Saving Seafood

Alaska salmon catch down by a third in most regions

July 25, 2018 — Alaska’s salmon fisheries continue to lag alarmingly in several regions, with overall catches down by a third from the same time last year.

The single exception is at the unconquerable Bristol Bay, where a 37 million sockeye catch so far has single-handedly pushed Alaska’s total salmon harvest towards a lackluster 60 million fish.

It’s too soon to press the panic button and there is lots of fishing left to go, but fears are growing that Alaska’s 2018 salmon season will be a bust for most fishermen. Worse, it comes on the heels of a cod crash and tanking halibut markets (and catches).

State salmon managers predicted that Alaska’s salmon harvest this year would be down by 34 percent to 149 million fish; due to an expected shortfall of pinks. But with the exception of Bristol Bay, nobody expected fishing to be this bad.

Catches of sockeye, the big money fish, are off by millions at places like  Copper River, Chignik and Kodiak, which has had the weakest sockeye harvest in nearly 40 years.

The weekly update by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute said that coho and Chinook catches remain slow, and while it is still way early in the season, the “bread and butter” pink harvests are off by 65 percent from the strong run of two years ago.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Alaska crabbers gearing up for fall Bering Sea fisheries

July 20, 2018 — Boats are already signing up to participate in fall Bering Sea crab fisheries that begin October 1. Meanwhile, many crabbers are still awaiting word on what their pay outs are for last season.

Prior to the crab fisheries changing from “come one, come all” to a catch share form of management in 2005 prices were set before boats headed out, said Jake Jacobsen, director of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange which negotiates prices for most of the fleet.

“Since then the price is based on the historical division of revenues and there is a formula that is applied to sales. It takes a long time for sales to be completed to the point where we know or can predict what the final wholesale prices will be, and then we can apply the formula to it,” he explained.

Prices to fishermen were down a bit from last year but historically very high, Jacobsen said. For snow crab and bairdi Tanners, which typically are hauled up after the start of each year, prices were just settled and won’t be made public for another week.

“Most of the snow crab and bairdi prices were over $4 a pound, so that’s very good,” he hinted.

According to processor data, last season’s average snow crab price was $4.07 a pound; Tanner crab averaged $3.33. For golden king crab, fishermen averaged $5.51 per pound.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Alaskans, not Outsiders, oppose Pebble mine

July 19, 2018 — The scoping period for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ review of the proposed Pebble mine permit application concluded on June 29, around the same time that Bristol Bay’s robust commercial salmon fishery was in full swing. Although the purpose of the scoping period is to provide the public with an opportunity to identify the issues the Corps should address in the review process, the period ended with many unanswered questions about the project proposal itself.

The Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP) has yet to answer or is unable to answer some very basic questions about the proposed project, and its permit application lacked the type of information and documentation that would normally accompany an application for a project as complex and controversial as Pebble. It is therefore no surprise that many Alaskans — including all of the undersigned and the governor — asked the Corps of Engineers to suspend its review.

A major reason a suspension is justified is that PLP’s proposed mine plans fundamentally changed during the scoping process. After the Corps’ public scoping meetings had concluded, the Pebble partnership substantially revised its mine plans to increase the quantity of mined materials during the first 20 years by 25 percent, increase the size and change the contours of the proposed open pit, change the layout of the tailings storage facility and increase the power plant capacity, among other changes. It would seem that the project plans are yet still a moving target.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Salmon scales tell researchers a lot about the fish returning to Bristol Bay

July 16, 2018 — Across Bristol Bay, scales from fish are being picked, licked, and stuck on cards to be sent to researchers. The reason? To figure out the ages of the salmon making their way up the rivers during the run. One researcher has spent almost 30 summers examining scales and figuring what fish are head where.

Cathy Tilly puts a thin sheet of plastic over a paper card with rows of fish scales on it and then places it into a hydraulic press.

She described the process, “then I can start pumping the pressure up and we go up to 25,000 psi and count to 15.”

It takes that much force to make imprints of the scales in the plastic.

She continued, “Okay and then we use a dump valve to lower the clayton. Pull these metal plates out. Peel it up and what you are left with is an impression of the fish scales.”

After pressing the scales, Tilly takes the small card with the impressions and examines it underneath a microfilm reader.

She said, “Most people describe them as looking like a thumbprint or as tree rings.”

Tilly is figuring out the age of a salmon. Like trees, salmon have rings on their scales that show how old they are. Tilly looks at these markings that indicate the fish’s growth to figure out how many years they spent in freshwater rivers where they were born and how many they spend in the ocean.

Tilly and one other person age all the scales collected from the Bristol Bay sockeye run. That means they each look at tens of thousands of scales in a summer.

Read the full story at KDLG

Seafood processors continue to grapple with H-2B visa shortage

July 11, 2018 — On June 30, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and the Alaskan Congressional delegation traveled to King Salmon to meet with seafood processors and transportation companies from Bristol Bay and around the state.

“I’ve always heard you don’t have the population to staff these up,” Acosta said. “Flying in, I have a different view of whether or not you have the population to – it is literally impossible.”

As the meeting got underway, it became clear that one issue was on everyone’s mind: H-2B visas.

Finding people willing to work long, grueling hours in remote locations is challenging. Many companies recruit year-round. They start by reaching out to Alaskans and workers from the lower 48. But while 65 to 70 percent of industry workers in Bristol Bay are domestic, processors can’t hire enough people from the U.S. alone. So, they turn to workers from abroad.

Glenn Reed is president of Pacific Seafoods Processors Association, which represents many Bristol Bay processors. He said that recruiting begins on a state and national level.

