Saving Seafood

Fishery council must act to reduce Alaska halibut bycatch

December 13, 2021 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, or NPFMC, has hardly been an Alaska household name, but we think it should become one. The 11-member council makes fisheries policy for the North Pacific Ocean that greatly shapes Alaskans’ livelihoods and lives, including an awfully big decision in the coming days that all Alaskans should know about.

This decision is an “all the marbles” decision to reduce — or to fail to reduce — how much halibut the Seattle-based Bering Sea groundfish trawl fishery can catch and discard as bycatch. Bycatch is when a “non-target” species of fish is accidentally caught while fishing — and is almost always discarded, often dead or dying, back to the ocean.

This is a very important decision for all Alaskans who care about our fisheries and our halibut. We believe halibut trawl bycatch caps must be substantially reduced. We believe most Alaskans feel similarly.

Right now, 3.3 million pounds of halibut are caught and discarded by the Bering Sea trawl fleets every year. Of the various trawlers in the Bering Sea, the 19 vessels that constitute the groundfish bottom trawl fleet — also known as the “Amendment 80″ fleet — are the biggest contributors to halibut bycatch.

Read the full op-ed at the Anchorage Daily News

NPFMC approaches pivotal decision on halibut bycatch, with USD 100 million potentially at stake

December 9, 2021 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) is once again considering whether or not to implement abundance-based management for halibut bycatch on the groundfish fleet, a decision stakeholders say could cost Alaska’s Amendment 80 fleet over USD 100 million (EUR 88 million).

The council faces four separate alternatives on how to handle the amount of halibut bycatch the Amendment 80 fleet – which harvests various flatfish, rockfish, Atka mackerel, Pacific Ocean perch, and Pacific cod in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands and Gulf of Alaska – should be allowed to catch. The four alternatives call for the council to either continue with the status quo on halibut bycatch, or ask the Amendment 80 fleet to reduce it by various amounts, up to a maximum of 40 percent.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Scientists Support New Measures, Changes to Hawaii Longline Tuna Fishery

December 3, 2021 — Blue bait or tori lines: Which is better for saving seabirds?

To the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, tori lines.

The SSC continued to support replacing blue-dyed fish bait and strategic offal discard requirements in the Hawai‘i deep-set longline fishery with tori lines for seabird bycatch mitigation when it met recently.

Read the full story at SeafoodNews.com

 

Gov. Dunleavy’s office announces formation of Alaska Bycatch Task Force

November 30, 2021 — Fishing vessels cast wide nets, and they often catch more than the species they’re targeting. That’s bycatch: one of the longest-running controversies in the fleet and a vexing problem for fisheries managers. Now, the Dunleavy administration is wading into the debate by naming a task force to study the issue and find ways to make it better for everyone working on the water.

Governor Mike Dunleavy’s office recently announced it’s setting up a task force to tackle the thorny issue of bycatch.

Federal data show trawl fisheries this year in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska have caught tens of thousands of Chinook salmon, millions of pounds of halibut, and in the case of the Bering Sea trawl fisheries, hundreds of thousands of crabs.

Stocks of 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.

Read the full story at KNBA

Protecting the Pacific’s endangered marine species using artificial intelligence

November 24, 2021 — The pelagic ocean covers over 50 percent of the planet’s surface and many of the species that call it home travel thousands of miles each year, seeking food and suitable nursery grounds. Some of these species end up in your favorite sushi—like Bigeye tuna—while others are some of the most imperiled on the planet, like leatherback sea turtles. Catching one without catching the other has challenged commercial fishers, scientists and fisheries managers to develop innovative solutions.

“In the last several decades, we have seen major improvements to bycatch reduction,” said T. Todd Jones, Fisheries Research and Monitoring Division director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. “We see as much as a 60 to 90 percent reduction in bycatch rates for endangered marine turtles due to gear improvement, for example. The goal is to refine that further.”

Recent efforts by UF/IFAS researchers attempt to do just that by drawing imaginary lines in the vast, open ocean, a seemingly impossible task. But using , scientists are making progress toward protecting  that are not meant to be caught.

Read the full story at Phys.org

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 lawmakers in both parties demand action on excessive fisheries bycatch

November 23, 2021 — A grilling on fish that is taken as bycatch didn’t satisfy the appetites of a bipartisan group of Alaska legislators at a special hearing on Nov. 15 by the House Fisheries Committee.

