Saving Seafood

Scientists point to climate change as likely cause for Alaska snow crab decline

June 17, 2022 — Even as scientists are still trying to figure out why the Bering Sea snow crab stock crashed in 2021, federal managers are working on a plan to help rebuild it.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council last week voted to accept alternatives for analysis on its snow crab rebuilding plan — a middle step before implementing an actual plan that will change fishing regulations or openings. The council is on track to approve a final plan for action in December, which would then go to the Secretary of Commerce and through the federal regulation process before becoming official.

Data from last year’s survey at this point seems to confirm that there was a massive decline in the number of young snow crab in the Eastern Bering Sea — something like 99% fewer female snow crab showed up in the survey from 2021.

There’s no complete consensus about why the stock crashed in the first place. Increasingly, however, the models seem to indicate that it’s due to temperature increases linked to climate change.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Alaska: What is the State Doing to Address Bycatch?

March 17, 2022 — There has been much discussion and debate about bycatch in marine fisheries off Alaska’s coasts recently, including several recent opinion pieces. All are chastising a perceived inaction to address bycatch, especially in the face of recent declines in salmon and crab in western Alaska.

Bycatch, by definition, is fish which are harvested but are not sold or kept. Simply put, bycatch is unintentionally caught fish that are unwanted, can’t be sold, or can’t be kept — like halibut, crab or salmon caught while targeting cod or pollock. While some bycatch occurs in state waters, most occurs in federal waters managed under plans established by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Bycatch is NOT the intercept of fish in mixed stock fisheries, such as occurs along the Alaska Peninsula when chum salmon of Yukon origin are harvested in directed sockeye salmon fisheries.

Let me begin by clearly stating that the state is concerned about bycatch. We should do our best to reduce the catch of unintended fish that are discarded and not used. That work is underway right now on multiple fronts.

Read the full story at Seafood News

North Pacific Council Opens Reallocation Issue For Halibut Charter vs Commercial Fishermen in Alaska

February 11, 2022 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council took action yesterday that reopens the specter of “uncompensated reallocation” from commercial fishermen to charter operators in Alaska. The Council adopted a Purpose and Needs Statement to analyze a revision in the halibut Catch Sharing Plan (CSP) that would increase the halibut charter sector allocation by taking from the halibut longline fleet without compensation.

The possibility of that triggered strong testimony from both charter operators and halibut fishermen — over 130 written comments and 70 public testimonies, the majority of which were opposed to any notion of uncompensated reallocation. The commercial sector, many of whom had helped create the CSP a decade ago, made the case that the CSP is working as planned. Charter fishermen countered that their business models don’t work under these continued low levels of halibut abundance. Charter operators in Area 2C are constrained from allowing their clients to catch two halibut a day. Area 3A charter operators can offer two halibut, but are under size restrictions as well.

Low levels of halibut abundance impact all stakeholders, and commercial skippers pointed out that their investment in quota shares over the years has lost value as abundance declines but the loan payments are still due.

Read the full story at Seafood News

 

Fishing council ties bycatch limits on Bering Sea trawlers to halibut abundance

December 16, 2021 — The council that manages fishing in federal waters voted this week to link groundfish trawl fishing in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands to halibut abundance. The action caps — at least for now — a six-year debate about curbing halibut bycatch in Alaska.

For many who have been following that debate, the decision comes as a surprise because it’s expected to deal what trawlers say is a crushing blow to their fishery.

But members of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council said it was also important for them to consider how high levels of bycatch hurt small-boat halibut fishermen in Western Alaska — even if they didn’t go quite as far as advocates from those communities had hoped.

The action that ultimately passed Monday came from Rachel Baker, the deputy Fish and Game commissioner who represents Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration on the council. She said it will incentivize the trawl industry to reduce the halibut they incidentally catch in their nets.

When halibut stocks are low, the cap on prohibited species catch, or PSC, will also drop.

Read the full story at KTOO

Halibut cuts threaten the livelihood of thousands of fishermen

December 13, 2021 — We are two captains with a combined experience of more than 70 years in Alaska’s groundfish trawl fisheries.

In that time, we’ve been a part of a trawl fishery that has evolved and innovated heavily to meet several regulatory challenges. This is thanks to a collective commitment of the 2,200 fishermen and women who participate in our fishery. Our families are fishing families, too – as important as any other. We believe we are true stewards of the North Pacific resources. But cuts to our halibut bycatch caps under consideration by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council at its upcoming December meeting threaten our fishery and our way of life.

Our fleet has achieved a 49% reduction in halibut bycatch mortality since Amendment 80 rationalization in 2007. Halibut now represents 0.4% of our catch, which is among Alaska’s lowest bycatch rates, and far lower than Canada’s West Coast fisheries, which are often held up as an example of low bycatch rates. But it has not been easy to get here.

Read the full op-ed at the Anchorage Daily News

Fishery council must act to reduce Alaska halibut bycatch

December 13, 2021 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, or NPFMC, has hardly been an Alaska household name, but we think it should become one. The 11-member council makes fisheries policy for the North Pacific Ocean that greatly shapes Alaskans’ livelihoods and lives, including an awfully big decision in the coming days that all Alaskans should know about.

This decision is an “all the marbles” decision to reduce — or to fail to reduce — how much halibut the Seattle-based Bering Sea groundfish trawl fishery can catch and discard as bycatch. Bycatch is when a “non-target” species of fish is accidentally caught while fishing — and is almost always discarded, often dead or dying, back to the ocean.

This is a very important decision for all Alaskans who care about our fisheries and our halibut. We believe halibut trawl bycatch caps must be substantially reduced. We believe most Alaskans feel similarly.

Right now, 3.3 million pounds of halibut are caught and discarded by the Bering Sea trawl fleets every year. Of the various trawlers in the Bering Sea, the 19 vessels that constitute the groundfish bottom trawl fleet — also known as the “Amendment 80″ fleet — are the biggest contributors to halibut bycatch.

Read the full op-ed at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Dunleavy administration announces formation of bycatch task force

November 22, 2021 — Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office recently announced that it’s setting up a task force to tackle the thorny issue of trawler bycatch.

Bycatch is what fishermen catch unintentionally — fish they aren’t targeting that get caught up in their nets, anyway. Federal bycatch data shows trawl fisheries in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska this year have caught tens of thousands of chinook salmon, millions of pounds of halibut and hundreds of thousands of crabs.

Meanwhile staple species like chinook salmon, red king crab and halibut have been on the decline, forcing subsistence, sport and commercial fishermen to pack up nets or reduce harvest.

“We’ve had a reduction in or closure of the crab fisheries in the Bering Sea. The [North Pacific Fishery Management] Council is discussing how to deal with halibut bycatch, and I think there’s a lot of perception that there are bycatch issues associated with what’s happened with salmon in Western Alaska systems,” said Alaska Fish & Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

NOAA closes federal Cook Inlet waters to commercial salmon fishing for 2022

November 4, 2021 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries this week amended one of its fishery management plans to now bar commercial salmon fishermen from operating in the federal waters of Cook Inlet, the main body of water located just west of the Kenai Peninsula in the Southcentral part of the state.

The amendment, Amendment 14, does not close any salmon fishing in state waters, but instead prohibits commercial salmon fishing in the federal waters of Cook Inlet, the area spanning from 3 nautical miles to 200 nautical miles off the coast of Alaska and referred to as the Cook Inlet Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ.

The change is to go into effect to be in place for the 2022 Cook Inlet EEZ commercial salmon fishery. It’s the result of a decision made in December 2020 by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which had been weighing four alternatives for dealing with the fishery management plan for salmon in the EEZ.

The first alternative would have taken no action, and the second option was to have federal oversight of the waters with some management delegated to the state. The third alternative was complete federal oversight and management of the Cook Inlet EEZ, and the fourth was to have federal oversight of the EEZ waters and to close them to commercial salmon fishing.

Read the full story at Alaska’s News Source

 

ALASKA: All major Bering Sea crab stocks are down alarmingly this season, surveys indicate

September 14, 2021 — Alaska’s Bering Sea crabbers are reeling from the devastating news that all major crab stocks are down substantially, based on summer survey results, and the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed for the first time in over 25 years.

That stock has been on a steady decline for several years, and the 2020 harvest dwindled to just 2.6 million pounds.

Most shocking was the drastic turnaround for snow crab stocks, which in 2018 showed a 60% boost in market-size male crabs (the only ones retained for sale) and nearly the same for females. That year’s survey was documented as “one of the largest snow crab recruitment events biologists have ever seen,” said Bob Foy, director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Crab Plan Team.

Again in 2019, the “very strong” snow crab biomass was projected at over 610 million pounds, and the catch was set at a conservative 45 million pounds for the 2020 fishery. No Bering Sea crab surveys were done that year due to the COVID pandemic, but the 2021 results indicated the numbers of mature male snow crab had plummeted by 55%.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

NPFMC October hybrid meeting

August 16, 2021 — The following was released by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The NPFMC will hold meetings over the period September 30-October 15, 2021. The SSC and Advisory Panel will meet entirely via webconference, and the Council will meet via webconference on October 6th, and tentatively in person from October 10-15th, at the Egan Center in Anchorage, AK.  The eAgenda, Schedule, and a list of when documents are available is now posted. Please note the SSC has a separate SSC eAgenda. More detailed information is available on our website.

You can submit comments for each agenda item through the Council and SSC eAgendas during the written public comment period, which opens September 17th and closes September 29th at 5:00 PM AST.  Submitted comments will be reviewed and publicly visible after the deadline, as per the Council’s comment policy. The Council will have remote testimony available if it meets in person.

If you have questions, please email npfmc.admin@noaa.gov.