100 Observers Await Board Action on Finfish

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Created on Monday, 03 February 2025 15:16

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By ANNA LAFFREY
Ketchikan Daily News
Votes on state fishery regulations came down on Friday and Saturday as the Alaska Board of Fisheries wrapped up Session One of its Southeast Alaska/Yakutat finfish and shellfish regulatory meeting in Ketchikan.
The first of two sessions in the Board’s 13-day meeting began on Jan. 28, and addressed harvest rules for groundfish and shellfish species that live in state-managed Southeast waters. Board members considered 72 formal regulatory proposals throughout Session One, and approved one Board-generated proposal regarding the Kodiak-area herring fishery.
Session Two began on Sunday with a full day of Alaska Department of Fish and Game staff presentations on the department’s management for all Southeast/Yakutat “finfish” fisheries for salmon and trout species, as well as herring. Public attendance at the Board meeting in the Ted Ferry Civic Center spiked on Monday, with more than 100 audience members ushering in some contentious Session Two topics.
Following staff presentations, Traditional Knowledge reports and public testimony about all Session Two issues, the Board will hold “committee of the whole” proceedings, and then deliberations, for set groups of proposals.
Eighty-seven formal “finfish” fishery regulatory proposals remain before the Board.
Thirty-one of the Session Two proposals deal with the allocation of chinook salmon between gear groups in Southeast Alaska, and address a disagreement primarily between the commercial troll fleet and nonresident sport/charter fleet that tracks back to the Board’s 2022 meeting, when the Board last made changes to the Southeast Alaska King Salmon Management Plan.
Another hot Session Two topic is a proposal (156) that would “reduce the permitted egg take of pink and chum salmon of each applicable Southeast hatchery for pink and chum salmon by 25%.”
Other commercial salmon fishery regulations, recreational trout harvest regulations and salmon enhancement aquaculture topics will feature this week.
On the final days of the meeting, the Board will consider 20 formal proposals to address regionwide commercial herring harvest regulations, commercial regulations for the Sitka Sound sac roe seine herring fishery and the Craig/Klawock roe-on-kelp herring fishery, and customary and traditional herring harvesters’ needs.
All Board negotiations, deliberations and voting on finfish fishery regulations, as well as miscellaneous Board business, (is) are set to wrap up by Feb. 9.

Groundfish votes
While working through 51 formal regulatory proposal on groundfish and crab topics on Friday, the Board voted in unanimous support of  Proposal 206 to reopen the Southeast yelloweye sport fishery for residents, allowing for a daily bag limit of one fish and a possession limit of two fish, with no annual or size limit.
Yelloweye is one of seven species in the demersal shelf rockfish complex. Due to population concerns, ADF&G in 2020 issued an “emergency order” that closed harvest of all DSR species to both resident and nonresident sport harvest.
In 2022, the Board opened the DSR sport fishery, excluding yelloweye, to residents only; yelloweye remained closed to all sport anglers.
After voting on Friday to reopen the resident yelloweye sport fishery on Friday, Board members voted 6-1 to support Proposal 208, as amended by Alaska Department of Fish and Game staff at the request of Board Member Greg Svendsen, to allow a limited, all-DSR harvest opportunity for nonresidents.
The proposal by the Craig ADF&G Advisory Committee, as amended and approved on Friday, opens the months of July and August to nonresident harvest of any demersal shelf rockfish species (yelloweye, canary, China, copper, quillback, rosethorn and tiger). Under the new rule, each nonresident is allowed to harvest just one DSR during those two months.The open nonresident season timing is meant to protect DSR during their spring spawning period. 
Board members and stakeholders last week collaborated with ADF&G staff to amend Proposal 208 after the department determined that a short nonresident season for DSR, including yelloweye, could keep the total sport fishery DSR harvest within allocation.
Board Member Tom Carpenter, who cast the sole “no” vote on the proposal to allow for nonresident DSR harvest, discussed before the Board’s vote how demersal shelf rockfish are very long-lived species that are susceptible to over-harvest, and recently were thought to be “in dire straits.”
Carpenter said that, while the Board’s unanimous action to reopen resident yelloweye harvest with Proposal 206 was “fairly warranted … I’m just not sure I’m there yet to open it up on the nonresident side quite yet.”
Carpenter said that he would like to see more information that “really shows that this is headed in the right direction before we go too far because these are very long-lived species.”
Carpenter also acknowledged the department’s cautionary approach to reopening DSR harvest.
While considering 21 total groundfish fishery proposals, the Board on Friday approved 16 other proposals regarding groundfish harvest, including:
* Proposal 192 to allow pots used in the personal use bottomfish fishery to be longlined.
* Proposal 194 to reduce the minimum “ring size” allowed on pots deployed in subsistence, personal use and commercial fisheries for sablefish (black cod), which would allow fishermen to retain more fish by keeping slightly smaller fish inside the pot.
* Proposal 198 to increase the daily resident bag limit for sablefish in the sport fishery from four fish to six fish.
* Proposal 202 to clarify that only one line can be used for dinglebar gear in the lingcod fishery.
* Proposal 209 to establish provisions for a resident priority within emergency order for pelagic rockfish.
* Proposal 210 to reduce the bag and possession limit for pelagic rockfish in Southeast Alaska.

