Saving Seafood

Predicting marine heatwaves can have economic implications

March 6, 2019 –The Gulf of Alaska is once again experiencing a marine heatwave. This follows the infamous warm-water event known as the “blob,” that formed back in 2014, which scientists have tied to seabird die-offs and declining Pacific cod stocks.

Scientists around the world are trying to predict these events, but there are economic implications to forecasting the future.

Scientists around the world are working to understand the impacts of marine heatwaves as they become more common. They also want to predict when and where the world’s oceans will heat up.

“If I gave you this information about the future, what would you possibly even do with it?” Alistair Hobday said. “And people’s first reaction is, ‘nothing, I don’t know what I would do.’”

Hobday is a research scientist with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Hobday said the predictive models for marine heatwaves are about 60 percent accurate currently, slightly better than a flip of a coin.

He wants to boost that number to 80 percent, and he said marine heatwave forecasts have practical applications.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

 

NPFMC Considers Rationalizing Bering Sea Pacific Cod Fishery

March 5, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council is considering rationalizing the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands trawl pacific cod fishery after voting to take action on the fishery at its February meeting. A number of alternatives for management changes to the fishery have been released for public review; the council will be considering final actions during upcoming meetings.

The fishery is facing a number of issues, including decreasing stocks, an increase in participation and an increasingly shortened season. Among the actions that the council is considering to address these issues is the introduction of a catch-share system, in which quota would be allocated.

The council is also weighing up its options to address the increasing prevalence of catcher/processor vessels — also known as motherships — which is resulting in a loss of deliveries to shore-based processing facilities. The council is looking at various ways to limit the participation of certain vessels acting as motherships.

At its June 2018 meeting, the council adopted a purpose and need statement, which acknowledged recent increases of motherships and a decrease Pacific cod deliveries to shoreside processors.

“The council is concerned about the impacts of the recent increases and potential for future growth in offshore deliveries of Pacific cod to … vessels operating as motherships, and the potential impacts those increases could have on shoreside processors, communities and participating catcher vessels,” the statement reads.

The statement also notes that the race-for-fish management system has resulted in a “decreased ability to maximize the value of the fishery … negatively impacting fishery participants,” as well as discouraging fishing practices that can minimize bycatch.

“Additional entrants could exacerbate these issues and threaten the viability of the fishery,” the statement reads. “The council is considering options to improve the prosecution of the fishery, with the intent of promoting safety and increasing the value of the fishery.”

TAC for the fishery has been reduced in recent years. While the cod fishery in the gulf of Alaska has fared worse, with its TAC being cut by 80 percent, the TAC for the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands fishery was cut by nearly 50 percent last year.

At the council’s February meeting, Darral Brannan, a consultant for the NPFMC, noted that the 2019 Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands trawl Pacific cod A season was the fishery’s shortest ever.

“In 2018, the A season for the trawl CV sector closed on February eleventh. This year, the fishery closed February first. It was 12 full days of fishing. It covered 13 calendar days, but it was noon to noon,” he told the council. “It was the shortest ever A season that we’ve had.”

According to Brannan, in 2018, 18 percent of the Pacific cod from the fishery was delivered to motherships, rather than shoreside processors. Comparatively, in 2019, mothership deliveries rose to 30 percent.

The council is considering a number of different options to limit activity in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Pacific cod trawl fishery, which are outlined in six alternatives.

At its February meeting, the council voted on a motion to bifurcate alternatives two, three and six in order to address concerns around motherships separately from issues surrounding higher levels of participation in the fishery. (Alternative one is for the council to take no action). Alternatives two, three and six specifically address the issues with increased mothership participation in the fishery, and these have now been released for public review.

Respectively, these alternatives would involve: limiting the number of motherships that can take Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands Pacific cod deliveries; limiting the total amount of Pacific cod that can be delivered to motherships; or prohibiting certain vessels from participating in the fishery as motherships.

The council received several letters urging it to take action on this issue — including one from the Pacific Seafood Processor Association, a nonprofit trade association comprised of nine processing companies, located in 18 communities throughout Alaska. Pacific Seafood Processor Association has members that operate processing facilities in Dutch Harbor, King Cove, Sand Point, Akutan and others. The letter urged the council to expediently address the issue.

“This issue continues to have meaningful impacts for BSAI coastal communities, who rely heavily on volume fisheries like pollock and cod,” the letter states. “All of these local governments levy local raw fish taxes on the value of fish landed at local processing facilities and inshore floating processors.”

The council also received public comment requesting that it take a more mediated approach to limiting motherships.

In a letter to the council Matthew Doherty, president and CEO of United States Seafoods, which operates the catcher processor Seabreeze Alaska, argued that the Seabreeze Alaska has an “extensive history in the fishery” and that United States Seafoods depends on the ability of its catcher vessels to deliver cod offshore.

