Statewide Finfish and Supplemental Issues (3/17/2026)

Good morning, everybody. Time is 8:48. The day is St. Patrick's Day, March 17th. Um, my name is Maret Carlson-Vandort. I am the chair of the Board of Fisheries, and I believe we've got 6 of 7 members present today.

And I'll go ahead and start to my far right, and I'd ask board members to introduce themselves, please.

Hi, my name is Olivia Irwin and I'm from Ninana, Alaska. Hi, my name is Kurt Chamberlain, I'm from Wasilla, Alaska. Good morning, Tom Carpenter from Cordova.

Good morning, Greg Swenson from Anchorage, Alaska. Mike Wood, Chase, north of Talkeetna. Great. And before we get into staff introductions, I should probably mention that we are here for statewide finfish and supplemental issues. So with that, Mr. Payton, would you like to introduce yourself and your staff, please?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, board members and members of the public. My name is Israel Payton. I'm director of Sport Fish. With me here today, I'll ask staff to raise their hand after I introduce them.

I have Jason Dye, the deputy director. Jay Baumer, South Central Management Coordinator. Andy Gary is our Sport Fish Hatchery Supervisor. Chrissy Dunker is our South Central Regional Supervisor. And Patrick Fowler is our South Central Management Coordinator.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Bowers. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Forrest Bowers. I'm Acting Director of the Division of Commercial Fisheries.

And here from the division, we have Shaleen Hutter. Regulations Program Coordinator. Andrew Monroe, Statewide Salmon Fishery Scientist. Sarah Gilkbaumer is the Gene Conservation Lab Director. Flip Prior is our Aquaculture Section Coordinator.

Troy Tienness is the Southeast Alaska Management Coordinator. Zach Liller, Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim Research Coordinator. Aaron Tiernan, Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim Management Coordinator. Colton Lipka, Cook Inlet Management Coordinator. Nat Nichols is the Kodiak Chignik Alaska Peninsula Groundfish and Shellfish Area Management Biologist.

In addition, Rachel Baker is here. Rachel's one of our Deputy Commissioners and she is Commissioner Vincent Lang's alternate on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Pappas. Morning, Madam Chair, staff, members of the public, and the board.

We have one person with me today. That'd be the statewide research director, Carolyn Brown, sitting behind me, and the rest of our staff will be at the Board of Game meeting starting during this meeting. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Jared Stone. I am the acting state subsistence liaison for the Office of Subsistence Management. And later today I'll be joined with our Deputy of Science, Scott Ayers. Thank you.

Great, thank you. And Department of Law. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, members of the board. Eddie Lee for the Department of Law.

And Public Safety. Good morning, Captain Derek DeGraff, Alaska Wildlife Troopers. Thank you. Thank you. And Director Nelson, will you please introduce yourself and your staff?

Good morning, Madam Chair. My name is Art Nelson. I'm Executive Director for the Board of Fisheries. And with board staff here at this meeting, we have Annie Bartholomew. She's our publications specialist and also the advisory committee coordinator for northern southeast.

We have Layla Williams over there organizing papers. She's our south central region advisory committee coordinator. And at the end of the table, Sam Kirby. She's our Arctic and southern southeast region advisory committee coordinator. Madam Chair, thank you.

Thank you. Let's see.

We will go ahead and just give my spiel here, give you a little bit of information about how this meeting is going to roll this week. But I'll start with by saying that for those of you that are here in the meeting room, if you have trouble hearing us, first of all, please let board support know. But we also have some wireless headsets that can tie into our sound system if you need a little bit of extra help. Again, please just ask the board support staff and we'll get you a headset and hopefully that'll help you out. I would also ask people to please to silence or turn off your cell phones.

And, and we'll get into ethics disclosures, I suppose, at this time. So we'll take ethics disclosures in the same order in which you introduced yourself, starting with Ms. Erwin. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Olivia Henahi Erwin. I live in Inanna, Alaska.

I am a Doyon Corporation shareholder and receive a dividend each year. I am also an Evansville Native Corporation shareholder and receive a dividend each year, both formed by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. I am currently unemployed. My prior employment as community liaison at the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association ended January 30th, 2026. I received an honorarium from the University of Alaska Fairbanks this year for guest lecturing.

I will receive a stipend for my service on the Board of Fisheries. Prior to my time on the board, I operated an Alaska Native— an Alaska business license for High Impact LLC that is no longer active. My license has been inactive since December 2025, and I have not taken on a client since 2024. I have a resident hunt, fish, and trapping license. My immediate family consists of my 4 siblings, only 1 of whom resides in Alaska, along with 2 aunts and 4 uncles who reside in Alaska, none of whom are currently involved in fisheries work or business.

My Aunt Marie Monroe retains 2 commercial fishery permits for the Tanana River, net and fish wheel. However, she has not fished the permit or financially benefited since 1993. Neither I nor any member of my immediate family have any affiliation with any business or Fish and Wildlife organizations that may be affected by the proposals before us. No member of my immediate family, myself, or my employer are involved in any lawsuits against the state, department, or Board of Fisheries. I certify this disclosure statement is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Miss Irwin. Any questions? Hearing none, I rule that you can fully participate in the meeting, um, this week. Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair.

My name is Kurt Chamberlain. I was raised on the Kuskokwim.

I am currently employed as Deputy General Counsel with Chalista Corporation. I oversee corporate governance, litigation, regulatory compliance, and general business law on behalf of the corporation. I'm a shareholder of the Kuskokwim Corporation and a shareholder descendant of Chalista Corporation and receive distributions from the Kuskokwim Corporation each year. In the past year, I've received residual income from the sale of a law firm and rental properties. I currently own a controlling interest in Neon Law Group Incorporated, which is currently winding down and not conducting business.

I will receive a stipend for my service on the board. I currently hold an Alaska hunting, fishing, and trapping license. Neither I, my family, nor my employer have a financial interest in fisheries. I have no interest in any business or fish and wildlife organization that may be affected by any of the proposals or agenda change requests. Change requests discussed in this meeting.

My father owns a commercial drift net permit for the Middle Kuskokwim that hasn't been used since 1996. Neither I, any member of my immediate family, nor my employer are involved in any lawsuit where the state or the board has— or the department has any— or is a party. And so this information is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge. Thank you, Mr. Chamberlain. Any board questions?

Hearing none, I rule you can fully participate at this meeting. Mr. Carpenter.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Tom Carpenter. I reside in Cordova, currently retired. I've divested myself completely of all businesses, including limited entry permits and IFQs. I receive the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, as does my daughter.

I also receive a stipend for serving on this board. I purchase an Alaska sport fish hunt license annually and also a Copper River subsistence permit. Neither I nor anyone in my immediate or extended family have any financial interest in any business which relates to Fish and Wildlife resources or belong to any organization to which financial gain can be attributed. There are no proposals before the board that will benefit myself nor anyone in my family. No member of my family is involved in any lawsuits against the the State of Alaska or the Department of Fish and Game.

I believe this statement to be true, correct, and complete. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Any questions from the board? Hearing none, you can fully participate at— for all the things for this meeting, all the things, all of the proposals. Mr. Swenson.

Good morning. My name is Greg Swenson. I was born and raised in Anchorage and married with one daughter and one grandson. My wife and I are retired school teachers, and I became a licensed builder-developer after my 13 years of teaching. My daughter is— was also an assistant principal in the school district, and she has since retired.

We both receive income from teacher retirement from the state, PFD, CDs, interest, investment, residential rental income, and I get a stipend from the state for my service on the board. Neither I nor my immediate family have any financial interest in fisheries, nor are we involved in any lawsuits with the State of Alaska Department of Fish and Game or Board of Fisheries. I also have licenses for hunting, fishing, and a private pilot's license. This information is true and correct to the best of my abilities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Svenson. Any questions from the board? Hearing none, I rule you can fully participate. Mr. Wood.

All right, thank you. Since this might be my last one, I'll do the old original one here. Hehe. Alright. So bear with me.

My name is Mike Wood. My first year in Alaska was 1989. I came to Alaska as an outdoor educator for the National Outdoor Leadership School based in Palmer and also worked as a Denali climbing guide for Alaska Denali Guiding based in Talkeetna. I worked as a carpenter and a fisherman during the off-season and eventually transitioned from guiding to full-time work as a self-employed builder, fisherman, and occasional guide. I live with my wife Molly in a house we built on the Susitna River on a remote property in Chase, which is about 5 miles north of Talkeetna.

