Continued debate as the fisheries battles go on

For decades, in the allocative battles between commercial and sport fishing interests in Cook Inlet, the commercial industry had economic reports showing the value of that industry to both the state and regional economies. The sport fishing interests had general estimates and massaged national studies broadly outlining sport fish impacts to Alaska’s economy.

The year 2007 saw all that change. ADF&G’s Sport Fish Division received authority to spend funds (approximately $500,000) from the Fish and Game fund to contract for a professionally done statewide recreational fishing economic impact study. Some of the reasoning behind this study involved justifying the existence of the Sport Fish Division and to see just how well or poorly the division was doing in achieving their mission statement.

Quoting from the Sport Fish Division homepage, here are some of their loosely stated mission objectives: “Here to protect, maintain and improve these valuable sport fisheries is Alaska’s Division of Sport Fish. Established in the territorial days of 1951, the division’s creation coincided with the passage of the Dingell-Johnson Act, which dedicated federal money for states and territories to conduct recreational fisheries research. Today, the division oversees Alaska’s sport fisheries, as well as many personal use fisheries ….”

The 2007 study was also tasked to develop criteria and procedures to be used in developing the economic values. The intent was to repeat this study every five years or so to monitor how well the division was achieving its mission and to note trends in sport fishing activity and economic impact. By using the same criteria and procedures, the studies would be directly comparable over the years

A request for proposals was circulated and Southwick Associates, Inc. was the winning bidder. Southwick had done similar studies for the federal government and approximately 30 other states at the time they began work on the Alaska study.

The final report was published in December, 2008, and used data from the 2007 calendar year. While the report was statewide, it was broken out into the three primary management regions: Interior, Southcentral, and Southeast and two subregions: Cook Inlet and Southeast marine.

The report confirmed what many sport fishing interests had long believed, that sport fishing was worth billions of dollars to Alaska’s economy annually. Many were further surprised to learn that the sport fishing industry, for salmon, was worth significantly more (by about a factor of five) to the Cook Inlet economy than the commercial salmon fishing industry.

The Sport Fish Division wanted to repeat the study starting around 2012 but was unable to secure authorization from the legislature to spend the necessary funds. The division did finally secure very limited funding authorization over the next few years, but the money was inadequate to repeat the entire study.

The decision was made to look only at the Cook Inlet area but the F&G funds still came up short. In FY 2014, the legislature granted $2 million to the Matanuska Susitna Borough for salmon research and habitat work. The number one priority for research was to see a second economic impact study for Cook Inlet completed.

After contract proposals and scoring were completed, the Mat-Su Borough awarded the necessary matching funds Sport Fish Division needed to complete a Cook Inlet economic study. Because of current state spending restrictions, the governor’s office required the Sport Fish Division to secure permission to spend their already allocated dollars (no new state money), matched by MSB dollars, on this one-time-only project.

The governor’s office refused the request and will not allow the Sport Fish Division to move ahead with the study. What is the total cost? About $125,000, $50,000 of which was funded from the MSB research grant. The reduced area of the study and the fact that procedures had already been developed significantly lowered funding needs.

Here’s the kicker: the Alaska Energy Authority, or AEA, is currently spending $93,000 per day to wrap up studies for the going nowhere proposed Susitna-Watana dam project. How does the governor’s office justify denying a one-time expenditure of already allocated state funds important to a state agency division while approving expending tens-of-thousands of dollars every day for a project that will not likely see the light of day for the foreseeable future?

Is this another example of the governor’s anti-Cook Inlet sport fishing prejudice or did somebody in his office make a decision without reviewing the cost verses benefits such an economic study would document? Sometimes you need to spend money to make money — even the governor knows that!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. This column is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman or its parent company, Wick Communications. You can leave Delo a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.