A recent opinion piece in the Clarion by Ricky Gease, Executive Director for Kenai River Sportfishing Association (KRSA), claimed to enlighten us on two different issues in a “fact based and truthful” manner when in fact they were neither. Instead, he chose the route of misinformation intended to mislead our community into believing their recent lobbying efforts to oust Board of Fisheries (BOF) member, Vince Webster of Naknek, were justified. KRSA’s actions in this regard were sleazy at best and further illustrate how far this organization will go to maintain control over all aspects of fisheries management on the Kenai River and Upper Cook Inlet.

In retrospect, I suspect Mr. Webster was probably too honest and knowledgeable for KRSA’s liking. They claimed that the main reason for wanting him gone was that he voted to support the new Kenai River Late-Run Chinook escapement goals and advocated for a lower OEG in times of low abundance presented by the BOF Task Force he co-chaired. When in actuality, all seven members of the BOF voted unanimously to accept the department’s escapement goal recommendations and while co-chairing the Task Force, Mr. Webster stated several times that a lower OEG would probably not be acceptable. The Task Force acted on its own and as Co-Chair he was not part of the vote. The simple truth is that they wanted him off the BOF because he was one of the members they couldn’t find a way to control.

This op-ed also claimed that the new lower end adjustment of the Late-Run escapement goal from 17,800 down to 15,000 was bad for the resource and an attempt by the department to provide more fishing opportunity for commercial fishermen. This is simply not true, but it makes for a good sound bite to further vilify the commercial fishing industry. The facts are that Department scientists recognized the necessity to convert these numbers to be more reflective of the actual counting differences in transitioning to a technically improved sonar system. The old split-beam sonar counts were biased high because they counted too many Sockeye as Kings and the new Didson sonar is supposed to eliminate much of this duplicity and give a more accurate count of actual Kings passing by, thus producing a lower count but relative to the old sonar numbers historically calculated. It had nothing to do with allocations to any particular user group.

Due to copyright law, the Alaska Salmon Alliance cannot repost full articles. You can read the rest of this editorial here.

Dwight Kramer is a “Joe Fisherman” private angler and concerned resource user who has fished the Kenai River since 1983. He was a sportfishing representative on the Upper Cook Inlet Task Force.

As with all the articles we link to on the ASA website, this report does not necessarily reflect the views of the Alaska Salmon Alliance.