Saving Seafood

Alaska seafood harvesting jobs sharply rebounded in 2017

November 14, 2018 — After a steep drop in 2016, seafood harvesting jobs grew 8.3 percent last year, the most in percent terms among all Alaska industries.

Harvesting hit a record in 2017 at 8,509 monthly jobs on average and jumped to over 24,000 jobs in July.

According to the state Department of Labor’s November report on economic trends, salmon fishing jobs grew overall but varied considerably by region. The crab fisheries had the only employment loss by species.

By region, harvesting jobs in the Aleutians jumped by nearly 20 percent, mostly through gains in groundfish catches.

Bristol Bay’s fishing jobs also grew overall by 6.2 percent.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Lack of ice in Bering Sea casts uncertainty over future of Alaska fish stocks

November 14, 2018 — Last winter, something unprecedented happened in Alaska. For the first time on record, there was no sea ice in the northern Bering Sea, and biologists are now scrambling to figure out how that will affect scores of area fisheries – from crab to salmon to rockfish to various pelagic stocks – in the coming years.

Because there are few fisheries in the northern Bering Sea, historically it has not been subject to as much surveying as the southeastern Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. But the boundary between the north and south – set at around 60 degrees north – is for research purposes, and stocks migrate freely over that boundary.

According to Diana Stram, a fisheries analyst and management plan coordinator at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council for the past 16 years, warming waters have highlighted the increasing connectivity between the two sides of the boundary.

“We’ve had the warm blob in the Gulf of Alaska, which caused the huge Gulf cod decline, in addition to the extremely warm waters this year in the Bering Sea, and that has caused a lot of species to move north. So we’re seeing these warm water masses pushing fish north and meanwhile increasing metabolic demands in fish and causing higher mortality,” Stram told SeafoodSource.

When fish like cod and pollock head north, it’s the sea ice that pushes them back down, Stram said. Without that ice, biologists are left in the dark, unsure where stocks end up.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Why did Ballot Measure 1 get crushed? Opponents outspent backers – by a lot – but other factors were also at play.

November 14, 2018 — The business-backed group Stand for Alaska poured more than $10 million into the campaign against Ballot Measure 1, eclipsing spending by the competition in one of the costliest campaigns ever seen in Alaska.

The Stand for Salmon forces, which raised less than $3 million to support the measure, pointed to the financial disadvantage as a key reason their side lost heavily Tuesday.

“We couldn’t overcome their messaging and misinformation,” said Stephanie Quinn-Davidson, a measure sponsor, as election results streamed in Tuesday night.

But campaign observers said the defeat didn’t necessarily turn on money, a view shared by Stand for Alaska’s political consultant, who said the opposition group didn’t spread lies.

The eight-page measure would have rewritten state law, setting new regulations for activity affecting salmon habitat.

The measure won in just six of 40 House districts — downtowns Juneau and Anchorage, and Southwest Alaska. It lost by nearly a 2-to-1 margin, receiving 85,553 yes votes, and 148,130 no votes, as of Friday.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Alaska’s commercial salmon harvest came in below forecast in 2018, largely due to pink salmon

November 14, 2018 — Bristol Bay’s commercial sockeye salmon fishery boomed in 2018, but on the other side of the Alaska Peninsula it was a terrible year for Chignik.

The statewide value of Alaska’s commercial salmon harvest this year was down 13 percent compared to the 2017 season, according to preliminary numbers released this month by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Fishermen caught fewer salmon compared to last year, as expected, but the harvest also fell short of the state’s forecast.

About 115 million salmon were harvested this year. That total is probably in the lower quarter of commercial harvests dating back to 1975, said Forrest Bowers, acting director at Fish and Game in the division of commercial fisheries.

“That’s offset somewhat by the relatively high proportion of the harvest that’s comprised of sockeye salmon and the strength of the sockeye salmon market,” he said.

The preliminary ex-vessel value for all Alaska commercial salmon harvested this season was $595.2 million. (Ex-vessel is the price paid to fishermen from processors.) In 2017, that value was $685 million.

Read the full story at Anchorage Daily News

 

ALASKA: Nushagak and Naknek-Kvichak Advisory Committees will oppose permit stacking

November 14, 2018 — The Alaska Board of Fisheries Bristol Bay Finfish meeting is two weeks away, and public comment is due by Wednesday. The state board that regulates commercial, subsistence and sport fishing the region will convene in Dillingham at the end of November. It will take up the 47 proposed regulation changes. In October, the Naknek-Kvichak and Nushagak advisory committees met to decide which proposals they will support.

Permit stacking, subsistence and gear restrictions are hot topics on the table. Both committees made it clear that they prioritize subsistence and that they want to protect the interests of local commercial fishermen.

In that vein, they voted against extending vessel length from 32 to 42 feet.

The Naknek-Kvichak committee supports all subsistence proposals.

“Dip netting, more time to fish, having a subsistence fishery in a different location in Egegik, using hook and line. All priority fisheries in the bay. We were in support of all of them,” said committee Chair Everett Thompson.

Five proposals related to permit stacking generated some controversy at the Naknek-Kvichak AC meeting. Permit stacking refers to one fishermen owning and operating two permits.

“Even though we have voted in the prior cycle to support permit stacking, with the price and trying to keep local vested interest in the fishery, we didn’t support the permit stacking proposals,” Thompson said. “But there were some on the committee that felt it was still a pretty good way to do business in the fishery. With that said, we also felt that we should shoot down the new language in proposal 23 that would prohibit this from being a discussion in the future.”

