ALASKA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND GAME

The Bering Sea’s biggest and most lucrative crab fisheries opened last week, and so far, fishing is looking good.“Fishing has been very good for the [Bristol Bay red king crab] fleet this season and the crab delivered so far has been of high quality — new shell, large size, good meat-fill,” said Alaska Department of Fish and Game Area Management Biologist Ethan Nichols.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced Friday afternoon that Bering Sea fishermen will be allowed to harvest a total of about 4.7 million pounds of opilio, also known as snow crab, for the first time in two years. According to Fish and Game, estimates of total mature male biomass are above the threshold required to open the fishery.

Black cod fishermen in the Bering Sea have reported an increase in orcas taking their catch off their fishing lines in recent years. Orca depredation isn't just a costly headache for fishermen — it can be dangerous for orcas, too.

The entangled humpback whale in Nateekin Bay has moved outside of the surrounding Unalaska Bay and is trailing a buoy.

There’s an entangled humpback whale in Nateekin Bay, and local responders are asking boaters to keep their distance.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has restricted fishing within 500 yards of the McLees Lake river mouth July 1-9.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game was unable to get funding to count fish and collect data this summer at Unalaska’s McLees Lake, where the community harvests a large majority of its subsistence sockeye salmon.

The commercial season for Dungeness crab in the North Peninsula District opens May 1, and officials say this year’s harvest trajectory looks good. The individual pot limit for the area this year is 500 per vessel.

On April 1, a young humpback whale was found tied up in a probable fishing line and anchored down in a busy area in Iliuliuk Bay. Four days later, a group of whale entanglement experts carefully cut the line wrapped around the humpback's mouth and tail.

The majority of Alaska’s Bristol Bay commercial red king crab have been caught for the season. This year’s quota was rather low, coming in at about 2.1 million pounds for the entire fleet. To compare, that’s less than half the total allowable catch, or TAC, for the 2018/2019 season. Ethan Nichols is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s area management biologist for groundfish and shellfish in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region. He said even just a couple million pounds was a welcome amount for harvesters during historic lows in the state’s commercial crab industry.