Sorted by date Results 601 - 625 of 855
Lovers choose lobster as the top Valentine's Day dish to share with that special someone. Crab legs and shrimp also get the nod as 'romantic meals' on Feb. 14 - one of the busiest dining out days for U.S. restaurants. In a national survey by Harris Interactive, chefs called lobster an "exotic delicacy that results in an intimate moment because it is hand-held and shareable." In fact, respondents called all shellfish 'a catalyst for connection like no other food.' The links between seafood and...
Freezer displays at Walmart superstores in Alaska and Washington now include a new lineup of 14 Alaska seafood items. The world's largest grocer announced the expanded commitment to Alaska seafood last week. "We are so proud to bring these to our customers, and we also know how important it is to local fishermen and folks across the state," said John Forrest Ales, Director of Corporate Communications for Walmart. Company stores already carry Alaska halibut and sockeye salmon. Added to the mix...
The need for a clear “fish first” policy in Alaska tops the list of priorities compiled by the Fisheries Transition Team for Governor Walker. The group also stated that “fish and fishermen in Alaska are viewed as barriers to development,” and that there is “irreplaceable optimism” that fish can coexist with development at any scale. Fisheries was just one of the topics that 250 Alaskans brainstormed about in 17 teams that newly elected Walker convened in late November. Their task was to identify the top five priorities in diverse categories,...
Alaska seafood marketers are ramping up promotions and bankrolling a global $1 million media blitz to counteract a tough sockeye salmon market. Sockeyes are by far the most valuable salmon catch, often worth two-thirds of the value of Alaska’s entire salmon fishery, but last summer’s unexpected surge of reds left lots of inventory in freezers, and record US imports of competing farmed salmon from Chile and Norway combined with the prospect of another big run at Bristol Bay make for a sockeye sales squeeze. Alaska’s approach will be patte...
A new phytoplankton monitoring program being done by Petersburg Indian Association (PIA) will help alert recreational and subsistence shellfishers to harmful algal blooms in the area more quickly. "There are types of phytoplankton that, in the spring or summertime or when the water starts to warm up, they start to come out of hibernation. And in some cases so much so that they form a bloom," said PIA Tribal Resource Director Marco Banda who heads the monitoring program and administers the...
Alaska seafood marketers are facing some strong headwinds heading into 2015, notably, for sockeye salmon and crab. Snow crab is Alaska’s largest crab fishery, underway now in the Bering Sea. The fleet has a slightly increased 61 million pound catch quota; boats also are tapping on a hefty bairdi Tanner crab catch, the larger cousin of snow crab. A 25% increase in snow crab, the unexpected 15 million pound Tanner fishery, a weak Japanese yen, plus several million pounds of Russian snow crab from a new fishery in the Barents Sea, (not to mention...
The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (ADOT&PF) announced travel fares on the Alaska Marine Highway System will increase 4.5 percent starting May 1. The new fare structure went into effect with the new year, but will not affect reservations already made in advance. Some fares will not be affected by the new structure. The ADOT&PF release said fares that are “disproportionately higher” than the majority of AMHS fares will remain unchanged. The department reports the fare increase will help cover operating costs and mee...
Alaska still has its share of naysayers who will quibble about the seafood industry’s importance to our great state. They dismiss the fact that fishing was Alaska’s first industry and was fish that spawned the push to statehood. “The canned salmon plants started in the 1870s and by the early 20th century, canned salmon was the largest industry and generated 80% of the territorial tax revenues. It had a position in the state economy that oil enjoys today,” said fisheries historian Bob King. The fisheries that Alaska inherited from the federal...
Salmon will always be the heart of Alaska’s fisheries, and that’s why most people think of summer as the fishing season. But that’s not the case. The heart of winter is when Alaska’s largest fisheries get underway each year. On January first, hundreds of boats with hook and line gear or pots begin plying the waters of the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska for Pacific cod, rockfish and other groundfish. Then on January 20th trawlers take to the seas to target Alaska pollock, the world’s largest food fishery with annual harvests topping three bil...
This fall’s Dungeness crab fishery preliminary harvest estimate is totaled at 975,000 pounds with 137 recorded permit holders fishing. According to Alaska Department of Fish and Game data, as of November 30, 19 percent of this year’s total fall harvest was caught this fall. During the previous ten year average, 25 percent of the annual harvest is taken in the fall. This year’s total harvest so far is a heaping 5.04 million pounds, well above the 3.78 million pound ten-year average. “With some areas still open it remains to be seen whether...
On Dec. 18 Wrangell’s advisory committee to Alaska Department of Fish and Game held the last and lengthiest of its public meetings to discuss Board of Fisheries proposals for the 2014-15 meeting cycle. This 12-person committee let the public review and discuss new finfish management proposals, providing their recommendations to the state board of Fisheries. Consulting them on management policies were Troy Thynes and Patrick Fowler from Petersburg’s ADFG office. Among the policies the committee supported, it voted ten to two in favor of cre...
Alaska seafood innovators are getting serious about ‘head to tail/inside and out’ usages of fish parts, and they see gold in all that gurry that ends up on cutting line floors. Fish oils, pet treats, animal feeds, gelatins, fish scales that put the shimmer in nail polish – “almost anything that can be made out of seafood byproducts has increased in value tremendously in the last few years,” said Peter Bechtel, a US Dept. of Agriculture researcher formerly at the University of Alaska. In today’s climate of planet consciousness “co-product...
