Currently in the Alaska State Legislature a bill titled “An Act providing priority to personal use fisheries when fishing restrictions are implemented to achieve a management goal” is currently in committee(s) as Senate Bill 42 and House Bill 110. Normally, fisheries management is handled by ADF&G and the Board of Fisheries.
ASA President Paul Dale wrote a commentary on the proposed bill:
Voices of the Peninsula: Some Alaskans first, some dead last, and most left out
As both a lifelong Alaskan and commercial fisher, I wanted to share my views on Senate Bill 42, establishing personal use priority in times of salmon shortages. Prime sponsor Senator Bill Stoltze has introduced failed versions of this for seven years, but this session, some legislators are giving it favorable attention. One could ask why such consideration now, when harvests of sockeye salmon in the premier Kenai river dipnet fishery are robust by any measure, and have grown almost every year since its inception.
Wildly popular, it has become an event treasured by many, but also carries a good number of critics, and not just the rightful concerns of private landowners, the city of Kenai, and commercial fishers, but from some surprising quarters as well. ADN writer Craig Medred described Kenai river dipnetters, “Too many of them are slobs, pigs, miscreants, call them what you want. There is no debating this. The evidence is obvious to anyone who visits the mouth of the Kenai River during the dip netting season in July.” In an earlier article Craig Medred thoughtfully commented on the economics of the dipnet fishery, “Commercial fishermen have a strong argument that in terms of economic management their fish are far more valuable than the salmon in the dipnet fishery. The dipnet fishery is like Alaskans taking oil out of the trans-Alaska pipeline instead of sending it to a refinery and taking the cash.”
I know that when developing fisheries policy in Alaska, people need to be mindful of all the affected user groups. Hopefully user groups can agree to damage each other the least amount possible in pursuit of their fishery management and allocative goals. Certainly each user group has different constraints and expectations, most of them reasonable, some less so. Many policies are formed without due consideration for all of the involved user groups. I fear this priority legislation is one of them. I think we need to give each user group what it most needs to survive in the long run, and much less what it simply desires.
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