November 10, 2021 — Juneau, Alaska (KINY) Seafood harvesting jobs in Alaska were down last year.
State Labor Economist Joshua Warren wrote about that in the November edition of Alaska Economic Trends.
He reported that there was a 14.1 percent drop, the largest decline since they created the job estimates in 2000.
Employment decreased from a monthly average of 7, 653 in 2019 to 6,575 in 2020.
November 9, 2021 — Alaska’s 2021 salmon fishery produced the third highest catch, fish poundage and value on record, dating back to 1975.
According to preliminary harvests and values by region from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the catch of nearly 234 million salmon had a dockside value of almost $644 million, and weighed in at 858.5 million pounds.
That compares to 117 million salmon harvested in 2020 valued at just over $295 million and a combined weight of 517.5 million pounds.
All Alaska regions saw salmon earnings double or nearly triple from last year, except for the Kuskokwim, Yukon and Kotzebue, where values decreased.
November 8, 2021 — The southern resident killer whale population, three pods of orcas that ply the coastal waters between Monterey, California, and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, has dwindled to only 73 members. Scientists believe this endangered species, which relies almost exclusively on Chinook — or king — salmon, which are also in steep decline, is basically starving its way to extinction.
This past September, however, the U.S. District Court in Seattle seemed to offer the marine mammals a lifeline when it issued a preliminary decision that might make more Chinook available to orcas. Responding to a lawsuit filed by the Wild Fish Conservancy, the court found that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the agency responsible for management of both fisheries and endangered marine species, had violated the Endangered Species Act when it determined that commercial harvest of Chinook off southeast Alaska would not jeopardize southern residents or endangered king salmon populations.
But while the court decision is expected to help orcas, it may be bad news for fishermen, as NMFS will likely need to rethink Chinook harvests.
Read the full story at FERN News
November 8, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Navigating the aquaculture leasing and permitting process in Alaska is a barrier to development. To reduce this barrier to sustainable aquaculture growth, we have produced a new permitting portal and guidance document to aid prospective and established farmers.
These processing barriers were identified by both the Alaska Mariculture Task Force and the NOAA Fisheries Alaska Mariculture Workshop Summary Report.
The mariculture industry in Alaska has great economic potential, and the Governor’s Mariculture Task Force set a goal of growing it into a $100 million industry in 20 years. However, one hindrance included the complex leasing and permitting process. The Task Force noted that farmers are required to file multiple permits with at least four different state and federal agencies—sometimes more, depending on the project. This results in a confusing and time-consuming process.
Read more.
Questions?
Contact Julie Fair, Public Affairs Officer.
November 5, 2021 — A crash in crab populations in the U.S. state of Alaska is being partially blamed on a mortality event scientists cannot fully explain.
A catastrophic drop in Alaska’s snow crab population led the state to set a much lower quota for the upcoming season. Along with a significant drop to the Bering Sea bairdi crab quota and the closure of the winter Bristol Bay red king crab fishery, Alaska’s overall crab fishery could lose up to USD 100 million (EUR 86.5 million) or more in value in the 2021-2022 season, according to the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
November 4, 2021 — If you’ve ever watched “Deadliest Catch,” you know commercial crab fishing is dangerous. It’s right there in the title. But the Alaskan king crab fishery — where crews featured on the show risk their lives to put seafood on our tables — isn’t the deadliest place to go crab fishing in US waters. That unsavory distinction, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, goes to the West Coast Dungeness crab fishery.
The Bering Sea/Aleutian Island crab fleet — of “Deadliest Catch” fame — averaged eight fatalities a year in the late 1990s, adding up to a death rate of 770 people out of 100,000, the CDC notes. But after the Coast Guard began dockside stability and safety checks, fatalities fell to less than one per year.
Compare that with the West Coast Dungeness fishery where eight crew members died between 2010 and 2014, the government health body said. Five perished in vessel disasters while three died in falls overboard. In the Atlantic crab fishery off the West Coast, three fishers lost their lives while fewer than five Gulf of Mexico crabbers died in that time. Another CDC report notes that 33 West Coast Dungeness crab fishermen drowned between 2010 and 2013.
November 4, 2021 — It’s hard to believe, but Dungeness crab in the Gulf of Alaska is now Alaska’s largest crab fishery — a distinction due to the collapse of stocks in the Bering Sea.
Combined Dungeness catches so far from Southeast and the westward region (Kodiak, Chignik and the Alaska Peninsula) totaled over 7.5 million pounds as the last pots were being pulled at the end of October.
Ranking second is golden king crab taken along the Aleutian Islands with a harvest by four boats of about 6 million pounds.
For snow crab, long the Bering Sea’s most productive shellfish fishery, the catch was cut by 88% to 5.6 million pounds this season.
The Gulf’s Dungeness fishery will provide a nice payday for crabbers. The dungies, which weigh just over two pounds on average, were fetching $4.21 per pound for 209 permit holders at Southeast who will share in the value of over $14 million.
November 4, 2021 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries this week amended one of its fishery management plans to now bar commercial salmon fishermen from operating in the federal waters of Cook Inlet, the main body of water located just west of the Kenai Peninsula in the Southcentral part of the state.
The amendment, Amendment 14, does not close any salmon fishing in state waters, but instead prohibits commercial salmon fishing in the federal waters of Cook Inlet, the area spanning from 3 nautical miles to 200 nautical miles off the coast of Alaska and referred to as the Cook Inlet Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ.
The change is to go into effect to be in place for the 2022 Cook Inlet EEZ commercial salmon fishery. It’s the result of a decision made in December 2020 by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which had been weighing four alternatives for dealing with the fishery management plan for salmon in the EEZ.
The first alternative would have taken no action, and the second option was to have federal oversight of the waters with some management delegated to the state. The third alternative was complete federal oversight and management of the Cook Inlet EEZ, and the fourth was to have federal oversight of the EEZ waters and to close them to commercial salmon fishing.
Read the full story at Alaska’s News Source
November 2, 2021 — Southeast Alaska’s salmon harvest was over four times more than last year’s, according to a preliminary report from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game released on Monday (November 1).
Commercial fishermen in Southeast harvested 58 million salmon across the five species this year: almost 7 million chum salmon, 48 million pinks, 1.5 million coho, 1.1 million sockeye, and 216,000 king salmon.
That’s a marked improvement in harvest for every species. Even the embattled Southeast king salmon had a commercial harvest increase of more than 16,000 fish. In total, commercial salmon fishermen in the region caught and sold 44 million more salmon than last year.
November 1, 2021 — Bristol Bay fishing advocates say a federal court ruling Friday enables the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to restart a process to protect the bay watershed from plans to develop the Pebble Mine under the federal Clean Water Act.
The order by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason in Anchorage came in response to a recent motion by the Pebble Limited Partnership and state of Alaska, asking the court to set a schedule for the EPA to either withdraw or finalize a 2014 proposal during the Obama administration that would have restricted mining and waste disposal.
Ruling in favor of the groups Trout Unlimited and SalmonState that filed as intervenors in the case, Gleason in her order stated “neither the retention of jurisdiction pending remand nor the establishment of an administrative timetable by the Court is warranted in this case,” remanding the matter to the EPA for action.