Saving Seafood

ALASKA: In victory for commercial fishermen, court orders Cook Inlet fishery to reopen

July 5, 2022 — Cook Inlet drift fishermen can fish the federal waters of the inlet this summer after all.

That’s after a district court judge shot down a federal rule that would have closed a large part of the inlet to commercial salmon fishing. Fishermen said it would have been a death knell for the fishery, which has 500 drift permit-holders.

One of those permit-holders is Erik Huebsch, of Kasilof. He’s vice president of the United Cook Inlet Drift Association, which filed the suit. And he said he’s pleased.

“Opening the EEZ is vital to the fleet,” Huebsch said. “Without opening the EEZ, the drift fishery is really not viable. That’s where we go to catch fish.”

The EEZ is the inlet’s exclusive economic zone. And it’s the federal waters that start three nautical miles offshore, south of Kalgin Island.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Cook Inlet fishermen are gearing up for weak sockeye and king runs again. They worry about the future of the fishery.

February 14, 2022 — A weak run is again forecasted for Upper Cook Inlet sockeye, continuing a trend of poor runs that has fishermen worried about the future of the fishery.

“It unfortunately may be a harbinger of the future,” said Ken Coleman, a setnetter and vice president of the Kenai Peninsula Fishermen’s Association, which represents eastside setnetters. He’s among the commercial fishermen disappointed with the report released by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Monday.

The forecast projects a run of 4.97 million sockeye in 2022. About 2.97 million of those fish, the forecast said, will be available for harvest by all users.

The forecasted run is weak by historical standards. The inlet’s 20-year average is about 6 million fish.

But runs over the last few years have been below that. The sockeye run in 2020 was so bad that the U.S. Secretary of Commerce declared it a disaster, along with several other Alaska fisheries.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

 

ALASKA: Aid from fisheries disasters can take years to come through

February 1, 2022 — Earlier this month, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce declared disasters for over a dozen fisheries in Alaska — more than the federal government usually approves at once.

The designation is supposed to unlock funds to help the communities impacted by those fisheries failures, including communities around Cook Inlet. But it can take years for the money to reach fishermen’s pockets.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the timing is one of the problems with the process.

“If you’ve had a disaster that happened in 2018, we’re sitting here in 2022 and you’re saying, ‘Really? You think that that’s going to help me?’ In the meantime. I’ve got a boat mortgage that I’ve got to be paying. I’ve got a crew that I’ve got to be paying. This doesn’t help me at all,” she said.

The state knows the process can be lengthy and tries to expedite it where possible, said Rachel Baker, Alaska’s deputy Fish and Game commissioner.

Read the full story from KDLL at KTOO

Groups prod feds to act on plan to save Cook Inlet beluga whales

January 24, 2022 — As Cook Inlet beluga whales continue to slide closer to extinction, a coalition of conservation groups petitioned the federal government this week to do more to save them.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has not made much progress in carrying out the recovery plan it created in 2016 to reverse the decline, the groups say.

“It’s been a little bit over five years now. And the population is is not recovering. In fact, it’s worse,” said CT Harry, with the Environmental Investigation Agency, a group behind the petition.

EIA has produced a report on the government’s efforts to help the whales. It’s titled “Five Years of Failure.”

Harry noted that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration continues to grant permits for activities in the inlet that emit noise or otherwise disturb the whales.

“The goal in our petition is to basically tell NOAA to follow their own advice by reevaluating how these harassment authorizations are permitted,” Harry said. “And to not look at each one on an individual basis, but to look at them on a cumulative basis to determine the cumulative stress impact of a multitude of threats.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

 

Dunleavy administration enters court fight alongside feds to keep Cook Inlet fishing grounds closed

January 13, 2022 — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration will be fighting in court to keep much of Cook Inlet closed to commercial salmon fishing after a federal judge approved the state’s request to intervene in a lawsuit over the fishery.

U.S. District Court of Alaska Judge Josh Kindred granted the state’s motion Jan. 6 to join the National Marine Fisheries Service as a defendant in suits filed last fall by the United Cook Inlet Drift Association and individual fishermen in an attempt to force the agency to reopen the federal waters of central Cook Inlet to salmon fishing this coming season.

Often referred to as the EEZ — an abbreviation for its formal name, the exclusive, economic zone — the area currently closed by federal regulations this year covers all of the waters beyond 3 miles offshore in central Cook Inlet. Fishing would still be allowed in state waters up to the 3-mile line.

Intervening in the consolidated lawsuits also puts the state in the odd legal circumstance of arguing alongside the federal government in court to prevent what Dunleavy administration officials insist would be a gross example of federal overreach.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Beluga Whale Sounds Aid Scientific Understanding of When Whales are Hunting Prey

December 1, 2021 — When listening to beluga whales, the sound of a crunch or a clapped jaw may be a reliable indication that a beluga whale just successfully captured or missed a fish. In a new published paper on beluga whales in Alaska, scientists analyzed sound data, collected over several years, to monitor beluga whale calls and other data. With these data they are gaining new insights into belugas’ diet, feeding behavior, and feeding habitats.

