BOEMRE awards Arctic fish study grant
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement has awarded a $858,900 grant to the Alaska Department of Natural Resources for the study of fish used for subsistence purposes in Admiralty Bay, an inlet from the Beaufort Sea, about 40 miles from Barrow.
The grant comes from the Coastal Impact Assistance Program, a program that distributes some federal outer continental shelf oil and gas revenues to states adjacent to OCS regions with oil and gas activity.
“With this grant, BOEMRE continues to support the collection of the critical scientific data that stakeholders and decision makers need,” said BOEMRE Director Michael Bromwich. “We have been funding research on important subsistence fisheries in similar ecosystems for more than 10 years and this grant will enable Alaska’s Department of Natural Resources to significantly add to that body of knowledge.”
The study in Admiralty Bay will involve the sampling of fish populations using traps, gill nets, seine nets and other methods, with the collected fish being analyzed for parameters such as age, weight and population size, BOEMRE said. Researchers will also use radio telemetry to track broad whitefish, a particularly important subsistence species in the region, the agency said.
—Alan Bailey
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