Looking back at the Board of Fisheries meeting

I take back all the nice things I ever said about how this current Board of Fisheries seemed to be really committed to putting the protection of our fisheries resources first in priority. The actions taken by the board regarding the rebuilding of our Northern District salmon stocks show a basic disregard for the health of the stocks.

Board members Israel Payton and Reed Morisky consistently and repeatedly argued for the protection of northern bound stocks passing through the Central District commercial fishery. The other board members: John Jensen, Sue Jeffery, Orville Huntington, Robert Ruffner, and Al Cain, generally seemed to either not be listening to presented facts or didn’t care how their reallocative votes would affect the health of the northern bound stocks.

That last is a fairly harsh statement to make. Why would I say such a thing? Read on.

A very strong argument was made by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission that Northern District salmon stocks were declining and additional fish needed to be moved through the Central District commercial fishery to rebuild these populations. A management plan was in place to do just that while still allowing the drift fleet to target and harvest the Kenai and Kasilof sockeye stocks they had always claimed they wanted to harvest.

The MSBFWC didn’t ask for more; they only asked the board to maintain the plan as is to continue allowing fish to move north. Instead, the board voted to allow a change in the plan that would allow as much as an additional 50,000 sockeye and 10,000 to 12,000 coho to be harvested by the drift fleet. The commercial fisheries manager told me personally that about 95% of those additional coho would be northern bound salmon.

What compelling reason did the drifters submit to justify this very significant reallocation of salmon resources? Under the existing management plan, the drifters were forced to work a little harder to achieve their catches. The drift fleet was actually doing better financially over the past five years as compared to the previous 20 years, but they didn’t like the inefficiency of the current plan.

We have inefficiency verses conservation with no real financial loss, according to the commercial industries’ own reported numbers. The board chose to improve the inefficiency rather than protect the conservation. How is that putting the fish first?

Here’s another example. The MSBFWC had submitted a proposal asking the board to establish an optimal escapement goal for each of the three lakes used to measure sockeye escapements in the Susitna/Yentna drainages. These stocks are currently designated as a stock of yield concern. The three index systems chronically didn’t make their minimum escapement goals. How was the department dealing with this? Their approach was to reduce the escapement goals for all three systems.

In the ADF&G report outlining the statistical methodology used to justify the lowering of the goals, a statement was made that this method should not be applied to salmon stocks being exploited at a rate of 40% or greater. Department reports stated that the Susitna/Yentna stocks were being exploited at a rate probably greater than 40%.

Board member Payton made all these arguments very clearly in the deliberations leading up to the vote on creating OEGs to maintain a status quo on the escapement numbers for these systems. The board voted down the proposal, thus opening the door for the department to lower escapement goals on a stock of fish already identified as in trouble.

This was frustrating to not only member Payton but also to observers who understood the potential implications of lowering the escapement goals on an already endangered stock of fish.

The board and the department have a very strong working relationship. Generally, not only the best scientific data available to manage a fishery, but also the only data available comes from the department. However, the department does, at times, have an agenda to achieve a desired outcome and maneuvers the board to adopt a position to achieve that outcome. This isn’t always a bad thing, but I’ve seen just such maneuvering during my time on the board.

I’ve also seen where the board will almost always agree with the department on things. I have a problem with this simply for the reasons mentioned earlier. Applying some common sense sometimes clashes with department positions. Just once, I’d like to see some common sense used rather a blind faith in the department, which doesn’t always know what it’s doing either!

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.