March 2023 – Page 3 – Fishermens News

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...

Zooplankton Research Sheds Light on Future Northern Bering Sea Ecosystem

New NOAA Fisheries research exploring the impact of unprecedented losses of sea ice on the northern Bering Sea ecosystem has identified a decline in high-fat copepods that are an important food source for many predators, and expansion of smaller zooplankton with warming waters. From fish to whales, nearly every predator in the sea eats zooplankton or eats something that does, notes the study led by research oceanographer David G. Kimmel, with NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. The study concludes that this altered prey field may have contributed to ecosystem-wide impacts on fish, seabirds and marine mammals. The shift to smaller, more nearshore zooplankton may have contributed to dramatic impacts on commercially harvested fish, protected seabirds and marine mammals in r...

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...