Saving Seafood

NOAA issues final ruling on Cook Inlet federal fishing waters

May 2, 2024 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a final ruling on a disputed commercial salmon fishing area in Cook Inlet.

The Cook Inlet Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ, starts three miles off shore and is where drift gillnet fishermen catch the majority of fish. In 2020, commercial fishermen sued over management of the fishery. Courts and fishermen went back and forth, and a year ago, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council was tasked with choosing a new management plan. In an unprecedented move, the council took no action, which turned the decision over to NOAA Fisheries.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Alaska lawmakers, residents ask feds to limit how much salmon industrial trawlers catch

May 1, 2024 — U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, Alaskan Natives and family-owned fisheries are looking for a sea change in the fishing rights battle between local fishermen and industrial trawling fishing operations after a federal council recently denied a tribe-approved reduction in chum salmon catches.

In Western Alaska, local communities are experiencing a marked decrease in salmon populations. The reasons for the decline remain a subject of intense debate between industry executives, conservation experts and subsistence communities. Many residents point to the Seattle-based trawler fleets operating in the Bering Sea, which, while fishing for pollock, inadvertently capture large numbers of chum salmon as bycatch.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which oversees the regulations for fish caught in federal waters, recommended an annual bycatch total of 100,000 − well above the 22,000 limit the advisory council sought in a motion April 8. The pollock industry already has a hard cap restricting its take of Chinook salmon

Read the full article at USA Today

Feds pinch Southeast Alaska skippers for illegally transporting crab

May 1, 2024 — Three men are charged in federal court for illegally transporting Alaska crab to sell in Washington. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Alaska says Kyle Potter and Justin Welch caught crab in Southeast Alaska this spring and moved them to Seattle at the direction of Potter’s dad, Corey.

The federal indictment says Corey Potter owns the two fishing vessels involved, which were run by his son, Kyle, and Welch. One of the boats is the 97-foot Arctic Dawn, which has been docked in Petersburg this spring but is registered to a Kodiak residence.

The two captains participated in the Southeast Tanner and golden king crab fisheries in February and March, harvesting over 7,000 pounds. Corey Potter allegedly directed the two captains to transport the crab to Seattle to fetch a higher price. By the time they arrived, a lot of the king crab was already dead and about 4,000 pounds of Tanner had to be thrown out because of bitter crab syndrome. Bitter crab is a common parasite and is sorted out at Alaska ports when fishermen sell their catch. It causes the crab to taste bad but isn’t harmful.

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: The federal government is assuming management of salmon fishing in parts of Alaska’s Cook Inlet

May 1, 2024 — Commercial and recreational salmon fishing in the federal waters of Cook Inlet will resume this summer, but under new management by the federal government, according to a rule made final this week.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, is taking over what had been state management of salmon in inlet waters designated as the federal exclusive economic zone, located more than 3 miles offshore.

The new rule goes into effect May 30.

Until now, the state had managed salmon fisheries in both state and federal waters of the inlet. But the switch in management was ordered by federal courts, as a result of litigation stretching back a decade.

The United Cook Inlet Drift Association, or UCIDA, which is made up of commercial salmon fishermen, sued the federal government in 2013 for failing to develop a salmon harvest management plan for the federal waters of the inlet. The National Marine Fisheries Service, rather than developing a Cook Inlet salmon plan, had deferred to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which since statehood has managed salmon harvests throughout the inlet in both state and federal waters.

The UCIDA lawsuit took issue with state management decisions and argued that the National Marine Fisheries Service was failing in its duties. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2016 ruled in UCIDA’s favor.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Economic report portrays a mixed picture of Alaska’s huge seafood industry

April 30, 2024 — The Alaska seafood industry remains an economic juggernaut, but it is under strain from forces outside of the state’s control, according to a new report commissioned by the state’s seafood marketing agency.

The report from the McKinley Research Group, titled The Economic Value of Alaska’s Seafood Industry, is the latest in a periodic series commissioned by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

The total economic value of the Alaska seafood industry in 2021 and 2022 was $6 billion, slightly more than the $5.6 billion tallied in 2019, the last full year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the new report and the previous version published in 2022.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Feds approve disaster declaration for 2022 Kuskokwim salmon fisheries

April 30, 2024 — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo has approved a federal disaster declaration for the Kuskokwim River because of the failure of multiple salmon fisheries in 2022.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy requested a disaster declaration from federal authorities for 2022 chinook, chum, and coho fisheries on the Kuskokwim after the fisheries experienced a 100 percent loss in commercial revenue and significant economic and cultural losses due to a depressed subsistence fishery.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Silver Bay Seafoods finalizes acquisition of Trident Seafood’s Ketchikan operation

April 28, 2024 — Trident Seafood’s Ketchikan processing plant has officially changed hands. It was announced last month that Sitka-based Silver Bay Seafoods would be acquiring the plant the seafood processing giant, Trident, put up for sale late last year.

The two companies announced the finalized acquisition in a joint statement on April 24th. Trident spokeswoman Alexis Telfer said the move promises “exciting opportunities and growth for the Ketchikan community.”

Read the full article at KRBD

 

Alaska asks judge to toss critical habitat for threatened seals

April 28, 2024 — Alaska’s fight against burdensome seal protections continued Thursday, when attorneys for the state and federal government debated whether the feds properly allocated a vast coastal area under the Endangered Species Act.

In April 2022, the National Marine Fisheries Service — also known as NOAA Fisheries — designated critical habitat off the coast of Alaska for Arctic ringed seals and the Beringia distinct population segment of bearded seals as required by the Endangered Species Act. The move came 10 years after the agency listed both species as “threatened” under the act, as actions to designate critical habitat for the seals were deferred when NOAA’s proposed listings were challenged in court.

NOAA’s legal challenges led to a settlement that allowed the agency to complete a final determination of critical habitat in 2022. But now that NOAA has designated critical habitat — 257,000 square miles for the ringed seal and 273,000 square miles for the bearded seals — Alaska claims too much land was designated and that the species are not even threatened.

“By comparison, the state of Texas contains 268,000 square miles while California contains 163,000 square miles,” Alaska wrote in its 2023 complaint. “All of this critical habitat is occupied by members of the two seal species, which are among the most common marine mammals found in the Arctic region.”

The following was released by Courthouse News Service

3 fishermen accused of illegally transporting Alaska crab to Seattle for better prices

April 25, 2025 — Three fishermen are facing federal charges after being accused of illegally transporting more than 7,000 pounds of crab harvested in Southeast Alaska to Seattle in hopes of getting better prices there.

Instead, federal prosecutors say, much of the haul was wasted upon arrival in Washington state because the crab had either died or were suspected of being diseased.

Corey Potter, Justin Welch and Kyle Potter were indicted last week on charges they violated the Lacey Act. The law makes it a federal crime to break the wildlife laws of any state, tribe or foreign country, and then move or trade the wildlife across U.S. borders.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

In Donlin lawsuit, Murkowski, Sullivan and Peltola come to mining project’s defense

April 25, 2024 — Alaska’s three-member, bipartisan congressional delegation is siding with boosters of the major proposed Donlin mine in an ongoing lawsuit filed by tribal governments that seeks to invalidate the Southwest Alaska project’s federal environmental approvals.

Republican U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, in documents filed in federal court late Tuesday, called the proposed Southwest Alaska mine one of the state’s “most important and necessary economic development projects.”

And they say that blocking the mine’s construction would stop one of the state’s largest Alaska Native-owned corporations, Calista, from “developing its natural resources in defiance of the commitment to economic self-determination” contained in the federal legislation that settled Indigenous land claims.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News