Saving Seafood

Alaska: First hatchery was not “eggs-actually” a success

February 26, 2018 — The first hatchery in the Cordova area was located a mere seven miles from town, on what is now known as Power Creek Road.

Today only a wide turnout, plus two large culverts that are a popular viewing area for spawning sockeye, and also brown bear looking for a tasty treat, give hints of its past. Remnants of a wooden bridge that led to the hatchery that was situated above the parking area can be seen if the water level is low.

A fascinating chronology of events leading to the establishment of this hatchery can be found in paper titled “History of Eyak Lake” by the Copper River Watershed Project.

In 1871, just six years after the end of the Civil War and four years after the purchase of Alaska from Russia, the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries was established “to determine the cause of decreasing salmon runs.”

In 1889, those concerns resulted in the establishment of the first Alaskan hatchery in Kodiak and made it unlawful to build obstructions to bodies of water offering habitat for salmon. By the late 1890s, government hatcheries had been abandoned; and canneries, wanting to protect their own interests, created their own.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

Alaska: In Nome, state experts ponder responses to Bering Sea crises

February 21, 2018 — Experts from around the state gathered in Nome to discuss marine mammals and how multiple entities can respond to different types of emergencies that may happen in the Bering Sea.

Mandy Migura with the National Marine Fisheries Service was one of the presenters at a “Strait Science” talk hosted at University of Alaska Fairbanks Northwest Campus.

Migura discussed how marine mammal stranding events take place in Alaska sporadically but have been rising in numbers since tracking began in the 1980s.

“Strandings involve live marine mammals. these may be animals that are unable to return to their natural habitat without some kind of assistance. And they may be injured, they may be entangled in gear or marine debris, they may be entrapped — ice entrapment, ice may form up and they’re in an area where they can’t get back to where they should be — or they may be disoriented, may be a health issue or something in the environment that’s affecting them.”

Migura is Alaska’s marine mammal stranding coordinator and said dead marine mammals can also be categorized as stranded.

With more cases of marine mammal strandings being reported, the Bering Sea marine ecosystem is currently in a volatile state.

Nome-based marine advisory agent Gay Sheffield mentioned how sharks have been found more frequently in the Bering Straits region, with the latest one documented in Gambell in summer 2017.

On the other side of St. Lawrence Island, a stellar sea lion was harvested last year in Savoonga, which she said is uncommon.

Migura said local and regional partners reporting this kind of information greatly benefits the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

Alaska: Bering Sea Trawl Cod Fishery May Have Been Shortest Ever, as High Prices Attract Effort

February 20, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Bering Sea federal trawl cod fishery closed in what may be record time on Feb. 11, just 22 days after the Jan. 20 opener, according to National Marine Fisheries Service Biologist Krista Milani in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the shortest ever,” and certainly for as long as she’s had the job going back to 2009.

While the Bering Sea cod quota is down 20 percent from last year, Milani said other factors are at play. She pointed out that in a previous year, with an almost identical quota, the season remained open for about six weeks, ending the second week of March in 2010.

This year, the A season Bering Sea cod trawl quota is 24,768 metric tons, and in 2010 it was 24,640 mt.

“The bigger thing is the price is good, and there’s a lot of interest in it,” Milani said.

“I think there’s a lot of reasons,” including fishermen feeling a need to build catch histories to qualify for future Pacific cod fishing rights, if a rationalization program is adopted for cod in the Bering Sea, she said.

“I think there’s some fear it could go to limited access,” Milani said.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Program is now considering a plan to restrict the number of boats eligible to fish for cod in the Bering Sea.

The fish council floated ideas to limit catcher vessel participation in the Bering Sea cod fishery, including controversial catch shares or individual fishing quotas, during a December meeting in Anchorage.

IFQs are not among alternatives the council is considering. The purpose and need statement, approved unanimously, includes limiting trawling to vessels actually fishing cod in various years between 2010 and 2017.

This would create a limited entry program within a limited entry program. Bering Sea cod fishing is already limited to boats with licenses. Some of those boats don’t usually participate, but can when prices are high or stocks are low in their usual fisheries.

Brent Paine, the executive director of United Catcher Boats, said something needs to be done to regulate fishing in the congested “Cod Alley.” He accurately predicted a three-week season in 2018 in the area offshore of Unimak Island.

