Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Record 74 Million Sockeye Run Forecast for 2022, Low Return for Pinks, as Expected

April 26, 2022 — Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game has released their final “Run Forecasts and Harvest Projections for 2022 Alaska Salmon Fisheries and Review of the 2021 Season” and once again Bristol Bay is outdoing its own record of consistently massive returns.

The forecast for the statewide total salmon return is lower than last years by 800,000 salmon, but it doesn’t detract much from the forecasted run in the Bay.

The 2021 inshore Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run of 67.7 million fish is the largest total run on record — 64% above the 41.3 million average run for the latest 20-year period. It was also the third time on record that the sockeye run exceeded 60.0 million fish. Last year’s 42.0 million harvest was 15% above the 36.4 million fish preseason forecast and the third largest harvest on record. It was also the third time in the last 4 years that landings  exceeded 40.0 million fish.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: Anti-Pebble super PAC will support candidates against the proposed mine

April 20, 2022 — A new super PAC that has amassed $600,000 from a single group says it will back federal candidates who support protections for Bristol Bay and who oppose the proposed Pebble mine project in Southwest Alaska.

Alaskans for Bristol Bay Action said Monday that it will focus on additional fundraising to support candidates in the upcoming election cycle.

Former Alaska Senate President Rick Halford, a Republican and longtime opponent of the proposed mine, is senior adviser for the new political action committee.

The committee was created in February, according to the Federal Elections Commission.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: An epic forecast for Bristol Bay salmon has industry leaders worried it will be too much to handle

April 7, 2022 — Alaska biologists are forecasting another massive run of sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay this summer, raising questions in commercial fishing circles about whether the industry in the Southwest Alaska region will be able to keep up.

The Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, representing the area’s commercial driftnet fleet, is urging processors to boost their capacity to maximize the fishery’s value and prevent harm to future runs if too many salmon return.

“We’re in unprecedented territory as far as what is forecast, so we never had a test like this to see how it would go,” said Andy Wink, executive director of the association.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game predicts that a record 75 million fish will return to Bristol Bay rivers this summer, with 60 million available for harvest, according to the agency’s commercial fisheries division.

But the agency reported early this year that 15 main commercial processors said they expect to buy 52 million Bristol Bay salmon, according to a survey. That amount of purchased fish would also be a record.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Salmon travel deep into the Pacific. As it warms, many ‘don’t come back.’

March 30, 2022 — During a typical fall, almost a million chum salmon pour into Alaska’s Yukon River, a torrent of wild fish that has sustained the economy and Indigenous culture in the far north for generations. Last year, that run collapsed, with salmon trickling upstream at a 10th of normal levels, forcing the state to airlift frozen fish from other regions to feed the population.

About 400 miles to the south, in Bristol Bay, the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery set a record last year, with more than 66 million salmon returning to the rivers in the watershed. That total is expected to be broken again this year.

Salmon in the Pacific Ocean face dramatically different fates from one river system to the next. As the planet warms, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, scientists say changes in ocean conditions are helping drive these wild swings and collapses of key stocks. These North Pacific fish account for most of the world’s wild-caught salmon, and their survival has implications for economies and cultures around the Pacific Rim.

During her three decades as a government scientist, as climate change has intensified, Laurie Weitkamp has watched these fluctuations in salmon numbers become bigger and the models that predict how many salmon will return from sea become more unreliable.

“Salmon will go out, in what we think is a really good ocean, and then it collapses,” said Weitkamp, a fisheries biologist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration based in Oregon. “They don’t come back.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

ALASKA: Fishermen discouraged by EPA’s delayed timeline to protect Bristol Bay salmon fishery

January 31, 2022 — The Environmental Protection Agency released a letter On January 27th signaling a change in its original timeline to put Clean Water Act protections in place for Bristol Bay.

Their letter indicates that the EPA will issue a revised Clean Water Act Section 404(c) Proposed Determination for Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed by May 31, 2022, meaning that a potential comment period could occur while Bristol Bay’s commercial fishermen and residents are out fishing and offline at remote fishing camps.

In response to the EPA’s letter, Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay’s Executive Director, Katherine Carscallen issued the following statement:

“Bristol Bay’s fishermen are deeply concerned by news from the EPA that they do not intend to protect Bristol Bay by the time we head out for another fishing season. We’ve been calling on EPA to finalize its proposed Clean Water Act protections for a decade.  Now, in spite of President Biden’s commitment in August 2020 to stop the Pebble Mine and despite a decade of science supporting Clean Water Act protections, we are yet again asked to wait,” the release stated.

