Tag Archives: commercial salmon industry
Commercial fish report shows impact of set-net closure
A recent report from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game shows the impact of the closure of a prominent fishery on the 2023 season for the commercial salmon industry in Upper Cook Inlet. Set-netters are worried about the future of their fishery, and the possible long-term impacts of over escapement. In Upper Cook Inlet, the report says, the 2023 commercial salmon harvest was about 40% lower than the 20-year average. Commercial fishermen caught 1.9 million salmon in the upper inlet, compared to the 20-year average of 3.1 million. Fish & Game attributes most of that decline to the closure of the east side set-net fishery, which the department closed before the season even began in anticipation of low king salmon numbers. >>click to read<< 13:04
A troubled business
The size of the letters in the handwriting on the wall for the Alaska commercial salmon industry just keep getting bigger. Only days after the Bristol Bay sockeye harvest began with processors offering $1 per pound for some of Alaska’s best salmon, Atlantic Sapphire announced it had raised another $100 million-plus in capital to expand its land-based salmon farm in Homestead, Fla. Fish Farmer magazine reported that planned increases in a wealth tax imposed on private fish farmers in Norway helped push considerable Norwegian investment toward the company, but it is becoming increasingly clear that taxes or not there is strong investor belief in the idea that land-based, recirculating aquaculture systems are the salmon production method of the future despite the startup problems some of those farms have faced. >click to read< 10:55
Fishery Closures and the Ghosts of Past Mistakes
The news spread quickly across the calm June waters off the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, as fishers jumped on the radio to figure out what had just happened. The radio chatter was incessant as fishers wondered aloud where they’d be allowed to fish, if they would be out of business, and what the future would hold. “Everyone was freaking out because all of those questions were unanswered,” Christian says, adding this policy will likely end British Columbia’s commercial salmon industry.,, Under the PSSI, DFO plans to close 57 percent of the 138 Pacific salmon fisheries along the west coast of British Columbia and Yukon. >click to read< 10:06
Brown requests federal disaster relief for Oregon’s commercial salmon industry
The governor submitted the formal aid request Monday to the U.S. Department of Commerce. In her letter Brown said the economic return from commercial salmon fishing along most of the coast since 2018 has been less than one-third of what it was in prior years. This continuing trend, she said in the letter, is having severe effects on already distressed rural communities and businesses that depend on salmon. >click to read< 08:58
At two-day virtual conference, B.C. commercial salmon fishermen discuss cures for an industry on the brink
The United Fishermen And Allied Workers’ Union (UFAWU-Unifor) and active fishermen’s associations convened the conference, Future of BC Commercial Salmon Fishing,,,, The issues are complex and sometimes controversial. Allocation of stocks with recreational and First Nations fisheries, and access to healthy runs are priority issues, but interwoven are challenges with policy and governance that are not meeting the economic-development needs of fishing communities, a licensing regime established in the 1990s that’s consolidated power into the hands of corporations and so-called “armchair fishermen”, and an explosion in pinniped predation rates on juvenile salmon, to name a few. >click to read< 07:49
