By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Following multiple days of public testimony, Sitka Sound herring fisheries proposals were withdrawn by sponsors from consideration at the Alaska Board of Fisheries meeting late last week.
The annual meeting on Southeast and Yakutat finfish and shellfish issues usually is held in Southeast, but was relocated to Anchorage because of COVID and travel concerns. It started March 10 and will run through March 22.
Three proposals to expand subsistence roe harvest rights were sponsored by Sitka Tribe of Alaska.
Counter proposals were submitted by the Southeast Herring Conservation Alliance, an industry group representing the commercial seiners.
Testimony from dozens of interested Alaskans ran from Thursday to Friday at the start of the meeting. But on after public comment ended, representatives of both subsistence and commercial interests submitted a letter to the board agreeing jointly to withdraw their proposals.
The brief handwritten note states: “The undersigned hereby withdraw proposals 156-161.”
Proposals 156, 157 and 158 had been submitted by STA, while the Alliance, representing the herring sac roe seine fleet, had submitted proposals 159, 160 and 161.
STA and the Alliance have been at loggerheads for years in a dispute over the conduct of the sac roe herring fishery in Sitka Sound.
The Tribe’s now-withdrawn proposals suggested altering the way the allowable commercial harvest is determined, among other items. The Alliance’s withdrawn proposals aimed to shrink the area of Sitka Sound closed to commercial fishing and require a permit for the subsistence gathering of herring roe on branches. All but one of the withdrawn proposals were opposed by the Sitka Fish and Game Advisory Committee.
Some herring-related proposals remain in consideration, however. One would increase the possession limit for spawn-on-kelp harvest, another would set equal-share quotas for the herring seine fleet, and a third would allow seiners to harvest herring for food and bait if the sac roe quota was left unfilled.
A full list of proposals, as well as recorded audio from recent discussion and testimony is published online at adfg.alaska.gov.
Public testimony on the topic of herring spanned two full days last week and covered a wide range of perspectives.
Local Tlingit elder Harvey Kitka discussed his decades of experience harvesting herring eggs on branches.
“I’m a harvester of herring eggs and some of the harvesting has taken place since 1951, so I’ve been harvesting an awful long time,” Kitka testified on Friday. “I still go out and help my nephews and show them where to set the branches. This is how we transfer what we learn over the years.”
He voiced his support for STA’s subsequently-withdrawn proposals aimed at curtailing the commercial herring harvest.
In past years, he recalled, “the whole sound would turn white… now we’re competing for a tiny spot (to set branches).”
He opposed the Alliance’s proposals to place limits on the subsistence harvest of herring eggs.
Board member John Wood, of Willow, complimented Kitka for his long-term knowledge of the topic and asked about historical herring data.
“When I came on the board, I was under the impression that part of our responsibility was to restore stocks to their traditional levels, and you hit on that today,” Wood said. “You, sir, are a treasure in that you go back to actually active harvesting back to a time before statehood. You can testify, and have, as to what you visualized when you were there… Is there any place I can find data that says what was the extent, what was the baseline prior to statehood?”
Kitka recommended sifting through the records of the now-defunct herring reduction plants that operated in Southeast in the 20th century.
“The only real records are in the herring reduction letters and all the places that had herring reduction plants,” Kitka testified. “I know Chatham Strait probably had the biggest reduction plants around. From Cape Decision on up to as far as Kake, it just seemed as though you could walk on the herring.”
He also told the board that in his younger years, herring spawning lasted longer and covered more shoreline as well.
Kitka was one of about 200 people who submitted testimony in person, remotely or in writing on the topic of herring.
Sitka Assembly member Crystal Duncan asked the board to take action to conserve herring.
“This resource needs appropriate intervention so it’s protected for use by my immediate family but even more importantly so that seven generations from now the subsistence users can send an invitation... inviting folks to come together and become one around a dinner table,” Duncan said. “I must strongly and overtly oppose the proposals to require permits or strike subsistence priority language from the regulations and oppose any action that would expand the scope of the commercial fishery. The loud seiner boats target the largest females, disrupting the spawn, both in terms of timing and location of the spawn.”
