Saving Seafood

ALASKA: With low stocks and closures looming, Bering Sea crab fleet braces for another blow

September 23, 2021 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced earlier this month that all major crab stocks are down. And for the first time in over 25 years, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed.

The species is world-renowned and was largely made famous by the popular reality tv show “Deadliest Catch.” In the glory days of king crab fishing, locals describe hundreds of boats rushing into the cold Bering Sea to harvest millions of pounds of the crab worth even more millions of dollars.

The commercial fishery has been around since 1966. In the 55 years since then, there have been just two other closures: once in the 1980s and again in the 1990s.

Now, the Bering Sea crab fleet and fishing communities around the state and the Pacific Northwest are bracing for another blow to their industry and are calling for new conservation efforts.

“It’s big news, and it’s hitting our industry really hard,” said Jamie Goen, executive director for Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association representing commercial crab harvesters. “We’re disappointed and deeply concerned.”

Read the full story at KNBA

 

With low stocks and closures looming, Bering Sea crab fleet braces for another blow

September 16, 2021 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced this month that all major crab stocks are down. And for the first time in more than 25 years, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed.

The species is world-renowned and was largely made famous by the popular reality TV show “Deadliest Catch.” In the glory days of king crab fishing, locals describe hundreds of boats rushing into the cold Bering Sea to harvest millions of pounds of crab worth even more millions of dollars.

The commercial fishery has been around since 1966. In the 55 years since then, there have been just two other closures: one in the 1980s and the other in the 1990s.

Now, the Bering Sea crab fleet and fishing communities around the state and the Pacific Northwest are bracing for yet another blow to their industry and are calling for new conservation efforts.

“It’s big news, and it’s hitting our industry really hard,” said Jamie Goen, executive director for Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association representing commercial crab harvesters. “We’re disappointed and deeply concerned.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

 

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

 

Winter red king crab fishery in Alaska’s Bering Sea canceled

September 9, 2021 — Low stocks have prompted the U.S. state of Alaska to cancel the red king crab fishery in Alaska’s Bering Sea for winter 2021-2022 season.

After a review of the final bottom-trawl survey by the National Marine Fisheries Service, Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) ADFG made the announcement Friday, 3 September, saying the stock was “below the regulatory threshold for opening a fishery.” ADFG said more details about the closure will be provided during the TAC meeting in early October.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Bering Sea crabbers talk shutdown, facing biomass disaster head on

September 7, 2021 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on Friday, Sept. 3, that the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery would be closed for the 2021-22 season, for the first time in 25 years. The announcement came in advance of the management decision-making process, providing the crab fleet time to make any possible adjustments.

“While this isn’t the news we wanted to hear, we appreciate knowing as soon as possible for our business planning purposes,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of the trade group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers. “It helps us to know now so we can notify our crews, plan where our vessels are going to go next, plan shipyard time between seasons, and batten down the hatches on our finances.”

The announcement on Friday also reported on data that shows all major Bering Sea crab stocks are down, and the majority of the Bering Sea opilio crab stock seems to have moved or disappeared.

“We had hoped the Bristol Bay red king crab stocks would have rebounded by now, after several years of reduced and conservative harvest levels, but that is simply not the case,” said Gabriel Prout, a third-generation fisherman on the F/V Silver Spray. “Coupling this closure with the fact that snow crab harvest levels could be reduced as well, even after positive levels of recruitment in previous years, has the makings for a very frustrating and trying time for crab fishermen and the industry as a whole.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Alaska fisheries: pollock and crab rule the winter

February 10, 2021 — Freezing February weather doesn’t keep Alaskans off the fishing grounds from Southeast to Norton Sound.

In the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, boats are pulling in pollock, cod, flounders and other groundfish.

More than 3 billion pounds of pollock will come out of the Bering Sea this year, and another 250 million pounds from the gulf.

Prince William Sound also has a winter pollock fishery that will produce nearly 5 million pounds.

