Saving Seafood

Federal survey delivers more bad news to the Bering Sea crab fleet

September 12, 2022 — A Bering Sea survey by federal scientists contains more bad news for Alaska, Washington and Oregon-based crabbers hoping for an upturn in upcoming harvests that last year fell to rock-bottom levels.

The federal survey results for Bristol Bay king crab are bleak and crabbers have been warned that — for a second consecutive year — there may not be a fall harvest, according to Jamie Goen, executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers.

The new survey results, released late last week, show that the population of mature male snow crab targeted by crabbers decreased by 22% from 2021, which at 5.6 million pounds was at the lowest level in more than 40 years. The snow crab population crashed amid a Bering Sea warming, and the new survey results are likely to result in an even smaller harvest for the upcoming winter season.

Alaska, within the limits of a federal management plan, determines how many crabs can be caught based on these surveys, as well as analysis by state and federal scientists. When more crabs are found in these surveys, the harvest levels generally climb. When the surveys indicate crab populations are in decline, the managers typically slash the quotas to give the populations a better chance to rebound. And, when the numbers fall too low, the harvests may be shut down.

As recently as 2016, the Bering Sea crab harvests grossed more than $280 million for a fleet that uses baited steel-framed traps — called pots — along the bottom of the ocean.

Snow crab and king crab historically have been the biggest-dollar harvests for Bering sea crabbers, some of whom also pursue smaller populations of other species. And the harvest cuts expected this year will put some fishermen who have big debt loads at risk of financial disaster, Goen said.

“We have got an emergency,” Goen said. “I’m trying to get Congress to act to help.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service survey does offer hope for improved harvests three to five years from now, as young snow crabs grow to adult size.

“The positive news is that we saw a significant increase in immature snow crab abundance, both males and females,” said Mike Litzow, survey lead and director of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center’s Kodiak Laboratory. “Depending on how many of these young crabs actually survive to adulthood, this could be one bright spot for the fishing industry in a few years.”

Read the full article at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Unnamed investor offers up to $60 million for Alaska’s Pebble mine project

August 12, 2022 — An unnamed investor has agreed to inject up to $60 million into the embattled Pebble copper and gold project in Southwest Alaska, an infusion the owner hopes will allow it to reverse major federal permitting actions against the project.

Pebble owner Northern Dynasty Minerals of Vancouver, B.C., is not naming the investor, a private asset management company, in part because it is not required to, said Mike Westerlund, vice president of investor relations for Northern Dynasty. It announced the new investment July 27.

Northern Dynasty is also declining to name the investor out of concern that project opponents will publicly attack the company in an attempt to discourage its investment, he said. The investor can reveal its name if it chooses, Westerlund said.

“We are trying to create economic opportunities and jobs, and these funds will help us do that,” he said.

The Pebble mineral deposit is located about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, near headwaters that support the valuable Bristol Bay salmon fishery. Pebble opponents have said pollution from the mine will harm what is the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery, which is enjoying record runs again this summer. Northern Dynasty argues it can safely develop the project.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Regardless of party or office, Alaska candidates are targeting trawling

August 11, 2022 — Republicans, Democrats and independents seeking a variety of elected offices across Alaska appear united by a desire to restrict deep-sea trawling.

In candidate questionnaires submitted to the Alaska Beacon, candidates for statewide and legislative races — regardless of party — say the restrictions are the best way to improve salmon returns on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers.

“I support efforts to reduce the wasteful bycatch of Alaska’s seafood by Seattle-based high seas fishing corporations,” said Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate for Alaska’s U.S. House seat.

“Science provides the best guide. However, I think most Alaskans agree it is past time to get high seas trawler bycatch under control,” said Tuckerman Babcock, a Republican candidate for an Alaska Senate district on the Kenai Peninsula.

Their comments were typical of those submitted to the Beacon, and Linda Kozak, a Kodiak fisher who has been following fisheries issues for three decades, said she’s seen a public reaction unlike anything in her career.

“For the first time in as long as I’ve been involved in fish politics, bycatch is a household name in Alaska. It’s something that the public is interested in,” she said.

Though Bristol Bay’s red-salmon fishery is enjoying a record year, fishing for king and chum salmon on the Yukon has been curtailed for a second straight summer because of low returns, leaving traditional subsistence fishermen unable to catch fish. Similar restrictions are in place on the Kuskokwim.

The low returns have been blamed on a variety of factors, including climate change, habitat destruction and bycatch, which occurs when ships catch salmon while pursuing other fish.

Read the full article at the Frontiersman

ALASKA: Bristol Bay run hits all-time record of 76 million sockeye

July 27, 2022 — The sockeye salmon run in Bristol Bay, Alaska, U.S.A. has surpassed 76 million fish, setting an all-time record.

As of 21 July, the latest day for which a count is available, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported a total run of 76,583,856 sockeye, with a cumulative catch of 58,298,771 sockeye between Bristol Bay’s Ugashik, Egegik, Naknek-Kvichak, Nushagak, and Togiak fisheries. The count  surpassed AFDG’s pre-season estimate predicted a run of 73.4 million sockeye salmon, the largest inshore run ever, with a potential harvest of over 61 million salmon.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Tale of two salmon fisheries: Bristol Bay breaks record, but Yukon River collapses

July 25, 2022 — In the Bristol Bay region, the sockeye salmon run and harvest amounts set new records, as was predicted in the preseason forecast. As of Monday, the run had totaled over 73.7 million, with a harvest of over 56.3 million. The previous record was set just last year, with a 67.7 million run of sockeyes and a third-biggest-ever harvest of nearly 42 million of the fish.

But along the Yukon River, a prized salmon run is heading toward a worst-ever season.

The number of Chinook counted by sonar while swimming up the river at Pilot Station, a village near the Bering Sea coast, was the lowest on record for this time of the year, the department said. Things are looking grim for the rest of the summer, Fish and Game said in its most recent update; “the drainage-wide run may be under 50,000 fish, which is so small that escapement goals may not be met in any tributaries,” the update said. Chinook fishing has been closed all along the river and its drainages.

Opponents of the controversial Pebble Mine say two consecutive years of record sockeye runs demonstrate the value of protecting the Bristol Bay watershed, site of the world’s biggest sockeye runs, from that proposed development. They are urging the Environmental Protection Agency to invoke a rarely used provision of the Clean Water Act to preclude any wetlands-fill permit for the mine.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

ALASKA: Fish for Families aims to bring Bristol Bay sockeye to Alaska communities facing low salmon runs

July 21, 2022 — Bristol Bay’s sockeye run is the largest on record this season. It has been an astounding summer: More than 70 million sockeye have returned, and fleets have pulled in record harvests of more than 53 million fish.

Fish for Families is a new program that aims to share that catch. The program is an extension of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association and the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust. Since 2020, these groups have helped coordinate sockeye salmon donations from Bristol Bay to Alaska Native communities in southwest Alaska.

At the end of June, it sent out its first shipment of the season — 1,000 pounds of salmon to Chignik communities on the Alaska Peninsula. The program plans to send a total of 8,000 pounds of salmon there this month.

The group also wants to send salmon to communities on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers that are facing record low chum salmon returns. That will require more funds. They’re asking the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for help shipping the salmon there.

The donations build off other efforts to bring salmon to communities in need in the past. In 2020, the fishermen’s association helped coordinate tribes, fishermen, local governments and Native organizations and nonprofits to donate fish from areas around the state, including from Bristol Bay and southeast Alaska. To date, the association said it has deployed $2.5 million to buy salmon and donate more than half a million meals.

Read the full article at KTOO

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