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Jim Harmon, executive director of SeaShare, in Seattle, and Scott Blake, president of Copper River Seafoods, were among those honored for their achievements at the recent Global Food Alaska 2011 conference in Soldotna. Harmon was named Alaska champion in the competition among food service, restaurant, distributor, wholesaler, broker and retail partners for individuals who played a significant role in putting Alaska food, beverage or bio products into the marketplace on a local, national or international level. Blake won in the manufacturer/processor category as the individual who has demonstrated the most leadership in processing or manufacturing Alaska food, beverage or bio products.Seashare’s seafood donation program solicits and collects donated seafood from Alaska and Pacific Northwest...

Legislation that would prohibit the federal Food and Drug Administration from approving genetically modified salmon for human consumption has passed in the US House but still awaits action in the Senate, where Senators Mark Begich, D-Alaska and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, have also voiced opposition.The action came as an amendment by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, to the $125.5 billion Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for 2012. That amendment would prohibit the FDA from spending funds to approve an application from Massachusetts-based AquaBounty to have genetically modified salmon approved.AquaBounty says the genetically modified salmon is safe and environmentally sustainable. Young says the so-called Frankenfish is uncertain and...

Alaska Department of Fish and Game preliminary statistics show that a total of 4,094,000 wild Alaska salmon were harvested through June 17, including 3.1 million sockeyes, 862,000 chums, 55,000 kings, 44,000 pinks and 3,000 coho. Just one week earlier the statewide total was 1.7 million wild salmon, including 1,050,000 reds, 694,000 chums, 17,000 kings and less than 1,000 each of coho and pink salmon.Economists specializing in fish harvests are forecasting a good year price-wise, thanks to worldwide demand, the strength of the Euro and Japanese yen against the dollar and still recovering Chilean farmed salmon markets.In the Copper River the harvest as of June 17, the latest date for which statewide preliminary totals were available, was 1,038,000 reds, 16,000 kings and 11,000 chum salmon. ...

By Margaret BaumanJune 2011Concern for the ecosystem, coupled with the hard reality that a good portion of wild caught seafood is being wasted and the federal government may not put up with it much longer is prompting increased effort to make full utilization of Alaska fish.“Long term, people are going to see the whole fish, that there is something to do with every part of it,” says Richard Mullins, a partner with Patrick Simpson, president of Scientific Fishery Systems, Inc., in Anchorage, in a project on Southcentral Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula to extract nutritious oils and also find uses for the viscera of wild salmon.“In the Lower 48, there is no dumping of fish wastes,” said Mullins, who grew up in Cordova and has been in the fish business for most of his life, first as a harvester in B...

Research efforts under way in Alaska with an aim at improving the health and well being of the population could bode well for the fishing industry.A research project at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, funded by over $1 million from the US Department of Agriculture, is looking at ways to increase the connection of Alaska school children with traditional foods, while improving local markets for fish harvested sustainably.At the same time, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium is working with a prominent Alaska chef on using traditional foods, including fish, in contemporary dishes.Andrea Bersamin is the principal investigator on the USDA funded research project. She explained that researchers ill determine what product forms of fish schools feel students will eat, plus whether the s...

A new book out this spring from the National Geographic Society speaks of the Bristol Bay watershed, with its world famous sockeye salmon run, and the threat that large-scale mining poses to the ecosystem. Hidden Alaska, Bristol Bay and Beyond, is the work of National Geographic photographer Michael Melford and freelance writer Dave Atcheson, board president of the Renewable Resources Coalition in Alaska.“The salmon are the heartbeat of the bay, both defining and supporting it,” writes Melford, in the book’s foreword. For centuries, he notes local Yupik and Aleut tribes have harvested, smoked and preserved salmon as their primary food for winter sustenance. Likewise the large brown bears, beluga whales and eagles depend on this harvest. “All this richness is possible only because the area ...

The South Peninsula fishing fleet, which has faced criticism in the past for allegedly harvesting chum salmon headed for the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim, voted for the second consecutive year to have seiners sit out the first opening of this year’s salmon fishery.According to the Aleutians East Borough, the fleet heeded word from subsistence fishermen that chum-to-sockeye ratios were still high on the eve of the first opening.For years now the Alaska Board of Fisheries has heard concerns voiced by commercial and subsistence fishermen in the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta that the Area M fish harvests have affected commercial and subsistence chum salmon runs. The Board of Fisheries in 2004 lifted restrictions to pre-2001 levels after finding no evidence that previous restrictions on salmon fishing...

Federal fishery managers, prompted by the incidental catch of more than 51,000 Chinook salmon in the 2010 Gulf of Alaska Pollock fishery, have placed a 25,000 king bycatch cap on the fishery. The action came on June 12 during the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s meeting in Nome.Alaska Fish and Game Commissioner Cora Campbell made the motion to adopt the 22,500 Chinook bycatch cap, but other council members argued that the Pollock fleet deserved a 25,000 cap to give vessels more cushion to catch the allowable amount of Pollock without hitting the king salmon cap.Their debate centered around how much responsibility to place on the Pollock fleet to avoid salmon bycatch versus how much benefit there would be to the salmon resource.Kodiak fish harvester Theresa Peterson, a community c...

By John Platt HurwitzIt’s six days ‘til salmon season opens in California; the initial part of the season focuses on Pt. Arena south to Pt. Sur. We fish out of Half Moon Bay so that means we have a few days to get ready. Late last week we finished bringing in the crab gear and stacking it in the yard. While a good crab season comes to an end we hope for a good start to a productive salmon season. As we make the switch, my mind drifts back to another salmon season.It was around April 1972 that Irene and I, bona-fide greenhorns, bought our first boat, the Alice E. We were enchanted by the whole idea of fishing for a living. What could be better? I loved to fish and she, a very very dedicated wife, was ready to follow me anywhere and everywhere, and surprisingly, she did.In those days salmon ...

Officials with United Fishermen of Alaska say fishing fleets, processors and others in the seafood industry have stepped up to the plate in fundraising to help Japan’s fishing communities, raising over a third of a million dollars to date. And, says UFA, they’re looking for more people in the industry to get involved. Anyone who would like to coordinate a fundraising event in their own fishing community with help from UFA is asked to contact Alaska Fishing Industry Relief Mission Inc. at www.akjapanhelp.org AFIRM has no overhead because its board is composed of volunteers so all contributions go directly for assistance of severely impacted fishing communities.