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National Maritime Day on May 22 is a holiday created by Congress in 1933 to honor America’s sea-going industry. It marks the day when the steamship Savannah set sail from Georgia on the first ever transoceanic voyage under steam power. As celebrations are underway, another maritime benchmark will be set as the first full container of 18 tons of fresh salmon from Chile is offloaded from a cargo ship in California after an iceless month at sea. How can that be? By using fuel cell technology in a new way. A fuel cell is an electrochemical e...
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. On the down side: The Japanese yen has taken a 20% drop versus the dollar this year – not good for Alaska seafood exporters. Japan is a leading buyer of salmon roe, pollock roe, surimi, sablefish (black cod),...
It might still feel like winter but Alaska’s 2013 salmon season will officially get underway on May 16, when the first runs of reds and kings are scheduled to arrive at Copper River. The season’s first fish will attract the usual media hoopla – helicopters whisking salmon from the fishing grounds to awaiting planes, ready to fly them to eager restaurateurs and retailers in Seattle and other regions. New among the salmon groupies will be two Texas chefs who will fish for Copper River salmon themselves, then stop over at the Alaskan Brewing Compa...
Fishing industry stakeholders and federal managers in June will begin crafting a bycatch reduction plan for trawl groundfish fisheries in the Gulf. It will include some form of catch share plan, and as the main delivery port for more than $100 million worth of pollock, cod, flats and other fishes, Kodiak is closely guarding any giveaways. It’s similar to a chess game, said Duncan Fields, a lifelong Kodiak fisherman and a member of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council charged with designing the new plan. “You have multiple moving pie...
Chinook salmon research money made it through the Alaska legislature this session but most other fish bills flopped. “The department asked and the legislature funded” said Kevin Brooks, Deputy Commissioner of the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game. “There is a little bit of repackaging, if you will, but there is a lot of money in this budget to do some good work on Chinook, and all species of salmon statewide.” Last November, in response to drastic reductions in king salmon returns and crippling fishing closures, Governor Parnell said his FY2014...
Did you know that red king crabs are cannibals and eat their babies, but blue king crabs do not? Or that deep water golden king crabs along the Aleutian Islands are almost indestructible and appear to resist the effects of ocean acidification? Those are just a few of the secrets being revealed at the nation’s top king crab research lab in Kodiak. Scientists at the Near Island center handle the yearly Bering Sea king crab surveys and use samples to study their biology and breeding. They hope to find clues about why king crab stocks are not retur...
Absent from supermarket fliers this spring have been ads featuring the year’s first fresh halibut, reflecting the anticipated push back by buyers to the high priced fish. “No ads in the papers. No excitement this year,” said more than one major buyer. In recent years, dwindling supplies of halibut helped push up dock prices to more than $7/lb at major ports, and halibut fillets topped $20/lb at retail. That’s not the case this year. The fishery opened March 23 and the prices for first deliveries at Kodiak were reported at $5.25 - $5.75/l...
A new plan is being crafted by federal managers for Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries that will reduce bycatch by trawlers, and it will very likely result in a catch share plan. Now is the time for fishing residents to make sure the new program protects their access to local resources and sustains, instead of drains, their coastal communities. Currently, the plan includes trawlers in the Central Gulf and both trawl and pot cod gear in the Western Gulf. “Catch share programs certainly can benefit the long term viability of the resource in a f...
It was unusually quiet along the waterfront as the halibut fishery got underway on Saturday. Most of the first fish landed goes to Homer, Kodiak and Petersburg and processors there said there wasn’t “the usual chatter” and none said they had a feel for what’s going to happen yet with prices. Lots of halibut remains in the freezers and some major processors had reportedly unloaded the high priced fish at a loss. In short, no one appeared very excited – catch limits have been slashed again this year, the fleet is unhappy about having onboard o...
Halibut scientists plan to expand the yearly Pacific stock assessments by 30% next summer, adding 390 survey stations to the existing 1,300 already in use from Oregon to the Bering Sea. Since 1998 the halibut surveys, which occur from June through October, have been conducted in a depth range of 20 to 275 fathoms where most of the fishing was taking place. But that’s been changing in recent years, said Claude Dykstra, Survey Manager for the International Pacific Halibut Commission. “We’re seeing the catch coming out of the deeper areas, parti...
More wild salmon from Alaska will make its way to world markets this year if forecasts hold true for the 2013 season. State salmon managers are projecting a total catch of nearly 179 million fish this year, 30 percent higher than the 2012 harvest of 127 million salmon. Pushing the higher catch is a robust return of pink salmon that could yield a harvest of 118 million fish, 73% higher than last summer’s harvest of 68 million humpies. The catch breakdown for other salmon species is 110,000 Chinook in areas outside Southeast Alaska; for s...
Dilution is the solution for pollution sums up the Parnell Administration policy when it comes to cruise ship discharges in Alaska waters. A bill being moved quickly by state lawmakers will repeal a 2006 citizens’ initiative that requires cruise ships to meet Alaska water quality standards at the point of discharge, and instead create mixing zones for dumping sewage, hazardous chemicals and other wastes. Alaskans won’t know where those zones are, as House Republicans rejected amendments to require disclosure of the locations. The measure, intro...
Volunteers are needed to test drive some new money-saving methods for ‘do it yourself’ energy audits on fishing boats. “Just as with a home audit where you try and understand where your energy is going, you can learn how your vessel is consuming energy and find places where it might be wasted or not used as efficiently as possible, and frankly, most fishing vessels are not very energy efficient,” said Terry Johnson, a marine advisor with Alaska Sea Grant in Anchorage. Johnson is part of a team working on a three year project to find ways to red...
Halibut catches weren’t slashed as badly as people feared, although they still continue on a downward trend – and the outlook is grim. A coast wide catch of 31 million pounds was approved on Friday by the International Pacific Halibut Commission, a decline of 7.5 percent from last year, and far better than the 30% cut that was widely anticipated. Alaska’s share of the Pacific catch is 23 million pounds, down 2.5 million pounds across the board. The IPHC commissioners, three from the US and three from Canada, each said the 2013 annual meeti...
Fishing groups, consumers and health organizations are launching a final push to prevent genetically modified fish from getting the nod for American dinner plates. During the holidays the Food and Drug Administration issued its environmental assessment concluding that the fish, tweaked to grow at least three times faster than normal, will not have any significant impacts on the human environment and is unlikely to harm wild stocks. The FDA’s environmental green light is the last step before AquaBounty, the creators of so called Frankenfish, c...
There’s lots of movement in Alaska’s salmon permit markets, but sales of catch shares are in a stall. Permit values are up and down depending on region, and interest reflects how the salmon runs have been coming in. for example At Bristol Bay, where sockeye runs for two years have been down and another lackluster season is expected this summer, salmon drift permit values have nosedived from a $165,000 high water mark in 2011 to around $90,000 now. “It’s hard to imagine they will go up a lot with a catch forecast of 16 to 17 million salmon...
Prince William Sound topped all other Alaska regions for salmon catches last year – but not by much. Fishermen in the Sound squeaked by their colleagues in the Panhandle by just 44 fish to get the #1 ranking for the 2012 season. The tally: 34,390,000 salmon crossed the docks at PWS compared to 34,346,000 for Southeast. For the second year running, Southeast Alaska beat out Bristol Bay for the most valuable salmon catch. According to preliminary numbers from the state, Southeast landings totaled $153 million at the docks, compared to $121 millio...
Ask an Alaskan what community is home to the most commercial fishermen and they will respond Kodiak or Dutch Harbor, or maybe Petersburg or Bristol Bay. Wrong! Anchorage ranks #1 for total fishing participation, with 994 permit holders and another 1,216 crew license holders who fish year round. The Anchorage–based fishermen brought home an estimated $52 million from the fishing grounds last year. The Mat-Su Valley with 396 permit holders and 420 fishing crew also is home to more harvesters than many coastal regions. Those are just a few of t...
Halibut catches could be cut by 33 percent next year if proposed numbers get the nod by the International Pacific Halibut Commission next month. That would mean a coast wide harvest of just 22.7 million pounds for fisheries in California, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alaska. Alaska’s share of the halibut catch would be 17.4 million pounds, down from about 25 million this year. Unlike past years, staff scientists are not making catch limit recommendations by separate areas. Instead, they are providing “assessment and advice framework...
The results of a six year study on Western salmon will be unveiled this month and the conclusions are not what people of the region had hoped for. Some background: the Western Alaska Salmon Stock Identification Project (WASSIP) was created in 2006 by a group of eleven signers to a memorandum of understanding including Aleut Corporation, Aleutians East Borough, Association of Village Council Presidents, Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association, Bristol Bay Native Association, Concerned Area M Fishermen, Kawerak, Lake and Peninsula Borough, Tanana Chie...
Alaska salmon sales had lots of ups and downs this summer, but held their own overall in a tough market awash with farmed fish. The wild salmon catch goes to market in many forms such as canned, fresh or frozen, fillets and roe. The state Revenue Department/Tax Division provides quartile reports on first wholesale prices for all of Alaska’s salmon forms by species and region. Its report covering May – August shows lots of wild salmon fillets were tossed on the grill this summer, and people were willing to pay more for them. Alaska pro...
October is National Seafood Month – and it also marks the start of one of the busiest months for Alaska’s fishing industry. The state’s biggest crab fisheries get underway in the Bering Sea on October 15 – the Bristol Bay red king crab catch will hold steady at 7.8 million pounds, while the snow crab harvest has taken a dip to 66.3 million pounds, down from about 80 million pounds last season. The St. Matthew Island blue king crab fishery is also down a bit to 1.6 million pounds. Hundreds of divers in Southeast Alaska are plying the depths...
Dutch Harbor-Unalaska held onto the title of the nation’s top fishing port for the 15th year in a row, with over 700 million pounds of fish and crab crossing the docks there last year, a 36% increase from 2010. New Bedford, Massachusetts remained as the priciest port with landings, mostly scallops, worth nearly $370 million at the docks. Dutch Harbor ranked second again for seafood value at $207 million, an increase of $44 million The numbers come from the annual Fisheries of the United States Report just released by NOAA Fisheries. Overall, t...
Alaska fishermen are feeling the squeeze of lower prices at the same time that their operating costs continue to spiral upwards. For halibut, in a reversal of trend and fortune, prices have dropped by 70 cents a pound in recent weeks. Dock prices usually peak from September until the halibut fishery closes in November, but that is not the case this year — overstocked freezers and resistance from buyers have put a downward press on fish prices. “Buyers simply aren’t buying,” said several Alaska fish processors. Prior to the start of the season...
Salmon season is winding down and it’s still a guess if the statewide catch will reach the 132 million fish forecast. Achieving that all comes down to those hard to predict pinks, whose catch makes up more than half of the total harvest. “I think it’s going to be close. It all depends on what happens with the pink salmon runs in the three major producing areas: Prince William Sound, Kodiak and Southeast,” said Geron Bruce, assistant director of the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game’s commercial fisheries division. This summer a catch of 70.2 mill...
