Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska aquaculture is growing quickly, but faces roadblocks

March 20, 2024 — Aquaculture is a new, but rapidly growing industry in Alaska. That’s according to a recent report from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) on the state of Alaska’s water-based farming.

James Currie is an Alaska Sea Grant fellow who authored the February report. He said it’s meant to provide an approachable overview for curious non-experts.

“So there have been steady increases over preceding years in our production of oysters and seaweed,” Currie said. “And it’s a really exciting time for the aquaculture industry overall, just in terms of we’re receiving more applications on average year by year.”

Read the full article at KRBD

ALASKA: Amid salmon crash, Alaska’s Yukon River residents say a new pact with Canada leaves them behind

March 19, 2024 — This reporting was supported by a Carnegie Foundation Fellowship.

Writers Olivia Ebertz and Bathsheba Demuth boated more than 1,000 miles up and down the Yukon River last summer, hearing the stories and perspective of residents and Tribal leaders along the way.

ALONG THE YUKON RIVER — The midsummer air is hot after a long day of sun and stillness in the middle river village of Grayling, and the cutbanks seem to slouch closer toward the Yukon River below. Rachel Freireich says her mother moved here permanently from the Athabaskan village of Holikachuk, up a nearby tributary, in the 1960s to be closer to schools and salmon eddies.

“They came over with steamboats every summer to fish the salmon,” said Freireich, a resident of Grayling her entire 43 years.

In summers while she was growing up, Freireich says the village was a ghost town.

“The whole community would become kind of abandoned, because everybody would bring their whole families out and they went to the fish camp. Everybody was busy,” she said.

But in the summer of 2023, fish camps are empty. The few boats in the lower river are mostly in a search party looking for a missing person. From the mouth of the Yukon at the Bering Sea to the river’s headwaters in Canada, no one is fishing — the consequence of the second-lowest king salmon run on record. The worst was just a year prior, a grim milestone in the wake of decades of ebbing runs that have robbed Indigenous residents of both traditions and nourishment.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Controversial mine project sues over EPA veto

March 18, 2024 — In a statement Friday, the Pebble Partnership alleged the EPA’s veto was issued before the completion of the permitting process.

Rather than waiting for the Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) permitting process to conclude, the EPA made its decision under a provision of the Clean Water Act that allows it to restrict mining activity in the Bristol Bay watershed.

The bay contains the world’s single largest sockeye salmon fishery.

Read the full article at The Hill

ALASKA: Trident Seafoods Confirms Sale of Petersburg Facilities To E.C. Phillips & Son

March 18, 2024 — A second buyer of one of Trident Seafoods’ four plants for sale has been named. The seafood giant announced Friday that it has reached an agreement to sell its processing plant, bunkhouse, galley and two housing units in Petersburg, Alaska, to E.C. Phillips & Son Inc.

E.C. Phillips & Son currently operates year-round out of Ketchikan and Craig, Alaska. Trident’s sale of their Petersburg facilities to E.C. Phillips & Son is expected to close in April.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

ALASKA: Alaska processors make their moves after market tumult

March 14, 2024 — Big changes are afoot in Alaska’s seafood processing sector.

In December 2023, Trident Seafoods announced it planned to sell its Alaskan assets in Kodiak, Ketchikan, Petersburg, and False Pass, as well as its South Naknek cannery and its support facilities in Chignik. Trident Seafoods CEO Joe Bundrant said the moves were being made to “position the company to fund the reinvestments necessary to continue to lead in the Alaska seafood industry.”

The announcement came just a few months after Trident – a vertically integrated seafood harvesting and processing company whose motto is “Anchored in Alaska” – announced it was delaying the development and construction of a processing plant in Unalaska, Alaska, that was supposed to replace an aging plant in Akutan, citing an overall collapse of the seafood market as the reason for the delay.

Bundrant said Trident’s strategy “reflects the realities facing U.S. seafood producers in global markets.”

“Across many species, the combination of declining demand, excess supply, and foreign competition has driven prices down, squeezed margins, and displaced U.S. producers from markets that they developed over decades,” he said. “In this global business environment, Trident is betting that it can remain competitive by attracting customers who value the sustainability, quality, and integrity of wild Alaska seafood while also aggressively reducing costs and improving productivity.”

Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute Food Aid Program and Development Director Bruce Schactler said Trident’s announcement heralded a crisis “years in the making.” He called Trident’s announcement “a wake-up call” for the state.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Silver Bay Seafoods buying Trident Seafoods’ Ketchikan processing plant

March 14, 2024 — Trident Seafoods is selling its processing facility in Ketchikan, Alaska, U.S.A. to Silver Bay Seafoods.

