Upper Cook Inlet fisheries meeting off to an unusual start

The 2020 Board of Fisheries Upper Cook Inlet meeting got underway this past Friday with board ethics disclosures and department reports. This has, in several ways, been an unusual UCI meeting to date.

Public testimony began Saturday morning under a new format. Testifiers signed up to provide their input either Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning or Sunday afternoon. You were “guaranteed” that your testimony would be heard within the time block you requested – and, with very few exceptions, it was!

This change greatly facilitated the public’s ability to have their voices heard within a timeframe that allowed them to minimize travel. Further, with testimony scheduled for the weekend, working folks didn’t have to take time off work to participate in the meeting.

A total of 136 folks representing all user groups signed up to testify with 14 missing their first and second calls to add their thoughts to the board process. This is a low number of testifiers, with number often exceeding 250 only ten years ago. A couple of long-time board observers commented that the number of people from the Valley who testified in person was the largest they remembered ever seeing at a BOF meeting. That was a good thing since the numbers of folks clearly showed the board that Mat-Su residents were serious about seeking the changes embodied in the various proposals submitted by Northern District residents for this meeting.

A partial listing of some of the folks who came into Anchorage to testify on behalf of Valley interests included three Assembly members: Dan Mayfield; Tam Boeve; and Stephanie Nowers. Jim Sykes, who only recently left the Borough Assembly, also testified. The Borough Mayor, Vern Halter, was scheduled to testify but was unable to do so because of illness.

Almost all the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission members presented testimony in a coordinated approach to explaining the proposals they had submitted. Members of the BOF and department staff complimented the Commission on the thoroughness of their presentations.

Assemblyperson Tam Boeve provided especially compelling testimony on the importance of having salmon available as food security to folks in her district. Most school kids in her district rely on federal Title 1 programs to provide meals at school. If salmon are not available for the children’s parents to harvest because of closures or restrictions for lack of fish in the rivers, many of these same kids would not have protein to eat other than the school-provided meals through the federal program.

Something else I never would have expected to see involved the submission of written information to the board making some bad statements about fish quality. Once the meeting has begun, written information can be submitted to the board through the Record Copy process. The United Cook Inlet Drift Association (the commercial drift fishermen in the Central District) submitted a report (RC69) titled: “Issues Concerning Salmon Yields in Upper Cook Inlet, Alaska.”

UCIDA had submitted several proposals asking that seasons and fishing areas on sockeye be extended well into August with varying degrees of harvest allowed. Quoting from the report:” It has been reported by many fishermen and processors that the 2019 sockeye salmon had numerous (10-200) red-colored, maybe infected, spotted areas randomly occurring on the sides of these fish. Additionally, less than 10% of these spotted sockeyes had gray-colored, mushy flesh. These spotted sockeye appeared to show up in the August 2019 catches.”

Continuing from the report, “The August component of the sockeye harvest no longer are graded #1; now it’s mostly #2 and dog food grades. Annually, the August sockeye component costs the industry in excess of $2 million.”

We, on the Commission, are scratching our heads on this. Why would you submit a report which essentially undercuts your request to have more fishing time and fish numbers by stating that the quality of the fish is poor and costs millions of dollars for the processors to deal with? Somebody within UCIDA made a major “boo-boo” here. How else can this be explained?

The board is finished with taking more information through the committee process on the first two groups of proposals. These proposals will be deliberated, and actions taken tomorrow (Tuesday). The MSBFWC’s most important proposal is contained in Group 2. I hope to report on Friday what the final outcome will be.

If this proposal is passed as written, we should expect to see significant numbers of both sockeye and Coho moved north through the Central District commercial drift fishery and into Valley waterways!