Alaska Peninsula / Aleutian Island / Chignik Finfish (2/18/2026)

Alright, good morning everybody. Are we ready to go, Annie? Okay, great. So the time is 8:33 AM. We're going to go ahead and call this meeting to order.

My name is Marit Carlson-Vandort. I am chair of the Board of Fisheries. It is Wednesday, February 18th. 6 Of 7 members are present right now. I expect to see the 7th one show up any time.

But before proceeding any further, I would like my fellow members to go ahead and introduce themselves. We'll start down at this end of the table with Ms. Irwin.

Zan hazoon, Olivia Sa'Uza, dehoondinaka heetlay, Henahi Sisney. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Olivia Henahi Irwin, and I'm from Ninana, Alaska.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Kirk Chamberlain. I'm originally from Maniac in Bethel, but I currently reside in Wasilla. It's great to see everyone here. Morning, everyone.

Tom Carpenter from Cordova.

Morning, everyone. Greg Swenson, born and raised in Anchorage. Glad to see you all here.

Good morning. Mike Wood, Talkeetna, Alaska. Uh, psyched to be here with you all. Thanks everybody. And like I said, my name is Marit Carlson Van Dordt.

I reside in Anchorage. And at this time I will go ahead and turn it over to the commissioner to introduce himself and any staff he'd like to introduce. Good morning everyone. Thanks for all coming. I know these board meetings are long, take your times out of your lives, but really appreciate this is your opportunity to weigh in and how we manage our resources.

So thank you. And with me I have couple directors here and they'll introduce themselves and their, um, staff.

Um, Doug, at some point you're going to want to bring that mic a little bit closer to you. Thank you. Mr. Payton.

Good morning, board members. My name is Israel Payton. I'm director of Sport Fish, and I'll introduce the 5 staff members with, uh, me today. Here, uh, we have Jason Dye. He's deputy director.

We have Chrissy Dunker. She's regional supervisor. Jay Baumer is the management coordinator. Nick Chikovich is our research coordinator. And Tyler Pullum is our AK Pen and Kodiak area biologist.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Payton. Mr. Bowers. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, everyone.

I'm Forrest Bowers, acting director Division of Commercial Fisheries. Here to assist you today, we have Shaleen Hutter, Regulations Program Coordinator. Bill Templin is our Chief Fisheries Scientist for the Division of Commercial Fisheries. And Andrew Monroe, Statewide Salmon Fishery Scientist. Dani Evenson— I'm not sure if she's here yet, but will be here later.

She's an Extended Jurisdiction Program Manager. Sarah Gilkwalmer is our Gene Conservation Lab Director. Tyler Dan is a Fish and Wildlife geneticist. Ben Daley, Westward Regional Supervisor. James Jackson, Regional Management Coordinator.

Birch Foster, Regional Research Coordinator. Heather Finkel, Regional Research Biologist. Michelle Wadham, Regional Research Biologist. Carl Burnside, Chignik Area Management Biologist. Charles Russell, North Peninsula Area Management Biologist.

Matt Keyes, Sandpoint Area Management Biologist. And Jeff Spallinger, Sandpoint Assistant Area Management Biologist. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pappas. Where—.

Madam Chair, members of the board, public and staff. George Pappas, Director, Division of Subsistence. And today with me we have the Deputy Director, Amy— Dr. Amy Weida behind me. Good morning, everybody. We have Dr. Greg Russell, who is the Southwest SRS III for us.

He is in the crowd over there. We have Lauren Sill, which is the Regional Supervisor for the Southern Region for the Division of Subsistence. I believe that is what we have. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Pappas.

OSM. Good morning, Madam Chair, and everyone here. Thank you. My name is Scott Ayers. I am with the Office of Subsistence Management.

I am here representing the Federal Subsistence Management Program today. And also in the audience is Anna Senecal. She is one of the fisheries biologists at OSM. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Moving around the table, Department of Law. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. Edward Lee for the Department of Law and Department of Public Safety. Good morning. Captain Derek DeGraff, Alaska Wildlife Troopers.

Thank you. And Director Nelson, will you please introduce yourself and board support staff? Good morning, Madam Chair. My name is Art Nelson. I'm Executive Director for the Board of Fisheries, and with board staff here we have Annie Bartholomew.

She's our publications specialist. Down past Annie is Kyle Campbell. He's our Interior Region Advisory Committee Coordinator, and he's out of our Anchorage office. And there at the end of the table is Natalie Romo. She's our Southwest Region Advisory Committee Coordinator out of our Dillingham office.

And if I may, we have a number of advisory committee reps I'd like to just recognize. I don't know if they're all here yet, but we have, uh, Marilyn Aunarak Stanislaus from the Coastal Lower Yukon AC, Mark McNeely with the Nelson Lagoon AC, Austin Shangen with the Chignik AC, Grant Newton King Cove AC, Patrick Brown Sandpoint AC, Carl Frank from the Mentonanana AC, Malena Jordan with Tanana Rampart Manley AC, Virgil Umphenour with the Fairbanks AC, Charlie Lean, Northern Norton Sound AC. Shirley Clark with the Grayling/Anvik/Shagalik/Holy Cross, or GASH, AC. Carlin Hoblet with False Pass AC. And Ernie Weiss with the Anchorage AC.

Thank you for your service. Madam Chair. Thanks. And it's great to have all that AC representation at this meeting. Thanks everyone for being here to participate.

Typically right now we would do our ethics disclosures, but I received a 110-page letter on Friday afternoon. And that should have been submitted during public comments more appropriately. I think it should have been submitted during public comments so that it would have had the benefit of having the board and members of the public have the time to read it in its entirety. As such, we are going to postpone ethics disclosures right now so that I have the opportunity to review it carefully and review the referenced Attorney General's opinions contained therein. So we are going to postpone ethics disclosures.

I will RC it. I would also note that that is outside of the board's normal process to RC a 110-page document. Typically, we will limit our pages for RCs to 10 pages so as not to overwhelm the board's support staff during meetings. I'm going to make this exception because I do think it's important. So probably by lunchtime, we will be RCing that, that document, that letter, so that the public has the opportunity to review it.

All members of the board have the opportunity to review it, and I have the opportunity again to review the reference document. So we're going to go ahead and postpone ethics disclosures until I imagine at least tomorrow morning, but we will make sure we get all of that on the record prior to getting into any of the Committee of the Wholes or if there is a conflicted member, which is at that time when if there is a conflict, a conflicted member would then leave the table. But it is not until deliberations or Committee of the Whole that a conflicted member would not be— would be unable to participate. So throughout the staff reports and throughout the public comment portion and traditional knowledge portions of our agenda, all members are able to participate. Any questions about that from any members?

Okay. I just want to make sure that everybody has a chance to read it before we get into the— get into the discussion and get into those potentially conflicted portions of our agenda. All right. So let's go ahead and move right into staff reports. We've got a lot of staff reports to get into today.

And I'm good. Before we, you know, set you up here, I'm going to just go through a few other things about information regarding this meeting. So in terms of access to board members, as board members, we are available to you for the purpose of receiving added information. This process doesn't work without your help. Many of us often meet with stakeholders informally during the breaks and before and after our daily meetings.

We're here to benefit from your input. On the floor in the front of our tables, there is a yellow and black striped line. We call that the sanctuary line, across which the public may not cross during our meetings or breaks. If you wish to talk with one of us, try to get our attention, or just ask anyone from department staff, whether that's board support staff or other agency staff, to notify whomever you'd wish to speak to, and we'll come out across that line and come to you. Please keep in mind, however, that it is during the breaks of both before and after daily meetings that we have the time to read the material that's been submitted during the meeting.

If you have process questions, um, in order to ensure that you are fully informed on the processes of the board, the chair, myself, Vice Chair Carpenter, and Executive Director Nelson are happy to answer all process questions that the public may have during the course of this meeting. It is hoped that the practices of the board outlined here will maximize public participation, participation, um, in the board process, as again, the board believes that an informed, engaged public will only result in better decision-making and better conservation.

The Board of Fisheries and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game are united in support of fostering a respectful workplace. We are committed to ensuring our workplace is free from negative, aggressive, or inappropriate behaviors. Harassment of any type is unacceptable, will not be tolerated, and of course, we appreciate everyone's assistance in joining us in this very important effort. In accordance with the Open Meetings Act, the board staff published a notice in the Alaska Online Public Notice System and in our statewide newspaper. We posted that notice on the board's website as our designated posting place and also distributed it to a list of our email recipients.

I'm not going to read it, but copies of that notice are in the meeting notebooks at the back of the room or are available to you from the executive director for those that are interested in seeing the complete text. The public notice and proposals were distributed to the local Fish and Game Advisory Committees and are posted online and were sent via email to interested organizations and individuals. Public comments were solicited and the board members have received copies of all on-time written public comments. The timely public comments and timely advisory committee comments are available for the board's use and are also available for the public in the workbooks located at the back of the room on the table. Copies of all the meeting materials will be updated frequently throughout the meeting, can also be found on the board's website and again on that web page specific to the meeting.

Keep your eyes peeled for updated RCs as they come in. And you will be able to hopefully see those RCs as soon as we do. Copies of the tentative agenda for this meeting can also be found on the table at the back of the room. This agenda is subject to change throughout the meeting, but I will do my very best to generally stay on the agenda, and if there are any deviations from the published draft agenda, I will do my best to inform the public of how that is going to change and when.

The goal here is no surprises, but we know that in these meetings sometimes the substitute language or discussions are happening that requires some adjustments to the agenda just to keep it moving. We have 7 days in which to do accomplish a lot of work, so I will do my best to keep the public notified of any agenda or roadmap changes. Um, the board encourages the public to submit written copies on specific proposals or issues. Written public comments submitted before deliberations begin are, are limited to 10 single-sided or 5 double-sided pages in length. Please make sure that your written comments clearly include your name, the organization you represent, if any, and what proposals your RC is addressing at the top of the document.

Once deliberations on proposals begin at this meeting, the board will only accept written public comments that are not more than 5 single-sided pages or the equivalent double-sided pages unless very specific information is requested by the board that requires more pages than are allowed under this standard. The board is accepting RCs submitted electronically as a Word document or a PDF through the board's website. A link to the submission portal is prominently featured on the meeting webpage of our website where all of the meetings for this material are posted. You can also turn in written material to the board support staff at the end of the table. Please note that you only need to turn in one copy.

However, board support staff will not be printing submitted materials in color, so if you have something that you would like to have in color, you will need to please turn in 20 copies to the board support staff at the end of the table. With no exception, all materials which are submitted to the board for its consideration must be presented to the record keeper for distribution or uploaded through our website. Do not give documents to board members directly, as these documents will be handed back to you to submit to the for the record. All documents received at this board meeting will be assigned a log number called an RC. All written materials submitted will be retained for permanent record of the board.

The record keeper will distribute RCs in the morning before the meeting begins, after the noon break, and if there is an evening session, after the dinner break. This practice will ensure regular distribution of all written materials to all board members as well as proper retention for board records. I would just note that while you do have the right to submit the maximum number of pages, please keep in mind that we are busy. We literally get thousands of pages to lay eyes on and read during these meetings and are sometimes unable to read everything immediately. So the fewer pages it takes to say what you need, the better opportunity we're going to have to read it.

And we certainly appreciate that.

So we're going to go ahead and begin our staff reports. Traditional knowledge reports and public testimony will follow the staff reports, and depending upon how long it takes to get through our staff reports, we'll insert those ethics disclosures somewhere in there. However, if anyone wishes to give public testimony for this meeting, you must fill out a blue card, as we call them, and turn that card into the board staff at the end of the table over here. The tentative time to turn in your blue card and sign up for public testimony is 10:00 AM Thursday, so that's tomorrow. So if you want to sign up for public testimony, please do so before 10:00 AM tomorrow.

I'll do my best to provide some reminders as we get closer to that time. Advisory committee members and Regional Advisory Council representatives should also fill out a blue card for their AC or RAC report and indicate whether they will testify at the beginning or end of the testimony. Please note on the card which AC or RAC you are representing and be prepared to describe the general membership of your committee. Please confine your testimony to the position the committee took on the proposals or issues and give minority opinions of the committee if there are any. And if you wish to provide your own personal testimony in addition to the committee report, please fill out a separate blue card and submit it to the board staff.

Again, that tentative cutoff time to turn in your blue card for public testimony for AC and RAC reports is 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday morning. At this meeting, the public will be given 3 minutes to testify. Traditional Knowledge reports, advisory committees, and regional advisory councils Council representatives at this time will each be given 10 minutes. I reserve the right to adjust that time depending upon volume. Following public testimony, there will be 5 sessions of the board's committee of the whole.

Please refer to the roadmap to see what proposals will be discussed in each of the committee sessions. Everyone present is allowed to participate. There won't be any need to sign up. The agenda, which is available online or in the materials at the back of the room, shows where we tentatively plan to deliberate in between each of the committee group sessions. And while that agenda is subject to change again, I'll provide updates along the way.

Again, if you have any questions about the process, please, I encourage you, invite you to ask me, Vice Chair Carpenter, or Director Nelson. Okay. I think at this time we will move directly into staff reports unless there's any questions or other comments. Mr. Godfrey, you've joined us. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Jared Godfrey, Eagle River, lifelong Alaskan. Thanks, Mr. Godfrey. All right. I believe we will start with our first oral report and welcome. Put yourselves on the record.

Let us make sure we have that in front of us and then we're good to go. Madam Chair, members of the board, public. My name is Heather Finkel. And for the record, I'm a finfish biologist. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] And with me today is Birch Foster and Nick Dokovich.

Birch is from Westport Region and Nick is the Sport Fish Regional Research Coordinator. Today we're going to present to you the escapement goals of salmon stocks for the Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, also known as Area M, and Chignik Management Areas or CMA. Full written reports of the Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands Management Area, And the Chignik Management Area escape and goal reviews are available as additional reports. Hard copies of this presentation are available as RC3, tab 1, and each slide is numbered at the bottom right for your reference.

So our goal here today is to identify the policies upon which the review was built, identify the goals reviewed and the general methods used. And finally to summarize the findings from the teams to the directors.

This review is based on the policy for the management of sustainable salmon fisheries and the policy for statewide salmon escapement goals that were established in 2000 and 2001. There are 3 key terms relevant to this presentation. The first is a biological escapement goal, or BEG, which is defined as the Sustainable Salmon— in the Sustainable Salmon Fisheries Policy as the escapement level that provides the greatest potential for maximum sustained yield, or MSY. Estimating MSY requires a time series of catch, escapement, and age composition data to evaluate spawner return relationships. Because these data are not always available, other classifications of escapement goals are also defined in policy.

A sustainable escapement goal, or SEG, is the level of escapement indicated by an index or escapement that is known to provide for sustained yield over a 5 to 10 year period. It is typically used in situations where a BEG cannot be estimated because there is a lack of stock-specific spawner return data. Both BEGs and SEGs are ranges with an upper and a lower bound. However, SEGs may have a range or also be stated as simply a lower bound.

The third type of goal is an optimal escapement goal, or OEG. As outlined in the policy for statewide salmon goals, an OEG is a specific management objective for salmon escapement that considers biological and allocative factors. It may differ from ABEG or SEG. The board is responsible for determining the appropriateness of an OEG and provides an explanation for establishing an OEG with the assistance of the department.

The escapement goal review process usually occurs once every 3 years, synchronous with the Board of Fisheries meeting schedule. For this review, an interdivisional team was formed in February of 2025 that evaluated the quality for each stock and identif— the data quality for each stock and identified the appropriate analysis analysis to perform. For BEGs, this typically entails running spawner recruit models to estimate SMSY, and for SEGs, most are determined using the updated percentile approach. The team reviewed the results of these analyses and presented findings to the directors in a memo for the October work session, in corresponding escapement goal reports, and in this presentation.

This map shows the Alaska Peninsula Aleutian Islands Management Area highlighted in blue and the Chignik Management Area highlighted in orange. Thank you. We will first present findings for the Aleutian Islands Alaska—. Pardon me—. Area M. There are 22 escapement goals across the 5 species of Pacific salmon in the Alaska Peninsula Aleutian Islands management area.

There are 1 king, 2 coho, 5 chum, 1 pink, and 13 sockeye salmon goals. The systems are shown here with the exception of McLeese Lake on Unalaska Island, which sits further west than the range of this map.

This slide presents the type and current escapement goals for Area M king, chum, coho, and pink salmon stocks, when the current goal was established, and the last 5 years of escapement data ranging from 2021 through 2025. Please note the footnotes to this table that will also apply to subsequent tables. Escapement text highlighted red did not meet the escapement goal that was in effect for that year. For chum salmon systems, escapements are estimated using an index of peak aerial surveys of selected streams. For this table, italicized text indicates that the complete suite of index streams was not surveyed.

As shown in this table, Nelson King and South Peninsula pink salmon met their escapement goals in each of the past 5 years. For coho salmon, inclement weather and insufficient funding has prevented surveys for both Ilnick and Nelson River coho salmon, as indicated by NS, or no survey, on the table. Weather and the lack of funding has also contributed to an aerial survey that occurred before peak run timing in 2023 that provided an escapement estimate below the lower bound of the goal. For chum salmon, Northern District chum salmon did not meet the escapement goals during 2021 and in 2024, with 2024 lacking the full suite of index streams as indicated by the italicized red font. Similarly, Northwestern District chum did not meet the goal during 2021 and 2022, but has met the current goal the past 3 years despite having some years without complete index stream surveys.

Southcentral, Southeastern, and Southwestern District chum salmon met the escapement goals with the exception of 4 occasions when the full suite of index streams could not be surveyed.

For this and subsequent tables, it is important to note that the achievement of an escapement goal is measured against the goal that was in effect during the given year. Thus, northern and northwestern district chum salmon shown as not meeting their goals when they exceeded the lower bounds of their goals listed in this table. So for northern district chum salmon, the escapement goal that was in effect during 2021 was 119,600,000 to 239,200 fish, which is why it did not meet the escapement goal at that time. Similarly, northwestern district District chum salmon did not meet the goal of 100,000 to 215,000 fish that was in effect during 2021 and 2022. For the escapement goal review, analysis including recent data for Nelson King, South Central, Southeastern, and Southwestern District chum salmon goals last formally reviewed in 2019, and the Northern and Northwestern District chum salmon and Ilnek and Nelson Rivers Coho salmon goals last reviewed in 2023 indicated no changes were warranted to those goals since the last reviews.

South Peninsula pink salmon were last reviewed in 2016, and results from updated spawner recruit analyses corroborated the current escapement goal, indicating no change was warranted to the goal.

This slide presents the type escapement goals for Area M sockeye salmon when the goals were last revised and the last 5 years of escapement data ranging from 2021 to 2025. Bear River early and late runs, Christiansen Lagoon, Ilnek River, Nelson River, and Worzynski Lake sockeye salmon runs have consistently met their escapement goals the past 5 years. When funding has been available to enumerate escapement with a weir, McLeese Lake and Sandy River sockeye salmon have met their escapement goals, which was up to 2023 for McLeese and up to 2024 for Sandy River. Cinder River, Meshick River, Mortensen's Lagoon, and North Creek sockeye salmon did not surpass the lower bound of their respective escapement goals in 2025, which was primarily, primarily attributed to flood conditions during peak spawn timing that delayed surveys and created poor survey conditions.

Similar to the Chum in the northern and northwestern districts, Mortensen Lagoon and Thin Point Lakes had different goals in effect that were not met during 2021 and 2022 respectively, which were 3,200 to 3,400 fish for Mortensen's Lagoon and 9,000 to 19,000 fish for Thin Point Lake. All 13 sockeye salmon goals presented here were identified as appropriate based on findings from our updated analyses and therefore no changes are warranted to the Area M sockeye salmon goals. Specifically, Christiansen Lagoon, Gilnick River, Mortensen Lagoon, Orzinski Lake, Sandy River, and Thin Point Lake sockeye salmon goals were analyzed in 2022 and did not present different findings with the additional 4 years of data. For Bear River early and late runs, Cinder River, McLeese Lake, Meshick River, Nelson River, and North Creek sockeye salmon goals. The team found Bear River early-run and late-run sockeye salmon goals were corroborated by update spawner recruit and habitat-based models.

And the updated percentile approach analysis indicated no changes were warranted for the other sockeye salmon systems. As a reminder, updated stock status and analysis can be found in the escapement goal report tables and dependencies.

That concludes our presentation of the Alaska Peninsula Aleutian Islands Management Area. Next, we will move on to the Chignik Management Area, which is shown in orange on this map.

The CMA has the following department-established goals: 1 king BEG, 1 CMA chum SEG, a CMA-wide pink salmon SEGs for even and odd years, and the total-run sockeye salmon BEG. Additional to these goals, in 2023, the board established early and late-run sockeye salmon OEGs. There are no coho salmon goals in the CMA.

This slide presents the type and escapement goals by species for CMA salmon, the year— the year the goals were last revised, and the last 5 years of escapement data. 2025 Was the first time since 2019 that king salmon met their escapement goal. Late-run sockeye, chum, and pink salmon have consistently met their escapement goals the past 5 years. Chignik River early-run sockeye salmon have met their escapement goal the past 4 consecutive years.

Should be noted that a BEG of 350,000 to 450,000 fish was in effect during 2021 and 2022 prior to the total run BEG of 450,000 to 800,000 fish and the OEG of 300,000 to 400,000 fish that were established in 2023. Overall, the team determined the current BEGs and SEGs for Chignik salmon are appropriate after examining the findings from updated analyses for all stocks, and therefore no changes are warranted. Percentile approach analyses supported the existing king, chum, and pink salmon escapement goals. Updated spawner recruit analyses support the total run sockeye salmon BEG. The early and late run sockeye salmon OEGs that were put into regulation in 2023 were not included in this review, as policy, policy states the board justifies and determines the appropriateness of OEGs.

Finally, in conjunction with the escapement goal review, the team examined potential stocks of yield management or conservation concern following the guidance defined in the Policy for Management of Sustainable Salmon Fisheries. Currently, Chignik King and sockeye salmon are both listed as stocks of management concern.

Chignik Chinook King salmon were listed as a stock of management concern during the 2023 Board of Fisheries meeting. As stated earlier, Chignik Kings have met their goal for the first time since 2019. Chignik early-run sockeye salmon were listed as a stock of management concern out of cycle at the March 2022 statewide shellfish board meeting. Because of this, an action plan was not created and adopted until the regular cycle of the Alaska Peninsula and Chignik Area board meeting in 2023. Chignik Early Run Sockeye Salmon have met the BEG the last 4 consecutive years between 2022 and 2025.

I would like to note that updated stock status and action plans for Chignik King and Early Run Sockeye Salmon will be presented in greater detail later in this meeting. Their presentations can be found in RC3 tabs 11 and 12 respectively. And with that, I am happy to answer any questions. And thank you for the time. Thank you for being here.

Questions? Ms. Irwin. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for that presentation. My first question would be on slide number 8.

And my question is in regards to the Northern District and Northwestern District escapement goals in 2021 and 2022. What was the purpose for changing those goals during those years? Seemed like you almost— we almost doubled the goals, and then 2 years— and then after that, we went back down to the original goal. So what was the purpose of that? Through the chair, um, that at the time we had changed the methodology for evaluating the goals.

We went from an area-wide goal that considered several streams that were hard to consistently survey, and we adopted an approach using index streams, which is a fraction of the total streams in the area. So it's— you're going from a large number of streams down to a smaller number of streams, and commensurately, the volume of escapement will also be smaller. So it's just having an index for the area as opposed to trying to survey all the streams which is sometimes not very feasible. So if the management biologist can target certain streams, I think it might help make it easier for them to accomplish assessing which streams get the most escapement and getting a relative index of what's there.

Thank you for that answer. And so my question, I guess, is why did you not stick with that methodology and, and keep consistent that 2022 —escapement goal?

The goal would change because the number would be lower. We're going from having an aggregate of maybe 300,000 fish where if we're only indexing, say, 10 of 23 streams, that number will be inherently smaller. So we're surveying maybe— if we survey all the streams in one area, and we get 300,000 fish, but if we're looking at just 9 or 10 streams, that might be a fraction of that, maybe 30,000 fish. So it's, it's scaled proportionally in a sense. Does that make sense?

Yeah, thank you, it does.

Thank you. Couple questions that I have. On slide 7, I'm just looking at— well, and 6 too, I guess— are there distinct genetic compositions of area Emchum?

Okay, thanks.

Um, Birch Foster, Department of Fish and Game.

Uh, can you restate that question about the chum? My question is, is there a distinct genetic composition for Area M chum salmon?

Madam Chair, there are, there are numerous distinct populations of chum within Area M, South Peninsula and North Peninsula. How is that determined? That is determined through, through genetic analysis. [Speaker] So you're doing genetic analysis of each of these streams in these districts? [Speaker] Madam Chair, over the course of the last probably 20 years, we have collected baseline population samples.

That's like going into these individual watersheds and taking fin clips biological information. And that is all processed through the Department of Genetics Conservation Lab. It's where the baseline genetics is determined. And so we have collected— I don't have the exact number, but I mean, it probably 20 or 30 within South Peninsula and North Peninsula. And there are definitely distinct populations.

That's good. Thank you. I appreciate that. What I'm getting at here is I'm— I just want to make sure that there is a way to discreetly tell the difference between an Area M or North or South Peninsula chum salmon and a Siwak chum. And Mr. Bowers.

Thanks, Madam Chair. So, so, Birch, there— could you describe the reporting groups for north and south peninsula and where the break is on the north peninsula between that reporting group and the CWAC reporting group? Thanks. Oh yeah, so the reporting groups, I mean, you know, it depends how much you're trying to refine what you're looking at. On the south peninsula, there's a large report— there's a large reporting group that is basically the South Peninsula, Chignik, and also the mainland portion of Kodiak.

So it's a— there's a very large reporting group that stretches kind of the whole South Peninsula. As you get to the North Peninsula, I think we have two reporting groups, Northwestern, Northern. And, but there is a break in the— the break between North Peninsula and say Bristol Bay is around Yugashik, Cinder Meshik area. Thank you. I just want to make sure that we are evaluating that there are distinctions because what I've heard a lot in the past is that Siwak Chum genetics are sort of homogenous and difficult to distinguish between various areas, regions, populations.

Mr. Commissioner? Yeah, I think we should have a geneticist answer this question. I think I brought one up to the table because what I'm hearing from the staff is not exactly congruent with what I'm hearing from my geneticist, so—. Okay, and if there's a separate report on this, we can hold that. I don't want to get too far in the weeds, but if you just quickly answer, thank you.

Sure, Madam Chair, Sarah Gilkbaumer, Gene Conservation Lab. Yes, I mean, if your specific question is if there is a distinction between coastal western Alaska and Alaska Peninsula. Yes, there are. And in the upcoming presentation, Tyler, Dan can answer specific questions about reporting groups. Awesome.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And so slide number 8, quickly, a Nelson River for coho. There's been no surveys '24, '25. It didn't meet as its escapement goal in '23.

It was flirting with the very bottom end of the escapement goal in 2022. Um, is there any intent to survey the Nelson River for coho in this year and whether it warrants a stock of concern designation since it is still on the books? Madam Chair, I, I know we're in the process of reevaluating kind of some of our evaluation methods for COHO that we've experienced funding shortages. And there's— it also happens when the weather is inclement and unsafe to fly. So I believe that we'd still like to keep the goal, and— but we're reassessing our evaluation program for that at the time.

Thank you. And then my very last question is just kind of related to slides 9 and 10 and the respective sockeye goals. Um, in the key sort of located at the bottom left-hand corner of the slide, you indicate no weirs or no surveys, right? So as I read that, am I to understand that with the exception of where the no weirs are indicated on your table, that weirs are present in all of the other places, and that's how they're being used to assess escapement? Uh, no, ma'am.

Sorry, Madam Chair. Um, solely for, for McLeese, really, because that one gets, uh, the funding can be spotty for whether it has a weir or not. So The Nowhere is specifically for McLeese. Apologies for that. And same for Sandy River.

Okay, so how are the escapements being assessed for all of these, all of these presumed sockeye systems in, in the South and North Pen? For Bear, Madam Chair, for Bear, Nelson, those are weird systems. The other ones— and Ilnik is also a WEIRD system. The other systems are evaluated by aerial surveys.

And Worzynski also has WEIRD, my apologies.

How confident are you in the aerial surveys of the sockeye?

It's an index. It's the best that we have to work with. In some cases, I think we know, like, fin point can be difficult to The survey can be turbid, same with cinders. So I think, you know, our management biologists are capable of accurately surveying the populations. It's just dependent on the conditions that they have to work with.

Okay, thanks. And you're accurately surveying for the presence of as well, correct? Yes. And how often does that survey occur annually? I think they believe— I believe the management Biologists try and survey, you know, they try and go a couple of times and they try and hit the peak and they have a good feel for when the peak of their run timing is and they try and hit the peak of the run timing.

Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. If they— I know 2024 was particularly difficult with weather and they missed opportunities because of that. So just my last question that an aerial survey has occurred on these sockeye systems. For at least one time a year? Usually, yes, probably multiple times.

They surveyed maybe sometimes 3 to 4 times and they try and hit the peak. Usually isn't answering my question, but I'm going to let it go. They do. OK, thank you. All right.

