Issue: September 2021

Six major processors of Bristol Bay salmon collaborated in late July to gather and transport to Yukon River villages 25,000 pounds of headed and gutted king salmon, a diet staple for hundreds of folks living in subsistence communities along the river. The project came together in the midst of a wildly successful Bristol Bay salmon harvest, with a yield of over 40 million sockeye salmon. Meanwhile on the Yukon River, all fishing including subsistence, was banned by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game because of weak runs of Chinook and keta salmon. Officials from Alaska General Seafoods, Leader Creek Fisheries, North Pacific Seafoods, OBI Seafoods (Ocean Beauty/Icicle), Silver Bay Seafoods and Trident Seafoods asked SeaShare executive director Jim Harmon to help with coordination and...

Up to 85% of historical salmon habitat on British Columbia’s Lower Fraser River is now gone, lost to over 1,200 barriers blocking fish from reaching streams and habitat, according to a newly released report by the University of British Columbia. Salmon have lost access to the bulk of their historical floodplain habitat, the biologically rich wetlands next to a river or stream that typically harbor wildlife, according to researchers from UBC and the British Columbia-based Raincoast Conservation Foundation. “Only around 101 square kilometers (under 63 miles) out of an estimated 659 square kilometers (about 409 miles) of historical floodplains remain accessible to salmon,” said Riley Finn, a research associate with the Conservation Decisions Lab at UBC and lead author of the study. There ...

New legislation to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA), is now before the U.S. House of Representatives. The Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act was introduced by Representatives Jared Huffman, D-CA, and Ed Case, D-HI, in the wake of a listening tour by Huffman to collect comments on issues facing numerous entities that depend on healthy fisheries. Huffman is the chair and Case is a member of the House Natural Resources Committee subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife. Huffman said that while MSA has worked well, new approaches are needed in this era of climate change, new technologies, evolving science needs and increasing ocean use. The new legislation rises to the challenges of the 21st century and includes critical updates...

Help has come for endangered Southern Resident orca whales along the outer coasts of Washington and Oregon— and as far south as Point Sur, California —in the form of expanded critical habitat areas. The newly designated critical habitat areas finalized on July 30 by the National Marine Fisheries Service span 15,910 square miles of Pacific Ocean waters off the West Coast. This designation encompasses waters where we now know that the Southern Residents hunt for salmon from West Coast rivers and other marine species, NMFS officials said. While the expansion of critical habitat recognizes that the orcas forage across much of the West Coast, the new protections for the whales are unlikely to extensively affect coastal activities like fishing, according to the officials. The environmental pro...

Oceanic measurements taken during a cruise aboard the NOAA vessel Ronald H. Brown have confirmed that a large area of poorly oxygenated water is growing off the coast of Washington and Oregon, with the potential to become a dead zone lethal to certain species. Research results reported online in late July by the Austria-based Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC) note that oxygen-depleted bottom waters occur seasonally along the continental shelf of Washington and Oregon when strong winds blowing along the coast in spring and summer trigger upwellings that bring deep, cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface. These waters fuel plankton blooms that feed small critters like krill, which themselves are food for other marine creatures. When these blooms die off, they...

Alaska’s salmon harvest has now surpassed the midpoint of the forecasted harvest. As of July 31, about 54% of this year’s projected harvest of 190 million fish had been caught, says Dan Lesh, a fisheries economist who compiles in-season weekly commercial salmon harvest reports for McKinley Capital Management on behalf of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. The total salmon harvest is now 10% above the year-to-date total for last year (using 2019 for pinks) and is 5% above the five-year year-to-date average. Most of the fish caught last week were pink salmon, which are continuing their early-season surge, particularly in Prince William sound (up 123% from 2019) and Southeast Alaska (up 22%). The pink salmon harvest usually peaks in mid-August. Markets for Alaska’s commercial salmon ca...

Help in the form of thousands of pounds of wild Alaska salmon is coming to Yukon River villagers, where freezers by now are normally filled with Chinook and keta salmon, but many more fish will be needed to fill a gap in a year when fishing was banned. About 12,500 pounds of chum salmon were delivered to the Yup’ik village of Emmonak on the Lower Yukon on Aug. 10 by Everts Air Cargo, courtesy of the state of Alaska. They came in the wake of some 13,000 pounds of Chinooks delivered less than two weeks earlier, that were the gift of six major Bristol Bay seafood processers. The Prince William Sound chums from Copper River Seafoods were purchased by the state. Once delivered to Emmonak, the fish were being repackaged and distributed by Kwik’Pak Fisheries, a subsidiary of the Yukon Delta Fis...