Saving Seafood

ALASKA: State seeks fishery resource disaster determination for Prince William Sound salmon

March 6, 2025 — State officials are seeking millions of dollars in financial relief funds for six salmon fisheries disasters in 2024, including one in Prince William Sound.

In his letter of Jan. 28 to Acting Commerce Secretary Jeremy Pelter, Gov. Mike Dunleavy noted that there was an unexpectedly large decrease in the harvest of pink and chum salmon in 2024 in the Prince William Sound salmon fisheries.

The harvests of 9.95 million pink salmon and 1.70 million chum salmon were below the recent five-year averages by 75% and 57% respectively.

Preliminary data estimates the financial value of the 2024 Prince William Sound pink and chum salmon fisheries were also below the recent five-year average – 78% to 88% respectively – and that estimated losses totaled more than $85 million.

The federal government has already acknowledged the request for funding for the Kotzebue area and more acknowledgements are anticipated for requests for Prince William Sound pink and chum fisheries, Lower Cook Inlet pink salmon, Kodiak pink salmon, and Alaska Peninsula sockeye and South Peninsula pinks.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

ALASKA: Alaska governor proposes lifting state’s longtime ban on fish farms

February 24, 2025 — Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Friday introduced a bill that would partially reverse Alaska’s 35-year-old ban on fish farms. House Bill 111 was referred to the House Fisheries Committee for consideration.

If signed into law, HB 111 wouldn’t allow salmon farming, but it would allow the farming of “any bony fish belonging to the osteichthyes class.”

That includes things like tilapia, catfish or carp — the world’s most widely farmed fish. Any farmed fish would have to be sterile, unable to reproduce if they escape into the wild. They would also have to be contained by an escape-proof barrier.

Fish farms would be subject to regulation by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and subject to oversight by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

Alaska already has a significant and growing number of shellfish farms.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: ‘Mining and salmon have never gotten along’: Alaskan tribes don’t want B.C. gold mine

December 20, 2024 — Southeast Alaskan tribal groups are decrying a proposed mine in northwestern British Columbia, arguing it will have disastrous environmental repercussions for the Taku River watershed.

Vancouver-based Canagold Resources Ltd., is proposing to develop the New Polaris gold mine, an underground gold mine located 100 kilometres south of Atlin, B.C. and 60 kilometres northeast of Juneau, Alaska.

The remote, fly-in mine would produce around 1,000 tonnes of ore per day.

“The people of the Taku have subsisted, survived and stewarded the Taku River watershed for thousands of years,” said Jill Weitz, government affairs liaison for the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

“It’s such a magical place that to even think about activity like that, for those of us downstream, it’s kind of mind boggling,” she said.

The Taku River, as well as the Stikine and Unuk rivers, flow from northwestern B.C. to southeastern Alaska.

The rivers are home to all five species of wild Alaska salmon, brown bears, moose and other wildlife and fish species.

Read the full article at Yahoo! News

ALASKA: Copper River fishing kicks off salmon season marked by fewer buyers and more uncertainty

June 28, 2024 — Justin Johnson surveyed his nets and the large net reel of his bowpicker the F/V White Night at the Cordova Harbor in early June, as he prepared for the next day’s opener.

“So a 20 pound king is a $300 fish or better, so you definitely don’t want to see it splash out of the net,” he said, gesturing to the dip net on hand to snap up the coveted Copper River king salmon.

The Copper River fishing season started on May 15, and marks the first salmon run of the year with the highest prices in the state, especially for kings. The Alaska commercial fishing season has been through an economic tailspin over the last year. Fishing crews grappled with historically low prices, and processors sold and closed down plants over the winter. The Prince William Sound fishery is one of the most productive in the state, but fishing crews are also feeling the pressure.

Back at the Cordova harbor, lifelong commercial fisherman Nick Nebesky took a break from boat engine repairs to share his concerns with market prices.

“It was rough. I’ve spent all winter redoing my finances, accounting everything, to try to get myself back where I need to be,” he said. “And it seems like this year could possibly make that happen. But last year was awful, it was a terrible price. There was good fish – the fish were beautiful, the fish were healthy, and I see them in the grocery stores. Seems like they’re the same price in the grocery stores, but we did not get paid as much.”

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Many Southeast Alaska salmon runs expected to be fairly good this year

June 27, 2024 — As commercial salmon fishing gets under way in Southeast Alaska, projections for salmon returns are up. Troy Thynes is the regional finfish coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He said as with any forecast, this one is only good until the fish start returning.

“Last year, with that 19 million forecast in the poor category, we ended up with a harvest of around 48 million pink salmon. So needless to say the forecast was a little off,” he said.

