Saving Seafood

Amid an unprecedented collapse in Alaska Yukon River salmon, no one can say for certain why there are so few fish

September 7, 2021 — A single slick silver salmon lay flat in the center of a floating dock.

The lone coho was the only fish that turned up in the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s test net that mid-August evening. A technician stooped low in her orange rubber gloves and sandals for measurements.

Test nets are one of the tools that fisheries managers use to understand what’s happening with the salmon runs on the Lower Yukon River. Any of the fish caught, once sampled, are given to local residents for food. In normal times, when big pulses of chum surge into the river, managers sometimes have 50 or a hundred fish at a time to donate. But this year, test nets sometimes went as long as three days without a single salmon. People stopped bothering to even check the bins set down the road from the AC store.

So it was a big deal that hours earlier during the morning run, the test nets yielded a catch.

“Word traveled fast that we got three fish,” said biologist Courtney Berry.

“Fishing for water all summer has been … boring,” Berry said.

The salmon situation this year on the Yukon is bad. Kings have been in decline for years, here and almost everywhere else in the state. This summer was the fourth lowest count of kings in the Yukon since 1995.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

CBP issues USD 350 million in Jones Act fines, threatening Alaskan seafood trade

September 7, 2021 — U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued approximately USD 350 million (EUR 294.3 million) in fines against American Seafoods and other companies associated with the company’s supply chain.

The fines, which were all issued in August 2021, apparently relate to the use of an intermodal facility in the Canadian province of New Brunswick that is used to transport Alaskan seafood to the U.S. East Coast.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

ALASKA: NOAA breaks ground on upgraded port facility in Ketchikan to host research vessel Fairweather

September 2, 2021 — A long-sought revitalization of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration facility in Ketchikan is officially underway. The project aims to give the NOAA ship Fairweather a permanent home.

Local, state and federal officials plunged gold-painted shovels into two long, narrow wooden boxes filled with dirt Tuesday morning.

The ceremonial groundbreaking marks the beginning of work on an $18.7 million project. There’ll be a new office building, utility upgrades and, most importantly, a floating pier to accommodate the NOAA research vessel Fairweather and its 50-plus crew.

NOAA Rear Admiral Nancy Hann says the facility will support fisheries research, hydrographic surveys — and the local economy.

Read the full story at KTOO

Peter Pan Seafood will require COVID vaccine for employees

September 2, 2021 — Peter Pan Seafood announced Wednesday, 1 September, it will require all shoreside employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as case numbers are on the rise in the U.S. states of Alaska and Washington.

The company’s new policy will go into effect by tiers. The first tier will pick up the remaining 5 percent of unvaccinated workers at processing plants and support facilities around Bristol Bay, Alaska, and at its Valdez processing plant, as well as at warehouses in Washington. All employees in tier one must be fully vaccinated by 1 October. Employees at the Peter Pan facility in King Cove, Alaska, face mandatory vaccination under Peter Pan’s tier two timeline. The vaccine policy does not extend to the fleet, but Peter Pan said it encourages its fishermen to get the vaccine and it said it will help them get vaccine appointments in Seattle or Alaska.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

United Fishermen of Alaska director leaving to start lobbying firm

September 1, 2021 — The head of United Fishermen of Alaska — the state’s broadest fishing industry group — is stepping down at the end of the year to become a full-time Juneau lobbyist.

Frances Leach says she’ll be starting her own firm named Capitol Compass, so she can take on more clients than the fishing industry group she’d represented in the state Capitol over the past four years.

“I’m really excited to continue lobbying for an industry that I really have a lot of respect for,” she said Wednesday. “But then also be able to lobby for other things that I care about greatly like environmental issues, and nonprofits.”

Read the full story at KTOO

 

Alaska Symphony of Seafood – Announcing Changes and Call for Product

August 31, 2021 — The following was released by the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation:

After a year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, AFDF is proud to announce the 2021-22 Alaska Symphony of Seafood, including the Call for Product and exciting new changes to the event. The deadline for entry into this year’s competition is October 04, 2021. The Call for Product can be downloaded here.

Since 1994, AFDF has organized the “Symphony”, a competition for commercial-ready value‐added products made from Alaska seafood. The Symphony is an exciting platform that encourages companies to invest in product development, helps promote those new products and competitively positions Alaska seafood in national and global markets. Product development is critically important to the entire industry and the fishing communities that depend on it. Innovative new products position the industry to remain competitive and relevant to consumers.

Read the full release here

Alaska’s 2021 salmon harvest has blown past the season’s forecast

August 31, 2021 — Alaska’s 2021 salmon harvest has blown past the forecast and by Aug. 27 had topped 201 million fish, well above the 190 million projected at the start of the season.

The catch was bolstered by a surge of pink salmon to the three top-producing regions: Prince William Sound, Southeast and Kodiak, combined with strong landings of sockeyes.

