Cook Inlet Archives - Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Fishing groups concerned over proposed Cook Inlet data center

October 8, 2026 — Alaska commercial fishing and conservation center in Cook Inlet warns that the project could affect salmon migration, fishing operations, and marine habitat.

East Coast company DeepGreen Cook Inlet is proposing a 100-megawatt subsea data center that could include as many as 350 underwater turbines and 66 “hives” housing artificial intelligence servers. The system would use Cook Inlet water for power and cooling.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission accepted DeepGreen’s preliminary permit application on Sept. 1, opening a two-month public comment period. The preliminary permit would not authorize construction but, if approved, would give the company priority to apply for a license while studying the site.

The Alaska Commercial Fisheries Conservation Alliance, Center for Biological Diversity, and Kenai Peninsula Borough have filed motions to intervene in the federal proceedings, citing concerns ranging from commercial fishing and salmon migration to Cook Inlet’s endangered beluga whale population.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Alaska fishing and wildlife groups raise alarm over proposal for underwater Cook Inlet data center

October 5, 2026 — Many Alaskans have opposed proposed data center development in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and on the North Slope. Some residents don’t believe they belong in Cook Inlet, either.

Earlier this year, the East Coast company DeepGreen Cook Inlet released plans for a 100-megawatt subsea data center with as many as 350 underwater turbines and 66 “hives” housing artificial intelligence servers, both powered and cooled by water in Cook Inlet.

Louis Wolfson, a managing member for company DeepGreen and luxury real estate developer based in Needham, Massachusetts, said the proposal seeks to work around some of the constraints facing traditional, land-based data centers: a need for both large plots of developable land and significant amounts of energy from the local grid.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission accepted DeepGreen’s preliminary Cook Inlet permit application on Sept. 1, triggering a two-month public comment period.

While this permit does not authorize construction, it does serve as a small step forward. A preliminary permit, if issued, would give DeepGreen priority to apply for a license while the company studies the site.

A decision on whether or not to issue the permit will be made once the comment period closes and all feedback and other filings are reviewed, said commission spokesperson Ashley Ingebrigtsen.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Alaska fishing and wildlife groups raise alarm over proposal for underwater Cook Inlet data center

September 25, 2026 — Many Alaskans have opposed proposed data center development in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and on the North Slope. Some residents don’t believe they belong in Cook Inlet, either.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Inside the overlooked world of Bristol Bay’s salmon tenders

August 5, 2026 — When Bristol Bay’s salmon run reaches its peak, the spotlight usually falls on the fishermen hauling sockeye over the rails. But just offshore, another fleet is working around the clock to keep the fishery moving.

Tender boats shuttle thousands of pounds of salmon from fishermen to processors, fuel skiffs, deliver groceries and gear, and often serve as floating support vessels during one of the busiest commercial fisheries in the U.S. Without them, many fishermen simply couldn’t keep fishing.

For Washington native Evan Blankenship, tendering has become an essential part of his livelihood.

“I stumbled into fishing and Alaska because of my high school history teacher,” Blankenship shared. “She told stories about working in a remote Alaskan cannery in the 1990s. It sounded like such a wildly different experience from where I grew up.”

In 2006, at age 19, Blankenship headed north to Naknek for his first summer working in a cannery. One season turned into many. He eventually moved from processing to tendering in Bristol Bay, then into salmon seining in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound before buying his first seine boat in Kodiak in 2015.

Today, his operation splits the summer between Bristol Bay tendering and Kodiak salmon seining, a combination that provides both stability and opportunity.

Blankenship began combining tendering and seining in 2018 after several unpredictable years in Kodiak’s salmon fishery.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Trump’s High-Profile Oil and Gas Lease Sale in Alaska Has No Takers

March 9 2026 — The Trump administration did not receive a single bid for its offer of new offshore oil and gas exploration opportunities in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, dealing a blow to President Trump’s ‘drill, baby drill,’ agenda.

The attempted sale of rights to drill in more than 1 million acres was the first of six offshore oil and gas auctions in Alaska that Republicans mandated last year when they passed Mr. Trump’s sweeping tax law.

It was seen as a key test of the industry’s appetite for investment in a state that Mr. Trump has called a “natural resource warehouse,” and essential for his “energy dominance” agenda of maximizing domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal. On Wednesday, though, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management acknowledged that no drilling companies submitted bids.

