May 3, 2024 — NOAA Fisheries will take over management of commercial and recreational salmon fishing in the Cook Inlet from the U.S. state of Alaska in June, the agency announced this week.
The action follows more than a decade of legal maneuvering, beginning with the United Cook Inlet Drift Association (UCIDA) suing NOAA Fisheries for not developing a management plan for the Cook Inlet exclusive economic zone.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
May 2, 2024 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued a final ruling on a disputed commercial salmon fishing area in Cook Inlet.
The Cook Inlet Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ, starts three miles off shore and is where drift gillnet fishermen catch the majority of fish. In 2020, commercial fishermen sued over management of the fishery. Courts and fishermen went back and forth, and a year ago, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council was tasked with choosing a new management plan. In an unprecedented move, the council took no action, which turned the decision over to NOAA Fisheries.
April 6, 2024 — On the docks at Pillar Point Harbor, fishing crews have been arriving with loads of freshly caught Dungeness crab.
The season is almost over, and this time of year the harbor would typically be bustling with crews preparing their vessels and gear for catching salmon. But this year, those in the fishing fleet of Half Moon Bay — as well as other California marinas — expect to catch very few, if any, of the popular fish.
The season typically runs from May to October, but California Chinook salmon populations have declined so severely in recent years that fishery authorities are considering whether to adopt severe restrictions this season or impose a ban on fishing altogether for the second consecutive year.
For those whose livelihoods revolve around catching salmon, the shutdown has brought hard times and widespread frustration.
“It’s devastating. It’s absolutely devastating,” said commercial fisherman Chris Pedersen. “They’re literally killing the salmon fleet.”
Pedersen, who is 64 and has been fishing for salmon since he was a boy, turned to other work over the past year to make ends meet. He has fiberglassed boats, delivered meals and built sheds at a horse ranch.
“You’ve got to do whatever you can to live,” he said.
As he prepared to unload the day’s catch from a 50-foot boat, Pedersen said that selling crab has brought him income but can’t make up for the loss of salmon.
Like other salmon fishers at Pillar Point, Pedersen lays much of the blame on California water managers, who he says send too much water to farms and cities and deprive rivers of the cold flows salmon need to survive. When salmon suffer, he said, “you’re robbing us as fishermen.”
January 8, 2024 — Salmon is good for you — that part we know.
“Fish is one of the few animal foods consistently linked to health benefits, and salmon is at the top of my list when I recommend fish to people,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a distinguished professor and the director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.
But choosing which type to eat for your health — sockeye or coho, wild or farmed — isn’t so obvious. Researchers have found that the nutritional value of salmon can vary depending on the species. And there is a consumer perception that farmed and wild-caught salmon differ in terms of their nutrients and levels of contaminants — beliefs that research partly supports.
From healthy fats to heavy metals, here are answers to all your salmon-related questions.
December 21, 2023 — Consultants and grocers are anticipating higher sales of seafood in U.S. retail stores over the holidays, as research points to many Americans wanting to cook at home more during the year-end break.
“We expect seafood sales to continue their positive trends throughout November and December,” Fresh Thyme Meat and Seafood Sales, Merchandising, Marketing, and Procurement Lead Jason Resner told SeafoodSource. “It might not be [the increase] of 35 percent or more we saw last year, but we still expect double-digit sales comps in fresh seafood such as salmon, as well as crab and shrimp.”
December 8, 2023 — Alaska Native and fisheries conservation organizations have gone to federal court in support of a lawsuit challenging how the National Marine Fisheries Service manages North Pacific trawl fisheries.
The amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief is a response to the lawsuit brought by the Association of Village Council Presidents, Tanana Chiefs Conference, and city officials of Bethel, Alaska, against federal fisheries managers. The lawsuit alleges that NMFS has “violated the National Environmental Policy Act by authorizing large-scale industrial fishing companies to catch billions of pounds of fish without appropriately considering the impacts in light of rapid environmental changes, ongoing species collapses, and closures on in-river salmon fisheries,” according to the supporters.
It’s the latest legal maneuver in the ongoing fight between the trawler fleet and other advocacy groups over salmon bycatch and environmental effects.
“If successful, the litigation could lead to better consideration of the impacts of industrial fishing and precautionary measures designed to minimize bycatch and killing of species like salmon, herring, crab and halibut,” according to a joint statement by SalmonState and the allied groups.
December 7, 2023 — Anti-salmon farming billboards in Canada have been removed for falsely claiming that “open-net pen salmon farms are banned in the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, California, and Alaska.” The following was released by the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance:
Anti-salmon farming billboards around Ottawa have been removed for false advertising. The false statements included claims from eco-activist group Wild First that “Open-net pen salmon farms are banned in Washington, Oregon, California, and Alaska.” Based on this inaccurate information, the ads called on Ottawa to “remove all salmon farms from B.C. waters.”
The letter of complaint filed by the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA) has provided clear evidence that the farming of finfish (including salmon) is not banned in California, Oregon, or Washington. In Alaska, net pens are commonly used to raise salmon for commercial purposes.
“In an age of misinformation, we are pleased that the right thing happened – false ads that did not stand up to the truth test were removed,” says Tim Kennedy, CAIA President and CEO. “Activists with deep pockets who don’t live or work where our salmon farmers live and work are trying to drive policy decisions in Ottawa that would cancel people’s livelihoods using a storyline based on old data and false information.”
“These anti-salmon billboards included statements by the activist group Wild First that were both false and potentially economically harmful to British Columbia businesses and organizations and their employees that the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance represents. Modern, sustainable, in-ocean salmon aquaculture is the second biggest agri-food export in British Columbia and key to the blue economy future for people living in rural, coastal and Indigenous communities.”
Read the full release from the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance
December 6, 2023 — For newly hatched Western Alaska chum salmon, there is no time to waste when it comes to making their way to the open ocean. The tiny fry begin their journey from their natal streams just days or weeks after being born. When they finally reach the Bering Sea, sometime from mid-June to mid-July, their priority becomes consuming marine prey and building the energy reserves that will carry them through their first winter. Throughout their years in the ocean, the Western Alaska chum will travel extensively between the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska.
Unfortunately, simultaneous warming trends in the Bering Sea and the gulf appear to have come as a double whammy for Western Alaska’s juvenile chum salmon. A new study by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shows a possible link between a period of exceptionally warm ocean temperatures and chum crashes seen across Western Alaska.
“Loss of sea ice is having an impact on various ecosystems. And so with warming we’re seeing a change in the food web,” said Ed Farley, lead author of the study and head of NOAA Fisheries Ecosystem Monitoring and Assessment Program. “That food web is less energetic. It’s poorer-quality prey. And it’s impacting juvenile salmon, especially juvenile chum salmon in the northern Bering Sea. It’s impacting their fitness prior to winter.”
By “poorer-quality prey,” Farley primarily means jellyfish, also known as cnidaria. Jellyfish have been shown to proliferate when ocean temperatures warm.
“There are more cnidaria in the ecosystem of the Northern Bering Sea during warm years, but there was significantly more during this most recent anomalously warm period,” Farley said.
December 5, 2023 — The following was released by NOAA:
Today, the Department of Commerce and NOAA are announcing the availability of up to $106 million in funding through the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF) for Pacific salmon and steelhead recovery and conservation projects. This funding — which includes funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — will support state and tribal salmon restoration projects and activities to protect, conserve and restore these fish populations and their habitats.
“Restoring Pacific salmon populations and their habitats is vital for communities on the West Coast and in Alaska,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “This funding — supported by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, a key pillar of Bidenomics — will power transformational, high-impact projects and support efforts by states and tribes to protect and conserve salmon populations.”
December 5, 2023 — Successive marine heat waves appear to have doomed much of the chum salmon swimming in the ocean waters off Alaska in the past year and probably account for the scarcities that have strained communities along Western Alaska rivers in recent years, a newly published study found.
In the much-higher water temperatures that lingered in the 2014-19 period, juvenile chum salmon metabolism was super-charged, meaning they needed more food, said the study, by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. But the food that was available was of low quality — things like jellyfish instead of the fat-packed krill and other prey they normally eat, the study said.
That means for the juvenile salmon trying to survive their first year at sea, “there’s not much gas in the tank,” said the study’s lead author, Ed Farley, manager of NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Ecosystem Monitoring and Assessment Program.
Juvenile chum salmon that swam from spawning areas in the rivers suffered what was essentially a double hit, said Farley, who works in the NOAA Fisheries Auke Bay Laboratories in Juneau. They encountered one extreme heat wave in their critical first summer when they were in the northern Bering Sea and then, when they entered their wintering grounds in the Gulf of Alaska, swam into the tail end of another extreme heat wave, he said.