Saving Seafood

Alaska golden king crab TAC rises 13 percent for 2026-27 season

June 26, 2026 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has announced a 2026-27 total allowable catch (TAC) of approximately 4.74 million pounds for Alaska golden king crab, a 13 percent increase from last season’s 4.19 million-pound harvest limit, according to a June 24 release from seafood supplier Keyport LLC.

The increase comes through adjustments across the fishery’s two Aleutian Islands management regions. The TAC east of 174° W longitude, which represents the core of the fishery, will decrease slightly from 3.32 million pounds to 3.184 million pounds. West of 174° W longitude, however, the TAC will increase from 870,000 pounds to 1.558 million pounds.

Golden king crab is managed across the eastern and western Aleutian Islands, with harvest limits allocated among Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ), Community Development Quota (CDQ), and the Adak Community Allocation (ACA) program.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Subsistence battle leaves Alaska with $1.8 million legal bill

June 25, 2026 — A federal judge has ordered the State of Alaska to pay nearly $ 1.8 million dollars in attorney fees to four Native groups, following a long-running fight over subsistence fishing rights in Southwest Alaska.

The case began four years ago when federal managers sued the state for failing to uphold a rural subsistence priority required under federal law. The Native groups joined the lawsuit. And the state ultimately lost a series of court battles, which culminated when the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear the case.

For now, this long-standing legal battle over subsistence management is at a standstill. But the legal bill is due — and the cost of that fight has raised new questions.

A clash of state and federal law

The litigation stems from a long-standing conflict between the Alaska Constitution and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or ANILCA, a law Congress passed in 1980. It gives priority to rural Alaskans to hunt and fish in times of scarcity.

But this kind of geographic preference runs up against the Alaska Constitution, which says all Alaskans have an equal right to natural resources. Under Article VIII, courts have ruled that giving preference based on where someone lives is unconstitutional and discriminatory.

The battle over rural priority led the federal government to take over management of subsistence in waters that flow through federal land. On the Kuskokwim River, dual management was especially problematic, because the 700-mile river runs through both state and federal lands.

For many years, state and federal managers shared responsibility for the fishery, with the state usually taking the lead in most of the decisions. But it was never an easy partnership, one that grew more difficult after salmon runs began to fail. In 2020, tensions reached a breaking point, when managers issued conflicting orders for subsistence fishing.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Commerce Department releases $123.6 million in fishery disaster aid

June 24, 2026 — The U.S. Department of Commerce announced June 17 the allocation of $123.6 million in fishery disaster relief funding to address a series of commercial fishery collapses that struck Alaska, Oregon, California, and Washington’s Squaxin Island Tribe between 2019 and 2023. The money was appropriated by Congress through the American Relief Act, 2025.

The funding covers six previously declared fishery resource disasters: the 2023–2024 Bering Sea snow crab fishery in Alaska; the 2023 Oregon ocean commercial salmon fishery; the 2022 Chignik salmon fishery in Alaska; the 2023 Upper Cook Inlet East Side Setnet salmon fishery in Alaska; the 2024 California Sacramento River Fall Chinook and Klamath River Fall Chinook ocean and inland salmon fisheries; and the 2023 Squaxin Island Tribe Puget Sound Fall Chum salmon fishery in Washington.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NOAA announces USD 124 million in fisheries disaster assistance

June 23, 2025 — NOAA has announced USD 124 million (EUR 109 million) in fisheries disaster aid to the states of Alaska, Oregon, and California, as well as the Squaxin Island Tribe.

“Fishery resource disasters have devastating effects on local communities and our economy,” NOAA Administrator Neil Jacobs said in a release. “This disaster funding provides much needed assistance to our fishing industry, and we will work with the affected communities to help them recover. This action demonstrates our continued commitment to hardworking American fishermen and to the president’s vision to uphold the United States as the world’s dominant seafood leader.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Bristol Bay sockeye run gaining momentum

June 23, 2026 — The 2026 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon season is beginning to take shape, with early catches concentrated in the Ugashik District and fishery managers reporting that run timing remains on track with preseason expectations.

According to the June 19 KDLG Bristol Bay Fisheries Report, fishermen across the bay have harvested 151,668 sockeye salmon so far this season, including 31,167 fish landed on Thursday. Total run strength has reached 199,369 fish, while cumulative escapement stands at 47,701 fish.

