Saving Seafood

ALASKA: No plans to close Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery over COVID-19

April 20, 2020 — Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang says it would be premature at this time to decide to close the Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery, since there are a couple months before it even gets going. However, he says the state is keeping a close eye on things, including the Copper River salmon fishery.

“From that experience, which brings in an influx of fishermen into the Cordova area, we’re meeting with the local representatives of the Cordova community as well as the fishing processing sector to figure out how to safely bring in processing workers to make sure that that fishery can occur. Right now that’s scheduled to occur. What we learn from that will inform us on how we manage the Bristol Bay fishery,” said the commissioner.

Dillingham Mayor Alice Ruby and First Chief of the Curyung Tribal Council Thomas Tilden wrote a letter to Gov. Mike Dunleavy asking him to consider closing the Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery because of the many fish processing employees who will come to the area.

“There is no way to prevent a potential mass disease situation when a few hundred people are in close proximity with each other. There is no way that they can comply with Health Mandate 11 on Social Distancing. Whether it is infection spread in the community by direct contact with residents during their travel to and within the community, or whether it will by draining precious resources when processing employees becomes infected,” read the letter.

Read the full story at KTVA

As Alaska fishing season set to begin, fearful communities and seafood industry try to prevent spread of coronavirus

April 20, 2020 — Early next month, Trident Seafoods vessel-operations manager Tod Hall will bid his wife goodbye, then leave his Lakewood home for the start of a six-month season catching and processing fish off Washington and Alaska. This year, instead of boarding the 316-foot Island Enterprise now moored at a Tacoma dock, he first will check into a hotel on the outskirts of Seattle. For the next 14 days, he will remain quarantined in his room with all meals delivered and even an occasional hallway stroll off-limits.

Hall will be one of the first of some 4,000 Trident shoreside processing workers and at-sea crew to undergo this two-week quarantine in Seattle-area and Alaska hotel rooms. Their confinement will be monitored by security guards and nurses who will do daily temperature checks. Two days before they exit, if Trident can secure enough supplies, they will be tested for COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.

Such measures might seem extraordinary, but these are extraordinary times for Alaska’s seafood industry, which each year delivers more than half of the U.S. harvest from coastal and offshore waters.

Trident and other seafood-company officials hope to ensure that factory trawlers making their way through remote swaths of the Bering Sea do not replay any of the harrowing scenarios that unfolded on cruise ships this year, when waves of the virus sickened passengers.

Read the full story from The Seattle Times at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Bristol Bay leaders cautiously optimistic, but ask state for fishery closure if protocol can’t be met

April 17, 2020 — Friday, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s communications director provided the following statement responding to the letter from the Bristol Bay Working Group:

“The State of Alaska continues to build testing capacity every day. Currently, testing capacity is not available to meet the requests made by the Bristol Bay work group, however, work is underway with communities, businesses, and all stakeholders in search of a balance that protects Alaskans and gives our critical fishing industry an opportunity to exist during upcoming fishing seasons.”

Leaders of several major organizations in Bristol Bay say they are more confident that a salmon season may be held safely this summer, but have joined in asking Gov. Mike Dunleavy to close the fishery if certain requirements can’t be met.

Wednesday evening, the Bristol Bay Working Group sent a letter to Gov. Mike Dunleavy calling on him to close the Bristol Bay fishery for 2020 if the steps it outlined earlier in the month cannot be met. The group comprises leaders of the Bristol Bay Housing Authority, Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation, Bristol Bay Native Association, Bristol Bay Native Corporation, Bristol Bay Area Health Corporation and United Tribes of Bristol Bay.

The group’s protocols outlined in the letter include testing for people coming into the region, both before traveling to Bristol Bay and after arriving, as well as continued health screenings and other precautions.

“In the intervening two weeks, very little has happened,” said Norm Van Vactor, CEO of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation. “We’re sensing as community members that this freight train that’s bearing down on us is not slowed down, and to some extent has accelerated.

Read the full story at KTUU

Alaska Seafood Industry Launches Massive Effort to Fish the Bay Without Spreading the Virus

April 10, 2020 — Bristol Bay’s processors and fishermen have been working non-stop for the past several weeks to establish protocols that will allow this summer’s sockeye season to happen. Eleven major companies have announced they will process this year and as of today, seven have submitted detailed plans to avoid the spread of COVID-19.

The conditions the processors and fishermen are facing are anathema to any business — no one knows how bad the COVID-19 spread will be in June when the fishery opens, or in July when harvesting is at its peak. No one knows how lethal it will be during the summer in Bristol Bay, which in recent years has been significantly warmer for both humans and salmon.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: Fishermen concerned over Pebble employee appointed to Board of Fisheries

April 9, 2020 — While communities and fishermen in Bristol Bay are facing an immediate challenge in deciding if and how to hold the $300 million salmon fishery in a few weeks, an appointment to the Board of Fisheries is adding to the stress felt by many in the region.

