Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Yes, a salmon disaster in Upper Cook Inlet

Alaska's congressional delegation has sent the Obama administration a letter supporting Gov. Sean Parnell's request for a fishery disaster declaration for Upper Cook Inlet.

Poor Chinook returns forced painful commercial and sportfishing closures this summer.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow what fast action on behalf of the old blue nose carpetbagging sport fish guides along the kenai!got to have those tourist taking home there alaskan resources now don't we?come have your adventure in alaska and take home a king salom,halibut,crab or whatever else you can get your little carpetbagging greedy hands on.i wish there was such swift action for the native people along the yukon,but they don't have friends in the state like the poor opprssed sport fishing guides aqlong the kenai!

Anonymous said...

"swift action" for some and total ignorance of the restrictions on subsistence salmon fishing for the Nome area users - declines for 30 years; Tier 11 for at least 20!

More salmon stocks will hit the "Stocks of Concern" list after this summer especially those on the Snake River in Nome: "...counts through August 15 are 651 chums, 6,119 pinks, 1 sockeye and 14 silvers." Numbers are from the August 23rd issue of The Nome Nugget in an article provided by Jim Menard, the F&G area manager for Norton Sound and Kotzebue.

"14 silvers"! That count makes that Snake River silver salmon run extinct! It took them 30 years to achieve this status. Killed off in one generation. That's a "record"!

Anonymous said...

The Yukon and Kusko people who are affected by the lack of chinooks should not be pointing fingers at sports fishers in the cook inlet. They should try to organize like the fishers who make up KRSA. Wake up! this is not a biological war, rather it is a political battle and the interior simply does not have the Ammo, YET. Talk to KRSA and ask them how to go about organizing and raising funds. KRSA has a guy who attends every Fish board meeting and who has access at any time. They put people in the Capital who walk the halls and persuade their elected officials on various subjects. They have large fund raising events. They contribute to them during election years. So they do have a voice in the outcome. You got to get with the program if you want to compete for the resource. don't rely on the dept to make sure things will turn out ok. They take their direction from the higher ups who gauge the political fall out of each decision when it comes to dividing up the resource.

Anonymous said...

build a hatchery.

Anonymous said...

build a hatchery?

Great theory, for those confused in the political battles at the BOF...and as if fundraising has anything to do with many questions related to the BOF and KRSA.

#1 has always confused the BOF, that's why their residency isssues are Always under Question.

Build a hatchery? You actual should build a school FIRST!

§ 1. Inherent Rights
This constitution is dedicated to the principles that all persons have a natural right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the enjoyment of the rewards of their own industry; that all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights, opportunities, and protection under the law; and that all persons have corresponding obligations to the people and to the State.

Anonymous said...

There is no need to build a hatchery for the Nome area rivers - a building exists that use to contain the equipment for operation until it was stripped by the state in 2010. It's in the 'pretend it didn't happen' cycle.

If you are not an 'agency' man, it appears that you don't "have a natural right to ........the enjoyment of the rewards of their own industry" or the ideal that one is "equal and entitled to equal rights, opportunities, and protection under the law"!

Some 'agency' men are above the law and are not expected to "have corresponding obligations to the people and to the State." These assumptions are attributes of tyranny.

Anonymous said...

According to the APOC database the Penney family has already contributed $81,500 during the 2012 legislative and Anchorage Muni election cycles.

Anonymous said...

The anonymous who thinks fund raising events by KRSA have nothing to do with issues before the BOF and Dpt. needs to get his head out of the sand. In addition it looks like KRSA has formed a PAC to assist them even more in their efforts to protect their turf. A significant amount of the money generated by fund raising events goes to send KRSA staff and officers to Juneau to lobby our lawmakers, to send an officer to each BOF meeting where he is in constant contact with board members and the Dept. staff, to hire experts to promote their causes before the BOF: and the list goes on. Are you so out of touch that you don't see how much a well organized and financed effort can influence the outcome. And as for residency issues with the BOF, that is plowed ground and your whining accomplishes nothing and is totally not relevant to the topic. Not even a decent diversion. All of the underhanded anonymous efforts in that regard fell on deaf ears because you/they were simply plain wrong. Time for you to move on unless that is all you have.

Anonymous said...

It is only a matter of time until one of these groups file and Endangered Species Act listing.

When the Feds control Chinook bycatch and do not consider that the only way to recover some of these Chinook runs which have been beaten down, is zero bycatch, then only a Federal judge will be able to bridge the State/Federal jurisdictional issues, and put the fish first.

The Columbia River is finally recovering, and it took a strong Federal judge 20 years to accomplish this miracle, and Alaska led by the blind, deaf, and dumb Federal managers still insisting that trawl bycatch's come before subsistence and long established fisheries that support our local Alaskan communities rather than Seattle.

