Saving Seafood

NOAA to trollers: A revised environmental analysis could allow king fishing by August

June 13, 2023 — The National Marine Fisheries Service hasn’t ruled out the possibility of opening the summer troll season for king salmon in Southeast Alaska, despite a federal judge’s recent ruling to the contrary.

During a meeting held Wednesday (6-8-23) in Sitka, NOAA Fisheries Alaska regional administrator, Jon Kurland, told a roomful of trollers that the agency was working hard to correct the problems identified in a federal lawsuit brought by a conservation group in Washington state. If successful, Southeast trollers might be able to harvest king salmon this summer – if not on the traditional date of July 1, then possibly in August.

To get a feel for the impact of the Wild Fish Conservancy lawsuit on Southeast trollers, try sitting in a room filled with them: Grizzled oldsters, seasoned men and women hardened by life on the ocean, well-known fisheries advocates,  young families, and a baby or two.

John Kurland is the regional administrator for fisheries in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which – among other agencies – oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service.

That’s a lengthy title, but Kurland said that he is a neighbor, and he gets it.

“So first off, I know that there’s been just a huge amount of concern about the implications of this suit and the potential for the troll fishery not to be able to open,” Kurland told the room. “I live in Juneau, I have a sense of how important this fishery is for Southeast Alaska for a lot of small businesses, a lot of families, a lot of communities. It’s a big deal.”

Read the full article at Raven Radio

ALASKA: Hooper Bay residents weigh in on fishing closures: ‘It’s like taking away food from our table’

June 13, 2023 — Inside Hooper Bay’s brown tribal council building, nearly 50 people gathered to hear more from state officials on why they decided to close chinook salmon fishing in the coastal area from the Naskanat Peninsula up to Point Romanof. That closure includes Hooper Bay, Scammon Bay, Chevak, Emmonak, Kotlik, Nunam Iqua and Alakanuk.

State biologists said that the closure is intended to protect chinook salmon while they migrate upriver to spawn in Alaska and Canada. But most in the crowd were subsistence fishermen and fishing means survival.

“It’s like taking away food from our table,” said one person who testified.

Alaska Wildlife Trooper Sergeant Walter Blajeski arranged the meeting. He said that he wanted to give the community an opportunity to ask questions they might have on both fishing opportunities and restrictions.

“And, you know, I think the meeting was a success. Our goal was just that: to be available to answer questions and to provide maybe some explanation as to why restrictions were going to be occurring. And I think we accomplished that,” Blajeski said.

Non-salmon fishing will still be permitted during the closures, but with restrictions. Gillnets will be limited to 4-inch or smaller mesh and 60 feet or less in length. These nets must be operated as a setnet and should be set near shore.

Blajeski said that troopers can’t always enforce these regulations; they do it when weather and time permits.

“We don’t often get to the coastal villages. But when we do, we usually go there, you know, for the day. And those types of enforcement patrols are usually conducted, you know, onshore in the village, walking around the village because we just don’t have the resources to get out there,” Blajeski said.

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: Salmon are disappearing on the Yukon and Kuskokwim. Here’s what to know about the crisis this summer.

June 10, 2023 — People on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers are expecting another dismal year for harvesting salmon, the food that used to fill their smokehouses and freezers. It’s a disaster that repeats annually, felt acutely in the region and accepted elsewhere as the new, bad normal.

Here’s a primer on the Y-K Delta salmon crisis and how this year is shaping up.

Which salmon are affected?

Chinook (king) and chum are the major salmon species on the Yukon and Kuskokwim. They’ve been at historically low numbers in both rivers for years. The coho (silver) returns have also dropped.

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: ‘It’ll be a disaster’: Southeast Alaska fishermen fear looming closure of king salmon fishery

June 10, 2023 — More than 100 salmon trollers packed a Sitka meeting Wednesday night with sharp questions about the future of an iconic Southeast Alaska fishery, facing what could be an unprecedented full shutdown of this year’s chinook trolling season.

“I’m optimistic, but I’m also scared as heck,” said Eric Jordan, a lifelong fisherman and resident of trolling stronghold Sitka at the standing room-only meeting with federal National Marine Fisheries Service officials.

The closure of the king salmon fishery in Southeast Alaska would be economically devastating, according to many in the region who rely on the valuable fish for their annual income.

A federal judge in Washington state effectively shut down the fishery in May in response to a lawsuit brought by Wild Fish Conservancy, a Washington organization. The suit contends that the fishery should be closed to protect endangered killer whales in Puget Sound that feed on chinook salmon.

Southeast Alaska’s summer troll fishery would typically open July 1. The state has requested that a federal appeals court decide whether the fishery will open by June 23 to give fishermen time to get ready for the season. But some in the industry say that will already be too late.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is doing “everything we can” to respond to the lawsuit, including work on a new biological opinion that could address some of the Seattle judge’s concerns, said Jon Kurland, the Juneau-based regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries Alaska, at a Wednesday night meeting meant to give trollers a chance to ask questions.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

Long-term study hopes to unlock secrets of Gulf of Alaska ecosystem

June 9, 2023 — The University of Alaska Fairbanks is using underwater autonomous vehicles in order to learn more about the ecosystem in the Gulf of Alaska.

