March 2022 – Page 3 – Fishermens News

Seven Alaska Fisheries Approved for Disaster Relief

Seven Alaska fisheries, from the Yukon River to Southcentral to Southeast Alaska, have been approved by Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo for disaster relief. The relief had been requested by Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy for multiple fishery disasters that impacted Alaska’s seafood industry from 2018 through 2021. The fisheries include the Upper Cook Inlet East Side Set Net for 2018, Upper Cook Inlet salmon fisheries for 2020; Copper River Chinook and sockeye salmon fisheries for 2018; Prince William Sound salmon fisheries for 2020; Copper River Chinook, sockeye and chum salmon fisheries for 2020; Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab for 2019-2020; Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska for 2020; and 2020 salmon fisheries for Norton Sound Yukon River, Chignik, Kuskokwim River and Southeast Alaska....

King Cove Renews Hope of Approval for Road for Medical Access

Residents of the Alaska Peninsula fishing community of King Cove say they are hopeful that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will visit their fishing community on Alaska’s Aleutian Chain soon and remove barriers to completing a one-land gravel road to the all-weather airport at nearby Cold Bay. King Cove is the home of Peter Pan Seafood’s largest facility, a year-round seafood plant processing king, bairdi and opilio tanner crab, Alaska Pollock, Pacific cod, salmon, halibut and black cod delivered from fisheries in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. The plant has the largest salmon-canning capacity of any plant in Alaska. At peak season there are some 500 employees working there. The community lies between two volcanic mountains near the end of the Alaska Peninsula, 625 miles southwest of...

NMFS Sued for Allegedly Failing to Protect Humpback Whales

The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service for failing to protect endangered Pacific humpback whales from deadly entanglements in sablefish pot gear off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington. The lawsuit, filed Jan. 10, challenges the federal permit given to the fishery in December. Fishing-gear entanglements are a major threat to endangered humpbacks that migrate along the West Coast, where 48,521 square nautical miles were designated as critical habitat last April. “These migrating whales shouldn’t have to dodge deadly commercial fishing gear, especially in national marine sanctuaries,” Center for Biological Diversity attorney Catherine Kilduff said. “This is critical habitat for endangered humpbacks, but it’s full ...

COVID-19 Created Huge Challenges, Losses for Alaska, West Coast Fisheries

A global pandemic raising havoc in health care and the nation’s economy, prompting cost-of-living increases and supply-chain disruptions, has cost the seafood industry in Alaska and Western states millions of dollars since the spring of 2020. If there’s a silver lining in those challenges, along with climate-change issues facing fisheries, it is that consumer demand for seafood is up, and so is the market price. When the novel coronavirus, aka COVID-19, began spreading rapidly two years ago, thousands of restaurants shut down, and customers of the food-service industry, ranging from universities to the tourism industry, also substantially decreased or halted their orders. With millions of people sick and many dying of COVID-19, seafood processors operating in Alaska and the U.S. West...

Vessel Profile: F/V Kiska Sea

The 125-foot crab vessel F/V Kiska Sea has returned to the snow crab grounds along the Russian border after a successful haul out at the Port of Toledo, Oregon. The haul out was the first of its kind for the Kiska Sea at the location. “The Port of Toledo was very accommodating,” vessel Capt. Mike Wilson from the helm via satellite phone. “They were good people.” Wilson has skippered the Kiska Sea since it launched in 1990 and was involved with design of the vessel when it was built, namely the functional elements of the deck layout. He began his fishing career when he was 17 in a Kodiak cannery. “Then I got a deck job and slowly worked my way to the wheelhouse,” he told Fishermen’s News. I’ve been skippering for close to 40 years now.” Owned by Seattle-based Aleutian Spray Fisheries,...

Divisiveness Should Not Have a Role in Commercial Fisheries

On January 15th, an underwater volcano erupted near the Tonga islands in the Pacific Ocean. This eruption sent tsunami waves around the world that day, closing beaches, flooding marinas and activating emergency plans in California. A four-foot spike in water levels was observed in Port San Luis, Calif., while Arena Cove, Calif., reported a 3.5-foot jump. Crescent City, Calif., got a 2.7-foot spike, and a tsunami of 2.8 feet was seen in King Cove, Alaska. At the time of this writing, the amount and extent of damage done to Tonga remains unknown. We share our thoughts and prayers to those impacted. All fishermen should take this opportunity to review your emergency plans and consider drafting a tsunami plan. Different West Coast ports are likely to be impacted in different ways. Divis...