May 11, 2023 — The State of Alaska and the Alaska Trollers Association (ATA) filed an appeal on Wednesday to undo a ruling in a U.S. Ninth Circuit court that could shut down the whole Southeast Alaskan king salmon troll fishery this summer.
The state and ATA are co-defendants in the case of Wild Fish Conservancy v. Scott Rumsey et al. The chief defendant is the National Marine Fisheries Service.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Jones upheld a December 13, 2022 decision by a federal magistrate to require federal fisheries biologists and managers to redo the biological opinion that allows for the take of king salmon by the Southeast Alaska troll fleet.
This ruling is the latest in a lawsuit by the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy alleging that the NMFS incidental take statement disproportionately restricts the number of Chinook salmon allowed to return to their native waters as prey for the endangered killer whales that spend part of the year in Puget Sound.
Judge Jones wrote in the two-page ruling, “the 2019 Southeast Alaska Biological Opinion is remanded to the NMFS to remedy the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act violations previously found by this court in December.”