Saving Seafood

The Wild Fish Conservancy’s never-ending lawsuits

December 3, 2025 — The environmental group that sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2020 in an effort to shut down the Southeast Alaska troll fishery for salmon took home a $1.6 million reimbursement for its costs, despite finally losing its case.

According to the Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC) website, its sole mission is “the protection and recovery of the Northwest’s wild fish.” Sounds like a great idea, and it would seem that the WFC’s mission and that of commercial fishermen ought to align.

But in 2020, the organization sued the NMFS and sought to close the Southeast Alaska fishery, claiming that it was necessary to protect chinook salmon and the Southern Resident killer whales (SRKW). The years-long case swung back and forth. In 2023, a U.S. District Court ruled in the WFC’s favor, threatening the 2024 season, but a stay imposed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed fishermen to work. On August 16, 2024, the court reversed the district court’s decision because it went too far.

But because the WFC won the earlier case, it sought compensation of $2.3 million for attorney fees and other related costs. The Judge gave them close to $1.7 million. “This appears to be their business model, how they make their money,” says Jeff Farvour, who trolls for salmon from his 40-foot boat, the Apollo. 

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Alaska Trollers Association gets legal victory, awaits updated NMFS king salmon biological opinion

August 19, 2024 — The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has handed a victory to the Alaska Trollers Association (ATA) by reversing a lower court’s ruling that found commercial chinook salmon fishing in Southeast Alaska endangered southern resident killer whales.

In May 2023, at the bequest of the environmental nonprofit Wild Fish Conservancy, a U.S. federal judge ruled the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) must remake its management plan for king salmon, finding NFMS did not adequately analyze the fishery’s impact on the southern resident killer whale population in the U.S. state of Washington.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Sitka Assembly donates $25K to support trollers’ legal fund

February 16, 2023 — The Sitka Assembly will give $25,000 to support the Alaska Trollers Association’s legal defense fund. The group unanimously approved the funding in a final vote on February 14.

The Alaska Trollers Association is an intervenor in a lawsuit that a Washington-based nonprofit brought against the National Marine Fisheries Service three years ago. The Wild Fish Conservancy aims to protect an endangered population of killer whales in Puget Sound by targeting the Southeast troll fishery. In December, a US District Court Judge issued a recommendation that could shut the troll fishery down until the NMFS makes some policy changes.

Read the full article at KCAW

ALASKA: Assembly greenlights $25,000 to support trollers’ legal fight

January 30, 2023 — The Sitka Assembly is moving forward with plans to donate $25,000 to the Alaska Trollers Association (ATA), to support the organization’s ongoing legal fight against a Washington environmental group that hopes to shut down commercial fishing for king salmon in Southeast Alaska. And other organizations and locals are piling on, in anticipation of a lengthy – and costly –  appeals process.

Alaska trollers and the Alaska Department of Fish & Game intervened in a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service brought by the Wild Fish Conservancy in 2020. The Duvall, Washington-based group argues that commercial trolling in Alaska threatens an endangered population of killer whales in Puget Sound by depriving them of king salmon – their primary food source. And they’ve been successful in court: In December a US District Court judge issued a report that, to make a long story short, puts the Southeast king salmon fishery at risk of closure.  And that means a bigger hole in the troll association’s pocket, as it anticipates a lengthy appeals process.

In early January, trollers drummed up support at the assembly table. And at its January 24 meeting, more folks came out of the woodwork in support of the organization. Roger Hames of Hames Corporation, which owns a major grocery store in Sitka, said he’d been asked to contribute $5,000 but he’d likely contribute $10,000. Tad Fujioka is chairman of the board for Seafood Producers Co-Op. He said the Alaska Trollers Association had requested around $48,000 from SPC, but employees asked them to donate more money from their profit sharing pool.

