Fisheries

Overall, it’s estimated that seafood processors paid fishermen working in Alaska a total of $643 million this year. That’s more than double last year’s total.

Tracy Welch grew up in Petersburg and has a background in commercial fishing, gillnetting and long-lining.

Like chinook salmon, NOAA researchers observed chum salmon almost exclusively near Alaska’s shores.

Federal bycatch data shows trawl fisheries in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska this year have caught tens of thousands of chinook salmon, millions of pounds of halibut and hundreds of thousands of crabs.

It is still a mystery to state biologists why king and chum salmon numbers are decreasing in Western Alaska. But ask any local fishermen on the Kuskokwim, and they’ll likely tell you commercial fishing trawlers in the Bering Sea are the problem.

A U.S. Coast Guard crew from Air Station Sitka rescued four people after their boat began taking on water late on Nov. 10.

The lives of sea otters — the tool-using marine mammals — were once intertwined with those of the coastal tribes in Oregon. Now, local Native Americans are hoping to bring them back.

Alaska has an ambitious goal: to turn its growing mariculture business into a $100 million industry by 2040.

The Southeast harvests in both 2020 and 2018 were around 8 million fish — among some of the lowest in decades.

State environmental officials say the 3,000 gallons of diesel and several hundred gallons of lubricants won’t have a significant environmental impact.