A dual permit configuration currently allows a Bristol Bay drift gillnet vessel with two permit holders on board to operate 200 fathoms of gear. That’s 50 more fathoms than a boat with one permit holder is allowed. Proposal 23 would make it explicit in the regulations that a person couldn’t own two drift permits and operate them on the same boat. In other words, an individual couldn’t use extra gear by stacking permits.

The Naknek-Kvichak AC also submitted several proposals to protect sport fishing for trout and Chinook in the Naknek river. They voted against ending postseason aerial counting of king salmon in the Alagnak River special harvest area. Thompson says they want to continue counting to promote conservation. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has recommended that the aerial surveys be discontinued because they say the surveys don’t provide reliable escapement estimates.

Like the Naknek-Kvichak AC, the Nushagak Advisory Committee spent much of their meeting considering subsistence proposals. The committee supported allowing subsistence fishing with drift gillnet, hook and line, and dipnet gear. It also supported extending subsistence fishing periods.

“We voted all for them,” said Nushagak AC Chair Frank Woods. “We do want to carry a message that subsistence is a priority, whether the board or sports fisheries or commercial fisheries participants agree or not. Access to resource for the local residents is a concern, but there’s a conservation concern too. That’s what the majority of the meeting time took up – where do we draw that balance and where do we draw the line?”

Read the full story at KDLG

Alaska stakeholders meet to discuss future of Copper River salmon

November 13, 2018 — Stakeholders in Alaska’s Copper River salmon fishery recently met to discuss forming a formal partnership to help ensure the future of the resource for their grandchildren, the Cordova Times reported.

At a three-day “search” conference held in Cordova, Alaska, beginning on Nov. 1, stakeholder groups including fisheries managers, and tribal and non-tribal harvesters from several gear types engaged in a number of “collective exercises to identify a shared vision and plan”, the newspaper reported.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Smaller than average sockeye return predicted for Alaska’s Bristol Bay in 2019

November 12, 2018 — The heart of Alaska’s most prolific salmon fishery, Bristol Bay, is projected to see a return of 40 million sockeye in 2019, under the 10-year average of 44m sockeye, biologists at the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) predicted.

The return — a range of 27.9m to 52.5m sockeye has been estimated — would still be larger than the 55-year average of 34.2m sockeye, the agency said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Alaska votes down salmon initiative by wide margin

November 9, 2018 — On Election Day, Nov. 6, Alaska voted on Ballot Measure 1, the Stand for Salmon habitat protection initiative.

Early polls showed the initiative polling well within margins, but voters struck down the measure 2-to-1.

“Everything I heard from our polling before the election was that we were within margins and it was extremely close,” said Lindsay Bloom, who consulted with Stand for Salmon and helped write the original proposal that evolved into the ballot measure. “The results frankly, from my perspective, were shocking.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Salmon measure suffers resounding defeat. What happened?

November 9, 2018 — A ballot measure aimed at protecting salmon habitat received a resounding defeat in the statewide general election Tuesday.

With 98 percent of precincts reporting as of Wednesday afternoon, Ballot Measure 1, commonly known as Stand for Salmon, held only 35.2 percent of Alaska’s vote, with 61.6 percent voting against.

In a state where everyone loves salmon, why did voters reject Ballot Measure 1 by such a large margin?

Measure co-sponsor Mike Wood, a Mat-Su carpenter and set net fisherman, was in good spirits when reached by phone Wednesday. The measure started a conversation, Wood said. Alaskans now talk about updating fish habitat permitting law. The existence of that discourse means that, though the measure fell, it “fell forward,” Wood said.

“Salmon now have a seat at the table, instead of just being on the platter,” as Wood put it.

Money played a big factor in the loss, Wood said.

The coffers behind the principal group supporting the measure, Yes for Salmon — Yes on 1, paled in comparison to that of industry-led opposition group Stand for Alaska — Vote No on One. Measure opponents raised $12 million in cash and in-kind contributions, according to the latest report from the Alaska Public Offices Commission. About half of that money came from a group of six oil and mining companies, which donated $1 million each. Stand for Salmon proponents had only $1.7 million to work with, according to the last APOC report before the election.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

ALASKA: With salmon ballot measure’s defeat, Pebble celebrates

November 8, 2018 — By a significant margin, Alaska voters defeated Ballot Measure 1, commonly known as the Stand for Salmon initiative.

The controversial measure was aimed at increasing protections for Alaska’s most iconic fish. It would have significantly toughened the environmental permitting process for large developments impacting salmon habitat.

The outcome was celebrated by a key figure pressing ahead on another controversial issue: the CEO of the Pebble Limited Partnership.

Pebble CEO Tom Collier said even though his company’s mine proposal wasn’t always at the forefront of the debate, the salmon habitat initiative was, in some ways, all about Pebble.

“It was clear that this initiative was aimed at trying to stop Pebble and to stop any other major significant resource development project in Alaska,” Collier said in an interview Wednesday.

Pebble’s push to develop a copper mine in the Bristol Bay region faces fierce resistance from groups who say it endangers the salmon fishery there, and many of those same groups supported Ballot Measure 1. But Pebble kept a relatively low profile leading up to the election. Although it contributed money to Stand for Alaska – Vote No on 1, the campaign against the initiative, it didn’t play much of a role in the opposition’s messaging.

But Collier said had Ballot Measure 1 passed, it would have posed hurdles for Pebble, both in getting permits and in seeking a new financial partner (the company lost a potential major investor earlier this year.) Collier said with the initiative’s defeat, he’s more confident about the Pebble’s prospects.

Read the full story at KTOO