This year’s forecast calls for an inshore run of 44.1 million sockeye salmon. While that projection is 26 percent below the recent 10-year average, it remains 21 percent above the long-term average run of 37.4 million fish.

Ugashik has accounted for the bulk of the early harvest. Fishermen there landed 27,813 sockeye on Thursday, bringing the district’s cumulative catch to 107,281 fish. The district’s inshore run is forecast at 5.2 million fish, with a projected harvestable surplus of approximately 4.3 million fish after escapement needs are met.

Egegik’s cumulative catch has reached 38,784 fish. Escapement counts there climbed to 2,658 sockeye after 2,340 fish passed the counting towers Thursday. The district is forecast to receive an 8.9 million fish run, with a potential harvestable surplus of 7.5 million fish.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Hilborn: respect indigenous, western fisheries knowledge

June 19, 2026 — A prominent University of Washington professor of marine biologist and fisheries scientist says respect for every form of knowledge is needed to find solutions to the decline of Pacific salmon.

“The impact of the decline of Chinook salmon and chum salmon to western Alaska communities is a concern to all, and every form of knowledge needs to be brought to bear to understand what has caused it and help to find solutions,” wrote Ray Hilborn, a professor of aquatic and fishery scientist at the University of Washington, in an article published in May by the Oxford University Press.

Hilborn noted that research published previously by Antoinette Lavoie, of the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University and others made a good case that Native people have been largely excluded from decision making in management of federal fisheries, especially as those fisheries may impact subsistence users.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Northwest’s yanked observatories to return to ocean after Trump administration backs down

June 19, 2026 — The Trump administration has reversed course on its effort to shut down a network of ocean research stations in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The National Science Foundation on Thursday announced a halt to the dismantling of floating scientific observatories off Alaska, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, and Greenland.

Researchers were offloading the last of the Ocean Observatories Initiative’s six high-tech data buoys from Pacific Northwest waters onto a flatbed truck in Newport, Oregon, Thursday morning when they got the word: The science foundation was turning the dismantling ship around.

“The U.S. National Science Foundation appreciates the concerns raised by the range of stakeholders that have informed us they rely on data from the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI),” the agency’s statement reads. “Effective immediately, NSF will not proceed with further removal or descoping of equipment from the remaining arrays and will continue operations including planned maintenance.”

Read the full article at KUOW

Deep sea observation system that tracks climate change saved from disassembly

June 19, 2026 — A critical deep ocean observation network that includes a long-standing station off the coast of Alaska has been saved from getting dismantled. As first reported by the New York Times, the Trump administration dropped its plan to get rid of the ocean and climate tracking system after the U.S. Senate unanimously blocked the move this week.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley sponsored the measure, which prohibits the National Science Foundation from spending federal money to remove the equipment anchored off the coast of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina and in an area called the Irminger Sea between Iceland and Greenland.

On the Senate floor Wednesday, Murkowski said the Ocean Observatories Initiative collects hard-to-access information that’s critical for understanding warming seas.

“This is all happening at a time when everybody’s talking about El Niño, and what that is going to bring in terms of the potential for extreme weather events,” Murkowski said. “This is not the time to be turning off one of our most valuable scientific assets.”

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: Feds sending $99 million in aid to address three declared Alaska fishery disasters

June 19, 2026 — Alaska has been allocated about $99 million in new fishery disaster assistance, making up the majority of the $123.6 million in aid that federal officials on Wednesday said is headed to Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California.

In Alaska, the money is to address previously declared fishery disasters for Bering Sea snow crab and Chignik and Cook Inlet salmon harvests, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fishery service said.

For the lost snow crab harvest of the 2023-24 winter, the second year that the usually lucrative fishery was canceled because of low stocks, NOAA Fisheries is allocating $75.2 million in aid. That follows a 2024 allocation of $39.5 million in aid for the lost harvest in the winter of 2022-23.

Snow crab harvests have now resumed, though at much lower levels than in past years.

For the Chignik salmon disaster that occurred in 2022, the agency is allocating $18.5 million in aid. For the declared disaster for the 2023 Upper Cook Inlet east side setnet salmon harvest, the agency said it is allocating $5.8 million in aid.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon