Monday, June 4, 2012
BRISTOL BAY BEGINS
The salmon season officially gets started this (Monday) morning in Bristol Bay. KDLG's Mike Mason has the details.
– KDLG, Dilllingham
More:dlg.org
Copper River fish pricey
Prices at Pike’s Market on the Seattle waterfront were holding at $49.95 for whole reds and $29.99 a pound for whole kings.
– Cordova Times
More:thecordovatimes.com
Race for opilio
With Bering Sea ice finally retreating well north of the Pribilof Islands, commercial crabbers are wondering how much of their opilio snow crab quota can be caught before the season ends June 15.
– Alaska Dispatch
More:www.alaskadispatch.com
Salmon guys fight Cal weather
After years of having short fishing seasons, or in some years no season at all, salmon fishermen are hopeful for great catches this year.
– Daily Journal, San Mateo County
More:www.smdailyjournal.com
Bristol Bay dockside exams
Commercial fishermen targeting the Bristol Bay salmon run are being offered free dockside exams at Dillingham, King Salmon, and Egegik, courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard during June.
– Cordova Times
More:thecordovatimes.com
Student worker visas draw complaints
With the economy still struggling and teen unemployment at record levels, supporters of tougher immigration policies say a State Department program that brings in these foreign students is displacing young Americans in need of work.
– Boston Globe
More:bostonglobe.com
Derelict fishing boat raised
A derelict fishing boat that sank in Penn Cove off Whidbey Island last month was raised to the surface, a promising development for the island’s world-famous mussel beds, which have been shut down since the boat caught fire and went down.
– Seattle Times
More:blogs.seattletimes.com
Commercial guys help economy
Independent analysis repeatedly shows the B.C. commercial fishing and processing industry contributes more to GDP, employment, wages, and salaries than the recreational fishery.
– Vancouver Sun
More:www.vancouversun.com
Halibut bycatch on agenda
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is meeting in Kodiak this week, and the big item on the agenda is halibut bycatch.
– Pacific Fishing columnist Wesley Loy, reporting on his blog: Deckboss
More:deckboss.blogspot.com
When Unalaska was bombed
Six months later, on a chilly summer morning 70 years ago, Japanese bombers from carriers in the North Pacific attacked an Alaska town!
– SitNews, Ketchikan
More:www.sitnews.us
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
NY TIMES: NO TO PEBBLE
But just about every factor involved — the location of the mine, the mining industry's poor environmental record, the value of the fishery that could be harmed — suggests the risks are too high.
– New York Times
More:www.nytimes.com
Surviving the Columbia Bar
"I've crossed it too many times to die on it. If you think about living rather than dying, you'll live."
– Longview (Wash.) Daily News
More:tdn.com
Record sockeye in Copper River
Sockeye salmon are swimming up the Copper River in record numbers.
– Anchorage Daily News
More:www.adn.com
Drone surveillance boats?
The unmanned surface vehicles, or USVs, are the naval equivalent of unmanned aerial vehicles, the remote-control drones that are becoming the weapon of choice for the Obama administration in recent targeted killings of al-Qaeda terrorists.
– Vancouver Sun
More:www.timescolonist.com
Pebble brings out all sides
Alaskans alternately thanked the Environmental Protection Agency or told its representatives to back off Monday night at a hearing on the federal agency's draft study of the effects of large-scale mining on the headwaters of Bristol Bay.
– Anchorage Daily News
More:www.adn.com
Halibut bycatch this week
"I think the basic fact is that for so long there hasn't been any adjustment for bycatch. Yet for both commercial and sport charter fisheries, there have been huge adjustments based on shifts of halibut biomass."
– SitNews, Ketchikan
More:www.sitnews.us
Togiak done
The 2012 Togiak Herring Fishery is over.
– KDLG, Dillingham
More:kdlg.org
Too many opilio females
In the past week, five fishing vessels have received citations for possessing female snow crab.
– Pacific Fishing columnist Alexandra Gutierrez, reporting for KUCB, Unalaska
More:kucb.org
Fish pirate to be scrapped
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's law enforcement division is seeking a contractor to tow the Bangun Perkasa from Dutch Harbor and dismantle it.
– Anchorage Daily News
More:www.adn.com
Fisherman dead on his boat
A 34-year-old Cordova man was found dead on a fishing boat in Prince William Sound.
– Anchorage Daily News
More:www.adn.com
Sea lion executions
About 20 dead sea lions — most with gunshot wounds — have been found on the U.S. West Coast in just two months.
More:www.vancouversun.com
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
GOOD YEAR FOR OREGON FLEET
Any way you fillet it, Oregon's commercial seafood and fishing industry had an outstanding year in 2011.
– Oregon Department of Agriculture
More:naturalresourcereport.com
Good time to be a fisherman
It has taken a while. America's main fishery law established the importance of scientific quotas in 1976.
– Halifax Herald
More:thechronicleherald.ca
Opposes weakening conservation rule
The retired head of habitat assessment and planning for the federal Fisheries Department in B.C. and Yukon describes the Conservative government's planned changes to the Fisheries Act as the biggest setback to conservation law in Canada in half a century.
– Vancouver Sun
More:www.vancouversun.com
Better wireless service in North
Two Alaska telecommunications companies announced a joint venture that they say should create the fastest wireless network in the state.
– Anchorage Daily News
More:www.adn.com
Help wanted (in Russia)
The National Marine Fisheries Service is seeking a contractor to conduct a boat-based survey of Steller adults and pups at rookeries and haulouts in East Kamchatka, the Commander Islands, the Kuril Islands, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the western Bering Sea.
– Pacific Fishing columnist Wesley Loy, reporting on his blog: Deckboss
More:deckboss.blogspot.com
U.S. fleet donates to Japan
The Alaska Fishing Industry Relief Mission (AFIRM) has begun delivering aid to help fishing fleets of Northern Japan affected by last year's tsunamis. AFIRM has received over $300,000 in donations from fishing vessel owners, seafood processing companies and their employees, and other businesses associated with the seafood industry.
– AFIRM
More:www.akjapanhelp.org
Puget salmon virus alarming
Owners of a commercial salmon farm near the southern tip of Bainbridge Island must destroy its entire stock of net pen-raised Atlantic salmon due to discovery of a deadly fish virus there.
– Daily Olympian
More:www.theolympian.com
Felt soles spread rock snot
Initially, the Fish Board banned felt soles three years ago in Southeast Alaska fresh waters and then banned them statewide a year later.
– Anchorage Daily News
More:www.adn.com
Fish management needs more funding
One thing we agree on wholeheartedly is that the federal government needs adequate funding to successfully implement the requirements under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the nation's principal fisheries law, mostly through the National Marine Fisheries Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
– Huffington Post
More:www.huffingtonpost.com
Thursday, June 7, 2012
SEINERS SIT OUT OPENER
For the third year in a row, the Area M Seiners Association is voluntarily sitting out the first opener of the June sockeye salmon fishery.
– Cordova Times
More:thecordovatimes.com
Sporties allowed on weak run
Despite what appears to be a weak Chinook salmon run in the Copper River, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has so far taken no actions to restrict the king harvest of dip-netters at Chitina or sport fishermen on the Gulkana River.
– Fairbanks News Miner
More:newsminer.com
Ghost dock traced to Japan
A nearly 70-foot-long dock that floated ashore on an Oregon beach was torn loose from a fishing port in northern Japan by last year's tsunami and drifted across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean, a Japanese Consulate official said.
– The Oregonian
More:www.oregonlive.com
Hunger, not your boat, hurts orcas
Not having enough Chinook salmon to eat stresses out southern resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest more than having boatloads of whale watchers nearby.
– Science Daily
More:www.sciencedaily.com
Disappearing frankenfish
In 2008, after what has been referred to as an "unusually severe storm," a Panama facility for genetically engineered AquAdvantage salmon lost its first commercial-size batch of fish. The entire batch—poof!—vanished.
– Gizmodo.com
More:gizmodo.com
Cal OKs final preservation area
With the designation of another group of ocean protection zones, California has put the finishing touches on a vast network of protected areas that dot the sea from Mexico to the Oregon border.
– Modesto Bee
More:www.modbee.com
CG plucks ailing crewman
Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak personnel medevaced an ailing crewmember from a fishing vessel more than 200 miles south of Cordova.
– Coast Guard
More:www.uscgnews.com
The (really) big one
One hundred years ago, the largest explosive volcanic eruption of the 20th century happened right here in Alaska.
– KMXT
More: www.kmxt.org
Critical buoy back at work
After a yearlong outage, the Cape Edgecumbe weather buoy is back in business.
– KCAW, Sitka
More:www.kcaw.org
Friday, June 8, 2012
AGROUND NEAR ERROR ISLAND
A Sitka fisherman is facing charges of reckless endangerment after running his boat aground in Sitka's Eastern Channel near Error Island.
– KCAW, Sitka
More:www.kcaw.org
Gillnet foes increase
Two powerful nonprofit organizations announced their support for a proposed ballot measure to stop commercial gillnet fishing on the lower Columbia River.
– Salem-News.Com
More:www.salem-news.com
Swarming with jellyfish
The sticky jellies can sweep through ocean water like a vacuum hose, mopping up so much plankton that none remain for fish and other creatures to eat.
– Huffington Post
More:www.huffingtonpost.com
Trawling Bering Sea
Federal fisheries scientists have begun annual and biennial bottom trawl surveys in the Bering Sea for stock assessments of species including walleye Pollock, Pacific cod, yellowfin sole, northern rock sole, red king crab and snow and tanner crab.
– Cordova Times
More:thecordovatimes.com
Nanaimo ignores fishermen
The plan is to focus on recreational boaters rather than the port's original use as a dock for commercial fisherman (and recreational boaters).
– Canada.com
More:www.canada.com
Rehabilitating Tongass river
Government agencies and non-profit corporations joined forces to rehabilitate a Chichagof Island river, damaged by past logging practices.
– Juneau Empire
More:juneauempire.com
Guv signs fishing loan measure
The law sets up a revolving loan funds to provide capital to entrepreneurs looking to start a shell fish farm, a charter business or purchase a commercial fishing permit.
– Juneau Empire
More: juneauempire.com
Tsunami debris: What now?
More than a year after a tsunami devastated Japan, killing thousands of people and washing millions of tons of debris into the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. government and West Coast states don't have a cohesive plan for cleaning up the rubble that floats to American shores.
– Daily Astorian
More:www.dailyastorian.com
Alaska Fisheries Report
Ocean Beauty says damage to its Petersburg dock will force them to pack salmon elsewhere this summer; the North Pacific council is meeting right now in Kodiak, and halibut bycatch is at the top of the menu. All that, and yes, boats still hit icebergs and they still sink.
– KMXT, Kodiak
More:www.kmxt.org
Give a helping hand
Here's a chance to help a young family who really deserves it.
More:Help a fishing family in need
