Fisheries

Unalaska is preparing to start monitoring for European green crabs. That’s after the invasive species was first found in Alaska last July.

The crabs could cause a big problem. They destroy habitat and outcompete native species.

Biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game say the monitoring program is crucial in the nation’s largest fishing port. They’re preparing to deploy traps later this summer.

“We don’t have any reason to believe that European green crab are here or established in the region, but we’re also not currently doing any monitoring,” said Ethan Nichols, the assistant area manager for shellfish with ADF&G in Dutch Harbor. “With European green crab steadily moving up the West Coast, through British Columbia, and into southern Southeast Alaska as of last year, I think it’s important that we start monitoring here in the Port of Dutch Harbor, given the amount of international ship traffic that we have.”

In much of the state, scientists have had their eyes on the species for years. In communities around Kachemak Bay and Prince William Sound, they’ve been setting traps for about two decades.

Tammy Davis is the invasive species program coordinator with the Department of Fish and Game in Juneau. She says European green crabs — which are native to coastal Europe and North Africa, and were introduced to the Atlantic coast through ballast water in the early 1800s — are so concerning, because although they’re small, they’re incredibly aggressive.

They reduce eelgrass (important nursery habitat for juvenile fish) and populations of clams, oysters, mollusks and other invertebrates that live on or in the seafloor. They can also prey on juvenile native crabs, like Dungeness — something that could impact Aleutian Island fisheries down the line, if their habitats overlap.

“Green crab are considered one of the top 100 invasive species globally,” Davis said.

Like anywhere else, Davis said, they would have impacts on the nearshore environment, putting organisms that rely on that intertidal and subtidal habitat at risk.

“They behave differently in different environments,” she said. “There’s, of course, some sort of general parameters of temperature triggers for reproduction, and tolerance for temperatures and so forth. But they’re very hardy organisms, and we don’t know what the potential impacts are in an environment like Dutch Harbor at this point.”

Davis said biologists are concerned the species could be introduced into Dutch Harbor through ballast water discharge, or by currents carrying larvae out the Aleutian Chain.

She said they hope to identify coastal areas with high-value commercial, recreational and subsistence harvests and use intensive trapping as a way to monitor and control green crab populations as they start to spread across the state.

Setting traps also helps them understand what species use these areas and are at risk of green crab predation, according to Davis.

“Whatever ends up in our traps also uses this part of the nearshore. Those are the species that are at risk from green crab,” she said.

Davis said although it’s not likely they’ll be able to get rid of green crabs if they establish themselves in the Aleutians, early detection is crucial.

“You’re keeping the population of green crab low enough that the negative impact they have on the native species and the native habitat is not greater than the native species can handle,” she said.

ADF&G plans to launch the monitoring program in the Port of Dutch Harbor this summer. Five traps are on their way to the island now.

If you find what you think might be a European green crab, you can call ADF&G’s invasive species hotline at 1-877-INVASIV or visit their website.

The commercial season for king salmon in Southeast Alaska opens on Saturday, July 1. For trollers across the region, it’s the equivalent of New Year’s Day – the beginning of the annual salmon harvest that lasts through next March.

For 50 anxiety-filled days this spring, it appeared that this fishery would not happen. On May 2, a federal judge in Washington ordered fishing closed to make more kings available to an endangered population of killer whales in Puget Sound. On June 21, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court issued a stay of that order, allowing trollers to fish as usual while the case remains under appeal.

Photojournalist Berett Wilber grew up in Sitka deckhanding aboard her family’s troller. She recently returned and spent a couple of afternoons visiting the docks, photographing and talking to trollers as they readied for the opening. As she explains to KCAW’s Robert Woolsey, Wilber found mixed emotions among the fleet.

Listen:

Berett Wilber: I think many people were excited and relieved that this fishery which makes up often, you know, 40% of their income, even if it’s just a few weeks of fishing each year, that they could still do this. For a fishing family, that’s a big dent in your bank account. And so I think there’s a lot of relief in terms of the economic value of the fish that people are going to be able to go out and make the money that they expect and need to make to fulfill their needs.

But I think there’s also frustration, there’s disbelief. I mean, there are people who are thinking that they weren’t going to be fishing July 1 who ripped out their hydraulic system to rebuild it, or people who rejiggered their boats and put on longline gear and decided to go longlining instead, and just don’t really have time to reconfigure everything to rush out for kings. And I talked to one fisherman who said that his wedding anniversary I think is July 3, and he and his wife had made plans to celebrate for the first time in decades their wedding anniversary together in person because he was always out fishing. And suddenly now that was off the table again.

Robert Woolsey: You mentioned people have been fishing for years and years. There are portraits of Chester Jackson, who’s 83. There’s Steve McMurray, he’s on the Seahorse. There’s Spencer Severson, who’s on the Dryas. These guys have seen a lot over the years, but they have never seen anything like this lawsuit and the roller coaster ride that it’s given people. What was it like talking to these guys?

Berett Wilber: I love talking to fishermen. And I love hearing what they are thinking. And I think after growing up on boats,  to me talking about fish and talking about the fishing industry and talking about fish politics is a real part of coming home. And so I really enjoyed talking to them. And I think the stories that you hear that people are willing to share even just you know, with a stranger with a camera like I am.

I’m maybe not quite a stranger, because I am somewhat recognizable. I’ve been on the dock before and I’m wearing Xtratufs. And it’s not like I’m a tourist down there in my poncho. But the level of detail that people are willing to talk about – they take fishing so personally, especially trolling, which one of the guys I talked to, Chester (Jackson), called ‘the most inefficient method of fishing possible.’ And it’s kind of nicknamed ‘the gentleman’s fishery’ for that reason.

Your relationship with fish and with the ocean is such an important part of what it means to make a living. And to have that taken away from you by a judge unexpectedly, is just really painful for people. Some of these guys have been fishing for a long, long time. Chester talked to me about his stories of escaping from a Native boarding school in the Lower 48 when he was 15, and working his way back up across the country to get back to Alaska to start fishing. And when he started, it was before Alaska was a state and you just had to buy one permit, and you could fish for everything in any manner you wanted. And you just think about how many changes people like him have seen during their lifetime of fishing. And it’s incredible.

Robert Woolsey: You have an image of Chris Caroll. And Carol told you something interesting about now that killer whales had been thrown into this mix, it sort of created a false dichotomy, that somehow it’s trollers or killer whales.

Berett Wilber: This was a feeling that people expressed a lot: This feeling of frustration that this lawsuit has created an image in the minds of the public, especially people maybe outside Alaska who aren’t interacting as much or aren’t seeing the real relationship that fishermen have with whales.

Having those moments where you unexpectedly see a whale or unexpectedly see the dorsal fin of a killer whale cutting through the water in the morning as you’re pulling the anchor. Those are some of the most special magical moments that people love to fish for. That’s part of the reason that they want to work on the water, is to have these relationships with marine mammals.

And I think this lawsuit creates this fiction that it’s either a fisherman or whales. And the thing that Chris said to me is, he was really frustrated by that idea, because at the end of the day, we’re all eating the same fish, you know, and to set this conflict as somehow being about fishermen versus whales, I think really is ignoring the the bigger picture of really big changes in the ecosystem that are affecting fish, fishermen, and whales all together at the same time.

 

Eric Jordan’s life on the ocean began more than 70 years ago, when his parents started taking him out on the family’s troller. At 73, Jordan still fishes regularly. But he says a lot has changed in the waters of Southeast Alaska.

“I was out there, the last two weekends at the Derby weigh station, seeing things that are truly dystopian. The lack of birds, the lack of fish,” Jordan said. “Those of us who are out there on the water, we are seeing the changes. And I’ll tell you it’s pretty spooky.” 

Jordan started his own operation in 1978, trolling for coho and chinook salmon across Southeast Alaska and catching hundreds of fish a day. But today, the marine environment seems less abundant. Most species of Southeast salmon have had record low harvests in recent years, and the devastation from “the Blob” — a Pacific heat wave that caused massive die-offs of marine species — lingers. 

Scientists expect a future with warmer oceans and more marine heat waves. But there’s a lack of data to explain how climate change is shaping Southeast fisheries. Now, two new citizen science projects from Alaska Sea Grant and the Alaska Trollers Association will help longtime troll fishermen like Jordan take the lead to gather data about how the waters they depend on are changing. 

Checking the ocean’s pulse

Tyler Hennon, an oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, describes temperature and salinity as foundational to most research in the marine environment. 

“I kind of think of it as the heartbeat of the ocean,” Hennon said.  “If you don’t know the temperature and salinity, you don’t know much of anything.”

Knowing temperature and salinity is important because they shape ocean mixing, a natural process where warmer surface water mixes with cold, nutrient-rich water from further down in the water column. That process triggers spring phytoplankton blooms.

“Which of course, are the base of the food chain,” Hennon said. “They set off all the production for all the higher trophic levels and fishing and all the things that we love in Southeast Alaska.”

To know what salmon and other marine animals are eating — and when they’re not getting enough to eat — scientists need information on temperature and salinity. But there are major data gaps in central Southeast Alaska, especially in the summer months.

To fill those gaps, Hennon’s project relies on the people who are already out on the water — fishermen who will take regular measurements at different depths near their fishing grounds using electronic sensors on their fishing lines.

The data they gather will provide a baseline for biologists and oceanographers as climate change continues to shape the Gulf of Alaska. That’s crucial for determining what marine conditions that are “normal,” as opposed to conditions that might be caused by climate change.   

Sitka fisherman Jim Moore, who serves on the Alaska Trollers Association board, says the data will also help fishermen make sense of decades of observations out on the water. 

“People talk about ‘Oh, my goodness, I’ve never seen that before.’ Well, I’ve been fishing for 53 years. I saw that back in 1979,” Moore said. “The long-term data set is what’s really valuable.” 

An old salmon counting program, rebooted

Moore is no stranger to doing science from a troll boat. As a commercial troll fisherman back in the 1970s, he participated in a logbook program where fishermen studied salmon populations in the Gulf of Alaska. 

That program ended in the early ’90s. But this spring, Moore and a select group of Southeast troll fishermen relaunched the program electronically. Using a tablet-based logbook, fishermen will record things like the species and quantity of salmon they’re catching, where they catch them, the size of the fish and their stomach contents.

The earlier logbook program informed major management decisions for Pacific salmon stocks, including the development of the Pacific Salmon Treaty in 1985. Moore said he hopes reviving the program will give fisheries managers more data to inform salmon conservation under climate change. 

Management of Southeast salmon fisheries was the center of a legal battle this spring, after a federal judge ordered the closure of the Southeast chinook fishery. Last week, a higher court ruled that the fishery could remain open this summer. 

Moore said the new logbook program could give fishermen a more solid legal defense against future lawsuits.

“Fishermen are natural scientists,” Moore said. “And the trust built between management and scientists and the fisherman is a good thing. We’re all working on it together.”

Jordan— who’s piloting the logbook program this summer — said collaborating with scientists is a long game for fishermen.   

“Trollers have a long history of standing up for salmon. And we are going to do that,” Jordan said. 

With science, Southeast troll fishermen can further solidify their role as environmental stewards, while building common ground with researchers and wildlife managers. 

 

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated Eric Jordan’s last name. 

While many Bering Sea crab populations are in freefall, Dungeness crab is breaking records in regions that hardly used to see them.

The North Peninsula District in the eastern Bering Sea opened as a commercial Dungeness fishery in the early ‘90s. In those early days, it was common for just one or two boats to fish there — many seasons, there were none.

The numbers increased modestly over the ensuing decades — but that growth has recently become exponential.

