Saving Seafood

Board votes to continue conservation measures for weak Southeast Alaska king salmon stocks

March 28, 2022 — Alaska’s Board of Fisheries this week voted to continue with conservation measures for chronically low returns of king salmon in Southeast Alaska. Some stocks are forecast to be at their lowest levels on record this year and others have rebounded a little under fishery closures.

The region has 34 stocks of king salmon and the board has listed seven as stocks of concern. That means for four years or more, those runs have not had enough fish making it back to spawn, or what managers call an escapement goal.

Ed Jones is an Alaska Department of Fish and Game coordinator specializing in king salmon research. He outlined to the board the measures taken to reduce harvest of those fish.

“Through the actions taken beginning in 2018 with the action plans, we have taken good steps towards achieving the escapement goals,” Jones said. “The problem is the production of these stocks has just continued to be low. And so right now we’ve not been able to provide a harvestable yield annually. The hopes are that that production will change, escapement goals will be met and we’ll also be able to identify yield.”

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: Board of Fish will consider moving Southeast meeting back to Ketchikan

January 26, 2022 — Alaska’s Board of Fisheries is considering moving its Southeast meeting back to Ketchikan, and it’s asking the public to weigh in.

The board — which sets the state’s subsistence, commercial and sport fishing rules — plans to discuss more than 150 proposed changes to Southeast Alaska finfish and shellfish regulations at the meeting, which was originally slated to be held in Ketchikan this month but was postponed due to a rise in COVID-19 cases in the region.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

ALASKA: Fisheries board member steps down, citing workload and bout with COVID

January 5, 2022 — Indy Walton of Soldotna has resigned from his seat on the state Board of Fisheries, the seven-member board that makes decisions about fish allocation and management in Alaska’s waters.

Walton said he’s dealing with a confluence of health issues that have been exacerbated by stress and a bout of COVID-19. While he thought he could balance those issues when he accepted Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s nomination in September, he said he has since had to reconsider.

“I hoped when I accepted the position that things would be different and change as far as my schedule, and I didn’t realize some of the health issues that I was being faced with until doing some tests,” he said. “And I know now I’ve got to alleviate some of the stress and lighten my load a little bit.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

With help from a new app, fishermen can track changing ocean conditions in real time

June 25, 2021 — A new smartphone app hit the market last week (6-18-21), with the potential to transform the debate over Alaska’s ocean resources.

“Skipper Science” will allow users along Alaska’s entire coastline to contribute observations about changes in fish and animal populations, which can then be collected and quantified as data for Alaska’s science-based resource management.

Anywhere the Alaska Board of Fisheries meets, there is always a certain amount of frustration among some of those who testify, because their years of experience — sometimes over many generations — doesn’t seem to carry much weight in management decisions, which tend to be driven by data.

In Sitka this is particularly acute around herring season, where subsistence harvesters have noted drastic declines in the abundance of the species over many decades, while 40-odd years of data collection by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game suggests everything is okay.

Skipper Science was created for exactly this purpose. Developed by the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, it’s a way for Alaska’s harvesters and managers to at least speak the same language.

“How do we take what has historically been called anecdotal and create some structure around it that is rigorous, has scientific repeatability?” asks Lauren Divine. She’s the Director of Ecosystem Conservation for the Aleut Community of St. Paul, the tribal government of St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea.

Read the full story at KCAW

ALASKA: Board of Fish bumps back meeting schedule citing cost concerns, public outcry

March 9, 2021 — Alaska’s Board of Fisheries has bumped its meeting cycle back a year after cost concerns and public outcry. Commercial fishing interests had raised concerns that a packed schedule wouldn’t give stakeholders a fair amount of time with the board.

Alaska’s Board of Fish is a seven-member board of citizens appointed by the governor. They make critical decisions about the whos, whats and whens of access to the state’s fisheries.

COVID-19 caused Board of Fish meetings to be postponed, including its regional meeting for Southeast. In January, the board voted to cram two years’ worth of meetings into the next meeting cycle. That would’ve effectively doubled the amount of meetings this year.

The vast majority of public and advisory committee comments received in recent months raised concerns about the doubled schedule.

On Monday, the Dunleavy administration also weighed in. Fish & Game commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang says his agency does not have the budget for twice the meeting load.

“Right now we do not have money to double up on in-person meetings next year,” Vincent-Lang said. “I can tell you it’s my intent not to rob Peter to pay Paul to double up on meetings. I’m not going to dig into the department budget at a half-million dollars to fund those meetings.”

Read the full story at KSTK

Alaska Board of Fisheries faces backlog of issues after pandemic delays

October 28, 2020 — Many Alaska fishermen are likely to be involved in regulatory meetings next spring instead of being out on the water. And Alaska legislators will be distracted by hearings for hundreds of unconfirmed appointments as they tackle contentious budgets and other pressing issues.

