Proposal 192 is drawing the most interest. It would make a change in eastside Cook Inlet legal commercial fishing gear, replacing set gillnet gear with set beach seine nets.
Beach seining could be a way to allow fishermen to harvest sockeye salmon while safely releasing scarce king salmon, says this Alaska Department of Fish and Game commentary on Proposal 192.
But the proposal is expected to draw opposition.
9 comments:
Obviously this BOF knows nothing. Beach Seining wiped out the big kings on the Columbia River a 100 years ago, and the White Act of 1924 eliminated set nets territorial wide in Alaska. Maybe it's time to find someone who actually knows something about fishing to be appointed to the BOF?
I beg to differ. Overfishing (by all gear types) and habitat destruction wiped out the Columbia River runs. The Grand Coulee Dam alone eliminated salmonid access to HALF of the spawning grounds in the river system and marked the virtual extinction of the "June Hog" summer chinook. The once cold-water river is now a series of (sometimes dangerously) warm lakes and subject to spectacular fish kills during extended drought. Whether beach seining is economically viable is another discussion, but I guarantee a chinook released alive over the corkline after a 1/2 hour seine tow has a better chance of survival than one baking in the mud flats on the ebb.
Salmon don't do stress, and you can make any claim you like, with Kings in trouble statewide. The Alaska Supreme Court even discussed the set net ban in South East Alaska with their Matson v.CFEC opinion. "The Limited Entry Act gives the Commission broad powers to regulate entry into fisheries..." 785 P.2d 1200 1990. The Board of Fish doesn't even know who controls permits, just like their illegal Chignik Co-Op Circus. The clowns are very popular in the school teachers government, as the Alaska Supreme Court had written about for decades. "In 1972 the Board of Fish eliminated the set net fishery..." Do tell us why Washington State also banned Set Nets, Fish Wheels and Fish Traps on the Columbia River in 1935, before there was such thing as Grand Coolie Dam, another New Deal that brought back set nets to Alaska in 1941.
Just to set the record straight, I personally don't believe that beach seines will make a bit of difference to the decline of Cook Inlet Chinook stocks, and the political nature of BOF members is problematic at best. Fish wheels etc. were banned on the Columbia in response to the overfishing of stocks (population declines noted as early as the 1880's) combined with a politically powerful drift net group who framed cannery owned fishing gear-types (traps, fishwheels, and Baker Bay set nets) as an existential threat to their independent owner-operator business's.
Sadly, I don't think there is a politically (or economically) solution to the decline. The same warming water and changing climate that has created such productivity in the Bristol Bay sockeye runs- the Yukon River has had measured temperatures as high as 68F - is not only directly detrimental to Chinook survival, it also allows parasites like "Ick" to flourish. Now couple that with so-called "catch and release" fisheries and King Salmon derbies with handling mortalities ranging as high as 40%, a lot of the surviving fish are caught multiple times, you've got problems. Another "elephant in the room" is whether the massive release of hatchery pink fry is an issue. Lots of case law citations and comments about "clowns" etc. do you offer any solutions?
Here's a preliminary summary of actions from the board meeting:
https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/regulations/regprocess/fisheriesboard/pdfs/2025-2026/special-may/soa_5-1-26.pdf
If the east side setnetters don’t sue with the support of the processors the communities and the borough something is broken. There are about 50 comments made by board members for and against in that meeting to justify a suit! What a sham that chair and her puppets you could see her texting in the zoom meeting are a curse on the commercial industry unless your name is KRSA. Everyone will cry about trawlers while KRSA destroys coastal communities right under their noses.
Amen to that.
Here's a report from Kenai radio station KDLL:
https://www.kdll.org/local-news/2026-05-05/board-of-fish-swaps-commercial-setnets-for-seines-in-kenai-king-stock-of-concern-plan
State Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, urges the Board of Fisheries to "withdraw and reconsider" its decision:
https://www.facebook.com/repsarahvance/posts/pfbid04AhALpmCd1wtDC8Ac98dn5p6bQaRFwySYxUNLtYQXN78p7WAPsfEYa3kXzVxH3gNl
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