July 21, 2021 — Alaska’s salmon harvest has continued to pick up steam, including the season’s largest weekly harvest.
A bump in pink salmon landings was driven by the Prince William Sound region, where pink hauls are up 21 percent over the pace set in 2019. In other regions of the state, harvests are currently well behind the 2019 pace for pinks, which typically produce big returns in alternating years. The harvest also tends to peak later in the summer.
July 20, 2021 — Early prices to Alaska salmon fishermen are trickling in. As anticipated, they are up across the board. That will give a nice boost to the economic base of both fishing communities and the state from fish taxes, fees and other assessments.
About a third (62 million) of Alaska’s projected catch of 190 million salmon had crossed the docks by July 16 at the halfway point of the fishing season.
Prices paid to fishermen vary based on buyers, gear types and regions. And bonuses and post-season pay adjustments won’t be finalized until early next year.
Here’s an early snapshot of average base prices from major processors at this point in the season:
At Bristol Bay, the price to fishermen was boosted to $1.25 by OBI Seafoods, topping the $1.10 Peter Pan posted in June before the start of the fishery, and up from 70 cents last year.
Kodiak fishermen were getting $1.45-$1.50 for sockeyes and $1.75 at Southeast.
That compares to a statewide average of just $0.76 a pound for sockeye salmon last year. A 2021 catch of 46.6 million sockeyes was projected for Alaska; the total so far has topped 44 million.
July 16, 2021 — It’s catch as catch can in Alaska salmon fisheries with five of six species still lagging behind normal across the region. Bristol Bay and the rest of Southwest Alaska continue to be a bright spot for the second year running, but not across all species.
As of mid-July, 72 percent of the state’s projected sockeye harvest had been caught, while just 23 percent of the projected overall salmon harvest of 190 million fish has crossed the docks, according to McKinley Research Group’s weekly report for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.
Bristol Bay’s Nushagak District topped 1 million fish per day for seven consecutive days and edged the 2 million mark several times, and the boom harvest has since spread out to other rivers across the bay. The only damper on yet another year with strong sockeye returns is a smaller average fish size at 4.5 pounds, compared with 5.1 last year.
July 13, 2021 — “Unprecedented” is how fishery managers are describing sockeye catches at Bristol Bay, which topped 1 million fish for seven days straight at the Nushagak district last week and neared the 2 million mark on several days.
By July 9, Alaska’s statewide sockeye salmon catch was approaching 32 million, of which more than 25 million came from Bristol Bay. The only other region getting good sockeye catches was the Alaska Peninsula, where nearly 4.6 million reds were landed so far.
The Alaska Peninsula also was far ahead of all other regions for pink salmon catches with over 3.3 million taken out of a total statewide tally of just over 5.4 million so far.
Pink salmon run in distinct two year cycles with odd years being stronger, and the preseason forecast calls for a total Alaska harvest of 124.2 million pinks this summer.
The timing for peak pink harvests is still several weeks away; likewise for chums, and most cohos will arrive in mid-August.
Alaska salmon managers are projecting the 2021 statewide salmon catch to top 190 million fish, a 61% increase over last year’s take of about 118 million salmon. By July 9, the statewide catch for all species had topped 41 million fish.
July 9, 2021 — This past weekend, a crew assembled to raise the sail on a traditionally restored Bristol Bay double-ender.
The boat was part of the Fourth of July parade in Homer but the plan is to sail it back to Bristol Bay where it served as salmon gillnetter in the early 1900s.
The crew of the Back to the Bay project is rigging a wooden double-ender with a spritsail in Nomar’s parking lot on Pioneer Avenue in Homer. Bumpo Bremiker is splicing line to make loops to hold the rings that will secure the sail while Dave Seaman explains.
“…splicing up some eye splices in the sheet attachment point on the sail. John Breiby, a nautical historian on Alaska wrote a little pamphlet called Rigging the Bristol Bay Double-ender. We’ve approximated the best we can,” said Seaman.
This year the boat is on a trailer, preparing to sail down Homer’s Fourth of July Parade route. Next year they hope to put out from Homer harbor, travel under sail – west across Cook Inlet to Williamsport. Then, they’ll take the 26 mile portage to Iliamna Lake, sail the lake and the Kvichak River, visiting a series of villages on the way to their destination, Fishtival 2022 in Naknek.
July 7, 2021 — Alaska’s Bristol Bay salmon season is off to a strong start in what is expected to be another harvest hovering around all-time highs for both catch and value in the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.
Fish were already pouring in to at least two of Bristol Bay’s four major river systems. As of July 1, the bay had produced 9.02 million commercial sockeye landings — 46 percent above the five-year average — on a preseason prediction of more than 36 million sockeye, according to area biologist Tim Sands with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
By Tuesday, July 6, that total was above 14 million sockeye.
While early returns look good, test fishing indicates the run should sustain for a relatively long period of time, which should help the fishery avoid bottlenecks in fishing and processing.
