Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Area M, Where Alaska commercial and subsistence fishing interests collide

July 14, 2022 — There have been clashes over regulating Area M for decades, but the battle heated up after the Yukon-Kuskokwim chum crashes began. This is the first in a three-part series.

Kuskokwim fisherman Fritz Charles grew up in Tuntutuliak, on the lower river. There were so many fish then that his parents would put away literal barrels of them. His job as a child was to pack the dry fish tight in the barrels using a special method.

In 2021, chum runs took a sharp downward turn. It was the worst year on record for them on the Yukon River, and it’s the same story on the Kuskokwim. This year, the runs on both rivers are at their second lowest.

In 2021, 153,497 summer chum salmon swam up the Yukon River. That’s compared to an average of about 1.7 million summer chum. The river was missing about 1.5 million fish.

At the same time, Area M commercial fishermen caught 1,168,601 chum at sea while subsistence fishing on the rivers was closed. In the midst of the smallest chum run western Alaska subsistence users had ever seen, Area M fishermen were catching more than ever before.

Do the subsistence fishermen in the Y-K Delta or the commercial fishermen in Area M have a greater claim to the chum? About a decade ago, a comprehensive salmon genetics study of the Area M fishery confirmed that most of the chum caught in the region, around 60%, are bound for coastal Western Alaska. But when you start to break that number down further, that’s where things get complicated.

Read the full story at KTOO

‘It’s very emotional’: Chignik residents fear for their communities’ future if abysmal salmon runs persist

September 14, 2021 — Gene Carlson drove the streets of the remote Chignik Bay, between quiet wooden houses and old cannery buildings on an afternoon in July.

“That used to be a restaurant there,” he said. “That’s a web loft over there, which is shut down now. Here’s another one of my cousin’s houses. He’s not living there anymore.”

The Chignik River’s salmon runs have sustained generations in the century-old small fishing communities along the Alaska Peninsula, Chignik Bay included. But, for the fourth year in a row, for reasons no one can definitively pinpoint, the runs came in severely low.

For years, residents have struggled to earn a living fishing and to put up enough fish for the winter, and some worry their villages will disappear if the low runs persist, taking with them a fishing tradition that connects their families to home.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Alaska: Pink salmon harvest below forecast, slightly up from 2016

August 31, 2018 — Though pink salmon harvests are ahead of what they were in 2016, the last comparable run-size year, they are still significantly below the forecast level.

As of Aug. 28, Alaska’s commercial pink salmon harvest was 38.2 million fish, about 4 percent ahead of the harvest in 2016. Pink salmon have a two-year life cycle, with large runs in even years and smaller runs on odd-numbered years, so the harvests are compared on every other year as compared to year-over-year like other species. Two years ago, the pink salmon runs returned so small that the U.S. Secretary of Commerce declared a fishery disaster on the Gulf of Alaska pink salmon fisheries.

The total harvest so far is slightly more than half of the forecasted 69.7 million fish for this season. Cook Inlet’s fishermen have harvested about 965,000 pinks, significantly more than the 465,000 in 2016. The vast majority of those — about 838,815 pinks — have been harvested in Lower Cook Inlet, largely the southern district bays around the lower edge of the Kenai Peninsula south of Kachemak Bay. The Port Graham Section alone has harvested 345,648 and the Tutka Bay Special Harvest Area has harvested 269,165, both of which have pink salmon hatcheries nearby.

Pink salmon harvest varies in other areas of the state. Kodiak’s harvest of pinks so far is behind the forecast but significantly better than in the 2016 disaster year. The Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands and Bristol Bay are both behind both their forecasts and the 2016 harvest. Southeast’s pink salmon is about 67 percent below its normal even-year harvest, with about 7.3 million pinks harvested so far compared to the 18.4 million harvested in 2016.

Read the full story at the Peninsula Clarion    

 

Supreme Court says no to hearing UCIDA case

October 3, 2017 — The lawsuit over whether the federal government or the state should manage Cook Inlet’s salmon fisheries won’t get its day in the U.S. Supreme Court after all.

Supreme Court justices on Monday denied the state of Alaska’s petition to hear a case in which the Kenai Peninsula-based fishing trade group the United Cook Inlet Drift Association challenged the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s decision to confer management of the salmon fishery to the state.

Because most of the fishery takes place more than 3 miles from shore, it is within federal jurisdiction and is subject to management and oversight by a federal Fishery Management Plan. In 2012, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council passed an amendment removing fisheries in Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound and the Alaska Peninsula and placing them entirely under state management. UCIDA sued over the decision in 2013, saying the state’s management authority doesn’t comply with the Magnuson-Stevens Fisher Conservation and Management Act.

Though the U.S. District Court for Alaska initially ruled in the state’s favor, a panel of three federal judges on the Ninth Circuit Court in Anchorage reversed the district court’s decision and ruled that the fishery did require a fishery management plan. Saying the state’s management was adequate for the fishery, the state petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Ninth Circuit Court’s decision.

UCIDA president Dave Martin said he wasn’t surprised by the Supreme Court’s decision. The organization’s line has been the same all along, he said — state management has not met the Magnuson-Stevens Act standard for sustainability and optimum yield, with state management plans leaving salmon unharvested and exceeding escapement goals on Cook Inlet freshwater systems.

Read the full story at the Peninsula Clarion

Comment Federal judge tosses another fisheries management rule

December 9th, 2016 — Federal judges keep smacking down the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s decisions.

For the second time in the last three months, a federal court has overturned a management decision made by the North Pacific council and enacted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS. The United States District Court of Washington overturned a 2011 decision relating to halibut quota shares harvested by hired skippers on Nov. 16.

Federal courts have overturned several council decisions in recent years. In September, a the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the council’s 2011 decision to remove Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound and Alaska Peninsula salmon fisheries from federal oversight.

In this case, the North Pacific council made a decision in 2011 regarding which halibut quota holders can use a hired skipper instead of being required to be on board the vessel. Due to the court’s ruling, NOAA will have to open that group back up after limiting it in 2011.

Julie Speegle, the NMFS Alaska Region spokesperson, said the agency will change the impacted halibut fishermen’s quota shares to reflect the court’s ruling and that the council itself will review the issue.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire 

Cook Inlet Fishermen Tell N. Pacific Council They Have Lost Faith in Alaska’s Salmon Management

October 18th, 2016 — Concerned fishermen gathered at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s October meeting in Anchorage to discuss a recent federal court decision that turns control of salmon fisheries in Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound and the Alaska Peninsula over to state management.

Though stakeholders brought their suggestions, the council did not direct its staff to any action related to the subject of a salmon FMP. Instead, the council reiterated that the decision will be remanded back to the lower court where it could either be appealed or produce a directive for the council to write a salmon FMP.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council governs federal fisheries, which take place from three to 200 miles offshore.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Southern fisheries earn win in federal court

September 26th, 2016 — A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of a state commercial fishing organization that challenged a decision to move several southern Alaska salmon fisheries from federal to state management.

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday overturned the decision by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The ruling means the case will go back to U.S. Alaska District Court and that federal fisheries policymakers will have to work with state managers on a new management plan, The Alaska Journal of Commerce reported.

The United Cook Inlet Drift Association sued over the council’s 2011 decision to remove Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound and Alaska Peninsula salmon fisheries from the federal fisheries management plan. The 2013 suit was initially rejected by District Court Judge Timothy Burgess. But the group appealed, arguing that the state’s plan doesn’t adhere to the same high standards as federal rules.

Federal fisheries management plans must be in line with the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which require fisheries managers to consider optimum yield, best available science, equitable allocations and community health among other factors.

The Cook Inlet group called the appeals court ruling a win for Alaska’s fishermen and the health of the resource.

 

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Juneau Empire 

KARL JOHNSTONE: Federal management of Cook Inlet fisheries would be a step back

May 11, 2016 — Were U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens alive today, he would be shocked to discover Alaska commercial fishermen (see commentary by United Cook Inlet Drift Association President Dave Martin, published by Alaska Dispatch News April 24) want to use the federal legislation he co-authored — the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act — to bring federal overreach to Cook Inlet only miles from the state’s largest city.

The now 40-year-old act booted foreign fishermen out of the 200-mile fisheries zone of the Alaska coast and led to the restoration of depleted fisheries, as detailed in a commentary published by ADN April 12. But the feds continue to struggle with how to manage bycatch in what are now domestic offshore fisheries.

Alaska salmon managers, on the other hand, have been successfully dealing with bycatch problems since statehood. Sometimes facing threats from commercial fishermen, they cleaned up mixed-stock fisheries that had decimated salmon stocks throughout the northern Panhandle.

In Cook Inlet, they wrote the book on best management for mixed-stock, mixed-species management that weighs commercial and noncommercial fishing interests. The reason the feds elected to delegate to the state all authority for salmon management, not only in Cook Inlet but also on the Alaska Peninsula and Prince William Sound, is not what Martin claims, not as some desire to dodge a role in moderating the inevitable fish wars that surround commercial, subsistence, personal use and sport allocations. The reason the feds took themselves out of the picture is they realize the state is already doing a better job than they could do.

Read the full opinion piece at Alaska Dispatch News

For Alaska fisheries, reason to celebrate 40 years of Magnuson-Stevens Act

April 12, 2016 — April 13, 2016, marks the 40th anniversary of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a law that took U.S. fisheries management in federal waters from being virtually non-existent to becoming a global model of sustainability.

Nowhere is this truer than in Alaska, where our fisheries have an international reputation as being among the most sustainable and valuable fisheries on the planet, largely thanks to the collaborative and inclusive management process set up under the Magnuson-Stevens Act. One of the MSA’s authors, our very own Sen. Ted Stevens, had an extraordinary vision for our nation’s fisheries, especially for those in his home state of Alaska. Many elements of the State of Alaska’s fishery management are woven into the fabric of the MSA.

The results? Our state produces 60 percent of all seafood harvested from U.S. waters. The Alaska seafood industry is the number one private employer in the State of Alaska, contributing an estimated $5.9 billion to the Alaska economy, and producing more than $4.2 billion first wholesale value of wild, sustainable seafood annually. For nearly 20 consecutive years, Dutch Harbor has been the top U.S. fishing port in volume of seafood landed. In 2014, Alaska ports took the top three spots in the nation in volume of seafood landed (Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, and Aleutian Islands). Other Alaska fishing ports — Alaska Peninsula, Naknek, Sitka, Ketchikan, Cordova, and Petersburg — ranked in our nation’s top 20 ports by volume.

Read the full opinion piece at the Alaska Dispatch News