Saving Seafood

The West Coast Challenge

March 9, 2016 — Fisheries on the West Coast of America have come under intense pressure after closures and a dramatic fall in stock levels. Adrian Tatum looks at the challenges over the last few years.

Sometimes when something is broken it seems almost impossible to fix. Commercial fishing on the West Coast of America is far from broken but parts of it do need fixing.

Nearly a year ago its commercial sardine fishery was closed after the population of Pacific sardines had fallen to alarming levels. In April last year, scientists made a recommendation for full closure after the population was estimated to be below 150,000 tonnes. It has been a dramatic decline, as in 2007 there were 1.4 million tonnes.

The sardine fishery has not only been a major revenue source for West Coast fishermen, but many other species of fish such as tuna also rely on a plentiful supply for food. Scientists believed that by closing it last year it would give the population a chance to recover. But just last month, it was revealed that the sardine population has not recovered, and is in fact still declining at a fast rate. Scientists from the National Marine Fisheries Service say that by the summer, the population is likely to be 33% lower than in 2015.

Bycatch reduction

Like most fisheries around the world, West Coast fishermen are facing up to a bycatch reduction plan. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is considering a plan which would allocate individual bycatch caps to groundfish vessels in the Gulf of Alaska rather than targeting specific large species. Back in 2011, the council passed a series of salmon and halibut bycatch reductions which angered fleet owners and fishermen. Now many Gulf of Alaska fishermen feel the recent changes will have a ‘crippling’ affect on its groundfish fleet.

Approximately 85% of the North Pacific groundfish fisheries are rationalised. This means fish quotas are assigned to individual vessels or fishing cooperatives. It is widely believed by some experts that this is the best way to ensure minimal bycatch, meaning vessels can fish without a time limit and are therefore more likely to avoid some of the endangered species such as salmon and halibut. But this process can also have a negative effect on the industry. Recent years have seen rationalisation being applied to the Bering Sea crab fishery where the number of boats fishing for crab fell by two thirds in just one year, with the loss of over 1,000 jobs.

Read the full story at World Fishing & Aquaculture

Ensuring a Future for American Seafood and Fishermen

February 2, 2016— America’s commercial fishermen provide the public with some of the world’s best seafood: Alaska salmon and halibut, Maine lobster, Gulf red snapper, New England cod – names that make your mouth water. These are the fishermen who support our coastal economies and contribute to our food security, and continue to do so in the face of a growing number of challenges.

Increasingly, commercial fishermen face vast uncertainty about changing ocean ecosystems, complex state and federal management systems, and the staggering costs to enter America’s fisheries. These factors have contributed to a new challenge: declining numbers of young fishermen entering the commercial fishing industry. As a coastal community loses its next generation of fishermen, it also loses access to economic opportunity, food security, and its heritage.

As we work together to ensure the health of America’s incredible marine ecosystems, we must also find ways to sustain the next generation of fishermen tasked with putting that food on our nation’s table. Rather than see fishermen’s role in our food system further isolated and diminished, we should equip young fishermen to be successful food producers, responsible marine stewards and valuable additions to their local economies.

Farmers and ranchers had concerns for their own future generations, inspiring Congress to create a number of programs to support this next generation of agriculture, including the Beginning Farmers and Ranchers Development Programand the Individual Development Accounts. Young farmers and ranchers have benefitted enormously from this federal support, ensuring a future generation is in place for this part of the U.S. food system.

Unfortunately, not a single federal program exists to provide support and resources to young commercial fishermen – the young men and women critical to the preservation of the culture, economy, community health, and food security in coastal America. This lack of support puts this important part of our food system in jeopardy, especially at a time when more consumers are looking for healthy protein sources that are locally sourced and sustainable. It reflects a massive oversight and a lost opportunity.

Read the full opinion piece at The Huffington Post

ALASKA: Halibut commission boosts catch limits for most of the coast

February 1, 2016 — The International Pacific Halibut Commission on Friday approved an increase in halibut catch limits for most of the coast.

The joint U.S. and Canadian body oversees management of the prized bottom fish from California to Alaska. The commission held its annual meeting in Juneau last week.

Commissioners approved a coastwide catch of 29,890,000 pounds for 2016. That’s an increase of 2.2 percent from last year’s limits.

Commission chair Jim Balsiger of Juneau said the decisions were not easy.

“The discussions focused quite a bit, both in the public and in our executive sessions about the trade-offs we have to make between rebuilding the stocks and capturing some revenue in the fisheries now when things look a little bit better,” Balsiger said. “I’m happy where we ended up so I think it was a good meeting.”

