Sorted by date Results 201 - 225 of 362
The required permits are not yet in hand, but the U.S. Navy is moving full steam ahead on its plans to conduct war training exercises in the Gulf of Alaska for two weeks in early May. Meanwhile, nine coastal communities have so far signed resolutions asking the Navy to instead conduct its training between September and mid-March, times that are less sensitive to migrating salmon, birds and marine mammals. Several more communities have indicated they will do the same by month’s end. “It’s not that we don’t want the Navy to do their training – it...
Alaska salmon fishermen could haul in a harvest that nearly doubles last year’s catch, due to a projected uptick in the number of pinks. An Alaska Department of Fish and Game report on 2017 salmon run forecasts and harvest projections pegs the total catch at 204 million fish. That compares to just over 112 million salmon taken by fishermen in 2016. The catch last season included 53 million sockeye salmon—the fifth largest harvest since 1970—but only 39 million pink salmon, the smallest harvest since 1977. For this year, the forecast calls for a...
Alaska crabbers are hauling back pots from the Panhandle to the Bering Sea, and reduced catches are resulting in record prices for their efforts. The year’s first red king crab fishery at Norton Sound has yielded 17,000 pounds so far of its nearly 40,000 pound winter quota for more than 50 local fishermen. The crab, which are taken through the ice near Nome, are paying out at a record $7.75 a pound. A summer opener will produce a combined catch of nearly half a million pounds for the region. Red king crab from Bristol Bay also yielded the h...
March 2, 1917 – Mayor Pryer received by Tuesday evening’s mail the satisfactory news that the townsite of Petersburg is to be surveyed, which is the first step toward granting patent, and gives a reasonable assurance that the holders of lots may, after the survey is made and accepted, and patent applied for and granted get clear title to the property from the government. The letter is from Attorney John Rustgard of Juneau to whom the council had referred the townsite problem. Mr. Rustgard writes: “By today’s mail I received a letter from Ju...
Puppy Love will soon be putting more people to work in Seldovia, a town of less than 300 people at the tip of the Kenai Peninsula. The love comes in the form of salmon pet treats, formerly made in Anchorage and now ready to come home, thanks to funding from the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. “The goal was always to come back to Seldovia,” said Brendan Bieri, Chief Operating Officer ofSeldovia Wild Seafoods. “It’s a value-added product, so it’s not like we’re processing and putting it on ice and shipping it...
ANCHORAGE (AP) – A year after tens of thousands of common murres, an abundant North Pacific seabird, starved and washed ashore on beaches from California to Alaska, researchers have pinned the cause to unusually warm ocean temperatures that affected the tiny fish they eat. Elevated temperatures in seawater affected wildlife in a pair of major marine ecosystems along the West Coast and Canada, said John Piatt, a research wildlife biologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Common murres are an indicator of the regions’ health. “If tens of thous...
Shellfish, sea cucumbers, geoduck clams, seaweeds and biofuels are crops envisioned by a group of Alaskans who are crafting a framework for a statewide mariculture industry expansion. An 11-member task force created last February by Governor Walker has wasted no time advancing its mission to put a comprehensive report on Walker’s desk by next March. The group, which has been meeting regularly, also has attracted wide interest from Alaskans who want to serve on advisory committees as the plan takes shape. The advisory committees include r...
February 3, 1917 – When the smoke of battle lifted at the conclusion of the basketball contest last Saturday evening it was found that Petersburg had the short end of a 50-to-16 score. The outcome, however, did not discourage the local boys who are confident that with the practice gained they will be able to shorten up, close, or maybe overlap the gap between their team and the seasoned Wrangellers. There were fully two hundred people present when the game was called at nine o’clock, after Fred Purinton, as manager of the home team, had add...
Though last year’s season may have hurt, Alaska fishermen may take some comfort in a disaster declaration made by the Department of Commerce last month. Then-Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker determined it and eight other commercial fisheries along the West Coast to have been failures, in a January 18 announcement. Low pink salmon runs across the Gulf of Alaska led to a significant drop in 2016 harvest numbers. This declaration provides Congress with a basis to appropriate disaster relief funding for economic assistance to affected c...
More Pacific halibut will be going to market this year due to an overall boost in the harvests for the West Coast, British Columbia and Alaska. The coast wide catch of 31.4 million pounds reflects a 5.1 percent increase, and for the first time in decades, not a single fishing region met with a decline in halibut catches. The International Pacific Halibut Commission, overseer of the stocks since 1923, released the heartening news on Friday. Halibut catch limits are determined by summer surveys at more than 1,200 stations from Oregon to the...
WRANGELL – Trident Seafoods will be welcoming a new manager for its Wrangell plant during the summer's production run. Nick Ohmer was named as the company's selection in a media brief last week. A lifelong resident of Southeast Alaska, in an interview Ohmer said he would be bringing to the job his local knowledge and personal connections with Wrangell's fishermen. Ohmer grew up in Petersburg, and even before fishing alongside those from the neighboring community he grew up with many of them t...
ANCHORAGE (AP) – State officials have announced that tests of Alaska seafood continue to show no detectable amounts of radiation, five years after a deadly earthquake and tsunami set off a nuclear disaster at a Japanese power plant. More than 16,000 people were killed in 2011 after Japan’s 9.1-magnitude earthquake, which led to nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Since then, U.S. and international agencies have been conducting tests to determine the health of marine life along the U.S. and Canada, KTVA-TV rep...
Fishery advocates are hoping for the speedy delivery of a letter to state lawmakers that asks them to dust off a law pertaining to fish habitats. Title 16, the statute that outlines the responsibilities of the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game when issuing development permits that could impact those resources, has not been updated for nearly 60 years. “The law we have now, in terms of permitting projects in fish habitat, was written the year after statehood and it has not had any substantive updates since then,” said Lindsey Bloom of Juneau, one...
The start of 2017 marks the 26th year for this weekly column that targets news for and about Alaska’s seafood industry. The goal is to make all readers more aware of the economic and cultural importance of our state’s first and oldest industry. Today, Alaska fishermen and processors provide 65 percent of our nation’s wild-caught seafood; it is also Alaska’s most valuable export to more than 100 countries around the world. The seafood industry puts more people to work throughout Alaska than oil/gas, mining, timber and tourism combined. The bul...
Next year’s pink salmon harvest forecast for Southeast Alaska is anticipating a run statistically on the stronger side, though the numbers may not be particularly optimistic for fishermen still reeling from a disappointing 2016 run. The 2017 report predicts the coming run will fall within in the “strong” range, with a point estimate of 43 million fish and an 80-percent confidence interval. To produce the forecast, researchers adjusted past harvest trends using peak June-July juvenile pink salmon abundance data from 2016. Using expon...
Giving to the less fortunate is the true meaning of the Christmas season, and giving Alaska seafood has never been easier. A single dollar donated to Sea Share translates to eight seafood dinners for hungry Americans from the nation’s food bank network. For 22 years, fish taken as bycatch in Alaska fisheries has been donated to hunger relief programs via Sea Share instead of being thrown overboard as required by law. During that time, the Seattle-based nonprofit has built a growing nationwide network of fishermen, processors, freight, s...
With so many salmon fisheries occurring across Alaska each year, why is there always so much hoopla about Bristol Bay? It can be summed up in a single word: sockeye. “The sockeye resource at Bristol bay is unique because of its size,” said Andy Wink, Senior Seafood Analyst at the Juneau-based McDowell Group. “Typically, it’s 35 to 40 percent of the global sockeye supply, and it is a huge chunk of Alaska’s overall salmon value. Preliminary data for 2016 show about 38 percent of Alaska’s total salmon value came out of Bristol Bay, and even more i...
Bering Sea fish stocks are booming but it’s a mixed bag for groundfish in the Gulf of Alaska. Fishery managers will set 2017 catches this week for pollock, cod and other fisheries that comprise Alaska’s largest fish hauls that are taken from three to 200 miles from shore. More than 80 percent of Alaska’s seafood poundage come from those federally-managed waters, and by all accounts the Bering Sea fish stocks are in great shape. “For the Bering Sea, just about every catch is up,” said Diana Stram, Bering Sea groundfish plan coordinator for the N...
As Alaska’s iconic halibut fishery wraps up this week, stakeholders are holding their breath to learn if catches might ratchet up slightly again in 2017. Meanwhile, prices for hard to get shares of the halibut catch are jaw-dropping. The halibut fishery ends on Nov. 7 for nearly 2,000 longliners who hold IFQs (Individual Fishing Quotas) of halibut. The Alaska fishery will produce a catch of more than 20 million pounds if the limit is reached by the fleet. Last year, the halibut haul was worth nearly $110 million at the Alaska docks. For the f...
JUNEAU – Forecasters say Juneau has seen measurable snowfall before Fairbanks for the first time in over 70 years. The National Weather Service reported on Sunday that Juneau was one of the first communities in Alaska to have snowfall this season. “Fairbanks has not seen any snow yet so far this season, neither has Anchorage. Nome has had zero. Kotzebue has had zero,’’ meteorologist Edward Liske told KTOO-FM. “The only place that really has had measurable snow this season has been Barrow with a tenth of an inch so far.” The state’s cap...
PETERSBURG – Ideas to reform the Alaska Marine Highway System were well received at Southeast Conference on Wednesday, but selling them to the rest of the state could be the largest gulf left to cross. Some of the plans presented by Southeast Conference and its consultants, Elliott Bay Design Group and the McDowell Group, are ambitious – they're exploring whether the system can be recreated as an independent transportation authority or a state-owned corporation similar to the Alaska Ind... Full story
Cordovans are hoping to revive a long lost Tanner crab fishery in Prince William Sound as a step towards keeping the town’s waterfront working year round. The crab fishery produced up to 14 million pounds in the early 1970s and had declined to about half a million pounds by the time it was closed after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. State managers believe the Tanner stock remains depleted and cannot provide for a commercial fishery, but locals believe it’s time to take a closer look. “It’s largely the opinion of the people around here th...
It surprises many people across the state that fall is one of the busiest times for Alaska”s fishing industry from the Panhandle to the Bering Sea. As salmon season gets tucked away, hundreds of boats of all gear types are still out on the water, or gearing up for even more openers in just a few weeks. Here”s a sampler: Longliners have taken 82 percent of their 17 million pound halibut catch quota with three million pounds left to go by the November 7 close of that eight month fishery. Homer, which bills itself as the nation”s top halibut port,...
With the seasonal peak behind it, Alaska’s commercial fishing industry is expecting one of the worst shortfalls for salmon in recent memory. As of last Tuesday, Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s in-season blue sheet summary estimated just over 102,245,000 salmon had been caught statewide, with less than a quarter of that caught in Southeast. Despite a fair showing for sockeye, the state’s fishermen would be fortunate enough to harvest half the 263,463,000 salmon estimated caught last year. The news has not been good for the local comme... Full story
Earlier this month the buzz around a monster halibut caught by local commercial fishermen in Thomas Bay went crazy after news of the catch spread through social media sites. Many of the comments expressed amazement for the monster catch, but some talked about sadness because another "breeder" was taken out of the reproduction equation. Multiple people talked about the cruelty of killing such a remarkable fish or simply said, "Should have put it back." No matter what your stance is, there are... Full story
