Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Rough Seas Ahead for Seafood Processing

June 11, 2024 — Not too long ago, Alaska’s salmon fishery was at a high. The record for the largest salmon run was set in 2018, and again in 2021, and again in 2022. It wasn’t just Bristol Bay; across Western Alaska, sockeye and pink salmon populations reached historic levels between 2021 and 2022, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But all good things must come to an end.

The sockeye salmon run in Bristol Bay is forecast to be millions of fish short of the 2023 season, although the run is still supposed to be above the ten-year average, according to the Alaska Department of Fish & Game.

That’s not the only place in the state that will see lower numbers. A weak pink salmon run on Kodiak Island drove OBI Seafoods to close its seafood processing plant in Larsen Bay, according to CEO John Hanrahan. However, the company will keep its plant in the City of Kodiak open.

Read the full article at Alaska Business

ALASKA: Rep. Mary Peltola on proposing 2 trawling bills, depressed salmon runs, and the Donlin mine project

June 11, 2024 — Alaska’s at-large United States House Rep. Mary Peltola spoke with KYUK’s Sage Smiley on morning show “Coffee at KYUK” about two bills she recently proposed meant to regulate the trawl industry and reduce bycatch. She also talked about what she’s hearing about fisheries on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and her recent amicus brief in support of the Donlin Gold mine development.

Read a rough transcript of the conversation below, which has been lightly edited for clarity and flow:

KYUK (Sage Smiley): Thank you so much for joining me for “Coffee at KYUK,” Rep. Peltola.

Rep. Mary Peltola: Thank you for having me Sage. It’s good to be back on KYUK.

KYUK: So we’re here today, first and foremost, to talk about the two fisheries bills that you recently proposed in the U.S. House. Can you tell us about those bills and what they’re meant to do?

Peltola: Yes, I have two bills that that we have submitted. Honestly, I don’t expect them to have much traction this Congress. The 118th Congress has not been productive. I think we were record-breaking in this very limited number of bills passed last session. And I think we’re on track to be another kind of record-setting year for a limited number of bills passing, but I think it’s important that I introduced these bills to get as much support as I can now and really teeing it up for the 119th Congress.

The first bill is called the Bottom Trawl Clarity Act. And what this bill does is it limits bottom trawling and vulnerable ocean by first mandating that each of the fisheries management councils, there’s eight of them across the U.S., including the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, which oversees Alaskan waters. So it mandates at each of these councils that permits the use of any of the bottom trawl gear, it requires them to define the term “substantial” versus the term “limited bottom contact.” I think that words have a lot of meaning, and defining words is a very important step in in fisheries management. The second thing the Bottom Trawl Clarity Act does is it requires a designation of bottom trawl zones, and it limits areas where gear can scrape the sea floor and where that’s allowed.

The second piece of legislation is called the Bycatch Reduction and Mitigation Act. And this really is helping Alaskan fishermen who have been working for years now to reduce bycatch. And the two things it does is it authorizes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Bycatch Reduction and Engineering program; it appropriates $10 million to that program for five years. Right now, that program has been funded at about $3 million a year, and it just is not putting in the kind of resources that fishermen have really needed to curb bycatch. It also establishes the Bycatch Mitigation Assistance Funds, which will be administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and used to help fishermen and fishing vessels purchase new gear or technology to reduce bycatch, such as camera systems and lights, and salmon excluders. And it also allows for philanthropists to donate to that Bycatch Mitigation Assistance Fund. I think there are a lot of wealthy donors who are interested in ocean health who want to help. And so this is a way to give wealthy donors a chance to help on bycatch as well. And these have both been very, very well received. I do want to note that just the fact that I was elected to Congress almost two years ago really had industry sit up and take notice, and on their own they have reduced chum bycatch by 50%. And this is really encouraging to me, because it shows that there is the will, on behalf of a number of the harvesters, to reduce their bycatch, and it shows that it can be done and that we can always be doing better.

Read the full transcipt at KYUK

ALASKA: Yukon River communities continue to balance conservation and survival in fifth year of near total salmon fishing closures

June 10, 2024 — As the 2024 Yukon River salmon season kicks off, there will once again be little to no opportunity for communities along the Western Alaska river to harvest any actual salmon.

One small exception is summer chum. If the run hits half a million fish, residents of the lower reaches of the Yukon may have the chance to take to the river with dipnets and other non-traditional gear for a brief window like they did in 2023.

But as Holly Carroll, the Yukon River subsistence fishery manager for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service noted in April, these types of opportunities may not be worth the effort for many along the river.

