Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Southeast Alaska’s commercial red king crab fishery sees ‘historically high’ value

December 1, 2025 — The commercial red king crab fishery that opened in Southeast Alaska on Nov. 1 is generating more money than it has in the past two decades combined.

Red king crab is a low-volume, high-value fishery. It last opened in Southeast Alaska in 2017. The catch that year was over 120,000 pounds, worth $1.2 million at the docks.

Eight years later, the value has skyrocketed to roughly $5 million.

“It’s definitely at a historic high,” said Adam Messmer, a regional shellfish biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Weighing 6.5 to 7.5 pounds each and selling for $26 to $30 a pound, the red king crab are worth about $200 a piece.

Messmer said expectations going into the fishery were high, but the starting price was “above everybody’s wildest dreams.”

Read the full article at KFSK

ALASKA: Coast Guard may briefly be unable to hear distress calls in Southeast Alaska this week

November 4, 2025 — The U. S. Coast Guard may briefly be unable to hear distress calls in Southeast Alaska for 3-5 minute intervals this week.

The Coast Guard sent out a notice on Monday, Nov. 3, that they would be undergoing maintenance upgrades from Nov. 3 – 7 – and this would impact receiving messages on the region’s emergency VHF channel 16.

In the broadly distributed email, the Coast Guard said they “may be unable to listen to or respond to distress calls on CH16 starting 03NOV25 until 07NOV25.”

But in a statement to KFSK later, the Coast Guard wrote, “the VHF-FM marine radio will not be down the entire 96 hours. It will experience a brief interruption, lasting only 3-5 minutes, during a scheduled upgrade within that 96-hour time frame.”

Read the full article at KFSK

ALASKA: Southeast Alaska’s commercial red king crab fishery opens Nov. 1

October 30, 2025 — Southeast Alaska’s first competitive commercial red king crab fishery in eight years opens on Saturday.

Ten different areas will be open for the fishery. They’ll be managed individually based on how much crab are available in each spot.

State regulations require at least 200,000 pounds of harvestable crab to be available for a commercial opener in the region. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) announced earlier this fall that over 211,000 pounds of crab are available this season.

Red king crab in Southeast Alaska is a low-volume, high-value commercial fishery with just 59 permit holders. Commercial openings have been few and far between, with just one in over a decade. The approaching fishery marks a highly-anticipated comeback.

Read the full article at KFSK

ALASKA: Southeast Alaska fishermen qualify for federal salmon disaster relief. The deadline to apply is fast approaching.

August 20, 2024 — The first deadline for Southeast Alaska fishermen to apply for relief funding from the abysmal 2020 salmon season is this Saturday, August 24.

A federal fishery disaster was declared for fisheries in the state with extraordinarily low returns.. The U.S. Department of Commerce at the time attributed those low runs to a series of marine heatwaves in the 2010’s and in 2022, the federal agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gave the state of Alaska about $56 million for those losses.

Read the full article at KRBD

ALASKA: Southeast Alaska not ready for a hatchery-only king fishery, study finds

May 13, 2024 — Should Southeast Alaska have a hatchery-only king salmon sports fishery? Researchers recently tried to answer that question as a possible solution to a declining number of wild kings.

Chinook or king salmon are the largest and most valuable salmon species. They’re sought-after by sport, commercial, and subsistence fishermen alike. But in recent decades, their harvest has become more restricted as populations plummet. A recent study considered if a new Southeast fishery could help – one that allows sport fishermen to keep only hatchery king salmon and release wild ones.

“And an important question there is could this actually be done within the current management context? And is this something that is desirable for folks in Alaska?” asked Anne Beaudreau, who led the study, which took about a year.

Beaudreau is an associate professor with the University of Washington’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. The study was initiated and funded by the Alaska delegation of the Pacific Salmon Commission. Members asked the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to explore the possibility of a hatchery-based sports fishery, and the state then contracted with the university.

As part of the study, Beaudreau helped run several public meetings throughout Southeast. Dozens of people participated.

“We heard a lot of concern brought up at these meetings,” she said.

Read the full article at CoastAlaska

Federal judge’s order could shut down Southeast Alaska troll fishery

May 5, 2023 — A U.S. district judge in Washington state has affirmed a controversial recommendation that could shut down summer trolling for king salmon in Southeast Alaska this summer.

Judge Richard A. Jones signed the two-page order on Tuesday. It requires the National Marine Fisheries Service to remedy a violation of the Endangered Species Act concerning a threatened population of killer whales in Puget Sound.

Read the full article at KTOO 

Southeast Alaska communities set to join growing chorus opposing lawsuit that threatens Chinook shutdown

February 6, 2023 — Local governments around Southeast Alaska are speaking out against a lawsuit that threatens to shut down trolling for king salmon, also known as Chinook salmon, across the region this year. The lawsuit aims to protect an endangered population of orcas in Washington state.

Ketchikan, Wrangell and Petersburg are set to join a growing chorus of Alaska voices highlighting the impact the suit could have on the region’s fishing fleet.

The lawsuit from the Washington state-based Wild Fish Conservancy centers on an endangered Puget Sound population of orcas known as Southern Resident Killer Whales.

Killer whales eat salmon — especially big, meaty king salmon — and the conservation group argues federal officials haven’t properly accounted for the impact the Southeast king salmon fishery has on the Puget Sound orcas.

Read the full article at KRBD

Judge faults federal plan to protect orcas from Southeast Alaska salmon harvests

August 12, 2022 — A U.S. District Court judge in Seattle has found the National Marine Fisheries Service has failed to ensure that Southeast Alaska salmon harvests not harm protected Pacific Northwest chinook and endangered southern killer whales that prey upon them.

The Monday ruling came in a brief summary judgment from U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones. It is a significant victory for the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy, which argued that the National Marine Fisheries Service approved a flawed plan to compensate for the harvest by increasing hatchery release of chinook.

“We applaud Judge Jones’ ruling that is finally calling into question decades of unsustainable Chinook harvest management in Southeast Alaska,” said Emma Helverson, Wild Fish Conservancy executive director, who in a statement called the decision a “watershed moment” for efforts to recover southern resident orcas and wild chinook.

The southern resident killer whales are an endangered community native to the Pacific Northwest that consists of 73 members across three pods: J, K and L, which have struggled amid a decline in wild chinook populations that are a key part of their diet. Some whale advocates have long looked with concern to Southeast Alaska harvests of the salmon.

It is still uncertain what the judge’s ruling will mean for Southeast Alaska fisheries catching salmon that would eventually head south to British Columbia or the Pacific Northwest to spawn.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

Orcas thrive in a land to the north. Why are Puget Sound’s dying?

November 16, 2018 — Bigger and bigger, with a puff and a blow, the orca surfaces, supreme in his kingdom of green.

Northern resident orcas like this one live primarily in the cleaner, quieter waters of northern Vancouver Island and Southeast Alaska, where there also are more fish to eat. They are the same animal as the southern residents that frequent Puget Sound, eating the same diet, and even sharing some of the same waters. They have similar family bonds and culture.

The difference between them is us.

The southern residents are struggling to survive amid waters influenced by more than 6 million people, between Vancouver and Seattle, with pollution, habitat degradation and fishery declines. The plight of the southern residents has become grimly familiar as they slide toward extinction, with three more deaths just last summer. Telling was the sad journey of J35, or Tahlequah, traveling more than 1,000 miles for at least 17 days, clinging to her dead calf, which lived only one half-hour.

Read the full story at the Bristol Herald Courier