Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Part of Bering Sea Pacific cod fishery could move toward quota system

February 20, 2019 — About a year after federal regulators dramatically cut the Pacific Cod quota in the Gulf of Alaska, some fishermen in the Bering Sea say there are too many boats fishing for the declining species.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is looking into the problem, but potential solutions are likely to be controversial.

Since Pacific cod stocks crashed in the Gulf of Alaska in recent years, members of the fishing industry say fishermen are focusing their efforts farther west.

Tom Enlow is the president of UniSea, which operates a large shore-side processor in Unalaska. He said more vessels — especially trawlers — are crowding the fishing grounds. He also said there are more offshore processors competing for their cod.

“You’re seeing people who have historically not participated in these fisheries – as a processor standpoint – now coming into the fishery,” Enlow explained. “So there’s a lot of excess capacity now and pressure on this resource.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

FCC issues warning on fishing gear beacons

February 14, 2019 — Small electronic beacons that are being widely used by increasing numbers of fishermen could net them big fines.

Automatic Identification Systems, or AIS, are easily attached to nets, longlines and pots and signal the locations of the gear via a vessel’s navigation system, laptops, or even cell phones.

The inexpensive buoys, which range from $47 to $199 from most online retailers, are regarded as a Godsend by fishermen in the way they help locate gear as well as being a potential money saver.

“If you’re not sitting on your gear with your vessel either on radar or on AIS, somebody can come along that doesn’t think there’s any gear in the water in the absence of an AIS marker and set over the top of you. Or a trawler could potentially come and nail your gear and it could result in substantial financial loses,” explained Buck Laukitis, a Homer-based fisherman and a member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

AIS is required for boats longer than 65 feet and in certain shipping lanes, said Jerry Dzugan, director of the Alaska Marine Safety Education Association. But warning bulletins are advising that other users and sellers are subject to fines of more than $19,000 to $147,000 per day for those who continue to use them.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

US shutdown delays NOAA surveys that influence groundfish TACs

February 7, 2019 — Some of the important summer research surveys that the US National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) conducts each year off the shores of Alaska to estimate the health of key commercially caught groundfish stocks like pollock and Pacific cod could face delays due to the recent partial government shutdown, officials said.

In a report to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center, said that the shutdown that sent most of its staffers home from Dec. 22, 2018, until Jan. 25 has already affected one research cruise, a winter pre-spawning acoustic survey of pollock stocks in the Gulf of Alaska.

“Unfortunately, due to the delay in starting the survey, the first two legs (in the Shumagin Islands and outer Kenai regions) will not be conducted,” science center staffers wrote in a report to the NPFMC.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Federal fishery regulators forced to postpone official decisions during shutdown

January 16, 2019 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council may not be able to make any official decisions at its February meeting due to the partial federal government shutdown.

Congress’s battle over funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is also causing the council, which regulates federal fisheries in the North Pacific Ocean, to remove some items from the agenda.

Employees at the federal register are no longer working. The council’s Deputy Director Dianna Evans said it needs to publish notices for final action items in the register by Jan. 21.

“There are three actions on our February agenda that are scheduled for final action,” she said. “At this point, unless we can meet those notification requirements, the council will likely be required to take perhaps a preliminary final determination for those different actions and actual final action will need to be rescheduled for another time.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

 

Federal shutdown effects on February NPFMC Portland meeting

January 11, 2019 — The following was released by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council:

IS THE COUNCIL IMPACTED BY THE SHUTDOWN? The Council staff is at work and conducting business as usual. However, most of our federal partners at the National Marine Fisheries Service (Alaska Region and the Alaska Fisheries Science Center), the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are on furlough during the shutdown.

WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS? Since many NMFS scientists and fishery management specialists are key contributors to the Council’s analyses, Plan Teams and Committees, the Council is rescheduling or modifying the agendas for several meetings where NMFS representatives were expected to provide pivotal presentations, reports, and/or analyses.

