Cordova District Fishermen United (CDFU) has voiced strong opposition to 10 proposals up for discussion before the Alaska Board of Fisheries meeting in Cordova Dec. 10-16, including Proposal 78 – which aims to reduce Prince William Sound hatchery production of pink salmon eggs.
Proposal 78, by former Board of Fisheries member Virgil Umphenour of Fairbanks, calls for reducing the permitted egg intake of each Prince William Sound hatchery that produces pink and chum salmon by 25%, then doing an evaluation in five years.
“There is no conclusive evidence to suggest this proposed decrease in pink and chum production,” CDFU said in a Nov. 26 letter to the fisheries board regarding Prop 78. “The BOF has repeatedly turned down similar anti-hatchery proposals for this very reason in the last 20 years.”
“This regulation does not address egg take level, nor does any regulation implemented by the BOF. For this reason, this proposal and any future proposals like it should be rejected,” CDFU added.
The commercial fisheries entity said passage of Proposal 78 would result in serious economic harm to every salmon permit holder CDFU represents. Activities at Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corp., which operates the hatchery, are estimated to contribute some $50 million in labor income and support roughly 2,400 jobs, they argued.
Four other proposals up for consideration would reduce or eliminate bycatch in Alaska’s only state-managed pollock pelagic trawl fishery, which takes place from Jan. 20 through March 31.
Proposals 14, 15, 16 and 17 would close the Prince William Sound (PWS) walleye pollock pelagic trawl fishery, modify bycatch limits in the PWS pelagic trawl fishery, close the PWS pelagic trawl fishery, and establish observer requirements in that fishery as well.
CDFU – which did not take a position on these four proposals – said that they have concerns about bycatch in this fishery, but that pollock are predators of salmon and herring fry. CDFU urged the Board to exercise caution on drastic proposals such as those four, and asked that any actions taken on this fishery are taken incrementally.
Neither the BOF nor the Alaska Department of Fish and Game have been granted the authority to require electronic monitoring aboard vessels.
CDFU said they do not support any such requirements without sufficient guardrails to prevent excessive burden on small boat fishermen, but they do support increased observer coverage placed upon these vessels only if paired with a hard rockfish bycatch cap.
SalmonState, which works to keep wild salmon and their habitat protected, said in a statement that a recent study has made clear that midwater trawlers actually drag the bottom between 40% and 100% of the time and that midwater trawlers have said they’ve known for a while that they were dragging the bottom.
Trawlers off Alaska’s coast, including the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, bycatch 141 million pounds of marine life each year. That’s part of the reason 70% of Alaskans from across the political spectrum want to completely ban trawling off Alaska’s coast, according to a Data For Progress poll published earlier this year cited by SalmonState.
Trawling is already banned off Southeast Alaska, and bottom trawling is prohibited in Alaska state waters.
CDFU also opposed several other proposals, including three to reduce commercial salmon fishing opportunity in the Copper River District. Proposal 53, for example, would allow the Copper River District commercial salmon fishery to open for the first two periods and then close until the Copper River cumulative salmon management objective is met.
CDFU said that proposals 51, 52 and 53 restrict Alaska Department of Fish and Game from managing the fishery to their best potential by taking management tools away from local fish biologists/managers, and that these proposals would have a severe economic impact on the fleet and the region.
