Bristol Bay Red King Crab TAC is 6.6 Million Pounds, Down 22 Percent

Commercial harvesters of Bristol Bay red king crab have been given a quota of 6.6 million pounds for the fishery that opens at noon on Oct. 15 – down 22 percent from the 2016-2017 quota.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game also announced on Oct. 3 closures this season of the Pribilof district red and blue king crab and Saint Matthew Island section blue king crab fisheries.

An official announcement is still pending on snow and tanner crab, but Mark Stichert, the state’s regional management coordinator for groundfish and shellfish, said there will be a snow crab fishery and also a tanner crab fishery, the latter in the western Bering Sea. There was no bairdi fishery last year, but there will be one this year, and the TAC on the snow crab fishery will be fairly similar to last year, he said.

The red king crab fishery has been a challenging one, Stichert said.

From 2003 through 2010 the fishery had good production and TACs between 15 million and 20 million pounds, but then they started dropping. “here were generally low population levels through the 1980s. We enjoyed pretty good stability in that fishery for a while, but since 2012-2013 there has been a generally declining trend of overall abundance.”

For the 2014/2015 season, the Bristol Bay red king crab TAC was 9.99 million pounds; in 2015/2016, 9.78 million pounds; and for 2016/2017, 8.47 million pounds.

This year’s TAC of 6.6 million pounds is the lowest TAC going back to 1996.

“These TACS are based on abundance of crab,” Stichert noted. “In the late 1970s there was a regime shift, and populations collapsed from the late 1970s and generally low population levels through the 1980s, and (then) they grew in the early 1990s.”

Beginning in the early 2000s there was another increase in overall abundance that led to TACs of 15 million to 20 million pounds, and then there was a downward trend since that time, he said.

5.6 Billion Pounds of Seafood Had $5.2B Impact on Alaska

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute’s latest economic value report concludes that the state’s 2016 seafood harvest of 5.6 billion pounds had a $5.2 billion impact on Alaska’s economy.

The commercial harvest itself had a total ex-vessel value of $1.7 billion, ASMI reported in the report prepared by the McDowell Group in Juneau.

The impact came from a total of some 56,800 workers who earned $1.518 million, including 29,200 harvesters earning $842 million, 24,500 processing workers who earned $467 million, and 3,200 workers in management, hatcheries and other areas who earned $228 million.

Processors produced 2.7 billion pounds of Alaska seafood products in 2016, worth a first wholesale value of $4.2 billion, while employing an average of 24,500 workers in 2015/2016, including an estimated 7,200 Alaska residents, the report said. The industry for that period included 169 shore-based plants, 73 catcher-processors, and more than a dozen floating processors.

On the national scale, the Alaska seafood industry creates an estimated 99,000 full time equivalent jobs, $5.2 billion in annual labor income and $12.8 billion in economic output, McDowell Group economists concluded. The national economic impacts of Alaska’s seafood industry include $5.4 billion in direct output associated with fishing, processing, distribution and retail. The impact also includes $7.3 billion in multiplier effects generated as industry income circulates through the national economy. The Alaska seafood industry employed some 29,600 residents of other states who came north to work in the state in 2016.

Alaska exports more than one million metric tons of seafood annually, bringing over $3 billion in new money into the nation’s economy. Since statehood in 1959, Alaska’s abundant fisheries have produced over 169 billion pounds of seafood. The largest harvest to date was 6.1 billion pounds in 2015.

The industry catches and processes enough seafood each year to feed everybody in the world at least one serving of Alaska seafood, or one serving for every American for more than a month, the economists said.

In 2016, Alaska seafood was sold in 105 countries. Export markets typically account for about two-thirds of sales value, while the domestic market buys the remaining one-third, the report said.

The complete report is online at http://www.alaskaseafood.org/industry/seafood-market-info/economic-value-reports/

New Food for Fish Farms is Fly Larvae

AgriProtein, a South African firm that recently moved its headquarters to London, has won the BBC Food Chain Global Championship for MagMeal, a protein substitute for fishmeal used widely in aquaculture, agriculture and pet food. The product is produced from black soldier flies fed on food waste.

The award, presented in Bristol, England, was announced in late September. “Insect protein is an idea whose time has come and we are now producing it at an industrial scale,” said Jason Drew, co-founder and chief executive officer of Agri-Protein. “By using existing waste to rear fly larvae, we’re reducing the greenhouse gases and pollution caused by organic landfill,” he said.

AgriProtein has fly farm projects under way in several countries, potentially including the United States and Canada, to produce MagMeal for the $100 billion aquafeed market.

The BBC noted in one of its podcasts (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05gpsz4) that AgriProtein’s South African farm has the capacity to farm more than nine billion black soldier flies. The maggot offspring of billions of these protein rich flies are churned into sustainable animal feed.

