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The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will serve up an agenda filled with groundfish, crab and halibut issues when it meets at the Grand Aleutian Hotel in Dutch Harbor September 28 through October 4. The council has allocated about 12 hours each for groundfish harvest specifications and Bering Sea-Aleutian Island crab issues. Also on the agenda is an eight-hour slot for an initial review of a salmon fishery management plan, plus four hours for halibut management issues. The groundfish harvest specifications session will involve an initial review of analysis to reduce Gulf of Alaska halibut prohibited species catch limits and time to adopt proposed specifications for the upcoming 2012 season.Under crab issues, the council plans an initial review of crab economic data, plus time to ap...

Togiak Seafoods in Southwest Alaska is continuing to strengthen the economy of the small Bristol Bay community, thanks to a partnership between the Traditional Council of Togiak and Copper River Seafoods. Operators of Togiak Seafoods said that through the end of July the facility was ahead of its 2010 production volume and preparing for its first ever deliveries of halibut while waiting for the silver salmon to start running. At last count, the plant had processed nearly 2 million pounds of salmon, mainly reds. Some filleting was being done in Togiak and a lot of the harvest was also being flown into Anchorage for processing at Copper River Seafoods facilities there, with flash freezing of the fillets.Togiak Seafoods is employing about 85 people this year, including 37 local residents, plu...

By Bob TkaczAugust 2011As long-term federal efforts to clarify rules controlling use and sale of all legally harvested marine mammals slowly ramp up, Native organizations in Southeast Alaska are hoping their plans for commercial tanneries will result in a multi-fold increase in sea otter harvests as soon as this winter.With quality finished pelts selling for upwards of $300 each and blankets or other items fetching five-figure prices, the initiatives could provide a desperately needed boost to village economies beside leaving more shellfish and other commercial and subsistence stocks for human use.The five-year old commercial tannery run by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, which specializes in otter pelts, expects to double its capacity by the end of this year when expansion into facilities twic...

State fishery managers for Alaska are now saying the run of wild Alaska sockeye salmon in Upper Cook Inlet could reach 9.9 million reds or more. The preseason forecast was for 6.4 million reds, but the mid-July mid-season assessment conducted by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game prompted biologists to boost those numbers. A week earlier some processors put restrictions on how much fish they would take from harvesters but not they have brought in extra tenders and there are no limits at this time on deliveries to tenders.Some 58 fishing vessels are registered to fish in Upper Cook Inlet, of which 420 drift gillnetters were reported fishing, but biologists said some might be fishing with double permits. Harvests continue to be robust, even with in-river escapement for the Kenai River ra...

A new draft report of an independent scientific review of a recent biological opinion by the National Marine Fisheries Service on the impact of groundfish fisheries on Steller sea lions is critical of the NMFS report. The draft report comes in the wake of a federal fisheries decision that implemented new fishery closures in 2011 for Atka mackerel and Pacific cod in the Western Aleutian Islands, a move the industry said would cost them millions of dollars.The independent researchers for the states of Alaska and Washington say they do not agree with the finding of jeopardy of adverse modification for Steller sea lions in the western and central Aleutian Islands, as concluded in the biological opinion. The scientists said they found that NMFS misinterpreted crucial evidence from statistical s...

Commercial fisheries veteran Merrick Burden has stepped into the post of executive director of the Marine Conservation Alliance, filling the vacancy left by the retirement of Dave Benton.Burden, who will be based in an office at Seattle Fisherman’s Terminal, has an extensive background in commercial fisheries. He has worked for the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Pacific Fishery Management Council, and, most recently, as the senior fisheries economist for the Environmental Defense Fund.He said in a statement issued by MCA that he is looking forward to helping chart a course that enhances MCA’s impact of sustainably managed fisheries through the use of science.MCA, which is based in Juneau and Seattle, is a coalition of seafood processors, harvesters, support industries, coastal c...

The struggling commercial fishery in the Lower Yukon has proven considerably better this year than in the past three years, according to Kwik'Pak Fisheries spokesman Jack Schultheis, the lousy weather notwithstanding. Schultheis said the weather has been downright horrible, “the coldest, nastiest, wettest summer we’ve ever had,” with temperatures hovering around 38 to 40 above zero. Still the fishermen – some 400 fishing families – have been in a pretty decent mood, he said. Wages to employees of Kwik'Pak plus payments to harvesters have put a little more than $2 million into the region so far this season, he said. Most of the Kwik'Pak summer run of oil-rich Yukon River chum salmon went into frozen fillets for domestic and European markets, with about 10 percent to the fresh domestic marke...

Wild sockeye salmon harvests in Bristol Bay hit 15.3 million fish through July 4 and just keep on growing, with a cumulative escapement of 4.7 million fish, for a total run through Independence Day of 20.4 million fish. That broke down to a total run of 8.5 million fish into the Naknek-Kvichak, 5,073,754 fish into the Nushagak district, 4.8 million into the Egegik district, 1.9 million into the Ugashik district, and 136,837 into the Togiak district.Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists say the preliminary harvest figures for July 4 alone show was 1.6 million fish, with the number of sockeye per drift delivery averaging 816,000 reds in the Naknek-Kvichak district, 758,000 in the Ugashik district, 561,000 in Egegik, 434,000 in the Nushagak and 395,000 in the Togiak district. On July ...

Alaska’s overall statewide harvest of all wild salmon species through July 1 stood at a preliminary total of nearly 20 million fish. The good news for fishermen is that prices were holding steady through July 5 in Anchorage at $6.95 a pound for headed and gutted whole sockeye, with those omega-3 oil packed fillets going for $10.95 at one popular retail seafood outlet. Bristol Bay’s total harvest through July 1 stood at 9.5 million salmon of all species, including 9.3 million sockeye, 188,000 chum and 28,000 kings. For Prince William Sound, the total harvest was 3.3 million salmon, including more than 2 million reds, 1.9 million chum, 19,000 kings, some 4,000 silvers and 3,000 pink salmon. For the Copper River alone, the total run was 1.3 million fish, 1,338,000 reds, 18,000 kings, 11,000 c...