Board of Fisheries set to meet again

Two weeks from today, the Alaska Board of Fisheries will begin their next cycle of meetings with a two-day work session in Anchorage. This non-regulatory meeting serves as a planning tool for the upcoming set of meetings this cycle. Dates and locations for the meetings involved in next year’s cycle are also discussed and voted on.

Meetings this year involve Bristol Bay finfish, Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim finfish (also known as the A-Y-K region), Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands finfish, and Statewide finfish issues. The meetings next year for which the BOF will be setting dates and locations involve Cook Inlet Area finfish, Kodiak and Chignik Areas finfish, and King and Tanner Crab and miscellaneous shellfish (Statewide, except Southeast/Yakutat).

I think it would be safe to say that fisheries issues in Alaska can be quite contentious and usually involve just a smidgeon of politics. Something that on the surface might seem relatively innocuous, like picking a location and time for a board meeting, can become not only contentious but political to boot!

Let me give you an example of this. At last year’s work session, where the times and locations for this year’s set of meetings was decided, the decision to hold the Bristol Bay meeting in Anchorage was made. Here’s some of the thinking that went into that decision.

Generally, the BOF prefers to hold their meetings out in the area or region the meeting is concerned with. This allows the local stakeholders to participate more easily and allows the board members to have a better exposure to the nuisances of the various fisheries being discussed.

Meetings for Bristol Bay usually are held in one of three different locations: Dillingham, King Salmon or Anchorage. The first two locations listed are in the Bristol Bay area and are generally well attended by the local folks involved in the fisheries. Travelling to these locations and staying for the duration of the meeting can be quite expensive for the other Bristol Bay stakeholders who are not Bristol Bay residents, so the Anchorage location tends to accommodate those folks.

The last Bristol Bay meeting was held in Dillingham and, if my memory is correct, the one prior to that was in Anchorage. This year, King Salmon was on tap to host the meeting. That was the basic background information the board had going into setting the dates and location for this meeting.

When the discussion began, I think the board was expecting to vote for King Salmon because there had been some good meetings with good accommodations in King Salmon in prior years. That’s when the bomb was dropped on the decision.

The board was informed that the only hotel in King Salmon which was large enough and properly equipped to host a BOF meeting had burned down and would not be rebuilt in time to host this meeting, if it ever is rebuilt at all!

The board discussed the options of meeting in the school gym, sleeping on cots and eating school cafeteria food. That might have been fine years ago, but wouldn’t fly in this Internet/wireless communications age. With the majority of the board members almost 60 years old or older, the cot idea didn’t work at all! Other options were discussed but nothing was suitable to easily host a meeting of this size. Facilities to accommodate the ADF&G staff and the public flying in to attend the meeting also seemed to be non-existent or more like a camping trip than attending a formal fisheries regulatory meeting.

In addition to the questionable facilities available in King Salmon because of the lost hotel, about half of the Bristol Bay fisheries stakeholders do not live in Bristol Bay, or even in Alaska. Since the last meeting had been held in Dillingham, the decision was made to hold this meeting in Anchorage and hope the folks in King Salmon could develop facilities suitable for the next meeting three years from now.

Folks in Bristol Bay, and especially Dillingham, were not happy with this decision and made their voices heard. When word of this spread throughout the Bristol Bay stakeholders, the board began receiving letters protesting moving the meeting to Dillingham from the half of the Bristol Bay stakeholders who were not Bristol Bay residents. You’ve heard of being between a rock and a hard place?

The board discussed moving the meeting to Bristol Bay at least twice more at various meetings and decided to stay with the original decision, adding an additional reason that changing the location several months after the meeting space and hotel accommodations had already been booked in Anchorage, with the possibility of not securing appropriate facilities in Bristol Bay, would not only potentially be confusing to the public but could also be problematic in securing the necessary facilities on relatively short notice.

Bristol Bay legislators had introduced legislation attempting to force the board to move meetings to the local areas as a political expediency. I understand their concerns in allowing local participation. The board has mechanisms to accommodate that, at least to an extent. Three of us will be travelling to Bristol Bay prior to the meeting to take public testimony and meet with folks about the issues.

I thought the fisheries issues would be contentious, not picking the place for the meeting!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.