Thursday, September 13, 2012

The Chinook research team

Speaking of Alaska's Chinook salmon woes, Deckboss is sure you recall Gov. Sean Parnell's July announcement that the Department of Fish and Game would assemble "a team of Alaska's top fisheries scientists" to develop a research plan.

A Cook Inlet reader asked me this week if I had any news about the team, such as who is on it.

Here's the reply I received today from the governor's office:

The team is headed up by F&G's chief fisheries scientists Eric Volk and Bob Clark. It also includes other fishery scientists (Andrew Munro and Steve Fleischman), fishery biologists (Ed Jones), a geneticist (Bill Templin) and staff from the subsistence division (Dr. Jim Fall).

Sharon Leighow
Press Secretary
Office of Governor Sean Parnell

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

At least the State won't have to fork over more money for this group. As salaried employees, they are already getting paid. This extra duty should finally have them earning their wages.

Anonymous said...

Earning their wages? Now that's just crazy talk.

The fact that they have to call a committee together now makes you wonder what they have been doing all this time? The king salmon collapse has been going on for a long time. It's funny that they state's top scientist just noticed.

Anonymous said...

Too bad Cora could not take the time to tell the public about this team or what the public process will be.
Thanks for staying on top of this Wes.

Anonymous said...

First stop all dragging. Then stop all in river sport fishing and saltwater charters, especially "catch kill and release". You can't catch a big fish like that without doing damage, I don't care how good you are. If you want to catch a king buy a troll permit or go to the market. Problem solved.

Anonymous said...

There is no public process. Governor Napoleon decreed very early on that no scientist under his rule is allowed to discuss science with the public without his prior approval.

Anonymous said...

They need at least two observers on every dragger. 24 hours a day everyday.

Anonymous said...

This is a joke. Dr Fall is a subsistence expert. This time around instead of finding out why we do not have more Chinooks, Fall is simply going to argue that there needs to be more Chinooks allocated to subsistence. Look at that new proposal book in the AYK section and you will see what i mean. Volk and Clark are good guys, but know nothing about the biology issues. Asking the ADF&G staff to look for a solution to this problem is like asking the fox to look into the problem of a reduction of chickens in the pen managed by the Fox. Won't happen.

Anonymous said...

This is not the team that I would have constructed to investigate the problem or to advise solutions for a very broad problem. Clark is limited in his capacity,Volk is limited in his real world applications. Fall is a nice guy that nobody listens to. Templin could be helpful if he would just run the 1000's of samples that his division has not run but are sitting in Anchorage, Juneau and maybe Kodiak. Fleischman and Munro, they need to complete the field work into reports which they are 3 to 5 years behind in. That is right, the field work is done, they are just sitting on desks in mostly Anchorage. The Department has some dirty little secrets that they don't want anybody to know!! The Department as a whole needs to be audited, no wait, the Ak Supreme Court says that that are not to be held accountable and a yes Murkowski said we can't sue them for mismanagment as a class action. Who is watching the hen house?? Nobody!!!!!!!!!