Saving Seafood

Council appointments delayed until ‘later this summer’

July 3, 2024 — Alaskan and West Coast fishery stakeholders are still in the dark as to who will represent them on their regional fishery management councils.

The appointments of 22 new and returning members to six of eight of the nation’s councils were announced on June 28 by the US Dept. of Commerce. The Secretary of Commerce appoints council seats from state governors’ lists of nominees. Each serves three-year terms.

“Appointments to the Pacific and North Pacific fishery management councils will be announced later this summer,” the Commerce press release said.

“My understanding is that the decision on those appointments have not yet been finalized,” said Julie Fair, Public Affairs Officer at NOAA’s Alaska Regional Office. “The appointments for Pacific and North Pacific Fishery Management Councils will be forthcoming later this summer, and we do not anticipate any lapse in voting during their September/October Council meetings,” Fair added. 

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Commission rejects permanent use of dipnets in Cook Inlet setnet fisheries

July 3, 2024 — Despite granting emergency authorization to dipnets for commercial setnet fisheries in Cook Inlet and even indicating “the commission intends to make the emergency regulation permanent” in that decision, the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission on Tuesday, June 25, decided not to approve dipnets as a permanent gear type for the fisheries.

Despite this move, the emergency approval will remain effective through the current fishing season before expiring in September.

The meeting comes as the conclusion to a regulatory process to add dipnets to the fisheries that began in May. That process, too, followed approval of dipnets for Cook Inlet commercial fisheries by the State Board of Fisheries in March. The board said that dipnets could be a more selective gear for harvest of sockeye salmon without killing king salmon.

Both the board and the commission needed to approve dipnets before they could be used in the fisheries, and the emergency approval allowed their use in the first opening of the season last weekend.

Commissioner Glenn Haight, in voting down the permanent proposal, said that the emergency regulation will remain active. If people try that fishery and want to have dipnets added as a permanent gear type, he said they should petition the commission again next year with more time to “take a good, hard look at it.”

Read the full article at the Homer News

ALASKA: Copper River fishing kicks off salmon season marked by fewer buyers and more uncertainty

June 28, 2024 — Justin Johnson surveyed his nets and the large net reel of his bowpicker the F/V White Night at the Cordova Harbor in early June, as he prepared for the next day’s opener.

“So a 20 pound king is a $300 fish or better, so you definitely don’t want to see it splash out of the net,” he said, gesturing to the dip net on hand to snap up the coveted Copper River king salmon.

The Copper River fishing season started on May 15, and marks the first salmon run of the year with the highest prices in the state, especially for kings. The Alaska commercial fishing season has been through an economic tailspin over the last year. Fishing crews grappled with historically low prices, and processors sold and closed down plants over the winter. The Prince William Sound fishery is one of the most productive in the state, but fishing crews are also feeling the pressure.

Back at the Cordova harbor, lifelong commercial fisherman Nick Nebesky took a break from boat engine repairs to share his concerns with market prices.

“It was rough. I’ve spent all winter redoing my finances, accounting everything, to try to get myself back where I need to be,” he said. “And it seems like this year could possibly make that happen. But last year was awful, it was a terrible price. There was good fish – the fish were beautiful, the fish were healthy, and I see them in the grocery stores. Seems like they’re the same price in the grocery stores, but we did not get paid as much.”

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Pacific cod can’t rely on coastal safe havens for protection during marine heat waves, study finds

June 28, 2024 — During recent periods of unusually warm water in the Gulf of Alaska, young Pacific cod in near shore safe havens where they typically spend their adolescence did not experience the protective effects those areas typically provide, a new Oregon State University study found.

Instead, during marine heat waves in 2014–16 and 2019, young cod in these near shore “nurseries” around Kodiak Island in Alaska experienced significant changes in their abundance,  and diet, with researchers estimating that only the largest 15–25% of the island’s cod population survived the summer. Even after the high temperatures subsided, the cod have yet to return to pre-heat wave size and diet.

The findings, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, may have broader implications for marine fish populations worldwide, as marine heat waves become longer and more frequent with , the researchers said.

“These coastal habitats aren’t supporting fish in the same way that they used to as a result of marine heat waves,” said lead author Hillary Thalmann, a graduate student in OSU’s Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences. “That’s a novel finding, because we don’t always look at the nurseries as a place where size-selective mortality could be occurring rapidly.”

Read the full article at phys.org

ALASKA: Many Southeast Alaska salmon runs expected to be fairly good this year

June 27, 2024 — As commercial salmon fishing gets under way in Southeast Alaska, projections for salmon returns are up. Troy Thynes is the regional finfish coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He said as with any forecast, this one is only good until the fish start returning.

“Last year, with that 19 million forecast in the poor category, we ended up with a harvest of around 48 million pink salmon. So needless to say the forecast was a little off,” he said.