It went down to the wire, but fishermen were relieved to learn they can continue to hose down their decks without fear of violating the Clean Water Act. Congress voted unanimously this week to extend a moratorium for three years that exempts commercial fishing vessels 79 feet and under from needing incidental discharge permits from the Environmental Protection Agency for deck wash. The current moratorium, which affects 8,500 Alaska vessels, was set to expire on Dec.18. The regulation is aimed at preventing fuels, toxins or hazardous wastes...
The Pacific halibut stock appears to be rising from the ashes and that bodes well for catches in some fishing regions next year. It would turn the tide of a decades-long decline that has caused halibut catches to be slashed by more than 70% in Alaska, Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. Three Alaska areas showed improvement in the annual stock surveys that range from Oregon to the Bering Sea, and could have higher catch levels in 2015. That’s according to information revealed at the International Pacific Halibut Commission’s interim mee...
SITKA (AP) — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the preliminary guideline harvest level for the 2015 Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery is 8,712 tons. That’s just over half of last year’s quota of 16,333 and the lowest expected GHL in more than 10 years. The preliminary harvest level is based on a 19.7 percent harvest rate of a mature biomass forecast of 44,237 tons, said Dave Gordon, area management biologist. The preliminary GHL is quite a bit below the 10-year average of 13,500, and far below the 2014 catch of 16,957 tons....
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the following information concerning the preseason forecast for king salmon returning to the Stikine and Taku Rivers in 2015. The 2015 preseason terminal run size forecast for large Stikine River king salmon is 30,200 fish. The resulting U.S. Allowable Catch (AC) is 210 large Stikine Kings. An AC of 210 fish is not large enough to allow for directed commercial fisheries. Inseason terminal run size estimates will be produced starting late May of 2015. Inseason estimates may result in a higher AC...
It’s the time of year when Alaska’s fishery meetings kick into high gear - with five set for this week alone. The industry will get a first glimpse of potential 2015 halibut catches when the International Pacific Halibut Commission convenes in Seattle, WA. It’s been a wait and see attitude among fish circles - will Alaska’s catch limits again be reduced, down already 70% over a decade to just 16 million pounds? Or has the Pacific halibut stock started to rebound as some of the science indicates? Tune into the IPHC meetings live via webinar...
Alaska is poised for some big fish stories next year based on predictions trickling in from state and federal managers. For the state’s (and nation’s) largest fishery - Alaska pollock - the Eastern Bering Sea stock has more than doubled its ten year average to top nine million tons, or 20 billion pounds. And the stock is healthy and growing, according to annual surveys. “It is one of the most stunning fisheries management successes on the planet,” exclaimed global market expert John Sackton when the pollock numbers were released by the (Seattl...
Sitka — The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the preliminary guideline harvest level (GHL) for the 2015 Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery is 8,712 tons based on a 19.7% harvest rate of a forecast mature biomass of 44,237 tons. The department mapped 50 nautical miles of herring spawn in the Sitka Sound area during the spring of 2014, compared to the recent 10-year average of 60 nautical miles. The estimated post-fishery spawning biomass in 2014 was 51,321 tons and the total sac roe harvest was 16,957 tons. An additional 121 tons w...
Crystal Lake Hatchery Manager Loren Thompson pled not guilty on Nov. 13 to a charge of Littering over Five Pounds. Thompson was cited for the minor violation by Alaska Wildlife Trooper Cody Litster for dumping some 400 pounds of coho on the tide flats at Olsen’s Log Dump. Bill Gass, production manager for Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association (SSRAA) which operates the Crystal Lake facility, said he didn’t have an official comment on the case itself but explained that the fish dumped at the site were brood stock coho salmon who...
Alaska’s largest employer continues to add more jobs to its roster. Commercial fishing jobs grew last year to a level not seen since the year 2000, according to the state Department of Labor. Driven primarily by an increased salmon harvest, notably from the record run of pinks, fishing jobs grew by nearly 2.5 percent last year. That brought the annual monthly average to 8,400 jobs, just 400 shy of the record over a decade ago. Seafood harvesting and processing jobs are a focus of the November Alaska Economic Trends, which breaks down the n...
Alaska claimed the nation’s top three fishing ports for seafood catches last year, and wild salmon landings – 95 percent from Alaska – topped one billion pounds, an all time record and a 70 percent increase from 2012. That’s according to the annual Fisheries of the US report for 2013, just released by NOAA Fisheries. Dutch Harbor topped the list for landings for the 17th year running with 753 million pounds of fish crossing the docks last year, valued at nearly $200 million. The Aleutian Islands region ranked second for landings, thanks to the...
The Petersburg Vessel Owners Association hosted a presentation by the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) exploring long-term halibut trends. IPHC Executive Director Bruce Leaman and quantitative scientist Ian Stewart presented the findings and fielding questions from the audience. The data collected look at halibut stocks from across the Pacific, from Alaska to British Columbia, Canada and south to Washington and Oregon. Stewart said that the IPHC has 100 years worth of data on the Pacific stock of halibut, which help IPHC to exami...
wrangell — Some changes to the federally-administered subsistence fisheries were recommended by the Southeast Alaska Subsistence Regional Advisory Council (RAC) at its three day meeting at Wrangell’s Nolan Center last week. Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Robert Larson explained the meeting’s agenda featured an uncommon mix of proposals from the state boards of Game and Fisheries, since the regulatory cycles of both synchronized with each other this year. “It doesn’t happen very often,” he noted. Of particular concern for Wrangel...
