Alaska Fish Factor

Tiny cod fish are reappearing around Kodiak.

Researchers aim to find out if it is a blip, or a sign that the stock is recovering after warming waters caused the stocks to crash.

Alaska’s seafood

industry was shocked last fall when the annual surveys showed cod stocks in the Gulf of Alaska had plummeted by 80 percent to the lowest

levels ever seen. Prior

surveys indicated large year classes of cod starting in 2012 were expected to produce good fishing for six or more years. But a so called “warm blob” of water depleted food supplies and wiped out that recruitment.

“That warm water was sitting i...