Molly is an independent consultant, and she works remotely from her home office. I founded— I'm one of the original founders, board members of the Susitna River Coalition, where I continue to play a significant role in protecting the rivers and advocating for all the watershed offers to support healthy communities and fisheries and wildlife. Through this role, I became active in the Matsu habitat issues, and in 2013, I was appointed to the Matsu Fish and Wildlife Commission and served for 9 years, 6 of which I chaired. I was the only commercial fishing representative on a diverse board, and I was able to bring balance and objectivity to the commission, especially on habitat and conservation issues. In 2017, my wife and I purchased a piece of property on the mouth of the Susitna River, 105 miles below our home.

We purchased a Cook Inlet setnet permit and leased a fishing site from DNR at the mouth of the Sioux in the area of Sioux Flats Game Refuge. Each year we register to fish in the Northern District and get our catcher, seller, and direct marketer license. Our business model is to sell high-quality fresh fish to local markets. Our business mission is to educate people about the value of the Susitna River through their stomach. We believe that in increasing awareness of the valuable sources of sustainable local food, we can help create a stronger connection to the Susitna River and the resources it offers to our community.

We have created a sustainable low-volume business targeting local customers in the Matsu and Anchorage and catching only what is ordered. We have about 120 regular customers, typically fish the top of the incoming tide during the two 12-hour openers we have within a week. Regulations impacting the west side setnetters of the Northern District have a direct impact on our business, our ability to fill our orders, and our finances. Regulations regarding fisheries on the east side of Cook Inlet and elsewhere have never had an impact on our business. This is a very niche market and brings modest, modest financial gains.

Honestly, the last 10 years it's been below $5,000 each year. We own several properties now and are all in the Mat-Su Watershed. We hunt and fish, collect food in the Mat-Su-Sitna Watershed. My history, my identity, my, my commitment to the Mat-Su-Sitna Valley is huge. My fishing business is tied explicitly to the the Susitna Valley.

I do not have any intention to move my permit elsewhere in Cook Inlet or elsewhere in the state. To be conservative, um, well, I'm not going to be conservative, uh, I'll wait and see what we say. Additional details on my current work: I work for Alaska Mountaineering School. I'm a contract employee guide. I train U.S. military Special Forces in winter survival, survival, and I contract with Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions in Antarctica.

I'm a contract builder for a variety of projects. My wife I both receive Alaska Permanent Fund dividends. Neither my wife nor I have any— been involved in any lawsuits including the State of Alaska, ADF&G, or the Board of Fish. This information is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge. Thank you, Mr. Wood.

Questions from the board? Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Could you please, um, touch briefly on any potential conflicts that you think you might have with the proposal specifically dealing with Cook Inlet at this meeting.

Yeah, thank you.

I own a set net permit that is throughout SO4H. It's throughout the entire inlet. And that, that, that permit has been registered in the Northern District years ago. It was created. So you register Northern, Central, Lower.

And that's what I've done. The value of that permit has changed zero or gone down throughout the entire 21st century. It's now valued maybe at $15,000. We'll see.

So the value of the permit is only going down. I think the court case of Carney v. State proves that because I have a permit in this area that I'm not eligible to vote on some of the Cook Inlet issues before us. I would say, however, that when we dealt with this 3 years ago, when I began on this board, that it was ruled— or an opinion came from the Attorney General, and I'll read it. Here, Mr. Woods' SO4H permit can be sold. He possesses an interest in the permit, and he receives a benefit from the permit permit based on its value.

He also possesses a financial interest in his fishing business because it is a source of income. Alaska Statute 39.52-120(b)(4) prevents public officials like Mr. Wood from taking or withholding official actions in order to affect a matter in which the public officer has a personal or financial interest. Thus, Mr. Wood has a conflict of interest in these proposals that I brought out 3 years ago before the board because it could have a significant impact on the value of this permit and the income it generates for him. So if, if I may, can I keep going a little bit? Yeah, we'll just tie it to, tie it to the permit, to, to proposal.

Totally, totally. Thank you. Okay, so I just want to say, in 3952.120, public officer may not use or attempt to use an official position for personal gain. I think in the other proposals that I've had before me on, you know, in Cook Inlet, it was ones that could stop, you know, commercial, uh, setnetting altogether.

That would really affect me in the Northern District. Proposals that affect the rivers that are close to me, um, could really affect the fish that I get. But honestly, elsewhere in the inlet, I never imagined how a proposal could potentially affect the value of my business or how much more I'll make, because I sell only what I need to sell online. I don't sell to a tender. There's no tender access in the Northern District anymore.

There's not even a port and anchorage where you can take your boat out and sell fish. It's pretty much dead. You gotta just do what you can to make a living out there. Get creative. I'd say in terms of Proposal 186 before us, I didn't realize, like, this is so complicated that at face value I didn't think that it could in any way affect my business at first.

But then I realized that the iterations that this could go through, and I think that if it's possible that the board could intend to completely shut down commercial drift fishing then that would— I cannot say without a straight face that those fish that would be passing through the Central District wouldn't end up in my nets. Now, in terms of significant value, how much more would it increase? I don't know. But I guess to be conservative, I will recuse myself from this because it could potentially increase the income of my business. So therefore, I offer to withdraw my ability to to deliberate or even in committee of a whole work that part of the group that I was supposed to work for Proposal 186.

Because it could potentially increase my earnings from $5,000 to, I don't know, maybe more. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Any additional questions from the board? Hearing none, I rule that you will have a conflict for Proposal 186. and you will recuse yourself as you stated in your ethics disclosures, and you are able to participate in all of the other proposals on the docket this week.

Mr. Carpenter, I will hand the gavel over to you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Would you please put your ethics disclosure on the record, please? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Marit Carlson Van Dorth. I was born and raised in Alaska and currently reside in Anchorage. I'm employed as the president and chief executive officer of Far West Incorporated, which is the village corporation for Chignik Bay, formed under the Alaska Native Native Claims Settlement Act. I am also a shareholder in Bristol Bay Native Corporation and in Koniag Native Corporation. I receive a State of Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, and I purchase a resident sport fish license annually.

I will receive a stipend for my service on this board. Mr. Chair, neither I, members of my immediate family, nor my employer have a financial interest in fisheries. Similarly, neither I, members of my immediate family, nor my employer are involved with any lawsuits with the State of Alaska, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, or the Board of Fisheries. And this information is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge, Mr.

Chair. Thank you. Any board questions? Seeing none, I rule that you can fully participate in the matters before us, and I would turn the chair back to you. Thank you.

And when Mr. Godfrey joins us, I believe tomorrow, we'll go ahead and make sure that we get his ethics statement on the record as well. So let's talk about access to board members for a second. So as board members, we are available to you for the purpose of receiving added information. And of course, this process doesn't work without you. Many of us often meet with stakeholders informally during breaks and before and after daily meetings.

We are here to benefit from your input. On the floor in front of the tables, there's a black and yellow, I believe, striped line we call the sanctuary line, across which the public may not cross during our meetings and breaks. If you would like to talk to one of us and we're behind that line, wave at us, try to get our attention, or just ask someone, either board support staff or any of the ADF&G staff, to notify who you'd like to speak with, and we'll come out and talk to you. Please keep in mind, however, that it is during these breaks and both before and after our daily meetings that we find the time to read all the material that's been submitted during the meetings. If you have process questions, please direct those questions to either myself, Vice Chair Carpenter, or the executive director, and we'll do our best to make sure that you have your questions answered about any of the process related to our business at this meeting over the course, you know, over the course of this week.

Certainly, it's hoped that the practices of the board outlined here will help maximize public participation in the board process, as the board believes that an informed and engaged public can only result in better conservation and development of our fisheries resources. The Alaska Board of Fisheries and Department of Fish and Game are united in our support of fostering a respectful workplace. We're committed to ensuring our workplace is free from negative, aggressive, and inappropriate behaviors. Harassment of any type is unacceptable and won't be tolerated. And we appreciate your assistance in joining us in this important effort.

In accordance with the Open Meetings Act, the board staff published a notice in the online Alaska Online Public Notice System and in the statewide— and in a statewide newspaper, posted the notice on the board's website as our designated posting place, and also distributed it to our list of email recipients. I'm not going to read it here, but copies of the notice are in the meeting notebooks at the back of the room or are available from the executive director for those who are interested in reading the complete text. The public notice and proposals were distributed to the local Fish and Game Advisory Committees. They're posted online and were sent by 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 available to the public again in the workbooks on the table at the back of the room. Copies of all the meeting materials are updated frequently throughout the meeting. And can be found on the board's website on the webpage specific for this meeting, which again is Statewide Finfish and Supplemental Issues. Copies of the tentative agenda for this meeting can also be found on that table at the back of the room. This agenda is subject to change throughout the meeting, but I'll do my very best to generally stay on the agenda, and if there's any deviations, I'll be sure to announce them and make sure that everybody is aware of any changes from the posted agenda.

With respect to record copies, the board encourages the public to submit written comments on specific proposals or issues Written public comments submitted before deliberations begin 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 there is one, and any 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 their equivalent double-sided pages unless very specific information has been requested by the board that requires more pages than allowed under the 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 materials for this meeting are posted.

You can also turn in written materials to the board support staff at the end of the table here. Please note that you only need to turn in one copy. However, the board support staff will not be printing submitted materials in color, so if you have something that you would like to submitted in color, please turn in 20 copies to the board support staff at the end of the table. With no exception, all materials which are to be submitted to the board for its consideration must be presented to the record keeper for distribution or uploaded through our website. Please do not give documents to board members directly, as these documents will be handed back to you and you'll be asked to submit them for the record.

All documents received at this board meeting will be assigned a log number called an RC, and all written materials submitted will be retained for the 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's 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 of board records. And I'll just note that again, you have the right to submit up to the maximum number of pages, but please keep in mind that we are busy during these meetings and sometimes unable to read everything immediately. Um, we receive sometimes hundreds of documents consisting of sometimes thousands of pages.

So the fewer pages it takes to say what you need to say, the better opportunity that we'll be able to lay eyes on it quickly. At this time, we're about to begin our staff reports. Traditional knowledge reports and public testimony will follow staff reports. Anyone who wishes to give public testimony for this meeting must fill out a blue card, as we call them, and turn that card into the board staff at the end of the table. The tentative time to turn in your blue card and sign up for public testimony is 10:00 AM tomorrow, Wednesday.

So if you want to— if you want to provide testimony at this meeting, please fill out one of those cards and make sure it gets dropped before 10:00 AM tomorrow. Advisory Committee and Regional Advisory Council representatives should also fill out a blue card and further AC or their RAC reports and indicate whether they will be testifying at the beginning or at the end of public testimony. Please note on the card which AC or RAC you're representing, and please be prepared to describe the general membership of your committee. Also, please confine your testimony to the position the committee took on the proposals or the issues and give minority opinions of the committee if there were any. And if you wish to provide your own personal testimony in addition to the committee report, also please fill out a separate blue card and submit it to the board staff.

Again, the tentative cutoff time to turn in those blue cards for public testimony or AC and RAC reports is 10:00 AM tomorrow. At this meeting, the public will be given 3 minutes to testify. Traditional Knowledge reports, advisory committees, and Regional Advisory Council representatives will each be given 10 minutes. Following public testimony, there will be 3 sessions of the board's Committee of the Whole. I'd encourage you to refer to the roadmap to see what proposals will be discussed in each of the committee sessions.

Everyone present is allowed to participate. There's no need to sign up in the committee process. The agenda, which is available online again or in the materials.

The back of the room show where we tentatively plan to deliberate in between committee group sessions. And as I mentioned, while the agenda is subject to change, we will provide updates along the way. And again, if you have any questions about the process, please ask myself, Vice Chair Carpenter, or Director Nelson. I think we'll pause here and we will get set up for staff reports. I think we have some action plans to walk through and then we will get into our traditional knowledge report.

So we'll take Couple minutes to get set up. Thank you.

Okay, we are back on the record. The time is 9:22, and we're going to go ahead and review the AYK stock of concern action plans. Mr. Tiernan, welcome. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Aaron Tiernan and I am the Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim Regional Management Coordinator for the Division of Commercial Fisheries.

And with me is Zach Liller, the Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim Regional Research Coordinator. This report will be presenting the 3 action plans for the AYK stocks of concern that were recently adopted by the to the board during this recent meeting cycle. These slides can be found in your binder under RC6.

As a brief overview, we will be discussing 3 different action plans for stocks of management concern. Those are the Yukon River King and Fall Chum Salmon and Kwiniek River King Salmon. Within those, I will go over a brief designation history, escapement review, along with action plan options for the board to consider for each stock. Also included will be criteria for delisting each stock and conditions for reducing management actions if the need arises.

Initially, I'd like to provide a couple definitions relating to this process. First, a stock of yield concern means a concern arising from a chronic inability, despite the use of specific management measures, to maintain expected yields or harvestable surpluses above a stock's escapement needs. A yield concern is less severe than a management concern. Secondly, a stock of management concern means a concern arising from a chronic inability, despite the use of specific management measures, to maintain expected yields or harvestable surpluses above a stock's escapement needs.

The last definition is for chronic inability. This means 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. For the stock of concern analysis, we chose to assess stocks using a 5-year period. For example, if any of the annual harvests of a stock during the most recent 5-year period did not fall within the range of harvest historically taken, it would meet the criteria for stock of yield concern. Or if a.

Goals were consistently not achieved during the most recent 5-year period and met the criteria as a stock of management concern.

The first stock out of the gate will be the Yukon River King Salmon. The draft action plan report can be found in RC5 of your board binders.

Yukon River King Salmon have been designated a stock of yield concern since 2000. This designation was brought about because of low harvests that were experienced from 1998 through 2000. The first action plan was developed and adopted in 2001 and has undergone substantial modifications during subsequent Board of Fisheries cycles. Actions have included amending the Yukon River King Salmon Management Plan to clarify objectives, establish harvest allocations, and implement structured subsistence schedules that aligned with migratory timing and provided windows without fishing time to allow fish to pass. Emergency order authority has also been granted to adjust those schedules and restrict gear, including gillnet mesh size and length during periods of conservation.

Additional measures implemented maximum mesh size limits, prohibition of king salmon sales during chum-directed commercial fisheries, and allowed the use of alternative gear types such as dip nets and beach seines for subsistence and commercial fisheries. With the ability to require the live release of king salmon. In October, the department recommended a change in designation from a stock of yield concern to a stock of management concern at the work session, which was adopted by the board.

Here's a look of how escapements have fallen after 2015. Dark green cells indicate that escapement exceeded the established escape— established goal for a particular tributary. Where light green indicates escapements within the range, and for escapements below the goal being colored red. As you can see, no escapement goals have been achieved since 2019, which is what led to the department's recommendation and subsequent adoption by the board. The following couple of slides will present a few action plan options for the board to discuss.

The first option presented in this draft action plan is for status quo. Since the initial Stock of Concern listing in 2000, the Yukon River King Salmon Management Plan has undergone extensive changes as well as adoption of a multitude of gear and gear specification amendments. This has provided the department with a robust toolbox for management of the subsistence, commercial, sport, and personal use fisheries, no matter of the run size. As a reminder, management of the Yukon River fisheries begins with the Yukon River salmon treaty agreement. One of the biggest treaty factors to mention is the 7-year agreement between the department and Fisheries and Oceans Canada that is in effect from 2024 through 2030.

This agreement states that all king salmon directed commercial sport, domestic, and personal use fisheries are closed for the duration. Also, it established a border passage objective of 71,000 Canadian origin king salmon with the stipulation that all fisheries within the mainstem will be closed if this is not projected to be met. However, if projections indicate a harvestable surplus above 71,000, then limited subsistence opportunity may be provided in the mainstem Yukon River. I would also note there are additional components of this agreement intended to conserve and rebuild the Yukon River King Salmon, one of those being the development of a Yukon River King Salmon rebuilding plan, which began in November of 2024. This process is being facilitated through the Yukon River Panel with involvement of stakeholders from all parts of the drainage.

As for management actions taken during the recent 5 years amid the historically low run sizes of king salmon, managers have closed all directed king salmon fishing within the drainage, restricted the use of gillnet mesh size to 4 inches or less, restricted length to a maximum of 60 feet, and specified those gillnets be operated as setnets. Management actions have also been taken to remove all gillnets from the water for approximately 2 weeks, coinciding with the peak of the king run. When summer chum run— summer chum abundances have warranted fishing opportunity, those have been provided with dip nets with the requirement to live release king salmon. Prior to the 2025 season, a new Yukon River permit program was implemented by the department to address a component of the 7-year agreement that recognizes the importance of king salmon for ceremonial use and the transmission of cultural knowledge. These permits have been adopted to allow a small amount of harvest in times of salmon conservation, following a process that should provide the preservation of culture and communities balanced with the need to ensure salmon return to their spawning grounds.

Overall, this option allows the department to flexibly and conservatively manage the stock based on preseason and in-season indicators. However, there is a possibility of foregoing harvest opportunity for summer chum salmon and non-salmon species during this period of low king salmon abundance.

For Option 2, the department is proposing further refining subsistence fish wheel specifications to make their construction more fish-friendly. Currently, fish wheels are— fish wheels used in the subsistence fishery can be constructed using a variety of materials. Some of those include baskets made from wood and chicken wire. Over time, fish wheels have been more often used as a conservation tool to allow for fishing opportunity on abundant species while allowing for the release of a species of concern with the fish wheel being equipped with a live box or chute and closely attended while in operation to facilitate timely live release. More recently, during these historically low runs of salmon in the Yukon River, the department has refrained from allowing this gear type in the subsistence fishery because of a concern that these may potentially harm fish that will ultimately be released, such as removal of their slime layer and scales, along with getting beat up as they thrash around in the basket after removal from the water.

However, in the commercial fishery of Subdistrict 4A and District 6, fishermen have developed and been using specifically constructed fish-friendly fish wheels with basket sides and bottoms consisting of soft mesh material similar to that of seine web, and with a slide or chute with a smooth bottom and with closed-cell foam-lined sides which return king salmon immediately back to the water. By using these materials, it reduces the potential for injuries to, to the salmon and improves their chances of survival upon release. If these new specifications are adopted, the department may be more inclined to offer opportunity with this gear type when there is a harvestable surplus of summer chum while requiring the release of king salmon. This would result in a direct cost to stakeholders since those fish wheels would need to be updated to be consistent with the new specifications. Locations.

Moving on to the third and final option, establishing a harvest limit on King Salmon for Yukon River subsistence permits during times of conservation. Currently, subsistence permits are required in designated areas of the middle and upper river, as well as the Tanana River drainage. The permits for Subdistrict 6A and 6B are the only is the only one that has established harvest limits, which are 60 king salmon and 500 summer chum. These harvest limits have not been achieved in recent years because of closures in the salmon fishery due to the historically low runs of both species. Other permit areas in the Yukon River have also been closed to salmon fishing and at times closed to the use of all gillnets.

Incidental harvest of king salmon does occur in these areas when the subsistence fishery is open to the use of small mesh gillnets intended to harvest whitefish and other resident species. By having subsistence permit harvest limits, the number of king salmon incidentally harvested could decrease. However, since the total harvest of king salmon in recent seasons is already very low, there is a chance that a savings would not be realized.

And to round out Yukon River King Salmon Action Plan, the next two slides will discuss delisting criteria and conditions for reducing management restrictions. First, for, for delisting criteria, the department may recommend removing the stock as a stock of management concern if a majority of the lower bounds of the established BG and SEG ranges are met or exceeded in 5 consecutive years and is expected to meet the goal ranges in future years. This recommendation will be presented at the first Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim board meeting after this condition is met.

Lastly, we have conditions for reducing management restrictions on the Yukon River King Salmon.

First is if the department determines a harvestable surplus in excess of 71,000 Canadian-origin King Salmon exists, limited subsistence opportunity in the Yukon River mainstem may be provided, as stated in the 7-year agreement, which is in place through 2030. Secondly, subsistence fishery management measures could be relaxed in specific Alaskan tributaries if updated stock composition and run assessment data indicates areas where specific restrictions are no longer needed to ensure the established escament goals will be met.

Next, we will be discussing Yukon River Fall Chum Salmon. The draft action plan report can be found in RC4 of your board binders.

Yukon River Fall Chum Salmon were first designated as a stock yield concern in 2000 due to low runs experienced in the late '90s. As a result, an action plan was developed in 2001 which further refined the Fall Chum Salmon Management Plan. The runs quickly rebounded in the mid-2000s, which led to a stock of concern— which led to the stock of concern designation being removed in 2007. Between 2007 and 2020, Fall Chum salmon runs were strong and allowed for full subsistence and commercial fisheries. Beginning in 2020, the stock also experienced a steep decline in abundance, which led to very poor escapements.

Due to this, the department recommended the stock be listed as a stock management concern, which the board adopted at the October 2025 work session.

Presented here is the escapement of Yukon River fall chum salmon from 2004 through 2025 in the blue bars, while the dashed lines indicate the drainage-wide escapement goal range of 300,000 to 600,000 fish. For much of this time period, escapements either fell within or exceeded the escapement goal range. As previously stated, the stock experienced a sharp decline in abundance beginning in 2020, which persists to this day. The drainage-wide escapement goal has not been achieved since 2020, with some of the lowest escapements on record occurring during this time period.

The first option presented in this draft action plan is again for status quo. Yukon River fall chum salmon are also managed in accordance with the Yukon River Salmon Agreement. Within this are established passage objectives for the Canadian mainstem and Fishing Branch River, and we will touch on those again in a subsequent slide. Since the initial stock of concern listing in 2000, Yukon River fall chum salmon management plan has undergone modifications as well as adoption of a multitude of gear and gear specification amendments for the management area. This has provided the department with a robust toolbox for management of the subsistence, commercial, sport, personal use fisheries, no matter of the run size.

For example, during the recent 5 years amid the historically low run sizes of fall chum salmon, managers have closed all salmon-directed fishing within the drainage, restricted gillnet mesh size to 4 inches or less, gillnet length to a maximum of 60 feet, and specified those be operated as setnets. To provide for non-salmon fishing opportunity. Management actions have also been taken to remove all gillnets from the water 4 days per week to further reduce incidental harvest. When coho abundances have warranted fishing opportunity, those have been provided with dip nets with the requirement to live release fall chum. This option allows the department to continue to flexibly and conservatively manage the stock based on preseason and in-season indicators However, there is an opportunity— however, there is a possibility for foregone harvest opportunity for Coho salmon and non-salmon species.

For Option 2, the department is again proposing further refining subsistence fish field specifications to make their construction more fish-friendly. For the sake of time, I'd like to refer to my comments on slide 10 during the King Salmon Action Plan review. Review.

And to round out Yukon River Fall Chum Salmon Action Plan, the next two slides will discuss delisting criteria and conditions for reducing management restrictions. First, for delisting criteria, the department may recommend removing the stock as a stock of management concern if the lower bound of the established drainage-wide SEG range is met or exceeded in 5 consecutive years and is expected to meet the goal ranges in future years. This recommendation will be presented at the first Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim Board meeting after this condition is met.

And here are the proposed conditions for reducing management restrictions on Yukon River fall chum salmon. First is if the department determines a harvestable surplus in excess of 300,000 fall chum salmon exists, Limited subsistence fishing opportunity in the Yukon River mainstem may be provided. When considering mainstem fishing opportunities, managers will also take into account the Fishing Branch River and Canadian Mainstem Interim Management Escapement Goals, or IMEGS, by applying updated stock composition estimates in season from genetics to determine what percentage of the run is of Canadian origin. Secondly, subsistence fishery management measures could be relaxed in specific Alaskan tributaries if updated stock composition position and run assessment data indicates areas where specific restrictions are no longer needed to ensure the established escapement goals will be met.

And now for the third and final action plan. We'll move north to Norton Sound and discuss Quinniack River king salmon. The draft action plan report can be found in RC3 of your board binders. Displayed here is a map to further orient you while we work through the forthcoming slides.

Kuniak River King Salmon have not had a history of stock of concern status. At the October work session, the stock was not recommended by the department as a stock of concern for several reasons. 2025 Escapement data was not yet available at the time of analysis. Local knowledge indicates relatively recent colonization of king salmon in the system. Lack of a directed fishery.

Concerns of— and concerns of an escapement goal is appropriate for this group of fish and how that might affect management of other species and lack of a clear path forward to consistently achieve an escapement goal without complete closures to subsistence, sport, and commercial fishing on other established and more abundant stocks. Moving forward to the AYK meeting in November, the board adopted this as a stock and management concern because the escapement goal had not been achieved in the last 5 years. During the deliberations of this, the department was not given an opportunity to provide additional information. Additionally, the public was not given full opportunity to engage on this topic and its possible implications.

Now we will shift over to discuss the escapement and harvest trends over the next couple of slides. Presented here is the escapement of Quinniac River king salmon in the blue bars, along with the escapement goal depicted by the dashed lines. As you can see, escapement has fluctuated over the years, with the escapement goal being achieved only once since it was revised in 2016. During the most recent escapement goal review, the department's escapement goal review team discussed the Quinniac River king salmon escapement goal extensively. Discussion centered around the limited utility of this goal as a fisheries management tool and entertained perspectives that the goal should be discontinued.

The Quinniac River king salmon run is and historically has been very small, and there are no directed subsistence or commercial fisheries. These king salmon represent a small population at the northern extent, extent of a species range. Ultimately, the review team decided the existing goal has utility because it keeps the board and the department's attention focused on Quinniac River king salmon while recognizing management options to attain the goal are limited. It's important to note that the runs experienced in the '90s were the highest that we have on record. Prior to that time, we have information that suggests run sizes were more similar to what has been experienced since the mid-2000s.

Moving on to the harvest component of salmon in Norton Sound Subdistrict 3, where Quinniack River flows into. The harvest information shown on the slide is a combination of subsistence and commercial harvest of all 5 Pacific salmon species. Harvest within the commercial fishery occurs in the marine waters of Subdistrict 3, while subsistence harvests occur in both the marine and fresh waters. The species that account for much of the harvest in both fisheries are pink salmon, shown in pink, coho salmon, shown in orange, and chum salmon, shown in green. Harvest of sockeye, shown in red, and king salmon, shown in black, are present.

However, they account for a very small proportion of the overall harvest. As you can see, harvests over the last 5 years have dropped considerably, mainly due to a limited commercial— mainly due to limited commercial opportunity because of low abundances of chum and coho salmon and the need to prioritize escapement and subsistence fishing opportunity.

Next, I would like to zoom into the king salmon harvest over the same time frame, which was depicted in the previous slide in the black bars. Subsistence harvest, shown here in orange, makes up most of the harvest, while commercial shown in blue, is generally a small component of the overall harvest. One thing to note for Subdistrict 3 is there is one other system that feeds into it that has an established king salmon population. This is the Tabucaluck River. So the total harvest of Quinniac River salmon is highly uncertain.

Commercial and subsistence marine harvest are assumed to be 50% Quinniac River king salmon and 50% Tabucaluck River king salmon.

Information about the subsistence harvest within the Quinniac River has been available since 2004, and harvests have averaged 54 fish. Now, circling back to slide 22, if king salmon harvest had been reduced to zero, escapement would not have been meaningfully different, but this would have severely impacted subsistence and commercial opportunity on abundant chum and coho salmon.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] The first option for this action plan is for status quo management of the fisheries. Currently, there's not a directed subsistence commercial fishery in the area. Subsistence stakeholders primarily target chum, pink, and coho salmon in both the marine and freshwaters of Subdistrict 3. Based on the Subdistrict 2 and 3 of the Norton Sound District Management Plan, Commercial opportunity may occur only if the department projects that chum salmon escapement goal will be achieved and the harvestable surplus is greater than subsistence needs. Additionally, the department has been consistently restricting gillnet mesh size in Subdistrict 3 to 6 inches or less to minimize the incidental harvest of king salmon.

This option would continue longstanding opportunities for subsistence, sport, and commercial fisheries in years where there is a harvestable surplus of chum. Pink and coho salmon while attempting to minimize the incidental harvest of king salmon. Small amounts of king salmon would continue to be incidentally harvested during fishing opportunities directed on more abundant species, and escapement of king salmon will continue to be based on natural production.

The last option for this action plan is for heavy restrictions on all fisheries to maximize king salmon escapement into the Quinniac River. Under this option, the subsistence gillnet fishery in the marine waters of Subdistrict 3 would close from June 1st until July 15th. Other live release gear types would be allowed, such as beach seines, cast nets, and dip nets, while requiring the release of all king salmon. Additionally, hook and line subsistence users in the freshwaters would be required to release all kings— king salmon should they catch one. Commercial fishing within the subdistrict, subdistrict would be delayed until July 15th or until there was an identified harvestable surplus of king salmon.

All sport fishing for king salmon within the subdistrict would also be closed. This option provides the only way to maximize king salmon escapement into the Quinniac River, but carries a lot of detriments to local area residents. If this were adopted, this would place a monetary burden on those subsistence users that primarily participate in the fishery with a gillnet. As they would need to acquire one or more of the live release gear types. Restrictions to subsistence fishing for other more abundant species may cause some food insecurity and cultural hardships.

Reducing time in the commercial fisheries in years where chum, pink, and coho salmon have a surplus available for commercial harvest will result— will result in foregone harvest opportunity and have negative economic impacts for the local community and region. Commercial fishing income provides local stakeholders additional resources to participate in subsistence hunting and fishing activities, which provides additional food security throughout the winter. Lastly, eliminating Subdistrict 3 king salmon harvest is unlikely, unlikely to result in the escapement goal being met in most years.

And to round out the Kwiniek River King Salmon Action Plan, this slide will go over the delisting criteria and conditions for reducing management restrictions. First, for delisting criteria, the department may recommend removing the stock as a stock of management concern if the lower bound of the established SEG is met or exceeded in 5 consecutive years and is expected to be, to be met in future years. This recommendation will be presented at the first Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim board meeting after this condition is met. And finally, management measures could be relaxed if updated stock assessment indicates that restrictions are no longer needed to ensure the SEG will be met.

And that concludes the action plan oral presentation for Yukon River King and Fall Chum Salmon and Quinniack River King Salmon. And with that, I will stand by for any questions. Thank you. Thanks, Aaron. Questions?

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Thanks for your presentation, Aaron. So on Option 2 for both the King and Fallchum action plans in regards to fish wheel specifications, can you give me a little bit of history maybe on why Subdistrict 4A and 6 already have something that kind of states this in place. Was that a board directive?

Is that something that department worked with, with user groups? Maybe could you touch on that a little? Yeah, from what I was able to gather— oh, excuse me, through the chair, Mr. Carpenter— from what I was able to gather with, uh, looking up background information, this came about during the last time the Chum crashed, or the King— sorry, for the Kings, right? And they worked with local area residents and the department, worked to come up with a way to build these more fish-friendly fish wheels and brought that to the board. I believe it came to the board a couple of different times before it was ultimately passed, but it was quite an undertaking.

You know, over a few years to come to this. Okay, thank you. Mr. Owen. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, thank you very much, Aaron, for your presentation.

I have a couple questions. So my first question with regards to the fish-friendly fish wheel option 2 for both Chum and Chinook: is it the intention of the department for that definition to only apply during a stock of concern in the action plan? Through the chair, Ms. Irwin, no, this— so if this were to be adopted, this would be a permanent tool for managers to have access to when they're trying to figure out how to best manage the fishery for both these runs. Okay, thank you. Because for me, it seems like that's something that would have been a good proposal for a definition at either AYK or this meeting if it's going to exist outside of the management plan.

I don't see exactly how that is an action because it doesn't include whether or not it's going to be prioritized over other uses. So that was my first question. My second question is, you have for the King delisting criteria, it has to meet the majority of the lower bound of out of 5 years. And then for the Quinniac and for the Chum, you have every 5 years consecutively it has to be met to be delisted. Why did you use different criteria and why did you use a lighter delisting criteria for kings?

All right. Through the chair, Mr. Irwin, I'll touch on your second question first.

So for Yukon River Fall Chum and Quinniac River King Salmon, there's a single— there's just one goal that we're basing, you know, whether we meet escapement on or not, right? The drainage-wide goal for Fall Chum, and then the lower bound threshold goal for Quinniac River King Salmon. Yukon River King Salmon are a little bit more— it's different because there are a multitude of different tributary goals, and we don't have a full drainage-wide goal to assess. And so we presented the delisting criteria as such because of just natural stock variability on any given year. And if, you know, if escape— if the majority of the escapement goals are being met consecutively for 5 years, things are starting to turn around.

If you look back through time when runs were healthy, the vast majority of those escapement goals were being achieved. And the inverse is also true when the stock has crashed. You know, the vast majority of those goals are not being achieved. And then could you please remind me of that first question? [Speaker:JENNY] I think you answered it.

I was asking the difference of why you chose the different criteria. No, thank you, thank you for that.

My other question is about the criteria in the Sustainable Salmon Policy, which asks the management plans to consider habitat and environmental changes. And so my next question is, did the department consider any habitat or environmental challenges acknowledged in the action plan and any considerations for action that can be done to mitigate those?

So we did consider— excuse me, through the chair, Mr. Owen. I'll remember that.

Habitat was considered when we were drafting up the action plans. There are— there is some verbiage within the draft reports that briefly touches on those. We didn't go into great detail, though.

There are— there are some discussions going on outside of this forum regarding habitat and what factors there are and what potentially could be done.

One is that rebuilding plan I briefly touched on within the oral presentation. And through all those discussions, habitat has been a theme. And it will continue to be a theme as those discussions continue, as that plan comes to fruition. And also there is a draft comprehensive salmon plan out there that speaks to habitat within the Alaskan portion of the Yukon River, the freshwater, that has identified a lot of factors within the habitat and possible programs to mitigate for those. Okay, thank you very much.

I understand that the department has limited authority over where funding can come from for research and, and with regards to habitat and environment, it would have been nice to see an acknowledgment in an action step of if the department receives funding, the priority will go to habitat and environment restoration. And lastly, I just want to say that, that with one, one option, I'm pretty surprised that this wasn't able to be presented at AYK. With the, with the options that were presented here, it seems like this could have presented to the board earlier. So that's all I have right now, Madam Chair. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you. I've got two questions. One was along the lines of Member Irwin's comments about habitat and how that will play into these stock reconstructions, because it seems to be having a significant effect. We hear a lot from biologists about, you know, the, the, how many the stock and how low they're doing, but the reasons why seem to continue to elude us. Oceans Canada seems to focus on this quite a bit, and I think it does really matter, especially on the Yukon, how habitat plays into this.

Especially, you know, if we have the goal on it through the treaty or whatever of 71,000 Canadian origin kings getting through, and we're taking that into consideration, like, is that realistic considering what's going on habitat-wise, a dam and all that other stuff? So I imagine that's probably in flux because it's not just a state issue, it's a treaty stuff as well. But I, I think that's super important to take into consideration. So I appreciate Member Erwin's question. Secondly, in terms of the fish wheels, how do you— if fish wheels are allowed to be implemented, I think they're an amazing contraption that take a lot of skill to build, and they are all of all different sizes, and I'm not sure that how many people out there even know how to do that anymore.

But who would run those? Are they— would be individual permitted people running them in these places? Would they be communities running them? Like, what, I guess, what would be the definition of how one of these fish wheels would actually operate? How many they could build?

And then, you know, back to the issue of releasing kings that have been captured back to the water to continue to live. Like, how comfortable, you know, we've had discussions all winter about this. How comfortable is the department with this catch and release of kings even in the Yukon. Yeah, thanks for the question, Member Wood.

So for the fish wheels and who would use them, I think it would be a collection of, you know, either it could be just single individuals that build them to use them, or it could be community, you know, somebody might build them for the whole community per se. And, you know, if, if this were to pass and there'd be more stricter definitions for them to be built more fish-friendly, we would be more apt to provide that opportunity because it'd be a little bit safer for those kings if there was abundant summer chum and we wanted to provide additional opportunities, say coinciding with dipnet fishing as well. Does that get to your question or—.

[Speaker] If I may, yeah, it does. But having visited the one at Rapids Camp, the last remaining large one, was pretty impressive to see even where they put it and how it operates. And the potential for hazard is immense. And just the skill to build it was very impressive to me. If thinking in those terms, I loved it.

Nonetheless, it seemed difficult just even how you manage something like that. Do those kings go out to individual families because you own it, or does it get passed out throughout a community, which seems somewhat tricky, you know? So I'm just wondering if the department's thought about how that happens, if that is allowed to be permitted. Yeah, through the chair, Member Wood. So if we were to provide fish wheel opportunity with these fish-friendly fish wheels, there would be a requirement to live release Chinook salmon.

Or king salmon, excuse me. And it would be up to the fishermen or group of fishermen to decide how, you know, any sort of chum salmon or non-salmon species they do take with the fish wheel, how those get distributed.

Okay, but then it begs the question of— I mean, I, I get what you're saying, but that mortality, if it does happen, then what happens? Like, I With the ichthyophonous studies, what happened to the feds? Those fish were donated to Rampart and Tanana. Right. And so I just wondered how, like, how would you deal with that?

And I guess then the live release thing, like if we're saying we can do this, which we've been discussing, do you feel comfortable with that? Yeah. So if they were to come and— or if they were to catch a king and it ultimately died, It would be up to them. There used to be— go back in time— there used to be regulations on the books that required even dead fish to be returned back to the water, but that subsequently was removed.

So yeah, it would be up to the fishermen to figure out how to distribute that.

There might be a law issue there too. If there's a trooper present or whatnot. Yeah.

Okay. Last one. Gonna move north. With the Quineyak River and you mentioning that it's such a small river. So it says it's very small and very northern, very northern extent.

And in the '90s, it had the highest record of return. I'm very familiar of what it's like to have restrictions around very small rivers that may never actually again reach their management, their goal, you know, to get out of a stock of concern. And so, and that has a real-time effect. So I appreciate how you have put that into the different options here, options 1 and 2. I'm just, I wonder just on a bigger scale, like, do you feel confident that the escapement numbers are accurate for, in terms of the higher end or, you know, where the lower end is set to ever see a return back to what we saw back in the early '90s?

Because like we've seen all around, early '90s was really good return and it may not happen again, not for a long time. So for the record, my name is Zach Liller, research coordinator, Division of Commercial Fisheries. Thanks for the question. Through the chair, the lower bound of the Quinniack River king salmon escapement goal has been— it was established in '99 based on 10 years of spawn and recruit information from portion of the time series where we were seeing growing and relatively record-high run abundances. It was based on expectation of the potential to develop a fishery in that location, and the escapement objective, the lower end, was based on maximum sustained yield.

So it's, uh, in 2016 The Escapement Goal Review Team for the department, we looked heavily at that objective and how the run sizes have developed over time, how the fishery really hadn't evolved, and decided to reduce the lower end of that escapement goal to 250. So they dropped it by 50 fish. And the focus of that was in recognition that there really wasn't the potential for a focused commercial fishery, but wanting to maintain some focus on that northern small population of fish and make sure that there was some, some reference point for, for minimum escapement. With that said, the, the escapement objective is not tied to any specific fishery expectation, given that there isn't a directed fishery. And so certainly if the escapements were to consistently exceed The escape objective that's on the books right now, we would expect that to produce, you know, the, the maximum level of harvestable surplus that that population is able to achieve if that was.

If there was interest in targeting that stock. But that's not to say that escapements below that lower end aren't sustainable long-term, given that we do have a long time series and indication that small escapements have continued to keep that population viable in that northern extent. Great, thank you. Ms. Irwin. Thank you, thank you, Madam Chair.

Erin, my question for you is when you were considering the criteria for chum, There was a discussion at AYK about the Yukon River chum management plan, and this board discussed substitute language that included a desire to see 3 years meeting the mid-range of the escapement goal in order to delist. However, then this board realized that was kind of a delisting criteria, it didn't really belong in the management plan itself, so we scratched that language. Did the department consider that language as the delisting criteria for chum, and if so, why did they choose to go with a different criteria?

Through the chair, through the chair, Mr. Irwin. Thanks for the question. So that was considered and we discussed it and we reflected back on the discussion that was had during the deliberations of that substitute language from the board. And if that is a delisting criteria, it's kind of It would almost be a pseudo-escapement goal. And during that deliberation, it was asked about how we would manage the fishery with that number as the delisting criteria.

And it was— the answer was given that we would do what we needed to do to achieve that. So that would, you know, that would potentially restrict subsistence fishing above the established escapement goal range of $300,000, the lower bound of that, right? So we elected to go with $300,000 because that is our established lower bound of our escapement goal range and how we analyze the stock for stock of concern, right? So. Okay, so it would allow you to continue to manage as you are right now and potentially provide additional subsistence opportunities before the 3-year midpoint would?

Yep. Okay. Yes. And then my last question is for the Quiniec River Kings. When I'm looking at the action plan option number 2, I'm wondering how option 2 upholds the subsistence priority if you're suggesting closing subsistence while just delaying commercial.

I understand that there's not an ANS, so we can't say that subsistence needs have to be met for a certain number of fish in that area before the opportunity, but for me, I would be looking at that as needing to provide meaningful subsistence opportunity before even the idea of opening a commercial fishery. So why is it laid out in that way? Through the chair, Mr. Irwin. So option 2 would just close subsistence gillnets in marine waters. It would still provide subsistence opportunity with live release gear types such as beach seines, cast nets, and dip nets.

But there would be a requirement to live release any king salmon if they, if they would come in contact with one. So, and there'd be hook and line fishing opportunity provided in the, in the marine or the freshwater with a live release requirement for kings as well. So there would still be some subsistence fishing opportunity provided while commercial is delayed. Okay. And that would be those subsistence opportunities would still be provided June 1st through July 15th.

