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Alaska salmon fishermen can get rebates on pingers aimed at keeping baleen whales away from their gear. The six inch, battery operated tubes are tied into fishing nets and transmit animal-specific signals every five seconds to alert the animals to keep their distance. “Pingers can be really helpful to alert the whales to something in front of them so you have less entanglements,” said Kathy Hansen, director of the Southeast Alaska Fisheries Alliance. SEAFA received a $25,000 Hollings Grant from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation to fund t...
The Coast Guard commercial fishing vessel examiner will be conducting free dockside examinations for commercial fishing vessels May 24 – 27. Check out our new specific checklist generator located at www.fishsafewest.info to allow safety requirements to be printed for an exam. Mandatory exams are required on all commercial fishing vessels that operate more than three miles off shore. Contact Jim Paul at (907) 617-2523 to schedule an exam....
AMSEA will offer its “Upright & Watertight: Vessel Stability Awareness” workshop in Petersburg Tuesday, May 24 from 8:00 am – 2:00 pm at the Tides Inn. Register online at www.amsea.org or call (907) 747-3287....
AMSEA will offer a 10-hour Fishing Vessel Drill Conductor Refresher workshop in Petersburg Monday, May 23, from 8:00 am – 7:00 pm at the Tides Inn. This is for commercial fishermen that have previously completed a Fishing Vessel Drill Conductor workshop and want to update their skills. Register online at www.amsea.org or call (907) 747-3287....
In the face of Alaska’s multi-billion dollar budget shortfalls, state policy makers are putting the onus on fishermen to cover the costs of going fishing. “One of the sources we have to offset general fund decreases is increased test fishing. We don’t like to catch fish or crab or anything just to raise money, but in this climate we’re having to look at that long and hard,” said Scott Kelley, director of the Commercial Fisheries for the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game. Test fishing is typically done by department chartered vessels to assess st...
In a news brief released April 28, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced additional sport fishing opportunities for king salmon would be available to Wrangell and Petersburg’s District 8. Sport fishing for king salmon in the district may be conducted with the use of two rods per angler, with no more than six lines fished from a vessel. Resident anglers have a bag limit of three king salmon 28 inches or greater in length, with a limit of six in possession. Nonresidents have a bag and possession limit of two, up to six for the year. Ch...
Cuts affecting Alaska’s fisheries will be spread across all regions and species, depending on the final budget that is approved by state legislators. As it stands now, the total commercial fisheries budget for FY 2017 from all state and federal funding sources is about $64 million, a drop of $10 million over two years. “With cuts of that magnitude, everything is on the table,” said Scott Kelley, director of the Commercial Fisheries Division at the Dept. of Fish and Game. Last year 109 fishery projects were axed, and another 65 are on the cut l...
Marine boat anglers returning to ports where and when on-site ADF&G creel surveys are conducted will be prohibited from filleting, mutilating, and de-heading sport caught lingcod, nonpelagic rockfish, and king and coho salmon at-sea. Marine boat anglers returning to any port on the road system of the communities listed below, during the times designated, may not fillet, mutilate, or de-head these fish until the fish have been brought to shore and offloaded, unless the fish have been consumed or preserved on board: Petersburg: 12:01 a.m....
Increasingly corrosive oceans are raising more red flags for Bering Sea crab stocks. Results from a first ever, two year project on baby Tanner crabs show that higher ocean acidity (pH) affects both their shell production and the immune systems. Bairdi Tanner crab, the larger cousins of snow crab, are growing into one of Alaska’s largest crab fisheries with a nearly 20 million pound harvest this season. “We put mom crabs from the Bering Sea in a tank, and allowed her embryos to grow and hatch in an acidified treatment,” explained project leade...
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the opening of the commercial king salmon troll fishery in District 8. District 8: will be open from 12:01 a.m., Monday, May 2 - 11:59 p.m., Wednesday, May 4, with restrictions at the Babbler Point Area, Wrangell Harbor Area, Greys Pass and Beacon Point/Point Frederick Area. All fish legally retained in the commercial salmon troll fishery, whether for sale or retained for personal use (condition code 95) must be recorded on a fish ticket....
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the first opening of the Southeast Alaska drift gillnet fishery will begin Monday, May 2, 2016. This opening is directed at returns of Stikine River king salmon and will occur in the following area: District 8: will be open from 8:00 a.m., Monday, May 2 - 8:00 a.m., Tuesday, May 3, with some restrictions at the Stikine River, Beacon Point/Point Frederick Area, Bear Creek and Wrangell Harbor Area. Gillnet Gear Restrictions: The gear allowed will be the standard length and depth (300 fathoms and...
Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan has scored seats on nearly every Congressional committee that deal with issues on, over and under the oceans. That fulfills a commitment he made to Kodiak when he ran for office two years ago, he said at a ComFish town meeting during a two day stay on “the Rock.” Sullivan ticked off a list of fishery related actions he’s had a hand in getting accomplished over the past year: passage of an enforcement act that combats global fish pirating and seafood fraud; adding language to bills that lifts pricey class...
Alaska fishermen can send an SOS call directly to the Coast Guard, but many are not hooking up to the new lifeline. Digital Selective Calling (DSC) instantly signals a distress call over VHF radios to other vessels, and the feature has been a required part of the hand-held units since 1996. In Alaska, the ability for mariners to hook up with the Coast Guard was acquired just last year when transceiver and antenna ‘high sites’ in Southeast and South Central regions came on line (more are scheduled soon). “There was a lot of rumor going aroun...
