Saving Seafood

Disaster aid has arrived, but Western Alaska’s salmon and crab problems continue

May 22, 2023 — As $216 million in federal aid is flowing to help Alaskans cope with salmon and crab collapses over the past three years, conditions that caused some of the harvest failures persist.

The Alaska congressional delegation announced on Friday that the U.S. Commerce Department released the disaster aid. The money is to go to harvesters, processors and communities affected by designated disasters in salmon and crab fisheries that occurred between 2020 and 2022. Some money will also go to research programs, the delegation said in the joint statement released by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

“This disaster funding comes at a time when several of our state’s fisheries are experiencing traumatizing and devastating collapses—so it will make a real difference for impacted fishermen and communities,” Murkowski said in the statement.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in December issued disaster declarations for the salmon and crab problems in Western Alaska and the Bering Sea, as well as some extremely weak salmon runs in 2020 in the Prince William Sound and Copper River areas. The biggest chunks of resulting disaster aid now arriving are designated as responses to Bering Sea and Norton Sound crab collapses

Read the full article at KINY

ALASKA: Alaskan fishing groups and tribes welcome changes to federal fishery guidelines

May 22, 2023 — Fishing groups and tribes in the U.S. state of Alaska are eyeing potential updates to federal fishing guidelines as a chance to change how several hallmark fisheries in the state are regulated.

Last week, NOAA Fisheries issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, welcoming public input on a number of topics, including climate change, equity in the representation of local fishing communities, and trawl bycatch. The agency will be accepting public comments offering suggestions on how to improve national standards to address those issues until 12 September, 2023.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

U.S. Department of Commerce allocates $220 million in fishery disaster funding to AK and WA

May 19, 2023 — U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced the allocation of over $220 million in fishery disaster funding, appropriated by Congress in the 2022 and 2023 Disaster Relief Supplemental Appropriations Acts. The funding will address fishery disasters that occurred in multiple Alaska and Washington fisheries between 2019 and 2023.

“Fishery disasters have devastating effects on local communities and our blue economy,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “This disaster funding provides much needed assistance to our fishing industry and we will work with the affected communities to begin the difficult work of helping them recover.”

Read the full article at KINY

MASSACHUSETTS: Sanfilippo invited to Rose Garden for salmon fight

May 19, 2023 — For more than a decade Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, has helped advocate for the cause to protect Bristol Bay in Southwest Alaska and the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery from a proposed open-pit gold and copper mining project near the bay’s headwaters.

She did so even though Gloucester, the nation’s oldest seaport, and Bristol Bay are some 3,600 miles apart on opposite coasts of the United States.

On Thursday at 4 p.m., Sanfilippo attended a celebration in the Rose Garden of the White House that marked the protection of Bristol Bay from the Pebble Mine project.

According to his remarks, President Joe Biden told advocates his administration had used its authority under the Clean Water Act to ban the disposal of mine waste in the Bristol Bay watershed. Sanfilippo helped advocate for this cause, got others in the local and regional fishing industry onboard, and helped those in Alaska organize in their David vs. Goliath fight.

Biden pointed out the Bristol Bay salmon fishery supports 15,000 jobs in fishing, processing and tourism with an economic value of $2.2 billion.

Once back in Gloucester, Sanfilippo said in an interview Tuesday that Biden was so on point she wondered how she could get him to protect the Massachusetts fishery with its 70,000 jobs from the threat posed by looming offshore wind energy projects.

Read the full article at Gloucester Times

ALASKA: Representative Peltola applauds NOAA Fisheries’ proposal to revise key National Standards for fisheries management

May 19, 2023 — Thursday, Representative Peltola applauded the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Fisheries division announcement of an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, which would allow revisions to the division’s Guidelines for National Standards, specifically sections (NS) 4 (allocations), 8 (communities), and 9 (bycatch).

Read the full article at KINY

ALASKA: ‘A’ season pollock quota back on par after decrease last season

May 17, 2023 — Bering Sea pollock fishermen have almost met their “A” season quota.

Since the fishery opened in late January, nearly 100 vessels have caught about 1.2 billion pounds of Alaska pollock. That leaves about 43 million pounds still available to catch.

“It’s definitely a lot of fish,” said Krista Milani, a fisheries resources management specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Unalaska. “Sometimes when you think about the amount of pollock that they’re able to sustain in the Bering Sea, it’s kind of mind-blowing how much pollock is actually there.”

Milani said this “A” season quota is back on par with recent years, after a decrease last season.

Read the full article at KYUK

ALASKA: USDA to buy almost $120M of Alaska sockeye, Pacific groundfish, with nudge from congressional delegation

May 15, 2023 — Bristol Bay fishermen harvested a record-breaking 60 million sockeye last summer, flooding the market with a surplus of salmon.

Early this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed to help with the glut by purchasing $119.5 million of canned and fileted Alaska sockeye and Pacific groundfish. It’s a win for the state’s marketing branch, which had some help from Alaska’s congressional delegation. But the purchase won’t totally clear out the storehouses and shelves.

“As far as, you know, fixing the problem of such a giant harvest from last year, it’s not going to fix anything,” said Bruce Schactler, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute’s global food aid director. “But it’s certainly going to help in a big way — in a really big way.”

Schactler said ASMI asked the USDA to buy Alaska seafood for their food assistance programs last fall, when they knew there would be surplus.

“It kind of got stalled, for whatever reason,” he said. “So we asked the three members of our congressional delegation to provide some encouragement to hurry this along. And that was clearly successful.”

Read the full article at KDLG

In Rose Garden address, Biden celebrates with Alaskans opposed to Pebble mine

May 14, 2023 — President Joe Biden celebrated his conservation achievements Thursday with a Rose Garden address. The No. 1 item on his list? Blocking the Pebble mine, a proposed open-pit gold and copper mine upstream from the sockeye-rich waters of Bristol Bay.

“Bristol Bay is an extraordinary place, unlike anywhere in the world,” the president said. “Six rivers meet there, traveling through 40,000 miles of tundra, wetlands and lakes, collecting freshwater and salmon along the way … making this the largest sockeye salmon fishery on all the earth.”

Biden announced no new developments in the ongoing Pebble saga. His speech cited scores of sanctuaries and safeguards his administration created, from the mountains of Nevada to the Pacific Ocean. But the primacy he gave to this one part of Southwest Alaska shows how committed Biden is to stopping Pebble, and how he sees it as a centerpiece of his environmental record.

United Tribes of Bristol Bay Executive Director Alannah Hurley was invited to Washington, D.C., to introduce the president. In a blue print kuspuk, she spoke of how her salmon-centered community has lived with a threat looming over them for 20 years.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Could this be the beginning of the end for the Southeast Alaska troll fishery?

May 11, 2023 — The State of Alaska and the Alaska Trollers Association (ATA) filed an appeal on Wednesday to undo a ruling in a U.S. Ninth Circuit court that could shut down the whole Southeast Alaskan king salmon troll fishery this summer. 

The state and ATA are co-defendants in the case of Wild Fish Conservancy v. Scott Rumsey et al. The chief defendant is the National Marine Fisheries Service. 

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Jones upheld a December 13, 2022 decision by a federal magistrate to require federal fisheries biologists and managers to redo the biological opinion that allows for the take of king salmon by the Southeast Alaska troll fleet. 

This ruling is the latest in a lawsuit by the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy alleging that the NMFS incidental take statement disproportionately restricts the number of Chinook salmon allowed to return to their native waters as prey for the endangered killer whales that spend part of the year in Puget Sound. 

Judge Jones wrote in the two-page ruling, “the 2019 Southeast Alaska Biological Opinion is remanded to the NMFS to remedy the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act violations previously found by this court in December.” 

Read the full article at the National Fisherman