Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Fishermen’s group calls Corps’ analysis of potential tailings dam failure at Pebble ‘woefully inadequate’

March 4, 2019 — A new study commissioned by a Bristol Bay seafood marketing group paints a doomsday scenario if the bulk tailings dam at the proposed Pebble mine ever suffered a catastrophic breach, an outcome the U.S Army Corps of Engineers has called very remote and one the mine developer has taken steps to avoid.

Billions of gallons of mud would smother valley bottoms, covering vast stretches of salmon habitat, according to an executive summary released Friday. Finely ground-up waste material from mining would travel downstream and spill into Bristol Bay more than 200 river miles from the mine site, threatening the valuable salmon fishery.

“Given the fine-grained nature of the material, it is extremely likely that these tailings would continue to Bristol Bay, where they would eventually settle out in the Nushagak River estuary,” the summary says.

Read the full story at Anchorage Daily News

Value of Bristol Bay salmon rises, even as the fish shrink

July 31, 2018 — 2018 has been a year for the Bristol Bay record books as total sockeye run surpassed 61 million on Thursday, putting it just a half-million fish behind the largest run of 61.7 million in 1980.

Bert Lewis oversees commercial fisheries in Bristol Bay, Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He’s impressed at the strength of the Nushagak district’s run and even at Bristol Bay’s east-side districts, which came in “late but solidly.”

“That stands out really statewide where sockeye runs have not been strong. I know that westward Kodiak area is meeting their goals, but with very little fishing opportunity. Cook Inlet right now is under restrictions,” Lewis said. “King salmon statewide are of concern with low returns, but meeting goals solidly in Bristol Bay.”

King salmon escapement was strong enough that nearly 100 anglers filled the Nushagak River this June for a new king derby, even as poor returns canceled a handful of derbies in southeast Alaska.

Lewis said the prevailing theory for Bristol Bay’s bounty is “the blob” — an unusually warm water mass that filled the northern Gulf of Alaska as this year’s returning fish migrated out to sea a few years back. It disrupted food webs that support the forage base that juvenile salmon feed on in waters across southeast Alaska and the north Gulf.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media