Doherty argued that the United States Seafoods has been “a good citizen” in the fishery by coordinating with other stakeholders — even suspending its operations in the Aleutian Islands cod fishery in 2018 in an attempt to aid the Adak plant’s success.

“The SEAFREEZE ALASKA’s participation in the fishery is NOT part of the ‘recent increases . . . in offshore deliveries’ noted as problematic in the Council’s purpose and need statement for this action,” the letter states. “If the Council restricts offshore cod processing, we recommend the action be narrowly focused on recent problematic changes in the fishery.”

While this item was originally scheduled for final action at the council’s June meeting, according to the most recent draft of the council’s upcoming meeting schedule, the item has been moved up to the council’s next meeting, which is in April.

The issues surrounding increasing participation in the fishery are being addressed as a separate agenda item. The council also voted on a motion to develop a scoping paper, which may be used to develop a comprehensive Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands cod trawl catcher vessel management program.

The scoping paper will analyse the possibility of introducing Pacific cod endorsements for trawlers with LLP licenses, which would rationalize the fishery.

A NPFMC Advisory Panel, which is made up of various fishery stakeholders, offered the council both arguments for and against this action. Meetings from the AP’s February meeting noted that some of the panel argued that a catch share program would the best solution for protecting stock levels and giving harvesters, processors and their communities the chance to maximize the value of the fishery.

Other fisheries have been rationalized in the past, including rockfish in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands crab.

“The problems currently being faced by the BSAI trawl CV cod fishery are similar in nature to problems previously faced by other fisheries that now operate under a catch share program,” the AP minutes state. “The multiple successes achieved under these varying programs established in the North Pacific now lead the participants in the BSAI cod trawl fishery to believe that the development of a cooperative-based program for BSAI Pacific cod is the best solution.”

However, not all of the panel was onboard. The minutes state that a catch share program for Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands trawl cod may make it harder to enter the fishery.

“Catch share programs that allocate quota to LLPs can make access to the fishery more expensive for new entrants and have potentially negative impacts on communities,” the minutes state.

Some public comments reflected a concern that, should the council establish a catch share program in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands fishery, it could negatively impact other fisheries. Among them was a letter from Patrick O’Donnell, the owner and operator of the F/V Caravelle, a trawler homeported in Kodiak. O’Donnell expressed concern that an action on the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands fishery could have an impact on the Gulf of Alaska cod fishery and requested that the council postpone further action until it can ensure that Gulf of Alaska fishermen wouldn’t be affected.

“GOA trawlers have asked for a catchshare management plan, with tools to better manage bycatch in the Gulf, and I would like to see that program move forward at the same time as any changes to the (BS cod fishery),” the letter states. “Any action that moves the cod TLAS fishery closer to a rationalized program has the potential to create spill-over effects in the GOA.

“It will create advantages for boats that have a guaranteed share in the BS, and give them an incentive to race for fish in the GOA first, then go harvest their share in the Bering Sea.”

The scoping paper is scheduled for council discussion at its October meeting.

All the alternatives that the council is considering, along with staff analysis and public comments can be found on the NPFMC’s website. Those looking to provide public comment prior to the council’s April meeting can do so via the NPFMC’s online comment portal, or at the meeting itself.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

ALASKA: North Pacific council to study catch-share proposal for cod trawlers

February 22, 2019 — As pressure continues to build on Pacific cod landings in the Bering Sea, the US’ North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) is taking a hard look at the number of trawl vessels and offshore processors there, Alaska Public Radio reports.

A year after federal regulators dramatically cut the quota in the Gulf of Alaska, trawlers say the congestion is causing a race for the fish.

“You got kind of a perfect storm going on here: You have more and more vessels entering a fishery, you’ve got less fish available to be caught, and now this year in 2019, we ended up with a 13-day season,” Brent Paine, executive director of United Catcher Boats, is quoted as saying. “Four years ago, it never even closed.”

The NPFMC has taken up a request from Paine and others to study a catch share plan for trawl catcher vessels, splitting up the sector’s landings between individual boats before the season begins. A scoping paper is due from its staff later this year.

Such a management structure, which is already used by halibut and pollock fisheries, would limit the number of vessels that can participate in the fishery and reduce competition, the article notes. A specific date range would determine historical participation and therefore who gets shares and how many.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

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

Ocean Acidification Could Affect Pacific Cod Development

February 20, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Scientists released results of a study showing that larval Pacific cod response to elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels varies depending on its stage of development. In laboratory experiments, NOAA Fisheries scientists and partners specifically examined larval cod behavior, growth, and lipid composition (the fats needed for storing energy and building muscles). As excess CO2 from the atmosphere dissolves in the ocean, pH is lowered and the ocean increases in acidity, in a process called ocean acidification. Studies like this are important because most marine fish mortality occurs at the larval stage of development and the high-latitude oceans where Pacific cod and other important commercial fisheries occur are expected to be among the most vulnerable to ocean acidification.

