Brian Hagenbuch spent a decade in South America, where he was a journalist for Reuters and Time Out in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. He now lives in Seattle and works as a freelance writer and translator, as well as a commercial fisherman in Bristol Bay.
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Small pink salmon runs and a more efficient fleet have prompted the Southeast Alaska seine fleet to consider a permit reduction that would buyout 36 of the 315 existing permit holders
… Read MoreThe Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) is crossing its fingers that its request goes through for several million dollars in federal aid to defray costs of the trade war between U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and China.
ASMI, a state-run entity, has requested USD 9 million (EUR 7.9 million) over three years as tariffs threaten to undermine the market for Alaskan seafood in China. The request was submitted to the
… Read MoreAround mid-August this year, the fishing season in Southeast Alaska looked grim. Some areas had posted the lowest pink salmon landings since the 1970s, and the total pink catch would end up at just around 70 percent of the paltry 23 million fish forecast. For comparison, the 18 million pinks caught in 2016 prompted a disaster declaration from the federal government.
But at the end of August, something unexpected happen. Hatchery chum salmon from
… Read MoreExperts at Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle, Washington rolled out a preliminary report on the 2018 Alaska fishing season, one that will go down in the books as a historically low catch at historically high value
… Read MoreBiologists from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) forecast a run that would represent a return to historical numbers for the Bristol Bay salmon fishery
… Read MoreLast winter, something unprecedented happened in Alaska. For the first time on record, there was no sea ice in the northern Bering Sea, and biologists are now scrambling to figure out how that will affect scores of area fisheries – from crab to salmon to rockfish to various pelagic stocks – in the coming years.
Because there are few fisheries in the northern Bering Sea, historically it has not been subject to as much surveying
… Read MoreAlaska chum salmon has settled into a robust niche as processors make inroads on flesh markets and Japanese chum stocks continue to bottom out.
In 2017, Alaska chums totaled a first wholesale value of USD 340 million (EUR 297 million), a sizable chunk of the total of USD 1.89 billion (EUR 950.5 million) for all salmon caught in the state of Alaska last year. For comparison, the state’s most lucrative species, sockeye salmon, had a
… Read MoreA group of educators and professionals led by Transform Aqorau recently announced the formation of Pacific Catalyst, a partnership designed to foster new policies and a fresh generation of leaders in the Pacific Island fisheries.
Aqorau, formerly the director of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the CEO of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), is the founding director of Pacific Catalyst, which will count on
… Read MoreInterest in longline Pacific cod from Alaska is growing quickly in the U.S. domestic market, with increasing demand for higher-quality fish coming from restaurants, foodservice, and retailers
… Read MoreSix months ago, biologist Mike Litzow was so pessimistic about the numbers of Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska that he was wondering what compensatory species might move in to replace them.
“Jellyfish taste pretty good with some barbecue sauce,” he joked grimly
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