Summer Crab Survey Has Industry Concerned

Results of the 2016 Eastern Bering Sea continental shelf bottom trawl survey are out, prompting industry concern that while Bristol Bay red king crab is about status quo with last year, the outlook for snow crab and tanner crab may be less rosy.

The standardized survey is conducted every year by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. This year’s technical memorandum on the survey is online at http://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Kodiak/shellfish/crabEBS/2016_tech_memo_final_draft_comp.pdf.

Ruth Christianson, the science and policy analyst for Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers in Seattle, says that in general red king crab stocks have been pretty steady, and while the total allowable catch might be down slightly this year, it should be relatively on par with previous years.

For tanner crab, the survey numbers are down quite dramatically, especially for eastern section mature females, and those numbers haven’t been that low in many, many years, she said. Water temperatures have a dramatic effect on crab behavior and because of that it has a dramatic effect on catchability rates for the survey, because the standardized survey goes to the same locations in the same season every year. An increase or decrease in water temperature will affect where crab are found, and this is one of the warmest years on record, both on the sea surface and ocean bottom, so it is possible the crab are just in a different place, she said. Starting next year and then every other year thereafter, NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center will be doing a northern Bering Sea Arctic survey, she said.

The survey report goes now to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Crab Plan Team, which meets in Seattle Sept. 20-23. It will also be reviewed by the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, during the council’s Anchorage meeting in October.

Christianson said that if the fisheries open for snow and bairdi, the total allowable catch would likely be less than last year, based on thresholds in state regulations.

Dismal Pink Salmon Harvest Prompts Call for Assistance

In what is being described as Alaska’s worst pink salmon season in 40 years, the state is being asked to lend a hand financially. Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, has asked Gov. Bill Walker to issue a disaster declaration for the pink salmon fishery, which has a total harvest to date of just over 36 million fish, compared to the preseason forecast of 90 million humpies. The disaster declaration would open the door to federal disaster aid for those affected.

Stutes also has asked the Alaska Division of Investments for a waiver of payments due this year from state funded loans to fishermen, so that those payments can be put on the end of their loan rather than paid this year.

Stutes, who chairs the Alaska House Fisheries Committee, said the procedure to allow for this is already provided for in existing loans, but because of the number of people likely to apply to skip this year’s payment, it would be more expedient for the state to not have to go through this for each individual loan. She said that those interested in the waiver should call the state at 1-800-478-loan prior to the due date on their loan payment.

Stutes said she approached the state agencies after going door-to-door in Kodiak and speaking with people impacted by the dismal harvest of pink salmon, including cannery workers.

“This has been a financial disaster to coastal communities, not having these fish landing,” she said. “It is affecting processors, fishermen, cannery workers, which affects every business in every one of these communities. We all depend on fishermen, fish, processors and our workers to keep a viable community and the fish are the main ingredient, and we are missing them this year,” she said.

BBRSDA Pilot Branding Project

Alaska’s Bristol Bay fish harvesters are testing the marketing waters of upscale Boulder, Colorado with a branding pilot project aimed at people who value sustainable food choices and want to know where their food really comes from.

To that end, the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, which represents the drift gillnet fleet that harvests the Bay’s famed sockeye salmon, has gone live with a colorful new website promoting the salmon, the region, and the fishermen, with links to 10 distributors and 11 processors of Bristol Bay salmon.

The website, www.bristolbaysockeye.com, designed by Anchorage public relations firm Rising Tide, features photos and videos of Bristol Bay, and recipes with photos for wild Alaska salmon, plus photos and profiles of five Bristol Bay harvesters from Washington State and Alaska. They are Pete Andrew, Dillingham, Alaska; Casey Coupchiak, Soldotna, Alaska; Fran Kaul, Washington State; Elijah Lawson, Seattle, and the O’Laire family, Homer, Alaska.

The campaign’s primary target is people from their mid-20s to late 30s, Millennials drawn to healthy, sustainable food choices and eager to support foods in line with those values. The campaign theme of “wild taste” and “amazing place”, telling the story of the Bay, its salmon and its fishermen, is also designed to appeal to other secondary demographics, including baby boomers in their 50s through early 70s, the BBRSDA said. Boulder is an upper middle class community, where the estimated median family income in 2011 was estimated at $113,681.

The promotion will include Bristol Bay point of sale materials, including recipe cards, recipe posters, printed fish wrap paper and stickers, branded bibs, and specialty mugs. The campaign will also include retail training and working in partnership with Chefs Collaborative to launch Bristol Bay Sockeye Salmon as a leading premium seafood brand.

The test period will run through year’s end with strategic touch points built in to measure retailer participation, effectiveness of training tools, consumer preferences for the branding and, ultimately, will measure sales performance at the retail level.

The BBRSDA plans to produce a year-end project report along with strategic recommendations for launching this effort nationwide in 2017.

Transfer of Alaska CFEC Functions Put on Hold

A plan to move some administrative functions from the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has been put on hold to allow for public comment.

The announcement from Alaska Gov. Bill Walker on Aug. 25 came in the wake of the governor’s decision back in February to issue an administrative order to transfer certain CFEC administrative functions to ADF&G as a cost-saving measure. The governor said he felt that in an effort to save on administrative costs he had bypassed an important step in any restructuring of state government- public engagement and feedback.

“The vital stakeholder input will help determine the best course of action needed to find a path forward for the fishing industry, individual Alaskans, and the affected state agencies,” he said.

Alaska is in the midst of a fiscal crisis brought on by a drop in oil prices.

The Walker administration has been looking to cut administrative costs wherever possible, including sharing administrative resources and streamlining services.

The objective of Administrative Order 279 was to streamline administrative and research functions of the agencies, identify cost-saving measures, and provide appropriate support to the commercial fishing industry in Alaska without negatively impacting the fishing industry.

United Fishermen of Alaska and Robert Thorstenson Jr. challenged the administrative order with a lawsuit.

Then on July 21, Alaska Superior Court Judge Louis James Menendez ruled in favor of the state, saying that “at this current time, any alleged conflict between the AO and the CFEC is purely hypothetical.

Walker said the state would now pursue input from Alaska’s commercial fishing industry after the conclusion of the fishing season this fall.

Max Worhatch, president of United Southeast Alaska Gillnetters, and a UFA board member, said he was “very pleased and supportive of the governor’s action and looking forward to working with him on this.

“He is willing to discuss it with us, which is more than refreshing,” Worhatch said.

UFA contended in its lawsuit that the reorganization or transfer of CFEC’s functions and duties established in statute by the Legislature are outside of the control of the governor and cannot be accomplished without an executive order or a bill adopted by the Legislature.

Wakefield Fisheries Symposium Will Focus on Climate Change

The 31st Wakefield Fisheries Symposium, set for May 9-12, 2017 in Anchorage, will focus on impacts of the environment on dynamics of Arctic and subarctic species of commercial, subsistence and ecological importance.

Hans-Otto Portner of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany is to be the keynote speaker, Alaska Sea Grant officials said.

Portner heads the Integrative Ecophysiology group at the Institute and was the coordinating lead author of the Ocean Systems chapter of the fifth climate change impact assessment report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change.

The symposium will focus on effects of warming, loss of sea ice, ocean acidification, and oceanographic variability on the distribution, phenology, life history, population dynamics, and interactions of these species, and how a better understanding can inform management of fish and invertebrates in a changing ocean to benefit affected communities, Sea Grant officials said.

Co-chairs of the symposium steering are Franz Mueter, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and Anne Hollowed, of the NOAA Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Also invited to speak are Anna Neuheimer, University of Hawaii; Christian Mollmann, University of Hamburg; Brad Seibel, University of South Florida; Charles Stock, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and Kathy Mills, Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

The Alaska Sea Grant College Program coordinates and sponsors the symposium in partnership with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries Service, and North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

More information is online at www.seagrant.uaf.edu/conferences/2017/wakefield-fish-dynamics/.

Icicle Sues Maersk over Damaged Shipment

Icicle Seafoods has filed a lawsuit in US District Court for the Southern District of New York against Maersk for $85,070 in damages, after a shipment of frozen Pacific cod from Dutch Harbor was declared unfit for sale to the customer in Spain.

Icicle contends, in the lawsuit filed in New York on Aug. 12, that there was negligence on the part of the Danish international container shipping firm or its subcontractors regarding the shipment of 810 bags of frozen Pacific cod.

The litigation notes that a consignment of 810 bags of frozen Pacific cod in a refrigerated container was delivered in good condition about Feb. 17, 2015 to Maersk at Dutch Harbor for transport to Vigo, Spain. The shipment left aboard the M/V Lindavis about Feb. 17 and was discharged at Tanjung Pelepas Container Terminal in Malaysia on March 30, due to alleged temperature anomalies.

The consignment was then put into a reefer container on March 31 and held for inspection. On April 22, 2015, a cargo inspector at Malaysia deemed the cargo unfit for sale to the intended customer, the lawsuit said.

The cargo was then returned to the Port of Tacoma on Aug. 14, where it was determined to be unfit for human consumption and destroyed.

Meanwhile Icicle submitted a claim to Maersk on April 17 for damages sustained.

On March 23, 2016, Maersk advised Icicle that they considered Aug. 14, 2015 to be the final discharge date and that the one year statue of limitations would expire on Aug. 14, 2016.

According to Icicle, the invoice value of the consignment was $76,152, and additional shipping costs of $8,917 brought the total loss to $85,070.

Saildrone Technology Tracks Pursuit of Pollock by Fur Seals

Fisheries researchers using Saildrones surveyed more than 1,700 miles within the fur seal foraging area of the Bering Sea this summer, measuring and locating walleye pollock that are the main food source for northern fur seals.

The unmanned drones are giving the Alaska Fisheries Science Center new insight into foraging habits of female northern fur seals, whose populations have been dwindling since the 1970s, says Carey Kuhn, an ecologist with the center, who has been blogging the project.

The next step will be analyzing all the data from the fur seal tags and devices on the Saildrones, an effort that will take Kuhn and her colleague, fisheries biologist Alex De Robertis, a couple of months to process. Knowing where the pollock and other prey sought by the fur seals in summer months are available may help unravel the mystery of why the seal population continues to decline, she said.

The researchers tagged 30 adult female fur seals at their breeding grounds during the breeding season and in addition to returning to the breeding grounds in the fall to measure the tagged seals, they get diet analysis from scat in the rookeries and fish bones, Kuhn said.

Reduced prey availability is just one hypothesis for the decline of the fur seal population. Before any decisions are made that would affect related management of the pollock fishery, Center researchers need to understand what is going on with the ecology of the fur seals. “Our goal isn’t to make those types of decisions without strong scientific backing,” Kuhn said.

Once the data is compiled it goes to NOAA’s Alaska regional office, which oversees the northern fur seal conservation plan, and it is there that any management decisions are made.