The purse seine fishery brings in the largest salmon harvest in the region because it’s primarily a pink and chum salmon fishery. Pinks are the most numerous salmon species in Southeast. The pre-season forecast is for 19.2 million fish. That’s just a little above last year’s harvest estimate of 19 million, but well under half of the actual harvest of 48 million fish.

Thynes said the seine pink salmon harvest probably could have been even higher last year, but market conditions got in the way. Processors dropped pink and chum salmon prices, and then quit buying early, saying the global salmon market was flooded.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: As salmon season kicks off, some Alaska fishermen fear for their futures

June 26, 2024 — On a brilliant spring morning, Buck Laukitis, a longtime fisherman from this Kenai Peninsula town, stood at the city dock watching his catch come ashore.

Crew members aboard Laukitis’ boat, the Oracle, filled bags with dozens of halibut — some of the fatter ones worth $200 or more — which a crane would lift up to the dock. There, processing workers on a small slime line weighed the fish, tossed crushed ice into the gills and slid them into boxes for shipment to Canada.

Harvest, unload, sell, repeat — exactly how the iconic Alaska commercial fishing industry is supposed to work. Until you ask Laukitis about the Oracle’s sister vessel, the Halcyon.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Silver Bay Seafoods acquires Alaska salmon plant from Trident Seafoods

June 13, 2024 — US-based company Silver Bay Seafoods has bought an Alaskan processing facility from local peer Trident Seafoods.

The plant, located in False Pass, is dedicated to processing salmon. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The facility is located close to Silver Bay Seafoods’ own processing plant in False Pass, which opened in 2019.

Silver Bay Seafoods, which is owned by 600 fishermen, is a processor of frozen salmon, herring, whitefish and squid products for the US and for export markets.

Read the full article at Yahoo News!

ALASKA: Rough Seas Ahead for Seafood Processing

June 11, 2024 — Not too long ago, Alaska’s salmon fishery was at a high. The record for the largest salmon run was set in 2018, and again in 2021, and again in 2022. It wasn’t just Bristol Bay; across Western Alaska, sockeye and pink salmon populations reached historic levels between 2021 and 2022, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But all good things must come to an end.

The sockeye salmon run in Bristol Bay is forecast to be millions of fish short of the 2023 season, although the run is still supposed to be above the ten-year average, according to the Alaska Department of Fish & Game.

That’s not the only place in the state that will see lower numbers. A weak pink salmon run on Kodiak Island drove OBI Seafoods to close its seafood processing plant in Larsen Bay, according to CEO John Hanrahan. However, the company will keep its plant in the City of Kodiak open.

Read the full article at Alaska Business

Peltola introduces bills to address salmon bycatch battle

May 29, 2024 — Alaska Native groups and others hope two new bills by Rep. Mary Peltola, D, will go where present fishery management plans haven’t gone before and cut down on salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea. The announcements of “The Bottom Trawl Clarity Act” and the “Bycatch Reduction and Mitigation Act” will reduce the incidental harvest of chinooks, chums, and other salmon destined for western Alaska watersheds.

The region has experienced abysmal salmon returns in recent years and wants trawlers to improve their bycatch reduction efforts.

“Subsistence and commercial fisheries throughout Western Alaska have been shuttered in recent years,” said Kevin Whitworth, executive director of the Kuskokwim Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, in a press release put out by SalmonState. “With record-low escapements and few (if any) opportunities for Indigenous and rural fishing families to harvest salmon, there is nothing more that our communities can sacrifice to protect salmon.”

The Bottom Trawl Clarity Act strives to define how trawl gear touches the ocean floor. Though pollock trawls have been hallowed as midwater nets, some studies show that they are towed along the bottom-most of the time. This act would distinguish “substantial” and “limited” times that the trawls hug bottom, then designate “Bottom Trawl Zones” where it would be allowed.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Peltola sponsors a bill to limit salmon bycatch. The pollock industry calls it ‘unworkable.’

May 23, 2024 — Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola introduced two bills Wednesday that aim to deliver on one of her campaign themes: Reducing the number of salmon that the Bering Sea fishing fleet catches by accident.

One of the bills would curtail the use of fishing nets that scrape sensitive parts of the sea floor. It would require regional fisheries management councils to designate bottom trawl zones and limit that kind of fishing to those areas.

It also attempts to crack down on fishing gear that hits the sea floor but goes by a different name. Peltola said areas that are closed to bottom trawling off Alaska’s coast are too often open to pelagic trawling, which in theory means the nets are in the mid-water.

“I think 40 to 80% of the time, that ‘pelagic’ gear is actually on the bottom,” she said. “So I think that defining these terms and having a more accurate definition of what bottom trawl is, and the percentage of time that those nets are on the bottom, is really important.”

A second bill would increase the money available for a grant program that funds research and equipment to help fishing fleets reduce bycatch. That program would get up to $10 million per year, $7 million more than its current cap.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media