SCS would like to congratulate the Sitka Tribe of Alaska for their success with the Federal Subsistence Board! For more good news about STA, read our previous blog post here.

What happened?

Herring making the swim to Sitka Sound this season have a new place to spawn safely: the federal waters around Makhnati Island. The Federal Subsistence Board approved FP15-17, submitted by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, at their January 21-23 Anchorage meeting. The proposal closes ~800 acres of federal waters to commercial herring harvesters, although traditional and sport harvesters will still be welcome. But this isn’t a story of sport and subsistence desires trumping the sac-roe industry’s concerns - this new protected area is good news for everyone from fishermen to roe-on-kelp enthusiasts to the fish themselves. Think a win-win-win is impossible? Think again!

Who benefits?

How could the exclusion of one group of herring harvesters from Makhnati Island possibly benefit everyone? Let’s start with the herring. Like other forage fish, herring are one of the primary pathways for energy stored in phyto- and zooplankton to nourish our favorite marine predators such as salmon. According to coastal archeologist Iain McKechnie, “They are the central node of the marine ecosystem. They aren’t the base, they aren’t the top, but they are the thing through which everything else flows.” Herring’s critical role in northern Pacific waters was quantified by the Canada Department of Oceans and Fisheries, who calculated that herring make up 62% of the diet of Chinook salmon, 68% of Coho's, 71% of lingcod's, and 32% of harbor seal's. Their impact isn’t limited to the waterline either. In British Columbia, coastal black bears, wolves, and shorebirds feed on herring eggs every spring.

With everyone in agreement that herring are a cornerstone of marine and coastal food webs, you might think we would know everything there is to know about their populations and survival rates from year to year. Unfortunately, that is far from the case. Forage fish are characterized by high reproductive rates, transient populations, and high susceptibility to both top-down population forcing (e.g., too many predators) and bottom-up forcing (e.g., not enough plankton). From a management perspective, that means we have high levels of uncertainty about the number of returning herring from year to year. The Makhnati Island protected area will serve as a buffer against inaccurate stock assessments by providing a small refuge for herring to spawn relatively unmolested.

Besides the herring, the other obvious beneficiaries of the Makhnati Island closure are the traditional and sport herring harvesters. Traditional egg harvesters in particular should be excited since subsistence harvesters have only met their herring egg needs 50% of the time in recent years. Happily, Makhnati Island area is easily accessible to all Sitka residents. Sport fishermen will also benefit from decreased competition with commercial boats.

The real surprise is that the Makhnati Island commercial closure could be good news even for the sac-roe industry. Marine protected areas have been established by politicians from all political stripes, such as George W. Bush’s creation of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in 2009 or President Obama’s expansion of that reserve in 2014. Part of the goal of those marine reserves is increase overall fish populations in waters open to fishermen. Sound far fetched? It’s worked before. The yellow tang population was crashing in Hawaii in 2000, prompting officials to close 35% of the available waters around the Big Island to tang harvesters. Only ten years later and with no reduction in closure areas, 70,000 more tang per year were being exported and the value of the fishery had increased from $745,000 to $1.27 million. Not a bad precedent for the herring industry to look to!

What's next for herring?

If you’re as excited about the potential positive effects of the Makhnati Island closure as we are, be sure to follow the happenings at the State Board of Fisheries at the end of February! Find the herring proposals here and submit your written or online comments to the Board by February 9th.

Salmon are a pillar of life in Southeast Alaska. They are essential to the ecosystem of the rainforest, in addition to driving the culture and economy of this region. The life cycles of salmon are intricately woven into the life of the Tongass. They need the habitat of the rainforest to survive, while the people and the rainforest in turn need the salmon to survive. Tlingit people have thrived in Sitka Sound for millennia on the bounty of salmon. Today, Southeast Alaskans are commercial fishermen, charter guides, sport fishers, and subsistence harvesters. 

