Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Demand remains high as Alaska’s sockeye salmon harvest hits 48 million fish

August 1, 2025 — Sockeye salmon commercial harvests in Alaska reached 90% of the annual projection near the end of July, including 40 million reds from Bristol Bay, and Anchorage retail prices were holding at from $13.99 to $39.99 a pound.

Fishmongers at the New Sagaya seafood counter in Anchorage were also doing a brisk business in fresh troll-caught coho salmon fillets at $13.99 a pound, and whole trolled silvers from Sitka were on sale at $7.99 a pound. Shoppers at 10th & M Seafoods, another popular Anchorage fish shop, were stocking up on the sockeyes, at $13.99 a pound, with average orders of 10 to 15 pounds each, said store manager Tito Marquez. Costco warehouses in Anchorage also had their seafood display cases packed with sockeye fillets at $13.99 a pound.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Legal fight over Pebble mine could drag on after DOJ departures

July 30, 2025 — A legal battle over the proposed Pebble mine in Alaska could drag on through next year as top attorneys leave the federal government, according to legal filings the Department of Justice submitted Tuesday.

Adam Gustafson, the acting assistant attorney general for DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, told a district court in Alaska that the Trump administration needs more time to respond to the mine developers’ challenges.

Pebble Partnership, a company wholly owned by Northern Dynasty Minerals, is suing the U.S. government for blocking its plans to build copper, gold and molybdenum mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed. EPA issued a rare veto of the project in 2023 under the Clean Water Act, warning it would harm the Bristol Bay watershed and fisheries there.

Read the full article at E&E News

ALASKA: Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association to test AI monitoring with USD 485,000 grant

July 30, 2025 — Sitka, Alaska, U.S.A.-based fisher advocacy organization The Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) has won a USD 485,000 (EUR 422,719) National Fish and Wildlife Foundation grant to support AI-driven electronic monitoring (EM) efforts for Alaska fixed gear fishers. 

The project will involve utilizing the FishVue AI tool created by British Columbia, Canada-based Archipelago Marine Research, as well as a partnership with the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC), to monitor Alaska sablefish and halibut in fixed gear fisheries.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Trump’s EPA reaffirms Biden-era Pebble Mine veto

July 25, 2025 — The Environmental Protection Agency is sticking with its veto of the proposed Pebble Mine project in southwest Alaska.

Northern Dynasty, the parent company behind the Pebble project, is still suing to get the veto overturned. A document filed in that lawsuit early this month said the company and the EPA were in settlement talks, and that the Trump administration said it was open to reconsidering the Biden-era veto on the controversial mining project.

But on July 17, attorneys in the case filed another document to update the judge. It says that negotiations between the company and the EPA did not reach a resolution, and that the Trump administration will continue to back the veto.

Read the full article at KDLG

How a marine heatwave transformed life along the Pacific coast

July 24, 2025 — Between 2014 and 2016, something very unsettling happened off the west coast of North America. For over two years, ocean waters from California to Alaska were unusually warm – 3.6°F to 10.8°F hotter than normal.

This wasn’t a one-off fluke or a seasonal shift. It was the longest and most intense marine heatwave ever recorded in the region.

The heat lingered, spreading across thousands of miles of ocean. This event reshaped life in the water in devastating ways.

Kelp forests collapsed and entire food chains were thrown off balance. Animals appeared in places they had never been spotted before, and many of them died.

An ongoing coastal crisis

The warm water pushed marine life out of their comfort zones – literally. According to newly published research, 240 species were found far beyond their usual ranges during the heatwave, many of them showing up more than 600 miles farther north than normal.

Northern right whale dolphins and small sea slugs like Placida cremoniana were spotted well outside their typical territory. For some species, the shift was temporary. For others, it hinted at a more permanent change.

As ocean waters heat up, many organisms are following the temperature they’re adapted to – heading toward cooler, northern waters in a bid to survive. But during the historic heatwave in the Pacific, some animals could not move fast enough.

Read the full article at Earth.com

ALASKA: Alaska governor vetoes legislation providing funding for low-interest commercial fishing loans

July 23, 2025 — Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy vetoed a bill that would help provide lower interest loans to commercial fishers, claiming the state could not afford to pay for the investment amidst what he called a revenue crisis.

Alaska Senate Bill 156 would have provided USD 3.7 million (EUR 3.1 million) to the Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank (CFAB) to offer low interest rates on commercial fishing loans. The legislation was recommended by the Joint Legislative Taskforce Evaluating Alaska’s Seafood Industry, which claimed that the CFAB had lost loan volume due to low interest commercial fishing loans created by the state government in 2024. SB 156 would fix that by providing funding to help CFAB match those low interest rates and then pay back the investment at a later date.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Mine developer and EPA fail to reach agreement over Pebble copper and gold project

July 22, 2025 — A possible settlement agreement between the Trump administration and the Pebble copper and gold prospect in Southwest Alaska did not pan out, according to a recent filing in a federal court by Pebble Limited Partnership.

