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Fishing lives and fishing wives are set to be showcased for a national audience; one as a documentary and the other, on reality television. The first, an hour-long feature called Last Man Fishing, focuses on the lifestyles and challenges facing our nation’s small-scale fishermen. “We’re from Indiana and we realized there is a disconnect between the consumer and where their fish is coming from,” said JD Schuyler who is co-producing the documentary with his wife, Kelley. “We want to bridge the gap of people appreciating seafood, while also unde...
Needy Alaskans are enjoying a rare taste of sablefish, thanks to a science project that kept research fish from going over the rails. Sablefish, more commonly called black cod, are one of the world’s priciest, high end fish, and Alaska waters are home to the largest stocks. The deep water fish are found at depths of 5,000 feet or more and can live to nearly 100 years. The Gulf of Alaska fishery, which has a catch total of about 20 million pounds this year (18.2 million in 2017) is usually worth more than $90 million to Alaska fishermen at t...
Alaska’s halibut stocks are showing signs of an uptick and fishermen’s catches will not be slashed for the first time in 15 years. Fishery managers on Friday set the coast wide Pacific halibut harvest for 2016 at 29.89 million pounds, a 2.3 percent increase from last year. “This was probably the most positive, upbeat meeting in the past decade,” said Doug Bowen of Alaska Boats and Permits in Homer. “The feeling is the stocks are up and the resource is stabilizing and recovering, and it’s the first meeting in a long time that there weren’t any...
The Sitka black-tailed deer hunting season is now closed in Southeast Alaska. All hunters who obtained deer harvest tickets, even those who did not hunt or harvest a deer, must now return completed hunt reports to Fish & Game. If you haven’t submitted your hunt report for last fall, please do so immediately. Hunt reports may be submitted by mail, in person at a Fish & Game office, or online at hunt.alaska.gov. The information provided in hunt reports helps biologists estimate changes in area-specific deer harvest and hunting effort, monitor p...
A single Chinook salmon is worth more than a barrel of oil. The winter kings being caught by Southeast Alaska trollers are averaging 10 pounds each with a dock price of $7.34 a pound, according to state fish tickets. That adds up to $73.40 per fish, compared to less than $25 per barrel of oil. Those who depend on fishing for their livelihoods want to make sure that budget cuts combined with any new fishery taxes, don’t cut core services that result in missed fishing opportunities. “Not all cuts are equal, and if there are cuts that int...
Fishing issues will take a back seat to budget cutting when the Alaska legislature convenes on January 19 for its 90-day session, but two early fish bills (and one hold-over) already are getting attention. One new measure aims to stop the migration of fishing permits outside of the state. We lost over 50 percent of our permits over the 1973 original issuance of permits,” said Robin Samuelsen of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation (BBEDC), speaking at a two day Alaska Sea Grant workshop last week in Anchorage titled Fisheries Access...
The federal subsistence deer season for federally qualified hunters continues on federal lands only in Unit 4 until Jan. 31, unless closed earlier by the U.S. Forest Service District Rangers....
Alaska’s mariculture industry has passed some big milestones, and is getting set to head into the weeds. Aquatic farming, which was Ok’d by Alaska lawmakers in 1988, topped $1 million in shellfish sales for the first time ever in 2014, coming in at $1.2 million. “This is the highest sales we’ve had since the inception of the program which is pretty exciting,” said Cynthia Pring-Ham, Director of Mariculture for the state Dept. of Fish and Game, adding that shellfish production increased 27 percent. That’s an average of $7,049 in sales per a...
9 marks a quarter of a century for this weekly column that targets Alaska’s seafood industry. At the end of every year, I proffer my ‘no holds barred’ look back at the best and worst fish stories, and select the biggest story of the year. The list is in no particular order and I’m sure to be missing a few, but here are the Fishing Picks and Pans for 2015: • Most eco-friendly fish feat: The massive airlift/barge project led by the Dept. of Environmental Conservation that removed more than 800,000 pounds of marine debris from remote Alaska be...
PETERSBURG — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Dec. 18 that seasons for the 2015/2016 commercial Tanner and golden king crab fisheries in Southeast Alaska will open by regulation at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, February 17, 2016. The season start date for the Tanner and golden king crab fisheries is based on the date with the smallest Juneau tidal range between February 10 and February 17. Any delay to the start of the 2015/2016 Tanner and golden king crab fisheries due to weather will be announced 24 hours before the start of the f...
“Tis the season for even bigger Alaska fish catches when groundfish seasons open at the start of the New Year. Catches of pollock, cod, flounders and other groundfish account for nearly 85 percent of Alaska’s harvest poundage, and 67 percent of the nation’s total groundfish harvests. Those numbers could increase due to boosts in several catch quotas in both the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea for the next two year. For pollock, the nation’s largest fishery, the catch is up slightly to 1.3 million metric tons, or just under three billion pound...
Alaska crab shells are fueling an eco-revolution that will drive new income streams for fabrics to pharmaceuticals to water filters. And for the first time, it is happening in the USA and not overseas. The entrepreneurs at Tidal Vision in October made the leap from their labs in Juneau to a pilot plant outside of Seattle to test an earth-friendly method that extracts chitin, the structural element in the exoskeletons of shellfish and insects. Their first big run a few weeks ago was tested on a 60,000 pound batch of crab shells delivered by...
Commercial sea cucumber divers harvested more than 1.4 million pounds of sea cucumbers this fall, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game preliminary harvest estimates. With an average price of $3.50 per pound, that's $5.1 million worth of sea cucumbers. Snow Pass yielded the most harvest weight with 327,454 pounds of cucumbers coming out of the waters and saw 58 divers fish the area on October 26, the most out of any area time this season. The cucumber dive fishery is a rotational...
Caught by Alaskans for Alaskans is a business concept that bested 170 others in a global fisheries business competition last month at Stanford University in California. The contest, sponsored by Fish 2.0, awards creative approaches that build demand for sustainable seafood, reduce waste and support fishing towns. The Alaska Community Seafood Hub model, presented by Kelly Harrell of Anchorage, won $5,000 in cash and is in the running for more money to be awarded this month. Fish 2.0 builds the knowledge and connections needed to increase...
Despite some encouraging signs that Pacific halibut stocks are stabilizing after being on a downward spiral for nearly two decades, catches could decrease slightly in most regions again next year. That’s IF fishery managers accept the catch recommendations by halibut scientists, which they don’t always do. At the International Pacific Halibut Commission meeting last week in Seattle, the total 2016 catch, meaning for the West Coast, British Columbia and Alaska, was recommended at 26.56 million pounds, down from 29.22 million pounds this year. Fo...
The call is out for products to compete in Alaska’s most celebrated seafood bash, and another new category has been added to the mix. For the 23rd year, the Symphony of Seafood in 2016 will showcase innovative new products that are entered both by major Alaska seafood companies and small ‘mom and pops’- such as last year’s top winner: Pickled Willy’s of Kodiak for their smoked black cod tips. All entries are judged privately by a panel of experts in several categories, based on the product’s packaging and presentation, overall eating expe...
Earlier this month a team of Oregon State University researchers visited Southeast to tag humpback whales and track their winter migration. The four person team is part of a Marine Mammal Institute (MMI) study that began tagging the endangered species last November. The goal of the two year study is to answer questions like how wide their travel range really is, where they congregate, how long they stay in specific places, and when they depart after staying in a specific place or area. These...
Alaskans are being asked to weigh in on two tough issues: budgets and halibut bycatch. First off, the state Boards of Fish and Game are asking for ideas on cutting costs within their annual meeting cycles, as well as for the state agencies involved with providing all of the backup information to the boards. Both boards include seven members which are appointed by the governor and approved by the Alaska legislature for three year terms. The Fish Board’s role is to conserve and develop the fishery resources for the state’s subsistence, com...
The popular January Tanner crab fishery has been called off for the third year running throughout the Westward Region (Kodiak, Chignik and the South Peninsula), leaving fishermen and managers wondering where all the crab has gone. State managers for several years have been tracking a huge plug of crab that appeared poised to enter the 2016 Tanner fishery, but based on this summer’s surveys, the crab have failed to materialize. “In 2013 saw a very large cohort of juveniles in the survey estimated at over 200 million crab, which was one of the...
Alaska claimed the top three fishing ports for landings again last year, and led all U.S. states in terms of seafood landings and values. “The Alaska port of Dutch Harbor continued to lead the nation with the highest amount of seafood landings – 761.8 million pounds, 87 percent of which was walleye pollock,” said Dr. Richard Merrick in announcing the national rankings last week from the annual Fisheries of the U.S. report for 2014. It’s the 18 year in a row that Dutch Harbor has claimed the top spot for fish landings. Kodiak ranked second...
Alaska’s 2015 salmon season produced the second largest harvest ever, but rock bottom prices yielded the lowest pay out to fishermen since 2006. That will cut into the tax base of coastal communities and state coffers, which collect fully half of all fish landing taxes. Preliminary tallies from the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game show that the statewide salmon catch topped 263 million fish (the record is 273 million in 2013) with an ex-vessel (dockside) value at $414 million, a 28 percent decrease from last year. (http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index...
Fish pirates are coming under fire as more countries band together to stop them from pilfering the world’s oceans. So called Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing accounts for one-fifth of global catches, according to the Global Ocean Commission, valued at $10 to $25 billion each year. Last month, at its annual Intergovernmental Consultative Committee meeting held in Portland, Oregon, and after years in the making, the U.S. and Russia signed a bilateral agreement to combat IUU fishing. The pact, which has strong support from the P...
When is Alaska pollock not really Alaska pollock? When it is listed as such by the Food and Drug Administration, which governs what every seafood product will be called in U.S. commerce. For pollock, one of the most widely eaten seafoods in the U.S., the FDA applies the “Alaska” moniker to all fish of that species on its market list, regardless of where it is caught. “So if the fish is caught in Korea or Japan or Russia, it still can be sold as Alaska pollock in the United States. And that’s not the case with Alaska salmon or halibut or Alas...
“Unsettled” best describes the mood among brokers in the business of buying, selling and trading Alaska salmon permits and quota shares of various catches. For salmon permits, “the dust hasn’t really settled” since the season ended, said Doug Bowen of Alaska Boats and Permits in Homer, but at the moment, prices are tanking across the board. “There were a few bright spots but several areas in the state did not do well, either because of production or price or both. That’s put a downward press on permit prices,” he added. Bristol Bay drift gilln...
