Saving Seafood

2020’s Southeast salmon harvest among worst on record, according to Alaska Fish & Game data

April 1, 2021 —  Last year’s salmon harvest across all species in Southeast Alaska was one of the worst in 50 years. Here’s what Southeast’s regional commercial fishery supervisor had to say about the terrible season, and about his hopes for the coming year.

A special report released in March paints a stark picture of 2020’s salmon harvest in Southeast Alaska.

“Overall, it was one of the lowest harvests we’d seen, I think since the ’70s,” says Lowell Fair. He’s the Southeast regional supervisor for the commercial fisheries division of Alaska Department of Fish and Game. It was already clear from preliminary reports that last year’s salmon season was a rough one. But just how rough?

For sockeye, the harvest was the second lowest since 1962 — that’s just a couple of years after the Department of Fish & Game was formed and started collecting data.

King harvest was in the bottom five harvests since the early 1960s as well.

Coho and pink harvests came in stronger than kings and sockeye, but were still among the lowest years in recent memory, ranking 48th and 53rd since 1962, respectively.

Read the full story at KNBA

ALASKA: Copper River Forecast Still Off from Historical Returns

March 15, 2021 — State research biologists expect the famed Copper River salmon fishery to rebound from what was nearly a lost season in 2020, but runs for the river’s high-value species are still expected to fall well short of historical averages.

Just more than 1.3 million sockeye are projected to return to the Copper River this year for a corresponding allowable commercial harvest of 672,000 fish, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game‘s 2021 Prince William Sound and Copper River Salmon Forecast.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: 2 Pebble appeals, 2 different outcomes

March 3, 2021 — Two requests to appeal the decision to deny a key permit for a proposed copper and gold mine in Southwest Alaska met different fates.

The Army Corps of Engineers didn’t accept the state’s attempt to appeal a November 2020 decision to deny a permit for the proposed Pebble Mine, a long-controversial effort to place an open-pit mine near the headwarters of the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world.

Meanwhile, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., the Vancouver-based parent company of Pebble Limited Partnership, reports that a Feb. 24 letter indicated the corps accepted Pebble’s request for an administrative appeal.

Mike Heatwole, a spokesperson for Pebble Limited Partnership, said Saturday in an email Pebble looks forward to having the appeal fully vetted.

In an email, Luciano Vera, deputy chief of public affairs for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Pacific Ocean Division, said the division engineer determined that the state does not meet the definition of an “affected party.”

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

ALASKA: What is going on in Bristol Bay?

March 2, 2021 — Despite record retail prices and a consistently strong demand, Bristol Bay salmon fishermen saw a nearly 50 percent drop in their base ex-vessel price in 2020 — from $1.35 a pound in 2019 to $0.70 in 2020. That’s a 65-cent drop in a single year.

The Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association published a new report that lays out likely reasons for the low base price. It also offers the region’s fishermen a range of solutions to consider for the future, and is seeking feedback from stakeholders to help set goals for the association.

“Demand for Bristol Bay sockeye is very high. Retail prices are at record levels. Anecdotally, wholesale prices are flat to up compared to last year — significantly so for once-frozen fillets,” says the BBRSDA’s white paper, released Monday, March 1. “When consumer prices are high or increasing for a product, the underlying raw material price usually goes up, not way down. In short, 2020 should have been a terrific season for Bristol Bay fishermen and ex-vessel prices, but it wasn’t (or at least it hasn’t been thus far).”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

As most Alaska salmon fishing regions face another season of mediocre runs, Russia hikes competitive pressure

February 24, 2021 — Alaskans are preparing for another salmon season of poor to average runs in most regions.

The big exception once again is at Bristol Bay, where another massive return of more than 51 million sockeyes is expected. Managers predict that surge will produce a harvest of over 36 million reds to fishermen.

Bristol Bay is home to the largest wild sockeye salmon run in the world and typically accounts for 42% of the world’s sockeye harvest. Those fish and all wild salmon compete in a tough worldwide commodities market, where Alaska salmon claims 13% of the global supply.

Farmed salmon production, which outnumbers wild harvests by nearly 3 to 1, is Alaska’s biggest competitor; the other is Russia.

According to global seafood trading company Tradex, Pacific salmon catches from Russia are projected to top 1 billion pounds in 2021. As a comparison, Alaska’s 2020 catch of nearly 117 million salmon weighed in at just over 500 million pounds.

The Russian catch breaks down to more than 700 million pounds of pinks, nearly 206 million pounds of chum salmon, 70.6 million pounds of sockeyes, over 24 million pounds of coho salmon and 8.8 million pounds of Chinook.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Scientist Profile: A Career Spent Saving Sockeye Salmon in the Pacific Northwest

February 23, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

In the fall of 1991, Snake River sockeye salmon hovered on the brink of extinction. Thousands of the distinctively red fish had once returned more than 900 miles from the Pacific Ocean. They swam up the Columbia, Snake, and Salmon rivers to Redfish Lake in Idaho every year. They passed eight major dams along the way.

Only four made it in 1991.

The dire situation galvanized regulatory and stakeholder groups. That same year,  the Redfish Lake Sockeye Captive Broodstock Program was formed. The program pooled the expertise and efforts of NOAA Fisheries and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. They collaborate with the Bonneville Power Administration, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of Idaho. The program endeavors to help save the signature species by protecting its remaining genetic diversity.

The next step was to revive the species by reproducing them in hatcheries.

Along came Carlin McAuley, a scientist with a rare blend of fisheries experience. For the next 29 years, Carlin led fish culture operations for NOAA Fisheries Redfish Lake sockeye captive broodstock program. He retired in December, but he has left a lasting legacy. While hard work remains, he helped halt the decline and set these sockeye on a path toward recovery. But he wants everyone to know he didn’t do this alone. He played a role amongst a group of very talented, hard-working people at NOAA.

We recently sat down with Carlin to reflect on his career.

Read the full interview here

Rising water temperatures could be a death sentence for Pacific salmon

February 12, 2021 — In the Pacific Northwest, several species of salmon are in danger of extinction. The Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office has released a report on the state of salmon populations in the state’s watersheds—and the findings predict a grim future.

The report was commissioned by the Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office, established by the state legislature in 1998 in response to the Salmon Recovery Planning Act. Its findings showed that 10 to 14 species of  in the northwest are “threatened or endangered,” and five species are “in crisis.”

The findings, though alarming, are in line with population trends over the last few decades. The once prolific salmon populations in Washington State have been declining for years, and populations are now estimated to be at about 5% of historic highs.

The five species of salmon and steelhead that the report found to be most at risk are Snake River spring/summer chinook, Puget Sound chinook, Lake Ozette sockeye, Upper Columbia River spring chinook, and Puget Sound steelhead—a sampling that covers a wide geographic area in the state.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Sockeye salmon retail prices at record winter highs, but uncertainty looms

February 5, 2021 — Retail prices for sockeye salmon have been at historical highs for the past three months, largely driven by a 25 percent drop in global supply in 2020.

For Q1 up through 27 January, wild sockeye salmon fillets averaged USD 12.07 (EU 10.05), the highest quarterly average since 2012, according to figures cited by the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association (BBRSDA).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Outlook poor for 2021 Copper River, Upper Cook Inlet sockeye runs in Alaska

February 3, 2021 — Sockeye salmon forecasts for both the Copper River and the Upper Cook Inlet came in well below historical averages for the upcoming season, a blow to fisheries already reeling from poor runs and pandemic-related losses last season.

For the Copper River, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) predicted a total run of nearly 1.3 million sockeye salmon. That number would be 37.4 percent short of the most recent 10-year average of around 2.1 million sockeye, and comes on the heels of a 2020 sockeye season where Copper River fishermen scarcely put their nets in the water.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ALASKA: Forecast predicts another poor sockeye season

January 26, 2021 — Upper Cook Inlet fishermen should expect another below-average sockeye salmon run this year.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game forecasts a return of 4,370,000 sockeye to Upper Cook Inlet in 2021, according to a report released Friday.

Brian Marston, Fish and Game’s area manager for UCI commercial fisheries, says the projections aren’t surprising.

“We have seen lower-than-average runs, or right around the 4.3 million mark, which is what we’re predicting this year,” he said. “So it’s not too different from recent numbers, but it is below average.”

The inlet’s 20-year average is nearly 6 million sockeye. But runs over the last few years have been lower.

Read the full story at KDLL