Saving Seafood

Big Alaska salmon harvest about 5 percent more than forecast

September 12, 2017 — Alaska’s salmon season is nearly a wrap but fall remains as one of the fishing industry’s busiest times of the year.

For salmon, the catch of 213 million has surpassed the forecast by 9 million fish. High points include a statewide sockeye catch topping 50 million for the 10th time in history (37 million from Bristol Bay), and one of the best chum harvests ever at more than 22 million fish.

Total catches and values by region will be released by state fishery managers in November.

Hundreds of boats are now fishing for cod following Sept. 1 openers in Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet, Kodiak and throughout the Bering Sea.

Pollock fishing reopened to Gulf of Alaska trawlers Aug. 25. More than 3 billion pounds of pollock will be landed this year in Alaska’s Gulf and Bering Sea fisheries. Fishing also is ongoing for Atka mackerel, perch, various flounders, rockfish and more.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

ALASKA: The F/V Akutan’s sad, failed season in Bristol Bay

August 17, 2017 — Fiasco. Disaster. Nightmare. These are words used by those involved with the floating processor Akutan to describe a fishing season gone terribly wrong. The Akutan, owned by Klawock Oceanside, Inc., was supposed to custom process up to 100,000 pounds of Bristol Bay salmon a day for a small fleet of fishermen under the banner Bristol Bay Seafoods, LLC. After July 25, it was bound for the Kuskokwim to give local fishermen their only salmon market.

Nothing went right. The owners, the fishing fleet, the lender, and the crew have gone unpaid or lost big sums of money. Onboard the vessel sits 130,000 pounds of headed-and-gutted sockeye salmon, the only bounty other than the vessel itself that may eventually compensate the parties involved. The owners, fishermen, and other parties filed liens against that fish as the 180-foot floating processor Akutan and a skeleton crew limped out of the silty, shallow Nushagak Bay Sunday to seek repairs at a blue water port.

“We’re in peril,” Captain Steve Lecklitner said Saturday. “We know we cannot stay in this river. It’s breaking down our systems. The owners have basically abandoned the vessel. The mortgage holders and the lenders have not established contact. I’m trying to get parts for our generator, and as soon as that’s done, it’s our intention to move the vessel to Dutch Harbor.”

Best laid plans

After last season a group of about 15 Bristol Bay drift boat fishermen decided to again pursue their own market. These fishing families are members of an Old Believer community in Homer and are commonly, and not pejoratively, referred to as the “Russians” in Bristol Bay’s fleet.

Skipper Kiril Basargin, a leader of this group, has been vocal about his frustration with the “mega corporate seafood buyers” that process 99 percent of Bristol Bay’s catch, faulting them for catch limits and low prices. In 2015 he brought his concerns to the state’s board of fisheries, telling them that Bristol Bay’s seafood companies promise “every year that they are going to keep up, and not holding there [sic] promises. Holding on, the commercial fisherman loses money every minute while they sit. We finally got tired of sitting and losing our seasons. The huge corporations control the markets and commercial fisherman. Finally in Bristol Bay in 2014 Wild Legacy Seafoods was born,” he wrote.

What happened to Wild Legacy Seafoods is unclear. But ahead of the 2017 season, Basargin and others formed a new company, Bristol Bay Seafoods LLC, to be their own “buyer”. They hired Klawock Oceanside to be their processor.

“And really they’ve lost their whole season to mismanagement and mis-operation of the F/V Akutan,” said William Earnhart, an attorney for the Bristol Bay Seafoods fishermen.

Read and listen to the full story at KDLG

FRI trains the fishery managers of tomorrow

June 26, 2017 — Area management biologists in Bristol Bay are responsible for tracking and maintaining the escapement numbers of multiple salmon species in multiple river systems. Not only are they charged with preserving the health of the run’s biology, but they are often held, at least partly, accountable for the economic viability of the fishery as well. One of the inherent challenges of the job is that the sustainability of the salmon run is not always synonymous with the profit margins of industry entities, and the managers are often the first to be blamed when the catch and escapement don’t go as planned.

The University of Washington’s Fisheries Research Institute is taking on the tall task of training those who hope to one day be fishery managers. Seven grad students—two from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, three from the University of Washington and two from Kamchatka State Technical Institute in Russia—are taking the three week course at FRI’s cabin on Aleknagik Lake.

Professors Milo Adkinson and Ray Hilborn are teaching the course.  “We bring our graduate students in fisheries out to see a real fishery in action,” said Adkinson.

For the class’s main term project, the students will work directly with the three area management biologists in Bristol Bay as the salmon run is going on.

“They get to pretend that they’re managing the fisheries,” said Adkinson. “So I’ve got a group of students that are going be deciding whether to open and close the Naknek-Kvichak district every day.”

The students will simulate making announcements relevant to the current salmon run, allocating when and where sport and commercial fisherman are allowed to fish. They will then be given a math equation which will determine the catch and escapement numbers based on the management decisions they made. The students will receive feedback from the actual area managers as the course progresses.

“We had one year where the students let several million fish escape into the Egegik system. I think the managers got a kick out of that,” said Adkinson.

Tim Sands is the area management biologist for the Nushagak and Togiak districts. He gave a lecture at FRI this week, and is making himself available to answer any questions the students charged with simulating his job might have.

“So there’s rules like what time of the tide you have to open the set nets—it’s all specified in the management plan. They can ask me questions like that, or things about allocation,” said Sands. “That’s what I do. Tell them the rules of the district.”

Read the full story at KDLG

Shutdown puts salmon fisheries at risk

June 9, 2017 — Alaska Department of Fish & Game workers are heading out to weirs and counting towers this month to prepare for the opening of salmon fisheries across the state, but with the Alaska Legislature unable to reach agreement on an operating budget, uncertainty remains about how to pay them.

State workers have already received notice of potential layoffs should the Legislature pass the July 1 deadline.

Fish & Game is rolling out management plans under the assumption that the Legislature will pass a budget before July 1. If lawmakers don’t pass that budget, a government shutdown would result in the layoff of thousands of state workers, ADF&G Commissioner Sam Cotten told the Empire in an interview Thursday at the State Office Building in Juneau.

Lucrative salmon fisheries are set to open in Bristol Bay and Southeast Alaska in coming weeks. Bristol Bay salmon runs traditionally peak around Independence Day. Because salmon only spawn during the summer, the shutdown makes them particularly vulnerable, Cotten said.

“If we’re talking about cod fish, you can wait a few months and the cod fish will still be there. But with salmon, the timing is pretty critical,” Cotten said.

In 2015, ADF&G estimated the value of Alaska’s commercial salmon harvest at $414 million.

“There’s thousands of jobs that are involved here, hundreds of millions of dollars of investment and logistic planning,” Cotten said. “Big ships are in Bristol Bay waiting to haul fish out and people are being moved there and processing crews are getting the equipment ready to roll and it’s a situation we don’t want to find ourselves in. It’s hard and I’m struggling a little bit because there is so much uncertainty.”

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

Alaska Peninsula fisheries could harvest more than 20 million salmon if averages stay true

June 8, 2017 — The Alaskan Peninsula extends from the mainland toward the southwest between the waters of Bristol Bay and Kodiak. There are several commercial fisheries included along its shores and in the archipelagos to the west. If the averages of the past five years stay consistent, these districts could collectively harvest more than 20.6 million salmon this 2017 season.

The South Alaska Peninsula district is expected to carry the lion’s share of this catch. While there is no formal forecast for sockeye, area biologists predict a South Pen pink run ranging up to 15.6 million fish, with a pink harvest projected at 12.4 million.

“It’s a decent year,” said area management biologist Lisa Fox—the outlook being far better than last year’s pink harvest, which was part of a statewide bust. However, pink runs during odd years are generally measured against other odd years. “It’s not going to be as strong as that 2015 year,” said Fox.

ADF&G is projecting a South Pen sockeye harvest of 2.26 million, which is based on the recent five year average. There are three sockeye systems with escapement goals in the South Pen: biologists hope to see 15,000 to 20,000 sockeye in Orzinski Lake, 14,000 to 28,000 in Thin Point, and 3,200 to 6,400 in Mortensen Lagoon.

The Chignik sockeye fishery is on the south side of the Peninsula, just west of Kodiak. Chignik’s sockeye forecast is down from last year, but close to the district’s ten year average. Biologists in the region are forecasting a total run of more than 2 million fish, with an expected commercial harvest of 1.2 million.

Read the full story at KDLG

ALASKA: When sailboats ruled Bristol Bay

May 21, 2017 — One hundred and thirty-two years ago, the Bristol Bay commercial fishery began on the shores of the Nushagak River when the first cannery went into operation and canned a little more than 4,000 salmon.

Within four years, three more canneries appeared on the Nushagak, and within a decade canneries were built on the Naknek and Kvichak rivers. The dawn of the 20th century saw dozens of canneries around Bristol Bay catching, processing and canning millions of pounds of sockeye salmon every summer. By 1910, Bristol Bay accounted for 40 percent of Alaska’s commercially caught salmon. Even today, Bristol Bay makes up about 40 percent of Alaska’s salmon value.

Canneries are large industrial operations. In the early days, coal and steam provided the power to run complex systems of boilers, belt-driven pulleys and winches needed to butcher, cook, can and deliver salmon to the world. But when it came to actually catching fish in Bristol Bay, canneries relied upon the muscle of men and the power of wind.

