Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Yukon subsistence users go to new lengths for food after chums don’t return

August 20, 2021 — This has been the worst salmon fishing season on record for the Yukon River.

King salmon, a regional favorite, have returned in low numbers for years. But now a typically stable species, chum salmon, has also collapsed this year. Subsistence fishing on the lower Yukon River for both species is now closed. Residents, like Jason Lamont, who usually depend heavily on the fish are pivoting toward other ways to get protein.

“I started fishing on the Yukon when I was 6 years old,” said Lamont. “There was one point, me and my grandpa were coming down here for supplies and we had a summer chum jump into the boat. But those days are gone.”

Lamont is from Emmonak and lives off of subsistence food, which in past summers has meant salmon. His family doesn’t buy meat from the store: Salmon caught during the summer will help carry his family through the winter.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Body Condition of Endangered Killer Whales Reflects Salmon Numbers and Odds of Survival

August 19, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The body condition of endangered Southern Resident killer whales reflects changes in Chinook salmon numbers in the Fraser River and the Salish Sea. This is according to new research using aerial photogrammetry from drones to track changes in their body condition over time.

The study, titled “Survival of the Fattest: Linking body condition to prey availability and survivorship of killer whales,” also found that poor body condition makes the whales more likely to die.

The new findings published today in Ecosphere highlight the value of monitoring these endangered whales through aerial photogrammetry. This method can detect individual whales declining in condition, which can provide an early warning system that they may die.

The 74 Southern Resident orcas make up three pods known as J, K, and L. Each pod is made up of distinct social and family groups.

The research showed that the body condition of J pod whales improved when Chinook salmon abundance was higher in the Salish Sea and in Fraser River tributaries. L pod body condition improved when Chinook salmon abundance was higher in Puget Sound tributaries, although that relationship was weaker than J pod and Fraser River Chinook. K pod whales had no clear relationship to the salmon populations examined in the study. However,  whales in K pod also experienced little change in their body condition during the study period.

K and L pods spend more time foraging on the outer coast of Washington and Oregon than J pod. Their more varied diet is more challenging to relate to changes in their body condition. In contrast, J pod depends to a greater extent on Chinook salmon. Differences in body condition between the three pods reflects distinct foraging patterns, while the condition of individual whales provides insights into their health, researchers found.

Read the full release here

Cooke reveals interest in Huon, setting up fight with JBS

August 19, 2021 — Cooke Aquaculture has confirmed its interest in purchasing Tasmania, Australia-based salmon-farming firm Huon Aquaculture, in the midst of a takeover bid from Brazilian meat processing giant JBS.

However, JBS has run into difficulty in the form of activist investor Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, who has used his minority interest in Huon to push for increased environmental standards. In response, JBS issued a parallel bid for control of the company that seeks a 50.1 percent minimum acceptance condition. In a notice filed with the Australian Stock Exchange on 17 August, Huon announced JBS had upped its ownership to 40.53 percent of the voting power of the company.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ALASKA: Net migration: Young commercial fishermen ship out of Cook Inlet

August 19, 2021 — The Cook Inlet salmon fishery was once an economic engine for Kenai.

But the fishing there is no longer lucrative. Many fishermen with deep ties to the inlet are retiring — or moving elsewhere.

The F/V Nedra E is smaller than the other boats bobbing at the dock in Naknek.

Thor Evenson didn’t have Bristol Bay in mind when he designed the boat for his parents, Nikiski homesteaders Jim and Nedra Evenson. Until last year, she’s been a Cook Inlet boat, captained by Jim, then his nephew, and now his grandson, 32-year-old Taylor Evenson.

Taylor grew up hearing about the heyday of Cook Inlet fishing from his dad and his friends.

“And just getting up in the morning every day and hearing their voices on the radio, voices I grew up with from the first time I was on the boat, I was 3 months old,” he said. “And particularly hearing my dad’s voice, going out and fishing with my dad … that’s why I never left the inlet, even though I always knew what was coming.”

Read the full story at KDLL

Salish Fish, Kurt Grinnell’s legacy, prepares for launch as Cooke Aquaculture reboots Washington operations

August 17, 2021 — Salish Fish, a joint venture between family-owned Cooke Aquaculture Pacific LLC and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, has officially launched and is moving forward with plans to stock its ocean fish farm in Port Angeles Harbor, Washington, U.S.A. with native steelhead and possibly sablefish in the coming months, according to the company and the tribe.

For Cooke, the move represents a reboot of its Washington operations after a 2017 escape at its Cypress Island farm led to the state banning the farming of non-native finfish, effectively phasing out Cooke’s Atlantic salmon farming.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Record Salmon in One Place. Barely Any in Another. Alarm All Around.

August 16, 2021 — This summer, fishers in the world’s largest wild salmon habitat pulled a record-breaking 65 million sockeye salmon from Alaska’s Bristol Bay, beating the 2018 record by more than three million fish.

But on the Yukon River, about 500 miles to the north, salmon were alarmingly absent. This summer’s chum run was the lowest on record, with only 153,000 fish counted in the river at the Pilot Station sonar — a stark contrast to the 1.7 million chum running in year’s past. The king salmon runs were also critically low this summer — the third lowest on record. The Yukon’s fall run is also shaping up to be sparse.

The disparity between the fisheries is concerning — a possible bellwether for the chaotic consequences of climate change; competition between wild and hatchery fish; and commercial fishing bycatch.

“This is something we’ve never seen before,” said Sabrina Garcia, a research biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. “I think that we’re starting to see changes due to climate change, and I think that we’re going to continue to see more changes, but we need more years of data.”

The low runs have had ripple effects for communities along the Yukon River and its tributaries — the Andreafski, Innoko, Anvik, Porcupine, Tanana and Koyukuk Rivers — resulting in a devastating blow to the people relying on salmon as a food staple, as feed for sled dogs and as an integral and enriching cultural tradition spanning millenniums.

Read the full story at The New York Times

When Yukon Chum Stocks Suddenly Collapsed, Yukon River Residents Received Donations From Bristol Bay

August 13, 2021 — For eight years, Tanya Ives has been traveling up from Washington each summer to work at the Yukon River’s only fish processing plant: Kwik’Pak Fisheries. The plant sits outside of Emmonak at the river’s mouth. Normally at this time of year, Ives would be packing up chum salmon harvested by commercial fishermen along the Yukon River to sell around the world. But this summer, she’s doing the opposite.

Read the full story at KYUK

‘Salmon is Life’: For Native Alaskans, Salmon Declines Pose Existential Crisis

August 12, 2021 — In St. Mary’s, Alaska, the people of the Yupiit of Andreafski look to the south wind, the budding tree leaves, and even the formations of migrating birds to discern whether the pulse of salmon returning upriver to spawn will be strong. Serena Fitka grew up in this tiny Yukon River village, and though she now lives in Valdez, she returns home every summer with her family, to partake in the traditional salmon harvest that is both the community’s main source of sustenance and the fabric of its culture.

This year, however, abysmally low salmon runs in the Yukon River have led Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) to impose a moratorium on fishing for Chinook (or King) and Chum salmon in the mighty river, which runs for 2,000 miles from the Bering Sea to Canada’s Yukon Territory. While Yukon run sizes for both salmon species numbered about 1.9 million in the past, this year they’re projected to be less than 430,000. The moratorium impacts 40 villages and roughly 11,000 people, 90 percent of whom are Indigenous Alaskans. And many have no access to grocery stores or any other source of food besides what they can hunt or harvest.

On a recent trip to St. Mary’s, Fitka said she felt depressed. “I walk on to the riverbank, and I look at the river and . . . I want to go get fish, but I can’t. And that’s how everyone was feeling this year. People came to me and said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’” Fitka is executive director of the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association, which represents the interests of Indigenous subsistence fishermen on the Yukon River.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

Wild Salmon Day: Alaska celebrates a mixed bag of returns

August 11, 2021 — This year, it’s complicated. Fishermen and other Alaska salmon stakeholders have some good reasons to celebrate of the fifth annual Wild Alaska Salmon Day on Tuesday, Aug. 10. But in some regions, the fleets are weighing their worries now that they’re just past the midpoint of the summer salmon season.

Overall, the state is seeing some bright spots in returns of pink, sockeye and silver salmon. But the success stories are stratified.

Both Bristol Bay and Prince William Sound are celebrating a big year.

As of the end of July, the Prince William Sound fleet had landed a 123 percent increase in pink salmon over the 2019 harvest (pinks tend to boom every other year), and sockeye, chum, silver and king returns were all up over the 2020 harvest. Though the bar was set low last year, healthy returns across the board are a welcome change after a downward trend over the last several seasons.

Not only is the Bristol Bay’s salmon return a significant record, closing in on 66 million fish (the last record was just under 63 million, set in 2018), but the base price is nothing to sneeze at either, coming out of the gates strong at $1.10 on a promise from Peter Pan Seafoods, and leaping up to $1.25, spurred by OBI Seafoods. That’s up from a covid-induced low of 70 cents last year.

Read the full story at National Fisherman