Don’t sit on the sidelines

I hope I’m wrong, but I’m beginning to wonder if this isn’t a little déjà vu at work.

Back in the late 1970s, I had moved to and was living and working in the Homer area. At that time, a fleet of commercial fishing vessels fished shrimp and, to a lesser extent crab, in the Lower Cook Inlet/Kachemak Bay area. Research biologists for the Commercial Fisheries Division (CFD) were warning the management biologists that overfishing was happening and that both the shrimp and crab quotas needed to be significantly reduced or risk damage to the stocks.

Pressure from the commercial industry and spineless managers who found life easier by “going with the flow” continued the status quo. A couple of years later, the commercial shrimp and crab fisheries in Lower Cook Inlet/Kachemak Bay collapsed. To this day, there is no commercial shrimp or crab fishing there because of poor population numbers.

Let’s fast-forward to today. We have just seen the worst king salmon returns to the Northern District in 30 years or more. We already have six king salmon stocks of concern based on poor returns over the past five years. We are nearing the end of the sockeye salmon returns for the season and, if things continue as they started, this will be one of the poorer Yentna/Susitna returns in recent memory. This same sockeye stock was declared a stock of concern in 2008 and remains in that status, in spite of action plans from Fish and Game to bring the stock back to a healthy condition.

So far, the coho and chum returns as measured at our two Valley weirs have been subpar as well. Even the commercial catch figures for these two species indicate weak returns to date. The Little Susitna River coho returns have failed to make minimum escapement numbers for the past three years. If they fail again this year, that automatically means the Little Susitna coho stock will be qualified to be declared a stock of concern. Other coho stocks around the Valley are in a similar situation.

So, recapping, the king return this year was one of the worst ever and a couple more stocks will probably be eligible to become stocks of concern, adding to the six already declared. The Yentna/Susitna sockeye stock is showing weak returns to date and has failed to meet minimum escapement at one of the three weirs being used to count returns each year since the enumeration program was changed. Prior to that, the sockeye failed to meet minimum numbers five of the eight previous years when sonar counts were used. And, while it is still a little early, the coho are exhibiting weak returns as well.

The department doesn’t keep counts on chum returns for the Northern District or we’d probably be in trouble there as well.

So what is causing this salmon dilemma for the Northern District? Commercial fishing has an impact on our kings, but it not the major cause of the problem.

Our sockeyes tend to be heavily intercepted by the drift fleet while they fish in the Central District. The Board of Fisheries (BOF) crafted a plan that would allow continued commercial drift fishing on the Kenai/Kasilof sockeye stocks while pulsing our Northern District fish through the commercial fishery, if the plan is diligently followed. It has not been this year.

Because of the extra time and area changes CFD has made to the drift management plan this year, coho bound for the Northern District have been intercepted. The coho management plan mandates that these fish be managed for the primary benefit of sport and guided sport anglers — not the commercial fleet. That doesn’t seem to be happening right now.

So, in addition to CFD ignoring the salmon escapement needs of the Northern District, we have an apathetic Valley angling community that complains about the lack of fish, but makes no effort to attend BOF meetings or other public fisheries forums to express concerns to Fish and Game about how the Cook Inlet fisheries are being managed.

Would more than 200 Valley people rally to protest Fish and Game’s management of salmon like the Soldotna folks just did and who are now receiving special attention from the governor and commissioner? Or are we content to just grumble and be ignored by Fish and Game and the establishment, and possibly lose our salmon fisheries in the process as well?

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.