February 24, 2025 — Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has proposed a bill outlining a roadmap for the state to host closed-system finfish farms for the first time.
Currently, Alaska law prohibits all such farming except for private nonprofit salmon hatcheries, many of which are run by Indigenous communities with the goal of rebuilding vulnerable wild salmon stocks.
February 21, 2025 — Fisheries observers in Alaska face workplace harassment, intimidation and assault at much higher rates than are reported, but the true prevalence is unknown as incidents largely go unreported, according to a new multiyear study.
Observers work alongside fishing crews to document scientific fisheries data essential to fisheries management, nontargeted species harvested as bycatch, and potential law violations of commercial fisheries operations, as mandated by federal law. Observers’ assignments can be aboard vessels or onshore locations such as harbors or processing plants, and can range from a few days to several weeks at sea.
The study focused on observers working in Alaska’s North Pacific groundfish and halibut fishery, which spans from the Bering Sea, to the Aleutian Islands and the Gulf of Alaska — the largest fisheries monitoring program in the United States.
“Observers find themselves labeled by industry members as ‘fish cops’ or ‘snitches,’ have been subject to intimidation, harassment, and assault (including sexual assault and rape), and have even gone missing at sea,” according to research cited in the study.
Study results estimate 45% of those who experienced harassment disclosed the issue in a given year, and that true prevalence of harassment varied from 22% to 38% of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observers each year.
Researchers with the Alaska office of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission and the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, and special agents at the Alaska Office of Law Enforcement, conducted the study from 2016 to 2022. Researchers say this is the first study to estimate rates of victimization and disclosure in a fisheries observer program.
“The goal of the project was really to discover what is the true victimization rate, trying to account for that problem we have in all crimes, which is underreporting,” said Craig Faunce, a study co-author. He is a research fisheries biologist with NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center.
February 19, 2025 — For almost 50 years, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act has governed sustainable fisheries all around the United States. It supports 1.6 million jobs and tens of thousands of small businesses. It also supports one of the most enduring and effective economic opportunity programs in America, the Western Alaska Community Development Quota program, or CDQ.
The Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, as Magnuson-Stevens was originally known, is known globally for creating the “exclusive economic zone,” which gave the United States control of natural resources from 3 miles (the end of state waters) out to 200 miles from its shores. The law evicted foreign fishing fleets from the bountiful fishing grounds of the Bering Sea, reserving it for a small but growing fleet of American fishing vessels. The Act also directs that local stakeholders appointed to regional fishery management councils decide how the fisheries should operate. Their decisions are made within firm statutory guardrails that mandate sustainability, minimize bycatch, and protect fishing communities.
America’s Bering Sea fleet was originally based in, and owned by, Seattle companies. When Congress updated Magnuson-Stevens in 1996, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens added the CDQ program into federal law, setting up a mechanism that would slowly shift ownership of the fleet from Seattle to Alaska. CDQ began at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in 1992, the brainchild of western Alaska advocates who saw that most Bering Sea communities did not have an economic stake in the Bering Sea. The program sets aside ten percent of the fish harvests for a small percentage of the pollock harvest for 65 Bering Sea communities, most of which are majority Alaska Native. The communities are grouped into six regional non-profit entities. These “CDQ groups” harvest the fish on their own vessels or sell the harvest rights to fishing companies, then use the revenues to invest in the Bering Sea industry and fund economic development in one of America’s poorest regions: coastal western Alaska.
February 18, 2025 — The Alaskan salmon fishery has met all Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) standard requirements related to its hatcheries after a recent audit, allowing it to continue possessing its certification.
MRAG Americas, an independent assessment body, determined Alaska’s salmon fishery met the MSC’s hatchery management standards, which include comprehensive marking of hatchery-produced salmon to track the origin of fish to certain hatcheries. The tracking is designed to allow fishery managers to assess and regulate fishery contributions and interactions between hatchery salmon and wild salmon.