Crab votes
The Board on Friday also considered 30 crab fishery proposals, and approved 11 proposals.
The actions on Friday affect changes to ADF&G’s harvest strategy for the commercial red and blue king crab fishery, and changes to commercial golden king crab fishery times and areas.
Board members decided to maintain the current Dungeness crab fishery season start date of June 15, and approved a proposal (255) to allow people or vessels to participate in the commercial Dungeness fishery if they operated commercial, personal use or subsistence shrimp pots during the 14 days immediately before the opening of the commercial Dungeness fishery.
The Board voted against a proposal to close the Ketchikan-area Traitors Cove to commercial and sport shellfish harvest, and voted against a proposal to close the nearby George Inlet, Carroll Inlet and Thorne Arm to commercial crabbing and shrimping.
Board members voted 5-2 to close sport fishing for Dungeness crab in Throne Bay.
Speaking in favor of the Thorne Bay closure, Board Member Mike Wood said that while the proposal is “a tricky one,” he supports the closure because the bay is “such a small area that a little bit of new added sport fishing could really impact the locals in this area, especially with all the road access around the bay.”

Shrimp
On Saturday, the Board heard eight proposals related to shrimp fisheries.
Board members voted 7-0 for Proposal 222 to adopt closures for subsistence, sport and personal use shrimp fisheries during the months of March and April to protect shrimp during the time that many shrimp develop and hatch their eggs.
The Board also declined a request to revert the commercial shrimp pot season from its current May 15 opening date, which the Board set with a regulation change in 2022, to its former Oct. 1 start date.
Board members approved amended language for a proposal (228), which ADF&G staff prepared for Board Member Wood, to allow all shrimp fishermen to deploy “slinky pots” that are no more than 48 inches long and 24 inches in diameter.
While considering multiple “slinky pot” proposals on Friday and Saturday, Board members urged ADF&G staff and industry leaders to develop clear, statewide definitions for “slinky pot” gear.

Miscellaneous shellfish
Also on Saturday, Board members voted against most of the 11 “miscellaneous shellfish” fishery proposals that sought to liberalize commercial dive harvesters’ take of geoduck clams and sea cucumbers from sea otter-impacted areas.
Board members voted 2-5 against a proposal by Juneau-based fisherman and businessman Richard Yamada that asked the Board to direct ADF&G to establish a commercial jig fishery for magister squid.

Board-generated Kodiak-area
herring proposal
At the end of Session One, the Board decided voted 5-2 to schedule for later consideration a Board-generated proposal by Board Member Gerard Godfrey to “modify herring purse seine gear, fishing seasons and periods, and herring sac roe harvest strategy to increase commercial herring harvest” in the Kodiak area.
The proposal would allow Kodiak-area sac roe seine herring fishermen to catch herring at more times of year, and market herring harvested in the fall and winter months, when the fish have a higher oil content, as “food and bait.”
The Board’s motion on Godfrey’s proposal Saturday will allow the Board to take up the Kodiak-area herring proposal during its statewide shellfish meeting in Anchorage next month.
Godfrey’s proposal originated with Bruce Schactler, who worked with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute for about 20 years as ASMI’s Global Food Aid program director, and as a leader in exploring potential markets for different product forms made from Alaska herring.
Both Godfrey and Schactler, as well as Board Member Tom Carpenter, last year served on a Herring Revitalization Committee that the Board forged with Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission Commissioner Glenn Haight in March of 2024. Haight is the former executive director of the Board of Fisheries.
The committee’s charter, as incorporated by the Board last year, describes how Alaska’s herring are currently “underutilized,” as tens of thousands of tons of statewide herring harvest quota is not harvested each year because roe fisheries (for full skeins of mature herring roe, and for spawn-on-kelp) have declined in value since the 1990s.
Schactler told the Daily News last week that the “point of the exercise” of the Herring Revitalization Committee was to explore how the state can “redo management away from any particular time of year” so herring fishermen who fish in the Gulf of Alaska and off Western Alaska can harvest their full quotas to supply more lucrative “food and bait” markets.
“If you only have access for a few weeks in the spring, you don’t have access,” Schactler said.
Carpenter told the Daily News last week that, throughout its work in 2024, the committee mainly “looked at how, when the Board gets proposals to utilize these (herring) fisheries … what’s the best way that we can have a real understanding of the overall herring complexity that exists in the State of Alaska, and not only fishermen, but marketing and things like that.”
“It will be up to the Board to take the information that we gathered in that committee meeting and look specifically at a proposal for Kodiak, but we could also obviously entertain proposals in the future from other parts of the state that we will also be able to have that information to utilize,” Carpenter said.
The committee disbanded following its most recent Oct. 31 meeting, according to Carpenter.

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