Saving Seafood

Remembering a pair of Alaska titans through the eyes of a fisherman

October 27, 2021 — Alaska, and the seafood industry, saw the passing of two giants in the past few weeks: Clem Tillion and Chuck Bundrant. The news articles about them were great and provided good insight into the men, their accomplishments and their passions. I had the pleasure to know and work with both for several decades. I loved both of them. This is my effort to share some behind-the-scenes observations of them as human beings.

Both Clem and Chuck shared many similarities. They were visionaries, keenly intelligent, tenacious, canny. They had endless stories and great memories, especially for people. They each had a great sense of humor, did everything possible to succeed — and succeed they did, albeit with a few broken eggs in the process. They both created legacies that will outlast them and benefit us for generations to come

I first met Clem on an early Sunday afternoon after I had finished processing crab at Juneau Cold Storage. It was January 1977. I was walking down the street in my soiled clothes when I encountered a tall, red-headed, husky man. He stopped me, asked if I was just getting off work at the cold storage and introduced himself, “I’m Clem.” We started talking fish. One thing led to another, and the next thing I knew, we were in his office in the Capitol Building. That was when I found out he was a state senator.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Alaska Symphony of Seafood competition features 18 entries and a new award

October 26, 2021 — Pollock Protein Noodles. Southern Style Alaska Wild Wings. Candied salmon ice cream. Fish oils for pets. Fish and chips meal kits. Fin Fish earrings.

That’s just a small sample of past winners of Alaska’s biggest seafood competition, the Alaska Symphony of Seafood, which has showcased and promoted new, market-ready products since 1993.

The annual event levels the playing field among Alaska’s largest seafood companies and the smallest “mom and pops,” whose products are all judged blind by an expert panel.

Eighteen entries are in the running for the 2021 contest, the first leg of which takes place next month at Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle. They will compete in several categories: retail and food service, salmon and whitefish, Beyond the Plate, and, new to the lineup, a Bristol Bay Choice awarded to the best new sockeye product.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Genetic Analysis Shows Beluga Whale in Puget Sound Likely Arrived from Arctic Waters

October 26, 2021 — Scientists have collected genetic material from the beluga whale that was first sighted in Puget Sound in early October. It indicates that the whale is likely from a large population of beluga whales in the Beaufort Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska.

The whale appears to have traveled thousands of miles south around Alaska through the Bering Sea and south to Puget Sound. It was last sighted on October 20 near Tacoma. The whale does not appear to be from the small and endangered Cook Inlet beluga population near Anchorage, Alaska.

The genetic analysis involved sequencing DNA extracted from a water sample collected near the beluga whale in Puget Sound earlier this month. This material is known as environmental DNA, or eDNA, because it comes from skin, fecal, or other cellular debris found in the environment near the animal.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

 

Mostly good Alaska commercial salmon season pushes up prices for fishing permits, but buyers have been scarce

October 19, 2021 — Optimism is the word that best sums up the attitude among most Alaska salmon fishermen after a good season, according to people in the business of buying and selling permits and boats.

Most fishermen in major regions ended up with good catches, and dock prices were up from recent years. That’s pushed up permit prices, notably at the bellwether fishery at Bristol Bay, where driftnet permits have topped $200,000.

“The highest has been $210,000, but it’s a pretty tight market,” said Maddie Lightsey, a broker at Alaska Boats and Permits in Homer. “A lot of fishermen had a great year out there and made a lot of money. But buyers are hesitant to pay these really high prices. Many are hoping it’s a pretty short spike.

“Meanwhile, sellers are holding out for high prices while at the same time expressing concerns over increased tax burdens if they sell this year following such a good season. Those two things combined have really restricted the market and there haven’t been that many sales,” she added.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Marine debris is washing up again on Bering Strait shores

October 15, 2021 — For the second year in a row, Bering Strait residents are finding foreign debris on their shores — and they’re still looking for the source.

The first reported piece of trash, one of numerous plastics with Russian and Korean writing, appeared in mid-August.

Last year, community members found well over 300 pieces of trash. This year, only 17 have been reported so far. Even this seemingly small amount is a serious cause for concern, according to Austin Ahmasuk, Kawerak’s marine advocate.

“Well, this year, again, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. So we don’t know, again, none of us are being funded to do this. So we don’t know how extensive this year’s debris event is,” Ahmasuk said.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

Trawler bycatch debate heats up after Alaska records dismal 2021 chinook salmon returns

October 15, 2021 — Fishermen are calling for state and federal fisheries managers to make changes to salmon bycatch limits for trawlers as chinook salmon numbers plummet across Alaska.

Chinook salmon returns were dismal virtually everywhere in Alaska this year, from Southeast to the Bering Sea, with few exceptions. That follows a trend, as abundance has declined over roughly the last decade. Commercial fishermen have lost most of their opportunity to harvest kings, and sport fisheries have been restricted. Now subsistence fisheries are being reined in to help preserve the runs.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is debating changes in its meeting this month. Trawlers, which use weighted nets to drag either along the bottom or in midwater, are permitted a certain amount of bycatch as they fish for their target species, the largest of which is pollock. Bycatch is always a heated issue, but it is especially so now.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game informed the council in a letter dated Sept. 23 that three index species that it uses to track king salmon runs in the Bering Sea — the Unalakleet, Yukon, and Kuskokwim rivers — didn’t reach a threshold necessary to maintain the current bycatch allowances. That threshold is set at 250,000 fish between the three rivers; this year, there were 165,148.

The Kuskokwim’s run came within its forecasted range, but the other two fell short.

The shortfall in salmon this year hit fishing communities hard, particularly among subsistence fishermen. Amos T. Philemenoff Sr., president of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, wrote to the board that the salmon shortages in the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim region this year have affected the island’s subsistence traditions. Donations of salmon from commercial harvesters to replace the lost food do not replace the traditions, he said.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Report highlights how Bristol Bay locals are losing access to commercial fisheries

October 14, 2021 — Alaska’s limited-entry commercial fisheries system may be pulling access to fisheries away from the coastal communities where they take place.

A series of research projects in the past decade has increasingly shown that limited-entry systems like Alaska’s commercial fishing permitting system or the federal-state individual fishing quota system are systematically pulling permits away from the coastal communities that traditionally depend on those industries. The most recent installment in that line of projects focuses specifically on Bristol Bay — today, the state’s most successful salmon fishery.

The report, commissioned for The Nature Conservancy, found that in the 46 years since Alaska’s limited-entry system went into place, residents in Bristol Bay’s rural communities now own 50% fewer permits. The decline is similar among younger permit holders, contributing to the overall trend: commercial fishing permit holders in the state are increasingly older and from regions other than where they fish.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Tribal, commercial fishing groups call for drastic reductions in trawl salmon bycatch

October 14, 2021 — Fisheries managers allow whitefish trawlers to inadvertently scoop up halibut, crab and salmon in their nets. The bycatch rate is relatively low, but because the trawlers catch so much of their target species, the unintended harvest adds up.

In rural western Alaska, where chum and king salmon runs have been performing poorly, the bycatch is raising alarms. While the bycaught salmon is often donated to food banks, it’s of little assurance to those living along the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, where subsistence is a way of life.

“We eat dry fish like people from the Midwest eat bread, with every meal,” Mary Peltola told the North Pacific Fishery Management Council this month. She’s the executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, and lives in the largely Yup’ik community of Bethel. “Our babies teethe on dry fish, it’s the first food most Yup’iks eat, and it’s something that we crave year-round.”

She testified that fishing on the Kuskokwim has been severely restricted to preserve wild salmon stocks. Meanwhile, trawlers haven’t faced new restrictions of their own as they scoop up lucrative whitefish like pollock, cod and halibut. She’s asked the council to work to put an end to bycatch in the industrial commercial trawl fleet.

Read the full story at KSTK

 

Alaska residents’ salmon permits down 50 percent since 1975

October 13, 2021 — The preliminary value to fishermen of the nearly 41 million salmon caught this summer at Alaska’s largest fishery at Bristol Bay is nearly $248 million, 64 percent above the 20-year average. That figure will be much higher when bonuses and other price adjustments are paid out.

But as with the fish bucks tallied from Alaska’s cod, pollock, flounders and other groundfish, the bulk of the Bay’s salmon money won’t be circulating through Alaska’s economy because most of the fishing participants live out of the state.

In 2017, for example, 62 percent of gross earnings from the Bristol Bay driftnet fishery and 40 percent from the setnet fishery left Alaska as nonresident earnings.

That’s due to the region experiencing an overall 50 percent decline in local permit holdings since Alaska began limiting entry into commercial salmon fisheries in 1975. Combined, residents of the Bristol Bay region now hold less than one-quarter of the region’s salmon permits.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Amid closures and stratifying salmon runs, Alaskans question fishery management process

October 11, 2021 — Lackluster salmon returns and some fishery closures have Alaskan fishermen wondering about their future.

Although overall salmon returns in the largest U.S. state have been strong this year, the results have been stratified. King salmon returns, specifically, have been in a long and steady decline. Statewide, king landings – by number of fish – have declined by more than 70 percent in the last 40 years, from a high of 875,630 fish in 1982 to 265,081 in 2020. The harvest so far for 2021 is about 212,000 fish. When accounting for landings by weight, the reduction is almost 85 percent over the same period, from almost 16.9 million pounds in 1982 to 2.9 million in 2020, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Read the full story from National Fisherman at SeafoodSource