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The 2021 tanner crab harvest in Southeast Alaska was the fourth largest tanner harvest in the last 15 seasons, according to preliminary data from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. In Registration Area A, which includes the inside waters of Southeast Alaska, the preliminary estimate of harvest for the 2021 tanner crab fishery is 1.26 million pounds of reported landings among 70 permit holders. Additionally, the harvest exceeded the 2020 run by 52,500 pounds, according to preliminary data....
OBI Seafoods employed about 90 local residents for the 2021 tanner crab season in an effort to prevent the possible spread of COVID-19 in the community, according to Plant Manager Nikolai Wendel. Additionally, the production season lasted just 10 days. Any employees who would have been brought into town from outside of the community would have had to arrive two weeks prior to the season to quarantine themselves. "To bring a crew up this early and quarantine them for two weeks for ten days worth...
Alaska fishermen displaced by the Covid pandemic are being recruited for seafaring jobs aboard U.S. cargo barges, tankers, towboats, military support vessels, research and cruise ships and more. The Seafarers International Union (SIU) is searching nationally for 300 apprentice workers on the vessels they are contracted to crew. Recruiters tout Alaskans as being at the top of their list. “The reason for that is people from Alaska come with a work ethic already. They've been working since they could stand up. And that's why they're so good,” sai...
Mar. 18 – Jerome Edward Dahl Jr. entered a guilty plea to charges of size limit for Tanner Crab, first offense. The court sentenced the defendant to a $3,000 fine with $1500 suspended, 1-year probation, pay $20 surcharge and ordered the forfeiture of the crab. Mar. 17 – Osvaldo Mulero-Cruz entered a guilty plea to charges of driving without a valid operator’s license. The court sentenced the defendant to a $150 fine that will be dismissed if the defendant can provide a valid driver’s license to the court. The defendant will pay a $20 surchar...
The Registration Area A (Southeast Alaska) Tanner crab harvest strategy establishes commercial Tanner crab fishing season length using estimated mature male biomass and the number of registered pots at the start of the fishery. As of 9:00 a.m., Wednesday, February 17, 2021, there are 58 pot vessels and 4,640 pots registered for the 2020/2021 commercial Tanner crab fishery. At the current estimated mature male biomass and effort level of 4,640 registered pots, the harvest strategy provides one...
A pre-hire employee for the 2021 tanner and golden king crab season at OBI Seafoods has tested positive for COVID-19, according to a joint press release from the Petersburg Borough and Petersburg Medical Center on Monday. The individual tested positive during the cannery's asymptomatic testing of all incoming employees, according to a press release from OBI Seafoods. The person is currently asymptomatic and is in isolation. Employees that may have come into contact with the infected individual...
Seafood sales “are on fire” in America’s supermarkets and one king salmon from Southeast Alaska is worth the same as two barrels of oil. ($116.16 for a troll caught Chinook salmon averaging 11 pounds at the docks vs. $115.48 for 2 barrels of oil at $57.74/barrel on Feb.3) As more Covid-conscious customers opted in 2020 for seafood’s proven health benefits, salmon powered sales at fresh seafood counters. Frozen and “on the shelf” seafoods also set sales records, and online ordering tripled to top $1 billion. Those are some takeaways from a Nati...
A pre-hire employee for the 2021 tanner and golden king crab season at OBI Seafoods has tested positive for COVID-19, according to a joint press release from the Petersburg Borough and Petersburg Medical Center. The individual tested positive during the cannery’s asymptomatic testing of all incoming employees, according to a press release from OBI Seafoods. The person is currently asymptomatic and is in isolation. Employees that may have come into contact with the infected individual have b... Full story
The number of boots on deck in Alaska has declined and most fisheries have lost jobs over the past five years. Overall, Alaska’s harvesting sector ticked downward by 848 jobs from 2015 through 2019. A snapshot of fish harvesting jobs is featured in the November edition of Alaska Economic Trends by the state Dept. of Labor. The findings show that after hitting a peak of 8,501 harvesters in 2015, fishing jobs then fell to around 8,000 for the next two years before dropping again in 2018 to about 7,600. In 2019, average monthly fishing e...
Many Alaska fishermen are likely to be involved in regulatory meetings next spring instead of being out on the water. And Alaska legislators will be distracted by hearings for hundreds of unconfirmed appointments as they tackle contentious budgets and other pressing issues. New dates have been set for state Board of Fisheries meetings that were bumped from later this year due to corona virus concerns. During the same time, along with four unconfirmed seats on the fish board, the Alaska legislature also will be tasked with considering nominees...
Aug. 31 – Brandon A. Burrell appeared in Felony First hearings on charges of burglary in the 1st degree, criminal mischief in the 3rd degree and sexual assault in the 1st degree. The public defender was appointed and the preliminary hearing was set for Oct. 12. The defendant was released on $15,000 performance bail along with other conditions. Sept. 1 – Judge Carey sentenced Brina Compton to 12-months jail time, gave credit for time served and resuspended all remaining time after the defendant admitted to all allegations read before the court....
Bering Sea crabbers will soon know how much they can pull up in their pots for the upcoming season that opens October 15. This week the Crab Plan Team, advisers to state and federal fishery managers who jointly manage the fisheries, will review stock assessments and other science used to set the catches for Bristol Bay red king crab, Tanners and snow crab. Normally, the biggest driver would be data from the annual summer trawl surveys that have tracked the stocks for decades. But this year, the...
All systems are go for keeping close tabs on fish and crab stocks in waters managed by the state, meaning out to three miles. While constraints from the coronavirus resulted in nearly all annual stock surveys being cut in deeper waters overseen by the federal government, it’s “closer to normal” closer to shore. “While it’s not business as usual, we are conducting business in as close to normal fashion as we can,” said Forrest Bowers, deputy director of the commercial fisheries division of the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game. “We have kept all...
Surveys of Alaska's fish, crab and halibut stocks in the Bering Sea have been called off or reduced due to constraints and dangers posed by the coronavirus. In what they called an "unprecedented" move, NOAA Fisheries announced in late May that five Alaska surveys will be cancelled this summer "due to the uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the unique challenges those are creating for the agency." NOAA said in a statement that they found "no way to move forward with a survey plan...
Sherry Tamone, a professor of biology at University of Alaska Southeast, held a virtual lecture this month as part of the Petersburg Science Series on her research in crab species in Southeast and the effect that warming sea temperatures has on their molt timing. Crustaceans grow in size through a process called molting, said Tamone. Molting is when a crustacean sheds its exoskeleton and builds a newer, bigger one. The process begins when they're newborn larva and lasts through adulthood. When i...
The State of Alaska wants input on plans to distribute nearly $24.5 million in federal disaster relief funds for stakeholders and communities hurt by the 2018 Gulf of Alaska cod crash. Better make it quick – the deadline to comment is April 10. Cod is Alaska’s second largest groundfish harvest (after pollock), but the Gulf stock dropped by 80% in 2018 following a three year heatwave that disrupted food webs, fish metabolism and egg survival on the ocean floor. It combined to push down cod catches to just 28.8 million pounds, compared to nea...
The U.S. seafood industry received a $300 million assist from the $2 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed by Congress on March 27, and a wide coalition of industry stakeholders is hoping for more. Fishery recipients in the relief bill include tribes, persons, communities, processors, aquaculture and other related businesses. SeafoodNews.com reports that those eligible for relief must have “revenue losses greater than 35 percent as compared to the prior 5-year average revenue, or any negative impacts to subsistence, cultural, or ceremonial f...
Alaska lawmakers are making fast work of several fish bills that have wide support from Alaska’s fishermen. “I was anticipating a somewhat slow start, but they’re organized and they’re diving right into these issues and taking these bills up. And so there’s lots of opportunities to participate,” said Frances Leach, executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska. The bill (HB 35) that would resolve a conflict of interest fix at the state Board of Fisheries has been moving through committee hearings in Juneau and could finally be settled aft...
It’s been a long time coming but payments should soon be in hand for Alaska fishermen, processors and coastal communities hurt by the 2016 pink salmon run failure, the worst in 40 years. The funds are earmarked for Kodiak, Prince William Sound, Chignik, Lower Cook Inlet, South Alaska Peninsula, Southeast Alaska and Yakutat. Congress ok’d over $56 million in federal relief in 2017, but the authorization to cut the money loose languished on NOAA desks in DC for over two years. The payouts got delayed again last October when salmon permit hol...
While some anglers may hang up their fishing rods until Spring, don't forget about the many angling opportunities that exist throughout the winter. Remember to purchase your 2020 fishing license prior to fishing in the new calendar year. Winter King Salmon King salmon can be found year round in local marine waters although catch rates are typically much slower during the winter time. New regulations have been issued as of January 1, 2020. The current regulations for all marine waters in the...
Alaska’s seafood industry will be “open for business” starting January 1 when some of the biggest fisheries get underway long before the start of the first salmon runs in mid-May. Cod will begin it all in the Bering Sea, which has a 305.5 million pound catch quota, down about a million pounds from 2019. Less than 6 million pounds of codfish will come out of the Gulf. A 400,000 Tanner crab fishery at Kodiak starting on January 15 will be helpful to a town whose economic bottom line will be badly battered by the Gulf cod crash. But it will be th...
Alaska’s 2019 salmon season was worth $657.6 million to fishermen, a 10% increase from the 2018 fishery. Sockeye salmon accounted for nearly 64% of the total value, topping $421 million, and 27% of the harvest at 55.2 million fish. Those are the lead takeaways in a summary from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game that reveals preliminary estimates of salmon harvests and values by region. The final values will be determined in 2020 after processors, buyers, and direct marketers submit their totals paid to fishermen. Pink salmon were the s...
They are certainly cute but the voracious appetites of sea otters continue to cause horrendous damage to some of Southeast Alaska’s most lucrative fisheries. How best to curtail those impacts will be the focus of a day long stakeholders meeting set for November 6 in Juneau. “All of the people who have anything to do with the otters hopefully will all be in the same room at the same time,” said Phil Doherty, co-director of the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association (SARDFA) based in Ketchikan. A 2011 report by the McDowell Group...
As the snow line creeps lower on the mountainside there’s no doubt that winter is fast approaching. While some anglers may hang up their fishing rods until spring, don’t forget about the many angling opportunities that exist throughout the winter. This will be the last Petersburg/Wrangell fishing report for the 2019 season, fishing reports will resume in the spring of 2020. Winter King Salmon King salmon can be found year round in local marine waters although catch rates are typically much slower during the winter time. Although anglers may...
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...
