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Who knows more about local salmon and their habitats than Alaska fishermen? That’s the impetus behind a new information-gathering project spawned by United Fishermen of Alaska (UFA) that aims to provide useful and timely news about the health of the state’s salmon runs. The Salmon Habitat Information Program (SHIP) launched last week with an online survey to provide commercial fishermen with a way to share their local intelligence. “We are asking people what issues they are most concerned about in their region,” said SHIP manager Lindsey...
The decades-old ‘bycatch to food banks’ program has grown far beyond its original Alaska beginnings. Today, only 10 percent of the fish going to hunger relief programs is bycatch of primarily halibut and salmon taken accidentally in other fisheries. The remainder is “first-run” products donated to Sea Share, the nation’s only non-profit that donates fish through a tight network of fishermen, processors, packagers and transporters. Sea Share began in 1993 when Bering Sea fishermen pushed to be allowed to direct fish taken as bycatch to food b...
Salmon takes center stage each summer but many other fisheries also are in full swing from Ketchikan to Kotzebue. For salmon, total catches by July 8 were nearing 28 million fish, of which 10 million were sockeyes, primarily from Bristol Bay. Last week marked the catch of the two billionth sockeye from the Bay since the fishery began in 1884. Other salmon highlights: Southeast trollers wrapped up their first Chinook opener in just five days on July 5, with the preliminary catch estimated at around 80,000 fish. Fish tickets are still being...
The United Kingdom’s recent exit from the European Union – dubbed Brexit — has turned seafood trading on its head. For 43 years the UK has been a major part of the 28 country EU, and what the pull out means for longstanding business arrangements is anyone’s guess. Last year the UK imported over $90 million dollars of Alaska seafood. “It’s still speculative, but anything that has a negative effect on currency values relative to the dollar hurts exports. I do expect we will continue to be strong trading partners with both with the UK and the EU,...
Turning crab shells into every day products is becoming a reality for the Tidal Vision team of eco-entrepreneurs from Juneau. The products are derived from chitin in the crab shells, the second most abundant biopolymer on the planet after cellulose. Chitin is found in fungi, plankton and the exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans and adds up to about 100 billion tons every year. The miracle substance can be spun into fabrics, filters, bio-plastics, bandages, stitches, even car coatings with self-healing scratches. Since the 1950s, chitin has...
There’s much more to Alaska herring than roe and bait. To prove that point, nearly 40 of Seattle’s finest restaurants and retailers will celebrate Northwest Herring Week as a way to re-introduce the tasty, health fish to the dining scene. “There’s more herring eaten all over the world than you can imagine. Some years there’s as much as four million tons harvested in the world. You can have a year when the herring fishery is as large as the whole Bering Sea pollock fishery,” said Bruce Schactler of Kodiak, a longtime fisherman and director of...
Boaters from Homer to the Mat-Su valley can help protect salmon and other aquatic creatures and get discounts from popular businesses by doing so. A pilot program launched this spring is an offshoot of Cook Inletkeeper’s Clean Boating program that began in the Valley five years ago. “It all started with oil and gas pollution in Big Lake,” said Heather Leba, director of the group’s Clean Boating Discount program.” The Department of Environmental Conservation was doing water quality testing in 2006 and they determined that Big Lake was an “impai...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced that the commercial golden king crab fishery in the Mid-Chatham Strait and Southern Areas will close at 12:00 noon, Wednesday, June 29, 2016. These areas are being closed in response to continued poor fishery performance. These declines are similar to the time period of the early to mid-1990s when the department routinely closed fishing areas before harvest reached preseason guideline harvest levels (GHL). While the fishery dependent data used to manage golden king crab since 2000 are more...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the commercial spring troll fishery in the Ketchikan Area (101-29) will open to trolling from 12:01 a.m., June 9 through 11:59 p.m., June 12. Tebenkof Bay (109-62) will open to trolling from 12:01 a.m., June 11 through 11:59 p.m., June 11....
The NOAA Fisheries Entanglement Response Network continues efforts to remove gear from a humpback whale that became entangled in anchor line in Seymour Canal a week ago, on June 1. On June 4, NOAA-led responders attached a satellite tag to the rope trailing the whale as it swam in Gastineau Channel and has been closely monitoring the whale's movements using the tag information and sightings reports. NOAA Fisheries Entanglement Response Network members assessed the whale in Tenakee Inlet on June...
Alaskan fishermen have raised the bar for big fishing boats with the F/V Northern Leader of Kodiak, and Discovery Canada producers of the popular “Mighty Ships” programs have taken notice. Mighty Ships producers search for unique ships around the world and its seven year run has featured a wide range of vessels including cruise ships, aircraft carriers, cargo ships, dredgers and more. The programs focus heavily on operational capabilities and technical aspects of the ships and also make use of computer-generated animation to show und...
The budget impasse with Alaska legislators is wreaking havoc on salmon fisheries across the state, and the industry is bracing for the possibility of a complete shutdown in some regions. If lawmakers can’t agree on a budget by June 1, all state workers will be on notice for layoffs starting July 1. That includes 750 full-time and seasonal workers in the commercial fisheries division, many of whom are the boots on the ground for salmon management. “The word that comes to my mind is catastrophic,” said Scott Kelley, director of the state comme...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Wildlife Conservation in Petersburg reminds the public that deer fawns should not be handled, picked up, or otherwise disturbed. The first fawns of the season are being reported and sightings will increase over the next few weeks. Several consecutive mild winters have resulted in high deer survival in and around Petersburg and Game Management Unit 3 in general. As a result, wildlife managers in the region expect a high number of fawns this season. Although a fawn may appear to be abandoned or...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on Tuesday that modified king salmon sport fishing regulations that have been in effect for Wrangell and Petersburg’s District 8 are rescinded. As of this morning, the increased sport fishing opportunity for the district has come to an end, bringing regulations back in line with those of the wider Southeast region. Under the regulations, an Alaska resident permit-holder can bag and possess a limit of three king salmon, of 28 inches or greater in length. Nonresidents are limited to one king s...
Place/Weight/Name 1 37.6 Mickey Knight 2 37.2 Dick Eide 3 35.9 Cody Wegener 4 35.6 Kimber Brown 5 33.5 Wes Malcom 6 32.6 Stephanie Thynes 7 32 Harry Rogers 8 31.6 Jennifer Thynes 9 31.5 Carlos Martinez 10 31.4 David Warner 11 30.3 Derek Lopez 12 30 Annette Olson 13 29.5 Liz Peterson 14 29.4 Dennis O’Neil 15 29.2 Bill Olson 16 28.6 Scott Hursey 17 28.4 Christopher Josey 18 28.2 Rob Swanson 19 27.8 Rodney Littleton 20 27.5 Derek Knudsen 21 27.1 Mattias Volk 22 26 Lavern Beier 23 25.4 Kevin Volk 24 25.2 Paul Marnane 25 25.0 Holli Flint 26 24.5 D... Full story
Alaska’s salmon season officially got underway on May 16 with the arrival of thousands of sockeye and king salmon at the Copper River near Cordova, and high prices were the talk of the town. The first opener produced a catch of 25,000 sockeye and about 1,500 kings. “It was pretty slow to start. Small fish, not too many of them,” said Kelsey Appleton with Cordova District Fishermen United. Following a trend seen over the past couple of years across Alaska, the salmon were healthy but much smaller. Weights taken on several hundred samples after...
Alaska’s salmon season has gotten underway with lots of optimism, a far cry from the bleak feelings of a year ago. Last year’s fishery was blown asunder by a perfect storm of depressed currencies, salmon backlogs and global markets awash with farmed fish. Prices to fishermen fell by nearly 41 percent between 2013 and 2015, years which produced the two largest Alaska salmon harvest volumes on record. But in the past six months, those trends have turned around. “Based on current market conditions and harvest expectations, it appears proba...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced last week limits for the year’s lingcod sport fishing season, which for Southeast Alaska began on Monday. Running through to Nov. 30, licensed residents will be limited to bagging one lingcod a day, with two in possession, and no size limitation. During the season nonresident anglers will likewise have a bag limit of one per day, though with only one in possession. In addition, nonresidents may only keep lingcod which are between 30 and 45 inches or else are 55 inches or greater in length. N...
