Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Final federal decision on chum salmon bycatch slated for December

February 14, 2025 — In the wake of several days of lengthy testimony on chum salmon bycatch, a final decision for the issue is scheduled for the December North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Anchorage.

In the interim, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is slated to publish its draft environmental impact statement on the matter in the Federal Register in August, allowing for 60 days of public comment to follow.

By the conclusion of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Anchorage on Feb. 11, the body had amended some alternatives and was sending the analysis to NMFS for publication of the draft environmental impact statement.

Those changes included lowering a considered bycatch cap in some salmon corridors to 50,000 chum salmon, shortening the time frame by which they’ll take action, and also broadening the overall range of alternatives. The council did not indicate support of any specific alternative.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

ALASKA: Board of Fish rejects proposal to cut SE hatchery production of chum by 25-percent

February 11, 2024 — The hatchery debate touches on the biggest unknown in salmon ecology: What occurs in the ocean between a salmon’s birth, and when it returns to spawn?

Proposal 156 was submitted to the Board of Fish by Virgil Umpenhour, a member of the Fairbanks Region Fish & Game Advisory Committee, and some form of this same idea has come before the board at least four previous times. Umpenhour believes that the millions upon millions of chum and pink released into the wild by hatcheries in Southeast Alaska every year are affecting the marine environment, to the detriment of wild stocks of other species, like chinook in Western Alaska. He proposed that the Board of Fish cut back hatchery releases in Southeast by 25-percent.

Stakeholders in Southeast packed the board’s meeting last week (2-7-25) to oppose the plan. “Just line up, folks, because we got a long room,” said member Mike Wood as chair of the “Committee of the Whole.” This committee allows the  board to step away from the agenda for a bit to take a deeper dive into related proposals. Proposal 156 generated only ten favorable comments from the public, and 400 opposed.

Sitka troller Jacquie Foss was one of them.

“Like any operation, you need diversification in order to be profitable,” said Foss. “And this would take a major pillar from our ability to be profitable.”

The short story is that while king salmon make the headlines, hatchery-produced chum salmon have become an economic mainstay in the Southeast troll fishery. They’ve increased significantly in value over the last decade or more, and some of the returns have been just staggering – millions of chum returning to a release site in West Crawfish Inlet in 2018, was a bonanza for trollers from around the region.

Many stakeholders objected that someone from Fairbanks would try to roll back this kind of economic opportunity.

“Heather Bauscher, Petersburg, AC,” Heather Bauscher formerly chaired the Sitka Advisory Committee, but has since moved to Petersburg. “We were in unanimous opposition to this. Initial concerns were that the proposer is not from this region and doesn’t understand the impacts that this would have for communities.”

And communities are pushing back, in any way they can. In an extraordinarily rare move, a member of the Alaska Legislature testified before the Committee of the Whole. Rep. Jeremy Bynum (R-Ketchikan) joined the House of Representatives about a month ago, representing Ketchikan. He and three other legislators signed a letter opposing the proposal, including Sen. Jesse Kiehl (D-Juneau), Rep. Andi Story (D-Juneau), and Rep. Sara Hannan (D-Juneau). Rep. Rebecca Himschoot (I-Sitka) wrote a separate letter with similar concerns.

Read the full article at KCAW

ALASKA: Biologists predict strong area sockeye, pink, chum runs; low Chinook returns

February 4, 2025 — Fisheries officials are predicting a mixed bag of salmon returns in the Copper River and Prince William Sound this year.

State biologists are forecasting strong runs of sockeye salmon into the Copper River and pink and chum salmon in Prince William Sound, but a weak run of wild Chinooks into the Copper River.

The forecasts – released by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Jan. 23 – calculated total runs for Copper River sockeye and Chinook salmon, Gulkana hatchery sockeye salmon, Coghill Lake sockeye salmon, and wild Prince William Sound pink and chum salmon.

