Article Category: SE Alaska Troll

Southeast Alaska’s lucrative commercial king salmon troll fishery faces new challenges from a federal judge’s decision in Seattle over the impact of their harvest on endangered killer whales in Puget Sound. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Jones in Seattle in August challenges the National Marine Fisheries Service’s biological opinion for the Southeast Alaska salmon fishery, the document giving Alaska Endangered Species Act “incidental take” coverage and allowing the state’s Pacific Salmon Treaty salmon fisheries to operate. The lawsuit brought by the Wild Fish Conservancy in Seattle argues that Alaska fisheries threaten the survival of several ESA-listed Chinook salmon stocks in Washington and Oregon and the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales that rely on Chinook salm...