Saving Seafood

ALAKSA: Surveys bode bad seasons ahead for Bering Sea crabbers

July 27, 2022 — Alaska’s Bering Sea king crab crash has reached proportions it hasn’t known since 1994 and 1995, when the population surveys warranted a shutdown of the fishery. The outlook appears equally dismal for Bering Sea opilio crab.

In last year’s 2021-2022 red king crab season the fleet stood down after trawl surveys indicated that the biomass had fallen below the threshold of 8.4 million mature females. Though complete data for this year’s surveys won’t be out until sometime in September or October, preliminary data from the first of three surveys indicates another season in which crabbers will stay tied to the docks.

“We’re seeing some preliminary information that shows that we’re going to continue to be low in abundance,” says Mark Stichert, a groundfish and shellfish fisheries management coordinator with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, in Kodiak. “We’re seeing some very similar trends. The number of mature females is going down, and mature males are slightly up. What we’re not seeing is the entry of small crab into the fishery.”

The Total Allowable Catch (TAC) is based upon data gleaned from three phases of trawl surveys conducted in late summer. In the 2008-2009 season the TAC was set at around 20 million pounds. In the last decade the TAC’s have risen from 7.8 million pounds in the 2011-2012 season to 9.97 million pounds in the 2015-2016 season, then declined.

The TAC for the 2017-2018 season had been set at about 3 million pounds and was reduced to the 1.2 million pounds in the 2020-2021 fishery.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Bristol Bay run hits all-time record of 76 million sockeye

July 27, 2022 — The sockeye salmon run in Bristol Bay, Alaska, U.S.A. has surpassed 76 million fish, setting an all-time record.

As of 21 July, the latest day for which a count is available, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported a total run of 76,583,856 sockeye, with a cumulative catch of 58,298,771 sockeye between Bristol Bay’s Ugashik, Egegik, Naknek-Kvichak, Nushagak, and Togiak fisheries. The count  surpassed AFDG’s pre-season estimate predicted a run of 73.4 million sockeye salmon, the largest inshore run ever, with a potential harvest of over 61 million salmon.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Tale of two salmon fisheries: Bristol Bay breaks record, but Yukon River collapses

July 25, 2022 — In the Bristol Bay region, the sockeye salmon run and harvest amounts set new records, as was predicted in the preseason forecast. As of Monday, the run had totaled over 73.7 million, with a harvest of over 56.3 million. The previous record was set just last year, with a 67.7 million run of sockeyes and a third-biggest-ever harvest of nearly 42 million of the fish.

But along the Yukon River, a prized salmon run is heading toward a worst-ever season.

The number of Chinook counted by sonar while swimming up the river at Pilot Station, a village near the Bering Sea coast, was the lowest on record for this time of the year, the department said. Things are looking grim for the rest of the summer, Fish and Game said in its most recent update; “the drainage-wide run may be under 50,000 fish, which is so small that escapement goals may not be met in any tributaries,” the update said. Chinook fishing has been closed all along the river and its drainages.

Opponents of the controversial Pebble Mine say two consecutive years of record sockeye runs demonstrate the value of protecting the Bristol Bay watershed, site of the world’s biggest sockeye runs, from that proposed development. They are urging the Environmental Protection Agency to invoke a rarely used provision of the Clean Water Act to preclude any wetlands-fill permit for the mine.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Fish for Families aims to bring Bristol Bay sockeye to Alaska communities facing low salmon runs

July 21, 2022 — Bristol Bay’s sockeye run is the largest on record this season. It has been an astounding summer: More than 70 million sockeye have returned, and fleets have pulled in record harvests of more than 53 million fish.

Fish for Families is a new program that aims to share that catch. The program is an extension of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association and the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust. Since 2020, these groups have helped coordinate sockeye salmon donations from Bristol Bay to Alaska Native communities in southwest Alaska.

At the end of June, it sent out its first shipment of the season — 1,000 pounds of salmon to Chignik communities on the Alaska Peninsula. The program plans to send a total of 8,000 pounds of salmon there this month.

The group also wants to send salmon to communities on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers that are facing record low chum salmon returns. That will require more funds. They’re asking the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for help shipping the salmon there.

The donations build off other efforts to bring salmon to communities in need in the past. In 2020, the fishermen’s association helped coordinate tribes, fishermen, local governments and Native organizations and nonprofits to donate fish from areas around the state, including from Bristol Bay and southeast Alaska. To date, the association said it has deployed $2.5 million to buy salmon and donate more than half a million meals.

Read the full article at KTOO

Bristol Bay’s sockeye run is already the biggest on record

July 18, 2022 — Bristol Bay’s 2022 sockeye run is now the biggest on record: 69.7 million fish have returned this summer. That surpasses the previous record of 67.7 million fish, which was set last year.

More than 3 million sockeye have swum up the Wood River to spawn in the tributaries around Lake Aleknagik, about 20 miles from Dillingham, according to the state’s counting tower on the river.

Bristol Bay’s commercial fleet hauled in the most fish on record this year. Fishermen in the Nushagak, one of the bay’s five commercial districts, harvested more than 2 million sockeye in one day this season.

William P. Johnson just finished his sixty-second year as a boat captain. He grew up set net fishing near Igushik in the 1940s with his family. After more than six decades of fishing, he wasn’t phased by the large returns this season.

While sockeye have returned in droves, chinook and chum salmon runs have dropped. Scientists don’t know why that is, either.

River systems on the west side of Bristol Bay have seen an especially large sockeye boom over the past few years.

The total run is now 69.7 million sockeye, but the season isn’t over yet. Fish and Game forecast a run of 75 million fish, but it could go as high as 90 million this summer.