For the Copper River, the forecast is for a range of 2.2 million to 2.9 million red salmon, which would be 55% above the 10-year average of 1.6 million fish. The Copper River Chinook run is forecast at 25,000 to 51,000 kings – or 25% below the 10-year total run average of 48,000 fish.

Read the full article at The Cordova Times

Alaska Salmon Research Task Force report calls for ‘immediate action’ to understand declines

July 16, 2024 — The group tasked by Congress with outlining research priorities to address challenges facing Alaska salmon has released its final report.

The Alaska Salmon Research Task Force report says that the need for action is urgent when it comes to understanding shifts in salmon productivity, particularly in the hardest-hit Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim (AYK) region.

The report summarizes the factors believed to be impacting salmon productivity, from warming oceans, to marine food limitations and bycatch.

In the case of chinook and chum salmon bycatch, the report says that improved stock identification methods need to be a research priority. It says that the impacts of commercial fishing on Western Alaska salmon are currently unclear due to the way stock groupings cover large geographical areas.

Read the full article at KYUK

ALASKA: Yukon River Fishery Update says chum salmon will be available for harvest

June 5, 2024 –No chinooks, but chum salmon will be available for subsistence harvest in the Yukon River this year.

Each year the salmon runs are meant to bring much needed food for folks that rely on subsistence fishing along the Yukon River. These runs have struggled to do just that in recent years as the chinook salmon runs have been well below average and smaller than the minimum escapement goals for the Yukon River Fishery. Such being the case, there will be no chinook salmon harvest once more.

There is work underway to better understand the decreasing runs.

Read the full article at Newscenter Fairbanks

ALASKA: Fisheries managers announce first 5 openers of 2024 Kuskokwim salmon season

May 28, 2024 — With another heavily restricted salmon fishing season just around the corner on the Kuskokwim River, federal managers have announced the first round of June gillnet opportunities for federally-qualified subsistence users.

All chinook, chum, and coho salmon caught may be retained during the following Kuskokwim River mainstem openers:

Set gillnet:

• Monday, June 3, from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

• Thursday, June 6, from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

• Monday, June 10, from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Read the full article at KYUK

Study shows connection between recent marine heatwaves and Western Alaska chum salmon declines

December 6, 2023 — For newly hatched Western Alaska chum salmon, there is no time to waste when it comes to making their way to the open ocean. The tiny fry begin their journey from their natal streams just days or weeks after being born. When they finally reach the Bering Sea, sometime from mid-June to mid-July, their priority becomes consuming marine prey and building the energy reserves that will carry them through their first winter. Throughout their years in the ocean, the Western Alaska chum will travel extensively between the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska.

Unfortunately, simultaneous warming trends in the Bering Sea and the gulf appear to have come as a double whammy for Western Alaska’s juvenile chum salmon. A new study by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shows a possible link between a period of exceptionally warm ocean temperatures and chum crashes seen across Western Alaska.

“Loss of sea ice is having an impact on various ecosystems. And so with warming we’re seeing a change in the food web,” said Ed Farley, lead author of the study and head of NOAA Fisheries Ecosystem Monitoring and Assessment Program. “That food web is less energetic. It’s poorer-quality prey. And it’s impacting juvenile salmon, especially juvenile chum salmon in the northern Bering Sea. It’s impacting their fitness prior to winter.”

By “poorer-quality prey,” Farley primarily means jellyfish, also known as cnidaria. Jellyfish have been shown to proliferate when ocean temperatures warm.

“There are more cnidaria in the ecosystem of the Northern Bering Sea during warm years, but there was significantly more during this most recent anomalously warm period,” Farley said.

Read the full story at KYUK

 

ALASKA: Battle flares anew over Alaska subsistence fisheries

November 13, 2023 — Abysmal chinook and chum salmon returns to Western Alaska have made the state’s jurisdiction in fisheries management a prominent target on the legal radar again. Though Alaska’s subsistence challenges have been the bane of salmon management in some areas for more than a half century, recent run failures on the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers have rekindled arguments in the courts.

Most recently, a case filed in 2022 has gained momentum and will argue whether the State of Alaska and the Alaska Division of Fish and Game, or the federal government, calls the shots in setting subsistence openings and closures on a 191-mile stretch of the river. 

“They’re literally fighting over crumbs here,” says Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola, D-Alaska.  “This is a legal battle over crumbs. All subsistence harvesting captures less than 1 percent of Alaska’s resources. When I was growing up it was 2 percent, which was negligible; now it’s less than 1 percent, and when you’re talking about subsistence on federal land, that’s infinitesimal.”

The case is the latest in court gyrations that promise to test the validity of a landmark court ruling that was never settled to anyone’s satisfaction in the 1990s. That case, commonly referred to as “Katie John,” was named after the woman who challenged a state law of 1964 which prevented her from operating a fish wheel for her winter’s salmon. That ruling was supposed to have defined “subsistence priority” in fisheries management.

The suit, originally filed in 1985 by Katie John and other parties, challenged the state management system in a plea for subsistence rights. What ensued since then has been a fight between state and federal courts in defining what constitutes public lands, submerged lands, navigable waters on those lands and which government (state or federal) has rightful management of those waters to comply with language in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). 

An equally hefty argument has been the definition of who among Alaska residents has rightful access to natural resources – and when. As the Katie John case gained momentum in federal courts, an Alaska state Supreme Court decision in another case, McDowell v. State, had rendered that natural resources are the property of all residents: urban, rural, Native and non-Native, and that relegating rights to specific groups violated the state constitution.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

ALASKA: North Pacific Council’s science committee voices concerns over chum bycatch plan

November 1, 2023 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting held at the Anchorage Hilton in October was not just one meeting – it was three meetings. In addition to the council itself, there was a meeting of industry stakeholders called the Advisory Panel, and a meeting of scientists called the Scientific and Statistical Committee – or SSC.

This fall the council tasked the SSC with reviewing a 120-page preliminary analysis of Bering Sea Chum Salmon Bycatch Management, and providing input on the “relative scientific uncertainty of management options.”

As KCAW’s Robert Woolsey reports, the committee of university, state, and federal scientists found a few things that were relatively uncertain.

At its October meeting the North Pacific Fishery Management Council  examined some potential management measures intended to reduce the amount of chum salmon caught by trawlers fishing for pollock in the Bering Sea. Many of those chum salmon – referred to as “bycatch” – may have been intercepted on their way to the Yukon, Kuskokwim, and other large river systems of Western Alaska, where chum salmon populations have crashed.

The council believes broader forces may be at work in causing chum salmon declines. The preliminary analysis prepared by the council’s scientists states that “declines in chum salmon populations appear to be driven by warmer water temperatures in both the marine and freshwater environments.”

Scientific and Statistical Committee member Dr. Ian Stewart, with the International Pacific Halibut Commission, had reservations about relying too heavily on temperature data.

Read the full at KCAW

North Pacific council declines hard cap for chum bycatch

October 17, 2023 —  Although it took steps to mitigate chum salmon bycatch in Bering Sea pollock trawls, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council fell short of imposing a hard cap at its meeting in October.

 A hard cap would restrict or shut down pollock trawling when the fleet reaches a maximum number of incidental salmon. The council’s inaction marks the latest round in a skirmish between trawling interests and local residents and fishermen living in western Alaska and from other regions in the state.

“We have submitted comments previously in support of a half-million chums,” says Tim Bristol, executive director of SalmonState, in Juneau. “We certainly don’t believe that’s a magic number, but a hard cap for trawlers, when essentially every other sector is facing some kind of restriction or closure, would have sent a message that the council is taking what is a crisis for many Alaskans seriously.”

For the past several years various conservation groups and fisheries associations have railed against the council’s failure to take more action in reducing the bycatch of salmon and crab, and impact on marine habitat. Recommendations by the groups have ranged from complete trawl closures in the Bering Sea to the use of hard caps.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman