Saving Seafood

Supreme Court won’t consider Pebble Mine appeal

January 11, 2023 — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a challenge by the State of Alaska to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s block of the Pebble Mine project.

The state sought to go directly to the high court and overturn the EPA’s January 2023 decision to veto the mine project based on the federal Clean Water Act and the danger of open-pit mining damaging the Bristol Bay watershed and its salmon fishery.

 Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy in July filed the lawsuit, arguing that the agency decision against the mine and its effect on Alaska economic development warranted an immediate top judicial review.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: Salmon are vanishing from the Yukon River — and so is a way of life

November 9, 2023 — Serena Fitka sat in the cabin of a flat-bottomed aluminum boat as it sped down the Yukon River in western Alaska, recalling how the river once ran thick with salmon. Each summer, in the Yup’ik village of St. Mary’s where Fitka grew up, she and her family fished for days on end. They’d catch enough salmon to last through winter, enough to share with cousins, aunts, uncles, and elders who couldn’t fish for themselves.

“We’d get what we need, and be done,” Fitka said, raising her voice above the whir of the outboard motor and the waves beating against the hull. “But now there’s nothing.”

The boat skirted the river bank as Fitka glanced out the window, her face shielded from the mid-July sun. Gray water, thick with glacial silt, lapped against the land’s muddy edge below a summer palette of green: dark spruce needles, light birch leaves, and willows a shade in between. A bald eagle soared 10 feet above the river, scanning the water.

“I thought this wouldn’t happen in my lifetime,” Fitka said. “I thought there would always be fish in the river.”

Read the full article at the Grist

ALASKA: Alaska Native leaders call for legal overhaul to protect traditional fish harvests

October 23, 2o23 — The crash of salmon stocks in Western Alaska’s Kuskokwim River has sparked a bitter court fight between the federal and state governments, and now Alaska Native leaders are calling for congressional action to ensure that Indigenous Alaskans have priority for harvests when stocks are scarce.

The conflict has gripped this year’s Alaska Federation of Natives convention underway this week in Anchorage, where delegates expressed anger over state policies and fears for the future of fish and wildlife upon that they and their ancestors traditionally harvested.

A resolution introduced at the convention urges the federal government to “aggressively protect our hunting and fishing rights in court” against a state government that is “actively undermining Alaska Natives’ rights to subsistence.” The resolution also calls for Congress to strengthen federal law to “permanently protect the right of Alaska Native people to engage in subsistence fishing” in Alaska waters.

Subsistence is the term that describes traditional harvests of fish, game and plants for personal and noncommercial use. Salmon has traditionally been a subsistence staple.

For Alaska Natives, subsistence is of cultural as well as practical importance. Within the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, a sweeping federal law passed in 1980, there are subsistence harvest protections for residents of rural Alaska – regions where communities are largely Native – but not for Native people specifically.

It is time to change those terms to explicitly protect Native traditions, convention attendees said. The sentiment was particularly strong among residents of the affected Kuskokwim River area.

“After decades of failed and broken promises, we urge Alaska’s state and federal policymakers to recognize and protect Alaska Native rights to subsistence uses of fish and game. We ask that they act quickly to stop the physical and cultural starvation of our people,” Curt Chamberlain, an attorney for the Yup’ik-owned Calista Corp., said during a three-hour session Friday afternoon on subsistence problems.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

OPINION: The seafood industry benefits all Alaskans

June 21, 2023 —  As the owner of a commercial fishing boat and sport fishing lodge, it’s easy for me to recognize the importance of the seafood industry for my fellow Alaskans, from sustaining jobs and local economies to embodying cultural connections and a way of life. I know the importance of healthy and sustainable fish populations, science-based management, and healthy ocean ecosystems. Without these, my businesses would fail to thrive — and I know many commercial fishermen and lodge owners across the state who depend on exactly the same factors for their own businesses. Too often sport fishermen and commercial fishermen find themselves pitted against each other in conversations about our state’s wild stocks — when in reality, we all make up the broader community that benefits from Alaska’s seafood industry.

I first started commercial fishing in 1979 on the south end of Kodiak with my mother, uncle and grandparents. I was immediately hooked on fishing. I would sport fish every chance that I got a break from commercial fishing. Fishing taught me the value of hard work as well as educated me on taking care of this valuable resource. My children have learned those same values as they have grown up commercial fishing and working at our lodge. I now have two grandchildren that were born in the last year; I hope to see them have similar experiences and gain the same values and appreciation for this wonderful resource.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

NOAA to trollers: A revised environmental analysis could allow king fishing by August

June 13, 2023 — The National Marine Fisheries Service hasn’t ruled out the possibility of opening the summer troll season for king salmon in Southeast Alaska, despite a federal judge’s recent ruling to the contrary.

During a meeting held Wednesday (6-8-23) in Sitka, NOAA Fisheries Alaska regional administrator, Jon Kurland, told a roomful of trollers that the agency was working hard to correct the problems identified in a federal lawsuit brought by a conservation group in Washington state. If successful, Southeast trollers might be able to harvest king salmon this summer – if not on the traditional date of July 1, then possibly in August.

To get a feel for the impact of the Wild Fish Conservancy lawsuit on Southeast trollers, try sitting in a room filled with them: Grizzled oldsters, seasoned men and women hardened by life on the ocean, well-known fisheries advocates,  young families, and a baby or two.

John Kurland is the regional administrator for fisheries in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which – among other agencies – oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service.

That’s a lengthy title, but Kurland said that he is a neighbor, and he gets it.

“So first off, I know that there’s been just a huge amount of concern about the implications of this suit and the potential for the troll fishery not to be able to open,” Kurland told the room. “I live in Juneau, I have a sense of how important this fishery is for Southeast Alaska for a lot of small businesses, a lot of families, a lot of communities. It’s a big deal.”

Read the full article at Raven Radio

No relief for beleaguered Southeast Alaska trollers as judge rejects request to keep fishery open

June 1, 2023 — Alaska Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang said the state would appeal the denial immediately, but the clock is ticking before the scheduled July 1 start to the king salmon fishery

A federal judge has rejected a request to allow a staple Southeast Alaska king salmon fishery to proceed this summer while an appeal challenging its court-imposed closure plays out.

Richard Jones, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington state, denied the request by Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration to set aside his own ruling from earlier this month. The ruling, aimed at protecting endangered orca whales, has the effect of closing this summer’s troll season for Chinook salmon in Southeast Alaska — a hook-and-line fishery that employs some 1,500 skippers and crew.

Jones, in a five-page order Friday, said he would not “stay,” or set aside, his earlier decision while the state’s underlying appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals plays out. In Friday’s order, Jones said the state’s arguments against his earlier ruling — arguments that stressed the financial impacts of a closure on fishermen and the region’s economy — are unlikely to win on appeal, which is a necessary finding for Jones to put the closure on hold.

Read the full article at KIFW

ALASKA: Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers call for reduced gear impact to aid crab recovery

May 9, 2023 — In the wake of Alaska’s closure of the Bering Sea snow crab, red king crab, blue king crab fisheries for 2022-2023 season, and likely for coming years, Jamie Goen, executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, hopes that reducing impacts of other gears on crab will hasten the resources’ recovery.

“We don’t believe that crab bycatch is the cause of the snow crab decline,” says Goen. “But we think it could slow down the recovery.”

Goen attributes the rapid and dramatic drop in snow crab abundance to a number of factors, mostly related to climate change.

“We know that climate was a main driver of the snow crab decline,” says Goen. “There was an absence of sea ice at a time when the snow crab population was exploding, and that created a number of problems.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

ALASKA: State of salmon is no rosy picture, UAF professor says

April 26, 2023 — As wild salmon stocks continue to struggle across Alaska, advances in research are creating a clearer picture of the many factors contributing to lower returns, lowers sizes and lower survivability.

That’s the good news, by the way — that there’s a greater understanding of all the bad news impacting wild salmon stocks.

“If really the question is, ‘Do I think that we’re just sort of in a down cycle? The bright side is coming next year or some year down the road?’ I don’t think so,” said Dr. Peter Westley, associate professor of fisheries with the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

Read the full article at Alaska Public Media

Can a North Pacific council overhaul cure Bering Sea bycatch blues?

March 28, 2023 — A mid widespread consternation about the incidental numbers of halibut, crab, salmon and other species that trawlers haul up in the Bering Sea, state and federal management regimes have come under increasing fire.

To some, inaction by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to impose trawl bycatch caps on salmon and crab demands an overhaul of the 11-member panel that votes on management strategies submitted to the Department of Commerce.

One side of the argument has long held that the NPFMC has been corrupt since its inception as part of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (MSFCMA ).

“That whole thing has stunk to high heaven from its beginning,” says Donald Mitchell, an Anchorage attorney and author of numerous books on Alaska Native issues. “There are people in the context who should be in jail.”

David Bayes, a charter boat operator out of Homer and the Facebook administrator of STOP Trawling Now, says that it wasn’t the original plan of the council’s founders to stack the panels with members whose conflicts of interest could undermine other facets of fishery management. But he adds that it evolved quickly as various sectors in the industry scrambled for representation and votes in key fisheries issues.

“If one looks back at the verbiage and intent when the regional councils were formed through the Magnuson-Stevens Act, one sees that lawmakers at the time had the  forward thinking to realize that in order for dynamic and ever-changing fisheries to be regulated, they would need to be regulated by the fishermen themselves.”

Bayes adds that conflict of interest was acceptable at the time the councils were founded, “because that was the only way to have fishermen regulating fishermen.”

But competition for representation among Alaska, Washington and Oregon, and conflicts among gear types quickly changed who was placed in the seats and left the fishermen behind.

“They’re bringing the heaviest hitters they can find, which are often government officials, CEO’s, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-political staff, etcetera,” says Bayes.

Others critical of the council conflicts prescribe replacing members who hold particular economic interests in the fisheries, with members steeped in the objective guise of science and resource conservation. Ratifying the council composition of its members at the federal level, however, could entail stripping the Magnuson-Stevens law down to its bare bones and rebuilding it again.

Not that somebody isn’t trying.

Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, who also chairs the House of Representatives Natural Resource Committee, petitioned through a bill in Congress to add two more voting members to the panel. They would represent smaller local fisheries and villages dependent upon subsistence fishing. The bill failed in Congress, however, and efforts to rejuvenate it or another like it may die a sudden death due to the partisan climate.

“Every time Magnuson-Stevens has been reauthorized it has been a bipartisan effort,” says Peltola, “and I’m hopeful it will be again this time around.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Bristol Bay, Alaska sockeye riding high on strong market, big runs, and bigger forecast

December 13, 2021 — Values continue to rise for the sockeye salmon fishery in Bristol Bay, Alaska as a record string of runs coincides with a strong sockeye salmon market.

According to final figures released by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) this fall, last season’s run – the largest ever in Bristol Bay – topped 71 million fish, with a catch of over 42 million sockeye.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource