May 3, 2024 — NOAA Fisheries will take over management of commercial and recreational salmon fishing in the Cook Inlet from the U.S. state of Alaska in June, the agency announced this week.
The action follows more than a decade of legal maneuvering, beginning with the United Cook Inlet Drift Association (UCIDA) suing NOAA Fisheries for not developing a management plan for the Cook Inlet exclusive economic zone.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
May 2, 2024 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a final ruling on a disputed commercial salmon fishing area in Cook Inlet.
The Cook Inlet Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ, starts three miles off shore and is where drift gillnet fishermen catch the majority of fish. In 2020, commercial fishermen sued over management of the fishery. Courts and fishermen went back and forth, and a year ago, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council was tasked with choosing a new management plan. In an unprecedented move, the council took no action, which turned the decision over to NOAA Fisheries.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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