March 2023 – Page 3 – Fishermens News

Pacific Northwest Fisheries: A Bird’s Eye View

The complex story of Cascadian fisheries defies a simple narrative, but seems mostly positive—minus the El Niño and Oregon quillback mystery. Commercial fisherfolk don’t need an article to know that Earth in the 2020s is a dynamic—some would say pretty insane—time and place, but the next fishing season is eternal. From a macro level, how did Pacific Northwest fisheries fare in 2022? How do they look in 2023? What environmental or economic factors should fishermen from the owner-operator to seasonal deckhand keep in mind? Read on for some intel of what’s to come. El Niño Possibility and Hypoxic Zone Considerations “I’ve just heard the first predictions of what the ocean is going to look like off our coast, and there is a very early … prediction out of NOAA that this will be a stro...

Vessel Profile: North River Boats’ Sounder

A workboat by Oregon-based North River Boats ushers in a new Sounder family of vessels. North River Boats has built the new 26-foot survey vessel Sounder for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) of Los Angeles. The Sounder is the flagship for a larger series of customizable workboats at North River Boats, based in Roseburg, Ore., that can be scaled from 23 feet to 60 feet in length with beams ranging from 8 feet, 6 inches to 16 feet. For the company, the combination of the boat hull, trailer-able size, topline outfitting and electronic configuration puts the Sounder in play as the most versatile survey vessel of its size on the market. The vessel was on display at the 2022 International Workboat Show in New Orleans. Inception and Construction According to North River Boats’ ...

Vessel Profile: The Turbo-Powered Triple Jet Gillnetter from Hades

“It’s a monster.” Cummins Inc. and Elliott Bay Design Group team up for a highliner-oriented Bristol Bay boat. Imagine you’re aboard grandpa’s fiberglass gillnetter on Bristol Bay for yet another (hopefully) gangbusters salmon season. Another gillnetter zooms past at 20 knots propelled by triple UltraJet 340HTs with a full load of fish in the hold. “I hear that thing can carry 20,000 pounds!” Grandpa says. No way, Gramps is spreading bar-side gossip again, you think. Such a scene is closer to reality than one might believe. A partnership between Cummins Inc’s Mike Fourtner—who in addition to being commercial marine sales manager of Cummins is a working Bristol Bay fisherman—and Seattle-based Elliott Bay Design Group (EBDG) have led to what is at the time of this writing officially...

Let’s Fight For Salmon, Not Over Them

The reality is that salmon-dependent fishing families are the ultimate victims of widespread salmon declines, not their cause. At the time of this writing in late January, prospects for 2023’s California, Oregon and Washington ocean commercial, recreational and Tribal salmon seasons are bleak. Ocean salmon abundance projections are so low that broad closures may be a “weak stock management” necessity, simply to keep already severely diminished Coho and Chinook stocks from extinction. The West Coast fishing industry is actually at the tail end of decades of salmon abundance declines. The onrushing threats of climate change bringing more droughts will only exacerbate these problems. The two questions salmon-dependent communities need to ask now are “Why is this happening?” and also “What...

From the Editor – Borealization

The first-ever cancellation of Alaska’s Bering Sea snow crab harvest due to population declines was a shock to the state’s fishing industry last fall, but in the decades to come, the ocean conditions that triggered the snow crab crash and harvest closure are expected to become common. This is according to according to several scientists who gave presentations at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium that took place in late January. Mike Litzow, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist based in Kodiak, Alaska said that the conditions that triggered the crash can be expected about once every seven years. By the 2040s, those conditions can be expected to occur one out of every three years, he said. Litzow said that the cause of the snow crab disaster is something called...