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Sockeye salmon catches often add up to half of the value of Alaska’s total salmon fishery, and the so-called reds dominate the season’s early fisheries starting in mid-May. But sockeye catches so far range from record-setting highs at Bristol Bay to record lows nearly everywhere else. For example, the Copper River sockeye harvest of just 26,000 is the lowest in 50 years. At Kodiak just 212,000 sockeyes were taken through July 6 making it the weakest harvest in 38 years. Sockeye fishing at Yakutat has been closed due to the lowest returns in...
Plastics in recycled fishing nets are being used to make an amazing array of products around the globe and Alaska plans to get in on the action. An Alaska Net Hack Challenge is being planned for September 8 and 9 that aims to identify potential opportunities for using the tons of old nets piled up in landfills and storage lots across the state and develop new items from the materials. Fishing nets can weigh from 5,000 to 20,000 pounds each. “The purpose of the program is to change how people look at fishing nets and ropes. Instead of looking a...
Hagfish is the real name for what is commonly called slime eels and it could become a viable fishery with ready markets standing by. Little is known about hagfish in Alaska, although they are commonly caught elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad. In Oregon, for example, a fleet of 15 to 20 boats catches up to two million pounds each year in customized five gallon buckets or large barrels and pay fishermen up to $1.25 a pound. Now, two Alaska biologists are testing the waters for a fishery with longliner in Southeast who were given a special permit...
Forces are aligned for a nice pay day for Alaska’s salmon fishermen. There is no backlog from last season in cold storages, a lower harvest forecast is boosting demand, prices for competing farmed salmon have remained high all year, and a devalued U.S. dollar makes Alaska salmon more appealing to foreign customers. “Over the past year the dollar has weakened 11 percent against the euro, 9 percent against the British pound, 5 percent against the Japanese yen, and 7 percent against the Chinese yuan. That makes Alaska salmon and other seafood mor...
The way that fisheries are managed determines the daily tempo for fishing families’ lives. Managers set the dates and times…the when’s and where’s and who’s … and the amounts that fishermen can catch. What happens to fishing families when any of the rules change? A new federal study aims to find out. “Those things are important for fishery managers to consider and try and integrate into their decision making, because there really are universal themes as far as how management changes have affected families,” said Marysia Szymkowiak, a social sci...
Alaska’s 2018 salmon season officially gets underway this week with the first 12-hour opener on May 17 for sockeyes and kings returning to the Copper River. The catch there this year calls for 19,000 kings and 942,000 sockeye salmon targeted by a fleet of more than 500 drift gillnetters. Here’s a primer of how fishery managers project the rest of Alaska’s salmon season may play out: Statewide, the 2018 salmon harvest is projected at 149 million fish, down 34 percent from the 2017 take of 226 million salmon. The shortfall this season stems...
Commercial fishing remains one of the most dangerous jobs in the nation, with a fatality rate that is 23 times higher than for all other workers. Vessel sinkings account for half of all fishing fatalities; second is falling overboard - deaths that are largely preventable. From 2000 through 2016, 204 U.S. fishermen died after falling overboard, according to a just released study called Fatal Falls Overboard in Commercial Fishing by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Nearly 60 percent of the falls were not...
A shuffle in some funding leaves Alaska’s commercial fisheries division in good shape to manage the resources and target important projects across the state. At first glance, the $69 million operating budget for FY19 appears to be down slightly from last year’s $72.3 million but that’s not the case. “Most of that difference is a sort of ‘cleanup’ in authority we no longer had funding for, such as the Alaska Sustainable Salmon Fund, test fishing and some interagency items. The rest is due to $1.1 million shortfall in Commercial Fisheries E...
Two commercial fisheries open each spring at Upper Cook Inlet that attract little notice and few participants, but each pays big bucks to fishermen. The first is a food and bait herring fishery that runs from April 20 through the end of May. The 150 ton catch quota is small compared to most of Alaska’s other herring fisheries, but the payout is far higher than all others. “They get $1.00 to $1.50 a pound, or $2,000 to $3,000 for a short ton, and the herring goes primarily into the halibut commercial bait fishery or the sport bait fis...
Alaska halibut is facing strong headwinds that have dampened the value of the catch shares needed to go fishing. Increasing imports of Atlantic halibut from eastern Canada, reports of several million pounds of halibut holdovers in freezers, speculation of reduced catches again next year, and dock prices down by $2 or more have caused a “major readjustment” in the market for individual fishing quotas (IFQ), according to Alaska brokers. “That definitely dims enthusiasm for buying quota, and prices have come down quite a bit from last year,” said...
Spring is usually the busiest time of year for brokers in the buy/sell/trade business for Alaska salmon permits. But that’s not the case this year. Values for several salmon permits had ticked upwards after a blockbuster salmon fishery in 2017, but they have remained stagnant since last fall. “That sort of summarizes the salmon permit market. There is not a lot of excitement about any of them,” said Doug Bowen of Alaska Boats and Permits in Homer. A lackluster catch forecast for the upcoming salmon season - down 34 percent – has helped dampen...
Pacific halibut catches for 2018 won’t decline as severely as initially feared, but the fishery faces headwinds from several directions. Federal fishery managers announced just a few days before the March 24 start of the halibut opener that commercial catches for Alaska will be down 10 percent for a total of 17.5 million pounds. The industry was on tenterhooks awaiting the catch information, which typically is announced by the International Pacific Halibut Commission in late January. However, representatives from the U.S. and Canada could n...
