Saving Seafood

Alaska groundfish: Covid’s hangover and bycatch caps slow the season

August 10, 2021 — King salmon caps, covid and stiff tariffs on the China end of business have stymied the Gulf of Alaska groundfish industry so far this year. As of March 26, trawlers targeting Pacific cod in the western gulf harvest area hit the hard cap of 3,060 kings.

Cod that have been scattered in their concentrations during winter form into tight schools as the calendar rolls toward March, but king salmon inhabit the same waters. Though the fleet can roll over unused caps from other fisheries, it wasn’t enough to warrant the continuation of the fishery. Trawlers will be able to fish on a new cap beginning Sept. 1.

Even if the fleet of about 40 shoreside-delivering vessels hadn’t hit the king salmon caps and had been allowed to fish later, covid conundrums and tariffs put the kibosh on moving product through processing plants and toward end markets.

“We don’t even have a flatfish market this year,” says Julie Bonney, executive director of the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank, in Kodiak. “The plants can’t sell it and make any money,” she adds. As of July 9, landings to plants in Kodiak totaled 4,060 tons. “We’ve caught 17,500 fewer tons than last year at this time,” she says. 

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Alaska salmon landings up 61%, while Yukon River villages see poorest chum return on record

August 9, 2021 — Alaska’s salmon landings have passed the season’s midpoint, and by Aug. 7 the statewide catch had topped 116 million fish. State managers are calling for a projected total 2021 harvest of 190 million salmon, a 61% increase over 2020.

Most of the salmon being caught now are pinks, with Prince William Sound topping 35 million humpies, well over the projection of 25 million.

Pink salmon catches at Kodiak remained sluggish at just over 3 million so far out of a forecast calling for over 22 million.

Southeast was seeing a slight uptick, with pink catches nearing 14 million out of a projected 28 million.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Processor executives and biologists consider what smaller fish mean for Bristol Bay

August 6, 2021 — The average Bristol Bay sockeye this year is smaller. That’s part of a trend over the past four decades, as increasingly smaller fish have returned to the bay amid larger salmon runs and warming oceans. Processor executives and biologists now have to consider what smaller fish mean for Bristol Bay.

Bristol Bay is home to the largest sockeye run on the planet. But while the size of the run broke records, the fish are getting smaller.

Last year’s average weight for sockeye was 5.1 pounds. But the 2021 average was just 4.5 pounds, according to the McKinley Research Group.

Jon Hickman is the executive vice president of operations for Peter Pan Seafoods. He says the smaller fish play a role in how much time processors spend processing.

“Smaller fish are going to take longer to process,” he said. “So you’re handling a 4 pound fish or a 3 pound fish, as opposed to a 5 pound fish so every time you handle one there’s a two pound difference. There’s more labor going into those smaller fish. You get more labor into them, there’s more costs associated with those smaller fish.”

Hickman says he isn’t worried about how the smaller fish will play in Peter Pan’s markets — demand is good, and he’s comfortable with the market for fish big and small.

Read the full story at KDLG

The Infrastructure Bill Includes Upgrades To Roads, Bridges And… Salmon Recovery?

August 5, 2021 — The Senate is preparing to vote on a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill. The bill clocks in at roughly 2,700 pages with nearly $550 billion in new spending.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

The Senate is preparing to vote as early as this week on a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Now, the bill is massive not just in price tag, but also in page count. It runs 2,700 pages. Which got us wondering, what is actually in this bill? What would it actually do if it becomes law? For some answers, we are turning to NPR congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell. She has been reading through this enormous piece of legislation.

Hey, Kelsey.

KELSEY SNELL, BYLINE: Hi there.

KELLY: All right. What does this bill do?

SNELL: Well, it expands investments in what are mostly considered traditional types of infrastructure. It builds on, you know, the regular highway bill that Congress has been writing and passing for ages. At the core, this bill is a recognition by a group of lawmakers from both parties that Congress could and should be funding more projects; you know, programs and systems that make it easier for people to get around, for people to do work and for the country to trade with the rest of the world. I’d say the biggest investment is about $110 billion for roads and bridges. There’s also money for airports, public transit, the power grid, broadband and some limited environmental protection.

KELLY: And what would this bill not do? What isn’t in this bill?

SNELL: This is just the stuff that could get the support of enough Democrats and enough Republicans to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. And it was negotiated in the Senate. So this is a very Senate-driven bill. It doesn’t have the broader climate change provisions that Democrats and, particularly, a lot of progressives in the House want. It also doesn’t have the paid leave or free college or child care elements that President Biden proposed. It’s mostly just an expansion of traditional infrastructure.

KELLY: Bills this big – again, 2,700 pages – are often littered with incentives to convince enough lawmakers to vote for them. Pork, I believe…

SNELL: Yes.

KELLY: …Might be the technical term. Have you – as you’ve been reading and reading and reading all these pages, have you found anything unexpected lurking in there?

SNELL: There are really some niche things that kind of fall well outside of what we’d think of as infrastructure. Like, there’s a study of whether first responders should use bicycles when responding to disasters. There’s also money for research on wildlife and vehicle collisions. But there are also regional programs that are clearly intended to satisfy some specific lawmakers. There’s extra money for a salmon recovery fund for states on the West Coast to build up salmon populations. Now, that’s places like Washington and Alaska, two states represented by senators who negotiated this bill. Plus, there are specific investments in Alaska and Appalachian highways. So Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and the two senators from West Virginia, they were critical to putting this bill together, so there’s no surprise there.

Read the full story at NPR

ALASKA: Board of Fisheries denies setnetters’ emergency petitions

August 4, 2021 — Kenai Peninsula setnetters are likely to remain closed for the rest of the season after the Board of Fisheries denied two emergency petitions seeking a partial reopening.

In an emergency meeting held Aug. 2, the Board of Fisheries voted 4-2 to deny a petition seeking a limited reopening of the East Side setnet fishery in Upper Cook Inlet. The petitioner, Chris Every, asked the board to reopen the East Side setnets within 600 feet of mean high tide, known as the 600-foot fishery.

“We believe by utilizing the 600-foot fishery we can reduce both the economic and biological impact while conserving chinook salmon, which is our ultimate goal with this 600-foot fishery,” he wrote in the petition.

The setnetters had a foreshortened and significantly restricted season because of low late-run king salmon returns to the Kenai River. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimates that 6,420 large kings have passed the sonar on the Kenai River since July 1, significantly less than the lower end of the escapement goal of 15,000 large kings. In response, the department placed progressively stronger restrictions on the sportfishery, going from no bait to catch-and-release, and finally to a complete closure.

Because of the paired-restriction model the Board of Fisheries placed on the East Side setnetters, when the king salmon sportfishery is completely closed, they are too. Setnetters have not been in the water since July 20, and they have watched the peak weeks of the Kenai River sockeye run swim past. Aug. 2 saw the highest daily passage to date: 151,525 sockeye passed the sonar, according to ADFG.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Unprecedented salmon declines force fish donations to Alaska’s Yukon River villages

August 3, 2021 — For 47 years, Jack Schultheis has spent fishing season around the mouth of Yukon River.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Schultheis said from Emmonak, where he is general manager of Kwik’Pak Fisheries, a commercial enterprise set up to help the regional economy in the Lower Yukon. In a regular season, the operation would be involved in commercial fishing, buying fish, and processing.

But this year, returns of staple salmon species are abysmal, prompting the state, regional non-profits, and processors to coordinate deliveries of fish from other parts of the state. Kwik’Pak isn’t fishing at all. Which means local residents aren’t earning cash to put towards essential needs, including gas and supplies for their own subsistence activities.

Communities up and down the Yukon are coming to terms with a collapse in key stocks, and now confronting the prospect of a winter without enough food. Tribal groups working in the region say the situation is dire, and are scrambling to find alternative ways to get protein and assistance to some of the most rural households in the state.

Runs of kings and chum salmon on the Yukon have been so low that subsistence fishing for both have remained closed. In the case of kings, the number of fish in the river has been in decline for decades, along with the average size of fish harvested, according to decades of data compiled by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Kuskokwim Fishermen Appeal To Gov. Dunleavy To Investigate Commercial Bycatch Impact On Subsistence

August 3, 2021 — Kuskokwim River fishermen want information on how commercial bycatch could be affecting Kuskokwim subsistence salmon runs, and they’re asking Gov. Dunleavy for help.

The Kuskokwim River Salmon Management Working Group is a group of local subsistence fishermen who advise state fishery managers. On July 28, the group unanimously voted to send a letter to the governor asking him to direct the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to provide the group information on how chum and king salmon bycatch in state commercial fisheries along the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands could be affecting Kuskokwim salmon returns. This is the area commonly referred to as Management Area M.

It also asks for information on chum and king salmon bycatch in the federally-managed Bering Sea pollock trawl fishery.

Read the full story at KYUK

What’s to blame for Alaska’s poor king salmon runs? Submarines, suggests Rep. Young.

August 3, 2021 — Chinook salmon runs are in decline across Alaska, and research suggests a host of factors are to blame, from ocean predators to warmer streams and excess rain. But Alaska Congressman Don Young recently added a novel suspect to the list: nuclear submarines.

“We have to figure this out. Have to work on it and make sure there’s not something going on,” he said of the poor runs. “Is it climate change? Are they moving north? Is there a nuclear sub stuck out there somewhere?”

Young spoke at a subcommittee hearing Thursday, and acknowledged his theory sounds unusual.

“Everybody laughs at me but at one time I counted 64 nuclear subs from Russia,” he said. “We kept track of them as they came off the coast of California.”

A spokesman said Young was referring to matters like those described in a 2020 BBC article on radioactive submarine wrecks.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

 

US government makes bid request for nearly 8 million pounds of Alaska pollock

July 30, 2021 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new massive bid request for 7.942 million pounds of frozen Alaska pollock will push the agency’s pollock purchases to near-record levels.

With the latest acquisition, the agency will have purchased nearly 18.3 million pounds of Alaskan pollock for the fiscal year 2021, Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP) CEO Craig Morris told SeafoodSource.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Alaska’s Bristol Bay sees record return of sockeye salmon. The warming climate may have helped.

July 30, 2021 — Amid a fierce June storm that whipped up 8-foot waves, Robin Samuelsen told his four young crew members to let out the gillnets behind his 32-foot boat in the Nushagak district of Bristol Bay.

For the 70-year-old, a veteran of more than a half-century of fishing, this was a tough day to start the 2021 sockeye salmon harvest. But soon the crew, all of them his grandsons, were dancing on the back deck as they spotted splash after splash made by sockeye hitting the net’s mesh in a surprisingly strong display of abundance so early in the season.

In the weeks that followed, storms often returned to make fishing miserable, and at times dangerous. Through it all, the salmon kept surging back from their ocean feeding grounds in what — by this week — developed into a record return of more than 65.5 million sockeye to the Bristol Bay region.

“It was pretty rough out there. It was really rough out there,” Samuelsen said. “But it was a fabulous year here in the Nushagak.”

The massive return once again demonstrated Bristol Bay’s stunning sockeye productivity at a time when these fish are struggling in other parts of North America, in part due to climate change, which can increase the temperature of the rivers adults must navigate to their spawning grounds. It can also reduce food for them in the ocean.

Read the full story from The Seattle Times at the Anchorage Daily News