The Alaska Board of Fisheries will hold an emergency teleconference at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow to consider a petition regarding Upper Cook Inlet salmon setnetters.
State fishery managers have shut down eastside setnetters because of poor Chinook salmon runs into the Kenai River.
That's costing the setnetters big time, as their target sockeye crop is swimming by unharvested.
Here's the public notice of tomorrow's board teleconference.
"The petition requests that setnet fishing in the East Forelands statistical area
of Cook Inlet be opened to help keep the Kenai River late-run sockeye salmon
escapement within the range set by regulation," the notice says.
Here are comments on the petition from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
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14 comments:
Those fishers must have big, big political clout to get the ADF&G hopping for them.
The department states that the king salmon return to the Kenai River will not meet minimum escapement this year.
The department has closed the Kenai sport fishery and the commercial set net fishery and prohibited retention of kings in the personal use fishery.
Those are the regulations. Have been for the past twenty years.
The district chair of the peninsula Republican party and multi-millionaire is a card carrying member of the east-side set net union, called United We Stand.
I really feel for the setnet folks who are being slowly regulated out of business and out of a lifestyle. But, with that said, there isn't a harvestable surplus of kings and the closure should remain in place.
Political clout and men with money pushing aside regulations and rules of fair play is a plague of American society.
The "setnet folks who are being slowly regulated out of business and out of a lifestyle." is necessary in order for the state to save the King Salmon.
"Political clout and men with money pushing aside regulations and rules of fair play is a plague of American society."
Surely, you must be referring to Penney and the KRSA gang, who have twisted and perverted the Board process in their favor over the past 15 years.
Yes, this year's closure of the setnet fishery is needed to protect kings, but the long term reallocations that have been made had/have nothing to do with conservation.
Allocation above the needs for sustainability of the resource of course has nothing to do with conservation.
The purpose of the board of fisheries process is to allocate fish to various user groups above the conservation needs of sustainability.
Maybe we the voters of Alaska need to change the purpose of the board of fisheries.
Sustainability should be the top priority all around.
Yeah for the BOF, they voted down the petitions 5-2 according to ADN.
The vote was 5 to 2 with Petersburg commercial fisher Jensen and Kodiak set netter Jeffrey who is a very good friend of the author of two of the emergency petitions both voting to open up the set net fishery with full knowledge that it would harvest Kings at a time when they were not even going to get 1/2 of their lower level of escapement. Instead of having the fish come first they wanted the fisherman to come first. Thanks to the rest of the board for making this important conservations decision.
was jensens son in trouble for a fishery violation
I'd suggest that the set net fishery look at fishwheels as a way to harvest the sockeye, but to also imediately return the kings to the giver untouched. either that, or as one petition suggested, turn them into drift permits. we cannot just bankrupt these folks that have no other opportunity. at age 50, 60, 70,... and with millions in investment that has long been encouraged and enabled by the State, a viable and responsible alternative must be figured out in the next 6 months.
From what hs been reported the fish Board offered a few novel approaches to be considered but the Dept and the fishers did not seem interested. Remember that once a king is gill netted it is dead king and will be released into the water dead. Perhaps a fish wheel would work and the users could pool their harvest. Maybe use beach seines and require release of kings. And perhaps, just perhaps, the set net fishery will have to go away. Look around the state and except for Cook inlet and Bristol Bay there are but a few scattered sites. You rarely see sites in Canada and in the Pacific Northwest. The drift fleet on the Kenai has shown that it has the power to kill almost enough reds to avoid too much of the dreaded over escapement and when combined with the dip net and sport fishery does a good job. History changes as time goes on. today the value of the king salmon in the river as far as economic benefit far exceeds that for the red salmon caught in the nets on the beach. The Board and Dept should manage to protect that species over worrying about the slight over escapement of reds. It sound tough for a few, but change is coming and there never was a guaranty that you could always make an annual living from simply buying a permit to set net and working for a few weeks a year. If you read carefully, almost everyone of the set netters have day jobs anyway. Instead of making sure the fisherman comes first the board is trying to make sure the fish come first. I for one applaud their efforts.
Nature should always "come first" because we cannot bring back what we humans destroy.
These fishermen "that have no other opportunity." are in the same boat as the fishers on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Rivers. They've been facing restrictions for at least 10 years.
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