“This is the last unrationalized fishery in the eastern Bering Sea,” Paine said. “If you don’t do anything, we’re all going to be losers.”

While Paine said the NPFMC’s present majority is unsympathetic to rationalization, calling it the “R word,” he said that may change in the future.

Rationalization opponents see IFQs as privatization adding another barrier to entry into the fishing world, while supporters call it a reward for investment with benefits including substantial retirement income.

Milani said Tuesday it was still too early to say how many trawlers participated, as there were vessels still delivering cod to processing companies, and perhaps some trawlers delivering loaded nets to offshore motherships. The last count had 55 in the federal cod fishery, compared to 57 last year, she said, expecting this year’s final count will be higher.

The number of boats is hard to track in-season, as many go back and forth between cod, pollock and other fisheries, although there are some that only fish cod, Milani said.

The depressed cod stocks in the Gulf of Alaska probably also contributed to this year’s fast pace, she said. Gulf cod stocks are way down, far worse than the smaller decline in the Bering Sea, an 80 per percent decline from last year.

Earlier in the season, Milani said the number of Gulf boats coming into the federal Bering Sea cod fishery was smaller than expected.

The Gulf cod crash appears to be having a greater impact in the state cod fishery, with 32 small boats registered on Tuesday, up from 24 last year in the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict. The state waters fishery is limited to boats 58 feet or shorter fishing within three miles of shore and using only pot gear.

The Dutch Harbor Subdistrict total catch on Monday was 11.4 million pounds caught in pots from a total quota of 28.4 million pounds. The pot cod fishery is expected to continue for another 14 to 16 days, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game Biologist Asia Beder in Unalaska.

In the Aleutian Islands Subdistrict state waters fishery, with a quota of 12.8 million pounds, Beder couldn’t release precise total catch numbers because of confidentiality rules when there’s fewer than three processors. She said the fleet has caught somewhere between 25 and 50 percent. There’s only one processor, in Adak, Golden Harvest — formerly Premier Harvest, she said. And she could also say there were eight small boats fishing cod in the Aleutian subdistrict, all in the Adak section.

In the Aleutians, cod boats are allowed up to 60 feet in with various gear types, although longliners are limited to 58 feet.

In Bering Sea crab fisheries, the 50 boats dropping pots for opilio snow crab had made 134 landings for 10.9 million pounds or 58 percent of the total quota. The cumulative catch per unit of effort for the season is an average of 161 crab per pot, according to shellfish biologist Ethan Nichols of ADF&G in Unalaska.

In the Western Bering Sea Tanner fishery, 28 vessels had made 66 landings for 2.1 million pounds, with the quota nearly wrapped up at 85 percent.

In the Eastern Aleutian District, two small boats harvesting bairdi Tanner had landed over 75 percent of the total quota of 35,000 pounds, Nichols said.

The EAD is open this year only in the Makushin and Skan Bay area, and that’s where the Tanners are from that sell for $10 each by local fisherman Roger Rowland at the Carl E. Moses Boat Harbor in Unalaska.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

Alaska: Bristol Bay Stakeholders to Testify in Juneau Regarding Proposed Pebble Mine

February 16, 2018 — JUNEAU, Ala. — Members of the Alaska Legislature will hear from a diverse group of Bristol Bay leaders and top scientists regarding permits for the proposed Pebble Mine and impacts the mine would have on Bristol Bay’s watershed and all it sustains.

Despite steadfast opposition to the project from Bristol Bay tribes, residents, businesses, anglers, commercial fishermen, and native corporations, Northern Dynasty continues to pursue its toxic mining project at the headwaters of Bristol Bay’s world-class fishery. In December, the company applied for permits with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, initiating the environmental impact statement process. Bristol Bay is home to the world’s last great sockeye run, which sustain the region’s indigenous cultures, generate more than 14,000 jobs and support a $1.5 billion economy each year.

Read the full story at the Alaska Native News

 

Commercial fleet highlights economic impact of Sitka Sound herring catch

February 15, 2018 — Despite three days of impassioned testimony before the Board of Fisheries in January, not much has changed for the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery, which will ramp up in about a month.

Local subsistence harvesters won an increase in the size of their exclusive use area, but failed to persuade the board to reduce the commercial catch.

Fishermen and processors from Petersburg joined with other commercial interests to remind the board of the economic importance of the annual springtime export.

Commercial fishing representatives at January’s meeting testified in oral and written comments about the economic importance of the annual fishery in Sitka Sound.

Icicle Seafoods processes some of the catch at its Petersburg plant and the company’s John Woodruff talked about the impact to the Petersburg economy.

“Last year, we spent roughly $450,000 just on Sitka herring labor,” Woodruff said. “Most of this stays in Petersburg and it comes at a time when there’s not much other economic activity in town and a half-million bucks might not seem like much but at that time of year for a town like Petersburg, I think it’s impactive.”

Read and listen to the full story at KTOO

 

To get good credit, Alaska’s fishing towns may have to factor in climate change

February 15, 2018 — Late last year one of the world’s largest credit rating agencies announced that climate change would have an economic impact on the U.S.

Moody’s suggested that climate risks could become credit risks for some U.S. states.

Even though Alaska is warming nearly twice as fast as the rest of the U.S., its credit rating doesn’t seem to be in danger. But take a closer look at some of the state’s coastal communities and the story changes, especially when Alaska’s fishing towns consider adding climate risks to their balance sheets.

Frank Kelty is the mayor of the Unalaska, a tiny town is on an island sandwiched between the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska, near some of the richest fishing grounds in the world.

Kelty has been there for 45 years, and lately, he’s seen a lot of changes.

“We’ve had a huge increase in humpback whales coming right into the inner harbor by the road system. Just hundreds of them hanging around,” he said.

People have been pulling off of the road to watch what he calls the “whale show.”

Read the full story at KTOO

 

A new study looks at why Pacific Cod stocks are crashing in the Gulf of Alaska

February 14, 2018 — A new study in Kodiak will hopefully shed some light on what Pacific cod go through when they’re young.

“We don’t know how they do in the winter. Where they are. What they are eating. What their energetic requirements are.”

One of the leaders of the project, Mike Litzow is a researcher for the University of Alaska Fairbanks based in Kodiak.

He said the recent crash in the Pacific cod population in the Gulf of Alaska was a wake-up call that there’s a lot to be learned about the early life stages of Pacific cod.

A few years ago a body of warm water settled in the gulf and it may have made it difficult for juvenile cod to survive.

“The operating hypothesis right now is that you can warm the temperatures up and they’ll survive if there’s enough food, but there wasn’t enough food to meet those requirements.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service, according to Litzow, recently found that the Pacific cod population had dropped by about 60 percent since 2015.

The North Pacific Fisheries Pacific Council reduced the amount of Pacific cod that can be caught by commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Alaska by about 80 percent because of the crash.

The decrease in cod will be hard for Kodiak fisherman because Pacific Cod is one of the bigger fisheries in the region.

Litzow thinks Kodiak will have to face the possibility that more fishery disasters could be in its future because of climate change.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

A Nearly Invisible Oil Spill Threatens Some of Asia’s Richest Fisheries

February 13, 2018 — ZHOUSHAN, China — A fiery collision that sank an Iranian tanker in the East China Sea a month ago has resulted in an environmental threat that experts say is unlike any before: An almost invisible type of petroleum has begun to contaminate some of the most important fishing grounds in Asia, from China to Japan and beyond.

It is the largest oil spill in decades, but the disaster has unfolded outside the glare of international attention that big spills have previously attracted. That is because of its remote location on the high seas and also the type of petroleum involved: condensate, a toxic, liquid byproduct of natural gas production.

Unlike the crude oil in better-known disasters like the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon, condensate does not clump into black globules that can be easily spotted or produce heart-wrenching images of animals mired in muck. There’s no visible slick that can be pumped out. Experts said the only real solution is to let it evaporate or dissolve. Absorbed into the water, it will remain toxic for a time, though it will also disperse more quickly into the ocean than crude oil.

Experts say there has never been so large a spill of condensate; up to 111,000 metric tons has poured into the ocean. It has almost certainly already invaded an ecosystem that includes some of the world’s most bountiful fisheries off Zhoushan, the archipelago that rises where the Yangtze River flows into the East China Sea.

The area produced five million tons of seafood of up to four dozen species for China alone last year, according to Greenpeace, including crab, squid, yellow croaker, mackerel and a local favorite, hairtail. If projections are correct, the toxins could soon make their way into equally abundant Japanese fisheries.