To catch fish in Bristol Bay, canners imported and adapted a wooden sailboat developed for use on the Columbia River — a boat propelled by wind and crewed by two fishermen who pulled heavy cedar-corked linen nets by hand. The sailboat, roughly 30 feet long, was commonly known as a Bristol Bay “double-ender” because the shape of its bow and stern were similar.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

ALASKA: Crabbers holding out hope for high prices after cuts

October 19, 2016 — Despite a grim beginning to the season, members of the crab industry are holding out hope for high prices and a late fishery.

The Alaska Board of Fisheries hasn’t yet decided whether to review harvest guidelines for Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab and potentially open the season in January or earlier, or leave the fishery closed entirely for the next two years. Meanwhile, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game cut the quota for snow crab by 50 percent and for Bristol Bay red king crab by 15 percent.

Despite the cuts, crab industry stakeholders say the season for Bristol Bay red king crab is moving along at more than a healthy clip.

“Some good news from the grounds, the crab look good. They’re heavy. There’s a lot of small crab, females. Folks are seeing pots just plugged with crab — so full they can’t get another one in,” said Jake Jacobsen, director of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange, a crab harvesting cooperative with 188 members that together harvest 70 percent of Alaska’s crab.

Jacobsen said that given the density of the fishing, he wonders why the surveys that measure abundance didn’t pick anything up.“The reports I’ve got, maybe the people who aren’t doing so well don’t say anything,” he said. “There’s a lot of very optimistic reports from the grounds. I’m not sure what happened with the survey last summer.”

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

ALASKA: Salmon season is in full swing, and dungeness is going strong

July 11, 2016 — Salmon takes center stage each summer but many other fisheries also are in full swing from Ketchikan to Kotzebue.

For salmon, total catches by Friday were nearing 28 million fish, of which 10 million were sockeyes, primarily from Bristol Bay. Last week marked the catch of the 2 billionth sockeye from the Bay since the fishery began in 1884.

Other salmon highlights: Southeast trollers wrapped up their summer chinook fishery on Tuesday after taking 158,000 kings in just eight days. The chinook catch is strictly limited by a U.S. and Canada treaty, and for only the third summer in 15 years, trollers won’t get another allotment for an August opener.

Sockeye catches at the North Peninsula were so strong, the fleet was put on limits by Peter Pan Seafoods, the lone processor in the region. The harvest there topped 1.3 million reds last week.

It’s been slowing going around Kodiak Island, where the catch was approaching 700,000 fish, mostly sockeyes. The pace was picking up at Cook Inlet with a catch nearing 400,000, primarily reds. At Prince William Sound, the harvest of chums, pinks and sockeyes topped 7.6 million fish.

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

Community-supported fish delivered to your door from the fisherman

May 10, 2016 — There was excitement last year on North Haven when fisherman Matt Luck arrived with fresh sockeye salmon. Caught far away in the chilly waters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay, why were islanders cheering?

“If you are going to buy salmon from Maine, it’s farmed salmon. This is very different. Everyone got to meet Matt, which is why people wanted to buy in the first place,” said Cecily Pingree, owner of Calderwood Hall restaurant and market on the island. She purchased enough sockeye to last her all year.

It’s a funny scenario. Fish from Alaska arriving by skiff to a tiny island in Maine by a bearded commercial fisherman from away. In Brunswick, 40 people welcomed Luck in the same fashion.

This year shares of Luck’s catch can be reserved beginning May 18 from his company Pride of Bristol Bay. Buying a 20-pound case of vacuum-packed fillets may sound excessive, but it’s a more sustainable way to shop. You lock in freshness and price, and “it encourages people not to get in their car when they think, ‘What’s for dinner tonight?’” Luck said. “The technology [for flash-freezing fresh fish] allows us to preserve this product.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

ALASKA: BBRSDA funding diverts need for Bristol Bay cost recovery fishery, for now

March 31, 2016 — BRISTOL BAY, Alaska — Fishermen and processors aren’t the only ones who rely on Bristol Bay sockeye for part of their annual income. Each summer, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game uses cost recovery fishing to help fund management in Bristol Bay. But this summer, BBRSDA has agreed to pick up the tab to avoid what’s widely seen as an inefficient way of funding management.

In late March, the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association agreed to provide the Alaska Department of Fish and Game with up to $250,000 to replace the need for the cost recovery fishery in Bristol Bay.

BBRSDA President Abe Williams said that while the board is providing funding this year, they have concerns about the long-term plan for funding fisheries management in the region.

“We see the budget of the department of fish and game being stripped, but in turn, they’re being forced to look at options like cost recovery to fund their budget,” Williams said. “I think collectively we need to look at how do we get the message back to the state of Alaska that they need to adequately fund the Department of Fish and Game so they can take care of the management business of the fishery in Bristol bay.”

Read the full story at KDLG