“Changing environmental conditions can impact species in multiple ways and not all life stages may respond in the same way,” said Tom Hurst, NOAA Fisheries scientist and lead author of a new paper in Marine Environmental Research. “We wanted to explore this because it has implications for the sustainability of Pacific cod and other important fish stocks in Alaska.”

Hurst and a team of scientists from the Alaska Fisheries Science Center; and the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and the Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies at Oregon State University conducted two laboratory studies to evaluate larval fish sensitivity to elevated CO2.

Read the full story here

Ocean heat waves like the Pacific’s deadly ‘Blob’ could become the new normal

February 1, 2019 — When marine biologist Steve Barbeaux first saw the data in late 2017, he thought it was the result of a computer glitch. How else could more than 100 million Pacific cod suddenly vanish from the waters off of southern Alaska?

Within hours, however, Barbeaux’s colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Seattle, Washington, had confirmed the numbers. No glitch. The data, collected by research trawlers, indicated cod numbers had plunged by 70% in 2 years, essentially erasing a fishery worth $100 million annually. There was no evidence that the fish had simply moved elsewhere. And as the vast scale of the disappearance became clear, a prime suspect emerged: “The Blob.”

In late 2013, a huge patch of unusually warm ocean water, roughly one-third the size of the contiguous United States, formed in the Gulf of Alaska and began to spread. A few months later, Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, dubbed it The Blob. The name, with its echo of a 1958 horror film about an alien life form that keeps growing as it consumes everything in its path, quickly caught on. By the summer of 2015, The Blob had more than doubled in size, stretching across more than 4 million square kilometers of ocean, from Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Water temperatures reached 2.5°C above normal in many places.

Read the full story at Science Magazine

‘Three-fold competition’ arises for tighter cod supplies as tariffs could invert haddock price gap

January 18, 2019 — According to figures released at the National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Market Conference, world cod supply is expected to decline to 1.5 million metric tons in 2019, down from 1.59 million metric tons in 2018.

Todd Clark, a founder and partner at Endeavor Seafood, an importer and marketer of frozen seafood based in Newport, Rhode Island, said that there’s a downward supply trend in both Atlantic cod, driven by reductions out of the Barents Sea, and Pacific cod, where US supply has fallen somewhat in the Bering Sea and sharply in the Gulf of Alaska.

“There’s a steady decrease in both of these resources, really,” Clark said.

Looking at Atlantic cod supply in historical perspective, the resource, at 1.3 million metric tons in 2017, has fluctuated between a low of under 1 million metric tons in 2007 and a 2.75 million metric ton high seen in 1974.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

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

ALASKA: NPFMC advisory panel proposes 33,000t hike in Bering Sea pollock TAC, 7,000t drop in cod

December 7, 2018 — The advisory panel to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) voted in favor of a 33,000-metric-ton increase in the eastern Bering Sea pollock total allowable catch (TAC), as well as a 7,000 drop in the Pacific cod TAC.

This draft TAC sheet will then go to the vote at the NPFMC meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday. The supply outlook comes with prices for cod and pollock set firm.

According to an Undercurrent News source, the advisory committee is recommending a pollock TAC of 1.397 million metric tons for 2019, up from 1.364m in 2018. The panel also recommended a Pacific cod TAC of 181,000t, down from 188,136t in 2018. For Pacific cod in the Aleutian Islands, the panel voted in favor of a TAC of 20,600t.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Bleak outlook for Pacific cod could see 2019 US pollock TAC hike, despite reduced biomass

December 5, 2018 — Although the biomass for pollock in the US eastern Bering Sea fishery is coming down, the total allowable catch (TAC) for 2019 could actually be increased, due to the outlook for further cuts to Pacific cod.

The TACs for pollock and cod, especially in light of the gloomy outlook for the latter, will be a major focus of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, this week, which will go ahead, after an earthquake hit the city last Friday. With whitefish prices set high, the Barents Sea cod and haddock fisheries coming down for 2019 and the Russians only increasing their pollock quota for next year marginally, industry players globally are looking to what happens at the meeting.

First, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists present their views on the outlook for 2019, then the council will decide on TAC levels for pollock, cod, yellowfin sole and other fish. There is uncertainty around pollock and cod moving further north, as previously reported by Undercurrent News. 

Read the full story at Undercurrent News