Alaska Waypoints | Navigating Alaska's Fishing Industry

Homer-based North Pacific Fisheries Association has received a $147,400 National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Fisheries Innovation Fund grant for a two-year project to use electronic monitoring in the pot and longline cod fisheries.

Pavlof Volcano continued to erupt over the weekend, spitting a plume of ash that reached 22,000 feet into the sky.

Bethel- Nearly 50 fishermen were cited for illegal salmon fishing last June. Half of them pled not guilty and have been fighting it in court ever since. In recent weeks, the fishermen had been waiting to hear a decision on whether they have the religious right to subsistence fish, even during state closures.

It takes quite a crew to get Alaska salmon from the fishing boat to dinner plates, and each gets a share of the goods.

Hilco Industrial will conduct the sale of over 500 lots of seafood processing equipment located in Adak's recently shuttered 250,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art processing facility.

Winter king salmon trolling was slow in Southeast Alaska for much of this past year, very slow, but the commercial catch brought sustained, record-high prices. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the fleet landed just under 26 thousand, four hundred kings during the winter season, which runs from mid-October through April. The state manages the winter fishery with a 45,000 king cap.

The 55th annual Kodiak Crab Festival will not live up to its name. With time running out to register for space at the festival, no vendor has announced intentions to sell crab. There will be plenty of salmon and halibut, but no snow crab, no Tanner crab and no king crab.

The initial Copper River opener on Thursday came on less bad weather than expected, and resulted in a harvest of 82,000 sockeye and 700 kings. The sockeye harvest was twice as much as expected, while kings were less than half. However, both totals were well below last year, with sockeye down nearly 50%. Total was about 500,00 lbs. of sockeye. The next opener is today, Monday, with a forecast for good weather.

Brazilian supplier Noronha Pescado is launching what it says are the first salmon, cod and pollock fillets from Alaska to be sold directly into Brazil.

Alaska Airlines' summer service to Dillingham and King Salmon is scheduled to start June 9th. "That's daily service between both destinations," said Marianne Lindsey, a spokesperson with Alaska Airlines.

NOAA is seeking public comment for a rule that will restrict the use of "hired skippers" to fish IFQ's of halibut and sablefish in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands and the Gulf of Alaska in a move by the agency to preserve the region's owner-operator fleet.

The Copper River salmon season began early Thursday amid windy, dreary weather. But the gray skies didn't stop Alaska's commercial fishermen from crowding the waters to participate in one of the state's most renowned wild salmon runs, a highly prized stock of kings and reds famous in Alaska and the Lower 48.

The Alaska Airlines plane arrived early this morning with Copper River king and sockeye salmon from three seafood processors: Ocean Beauty Seafoods, Trident Seafoods and Copper River Seafoods. At least four more Alaska Airlines flights today will transport salmon from Cordova, Alaska, to Anchorage, Alaska, Seattle and across the United States.

Two Bering Sea groundfish catcher-processor vessels have been accused of tampering with the scales used to weigh their harvest. As KUCB’s Stephanie Joyce reports, the alleged violations carry hefty penalties for the vessels’ parent company, American Seafoods.

The prices of high-grade Alaskan pollock roe--raw materials for mentai spiced roe and other pollock roe products in Japan have been on a declining trend.

U.S. Sen. Mark Begich recently met with Penny Pritzker, the President’s nominee to serve as Secretary of Commerce. According to Begich’s office, the State’s Junior Senator pressed her on the importance of sound fisheries management, noting that 55 percent of America’s domestically caught seafood is harvested in Alaska, as well as, discussing the importance of Arctic development.

Alaska has unparalleled vistas, gorgeous wildlife, glaciers, mountains, rivers, streams, beaches, and so much more. The state boasts plant and animal life not found anywhere else in the world, much of which is marine in nature. That same marine wildlife is a boon for the state's economy, drawing hundreds of commercial fishermen each year hoping for a big catch.

After a costly economic closure not supported by peer reviewed science, NOAA has issued a new EIS for steller sea lions in the Western Aleutians that will somewhat restore the status quo prior to the agencies emergency action in 2011. In particular, the preferred alternative, if adopted would return to fishery exclusion zones of 3 miles and ten miles around haulouts and rookeries, and allow some fishing elsewhere in what are now closed areas.

A hot herring season has instead cooled, leading to slow fishing across the Kodiak archipelago. As of Monday afternoon, only about 4,000 tons of herring had been harvested from a quota of 5,410 tons. While 40 boats were registered for the fishery before its April 15 opening, only about 10 remain. The rest have gone west to the Togiak herring fishery, Alaska's largest.

The Seafood Nutrition Partnership, a non-profit to address seafood deficiency and build awareness of the health and nutritional benefits of seafood, is taking shape.

On behalf of my fellow Bristol Bay fishermen, past and present, I would like to issue a friendly challenge to the Pebble Limited Partnership, and specifically its Chief Executive Officer, John Shively. But first, let’s review a few things that we know about the Bristol Bay watershed and the proposed Pebble Mine:

•The salmon runs of Bristol Bay have sustained residents of this region for approximately 9,000 years, or about 350 generations.

Between 60 and 70 percent of Alaska’s seafood is exported to customers around the globe, and the strength of foreign currencies against the US dollar plays a big role in annual sales. Tracking by the Juneau-based McDowell Group for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute shows mid-year ups and downs for Alaska’s biggest seafood buyers.

The question of offshore oil and gas development has hung over Bristol Bay and the southeast Bering Sea for 35 years. Lease sales have been scheduled, fought, sold and repurchased only to be scheduled again once temporary moratoriums expired or were lifted.

Alaska’s most active volcano appears to be erupting. Mount Pavlof, on the Alaska Peninsula, started rumbling Monday morning, according to Alaska Volcano Observatory scientist-in-charge John Power.

Commercial fishermen in the Togiak Sac Roe Herring Fishery are off to a good start with nearly 5-thousand tons of herring harvested during the first 2 days of fishing. KDLG's Mike Mason has the details.

The salmon fry that resided in Margaret Lake this winter have matured and are already being placed in their new locations. The Kodiak Regional Aquiculture Association began raising the salmon in one of Kodiak’s local lakes in August of 2012.