Minimum escapement goals are the basic necessity for the survival of the species, and when these goals are not being met, then any bycatches of Chinooks destined for a river which is not meeting MINIMUM escapement, is gross negligence, and fraudulent science.

In a courtroom, this is a winning aurgement, but at the Federal management level, this is a sure loser.

This is precisely how we got in this mess in the first place.

Recent lower bycatches of Chinooks by trawlers are not entirely a function of their efforts, but a mere fact that there are not many Chinooks left in the ocean.

The trawl industry has raped this Chinook resource in the last three decades, under-reporting and duping observers, now they do not want to pay the same price that the rest of us are going to have to pay.

Sharing the conservation sacrifice means that when one group cannot fish, then neither can any of the others.

Escapement first as our Constitution requires, otherwise the economic price paid this year, will become an annual event for decades.

Anonymous said...

yeah. a section 7 for a river that last year produced over well over 20,000 kings through a sonar- or is it "ultrasound" now-and outproduced kings for "total" escapement, albeit with draconian restrictions, the last years, 2010 and 2011.


no doubt a tough year. one of the toughest ever. but an ESA listing? a total closure of a catch and release sport fishery that was predicted to have a harvest rate of less than 1%?


the sports guys were screwed. the estimate of their harvest was to be far less than 200 fish. so we cost $20 million to an industry and triple that in future clients for 200 fricking kings? are you fricking kidding me?


to completely shutdown an entire commercial fishery on a separate specie- sockeye- to pass another few percent. look out kodiak. look out copper river. look out false pass.

get your esa listing out for the Taku, Stikine kings as well.

and while you're at it, both Petersburg Creek and 5- mile

let's list SE pinks as an endangered species. after all, it was the worst year on record north of Petersburg. couldn't have been that all pinks statewide were doomed by a tough winter a couple years back. after 134 years of commercial fishing, the SE guys must have 'fished them out'.

what a crock of ''/. CI ESSN Setnetters have a king salmon harvest rate of 1-2-3 percent of their entire harvest

our last decade we caught very similar numbers to the sports fishermen. we caught more this year as well.

as for the Penney family and KRSA?
if these guys were smart they'd be our allies in this one. think about it. we've been legitimately and conservatively harvesting sockeye with a minute percentage of our harvest- generally under 1% with our 'modern' management- but as high as 3-4% of our catch a decade ago.

it's obvious that there will be careful tweaks to our management-- hopefully and honestly, though, no more gutting of our fishery. when the kings come back, which they will soon, we'll be harvesting far less kings than will the sports community just by the way our management and number of days are decreasing our ability to fish.

i've setnet in every district of AK except False Pass and the Yukon.

this is an aggregious attacks on setnetters statewide.

pick a fishery in the state that survives under this scenario.

not even our sister fishery here in the inlet can match our low associated species harvest rate.
it's just that theirs are going to other--READ mat-su-- rivers.

which is why this year the fish should have been harvested 50-50

just the plain gutting of a backup counting system for 2012-- when they switched the counting systems-- by the parnell administration is unbelievable.

add to that the unwarrantable pathetic management or just plain pre-planned economic bombing and disestablishment of the Kenai Peninsula communties.

surprised after such a raid there were living and healthy - if hungry- women and children left remaining this fall. get out your berry buckets and shoot a moose this fall guys.

and then raise One hundred and 83,000 dollars to be sure you get your voice heard about the economic genocide of 2012.

Anonymous said...

Whew what a tirade! You seem to forget the hundreds or is it thousands of businesses that suffered because of the shut down of the in-river fishery. You also seem to forget that the Chinooks are supposed to be managed for the sports fishery, not the commercial fishery. If you all would come up with some ideas on how to get the chinooks into the river ( which you all have NEVER done) instead of whining, maybe something could be done to accommodate both user groups. And finally you claim that your 'sister' fishery is losing "theirs" to the Mat Su rivers. Boy are you either totally out of touch or just plain selfish beyond belief. the Mat Su has been deprived of "theirs" by your 'sisters" who for years have been intercepting sockeye and cohos by the hundreds of thousands until there are now designated stocks of concern in the northern district. What? You in the central district want them all, right? and the heck with anyone else. Do you have to take a blood oath to "kill em all" before joining the east side set net group or what? In the meantime remember that if nothing can be worked out you might end up an endangered species, as it has become abundantly clear that the east side set fishery is not necessary to manage the sockeye runs to be within escapement ranges. Better get with the program and help find a solution instead of being part of the problem. All it will take are four votes by your Board of Fish with whom you are so fond of finding fault, and you all might be history.

Anonymous said...

Excellent advice is given by blogger @ 4:40PM: "Better get with the program and help find a solution instead of being part of the problem."

The lack of king salmon returning to our rivers in Alaska is everybody's problem and those who continue to demand harvest rights are not seeing the whole picture and they probably won't ever see the whole picture because they are greedy and selfish.

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