2024 Wild Salmon Season: Unraveling the Causes Behind Declining Landings

The 2024 Alaskan wild salmon season experienced significantly lower landings across all species, including Chinook (king), chum (keta), pink, coho, and sockeye. With the season largely wrapped up through September 7, landings for sockeye across Alaska were down 20% compared to 2023, with pink landings falling 44% from 2022 YTD and the chum catch dipping 32% year-over-year, respectively, according to Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute's Weekly Alaska Salmon Updates produced by the McKinley Research Group.

Back in September, McKinley Research Group noted that the harvest of lower than 100...

NOAA Fisheries: Alaska’s Seafood Industry Bore a $1.8 Billion Loss in 2022-23

For anyone curious about what all the disaster declarations, price drops, rising costs, market shifts, and labor shortages have added up to over the past two years, now we can — it’s $1.8 billion.

NOAA Fisheries has done the heavy lifting of summing up the financial impacts of consumer behavior changes, shifts in global markets, climate change, and other factors in its 67-page economic report called Alaska Seafood Snapshot, released yesterday.

In the three-year period 2021-2023, the report says that the Alaska fishing ...

Alaska's Peltola Announces $277 Million to Alaska Fisheries Disasters

Last week, Alaska’s U.S. House Representative Mary S. Peltola announced $277 million in financial relief for ten fisheries disasters that have occurred in Alaska between 2018 and 2022. The funding will go from NOAA Fisheries in the Department of Commerce to the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSFMC)  and will be distributed in partnership between the PSFMC, the State of Alaska, and Tribal leaders.

Peltola wrote to Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo last April, urging action and expressing concerns about “three groups of fishery disaster funds that were stuck ...

Russia's Navy Launches Ocean 2024 War Drills  Globally, USCG Alerts Alaska Fishing Industry

Yesterday, Russia began a long-planned, massive military exercise dubbed Ocean-24 in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, the Mediterranean, Caspian, and Baltic Seas. The exercise involved over 400 warships, submarines, and support vessels, more than 120 planes and helicopters, and over 90,000 troops, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. The ministry said the maneuvers would continue through Sept. 16.

Last week, Alaska’s 17th District of the US Coast Guard warned the fishing industry, particularly those operating in the Bering Sea and Aleutians, to be...

UW Issues Early Bristol Bay Forecast of 49.6 Million Salmon Run in 2025, 32.4 Million Harvest

University of Washington’s Fisheries Research Institute (UAW-FRI), part of the university’s Alaska Salmon Program, released a preliminary preseason forecast at the request of Bristol Bay’s fleet, processors, and managers of 49.6 million sockeye, which translates to a preliminary estimate of 32.4 million harvested. 

To date 31.2 million sockeye have been landed in Bristol Bay this year, compared to a 25 million fish forecast. UW-FRI’s team of forecasters, led by Dr. Curry Cunningham, will release a more detailed forecast in early November ... 

Trending Now: Single Ingredient Treats In The Pet Food Space

In recent years there has been a growing interest in eating items with “clean” labels. People want to understand what they are putting into their bodies. And the same goes for their pets. Single ingredient treats are rising in popularity, and the seafood industry is cashing in on this trend.

There is so much more than just fillets when processing fish. The seafood industry has long used byproducts, such as heads, frames, skin and viscera, to create additional products like fishmeal, fish oil and other...

Alaska Air Cargo Expands Capacity Out of California With 24/7 Service At LAX

Growing logistical needs has led Alaska Air Cargo to expand its capacity in California. The airline service provider has not only added new routes, but also new hours to continue to support businesses as they move time-sensitive cargo — like fresh caught seafood.

Los Angeles has become the airport Alaska Air Cargo services with the most daily flights with belly-cargo capacity. And in order to handle that demand, the company announced that “at LAX, the Alaska Air Cargo station never...

Northline Seafoods’ New Freezer Barge At Reduced Capacity Following Electrical Fire

In late May Northline Seafoods’ new freezer barge, Hannah, departed Bellingham’s Fairhaven Shipyard for its maiden voyage to Bristol Bay. The one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art vessel was entering the 2024 salmon season in Bristol Bay with the capacity to freeze up to 1 million pounds of salmon per day, with cold storage on board the vessel able to hold over 10 million pounds of frozen fish, and 2.3 million pounds of fresh.

“This is a dream come true,” Northline Seafoods CEO Ben Blakey...

High Numbers in Egegik But Overnight Ugashik Nearly Tripled Catch to 112,000 Sockeye

If you can’t wait to track the performance stats on display at the Paris Olympics in a month, turn your focus to Bristol Bay, Alaska for a worthwhile diversion before the Games begin.  

Seafood aficionados can track the daily run of what could be 45 million sockeye salmon returning to the Bay’s nine river systems, compare those rivers performances with two forecasts this year, and even get an early DNA peek at what’s to come. A little over a week out and 100 miles distant scientists at ...

Holland America Line’s McKinley Chalet Resort in Alaska Receives MSC Certificate

Holland America Line is ensuring that its guests have access to the highest quality and sustainably sourced seafood through not only their cruises, but also their land-based properties. The company announced on Monday that its McKinley Chalet Resort, located in the heart of the Denali Canyon in Alaska, has recently received Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification. 

"We are proud to extend our promise of fresh, sustainable fish beyond our ships to our guests on cruise tours visiting Denali," said...

Nearly $40 Million in Disaster Funding Allocated for ’23-24 Bering Sea Snow Crab Fishery

The U.S. Secretary of Commerce announced that $39.5 million in funding will address a fishery resource disaster that occurred in the Alaska Bering Sea Snow Crab Fishery from 2023 to 2024.

“As climate change continues to have severe impacts on the fisheries and ecosystems that are vital to Alaska’s economy, the Department of Commerce remains committed to providing disaster relief across the state,” said Secretary Raimondo. “This funding will help Alaskans recover from the Bering Sea Snow Crab Fishery disaster...

U.S. Coast Guard Encounters Russian Naval Vessels near Point Hope, Inside Alaska’s EEZ

For the fourth time in less than a week, U.S. Coast Guard and other military monitors located Russian military aircraft or warships near Alaska. The most recent one occured Sunday, when USCG Cutter Stratton observed four Russian Federation Navy (RFN) vessels 57 miles northwest of Point Hope, AK, within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Chukchi Sea.

The day before, Saturday September 14, two Russian IL-38 military aircraft were detected and tracked while operating within the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) ...

AK Bering Sea Crabber’s Jamie Goen Appointed to Seat on North Pacific Council

Alaska’s crab industry hasn’t had much good news lately, but early last week, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced that Jamie Goen, executive director of the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers Association (ABSC) was picked to serve on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC). Goen has advocated for science-based management and sustainable fishery practices for most of her career, and for Alaska crab specifically since she was hired to lead ABSC in 2018. 

Goen's appointment follows the untimely death of Kenny Down, a highly respected advocate ...

Alaska Salmon Season Shaping Up to Be Worst in Several Decades

The most recent cumulative state landings on Alaska salmon show 83.9 million salmon harvested, compared to a preseason forecasted annual harvest of 135.7 million. Looking at the calendar -- there are only a few weeks left in the season -- and following the catch trajectory, 2024 could be the lowest salmon catch on record since 1988, when annual landings reached 100 million salmon.

The bulk of current landings are made up of 40.5 million sockeye and 29.6 million pink salmon. Sockeye landings dovetail almost exactly with forecasts of 39.5 million. Statewide ...

Crustacean Boom: Mid-Year Market Trends of King and Snow Crab

Data covering global king and snow crab for the first half of 2024 has been released, revealing that demand remains strong in both the live and frozen crab sectors, despite economic difficulties in major markets.  

The U.S. continues to import snow crab at a robust pace with 91 million pounds imported through June. Overall, snow crab from all sources have increased by 18%. Compared to 2023, snow crab imports from Canada have surged by 19%, now representing 90% of all...

Northline Seafoods’ Freezer Barge Returns To Full Operations Less Than Month After Fire

Hannah, the new freezer barge from Northline Seafoods, is back to full operations less than a month after a fire occurred under one of Hannah’s three spiral freezers.

As Seafoodnews reported early this month, an electrical fire on board Hannah “caused a significant loss of freezer production capacity” on the vessel. The freezer barge had only departed Bellingham’s Fairhaven Shipyard for its maiden voyage to Bristol Bay in late May. The one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art vessel was entering the 2024 salmon season...

It's Early: Alaska Wild Salmon Landings on Par With ADF&G Forecasts So Far

With 10.6 million wild salmon caught in Alaska this year so far, landings are on par with ADF&G forecasts of 135.7 million salmon rather than last year’s actual landings of 232.4 million salmon, a 41.6% drop that is due to lower projected catches of pink salmon in Southeast and sockeyes in Bristol Bay. It is still too early in the season to make statements on timing: the latest numbers are as of July 1 when the peak of the Bristol Bay Run is still at ...

Commerce Approves More Than $12M for Alaska, Washington Salmon Disasters in 2021-2022

Last Friday U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo announced that $12.2 million will be allocated to Alaska’s 2022 Kuskokwim River salmon fishery, 2021 and 2022 Upper Cook Inlet East Side Setnet salmon fishery, and the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe’s 2021 Puget Sound fall chum and coho salmon fisheries.

In the past twelve months, Commerce has approved as many fisheries disaster just in the west coast states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California. The fishery disasters, most of them salmon and of those many...

Japan: 2023 Sockeye Salmon Imports Surged by 41% to Over 10,000 Tons