Friday, May 8, 2015

Three notes

The Copper River salmon fishery will open for the season at 7 a.m. May 14. It'll be a 12-hour period, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game says. More details here.

Out west at Togiak, the sac roe herring fishery cruises along. The seine fleet has taken 15,654 tons on its quota of 20,309 tons. As for the gillnet fleet, the department is holding the catch total confidential because only two companies are buying gillnet fish.

On the Yukon River, managers don't anticipate a commercial fishery for Chinook salmon due to continued weak returns. The picture is brighter for chum and coho. Read the Yukon outlook here.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Herring roe market in Japan improving a bit by all accounts. F&G says roe percentage topping 10% making Togiak fish more valuable than usual. So Icicle stops buying. After sending a processor all the way to Togiak, they stop buying just as things are improving. Must be new managements thinking. Lets hope whoever buys them puts someone with some experience in charge. But not Trident. Trident builds a meal plant in Naknek but it doesn't run. Instead they send fish to Sand Point, females with roe too, and turn it into fish meal. Of course that increases their tonnage and makes up for no floater this year. But it guarantees the fish goes into the lowest value form. How does the thinking of these two companies do anything to increase the value of herring this season or work toward a solution to stabilize this fishery in future seasons?

Anonymous said...

Little slow. Fish meal for what ?Please don't tell me that this is food for Farm Salmon Operations.

Anonymous said...

That is what I heard about Trident too, than they were making fish meal and fish oil caplets with the herring. Not much of a roe fishery, is it?

Anonymous said...

No news of the dock collapse at Copper River Seafoods in Cordova? Will it affect their ability to process?

Anonymous said...

I would think less herring roe on the market is a good thing. Too bad they can't turn humpies into fish meal.

Anonymous said...

The meal and oil from Sand Point goes into feed for farmed fish, but not just farmed salmon. No one will take three or four day old herring oil for capsules. The meal/oil produced has a far lower value per ton than roe herring sold to Japan, even in this depressed market. Makes no sense.

Anonymous said...

16,080 sockeye caught on first opener of the copper river, with beautiful weather, price was 5.25 and 8.25, here is hoping we are early yet. Counter is 2 days ahead of schedule , and starting to increase.