Saving Seafood

Bristol Bay’s sockeye run is already the biggest on record

July 18, 2022 — Bristol Bay’s 2022 sockeye run is now the biggest on record: 69.7 million fish have returned this summer. That surpasses the previous record of 67.7 million fish, which was set last year.

More than 3 million sockeye have swum up the Wood River to spawn in the tributaries around Lake Aleknagik, about 20 miles from Dillingham, according to the state’s counting tower on the river.

Bristol Bay’s commercial fleet hauled in the most fish on record this year. Fishermen in the Nushagak, one of the bay’s five commercial districts, harvested more than 2 million sockeye in one day this season.

William P. Johnson just finished his sixty-second year as a boat captain. He grew up set net fishing near Igushik in the 1940s with his family. After more than six decades of fishing, he wasn’t phased by the large returns this season.

While sockeye have returned in droves, chinook and chum salmon runs have dropped. Scientists don’t know why that is, either.

River systems on the west side of Bristol Bay have seen an especially large sockeye boom over the past few years.

The total run is now 69.7 million sockeye, but the season isn’t over yet. Fish and Game forecast a run of 75 million fish, but it could go as high as 90 million this summer.

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: EPA extends comment period on watershed protections that would block Pebble Mine

July 4, 2022 — The Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that it is extending its comment period for proposed restrictions on mining of the Pebble deposit. The comment period was originally set to end in July. Now it will continue for two more months, to Sept. 6.

Representatives with the EPA visited Dillingham and Newhalen earlier this month to hear public testimony on the agency’s proposal to protect waters around the Pebble deposit. It was the first in-person public hearings since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2014, when the Obama administration released a proposed determination for protections, more than a million people — including tens of thousands of Alaskans — commented in support of the federal protections for Bristol Bay. In 2019, the Trump administration revoked the proposal.

In May, the EPA used its authority under the Clean Water Act to issue a revised proposal that included analysis from multi-year environmental reviews and Pebble’s mining proposal.

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: Fishermen say Bristol Bay protections must be stronger

June 20, 2022 — One of the oldest Bristol Bay fishing associations came out strongly against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new limits on the potential Pebble Mine, reflecting unease that the much-heralded move does not go far enough.

“The Bristol Bay Fishermen’s Association regrets that it cannot support the EPA’s weak and watered-down 2022 PD (proposed determination),” said David Harsila, a spokesman for the association in a statement this week.

“The watershed will not be protected, and a large-scale mining operation could still be permitted. We demand that EPA do more to protect the Bristol Bay drainages.”

Under the Obama administration, the EPA in 2014 proposed a declaration under section 404 (c) of the Clean Water Act to protect headwaters of Bristol Bay salmon streams from pollution generated by mining for gold, copper and other metal ores in the Pebble Deposit.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Don’t endanger aquatic ecosystems in the name of solving climate change

June 20, 2022 — In New England, too, we are being told that jeopardizing fishery-supporting ecosystems is the price we must pay to solve climate change. Here, the argument is coming from offshore wind proponents, who are working hand-in-glove with the Biden administration to set a course to install 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 — from a baseline of almost zero in just eight years — and 110 gigawatts by 2050, with most of the initial development taking place off New England and the mid-Atlantic and limited environmental review taking place prior to the issuance of leases.

What would this scale of development look like? With today’s technology, 110 gigawatts would be almost 8,500 turbines — 137 times the size of the Vineyard Wind facility planned for south of Cape Cod. It would mean near-continuous construction on the continental shelf for three decades. While no one knows what the ecological impacts of such construction might be (and that’s precisely our point), evidence suggests they may include alterations of the acoustic and sensory environment, electromagnetic fields, and current and wind patterns, affecting a variety of species whose survival depends on these aspects of the underwater world.

Offshore wind off New England and mining in the Bristol Bay watershed are linked by more than just spurious ultimatums invoking climate catastrophe as the inevitable consequence of keeping these wild places wild. It also happens that offshore wind, which requires hundreds of miles of electrical cables measuring up to 11 inches in diameter, is the most copper-intensive of all renewable energy technologies. Every mile of cable laid across the ocean floor will spur greater pressure to mine copper in precious, irreplaceable places like Bristol Bay.

Read the full op-ed at The Boston Globe

EPA tours Bristol Bay to hear comments on plans that could prevent Pebble Mine

June 17, 2022 — Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency are touring the Bristol Bay region to hear public comments on a plan announced last month that could prevent the proposed Pebble Mine from moving forward.

The EPA heard from dozens of residents in Dillingham Middle/High School on Thursday morning who were concerned about the impacts that the planned copper and gold mine could have on Bristol Bay’s sockeye salmon fishery. Subsistence salmon users spoke about their concerns for a resource they described as an essential source of food and culture for Alaska Natives.

Robin Samuelson, one of Bristol Bay Native Corp.’s board of directors, spoke about the plans for the mine near Iliamna Lake, and was adamant that “nobody is going to build up there. Nobody.”

“We live and die by our fish,” he added.