Despite the importance of salmon both ecologically and economically, salmon management in the Tongass has been chronically underfunded and under-appreciated. The Forest Service currently dedicates $15 million to timber and road-building in the Tongass, while the timber industry only provides around 200 jobs. Comparatively, the Forest Service gives only $1.5 million to salmon management and restoration, even though salmon provide over 4,000 jobs for Southeast Alaskans.  Salmon deserve more of our public resources. The Forest Service should prioritize salmon fishery health while managing the Tongass. If more money can be devoted to watershed restoration and caring for salmon habitat, our Southeast communities can continue to thrive.

We need your voice to help protect Tongass salmon! Tell the Forest Service why salmon matter!

We are surrounded by a natural pantry here in Sitka. From beach asparagus to salmonberries to rockfish, the woods and waters in Sitka Sound teem with edible organisms. Nearly everyone here has a favorite way to prepare salmon or a secret recipe using local plants. The annual Sitka Conservation Society wild foods potluck celebrates our local knowledge about available natural foods and showcases their abundance. Additionally, it gives the community a chance to share an incredible variety of dishes, as well as the stories that came with them. This year over 200 people joined us for our 2014 potluck, bringing dishes from herring egg salad to stir-fried fiddleheads. Become an SCS member to stay abreast of our 2015 potluck plans. Stay in touch with the wild and keep cooking!

SCS is not involved with this project, but we are excited to highlight the exciting science our neighbors at the Sitka Tribe of Alaska are starting. We wish them sunny skies and toxin-free plankton samples!

No Southeast Alaskan wild foods potluck would be complete without butter clams, blue mussels, or geoducks harvested from along our local beaches. Unfortunately, the fear of picking up shellfish contaminated with paralyzing or brain-damaging toxins, such as those found in a “red tide”, is enough to make most shellfish aficionados stick to the grocery stores. Luckily, subsistence and recreational shellfish harvesters got their first helping of good news this week at the Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) conference organized and hosted by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. Starting next week, seven tribes from Southeast Alaska will begin collecting and analyzing plankton samples from local beaches to use as an early warning system for toxic plankton bloom events. Within a few years, this species monitoring will be accompanied by direct testing of shellfish samples in the Sitka Tribe’s new lab. The end goal, although a few years away, is for subsistence Southeast harvesters to have the up to date information necessary to make an informed decision about the risks of harvesting on a given beach. At stake? An abundant, local, delicious, and currently underutilized source of protein. Let the testing begin!

Many of us have heard of phytoplankton, but not many of us have a working knowledge of the different species or why they might be dangerous. Phytoplankton, or microscopic marine plants, are the world’s most important primary producers and are responsible for at least half of the global annual oxygen production. Microscopic oxygen-emitters floating through our oceans may sound like a dream come true, but phytoplankton are also capable of producing some of the world’s deadliest toxins. The HAB conference was introduced to Alaska’s three main phytoplankton villains: the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia and the dinoflagellates Dinophysis and Alexandrium. Pseudo-nitzschia produces domoic acid, a poison that targets brain cells and leads to permanent short-term memory loss known as Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning (ASP). Dinophysis is the most benign of Alaska’s toxic plankton and merely induces “food-poisoning on steroids”, or Diarrhetic Shellfish Poisoning (DSP). Alexandrium, the most well-known and feared species, produces saxitoxins that inhibit nerve function. This leads to Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) and, occasionally, to death. Saxitoxins are so potent that they have been weaponized by the U.S. military and are classified under Schedule 1 of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Toxins classified as chemical weapons are terrifying, but plankton are hardly alone among organisms in their ability to produce deadly poisons. The reason planktonic toxins in particular get so much attention is the ease with which they make their way into the human food chain. Plankton are filtered indiscriminately out of the water by shellfish. In a bloom situation, when one plankton species multiplies especially rapidly, any toxins produced can quickly accumulate to lethal levels in all of our favorite mussels, clams, scallops, and even in crustaceans. Humans are not the only species affected by high toxin concentrations in our seafood; sea lions and whales are known to have died from ASP while sea otters in areas with frequent Alexandrium blooms have learned to taste and spit out shellfish with high saxitoxin concentrations.

