KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
Kayla Desroches/KMXT
Researchers filled their databases and the freezers at a local food bank through a recent study.
For the survey in December, scientists collected data in order to determine how many female sablefish will spawn in the coming year. They did similar work with female rockfish as a side project.
Katy Echave, a NOAA fisheries research scientist with the Auke Bay Lab in Juneau and chief scientist on the survey, says they went out and studied otoliths.
“Which are the ear bones, which is how we age the fish, and the ovaries from the females, and in this particular cruise, we also added in collecting livers, which may possibly be another way to show their maturity state as well as the basic length and weight.”
She says while the stock in Alaska has been healthy, it’s been declining in recent years, which has also negatively affected quotas.
“And we think the primary reason that the stock has been declining is because of the lack in recent recruitment, which is the reproductive success, meaning there’s not as many fish entering the population, so really it all comes to estimating that recruitment for sablefish and why is it low.”
Echave says the researchers tagged 40 sablefish to help investigate that question.
“We are putting these tags on the fish also to release when the fish are spawning so then we can hopefully close that picture per se of finding out where these fish are spawning and then having a look at the conditions there that would make the low survival of their egg or larval stages.”
She says those tags are programmed to release December 2016 and February 2017. That way they’ll get a year’s worth of data to track from one spawning season to the next. Echave says they usually do similar surveys in the summer, but the maturity of fish is more difficult to determine during those months.
She says the team contracted the fishing vessel Gold Rush for the project. And since the crew can’t keep the fish due to scientific regulations, they suggested donating the fish to the Kodiak Island Food Bank instead. Alex von Tsurikov runs the food bank and says he received the fish through Trident.
“This was all whole, glazed sablefish – [beheaded], gutted sablefish – but the other fish I get is usually halibut steaks or salmon steaks. That’s bycatch that’s too small. And yeah, they made as much available as I need. Actually, my freezer was too small, so I could only take some, but this week I’ll try to get the rest.”
As for the scientific side, Echave says researchers will complete their work in the lab, where they’ll process the liver and ovary samples. They’ll then send those to another lab for histology work.