On April 1, Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced appointments to boards and commissions. Among the governor’s appointments is Abe Williams, who is an employee of the Pebble Partnership, the company looking to build a open pit copper, gold and molybdenum mine in Southwest Alaska. According to the company’s preferred alternative plan submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the fully-developed mine site would be more than 8,300 acres, a land area the size of the City of Wasilla.

Williams was born and raised in Naknek, currently lives in Anchorage, and is a fourth-generation Bristol Bay fisherman. However, his position on Pebble Mine has bothered both commercial and sport fishermen in Bristol Bay. Williams is currently the Director of Regional Affairs for the Pebble Partnership.

In 2015, Williams was elected to serve as the Board President for the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association. His election and reports that followed prompted the organization to issue a notice to its members that “The position of the BBRSDA and the near-unanimous views of its 1,650 members are unchanged. A resolution passed by the board of directors in 2014 stating that the BBRSDA opposes large-scale mining in Bristol Bay’s watersheds is, and continues to be, the position of this organization.”

In April of 2019, Williams and five other fishermen sued the BBRSDA for using part of its 1
percent tax collected from the Bristol Bay drift fleet to advocate against the Pebble Mine. The Pebble Partnership funded the lawsuit. The judge dismissed the case the following month.

Read the full story at KTUU

Alaska community asks for fishery shutdown because of virus

April 9, 2020 — An Alaska tribe and city asked have the governor to shut down a prosperous fishery this year in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Curyung Tribal Council and the city of Dillingham requested the closure of the Bristol Bay fishery in a letter to Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy Tuesday, Indian County Today reported.

The Bristol Bay fishery typically opens in June and harvests more Sockeye salmon than anywhere else globally. Fish harvesters there caught 56.5 million salmon in 2019.

The fishery brings about 14,000 people to the region for work with fish processing plant companies while drawing about 1,800 fishermen who have been named essential workers by the state.

“Our community does not have the capability to control the movement of this group,” the letter to Dunleavy said. “This is unacceptable and places us in an impossible situation.”

Read the full story at the Associated Press

ALASKA: Bristol Bay processors offer plan aimed at keeping massive salmon fishery safe

April 9, 2020 — A group of seafood processors has offered details on how they would ensure safety in Alaska’s lucrative Bristol Bay commercial fishing season amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, a day after Dillingham leaders told the governor the fishery poses an “unacceptable” risk to local communities and should be canceled.

On Tuesday, Dillingham’s mayor and tribal first chief sent an open letter to Gov. Mike Dunleavy, asking him to cancel this summer’s Bristol Bay salmon fishery, the biggest by volume in the world. Last year, the total value of the catch set a record at $306 million.

Eleven seafood companies planning to participate in the Bristol Bay fishery this summer released a letter Wednesday “to confirm our commitment that we are prioritizing health and safety” of local communities.

The letter is addressed to the “communities and tribal councils of Bristol Bay.”

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

Coronavirus places 2020 Alaska salmon fishery ‘in question’, exec worries

April 2, 2020 — The escalating COVID-19 crisis places the 2020 Alaska salmon fishery in question, as the industry works on solutions to getting thousands of workers to the remote state without spreading the highly infectious coronavirus.

As many as 15,000 workers can descend on Alaska from the other US states and overseas for the season, but numbers are expected to be lower than this in 2020, if indeed the industry can find a workable solution, sources told Undercurrent News.

“If you asked me a month ago that a situation like this would be possible, that I was contemplating that the successful prosecution of our 2020 salmon fishery couldn’t take place, I would not have believed you,” said Norm Van Vactor, executive director of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation (BBEDC), a community development quota group, which owns half of processor Ocean Beauty Seafoods.

“If you know what we know today — and we don’t know a lot — then the prosecution of the fishery is in question,” Van Vactor told Undercurrent. “I’m optimistic that if we all pull together — understanding that communities are going to put health and public safety first, and that’s the foundation of how we move forward — we can make it happen, to some extent.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Alaska shellfish farmers and divers object to paying for federally required lab tests

March 18, 2020 — Alaska shellfish farmers and divers fear they won’t be “open for business” much longer if they’re forced to pick up the tab for federally required lab tests as outlined in Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s budget.

The Department of Environmental Conservation has proposed shifting the cost to the harvesters, which last year totaled almost a half million dollars.

Geoduck clam divers in Southeast Alaska, for example, pay about $150,000 each year to collect samples that are sent to the single federally approved laboratory in Anchorage and tested for paralytic shellfish poison and other toxins. Divers also pay $20,000 for water quality samples twice a year, and $8,000 to test for inorganic arsenic.

“And then we pay the Alaska Department of Fish and Game about $25,000 a year for them to do the management and assessment of the geoduck resource,” said Phil Doherty, co-director of the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Association.

The geoduck divers also tax themselves 7% to cover SARDFA’s $50,000 administrative costs. In all, Doherty said it adds up to $266,00 a year.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News