Alaska’s 2016 salmon harvest will be down by 40 percent from last year’s catch, if the fish show up as predicted. The preliminary numbers released by the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game call for a total catch of 161 million salmon this year; the 2015 harvest topped 268 million fish. The shortfall stems from a projected big decrease for pink salmon. A humpie harvest forecast of 90 million would be a drop of 100 million fish from last summer. Here’s the statewide catch breakdown for the other salmon species: for sockeye, the forecast calls for a...
If a fisherman gets 50-cents a pound for his reds, how can the fish fetch $10, $15 or more at retail counters? “It’s all the other stuff that happens after he sells the fish. A lot of costs, margins and profits are included in that retail price,” said Andy Wink, a Fisheries Economist with the McDowell Group in Juneau. It’s an ‘apples and oranges’ comparison when it comes to using weights paid for the raw goods and the end product. A lot of weight is lost going from a whole fish, which fishermen are paid on, to a fillet at retail counters. ...
Fish stomachs could help solve the mystery of why Alaska halibut are so small for their age. Halibut weights are about one-third of what they were 30 years ago, meaning a halibut weighing 120 pounds in the late 1980s is closer to 40 pounds nowadays. One culprit could be arrowtooth flounders, whose numbers have increased 500 percent over the same time to outnumber the most abundant species in the Gulf: pollock. Fishermen for decades have claimed the toothy flounders, which grow to about three feet in length, are blanketing the bottom of the...
Early signs point to continuing headwinds in world markets for Alaska salmon. Global currencies remain in disarray, the ongoing Russian seafood embargo is diverting more farmed salmon to the U.S., and tons of product remains in freezers from back to back bumper sockeye runs. (The majority of Alaska’s salmon goes to market in frozen, headed and gutted (H&G) form.) One plus: aggressive market promotions have kept reds moving briskly at retail outlets at home and abroad and removed some of the back log. “What the Alaska industry really needs is...
Fishing lives and fishing wives are set to be showcased for a national audience; one as a documentary and the other, on reality television. The first, an hour-long feature called Last Man Fishing, focuses on the lifestyles and challenges facing our nation’s small-scale fishermen. “We’re from Indiana and we realized there is a disconnect between the consumer and where their fish is coming from,” said JD Schuyler who is co-producing the documentary with his wife, Kelley. “We want to bridge the gap of people appreciating seafood, while also unde...
Needy Alaskans are enjoying a rare taste of sablefish, thanks to a science project that kept research fish from going over the rails. Sablefish, more commonly called black cod, are one of the world’s priciest, high end fish, and Alaska waters are home to the largest stocks. The deep water fish are found at depths of 5,000 feet or more and can live to nearly 100 years. The Gulf of Alaska fishery, which has a catch total of about 20 million pounds this year (18.2 million in 2017) is usually worth more than $90 million to Alaska fishermen at t...
Alaska’s halibut stocks are showing signs of an uptick and fishermen’s catches will not be slashed for the first time in 15 years. Fishery managers on Friday set the coast wide Pacific halibut harvest for 2016 at 29.89 million pounds, a 2.3 percent increase from last year. “This was probably the most positive, upbeat meeting in the past decade,” said Doug Bowen of Alaska Boats and Permits in Homer. “The feeling is the stocks are up and the resource is stabilizing and recovering, and it’s the first meeting in a long time that there weren’t any...
The Sitka black-tailed deer hunting season is now closed in Southeast Alaska. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game reminds all hunters who have obtained deer harvest tickets to return completed hunt reports to their nearest office. Even those who did not hunt or harvest a deer must submit a report. Hunt reports may be submitted by mail or in person at an ADFG office, or online at hunt.alaska.gov. The information collected from the hunt reports helps biologists estimate changes in area-specific deer harvest and hunting effort, monitor...
A single Chinook salmon is worth more than a barrel of oil. The winter kings being caught by Southeast Alaska trollers are averaging10 pounds each with a dock price of $7.34 a pound, according to state fish tickets. That adds up to $73.40 per fish, compared to less than $25 per barrel of oil. Those who depend on fishing for their livelihoods want to make sure that budget cuts combined with any new fishery taxes, don’t cut core services that result in missed fishing opportunities. “Not all cuts are equal, and if there are cuts that interfere wit...
Fishing issues will take a back seat to budget cutting when the Alaska legislature convenes on January 19 for its 90-day session, but two early fish bills (and one hold-over) already are getting attention. One new measure aims to stop the migration of fishing permits outside of the state. We lost over 50 percent of our permits over the 1973 original issuance of permits,” said Robin Samuelsen of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation (BBEDC), speaking at a two day Alaska Sea Grant workshop last week in Anchorage titled Fisheries Access...
Alaska’s mariculture industry has passed some big milestones, and is getting set to head into the weeds. Aquatic farming, which was Ok’d by Alaska lawmakers in 1988, topped $1 million in shellfish sales for the first time ever in 2014, coming in at $1.2 million. “This is the highest sales we’ve had since the inception of the program which is pretty exciting,” said Cynthia Pring-Ham, Director of Mariculture for the state Dept. of Fish and Game, adding that shellfish production increased 27 percent. That’s an average of $7,049 in sales per a...