Saving Seafood

Key federal fisheries advisory panel loses Alaska Native voice

April 13, 2021 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council often flies under the radar, meeting in dimly lit conference rooms and delving into technical questions about fish stocks and ecosystems. But it has a hugely important job: conservation of species and managing offshore fisheries for species like cod, pollock and crab, which are huge economic drivers for coastal communities on the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.

At the end of last year, the council went into a closed door meeting. When it emerged, it had eliminated two seats on its key advisory panel: Ernie Weiss of Anchorage who had reached his cap for reappointment on the panel, and Natasha Hayden of Kodiak, a vocal advocate for smaller vessels and Alaska Natives, who had been seeking reappointment.

The blowback of Hayden’s ouster was immediate, especially among stakeholders advocating for Indigenous voices in fisheries management.

At the council’s February meeting, more than 20 people — from conservation council representatives, to well established commercial fishermen, to policy directors at Native non-profits — provided public testimony calling for Hayden’s reappointment.

“This is a time when we should be adding more Indigenous voices to council bodies and not less,” Marissa Merculieff, director of justice and governance administration for the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Tribal Government, told the council.

Read the full story at KTOO

Pacific heat wave had lasting impacts on Gulf of Alaska marine species

April 13, 2021 — When a heat wave swept through the northeast Pacific Ocean between 2014 and 2016, it changed the marine makeup of the Gulf of Alaska. The warm water decimated some commercial fish populations.

Some species bounced back right away. But a recent study from NOAA finds others are rebounding more slowly.

NOAA’s study charted the impacts of the heat wave — also known as “the blob” —  on gulf marine species over time, through 2019.

Some of the blob’s impacts on local marine life were immediate. Rob Suryan is a program manager for NOAA in Juneau and the lead author on the study. He said in 2015 and 2016, thousands of common murres were found dead.

“Especially noticeable in the Prince William Sound, near Whittier, actually, a beach was just littered with thousands of carcasses,” he said.

NOAA focused on longer-term trends in this study using data from Gulf Watch Alaska, a group that monitors species recovery in Alaska waters and is funded by the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.

Read the full story at KTOO

Climate Change Raises Risk of Prey Mismatch for Young Cod in Alaska

April 9, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

For a young Pacific cod, first feeding is a life-or-death moment. Cod larva are nourished by a yolk sac after they hatch. Once the yolk sac is depleted, they must find food within days in order to survive. If there is no prey available during that critical window for first feeding, young fish face starvation.

Warming Alaska waters are increasing the risk of prey mismatch and starvation for cod larvae, a new study finds.

NOAA Fisheries scientists collaborated with our partners to look at how temperature shifts affected first feeding Pacific cod larvae in two large ecosystems: the southeast Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. The models made predictions for 1998–2019, a period that encompassed warm and cool years, including a series of extreme heatwave events beginning in 2014.

“Warming can increase the metabolic demands of fish and shift the timing of their food production. So you have temperature unravelling the system, moving food around. And you have fish needing food now. When mismatched prey timing and increased metabolic demand line up, it can be pretty disastrous,” said Ben Laurel, NOAA Fisheries scientist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, who led the study. “The better we can understand and predict these effects, the more effectively we can manage them now and in the future.”

Read the full release here

Alaska cod: Gulf cod stocks creep back, but Bering and Aleutian still down

April 5, 2021 — Pacific cod stocks have begun to rebound in the Gulf of Alaska, but the TAC for 2021 remains low at 17,321 metric tons. Last year managers curtailed the fishery in federally managed waters after stock assessments put the biomass near the bottom of the threshold for conducting the fishery.

Though the recruitment of younger cod and the uncaught fish from last year have added to the abundance in most recent assessments, full recovery of the stock could take years. The warm-water blob of 2014 has been blamed for the crash.

The warming waters began in 2013 and precipitated a 79 percent decline in the stocks. Prevalent theories suggest that warmer waters raise the metabolic rates for the young cod. At the same time the forage species for young cod appeared to have higher concentrations of protein and lower concentrations of fat. More recent studies determined that the eggs of cod survive in a narrow range of temperature (3 to 6 degrees C, or 37.4 to 42.8 degrees F).

Stocks also continue to decline in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands harvest areas. The 2021 TAC for the Bering Sea has been set at 111,380 metric tons with a TAC of 13,796 metric tons for the Aleutian Islands.

The 2020 TACs for the respective areas had been set at 141,799 metric tons and 14,214 metric tons.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Slow start, higher prices for Alaska halibut season

March 24, 2021 — Halibut prices for Alaska fishermen for 2021 started out significantly higher than last year, despite sluggish demand and transportation logjams in some regions.

The Pacific halibut fishery opened on March 6 and two weeks later only 80 deliveries were made, 46 at Southeast ports and 34 from the Central Gulf totaling 355,524 pounds. Most landings appeared to be small lots that were purchased on consignment.

The first fish typically fetches higher prices and then drops off as the season progresses. No Alaska ports reported paying under $5 per pound, whereas the 2020 price to Alaska fishermen averaged $4.

Early prices at Sitka and Juneau, where there is daily air service, were reported at $5.50-$5.75 a pound, up by $1 from last year, and deliveries at Petersburg paid out at $5.75 straight. No ferry service and high costs for airfreight bit into buying at nearly all Southeast ports, where major processors said they aren’t purchasing halibut until April or May.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Most Recent Data Shows Gulf of Alaska Marine Ecosystem Slow to Return to Pre-Heatwave State

March 19, 2021 — The eastern Pacific marine heatwave, which occurred from California to Alaska in 2014–2016, was the longest lasting heatwave globally over the past decade. A new study led by NOAA Fisheries scientists and partners looked at its effects. They found that the heatwave affected various components of the Gulf of Alaska marine food web from plankton to whales to humans. There have been various impacts, some positive and some negative. Some of these impacts persisted through 2019, when this study was completed.

“As of 2019, the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem had yet to recover from the effects of this major heatwave,” said Rob Suryan, from the Alaska Fisheries Science Center who is lead author on the study. “What also is remarkable is how rapidly conditions changed and that species from all trophic levels and age classes responded. The community composition, or proportion of species that make up the ecosystem, are distinct from what we observed prior to the heatwave.”

Since 2012, the percent of global ocean experiencing strong or severe heatwaves has increased from 30 percent to nearly 70 percent in 2016. There has also been an increase in documentation of disturbance to marine ecosystems, biodiversity, and ecosystem services associated with marine heatwaves.

In the Gulf of Alaska, the marine heatwave was particularly strong in the spatial extent, duration, and magnitude of ocean warming. It was also unique in that it extended down to the seafloor and affected a broad diversity of habitats. Its effects were seen in offshore oceanic to intertidal waters in glacial fjords.

Scientists looked at 187 biological data sets from different sampling programs in the Gulf of Alaska. They also examined long-term monitoring and synthesis efforts led by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council’s Gulf Watch Alaska and the Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

From these data, scientists determined how the biological community responded as a whole and which species exhibited negative, positive, or neutral responses. They also looked at whether species showed continued, multi-year response or signs of recovery for up to five years after the onset of the Pacific marine heatwave.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

 

Alaska fisheries: pollock and crab rule the winter

February 10, 2021 — Freezing February weather doesn’t keep Alaskans off the fishing grounds from Southeast to Norton Sound.

In the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, boats are pulling in pollock, cod, flounders and other groundfish.

More than 3 billion pounds of pollock will come out of the Bering Sea this year, and another 250 million pounds from the gulf.

Prince William Sound also has a winter pollock fishery that will produce nearly 5 million pounds.

Many Alaska crab fisheries are underway or soon to be.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Partners Provide Critical Support in Unprecedented Year for Alaska Research and Fisheries Management

January 29, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Each year, NOAA Fisheries scientists compile information from a variety of sources to produce and update annual indicators of ecosystem status in the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska and Aleutian Islands. Data and information are provided by federal, state, academic, non-government organizations, private companies, and local community partners across Alaska. Collected data complement NOAA Fisheries’ own research.

However, in 2020 several key NOAA research surveys were cancelled. Collaboration, increased engagement by community and research partners, and creative thinking on the part of some NOAA scientists helped fill critical information gaps. As a result, the annual Ecosystem Status Reports still could be produced.

“Around 143 individuals contributed to the three Ecosystem Status Reports we produced this year,” said Elizabeth Sidden, editor of the Eastern Bering Sea Ecosystem Status Report and a scientist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. “The success of this continuing effort to provide valuable ecosystem context to better understand factors contributing to fish stock fluctuations hinges on these partnerships. We couldn’t do this without the help of fellow researchers and local communities along with our staff contributions.”

One example of the kind of information provided by partners this year in all regions is seabird data. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (U.S. FWS) was unable to conduct field research due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Coastal community members, tribal governments, and state and university partners provided information on seabird dynamics for the Bering Sea region. U.S. FWS biologists then synthesized that data. In the Gulf of Alaska, they provided opportunistic observations that were incorporated into the Ecosystem Status Report along with other information from non-profits, The Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team (COASST) and U.S. Geological Survey.  Seabird biology and ecology are bellwethers of environmental change, which is one of the reasons they are important ecosystem indicators.

NOAA scientists also identified other sources of information to develop ecosystem indicators in 2020.  For instance, they used satellite data to measure sea surface temperatures in the Bering Sea since they weren’t able to collect these data during annual research surveys. They also were able to process and analyze data collected from previous years of surveys.

Read the full release here