Saving Seafood

How Covid-19 Is Threatening Alaska’s Wild Salmon Fishing Season

June 23, 2020 — For Christopher Nicolson, each June brings happy anticipation of his family’s trip to the tiny Alaska fishing town of Naknek, 3,700 miles from his home in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Naknek, set into the grassy bluffs above Bristol Bay, is as bygone as New York City is modern. Cellphones barely work. Bears bang around in the trash at night. You can go from your fishing boat to your truck to the store and back again without missing a word of news on the single AM station.

Mr. Nicolson, 45, spends much of the year working at Red Hook Winery in Brooklyn, where he is the managing winemaker, but his main income is drawn from Iliamna Fish Company. The business, which he and two cousins own, sells Alaska red salmon directly to thousands of shareholders, most of them in New York and Portland, Ore., as well as to a few high-end restaurants and stores, including the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn.

Read the full story at the New York Times

ALASKA: Mike Dunleavy skips Kodiak fishing forum

October 26th, 2018 — Rack up another empty seat on the Alaska debate stage for Mike Dunleavy.

The Republican candidate for Alaska governor bailed out of Kodiak’s traditional fisheries debate — after saying he’d show up.

“We plan on being there,” Dunleavy said on public radio’s statewide Talk of Alaska call-in show on Aug.31. But from then on, there was silence from the Dunleavy campaign as Kodiak organizers struggled to plan the Oct. 22 event that is broadcast live statewide on radio and television.

Days before the event, after weeks of unreturned phone calls and emails, organizers finally learned that Dunleavy would not be attending.

“Mike is unfortunately not going to be able to attend the debate as he will be visiting with Alaskans in Barrow. We wish you the best with you (sic) event,” wrote Gina Ritacco, deputy director of scheduling and events, in an Oct. 16 email to the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce.

The conflicting trip to Barrow was posted on the Dunleavy event calendar that same day.

“Certainly, it makes us in Kodiak feel like even though the fishing industry is so important to Alaska, it may not be that important to him,” said Frank Schiro, executive director of the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce which has hosted the debate since 1991.

Shiro added that he was not surprised.

“People had predicted from the beginning that it might not be to his advantage to come here. I think he believes he doesn’t need to pay attention to people down here and will walk into office anyway,” he said,

“We gave him two months to schedule it,” Schiro added. “The other two candidates for governor responded immediately and Dunleavy’s lag time made our planning extremely difficult.”

Since late March Dunleavy’s calendar shows that he has participated in a debate on rural issues in Naknek in early June and visited Juneau and Ketchikan. Besides that to date he had not visited any coastal communities beyond the Kenai Peninsula. Dunleavy also has not responded to requests for interviews by any media in coastal towns.

The seafood industry is Alaska’s largest private employer and second only to oil in the tax revenues it puts into state coffers. Seafood also is Alaska’s top export by far. Dunleavy has missed an opportunity to share his views and vision for Alaska’s oldest industry to a statewide audience.

Read the full story at Alaska Journal of Commerce

For Alaska fisheries, reason to celebrate 40 years of Magnuson-Stevens Act

April 12, 2016 — April 13, 2016, marks the 40th anniversary of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a law that took U.S. fisheries management in federal waters from being virtually non-existent to becoming a global model of sustainability.

Nowhere is this truer than in Alaska, where our fisheries have an international reputation as being among the most sustainable and valuable fisheries on the planet, largely thanks to the collaborative and inclusive management process set up under the Magnuson-Stevens Act. One of the MSA’s authors, our very own Sen. Ted Stevens, had an extraordinary vision for our nation’s fisheries, especially for those in his home state of Alaska. Many elements of the State of Alaska’s fishery management are woven into the fabric of the MSA.

The results? Our state produces 60 percent of all seafood harvested from U.S. waters. The Alaska seafood industry is the number one private employer in the State of Alaska, contributing an estimated $5.9 billion to the Alaska economy, and producing more than $4.2 billion first wholesale value of wild, sustainable seafood annually. For nearly 20 consecutive years, Dutch Harbor has been the top U.S. fishing port in volume of seafood landed. In 2014, Alaska ports took the top three spots in the nation in volume of seafood landed (Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, and Aleutian Islands). Other Alaska fishing ports — Alaska Peninsula, Naknek, Sitka, Ketchikan, Cordova, and Petersburg — ranked in our nation’s top 20 ports by volume.

Read the full opinion piece at the Alaska Dispatch News