates the so-called “federal fisheries” which take place outside the three-mile limit of Alaska’s state waters, and within the exclusive economic zone of the United States which extends 200 miles offshore.
May 27, 2022 — Hawaii’s deep-set longline fleet is completing its changeover from wire leaders to nylon monofilament, a process that fishermen started on their own and is expected to reduce bycatch and mortality of threatened oceanic whitetip sharks by 30 percent.
A new federal regulation effective May 31 will prohibit the use of wire leaders in the fishery, formally instituting the industry-led initiative.
Wire leaders have been used so hooked fish can’t break off, and to make gear safer for fishermen. But even the sharp-toothed oceanic whitetip sharks can’t bite through them, meaning fishermen must release them, a dangerous process for both fish and fishermen.
The Hawaii Longline Association, representing tuna longline fishermen in the area, took the initiative to stop using wire leaders when deep-set longline fishing when its members voluntarily phased out wire leaders starting in November 2020, according to HLA Executive Director Eric Kingma.
“Our members—which include all of the Hawaii-based longline fleet of around 145 vessels—don’t want to catch sharks,” Kingma said in a joint statement with NMFS. “While the amount of fishing effort by Hawaii vessels is small compared with foreign fleets, we continue to work with our members and researchers on innovative methods to minimize the impacts of our fishery on these sharks and other protected species.”
May 19, 2022 — People in the world’s developed nations live in a post-industrial era, working mainly in service or knowledge industries. Manufacturers increasingly rely on sensors, robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning to replace human labor or make it more efficient. Farmers can monitor crop health via satellite and apply pesticides and fertilizers with drones.
Commercial fishing, one of the oldest industries in the world, is a stark exception. Industrial fishing, with factory ships and deep-sea trawlers that land thousands of tons of fish at a time, are still the dominant hunting mode in much of the world.
This approach has led to overfishing, stock depletions, habitat destruction, the senseless killing of unwanted by-catch and wastage of as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of landed fish. Industrial fishing has devastated artisanal pre-industrial fleets in Asia, Africa and the the Pacific.
Read the full story at Greenbiz.com
April 18, 2022 — The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), and Birdlife International have formed a new partnership to protect marine wildlife from bycatch.
The new partnership intends to work directly with major retailers, brands, and foodservice companies in order to conduct bycatch audits. The audits are to identify the level of threats to endangered, threatened, and protected (ETP) species in fisheries that are supplier to the retailers and brands, allowing companies to identify and prioritize actions to take in the seafood supply chain in order to reduce overall bycatch.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
March 17, 2022 — There has been much discussion and debate about bycatch in marine fisheries off Alaska’s coasts recently, including several recent opinion pieces. All are chastising a perceived inaction to address bycatch, especially in the face of recent declines in salmon and crab in western Alaska.
Bycatch, by definition, is fish which are harvested but are not sold or kept. Simply put, bycatch is unintentionally caught fish that are unwanted, can’t be sold, or can’t be kept — like halibut, crab or salmon caught while targeting cod or pollock. While some bycatch occurs in state waters, most occurs in federal waters managed under plans established by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Bycatch is NOT the intercept of fish in mixed stock fisheries, such as occurs along the Alaska Peninsula when chum salmon of Yukon origin are harvested in directed sockeye salmon fisheries.
Let me begin by clearly stating that the state is concerned about bycatch. We should do our best to reduce the catch of unintended fish that are discarded and not used. That work is underway right now on multiple fronts.