Could a new commercial jig fishery for magister “armhook” squid help open new markets for small-boat commercial fishermen in Southeast Alaska, and benefit ocean species that are bearing the effects of climate change?
Richard Yamada, a long-time Juneau-based recreational fisherman and fisheries management leader, is presenting those questions with two proposals that he authored for the Alaska Board of Fisheries’ upcoming Southeast Alaska finfish and shellfish regulatory meeting in Ketchikan.
The seven-member board, which sets regulations for state-managed fisheries statewide, is meeting in the Ted Ferry Civic Center from Jan. 28 to Feb. 9 to hear more than 150 total proposals regarding Southeast Alaska fisheries regulations.
Yamada’s two unique proposals seek to establish a region-wide commercial jig fishery for magister squid in state fishery regulations.
If either of the proposals wins board approval, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game would need to collect biological information on magister squid in order to establish a formal commercial fishery management plan.
At present, Fish & Game managers can issue isolated “commissioner’s permits” to allow individual Southeast Alaska fishermen to harvest and potentially sell a limited amount of magister squid (up to 5 tons to 10 tons each year per person, depending on fishery area).
During an interview with the Ketchikan Daily News on Dec. 17, Yamada said that establishing a magister squid fishery would expand access, and is meant to boost awareness, participation and investment in commercial squid fishing.
His pitch to the board is just one step towards launching a viable commercial magister squid fishery, a project he’s been pursuing since about 2018.
Yamada, originally from Hawai’i, came to Alaska in 1972 and has been working within fisheries regulatory processes for about 20 years.
He serves as a recreational stakeholder on the International Pacific Halibut Commission, on a committee of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, and as a public member on the Juneau-Douglas Advisory Committee to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Yamada and the Juneau-Douglas Advisory Committee co-authored one of the current Board of Fisheries proposals (230) that would establish a magister squid fishery in Southeast, while Yamada alone submitted the identical Proposal 231.
Both proposals state that “magister squid is an underutilized species” that could provide small-boat commercial fishermen with a new revenue stream as their profits sink in longstanding fisheries for salmon, halibut and other species.
The proposals also argue that expanding squid fishing could benefit fisheries by curbing predation by squid “on other economically important commercial species such as all species of salmon, cod fish, and herring.”
In formal comments, Fish & Game stated opposition for Yamada’s proposals because the department does not currently have enough biological information to establish a formal management plan for the squid, and because fishermen already can commercially harvest some magister squid with a commissioner’s permit.
“There have been no inquiries from fish buyers or processors regarding increased need of squid harvest to fulfill market demands,” fish & Game stated in the comment that it released last week. “At this stage of the fishery, a regulatory management plan is not needed.”
Earlier last week, Yamada said that he was not expecting the department to support his proposal, as Southeast fishermen “haven’t yet proven that we can catch enough (squid) to make it a commercial fishery”
“I think (the proposal) is the first step to just get people aware that there’s the potential of a fishery,” Yamada said.
Yamada said that his zeal for a Southeast Alaska squid fishery cropped up about six years ago when he began recreationally catching hundreds of magister squid in deep waters of northern Chatham Strait.
Magister squid live for only one year, and are a “complex” population “composed of multiple cohorts spawning throughout the year,” according to ADF&G.
The squid grows up to about four pounds and lives throughout Southeast Alaska, primarily in deep, high-salinity waters. Yamada said that he finds the most squid off the continental shelf, between about 1,200 and 2,000 feet deep.
Yamada said that fishermen could commercially target squid from their boats via “jigging machines,” or a series of small roller drums that run jigging lines that can be automated for depth, frequency and speed. Fishermen also could use deep-water lights that attract the squid, which primarily feed at night.
Historically, Japanese trawl boats conducted a large magister squid fishery in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, Yamada noted. Large-scale squid fishing halted after the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act extended U.S. jurisdiction to 200 nautical miles offshore.
Yamada said that Russia now catches most of the magister squid that’s available on global markets.
Little harvest occurs in Alaska waters, although charter fishermen have guided rod-and -reel clients for decades to target the squid near deep-water shelves offshore of communities like Ketchikan, Petersburg, Cordova, Valdez and Whittier.
Once Yamada began catching magister squid in the Juneau area, he invited students from Stanford and the University of Alaska Fairbanks to visit his charter lodge to fish and study the species.
“They informed me that we were in prime squid spawning grounds, and that kind of encouraged me to pursue this idea of potential fishery,” Yamada said.
Early on in his work, he “came across a biologist that was researching the at-sea survival of king salmon,” and who hypothesized that a growing squid population could be intercepting juvenile king salmon before they began their ocean migration.
Fish & Game stated in its comments last week that fishermen are finding squid in “increased abundances” that “appear to be correlated with warmer water such as El Niño events.”
Scientists such as Michael O. Navarro, who leads students in the Navarro Lab at the University of Alaska Southeast, are working with Yamada while conducting further research into the magister squid’s diet and life cycle.
One Navarro Lab research project on the magister squid diet showed that squid prey on important species such as herring, flounder, and juvenile salmon.
Yamada said that, given these findings, he’s sent letters to research groups to raise the possibility that increasing squid predation, driven by climate change, is harming fish stocks such as king salmon.
And Yamada said that he has sent mailers to every Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission permit-holder in Southeast Alaska to gauge fishermen’s interest in carving out a commercial squid fishery.
Principally, in recent years, Yamada has focused on researching potential markets for Alaska magister squid.
Yamada won a Saltonstall-Kennedy grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for FY23 to develop “a global market for Alaska’s magister squid.”
With the grant, he’s hosted and traveled to meet with fishermen, chefs and consumers who treasure the squid, and know how to process and prepare it for different luxury markets.
Yamada said that he’s found that Japanese consumers “want the squid to be in the most perfect condition.”
“The Japanese market, they grew up with all kinds of squid, they know the quality is different,” Yamada said.
And he said he’s found that, for “a lot of U.S. consumers, especially in New York, it’s become a faddish thing to get somebody, a client, off to a $1,500 per plate sushi dinner” where magister squid would feature well.
“It’s like having wine,” Yamada explained. “You know, like somebody will pay $2,000 for a bottle of wine, because they know the difference. … they’ll pay that money for squid, especially when you see it’s coming from Alaska, the ice cold waters of Alaska.”
“There’s a whole bunch of things that weigh in on that purchase by a U.S. consumer that doesn’t exist in Japan, but it works,” Yamada said. “So I will try to tap into that, which I think it’s going to add value to that squid, which I think we need to compete with traditional markets.”
He said that, this coming summer, he plans to explore possibilities for large-scale squid fishery production.
He plans to study “how commercial fishermen will catch the squid, in what quantities, and what the production capabilities will be for the commercial fleet catching the squid in U.S. waters.”
While most squid would be packaged and sold “in the round,” requiring minimal processing, Yamada said that working with local processing plants could be a challenge.
“During the peak of summer, which might also be peak season for the squid, they’re probably not going to have freezer room or processing capability for squid,” Yamada said.
Nevertheless, Yamada is enthusiastic about the fishery development project.
“There’s a potential here that’s underutilized and we need to get more people on board to at least, you know, test the waters, get some funding,” Yamada said. “I’d really like to see domestic investment in this fishery.”
More information about Yamada’s work to launch an Alaska magister squid fishery can be found at magistersquidalaska.com.