September 3, 2019 — Applications should now be in the hands of Alaska salmon fishermen and processors hurt by the 2016 pink salmon fishery failure.
NOAA Fisheries last month approved USD 56.3 million (EUR 51 million) in relief funds at Kodiak, Prince William Sound, Chignik, Lower Cook Inlet, South Alaska Peninsula, Southeast Alaska, and Yakutat.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
September 20, 2018 — The distribution of federal fund for fishermen who got walloped by the disastrous 2016 pink salmon season inched another step forward yesterday.
Tuesday was the final day to comment on the proposed distribution plan. Once the funds are finally released they will be administered by the Pacific States Marine Commission, which is based out of Portland. The relief funds will be distributed according to the plan being finalized now.
As it sits now, Kodiak pink salmon fishermen would receive nearly $7 million to help offset the losses sustained when pink salmon stocks crashed in the summer of 2016.
That’s roughly 22 percent of the total amount assigned to fisheries participants under the current distribution proposal for the 2016 Gulf of Alaska pink salmon disaster funds.
The bulk of the $32 million being set aside for fishermen would go to compensate those who participated in the Prince William Sound pink salmon fishery.
In all more than $56 million was appropriated by Congress to address the 2016 disaster. The money would be divvied up into four broad categories which include research, participants, municipalities and processors.
Funds for participants are based on a formula which considers ex-vessel value of losses and five-year even-year average ex-vessel value in each of seven management areas.
August 17, 2018 — Commercial salmon harvests in Prince William Sound are edging closer to the 24 million fish mark, with the catch to date still way behind the season’s forecast.
Preliminary harvest results posted by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game through Aug. 14 were up by about two million fish from a week earlier, with deliveries of some 19 million humpies, 3.3 million chums, 1.8 million sockeyes, 35,000 silvers and 7,000 Chinooks.
The bulk of the chum catch to date, 1.8 million fish, were captured by drift gillnetters in the Coghill District, and the bulk of the pink salmon – more than 10 million humpies – were taken by purse seiners in eastern Prince William Sound, followed by other purse seiners in southwestern and northern areas of the sound.
Purse seiners in eastern Prince William Sound have led the coho harvest with some 12,504 silvers, followed by other purse seiners in southwestern Prince William Sound, with 9,366 fish.
Drift gillnetters in Eshamy Main Bay led in the catch of sockeyes with an overall seasonal catch to date of 956,622 reds, and Copper River drift gillnetters had some 7,164 kings, far and away more than any other Prince William Sound district.
Still the overall harvest of sockeyes and Chinooks to date compared with a forecast of 1.8 million reds and 14,000 kings for the sound fisheries.
August 1, 2018 — Salmon prices are starting to trickle in as more sales are firmed up by local buyers, and early signs point to good paydays across the board.
At Bristol Bay last week, Trident, Ocean Beauty and Togiak Seafoods posted a base price of $1.25 a pound for sockeyes, according to KDLG in Dillingham. Trident also was paying a 15 cent bonus for reds that are chilled and bled, and the others may follow suit.
Copper River Seafoods raised its sockeye price from $1.30 to $1.70 for fish that is chilled/bled and sorted. That company also reportedly is paying 80 cents a pound for coho salmon and 45 cents for chums and pinks.
The average base price last year for Bristol Bay sockeyes was $1.02 a pound, 65 cents for cohos, 30 cents for chums and 18 cents a pound for pinks.
Kodiak advances were reported at $1.60 for sockeyes, 55 cents for chums and 40 cents for pinks. That compares to average prices of $1.38 for sockeyes, 40 cents for chums and 31 cents for Kodiak pinks in 2017.
At Prince William Sound a sockeye base price was reported at $1.95 and chums at 95 cents.
At Norton Sound the single buyer was advancing 80 cents a pound for chums and $1.40 for cohos, same as last year, and 25 cents for pinks, an increase of 22 cents.
Read the full story at National Fisherman
January 15, 2018 — Last week, the Trump administration unveiled an extreme proposal to open nearly all United States federal waters off Alaska to offshore oil and gas leasing. Under the Draft Proposed Program for the 2019-2024 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, only the North Aleutian Basin (which contains Bristol Bay) would be safe from potential oil and gas leasing activity. Areas such as the Gulf of Alaska that have not seen a lease sale since the early 1980s, and regions that have never been considered for exploration like the Aleutians, Bering Sea and Kodiak have suddenly been put at risk.
The Gulf of Alaska faced oil and gas lease sales when the first federal offshore leases were offered in Alaska as part of the 1976-1981 program. At that time, 600,000 acres of the seafloor, starting 10 miles off Cape Suckling and stretching to Yakutat, were leased and twelve exploratory wells were drilled. None yielded commercially significant quantities of oil or gas, and thankfully there were no catastrophes from this misguided effort. Further sales were scheduled between 1997 and 2002, but were canceled due to a lack of interest from industry. It was a bad idea then, and it is a bad idea now.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) now estimates the recoverable oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Alaska at around 600 million barrels of oil. Current U.S. consumption is about 20 million barrels per day. In other words, burning through the estimated Gulf of Alaska oil reserves might fuel our country for a mere month. BOEM’s low estimate of environmental and social costs of exploration activities and “small” spills (up to 4 million gallons!) is a staggering $100 million. That doesn’t even include the costs of a catastrophic oil spill, like BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, which they claim they will analyze later.
The Gulf of Alaska ecosystem is already stressed, and many fishermen will tell you that things do not look good. Halibut are smaller, Chinook salmon are disappearing, and the Pacific cod stock is collapsing. To add the stress of offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling to the mix is both thoughtless and irresponsible.
Read the full story at the Cordova Times