Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Board of Fisheries to consider 15 options to protect Bristol Bay’s Nushagak king salmon runs

December 1, 2022 — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game published a draft plan last week to address the struggling Nushagak king salmon run.

At the statewide Bristol Bay finfish meeting this week, the Board of Fisheries will decide which of those tools to put into an action plan. There could be significant restrictions to fishing in the Nushagak District, and that could have widespread impacts on the entire fishery.

The Nushagak River is on the west side of the commercial fishery. It’s the last place in Bristol Bay where the state still counts king salmon. In recent years, sockeye runs have boomed while king runs have dropped. That’s created a problem for managers, who are tasked with providing fishing opportunity for sockeye and controlling that escapement while also preserving the kings.

The plan organizes potential actions into three sections: commercial, sport and subsistence.

The actions range from continuing management under the status quo to closing the fishery until a certain date. The department lists the benefits and downsides of each action. The commercial fishing division says several of its recommendations could protect kings but that fishermen would lose out economically. It also says some actions could push fishermen into other districts in the fishery.

In October, the state designated Nushagak king salmon as a stock of concern because it has failed to meet the in-river goal of 95,000 fish for five of the last six years. This action plan is the result of that listing. If the king salmon run meets its minimum escapement goal for three years in a row and is expected to continue, the department can remove the designation.

The public will have the chance to weigh in on the plan during the Board of Fish meeting, which started Tuesday at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage. The meeting is also livestreamed.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

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 Anticipates Limited Salted Salmon Roe Production and Air Freight to Japan

May 17, 2022 — The Copper River salmon fishery, which is the start of Alaska salmon fishing season in Alaska, opened today, May 16, which is one day earlier than last year.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the first day of the season opener is set from 7 am for 12 hours on May 17, and fishing restrictions continue for king salmon as usual for resource protection, Suisan Keizai reports.

According to the previous forecast, the Fish & Game said that the number of sockeye salmon fishing in the Copper River area would increase to 1,432,000 fish this summer, including the returning to the hatchery, which is more than double the previous year’s level, but 34% less than the average of the past 10 years. Last year, the actual catch was 404,653, 68% less than the 10-year average of 1,250,000 fish.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Board votes to continue conservation measures for weak Southeast Alaska king salmon stocks

March 28, 2022 — Alaska’s Board of Fisheries this week voted to continue with conservation measures for chronically low returns of king salmon in Southeast Alaska. Some stocks are forecast to be at their lowest levels on record this year and others have rebounded a little under fishery closures.

The region has 34 stocks of king salmon and the board has listed seven as stocks of concern. That means for four years or more, those runs have not had enough fish making it back to spawn, or what managers call an escapement goal.

Ed Jones is an Alaska Department of Fish and Game coordinator specializing in king salmon research. He outlined to the board the measures taken to reduce harvest of those fish.

“Through the actions taken beginning in 2018 with the action plans, we have taken good steps towards achieving the escapement goals,” Jones said. “The problem is the production of these stocks has just continued to be low. And so right now we’ve not been able to provide a harvestable yield annually. The hopes are that that production will change, escapement goals will be met and we’ll also be able to identify yield.”

Read the full story at KTOO

A court decision may help endangered orcas, but Alaskan fishermen are wary

November 8, 2021 — The southern resident killer whale population, three pods of orcas that ply the coastal waters between Monterey, California, and Vancouver Island, British Columbia, has dwindled to only 73 members. Scientists believe this endangered species, which relies almost exclusively on Chinook — or king — salmon, which are also in steep decline, is basically starving its way to extinction.

This past September, however, the U.S. District Court in Seattle seemed to offer the marine mammals a lifeline when it issued a preliminary decision that might make more Chinook available to orcas. Responding to a lawsuit filed by the Wild Fish Conservancy, the court found that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), the agency responsible for management of both fisheries and endangered marine species, had violated the Endangered Species Act when it determined that commercial harvest of Chinook off southeast Alaska would not jeopardize southern residents or endangered king salmon populations.

But while the court decision is expected to help orcas, it may be bad news for fishermen, as NMFS will likely need to rethink Chinook harvests.

Read the full story at FERN News

 

ALASKA: Southeast commercial salmon harvest 4 times higher than last year

November 2, 2021 — Southeast Alaska’s salmon harvest was over four times more than last year’s, according to a preliminary report from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game released on Monday (November 1).

Commercial fishermen in Southeast harvested 58 million salmon across the five species this year: almost 7 million chum salmon, 48 million pinks, 1.5 million coho, 1.1 million sockeye, and 216,000 king salmon.

That’s a marked improvement in harvest for every species. Even the embattled Southeast king salmon had a commercial harvest increase of more than 16,000 fish. In total, commercial salmon fishermen in the region caught and sold 44 million more salmon than last year.

Read the full story at KSTK

 

Trawl overhaul? Alaska fishermen go to bat for kings and crabs

October 8, 2021 — Animosity toward Alaska’s trawl fleet reached a fever pitch over the summer. In most parts of the state, where salmon fishing would have kept stakeholders busy, lackluster returns and some closures instead gave thousands of fishermen more time to mull over answers to where the fish may have gone.

Although Alaska’s overall salmon returns have been strong this year, the results are stratified. King salmon returns, specifically, have been in a long and steady decline. Statewide, king landings — by number of fish — have declined by more than 70 percent in the last 40 years, from a high of 875,630 fish in 1982 to 265,081 in 2020. The harvest so far for 2021 is about 212,000 fish.

When accounting for landings by weight, the reduction is almost 85 percent over the same period, from 16.9 million pounds in 1982 to 2.9 million in 2020, according to the Alaska Department of Fish & Game.

As council meetings went virtual during the pandemic-induced shutdowns, participation and feedback from local stakeholders increased significantly.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Low King Salmon Runs In Western Alaska Trigger Bering Sea Bycatch Caps

September 29, 2021 — Unofficial estimates of this summer’s king salmon run in Western Alaska rivers show a lower than average return, which will trigger stricter limits on the Bering Sea pollock fishery’s bycatch caps for king salmon next year.

State biologists said that about 129,000 king salmon returned to the Kuskokwim River this year. Of those, the state estimates that about 28,000 were harvested, and 101,000 made their way upriver to spawn.

The state’s escapement goal of 65,000 to 120,000 kings was met, but federal and tribal managers’ escapement goal of 110,000 king salmon was not. This year’s king salmon run is slightly higher than last year’s estimated run size of 116,000 king salmon, but much lower than the 2019 run of 233,000.

Read the full story at KYUK

NMFS approves plan to restrict salmon fishing, protect orcas

September 17, 2021 — King salmon fishing could be cut back from Puget Sound to Monterey Bay if king salmon numbers fall too low to feed the 75 endangered Southern Resident orcas, under a plan approved Sept. 14 by NMFS.

Non-tribal fishing would be restricted when king salmon numbers appear heading toward that threshold — a key recommendation from a working group convened by the Pacific Fishery Management Council, including representatives from West Coast states, tribes, and NMFS.

In late 2020 the council adopted the work group’s suggestions, including limiting commercial and recreational fishing in certain places off California, Oregon, and Washington when estimated king salmon numbers north of Cape Falcon, Oregon, fall below a certain level of abundance.

That level would be set as the average of the seven lowest years of forecast king salmon abundance off the northern Oregon and Washington coasts, currently estimated at 966,000. In recent years salmon numbers held above that level, and 2007 was the last year when forecasts would have fallen below the threshold.

Read the full story at National Fisherman