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The wolf hunting and trapping season for Prince of Wales Island will be the same as last year — Nov. 15 to Dec. 15 — though a number of individuals who trap wolves in the area criticized the Alaska Department of Fish and Game last week for its wolf management decisions. The department announced the limited season last Friday, just two days after a teleconference to review with the public wolf population estimates and harvest levels. Several people described seeing more wolves than deer in the area, arguing that a longer season and higher harves...
The City Creek king salmon release site will close after a decision was made by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association (SSRAA). The decision to close the release site comes as a result of a combination of factors according to sources from the two organizations. The City Creek release site was a collaboration between Fish and Game and the SSRAA which utilized funding from the Pacific Salmon Treaty mitigation funds and saw its first... Full story
NOAA Fisheries is taking public comment on a request to take emergency action to close the Red King Crab Savings Area and the Red King Crab Savings Subarea to all fishing gear that comes into contact with the ocean bottom. The request is from the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers and is dated September 29, 2022. If implemented, the requested emergency closures would include pelagic trawl, pot gear, and longline gear, and would be in effect for 180 days after the emergency rule is published. The petitioners requested that the closure occur for 6 months...
PETERSBURG, AK-At East Ohmer Creek, 22 miles south of Petersburg, Alaska, is a tree believed to be the largest left on Mitkof Island. Forest Service Fish Biologist Eric Castro said foresters estimate the tree, which grew on a once-rich floodplain, is around 600 years old. "Those giant pumpkins are what used to grow in this type of environment," Castro said. That tree stands in contrast to those that have grown around it over the last 60 years, which have reached four to eight inches in diameter...
The Sound Science Research Collective returned to Five Finger Lighthouse again in the summer of 2022. And earlier this month they shared some results from their 2019 field season in an online presentation for the Five Finger Lighthouse Society by Dr. Leanna Matthews, detailing their playback study with humpback whales. "Usually when people think about whale song, they think about humpback song, but song is not the only thing they do. Song is produced on the breeding grounds, on those lower...
SEATTLE (AP) — Alaska officials have canceled the fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest, and for the first time, have also scrapped the winter harvest of smaller snow crab. The move is a double whammy to a fleet from Alaska, Washington and Oregon chasing Bering Sea crab in harvests that in 2016 grossed $280 million, The Seattle Times reported. The closures reflect conservation concerns about both crab species following bleak summer populations surveys. The decisions to shut down the snow crab and fall king crab harvests came after days of d...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) is soliciting bids to conduct a test fishery harvesting food and bait herring with purse seine gear in Sitka Sound during fall and winter of 2022/23. The Request for Quotation (RFQ) format for this test fishery will be done in tons of herring. The department is seeking to generate $30,000 from a herring food and bait test fishery in Sitka Sound. The quote must be based on tons of herring to reach that dollar amount. The party that quotes the lowest amount of herring in tons will be awarded the...
The RM038 moose hunt is staying on a steady pace with 77 moose harvested as of Oct. 5 according to Hilary Wood of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Of the 77 harvested, 70 were legal while 7 were determined to be illegal moose. The total number of moose taken is just behind the 81 harvested at this time last year. Hunters have seen by far the most success on Kupreanof Island which has recorded 34 legal moose. The Stikine River and Kuiu Island are currently tied for second in the legal moos...
PETERSBURG – The Etolin Island Area - Unit 3, as described in Alaska Department of Fish & Game hunting regulations, is closed to the harvest of elk under the new Federal General Elk Permit (FE1234). The permit conditions allow for the harvest of one elk from Units 1, 2, 3-Remainder, and 4, excluding Zarembo, Bushy, Shrubby, and Kashevarof Islands and the Etolin Island Area in Unit 3. Successful harvesters are required to bring the complete skull, including the lower jaw, to a local USDA Forest Service office within 48 hours of harvest. R...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced last Thursday that the commercial Dungeness crab fall season in Southeast Alaska will have a normal length. The length of the fall season was determined after an analysis revealed that an above-average proportion of male legal-sized soft-shelled Dungeness crabs discarded in the first week of the summer season contributed to the full season harvest projection failing to meet the management plan threshold according to Region I Lead Shellfish...
Young Alaskans seeking to break into commercial fishing face a lot of the same barriers that confront young farmers in the Lower 48 states, but they have far fewer resources to help overcome those barriers, according to newly published research. A study by Alaska experts with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration argues that the fishing industry and the communities that depend on fishing should have support similar to that offered to young farmers. “The sheer scale, depth, and breadth of programming for beginning farmers makes t... Full story
Applications are due by Oct. 31 for more than $39 million in the second round of federal relief funds for those in Alaska’s fishing industry who incurred a greater than 35% income loss in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state was involved in deciding the allocation of the federal aid between different fishing interests in Alaska. The money is Alaska’s share of $255 million in grants being distributed nationwide to help the fishing industry recover from income losses suffered during the worst of the pandemic. The first rou...
With hot temperatures during the summer, knowing the symptoms of paralytic shellfish poisoning is critical for being safe while harvesting and consuming shellfish. According to Carol Brady, an environmental health officer at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP, is an illness caused by eating shellfish that have been feeding on single celled dinoflagellate algae called Alexandrium that produce highly poisonous toxins. The warmer weather...
This summer's commercial Dungeness crab fishery in Southeast was cut short by about two weeks due to low harvest projections and is set to end this Saturday according to Joe Stratman, a shellfish biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The season length is determined by a full season harvest estimate based on pounds landed and permits fished during the first week of the current season along with what percentage of the previous season's total harvest was taken within the first week...
Shellfish hatcheries could be in Alaska's future, under legislation recently signed into law. The measure allows the Department of Fish and Game to manage shellfish enhancement and restoration projects. Restoration projects are designed to bring a struggling stock back to a self-sustaining level, while enhancement projects would boost the stock to allow for commercial harvest. The new laws give the department another tool to address declining shellfish stock, such as red and blue king crab, sea...
The Kodiak Chamber of Commerce will host debates focused on Alaskan fisheries this October featuring candidates running for the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate, and the Alaska governorship. Kodiak has hosted fisheries debates for over thirty years and the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce’s Debate Committee will be reaching out to the public and representatives from the seafood industry for questions and topics to discuss. The debates will be held in-person in Kodiak and will be live streamed on Zoom and Facebook Live. They will also b...
For Alaska salmon fishing, the summer of 2022 is the best of times and the worst of times. In the Bristol Bay region, the sockeye salmon run and harvest amounts set new records, as was predicted in the preseason forecast. As of Monday, the run had totaled over 73.7 million, with a harvest of over 56.3 million. The previous record was set just last year, with a 67.7 million run of sockeyes and a third-biggest-ever harvest of nearly 42 million of the fish. But along the Yukon River, a prized salmo... Full story
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is announcing revised 2022 sport fishing regulations for king salmon in Southeast Alaska and Yakutat. These regulations will be effective 12:01 a.m. Friday, July 1 through 11:59 p.m. Friday, March 31, 2023. The regulations are: Alaskan Resident The resident bag and possession limit is two king salmon, 28 inches or greater in length; From October 1, 2022, through March 31, 2023, a resident sport angler may use two rods when fishing for king salmon; a person...
Western Alaska villagers have endured the worst chum salmon runs on record, several years of anemic Chinook salmon runs in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, harvest closures from the Bering Sea coast to Canada’s Yukon Territory and such dire conditions that they relied on emergency shipments of salmon from elsewhere in Alaska just to have food to eat. Many of those suffering see one way to provide some quick relief: Large vessels trawling for pollock and other groundfish in the industrial-scale fisheries of the Bering Sea, they say, must stop i... Full story
With the heavy snow pack and delayed melt this spring, rivers, and lakes are now swelling with snowmelt due to the recent warm weather and summer sunshine. King Salmon Opportunity for Alaska hatchery-produced king salmon is now open in the Anita Bay and Blind Slough-Wrangell Narrows terminal harvest areas. Anglers report good success in the first few days of these fisheries. Blind Slough-Wrangell Narrows king salmon regulations: Bag and possession limit is 2 king salmon, 28 inches or greater in length, and 2 king salmon, under 28 inches in leng...
Ted Cheeseman, the co-founder of Happywhale, gave a presentation to the people of Petersburg last month on the online whale documentation project and what has been learned through the contributions of users. Happywhale is a program which uses pictures of whale flukes submitted by users to identify whales and chart where they have been spotted. Cheeseman co-founded it after speaking to scientists about how regular photographs could be collected and used as data to research individual whales. The...
Legislation to restore and increase the state licensing fee on sportfishing guides and operators ran into problems in the Senate Finance Committee last week, as lawmakers questioned why out-of-state boat owners who bring up guests are not required to get a license and pay the fee. “My district has got to be one of the top guided areas in the state,” said Committee Co-Chair Sen. Bert Stedman, whose district stretches from Sitka to Prince of Wales Island, including Petersburg. And while that means a lot of non-residents pay local operators for...
On May 4 the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development (DCCED) announced an updated deadline for the Alaska Seafood Processors Pandemic Response Relief Program. DCCED is extending the deadline to apply to Friday, May 20 at 5:00 pm. All other program criteria remain the same. The Alaska Seafood Processors Pandemic Response Relief Program is a grant program to distribute $30.6 million to Alaska’s seafood and shellfish processing sector. The State of Alaska was allocated this funding under the U.S. Department of A...
