Global Fisheries Could See More Profit Despite Climate Change

Sustainable harvesting of seafood globally – over the next 75 years – could provide more food and profits, despite warming seas, if adaptive management prices are implemented, according to a report on international research efforts by Japan’s Hokkaido University.

The report published on August 29 in the journal Science Advances is also available online through the American Association for the Advancement of Science website EurekAlert.

Researchers said their conclusions take into consideration the projected fish populations decline as the ocean warms and habitats change.

The study points out that under a best management scenario, some major fish and shellfish stocks that are commercially harvested will grow and become more profitable offsetting others projected to shrink or even disappear. It also indicates that on a global average, profitability could rise by 14 billion US dollars and harvest by 217 million metric tons above today’s levels.

In the model used for the study, growth would be achieved under the projected moderate warming of 2.2 degrees Celsius (3.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above average global temperatures by 2100. But if temperatures rise further, global fish harvest and profits are expected to decline below today’s levels even with best management practice in place.

Their message, researchers said, is that oceans can continue to be a source of healthy seafood and sustainable livelihoods for billions of people only if actions are taken to manage stocks well and limit the carbon emissions that drive climate change.

“By working toward development of adaptive fishery management strategies and committing to international agreements for climate change mitigation and emission reductions, the future may be overall brighter than so far anticipated,” said Jorge Garcia Molinos an aquatic ecologist at Hokkaido University. Still this potentially brighter future appears unattainable for nearly half of the 915 species and mixed groups of species analyzed, and the tropics will be especially hard hit, he indicated.

Researchers said their work represents the first such study incorporating both climate change projections and alternative management approaches into predictions of future fishery status.

Participants in the study were from Hokkaido University, the University of California Santa Barbara, National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, and the Environmental Defense Fund. Their work was funded by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports Science and Technology and three private US foundations.

Alaska’s Salmon Harvest 31 Percent Below Forecast

A preliminary review of 2018 Alaska commercial salmon fishing season released by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) in late August notes the harvest is 31 percent below the preseason forecast of 147 million fish and not likely to recover by season’s end.

Most of that shortfall has come from poor pink salmon returns to streams and rivers flowing into the Gulf of Alaska where the humpy harvest is about half of the preseason prediction. As of August 28, the preliminary harvest estimated by ADF&G was 105,862,000 salmon, including 49.6 million sockeyes, 38 million pinks, 15.4 million chums, 2.3 million cohos and 234,000 kings.

State biologists said several major sockeye salmon stocks had unexpected run timing this year. The peak run of Kvichak River sockeyes in the Bristol Bay watershed was 10 days later than average, making it the latest run since 1956. More than half of Kenai River late-run sockeyes returned in August, and Copper River sockeyes came back in three distinct pulses, the third happening in mid-July. These unusual run timing events created uncertainty for fishery managers and results in foregone harvest opportunity for commercial fishermen.

Still the fishing closures and restrictions allowed enough salmon passage to meet or exceed many established escapement goals, notably Yukon River summer and fall chum salmon, Canadian border king salmon passage, Kuskokwim River king salmon, Copper River sockeye and king salmon, all sockeyes and cohos in Upper Cook Inlet, Kenai River late-run kings and Unuk, Alsek and Keta river king salmon. Meeting those escapement goals bodes well for the probability that future salmon returns will provide harvestable surplus for all harvesters, the report reads.

ADF&G also noted that the three largest Alaska commercial salmon harvests to date occurred between 2013 and 2017. Back in the mid-1970s, harvests between 100 million and 150 million fish, like 2018, were far more common than harvests exceeding 200 million fish. The latter occurring only in seven seasons since 1975.

One of the highlights of the season was the Bristol Bay fishery, which saw the second largest sockeye harvest on record with nearly 42 million fish. It was the region fourth consecutive season with a harvest exceeding 35 million sockeyes. Also, on the plus side are Norton Sound, which is on track to exceed last year’s record coho salmon harvest, and the Kotzebue Sound with its chum harvest that should be among the top four ever recorded, biologists said.

ASMI/McDowell Group Notes Harvest Similarity to 2016

The latest weekly harvest report for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Association prepared by McDowell Group in Juneau, Alaska, notes that the state’s year-to-date harvest of some 105 million salmon is nearly identical to 2016 and generally below expectation.

The report was prepared by research analyst Garrett Evridge, a key member for the Seafood Market Information Service, conducted by McDowell on behalf of ASMI.

Evridge notes that pink salmon harvests to date are about four percent above the 2016 pace but remain slow compared to historical even-year harvests, with Southeast Alaska at 67 percent below the typical even-year numbers. The year-to-date keta volume is about a third lower than last year and 10 percent below the five-year average, while production in the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim (AYK) region continues to exceed expectations. Through August 28, the AYK region harvested 2.1 million fish, including 1.8 million chum, 297,000 coho, 76,000 pink, 3,000 sockeye and 1,000 kings. Of that total 727,000 chum came from the Lower Yukon River, 659,000 from the Kotzebue area and 231,000 from Norton Sound.

Evridge’s report also indicates that about 2.3 million silver salmon have been harvested statewide this year, roughly a quarter below the five-year average, and that relatively strong Chinook fishing over the past two weeks has pushed the year-to-date total of kings to near the 2017 level.

At Kodiak, the sockeye harvest last week totaled about 340,000 fish, the highest weekly harvest this year for that region.

Alaska’s Chignik Salmon Fishery Declared an Economic Disaster

The declaration by Alaska Gov. Bill Walker on August 23 includes the communities of Chignik, Chignik Lagoon, Chignik Lake, Perryville and Ivanof Bay, all of which depend on the availability of salmon for subsistence and commercial harvest.

“Chignik is used to catching more than a million sockeye every year,” Walker said. “This year they caught 128 fish. Salmon is the economic and subsistence staple in these communities and the failure of this year’s fishery is a one-two punch. It is critical that we do what we can to support them as they work to recover; that’s what we’re here for.”

The disaster declaration allows the Alaska Legislature to appropriate money for assistance grants and allows the governor to make budget recommendations to legislators to accelerate the region’s existing capital projects and provide funding for new ones.

Walker has also directed the state’s Division of Economic Development to commit as many resources as possible to assist salmon permit holders participating in the Commercial Fishing Revolving Loan program unable to meet terms of their loans because of the low harvest.

“Declaring an economic disaster increases the ability of the state’s Division of Economic Development to work with commercial fishermen impacted by the disaster,” noted Micaela Fowler, a policy analyst with Alaska Office of Management and Budget. “It allows for greater flexibility to repayment (of loan) plans.” And while an appropriations bill is needed to fund capital projects, economic disaster stats would allow for additional flexibility with procurement and hiring practices once the money is appropriated, she added.

Recycling Solutions Sought for Commercial Fishing Nets

The Alaska Net Hack Challenge set for September 8–9 in Anchorage and Kodiak will engage participants in creating prototype designs for products to be made from recycled fish nets.

The challenge was designed by Nicole Baker, a former North Pacific groundfish fishery observer and researcher at the University of Washington. Baker is also the founder of www.netyourproblem.com, an entity working with fishermen and recyclers to get thousands of pounds of discarded fishing nets turned into new plastic products.

Through her website, Baker is connecting with fishermen with old nets that need recycling, recyclers looking for raw materials, net manufacturers who want to be involved in responsible disposal of their products, and others who might offer financial support for this massive recycling endeavor.

Last summer Baker’s efforts helped ship nearly 240,000 pounds of nets from Dutch Harbor to the Danish company Plastix, which refines and pelletizes plastics for reuse in many items, including water bottles.

Baker is co-hosting the challenge with the Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association’s Alaska Ocean Cluster Initiative, whose goal is to create new businesses in Alaska and thousands of new jobs, based on the Blue Economy. In addition to the design contest, speakers Peter Murphy, the Alaska regional coordinator for the NOAA Marine Debris Program and Ky Holland of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Office of Intellectual Property and Commercialization, will discuss opportunities for entrepreneurial small businesses.

Baker said she is hopeful that people will start looking at those massive piles of old fishing nets as a resource that can be recycled into useful and valuable products.

More information on BEFA’s Alaska Ocean Cluster Initiative can be found online at https://www.bsfaak.org/alaska-ocean-cluster-initiative.

Lack of ‘Cold Pool’ Observed in Southern Bering Sea Trawl Survey

For the past 37 years, annual trawl surveys of the southern Bering Sea have identified a “cold pool” south of St. Lawrence Island, a natural barrier that kept Alaska Pollock and Pacific cod from swimming beyond that area. This year there was none.

“We did find Pollock and cod all the way up to the Bering Strait, but they were not concentrated in the normal areas,” says Lyle Britt, a veteran research fisheries biologist with NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center who was involved in the survey. “It appears that conditions are such now that we are moving into a warming phase and there is not clear evidence that we will move back into a cold phase, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a cold pool… because of the influx of climate change and weather,” he said.

The annual surveys, used in part by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to determine commercial groundfish allocations, collect data on everything, and that data, said Britt, goes into models that help assess the health of the habitat. Researchers trawl the bottom of each of dozens of measured squares in what has been considered a closed ecosystem and as they march across they expect fish to move around but that cold pool is critical to movement of the fish.

“Pollock and cod don’t want to go into the cold pool, because below 2 degrees Celsius their metabolic rates go down, so they can’t process food as well, they can become lethargic and they are not (long term) as reproductively fit,” Britt added. “We started realizing we were not seeing cold pool waters and there was not much ice last year. We also started to see that catches of Pollock and cod were lower than what we would historically see.”

Britt said the whole ecosystem is starting to look different, not just the commercial fishery, but cautioned that at this time the only hard data they have is the temperature data. “It is alarming to not have a cold pool for the first time in 37 years of the survey,” he said. “This can have some effect on distribution of the fishes, but until we have all the results from the survey processed, I don’t have any hard numbers to give you.”

Meanwhile there are no firm answers on whether the biomass of these groundfish has declined or these fish have moved outside the survey area.

Transboundary Mine Negotiations Criticized for Missing the Target

Alaska Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott and Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, have thanked Canadian government officials for their attention to transboundary mining issues, but say key areas of concern remain.

In their July 31 letter to Minister of Environment Catherin McKenna and Minister of International Trade James Carr, made public on August 21, they identified reclamation of the Tulsequah Chief mine site as one of those key areas, and urged their help in coordinating and facilitating British Columbia’s efforts to do so. They also urged the support of Canada’s government in establishing and funding a joint water quality monitoring program for salmon rich transboundary rivers that flow from British Columbia into Southeast Alaska.

The Tulsequah Chief mine, which operated from 1950 to 1957, and is currently in receivership, has been leaking acid mine drainage ever since.

Salmon Beyond Border, which represent commercial and sport fishermen and tribal groups on both sides of the border, thanked Mallott and Sullivan for writing the letter, but said they seem to have lost sight of the real issue. That is, they said, the need for binding international agreements and financial assurances to protect shared waters, rather than the continued pursuit of non-binding understandings that the group says hinder real action and liability.

Salmon Beyond Borders Campaign Director Jill Weitz said Teck Resources has been required to post more money in financial assurances for its one Alaska mine than for all five of its British Columbia coal mines that drain into Montana, despite their adverse impact on fish downstream in US rivers. Weitz also noted that Canadian taxpayers ended up footing the $40 million cleanup bill for the Imperil Metals’ Mount Polley disaster in the Fraser River watershed, which flows into the ocean just north of the Washington state line.