April 4, 2023 — The Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) and the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust (ASFT) are hosting a Spring Virtual Fishermen’s EXPO on April 4 and 5, from 9AM-1PM to provide educational workshops to new and experienced local fishermen. ALFA and ASFT welcome those interested in the fishing sector to attend.
ALASKA: Love at first fish
April 4, 2023 — The Sitka Sac Roe fishery got quite a romantic start on Wednesday, March 29.
Fisherman Pete Feenstra, who fishes on the F/V Noble Provider, hailed fellow fisherwoman and captain Brannon Finney from the F/V Alaskan Girl on the radio to propose.
Feenstra had quite the audience- the entire fleet, ADFG, local processors, and many from the town of Sitka tuned into channel 10 for the proposal.
ALASKA: Alaska Department of Fish and Game releases Kuskokwim Bay salmon fishery announcement
April 2, 2o23 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) released an announcement on March 29, 2023. The advisory announcement notes that ADF&G does not expect to open any commercial gillnet fishing in Districts 4 and 5 of Kuskokwim Bay.
This news may not come as a surprise to commercial gillnetters in that region. Those fisheries have been closed for most years since 2016 because there hasn’t been a commercial buyer.
ALASKA: Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association and Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust host Spring Virtual Fishermen’s EXPO
March 28, 2023 — The Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) and the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust (ASFT) are hosting a Spring Virtual Fishermen’s EXPO on April 4 and 5, from 9AM-1PM to provide educational workshops and training to new and experienced local fishermen as well as others with interest in the fishing sector. During this EXPO all the workshops and presentations will be offered in a virtual format.
The Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) and the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust (ASFT) are hosting a Spring Virtual Fishermen’s EXPO on April 4 and 5, from 9AM-1PM to provide educational workshops and training to new and experienced local fishermen as well as others with interest in the fishing sector. During this EXPO all the workshops and presentations will be offered in a virtual format.
ALASKA: Unprecedented closures threaten setnet way of life
March 27, 2023 — When Lisa Gabriel was 22, she and her husband, Brian, now the mayor of Kenai, bought their first commercial setnet permit, worth $35,000.
The year was 1987 and Gabriel, pregnant with her third child, flew with Brian in a privately chartered plane to Anchorage, where they met up with a Cook Inlet fisherman who was selling his permit. After the papers were signed and the permit transferred, Brian and Lisa flew back to Kenai.
“We just jumped in a plane because that’s what we needed to do,” she said.
They have been commercial setnetting in the inlet ever since. The pair are fishing for sockeye but also harvest other kinds of fish, including chinook, or king, salmon. This year, however, they’re two of the hundreds of east side setnet fishers in upper Cook Inlet whose nets may stay out of the water entirely.
That’s because of an unprecedented preseason closure of the fishery by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game earlier this month. Among other things, 11 emergency orders handed down by the department completely closed the east side setnet fishery this season, as well as the Kenai River and Cook Inlet to sport fishing for king salmon.
The department issued those orders after preseason forecasts suggested that Kenai River late run would see only 13,630 king salmon longer than 34 inches, or “large” fish. Because that forecast falls below the department’s optimal escapement goal of at least 15,000 fish, the Kenai River’s late-run king salmon sport fishery was closed.
The closure of the fisheries threatens to upend not just the livelihood of anglers in the inlet, but a way of life for those who have spent decades working in the setnet industries.
Read the full article at Peninsula Clarion
ALASKA: Legislature passes resolution to protect Southeast Alaska troll fishery
March 26, 2023 — A resolution to protect the Southeast Alaska troll fishery passed in the state Legislature on March 20 by a unanimous vote in the Senate. House Joint Resolution 5 calls on state and federal governments to defend Alaska fisheries from a lawsuit filed by the Washington State-based environmental group, the Wild Fish Conservancy.
The suit seeks to stop the Southeast troll fishery over what the group sees as a threat to the Southern Resident killer whales in the Puget Sound. The organization’s position is that terminating Southeast’s king salmon troll fishery might allow chinook salmon to migrate back down the coast through key hunting grounds of the Southern Resident killer whales.
ALASKA: Alaska Gov. Dunleavy passes over tribal advocate for fishery council post, fueling calls for change
March 23, 2023 — Some tribal and subsistence advocates are criticizing Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s nomination of a rural fisheries executive for an influential federal management post — another sign of the rising polarization and stakes in Alaska fish politics amid historic crashes in salmon stocks.
