Saving Seafood

Alaska Releases Plan and Application Forms for CARES Act Fisheries Relief

October 7, 2020 — The state of Alaska released its plan to “broadly distribute stimulus payments to those eligible individuals and businesses” who qualify for the $50 million allocated to Alaska in May through the CARES Act. Alaska and Washington state each received $50 million, a combined total of $100 million or about a third of the full $300 million appropriated by Congress for fisheries relief nationwide.

Eligible sectors are seafood processing, commercial harvesting, sport charter, subsistence, and aquaculture.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: Fisheries assistance plan available for public comment

October 6, 2020 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game today released the Section 12005 CARES Act fisheries assistance draft spending plan for public comment at adfg.alaska.gov.

The draft spending plan provides eligibility criteria for participants in seafood processing, commercial harvesting, sport charter, subsistence, and aquaculture.

On May 7, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce announced allocations of Section 12005 CARES Act fisheries assistance funding to all coastal states and territories.

Alaska will receive $50 million of the $300 million available for this assistance program.

The spending plan will allocate 100% of available funds as direct payments to fishery participants in eligible sectors.

Read the full story at KINY

“More negatives than positives” as Alaska salmon season wraps up

September 25, 2020 — As Alaska’s salmon fishing season starts to wrap up, numbers are indicating a relatively poor showing overall.

While landings and fish tickets continued to trickle in, preliminary numbers from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game showed Alaskan salmon fishermen harvested around 113 million fish on the 2020 season, falling well short of the pre-season projection of nearly 133 million fish. It makes the season the fifth-worst even-year harvest since 1975, according to Garrett Evridge, chief economist for the McDowell Group.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Salmon fishing in Alaska off to a slow start statewide

July 6, 2020 — Salmon harvests across Alaska are slow so far as the fisheries head toward their usual high points in July.

So far, fishermen have landed about 5.8 million salmon. That’s less than half of the 2018 numbers by the same date, when 14 million had been landed. Much of that is due to poor sockeye returns, particularly in the Copper River area, though everywhere is slower than previous years, including Bristol Bay.

The Copper River and Bering River districts continue their shutdown this week due to unexpectedly low sockeye returns. The return to the Copper River is not living up to the preseason forecast, with only 378,058 sockeye through the Miles Lake weir as of June 29, compared to more than 696,828 by the same date last year. The forecast called for 1.5 million sockeye to return to the Copper River this year.

In an emergency order issued June 27, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game noted that the escapement through June 25 is about 85,000 fish behind projections, and the surveys of the Copper River Delta are significantly behind estimated ranges.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Pandemic slows distribution of relief funds for 2018 Gulf of Alaska cod crash

June 24, 2020 — Upheavals stemming from the coronavirus pandemic have slowed the process of getting relief payments into the hands of fishermen and communities hurt by the 2018 Gulf of Alaska cod crash.

In late February, the secretary of commerce cut loose $24.4 million for affected stakeholders. Then in late March, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang proposed a written timeline for developing a distribution plan and also called for input from communities and fishing groups.

A draft of the initial plan was intended to compile stakeholder comments in April, be revised in May, and go out for a second round of public input in June and July. But that timeframe was derailed a bit by COVID-19.

Now, the state is “aiming” to get the draft distribution plan out for the first round of stakeholder and public comments by the end of June, according to Rick Green, assistant to the Fish and Game commissioner.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

All systems are ‘go’ for near-shore Alaska fisheries, state officials say

June 18, 2020 — All systems are go for keeping close tabs on fish and crab stocks in waters managed by the state, meaning out to three miles. While constraints from the coronavirus resulted in nearly all annual stock surveys being cut in deeper waters overseen by the federal government, it’s “closer to normal” closer to shore.

“While it’s not business as usual, we are conducting business in as close to normal fashion as we can,” said Forrest Bowers, deputy director of the commercial fisheries division of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

“We have kept all of our area offices open and all of our field projects in place to monitor salmon stocks around the state this summer, as well as our projects and support for other fisheries,” Bowers said, adding that Fish and Game has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic “very seriously” and has had strict protection plans in place since March.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Alaskan Salmon Industry Faces Off Against COVID-19

May 20, 2020 — Rich in omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin D, and antioxidants, sockeye is health food for your heart, brain, eyes, and skin. And given the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s careful management of the fishery, it’s a sustainable resource. In 2018, according to the ADFG, 63 million sockeye returned, and a record 41.9 million of them were netted. Bristol Bay is, by far, the world’s largest sockeye fishery, and the biggest salmon fishery in Alaska. It is a well-tended natural bounty valued at more than $1 billion. Along with the other salmon fisheries in Bristol Bay, it returns an annual $14.7 million to local governments and employs a third of the residents in the largely indigenous communities. Norman Van Vactor, President and CEO of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation (BBEDC), estimates that, all totaled, salmon fishing brings up to $200 million into the region each year.

There are many reasons to feel good about eating Bristol Bay sockeye, but this is 2020, a year that has complicated everything in food. While subsistence salmon fishing is essential to the region’s 6,700 residents, the commercial fishery is operated primarily by outsiders. As of now, there are less than 400 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across Alaska. But as 13,000 fishermen, processors, and other workers from around the world arrive in May for Bristol Bay’s season, which begins in early June, they bring the danger of spreading the virus to isolated communities with few medical resources.

For the locals of Bristol Bay, the possibility of an outbreak engenders a horrifying dèjá vu. “Our people keep saying that we went through this already,” says Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, a consortium of 15 Yup’ik, Den’ina, and Alutiiq tribes representing 80 percent of the region’s inhabitants. She’s referring to the Spanish flu, which arrived in Bristol Bay in 1919, possibly on a cannery ship, and decimated the native population. “A lot of us are descendents. So for native people, the devastation of a pandemic is not an obscure concept,” she said. “We are the people raised by the orphans who survived.”

Read the full story at Food & Wine

North Pacific Council Approves Three Halibut Proposals, Rejects Two on Friday

May 19, 2020 — The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, in their first-ever special electronic meeting, acted on five requests for emergency rules triggered by the corona virus outbreak, in less than a day last Friday.

Halibut fishermen and fleet associations asked the 11-member council for relief on requirements to make medical quota transfers during the pandemic. Council members agreed to an option that would “allow the temporary transfer of halibut and sablefish IFQ for all quota share holders for the remainder of the 2020 fishing season,” without changing anything else in the program.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Herring fishermen challenge monitoring requirements, as study shows promise of Alaska’s fishery

May 13, 2020 — Although there was no commercial herring sac roe fishery this year in Sitka Sound due to small average fish size, an Alaska Department of Fish and Game report has provided encouraging data for the fishery to consider an eventual reopening.

Some 83 percent of this year’s guideline harvest level was forecast to be age-four herring, with an average weight of 92 grams. The size forecast for herring across all age classes was slightly larger, at 97 grams.

Read the full story at Seafood Source