New dates have been set for state Board of Fisheries meetings that were bumped from later this year due to coronavirus concerns. During the same time, along with four unconfirmed seats on the fish board, the Alaska Legislature also will be tasked with considering nominees for 137 state boards and commissions named by Gov. Dunleavy during the 2020 session. State lawmakers were unable to do the usual in-depth vetting of appointees when the virus forced them to adjourn early.

The upcoming round of fish board meetings focuses on management of subsistence, commercial, sport and personal use fisheries at Prince William Sound, Southeast and Yakutat, as well as statewide shellfish issues and hatcheries.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Legal limbo: Alaska fisheries reps set to vote rogue

August 27, 2020 — Two unconfirmed and controversial Alaska Board of Fisheries members will likely be voting on issues in meetings that begin in October and run through mid-March.

The board oversees management of Alaska’s subsistence, commercial, sport and personal-use fisheries and will be focusing this cycle on Prince William Sound, Southeast and statewide shellfish issues.

Appointments were made by Gov. Mike Dunleavy on April 1 and would normally go through a rigorous vetting process by the Alaska Legislature with public input. But covid-19 sent lawmakers home early from the last session, leaving the confirmation process in limbo.

A public hearing on appointments of Abe Williams of Anchorage and McKenzie Mitchell of Fairbanks is set for Sept. 3 starting at 10 a.m. at the Legislative Information Office in Anchorage. John Jensen of Petersburg also is up for reappointment.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Gov. Dunleavy’s controversial Fish Board appointees will get a legislative hearing in September

July 15, 2020 — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s controversial selections to the state Board of Fisheries will get a legislative hearing in early fall, and the call is out for public comments.

The board oversees management of the state’s subsistence, commercial, sport and personal use fisheries. Appointments were made on April 1 and would normally go through a vigorous vetting process by the Alaska Legislature with public input. But COVID-19 sent lawmakers home early from the last session, leaving the confirmation process in limbo.

Now, state Rep. Louise Stutes (R-Kodiak) has set the date for a hearing.

“I tried to push it out as far as I thought I safely could because I know there’s a lot of guys out fishing. But I just didn’t dare push it any further than Thursday, Sept. 3, at 10 a.m. at the Anchorage Legislative Information Office,” she said in a phone interview.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

HOMER NEWS: Cook Inlet commercial fisheries feed Alaskans

February 13, 2020 — Alaska is salmon country, where fish feed our communities in every way — sustenance, work, recreation, art, faith, family, tradition and culture. For us, second- and third-generation commercial fishermen raised on Cook Inlet, salmon is a complex livelihood and identity built on all of those things.

We are proud to wield the skills our fathers taught us, and proud that we are able to venture onto an unruly ocean and return with food for our communities. That is the core purpose of commercial fishing: the movement of healthy protein from the ocean to the people.

An incredible industry has grown around it, reaching from riverbed to global marketplace. But our first duty is as local harvester, as small business owners bolstering the food security and economic stability of coastal Alaska.

In Cook Inlet, commercial fishing provides essential coastal livelihoods through hundreds of small locally-owned businesses, and thousands of jobs in the harvesting, processing and marine trades sectors. Additionally, 79% of Cook Inlet fishermen are Alaska residents.

Read the full opinion piece at the Homer News

Alaska’s Sitka Tribe sues state, claims mismanagement of herring fishery

December 19, 2018 — A tribal government is filing suit against the State of Alaska, alleging mismanagement of the Sitka sac roe herring fishery. The Sitka Tribe of Alaska has retained a major Anchorage law firm that specializes in tribal advocacy and subsistence issues. KCAW’s Katherine Rose reports on the build-up to this moment over the future of Sitka’s sac roe herring fishery.

For 20 years, tribal leaders have been worried about the health of Sitka’s herring. The silvery fish return every spring to spawn and are pursued by commercial fisherman, subsistence harvesters, and marine mammals alike. As a forage fish, they’re a cornerstone of the ecosystem.

Herring rock is blessed with water to mark this seasonal moment.

Audio: “This is spring. We are getting ready for our season. This is our time for work. Gunalchéesh.”    

Jessie Johnnie told the story of herring rock to the Board of Fish in 1997 — one of a young Tlingit woman sitting on the rock and lowering her hair into the ocean for the herring to lay their eggs. “All the herring would come to the rock and swim around,” she said, “and she would sing lullabies to them.”

Herring have cultural, ecological, and economic significance for Sitka. But the message to the Board of Fish back then was that the herring weren’t spawning the same way in the same places, and subsistence harvesters were struggling to gather enough roe.

Herman Kitka, testifying at that 1997 meeting, feared for the worst. “If nothing is done,” he said, “we will lose the herring stock that is left in Sitka Sound.”

In 2018, his son Harvey Kitka went before the Board of Fish to say the same thing: Act now, or potentially lose our herring. Sitka Tribe proposed capping the commercial harvest of herring at 10-percent. But the Board took no action, maintaining a formula that calculates a sliding scale of 12- to 20-percent depending on the size of the biomass.

Read the full story at KCAW