Read the full article at KCAW

Commercial fishing vessels can serve as research vessels for cost-effective data collection

January 26, 2023 — A growing network of commercial fishing boats and private companies are using sensors attached to fishing gear to cheaply collect crucial ocean data like temperature and salinity, used in fisheries science, climate models, and more. Traditionally gathered at great expense by research vessels, moorings, and gliders, data gathered by fishing boats offers ocean observers a cost-effective way to increase their coverage.

“Word has spread in the scientific community that we’re offering affordable fieldwork,” said Jim Moore, board member of the Alaska Trollers Association (ATA). “Here our interests converge: the better the science, knowledge based on reality, the healthier the relationship between fisheries and managers.”

Moore is working to outfit 10 ATA boats with marine observation equipment as part of a grant-funded pilot program, one of many such collaborations between ocean observers and fishermen around the country. Ocean Data Network (ODN) a Maine-based data collection company recently named as a winner in the World Economic Forum’s Ocean Data Challenge, will be the back-end data management team, exemplifying the aligned interests of fishing and science.

“It’s not only that it’s more cost effective,” said Cooper Van Vranken, founder of ODN, “but it’s also that the fishing is getting data in the oceanographically most interesting areas and in the areas where it matters most for fisheries and for all kinds of other users. The future of ocean observation is a symphony of different observing platforms and fishing vessels are going to be a very important piece of all that.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman

A state government shutdown could also shutter Alaska fisheries

June 24, 2021 — If Alaska state leaders can’t resolve an impasse over the budget, large swaths of state government will shut down in July. That could include Alaska’s lucrative summer salmon fisheries, which is causing concern across coastal communities.

Southeast Alaska’s summer salmon troll fishery opens July 1. That’s the same day nearly 15,000 state workers could be out of work. Among those is Grant Hagerman, a state fisheries biologist managing the fishery from Sitka.

“We’re planning not to be here on July 1 unless we hear differently,” Hagerman says. “And with that, that summer fishery does not commence.”

Many of Alaska’s fisheries are operated by emergency order. That means fisheries open and close based on real-time data and biologists like Hagerman’s professional judgment. But he’s not part of the special class of state employees that would keep their jobs even in the shutdown — public safety or public health workers.

“You would think that we would have had a message, maybe from administration, just saying ‘Here are the exempt or partially exempt or whatever job classes that could remain open,’ but we didn’t get anything like that. I think it’s just pink slips across the board if they don’t pass so just — it’s really scary, you know, not just for us losing our jobs, but I mean, we manage a fishery with 1,000 permit holders and Southeast so it affects a lot of people.” Hagerman adds: “But I have faith that they’ll get something agreed to.”

Read the full story at KSTK

Alaska Files to Defend Salmon Fisheries in Southeast Alaska

March 17, 2021 — The State of Alaska has moved to intervene in a federal case that threatens state management of Alaska’s salmon fisheries.

The Wild Fish Conservancy, a conservation organization based in Washington state, claims that Alaska’s management of fisheries under the Pacific Salmon Treaty threatens the survival of several salmon stocks in Washington and Oregon, and the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales that depend on them.

The lawsuit seeks to shut down all salmon fisheries in the federal waters off the coast of Southeast Alaska.

Read the full story at KINY

Washington lawsuit targets Alaska trollers

April 29, 2020 — Nearly 1,600 trollers who fish for king salmon in Southeast Alaska could be beached this summer over a lawsuit to protect killer whales — in Washington’s Puget Sound.

On April 16 the Wild Fish Conservancy filed an injunction against NMFS to block the summer king salmon season set to open July 1 until the lawsuit is resolved.

KCAW in Sitka reported the Conservancy claims NOAA has failed to allow enough king salmon to return to Puget Sound to feed endangered resident killer whales. Their lawsuit says that 97 percent of the kings caught in Southeast’s troll fishery are from British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Alaska data show catches range from 30 to 80 percent, depending on the year.

Amy Daugherty, director of the Alaska Trollers Association, said her group is in shock and has intervened in the lawsuit.

Read the full story at National Fisherman