Oct. 16 Deadline Looms For Commercial Vessel Dockside Exams

Dockside safety exams for most commercial fishing vessels become mandatory in October and the US Coast Guard will be working through next spring to have all boats ready for next summer’s salmon fisheries.

Ken Lawrenson, the Coast Guard District 17 commercial fishing vessel safety coordinator, has been advising fishermen for the past two years about the approaching Oct. 16 deadline for all commercial fishing vessels that operate or fish more than three miles from the territorial sea baseline to get those mandatory dockside safety exams done.

“Exams are free and most vessels already have the safety equipment and documentation to pass a dockside safety exam,” he said.

To date 30 percent to 40 percent of some 3,200 vessels required to have these exams have done so and received their decals.

“The Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2010 introduces a number of new rules the Coast Guard will be enforcing,” Lawrenson said.

“The use of ‘three miles from the territorial sea baseline’ is a bit of a change from the existing regulation, which uses a complicated definition of the ‘boundary line’. It will be a lot easier to understand because most nautical charts show a thin grey line that indicates where that three miles from the territorial sea baseline is located, so it becomes very simple to see if you are operating seaward or shoreward of that line. If you are operating, either fishing or transiting your boat, beyond that three mile line, then the 16th of October deadline applies to you, and your fishing vessel needs to have completed a dockside safety exam.”

For fishermen living near a Marine Safety Detachment, the manpower to conduct these exams in readily available.

The problem will be for smaller fleets in remote geographic areas, such as Adak, St. Paul Island, Kuskokwim Bay, Norton Sound and St. Lawrence Island. Coast Guard officials plan to work into the spring to help bring these areas into compliance.

A letter from the Coast Guard to the commercial fishing industry explaining the dockside safety exam requirements is at www.fishsafe.info.

In Alaska, fishermen may contact the nearest Coast Guard Sector or Marine Safety Detachment to schedule an exam.

The contact phone numbers are: Ketchikan, 1-907-225-4496; Sitka, 1-907-966-5454; Juneau, 1-907-463-2448; Valdez, 1-907-835-7223; Homer, 1-907-235-3292; Kodiak, 1-907-486-5918; Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, 1-907-581-3466; and Anchorage, 1-907-271-6700.

For further information contact Lawrenson at his office at 1-907-463-2810, by cell phone at 1-907-32104110 or email at Kenneth.m.lawrenson@uscg.mil

Ninth Circuit Court Upholds West Coast Groundfish Catch Share Program

A federal appeals court in San Francisco has unanimously upheld a prior court’s ruling that the West Coast groundfish individual transferable quota system, a form of catch share, was lawfully executed. 

The West Coast Trawlers’ Network said Sept. 12 that the decision helps to ensure that efforts to improve the management and conservation of the resource through a catch share will continue as originally designed.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the ITQ program complies with requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The opinion, filed on Sept. 10, determined that NMFS properly considered the impacts of the program and took necessary steps to achieve its goals, including increasing economic benefits, protecting the environment, and holding fishermen accountable for staying within catch limits.

Brent Paine of United Catcher Boats said that UCB was pleased that the court confirmed that the catch share program is legal and should continue.

“Disrupting a system that has put the west coast fishing industry back on the right track would have been a disaster and cost jobs at a critical time,” Paine said.

David Jincks of the Midwater Trawlers’ Cooperative said the decision affirms that NMFS and the Pacific Fishery Management Council carefully considered the impact of the ITQ program on communities and took steps to protect them, including at the expense of efficiency where necessary.

“In fact, coastal communities and fishing jobs, which were faltering before, are more stable under the new system,” Jincks said. “We have seen profits go up and wasteful bycatch go down under ITQ management.

According to Sherm Jud, Pacific regional deputy director for the Environmental Defense Fund’s Oceans program, the environment and the economy both benefit under this program. His organization had joined UCB and the trawlers cooperative in support of the government in this case.

“For years regulators tried and failed to figure out how to allow catch of targeted species without overfishing vulnerable species as bycatch,” Jud said. “Now results from the first year confirm that catch shares have resulted in far less bycatch of overfished species.”

Humpies Boost Wild Salmon Harvest to Nearly 90 Million Fish

By Margaret Bauman

Alaska’s wild salmon harvest for the 2012 season stood at 89.9 million fish by August 10th, a leap of nearly 40 million fish since July 27, albeit still below the projected harvest of 132.1 million fish.

But the salmon fisheries, pink salmon in particular, have a ways to go, says Geron Bruce, deputy director of commercial fisheries for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

“It can happen fast with pink salmon,” Bruce said in an interview Aug. 7, referring to the fisheries in Prince William Sound, Kodiak and Southeast Alaska.

The pink salmon numbers are looking like the forecast, he said. “They are looking decent, maybe a little bit stronger. It is down from the five-year average and down from last year, but we expected that going into the season.”

And sure enough, the harvest of humpies alone rose from13 million on July 27 to 22.4 million by Aug. 3 and up to 39 million on Aug. 10, according to preliminary harvest reports from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Sockeye harvests are also down a bit, but not that far off from last year, and the chum harvest is actually looking pretty good, he said. As for pink salmon, “we are just hitting our stride,” Bruce said.

