Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska governor candidates split on fisheries

September 11, 2026 — Alaska’s four candidates for governor faced off over fisheries policy in Kodiak Wednesday night, offering commercial fishermen their clearest look yet at how the next administration could reshape fisheries management in the state.

For fishermen, the differences went beyond campaign politics. Depending on who wins, Alaska could see changes to who represents the commercial fleet on the Board of Fisheries, how conservation restrictions are shared among user groups, who is nominated to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (NPFMC), and even how fisheries leadership is structured within state government.

Republicans Dave Bronson, Treg Taylor and Bernadette Wilson joined Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins for the Sept. 9 gubernatorial fisheries debate at Kodiak’s Gerald C. Wilson Auditorium. Hosted by the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce and KMXT Public Radio, the event is Alaska’s only gubernatorial debate devoted exclusively to fisheries. Questions were submitted by members of the public and the seafood industry and vetted by a committee representing different sectors of the fishing industry.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Alaska gubernatorial candidates vow support for the seafood industry while revealing some splits

September 11, 2026 — At a fisheries forum held Wednesday night in Kodiak, all four candidates remaining in Alaska’s gubernatorial race found plenty of common ground.

Former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a Democrat, and the three Republicans, former Anchorage Mayor Dave Bronson, former state Attorney General Treg Taylor and business owner and talk-show host Bernadette Wilson, described the seafood industry as a pillar of the state’s economy and fish as part of the state’s identity.

All four gubernatorial candidates, who are set to face off in the general election in Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, said they consider bycatch — the accidental interception of nontargeted species — to be an urgent problem for salmon runs.

All said they want to appoint a special adviser on fisheries, something that past governors have done but that current Gov. Mike Dunleavy has not.

All said they wanted to appoint members of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the panel that oversees practices in federal waters, and the Alaska Board of Fisheries, which has jurisdiction over state waters, who would represent state interests broadly, including non-commercial interests.

All vowed a commitment to science, support for the state agency that markets Alaska’s seafood and investment in the infrastructure in coastal communities.

But there were differences that emerged at the event, sponsored by the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce. Those started with the candidates’ personal connections to and knowledge of seafood issues.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: State denies Ketchikan tribe’s request to open green crab fishery

August 4, 2026 —  The Ketchikan Indian Community submitted an emergency petition to the state’s Board of Fisheries in March, asking to reclassify European green crabs from a Class A to a Class B banned invasive species.

This change would allow anybody to transport dead European green crabs for harvest or consumption. Currently, the invasive can only be possessed or transported for scientific or educational purposes by those with an Aquatic Resource Permit.

“This isn’t an issue that’s going anywhere, and it seems to be largely ignored throughout much of the state,” said Emily Halsell, a fisheries and wildlife biologist with the Ketchikan Indian Community.

Halsell is leading a green crab monitoring and removal program, which officially kicked off last fall. The tribe has removed about 1,500 green crabs from Ketchikan beaches so far this year.

In its petition to the state, the tribe cites the species’ damaging impacts to the local ecosystem and economy. The adaptive critter can burrow and destroy eelgrass beds, which are nurseries for native species like Dungeness crabs and juvenile salmon. They can also compete with native crab species for the same resources.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: A parasite that thrives in warm conditions adds to Yukon River salmon woes

July 23, 2026 — When Stan Zuray began noticing white spots, a mushy texture and a weird “sour watermelon” smell in the Chinook salmon he was pulling from the Yukon River, he knew something was going wrong.

That was back in the 1980s. By about 1990, he and others just stopped fishing what he calls “the ass end of the king run” because the fish were so low in quality, he said.

Everyone stopped fishing earlier than normal, he said. “You just get tired of the bum-looking fish,” said Zuray, who lives in the village of Tanana but still has his Boston accent after spending half a century in the Alaska Bush.

It was an ominous turn for a river famous for producing some of the world’s biggest and most prized wild salmon. Chinook salmon, also known as king salmon, is so exalted among the five Pacific salmon species that it is designated Alaska’s official state fish. And the Yukon River Chinooks were traditionally considered among the best of the best.

The culprit in the mushy, weird-smelling salmon was Ichthyophonus, a parasite found in oceans around the world, but a particular menace to the health of Yukon River Chinook salmon.

Zuray is known nationally as a featured character in the reality TV show “Yukon Men” and from his own YouTube broadcasts and a biographical documentary. Within Alaska fishing circles, he is well known as a former subsistence representative on the Alaska Board of Fisheries.

In the science community, he is known for his work as one of the early Yukon River Ichthyophonus researchers. He set up a program and documented infection rates at Rampart Falls, a spot on the river near the tiny Alaska village of Rampart, collecting data that has become critical to current studies.

Zuray said he could smell the infection as fish dried on racks in the traditional way and the parasite multiplied rapidly in the warm sunlight. He dissected samples and documented how Icthyophonus attacks a salmon’s heart. “I squish it in my hand by closing my fingers, and the heart will ooze out through my fingers,” he said.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

Lawmakers approve state audit of the Alaska Board of Fisheries

July 22, 2026 — A legislative audit committee instructed the state auditor to investigate the past three years of process and legal compliance of the board tasked with developing policy and managing Alaska’s fisheries.

Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak and chair of the House Fisheries Committee, made the request for the special audit of the Alaska Board of Fisheries. The bicameral Legislative Audit and Budget Committee approved it at a hearing on Thursday.

“The breadth and frequency of stakeholder complaints about the Board’s process make it clear the Board has lost the public’s trust. As Chair of the House Fisheries Committee, I am compelled to act,” Stutes wrote.

She said the board has been “increasingly characterized as lacking transparency, unethical, and/or unlawful.”

The seven-member Board of Fisheries is appointed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and confirmed by the Legislature. Each member serves a three year term. The legislative audit committee authorized an examination of the board’s activity from an Oct 12, 2023 meeting through July 1 of this year.

Read the full story at the Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Alaska’s board of fish restricted a commercial fleet to protect Western Alaska salmon. Then the AG stepped in

June 8, 2026 — Just as hundreds of fishermen begin pouring into the Aleutian Islands ahead of its most productive season, a conflict over restrictions on commercial salmon harvests has erupted.

After the Alaska Board of Fisheries passed restrictions on the Aleutian commercial fleet to protect salmon bound for Western Alaska spawning streams, Alaska’s acting attorney general, Cori Mills, invalidated the measures last month.

Now, subsistence advocates say they may try to win the restrictions back in a lawsuit against Mills.

The board’s new regulations, pushed by subsistence fishermen for years as Western Alaska salmon runs declined, would have shortened the number of days and the size of the harvest that commercial fishermen could make in the Aleutians, widened a regulated area, and added some restrictions on net depths.

The threat of a lawsuit follows the subsistence advocates’ attempt to re-implement the regulations ahead of the commercial fishery opener on June 6. The advocates tried to join a lawsuit originally filed by the commercial fleet and its allies that challenged the restrictions — but the judge threw out the suit on June 1.

Read the full article at KYUK

ALASKA: Board of Fish rejects proposals to reduce hatchery pink and chum production

March 27, 2026 — The Alaska Board of Fisheries last weekend voted down three proposals to limit hatchery production of pink and chum salmon. Those hatcheries are mostly in Southeast Alaska and Prince William Sound. They’re run by private nonprofits, and the state manages their permits.

There are currently 11 hatcheries permitted to take 1.39 billion pink salmon eggs and 15 hatcheries permitted to take 939 million chum salmon eggs.

The Fairbanks Fish and Game Advisory Committee sought a 25% reduction in egg production per hatchery permit. That’s a proposal that they’ve recommended before.

Board of Fish member Mike Wood of Talkeetna discussed the pros and cons.

“By cutting 25% of hatchery production in areas like Prince William Sound or Southeast, is the squeeze worth the juice with the impacts that it would have on these small boat fishermen, on an industry that we really need to rely on in this state?” he asked.

Read the full article at KCAW

ALASKA: Board of Fisheries overhauls commercial drift fleet management plan

March 26, 2026 — Upper Cook Inlet’s commercial driftnet fishing fleet has a new rulebook for the salmon fishing season that starts in July. That’s after the Alaska Board of Fisheries, which oversees state-managed waters, significantly altered the fleet’s season parameters during its meeting in Anchorage last week. Some Kenai Peninsula fishermen are unhappy with the changes.

The changes were spurred by a proposal from Andy Couch, a fishing guide in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, although the version approved by the board was ultimately a dramatic rewrite of the submitted language. Couch told commissioners the Upper Cook Inlet’s drift fleet is preventing coho salmon from getting to the Deshka and Little Susitna Rivers. That’s where Couch guides.

“Northern Cook Inlet coho salmon escapements have declined with increased use of the central district drift gill net fleet to harvest large returns of Kenai and Kasilof river sockeye during the past three years,” he said.

The state’s management plan for Cook Inlet’s central district drift gillnet fishery is outlined in Alaska Administrative Code. Cook Inlet is carved into chunks of fishing grounds that may be opened or closed by the Department of Fish and Game.

Board members weren’t scheduled to hear proposals impacting Cook Inlet fisheries during its 2026 meeting. That’s because the board meets on three-year cycles, and Cook Inlet issues aren’t scheduled to be taken up until 2027. But the board agreed to take up the proposal as a supplemental issue.

The new rules let the fleet potentially fish eight more hours per week, but restrict the fleet’s fishing grounds.

Read the full article at KDLL 

ALASKA: New proposals would protect Alaska waters from bottom trawling

March 23, 2026 — Three proposals before the Alaska Board of Fisheries, which took place March 17-21 in Anchorage, would require that bycatch mitigation tools recognized as best practice be used in groundfish harvesting within state waters.

These proposals are not intended to prohibit pelagic trawling or shut down a fishery, but to keep trawl gear off the ocean bottom, where it is not legally allowed, according to the Alaska Healthy Habitat Alliance (AHHA).

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Board of Fish to consider limiting pink and chum hatchery production and changes to trawl gear

March 19, 2026 — The Alaska Board of Fisheries is meeting Tuesday through Saturday in Anchorage at the Egan Civic and Convention Center to consider changes to statewide finfish fisheries. Board members are appointed by the governor. They consider changes to the state’s fish regulations after listening to opinions from Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game and the public.

Three proposals are seeking to limit hatchery production of chum and pink salmon in the state. There are about 30 salmon hatcheries, mostly in Southeast and Prince William Sound. Almost all of them are private nonprofits permitted by the state.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media