CFEC notes

Here are two items of interest from the Alaska Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission.

• The commission will hold a public meeting beginning at 10 a.m. Thursday. Here's the agenda.

• The commission is conducting an optimum number study for the Prince William Sound salmon drift gillnet fishery. The area includes the Copper River District. The study comes at the request of a permit holder who submitted this petition. The commission obscured the petitioner's name. An optimum number study helps the commission determine if the number of permits in a fishery is appropriate. The Prince William Sound fishery (SO3E) has 535 permits, according to the CFEC database.

PWS herring fishery wraps with 440-ton take

Here's the announcement from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Waste of rockfish, cod charged

Details in this press release from the Alaska State Troopers.

Visit our companion blog The Brig for lots more fisheries enforcement news.

A turning point for Prince William Sound herring?

The Prince William Sound herring food and bait fishery will open in November with a guideline harvest level of 500 tons, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced.

Several years of favorable spawning biomass estimates and signs of improving recruitment "support opening this small-scale fishery," the department said, adding: "This is the first time the food and bait fishery has been open since 1998."

A gruesome year for Prince William Sound seiners

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game today released its summary of the Prince William Sound salmon season, and many of the results are ugly.

"The 2024 season marked the worst pink salmon harvest since 1993 and the second-worst since the late 1970s when PWS hatcheries were established," the department said.

Total pink salmon harvest was 9.95 million fish, including a commercial catch of 5.07 million and 4.88 million taken for hatchery cost recovery and broodstock.

Hatchery pink salmon run failures punished purse seiners. Average permit earnings were $42,500 compared to a 10-year average of $203,000.

The 205 seine permit holders reporting at least one delivery was the lowest number since 2011.

"The last delivery was reported on Aug. 15, at least two weeks earlier than expected," the department said.

Another fishery headed for limited entry

Dozens of Alaska commercial fisheries are limited — that is, restricted to a maximum number of participants.

Now, another fishery is moving toward limited entry.

Regulations to limit the Prince William Sound shrimp pot fishery will be the subject of a Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission public hearing on March 26 in Anchorage.

More details are available here.

Hope for herring

An updated Prince William Sound herring stock assessment shows an estimated spawning biomass of 29,253 short tons.

"It is the largest estimate since 2008 and is 119.9 percent above the 10-year average (2013-22) of 13,305 short tons," says this advisory announcement from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Herring looking up in Prince William Sound

The spawning biomass estimate for Prince William Sound herring is the largest since 2009, but fisheries will remain closed through mid-2023.

More details in this announcement from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Tsunami danger flagged in PWS

This just in from state officials:

The threat of a large and potentially dangerous tsunami is looming in Prince William Sound, where an increasingly likely landslide could generate a wave with devastating effects on fishermen and recreationalists using the area, the state's top geologist said today.

More details here.

The legal fallout

Regular Deckboss readers surely will recall our post on a violent skirmish involving three fishing vessels in Prince William Sound.

One of those boats, the salmon seiner Temptation, sustained serious collision damage in the August 2016 incident, and a crewman was injured badly enough to require a U.S. Coast Guard medevac.

Well, much has transpired since in terms of legal fallout.

The injured crewman, the Temptation's skipper, and others brought this lawsuit in federal court in Anchorage.

Court papers filed in recent days indicate the parties are close to finalizing a settlement of the case. The papers don't reveal the terms of the settlement.

On another front, Kami Christine Cabana has been indicted on a felony charge of assault in the first degree.

The federal lawsuit says Cabana was the operator of the F/V Chugach Pearl, one of two boats alleged to have struck the Temptation.

Prince William Sound salmon joins MSC club

Prince William Sound is no longer excluded — the region's salmon fishery has been certified as well-managed and sustainable under the Marine Stewardship Council program.

Here are the two key documents:

Certification report — Executive summary on Pages 5-8.

Certificate of conformity

Some significant MSC news

Alaska's salmon fishery — with one big exception — is certified as well-managed and sustainable under the Marine Stewardship Council program.

The exception is Prince William Sound, a top salmon-producing region. The region lacks MSC certification due at least in part to questions about the impact of the Sound's large salmon hatcheries on wild fish stocks.

Now comes hope that Prince William Sound might soon achieve certification, joining the rest of the state's salmon fishery.

MRAG Americas, the company that certifies the Alaska salmon fishery to the MSC standard, recently issued an announcement that an MSC assessment of Prince William Sound salmon has begun.

The assessment, if favorable, could result in certification of the Prince William Sound salmon fishery in March 2017.

An assessment team is meeting in Juneau this week and will take up Prince William Sound on Wednesday, Amanda Stern-Pirlot, team leader for the assessment, tells Deckboss.

MSC certification is regarded as important for marketing Alaska salmon, particularly in Europe. Certification allows producers to label their product with the blue MSC ecolabel.

The Prince William Sound assessment comes at the request of the Pacific Seafood Processors Association, the Seattle-based trade group that holds the MSC certificate for the Alaska salmon fishery.

Gangster fishing?

The F/V Temptation with significant damage to its port side.

The Alaska State Troopers are investigating an incident in which a commercial salmon seiner was rammed in Hidden Bay in western Prince William Sound.

It occurred the morning of Aug. 15 during the pink salmon fishery.

Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said three vessels were involved in the incident: the Temptation, Chugach Pearl and Silver Streak.

She was unable to say which boat did what.

But a reader tells Deckboss it was the Temptation that took the hit, as evidenced by these photos.

A 23-year-old crewman aboard the Temptation was injured, Peters said. He reportedly needed a Coast Guard medevac.

Now, we all know Alaska commercial fishing can get a bit rough, with boats swapping curses and even a little paint. Tempers can easily flare on the water.

But this case might have had an extra dimension.

The story goes that a group of cooperating boats had formed a blockade to prevent competing vessels from accessing the pink salmon.

When the Temptation, which was not part of the group, tried to run through, a blockading boat rammed the Temptation midships on the port side.

Did it really happen this way?

Deckboss can't say for sure. All we know is the Temptation appears to have taken a pretty hard lick.

The reader who brought this case to our attention says this kind of rough, organized fishing has gone on for too long and must stop.

Let's hope the troopers can get to the bottom of the Hidden Bay case.

Back in the MSC fold

The return of Alaska's major salmon processors to the Marine Stewardship Council program is now official with the signing of this certificate of conformity.

The document lists all of the companies eligible to use the blue MSC ecolabel, which evidently is quite important in certain markets.

Unfortunately, the certification picture remains muddled as Prince William Sound, one of Alaska's top salmon-producing regions, remains excluded from the certificate. This stems from questions about the impact of the area's large hatcheries on wild salmon and herring populations.

Salmon notes

Here are a few items of interest from Alaska's commercial salmon season thus far.

• The statewide, all-species salmon catch stands at 73.5 million fish. Of these, 38.4 million are sockeyes and 27.8 million are pinks. The season forecast calls for a statewide harvest of 221 million salmon.

• Just like that, the Southeast Alaska summer troll Chinook salmon season is over. The Department of Fish and Game says the fleet caught the full 150,000-fish allocation during the eight-day opener that began July 1. Managers say 729 troll vessels made landings, and catch rates were "very good."

• The Prince William Sound pink salmon seine harvest through July 16 is estimated at 22.4 million fish, including pinks taken for cost recovery at the Valdez hatchery. "This is a record cumulative total for the date," the department says.

Scientists to launch new ocean acidification study

The research in Prince William Sound will make use of wave gliders that look like surfboards.

An opportunity in Cordova

The Copper River/Prince William Sound Marketing Association is looking to hire up to two boats to help supply ice during the upcoming salmon season.

For more details, check out this bid solicitation.

Explosive catches of pink salmon reported

Deckboss just got off the line with Dan Gray of the state Department of Fish and Game down in Sitka.

Purse seiners are making what are believed to be record catches in Southeast Alaska.

"It's just more and more and more fish piling in here," Gray says.

State fishery managers and overwhelmed processors have been talking about how to "keep things orderly and under control," he says.

The state's preseason forecast was for a Southeast seine harvest of 54 million pinks, but now managers believe it'll be 60 to 70 million or even more.

To cope, processors have placed vessels on delivery limits.

Such limits also are reported in Prince William Sound, which likewise is seeing huge catches. Through Monday, seiners had taken an estimated 49.4 million pinks in the common property fishery.

Hatchery pinks dominate the runs in Prince William Sound, while Southeast pinks are predominantly wild fish.

USCG conducts Prince William Sound medevac

A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter out of Cordova this morning hoisted a possible stroke victim off the processing ship Island Enterprise in Prince William Sound.

The patient, 61, was taken to Valdez, the Coast Guard said.

Fish tender runs aground east of Whittier

As if we haven't already seen enough trouble over this holiday weekend, the U.S. Coast Guard now reports a fish tender has run aground and ruptured a fuel tank in Prince William Sound.

The 110-foot Naknek Spirit, with five people aboard, grounded in Passage Canal six miles east of Whittier.

No injuries were reported, but the starboard fuel tank ruptured.

"The tank was reportedly carrying 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel, but crewmembers managed to transfer 1,500 gallons into an intact tank," the Coast Guard says.