Saving Seafood

ALASKA: EPA extends comment period on watershed protections that would block Pebble Mine

July 4, 2022 — The Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that it is extending its comment period for proposed restrictions on mining of the Pebble deposit. The comment period was originally set to end in July. Now it will continue for two more months, to Sept. 6.

Representatives with the EPA visited Dillingham and Newhalen earlier this month to hear public testimony on the agency’s proposal to protect waters around the Pebble deposit. It was the first in-person public hearings since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2014, when the Obama administration released a proposed determination for protections, more than a million people — including tens of thousands of Alaskans — commented in support of the federal protections for Bristol Bay. In 2019, the Trump administration revoked the proposal.

In May, the EPA used its authority under the Clean Water Act to issue a revised proposal that included analysis from multi-year environmental reviews and Pebble’s mining proposal.

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: Bristol Bay advocates pushing EPA to do more

June 2, 2022 — Groups united in opposition to the proposed Pebble Mine say they will marshal a big turnout to press the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to go even farther with its proposed protections for the Bristol Bay headwaters.

Advocates outlined their plan at a June 1 press conference in Dillingham, Alaska, with public hearings on the EPA proposal coming up June 16-17 – along with a projected record-setting sockeye season for the $2.2 billion summer fishery.

The EPA’s newly proposed determination under Clean Water Act Section 404(c) “is a milestone, it is a starting point, but we have a long way to go,” said Daniel Cheyette, vice president lands and resources for the Bristol Bay Native Corporation.

Biologists anticipate 75 million sockeye could return this season, underscoring Bristol Bay’s status as the most productive salmon habitat, said Katherine Carscallen, director of Commercial Fishermen for Bristol Bay.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Alaskans pursue permanent protections for Bristol Bay

February 16, 2021 — Robin Samuelsen still recalls his first meeting about the prospective Pebble Mine. It was around 2005 or 2006, in Dillingham, Alaska. Listening to an early plan for developing a copper and gold mine in the spawning grounds of Bristol Bay’s abundant salmon, this Curyung tribal chief and commercial fisherman quickly made up his mind. “You’ll kill off our salmon,” Samuelsen remembers saying, adding: “I’ll be up there to stop you.”

More than 15 years later, in November 2020, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) denied the Pebble Mine a key permit, a sharp setback for the mine — though not the first. Already, the mine’s developer, Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP), has filed an appeal challenging that decision. PLP was joined by the State of Alaska, which, in an unusual move, filed its own appeal. Both appeals are currently under review.

Even before these latest developments, however, the people living around the Bristol Bay region had been trying to bring this long-running tug of war to rest once and for all.

Just as he promised at the meeting in Dillingham, Samuelsen is part of a tribally led campaign to garner permanent legal protection for the Bristol Bay region’s thriving wild salmon from large-scale mining proposals — whether that be the Pebble Mine, or whatever comes next. Lindsay Layland, deputy director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay (UTBB), which is involved in the effort, says the goal of the coalition is to find a way to legally prioritize the salmon that mean so much to the people living and fishing in the region.

Read the full story at High Country News

12 of Alaska’s 35 new coronavirus cases are seafood workers in Dillingham

June 24, 2020 — A dozen of Alaska’s new cases of COVID-19 reported Tuesday by state health officials are out-of-state seafood workers in Dillingham, a small fishing town with limited health care capacity where locals had been wary of outsiders bringing in the virus.

The 12 workers are among 19 new cases in nonresidents, according to the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services COVID-19 dashboard. That’s the highest daily nonresident count since the pandemic began in March.

The state’s active-case count also hit new high of 264, as reported Tuesday. That number reflects residents who test positive and aren’t yet considered recovered.

The state reported one new resident sick enough to be hospitalized Tuesday, for a total since March of 63.

Along with the nonresident cases, the state reported another 16 new cases in Alaska residents, most of them in Anchorage, with other individual cases scattered from Nome and Bethel to Mat-Su, Homer and Fairbanks.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Salmon shutdown? Alaska city requests Bristol Bay fishery closure

April 8, 2020 — City officials in Dillingham, Alaska, have requested that the state consider closing the Bristol Bay salmon fishery to protect the region’s year-round residents from widespread infection of covid-19.

A letter to Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy from Dillingham Mayor Alice Ruby and First Chief Thomas Tilden of the Curyung Tribal Council urges the governor to consider closing the Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery to prevent an influx of workers to the region.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: The next generation of ocean specialists

November 28, 2016 — Alaska’s university system is ramping up programs to train the next generations of fishery and ocean specialists — and plenty of jobs await.

Since 1987, the College of Fisheries and Ocean Science, or CFOS, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has offered undergraduate and graduate degrees in Fisheries Science, complete with paid internships to help prepare them for positions in the state’s largest industry.

“It’s a degree path preparing students for what I call fish squeezers — they’re going to go to work for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, or NOAA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or some other type of agency where they’re going to be primarily out doing field work, traditional fish biologist types,” said Trent Sutton, a Professor of Fisheries Biology and Associate Dean of Academics.

Due to student interest, the college broadened the fisheries degree this fall to include ocean sciences, and opened more oceanography and marine biology classes to undergraduate students. The new degree combo program attracted 53 students, Sutton said.

The college also is a center for ocean acidification studies, which is a big student draw.

“You hear all the concerns regarding climate change and marine mammals and fisheries and sea ice — all of those garner interest from students because there are job opportunities down the road to deal with these issues,” Sutton explained.

The CFOS also is the only school in the nation to offer a Bachelor of Arts degree in fisheries for students interested in seafood sciences and technology, and marine policy. Another focus of the B.A. track is in rural and community development where students can get the degree at home.

“A student in Bethel or Dillingham can stay home and take 100 percent of their courses either through video conferences or online or by some other distance delivery technology. They can get a degree that is tied to fisheries and it will help them have a good career and become leaders in their communities,” Sutton said.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce