Monday, August 29, 2011
HALIBUT WARS
Why do we continue to allow commercial fishermen to not only “hunt" the ocean, but to also dominate the rule-making authority?
– Homer Tribune
More:peninsulaclarion.com
Fraser sockeye
Commercial sockeye harvesters on the Fraser River are enjoying a decent fishery so far this season, after dramatic fluctuations in their catch in recent years.
– Perishable News
More:www.perishablenews.com
Kodiak processing workers
Kodiak is the number three fishing port in the country - and it wouldn't rank so high if it wasn't for the dedicated local processing work force.
– KMXT, Kodiak
More:www.kmxt.org
Tracking halibut
Fish tags with iPhone technology are being used for the first time to track halibut migrations based on the earth’s magnetic field.
– Pacific Fishing columnist Laine Welch, writing for SitNews, Ketchikan
More:www.sitnews.us
Sharing halibut
No one likes one halibut a day and the 37 inch size limit, particularly the guided sport industry. But unless the Halibut Catch Sharing Plan now before the National Marine Fisheries Service is adopted this will become the norm for some time.
– Juneau Empire
More:juneauempire.com
Fish farm secrecy
B.C. applied at the Cohen Commission to keep private a database of its audits of dead fish at salmon farms.
– Victoria Times Colonist
More:www.timescolonist.com
Gillnetter dies on Klamath
A local man’s body was found under the Highway 101 Klamath River bridge after a fishing boat he was in capsized.
– Crescent City Triplicate
More:www.triplicate.com
Tainted smoked salmon
A Chicago food company is recalling more than 8,000 packages of smoked salmon because of listeria concerns.
– All Headline News
More:www.allheadlinenews.com
Overboard in Chignik
Troopers said that efforts to locate a man who disappeared from a fishing boat in Chignik Lagoon have been unsuccessful.
– Anchorage Daily News
Read more:www.adn.com
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
OOPS! THAT'S NOT ALASKA
The national seafood chain Red Lobster is airing a picturesque new television commercial featuring an Alaska crabber who lives in Washington state, a fishing boat that's registered in Washington state, and gorgeous Alaska tanner caught using crab-pot sized loopholes in Alaska law.
– Alaska Dispatch
More:www.alaskadispatch.com
New director of Cal Fish & Game
Charlton "Chuck" Bonham has served in multiple positions at Trout Unlimited, a national trout advocacy organization, since 2000.
– California Progress Report
More:www.californiaprogressreport.com
B.C. halibut shutdown hurts communities
Last week's announcement of a shut-down of recreational fishing is terrible news for coastal communities.
– Canada.com
More:www.canada.com
Kake plant challenging
A reopened fish plant is bringing some badly needed jobs to Kake, but Sealaska Corp. is already finding running the old plant to be a challenge.
– Juneau Empire
More:juneauempire.com
Brown pelicans oiled in Dumpster diving
Brown pelicans reportedly "Dumpster diving" in the Crescent City Harbor are becoming covered in fish oil, a substance causing the same external symptoms as a petroleum oil spill.
– Eureka Times Standard
More:www.times-standard.com
Share halibut conservation efforts
No one likes one halibut a day and the 37 inch size limit, particularly the guided sport industry. But unless the Halibut Catch Sharing Plan now before the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is adopted this will become the norm for some time.
– Juneau Empire
More:juneauempire.com
Fraser sockeye and pink runs
At the meeting Monday, the Panel adopted an Early Summer run size of 500,000 sockeye, the Summer run size of 1,450,000 sockeye. There were no changes to the run-sizes of the other management groups.
– Pacific Salmon Commission
More:www.psc.org
The world is fish-hungry
The world's appetite for fish is now at an all time high according to the United Nations.
– CNN
More:www.cnn.com
Untangling a young whale
A team of volunteers from Petersburg freed a young gray whale that was tangled in what appeared to be foreign gillnet gear.
– KFSK, Petersburg
More:kfsk.org
SE D-crab: Good price, lower catch
Higher value helped make up for the lower catches of Dungeness crab in Southeast this summer.
– KFSK, Petersburg
More:kfsk.org
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
PEBBLE MINE PROJECT FOR SALE
A mining company with a 50 percent interest in a huge copper and gold deposit in Alaska where hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on exploration is trying to find a buyer for the contentious project near the world's best remaining wild sockeye salmon streams.
– Bloomberg Businessweek
More:www.businessweek.com
CG rescues Alaska fishermen
A Coast Guard Air Station MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew rescued three fishermen from a life raft after their vessel grounded in Aniakchak Bay 196 miles southwest of Kodiak Tuesday morning.
– Coast Guard
More:www.d17.uscgnews.com
Aleutian volcano calming
After a summer of eruptive activity, Mount Cleveland has finally calmed down some.
– Pacific Fishing columnist Alexandra Gutierrez, reporting for KUCB, Unalaska
More:www.kucb.org
Kodiak harbor befouled
Officials are unsure about the source of contamination in the waters around downtown Kodiak.
– KMXT, Kodiak
More:www.kmxt.org
Fish guts befoul Astoria
A truck full of fish guts, freshly filled by Bornstein's Seafood on Portway Street, sloshed heads, blood and other muck out at the stoplight by the Portway Tavern.
– Daily Astorian
More:www.dailyastorian.com
B.C. OKs farm mortality report
The B.C. government has retracted an application to the Cohen commission to keep its audits of dead fish at salmon farms out of the public eye.
– Victoria Times Colonist
Read more:www.timescolonist.com
B.C. farms: Dueling scientists
Two researchers hired by the Cohen Inquiry have come to differing conclusions on the likelihood commercial salmon farms are seriously harming the Fraser River sockeye run.
– BCLocalNews.com
More:www.bclocalnews.com
Fuglvog's dangerous spin-off
But the issue here is not just the dead fish. Fuglvog might have driven a stake into the heart of how some Alaska fisheries are managed.
– Alaska Dispatch
More:www.alaskadispatch.com
Sinking in the San Juans
The owner of the Legacy, which ran aground while traveling through Thatcher Pass, said that the boat could have been carrying between 50 to 400 gallons of diesel at the time it struck the rocks and then sank near Decatur Island.
– San Juan Journal
More:www.pnwlocalnews.com
Sockeye radioactive?
Sockeye salmon returning to Canada this year will be tested by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for radiation contamination that might be picked up in the North Pacific from Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster.
– KPLU, Tacoma
More:www.kplu.org
Thursday, September 1, 2011
PEBBLE MINE PROJECT FOR SALE
But this pollock season has been a bust so far. And many boat owners have started sending crews home.
– Pacific Fishing columnist Alexandra Gutierrez, reporting for KUCB, Unalaska
More:www.kucb.org
Alaska politicians enter halibut fray
With a deadline fast approaching on a federal plan to reduce the number of fish allocated to Alaska halibut charter businesses and hand them over to commercial fishermen, a handful of state legislators say they are going to take a look at the issue.
– Alaska Dispatch
More:www.alaskadispatch.com
B.C. halibut decision slammed
The Sport Fishing Institute of British Columbia slammed DFO's decision to force an early end to the Pacific recreational halibut fishery.
– Canada.com
More:www.canada.com
Some SE fisheries stunning
This Southeast commercial salmon harvest is already one for the record books this year and it's not quite done yet.
– KRBD, Ketchikan
More:krbd.org
Oregon crabbers seek derelict gear
Leaving the ocean as clean as we found it. This is the new stance commercial crabbers and fishermen will take by participating in a "debris removal effort."
– KCBY, Coos Bay
More:www.kcby.com
Squid boat sinks
The Coast Guard responded to a report of a 61-foot fishing vessel that sank in the vicinity of Eagle Rock near Catalina Island Tuesday evening.
– Los Alamitos-Seal Beach Patch
More:losalamitos.patch.com
Gene tests tell salmon story
But advances in genetic testing make it just about that easy to get much better acquainted with king salmon.
– Homer Tribune
More:homertribune.com
Chum run strong on Yukon
The fall chum run on the Yukon River has surpassed expectations with a return in excess of average.
– Alaska Public Radio
More:www.alaskapublic.org
Chuitna mine blasted
Is it right to allow a Texas-funded corporation destroy our Chuitna River just to make some money?
– Kenai Peninsula Clarion
More:peninsulaclarion.com
And finally, salmon-flavored vodka
To say that some commercial brands have gone the way of the extreme — with flavors like scorpion and smoked salmon — would be a bit of an understatement.
– Business Insider
More:www.businessinsider.com
Friday, September 2, 2011
ANOTHER ALEUTIAN TSUNAMI ALERT
For the second time this summer, residents of the Aleutian Islands evacuated for a tsunami warning.
– Pacific Fishing columnist Alexandra Gutierrez, reporting for KUCB, Unalaska
More:www.kucb.org
A weaker quake on Kodiak
You might have felt a little bit of shaking Wednesday afternoon. Seismographs at the Alaska Earthquake Information Center recorded a 4.2 magnitude quake at 1:40 p.m. in Kodiak.
– KMXT, Kodiak
More:www.kmxt.org (scroll down)
Halibut comment time extended
NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service is extending the comment period for the proposed Halibut Catch Sharing Plan by 15 days, to Sept. 21.
– NOAA
More:alaskafisheries.noaa.gov
Fraser pinks
There was no change to the pink salmon pre-season forecast run size of 17,000,000 fish. The recent three-day diversion rate of pink salmon is currently estimated to be 46 percent.
– Pacific Salmon Commission
More:www.psc.org
Eureka Fisherman's Terminal
A couple hundred people turned out to celebrate the unveiling of Eureka's Fisherman's Terminal Building.
– Eureka Times Standard
More:www.times-standard.com
Complicated Columbia seabird habitat
It's been a dozen years since the federal government moved thousands of black-capped squawking seabirds here to reduce their diet of endangered fish.
– The Oregonian
More:www.oregonlive.com
Sacramento Delta maneuvers
A federal judge in Fresno has ruled that the location of a low salinity zone preferred by the tiny delta smelt should be modified, a move environmentalists say could reduce the numbers of the endangered fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
– San Francisco Chronicle
More: www.sfgate.com
Alaska Fisheries Report
Coming up this week: As Alaska's salmon season winds down, it's apparent the statewide catch won't equal projections – EXCEPT, in Southeast where they're breaking records.
– KMXT, Kodiak
More:www.kmxt.org
B.C. farm growth
A new open net-cage salmon farm proposed by Mainstream Canada near Plover Point in the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve seeks to more than triple the size of the farm it will replace.
– Living Oceans Society
More:www.livingoceans.org
Juneau Fishermen's Memorial stays put
The City and Borough of Juneau Assembly's Committee of the Whole voted 6-3 Monday night to leave the Alaska Commercial Fishermen's Memorial where it's at.
– Juneau Empire
More:juneauempire.com
