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There is only one species of abalone native to Alaska waters, and a new project is underway to try find ways to boost its depleted numbers. An Alaska Abalone Recovery Working Group is brainstorming ideas for strengthening the state’s vulnerable population of pinto abalones, also known as Northern abalones or, to the Indigenous peoples of the region, Gunxaa and Gúlaa. The working group includes representatives from state and federal agencies, tribal governments and others, including support from Alaska Sea Grant, a program based at the Un...
Over a five-year period, 867 Alaska sea lions, seals, whales and small marine mammals like dolphins died or were gravely injured from interactions with humans, according to a report newly released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The report, required by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, lists documented cases of human-inflicted harm from 2016 to 2020 to mammal species managed by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. The vast majority of cases involve entanglements in fishing gear or marine debris, and Steller sea l...
For Alaska salmon fishing, the summer of 2022 is the best of times and the worst of times. In the Bristol Bay region, the sockeye salmon run and harvest amounts set new records, as was predicted in the preseason forecast. As of July 18, the run had totaled over 73.7 million salmon, with a harvest of over 56.3 million. The previous record was set just last year, with a 67.7 million run of sockeyes and a third-biggest-ever harvest of nearly 42 million of the fish. But along the Yukon River, a prized salmon run is heading toward a worst-ever seaso...
Alaska was the only U.S. coastal region to have an increase in the confirmed cases of large whales entangled in fishing gear in 2020, a contrast to a national trend of declining cases over the past six to eight years, according to a report issued June 28 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Of the 53 cases of large whales entangled in fishing gear nationally in 2020, 11 occurred in Alaska, according to the report, from NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. The previous year, there were 75 confirmed cases of whale e...
Scientists are on the water this summer, gathering information about a once-mysterious habitat - the large and varied gardens of colorful corals that cover parts of the Alaska seafloor. What they learn could prompt new restrictions for commercial seafood harvests. Though often associated with tropical locations, corals and associated sponges are also important features of the Alaska marine ecosystem. Some Alaska marine sites are believed to hold the world's most diverse and abundant deep-sea cor...
As election officials count votes in Alaska’s first-ever statewide election by mail, they have rejected thousands of submitted ballots, including one in six from a Western Alaska state House district, causing concern from observers who say the state’s process is disenfranchising voters, particularly Alaska Natives. At last week’s meeting of the National Congress of American Indians in Anchorage, Michelle Sparck delivered a speech on behalf of a group whose mission is to improve Alaska Native voting rates. When she described the issue, “ther...
Western Alaska villagers have endured the worst chum salmon runs on record, several years of anemic Chinook salmon runs in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, harvest closures from the Bering Sea coast to Canada’s Yukon Territory and such dire conditions that they relied on emergency shipments of salmon from elsewhere in Alaska just to have food to eat. Many of those suffering see one way to provide some quick relief: Large vessels trawling for pollock and other groundfish in the industrial-scale fisheries of the Bering Sea, they say, must stop i...
When Dr. Anne Zink began working as the state’s chief medical officer in the summer of 2019, she had a vision of transforming the state’s health system into one that promotes health holistically rather than one that simply responds to sickness. Then came COVID-19. At least a third of Alaskans have tested positive for the COVID virus as of the May 11 count, according to the state’s data hub, while more than 3,700 have been hospitalized and 1,235 have died. Now, two years after the pandemic overt...