Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Kuskokwim Bay commercial salmon fishery opens after 5-year hiatus

July 30, 2026 — Dozens of ocean-going skiffs have been busy unfurling gill nets along the shores of Kuskokwim Bay. But the catches haven’t been headed to fish camps. Instead, the salmon are quickly bled, put on ice, and offloaded onto vessels bobbing in the waters in front of Quinhagak and Goodnews Bay.

If the fishery is successful, an at-sea processor with hundreds of thousands of pounds of frozen, mostly sockeye, salmon will return to Washington state to bring the catch to market.

According to Larry Strunk, a founding member of the Independent Fishermen of Quinhagak Cooperative, local permit holders could earn upwards of $15,000 each by fishing the openers.

“We have some fishermen that have already been paid over $10,000 this month,” Strunk said.

But as of July 28, Strunk said that diminishing sockeye numbers and logistical issues have spelled the end of this year’s fishery, just three weeks after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game opened it.

Read the full article at KYUK

ALASKA: Bristol Bay honors 75th anniversary of the end of commercial sailboat fishery

July 29, 2026 — Diesel-powered boats fish Bristol Bay’s waters by the hundreds, but it wasn’t always that way.

Motorized fishing vessels were once banned in Bristol Bay. And in their place, sailboats dominated the commercial fishery until the early 50s. The late Harvey Samuelson was one fisherman who sailed for salmon. His quotations used in this story are from a 2005 interview that aired on KDLG in a Bristol Bay oral history program called “Our Story.”

“We didn’t have no reels or anything like that,” Samuelson told KDLG at the time. “It was all manhandling wooden corks – it’d get awful heavy. Now you’ve got plastic floats, corks.”

Samuelson said without a motorized vessel, the job was not easy.

“Sailing was a lot of fun,” he said. “But to make a living in a sailboat was sort of tough.”

Tim Troll is the creator of “Our Story,” who interviewed Samuelson. He’s also director of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust and author of the book, Sailing for Salmon. The commercial sockeye fishery used to be federally managed, and Troll says the US Fish & Wildlife Service finally allowed power boats to fish in 1951.

Read the full article at Alaska Pubic Media

Opinion: Why targeting one fishery puts Alaska’s seafood economy at risk

July 29, 2026 — Alaska’s commercial fishing economy works because of a simple truth: it is built on interdependence.

Like a three-legged stool, the state’s seafood economy depends on three connected pillars: fishermen who harvest responsibly, processors who transform that harvest into marketable products, and the coastal communities whose infrastructure, workforce, and local economies make it all possible.

Remove any one of those legs, and the entire system becomes unstable. That is why proposals to dismantle major parts of Alaska’s seafood economy are not isolated fishery debates. They are statewide economic questions.

Increasingly, public rhetoric around trawling has been reduced to simplistic slogans and social media talking points that ignore both the scale of Alaska’s seafood economy and the complex systems that sustain it. Some have advanced sweeping calls to “end trawling” without acknowledging what those policies would actually mean for Alaska communities.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Bristol Bay comes off decade of historic runs with moderate and early returns in 2026

July 28, 2026 — Bristol Bay’s sockeye salmon run is coming to a close, and it just surpassed the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s pre-season forecast of 44 million fish.

The thing that stands out most this year was that early run timing, said Curry Cunningham, an associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and part of a team that creates pre-season and in-season forecasts for the commercial fishery.

“If we look at the large-run-size years in Bristol Bay, we’ve seen generally since about 2015 they’ve been predominantly on time,” Cunningham said.

The last two years have bucked that trend, he said.

“In 2025 and this year in 2026, we’ve seen earlier run timing to Bristol Bay,” he said. “So a bit of a shift back towards run timings we hadn’t seen in quite a while.”

One of the variables that correlates most strongly with run timing is the extent of sea ice in the late spring, Cunningham said. Bristol Bay sockeye tend to return earlier during years with more sea ice in May.

This year’s run was about three days earlier than the long-term average, according to Cunningham, with a midpoint around July 3 or 4. While three days might seem like a small difference, he said it can have big impacts.

“In Bristol Bay, where the vast majority of the run comes through and arrives inshore over the course of two or three weeks, it actually makes a huge difference,” he said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

US senators call for sanctions on vessels that support China’s distant water fishing fleet

July 28, 2026 — A handful of U.S. senators have asked the Department of the Treasury to issue sanctions on vessels that support China’s distant water fishing fleet, continuing a push from U.S. lawmakers to limit China’s commercial fishing and seafood sectors.

“The Chinese Communist Party is using its global distant-water fleet to conduct ecocide across at least three continents in both hemispheres. They kill endangered species by the hundreds and sharks, whales, and dolphins by the thousands, and have destroyed tens of thousands of acres of coral reefs,” U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a statement. “Their fleet uses coerced laborers, who are subjected to physical abuse, malnutrition, overwork, and withheld pay. They could not conduct these activities without supply ships, including reefers, tankers, and floating bases. The U.S. should bolster our Maritime Domain Awareness capabilities to identify these vessels, and then we should use every available option to sanction and disrupt them.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: For Yukon River residents, salmon shortages have health consequences

Juky 24, 2026 — When 26-year-old Tirzah Bryant was a kid, she knew how to watch the cottonwood trees along the Yukon River for the sign that it was time to fish for salmon.

“We know that the fish are coming when the cotton’s flying from the cottonwood,” she said.

But run collapses and successive fishing closures along the river have rendered the cottonwood signal meaningless.

“I remember that first summer that we couldn’t fish, watching the cotton flying and being like …what it felt like, I was drifting. I’m like, ‘What am I doing?’” she said. That drifting feeling includes interactions with members of her extended family who had moved to cities but used to gather in Galena during fishing season. “They don’t have a reason to come home now,” she said.

Bryant described that odd feeling during a presentation in March at an Anchorage tribal environmental conference. A 2025 graduate of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Center for One Health Research master’s degree program, which focuses on the human-animal-environmental health connections in Alaska and the Arctic, she described the One Health concept as fitting perfectly with her family’s traditions.

“Everything is related. So a healthy environment equals healthy animals, which equals healthy humans,” said Bryant, who also holds a biology degree from UAF and is now the environmental and education coordinator for the Louden Tribe, the Galena-based tribal government.

That makes the collapse of runs in the Yukon River — where Indigenous residents’ culture is tied to communal salmon harvesting, preparation and eating — “very detrimental to our people,” she said.

On the Yukon River, salmon runs that used to support a thriving and lucrative commercial harvest have collapsed. The runs of Chinook, also called king salmon, that have been in steady decline since the early 2000s, took a nosedive in recent years; by 2022, Chinook abundance was down 81% below its long-term average, according to fishery biologists. Harvest closures that began in 2020 were extended, and in 2024 an Alaska-Canada agreement established a seven-year moratorium on Chinook salmon fishing in the river to preserve Canadian-origin stocks.

Runs of chum salmon, a species that is generally more abundant in the river, suffered a similar but more sudden crash. A series of chum-harvest closures, even for subsistence purposes, started in 2020, and by 2022 abundance had fallen 92% below the long-term average.

Several factors, working in combination, are blamed for the declines. Scientists cite multiple climate change effects in both the ocean and freshwater bodies used by salmon. Those changes have not only affected the raw numbers of fish but also contributed to the shrinking size of salmon, resulting in smaller egg loads carried to spawning grounds by females.

Other factors cited are interceptions at sea by trawlers targeting groundfish species like pollock, changes forced by increasing loads of Asian hatchery fish in the ocean, past fishery management practices and the parasite Icthyophonus, which thrives in warmer conditions and has a more detrimental effect on Yukon Chinook than on any other type of salmon.

Salmon-protection activists say there is not much that can be done in the short term in Alaska to address those factors, other than to adjust fishery management to cut down on at-sea interception, also known as bycatch.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

Alaska Airlines purchases four new cargo planes to strengthen freight capacity out of Alaska, Hawai’i

July 24, 2026 — Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based Alaska Airlines announced it entered into long-term lease agreements to add four additional 737-800 Boeing Converted Freighter aircraft to its existing cargo fleet of five, increasing its fleet to nine total.

“Alaska Air Cargo has two very important goals: supporting our communities and customers and connecting them to the world,” Alaska Airlines Vice President of Cargo Ian Morgan said in a company release. “Expanding our cargo fleet with dedicated aircraft helps us accomplish both goals, opening up new international shipping opportunities for seafood and other commodities while making sure we can reliably ship time-sensitive goods that our communities need, such as medicine, household supplies, and groceries.”

Read the full article at SeaofoodSource

Can killing seals save salmon? Conservationists and Washington lawmakers disagree

July 23, 2026 — A marine wildlife hospital based in the Pacific Northwest is worried about an alarming trend: seals coming to them alive, but gravely injured.