Read the full story at KINY

Rally on Rewind: Pebble Mine fight carries on

January 26, 2022 — Eight years ago this week, representatives of Bristol Bay Tribes, commercial fishermen, seafood processors, Pacific Northwest and Alaska fisheries, local chefs, and other stakeholders convened in Seattle for a rally to urge the U.S. EPA to veto Pebble Mine.

Most of us are well aware of the fact that the fight to stop the construction of this mine at the headwaters of Bristol Bay’s world-famous and unparalleled salmon streams has been ongoing for more than two decades.

This anniversary of the rally, organizers say, is the perfect time to remember that permanent protections are the only solution that will end this fight.

“I am tired of being held hostage by the cloud that this type of development has settled over our region. I am tired of watching my friends and family wonder: If this happens, how will we feed our children? How will our culture survive?” said Alannah Hurley, executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, at the rally on Jan. 23, 2014. “The people of Bristol Bay are sick and tired of the uncertain fate of our watershed that has fed the hearts and souls of our people for thousands of years.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Pebble mine developer does away with Washington lobbyists

January 25, 2022 — The company behind the proposed Pebble mine in Alaska has been saying goodbye — for now — to its lobbyists in Washington.

Pebble LP once had a large team of lobbyists fighting to guarantee development of an enormous copper and gold development near southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay, home to the nation’s strongest salmon fishery.

That was before the company lost a key fight during the Trump administration, when the Army Corps of Engineers in 2020 rejected Pebble’s application to build the mine. And the Biden administration has since restarted a Clean Water Act veto process that could prevent any large-scale mining near Bristol Bay (Greenwire, Sept. 9, 2021).

Pebble didn’t lobby Congress or agencies on any issues during the last six months of last year and spent no money on federal lobbying efforts during that period, according to disclosures filed last week by firms the company had retained.

In the last year, Pebble has terminated contracts with BGR Government Affairs, Ballard Partners, Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, and Windward Strategies, disclosures show. Some big names were representing Pebble through those firms, including former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) at BGR and Brian Ballard, a major ally and fundraiser for former President Trump.

Read the full story at E&E News

Bristol Bay, Alaska sockeye riding high on strong market, big runs, and bigger forecast

December 13, 2021 — Values continue to rise for the sockeye salmon fishery in Bristol Bay, Alaska as a record string of runs coincides with a strong sockeye salmon market.

According to final figures released by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) this fall, last season’s run – the largest ever in Bristol Bay – topped 71 million fish, with a catch of over 42 million sockeye.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

ALASKA: More than 70 million sockeye salmon expected in Bristol Bay next year, potentially busting this year’s record

December 8, 2021 — If the forecasts are close to accurate, this year’s Bristol Bay sockeye run won’t be a record for long.

Biology teams with University of Washington and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game both expect more than 70 million sockeye to return to Bristol Bay for the first time in recorded history.

Daniel Schindler, a biologist with UW’s Alaska Salmon Program, said multiple factors in the university’s record run forecast bolster its credibility. For one, all of the Bay’s nine large river systems are predicted to do very well, rather than just one or two forecasted to have outsized sockeye returns. The fact that the 2022 run will be on the heels of an inshore run of approximately 66.1 million sockeye — the all-time record — which provides researchers more to go on as well, according to Schindler.

Both the UW and Fish and Game forecasts are a weighted average of several models that use what are known as sibling relationships to formulate predictions, largely based on how many salmon of certain age classes returned in prior years.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Beluga Whale Sounds Aid Scientific Understanding of When Whales are Hunting Prey

December 1, 2021 — When listening to beluga whales, the sound of a crunch or a clapped jaw may be a reliable indication that a beluga whale just successfully captured or missed a fish. In a new published paper on beluga whales in Alaska, scientists analyzed sound data, collected over several years, to monitor beluga whale calls and other data. With these data they are gaining new insights into belugas’ diet, feeding behavior, and feeding habitats.

“Our goal is to collect data to help understand and recover Cook Inlet beluga whales, an endangered species and NOAA Fisheries,” said Manuel Castellote, NOAA Affiliate and lead author for the study from the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Ocean and Ecosystem Studies, University of Washington. “There is a paucity of basic ecological knowledge, such as prey preference, about this population of whales. This impedes our efforts to help recover the population. The population is estimated to be only 279 animals, and was in decline during the 10-year period from 2008-2018, the most recent time period for which we have data.”

Given the endangered status of the Cook Inlet belugas, there are limited studies that are permitted on this population. So scientists conducted research using tagging technology and other methods on a comparable surrogate—an abundant population of beluga whales in Bristol Bay, Alaska. The Bristol Bay beluga population is estimated to be between 2,000 and 3,000 animals.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries