Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Sockeye run overescaped by 1 million fish

August 25, 2021 — Nearly 2.5 million late-run sockeye are projected to pass through the Kenai River by the end of the month, overescaping the river by over one million fish.

Those numbers concern fishermen like Joe Dragseth, a drift-netter in Kenai. He said he worries about the health of the river. And he said it’s unfair commercial fishermen have been restricted while so many fish have made it up the river.

“Basically, they’re taking the living away from us,” he said.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game sets both in-river and sustainable escapement goals for the run each season. The philosophy is returns will be best if the run falls between those goalposts.

Read the full story at KDLL

Weekend’s uptick in coronavirus cases linked to seafood plant

August 24, 2021 — Sitka’s recent uptick in COVID cases over the weekend can be attributed, in part, to an outbreak at a local seafood plant.

When the Sitka Unified Command met on Wednesday (8-18-21) Public Health Nurse Denise Ewing said the outbreak occurred at Sitka Sound Seafoods.

“It was several of their employees that became positive. They were very advantageous, and made sure that they quickly worked with me,” Ewing said. “[It] could have been much worse than what it was.”

Ewing said she’s been working with state epidemiologists and the seafood company to mitigate the spread, securing housing for all employees who were exposed to quarantine, and shut down some areas of the plant.

“And we enforced it, and I was able to activate that [mitigation plan] and to keep it from spreading. And that’s exactly what we’ve done. We’ve contained it, it is contained.” she said. Employees are testing every three days and will continue that process for at least two weeks.

Sitka Sound Seafoods is a subsidiary of Seattle-based North Pacific Seafoods. In a written statement, North Pacific Seafoods Vice President of Human Resources Leauri Moore said several employees tested positive in mid-July. The plant discovered a new group of cases over the weekend as a result of regular testing. She said the employees are receiving isolation and quarantine pay.

Read the full story at KCAW

NOAA Fisheries Cancels 2021 Belugas Count!

August 23, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

After careful consideration regarding the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, NOAA Fisheries and partners have decided to cancel the 2021 Belugas Count! event.

Belugas Count! is a citizen science opportunity and festival event usually held in September, when viewing of endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales near Anchorage and Kenai is optimal.

“Belugas Count! is a family-focused event that brings together people of all ages,” said Jon Kurland, director of NOAA Fisheries Alaska Region’s Protected Resources Division. “Regrettably, due to the status of the pandemic, NOAA Fisheries and our partners decided to cancel the 2021 Belugas Count! event, as we did in 2020, out of an abundance of caution.”

Read more.

ALASKA: Yukon subsistence users go to new lengths for food after chums don’t return

August 20, 2021 — This has been the worst salmon fishing season on record for the Yukon River.

King salmon, a regional favorite, have returned in low numbers for years. But now a typically stable species, chum salmon, has also collapsed this year. Subsistence fishing on the lower Yukon River for both species is now closed. Residents, like Jason Lamont, who usually depend heavily on the fish are pivoting toward other ways to get protein.

“I started fishing on the Yukon when I was 6 years old,” said Lamont. “There was one point, me and my grandpa were coming down here for supplies and we had a summer chum jump into the boat. But those days are gone.”

Lamont is from Emmonak and lives off of subsistence food, which in past summers has meant salmon. His family doesn’t buy meat from the store: Salmon caught during the summer will help carry his family through the winter.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Last chance? Cook Inlet setnetters look to buyback as a way to save fishery

August 19, 2021 — In some ways, Cook Inlet’s East Side setnet fishery is the most desirable of commercial fisheries to get into: instead of having to fish remote sections of muddy beach, far from roads or towns, commercial fishermen can finish their sets for the day, jump up to the top of the bluff, and go to town for the night.

The ones who live on the Kenai Peninsula can even go home, if they want to.

In other ways, it’s one of the worst fisheries to be in. With unexpected closures and constant conflicts over salmon allocation, it’s not uncommon to find fishermen poring over the specific wording of management plans or frantically checking fish counts in the nearby Kenai River to see if they’ll be open. Many of them also listen in to the Board of Fisheries meetings, asking the members and department for changes or adjustments to management.

That’s where Ken Coleman has found himself every three years since the 1980s: in the chairs at the Board of Fisheries meetings. A north Kalifornsky Beach, known as K-Beach, setnetter, Coleman said he’s watched the fishery ratchet back, with setnetters losing first the early season, then the late season, then gear, then time.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

ALASKA: Net migration: Young commercial fishermen ship out of Cook Inlet

August 19, 2021 — The Cook Inlet salmon fishery was once an economic engine for Kenai.

But the fishing there is no longer lucrative. Many fishermen with deep ties to the inlet are retiring — or moving elsewhere.

The F/V Nedra E is smaller than the other boats bobbing at the dock in Naknek.

Thor Evenson didn’t have Bristol Bay in mind when he designed the boat for his parents, Nikiski homesteaders Jim and Nedra Evenson. Until last year, she’s been a Cook Inlet boat, captained by Jim, then his nephew, and now his grandson, 32-year-old Taylor Evenson.

Taylor grew up hearing about the heyday of Cook Inlet fishing from his dad and his friends.

“And just getting up in the morning every day and hearing their voices on the radio, voices I grew up with from the first time I was on the boat, I was 3 months old,” he said. “And particularly hearing my dad’s voice, going out and fishing with my dad … that’s why I never left the inlet, even though I always knew what was coming.”

Read the full story at KDLL

Unalaska Boosts COVID Risk Level To ‘High’ After Potential Spread At Weekend Festivals

August 19, 2021 — The City of Unalaska confirmed what it called a “widespread community exposure” of COVID-19, after identifying two new community acquired cases of the virus Tuesday.

In a prepared statement and interviews, city officials said wastewater testing had recently shown an uptick in COVID-19 positivity. They also said they’re on guard after two major public festivals last weekend brought residents together in close quarters.

In response to the new cases, the city has raised its COVID-19 risk level to “high” and closed certain municipal buildings to the public.

Despite the uptick in cases, the city isn’t mandating any extra public health protocols or scheduling a special City Council meeting to discuss them. However, council will meet next Tuesday to review community-wide protective measures.

City Hall and the public library are also temporarily closing to the public, while the pool and Community Center will remain open at limited capacity, and by appointment only.

Read the full story at KUCB

LED lights offer potential solution to chronic bycatch problem in Alaska fisheries

August 17, 2021 — Bycatch gives Alaska’s otherwise stellar fisheries management its biggest black eye.

The term refers to unwanted sea creatures taken in trawls, pots, lines and nets when boats are going after targeted catches. Bycatch is the bane of existence for fishermen, seafood companies and policy makers alike, yet few significant advances have been found to mitigate the problem.

A simple device has recently offered a potential solution.

“Ten underwater LED lights can be configured to light up different parts of the fishing gear with six different colors, intensity and flash rates to attract, repel or guide fish through the gear while retaining the target catches,” said Dan Watson, CEO and co-founder of SafetyNet Technologies based in the U.K., which provides its Pisces light system to fisheries around the globe.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Pebble Mine owners discuss delay in appeals process

August 17, 2021 — Northern Dynasty Minerals announced this week that its appeal of the Pebble Mine decision is receiving new oversight and is likely to take a year or longer.

In November 2020, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected the mining company’s permit application to build Pebble Mine at the headwaters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay under its subsidiary Pebble Limited Partnership, following a battle with local residents, Native tribes and fishing stakeholders that spanned three decades.

The mining company submitted its appeal of the decision in January, and now the Corps has assigned a new review officer to the appeal, after the prior RO was promoted out of the position, according to a release from Northern Dynasty President and CEO Ronald Thiessen.

The release notes that “guidelines indicate the administrative appeal process should conclude within 90 days.” However, “the Pebble Partnership has been advised that the administrative appeal process for Pebble is likely to take a year or more given the complexity of the case and the scope of the administrative record.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Record Salmon in One Place. Barely Any in Another. Alarm All Around.

August 16, 2021 — This summer, fishers in the world’s largest wild salmon habitat pulled a record-breaking 65 million sockeye salmon from Alaska’s Bristol Bay, beating the 2018 record by more than three million fish.

But on the Yukon River, about 500 miles to the north, salmon were alarmingly absent. This summer’s chum run was the lowest on record, with only 153,000 fish counted in the river at the Pilot Station sonar — a stark contrast to the 1.7 million chum running in year’s past. The king salmon runs were also critically low this summer — the third lowest on record. The Yukon’s fall run is also shaping up to be sparse.

The disparity between the fisheries is concerning — a possible bellwether for the chaotic consequences of climate change; competition between wild and hatchery fish; and commercial fishing bycatch.

“This is something we’ve never seen before,” said Sabrina Garcia, a research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “I think that we’re starting to see changes due to climate change, and I think that we’re going to continue to see more changes, but we need more years of data.”

The low runs have had ripple effects for communities along the Yukon River and its tributaries — the Andreafski, Innoko, Anvik, Porcupine, Tanana and Koyukuk Rivers — resulting in a devastating blow to the people relying on salmon as a food staple, as feed for sled dogs and as an integral and enriching cultural tradition spanning millenniums.

Read the full story at The New York Times