Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Peter Pan Seafoods cancels A season processing at King Cove

January 24, 2024 — Peter Pan Seafoods has canceled processing for the A season of 2024 at its large King Cove facility, citing “tumultuous” conditions in global seafood economics, but vowed to be open for the B season, and firmly committed to Alaska, its fleet and communities where they do business.

“We did not come to this decision quickly or easily,” the company said when announcing the forthcoming closure on Jan. 12. “The industry is facing inflation, interest rates hikes, financing challenges, and high fuel costs. We have worked through these issues as diligently as possible and have explored possible options.”

“We remain committed to continuing to provide the best service and support possible to our fleet, communities, and stakeholders while continuing our mission to be an exemplary global supplier of top-quality and responsibly sourced seafood. Looking to the future, we will employ more than 1,000 this year as we open the King Cove facility for the 2024 B Season and our other three facilities as normal for the salmon season,” the company said.

In years past the King Cove processing facility has processed seafood on a year-round basis and been closed down only for a couple of weeks at year’s end. Workers there, brought in on a seasonal basis, have processed king crab, opilio crab, Tanner crab, Alaska pollock, cod salmon halibut, and black cod.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Wild Fish Conservancy seeks endangered species listing of Alaska Chinook salmon

January 16, 2024 — The Wild Fish Conservancy has petitioned NOAA Fisheries to list Alaska king salmon under the Endangered Species Act.

The organization claims the petition is a response to “the severe decline and poor condition of Chinook populations” in Alaska.

“For decades, scientists have been sounding the alarm that Alaska’s Chinook are in dire trouble,” Wild Fish Conservancy Executive Director Emma Helverson said. “Despite existing management plans and years of efforts by the state of Alaska, Chinook salmon continue to decline in abundance, size, diversity, and spatial structure throughout the state. Through this action, we are asking the federal government to undertake a formal status review and implement protections warranted under the Endangered Species Act, including designating critical habitat protections, to ensure the survival of these iconic fish.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Conservation group petitions for Alaska king salmon to be listed as an endangered species

January 13, 2024 — A Washington-based conservation group filed a petition with federal regulators Wednesday, requesting that they list Alaska king salmon as an endangered species.

The Wild Fish Conservancy argued in its 67-page petition that king, or chinook, salmon numbers have declined to the point where the species is at risk of extinction in Alaska. The group cites state data indicating that the decline has been predominately caused by climate change, habit destruction and hatchery salmon competing for food with wild fish.

The group is asking that the National Marine Fisheries Service formally review king salmon numbers across the Gulf of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and Southeast Alaska before considering stricter protections. Those could include critical habit protections and expanding ways to protect king salmon smolt — among other measures the group lists.

The petition is a first step in a process that could take years to be resolved with court challenges possible. But legal experts say there could be broad implications if the request is approved to list Alaska king salmon as threatened or endangered under the 1973 Endangered Species Act.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

Supreme Court won’t consider Pebble Mine appeal

January 11, 2023 — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge by the State of Alaska to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s block of the Pebble Mine project.

The state sought to go directly to the high court and overturn the EPA’s January 2023 decision to veto the mine project based on the federal Clean Water Act and the danger of open-pit mining damaging the Bristol Bay watershed and its salmon fishery.

 Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy in July filed the lawsuit, arguing that the agency decision against the mine and its effect on Alaska economic development warranted an immediate top judicial review.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US Alaska pollock suppliers navigating complications from expanded ban on Russian product

January 10, 2023 — U.S. suppliers are scrambling to figure out how the nuances of an expanded U.S. ban on Russian seafood might impact their trading in Alaska pollock.

On 22 December 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order expanding the U.S. ban on Russian seafood to include imports of Russia-originated seafood processed in third countries, including China. The expanded ban entered into immediate effect, with import contracts signed before that permitted to be carried out through 21 February 2024, according to the department.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Supreme Court denies Alaska’s bid to revive the copper and gold Pebble Mine proposal blocked by EPA

January 9, 2024 — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Alaska’s bid to revive a proposed copper and gold mine that was blocked by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The justices did not comment in turning away the state’s attempt to sue the Biden administration directly in the high court over its desire to revive the proposed Pebble Mine in the state’s Bristol Bay region.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

ALASKA: Tribal groups applaud Alaska Native appointments to federal fisheries advisory panel

January 9, 2024 — Amid alarmingly low salmon returns in Western Alaska, calls have grown for tribes to have a greater say in the way fisheries are managed. Many say that the recent appointment of three Alaska Native members to the panel tasked with advising the top regional federal fisheries council could be a step in the right direction.

A recent press release from the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim Tribal Consortium, representing 98 tribes directly impacted by salmon crashes in Western Alaska rivers, said that it was encouraging to see more Alaska Native faces than ever before on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Advisory Panel. But it also called out the council for having a “voting majority with an economic interest in the trawl fleet,” as well as a total lack of Alaska Native representation.

“It’s something that we’ve been fighting for and asking for for many years. The fight for Alaska Native subsistence rights is getting a lot of attention right now because things are crashing,” said Eva Dawn Burk, who was recently appointed to a three-year term on the advisory panel, holding its first-ever designated Alaska Native seat.

“I sit on at least four Alaska Native advisory councils, and it’s like, yeah, I’m an advisor, but I don’t have decision-making power,” Burk said.

Read the full article at KYUK

Alaska pollock may gain with expanded ban on Russian product

January 9, 2024 — The recent U.S. Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control ban on the importation of Chinese seafood that originates from Russia promises to crimp the cash funding Russia’s war against Ukraine. In less than 60 days, the hope is that the United States and other countries will adapt labeling and procedures that establish clarity on country of origin, presumably shutting down the seafood pipeline coming out of Russia.

That’s the ethical-geopolitical side of it.

The so-called Seafood Determination issued Dec. 22, 2023 expands the March 2022 federal ban on importation into the U.S. of seafood and other products of Russian origin to include salmon, cod, pollock and crab harvested in Russian waters or by Russian vessels, and processed in another country.

Though language in the federal sanction has been generalized to include any third-party countries reprocessing Russian seafood products for distribution into the United States, the main country of concern is China and the predominant fish species is Bering Sea pollock, a mainstay commodity among whitefish consumers worldwide.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Alaska’s snow crab season canceled for second year in a row as population fails to rebound

January 7, 2024 — Gabriel Prout is grateful for a modest haul of king crab, but it’s the vanishing of another crustacean variety that has the fishing port in Kodiak, Alaska, bracing for financial fallout; for the second year in a row, the lucrative snow crab season has been canceled.

“We’re still definitely in survival mode trying to find a way to stay in business,” he told CBS News.

When the season was canceled last year, there was a sense of confusion among the Alaska crab fisher community. Now, a sense of panic is taking hold in the state’s fisheries, which produce 60% of the nation’s seafood.

“It’s just still extremely difficult to fathom how we could go from a healthy population in the Bering Sea to two closures in a row,” Prout said.

And while he is barely holding on, others — like Joshua Songstad — have lost almost everything.

Read the full article at CBS News