Dunleavy last week announced Rudy Tsukada as his preferred nominee for an open seat on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. That’s the entity that oversees the huge harvests of Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska crab and whitefish stocks worth hundreds of millions of dollars — and that’s under pressure to reduce accidental catches of king and chum salmon, species that have all but disappeared from the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers in Southwest Alaska in recent years.
Tsukada is chief operating officer for Coastal Villages Region Fund, one of six Community Development Quota, or CDQ, groups established by Congress three decades ago.
The nonprofit CDQ groups play a unique role in Alaska fisheries and politics. They received whitefish quota when the program was established in the 1990s, so they participate in the trawl fisheries that have accidental catches of Southwest Alaska salmon stocks.
But the CDQ groups are also charged with creating economic development and providing social benefits for Western Alaska residents — and supporters say that mission makes the groups’ leaders responsive to the regional crisis that’s developed amid closures of subsistence and commercial salmon fisheries.
Supporters of Tsukada’s nomination note that Dunleavy passed over other candidates that included an employee of Trident, a for-profit seafood company with investments in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska trawl fisheries.
Lawsuit accuses Alaska of unconstitutionally mismanaging Yukon, Kuskokwim salmon fisheries
March 22, 2023 — An attorney who successfully overturned a billion-dollar Alaska oil tax credit program is now targeting the state’s management of its salmon fisheries.
On Monday in Bethel, attorney Joe Geldhof argued that the state is managing those fisheries so poorly that it is violating the Alaska Constitution. Article VIII, Section 4 of the constitution says that fisheries should be managed “on the sustained yield principle,” and Geldhof — representing a Juneau man, Eric Forrer — argues that declining king and chum salmon returns in the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers “illustrate a failure to adhere to the constitutional directive regarding sustained yield.”
An unprecedented collapse in those fisheries has resulted in orders banning traditional subsistence fishing along the river.
In a lawsuit filed last year against the state and the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Forrer asked a judge in Bethel to issue a ruling declaring that the state is unconstitutionally managing the Yukon and Kuskokwim salmon fisheries and for a “mutually agreeable consent decree” outlining an as-yet-unwritten new management system.
Geldhof’s case is one of the first challenging the state in court over the failure of the Yukon and Kuskokwim fisheries, and he isn’t sure what a fix would look like.
ALASKA: Murkowski, Peltola tell ComFish more needs to be done about ‘crisis’ levels of species decline
March 20, 2023 — Alaska’s congressional delegation says species collapse in Alaska’s fisheries is nearing crisis levels. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Mary Peltola discussed the monumental challenges faced by Alaska’s fishermen and coastal communities during their legislative update on the opening day Thursday of Kodiak’s annual commercial fishing trade show, ComFish.
Murkowsi and Peltola kicked off ComFish’s federal legislative update with a brief acknowledgement of the Willow project’s recent approval — calling the $8 billion oil development a win for the state of Alaska. Sen. Dan Sullivan was not at Thursday’s forum due to a scheduling issue. He’ll speak on Saturday instead.
But much of their time was spent detailing the uncertainties caused by species collapse in the waters off Alaska’s coast. Murkowski said the declines in salmon, crab and halibut fisheries across the state are at crisis levels.
“I don’t like to use the word ‘crisis’ lightly, but I think crisis is the appropriate word here. I wish that we could tell you the exact causes, I wish there was one single thing to explain everything,” she said.
ALASKA: Small businesses affected by Alaska crab crash may be eligible for low-interest federal loans
March 20, 2023 — The U.S. Small Business Administration is offering special disaster loans to some businesses hurt by the recent red king crab and snow crab closures.
The federal agency announced last month that certain entities, like small agricultural coops or aquaculture businesses, as well as most private nonprofit organizations are eligible for low-interest loans of up to $2 million. Interest rates range from below 2% to about 3%, depending on the type of organization.
The SBA declared a disaster following a relief request from Gov. Mike Dunleavy for the crab fisheries closures in the Bering Sea and Bristol Bay. Along with U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, Dunleavy requested a total of nearly $290 million from the federal government last year — the estimated total exvessel loss for both fisheries since 2021. It generally takes years for that kind of money to reach the hands of fishermen and others affected by similar disasters.
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