Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Area M, Where Alaska commercial and subsistence fishing interests collide

July 14, 2022 — There have been clashes over regulating Area M for decades, but the battle heated up after the Yukon-Kuskokwim chum crashes began. This is the first in a three-part series.

Kuskokwim fisherman Fritz Charles grew up in Tuntutuliak, on the lower river. There were so many fish then that his parents would put away literal barrels of them. His job as a child was to pack the dry fish tight in the barrels using a special method.

In 2021, chum runs took a sharp downward turn. It was the worst year on record for them on the Yukon River, and it’s the same story on the Kuskokwim. This year, the runs on both rivers are at their second lowest.

In 2021, 153,497 summer chum salmon swam up the Yukon River. That’s compared to an average of about 1.7 million summer chum. The river was missing about 1.5 million fish.

At the same time, Area M commercial fishermen caught 1,168,601 chum at sea while subsistence fishing on the rivers was closed. In the midst of the smallest chum run western Alaska subsistence users had ever seen, Area M fishermen were catching more than ever before.

Do the subsistence fishermen in the Y-K Delta or the commercial fishermen in Area M have a greater claim to the chum? About a decade ago, a comprehensive salmon genetics study of the Area M fishery confirmed that most of the chum caught in the region, around 60%, are bound for coastal Western Alaska. But when you start to break that number down further, that’s where things get complicated.

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: New genetic data fuels debate over Bering Sea salmon bycatch

July 6, 2022 — The contentious issue of chinook and chum salmon that are taken as bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock and groundfish trawl fisheries reached a new order of magnitude as the North Pacific Fishery Management Council grappled with concerns over declining salmon fisheries at its June meeting in Sitka.

The council and its scientific committees are no newcomers to the controversy pitting the Bering Sea trawl fleet against commercial and subsistence salmon fishermen along Alaska’s western coastline and the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers.

Genetic sampling and stock composition modeling of salmon caught in the trawl fisheries has been conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service since 2011. Late last year ADF&G released new information to supplement those studies as an ongoing effort to combine state and federal scientific resources. “We want to work in a more unified front in presenting this information,” says Dianna Stram, a senior scientist with the North Pacific council, in Anchorage.

Random sampling of one in ten chinooks in 2021 rendered genetic material from 2,614 fish, of which 52 percent were linked to Coastal Western Alaska. The 52 percent was higher than the previous 10-year average of 44 percent. And of that 52 percent, an estimated 2 to 4 percent were headed to Middle and Upper Yukon River tributaries. Breaking those percentages down to the actual numbers of fish, scientists estimate that 16,796 chinooks were Coastal Western Alaska stocks, and of those, 670 chinooks were stocks bound for the Middle Yukon, with 729 fish headed for the Upper Yukon.

In response to the higher bycatch, the North Pacific council called upon Rachel Baker, who represents the State of Alaska in federal fishery management issues on behalf of ADF&G, to present a list of actions put forth by the council’s science and statistical committee.

Those actions include the implementation of new chum salmon avoidance strategies immediately; formation of a working group of scientists, fishermen and industry and tribal leaders to examine causes of declining western Alaska salmon; updating a 2012 analysis of chum salmon bycatch; and research focused on correlations between seawater temperature, forage species and young salmon.

Gruver and partner John Gauvin, fishery science project director with the Alaska Seafood Cooperative, have been working for years in the development of the salmon excluders used in trawls. Early models destroyed the netting in the trawls, or made the trawls fish incorrectly, which meant starting over on the new prototypes and subsequent test sessions in a giant glass tank made for trawl development in Newfoundland.

Gruver reports that the excluders had an 80 percent success rate in the Gulf of Alaska and ranged from 30 to 50 percent success rates during trials in the Bering Sea.

At the same time, many other salmon-dependent communities beyond 50 miles inland got cut out of the 10 percent allocated to CDQ groups. The seasonal run of chinooks and chums are all they have.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

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