Saving Seafood

Southeast Alaska squid fishery shot down

January 18, 2018 — Declining king salmon stocks are playing a role in the Alaska Board of Fisheries decisions for other commercial fisheries.

On Sunday, the board voted down a proposal for a new fishery in Southeast Alaska for market squid.

The proposal sought to allow purse seining for the squid, a species that can grow to 7-and-a-half-inches long and ranges from Mexico to Alaska.

Salmon seiner Justin Peeler of Petersburg told the board he’s also fished for squid in California.

“As somebody that had a background in fishing squid I got reports from other fishermen during various times of the year of seeing squid, biomass is showing up, water temperature is warming a little bit and we’re seeing changes of that in our other fisheries and after seeing it grow and kind of more and more sightings and the density of the schools and the sightings growing I decided well I should put this proposal in,” Peeler said.

Peeler thought the fishery could be opened to other gear types as well. He saw squid as an opportunity for fishermen but also a potential threat to other species.

“They’re eaters,” Peeler said. “In a short period of time they have to eat grow and spawn and that’s the fear I have is that these could move in in a very rapid rate and we could see a huge change in some of our other fisheries due to us not realizing that this is somewhat of an invasive species as oceans warm. Our local inside waters may stay cool enough that they might hold ‘em off a little bit but if it’s warm out in the deep they’re gonna come up and they’re going to spawn and they’re going to be in our waters as their population booms.”

Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued what are called “commissioners permits” in 2014 and 2017 to Peeler and others interested in testing whether they could catch squid.

Read the full story at KTOO Public Media

 

Alaska: Board of Fisheries votes down change in Southeast Dungeness crab season

January 17, 2018 — On Saturday, Alaska Board of Fisheries voted down a proposal to change commercial Dungeness crab seasons in Southeast Alaska.

Crabbers were seeking set season lengths and no option for shortened fishing time like they experienced in 2017.

Crabber Max Worhatch proposed the change and successfully got the board to add the proposal to the meeting after missing the deadline for regulation changes.

“I would like to seriously consider this,” Worhatch told the board. “I put a proposal in, just like this three years ago, didn’t get anywhere. The department felt like they had to have something to manage the fishery when it got to the low end. But in my experience and just from what I’ve seen in Oregon, California and Washington, size sex and season for Dungeness crab works and it works extremely well. It’s kind of an autopilot thing, doesn’t take a lot of work.”

Size, sex and season are a management tool for regulating the catch of crab, with a minimum size, allowing crabbers to only keep male crab and only during a set season.

While that’s part of the management in Southeast Alaska, since 2000 the Alaska Department of Fish and Game also has set the season length based on the catch from the first week of the season.

In 2017, a low commercial catch in that first week led to shortened summer and fall seasons in most of the region.

The board considered an amended proposal for set seasons, with the same starting and ending dates already used around region but deleting the language in the management plan that allows for early closure with low catches.

Crabbers said they needed the assurance of scheduled fishing time, especially with the fleet fishing in smaller areas with competition from sea otters.

Part of the Southeast Alaska summer commercial crab fishing season overlaps with the time when male Dungeness molt, or shed their shell and grow a new one.

Read the full story at KTOO Public Media

 

Alaska: Board of Fisheries to begin meeting with crabs, shrimp, clams and squid regulations

January 11, 2018 — The Alaska Board of Fisheries will meet for the next two weeks to decide on fishing regulations for the Southeast and Yakutat regions.

Unlike most years, the Alaska Board of Fisheries is joining both the shellfish and finfish hearings together for a two-week-long meeting in Sitka.

While finfish, such as king salmon, account for a majority of the meeting, the board will start with proposals on shellfish.

The board will consider a proposal regarding Dungeness crab seasons in Southeast.

Proposal 235 would repeal a management plan that’s been in place since 2000. The current plan sets the summer and fall seasons based on catch from the first two weeks of each season.

Last year, that meant the seasons were reduced by half. The proposal would set both seasons at two-months each.

“This seems like a good plan to update the fishery due to the loss of are due to sea otters,” said Joel Randrup, vice chair of Petersburg’s Fish and Game Advisory committee.

Committee chair Max Worhatch recommended the proposal to the Board of Fisheries.

The Petersburg committee voted in support of this proposal, as did Wrangell’s Advisory committee.

“If you have a two-month season, and if you only take the males and only 6-and-a-half inches you still leave enough breeding males on the ground to replenish the population,” said Wrangell chair Chris Guggenbickler.

