"Alaska Fisheries Science Center"

From exceptionally strong to exceptionally weak runs, sockeye salmon leave scientists scratching their heads this year in Alaska.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, is based in Washington state. But Sitka Representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins wants to see NOAA’s Alaska-focused staff, programs and assets relocated closer to home.

A group of marine scientists visited Western Alaska recently to discuss the results of a second bottom-trawl survey of the northern Bering Sea. This round of research comes seven years after their first survey of the area in 2010. 

Over the past couple of decades black cod — or sablefish — has become one of Southeast Alaska’s most commercially important species. Longliners target them in deep waters off the continental shelf, during the same season as halibut. Although stocks are strong, biologists don’t fully grasp black cod population ecology. A research partnership in Sitka hopes to change that.

Scientists and fishermen have a new tool for looking at annual trawl surveys in the Bering Sea. It will help researchers get a picture of the true impacts of climate change.

Researchers are cruising the Gulf of Alaska on the lookout for one of the world’s rarest animals, the North Pacific right whale.

This week, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council has been looking at ways to cut back on the number of Chinook salmon that get scooped up by commercial trawl boats in the Bering Sea.

NOAA researchers recently captured this amazing photo of thousands of walruses on a beach in the Chukchi Sea.

Is the North Pacific humpback whale no longer endangered? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could decide as early as today whether to pursue taking the whale off the Endangered Species list.