Fisheries

Southeast Alaska’s king salmon sport fishery is closed, effective Monday through the end of September.

King salmon caught in any Southeast salt waters may not be kept or processed. They must be returned to the water unharmed.

The Southeast sport fishery has already exceeded its 2024 allocation of king salmon, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. 

In an announcement online, the agency said their management plan aims to avoid in-season changes to sport regulations. But the projected end of season harvest for king salmon would exceed the 2024 Alaska catch limit as outlined in the Pacific Salmon Treaty. 

Most of the king sport fishery in Juneau was already closed earlier this summer because of low hatchery returns. The fishery will reopen for the winter season on Oct. 1. 

Scientists had previously linked the crash of the Bering Sea snow crab population in recent years to warming ocean waters. But a new study released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deepens the connection between human-caused climate change and the die-off.

Snow crabs are well suited for Arctic conditions. But Mike Litzow — the lead author of the report, which was published in the journal “Nature Climate Change” — said the southeastern Bering Sea is changing to more sub-Arctic conditions through a process called borealization. St. Matthew Island to the south, nothing north of 60 degrees’ latitude is included in the southeastern Bering Sea. It’s a process that’s also happening in terrestrial ecosystems in Alaska.

“Like an Arctic terrestrial ecosystem around Kotzebue is traditionally tundra, you don’t have shrubs. But as you borealize, you get more shrubs, even trees,” said Litzow, who is also the director of NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center in Kodiak. “So you can imagine what a huge transition it is to go from tundra to forest. And it’s the same type of thing going from ice-associated to no ice all year.”

This borealization, brought on by human-caused climate change, means warmer conditions and more negative effects for snow crab in the southeastern Bering Sea. That includes a greater abundance of predator species like Pacific cod, shifts in food availability for crabs and increased bitter crab disease which can be fatal. These were all evident in 2018-2019 when the thermal barrier — a cold pool of water in the Bering Sea — vanished, bringing on extreme ecosystem shifts that allowed different species of groundfish to migrate further north.

Litzow and his team had previously confirmed that a combination of these factors caused the crash of snow crab populations between the years 2018 and 2019, when the stocks declined greater than 90%. The population still hasn’t recovered. And after the last two back to back years without a commercial fishery, which is estimated to be worth roughly $227 million of ex-vessel value annually, fishermen have also not fully recovered. And the snow crab most likely never will.

The new report indicates the fishery may be entirely displaced in the coming decades. Litzow said the recent changes are not part of a one-off event and ecosystem-wide changes are expected to continue to affect snow crab populations into the future.

“So it’s not like we are going to lose snow crab anytime soon, but we should expect the southern limit of their range to be retracting north, fairly rapidly,” Litzow said.

There is still hope for a short-term recovery of snow crab over the next five years however, based on favorable abundance seen during a 2022 bottom trawl survey. The Alaska Fisheries Science Center conducts an annual bottom trawl survey in the eastern Bering Sea, but won’t do a survey this year in the Northern Bering Sea.

Otherwise, Litzow and his team said the southeastern Bering Sea may only see Arctic conditions 8% of the time in the years to come.

As for this year’s snow crab commercial fishing season, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, and the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, are expected to make a decision on opening or closing the fishery in October.

Editor’s Note: Mike Litzow is on KMXT’s board of directors, which has no input on this article or any of its other news coverage.

Until about 20 years ago, little was known about the abundance of colorful cold-water corals that line sections of the seafloor around Alaska.

Now an environmental group has gone to court to try to compel better protections for those once-secret gardens.

The lawsuit, filed Monday by Oceana in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, accused federal fishery managers of neglecting to safeguard Gulf of Alaska corals, and the sponges that are often found with them, from damages wreaked by bottom trawling.

Bottom trawling is a practice that harvests fish with nets pulled across the seafloor.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service “ignored important obligations” to protect the Gulf of Alaska’s seafloor, under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, the lawsuit said.

Corals and sponges are important marine habitat features, supporting fish populations and other sea life. Already vulnerable to the warming conditions caused by climate change and acidification caused by the ocean’s absorption of atmospheric carbon, corals and sponges are further imperiled by fishing gear that scrapes the seafloor, the lawsuit said.

“If not destroyed by trawling, some corals and sponges can live for hundreds or thousands of years. They provide complex habitat for fish and other species, including commercially important species like rockfish, crab, and prawns,” the lawsuit said. “Damage to long-lived, slow-growing, and sedentary species, like cold-water corals and sponges, can be irreversible.”

At issue in the lawsuit is the way managers identify and protect what is known as “essential fish habitat.”

