Publications

This Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis evaluates the impacts of the Crab Rationalization Program for the King and Tanner fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands on small entities.

Subsistence harvest report for northern fur seals in St. George and St. Paul Islands of Alaska.

The Humpback Whale North American Conservation Action Plan resulted from a trinational workshop in San Francisco, California in March 2004 and benefited from the in-depth review of an extensive list of wildlife experts from diverse backgrounds.

Publication prepared by the Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation

Over 34,000 age 0–2 juvenile sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) were tagged and released in southeast Alaska waters during 1985–2005. The data set resulting from this tagging study was unusual because of its time span (20 years) and because age could be reliably inferred from release length (i.e., tagged and released fish were of known age); thus, age-specific movement patterns could be examined. The depth-and area-related recovery patterns supported the concepts that sablefish move to deeper water with age and migrate counterclockwise in the Gulf of Alaska. Availability to the fishery increased rapidly for fish of younger ages, peaked at age 5 to 6, and then gradually declined as sablefish moved deeper with age. Decreased availability with age may occur because of lower fishing effort in deep water and could have substantial implications for sablefish stock assessments because “dome-shaped” availability influences the reliability of abundance estimates. The area-related recovery pattern was not affected by year-class strength; i.e., there was no significant density-dependent relationship.

The HCP for Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District is a multi-species agreement with a 50-year term.

Status review of southern resident killer whales (Orcinus orca) under the Endangered Species Act

This document analyzes the effects of a regulatory amendment to require full retention of Demersal Shelf Rockfish (DSR) in the longline fisheries of the Southeast Outside District of the Gulf of Alaska.

On September 1, 2004, the, Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC), completed the twenty-fifth annual longline survey of Alaska sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) resources of the upper continental slope (Figure 1). The present NMFS survey was designed to continue the time series (1979-94) of the discontinued Japan-U.S. cooperative longline survey of the Gulf of Alaska. 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 2004.