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Hundreds of fishery stakeholders and scientists will gather in Anchorage next week as the state Board of Fisheries (BOF) begins its annual meeting cycle with a two-day work session. The seven-member BOF sets the rules for the state’s subsistence, commercial, sport and personal use fisheries. It meets four to six times each year in various communities on a three-year rotation; this year the focus is on Kodiak and Cook Inlet. The fish board and the public also will learn the latest on how a changing climate and off kilter ocean chemistry are a...
Federal agencies are meeting now through next March to define U.S. dietary guidelines for 2020-2025, and a high powered group of doctors and nutritionists are making sure the health benefits of seafood are front and center. For the first time in the 40 year history of the program, the dietary guidelines committee has posted the questions they are going to consider. They include the role of seafood in the neurocognitive development in pregnant moms for their babies, and in the diet of kids from b...
Bering Sea crabbers saw upticks in crab recruits during a good fishery for the 2018/2019 season, along with strong prices. The crab season opens in mid-October for red king crab, Tanners and snow crab (opilio), and while fishing goes fast for red kings in order to fill orders for year-end markets in Japan, the fleet typically drops pots for the other species in January. Crabbers said they saw strong showings of younger crab poised to enter the three fisheries. Only male crabs of a certain size are able to be retained for sale. “For Bristol Bay...
The Panhandle plans to be the next Alaska region to give new life to old fishing gear by sending it to plastic recycling centers. The tons of nets and lines piled up in local lots and landfills will become the raw material for soda bottles, cell phone cases, sunglasses, skateboards, swimsuits and more. Juneau, Haines, Petersburg and possibly Sitka have partnered with Net Your Problem to launch an effort this year to send old or derelict seine and gillnets to a recycler in Richmond, British Columbia. “We’re going to be working in a new loc...
When most people think of Alaska crab, they envision huge boats pulling up “7 bys” for millions of pounds of bounty in the Bering Sea. (7 bys refers to the 7’x7’x3’ size of the crab pots.) But it is the smaller, local crab fisheries that each winter give a big economic boost to dozens of coastal communities across the Gulf of Alaska. They occur at a time when many fishing towns are feeling a lull while awaiting the March start of halibut and herring openers. The gearing up means a nice pulse of extra work and money for just about every bus...
Alaska salmon fishermen harvested 114.5 million fish during the 2018 season for a payout of $595 million at the docks. That’s down 13 percent from the value of last year’s salmon catch. A preliminary wrap up of the 2018 salmon season by the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game provides summaries for every fishing region across the state. It shows that sockeye salmon accounted for nearly 60 percent of the total value and 44 percent of the statewide salmon harvest. A catch of 50 million sockeyes added up to nearly $350 million for Alaska fishermen. Chu...
Hatchery reprieve - Two proposals to limit production of hatchery salmon were rejected by the Alaska Board of Fisheries at a special meeting on Oct. 16 in Anchorage. Both claimed that hatchery fish are straying and intermingling with wild stocks and are out competing wild salmon for food in the open ocean. Typically, over 30 percent of Alaska’s total salmon harvest each year are fish that began their lives in state hatcheries, mostly pinks and chums. Longtime studies by state fishery scientists show some straying of the fish but in very s...
Crab catches dominate Alaska’s fish news in early October as boats gear up for mid-month openers in the Bering Sea. As expected, crabbers will see increased catches for snow crab after the annual survey showed a 60 percent boost in market sized males and nearly the same for females (only male crabs can be retained for sale). Managers announced this week a catch of 27.5 million pounds of snow crab, up 47 percent from last season. Even better, biologists documented one of the largest numbers of small snow crab poised to enter the fishery t...
April 26, 1918 Notice Is Hereby Given, That all owners of lots situated within the corporate limits of the Town of Petersburg must have all rubbish cleared from their property by Friday, May 10, 1918. Any rubbish remaining on lots after that date I will have removed and the expense of such work will be taxed to the property. It is further ordered that no tin cans or other rubbish shall be placed on the beach or tideflats, but must be dumped from the docks or floats below low tide. Hans Wick, Health Officer. April 23, 1943 In a previous Student...
The nation’s top fishing port welcomed seven European seafood buyers in late January – all women – and showed off its massive seafood industry during peak operations at Dutch Harbor. The women, whose companies import more than $60 million in U.S. seafood sales, hailed from France, Germany, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, and the U.K., said Hannah Lindoff, international program coordinator for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, which hosted the trip. “They are interested in Alaska pollock, cod, surimi, octopus, salmon, roe, black cod and kin...
Millennials are now the nation’s “peak spenders” and they are gravitating towards healthier eating which favors more seafood. “We see year over year that there is this cohort aged 35 to 54 that is going to be spending far more across categories, including food expenditures, than any others,” said Will Notini, consumer insights manager at Chicago-based Technomic, a leading market tracker for over 50 years.” The company has contracted with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute to identify trends in seafood consumption and how best to position...
KODIAK, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska program is in its final year of an experiment to determine whether hatchery-raised red king crab can increase wild stock. The Alaska King Crab Research, Rehabilitation and Biology Program started its work in 2009 with a goal of enhancing depressed king crab populations throughout Alaska, the Kodiak Daily Mirror reported Tuesday. So far, the program has achieved efficient production of juvenile crab, conducted research on their behavior and completed a number of small out-planting releases. Dr. Robert Foy, d...
October is National Seafood Month, a distinction bestowed by Congress 30 years ago to recognize one of America’s oldest industries. Alaska merits special recognition because its fishing fleets provide 65 percent of the nation’s wild caught seafood, more than all of the other states combined. Ironically, there is little to no fanfare in Alaska during seafood month. My hometown of Kodiak, for example, (the #2 U.S. fishing port) never gives a shout out to our fishermen and processors, nor do local restaurants celebrate seafood on their Oct...
Robots are cutting up snow crabs in Canada, a sign of things to come in the seafood processing industry. Overall, seafood processing has a relatively small robotic involvement compared to other sectors. Robots have yet to make it into any of Alaska’s 176 fish processing shops, but the lure of reduced production costs, increased fish quality and crews of worker-bots is turning the tide. The CBC reports that the world’s first crab plant robot began work this spring in a plastic chamber about the size of a shipping container in remote Newfoundland...
The U.S. seafood industry’s contribution to the nation’s economy sank a bit, while Alaska’s output increased slightly and dollar values held steady. An eagerly anticipated annual report released last week by NOAA Fisheries measures the economic impacts of U.S. commercial and recreational fisheries. It highlights values, jobs, and sales for 2015, along with a 10 year snapshot of comparisons. A second report provides the status of U.S. fish stocks for 2016. The Fisheries Economics Report shows that including imports, U.S. commercial fishi...
Candied salmon ice cream … poke snack kits … salmon bisque baby food … fish skin tote bags and pet oils – Those are among the more than 20 new items to be revealed this week at the industry’s most popular annual seafood soiree: the Alaska Symphony of Seafood, where the public is invited to taste and vote on their favorites. Now in its 24th year, the event attracts commercially ready entries from major companies to small “Mom and Pop’s” who frequently take home the top prizes. Bambino’s Baby Food of Anchorage, for example, won grand prize for it...
It was fast and furious for Alaska’s premiere crab fishery with the fleet catching the nearly eight-million pound red king crab quota at Bristol Bay in less than three weeks. The overall take was down 15 percent from the 2015 fishery and will likely fetch record prices when all sales are made. “The only price we have is an advance price so fishermen can pay fuel, bait and other trip expenses. The final price will be determined from now to January,” said Jake Jacobsen, executive director of the Inter-Cooperative Exchange, which represents 70 pe...
It was a rough salmon season at most Alaska regions this summer, with Bristol Bay being the big exception. While sockeye catches exceeded expectations, all other species came up short. But salmon stakeholders can take heart that the fish is moving swimmingly to market. “The demand is there. The world still recognizes that this is the best place to go for the highest quality salmon, including pinks,” said Tyson Fick, Communications Director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. “Sales have been brisk this fall,” added Tom Sunderl...
Fish on! The lure of reaching a statewide radio audience has once again attracted a full slate of political hopefuls to Kodiak for its popular fisheries debate. On Wednesday, October 12, five candidates for U.S. Senate will travel to the nation’s #2 fishing port to share their knowledge and ideas on a single topic: Alaska’s seafood industry. “It’s a great service to Kodiak, to our fishing communities and to Alaska in general,” said Trevor Brown, director of the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce, host of the event. “Fishing is the state’s lar...
Increasingly corrosive oceans are raising more red flags for Bering Sea crab stocks. Results from a first ever, two year project on baby Tanner crabs show that higher ocean acidity (pH) affects both their shell production and the immune systems. Bairdi Tanner crab, the larger cousins of snow crab, are growing into one of Alaska’s largest crab fisheries with a nearly 20 million pound harvest this season. “We put mom crabs from the Bering Sea in a tank, and allowed her embryos to grow and hatch in an acidified treatment,” explained project leade...
Catches for Alaska’s premier crab fisheries in the Bering Sea could take a dip this year based on results from the annual summer surveys. The annual report by NOAA Fisheries called “The Eastern Bering Sea Continental Shelf Bottom Trawl Survey: Results from Commercial Crab Species” (long dubbed the ‘crab map’) shows tables reflecting big drops over the past year in abundance of legal sized males for both snow crab and red king crab at Bristol Bay. (Only legal males are allowed to be retained for sale.) But there is a bright side -- both stoc...
“Upcycling” seafood byproducts is the business model for Tidal Vision, a Juneau-based company of five entrepreneurs who are making waves with their line of aquatic leather and performance textiles. The start-up is making wallets, belts and other products from sheets of salmon skins using an all-natural, proprietary tanning formula from vegetable oils and other eco-friendly ingredients. “We can produce the same quality and durability products with no formaldehyde, no chrome based tanning chemicals or EPA regulated chemicals to dispose of. And we...
This year’s Tanner crab season saw its largest harvest in 15 years while prices dropped. Preliminary estimates show the 2014-15 Tanner fishery in Registration Area A (Southeast Alaska) is 1.42 million pounds with 84 permit holders, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game Lead Crab Biologist Joe Stratman. “This harvest exceeded last season’s harvest by 170,000 pounds, and is the largest Tanner harvest in 15 seasons,” he said. “You have to go back to the 1999-2000 season to find a larger harvest of Tanner crab in Southeast Alaska.... Full story
Alaska still has its share of naysayers who will quibble about the seafood industry’s importance to our great state. They dismiss the fact that fishing was Alaska’s first industry and was fish that spawned the push to statehood. “The canned salmon plants started in the 1870s and by the early 20th century, canned salmon was the largest industry and generated 80% of the territorial tax revenues. It had a position in the state economy that oil enjoys today,” said fisheries historian Bob King. The fisheries that Alaska inherited from the federal...
Alaska seafood innovators are getting serious about ‘head to tail/inside and out’ usages of fish parts, and they see gold in all that gurry that ends up on cutting line floors. Fish oils, pet treats, animal feeds, gelatins, fish scales that put the shimmer in nail polish – “almost anything that can be made out of seafood byproducts has increased in value tremendously in the last few years,” said Peter Bechtel, a US Dept. of Agriculture researcher formerly at the University of Alaska. In today’s climate of planet consciousness “co-product...
