September 7, 2022 –A lawsuit filed against National Marine Fisheries Service in 2020 reared its head in a Washington district court on Aug. 8, and it could spell changes in fisheries management for Southeast Alaska trollers.
The case stems from a suit brought by the Wild Fish Conservancy that challenges the biological rationale in setting allocations of Pacific Salmon Treaty chinooks that Southeast trollers catch.
The premise of the case is that NMFS, in its biological opinion, did not consider a portion of the commingling stocks as forage fish for a pod of 74 killer whales in Puget Sound, rendering the agency out of compliance with the Endangered Species Act.
Like other legal battles between the fishing industry and environmental groups, this case stems from differing interpretations of the data.
The Wild Fish Conservancy contends that 97 percent of the troll-caught chinooks originate in drainages outside of Alaska. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, meanwhile, estimates those numbers between 30 and 80 percent, and that the percentages vary each year.
Though some feared that a subsequent injunction filed by the conservancy could stop the fishery after the initial case was filed in 2020, that didn’t happen.