Salmon notes

• The North Pacific Fishery Management Council has set a total allowable catch of 1,487,153 sockeye for this year's Cook Inlet Exclusive Economic Zone salmon fishery. That's well above last year's 800,126 sockeye.

• In legislative action in Juneau, the Senate Resources Committee yesterday held a hearing on Senate Bill 158. Sponsored by Sen. Jesse Bjorkman, R-Nikiski, the bill would segregate eastside Cook Inlet setnet permits into their own district separate from the rest of the inlet. The sponsor says this would help the setnetters — who have been mostly shut down in recent years to conserve scarce Chinook salmon — pursue relief such as a buyback of permits. Video of the hearing is available here and is well worth watching.

• Circle Seafoods, of Aberdeen, Washington, announced plans for the upcoming salmon season: "In partnership with the Metlakatla Indian Community, Circle plans to operate on Annette Island during the 2026 salmon season. The Circle I barge, with a daily production capacity of 500,000 pounds and 1M pounds of salmon tank capacity, is expected to moor at the city dock in Metlakatla and buy fish off the port side." The company posted a video of its rapid slush ice delivery system. Circle debuted its newly built processing barge last year at Metlakatla.

Council moves to limit Bering trawl chum bycatch

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, meeting in Anchorage, just voted 8-3 in favor of a complex motion setting an overall bycatch cap of 45,000 Western Alaska chum salmon in the Bering Sea pollock trawl fishery.

The action concludes what was a passionately debated issue before the council.

We'll update this post with further details and public reaction. See the comments section.

Gulf gets more cod

Details in this press release from the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Togiak herring quota set, but will anyone fish?

This year's harvest quota for the Togiak sac roe herring fishery is a sizeable 20,737 tons.

The question is, will any commercial fishermen go after it?

We saw no fishery 2023, 2024 and 2025 due to lack of market interest.

This could well be the fourth consecutive year the Togiak herring fishery remains dormant.

It's odd considering that years ago, this was a wildly competitive fishery with numerous boats, spotter planes and processors going after fish valued in Asia for their eggs, or roe.

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

Mining the seabed off Alaska?

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, in a recent Federal Register notice, said it is "initiating the first steps that could potentially lead to a lease sale for minerals on the Outer Continental Shelf offshore Alaska."

Here's a BOEM map showing prospective mining areas.

Juneau watch

Jeremy Woodrow, executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, is scheduled to present this sweeping overview tomorrow to the House Finance Committee.

An interesting graph on Page 10 tracks the ex-vessel value of Alaska's seafood harvest over the last decade.

An anxious moment for Bering Sea pollock trawlers

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is meeting for a week starting Thursday in Anchorage, and the main item on the agenda is possible action to crack down on chum salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery.

Trawlers are worried over the possibility the council might recommend limits, or caps, on the number of chum the fleet could take each season. Once met, such caps could result in closure of the fishery, leaving valuable pollock quota stranded in the water.

The council is under enormous pressure from Western Alaska villagers, environmental groups and others to impose caps on the trawl fleet, which has been broadly blamed for poor chum returns and subsistence fishing restrictions.

"The salmon situation in our communities has become an existential crisis," the Bethel-based Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission said in a letter to the council.

The pollock industry is adamantly opposed to caps, arguing they wouldn't do much to help improve Western Alaska chum runs. For one thing, they argue, many of the chum caught as bycatch in the pollock trawl fishery actually come from Japanese and Russian hatcheries, not Alaska rivers.

Trawl interests urge the council to select a different option, one that would build upon steps the fleet already has begun to avoid chum — particularly Western Alaska chums. These steps include fleet communication, avoidance of chum "hot spots," genetic identification of chum to determine their origin, and the use of salmon excluders in nets.

"It is obvious that the pollock fishery's bycatch is not driving Western Alaska chum declines," United Catcher Boats, a Seattle-based fleet organization, said in a letter to the council. UCB noted complex factors such as changing ocean conditions.

The chum bycatch issue is expected to draw a ton of public comment at the meeting. Council members likely won't have an easy time deciding this one.