“The pots that we’re seeing coming out of this fishery are absolutely stuffed with crab,” said Ethan Nichols, who works for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “Like, you don’t even know how many crabs can fit in a pot.”

Nichols is Fish and Game’s assistant area manager for groundfish and shellfish in Dutch Harbor. He said the fishery boomed last year and became the largest Dungeness crab fishery in Alaska — bringing in 35% of the state’s total Dungeness landings.

So why are populations of this one particular species increasing, while red king crab and snow crab are decreasing?

The answer may be the same for both questions: climate change.

“We think it’s likely that the recent warming conditions in the Bering Sea are creating conditions more favorable for Dungeness crab,” Nichols said.

The same warming trend that is likely pushing king crab farther north could be bringing Dungeness crab to the eastern Bering Sea. But Nichols said the trend is too new to have any definitive answer.

“I’m hoping that as we have more years of consistent harvest in the fishery, we’ll have a better idea of the full distribution of crab in the area,” he said. “And if this is just a fluke for a couple of seasons, or if this can be a more consistently large Dungeness fishery.”

What is certain is that crabbers have taken notice. Last year, the fleet harvested 3 million pounds of Dungeness crab, breaking the highest record in the district.

That boom has some people concerned. In January, an Unalaska fisherman introduced an emergency proposal to ADF&G, warning that the sudden increase in vessel participation could lead to over-harvesting.

“The person who put this in was worried about some really big boats coming out from down south with like 3,000 pots apiece,” Nichols said.

In response, the department set a Dungeness pot limit — the first time they had ever done so in the district. The regulation limits pots to 500 or 750 per vessel, depending on how many boats have registered. This year, it’s 500.

The department said this season is starting slower than last year, with around 33,000 pounds of Dungeness crab caught since opening May 1.

The fishery will remain open until October 18, or until pot limits are met.

 

A prominent fisheries journalist is calling into question the transparency of how much Alaskan salmon fishermen get paid for their catch.

John Fiorillo is the executive editor of Intrafish, a global news bureau covering seafood, commercial fisheries and aquaculture industries worldwide. He argues that the secretive nature of price setting in Alaska salmon fisheries strains the relationship between fishermen and processors, and puts everyone on precarious financial footing.

Fiorillo joined KDLG’s Corinne Smith to talk about why seafood companies don’t usually set a base prices, and why he thinks it’s time for a change.

Listen:

John Fiorillo: Yeah, it’s more cultural and tradition, then there’s a great reason for it, I guess you would say it’s been the way it’s always been. It’s been that kind of situation. And it’s been hard to change, because the processors have the upper hand. In a lot of cases, the fishermen are independent, but they deliver to the processors, and subsequently, they have to get paid. And processors have been setting the price for years and years and years. And it’s just been the way it has been.

Corinne Smith: Some companies have set a price ahead of the season, like Peter Pan Seafoods for the past two years. And what was the impact of that? Like, what were the benefits? And were there any drawbacks for them disclosing a price?

John Fiorillo: Well, Peter Pan had just gone through a sale and new owners, they were trying to make a splash. They were trying to rebuild the fleet that delivered them, particularly in the bay. And so yes, they broke tradition, so to speak. I want to say it was a couple of weeks before the bay really opened, really got going, that they published the price. And everybody followed, which was remarkable, really, to see. It just doesn’t happen, it hasn’t happened, right? So there were no real repercussions. I think they got some good vibes and PR out of it, so to speak. And then again, they did it last year. And it appeared that we were on the road to some sort of preseason price discovery, with everything, but that hasn’t been happening. So we’ll see this year. We’re in the middle of June, if they’re going to do it, I would imagine they do it in the next week to ten days. But we have no knowledge about whether they’ll do it again.

Corinne Smith: So you’re saying it was a gesture of goodwill, and beneficial to the fleet, I know fishermen were pretty happy to hear it. So do you think there were drawbacks to that base price set ahead of the season?

John Fiorillo: Well, I guess the drawback is now we find ourselves in the situation we’re in. So instead of them being able to post, what most people considered a fair, good price the last two years. This year, they would have to go out and post a price ahead of everybody else that is a real slash, I mean, it may be as low as 50 cents a pound. It may be more than that, but it’s not going to be $1.15 like it was last year. So nobody wants to be that company that goes out and puts a price like that out ahead of everybody else. And that probably is the drawback that they could be facing.

Corinne Smith: And then this year, especially fishermen are very frustrated with the rumors of a potential dramatic price drop this year. Can you talk about how this price secrecy affects fishermen and what that uncertainty does to the industry?

John Fiorillo: Yeah, I mean, they’re out there doing what they love. They love to fish, but they don’t know how much they’re going to get paid for their fish. It’s just a very weird dynamic. So over time, it builds anxiety and builds resentment, it builds suspicion. And in a time like we are now, the price is under a major correction, that gets amplified. Now, to be fair to the processors. They too are under a lot of duress this year, they that was a massive, as you know, is a massive haul in Bristol Bay last year, 60 million fish record. All that fish came into the market. Fishermen were largely not put on limits last year, which, you know, with the processors took all the fish and other words, and all that fish head to the market, just as inflation was peaking. Consumers were closing their wallets and being very careful about their spending. And the processors were stuck with all this fish in inventory that they had to carry at a high cost, and they couldn’t get rid of. So the market itself, whether it’s the US market or the market in Europe, which is another strong market for Alaska salmon. There’s no demand, and there still isn’t. Demand has not bounced back. So although many of the processors say they sold their pack, probably at a massive discount. It’s still an inventory challenge for them. And a demand challenge on the consumer side, which, nobody can fix that at this point.

Corinne Smith: And you argue that more transparency from processors or discussing those market conditions with the fleet would also be beneficial for processors.

John Fiorillo: Oh, absolutely. And for fishermen, they really will do themselves a service if they follow what’s going on in the salmon markets around the world. And keep in mind their big competitor is farmed salmon. And the salmon farmers around the world produce a lot more salmon than Alaska does. So their fish is entering a market with you know, the market has farmed salmon and it has wild salmon. And so there’s a lot of dynamics in that market that have to be understood and tracked. And I think fishermen would really help themselves if they paid attention to that, and I think the processors should help them. I think the processors should be more transparent. If they had told them earlier about all these inventory challenges, and the slack demand and all that, maybe it wouldn’t be such a shock. But I think both sides need to just talk to each other a lot more.”

Corinne Smith: And how would those discussions happen, do you imagine? Would it be more communications to the fleet directly from processors? Or perhaps talking more to the media, we would always love to hear more from processors as well. But yeah, what are some channels of communication that could be created and developed between processors and the fleet’s?

John Fiorillo: Yeah, and I think you’re right, I think the two need to speak to each other now, how that happens. I mean, there are models all around the country, all around the world where there are price boards that meet and there’s a kind of discovery of the price together. Some of these are government boards, some are just industry boards. I don’t know if that would be the solution in Alaska, and I don’t know that they’re, I don’t really have the solution, obviously. But to your point, there just needs to be some two way channel of communication throughout the year leading up to the seasons. So I think everybody is better prepared for times like these where it looks like the price is going to be really, really shaved.

Corinne Smith: And we do hear quite often, how fishermen wonder why Bristol Bay processors all set the same base price…

John Fiorillo: Yeah, well, they’re all selling into the same markets, whether it be the US market, Japan or Europe. So they don’t want to pay any more than the guy next to them. For the fish that are going to go to the same markets. I mean, it makes sense…that’s the essence of it, unfortunately.

Corinne Smith: What do you think it would take to sort of break tradition here with price secrecy, and move towards a more transparent model? more collaborative, maybe more communication? What do you think it would take to make this change?

