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University of Alaska Fairbanks divers have gathered nearly 200 recently settled juvenile red king crabs, using artificial collectors. The collectors were deployed in May 2010 off Indian Point near Juneau by boat, and retrieved in late July using scuba and other methods. The collectors have an outer skin of tubular plastic netting stuffed with conditioned gillnet or artificial seaweed.It took one week to retrieve and process nearly 60 collectors with the help of University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate students Ben Daly, Miranda Westphal, Jodi Pirtle, and Jon Richar, and laboratory technicians Jaspri Sylvan and Melissa Rhodes-Reese.The purpose of the study was to determine the best method for collecting early juvenile king crabs. Similar studies were conducted in 2008 and 2009 near Juneau to...

On August 9th, NOAA Fisheries adopted a catch-share program for West Coast trawl fishing that for the first time will make a major shift in how groundfish are managed, one that can benefit both fish and fishermen and lead to economic efficiencies that are difficult to obtain under traditional management schemes.The new approach does away with the conventional practice of setting a fleet-wide quota of how many fish can be caught and then letting fishermen compete with each other to catch as much of that quota as possible before the fishery is closed. Instead, the new system divides the total quota into shares controlled by individual fishermen. Those shares can be caught whenever the fisherman wants, ideally more efficiently and at more profitable marketing times.The new system has the supp...

What do you get when you cross an Atlantic salmon with a northern pike? We may soon find out, as the Atlantic salmon species is one step closer to having its genome fully sequenced.Vancouver, BC-based Genome BC has partnered with the Chilean Economic Development Agency, InnovaChile, Norwegian Research Council, Norwegian Fishery and Aquaculture Industry Research Fund to form an international co-op to sequence the Atlantic salmon genome, and claim they are well underway on a multi-million dollar project that will identify and map all of the genes in the Atlantic salmon genome, and can act as a reference/guide sequence for the genomes of other salmonids, including Pacific salmon, rainbow trout and more distantly related fish such as smelt and pike.Therein lies the problem. With a map of the g...

By Dan Bacher On August 17, the Partnership for Sustainable Oceans (PSO), a coalition of conservation and fishing industry organizations, announced that it "fully supports" the request by Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro to delay the implementation of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's fast-track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative on the North Coast.Chesbro recently asked California Resources Secretary Lester Snow for a six-month delay in the controversial process to allow more time to develop a plan that balances marine conservation with access for the public and traditional user groups. To date, Snow has not responded to Chesbro's request."I have met with Resources Secretary Lester Snow and strongly urged him to slow down the process and that no action be taken by the Blue Ribbon Ta...

Salmon Feedlots in the Broughton Archipelago are operating on Crown Land tenures that have been expired for years. Last week biologist Alexandra Morton applied for these licences to return them to their natural state to grow wild fish to the much greater benefit of British Columbians and the BC economy.Crown Land is public land that the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL) leases to people and companies. MAL is also in charge of regulating the salmon feedlots.“I don’t know how these foreign companies can be in full production for years on expired tenures, but these sites are the fishiest places in the Broughton where we once found the highest concentrations of herring, salmon, prawns and other species,” says biologist Alexandra Morton, “I have made detailed application to MAL to use the...

A NOAA scientist, Dr. Bill Lehr, last week told a group of Congressional staff investigators on a conference call that a controversial National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report claiming that nearly three-quarters of the oil from the Gulf oil spill has already been addressed was released by White House officials and not scientists at NOAA. The NOAA scientist told congressional investigators that the data backing up the assertions made in the report is still unavailable and that peer review of the report is still not complete. Officials at an August 4 White House press briefing had said that the report had been thoroughly peer reviewed. “This is yet another in a long line of examples where the White House’s pre-occupation with the public relations of the oil spill has sup...

Chris Goldblatt, Gold Leaf SustainableTo set the record straight, I do not represent the commercial fishery or any other interest. I am acting solely out of my deepest sense of right and wrong. The Marine Protected Areas (MPA) will not remove the existing, complex fishing regulations; they will be in addition to them.I recently attended a meeting at the Double Tree in Santa Barbara, California. The Department of Fish and Game-assisted meeting was technically public and formally intended to field ideas about how the marine protected areas were to be monitored once they were established.My wife and I showed up bright eyed and bushy tailed. It was just us, two former abalone divers looking down the barrel of 30 or so hard core pro MPA people, most of them scientists, university heads and Pack...

Attorney Stuart H. Smith, representing the United Commercial Fishermen's Association, the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, public and private entities, and citizens harmed by the BP oil catastrophe, today issued this statement:"Independent water and seafood testing and analyses by Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery experts reveal that highly toxic chemicals remain in the water and food chain. These toxins pose a significant risk to marine reproduction and human consumption of Gulf seafood."The greatest concern is the presence of chemicals known as PAHs (or polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons), which have carcinogenic properties. Our studies have shown that PAHs are present in shrimp from the impacted Gulf areas of the spill at 10 times the levels found in shrimp from inland, low-impacted area...

From its genesis as the Revenue Marine, the Coast Guard has evolved to become the world’s premiere multi-mission, maritime service, conducting operations around the globe to execute its 11 missions.“Coast Guardsmen are agile, adaptable and multi-missioned,” said Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert J. Papp, Jr. “Born as revenue cuttermen, lighthouse keepers, steamboat inspectors and surfmen, we have expanded to meet the maritime needs of our nation. As Coast Guard men and women, we share a bond of pride in our rich heritage and a common purpose to uphold our honorable traditions.”The Coast Guard began its service to America in 1790 within the Treasury Department as the Revenue Marine, later renamed the Revenue Cutter Service. The Revenue Cutter Service joined with the US Lifesaving Service i...

The nation's farmers could face new restrictions on the use of pesticides as environmentalists and fishermen’s groups, spurred by a favorable ruling from a federal judge in Washington state, want the courts to force federal regulators to protect endangered salmon and steelhead from the ill effects of many commonly used agricultural chemicals. The eight-year-old ruling by a federal Judge in Seattle required the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review whether 54 pesticides, herbicides and fungicides were jeopardizing troubled West Coast salmon runs.The agencies moved recently to restrict the use of three of these chemicals, methomyl, carbofuran and carbaryl, near bodies of water that flow into salmon-bearing streams, and they're consid...