Exposure to condensate is extremely unhealthy to humans and potentially fatal. The effects of eating fish contaminated with it remain essentially untested, but experts strongly advise against doing so.

“This is an oil spill of a type we haven’t seen before,” said Paul Johnston, a scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter in England. “Working out the impact is actually a huge task — probably next to impossible.”

For China, the disaster has become a test of its ambitions as a global and regional steward of the seas, especially at a time when it is reinforcing its territorial claims, including disputed territories with Japan in these waters. Given its proximity, China has taken the lead in investigating the disaster and monitoring the spill, but it has faced some criticism for what some see as a slow and inadequate response thus far.

Officials in Beijing announced on Feb. 1 that samples of fish taken within four to five nautical miles of the sunken ship contained traces of petroleum hydrocarbons, suggesting possible condensate contamination; they pledged to expand the range of testing to 90 miles, and closely monitor fish coming into markets.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Court approves threatened-species status for ringed seals in Alaska

February 13, 2018 — In a decision based on long-term climate projections, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed ringed seals in Alaska as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The ruling could result in limits on oil and gas projects and other activity in the Arctic. It reverses a 2016 decision by U.S. District Court Anchorage Judge Ralph Beistline.

The National Marine Fisheries Service in 2012 listed the Arctic ringed seal as threatened, based on long-term climate-model projections showing its sea-ice habitat shrinking.

The agency’s finding that the seal “was likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future – was reasonable and supported by the record,” the appeal court’s decision says.

The state of Alaska, the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, and other groups had challenged the listing.

In a related case, the U.S. Supreme Court in January decided not to review the appeals court’s conclusion upholding the threatened listing of Alaska’s bearded seal.

The bearded and ringed seals are “closely related,” the appeals court said Monday. The bearded-seal case adjudicated the same issues, and the court is bound by that precedent, the appeals court said.

The Alaska Oil and Gas Association, the state of Alaska and other plaintiffs had challenged that listing as well.

Kara Moriarty, president of AOGA, called the decisions disappointing. She said there are millions of bearded and ringed seals worldwide.

“The ESA listing was made despite a lack of sufficient scientific evidence to suggest that the species would be threatened any time in the near future,” Moriarty said. “Under such a standard, virtually any and all species could be listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA. All this will do is add additional cost and burden to our industry for seals with extremely healthy populations.”

Kristen Monsell, senior attorney for Center for Biological Diversity, a defendant in the case along with the federal government, said NMFS will implement a recovery plan for the ringed seal and designate critical habitat. The agency in 2014 proposed critical habitat for the seal off Alaska’s northern and western coasts.

To protect the threatened seals, the federal government could set limits affecting industrial activity, Monsell said. Agencies may require, say a re-route of pipeline construction plans, or stopping noisy work during birthing seasons.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Why are Pacific Cod Stocks Crashing?

February 13, 2018 — “The status of Pacific cod is probably the biggest fishery issue facing Kodiak right now, with the quota cut 80 percent for 2018,” said Mike Litzow, a University of Alaska Fairbanks associate professor at the Kodiak Seafood and Marine Science Center.

Pacific cod stocks have collapsed, possibly because recruitment (production of young fish to enter the population) has been very low during a recent string of incredibly warm years in the Gulf of Alaska, he said.

Scientists don’t know why cod stocks are shrinking. The leading hypothesis is that warmer temperatures increase the metabolic rates of young cod, and their food sources don’t supply enough energy.

There’s a sticking point—there’s not enough data to test the theory. Studies of fish ecology and population dynamics in Alaska are overwhelmingly conducted in the summer. Almost nothing is known about wintertime ecology of juvenile Pacific cod.

To help provide answers, Litzow and fisheries oceanographer Alisa Abookire embarked on a pilot study this month to collect information about habitat use, diet and energetics of juvenile cod.

They are sampling the fish with a beach seine and taking ocean water data aboard a semi-enclosed 22 foot skiff. To stay warm they wear insulated paddling suits.

Litzow and Abookire are collaborating with scientists at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore., who have been studying juvenile cod in Kodiak over the last 12 years. The pilot study is funded by the Ocean Phoenix Fund through the University of Alaska Foundation.

Read the full story at Alaska Native News