Cook Inlet Archives - Page 3 of 7

ALASKA: Sen. Murkowski “Disappointed” by Cook Inlet Closure, Supports “Long-Term Solution” for CI Fleet

December 14, 2020 — Two days after Monday’s decision to close the federal waters of Cook Inlet to commercial salmon fishermen, Alaska’s senior Senator Lisa Murkowski called for “the need to collaboratively resolve tensions that have long persisted in Cook Inlet.” The decision came at the beginning of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council’s December meeting.

The ‘historical tensions” the senator referred to have been between both commercial and recreational fishermen and between all fishermen and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Cook Inlet is home to Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, the nearby Matenuska-Susitna Borough, and the state’s most popular recreational area, the Kenai Peninsula. About two-thirds of the state’s population lives on or near Cook Inlet, which is accessed by the state’s only road system.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ALASKA: Worry for commercial fishermen and Peninsula communities after Cook Inlet fishery closure

December 9, 2020 — Federal managers voted Monday to close a huge swath of Upper Cook Inlet to commercial salmon fishing, capping a two-year fight over the fate of the fishery and its 500 permit-holders.

Fishermen and representatives from the Kenai Peninsula turned out in droves to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting to oppose the closure and advocate for lighter conservation measures.

But when representatives from Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration said the state was unwilling to manage the area’s fisheries alongside the federal government, the council voted unanimously for the closure.

The 10-0 vote shuts down drift gillnet fishing in waters farther than three miles offshore, from the southern tip of Kalgin Island to Anchor Point. Fishermen like Georgie Heaverly of Anchorage said the area is a crucial fishing ground, and the closure will reverberate across industries.

“Fishermen have been leaving the fishery already for the last several years,” she said. “It’s hardly economically viable, and this really is the nail in the coffin.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Fisheries council shuts down commercial salmon fishing in Cook Inlet federal waters

December 9, 2020 — The council that controls fishing in most federal waters off Alaska on Monday closed a large chunk of Cook Inlet to commercial salmon fishing.

The decision came despite a wall of opposition from commercial fishermen and community and state leaders who said the move threatens seafood processors on the Kenai Peninsula and hundreds of fishing operations.

The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council accepted the proposal, presented to the council by the Dunleavy administration in October, to close federal waters starting 3 miles offshore.

Stretching from Homer to Ninilchik off the southern Kenai Peninsula, the waters are where some boats fish exclusively, fishermen said, and it’s where the commercial driftnet fleet typically lands about half its salmon.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Commercial fishermen outraged by state of Alaska’s proposal to close much of Cook Inlet

December 7, 2020 — A Dunleavy administration proposal to shut down a large chunk of Cook Inlet to commercial salmon fishing has drawn a tidal wave of opposition from Alaska fishermen.

The state’s proposal, alongside two other viable options, is under consideration by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, as the federal government prepares to assume oversight of the salmon fishery in federal waters.

The state has managed salmon fishing in those waters — west of Homer and Ninilchik off the southern Kenai Peninsula — for decades.

But two Cook Inlet groups representing commercial fishermen filed a lawsuit in 2013 challenging the state’s management. A federal appeals court sided with the groups in 2016. It ordered the council, which oversees fishing in most federal waters off Alaska, to include the inlet’s federal waters in its fishery management plan.

The council is expected to decide the issue on Monday, after taking public testimony at a virtual meeting. The court has given the council until Dec. 31.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Assembly to take up legislation opposing closure of federal inlet waters to commercial fishing

December 2, 2020 — The Kenai Peninsula Borough will consider at their Dec. 1 meeting legislation opposing the closure of federal waters in Cook Inlet to commercial fishing.

The resolution is a response to one of four proposed alternative amendments to the Fishery Management Plan for Salmon Fisheries in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone off Alaska known as “Alternative Four.”

Alternative Four would close federal waters in Cook Inlet to commercial fishing. Federal waters make up the southern half of the inlet, south of Kalgin Island, according to a memo from assembly member Brent Johnson. The water located south of Kalgin Island has traditionally been used by the drift gillnet fleet.

Other peninsula municipalities have recently taken action to oppose Alternative Four, including the Kenai City Council, which voted unanimously to oppose it.

Alternative Four was introduced near the end of the last meeting of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) last month by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Deputy Commissioner.

Read the full story at the Peninsula Clarion

Pandemic cut the Alaska salmon catch and fishermen’s paychecks – and will mean lower tax revenues for fishing towns

November 18, 2020 — Tamped-down prices due to toppled markets caused by the coronavirus combined with low salmon returns to many Alaska regions added up to reduced paychecks for fishermen and will mean lower tax revenues for fishing communities.

A summary of the preliminary harvests and values by the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game shows that Alaska’s total 2020 salmon catch came in at just under 117 million fish, a 44% decrease from last season’s haul of 208.3 million fish, and the 13th lowest on record.

The statewide salmon value of $295.2 million is a whopping 56% decrease from 2019′s $673.4 million, and when adjusted for inflation, it is the lowest value since 2006.

Sockeyes accounted for nearly 59% of Alaska’s total salmon value at $174.9 million and comprised 40% of the harvest at 46.1 million fish.

Pinks accounted for 51% of the statewide salmon harvest at 51.4 million and 21% of the value at $61.8 million.

Regional tallies compared to the 2019 catches and values reveal a clearer picture of the economic hits, which are down by half or more across the board.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Endangered Cook Inlet belugas continue to decline, scientists aren’t sure why

March 17, 2020 — Cook Inlet beluga whales are continuing to decline in number, according to a NOAA abundance estimate released last month. From Alaska’s Energy Desk, Kavitha George has the story of how the decline in belugas is both controversial and largely unexplained.

The decline of the white whales in the inlet in view of Anchorage has been going on for decades. In the 1970’s they numbered around 1400. In 2008, Cook Inlet belugas were listed as endangered, and still numbers continued to drop. With new analysis methods today there are even fewer whales than previously thought — less than 300, and steadily declining from there.

Still, the reasons why Cook Inlet belugas are disappearing are still largely a mystery to researchers.

“It’s such a frustration to not be able to really understand why the population is not recovering,” said Paul Wade, a NOAA researcher who has done aerial surveys of Cook Inlet belugas since the 1990s. “So we are just stuck with hypotheses that we really cannot yet prove or disprove.”

Read the full story at KNBA

Helping Scientists Protect Beluga Whales with Deep Learning

March 11, 2020 — In the U.S., there are five populations of beluga whales, all in Alaska. Of those five, the Cook Inlet population is the smallest and has declined by about seventy-five percent since 1979. Subsistence hunting contributed to this initial population drop, but this practice was regulated starting in 1999, with the last hunt in 2005. Still, the beluga whale population in Cook Inlet has yet to recover. This population was listed as an endangered species in 2008, with hopes that the population would begin to recover in the near future, but more than a decade later they continue to decline, with a current population estimate of 328 whales.

Like other toothed whales, beluga whales rely highly on sound. They produce acoustic signals to find prey and to communicate; consequently, scientists can use acoustic recordings to study beluga populations and behavior. In 2008, the NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) Alaska Fisheries Science Center, in partnership with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, put together an acoustic research program to continuously monitor beluga whale habitat. This program has two main objectives: (1) studying beluga whale behavior and population size, and (2) understanding the extent to which human-generated noise is disrupting beluga populations.

In the past, with raw audio recordings collected by underwater moorings, NOAA scientists used a very basic detector — based on energy levels in certain frequencies — to detect acoustic signals from beluga whales. This detector was tuned toward high recall, i.e., it was tuned to make sure that it didn’t miss any beluga sounds, but consequently allowed many sounds to pass through that were false positives, i.e. uninteresting background noise. Consequently, manual validation was required for each of those detections. This validation process is very time-consuming and labor-intensive, which limits the number of sensors that the team can deploy, and also limits the speed with which the team can provide answers to critical conservation questions.

Read the full story at Medium

First Long Term Acoustic Study Tunes Into Cook Inlet Beluga Whale Foraging Ecology

February 19, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The first continuous multiyear acoustic monitoring effort across Cook Inlet provides the most comprehensive description of beluga whale seasonal distribution and feeding behavior to date.

This knowledge is critical for understanding and managing potential threats impeding recovery of this endangered population.

“Cook Inlet belugas were listed as endangered in 2008. Despite protective measures, the population continued to decline,” said Manuel Castellote, NOAA Fisheries affiliate/University of Washington/Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean biologist who led the study. “We undertook this study to provide information that managers needed to develop an effective recovery strategy.”

Castellote worked in partnership with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to develop a passive acoustic monitoring program. It recorded beluga movements and foraging behavior within their critical habitat year-round over five years.

“Summer beluga distribution has been well studied, especially in the upper inlet. But information on foraging behavior during the rest of the year was basically nonexistent,” Castellote said. “That knowledge is essential to identify threats impeding the whales’ recovery.”

Read the full release here

HOMER NEWS: Cook Inlet commercial fisheries feed Alaskans

February 13, 2020 — Alaska is salmon country, where fish feed our communities in every way — sustenance, work, recreation, art, faith, family, tradition and culture. For us, second- and third-generation commercial fishermen raised on Cook Inlet, salmon is a complex livelihood and identity built on all of those things.

We are proud to wield the skills our fathers taught us, and proud that we are able to venture onto an unruly ocean and return with food for our communities. That is the core purpose of commercial fishing: the movement of healthy protein from the ocean to the people.

An incredible industry has grown around it, reaching from riverbed to global marketplace. But our first duty is as local harvester, as small business owners bolstering the food security and economic stability of coastal Alaska.

In Cook Inlet, commercial fishing provides essential coastal livelihoods through hundreds of small locally-owned businesses, and thousands of jobs in the harvesting, processing and marine trades sectors. Additionally, 79% of Cook Inlet fishermen are Alaska residents.

Read the full opinion piece at the Homer News