Mat-Su has quite a fish story

MAT-SU — After year after year of closed salmon fishing, the Mat-Su Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission has brought its case to Juneau.

Commissioner Larry Engle, in a Feb. 21 hearing in Juneau before a legislative subcommittee meeting discussing fisheries, told legislators that the Mat-Su is home to seven of the 11 “stocks of concern” in the state —fish species whose numbers are low enough to close off fishing.

Locally, the Mat-Su Convention and Visitor’s Bureau will host a forum on the economic impact of salmon fishing at noon, today at Evangelo’s. The luncheon will feature Sam Ivey of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Frankie Barker with the Mat-Su Borough, local fishing guide Andy Couch and Justin High from the Deshka Landing Outdoor Association. The event is free and lunch may be purchased from the restaurant.

In 2008, the Susitna River sockeye was given that designation and in 2011 six Mat-Su king salmon stocks were added to the list.

Kings have not met their escapement goals — the required number of fish passing through counters — for six years and Little Susitna coho salmon missed their escapement goals for four seasons.

And yet, Engle said, the state isn’t studying those stocks.

Rep. Bill Stoltze, R-Butte, asked the commissioners to put it in terms of a medical analogy. Commissioner Bruce Knowles took him up on it:

“It’s like a guy going in with chest pains and they haven’t got the EKG machine set up to tell him he’s having a heart attack,” Knowles said.

Engle said he sees a few problems with the way the state manages the resource. First, he said, the programs are too Kenai-centric.

“The primary goal of the Upper Cook Inlet commercial management is to maintain adequate Kenai sockeye salmon escapement goals,” he said.

Doing that, he said, can lead to situations like in Mat-Su. The fish up here aren’t studied and can be left to decline.

Toward that end, the commission advocated for more research dollars, including to conduct studies of all salmon species, to complete the Legislature’s Joint Legislative Salmon Task Force report, for economic analysts for the state Board of Fish, and to update a 2007 Alaska Department of Fish and Game study on the economics of sport fishing.

Speaking of which, numbers cited in the presentation seem to imply that, at least in Cook Inlet, sport fishing is equal to or greater an industry than commercial fishing.

Those 2007 numbers show that anglers spent $733 million here, generating $55 million in local taxes. The wholesale value of salmon commercially taken from the inlet in 2007 was $77 million.

Engle also addressed commercial fishing in the Inlet. He said that while it wasn’t currently on the table and had some pretty strong opposition, the state should look at a system that could take some of the better parts of how fisheries are managed in Bristol Bay.

Engle pointed out that in Bristol Bay, commercial boats are kept out of areas that could harm salmon runs in places where they are declining.

“They adjusted to something they didn’t like, but it’s a new way of doing business,” Engle said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.