Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Fish fights take center stage in Alaska Senate race

August 20, 2026 — The plight of the state’s fisheries, some of the most productive in the world, has become a flashpoint in Alaska’s Senate race and arisen as a potential weakness for two-term incumbent Dan Sullivan.

Sullivan faces a tough reelection bid against former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who has centered her campaign around “Fish, Family, Freedom.” She’s trying to harness anger at out-of-state commercial fishing to win her way back to Congress.

Alaska hosts some of the largest commercial pollock fisheries in the world as well as major salmon populations — buttressing a seafood industry that supports more than 15,000 Alaskan jobs with around $5 billion in value. Many Alaska Natives harvest fish from the state’s mighty rivers and rely on the catch during winter.

Read the full article at E&E News

ALASKA: After historic crash, Yukon River’s iconic king salmon run shows early signs of rebound

August 18, 2026 — For the past few years, smokehouses in the Yukon River village of Anvik have sat empty.

After salmon populations crashed, dozens of Alaska Native communities along the river faced a stark new reality, one without the fish that fed families and sustained Yup’ik and Athabascan traditions for generations.

This summer, though, smoke once again wafted through Anvik, on the middle Yukon some 350 miles west of Anchorage.

The river’s two main species, chinook and chum, have recorded a surprising uptick in numbers. And in spite of state regulations that bar fishing for chinook, Anvik’s fishermen have caught dozens of the fish this year, plus even more salmon of other species — meaning that there are enough to share with elders, hang in smokehouses and store in freezers.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen the smokehouses smoking in five years,” said Robert Walker, former chief of the Anvik Tribal Council. “I was just amazed. People are so happy.”

The returning fish could represent a remarkable rebound for one of Alaska’s most iconic and culturally important salmon runs, though scientists caution that numbers are still relatively low and that more data are needed before they can be confident about a meaningful turnaround.

The harvest in Anvik, announced by Walker on a public teleconference with fishery managers and local leaders in July, also has inflamed a long-running political debate over fishery closures and government policies aimed at rebuilding the runs.

In 2024, Alaska state officials agreed with the Canadian government to a seven-year ban on harvesting chinook along the Yukon, which flows from northwest Canada more than 2,000 miles through Alaska to the Bering Sea.

Even though many Alaska Native leaders generally agreed about the need to limit fishing, they also criticized Alaska’s government for not formally including tribal governments in the decision-making process.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Trawling and bycatch dominate political messaging in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race

August 17, 2026 — Trawling ships that over the years have incidentally scooped up and wasted millions of pounds of salmon and other fish have burst onto the forefront of Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.

Multiple Outside political advocacy groups with little public information about their donors are targeting candidates over their approach to limiting bycatch in the pollock industry, which critics blame for contributing to historic declines in Alaska salmon, halibut and crab fisheries.

Alaska fishermen have appeared in ads discussing the bycatch records of the major candidates, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and challenger Mary Peltola, a Democratic former U.S. representative.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Preliminary 2027 forecast for Alaska’s Bristol Bay fishery predicts more, smaller sockeye

August 17, 2026 — With the 2026 commercial salmon harvests winding down in Alaska, the seafood industry is already calculating how to navigate at a profit in 2027, given dynamic biological, economic, climate and market conditions.

Their forecast has a far-reaching socio-economic impact across the state — Bristol Bay’s commercial fishery had about $2 billion in economic impact and supported 15,000 jobs in 2019 according to research from the McKinley Research Group.

Data from the University of Washington’s forthcoming preliminary preseason forecast for the celebrated Bristol Bay wild sockeye fishery anticipate a run of 45 million fish next year, up from the 2026 forecast of 41.5 million. But run size is just one of many factors under consideration.

Fish size is one of those factors: 45 million big fish have more meat — and a bigger economic effect — than 45 million smaller fish. The size of the fish also helps determine which products the processors will produce.

“When we get really big returns the fish are smaller for their age, because they are competing for their food,” said salmon researcher Daniel Schindler of the University of Washington School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “We estimate how many fish of each age class are coming back.”

For 2027 those preliminary indications are for 20 million fish that have spent three years in the ocean — known as three ocean fish — and 30 million fish that have spent two years in the ocean in 2027. Because there are more fish that have spent less time in the ocean, the overall catch will be smaller.

But the climate can affect how much of that forecast becomes a reality.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Beyond bycatch: The bigger story of Alaska pollock

August 14, 2026 — Alaska pollock is the biggest catch in the United States. But the fish drawing the most attention are the ones the fleet never meant to pull up.

For Sam Murphy, vice president of the Alaska Pollock Fishery Alliance (APFA), the focus on bycatch misses a much larger story.

That argument comes at a pointed moment for the fishery. In February, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) voted 8-3 to recommend the first mandatory limit on chum salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery, an annual cap of 45,000 Western Alaska chum, paired with a corridor closure near the Alaska Peninsula between June 10 and Aug. 31, apportioned among the at-sea processor, catcher vessel, mothership, and Community Development Quota (CDQ) sectors.

The NPFMC heard testimony from more than 170 people over four days, including tribal leaders, subsistence fishermen, CDQ groups, and pollock industry participants. The new rules are not expected to take effect until June 2028 at the earliest.