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which sets policies that are carried out by the National Marine Fisheries Service, does periodic reviews to determine which areas should be considered essential fish habitat and what special protections should apply there.  In December, the council passed a series of updates for habitat important to a variety of fish species; those changes got NMFS approval in July.

But a key omission from those updates are any new protections for coral gardens or sponge habitat in the Gulf of Alaska, Oceana argues.

That leaves the swath of Gulf water that stretches from Yakutat to the Islands of the Four Mountains in the Aleutians as “the largest remaining area between San Diego and the Arctic that is largely open to bottom trawling,” said Ben Enticknap, Oceana’s Pacific campaign director and senior scientist.

More knowledge is being gained about Alaska’s corals and sponges and their role in the ecosystem, Enticknap said. “That type of information is really critical and should be incorporated into the council’s process for consideration,” he said.

At the June 2023 North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting, Oceana submitted a proposal that would close about 90% of the Gulf to bottom trawling. The council did not take any action on that proposal, Enticknap said.

In the past, the council was a pioneer in cold-water coral protection, Enticknap said.

In 2005, the council closed a large marine area around the Aleutians to bottom trawling to protect the coral gardens that had been newly discovered there. Enticknap, then with the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, provided information that helped bring about what he considers to be a landmark policy change.

The 2005 rule did close some sections of the Gulf of Alaska to bottom trawling for the purpose of coral protections. But Oceana contends that much more area should be off-limits to bottom trawling.

A spokesperson for NMFS declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing the agency’s policy concerning pending litigation.

The agency itself is the prime source of new knowledge about Alaska’s corals and sponges.

NOAA scientists have been working for several years to identify and map Alaska’s corals, including those on the floor of the Gulf of Alaska.  Underwater surveys, including those conducted last summer by NMFS in collaboration with an array of international agencies and institutions, have used sophisticated technology to capture images of the corals, sponges and the sea creatures that live among them. An important goal of the research, according to NMFS, is examining whether fishing, other human activities or climate change are harming the coral habitat and, if so, how that habitat should be protected.

The Oceana lawsuit is not the only effort to secure more protection for deep-water corals.

A bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, seeks to restrict trawl fishing that touches the seafloor. Called the Bottom Trawl Clarity Act, it specifically lists corals and sponges as resources to be protected from trawling impacts.

A three-judge panel at 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned a lower-court decision that could have temporarily halted troll fishing for salmon in Southeast Alaska.

The appellate court decision, announced Friday, clears the way for the region’s troll fishery to continue. It had been threatened by a lawsuit from the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy, an environmental group.

The group filed suit in 2020, arguing that National Marine Fisheries Service rules applied to the fishery were inadequate when it came to protecting endangered killer whales that live in Puget Sound.

A U.S. District Court judge in Washington state agreed with the group, ruling in May 2023 that the biological opinion — a document that underpins fishing rules — was inadequate. Southeast Alaska’s troll fishery would be shut down as a consequence.

The ruling shocked Alaskans. Troll fishing in Southeast Alaska happens on a small scale, with individual fishermen and small groups working by hook and line. The state, tribal groups, local fishermen and even Alaska environmental groups — who have praised the troll fishery’s low impact on the environment — all filed documents urging the 9th Circuit to pause the District Court ruling.

During oral arguments in July, comments from the three-judge panel hearing the issue made it seem as if they were inclined to rule in favor of Alaskans.

On Friday, that confirmed that inclination, ruling that the District Court had “abused its discretion” and “erred by overlooking the severe disruptive consequences” of its action.

SalmonState, an Alaska-based conservation group, was among the groups opposing the lawsuit. Tim Bristol, the group’s executive director, said in an emailed statement that the ruling “shows the Wild Fish Conservancy’s attempt to shut down all Chinook fishing by Alaska hook and line trollers was the wrong diagnosis and the wrong prescription for the endangered Southern Resident Orca’s future survival.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service is already at work on a new biological opinion, which is scheduled to be released before Dec. 1.

A new round of lawsuits is possible after that.

Emma Helverson, director of the Wild Fish Conservancy, said this week’s ruling is “disappointing, to say the least.”

“We will continue to take every action necessary to ensure the management of this fishery will not continue to harm salmon recovery, ecosystems, coastal communities coastwide,” she said by email.

The Biden administration has rejected a nominee for a key Alaska fisheries management post who could have tipped decisions toward the interests of tribes and conservation groups and away from the priorities of the large-boat, Seattle-based trawl industry.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo skipped over the top choice of Washington Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, conservation advocate Becca Robbins Gisclair, and instead reappointed the last-ranked nominee on a slate of four candidates that Inslee offered: Anne Vanderhoeven, a trawl industry employee who has served on the panel for several years.

