Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Pandemic economy contributes to record Southeast Dungeness crab prices

September 28, 2021 — Southeast Alaska’s Dungeness crab fetched record breaking prices this summer. The size of the harvest was close to average, but the value of the crab was exceptional.

Southeast’s summer Dungeness crab season ended up being worth $13 million. That’s about double the $7.52 million average over the last decade.

The summer fishery brought in just over 3.09 million pounds of Dungeness crab. That’s slightly above the ten year average but well below last year’s near-record harvest of 5.87 million, which was the second highest harvest ever recorded.

Still, the average price paid for Dungeness crab this summer was a record breaker at $4.21 per pound.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

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

 

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

 

Bering Sea crabbers talk shutdown, facing biomass disaster head on

September 7, 2021 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on Friday, Sept. 3, that the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery would be closed for the 2021-22 season, for the first time in 25 years. The announcement came in advance of the management decision-making process, providing the crab fleet time to make any possible adjustments.

“While this isn’t the news we wanted to hear, we appreciate knowing as soon as possible for our business planning purposes,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of the trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. “It helps us to know now so we can notify our crews, plan where our vessels are going to go next, plan shipyard time between seasons, and batten down the hatches on our finances.”

The announcement on Friday also reported on data that shows all major Bering Sea crab stocks are down, and the majority of the Bering Sea opilio crab stock seems to have moved or disappeared.

“We had hoped the Bristol Bay red king crab stocks would have rebounded by now, after several years of reduced and conservative harvest levels, but that is simply not the case,” said Gabriel Prout, a third-generation fisherman on the F/V Silver Spray. “Coupling this closure with the fact that snow crab harvest levels could be reduced as well, even after positive levels of recruitment in previous years, has the makings for a very frustrating and trying time for crab fishermen and the industry as a whole.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Clean needles depend on the blue blood of horseshoe crabs

August 23, 2021 — It’s one of the stranger, lesser-known aspects of U.S. health care — the striking, milky-blue blood of horseshoe crabs is a critical component of tests to ensure injectable medications such as coronavirus vaccines aren’t contaminated.

To obtain it, harvesters bring many thousands of the creatures to laboratories to be bled each year, and then return them to the sea — a practice that has drawn criticism from conservationists because some don’t survive the process.

The blood, which is blue due to its copper content, is coveted for proteins used to create the LAL test, a process used to screen medical products for bacteria. Synthetic alternatives aren’t widely accepted by the health care industry and haven’t been approved federally, leaving the crabs as the only domestic source of this key ingredient.

Many of these crabs are harvested along the coast of South Carolina, where Gov. Henry McMaster promoted the niche industry as key to the development of a domestic medical supply chain, while also noting that environmental concerns should be explored.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Electronic tracking system considered for lobstermen in federal waters

August 13, 2021 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering requiring electronic tracking for the lobstermen who fish in federal waters.

The commission’s American Lobster Management Board initiated a draft addendum last week with the goal of collecting spatial and effort data from lobster and Jonah crab fishermen.

“In my opinion, this is the single most important thing the American Lobster Board can do to ensure the viability of the American lobster fishery,” said Dan McKiernan, the board’s chairman. “Through the proposed action, the board seeks to significantly improve our understanding of stock status, identify areas where lobster fishing effort might present a risk to endangered North Atlantic right whales and provide important information to help reduce spatial conflicts with other ocean uses, such as wind energy development and aquaculture.”

The management board has expressed interest in implementing these types of requirements over the last few years and has supported efforts to look into the systems and technology that would be needed to collect the data.

In May, the board created a working group that had representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, state and federal law enforcement and members of the board to study electronic tracking. The working group recommended that data be reported at a minimum rate of one ping per minute for at least 90 percent of the fishing trip in order to tell the difference between when the fishermen are lobstering and when they are in transit. It would also be able to calculate the number of traps per trawl.  Cellular tracking devices are the preferred technology for the tracking.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Electronic tracking considered for offshore lobster fishery 

August 10, 2021 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering requiring electronic tracking for the lobstermen who fish in federal waters.

The commission’s American Lobster Management Board initiated a draft addendum last week with the goal of collecting spatial and effort data from lobster and Jonah crab fishermen.

“In my opinion, this is the single most important thing the American Lobster Board can do to ensure the viability of the American lobster fishery,” said Dan McKiernan, the board’s chairman. “Through the proposed action, the Board seeks to significantly improve our understanding of stock status, identify areas where lobster fishing effort might present a risk to endangered North Atlantic right whales, and provide important information to help reduce spatial conflicts with other ocean uses, such as wind energy development and aquaculture.”

The management board has expressed interest in implementing these types of requirements over the last few years and has supported efforts to look into the systems and technology that would be needed to collect the data.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

ASMFC Lobster Board Initiates Draft Addendum to Consider Electronic Tracking for Lobster, Jonah Crab

August 6, 2021 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC)’s American Lobster Board initiated Draft Addendum XXIX to Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for American Lobster.

This Draft Addendum considers the implementation of electronic tracking requirements for federally permitted vessels in the American lobster and Jonah crab fishery. The potential new tracking will aim to collect “high resolution spatial and temporal effort data.

Read the full story at Seafood News