Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Kuskokwim Bay commercial salmon fishery returns after five-year hiatus

August 4, 2026 — Commercial salmon fishing returned to Alaska’s Kuskokwim Bay this summer for the first time in five years, offering dozens of local fishermen a chance to earn income despite persistent logistical and financial challenges.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the fishery reopened in early July, with about 70 permit holders targeting primarily sockeye salmon. Larry Strunk, a founding member of the Independent Fishermen of Quinhagak Cooperative, told KYUK that some fishermen had already earned more than $10,000 during the season with the potential for individual earnings to reach $15,000.

The fishery, however, was short-lived. Strunk told KYUK that the cooperative wrapped up fishing around July 28 after declining sockeye catches and rising operating costs made it difficult to continue.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Kuskokwim Bay commercial salmon fishery opens after 5-year hiatus

July 30, 2026 — Dozens of ocean-going skiffs have been busy unfurling gill nets along the shores of Kuskokwim Bay. But the catches haven’t been headed to fish camps. Instead, the salmon are quickly bled, put on ice, and offloaded onto vessels bobbing in the waters in front of Quinhagak and Goodnews Bay.

If the fishery is successful, an at-sea processor with hundreds of thousands of pounds of frozen, mostly sockeye, salmon will return to Washington state to bring the catch to market.

According to Larry Strunk, a founding member of the Independent Fishermen of Quinhagak Cooperative, local permit holders could earn upwards of $15,000 each by fishing the openers.

“We have some fishermen that have already been paid over $10,000 this month,” Strunk said.

But as of July 28, Strunk said that diminishing sockeye numbers and logistical issues have spelled the end of this year’s fishery, just three weeks after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game opened it.

Read the full article at KYUK

ALASKA: Bristol Bay comes off decade of historic runs with moderate and early returns in 2026

July 28, 2026 — Bristol Bay’s sockeye salmon run is coming to a close, and it just surpassed the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s pre-season forecast of 44 million fish.

The thing that stands out most this year was that early run timing, said Curry Cunningham, an associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and part of a team that creates pre-season and in-season forecasts for the commercial fishery.

“If we look at the large-run-size years in Bristol Bay, we’ve seen generally since about 2015 they’ve been predominantly on time,” Cunningham said.

The last two years have bucked that trend, he said.

“In 2025 and this year in 2026, we’ve seen earlier run timing to Bristol Bay,” he said. “So a bit of a shift back towards run timings we hadn’t seen in quite a while.”

One of the variables that correlates most strongly with run timing is the extent of sea ice in the late spring, Cunningham said. Bristol Bay sockeye tend to return earlier during years with more sea ice in May.

This year’s run was about three days earlier than the long-term average, according to Cunningham, with a midpoint around July 3 or 4. While three days might seem like a small difference, he said it can have big impacts.

“In Bristol Bay, where the vast majority of the run comes through and arrives inshore over the course of two or three weeks, it actually makes a huge difference,” he said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick goes against top choices for fishery management councils

July 17, 2026 — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has opted to go against some top nominations for U.S. fishery management councils.

In a 26 June announcement Lutnick announced he selected Forrest Bowers, the second choice for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, instead the Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy’s top choice and current Alaska Department of Fish & Game Board Chair Märit Carlson-Van Dort. For the Pacific Fishery Management Council, Lutnick selected second-choice Chad See, director of the Freezer Longline Coalition, over the Washington Governor Bob Ferguson’s first pic of Jamie Goen, the executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers trade group.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Commercial troll fishery stays open with half of allotted kings remaining

July 15, 2026 — Southeast Alaska’s commercial king salmon fishery will remain open until further notice. The July 1 king opener for trollers, who fish with hook and line, is usually over quickly– it typically lasts anywhere from a handful of days to a week. But this year, with two weeks down, trollers are only at the halfway mark toward catching their target.

Grant Hagerman is the Southeast region’s commercial troll management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. In an interview with KCAW on Monday (7-13-26) Hagerman said in the past two weeks, trollers have caught roughly half of the 84,000 allotted Chinook salmon.

“Fishing is a little bit slower, definitely,” Hagerman said. “But we have fewer boats. There’s less effort this year as well. So a combination of those two has has prolonged this longer than what we’d anticipated, preseason.”

Read the full article at KCAW

ALASKA: Summer troll update, Fish scarce, catch low

July 14, 2026 — On Friday morning, the 10th day of the summer king salmon troll opening, the catch was less than half of the harvest target of 83,700, fishery officials said. The opening, which was initially projected to last seven to ten days, will continue until further notice.

Department of Fish and Game troll fishery management biologist Grant Hagerman said that since July 1 fish abundance, fleet effort and catch rate have been low.
“Fewer fish, fewer boats, and fewer fish per boat,” Hagerman summarized for the Sentinel.
Hagerman says the fishery will stay open until further notice. Last year, the summer troll opening lasted four days. As of Friday morning, Fish & Game estimates that trollers had caught fewer than 35,000 chinook in nine days in this opening, compared to 40,000 chinook harvested in four days in 2025.
There is a higher treaty allocation this year; Southeast commercial trollers can harvest up to 146,000 treaty chinook. Last year the limit was a record low of 92,730.

AI, drones, and salmon: What new technology could mean for Bristol Bay sockeye counts

July 10, 2026 — Norm Van Vactor stands on the bank of the Wood River facing a mysterious looking grey box with blinking lights.

“So that’s the habitat and the home for our ‘bird’, and it’s a completely self-contained unit,” he said, pointing to the box.

At exactly 8:30 a.m., the box opens and a drone emerges. It quickly takes off on an automated flight path, flying to an observation position above the right bank of the Wood River. It hovers there for a few minutes, with its camera fixed on the river bed.

The goal is to feed the images into a computer model to generate more accurate salmon escapement counts. For over 70 years, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has used counting towers in Bristol Bay to track salmon escapement. That means techs hand count each fish that swims by. But new technology is on its way to the Bay, Van Vactor is a project lead.

“I feel strongly that there are some tools out there, like this, that could significantly enhance the quality of our data collection that helps manage this fishery,” he said. Van Vactor noted that this project wouldn’t have been possible just a few years ago.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Alaska challenges MSC certification of Russian pollock

July 10, 2026 — Alaska fisheries officials are calling on the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to reject the recertification of Russia’s Western Bering Sea pollock fishery, arguing the fishery fails to meet the conservation standards routinely required of U.S. fishermen while competing directly with Alaska pollock in global markets.

The request comes as MSC considers formal objections to the fishery’s five-year recertification. According to IntraFish, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang submitted a July 1 letter urging MSC Chief Executive Rupert Howes to halt the recertification, following a formal objection filed by the At-sea Processors Association (APA). MSC expects a decision on the objection during the week of July 13.

In his letter, Vincent-Lang argued consumers purchasing seafood bearing the MSC ecolabel often assume the product was harvested responsibly, despite what he described as significant shortcomings in the Russian fishery’s management.

“For the last five years, the MSC has provided products originating from the WBS (Western Bering Sea) pollock fishery with full access to the most widely recognized sustainability certification in global seafood,” Vincent-Lang wrote. “During this time, WBS pollock has been sold around the world to unwitting consumers who see the MSC ecolabel and believe that their purchases must be ethical.”

He argued the Western Bering Sea fishery lacks “no credible harvest strategy, no bycatch avoidance measures, and no benthic habitat protections whatsoever,” while questioning how the fishery’s previous certification conditions were considered satisfied.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Only two vessels will fish Alaska’s weathervane scallop season

July 10, 2026 — Alaska’s commercial weathervane scallop fishery opened July 1 with harvest levels unchanged from last season, but despite nearly 400,000 pounds of statewide quota available, only two vessels are expected to participate in one of the world’s most exclusive commercial fisheries.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), the 2026/27 fishery carries a statewide guideline harvest level (GHL) of approximately 381,700 pounds of shucked scallop meat, with nearly half of the allocation, 190,000 pounds, coming from waters around Kodiak.

Kodiak remains the center of Alaska’s scallop fishery, but as KMXT reported on July 8, there was no rush of boats leaving the harbor when the season opened. “Weathervane scallops are the largest species of scallop in the world, and the only scallop species on the West Coast that has a substantial commercial fishery,” Kodiak-based ADF&G area biologist Nat Nichols told KMXT.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Alaska’s wild salmon harvest climbs to over 14.5 million fish

July 7, 2026 — On the eve of July 4 and a plethora of holiday barbecues, Alaska’s commercial salmon harvest had already brought in over 14 million wild sockeye salmon, with the big surge coming from Bristol Bay.

Silver Bay Seafoods and Trident Seafoods posted $1.60 a pound for chilled, bled sockeye, 30 cents more than last year’s pre-season price and considered a conservative starting price for the 2026 season, said Janis Harsilla, business manager for the Bristol Bay Fishermen’s Association.

Retail sales were steady, with prices ranging between $16.99 to $18.99 a pound at King Soopers supermarkets, between $23 and $29.99 a pound at some online direct-to-consumer shops, $15.99 a pound at Anchorage Fred Meyer, part of the Kroger chain, and $20.99 a pound at Anchorage Carrs-Safeway supermarkets. The best deal in town was still $14.99 a pound at Costco warehouses in Anchorage for fresh Copper River reds. 

Read the full article at the National Fisherman