Fisheries meeting off to an interesting start

The Upper Cook Inlet Finfish meeting of the Alaska Board of Fisheries began this past Thursday at the Sheraton Hotel in Anchorage. Depending on how the board decides several proposals affecting the management of commercial salmon harvest in the Central District, our northern bound salmon stocks may be fairly well protected for another three years or thrown to the wolves!

A couple of things were of interest early in the meeting. On Thursday, over the lunch break, the Board Support folks from Fish and Game presented a workshop open to the public giving instruction on how to make an effective public testimony before the board. The workshop stressed short and succinct statements hitting the high points of the presenter’s thoughts on proposals. Identifying the specific proposal and stating why you agreed or disagreed with the concept are also important.

The magic in all this is being able to do so in a three-minute presentation. Many of us who have been at this for a while still struggle with making a short but powerful presentation within the allotted time period. I got cut off at the 2014 meeting about three-quarters of the way through my testimony. I had thought I had it down fairly well.

You can gain some extra time if you say something that provokes a question from a board member wanting more information about the specific statement. Answering the board member’s question doesn’t count against you official time. Sometimes, if you’re almost done, the board Chair will allow you to either finish your presentation or will ask you to summarize your remaining thoughts, essentially letting you finish your presentation.

The bottom line, however, is that you should strive to have your testimony neatly bundled into either the three or five-minute timeframe you are allotted to speak. Don’t count on the Chair’s allowing you any extra time!

The first day of the meeting, the board members went through their ethics statements and a determination was made whether there were any conflicts of interest for the respective board member when voting on a given proposal. After the public notice and other legally required stuff was dealt with, the board moved into hearing department reports on several different topics related to the Cook Inlet fisheries.

One of those reports is titled, “Temporal and Spatial Distributions of Kenai River and Susitna River Sockeye Salmon and Coho Salmon in Upper Cook Inlet: Implications for Management.” What’s interesting about this report is that sports interests from the Northern District see the report as supporting the need for maintaining a conservation corridor up the middle of Cook Inlet, while the commercial interests from the Central District site this same report as proof that the conservation corridor has no meaningful benefit and should be scrapped (The Salmon Divide, Frontiersman, Feb. 17, 2017).

I am writing this to make deadline prior to the meeting and have not yet heard Fish and Game’s presentation of what they were actually saying in the report, so the jury’s still out on which side is correct. From past experience, I would expect the department to use a lot of “biological doublespeak” in presenting this report to avoid appearing to disagree with the commercial interests. The department has a long track record of doing that.

On another topic, I was flattered to receive an invitation from a good friend with Fish and Game to attend the Safari Club International banquet held Saturday evening in Anchorage. This is a large event and is one of the main fundraisers for the organization in Alaska.

There will be outfitters and hunting guides from across Alaska and around the world present. Impressive displays of taxidermy will be available for viewing and awards will be presented for the best work. Silent auctions will be held as well. If this event happens similarly to others from other organizations I have attended (in case you’re wondering: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Alaska Outdoor Council, and Friends of the NRA), there will also be cry out auctions too.

I always enjoy these types of affairs but I find I usually don’t have enough money to seriously bid on the really “good stuff.” At one FNRA banquet, an item in the cry out auction appealed to me. I decided the maximum amount I could afford to bid and waited for the auction to begin. The opening bid was $100 more than my maximum! This is the story of my life.

Oh, I actually drew a caribou permit for this fall. Wonders never cease!

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.