American Seafoods has agreed to pay out $700,000 in penalties to the federal government over Clean Air Act violations.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the company was caught smuggling 155,000 pounds of a refrigerant that causes harm to the ozone layer. The EPA also alleges that American Seafoods catcher-processors used these illegal refrigerants for four years.
In addition to payment of the fines, American Seafoods has agreed to retrofit the refrigeration systems on five vessels the process fish in the Bering Sea. The upgrades to the Northern Jaeger, the Ocean Rover, the American Triumph, the American Dynasty, and the Katie Ann will cost up to $15 million. The company will also be performing leak tests aboard these vessels over the next year.
The end of the opilio season is in sight at last. As of this morning, fishermen have less than a million pounds of snow crab left to catch.
Heather Fitch is a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and she says only a handful of boats are still fishing. Most crews have packed up and left town. She says that after a long winter, a battle with record sea ice, and one season extension that everyone involved with the fishery is pretty excited to reach this point.
Commercial fishermen are on track to take the snow crab quota after all.
With ten days left to the opilio season, the fleet has a less than 8 million pounds of crab to catch. Boats are filling up their pots, and 31 of the 72 vessels registered to fish have checked out of the fishery according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
This is a dramatic improvement from last month. Going into Memorial Day weekend, it looked like it would be an impossible challenge for the fleet to take the full 89-million pound allocation. Fishermen had been hampered for months, with record-setting ice in the Bering Sea closing off fishing grounds and damaging gear. Conditions were so bad that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game even added an extra two weeks to the snow crab season to help the fleet get closer to its allocation.
The crab fleet is suffering from a bit of female trouble.
In the past week, five fishing vessels have received citations for possessing female snow crab. That’s an unusual number of violations for the 40-boat fleet, says Sgt. Robin Morrissett with the Alaska Wildlife Troopers. Three citations were issued on Tuesday and two more were given on Thursday. Morrissett adds that the take of female crab can lead to trouble for the fishery.
“Because they’re females, they’ve got a lot of eggs on them,” says Morrissett. “Those are the breeders and those have to go back to the bottom.”
The cause of a recent ammonia release aboard the Alaska Juris has been determined. According to the Coast Guard’s local marine safety detachment, the leak came from a faulty hose, which has since been replaced.
The ammonia leak occurred at sea on May 10, and three crewmembers were medevaced from the factory trawler because of exposure. The Alaska Juris, which is owned by the Fishing Company of Alaska, has been docked at OSI since the event. No further medical calls connected to the ammonia leak have been made, but the Unalaska Department of Public safety did send an ambulance to the vessel last night because of an unrelated incident.
Despite some warmer weather and significant ice retreat, the Bering Sea snow crab fleet is still struggling. Last week, crabbers made no deliveries, a first in what’s already been an unusually slow season.
The Unalaska Fish and Game office says boats were on the grounds, but they weren’t catching much. Fishermen pulled up an average of only 100 crab per pot last week, about half the season norm.
It’s already been a long snow crab season, but it’s about to be longer. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Monday that the season will be extended by two weeks in some areas, moving the overall end date to mid-June.
Heavy ice cover in the Bering Sea periodically forced fishermen off the grounds this winter and almost a quarter of the allowable harvest remains uncaught. The unprecedented move by Fish and Game should give crabbers time to bring in the remaining 20 million pounds.
Petty Officer 3rd Class David Call, a health service technician with Kodiak-based Rockmore King Clinic, assists an Alaska Juris crewman on an Air Station Kodiak HC-130 Hercules airplane in Cold Bay. Courtesy of Petty Officer 3rd Class Jonathan Lally
Three crewmembers are reported as being in good condition after exposure to an ammonia leak aboard the F/V Alaska Juris. The crewmen were airlifted from the vessel by helicopter and medevaced to Anchorage on a Coast Guard C-130 aircraft Thursday night.
Details are still spotty about how the leak started.
“I don’t know anything about the ammonia leak," says Petty Officer Grant Devuyst. "I’d say the company that owns the vessel would be the best route for getting that.”
The crab fleet is in a race against time. The Bering Sea has been covered in record-setting ice since the season got underway in January and with just a few weeks left, fishermen still have millions of pounds of snow crab to catch. As KUCB’s Stephanie Joyce reports, boats are going to extremes to finish in time, with a little help from a tugboat stationed on St. Paul Island.
