Tag Archive for: alaska salmon

Bro, Enough Bycatch

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TAKE ACTION: Submit Your Comment Today

As the skies taunt us off and on with sunshine and rain, many Alaskans are taking the time to fill our freezers and hit the waters. Whether it be rods and reels or nets of varying degrees of size from dip nets to trawlers. Our fishing economy accommodates all sizes and most Alaskans know how to fish sustainably to ensure the runs return and that Alaskans further inland have the opportunity to feed their families and sustain their way of life. These waters can be bountiful for all if we show a little respect and moderation.

But moderation isn’t everyone’s net, and many out-of-state trawling companies are reaping it all and sowing bubkis for us. Over the past ten years, the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska trawl fleets have caught, killed, and discarded approximately 141 million pounds of salmon, halibut, crab, sablefish, and other species, yearly. It’s time for some intervention before they wreck the party for everyone.

While Washington-based trawl fleets guzzle up record numbers, western Alaskan fishing communities, salmon fishing, snow crab fishing, and Bristol Bay red king crab fishing have been severely limited or cut off altogether. The doors swung too wide open to some excessive party boys, and now we are left with more than a mess; Alaskans are without food to feed our families.
The primary issue is a massive hit on bycatch species. Species that are just tossed away by massive trawlers are critical to our communities’ livelihoods and health. Closures and reduced access straight up harm our communities. Overfishing straight up harms our ecosystems and the diversity of species we need to repair our waters and our climate.
Do we really need that many fish sticks and fake crab dips at the risk of Alaskans’ livelihood? From our perspective, what we need is better regulation so that Alaskan salmon, crab and pollock can sustainably fill our freezers and our nets, and if you’re so inclined to have your fish in stick form, you can still have it as an option. Slap a little tartar sauce on it, and pretend it’s from some amorphous yellow-hatted fisherman. But we can’t keep damaging the livelihoods of the rest of our state’s fisherfolk, subsistence or commercial, because there is a worldwide market for questionable finger food.
It’s time to take action and demand that dirty little word “regulations.” Right now, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) fisheries is collecting comments to update guidelines for National Standards to better address environmental changes and inequity in federal fisheries management. We have the opportunity to say that the system is broken and give some real solutions on how to fix it before it’s too late.

The big loud drunk guy at the party can do some impressive feats, but it shouldn’t be at the risk of the broader community. We all deserve a chance to enjoy the party, right? It’s time that NOAA defines “fishing community” to include the importance of place-based communities directly tied to fisheries, including Alaska Native subsistence fisheries and Alaska coastal communities. It shouldn’t be on the party’s host to clean up the mess.

This comment period is important, and our priority should be a holistic approach that includes climate and ecosystem management. While there are numerous issues why our fish are in decline, this is an opportunity to do something tangible about it now.

Take action with us and get your voice heard before the drunk guy at the party and his well-funded friends crank up the karaoke and drown us all out with some crappy cover of Freebird.

In Salmon Solidarity,
The Alaska Center

Simple Steps for Salmon Protection

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When the legislation creating a Wild Salmon Day for Alaska was considered in the Alaska State Legislature, we knew it was an important bill. Even if it is mainly a symbolic gesture of our collective goodwill toward the salmon that swim through the life of our Alaskan society and culture, it was a good bill because it was a simple bill.

At the same time, in hindsight, there is nothing simple about our relationship with salmon. Those who have relied on salmon and protected them for millennia might see the designation of a calendar day in honor of salmon as cheap, considering that it is integral to the existence of their people. There is also nothing terribly simple about the economic impact of wild salmon. Sport and commercial fishers view the same wild salmon run on often sharply divergent terms, and the management of these fish can raise all sorts of claims of political bias.
Wild Salmon Day, if anything, provides us with a point of reflection, and for that, it is crucial. We, who are so blessed to experience, eat, watch, hook, net, paint, write about, and otherwise contemplate these salmon, also are called upon to protect them. When it comes to protection, there is also a level of complexity; the simple answers are there but none are a fix-all.

We had great runs this summer in Bristol Bay, partly due to global warming trends increasing the freshwater food for juvenile salmon. While the salmon were flooding into Bristol Bay, catastrophic low returns have beset the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers. The trawl sector undoubtedly bears some responsibility for killing off thousands of Y/K bound salmon as bycatch. So too do the Area-M fishers. And beyond that, the causes are giant, terrifying, and vague: ocean warming, river warming, ocean acidification, competition from hatchery fish, ocean regime change? The answers to the questions on how we protect wild salmon should be clear, but they are manyfold.

We know these things: we need to keep voting the right people into office who value salmon and will push for policy to protect their habitat, ensuring that our salmon runs thrive in all parts of our state. We must respect Indigenous stewardship and sustainability practices as we work to protect our wild salmon from future harm. We must come together in community to celebrate and honor the resource.
We must work throughout the year to protect our salmon for future generations. It is that simple.

On August 10 in Anchorage and August 14 in Fairbanks, come together to celebrate Wild Salmon Day and learn about how you can use your voice in a multitude of ways to protect our salmon.

Now through August 16, you have the chance to vote for leadership that will protect our salmon. We have endorsed Mary Peltola in part because of her commitment to protecting our salmon. Learn more about our endorsements and how and where to vote this election.
Today until September 6 you have the opportunity to have your voice heard to ensure EPA protections and to Stop Pebble Mine once and for all.

The solutions to the myriad of salmon issues we face aren’t simple but the end goal is: Protecting our Salmon for generations to come.
The Alaska Center

It’s baaaaack!

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Last week, we wrote about the approximately $5 Million that the Governor is requesting for the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to hire 32 full-time staff to take over and administer wetland dredge and fill permitting currently done by the federal government EPA. Ironically, at the same time that DEC is asking for more responsibility over permitting (to benefit large scale mining development); they are also trying to dodge their responsibility to administer protections for high ecological value waters under the federal Outstanding National Resource Waters. Instead, they have introduced HB 398, which would require that the Legislature take responsibility.

HB 398 is the 2022 version of a bill that has been around for many many years, and different legislative sessions – yet has never enjoyed enough support to pass. In essence, it would require that high-value water protection be determined by the state legislature instead of through DEC regulation. HB 398 seeks to make it impossible for Alaskans to protect waters of high ecological value as Tier III waters under the Clean Water Act. Right now, federal law requires states to craft a process for citizens to nominate pristine high-value (fish spawning, culturally critical, etc.) top Tier or Tier III waters for protection from pollution. DEC is legally authorized to protect waters under a Tier III status, but they don’t want to do it.

Instead of DEC simply taking legal responsibility to protect high-value waters nominated by Alaskans, they propose HB 398, which creates more bureaucracy, expense, and red tape that strips Alaskans of our right to protect our waters. This bill is bad.

It would remove Alaskan’s right to have a voice in protecting water in Alaska by putting the power in the hands of politicians instead of the experts with Indigenous, local, and scientific knowledge.

It would allow committee chairs in the House and Senate to prevent Tier III nominations from moving through the Legislature, creating a de facto ban on water protections.

It would take power away from Alaskans and give an upper hand to outside mining companies and big businesses with no interest in protecting our fisheries and the clean water.

It would create additional bureaucracy, expense, and political paralysis that leaves our most essential and vulnerable waterways unprotected.

It would put our $2 billion salmon industry at risk.

It would silence constituents from being a part of the decision-making process around the use of waters integral to our cultures, livelihoods, and survival.

Legislative attorneys have time and again concluded that DEC can already establish and administer a process for Alaskans to seek the protection of high-value water through agency regulation. DEC has time and time again sought to shirk its responsibility, hiding behind bogus legal interpretations and philosophical objections.

Why should the Legislature approve increasing the budget to give DEC the complex responsibility of permitting mining projects in wetlands that support our salmon when, simultaneously, DEC is telling everyone with HB 398 that it does not want to be the agency to protect salmon?

Keep an eye on this bad bill.