After more than a month apart, Gretel and Shackleton began their reunion with a slow dance.

The autonomous underwater vehicles circled each other in the Gulf of Alaska in April, gathering data about ocean conditions: temperature, light, salinity, chlorophyll, fluorescence, and even acoustically determined densities of fish and zooplankton.

The torpedo-shaped vehicles, known informally as gliders, met after taking separate journeys to the middle of the continental shelf south of Seward, about 70 miles offshore. Seth Danielson, a University of Alaska Fairbanks oceanographer, expects it to become a spring ritual.

Read the full article at KINY

How Warming Ruined a Crab Fishery and Hurt an Alaskan Town

June 8, 2023 — On a normal winter day on St. Paul, an island in the Bering Sea some 300 miles off the Alaskan coast, the community would be humming with activity. At the Trident Seafood crab processing plant, the diesel engines of commercial crab boats would be gurgling, and lifts would be running nonstop, transferring thousands of pounds of snow crab into the plant. “Those sounds are a reminder that money is coming in,” St. Paul’s city manager, Phil Zavadil, said in February from his office in city hall. But instead, St. Paul, a mostly Aleut community of just under 500, was silent. From “an environmental aesthetic point of view,” Zavadil admitted, the quiet was nice. “But it translates into the real-world [budget] cuts we’re experiencing now.”

In early October 2022, for the first time ever, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled the Bering Sea season for snow crab (also known as opilio crab) after an annual survey revealed an almost total population collapse. No Bering Sea community was hit harder than St. Paul, whose economy relies almost entirely on snow crab, thanks to Trident, whose plant there is the largest crab processing facility in North America. Most of Trident’s some 400 workers are seasonal and come from outside St. Paul, but the facility generates millions for the city through a “landing tax” imposed on commercial fishing boats, a tax on crab sales, and fees for fuel, supplies, and support services for the snow crab fleet.

Heather McCarty, of the Central Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association, which manages community fisheries allocations for St. Paul, said in February that the city’s tax revenues went from about $2.5 million two years ago to approximately $200,000 this year. “It was all snow crab all the time,” she said at the time. “[Now] they have about a year’s worth of reserves that will allow them to survive with the municipal services relatively intact, but, after that, it’s anybody’s guess how they’ll actually pay for really basic things.”

Read the full article at Yale Environment 360 

ALASKA: A visit to Dutch Harbor, built for fishing, is an opportunity to soak up its distinct history

June 5, 2023 — Fishing is the front door to Unalaska and the Port of Dutch Harbor, located almost 800 miles southwest of Anchorage on the Aleutian Chain.

Most people who come to Unalaska are arriving to work in the processing plants, or on the fishing boats that Hobo Jim sings about.

But Unalaska’s first settlers, the Unangan people, have called the island home for 10,000 years.

Before the crab and pollock fisheries, Russian explorers arrived in the 18th century to harvest fur seals. In 1942, Japanese planes bombed Dutch Harbor — and World War II brought massive changes to the Aleutian Islands.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

Murkowski, King introduce bipartisan bill to support rural fishing communities

June 2, 2023 — The Fishing Industry Credit Enhancement Act would allow businesses that directly support fishing industry to access existing agriculture loan program

U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Angus King (I-Maine) have introduced bipartisan legislation to expand financial support for America’s fishing communities. The Fishing Industry Credit Enhancement Act would allow businesses that provide direct assistance to fishing operations – like gear producers or cold storage – to access the same loans from the Farm Credit System (FCS) already offered to service providers for farmers, ranchers, and loggers.

Read the full article at KINY

NOAA to identify aquaculture opportunity area in Alaska

June 2, 2023 — NOAA is considering the creation of an aquaculture opportunity area in the U.S. state of Alaska, the agency announced 1 June.

Alaska could become the third region with an aquaculture opportunity area (AOA), joining Southern California and the Gulf of Mexico, though Alaska’s is likely to be declared in state waters, whilethe previous two AOAs are in federal waters.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Southeast trollers remain hooked in web of Washington lawsuit that could halt summer season

June 1, 2023 — The king salmon troll fishery in Southeast Alaska remains tangled in a net of legal proceedings that threatens the livelihood of this summer’s season. The season is scheduled to begin July 1.

The U.S. District Court of Western Washington ruled May 3 the Southeast king salmon summer and winter troll fisheries have been operating in violation of the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act by causing irreversible harm to an endangered population of orcas, called southern resident killer whales. The whales travel through Washington’s Puget Sound area due to lack of prey, specifically wild king salmon that are caught by the fishery.

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit originally filed in 2019 by a Seattle-based environmental group, Wild Fish Conservancy, and the decision only affects the king salmon troll fishery in Southeast Alaska.

Read the full article at Juneau Empire