Saving Seafood

Salmon will soon swim freely in the Klamath River for first time in a century once dams are removed

August 28, 2024 — For the first time in more than a century, salmon will soon have free passage along the Klamath River and its tributaries — a major watershed near the California-Oregon border — as the largest dam removal project in U.S. history nears completion.

Crews will use excavators this week to breach rock dams that have been diverting water upstream of two dams that were already almost completely removed, Iron Gate and Copco No. 1. The work will allow the river to flow freely in its historic channel, giving salmon a passageway to key swaths of habitat just in time for the fall Chinook, or king salmon, spawning season.

Read the full article at The Associated Press

NOAA study links massive Bering Sea snow crab loss to climate change

August 23, 2024 — Scientists had previously linked the crash of the Bering Sea snow crab population in recent years to warming ocean waters. But a new study released Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deepens the connection between human-caused climate change and the die-off.

Snow crabs are well suited for Arctic conditions. But Mike Litzow — the lead author of the report, which was published in the journal “Nature Climate Change” — said the southeastern Bering Sea is changing to more sub-Arctic conditions through a process called borealization. St. Matthew Island to the south, nothing north of 60 degrees’ latitude is included in the southeastern Bering Sea. It’s a process that’s also happening in terrestrial ecosystems in Alaska.

Read the full article at KMXT

Scientists have more evidence to explain why billions of crabs vanished around Alaska

August 21, 2024 — Fishermen and scientists were alarmed when billions of crabs vanished from the Bering Sea near Alaska in 2022. It wasn’t overfishing, scientists explained — it was likely the shockingly warm water that sent the crabs’ metabolism into overdrive and starved them to death.

But their horrific demise appears to be just one impact of the massive transition unfolding in the region, scientists reported in a new study released Wednesday: Parts of the Bering Sea are literally becoming less Arctic.

Read the full article at CNN

Lawsuit claims fishery managers have failed to adequately protect Alaska’s coral gardens

August 21, 2024 — Until about 20 years ago, little was known about the abundance of colorful cold-water corals that line sections of the seafloor around Alaska.

Now an environmental group has gone to court to try to compel better protections for those once-secret gardens.

The lawsuit, filed Monday by Oceana in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, accused federal fishery managers of neglecting to safeguard Gulf of Alaska corals, and the sponges that are often found with them, from damages wreaked by bottom trawling.

Bottom trawling is a practice that harvests fish with nets pulled across the seafloor.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service “ignored important obligations” to protect the Gulf of Alaska’s seafloor, under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, the lawsuit said.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Down year for Alaska salmon fishery may spell end of some Alaska seafood businesses

August 21, 2024 — Salmon catch totals and fish sizes have been disappointing thus far in the U.S. state of Alaska’s summer season, potentially accelerating the ongoing shakeout taking place in Alaska’s seafood sector.

Around 87 million salmon have been caught in Alaska this summer, far short of the 230.2 million salmon harvested in 2023 and tracking well below the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) forecast of 135.7 million fish by season’s end. While part of that has to do with the two-year cycle of pink salmon returns in Alaska, catches for every salmon species in Alaska are down this year.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Southeast Alaska fishermen qualify for federal salmon disaster relief. The deadline to apply is fast approaching.

August 20, 2024 — The first deadline for Southeast Alaska fishermen to apply for relief funding from the abysmal 2020 salmon season is this Saturday, August 24.

A federal fishery disaster was declared for fisheries in the state with extraordinarily low returns.. The U.S. Department of Commerce at the time attributed those low runs to a series of marine heatwaves in the 2010’s and in 2022, the federal agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave the state of Alaska about $56 million for those losses.

Read the full article at KRBD

Appeals court upholds Alaska salmon fishery operations

August 20, 2024 — A federal appeals court ruled Friday that an Alaska salmon fishery can continue operation despite environmentalists’ concerns about its affect on killer whale populations.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision that had threatened to halt fishing at Alaska’s Southeast troll salmon fishery. Wild Fish Conservancy, a conservationist group based in Washington state, sued to stop fishery operations in 2020 on the grounds that fishing for Chinook salmon was depleting a primary food source for endangered Southern Resident killer whales.

The Conservancy argued that NOAA Fisheries, which oversees the troll salmon fishery, violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act while drafting a 2019 biological opinion about fishing’s impact on the endangered killer whales. U.S. District Judge Richard Jones sided with the conservationists and ordered the fishery to be at least temporarily shuttered in May 2023, but a stay by the 9th Circuit kept the fishery open.

Read the full article at E&E News

US appeals court allows Alaska fishery to remain open

August 19, 2024 — A federal appeals court on Friday reversed a judge’s decision that would have effectively shuttered an Alaska salmon fishery, a result environmentalists sought in order to protect endangered whales and threatened wild Chinook salmon populations.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held, opens new tab that a judge in Seattle last year abused his discretion by vacating a key authorization issued by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Services for the fishery’s summer and winter Chinook salmon harvests.

U.S. District Judge Richard Jones at the urging of the Wild Fish Conservancy had in May 2023 vacated part of a so-called incidental take statement the fisheries service issued in 2019 that authorized the commercial Chinook salmon troll fishery in southeast Alaska.

He did so after finding it violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to adequately provide a plan to mitigate impacts from commercial fishing on threatened wild Chinook salmon and endangered southern resident orca that depend on them for food off the coasts of Washington, Oregon and Canada.

Read the full article at Reuters

Alaska Trollers Association gets legal victory, awaits updated NMFS king salmon biological opinion

August 19, 2024 — The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has handed a victory to the Alaska Trollers Association (ATA) by reversing a lower court’s ruling that found commercial chinook salmon fishing in Southeast Alaska endangered southern resident killer whales.

In May 2023, at the bequest of the environmental nonprofit Wild Fish Conservancy, a U.S. federal judge ruled the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) must remake its management plan for king salmon, finding NFMS did not adequately analyze the fishery’s impact on the southern resident killer whale population in the U.S. state of Washington.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

9th Circuit Appeals Court lifts lower court ruling ordering closure of Southeast Alaska king salmon troll fishery

August 19, 2024 — A controversial 2023 court ruling ordering the closure of commercial trolling for king salmon, or chinook, in Southeast Alaska has been lifted.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on August 16 partially reversed a lower court ruling stemming from a lawsuit brought by a Washington state conservation group hoping to protect an endangered population of killer whales. The panel of three judges decided that shutting down the fishery is the wrong prescription for the whales’ survival.

When judges Mark Bennett, Anthony Johnstone, and Milan Smith Jr. heard oral arguments for the case on July 18, they expressed sympathy for the Southeast communities that would suffer severe economic consequences from losing the fishery. The judges’ August 16 decision echoes that sentiment, saying that the initial ruling “glossed over significant economic consequences, as well as the downstream social and cultural harms to fishing villages and Alaska Natives.”

The court’s action wasn’t entirely unexpected. Last year the panel ordered a stay of the lower court ruling just eleven days before the start of the July 1 summer troll season, and fishing took place as usual. Nevertheless, the lower court ruling had not been vacated, leaving the future of the fishery in doubt.

Read the full article at KFSK