14 Alaska Fisheries Declared Disasters

[AlaskaHunter]

On Friday, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced that disasters took place in 14 fisheries across Alaska over the last four years, and will be eligible for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disaster declaration funding previously requested by Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
These are the fisheries:

• Upper Cook Inlet East side set net 2018
• Copper River chinook and sockeye salmon 2018
• Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab 2019
• Prince William Sound salmon 2020
• Copper River chinook, sockeye and chum salmon 2020
• Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab 2020
• Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska 2020
• Norton Sound salmon 2020
• Yukon River salmon 2020
• Chignik salmon 2020
• Kuskokwim River salmon 2020
• Southeast Alaska salmon 2020
• Upper Cook Inlet salmon 2020
• Yukon River salmon 2021

Sockeye and pink salmon have been doing well in much of Alaska.
Kings and Chums runs have been very weak.

 

[SD_Prairie_Goat]

On Friday, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced that disasters took place in 14 fisheries across Alaska over the last four years, and will be eligible for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration disaster declaration funding previously requested by Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
These are the fisheries:

• Upper Cook Inlet East side set net 2018
• Copper River chinook and sockeye salmon 2018
• Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab 2019
• Prince William Sound salmon 2020
• Copper River chinook, sockeye and chum salmon 2020
• Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab 2020
• Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska 2020
• Norton Sound salmon 2020
• Yukon River salmon 2020
• Chignik salmon 2020
• Kuskokwim River salmon 2020
• Southeast Alaska salmon 2020
• Upper Cook Inlet salmon 2020
• Yukon River salmon 2021

Sockeye and pink salmon have been doing well in much of Alaska.
Kings and Chums runs have been very weak.

Been a rough ride. Seems like everyone has an answer for how to solve it the salmon issues, but I sure don't know the right answer.

I see a sad future where Kings are no longer a natural run of salmon in Alaska.

I hope I'm wrong, but feels like it's going to happen

 

[338win]

Allowing subsistence fish wheels to supply winter dog food isn't helping nor the obscene bycatch from the commercial fleet.

 

[AlaskaHunter]

Allowing subsistence fish wheels to supply winter dog food isn't helping nor the obscene bycatch from the commercial fleet.

The subsistence season was closed this year for Kings/Chums on the Tanana/Yukon drainage.
Bristol Bay processors donated 100,000 servings of seafood to the Yukon, all at zero cost to the Yukon villages.

 

[hank4elk]

It was just a matter of time.
CA used to be a huge commercial fishery alone. I fished for kings & silvers in the San Juaquin & Sacramento rivers.

 

[wa_archer]

I have had many a hard times thinking about what used to be of salmon runs. Im 40 yo and when i was growing up around the Puget Sound in WA it was common place for my dad and i to go out and bring home salmon. At one point i was sick of eating salmon we ate so much. It wasn't uncommon to limit out or at least bring in half a limit every time. some years it was hard to get down to kings because there were so many coho you would catch one every time you tried to put your line down. By the time i moved away from the salt water my dad would catch a couple salmon a year.

I have no clue what is going on in Alaska and i wont pretend to have the answers. I do know one of the primary reasons for the decline in WA is in-fighting. The same arguments are going on now between commercial, recreational and tribal groups over salmon that went on 30-40 years ago when i was going to conservation group meetings with my dad and grandparents. Decisions can't be made mainly because everyone is too damn worried about lossing there slice of the pie or having it reduced. Yes, it would be great for everyone to have what they want but its just not realistic or going to happen. You couple that with widespread run off pollution and small changing like sea water temps rising that to us are not a huge deal but to fish species could and are a huge deal.

I just hope changes and decisions can be made before we watch salmon decline in yet another area to a tipping point which sounds like may have already happened.

If you have the time read the book "King of Fish" by David Montgomery it is a great read on salmon ecology and history.

 

[Irrelevant]

If you have the time read the book "King of Fish" by David Montgomery it is a great read on salmon ecology and history.

^Great book highlighting our attempts at "solutions" that we already know from the last 200 years won't work.

 

[Labman]

I have no clue what is going on in Alaska and i wont pretend to have the answers.

My take: I would bet it has little to do with the group who have had seasons cancelled altogether, or limited to artificial bait/single barbless hook/ and eventually catch and release every year. My guess is it has to do with the commercial industry, but my only credentials are that I take most of my breaths through my nose and not exclusively through my mouth.
In 2020 there weren’t even 12k that made it into the Kenai river on the late run. Commercial take was 260k fish.
Possibly same group of decision makers who manage for mature mule deer in MT manage for Kings in AK.

 

[Goodfish]

Nobody wants to admit that they are part of the problem, but the hits will keep coming with the status quo of management. The commercial lobby in Alaska is criminal if you look at in terms of bycatch and the amounts left for sportsmen. Yet we turn around and buy fillet-o-fish at McDonalds and ignore 8 figure annual bycatch cost as being “sustainable “. We are allowing the trawling industry to ruin the resources exactly like they did on the east coast and Norway before that. It’s been going on since the 80’s when I was part of it for just a few months before it made me sick. There are sustainable long line and pot fishing methods available but they plain cost more.

Spawning habitat issues? Where to start?!
Ocean conditions? That’s a hard one to solve but hopefully not to be used as an excuse for inaction.

You’ve heard me bitch about the advertising focus on “value added” products like using the chums and humpies that used to fertilize the spawning grounds. It will have a bad effect In the long run. Maybe that time is here?

Trawling in Alaska - Serious Issue or Responsible Business?

