Author: Fishermen's News

A 10-year “tree-to-sea” plan is underway for Washington state’s Snohomish River watershed, to boost salmon habitat for as many as 16 populations of salmonids listed as endangered or threatened, an issue that impacts the entire marine food web up to Puget Sound’s iconic orcas. Department of Natural Resources plans include identifying priority restoration needs across the watershed, such as kelp and eelgrass in nearshore environments and forest canopies to shade spawning streams and filter pollutants. Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz said the Watershed Resilience Action Plan is designed to coordinate, enhance and maximize protection and restoration of salmon habitat along the 20-mile river. Franz said that despite decades of focus and nearly $1 billion spent in recovery effor...

Commercial salmon fishermen in Alaska have mounted a new legal effort to restore their right to fish in the federal waters of Cook Inlet. A lawsuit filed in federal court in Anchorage in early February by the United Cook Inlet Drift Association and Cook Inlet Fishermen’s Fund against National Marine Fisheries Service contends that NMFS’s approval of the fishery closure is arbitrary, capricious and contrary to law. The litigation comes in the wake of a decision of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in late 2021 to close those federal waters to commercial fishing. Plaintiffs’ attorneys argue that the Ninth Circuit Court held previously that NMFS is required to produce a fishery management plan to govern the Cook Inlet salmon fishery, as the stated purpose of the Magnus...

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has awarded $13 million to 15 multi-benefit restoration and projection projects for the state’s North Coast coho salmon recovery, via its Proposition 1 grant program. The awards were made under CDFW’s 2021 Proposition 1 North Coast Coho Recovery Proposal Solicitation Notice. The solicitation was part of CDFW’s “Cutting the Green Tape” initiative to increase the pace and scale of restoration by making the permitting and granting processes more efficient. CDFW’s Watershed Restoration Grants Branch partnered with the North Coast Salmon Project on the solicitation, focusing on coho salmon recovery in North Coast watersheds. CDFW director Charlton H. Bonham said the project represents an opportunity to double down on coho recovery on the Nor...

Bristol Bay commercial fishermen have launched two new campaigns against the proposed Pebble mine, which would extract copper, gold and molybdenum from land abutting the Bristol Bay watershed. Mine proponents have repeatedly said they can extract the minerals with no harm to the waters, which are home to the world’s largest run of wild sockeye sockman. Mine opponents strongly disagree. The Bristol Bay Action Now campaign is a new 501(c4) initiative calling for finalization of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water Act “veto” authority to stop the mine and to establish enduring protections and investments in a sustainable future for the region through legislation. Longtime Bristol Bay leaders Robin Samuelsen, AlexAnna Salmon, Katherine Carscellen and Brian Kraft would s...

An initial review is expected in December regarding a contentious halibut catch share plan before the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, in the wake of a decision at its virtual meeting in February to direct staff to produce a detailed analysis of alternative options. The analysis will evaluate changes for Area 2C (Southeast Alaska) and Area 3A (Southcentral Alaska) and explore methods of implementing charter measures for more than one year. The decision came following extensive public and written testimony, the bulk of which supported keeping the charter/commercial catch share allocation as it was adopted in 2012 and implemented in 2014, with passage of the 2C/3A Halibut Catch Sharing Plan. The Halibut Coalition, a collective of commercial fishermen and processors, exp...

A study of potential new Pacific salmon habitat in western North America as a result of glacial retreat through the year 2100 poses benefits to salmon, but also warns of the need for forward-looking management decision making and conservation planning. The study, published recently in the journal Nature, projects that by the year 2100 glacier retreat will create 6,146 kilometers (3,818 miles) of new streams accessible for colonization by Pacific salmon, of which 1,930 km (1,200 miles) have potential for spawning and juvenile rearing within 18 sub-regions. “With climate change, the distribution of habitat of salmon in the future is probably going to be different than the distribution for salmon now, because of changes in temperature and precipitation which affect stream flow,” sai...

OBI Seafoods’ Chief Executive Officer Mark Palmer said the company plans a full force showing at Seafood Expo North America in Boston March 13-15, to introduce the company to new customers. As a seafood producer, OBI is well-versed at operating during a pandemic, and the protocols in place for the show should allow everyone to have a successful show and get back to business, Palmer said. The OBI Seafoods global sales booth at Booth #1205 is expected to be fully staffed. This will be OBI’s first opportunity to present its expanded capabilities since the merger of Ocean Beauty Seafoods’ Alaska operations with Icicle Seafoods’ Alaska salmon and Gulf of Alaska groundfish operations to form OBI Seafoods in May 2020. “We have had a high level of interest from our global customers...

A pilot project to reintroduce endangered winter-run Chinook salmon and other salmon runs to their historical habitat in California’s Central Valley via a test collection system is being funded by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The project in the McCloud Arm of the Shasta reservoir is designed to solve what may be the biggest challenge in reintroducing winter-run Chinook salmon to the McCloud River. The $1.5 million grant for this first year of testing the collection system, leveraged by CDFW from the Wildlife Conservation Board, is going to the state’s Department of Water Resources. The collection system consists of a debris broom, guidance net, fish trap and temperature curtain, which will be tested in the McCloud Arm of Shasta reservoir from mid-September to m...

Legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate by Alaska’s two U.S. senators would ban the import of all Russian seafood products into the United States to response to Russia’s ban on the import of U.S. and other western seafood products since 2014. The United States-Russian Federation Seafood Reciprocity Act of 2022, sponsored by Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both R-Alaska, would prohibit import of any Russian Federation seafood or seafood products into the U.S. The prohibition would be terminated only when the Russian Federation terminates its ban on the import of U.S. seafood products. The bill notes that in 2014 the Russian Federation invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and that the United States and its allies responded by imposing sanctions on the ...

Federal fisheries managers were expected to take action Feb. 9 on a halibut catch share plan allocation review during the virtual February meeting of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. If the council concludes that its objectives for the catch sharing plan are being met and the program is functioning as intended, then the review is complete and the 10-year trigger for reevaluation is reset. If not, the council could request further analysis considering different allocation percentages of halibut in the commercial and charter sectors. Extensive testimony on the subject ran to late afternoon on Tuesday, Feb. 8 and was continued until Wednesday, Feb. 9. Among those submitting written testimony was Linda Behnken, executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Ass...