BOF needs a better process

I finished last week’s column with the statement to expect restrictions this week in the Northern District king salmon sport fishery. I was right, but for the wrong reasons.

Fish and Game issued an emergency order Wednesday closing the Little Susitna River to king salmon sports fishing effective at 11 this evening for the remainder of the season. I was expecting the restrictions to be on the Deshka River king salmon fishery.

Word has it that the Deshka king return is very similar to last year’s return situation, at least so far. Fish and Game closed the Deshka to bait last year, somewhat prematurely they feel in hindsight, and then reinstituted bait fishing after a good shot of fish showed up. The sportfish managers don’t want to make that same “mistake” this year. A side note: in my opinion, making a “mistake” in favor of the conservation of a species of fish may reduce the fishing opportunity and make a few folks mad, but it’s not a mistake to err on the side of conservative management when fish stocks have been in a bad way.

Projections have the Deshka king run making escapement, based on the 25 percent of run return numbers. Again, from my perspective, this making escapement mentality embodies making the bare minimum, bottom number of the escapement range, which for the Deshka is 13,000 fish. The escapement range for the Deshka is 13,000 to 28,000 fish. Rather than just getting 13,000 or maybe 13,001 kings, would it be the end of the world if “making escapement” really meant the number of spawners was closer to the midline of say around 20,000 fish? That could help the population rebound more quickly and in greater numbers, which provides more opportunity for all users.

I also hear that it is still too early to call how things are going with the east side salmon streams. The kings are just now finding their way into many of those systems. Chances are, Fish and Game will not restrict those king fisheries because the Alaska Board of Fisheries at this past Upper Cook Inlet meeting already instituted closures that are expected to reduce the harvest in the east side systems by 35 to 40 percent. However, Fish and Game will monitor things and take action if necessary to try to make minimum escapement goals in those systems.

Another Cook Inlet salmon fisheries issue has been brewing behind the scenes for the past few weeks and reached a head earlier this past week. BOF made some significant changes to the Central District Drift Gill Net Management Plan at this past UCI meeting that were intended to address the concerns of the Susitna-Yentna sockeye salmon stock of concern status by moving more fish through the commercial drift fleet and back into their natal systems in the Northern District.

These changes were restrictions to where and when the fleet could fish on the mixed stock sockeyes returning to Cook Inlet. When the newly revised regulations were made available for public review, the Kenai River Sportfishing Association and the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Sportsmen’s Committee noted significant and compounding errors in where the fleet was allowed to fish during the season. These errors were an expansion of the fishing area the board had defined during the meeting. KRSA and the MBRSC were the original proposers of the changes the BOF made.

An emergency petition has been submitted to the commissioner and the BOF to correct this regulatory error prior to the beginning of this season’s commercial drift fishery. Hopefully, it will be handled in a timely and correct manner.

In fairness, a meeting like the UCI BOF two-week meeting, with intense deliberation and contentious proposals, is difficult for even the seasoned board watcher to follow in minute detail. Occasionally, details get lost in the translation of board intent into written regulation. Everybody makes mistakes even as they try their best to get everything correct. We all are only human, after all.

The pattern I have noticed over several years of watching the board process and actually being a three-year member of the BOF is that these regulatory errors have almost always been commercial regulations errors, not sport, personal use or subsistence problems, and they have almost always been errors of under-restriction rather than over-restriction of a fishery.

For instance, this past UCI meeting contained a proposal to correct a regulatory oversight on the west side of the Central District. In 2005, the BOF specifically closed a statistical fishing area to drift gillnet fishing for three years. The board’s intent was clearly stated in the board record and even in the department’s summary of the board actions on proposals. That closure never made it into regulation and the fleet openly fished that area during the three-year period.

At the last Prince William Sound BOF meeting in Cordova, the board discussed, on the record, the possibility of establishing a board committee to review fisheries regulations before they begin movement through the system for certification to make sure board intent in passing a proposal is accurately translated into regulatory language. The topic came up because sitting board members could itemize something like five or six recent examples of errors in regulation (all related to commercial fisheries) and members were frustrated that their intent was not being recognized. As I recall, the department offered enough excuses and explanations to effectively kill that idea.

After this latest episode, I would encourage the BOF to establish that oversight committee. Errors will still slip by, but hopefully not as many and not any of significance equal to the current Cook Inlet situation.

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.