At present, about 10 percent of global fish production goes into fishmeal, and is used mainly in aquaculture, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization notes in an online report, http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e07.pdf The high demand and consequent high prices for fishmeal, together with increasing production pressure on aquaculture, led to research into the development of insect proteins for aquaculture and livestock. Meanwhile, aquaculture is growing and fishmeal declining as a source of feed, because of decreased supplies of industrially caught fish due to tighter quotas, additional controls on unregulated fishing, and greater use of more cost-effective dietary fishmeal substitutes, the FAO report said.

The report identifies black soldier flies as the most promising species for industrial feed production, noting that they are found in abundance and naturally occur around manure piles of large poultry, pigs and cattle, and for this reason are known as latrine larvae.

“They can be used commercially to solve a number of environmental problems associated with manure and other organic waste, such as reducing manure mass, moisture content and offensive odors, while providing high value feedstuff for cattle, pigs, poultry and fish, the report said.

NOAA Takes a Closer Look at Bering Sea Bloom

NOAA researchers embarked from Dutch Harbor on September 22, hoping to witness changing colors in the Bering Sea and gather more samples for a continuing investigation in what these changes mean for an ecosystem critical to one of the nation’s biggest fisheries.

Survey samples will be taken from up to a depth range of 70 meters from the southeast Bering Sea to the southwest of St. Lawrence Island, with hopes that in later years more sampling may be done on the shelf area. The focus will be on coccolithophores – single-celled phytoplankton that live in oceans worldwide, and play a vital role in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Coccolithophores, unlike other marine algae, armor themselves with plates of calcium carbonate-chalk. They shed multitudes of these tiny white discs, called coccoliths, into surface water, where they linger long after the coccolithophores themselves, have gone. These plates reflect light the same way coral sands do in shallow Caribbean waters with similar shimmering turquoise results, NOAA scientists said.

By clouding the water, they make it difficult for visual predators like seabirds and fish to find food and they make the food web less efficient.

Under certain conditions, the number of coccolithophores can skyrocket locally into enormous “blooms” that cloud water, resulting in potentially catastrophic consequences for other marine life, researchers at the NOAA Fisheries Science Center said.

The researchers are aboard the NOAA ship Oscar Dyson, the first in a class of ultra-quiet fisheries survey vessels built to collect data on fish populations, and conduct marine mammal and seabird surveys and study marine ecosystems.

The summer of 1997 was the first time anyone could remember when a vast swath of the deep blue Bering Sea turned milky turquoise. That year 190,000 seabirds died of starvation. The culprit in the color change, and suspect in the seabird deaths, was coccolithophores. Exactly what conditions cause the blooms to cloud the waters and what they portend for the ecosystem of the Bering Sea is the mystery researchers are trying to solve.

To that end, NOAA researchers have been tracking late summer coccolithophore bloom extent from 1998 to 2016 using satellite color data. They compared this index with ocean conditions and looked at possible implications for forage fish and predators.

The study was initiated by oceanographers Lisa Eisner at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and Carol Ladd of the Pacific Marine Environmental Lab after they found themselves in the midst of a bloom during a Bering Sea research cruise. The impact of the bloom on commercial fisheries has not yet been determined, they said.

Oil Spilled at Valdez Marine Terminal

A faulty check valve at Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.’s Valdez Marine Terminal is believed to be the culprit in a crude oil spill at Valdez, Alaska, on September 21, which has proven larger than anticipated.

An updated report from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) on September 26 noted that ADEC was continuing to monitor response actions and work with the US Coast Guard and Alyeska on waste management and decontamination plans. Early indicators show that oily water in the oil loading system may have drained through the berth firewater system during a pressure test, the agency said.

Response to the spill, estimated at up to 100 gallons of crude oil, continued around the clock, with Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. reporting by September 23 that crews in the field had recovered an estimated 400 gallons of an oily water mix.

Response teams had deployed more than 23,000 feet of boom, and more than 25 vessels were on the water responding, as of September 23. There were no reports of wildlife being impacted by the spill.

Meanwhile, ADEC and the U.S. Coast Guard, along with the Ship Escort/Response Vessel System were scrambling to clean up an oil sheen in the terminal area.

The sheen was noted shortly before noon on September 21 and by midnight booming was completed in two sensitive areas of the Port of Valdez, the Solomon Gulch Hatchery and Valdez Duck Flats, said Kate Dugin, Alyeska’s spokeswoman. There were no reports that the sheen had reached either area, but they were boomed because they are both considered to be environmentally sensitive, she said.

