Tag Archives: Kotzebue
Wondering where the fish have gone
Howard Kantner watches for hits on the net.
KOTZEBUE — It’s raining again, the wind rising and waves sloshing over the grass. I’m yanking at corkline, struggling to stack my salmon nets into old army totes, to protect them from mice and weather for another winter. Commercial fishing in Kotzebue Sound is closed, over before it really started. A complete bust, exponentially worse than any in the past 51 years I’ve participated in this fishery. Catches were dismal in July and many of us assumed — or tried to believe — that the run was late. Rumors swirled around town: about beluga whales, killer whales, warm water, cold water, and villagers up the Noatak and Kobuk rivers catching runs we’d allegedly missed. I didn’t believe it and kept hoping the dearth of fish was tied to changes some of us have noticed over the decades: how the peak of the run has been arriving later and later in August. Our last best season, two years ago, was slow in July, and in August more salmon flooded in than we’d seen before. more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 17:05
Kenai River sockeye over-escape by 1M, Kotzebue’s 2021 chum season to wrap up, Big PWS Humpy Harvest
Those numbers concern fishermen like Joe Dragseth, a drift-netter in Kenai. He said he worries about the health of the river. And, he said, it’s unfair commercial fishermen have been restricted while so many fish have made it up the river. “Basically, they’re taking the living away from us,” he said. >click to read< – Kotzebue’s 2021 chum salmon season to wrap up with another low catch – “It hasn’t been very good,” said Karen Gillis, manager of the Copper River Seafoods processing plant in Kotzebue. It’s one of two commercial chum salmon buyers in town this year. >click to read< – Prince 
William Sound Humpy harvest is 3rd largest of decade – “The highlight of this season has been the wild stocks returning stronger than anticipated, given the uncertainty about spawning success from the 2019 parent year that was assumed to be negatively impacted by drought conditions,” said Heather Scannell, area management seine biologist in Cordova for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. >click to read< 14:35
Company to boost Kotzebue summer chum operation
Following a slim couple of years, the summer Arctic keta, or chum, fishery in Kotzebue should see a significant boost this summer. Seattle-based E&E Foods, which runs both land-based and vessel operations in Bristol Bay, Southeast, and the Kenai Peninsula, plans to bring its floating processor to the waters outside of town this summer. “I feel really good about this opportunity where they’re going to be able to have a volume fishery now, and not have the limitations that they’ve had with a pure buy-and-fly-type fishery,” said Roger Stiles, business manager for the company’s Southcentral operations. E&E Foods is already planning to send its floating processor, the Cape Greig, to Bristol Bay for the area’s lucrative summer season. It will be accompanied by the freighter Sea Bird and combined, the two vessels have a carrying capacity of 1.2 million pounds of frozen finished product, Stiles said. After that seasons winds down at the end of July, the two boats will head up to Kotzebue and set up shop for the keta harvest, starting Aug. 1. Click here to read the story 13:27
Kotzebue Fishery Closes Early with ‘3rd Best Harvest in Over 25 Years’
The commercial fishing season in Kotzebue came to a close Friday, and while both the chum salmon run and the payout to fishermen pales in comparison to the gargantuan success of last year, the fishermen at Alaska’s northernmost salmon fishery still have plenty of reason to smile. “Right now we’re a little over 300,000 harvested, and this was the third best harvest in over 25 years in the Kotzebue fishery,” Read the rest here 13:38
