July 10, 2023 — Uncertainty continues to cloud the 2023 sockeye salmon season in Bristol Bay, Alaska, U.S.A., as the fishery heads toward what has historically been its peak period.
Fishing in one of the world’s most-productive sockeye salmon fishing grounds began on 1 June, but fishers are frustrated that processors have yet to disclose the price they intend to pay for this year’s catch.
July 9, 2023 — Low numbers of salmon continue to frustrate those who rely on some of the state’s largest fisheries.
The Bristol Bay area has been somewhat of a mixed bag, as sockeye salmon numbers are doing well but king salmon numbers remain well below escapement goals.
Tim Sands, west side of Bristol Bay area management biologist, said making sure everyone gets their fair share isn’t easy.
“When you have these conflicting goals of harvesting sockeye and trying to manage for king salmon escapement, it gets really complex,” Sands said.
July 5, 2023 — Fresh off legal victories, lobstermen in the U.S. state of Maine and salmon trollers across the country in Alaska are finding kinship in a shared narrative.
In a letter sent to the Alaska Trollers Association, Maine Lobstermen’s Association President Kristan Porter said both organizations had fought similar battles against environmentalists who want to end commercial fishing over concern about the threat it poses to whales.
July 3, 2023 — The commercial season for king salmon in Southeast Alaska opens on Saturday, July 1. For trollers across the region, it’s the equivalent of New Year’s Day – the beginning of the annual salmon harvest that lasts through next March.
For 50 anxiety-filled days this spring, it appeared that this fishery would not happen. On May 2, a federal judge in Washington ordered fishing closed to make more kings available to an endangered population of killer whales in Puget Sound. On June 21, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court issued a stay of that order, allowing trollers to fish as usual while the case remains under appeal.
Photojournalist Berett Wilber grew up in Sitka deckhanding aboard her family’s troller. She recently returned and spent a couple of afternoons visiting the docks, photographing and talking to trollers as they readied for the opening. As she explains to KCAW’s Robert Woolsey, Wilber found mixed emotions among the fleet.
July 1, 2023 — The commercial season for king salmon – or chinook – in Southeast Alaska opens on Saturday, July 1. For trollers across the region, it’s the equivalent of New Year’s Day – the beginning of the annual salmon harvest that lasts through next March.
For 50 anxiety-filled days this spring, it appeared that this fishery would not happen. On May 2, a federal judge in Washington ordered fishing closed to make more kings available to an endangered population of killer whales in Puget Sound. On June 21, the US Ninth Circuit Court issued a stay of that order, and allowed trollers to fish as usual while the case remains under appeal.
Photojournalist Berett Wilber grew up in Sitka deckhanding aboard her family’s troller. She recently returned and spent a couple of afternoons visiting the docks, photographing and talking to trollers as they readied for the opening. As she explains to KCAW’s Robert Woolsey, Wilber found mixed emotions among the fleet.
July 1, 2023 — Every year, the state sets a range of projected sockeye salmon that will ideally evade a fisherman’s net bound for upstream spawning grounds in order to sustain the fishery. Often, kings are swimming hidden among the surging sockeye, like needles in a writhing, riverine haystack. In the hopes that more king salmon may survive to see the lakes upstream, Sands also explained that the Nushagak King action plan widens the season’s total escapement goal range by 15% of the forecasted run. They’re called optimal escapement goals and they mean that if the sustainable escapement goal was 900,000, the optimal goal adds a little over one million fish on top.
“Instead of fishing to control the sockeye escapement down to 900,000 on the Nushagak, we’re fishing less, which means we’re allowing for more sockeye passage, but also more king passage. It’s trying to strike this balance of how many sockeye we’re willing to forego harvesting to try and protect kings,” said Sands.
Daniel Schindler is a professor in the University of Washington’s Alaska Salmon Program, and is part of the research team monitoring the Nushagak runs – which have been under biologists observation since the 1950s. According to Schindler, the declining king populations are not specific to the Nushagak but until the cause for the dwindling species can be determined, something has to be done.
“We know that king salmon are suffering throughout the range. And the action plan is one attempt to reduce interceptions of Nushagak kings in the commercial fishery, so that more of them can make it into the watershed to spawn. And the hope is that more abundance in the watersheds may lead to some recovery in the populations,” he said. “So how this one plays out is anyone’s bet. But the reality is management has to try something because kings are lower now than they have been in a long time.”
July 1, 2023 — Federal judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals laid to rest threats of closing this year’s Southeast salmon troll fishery – at least for now.
As the final days of June ticked toward the traditional July 1 opening for Pacific Salmon Treaty chinook salmon many in the fleet didn’t know whether to ready their boats for the season or start beating the streets for alternative work. The decision breathes new hope for a fleet that feared that politics rather than sound scientific studies dictate the future of their fishery.
“We’re very relieved that the Ninth Circuit honored our request for a stay,” says Amy Daugherty, executive director of Alaska Trollers Association in Juneau. “Not only has it kept the fishermen from going crazy at the docks if they had been tied up for the season, but they now are starting to believe in the judicial system.”
July 1, 2023 — The Dungeness crab season in the eastern Bering Sea in the U.S. state of Alaska is reportedly going well as officials report crab pots “stuffed” with crab.
Historically, Alaska’s Dungeness crab fishery has been relatively small, and largely overshadowed by the red king crab fishery. In 2004, for example, harvesters caught 12.5 million pounds of red king crab worth USD 105 million (EUR 96 million), versus 3.2 million pounds, of Dungeness crab worth USD 11 million (EUR 10 million), according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
June 29, 2023 — A new bill introduced by Alaska’s U.S. senators would set up a new consumer-focused label for wild seafood. It’s among several bills eyed by Congress that could affect fishing in Alaska.
Under the bill introduced last week, there would be a program to voluntarily label qualified products as “Wild USA Seafood,” a tool that Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Dan Sullivan, both Republicans, said would serve consumers who already have a strong preference for those products.
“Consumers want to know where their food comes from—and by creating a specific label allowing wild seafood, like Alaskan salmon caught in Bristol Bay, wild kelp harvested in Southeast, or pollock caught in the Bering Sea, the option to be labeled as ‘Wild USA Seafood,’ we’re ensuring consumers know they are purchasing the highest-quality seafood from the best-managed fisheries in the world.” Murkowski said in a statement.
There have been persistent problems with mislabeled and sometimes even illegal seafood reaching U.S. markets. For salmon from Alaska, where finfish farming is prohibited by state law, mislabeling has been a particular problem. Past investigations by the nonprofit Oceana and others revealed that farm-raised Atlantic salmon is frequently sold incorrectly as wild salmon.
June 29, 2023 — Eric Jordan’s life on the ocean began more than 70 years ago, when his parents started taking him out on the family’s troller. At 73, Jordan still fishes regularly. But he says a lot has changed in the waters of Southeast Alaska.
“I was out there, the last two weekends at the Derby weigh station, seeing things that are truly dystopian. The lack of birds, the lack of fish,” Jordan said. “Those of us who are out there on the water, we are seeing the changes. And I’ll tell you it’s pretty spooky.”
Jordan started his own operation in 1978, trolling for coho and chinook salmon across Southeast Alaska and catching hundreds of fish a day. But today, the marine environment seems less abundant. Most species of Southeast salmon have had record low harvests in recent years, and the devastation from “the Blob” — a Pacific heat wave that caused massive die-offs of marine species — lingers.
Scientists expect a future with warmer oceans and more marine heat waves. But there’s a lack of data to explain how climate change is shaping Southeast fisheries. Now, two new citizen science projects from Alaska Sea Grant and the Alaska Trollers Association will help longtime troll fishermen like Jordan take the lead to gather data about how the waters they depend on are changing.