Read the full story at KTOO Public Media

Secretary of Commerce approves measure to reduce Bering Sea halibut bycatch

January 20, 2016 — The following was released by the NOOA Alaska Regional Office:

The Secretary of Commerce has approved a fishery management plan amendment to reduce halibut bycatch in four sectors of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands groundfish fisheries. NOAA Fisheries anticipates the amendment will reduce the actual amount of halibut bycatch in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands by approximately 361 metric tons compared to 2014. It may also provide additional harvest opportunities in the directed commercial, personal use, sport, and subsistence halibut fisheries.

In recent years, the International Pacific Halibut Commission – the joint U.S.-Canadian body charged with management of Pacific halibut – has determined that the exploitable biomass of halibut has declined, particularly in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. This decline has resulted in reductions to the catch limits for the directed commercial halibut fishery in Area 4, in particular Area 4 CDE in the eastern and northern Bering Sea.

Groundfish fisheries–which seek to catch species like pollock and yellowfin sole–regularly encounter halibut as bycatch during their fishing operations.

In response to declining commercial catch limits for the directed commercial halibut fishery, in June 2015, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council recommended reducing halibut prohibited species catch (PSC) limits for the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands groundfish fisheries. The council’s recommendation was Amendment 111 to the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands.

Amendment 111 reduces the overall Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Management Area halibut prohibited species catch (PSC) limit by 21% to 3,515 metric tons (mt). The PSC limits are reduced by specific amounts for the following groundfish sectors:

  • Amendment 80 sector by 25% to 1,745 mt;
  • BSAI trawl limited access sector by 15% to 745 mt;
  • BSAI non-trawl sector by 15% to 710 mt; and
  • Community Development Quota (CDQ) Program (CDQ sector) by 20% to 315 mt.

The Secretary approved Amendment 111 after determining that it is consistent with the national standards in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

NOAA Fisheries will publish a final rule for the measure this spring, which will go into effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. For more information, visit NOAA Fisheries Alaska Regional website.

 

 

Factory trawlers praised for halibut conservation

December 26, 2015 — What a difference a year makes for the halibut bycatch controversy in the Bering Sea at the December meetings of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Anchorage. The flatfish factory trawlers, vilified for much of this year, reported vigorous and voluntary efforts at halibut conservation, and even received praise from the Pribilofs. Their zeal was prompted by what might be termed resolution number two-by-four of the fish council last summer, which slashed halibut bycatch by 25 percent.

“It was a huge hit to our sector,” said Chris Woodley, executive director of the Groundfish Forum said last week.

But voluntary efforts by the flatfish fleet have already saved 265 metric tons of halibut this year, he said, exceeding the goal of 217 metric tons.

He cited the benefits of a special federal permit allowing deck sorting that gets the halibut back into the water faster and with greater chances of survival. With the halibut removed from the net and returned to the water from the top deck of the boat, only about half the halibut die, down from the 83 percent that perish when kept inside the huge trawl net for up to two hours while below decks in the factory area, he said.

At last week’s NPFMC meeting, representatives of the factory trawlers in the Amendment 80 fleet said that they were already taking measures to limit halibut bycatch, getting out ahead of the 25 percent cut that takes effect next year.

Read the full story at The Bristol Bay Times

 

Overfishing is Getting Filleted by Markets

December 9, 2015 — Overfishing is a serious threat to the nearly 200 million people who depend on the world’s oceans for sustenance. After all, nearly one in five people around the world consume fish as their primary source of protein and overfishing has deleterious cascade effects on other marine ecosystems.

Illegal and excessive fishing are to a degree inevitable because oceans, rivers and many lakes are publicly administered. This gives fishermen an incentive to take from them as much as is legally possible. Yet, market-based resource management is offering a concrete solution to this “tragedy of the commons” and has already begun alleviating strains on U.S. fish stocks.

The U.S. economy is intertwined with the fate of the high seas. By conservative estimates, commercial and recreational fishing alone account for 1.3 million jobs and nearly $60 billion in economic activity. Overfishing has pernicious effects on Americans’ livelihoods: commercial anglers can lose out on up to 80 percent of potential revenue when local fish species see drastic population decline, as was the case in New England when cod, flounder, and halibut populations were unexpectedly low in 2009.

With market-based resource management, data from September 2015 show that the total number of wild stocks placed on the “overfishing” watch list has fallen to its all-time lowest level since 1997. Since the 2007 reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, annual catch limits (ACLs) have allowed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to reduce the number of overfished U.S. stocks by nearly 75 percent since 2007 alone (from 41 in 2007 to only 10 in 2014). ACLs create total tonnage allotments based on a series of population growth factors specific to certain fish species.

Read the full story at Economics 21