Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska lawmakers introduce bill to ban metals mining in Bristol Bay watershed

June 17, 2025 — On the last day of Alaska’s legislative session, House Speaker Bryce Edgmon introduced a bill to ban metal mining in the Bristol Bay watershed – including the controversial Pebble Mine.

House Bill 233 still has a long way to go before it could become law. But if passed, it would be the region’s first state-level restriction on metallic sulfide mining.

There are more than 20 active mining claims across the watershed, home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon run. That includes Northern Dynasty Minerals’ proposed Pebble Mine — which remains under consideration after more than 20 years despite local, state and federal challenges.

“The bill itself, I think, is a vehicle to continue the fight against the Pebble Mine,” said Edgmon, I-Dillingham. “Whether or not it advances or whether it just sits there and makes a very large statement that the region by and large is opposed to the mine.”

The bill, co-sponsored by House Reps. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage, and Sara Hannan, D-Juneau, builds on a 1972 state law that established the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve to protect the watershed against oil and gas drilling. In the past few decades, several bills have been introduced to ban metals mining, too, but none became law.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: New bill seeks to vastly expand Bristol Bay mining protections

June 6, 2025 — A new bill introduced in the closing hours of Alaska’s legislative session seeks to expand protection for the Bristol Bay region, home to a prolific wild salmon fishery that produces over $2.2 billion in economic output and supports over 15,000 Alaskan jobs. The bill, introduced by Speaker of the House Bryce Edgmon (I- Dillingham) and Representative Andy Josephson (D- Anchorage), would ban metallic sulfide mining, also known as hard-rock mining, throughout the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve, where oil and gas development is already banned without approval of the Alaska legislature.

The ban would greatly expand the area currently protected by the EPA under the Clean Water Act, which is centered around the proposed Pebble Mine. The new reserve-wide protections would encompass the entirety of the Bristol Bay watershed, where over 20 mining claims remain active in the wake of the battle over the Pebble Deposit. Additionally, if passed by the state legislature, the bill would create multi-layered protection — based on both state and federal regulations — for the region.

The Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve was first established in 1972 under the leadership of then state senator and later Alaska Governor Jay Hammond, recognizing the need to protect the sensitive region and its immensely valuable wild salmon fishery from the dangers of fossil fuel extraction and development.

According to Daniel Schindler, Ph.D., Professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, “The iconic fisheries in Bristol Bay ultimately depend on the vast and productive watersheds that provide the spawning and nursery habitats for salmon. Industrial scale efforts to extract metals from the sulfide-rich deposits found throughout Bristol Bay watersheds pose substantial and unavoidable risks to salmon fisheries because it is clear that these activities will permanently alter stream flows, and will contaminate surface and ground water sources. Mining of these sulfide-rich deposits will also require perpetual retention and maintenance of waste materials that will generate contaminants directly toxic to fish for centuries. These activities are both economically expensive and are simply not compatible with strategies to sustain commercial, sport, and subsistence fisheries in the future.”

As a result of the bill being introduced in the waning hours of the Alaskan legislature’s first of two legislative sessions, the bill will automatically be up for consideration when the legislature next convenes in January of 2026.

Read the full article at The Hatch

ALASKA: Bill targets watershed protection for Bristol Bay salmon

May 23, 2025 — Legislation aimed at protecting the Bristol Bay watershed in southwest Alaska, home of the world’s largest run of wild sockeye salmon, was introduced on May 20, by Speaker of the House Rep. Bryce Edgmon, I-Dillingham, and Rep. Andy Josephson, D-Anchorage.

Coming at the end of a busy first legislative session, House Bil 233 – which would strengthen protections for wild salmon within the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve – will automatically be up for consideration when the Legislature reconvenes in January 2026.

Oil and gas development is currently prohibited in the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve without legislative approval. The reserve was established by the Legislature with the leadership of Gov. Jay Hammond in 1972 – marking more than half a century of state-based efforts to safeguard the region.

Northern Dynasty Minerals, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has sought for years to mine the Pebble prospect, to extract copper, gold and molybdenum from lands abutting the Bristol Bay watershed. The mining company contends that by using state-of-the-art technology they can prevent spills from mining operations. Their plans have been challenged in court many times by concerns of potential environmental damage from copper spilling into the watershed in the event of equipment failure or other incidents.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

New study shows impact of ocean acidification on Bering Sea red king crab

February 27, 2025 — Ocean acidification appears to be a driver in the decline of Bristol Bay red king crab, a highly value wild Alaska seafood that has for years been threatened by climate change.

“There’s always been a high demand for Alaska crab,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, in October 2024. “It’s a matter of having the crab to harvest.”

The red king crab fishery was closed in 2021 and 2022, then reopened in 2023 with 31 vessels fishing down from 47 vessels, she said.

The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery experienced record landings every year from 1977 to 1980, peaking in 1980 with a record total harvest of 130 million pounds. Then the fishery collapsed in 1981 and 1982, leading to closure in 1983.

A new report published on Feb. 7 in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science said that negative effects of acidification explained 21% of recruitment variability of Bristol Bay red king crab between 1980 and 2023, and 45% since 2000.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Bristol Bay data show widening gap in fishermen’s earnings

February 7, 2025 — Last year’s lower-than-average Bristol Bay salmon harvest likely went a long way toward long-term polarization of the drift fleet between fishermen earning the highest and lowest revenues. As a trend, drift fishermen with the highest production in the fleet typically made double the earnings of fishermen with the lowest production.

