Disappointed in poor showing by ADF&G

The 2011 Alaska Board of Fisheries Upper Cook Inlet meeting is history. Barring some emergency petition or lawsuit mandating a review of board actions from this meeting, the regulations adopted will be followed for at least the next three years in managing our Northern District fisheries as part of the overall Cook Inlet management scheme.

In previous columns and one article, I’ve written about the major changes the board made. I also wrote about how the stress of such a contentious regulatory meeting tends to cause board members to bond in ways only they understand. Now I feel compelled to comment on a situation I witnessed and was disappointed to see.

As you know, I’m a retired ADF&G biologist. I’ve been gone for for more than 10 years from the department and things have certainly changed since I’ve been retired. In helping to represent the Northern District at this latest board meeting, I had the opportunity to work with three other retired ADF&G biologists who have also been out of the system for 10 years or longer. We all noticed this change.

The department has two fisheries divisions: commercial and sport fish. The commercial guys manage the saltwater situations and the sport fish guys take over once the fish hit freshwater. The mission statements of the two divisions are different but similar; the similarity being that both are charged with managing the fisheries resources to maintain healthy stocks while providing a sustainable yield of fish.

In the normal daily routine, differences arise between the two divisions on how a stock of fish should be managed as it moves through saltwater and into its natal freshwater system. While disagreements on how to manage returns throughout the run may never be totally resolved, the department had always developed a unified public position to address things, especially when dealing with the board. Not so much this time.

The department reviews all the proposals coming before the board. In these written department comments, the biological history of the fishery is explained and recommendations are made supporting, opposing or remaining neutral about each proposal. This lack of department unity was glaringly evident in comments related to the majority of coho salmon proposals addressed at the board meeting.

Several proposals were submitted by commercial fishing interests asking for either extended fishing season times for sockeye (which would result in significant coho catches) or outright extensions allowing a directed coho fishery. The department comments for these proposals were written by the commercial division biologists who noted an unknown increase in coho catches would result, but no concern for sustainability of the resource was stated. Proposals asking for a third sport-caught coho in a daily bag limit on the same salmon stocks the commercial proposals addressed were opposed in department comments with strong concerns for sustainability being used as the reason for the objection. These comments came from the sport fish division biologists.

Board members pointed out on the record that, for the same stock of fish, the department had no sustainability concerns if the fish were commercially harvested, but actually objected to any increased catch if the fish were sport harvested. Anticipated harvests would probably run about the same or perhaps slightly higher on the commercial side. This level of disunity was unthinkable back in my time with the department!

The department had submitted a “placeholder” proposal to address getting board approval for the enumeration method changes on Susitna/Yentna sockeyes the department had made two years ago, outside the normal board cycle and without either board or public input. In fact, in a dated written response to a direct question about making such a change, the commercial division biologists had stated they did not have enough data to warrant making any changes in enumeration methods. This document was submitted into the meeting record. Six months later, the change was announced with no more data to support the new method.

Knowledgeable Northern District representatives felt this change of method constituted a reallocation of fish to the commercial fishery, something the department is not authorized to do. The department denied the reallocation criticism. During committee discussions about this proposal, it was pointed out that the department’s formal written position on their own proposal was neutral because it was an allocative proposal – a charge which had been denied only minutes before by the commercial management biologist.

Other examples from the meeting would include opposing various proposals for biological or sustainability reasons but failing to have the data to explain why a biological or sustainability problem might occur. For instance, the department’s objecting to raising the bag limit on coho to three fish because of an unsustainably large sport harvest, but then failing to have a number indicating how many more fish might be harvested.

This poor showing by ADF&G at the board meeting can only indicate a lack of leadership in directing biologists to come prepared to answer questions and defend department positions with hard data. It also indicates a poor interdivisional working relationship, at least in preparing and reviewing department positions on proposals.

I’m not blaming the commissioner. She’s new and has inherited this problem but she seriously needs to address it. Has one division become so arrogant it no longer feels a need to justify and defend its actions? Has the other division been “put down” so much for so long it no longer really tries to make its points? I don’t know. I just hope I never see such an unprofessional public display by the agency charged with managing my fisheries resources again.

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.