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Kodiak’s roe herring fishery began on April 15 with little notice and rumors of fire sale prices. The fleet of 22 seiners was down a bit; they are competing for a harvest of 5,800 short tons, similar to the past five years. No gillnetters had signed up for the herring fishery. Test fishing from the east side of the island were showing nice roe counts, said James Jackson, herring manager at ADF&G in Kodiak. “We are fishing a predominantly older age class of mostly nine year olds and it looks like we are hitting those fish right now. They are...
Alaska salmon permits in many fisheries have tripled in value since 2002 and the upward trend continues. An overview of April listings by four brokers shows that Bristol Bay drift net permits are valued at nearly $134,000 by the State, and listed for sale at $150,000 to $170,000. That compares to $90,000 this past January. At Southeast Alaska, seine permits are the priciest in the state at over $300,000. That’s an increase of fifty grand since January. The asking price for Prince William Sound seine cards exceeds $200,000 compared to the $...
Alaska's total salmon catch for 2014 is projected to be down by almost half of last year's record haul. State fishery managers are calling for an all species harvest of just under 133 million salmon, a 47% drop from last year's whopping 283 million fish. A pink catch of 95 million pushed the record last year and it is pinks that will bring the numbers down this summer. Pink salmon run in on/off year cycles and this year the catch is pegged at about 75 million, a 67% decrease from last summer's 2...
Kodiak seiners will be scooping up pollock in their nets starting this week. You heard right. Seiners have a chance to test the waters to determine if a directed pollock fishery makes sense for that type of gear in the Gulf. Except for a small jig fishery, the only pollock fishery operating in state waters (out to three miles) is at Prince William Sound where trawlers this year have an 8.5 million pound catch. “The initial seine opportunity will just run from April 11 through June 8 so we don’t overlap with salmon season. And during that tim...
Nine names are vying for three seats on the state Board of Fisheries, including six newcomers. That gives Governor Parnell the unique opportunity to replace a majority of the seven-member Fish Board, should he choose to do so, and should the Alaska legislature go along with it - an unlikely scenario. It took filing a Freedom of Information request and a 10 day wait to get the names of the Fish Board hopefuls, said veteran legislative watch dog Bob Tkacz in his weekly Laws for the Sea. They include the three incumbents - John Jensen of...
Alaska’s salmon catch of 273 million salmon set a record last year – and so did the number of salmon returning home to state hatcheries. The 2013 Fisheries Enhancement Report by the AK Dept. of Fish and Game shows that a return of 112 million hatchery reared salmon contributed 36 percent to the state’s total salmon harvest. The breakdown by species was 63% for chum salmon, 38% for pinks, 23% for Chinook salmon, 22% for cohos and 5% of Alaska’s sockeye salmon catch can be credited to hatchery returns. Unlike farmed fish, which are crammed...
Co-products is the big new buzz word in the seafood industry as more companies move towards ‘head to tails’ usages for fish. “For instance, the oils we are producing now from pollock livers has become so valuable in capsules and other human nutraceutical products, it makes no sense to call the livers a “byproduct” of the fillets or surimi. All of it is important in the puzzle of how to maximize the value of each fish caught,” said Alex Oliveira, a food specialist at the Kodiak Seafood and Marine Science Center, a satellite campus of the UAF...
Last Wednesday marked the start of Lent, a time of fasting, soul searching and repentance for hundreds of millions of Christians around the world. And what the burst in the holiday sales season from Thanksgiving to Christmas means to retailers, Lent means the same to the seafood industry. The 40-day Lenten season, which this year runs from March 5th to Easter Sunday on April 20th, dates back to the 4th century, and it has been customary to forego meat ever since. While nearly all seafood enjoys a surge of interest during Lent, the most...
Just as Nero fiddled while Rome burned, US policy makers are quibbling over climate issues as bivalves dissolve in an increasingly corrosive Pacific Ocean. Any kid’s chemistry set will show that big changes are occurring in seawater throughout the world. As the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning outputs (primarily coal), it increases acidity to a point where shellfish can’t survive. It is referred to as ocean acidification (OA) and results in sea creatures’ inability to grow skeletons and protective shells. The proce...
Bait is always a big expenditure for many fishing businesses and pollock could help cut costs for Alaska halibut longliners who fish in the Gulf. Researchers have tested pollock in two projects to see if it might replace pricier chum salmon as halibut bait. Fish biologists use over 300,000 pounds of chums in their stock surveys each year, costing nearly half a million dollars. The baits are used at more than 1,200 testing stations from Oregon to the Bering Sea. A pilot study three years ago in the central Gulf and off of British Columbia...
Alaska seafood is free of radiation stemming from Japan’s 2011 tsunami and Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster. That was the take home message from the Alaska Dept. of Conservation to the state Senate Resources Committee at a recent hearing. Citing information from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Pacific states including Hawaii, California, Oregon and Washington, as well as Health Canada, “all have demonstrated there are no levels of radiation that are of a pub...
Eleven new seafood products from seven companies are set to be showcased at the upcoming Symphony of Seafood galas in Seattle and Anchorage. In its 21 years the event has introduced and promoted hundreds of new Alaska seafood items to the marketplace. “Developing new products is really hard,” said Julie Decker, new executive director of the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation which hosts the event. (Decker replaces Jim Browning who retired,) “It costs a lot of money, takes a lot of time and attention, and sometimes the products are wonde...
A measure aimed at banning salmon setnetting is being held afloat by backers. The ban includes the Anchorage area, much of the Kenai Peninsula, Valdez and Juneau. It would completely eliminate Cook Inlet setnetters and affect roughly 500 fishing families in all. Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell decided two weeks ago to not allow the question to go before Alaska voters as a ballot initiative in 2016. The newly formed Kenai-based Alaska Fisheries Conservation Alliance followed up with an appeal filed in Alaska Superior Court. “In a measure based on co...