Earlier this month, the organization treated its third seal in less than a year with a gunshot wound. That seal pup, named Waffles, was found over Fourth of July weekend. It had to be euthanized once it was determined its injuries were too severe.

“It’s not uncommon for us to see animals that have been shot,” said Casey Mclean, executive director and veterinary nurse at SR3 SeaLife Response + Rehab + Research. “Historically, we often found those animals dead. Now we’re starting to see more of them alive and suffering from gunshot injuries.”This trend, Mclean believes, is being fueled by misinformation about the role marine mammals play in Washington’s continually struggling salmon populations.

Her concern is amplified by a congressional bipartisan bill from two Washington lawmakers, U.S. Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Republican, and U.S. Rep. Emily Randall, a Democrat. The Northwest Endangered Salmon Predation Prevention Act (H.R. 9621) would expand the ability of federal, state, and tribal authorities to remove seals and sea lions, known collectively as pinnipeds, from Washington waters in an effort to boost salmon recovery.

In statements to KING 5, both sponsors of the bill lambasted the shooting of the seal pup as illegal, but insisted it should not be confused with what they’re proposing.

“Joe Schmo or any person off the streets shouldn’t be shooting seals or sea lions,” Randall said. “What we have proposed is a robust process to figure out how we can have responsible management of a population that’s decimating our salmon.”

“No one should be illegally poaching sea lions,” Baumgartner said. “I hope the perpetrator is identified and brought to justice. This does not have anything to do with my bipartisan bill to try to save and restore our endangered salmon populations.”

Supporters of the proposal, like the representatives, argue reducing pinnipeds could help struggling salmon populations. However, critics like Mclean say the bill ignores more significant threats to salmon and risks repeating decades-old mistakes in wildlife management.

Read the full article at KUOW

ALASKA: Bristol Bay sockeye run surpasses forecast as harvest nears 29.3M

July 23, 2026 — In a July 21 Bristol Bay fisheries update, the region’s sockeye salmon run has now exceeded preseason expectations, with the total run climbing to 44.38 million fish—surpassing the forecast of 44.05 million—while the cumulative harvest reached 29.29 million sockeye.

The baywide catch on Monday totaled 164,316 fish, nearly double the previous day’s harvest, while daily escapement remained relatively steady at 69,410 fish.

The Nushagak District added 14,689 sockeye to the harvest, bringing its season total to 8.97 million fish, while the district’s total run reached 15.1 million. The Nushagak River sonar counted 3,422 sockeye, pushing seasonal escapement to more than 3.11 million fish, well above the upper end of its escapement goal.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: A parasite that thrives in warm conditions adds to Yukon River salmon woes

July 23, 2026 — When Stan Zuray began noticing white spots, a mushy texture and a weird “sour watermelon” smell in the Chinook salmon he was pulling from the Yukon River, he knew something was going wrong.

That was back in the 1980s. By about 1990, he and others just stopped fishing what he calls “the ass end of the king run” because the fish were so low in quality, he said.

Everyone stopped fishing earlier than normal, he said. “You just get tired of the bum-looking fish,” said Zuray, who lives in the village of Tanana but still has his Boston accent after spending half a century in the Alaska Bush.

It was an ominous turn for a river famous for producing some of the world’s biggest and most prized wild salmon. Chinook salmon, also known as king salmon, is so exalted among the five Pacific salmon species that it is designated Alaska’s official state fish. And the Yukon River Chinooks were traditionally considered among the best of the best.

The culprit in the mushy, weird-smelling salmon was Ichthyophonus, a parasite found in oceans around the world, but a particular menace to the health of Yukon River Chinook salmon.

Zuray is known nationally as a featured character in the reality TV show “Yukon Men” and from his own YouTube broadcasts and a biographical documentary. Within Alaska fishing circles, he is well known as a former subsistence representative on the Alaska Board of Fisheries.

In the science community, he is known for his work as one of the early Yukon River Ichthyophonus researchers. He set up a program and documented infection rates at Rampart Falls, a spot on the river near the tiny Alaska village of Rampart, collecting data that has become critical to current studies.

Zuray said he could smell the infection as fish dried on racks in the traditional way and the parasite multiplied rapidly in the warm sunlight. He dissected samples and documented how Icthyophonus attacks a salmon’s heart. “I squish it in my hand by closing my fingers, and the heart will ooze out through my fingers,” he said.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon