Publications

Environmental Assessment analyzes alternatives to issue an exempted fishing permit for testing of a salmon excluder device in the Central Gulf of Alaska Pollock trawl fishery. The experiment would be conducted during the Spring and Fall of 2013 and 2014.

References for listing the ringed seal under the Endangered Species Act

Biological Opinion on granting quotas for subsistence hunting bowhead whales 2013 through 2018.

Through an Inter-Agency agreement (IA) between the National Marine Mammal Laboratory (NMML) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), NMML is conducting a dedicated multi-year study to determine relationships between dominant currents passing from the Bering Sea into and through the Chukchi Sea and prey resources delivered to the Barrow Arch area (an area of high bowhead whale and prey concentrations between Wainwright and Smith Bay), and to provide information about the dynamic nature of those relationships relative to whale distribution and habitat utilization in the eastern Chukchi and extreme western Beaufort Seas. This study will also provide important baseline data on the occurrence, distribution and habitat use of large whales in an area that is subject to rapid change in climate and human industrial development. This quarterly report covers the first period of this study between 25 July and 30 September 2012. The major activity during this period consisted of purchasing equipment, deploying the first set of longterm moorings, and opportunistically tagging a gray whale during the Chukchi Sea Acoustics, Oceanography, and Zooplankton (CHAOZ) cruise on 25 August, 2012. The CHAOZ cruise took place from 8 August through 7 September on the chartered research vessel R/V Aquila. Seventeen scientists, technicians, and observers from eight different laboratories and institutions participated on the CHAOZ cruise.

Through an Inter-Agency agreement (IA) between the National Marine Mammal Laboratory (NMML) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), NMML is conducting a dedicated multi-year study to determine relationships between dominant currents passing from the Bering Sea into and through the Chukchi Sea and prey resources delivered to the Barrow Arch area (an area of high bowhead whale and prey concentrations between Wainwright and Smith Bay), and to provide information about the dynamic nature of those relationships relative to whale distribution and habitat utilization in the eastern Chukchi and extreme western Beaufort Seas. This study will also provide important baseline data on the occurrence, distribution and habitat use of large whales in an area that is subject to rapid change in climate and human industrial development. This annual report covers the first year of this study between March and December 2012. The major activity during this period consisted of planning for the 2013 vessel survey.

Biological opinion on the effects of the Knik Arm Crossing Project at Anchorage on Cook Inlet beluga whales.

Environmental Assessment analyzes alternatives to issue an exempted fishing permit for testing of a salmon excluder device in the Central Gulf of Alaska pollock trawl fishery.

Groundfish Retention Standard for Non-AFA Trawl Catcher/Processors, Amendment 80 vessels, and Amendment 80 cooperatives participating in the BSAI groundfish fisheries.

On August 28, 2012, the Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) completed the thirty-fourth annual longline survey of Alaska sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) and other groundfish resources of the upper continental slope (Figure 1). This survey was designed to continue the time series (1979-94) of the Gulf of Alaska portion of the Japan-U.S. cooperative longline survey that was discontinued after 1994. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has surveyed the Gulf of Alaska annually since 1987, the eastern Aleutian Islands biennially since 1996, and the eastern Bering Sea biennially since 1997. The Gulf of Alaska and eastern Aleutian Islands were sampled in 2012.

On October 20, 2009, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) received a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) to list 83 species of coral as either threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). In response, NMFS i