Trident and Silver Bay are two of Alaska’s largest seafood processors. Trident announced in December 2023 it was aiming to sell its Ketchikan plant, along with its facilities in Kodiak, Petersburg, False Pass, as well as its support facilities in Chignik. In a 8 March update, Trident said it was close to finalizing sales of its Ketchikan, False Pass, and Petersburg plants.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: NOAA and the State of Alaska to Hold AOA Spatial Planning Workshop

March 14, 2024 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries, the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, and the State of Alaska are hosting a day-and-a-half Aquaculture Opportunity Area (AOA) Spatial Planning Workshop March 26 and 27, 2024, at Centennial Hall in Juneau, Alaska.

The purpose of the workshop is to discuss the ongoing AOA identification process in Alaska state waters.

NOAA provides science-based tools and strategies to help communities consider how and where to sustainably develop aquaculture that complements wild-caught fisheries, working waterfronts, and resilient communities. NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science and National Marine Fisheries Service are jointly convening this workshop.

NOAA, working in collaboration with the State of Alaska over the coming years, will support the sustainable development of invertebrate (shellfish, sea cucumbers) and seaweed farming in state waters.

Please Join Us To:

  • Learn more about NOAA’s spatial planning approach and discuss available spatial data within Alaska study areas
  • Document data gaps and help identify points of contact for additional data
  • Increase transparency, local capacity, and resources to support seaweed and invertebrate mariculture planning
  • Further develop an engaged community to inform NOAA’s AOA identification process in Alaska state waters

Travel Needs: We have limited travel funds to assist with airfare, accommodations, and incidentals. Please contact Teresa Fairchild (TFairchild@psmfc.org) for travel assistance. 

All Alaska seafood industry members, charter and sport fishermen and hunters, outdoor enthusiasts, Tribal organizations, coastal community members, managers, scientists and others who might be interested are welcome to join. This is an opportunity to share information and discuss how you can help inform future planning efforts.

ALASKA: BOF declines to lower hatchery production levels

March 13, 2024 — A proposal to lower hatchery production to its 2000 level went down in defeat at the Alaska Board of Fisheries meeting on Monday, March 4 in a 1-6 vote, after the majority of the board concluded that hatchery raised salmon were not causing undue harm to wild stocks.

The decision came after extensive testimony, mostly from fishing industry activists opposed to Proposal 43, which was offered by the Fairbanks Advisory Committee to the Board of Fisheries.

The board also took testimony at its Lower Cook Inlet meeting in Homer Nov. 26 through Dec. 1, but postponed any action until its Upper Cook Inlet meeting, from Feb. 23 through March 5 in Anchorage.

Stan Zuray, of Tanana, the only board member to vote for the proposal, said the effects of the state producing commercial opportunity for hatchery fisheries has made for great opportunity for commercial fisheries, while at the same time destroying significant subsistence and commercial economy and opportunities for village communities and processors in places like the Yukon River drainage. What is needed, said Zuray, is an open, continuing, independent review of research into the impact of hatchery salmon on wild stocks.

“Since my first hatchery meeting here in Anchorage in 2000, there has been a systematic unwillingness to do that,” he said.

Zuray has served for many years as chair of his local ADF&G advisory committee and as secretary of the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Regional council opposes further regulations in Bristol Bay savings area

March 12, 2024 — At their February meeting, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council decided not to move forward with the request to close the Bristol Bay red king crab 4000-square nautical mile saving area to all commercial fishing. The council investigated the effectiveness of closing this eastern Bering Sea section to commercial trawl, pot, and longline fishing. However, they advised that they will not tighten regulations in this area.

The savings box was established in 1996 as a haven for red king crabs. However, other fishing, such as midwater/ pelagic trawlers, pot fishing, and longlining, is allowed in the area. According to the AFDG Status of King Crab Stocks, the area is closed to bottom trawling. The year after the saving box was established, the mature male red king crab stock increased from 8.5 million to 10.5 million.

According to KUCB, at this meeting, the Council also evaluated a pot gear closure of a large section in the eastern portion of Bristol Bay, known as Area 512, to address drops in the Bristol Bay red king crab stock. Trawling has also previously been prohibited in that area.

Read the full article at The National Fisherman

ALASKA: Leading Alaska legislators propose task force to help rescue a seafood industry ‘in a tailspin’

March 11, 2024 — Russian fish flooding global markets and other economic forces beyond the state’s border have created dire conditions for Alaska’s seafood industry.

Now key legislators are seeking to establish a task force to come up with some responses to the low prices, lost market share, lost jobs and lost income being suffered by fishermen, fishing companies and fishing-related communities.

The measure, Senate Concurrent Resolution 10, was introduced on March 1 and is sponsored by the Senate Finance Committee.

“Alaska’s seafood industry is in a tailspin from facing unprecedented challenges,” said the measure’s sponsor statement issued by the committee’s co-chairs: Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka; Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel; and Sen. Donny Olson, D-Golovin. The measure is also being promoted by Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak.

The industry’s troubles caused a loss to Alaska’s economy of more than $2 billion in 2023, the sponsor statement says.

The resolution got its first hearing on Thursday in the committee that introduced it.

Read the full article at the Anchorage Daily News