Board of Fisheries debate continues

This whole Board of Fish controversy will undoubtedly continue until Roland Maw is either confirmed or rejected by the legislature. I don’t want to dwell on this subject too long, but material just keeps appearing weekly and needs comment.

My editor forwards reader’s comments to me. So far, everything from the Kenai Peninsula regarding fisheries has amounted to hate mail, but some of it is “interesting” to read. For instance, a recently received email from an unnamed (I won’t name him) commercial drift netter called me a liar and a hypocrite, claiming I had an agenda when I first joined the BOF. He’s right.

I did — protect the resource first and allocate the harvestable portion as fairly as possible. I’m sure he’ll disagree with that statement.

I won’t name him is because I listened to this same individual give public testimony to the BOF, back when I was representing the local advisory committee and before my BOF appointment, where he stated “… any fish which gets past my nets is a wasted resource.” I think that covers his agenda and is embarrassing enough to the gentleman as is.

In a recent media article, Maw claims he resigned from UCIDA “months ago.” The staff person who set up the research planning workshop, held Jan. 21-22, for the Mat-Su Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission talked with Maw on Jan. 9 about UCIDA sending an invited representative. Maw was speaking for UCIDA in that discussion. The commission received a letter signed by David Martin as the UCIDA President on Jan.14 indicating that they would not be attending the workshop (that letter was printed in the Feb.3 edition of the Frontiersman). Maw's statement about his resignation timing in the article doesn't match his recent actions.

Also, the sub-headline in the same article about Maw made me chuckle. Maw says he will be fair regarding proposal deliberations and not take the commercial side automatically.

Well, DUH!

What else would he say?

“I’m going to vote for the commercial perspective regardless of the merits of the proposal.” I think not!

When I was on the BOF, everybody claimed to support the health and welfare of the fisheries resource first and then would lobby for their piece of the pie if the resource had a harvestable portion. In reality, the majority, but not all, sportsfishing groups or individuals did this. Only one commercial fishing group actually advocated for the resource first, and that group was the scallop fishers under Jim Stone. Some of the other individual commercial fishermen also did so, but their representative groups lobbied hard for an even increasing share of the harvest, regardless of the impacts affecting that particular fishery.

Bonnie Williams, a former BOF member from Fairbanks, coined a statement she distributed to the board members which she claimed described every group coming before the BOF to lobby. Her phrase, “I want you to take their allocation away from them and give it to me,” in fact, describes about 99 percent of the lobbying I personally experienced during my time on the board.

I am skeptical of some of the statements in another media opinion piece purporting to explain the UCIDA lawsuit over management of salmon fisheries in Cook Inlet. Does UCIDA really believe that if they prevail in court and force the federal government to implement the Magnuson-Stevens Act provisions they believe are missing in Cook Inlet, that the federal government would not take over management to insure those provisions are now being followed?

That same article also took exception to the Sustainable Salmon Fisheries Policy which was developed by the BOF years ago and passed into regulation, requiring both the BOF and ADF&G to follow its requirements in developing and implementing management regulations. Personally, I think the SSFP is one of the most insightful, prudent, and all-encompassing fisheries guidelines any government agency could use in their management process. There is even a current push to turn the SSFP into a state statute rather than keeping it as a regulation.

I know the state commercial fisheries managers have never liked the SSFP and have skirted its implementation whenever they could. Why? Because if the provisions of the regulation were followed as intended, the management schemes of several commercial fisheries, including those in Cook Inlet, would have been significantly changed decades ago. Nobody likes change – neither the managers nor those who benefit from the established management practices.

That’s partially why we have the problems we do with Northern District salmon populations today.

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