U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Friday approved disaster declarations for several distressed fisheries, including the recently canceled Bering Sea snow crab and Bristol Bay red crab harvests.
The declarations are for poor or closed Alaska harvests going back to 2020. They cover failures in the crab fisheries for this season and last season, the closure of king crab fishing in Norton Sound in 2020 and 2021, the collapse of chum and coho harvests in the Kuskokwim River area, the poor salmon returns in the Chignik area in 2021, and low returns of pink and coho salmon the Copper River and Prince William Sound areas in 2020.