Sorted by date Results 351 - 375 of 463
Alaska claimed the nation’s top three fishing ports for seafood catches last year, and wild salmon landings – 95 percent from Alaska – topped one billion pounds, an all time record and a 70 percent increase from 2012. That’s according to the annual Fisheries of the US report for 2013, just released by NOAA Fisheries. Dutch Harbor topped the list for landings for the 17th year running with 753 million pounds of fish crossing the docks last year, valued at nearly $200 million. The Aleutian Islands region ranked second for landings, thanks to the...
Throughout history, arguments over land and water usages have run the gamut from tussles over fences with next door neighbors to shoot outs over inter-state grazing rights in the old west, but when land and water rights pit one country against another, that’s when things really get tricky. That is the situation in Southeast Alaska, where residents find themselves downstream from several massive open pit gold/copper mines being developed in bordering British Columbia. The mines are located in the headwaters of some of Southeast’s largest and...
The Bering Sea crab fleet now stands at 77 vessels, a far cry from the nearly 250 boats before the fishery downsized to catch shares in 2005. Fewer boats means less hands on deck, and as with so many others, the Bering Sea crabbers are ‘graying’ and need to recruit young entrants to sustain the iconic fisheries. To do so, the shareholders have devised a way to give captains and crews a first crack at available crab. “The long term future of the fishery is dependent on bringing young people in. That’s not unique to crab, we are seeing it all ove...
A ballot measure to protect salmon in Southwest hasn’t grabbed as many headlines as pot and campaign politics. Ballot Measure 4, sponsored by the group Bristol Bay Forever, asks voters to give the Alaska legislature final say on any large oil, gas and mining projects in the 36,000 square miles of the Bristol Bay Fisheries Reserve. The initiative does three significant things to the existing reserve, said Dick Mylius, a former state director for the Division of Mining, Land, and Water. “It adds large scale metallic mines to things requiring legi...
I must admit that US Senate candidate Dan Sullivan achieved something I have been trying to accomplish as a fisheries writer for more than a quarter of a century: he gave long legs to media stories about Alaska’s fisheries and, more importantly, it attracted unparalleled recognition of the seafood industry nationwide. How did that come about for a fractious industry that bemoans a la comedian Rodney Dangerfield—“I don’t get no respect?” When Sullivan’s campaign announced that he would not attend a traditional Kodiak fisheries debate sche...
Alaska’s conservative management combined with the grace of Mother Nature are swelling the abundance of two of the state’s largest and most important fisheries. Bering Sea crab scientists and stakeholder met last week to discuss the outlook for Alaska’s biggest crab fisheries that open October 15th. The take away was that the stocks of red king crab, bairdi Tanners and snow crab all showed big increases in mature size classes, based on data from the annual summer surveys. (Only mature male crabs cans be retained in Alaska’s crab fisheries.) Tha...
Naked Truth - World class fisheries depend on clean water and Southeast Alaskans are stripping down to make that point. “Water quality issues are becoming the biggest issues we have to deal with in Southeast. Long ago it was forestry, but as that industry has slowed down and mining and industrial tourism via cruise ships has sped up, our relatively pristine waters face more threats than they ever have,” said Malena Marvin, executive director of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council which has advocated for protecting the world’s largest temp...
“Surprised and disappointed” was the reaction by Senator Mark Begich upon learning that his opponent Dan Sullivan has bowed out of an October 1 fisheries debate in Kodiak. It is the second time this year that Sullivan has declined to participate in the Chamber of Commerce event that has been an election year tradition since 1990. “I can’t recall a time that a candidate has not participated in the Kodiak debate,” Begich said as he readied to head back to DC on Friday. “It’s a must do for statewide candidates. It’s not an option. It’s clear he do...
If Russia won't buy seafood from the US, we won't buy seafood from them. That's the gauntlet being thrown down by Alaska's Congressional Delegation to retaliate against Russia's yearlong ban on food products from the US and several nations. In a letter to President Obama spurred on by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the Delegation wrote: "Our purpose here is to ask that your Administration respond to the Russian action with a two-step process. First, we ask that you use all diplomatic means available to...
More than 100 researchers and three dozen projects are underway to find clues as to why Alaska’s Chinook salmon production has declined since 2007. The ambitious effort marks the start of a state-backed five year, $30 million Chinook Salmon Research Initiative that includes 12 major river systems from Southeast Alaska to the Yukon. And while it will be years before the project yields definitive data, the scientists have pinned down some early findings. “It’s not the fresh water production of the juvenile Chinook that is the reason this decli...
Seafood is by far Alaska’s top export and as it heads overseas, global politics play a big role in making sales sink or swim. That dynamic took center stage last week when Russia banned imports of foods for one year from the US, Canada, Europe, Norway and Australia in retaliation for sanctions imposed due to its aggressive actions in Ukraine. It is a direct hit to Alaska, which last year exported nearly 20 million pounds of seafood to Russia, valued at more than $60 million. The primary product it hurts is pink and chum salmon roe; Russia is a...
Breached mine tailings dams be damned! As millions of Fraser River sockeye salmon head for spawning beds polluted by a brew of metal toxins oozing from the Mount Polley gold/copper mine disaster in British Columbia, Republican candidates vying for US Senate want environmental regulators to butt out of Alaska’s mining development decisions. The three men hoping to unseat Mark Begich faced off last week for a Rural Alaska Republican Candidates forum hosted by KYUK/Bethel. To questions posed by moderator Ben Matheson, candidates Joe Miller, M...
Fishermen won’t need special permits to hose off their decks thanks to a bill moving through the US Senate. That’s garnered a big sigh of relief from harvesters across the nation and kudos to a rare show of bipartisanship by coastal lawmakers, notably Senators Begich of Alaska and Marco Rubio of Florida. “The Vessel Incidental Discharge Act extends a moratorium that was already granted to the commercial fishing industry from 2008, and it’s been up every couple of years. It would extend this moratorium indefinitely so commercial fishing vessels...