WHAT ABOUT THE COUNCIL’S FEBRUARY 2019 MEETING? The Council’s February meeting in Portland, OR at the Benson Hotel will be shortened to occur from February 4-10 and will still include meetings of the SSC and Advisory Panel. If the partial government shutdown remains in place, the Council will conduct as much business as possible given the federal furlough.

The following agenda items have been postponed to a future meeting: C2 Observer Program Fees Initial Review and FMAC report, and D4 Economic Data Reports Discussion Paper. Additionally, the following items may be postponed as well: B4 State Department Report on Central Arctic Ocean fishing agreement; D6 Economic SAFE Report; D7 Marine Mammal Conservation Status Report. Additionally, the presentation on Saltonstall-Kennedy grant results may also be postponed. The updated agenda and additional information can be found at npfmc.org.

The Council may not be able to take final action on any agenda items during this meeting unless the meeting has been announced in the Federal Register at least 14 days before the Council takes a final action. The Council could make a ‘preliminary final determination’ on these issues, and take final action at a later meeting. With respect to the Norton Sound Red King Crab Harvest Specifications, which requires timely action to open the fishery, the Council may hold a teleconference meeting as soon as the Federal Register notification requirements can be met, allow additional public comments, and take final action on that issue.

UPCOMING PLAN TEAM AND COMMITTEE MEETINGS:

Further information and updates on all Council meetings can be found at meetings.npfmc.org.

Crab Plan Team: The Council’s Crab Plan Team will meet January 23 – 25 in Nome, Alaska. The meeting has been shortened to start on Wednesday, as some agenda items have been postponed until May as NMFS staff may not be available.

Halibut ABM Stakeholder Committee: The Committee will meet on February 4th at the Benson Hotel in Portland, OR. There are no changes to the previously announced agenda.

Fishery Monitoring Advisory Committee: This Committee meeting has been postponed, and will likely be rescheduled to occur during the April 2019 Council meeting in Anchorage, AK. The Committee was primarily scheduled to review the observer fee analysis (which has been withdrawn from the agenda), and other topics.

Ecosystem Committee: The Committee will meet on February 5th at the Benson Hotel in Portland, OR. The agenda will likely be modified to remove the presentation on marine mammal conservation status, unless NMFS staff are available to provide this report.

At this point, no further changes have yet been proposed to Council Plan Team and Committee meetings that are scheduled for mid-February and beyond.

NPFMC February 2019 Meeting Agenda

January 8, 2019 — The following was released by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet the week of February 4th at the Benson Hotel, 309 SW Broadway, Portland, OR. The government shutdown may create additional changes to the schedule. Please check back for updates. The Agenda and Schedule are available.

NEW THIS MEETING
For attendees presenting during public comment, or for other presenters, the Council will be uploading presentations in advance to a single, shared, computer. Please contact a staff person and have your presentation ready to be uploaded before the agenda item is scheduled.

Public comments on all agenda items will be accepted until 12 noon (Alaska time) on Friday, February 1, 2019. Click here for more information on providing public comments.

ALASKA: Work continues on federal plan for Cook Inlet salmon

December 28, 2018 — More than two years after a court ruling ordered the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to develop a management plan for the Cook Inlet salmon fishery, a stakeholder group has made a first set of recommendations.

The council convened a Cook Inlet Salmon Committee last year composed of five stakeholders to meet and offer recommendations before the council officially amends the Fishery Management Plan, or FMP, for the drift gillnet salmon fishery in Upper Cook Inlet, which occurs partially in federal waters.

The committee presented a report with three main findings: first, that the fishery be managed cooperatively with the State of Alaska; second, that the committee schedule another meeting before the April 2019 council meeting; and third, that fishery participants be prohibited from retaining groundfish.

The council went into rewriting the FMP for Cook Inlet unwillingly. The whole battle began in 2012 when the council voted unanimously to pass Amendment 12 to the existing Cook Inlet FMP, which essentially delegated all management authority for the fishery to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, along with the management of two other salmon fisheries in Prince William Sound and the Alaska Peninsula.

