Saving Seafood

A salmon glut has sent prices plunging, and economists don’t know when they’ll recover

August 29, 2023 — Kodiak fisherman Mike Friccero has fished for salmon for over four decades. He said he was expecting a low price for Bristol Bay salmon this summer, but didn’t think rumors were true about how low it would drop.

“Our processor gave us a letter, a narrative before the season started, saying that pricing conditions weren’t great but that they were going to go after it with all the resources that they utilized last year as far as tendering and logistics and resources in general,” he said. “And they asked if we would do the same.”

It’s been a tough year for commercial salmon fishermen. Three years of huge returns in Bristol Bay created a surplus of sockeye in the market. Towards the end of the season, processors announced a base price of just 50 cents per pound – the lowest price in decades, when adjusted for inflation.

Fishermen can get bonuses for better quality, but Friccero said even with the boost, he was better off gearing up to fish for other species like halibut.

“If you’re catching 5,000 pounds and you’re thinking 80 cents, then your crew’s share might be $400,” he said. “Well that’s worth doing for folks, but once it drops into the lower figures, if you have crew that have talent, they’ve got other things they want to get over to.”

Friccero said he usually leaves shortly after the peak anyway, but he wasn’t the only one packing up before August.

Read the full article at KTOO

ALASKA: Why sockeye flourish and chinook fail in Alaska’s changing climate

July 27, 2023 — University of Washington ecologist Daniel Schindler is at the mouth of a salmon stream at Lake Nerka, in Southwest Alaska. It’s roiling with fish.

“They sort of pile up in balls of thousands of fish for a couple of weeks. I think that’s when they’re doing their final maturation,” he said of the sockeye mob. “They’re jostling with each other and splashing, occasionally jumping.”

Schindler is in his 27th year of field work, studying Bristol Bay sockeye. This year is on par with the sockeye abundance Bristol Bay has seen in the last decade, he said, which is far higher than the historical average.

The unlikely hero of this story of plenty: Climate change.

“We tend to think of climate warming is bad news for wild animals,” he said. “But for sockeye Bristol Bay warming has been good news.”

For other salmon, climate change is a villain.

Chinook – or king – salmon are in terrible decline all over the state, and especially dire on the Yukon River. Meanwhile, sockeye – or reds – are having another banner year in Bristol Bay, and everywhere.  Scientists say they don’t know exactly why one salmon species is doing so well while the other is in crisis, but some clues are coming into sharper focus.

One key difference, Schindler said, is what kind of river habit each species needs.

Sockeye use lakes as their nurseries. Since the 1980s the water in those lakes has warmed significantly. The warmth stimulates plankton to reproduce more, and young sockeye eat plankton. Fifty years ago, Schindler said, a lot of sockeye spent two years in Lake Nerka before heading out to sea.

“And now they grow so fast that nearly all of them leave after a single year in freshwater, which is a reflection of the fact that the freshwater systems have become more productive,” he said.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Starving Orcas and the Fate of Alaska’s Disappearing King Salmon

July 23, 2023 — In the waters of Puget Sound outside Seattle, 73 beloved and endangered orcas, known as the Southern Residents, are on the hunt, clicking. Using sound like a searchlight, they patrol the chilly depths. When they locate a target, they dive, sinking sharp white teeth into their preferred food, the fatty coral-colored flesh of king salmon.

But in recent weeks, this ancient rhythm of the Pacific Northwest was being negotiated not just at sea but also in a federal courtroom in downtown Seattle, where on May 2 a district court judge issued an order effectively shutting down Alaska’s biggest king salmon fishery, one of the largest remaining in the world.

To the Wild Fish Conservancy, the Washington State-based environmental group that filed the lawsuit, the fates of the two totemic animals are intimately bound. The orcas need the salmon to eat, and if we stop fishing them, the conservancy argues, we save the whales.

But the State of Alaska, the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Alaska Trollers Association — all defendants in the suit — argued that shutting down the fishery would have little impact on either, and won a last-minute reprieve that allowed Alaska fishermen to put their lines in the water when the season began on July 1. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will decide what happens next.

Regardless of the lawsuit’s outcome, though, there is broad agreement that the king salmon, also known as Chinook, are in crisis. After decades of environmental pressures like dams and pollution, the king populations are at historic lows, and scientists are struggling to understand the escalating effects of climate change. The fish are also smaller than they have ever been. Gone are the taxidermied 70-pounders that ended up on the walls of fisherman’s bars.

Some argue that the only way to save the species is to stop catching and eating them at all — if even that would be enough.

“Everyone is fighting each other for the last king salmon,” said Mark Stopha, a retired fish biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game and a longtime fish seller in Juneau. “It’s something a lot bigger than fisheries management — there’s something that’s going on with the changing climate. We know the ocean’s getting warmer.”

While kings make up less than 1 percent of Alaska’s wild catch, they are the official state fish because of their wide-ranging economic importance, a vivid symbol of Alaska, with its cool waters and pristine habitat. Sport, commercial and subsistence king fishing has sustained generations of rural communities. The fish are central to Alaska Native culture.

Read the full article at the New York Times

ALASKA: Bristol Bay salmon run begins to slow, sockeye catch lower than predicted

July 16, 2023 — The peak of Bristol Bay’s sockeye salmon run has past, and indications are the total catch will be lower than predicted.

Across Alaska, 42.3 million salmon of all types had been landed as of 13 July, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. In Bristol Bay, ADF&G forecasted a run of 51 million sockeye in the Bristol Bay watershed in 2023, which would have made it one of the best years ever in the bay. But initial catch figures are coming up short of projections.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Bristol Bay sockeye season plagued with uncertainty over pricing, supply glut

July 10, 2023 — Uncertainty continues to cloud the 2023 sockeye salmon season in Bristol Bay, Alaska, U.S.A., as the fishery heads toward what has historically been its peak period.

Fishing in one of the world’s most-productive sockeye salmon fishing grounds began on 1 June, but fishers are frustrated that processors have yet to disclose the price they intend to pay for this year’s catch.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

ALASKA: Salmon numbers still struggling across Alaska

July 9, 2023 — Low numbers of salmon continue to frustrate those who rely on some of the state’s largest fisheries.

The Bristol Bay area has been somewhat of a mixed bag, as sockeye salmon numbers are doing well but king salmon numbers remain well below escapement goals.

Tim Sands, west side of Bristol Bay area management biologist, said making sure everyone gets their fair share isn’t easy.

“When you have these conflicting goals of harvesting sockeye and trying to manage for king salmon escapement, it gets really complex,” Sands said.

Read the full article at Alaska News Source

Spamming streams with hatchery salmon can disrupt ecosystems, study finds

May 10, 2023 — Every year, 22 million sockeye salmon begin life some 420 kilometers, or about 260 miles, inland from the Alaskan coast, in plastic bins. They’re at the Gulkana hatchery, the largest sockeye salmon hatchery in the world — but just one of countless hatcheries around the globe that release native fish into rivers, lakes and oceans to augment wild stocks.

Fish hatcheries, like the species they breed, come in many shapes and sizes. Some, like the Gulkana facility in the U.S., pump out millions of fish each year to support commercial fisheries. Others, like the Nechako White Sturgeon Conservation Centre hatchery in Canada, focus on conservation by rebuilding and maintaining genetic diversity in threatened populations. Some hatcheries use eggs and milt (sperm) from wild fish; others use hatchery fish as parents. But no matter what the species of fish or the purpose of the hatchery program, the released fish enter the ecosystem en masse and interact with an existing community.

Pacific salmon are economically and culturally important species for nations across the northern Pacific Ocean, and hatchery programs positioned to boost commercial fisheries have increased dramatically over the last 150 years. Since the early 1990s, approximately 5 billion hatchery salmon have been released every year, primarily by the United States, Japan and Russia. Chum (Oncorhynchus keta) and pink (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) salmon are by far the most common hatchery salmon species, but others are also bred and released from hatcheries. For example, in Japan, masu salmon (Oncorhynchus masou masou) are a highly sought-after fish, and hatchery managers release approximately 10 million hatchery-bred fry — a juvenile life stage of salmon — into freshwater each year. Typically, the released masu fry stay in streams for at least a year before the majority migrate to sea (as smolts), returning a year later to freshwater streams to spawn (as adults).

Read the full article at Mongabay

USDA to purchase USD 119.5 million worth of Alaskan sockeye and groundfish

May 9, 2023 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) intends to purchase USD 119.5 million (EUR 109 million) worth of Alaskan sockeye salmon and Pacific groundfish for federal food assistance programs, according to Alaska’s congressional delegation.

“USDA’s purchase of Alaska seafood is great news for our fishing industry and all who depend on federal food assistance,” U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said in a statement. “Alaskan fishermen stand ready to help feed their communities, and these purchases provide them the perfect opportunity to bring healthy Alaskan seafood to the tables of families who need it most.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Alaska Delegation condemns court ruling against Southeast Troll Fishermen

May 5, 2023 — U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Representative Mary Sattler Peltola condemned a ruling by the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington in favor of a lawsuit filed by Wild Fish Conservancy (WFC) that will effectively shut down a Southeast Alaska small boat troll salmon fishery.

WFC argued that the Southeast Alaska salmon harvest is a primary contributor to the population decline of Southern resident killer whales hundreds of miles to the south in Puget Sound.

On Mar. 6, the Alaska congressional delegation filed an amicus brief supporting Southeast Alaska troll fishermen with the District Court.

Read the full article at KINY