“Pink salmon runs are over 95% complete, based on average run timing. Effort drops off quickly this late in the season, so it is difficult to predict where that harvest will end up,” said Forrest Bowers, deputy director of the Commercial Fisheries Division at the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game. “My guess is up to another half million late-run sockeye salmon and perhaps 10 million pink salmon will be harvested. If that occurs, we will end up with around 143 million pink salmon, 54 million sockeye, and 207 million total salmon harvested. 2021 could end up being the sixth-largest sockeye and sixth- or seventh-largest pink salmon harvest on record.”

Pinks are the “bread and butter” catch for Alaska salmon fishermen and total landings were approaching 137 million, well above the 124 million projected for this season.

At Prince William Sound, which had a catch forecast of about 25 million pinks, nearly 62 million had crossed the docks.

“Wild stocks are returning stronger than anticipated (to PWS) given the uncertainty about spawning success from the 2019 parent year which was negatively impacted by drought conditions,” said the weekly Fish and Game inseason summary.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Subsistence users, scientists seek answers for chum salmon declines

August 31, 2021 — Bill Alstrom lives in St. Mary’s on the lower Yukon River. It used to be that if he wanted fresh salmon for dinner, he’d throw a net in the river to catch a couple. But with fishing closures this season, he can’t do that anymore.

“It’s hard to comprehend that this is happening in my lifetime,” said Alstrom. “It makes me sad just thinking about it.”

Chum salmon stocks have sharply declined over the last two years in Western Alaska. It’s a major problem because people in the region, like Alstrom, depend heavily on the fish for food and for work. With chinook salmon low for decades, chum were the fish that families could depend on until last year, when the summer chum run dropped below half of its usual numbers. This year, the run dropped even further, to record lows. The State of Alaska has closed fishing for chum to protect the runs.

Scientists are in the early stages of trying to understand the crash.

Biologist Katie Howard with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said that the chum declines are not just occurring in the Yukon River.

“When we talk to colleagues in the Lower 48 and Canada, Japan, Russia, they are all reporting really poor chum runs,” she said. “So it’s not just a Yukon phenomenon. It’s not just an Alaska phenomenon, but pretty much everywhere.”.

So why are the chum numbers so low? The short answer is that no one really knows for sure. But there are a lot of theories.

Every week during the summer, subsistence users, biologists and fishery managers gather on a weekly teleconference hosted by the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association. They share information and ask each other questions, and the subsistence users bring up one theory for the decline again and again: bycatch.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Notice of Alaska Observer Requirements for the Partial Coverage Fleet Effective September 1, 2021

August 31, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Observers are an essential component of commercial fishing operations and provide critical information that is necessary to keep fisheries open and to provide sustainable seafood to our nation. In response to widely available vaccines, increased transportation availability, and the removal of health and travel mandates in most communities, NOAA Fisheries has identified that most ports in Alaska have current travel and lodging conditions that allow observers to meet and maintain applicable health and travel advisories for deployment into the commercial fisheries.

NOAA fisheries will be expanding the deployment of observers to all ports throughout Alaska on September 1, 2021 to meet monitoring objectives for vessels in the Partial Coverage Category of the North Pacific groundfish and Pacific halibut fisheries. This change is consistent with the June 29, 2021 updated NOAA Fisheries observer waiver policy which states that vessels are no longer eligible for release from observer coverage under the Emergency Rule if a fully vaccinated or quarantined/shelter-in-place observer is available.

To the extent possible, NOAA Fisheries will deploy observers to achieve coverage levels identified in the 2021 Annual Deployment Plan for the remainder of the year, which are designed to meet the monitoring objectives established by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries.

Consistent with existing regulatory authority at 50 CFR 679.51(a)(1), NOAA fisheries may release trips from observer coverage on a case-by-case basis for vessels in the Partial Coverage Category.  NOAA will use this authority when no observers are available for deployment.  We will continue to work with the contracted observer service provider, AIS, Inc., to implement adjustments to the logistics of deploying observers, ensuring that qualified observers are available as soon as safely possible.

NOAA Fisheries may modify the list of ports with available observers in the future in response to transportation availability and/or changes in health and travel advisories.  Any revisions to the deployment of observers due to changes in health and travel advisories will be published through an Alaska Region Information Bulletin.

NOAA Fisheries is committed to protecting the public’s health and ensuring the safety of fishermen, observers, and the communities in which they work, while fulfilling our mission to maintain our nation’s seafood supply and conserving marine life.  We will continue to monitor all local public health notifications, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for updates.

ALASKA: Kenai River sockeye run over-escaped by 1 million fish

August 27, 2021 — Nearly 2.5 million late-run sockeye are projected to pass through the Kenai River by the end of the month, over-escaping the river by over 1 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.

This season, and the last several seasons, the sockeye run has surpassed the upper limit of those goals.

This year, the department set an in-river escapement goal of 1 million to 1.2 million for the run. Now, it’s projecting 2.4 million fish will pass through the sonar at mile 19 of the Kenai River by the end of the month.

For Kenai Peninsula set-netters, who’ve had abbreviated fishing seasons due to “paired restrictions” with the Kenai River king run, it’s been particularly hard to watch.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media