Saving Seafood

With New Camera Technology, Scientists Will Survey Untrawlable Ocean Habitat in AK Next Year

February 8, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — NOAA is releasing more information about its thinking about camera monitoring.

In a recent newsletter, NOAA said cameras can go where humans cannot and new fisheries research tools can save hundreds of hours in analyzing information contained in collected photographs.

NOAA Fisheries scientists are designing the first large-scale image-based fish survey in Alaska, and one of the first untrawlable habitat surveys nationwide.

Bottom-trawl and midwater acoustic surveys have been the main source of fishery-independent data for assessing fish stocks in Alaska. But a bottom trawl cannot sample the steep, rocky areas– untrawlable habitats — that species such as Atka mackerel and rockfishes prefer.  Acoustic instruments can be used in these areas, but are limited in detecting fish on or near the seafloor and cannot discern between fish species or sizes. Untrawlable areas make up to 17% of federally managed areas where bottom trawl surveys are regularly conducted in the Gulf of Alaska, and 54% in the Aleutian Islands.

Historically, untrawlable areas were inaccessible not only to scientific surveys, but also to commercial fishing bottom trawls. That is no longer the case.

“Fishermen have made great technological advances,” explains Kresimir Williams, a fisheries biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center who together with colleague Chris Rooper is leading the effort to design a survey of untrawlable habitat in Alaska.

“They are using the latest and greatest gadgets to fish as efficiently as possible. They are using cameras with live view that let them avoid catching boulders in ‘untrawlable’ areas. These areas are not untrawlable anymore – but they are unsurveyed.”

While fishermen use the latest technology, scientific surveys strive to maintain gear consistency to allow direct comparison of survey results over time, so that results from a bottom trawl survey conducted in the 1980s are directly comparable with results from the 2000s. “That consistency gives us confidence that population trends are informative, and can be used to detect changes in fish populations over time allowing the effective management of fish populations. But it hasn’t allowed for the adaptations needed to survey untrawlable areas,” Williams explains.

A number of commercially important fish species– including dusky, northern, harlequin, and yelloweye rockfish– strongly prefer these habitats. Many species of rockfish are long-lived and reproduce later in life, making them particularly vulnerable to overfishing. To keep these fisheries sustainable, managers need accurate stock assessments.

Assessments based on surveys of only trawlable areas for species that live mainly in untrawlable habitat are highly uncertain.  In addition, surveying only trawlable areas may also incorrectly inflate estimates of species such as flatfish, which are predominantly in the trawlable habitats by expanding these results over untrawlable areas where these fish are generally much less common.

Creating rigorous methods for surveying untrawlable habitats will benefit the assessments of both types of fish and the fishing industry and managers who rely on this information to set sustainable fishing quotas.

Take nothing but pictures

The problem of assessing fish stocks in untrawlable habitat is not limited to Alaska. Developing new methods to sample in rock, reef, and other untrawlable habitats is a nationwide NOAA Fisheries effort. Many methods are being explored, but all involve acoustic or optical technologies. Alaska will be one of the first regions to realize an image-based survey of untrawlable habitats if we are able to conduct an initial survey in 2019.

Cameras can go where traditional bottom trawl and acoustic surveys cannot.

The plan for the Gulf of Alaska combines large-scale acoustic and optical sampling. Bottom trawl samples will be replaced with high resolution photos from which fish species and sizes can be identified and fish populations can be estimated. Cameras lowered from ships and moored stationary stereo camera systems will be used where each will be most effective.

“It will be a non-extractive survey,” says Williams. “We will take away nothing but pictures.”

To realize this vision by turning images into data, Williams’ team is collaborating with a University of Washington’s Electrical Engineering department program dedicated to computer automated image analysis. UW researchers and Williams created computer programs that automatically identify and determine the length of fish in the images.

“These sophisticated analysis techniques are widely used in security and medical fields, but are only now becoming accessible for fisheries research,” explains Williams. ”It can hugely reduce the effort required to extract data from images. Until this technique was available, starting a new image-based survey was impractical — it would require a huge number of people and amount of time just to examine photos.”

The new programs are able to analyze the images and determine fish identity and length in one-fifth of the time it would take a trained fisheries biologist to do the task in expenses.

Focus and fine tune

The new survey design is based on many years of research by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and knowledge gained through NOAA’s Untrawlable Habitat Strategic Initiative, which funded several pilot projects for developing the methodology:

Acoustic-optics studies
Experiments with stationary triggered cameras
Bottom mapping and habitat classification efforts
Remotely operated vehicle surveys
Studies of fish response to camera equipment and movement
A study of fish visual spectrum sensitivity
These studies provided information that is being incorporated into the survey design, such as:

Some fish move to different depths during day and night. This knowledge is useful in deciding what equipment to use or what time of day to survey them.

Some fish move around and others stay close to one location. Understanding these behaviors helps determine what camera equipment to use.

Fish are more sensitive to certain wavelengths of light. The survey will use lighting within a spectrum that fish are least likely to avoid.

Until now, many estimates of fish populations made using traditional survey approaches have been relative — you know if there are more or less than other years, but you don’t know exactly how many there are. That approach often requires several years of data to detect a trend, and consistent methods from year to year, even if those methods become outdated. Williams found an innovative way to use new stereo camera systems to calculate the volume of water represented in each image. That enables researchers to calculate the number of fish per volume of seawater (fish per cubic meter), an absolute estimate.

“With the new survey, we are shooting for an absolute estimate– the actual number of fish. That gives you a much more precise piece of information to work with. And you can keep improving the gear instead of being constrained to using the same techniques for consistency. It’s exciting, using these advanced technologies to do something completely new,” says Williams. “It’s the next place to go.”

This story originally appeared in SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Network seeks to bring together data on harmful algal blooms

February 6, 2018 — A group of scientists is coming together to share information related to harmful algal blooms in Alaska.

Under the umbrella of the Alaska Ocean Observation System, part of the national ocean observation system network, a partnership of state agencies, Alaska Native organizations and the University of Alaska has launched the Alaska Harmful Algal Bloom Network. The intent is to stitch together a statewide approach to researching, monitoring, responding to and spreading information about harmful algal blooms in the state.

Algal blooms are natural processes in the ocean and occur when the population of algae in a certain area increases dramatically. However, they can turn toxic when certain types of algae proliferate and produce chemicals that can be harmful to other plants, animals and people, or consume all the oxygen in the water as they decay. The events, called harmful algal blooms, occur all over the planet, in both freshwater and the ocean, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“Over the last 10 years, we’ve been seeing more and more of these bloom events happening,” said Ginny Eckert, a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Juneau and co-chair of the Alaska Harmful Algal Bloom Network’s executive committee. “It’s always a question: Are we seeing more because we’re paying attention more? But … the more information we can get out to people, (the better).”

Harmful algal blooms can have devastating consequences. In 2014, nearly 500,000 Ohio residents had to go without clean drinking water because of harmful algal blooms near a water treatment plant in Lake Erie. A harmful algal bloom in a lake that flowed into the ocean near Monterey Bay, California in 2007 is thought to have killed 11 sea otters with infections of microcystin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Every year in Alaska, a number of alerts go out to shellfish gatherers to be careful because some of the clams, oysters and mussels may have high levels of a toxin that causes paralytic shellfish poisoning, a fatal condition in humans.

Read the full at the Peninsula Clarion

 

Bering Sea cod season has potential to be shortest ever

January 19, 2018 — The trawling season for Pacific cod in the Bering Sea begins 20 January, although the season will likely draw to a close earlier than mid- to late-March, when the season traditionally ends.

Analysts expect the season to close for a number of reasons. Quotas have decreased in the Bering Sea by about 15 percent to about 414 million pounds of fish. However, it’s the quota decrease in the Gulf of Alaska that is expected to cause more competition and quotas being filled quickly in the Bering Sea.

Due to a severe 80 percent cut in the cod quota in the Gulf of Alaska, the fleets that usually consider those waters their home turf will likely make their way to the Bering Sea to fish for the season, however long it lasts.

The reason for the quota cuts is a severe depletion in Alaska cod stocks which, in recent years, have posted the worst numbers for decades, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Krista Milani, who is a marine biologist at the NMFS, predicted the numbers to rebound in the coming years, since she expects water temperatures to revert to cooler temperatures.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Susan Murray: Crude plan puts Alaska’s fisheries at risk

January 15, 2018 — Last week, the Trump administration unveiled an extreme proposal to open nearly all United States federal waters off Alaska to offshore oil and gas leasing. Under the Draft Proposed Program for the 2019-2024 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, only the North Aleutian Basin (which contains Bristol Bay) would be safe from potential oil and gas leasing activity. Areas such as the Gulf of Alaska that have not seen a lease sale since the early 1980s, and regions that have never been considered for exploration like the Aleutians, Bering Sea and Kodiak have suddenly been put at risk.

The Gulf of Alaska faced oil and gas lease sales when the first federal offshore leases were offered in Alaska as part of the 1976-1981 program. At that time, 600,000 acres of the seafloor, starting 10 miles off Cape Suckling and stretching to Yakutat, were leased and twelve exploratory wells were drilled. None yielded commercially significant quantities of oil or gas, and thankfully there were no catastrophes from this misguided effort. Further sales were scheduled between 1997 and 2002, but were canceled due to a lack of interest from industry. It was a bad idea then, and it is a bad idea now.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) now estimates the recoverable oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Alaska at around 600 million barrels of oil. Current U.S. consumption is about 20 million barrels per day. In other words, burning through the estimated Gulf of Alaska oil reserves might fuel our country for a mere month. BOEM’s low estimate of environmental and social costs of exploration activities and “small” spills (up to 4 million gallons!) is a staggering $100 million. That doesn’t even include the costs of a catastrophic oil spill, like BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, which they claim they will analyze later.

The Gulf of Alaska ecosystem is already stressed, and many fishermen will tell you that things do not look good. Halibut are smaller, Chinook salmon are disappearing, and the Pacific cod stock is collapsing. To add the stress of offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling to the mix is both thoughtless and irresponsible.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

Seafood industry seeks new value in fish parts

January 15, 2018 — State seafood marketers are rebranding fish parts as “specialty” products and mapping a path for millions more dollars in sales.

Alaska’s fisheries produce more than 5 billion pounds of seafood each year. When all the fish is headed and gutted or filleted and all the crab legs are clustered, it leaves about 3 billion pounds of trimmings. Some is turned into meal and oil, but for the most part, the “gurry” is ground up and discharged into local waterways.

“Whether that’s heads or guts, milt, or meal or oil or something else, it should be held in high regard,” said Andy Wink, a seafood economist formerly with the McDowell Group. “These are products that are out of our normal range but they are specialty items serving niche markets.”

A new Analyses of Specialty Alaska Seafood Products report compiled for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute takes a look at uses for fish heads, oil, meal, internal organs, crab products, roe, herring fillets, arrowtooth flounder, spiny dogfish and skates.

It makes the point that Alaska’s combined seafood catches, valued at roughly $2 billion at the docks and twice that when processors sell to their buyers, could be worth an additional $700 million or more if so called “specialty” products were added to the mix.

Take fish heads, for example. Alaska produces about 1 billion pounds of fish heads per year, which likely account for most of the processing waste, the report said. Just 1 percent is sold as frozen heads, although a single large salmon head can fetch up to $5 a pound at Beijing supermarkets, according to previous reports. Increasing the frozen market alone could add $100 million to processors’ sales, the report said.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

North Pacific Council Issues Alert to Gulf of Alaska Cod Fishermen

January 4, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — In big red letters, a one-page alert warns the Gulf of Alaska cod fleets:  “Attention Cod Fishermen! 80% Decrease in Catch Limit for 2018” before describing what the massive cut in landings will mean to all gear types in federal and state waters of the Gulf.

At its December 2017 meeting, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council approved a Gulf-wide catch limit for Pacific cod at 18,000 mt, or about 39.7 million pounds for the 2018 season that starts January 20. Last year’s quota for P-cod in the Gulf for both the federal and state waters was about 82,000 mt.

“Recognizing that cod fishermen in the Central and Western Gulf of Alaska need to quickly get this information to adjust their fishing plans for 2018, the Council is providing the following tables that compare the 2018 catch limits to the 2017 limits by area, fishery, and season,” reads the one-page flyer.

The biggest producers are trawl vessels in the Western Gulf, a fleet that landed 6,861 mt in the A season last year and 2,650 mt in the 2017 B season. Those totals will be 1,543 mt in the A season and 596 in the B season this year.

Central Gulf trawlers are suffering a similar fate: catch limits for the A season are 1,275 mt in 2018 compared to 6,933 mt last year. That fleet is allowed 1,233 mt for this year’s B season, compared to 6,708 mt last year.

The flyer covers jig, hook and line, and pot gear throughout the Gulf and includes the breakdown for state catch limits by area. The two most productive areas historically in state waters are the South Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak. Last year’s catch limit for the South Peninsula (jig and pot gear combined) was 10,887 mt and for Kodiak was 5,523 mt.  This year, it is 2,425 mt and 1,015 mt respectively.

The smallest fishery is the Central Gulf jig fleet, which got 331 mt last year. This year, the combined total for A and B season will be 61 mt.

The flyer can be found here.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

ALASKA: Kodiak officials prepare for ‘disaster’: An 80 percent decline in Gulf cod catches in 2018

December 18, 2017 — Kodiak officials already are drafting a disaster declaration due to the crash of cod stocks throughout the Gulf of Alaska. The shortage will hurt many other coastal communities as well.

Gulf cod catches for 2018 will drop by 80 percent to just under 29 million pounds in federally managed waters, compared to a harvest this year of nearly 142 million pounds. The crash is expected to continue into 2020 or 2021.

Cod catches in the Bering Sea also will decline by 15 percent to 414 million pounds. In all, Alaska produces 12 percent of global cod fish.

The bad news was announced by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which sets the catches for more than 25 species in waters from 3 miles to 200 miles from shore in the Gulf and the Bering Sea.

“It’s almost like a double, triple, quadruple disaster because it’s not just one year,” said Julie Bonney, director of the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank. She added that the cod decline will decrease revenues for fishermen who use longline, pots, jig and trawl gear and will make it more difficult for processors to fill their market demands. It also will be a huge hit to the coffers of local communities, which get a 3 percent tax on all fish landings.

Kodiak fisheries analyst Heather McCarty called the cod crash “devastating” for the short- and long-term.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Alaska: A Tough Break for Alaska Fishermen: Pacific Halibut Catches Likely to Drop Next Year

December 5, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — It’s going to be a tough year for many Alaska fishermen.

After announcements of a massive drop in cod stocks, the industry learned last week that Pacific halibut catches are likely to drop by 20 percent next year, and the declines could continue for several years.

That could bring the coastwide catch for 2018, meaning from Oregon to British Columbia to the Bering Sea, to about 31 million pounds.

Scientists at the International Pacific Halibut Commission interim meeting in Seattle revealed that survey results showed halibut numbers were down 23 percent from last summer, and the total biomass (weight) dropped 10 percent. The surveys are done each year from May through September at nearly 1,500 stations from Oregon to the far reaches of the Bering Sea.

The biggest drop stems from a lack of younger fish entering the halibut fishery. Stewart said the 9- to 18-year-old year classes that have been sustaining the recent halibut fishery are not being followed up by younger fish.

“In 2018, and especially projecting out to 2019, we are moving out of a fishery that is dominated by those relatively good recruitments starting in 1999 and extending to 2005. We see an increasing number of relatively poor recruitments stemming from at least 2009 and 2010,” he said.

Although they are not factoring them into their halibut catch computations, scientists for the first time are looking closely at environmental and habitat conditions, as well as trends in other fisheries.

Stewart said warmer waters starting in 2007 appear to correspond to the lower halibut year classes. Most relevant to the drop in halibut recruitment in recent years, as with Pacific cod, are the effects of “the blob.”

“Especially through 2015 to 2016 we saw that warmer water extending even to deeper shelf waters in the Gulf of Alaska,” he said. “We’ve seen a big increase the last several years in pyrosomes, which are these nasty gelatinous zooplankton, well documented sea bird die offs and whale strandings. So some abnormal things are going on in the Gulf.”

The IPHC does not always follow the recommendations of its scientists. Final decisions will be made at the annual meeting Jan. 22-26 in Portland, Oregon.

Sport halibut hike

While commercial halibut catches are set to drop, charter operators will see an increase.

A Recreational Quota Entity program was approved by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council that will allow halibut catch shares to be purchased and held in a common pool for charter operators to draw from as needed.

Under the plan, the RQE can hold 10 percent of the total commercial quota pool in Southeast Alaska and 12 percent from the Southcentral region, making it the single largest halibut-holding entity in the North Pacific.

The program would be phased in over 10 years with transfers of 1 percent and 1.2 percent from each region, respectively.

It is unclear where the RQE will get the estimated $25 million needed to buy halibut shares. Some have suggested a self-funding option such as a halibut stamp, similar to king salmon, or a voluntary tax.

The RQE program is strongly opposed by commercial fishermen. In written comments, the Halibut Coalition’s Tom Gemmell stated that the RQE “undermines the goal of maintaining an owner operated fleet, and will force fishermen to compete for quota against a subsidized entity.”

Linda Behnken, director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, said charter effort has remained relatively constant or increased despite catch conservation measures.

“Charter operators claim their clients need more harvesting opportunity despite low abundance, ignoring the obvious need for all sectors to conserve during times of low abundance,” Behnken said.

Longtime fisheries advocate Clem Tillion called RQEs the “death of a small boat, owner operated fishery” adding “Holland America and Carnival Cruise lines will buy the quota and hired hands will fish it, and the small boat fleet out of villages is gone.”

The RQE plan is set to begin next year.

Gender on the agenda

Recognizing the roles of women in the seafood industry and making them more visible is the goal of the new group International Association for Women in the Seafood Industry (WSI) and input is being gathered from around the world.

The nonprofit, launched a year ago, was created by seafood and gender issues specialists to highlight imbalances in the industry, to shed light on women’s real participation and to promote greater diversity and inclusiveness.

One in two seafood workers is a woman, WSI claims, yet they are over-represented in low-skilled, low-paying positions and account for less than 10 percent of company directors and a mere 1 percent of CEOs.

“There is a gender imbalance,” said Marie Catherine Monfort, WSI president and co-founder.

Monfort, who is based in Paris, has been working in the seafood industry for several decades, both as an economist and a seafood marketing analyst.

“I noticed that in most meetings I was surrounded by men, and I could only see men speaking in most conversations. Women were very numerous in this industry, but not very visible. They are not taken into account by the policy makers and by employers as well. That was the main motivation,” she said in a phone conversation.

To gather more perceptions on women’s roles in the industry, WSI launched a first of its kind survey in September at a World Seafood Congress in Iceland.

It went so well, she said, that WSI decided to translate the survey into French, English and Spanish and expand it to the entire world.

