Issue: February 2022

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 ...

NOAA Fisheries has two new supervisors for its Alaska bottom trawl surveys: Duane Stevenson for the Bering Sea survey; and Ned Laman for the Gulf of Alaska/Aleutian Islands survey. Stevenson is a research fishery biologist whose expertise is in taxonomy and evolutionary relationships of marine fish. His research focuses on the identification and distribution of fish in Alaska’s marine ecosystems. Stevenson has also worked with the North Pacific Groundfish Observer Program, training observers to identify fish and invertebrates for over two decades. He also designs and implements quality control measures and analyzes patterns in fishery-dependent and fishery-independent distribution data. Laman has been part of the Gulf of Alaska-Aleutian Islands bottom trawl group for over 18 years, co...

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...

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 ...

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...

A new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommends that the Defense Department determine whether it has authority to continue working with other nations to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing at sea. The report, released publicly by the GAO on Dec. 6, notes that the U.S. works internationally to combat IUU fishing. The Defense Department, for example, leads a program to build maritime security and maritime law enforcement capabilities among African nations, but Defense Department officials told the GAO that due to a change in U.S. law, it’s no longer clear that the DOD has authority to conduct all aspects of this program, the report states. The U.S. is a member of nine regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs), treaty-based organizations of n...

In December, U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan (both R-Alaska) introduced the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force Act, legislation that would create a panel stakeholders and research experts to study Pacific salmon trends and create a coordinated research strategy to support salmon management in Alaska. The task force would be directed to conduct a comprehensive review of Pacific salmon science relevant to understanding and managing salmon returns in Alaska, and publish a report, within one year of convening, to provide recommendations identifying knowledge and research gaps and further research priorities for salmon in Alaska. “It is difficult to overstate the importance of salmon to Alaska, our communities, our economy and our traditional way of life,” Sullivan said in a st...