Project Spotlight - Port Moller Test Fishery & BBSRI

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Project Importance:

Historically, the primary goal of the Port Moller Test Fishery (PMTF) has been to predict run strength of Sockeye Salmon traveling past Port Moller approximately one week prior to their arrival in the various terminal commercial fishing districts of Bristol Bay. PMTF gives Bristol Bay fishermen, processors, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) time to respond to suspected departures from the preseason forecasts. In addition, this information is used by fishermen when deciding which districts to fish and helps processors anticipate where among Bristol Bay fishing districts to assign their tendering capacity.  

The info:  The Port Moller Test Fishery has two vessels (R/V Ocean Cat and the R/V Miss Leona ) that test fish out from Port Moller. The onboard lab on one of the vessels provides laboratory analysis for stock composition estimates. From 2006 until 2021, lab work for PMTF had been done in Anchorage at ADF&G’s Gene Conservation Laboratory. Conducting lab work at sea allows for more test fishing time resulting in more samples because the vessel does not need to run the samples to shore for shipment. The release of stock composition estimates now reach the fishermen, fishery managers and processors within 2 days of samples being collected.

Test Fishing Effort

• The Port Moller Test Fishery (PMTF) operated from June 11 to July 13.

• A total of 6,670 Sockeye were caught in 300 sets distributed across Stations 2-24 to provide the information used for in season forecasting.

• The coverage of stations and days during the 2023 test fishery was thorough with only one day missed during mid-season due to weather.

The data collected:

BBSRI distributes four types of information from the PMTF:

  • Daily Catch Updates
    -     Report raw catches by panel, set duration, average fish size, weather and sea state, and the PMTF Catch Index

  • Interpretations of PMTF Data and developing run
    -     Periodic forecasts of the entire year’s run and its relative strength to various districts (every 3 to 7 days)

  • Stock Composition Estimates of the PMTF catches
    -     Released by ADF&G Gene Lab up to 11 times per season

  • Age Composition Estimates
    -     Released by ADF&G multiple times per season

Genetic stock composition estimates:

• Aboard the R/V Miss Leona, 2,090 fish were genotyped at sea across 11 arrays each with 190-fish samples, compared to an average of 9.2 arrays (range 7-10) in years prior to the At Sea Genetics Lab’s inception.

• The first stock composition results were released earlier than average (June 17 versus an average of June 20 prior).

• The time from test fishing to stock composition estimates being shared spanned no more than two days (three and sometimes more days was routine in previous years).

• The onboard genetics lab eliminated the transit time to get samples from the test boats to the gene lab in Anchorage reducing the delay from about three days to only one. An added benefit to this innovation was that the test boats did not have to deliver genetics samples to Port Moller every two days, which kept the crews on the fishing transect and improved spatio-temporal sampling coverage to the greatest level in the project’s history.

 

Age composition estimates:

• Pressing and imaging of sockeye scales was successful. Images were shipped via a satellite email connection to ADF&G scale readers in King Salmon during the season. This allowed age composition summaries from PMTF without bringing scale samples to shore for physical shipment to King Salmon.

• The addition of starlink to both vessels made communication and data transfer faster than ever, allowing age and length data to be sent to ADF&G faster than ever before. Digitizing scale images in combination with starlink allowed PMTF’s scale data to arrive at ADF&G daily.

 

The cost:  In 2023 BBRSDA funded a portion of this project with a $96,000 grant. Other funding came from the State of AK, Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute and contributions from the processing industry.

 

Get the PMFT Data Directly in season:

To receive a brief summary of daily indexes by text message, Text just these four letters “PMTF” to 833-612-1053. Be sure to spell PMTF correctly or it won't work. These text updates go out about the time the email update goes out. 

 

If you have email access in season and would like more information, each series of updates are delivered by email to everyone on the BBSRI email list serve, then posted to the web page. Send an email request to PMTF@BBSRI.org to be added to the list of email recipients for all PMTF updates.  

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Read more about the Port Moller Test Fishery at: https://www.bbsri.org/port-moller-test-fishery