Saving Seafood

Adak stakeholders protest denial of proposed cod allocation

July 22, 2021 — Stakeholders of an isolated Aleutians fish plant contend state appointees on the federal fisheries management board have ignored calls for help to keep more of the area’s large Pacific cod catch in Alaska despite a court order that shot down the first attempt to do so.

Representatives from Aleut Corp., which owns the fish processing plant in Adak through a subsidiary, and Peter Pan Seafood Co., have said they need to be able to rely on a foundational allocation of cod from federal fisheries to reopen the currently shuttered plant.

It’s believed a reliable allocation of roughly 5,000 metric tons of Pacific cod to the plants in Adak and Atka, where a plant is also currently closed, would provide a base volume of fish that would allow an operator to keep it open year-round with purchases in the state waters cod and other fisheries throughout the year.

Doing so could provide the ultra-remote community of approximately 300 residents with nearly 200 jobs during peak activity and several dozen steady positions if the plant were operated year-round, they estimate.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council that oversees the largely Seattle-based trawl cod fishery is in the process of reforming those allocations amidst other regulatory changes.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

ALASKA: Council’s Swift Action on BSAI Cod Shuts Down Efforts to Restore Adak’s Seafood Economy

June 24, 2021 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council moved quickly to adopt a preliminary preferred alternative (PPA) to rationalize the last major race for fish in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands — trawl-caught Pacific cod — which also relegated Adak’s state-of-the-art seafood plant to the bottom of the pile in terms of access to the resource.

“I am announcing today that, based on the Council’s preliminary preferred alternative in the CV [catcher-vessel] trawl package, Peter Pan Seafood Company is suspending all further work in Adak,” said Steve Minor, Manager of Business Development for Peter Pan, on the day after the Council approved the motion.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Cod stocks creep back up for Gulf of Alaska, but remain down for Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands

April 15, 2021 — Pacific cod stocks have begun to rebound in the Gulf of Alaska, but the total allowable catch (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 recruitment of younger cod and 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.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

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

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

March 30, 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

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