October 15, 2019 — In the early 1970s, Alaska’s salmon harvests were at an all-time low. Annual statewide harvests for all salmon species were down to nearly 20 million fish. As all Alaskans trying to fish for their business or sport or to fill a freezer at that time know, the lack of reliable harvests resulted in deep and painful impacts in our state and communities. Selective openings and even complete fishery closures failed to reverse the decline. So, too, did efforts to stop foreign vessels from fishing in state waters. It was a time, as the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner observed in 1970, “dominated by tragedy, disaster, intrigue and double-dealing.”
Undaunted, Alaskans banded together to overhaul state fisheries. In 1969, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game started a rehabilitation program to build fish ladders, stock lakes with smolt, and remove log jams and other obstacles from salmon-producing streams. In 1973, voters amended the state constitution’s “no exclusive right of fishery” clause, putting into place limited-entry and hatchery production. And in 1976, Alaska’s congressional delegation helped pass the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which established a federally managed exclusive economic zone up to 200 miles offshore.
To protect wild salmon stocks from overfishing and to support the sport, subsistence and commercial users whose livelihoods depended on the salmon fishery, the Alaska Legislature expanded the hatchery program. Starting in 1974, Fish and Game enabled legislation providing authority for private non-profit, or PNP, hatcheries to operate and to harvest salmon for brood stock and cost recovery. By 1977, the first hatchery fish had returned from the ocean, relieving harvest pressure on wild stocks.