Bits and pieces

• The new salmon season is gaining steam, and you can track the catch on the Blue Sheet. We just clicked over 1 million fish statewide.

• The Alaska Department of Fish and Game today announced the Aleutian Islands golden king crab quotas and season dates.

• Pacific Seafood has been hit with a big pollution penalty in Washington state.

• Coastal states reportedly have failed to agree on a protocol for commercial fishing in the central Arctic Ocean.

• A new United Nations report says that in 2022, production of animal species from aquaculture surpassed for the first time that from capture fisheries.

Arctic fisheries forum launches Monday

We've got a big, three-day event in Anchorage starting tomorrow, the International Arctic Fisheries Symposium.

The symposium is "designed to initiate international discussions for conserving and managing future fisheries in the Arctic Ocean, including managing migratory, transboundary and straddling fish stocks."

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell and the state's two U.S. senators, Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, are listed as keynote speakers for the event at the Hotel Captain Cook.

Fisheries experts from Great Britain, Iceland, Greenland, Norway, the Netherlands and Russia also will speak.

The registration fee to attend is $200.

Mark your calendar

This sounds like a big deal.

An International Arctic Fisheries Symposium is planned for October at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage.

Click here for details.