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The North Pacific Fishery Management Council has sent Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick a three-page letter stressing the importance of maintaining NOAA marine surveys and the council process.

"Without these surveys, scientists would be required to account for substantially increased uncertainty by lowering catch limits for U.S. fishermen," the letter says.

'I'm starting to get really upset'

Alaska's junior U.S. senator, Dan Sullivan, kinda went off in a hearing this week, saying the Trump administration — which has been busy cutting budget and staff — needs to make sure fisheries stock surveys get done.

"When you don't do stock assessment surveys, you know what happens? My fishermen can't fish," Sullivan said.

Lots more in this press release from Sullivan's office.

NMFS moves to 'modernize' surveys, cut costs

Deckboss recently posted an industry letter to Congress expressing "urgent concern" about adequate funding for federal fisheries surveys.

Now comes word that the National Marine Fisheries Service is consolidating, reducing and suspending a number of Alaska surveys.

COVID-19 plays havoc with surveys

As we all know, sound scientific stock surveys are paramount in supporting commercial fisheries.

But the COVID-19 pandemic is ravaging this year's survey plans.

Last week, the National Marine Fisheries Service said it was taking the unprecedented step of canceling five major research surveys, including the Eastern Bering Sea bottom trawl survey.

Now, today brings news that the International Pacific Halibut Commission is scaling back its setline survey.

Trouble for red king crab

Results from this summer's eastern Bering Sea trawl survey is fueling fears of a painful cut in the catch limit for the state's most valuable crab.

The estimated biomass of legal-sized male Bristol Bay red king crabs is 15,412 metric tons, down 27.8 percent from the 2010 estimate. It's the fourth consecutive year the biomass has fallen.

The numbers are contained in a National Marine Fisheries Service draft technical memorandum now making the rounds. Deckboss reviewed the 117-page document.

The survey results suggest that a significant cut in the total allowable catch (TAC) could be forthcoming. A panel of crab managers and scientists will review the survey at a meeting set for Sept. 19-22 in Seattle.

Bristol Bay red king crab in most years is Alaska's richest crab harvest. Over the most recent 10-year period for which data is available, 2000-2009, the fishery averaged a dockside value of $68 million.

The red king crab TAC for last season was 14.8 million pounds.

Fishery managers are likely to announce around Oct. 1 what the TAC will be for the 2011 season, which opens Oct. 15.

Hard times on horizon for king crab?

The stock assessment for Alaska's richest shellfish harvest, Bristol Bay red king crab, is out. And it's disappointing.

The assessment incorporates the latest trawl survey, conducted annually in late May and June.

Deckboss spent some time reviewing the hefty document and found words for worry.

"Male abundance from the 2010 summer trawl survey was lower than expected," the assessment says.

Of course, it's only the big, male crabs that fishermen and processors can legally take to market.

The assessment said estimated mature male abundance and biomass were about 7 percent lower than in 2009.

But this isn't the biggest concern. The red king crab stock, not all that strong to begin with, looks to be heading into further decline.

"Due to lack of recruitment, mature and legal crabs should decline next year," the assessment says. "Current crab abundance is still low relative to the late 1970s, and without favorable environmental conditions, recovery to the high levels of the late 1970s is unlikely."

Recruitment is when young crab reach the adult ranks.

OK, so what does this mean in terms of catch limits for this fall and for coming years?

The fishery opens Oct. 15.

Regulators announced the 2009 quota on Sept. 30, and it was 16 million pounds — down 21.6 percent from the prior year.

We seem likely to see another reduction when this year's quota is announced.

Without recruitment, future cuts could be much more severe.

Certainly, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery has been a story of spectacular boom and bust. The domestic harvest peaked in 1980 with a catch of nearly 130 million pounds.

The fishery never has approached that kind of productivity since, and managers were forced to shut it down as recently as 1994 and 1995.

Still, it's been extremely valuable in recent years, with last season's catch worth $70 million dockside and the 2008 fishery worth $100 million.

For crabbers, losing money like that would be the deadliest pain.

Is NMFS science cheating snow crabbers?

Maybe more abundant than we thought. ASMI photo

Some tension always exists between the fishing industry and government scientists over official estimates of just how much fish and shellfish is out there.

The scientists survey the population, then bring the results back to fishermen and processors. Generally, it seems to me the industry has a fairly high degree of trust in the work the scientists do in Alaska, unlike in other parts of the country.

But now comes an apparent admission from the National Marine Fisheries Service in Seattle that surveys for eastern Bering Sea (EBS) snow crab, a multimillion-dollar commercial stock, might be suspect.

The issue is just how good a job the government's survey trawl does in netting snow crab on the seafloor for purposes of estimating abundance. These estimates, of course, have a huge bearing on how many snow crabs the "Deadliest Catch" fleet can harvest.

This past July, according to this brief NMFS report, government scientists and industry players conducted a cooperative experiment on the snow crab grounds to test the standard NMFS survey trawl.

Part of the experiment involved towing two alternative nets, including a modified NMFS trawl and one from an industry organization, the Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation. The foundation's trawl is designed for the European Norway lobster fishery.

You can read the NMFS report for full details, but the bottom line is that the foundation's net is a much more effective crab catcher than the NMFS nets, including the one that was modified to improve its catch rate.

Here's the key paragraph from the NMFS write-up:

"Preliminary results show that more escapement of snow crab under the footrope of the EBS survey trawl occurs than previously estimated. Specifically, only 35% of the large males, 27% of the pre-recruit males, 13% of the small males, 25% of the large females, and just 3% of the small female snow crab in the path of the survey trawl are captured."

Deckboss put the following question to Steve Minor, a crab industry lobbyist and chairman of the Pacific Northwest Crab Industry Advisory Committee:

"Is the government short-changing the crab industry because of a flawed stock survey?"

Minor replied: "Let's just say that stock assessment science is evolving."

Surveys confirm 'low' pollock population

Pollock not overfished, scientists say. NOAA photo

We've seen a downward trend the last few years in the eastern Bering Sea pollock fishery, the nation's largest commercial catch by weight.

This year's total allowable catch (TAC) of 815,000 metric ton is barely more than half the 2006 level.

Now government scientists are evaluating this summer's at-sea stock surveys, which will be used to determine the TAC for the 2010 season. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will recommend a TAC at its early December meeting in Anchorage.

So, will the TAC be up or down?

It seems likely based on this press release that we won't see an increase, as researchers continue to find fewer fish of commercial size in the population.

It also seems pretty safe to assume, however, that we're not going to run out of fish sticks or imitation crab anytime soon, as the Bering Sea pollock catch will still be substantial even if regulators trim the TAC again.

Feds wrap up stock surveys, OK Arctic fishing ban

Here are two important announcements today from the National Marine Fisheries Service.

First, researchers have completed this year's surveys of eastern Bering Sea fish and crab stocks. The annual surveys are important for setting commercial catch limits.

Second, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has approved a temporary no-fishing policy for warming Arctic Ocean waters. Approval of the widely hailed fishing ban was considered largely a formality.