Raimondo’s choice for the open North Pacific Fishery Management Council seat, which was confirmed Tuesday by Inslee’s natural resources advisor Ruth Musgrave, comes after what advocates describe as weeks of intense lobbying by supporters of both Gisclair and Vanderhoeven.

The council regulates lucrative commercial fisheries for pollock, cod and other species off Alaska’s coast. It’s been the site of polarized, emotional debate in recent years over the trawl industry’s unintended harvest — known as bycatch — of chum and king salmon that spawn in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers in Western Alaska.

Populations of Yukon and Kuskokwim salmon have crashed in recent years, and while scientists largely attribute the declines to warming ocean temperatures, tribal advocates have also pushed the council to tighten bycatch limits on trawlers.

Of the council’s 11 voting positions, seven are nominated from ranked slates of candidates advanced by governors — five from Alaska and two from Washington — and four are top fisheries regulators from Alaska, Washington, Oregon and the federal government.

Four current members work in or have financial ties to the trawl industry, including Vanderhoeven, who is director of government affairs at Seattle-based Arctic Storm Management Group.

Typically, the commerce secretary defers to governors and appoints the top choice from the slate.

But advocates from Alaska tribes and conservation groups said that Vanderhoeven’s allies were pushing Raimondo — herself a former governor — to skip over Gisclair and Inslee’s two other higher-ranked nominees.

Gisclair has worked directly with Yukon residents, tribes and conservation advocates and now works as senior director for Arctic programs at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. One trawl official had said that if she was appointed, she would make his industry “squirm for a while.”

Vanderhoeven’s reappointment is “so upsetting,” said Eva Burk, who holds an Alaska Native tribal seat on an advisory panel to the North Pacific Council.

“You can’t just have a trawl sector-dominated council,” Burk said. “It’s just not going to start to get balance back into our different fisheries if we don’t put some diversity in the decisionmaking.”

The appointment of Vanderhoeven has not yet been formally announced by the National Marine Fisheries Service — the branch of Raimondo’s department that works with the North Pacific Council — and Raimondo herself has not offered any explanation for why she skipped over Gisclair. Two other appointments to the council from slates advanced by Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy are pending from Raimondo, as well.

A Seattle-based spokeswoman for the fisheries service, Marjorie Mooney-Seus, said “we expect to be making an announcement soon and don’t have any further details to share at this time.”

A spokesman for Inslee, Mike Faulk, declined to comment, as did representatives from the two leading trawl industry trade groups, the At-Sea Processors Association and United Catcher Boats.

Advocates who have been calling on the North Pacific Council to reduce bycatch said they were deeply disappointed with Raimondo’s decision.

SalmonState, a Juneau-based conservation group, called Vanderhoeven’s reappointment a “gut punch” to Alaskans and Indigenous people.

“We were hoping a strong, independent, conservation-minded voice would be added to the council,” the group’s executive director, Tim Bristol, said in a prepared statement. “Instead, we get pro-trawl business as usual.”

Not all Alaskans, however, had taken sides in the fight over the open Washington council seat.

The City of Unalaska, in the Aleutian Islands, remained neutral, and Frank Kelty, a former mayor who now works as a fisheries consultant to the municipality, noted that revenue from trawl-caught fish like pollock supports community services in multiple coastal Alaska communities.

“It’s our bread and butter right now,” he said.

Kelty also said that Gisclair could still end up filling a Washington seat on the North Pacific Council because of the death earlier this year of Kenny Down, the state’s gubernatorial nominee.

Down was a longtime advocate for tribal and other non-trawl interests — his obituary described the council as being “stacked with trawler-biased members” — and his wife, Shannon, said Tuesday that her husband made it very clear, including directly to Inslee, that he wanted to be replaced by someone with a similar point of view.

“He was making calls when he was in bed, trying to fight for his life,” Shannon Down said, adding that her husband shared his desire directly with Inslee. “This was his dying wish.”

Nathaniel Herz welcomes tips at natherz@gmail.com or (907) 793-0312. This article was originally published in Northern Journal, a newsletter from Herz. Subscribe at this link.

This year in Bristol Bay, fishing crews have noticed that sockeye salmon were on the small side — an observation confirmed this month by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Fish and Game officials say that at this point in the 2024 season, the sockeye returning to Bristol Bay are on average the smallest they’ve ever seen. This continues a decades-long trend.

So far, the average weight of Bristol Bay sockeye was 4.2 pounds this year. Fish and Game biologist Stacy Vega said that’s the smallest average weight on record.

“Fish are smaller, weigh less than, than they have in the past and against our historical averages,” Vega said.

The exact number could change a bit by the end of the season, but Vega expects it will stay low. That smaller fish size also means a smaller overall catch. By mid-July, Vega said, fishing crews had hauled in almost 130 million pounds of fish. That’s almost 70 million pounds less than this time last year.

Vega said that all kinds of factors go into fish size. The same is true with humans. Age is the most obvious: The tallest toddler is still shorter than the shortest teenager.

But other things also matter: How tall were your parents and grandparents? Did you grow up with enough to eat, or did you experience hunger? And then there are the less obvious things. Over many generations, hotter or colder climates can also impact our body size.

As with humans, so with fish.

“There is nature and nurture to all things that grow,” Vega said.

“Different water temperatures mean not just availability of different food types, they also mean how well you metabolize that food. So temperature, food, wind, currents — there’s so many things that go into how fish grow and how old they get,” she said.

This year, Vega said, the biggest factor for returning sockeye was their age.

“So what we’re seeing here as an overall decrease in weight of fish is a factor of a lot of young fish coming back this year,” she said.

Most of the fish that came back this year are fish that spent one year in the lakes and two years in the ocean. But not all of the fish that came back were the same age. Fish and Game tracks four major age classes. This year, as of July 18, each age group is the smallest they’ve seen, compared to historical data that goes back to the 1970s.

Almost three-quarters of the fish spent one year in the lakes, then two years in the ocean. That age class weighed 3.9 pounds on average. Similar fish that stayed in the ocean an extra year came back heavier, at 5.3 pounds on average.

A smaller group of fish spent an extra year in the lakes before swimming out to the ocean; those fish were just a tenth of a pound heavier than their counterparts, at 4 pounds for fish that stayed in the ocean two years and 5.4 pounds for fish that stayed for three.

For each of those four age classes, Vega said, “We saw the smallest and lightest size of fish we have ever seen in our history. Not by a huge margin — it’s not pounds and pounds — but it definitely is the smallest we’ve ever seen. 2020 was a close second.”

Since 2015, Vega says, more fish have been returning on average. One hypothesis for smaller fish sizes is that when more fish survive early on, there’s less food to go around as they grow. Each fish gets less to eat, and they grow up smaller.

“Ocean conditions, lake conditions, food availability — all that factors into the size of fish and how many return. So it’s all intertwined. But certainly with really big runs we see smaller fish,” Vega said.

And sockeye aren’t just competing with each other. They’re also competing with other species, like pink salmon. Greg Ruggerone, a scientist at the University of Washington, has been testing the hypothesis that pink salmon affect the annual growth of sockeye salmon in the ocean.

Researchers can’t remove all the pinks from the ocean to see what happens to sockeye. But they don’t have to. Because something similar happens naturally: every other year, the number of pink salmon skyrockets.

“Because they have a biennial pattern of abundance: very high abundance and odd numbered years and lower abundance and even numbered years. Sometimes, in some regions, that difference is 25 times more abundant in odd numbered years,” Ruggerone said.

Unlike sockeye, pink salmon stay in the ocean for a set number of years: Odd year and even year populations don’t usually mix. Over the years, one of those populations got big, and one stayed small, so every other year, sockeye have more competitors.

Ruggerone suspected that those competitors might have an impact on sockeye size. With Peter Rand of the Prince William Sound Science Center, Ruggerone analyzed sockeye from the Gulf of Alaska and from Egegik in Bristol Bay for a study in the ICES Journal of Marine Science.

Ruggerone says the data suggest that all of those pinks are indeed having an impact on sockeye size.

“In odd-numbered years when pinks are very abundant, the growth was low. And in even-numbered years, when there were fewer pink salmon, growth during the second and third years at sea was relatively high,” Ruggerone said.

Ruggerone said that pattern is just oneof many factors that made this year’s sockeye smaller. But he said it’s an important factor to keep an eye on, because the number of pink salmon has been growing over time.

Partly, that’s because of hatcheries. But it’s also because wild pinks have been doing really well.

“Going back to the early 1950s, there’s a very strong correlation between pink salmon abundance and the ocean heat index,” Ruggerone said. “Pink salmon are climate change winners.”

Sockeye have also been doing well in terms of the number of fish, despite their shrinking size. But for other salmon species, that abundance of pinks may be a bigger problem. Ruggerone says that complicates traditional management wisdom.

“Fisheries managers, we’re taught to promote abundance in the wild populations, so that there are more fish for fishermen to catch. But here’s a situation where the pink’s are doing extremely well with climate change, and other species are not doing so well,” Ruggerone said.

Now, he says, some people are beginning to question whether maximizing wild pinks for future abundance is still the right approach.

Ruggerone said there will be fewer pinks next year, so sockeye will have less competition for food. Plus, many sockeye that did not come back this year will see another birthday, so Vega said Alaska fishers can also expect more older fish. Both factors may mean larger sockeye next year in Bristol Bay.