Murphy didn’t dismiss the difficult conversations about salmon bycatch or the challenges facing Alaska’s fisheries. Those discussions are necessary, he said. But after spending the past year and a half aboard fishing vessels, touring processing plants, and visiting fishing communities across Alaska, he believes the conversation had become too narrowly focused on a single issue while overlooking the broader role pollock plays in the state’s seafood economy.

“I don’t really see it as an argument,” Murphy said in an interview with National Fisherman. “To me, it’s simply the reality that I hope more people start to recognize.”

That reality, he said, was one of interdependence.

Murphy described Alaska’s seafood economy as a three-legged stool. Commercial fishermen harvest the resource, processors transform that harvest into products consumed around the world, and coastal communities provide the workforce, ports, and infrastructure that allow the system to function.

“Remove any one of those three legs, and the whole thing starts to wobble,” Murphy said.

That connection, he said, was why framing Alaska’s fisheries as rivals missed the point.

“Pollock doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Neither do salmon, crab, cod, or halibut,” Murphy said. “These fisheries are connected economically, operationally, and culturally.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Deep sea mining in the Gulf of Alaska

August 13, 2026 — With China reportedly producing around 90 percent of the world’s supply of rare earth elements, and far ahead in processing technology, the U.S. and other countries are searching for new ways to meet demand, and deep sea mining on seamounts in the Gulf of Alaska is on the list of proposals. The Japanese press reported in July that experimental deep sea mining had successfully extracted rare earth elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium—all vital for fighter jet and missile guidance systems—from 6,000 feet below the surface.

In April of 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14285 “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources,” and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is evaluating whether to advance a competitive lease sale for minerals on the Alaska Outer Continental Shelf. “We don’t know what impact deep sea mining could have on fisheries, but there is cause for concern,” says retired University of Alaska marine professor Rick Steiner, who now runs a consulting company called Oasis Earth.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Feds take back management of Kuskokwim River salmon with emergency coho closure

August 13, 2026 — Federal fisheries managers have announced an emergency closure for the harvest of silver salmon on the Kuskokwim River and its tributaries within federal refuge boundaries.

The closure goes into effect at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 12 and is a continuation of a state closure already in place.

Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge Manager Spencer Rearden said that this year’s run of silver salmon, also called coho, is tracking similar to 2022, when estimated returns were the lowest in more than two decades.

“Fifty percent of the run has already passed Bethel now, and could the numbers improve with some late runs? Absolutely. We want to open the river, but until the fish say we can, we’re closed at this moment,” Rearden said.

As of Aug. 10, an estimated 96,000 silvers had passed the Kuskokwim River sonar, just downriver from Kwethluk, Rearden said. On the same day in 2022, that number was around 86,000.

Read the full article at KYUK

NOAA Scientists Discover Repeat Spawning in Pacific Capelin

August 12, 2026 — For certain fish species, like Pacific salmon, reproduction is a once-in-a-lifetime event, known as semelparity. Many other fish are iteroparous—meaning they can spawn repeatedly throughout their lives. New research by NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center reveals the first evidence that Pacific capelin can be repeat spawners.

Over the past decade, the North Pacific Ocean has faced extreme climate variability, including marine heatwaves that severely impacted capelin populations. Understanding capelin’s reproductive flexibility under these fluctuating conditions is crucial for predicting their annual reproductive potential and long-term resilience. Capelin abundance is also an important indicator of the marine ecosystem health.

Examining Reproductive Flexibility in Fluctuating Environments

Historically, the life history, ecology, behavior, and population dynamics of Pacific capelin have not been studied as well as their commercially important counterparts in the Atlantic. In North Pacific and Arctic ecosystems, Pacific capelin serve as a major forage fish and primary food source for Steller sea lions, humpback whales, and other marine mammals. They also are a key subsistence resource and an important food source for commercially important groundfish.

Capelin are short-lived—typically surviving only 1 to 4 years. Their abundance fluctuates wildly in changing environments, leading to multiyear population crashes during marine heatwaves. Recent research highlights that these heatwaves shrink capelin distribution and deplete their energy reserves. Ultimately, these combined stressors leave capelin highly vulnerable to mortality and put the predator populations that rely on them at risk of decline.

In this new experimental study of captive fish, NOAA scientists looked more closely at the spawning potential of Pacific capelin. They researched their life history and how they respond to shifting environments.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

Alaskan fishing management on the hook in Ninth Circuit

August 11, 2026 — An ocean conservation group asked a Ninth Circuit panel on Monday to make the National Fisheries Management Service take another look at the impact of fishing on essential fish habitat offshore of Alaska.

“All the court needs to decide is a straightforward legal question: Can the Fisheries Service meet its obligation to minimize all adverse effects on all designated essential fish habitat by using only two tests to identify those adverse effects?” posited Katherine Glover, Earthjustice attorney representing Oceana.

Oceana, an advocacy organization focused on ocean conservation, sued the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2024. It accused the service of using the wrong criteria when looking at the effects of fishing on essential fish habitat offshore of Alaska.

Under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the service is required to identify and protect “essential fish habitat” necessary to sustain healthy fish populations.  As part of that, the service is obligated to minimize adverse impacts on essential fish habitats caused by fishing.

The service approved five amendments to management plans for federally managed groundfish, crab and salmon fisheries in the waters near Alaska, and Oceana accused the service of relying on only two flawed tests to make its decision. One is the core essential fish habitat test and the other is the minimum stock size threshold test.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service