Our office at the Sitka Sound Science Center is under construction, and ALFA staff will be working from home until the renovations are complete. We expect to be back in the building sometime next week and will send an email out to members when we have more information.
NPFMC Authorizes Charter Purchase of Halibut Quota
In a dark day for Alaska’s small boat halibut fishery and the next generation of commercial halibut fishermen, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) today authorized formation of a non-profit Recreational Quota Entity (RQE) that can purchase and hold commercial halibut quota in Areas 2C and 3A for use by the charter sector.
The Council took this action despite strong opposition from commercial fishermen and processors, Gustavus coastal residents, and the National Park Service at Glacier Bay, all of whom weighed in to oppose the subsidized reallocation of quota from the commercial to the charter sector. Details of the decision are below, but for the record the only Alaskan to vote against the action was Buck Laukitis. He was joined by Oregon and Washington representatives Roy Hyder and Kenny Downs. Council chair Dan Hull and ADFG Commissioner Sam Cotton spoke in strong support of the RQE amendment.
Council final action on Charter Recreational Quota Entity
- Establish an RQE as a qualified non-profit entity registered with the IRS to purchase and hold commercial halibut QS for the guided halibut sector.
- Establish one RQE with two quota pools, one in each Area 2C and Area 3A
- Allow two way transfers. Quota class and block designation is retained if the quota is transferred back to the commercial sector.
- Annual limit on transfers to the RQE in each regulatory area are 1% in Area 2C and 1.2% in Area 3A (amounts based on 2015 QS pool)
Total (cumulative) limit on amount of commercial quota share held by RQE and leased under GAF:
10% of the 2015 commercial QS pool may be held as RQE and Guided Angler Fish (GAF) combined in Area 2C and 12% of the commercial QS pool may be held as RQE and GAF combined in Area 3A
Cumulative cap will be managed annually on a sliding scale between RQE and GAF, with GAF transfers restricted to accommodate RQE QS holdings.
The RQE may not purchase more than 10% of the D shares in Area 2C (annually and in total) and not more than 10% of the B shares in Area 2C. The RQE may not purchase any D shares
No D shares in Area 3. No more than 10 percent D or 10 percent B shares in 2C
The RQE may not purchase blocked QS that equates to less than less than or equal to 1500 pounds in 2015 pounds.
Use RQE QS holdings as of October 1 each year as the basis to estimate IFQ pounds to add to the estimated guided recreational allocation under the catch sharing plan for the upcoming year. This amount must be maintained for the following fishing year. This estimated combined allocation would be used to recommend the guided recreational harvest measure for the following year.
If the RQE holdings provide a charter harvest opportunity greater than the unguided recreational bag limit in either area, NMFS would not issue annual IFQ in excess of the amount needed for the charter sector to obtain the unguided recreational bag limit to the RQE for that area. (This is VERY unlikely in Area 2C; could happen in Area 3A)
Unallocated RQE IFQ would be reallocated as follows:
- 50% to all catcher vessel QS holders in the applicable area who do not hold more than 32,333 QS units in Area 2C and 47,469 units in Area 3A (2,000 pounds in 2015). This 50% redistributed among qualified QS holders proportional to their QS holdings.
- 50% equally among all CQEs that held halibut QS in the applicable Area in the year prior to the reallocation. If no CQE held QS in the applicable area in the preceding year, unallocated RQE IFQ would not be allocated in that area (left in the water).
The Council envisions the RQE will use funds primarily for the acquisition of commercial halibut quota, halibut conservation/research; promotion of the halibut resource; and administrative costs. Council intends the RQE resources not be involved in political campaigns.
RQE organizational structure:
To be approved as an entity eligible to purchase and hold commercial halibut QS, the RQE must submit articles of incorporation and management organizational information to NMFS, including 1) bylaws and 2) a list of key personnel including, but not limited to, the board of directors, officers, representatives and managers. In addition:
- A representative of the Alaska Department of Revenue may sit as an ex-officio member of the RQE board, and the Commissioner of ADFG, or their designee, may sit as a voting member of the RQE board.
- The RQE shall file an annual report detailing RQE activities during the prior year by January 31. The annual report shall be provided to the Council and shall include:
1) List of all purchases and sales of QS
2) Any changes to the bylaws from the preceding year
3) Any changes to the BOD or key personnel from the preceding year
4) Number of charter halibut permits purchased or held
5) Funds spent on conservation, research and promotion of the halibut resource and a summary of the results
6) Administrative expenses.
Big thanks to Jeff Farvour, Carina Nichols and Dan Falvey who travelled to Anchorage to testify. We could have use about 80 more commercial fishermen at the meeting.
Thank you also to Carter Hughes, who testified for Seafood Producers Cooperative, Jim Machovjak who testified for Gustavus-based fishermen, Rhonda and Jim Hubbard of Kruzof Fisheries, Matt and Malcolm Milne, from North Pacific Fisheries Association, Megan O'Neil, from PVOA, and to Tom Gemmell of the Halibut Coalition, who kept the troops organized and well-informed.
More to follow soon once the Council takes action on electronic monitoring....
UAS Offers Spring Fisheries Courses
The Fisheries Technology Program housed at the University of Alaska Southeast is offering several courses open to degree and non-degree seeking students, including:
- Fisheries of Alaska
- Fisheries Management Techniques
- Fisheries Biology
- Salmon Culture
- Fisheries Management, Law, and Economics
View a flyer with more information here.
Snagging Savings: Energy audit aims to cut costs for fishermen
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.
ALFA Meeting December 6 at 1pm
ALFA NEWSLETTER UPDATED
IPHC releases 2017 halibut stock assessment
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.
Please note !! Area 2C and 3A Blue Line FCEYs include charter allocation.
New publication: killer whale depredation in Hawaii
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.
