Saving Seafood

Past heat waves and low sea ice continued to impact Alaska’s waters in 2021

January 18, 2022 — The so-called blob that brought warm surface water temperatures to the Gulf of Alaska between 2014 and 2016 has passed.

But the effects of that blob, and a subsequent heat wave in 2019, are not all in the rearview mirror. And researchers are bracing for more as climate change brings with it more ocean warming.

“For an area like the Gulf of Alaska, definitely this is a topic we need to understand better,” said Bridget Ferriss, a research fish biologist with NOAA Fisheries. She edited this year’s Ecosystems Status Report for the Gulf of Alaska, used by federal managers to inform fisheries policy in Alaska.

Last year, researchers continued to track the impacts of recent heat waves on Alaska’s marine species.

Ferriss said a heat wave happens when the sea surface temperature on a given day is warmer than 90% of the temperatures on record for that same day, for five days in a row.

Read the full story at KTOO

NMFS Revises TAC Amounts For Gulf of Alaska Pollock, Pacific Cod

January 6, 2022 — The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) revised the 2022 total allowable catch (TAC) amounts for pollock and Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska. The changes, which increases the pollock TAC and decreases the Pacific cod TAC, were put into effect at 12 noon Alaska local time on January 1, 2022.

According to NMFS, the pollock TAC will increase from 99,784 metric tons (mt) to 141, 117 mt. The TAC for Pacific cod decreased from 27,961 mt to 24,111 mt.

Read the full story at Seafood News

NOAA Releases 2021 Ecosystem Status Reports for the Eastern Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Aleutian Islands

December 21, 2021 — These reports are a compilation of inputs from our own research and the work of many contributors from fishing, coastal and Alaska Native communities, academic institutions, the State of Alaska and other federal agencies.

Today, NOAA Fisheries released three key reports on the state of Alaska’s marine ecosystems. For more than two decades, Alaska has been using this ecosystem information to inform fisheries management decisions. To assess the status of Alaska’s marine ecosystems, scientists look at a variety of indicators.

For instance, they monitor oceanographic conditions. These include sea surface temperatures and temperatures near the sea floor, plankton, and wind and weather patterns in the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Aleutian Islands annually and over time.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

 

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

 

Dungeness emerges as Alaska’s top crab fishery

November 4, 2021 — It’s hard to believe, but Dungeness crab in the Gulf of Alaska is now Alaska’s largest crab fishery — a distinction due to the collapse of stocks in the Bering Sea.

Combined Dungeness catches so far from Southeast and the westward region (Kodiak, Chignik and the Alaska Peninsula) totaled over 7.5 million pounds as the last pots were being pulled at the end of October.

Ranking second is golden king crab taken along the Aleutian Islands with a harvest by four boats of about 6 million pounds.

For snow crab, long the Bering Sea’s most productive shellfish fishery, the catch was cut by 88% to 5.6 million pounds this season.

The Gulf’s Dungeness fishery will provide a nice payday for crabbers. The dungies, which weigh just over two pounds on average, were fetching $4.21 per pound for 209 permit holders at Southeast who will share in the value of over $14 million.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Good news in the crab fishery comes from the Gulf of Alaska

September 21, 2021 –Unlike in the Bering Sea, there’s good news for crab in the Gulf of Alaska.

A huge cohort of Tanner crab that biologists have been tracking in the Westward region for three years showed up again in this summer’s survey.

“We were optimistic and we did find them again. Pretty much all the way across the board from Kodiak all the way out to False Pass, we found those crab and in good quantity,” said Nat Nichols, area manager for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game at Kodiak.

The bairdi Tanners are the larger cousins of snow crab (opilio Tanners) found in the Bering Sea.

“The very, very rough preliminary numbers look like we’ve at least hit the minimum abundance thresholds in all three areas of Kodiak, Chignik and the South Peninsula. So we’re excited about that.”

The last Tanner opener was in 2020 for 400,000 pounds, the minimum abundance number for a district to have a fishery. A fleet of 49 boats participated in that fishery and averaged over $4 per pound for the harvestable male crabs that typically weigh 2-4 pounds.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Alaska groundfish: Covid’s hangover and bycatch caps slow the season

August 10, 2021 — King salmon caps, covid and stiff tariffs on the China end of business have stymied the Gulf of Alaska groundfish industry so far this year. As of March 26, trawlers targeting Pacific cod in the western gulf harvest area hit the hard cap of 3,060 kings.

Cod that have been scattered in their concentrations during winter form into tight schools as the calendar rolls toward March, but king salmon inhabit the same waters. Though the fleet can roll over unused caps from other fisheries, it wasn’t enough to warrant the continuation of the fishery. Trawlers will be able to fish on a new cap beginning Sept. 1.

Even if the fleet of about 40 shoreside-delivering vessels hadn’t hit the king salmon caps and had been allowed to fish later, covid conundrums and tariffs put the kibosh on moving product through processing plants and toward end markets.

“We don’t even have a flatfish market this year,” says Julie Bonney, executive director of the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, in Kodiak. “The plants can’t sell it and make any money,” she adds. As of July 9, landings to plants in Kodiak totaled 4,060 tons. “We’ve caught 17,500 fewer tons than last year at this time,” she says. 

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Major quake hits off the coast of Alaska, triggers tsunami warnings but no large waves

July 30, 2021 — A major earthquake struck near the Alaska Peninsula at 10:15 p.m. Wednesday, triggering tsunami warnings for much of the Gulf of Alaska coastline, but no large waves.

The magnitude-8.2 quake hit roughly 60 miles offshore of the tiny community of Perryville, reported the U.S. Geological Survey.

“This is the largest earthquake to happen in the Alaska region since 1965,” said Michael West, state seismologist with the Alaska Earthquake Center.

There were no immediate reports of major injuries or damage, but officials said that could change as people get a better look over the next few days.

After the initial tsunami warnings late Wednesday, the National Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer said at midnight that the waves caused by the quake were likely to be smaller than a foot.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

US House bill would add tribal seats to North Pacific Fisheries Management Council

July 27, 2021 — A key Democrat in the U.S. House introduced a bill Monday to renew the Magnuson Stevens Act. Magnuson Stevens is the primary law that covers fishing in federal waters. Past bills have languished in Congress, in part because many in the industry were generally happy with the law as it is.

But Jared Huffman, D-Calif., included a few provisions in his bill that certain Alaska groups have been requesting for a long time. Huffman chairs the Oceans subcommittee of the House Resources Committee.

The bill emphasizes the need to consider the impacts of climate change on marine resources. It would, for the first time, recognize the importance of subsistence fishing. It would also put two tribal representatives on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council — the committee responsible for fisheries in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Low-Fat Diet Possible Culprit in Poor Survival of Young Pollock Born 2013

July 21, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

In summer 2013,  the number of juvenile Alaska pollock in the Gulf of Alaska was the largest on record by far. A year later, those fish were mostly gone.

A new NOAA Fisheries study explores what happened to the pollock born in 2013,  focusing on the interaction between juvenile fish and their prey. Results suggest that a diet high in low-fat food may have kept fish from gaining the weight they needed to survive over winter.

“Our results point to poor diet as a contributing factor,” said NOAA Fisheries Alaska Fisheries Science Center biologist Jesse Lamb, who led the study with colleague David Kimmel. “But there is probably not just one answer. Cannibalism and wind-driven transport to inferior habitat likely also played a role. With that combination, the 2013 year class had the deck stacked against them.”

Read the full release here