Navigating Toward Healthier Oceans and More Productive Fisheries Requires a Climate Change Response in Management

Navigating Toward Healthier Oceans and More Productive Fisheries Requires a Climate Change Response in Management

By Linda Behnken and Kevin Scribner, MFCN Policy Council co-chairs For the two of us, climate change is top of mind. It impacts the way we do business, the way we think about the ocean resources we depend on, the way we see our communities surviving into the future. We’re going to have to adapt; […]

Kevin Scribner: Pebble Mine Threatens the Largest Wild Salmon Run in the World

Kevin Scribner: Pebble Mine Threatens the Largest Wild Salmon Run in the World

Communities and fishermen in and around Bristol Bay, Alaska have depended for generations on abundant salmon runs for food, income, and a way of life. Fishermen and salmon have maintained this sustainable relationship through science-based fisheries management and a respect for the salmon’s natural habitat. That relationship is facing an uncertain future right now. First, […]

Kevin Scribner: Support Fishermen and Communities in Bristol Bay During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Kevin Scribner: Support Fishermen and Communities in Bristol Bay During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Communities and fishermen in and around Bristol Bay, Alaska have depended for generations on abundant salmon runs for food, income, and a way of life. Fishermen and salmon have maintained this sustainable relationship through science-based fisheries management and a respect for the salmon’s natural habitat. That relationship is facing an uncertain future right now. First, […]

You Are What You Eat, You Are From Where You Eat: We Are Bristol Bay

You Are What You Eat, You Are From Where You Eat: We Are Bristol Bay

Read the first part of this two-article series. Top photo: Kevin Scribner. I belong to a food movement called Slow Food, with a tributary called Slow Fish. Slow Food began in Italy, in the late 1980’s, as a reaction to the McDonald’s fast food chain showing up in Rome. Slow Food & Fish has three […]

Tears of Joy: A Bristol Bay Free from Pebble Mine

Tears of Joy: A Bristol Bay Free from Pebble Mine

Read the second part of this two-article series. It was with great joy that I commercially fished for salmon this summer in Bristol Bay, Alaska, and for a very personal reason. I had returned after a hiatus of some twenty years to help a friend establish a shore-based, family-friendly commercial setnet camp for his youngest […]

My Fishing Past, Our Sustainable Future

My Fishing Past, Our Sustainable Future

Photo: Keven Scribner on the Antigone in the 1970s I began commercially fishing in 1976, the year when the original Magnuson Act was signed into law. Chasing salmon, I fished in both Washington state and federal waters, and quickly became acquainted with circumscribed fishing seasons, specific opening times, gear-type restrictions and allowable catch limits. Regulation […]

Sirens of the Sea

Sirens of the Sea

“Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.” — from a country music song written by Ed and Patsy Bruce There are different gangplanks for boarding a boat to become a fisherman—and please note that my women skipper and deckhand friends from Alaska prefer to be called fishermen. Some fishermen come at it […]