“Who’s going to spend nine bucks a gallon to go out fishing with a dipnet?” Carroll asked. “It might take them four or five hours to get seven chums. Whereas if they had been given their six-inch gillnet, they put it out for a minute, minute and a half, and they’re done. They’ll have 100. Then they’ll spend the next couple of days cutting and smoking, and they’re done for the season.”

While communities cannot count on these types of heavily restricted opportunities to meet their subsistence needs in 2024, one thing they can count on is a total closure of chinook salmon fishing for the next seven years. Carroll said that the recently signed Alaska-Canada agreement was overdue.

“For me as the federal manager, I see this as the bold step that needed to be taken. We’re just not seeing the returns off those runs that we would have liked. I really felt that it was time,” Carroll said. “I also think we really needed to listen to our tribal stakeholders who have been telling us for years that this annual approach is not a great way to manage.”

Read the full article at KYUK

NOAA finds Alaska Chinook salmon may need to be ESA-listed

June 10, 2024 — A preliminary review by NOAA Fisheries found that Alaska Chinook salmon may need to be listed as threatened or endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA).

“This is an encouraging first step in what we hope will be a listing of Southeast Alaska Chinook under the Endangered Species Act,” Wild Fish Conservancy Senior Ecologist Nick Gayeski said. “Listing should provide the many at-risk Chinook populations in this region stronger protection from harm in the near term and initiate the development of scientifically credible recovery plans.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Commercial drift fishing outlook published by Fish and Game ahead of opening

June 6, 2024 — Local commercial drift gillnet fisheries open later this month, and an outlook for the fishery published by the State Department of Fish and Game on Monday says around 5.7 million sockeye are expected to return to Upper Cook Inlet, with 3.7 million of those fish available for harvest across all user groups.

The document says that drift gillnet vessels cannot participate in both state fisheries and federal fisheries on the same day, specifically citing the Cook Inlet exclusive economic zone, which is newly under federal management this year. This year, commercial fisheries are expected to open June 20 by regulation or June 19 by emergency order.

Drift gillnet openings will be Monday and Thursday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and the recently passed Kenai River Late-Run King Salmon Stock of Concern Management Plan closes all drift gillnet fishing within 2 miles of the Kenai Peninsula shoreline.

Read the full article at Homer News

ALASKA: Report: Half of vessels in federally managed Alaska fisheries had observer coverage in 2023

June 5, 2024 — In fishing vessels harvesting seafood from federal waters off Alaska, key information about performance and rule compliance comes from employees who observe the catches or from electronic equipment that monitors the amount and types of marine life that are brought aboard.

Because of concerns about salmon bycatch and the fishery-related deaths of marine mammals, there have been calls to increase observer coverage in the federally managed fisheries off Alaska.

About half the 463 vessels engaged in those federally managed fisheries last year had either human observers or electronic monitoring systems on board, said an annual report presented to fishery managers meeting this week in Kodiak. About 44% of the vessel trips were covered by such observations, the report said. Those percentages were a bit higher than those recorded in 2022, when about 44% of vessels had human observers or electronic monitoring, and about 40% of trips were covered.

The 2023 annual report for the North Pacific Observer Program was presented on Monday to the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council and on Tuesday to the council’s Advisory Panel. It is also to be presented in the coming days to the full council.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Yukon River Fishery Update says chum salmon will be available for harvest

June 5, 2024 –No chinooks, but chum salmon will be available for subsistence harvest in the Yukon River this year.

Each year the salmon runs are meant to bring much needed food for folks that rely on subsistence fishing along the Yukon River. These runs have struggled to do just that in recent years as the chinook salmon runs have been well below average and smaller than the minimum escapement goals for the Yukon River Fishery. Such being the case, there will be no chinook salmon harvest once more.

There is work underway to better understand the decreasing runs.

Read the full article at Newscenter Fairbanks

Commercial fishing groups bring new legal action over Cook Inlet’s federal waters

June 5, 2025 —  Two commercial fishing advocacy groups based on the Kenai Peninsula are again taking the federal government to court over its proposed management strategy for fishing in Cook Inlet’s federal waters.

The United Cook Inlet Drift Association and the Cook Inlet Fishermen’s Fund filed a complaint Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for Alaska. They allege that an amendment approved in April to the fishery plan for the inlet’s federal waters defers the federal government’s management responsibilities, in violation of the federal Magnuson-Stevens Act.

The affected waters, called the Exclusive Economic Zone, run from Kalgin Island south to about Anchor Point.

Read the full article at KDLL