The Fisheries Technology Program housed at the University of Alaska Southeast is offering several courses open to degree and non-degree seeking students, including:
View a flyer with more information here.
This article was originally posted on KCAW by Emily Russell. Read and listen to the full story here. Photo by Bethany Goodrich.
Commercial fishermen are largely at the whim of the seafood market. Prices can vary wildly, while operation costs stays the same — That is, until now. An energy audit aims to help Sitka’s fishermen increase their profit margins.
It’s a sunny morning in Sitka. Usually Steve Fish — yes, that is his real name — would be out on his boat the Kariel, trolling for salmon or longlining for black cod or halibut. But today, the 66-foot fishing vessel and its captain are parked in the harbor.
Fish has surrendered the Kariel to a swarm of engineers, who can’t help but ask about how his gear works. Fish explains.
“The fish hits the cruise fire and then the winch, as it’s hauling the gear, pulls the hook out of the fish’s mouth.”
They’re all aboard the Kariel to conduct an energy audit of the vessel. Fish, along with 17 other fishermen in Sitka, volunteered for the audit.
“It’s dollars and cents,” Fish says.
For Fish and most others in the industry, each year those dollars and cents are spent at the pump.
“We might use somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 gallons,” Fish says, which costs between $20,000 and $50,000, depending on the price of diesel.
One obvious way to cut costs is with a more efficient engine, but Mike Gaffney says there are other, less expensive avenues as well. He’s an engineer based in Norfolk, Virginia and usually works on larger ships like cruise liners and Coast Guard cutters.
“But this is my first episode with fishing vessels, so that’s why I keep asking how the operations work,” explains Gaffney.
Gaffney was brought up to help with the Fishing Vessel Energy Efficiency Project. That’s a joint effort by the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association and the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation aimed at energy and cost savings.
But to do that, Gaffney says they need a baseline of data: How much, say, a vessel like the Kariel uses without the upgrades.
Gaffney climbs down the narrow ladder into the Kariel’s engine room
“And of course there’s lots of room here to move around,” Gaffney jokes.
The space is tiny. Gaffney tucks himself up against the electric panel and runs wires between it and his power quality analyzer, or PQA, which resembles a clunky, oversized calculator.
“It is the Hioki 3197 model,” Gaffney explains of his PQA. “That one is sexy.”
He starts with the vessel’s lighting. It’s measuring amperage, voltage, and power factor, which together determine how much energy the lights actually use.
“So we’re going to measure what he’s currently drawing and see how long he actually keeps them on,” Gaffney says. “We’ll figure out what his annual cost is to operate these lights and see if it’s cost effective to switch to LEDs.”
Right now the vessel uses high pressure sodium lights, which Gaffney says have a long warm up period, so fishermen tend to just turn them on and leave them on.
“Also every time you cycle them on and off, it shortens the life of the bulb,” Gaffney adds.
That’s not the case for LEDs. There’s no warm up time and it doesn’t hurt to turn them on and off. And they’re brighter.
“If you put an LED lighting in this engine room, it’ll brighten it way up,” Gaffney says.
For fishermen, though, that’s not always a good thing. Some complain about the light being too blue, too harsh on the eyes. Another problem unique to fishermen especially in Alaska: LEDs don’t heat up the way other bulbs do, which means more ice buildup on outside lighting.
It’s the data but also these insights that make the project unique.
Chandler Kemp is an engineer based in Sitka. “I don’t know of anybody who is doing this type of work on fishing boats,” Kemp says.
He’s compiling all of Gaffney’s data and writing up reports for the 18 vessels that volunteered for the audit. Kemp says the end goal is an online tool for fishermen.
“It would be an online interface that people can go on to easily access the information we have collected and enter in a little bit of information about their boats, say the fisheries they participate in, the length, the engine size,” Kemp explains.
The tool, which Kemp expects will be released in 2017, will then generate ways to make the vessel more energy efficient, and for fishermen, that means more profitable.
Click here to view the IPHC stock assessment presentation
On November 29th, the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) staff presented the 2016 stock assessment results and the 2017 halibut catch limit decision table. Stock assessment results show a stable or slightly increasing spawning biomass. A few highlights include: Area 3A and 3B stocks are recovering; bycatch in the Bering Sea is down by .44 million pounds (allowing for an increased catch limit in Area 4CDE); and Area 2C survey Weight Per Unit Effort is again the highest across the entire fishery. Despite these improvements, or in some ways because of these improvements, the staff “blue line” catch limits for Areas 2B and 2C are down from last year. The reason for the Area 2 decrease is that coastwide fishery catch limits are down slightly from last year and the survey, which determines apportionment between areas, found more fish relative to last year in Areas 3A and 3B than in Areas 2B and 2C. In other words, Area 2 gets a smaller percentage of the total as other areas improve. This counter-intuitive result raised questions and concerns from both Canada and the U.S.; expect more discussion of this apportionment issue at the annual meeting. REMEMBER—the IPHC will meet in January to consider the decision table and establish catch limits.
After reviewing the decision tables, IPHC Commissioners discussed rebuilding objectives for the halibut fishery and noticed their intent to move away from the outdated and mostly ignored existing harvest policy (which results in the blue line catch limits) and toward a Spawning Potential Ratio approach (explained in Halibut article on Page X). Adopting an SPR approach and Identifying an appropriate SPR, or level of fishing intensity, will take additional work and input from IPHC staff and advisory bodies, but this notice from the Commission provides a road map toward a new harvest policy.
The IPHC will be accepting catch limit proposals and comments until December 31st. The IPHC Annual Meeting will be held in Victoria, BC January 23-27th 2017.
Are you curious about whale depredation in other parts of the world? A recent publication describes acoustical research on False Killer Whale depredation of longline gear in Hawaii that could be relevant to ALFA's efforts in Alaska in avoiding sperm whale depredation.
"False killer whales depredate pelagic longlines in offshore Hawaiian waters. On January 28, 2015 a depredation event was recorded 14 m from an integrated GoPro camera, hydrophone,and accelerometer, revealing that false killer whales depredate bait and generate clicks and whistlesunder good visibility conditions. The act of plucking bait off a hook generated a distinctive 15 Hz line vibration[...] These detection range analyses provide insight into how passive acoustic monitoring might be used to both quantify and avoid depredation encounters."
Read the full publication here.
For more information about what ALFA is doing to prevent Sperm Whale Depredation in Southeast Alaska, visit our Seaswap page.
Please fill out the Alaska Longline Fishermen's Association (ALFA) Strategic Planning Survey.
ALFA relies on its members to provide direction for our programs and services and we want to include your voice in our strategic planning session this November, 2016.
Your responses will remain confidential. The survey is brief and is due by October 31st, 2016. You can fill out the survey here.
ALFA staff and board are very grateful for any input you can provide as we work to continually improve our ability as an Association to successfully accomplish our members' goals.
Please contact Willow Moore at 907-747-3400 or alfastaff2@gmail.com with any questions.
