For decades, the Bering Sea herring fishery has provided bait fish for crabbers.

The Alaska Fisheries Science Center, which studies and helps oversee Alaska’s marine resources, may have lost more than 5% of its staff at once.

Dunleavy responded to fears over the bill in a video, doubling down on his assertion that it would not open opportunities for salmon farming.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which manages federal fisheries off Alaska’s coast, wrapped up its February meeting Tuesday, with one issue dominating discussions: salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea. The 15-member council unanimously approved a motion that inches forward a decision that will finally put to bed the issue of pollock trawlers’ chum salmon bycatch, which has become the biggest fisheries issue in over a decade.

The issue pits a multibillion-dollar industry against Western Alaska subsistence communities struggling with record-low salmon returns — with climate change in the background.

Earlier this month, commercial snow crabs started hitting Unalaska’s docks again, for the first time in nearly three years. The Bering Sea snow crab fishery reopened in mid-October, after billions of the crab disappeared and the fishery was shut down in October 2022. This season’s first catch was delivered on Jan. 15. Opilio, or snow crab, is generally fished in the new year and into the early spring. The season runs through the end of May.

This season, the Bering Sea snow crab fishery opened for the first time in two years, and the first boats began delivering to processors on Jan. 15. But the Trident Seafoods facility in St. Paul — which the company calls the “largest crab processing plant in the world” — isn’t taking any crab.

Unalaska's U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit is investigating a fishing vessel that ran aground near Iliuliuk Bay. The F/V Northern Endurance was partially beached about three miles from downtown Unalaska, near Little Priest Rock on Thursday and was pulled free by the emergency response and salvage company Resolve Marine Friday morning around 9 a.m., according to Commanding Officer Lt. Lawrence Schalles.

Unalaska’s U.S. Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit is responding to a distressed vessel near the island’s landfill.The F/V Northern Endurance ran aground near Iliuliuk Bay along Summer Bay Road sometime Thursday morning. The Unalaska Fire Department responded to the incident around noon.