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Low-cost LED lights can help Chinook salmon escape trawl nets. A 2020 study by the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission and NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center showed that LEDs are very effective in directing Chinook salmon to escape openings in trawl nets targeting Pacific hake, the largest groundfish fishery on the West Coast that typically takes more than 500 million pounds a year. The study showed that Chinook are much more likely to exit the nets where lights are placed — 86% of escaped salmon used the LED-framed openings — w...
Pacific halibut stock appears to be on an upswing and could result in increased catches for most regions in 2022. At the interim meeting of the International Pacific Halibut Commission last week, scientists gave an overview of the summer setline survey that targets nearly 2,000 stations over three months. The Pacific resource is modeled as a single stock extending from northern California to the Aleutian Islands and Bering Sea, including all inside waters through British Columbia and Alaska. The survey showed that coastwide combined numbers...
More than one million pounds of old fishing nets and lines from Alaska have made it to recycling markets, where they are remade into plastic pellets and fibers. The milestone was reached with a recent haul of nets from Unalaska, and more are already adding to the total. Shipping vans filled with old gear collected at Haines were offloaded in Seattle last week and another container from Cordova is on its way. Unalaska was the first to sign on four years ago with Net Your Problem (NYP), a small Seattle-based company that jump-started fishing...
A hearing on seafood bycatch didn’t satisfy a bipartisan group of Alaska legislators at a meeting of the House Fisheries Committee on Nov. 15. The bycatch issue came up again this summer when all Yukon River salmon fisheries were canceled due to so few returning Chinook and chums. Along with ocean and climate impacts, villagers questioned the takes by huge trawlers that catch and process fish at sea. A presentation of the committee hearing by Glenn Merrill, regional administrator at NOAA Fisheries/Alaska, showed that in the 2019 Bering Sea p...
It’s a fish trifecta for Alaska’s 2021 salmon season. The fishery produced the third-highest catch, fish poundage and value on record dating back to 1975. According to preliminary harvests and values by region from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the catch of nearly 234 million salmon had a dockside value of almost $644 million, and weighed in at 858.5 million pounds. That compares to 117 million salmon harvested in 2020, valued at just over $295 million and a combined weight of 517.5 million pounds. All regions saw salmon earnings dou...
It’s hard to believe, but Dungeness crab in the Gulf of Alaska is now Alaska’s largest crab fishery – a distinction due to the collapse of stocks in the Bering Sea. Combined Dungeness catches so far from Southeast and the westward region (Kodiak, Chignik and the Alaska Peninsula) totaled over 7.5 million pounds as the last pots were being pulled at the end of October. Ranking second is golden king crab taken along the Aleutian Islands with a harvest by four boats of about 6 million pounds. For snow crab, long the Bering Sea’s most product...
Pollock protein noodles, southern-style Alaska wild wings, candied salmon ice cream, fish oils for pets, fish and chips meal kits and finfish earrings are just a small sample of past winners of Alaska’s biggest seafood competition — the Alaska Symphony of Seafood — which has showcased and promoted new, market-ready products since 1993. The annual event draws from Alaska’s largest and smallest seafood companies, whose products are all judged blind by an expert panel. Eighteen entries are in the running for the 2021 contest, the first leg of...
Optimism is the word that best sums up the attitude among most Alaska salmon fishermen after a good season, according to people in the business of buying and selling permits and boats. Most fishermen in major regions ended up with good catches and dock prices were up from recent years. That’s pushed up permit prices, including at the bellwether fishery at Bristol Bay where drift net permits have topped $200,000. “The highest has been $210,000. But it’s a pretty tight market,” said Maddie Lightsey, a broker at Alaska Boats and Permits in Homer....
The preliminary value to fishermen of the nearly 41 million salmon caught this summer at Alaska’s largest fishery at Bristol Bay is nearly $248 million, 64% above the 20-year average. That figure will be much higher when bonuses and other price adjustments are paid out. But as with the fish dollars tallied from Alaska’s cod, pollock, flounders and other groundfish, the bulk of the Bristol Bay’s salmon money won’t be circulating through Alaska’s economy because most of the fishing participants live out of the state. In 2017, for example,...
Lost fishing gear - be it nets, lines or pots - continues "ghost fishing" forever, causing a slow death to countless marine creatures and financial losses to fishermen. Now new "smart buoys" can track and monitor all types of deployed gear and report its location directly to a cell phone or website. Blue Ocean Gear of California created and builds the buoys that also can track ocean temperatures, depth, movement, even how much has been caught. The small, three pound buoys are just seven inches...
Unlike in the Bering Sea, there's good news for crab in the Gulf of Alaska. A huge cohort of Tanner crab that biologists have been tracking in the Westward region for three years showed up again in this summer's survey. "We were optimistic and we did find them again. Pretty much all the way across the board from Kodiak all the way out to False Pass we found those crab and in good quantity," said Nat Nichols, area manager for the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game at Kodiak. The bairdi Tanners are...
Alaska's Bering Sea crabbers are reeling from the devastating news that all major crab stocks are down substantially, based on summer survey results, and the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed for the first time in over 25 years. That stock has been on a steady decline for several years and the 2020 harvest dwindled to just 2.6 million pounds. Most shocking was the drastic turn-around for snow crab stocks, which in 2018 showed a 60% boost in market sized male crabs (the only ones...
It took freedom of information requests, weeks of queries to administrators and more than three months past a legal deadline for Governor Dunleavy to finally release his choice for a Board of Fisheries seat. Dunleavy announced last Friday his appointment of INDY Walton of Soldotna to fill the vacant seat on the seven-member Board that directs management of subsistence, personal use, sport and commercial fisheries in state waters out to three miles. The vacancy came 115 days after the Alaska Legislature on May 11 rejected his choice of Abe...
