After experiencing an unprecedented closure of subsistence salmon fishing, the Port Clarence district, including Teller and Brevig Mission, is now open for fishing.
A moose that was killed in Teller last week had been infected with rabies, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game confirmed.
The commercial Silver harvest in the Norton Sound yielded the lowest numbers since 2002.This trend follows suit from last year as well, which yielded far less than projected. The run was “very poor,” Menard said. The preliminary catch was 7,100 Silvers. That’s less than half caught in the commercial fishery last year.
St. Lawrence Island, home to two native villages in the region, is also the summer home of several migratory seabird species, including kittiwakes, auklets, murre and shearwaters. Over the last several years, though, the bird colonies on the island have been shrinking, and no one has been able to determine why.
Starting last week, regional residents reported numerous dead seabirds washing up on regional beaches. Alaska Sea Grant Agent Gay Sheffield said there were carcasses of murres, puffins, shearwaters and a kittiwake starting on July 28; in Golovin, Solomon, Nome and a dead Little Diomede.
The prospects are dim for this summer’s Norton Sound commercial fishing and crabbing seasons.
The last few weeks have seen another alarming uptick in the number of dead, emaciated seabirds found washed up on the shores in the Bering Sea.
Dead tomcod were found on the beach following warm temperatures in Norton Sound, repeating a 2019 mortality event in the same area.
Every year since 2015, the Bering Sea has melted out earlier than in every year before 2015. If heat is killing animals, scientists have yet to pin down exactly how it is doing so.
"When we looked over the side of the boat, we saw clumps of mussels floating up the whole Tuksuk channel. No one has ever heard of something like this before."
Widespread mortality events that include more than one fish species are indicators that something is wrong in the environment.
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