A troller in Sitka’s ANB Harbor. The annual troll closure starts at midnight on Saturday. (KCAW photo/Rachel Waldholz)

The Alaska Board of Fisheries on Monday (3-2-15) took up a pair of proposals to reshape the king salmon troll season in Southeast Alaska.

They rejected one, and adopted the other.

The Alaska Board of Fisheries adjourned on Tuesday (3-3-15) after ten days of meeting in Sitka. The Board will post the full audio from its entire Sitka meeting online in the coming days. You can find that here.

Proposal 223, from Sitka troller John Murray, would have shifted some of the harvest to later in the summer.

The king salmon summer troll season usually has two openings: 70% of the quota is targeted in July, while 30% is reserved for a second opening in August. The proposal would have changed the ratio in higher abundance years to 60% in July, and 40% in August. Supporters argued that a longer August opening would give smaller boats a greater shot at the fish, while kings caught later in the season generally fetch a higher price.

That last point was backed by an assessment from Patti Skannes, of the Department of Fish & Game.

“I do have some statistics on the difference in value between July and August based on fish prices,” Skannes told the Baord. “And the value of the fishery would be estimated to increase approximately 6% if 10% were moved to August from July. So there is likely to be some increase in value.”

But critics argued that a shift would upset a status quo hammered out among trollers two decades ago.

The Board was down to four members during the discussion: John Jensen, of Petersburg, and Reed Morisky, of Fairbanks, recused themselves because of family connections to the troll fishery.

Acting chair Tom Kluberton, of Talkeetna, said he’d heard compelling testimony on both sides of the issue. He said he’d be more willing to upset the existing regime if the proposal came from a wider range of stakeholders.

“I would feel so much better adopting something like this if it came in, in a harmonious concert like that, where multiple voices came together and said, ‘Yep, we put our minds together and we agree on this,'” Kluberton said. “Because…it’s how this area does business. So I’m  inclined to not support it, and try to encourage this area to continue to do business that way.”

In the end, the proposal failed, by a vote of 2-2 with members Sue Jeffrey and Fritz Johnson in favor.

Meanwhile, the Board voted 4-0 to approve a proposal from the Alaska Trollers’ Association to add a third potential summer opening for trollers targeting king salmon.

In the current system, there are sometimes fish left under the treaty quota that governs king salmon after the August opener. But the number is usually small enough that if the Department allowed another competitive opening, the fleet would blow past the target. So those fish generally go unharvested. The new regulations allow the Department to open the fishery, but limit each permit-holder to a set number of fish — potentially as few as ten apiece.

Dale Kelley, of the Alaska Trollers Association, said that even at low numbers, it would be worth it to mop up any final quota.

“So there may still be a few left on the table, but our hope is, we’ll take every fish that we possibly can under the quota,” she said. “It’s really important to get our treaty quota.”

That’s because king salmon generally make up about half the value of the troll fishery each year, Kelley said. And besides, she said, “pulling a king salmon over the rail is why you are a troller.”

Not all drones are alike. This unmanned aircraft — now banned by the Board — is just large enough to carry a camera. (Flickr photo/Don McCullough)

The Alaska Board of Fisheries closed some waters near Angoon to purse seining in order to improve subsistence harvests, in action over the weekend (3-1-15).

They also shot down the use of unmanned aircraft to aid in salmon fishing.

Downloadable audio.

The closure was intended to improve access to sockeye salmon in freshwater systems important to the subsistence harvest in Angoon.

During committee work earlier in the week, Angoon residents spoke passionately about the impact of low sockeye availability, and subsistence harvest limits often as low as 15 fish.

Alaska Department of Fish & Game staff initially opposed Proposal 193, because it would limit their flexibility to manage the seine fishery.

However, the stakeholders were able to put together a compromise that permanently closed waters that the department routinely closed by emergency order.

Board member Sue Jeffrey acknowledged the effort.

“You know, I’m in support of this. This is exactly what we appreciate, when the opposing parties come together and find a solution that works for everyone.”

Subsistence sockeye fishing in Angoon came into the spotlight in 2009 when then-state senator Albert Kookesh — an Alaska Native and lifetime Angoon resident — was cited by troopers for overfishing his permit. The charges were later dismissed.

But many other proposals did not fly — literally — in board deliberations on Sunday — namely, Proposal 204, which would have banned the use of spotter planes during seine openings for salmon. Given the number of small aircraft in use in Southeast Alaska, Department of Public Safety representatives thought enforcing a ban would be very difficult. They referred to the proposal as “a solution looking for a problem.”

The Board rejected the proposed ban on spotter planes.

Drones, however, were not so lucky. Proposal 205 would ban the use of unmanned aircraft in salmon fisheries.

Member Reed Morisky and chairman Tom Klubertson framed the board’s anti-drone position.

Moriskiy – I’m for keeping pilots employed, and not using unmanned aircraft for fish spotting.
Klubertson – Thank you. I tend to look very hard at existing patterns of areas and fisheries, and I do like — whenever possible — to promote economic stability. We’ve had aircraft in this region for a long time. There are folks who stake their livelihoods, and contribute to local economies flying their aircraft. I feel it’s just an unnecessary move, and as Member Jeffrey said, it’s not something I want over my head.

Strictly speaking, the Board of Fish lacks jurisdiction over aircraft use. But it can — and did — ban the use of drones to aid in in all commercial salmon fishing.

The seiner Infinite Grace pursing up during the third opening in the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery, on Wednesday, March 26, 2014 (KCAW photo/Rachel Waldholz)

The Alaska Board of Fisheries began deliberations on Thursday (2-26-15), the fourth day of their meeting in Sitka.

But when it came to one of the most contentious issues, Sitka Sound herring, the Board voted down all proposals, leaving the status quo intact.

Downloadable audio

The Board faced a series of dueling proposals, with subsistence users — including the Sitka Tribe of Alaska — on one side, and commercial herring seiners on the other.

One proposal from the Sitka Tribe would have cut the harvest level for the commercial fishery, while one from the Southeast Herring Conservation Alliance, an industry group, would have cut the amount necessary for subsistence users. The Sitka Tribe asked to expand the area closed to commercial fishing, while the seiners asked to do away with the closed waters altogether. And while the Tribe proposed banning any fishery until the minimum threshold had been met for five years in a row, the seiners proposed lowering that threshold.

In the end, the Board took a Goldilocks approach. Orville Huntington, of Huslia, spoke for many on the Board when he said he did not want to impose more mandates of any kind on the biologists managing the fishery.

“I’m really reluctant to take the best science we have out there right now and make it more rigid,” Huntington said. “Because what happens is when you restrict science, only bad things come of it.”

That was the theme of the afternoon: Board members repeatedly praised the Sitka Sound sac roe herring fishery as perhaps the best managed fishery in the state, and said they didn’t want to tie the hands of the Department of Fish and Game.

But Board members did express concerns about recent declines. The forecast for the Sitka Sound herring biomass this spring is the lowest in a decade and it’s not the first below-average year, as Fish & Game’s Sherri Dressel explained.

“It hasn’t been a chronic problem,” Dressel said. “But 2011, 2012 and then 2014 have been lower than they have been for the last ten, fifteen years or so.”

Board member Sue Jeffrey, of Kodiak, asked whether that was cause for concern, or just a normal fluctuation. Dressel said she saw no reason for alarm.

“You know, we definitely take notice any time that it’s low, and we definitely have,” she said. “But at this point, it would be premature to say that this is a pattern that we expect will continue.”

Board member Fritz Johnson, of Dillingham, asked Dressel to address public testimony from subsistence users warning that herring populations are far below historic levels. Dressel said she couldn’t speak to numbers before the Department started tracking the population in the 1960s, and there’s no agreement on how many herring swam in Sitka Sound in the early 20th century. But, she said, she could speak to the present.

“If the Department is the scientific consensus, we do have consensus that the population is not depressed,” she said. “It is, at the moment, twice the size of threshold, so I would not call that depressed.”

Still, Board members said the trend of the last couple years made them reluctant to take any steps to loosen protections.

But they also weren’t willing to tighten restrictions. At its last two meetings on herring, in 2009 and 2012, the Board raised the threshold required for a fishery, and closed some waters to the commercial fleet. Chair Tom Kluberton said those decisions were prompted by worries that current models aren’t great at predicting sudden population declines. But any more restrictions could harm the commercial sac roe fishery.

“I tend to regard the Board’s action as providing a good safety measure,” he said.

Speaking after the vote, Sitka Tribal Council member Harvey Kitka said that though the Tribe’s proposals were voted down, he felt subsistence users had gotten the Board’s attention.

“We tried real hard to convince them that this was really the last viable stock of subsistence herring eggs in Alaska,” Kitka said. “And they need to take a little better care of it.”

The Board was intrigued by a proposal to open a pound fishery in Sitka Sound. In pound fisheries, herring spawn on kelp within a net enclosure. The fish then leave the net, and the kelp with eggs is sold.

Jeffrey said the idea was worth investigating.

“I think it seems like the kind of product that we’re moving toward,” she said. “You know, this all natural, healthy super-food type of product.”

The Board voted to postpone action on that proposal until the statewide meeting in March 2016, and will draft a letter in support of the concept.

The Board of Fish is meeting in Sitka’s Harrigan Centennial Hall through next Tuesday (3-3-15). The meetings are open to the public, and stream live online here.

St. Matthew Island sits just north of the 60th Parallel. Like Sitka’s St. Lazaria, St. Matthew is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge system.

Some king salmon reared in Southeast Alaska are traveling farther north as ocean temperatures rise.

This news was delivered to the Alaska Board of Fisheries as their spring meeting opened in Sitka Monday afternoon (2-23-15).

Downloadable audio.

Note: Due to weather-related travel delays, the Sitka meeting of the Board of Fish got off to a late start Monday afternoon. Public testimony on the 107 proposals for changes in management to salmon, herring, and cod will be heard beginning Tuesday morning (2-24-15).

The three-year meeting cycle of the Board of Fish is designed to take the board to different regions of the state, and a substantial portion of each ten-day meeting is devoted to education — of the board. Regional managers and biologists from the Department of Fish & Game deliver literally reams of data about salmon harvest levels, escapement, and economics.

Most of this information rolls in and out with the tide, and generates little comment from the board. But this fact caught their attention: The king salmon hatched in Southeast’s four top-producing river systems, the Alsek, Situk, Taku, and Stikine, are going very far afield.

This is ADF&G Sportfish coordinator Ed Jones.

“All four of these stocks are considered outside-rearing, or what we term the far-north migrators. This means that shortly after the juveniles enter the marine environment to rear, they essentially take a right and head out to the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea.”

Again, these rivers are the four largest producers of king salmon in Southeast. Board member Orville Huntington wanted to know more.

“Do you guys know where it is they’re going?”

Huntington wanted to know if the Department used any sort of telemetry to track the fish.

It turns out telemetry isn’t needed. Jones knows exactly where the kings are going. The National Marine Fisheries Service has increased trawl surveys in the Western Gulf in recent years. The surveys are catching king salmon, some of which have tiny coded-wire tags embedded in their skulls. Those salmon were tagged in Southeast, says Jones.

“They’re typically found from Kodiak west, and what’s interesting to me is that in years of really warm water — which took place in 2005 – 2006 — most of our coded-wire tags were found in the Bering Sea. So that told me that the fish are being opportunistic, and moving with water temperatures. They’re going out to that part of the world, and moving as water temperatures dictate.”

Board member Sue Jeffrey asked Jones to elaborate on this idea.

Jeffrey – You’re saying that warm waters create different patterns. Are they moving to cooler waters then?
Jones – In 2005 – 2006, those very warm water years, they found a Taku coded-wire tag all the way up by St. Matthew Island, which is quite a bit north of the Bering Sea. So that’s what is going on: They have a preferred temperature that their feed is in, that they like to operate in, and they’re moving with it.

Although the Taku, Alsek, Situk, and Stikine produce most of Southeast’s king salmon, Jones said that there are seven smaller stocks that the department considers “inside rearing.” Once these fish enter the marine environment as juveniles, Jones said they remain in regional waters until maturity.