Saving Seafood

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

ALASKA: Peter Pan Seafoods halts operations at processing plants

April 24, 2024 — Officials at Peter Pan Seafoods in Anchorage have reached an agreement with Silver Bay Seafoods to operate Peter Pan’s facilities in Port Moller and Dillingham this summer, but have

announced no plans for the future of its historic processing facilities at King Cove.

Peter Pan had announced earlier that the processing plant at King Cove would not be open for

the groundfish A season, leaving King Cove residents hoping that there would be processing for the B season and other fisheries as well.

Then on April 4, Peter Pan posted a notice on Facebook saying that the company was saddened to share that Peter Pan would be halting operations at its processing plants, leading to discontinuation of both summer and winter production cycles for the foreseeable future.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Problems mount for Alaska’s salmon sector

April 23, 2024 — Processors are going out of business, fishermen are scrambling to upgrade their onboard freezing equipment to meet higher standards, and politicians are at loggerheads regarding a proposed aid package.

This is the current situation of the salmon industry in the U.S. state of Alaska, on the cusp of the 2024 season.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Alaska appeals Kuskokwim River fisheries lawsuit that pitted AFN against state officials

April 23, 2024 — The state of Alaska is appealing its defeat in a lawsuit brought by the federal government over control of salmon fisheries on the Kuskokwim River in Southwest Alaska.

In a notice published Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for Alaska, the Alaska Department of Law said it was appealing Judge Sharon Gleason’s decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Read the full article at KYUK

Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan Talks ‘Fish’ to Local Fishermen

April 23, 2024 — When you think of “free fish,” you’re likely to remember those generous fishermen who dropped a fresh silver salmon on your doorstep or loaded your freezer with offerings of halibut, cod and crab.

But when Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) uses the term, it’s in the context of “Communist fish,” which he links to Russia (the former Soviet Union) and China.

Appearing at two ComFish events last weekend, Sullivan touted some of the work he and his colleagues have been doing in Washington, D.C., including the passage of legislation that placed an embargo on Russian fish products coming into this country.

“It took too damn long, but we finally got it done,” he said, to applause.

To no avail, Sullivan and his colleagues tried to get the Obama and Trump administrations to put an embargo on imported Russian fish.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the Biden administration was putting together “a big sanctions package, I went to the White House and said, ‘Now is the time to fix this to a level playing field.’ To their credit they did it. It took a war to fix this,” Sullivan said.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

ALASKA: Alaska Senate proposes $7.5M aid package for struggling fish processors

April 22, 2024 — The Alaska Senate has proposed a new aid package for the state’s fish processing companies — some of which have been teetering among a crash in prices that’s caused an industry-wide crisis.

The Senate, in its capital budget passed last week, included the $7.5 million grant to a nonprofit organization called SeaShare. Most of the cash would go toward buying out what SeaShare calls an “oversupply” of seafood from last year’s harvest, which it says is costing processing companies money to store in freezers.

The program would add to more than $100 million in salmon and Alaska pollock purchases — more than 1,500 truck loads — announced earlier this year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

SeaShare would use the state money to support smaller Alaska processingcompanies that couldn’t match the scale of the federal purchases, said Hannah Lindoff, the organization’s executive director.

The seafood purchases would then be donated to Alaska food programs and food banks, she said. A smaller share of the grant would also pay for the purchase of new freezers in communities around the state that could store more fish in the future.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: NOAA denies emergency petition to zero out Alaska pollock fishery’s permitted king salmon bycatch

April 22, 2024 — NOAA Fisheries has denied a request for emergency action to institute a cap of zero on Chinook salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery, which would have closed the fishery for the first half of 2024.

Group’s representing Alaska’s commercial and recreational salmon fisheries and Native Alaskan groups have clashed with the Alaska pollock sector over the cause of smaller Chinook salmon runs and actions that can be taken to reverse the decline.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: State anticipates status quo for 2024 Kuskokwim River salmon runs

April 20, 2024 — With another heavily restricted salmon fishing season just around the corner on the Kuskokwim River, state fisheries managers are not anticipating any drastic changes in terms of run strength from what was seen last year.

According to Chuck Brazil, a regional fisheries management coordinator with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game who oversees the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim (AYK) region, the forecast for chinook (king) salmon is in line with returns over the past decade.

“We’re looking at a near-recent average, which is about 120,000 to 140,000 fish,” Brazil said. “I would expect this upcoming season to look very similar to last season with limited openings, maybe one opening a week throughout the course of this chinook salmon season.”

The federal government, rather than the state, currently has the final say regarding when salmon fishing is allowed on the lower Kuskokwim River. This was confirmed by a recent U.S. District Court ruling in a case which calls into question management of the 180-mile portion of the river that flows through the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge.

Read the full article at KYUK

From crew to captain, 21 years young

April 20, 2024 — When you’re 21, you know everything. When you’re 21 and a first-year captain of an Alaskan salmon seiner, you know even more. I was a 21-year-old captain once, and it took me all of 21 minutes to realize that I, in fact, did not know everything…

After a decade spent seining as a crewmember in perpetually progressing positions aboard my father’s high-producing salmon boat based out of Port Lions, Alaska (a picturesque pacific paradise positioned where the spruce meets the sea) in the Kodiak Island statistical salmon district, I was positive I was ready to fulfill my destiny as a salty sea-hardened highliner as the impending June 9th salmon season opener crept ever closer.

Despite my newfound status of skipper, my green as-grass crew, and my complete inability to grow a beard, morale was high. At the same time, we buttoned up boat work, and I did my downright damnedest to inspire and excite my crew about the upcoming opener with pre-season inspirational speeches during our nightly “team meetings” over barley pops and BBQ.

If my guys had any inkling, I commandeered most of my quotes from “Lord of the Rings” and “Rudy,” they kept it to themselves as we spent our last night in port preparing my newly purchased “pocket seiner” for our first trip by loading the last of the gourmet grub disguised as canned chili, a cup of noodles and store brand cereal aboard the boat in whatever nooks and crannies we could find. The borderline claustrophobic confines of the cabin were so short on space that Larry, my skiff-man, said it was “less cabin & more coffin.”

Somehow, no one seemed to mind that we’d eat like inmates, sleep like sardines, and likely smell like them for the next three months. We were boys, and to us, the ocean was just another adventure that we hoped would soon make us men.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman