Saving Seafood

‘It’s very emotional’: Chignik residents fear for their communities’ future if abysmal salmon runs persist

September 14, 2021 — Gene Carlson drove the streets of the remote Chignik Bay, between quiet wooden houses and old cannery buildings on an afternoon in July.

“That used to be a restaurant there,” he said. “That’s a web loft over there, which is shut down now. Here’s another one of my cousin’s houses. He’s not living there anymore.”

The Chignik River’s salmon runs have sustained generations in the century-old small fishing communities along the Alaska Peninsula, Chignik Bay included. But, for the fourth year in a row, for reasons no one can definitively pinpoint, the runs came in severely low.

For years, residents have struggled to earn a living fishing and to put up enough fish for the winter, and some worry their villages will disappear if the low runs persist, taking with them a fishing tradition that connects their families to home.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Citing failed sockeye runs, Alaska Gov. Walker declares economic disaster for Chignik fisheries

August 24, 2018 — ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Citing a preliminary harvest count of 128 sockeye salmon and rapidly declining escapement counts, Gov. Walker declared an economic disaster for the Chignik fisheries region Thursday.

According to a Thursday release, the governor’s decision is a result of harvest numbers that pose a threat to communities in the region that rely on subsistence and commercial salmon fishing, including Chignik, Chignik Lake, Chignik Lagoon, Ivanof Bay and Perryville.

“Chignik is used to catching more than a million sockeye every year. This year, they caught 128 fish,” Gov. Walker said in the statement. “Salmon is the economic and subsistence staple in these communities and the failure of this year’s fishery is a one-two punch. It is critical that we do what we can to support them as they work to recover: that’s what we’re here for.”

Read the full story at KTUU

 

ALASKA: SE legislators seek inclusion in pink salmon disaster request

October 26th, 2016 — A pair of Southeast legislators is asking the governor to include Southeast fishermen in Alaska’s request for federal disaster relief under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

Sitka representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins and Ketchikan representative Dan Ortiz made the appeal in a letter to Governor Bill Walker on October 21, on behalf of Southeast fishermen affected by this season’s weak pink salmon return.

Under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, fishermen are eligible for automatic disaster relief if the value of a fishery drops more than 80-percent below its five-year average.

Staffers for Kreiss-Tomkins and Ortiz calculated this season’s loss at 55-percent, which qualifies the Southeast pink salmon fishery for “further evaluation” for disaster relief.

Governor Walker in September applied for disaster relief for the pink salmon fisheries in Prince William Sound, Kodiak, Lower Cook Inlet, and in Chignik.

In Southeast, pink salmon are targeted primarily by seiners. In their letter, Kreiss-Tomkins and Ortiz argue that Southeast fishing families are facing huge losses through no fault of their own, and there is no reason to bar them from the same support requested for Southcentral fishermen.

Read the full story at KCAW