Alaska salmon fishery disaster determinations, 1997-2018

Fishery disaster determinations are made by the Secretary of Commerce through National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries. A fishery disaster refers to a commercial fishery failure, a catastrophic regional fishery disaster, significant harm incurred, or a serious disruption affecting future production due to a fishery resource disaster arising from natural, undetermined, or in certain circumstances man-made causes. The general process for these determinations is that an eligible entity (such as a state Governor) requests a fishery disaster determination from the Secretary of Commerce. NOAA fisheries then conducts an evaluation of the information provided, which is used by the Secretary to make a determination to approve or deny the request for disaster declaration. Then, if a disaster is determined, Congress may appropriate funds for relief. If funds are appropriated, NOAA Fisheries works with the affected entities to distribute the funds. This dataset contains fishery disaster determinations for Alaska salmon fisheries from 1997-2018. The file "fishery_disaster_request_details.csv" contains details on the disaster including a short description, the amount of funding appropriated (if the disaster was declared), what area is affected, the dates(s) of request, and the requestor. This file was derived from information obtained from the NOAA website. All fishery disaster information can be found at: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/funding-and-financial-services/fishery-disaster-determinations. The file "fishery_disaster_requests_by_area.csv" contains the number and years of fishery disasters declared by region in Alaska, and is derived from the detailed file.