The Trump Administration’s $4.4 trillion federal budget for next year takes some mean whacks to programs that affect fisheries. Off the top, the spending plan unveiled on February 12 cuts the budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) by 20 percent to $4.6 billion. Among other things, NOAA manages the nation’s fisheries in waters from three to 200 miles offshore, which produce the bulk of Alaska’s seafood landings. It’s the cuts within the cuts that reveal the most. NOAA Fisheries is facing a $110.4 million drop to $8...
The nation’s top fishing port welcomed seven European seafood buyers in late January – all women – and showed off its massive seafood industry during peak operations at Dutch Harbor. The women, whose companies import more than $60 million in U.S. seafood sales, hailed from France, Germany, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain, and the U.K., said Hannah Lindoff, international program coordinator for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, which hosted the trip. “They are interested in Alaska pollock, cod, surimi, octopus, salmon, roe, black cod and kin...
Millennials are now the nation’s “peak spenders” and they are gravitating towards healthier eating which favors more seafood. “We see year over year that there is this cohort aged 35 to 54 that is going to be spending far more across categories, including food expenditures, than any others,” said Will Notini, consumer insights manager at Chicago-based Technomic, a leading market tracker for over 50 years.” The company has contracted with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute to identify trends in seafood consumption and how best to position...
Alaska pollock is the nation’s largest food fishery, usually producing more than three billion pounds each year. The flaky whitefish dominates in fish sticks, fast food sandwiches and surimi “seafood salad” blends - but most Americans don’t even know what a pollock is. Trident Seafoods is intent on changing that by bringing the fish directly to the people. “It is the most abundant, certified sustainable species in the world. It’s our mission to show how this delicious, cousin to the cod fish can be enjoyed one serving at a time,” said Lo Reich...
It’s going to be a tough year for many Alaska fishermen. Following on the heels of announcements of a massive drop in cod stocks, the industry learned last week that Pacific halibut catches are likely to drop by 20 percent next year, and the declines could continue for several years. That could bring the coast wide catch for 2018, meaning from Oregon to British Columbia to the Bering Sea, to about 31 million pounds. Scientists at the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) interim meeting in Seattle revealed that survey results s...
Alaskans pull home packs of fish from their freezers all year round and know it will cook up nutritious and delicious. Yet there is still a perception that fresh seafood is always better than frozen. A Sitka fishermen’s group has set a course to counteract that stereotype, and prove that properly frozen fish has clear advantages over the ‘fresh’ fish sold to consumers. More than 80 percent of the fresh fish/shellfish enjoyed by Americans are imports and can sit for a week or more before being purchased at retail counters. And most people don’t...
It’s steady as she goes for the values of Alaska salmon fishing permits, with upticks in the wind at several fishing regions. “There’s a lot of cautious optimism,” said Jeff Osborn of Dock Street Brokers in Seattle. As well there should be after a salmon fishery that produced 225 million fish valued at nearly $680 million, a 67 percent increase over 2016. Bristol Bay drift salmon permits trade more than any other due to the sheer volume (1,800) and it’s no surprise the value is increasing after one of the best fishing seasons ever. But they are...
Alaska’s fishing fleet of 9,400 vessels would span nearly 71 miles if lined up from bow to stern. And Alaska’s fishing industry catches and processes enough seafood each year to feed every person on the planet one serving; or a serving for each American every day for more than a month. Those are just a few of the fish facts highlighted in the annual “Economic value of Alaska’s seafood industry” report by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute compiled by the McDowell Group. The report breaks down the numbers of fishermen, processors, species c...
Kodiak is at the center of a national push to produce biofuels from seaweeds. Agents from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) recently traveled to the island to meet with a team of academics, scientists, businesses and local growers to plan the first steps of a bi-coastal pilot project to modernize methods to grow sugar kelp as a fuel source. The project is bankrolled by a $500,000 grant to the University of Alaska/Fairbanks through a new DOE program called Macroalgae Research Inspiring Novel E...
Fishing outlooks for some of Alaska’s largest catches are running the gamut from celebratory (salmon) to relief (Bering Sea crab) to catastrophic (cod). First the bad news. Stakeholders were stunned to learn that surveys yielded the lowest numbers ever for Pacific cod in the federally managed waters of the Gulf of Alaska, meaning from three to 200 miles offshore. Seafood.com was the first to report the bad news as the North Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting got underway last week in Anchorage. Fisheries biologist Steve Barbeaux of the...
Chum salmon returned home to Alaska this year in numbers never seen before from Southeast to Kotzebue, and set catch records statewide and in many regions. Chums, also called dogs because of their long use as a prime food source for Alaska Native dog teams, are the most widely distributed of all Pacific salmon and occur throughout Alaska. The fish usually comprise about 15 percent of the total salmon catch, and this year’s tally of almost 25 million is the biggest harvest since 2000. At Kodiak, for example, a chum catch of nearly two million w...
October is National Seafood Month, a distinction bestowed by Congress 30 years ago to recognize one of America’s oldest industries. Alaska merits special recognition because its fishing fleets provide 65 percent of the nation’s wild caught seafood, more than all of the other states combined. Ironically, there is little to no fanfare in Alaska during seafood month. My hometown of Kodiak, for example, (the #2 U.S. fishing port) never gives a shout out to our fishermen and processors, nor do local restaurants celebrate seafood on their Oct...
A growing cluster of entrepreneurs is seeding prospects for Alaska’s new “blue economy” and it is attracting interest from around the world. Marine technology experts are meeting at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage this week as part of the Oceans ’17 conference and the conversations and a competition will continue into October. It’s a first visit to Alaska for the global event that is hosted by the Marine Technology Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Founded in 1884 by the likes of Thomas Edison and Alexander G...