When fishing in Alaska, every fishery an individual would encounter has limits. These limits exist not only to ensure that recreational users can all share the resources, but also to protect the resource from over-fishing. This seems like a smart plan that would keep the resources renewable and...

www.thealaskalife.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/405ehv

‘It’s mind-boggling’: the hidden cost of our obsession with fish oil pills

The market in this prized commodity is worth billions – but are the supposed benefits worth the cost to global ecosystems?

www.theguardian.com

Licence to krill: the destructive demand for a ‘better’ fish oil

Industrial fishing of the tiny crustacea in a dietary supplements gold rush is threatening the Antarctic food chain – and even the climate

www.theguardian.com

 

[Irrelevant]

Nobody wants to admit that they are part of the problem, but the hits will keep coming with the status quo of management. The commercial lobby in Alaska is criminal if you look at in terms of bycatch and the amounts left for sportsmen. Yet we turn around and buy fillet-o-fish at McDonalds and ignore 8 figure annual bycatch cost as being “sustainable “. We are allowing the trawling industry to ruin the resources exactly like they did on the east coast and Norway before that. It’s been going on since the 80’s when I was part of it for just a few months before it made me sick. There are sustainable long line and pot fishing methods available but they plain cost more.

Spawning habitat issues? Where to start?!
Ocean conditions? That’s a hard one to solve but hopefully not to be used as an excuse for inaction.

You’ve heard me bitch about the advertising focus on “value added” products like using the chums and humpies that used to fertilize the spawning grounds. It will have a bad effect In the long run. Maybe that time is here?

Trawling in Alaska - Serious Issue or Responsible Business?

When fishing in Alaska, every fishery an individual would encounter has limits. These limits exist not only to ensure that recreational users can all share the resources, but also to protect the resource from over-fishing. This seems like a smart plan that would keep the resources renewable and...

www.thealaskalife.com

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/405ehv

‘It’s mind-boggling’: the hidden cost of our obsession with fish oil pills

The market in this prized commodity is worth billions – but are the supposed benefits worth the cost to global ecosystems?

www.theguardian.com

Licence to krill: the destructive demand for a ‘better’ fish oil

Industrial fishing of the tiny crustacea in a dietary supplements gold rush is threatening the Antarctic food chain – and even the climate

www.theguardian.com

Dude, those are some good links. I had no idea the by catch was that high.

I've long thought it has to be micro contamination in our rivers and estuaries but damn if over harvest isn't likely a big reason. I tried to make the case for just no salmon fishing for 10 years. No recreation. No commercial. No tribal. See what effect that has.

I love salmon and steelhead more than I love catching them.

 

[Salmonchaser]

I caught my first king on the Kenai River in 1960. I’ve fished for kings in almost every well known system from Northern California to the Yukon in the last 60 years. Dad wrote the EPAs final approval transplanting Kings and Steelhead into the Great Lakes.
The last 20 years I guided in Alaska, w/o a regulation to do so we went to no kill and largely pulled off the kings the last few years.
I’m done, won’t fish for them anymore. I’m afraid they will soon be the stuff of legends. Alaska I’m afraid will have some tough decisions to make.

 

[44hunter45]

If you have the time read the book "King of Fish" by David Montgomery it is a great read on salmon ecology and history.

^Great book highlighting our attempts at "solutions" that we already know from the last 200 years won't work.

It's on my list after I finish "Dirt".

 

[Irrelevant]

It's on my list after I finish "Dirt".

It's better than Dirt. I think his newer books trend downward as he's become more of an activist.

 

[Irrelevant]

I caught my first king on the Kenai River in 1960. I’ve fished for kings in almost every well known system from Northern California to the Yukon in the last 60 years. Dad wrote the EPAs final approval transplanting Kings and Steelhead into the Great Lakes.
The last 20 years I guided in Alaska, w/o a regulation to do so we went to no kill and largely pulled off the kings the last few years.
I’m done, won’t fish for them anymore. I’m afraid they will soon be the stuff of legends. Alaska I’m afraid will have some tough decisions to make.

I hope they do make those tough decisions and don't simply allow them to slip away entirely.

 

[Rainer]

I wonder if the salmon farm industry has also played a major role in this. I know they have in British Columbia

 

[wa_archer]

I thought they should have closed halibut in Washington 20+ yrs ago for a few season to let them come back then re institute a better management strategy. I can only imagine we would be far better off if they had.

 

[thomas89]

I was told when I moved to Washington that it was like a lower Alaska as far as salmon goes.

Based off how salmon is going even in Alaska, maybe that person was right. Sad all around. Having been on several drift boat trips during my time, the gill-nets around every bend and every straight section of river lined shoulder to shoulder with "combat fishermen", it's no wonder the salmon are doing so poorly. This isn't even the ocean where the fish have some chance of escape, this is the rivers in which they are expected to repopulate year after year.

 

[rwc101]

Seems like good news is hard to find on anadromous fisheries coast to coast.

 

[Labman]

I was told when I moved to Washington that it was like a lower Alaska as far as salmon goes.

Based off how salmon is going even in Alaska, maybe that person was right. Sad all around. Having been on several drift boat trips during my time, the gill-nets around every bend and every straight section of river lined shoulder to shoulder with "combat fishermen", it's no wonder the salmon are doing so poorly. This isn't even the ocean where the fish have some chance of escape, this is the rivers in which they are expected to repopulate year after year.

I bet about a handful of mature kings get landed from the banks on the Kenai. Those big fish stick to the main current. That’s why the counters are where they are. The combat fishermen are in the reds, pinks, and a few silvers. Every time I have ever seen a King get hooked from the bank of the Kenai it is off the hook in about 4 seconds. If a bank fisherman lands one they deserve it, that’s a feat.

 

[TheTone]

I’m planning to head back up this august to fish silvers and bottom fish. Reading this makes me half wish I was heading earlier to catch kings while I still can