BOF has egg on its face

After three previous Alaska Board of Fisheries meetings and votes, one lawsuit, a temporary restraining order, an explicit directive from the BOF to the commissioner of Fish and Game to correct an error in regulation, a public comment and administrative period handled by the commissioner’s office and a long seven months after the original action, I think we finally have a correct regulation governing how the drift gillnet fleet in Cook Inlet will be managed by Fish and Game during the commercial salmon season.

The annual two-day BOF workshop meeting wrapped up in Anchorage this past Wednesday. This is a meeting held by the board to get things organized for the coming board regulatory cycle. This year’s cycle involves proposed fishery regulations in the Pacific cod fisheries in Southcentral and Southeast; Prince William Sound and Upper Copper River/Upper Susitna River finfish; Southeast and Yakutat king and tanner crab, Dungeness crab, shrimp and miscellaneous shellfish; Southeast and Yakutat finfish; and Statewide Dungeness crab, shrimp and miscellaneous shellfish. Most of these fisheries don’t directly affect us here in the Valley.

I attended the meeting to say hey to folks I had worked with while on the board, to meet new board members and to see how a few items would be handled by the board. This is the meeting where, among other things, the board decides whether to accept agenda change requests, or ACRs, submitted by folks asking the board to address specific fisheries issues not scheduled to be a part of the normal meeting cycle.

Two ACRs specifically held my attention. The first (ACR 5) was submitted by the Kenai River Sportsfishing Association (KRSA) and the Matanuska-Susitna Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Sportsmen’s Committee (MSMBRSC) asking the BOF to correct an error in regulation regarding the management of the Cook Inlet commercial drift gillnet salmon fishery.

I wrote fairly extensively about this back in March and over time as various things happened in the process of attempting to implement into regulation what the BOF had passed during its Upper Cook Inlet (UCI) meeting this past spring. Fish and Game screwed up, big time, in translating board intent into regulatory language. Because of the screw-up, we essentially lost this past season in attempting to pulse more fish through the Central District commercial fishery and begin turning around the decline of salmon stocks in the Northern District of Cook Inlet.

When ACR 5 came up for discussion, newly elected board Chairman Karl Johnstone asked the commissioner the status of the correction process. The commissioner turned the question over to the Department of Law attorney, Lance Nelson, who advises the BOF on legal aspects of its regulatory responsibilities. Mr. Nelson stated that, pending some further internal review by the Department of Law, he fully expected the revised and corrected regulations to be forwarded to the lieutenant governor’s office for final implementation within a week or so. The board wisely voted to take no action on ACR 5, leaving the door open for further action if the regulation still ends up to be other than what the board had originally passed back at the UCI meeting.

The second ACR, No. 8, was submitted by KRSA and asked the board to make specific revisions in a management plan to address how the department should manage the late-run king salmon run in the Kenai River.

This past season, after the department had publically announced that they didn’t think the late-run king run would make even minimum escapement, Fish and Game went ahead and opened commercial setnet periods to mop up what remained of the sockeye run, knowing that these same nets would intercept late-run king salmon as well. KRSA was hoping the board would implement some sort of priority language to protect weak run stocks that would be intercepted in fishing for a strong run stock.

The board ultimately did not accept ACR 8 because Fish and Game said they had developed a new management strategy (made public three days after a major public outcry of poor management practices developed) that should preclude this sort of thing happening in the future. However, the board did delve into an almost two-hour discussion with Fish and Game about why this situation had developed. One television report of the meeting stated the board “grilled” Fish and Game over its management approach in this particular circumstance.

I would agree with the term “grilled” and will go further and state the department walked away from the table with serious egg on its face. When chairman Johnstone itemized, in chronological order, how this issue had developed, it would have been easy to infer the department was reactive in how the issue was handled and how its position changed as allegations of poor management practices were made. For instance, the department originally stated the minimum escapement goals would not be met. Then, under the guise of this new and apparently hastily developed management strategy, suddenly minimum escapement was met so there was no cause for concern and no need for the BOF to accept the ACR.

I overheard one stakeholder refer to this new management strategy as “ouija board magic” while he was discussing how the department appeared to be covering its tracks in yet another Cook Inlet salmon management fiasco.

On another note, don’t forget the gun show coming up tomorrow and Sunday at Raven Hall at the state fairgrounds. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. I might attend just to put fisheries issues out of my mind for a few hours. Talking guns is fun!

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