July 2023 – Page 3 – Fishermens News

Bristol Bay Fishery Report: Sockeye Salmon Still Strong After Record 2022; Togiak Herring Fishery Canceled in 2023

While one commercial fishery in the Bristol Bay and Bering Sea area is coming off a record-breaking year, another didn’t even open this year due to lack of interest. As the largest sockeye salmon producing region in Alaska, Bristol Bay exceeded historic benchmarks with record-breaking inshore numbers reported in 2022. Following the hefty stock last year, the total run for 2023 is predicted to be smaller, but still strong. The outlook for the Togiak herring fishery is also robust, but the purchasing market is floundering. Fish processors indicated earlier this year that they did not intend to harvest herring in Togiak in 2023, so there will be no commercial fishery this spring, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG). This is the first time in several decades that To...

Maybe Someday? A 319-Foot, Made-for-USA Trawler Concept

As I walked among exhibitors at the Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle last winter, a 319-foot design rendering of a factory trawler at the Elliott Bay Design Group (EBDG) display caught my eye. Advertised as the ideal addition to the pollock fleet in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, the vessel concept was specifically meant to maximize ease of construction and affordability for U.S. shipyards. I later caught up with Jim Towers, EBDG‘s chief concept engineer, who designed the build, to get the inside scoop. Towers has been in the naval-architect-and-design industry for nearly 50 years and has worked with EBDG for around 16 years. According to Towers, the 319-foot factory-trawler design was put together some years back for a potential client. “It was basically an AFA (American Fisheries ...

Some Skippers Sticking with Fiberglass on Bristol Bay

Last year’s record-breaking catch on Bristol Bay resulted in plenty of orders for new boats, with skippers predictably searching for the latest ideas to boost speed, capacity or efficiency. This demand for highly customized designs is great news for the Pacific Northwest aluminum boat builders that can quickly adapt a hull to accept any type and sizes of engine, outdrive, waterjet, and the latest trend, the movable reel. So the latest flood of orders barely caused a ripple in the handful of remaining fiberglass shops, whose entire business model centers on one or two 32-foot molds that produce identical fairly narrow hulls with a single engine. This makes a fiberglass hull very much a “take it or leave it” proposition unless a builder was prepared to re-tool the whole operation with ...

Joint NIOSH-USCG Grant Program Provides Funds for Improving Commercial Fishing Safety

You’re a Dungeness crab fisherman. It’s 4:30 p.m. on a cold and rapidly darkening January day. It has been a great day, with a catch like you have never seen. You and your crew are pulling the last of your pots when you look over and see one of your crew not looking right. A crew member is standing near the winch with his left arm bending the wrong direction. He’s not saying anything, but he’s wet and starting to shiver. You are 30 miles offshore and even further back to port. The seas are building, winds picking up and the clouds are dropping. This scenario is part of Fishermen First Aid Safety Training (FFAST), developed by Oregon State University (OSU) and Oregon Sea Grant, to address the specific first aid needs of commercial fishermen responding to workplace injuries on their vess...

Finally—A U.S. Ocean Climate Action Plan

The Earth’s oceans are fragile ecosystems that nevertheless provide essential protein to about 3.3 billion people. We ignore the potential ocean impacts of accelerating climate change at great peril to this major world food supply and to the 6% of the world’s economy represented by its seafood harvest and distribution sector. With so much recent research and concern about the onrushing impacts of climate change on land, its remarkable that so little attention has been paid to these impacts likely to hit our oceans. This is extremely short-sighted. Fortunately, some of this neglect is now being addressed—at least in the U.S.—by the first-ever U.S. Ocean Climate Action Plan (OCAP) released in March 2023. The OCAP includes three broad themes: (a) creating a carbon-neutral future; (b) impl...