Saving Seafood

Alaska Fisheries Science Center presses forward amid budget strains

April 22, 2025 — At a time when science-based decision-making is more critical than ever for the future of Alaska’s fisheries, researchers at NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center (AFSC) are navigating severe staffing shortages and budget uncertainties heading into 2025.

Despite the setbacks, the Center is doubling down on its mission: delivering the data federal fisheries managers rely on to keep Alaska’s waters productive and its fisheries sustainable.

“A loss of staff and uncertainties about the budget have not changed the importance of our mission,” said Bob Foy, science and research director for AFSC, in a virtual presentation from Juneau during ComFish Alaska, held April 16 in Kodiak, as reported by The Cordova Times.

That mission, Foy emphasized, includes supporting sustainable fisheries, conserving protected resources, and maintaining healthy marine ecosystems across Alaska’s expansive and diverse waters.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

ALASKA: Sen. Sullivan welcomes executive order on enhancing American seafood competitiveness

April 18, 2025 — The following was released by the office of Sen. Dan Sullivan: 

U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) today praised an executive order issued by President Donald Trump to strengthen U.S. and Alaska fisheries. As the chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Coast Guard, Maritime, and Fisheries, Sen. Sullivan has been working with the Trump administration and introducing legislation to address challenges facing Alaska’s fishermen, including global trading practices that disadvantage Alaska fisheries, and regulations that burden Alaska fishermen.

“Last month in my speech to the Alaska Legislature, I issued a clarion call about the need to go on offense for our fishermen,” said Sen. Sullivan. “These great Alaskans have endured a perfect storm of challenges, which include unfair seafood trade practices by dictatorships like Russia and China, and onerous regulatory burdens from our own federal government. I have been working relentlessly with the Trump administration, including with the Commerce and Agriculture Departments, and the U.S. Trade Representative, to get relief for our fisherman. They listened. Today, President Trump gave our fishermen a major shot in the arm, ordering his administration to remove unnecessary federal red tape and develop an America First Seafood Strategy with measures to enhance the competitiveness of our seafood in global markets and hold bad actors in seafood trade accountable. I appreciate the Trump administration’s continued strong focus on advancing the interests and priorities of Alaska across a range of economic sectors, including our fishermen and coastal communities. I thank President Trump, Secretary Lutnick, and Ambassador Greer for taking decisive action on behalf of our hard-working fishermen, and fighting to ensure more Americans and our trading partners around the world are eating ‘freedom fish’ from Alaska—not ‘communist fish’ from the likes of Russia and China.”

Below is a timeline of Sen. Sullivan’s recent efforts to advocate on behalf of the competitiveness of Alaska’s seafood industry:

  • On March 11, 2022, as a result of Sen. Sullivan’s advocacy, the Biden administration announced it would prohibit the importation of Russian seafood into the United States, in addition to banning goods from several other signature sectors of Russia’s economy.
  • On December 22, 2023, Sen. Sullivan welcomed a new Executive Order and resulting U.S. Department of the Treasury determination to revise existing guidance that allowed all Russian-origin seafood to bypass an earlier Executive Order banning its import into the United States.
  • On January 29, 2025, Sen. Sullivan received Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s commitment to champion the interests of Alaska’s fishermen and seafood industry.
  • On February 24, 2025, Sen. Sullivan reintroduced his Fighting Foreign Illegal Seafood Harvest (FISH) Act to combat foreign illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing by blacklisting offending vessels from U.S. ports and waters, bolstering the U.S. Coast Guard’s enforcement capabilities, and advancing international and bilateral negotiations to achieve enforceable agreements and treaties.
  • On March 13, 2025, Sen. Sullivan wrote a letter to Ambassador Jamieson Greer, the United States Trade Representative, urging him to initiate an investigation under Section 301 of theTrade Act of 1974 into Russian and Chinese seafood trade practices.

ALASKA: Southeast king salmon harvest limit cut by 60,000 this year

April 10, 2025 — The 2025 Southeast Alaska harvest limit for king salmon will be almost 40% less than last year, a drop of 60,000 fish.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game on April 1 announced an overall allocation of 130,800 treaty king salmon — fish that don’t originate in Alaska hatcheries — for all gear groups targeting kings in waters off Southeast Alaska and Yakutat.

In recent years, Southeast Alaska’s all-gear allocation has ranged between a high of 355,600 treaty kings in 2016 down to 130,000 in 2018, Fish and Game records show. The regionwide king quota for all commercial and sport fishermen averaged about 200,900 kings a year from 2020 through 2024.

This year’s all-gear catch limit was set based on measures of king abundance calculated by the Pacific Salmon Commission’s “chinook model,” and did not incorporate annual data from the winter troll fishery in Sitka Sound, which the commission had used in recent years through 2023 to estimate the abundance of kings in Southeast and to set the all-gear allocation for the region.

The commission is tasked with implementing the U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty. It regulates the catch for migratory king populations along the west coast of both countries.

The commission allocates the king salmon catch between the U.S. and Canada, and the Alaska Board of Fisheries approves management plans to split Alaska’s catch between different gear types and user groups, such as sport and commercial.

Read the full article at Wrangell Sentinel

ALASKA: Alaska accuses prominent Kodiak family of widespread fishing permit fraud

April 10, 2025 — State prosecutors have accused Kodiak fisher Duncan Fields and other members of his family of defrauding the state and fish buyers through a coordinated scheme that involved committing perjury and manipulating permits.

Court documents filed Monday state that Fields and his family, who operate Fields and Sons Inc., illegally earned more than $1 million by temporarily transferring various salmon setnet permits to crew members, allowing the family to bypass state limits on individual ownership.

Fields, whose family has been setnetting in Kodiak since 1961, denied the state’s claims, saying by text that the “charges stem from the gifting of limited entry permits to family and crew, something my family and I have done for more than 30 years. This is a common practice in the industry, and we believe that our family has been singled out to try to set an example with a unique application of existing statutes. The charges are not supported by the facts.”

The criminal accusations against the Fields family — which include multiple felonies — surprised fishers and have implications beyond Kodiak.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

Pacific halibut fishery gets off to a slow start with high prices

April 10, 2025 — Bad weather and some last-minute paperwork scrambling at NOAA Fisheries combined to produce low catches during the first weeks of the Pacific halibut fishery.

By April 1, just 3 percent of the 23.79 million pound fishery limit for 2025 had been harvested since the March 20 opener. That poundage applies to the catches for commercial fishermen, sport charter operators, anglers, and subsistence users along the west coast and British Columbia/Canada to the far reaches of Alaska’s Bering Sea.

Alaska always gets the lion’s share of the annual commercial halibut catch and for 2025 it totals 19.7 million pounds, a 2.7 percent decrease from 2024. Reports by NOAA Fisheries show that 873,366 pounds were taken by Alaskan fishermen through April 7, compared to 1,223,849 pounds taken during the same time in 2024, a drop of nearly 29 percent.

As always, the first fresh halibut of the year fetched high prices, although early information was sketchy due to the low landings. Many ports have had so few deliveries that the data remain confidential.

At Seward, prices to fishermen started out at $7 per pound across the board, according to Alaska Boats and Permits in Homer.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Southeast Alaska sport fishery sees single-fish limits for king salmon

April 7, 2025 — The amount of Chinook (king) salmon allocated under the Pacific Salmon Treaty is much lower this year in Southeast Alaska —almost 40 percent lower than last year— and that’s affecting all user groups.

The treaty is an agreement between the U.S. and Canada, ensuring both countries get some fish. Southeast’s sport fishing allocation (the amount of fish the group is allowed to take) is 27,700 wild king salmon — a slice out of the region’s almost 131,000-fish pie.

Patrick Fowler, regional fisheries management coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said that overall, under the significantly lower treaty allocation, everyone’s going to fish less.

“The Board of Fish has given us the allocation plan for how big of a slice of the pie for each fishery,” he explained. “But because the base of the whole pie wasn’t as big, everyone’s slice is smaller.”

Fish and Game expects resident anglers to harvest about 10,000 fish, which leaves about 17,000 fish for nonresidents this year.

Read the full article at KFSK

ALASKA: Internal memo outlines stark impacts of federal downsizing on Alaska regional fishery agency

April 4, 2025 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has long struggled to compete with corporate America to recruit tech workers to maintain the complicated computer systems that track the federal seafood harvests off Alaska.

These chronic staffing shortages at NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Region have been greatly exacerbated by the Trump administration’s efforts to cut the federal workforce.

As of mid-March, the Alaska Region had 29% of its staffing positions vacant, and the Information Services Division, staffed largely by tech workers, had a vacancy rate of 45%, according to an internal agency memorandum obtained by the Alaska Beacon.

Read the full article at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: ADF&G sets 2025 Chinook limits, tightens regulations

April 3, 2025 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) announced a preseason all-gear catch limit of 133,500 treaty Chinook salmon for Southeast Alaska in 2025, per the Pacific Salmon Treaty provisions.

ADF&G has set a target of 130,850 Chinook salmon, incorporating a 2 percent reduction from the treaty catch limit to serve as a buffer against exceeding the all-gear limit and triggering payback provisions.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Alaska expands commercial dipnet fishery

April 2, 2025 — Alaska’s commercial dipnet fishery is getting more time on the water this season, following an expansion approved by the State Board of Fisheries in March.

The board’s decision, reported by Peninsula Clarion’s Jake Dye, extends fishing hours from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, increasing opportunities for participants while maintaining limits aimed at protecting struggling king salmon stocks.

The expansion came from a proposal by Joseph Person, who initially sought to allow 12-hour openings every day of the week. The board unanimously approved the increase on March 15 but adjusted the plan to restrict operations to weekdays. The season will continue to run from June 20 through July 31, rejecting Person’s request to extend it through mid-August. Additional provisions now allow dipnet fishermen to operate on City of Kenai shore leases and require them to record any released king or coho salmon on a fish ticket.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: State imposes ‘unprecedented’ conservation measures for Gulf of Alaska Chinook salmon

April 1, 2025 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is imposing what it calls “unprecedented” conservation measures to address declines of Gulf of Alaska Chinook salmon — also known as king salmon — which is currently under review for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The department said in a March 18 announcement that it will be restricting western Alaska king salmon fisheries, including in Kodiak, Chignik and Sand Point.

Matt Keyse, an area management biologist at fish and game’s Sand Point office, said this is the first time the department has used data from one region to trigger management action in another.

“That is unprecedented from managing a fishery based on fish that are not found locally to the systems in the area in which we’re harvesting fish,” Keyse said.

Sand Point — off the Alaska Peninsula — is in the middle of the management region known as Area M. Although it doesn’t have its own king runs, fishermen intercept salmon that migrate through the region. In recent years, Area M’s harvest levels have drawn criticism from stakeholders in Western Alaska, who argue the fishery reduces local salmon returns.

Read the full article at KYUK