Fish Groups Debate Chinook Proposals

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Created on Thursday, 06 February 2025 12:32

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By ANNA LAFFREY
Sentinel Staff Writer
The Ted Ferry Civic Center buzzed around 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday as Alaska Board of Fisheries Member Tom Carpenter called a 25-minute break in the ninth day of the Board’s 13-day Southeast Alaska/Yakutat finfish and shellfish regulatory meeting.
This morning, the Board began its final deliberations on state rules that guide the harvest of chinook salmon by different user groups in Southeast.
On Wednesday, Carpenter stood down the meeting as the Board was working through the fourth of 32 regulatory proposals at hand for the Board’s “committee of the whole” session regarding the state’s chinook management.
As the meeting paused, Sitka-based commercial troll fisherman Jeff Farvour, who serves on the board of directors of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, jumped up to huddle with his colleagues.
“We’ve got 25 minutes to figure this all out,” Farvour said.
Farvour, like many Southeast fishermen who harvest chinook, has been working for more than a year to support chinook management proposals for the Board’s 2025 meeting in Ketchikan.
Eighteen of the 32 chinook proposals before the Board this week address the allocation of migratory chinook between the hook-and-line commercial troll fishery and the resident / nonresident sport fishery in Southeast Alaska, which is bound each year by an “all-gear catch limit” that’s set according to the U.S./Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty.
Chinook harvesters presented roughly 75 individual public testimonies related to these 18 chinook proposals on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, ahead of a zippy, three-hour “committee” session regarding all chinook regulations on Wednesday afternoon.
The Board’s deliberations on the chinook proposals today could answer the grievances of Southeast chinook harvesters over an allocative change that the Board made in 2022 to the King Salmon Management Plan for Southeast.
Just two of the seven current Board members served on the Board in 2022. 
While the Board on Wednesday considered the formal “KSMP and allocation” proposals from fishermen, fishery organizations, and governments, ideas were still flowing around the Board table about how to best allot chinook harvest opportunities in Southeast.
Just before the Board’s town-hall-style “committee” negotiations Wednesday, Board Chair Märit Carlson-Van Dort had published “substitute language” for two of the chinook allocation proposals at hand.
Alaska Department of Fish and Game Staff prepared substitute language for Carlson-Van Dort that amends Proposal 109 (published as Board meeting “record copy” 140). RC140 would change the current allocation of chinook between trollers and sport fishermen, following net fishery reductions, from the historic 80/20 percent to 75/25 percent of the combined troll/sport allocation.
One formal Board proposal (113) would increase the sport allocation of king salmon from 20 percent to up to 25 percent of the overall troll/sport chinook allocation.
Nine local ADF&G Advisory Committees in Southeast opposed Proposal 113, and no local ACs supported it. In other on-time public comments to the Board, 120 individuals, organizations, businesses and governments opposed Proposal 113 to “increase the sport allocation of king salmon”; 29 individuals, organizations and businesses supported the proposal. 
Carlson-Van Dort’s Wednesday RC140 also would allow any allocation remaining from the “net fisheries” in the late season to be transferred not just to trollers, but to any user group, a change that ADF&G recommended in formal comments ahead of the meeting.
Meanwhile, Carlson-Van Dort’s RC139, which builds off of Proposal 131, would allow ADF&G’s commissioner to open a limited harvest troll fishery for chinook any time after Aug. 1, following trollers’ initial July 1 treaty chinook opening, if sufficient allocation remains.
While kicking off the chinook “committee” after a lunch break on Wednesdays, Board members and public participants were soon caught up in discussions about Carlson-Van Dort’s new RCs, which many meeting participants hadn’t had a chance to read.
Recognizing that “these particular proposals are of utmost importance” to the Board’s large audience, Carpenter, who was chairing the committee session, decided to stand down the meeting.
Some chinook harvesters huddled in the main hall of the Civic Center while reading and talking through the proposals, or conferring with Board members. Others stood outside to watch the sunset, just letting off steam.
When committee talks resumed, fishermen shared their positions on each of the chinook management proposals, including the emerging RCs.
Jeff Wedekind, who owns Chinook Shores Lodge in Ketchikan, said that Carlson-Van Dort’s RC140, or Board Member Greg Svendsen’s RC109 that suggests a 70/30 percent allocation between troll and sport, rather than 80/20, “recognize the need for higher allocation” in the growing nonresident sport fishing industry.
“When you think about how we prosecute our fisheries, growth is really hard, because there’s a finite number of fish in the ocean,” Wedekind said. “So how do you grow?
“You need to bring more value to the fish that you catch, or you can’t grow,” Wedekind said.
Wedekind, who submitted the formal Proposal 113 to increase sport allocation to 25 percent, said that he would “advocate for (Svendsen’s) RC109 … with stipulations that there would be resident (sport harvest) protections and also a hard cap on that 30 percent” of the combined troll/sport allocation by the sport sector.
Nonresident harvest has comprised about 75 percent of sport harvest in recent years.
When addressing Carlson-Van Dort’s RC140, Linda Behnken, executive director for ALFA, said that “we don’t support reallocation.”
“What you’re dealing with is a management issue, not an allocation issue,” Behnken said. “We have a charter fleet that consistently drives an overage, and the way that you deal with management issues is not to give a bigger allocation, but to give the managers new tools.”
“From our perspective, RC89 gets you most of the way there,” Behnken said, referencing a proposal that Board Member Mike Wood published on Sunday.
Wood’s RC89 would reinstate “inseason management” of the sport fishery and eliminated the “tiered structure” that currently prescribed chinook bag, possession and annual limits based on the all-gear catch limit of treaty chinook for Southeast.
Wood’s RC89 also would “prioritize Alaska resident fishing opportunity and establish stable bag and possession limits for the entire season.”
“The nonresident fishery will be managed to avoid inseason changes or closures for resident anglers,” per Wood’s RC89.
Behnken noted Wednesday that “some of the bag limits in there (RC89) are too high and you’re going to have to look at adjusting those.”
Behnken also suggested managing the sport fishery in ways that the department currently manages the troll fishery: “by putting in closures of high-abundance areas or putting in time limits on when the troll fishery can target king salmon.” She laid out those nonresident sport fishery management options in RC130.
As of Wednesday night, meeting stakeholders had submitted 140 “record copy” documents throughout the Board’s regionwide shellfish and finfish rule-making process that began on Jan. 28. About 25 of those documents address chinook allocation between gear groups in Southeast.
Members of the public submitted 13 additional RCs related to chinook allocation by 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, an RC deadline that Carlson-Van Dort set at the close of the meeting Wednesday.
When the meeting wrapped up at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, it was unclear whether Board members would be prepared upon resuming the meeting at 10 a.m. on Thursday to take action on Southeast chinook harvest regulations.
User groups met with Board members in the evening and morning to hash out potential solutions to current chinook allocation pains.
Carlson-Van Dort today delayed the start of the meeting from 10 a.m. to about 10:45 a.m., when the Board began its deliberations on chinook management.
A record of Board actions will be available on Board’s meeting page at bit.ly/SoutheastBOF.
On Friday, the Board is set to kick off its next “committee” session regarding commercial, sport and personal use salmon and trout regulations, and salmon enhancement-related proposals, including 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%.”
As of this morning, deliberations for that next group of proposals were scheduled for Friday.
Committee proceedings and deliberations on all Southeast herring fishery proposals are scheduled for Saturday, per a draft agenda updated on Monday.