February 17, 2021 — A report on Washington state’s dwindling wild salmon populations offers a warning to Alaska, where several stocks have registered concerning declines over the past years.
Washington’s 2020 State of the Salmon in Watersheds report chronicled a bleak panorama, with 14 of the state’s species listed as endangered. While conversation efforts have succeeded in revitalizing some salmon runs in Washington, the report said fish stocks in the Pacific Northwest face an uphill battle.
February 17, 2021 — It was a hectic and hazardous opening weekend for commercial crab fishermen and the Coast Guard monitoring the fleet.
Commercial crabbing kicked off in Washington with a majority of fishermen dropping their first load of pots late last week for a 73-hour day soak period.
Fishermen reported encountering challenging conditions during their initial trips offshore with rogue waves, freezing rain and dense fog combined with usual turbulence of crossing the Columbia River Bar in boats loaded with crab pots.
Fishermen described the opening weekend conditions as “gnarly,” “brutal,” and in some instances “the worst they’ve ever seen.” One said he was simply grateful there weren’t any deaths despite some close calls.
February 16, 2021 — Wrangell will receive considerably less in its shared fish tax payments this year than the city expected, city manager Lisa Von Bargen explained at an assembly meeting on Tuesday.
“That speaks to the abysmal situation related to the fishing issues in our region,” Von Bargen said.
The payment she referred to is a fisheries business tax collected outside of municipal boundaries. The state disperses the tax money to communities in the region. Wrangell planned to receive $10,000 dollars this year from the shared fish tax. In reality, the city will receive just over $1,600.
Municipalities also receive another fisheries business tax for fishing business within municipal boundaries. Wrangell’s payment from that tax is lower than expected as well: about $203,000 for the last fiscal year.
February 16, 2021 — Robin Samuelsen still recalls his first meeting about the prospective Pebble Mine. It was around 2005 or 2006, in Dillingham, Alaska. Listening to an early plan for developing a copper and gold mine in the spawning grounds of Bristol Bay’s abundant salmon, this Curyung tribal chief and commercial fisherman quickly made up his mind. “You’ll kill off our salmon,” Samuelsen remembers saying, adding: “I’ll be up there to stop you.”
More than 15 years later, in November 2020, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) denied the Pebble Mine a key permit, a sharp setback for the mine — though not the first. Already, the mine’s developer, Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP), has filed an appeal challenging that decision. PLP was joined by the State of Alaska, which, in an unusual move, filed its own appeal. Both appeals are currently under review.
Even before these latest developments, however, the people living around the Bristol Bay region had been trying to bring this long-running tug of war to rest once and for all.
Just as he promised at the meeting in Dillingham, Samuelsen is part of a tribally led campaign to garner permanent legal protection for the Bristol Bay region’s thriving wild salmon from large-scale mining proposals — whether that be the Pebble Mine, or whatever comes next. Lindsay Layland, deputy director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay (UTBB), which is involved in the effort, says the goal of the coalition is to find a way to legally prioritize the salmon that mean so much to the people living and fishing in the region.
February 16, 2021 — Just two seiners and one gillnetter participated in the 2020 herring season in Togiak, Alaska. With a guideline harvest of 38,749 metric tons (MT), it is believed those that participated did well, though exact harvest data will remain confidential due to rules allowing the participants not to report catch data with fewer than five vessels partaking in the harvest.
Elsewhere in Alaska, the Sitka sac roe fishery struck out last year after managers and the industry decided the fishery should remain closed for its second year in a row. The predominance of herring recruiting into the fishery have been three-year-olds. With weights of about 90 grams per fish, buyers aren’t interested in the tiny egg skeins for salted roe markets in Japan.
February 12, 2021 — Last year went down as one of the most lackluster seasons in history for salmon fishermen on the U.S. West Coast.
Regional fishermen landed 6.33 million pounds of kings, silvers, and chums in 2020, down by almost half of the 11.05 million pounds the three West Coast states landed in 2019, according to data from PacFIN, and a fraction of the 56.16 million pounds in the record-setting year of 2013.
February 10, 2021 — Freezing February weather doesn’t keep Alaskans off the fishing grounds from Southeast to Norton Sound.
In the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, boats are pulling in pollock, cod, flounders and other groundfish.
More than 3 billion pounds of pollock will come out of the Bering Sea this year, and another 250 million pounds from the gulf.
Prince William Sound also has a winter pollock fishery that will produce nearly 5 million pounds.
Many Alaska crab fisheries are underway or soon to be.
February 10, 2021 — Seafood sales “are on fire” in America’s supermarkets and one king salmon from Southeast Alaska is worth the same as two barrels of oil.
That’s $116.16 for a troll-caught chinook salmon averaging 11 pounds at the docks vs. $115.48 for 2 barrels of oil at $57.74 per barrel on Feb. 3.
As more COVID-conscious customers opted in 2020 for seafood’s proven health benefits, salmon powered sales at fresh seafood counters. Frozen and “on the shelf” seafoods also set sales records, and online ordering tripled to top $1 billion.
Those are some takeaways from a National Fisheries Institute Global Marketing Conference hosted online by SeafoodSource News.
Here is a sampler of what experts called “eye-popping” 2020 retail sales reflecting America’s trend to eat more fish:
IRI, a world leader in market data, said overall sales at in-store fresh seafood counters jumped 28% to $871 million, led by salmon with a 19% increase to $2.2 billion.
February 10, 2021 — Petersburg, AK — Yesterday, after testing all incoming employees for the crab season, OBI Seafoods confirmed one positive case of COVID. The company hired a completely local workforce of Petersburg residents for the 2021 tanner and golden king crab fishery, which begins February 17.
The employee who tested positive is asymptomatic and was immediately isolated. Contact tracing was done to identify others for additional testing and quarantine.
February 10, 2021 — The parent company of the proposed Pebble Mine said it’s cooperating with a federal grand jury investigation. The company said the case relates to conversations about the mine that were secretly recorded. But who is being investigated, and for what alleged crime, is not clear.
The company, British Columbia-based Northern Dynasty, issued a statement Friday that leaves a lot unanswered. It said the U.S. Attorney’s office in Alaska issued subpoenas to Pebble Limited Partnership and its former CEO, Tom Collier, requiring them to hand over certain documents.
The statement said the investigation appears related to “previously disclosed recordings of private conversations regarding the Pebble Project.”
That seems to describe the so-called Pebble Tapes, undercover recordings produced last year by an environmental group.