January 9, 2020 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Last winter scientists and Alaskan fishermen agreed to launch a pilot study to develop methods for tagging cod on active commercial fishing vessels in the Aleutian Island.
Satellite tags had never been used on Pacific cod. No one had recorded seasonal movements of cod in the Aleutian Islands. This was the first time industry, scientists, and the fishing community all took part in the research.
January 9, 2020 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Marine Stewardship Council’s certifying agency for Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod, MRAG Americas of Florida, announced an expedited audit for the GOA Pcod based on the new stock assessment that resulted in the fishery’s 2020 closure last month.
“New information on stock status provided by NOAA Fisheries and decisions of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council in December of 2019” is the basis for a desk-based audit covering Principle 1 (stock status) only, the MSC announcement reads.
January 9, 2020 — Failure to grant the European Union access to British fishing waters after Brexit could lead to an outbreak of cod war style hostilities, the EU has warned.
Brussels is demanding continued access to British waters as a condition of the trade deal but Boris Johnson has warned the European Commission that Britain will take back control of its waters once Britain leaves the EU.
“We want to avoid any fisheries skirmishes in the Atlantic. We have seen them before we don’t want to see them again,” Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at a press conference with Charles Michel, the European Council president in Zagreb
January 9, 2020 — Members of the Russia-based Longline Fishery Association (LFA) have earned Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for their Pacific halibut and Pacific cod fisheries in three zones of the Bering Sea.
Six fisheries got certificates: Interrybflot, YAMSy, Polaris, Sigma Marine Technology, Tymlatsky rybokombinat, and Dalrybprom. The certification covers the Chukchi, West Bering Sea, and East Kamchatka fishery zones of the Bering Sea.
December 23, 2019 — The precipitous drop in Gulf of Alaska cod recently closed the federal fishery for the upcoming season. Its effects are also being felt by processors who rely on the fish for their winter workload. The Trident Seafoods plant in Sand Point closed last month for the winter, leaving a gaping hole in the city’s budget, and sowing uncertainty about the future.
The city of Sand Point was founded on cod. Settled less than 150 years ago, it’s had a processing plant in some form for nearly a century. This year is the first that the plant, now owned by Trident Seafoods, won’t be processing cod — and that’s because of climate change.
“It’s no fault of the plant at Sand Point, however, there’s not enough fish to process. So for the first time in my life, it’s closed,” Paul Gronholdt, an Aleutians East Borough assembly member testified at the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council meeting earlier this month. “That’s going to be pretty devastating to Sand Point and it’ll hurt the other communities in our region too.”
December 19, 2019 — It’s been a long road to setting final groundfish catch limits for the next three years in the Northeast Multispecies groundfishery and the journey isn’t quite over yet.
The New England Fishery Management Council approved the management framework that sets Northeast multispecies groundfish catch limits for 2020-2022 earlier this month. And local groundfishermen are looking at significant increases in several flounder stocks, American plaice and haddock.
But the state of the cod fishery in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank remains a point of contention.
“Overall, it’s pretty rosy,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition. “But the real issue is codfish, with catch limits that are going to be limiting and constricting when fishermen try to target other stocks.”
The council approved a 32% cut to Georges Bank cod to 1,073 metric tons per season and slashed the annual catch limit for Gulf of Maine cod by 24% to 275 metric tons per season.
Fishing stakeholders say those cuts reflect the continuing deep divide between what fishermen are seeing with cod on Georges Bank and in the Gulf of Maine and what NOAA Fisheries scientists include in their projections and assessments.
December 18, 2019 — Pacific cod stocks hard hit by warming ocean temperatures are becoming a focal point at federal fisheries meetings, where harvesting sectors and processors fight over who gets to catch and process this versatile vitamin and protein packed white fish.
Stock assessments in the fall of 2019 put the population of P-cod in the Gulf of Alaska below the federal threshold that allows for commercial harvest, for the benefit of endangered Steller sea lions who rely on them as a food source.
The Gulf cod fishery was cancelled. The Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands TAC was cut from 24,319,000 metric tons in 2019 to 22,000 metric tons for 2020.
The lower quota is intensifying the race for fish, and a fight between the trawlers and the community of Adak, Alaska, over where that fish will be processed.
At the heart of the battle is Amendment 113 to the fishery management plan for BSAI groundfish. This amendment set aside a portion of the Aleutian Islands cod fishery TAC for harvest by vessels directed fishing for Aleutian Islands Pacific cod and delivering their catch for processing to a shoreside processor located on land in Adak. The 5,000 metric tons P-cod harvest set-aside was designed to provide the opportunity for vessels, Aleutian Islands shore plants and communities where Aleutian Islands shore plants are located to benefit from the P-cod fishery.
December 16, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Effective at 0845 hours on December 16, 2019, the Regular B Days-at-Sea (DAS) program is closed for the remainder of fishing year 2019, through April 30, 2020. During this closure, Northeast multispecies vessels may not declare or use regular B days-at-sea. We have closed the Regular B DAS program because 77 percent of the 242.5 lb Incidental Catch Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for Gulf of Maine cod is projected to have been caught.
The Regional Administrator is authorized to close the Regular B Days-at-Sea Program if it is projected that catch in the Regular B DAS Program cannot be constrained to the Gulf of Maine Cod Incidental Catch TAC. With only two trip limits of catch available before the fishery meets or exceeds the Gulf of Maine Cod Incidental Catch TAC, we project that this criteria for closure has been met.
If you have crossed the vessel monitoring system demarcation line and are currently at sea on a groundfish trip declared under a regular B day-at-sea, you may complete your trip.
For more information see the rule as filed in the Federal Register today or our bulletin.
December 11, 2019 — The Gulf of Alaska’s federal cod fleet is bracing for a complete shutdown in 2020 after an 80 percent TAC cut in 2018 and another 5 percent last year, down to 17,000 tons.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council announced its decision on Friday, Dec. 6, in response to low recruitment.
“We’re on the knife’s edge of this overfished status,” said Council Member Nicole Kimball, vice president of Alaskan operations for the Pacific Seafood Processors Association.
The fall 2019 stock assessment returned biomass numbers for gulf cod below the necessary threshold as a food source for the endangered Steller sea lion.
The infamous Blob of 2014 — a mass of warm water that hovered in the Gulf of Alaska — likely depleted the cod’s food supply and severely restricted recruitment. The fall 2017 Gulf of Alaska survey yielded historically low numbers at 46,080 metric tons, down more than 80 percent since 2013.
“That warm water was sitting in the gulf for three years starting in 2014, and it was different than other years in that it went really deep and it also lasted throughout the winter,” said Steven Barbeaux with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. “You can deplete the food source pretty rapidly when the entire ecosystem is ramped up in those warm temperatures.”
December 11, 2019 — Climate change is causing chaos in the Bering Sea, home to one of America’s largest fisheries, an example of how rising temperatures can rapidly change ecosystems important to the economy, U.S. federal government scientists said in a report on Tuesday.
Rising temperatures in the Arctic have led to decreases in sea ice, record warm temperatures at the bottom of the Bering Sea and the northward migration of fish species such as Pacific cod, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, said in its 2019 Arctic Report Card.
While the changes are widespread in the Arctic, the effect on wildlife is acute in the eastern shelf of the Bering Sea, which yields more than 40% of the annual U.S. fish and shellfish catch.
“The changes going on have the potential to influence the kinds of fish products you have available to you, whether that’s fish sticks in the grocery store or shellfish at a restaurant,” said Rick Thoman, a meteorologist in Alaska and one of the report’s authors.