“We do start our recruiting with job fairs and working with the state of Alaska seafood employment program to hire Alaskans. We always get a few people out of Alaska, but not a very large number. I would say that fifty out of job fairs and the state employment program would be a large number. We always hire whatever workers we can out of Alaska first, and we’re quickly in the need for quite a few more workers than that – thousands.”

Read the full story at KDLG

ALASKA: Size of Bristol Bay Run Will Be in Upper Range of Forecast, Likely 50-55 Million Sockeye

July 11, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The most recent Port Moller Test Fishery catches plus escapement data indicates this year’s total Bristol Bay sockeye run (catch plus escapement) will likely be at least 50-55 million.

The magnitude and timing of the world’s largest salmon run changes with each day’s data, but the most recent minimum estimate would put the 2018 season in the top two, since 1997. Bristol Bay’s largest run since 1997 returned in 2015 at 58.8 million sockeye.

That was the total run. The harvest from that run in 2015 was 37.9 million sockeye, the second largest since 1997. The following year, in 2016, Bristol Bay pegged the largest harvest in 20 years at 39.4 million.

With a total catch to date of 16.6 million and the assumption that the run is still building, the final catch numbers could well be above the mid-point harvest forecast of 37.59 million sockeye.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game gives a range for the total run in the bay, and a point estimate for the total catch. The 2018 run size ranges from 40.7 million sockeye to 61.9 million. The harvest point estimate is 37.6 million sockeye.

Dr. Scott Rayborn’s latest interpretation of the data, written last Saturday, July 7, indicated that the run should “build inshore through about July 12 before tapering on July 13-14.”

“We expect the daily catch and escapement will bounce around these daily projections, but if on average it is correct, then the total run would be 47 million by July 14,” Raborn said. That is well within the pre-season total run forecast range.

“We will need to know what the remainder of the test fishing indices look like to see how big the tail may be beyond July 14,” he explained. “We only predict the catch plus escapement (C+E) that is between Port Moller and the inshore districts.”

Catches in the Nushagak District account for the lion’s share of the bay’s landings so far. Over 14 million sockeye have been caught to date, with 3.4 million fish landed in the other districts.

The total catch for sockeye from all areas in the state is now just over 19.4 million salmon.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

For Alaska sockeye salmon, record highs in Bristol Bay, record lows nearly everywhere else

July 10, 2018 — Sockeye salmon catches often add up to half of the value of Alaska’s total salmon fishery, and the so-called reds dominate the season’s early fisheries starting in mid-May.

But sockeye catches so far range from record-setting highs at Bristol Bay to record lows nearly everywhere else.

For example, the Copper River sockeye harvest of just 26,000 is the lowest in 50 years. At Kodiak, just 212,000 sockeyes were taken through July 6, making it the weakest harvest in 38 years. Sockeye fishing at Yakutat has been closed due to the lowest returns in 50 years; likewise, fishermen at Chignik also have yet to see an opener.

Sockeye harvest levels at Cook Inlet and the Alaska Peninsula also are running well below average.

Fishery scientists suspect the downturns are due to the warmest sea-surface temperatures ever recorded running from 2014-2016, which likely depleted food sources before the sockeyes returned from the ocean this year as adults.

Read the full story at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: How ‘pickers’ and ‘lickers’ help Bristol Bay’s fleet

July 5, 2018 — Preschool teacher Hannah Hendrickson said there are two distinct duties for catch samplers working at salmon processing plants around Bristol Bay.

“People oftentimes nickname this job as the pickers and the lickers, so I said, ‘I’m not a licker. I’m only a picker!’ ” she said.

ALASKA: Gov. Walker urges Army Corps to suspend environmental review process for Pebble

July 2, 2018 — Gov. Bill Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott on Friday asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to suspend the environmental review process for the proposed Pebble mine project, citing the “unique” environment of the Bristol Bay region.

Pebble Limited Partnership has proposed the copper and gold prospect for a site that straddles the Bristol Bay salmon fishery headwaters.

Bristol Bay is the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world. Without at least a preliminary economic assessment, Walker and Mallott said in the letter, the Army Corps would be “unable to take a hard look at all reasonable alternatives” in the draft environmental review.

“Given the unique characteristics of the region, the mine proposed by Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP) must be held to an extraordinarily high standard,” the letter said.

There are “too many unanswered questions” for the review to advance further, a statement from the governor’s office said Saturday afternoon.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Mining power: EPA’s Pruitt aims to short-circuit Clean Water Act

June 29, 2018 — Three days before the deadline for public comments on the proposed Pebble Mine project  in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt directed his staff to create a rule limiting the agency’s ability to regulate projects under Clean Water Act guidelines.

These are the exact guidelines that commercial fishermen and local tribes urged Obama-administration EPA officials to invoke to protect Bristol Bay, Alaska’s salmon gold mine.

In a memo dated Tuesday, June 26, Pruitt directed the EPA’s Office of Water to submit the following changes, at minimum, to the Office of Management and Budget within the next six months:

• Eliminating the authority to initiate the section 404(c) process before a section 404 permit application has been filed with the Corps or a state, otherwise known as the “preemptive veto.”

• Eliminating the authority to initiate the section 404(c) process after a permit has been issued by the Corps or a state, otherwise known as the “retroactive veto.”

• Requiring a regional administrator to obtain approval from EPA Headquarters before initiating the section 404(c) process.

• Requiring a regional administrator to review and consider the findings of a final Environmental Assessment or environmental impact statement by the Corps or a state before preparing and publishing notice of a proposed determination.

Read the full story at National Fisherman