It came as no surprise when the first price postings last week tanked for Bristol Bay sockeye salmon to $1.20 a pound, with an extra 15 cents for chilled fish. That compares to a base price of $1.50 a pound last year. The Bristol Bay catch topped 28 million reds by Friday, 11 million more than projected, and the fish were still coming. (Alaska’s total sockeye salmon catch as of July 18 was over 37 million and counting.) Demand for the fish is strong by both foreign and U.S. buyers, but the downward press on prices stems from lots of c...
Ocean chemists are calling it “revolutionary technology” as unmanned gliders track how melting glaciers may be intensifying corrosive waters in Prince William Sound. “It’s been hugely successful. We’ve flown these things all over inside and outside of Prince William Sound, we’ve had great control over them, we’ve been able to move them to exactly where we want them to be. They are making thousands of measurements all over,” said Jeremy Mathis, director of the Ocean Environment Research Division at the Pacific Marine Environmental L...
With salmon fisheries going on every summer all across Alaska, you might wonder why so much attention is focused on Bristol Bay. The answer can be summed up in two words: sockeye salmon. Bristol Bay is home to the largest red salmon runs in the world and sockeye is Alaska’s most valuable salmon fishery by far. In most years, well over one-third of Alaska’s total earnings from salmon fishing stem from Bristol Bay. Whereas other fishing regions like Copper River, Cook Inlet, Kodiak, Southeast and the Alaska Peninsula might get sockeye cat...
Salmon takes center stage in Alaska every summer, but many more fisheries also are going on all across the state. The world’s biggest sockeye salmon run is expected to surge into Bristol Bay any day, where a catch of about 17 million reds is projected. Elsewhere, the annual summer troll fishery in Southeast Alaska kicks off on July first with a target of just over 166,000 Chinook salmon. Lots of crab fisheries are underway each summer— Dungeness fishing began on June 15 in Southeast where a harvest of 2.25 million pounds is expected. The reg...
Uncertainty best sums up the mood as fishermen and processors await the world’s biggest sockeye salmon run at Bristol Bay. In fact, it’s being called the riskiest season in recent memory in the 2014 Sockeye Market Analysis, a biannual report done by the McDowell Group for the fishermen-run Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association. As presaged by buyer pushback at seafood trade shows earlier this year at Boston and Brussels, for the first time since 2010 the starting price for the first sockeyes from Copper River took a $0.50/lb dip...
You’ve heard it before and you’ll hear it again: The seafood industry is Alaska’s largest private employer, putting more people to work than mining, oil/gas, timber and tourism combined. The annual revenue the seafood sector contributes to State coffers is second only to Big Oil. So where does the seafood industry rank for the major candidates running for Alaska Governor and the US Senate? Here’s what a thorough look at each of their campaign websites reveals, starting with the race for Governor (all in alphabetical order)— Byron Mallott (...
Salmon prices at wholesale show marked seasonal variations for both wild and farmed fish. It’s a pattern that has been tracked for decades by Urner Barry, the nation’s oldest commodity market watcher in business since 1895. The prices tend to decline through June, July, August and September and they begin rising again from November through the following April or May. Two things drive the well-established pattern, said market expert John Sackton who publishes Seafood.com, an Urner-Barry partner. “There’s a growth cycle for farmed salmon when th...
If genetically modified salmon gets a green light by the federal government, it will be labeled as such if US Senators on both sides of the aisle have their way. The Senate Appropriations Committee last week passed the bipartisan Murkowski-Begich amendment requiring that consumers be advised of what they are buying. During testimony, Senator Murkowski questioned if the so called Frankenfish can even be called a real salmon. “This takes a transgenic Atlantic salmon egg, which has genes from an ocean pout that is somewhat akin to an eel, and it c...
Salmon season is just getting underway, but seafood companies are still selling last summer’s record catch of 226 million pink salmon - and it has prompted lots of creative thinking. “The challenge is to market all this fish and still maintain the value,” said Tyson Fick, communications director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI), the state’s lone marketing arm. “It wouldn’t be any problem for the producers just to flood the market, and then we would see a tremendous downward pressure in years to come. More so, we see this as...
Trollers in Southeast Alaska provide fresh king salmon nearly year round, but the runs of reds and kings to the Copper River mark the “official start” of Alaska’s salmon season. On May 15 the fleet of more than 570 fishermen set out their nets on a beautiful day for the first 12 hour opener amidst the usual hype for the first fish. “We’ve got a lot of people riding around in the sky checking out the conditions, and a lot of people are getting ready to move the fish to other places for First Fish celebrations,” said Kim Ryals, executive d...
The debate over which sector – commercial or recreational fishing – provides the bigger economic punch can finally be put to rest. The annual ‘Fisheries Economics of the US’ report by the Dept. of Commerce shows once and for all that in terms of values, jobs, sales and incomes the commercial sector far outscores recreational fishing. A breakdown of the extensive report by market analyst John Sackton shows that in 2012, commercial fishing had $140 billion in sales compared to $58 billion for sport fishing. And for the value contributed to the...
The basic laws of supply and demand are resulting in a nice pay day for Alaska halibut and sablefish harvesters. Prices for both fish are up by more than a dollar a pound compared to the same time last year. Fresh halibut has been moving smoothly and demand is steady since the fishery opened in early March, said a major Kodiak buyer, where dock prices were reported at $6 a pound for ten to 20 pounders, $6.25 for halibut weighing 20 to 40 pounds, and $6.50 for “40 ups.” At Homer and in Southeast Alaska, halibut prices have yet to drop below six...
