Marathon Board of Fisheries meetings can take a toll

I’ve just returned home from one of the more grueling Board of Fisheries (BOF) meeting schedules of my three-year term. We started back on Jan. 25 by travelling to Fairbanks for the Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim (AYK) meeting, which concluded on Jan. 31. We then had a one-day turnaround to Anchorage for the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands (Area M) finfish meeting, which began on Feb. 2.

The Area M meeting was extended one day over the original schedule and wrapped up about a half-hour before kick-off of the Superbowl on Sunday. I got home just a few minutes into the third quarter of the game. I was tired, a little cranky, and generally ready to do nothing for the next day or two.

Ordinarily, two major regional meetings like these would not be scheduled back-to-back. This year started out with some time between meetings but the schedule was changed to accommodate one board member who needed to start his commercial fishing season activities on Feb. 15.

If I’m still around to be participating in future BOF scheduling, I don’t think I’ll be quite as accommodating in shifting meeting schedules.

You are probably wondering why I’m complaining about this recently completed scheduling. I have participated in two weeks at a time worth of BOF meetings in prior years. So why was this near combination AYK/Area M series so tiring?

The longer meetings from prior years, while grueling in their own right, were meetings that addressed multiple proposals for one specific region of the state. For instance, the Upper Cook Inlet meeting went for almost two weeks and dealt with sport fish, commercial fishing, personal use, and subsistence proposals. However, all the proposals addressed issues in one region. For someone unfamiliar with the Cook Inlet area, the topics themselves, as well as the lobbying efforts of meeting participants, helped the board member learn about the area, its concerns, and the nuances and potential impacts of the various proposals on the area and its fisheries.

Also, board members usually had a couple of weeks prior to the beginning of the meeting to read department research and management reports, and public and advisory committee comments on the proposals in preparation for debate on the multitude of proposals before the BOF in that meeting.

That two-week timeframe to review materials held for the AYK meeting and for the Area M meeting. The only problem was that one of those weeks prior to the Area M meeting was being used by board members for the AYK meeting — in other words, prep time for the Area M meeting was about four to five days immediately prior to the AYK meeting, when review materials were received. Members were concentrating on the materials for the AYK meeting and working the Area M materials in as time allowed during the AYK meeting itself.

While everybody got through the review materials, I heard comments from virtually all of the other board members complaining about the cramped time frame for material review. Four of the board members were new to both the AYK and the Area M situations and had steep learning curves both prior to and during the meetings themselves.

The board survived the process and dealt with each proposal based on its merits and deficiencies. I think we did fine with proposal outcomes. This particular board has a fine group of focused, level-headed, independent thinking individuals who handled the proposals in a fair and equable manner. I think even with the extremely tight scheduling timeframe that the BOF did just fine, even if it meant a lot of late night reading to try to come up to speed on topics.

As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, the world can be a small place. In Fairbanks during the AYK meeting, I had a man in his late thirties or early forties come up to me and ask if I had ever been involved with the East Creek Hatchery out near Dillingham. I replied that I had, but that it was 30 years ago.

At that same meeting, the department Board Support Section had a new hire working on all the various jobs necessary to make a meeting of this nature function properly. I had a question to ask of this young lady, probably in her late twenties or early thirties, and, in casual chatter while dealing with my situation, I learned I had worked with her father back in my days of hatchery work for the department. I asked her to give her father a “hey” from me the next time she talked with him, which she did.

The BOF has one more scheduled meeting for the current cycle. The Statewide Finfish and Supplemental Issues meeting is scheduled for March 16-21 at the Hilton Hotel in Anchorage. In addition to several proposals of potential interest to valley residents, the BOF will deal yet again with the Chitna dipnet fishery situation. You might want to stop by and listen in!

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.