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: Pebble mine supply camp a ‘near total loss’ in Southwest Alaska wildfire

July 14, 2022 — A supply camp that supported operations for the controversial Pebble Mine prospect in Southwest Alaska was destroyed by a wildfire last weekend.

The camp suffered a “near total loss” during the Fourth of July weekend, said Mike Heatwole, a spokesman with mine developer Pebble Limited Partnership.

The fire razed several items such as a quonset-like facility that stored tools, safety equipment and other gear, shack-like structures that supported crews and operations, he said.

The Pebble copper and gold prospect is located about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage in a remote area, near headwaters that support the Bristol Bay salmon fishery. The wildfire is one of several fires in the region this summer and is known as the Upper Talarik fire.

The supply camp was used to support exploration and environmental studies in year’s past, Heatwole said. But activities have slowed at the deposit, which is currently awaiting decisions from two federal agencies about whether a mine can be built.

This summer, the camp supported a small maintenance and reclamation program that includes closing off holes from drilling in previous years, Heatwole said. He said the crew had recently finished its work and left the site before the blaze reached the camp.

The Environmental Protection Agency in May, under the Biden administration, proposed an effort to block the mine. It’s taking public comment on the issue. The agency’s proposal would prevent waterbodies such as Upper Talarik Creek, the fire’s namesake, from being used as disposal sites for dredged or fill material that would result from mining activity.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Area M, Where Alaska commercial and subsistence fishing interests collide

July 14, 2022 — There have been clashes over regulating Area M for decades, but the battle heated up after the Yukon-Kuskokwim chum crashes began. This is the first in a three-part series.

Kuskokwim fisherman Fritz Charles grew up in Tuntutuliak, on the lower river. There were so many fish then that his parents would put away literal barrels of them. His job as a child was to pack the dry fish tight in the barrels using a special method.

In 2021, chum runs took a sharp downward turn. It was the worst year on record for them on the Yukon River, and it’s the same story on the Kuskokwim. This year, the runs on both rivers are at their second lowest.

In 2021, 153,497 summer chum salmon swam up the Yukon River. That’s compared to an average of about 1.7 million summer chum. The river was missing about 1.5 million fish.

At the same time, Area M commercial fishermen caught 1,168,601 chum at sea while subsistence fishing on the rivers was closed. In the midst of the smallest chum run western Alaska subsistence users had ever seen, Area M fishermen were catching more than ever before.

Do the subsistence fishermen in the Y-K Delta or the commercial fishermen in Area M have a greater claim to the chum? About a decade ago, a comprehensive salmon genetics study of the Area M fishery confirmed that most of the chum caught in the region, around 60%, are bound for coastal Western Alaska. But when you start to break that number down further, that’s where things get complicated.

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: New genetic data fuels debate over Bering Sea salmon bycatch

July 6, 2022 — The contentious issue of chinook and chum salmon that are taken as bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock and groundfish trawl fisheries reached a new order of magnitude as the North Pacific Fishery Management Council grappled with concerns over declining salmon fisheries at its June meeting in Sitka.

The council and its scientific committees are no newcomers to the controversy pitting the Bering Sea trawl fleet against commercial and subsistence salmon fishermen along Alaska’s western coastline and the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers.

Genetic sampling and stock composition modeling of salmon caught in the trawl fisheries has been conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service since 2011. Late last year ADF&G released new information to supplement those studies as an ongoing effort to combine state and federal scientific resources. “We want to work in a more unified front in presenting this information,” says Dianna Stram, a senior scientist with the North Pacific council, in Anchorage.

Random sampling of one in ten chinooks in 2021 rendered genetic material from 2,614 fish, of which 52 percent were linked to Coastal Western Alaska. The 52 percent was higher than the previous 10-year average of 44 percent. And of that 52 percent, an estimated 2 to 4 percent were headed to Middle and Upper Yukon River tributaries. Breaking those percentages down to the actual numbers of fish, scientists estimate that 16,796 chinooks were Coastal Western Alaska stocks, and of those, 670 chinooks were stocks bound for the Middle Yukon, with 729 fish headed for the Upper Yukon.

In response to the higher bycatch, the North Pacific council called upon Rachel Baker, who represents the State of Alaska in federal fishery management issues on behalf of ADF&G, to present a list of actions put forth by the council’s science and statistical committee.

Those actions include the implementation of new chum salmon avoidance strategies immediately; formation of a working group of scientists, fishermen and industry and tribal leaders to examine causes of declining western Alaska salmon; updating a 2012 analysis of chum salmon bycatch; and research focused on correlations between seawater temperature, forage species and young salmon.

Gruver and partner John Gauvin, fishery science project director with the Alaska Seafood Cooperative, have been working for years in the development of the salmon excluders used in trawls. Early models destroyed the netting in the trawls, or made the trawls fish incorrectly, which meant starting over on the new prototypes and subsequent test sessions in a giant glass tank made for trawl development in Newfoundland.

Gruver reports that the excluders had an 80 percent success rate in the Gulf of Alaska and ranged from 30 to 50 percent success rates during trials in the Bering Sea.

At the same time, many other salmon-dependent communities beyond 50 miles inland got cut out of the 10 percent allocated to CDQ groups. The seasonal run of chinooks and chums are all they have.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Biden’s offshore drilling proposal met with criticism

July 6, 2022 — U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday, 1 July, 2022, announced a plan for leasing offshore oil and gas drilling sites over the next five years, which was immediately met with criticism from both supporters of expanding domestic production and environmental groups.

The plan calls for leasing up to 11 sites for drilling between 2023 and 2028. All but one of the sites would be in the Gulf of Mexico, with the other proposed site in Alaska’s Cook Inlet. That is a sharp reduction from the Trump administration’s now-nixed plans for 47 lease-sites over several more regions – including Atlantic and Pacific offshore sites.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource