Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Seafood for thought as election approaches

October 27, 2026 — October marks National Seafood Month — a month when Americans are encouraged to consume more seafood and support America’s seafood harvesters. Alaskans don’t need National Seafood Month to remind us about seafood, though. Seafood is already an integral part of our day-to-day lives, a staple of our diets, and a pillar of our local food system. If you haven’t crewed on a fishing boat yourself, then you certainly know someone who has. It’s important that we not take our seafood for granted as we head to the polls this election season; your vote will shape the future of Alaska’s seafood access and abundance.

Here in Alaska, seafood is much more than just a source of omegas and nutrient-packed protein — although those are all great reasons to consume it. Seafood has sustained Alaska’s Indigenous communities for millennia and remains central to their cultures and traditions. Seafood unites Alaskans, bringing us together and giving us a shared purpose; just visit the Kenai River during the salmon dipnet season and you’ll see people old and young, rural and urban, Alaska Native and non-Native elbow-to-elbow, chest-deep in the water cheering each other on and lending each other a hand. According to the State of Alaska’s Food Security and Independence Task Force 2022 Report, fishing is the single greatest source of wild-harvested food for Alaskans. Subsistence, personal use, and sportfish harvests comprise approximately 50–60% of the annual wild food harvested by Alaskans.  This access to local seafood is especially important in Alaska’s rural communities where recent surveys show that nearly all rural Alaskans depend on fish. What these statistics really tell us, though, is that harvesting seafood is how we provide for our families and build community. Being able to harvest and share seafood with others is what makes us Alaskans.

ALASKA: King salmon’s disappearance has changed the Kenai River, but a soaring sockeye run is keeping it in business

August 11, 2025 — A trio of anglers leaned on the edge of Jordan Carter’s boat in shallow water on the Kenai River last month, victoriously enjoying a cold beverage.

Their ride with Carter, a local fishing guide, was brief but bountiful. The group pulled in 18 sockeye salmon in a flash, easily reaching their limit with time left to enjoy the sunny day.

“He was 30 minutes, I was 45, and he was like 46,” Bryan Fanning said, pointing at fishing partners as he recounted the timelines for reaching their respective limits. “Coming up here and doing the sockeye, it’s great.”

It’s a different river from what Fanning recalls from his youth. The king salmon run that for so long was the centerpiece of the Kenai River has virtually dried up, with the fishery closed for a third straight summer.

Fanning remembers the family fishing excursions in the 1990s that could take more than a day to reel in a single king. Now living in Wyoming, his annual fishing trips north have become more eventful with the bustling sockeye fishery providing a reasonable alternative.

This summer’s late-run sockeye have been an absolute rocket ship, with multiple days of fish counts reaching over 240,000 in late July. By Thursday, the late-run sockeye count had passed 3.7 million, setting a new record amid a string of strong seasons.

The booming sockeye runs of recent years couldn’t have come at a better time, providing a lifeline for the fishing trade that has been the main economic driver on the Kenai Peninsula for decades.

The shift from kings has also shortened the fishing window — and with it, the associated tourism season — and brought a different demographic group to the region.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

Set-netters’ case shot down, again, in court

August 19, 2022 — Alaska’s highest court said fisheries managers did not have to manage the Cook Inlet set-net fishery to national standards and that they didn’t violate any regulations when they closed the fishery early.

That opinion from the Alaska Supreme Court, published last Friday, is the latest legal blow to the 440 or so east-side permit holders, who have seen their fishery close early for the last four summers due to paired restrictions with the king salmon sport fishery. When fewer than 15,000 large kings pass through the sonar on the Kenai River, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game closes both fisheries entirely. Late-run escapement hasn’t passed 15,000 kings since 2018.

And after the closure in 2019, set-netters represented by the Cook Inlet Fishermen’s Fund sued the state in hopes the court would order managers to rework that management plan and others. It alleged restrictions the state had placed on the commercial fishermen were unscientific and arbitrary and flew in the face of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

The Kenai court said because there was no federal management plan for Cook Inlet fisheries at that time, the state was not bound by those standards. And it said the state’s Board of Fisheries and Department of Fish and Game had the discretion to write and enforce their own rules.

Read the full article at KDLL

ALASKA: Kenai River sockeye run over-escaped by 1 million fish

August 27, 2021 — Nearly 2.5 million late-run sockeye are projected to pass through the Kenai River by the end of the month, over-escaping the river by over 1 million fish.

Those numbers concern fishermen like Joe Dragseth, a drift-netter in Kenai. He said he worries about the health of the river. And, he said, it’s unfair commercial fishermen have been restricted while so many fish have made it up the river.

“Basically, they’re taking the living away from us,” he said.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game sets both in-river and sustainable escapement goals for the run each season. The philosophy is returns will be best if the run falls between those goalposts.

This season, and the last several seasons, the sockeye run has surpassed the upper limit of those goals.

This year, the department set an in-river escapement goal of 1 million to 1.2 million for the run. Now, it’s projecting 2.4 million fish will pass through the sonar at mile 19 of the Kenai River by the end of the month.

