May 5, 2021 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture is asking Alaska pollock suppliers to bid on a contract for 8.325 million pounds of the fish – the third-largest bid invitation for Alaskan pollock in the agency’s history.
The USDA is also requesting bids on nearly 2.7 million pounds of catfish and said in a pre-solicitation notice that it plans to purchase canned tuna, haddock fillets, ocean perch fillets, wild salmon fillets, and canned pink salmon.
May 4, 2021 — When Shawn McManus, skipper of the F/V Vansee, left Seattle in the spring of 2020 to longline for blackcod in Alaska, the outlook was not good. The burgeoning pandemic had injected uncertainty into a fishery that was already struggling with flagging prices and crippling whale depredation.
On the grounds, McManus and his colleagues estimated half their catch, sometimes more, was being snatched off hooks by orcas and sperm whales. Fishermen with bigger boats and more powerful hydraulics had long ago switched to whale-proof rigid pots, but they were not an option for smaller operations like the Vansee, a 107-year-old halibut schooner with limited deck space.
Veteran fisherman Buck Laukitis was among those who had switched to rigid pots. He looked on in dismay as depredation threatened not just individual boats but the fishery at large.
“We needed 75 or 80 percent of the fishing done by pots, or we were going to kill the resource off by feeding whales,” Laukitis said.
In a last ditch attempt to save his season, McManus threw in 50 so-called slinky pots before he left Seattle’s Fishermen’s Terminal. To him, it was a new and virtually unknown product, a lightweight collapsible pot that would fold flat and stack on deck, giving boats like his a chance to get off hooks and into pots.
May 4, 2021 — The budget for Alaska’s Commercial Fisheries Division won’t be cut for the upcoming fiscal year, assuming the current numbers make it through the Legislature.
“The governor’s proposed budget is at about $72.8 million, which is a slight increase from the FY21 approved budget. And most of that increase is due to our personnel services, cost of living increases and things like that that are funded by the administration generally. And also from some additional federal funds for training and things like that. So we’re looking pretty good compared to past years,” said Sam Rabung, director of the Commercial Fisheries Division, the largest within the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which employs just over 640 full-time, part-time and seasonal workers.
“We’re really relieved because we’ve been cut pretty close to the bone and any additional significant cuts would impact fisheries directly. We wouldn’t be able to do some of the assessment projects required for management and we would have to either close or severely restrict fisheries. And I think everybody understands that,” he said, adding that another bonus will be the reopening of the ADF&G office at Wrangell.
Rabung credited the Dunleavy administration for taking the time to dig into the details that clearly show Alaska’s fisheries “pay their own way.”
May 4, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
More than 90 researchers and local community members contributed knowledge and information to help NOAA Fisheries scientists generate an ecosystem status report for the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem last year. This new video captures some of the high points of that report.
“We are excited to offer another way of sharing what we learned about ecosystem conditions in the Gulf of Alaska last year,” said Bridget Ferriss, Gulf of Alaska Ecosystem Status Report editor. “This video is a nice complement to our other communications products.”
For decades, scientists at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center have been pulling together data for numerous indicators of ecosystem health including water temperature, plankton abundance, and seabird reproductive success. NOAA Fisheries and other scientists from other organizations monitor these indicators for the four marine ecosystems that surround Alaska–the Aleutian Islands, the Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska, and the Arctic.
Every fall, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council sets catch limits for groundfish and crab in federal waters off Alaska for the upcoming fishing year. They base these decisions on scientific research and analysis including fish stock assessments, economic information on the commercial fishery, and these annual ecosystem assessments.
“Ecosystem assessments help us understand the context by explaining, among other things, how changes in the ecosystem might affect present and future abundance of commercially important fish and crab stocks,” said Ferriss.
For each of the Alaska Ecosystem Status Reports, a variety of indicators are evaluated annually. All of this information helps fisheries managers to determine what steps to take to ensure sustainable fish and crab fisheries while preserving the health of the overall ecosystem.
The goal of this video is to communicate our updated summary of ecosystem information beyond the Council, to the broader community.
May 3, 2021 — Climate change and other threats to one of the world’s last bastions of wild salmon are already roiling the food supply chain and could alter U.S. export sales of the widely sought-after fish.
About 40% of the world’s wild salmon comes from Alaska, where fishermen are seeing fish size shrink. Scientists are still delving into the precise causes — it’s complicated because there are five different species of Pacific salmon in North America — but the consensus is that climate change is a main culprit.
The size conundrum could end up disrupting global trade flows. American exporters may soon find they’re selling more to Japan, which typically favors smaller fish. Meanwhile, European markets, especially those with heavy demand for smoked salmon, prefer bigger products, according to Elizabeth Herendeen, marketplace manager at Alaska-based Salmon State, which advocates for the protection of Pacific salmon.
It’s the latest example of how climate change is changing how food is produced and where it gets shipped. Rapidly warming temperatures are forcing some lobster boats to move further offshore, and hotter Midwest summers are a threat to yields. Agriculture futures have surged recently as bad weather makes it harder to grow crops at a time when food inflation is already on the rise.
May 3, 2021 — OBI Seafoods and Trident Seafoods will not be opening salmon processing plants in Alaska as a result of low projected salmon returns.
OB Seafoods’ processing plant in Excursion Inlet, Alaska, will be not be processing fish for the 2021 salmon season due to a string of poor runs in the Southeast district.
April 30, 2021 — A long with the certainty of death and taxes, fishermen know universally that the council process is a slog. We are often faced with the dual realities that a slow process works to ensure robust stakeholder input as well as sometimes letting fishery oversight slip behind the pace of changing ocean dynamics.
Indeed, by the time a management plan is amended, the council and stakeholders typically get right to work on the next one to address the problems that evolved during the arduous process of making the last one.
Though there are many things one might change about the process, none of them is likely to transform fishery management into that elusive unicorn of efficient bureaucracy.
Earlier this month, however, at the close of its spring meeting, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council moved faster than I’ve ever witnessed in council history by making a series of rule changes in response to something that happened around that very April meeting. This swift action was taken to address the council’s public comment guidelines based on the quality and apparent abundance of input on halibut and salmon bycatch.
I understand that stakeholder input in a blue-collar industry is not always going to be composed in the same language an office dweller might employ. I also appreciate that social media and casual access to industry leadership may encourage less formal and even occasionally uncomfortably personal commentary. I don’t think it’s appropriate for anyone to submit public comments that include personal attacks, profanity or baseless accusations. And ostensibly, that’s what these new rules aim to curb.
April 30, 2021 — On a sunny afternoon this past summer, several fishing boats milled about in Cordova’s harbor. Rain clouds lingered over the Chugach Mountains, which surround the small Alaskan fishing community. Seagulls called overhead, and the salty smell of fresh salmon was sharp in the air.
The harbor was quieter than usual. Shiny metal hand-washing stations stood at the ready. As a boat approached, crew members wearing face masks prepared to dock. The boat flew a solid yellow flag—no one on the vessel was sick with COVID-19. A black-and-yellow-checkered flag would mean the boat is in quarantine.
From fears about visitors to the state for the fishing season bringing the virus into Alaska’s rural communities, to the logistics of quarantining on boats, fishing looked different in summer 2020.
These new challenges landed particularly hard on a growing subset of fishermen: women.
Although the industry is historically male-dominated, the number of women working in Alaska’s seafood industry is increasing, women fishermen say. Women are not only fishermen, but also work in processing, direct marketing, managerial jobs, and sales positions on the shore.
The International Organisation for Women in the Seafood Industry (WSI) predicts the COVID-19 pandemic will impact women more than men and intensify gender inequalities already present in the industry. Women face barriers such as gender discrimination and carry responsibilities that men typically do not, such as balancing fishing and caring for children.
April 30, 2021 — Oil and gas leasing isn’t allowed in Kachemak Bay. The state blocked development there after an oil rig got stuck and leaked oil into the bay in 1976.
But legislation proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy would allow the state to sell subsurface gas-only leases in part of Kachemak Bay, so oil and gas companies could drill into undersea reservoirs from miles away.
More broadly, the bill would permit subsurface leasing and drilling where surface drilling is currently prohibited. And the bill’s opponents say that would unravel state restrictions meant to protect wildlife.
Haley Paine, deputy director of the Alaska Division of Oil and Gas, told the House Fisheries Committee the point of the legislation is to capture royalties for the state.
April 27, 2021 — Are toxins from road runoff a threat to salmon in Anchorage’s most popular fishing streams? A Go Fund Me campaign has been launched so Alaskans can chip in to find out.
The push stems from an organic compound in tires called quinone that was newly identified by researchers at the University of Washington, said Birgit Hagedorn, a geochemist and longtime board member of the Anchorage Waterways Council.
“The little flakes that rub off of tires, especially larger truck tires, can be transported into the streams via stormwater. And they leach out the compound that they discovered was highly toxic to salmon. They were specifically looking at coho salmon,” she explained.
Hagedorn hopes to raise $5,500 to test the urban waters that run off the Seward and Glenn highways into Ship Creek and Campbell Creek. The Ship Creek salmon sport fishery is the region’s most popular and successful, with anglers targeting stocked chinook and coho salmon. Other stocked coho fisheries have been established in Campbell and Bird creeks, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.