Saving Seafood

Court case is final hope for Inlet drifters

August 27, 2021 — A late-season bumper run of sockeye salmon has pushed the Kenai River to its highest escapement in more than a decade.

Unfortunately for the commercial fishermen in Upper Cook Inlet, they have had to watch many of them go by.

Over the course of the season, Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists upgraded the estimate for the run’s escapement multiple times, upping the in-river bag limits for the sportfishery and opening some additional time for the drift gillnet fleet.

With the setnet fleet out of the water after July 20 because of poor king salmon returns to the Kenai, controlling sockeye escapements to the Kenai and Kasilof fell on the drift fleet and on the in-river dipnet and sportfisheries. Both rivers are ending their seasons significantly greater than the upper end of their escapement goals.

ADFG is projecting a final escapement in the Kasilof of 519,000 sockeye compared to the top end of the escapement goal of 320,000; the sustainable escapement goal for the Kenai River has a top end of 1.3 million and ADFG is projecting an in-river run of about 2.4 million sockeye.

Unless something changes, the drift fleet is likely to lose a major chunk of their fishing area at the end of this year, too.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is currently working its way through the regulations review process for a new fishery management plan amendment that will close the federal waters of Cook Inlet to salmon fishing. That section, known as the Exclusive Economic Zone or EEZ, covers the section of Cook Inlet that’s three nautical miles and farther offshore; drifters typically harvest half or more of their salmon from there during the season.

“For most of the fleet, the EEZ is the preferred area for fishing,” said Erik Huebsch, a drifter and vice president of the United Cook Inlet Drift Association. “Without access to the EEZ, the drift fleet cannot harvest enough salmon to meet expenses and cannot afford to operate.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

ALASKA: Sockeye run overescaped by 1 million fish

August 25, 2021 — Nearly 2.5 million late-run sockeye are projected to pass through the Kenai River by the end of the month, overescaping the river by over one million fish.

Those numbers concern fishermen like Joe Dragseth, a drift-netter in Kenai. He said he worries about the health of the river. And he said it’s unfair commercial fishermen have been restricted while so many fish have made it up the river.

“Basically, they’re taking the living away from us,” he said.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game sets both in-river and sustainable escapement goals for the run each season. The philosophy is returns will be best if the run falls between those goalposts.

Read the full story at KDLL

Record Salmon in One Place. Barely Any in Another. Alarm All Around.

August 16, 2021 — This summer, fishers in the world’s largest wild salmon habitat pulled a record-breaking 65 million sockeye salmon from Alaska’s Bristol Bay, beating the 2018 record by more than three million fish.

But on the Yukon River, about 500 miles to the north, salmon were alarmingly absent. This summer’s chum run was the lowest on record, with only 153,000 fish counted in the river at the Pilot Station sonar — a stark contrast to the 1.7 million chum running in year’s past. The king salmon runs were also critically low this summer — the third lowest on record. The Yukon’s fall run is also shaping up to be sparse.

The disparity between the fisheries is concerning — a possible bellwether for the chaotic consequences of climate change; competition between wild and hatchery fish; and commercial fishing bycatch.

“This is something we’ve never seen before,” said Sabrina Garcia, a research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “I think that we’re starting to see changes due to climate change, and I think that we’re going to continue to see more changes, but we need more years of data.”

The low runs have had ripple effects for communities along the Yukon River and its tributaries — the Andreafski, Innoko, Anvik, Porcupine, Tanana and Koyukuk Rivers — resulting in a devastating blow to the people relying on salmon as a food staple, as feed for sled dogs and as an integral and enriching cultural tradition spanning millenniums.

Read the full story at The New York Times

‘Salmon is Life’: For Native Alaskans, Salmon Declines Pose Existential Crisis

August 12, 2021 — In St. Mary’s, Alaska, the people of the Yupiit of Andreafski look to the south wind, the budding tree leaves, and even the formations of migrating birds to discern whether the pulse of salmon returning upriver to spawn will be strong. Serena Fitka grew up in this tiny Yukon River village, and though she now lives in Valdez, she returns home every summer with her family, to partake in the traditional salmon harvest that is both the community’s main source of sustenance and the fabric of its culture.

This year, however, abysmally low salmon runs in the Yukon River have led Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) to impose a moratorium on fishing for Chinook (or King) and Chum salmon in the mighty river, which runs for 2,000 miles from the Bering Sea to Canada’s Yukon Territory. While Yukon run sizes for both salmon species numbered about 1.9 million in the past, this year they’re projected to be less than 430,000. The moratorium impacts 40 villages and roughly 11,000 people, 90 percent of whom are Indigenous Alaskans. And many have no access to grocery stores or any other source of food besides what they can hunt or harvest.

On a recent trip to St. Mary’s, Fitka said she felt depressed. “I walk on to the riverbank, and I look at the river and . . . I want to go get fish, but I can’t. And that’s how everyone was feeling this year. People came to me and said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’” Fitka is executive director of the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association, which represents the interests of Indigenous subsistence fishermen on the Yukon River.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

Processor executives and biologists consider what smaller fish mean for Bristol Bay

August 6, 2021 — The average Bristol Bay sockeye this year is smaller. That’s part of a trend over the past four decades, as increasingly smaller fish have returned to the bay amid larger salmon runs and warming oceans. Processor executives and biologists now have to consider what smaller fish mean for Bristol Bay.

Bristol Bay is home to the largest sockeye run on the planet. But while the size of the run broke records, the fish are getting smaller.

Last year’s average weight for sockeye was 5.1 pounds. But the 2021 average was just 4.5 pounds, according to the McKinley Research Group.

Jon Hickman is the executive vice president of operations for Peter Pan Seafoods. He says the smaller fish play a role in how much time processors spend processing.

“Smaller fish are going to take longer to process,” he said. “So you’re handling a 4 pound fish or a 3 pound fish, as opposed to a 5 pound fish so every time you handle one there’s a two pound difference. There’s more labor going into those smaller fish. You get more labor into them, there’s more costs associated with those smaller fish.”

Hickman says he isn’t worried about how the smaller fish will play in Peter Pan’s markets — demand is good, and he’s comfortable with the market for fish big and small.

Read the full story at KDLG

ALASKA: Board of Fisheries denies setnetters’ emergency petitions

August 4, 2021 — Kenai Peninsula setnetters are likely to remain closed for the rest of the season after the Board of Fisheries denied two emergency petitions seeking a partial reopening.

In an emergency meeting held Aug. 2, the Board of Fisheries voted 4-2 to deny a petition seeking a limited reopening of the East Side setnet fishery in Upper Cook Inlet. The petitioner, Chris Every, asked the board to reopen the East Side setnets within 600 feet of mean high tide, known as the 600-foot fishery.

“We believe by utilizing the 600-foot fishery we can reduce both the economic and biological impact while conserving chinook salmon, which is our ultimate goal with this 600-foot fishery,” he wrote in the petition.

The setnetters had a foreshortened and significantly restricted season because of low late-run king salmon returns to the Kenai River. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimates that 6,420 large kings have passed the sonar on the Kenai River since July 1, significantly less than the lower end of the escapement goal of 15,000 large kings. In response, the department placed progressively stronger restrictions on the sportfishery, going from no bait to catch-and-release, and finally to a complete closure.

Because of the paired-restriction model the Board of Fisheries placed on the East Side setnetters, when the king salmon sportfishery is completely closed, they are too. Setnetters have not been in the water since July 20, and they have watched the peak weeks of the Kenai River sockeye run swim past. Aug. 2 saw the highest daily passage to date: 151,525 sockeye passed the sonar, according to ADFG.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Unprecedented salmon declines force fish donations to Alaska’s Yukon River villages

August 3, 2021 — For 47 years, Jack Schultheis has spent fishing season around the mouth of Yukon River.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Schultheis said from Emmonak, where he is general manager of Kwik’Pak Fisheries, a commercial enterprise set up to help the regional economy in the Lower Yukon. In a regular season, the operation would be involved in commercial fishing, buying fish, and processing.

But this year, returns of staple salmon species are abysmal, prompting the state, regional non-profits, and processors to coordinate deliveries of fish from other parts of the state. Kwik’Pak isn’t fishing at all. Which means local residents aren’t earning cash to put towards essential needs, including gas and supplies for their own subsistence activities.

Communities up and down the Yukon are coming to terms with a collapse in key stocks, and now confronting the prospect of a winter without enough food. Tribal groups working in the region say the situation is dire, and are scrambling to find alternative ways to get protein and assistance to some of the most rural households in the state.

Runs of kings and chum salmon on the Yukon have been so low that subsistence fishing for both have remained closed. In the case of kings, the number of fish in the river has been in decline for decades, along with the average size of fish harvested, according to decades of data compiled by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Kuskokwim Fishermen Appeal To Gov. Dunleavy To Investigate Commercial Bycatch Impact On Subsistence

August 3, 2021 — Kuskokwim River fishermen want information on how commercial bycatch could be affecting Kuskokwim subsistence salmon runs, and they’re asking Gov. Dunleavy for help.

The Kuskokwim River Salmon Management Working Group is a group of local subsistence fishermen who advise state fishery managers. On July 28, the group unanimously voted to send a letter to the governor asking him to direct the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to provide the group information on how chum and king salmon bycatch in state commercial fisheries along the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands could be affecting Kuskokwim salmon returns. This is the area commonly referred to as Management Area M.

It also asks for information on chum and king salmon bycatch in the federally-managed Bering Sea pollock trawl fishery.

Read the full story at KYUK

After a difficult year, Alaska’s salmon industry is back

July 29, 2021 — In 2020, the price per pound for Bristol Bay, Alaska, sockeye salmon dropped to some of the lowest prices fishermen have seen in several years. The famed fishery, like most industries, wasn’t insulated from complications brought on by COVID-19.

Large fish processing companies struggled to operate at full capacity last year. Roughly a dozen major fish processors operate out of Naknek, Alaska. More than a dozen others operate out of six more small, roadless and remote communities in the Bristol Bay region.

Each summer, these companies hire thousands of workers from all over the world, but in 2020 they were hamstrung by quarantine and travel restrictions. The processors simply didn’t have enough people to cut, package and ship fish worldwide, so they bought less. In turn, fishers harvested fewer salmon.

This year, optimism among those who are out fishing is bolstered by forecasts. Bristol Bay is home to the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon run. Prices are way up from last year and biologists believe they might see the largest run of Alaskan sockeye on record this summer.

Read the full story at Marketplace

ALASKA: Bristol Bay sockeye run is largest on record

July 22, 2021 — Bristol Bay’s 2021 sockeye run is the largest on record: 63.2 million fish have returned to the bay this year, breaking the 2018 record of 62.9 million.

This is the fourth time since 1952 that the bay’s run has exceeded the 60-million-fish mark.

The latest record shows Bristol Bay’s sockeye management is working, said Tim Sands, an area management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

“I think it’s a shining beacon of sustainable management,” he said. “We’ve been prosecuting the commercial salmon fishery management since 1884 and we are still able to set records on total runs, and I think that speaks to the escapement-based management that we use, and it’s great.”

Read the full story at KTOO