Tag Archives: Alaska

Rivers & Oceans

DFO ‘legacy of neglect’ leaves North Coast salmon to flounder

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Fisheries and Oceans Canada cut the monitoring of salmon streams along BC’s North and Central Coast, leaving critical stocks uncounted at the height of spawning season.

Seasonal “creek walkers” — contractors for the fisheries department (DFO) who trek along streams to record salmon returns — haven’t been hired as stocks return along the coast from Bella Bella to the Alaskan border, including major watersheds like the Skeena, Nass and Kitimat systems, says a coalition of conservation groups. 

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Animals, Indigenous Nations

In Sheet’ká, Łingít fishers share herring harvests with a surprise influx of grey whales

By Amy Romer, IndigiNews, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter.

Growing up, Yanshkawoo (Harvey Kitka) never saw many grey whales in the waters of Sheet’ká Sound.

The Łingít (Tlingít) Elder and subsistence yaaw (herring) fisherman recalled harvesting gáax’w (herring eggs) in his territories before “Alaska” became a “U.S.” state in 1959. It was a time when yaaw were plentiful and sightings of whales were rare — just a handful at most.

“There was food everywhere,” mused Yanshkawoo, tracing a slow circle in the air with his hand — a gesture toward the abundance the ocean once held. He sat at a crowded café in Sheet’ká (Sitka), his voice calm but thoughtful.

“They had no reason to come into the Sound back then.” 

But things changed in 2019, when fishers, researchers and community members began noticing an influx of grey whales, an order of magnitude larger than in previous years.

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Rivers & Oceans

The Documentary ‘Salmon Secrets’ Comes to Cortes Island

French filmmaker Jérémy Mathieu’s award winning documentary ‘Salmon Secrets,’ will be coming to Gorge Hall at 1 PM on Sunday, January 12.    

This 40 minute film was produced by Clayoquot Action, whose co-founders Bonny Glambeck and Dan Lewis will be speaking at the screening. 

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Animals, Rivers & Oceans

The Pacific Herring Spawn and Nurseries Project

A citizen scientist project to photograph Pacific herring spawn along the West Coast, from Alaska down to California, has been underway for close to two months. It is based in the Comox-Courtenay area, and one of its many partners is the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI).

Project lead Jacqueline Huard, a scientist with Project Watershed,  explained, “I work with the Coastal Forage Fish Network. We are very community scientist based and working on a herring project in iNaturalist just was a natural fit for us. I wanted to encourage the folks that we work with to put their data somewhere where they could also access it. The goal is twofold, both to collect some data and address a gap, but also to get it out to the public and have a publicly available data set for the public created by community scientists.”

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Animals, Rivers & Oceans

New subpopulation of Deep Ocean Orcas Identified

A new subpopulation of Orcas has been identified in the open ocean off the coasts of Oregon and California. UBC researchers have identified 49 individual killer whales in photographs taken between 1997 and 2021. 

According to Josh McInnes, a masters student in the UBC Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and lead author of a new paper in Aquatic Animals, they may also be off the coast of British Columbia.

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