King salmon vanishing in Alaska, smokehouses empty

[DainBramaged]

Yukon River smokehouses should be filled this summer with oil-rich strips of king salmon — long used by Alaska Natives as a high-energy food to get through the long Alaska winters. But they're mostly empty.

The kings failed to show up, and not just in the Yukon.

One Alaska river after another has been closed to king fishing this summer because significant numbers of fish failed to return to spawn. The dismally weak return follows weak runs last summer and poor runs in 2007, which also resulted in emergency fishing closures.

"It is going to be a tough winter, no two ways about it," said Leslie Hunter, a 67-year-old store owner and commercial fisherman from the Yup'ik Eskimo village of Marshall in western Alaska.

Federal and state fisheries biologists are looking into the mystery.

King salmon spend years in the Bering Sea before returning as adults to rivers where they were born to spawn and die. Biologists speculate that the mostly likely cause was a shift in Pacific Ocean currents, but food availability, changing river conditions and predator-prey relationships could be affecting the fish.

People living along the Yukon River think they know what is to blame — pollock fishery. The fishery — the nation's largest — removes about 1 million metric tons of pollock each year from the eastern Bering Sea. Its wholesale value is nearly $1 billion.

King salmon get caught in the huge pollock trawl nets, and the dead kings are counted and most are thrown back into the ocean. Some are donated to the needy.

"We do know for a fact that the pollock fishery is slaughtering wholesale and wiping out the king salmon stocks out there that are coming into all the major tributaries," said Nick Andrew Jr., executive director of the Ohagamuit Traditional Council. "The pollock fishery is taking away our way of living."

Since 2000, the incidental number of king salmon caught has skyrocketed, reaching over 120,000 kings in 2007. A substantial portion of those fish were bound for western Alaska rivers. If those fish had lived, an estimated 78,000 adult fish would have returned to rivers from the Pacific Northwest to Western Alaska.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jcd_kMlBxTpR7VrBASySIgGKj6ngD99QSJAO1

[madaboutharry]

1. Greed ruins everything.

That is all I have to say.

[Blue_In_AK]

2. I believe the pollack fishery is a huge contributing factor.

Phil Munger had a couple of great posts about this back in January and February



http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2009/01/salmon-habitat-quality-questions-in.html

http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2009/02/post-super-bowl-perspective-on-yukon.html

[DCKit]

10. I've heard that "by-catch" is as high as 70%...

so 70% of everything caught by the factory trawlers is thrown back into the oceans, mostly dead or severely injured. Add to that the destruction of reefs and the sea bottom by nets, and declining catches of everything are the guaranteed outcome.

Factory fishing is unsustainable.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

3. They probably split because they were afraid of being shot from helicopters.

:hide:

[DainBramaged]

7. Perfect

:yourock:

[livvy]

4. Somebody should check the Palin's freezer. n/t

[BeatleBoot]

5. Like Caribou Barbie says...

"...only dead fish go with the flow..."

How true.


:smoke:

[jberryhill]

6. He Fishes Too?

I knew he was a bad painter, but I didn't know he fished. I didn't know he was still alive, really.

[OneBlueSky]

8. Garbage . . .

Mister Thompson calls the waiter, orders steak and baked potato
Then he leaves the bone and gristle and he never eats the skins;
The busboy comes and takes it, with a cough contaminates it
And puts it in a can with coffee grinds and sardine tins;
The truck comes by on Friday and carts it all away;
And a thousand trucks just like it are converging on the Bay, oh,

Garbage (garbage, garbage, garbage) Garbage!
We're filling up the sea with garbage (garbage. . .)
What will we do when there's no place left
To put all the garbage? (garbage. . .)

[humus]

9. humus or hubris?

Eay less or no meat, compost the potato skins/vegatables.
then grow your own.

[ensho]

11. tick, tick

nt