The purse seine fishery brings in the largest salmon harvest in the region because it’s primarily a pink and chum salmon fishery. Pinks are the most numerous salmon species in Southeast. The pre-season forecast is for 19.2 million fish. That’s just a little above last year’s harvest estimate of 19 million, but well under half of the actual harvest of 48 million fish.

Thynes said the seine pink salmon harvest probably could have been even higher last year, but market conditions got in the way. Processors dropped pink and chum salmon prices, and then quit buying early, saying the global salmon market was flooded.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: As salmon season kicks off, some Alaska fishermen fear for their futures

June 26, 2024 — On a brilliant spring morning, Buck Laukitis, a longtime fisherman from this Kenai Peninsula town, stood at the city dock watching his catch come ashore.

Crew members aboard Laukitis’ boat, the Oracle, filled bags with dozens of halibut — some of the fatter ones worth $200 or more — which a crane would lift up to the dock. There, processing workers on a small slime line weighed the fish, tossed crushed ice into the gills and slid them into boxes for shipment to Canada.

Harvest, unload, sell, repeat — exactly how the iconic Alaska commercial fishing industry is supposed to work. Until you ask Laukitis about the Oracle’s sister vessel, the Halcyon.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Alaska Native corporations challenge EPA veto authority

June 27, 2024 — Two Alaska Native Village corporations are suing the Biden administration and calling on a district court there to halt EPA’s Clean Water Act authority to stymie projects like the Pebble copper and gold mine in the pristine Bristol Bay.

Iliamna Natives Ltd. and Alaska Peninsula Corp. on Monday sued EPA in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, arguing the agency overstepped its authority when it issued a rare veto under the Clean Water Act last year to block the Pebble mine from being built in a watershed that supports the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

The Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit known for arguing a precedent-setting Clean Water Act case before the Supreme Court last year that is representing the groups, asked the court to find Section 404 of the Clean Water Act to be unconstitutional.

Read the full article at E&E News

ALASKA: Nearly $12M headed to Alaska in latest infusion of fishery-disaster aid

June 25, 2024 — The federal government is sending nearly $12 million to Alaska to address salmon fishery disasters on the Kuskokwim River and in Upper Cook Inlet, United States Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced on June 21.

The aid money is for disasters declared for the 2022 chum salmon failure on the Kuskokwim River and the 2021-2022 sockeye salmon failure that affected Upper Cook Inlet setnet fishers. Aid for the Kuskokwim River disaster totaled $331,920, while aid for the Upper Cook Inlet sockeye disaster totaled nearly $11.5 million, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is a branch of the Commerce Department.

Alaska is not the only state affected by poor salmon returns. Along with the June 21 announcement of aid for those affected by the Alaska salmon disasters, the Commerce Department announced $403,978 in aid for the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s 2021 Puget Sound fall chum and coho salmon fisheries in Washington state.

“Each year we see how climate change continues to have severe impacts on the fisheries and ecosystems that are vital to our economy, and the Commerce Department is working to mitigate these impacts,” Raimondo said in a statement issued by NOAA. “This funding will assist with the recovery of salmon fisheries in communities across Alaska and Puget Sound by bolstering fisheries restoration efforts, minimizing the risk of future disasters and helping build back stronger.”

Read the full article at KYUK

ALASKA: Relief applications open for Alaska’s 2019 and 2020 crab fisheries disasters

June 25, 2024 — In March of 2020 a fishery disaster was declared for the 2019 Norton Sound Red King crab fishery and a year later for the 2019-2020 Bering Sea Tanner crab fishery.

Roughly four years later, affected fishers can now apply to receive a portion of $14.4 million in total federal relief funds for both fisheries.

Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers Executive Director Jamie Goen said the vast majority of that funding — nearly $13 million — will go to the Bering Sea Tanner crab fishery.

“The total for this disaster is around $13 million which can be shared with harvesters, processors, CDQ groups, communities’ research. We’re excited that that application process has started and is going to be open over the summer here,” Goen said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Op-ed: Alaska’s seafood industry must improve its leadership position with better products

June 25, 2024 — Joseph Sabbagh is the president of Calabasas, California, U.S.A.-based Sax Maritime Associates, which has been offering consulting services to those invested or considering investing in the seafood industry since 1985.

I view the Alaska seafood industry as a microcosm of the entire seafood industry in the U.S. However, it has a major advantage with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI). I cannot think of any seafood marketing organization that has done a better job at creating and promoting a seafood brand in the U.S. than ASMI. It has embedded Alaskan seafood as a favorite seafood choice in the minds of American consumers. It has the budget to do that, and unlike too many other industry or state marketing groups, it has spent that money wisely for the most part. Yet, despite its best efforts, being a favorite choice in the minds of consumers has not been enough to open their wallets over the last few years.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource