Ben Fisher

A court hearing was held in Juneau, Alaska earlier this month as part of a civil case filed by the Sitka Tribe against the Alaskan Department of Fish and Game, in an effort to have the department take action to address the dwindling numbers of herring in Sitka Sound, according to The Juneau Empire.  

Although last year, the department expected a catch of more than 11,000 metric tons (MT) of sac roe herring, not even 3,000 MT were

The spending bill passed by the United States Congress earlier this month to avoid another partial government shutdown includes USD 655 million (EUR 576 million) to build the country's first polar icebreaker in a decade, according to the Anchorage Daily News. 

The bill also provides funding for four new Coast Guard cutters in Alaska, and USD 20 million (EUR 17.5 million) which will go towards building materials for a second icebreaker,

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy’s proposed state budget would stop a tax revenue sharing plan that would take away about USD 28 million (EUR 24.7 million) in tax revenue from commercial fishing for coastal communities in the state, according to a KUCB radio report.  

Alaska collects tax from fisheries, colloquially referred to as a “raw fish tax.” Typically, half the proceeds of the taxes are shared with the city where

Salmon aquaculture should be moved out of sensitive native salmon migratory habitats out of concern for the impact it may have on wild fish, according to Canadian Minister for Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard Jonathan Wilkinson. 

In recent public comment,s Wilkinson expressed alarm related to wild salmon stock declines.

“We need to move to area-based management, which means we are actually thinking about siting of these

The International Gulf of Alaska Expedition 2019 is underway, according to the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, with the chartered 62-meter Russian research vessel Professor Kaganovskiy having departed Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on Saturday, 16 February.

The expedition is setting out to study salmon while they are at sea, rather than when they journey back to rivers and streams to spawn at the end of their lives. The study is

Aquaculture is being unfairly demonized, and that’s not good for industry or the planet, according to Hugh Mitchell, a newly appointed board member of the Northwest Aquaculture Alliance. 

Mitchell, a fish health expert and co-owner the Kirkland, Washington, U.S.A.-based fish health supply distributor and consultancy company Aquatactics, said he joined the board of the organization formerly known as the Washington Fish Growers

A peer review recommended by the Cohen Commission, a Canadian government sponsored inquiry into the decline of sockeye salmon in the Fraser River, has found that the threat of the spread of piscine irthoreovirus (PRV) from farmed Atlantic salmon near the Discovery Islands to wild Fraser River sockeye salmon is minimal. 

The review, carried out by the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, concedes that “there are still some knowledge

The International Pacific Halibut Commission last week agreed on catch limits for the Pacific halibut fishery which runs from California to Alaska, according to KBBI. 

In 2018, the IPHC, the public organization responsible for managing the  U.S. and Canadian West Coast halibut fisheries, was unable to agree on quotas for the season, and as a result the quota remained the same as the 2017 season. Before last year, the last time the