The Cook Inlet Fishermen’s Fund and the United Cook Inlet Drift Association, the trade group for the drift gillnet fleet in the area, sued the National Marine Fisheries Service to restore the FMP to the fishery. After losing in the U.S. District Court of Alaska, the groups prevailed at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in fall 2016.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Quotas set for Alaska groundfish, plus Southeast rockfish opener

December 21, 2018 — Cod catches will decline next year in both the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, while catches for pollock could be up in the Bering Sea and down in the gulf. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council set the 2019 quotas this month for more than two dozen fisheries in federal waters.

The Bering Sea pollock quota got a 2.4 percent increase to nearly 1.4 million metric tons, or more than 3 billion pounds.

Bering Sea cod TACs were cut 11.5 percent to just over 366 million pounds (166,475 mt).

In the gulf, pollock totals will be down 15 percent to 311 million pounds, a drop of 55 million pounds from this year.

Gulf of Alaska cod quota will again take a dip to just over 27 million pounds — down 5.6 percent.

Meanwhile, boats are still out on the water throughout the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea hauling up final catches of various groundfish for the year.

The 4 million-pound red king crab fishery at Bristol Bay is a wrap, but crabbers are still tapping away at the 2.4 million-pound Bering Sea Tanner crab quota. Snow crab is open, but fishing typically gets going in mid-January.

Divers are picking up the last 35,000 pounds of sea cucumbers in parts of Southeast Alaska. About 170 divers competed for a 1.7 million-pound sea cucumber quota this year; diving also continues for more than 700,000 pounds of giant geoduck clams.

Southeast trollers are still out on the water targeting winter king salmon.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

2020 US Pacific cod catch may be lowest since 1983, could drop further

December 18, 2018 — The eastern Bering Sea (EBS) Pacific cod catch could drop again in 2021 and 2022, as scientific forecasts indicate 2020 could see the lowest federal total allowable catch (TAC) since the early-1980s, according to an Undercurrent News analysis of government scientific data.

Data presented in the 2018 stock assessment report from Grant Thompson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist and an expert on the cod fishery, suggests the TAC will bottom out in 2022 and then increase again. However, new models to be developed in 2019 will include alternative methods of accounting for the increased biomass in the northern Bering Sea (NBS) and could see this bleak outlook improve.

In 2018, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) has indicated the federal TAC in 2020 could be cut to 124,625 metric tons, compared to 166,475t in 2019 and 188,136t this year. The TAC for 2019 has been recommended by NPFMC at the meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, last week, but the 2020 level is only provisional and will be reviewed next year in light of new data. The NPFMC went with Thompson’s number for 2019, not a lower one from a team of scientists who take into account the stock assessment report.

Then, Thompson’s report gives various projections for female spawning biomass and catches through 2030. The first is the most relevant, however, he said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Blob 2.0 is bad sign for Gulf of Alaska groundfish

December 11, 2018 — Fish heavily impacted by a three-year marine heatwave in the Gulf of Alaska may be headed for round two. Commonly referred to as the blob, warmer waters between 2014 and 2017 were blamed for a dramatic decline in Pacific cod and are thought to have negatively impacted other species such as pollock.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council set catch limits for several groundfish species in the Gulf of Alaska Thursday afternoon. Before members set those limits, Stephani Zador with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center updated the council on the latest trends in the Gulf.

“Importantly, starting in September, we are officially in another heatwave in the Gulf of Alaska,” she explained.

Pacific cod populations in the Gulf plummeted as their food source decreased during the blob, but after waters returned to somewhat normal temperatures in 2017, Zador said cod body conditions improved.

“All the groundfish in our survey that we sampled, except for cod, had poor body condition. So, they were skinnier per length than average,” Zador said. “That was a sign we saw consistently through the heatwave and indicates that cod were able to pop back up.”

The council slashed the total allowable catch by 80 percent last year and lowered it slightly again this year in order to allow the species to rebound. Pacific cod populations in the Gulf are expected to stabilize in the coming years, but another marine heatwave, or blob 2.0, could hamper any progress.

Pollock have also suffered poor recruitment in recent years, but Zador said larva abundance was above average in 2017. However, much like cod, another heatwave is not a good sign.

Read the full story at KBBI