The 12-page ruling says the Alaska Board of Fisheries lacked an "emergency" basis to enact late-minute regulations that drift gillnetters said could have cut their catch by up to half this season.
It's a defeat for the state as well as the Kenai River Sportfishing Association, which jumped into the case as an intervenor.
Finally, a judge that is not in the pocket of special interest and influenced by KSRA & MBRC. The current BOF has four members who are highly influenced by these special interest groups. The decisions for finfish allocation through out the state needs to be based on scientific research rather then on political and special interest. Upper Cook Inlet salmon management should not be treated or allocated differently because there is a road system attached to the resource. Anyone appointed to the Board needs to follow the rules and look out for all user groups - otherwise they need to be removed from the Board immediately. There are enough fish for all user groups if managed based on science and not special interest. Ricky G., Carl J., Tom K., Bill B., and Mike S. you cannot have all the fish for your intended user groups. My friends and family who live in Anchorage and the lower 48 want some too and we will buy our king, sockeye, and cohos salmon from Coal Point or Saigia - who happens to buy theirs from commercial fishermen.
ReplyDeleteDeck Boss, thank you for posting this as the majority of media in Anchorage/Mat-su make commercial fishermen in UCI out to be the bad guys, when in fact, they are hard working families just trying to make a basic living and be able to pay their heating, grocery, and mortgage bills. They want more then anyother group to insure this resource is sustainable and managed for future generations.
Good one for the fishermen. Yup, that Alaska Board of Fisheries sometimes can be influenced by the wrong guys. They placed Nome area Subsistence Users on a Tier II system against the Salmon Working Group's recommendation twenty years ago. They must have had some back-door meetings with important people back then to go against what the people wanted. We know who those special important people are now because they openly support the pollock trawlers like Roy Boy being spotted running around town with a blue jumpsuit advertising a pollock trawling vessel. And for the record, ALL of Nome's population isn't "traditionally sea mammal users". We know where that line of BS came from also.
ReplyDeleteIs that you again Tim?
ReplyDeleteA Gander-finally cooked.
ReplyDeleteThe judge did not rule on merits of the regulations but on process -on whether or not regulatory errors on salmon stocks of concern qualifies as an emergency that the BOF can take action on through emergency action authority. The situation came about after Department staff drafted and had signed into law regulations that were substantially different than what the board had intended at the BOF meeting in March.
ReplyDeleteThe judge ruled that no emergency existed because the BOF and the Department deal with threatened fish stocks all the time, and that it is obvious that errors in the Department's codification are to be expected, and possibly even commonplace.
With that reasoning, he approved the temporary restraining order and vacated the BOF emergency actions to correct regulatory errors on a salmon stock of concern.
This ruling, if upheld, may have far greater implications on the emergency authority for both the Department and the BOF than just the matter at hand.
commercial fisherman need a class action lawsuit[much like the lawsuits brought by the charter and tourism industries trying to steal livelyhoods]to protect our chosen career's!the commercial fishermans resource is the fish that we catch to pay our bills,the sport and charter operators resource are called tourist that is what pays there bills!what is happening now would be like commercial fisherman all of a sudden telling the charter operators that half the tourist getting off the planes,trains,and ships belong to the commercial fishing fleet, they can no longer have those to themselves!this is why i feel we as commercial fisherman who truly rely on the salmon to feed our familys and to pay our bills, would win in such a case!as long as we get judges who are not bought and paid for by special intrests,ie tourism industriy!
ReplyDeleteLet's see, the case for a class action lawsuit for commercial fishermen in Alaska would be based on the fact that more than 95% of all salmon harvested in the state are for commercial purposes (salmon harvesters and processors), while less than 5% of salmon in the state are harvested by sport, guided sport, personal use and subsistence users.
ReplyDeleteI guess the point of the class action lawsuit would be that the monopoly of more than 95% of the total harvest of salmon in the state just isn't enough anymore to sustain a healthy commercial salmon fishing industry - statewide - as a class?
Yeah, I guess you have a point there.
It definitely makes dollars and sense that with already more than 95% of the total salmon harvest in the state of Alaska that there just isn't enough to go around for any other user group besides the commercial salmon fishing industry.
Go for it. Sounds like a winning recipe for a class action lawsuit.
let see if the score were 95 for charter and 5 for commercial,the commercial fisherman would be out of busness.where as the charter fleet would still have the option to hook and release,yes i think we have a chance!
ReplyDeleteIt looks like thi s decision will effect what constitutes an "emergency" (and use of emergency petitions and regulations). Hopefully, the use of "emergency" may be restored back to the original intent. The BOF has gone pretty far afield in accepting emergency petitions in the last five years (i.e. emergencies based on political pressure).
