June 29, 2021 — Reversing the complex decline of Pacific salmon will take research, resources, leadership and collaboration, according to a new parliamentary report.
The report, tabled in the House of Commons on June 21 by Fleetwood-Port Kells MP Ken Hardie, caps an investigation into B.C.’s declining salmon populations by Canada’s Standing Committee on Fisheries & Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard.
June 28, 2021 — NOAA Fisheries has partnered with Puckerbrush Animation to create a new animated video about Atlantic salmon and the threats that have led to their endangered listing.
The video is part of NOAA’s “Species in the Spotlight” series, which highlights nine species that are considered the most at risk of extinction in the near future. Besides Atlantic salmon, NOAA’s “Species in the Spotlight” series also includes Central California Coast coho, Cook Inlet beluga, Hawaiian Monk Seal, Pacific Leatherback, North Atlantic Right Whale, Sacramento River Winter-Run Chinook Salmon, Southern Resident Killer Whale, and White Abalone.
June 25, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
NOAA Fisheries and Maine-based animation team, Puckerbrush Animation, recently partnered to create a new digital animation that talks about Atlantic salmon and the threats that have led to their endangered listing.
Atlantic salmon are part of our Species in the Spotlight initiative, which highlights our most imperiled species to focus attention and resources towards actions that we and our partners can take to bring them back from the brink of extinction.
Learn about the various threats facing Atlantic salmon, including climate change, and about what you can do to help protect and restore Atlantic salmon, and their ecosystems in this animated video.
June 24, 2021 — If Alaska state leaders can’t resolve an impasse over the budget, large swaths of state government will shut down in July. That could include Alaska’s lucrative summer salmon fisheries, which is causing concern across coastal communities.
Southeast Alaska’s summer salmon troll fishery opens July 1. That’s the same day nearly 15,000 state workers could be out of work. Among those is Grant Hagerman, a state fisheries biologist managing the fishery from Sitka.
“We’re planning not to be here on July 1 unless we hear differently,” Hagerman says. “And with that, that summer fishery does not commence.”
Many of Alaska’s fisheries are operated by emergency order. That means fisheries open and close based on real-time data and biologists like Hagerman’s professional judgment. But he’s not part of the special class of state employees that would keep their jobs even in the shutdown — public safety or public health workers.
“You would think that we would have had a message, maybe from administration, just saying ‘Here are the exempt or partially exempt or whatever job classes that could remain open,’ but we didn’t get anything like that. I think it’s just pink slips across the board if they don’t pass so just — it’s really scary, you know, not just for us losing our jobs, but I mean, we manage a fishery with 1,000 permit holders and Southeast so it affects a lot of people.” Hagerman adds: “But I have faith that they’ll get something agreed to.”
June 23, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Dale Bambrick jokes he has seen the world, or at least as much as you can see between Issaquah and Ellensburg. He retired in May after 20 years leading NOAA Fisheries’ Ellensburg Office, and delivering critical gains for salmon and steelhead across Central Washington.
“I have never seen someone so committed to the resource, who was willing to say what was important and work so hard to make things happen,” said Barry Thom, Regional Administrator for NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region. “I have always appreciated Dale’s commitment and his humor to get us through some pretty tough issues.”
Dale Bambrick spent 37 years protecting and improving habitat and more to recover salmon in central Washington. Dale grew up in Issaquah and then crossed the mountains to attend Central Washington University in Ellensburg. He started as an art major, but with the encouragement of a professor he switched to biology.
In 1983 Dale’s advisor encouraged him to pursue a doctorate at Oregon State University. Instead, he accepted an offer from Grant County Public Utility District to join its environmental division. There he studied strategies to improve the survival of fish passing through dams, such as guidance nets that funnel fish toward safer passage routes. He also pondered the future: Should he be a teacher, a fish biologist, or go to graduate school?
In 1988 Dale left Grant County to work for the Yakama Nation’s fisheries division, starting as a habitat biologist. Three years later he became Environmental Director, building a strong team. He helped lay the foundations for habitat conservation plans in the upper Columbia, assuring improvements for salmon. He developed the fisheries portion of the Yakama Nation’s Forest Management Plan. He also helped shape state water policy, returning more water to streams for fish.
June 23, 2021 — For 2,000 years, Jones Hotch’s ancestors have fished Alaska’s Chilkat River for the five species of salmon that spawn in its cold, clean waters. They have gathered berries, hunted moose and raised their families, sheltered from the extremes of winter by the black, saw-toothed peaks of the Iron Mountain.
Now Hotch fears a proposed mining project could end that way of life.
Hotch has an infectious, boyish laugh – but there is no mistaking how worried he is about plans to build a mine where millions of pounds of zinc, copper, lead, silver and gold are buried, beneath the valleys’ mountains. We arejust miles from the headwaters of the Chilkat, the glacial river that serves as the main food source of the Tlingit, the region’s Indigenous people, as well as the inhabitants of Haines, the nearest port town.
“You guys might have your Safeway,” he says, waving his arm across the valley. “There’s ours all around here.”
Hotch, a tribal leader, lives in Klukwan, a village that takes its name from the Tlingit phrase “Tlakw Aan” – “the village that has always been”. It is the hub of an ancient trading route – later known as the Dalton Trail – that runs from Haines to Fort Selkirk in Canada.
Here in south-east Alaska, the consequences of the climate crisis are already visible. “Our mountains used to be snow-capped all year round,” Hotch said. “Two summers ago, our mountains were almost totally bare.” In Haines, hardware stores sold out of box fans because it was so hot.
June 23, 2021 — Twenty-six Bar Harbor fishermen have signed onto a statement opposing a proposed salmon pen operation in Frenchman Bay.
The statement cited numerous concerns about the proposal by American Aquafarms, a business based in Norway that has submitted applications to the Department of Marine Resources to lease 120 acres in order to install 30 “closed net” pens for raising salmon. The company has said its goal is to scale up to grow 66 million pounds of salmon per year.
Hatchery and processing facilities would be located in Gouldsboro. Support vessels would travel between the pens and facilities.
Fishermen say they’re concerned about the potential “loss of prime fishing ground for lobster, scallops and shrimp,” increased fishing pressure on grounds adjacent to the proposed operation, loss of gear from service vessels and related support activity, navigational conflicts, water pollution related to discharge, feed and fuel spills, habitat impacts, and disturbance to the ocean bottom around the pens.
In addition, the statement said, the proposal could lower “the potential for a comeback to the historical fisheries of the bay, including the recent shrimping fishery that centered inside the bay on these two deep water holes.”
June 21, 2021 — Peter Pan Seafood shook up the world’s largest wild salmon run on 19 June with the announcement it will pay a base price of USD 1.10 (EUR 0.84) per pound for sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay, Alaska.
The price upholds reports of a strong market for wild sockeye and is a welcome development for Bristol Bay fishermen, who were disappointed by last season’s base price of USD 0.75 (EUR 0.63).
June 21, 2021 — The town council of Bar Harbor, Maine, U.S.A. has filed to seek intervenor status in with the Maine State Department of Marine Resources regarding a salmon farm project proposed by American Aquafarms.
The project is planned to initially produce 30,000 metric tons of salmon a year out of its proposed site in Frenchmen’s Bay in Gouldsboro, Maine – across the water from Bar Harbor’s location on Mt. Desert Island. Bar Harbor’s intervenor status, if approved, would allow the town to provide testimony at a public hearing on the lease and potentially comment on draft decisions, reports the Mount Desert Islander.
June 21, 2021 — In recent years, the chum salmon runs on the Yukon River have been low. This year, it is too early to tell how the run will be. But with commercial fishing becoming a less reliable venture, one fishing enterprise is hoping to find stability by turning to veggies.
The goal is to keep the business operating and workers employed, so Kwik’Pak Fisheries in Emmonak is diversifying its business by building greenhouses right next to its fish processing plant.
Traditionally, Kwik’Pak is the only fish buyer in the lower Yukon and one of the region’s main employers during the summer. During good chum and coho salmon runs, Kwik’Pak can employ between 100 and 300 workers on a given day. A number of those employees are teenagers from villages all over the lower Yukon.
“It’s great seeing these kids, ‘cause their self-esteem and well-being, they just glow because they have work,” said Jack Schultheis, who manages Kwik’Pak Fisheries. “They have their own money. And not just menial work, but when they can use the imagination and their intellect.”