Saving Seafood

Fishery managers call for deeper look at salmon bycatch, but decline to tighten rules

June 16, 2022 — Western Alaska villagers have endured the worst chum salmon runs on record, several years of anemic Chinook salmon runs in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, harvest closures from the Bering Sea coast to Canada’s Yukon Territory and such dire conditions that they relied on emergency shipments of salmon from elsewhere in Alaska just to have food to eat.

Many of those suffering see one way to provide some quick relief: Large vessels trawling for pollock and other groundfish in the industrial-scale fisheries of the Bering Sea, they say, must stop intercepting so many salmon.

Advocates for tighter rules on those interceptions, known as bycatch, made their case over the past several days to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, the organization that manages fish harvests in federal waters off Alaska.

‘Like fishing in the desert’

“The numbers are really low. There’s nothing out there. It’s like fishing in the desert,” Walter Morgan, of the Yup’ik village of Lower Kalskag, said in online testimony to the council, which met in Sitka.

Read the full story at the the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman

 

ALASKA: Salmon bycatch, electronic monitoring on the table at Sitka meeting of North Pacific Fishery Management Council

June 9, 2022 — The bycatch of chinook and chum salmon is on the agenda, as the spring meeting of the North Pacific Management Council gets underway in Sitka this week (June 9-14).

In addition to hearing how much salmon is being intercepted in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea by the trawl fisheries, the council will review a proposal to supplement the human observer program with electronic monitoring.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council regulates the so-called “federal fisheries” which take place outside the three-mile limit of Alaska’s state waters, and within the exclusive economic zone of the United States which extends 200 miles offshore.

Read the full story at KCAW

Klamath Dam Removal Could Offer Promise for Oregon Commercial Salmon Fishery

May 19, 2022 — The final hurdle is in sight and expected to be overcome, in the decades-long fight to remove four dams from the Klamath River and hopefully allow restoration of the river’s Chinook salmon population which was once the third-largest in the country, but in recent years has plummeted by as much as ninety-eight percent. The four dams were built between 1903 and 1967 as part of PacifiCorp’s Klamath Hydroelectric Project and are now obsolete. Removing them will provide native migratory fish, like Chinook salmon, access to larger spawning grounds. It will also help restore the natural flow of the river, providing innumerable benefits to the entire ecosystem.

The repercussions that an exhausted river system with a dramatically declining salmon population can deliver are far-reaching and staggering. The slow-moving, warm water gives rise to parasites, like Ceratonova Shasta, which reaches unhealthy levels in this environment and begins to infect and kill the salmon. In addition to parasites, the higher water temperatures are also a deadly threat to the salmon that are necessary for the overall health of the river. After salmon return to the river to spawn and die their bodies provide key nutrients to other organisms in the river. This includes the trees that grow along the riverbanks whose roots help to prevent erosion and to maintain the structural integrity of the riverbank. The Native American Tribes in the Klamath Basin are also heavily dependent on the Chinook salmon, both culturally and for sustenance. Subsistence salmon fishing is a way of life for tribes like the Yurok and the Karuk. Along with the salmon and the river, their way of life is dying.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

As drought puts growing strains on fish, hatcheries serve as lifelines for California salmon

April 11, 2022 — When Shasta Dam was built on the Sacramento River in the 1940s, the government also established Coleman National Fish Hatchery about 30 miles away on the tributary Battle Creek, aiming to make up for the loss of upstream habitat by raising fish for release.

The hatchery’s staff runs an elaborate spawning operation that this year is raising 12 million fall-run Chinook salmon, supporting California’s commercial and recreational fisheries. The hatchery also raises other types of salmon and steelhead.

The adult salmon swim up the Sacramento River and into Battle Creek, then up a fish ladder to the hatchery’s holding ponds. Mechanical screens in the water are used to move the fish to the spawning building.

The fish are placed into a bath with carbon-dioxide in the water, which enables the staff to handle them. Workers lift the salmon from the water in nets, check to see that they’re ready for spawning, and separate females from males.

They club the fish and send them sliding down a metal chute. One worker hangs each female salmon from a hook, inserts a needle in its abdomen and sends air flowing to push out the eggs, which land in a colander. Another worker grabs each male fish and twists the tail, squeezing out milt that will fertilize the eggs.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

California salmon are at risk of extinction. A plan to save them stirs hope and controversy

April 8, 2022 — Shasta Dam stands more than 600 feet tall, the height of a 55-story building, with a colossal spillway that towers over the Sacramento River in a curved face of concrete.

Since its completion in 1945, the dam has created California’s largest reservoir, which provides water for farms and cities across the state. But it has also blocked Chinook salmon from returning upstream to the cold, spring-fed streams near Mt. Shasta where they once spawned.

Cut off from that chilly egg-laying habitat, endangered winter-run Chinook have struggled to survive. They’ve had help from an elaborate spawning operation at a government-run fish hatchery, which is intended to function like a life-support system for the salmon.

But that support system is no longer enough. As global warming fuels worsening drought conditions and extreme heat, experts say winter-run Chinook are being pushed to the brink of extinction.

Last year, the water flowing from Shasta Dam got so warm that it was lethal for winter-run salmon eggs. Most of the eggs and young fish died. State biologists estimated that only 2.56% of the eggs hatched and survived to swim downriver, one of the lowest estimates of “egg-to-fry” survival yet.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

Board votes to continue conservation measures for weak Southeast Alaska king salmon stocks

March 28, 2022 — Alaska’s Board of Fisheries this week voted to continue with conservation measures for chronically low returns of king salmon in Southeast Alaska. Some stocks are forecast to be at their lowest levels on record this year and others have rebounded a little under fishery closures.

The region has 34 stocks of king salmon and the board has listed seven as stocks of concern. That means for four years or more, those runs have not had enough fish making it back to spawn, or what managers call an escapement goal.

Ed Jones is an Alaska Department of Fish and Game coordinator specializing in king salmon research. He outlined to the board the measures taken to reduce harvest of those fish.

“Through the actions taken beginning in 2018 with the action plans, we have taken good steps towards achieving the escapement goals,” Jones said. “The problem is the production of these stocks has just continued to be low. And so right now we’ve not been able to provide a harvestable yield annually. The hopes are that that production will change, escapement goals will be met and we’ll also be able to identify yield.”

Read the full story at KTOO

Cool Ocean Waters, Abundant Nutrients Provide Rosy Outlook for Washington Salmon

February 1, 2022 — Scientific markers used to predict the health and productivity of marine species such as juvenile salmon were positive in 2021, the second most favorable since 1998, according to analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Fisheries biologists are cautiously optimistic that those conditions will persist into the near future, supporting the health of juvenile, ocean-run salmon off the coasts of Washington and Oregon.

The report looked at a number of oceanic health markers: atmospheric conditions, water temperature, salinity, oxygen levels, current movement, and biomass of Chinook and Coho salmon, along with food sources such as plankton and small crustaceans. Many of those indicators were more favorable than every year in the last 24, outside of 2008.

“Every once in a while, things are in alignment. … In 2021, everything from water temperatures to phytoplankton, zooplankton, and larval fishes were pointing in the same direction,” Brian Burke, a fishery biologist with NOAA, told MyNorthwest.

Burke attributes those conditions to a strong upwelling in the Pacific along the 45-degree parallel north, a term which refers to atmospheric and ocean conditions that bring cold, nutrient rich water from the deep ocean toward the surface.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Tribal groups petition federal government to eliminate or limit Bering Sea salmon bycatch

January 27, 2022 — In their latest bid to halt or limit chinook and chum salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea, tribal organizations in Western Alaska have signed onto a petition calling on the federal government to take action.

The petition asks the U.S. Department of Commerce to eliminate chinook salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea completely and to put a cap on chum salmon bycatch. It does not specify an acceptable limit for chum bycatch.

The tribal groups signing the petition mostly represent areas of Alaska where salmon runs have crashed or declined dramatically in recent years. They include the Kuskokwim River Inter-tribal Fish Commission, the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, the Association of Village Council Presidents, Kawerak, Inc., the Bering Sea Elders Group and the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island.

“The recent crashes of Chinook. And now the chum on the Kuskokwim River is pretty evident that we need to take emergency action on this issue,” said Mike Williams Sr., chair of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. “I think we need to begin to take drastic measures.”

Read the full story at KTOO

 

Gov. Dunleavy’s office announces formation of Alaska Bycatch Task Force

November 30, 2021 — Fishing vessels cast wide nets, and they often catch more than the species they’re targeting. That’s bycatch: one of the longest-running controversies in the fleet and a vexing problem for fisheries managers. Now, the Dunleavy administration is wading into the debate by naming a task force to study the issue and find ways to make it better for everyone working on the water.

Governor Mike Dunleavy’s office recently announced it’s setting up a task force to tackle the thorny issue of bycatch.

Federal data show trawl fisheries this year in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska have caught tens of thousands of Chinook salmon, millions of pounds of halibut, and in the case of the Bering Sea trawl fisheries, hundreds of thousands of crabs.

Stocks of staple species like Chinook salmon, red king crab, and halibut have been on the decline, forcing subsistence, sport and commercial fishermen to pack up nets or reduce harvest.

Read the full story at KNBA

Alaska lawmakers in both parties demand action on excessive fisheries bycatch

November 23, 2021 — A grilling on fish that is taken as bycatch didn’t satisfy the appetites of a bipartisan group of Alaska legislators at a special hearing on Nov. 15 by the House Fisheries Committee.

“We probably could not be more diametrically opposed on many things but we are frustrated with the waste of the resource and we are in lockstep. It’s all about the best economics and the best stewardship of our resources,” said Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, who devoted his entire November Capital Report to the topic.

“The fish don’t care if you’re red or blue,” said Sarah Vance, R-Homer, the catalyst behind the bycatch hearing. “We lay aside everything else and focus on good stewardship and making sure that every fisherman is able to get fish in the freezer and food on the table.”

The bycatch issue came to a head this summer when all Yukon River salmon fisheries were canceled due to so few returning chinook and chums. Along with ocean and climate impacts, villagers questioned the takes by huge trawlers that catch and process fish at sea.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News