http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090802/ap_on_bi_ge/us_vanishing_king_salmon
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – 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.
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.
General manager Jack Schultheis said when the king fishery was shut down, the summer chum salmon run was curtailed as well, even though a good number of chums were returning to the river.
The lower Yukon villages are economically devastated, he said.
Fishermen used to get between $5 million and $10 million from the fishery. Last year, it was $1.1 million.
That means instead of making between $20,000 and $30,000 in the 1970s, fishermen are making just a few thousand dollars now, and that in villages where fuel costs $8 a gallon, milk is $15 a gallon and a T-bone steak costs $25, he said.
It's hard to see the villages in such economic hardship but the Yukon should be managed conservatively until the problem of the disappearing kings is better understood, Schultheis said.
"For 50 years, it was an extremely stable fishery," he said."
Ok Sarah what you do with the fish? J/k
Actually not funny ,everything is being stressed.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska – 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.
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.
General manager Jack Schultheis said when the king fishery was shut down, the summer chum salmon run was curtailed as well, even though a good number of chums were returning to the river.
The lower Yukon villages are economically devastated, he said.
Fishermen used to get between $5 million and $10 million from the fishery. Last year, it was $1.1 million.
That means instead of making between $20,000 and $30,000 in the 1970s, fishermen are making just a few thousand dollars now, and that in villages where fuel costs $8 a gallon, milk is $15 a gallon and a T-bone steak costs $25, he said.
It's hard to see the villages in such economic hardship but the Yukon should be managed conservatively until the problem of the disappearing kings is better understood, Schultheis said.
"For 50 years, it was an extremely stable fishery," he said."
Ok Sarah what you do with the fish? J/k
Actually not funny ,everything is being stressed.
