Saving Seafood

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

ALASKA: Much of Juneau’s king salmon fishery will close this summer, because of a 2020 landslide

June 24, 2024 — Sport fishermen in Juneau may be disappointed come Monday, because king salmon will largely be off limits this summer. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has announced an emergency closure for most near-shore fishing areas around Juneau.

Douglas Island Pink and Chum, or DIPAC’s executive director Katie Harms said hatchery returns are expected to be quite low this year. That’s because most of the chinook that were supposed to come back were killed when a landslide severed the hatchery’s supply of freshwater from Salmon Creek during an atmospheric river in December 2020 that caused flooding and mudslides across the city.

“We had to prematurely release all those chinook salmon that were in raceways at the time,” Harms said. “They entered saltwater before they were biologically able to process saltwater and likely, mostly died.”

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: Federal case challenging Donlin mine’s environmental impact statement heads to court

June 24, 2024 — The environmental review process for proposed mining projects is a lengthy one. But Bethel’s Orutsararmiut Native Council and five other tribes from the region are suing the United States Army Corps of Engineers, saying the federal agency failed to consider important information in its review of the Donlin Gold mine project.

The suit focuses on three main points.

The first, the tribes assert, is that the Army Corps didn’t model a large enough potential spill from the tailings pond that would hold the mine’s waste material. Earthjustice attorney Maile Tavepholjalern represents the six tribes in the case.

“The Army Corps looked at a tailings spill of just 0.5% of the dam capacity,” Tavepholjalern said. “That’s even though larger tailings spills have happened, including during the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process for this mine – that was when Mount Polley’s dam failed, spilling out more than 30% of its contents.”

Second, the tribes allege the Army Corps of Engineers didn’t look closely enough at the health impacts of a massive mine in the region. They point to an unreleased state report, which outlined the mine’s potential positive and negative impacts including diet and food security, marine traffic, and local economies.

The third point of contention is the impact of Donlin’s barging plan on the Kuskokwim, which could more than double the number of barges on the river during the spring and summer. The tribes argue that the Army Corps didn’t properly consider or mitigate the impact of increased barging on Kuskokwim rainbow smelt – an important subsistence food for communities up and down the river.

“Despite knowing about these impacts, the Army Corps of Engineers relied on ineffective measures to try to prevent those impacts,” Tavepholjalern said. The environmental review takes into account a barge communication plan with subsistence users, a monitoring program for rainbow smelt, and subcommittees to help coordinate communication.

Read the full article at KYUK

New Evidence of Seasonal and Temperature-Driven Movement of Alaska Pollock across the U.S.-Russia Maritime Boundary

June 22, 2024 — Scientists placed specially designed moorings, equipped with sonar, on the seafloor to acoustically monitor pollock abundance and movements between U.S. and Russian waters. They found that a substantial amount of pollock travel between the two exclusive economic zones (EEZs) seasonally.

The study was conducted from summer 2019 to summer 2020. During this time, pollock moved southeast over the maritime boundary in winter as the sea ice formed. They were largely absent in late spring when ocean temperatures were near freezing and the sea ice was still present. They subsequently migrated northwest in late spring and early summer as waters warmed. The extent of the movement between EEZs) appears to be partially driven by water temperature.

When the moorings were deployed in summer 2019 the area was unusually warm. Following the winter migration into U.S. waters, conditions were cooler in summer 2020. Over the year of observations, 2.3 times more pollock moved into the U.S. EEZ in fall and winter then exited during the subsequent spring and summer. Scientists believe the cooler conditions in 2020 led to fewer pollock moving into Russian waters than had the previous year.

“There are some important implications for pollock management,” said Robert Levine, physical scientist and lead author on a new paper published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science. “Our research suggests that in years when water temperatures are warmer than average, the proportion of fish moving across the boundary will be greater.”

Scientists suspect that continued warming in the eastern Bering Sea will increase the proportion of the pollock stock found in Russian waters. Currently, pollock support the top U.S. commercial fishery, which harvests more than 1 million metric tons annually.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries 

ALASKA: Invasive European green crabs are expanding their territory in Southeast Alaska

June 19, 2024 — Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on Friday that shells of the invasive European green crab were spotted along the shores of Bostwick Inlet on Gravina Island near Ketchikan.

European green crabs have the potential to wreak havoc on commercial and subsistence fisheries in Alaska — the crabs are highly competitive and very hungry. They eat clams, oysters, scallops, other crabs and are known to rip up seagrass in their search for food. Fish and Game said that as a result, they can displace local crab populations like the Dungeness crabs in Bostwick Inlet. They can also decimate eelgrass and saltmarsh habitats, disrupt ecosystem balance, and cheapen overall intertidal biodiversity.

According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, they have even been reported in British Columbia eating juvenile salmon. The International Union for Conservation and Nature ranks them as one of the top 100 worst invasive species in the world.

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: An influx of chum salmon in the Canadian Arctic could be the same fish missing from Western Alaska

June 17, 2024 — Johnnie Storr grew up fishing with his dad in the hamlet of Aklavik, a small town on the Mackenzie River delta in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Depending on the season, they looked for Arctic char, Dolly Varden or whitefish.

“We fished for char in the fall time,” Storr said. “Soon as there was enough ice we walked out and set nets for whitefish.”

Storr is Inuvialuit and Gwich’in, and heads the local Hunters and Trappers Committee, which helps manage Indigenous hunting rights in the region. He said elders say chum salmon have always lived in small numbers in the Mackenzie River, but in the last decade there has been a clear uptick.

“I think it was 2019 where we have seen a big jump,” he said. “I think we had at least 300 salmon brought into the Hunters and Trappers Committee.”

In recent years, all five salmon species have shown up in rivers from northeast Alaska to Nunavut, in Canada’s eastern Arctic. Chum salmon, one of the most cold-tolerant salmon species, are the most commonly found.

Storr said some people eat them, but personally he doesn’t prefer salmon.

“We were releasing them just because we really prefer char around here,” he said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media