Any other questions? Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. And thanks for— I'm just going to tag on to the chair's questions, but thank you for pointing out the survey method for Thin Point Lake on slide 9. I could see, um, I just wanted to say I also appreciate on slide 8 and 9 how you point out how the goals have changed, because looking back at the fisheries management manuscript 26-02, on page 11, table 2, Thinpoint Lake did look like it had 5 years of not meeting escapement, but because of the change of how you were— I guess you went to an index, that's why it didn't meet the criteria for changing ischemic goals that— like you listed in— on slide 9?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood, ThinPoint isn't based on an index. It's solely based on aerial surveys. Okay. But at some point, the way you— you— what's the word I'm trying to use— the escapement number changed in there, is that correct? Because on Table 2, if you go back as far as 2018, it shows that there's 5 years that it's missed escapement.

Page 11.

So yeah, through the chair, Mr. Wood, for Thin Point Lake We've shifted— Thinpoint Lake is aerial survey and it's not like an index. The problem with Thinpoint is that there's many different— what should I say— parts and pieces to the system. Lagoon, different tributaries, the lake. And we've tried to go back and create a standardized goal for Thinpoint. That used a standardized kind of account of the number of places we see fish within the system.

But some years we run into problems where early on we could only see the fish in the lagoon or in the river, and then by the time they all moved in the lake, the visibility was poor and the water was cloudy and you couldn't see it. So we shifted from using lake to using lagoon to using tribes. So that— what I'm trying to get at is that explains how we've— the number has changed. And so it looks like the assessment has gone up and down, but it's mostly us changing parts of ThinPoint that we're using in the standardized method.

So, I mean, so for instance, if you get to— we had some years where there was a large escapement and we saw some in the river, but then, you know, by the time they moved into the lake, they were not visible. But then we had a year where they were visible in the lake. We saw like 50,000 fish in the lake, but that was no longer part of the index. And so I think we might— you know, rehash this next go around and try to— and try to use every bit and part of Thinpoint Lake system as the index. Because right now it's not.

It's only just part of it.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Your answer was as accurate as my question, but I appreciate you answering it. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm looking at the Chignik River, King's escapement goals, and, you know, saying that they haven't been met since 2019 and then was met in 2025. It was met in 2025 by 91 fish. So my question is, and forgive me, I haven't taken statistics in a long time, so I don't remember the exact verbiage, is what is either your margin of error or confidence interval for these counts of the escapement goals? Are you assuming that that's an exact number, or what is your margin of error when analyzing these escapement goal numbers that you're getting?

Uh, through the chair, ma'am, in the past they have gone through the video and looked at They've done specific counts just for Kings to get an accurate count just for this reason, I believe. And Carl might be able to answer it better as far as what they've done this year, but I believe, you know, they go through the video and their time counts 10 minutes on the hour, so there is a little bit of margin of error around there, but I believe that they go back post-season and they review all those counts to check for accuracy. I believe they are fairly accurate counts. Otherwise, without that, they could be off by 20%. Mr. Bowers.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I just wanted to be clear on this one. So this is Chignik, Chinook are assessed through a weir. So it is a much more accurate count than say an aerial survey and maybe when And when Carl comes up and gives his present management presentation or presentation on the Stock of Concern action plan, he can go into more detail on how that count is derived. Thanks.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Bowers. Thank you, staff. It would be great to actually have a percentage or an actual number instead of it being— it's relatively accurate. Thank you.

Okay, I don't see any more questions. Thank you very much for your presentation. And I'm sure we'll continue the conversation in subsequent presentations. Moving on to the subsistence overview, please. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Good morning.

Whenever you're ready, please place yourself on the record and begin.

Okay, good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board, members of the public. My name is Lauren Sill. I'm the Southern Region Program Manager for the Division of Subsistence at ADF&G. With me today is Greg Russell, who is the lead researcher for the Southwest Region. Our presentation today is going to focus on an overview of subsistence harvests and uses of fisheries in the Chignik Management Area Alaska Peninsula area and the Aleutian Islands area.

Slides associated with this presentation can be found in RC3 tab 2.

All right. Before we get into the overview, I just want to take a couple of minutes to talk about our division and where the information we're going to provide comes from. I recognize the board has just listened to me give a similar presentation just last month, so this is an abbreviated version. Our division is mandated by state statute to conduct studies to gather information from residents of communities throughout Alaska on all aspects of the role of subsistence hunting and fishing in the lives of state residents. We engage in all research and regulatory arenas in all regions of the state, and we serve both the Board of Fisheries and the Board of Game.

We make the summarized data we gather publicly available shortly after the conclusion of projects, and these data are used by the boards, by the department, and by the communities for a variety of applications, including community planning, regulatory changes, and C&T and A&S findings. While the board is familiar with these two terms, we'll be using them throughout the presentation, so I wanted to pause a moment and define them in case they are new to anyone. C&T refers to customary traditional uses of resources, which means the non-commercial, long-term, and consistent taking of, use of, and reliance upon fish or game in a specific area. A&S is short for the amounts reasonably necessary for subsistence. It is not a harvest quota.

But it does provide the board with guidelines on typical numbers of animals harvested for customary and traditional uses under normal conditions.

There are several ways that we gather information about the customary traditional uses of resources, including through household harvest surveys and ethnographic interviews. Our research focus and methods are determined by identified information needs or data gaps, funding availability, and community input. Most of our projects are partnerships, including with community entities, regional nonprofits, and other agencies. In general, our research takes place in the more rural areas of the state, but Alaskans living anywhere in the state are eligible to hunt and fish under subsistence regulations. Information on the subsistence harvest of all state residents living in rural and urban areas is available through various permit programs.

In Greg's presentation, he'll be sharing data resulting from our division's household harvest surveys, and ethnographic interviews, as well as from the Subsistence Salmon Permit Program, which is administered by the Division of Commercial Fisheries. Our work is guided by the Alaska Confidentiality Statute, the National Science Foundation's Principles for the Conduct of Research in the Arctic, and the Alaska Federation of Natives' Guidelines for Research. All of our research projects are based on voluntary participation, informed consent, confidentiality, and respect for the privacy and dignity of the people we work with and learn from. Informed consent is obtained from each participant in the research as well as from the community at large. At the end of projects, we return to communities with draft data for their review and feedback.

And with that, I'm going to hand this over to Greg for more information about subsistence uses in the area. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Good afternoon. Again, for the record, my name is Greg Russell and I am the lead Southwest Subsistence Resource I'm a subsistence specialist for the department.

The area under consideration at this week's meeting is geographically large, stretching over 1,000 miles from Port Haiden in the east to Attu Island in the west. There are 18 communities in this region, and we have at least 1 year of household survey data for 17 of them. The only community for which we do not have subsistence harvest data is Adak. I'm going to provide a little information about the region as a whole, and then we'll look at each of these subregions.

The Chignik area highlighted here in purple, the Alaska Peninsula area shown in black, and the Aleutian Islands area outlined in red. As you'll see in future slides, we have limited data for some of the areas or communities. This is an expansive and logistically difficult place to work with weather that can make it very challenging to even get to some of these communities.

[MASKED] Most of our work in the region has focused on the Chignik area and recently in Alaska as well.

Throughout this presentation, we'll be sharing data from household harvest surveys and from system salmon permits. To begin, we have a pie chart showing harvest composition of the region from the most recent household harvest surveys in 17 communities conducted within the region. Comprehensive household surveys document information on the harvest of all wild resources in a community and allow us to consider the harvest of salmon and other marine resources in relation to other wild foods. Percentages in this chart are measured from the total usable harvest weight. As you can see, marine resources dominate the harvest of wild resources in these communities.

Salmon, non-salmon fish, marine mammals, and marine invertebrates together compose over 80% of the overall harvest in edible weight. Again, this is for all communities combined. At the community level, you would expect to see some variation. Along with community demographics, potential variables that influence harvest levels and composition include geographic location, such as proximity to the limited caribou or moose populations in this area, household participation in commercial fisheries, economic conditions like fuel costs and available cash income as well as environmental factors.

Here we have the board determinations for the customary and traditional use of salmon for each of the subregion. The board has found that salmon are customarily and traditionally used in each of these subregions, whether they are specifically named, as in the Chignik area, or are included in the all other finfish category, as in the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Island areas. It's important to remember that these findings apply to the salmon and other fish stocks in these regions. All Alaska residents are eligible to participate in subsistence fisheries anywhere in the state. As we'll discuss in future slides, there is a highly seasonal component to the populations of many of the communities in this region.

Harvests from these seasonal residents are likely not captured through Division household harvest surveys, but instead are reflected in subsistence salmon permit data.

As with the C&T findings, the board has made determinations on the amounts of salmon reasonably necessary for subsistence by management area. In the Chidnick area, these determinations have been made by species and by district. In the Perryville and Western Districts, the determinations are for coho salmon and for salmon other than coho. In the remaining districts, the determinations are for sockeye salmon, both the early run and late run, which the board revised in 2019, for king salmon, and then for all other salmon. In both the Alaska Peninsula area and the Aleutian Islands area, the board made ANS determinations for all salmon in the entirety of the area.

The board has also made ANS determinations for non-salmon fish in each of these management management areas. In each management area, legal subsistence salmon gear includes drift nets— I'm sorry, drift gillnets, set gillnets, and seines. The gear employed often depends on local conditions, access, species targeted, and fishing history. In general, subsistence salmon fishing is open with no seasons or time limits specified in regulation. There are two exceptions to this.

In Unalaska, salmon may be taken year-round, but only between 6:00 AM 9:00 PM. In each subregion, there are limits on when commercial permit holders or commercial vessels can engage in subsistence fishing, generally limiting participation in the 12 or 24 hours before a commercial opener and in the 12 hours after a commercial period closes. Commercial permit holders can choose, choose to subsistence fish instead of commercial fish during a commercial opener. In the Chignik area, Alaska Peninsula area and the Unalaska and ADAC districts, in order for fish— in order to fish for salmon under subsistence regulations, an individual or household must obtain a permit prior to fishing and return that permit at the end of the season. This is the main way the department collects annual harvest data.

In general, there is a salmon harvest limit of 250 salmon. The expectations— the exceptions to this are the Unalaska and ADAC districts, which have a harvest limit of 25 salmon, with an additional 25 salmon allowed per member of the household listed on the permit. Households and individuals can get additional permits from the department if needed. Finally, in each of these areas, there are waters close to subsistence by regulation, either year-round or seasonally. There are also federal lands and waters throughout this region, so federally qualified subsistence Subsistence users also have opportunity to harvest salmon under federal subsistence salmon regulations, which in large part mirror state regulations and require permit before fishing.

The Chigin Management Area comprises 5 established communities with permanent populations ranging from 1 resident in Ivanoff Bay to 81 residents in Perryville. Many of these communities are characterized by highly seasonal populations. With individuals residing in Anchorage or other more urban areas and returning to the Chigniks in the summer for commercial fishing and subsistence activities. Along with this seasonal characteristic, the population of the area is declining. The total population of these 5 communities peaked at 518 individuals.

After remaining relatively stable until the 1990s, the regional population has been on a downward trend. Elements like the cost of of living, availability of employment and social resources, the presence of a school, changes in the commercial fishery, and accessibility to transportation all factor into this decline. The economy of the area is dependent on commercial fisheries. There is substantial local involvement in both commercial and subsistence salmon fisheries. Local residents highlighted a few predominant changes in their communities during an ethnographic study we conducted in the early 2000s.

2010S. There were concerns about how involved youth were or were not in subsistence activities and learning that way of life, observations of a general shift away from the use of fish camps for harvesting and processing salmon, and changing local participation in commercial fisheries.

Through our research, we've documented that Chignik area households have maintained consistent subsistence salmon harvest goals over the years. Subsistence salmon fishing and processing continues to be— continues to be conducted in family groups and strengthens kinship and friendship ties. As noted earlier, there are a lot of seasonal residents in these communities, many of whom are tied to the area through family. So these harvesting and processing groups often include both permanent and seasonal residents. We've also documented distinct harvest patterns for early-run sockeye versus late-run sockeye.

Subsistence harvesters have traditionally targeted early-run sockeye in May and June, though more households have been fishing later into the summer in recent years. Fishing early allows families to harvest and process their subsistence fish before commercial activities begin. The weather is also preferable for smoking and jarring. For the early-run harvest, fishers use seines and gillnets and focus harvesting efforts on Chignik Lagoon. Early-run sockeye are smoked, kippered, canned, salted, and frozen.

Late-run sockeye are harvested beginning around July and extending through the winter. Bright late-run sockeye are generally harvested similar to early-run sockeye. In the fall, people will target redfish or spawning sockeye salmon. Due to their low fat content, these fish can be easily dried without spoilage and are a local favorite. The cooler weather, lack of flies, and lack of bears can make drying these fish easier, but the prevalence of storms and inclement weather require flexibility and adaptation in drying techniques.

Fishing the late run focuses on Chignik Lagoon, Chignik Lake, and Chignik River, along with Clark River and Home Creek. In contrast to sockeye salmon, fishing for king salmon is often done with rod and reel or gill net in the Chignik River or off the the beach in Perryville. Rod and reel is legal subsistence gear for local residents under federal subsistence fishing regulations, but not under state regulations. Many commercial fishermen also retain king salmon from their commercial harvests, which is one of the main ways king salmon are procured for the home. King salmon are smoked, kippered, and canned.

Other types of salmon are also harvested in the Chigniks. Coho salmon is particularly important in the Herriville area, primarily because they can be harvested in local— locally accessible streams. There are a variety of factors that influence participation in local subsistence salmon fisheries. Sociocultural components such as the number of community events in a given year that require subsistence foods, economic considerations such as the availability of cash income, environmental factors like salmon run size and timing all contribute to the overall level of participation seen in these communities.

While there is variability in participation levels, the majority of households in these communities do participate in salmon fishing. This figure shows the percentage of households within a community that fish for salmon in orange and the percentage of households that use salmon in blue. Data come from our household harvest surveys. Across the bottom are each of the communities and the most recent year for which we have data. And along the y-axis is the percentage of households.

Note that this information— that this information for Ivanoff Bay on the far right dates back to 1989, where the other communities have data as recent as 2016 or 2024. As you can see, more than one-half of households fish for salmon in each community, and nearly all all households use salmon. This is a common pattern seen in communities with more people using resources than harvesting them and demonstrates the important role that, that sharing of wild resources plays in rural communities. As we mentioned earlier, with these surveys we are trying to gain a holistic perspective of fishing activities within a household and community. Therefore, these bars represent any type of non-commercial salmon fishing including subsistence, sport, and personal use fishing that fall under state or federal regulations.

This map also draws data from our household harvest surveys. Here we show areas used for non-commercial salmon fishing by residents of each of the 5 communities in the Chignik area. These data were collected for the 2016 calendar year and the 1989 year for Ivanof Bay. You could see that fishing locations are generally in the vicinity of the communities. Because this map displays only 1 year of data collection for each community, it likely represents only a minimum of fishing areas used.

This slide draws from the subsistence salmon permit program, which is the other main source of data on subsistence salmon harvests and harvesters in the Chignik area. In 2024, the most recent year for which we we have data, 57 permits were issued to Alaska residents to fish the Chignik area with a total estimated salmon harvest of 5,234 fish. The majority of salmon were caught by permit holders who identified as residents of local communities, with just 5% of salmon being harvested by people who live outside the area.

I just mentioned that 57 permits were issued in 2024. Historically, about 100 permits have been issued annually for the Chignik area, but this has been declining with an average of 62 permits issued annually in the last 5 years. On this chart, the blue bars are showing the subsistence salmon harvest estimated from return permits. The numbers of salmon are on the y-axis and the year is along the bottom. As you can see, there is year-to-year variability in harvest amounts with with a few high harvest years in the 1990s.

Since the late 1990s, there has been a generally declining trend in annual harvests. The green dashed line represents the historical average salmon harvest of just over 10,000 salmon. The dashed purple line represents the most recent 10-year average harvest of approximately 7,000 salmon. And the solid orange line is the 5-year average of 5,500 salmon. Standard salmon.

These two pie charts each show the composition of the salmon harvest by species. On the left is the harvest composition based on subsistence salmon permits from all Alaska residents, and on the right is the harvest composition based on household harvest surveys in the Five Chicknik Area communities. These represent the department's two main sources of data about subsistence harvest in the area. Permits provide valuable annual data and capture harvests of both local and non-local residents. Household harvest surveys provide more details and context about harvests of local communities.

The two pie charts shown here include all of our available years of data. Both charts show that sockeye is the dominant species harvested, followed by coho. I'd like to draw your attention to two points. The chart on the right has a wedge for other salmon, which is primarily composed of of redfish. Redfish are either not reported on permits or they are reported as sockeye salmon.

The other pie wedge to note is that for king salmon. Based on permit returns, king salmon harvests compose approximately 1% of the overall harvest. Based on household surveys, this percentage increases to 6%. The reason for the disparity is likely that king salmon are often harvested with methods methods not considered subsistence under state regulation, such as rod and reel, and are therefore not recorded on subsistence permits. As mentioned earlier, people fish legally with rod and reel for king salmon under federal subsistence regulations, and they remove king salmon from their commercial harvests.

Here we show the harvest of sockeye salmon by community for each year that we have conducted we did a comprehensive subsistence household survey. The community is across the bottom. Each bar within the community corresponds to one year, beginning with 1984 in the blue bars on the left and continuing through to 2024 in the darkest bars on the right. Note that the gray bar is missing for Chignik Lagoon and Perryville. In those two communities, we did not collect data in 1991.

Also note that the 2024 data for Chugach Lake are not available as we are in the middle of this project and the data have not yet been reviewed by the community. Estimates are given in pounds harvested per capita, which allows us to control for changes in population over time and to compare data from communities of different sizes. For 3 of the 4 communities, per capita sockeye salmon harvest have remained relatively stable or increased over time. Chinook Lake appears to be experiencing a slight decline in harvest.

In contrast, we have a similar figure as the previous slide, but this is showing the harvest of king salmon. Again, this is measured in per capita pounds to control for changes in the human population size and to compare communities of different sizes. Note the change in scale from sockeye salmon harvest that went up to 200 pounds per capita. Rather than the 60 pounds we have here. While king salmon harvests have always been smaller than sockeye harvests, there has also been a clear decline in the harvest of king salmon during the most recent surveys.

Because these data result from household harvest surveys, this figure includes harvest of all non-commercial salmon, meaning harvest by subsistence nets, rod and reel under sport or federal subsistence regulations, or home pack. In 2024, estimated king salmon harvest totaled 1 pound per capita or less in each community.

This chart shows the total harvest of salmon by gear type. Along the bottom of this graph is the year for which there is data, and along the y-axis is the estimated salmon harvest in total usable pounds of fish. Each bar represents the combined salmon harvest from each of the communities by gear type. By gear type. Because we only have one year of data for Ivanoff Bay, that community is not included here.

The bottom blue portion of each bar is home pack salmon. The large orange portion of the bar is harvest with subsistence nets. And the green— a small green portion at the top of the bars represents harvest with rod and reel. Despite changes in population over time and a general decline in total salmon harvests, The amount of salmon retained as home pack has remained markedly stable between 10,000 and 15,000 pounds of salmon or approximately 20% of the salmon harvest. Home pack is an efficient method to obtain salmon needed for home use and can be an important source of salmon for Chignik area households.

However, I want to remind the board that these are not— that these are not salmon harvested under subsistence regulation and are instead instead commercial harvest not intended for sale.

Now we are moving out of the Chigniks and into the Alaska Peninsula area. There are 6 communities located in this area ranging in size from Nelson Lagoon with 30 residents to Sand Point with 468 residents. One feature of this region is a relatively large transient population in some communities because of seafood processing facilities. Hundreds of people travel to False Pass, King Cove, and Sandpoint each year for seasonal jobs. Cold Bay is where the headquarters are located for the Izembek Refuge and has a large federal employee population.

As with the Chinnik area, the economy of this region focuses on commercial fishing and related activities. Many residents of these communities have traditionally participated in the South Alaska Peninsula commercial fishery. Fisheries. Shore-based processing facilities bring in a large workforce and contribute heavily to the local economy and some communities. Along with this heavy involvement in commercial fisheries is reliance on home pack as a way to procure salmon for household use.

Sockeye are usually the most common species kept as home pack and secondary to these species is coho, king, and chum. It is likely more common that kings are kept and consumed on board the boat rather than brought home and put up. Home pack is often comprised of a small amount of fish and not a season's worth of salmon in one trip. Although there is a reliance on home pack as a source of salmon, people in the region also participate in subsistence salmon fisheries. There are different strategies pursued.

Some residents will subsistence fish early in the season before the commercial fisheries begin and put up their salmon then. Others will subsistence fish during breaks in the commercial fisheries, and some may wait until after the commercial season ends to engage in subsistence salmon harvests. Regardless of the timing, subsistence fishing gear includes set gillnets, beach seines, as well as rod and reel under federal subsistence regulations. As with other subsistence-based communities, the sharing of salmon whether it's procured from home pack or subsistence fisheries, is an important component of community life.

This figure shows the percentage of households within a community that fish for salmon in orange and the percentage of households that use salmon in blue. Data come from our household harvest surveys. Across the bottom are each of the region's communities and the most recent year for which we have data. And along the y-axis is is the percentage of households. Note that among these communities, the oldest data are for False Pass.

We have recently completed updated harvest surveys in False Pass, but those data have not been reviewed by the community yet, so they are not presented here. Approximately two-thirds or more of households engage in salmon fishing, and most households use salmon. Again, the difference between the percentage of households using salmon versus fish fishing for it represents the sharing that occurs among community households. Excuse me.

This map represents the spatial extent of non-commercial salmon fishing by community households during the most recent year for which we have data. While many residents engage in commercial salmon fishing and we do record home pack on our surveys, we do not map where commercial salmon fishing occurs. This map represents one year of data for each community and therefore is likely a minimum representation of the areas used. In general, people are fishing close to home. The area around Sandpoint represents the most extensive range of a fishing area around a community.

This slide draws from the subsistence salmon permit program for the Alaska Peninsula area. In 2024, 97 permits were issued to Alaska residents to fish the area, with a total estimated salmon harvest of 6,230 fish. The majority of these salmon were harvested by residents of local communities, with 15% of the salmon harvested by people who live outside the area.

Similar to the Chignik area, there has been a trend of declining permits issued and, and of total salmon harvested. Historically, about 175 permits have been issued annually in the Alaska Peninsula area. In the most recent 5 years, 101 permits have been issued each year on average. On this chart, the blue bars are showing the subsistence salmon harvest estimated from return permits. The number of salmon are on the y-axis and the year is along the bottom.

As you can see, there is year-to-year variability in harvest amounts. But harvests in the 1990s were higher than in the last 20 years. The green dashed line represents the historical average salmon harvest of just over 15,000 salmon. The dashed purple line represents the most recent 10-year average harvest of just less than 10,000 fish. And the solid orange line is the 5-year average of 7,000 salmon.

This slide is similar to the one I showed for the Chignik area. Both pie charts show the salmon harvest composition by species. The chart on the left is harvest composition based on returned subsistence salmon permits. The one on the right is based on household harvest surveys. Harvest composition is similar, but more king salmon, pink salmon, and spawned-out salmon show up in our household surveys.

There are likely a couple reasons for this. People procure some of their salmon through home pack or through rod and reel fisheries. Of which do not get recorded on subsistence salmon permits. Additionally, while we surveyed Nelson Lagoon in 2023, most of our surveys in this region date to 2016 or earlier. King salmon harvests have been declining in recent years, but that decline is not represented in this older data set.

This chart pulls from our household harvest survey data and shows the harvest of salmon by gear type. Along the x-axis On the x-axis is the community and year of data collection. Along the y-axis is the estimated per capita harvest of salmon in usable pounds. We are showing per capita harvest to make it easier to compare between these communities which vary greatly in size and therefore in total salmon harvest. In all communities, there is at least some harvest by each method.

Subsistence methods account for approximately one-half or more of the of the total salmon harvested in most communities. In Sandpoint and Falls Pass, home pack accounts for a greater proportion of salmon than do subsistence methods. Only in Cold Bay does rod and reel contribute a substantial amount to overall salmon harvest.

The last region to discuss is the Aleutian Islands area. There are 7 communities located along these islands ranging in size from 42 permanent residents in St. George to over 1,000 in Unalaska. Similar to the Chignik area, there is a high seasonal component to many of these communities. And similar to the Alaska Peninsula, there is also a large transient population, particularly in Unalaska and Akutan.

Commercial fishing is also the main economic driver in these communities with some local processing facilities. As you'll see shortly, most of the information we have on subsistence subsistence uses in these areas is relatively old. However, we recently completed a study in Unalaska focused on salmon harvest and use. Through surveys and ethnographic interviews, we documented a continued reliance on salmon throughout the community. Many individuals we spoke to felt strongly about participation in the subsistence salmon permit program.

In earlier studies, we had documented concerns that people either weren't getting permits or weren't returning them. But results from this study indicate that permits in Unalaska are generally reflective of the actual harvest levels of salmon in Unalaska. During our most recent study, we also heard many concerns about the amount of harvest pressure placed on local accessible salmon systems. Community-driven solutions to these concerns have included reduced permit limits in the most accessible harvest areas and an increased use of salmon systems that are more distant from Unalaska. Not everyone has the boats or the time to access these places such as Volcano Bay or McLeese Lake, but those who do are trying to source more salmon from these system— systems in order to reduce pressure on the more accessible systems.

This is the same chart that I've shown for each region showing household participation in fishing for and using salmon. Across the bottom are the communities and year of data collection. Along the y-axis is the percentage of households. The blue bars represent households using salmon and the orange bars represent households fishing for salmon. As you can see, the data we have for this remote region is generally old, dating back to the 1990s for most communities.

Unalaska is the only community for which we have recent data due to a project we are just wrapping up there. Similar to the other areas we've talked about today, most households in the region are using salmon, and in most communities, more than one-half of households are fishing for salmon. You can see that St. Paul has the lowest involvement in salmon fishing, and only about one-third of Unalaska households were engaged in salmon fishing in 2022.

We have limited data on the spatial extent of salmon harvesting activities in this region. We only have map data for Inalaska in 2022 and Akutan in 20— or 2008. You can see Akutan households are generally fishing around the community while Inalaska households are fishing near the community. They also travel further around the island to fish. As I noted in an earlier slide, some community members with the means to harvest salmon from further away are doing so in an effort to reduce the pressure on the nearby salmon systems.

Subsistence salmon permits are only required in the Unalaska and ADAC areas. This chart shows estimated subsistence salmon harvests in the Unalaska area. Salmon harvests have been variable over time but were generally larger until about 10 years ago. This historical average harvest shown here in the dotted green line was approximately 4,400 fish. Over the last 10 years, this average has declined to about 3,500 fish.

The most recent years have been— have seen both high and low harvest years, and the 5-year average is about 3,100 fish. Looking again at salmon harvest composition, here we have the composition for the Unalaska area based on subsistence salmon permits from 1985 through 2024 on the left and the composition of harvest based on the 2022 household survey conducted in Unalaska. While similar, household harvest surveys show a higher percentage of coho salmon and king salmon and a smaller percentage of sockeye salmon. Because the pie chart on the right is only reflecting one year of data, the difference with of the pie chart on the left could be due to unique characteristics of 2022 salmon harvest, as well as likely reflecting the fact that people harvest king and coho salmon with rod and reel in sport fisheries, and that harvest is not recorded on subsistence salmon permits.

Because we do not have permit data for other areas in this region, this chart shows the estimated harvest of salmon from household harvest surveys in number of fish by species for the most recent year of data for the other communities in the region. Along the bottom is the community and year of data collection. Along the y-axis are the estimated number of salmon harvested. Each color of the bar represents harvest of a salmon species. The bottom pink color is sockeye salmon harvest and the bright blue is pink salmon.

The green represents coho salmon. Along the top of the bars in Akutan and Natka, you can see some orange which represents chum salmon harvest. And the dark blue visible at the top of the St. Paul bar— visible at the top of the St. Paul bar is king salmon harvest.

In these communities during these years, sockeye and pink salmon composed the majority of the salmon harvest with some coho harvest. Apart from the Pribilof Island communities.

In contrast to the other regions we've looked at today, the majority of salmon harvesting in these communities is done with subsistence gear types represented by the orange portions of these bars. In Alaska and AFCA, there is a little bit of home pack, which is the dark blue at the base of the columns. Rod and reel in green contributed a small amount in these communities.

Moving on to a slightly different look at some of the data we collect, I wanted to show a couple of slides about the sharing network data that we have. We haven't collected much of these types of data in the southern region, but we did have a project about a decade ago documenting sharing patterns in the three Chignik communities: Perryville, Port Hyden, and Ikigik. I'm not going to go into all that we learned during that project, but I do want to show a couple of examples of the results. This slide shows different networks for salmon within the community of Chignik Lake. Each blue dot represents a household within the community and each line represents a connection.

The collection of dots on the top left represent— represents how households are connected to each other when harvesting salmon. On the top right is how households process salmon. You can see in each of these that some dots stand alone. These are households that do not work with other community households to harvest or process salmon. But many households do work together with at least one other household, especially to harvest salmon.

On the bottom left is a representation of how households are connected through the sharing of harvested salmon. Finally, on the bottom right is a representation of all of this combined. This is how how households are connected to each other through harvesting, processing, and sharing salmon. You can see that except for one household, everyone is connected in the community through salmon.

We also looked at how harvested salmon are shared beyond the borders of communities. In this diagram, each blue dot represents a Chiniklik household. Each purple dot represents another community. And the lines are directional and represent the exchange of salmon. The dots are not scaled to represent the magnitude of sharing, and they do not encompass demographic data.

This is a simple visual representation of how widely Chignik Lake households share salmon. You can see a lot of Chignik Lake households share with Anchorage households. Some households share salmon with multiple communities, while other households share or receive salmon with just one. Mostly households share with others in the region or with communities around the Matsu Valley.

We covered a lot of information in this presentation about a geographically large and diverse area. While there is regional variation in subsistence harvesting patterns throughout the area, there are many similarities as well. Across the region, subsistence salmon harvests as estimated from return salmon permits are declining. The reasons for the declines likely vary by region, but include resource abundance, economic changes, and social factors. In all regions within the area, sockeye salmon are the most harvested salmon resource and compose the majority of the salmon harvest.

Throughout the area, while subsistence gear is employed to harvest much of the salmon taken for a household's use, some households also rely on rod and reel fisheries and home pack to obtain their salmon. Declining harvests constitute another common factor throughout this area. This is not true for every community in the region, but at the broader geographic scale, fewer people are living full-time in the region. Many communities also see seasonal swells in their populations. In some communities, this is driven by seasonal shifts in populations as people who have moved out of the community return during the summer or fall to participate in commercial fisheries or subsistence activities.

In other communities, it is more of a transient population that arrives to participate in seafood processing jobs. Overall, in the places where we have subsistence salmon permit data, we know that the majority of participants in these subsistence fisheries are local residents. Salmon fisheries in the area may look different in terms of predominant gear types used or species targeted, but in every community, it is common that residents share in the labor of harvesting and processing and in the harvested salmon. Thank you to the board for the opportunity to share this overview. We are now happy to take any questions.

Questions? Mr. Swenson. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Lauren and Greg, thanks for your presentation. It was very informative. I just have one question.

Why can't the subsistence users use rod and reel?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Member Swinson, rod and reel fisheries in general, rod and reel in general throughout the state is not illegal subsistence gear. There are a few places where it is allowed, but overall it's not allowed as subsistence gear. The reasons for it, I'm not entirely sure.

It's been like that for a long time. I imagine some of it has to do with efficiency. One of the hallmarks of subsistence gear is efficient method of harvest, and rod and reel is less efficient in many cases.

Okay. I guess I still don't— I mean, yeah, I can see it's a lot— using a net's a lot faster than rod and reel for subsistence, obviously. But I'm just curious as to why a guy can't go out there with his rod and reel and subsistence fish.

To the chair. Thanks, Member Swenson. I don't think that I have a great reason for why that is. I know that it's just been a regulation for a long period of time. I think that there have been some proposals to change that, and largely the board has not changed that.

Okay, thank you. Might defer to Sport Fish, but my understanding of that is that it is difficult to enforce the difference between sport fishing and subsistence fishing practices and also sport licensing that might be required. I don't know if anybody from the department would like to chime in on that, but I know that that's been parts of the discussions that I've been a part of in the past. Mr. Commissioner, I think you nailed it.

Mr. Carpenter, thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for your presentation, it's very informative. Um, so I was looking at, um, slide 10 and when it talks about kings, basically says that the kings are harvested by primarily home pack and rod and reel. So I assume that rod and reel in this particular instance would be done under sport fishing regulations.

I'm just curious why you included rod and reel in your analysis if you're not allowed to use rod and reel for subsistence. Questions through the chair, Member Carpenter. So we include rod and reel because we are trying to understand how people are using and harvesting salmon, the salmon that they need, whether it's coming— wherever method is coming through. But also in this region, rod and reel is legal federal subsistence harvest, or gear for federal subsistence harvest. And so when we collect our data, we just do it by gear type, but we don't ask people to identify what fishery they're in.

So we don't necessarily really know if they're harvesting them in the federal subsistence fishery or in the state sport fishery. Okay, thanks for that clarification. Just a quick follow-up. So then when I looked at the percentages of harvest, you know, this king salmon specifically, about 1% of the overall harvest was done in subsistence. And I would assume most of that is done with beach seines or gillnets, mostly when they're fishing for sockeye.

And about 5% of Kings harvested are under home pack. And I would assume those are all fish harvested in the commercial fishery that are recorded on fish tickets like many other parts of the state. I just want to make sure I'm accurate about that. Through the chair, yes, that's correct. Thank you.

Mr. Irwin. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much, Ms. Sill and Mr. Russell, for your presentation. My question starts on Page slide number 14. It's with regards to the Chignik Management Area.

So when I'm looking at this graph, there's no way for me to determine whether or not any subsistence needs were met because the subsistence needs, from what I'm understanding, in the Chignik area are broken up to coho, salmon, other coho, and then in the other areas, early and late-run sockeye. So I'm not sure what the purpose of this is other than giving us a general idea of how much salmon is harvested. And then the following slides, you have sockeye salmon harvest by pounds and king salmon harvest by pounds and nothing about coho salmon. So I'm wondering, do you know if you've been— if the amount necessary for subsistence and people's subsistence needs in Chignik have been being met for the coho stock?

Through the Chair, Member Erwin, I do not know off the top of my head, but I do have that information and can get it for you. And the reason it's not in this presentation is that it was long presentation to begin with, and so I was trying to keep it sort of short, broad overview. And as you mentioned, trying to compare the ANS to these harvests is challenging in the Chignik areas just because they're broken down into such specific measures.

Yeah, thank you very much. It's integral that we understand whether or not subsistence needs are being met in order to make management decisions. So my other point would just be, in the sockeye salmon harvest and king harvest slides, it would be helpful if you do want to include pounds, that's fine, but pounds is not the ANS. So ANS needs number of fish. So I would like to be able to see the number of fish.

Thank you. Mr. Commissioner, I just want to correct— I don't think there's an ANS for Coho salmon. There's an ANS for salmon, but there's no ANS for Coho specifically. Um, on slide number 17 in Perryville and Western districts in the Chignik area, it says there's a Coho salmon, uh, ANS of 1,400 to 2,600. Please correct me if I'm incorrect though.

That's what it says. We'll get back to you. That's what it says on slide 7. She is correct. I guess you're parsing out between Perryville and Western and then Chignik Central and Eastern districts where there isn't a specific Cojo ANS.

My apologies, you're correct.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate this presentation. It just gives me perspective of this huge area.

Beginning on slide 9, it talked about at one point there was 518 people living in the CMA And now if I add it up right now, about 273. Is that accurate?

Through the chair, Member Wood. Yes, I think that— All right. And thank you for letting— telling us how, like, throughout all these communities, the economy is basically based on commercial fishing. And I also appreciate the fact that the emphasis you put on home pack and how that applied to people's overall yearly supply of food and how important that home pack is, because that will continue to be something we discuss. Yeah, so my next question is, is on slide 11, Ivanoff Bay and 1989, but the bars are totally equal.

Is that for the one family that's living there, or is there more? Through the chairman, but in 1989 there were more families living there. All right, thanks. Mr. One.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My next question is on slide number 23, and I just want to under— make sure I understand this correctly. So for Alaska Peninsula area, it is all salmon goal for ANS. So when I look at this, I'm seeing the ANS is 34,000 to 56,000. So am I looking at this graph seeing that subsistence needs have not been met since 1985?

Through the chair, Member Erwin. So the ANS for the Alaska Peninsula area and the Aleutian Islands area, when the board determined those numbers, they included home pack as part of it. And so this is just showing the subsistence salmon harvest data through permits, because as the annual data that we have, it does not include the home pack parts in there that would need to be factored in for for an evaluation of the ANS. Okay, thank you very much. I think the other piece of that, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that it also depends on the number of people that are participating, right?

So the ANS is set, but that not— it isn't necessarily an indication of whether or not people have enough fish or not, always. Is that correct? Yeah, Madam Chair, that is correct. It is a metric, but it is not a defined— you know, there are lots of reasons of why the ANS is not being met. Thank you.

Other questions? All right, thank you very much for your presentation. I would like to push through, through the next one and then take a short break if that's amenable to the members. I think we got 17 slides in this one, so I'd like to get through this one and then we'll take a break. Sport fish.

Gentlemen, whenever you're ready.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Tyler Pollom. I'm the area biologist for sport fish for the Kodiak and Alaska Peninsula Aleutian Islands management areas for And I have with me Jay Baumer, the Regional Management Coordinator, and Tyler Dan with the Genetics Lab. I'll present an overview of the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands Management Area sport fisheries and information specific to sport fisheries addressed in the proposals that will be presented to the board at this meeting. This presentation can also be found in RC3, tab 3.

And I apologize, I am quite hoarse today, so I may just need a moment at times. Please bear with me.

From the Kodiak office, myself and an assistant area biologist with other staff oversee the management of the Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, and Kodiak management areas. And the Alaska Peninsula Aleutian Islands area includes all of the salt and fresh waters south and west of the lines shown on the map at Cape Douglas that forms the border with the Cook Inlet management area. And Cape Menchikof that forms the border with the Bristol Bay area. The Kodiak management area is shown inside the red box at the right of the map, and that's a separate management area.

Sport fisheries in the Alaska Peninsula Aleutian Islands area include freshwater fishing for king, sockeye, coho, and pink salmon, as well as steelhead in drainages throughout the area, with the largest fisheries occurring within— on Alaska Bay. Saltwater sport fisheries also occur primarily on the south side of the Alaska Peninsula through and through the Aleutian Islands targeting king and coho salmon and halibut, rockfish, and lingcod. And very little sport fishing occurs in salt waters of the North Alaska Peninsula. Access to sport fisheries in the Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands area are primarily through travel by boat or airplane except in the— near the small road networks adjacent to Cold Bay and in Unalaska. Nearly all other sport fisheries of the area are extremely remote and most often accessed by anglers through a guide service or located near one of the permanent— the several permanent settlements in the area.

The North Alaska Peninsula has numerous drainages flowing in— that flow into the Bering Sea, and many of these rivers support all 5 species of Pacific salmon, as well as Dolly Varden, rainbow trout, and steelhead. Drainages supporting king salmon runs addressed in these proposals at this meeting are shown in blue on this map. Also included is the only drainage on the south side of the Alaska Peninsula with a king salmon run, the Chicknik River. Rivers addressed in the proposals at this meeting are located in an approximately 200-mile section of the Alaska Peninsula along the Bering Sea and are some of the more remote and difficult to access sport fisheries in the state.

Sport fisheries on individual drainages in the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands area are very small, often from guided anglers, and the inaccessibility of the area lends itself to low participation in harvest in nearly all sport fisheries. As such, estimates of harvest and catch and effort are— for sport fisheries are rarely available for individual drainages or fisheries and are presented in aggregations for the whole of the area, as response rates to the statewide harvest survey are intermittent or too low to generate estimates for individual fisheries.

According to the statewide harvest survey estimates, from 2015 to '24, an average of 13,400 angler days of effort were expended in all sport fisheries of the area. And this is less than 1% of the statewide total angler effort. An average of about 5,000 angler days were, were expended in saltwater sport fisheries and about 8,400 angler days in freshwater sport fisheries.

Angler effort targeting king salmon accounts for about 29% of the total freshwater sport fishing effort in the, in the area on average. And while the statewide harvest survey does not directly estimate effort by species, this graph shows the number of days spent fishing by anglers who reported catching a king salmon. Estimates of king salmon harvest are low, averaging 253 king salmon from 2015 to 2024. For the entire area, ranging from 16 fish to 646 fish. The number of king salmon caught and released during this period is much higher, averaging 4,376 and ranging from 98 to over 11,000.

The only estimate of king salmon escapement in the North Alaska Peninsula is for Nelson River, using weir and post-season aerial surveys to count survey counts to estimate king salmon escapement and monitor the run in season.

Other king salmon runs in the North Alaska Peninsula are monitored opportunistically by aerial surveys. And aerial surveys are conducted by the Division of Commercial Fisheries primarily to count sockeye, pink, and chum salmon. Surveys are not necessarily conducted at peak run timing for king salmon and may not cover the full extent of king salmon distribution in a drainage. And coverage of aerial surveys may also vary considerably between years or may not be conducted every year. As a multitude of factors influence the timing and extent of these surveys.

A biological escapement goal has been established for the Nelson River of 2,400 to 5,000 king salmon, and the BEG has been achieved in all but one of the last 10 years. The recent 10-year average escapement was 4,294 fish, and the, and the record escapement occurred in 2019 with more than 12,000 king salmon counted. While many king salmon runs throughout the state are experiencing decreased productivity, The Nelson River and other North Alaska Peninsula rivers have generally remained stable in their run size in recent years and have provided stable fishing opportunity, including the opportunity for harvest in some drainages. While other drainages in the area have produced a harvestable surplus of king salmon, they are closed to harvest or have a reduced bag limit by regulation.

There are 7 proposals specific to North Alaska Peninsula king salmon sport fisheries that will come before the for the board at this meeting. Proposal 155 will address season dates for the use of bait and treble hooks in the Bear and King Salmon Rivers. Proposal 156 seeks to restrict the harvest of king salmon in the Cinder, Meshick, Black Hills, and North Creek drainages to only king salmon under 20 inches. Proposal 157 and 158 seek to prohibit king salmon— retention of king salmon in the Sandy River. And Proposals 159 and 160 are similar in that they seek to prohibit harvest of king salmon in the Sandy River, as well as restrict tackle to single hook and artificial lures or flies.

And then Proposal 161 seeks to establish a management plan for king salmon runs in the North Alaska Peninsula, and this proposal encompasses the area and regulations addressed in all of the previous proposals.

Area-wide bag limits are in place for freshwater salmon fisheries of the Alaska Peninsula, with a combined bag, bag limit for salmon other than king salmon of 5 per day, 10 in possession. And this can be any combination of sockeye, coho, pink, or chum salmon, except in Onalaska Bay where only 2 per day, 2 in possession, maybe coho salmon or sockeye salmon. King salmon bag limits are 2 per day, 2 in possession, with a 5-fish annual limit. And the king salmon set— the king salmon season from— is from January 1st through July 25th, except in the Chignik River where the king salmon season runs through August 9th. Month.

King salmon less than 20 inches have a bag limit of 10 per day, 10 in possession, with no annual limit. Bear and King Salmon Rivers addressed in Proposal 155 are located near the remote cannery of Port Moller, just to the east of Moller Bay, shown in the— in blue at the map— in the— about the middle of the map.

And Proposal 155 seeks to align the season dates for restricting tackle in these two drainages to single-hook artificial artificial lures or flies with the king salmon season. And the current regulations for Bear and King Salmon Rivers are a bag limit of 10 king salmon per day under 20 inches and no retention of king salmon 20 inches or greater. And tackle is restricted to single hook artificial lures or flies year-round.

Four other drainages are addressed in Proposal 156 and are among the drainages shown in blue on the map. These are the Cinder River in the northeastern part of Alaska Peninsula in the upper part of the map, the Meshik River, which is the next drainage shown to the south and the west, the Black Hills River shown at the left in the southwestern part of the Alaska Peninsula, and then North Creek, which is the river furthest south and west of the map.

Proposal 156 seeks to prohibit retention of king salmon 20 inches or greater in the Cinder, Meshick, and Black Hills River and in North Creek, and restrict tackle to single hook and artificial lures or flies. And current regulations in these 4 drainages are just the area-wide king salmon bag limit and season of 2 per day with a 5-fish annual limit with a king salmon season that runs through July 25th.

And then the Sandy River is addressed in Proposals 157 through 160. And this is located just to the east of Bear River, about the middle of the map shown in blue.

And each of these 4 proposals seeks to prohibit retention of king salmon in the Sandy River drainage. And then proposals 159 and 160 also seek to restrict tackle options to single-hook artificial lures or flies. And then the king salmon bag limits in the, in the Sandy River are less than the area-wide bag limits, with a bag and possession limit of 1 king salmon salmon per day and a 2-fish annual limit. And bait and treble hooks are currently prohibited year-round in the, in the Sandy River. And then Proposal 161 addresses all of the drainages with king salmon flowing into the Bering Sea on the Alaska Peninsula.

This includes most of the drainages on the North Alaska Peninsula, and major king salmon-producing rivers are shown here, most of which we just discussed. The Chignik River is again the sole drainage excluded from this proposal. Being the only king salmon run in the area flowing into the Gulf of Alaska.

The proposal seeks to create a King Salmon Management Plan for North Alaska Peninsula drainages. It stipulates that it would cover sport subsistence and personal use fisheries for Bering Sea drainages not covered under an existing plan. It would address both the existing complex of drainage-specific sport regulations regarding king salmon fisheries in the area as well as regulations proposed in the 6 other proposals coming before the board at this meeting. There are currently no management plans for sport fisheries or for any of these fisheries in place in the area, nor are there personal use fisheries in the Alaska Peninsula.

As mentioned in the— in discussing the previous proposals, there are a number of existing drainages specific to— with specific regulations in the Alaska Peninsula. The Nelson River that we did not discuss for specific regulations, is closed to the retention of king salmon as well as the use of bait and treble hooks during the king salmon season. Bear and King Salmon Rivers are closed to retention of king salmon under 20 inches, and bait and treble hooks are prohibited year-round. Sandy River has a king salmon bag and possession limit of 1 fish with a 2-fish annual limit, and bait and treble hooks are prohibited year-round. Chignik River has an alternate king salmon season that runs from January 1st through August 9th.

But again, it's not a bearing sea drainage and will be addressed in an upcoming presentation and in the discussion of the Chignik River King Salmon Stock of Concern Action Plan.

Thanks, Madam Chair and members of the board. And this time I can take any questions you might have. Mr. Carpenter, thank you. Thanks for the presentation. Just a quick question.

So looking at the Nelson River, you know, it's— I understand generally the population size, we have weir information there, etc. But when you look at like the Bear, Sandy, Meschick, Cinder Rivers, am I to assume that obviously those populations of king specifically in those rivers are much smaller than the Nelson River? Is that hundreds of fish generally across the board? I mean, what— just a general idea.

Yeah, Mr. Carpenter, through the chair, good question. The— as you mentioned, we have— we only have weir counts and really good escapement estimates for the Nelson. We don't have actual escapement estimates for any of the other drainages. Based on the aerial survey data that we do have and then the weir counts that we used to get at the Sandy River, the— those— any of those runs can be any— from in the range of hundreds of fish to thousands from what we've seen in the past. We don't have an idea of the upper end of that, but the average counts are listed for many of those in our staff comments.

I don't have them in front of me at the moment, but those are— some of them are in the hundreds and some of them are in the thousands. And so could be comparable to Nelson, but some are much smaller too. And then just one quick follow-up. What kind of overlap timing is there between the king salmon and the steelhead season on those smaller rivers?

Mr. Carpenter, through the chair, there's, there's almost no overlap between the salmon run other than coho salmon for kings or the other summer species on the Alaska Peninsula between those and steelhead. Steelhead in the rivers in this area are leaving the drainage after spawning in May, perhaps as late as early June. That would be the most that they overlap. And then they don't return until the end of September or into October. So as far as returning from the ocean, there's no overlap in those.

Thank you.

Quick question on slide 7. I see that this is representative of the entire area. That's a really big area, right? And if I just heard you correctly, that this, this would include the Chignik River and the Nelson River, I presume, presumably. But those rivers have not had any king retention in recent years.

So this is representative of primarily those other North Penn systems. Madam Chair, that's correct. Yes. So Chignik has been closed for several years or restricted to some degree. Nelson is restricted by regulation.

And so these would be barren king salmon rivers prior to 2023 as— and then otherwise Sandy, North Creek, Black Hills, as you met— as we discussed in other proposals, and then Cinder and Meschick would be the other big ones. Okay. I would be kind of interested in seeing how that breaks out per system that you have articulated in this. So obviously the Chignik, the ones on the north, and then ones on the North Penn, and sort of I would like to see the breakout of this. Now, is the, is the release rate high because there's been non-retention but fishing is allowed?

What's going on there? Yeah, Madam Chair, so yes, the, the release rate is high because many of these rivers, many people choose to catch and release fish in these rivers, particularly with the guide services. So that has been a practice for many years, even despite regulations that have been enacted. But in this case there is the catch-and-release regulations at Nelson do come into play with that, as well as the lower bag limit at Sandy. You're necessarily going to have more release of king salmon there than you would at other places that would have a more liberal harvest bag limit.

And as far as breaking out these individual drainages, we, we don't get enough responses from any particular drainages to be able to do that with the statewide harvest survey, unfortunately. And so we get— this is, this is as fine a resolution as we get for sport harvest data for the area. And at least in the last 10 years, when we had freshwater logbook data prior to 2016, then we were able to do that, but not, not in recent times. So in your— in the statewide harvest survey, it only says like North Penn, South Penn, just Alaska Peninsula. It's an aggregate for freshwater anyway.

For some saltwater fisheries, we're able to break those out. And then for species like coho salmon in Cold Bay, we're able to break those out occasionally as well. But these are small enough on an individual basis that we have to combine them into larger pools. You don't have to. I mean, it would seem like it would be simple enough on a statewide harvest survey to just check, you know, just add some of the systems in.

I mean, And it would be a matter of just refining the survey, you know, the survey just ever so slightly. [Speaker:MR. BOLL] Madam Chair, the statewide harbor survey response rates for individual drainages are less than what the standardized published number is in almost every single year for individual drainages. And that's why we pool them as such here. And so if there's more clarification on that that we need, I can talk to statewide harbor survey staff But that's what we have here. I think we can do better.

Thank you, Mr. Swenson. Thanks for your presentation. Is there any concern? I know there's several proposals there near Port Moller, those rivers there, and I've heard— is there any concern about some of the Bristol Bay lodges flying people down to those drainages and then affecting worried about affecting the amount of kings that would be taken if they're allowed to keep them.

Mr. Fenson, through the chair, um, there— we don't have any conservation concerns currently for these king runs in relation to the increasing effort, or in terms of the total sport fishing effort. It's very low in all drainages. Some of the Bristol Bay— some of the air— the rivers are probably more accessible for Bristol Bay King Salmon and Bear Rivers are already closed to harvest of king salmon over 20 inches and are on our— I don't know the exact distance, but are a couple hundred miles from some of the nearest Bristol Bay fisheries. So there's significant distance.

Thank you.

All right, thank you for your presentation. I appreciate you breaking it out the way that you did. It was informative. And we're going to go ahead and We're going to take about a 20-minute break. We'll come back on the record at 10:50.

10:50.

All right, welcome everybody. Time is 10:54. We are back on the record and going to continue with staff reports. I think we have up North Alaska Pen Commercial Salmon Management. Gentlemen, whenever you're ready.

[MASKED] Madam Chair, members of the board, good morning. My name is Charles Russell and I'm the area management biologist for the North Alaska Peninsula, and today I'm going to talk about North Alaska Peninsula commercial salmon fisheries. For your reference, hard copies of this presentation are in RC3 tab 4, and for your convenience, slides after the COVID slide are numbered sequentially in the lower right-hand corner. My written report is available in the additional report section of your binders, and the staff comments can be found in 2.

I'll start out with an overview of the North Salish— North Peninsula area, continuing the North Peninsula fisheries assessment tools and salmon management, followed by a brief summary of relevant salmon harvest and escapement information, and finally an overview of the proposals before you today.

This slide shows fishing districts in the North Peninsula and locations of importance. The North Peninsula includes two commercial salmon fishing districts. The northwestern, shown here in yellow. The northwestern district encompasses the coastal waters from Cape Sarichef to Moffett Point and includes areas such as Urilla Bay, Swanson Lagoon, and Eisenbeck-Moffett Bay. The northern district, shown here in blue.

And the northern district encompasses the waters from Moffett Point to Cape Minchikoff, which is the northern boundary line with Area T or the Bristol Bay Area Management Area. This area includes the communities of Port Haydn, Nelson Lagoon, and Port Moller. And I've also included relevant geographical points such as Cape Cinnabon, Unagashak Bluffs, Stroganoff Point for your reference.

There are 6— sockeye salmon are the dominant species along the North Peninsula, and there are 6 major sockeye producing systems in the Northern District seen here highlighted in blue. Those are the Nelson River, the Bear River, Sandy River, Ilmik River, Meshick River, and the Cinder River. In addition to those listed above, there are numerous smaller producing sockeye systems throughout the area as well.

This map shows the Northern District sections and, and is where most of the sockeye salmon harvest occurs on the North Peninsula. For reference, the areas in black are closed to commercial salmon fishing year-round, and the date next to each section is the earliest possible possible opening date. These sections are the Black Hills, Caribou Flats, Nelson Lagoon, Harrodine and Molar Bay, Port Molar Bight, Bear River, Three Hills, Ilnik, which is split into Southwest Ilnik and Northeast Ilnik, the inner Port Hayden, the Outer Port Haiden and the Cinder River. Most of the proposals before you today address sections found in this area.

The predominant gear types used in the North Alaska Peninsula are drift and set gillnets, though purse seine and hand seines are legal gear types in some areas. Areas open to all gear types are shown in blue and those include the Northwestern District and in the Northern District, the Harranee-Molar Bay and Port Molar Bight sections. The Bear River section is the only area open to drift gillnet, purse seine, and hand seine gear groups and is shown in yellow. Areas open to drift and set gillnet are shown in red. These include the Black Hills, Nelson Lagoon, Ilnick, Inner Port Haiden, and Cinder River sections.

And finally, areas open exclusively to drift gillnet are shown in green, and those are the Three Hills and Outer Port Haiden sections.

There are 4 salmon enumeration weirs on the North Peninsula, and they are located all within the Northern District and they are located at the Nelson River, the Bear River, and the Sandy River. However, the Sandy River weir was not operated in 2025 due to budget constraints, and continued operation is uncertain moving forward. And finally, the Ilnek River weir.

These weirs operate from approximately the first week of June, uh, through the end of July, except for the Bear River weir, which operates till the end of August. The rest of the area rivers and streams are monitored by aerial surveys, and aerial surveys are one of our primary sources of end season data for monitoring king, pink, chum, and coho escapements throughout the area.

North Alaska Peninsula salmon fisheries are managed based on abundance with our primary management objective on the North Peninsula being to achieve escapement goals and provide escapement throughout the run. Escapement information for the area is based on weir counts and aerial surveys, and this data is our primary tool to determine when the department can provide an opportunity to harvest fish surplus to escapement needs. Time and area provided for commercial fisheries is also dependent on other factors such as commercial harvest, which is reported daily to ADF&G, allowing managers to monitor harvest trends and fleet distribution closely. Test fisheries are also used to determine salmon abundance and is a common tool used in August during Bear River late run And finally, biological sampling programs such as ACEX and LINT data round out our understanding of the fishery.

This slide shows the 5 main sections northeast of Port Moller and the stocks currently managed in, in these sections under the Northern District Salmon Fisheries Management Plan through July 20 and post-July 20. The Bear River section is managed based on the abundance of bear and Sandy River sockeye salmon through July 20 and post-July 20. The Three Hills section is managed based on the abundance of Bear, Sandy, and Ilnek River sockeye salmon through July 20th and on the abundance of Bear and Sandy post-July 20th. In the Ilnek section through July 20th, the area southwest of Unagashak Bluffs is managed based off the abundance of Ilnek sockeye salmon and the area northeast of Unagashak Bluffs is managed based on the abundance of Meshik and Ilnek River sockeye salmon. Post-July 20th through August 15th, the Ilnek section is managed based off the abundance of Bear River sockeye and after August 15th, the area is managed based on Unagaxak and Ilnek River Coho salmon stocks, as well as late-run Bear River sockeye salmon.

The Outer Port Haiden section is managed based on the abundance of Meshik River sockeye salmon from June 20th through July 31st. Additionally, the Ilnek and Outer Port Haiden sections can be managed to conserve Ugashik River salmon, but only if specific closures occur within the Igugik District.

Unique to the North Peninsula is the Area M and Bristol Bay overlap area shown here in orange. The overlap area was created, created shortly after statehood to allow Port Haiden and Pilot Point residents who fish in Bristol Bay to continue, continue fishing in waters at Area M that they have historically fished in the past, either for king salmon during May and June or for coho salmon during August and September. This area allows Bristol Bay permit holders to fish during specific times within these areas. And in 2016, the board allowed Area T permit holders to fish in inner Port Haiden and Cinder River sections for salmon year-round. Year-round.

It should be noted that during June and July, only the Cinder River Lagoon, shown here in green, is open in the Cinder River section. In the Ilnick Lagoon portion, shown here in red, of the Ilnick section, Bristol Bay permit holders are allowed to commercial fish for salmon from August 1st through December 31st. But in recent years, little or no fishing effort from Bristol Bay permit holders has occurred in the inner Port Haydn and Cinder River sections, and it has been many years since Bristol Bay permit— permits have fished inside Ilnick Lagoon. For more details about this area are available in my written report.

The following 5 slides present salmon harvest and escapement data relevant to the proposals before you, with the number of fish on the y-axis and the year on the x-axis, with 5, 10, and 20-year averages when available. This graph shows North Peninsula harvest from 1992 through 2025. Sockeye salmon are the dominant species harvested on the North Peninsula and represent on average 90% of the harvest. Harvest, with the majority of this harvest in recent years occurring in the OPH and Ilnek sections of the Northern District. Since the last Board of Fish meeting in 2023, the North Peninsula commercial salmon harvests have been well below the 2010 and 5-year average each year.

