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Alaska commercial fishing news and notes
About me
- Deckboss
- I'm a journalist covering Alaska's commercial fishing industry. My real name is Wesley Loy. Reach me at wloy61@gmail.com.
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2025
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May
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- Upcoming
- NMFS Alaska loses nearly a quarter of its staff
- Hannah heads to the bay
- Copper River closure
- It's a start
- Mark your calendar
- What the Legislature did
- More from Juneau
- Juneau watch
- A buyer for Peter Pan's King Cove plant?
- Crabber gets prison in illegal transport scheme
- A sharp exchange between commissioner, trollers
- Much bigger salmon harvest expected this year
- Not giving up
- Conservancy takes its ESA campaign to court
- Recommended reading
- An update on the Northline barge
- 'I'm starting to get really upset'
- Fishermen's News is done
- Continuity on the council
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May
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9 comments:
The elephant in the room is trawl bycatch. Trawlers wasting tens of thousands of kings while everyone else gets shut down is a public relations nightmare for managers.
Fair or not, the unequal treatment of trawl versus other users is undermining management and is going to break the system.
The Copper River District will reopen tomorrow.
https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/applications/dcfnewsrelease/1672886966.pdf
Keep believing the same SalmonState garbage. Look at the genetic information from all that bycatch. Over 90 percent is from PNW/BC hatcheries. Only a handful of Copper River kings. There are also more than 100K kings caught as bycatch in state water pink, sockeye and chum fisheries each year. They don't have a limit.
6:37, you are right with some of your points, but missing the bigger point. The state and NPFMC are flooded with anti-trawl comments from the public, the feds are tangled in litigation on how the handle trawling. You are right with your points, but the majority of people don't care.
If everything is good with the trawlers, why are they spending so much on public relations?
The problem with king salmon are the inriver sportfishermen — it's crazy how many there are now. Back in the '70s and '80s everything was fine, fish were huge and there were lots. Sportfishing got popular and everything is going to shit. Commercial fishing keeps getting cut here and there but nothing improves, yet inriver hook-and-liners keep fishing! Maybe it's time to look at them?
You're almost there. It's not inriver anglers, since there are basically no rivers open. I would like to offer up the gigantic charter fleet, seven days a week, no client caps. Who's checking freezers in Oklahoma to see how many freezer-burned halibut and salmon fillets are in there? Just start by hanging out at the Ketchikan airport, specifically the Island Air counter, and you will see an absurd amount of fish boxes. But let's sue the Southeast commercial troll fleet — what a joke! I'm looking in your direction, Wild Fish Conservancy. Get real or GET LOST!
Plenty of blame to go around! I am an avid sportfisherman. Why the state would think it's OK to turn the public loose to fish in rivers and target spawning Chinook is beyond me. I get the Alaska Native subsistence needs, but everyone else ought to let what kings are left make more babies for the future.
Really, the state should require 100 percent observers in state waters trawl fisheries, single barbless hooks for sporties in salt water, put cameras on the seiners fishing the ocean capes, and restrict drifters and setnetters during prime king salmon migration times ... if the goal is to let Chinook recover to healthy levels. Otherwise, they will be a fish we tell stories about what used to be to our grandchildren.
Blame should also be on the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the High Seas Driftnet Fisheries Enforcement Act of 1992.
MMPA: NOAA and other researchers estimate that from 1975 to 2015, the yearly biomass of Chinook salmon consumed by sea lions, seals and killer whales increased from 6,100 to 15,200 metric tons, and from 5 to 31.5 million individual Chinook salmon.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/recovering-marine-mammals-increase-pressure-west-coast-salmon#:~:text=The%20researchers%20estimate%20that%20from,to%2031.5%20million%20individual%20salmon.
Driftnet Enforcement Act: Of 23 pop-up satellite tags attached to Chinooks, 17 transmitted information of ocean conditions back to the mainland. Of those 17, biologist Andy Seitz said, seven reported unusually warm temperatures, and he's "pretty sure" that meant they were recording data from inside shark stomachs.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/science/2016/07/17/salmon-sharks-might-play-a-role-in-king-salmon-declines/
Good discussion. The charter fleet had declined lately, not grown, and bag limits are at one per person per day and five per year. Captain and crew retention has been eliminated in some areas, so we know exactly how many salmon are ending up in freezers in Oklahoma and it is not any amount that causes the resource to decline.
With that said, let's all share in the conservation burden. Trollers have been cut, charter cut, sporties cut, but the trawl bycatch caps never get reduced.
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