Good science should drive all fisheries decisions, and Lite Guv Mead Treadwell says he has the chops to maintain a true course. Treadwell, a Republican who hopes to unseat Democratic US Senator Mark Begich in November’s election, paid a recent visit to Kodiak and “talked fish” in a brief interview. Few can claim Treadwell’s experience and understanding of the Arctic, where he has represented Alaska on U.S. Delegations in three circumpolar government groups, and been a director of the Institute of the North. He said he “doesn’t expect any...
Walmart reps were in Juneau last week to learn more about Alaska’s salmon fisheries, and to make sure management is up to snuff with the company’s sustainability criteria. Alaska’s salmon industry opted out of the high priced certifying program that Walmart uses as its seafood purchasing standard (London-based Marine Stewardship Council). Alaska instead adopted the UN sanctioned Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM) program for ‘well managed’ certification, a label that has become practically a requirement in most seafood buying and selling to...
Salmon will always be the heart of Alaska’s fisheries. That’s why many people think of summer as “the fishing season.” But that’s not the case. The deep of winter is when Alaska’s largest fisheries get underway each year. On January first, hundreds of boats with hook and line gear or big pots will begin plying the waters of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska for Pacific cod, rockfish and other groundfish. Then on January 20th trawlers take to the seas to target Alaska pollock, the world’s largest food fishery with harvests near three billion...
Alaska’s seafood industry worked hard again in 2013 to ramp up its message to policy makers, most of whom still tend to overlook the industry’s economic significance to the state and beyond. What is that message? That “the industry” is made up of thousands of small businesses – the fishing boats that each supports one or several families. That the seafood companies in coastal towns provide one of the state’s biggest tax bases. And together, fishing and processing provide more jobs in Alaska than oil/gas, mining, tourism and timber combined. S...
It’s traditional during the Christmas season to decorate a downtown with lights – for Kodiak and other coastal communities “downtown” means the boat harbor. This month, alongside the local businesses on shore, Kodiak’s floating storefronts will be showcased in the downtown lighting festivities – meaning the 650 or so fishing businesses that each support one or several Kodiak families. Think of it as a mall in a marina! The revamped Harbor Lights Festival is an old theme with a new twist, said Toby Sullivan, director of the Kodiak Maritime Mu...
It comes as no surprise that the recommendations for next year’s halibut catches are down again for all regions except Southeast Alaska. Fishery scientists with the International Pacific Halibut Commission have recommended a 2014 coast wide commercial catch total of 24.45 million pounds, a 21% decrease from the 31 million pounds allowed for this year. That includes catches in Alaska, British Columbia and the Pacific Coast states. In a summation at a meeting in Seattle last week, the IPHC said: “The results of the 2013 stock assessment ind...
Will Alaska’s halibut catches be cut again next year? That’s the big question as the industry braces for the International Pacific Halibut Commission’s interim meeting this week in Seattle. By all accounts, there appear to be lots of halibut in Alaska waters, but their unusually slow growth rates have forced a downward press on catches for nearly a decade. The Alaska catch total this year was about 22 million pounds. Also up for review – 22 fishermen from remote communities in the mid-Aleutians (4A) are requesting an increase in their halibut...
More Alaskans are taking to the fishing life, as indicated by upward ticks in harvesting jobs for three years running. That’s according to the November Alaska Economic Trends by the state Labor Department, which provides a look at the numbers of “boots on deck” by region and fishery. A first: economists Jack Cannon and Josh Warren also looked at how much time is put into fishing pre- and post-season prep work and clean up, and what jobs fishermen do during the off times. Some highlights: Each month last year, on average 8,189 fishermen plied...
Americans remained true to their seafood favorites last year with shrimp, canned tuna and salmon topped the list of the 10 most popular seafoods. That’s according to the National Fisheries Institute which compiles the list each year based on data from the government’s US Fisheries Report. Following the top three are tilapia, Alaska pollock, Pangasius, crab, cod, catfish and clams. Looking more closely at the numbers shows that for the first time in five years, crab consumption began to increase again after a steady decline since 2007. Per...
Keeping tabs on how many and what kinds of fish are coming over the rails is a key tool in Alaska’s highly successful fishery management programs. For nearly four decades, that has been the job of fishery observers who track everything that is hauled aboard trawlers, crabbers and most other fishing vessels 50 feet and up. Starting this year and for the first time ever, observers were placed aboard smaller boats as well as Alaska’s hook and line fleet to start getting information about “removals” in that gear group’s fisheries. The primary f...
The Bering Sea crab fleet was ready to head to the fishing grounds over the weekend after the government shutdown and unissued licenses stalled the Oct. 15 start of the crab season. Skippers of the 80 boats estimated the extra time tied up in Dutch Harbor cost them each $1,000 per day. Meanwhile, the situation was even worse for small boat crabbers at Kodiak and the Westward region who learned there would not even be a Tanner fishery come January. “It is not unexpected,” said Mark Stichert, a shellfish biologist at ADF&G in Kodiak. “We...
As expected, Alaska’s 2013 salmon catch is one for the record books. Early tallies by state fishery managers show that fishermen caught 272 million salmon this summer, smashing the previous record of 221 salmon in 2005. The fishery was powered by a whopping catch of 219 million pinks. In terms of money, the preliminary harvest value of $691 ranks second to the $724 million of 1988, called an “outlier” season by salmon managers. They also predict that once all post season bonuses and price adjustments are determined by salmon processors, the 2...
