A dispute over a fishing company’s tax bill is challenging Alaska’s fisheries resource landing tax on constitutional grounds. The landing tax is crucial for fishing dependent communities that receive half the revenue.
Fisheries
Come 2018, the state plans to dispose of F/V Akutan
The processor was abandoned in September following a disastrous fishing season in Bristol Bay where the ship’s owner went broke, the crew went unpaid, and it’s 158,000 pound haul of salmon was declared unfit for human consumption.
Homer fishermen grapple with cod decline
Regulators voted to slash Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod allocations 80 percent earlier this month after a massive decline in stocks. That has fishermen and processors around the Gulf deciding what to do when the season kicks off in January.
State’s latest water quality report has bad news for popular Kenai River
Each time the state puts out its water quality report, there’s good news and there’s bad news.
Pebble announces federal permit application
Pebble Limited Partnership has announced that tomorrow, it will apply for a federal Clean Water Act permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Abandoned and adrift, North Pacific fishing vessel sunk by Coast Guard
The 170-foot Alaska Patriot was under tow from Dutch Harbor to Mexico when it broke free on Dec. 7. The vessel is currently adrift about 215 miles south of Chirikof Island and is a navigational hazard to commercial freighter traffic traveling along the Great Circle route.
Rural Alaska losing access to fisheries, report says
The increasing costs to get into Alaska’s fisheries are making it difficult for new fishermen to break into the business — especially in rural, coastal communities, according to a recent report from University of Alaska Fairbanks and SeaGrant scientists.
Salmon Work Group gears up to fight possible threat to Kodiak fisheries
The Salmon Work Group, which also came together the last time the same issue came up in 1980s, has revitalized to address what many Kodiak salmon fishermen consider a threat to their fisheries — Cook Inlet fish in Kodiak waters.
Staggeringly low forecasts for king salmon in the Stikine
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game expects considerably lower numbers of chinook salmon for the Stikine and Taku Rivers.
Forecast for Taku king salmon at historic low
The Taku River’s pre-season terminal run is forecast at 4,700 fish. The state requires at least 19,000 fish for a healthy fishery.