“We probably could not be more diametrically opposed on many things but we are frustrated with the waste of the resource and we are in lockstep. It’s all about the best economics and the best stewardship of our resources,” said Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, who devoted his entire November Capital Report to the topic.

“The fish don’t care if you’re red or blue,” said Sarah Vance, R-Homer, the catalyst behind the bycatch hearing. “We lay aside everything else and focus on good stewardship and making sure that every fisherman is able to get fish in the freezer and food on the table.”

The bycatch issue came to a head this summer when all Yukon River salmon fisheries were canceled due to so few returning chinook and chums. Along with ocean and climate impacts, villagers questioned the takes by huge trawlers that catch and process fish at sea.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Federal judge blocks lobster fishing ban in stretch of Gulf of Maine

October 18, 2021 — A federal judge in Maine on Saturday blocked a seasonal ban on traditional lobster fishing in a stretch of offshore waters in the Gulf of Maine that regulators say is needed to save the endangered North Atlantic right whale from extinction.

In his 28-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Lance Walker said regulators had relied on “markedly thin” statistical modeling instead of hard evidence to show the nearly thousand-square-mile area they had planned to close was really a hot spot for the imperiled whale.

While the area targeted for closure may be a viable habitat for the right whale, there is no hard proof the whales actually gather there, or even pass through that part of the Gulf of Maine, with enough frequency to render it a “hotspot,” Walker wrote.

The National Marine Fisheries Service had only just this year deployed acoustic devices along the Maine coast that can detect the presence of right whales through their song, Walker noted. When available, such evidence of a hot spot is preferable to statistical likelihoods.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Trawler bycatch debate heats up after Alaska records dismal 2021 chinook salmon returns

October 15, 2021 — Fishermen are calling for state and federal fisheries managers to make changes to salmon bycatch limits for trawlers as chinook salmon numbers plummet across Alaska.

Chinook salmon returns were dismal virtually everywhere in Alaska this year, from Southeast to the Bering Sea, with few exceptions. That follows a trend, as abundance has declined over roughly the last decade. Commercial fishermen have lost most of their opportunity to harvest kings, and sport fisheries have been restricted. Now subsistence fisheries are being reined in to help preserve the runs.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is debating changes in its meeting this month. Trawlers, which use weighted nets to drag either along the bottom or in midwater, are permitted a certain amount of bycatch as they fish for their target species, the largest of which is pollock. Bycatch is always a heated issue, but it is especially so now.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game informed the council in a letter dated Sept. 23 that three index species that it uses to track king salmon runs in the Bering Sea — the Unalakleet, Yukon, and Kuskokwim rivers — didn’t reach a threshold necessary to maintain the current bycatch allowances. That threshold is set at 250,000 fish between the three rivers; this year, there were 165,148.

The Kuskokwim’s run came within its forecasted range, but the other two fell short.

The shortfall in salmon this year hit fishing communities hard, particularly among subsistence fishermen. Amos T. Philemenoff Sr., president of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, wrote to the board that the salmon shortages in the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region this year have affected the island’s subsistence traditions. Donations of salmon from commercial harvesters to replace the lost food do not replace the traditions, he said.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Tribal, commercial fishing groups call for drastic reductions in trawl salmon bycatch

October 14, 2021 — Fisheries managers allow whitefish trawlers to inadvertently scoop up halibut, crab and salmon in their nets. The bycatch rate is relatively low, but because the trawlers catch so much of their target species, the unintended harvest adds up.

In rural western Alaska, where chum and king salmon runs have been performing poorly, the bycatch is raising alarms. While the bycaught salmon is often donated to food banks, it’s of little assurance to those living along the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, where subsistence is a way of life.

“We eat dry fish like people from the Midwest eat bread, with every meal,” Mary Peltola told the North Pacific Fishery Management Council this month. She’s the executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, and lives in the largely Yup’ik community of Bethel. “Our babies teethe on dry fish, it’s the first food most Yup’iks eat, and it’s something that we crave year-round.”

She testified that fishing on the Kuskokwim has been severely restricted to preserve wild salmon stocks. Meanwhile, trawlers haven’t faced new restrictions of their own as they scoop up lucrative whitefish like pollock, cod and halibut. She’s asked the council to work to put an end to bycatch in the industrial commercial trawl fleet.

Read the full story at KSTK