Alaska’s 2021 salmon harvest has blown past the forecast and by August 27 had topped 201 million fish, well above the 190 million projected at the start of the season. The catch was bolstered by a surge of pink salmon to the three top producing regions: Prince William Sound, Southeast and Kodiak, combined with strong landings of sockeyes. “Pink salmon runs are over 95% complete, based on average run timing. Effort drops off quickly this late in the season, so it is difficult to predict where that harvest will end up,” said Forrest Bower...
Nutrition, Native ways and knowing where your fish comes from. That multi-message forms the nexus of a new partnership of the Bristol Bay Native Corporation, salmon fishermen and Bambino’s Baby Food of Anchorage. Bambino's launched the nation’s first subscription service with home delivery of frozen baby foods in 2015, and was the first to bring the frozen option to U.S. retail baby food aisles (devoid of seafood). Wild Alaska seafood has always been front and center on the Bambino menu since the launch of its baby-sized, star-shaped Hal...
Bycatch gives Alaska's otherwise stellar fisheries management its biggest black eye. The term refers to unwanted sea creatures taken in trawls, pots, lines and nets when boats are going after other targeted catches. Bycatch is the bane of existence for fishermen, seafood companies and policy makers alike, yet few significant advances have been found to mitigate the problem. A simple fix has recently shed light on a solution. "Ten underwater LED lights can be configured to light up different...
Alaska’s salmon landings have passed the season’s midpoint and by August 7 the statewide catch had topped 116 million fish. State managers are calling for a projected total 2021 harvest of 190 million salmon, a 61% increase over 2020. Most of the salmon being caught now are pinks with Prince William Sound topping 35 million humpies, well over the projection of 25 million. Pink salmon catches at Kodiak remained sluggish at just over three million so far out of a forecast calling for over 22 million. Southeast was seeing a slight uptick with pin...
King Salmon Catch rates are now slowing as we approach the end of the summer season. Residents: Throughout most of the management area, where the retention of king salmon was prohibited to conserve Alaska wild stock king salmon in the spring, the resident bag and possession limit is now two king salmon 28 inches or greater in length. South and West of Point Baker the bag and possession limit is one king salmon, 28 inches or greater in length. Maps of this boundary are provided in the most recent king salmon advisory announcement (link to...
Most people are unaware that the yarns and fabrics that make up our carpets, clothing, car seats, mattresses, even mop heads, are coated with chemicals and metals such as copper, silver and aluminum that act as fire retardants, odor preventors, antifungals and anti-microbials. Now, crab shells from Alaska are providing the same safeguards in a bio-friendly way. The metals and chemicals are being replaced by all-natural Tidal-Tex liquid treatments derived from chitosan molecules found in the exoskeletons of crab shells. The bio-shift stems from...
King Salmon All marine waters in the Petersburg/Wrangell management area are now open to the retention of king salmon. The regional bag, possession, and nonresident annual limits, apply in all waters except the Blind Slough/Wrangell Narrows terminal harvest area where additional opportunity is provided for these hatchery produced king salmon. The revised regional regulations issued 6/21/21 are: Residents: the bag and possession limit is 2 king salmon greater than 28” in length, with no annual limit. Nonresidents: the bag and possession limit i...
Early prices to Alaska salmon fishermen are trickling in and as anticipated, they are up across the board. That will give a nice boost to the economic base of both fishing communities and the state from fish taxes, fees and other assessments. About one-third (62 million) of Alaska's projected catch of 190 million salmon had crossed the docks by July 16 at the half-way point of the fishing season. Prices paid to fishermen vary based on buyers, gear types and regions, and bonuses and post season...
“Unprecedented” is how fishery managers are describing sockeye catches at Bristol Bay, which topped one million fish for seven days straight at the Nushagak district last week and neared the two million mark on several days. By July 9, Alaska’s statewide sockeye salmon catch was approaching 32 million, of which more than 25 million came from Bristol Bay. The only other region getting good sockeye catches was the Alaska Peninsula where nearly 4.6 million reds were landed so far. The Alaska Peninsula also was far ahead of all other regions for pi...
Fishermen are the ears and eyes of the marine ecosystem as a changing climate throws our oceans off kilter. Now a new phone app is making sure their real life, real time observations are included in scientific data. The new Skipper Science smartphone app, released on June 18, comes from the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea as a way “to elevate the thousands of informal-yet-meaningful environmental observations by fishermen and others into hard numbers for Alaska’s science-based management,” said Lauren Divine, Director of Ec...
Blue pipeline booms - The nation’s maritime economy grew at pace that nearly doubled the growth of the entire U.S. GDP in 2019. GDP stands for gross domestic product and reflects the total market value of all finished goods and services in a specific time frame. It is used to estimate the size of an economy and its growth rate – a sort of comprehensive scorecard of a country’s economic health. A first-ever report released this month by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce showed that the so-called “blue economy” grew by 4.2% and generated nearly $4...
Crab has been one of the hottest commodities since the Covid pandemic forced people in 2020 to buy and cook seafood at home, and demand is even higher this year. Crab is now perceived as being more affordable when compared to the cost to enjoy it at restaurants, said global seafood supplier Tradex, and prices continue to soar. That's how it's playing out for Dungeness crab at Kodiak and hopefully, at Southeast Alaska where the summer fishery got underway on June 15. Kodiak's fishery opened on...
