Ask the Board of Fish

In his Fishing Report column over the last few weeks, Andy Couch has raised some interesting points and asked some pointed questions about how Fish and Game is managing the Northern District salmon fisheries, specifically, the king salmon fisheries.

If you present Andy’s points and questions to the fisheries managers, you will automatically hear they are following the fisheries management plan developed by the Board of Fisheries to address that fishery. The managers would be correct — as far as they go. Here are some “behind the scenes” perspectives I learned during my time on the board.

Yes, the board adopts the various management plans into regulation and the department is then obligated to follow the management strategy (key word: strategy) outlined. That jives with department statements. However, as Paul Harvey used to say, here’s the rest of the story.

Fish and Game is supposed to have significant input into the development of these management plans. More often than not, they will not comment on all the various implications a specific action might have when being placed into regulation unless a board member specifically asks about it.

When the board was debating some points during the 2008 Upper Cook Inlet meeting, department managers narrowly answered only questions put to them by the board — no additional information was volunteered. After the action was taken, I spoke with a mid-level manager during a break. He told me some facts (not opinions) that I thought would have changed the outcome of the vote had board members been aware of the information.

I asked why these facts were not put forth during the deliberations and was told, “Sometimes you (the board member) just have to ask the right questions!” The manager was quite aware of possible implications the new regulation might have, which were unknown to any board member during the discussions. I thought that withholding of pertinent information was deceitful on the part of the department.

One regulation the department does their best to avoid following is the Sustainable Salmon Fisheries Policy, or SSFP. In that policy/regulation, the burden of conservation in managing a depressed fishery is to be shared as equally as possible among the resource users in the form of restrictions on how the fishery is prosecuted.

As Andy pointed out, there were significant pre-season restrictions placed on both the sport and commercial fisheries in the Northern District regarding king salmon. When the run came in earlier and a little stronger than expected, Sport Fish relaxed the no-bait and treble-hook restrictions on the Deshka River. The two-fish limit remained along with all the other king salmon restrictions and closures in the Susitna River drainages. Nothing was changed for the Little Susitna River at that time either.

That one action triggered a response from the Commercial Fisheries Division managers to totally remove all pre-season restrictions, which had been placed on the commercial fishers for the remainder of their season. That has a potential impact on all the Northern District drainages (including the Little Susitna River) since the commercial fishery is spread out over most of the Northern District. Does that sound fair or even reasonable?

That is what is written in the management plan, so the department is doing exactly what they have been told. The problem here is that, if the Board of Fish was to write a management plan so specific that it would remove any discretionary ability from the department managers, why bother to have Fish and Game?

When enough wiggle room is incorporated into a plan to allow professional judgment in making management calls and the department managers fail to do so, as regularly occurs, the Board of Fish is blamed for having an inadequate or faulty plan in place. Sort of a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” perspective on management from the board’s point of view, I think.

Alaskan fisheries management is a very complicated process involving billions of dollars in resource value. While everybody talks about putting the resource first, few department managers are willing to buck the big money interests to do so in a meaningful way when necessary. The user groups all want as much as they can have allocated to them, even if “creative facts” result in reallocation from other users. The department often has little to no scientific information available with which to advise the Board of Fish and has been known, under specific and rare circumstances, to have their own agenda in accomplishing a final regulation.

Frankly, I’m often surprised Alaskan fisheries management does as well as it has!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Leave him a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.