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Federal Fisheries Board Takes Up Chum Salmon Bycatch Issues
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Federal Fisheries Board Takes Up Chum Salmon Bycatch Issues

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council held a special meeting in Anchorage this week focused on two issues: a second review of the chum salmon bycatch analysis and appendices last reviewed in April 2024; and 2025 harvest specifications for Cook Inlet salmon. The meeting is being held in the Egan Center in downtown Anchorage. Several dozen people have already testified at this special meeting, which was scheduled to run through Tuesday, Feb. 11. The five options being considered by the council range from Alternative 1, keeping the status quo, to Alternative 5, which calls for an in-season prohibited species cap on total chum salmon. In advance of the meeting, the council received some 238 comments from commercial and subsistence fishermen, communities and fisheries organizati...
Wild Fish Conservancy Threatens Lawsuit Over Chinook Salmon
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Wild Fish Conservancy Threatens Lawsuit Over Chinook Salmon

The Washington state-based non-profit conservation organization Wild Fish Conservancy has notified NOAA Fisheries of its intent to sue for failure to meet deadlines under the Endangered Species Act related to Chinook salmon in Alaska. The conservancy’s notification, issued Feb. 6, noted that the once abundant Chinooks are experiencing dramatic declines in Alaska, threatening food security, indigenous cultural practices, economics and coastal communities. The WFC formally petitioned NOAA on Jan. 11, 2024, to grant ESA protections for Chinook salmon from rivers that flow into the Gulf of Alaska. The WFC said NOAA responded May 24, confirming that the petition contained substantial information indicating ESA-listing and protection may be warranted. The initial finding triggered an in...
Oceana Sounds Alarm Over Potential Changes to NOAA
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Oceana Sounds Alarm Over Potential Changes to NOAA

Oceana, an international advocacy entity focused on ocean conservation, voiced concerns on Feb. 10 about threats to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration if the Trump administration moves to downsize the agency. “NOAA is the federal agency that manages our national fisheries, monitors and forecasts our weather, charts our oceans and protects our coastal communities and infrastructure,” Beth Lowell, vice president for U.S. Oceans at Oceana, said. “Millions of people rely on healthy oceans and without a strong NOAA, our oceans, Great Lakes and coastal economies will suffer severe consequences.” Scaling back NOAA’s resources could lead to consequences including overfishing, delayed life-saving alerts about severe weather and allowing endangered or threatened marine wildlif...
ALFA Launches 2025 Crew Training Program
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ALFA Launches 2025 Crew Training Program

Crew training opportunities for the 2025 fishing season are being offered by the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) in an effort to match the needs of skippers with young people interested in a career in commercial fisheries. ALFA is partnering with the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust (ASFT) in the Young Fishermen Initiative, which dates back to 2015. The objective of this crew training program is to attract younger entrants into an industry where the average fisherman's age in Alaska is over 50. To date, over 100 apprentices have been trained and placed on local fishing vessels in Southeast Alaska, according to the two organizations. “There are always skippers looking for crew and crew looking for skippers,” ALFA communications and program director Natalie Sattler ...
Net Your Problem Plans for New Warehouse in Newport, Oregon
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Net Your Problem Plans for New Warehouse in Newport, Oregon

Eight years into repurposing commercial fishing nets into multiple useable products, entrepreneur Nicole Baker’s newest goal is establishing a warehouse in Newport, Oregon, to meet new requirements for separate cleaning of a variety of plastics. “That’s the new focus for us this year and also to expand to collecting worn out plastic gear from cruise ships, barges and aquaculture firms,” Baker said Feb. 6 at an environmental forum in Anchorage. Since Baker began her mission in 2017 to get the massive amount of commercial fisheries equipment waste washing up on coastal shores off the beaches and in dumps into usable products, her company has collected some 2.2 million pounds of plastics, she said. Under recent rules of the Basel-Rotterdam-Stockholm agreement, each variety of pla...
Chinook Salmon an Increasingly Popular Food Choice of Sharks
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Chinook Salmon an Increasingly Popular Food Choice of Sharks

Wild Chinook salmon, a perennial favorite of seafood aficionados at upscale restaurants, is also becoming increasingly popular with a tough and hungry predator found in ocean waters from the Central Bering Sea to the coast of Oregon. “Predation by salmon sharks is on the increase,” Andrew Seitz, a researcher at the University of Alaska College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, in Fairbanks, Alaska, said. “We don't know how long because we haven't been doing this long enough, but signs are (that) there are a lot of them out there in the ocean.” Seitz presented his research findings on the decline of Chinook salmon abundance in the North Pacific Ocean during the Gulf of Alaska plenary session of 2025 Alaska Marine Science Symposium in Anchorage on Jan. 28. “The ocean is a dangero...
ODFW Issues Fleet Advisory to Avoid Whale Entanglement
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ODFW Issues Fleet Advisory to Avoid Whale Entanglement

Oregon fisheries officials faced with another humpback whale entangled in multiple sets of commercial crab gear have issued a fleet advisory for the Dungeness crab fishery in all waters off the Oregon coast to avoid setting gear where whales are transiting or foraging. The advisory, issued Jan. 30, became effective immediately. The latest entanglement comes in the wake of a record four entanglements, involving three humpback whales and one fin whale, attributed to Oregon commercial crab gear in 2024. Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife officials reminded the fleet of crab fishing best practices to help reduce the risk of entanglements at all times, but especially when entanglement risk is elevated during times of higher crabbing effort or when higher numbers of humpback wha...
IPHC Cuts Coastwide Commercial Halibut Catch By 18%
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IPHC Cuts Coastwide Commercial Halibut Catch By 18%

In a somber and tense meeting of the International Pacific Halibut Commission in Vancouver, British Columbia, stakeholders faced with the lowest spawning biomass in 40 years opted to cut the commercial catch limits for the 2025 season by just over 18%. The 2025 quotas were announced Jan. 31. The fishery has been scheduled to open at 6 a.m. on March 20 and run through 11:50 p.m. on Dec. 7. “The halibut spawning biomass is at historic low levels,” Linda Behnken, a veteran commercial harvester and executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, said. “Stock productivity is low with no obvious strong year classes on the horizon,” she continued. “Reductions in catch limits are necessary, but would be less painful if Canada’s harvest was proportional to the abu...
Juvenile Salmon Face Competition for Food in Northwest Waters
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Juvenile Salmon Face Competition for Food in Northwest Waters

Juvenile sablefish in increasing numbers off the coastal waters from Central Oregon north to northern Washington are competing with juvenile salmon for food, according to NOAA Fisheries research recently published in the journal Marine and Coastal Fisheries. The report, released Jan. 7, shows the influence of warming ocean temperatures off the West Coast. It matches reports of fishing boats catching smaller sablefish closer to shore. Researchers said their findings mean that salmon may face new competition from sablefish at a critical time in their life cycle, which is already threatened by climate change. Adult sablefish live for many years in deep offshore waters along the ocean floor.  Juvenile sablefish, like young salmon, first feed and grow along the highest layers of th...
Salmon Troller Advocacy Group to Attend Wild Seafood Connection
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Salmon Troller Advocacy Group to Attend Wild Seafood Connection

ALFA to highlight challenges to the independent commercial fishing fleet Around the U.S., commercial fishermen of all kinds are being targeted by lawsuits and misinformation campaigns orchestrated by competing special interest groups posing as environmentalists. Among other sustainably managed commercial fisheries, Southeast Alaska’s salmon troll fisheries have been the target of aggressive lawsuits and misleading rhetoric trying to frame small-boat salmon fishermen as the cause for declining Chinook salmon and Southern Resident Killer Whales in the Pacific Northwest. In a coordinated effort to correct misinformation, the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association (ALFA) has implemented an initiative to educate chefs and seafood buyers with well-documented science to promote salm...