All this terrifying information from was almost enough to turn me off mussels forever. Thankfully the goal of the HAB conference was not to terrify the tribes in attendance, but rather to empower them to test their own beaches and ultimately to predict risk. That risk is real – in May of 2011, for example, thirteen people in Ketchikan and Metlakatla were admitted to the hospital with symptoms of PSP. But there is hope: in contrast to Southeast Alaska, where recreational shellfish harvesters are playing Russian roulette every time they eat a clam, Washington State has established a highly effective system of early monitoring and shellfish testing throughout Puget Sound. The HAB conference heard from Dr. Vera Trainer (NOAA) and Dr. Jerry Borchert (Washington Department of Health) about how they have coordinated a crew of volunteers and amateurs to make one of the most impressive, comprehensive, and up to date risk maps for the public to use.

Under the tutelage of NOAA scientists Dr. Trainer, Dr. Steve Morton, and Dr. Jennifer Maucher, the HAB conference attendees learned how to collect a plankton sample at a local beach (the primary site for the Sitka Tribe will be at Starrigavan), how to prepare a slide of that sample, and finally how to interpret and identify the organisms present under a microscope. As the attendees ogled at their water samples, they learned to measure the relative abundance of a species. They also learned how to collect and upload our data to a shared website so that all seven tribes involved in this project can see the results of the others. The goal of this plankton monitoring is to use plankton abundances to predict whether there will be a toxicity spike in shellfish in the immediate future.

The Sitka Tribe’s program is modeled after Washington State’s, but the Washington program does have some important differences. First, Washington testers enjoy funding and support from the state’s Department of Health, support that shellfish testers in Alaska will not receive. That support means the Washington DOH can certify beaches as safe or close them to harvesting at any time. The Tribe will have no such authority. No one will be certifying beaches as definitively safe, nor will they be closing beaches that are deemed unsafe. It will be up to us as consumers to pay attention to the Tribe’s data. Secondly, Washington’s program currently consists of both weekly sampling of plankton and of direct testing of shellfish toxin levels. For now, the Alaska program will just consist of plankton sampling, with direct, weekly shellfish testing possibly a year or two away.

So if the beaches won’t be certified, and no one is going to be testing the clams I want to eat next week, and I’m not a member of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, why should I be excited about this HAB conference as a casual harvester? Because this is the first step to what may in the not-too-distant future grow into a Washington-style risk-assessment program. Because coordination between seven far-flung communities in Southeast Alaska will likely give us some surprising insights on plankton movements and habits, and possibly on local currents. Because watching private citizens collect and interpret valuable scientific data may eventually spur the state to get involved. And because waiting a few years to know that your local shellfish are safe is definitely worth it when the alternative is to risk paralysis and suffocation, permanent brain damage, or (best case) horrible food poisoning. In short, we should all be excited because this is the first step anyone in Southeast Alaska has taken to reclaiming some personal ownership of a local food resource. Bravo and smooth sailing to the Sitka Tribe of Alaska!

Two weeks ago, youth volunteers from 4-H harvested apples that were grown as a result of one of the initiatives from the 2010 Sitka Health Summit. Volunteers and their parents came together once again to decorate fabric for mason jars and to cook applesauce. The aptly-named event, Applooza, was hosted by the Sitka Kitch at the First Presbyterian Church. Sitka Conservation Society, in conjunction with the Sitka Food Co-Op and the Sitka Local Foods Network, supported and promoted this event. SCS staff members Mary Wood and Sarah Komisar encouraged the engagement of youth volunteers, providing the 4H participants with an opportunity to make a valuable contribution to our community while educating them about the importance of local food production and consumption. The beautifully-decorated jars of applesauce were donated to the Swan Lake Senior Center and the Salvation Army.

