The Alaska Board of Fisheries kicked off their highly-anticipated regulatory meeting in Ketchikan on Tuesday. The board composed of seven members from across the state who are appointed by the governor deliberates on state fishery regulations and their decisions dictate how the Alaska Department of Fish and Game manages fishing in Alaska waters.
The board meets every three years to review policies and regulations in Southeast Alaska fisheries. At their sprawling meeting in Ketchikan over the next two weeks, they will deliberate on 159 different proposals. These proposals cover big questions for fishermen in the region, like harvest quotas and when, where, and how different gear types and user groups can fish.
The Alaska Board of Fisheries is chaired by Märit Carlson-Van Dort. Carlson-Van Dort is the Anchorage-based head of Far West, Inc., the Alaska Native village corporation for Chignik Bay. As the board members introduced themselves Tuesday morning, it became apparent that this was the first time many of them would be deliberating on Southeast Alaska fisheries. The last Board of Fisheries meeting on the Southeast region was in 2022. Governor Mike Dunleavy appointed five of the seven current board members after that meeting. Those five new board members hail from Talkeetna, Cordova, Tanana, and Anchorage and two of them noted at the beginning of the meeting that it was their first time in the Ketchikan area.
Another difference for this year’s meeting is the schedule includes periods of time in which the public can share indigenous Traditional Knowledge. The meeting runs through February 9th at the Ted Ferry Civic Center in Ketchikan.
Session 1 Proposals
The proposals are grouped into two week-long sessions. Tuesday marked the beginning of the six-day groundfish and shellfish session. Following opening remarks from the Board of Fisheries chair, the meeting launched into a series of presentations from area management biologists and state fisheries officials about subsistence, data, and management methods for the region’s Dungeness, red king, and Tanner crabs, shrimp, geoduck, sablefish, rockfish, and lingcod.
There are 72 groundfish and shellfish proposals, covering relatively small tweaks, like how longline fisherman have to fill out their logbooks, to bigger shifts like shifting the Dungeness crabbing season or allowing residents to take home yelloweye rockfish again. That fishery has been shuttered for years.
There are also proposals before the board to change when and how sport and commercial fishermen can catch black cod in Southeast waters or tighten and clarify regulations and bycatch requirements on the regional lingcod fisheries.
There are six rockfish proposals that generated buzz ahead of the meeting. On the opening day of the meeting, Board members spent about two hours hearing from local rockfish management biologists. The proposals have to do with reopening fishing for yelloweye rockfish for residents and all other demersal shelf rockfish species for nonresidents.
There are also 51 shellfish proposals affecting dive fisheries like geoduck clams and sea cucumbers, changing the season for shrimping, and, interestingly, making an entirely new jig fishery for deepwater magister squid.
That proposal comes from Richard Yamada, a Juneau-based businessman and U.S. Commisioner of the International Pacific Halibut Commission. The proposal, backed by the Juneau’s Fish and Game Advisory Committee, stated that a magister squid fishery could provide another revenue stream for struggling commercial fishermen and tamp down magister squid predation on more economically viable catches like salmon and herring.
Then there are proposals having to do with tweaks to fishing areas, depth of pots, and when the time of fishery openers for Tanner crabs, golden king crabs, and red king crabs. Dungeness crabs occupy a significant raft of proposals. Petersburg fisherman Derek Thynes’ proposal alleges that sea otters and closures have made the commercial harvest area for the crabs so small that the commercial fishery is becoming economically untenable and seeks to open up many areas closed to commercial crabbing for dungies in recent years. Other proposals called for further closures, blaming overfishing and sea otter predation.
The board is expected to start voting on some decisions over the weekend, before turning their attention to finfish like salmon and herring next week.
The meeting runs through February 9th at the Ted Ferry Civic Center in Ketchikan.