ReplyDeleteLets see if I got this right. The Dept. codifies regulations which are signed into law that instead of addressing a conservation concern, ie, moving fish to the Susitna which is a river designated a stock of concern, insteads permits the Kenai fleet to target those fish which is clearly not what the Board intended. And because the Dept. can be expected to make errors and that are so "commonplace" this error cannot be unforeseen or unexpected and cannot form the basis of an emergency. The Board initially tried to address a conservation concern and the Dept screwed up in drafting the regulation, and the fishery is now under way, but now there is no way to fix the problem. So all the Dept. needs to do is either intentionally or inadvertently change the board's intent when they draft the regulations and everyone will be stuck with it, and because it happens so often this conduct cannot be considered an emergency. Is that it? If I were the commissioner I would be cleaning house. What a condemnation of the Dept. "Errors that are to be expected and possibly commonplace" How can the Board do its work if the Dept. can't be trusted to do theirs. The efforts of the Board were to help the Northern district get some sockeye, not to favor the sports fishing interests in the Kenai. The Kenai fleet should not be celebrating, they should realize that more harm than good will come from this decision.
ReplyDeleteThe name is Upper Cook Inlet Drift fleet, not "Kenia fleet". Maybe it should be asked of the three members on the BOF who did not vote for the emergency order on June 30 why they did not vote the same way if it was such an urgency. One would think the whole BOF would vote the same way? The four who did vote for this are in bed with KSRA & MBRC. Just sayin....
ReplyDeleteNorthern district has a serious pike infestation and this infestation has been growing like a virus over the last decade. Pike have moved into lakes, streams and water ways in the Susitna drainage eating and killing any form of marine life in their path, salmon fry included. If it's always the comm fishers fault for declining runs, why is this years return of salmon to Kenai & Kasilof anticipating great returns of salmon? Could it be due to no serious pike problems in Kenai Peninsula drainages? It's always easy to blame someone else then it is to look at the actual science.
ReplyDeleteAh, the "actual science" style of argument.
ReplyDeleteOK - ADFG has published reports that refute the sky is falling gospel of overescapement concerns for sockeye, but actual science doesn't seem to effect such proponents from crying that putting "too many fish" up the Kenai or Kasilof rivers is gonna make the systems crash - even though this year the escapement goal for the Kasilof River basically doubled in range, so that the upper end of the BEG is now 340,000 instead of 250,000.
Guess what, contrary to the gospel claims that too many sockeye up the Kasilof will crash the system - more fish for escapement meant more fish returning - what a novel scientific concept...
And the Kenai has never failed to replace itself at any escapement level yet - but ask any commercial fishermen in the local KENAI FLEET if overescapement is a proving scientific fact for the Kenai and Kasilof Rivers - of course it is - because the preacher of overescapement - the retired local comm fish biologist who now sits on the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association board of directors as a "sportfishing representative" - said it is so - so we believe it to be gospel...
Only problem is that the real science does not support the so-called brood year interaction "model" - a hypothesis was never peer reviewed or published - yet is taken as gospel "actual scientific" fact by proponents who always claim they only want the local comm fish biologists to make all the allocation decisions - based on the belief that we must do everything in our powers to prevent the dreaded problem of overescapement ever occurring on the Kenai.
Guess what, the Kenai River and the Kasilof River have some of the highest exploitation rates for sockeye salmon in Alaska. They have proven themselves as systems that can sustain very high levels of exploitation.
For whatever the reason, the Mat-Su system is not that resilent and has shown that it cannot hold up over the long term to those same high exploitation levels.
Maybe it Beavers and Pike, maybe it is Global Warming effects, maybe the Mat-Su sockeye populations are more diverse and made up of much smaller aggregate sub-systems that are prone to collapse at higher exploitation rate - whatever the reason, they ain't doing well. Hence the stock of concern for Susitna sockeye.
Scientifically, does it make for a great hypothesis to fish hard on a fish stock that has shown itself to be under duress?
The BOF passed a drift gillnet management plan for the central district that reconfigured it into more of a terminal fishery on Kenai and Kasilof stocks in an expanded corridor approach, instead of an intercept fishery with northern district stocks with an inlet-wide approach.
They reaffirmed that approach twice to the Department.
It will be interesting to see if the Department follows what the BOF intended, or if it follows the approach of we know best at the local area level, and we are going to fish the drift fleet on an inlet-wide approach, which means northern district stocks will be harvested in larger numbers than what the BOF intended.
This is the same local area management that on one hand will still talk about overescapement being a "real" issue of scientific concern, but in their own reports discount the brood year interaction model when making preseason forecast predictions. And when you don't trust something in the effort to make a preseason forecast for sockeye, which is notoriously shaky at best, then you know a shell game is being played between rhetoric and science.
So it will be interesting to see what approach the department takes for the rest of the season.
Will the shill / shell game continue?
More importantly, what type of accountability will there be in the department for having a system so rife with regulatory errors that they are described by a judge to be "commonplace."
ReplyDeleteThat should be a concern for every type of fishery in this state - be they commercial, sport, guided sport, personal use or subsistence. To have a system that is touted by ADFG to be the best in the world, yet is infested with a malfunctioning regulatory interface with the BOF, that regulatory errors are seen by the legal system as "commonplace."
Think that judge would say the same thing about the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council regulatory system - is it too rife with errors so much that it is to be expected and accepted as "commonplace"?
Why didn't the other Board of fish members vote on the emergency order? That definitely seems fishy!
ReplyDelete