Guggenbickler said sea mammals, mostly otters, are eating the crabs, reducing the stock. And regulations have responded by limiting areas to crabbers.

Read the full story at KTOO Public Media

 

ALASKA: Kodiak opposes salmon cap agenda change

September 18, 2017 — Kodiak is gearing up to oppose what it considers a threat to its fisheries.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game released a study last year that found a percentage of Kodiak area sockeye salmon are Cook Inlet fish.

Some Cook Inlet fishermen now want to set caps for sockeye salmon in the Kodiak area.

The United Cook Inlet Drift Association is asking the Board of Fisheries to consider an agenda change at its work session next month.

The change would move the consideration of a new Kodiak area management plan up to a sooner date. The next time the Board of Fisheries is scheduled to look over the management plan is 2020.

The request is based on findings from a genetic study of sockeye salmon in the western Kodiak management area.

Read and listen to the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: Strong harvests, more oversight marked 2016 groundfish fisheries

January 23, 2017 — Last year was a good year overall for groundfish fisheries in the region.

With a few standout harvests and favorable proposals with the Board of Fisheries, managers are feeling optimistic heading into the new year.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game oversees several groundfish fisheries within the Cook Inlet Management Area, which extends outside of Kachemak Bay to the north Gulf coast.

“These fisheries include Pacific cod, sablefish, a directed pelagic shelf rockfish fishery, lingcod, and a small commissioner’s permit Pollock fishery,” said Jan Rumble, Fish and Game area groundfish management biologist.

Pacific cod stood out in 2016 as it was open all year long for pot and jig gear in either a parallel or state waters fishery, Rumble said.

Despite the extended opening, the state waters fishery only reached 83 percent of its guideline harvest level, or GHL.

Read the full story at KTOO

VOICES OF ALASKA: Alaskans must unite to protect salmon

November 25, 2016 — As commercial, sport and personal use fishermen, we often have passionate disagreements about decisions that must be made regarding the management of our salmon. But today we are uniting as residents of our Nation’s last great salmon state by asking the Alaska Board of Fisheries to take action to protect the fish that is so intimately tied to our identity, culture and economy.

Whether it’s making a living by set netting for wild salmon in Cook Inlet, feeling the thrill of a silver salmon leaping at the end of your line, or experiencing the satisfaction of filling your freezer with salmon that will feed your family all winter; salmon are an essential part of life for so many of us in Alaska.

Unfortunately the primary law that is designed to protect the rivers and streams which salmon rely on hasn’t been updated since statehood and leaves our salmon resource — and the jobs, culture, food, recreation and economic activity it creates – at risk. If we do not take the opportunity now to update this law, we stand to repeat the mistakes that have decimated salmon runs throughout the rest of the country and lose one of the top reasons Alaska is such a special place to call home.

This law is known as “Title 16,” and is Alaska’s fish habitat permitting law. Currently, the law contains only two sentences guiding how decisions are made on development projects that could harm salmon habitat. These projects include proposals like Pebble Mine and Chuitna Coal, where a company proposes strip mining through nearly 14 miles of wild salmon stream.

Read the full op-ed at the Peninsula Clarion

ALASKA: Crabbers holding out hope for high prices after cuts

October 19, 2016 — Despite a grim beginning to the season, members of the crab industry are holding out hope for high prices and a late fishery.

The Alaska Board of Fisheries hasn’t yet decided whether to review harvest guidelines for Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab and potentially open the season in January or earlier, or leave the fishery closed entirely for the next two years. Meanwhile, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game cut the quota for snow crab by 50 percent and for Bristol Bay red king crab by 15 percent.

Despite the cuts, crab industry stakeholders say the season for Bristol Bay red king crab is moving along at more than a healthy clip.

“Some good news from the grounds, the crab look good. They’re heavy. There’s a lot of small crab, females. Folks are seeing pots just plugged with crab — so full they can’t get another one in,” said Jake Jacobsen, director of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange, a crab harvesting cooperative with 188 members that together harvest 70 percent of Alaska’s crab.

Jacobsen said that given the density of the fishing, he wonders why the surveys that measure abundance didn’t pick anything up.“The reports I’ve got, maybe the people who aren’t doing so well don’t say anything,” he said. “There’s a lot of very optimistic reports from the grounds. I’m not sure what happened with the survey last summer.”

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce