Fishery Board Cuts Herring Catch Rate

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Created on Monday, 10 February 2025 15:52

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By ANNA LAFFREY
Ketchikan Daily News
The Southeast Alaska/Yakutat finfish and shellfish regulatory meeting that began on Jan. 28 finally adjourned at 12:23 p.m. Sunday.
To wrap up the 13-day meeting, the seven-member Board on Sunday voted on 20 proposals regarding harvest rules for commercial herring fisheries in Southeast, namely the Sitka Sound seine fishery for herring “sac roe” and the spawn-on-kelp herring fishery that takes place in the Craig/Klawock area.
The Board approved just three herring fishery proposals on Sunday, all three of which originated with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and affect the Sitka sac roe fishery.
Board members approved two ADF&G proposals (171 and 172) to modify the department’s harvest rate strategy for Sitka Sound, affecting a slightly higher biomass threshold above which the department can open the fishery, as well as a lower “sliding-scale” harvest rate range.
The proposals account for a new ADF&G analysis of Sitka’s “unfished biomass” of herring, align the department’s management with “current practice for Pacific herring stocks” and account for “the absence of current management strategy evaluations explicitly for Sitka Sound,” according to ADF&G’s comments on the proposals.
Board members voted 5-2 in support of both proposals, with Board members Tom Carpenter of Cordova and Gerad Godfrey of Eagle River voting in opposition.
Other board members are Marit Carlson-Van Dort of Anchorage, Curtis Chamberlain of Anchorage, Stan Zurayh of Tanana, and Mike Wood of Talkeetna.
The Board’s ruling on Proposal 171 will increase the Sitka Sound herring biomass “threshold,” above which the sac roe fishery can open, from 25,000 tons of herring to 26,000 tons of herring. The proposal also reduces the fishery harvest rate range from 12 percent to 20 percent of the estimated herring biomass in Sitka Sound to 10 percent to 15 percent of the estimated biomass.
Proposal 172 reduces the upper bound of the “sliding-scale” harvest rate from 20 percent to 15 percent.
Board members on Sunday also voted 7-0 in support of ADF&G’s Proposal 180 to correct the latitude of Aspid Cape for the southern boundary of the Section 13-B purse seine sac roe fishery area.
The Board “took no action” on six proposals, voted in unanimous opposition of eight proposals, and logged split votes on three failing proposals.
Board members voted 3-4 against closing 0.5 square nautical miles of Promisla Bay to commercial herring fishing. Sitka harvester Steve Johnson submitted Proposal 179 asking that the Board close the area because it is growing in importance to the customary and traditional herring egg harvest.
Board members voted 0-7 against Proposal 190, which the Sitka-based nonprofit Herring Protectors submitted to require ADF&G to “develop a consent-based co-management framework to allow for collaborative management efforts with appropriate local sovereign Tribal Government(s).”
In a “record copy” letter to the Board this week (RC174), Sitka Tribe of Alaska expressed support for the idea of Proposal 190, and recognized that “the goals set forth are unlikely to become reality any time in the near future.”
“In the meantime, STA proposes a return to the memorandum of agreement between STA and ADF&G that was in place between 2002 and 2009,” stated STA’s letter, which included a slightly modified version of the MOA that the Board discussed, agreed to and requested by a formal motion in 2002.
ADF&G Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang wrote in a statement for Sunday’s Board meeting that while he is “willing to continue the current processes” of communication between ADF&G and STA, he is “not willing to agree to sign the proposed MOA with Sitka Tribe of Alaska at this time.
“I believe we can get to the same end by using other means that ensure all users understand management decisions and are equally engaged in research,” Vincent-Lang wrote.
Four “miscellaneous business” items followed the herring deliberations on Sunday. The Board took no formal action on those items on Sunday, but will revisit three items for possible final action during the Board’s statewide meeting in March.
All meeting materials and a summary of Board actions are available at bit.ly/SoutheastBOF.

Redoubt Subsistence, Hatcheries
The Board of Fisheries took action on other finfish proposals on Friday and Saturday. The board:
– voted 7-0 Friday, to approve substitute language for Proposal 135 that ADF&G staff prepared for Board member Greg Svendsen in meeting “record copy” number 94, to allow for the use of seine or gillnet gear by subsistence permit-holders in the Sitka-area Redoubt Bay, seaward of a line approximately 100 yards from the base of the Redoubt Lake falls, when escapement of sockeye at Redoubt is projected to exceed 40,000 fish.
– in a 5-2 vote Saturday turned down a proposal (156) that had garnered broad opposition ahead of the Southeast meeting. The proposal, as written by former Board member and North Pole resident Virgil Umphenour, sought to “reduce the permitted egg take of pink and chum salmon of each applicable Southeast hatchery for pink and chum salmon by 25%.”
The board’s rejection of the proposal maintains the currently permitted egg-take levels for hatcheries in Southeast Alaska.

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