To increase the future capacity for successful food projects like Applooza, SCS will be sponsoring the planting of additional apple trees in Sitka. Please join us for our ‘Apple a Day’ apple tree workshop next week. Our Yale Fellow, Michelle Huang, has been working with Jud Kirkness to plan the event. Jud will be on hand to present everything you need to know about apple trees. We will have ordering instructions on hand and encourage everyone to order a tree. We have a goal of increasing the number of apple trees in Sitka by 15 this year! SCS will also be ordering an apple tree for the Pacific High school campus.

This is something SCS, Sitka Kitch, Sitka Local Foods Network and the Sitka Food Co-op would like to see become an annual event. Special thanks to all the Sitkans who supported this event through donations of jars, time, knowledge and offered up their apple trees for harvesting, including the trees at KCAW.

Having grown up on a farm in Oregon, Lori Adams couldn’t help but get her hands in the soil when she moved to Sitka back in the 1980s. She started “Down to Earth You-Pick garden,” where Sitkans go to pick their own, locally-grown vegetables. In this episode of “Living with the Land,” Lori tells us about her garden, her ducks and her favorite customers!

Lori Adams and the You-Pick Garden

Living with the Land is a 12 part radio series exploring stories of place in Sitka. It is produced by the Sitka Conservation Society in collaboration with Raven Radio. You can also hear the episodes every Sunday at 10:27am on KCAW, just before Living Planet.

Katy and Coral Pendall are sisters and co-captains of their boat the FV Morgan. In this weeks episode of “Living with the Land,” they tell us about their favorite salmon to catch and even reveal some fishing secrets.

Katy and Coral Pendall

Living with the Land is a 12 part radio series exploring stories of place in Sitka. It is produced by the Sitka Conservation Society in collaboration with Raven Radio. You can also hear the episodes every Sunday at 10:27am on KCAW, just before Living Planet.

As a employee of Parks and Rec, Jud Kirkness keeps Sitka’s parks, lawns and flowerbeds beautiful for all of us to enjoy. Yet while he is mowing Sitka’s lawns, he admits to daydreaming about other uses for our public city land. What’s Jud dreaming about? Gardens! Gardens! Gardens! But Jud isn’t just dreaming. He is also making these imagined gardens a reality. Listen to his story below.

What’s Jud Dreaming About?

Living with the Land is a 12 part radio series exploring stories of place in Sitka. It is produced by the Sitka Conservation Society in collaboration with Raven Radio. You can also hear the episodes every Sunday at 10:27am on KCAW, just before Living Planet.

Passing on local knowledge, like the skills and technique of hunting, fishing and foraging, are essential to maintaining long-term sustainability and the Alaskan way of life. In this episode of “Living with the Land,” we visit with SCS executive director Andrew Thoms and his mentee Andrew Martin as they process a deer they hunted together.

Two Andrews Prepare a Deer

Living with the Land is a 12 part radio series exploring stories of place in Sitka. It is produced by the Sitka Conservation Society in collaboration with Raven Radio. You can also hear the episodes every Sunday at 10:27am on KCAW, just before Living Planet.

Long-time Sitkan Bob Ellis has been experimenting with how to eat locally for decades. In this episode of Living with the Land, Bob tells us about his love for salmon livers: a habit he started as part of his efforts to eat every part of the fish he catches. Bob convinces SCS intern Sarah Stockdale to try some of the livers too! Will Sarah and her dinner guests become liver lovers?  Find out here!

Bob Ellis and the great Salmon Liver Experiment

Living with the Land is a 12 part radio series exploring stories of place in Sitka. It is produced by the Sitka Conservation Society in collaboration with Raven Radio. You can also hear the episodes every Sunday at 10:27am on KCAW, just before Living Planet.