February 18, 2025 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is asking seafood suppliers to bid on significant quantities of domestic pollock, shrimp, and catfish.
The agency is asking for bids on more than 21 million pounds of Alaska pollock fillets, nuggets, and sticks for household food distribution through food banks. Offers are due by 27 February for deliveries that will be made between April and June 2025.
February 18, 2025 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) has advanced a set of five alternatives for reducing chum salmon bycatch in the U.S. state of Alaska’s pollock fishery, setting up a vote on implementing new protections as soon as December 2025.
Chum salmon populations in Alaska have plummeted in recent years; in the Yukon River, for instance, the fall chum salmon run is 97 percent below its historical average. The low abundance levels have led to fishery closures and bans on subsistence fishing in parts of the state.
February 14, 2025 — In the wake of several days of lengthy testimony on chum salmon bycatch, a final decision for the issue is scheduled for the December North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Anchorage.
In the interim, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is slated to publish its draft environmental impact statement on the matter in the Federal Register in August, allowing for 60 days of public comment to follow.
By the conclusion of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Anchorage on Feb. 11, the body had amended some alternatives and was sending the analysis to NMFS for publication of the draft environmental impact statement.
Those changes included lowering a considered bycatch cap in some salmon corridors to 50,000 chum salmon, shortening the time frame by which they’ll take action, and also broadening the overall range of alternatives. The council did not indicate support of any specific alternative.
February 14, 2025 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:
The Alaska salmon fishery has successfully met all Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) Standard requirements related to hatcheries, according to a recent audit by independent assessment body MRAG Americas. This achievement was possible through dedicated efforts by the Alaska Fishery Development Foundation, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s (ADF&G) Commercial Fisheries Division and Alaska Private Non-Profit Hatchery Corporations and reinforces Alaska’s commitment to environmentally sustainable fishing under MSC certification.
February 13, 2025 — Federal fishery managers took steps on Tuesday to impose new rules to prevent Alaska chum salmon from being scooped into nets used to catch Bering Sea pollock, an industrial-scale fishery that makes up the nation’s largest single-species commercial seafood harvest.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council advanced a suite of new protections intended to combat the pollock trawlers’ salmon bycatch, the term for the incidental catch of unintended species. Proposed steps in the package include numeric caps on total chum salmon bycatch, with varying allocations for different sectors of the pollock fleet; protective limits in corridors known to be used by salmon migrating through the ocean back to Western Alaska freshwater spawning areas; and provisions that would link new limits in the ocean to real-time salmon counts and conditions in the rivers.
The action followed years of complaints about ocean bycatch of chum salmon at a time when runs in Western Alaska rivers have dwindled, becoming so low at times that no fishing was allowed.
The council’s meeting in Anchorage, which started on Feb. 3 and wrapped up with the vote on Tuesday, was devoted almost exclusively to the problem of bycatch and its effects of chum salmon runs in the Yukon and Kuskokwim river systems.
The vote to advance the protective package followed days of sometimes-emotional testimony from residents of rural Western and Interior Alaska villages who have long depended on chum salmon – one of the five species of Pacific salmon – as a food staple.
Residents who testified described the anemic salmon runs as a crisis threatening family well-being, local economies and Indigenous cultures and identities.
February 13, 2025 — Tŝilhqot’in chiefs are calling on the Alaskan District 104 Fishery to stop intercepting vulnerable salmon stocks bound for their territory, stating the fishery’s harvesting is infringing on Tŝilhqot’in Aboriginal rights.
“Our people depend on the salmon run every year to ensure that our families do not go hungry,” Nits’ilʔin (Chief) Joe Alphonse said in a Feb. 11 press release issued by the Tŝilhqot’in National Government (TNG).
The chiefs are making their call at the Pacific Salmon Commission’s fortieth annual meeting in Portland, Ore. The commission works to implement the Pacific Salmon Treaty which authorizes the Alaskan Salmon Fishery.