Fish woes continue

First, some housekeeping before we launch into the main topic. The Alaska Moose Federation is holding its fundraising banquet at Raven Hall on the Alaska State Fairgrounds in Palmer tomorrow night, according to the group’s website events announcement. You’ve probably heard the radio ads and seen the announcements printed in the paper. For more information or to buy tickets, call (907) 263-9832 or visit growmoremoose.com.

The statewide Friends of the NRA banquet is also being held tomorrow evening at the Egan Center in Anchorage. For more information or to learn how to get tickets, call Marie Murdock at (907) 440-5574 or email mudduckak@gmail.com.

OK, back to business. I’ve not mentioned much about fisheries issues the last few weeks because, quite frankly, I suspect most are tired of it and only the diehards are reading the whole article. I, too, get tired of the oftentimes broken-record tone the columns seem to develop because the same issues keep coming up and nobody, including the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, is making any meaningful effort to try to correct things.

We, the Mat-Su Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission (MSBFWC), had submitted an agenda change request (ACR) to the Board of Fisheries asking it to address the Little Susitna coho situation in an out-of-cycle meeting year. The BOF took up that ACR request Wednesday at its workshop meeting in Anchorage.

As you have read here, the Little Su coho sport fishing season was closed less than halfway through the 2012 season for lack of returning fish. The season was similarly closed in 2011 for the same reason. The final coho escapement tally both years was less than half the minimum number of fish ADF&G has determined is required to maintain a healthy population. Read that last sentence again. The minimum coho escapement goals have been missed for the last four years in a row. Does that sound like a properly managed fishery resource to you?

I was not able to attend the BOF meeting because of other obligations, but I heard from one of the MSBFWC commissioners who was there that the BOF voted 3-4 on accepting the ACR and addressing the coho issue. I was further told that the voting was down “party” lines: the three members with commercial fisheries ties voted against and the three members commonly perceived as sport fish oriented voted for the ACR. The seventh and deciding vote was from the newest member who basically would be pigeonholed as the subsistence member. He also voted against the ACR.

I am ashamed to say that, in my opinion, the BOF is obviously putting user interests before proper resource management concerns. It was more important to four members of the BOF to protect their commercial fishing buddies and any potential lost revenue that might have occurred if steps were taken to protect a declining and diminishing natural resource. Either that, or these four members exhibited their ignorance of conditions in the Northern District as if they didn’t care how bad things might be.

They also condoned ADF&G essentially ignoring the intent of previous boards by themselves ignoring BOF management intent statements and area-time restrictions written into management plans designed to protect the non-sockeye salmon populations in Cook Inlet.

I am further disheartened by the actions of one board member in particular here. While he makes a large part of his living commercial fishing, he had shown a fairly balanced approach his first term toward supporting the resource first and dealing with allocation issues once the resource itself was on solid ground. Over the past couple of years, however, he has started to show his “true colors” by undercutting efforts in several fisheries that needed some level of reduction to protect commercial fishing income derived from those fisheries. If this approach goes to its logical conclusion, there eventually won’t be fish for anybody, let alone his “buddies.” That’s a sad situation.

The BOF is not supposed to be about commercial or sport or personal use or subsistence agendas from respective members. It’s supposed to represent an effort by members to oversee ADF&G’s constitutional mandate to manage our fish resources in a sustainable manner and make as fair as possible allocations of the harvestable surplus to the various user groups.

The problem is the multi-billion dollar value of these fisheries. The integrity of the process is being lost because of that. All you have to do is follow the money.

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.