Saving Seafood

Alaska fishermen seek solutions as they grapple with the destructive appetites of sea otters

October 30, 2019 — They may be cute, but the voracious appetites of sea otters continue to cause significant damage to some of Southeast Alaska’s most lucrative fisheries.

How best to curtail those impacts will be the focus of a day long stakeholders meeting set for Nov. 6 in Juneau.

“All of the people who have anything to do with the otters hopefully will all be in the same room at the same time,” said Phil Doherty, co-director of the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association based in Ketchikan.

A 2011 report by the McDowell Group showed that otter predation on sea cucumbers, clams, urchins, crabs and other shellfish cost the Southeast economy nearly $30 million over 15 years. And their population has skyrocketed since then.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Alaska fishermen: Sea otter comeback is eating into profits

May 18, 2018 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska —  Northern sea otters, once hunted to the brink of extinction along Alaska’s Panhandle, have made a spectacular comeback by gobbling some of the state’s finest seafood – and fishermen are not happy about the competition.

Sea otters dive for red sea urchins, geoduck clams, sea cucumbers – delicacies in Asia markets – plus prized Dungeness crab. They then carry their meals to the surface and float on their backs as they eat, sometimes using rocks to crack open clams and crab. The furry marine mammals, which grow as large as 100 pounds (45 kilograms), eat the equivalent of a quarter of their weight each day.

Phil Doherty, head of the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association, is working to save the livelihood of 200 southeast Alaska fishermen and a $10 million industry but faces an uphill struggle against an opponent that looks like a cuddly plush toy.

Fishermen have watched their harvest shrink as sea otters spread and colonize, Doherty said. Divers once annually harvested 6 million pounds (2.7 million kilograms) of red sea urchins. The recent quota has been less than 1 million pounds (454,000 kilograms).

“We’ve seen a multimillion-dollar fishery in sea urchins pretty much go away,” he said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WPXI

 

Alaska: Sea otter resolution gets first hearing in Senate committee

March 16, 2018 — A Senate committee heard Monday from supporters and opponents of state involvement in the management of sea otters in Southeast Alaska.

The Senate Resources Committee held its first hearing on Senate Joint Resolution 13, which calls on the federal government to allow the state or a Native organization to co-manage the rebounding marine mammals and seek ways to increase harvest of otters.

“We’re urging the federal agencies to work with state, Native and local leaders to establish a sea otter management plan to protect the shellfish resources and subsistence availability,” said Sitka Republican committee member Bert Stedman, who sponsored the resolution.

Once nearly hunted to extinction in the region, otters are protected under federal law.

Only coastal Alaska Natives are allowed to hunt them and sell products made from pelts.

The resolution calls on Congress to change the Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow expanded use of those pelts.

The measure also urges the transfer of otter management to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game or National Marine Fisheries Service.

Commercial fishing organizations and municipalities have called for the changes to slow the increase in Southeast’s otters because of their impact on shellfish and other sea food.

Commercial sea cucumber diver Stephanie Jurries of Craig told of a rapid loss of fishing areas on the western shore of Prince of Wales Island.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

ALASKA: Petersburg assembly joins call for increased sea otter harvest

March 12, 2018 — Petersburg’s borough assembly this month joined the call for measures to slow a growing population of sea otters in Southeast, as the marine mammals are impacting shellfish stocks.

The assembly passed a resolution at its March 5th meeting calling for the federal government to work with the State of Alaska and Alaska Native tribes to establish strategies for an ecological balance of shellfish resources and the reintroduced sea otters.

The municipal government sought input on the problem and received letters from commercial fishing organizations like the Petersburg Vessels Owners Association, United Southeast Alaska Gillnetters and the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association. Those letters call for measures to increase the harvest of otters and allowances for expanded use of their pelts by coastal Alaska Natives. Sea otters are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and only coastal Alaska Natives are allowed to hunt them and sell products made from otter pelts.

Petersburg assembly member Eric Castro was convinced to pass the resolution in support of changes to otter management. “All the letters written to this point have been very compelling by all the individuals and groups and I sincerely hope that our federal officials take note on our comments,” Castro said.

Read the full story at KFSK

 

California Fishermen Fight to Restore Otter-Free Zone

May 9, 2016 — PASADENA, Calif. — California’s shellfish industry fought the federal government’s termination of a “no-otter zone” along the Southern California coast at a Ninth Circuit hearing on Friday.

Four fishing industry groups sued the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in 2013, claiming its decision to end a long-disputed sea otter translocation program would “severely compromise if not destroy” shellfish and other marine fisheries on the southern coast.

Nixing the program would lead more than 300 sea otters to occupy a previously “otter-free zone” within 10 years and prey on the shellfish which fishermen depend on for their livelihood, the plaintiffs claimed in their 2013 complaint.

But environmental groups had long pushed for the government to end the program, claiming it was a disaster from the start and that it bowed to the interests of the oil and fishing industries.

The program relocated 140 sea otters to San Nicholas Island and established an otter-free zone south of Point Conception in Santa Barbara County, where fishermen harvest sea urchin, abalone and lobster.

Under the program, fishermen who accidentally killed otters in the zone could not be federally prosecuted, and the government was to use nonlethal means to capture any otters that wandered into the zone.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

Dive fishermen and sea otters face complex competition

December 3, 2015 — What many Americans consider to be a cute, back-floating mammal is a pest, even a thief, to some Southeast Alaskan fishermen.

Humans and sea otters enjoy consuming the same bottom-dwelling seafood: Dungeness crabs, clams, sea cucumbers and urchins. Competition between dive fishermen and sea otters for those resources has intensified as the otter population grows.

Wadley has been a commercial sea cucumber diver for 27 years. She dove for abalone until the dive fishery closed in 1996.

“We had an abalone fishery here until the otters ate us out of it,” she said. “And then I switched about the time that the abalone fishery was dying, the sea cucumbers started up.”

A paper published by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in 2014 says the sea otter population is growing by 12 to 14 percent a year. And more otters mean an expansion of their range.

Many sea cucumber, clam and urchin dive fishing areas have been closed to commercial fishing because of sea otters, Wadley said.

They eat immense amounts of seafood and seem to have the leading edge on humans.

It wasn’t easy starting out as a female fisherman, Wadley said. She was inexperienced — green but eager. A diver with a good reputation eventually agreed to take her out for abalone.

“I ended up getting more poundage than the rest of the divers put together,” she said.

Now Wadley owns her own 45-foot boat named “Vulcan.” She has a sea cucumber quota and manages her own personal dive fishing operation. Wadley and one other person take her boat out for seven-hour fishery openings.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media