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NMFS Announces Decreased Fees for Loan Repayments
4Dec By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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NMFS Announces Decreased Fees for Loan Repayments

The National Marine Fisheries Service has announced a decrease in repayment fees for reduction loan financing for the non-pollock groundfish fishing capacity reduction program, effective Jan. 1. In a statement published in the Federal Register on Dec. 2, NMFS said it is lowering the Loan A fee rate to $0.016 per pound to ensure timely repayment of the loan, but that the fee rate for Loan B would remain unchanged at $0.001 per pound. The federal agency explained that the decreased fee rate is due to a recalculation based on the required amortization target and projected non-pollock groundfish total allowable catch (TAC) for 2025, as well as a temporary adjustment related to the 2024 Season B. The first due date for fee payments with the decreased rate is set for Feb. 15, 2025. ...
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Research Team Designs Technology to Measure Carbon Dioxide in Oceans
4Dec By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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Research Team Designs Technology to Measure Carbon Dioxide in Oceans

New technology developed by University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers and their industry partners would enable an unmanned underwater vehicle to measure carbon dioxide in the ocean, to help develop climate change adaptation plans. The design is now available to the scientific community, researchers at UAF's International Arctic Research Center said Nov. 26. The design was first published in the journal Ocean Science on Oct. 29. Over the past six years, a team from the UAF International Arctic Research Center (IARC) and private companies developed a way to equip an autonomous underwater vehicle called a Seaglider, with a sensor that monitors carbon dioxide. The sensor communicates with a satellite to provide high spatial and temporal resolution data for weeks at a time. This c...
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Alaska Yellowfin Sole Faces Lowest Harvest in Decades
4Dec By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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Alaska Yellowfin Sole Faces Lowest Harvest in Decades

Online trade publication Tradex reported Dec. 2 that Alaska’s yellowfin sole fishery is facing one of its lowest harvests in decades, which is expected to drastically reduce supply and the ability to meet the demand for this fish. The article recommends that potential buyers put their orders in as soon as possible so that when produce becomes available they have a chance to acquire it. Current harvests are at about 85,000 metric tons, a 25% drop from last year and 45% below the 154,000 metric tons landed in 2022. The last time harvests dropped below 85,000 metric tons was in 2000. Between 1998 and 2010, the average annual harvest was about 94,000 metric tons. According to Tradex, Russia's five-year average harvest of flounder, which is predominantly yellowfin sole, is about 90...
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Bristol Bay Harvester Hawks Gillnetter at Pacific Marine Expo
4Dec By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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Bristol Bay Harvester Hawks Gillnetter at Pacific Marine Expo

Veteran Bristol Bay salmon harvester Leslie Stambaugh was on the move at the 2024 Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle, eager to talk with anyone willing to listen about the 32-foot drift gillnetter he has for sale. Stambaugh kept a steady pace from Nov. 20-22, through the vast open spaces at the Lumen Field Event Center filled with some 380 trade show booths, attracting attention from many folks manning and visiting the booths. Pacific Marine Expo, billed as the largest annual gathering of the commercial maritime industry on the West Coast, attracts several thousand individuals, businesses, government agencies and non-profits with links to maritime and commercial fisheries. “My wife just wants me to quit fishing; she wants me home,” said Stambaugh, 70, of Green Valley, Arizona, whe...
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PicoICE Made from Seawater Introduced to Alaska Fisheries
4Dec By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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PicoICE Made from Seawater Introduced to Alaska Fisheries

When the f/v Seabrooke begins fishing out of Akutan in the Aleutian Islands in January, plans are for the vessel to be equipped with the technology to turn seawater into tiny ice crystals that form a protective slurry around the Pacific cod catch. The Aberdeen, Wash. processor’s focus on improving the quality and value of its catch will be enhanced by PicoICE. These very small ice crystals produced from sea water, surround the fish, largely stopping any bacterial action to the flesh by getting the core temperature of the fish down to 31-32 degrees Fahrenheit before the fish goes into rigor mortis. “Our machines have worked all over the world,” Dan Strickland, the Alaska sales agent for Green Iceberg AS of Oslo, Norway, who was at the 2024 Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle Nov. 20-22...
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Study: Conservation Alone Can’t Ensure Sustainable Snow Crab Fishing Goals
27Nov By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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Study: Conservation Alone Can’t Ensure Sustainable Snow Crab Fishing Goals

A study released by Purdue University on the impacts of climate change on the global snow crab fishery concludes that given the uncertainties induced by climate change, conservation strategies alone are not sufficient to ensure sustainable fishery goals. The research, led by Jingjing Tao and released by the Purdue University Department of Agricultural Economics, was published in the online publication Natural Resource Modeling on Aug. 5. The study estimates snow crab harvest functions using climate change indicators with unbalanced panel data of snow crab production from the eastern Bering Sea off Alaska, the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, the Sea of Japan and the Barents Sea, impacting Norway and Russia. Despite years of efforts by the Alaska Department of Fish and ...
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29M Pink Salmon Harvest Forecast for SE Alaska
27Nov By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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29M Pink Salmon Harvest Forecast for SE Alaska

State fisheries biologists have good news for pink salmon harvesters in Southeast Alaska: a 2025 harvest forecast of 29 million humpies, with an ex-vessel value of $14.5 million. The prediction, which comes in the wake of a 2024 fishery disaster, is considered an average run. The forecast was released Nov. 19, and is based on juvenile pink salmon abundance indices collected in northern Southeast Alaska inside waters. State biologists said the current forecast is slightly above the recent 10-year average harvest of 26 million for humpies, and about 60% of the parent year of 2023 harvest of 48 million fish. Last year’s harvest of 19.9 million pink salmon, with an average weight of 2.9 pounds, was lower than anticipated and by August, fishermen had netted only 35% of the forecast...
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CDFW: Coho Salmon Returning to Klamath River Basin For 1st Time in Over 60 Years
27Nov By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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CDFW: Coho Salmon Returning to Klamath River Basin For 1st Time in Over 60 Years

Coho salmon, a threatened species, are slowly returning to the Klamath River Basin, now that the dam blocking their passage is gone. California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials on Nov. 22 reported the first returns of cohos to the upper Klamath River Basin in over 60 years, following removal of the former Iron Gate Dam, which was completed last month. CDFW officials said that not since construction of Iron Gate in the early 1960s have they documented coho salmon in their historic habitat in the upper watershed. The dam was one of four hydroelectric dams built on the Klamath River between 1908 and 1962 to generate electricity. The state agency report said that on Nov. 13, seven coho salmon entered the CDFW’s new Fall Creek Fish Hatchery in Siskiyou County. The creek wa...
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Seafood Industry Urges Biden to Halt Expansion of Marine Monuments
27Nov By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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Seafood Industry Urges Biden to Halt Expansion of Marine Monuments

Several dozen seafood industry, related business entities and coastal communities are urging President Biden to halt proposals to create or expand any marine national monuments in the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) during his final days in office. The group told Biden in a Nov. 18 letter that between 2006 and 2016, five marine national monuments spanning nearly 1.2 million square miles of ocean were created in the U.S. EEZ by presidential proclamations, so that over one-quarter of U.S. ocean territory is now part of a Marine Protected Area where commercial resource extraction is prohibited. Further reliance upon the Antiquities Act to proclaim additional tracts of ocean territory off limits to fishing and other sustainable uses would cause significant negative impacts, the gr...
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Commercial Dungeness Crab Season Put On Hold for 3 Calif. Counties
27Nov By Fishermen's NewsNo Comments
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Commercial Dungeness Crab Season Put On Hold for 3 Calif. Counties

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has put the Northern California commercial Dungeness crab season for Mendocino, Humboldt and Del Norte counties (Fishing Zones 1 and 2) on hold until Dec. 1. State fish and wildlife officials said in Nov. 25 announcement that the opener was being delayed because crab meat quality tests could not be conducted due to high domoic acid concentrations in crab collected at Northern California port locations. The agency also said that additionally high numbers of humpback and blue whale were observed in these fishing zones, creating an elevated entanglement risk. The commercial Dungeness crab fishery delay in Fishing Zones 3 through 6, which constitutes the rest of the California coast, is scheduled to continue due to the presence of hum...
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