That means the legal case brought by Pebble against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues. Pebble is seeking to overturn the unusual 2023 decision by the agency, known as a veto, that stopped the project.

“Those discussions were productive but the parties did not reach a negotiated resolution,” said the status report from Pebble, filed Thursday.

Earlier this month, Northern Journal reported that EPA was negotiating a deal that could have ended the lawsuit between Pebble’s owner company and the federal agency.

Conservation groups characterized the lack of a settlement as a sign that the administration of President Donald Trump is standing by the agency’s decision, which was made under former President Joe Biden.

Pebble last week said in a statement that with no settlement reached, it is asking the court to set a briefing schedule for a summary judgment to have the EPA decision quickly withdrawn.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

Alaska salmon groups hail legal filing on Pebble Mine

July 21, 2025 — Salmon fishers, Tribes, and associated businesses in Bristol Bay, Alaska, U.S.A. have welcomed a recent legal filing regarding Pebble Mine, claiming the Trump administration is backing their opposition to the development of Pebble Mine.

“We thank President Trump for defending this one of a kind natural resource from short term exploitation by foreign controlled interests,” SalmonState Executive Director Tim Bristol said in a statement. “Bristol Bay’s world class salmon runs generate upwards of USD 2.2 billion (EUR 1.9 billion billion) in economic activity, are a vital source of clean, nutritious food, and represent one of the great hunting and angling destinations on the planet. Simply put, Bristol Bay is the biggest and the best and it’s clear the President knows this based on his wise decision today.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Veteran fisheries researcher says smart development can still protect Alaska salmon habitat

July 17, 2025 — Nearly three decades into his research on how aquatic systems are responding climate change in Bristol Bay, University of Washington (UW) veteran fisheries biologist Daniel Schindler says smart development will be needed to protect Alaska’s salmon habitat.

“I think it is an important message that Alaska must protect its habitat,” Schindler said in an interview with National Fisherman from a UW field camp in the Bristol Bay watershed, on July 13. “We have destroyed so much habitat in so many places due to ignorance, only to learn afterward how important that habitat was to our fisheries.

“All over the West Coast and in Europe, habitat has been destroyed,” he said. “Alaska still has most of the pieces on the table. We are in a position to protect most of these ecosystems, and I hope we wake up and realize we can seriously degrade their capacity to support fisheries.”

To Schindler and many others, mines such as Pebble and Donlin mine in salmon habitat, along with certain energy and road development projects, pose distinct threats. Backers of mineral exploration and development say that using state-of-the-art practices will protect the fisheries, but history and science do not support these claims.

The University of Washington’s Alaska Salmon Program, which dates back to the 1940s, focuses on all aspects of the ecology and evolution of Pacific salmon in watersheds in western Alaska, the Bering Sea, and Gulf of Alaska.  Every summer, as many as 30 researchers, including undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty professors, rotate through several field stations for the program, with a handful of them there for the entire summer.

One of them is Schindler, who began his research there in 1997 on the invitation of UW professor Ray Hilborn before joining the faculty and beginning to teach on the UW campus. Program facilities include a network of field camps on Wood River, Lake Iliamna, and at Chignik.

UW also has a broad web of collaborators in Alaska, nationwide, and globally, but they have to pay their own way to Bristol Bay and for accommodations at the field camps.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Setnetters revive beach seine tests amid shuttered fishery

July 17, 2025 — For the second year in a row, permit holders in Cook Inlet’s east side setnet salmon fishery are experimenting with new equipment they hope will get them back in the water after years of consecutive closures. The system isn’t totally honed yet, but people are giving it a try.

It’s a cloudy day on the beach in Clam Gulch. Brent Johnson kneels in the sand while a wall of emerald trees sways in the wind above him. He’s splicing two ropes together while his wife, Judy, thinks out loud.

“It doesn’t make sense in my head,” Judy said. “It’s not regular setnetting.”

The couple has been setnetting for decades, so they’d know. And she’s right – it isn’t regular settnetting. It’s beach seining.

The Johnsons are permit holders in Cook Inlet’s east side setnet fishery. But over the last five years, the federal government has formally considered the fishery an economic disaster.

Setnetters like the Johnsons target sockeye salmon. But chinook sometimes end up in their nets. And that’s a problem — declining chinook salmon runs in the Kenai and Kasilof rivers have prompted state fishery managers to crack down on commercial fishing in the area. That means the setnet fishery is sometimes closed altogether, including this year.

That’s what spurred another pair of setnetters, Brian and Lisa Gabriel, to get what’s called an experimental permit from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to try beach seine gear instead. It’s the Gabriels’ second summer using the new method. Last year, they brought their seines to multiple beach sites to try the gear out in different environments.

Read the full article at KDLL