Harvest totals compiled by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game through Aug. 10 showed a total of 34,686,000 sockeyes, 39,008,000 pinks, 14,866,000 chum, 1,152,000 coho and 210,000 Chinook salmon delivered to processors. The biggest jump came in pink salmon harvests in Southeast Alaska, where the catch of pinks rose from 1.2 million to 9 million fish between July 27 and Aug. 10.

In Prince William Sound, the humpy harvest rose in one week from 12.2 million to 18 million pinks, while for the same period at Kodiak, the humpy harvest jumped from 5.5 million fish to 10 million pinks.

State biologists said earlier they expected 2012 harvest of some 132.1 million salmon of all species, a decrease in commercial salmon caught in 2012 due to the projected decrease in pink salmon harvests. The projection was to include 120,000 Chinook salmon in areas outside Southeast Alaska, 38.4 million sockeye salmon, 4.3 million coho salmon, 70.2 million pink salmon and 19.1 million chum salmon.

The projected sockeye harvest was about 4 percent lower than the harvest of 2011, and the projected chum harvest was expected to be 12 percent higher than that of the 2011 chum harvest.

Of the 204,000 kings caught commercially statewide through Aug. 3, only 65,000 of them had been netted outside of Southeast Alaska.

In 2011, by comparison, the harvest totaled 177.1 million salmon of all species, which was 26.4 million less than the preseason forecast of 203.5 million fish.

The Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute noted in its June market bulletin that a survey of fishery conditions and available forecasts suggested that the 2012 wild salmon production might decline by 30 percent, or 690 million pounds, with reduced supplies in Russia and Alaska.

The largest decline, however, was forecast to come from Russia. Russian pink salmon harvests, like those in Alaska, have recently followed a two-year up/down cycle, ASMI’s report noted. Pink salmon harvests are generally much lower in even years as opposed to odd years in both countries.

In Southeast Alaska’s troll fishery, the regional power troll coho catch rates for the week ended Aug. 10 were 77 fish a day. The average price was $1.40 a pound for the silvers. The seasonal average coho weight of 5 pounds is still relatively small, but for the week ending Aug. 10, the average weight of cohos increased to 5.6 pounds, and the cumulative coho catch in the troll fishery since July 1 stood at just over 484,500 fish.

In the Southeast purse seine fishery, the cumulative purse seine harvest was 7.9 million pink and 4.6 million chum salmon, with landings reported by 229 boats. The second in-season pink salmon forecast for the Southeast purse seine fishery, based on data through week 31, projected a harvest of 25 million fish, somewhat higher than the pre-season forecast of 17 million, state biologists said.

Harvests for the Copper River edged up slightly to 1.9 million fish, from 1.8 million on July 27, with the sockeye harvest reaching 1,854,000 reds. Participation in the drift gillnet fisheries had tapered off as hatchery chum salmon and hatchery and wild sockeye salmon runs neared completion. The fleet was concentrated primarily on pink salmon stocks in the Coghill district. The cumulative harvest of 1.85 million sockeye and about 12,000 Copper River kings through Aug. 10 compared with a historical five-year cumulative harvest average of 1.15 million sockeyes and 17,600 kings for that date.

Weather did not appear to be limiting the fishing effort in Prince William Sound. Purse seine fleet distribution in Prince William Sound shifted from Valdez Fisheries Development Association to wild stock fisheries in late July and it was anticipated that effort would switch focus to Prince William Sound Aquaculture Association hatchery fish as cost recovery fishing was completed.

In Upper Cook Inlet, participation in commercial fisheries was about normal, biologists said. About this time of year, participation in the drift gillnet fishery begins dropping. In the East Side setnet fishery, which had been closed down as a conservation measure earlier to allow more king salmon to get upstream, participation was low despite openings on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9. Many setnet crews had by this time left to find other sources of employment.

Chinook salmon runs in many watersheds on the Kenai Peninsula were either late in arriving or the runs were very weak, biologists said. The sport fishing division of the Alaska Department of Fish and game closed or severely restricted Chinook salmon fishing on nearly every system in Cook Inlet, and also made restrictions on the coho salmon fishery in the Kenai River to conserve Chinook salmon.

A commercial salmon fishing period in the Chignik Bay District, as well as the Inner Castle Cape subsection of the western district opened Aug. 3.

On the Lower Yukon River, the fall chum fishery continued, with a projected chum salmon run size greater than 900,000 fish, while on the Upper Yukon, the summer season commercial fishery was ongoing.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margieb42@mtaonline.net.

Demand for Wild Alaska King Crab Remains High

By Margaret Bauman

Two months before the 2012 Bristol Bay red king crab season begins, with brokers and buyers about to begin price negotiations, some industry sources were saying the best they can hope for is a quota of 7.7 million pounds.

Others, in the wake of the 2011 quota of 7.8 million pounds, were betting the quota could slide to 6 million pounds.

So it’s a nervous waiting game, until the quota is announced in early October, but still a sure bet that demand will continue to outweigh supply. Wholesalers were weighing their options on how best to market this prized seafood for the coming holidays, and not wanting to give any edge to their domestic competition.

Alaska is famous for its king crab, with Bristol Bay red king crab the predominant king crab in commercial harvests.

Ten months after the 2011 season ended, Alaska red king crab legs and claws, pre-cooked and fresh-frozen, were still selling online for $38 to $49 a pound, with occasional discounts for orders over 10 pounds or more. Golden king crab legs and claws, by comparison, were selling for about $34 a pound where available.

“There’s nothing quite like sitting down to a table heaped with steaming king crab legs,” teased one online website. “You can hardly wait to dunk that first piece of tender crab meat in hot butter.”

“It’s hard to tell what will happen this year,” said Jake Jacobsen, director of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange, a harvester group in Seattle. “We don’t know what the quota will be.”

“Often there is a greater demand than supply of red king crab,” Jacobsen said. “The market sets the price; we’re not setting prices in a vacuum.”

In Las Vegas, meanwhile, Rob George of The Crab Broker was explaining that a lot of variables are involved in what the price will be, once the Alaska Department of Fish and Game determines how much of this succulent crab can be harvested while assuring a sustainable fishery. Those variables include how great the demand will be from Japanese buyers, the value of the Japanese yen compared to the US dollar, and yes, the economy.

“Every year is totally different,” George said. “There are always challenges. What’s the quota going to be? That’s the biggest part of the equation.”

Another unknown is how much king crab, at a lower price, will be available from Russian fisheries.

The shell shock last year came when the quota was set at 7,834,000 pounds, including 7,050,600 pounds for individual fishing quota owners and 1,483,900 pounds for Western Alaska’s community development quota associations.

The quota had been slashed, to maintain sustainability of the fishery, from the 2010 quota of 14,839,000 pounds, including 13,355,100 pounds for IFQ holders and 1,483,900 pounds for CDQ holders.

Prices for crab delivered to Japan leaped to $20 a pound.

On the domestic scene, some buyers at the wholesale level were switching from Alaska red king crab to brown king crab, or even to Russian red and brown crab.

A popular Alaska seafood firm that does a brisk business online, particularly in holiday gift packages, observed a huge reduction in sales of Bristol Bay red king crab, because of prices of more than $30 a pound. The firm’s owner, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he anticipated the price would remain high. He said he expected to do more business in snow crab, particularly bairdi, in the 2012 season.

The saving grace for the crab fleet last year was the snow crab quota, which rose to 88,894,000 pounds, including 80,004,600 pounds to the IFQ fishery and 8,889,400 pounds for the CDQ fishery. That was up from the 2010 snow crab quota of 54,281,000 pounds, with 48,852,900 pounds to the IFQ permit holders and 5,428,100 pounds to CDQ groups. Record quota on that snow crab notwithstanding, harvesters faced what some observers described as record ice on the grounds, with some vessels having to retreat from the ice and wait out a change in weather.

“As long as there is a quota, we are going to go do our best to catch it, said Ed Poulsen, of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, in Seattle. “Most of the skippers feel there is more crab out there than what the survey is showing, but we have to go with what the survey and stock assessments show. There is some thought that crab are going to nearshore areas to avoid colder waters in the depths of the Bering Sea.”

There was a lot more crab back in the 1970s when there was a different climate regime in place, but the shift in climate came in the late 1970s and favored groundfish over crab, he mused.

Biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game say the Bristol Bay red king crab population is currently healthy, but that there has been a substantial change in the overall biomass of the stock. Just why this happened is uncertain, but those changes could be due to anything from a natural fluctuation of stocks in the ecosystem to changes in the predator field or Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a pattern of Pacific climate variability that shifts phases on at least inter-decadal time scale, usually about 20 to 30 years.

Such pressures, including those of the commercial fisheries, affect stocks in different ways at different times, biologists said.

Snow crab was declared overfished back in 1999, but has recovered and is doing well, thanks to a rebuilding plan put in place by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Biologists reduced the harvest rate and used models and other efforts that allowed them to return snow crab stocks to maximum sustained yield within a decade. The snow crab quota has fluctuated over the past few years: 36.6 million pounds in 2006; 63 million pounds in 2007; 58.5 million pounds in 2008; 48 million pounds in 2009 and 54 million pounds in 2010, before leaping to nearly 90 million pounds last year.

Tanner crab stocks were declared overfished in the past year and there was no commercial tanner crab fishery in 2011.

Golden king crab stocks, meanwhile, have been fairly stable, as measured by data on catch per unit effort, biologists said. Back in 2005, the Aleutian Islands golden king crab quotas were 3 million pounds for the eastern sector and 2.7 million pounds for the western sector. A year ago, the eastern sector total was 3.15 million pounds and in the western sector, the quota was 2.8 million pounds.

More information about Alaska’s crab fisheries can be found at http://www.fakr.noaa.gov/sustainablefisheries/crab/crfaq.htm#landings.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margieb42@mtaonline.net.