The Research Vessel Aquila has put to sea once again, promoting economic development at home and spearheading scientific progress worldwide. Our first trip this year was the GOALS survey, a marine mammal study in the Gulf of Alaska intended to assess the impact of Navy sonar testing and training in the area. By all accounts the survey was a resounding success, and although the verdict has not come out on whether sonar testing is impacting the marine life, the weather cooporated wonderfully and the team was able to log a record number of sightings. One of the highlights was a pair of blue whale sightings, and what may have been the first ever tagging operation of a blue whale in the region. The tag is a satellite tracking device that allows the movements of the whale to be recorded and analyzed, providing invaluable data on the movement and migration patterns of the whales.
After the conclusion of the GOALS survey, we headed to Sitka, home of Silver Bay Seafoods. Silver Bay is a startup salmon company that has set out to change the salmon industry forever. For the last fifty years, the salmon industry has been relatively unchanged. While the Alaskan salmon stock is one of the best managed and sustainable fisheries in the world, catching and transporting the fish has historically been a rather unglorious job. Silver Bay has set out to change this, and in doing so produce a far superior product. The two major methods of catching salmon are gillnetting and purse seining. A gill net is strung across the water where the salmon are swimming, often in the mouth of a river. When the fish encounter the monofiliment net, they become entangled, then the net is hauled in. Purse seining involves a larger and thicker net that is circled around a school of salmon, then the bottom of the net is cinched closed and the 'purse' is hauled aboard. Both fisheries have a len
gth limit for catcher vessels, thirty-two feet for gillnetting, fifty-eight feet for seiners. Due to the small boats in the fishery and the fishing grounds often being many hours from a processing plant, fish tenders are used to support the fishing fleet. Tenders offload the smaller boats and hold the fish in large refridgerated tanks, normally just one degree above freezing. This keeps the fish as fresh as possible, and allows the boats to continue fishing without worrying about driving eight hours back to the plant to offload. Tenders also support the fleet with additional services such as fuel, fresh water, groceries, net storage, and parts, mail, and packages from town. In the past, tendering has been a summer job for the Bering Sea crabbing fleet, and was often a break-even proposition at best, barely covering the bills between crab seasons. The fundemental idea behind the success of Silver Bay is to pay the tender fleet a decent wage, and supply all of the expensive gear, such a
s pumps, scales, and sorting tables. This way the equipment will always be top of the line, and although it may cost more up front, they will never have to worry about losing time and productivity due to a breakdown in the tender fleet.
For Team Aquila, our stay at Silver Bay was very short lived, and more a warmup round for next year. Because of our science cruises, we were only able to spend two weeks in Sitka. Although short lived, we had a great time working with the team at SBS and can't wait to be back next year. The way our tanks are currently configured, we are able to pack 440,000 pounds, but we have four more tanks that need only refridgeration systems and they will be ready to pack fish. We hope to have this done before next summer, as this would put our total capacity closer to 1.2 millon pounds of salmon and make us the equivalent of three or four average tenders.
Leaving Sitka early august, we made a quick trip back to Seattle to load gear for our next project. Several thousand pounds of gear later, we set course for Kodiak, home of the ferocious Kodiak Grizzly bear and the starting point of ARCWEST 2013. ARCWEST will be fairly similiar to our second cruise last year, with a visual survey team, an acoustics team, and a marine environment team. The visual team is recording each marine mammal sighting and is generally on duty during daylight hours. Once we get further north, they hope to do some tagging operations as well. Our acoustics team is running two separate efforts, real time monitoring via sonobouy, and long term data acquisition through sensors that have been here since last summer. The marine environment team will also be running two efforts, one through water column sensors deployed last year, the second through CTD samples and towing a plankton sled.
Pictures included with this post (hopefully in this order) are as follows
Offloading 300,000 pounds of salmon in the Sitka fog
Watching a seiner at work
A beautiful night underway
More sunset scenery
Waiting for a boat to deliver
Anchored in Ketchikan
Last minute loading in Kodiak
Pumping out the tanks during an offload
Sorting fish
Underway at sunset
Leaving the dock in Kodiak
New switch panel for the deck lights
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