{"id":8293,"date":"2016-01-26T09:16:52","date_gmt":"2016-01-26T18:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aksalmonalliance.org\/staging1\/?p=8293"},"modified":"2016-01-26T09:16:52","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T18:16:52","slug":"is-alaska-getting-full-value-from-fishery-resources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aksalmonalliance.org\/staging1\/2016\/01\/26\/is-alaska-getting-full-value-from-fishery-resources\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Alaska getting full value from fishery resources?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Salmon and other fishery resources in Alaska are constitutionally required to be managed for both sustained yield and maximum benefit to the people. Allowing huge quantities of surplus salmon (beyond the number needed for escapements) to go unharvested does not meet the maximum benefit requirement. Current fisheries management in Cook Inlet is allowing millions of surplus salmon to go unharvested. A report detailing this foregone harvest and its potential value is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Changes in the management of Cook Inlet commercial fishing in the past 25 years have caused significant harvest declines. An example of this is described in this article from the Alaska Journal of Commerce:<\/p>\n

Smaller budget means ADFG can\u2019t fix faulty Susitna counts<\/h1>\n
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By: DJ Summers\u00a0 <\/a>Alaska Journal of Commerce<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Posted:\u00a0 Wed, 01\/13\/2016 – 2:01pm<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Alaska Department of Fish and Game cannot undo a set of Cook Inlet driftnet restrictions in place over the last 25 years.<\/p>\n

Cook Inlet driftnetters say restrictions unjustly keep them from millions of dollars of sockeye harvest based on faulty data. Protective measures for Susitna sockeye, a designated stock of concern, keep drifters in specific corridors in Cook Inlet from July 9 to 31. Fishermen say the decades have added up to thousands of available sockeye \u2014 and millions of dollars \u2014 they didn\u2019t need to forgo.<\/p>\n

The department, the fishermen believe, has no reason to continue the restrictions. ADFG managers say they have no money or resources to make the adjustments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they redid the sonar, they found out they were in effect, under harvesting those stocks and overescaping,\u201d said Erik Huebsch, vice president of United Cook Inlet Drift Association, an industry group. \u201cThey knew they were managing way too conservatively based on that. Why didn\u2019t they change the management to ratchet it up any more if they knew they were managing too conservatively?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, or ADFG, says the driftnetters\u2019 concerns are well-founded.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have a legitimate question and concern to have some restrictions removed when there\u2019s going to be a surplus,\u201d said Pat Shields, ADFG\u2019s commercial manager for Upper Cook Inlet.<\/p>\n

However, apart from three lake-based escapement goals, though, Shields said there\u2019s nothing on which to base new management.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now we don\u2019t have a tool other than those three weirs. With the funding we\u2019re looking at right now, we\u2019re really challenged to find a new method.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study<\/strong><\/p>\n

A 2009 study presented to the Board of Fisheries discredited the basis for the drift fleet\u2019s restrictions.<\/p>\n

In 1981, ADFG installed a Bendix sonar system at the mouth of the Yentna River, a Susitna River tributary. Susitna sockeye stock is particularly difficult to enumerate; the river is wide and murky, and a multitude of the other salmon species \u2014 pink, chum, coho, and chinook \u2014 fog the sonar numbers trying to pinpoint sockeye.<\/p>\n

To mitigate, ADFG based much of Susitna sockeye management on the Yentna River\u2019s sockeye escapement, figuring the river accounted for roughly half the overall Susitna\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Since the 1981 Yentna Bendix start date, the river\u2019s measurements have always seemed off, frequently missing the sustainable escapement goal. During the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Cook Inlet drift fleet was closed by emergency order, but the Yentna sockeye escapement remained largely unchanged from other years. By 2006, five of the last nine years had failed to make the sustainable escapement goal of 90,000 to 160,000 sockeye.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the department got curious enough about the chronic underperformance to question the method. Using extra funds from various sources including the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association, the department stacked the Yentna with extra counting methods like fish weirs, DIDSON sonar, and mark-recapture studies, to compare the results to the Bendix sonar.<\/p>\n

The results punctured the decades of Yentna Bendix counts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is little confidence in the reliability of the Bendix sonar estimates,\u201d the report reads. \u201cSince 2006, when additional escapement studies began, Bendix sockeye salmon estimates have ranged from 56 percent to 76 percent of the DIDSON estimate, and just 31 percent and 32 percent of the Yentna River mark-recapture estimates in 2007 and 2008.\u201d<\/p>\n

The board made a major change to the river\u2019s management in 2008 by declaring Susitna sockeye a \u201cstock of concern\u201d just before the 2009 study came out. That year, the Bendix sonar counted 90,000 compared to more than 130,000 that both DIDSON sonar and weirs counted and well within the sustainable escapement goal.<\/p>\n

The stock of concern designation placed additional restrictions on the Cook Inlet drift fleet to protect the erroneously underestimated Susitna sockeye.<\/p>\n

After the report, ADFG changed the escapement goals from the Yentna River\u2019s Bendix-based goal to a series of goals on nearby Chelatna, Judd, and Larson lakes. The stock of concern designation and its resulting drift restrictions, however, remained.<\/p>\n

Due to copyright law, the Alaska Salmon Alliance cannot repost full articles. You can read the whole article<\/i> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Because the Alaska Salmon Alliance wish to provide a wide breadth of information, we sometimes provide links and documents that may conflict or present only one perspective on an issue.\u00a0 Because of that, we feel it is important to note that none of the content provided on our website necessarily represents the views or opinions of the Alaska Salmon Alliance, excepting, of course, those articles authored by us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Salmon and other fishery resources in Alaska are constitutionally required to be managed for both sustained yield and maximum benefit to the people. Allowing huge quantities of surplus salmon (beyond the number needed for escapements) to go unharvested does not meet the maximum benefit requirement. 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