Now is no time to be silent

The Alaska Board of Fisheries (BOF) Upper Cook Inlet (UCI) meeting is scheduled to begin this Sunday at the Egan Center in Anchorage. This major fisheries regulatory meeting only happens once every three years and deals with some of the more contentious fisheries issues found in Alaska.

The Northern District (that’s us folks) stands to either gain some significant salmon resource protection or continue advancing toward the eventual loss of several of our salmon stocks. That outcome rests squarely on you and whether you make your voice and your concerns known to the BOF.

If you think that sounds overly dramatic, consider this. At the last UCI meeting in 2008, without the support of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), the BOF, at the request of some knowledgeable Northern District residents, declared the Susitna/Yentna drainage sockeye stock a Stock of Yield Concern. That declaration came as a result of that sockeye stock failing to make minimum escapement goals in five of the previous seven years and required ADF&G to develop an action plan designed to bring the stock back to a healthy condition.

ADF&G’s action plan contained the same management strategies already in use and which had led to the stock of concern declaration. The action plan also had several research components included. One year into the action plan, the department completely changed how the Susitna/Yentna sockeye stocks were enumerated or counted. By making this change, the department made a defacto allocation of fish to the commercial fishery.

During each of the last two years, the Susitna/Yentna sockeye runs have fallen below minimum return levels for one of the three sub-goals in the new enumeration process. In short, the minimum escapement goals were missed during two of the three years ADF&G has been managing the Susitna/Yentna sockeye escapements under their action plan, a plan supposedly designed to bring the stock back to a healthy condition. Some significant changes to that action plan appear to be in order!

In addition to this failure to reverse the Susitna/Yentna sockeye situation, ADF&G is asking the BOF to declare six (yes I said six) different king salmon stocks in the Northern District as either stocks of yield concern or the more critical stocks of management concern as defined in the Sustainable Salmon Fisheries Policy regulations because of failure to make minimum escapements. The department only has escapement goals for 18 different king salmon runs in the Northern District and Westside Cook Inlet areas, so we’re a third of the way toward having all our king salmon in a critical state of affairs.

In addition, two other king salmon systems are teetering on the brink of falling into a stock of concern status: Sheep Creek off the Parks Highway and Lake Creek, a tributary of the Yentna River on the west side of the Susitna River. By the end of the 2011 season, I fully expect both of those systems will meet the criteria to be declared stocks of concern as well.

Why do I say that? At a public meeting sponsored by the Mayor’s Blue Ribbon Sportsmen’s Committee (MBRSC) with ADF&G staff on Jan. 24 in Wasilla, the Sport Fish Division regional management coordinator told the attending audience that the projections for returning king salmon during the 2011 season to the Northern District would probably be a little worse than what the 2010 runs had been. ADF&G was able to monitor 15 of the returning king salmon stocks in 2010 and 13 of those stocks failed to make minimum escapement goals.

One of those lucky two systems meeting minimum goals was the Deshka River, which has the only weir allowing for in-season king salmon counts and for making in-season management actions in the Northern District. The Deshka only made its escapement in 2010 (it failed to make minimum escapements in both 2008 and 2009) because of the strength of the returning 5-year-old age class of fish. Normally, the 4-year-olds account for the largest portion of returning king salmon. With a weaker than average 4-year-old age class returning to the Deshka in 2010, things don’t appear rosy for the short-term future for king salmon in the Northern District.

I hope you are getting an appreciation of my opening comments with this explanation. OK, so what can you do about this? The public sign-up to give testimony to the BOF begins at 8 a.m., Sunday and runs until 9 a.m., Monday. Public testimony could begin sometime Sunday afternoon and will probably run at least through Tuesday morning (best guess).

If you can make time to attend the meeting during this timeframe, you can tell the BOF why the Northern District needs some help. Tell them how this situation impacts you and your family’s summer activities or if you own a business related to fishing, how these negatives are impacting your operations.

If you can’t physically attend, you can still submit written testimony. The longest written submissions cannot exceed 10 single pages of typewritten material. The shorter and to-the-point written material will make the best impression. If you can’t hand deliver the written comments or have a friend at the meeting deliver them for you, the only way to submit your materials is to FAX them to 465-6094. The board support staff will be able to receive the material and enter it into the public documents associated with the meeting.

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.