Read the full story at Alaska’s News Source

 

ALASKA: Bristol Bay advocates pushing EPA to do more

June 2, 2022 — Groups united in opposition to the proposed Pebble Mine say they will marshal a big turnout to press the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to go even farther with its proposed protections for the Bristol Bay headwaters.

Advocates outlined their plan at a June 1 press conference in Dillingham, Alaska, with public hearings on the EPA proposal coming up June 16-17 – along with a projected record-setting sockeye season for the $2.2 billion summer fishery.

The EPA’s newly proposed determination under Clean Water Act Section 404(c) “is a milestone, it is a starting point, but we have a long way to go,” said Daniel Cheyette, vice president lands and resources for the Bristol Bay Native Corporation.

Biologists anticipate 75 million sockeye could return this season, underscoring Bristol Bay’s status as the most productive salmon habitat, said Katherine Carscallen, director of Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

EPA could kill mining project in the Bristol Bay watershed

June 1, 2022 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will hold public hearings next month on a proposal to restrict mining in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed and possibly kill a large project. 

The move “would help protect the Bristol Bay watershed’s rivers, streams, and wetlands that support the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery and a subsistence-based way of life that has sustained Alaska Native communities for millennia,” officials said on its website. 

Any changes could kill the proposed “Pebble Mine,” called “one of the greatest stores of mineral wealth ever discovered, and the world’s largest undeveloped copper and gold resource,” by Northern Dynasty Minerals, which is in charge of the project. The National Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups have opposed the project, saying it would damage wildlife there.

Read the full story at KPVI

 

EPA’s Pebble ‘veto’ won’t stop all mining in Alaska’s Bristol Bay

May 31, 2022 — EPA’s move to ban mining the Pebble deposit in the Bristol Bay watershed this week set off a swirl of questions about whether the proposed Clean Water Act veto could have broader implications for mining in one of the world’s premier salmon habitats.

But a close look at the agency documents explaining the decision makes it crystal clear: The Pebble veto won’t stop mining in Bristol Bay, much less the rest of the Last Frontier.

EPA’s proposed veto Wednesday only targets efforts to mine the Pebble deposit. It was based on a mine plan Pebble LP and its backer Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Clean Water Act permitting process two years ago.

That mine plan specifically affected three watersheds, the South and North Forks of the Koktuli River and the Upper Talarik Creek, where it would permanently damage 99 miles of stream habitat and more than 2,000 acres of wetlands. EPA says it is vetoing the project because it would result in four “unacceptable adverse effects” on aquatic life and habitat, including the loss of salmon habitat and negative effects on the genetic diversity of salmon in the watersheds.

The veto is limited to certain headwaters of those watersheds, and includes approximately 309 square miles surrounding the 2020 mine plan. There are other mine claims within that restricted area, however the veto documents are clear that the restriction only applies to mining the Pebble deposit, specifically.

Read the full story at Greenwire

 

As EPA moves to block mining at the Pebble deposit, mine supporters and opponents look to details

May 31, 2022 — In late May, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it wants to veto development of the Pebble Mine — a vast deposit of copper and gold at the headwaters of Bristol Bay.

The proposal is a step toward permanently blocking development of the proposed open-pit mine in the Bristol Bay watershed. Mine opponents have pursued a veto for more than a decade.

The EPA said mining the Pebble deposit would result in unacceptable loss of salmon habitat, both at the site and further downstream. Using its authority under the Clean Water Act, the agency proposes to prohibit the discharge of mining materials in waters and wetlands at the Pebble site. That could make it impossible to extract minerals from the deposit.

The executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, Alannah Hurley, opposes the mine and said the EPA’s move is a step in the right direction.

“Today is a really big day for Bristol Bay — for us to get back on track in this process, and for the Biden administration to be committed to finishing the job to stop Pebble Mine once and for all is very exciting,” she said. “But we’re not there yet. We definitely need to get through the rest of this process.”

Read the full story at KTOO

Alaska Republicans open to EPA Pebble mine veto

May 27, 2022 — The Biden administration’s move to veto the contentious Pebble gold and copper mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed may soothe the state’s Republican senators who in the past have pushed back against federal intervention.

GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan said he and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, both staunch supporters of mining in Alaska, are still digesting the agency’s proposal to impose a Clean Water Act veto against mining in the watershed (Greenwire, May 25).

Sullivan suggested his opposition to federal intervention could be muted if EPA’s decision was based on Pebble LP’s most recent proposal. When the Obama administration tried to veto the project, the company had yet to enter the permitting process. The agency used a watershed assessment and publicly available information about the company’s intentions.

Indeed, Sullivan told E&E News his past opposition was based on EPA moving forward with a “preemptive veto.” In 2014, he said, there was “kind of a vague declaration that the EPA had the power to veto any project on state of Alaska land, that they deem vetoable.”

“Most people, myself included, and the whole Alaskan delegation, were vehemently opposed to that, because they didn’t have the legal authority to do it,” said Sullivan. “If this is based on the project, not the 2014 watershed assessment, it’s very different.”

Read the full story at E&E News