Arctic | Fishes and Fish Habitats
Under ice fish assemblages in the Colville River Delta Presenter: Caitlin Forster , cforster@abrinc.com, ABR, Inc.—Environmental Research & Services John Seigle , jseigle@abrinc.com, ABR, Inc.—Environmental Research & Services Samantha Simpson , SSimpson@arcsenergy.com, ARCS Consulting & Environmental Services Jerry Pausanna , jerrikki19@gmail.com, Resident of Nuiqsut
The annual under-ice gillnet fishery for Arctic Cisco ( Coregonus autumnalis ), or Qaaktaq in Iñupiaq, located in the Niġliq Channel of the Colville River Delta, Alaska is important to the food security of residents of the nearby village of Nuiqsut. Each fall after river freeze-up, the community of subsistence fishers deploy nets from October through November, typically harvesting tens of thousands of Qaaktaq, which is prized for its high fat content and quality of meat. These harvests of Qaaktaq and other species have been monitored since the mid-1980s to address local concerns that increasing oil and gas development would impact the migrations and feeding behavior of anadromous whitefish. This monitoring program has fulfilled agency stipulations to assess the health of the fishery while also providing an excellent long-term dataset for tracking trends in the fishery over time. However, because the under-ice fishery itself mainly targets one species using mostly 7.6 cm (3 in) mesh gillnets, the monitoring dataset is inherently selective to a specific size class of fish. Furthermore, subsistence fishing activity in the Colville River Delta is also spatially selective and focused mostly on the western-most channel (Niġliq Channel) near Nuiqsut. To better understand fall and early winter fish assemblages in other parts of the Colville River Delta, we conducted fishery-independent sampling in the East Channel of the Colville River delta in the fall of 2022. Sampling was conducted concurrent with the subsistence fishing activities in the Niġliq Channel in early November. We set multi-panel test gillnets with mesh sizes from 2.54–12.7 cm (1.0–5.0 in). Net-set locations were informed mostly by river bathymetry and the location of potential future oil and gas infrastructure activity, but also to avoid impacting subsistence fishing activities near Nuiqsut. This sampling effort was intended to target all available fish species and size classes to help fishery stakeholders better understand fish species assemblages, size range, and age classes present in the Colville River Delta. Results were compared to summertime sampling efforts to determine seasonal differences in fish use of the area.
Alaska Marine Science Symposium 2023 224
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