October 27, 2022 — Last week, Representative Mary Sattler Peltola sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro asking them to consider appropriating disaster relief funding for those impacted by this year’s total shut down of crab harvests.
Ketchikan’s tribe asks federal board to expand subsistence hunting and fishing opportunities
October 26, 2022 — Access to traditional foods has long been a priority for Ketchikan’s federally recognized tribe. But for decades, Ketchikan residents have been barred from taking part in federal subsistence hunts and fisheries.
Now, Ketchikan Indian Community is pushing to change that. It hinges on one big question: is Ketchikan a rural community?
Trixie Bennett, the president of Ketchikan’s tribe, said the push to designate Ketchikan as a rural community is a major step toward the tribe’s goal of food sovereignty.
“Our food is our way of life,” Bennett said. “Our food is the medicine, our culture is the medicine.”
If Ketchikan were classified as rural, all residents — Native and non-Native — would be federally qualified subsistence hunters. That means they’d be able to hunt and fish on federal lands and harvest subsistence species, like ooligan from the Unuk River. And wildlife officials would be required to prioritize the needs of Ketchikan’s subsistence users over commercial and sport fishermen.
“We want this better access to our healthier foods around here and not just for us, but for everyone on the island,” Bennett said.
ALASKA: Governor requests fishery disaster determination for snow, red king crab
October 26, 2022 — Gov. Mike Dunleavy has requested that the United States Department of Commerce expedite a disaster declaration for the 2022-2023 Bristol Bay red king crab and Bering Sea snow crab fisheries.
Dunleavy asked via a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo for the declaration in accordance with Section 312(a) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and Section 308(b) of the Interjurisdictional Fisheries Act. Dunleavy also asked Raimondo to expedite a disaster determination for the 2021-2022 Bristol Bay red king crab fishery season.
Alaska Gov. Dunleavy urges EPA to stop veto of Pebble mine
October 26, 2022 — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to put the brakes on its effort to stop the giant Pebble copper and gold project.
In May, the federal agency proposed halting the proposed mine under a provision of the Clean Water Act it has used sparingly. It says the mine would be among the world’s largest open-pit copper mines and threatens the Bristol Bay region’s valuable wild salmon fishery and people who rely on it.
The agency is expected to decide by Dec. 2 whether it will move ahead with its proposal.
In his Sept. 6, three-page letter to Casey Sixkiller, administrator of the EPA region that includes Alaska, Dunleavy said the proposed veto of the project is “deeply concerning” and would undermine Alaska’s legal decision-making authority in resource development.
The letter, accompanied by the state’s 53-page comment to the agency, was obtained through a routine records request by the Daily News for the governor’s monthly correspondence.
Dunleavy said the EPA proposal, if finalized, would make preemptive decisions about which resources Alaska can develop and how it can develop them. It chooses fisheries over mining, while disregarding Alaska’s ability to protect its fishery resources, the governor said in the letter.
“Whether, and how, Alaska develops Bristol Bay’s mineral resources or its fishery resources — or both, responsibly — is Alaska’s decision to make, considering the input of all stakeholders and working through the standard permitting process,” Dunleavy said in the letter. “EPA would instead choke off further discussion, usurping for itself this important decision affecting so many Alaskans.”
ALASKA: AFN delegates push for measures to decrease salmon bycatch
October 26, 2o22 — Two resolutions brought before the Alaska Federation of Natives during this year’s annual convention called for efforts to reduce salmon bycatch for fish that return to the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers. Debate over both resolutions was contentious and revealed a regional rift among tribes.
One resolution calls on Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game to support measures that decrease salmon bycatch by commercial trawlers in a region along the Aleutian Island chain known as Area M. A second resolution requests the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council address bycatch amounts in the same region.
“I really have to take a step back here and talk about how sad I am that we have to fight so hard here to be heard to try to protect our salmon,” said Brian Ridley. Ridley is the chairman of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, an Interior region tribal organization that brought both resolutions to the floor of this year’s annual Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage.
“I know this is a controversial issue,” Ridley told a crowd of hundreds, after the resolutions were introduced on the floor Saturday. “There’s a lot of people that didn’t want to have this discussion here, but if we don’t have it here and we don’t get the support of AFN, the problem is, we’re gonna be out of the fish on the Yukon and Kuskokwim and we’re gonna be talking endangered species.”
Fisheries disaster declaration sought in Bering Sea crab fishery
October 25, 2022 — With a virtually complete shutdown of Bering Sea crab fishing at hand, fishermen, and Alaska communities are seeking an expedited fishery disaster declaration from the federal government.
The emergency is felt acutely on St. Paul Island, where the largely Aleut community of about 400 live on an economy dependent on the now-closing snow crab fishery.
“We’re predicting a 90 percent loss from two years ago and 85 percent of revenue from last year, said Ray Melovidov, chief operating officer of the Central Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association based in St. Paul.
Other revenue streams come in from pollock and cod fishing, but crabbing carries the freight for St. Paul. The money pays for fully funded preschool programs, home heating aid for residents, and community-wide broadband internet access among others said Melovidov, who serves on the city council.
Revenue from the big boats help maintain a local halibut fleet of 15 boats and about 80 crewmembers, a subsidy to buy their catch at prices competitive with other ports, said Melovidov.
Billions of crabs vanished, and scientists have a good clue why
October 25, 2022 — While counting snow crabs at sea in 2021, fisheries biologist Erin Fedewa saw that something was deeply amiss.
Fedewa, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist, spends three or four months with a team that collects crabs from 376 stations in Alaska’s Bering Sea each year. Some of these areas always teem with crabs. Scientists count thousands. But in 2021, thousands dwindled to hundreds.
“The survey last year was a huge red flag for me,” she told Mashable.
The harbingers proved right. The population of snow crabs has crashed after hitting record highs somewhat recently, in 2018. Numbers have fallen so low, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, for the first time, canceled the snow crab fishing season this year. The NOAA abundance surveys found the total snow crab population in the eastern Bering Sea dropped from an estimated 11.7 billion in 2018 down to 1.9 billion in 2022 (these surveys are a critical piece, but not the only piece, that NOAA uses to determine long-term population trends). That’s a drop of well over 80 percent.
The agency thinks a dramatic episode wiped out billions of the creatures.
“As biologists, all we can point to is some sort of large-scale mortality event,” Fedewa said.
And it’s an episode NOAA believes was ultimately stoked by exceptionally warm ocean waters in the Arctic. In other words, it could be a consequence of climate change, which can make environmental impacts significantly more extreme.
Disappearance of Alaska snow crabs means some businesses might disappear, too
October 25, 2022 — Some seven billion snow crabs have disappeared from the waters around Alaska. Experts are still investigating the cause, but rapid warming in the Bering Sea is a likely factor.
Alaska has canceled the snow crab harvesting season for the first time ever, and commercial crabbers and the economies that depend on the species stand to lose millions.
Just a few years ago, Alaska’s snow crab population was booming. Jamie Goen with the industry group Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers said businesses were making big investments.
‘Deadliest Catch’: Producer Says Fishery Closure In Bering Sea Won’t Impact 19th Season
October 20, 2022 — The show is expected to go on for Discovery’s Deadliest Catch, despite the decision by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game last week to cancel the winter snow and red king crab seasons due to dwindling populations.
Warming waters ‘key culprit’ in Alaska crab mass die-off
October 20, 2022 — Climate change is a prime suspect in a mass die-off of Alaska’s snow crabs, experts say, after the state took the unprecedented step of canceling their harvest this season to save the species.
According to an annual survey of the Bering Sea floor carried out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, estimates for the crustaceans’ total numbers fell to about 1.9 billion in 2022, down from 11.7 billion in 2018, or a reduction of about 84 percent.
For the first time ever, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the Bering Sea snow crab season will remain closed for 2022-23, saying in a statement efforts must turn to “conservation and rebuilding given the condition of the stock.”
The species is also found in the more northward Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, but they do not grow to fishable sizes there.
Erin Fedewa, a marine biologist with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, told AFP the shocking numbers seen today were the result of heatwaves in 2018 and 2019.
The “cold water habitat that they need was virtually absent, which suggests that temperature is really the key culprit in this population decline,” she said.
Historically an abundant resource in the Bering Sea, their loss is considered a bellwether of ecological disruption.
Read the full article at PHYS.org
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