News – Page 40 – Fishermens News

New Reports Outline Changes in Alaska Marine Ecosystems

New ecosystem reports by NOAA Fisheries cover the impact of climate change on Alaska’s marine ecosystems in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands, including heatwave periods and sustained warm conditions. NOAA scientists note that the Gulf of Alaska has been in transition since marine heatwave periods that took place from 2014 through 2016 and again in 2019, with some marine populations decreasing and others increasing. The year 2021 was the second consecutive year without such conditions. Mixed trends were noted in the prey base in the Gulf, with the abundance of zooplankton that provides food for fish, whales and other marine life either below average or average overall. The abundance of forage fish, including herring and age-one Pollock, was higher than in previous ye...

New ASMI Board Member Urges More Domestic Seafood Processing

In an economy challenged by a global pandemic and rising transportation costs, more Alaska seafood should be processed in the United States and more effort put into increasing domestic consumption, according to veteran Kodiak seafood harvester, processor and marketer Duncan Fields. “With transportation costs going up, I think there are opportunities for companies to process more seafood in America,” said Fields, who was appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy in January to a harvester seat on the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. Fields, who holds a law degree from the University of Oregon School of Law, began fishing commercially in Alaska in 1960. He is the owner and marketer for Fields Wild Salmon in Kodiak, and is also a fisheries consultant. He has served on the North Pacific Fishery Ma...

New Anchovy Protections Seen as Boost for Ocean Health

A new management framework for the anchovy population adopted in November by the Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC) goes into effect in January, requiring a regular review of anchovy numbers and adjusting catch levels as needed based on annual abundance surveys and other information. The independent non-profit Pew Charitable Trusts hailed that change as a more responsive, holistic management approach, which will benefit more than 50 species of marine wildlife, from albacore tuna and Chinook salmon to least terns and humpback whales. The PEW report notes that fishery managers had for years used fixed-catch limits, no matter how much the anchovy population or ocean health declined. In addition, for more than two decades, management of California’s anchovy population was based on i...

New ASMI Report Hails Seafood Industry as Essential Driver of Alaska Economy

An updated economic report on Alaska’s seafood industry says preliminary 2021 data reflects a partial rebound in the wake of a 2020 season when the industry suffered from widespread impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic and biological issues in several key fisheries. Information included in the 2022 update of “The Economic Value of Alaska’s Seafood Industry” report, released Jan. 12 by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, notes that unlike previous years, economic impacts were calculated solely on 2019 data as opposed to averaging two years of data. “While the report includes some 2020 data, averaging 2019 data with the pandemic-disrupted 2020 season would not produce an accurate picture of the seafood industry’s economic impact in Alaska,” said Jim Calvin, vice president of McKi...

$50 Million in CARES Act Funding Disbursed to Alaska Fisheries

A total of $50 million in fishery assistance secured through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act was mailed in mid-December to commercial harvesters, sport fishing charters and seafood processors in Alaska. The funding came as a result of efforts by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to make direct assistance available to subsistence, commercial, and charter fishery participants, processors, fishery-related businesses and fishery-dependent communities that have been negatively affected by the economic and other impacts of COVID-19. “Alaska’s fisheries and seafood sector are a critical driver of our state’s economy, employing more than 58,000 people and producing billions of dollars in economic output in our state each year,” Murkowski said. “As I worked to help craft ...

Togiak Herring Forecast is Robust

The mature herring biomass forecast for 2022 is 357,536 tons, Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials say, which is the highest forecast since an age-structured assessment model was first used in 1993. Given the 20% exploitation rate, the coming year’s potential harvest is 71,507 tons in all fisheries and 65,107 tons in the Togiak sac roe fisheries, which are harvested with purse seine and gillnet gear. The gear group allocation specified in the Bristol Bay Herring Management Plan is for 80% purse seine and 20% gillnet. Togiak herring are targeted for their roe, but those markets have been declining in recent years. A year ago, the harvest forecast was for 47,348 tons of herring in all Togiak fisheries and 42,639 tons in the Togiak sac roe purse seine and gillnet harvest. “The ...

Report Advocates for Protection of Coastal Ecosystems

Climate change impacts on coastal ecosystems call for steps to protect these economically valuable coastlines for current and future fisheries, say the authors of the latest “SeaBank” report from the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust. The physical and biological diversities of salmon-producing watersheds are globally unique, according to the report, which was released in early December by the nonprofit Sitka, Alaska-based trust. The report takes a multi-disciplinary approach to identifying and assessing the value of the Southeast Alaska ecosystem. “The 2020 SeaBank report underscores that Southeast Alaska is one of the most productive ecosystems in the world,” said Linda Behnken, a veteran commercial longline harvester who’s a trust founder and executive director of the Alaska Longlin...

Plans to Demolish Former LA Cannery Draw Objections

A plan by the Port of Los Angeles to demolish a long shuttered cannery is drawing fire from area residents who say that a new use should be found for the building, which some consider historic due to its connection to the area’s commercial fishing past. The Port of LA wants to demolish the former StarKist plant to create “a parcel of land that is more marketable for future development,” along with removing safety hazards, according to a late December article in the Daily Breeze newspaper. The article also states that the port’s wish to demolish the long-empty StarKist cannery building, located in San Pedro—an LA area that’s known for its connection to maritime commerce— is bringing objections from those who say a new use should be found for the structure that was a central part of the po...

Ocean Enterprise Businesses See 60% Growth

A cluster of businesses providing essential services in support of sustainable use of ocean resources in the global “Blue Economy” continues to grow, with upwards of 800 firms nationwide now helping to take the pulse of the planet, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report. The study, which analyzes trends in ocean enterprise, identifies how the businesses are responding to opportunities in the $2 trillion Blue Economy and how the scale and scope of this industry cluster has evolved since 2015. “Ocean Enterprise businesses provide observational technology and equipment essential to NOAA’s mission to take the pulse of the planet,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said. “These businesses are also important users of NOAA’s publicly available data that they turn ...

NOAA Fisheries Develops New Approach to Evaluate Changing Fish Productivity

NOAA Fisheries scientists say they have developed a new modeling approach to evaluate the changing productivity of fish populations as ocean temperatures continue to warm. This new approach was used to evaluate productivity for Alaska Pollock and Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska. They found that for Alaska Pollock and especially Pacific cod, sea surface temperatures in the Gulf are already less conducive to successful fish development, growth and survival than in recent decades. Fish productivity is determined by estimating how many fish survive from the egg and larvae stages annually to become adults. According to Mike Litzow, director of the Kodiak laboratory of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, a critical step in climate change adaptation is the ability to effectively evaluate t...