Chum salmon are typically the second most harvested commercial salmon species. For the most part, chum salmon are harvested incidentally during the sockeye fishery in the Northern District, but when direct fisheries do occur, they are predominantly harvested in the Eisenbeck-Moffett Bay section in the Northwestern District and in the Haredeen-Port Moller Bay section in the Northern District. And coho salmon are our third most harvested commercial salmon species, with Nelson Lagoon typically the largest producer of coho on the North Peninsula, followed by Ilnek, Cinder, and Meshick Rivers. However, due to market conditions and processor availability, it has been, it's been quite a few years since the North Peninsula has seen a directed coho fishery, and in recent years the harvest has been incidental and primarily occurs during the sockeye fishery.

These two graphs show sockeye salmon harvest from 1992 through 2025 for the Bear River, Three Hills, and Ilnek and OPH sections. The Bear River section is shown in green, the Three Hills section is in black, the Ilnek section in red, and the Outer Port Hayden section in blue. These labels are the same for both graphs. The top graph shows salmon harvest by section through July 20. The majority of Northern District sockeye harvest occurs during June and July.

And over the past 3 years, the pre-July 20 harvest has been limited to the Ilnick and Outer Port Haiden sections due to below-average sockeye returns to the Bear and Sandy Rivers. The bottom graph shows the harvest after July 20, which in most years is primarily composed of late Bear River sockeye salmon. And this run typically supports harvest through August and in some years well into September.

This graph shows the total North Peninsula sockeye salmon escapement from '92 through 2025. As stated earlier, sockeye salmon are counted through the area at 4 salmon counting weirs, and aerial surveys are conducted on the other systems. The 5, 10, and 20-year averages range from about 1.1 to 1.3 million sockeye salmon in all rivers combined. In 2017, the escapement of roughly 2.36 million fish across the North Peninsula was the largest escapement on record. But since 2018, the area-wide escapements have been fairly consistent, averaging 1.2 million fish across, across across the North Peninsula, and a detailed breakdown of these escapements by system is provided in my written report.

This graph shows Nelson River sockeye salmon total run size from 1970 through 2025. The total run is divided into harvest shown in red and escapement shown in blue, which, which includes Nelson River weir counts and the aerial survey data from the David and Caribou River drainages. As shown in the graph, the 2004 run of well over 1 million Nelson River sockeye salmon was the largest return on record, with a harvest of over 500,000 and escapement of over 500,000. From 2019 through 2022, the Nelson River sockeye runs were consistently below average, averaging approximately 240,000 sockeye with an average harvest of 82,000 and an escapement of around 150, uh, 156. However, since 2024, Nelson River sockeye runs have rebounded and have been above the 20, 10, and 5-year averages with the 2024 sockeye run being the third largest return on record with a harvest of 205,000 fish and an escapement of over 775,000, which is the largest escapement on record.

This graph shows the number of permits fished in the Northern District by sections from 2005 through 2025, as well as the total number, number of permits fished. As you can see from the graph, the Ilnek and OPH section typically has the most permit participation year to year, while the Bear and Three Hill sections can vary depending on the sockeye salmon returns to the Bear and Sandy River systems, which in recent years have not provided much harvest opportunity. The Nelson Lagoon section is primarily fished by the set gillnet fleet, and in 2025 we had approximately 16 set gillnet permits and 8 drift gillnets per— participate in that fishery. Overall, the number of permits fished has been steadily decreasing since a peak of 170 in 2019 And in 2025, only 131 permits participated in the Northern District commercial salmon fishery, which includes 18 set gillnet and 113 drift gillnet permits. This decline over the past few years is likely due to a few different issues, including a sharp decline in value for salmon in 2023 due to market conditions, declining sockeye harvests, and the closure of the processing plant in Port Moller in 2024.

This graph shows the total ex-vessel value for North Peninsula for all salmon species from 2016 through 2025, with a 10-year average and the most recent 3-year average. Drift gillnet harvest is in blue, purse seine in red, and set gillnet in green. During the last 10 years, on average, the North Peninsula fisheries contributed 29% of the total ex-vessel value of the Area M fishery, with the majority of this harvest occurring in the Northern District by the drift gillnet fishery. As discussed in earlier slides, harvest of sockeye salmon have been below average on the North Peninsula over the last 3 years, resulting in a decline of ex-vessel value. Over the past 3 years, the average ex-vessel value has been approximately $6.4 million, substantially lower than the 10-year average of $15.6 million.

And broken down by gear type, the drift gillnet fishery averaged around $5.4 million, the set gillnet fishery averaged $800,000, and the purse seine fishery averaged $281,000 fish— or, uh, $281,000.

Altogether, there are 6 proposals specific to the Northern District salmon fisheries. Before the board in 2026. Proposal 113 would reopen the Caribou Flats section to commercial salmon fishing. Proposal 114 repeals language from the Northern District Salmon Fisheries Management Plan that sunset on December 31st, 2018. Proposal 115 changes the Northern District Fisheries Management Plan to increase the time the Ilnek section is managed during July for Ilnek sockeye, and it adds additional language for the management of Bear River sockeye in the southwest portion of Ilnek— of the Ilnek area.

Proposal 116 adds mandatory closures to the Northern District fisheries to conserve Nelson Lagoon sockeye salmon. And Proposal 117 requires steelhead to be reported as bycatch during the Northern District Coho Salmon fisheries.

And that concludes my presentation, and I would like to thank ADFNG Comfish staff, specifically the following individuals. And with that, I can take any questions you may have. Okay, thank you. Questions? Mr. Irwin.

Thank you. Thank you for that presentation, Mr. Russell. I just have a clarifying question on slide number 10 with the salmon harvest. You mentioned the chum fishing, and my question is, is there a directed chum fishery on North Penn? And if so, is, is it a, is it also a mixed stock chum fishery, or is it trying to be a directed stock at local chums?

Through the chair, yep. So most of the Northern District chum salmon harvest that occurs in June, July is going to be— or in July is likely local stocks. If we have a directed fishery within Eisenbeck-Moffett Bay or the Herring Port Moller Bay section, that's considered 100% local. Those are where our our largest chum returns are. We also have significant chum salmon returns that can go into the Meshick River.

As in 2025, we had a fairly large chum salmon return to the Meshick River, and that was reflected in our harvests for the season as well in, in the Ilmaken, Outer Port Huyden section. So, okay, thank you.

So again, I think this gets to my— some of my earlier questions about just how are we determining what that stock composition is? Is it purely where they're fishing at? Are they literally at the mouths of these systems?

How are you— how is the department determining that those are— I think your words were 100% local stocks. Yeah, Madam Chair, not 100%, but it's— I'll refer to the genetics staff here for the percentages of the chum stock from the WASP report, but it's a— well, Tyler D.

For the record, my name is Tyler Dan. I'm a fisheries geneticist with the department, and the only data we have regarding the chum stock composition from the North Alaska Peninsula fisheries comes from 2007 to 2009 as part of the WASP study. Which were analyzed and summarized many different ways. And so if there's a particular question that I could try to dig up some information for, I'd be happy to try. Okay, let's see how many different ways I can ask this question.

Okay. My question is, how is the department determining the origin of the chum stock that are being harvested in the North Pen? Okay. Whether that's, you know, what I've heard repeatedly is is that the western Alaska chum stock is very difficult genetically to distinguish between Bristol Bay and Points North. What I'm hearing from— I think at this meeting now is that the North Penn are genetically distinct.

My question is, how are you determining that when you're making statements like 100% or near 100% or majority or substantially or all these sort of qualified statements? I'm curious how we're getting there. Yeah, Madam Chair, I think there are two things in your inquiry that maybe I could try to clean up. And one is the, the distinctiveness between populations which are part of reporting groups, and I'll go through this in my presentation later. And the next part of your question, I think, is what is the stock composition of the harvest, which is a separate inquiry.

But to quickly walk through the first question, We collect samples from the spawning grounds to represent known baseline samples. We test for differences between those collections and those that are not different, we pool together and consider those a population. Groups of populations that are similar enough and different enough from other groups of populations, and we determine that separation through rigorous testing, are reporting groups or stocks. And you are correct that there is a lack of distinction within western Alaska, which extends from Norton Sound down through Bristol Bay. The point of distinction between populations in that group, which is coastal western Alaska and the North Peninsula, is roughly for chum salmon in the area between Naknek and Igigiq, And for Chinook salmon, that area is between Ugashik and the Cinder River.

So it does line up with the management boundary in that case. Okay. And so I guess— and I heard that earlier and that question was answered earlier. I guess my question is, is that based on WASP?

The stock composition of the fishery— that WASP is the best available information that we have, but that was collected some time ago. For both chum and Chinook salmon, we have developed updated baselines. And so that information is based upon current baselines. And so the harvest then is determined how the harvest proportions are determined. How we currently are not sampling North Peninsula harvest to determine the stock composition of those catches.

Okay. So you can't make the assumption then that 100% are local stocks.

For the record, my name is James Jackson. I'm the Westward Region Management Coordinator. I think there's two questions that you're, you're trying to ask here. There are the chum salmon that are incidentally harvested in the drift fishery, but there are also terminal chum salmon harvests. So if you're having a terminal chum salmon harvest up in Harrandine and Moller Bay, the department just assumes because they're all the way up at the head of the bay they're likely all local origin.

The same thing goes for the Eisenbeck-Moffett area because they're inside Eisenbeck Bay. The department determines that, or we assume that they're 100% local. Okay, that is for those two systems. And that's what my question was, is that determined by literally where the people are harvesting? But in the North Penn, when you talk about those other systems and you're lumping them in the North Peninsula here, I'm asking how that determination is made, especially when you have arbitrarily drawn boundary lines.

You know, for this case, the, you know, we, the department and the board draws a boundary line. The fish don't care about that. I'm just curious how we're determining that if we're making those kind of qualitative statements.

Madam Chair, so again, you know, obviously you've got the terminal harvest areas, which we assume are all local, but then in looking at the WASP data, the majority of the chum salmon incidentally harvested in the sockeye salmon fishery were also of local origin. So that's why the department assumes they are mostly all local stocks. Okay. Any other questions? Thank you for your presentation.

All right.

Well, we'll move on to South Unit Mountain Chinook and Islands. Go for it.

Whenever you're ready.

Hello, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, my name is Matt Keyes. I'm the area management biologist for the South Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Island salmon and herring fisheries. There are 3 management plans currently in regulation that direct fishery management in the South Alaska Peninsula: the South Unimak and Shumagin Islands June Salmon Management Plan, which will be covered in this presentation, the Southeastern District Mainland Salmon Management Plan, and the Post-June Salmon Management Plan for the South Alaska Peninsula, which will be covered in the following presentations. For your convenience, slides after the COVID slide are numbered sequentially in the lower right corner.

The written report containing information about the South Alaska Peninsula can be found in supplemental materials. Staff comments can be found in RC2, and a copy of oral reports can be found in RC3, tab 5.

In this presentation, I will cover the fishery location, a brief history of the June fishery, the current regulations found in the June management plan, a summary of the 2023 through 2025 June fisheries, the economic importance of the June fishery to the South Alaska Peninsula and Area M, and an overview of proposals and issues related to the June fishery that will be before the board.

The South Alaska Peninsula area management area is defined as waters south of Alaska Peninsula between Scotch Cap and Kupreanof Point in the east. The South Peninsula is divided into 4 districts: the Unimak District, the Southwestern District, the Southcentral District, and the Southeastern District. Although Bechevin Bay section is part of the Northwestern District, It is included in the South Peninsula June Fishery Management Plan. The June fishery is set— is fished by set gillnet, drift gillnet, and seine gear.

Set gillnet gear is allowed in the June fishery in the Bechuan Bay section of the Northwestern District, the Unimak District, the Southwestern District, the West and East Pavlof Bay section of the Southcentral District, and the Shumagin Island section of the Southeastern District.

Drift gillnet gear is allowed in the June fishery in the Unimak District, portions of the Southwestern District, and the Bechman Bay section of the Northwestern District.

Pursing gear is allowed in the Shumagin Island section of the Southeastern District, portions of the Southwestern District shown here in blue, the Unimak District, and the Bechman Bay section of the Northwestern District. Changes were made at the 2019 board meeting that removed pursing gear from the Dolgoi Island area which will be covered next.

There are regulations in the June fishery related to the Dolgoy Island area. This area includes the South Central District in yellow and parts of the Southwestern District in blue. These areas are only open to set gillnet gear and drift gillnet gear. Set gillnet gear can fish in the yellow and blue portions in June, and while drift gillnet gear can only be fished in the area shaded with dots in the outer portions of the southwestern district. In regulations, if 191,000 sockeye salmon are harvested in the blue and yellow areas, the crosshatched areas are closed until July 25th.

All 5 species of Pacific salmon common in North America are harvested during the June fishery. There are 2 main species of interest in this fishery, which are sockeye and chum salmon. The June fishery is a mixed stock fishery and has complex regulatory history, and controversy became intense between Alaska Peninsula area and Bristol Bay area fishermen during the 1960s and early '70s when the June fishery was open to commercial fishing from 4, 4.5 to 7 days per week regardless of the Bristol Bay salmon forecast. Subsequently, from 1975 to 2000, fishing time in the June fishery was limited by provisions in the management plan that included Bristol Bay sockeye salmon allocations, seasonal and weekly harvest limits, and changes in the season start dates and fishing windows. In the mid-1980s, low numbers of chum salmon returns to the Arctic Yukon-Kuskokwim region prompted regulations with sockeye to chum salmon ratio limits and chum salmon caps.

Appendix B2 in your written report gives a more complete regulatory history.

This graph shows the historical harvest of sockeye salmon in the June fishery from 1960 to 2025, with the year along the bottom of the graph and the number of sockeye salmon harvest in millions along this— along the side. The South Unimak June sockeye salmon harvest are in the solid red portion The upper crosshatched red portion represents the Shumagin Islands June sockeye salmon harvest. In 1975, a management plan was implemented where 8.3% of the forecasted inshore Bristol Bay sockeye salmon harvest was allocated to the June fishery. The allocation was further distributed as 6.8% to the South Unimak area and 1.5% allocated to the Shumagin Islands. These allocations were based on historical harvest and remain in effect through the year 2000.

From 2001 to 2003, the June plan was amended to allow no more than 3 days of fishing per week, no more than 16 hours of fishing per day, and no more than 48 hours or 2 consecutive days of fishing in a 7-day period. Additionally, the area was open to fishing in the South Unimak portion of the June fishery The area— sorry, the area open to fishing in the South Unimak portion of the June fishery was much smaller. These regulations were changed in 2004 to a fishery schedule that is very similar to the regulations in place today.

This graph shows the historical harvest of chum salmon in the June fishery from 1960 to 2025, again with the year along the bottom of the graph and the number of chum salmon harvested in millions along the side. I intentionally left the scale of this graph the same as the previous graph to highlight the contribution of chum salmon relative to sockeye salmon in the June fishery. The South Unimak June chum salmon harvests are represented in the solid green portions on the bottom, and the upper crosshatched green portion represents the Shumagin Islands June salmon harvest. In 1982, a 1.1 million chum salmon harvest in June fisheries combined with a very poor Yukon River fall chum salmon created controversy between fishermen in the Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim region and those in the Alaska Peninsula area. A chum cap was first established in 1986 at 400,000 chum salmon, except for 1987 when there was no chum cap.

The cap was set at a specific number and was changed several times over the years. The 1998— in 1998, a floating chum salmon cap was established that would range from 350,000 to 650,000 depending on the harvest projections of Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim chum salmon. The chum cap regulations remained in effect until 2000. Again, in 2001 to 2003, highlighted here, regulations was adopted during the February 2023 Board of Fishery meeting that directed department to manage the June fishery using chum triggers that would reduce the final two fishing periods by 50% or close the final fishing period for purse seine gear if met.

This graph depicts the historical harvest of chum and sockeye salmon in the June fishery from 1960 to 2025. The red portions of the graph is sockeye salmon and the upper crosshatched green portion is chum salmon. Again, here are the years with allocated plans associated with Bristol Bay. Here are the years with chum salmon caps as part of the management plan.

Again, here are the years with the allocated plans associated with Bristol Bay. I'm sorry. Here are the years with the 2001-2003 management plan in place. Again, the 2004 board adopted regulations for the June fishery that were very similar to those used to manage the June fishery. And here are the chum triggers that are being used to manage the June fishery currently.

Current regulations that were adopted in 2023 pertaining to the management of the June fishery are as follows: set gillnet gear may open on June 6th for 64 hours. Fishing periods are set. There are 4 commercial fishing periods for set gillnet and drift gillnet gear. Fishing periods are set to begin on June 10th, 15th, 20th, and 25th. Each fishing period begins at 6 AM, lasts for 88 hours in length, and closes at 10 PM.

Fishing periods are separated by 32-hour closures.

There are also 4 fishing periods for purse seine gear. The first fishing period begins at 5:59 AM on June 10th for 68 hours, followed by a 76-hour closure. The second fishing period begins at 5:59 AM on June 16th for 66 hours, followed by a 32-hour closure. The final two fishing periods are 88 hours in length and begin on June 20th and June 25th and are interspersed by 32-hour closures.

Additional changes that were made to the South Unimak and Shumagin Islands June fishery in 2023 with the adoption of the chum salmon harvest triggers on June 18th and June 23rd. If by June 18th, 300,000 chum salmon were harvested by all gear types in the South Alaska Peninsula, then the last two 88-hour fishing periods would be reduced by 50% for purse seine gear only. If by June 23rd, 450,000 chum salmon are harvested by all gear types in the South Alaska Peninsula, then the final fishing period would be closed by purse seine gear only.

Additionally, the Sanak Island section of the Unimak District was closed to all gear types during June.

This slide represents a generalization of the current fishing periods for all gear types during June. The gray boxes represent the fishing periods for purse seine gear, and the black boxes represent fishing periods for set gillnet and drift gillnet gear. Also represented in this calendar is when we should evaluate the chum harvest and determine if any actions were needed for the final two fishing periods for seine gear. From 2023 through 2025, chum salmon harvest did not reach the levels necessary to take management actions to reduce or close fishing periods for purse seine gear.

In response to high numbers of chum salmon harvested in 2021, the South Peninsula June fishery combined with record low runs of chum salmon to the AYK rivers, the purse seine fleet, drift gillnet fleet, and processors voluntarily took several measures outside of regulation to reduce the overall harvest of chum salmon in June of '23 through 2025. All processors signed confidentiality waivers, so if fewer than 3 processors were reporting by area, that information could be released as long as there were 3 or more permits fishing.

Also, in 2023 through 2025, there were test fishing days before the first purse seine or drift gillnet opening on June 8th, 9th, and 10th on the east side of Popoff Island in the Shoemaking Islands. And at Cape Lutke and Cape Lazarus in the Unimak District. Persane and Drift Gillnet did not fish the first day of the opening on June 10th in order to do the test fishery that day. The fleet also implemented self-imposed closures when chum salmon were present in high abundance to help curtail the fleet's overall harvest of chum salmon and to stay below the triggers that would reduce fishing in all areas. In addition to these fleet actions due to the stock of concern status of Chignik early-run sockeye salmon, a management action plan is implemented in the Shumigan Islands section for purse seine gear.

Beginning June 16th, if the lower bound of OEG of the Chignik early-run escapement is not being met, the fishing periods are reduced by 50%. Restrictions are lifted once the lower escapement goal is being met.

This slide represents the reduced fishing periods for purse seine gear in the Shumigan Islands. When Chicknick early-run sockeye salmon lower bound OEG are not being met. Reductions in fishing periods in the Shumagin Islands for purse seining gear occurred in 2023 and 2024, but not in 2025. In 2023, only the second and third fishing periods were reduced by 50% in the Shumagin Island section, and in 2024, fishing periods were reduced by 50% during the second, third, and fourth fishing periods. In the Chumash Islands.

This slide summarizes the 2023 through 2025 harvest— June harvest information with averages from 2019 through 2022 and 2016 through 2018 to compare changes in number of permits and reduced harvest over the last 3 years. From 2023 through 2025, the June fishery harvest on average approximately 1,500 king salmon, 786,000 sockeye salmon, 217 coho, 209,000 pink salmon, and 271,000 chum salmon. The average total number of permits that participated in the fishery from 2023 through 2025 was 184 permits and comprised of 50 purse seine, 102 drift gillnet, and 32 set gillnet permit holders that made deliveries in June. There has been a significant decline in permit holders over the last 3 years, especially for drift gillnet and set gillnet fleet compared to the previous 2 bore cycles. One major factor that has likely played a role in this decline in the lot is the loss of the processor Peter Pan Seafoods in King Cove and Port Moller in 2024.

There was also a sharp decline in value for salmon in 2023 due to international market conditions. Persane Fleet averaged 72.3% of the total June harvest of all species, while drift gillnet and set gillnet fleets harvested 22.7% and 5%, respectively.

The South Unimak and Shumagin Islands June fisheries have directed— have direct economic impacts on the communities of Sand Point, King Cove, Cold Bay, and False Pass. Over the last 10 years, on average, the June fisheries contributed 40% of the ex-vessel value of the South Alaska Peninsula fishery and 22% of the ex-vessel value of the area and fishery, which includes the North Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands.

The most recent 10-year average total ex-vessel value for the June fishery is $8.78 million.

This graph shows the total earnings based on fish tickets on the June fish— of the June fishery in regulation in relation to the post-June and set'em fisheries from all salmon species from 2016 through 2025. Across the bottom are the years, and along the side is the total ex-vessel value in millions of dollars. The green bars represent earnings from the June fishery, while the blue bars represent earnings from the post-June and set'em fisheries. You can see from this graph that odd years— that in odd years, the post-June fishery has been more lucrative as the The pink salmon harvests have been much larger in odd years than in even years. The average annual ex-vessel value of the South Alaska Peninsula commercial salmon fishery in June from 2023 through 2025 was roughly $4 million.

These ex-vessel value estimates are based on fish tickets and do not include any retro pay or price adjustments that are known to great— and are known to greatly underestimate the value of the fisheries.

I'll conclude this presentation by summarizing the proposals that pertain to the South Unimak and Shumagin Islands June fishery. Proposal 127 would amend the June management plan to establish a 10 consecutive day closure between June 10th and June 23rd for purse seine and drift gillnet gear. Proposal 128 would establish time closures and mandate fleet movement when a predetermined threshold of when king, chum, and coho salmon are incidentally harvested. Proposal 129 would establish fishing periods later in June and reduce the total number of hours that are fished by all gear types. Proposal 130 would amend fishing periods for purse seine gear in the Shoemaking Island section of the Southeastern District.

Proposal 131 would establish a closed fishing period from June 12th through June 23rd, inclusively, Proposal 132 would reduce fishing time for all gear types and increase the closed fishing period for both purse seine and drift gillnet gear between the second and third fishing periods and eliminate the chum harvest triggers. Proposal 133 would amend fishing periods for purse seine and drift gillnet gear in the South Unimak Fishery and only purse seine gear in the Shumagin Islands Fishery.

Proposal 134 would revert fishing periods for purse seine gear back to the fishing periods that were established during the 2013 Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands Board of Fisheries meeting. Proposal 135 would allow non-retention of king salmon 28 inches or greater in length from June 1st through October 31st. Proposal 136 would close the entire South Alaska Peninsula to commercial salmon fishing during month of June. Proposal 137 would add an additional 24 hours of fishing time to the final fishing periods for set gillnet gear only in June.

This concludes my report and be happy to try to answer questions you may have at this time. Thanks. Questions? Mr. Nguyen. Thank you.

I guess I'll start again. Thank you very much, Mr. Keys, for your presentation. My first question is going to be on Slide 14. You have the additional actions outside of regulation. You have mandatory and voluntary closures.

Were the mandatory closures the Department's use of the EO authority? Through the Chair, no. What I'm referring to here is the quote-unquote adaptive management plan that the Pershing Fleet implemented. And they, they had different levels of closures that they implemented on themselves. And the best way to describe them was in certain areas they would call them mandatory closures.

And anyone fishing in that area would be mandated to, to not fish there until they released that or allow for fishing to occur in that area. Okay. So it was the fleet mandating themselves. Not, not the department or the board mandating, but through the chair. That's correct.

Thank you.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. Page 9, when you talk about the caps, in over time when these caps have been implemented, this has just been for all CHUM?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood, I guess I'm not—. So it's been for the total harvest of chum salmon. It wasn't harvest based on any kind of genetics or percentage necessarily. Through the chair, Mr. Wood, yes, it's the total harvest by all gear types that these caps are— or the triggers are established. Thank you.

The trigger represents all chum, not west— coastal western Alaskan chum.

Thanks. Yeah, I was just trying to clarify because after just listening to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, they seem to distinguish between all chum and coastal western Alaska chum to make a decision. So I— that's why I asked that question. And then on my next slide, Um, uh, well, here, I'll formulate my next question. Thank you, Miss Irwin, then Mr. Swenson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, Mr. Keys, I don't know how long you've been at the department and whether or not you can answer this question, but I'm just curious on how the last 10-year average of the ex-vessel value compares to a— to prior 10 to 20-year averages. Um, I'm just interested in knowing a more broad understanding of the timeframe that this fishery has been implemented, what that ex-vessel value compares to now, that this 10-year average versus a long time in the past.

Madam Chair, or through the Chair, Ms. Erwin. So the 10-year average was about, and I know you are aware of this, about $10 million I would have to go back and look at my notes to see what the ex-vessel value has been over, over those, those time— that time. It can vary quite a bit, especially between even and odd years, as a comparison between the entire South Peninsula fishery versus just the June fishery.

And then the last 3 years, as in my report, was approximately $4 million, so about half of what it was 10 years prior to that. So I can certainly dig up some additional information. We do have this information in our annual management reports. Okay. Thank you.

That would be great. Mr. Swenson. I'm just curious, how do you come up with 88 hours? It's not a multiple of 24, so how did he—. What is that— how did that ever come about?

Through the Chair, Mr. Swenson, unfortunately I wasn't there in 2004, how they came up with the 88 hours specifically. A lot of it has to do with daylight, you know, starting at 6:00 a.m. and then ending at 10 PM and for the number of days that they want to fish, which, you know, is over the course of approximately 4 days. So starting at 6 and ending at 10 over 4 days gives you the 88 hours. One follow-up question: Do they fish at night also? Of course, there's no night, I guess.

I mean, at that time of year, I guess you can fish anytime. Isn't that correct? Through the chair, yes, that is correct. Whether or not an individual fishes at night is up to the individual. All right, thanks.

Uh, Mr. Wood? Yeah, thank you. I guess it— my question is on page 14 when it talked about confidentiality waivers, which I understand if there's less than 3 fishermen at that you hit the waiver. But I'm trying to understand with this management plan how it has worked for the department to work with the processor to get a clear understanding of the harvest of chum in order to hit that cap. Like, has this been based strictly off of fish tickets, or has— have you been working directly with the processors to, to find that, to know when you're approaching that cap number?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood, uh, we— to make management decisions in a timely fashion, we have to have daily in-season harvest that comes directly from the processors. They send those to us every single morning, and we publish that information, and we're able to publish that information with only 2 processors because of the confidentiality waivers. If there were no confidentiality waivers, then we have to probably be— probably reduce how much reporting we do. But after that, we use the in-season harvest to make in-season management decisions, and then we also look at fish ticket information as it comes through to compare, to make sure that the information we're working off of is, is at least relative to what is being reported. Okay, follow-up.

So that's where you're getting your information after the fact, but when there are these— when we're discussing a test fishery June 8th, 9th, and 10th, and then the mandatory or slash voluntary closures that are being implemented, are the fishermen just out there in these different areas and they do a seine and then they just look at the ratio of fish that they have to make that judgment to mandatory stand down or voluntarily?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood. Yeah, I— they, they are— they have several members of the fleet that are fishing in separate areas, and as they determine high abundance of chum salmon in an area, and I think one of the key factors that they're looking at is sockeye to chum ratio of 2 to 1. And so when they— when that ratio is no longer favorable to just sockeye salmon, then they'll issue through their communications and their portal a closure for an area, either a very specific area or a much broader area, depending on what the fleet is communicating between each other. What they're seeing in these, in each area that they're fishing. Thank you.

Quick question, then I'll go to Mr. Swenson.

For your harvest, with respect to the determination of the chum harvest as it relates to the caps and the data that you're receiving from the processors, is that an averaged number, or is that an individual fish count number? Because I know that, that, that the averaging happens in the delivery, and I'm wondering what that— what happens at, at the dock with the processors. Madam Chair, the, the processors, it's, it's an average number based on weight, so they take an average Or they take, say, 20 fish, weigh them, take an average, and apply that to the total pounds. So we've got a number of fish. We've got a non-regulatory management scheme that's being based on regulatory management actions from weighted averages, not individual fish counts, to determine a cap.

What's happening here, Madam Chair? Yes, Mr. Swenson. I'm just curious, what percent of the fleet fish at night?

Madam Chair, or through, through the chair, I, I honestly have no idea what, how long they're fishing through the night. They don't, they don't, I don't have any way of figuring that out. They're hundreds of miles away from where I'm stationed, and they don't, they don't tell me the hours that they're fishing. Oh, that makes sense. Thank you.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. Just to follow up to that, so I understand that, like, with the fish tickets, you would do an average of fish as they're coming on, potentially. But then at the processor, they are sorting the fish out individually, aren't they? So from the processor, are you, are you getting that individual count, or is it still just a ratio of the fish being weighed.

Through the chair, the fish ticket information is— hold on.

For the record, James Jackson, Western Region Management Coordinator. In almost all commercial fisheries in the state of Alaska, When you're coming up with a number on a fish ticket, they're usually based on weighted averages. So if a purse seiner delivers 20,000 pounds of pink salmon or chum salmon at the processor or at the tender, they'll take a total weight and then they usually subsample each of those totes or whatever they're doing. They're, they're separating it out as, and they use that to come up with an individual number. Do the processors separate at the processing plants?

Absolutely. Right? But they don't actually give us that number. The number that we get and the number that we use for coming up with our caps are based on the fish tickets. Did I just hear you say that almost every single fishery in the state of Alaska is not providing accurate fish tickets?

Uh, Madam Chair, no, I didn't say that. I said that the way that the fish tickets are typically set up around the state of Alaska are through weighted weighted averages. Almost all because of the volume, the large volume of fish that commercial fishermen harvest. It's been common practice for a very long time. How does the department determine the margin of error in those weighted averages, especially when you're collecting fish from different areas and different stat areas?

Just to double-check, you're asking me how the department figures out whether—. Yeah, because you just made that statement. I'm kind of curious. Like, you know, if, if that's the practice, then how does the department— and maybe you're not the right person to ask that, but that's a concerning statement to me. If you go through, Madam Chair, if you go through and you look at every delivery, most of them all don't have the same average weight.

Every individual delivery, they separate the fish out and they take an average depending upon how many fish they subsample, and they apply that to the fish tickle for the ticket for that individual delivery. So it's not just, you know, in the South Peninsula they use one weighted average for all the deliveries. There, every individual delivery has a different weighted average. Okay, that's interesting. That's different from what I've heard in other areas and different fisheries.

Okay, um, my question is related to slide number 8. And I really appreciate these slides because they really give me a good picture of over time how the management schemes have changed and their effects on harvest. And my question was that 8.3% Bristol Bay allocation, you mentioned that it was split roughly— and my math is a little off— roughly between 6 and maybe 1.7% between South Unimak and the Shumagans. Do you have any information about why that allocation was split the way it was? Was it based on, you know, localized sockeye stocks?

I mean, when I say localized, I mean South Penn.

Through the chair, I think that 8 point— well, the 8.3% was historical, was the estimated historical harvest out of the South Peninsula of Bristol Bay stocks. And then the 6.8% for the Unimak, South Unimak area, which covers Unimak District and the Southwestern District and a portion of the Southwestern or Southcentral District. The proportion of sockeye that were harvested historically was likely at 6.8%, whereas of Bristol Bay stocks. So that 1.5% in the Chumigans was estimated historical harvest of Bristol Bay stocks. So that's why it was broken up in that manner.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. And then my last comment, I guess, or request is I really also appreciate slide number 16. But this is an aggregated summary, and I'm wondering if you could break this— just basically duplicate this exact table for just South Unimak and just the Shumagak for the June fishery, please.

Madam Chair, I'm sure, yeah, we can probably come up with something, but we, we also have the Unimak and Shumagin Islands fisheries independently broken out in all of our Appendix B tables as well. I understand that. I'm asking for that to be, to be put together and then RC'd. Okay, thank you.

Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to revisit the fish tickets. Uh, for—.

Can the department, uh, give me information on what percentage of the fish tickets in this, uh, in this fishery are modified, uh, after delivery, and what the timeline on modification typically is?

Through the chair, just a real quick clarification. Are you asking when the fish tickets are modified, whether they're a fish ticket is cut on the grounds and then it's modified at the processing plant? Just can you clarify that? Yes, so the fish ticket should be given at the time of delivery. And, and I'm wondering if those fish tickets have ever been modified within this district, and if so, to the extent, how much or how frequently and how much.

Yeah, fish tickets do get modified at times. I would not— I'd have to look into that for you to find out the specific number of fish tickets that were modified, and I don't know how difficult of a query that would be.

Mr. Carpenter, thank you.

I guess maybe this is for Mr. Keys, but somebody else can chime in if they want to. So generally speaking, the June fishery, the, the driver of that is the strength or weakness of the sockeye run in Bristol Bay, and the stronger The higher the run is, you know, the higher level of sockeye harvest that there will be, and there will also be a higher level of chum harvest. And when I look back over time, we really only have these couple years of this adaptive management that we've used the last couple years. And I'm thinking about you as a manager and the information that you're getting from the adaptive management plan during the season and the 2-to-1 ratio that kind of the fleet is using to gauge the level of chums in the sockeye fishery. If you were to have a weak Bristol Bay sockeye run and that ratio that they're using on a daily basis to gauge that, if you didn't have this adaptive management plan, and you weren't using that 2-to-1 ratio, wouldn't the level of chum harvest on a weak sockeye run be much higher and would be very uncontrollable from your position?

Through the chair, I, I would say it would probably be much less manageable, but also The amount of fisheries or amount of fish that actually come through this fishery at times from year to year is also based on a lot of environmental factors too. So we could see a low sockeye abundance, but we could also see a low chum abundance as well. So it just, it varies from year to year and it would be, one of those things you have to determine in season.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. So I, I'm trying to understand the, this cap number because without— with managing an area without escapement or without genetics, you don't have a lot of tools to figure out exactly how much you're catching, like, in real time, to manage too. So it seems to me that this cap is very important. And if we're going to use a cap, because a cap seems like it could go either way, it could be great or it could come back and bite you in the butt.

So I'm trying to understand, like, fish tickets, obviously, after Bristol Bay, we realize there's some gray area in there just in timing and accuracy, but with the help of processors and them sorting to make sure that there's not a chum going on the line, you're getting more accurate data, which would really help direct the— that actual cap number and the management of that fishery day to day, or maybe week to week, let's say, to how close you're getting, rather than it being so more exact rather than— and less of a gut feeling. I don't know if I'm making my point, but I do think that these numbers, like real-time, are important to actually manage.

Through the Chair, I mean, absolutely. I mean, we've been receiving this. I mean, this is not a new concept. I mean, ever since I started working at the department, we had Daily harvest reporting by all the processors that would come in and that's what we would report every day. And we are— we have a spreadsheet we send to every processor.

We have— that they fill out that kind of helps us. We don't look at section by section by section, but we do have kind of broken out areas that we want to pay attention to. In those that they fill out based on where harvest is occurring. And that's, that's been as far back as I can remember, that daily processor information has been key to our management, always. Thank you.

Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. So the subject of fish tickets and how fish tickets are generated and How the numbers on fish tickets are reached has come up several times during this presentation, and I just wanted to make a few general comments about fish tickets. So for salmon fisheries, the processors are required to report the pounds and number of salmon purchased. The regulations don't specify how those numbers are to be generated.

Typically in the fisheries that we're talking about here, many of the fish tickets are generated on tenders. So that's when the landing occurs. The fish ticket has to be generated at the time of landing. The landing often occurs at a tender, sometimes at a shore plant, but often at a tender. And so earlier, Mr. Keyes You said that the chum harvest numbers that are used to evaluate relative to the chum triggers in the June plan, that those numbers were derived from processor reports.

And I just want to be clear, the regulations for the June plan say that the triggers are to be evaluated on fish ticket The processor reports that Mr. Keyes referred to are summaries of fish ticket data generated on the tenders, and then they're relayed to him in a report from processors. So they are based on fish ticket data. The question of editing of fish tickets came up. Editing fish tickets is common practice throughout the state. There's various reasons why fish tickets are edited.

Sometimes there are errors in the information that's recorded. There's, there's header information on, on the fish ticket. And, you know, when there's thousands of these being generated across the state, sometimes there's errors. And our managers actually sit down at the end of the season and look at fish tickets and find those errors and make changes in the database. So processors also have the ability to edit a fish ticket when they find an error.

So that's a common process. That's just a QA/QC that we go through before our fish ticket database is finalized. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.

And, you know, I guess, but therein kind of lies the rub a little bit that, you know, the the harvest data comes from the point of sale, right, which is the fish ticket. And that's the receipt of the sale, essentially, to some extent, right? And so my concern, not so much is with the weighted average when you have a very homogenous sale, like if it's all sockeye or 99% sockeye and there's only a handful of, you know, other species in there. Okay, I can buy that, right? Point, although I do think that they should be checking it periodically and over the course of the delivery, like, you know, throw 100 fish, weigh it, pump a bunch off, maybe do it again at some point just to make sure that you're fairly consistent in there.

My concern, especially in the context of CAPS, becomes when we're using those weighted averages in mixed stock deliveries and how do we parse out how accurate that is based on a weighted average That is, I don't know how— we don't have any real knowledge of how that's derived or the consistency with which that's derived. That's, I guess, my concern and what I'm getting at. And so when it has a consequence of a real, a very impactful consequence like the closure of a fishery, that's a big darn deal, right? We want to make sure that we're trying to get to as accurate a number as possible. I'm also trying to dispel some of the concerns, the distrust, the conspiracies that come with that confusion or that lack of accuracy.

And so when I'm asking these questions, that's, that's what I'm trying to get at. I'm trying to get at, you know, it's not gotcha politics here. It really isn't. I'm trying to understand how we're using the numbers and the data available to us us to make decisions around a very impactful, you know, consequence. And for me, I'm very interested in trying to produce as accurate of data that we're basing that, that management decision on, because, you know, if it shouldn't be closed and it shouldn't be closed, if it should be, if they are hitting those caps and how far over, um, You know, those are, those are real-world consequences and they play out at this table and they play out at these meetings.

And I found that over the course of several meetings, this is— this has inserted itself into the narrative. Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. I appreciate those comments and I agree with a lot of what you said. I do want to be clear that a fish ticket is not a sales receipt.

In fact, price isn't even required to be reported. True. Thank you. So the fish tickets are a tool, a harvest reporting tool. And we believe that fish tickets are generally very accurate.

You know, they're accurate enough for what we ask them to do.

I think we've asked a lot of fish ticket data in recent years and You know, they're, you know, any, any data collection methodology is going to have inherent areas where you have imprecision. So, you know, we're asking a lot of fish ticket data these days. I believe it's accurate enough for what the department needs out of it. You know, I think in a fishery where there are impacts such as potential closures, I mean, I think there's incentive for people to report accurately. So— [Speaker:DR. LISA MILLER] I don't disagree, but, you know, the problem is when the— I think sort of the excitement of the harvest comes, right?

And the temptation is to go and move as quickly as you can to get as much as you can. I get it. I've been there. But sometimes in that you lose accuracy, and that's my concern. Mr.

Wood, and then we're going to wrap it up. Yeah, I appreciate the discussion, and I do recognize I don't want to get into anything deliberative, so, but I do want to just say that this helps me better understand from my own mindset, like, how the Department of Fish Tickets work with the processor to get those numbers. It's, to me, it seems very similar to escapement. We really want to know every single fish that goes into a river, but that's impossible. We don't know.

So we have to have a margin of error. Same with these fish tickets. I'm getting the sense that they are the best tool. They are a reasonable tool for making these decisions. And I have more confidence that working with the processor makes this tool as effective as it can be for us to make these decisions, if I'm making myself clear.

Thanks, Mr. Jackson. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to make one clarification. They're weighted averages by species, so that you're not mixing different species to come up with a weighted average.

So when the tenders or the processors are separating the fish and coming up with the estimated number of fish, it's a weighted average by species. Okay. All right. Well, I think we have exhausted our questions for this period. It's 12:05.

Let's give an hour and a half for lunch. Let's come back at about 12:30, 12:35. Thanks. 1:30, 1:35, Sorry.

All right, everybody, welcome back. The time is 1:48, and we're going to go ahead and resume with staff presentations. Just a quick announcement, though, in the order of oral presentations, we are going to continue on. Where are we at? Are we at— we should be post-June, is that right?

Yes. Okay, so we're going to do the South Penn post-June salmon fisheries Southeast District Mainland, and then we're going to skip down to Chignik Area Salmon Fishery, Chignik River King Salmon Action Plan, Chignik River Early Run Sockeye Action Plan, and then we're going to go back up to the two genetics presentations, which is the South Penn and Chignik Chum and King Salmon, and then the genetic stock composition of chum and king salmon. Just trying to keep all the management reports kind of grouped together, and then we'll get into end of the genetics. So thanks for that. I just wanted to let everybody know as you're following along in the audience or online.

So with that, let's go ahead and resume and hear about the post-June South Penn fisheries, please.

Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Matt Keyes and I'm the South Peninsula Area Management Biologist. This report was prepared by my assistant Annie Brewster, but I'll be presenting it to you today. I'll be giving a brief overview of the South Alaska Peninsula post-June salmon fishery. Slide numbers can be found at the lower right-hand corner of each slide. Staff comments can be found in RC2, and a copy of this oral report can be found in RC3, tab 6.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] The topics which will be discussed include the location of the post-June fishery, a brief history of the fishery, current regulations in the Post-June Management Plan, 2023 through 2025 season summaries, the economic importance of the South Alaska Peninsula, and an overview of proposals that will be before the board at this meeting.

We will start things off by looking at where fishing occurs during the post-June fishery. Here's one example of some of the fleet fishing on the east side of Popoff Island.

As covered in the June fishery presentation, the South Alaska Peninsula Salmon Management Area includes those waters from Scotch Cap in the west and to Kupreanof Point in the east, which borders the Chignik Management Area.

The area is divided into 4 districts shown here. During the post-June fishery, set gillnet and seine gear are followed by— allowed— sorry, set gillnet and seine gear are allowed in all districts, while drift gillnet gear is only allowed in the Unimak District and the Ikitan Bay section of the Southwestern District.

The Southeastern District Mainland, referred to as SEDM, will be as discussed in a separate presentation. After July 25th, harvest info from Setom is included with the post-June harvest presented today, since that marks the end of the Chignik allocation period. Note the southern portion of the Southeastern District contains the Shumagin Island section.

In the South Alaska Peninsula, commercial fishing is permitted, permitted to occur concurrently in terminal and non-terminal harvest areas in July. Additional fishing time in terminal areas may be provided during closures based on harvest and escapement data. However, due to later run timing of pink and chum salmon, these terminal harvest areas have not been extended beyond the scheduled fishing periods for almost 20 years. In this map, terminal harvest areas are indicated by solid, solid yellow. From July 6th through July 21st, terminal harvest areas are the Marshoby Bay section the Thin Point section, the Cold Bay section, Pavlov Bay, which contains— which consists of portions of the East and West Pavlov Bay sections, the Canoe Bay section, and Zachary Bay.

Additional terminal harvest areas are incorporated into the management plan from July 22nd through July 31st. July 21st. These areas are included at this time due to the late runtime— due to the late runtime of salmon in these areas. These areas include the Deer Island section, the Belkofsky Bay section, and the Mino Creek/Little Coal Bay section.

The Dolgoi Island area sockeye salmon harvest limit is still in effect until July 25th, where the 191,000 sockeye salmon harvest limit is reached. In July, sections of the Dolgoi Island area are managed based on returning local stocks in terminal harvest areas including Pavlof Bay, Canoe Bay, Mino Creek, Little Coal Bay, and the Belkofsky Bay section.

Next is a brief overview of the post-June fishery regulatory history in relation to harvest areas. In terminal harvest areas, fishing opportunities provided for the harvest of local stocks, whereas non-terminal harvest areas harvest traveling fish. Before 1974, post-June fisheries were generally open 5 days per week. Since 1974, the amount of fishing time allowed inside and outside terminal harvest areas has varied. For part of the season in 1992 through 1997, harvest was restricted to terminal harvest areas only.

From July 6th through July 19th. In 1998, in early July, fishing opportunities in non-terminal areas were increased. From 2001 to present, several changes to the management plan were implemented and terminal harvest area boundaries were modified.

The current fishing schedule was established in 2013. Additionally, some gear specifications have been changed. The length of a lead used by set gillnet gear increased from 10 fathoms to 25 fathoms in 2010. The minimum mesh size for drift gillnet gear was repealed in 2016 and for set gillnet gear in 2019. Appendix D3 in your written— in the written area management report gives a more complete regulatory history.

This slide is a brief summary of area-wide escapement over the last 3 years. You can see this— the sustainable escapement goals for both pink and chum salmon total index escapement at the bottom of this table. In both 2023 and 2025, the pink salmon escapement surpassed the upper bound of the SEG, and in 2023, the chum salmon escapement surpassed the upper bound of the SEG.

This graph and following graphs pick the historical salmon harvest per year in the post-June fishery from 1995 through 2025, with year on the horizontal axis and the number of salmon harvested on the vertical axis. The most recent 10-year average harvest for 2016 through 2025 is shown towards the far right of each chart as represented by a horizontal black bar. For instance, here we see the 10-year average harvest of king salmon is about 10,700 fish. King harvest in the past several years has been above average. However, king harvest has never represented more than 1% of the post-June harvest.

This graph depicts annual sockeye salmon harvest from 1995 to 2025. Note that the number of salmon on this y-axis is in millions of fish. The 10-year average harvest is approximately 798,000 sockeye salmon.

This graph shows coho salmon harvest since 1995. The recent 10-year average harvest of coho salmon is about 234,000. The 2025 harvest of 196,264 coho was slightly below the 10-year average. This seems to mirror similar decreases in coho harvest around the region. For our region, this decline can also partially be attributed to a due to a decrease in the participation from the fleet as many fishermen stop fishing by the third week of August before coho are present in significant numbers, as well as the lack of interest from processors to continue buying coho at the tail end of the season.

Region-wide escapement data for South Alaska Peninsula coho salmon are typically not compiled as their late run timing makes aerial surveys logistically challenging.

This graph represents annual pink salmon harvests harvests were the strongest. After falling short of the SEG in 2016 and 2018, more recent even-year escapements were more robust and above the lower bound of the SEG. 2022 Saw the strongest even-year pink escapement in over a decade. In turn, 2020 and 2022 harvests were above the recent even-year harvest average of approximately 2 million, depicted by the solid black horizontal line in the lower right. Harvest in 2024 fell short of the recent even-year harvest average.

Odd-year escapement has consistently met escapement goals in recent history, especially over the last 10 years, and this corresponds with large amounts of harvest in odd years. The recent odd-year harvest average is about 15.5 million pinks, shown by the dashed horizontal line towards the upper right.

This graph depicts annual chum salmon harvest Chum escapement during early August does tend to lag behind pink salmon escapement, thus the department often closes some sections in early August until chum escapement goals are met. The recent 10-year average harvest is above— is about 633,000 chum salmon. 2017 Shows record harvest and escapement in his— in recent history.

Now to Next, we'll discuss when fishing can occur. This calendar shows the fishing schedule for all gear types. Commercial salmon fishing may begin as early as July 6th. The schedule from July 6th through July 31st allows a total of 249 hours of fishing time during 7 openings. If fishing does begin on the 6th for purse seine gear, all periods begin at 6:00 AM.

The first fishing period on July 6th is 33 hours in length followed by a 60-hour or 63-hour closure. The remaining 6 periods are 36 hours in length followed by 60-hour closures. The districts open to fishing by gear type can vary depending on the results of the Chumigan Islands immature salmon test fishery, which will be discussed next.

This map depicts the location of the post-June immature salmon test fishery on the east side of Popoff Island in the Chumigan Islands section. Typically, the test fishery makes 2 purse seine sets at each of the locations seen here at Popoff Head, Middle Set, and Red Bluff.

Concerns of fishery-dependent mortality of immature salmon in the South Alaska Peninsula was first brought to the department's attention in 1963. Historically, immature salmon are most prevalent in the Shumagin Island section. Prior to any fishing periods in July, the department conducts a test fishery to determine the presence and abundance of immature salmon. This is done in order to reduce incidental harvest, most often by purse seine fleet, due to the smaller mesh size in seine nets.

The test fishery is normally conducted on July 2nd, 3rd, and 5th. Additional fishing days are warranted when high numbers of immature salmon are present.

Immature salmon are defined as the number of king, sockeye, coho, and chum salmon observed to be gilled in the seine web. Pink salmon are not part of this definition due to the fact that adult pink salmon can be gilled in the seine web. This definition, in particular the words observed to be gilled, was guided by department research done in the Shumagin Islands concerning the most time and cost-effective ways to define immature salmon for in-season management purposes. Based on that research, the Board of Fish adopted this definition as shown back— as shown back in 2001.

During the test fishing period, if 100 or more immature salmon per set are present on average, the same fishery will be closed in specified areas until the abundance is below the threshold of 100 immature salmon salmon. If an area is closed to seine gear due to the presence of immature salmon, set gillnet gear will still be allowed to fish the regulatory fishing schedule.

If fewer than 100 immature salmon per set are present, then the fishery may open on July 6th to both seine and set gillnet gear, and post-June openings occur as scheduled in regulation.

The area between Popoff Head and Dark Cliffs can only be fished by St. Geer.

Because of concerns for Gulf of Alaska king salmon, the department took unprecedented steps to conserve king salmon by restricting numerous fisheries in 2025. In the South Alaska Peninsula area, additional management actions were implemented to protect these stocks. Beginning July 1st, the department monitored the harvest of king salmon in the Shumagin Island section of the South Southeastern District. If more than 1,000 king salmon were harvested within the Shumigan Island section of the Southeastern District during a regulatory fishing period in July, then the next scheduled fishing period in Statistical Area 282.11 did not open to commercial salmon fishing for purse seine gear only. Statistical Area 282.11 was selected for these closures due to the to this statistical area having a historically high harvest of king salmon compared to other districts and sections of the South Alaska Peninsula.

Full retention of all salmon in the South Alaska Peninsula was also required from July 1 through July 31.

In 2025, two fishing periods were closed to purse seine gear beginning on July 14 and July 22 in Stat Area 282.

This slide depicts the statistical area 282.11 highlighted in gray for you.

Though this graph is for the entire South Alaska Peninsula, it represents the recent 5-year average daily harvest of king salmon. The month of July stands out as a time period when the most king salmon are harvested. Listed. The peaks represent fishing periods and the valleys represent closed periods for June and July.

Starting August 1st, fishing periods are established by emergency order until the end of the salmon fishing season. In August, fishing periods are based on the run strength of local sockeye, coho, pink, and chum salmon as determined by harvest and escapement data.

From September 1st through October 31st, fishing periods are based primarily on local Coho salmon stocks, although late pink and chum salmon run strength is also considered.

Next is a brief summary of the harvest and participation since the last Board of Fish meeting in 2023.

Due to pink and chum salmon escapement goals being met over the last 3 years, the department has issued emergency orders to open the fishery in August, which combined with scheduled openings in July contributes to the harvest shown in this table. We see the obvious pattern of more harvests occurring in odd years for all species.

On average, the last 3 years, 55 purse seine, 38 drift gillnet, and 42 set gillnet permits have been active in the post-June fishery.

From 2023 to 2025, purse seine gear harvested approximately 72% of the total catch in the post-June fishery, while drift gillnet gear and set gillnet gear accounted for 23% and 5% of the total harvest respectively.

Over the last 10 years, the post-June fishery has contributed 50% of the total X vessel value of the South Alaska Peninsula salmon fisheries. During this time, the average ex-vessel value for the post-June fishery is $11.9 million, and from 2023 to 2025, the average post-June ex-vessel value was $10.7 million.

To close out this presentation, I'll highlight proposals that will be brought before the board related to the post-June fishery. Proposal 138 seeks to increase scheduled fishing period time in July for set gillnet gear only based on changes to the July fishing schedule calendar. Proposal 139 would increase fishing periods for set gillnet gear in August by implementing a schedule that is based on pink salmon escapement. Accruing percentages of the pink salmon escapement goal would need to be reached in order to schedule— in order for scheduled fishing periods to occur for set gillnet gear. Proposal 140 seeks seeks to decrease terminal harvest area size by modifying 3 terminal harvest areas, the Belkofsky Bay, Mino Creek, Little Cold Bay, and the East and West Pavlof Bay sections.

Proposal 141 would institute 2 king salmon caps. The first would reduce fishing time in areas responsible for high harvest. The second cap would close areas responsible for high harvest. Proposal 142 seeks to allow fishing periods in August for specific or multiple gear types, allowing concurrent or non-concurrent fishing periods. Proposal 143 would make a few changes to the existing July Schumagin Islands amateur test fishery.

These changes would be— would include set gillnet gear with seine gear for any test fishery-specific closures, changing the definition of immature salmon from gill fish in the seine to a length-based qualification and introduction of genetic sampling to determine origin. Furthermore, this proposal seeks to also conduct a June test fishery for king salmon.

Proposal 144 seeks to allow fishing periods in August for set gillnet gear only before escapement goals have been met in order to help the department assess abundance of salmon in the area. Proposal 145 seeks to allow fishing periods in August for specific or multiple gear types, allowing concurrent or non-concurrent fishing periods. And Proposal 146 seeks to increase scheduled fishing period time in July for set gillnet gear only based on changes to the July fishing schedule calendar.

Next, we will review the gear-specific proposals. Proposal 147 would reduce the maximum gillnet depth to 70 meshes deep. Proposal 148 would reduce the seine depth from 375 meshes to 325 meshes and seine lead length from 150 fathoms to 100 fathoms. It would also reduce maximum aggregate seine and lead length combined from 400 fathoms to 250 fathoms. Proposal 149 seeks to increase the maximum set gillnet length to 200 fathoms.

Proposal 150 would allow the use of monofilament in gillnet specifications. What happened there?

Proposal 151 seeks to remove the 25 fathoms of seine webbing that set gillnet gear is permitted to use on the shore— shoreward end of the set gillnet. Proposal 152 would reduce the seine depth from 375 meshes to 325 meshes and seine lead length from 150 fathoms to 100 fathoms. It would also reduce maximum aggregate seine and lead length combined from 400 fathoms to 250 fathoms. And Proposal 153 would allow the use of monofilament in set gillnet specifications. This concludes my presentation.

I'd be happy to take any questions that you might have. Thanks, guys. Questions? Ms. Irwin. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Keys, for your presentation. My question starts on slide number 10. I have a couple questions on this slide. My first is, I'm not sure if you'll be able to answer this, but does the— what does the department attribute the quite steady increase in harvest of kings, you know, starting maybe in like 2010, we start seeing that trend up quite a bit, but since 1995 it was pretty low.

So what do we attribute that increased harvest of kings to?

Through the chair, there's no real direct answer.

Prevalence seems to have increased more so starting around 2014, 2015, but I think there's there's several, many factors that are kind of hard to fully pinpoint why that would— why that change, why that abundance has changed over time, especially recently in the last 10 years.

Abundance of king salmon in the post-June fishery? That is correct. Okay, thank you. And then my next question is, I'm seeing on slide 10 and 11 this big jump from 2024 to 2025 in the harvest of both kings and sockeye. Is there a reason for that pretty sharp decline in the last year?

Sorry, I'm sorry, for the increase from 2024 to 2025. For king— I'm sorry, through the chair, for kings in particular, Um, we in 2024, um, we did allow non-retention to mimic some management actions that have taken place in some other areas in the Westward Region of 28 inches or greater. That's a possibility of the contribution to the lower harvest in 2024. In 2025, however, In July, we started— we had full retention of all salmon throughout the entire area.

And then just a high abundance of king salmon present in the area this particular year. Okay, thank you. Hey, I got— I got a couple of questions for you. Beginning in slide 5, I just wanted to— you talk about terminal harvest areas. As you tee up the rest of your presentation, are these terminal harvest areas that you have highlighted for sockeye?

Are they for pink? Are they for chum? Are they for all of them? What are they terminally harvesting? What's there?

What are you managing for there? Madam Chair, it's primarily pinks and chum salmon. Different terminal areas are going to be have different compositions of pink or chum salmon. These areas are defined in regulation as terminal harvest areas. They were defined long ago, well before my, my management experience, and it was established at a time to permit additional fishing opportunity if escapements were being achieved or expected to be achieved within these areas.

Okay, that is helpful, but it is for Pink's and Chum's primarily? Yes, ma'am. Okay, thank you. Next question is on slide 20.

Why were only 3 years selected? That is not a very long amount of time. Was there reasoning behind why you're only showing 23, 24, and 25?

Sorry, I'm trying to find the correct—. You're talking about the— Slide 20, next one. Slide 20 is— Well, I have a different slide 20 then. It's the slide that's titled Post-June Salmon Fishery.

That is— no, one more back. That is weird. Do you have like a click to add stuff to it? There you go. That one.

Sorry, I think I misnumbered that one. That is okay. I got you. We got there. So I was just kind of curious, why did you only select to show 3 years?

In this particular instance, it was mostly just from the most recent Board of Fish, trying to— a lot of information and trying to be a little concise on all the information that we're providing. Thank you. Thinking back to the previous proposal— I mean, the previous— one of the previous presentations where we had that sort of time strata that showed from the '80s and the different management plans as they cropped up. I'm particularly interested in taking a look at what those numbers would look like from 2000, probably, to present. Can we do an RC for that?

Madam Chair, yes. Similarly, on the next slide also, I think these ex-vessel values are really important to the conversation, and so I would also like I would like to see this time strata extended back to the year 2000 as well with the accessible values for the post-June. Can you do that for an RC also? Madam Chair, yes. Thank you.

And that's it for me. Any other questions?

All right. Thank you for your presentation.

Moving on to the Southeast District Mainland, please.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Jeff Spallinger. I am an assistant area management biologist for the South Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands commercial salmon and herring fisheries. I will be presenting a report about the Southeastern District mainland commercial salmon fishery. This report can be found in RC3 tab 7. The written report containing information about the South Alaska Peninsula can be found in supplemental materials, and the staff comments are in Page numbers are located on the lower right corner.

Topics I will be covering include a geographic description of the Southeastern District Mainland. This area will be referred to as SEDM for the duration of the presentation. The historical perspective of the SEDM fishery, an overview of the fishery and current regulations, And finally, the proposals pertaining to the setum fishery. The setum fishery occurs within the South Alaska Peninsula Management Area, whose boundaries extend from Scotch Cap in the west to Kupreanof Point in the east. The Chignik Management Area, which I will refer to as the CMA for the duration of the presentation, is to the east of the South Alaska Peninsula.

Within the Southeastern District, shown in orange, Set'em can be seen highlighted with the red border. The other districts that make up the South Alaska Peninsula are the South Central District, the Southwestern District, and the Unimak District.

This map focuses on Set'em and the surrounding areas in greater detail. To the east of Set'em is the CMA. The shaded portion of waters around Kupreanof Point are closed to commercial salmon fishing beginning July 6th. August 31st. The location of the Chignik Weir is seen here in the upper right portion of the map.

The town of Sandpoint is located on Popoff Island and the Orzinsky River Weir is located on the Alaska Peninsula and is the only weir on the South Alaska Peninsula.

The sedum area is defined as the area between McGinty Point to the west and Kupreanof Point to the east. Sedum is divided into several sections: the Beaver Bay, Balboa Bay, Southwest Steppevac, Northwest Steppevac where the Yorzynski Weir is located, Steppevac Flats, and the East Steppevac section.

I will now give a brief history of the fishery. Prior to 1974, the Sedum area was regulated by set weekly fishing periods generally 5 days per week. From 1974 through 1977, the fishery was open on a day-per-day basis with Chignik Lagoon. From 1978 through 1984, the Setom fishery was open either 3 or 5 days per week. Beginning in 1979, no more than 60,000 Chignik bount sockeye could be harvested before July 10th.

In 1980, the board formally adopted the Southeastern District Mainland Salmon Management Plan. This management plan established that 80% of the sockeye salmon harvested in the Set'em fishery are considered to be destined for the Chignik watershed based on several mark recapture tagging studies conducted in the South Alaska Peninsula.

In 1985, the board modified the Set'em management plan based on the K'pik'vak Salmon Management Plan in the Kodiak management area. The amount of sockeye salmon to be harvested in the Set'em fishery was set at 6.2% of the total Chignik-bound sockeye salmon harvest until July 25th. The Chignik-bound harvest was calculated as 80% of the sockeye salmon harvested in Set'em, 100% of the sockeye salmon harvested in the CMA, and 90% of the sockeye salmon harvested in the Cape Igvak section. During 1988, regulations were adopted so that in years when the CMA harvest was expected to be less than 600,000 sockeye salmon. A set'em fishery could not incur until at least 300,000 sockeye salmon were harvested in the CMA before July 8th.

Escapement goals were being met at the Chignik weir, and at least 600,000 sockeye salmon were anticipated to be harvested in the CMA. During 1996, set'em regulations were revised again to make management of the Northwest Steppevac section entirely based on local stocks beginning July 1st. In 2007, the percentage of Chignik-bound sockeye salmon allocated to the Set'em fishery was recalculated to 7.6% of the total number of sockeye salmon harvested in the CMA. A more detailed overview of the history of the fishery can be found in the written report.

The current Set'em management plan has has remained relatively unchanged since 2007. The allocation time frame is from June 1st through July 25th. Set gillnet gear is the only legal gear type allowed in the setum fishery until July 11th, and from July 11th through July 25th, both set gillnet and purse seine gear are permitted to fish within setum. The plan stipulates biological and allocative criteria that must be met prior to fishing in Sedum. Chignik escapement goals must be being met.

The harvest in the CMA must be projected to be 300,000 sockeye by July 8th, then 600,000 by July 25th.

Commercial fishing is disallowed or severely restricted from June 26th through July 8th. This time frame is commonly referred to as the overlap period as the Chignik River transitions from the early run to the late run.

If all criteria are met, the Sedum will be managed so that the sockeye salmon harvest will be as close as possible to 7.6% of the sockeye salmon harvest within the CMA. During the allocation period, 80% of the sockeye salmon caught in the Sedum fishery are considered to be Chignik-bound, excluding the Northwest Stepevak section after July 1st.

Beginning July 1st, all sockeye harvested in the Northwest Stepevak section are considered to be Orzynski-bound, and commercial salmon fishing in the Northwest Steppevec is managed on Sakai Escapement at the Orzynski weir. The Northwest Steppevec section may not be open more than 96 hours in a 7-day period. After the allocation period from July 26th to October 31st, Sedum is managed for local pink, chum, and coho salmon stocks, and the fishery must be closed for at least one 36-hour period within a 7-day period.

This graph shows the Set'em and Chignik harvest from 1985 to 2025. The vertical axis shows the number of sockeye salmon harvested, with year displayed on the horizontal axis. The orange bars represent the number of sockeye salmon considered to be Chignik-bound that are harvested in the Set'em fishery. The most recent 10-year average harvest within Set'em of approximately 56,000 sockeye of sockeye salmon is represented by the solid black line and does not include years when the fishery did not occur. The blue bars represent the annual harvest of sockeye salmon within the Chignik Management Area.

The recent 10-year average for sockeye salmon harvested in the CMA of approximately 412,000 fish is represented by the dashed black line and does not include years that the fishery did not occur.

This line graph shows the percentage of Chignik-bound sockeye salmon harvested in Sedum, since 2007, with percentage shown on the vertical axis and years on the horizontal axis. The solid black horizontal line represents the allocated 7.6%, and the dashed orange horizontal line represents the average percent harvested at 7.1%, which does not, not include years when the fishery did not occur in Setom. When fished, the percentage harvested has ranged from 4.5% in 2025 to 9.6% 7% in 2015.

This is a summary of the past 3 seasons in the Setom fishery during the allocation period. The table at the top depicts the amount of harvest for all salmon species. The harvest of sockeye salmon is given in the amount that were considered to be Chignik-bound or local sockeye. In 2023, the only harvest in Setom occurred in the Northwest Steppevac section after July 1st. For Orzinski Lake sockeye salmon.

In 2024, there was no harvest during the allocation period. In 2025, harvest occurred both in the Northwest Steppevac section after July 1st for Orzynski sockeye and in the remainder of Setom when the biological and allocative criteria were met in Chignik. The table at the bottom left of the page shows the amount of effort for both gear types. Only set gillnet gear fished in 2023. No fishery occurred in 2024.

And in 2025, both set gillnet and purse seine gearfish set'em. The table at the bottom right of the page shows the most recent 3-year harvest allocation. 2025 Was the only year fishing and set'em occurred outside of the Northwest Steppevac section, and the percentage of sockeye salmon harvested considered to be Chignik bound was 4.5%.

Orzinsky Weir is the only salmon weir in the South Alaska Peninsula and has operated seasonally since 1990. The recent 10-year average escapement of 14,541 sockeye salmon— the current escapement goal range of 14,000 to 28,000 sockeye salmon was established in 2023 and has been met each of the past 3 years.

Sedum has been a historically important economic fishery for the South Alaska Peninsula Management Area. This graph illustrates the ex-vessel value for all salmon species and gear types in the set'em fishery during the allocation period. Vertical axis represents ex-vessel value and the horizontal axis represents the year. The purse seine value is represented by the orange portion of the bars and the set gillnet value is represented by the green portion. During the past 10 years when a set'em fishery has occurred, the average ex-vessel value has been approximately $490,000 with purse seine gear earning approximately $60,000 and set gillnet gear earning approximately $430,000.

After the allocation period ends on July 25th, the Sedum fishery switches to local salmon stock management. Biologists conduct aerial surveys of the area to determine if local escapement goals for pink and chum salmon are being met. This graph depicts sockeye salmon harvest from 2006 to 2024 5 in the Set'em fishery beginning on July 26th. The number of salmon harvested is shown on the vertical axis and the years along the horizontal axis. Sockeye salmon are represented by the red bars, pink salmon by the pink bars, and chum salmon by the green bars.

Pink salmon make up the majority of the harvest and have averaged approximately 1.1 million fish over the last 10 years.

This graph is similar to the previous one but shows escapement in sediment instead of harvest. Again, sockeye salmon are represented by the red bars, pink salmon by the pink bars, and chum salmon by the green bars. Pink salmon escapement has averaged 740,000 fish the past 10 years, and chum salmon escapement has averaged 170,000 fish.

There are 8 sediment-related proposals during the sport cycle. Proposal 119 would allow commercial fishing in Set'em concurrently with commercial salmon fishing periods in the CMA. Proposal 120 would remove purse seine gear from the Set'em fishery during the allocation timeframe. Proposal 121 would remove the 600,000 sockeye salmon harvest criteria in the CMA that is projected before fishing can occur in Set'em. Proposal 122 would increase the harvest allocation in Set'em from from 7.6% to 20%.

Proposal 123 would adjust the harvest criteria and allocated setum harvest based on the processing capacity or number of boats fishing in the CMA. Proposal 124 would change the percentage of sockeye salmon harvested in setum that are considered to be Chignik-bound from 80% to between 55 and 68%. Proposal 125 would replace the sediment management plan with the management plan for the CMA. And lastly, Proposal 126 would move the Volcano Bay section into the South Central District and include the majority of the South Central District in the sediment management plan. And that is the conclusion of the presentation.

I would be happy to try and answer any questions you might have. All right. Any questions?

Mr. Wood and then Mr. Erwin. Yeah, thank you. Where is it tenders that are tendering the setnet gear and hauling it to where?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood. Yes, mostly tenders bringing it to either Sandpoint or current Sandpoint, or they're hauling their fish to Sandpoint. Okay, thank you. Mr. Wood. Thank you.

Thank you for your presentation. My question is on slide number 8. It says the biological and allocative criteria is Chignik River escapement goals are being met. What escapement goals are those? Are you including late-run sockeye, early-run sockeye, coho, and Chinook?

And then what does it mean by being met? Is it opened whenever so many go past the weir or harvest ticket data? How is that determined?

Yeah, Mr. Irwin, through the chair, it's the Chignik River sockeye salmon OEG that needs to be being currently met, basically within the range. So if that's happening, then Chignik is likely fishing and then they have to be hitting those harvest projections as well. Okay, thank you. So just to clarify, the Chinook and Coho escapement goals don't have anything to do with opening with this allocative criteria? Ms. Irwin, that's correct.

Sockeye salmon only.

Any other questions?

Going once.

Okay, go ahead. Thank you. I— you may have stated this, but I just need to clarify on slide number 12 in, in 2024. Why was there— why was there no harvest in 2024?

Miss, I went through the cherry in 2024. Chignik wasn't meeting those— that criteria to allow a fishery in set'em. And also Orzinski Weir, which the Northwest Steppe Evac section is managed on, was also not doing well enough to allow fishing time. Okay, thank you for clarifying.

All right, thanks for your presentation, appreciate it. Um, moving on to— let's see, I guess we're switching gears to Chignik, is that right? Chignik Management Area Salmon Fishery.

Welcome, Carl. Whenever you're ready, put yourself on the record and begin.

All right, Madam Chair, members of the board, for the record, my name is Karl Burnside. I am the area management biologist for the Chignik salmon fishery. My presentation today will provide an overview of the commercial salmon fishery in the Chignik area. For your reference, the following slides in this report are numbered in the lower right-hand corner. The Chignik area written report can be found in supplemental materials, and this oral report is located in RC3 tab 10.

This presentation will cover the following topics: the geographic location of the Chignik Management Area, also referred to as the CMA throughout this report, the general management and harvest strategy of the CMA since the last board cycle, historical and recent escapement, harvest and fishery value information, a summary of the 2023 through 2025 season, and an overview of the Chignik Area salmon proposals before you.

The CMA, or Area L, encompasses all waters between Kilukak Rocks to Kupreanof Point on the South Alaska Peninsula. It is located between Management Areas K to the east and M to the west. Cape Igvak section of Area K borders the CMA at Kilukak Rocks, while the Southeastern District mainland section of Area M borders the CMA at Kupreanof Point. Commercial fishing has occurred in the Chignik area since the late 1800s, and the majority of the area's commercial salmon value has historically come from two stocks of sockeye salmon returning to the Chignik River watershed.

The early-run sockeye salmon predominantly return to Black Lake in June and July, while the late-run predominantly returns to Chignik Lake in July and August. In addition to the sockeye fishery, there's also directed pink and chum salmon fisheries some years throughout the remaining areas of the CMA.

The CMA is divided into 5 fishing districts, that being the Eastern, Central, Chignik Bay, Western, and Perryville districts. Fishing periods in these districts are primarily dependent on Chignik River sockeye salmon escapement, which is monitored using underwater video equipment incorporated into a large pile-driven weir.

The commercial fishing season in the CMA may open as soon as June 1st and go through as late as October 31st, although fishing operations usually finish late August or early September. By default, the entire CMA is closed to fishing fishing. All commercial fishing periods are established by emergency order dependent on local salmon stocks. Pursane and hand pursanes are the only legal commercial fishing gear type, and the management plan is structured so that Chignik Bay and Central Districts are usually managed together, as well as the Western Parrybill Districts for the majority of the salmon fishing season. Here I'll review how each district has been managed since the last board cycle.

In the Eastern District, shown in orange, opens and closes with the Chignik Bay and Central Districts in June, when fishing periods are dependent on Chignik River early-run sockeye salmon escapement. As sockeye salmon runs shift from predominance of early-run fish to late-run fish, the Eastern District may be restricted while the strength of the late run is assessed. And from the end of the transition period until the end of the fishing season, the Eastern District is managed primarily on the evaluation of pink and chum salmon stocks as well as the strength of late-run sockeye salmon. Department's evaluation is based on fishery performance in early July and shifts to an escapement-based approach through aerial surveys as pink and chum salmon begin to enter local eastern district streams, typically late July to August.

Chignik Bay and central districts, along with the inner Castle Cape subsection of the western district, must open, open concurrently by regulation. In June, management is based on achievement of early-run sockeye salmon escapement. During the peak of the transition period, typical late June through mid-July, these areas are managed to harvest service surplus early-run fish without jeopardizing late-run sockeye salmon escapement or vice versa. From the end of the transition period through the remainder of the season, these areas are managed so that late-run sockeye salmon escapement is met. And worth noting, further emergency order actions can be taken to ensure that local king, coho, pink, and chum salmon escapement is met.

2024 And 2025 have seen significant restrictions in the Chignik Bay District for Chignik king salmon conservation throughout July. Which I will go over in more detail in the King Salmon Action Plan presentation. Lastly, beginning August 1st, fishing periods may not occur 10 PM Friday through 6 AM Monday in the Chignik Bay and Central Districts.

This slide highlights Western and Perryville Districts, which from June 1st through July 5th, the Western and Perryville Districts may open concurrently with fishing periods in Chignik Bay and Central Districts. The Perryville District, however, is restricted to no more than 3 48-hour periods with minimum closures of 48 hours between during this time. From July 6th until August 20th, fishing periods in both districts are based on the evaluation of local pink and chum salmon as well as late-run sockeye salmon. And from August 20th until the end of this fishing season, both districts are managed based on local coho, pink, and chum salmon escapements as well as late-run sockeye salmon.

The two Chignik River sockeye salmon runs are genetically distinct yet temporally overlap from late June throughout to through July and are managed to their own escapement goals as shown here. Over the years, multiple run methods have been used to assign early-run and late-run fish during the temporal overlap in season. This includes scale pattern analysis, cutoff dates, genetics, and historical run timing. From 2023 through 2025, the daily proportion of early and late-run sockeye salmon during the run transition was estimated in season using an average run transition curve developed from a mix of genetic sampling and an expectation maximum maximization algorithm from all previous years going back to 2010. Management is based on meeting interim goals throughout the season, typically targeting the midpoint projection.

The chicken manager may alter the exact target goals if run timing appears different based on factors such as run strength, run strength, age, or sex composition. Sockeye-targeted commercial fishing opportunities will not occur if escapement is not meeting objectives. This management strategy ensures that the lower bound of escapement objectives are reliably reached even during years with unusual run timing. Post-season, final apportionment adjustments are currently made using an expectation maximization algorithm.

The following slides will present escapement information in the CMA. Lines representing the 5, 10, 20-year average will be shown when available, and the black dashed lines indicate upper and lower bounds. Of the escapement goal. Coho escapement is excluded due to a lack of information. Chignik River is the only major king salmon producer on the South Alaska Peninsula.

The current BEG was established in 2002. The king salmon BEG has not been met for 7 of the last 9 years. 2023 Had the lowest escapement on record at 267 fish. That said, the BEG was reached in 2025 for the first time since 2019. King salmon escapement estimates shown here are not adjusted for subsistence or sport harvest above the weir.

Details on recent management measures taken to King Salmon will again be presented in the King Salmon Action Plan presentation.

Historically, early-run sockeye salmon escapement has been highly variable, with current OEG implemented in 2023 Board of Fish meeting. While recent years have had weak runs following the run crash in 2018, escapement has been consistently made since 2022, and the overall run strength has been continuously improving.

Late-run sockeye salmon escapement goals have been achieved or exceeded nearly every year since 1970. Recent escapement has either been near or has exceeded upper bounds of the goal due to a combination of small fleet size, strong fish returns, and the restrictions focused on king salmon conservation.

This graph represents combined sockeye salmon escapement. Recent combined sockeye salmon escapement has been well above historical averages. I'd like to note that following the early run crash in 2018, participation in the CMAA fishery dropped off considerably, and the fishery has been considered unreliable. It is likely with the continued stronger returns seen recently, participation will increase and the foregone harvest resulting from escapement above the goals may be curtailed.

Pink salmon typically begin entering CMAA streams during mid-July, with peak escapements in mid to late August. Since 2004, annual escapement estimates have been based on peak aerial surveys of approximately 49 index streams spread throughout the CMA. In 2016, the SEG goal was recalculated using a reduced number of index streams, which also resulted in a reduction of the escapement goal. Because of this, but values before and after 2016 are not comparable. However, the department still monitors previous index streams in season to evaluate the health and spatial distribution of the runs.

This graph displays the odd year escapement, which is typically larger than even years in the CMA. Again, please note this graph represents peak aerial survey estimates, which are an index of escapement, not a total estimated escapement. Factors apart from run size, such as survey timing, viewing conditions, can also heavily affect year-to-year estimates. Due to changes in escapement calculation methods and escapement goals, the most recent averages are not comparable on this graph. As you can see here, during odd years, CMA pink salmon escapement has been consistently exceeding the upper bounds of the escapement goal.

This graph shows the CMA peak pink salmon escapements since 2004 for even years only. Please note that again, poor survey conditions in 2018 prevented ability for an accurate escapement estimate that year. While CMA pink salmon escapements for 2016 and 2022 were below the SAG range, escapements rebounded in 2022 and 2023.

2024. Similar to pink salmon, chum salmon escapement in the CMA is also monitored by aerial survey and has been estimated using peak aerial survey since 2004. Prior to 2016, the chum salmon SEG consisted of a lower bound value only when it was based on the valuation of 49 index streams. However, after an escapement goal review analysis in 2015, this lower bound SEG was changed to an SEG range, and the number of index streams was reduced similar to that of the pink salmon SEG. So again, those numbers are not comparable before and after 2016.

Chum salmon escapement has exceeded the lower bound threshold most years from 2004 to 2025. Escapement has been within or above the SEG range for the last 5 years.

Following slides will depict salmon harvest by species and year in the CMA. Most of the king salmon harvest in the CMA occurs from late June through early August in the western, central, and Chignik Bay districts. Districts and is incidental to fishing targeting other species.

Sockeye salmon harvest has steadily risen since 2018. Recent harvest has come primarily from strong late-run returns seen in 2023 and 2025, though each— though early-run harvest opportunity has steadily increased and has occurred each year since 2022. Historically, at least 80% of the sockeye salmon harvest has occurred in the Chignik Bay and Central Districts. Since around 2014, combined harvest in these districts has dropped though, ranging from approximately 50 to 80%, while the Western District has increased from 25 to 50% of the total CMA harvest depending on the year.

Most of the CMA pink salmon harvest occurs in the Eastern, Western, Perryville, and Central Districts between mid-July and mid-August. Recent CMA even pink year harvest has been significantly above historical averages, and odd years have remained consistent with historical levels despite a reduction and participation.

The majority of chum salmon harvest typically occurs in the Western Imperial Districts. Recent chum harvest is low compared to historical harvest.

The next two slides will review CMA X vessel value. Averages do not include 2020. Price reflected in the season fish ticket values and do not include any premium or retro pay and may be significantly lower than actual historical values. It's worth noting that the price per pound during the 2023 season was also significantly lower than usual for most salmon species in the CMA. As a whole, recent total excess ex-vessel value has been well below historical values.

In this chart, the blue line shows the number of permits delivering to the CMA by year, and the red bars just depict the average ex-vessel value per active permit by year. Recently, 91 permits have been issued each year, permit. However, only 35 to 53 have made deliveries each season from 2023 through 2025. Note that while recent total CMAA ex-vessel value has been low, 2023 and 2025 ex-vessel value per permit is comparable to historical levels. Historically, sockeye salmon comprised 80 to 90% of the CMAA ex-vessel full value, while pink salmon is usually less than 10%.

More recently, however, pink salmon has ranged from approximately 21 to 54% of the total ex-vessel value.

Now I'll provide a brief summary of the '23 through 2025 seasons in the CMA. While a 2023 commercial salmon fishing season did not have opportunity to fish on early-run sockeye salmon until June 29th, fishing opportunity on late-run sockeye salmon and pink salmon resulted in harvests in line with or above the 10- and 20-year averages. After June 29th, all districts of the CMA were kept open for the entirety of of the 2023 season, barring mandatory closures in the Chignik Bay and Central District starting in August. The 2024 commercial salmon fishing season was poor, primarily, primarily resulting from weak early and late-run sockeye salmon returns. Fishing opportunity was not available until July 4th, and the Chignik Bay District was limited to 48 hours per week throughout July for king salmon conservation.

Outside districts were intermittently or primarily closed as well due to weaker pink and chum returns.

Lastly, 2025 saw the best early-run sockeye returns since 2017, and fishing opportunity began on June 20th. The Chignik Bay District was again limited to 48 hours per week throughout July. All other districts were open from late June through the remainder of the season. Chignik Bay District restrictions combined with a late— with a strong late-run and a relatively small fleet resulted in significant sockeye escaping beyond the upper bounds of the established goals, with over 1 million cumulative salmon escapement.

Lastly, I'll briefly go over each of the 5 proposals addressing management of the Chignik salmon fishery. Proposal 108 seeks to remove the ability to fish within the Western and Perryville Districts from June 1 through July 5. Proposal 109 seeks to incorporate the portion of the Jacks Box area currently within the Central District into the Chignik Bay District.

Proposal 110 seeks to reduce allowable mesh depth from 375 meshes to 325 meshes and includes meshes of chafing gear into the total aggregate mesh count. This proposal also seeks to incorporate leads into the aggregate sane length within that Chignik Bay District. Proposal 111 seeks to create an East and West Mitrophanie Island area within the Mitrophanie section of the Western District. And lastly, Proposal 112 seeks to implement time and/or area closures of increasing severity within the Chignik Bay District district and limit fishing time within the Midriffania Island area throughout July. Proposal 112 also seeks to implement king salmon harvest caps throughout the CMA, which if reached would trigger a 7-day closure of the stat areas primarily responsible.

I will review Proposal 112 in more detail in the King Salmon Action Plan presentation. This completes the Chingik management presentation. Happy to take any questions. Thanks, Carl. Any questions?

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Um, I just want you to clarify something for me, if you will. You said there's been a shift more to the western, um, district in regards to sockeye harvest lately. Is there— can you kind of maybe describe that a little more, or did I mishear you?

Through the chair, no, you heard correct. Um, just recently, within the last decade or so, this is the percent of sockeye caught is increased in the Western District, specifically during the years of poor sockeye returns. And I guess just a quick follow-up there, is there any particular statistical area that you might have— might be able to tell where maybe that's occurring? Through the chair, most of the outside harvest occurs around the Trafalgar Island area. So, but it'd probably be universal across the districts.

Thank you.

Follow up on that. Is that because of the, uh, any restrictions in the eastern and central districts that increased harvest push to the west? Uh, through the chair, no. Most of the time, uh, the western Imperial districts are open. The central and eastern are as well.

Um, the only time that has been the case recently in '24, central and eastern were kept closed more than Western Perryville due to chum and pink returns being poorer there. Okay, thanks. And then a couple of questions since I don't see any, um, or clarifications perhaps on slide 22. I think it was— it's not necessarily on the slide, but I think it was a footnote that you mentioned in your commentary that, um, there was a percentage of pink and chum— I mean, sorry, pink versus sockeye of the ex-vessel value? Is that— there's more pinks that are making up that ex-vessel value in recent years?

Is that what I thought I heard you say? Yeah, so historically, like, 80 to 90% plus of all ex-vessel value was just sockeye, but more recently, like, especially since the run crash, it's ranged from about 21 to 54% ex-vessel value coming from pink salmon. Okay, so that's really a product of the sockeye collapsing primarily. Yeah, it does seem like we have been getting stronger pink returns than historically, but it's probably mostly a reduction in sockeye. Okay, and then similar, I think on the next slide is another footnote that you sort of mentioned, I think again in your comments, was that 2025 you saw over a million cumulative escapement.

Is that right? Correct. But that doesn't represent a gross over-escapement since the upper end of the combined BEG is 800, correct? Correct. Okay, thanks.

Just want to make sure. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. On slide 10, you reference the Chignik River king salmon escapement and how the numbers keep dropping and it's difficult to meet the 2,700 upper goal.

But then you go to slide 11 Slide 17, and in 2024 it looks like there was a harvest of like 11,000 or something kings that year. Is there an explanation for that? Uh, through Chairman Wood, yeah. So 2024, there is, uh, 12,172, uh, king salmon harvested that year. Um, the vast bulk of that, approximately 10,000 occurred over like a 2-day period in the Western District.

Um, so primarily, most likely not Chignik kings, but it was, it was mostly juvenile small king salmon harvested within a short time frame that came through. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Just to follow up on that, and I know it might be a difficult answer and you might not have the answer, but Is there any ASL sampling that was done that year that would maybe clean samples, clean tender loads that might have come from the Western District when that king salmon increase was happening to kind of break down maybe where some of these fish were roughly through here?

Carpenter, not in 2024. We just started taking king samples from harvest in 2025, but nothing was taken from '24. Thank you. Was that harvest taken from the inside of the island, Metrophania Island? Um, it was taken primarily from Metrophania Island.

I can't tell you exactly where on the island, but yeah, that was the stat area that most of it occurred in. Thank you. Miss Rowan. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your presentation.

My question is also on slide 10. I believe you said this doesn't take into account harvest above the weir. Did I, did I hear you correctly? Through the chair, yes, that would be correct. Um, for clarity, recently, since it's been a stock of concern, um, we don't imagine that number is— it shouldn't be anything because there have been restrictions.

But historically, there has been sport and subsistence harvest that wouldn't have been taken account for. And what years— what years did that end? What years would you have taken into account that additional harvest above the weir? Um, off the top of my head, that would be technically any year prior to 2023 that some amount of sport or subsistence harvest could have occurred. Okay, and, uh, one more question for you because as a depart— one of your department friends, uh, passed it on to you.

My question is, what is your margin of error or confidence interval on these escapement goal numbers? Through the chair, sure. Yeah, so we had some funding to do kind of a full count of king salmon in 2022. We did 2022 and 2024 specifically for a portion of the run. We— so the traditional method, right, is the— we count for 10 minutes on the top of every hour, and it's extrapolated, multiplied by 6, and that's where most these numbers come from.

But in these, these years, from July 1st through August 5th, so not the entirety of the run but the central 85% or so, we did a comparison of those 10-minute counts to a full comprehensive 24/7 for both cameras every single day during that time period. And in both years the— and let's see.

So in 2022, the 10-minute method, uh, the traditional method, during that time frame we counted 700 king salmon. Uh, the 24/7 count we did 736, or a little bit less than 5% more. And 2024, the 10-minute method during that time frame counted 1,094, and the 24/7 counts counted 1,170, or about 7% more. So I think it's pretty safe to say it's reliably under 10%. And we've also done simulations and other things that would have looked at this, and definitely under 10% consistently.

Okay, thank you. With that math, 2025 would not have met the escapement goal then. So thank you, just clarify that. Well, follow-up? Uh, yeah, through the chair, just to clarify, um, The 24/7 counts counted more than our 10-minute method, not less.

So by that method, we still would have definitely made it within it. Okay. Thank you for clarifying that for the record. I appreciate that.

Yeah, it's kind of cool that the weir cameras are streamed on YouTube. It's kind of like having a very nice salmon aquarium in your living room, depending on the size of your screen. So it's pretty cool. Thank you for that. And I think that because you have those cameras and the uniqueness of that weir, its size and sort of all the things that you have available to you, I think that it is more accurate than a lot of, a lot of them.

So yeah, I encourage people to go check it out during the summer. It's fun. Anything else? All right. I think that's a pretty good segue into the King Salmon Action Plan.

Please.

All right. Once again, Madam Chair and members of the board, my name is Karl Burnside and I've been the Chignik Management Area biologist for 2023 to 2025 seasons. In this presentation, I will cover the Chignik River King Salmon Sockeye Concern Action Plan. This report can be found in REC 3, tab 11, and the action plan document can be found in additional reports. Before starting, I would like to stress that the Chignik Early Run Sockeye Salmon Action Plan and the Chignik King Salmon Action Plans are two entirely separate plans that have no overlap.

Changes in either action plan will not affect the other. The Early Run Sockeye Salmon Action Plan would be presented following this one.

In this presentation, I will review Chignik King Salmon escapement history, management history, future action plan options before the board, and conditions needed to delist the King Salmon stock of concern— stock of management concern. A reminder that the definition of a stock of management concern is a concern arising from a chronic inability, despite the use of specific management measures, to maintain escapements for a salmon stock within the bounds of the SEG, PEG, OEG, or other specified management objectives for the fishery.

Further, the chronic inability is defined as the continuing or anticipated inability to meet escapement thresholds over a 4 to 5 year period, which is approximately the generation time of most salmon species.

At the October Board of Fisheries work session in 2022, the board designated the Chugach River King Salmon a stock of management concern. A formal action plan was adopted at the Alaska Peninsula Ocean Island Finfish Board meeting in February of 2023, and Chignik King Salmon were kept as a stock of management concern at the October 2025 Board of Fisheries work session.

Chignik River King Salmon have had a biological escapement goal of 1,300 to 2,700 fish since 2002. Chignik River King Salmon escapement has failed to meet the lower end of the goal for 7 of the last 9 years, and recently the worst King Salmon returns in recorded history were observed in 2023 with an escapement of 267 fish. However, the BEG, which just met with— during the 2025 season with 1,391 fish.

For context, Chugach King Salmon typically run from late June through early August, though in recent years timing has shifted to be slightly later. At minimum, 80% of the orbal king run occurs throughout July every year.

The following slides will briefly cover the actions cited on at the 2023 Board of Fisheries meeting and a summary of additional department actions since then. For a detailed list of all management actions in each fishery taken each year and action taken prior to 2023, please refer to the tables 2 through 4 in the King Salmon Stock Status and Action Plan document. At the 2023 Board of Fish meeting, the board decided to adopt commercial action number 2, to mandate non-retention of king salmon 28 inches and greater in the Chignik Bay and Central Districts, as well as the Castle Cape section of the Western District, until it was deemed that the king salmon BEG would be met. This action was similar to the department's actions in prior years, except more strict in that it required non-retention across a larger area and would be implemented preseason. However, following record low king returns in the 2023 season, the department decided that more extreme action was required for the 2024 and 2025 seasons.

In both 2024 and 2025, the Chignik Bay District was limited to no more than 48 hours of commercial fishing time per calendar week throughout July. Additionally, following unusually high harvest of juvenile king salmon in the Western District in 2024, harvest caps were implemented throughout this entire CMA in 2025. If more than 1,000 king salmon were harvested within a 48-hour window, a 7-day closure in the districts primarily responsible would occur. This harvest cap was never triggered during the 2025 season.

For the subsistence fishery, the board voted to continue the status quo. The department would continue to use emergency order authority to manage the subsistence fishery. The department has continuously opted to restrict the subsistence fishery and has done so at an earlier date each year. Restrictions to started prior to the king salmon run in 2024 and 2025 due to the expectation that the BEG would not be met. The area of restriction was also increased to encompass the entire Chignik Lagoon in 2024 and 2025.

As a side note, the federal subsistence king fishery is consistently closed in conjunction with the state king subsistence fishery.

Similar to the subsistence fishery, the board voted to continue the status quo The department would continue to use emergency order authority to manage the sport fishery. Like the subsistence fishery, the department has continuously opted to restrict the sport fishery at an earlier date each year. Restrictions started prior to the king salmon run in 2024 and 2025 due to the expectation that the BEG would not be met. The area of restriction was also increased to encompass the entire Chignik Lagoon in 2024 and 2025. And lastly, the saltwater bag limit was reduced in the entire CMA in 2025 in parallel with other emergency emergency orders encompassing the Gulf of Alaska.

Considering the poor return seen in 2023 and the department's decision to implement management actions beyond those set in 2023, the department is providing additional potential options for the 2026 action plan. There are 5 options for commercial fishing, split into 3 options for the Chignik Bay District and 2 for the entire CMA. 1 Option for subsistence fishing and 4 options for sport fishing are presented 2026 action plan. I will also be reviewing Proposal 112. Please keep in mind that the commercial actions are written with the intent for the board to be able to pick and choose multiple management actions or alter actions if desired.

Here we can see Figure 6 from the King Salmon Action Plan document to reference areas described in the following slides. The King Hole is used in Chignik Bay Commercial Action Number 1 and has been closed for the majority of the 2024 and 2025 seasons. 2025 Seasons. And the Olleys Point line is used in actions 2 and 3, as well as in Proposal 112. The lagoon spit line has been used in the subsistence and sport fisheries and is referenced in Proposal 112.

Note that this line extends all the way to the spit in reality.

The first Chignik Bay District commercial action would be to keep status quo to department actions taken in 2025. The Chignik Bay District would be restricted to 48 total hours per week, constrained openings no shorter than 24 hours. Closed waters around the area known locally as the King Hole would be implemented, and non-retention of king salmon 28 inches and greater would be implemented in the Chignik Bay District, Central District, and inner Castle Cape subsection of the Western District.

The second Chignik Bay District commercial action would trade additional fishing time for reduced area and comparison to Action No. 1. The Chignik Bay District would be restricted to 72 hours per week rather than 48, and closed waters inside a line from Ollie's Point would be implemented rather than just the King Hole. The same non-retention requirements as Action 1 would be in effect.

Lastly, the third Chignik Bay District commercial action would be the most strict, incorporating time restrictions from Action 1 and the area restrictions from Action 2. The same non-retention requirements would also be in effect.

The first CMA-wide commercial action would be to implement a harvest cap of 1,000 king salmon within a 48-hour period. If triggered, this would cause a 7-day closure of the statistical areas primarily responsible. Mandatory retention of all king salmon in outer districts would be in effect.

The second CMA-wide commercial action would be to keep status quo to department action taken in 2025, a harvest cap of 1,000 king salmon within a 48-hour period would be instated. If triggered, this would cause a 7-day closure of the districts primarily responsible rather than the stat areas, so a larger area. Mandatory retention of all king salmon would again be in effect for outer districts. The department is recommending status quo for the king salmon subsistence fishery. The department will likely continue to restrict the subsistence fishery to king salmon 28 inches and greater within the Chignik Lagoon and Chignik River watershed preseason each year until the lower bound of the goal is reached more consistently.

In the case that we start seeing the BEG reached more consistently, this will be the first management action to be relaxed.

The first sport action for the— first sport action for the king salmon sport fishery would also be status quo to 2023. The department will continue to manage the sport fishery through emergency order. A second sport action for the king salmon sport fishery would be status quo to 2024 and 2025 actions. The department will continue to manage the sport fishery through emergency order. The department would continue to close the sport fishery to king salmon within the Chignik Lagoon and Chignik River watershed preseason each year and may continue to reduce saltwater bag limits.

This is the most restrictive of the four sport action options.

The third sport action for the king salmon sport fishery would be to restrict the sport harvest of Chignik River king salmon. The sport fishery would be limited to non-retention of king salmon in the Chignik Lagoon and Chignik River watershed. Bait would be prohibited and gear would be restricted to single hook.

The fourth sport action for king salmon would be to close the sport harvest of Chignik River king salmon within the Chignik River. Additionally, the use of bait would be prohibited and gear would be restricted to single hooks.

Now I would like to review Proposal 112. It is the department's recommendation that if Proposal 112 were to be passed, that it be incorporated into the Chignik King Action Plan rather than written as is into regulation. Proposal 112 effectively has 3 sections, these being tiered Chignik Bay restrictions, reduced fishing time at Mitrofeinia Island to a schedule of no more than 48 hours open followed by minimum closures of at least 72 hours, and harvest caps identical to those present did it in the CMA-wide Commercial Action Number 1. I will focus now on detailing the Chignik Lagoon restrictions.

The first tier would be a closed waters inside a line from Ollies Point. However, no time restrictions would be in place. If the first tier is deemed insufficient, the second tier would be to have closed waters inside the spit line, effectively closing the entire lagoon. No time restrictions would be in place. If the second tier is deemed insufficient, the final tier would be to move to a restricted schedule, limited openings to 48 hours with minimum closures of 72 hours between.

The schedule would be in addition to or instead of the area closures from the first or second tier. This schedule would be less restrictive than the time restrictions seen during the 2024 and 2025 seasons, but could be in addition to the previous area closures which have not been in place.

While the department is open to alternative solutions and is not inherently opposed to Proposal 112, we would like to highlight some potential issues. First, while local knowledge has stated that more king salmon hold inside waters from Ollie's Point, such as the King Hole, it is ultimately unclear how effective area closures are in comparison to time restrictions, particularly if there are no time restrictions. Proposal 112 ranges from the least restricted option being closed inside of Ollie's Point line with with no time restrictions to potentially the most restrictive, being closed inside the lagoon spit and on a limited schedule. However, Proposal 112 is extremely vague on how to determine which tier is necessary. If Proposal 112 were to be taken up, the department would seek clarification on when it is appropriate to move between tiers.

As a stock of concern, the department assumes that the king and beg will not be met going into the commercial season, and as is, would likely choose to start with the most restrictive option.

Lastly, consistent with previous delisting criteria, if the lower bound of the escapement goal for the Chignik River King Salmon is met in 3 consecutive years and expected to meet the goal in future years, or if the lower bound is met in 4 out of 6 consecutive years and is expected to meet the goal range in future years, the department will recommend removing Chignik River King Salmon as a sockeye management concern. And in the event that 2 consecutive years of escapements are near the upper bound of the escapement goal range or above the range, management restrictions may be relaxed or set aside using EEO authority. Stock status, action plan performance, and escapement goal review will be updated and reported to the Board at the 2029 CHIKMIC meeting. Concludes my presentation on this, and happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Thanks for that presentation. That was a lot, so I might have a few questions. First, could you briefly state again what the restrictions you put in place specific to subsistence.

What was the EO? What was the EO specifically doing? Through the Chair Carpenter. Yeah. So in 2024, so each year it's just been historically it was non-retention of king salmon 28 inches and greater in the Chignik River watershed.

Watershed. And in 2024 and 2025, we had done those— it was the first year we'd done them completely preseason. They're usually done partway through the King Run. '24 And '25, they were done preseason, and it was also extended to the lagoon rather than— the watershed previously was defined as like roughly like the Menzies Point markers, which is closer to the mouth of the river rather than the entire lagoon. Okay, that's clear.

Um, the other question, and I guess This is more about Proposal 112.

You said earlier, and I asked the question earlier about kind of the breakdown of kings that were caught around the Mitrofina Island area, and I think that statistical area 273-74, if I'm correct.

You know, without a breakdown of like what that area, how that area may be impacting Tachignic King Salmon Escapement situation or possibly others. It's kind of hard to make a determination, but I guess my question is, what would be the— what would be the benefit of splitting this area in your eyes as a manager?

Through the chair, Ms. Carpenter.

In theory, it could give us, you know, there are a lot of claims that more kings are harvested on certain parts of the area. And so I think it's really relevant for if like these king caps are in place, you know, if it would actually make that area a little harder to shut down if that were the case. If the king caps are specified stat areas.

So that's the— probably the biggest practical effect. It might give us some more information, assuming that we don't get too many split fish tickets, on if they actually are on one side of the island or the other, because really I don't have any way of knowing right now. So it could be helpful in that sense. In the past, there have been times when fishermen reported early that there were immature fish in the areas, and we have close that island or part of the island. So I mean, I think a manager probably would close just half of it if somebody were to report early that they were seeing a lot of immature fish.

But I think practically speaking, it has the biggest impact if there are king caps on stat areas. Okay, thank you. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. Okay, on slide 13, Chignik Bay District Commercial Action Plan 1, there's non-retention.

And then on slide 16, it becomes mandatory retention. And I guess I'm not sure you're the right person to ask this for, of, but, but in front of us now, we're going to have a bunch of proposals about the idea of keeping kings or throwing kings back. And I feel like with Sport fishing, we've gone at infinitum with, you know, the percentages of what survives and what doesn't. But is there a way to educate the board on retaining a king salmon versus throwing it back based on how close you're harvesting it near the terminal area, meaning its scales are hardened, has a better lifespan or potential to survive versus ocean? I'm just trying to wrap my head around this a little bit.

Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. So that's a good question. And so when, when the department implemented these, you know, really unprecedented conservation measures for king salmon with the, the harvest caps, with closure through EO action, you know, we, we thought about this and how we structured those.

So, for example, in the Kodiak Management Area and the Chignik Bay area, we allowed release of large king salmon because there are local stocks and fish could be harvested or could be caught in close proximity to those streams where it's a— you're more likely to be encountering mature fish. That probably are more robust to handling than an immature fish where its scales aren't set. And I mean, you just look at an immature king salmon and the scales start to fall off. So, you know, we, we, we think that survival of immature fish is probably pretty low when being released from purse-seine gear. But, you know, in more terminal areas, a mature— sexually mature fish that's on its spawning migration probably has a better chance of survival.

And then, of course, retention comes into play when you have these caps in place. So thank you. I have a question about the caps. So how did the department implement similar caps in adjacent areas, or or for that matter, in any area in the state of Alaska that has a king salmon SOC designation?

Madam Chair, so we did have similar caps in the South Alaska Peninsula area. Those were described earlier. What about on the other side? What about in Kodiak for Karluk and the Eyakulik? In the Kodiak management area, we took a closure approach.

So we had, you know, most of the west side of Kodiak Island closed until early, early mid-July. Bummer. Mr. Irwin. Yeah, thank you. Through the chair, thank you for the presentation.

My question is on this slide as well. I just, I just want to make sure that I'm, that I'm really clear in understanding the first bullet point for a harvest of 1,000 king salmon. So I would assume the assumption is that those aren't all Chignik-bound king salmon, that there's a mix of other salmon in there? Through the chair, yeah, that's correct. And I do believe the upcoming genetics presentation does have a little bit on the 2025 genetic results for the Chigniks.

So, okay, great. Thank you. Mr. Pappas. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is an odd request, but Carl, could you please repeat the restrictions on subsistence in '24 and '25 And also the commercial fisheries in '24 and '25, to state whether the subsistence fisheries could or could not retain fish and which ones they could in '24 and '25, please.

Uh, yeah, um, so in 2024 it was non-retention implemented. I think— I can't remember the exact date, but it was preseason, um, non-retention to 28 inches and above. Within the entire Chiglink Lagoon, Chiglink River watershed. In 2025, it was all— yeah, yeah. For subsistence, it's just king salmon, right?

And in 2025, it was all king salmon within that area. Thank you for your indulgence, Madam Chair.

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you.

So in 2025, there was complete restriction on subsistence harvest in those two areas. Is that what you just said? Uh, through Cherry Carbonate, uh, yeah, that's correct. Um, that being said, in future years we'll probably just do 28 inches and above. Okay, because my, my question was going to be, was there still home pack allowed under 28 inches in the, in the commercial fishery while that was being restricted?

Uh, through Cherry, within the Chignik Lagoon, uh, that'd be the one area of overlap here, yes. Yes. Hmm. Thank you.

Okay. Um, let's move on to the Sakai action plan. We'll complete that and then we will take a break.

All right, for the last time today, through the, uh, Madam Chair and members of the board, my name is Carl Burnside and I've been the Chignik Area Management Biologist. In this presentation, I will cover the Chignik River sockeye salmon stock of concern action plan. This report can be found in RC3, tab 12, and the action plan document can be found in supplemental materials. Before starting, I would like Yeah, I covered that. This presentation, I will review Chignik early-run sockeye salmon escapement history, management history, the action plan options before the board, and conditions needed for delisting the Chignik River sockeye salmon stock of managed concern.

Again, the definition of a stock of managed concern is a concern arising from a chronic inability, despite the use of specific management measures, to maintain escapement for a salmon stock within the bounds of the SEG, BEG, OEG, or other specified specified management objectives for the fishery. Chronic inability is further defined as the continuing or anticipated inability to meet escapement thresholds over a 4 to 5 year period, which is approximately the generation time of most salmon species.

At the time of listing, the Chignik River early-run sockeye salmon escapement had failed to meet the lower end goal 2018 through 2021 despite no directed fishing on the early run in the Chignik management area or the Southeastern District Mainland of South Alaska Peninsula, or the Cape Igvak section of the Kodiak Management Area. Please note that the values in this figure use the current run timing model apportionment. Under this model, early-run escapement estimates were lower in 2018 and higher in 2019 through 2021 when compared to the previous GSI model. Following an escapement goal review in 2022, the early-run VEG of 350,000 to 450,000 was changed to a single-run goal of 450,000 to 800,000. However, at the 2023 Board of Fish, a new early-run optimal escapement goal, or OEG, of 300,000 to 400,000 was instated to be managed for.

The early-run OEG has been reached the last 4 consecutive years, and the total BEG has been met or surpassed.

I would now like to take some time to address the concerns over recent escapement values and explain why the department is confident that the early-run goal has been reached for the last 4 years. Years. Currently, the department is using a run timing distribution model for postseason run apportionment estimates. Under this model, the early run has been made each year since 2022. The department also currently has GeneX stock identification results for 2023 as well as 2006 through 2021, and we just received some for 2024, which I'll also go over briefly.

Um, both escapement models are simply estimates of the proportion of each run and each method comes with their own pros, cons, and assumptions. These estimates are not hard numbers and can have relatively wide confidence intervals. Considering this, there is no way to know the true early run excrement without direct blackleg enumeration. With that in mind, in 2023, the genetic and the runtime models had the largest disparity between estimates observed. I would like to emphasize that despite this, both models estimated that early run excrement was reached.

I would also like to emphasize that the disparity seen between models in 2023 is not the norm.

Here is a plot comparing runtime model with the department's genetic stock model for all years that genetics are currently available, minus 2024. The y-axis shows the proportion of the total run that was composed of the early run in each model. As you can see, 2023 had a much larger proportional difference than any other year. The average proportional difference across all years, however, is only 6.4%. Please note that since this presentation, yeah, we have gotten 2024 results.

So what was the deal with 2023? First, I would like to again emphasize that models are estimates. This table shows the GSI smooth logistical model presented by the Chignik Regional Aquacultural Association, RC13, submitted at the 2025 October work session. The early run given estimates from SeaRAY's GSI model was an extremely close to the department's GSI logistics model. This estimate has a lower confidence interval of 168,000 and an upper confidence interval of over 418,000.

Normally, looking at an estimated range like this in a vacuum, you couldn't make any assumptions on the true value being closer to the upper or lower confidence interval. However, ancillary evidence suggests that early-run escapement was likely higher. Here you can see a table of combined Black Lake tributaries aerial survey escape estimates. Black Lake escapement in 2023 was in line with previous years of higher early run escapement. Due to this and the results from the run timing estimate, the department believes that the true early run escapement value is probably somewhere between the GSI estimate and its upper confidence interval.

2023 Had an unusually strong late run. The proportion of late run fish that composed the total run was one of the highest ever observed. It is likely that this was a source of disparity between models that year.

2022, 2024, And 2025 all had much more normal run distributions. Both 2022 and 2024 saw average to weak late runs, and while 2025 had a strong late run closer to what was seen in 2023, early run escapement prior to the transition period is much higher than previous years. Furthermore, 2024 and 2025 both saw a high Black Lake escapement. Briefly, I would like to refer to RC13 submitted today that has results from our 2024 genetics. Um, according to the GSI model that we used, approximately 346,246 early-run sockeye would have escaped that year, or approximately 48% of the total run, in comparison to the run timing model's estimate of 372,831 or approximately 51% of the total run.

So in 2024, there's only a 3% proportional difference between the two models, and the early run estimate of 346 was safely within the OEG.

In summary, the department is confident that early run escape management met the OEG signed by the board in 2023 each year. Despite the model differences in 2023, the OEG was met by both The two models are usually very similar, and early run escapement under the runtime model was near or above the OEG each year. Even if during other years had higher disparity between the models than usual, it is still extremely unlikely that the OEG was not met. This is further backed by Black Lake aerial surveys. This concludes the escapement review.

So, just real fast, previous slide, and I don't typically interrupt you, but you said a lot of numbers on this slide that aren't on the slide. Why? Can we get that reference? Or, uh, yes, um, that would be— we just posted at RC13, which I tried to refer to. So it's all— it's all in that.

Got it. Thank you. Sorry about the interruption. No problem.

All right, as a refresher, in March of 2022, at the Arctic Shellfish and Shellfish General Provisions meeting, the The board designated the Chignik River early-run sockeye salmon as a stock of management concern. This designation was out of cycle with a regular escapement goal review process due to meeting delays resulting from COVID At this meeting, the Chignik Intertribal Coalition and the Area M Stainers Association came to an agreement with each other, the board, and the department and created RC 104. RC 104 serves as an interim action plan for the 2022 salmon season under the department until the department could draft an action plan for the stock management concern. RC-104 was formally adopted into the 2023 Chignik Early Run Sockeye Action Plan by the board at the February 2023 Chignik and Alaska Peninsula meeting.

Because the Chignik management area is managed entirely through emergency orders based on local escapement, the fishery is closed by default when Chignik sockeye runs are below their interim goals. No commercial opportunity is provided. As such, the only option for further management restriction is outside of the Chinook Management Area. I would like to stress that the current Chinook Early Run Sockeye Salmon Action Plan has no impact on commercial management within the Chinook Management Area.

As mentioned previously, RC-104 was created at the March of 2022 board meeting and set out a framework for actions to be taken for the 2022 season if early run was not projected to be met. RC-104, in summary, stated that if Chinook early run sockeye salmon escapement goal is not projected to be met, the Shungen Island sections of the Southeastern District of the South Alaska Peninsula Management Area would be reduced by 50% for purse seine gear on June 15th, June 20th, and June 25th. Note that following changes at the 2023 Board of Fish meeting, the second Shumagin Islands period now starts on June 16th. At the 2023 Board of Fish meeting, the Shumagin Early Run sockeye salmon action plan was formally adopted, and the commercial management action chosen was status quo to 2022's RC-104, again resulting in an overall 50% reduction on the June June 20th and June 25th Chumigan Islands same periods if Chignik River early-run sockeye salmon are not meeting lower interim escapement goals. The board also voted to keep status quo for Chignik sockeye salmon subsistence and sport fisheries.

The department has opted to not restrict subsistence or sport opportunity on sockeye salmon due to minimal harvest in relation to overall run size and the high importance of the sockeye subsistence fishery to residents.

Since the formal adoption of the 2023 action plan, the Chumigan Islands have had periods reduced in 2 of the last 3 years. In 2023, the June 16th and June 20th periods were both reduced. The June 25th period was not reduced due to an increase in Chinook early-run sockeye salmon escapement. In 2024, the June 16th, 20th, and 25th periods were all reduced due to low Chinook early-run escapement throughout June.

In 2025, no reductions were implemented due to adequate Chinook early-run sockeye salmon escapement. Throughout June.

At the 2025 Board of Fish Work Session, the board opted to retain Chugach Early Run Sockeye Salmon as a stock of management concern. It is still the department's recommendation that Chugach Early Run Sockeye be delisted from a stock of management concern based on the criteria given by the board in 2023. The board still wishes to retain stock of concern status. However, the department is recommending status quo for the 2026 action plan and is providing potential alternate delisting options options since the previous criteria has been met. There are two options for commercial fishing, one option for— sorry, there's one option for commercial fishing, one for subsistence fishing, and one option for sport fishing for the 26 early run sock salmon.

Two additional stock of concern delisting options are present— are being presented.

The commercial action plan options relate to RC-104, which can cause closures within the Shoaligan Islands. For context presented Here is Shubenacadie Island's harvest data from WASIP. Each row shows the harvest composition made of Chignik sockeye salmon from each sampling event. The average Chignik sockeye harvest from 2006 through 2008 in June was 7.8%.

With that in mind, the first commercial action would be to keep status quo. Regulations for the Chignik Management Area and areas with allocated Tice would be— continue to remain unchanged. Department would continue to implement implement 50% time reductions on the Chumigan Islands originally established in 2022 if in-season estimates of the lower bound of the OEG is not projected to be met.

Department is further recommending status quo for the subsistence and sport sockeye salmon fisheries. Sockeye salmon subsistence opportunity is of high importance to residents, and overall harvest is minimal in relation to overall run size. There are currently no sport fishing— sport fisheries focusing on sockeye salmon in the CMA, and any sockeye salmon harvest is extremely minimal. The department retains emergency order authority in both fisheries if action is deemed necessary.

The first recommended stock of concern delisting is consistent with previous delisting criteria. If the lower bound of the escapement goal range for Chignik early-run sockeye salmon is met in 3 consecutive years and is expected to meet the goal in future years, or if the lower bound is met in 4 out of 6 consecutive years and is expected to meet the goal in future years, the department will recommend removing Chignik River early-run sockeye salmon as stock of management concern. Please note that this recommended would be based on the department's postseason apportionment method at the time, or if available, genetic stock identification results.

Considering the previous criteria is met since the stock of concern designation in 2023, two alternate delisting conditions are being provided. For the first alternate, uh, option, annual criteria would be the same as previously mentioned, but the achievement of criteria would be be tied to an alternate delisting goal of 350,000 to 450,000. This alternate delisting goal would be targeted in management rather than the early-run OEG. The commercial action plan option would be continue to leave the existing OEG, and this option would delay and reduce CMA harvest opportunity. Please note, though, that the existing goals already target maximum sustained yield.

Lastly, the department's giving a secondary delisting criteria that would be guaranteed during in-season management and would not be tied to any postseason modeling. While the annual delisting criteria would be the same as previous options, the criteria and goals would instead be tied to reaching multiple combined-run interim delisting objectives. A successful year would be met by reaching interim goals for all 3 suggested dates. These suggested goals would be 150,000 fish through June 25th, 250,000 fish through July 5th, and 350,000 through July 15th. Please note that these goals are higher than typical lower early or combined-run interim objectives but below typical midpoint goals.

Again, this delisting criteria creates an option not dependent on any postseason run apportionment estimates or models and could be accomplished in season. The June 25th goal acts as a strong indicator of early run strength. It is typically during the peak of the early run and ensures an objective is met prior to late run influence. Considering the 150,000 goal for the date is also above the low end objective, there's very little chance that this goal will reach that the entire and early-run OEG would not be accomplished, particularly if fishing time in July is restricted. This criteria is objectively harder to meet.

It is dependent on meeting multiple escapement goals spread out temporally rather than a final sum escapement, and target numbers are above existing low-end interim goals. For context, this criteria would have been narrowly met in 2023, safely met in 2025, and missed in 2022 and 2024. Please note that under this criteria, CMA, Commercial Fishing Opportunity and Management, will continue to be based on aiming for the existing OEG midpoint interim goals, and any commercial action on the Schumagin Islands would also be based on the low-end OEG interim goals. As a result, this criteria is unlikely to impact management in any way, but does make delisting the sockets a concern more difficult. This concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So at the work session, the board declined to delist.

But you are basically telling us in this presentation you got it wrong. And now you have put forth a suite of options that are different from what the action— the existing action plan is. My memory doesn't serve me very well, but who the hell asked for that?

Madam Chair, so you are correct that the board declined or disagreed with the department's recommendation to remove the stock of concern designation. So our practice is to review action plans, and that's what we've done here. You know, we've— so one of the criteria is status quo, but we also, you know, it is not uncommon for us to provide other alternatives in an action plan. It is a draft action plan for your consideration. [Speaker:DR. BAXTER] Yeah, it is just I have never seen anything like this in my tenure on this board in terms of action plans.

This is the first time I have seen anything like this from the department. Commissioner? Yeah, I think it's one of the first times where the department and the board— where we thought we met the criteria, now the board hasn't. So we're kind of in a unique quandary here. How do we develop additional actions that the board can take when it's meeting the criteria of the action plan?

So we were equally kind of perplexed as to how to move forward with this one. Fair. I mean, there— but there's some language in this, in this presentation that that certainly caught my attention. You are making a statement to the board. Is that intentional?

No, not at all. I think we were equally perplexed as to how to deal with this because we thought we met the criteria, so we didn't know if we should come back with more restrictive criteria that would further meet it. Yeah, we were confused as to how to proceed. Okay. So—.

We probably should have had a more thorough discussion discussion after you decided to not delist the criteria as to what you expected in our action plan. That definitely would have been the time to have that conversation because this is, you know, I think a surprise, certainly to me. Okay, any other questions? Mr. Wood. Yeah, I would like to just comment on that since it's open.

I mean, I— the department, when we— sometimes this is the problem when we get these delisting criteria, and in this case we decided to not follow the department's recommendation. And, um, I feel like sometimes, like, I personally didn't have all of the facts behind why it was listed and why it was being delisted, and you just got to put the faith in the department because they have a better understanding of that perspective. I feel like now since that vote, I have got a better understanding of that perspective. And I— so I actually sympathize with the department and the position they've been put in. I feel like I played, you know, if I could redo things, I would, you know, I'd have more information on making that decision now than I had before.

Any other questions or comments? Okay, I think it's a good time for a break. Let's take about a 20-minute break. We'll come back at right before 4:00, and we'll hopefully wrap up our presentations.

The end is in sight. We are close. You ready, Annie? All right. So we are back on the record.

The time is 4:03. We are going to hopefully wrap up our staff reports. So we are switching gears here to tab 8 and 9 for the members that are following along in RC3, I think it is. Um, let's talk genetics, shall we? All right, whenever you're ready, please put yourself on the record and begin.

Madam Chair and members of the board, for the record, my name is Michelle Wadham. I'm a regional research biologist for salmon and herring fisheries. Today I'll give an overview of the 2022 through 2025 South Alaska Peninsula and Chignik chum and king salmon and harvest genetic sampling. I am presenting information about the sampling, and Tyler Dan, here next to me, a fisheries geneticist with the Gene Conservation Lab, will present genetic stock composition results in the following presentation. For your reference, the slides in this report are numbered in the lower right corner of each slide, and this oral report is located in RC3, tab 8.

As an overview of the presentation, I will first discuss background information and before describing project objectives, study areas and design, sample determination, sample collection, and sampling results.

Unusually high harvest of chum salmon in South Alaska Peninsula fisheries occurred in 2021. At the same time, poor returns of chum salmon to coastal western Alaska raised concerns among some stakeholders about the stock-specific harvest in South Alaska Peninsula fisheries. A study was designed and implemented beginning in 2022 2022 to estimate stock contribution, stock compositions, and stock-specific harvests of chum salmon in the southern portion of the Alaska Peninsula Management Area. As you are aware, decreased returns of king salmon in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea watersheds have prompted statewide concern, and a plan was developed to estimate stock composition of king salmon harvested in the southern portion of the Alaska Peninsula Management Area. Opportunistic sampling occurred in July of 2024. and sampling with a study plan began in 2025.

Additionally, king salmon harvested from the Chignik Management Area were opportunistically sampled in 2025. The objectives of the chum and king studies were similar: to collect genetic tissue samples representative of the harvest, to collect biological information from sampled fish in the form of scales for age determination and mid-eye to tail fork lengths, to select a subsample of collected tissues to genotype for genetic analysis, and to use mixed stock analysis techniques to estimate stock proportions and stock-specific harvests of sampled commercial fisheries. This presentation will describe the tissue sampling and age and length estimation. Stock composition estimates will be presented in the following presentation.

I will start describing the study design by showing the geographical areas for these chum and king projects. This map shows the South Peninsula area of the Alaska Peninsula Management Area, which is divided into 4 districts. Districts: the Unimak District in blue, the Southwestern District in green, the Southcentral District in orange, and the Southeastern District in yellow.

Current studies group the 4 South Alaska Peninsula districts into 2 broader geographical areas shown on this map in blue and yellow. To the west, one area is comprised of the Unimak and Southwestern Districts shown in blue. To the east, the second geographical area is comprised the southeastern and south-central, central districts shown in yellow. In addition to areas, sampling was also broken down by gear type. Both areas have a purse seine fishery, but gillnet fishing in the blue Unimak and southwestern districts is primarily drift gillnet, and the yellow southeastern and south-central districts is set gillnet.

Occasional set gillnet effort occurs in the southwestern district and was sampled when available. There are changes in fishing time, area, and gear over the course of the seasons, June and post-June, and year to year, but these sampling areas remain consistent throughout the project duration.

This table summarizes the South Alaska Peninsula chum study design. As shown on the previous maps, samples were obtained from the two geographical areas, the Southeastern and Southcentral Districts and the Unimak and Southwestern Districts. Sampling was also broken down by two gear types, purse seine and gillnet, by area. The goal was to analyze a representative 380 samples per spatiotemporal strata that extended from June through August. The study design included a total of 31 strata.

This slide summarizes the study design for South Alaska Peninsula King studies. The geographical areas for King sampling mirror that of chum sampling and on the, on the Alaska Peninsula in the, with sorry, mirror that of chum sampling on the Alaska Peninsula, with the Unimak and southwestern districts comprising one sampling area and the south-central and southeastern districts comprising the other. In addition to areas like the chum study, king sampling was also broken down by purse seine and gillnet gear type. Temporally, strata were separated into June and post-June.

In addition to South Alaska Peninsula sampling, king salmon were sampled from the Chignik Management Area in 2025. This is a map of the Chignik Management Area, which consists of 5 districts: the Chignik Bay, Eastern, Central, Western, and Perryville districts. Technicians positioned to sample other salmon harvests were able to opportunistically sample Chignik Management Area king salmon harvest that was delivered to False Pass and Kodiak ports. Harvest throughout the Chignik Management Area were combined before delivery, so Chignik Management Area districts were analyzed as one geographical unit.

In each of the sampling ports— False Pass, King Cove, Sand Point, and Kodiak— department biologists and technicians coordinated with processing plants to locate deliveries needed for sampling. The number of fish sampled in an event or day varied based on sampling targets. Daily harvest reports were monitored closely to aid in sample target determination. Statistical fishing areas, gear type, and dates of harvest were confirmed by reviewing fish tickets and conducting skipper interviews. Samples were obtained from both tenders and fishing vessel deliveries at shore-based processors.

The tissue collected for genetic analysis was a piece of the pelvic fin that was clipped from the left side of the fish and placed onto a numbered paper grid. The fin clips were desiccated after collection and shipped to the Gene Conservation Laboratory. In addition to genetic tissue, Preseason, scales for age assessment were collected and length of the fish was measured from mid-eye to tail fork to the closest millimeter. All biological data were paired. Postseason scales were aged by department staff trained in scale aging.

In total, from 2022 through 2025, 55,535 chum salmon were sampled. Postseason analysis adjustments to the number of strata were made as necessary based on available samples and harvest. In 2022, chum salmon analysis included 28 strata, and 2023 included all 31 strata, and in 2024 included 25 strata. Sample selection has not been conducted for 2025. A minimum sample size of 100 fish was achieved in nearly all strata, and targeted goals of 380 fish were met or exceeded in most strata.

Details of the sampling with daily tabulation of harvest and numbers of samples collected and selected for each temporal stratum are found in Appendix B of the written report. In general, a reduced number of strata in a given year and/or strata that did not achieve sampling goals were the result of low harvest. The figure displayed on this slide is a histogram that shows the distribution of South Alaska Peninsula chum salmon lengths. The x-axis has the mid-eye to tail fork lengths data points grouped into bins of equal 20mm intervals, and the y-axis, or each bar's height, indicates the frequency of data points, which is the number of chum salmon that fell within each range. In total, we successfully measured 55,500 chum salmon for length.

Mid-eye to tail fork lengths range from 299 to 798mm and average 555mm.

In total, approximately 50,300 chum scales were successfully aged. Ages varied annually, but overall the samples were predominated by age 0-3, shown by the green bars, followed by age 0-4 in blue, age 0-2 in orange, and age 0-5 in purple chum salmon. There were very few age 0-1 chum salmon in dark blue that are not easily visible on this figure.

In 2024 and 2025, 5,617 king salmon were sampled from South Alaska Peninsula and Chignik fisheries. From South Alaska Peninsula harvests, 1,761 kings were opportunistically sampled in July of 2024 for tissue only, and 3,211 were sampled in 2025. In 2025, 645 king salmon were sampled from Chignik Management Area harvests. For the preliminary results presented at this meeting, the South Alaska Peninsula purslane strata were combined into June and post-June by area, and gillnet strata were combined across areas. All available samples were analyzed.

The figure displayed on this slide is a histogram that shows the distribution of South Alaska Peninsula peninsula and Chignik king salmon lengths. The x-axis has mid-eye to tail fork lengths grouped into bins of equal 30mm intervals. The y-axis, or each bar's height, indicates the frequency of data points, which is the number of king salmon that fell within each range. In total, we successfully collected 3,856 samples for length. Mid-eye to tail fork lengths range from 302 to 1,051mm and average 566 millimeters.

At the time of this meeting, the collected king salmon scales have not been aged.

This brings me to the end of the sampling presentation. In summary, between 2022 and 2025, 55,535 chum salmon were sampled from South Alaska Peninsula commercial harvests. The average length of sampled chum salmon was 555 millimeters. And the sampled harvest was predominated by age 0-3 chum salmon. Between 2024 and 2025, 5,617 king salmon were sampled from South Alaska Peninsula and Chignik commercial harvest.

These fish average 566 millimeters.

I'd like to thank the Alaska Department of Fish and Game management staff on the peninsula who made logistics possible. Catch samplers, support staff, and the lab worked tirelessly to ensure accurate data collection and analysis. Last but certainly not least, I'd like to thank the seafood processors based in King Cove, False Pass, Sandpoint, and Kodiak. There are too many folks to name individually, but their assistance, cooperation, and patience were integral in promoting the highest level of scientific work, accommodating the sampling crews, and creating a safe environment to conduct the projects. This concludes the sampling presentation.

The results of the genetic analysis will be presented next. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Any questions on the sampling?

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. Just in comparison, how many samples were done during the WASP study?

I'm comparing like per fish. Like here, it seems like you did quite a few, 1 out of what, 80 or something, versus WASP.

For the record, Tyler Dan, geneticist with the department. It's comparable to those years for chum salmon. I don't recall off the top of my head. I can tell you that the number of fish that we analyzed per harvest during WASIP was 1 out of every 125 harvested fish, and in this study, 1 out of every 84. So we analyzed at a higher rate, and I believe the sampling rate was comparable.

Awesome, kabork.

Thanks. Okay, Mr. Swenson, be an old guy. What's 500 and 566 millimeters transfer into in inches? There's 25.4 millimeters in an inch.

Are you making us do math? You know what happens when we do math. So, uh, yeah, that's about 20. Mr. Payton, 22.2835 inches. Yes, but once again, that is from eye to mid-fork, so you got to add an inch or two if you're measuring it like normal fishermen would.

Okay. Those are small kings.

Thank you.

Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have two questions. I'll start with the first. From— was there a difference in sampling strategies between this most recent study and the WASP study?

If so, can you describe it?

Sure. For the record, Birch Foster, Department of Fish and Game. You know, in this study compared to WASP, and then the, the, we talked about sample numbers, and I will I'll kind of go over that too real fast. But as far as the chum sample during WASP on the South Peninsula, for this South Peninsula project, we're probably sampling greater numbers. And we're also collecting agent size.

Agent size, I mean scales and length. So that's definitely different than WASP because that was just Those were just tissue samples. As far as the areas during WASP, there was— we had probably more resolution in areas. We had finer detail in temporal strata. And there was more breakout, like we have two main sampling areas in this project, but WASP had we had areas like Unimak, Ikitan was an area, Dolgoys was an area, Sedum and Shumigans.

So there was more temporal stratum in Wasup. But as far as sheer numbers, we're sampling more fish, probably more of the annual harvest.

And oh yeah, another thing was that the The gear types are separated in this study, purse seine and gill net, drift and set, and that was not done in WASP.

Thank you. The second question, and you may get to this in the results, was there a size difference in the king salmon between the June and July fisheries in sampling this, in this most recent study?

You can let me know if I'm jumping the gun on this one too. I think you're in the right spot.

You guys need a couple more minutes or— Want to come back to it? What do you think, Madam Chair? If you guys— is it something you need now? We can get it to you in the next, you know, before the evening's over. That's fine by me.

Okay. Why don't you do that, guys? Yeah. I mean, through the chair, we have the tables in the report and you're talking King. Correct?

That's correct.

Okay, we're going to move on. Um, any other questions related to sampling? All right, um, once you guys have a chance to sort of pull that, we'll, uh, we'll look for it. Thank you very much for the presentation. Let's go ahead and move on to the results.

Madam Chair, members of the board, for the record, my name is Tyler Dan. I'm a fisheries geneticist with the Gene Conservation Lab, and today I'll give an overview of the South Alaska Peninsula hanchinik, chum, and Chinook salmon harvest genetic analyses. For your reference, the following slides in this report are numbered in the lower right part of the slide, and this oral report is located in RC3 tab 9.

Sì, here's an outline of this presentation. First, I'll give a brief overview of genetic stock identification, or GSI, methods. Then I'll present the design of our chum salmon analysis results at the June, post-June, and overall South Alaska Peninsula fisheries level, and provide a summary of results for Western Alaska stocks of interest. I'll provide the same summary for our preliminary Chinook salmon results, then I'll provide a guide to where other results can be found in the chum salmon report, summary conclusions, and what we plan for the future of this program.

Here's how we apply genetic stock identification as a tool in fisheries management. In this hypothetical landscape, there are two populations of salmon in this drainage. Individual fish within each population circle each have two copies of a gene called an allele, displayed here by different shapes and colors. Each fish inherits one allele from the female parent and one from the male parent. Due to evolutionary processes, these populations have different frequencies of an allele, with more blue triangles in the top population and more red circles in the bottom population.

This genetic variation between populations is the raw material that allows us to use genetic stock identification.

So GSI is a 3-step process, and it begins with sampling fish on the spawning grounds to construct a genetic baseline by characterizing each population in groups of populations called reporting groups or stocks for a set of genetic markers. The second step involves sampling fish from a mixture, in our case from the South Alaskan Peninsula and Chignik fisheries, and characterizing those catch samples for the same genetic markers common to the baseline. And the third step involves comparing the genetic data from the baseline and catch samples in the math called mixed stock analysis.

So we constructed an updated coast-wide baseline for chum salmon for this project. It includes 42,000 fish sampled from 382 populations characterized for 96 genetic markers called SNPs, and we identified contributions from 13 reporting groups or stocks, including 8 new groups compared to the previous WASSIP baseline, denoted with red stars here.

For Chinook salmon, the process was a little more complicated. We use two baselines in multi-stage GSI to first identify fish from broad regions, including western Alaska, using a coast-wide baseline containing 55,000 fish from 508 populations characterized for 81 SNPs.

We then used an Alaska-specific baseline of 26,000 fish from 240 populations characterized for 245 SNPs. This increase in the number of markers is what allowed us to identify western Alaska stocks of interest that were previously grouped together into a coastal western Alaska group. These new reporting groups included Norton Sound, Yukon, Alaska, and a combined Kuskokwim-Bristol Bay group. Populations from the Kuskokwim and Bristol Bay regions are very closely related and so we are currently unable to identify them separately using DNA as a natural tag.

Now we'll present results from the chum study.

We define mixtures or strata in two areas, Unimak and southwestern districts, or just Unimak, and south-central and southeastern districts, or the Shumagins, and by two gear types, seine and gillnet, and in three months June through August. Estimates from individual strata were stratified hierarchically or rolled up in a method I'll describe later into monthly estimates, June and post-June estimates, and for an overall set of South Alaska Peninsula estimates.

I'm going to describe our sample selection method using June Unimax Ain in 2022 as an example. In this figure are harvest dates are on the horizontal axis and number of fish on the vertical axis. In the top panel are daily harvests color-coded by stratum, which were defined as the 4 fishing periods in the area in June. Note that the earliest days' catch were from a fleet test fishery and that harvests were greater in the second and third stratum than the first or last. The second panel is the number of samples that we would select to analyze from each day to have proportional sampling where each day represents its harvest contribution to the total harvest for that stratum.

This third panel shows the actual number of samples collected on each day. Note that we oversampled so that we could subsample to try and achieve the proportional sampling numbers in the second panel. A total of 3,894 samples were collected in the June Unamax seine fishery in 2022. And finally, the bottom panel shows the actual number of samples that we selected for analysis from each day. A total of 2,729 samples were selected for analysis of the June Unamax seine fishery in 2022.

You can see we didn't select samples from the first day because they included test fishery samples and that we are representing commercial harvest. In general, we want our numbers of samples selected in the bottom panel to look like the harvest distribution in the top panel, and we got pretty close. So we're confident our analyzed samples are representative of harvest. We repeated the same process for sample selection of each strata to ensure that we had mixtures that were the best representation of harvest as possible.

We use a hierarchical design to weight each set of stock composition estimates by the harvest they represented to summarize stock composition and stock-specific harvests at higher levels.

The stratified estimates, or roll-ups, were summed hierarchically: temporal strata within gear types, areas, and months, then gear types within areas and months, then areas within months, then months into June and post-June fisheries, and finally to the South Alaska Peninsula as a whole.

Here is Table 5 from the CHUM Report. Each row is a catch sample or stratum that we analyzed in 2022, with the far right column including the harvests each represented. The percentages in parentheses represent the percent of the total South Peninsula harvest represented by each level of stratified estimates that we summarized. For example, the 4 June unimax seine strata we just walked through are highlighted in green here and were stratified to an overall June UNOMAC seine set of estimates that were 40% of the total South Penn harvest. Summarizing seine and gillnet together, we can estimate June UNOMAC harvests, which combined with Schumigin harvests lets us estimate total June harvest composition which was two-thirds of the total harvest.

Lastly, combining June and post-June gives us stock-specific estimates of harvest in the South Alaska Peninsula in 2022. Again, we use this hierarchical design to ensure that estimates are rolled up for gear types, areas, and time strata are representative of the harvest. While estimates are available for individual strata in the report, I'll only be presenting summary roll-ups today.

I'll be using the same figure format to summarize results at the June and post-June levels and South Peninsula as a whole. The horizontal axis has each of our 13 reporting groups that we produce stock composition and stock-specific harvest estimates for. The vertical axis displays median and 90% credible intervals. The top panel will have results as a percentage, and the bottom panel, stock-specific harvest estimates in tens of thousands of fish. Here are the percentages for the June fishery level roll-ups for 2022, '23, and '24.

Japan was the largest contributor on average across the 3 years, and coastal western Alaska averaged 24% of harvest in the June fishery. In terms of stock-specific harvests, overall harvests were greater in 2022 than the other years. Harvests of Japan averaged 115,000 chum salmon, and coastal western Alaska averaged 91,000.

Here are the results in the same format for the post-June fishery. The local South Alaska Peninsula West Kodiak Island group was the greatest contributor to harvest in the post-June fishery, averaging 52% across years. In terms of harvest, catches were much higher in '23 than the other years, and harvests of South Peninsula averaged 252,000 across the 3 years. Harvests of coastal western Alaska were lower than in the June fishery and averaged 11,000 fish.

And here are the results in the same format for South Pen as a whole. The local South Peninsula group was on average the greatest contributor to South Pen harvests across the 3 years, averaging 20% of the total. Japan was the second largest contributor on average at 19%, and coastal western Alaska was the fourth largest on average at 14%. Stock-specific harvests of coastal western Alaska averaged 103,000 across the 3 years.

In the next few slides, I'll be focusing on estimates for individual stocks of western Alaska chum salmon. The figures will all have the same 6 panel layout with time on the horizontal axis ranging from June on the left through August on the right. The vertical axis will be the value in either percentages or harvests. The two panel— or the panel columns will be years from '22 to '24, and the rows will be the two areas with the Chumagins on top and Unimak on bottom.

The percentages of coastal western Alaska chum salmon are on the left. Percentages are generally higher in early June with the declining contributions to harvest through time, are higher in the gillnet fleet in red, and in the Unimak and southwestern districts along the bottom panels. The stock-specific harvests are on the right. While coastal western Alaska was more vulnerable to the gillnet fleet fleet, because harvests were greater in the seine fleet, the overall impact was greater in the seine fleet and in the Unimak and southwestern districts in the bottom panels.

Here are the same estimates of harvest of coastal western Alaska viewed another way in a bubble plot format on the right with a map of our two sampling areas on the left. On the map, the Unimak and southwestern districts are to the west in blue and the south central and south eastern or in the east in gold. The bubble plot has temporal strata on the horizontal axis from early June on the left through August on the right. And stratified air-giria combinations for each year as rows along the vertical. The color boxes correspond with the sampling and analysis areas on the map.

Harvests of coastal western Alaska are generally greater earlier in June in Unimak and southwestern districts and in the same fleet as noted by the larger harvest bubbles.

Here are results for Kotzebue Sound chum salmon in the same format, but the scales have changed and are much lower. Kotzebue Sound was not observed in large proportions except for in June of 2022 when it averaged 3.9%.

There was low harvest of Kotzebue Sound averaging 339 fish among strata.

And here are results for Upper Yukon chum salmon in the same format, but the scales have changed and are lower. Upper Yukon was not observed in large proportions except for in July of 2024 in the Unimak and southwestern districts when it averaged 0.8%.

There was low harvest of Upper Yukon, averaged 76 fish among strata.

Now we'll present results from the initial Chinook study in a similar format.

We define strata for the Chinook study similar to the chum. We analyze seine harvests in the two areas for the June and post-June fisheries and for the entire South Peninsula for gillnet, as those harvests were smaller. 2024 Was a pilot year for sampling, and samples were only collected in July. It should be noted that we did apply those post-June samples collected in 2024 to harvest across the entire season. However, 82% of the season harvest occurred in July and could be considered representative of the total season, season harvest.

Samples of the same harvest in the Chignik Management Area were collected opportunistically in 2025.

2025 Was the first full year of a 3-year study, and the study was modified to include fisheries in the Chignik Management Area. We report results from the 2024 pilot year and 2025 only, but note that our policy and best practices for these projects is to report 3 years of coverage given interannual variability in these results.

Here are results from the South Alaska Peninsula as a whole in the June fishery of 2025, again with percentages in the top panel and harvests, harvests in the right panel. Non-Alaska stocks were the majority of harvests with an estimated harvest of 756 fish or 78% followed by the Kuskokwim Bristol Bay group, 432 fish or 33%. No other group contributed more than 5% to overall harvest.

Here are results from the South Alaska Peninsula as a whole in the post-June fishery of 2024 and 2025. Again, it should be noted that the 2024 estimates were collected in July, representing 82% of total harvests but were applied to harvests from throughout the entire season. Non-Alaska was the largest contributing stock to harvests in 2025 at 91%. No other stock averaged greater than 5% across these years for the overall post-June fishery.

Here are results from the Chignik-Seine harvest in 2025. Non-Alaska was the largest contributor with an estimated 2,532 fish, or 86 Other contributors include Chignik with 210 fish or 7% and Southeast Alaska with 202 fish or 7%. No other group contributed more than 5% to harvest.

Here are results from the one western Alaska reporting group observed at greater than 3% in any single stratum for the South Peninsula, Kuskokwim Bristol Bay. In a similar format with percentages on the left and harvests on the right. June and post-June fisheries are along the horizontal for each year, with Unimak in the bottom panels and Chumigans in the top panels. The largest proportions of Chinook from this group were observed in the seine harvests in Unimak with an average of 34% and in the gillnet harvests with an average of 44%.

However, these strata had relatively small harvests of Chinook salmon. Overall numbers of Kuskokwim Bristol Bay Chinook salmon averaged 135 fish among strata.

In addition to preliminary results of Chinook, this presentation focused on the top-level results from the chum study. Here's a guide to where to find other results in the chum report. The baseline is described in Table 3 and Appendix A. The design is laid out in Tables 4 through 7 and 9 through 11. Daily summaries of harvest and samples are found in Appendix B, with summaries in Table 8.

Annual fishery summary— summaries can be found in Table 8. Annual fishery level results presented today can be found in Tables 6 16 through 14. Individual stratum estimates are in Appendix D. And other stratified estimates are in Appendix E. Summaries of Asia and Siwak chum estimates are in Table 25 and Figure 19. And a comparison with WASP results in Table 29 and Figure 23. Stock-specific estimates can be found in Appendix G. In summary, we analyzed roughly 30,000 chum salmon representing 1 out of every 84 harvested fish, an analysis far higher than most mixed stock analysis programs.

Coastal western Alaska chum were observed highest in early June, were more vulnerable to the gillnet fleet, but were harvested more in the same fleet and in the Unimak and southwestern districts. For Chinook, for the 2024 pilot study, and the preliminary results for 2025. We analyzed 5,500 samples representing 1 out of every 5 harvested fish. The Kuskokwim Bristol Bay stock was observed greater than 10% in 6 strata, but they represented low harvests, so total harvest was about 1,200 fish. Chignik was observed at 7% in the Chignik fishery, representing about 200 fish.

We plan to continue sampling and analyzing chum and Chinook salmon harvests in the area through 2027.

We acknowledge the previously recognized samplers and processors, the team of co-authors, the GCL staff that produce high-quality data in a timely fashion, reviewers that improve this work, and the state of Alaska for funding these studies. And with that, I'll conclude my presentation and try to answer any questions you may have. Thanks, Tyler. In an effort to give everyone in the room whiplash, Oh my gosh. Well done.

No, sincerely though, Commissioner, I want to thank you and your staff for fighting for the funds for this, for producing the results, you know, as quickly as possible to try and get this before the board for this meeting. So thank you very much. If I could, I want to thank staff too. This was a Herculean effort to get this done by this board meeting and get it in front of you so you could inform your discussion. So thank you, staff, very much for what you've done.

Really appreciate it. Very much appreciated. Thank you, Mr. Swenson.

That was a great presentation. So how did your study compare with the WASAP study that was done? Do you— is it kind of a lot of the same or different? Just through the chair, Mr. Swenson. Um, there were similarities and some important differences worth noting.

Um, as noted earlier, we analyzed harvest at a higher rate, and so maybe have better estimates of overall, um, stock-specific harvest. Another important difference is that we used an updated baseline with somewhat different groups. Um, at the previous board meeting where we presented 2022 results, we also presented summaries of Asia relative to coastal western Alaska harvests. And that may be another big difference in that, um, during the WASP years, we saw more coastal western Alaska fish relative to Asia fish, and that trend has changed where there are far more Asia fish observed in recent years relative to coastal western Alaska.

Thank you. Mr. Chamberlain. So have we seen an uptick in the number of raw, raw numbers for the Asian fish that are coming, coming through, or are we, or are we seeing a decline in, in the Western Alaska chum, or is it a combination of both?

Through the chair, Mr. Chamberlain, I'd say likely a combination of both. Certainly, I believe run sizes for coastal western Alaska were greater in 2007-09 than they are in 2022-24. I can't speak to total run estimates for Asian chum, but likely a combination of both.

Mr. Owen. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that presentation. So based on your comment about increased hatchery production and it being majority non-Alaskan hatchery chum. I guess I— in the longer report in 2023, 2022, '23, and '24, when you start to break it down by the fishery gear type and the area, there's some striking results that actually show that in those, when you break it down, it's not majority Russian or Japanese hatchery chum.

I'm looking at the results right now, and for the gillnet in the June 2023 fishery, for example, Siwak was the largest contributor with 33%. And so I guess my question is just based on the way that the information was presented to us in these very tiny tables with proportions where you can't even see the number of Upper Yukon or Siwak chum, um, I guess I'm just wondering what is, what, what is the validity in that statement that it's, that it's only a majority Russian and Japanese hatchery fish when we break it down to these strata levels and we've actually got higher contributions of them?

Through the chair, Ms. Irwin, we, we didn't attribute any Japanese or Russian any harvest estimates to hatchery fish. My understanding is a majority of Japanese chum salmon are hatchery origin, but we, we didn't attribute any harvest to hatchery fish. And I think I understand your question regarding greater proportions observed in some gillnet harvests in some areas and years, and we certainly did observe that. The reason we tried to present these results both in terms of percentages as well as stock specific harvest is that often the harvests in the gillnet strata were less than they were in the seine strata, and so the overall impact was greater for coastal western Alaska. Okay, thank you very much, and I really appreciate the, the depth that the report goes into with the number of fish.

And just personally for me, it's difficult to actually understand what the effects of say 10,000 fish from CWAC is in proportion when you put them on 16, 12 graphs this size, I think that it undermines actually the, the importance of those lower number of fish to these systems that are really struggling with escapement goals. So we go based off of escapement goals by number of fish, and so having number of fish in front of me would be really helpful in the future. Thank you though.

Mr. Wood? Yeah, thank you. I just, in the very beginning, my first question was, what is the— did you see any difference in percentages of Siwak Chum from this WASP study versus now?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood, we did summarize those estimates in the report. I don't have those numbers off the top of my head. Um, but we did summarize percentages at the June and post-June level for the WASP years and the current years, and we can try to provide that for you if you'd like.

Um, I've got them. Thank you. And then the other question I had, um, this decrease in chum, sea whack chum in particular, and then the increase of of Asian chum. Are you— is this a trend that goes beyond just this Aleutian area, or are you seeing this statewide in terms of the reduction in chum statewide? And maybe it's not a pertinent question, but I asked it.

Yeah, through the chair, Mr. Wood, we— this is currently the only chum mix stock analysis program that the lab is running, and so we're not observing the relative abundance of Alaska chum relative to Asian chum elsewhere in other fisheries.

[Speaker:JENNY] All right. Well done, everyone. Thank you very much for pulling that together. I think it's going to be really helpful to inform the discussions that we have this week. Any other board comments, questions?

That concludes staff reports. Then the time is about 12 minutes to 5. We will adjourn for the day and pick up tomorrow morning with traditional knowledge reports, and then we will roll into public testimony. And we will likely do our ethics disclosures in the morning. So before we get started with TK testimony, don't forget, if you want to sign up for public testimony, please get those blue cards in by 10:00 a.m. tomorrow.

We will see you at 8:30. Thank you.