For Kenai Peninsula set-netters, who’ve had abbreviated fishing seasons due to “paired restrictions” with the Kenai River king run, it’s been particularly hard to watch.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Court case is final hope for Inlet drifters

August 27, 2021 — A late-season bumper run of sockeye salmon has pushed the Kenai River to its highest escapement in more than a decade.

Unfortunately for the commercial fishermen in Upper Cook Inlet, they have had to watch many of them go by.

Over the course of the season, Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists upgraded the estimate for the run’s escapement multiple times, upping the in-river bag limits for the sportfishery and opening some additional time for the drift gillnet fleet.

With the setnet fleet out of the water after July 20 because of poor king salmon returns to the Kenai, controlling sockeye escapements to the Kenai and Kasilof fell on the drift fleet and on the in-river dipnet and sportfisheries. Both rivers are ending their seasons significantly greater than the upper end of their escapement goals.

ADFG is projecting a final escapement in the Kasilof of 519,000 sockeye compared to the top end of the escapement goal of 320,000; the sustainable escapement goal for the Kenai River has a top end of 1.3 million and ADFG is projecting an in-river run of about 2.4 million sockeye.

Unless something changes, the drift fleet is likely to lose a major chunk of their fishing area at the end of this year, too.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is currently working its way through the regulations review process for a new fishery management plan amendment that will close the federal waters of Cook Inlet to salmon fishing. That section, known as the Exclusive Economic Zone or EEZ, covers the section of Cook Inlet that’s three nautical miles and farther offshore; drifters typically harvest half or more of their salmon from there during the season.

“For most of the fleet, the EEZ is the preferred area for fishing,” said Erik Huebsch, a drifter and vice president of the United Cook Inlet Drift Association. “Without access to the EEZ, the drift fleet cannot harvest enough salmon to meet expenses and cannot afford to operate.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

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: Sockeye run overescaped by 1 million fish

August 25, 2021 — Nearly 2.5 million late-run sockeye are projected to pass through the Kenai River by the end of the month, overescaping the river by over one million fish.

Those numbers concern fishermen like Joe Dragseth, a drift-netter in Kenai. He said he worries about the health of the river. And he said it’s unfair commercial fishermen have been restricted while so many fish have made it up the river.

“Basically, they’re taking the living away from us,” he said.

Alaska Department of Fish and Game sets both in-river and sustainable escapement goals for the run each season. The philosophy is returns will be best if the run falls between those goalposts.

Read the full story at KDLL

ALASKA: Last chance? Cook Inlet setnetters look to buyback as a way to save fishery

August 19, 2021 — In some ways, Cook Inlet’s East Side setnet fishery is the most desirable of commercial fisheries to get into: instead of having to fish remote sections of muddy beach, far from roads or towns, commercial fishermen can finish their sets for the day, jump up to the top of the bluff, and go to town for the night.

The ones who live on the Kenai Peninsula can even go home, if they want to.

In other ways, it’s one of the worst fisheries to be in. With unexpected closures and constant conflicts over salmon allocation, it’s not uncommon to find fishermen poring over the specific wording of management plans or frantically checking fish counts in the nearby Kenai River to see if they’ll be open. Many of them also listen in to the Board of Fisheries meetings, asking the members and department for changes or adjustments to management.

That’s where Ken Coleman has found himself every three years since the 1980s: in the chairs at the Board of Fisheries meetings. A north Kalifornsky Beach, known as K-Beach, setnetter, Coleman said he’s watched the fishery ratchet back, with setnetters losing first the early season, then the late season, then gear, then time.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

US Senate candidate under investigation for improperly receiving resident sportfish license

July 29, 2021 — Alaska Wildlife Troopers are investigating whether U.S. Senate candidate Kelly Tshibaka illegally obtained a resident sportfishing license for a Kenai River sportfishing event in 2019.

Records indicate Tshibaka, a leading challenger to incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski, received a resident sportfishing license despite failing to meet the requirements.

Knowingly violating the law on fishing licenses is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $300. A senior adviser to Tshibaka’s campaign said he believes she did not intend to break the law.

Troopers regularly cite fishermen for illegally buying a resident-only permit, and other political figures have run afoul of the residency requirement.

“The Alaska Wildlife Troopers are aware of the recent media reports regarding Mrs. Tshibaka and are looking into them. No criminal charges or citations have been issued at this time,” said Austin McDaniel, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Public Safety.

Tshibaka announced her run for U.S. Senate in March and on July 15 released a fishing-themed video adfilmed at a setnet site owned by former Lt. Gov. Loren Leman. The video raised questions about Tshibaka’s fishing history, including whether she has a commercial license.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: State projects low returns of salmon to Upper Cook Inlet

January 30, 2020 — Another year of poor salmon returns is forecast this summer on one of the world’s most famous salmon streams.

Forecasts for Kenai River chinook (king) and sockeye (red) salmon are below average, according to estimates released this week by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

According to state biologists, this year’s forecast of large, early run Kenai River chinook salmon is just 4,794 fish, a return that would rank as the eighth-lowest return in the last 35 years but would be slightly higher than last year’s run of 4,216 fish. The average return over the past 35 years is more than 9,100 kings in the early run, fish that enter the river through June 30.

The department classifies large fish as those greater than 34 inches in length in order to differentiate 5-, 6- and 7-year fish from their younger, smaller counterparts.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News