“The questions center around what is the position of women in your company, and what is your opinion of the situation of women in the industry. Are there areas where things could be improved, or maybe some feel there is no need for any improvement,” Monfort said, adding that responses by both sexes are welcomed.

“It is very important to also collect men’s opinions, and it will be interesting to see if men and women have the same or differing opinions,” she said. “The results will help us cultivate a better future with equal opportunities and increase awareness of women’s roles in the seafood industry. The more we are, the stronger we will be.”

The “Gender on the Agenda” survey is open through December, and results will be available by early March. Contact Monfort at contact@wsi-asso.org with questions.

Crab wrap

The Bristol Bay red king crab season wrapped up after about five weeks, and by all accounts, it was uneventful.

“Fishermen were seeing about what we expected from the survey, with a little bit slower fishing and pockets of crab without real wide distribution,” said Miranda Westphal, area management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Dutch Harbor.

The red king crab catch quota this year of 6.6 million pounds was down 22 percent from last season, and the lowest catch since 1996.

The crab was “big and nice,” said Jake Jacobsen, director of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange, a harvester group that catches 70 percent of the Bering Sea crab quota.

There’s no word yet on price, and Jacobsen said negotiations will likely continue into January. Red king crab averaged $10.89 per pound to fishermen last year, the highest price ever. Jacobsen said the price is likely to be lower this year.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

Cod numbers in the Gulf of Alaska fall dramatically

November 7, 2017 — JUNEAU, Alaska — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which regulates groundfish in Alaska and other federal fisheries, received some shocking news last month.

Pacific cod stocks in the Gulf of Alaska may have declined as much as 70 percent over the past two years.

The estimate is a preliminary figure, but it leaves plenty of questions about the future of cod fishing in Gulf of Alaska.

The first question that comes to mind when you hear the number of Pacific cod in the Gulf dropped by about two-thirds is what happened?

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries division’s Steven Barbeaux has been trying to answer that question. Barbeaux said the issue likely started with warmer water moving into the Gulf in 2014 and sticking around for the next three years.

“We had what the oceanographers and the news media have been calling the blob, which is this warm water that was sitting in the Gulf for those three years,” Barbeaux said. “It was different from other years in that it went really deep, but it also lasted throughout the winter.”

Read the full story at KTOO

Climate change preview? Pacific Ocean ‘blob’ appears to take toll on Alaska cod

November 4, 2017 — Gulf of Alaska cod populations appear to have nose-dived, a collapse fishery scientists believe is linked to warm water temperatures known as “the blob” that peaked in 2015.

The decline is expected to substantially reduce the Gulf cod harvests that in recent years have been worth — before processing — more than $50 million to Northwest and Alaska fishermen who catch them with nets, pot traps and baited hooks set along the sea bottom.

The blob also could foreshadow the effects of climate change on the marine ecosystem off Alaska’s coast, where chilly waters rich with food sustain North America’s richest fisheries.

Federal fisheries biologist Steve Barbeaux says that the warm water, which has spread to depths of more than 1,000 feet, hit the cod like a kind of double-whammy. Higher temperatures sped up the rate at which young cod burned calories while reducing the food available for the cod to consume.

“They get weak and die or get eaten by something else,” said Barbeaux, who in October presented preliminary survey findings to scientists and industry officials at an Anchorage meeting of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The 2017 trawl net survey found the lowest numbers of cod on record, more than 70 percent lower than the survey found two years earlier.

Barbeaux said the cod decline likely resulted from the blob, a huge influx of warm Pacific Ocean water that stretched — during its 2015 peak — from the Gulf of Alaska to California’s offshore waters.

Biologists tracked increases in bird die-offs, whale strandings and other events such as toxic algae blooms. Even today, its effects appear to linger, such as in the dismal survey results for salmon this past summer off Oregon and Washington.

Read the full story at the Seattle Times