3 Alaska trollers contemplate a summer without chinook
Barring a stay, or a successful appeal, or other eleventh-hour legal action, there will be no troll fishery for king salmon in Southeast Alaska either this summer or winter. The fisheries have been canceled by order of the U.S. District Court of Western Washington on largely procedural grounds. According to the ruling they stem from a violation of the Endangered Species Act, and the failure of the National Marine Fisheries Service to fully address the impact of Alaska’s king salmon trollers on an endangered population of orcas in Puget Sound called Southern Resident killer whales. No other salmon species or commercial gear group or sport fishery anywhere on the entire Pacific Northwest coast is affected by the order, just commercial trolling for king salmon in Southeast Alaska. photos, >click to read/listen< 13:39
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