Saving Seafood

Alaska’s 2021 salmon harvest has blown past the season’s forecast

August 31, 2021 — Alaska’s 2021 salmon harvest has blown past the forecast and by Aug. 27 had topped 201 million fish, well above the 190 million projected at the start of the season.

The catch was bolstered by a surge of pink salmon to the three top-producing regions: Prince William Sound, Southeast and Kodiak, combined with strong landings of sockeyes.

“Pink salmon runs are over 95% complete, based on average run timing. Effort drops off quickly this late in the season, so it is difficult to predict where that harvest will end up,” said Forrest Bowers, deputy director of the Commercial Fisheries Division at the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game. “My guess is up to another half million late-run sockeye salmon and perhaps 10 million pink salmon will be harvested. If that occurs, we will end up with around 143 million pink salmon, 54 million sockeye, and 207 million total salmon harvested. 2021 could end up being the sixth-largest sockeye and sixth- or seventh-largest pink salmon harvest on record.”

Pinks are the “bread and butter” catch for Alaska salmon fishermen and total landings were approaching 137 million, well above the 124 million projected for this season.

At Prince William Sound, which had a catch forecast of about 25 million pinks, nearly 62 million had crossed the docks.

“Wild stocks are returning stronger than anticipated (to PWS) given the uncertainty about spawning success from the 2019 parent year which was negatively impacted by drought conditions,” said the weekly Fish and Game inseason summary.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

KRISTIN CARPENTER: Salmon hatcheries add resilience to Alaska’s seafood industry

July 16, 2021 — This past year hasn’t been an easy one. The impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic are widespread, affecting the ability of Alaskans to support their families in the same way they did before. With tourism shut down in 2020 and fluctuations in the price of oil and the ever-mounting threat of climate change on our daily lives, it’s no wonder Alaskans are deeply concerned about the state’s economy. But here in 2021, we are in a better spot than we were a year ago, and there is light at the end of the pandemic tunnel. One component of the state’s economy has served as a consistent economic driver throughout last year’s trials and will continue to do so far into the future — Alaska’s salmon hatcheries.

Seafood, tourism, and oil & gas make up the three-legged stool of our economy, according to economic models. Our seafood sector has been able to thrive through the pandemic, thanks partly to the long-term and sustainable production of the salmon hatcheries established in Alaska in the 1970s. Across the state, the seafood industry employs almost 60,000 workers, nearly half of whom are Alaska residents, and it contributed more than $172 million in 2019 in raw fish taxes for state and local governments. The economic benefits generated by the seafood industry ripple across the state, and from Prince William Sound across Southcentral Alaska, raising incomes and lowering the cost of living in many communities, not to mention increasing food security. Harvests from Prince William Sound specifically make up more than half of the state’s ex-vessel value from hatchery-raised fish harvests — $69 million out of a total of $120 million. Our Alaska salmon hatcheries contribute 1 billion meals of nutritious Alaskan salmon to Alaska and the world annually.

Even those without direct ties to seafood can look to hatcheries as drivers of economic opportunity. A recent report by McKinley Research Group — formerly McDowell Group — highlights the impacts that hatcheries have on economic outcomes throughout Alaska. Each year, Alaska hatcheries account for roughly 4,700 jobs, $218 million in labor income, and a total of $600 million in economic output. In Prince William Sound alone, hatcheries generate roughly 2,200 jobs, $104 million in labor income, and a total economic output of $316 million each year. Hatcheries drive economic impacts far beyond direct labor and income by benefiting thousands of fishermen, processing employees, and hatchery workers, not to mention thousands more support sector workers, and even sportfish charter operators and guides, who likely rely on hatchery production for some portion of their income.

It’s hard to overstate the far-reaching impacts of Alaska’s hatcheries, especially when it comes to additional tax revenue. Hatcheries and the fish they produce generate local revenue through taxes on raw fish, property, and sales paid by commercial and charter fishermen, seafood processors, hatchery associations, and support sector businesses and employees. These tax revenues help Alaskan communities to survive in the challenging years and thrive in the good years across the state.

