Sorted by date Results 351 - 362 of 362
Soccer balls…motorcycles… reminders of the massive tsunami in Japan a year ago are now appearing along Alaska’s coastlines. “It’s safe to say that tsunami debris is here,” said Merrick Burden, director of the Juneau-based Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation. Since January the MCA has been tracking where and the kinds of debris that is coming ashore, and whether it is radioactive (none so far), at Kodiak, Yakutat, Sitka and Craig where the wreckage was first likely to hit. “What we’re finding are wind driven objects like buoys, Styrofoa...
It has taken a quarter of a century, but fishery managers are finally poised to take action to reduce the five million pounds of halibut allowed to be taken as bycatch in Gulf of Alaska (GOA) fisheries. Industry watchers are hoping that public comments will sway them to make the largest cuts under consideration. Currently, 2,300 metric tons of halibut bycatch is allowed in the GOA groundfish fisheries. That is further broken down to 2,000mt for the trawl sector and 300mt for hook and line fisheries, primarily the cod fleet. Those are the two fi...
Brainstorming over halibut bycatch is the theme of a two day workshop this week in Seattle. Topping the discussions: the methods used to collect bycatch numbers and the accuracy of the data. Setting a precedent: the IPHC and NPFMC working together to reduce the estimated 10 million pounds of halibut taken as bycatch and discarded in Alaska’s fisheries. “As far as I know, this meeting represents a first ever joint effort by the two bodies to meet together to discuss current "science" and/or research,” said Duncan Fields of Kodiak, a membe...
OVER THE GULF OF ALASKA (AP) — A U.S. Coast Guard cutter poured cannon fire into a Japanese ghost ship that had been drifting since last year's tsunami, sinking the vessel in the Gulf of Alaska and eliminating the hazard it posed to shipping and the coastline. The cutter's guns tore holes in the 110-foot Ryou-Un Maru on Thursday, ending the abandoned vessel's long, lonely journey across the Pacific. As the crew pummeled the ship, it burst into flames and began taking on water, offic...
A resurgence of farmed fish and shifting world currencies could shake up salmon markets this year. “There are two trends going into the current salmon season that we haven’t seen for several years,” said Gunnar Knapp, a fisheries economist at the University of Alaska at Anchorage. “Exchange rates look to be weaker, not stronger, and perhaps more importantly, farmed salmon prices, rather than rising or holding steady, have fallen significantly. So we will be selling into a market where there is a lot more competing product available at a lot c...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — A derelict Japanese ship dislodged by last year's massive tsunami was drifting toward Alaska Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The shrimping vessel was floating slowly northwest in the Gulf of Alaska about 125 miles west of the nearest point of land _ Forrester Island outside the Dixon Entrance, a maritime transportation corridor separating U.S. and Canada jurisdictions. The ship is heading in the direction of the southeast Alaska town of Sitka 170 miles to the north, traveling at about one mile per hour, Coast Guard s...
Home grown salmon are Alaska’s largest crop – but don’t ever refer to it as farming. Whereas farmed fish are crammed into closed pens or cages until they’re ready for market, Alaska salmon begin their lives in one of 35 hatcheries and are released as fingerlings to the sea. When the fish return home, they make up a huge part of Alaska’s total salmon catch. The state’s annual report on its fisheries enhancement programs show that last year, hatchery returns and harvests were down by more than half from 2010, when a record 77 million hatchery sa...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — A man who sat on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council and violated fishing regulations while a member was sentenced Friday to five months in federal prison. Arne Fuglvog was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland, who said the real crime committed was not monetary but to the reputation of the agency responsible for regulating fishing. In addition, Fuglvog will have to pay a $50,000 fine and pay $100,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which will be used to improve fish habitat in the G...
As expected there will be less halibut available for fishermen to catch this year – an 18% drop to 33 million pounds, to be split among fisheries along the west coast, British Columbia and Alaska. That follows a 19% cut to the catch last year. The announcement was made at the International Pacific Halibut Commission’s annual meeting last week in Anchorage. Alaska always gets the lion’s share of the catch, which this year will be 25.5 million pounds. Driving the fishing decreases: Pacific halibut stocks continue a decade long decline, there...
An array of 19 new seafood products will compete for top honors at the annual Symphony of Seafood contest, and the crowd will choose the popular People’s Choice award. The Symphony began nearly two decades ago as a way to celebrate innovation and introduce new Alaska seafood products. The event provides an even playing field for Alaska’s major seafood companies and small ‘mom and pops, such as Tustamena Smokehouse in Kasilof with its salmon bacon. “It is the most wonderful stuff. It doesn’t taste fishy; it just tastes like wonderful low fat b...
Most people don’t know that 40 years ago Alaska pioneered the use of sonar to track salmon runs, or that state fishery managers operate 15 sonar sites on 13 rivers from Southeast to the Yukon. The goal of making Alaskans more aware of one of Alaska’s most important fish counting tools has been accomplished with the launch of new web based project that lets visitors see three types of sonar in action. The site explains that traditional tools such as weirs and counting towers can be used to count salmon in clear, narrow streams, but not in wide,...
On December 30, 2011 the Petersburg based Alaska Longline Company signed a contract with the Ketchikan based shipbuilder Alaska Ship & Drydock, Inc. (ASD) to build a new 136 foot factory longliner. Alaska Longline Company operates modern fishing vessels in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska. These vessels harvest Pacific cod, sablefish (Black Cod) and turbot. The new factory longliner will use the Mustad auto-line circle-hook baiting system. This is considered to be the most modern baiting...
