Anglers, ADF&G at odds over salmon

MAT-SU — The Alaska Board of Fisheries will hear an emergency petition about Upper Cook Inlet sockeye salmon at its statewide meeting in March, but Valley anglers and guides are still standing in the dark.

The petition requests the board close the Upper Cook Inlet commercial driftnet fishery or restrict it to the Kenai or Kasilof section of the Inlet for one of the scheduled Monday or Thursday commercial fishing days in July.

Local fishing guide Andy Couch filed the petition citing recent low returns of sockeye salmon to the Yentna River. The fishery is already listed as a stock of concern, and Couch writes in the petition that the escapement goals set in 2007 have historically never been met without such reductions in the driftnet fleet catch.

Further, Couch requests the board to direct the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to manage Upper Cook Inlet fisheries to meet the escapement goal of 90,000 to 160,000 sockeyes on the Yentna River using counting methods similar to those used to set the goals.

This last part about how the fish are counted is becoming a bone of contention between sport groups and ADF&G.

Bruce Knowles is the acting director of the Mat-Su Borough Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Sportsmen’s Committee. Knowles said before 2009, fish counts on the Susitna River Drainage were taken using the Bendix-type sonar counter. This is how escapement had been measured for 28 years, and these numbers are what the escapement goals were based on.

But in 2009, the Bendix was scrapped as an in-season management tool. Now, Knowles is asking whether ADF&G abandoned Bendix because of the method’s inaccuracies or because it wasn’t giving the department the numbers it was looking for.

Knowles, writing on behalf of the blue ribbon committee, submitted a letter to Fish and Game asking for a justification as well as results of other studies on the salmon population of Upper Cook Inlet. Knowles said the studies he is looking for include the second part of the results of genetic stock identification of sockeye salmon in the upper Inlet. This is potentially ground-breaking work that will allow ADF&G to identify what river the fish taken in the Inlet were headed for.

Knowles said the committee needs the results of studies before it makes its proposals to the Board of Fisheries for the 2011 meeting on issues affecting fisheries in Southcentral. The deadline for proposals is April 10, he said.

The committee first requested the data last March. Knowles said the department said the information would be available in the fall of 2009. Come fall, the committee requested the information again, only to be told it would come out in December. The committee filed its latest letter on Jan. 25., with a letter of support submitted by the local state legislative delegation soon after.

The department replied Feb. 10. The genetic stock identification study is still in draft form, ADF&G says, and the final report should be out next month.

As to why the Bendix sonar count was discontinued, the department responded that results from another study where salmon were marked with tags then recaptured shows the sonar counts were an unreliable indicator of actual escapement. As a result, the forecast was expanded to include information based on this mark-recapture and genetic stock identification.

Even with the expanded methodology, the ADF&G count of 350,000 sockeye salmon escapement to the Susitna Drainage was still well below the 669,000-fish forecast.

Based on the department’s response, Knowles said he is not hopeful the committee will have the information by the proposal deadline. Even if the committee does get the information by March, it needs time to digest the data to craft educated proposals.

Fish and Game admits to using the genetic stock information in its justification for moving away from the Bendix sonar count, meaning this information is being used for in-season management decisions. Yet, this information is still not open to the public, Knowles said. What’s more, he said, the escapement goals set in 2007 were based on Bendix sonar count from previous years.

The fact that the run did not meet the prediction even with the expanded count should raise some serious concerns, Knowles said, concerns he hopes are addressed by an emergency petition at the statewide Board of Fisheries meeting on March 19.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.