Many Alaska crab fisheries are underway or soon to be.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Buyout nets coastal Alaska villages first direct ownership of Bering Sea crab quota

January 13, 2021 — Fishing rights and vessel ownership are transferring from a Seattle-based fishing company to two Alaskan regional economic development organizations and 30 communities.

The seller is Mariner Companies, owned by pioneering Bering Sea crabbers Kevin Kaldestad and Gordon Kristjanson. Two Community Development Quota organizations have purchased the company’s crab boats, and 30 communities have formed limited liability companies to purchase the quota, which amounts to 3% of the Bering Sea opilio and red king crab fishery.

The direct ownership of quota by communities is new in the area served by both Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation and the Coastal Villages Region Fund.

The BBEDC and CVRF are two of the six Community Development Program groups in Alaska, which are allocated portions of Bering Sea resources. The groups can then either lease their rights or develop owner-operator businesses themselves, but the proceeds return to the communities they cover through economic development programs.

Although the communities involved are included in BBEDC and CVRF programs, by establishing new LLCs for the communities, each one is able to have more control over how to best use the revenue the quota brings in.

Read the full story at Alaska’s News Source

Alaska governor’s budget proposal would trim some fishery programs

February 3, 2020 — Cuts proposed by Alaska governor Mike Dunleavy to his state’s Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) next fiscal budget could be felt in a number of commercial fisheries, reports Alaska Fish Radio‘s Laine Welch.

Dunleavy, a Republican elected in 2018, has proposed nipping $1 million next year from the agency’s nearly $67m budget, of which $36m comes from state general funds, according to Welch.

That would mean the closure of an office in Southeast Alaska and the elimination of red king crab assessments. Cuts also are on deck for stock assessments for Southeast urchin and sea cucumber fisheries, which will likely reduce dive time, Welch reported.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ALASKA: Bristol Bay red king crab fishery trends toward closure as fleet reports slow fishing, aging stock

November 20, 2019 — Next fall, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery could face its first closure in 25 years.

This season, the 54-vessel fleet has reported slow, spotty fishing, and the stock continues to show signs of decline. The current quota — 3.8 million pounds — is the lowest since the fishery was rationalized in 2005.

“A lot of boats had to scratch their way through the season,” said Ethan Nichols, assistant area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “There were only one to two large schools of legal males that were reported to us from captains out on the grounds. So the season was definitely a bit of a grind.”

With 99 percent of the harvest landed, Nichols said the average number of crab caught in each pot is down five from last season, marking the lowest catch per unit effort since rationalization.

The average crab weight, however, continues to go up.

“Last year, it was 7.1 pounds. Right now, we have an average weight of 7.14 pounds,” said Nichols. “It’s the highest average weight in the history of the fishery.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Northern Bering Sea trawl survey shows fisheries in flux

November 19, 2019 — Norton Sound red king crab are moving, Arctic cod numbers have dropped significantly and Pacific cod are continuing to increase as the Northern Bering Sea ecosystem undergoes drastic change. That’s all according to preliminary results from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration trawl survey this summer in the Northern Bering Sea (NBS).

Before Lyle Britt even began leading the NOAA Fisheries’ study of the NBS in September, he anticipated seeing more warm water fish in a region that stretches from Nunivak Island north to the Bering Strait.

“We can tell that the ecosystem is very much in flux up here,” Britt said. “We’re seeing expansion of ranges of some fish and invertebrates, and we’re seeing the retraction of others. Now how permanent or ephemeral those are, I think is still in question.”

As an example of a species that’s expanding its range based on what was discovered in the 2010 baseline survey of the Northern Bering Sea, Britt points to Pacific cod.

“Between 2010 and 2017 there was about a 900% increase in the amount of Pacific cod we saw in the Northern Bering Sea region, based on that biomass or total weight estimate,” he said. “That number sounds really dramatic in part because there were so few in 2010 and now there are some. That number increased between 2017 and 2019 by about 30%, so it’s continued to go up.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media