Saving Seafood

Alaska’s Bristol Bay sees record return of sockeye salmon. The warming climate may have helped.

July 30, 2021 — Amid a fierce June storm that whipped up 8-foot waves, Robin Samuelsen told his four young crew members to let out the gillnets behind his 32-foot boat in the Nushagak district of Bristol Bay.

For the 70-year-old, a veteran of more than a half-century of fishing, this was a tough day to start the 2021 sockeye salmon harvest. But soon the crew, all of them his grandsons, were dancing on the back deck as they spotted splash after splash made by sockeye hitting the net’s mesh in a surprisingly strong display of abundance so early in the season.

In the weeks that followed, storms often returned to make fishing miserable, and at times dangerous. Through it all, the salmon kept surging back from their ocean feeding grounds in what — by this week — developed into a record return of more than 65.5 million sockeye to the Bristol Bay region.

“It was pretty rough out there. It was really rough out there,” Samuelsen said. “But it was a fabulous year here in the Nushagak.”

The massive return once again demonstrated Bristol Bay’s stunning sockeye productivity at a time when these fish are struggling in other parts of North America, in part due to climate change, which can increase the temperature of the rivers adults must navigate to their spawning grounds. It can also reduce food for them in the ocean.

Read the full story from The Seattle Times at the Anchorage Daily News

After a difficult year, Alaska’s salmon industry is back

July 29, 2021 — In 2020, the price per pound for Bristol Bay, Alaska, sockeye salmon dropped to some of the lowest prices fishermen have seen in several years. The famed fishery, like most industries, wasn’t insulated from complications brought on by COVID-19.

Large fish processing companies struggled to operate at full capacity last year. Roughly a dozen major fish processors operate out of Naknek, Alaska. More than a dozen others operate out of six more small, roadless and remote communities in the Bristol Bay region.

Each summer, these companies hire thousands of workers from all over the world, but in 2020 they were hamstrung by quarantine and travel restrictions. The processors simply didn’t have enough people to cut, package and ship fish worldwide, so they bought less. In turn, fishers harvested fewer salmon.

This year, optimism among those who are out fishing is bolstered by forecasts. Bristol Bay is home to the world’s largest wild sockeye salmon run. Prices are way up from last year and biologists believe they might see the largest run of Alaskan sockeye on record this summer.

Read the full story at Marketplace

Peter Pan raises Bristol Bay base price; meager king salmon return shuts Alaska fisheries

July 23, 2021 — Late last week, Peter Pan Seafood raised its base price for sockeye salmon in Bristol Bay from $1.10 to $1.25 “after gauging the strength of the run and the market,” said the company in a press release.

“We felt it was only responsible to push the base price up to $1.25, once again demonstrating our commitment and our partnership with the harvesters,” said Jon Hickman, Peter Pan’s vice president of Operations.

Peter Pan is also now offering a late season incentive of $0.10 for harvesters to stay in the water and keep fishing. This is only for fish harvested after July 18.

Peter Pan was the first out of the gate this season to announce its initial base price of $1.10 early in the season “to put fishermen at ease that they would receive a fair price and to help them plan their finances for the year,” the company reported.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Bristol Bay on Brink of Shattering All Time Record Salmon Run in 2021

July 21, 2021 — The total numbers since July 19 for catch and escapement have not yet been summed, but when they are it’s all but certain that Bristol Bay’s 2018 all-time record of 62.95 million sockeyes will be shattered⁠—the second time in four years. Catch and escapement numbers in the Bay have been kept since 1893.

As of July 19, and poised to be updated later today, Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s total run number is 62.8 million sockeye.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Alaska salmon report: Troll kings worth more than oil; base price up in Bristol Bay

July 20, 2021 — Early prices to Alaska salmon fishermen are trickling in. As anticipated, they are up across the board. That will give a nice boost to the economic base of both fishing communities and the state from fish taxes, fees and other assessments.

About a third (62 million) of Alaska’s projected catch of 190 million salmon had crossed the docks by July 16 at the halfway point of the fishing season.

Prices paid to fishermen vary based on buyers, gear types and regions. And bonuses and post-season pay adjustments won’t be finalized until early next year.

Here’s an early snapshot of average base prices from major processors at this point in the season:

At Bristol Bay, the price to fishermen was boosted to $1.25 by OBI Seafoods, topping the $1.10 Peter Pan posted in June before the start of the fishery, and up from 70 cents last year.

Kodiak fishermen were getting $1.45-$1.50 for sockeyes and $1.75 at Southeast.

That compares to a statewide average of just $0.76 a pound for sockeye salmon last year. A 2021 catch of 46.6 million sockeyes was projected for Alaska; the total so far has topped 44 million.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Alaska salmon returns down 87 percent, as Bristol Bay sockeye harvest soars

July 16, 2021 — It’s catch as catch can in Alaska salmon fisheries with five of six species still lagging behind normal across the region. Bristol Bay and the rest of Southwest Alaska continue to be a bright spot for the second year running, but not across all species.

As of mid-July, 72 percent of the state’s projected sockeye harvest had been caught, while just 23 percent of the projected overall salmon harvest of 190 million fish has crossed the docks, according to McKinley Research Group’s weekly report for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

Bristol Bay’s Nushagak District topped 1 million fish per day for seven consecutive days and edged the 2 million mark several times, and the boom harvest has since spread out to other rivers across the bay. The only damper on yet another year with strong sockeye returns is a smaller average fish size at 4.5 pounds, compared with 5.1 last year.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Bristol Bay sockeye catches called ‘unprecedented’ by Alaska fishery managers

July 13, 2021 — “Unprecedented” is how fishery managers are describing sockeye catches at Bristol Bay, which topped 1 million fish for seven days straight at the Nushagak district last week and neared the 2 million mark on several days.

By July 9, Alaska’s statewide sockeye salmon catch was approaching 32 million, of which more than 25 million came from Bristol Bay. The only other region getting good sockeye catches was the Alaska Peninsula, where nearly 4.6 million reds were landed so far.

The Alaska Peninsula also was far ahead of all other regions for pink salmon catches with over 3.3 million taken out of a total statewide tally of just over 5.4 million so far.

Pink salmon run in distinct two year cycles with odd years being stronger, and the preseason forecast calls for a total Alaska harvest of 124.2 million pinks this summer.

The timing for peak pink harvests is still several weeks away; likewise for chums, and most cohos will arrive in mid-August.

Alaska salmon managers are projecting the 2021 statewide salmon catch to top 190 million fish, a 61% increase over last year’s take of about 118 million salmon. By July 9, the statewide catch for all species had topped 41 million fish.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Promising prices, record landings for Bristol Bay sockeye

July 7, 2021 — Alaska’s Bristol Bay salmon season is off to a strong start in what is expected to be another harvest hovering around all-time highs for both catch and value in the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery.

Fish were already pouring in to at least two of Bristol Bay’s four major river systems. As of July 1, the bay had produced 9.02 million commercial sockeye landings — 46 percent above the five-year average — on a preseason prediction of more than 36 million sockeye, according to area biologist Tim Sands with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

By Tuesday, July 6, that total was above 14 million sockeye.

While early returns look good, test fishing indicates the run should sustain for a relatively long period of time, which should help the fishery avoid bottlenecks in fishing and processing.

Last season’s compressed run, coupled with covid-19 complications, strained Bristol Bay’s fishermen and processors. The Bristol Bay fishery also slogged through the pandemic last season with a disappointing base price of just $0.75, but got early, unexpected news that Peter Pan Seafoods will pay a base price of $1.10.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ALASKA: More of the same a good thing as Bristol Bay gets underway

June 30, 2021 — Early indicators are pointing to yet another strong year in the massive Bristol Bay sockeye fishery, which is contrasted against the continued struggles in many of the state’s other large salmon fisheries.

Just more than 3.2 million sockeye had been harvested through June 27, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game figures, with the Nushagak District accounting for more than half of the catch so far at nearly 1.7 million fish. The 3.2 million-fish harvest to-date this year is between the comparable totals for recent years; 1.2 million sockeye were harvested through June 27 last year, while more than 4.4 million were caught by the same day in 2019.

With sockeye harvests of more than 40 million fish and total runs greater than 56 million sockeye, both of the last two years have been among the most productive in the history of the Bristol Bay fishery.

Dillingham Area Management Biologist Tim Sands said early June 29 that he’s confident there are a lot of fish still making their way to the head of Bristol Bay based on catches in the Port Moller test fishery.

He noted that returns to the Egegik River down the Alaska Peninsula have been particularly strong, with a harvest of more than 1.2 million fish and a total return estimated at more than 1.7 million sockeye through June 27, several-fold more than last year in each category.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Pacific Salmon Recovery Report Gives 32 Recommendations to Reverse Salmon Declines

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.

Read the full story at Seafood News