“Our goal is to collect data to help understand and recover Cook Inlet beluga whales, an endangered species and NOAA Fisheries,” said Manuel Castellote, NOAA Affiliate and lead author for the study from the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Ocean and Ecosystem Studies, University of Washington. “There is a paucity of basic ecological knowledge, such as prey preference, about this population of whales. This impedes our efforts to help recover the population. The population is estimated to be only 279 animals, and was in decline during the 10-year period from 2008-2018, the most recent time period for which we have data.”

Given the endangered status of the Cook Inlet belugas, there are limited studies that are permitted on this population. So scientists conducted research using tagging technology and other methods on a comparable surrogate—an abundant population of beluga whales in Bristol Bay, Alaska. The Bristol Bay beluga population is estimated to be between 2,000 and 3,000 animals.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

 

Alaskan Fishermen Sue NMFS, Department of Commerce Over Cook Inlet Salmon Fishery Closure

November 15, 2021 — A trio of Alaskan fishermen has sued the National Marine Fisheries Service (NFMS)’s Assistant Administrator Janet Coit and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo for a recently announced rule change that will close commercial salmon fishing in the federal waters of Cook Inlet, as SeafoodNews covered on November 4.

The fishermen, Wes Humbyrd, Robert Wolfe and Dan Anderson, argue that the rule, which implemented Amendment 14 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Salmon Fisheries in the Exclusive Economic Zone Off Alaska (Salmon FMP), was unconstitutional.

“This casually destructive rule must be vacated, however, because it violates the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and Take Care Clause. These “essential” structural provisions of the Constitution are accountability-preserving mechanisms,” the complaint from the fishermen wrote. “Their basic function is to ensure presidential control over the agents who exercise executive power on his behalf.

Read the full story at Seafood News

NOAA closes federal Cook Inlet waters to commercial salmon fishing for 2022

November 4, 2021 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries this week amended one of its fishery management plans to now bar commercial salmon fishermen from operating in the federal waters of Cook Inlet, the main body of water located just west of the Kenai Peninsula in the Southcentral part of the state.

The amendment, Amendment 14, does not close any salmon fishing in state waters, but instead prohibits commercial salmon fishing in the federal waters of Cook Inlet, the area spanning from 3 nautical miles to 200 nautical miles off the coast of Alaska and referred to as the Cook Inlet Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ.

The change is to go into effect to be in place for the 2022 Cook Inlet EEZ commercial salmon fishery. It’s the result of a decision made in December 2020 by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which had been weighing four alternatives for dealing with the fishery management plan for salmon in the EEZ.

The first alternative would have taken no action, and the second option was to have federal oversight of the waters with some management delegated to the state. The third alternative was complete federal oversight and management of the Cook Inlet EEZ, and the fourth was to have federal oversight of the EEZ waters and to close them to commercial salmon fishing.

Read the full story at Alaska’s News Source

 

ALASKA: As local streams warm, cold water inputs could be crucial for salmon

August 26, 2021 — This particular pocket of Beaver Creek is not far from the road, just a short and muddy tromp away from a gravel parking lot between Kenai and Soldotna. But it’s home to several cold water inputs that could be crucially important for young salmon as they swim from the Kenai River to Cook Inlet.

Cook Inletkeeper Executive Director Sue Mauger said the inputs are like cold water faucets.

“They’re a little place where there’s a constant pump of colder water,” she said. “And that really can help buffer when we have those really warm, sunny days to actually have some cold water coming into the creek.”

Inletkeeper is working with the Kenai Watershed Forum and the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust to diagram those cold water spots in four peninsula creeks. The goal is to keep those creeks, and the salmon that use them, protected.

Here’s the catch — the inputs fall over a mosaic of private and city land. The nonprofits are reaching out to landowners to let them know they have something special in their backyards.

“Everyone who owns riverfront property knows they have really special habitat,” Mauger said. “Like, they know that that’s important; that’s why they bought the property, probably, is to be on the river. But to then be told, ‘You have extra special property. You have something really unique on your property’ is very exciting for someone.”

Read the full story at KDLL

ALASKA: Net migration: Young commercial fishermen ship out of Cook Inlet

August 19, 2021 — The Cook Inlet salmon fishery was once an economic engine for Kenai.

But the fishing there is no longer lucrative. Many fishermen with deep ties to the inlet are retiring — or moving elsewhere.

The F/V Nedra E is smaller than the other boats bobbing at the dock in Naknek.

Thor Evenson didn’t have Bristol Bay in mind when he designed the boat for his parents, Nikiski homesteaders Jim and Nedra Evenson. Until last year, she’s been a Cook Inlet boat, captained by Jim, then his nephew, and now his grandson, 32-year-old Taylor Evenson.

Taylor grew up hearing about the heyday of Cook Inlet fishing from his dad and his friends.

“And just getting up in the morning every day and hearing their voices on the radio, voices I grew up with from the first time I was on the boat, I was 3 months old,” he said. “And particularly hearing my dad’s voice, going out and fishing with my dad … that’s why I never left the inlet, even though I always knew what was coming.”

Read the full story at KDLL