“This is a huge embarrassment for Trump’s Alaska fossil fuel fantasy,” said Cooper Freeman, the Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

Read the full article at The New York Times

ALASKA: Trump administration proposes offshore leasing in almost all Alaska waters

November 24, 2025 — The Trump administration has released a plan for offshore oil and gas leasing that would open up almost all Alaska marine waters to development, along with the entire Pacific coast and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Alaska portion of the plan proposes 21 lease sales through 2031, five of them in Cook Inlet, two in the Beaufort Sea, two in the Chukchi Sea and the others in other marine areas. Those include a lease sale in a newly designated “High Arctic” area that lies beyond the 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone and where U.S. territorial rights are not yet clear.

The only federal Alaska offshore area without a proposed lease sale is the North Aleutian Basin, where oil leasing is under an indefinite ban to protect salmon-rich Bristol Bay.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: New rule could clear path to harm Cook Inlet’s endangered whales

August 19, 2025 — A new rule proposed to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) would allow companies working on the Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in the Cook Inlet to “take” marine mammals.

The rule was proposed on July 29 by 8 Star Alaska, LLC, a subsidiary of Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC).

The proposed rule falls under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMAP) and would allow the company, over the next 5 years, to harass, hunt, capture or kill mammals by carving out acceptable ways of taking.

Currently, the taking of mammals is prohibited, unless a rule is proposed and directed in a specified area while engaged in a specific activity.

Read the full article at Alaska News Source

Cook Inletkeeper, partners file lawsuit against Cook Inlet gold mine

July 23, 2025 — The Kenai Peninsula’s Cook Inletkeeper joined a lawsuit last month opposing the proposed Johnson Tract gold mine project on the west side of the Cook Inlet in Southcentral Alaska. Also listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the Center for Biological Diversity, the Chickaloon Village Traditional Council and an unnamed local stakeholder who fishes in the adjacent Tuxedni Bay.

The project site is located at the headwaters of the Johnson River, on nearly 21,000 acres of land privately owned by Native corporation Cook Inlet Region, Inc. within Lake Clark National Park. According to Cook Inletkeeper, however, should the mine project move forward, it will adversely affect both surrounding wilderness areas and long-time businesses owned and operated by local stakeholders. At risk are the Johnson River itself, subsistence harvesting grounds in Lake Clark National Park, the largest seabird nesting colony in the Cook Inlet, and critical habitat areas for the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale population.

Johnson Tract past and present

CIRI acquired the Johnson Tract inholdings in the 1976 Cook Inlet Land Exchange, prior to the establishment of Lake Clark National Park via the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980. In addition to mineral and surface rights, in January CIRI was also granted port and transportation easements, in agreement with the National Park Service, across adjoining parkland for mineral extraction and development. Exploratory mining on the tracts was conducted from 1982-1995 by different companies, until the project reverted back to CIRI in the late 1990s.

Read the full article at Juneau Empire

ALASKA: Setnetters revive beach seine tests amid shuttered fishery

July 17, 2025 — For the second year in a row, permit holders in Cook Inlet’s east side setnet salmon fishery are experimenting with new equipment they hope will get them back in the water after years of consecutive closures. The system isn’t totally honed yet, but people are giving it a try.

It’s a cloudy day on the beach in Clam Gulch. Brent Johnson kneels in the sand while a wall of emerald trees sways in the wind above him. He’s splicing two ropes together while his wife, Judy, thinks out loud.

“It doesn’t make sense in my head,” Judy said. “It’s not regular setnetting.”

The couple has been setnetting for decades, so they’d know. And she’s right – it isn’t regular settnetting. It’s beach seining.

The Johnsons are permit holders in Cook Inlet’s east side setnet fishery. But over the last five years, the federal government has formally considered the fishery an economic disaster.

Setnetters like the Johnsons target sockeye salmon. But chinook sometimes end up in their nets. And that’s a problem — declining chinook salmon runs in the Kenai and Kasilof rivers have prompted state fishery managers to crack down on commercial fishing in the area. That means the setnet fishery is sometimes closed altogether, including this year.

That’s what spurred another pair of setnetters, Brian and Lisa Gabriel, to get what’s called an experimental permit from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to try beach seine gear instead. It’s the Gabriels’ second summer using the new method. Last year, they brought their seines to multiple beach sites to try the gear out in different environments.

Read the full article at KDLL

Court affirms split federal-state Cook Inlet salmon management system

July 14, 2025 — A federal judge has upheld the National Marine Fisheries Service’s new system to manage commercial harvests in federal waters of Cook Inlet, concluding that the agency has no obligation to extend that management to state waters.

The July 1 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason lets stand a split federal-state management regime for commercial salmon harvests in Cook Inlet, the marine waters by Alaska’s most heavily populated region.

The ruling is a win for the NMFS, an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a loss for fishers who sought federal management of all Cook Inlet commercial salmon harvests because they were dissatisfied with state management.

NMFS had previously deferred all Cook Inlet commercial salmon harvest management to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Read the full article at the Alaska Public Media