More recently, however, a dwindling number of top producers have been earning five times more money than fishermen at the bottom of the scale, A more dispiriting trend is how an increasing number of fishermen are falling from the middle into the bottom tier when it comes to their seasonal earnings. 

“The Bristol Bay fishermen we’ve spoken with seem to have done very well or very poorly, with not much in the middle,” says Sharon Lechner, president and CEO of the Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank (CFAB) in Anchorage.

For those not familiar with fisheries economic tools, the State of Alaska’s Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission (CFEC) keeps tabs on earnings in many state-sanctioned fisheries including salmon via data sets known as quartile tables. The tables break out the number of permit holders comprising the top 25 percent, the upper and lower middle 50 percentiles and the lowest 25 percent of the season’s revenues.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Alaska’s pink returns cause a low salmon harvest year overall

December 3, 2024 — Alaska’s commercial salmon harvests plummeted this year, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The department’s annual report shows that the statewide harvest of just over 100 million fish was the third lowest on record. And the pounds harvested — 450 million — were the lowest on record. The numbers came with a decline in the fishery’s overall value, too.

The poor harvest results were driven mostly by weak pink salmon returns statewide. Bristol Bay’s annual sockeye run – the most valuable salmon fishery in the state at $128 million – saw another good year. The Southeast region saw lower runs across the board, except for chums. But pink salmon, which are harvested in the millions across the state, drove the overall harvest numbers way down.

Pinks run on a two-year cycle and even years are always lower than odd years. But 2024 saw a dramatic swing. The overall harvest was 42% below projections.

“So that was a bit unexpected,” said Forrest Bowers, the state’s Deputy Director of the Division of Commercial Fisheries. “Even with that awareness of the distinct, even odd year cycle of pink salmon, returns for pink salmon were poor in 2024, even for an even year.”

Read the full story at KFSK

ALASKA: Bristol Bay fishermen faced ‘more stagger than swagger’ this season

September 4, 2024 — Even though the final days of the sockeye salmon season in Bristol Bay hadn’t yet been fished, fishermen felt a mood swing reminiscent of last season in terms of what went into their wallets. To some, the prospects of fishing the Bay each season may come down to crunching out the cost of maintaining the commercial fishing lifestyle.

“I have a headline for this year’s Bristol Bay season,” texted a fishermanwho was running his boat toward the yard for dry dock storage. “More stagger than swagger as fishermen leave Bristol Bay.”

Last year it was the gut punch of low ex-vessel prices. This season’s base prices of 8o cents per pound among brick-and-mortar processors was slightly higher than last year’s 50 cents, and some of them bumped prices to $1.40 per pound for late fish in hopes of putting up a bigger pack. But for all sectors of the industry, the harvest volume just wasn’t there.

The total run forecast for the Bay in 2024 had been set at 39 million, which was down from the 10-year average by about a third. Of that 39 million, the harvest projections had been set at 25 million. This season’s harvest (preliminary) came in above the projections at 31.5 million.

As for the harvest breakdowns by district, the fabled Nushagak District hit 11.9 million. The Naknek-Kvichak District produced 9.1 million. Egegik came in at 5.1 million, with Ugashik District kicking in another 4.3 million fish.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Bristol Bay sees smallest sockeye sizes on record, despite large run

July 30, 2024 — This year in Bristol Bay, fishing crews have noticed that sockeye salmon were on the small side — an observation confirmed this month by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Fish and Game officials say that at this point in the 2024 season, the sockeye returning to Bristol Bay are on average the smallest they’ve ever seen. This continues a decades-long trend.

So far, the average weight of Bristol Bay sockeye was 4.2 pounds this year. Fish and Game biologist Stacy Vega said that’s the smallest average weight on record.

“Fish are smaller, weigh less than, than they have in the past and against our historical averages,” Vega said.

Read the full article at KDLG

Citations surge during Bristol Bay sockeye season

July 12, 2024 — Commercial fishing citations during the Bristol Bay sockeye season are ramping up. During the sockeye run, Alaska State Troopers come to the area from all around the state to patrol the commercial fishermen and ensure all rules and areas are followed. Due to the many regulations, some waters remain closed during certain periods while others are open. State Troopers reported that most of the violations in the area are due to commercial fishing in the closed areas.

“We have troopers in from Kodiak, other parts of western Alaska, as well as South Central and even interior Alaska, flown in during this special enforcement period, which occurs every year during the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world,” spokesperson Austin McDaniel told KDLG Dillingham, Alaska.

An estimated 2.2 billion dollars is earned annually from the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon industry. Over 1500 commercial fishing boats are registered in the bay, all competing for the 2024 catch. Before the season began, Silver Bay Seafoods posted a pre-season price for Bristol Bay sockeye, an unexpected move from a processor. They announced that fishermen delivering chilled Bristol Bay fish to their processing facility would receive $1.10 per pound, with a bonus on top of that price for fish that had been bled.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Bristol Bay sockeye season starting as predicted with lower catch

July 12, 2024 — Sockeye salmon fishing in Alaska’s Bristol Bay is, as predicted, off to a slower start this fishing season.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) 2024 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon forecast predicted a run of roughly 39 million sockeye salmon, down from the 54.5 million in 2023. AFD&G’s predicted run for 2023 was 49.7 million sockeye, and the state agency acknowledged that its preseason forecasts have generally under-forecast the actual run by 15 percent.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource