This week on the Alaska Fisheries Report with Terry Haines: Robert Woolsey’s story on hatchery chums, Joe Viechnicki’s on the record herring catch in Sitka Sound, Clair Stremple’s piece on the Mariculture conference in Juneau, and Kirsten Dobroth on a tiny maritime art display.
CHUM RULE ROBERT WOOLSEY
After a challenging year in 2020, chum salmon returned to the top of the list of Southeast Alaska’s most valuable hatchery-produced fish in 2021.
Coho, or silver salmon, were a distant second.
Hatchery chum salmon are so valuable to Southeast Alaska’s salmon fisheries, that they’re not even on the same chart as the four other species. Based on preliminary estimates, chum were worth about $25 million to the commercial fisheries in 2021, out of a total $31 million for all hatchery-produced species.
Flip Pryor is the Aquaculture Section Chief for the Alaska Department of Fish & Game. He led the department’s twice-yearly “Regional Planning Team” meeting in Sitka in the first week in April. The rebound in 2021 is in part a function of the market during the lockdown in 2020, but there are other factors that are less well understood.
Trollers, for example, landed nearly $5 million worth of chum in 2021, their second-best year, even though the hatchery chum return has been generally larger over the past decade. Chum – compared to kings and coho – don’t always strike troll gear with much enthusiasm. But sometimes they do.
8:21 – this was one of the years the fish were really biting the chum were biting when they were coming in. And that’s not always the case. There’s some years they simply don’t bite thick. They come in deep and they you know, they just aren’t hitting hooks, basically. And so the trollers don’t do so well. And this year, they did really well.
There are a few theories about the “will they or won’t they” behavior of chum – but no research. Pryor says a best guess is food availability at sea, as chum return to spawn, and whether the fish are satiated or hungry when they’re intercepted by trollers. It could be that simple.
What’s not especially simple is managing around it. A large forecast for hatchery chum in any given year can raise the troll fleet’s hopes, but it doesn’t always pan out.
10:20 – it also is kind of a management thing is you go, Okay, well, you know, CPU II and all these boats, let’s, you know, try to figure out what they’re catching. And you know, one year it’s way up and the next year, it’s way down. It’s like, okay, how do you how do you? How do you manage that? And it’s just something that you got to do in season and it’s just one of those weird things you have to deal with.
As good as 2021 was for chum, it was still below all the pre-pandemic years as far back as 2010, and it was less than half the record years of 2018 and 2012, when hatchery chum were worth almost $63 million. Seiners and gillnetters catch most of those fish – and get proportionately more value for them (WEB: In 2021, Seiners landed roughly $12 million in chum, to $8 million for gillnetters, to $5 million for trollers).
Trollers, however, do get considerably more value for kings and coho than the net fleets. After chum, coho were the second-most valuable hatchery salmon in Southeast in 2021, worth about $4 million, with trollers taking almost 90-percent of that value. Hatchery kings came in at around $800,000 for trollers, and far less for seiners and gillnetters.
Record Herring Catch in Sitka Joe Viechnicki
The commercial herring fishery in Sitka Sound wrapped up Sunday April 10, with its largest harvest on record.
The sac roe fishery had daily openings last week, with the last one on Sunday. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimates the catch totaled over 26-thousand tons, (26,350), over half of this year’s guideline harvest level (45,164). That beats the previous record for the fishery from 2011 when the fleet caught over 19-thousand tons (19,419).
Fishing started on March 26. The herring are caught for their roe and that’s processed in Petersburg and other Southeast communities and sold in Japan.
The fishery did not open in 2019 and 2020 because fish were too small for buyers. Last year’s catch was over 15-thousand tons (15,164).
This year Fish and Game has reported herring spawning along more than 74 nautical miles of coastline around Sitka Sound.
Meanwhile, herring are also spawning further south near Prince of Wales Island. A roe-on-kelp fishery opened near Craig on March 17. Fishermen have been given extra time to transfer fish into pounds, or floating net pens, where the herring lay their eggs on kelp.
During an aerial survey Sunday, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported over 26 nautical miles of active spawn in that area. Managers say herring have been placed in most of the 65 pounds. They’re released after laying eggs.
Both herring stocks are strong this year because of big numbers of six-year-old fish born in 2016.