Heather Bauscher, chairperson of the Sitka Fish and Game Advisory Committee, told the board the committee is opposed to expanding the commercial herring fishery, but also doesn’t want to see it curtailed.
“Overall, we did not support expanding the (commercial) fishery, but we did not support reducing it in any way, and we did not support any additional take or use of the unharvested portion of the quota,” Bauscher said.
“It’s hard to justify reducing the fishery and taking opportunity away from fishermen at a time of abundance,” she said, “especially after the fishermen did not fish for two years (in 2019 and 2020) and there has never been a time when a fishery was prosecuted without the presence of marketable fish. Last year the spawn was abundant and the fishermen got their fish and the processors met their market needs and it seemed like the subsistence users were happy with the branches they got. If it was like that every year we wouldn’t be in such a contentious place right now.”
Board of Fisheries member John Wood described Sitka’s committee as “the absolute best example of AC operation that I’ve experienced thus far.”
In a Dec. 20, 2021, letter to the board, the Sitka advisory committee requested that ADFG provide “funding for a major survey to acquire a current population estimate of unfished biomass of herring... including natural mortality, age class recruitment, an assessment of the model, and of the current thresholds.”
The Sitka committee’s letter cited lack of department funding as a cause for scientific uncertainty regarding local herring stocks.
“During committee discussion we became aware that department funding limitations are impacting crucial research and limiting the ability of our staff biologists to give us the best available science as we weigh in on these important management changes,” the Sitka AC wrote. “This creates doubt in the accuracy of the data along with the model and associated threshold levels as well as the whole overall herring harvest strategy. These concerns only degrade public trust and threaten the integrity of the entire process.”
The Sitka committee also requested funding for a new ADFG position to help with herring modeling, and additional support for ADFG’s subsistence section.
Speaking for the Southeast Herring Conservation Alliance, Mitch Keplinger said the positions of the commercial seiners that he represents and those of STA are not diametrically opposed.
“I oppose proposals 156, 157, and 158 (which would limit commercial herring harvest),” Keplinger said. “I do however support subsistence egg harvest and subsistence preference on fisheries. If you can’t feed people I think those things have to come first… I look at these issues (and) it appears that the Sitka Tribe’s proposals and ours are a long way apart, but I saw a lot of ‘Protect the Herring’ signs here today. I couldn’t agree more with that… Without a viable herring stock neither fishery can succeed.”
Sitkan subsistence advocate Louise Brady told the board she has seen the area of herring spawn decline through the years.
“Many of our people don’t have the resources to do this and spend hundreds of dollars on gas chasing the herring spawn,” she said. “Another friend told me he could only send herring eggs to family that year because of the scarcity… Our elders talk of the entire sound being filled with that beautiful blue herring spawn water. Now it is the exception… I want my grandchildren’s grandchildren to know the joy of herring, to know the joy of common sharing, to know the joy of sharing with extended family and share that joy throughout the country with our relatives. Western science has found a way to not listen to us, to belittle us, the herring for us have never been about money. They will never be about money, they are about our way of life.”
Prior to public testimony, Fish and Game staff presented the board with background information on herring stocks and fisheries.
“Herring are a key food source to so many other species,” said ADFG herring dive vessel program leader Kyle Hebert. “They have a particularly important role in the ecosystem. They bridge plankton and top predators like salmon and other marine mammals.
“Although herring are well recognized for the important link between these trophic levels,” he continued, “there is still inadequate information to fully develop ecosystem-based conservation limits for herring.”
Like many who provided public testimony, ADFG Southeast Alaska subsistence resource specialist Lauren Sill stressed the social importance of sharing herring eggs.
“Subsistence resources are widely shared between family and friends, but Sitka in particular, because it’s one of the main locations to get subsistence herrings eggs, everybody shares,” Sill said. “The worst year documented was still 55 percent of herring harvesters in 2015 shared their eggs with somebody.”
The Board of Fisheries meeting is ongoing for the next week and can be viewed live on the board’s YouTube channel. Recorded audio from the meeting is posted on the Fish and Game website.