John Fiorillo: That’s the million dollar question. I don’t know. Like I said earlier, I thought Peter Pan (Seafoods) was setting a new course. But what I did calculate, last year, the year before, was, well, what happens when the price drops like it’s doing now? So, I don’t know. I mean, the short answer is I don’t know. But I do know that both sides need to talk a lot more to reduce the hard feelings that are probably going to develop this year, over this price situation.

The Southeast Alaska Dungeness crab fishery opened on June 15. But roughly a quarter of the fleet in Petersburg is skipping the season. That’s partly because many of them are expecting low prices.

Two days before crabbing started, Petersburg fisherman Paul Menish was in the cabin of his boat, the Hi Nikki, speculating on crab prices.

“Sounds like prices aren’t going to be as low as we were quoted three weeks ago,” said Menish. “Now, it’s just rumors, but that the prices will be for Dungeness, will be in north at two dollars. Which isn’t a good price but better than three weeks ago.”

It turns out Menish was right.

When he sold his first load to OBI Seafoods in Petersburg, he said he got $2.10 a pound. That’s fifty cents lower than the starting price last summer.

Kevin Timm is the fleet manager at OBI Seafoods in Petersburg. He said the problem is that there’s still a lot of Dungeness crab left over from last year. He said it’s expensive and customers just aren’t buying it.

“There’s not a huge demand for it. It’s all about demand. And with the economy and recession, people aren’t buying crab,” said Timm.

Greg Smith is the communication director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. He said that while the institute doesn’t track prices, he’s noticed the same thing.

“We believe the impacts of inflation are moving people away from that species, from that category — and as a result, is hurting demand,” said Smith.

The organization doesn’t have any specific information on last year’s leftover dungy inventory. But they do know that snow crab inventory is higher than usual.

“The fisheries, they will kind of trend together,” said Smith. “So we can kind of make some assumptions that with snow crab having higher inventories, that Dungeness also probably has higher inventories as well.”

One way that crabbers make up for low prices is by catching a whole lot of crab. But last year, state managers closed Southeast’s Dungeness summer fishery two weeks early by emergency order because of low harvest numbers.

Joe Stratman is a regional shellfish biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He said that unlike many fisheries, last year’s Dungeness numbers are not any indication of potential stocks for the summer fishery. No one will know those numbers until the fishery is under way.

“We don’t survey Dungeness like we do in Southeast for red and blue king crab and tanner crab,” said Stratman. “So we don’t have any stock assessment independent of the fishery. So all of our information is fishery dependent.”

Fish and Game collects data on Dungeness stocks when processors buy crab. That means the department knows what to expect in terms of numbers at roughly the same time the fishermen do.

Menish — the Petersburg fisherman — feels good about this year’s potential harvest. He said the low crab price didn’t factor into his decision to participate this year. He’s heard that there were a lot of soft shells during last fall’s dungy opener. Soft shells mean the crabs aren’t mature enough to be caught and sold, but they’re a promising sign for future harvests.

“[I’m] hoping we can make up for it in volume this year,” said Menish. “But yeah, it has definitely taken the wind out of your sails, you know, when you hear those prices and your enthusiasm drops, but I was gonna do it anyways.”

Still, others just aren’t willing to set gear out. This summer, the Southeast Dungeness fishery opened with only 146 permit holders registered, which is about 50 less than last year.  That means roughly one quarter of the crabbing fleet decided to focus on other fisheries, or stay home and work other jobs.

Mike Weigand is one of them. He owns the Deli, a skiff with a winch for hauling crab pots. Weigand does have another job, which means he can be pretty relaxed about his fishing decisions.

“Even if it’s not the best year, I still have my other job I can kind of fall back on,” said Weigand. “So if it’s bad, then we’ll try and have as much fun as possible, I guess. We’ll just let the gear soak and play.”

One thing is for sure: fishermen are tight-lipped. Now that the crabbing has started, they won’t be sharing their dungy numbers.

Fish and Game will announce the length of the season by June 29. Their report will also have stock data from the first week of crabbing.