Last season’s compressed run, coupled with covid-19 complications, strained Bristol Bay’s fishermen and processors. The Bristol Bay fishery also slogged through the pandemic last season with a disappointing base price of just $0.75, but got early, unexpected news that Peter Pan Seafoods will pay a base price of $1.10.
July 7, 2021 — Fishermen are the ears and eyes of the marine ecosystem as a changing climate throws our oceans off kilter.
Now a new phone app is making sure their real-life, real-time observations are included in scientific data.
The new Skipper Science smartphone app, released June 18, comes from the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea as a way “to elevate the thousands of informal-yet-meaningful environmental observations by fishermen and others into hard numbers for Alaska’s science-based management,” said Lauren Divine, director of ecosystem conservation for St. Paul’s tribal government whose team created and owns the dataset for the app.
“How do we take what has historically been called anecdotal and create some structure around it that is rigorous and has scientific repeatability?” Divine told KCAW in Sitka.
“There is a vast body of deep knowledge that fishermen hold from their experience on the water, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, that they use for decision making and risk evaluation and to execute a likelihood on the water. And we have very much underutilized that knowledge for years, especially here in the North Pacific,” she added in a phone interview.
The free app, which works on or off the internet, is an offshoot of an Indigenous Sentinels Network started 16 years ago at St. Paul Island to monitor wildlife and the environment in the Bering Sea.
To broaden its reach, St. Paul partnered with advocacy group SalmonState’s Salmon Habitat Information Program. Through its surveys and other outreach, SHIP quantifies what’s regarded by scientists as fishermen’s “informal observations” and shares the information with managers and decision makers.
July 7, 2021 — Record-breaking salmon hauls in Bristol Bay were met with tragedy on July 1, when the captain of the F/V Pneuma died after the gillnetter capsized in the Nushagak District fishery, sending the whole crew overboard.
Lance Eric Norby, 45, of Texas, was identified as the captain, according to the Alaska State Troopers.
“Pneuma was stuck on a sandbar when a large wave knocked the entire crew overboard. The F/V Fortress, and tenders Provider and Last Frontier responded to the call,” said OBI Seafoods in a statement released over the weekend.
The Alaska Wildlife Troopers reported that they received a call just before 6 a.m. on July 1 that a commercial fishing boat was taking on water on the South end of Nushagak Bay. All three crew members went into the water, and two troopers patrolling the area in a skiff immediately responded. They were able to pull one of the survivors to safety aboard the skiff. The good Samaritan commercial fishing boats pulled the other deckhand and Norby from the water.
“Poor weather combined with an uneven fish load is likely what caused the vessel to capsize,” said Austin McDaniel spokesman for the troopers, based on the agency’s preliminary investigation.
A Coast Guard rescue swimmer assisted with initial medical care for the crew. Despite extensive life-saving efforts, the captain was declared deceased by Coast Guard personnel at about 9:40 a.m.
July 6, 2021 — A commercial fisherman has died after a vessel sank in the south end of Nushagak Bay on Thursday morning with three people on board.
Authorities on Friday identified the deceased as Lance Eric Norby, 45, of Arlington, Texas. He captained the F/V Pneuma. Norby’s next of kin has been notified.
Alaska State Troopers report receiving a call around 5 a.m. Thursday morning that a commercial vessel was taking on water. Two wildlife troopers responded immediately. Before they got there, they heard reports that the three people on board were in the water.
Authorities credit Good Samaritans on the scene with helping in the rescue. Among those was skipper Caleb Mikkelsen, who said his crew was getting ready for an opener when he got a call from a friend that there was a vessel in distress on the VHF radio.
“We could hear that there were two boats and a skiff trying to help this vessel that was sinking out on those Snake River flats there,” he said.
The people at the scene said they still needed help. So Mikkelsen piloted his boat, the F/V Fortress, about seven miles to help.
June 30, 2021 — Early indicators are pointing to yet another strong year in the massive Bristol Bay sockeye fishery, which is contrasted against the continued struggles in many of the state’s other large salmon fisheries.
Just more than 3.2 million sockeye had been harvested through June 27, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game figures, with the Nushagak District accounting for more than half of the catch so far at nearly 1.7 million fish. The 3.2 million-fish harvest to-date this year is between the comparable totals for recent years; 1.2 million sockeye were harvested through June 27 last year, while more than 4.4 million were caught by the same day in 2019.
With sockeye harvests of more than 40 million fish and total runs greater than 56 million sockeye, both of the last two years have been among the most productive in the history of the Bristol Bay fishery.
Dillingham Area Management Biologist Tim Sands said early June 29 that he’s confident there are a lot of fish still making their way to the head of Bristol Bay based on catches in the Port Moller test fishery.
He noted that returns to the Egegik River down the Alaska Peninsula have been particularly strong, with a harvest of more than 1.2 million fish and a total return estimated at more than 1.7 million sockeye through June 27, several-fold more than last year in each category.