A team of researchers, led by the Sitka Sound Science Center, are conducting a survey to ensure all Sitkans are adequately connected for improved community resilience. After the survey, they will share the anonymized findings with Sitka.
To take the survey or more information, follow link below.
On October 5, 2020, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) released its “Section 12005 CARES Act Relief for Fisheries Participants Draft Spend Plan” which will distribute $50 million in fisheries disaster relief funds to eligible participants from the commercial fishing, seafood processing, charter fishing, aquaculture and subsistence sectors. ADF&G’s draft spend plan allocates nearly a third of the funds – 32 percent - to the charter sector. Commercial fishing and seafood processing sectors will also each receive 32 percent of the disaster relief funds.
ALFA had requested that the Department use the approach of other major fishing states such as Massachusetts, which evaluated 2020 fishery market trends and other fishery data while developing its spend plan and allocated its funds by sector using NOAA Fisheries’ formula for distributing the CARES Act funds to each coastal fishing state. Other coastal state spend plans also attempted to allocate fishermen’s funds fairly by identifying the number of license holders and businesses in each sector.
NOAA Fisheries allocated $50 million to Alaska based on multi-year revenue information from commercial and charter fishing sectors, aquaculture businesses, and processing/seafood sectors showing that nearly 60 percent of Alaska’s fishery revenue derived from seafood processors. Commercial fishermen generated 35.2 percent of the state’s fishery revenue, and charter operators generated the remaining 5.5 percent. ALFA requested that ADF&G should use these percentages as a primary basis for allocating disaster relief funds between the sectors.
Instead, ADF&G’s spend plan explains that the agency increased the charter allocation to 32 percent to mitigate losses caused by travel restrictions and health mandates. This approach diverts funding mostly from the seafood processing sector, which otherwise would have received $30 million in disaster relief funds instead of the $16 million allocated to the sector under the ADF&G plan. This approach ignores the fact that many Alaska-based processors have incurred significant expenses in order to operate under the state’s health mandates and travel restrictions, and despite precautions, some have shut down due to COVID-19 outbreaks. Alaska processors support many resident workers and are essential for our fishermen and many have also experienced significant revenue declines.
Alaska’s fisheries produce more seafood volume than all the other states combined - nearly 60 percent of all commercial fishery landings in the United States by volume, and one-third of the nation’s commercial fishery economic value. The seafood industry is second only to oil and gas in terms of state jobs, making it important to utilize the limited funds in a way that fairly allocates relief. ADF&G’s allocation does not reflect the relative importance of the seafood sector, which employs more workers than any other industry in Alaska. Available data from the McDowell Group’s 2017 report, “The Economic Value of Alaska’s Seafood Industry” identify a total of 16,500 Alaska residents and 9,400 home-ported fishing vessels that, combined with non-resident fishermen, generated $1.7 billion in ex-vessel value in 2016. The state’s seafood processing industry employs 26,500 Alaska residents and generated a wholesale value of $4.2 billion in 2016.
In contrast, according to a 2019 NOAA Fisheries report measuring economic contributions from the charter fishing sector, “the saltwater recreational charter fishing sector is small relative to the commercial seafood sector,” contributing a total economic output of $166 million, or 4 percent of the $4.4 billion total economic output to Alaska’s economy. ADF&G management reports identify 686 active saltwater businesses, split evenly between Southeast and Southcentral Alaska, which employ roughly 1,222 guides. This means that funds which would otherwise provide relief to processors in rural coastal fishing communities throughout the state will instead accrue to charter businesses concentrated in just a few communities. According to the McDowell Group, seafood processing is an “economic foundation of many rural communities” employing 15% of rural workers and over 21,200 rural Alaska residents.
ADF&G’s spend plan differs from the approach of other major fishing states in that it does not provide any data showing the relative economic contributions of the sectors or the number of affected businesses and workers. Most major coastal states evaluated changes in the ex-vessel values of their fisheries and compiled data identifying of the total number of eligible participants by sector to inform their spend plans. The ADF&G spend plan also does not explain why ADF&G assumes that the charter sector experienced more cumulative economic harm than commercial fisheries and seafood processors.
ADF&G is allowing a public comment period through 6:00 p.m. October 19, 2020. ALFA encourages commercial fishermen, processors and community members to comment on this unfair allocation. ADF&G’s press release and information for submitting comments is available here:
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=pressreleases.pr&release=2020_10_05
A summary of eligibility requirements and other spend plan components for fishermen and processors is available on ALFA’s COVID-19 page.
Below is ADFG's draft spend plan for the $50M for fisheries dedicated CARES money. Public comment is due October 19.
Note that NOAA proposed allocating 5.5% of funds to the charter sector. ADFG proposes allocating 32% to the charter sector (including non-resident). This is an increase of $13.25M for the charter sector.
NOAA proposed allocating 59.3% to processors, dealers, wholesalers, and distributors. ADFG proposes allocating 32% to the seafood processing sector.
ADFG proposes allocating 1% to aquaculture and 3% to subsistence.
ALFA will be providing comments but we urge all members to also voice their concerns.
Press release: http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=pressreleases.pr&release=2020_10_05
NOAA Allocations (scroll down) https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/commerce-secretary-announces-allocation-300-million-cares-act-fundinghttp://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/home/news/hottopics/pdfs/cares_act_spendingplan_100520.pdf
NPFMC SSC meetings are this week regarding sablefish ABC, apportionment, and sablefish bycatch in the Bering Sea.
With the help of our new coalition, we were able to rally 110 comments and secure 120 signatures on a sign on letter in support of lowering bycatch. The AP meets this week, and the Council the following week. You can listen and testify through the Council’s website: https://meetings.npfmc.org/Meeting/Details/1565
Below are comments submitted to the Council on sablefish, halibut bycatch ABM, and observer program/EM:
ALFA’s fall fishermen’s expo will take place on November 11 and 12th. Sign up to reserve your spot now!
Ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) has been applied in Alaska for decades with great success. Alaska’s valuable commercial fisheries are among the most productive and sustainable in the world. However, current EBFM policies were not designed to address climate change.
See full story at NOAA Fisheries: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/ecosystem-based-fisheries-management-strengthens-resilience-climate-change
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Seafood Trade Relief Program has set aside $530 million for commercial fishermen hurt by the U.S.-China trade war. Applicants can receive up to $250,000. This is a great opportunity for eligible fishermen and is especially timely given the additional fallout from COVID-19.
Q: Who is eligible to participate in the Seafood Trade Relief Program (STRP)?A: U.S. commercial fishermen who have a valid federal or state license or permit to catchseafood who bring their catch to shore and sell or transfer them to another party. That otherparty must be a legally permitted or licensed seafood dealer. Alternatively, the catch can beprocessed at sea and sold by the same legally permitted entity that harvested or processed the product.
Q: What seafood is eligible?A: Eligible seafood species must have been subject to retaliatory tariffs and suffered more than$5 million in retaliatory trade damages.Eligible species are Atka mackerel, Dungeness crab, King crab, Snow crab, SouthernTanner crab, Flounder, Geoduck, Goosefish, Herring, Lobster, Pacific Cod, Pacific Ocean Perch, Pollock, Sablefish, Salmon, Sole, Squid, Tuna and Turbot.
Here is the USDA page where the application and instructions can be found. Applications opened on September 14 and will be open through December 14.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/david-goliath-story-sitka-alaska-fisheries_n_5f5a65e8c5b62874bc1a0129
One day in April 1991, a large fishing boat sliced through the cobalt waters of the North Pacific, not far from Sitka, Alaska, on its way to the Bering Sea. For some reason, perhaps to make sure its gear was in order, the boat dropped its weighted trawling net, dragging it across the ocean floor. As the boat drifted by, thousands of pounds of rockfish got scooped up in the mesh. Just like that, the local rockfish season was over.
“Outraged.” That is how Linda Behnken, a Sitka-based fisherman and director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, described her reaction to news of the trawler’s nets rising from the ocean full of strangled or struggling fish, leaving the area’s fishing territory depleted. “It was a major catalyzing event.”
Facing the loss of a resource that had supported generations of fishing families, Behnken and the local community set out to protect the pristine waters of Southeast Alaska from the ravages of industrial fishing and banish trawling boats that drag wide nets to indiscriminately collect fish. A David to industrial fishing’s Goliath, Behnken was told to give up, that the cards were stacked against her. It took years of lobbying and rallying local support, but with the passage of the Southeast Alaska Trawl Closure in 1998, she had helped enact what at that time was the world’s largest ban on trawling, protecting 70,000 square miles of ocean habitat.
“The trawling ban is the reason we still have healthy small-scale fisheries in Southeast Alaska,” she said.
In the decades since, as the global fishing industry has consolidated into fewer, larger corporate fleets and environmental changes have threatened the ocean’s resources, Alaska’s Southeastern panhandle has emerged as a bastion for sustainable, small-scale fishing.
From Yakutat to Ketchikan, family-owned and -operated boats like Behnken’s “Woodstock” form the backbone of community-supported fisheries (CSFs) that often sell their catch directly to local customers and have lately seen a spike in orders from as far away as the Midwest and East Coast. Through their cooperative model, fishermen here have avoided exhausting ocean resources, protecting the marine biodiversity that keeps the ecosystem resilient to the mounting impacts of climate change. They’re also ensuring their own livelihoods; business is good even amid the turmoil of COVID-19 pandemic.
“No one wants to catch the last fish,” said Nic Mink, CEO of Sitka Salmon Shares, one of the more popular CSFs in southeast Alaska. “Our mentality is to take care of small boat fishermen that are harvesting with low-impact gear. They’re the best stewards of the resource.” Nationally, in the past eight years, the number of CSFs has jumped from around 20 to nearly 100, he said.
Here in Alaska’s southeast, the economy relies primarily on fishermen who own their own small boats and troll the water with lines and tackle, rather than raking the ocean with trawling nets. Policies, including localized caps on the amount a single operation can catch, as well as limits to a boat’s size, have been added to the trawling ban. These measures have kept industrial operations farther north, in the waters of central Alaska and the Bering Sea.
The southeast is unique in that, said Forrest Bower, deputy director of commercial fisheries for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. It’s the only part of the state where salmon are caught commercially with hook and line, and fishermen here have earned a reputation for bringing in high-quality fish that serve a high-end consumer market.
Historically, Alaska’s fishing industry, which accounts for about 60% of the nation’s total seafood harvests and exports $3.3 billion worth of fish each year, has not prioritized family-owned operations that sell directly to customers. Even 10 years ago, when Mink started his CSF, there was still enormous pressure in the state to “get big or get out.” Big boats backed by big money can haul more catch and follow fish hundreds of miles farther out to sea than smaller operations.
But factory trawling boats, which account for about a quarter of global fishing production, can ensnare huge amounts of bycatch and wreak havoc on marine ecosystems by disturbing the seafloor and reducing biodiversity ― as Behnken saw firsthand back in 1991.
The results of her underdog victory against Big Fishing are apparent in the southeast today. This section of the North Pacific, which laps against the planet’s largest tract of undisturbed coastal temperate rainforest, is home to one of the world’s most productive marine ecosystems. It produces over 300 million pounds of seafood a year and typically leads the state in commercial salmon production by volume. Wrenching them from the ocean supports over 8,000 harvesting and processing jobs and brings an estimated $700 million total economic impact to a sparsely populated archipelago that makes coastal Maine look metropolitan.
Though still only a niche within the state’s greater fishing industry, CSFs like Sitka Salmon Shares and Alaskans Own — the state’s first CSF, which Behnken founded in 2009 — have become integral to many southeast communities. They function like community-supported agriculture, in which members buy “farm shares,” funding farmers’ operations and reaping bundles of produce in return.
Fishermen and women bait lines to catch fish, and keep them on ice until returning to port where they are processed and packed for delivery. Each month, customers collect boxes from pickup spots and farmers markets, or have them delivered directly to their doors thousands of miles away. Alaskan’s Own sells monthly shares starting around $100 that include any of five species of salmon, as well as black cod, crab, shrimp and other shellfish.
As with community-supported farms, boat owners can make more selling through the CSF than to an industrial supply chain diluted by a series of profit-skimming middlemen: processors, wholesalers, distributors and grocery stores. And customers, who appear more interested in the source of their seafood than ever before, know that their fillets were caught and cleaned by individuals invested in maintaining a healthy resource.
Still, as encouraging as the landscape in the southeast may be, it’s far from immune to the challenges threatening fisheries across the globe.
Logging is a big industry in Alaska, and clear cutting destroys forests that shelter salmon spawning in inland rivers. Open-pit mines, like the bitterly contested project proposed in Bristol Bay, can leak toxic waste into waterways. The ocean is acidifying and warming, which is drastically changing the timing and distribution of critical salmon runs.
“The Coho salmon season has been iffy this year, almost a total bust,” Mink said, referring to the species of salmon also called “silvers” that run in late summer. “Five years ago I couldn’t imagine a fishery like Coho shutting down, but I no longer think it’s off the table for us.”
Add to all that President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, which has driven the seafood business into downward-trending chaos. And, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic, which has sent shudders throughout the industry, resulting in a 50% drop in some fish prices, the Alaska Journal of Commerce reported.
“We’re seeing climate change impacts overlaid with pandemic impacts for a pretty tough season,” Behnken said.
But fishermen who sell direct to customers through CSFs have been insulated from some of the global market chaos. This year, as large supply chains have sputtered, many have experienced the same COVID-19-inspired shot in the arm that has buoyed CSAs and small-scale ranchers across the country. Alaskan’s Own has seen as much as a 30% increase in sales, with local customers buying more and new customers from across the country placing orders for the first time.
“Everyone’s been growing beyond their wildest imagination this year,” Mink said. “Our demand volume is up significantly, which has allowed us to bring down fixed costs and pay our fishermen more than we ever have.”
And they have not hoarded their winnings. In this wildly remote and rugged terrain, the salmon can run strong in one watershed and poorly in the next. Along the Southeast panhandle, some communities that depend heavily on fisheries for subsistence have seen historically low returns. In response, Behnken and many others in the Southeast’s fleet have together donated tens of thousands of pounds of fish to help them. Community support is a feedback loop — a give and take as critical at home as it is in the sea.
HuffPost’s “Work In Progress” series focuses on the impact of business on society and the environment and is funded by Porticus. It is part of the “This New World” series. All content is editorially independent, with no influence or input from Porticus. If you have an idea or tip for the editorial series, send an email to thisnewworld@huffpost.com.
Ecotrust is now accepting applications for the 2020-2022 Ag of the Middle Accelerator Program! To make this program accessible during the COVID-19 pandemic, the program will be 100% virtual! This is a two-year, hands-on, capacity-building and business development program. It is designed to help cultivate a thriving cohort of mid-sized, independent farms, ranches, and fishing operations in the region that spans from Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.
This business development program provides instruction from experts on subjects such as business structure, finance, taxation, accounting, credit, market development, food justice and more. Designed to fit the demands of the producers we serve, trainings and one-on-one technical assistance sessions are scheduled between December and March so producers can focus on their businesses during the busy growing season.
The goal is a modern-day “ag of the middle” sector that can supply regional markets with products raised in ways good for land, soil, water, people, and animals. Through this program, participants will have the opportunity to get dedicated, customized business support from an array of service providers who understand the unique needs of independent, smaller-scale producers who want to grow with integrity.
Interested in becoming a participant in the business accelerator program? Please complete the program application by October 2, 2020 and visit our website for more details.
An informational session will be held on Monday, September 14, 2020 from 9-10am to answer your questions and provide an overview of the program. To attend the info session, please register here by September 10th.
Application & Program Timeline:
August 24th - application period opens.
September 14th - program info session (Webinar).
October 2nd - application deadline.
October 16th - announcements of application acceptance will commence.
December 1st - program kickoff
If you have any questions about the program, or how to message the program to your network, please contact contact Tyson Rasor (trasor@ecotrust.org or 503-467-0783) or Yolimar Rivera Vázquez (yolimar@ecotrust.org or 503-467-0819).
August 17, 2020 — In 2019, Alaska experienced its warmest month, summer, and year on record. This year, it recorded some of the hottest average May temperatures on the globe. America’s northernmost state is warming twice as quickly as the rest of the world—and much more rapidly than the continental U.S.
Read the full story here.