Mariculture Conference Claire Stremple/KTOO
Supporters of mariculture [MARE-ih-cuhl-chur] in Alaska are working to build a $100 million dollar industry out of shellfish and seaweed over the next two decades. They’re meeting up at the University of Alaska Mariculture Conference in Juneau this week to talk about how to get there.
The Juneau Economic Development Council is hosting the conference. Executive Director Brian Holst said mariculture is a good long term investment for the state.
12Mariculture1 (:19) It is an industry that’s sustainable for Alaska, and can create jobs in not just in communities, such as in places like Juneau, but in rural areas throughout Southeast, and anything that’s good for communities around Southeast Alaska is also good for Juneau.
The University of Alaska is sponsoring the 3-day event. President Pat Pitney said the university is “all in” on mariculture.
12Mariculture2 (:24) Alaska needs to be on the world map from agriculture, we can be we have more resources, we have better people… wouldn’t say better people, we have people who are better prepared and more willing to work for it. And that’s gonna get us there.
The university is developing academic programs in mariculture for its undergraduates and now offers a Master’s in Marine Policy [WEB: in a partnership between the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Alaska Southeast].
Julie Decker directs the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, a non profit that supports fisheries. She says mariculture is a way to grow seafood opportunities in the state.
12Mariculture3 (:18) This incredible, once in a lifetime opportunity has to be balanced with a sense of responsibility. The urgency needs to be balanced with equity. And so the real challenge that’s before us is figuring out how to do things better than we’ve done them in the past.
There’s $32 million in mariculture research over the next decade coming from the settlement from the Exxon Valdez [val-DEEZ] oil spill. An additional $50 million could come from the federal government and $25 million in matching funds from the state.
Kodiak Maritime Museum brings fishermen-inspired art to Kodiak’s downtown brewery
Kirsten Dobroth
There’s a new pint-sized exhibition on display at Kodiak’s downtown brewery. The Kodiak Maritime Museum’s exhibition is called “Water Haul,” and features art inspired by and for the commercial fishing industry.
Catie Bursch is an artist from Homer. She’s been an Alaska commercial fisherman for more than three decades with her family in Bristol Bay. She said the term “water haul” refers to a net that comes up empty, but there’s also a more somber parallel.
“In the area that I’ve been setnetting, it seems like someone drowns not quite every year but almost every year, unfortunately,” she said. “And so, a lot of times with our setnet skiffs, we’re looking for the body basically.”
Bursch created 11 small-scale dioramas for the show – they’re filled with nick-nacks and built out of fishing paraphernalia, like empty Xtratuf boxes and a gutted single side band radio. And in each one, skeletons are dressed in raingear, laughing, or sharing stories on the dock.
Bursch says some of her inspiration comes from the Mexican tradition known as Dia de los Muertos – or the Day of the Dead – when families leave out drinks and food for deceased family members in hopes that they’ll visit. Bursch said her work is similarly crafty and whimsical – and it’s a way to celebrate the fishermen that don’t make it home.
“If you got one day to come back to earth like, where would you go and what would you do?” she said. “And I just imagine myself as a fisherman being like, ‘I just want to go back to the cannery bunkhouse and play crib with my old friend Johnny, or I just want to get on the flying bridge and get a fish call.’”
“Water Haul” was exhibited back in December of 2020 at a gallery in Homer. Bursch said a lot of people didn’t get to see it because of COVID. This time, the Kodiak Maritime Museum is showing her work at Kodiak Island Brewery on Lower Mill Bay Road. Bursch said she’s hoping others in the fishing community will have a chance to see it.
“That’s the audience I would most want,” said Bursch. “So, I just feel like Kodiak is a great place for this art just because, you know, I want fishermen to see it.”
“Water Haul” is on display through the end of May.
Virtual Changes to the Council Process Terry Haines
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is considering changing the way it does business. Some of the changes it is pondering are obviously in response to the experience of doing business virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. On the table are conducting one to two meetings a year entirely online in the future, and to continue to allow official testimony virtually.
The latter seems a no brainer. The ability to testify remotely has allowed the participation of commenters that would not have been able to in the past, sometimes to the consternation of the Council. This is a good thing. And holding some meetings virtually might make sense, too, depending on the actions and issues before the Council at a given meeting. But despite the expense of time and travel to attend Council meetings personally, face to face interactions with regulators can never be replaced by chat rooms. One thing seems certain though: the post COVID process of the North Pacific Management Council will be different.
