Fishermen’s News Online

Residents of upper Yukon River villages in Alaska who were banned from fishing in the summer of 2021 due to weak runs of keta and Chinook salmon are getting another gift of wild Alaska salmon, thanks to the efforts of a Stanford University senior of Alaska Native heritage Political science major Sam Schimmel, who is of Kenaitze Indian and St. Lawrence Island Siberian Yupik Eskimo descent, worked with the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust in Sitka, Alaska, to get 2,000 pounds of filleted Bristol Bay sockeyes to the Tanana Chiefs Conference in Fairbanks this past week for distribution to villages in need. Fishing communities from the mouth of the Yukon to the Canadian border were banned from commercial and subsistence fishing this past summer because of weak salmon runs. Schimmel ...

A new study by researchers at British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University concludes that the impacts of logging may take a surprisingly long time to manifest themselves, but that logging does indeed have big impacts on the well-being of fish. The study, led by Simon Fraser’s Kyle Wilson, looks at the successes and failures of five species of salmon in the Keogh River on northern Vancouver Island. “It’s not just the ocean that is driving declines,” Wilson explained. “The combination of marine and freshwater stressors effectively ‘squeezes’ sone salmon populations by lowering survival in both the rifer and the sea.” The declines were found to coincide with combinations of stressful environmental changes including fluctuating ocean climate an increase in coastal seals and other co...

A new NOAA Fisheries report identifies late-migrating juvenile spring-run Chinook salmon of California’s Central Valley as the ultimate survivors in drought years and when marine heat waves warm the waters of the Pacific Ocean. They are among the few salmon returning to spawning rivers in such difficult years to keep these populations alive, according to research published in early November in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Some years the late migrants were the only life-history strategy that was successful,” according to Flora Cordoleani, lead author of the research and associate project scientist with NOAA Fisheries and the University of California Santa Cruz. These fish, Cordoleani said, can survive difficult drought conditions because they come from the few remaining rivers...

A new digital and television ad campaign launched by the Bristol Bay Defense Fund is urging the Environment Protection Agency to “finish the job” of protecting salmon habitat in Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed. The campaign, part of a nearly year-long effort aimed at the Biden administration and EPA, comes in the wake of a federal court decision vacating a previous decision by the Trump Administration to withdraw proposed protections for Bristol Bay and to put the process of protecting Bristol Bay back in the EPA’s hands. The new ad states that “the president and the EPA know what’s at stake. Before the next fishing season begins, they have the power to stop Pebble mine.” This ad and previous efforts by Alaska seafood harvesters, fishing communities and others, were prompted by co...

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council plans to hold virtual meetings during the first two and a half weeks of December, with Scientific and Statistic Committee and Advisory Panel meetings beginning on Thursday, Dec. 2. Items on the agenda include consideration of an emergency action request for extension of the red king crab savings area, a matter before the council only. The request for this emergency action was prompted by a decision for closure of the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery in the Bering Sea for the current season due to lack of abundance of legal male king crab. The full agenda, schedule and documents for review are now available on the council’s website, https://www.npfmc.org. Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers said their fishermen are facing a $200 million hit ...

A federal judge in Anchorage has vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2019 decision to withdraw protections for the Bristol Bay watershed in Southwest Alaska, reinstating proposed protections under the Clean Water Act for the world’s largest wild salmon fishery. The decision announced Friday, Oct. 29, was hailed by commercial fishermen, Alaska Native and environmental entities, who are now asking the EPA to complete the 404(c) process under the Clean Water Act by June 2022, when millions of salmon will again return to the Bristol Bay river system. The proposed protections would limit how much mine waste could be released by developers of the proposed copper, gold and molybdenum Pebble mine into streams, rivers and wetlands at the headwaters of Bristol Bay. The decisio...

New restrictions have been put in place for traps utilized in California’s recreational Dungeness crab fishery, which opens statewide on Nov. 6, in an effort to reduce entanglement risks for whales and sea turtles. Under new regulations announced Nov. 1 by the state’s Fish and Game Commission, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has the authority to prohibit use of traps in the fishery to minimize entanglement from lines and buoys typically used with trap gear. A crab trap gear prohibition would also prevent use of crab traps in the rock crab fishery. Use of hoop nets and snares (crab loop traps) are not affected by the new regulations and may be used to catch Dungeness crab when the season opens. The commercial Dungeness crab fishery south of the Sonoma/Mendocino c...

Legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate in late October would establish national standards for sustainable offshore aquaculture and also designate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as the lead federal agency for marine aquaculture. “Hawaii’s diverse aquaculture produced over $80 million finfish, shellfish and algae in 2019,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii and a key sponsor of the Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture Act (AQUAA) Act. “At the same time, the movement to restore native Hawaiian fishponds such as those at He’eia and Maunalua continues to develop momentum. This bipartisan bill would increase federal support for both.” Schatz, along with Senators Roger Wicker, R-Miss, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla, introduced the bill in the Sen...

Preliminary harvest and value figures on the 2021 Alaska commercial salmon fishery show a value of $643.9 million, up from $295.2 million, with 233.8 million fish caught, compared to 116.8 million fish in 2020. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s preliminary figures show that sockeye salmon accounted for about 56% of the total value at $361.4 million and 24% of the harvest at just under 57 million fish. Humpies accounted for about 28% of the value at $178.8 million and 69% of the harvest with under 161 million fish, Chums were nearly 10% of the value at $62.7 million and about 6% of the harvest with 128 million fish. The cohos comprised about 4% of the value at $23.9 million and 1% of the harvest at 2.7 million fish, Chinooks were estimated to include over 265,000 fish with an ...

Members of Oregon’s congressional delegation are urging U.S. Commerce Secretary Rina Raimondo to expeditiously approve a request from Oregon Gov. Kate Brown for a catastrophic regional fishery disaster declaration for Oregon’s ocean commercial salmon fishery. The delegation noted in its Oct. 21 letter to Raimondo that federal aid is urgently needed to mitigate negative impacts of three consecutive years of steep declines in revenue generated by this fishery and to provide support to communities that were economically impacted. In 2018, 2019 and 2020, the commercial ex-vessel value of Chinook salmon in these waters was $2.3 million, $2.0 million and $1.4 million respectively, a significant decrease from the average 2013-2017 value of $6.3 million, they said. In addition to the eco...