Saving Seafood

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

ALASKA: Vance calls on board of fish to clarify stance on Cook Inlet commercial fisheries

March 27, 2025 — Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, on Friday sent a letter to the State Board of Fisheries “demanding” it “clarify its stance on the future of our drifter and setnet fisheries in Cook Inlet.”

The move comes after what she describes as “alarming” recent actions at meeting of the board in Anchorage this month where they declined to support a proposal by local setnetters to fish with beach seines — the group has in recent years been wholly restricted for fishing amid low king salmon abundance — and one member said he wanted to see no setnets or drifters operating in the inlet at all.

Brian and Lisa Gabriel, setnetters from Kenai, last summer operated a test fishery for set beach seines that they said were able to operate without killing any king salmon and while catching enough sockeye salmon to be economically viable. They successfully petitioned the board to hear their proposal out of cycle — Upper Cook Inlet fishing issues aren’t set to be heard by the board until 2027 — but the motion was failed by the board on March 15.

Read the full article at Homer News

Kenai accepts funds for 2018 and 2020 fishery disasters

December 6, 2024 — Kenai’s City Council on Wednesday accepted relief funds from a pair of fishery disasters that were first recognized and allocated in 2022.

During their regular meeting on Dec. 4, the council adopted by unanimous consent two resolutions accepting around $67,000 in disaster relief funds for the 2018 east side set gillnet and 2020 Upper Cook Inlet salmon disasters and $11,000 for the 2018 and 2020 Copper River and Prince William Sound salmon disasters.

Kenai Mayor Brian Gabriel said during the meeting that the city had passed a resolution in support of the disaster declaration at the request of the Kenai Peninsula Fishermen’s Association. Gabriel credited their efforts in securing the fundings — especially Ken Coleman, who died earlier this year.

Read the full story at the Peninsula Clarion

 

ALASKA: Cook Inlet fisheries to get $9.4M in disaster relief for 2018, 2020

September 26, 2024 — Two Cook Inlet salmon fisheries will receive more than $9.4 million in federal disaster relief that was held up, in part, by technical difficulties. They’re among ten Alaska fisheries getting money, the state’s Congressional delegation announced Friday.

In all, ten fisheries across the state will receive $277 million for disasters dating back to 2018. They include 2020’s Upper Cook Inlet salmon fishery and 2018’s Upper Cook Inlet east side setnet fishery.

Other fisheries that will receive money through the distribution include Bering Sea crab, Kuskokwim River and Norton Sound salmon and Gulf of Alaska pacific cod.

However, Friday’s announcement comes almost six months after U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola called on U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to address payment holdups caused by a software glitch.

Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, started using new accounting software, Business Applications Solution. NOAA is one of the agencies responsible for moving relief funds through the federal government. Peltola says problems with that software have held up disaster relief.

Read the full article at KDLL