Article Category: News

Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, is speaking out in support of an international board for specific rivers along the Southeast Alaska and British Columbia border to ensure environmental protection for these salmon-rich waterways. Peltola announced her support for an International Watershed Board in late April, in advance of meetings by the International Joint Commission of the U.S. and Canada in Washington D.C.  The commission’s mandate is to prevent and resolve disputes under the U.S.-Canada Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909. “Alaska and Canada share more than just a border; we share many watersheds and rivers that are critical to our people,” Peltola said. The representative added that she’d heard from many Alaska communities and tribes regarding their concerns about the potential impacts o...

Alaska, California, Oregon and Washington are among 22 states sharing in $35 million in federal funding to address outdated or obsolete dams, culverts, levees and other barriers to fish in the nation’s rivers and streams. Dams built in the western U.S. over the past 100 years to provide power for communities have made it difficult for salmon to return to their natal streams to spawn. The resulting decline of salmon has adversely impacted people and wildlife, including marine mammals and birds, that depend on the fish for sustenance. The Interior Department’s April 21 announcement is part of the agency’s five-year, $200-million commitment to restore free-flowing waters, remove barriers to fish migration and protect communities from flooding. The funding is provided under President Biden’s...

As of early May, an investigation was continuing into an April 8 fire that occurred aboard Trident Seafoods’ Kodiak Enterprise while the 276-foot fishing vessel was moored in the Hylebos Waterway in Tacoma, Wash. The Kodiak Enterprise had returned to Tacoma in late March on the heels of the groundfish A season and was there for maintenance. In a statement released at the time by Trident Seafoods, in response to a request from Tacoma television station KIRO 7, company officials said that they did not know the cause of the fire, were cooperating with the investigation and would conduct a thorough review of shipyard maintenance safety protocols with internal and external experts. At the time the fire began, the Kodiak Enterprise was reported to have an estimated 55,000 gallons of diesel ...

Dozens of commercial harvesting vessels out on May 15 for the celebrated Copper River salmon opener were greeted by calm waters and temperatures in the low 40s, but relatively few fish. “On our first set we caught two fish,” veteran Copper River harvester Bill Webber of Cordova said. “The sea lions got them out of the net, and they ripped a big hole in the net,” he said. “Then we moved offshore and then west, and ended up with 31 fish for the whole day, all sockeyes.”  If the fishing was slow, so was the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s effort to calculate the day’s overall harvest. ADF&G fisheries biologist Jeremy Botz in Cordova noted that the agency’s new online reporting system was not at first reporting the harvest correctly. Processors were initially paying $10 a pound ...

A coalition of five commercial fishing and conservation groups have filed suit in federal court charging that Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s Potter Valley Hydroelectric Project on the Eel River in Northern California is illegally harming salmon and steelhead listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Specifically, the lawsuit charges the utility with maintaining and operating the Potter Valley Project in a manner that harms and harasses Coastal California Chinook salmon and Northern California steelhead trout, amounting to illegal take of these species. The Potter Valley Project includes two dams, Scott Dam and Cape Horn Dam, which impede fish passage and block access to hundreds of miles of critical, high quality spawning and nursery habitat for Chinook salmon, steelhead trout a...

The Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley returned to Kodiak, Alaska, in early May after a 30-day patrol in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands to enforce federal fishery laws and ensure mariners are maintaining all required safety equipment. The crew sailed the 282-foot medium endurance cutter over 2,000 nautical miles from the Alaska Peninsula to Adak and north of the Pribilof Islands, also steaming west to cross the 180th Meridian into the eastern hemisphere, to conduct a time-honored naval ceremony. Training and drills were performed throughout the patrol to ensure mission readiness. Crewmembers donned firefighting gear for simulated engine room fires, arranged dewatering pumps for flooding drills, and manually navigated the cutter without GPS all of which enhanced proficiency in damage contro...

A commercial salmon troll fishery in Southeast Alaska that contributes millions of dollars to the regional economy remained uncertain in May, with federal fisheries managers and harvesters pitted against an environmental group that contends endangered orca whales need the fish more. The state of Alaska on May 8 filed an appeal to the U.S. District Court of Western Washington, which ruled just a week earlier than the summer and winter king salmon troll fisheries in Southeast Alaska were in violation of the Endangered Species Act and were depriving endangered Southern Resident killer whales in Puget Sound of fish critical to their survival. U.S. District Court Judge Richard A. Jones ruled in favor of the plaintiff, the Washington State-based Wild Fish Conservancy, in its three-year-old b...