Saving Seafood

Fall fishing: Alaska’s commercial fleets load up on pollock, Dungeness, king crabs and more

October 9, 2020 — As always, there is a lot of fishing action going on after summer salmon.

At Southeast Alaska, beam trawlers are back on the water targeting 650,000 pounds of pink and sidestripe shrimp in a third opener.

Southeast’s Dungeness season reopened on Oct. 1, and a few million pounds are likely to come out of that fishery. There will again be no opener for red or blue king crab because of low abundances.

On Oct. 5, a hundred or more divers also could be heading down for more than 1.7 million pounds of red sea cucumbers. A catch of just under 3 million pounds of sea urchins also is up for grabs, but there may be a lack of buyers. Southeast divers also are targeting giant geoduck clams.

At Prince William Sound, a 15,000-pound test fishery just wrapped up for golden king crabs; likewise, a nearly 7 million pound golden king crab fishery is ongoing along the Aleutian Islands.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Pollock: Season surges as fish sticks 
rule the covid marketplace

October 9, 2020 — Alaska pollock trawlers were well on track to catch their TAC for the year, and increased demand for seafood during the covid-19 pandemic threw some optimistic twists into market dynamics.

The TAC for the Bering Sea had been set at 1.425 million metric tons, with another 19,000 metric tons coming out of the Aleutian Islands harvest area. While the Aleutian Islands TAC has remained unchanged in recent years, those for the Bering Sea have been nudging upward from 1.345 million metric tons in 2018 and 1.397 million metric tons of last year.  

The TAC for the Gulf of Alaska, meanwhile, has also risen slightly from last year’s 112,000 metric tons with 115,930 metric tons for this year, and trawlers in August continued plugging away on their C-season allotments.

The A-season for pollock trawling in the Bering Sea began on Jan. 20 and ended on April 30, with nearly all four sectors (inshore, catcher-processor, mothership, and CDQ groups) catching their allotted percentages of the TAC.

As of August, the four trawl sectors were scattered about the Bering Sea and mopping up quotas for the B-season, which began on June 10 and ends on Oct. 31.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Alaska proposes to split $50 million in virus aid among fishermen

October 8, 2020 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is taking public comments on a plan to split $50 million in federal coronavirus aid among commercial, sport and subsistence fishermen.

Under the state plan, sportfishing businesses will share $16 million, commercial fishing businesses will split $16 million, and fish processors will split $16 million. Subsistence fishermen will split $1.5 million, and aquaculture businesses will share $500,000.

The aid will be distributed by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, which is expected to take applications later this year using the state’s plan.

Applicants will have to sign an affidavit swearing that they lost at least 35% of their fishing revenue between March 1 and Nov. 1 as a result of COVID-19.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Leaked tapes and loose talk tarnished Pebble’s reputation. Can the proposed mine go on?

October 7, 2020 — The Pebble Limited Partnership is trying to patch its battered image after secretly recorded videos last month caught its two top executives boasting about their influence over Alaska politicians and regulators.

The controversial Pebble mine proposal faces new challenges after Alaska’s U.S. senators, the governor and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denounced the statements as false.

But despite the blowback from the videos’ Sept. 21 release, the developer of the copper and gold prospect in Southwest Alaska continues its effort to win a key construction permit from the Corps.

“The idea that Pebble is dead, no matter whose opinion it is, is just not accurate,” said Mark Hamilton, vice president of public affairs at Pebble Limited Partnership. “(Pebble) can go forward and it is going forward as we speak.”

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: In letter, Gov. Dunleavy makes economic case for Pebble mine while still not expressly supporting it

October 7, 2020 — While stopping short of endorsing the controversial project, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Tuesday laid out an economic argument for the Pebble mine and said he would not stand in the way of a rigorous state review of it.

Dunleavy made the case in a letter to two Alaska state lawmakers, House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, and House Majority Whip Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak. Stutes and Edgmon had written a letterasking him to withhold support for the project after the release of secretly recorded videos that showed Pebble executives boasting about their influence over the governor’s office.

The governor in his response said he is committed to a careful analysis of the project. But he emphasized the “generational poverty” and the “chronic lack of economic options” in the Bristol Bay region where the mine would be built.

He pointed out that the wild salmon fishery, which he said he won’t put at risk, does not operate year-round, contributing to high unemployment rates in the offseason and poverty levels more than twice the statewide average.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Lower supplies of wild Pacific salmon by major producers push up prices

October 7, 2020 — Now that the 2020 pack of Alaska salmon has been caught and put up, stakeholders will get a better picture of how global prices may rise or fall.

Nearly 75% of the value of Alaska’s salmon exports is driven by sales between July and October. And right now, lower supplies of wild Pacific salmon by the major producers are pushing up prices as the bulk of those sales are made.

For sockeye salmon, global supplier and market tracker Tradex reports that frozen fillets are in high demand and supplies are hard to source for all sizes. With a catch this year topping 45 million, Alaska is the leading producer of that popular commodity.

“Luckily, sockeye harvests were once again abundant in Bristol Bay as fishermen caught nearly 200 million pounds. Although that’s a bigger than average harvest for Bristol Bay, it’s still down 9% from last year. With lower sockeye harvests in Russia and closures in Canada, we estimate the global sockeye harvest declined by 26% in 2020,” said Andy Wink, executive director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association speaking on the Tradex Three-Minute Market Report.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Alaska Releases Plan and Application Forms for CARES Act Fisheries Relief

October 7, 2020 — The state of Alaska released its plan to “broadly distribute stimulus payments to those eligible individuals and businesses” who qualify for the $50 million allocated to Alaska in May through the CARES Act. Alaska and Washington state each received $50 million, a combined total of $100 million or about a third of the full $300 million appropriated by Congress for fisheries relief nationwide.

Eligible sectors are seafood processing, commercial harvesting, sport charter, subsistence, and aquaculture.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: Disaster Declaration for SE Fisheries Sought

October 6, 2020 — Five Southeast legislators are calling on Gov. Dunleavy to seek a federal fisheries disaster declaration for Southeast because of poor harvests and low prices.

“Reports from the Southeast commercial fishing fleets indicate a dismal year for salmon returns in the region. There has also been a significant drop in prices fishermen get from processors. This, paired with reduced economic opportunity caused by COVID-19, has led many of our communities to request declarations of economic disaster,” the legislators said in a letter to the governor.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: Fisheries assistance plan available for public comment

October 6, 2020 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game today released the Section 12005 CARES Act fisheries assistance draft spending plan for public comment at adfg.alaska.gov.

The draft spending plan provides eligibility criteria for participants in seafood processing, commercial harvesting, sport charter, subsistence, and aquaculture.

On May 7, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce announced allocations of Section 12005 CARES Act fisheries assistance funding to all coastal states and territories.

Alaska will receive $50 million of the $300 million available for this assistance program.

The spending plan will allocate 100% of available funds as direct payments to fishery participants in eligible sectors.

Read the full story at KINY

ALASKA: State legislative leaders ask Dunleavy not to help Pebble

October 5, 2020 — Two Alaska legislative leaders have called on the state’s governor to stop assisting the development of a proposed copper and gold mine.

House Speaker Bryce Edgmon, an independent, and Republican Rep. Louise Stutes wrote to Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy Tuesday about the Pebble Mine project.

The legislators said the administration should not provide state land for a mitigation plan that developers hope will lead to a federal permit for the proposed open-pit mine about 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage.

The mine would straddle salmon-producing headwaters of the Bristol Bay fishery.

Read the full story at the Associated Press