Read the full opinion piece at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Meeting season nears amid COVID-19 complications

October 30, 2020 — Many Alaska fishermen are likely to be involved in regulatory meetings next spring instead of being out on the water. And Alaska legislators will be distracted by hearings for hundreds of unconfirmed appointments as they tackle contentious budgets and other pressing issues.

New dates have been set for state Board of Fisheries meetings that were bumped from later this year due to COVID-19 concerns. During the same time, along with four unconfirmed seats on the fish board, the Alaska legislature also will be tasked with considering nominees for 137 state boards and commissions named by Gov. Mike Dunleavy during the 2020 session. State lawmakers were unable to do the usual in-depth vetting of appointees when the virus forced them to adjourn early.

The upcoming round of board meetings focuses on management of subsistence, commercial, sport and personal use fisheries at Prince William Sound, Southeast and Yakutat, as well as statewide shellfish issues and hatcheries.

The meeting dates of March 4, 2021, for the hatchery committee and March 5-10 for shellfish issues remain the same as originally scheduled. The Prince William Sound meetings, set to be held in Cordova, are now set to occur from March 30-April 5; for Southeast and Yakutat, the dates are April 17-29 with the meetings scheduled to be in Ketchikan.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Cordova is First to Ask State and Commerce Dept. to Declare Twin Disasters: Fishery and Economic

August 10, 2020 — On Wednesday, August 5, the Cordova City Council unanimously passed a resolution encouraging the state and the federal Secretary of Commerce to declare fisheries disasters for two years: the 2018 Copper River Chinook and sockeye salmon runs and the 2020 Copper River and Prince William Sound Chinook, sockeye and chum salmon runs. The resolution also urges state and federal governments to declare a “condition of economic disaster in Cordova as a result.”

The fishing town of Cordova, located in South-central Alaska between the Copper River to the east and Prince William sound to the west, is the home port for nearly 800 vessels, most of which are the first to harvest returning salmon in Alaska every spring. The town of 2,500 is now the first, of what will likely be at least one or two others, to ask for a fisheries and economic disaster declaration in 2020.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Pink salmon harvest running late but surging in Alaska’s Prince William Sound

August 30, 2019 — The pink salmon harvest is running behind in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, a problem that’s been linked to a record heat wave and drought conditions, but it’s making a strong push, the Cordova (Alaska) Times reports.

Typically by this date, 90% of the catch is complete, but instead, it seems that the harvest is just beginning, Charlie Russell, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, reportedly told the newspaper. Russell said his agency is seeing a lot of die-offs before the fish are successful in spawning.

“They are still hanging out at the mouth of rivers. There is no rain. Until it rains the fish are in a holding pattern waiting at the creek’s mouth. This run is so late that it doesn’t follow a historical run timing curve,” Russell said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

What happens when wild salmon interbreed with hatchery fish?

March 21, 2019 — A research project by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game looking at chum and pink salmon runs in Southeast Alaska and Prince William Sound is expanding to help biologists understand the interplay between wild runs and hatchery strays. There is concern that hatchery fish could alter the genetics of wild populations, posing a threat to their survival.

Homer-based Fish and Game biologists Glenn Hollowell and Ted Otis started tracking hatchery fish found in wild streams around Kachemak Bay in 2014. That was around the time when Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association’s Tutka Bay Lagoon Hatchery reopened after several years.

They wanted to examine how well the hatchery pink salmon homed back to the Kachemak Bay facility, but they found something strange: salmon from other hatcheries.

“When we initially started doing this, we were not anticipating finding any Prince William Sound fish in our samples whatsoever. It was just not something we even considered,” Hollowell explained. “We were very surprised to find that a number of our streams had very significant, double-digit numbers (of Prince William Sound hatchery fish) in 2014.”

The Prince William Sound pinks keep showing up each year, and just the idea that hatchery pinks could stray so far has heated up a dispute over the potential harm on wild runs — namely, whether they could alter the genetics of wild populations in a way that would threaten their survival rate.

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: Board of Fish agenda heavy with hatchery issues

October 16, 2018 — The Alaska Board of Fisheries will kick off its annual work session in Anchorage Monday and salmon hatcheries will once again be a prominent topic of discussion. The board will consider whether to add issues surrounding production levels to future agendas and it will kick off a broader discussion on the hatchery industry Tuesday.

Disagreements over salmon hatcheries have been roiling over the past few years, and those arguments have played out at Board of Fish meetings.

Hatchery opponents want the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to conduct more studies on the effects of hatchery fish spawning with wild populations and to start examining potential ocean carrying capacity issues. The department is currently in the midst of a large hatchery-wild spawning study.

Hatchery operators point to that as an example of due diligence by the department. Operators like Cook Inlet Aquaculture Executive Director Gary Fandrei say they’re ready for the board’s broad discussion on the state of hatcheries Tuesday afternoon, which may touch on some of those issues.

“We’re prepared for it. The hatchery programs are based on good sound science and we follow those principals,” Fandrei said. “They’re well regulated by the Department of Fish and Game, and we believe we are above board with everything we’re doing.”

An emergency petition back in March sparked the board’s discussion. The petition asked the board to look into Prince William Sound pinks that have been straying into lower Cook Inlet streams.

Valdez Fisheries Development Association Executive Director Mike Wells thinks the discussion will help the public better understand how hatcheries operate.

Read the full story at KBBI

Fight over pink salmon hatchery splits Alaska fishermen

October 5, 2018 — The pink salmon harvest in Alaska may be down, but a recreational fishing group is seeking to prevent a hatchery in Prince William Sound from putting an extra 20 million young fish in the water.

The Kenai River Sportfishing Association (KRSA) says the artificially revved up number of pink salmon in Alaska are a major contributor to a reduction in the number of other more valuable salmon species, such as sockeye, king and coho. It has filed a petition with the state’s Board of Fisheries (BOF) to block the previously approved plans of the Solomon Gulch hatchery, in Valdez, to grow the number of pink salmon it can grow from eggs and release annually into Prince William Sound to 270m.

The United Fishermen of Alaska (UFA), a group that represents 35 commercial fishing associations and related interests, including hatcheries, however, is firing back. It argues that KRSA’s request defies strong science. UFA has hired a research firm and rallied its members to submit comments in advance of the next BOF meeting, Oct. 16, in Anchorage, Alaska.

“We need to send a direct and clear message to the BOF to show support for our hatchery systems and their necessity to our state for all users, not just commercial fishermen,” UFA told its members in an email sent Tuesday.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Alaska salmon hatchery critics call for decreased caps

October 5, 2018 — Salmon that begin their lives in Alaska hatcheries often save the day for thousands of fishermen when returns of wild stocks are a bust. This year was a prime example, when pinks and chums that originated in hatcheries made up for record shortfalls for fishing towns in the Gulf of Alaska.

“This year Kodiak hatchery fish added more than $6 million for fishermen, and also for sport fish, subsistence and personal use fisheries,” said Tina Fairbanks, director of the Kodiak Regional Aquaculture Association, in testimony to the Kodiak Island Borough after one of the Island’s poorest salmon seasons.

But Alaska’s hatchery program, which has operated since the early 1970s, is under assault by critics who claim the fish are jeopardizing survival of wild stocks.

A Kenai sportfishing group said in statements to the state Board of Fisheries that “massive releases of pinks from Prince William Sound hatcheries threaten wild sockeye and Chinook salmon” bound for their region. An individual from Fairbanks is calling for a decreased cap on how many pink salmon some hatcheries are allowed to release to the ocean each year.

Read the full story at National Fisherman