Saving Seafood

MSC Certification of Gulf of Alaska Cod Reinstated

January 26, 2021 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

On January 22, 2021, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification of Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA) region was reinstated, effective January 1, 2021, and announced by MRAG Americas, Inc., the independent certification body responsible for conducting the annual audits of the fishery.

From April 5, 2020 through December 31, 2020, the MSC certification for GOA Pacific cod had been suspended due to a decline in the stock. According to MRAG Americas, the suspension was “not due to overfishing or a lack of a responsible management response, rather, the depressed stocks of Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska below the B20% limit is climate driven and caused by the Gulf of Alaska marine heat wave.”

From 2017 through 2019, the GOA Pacific cod stock had declined due to the effects of an anomalous warm water event in 2014-2016. This marine heat wave, among other things, reduced food availability for cod and dramatically increased natural mortality. In response, federal and state fishery managers took swift and immediate action to severely restrict commercial fishing efforts — a responsible and precautionary management decision responding to ecosystem uncertainty. In 2018 and 2019, harvests were reduced by 80% to maintain the future viability of the fishery. In 2020, commercial fishing was closed in the federal GOA fishery and the small state fishery was further reduced.

“The decision to lift the suspension comes as a result of an expedited audit that was announced on December 22, 2020. The audit was based on new information on the stock status provided by NOAA Fisheries and decisions by the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council,” explains MRAG Americas in its announcement.

Read the full release here

Pacific cod appears to be rebounding throughout the Gulf of Alaska after long heat wave

December 23, 2020 — Alaska coastal communities will get a bit of an economic boost in 2021 from increased catches of Pacific cod.

The stock, which crashed after a multiyear heat wave starting in 2014 wiped out several year classes, appears to be rebounding throughout the Gulf of Alaska.

No cod fishery occurred at all this year in federally managed waters (from 3 to 200 miles out) where the bulk of the harvest is taken, and a catch of under 6 million pounds was allowed in state managed waters (out to 3 miles).

For 2021, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council set the federal cod catch at just over 38 million pounds and nearly 11.7 million pounds for the state. While it’s a bump up, managers caution that the stock remains very low.

“The state waters GHLs (guideline harvest levels) have gone up about two and half times since last year. While it’s good, we are still at a very low level of abundance, so that should be kept in mind,” said Nat Nichols, area groundfish manager for the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game at Kodiak.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

SETH DANIELSON: The importance of University of Alaska-based monitoring of our oceans

December 15, 2020 — Data is the lifeblood of science. It provides scientists with a way to prove, refine, or disprove our ideas about how the world works. Data from the University of Alaska Fairbanks is providing valuable information for oil spill response, public safety and economic development efforts in the 49th state.

UAF passed a remarkable milestone this month, when scientists from the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences completed a half-century of regular observations at a Gulf of Alaska oceanographic station. Station GAK-1 is located near Seward at the mouth of Resurrection Bay, and it has the longest set of sustained measurements of surface-to-seafloor temperature and salinity in all of Alaska’s coastal and offshore waters.

What does this mean for our state? GAK-1 is providing data to drive good decision-making and help us evaluate risks to Alaska’s marine ecosystem and economy as the ocean becomes warmer and more acidic due to climate change. This monitoring contributes to our understanding of melting glacier runoff in the ocean, variations in Alaska’s commercial fisheries, and the population status of marine mammals.

Read the full opinion piece at the Anchorage Daily News

Electronic monitoring grants will benefit Alaska fisheries

November 30, 2020 — Two Alaska fisheries are among the beneficiaries of new national grants to modernize data management systems to ensure sustainable fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands through electronic monitoring.

One grant for $185,104 went to the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association which matched those funds with another $213,500, for a total of $398,604.

The other, for $908,862, went to United Catcher Boats in Seattle, which added $1,385,854, for a total of $2,294,716.

ALFA will use its share to develop lower cost electronic monitoring hardware, test automated real-time feedback to vessels on image quality and support stakeholder engagement in fisheries management forums relevant to electronic monitoring in the Alaska fixed gear fishery. The project will also explore ways to improve image quality and cost effectiveness of electronic monitoring through the development of new electronic monitoring systems and deployment methods, ALFA officials said,

UBC will focus on scaling up existing efforts to evaluate the feasibility and cost efficiency of using electronic monitoring systems on Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska Pollock pelagic trawl catcher vessels to monitor compliance with retention regulations. The project will demonstrate the feasibility of electronic monitoring at scale and improve data quality, timeliness and cost-efficiency for salmon bycatch accounting and detecting and quantifying groundfish discards, according to UBC.

Read the full story at The Cordova Times

Pacific cod in Marine Stewardship Council limbo: Gulf of Alaska fishery meets standard, but eco-label still suspended

November 20, 2020 — The Gulf of Alaska (GOA) Pacific cod fishery will be recertified to the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard after a 15-day review period starting Thursday, but the area’s actual MSC status remains in limbo while regulators determine the health of the stock.

Certifier MRAG released a draft final report on Thursday recertifying a slew of Alaska whitefish fisheries, including Alaska pollock, and among the areas that received recertification was the GOA Pacific cod fishery.

However, the group’s certification remains in “suspension” pending a decision to allow directed fishing on the stock, MRAG Americas Director of Fisheries Certification Amanda Stern-Pirlot, confirmed with IntraFish.

The MSC suspended the Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod fishery certificate in April after National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries researchers made the decision in 2019 to close the area to harvesting after research found the available biomass would not likely be able to handle fishing pressure.

Read the full story at IntraFish

These collapsible pots are helping Alaska fishermen keep whales from pirating pricey black cod

October 23, 2020 — Lightweight collapsible pots prevent whales from pirating pricey black cod from longline hooks and give a break to small boats.

“Getting whaled” is so pervasive that fishery managers allowed black cod, aka sablefish, fishermen to switch from baited lines to rigid pots in the Bering Sea in 2008 and in the Gulf of Alaska starting in 2017. (Interestingly, killer whales rob the hooks in the Bering Sea, while sperm whales are the culprits in the Gulf.)

“The whale predation has just been so horrible,” said Frank Miles of Kodiak, owner of 58-foot and 78-foot fishing boats. “The last couple years I tried to do it with hooks, and it just got to the point to where we left tens of thousands of pounds of black cod unharvested because we were going backwards feeding the whales. You can spread your strings 10 miles apart, and you might get one or two skates up and they find you. And then they pretty much strip you blind.”

Analyses from federal surveys in 2013 showed that when killer whales were present during annual sablefish stock surveys, the whales removed 54% to 72% from the hooks.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

What Happened to the Pollock Born in 2015?

October 9, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

n 2015, NOAA Fisheries scientists saw the lowest number of pollock larvae in the 30-year history of their Gulf of Alaska spring survey. They also observed the lowest number of juveniles in their late-summer survey, which has occurred since 2000. The low abundance in both surveys coincided with a marine heatwave of record ocean temperatures. Scientist Lauren Rogers and colleagues attribute the absence of larval and juvenile fish to environmental conditions that were not ideal for pollock growth and development during the heatwave.

“Marine ecosystems are complex with lots of connections,” said Rogers. “When you are trying to identify what might be behind a decline in abundance of fish at a particular age, it is often a series of factors that are at play.”

That is exactly what scientists found when looking at young pollock survival in 2015. Their survival was affected by:

  • Low-salinity conditions, which affected egg buoyancy and survival
  • Low abundance of prey for larval fish
  • Poor body condition of young-of-the-year (age-0) juveniles

Read the full release here

Fall fishing: Alaska’s commercial fleets load up on pollock, Dungeness, king crabs and more

October 9, 2020 — As always, there is a lot of fishing action going on after summer salmon.

At Southeast Alaska, beam trawlers are back on the water targeting 650,000 pounds of pink and sidestripe shrimp in a third opener.

Southeast’s Dungeness season reopened on Oct. 1, and a few million pounds are likely to come out of that fishery. There will again be no opener for red or blue king crab because of low abundances.

On Oct. 5, a hundred or more divers also could be heading down for more than 1.7 million pounds of red sea cucumbers. A catch of just under 3 million pounds of sea urchins also is up for grabs, but there may be a lack of buyers. Southeast divers also are targeting giant geoduck clams.

At Prince William Sound, a 15,000-pound test fishery just wrapped up for golden king crabs; likewise, a nearly 7 million pound golden king crab fishery is ongoing along the Aleutian Islands.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Pollock: Season surges as fish sticks 
rule the covid marketplace

October 9, 2020 — Alaska pollock trawlers were well on track to catch their TAC for the year, and increased demand for seafood during the covid-19 pandemic threw some optimistic twists into market dynamics.

The TAC for the Bering Sea had been set at 1.425 million metric tons, with another 19,000 metric tons coming out of the Aleutian Islands harvest area. While the Aleutian Islands TAC has remained unchanged in recent years, those for the Bering Sea have been nudging upward from 1.345 million metric tons in 2018 and 1.397 million metric tons of last year.  

The TAC for the Gulf of Alaska, meanwhile, has also risen slightly from last year’s 112,000 metric tons with 115,930 metric tons for this year, and trawlers in August continued plugging away on their C-season allotments.

The A-season for pollock trawling in the Bering Sea began on Jan. 20 and ended on April 30, with nearly all four sectors (inshore, catcher-processor, mothership, and CDQ groups) catching their allotted percentages of the TAC.

As of August, the four trawl sectors were scattered about the Bering Sea and mopping up quotas for the B-season, which began on June 10 and ends on Oct. 31.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Wind Influences Pollock Success in the Gulf of Alaska

September 29, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

For young Alaska pollock in the Gulf of Alaska, survival may depend on which way the wind blows.

A study conclusively shows for the first time that year-to-year variation in the geographic distribution of juvenile pollock in the Gulf of Alaska is driven by wind. Depending on wind direction, water movement may retain juvenile fish in favorable nursery habitats, or transport them away. Young fish that are transported to less favorable habitats are less likely to contribute to year-class strength— the abundance of adults available to the valuable Gulf of Alaska pollock fishery.

For NOAA Fisheries biologist Matt Wilson of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, the new study addressed a longstanding question.

“When we began this research, scientists thought that lots of juvenile fish would mean a relatively strong adult year-class. But in some years our surveys found a lot of juvenile pollock, followed by a weak year class. In other years a high number of juveniles grew into a strong year class,” Wilson said. “We undertook this research to better understand why large numbers of juveniles do not always translate into a high abundance of adults.”

Wilson and co-author Ned Laman also observed that the geographic distribution of juveniles was highly variable from year to year. In some summers, a very large proportion of the juvenile population was far southwest of the main spawning grounds.

“In this study we asked: what is the cause and consequence of year-to-year geographic variability in the distribution of juvenile pollock in the Gulf of Alaska?” Wilson said.

Read the full release here