“We recognize and share the public’s concerns and are activating all available resources, including pre-staged equipment around Port Valdez, to respond to the incident and protect the environment and surrounding community,” Alyeska said in a statement. The Valdez Star skimmed the north of the Valdez Marine Terminal with five vessels, pulling some 1,700 feet of absorbent boom, and wildlife personnel were on the water, equipped to respond, the company said.

On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound when the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker owned by Exxon Shipping Co., struck Bligh Reef shortly after midnight, spilling 10.8 million gallons of crude oil. The incident is considered one of the most devastating environmental disasters ever caused by people and resulted in efforts to assure prevention of further spills and to have emergency responders in place in the event of any other spills.

Ferry System Budget Issues On Tap for Alaska Special Legislative Session

A budget issue critical to the commercial fishing industry, the future of the Alaska Marine Highway System (AHMS), is on tap for discussion during a special session of the Alaska Legislature beginning on October 23.

At issue is a budget oversight that could leave the marine highway without sufficient funds to operate next spring, but it will be corrected, says Alaska Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak.

The ferry system is crucial to Stevens’ legislative district, which includes Kodiak, Homer and Cordova, as well as the commercial seafood industry and tourism in Alaska.

A 2016 economic report from Juneau’s McDowell Group notes that AMHS provides essential transport for passengers, their vehicles and freight, including fresh seafood and other products critical to businesses operating in Alaska.

“A number of seafood companies rely on AMHS for shipment of fresh seafood,” the McDowell report read. “The ferry offers an essential alternative to air freight, which can be prohibitively expensive, have insufficient capacity and lack proper refrigeration. Having a ferry option lowers transportation costs, allowing seafood processors to pay local fishermen more for their product,” the report concluded.

Commercial harvesters also use the ferry to transport nets, line, equipment and other supplies from the Kenai Peninsula, Anchorage, Mat-Su Valley and other locations to Cordova.

The budget shortfall for the ferry system came to light in September when legislative leaders were advised that AMHS would run out of money in early April of 2018.

Brian Fechter, an analyst with the Alaska Office of Management and Budget, said it was due to a bad timing situation, as legislators were struggling to pass a budget to avoid a government shutdown.

Every year legislators pass a budget bill to approve spending for the upcoming fiscal year. Knowing unforeseen events, including emergencies, may arise they add an allotment to cover those costs. That allotment comes from Alaska’s savings account, the Constitutional Budget Reserve. Last year legislators approved an allotment of $100 million, which was much lower than in previous years, and included covering the state’s commitment to Medicaid expansion. Also, there was no way of knowing what would be appropriate for the ferry system in the capital budget, so AMHS funding, which was to be $30 million, was cut down to $7 million. “Everything was moving so fast,” Fechter said. “By the time the bill was sent to the governor we were days before a government shutdown, and there was no time to review the situation.”

Stevens said it’s a situation that needs correcting and legislators will do their best to get funds back to continue smooth operating of AMHS.

Coalition Urges Investigation into BC Mines

A coalition of conservation groups and Alaska Native tribal governments are asking Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to investigate six hard rock mines in British Columbia and their anticipated impact on salmon-rich transboundary watershed.

The coalition petitioned Ross on September 26 to join the Interior Department and other federal agencies in bringing the issue before the International Joint Commission, the governing body of the Boundary Waters Treaty between the two countries.

The coalition’s concern is that development of these six British Columbia mines will adversely impact the salmon-rich transboundary watersheds of the Taku, Stikine and Unuk rivers, which flow across the Canadian border into Alaska. The salmon are critical for sustenance to wildlife, as well as to thousands of people who harvest and process these fish commercially, for sport and subsistence. While not among the signers of the petition, Dale Kelly, executive director of the Alaska Trollers Association, said that ATA shares their concerns and has worked alongside some of those signers for years.

The petition was submitted on behalf of the signers by the Alaska regional office of EarthJustice under the Pelly Amendment to the Fishermen’s Protective Act of 1967, a federal law enacted in 1971. The aim of the Pelly Amendment itself was to boost the effectiveness of international programs for the conservation of threatened and endangered species.

The petition analyzes the mine projects and their potential impacts on watersheds and invokes the shared duty of the federal agencies to investigate when foreign nationals may be diminishing the effectiveness of U.S. conservation treaties.

The conservation and tribal entities contend that the transboundary watersheds are endangered by the development of metals mines in British Columbia. Listed in the petition are the Tulsequah Chief, Red Chris, Schaft Creek, Galore Creek, Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell and Brucejack mines. All six mines involve large-scale infrastructure development and generate large quantities of tailings and mine wastes, and require water treatment in perpetuity.

The petition is posted online at https://earthjustice.org/documents/letter/letter-to-commerce-secretary-ross