Issue: February 2024

NOAA Fisheries has issued a report on 31 years of killer whale entanglements in Alaska, saying that additional research is needed to learn more about the behavior of the orcas to speed development of innovations to reduce the number of whales trapped in commercial fishing nets. Researchers noted that suggestions and innovations by harvesters to reduce killer whale gear interactions could be applied statewide. The summary report covers 37 orca entanglements from 1991 through 2022, including 30 in the Bering Sea, one in the Arctic, one in the Gulf of Alaska and five in Southeast Alaska. The reported cases included 20 whales entangled in trawl gear, 10 in longline gear, two in pot gear, two in kelp gear and one each in a mix of gear, anchorage line and unknown line. Of the trawl net entang...

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) has increased the Hawaii longline fishery catch limit of bigeye tuna to 6,554 metric tons, a jump of 3,000 metric tons. The Dec. 11 announcement came from the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council following the conclusion of the 20th regular session of the commission at Rarotonga, Cook Islands. The revised tropical tuna conservation and management measure (CMM) is expected to be in effect from 2024 through 2026. The CMM increases catch limits for five nations with fishing limits for longline-caught bigeye contingent on reports from human observers and/or electronic monitoring. The measure, which covers nearly 60% of the global tuna supply, establishes international rules for bigeye, skipjack and yellowfin tuna harv...

Want to learn how the Pacific Ocean is likely to change and affect salmon survival in the coming year? Stay tuned, scientists say. The ocean indicators that NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center researchers track off Newport, on the Central Oregon Coast, are decidedly mixed for the coming year. El Niño is still developing at the equator and there are both positive and negative indicators in local waters for emerging salmon. The ocean indicators of juvenile salmon survival — now online — reflect a rapidly changing ocean that is tough to predict. “We’re not seeing any clear direction as we sometimes have before,” Jennifer Fisher, a research fisheries biologist at the Science Center’s Newport Research Station, said. “The overall message is that the system is unsettled. We’d like to be a...

NOAA Fisheries on Dec. 26 announced that it has introduced a new communications tool called the Ecosystem and Socioeconomic Profile (ESP), in order to move toward the application of ecosystem-based fisheries management. The tool’s purpose is to facilitate integration of ecosystem and socioeconomic information into fisheries management decisions by distilling information from a variety of sources into a succinct, focused report to help resource managers in decision-making. The ESP was first conceived in 2014, building on NOAA Fisheries’ history, dating back to the 1990s, of identifying ecosystem and socioeconomic pressures. “The ESP gives managers a streamlined version of what affects each fish stock,” said Alaska Fisheries Science Center biologist Kalei Shotwell, who initiated developme...