With the selective gears. Correct. Okay, thanks, Erin. Mr. Swanson.

I guess maybe I missed— I just was curious, you lowered the King escapement goal, isn't that correct?

Through the chair, I presume you're asking about the quinjet— Yes. —That I referenced. Yeah, so that, that original escapement goal was established in 1999. It was 300 on the lower end, 550 on the upper end. And in 2016, in recognition of the escapement history, the run size history and how that fishery had changed, the goal, the upper end was eliminated.

And a lower bound threshold of greater than or equal to 250 was established. So they lowered it by 50 fish in 2016 to better align with the history of the data for that system, and eliminating the upper bound of the goal was specifically focused on recognizing that there was— that it was unlikely that that population of fish or the fishery would ever evolve to support support a dedicated, focused, specifically commercial interest.

Okay, thank you.

So just to get it out there, because I hear lots of concern around certainly Yukon Kings. It has been certainly a theme throughout this cycle, certainly. With respect to your definitions that you presented in your report, there is one missing. There is a classification missing, and that is the conservation concern designation. And I am certainly not suggesting necessarily that we consider that designation.

We have already gone through that exercise. But I would like the department to talk about how you assess for a conservation concern? And sort of at what point would that come into play? Not only for Quinniack, but also for UConn. You know, we sat in a stock of yield concern designation for 26 years before deciding that we needed to sort of bump it up to a management concern.

And I'm just wondering what the assessment process is for a stock of conservation concern designation.

Yeah, Madam Chair, I can take a stab at it and maybe if somebody else has something to add afterwards, then feel free. But so the stock of conservation concern, first, I didn't include it here in this oral presentation just because it didn't have any relevance, right, to what we were talking about. Second, too, for the analysis for stock of concern of these stocks, stocks within the definition of stock of conservation concern, it refers to an SET. Well, we don't have— currently we don't have any established SETs on the books, and so we can't really analyze these stocks in relation to that definition.

So you have a definition that refers to something doesn't really exist, right? So how would you assess for an SET?

Through the chair, thanks for the question. To be quite blunt, that's still very much a developing initiative with within the department. There is, as we have mentioned, we mentioned this at the AYK meeting, I have heard similar conversations at past board meetings. There is a team of folks that are looking at techniques for establishing sustainable escapement thresholds. That technique hasn't been fully established or vetted yet.

I think part of the challenge is that the way that the escapement goal policy is set up, the way that escapement goals that are recommended or that are established by the department, and then the way that the department manages fisheries is with an attempt, within our management limitations, is within an attempt to stay as far away from run abundances that, that would pose a true conservation or extinction threat. And so most of the you know, most of the observed data that we have is at run sizes and escapement levels much higher than that. So we start getting into applying theory, you know, statistical modeling, things like that to try to evaluate where those tipping points might be. And there's— in addition to the department, there's quite a few entities, both academic, other— other organizations that look at those kinds of techniques and trying to find, you know, fishery thresholds that, that can serve a similar function, basically a no-go zone. But there's, there's no clear consensus that I'm aware of within the salmon management world as to what exactly the right technique is for identifying those, those tipping points.

So to date, we've been trying to stay as far away from those as possible. I should say that in situations like the Yukon, situations like the Kwiniuk, where the escapements and the total runs have been very small in recent years— and Kwiniuk, there's examples back in the '60s and '70s when run sizes were very small— you know, the basic approach is to close targeted fisheries. Within our ability. So that's basically what's in our current assessment.

Statement goal structure and the way that management plans are drafted right now, you know, directs us to do that. And so we've been closed for Yukon kings. They've been doing everything they can to shift the incidental harvest off of Quinnipiac kings while still executing fisheries where we can. So it's kind of a balancing act there. No, thank you.

Thank you for indulging my question, and I appreciate your response. You know, I'm just I just kind of wanted to get the conversation started a little bit more on the record because— and I am encouraged to hear that the department is actively working on this. It is an unfortunate scenario that we might be having more conversations around that. But I just kind of wanted to talk about that for a little bit because, you know, there are streams rivers where the numbers are getting very concerningly low. The Karluk immediately comes to mind for me, looking at last year.

But the Quinniack too. I mean, if we've gone through the exercise of having an escapement goal established and going through that work, let's use them. It seems to me that when we get into these very small numbers and smaller systems, that the, the temptation or the recommendation has been to stop removing the escapement goal entirely. And so there is no assessment, and we don't know what's, what's been going on or what has happened and whether or not those would have met a potential SET or could have been a case study for an SET or, or a stock of conservation concern designation. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you. I, I've been curious about this A long time too, because as soon as you start, if your only tool is to stop fishing, and then that's not working, then what do you do? So I think that's where it really brings into the environmental factors, like what are all the other factors that are going into these fish not returning or meeting an escapement? It just keeps getting worse and worse. And I would think that you look at, the department starts looking at the size of the fish, therefore fecundity, like what's actually getting back in the gravel.

The predation that exists now or that's increased out there in the waters, whether it's sharks or pollock, one or the other, just what's happening out there when they leave, the condition that they leave in as they leave the river into the ocean environment that first year, ocean conditions, like what is starting to happen out there in terms of food? Do they even have the food? And then the last part is these small systems are getting totally washed out and blown out from high water rain events and stuff. They won't come back. The gravel's not there.

Like, you see that everywhere now. So I'm just wondering if those are some factors that the department starts using as tools to kind of assess, like, what are the chances of these things coming back, rather than just stopping harvest.

Uh, through the chair, and I'd like to— if it's okay, I'd like to kind of— I know it wasn't a direct question from Madam Chair, but I'd like to kind of comment briefly on some of your remarks and then transition to Mr. Woods. I did want to draw just a quick distinction that I think is hopefully an important distinction between Quinniack Kings and Yukon Kings.

The Quinniack— the current run sizes and escapements that we've been seeing in, say, the last decade for Quinniack Chinook salmon are quite similar to what we saw back in the '60s and early '70s when— shortly after statehood and when focused assessment on the Quinniack River began. Whereas that's not the case for Yukon-Kings, right? I mean, Yukon-Kings were very strong at one point in time and we're now seeing record lows. So I just wanted to draw a distinction there. You know, preparations for this meeting and reviewing old memos and old area management reports for Norton Sound and Quinniack areas It was interesting to see some of the comments that those managers and biologists were saying about Quinniuk at that time.

There was one in particular, I wanna say the escapement was just a little shy of 50 fish, 50 king salmon. And the comment was something to the effect of, while not a record run, we're encouraged to see that this population of fish is growing, right? And so, and the record highs that we saw at Quinniuk in the mid to late '90s was the same time that we were seeing record highs throughout western Alaska. So just to the south, Unalakleet, uh, king salmon saw record highs at that time. Uh, we were seeing, you know, runs just a little shy of 300,000 for Yukon, uh, record highs for Kuskokwim.

So the— just to try to put these, these low runs at Quinniuk into context, that, um, now shifting to, to Mr. Woods's comments, the The department, I think you're spot on. When there's a management and a research focus both for, from, at the regional and area levels for the department, you know, the managers have fixed toolboxes that they can use and at a certain point closing fisheries when run sizes are too small is about as far as we can go. With that said, the research is— can often get hyperfocused at that point. So for UConn in particular, you know, over the last decade we've seen the rise of the Salmon Ocean Ecology Program. There's been incredible focus on marine environmental conditions, the impact that that has on growth, that that has on age and size at maturity, diet, energetics, disease.

We've also seen quite a bit of collaboration with other entities looking at the effects of temperature and other environmental drivers on, on Chinook salmon production in the Yukon in particular. There's been a huge focus by the department to invest in fish health research in recent years, specifically on the Yukon Chinook front. There's quite a bit of collaboration with our partners in Canada looking at changes in environmental conditions and the impact that that has on the Canadian origin stock production. That applies to Fallchum in particular. And then there's other coordination efforts as well.

You know, the Yukon River Panel, the Yukon River Panel's Joint Technical Committee, just to name a few, work on these challenges quite a bit. There's, I think Erin mentioned it, there's an initiative ongoing now through the Yukon River Panel process to develop a Chinook salmon rebuilding plan. Part of that process is specifically what you're looking at. What you're talking about is to have an explicit discussion of the risks that are— that these fish are presented with and the likelihood that those risks could be mitigated to bring fish back at the levels that we would expect. So that's all kind of part of the rebuilding plan discussion.

And then similarly for Yukon Fallchum, there's a Yukon River Panel initiative tasking its technical committee to review escapement objectives for the mainstem fall chum and Fishing Branch fall chum. Both of those initiatives are having some focused habitat conversations, 'cause there has been some habitat shifts in Canada that have implications for fall chum, and trying to figure out what that means for setting responsible escapement objectives, and what that means for the likelihood of those stocks rebuilding on timelines that would be acceptable. So. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Yeah, thank you. I mean, I think, The board has such limited abilities and blunt tools.

You know, time, area, method, and means. And having a SCT, or a stock of conservation concern, that would educate us on all these other factors, why the returns of, say, fall chum, or chum, or kings aren't coming back, would really help frame the issue that we have before us time and time again. Like, is it just overharvest? And, and, and, and so we make decisions just to cut fisheries based on that's our only tool. Only tool is a hammer, so we use a hammer.

So I just feel like if the department was able to actually have a definition of that and present us with options, then it would give us some more tools in order to say restrict fisheries for certain reasons. It would be helpful as a board member to have that bigger picture. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for your presentation today.

I think that concludes the oral reports that the department has. We're going to do things a little bit differently, I think, at this meeting and have the department give a little bit contextual information at the beginning of committee for some of the committee work that we have. So With that, let's go ahead and take about a 20-minute break. Let's come back on the record at quarter to 11, and we'll begin with traditional knowledge reports. Thank you.

All right, welcome back everybody. The time is 10:47. We're going to go ahead and get into traditional knowledge reports. So new, relatively new to the board's process since the last statewide meeting is the inclusion of the traditional knowledge reports from the public. The board recognizes local and local knowledge and traditional knowledge as important aspects of best available science, and as such, access to these knowledge systems should be an important part of informing the board decisions through their close proximity and intimate, often longstanding relationships with fish resources, the environment, and the ecological systems that are critical to fishery sustainability.

The board has endeavored to incorporate traditional knowledge more intentionally into its process by seeking and inviting traditional knowledge holders recognized by their community, tribe, or other organizations to share their experiences, values, alternative and/or independent observations, and data collections directly with the board. For the purposes of this meeting, the invitation is made through, again, this new agenda item, and we've provided the opportunity to sign up to provide traditional knowledge relevant to the proposals and subject matter under consideration at this meeting, and the time allowed balance will be 10 minutes. So I will also just note that it was about 3 years ago or so when the board began formally, formally incorporating traditional knowledge reports into our meeting agenda. Once we complete this cycle, this winter's meeting, I intend to hold at least one meeting of the board's process committee to kind of gather more public input, evaluate our experience with this agenda item so far, and discuss how we can improve still new part of our process going forward. So I just kind of wanted to put that out there and encourage the public to watch for the opportunity to provide comments to the process committee formally when we, when we convene.

But I also welcome your thoughts on this at any time in your written comments or public testimony with the board. So I just kind of wanted to, to throw that out there over the course of sort of implementing Traditional knowledge, we had several meetings of the, of the process committee, and I think it's probably time to take a step back and see what's working, what's not, and see how we can improve it a little bit better, a little bit more. OK, so with respect to traditional knowledge reports, I have 6 people that have signed up. The first gentleman on the list is Jim Smith. I believe he is still en route, and so we will wait to see if he gets a chance to join us.

The next person on the list is Mr. Rob Anderson Jr. And I would like to welcome him to the board representing the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida. Welcome, Mr. Anderson. Nice to see you again. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate this time to give our tech report to the Board of Fisheries here, and thank you to the council too.

My name is Rob Sanderson. I am from Hyderburg, Alaska, which is part of the Haida Nation. And before I go into my testimony here, I— to my report, I'm I'm not the very best at reading off script. I usually go from what I know because I've been in fisheries for most of my life. So here goes.

I'll give it my best shot here. So I reside in Ketchikan, and I'm here on behalf of Tlingit Haida Central Council, Tlingit Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. I was raised in the village of Hyderburg, which is part of the Haida Nations I stated.

Which is located on the southern end of Prince of Wales Island. My father is Robert Sanderson Senior, who was instrumental in protecting the food security of Hyderburg by building up salmon operations on two sockeye systems in that area. I am a lifelong subsistence fisherman who supported my family and my community. I also have been— have many years of experience commercial fishing in the eastern Gulf of Alaska and throughout Southeast Alaska as a whole.

I currently serve as the third vice president of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. I've been with the tribe for 25 years, 20 years as one of our vice presidents. So, and a lot of my free time, Madam Chair, I go out and we look and scour over our sacred sites within the K'ay Gaa Nee Hai Daa Nation, which is Kurova Bay.

My culture and my lineage is, of course, from Haida Gwaii, but on my other half of the family, my white side of the family, you guys all heard of Craig, Alaska, obviously. My great-grandfather's name Craig Miller, that's who they named Craig, Alaska after. My family is one of the founding members of Craig, Alaska, as well as Heidelberg, Alaska, too. Just putting that out there. So, Tlingit and Haida, we represent— I represent speaking today over 38,000 tribal citizens.

Tlingit and Haida maintains a strong government-to-government relationship with the United States and is a regional coordinator for collaborative stewardship projects with tribes, Alaska Native organizations, government entities, nonprofit organizations, and other groups in Southeast Alaska. Tlingit and Haida applauds the Board of Fisheries in its effort to dedicate space for the inclusion of traditional knowledge reports. We look forward to seeing refined progress, our processes in how traditional knowledge is provided during these reports. It is meaningfully considered and weighted in regulatory frameworks, board actions, fisheries management, and decision-making. We stand by the assertion that the best way to ensure the sustainability of fisheries in Alaska will stem from the meaningful system that includes both— I'm just going to use tek— tek and Western science.

Given that there is no Southeast Alaska representation on the Board of Fish, this traditional— this tek knowledge report becomes even more important for the board's consideration. For thousands of years, the Tlingit and Ahadas people have been stewards of wild salmon and other fish populations that span 43,000 square miles across, which is commonly known as Southeast East Alaska. Today there are 19 federally recognized tribes in Southeast Alaska. W��m, their foundation to their cultural existence and economic well-being, the importance of traditional foods can be seen throughout various aspects of our culture. Our stories, our art, our song, our dance, all these things that our cultural foods are our livelihoods.

Not only this, but our culture is filled with stories of how people have stewarded these lands since time immemorial. These stories teach us many things. They teach us to respect what we harvest. They teach us to harvest only what we need. They teach us to share with the rest of our community.

Most importantly, these stories teach us how to manage these resources in such a way that they are sustainable for future generations. These stories now.

More than ever are needed to ensure that my people can continue to harvest, be who they are, Indigenous people. Between all statewide proposals that dismaying, our tribal citizens are at risk of losing future access to all Pacific salmon species, especially king salmon, rockfish, cod, other sportsman species in Southeast Alaska. Again, these species are core traditional value foods that indigenous families rely on. Tlingit and Haida opposes any regulatory change that would limit the ability of our tribal citizens to freely travel and to and from subsistence harvest— harvesting sites. Restrictions such as these are unnecessary.

Unnecessary. They are not creating any issues within our jurisdiction of Southeast Alaska. Furthermore, these The use of commercial transportation services either by air or sea are not only essential but also unavoidable. Tlingit and Haida opposes all annual limits that may be imposed on our tribal citizens to harvest any cultural foods. Our livelihoods depend on food that we harvest throughout the year.

Arbitrarily limiting the harvest of any species inhibits our tribal citizens to meet their basic needs. Tlingit and Haida opposes proposals that recklessly— that slashes— salmon hatchery populations anywhere in the state, but especially in Southeast Alaska. These operations support many aspects of our region's subsistence, sport, and commercial fishery economies, especially placing significant pressure on the already depressed salmon stocks, including king salmon. Hatchery salmon that are caught in terminal harvest areas do not count towards Alaska's allocation for the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Any short-term dramatic change will not pressure will put pressure on our people, wild stock, and ecosystems without guaranteed positive outcomes.

Tlingit Haida supports any proposals that allow for— any proposals that allow for increased accountability of the state-managed pollock trawl fleet that puts the sustainability of our resources as a primary objective of that fishery. While not currently designed as a bottom trawl fishery, bycatch data shows that significant contact with the to the seafloor, that there is significant contact with the seafloor. This results in degraded habitat, so benthonetric organisms in the wake of these vessels. While we maintain that these proposals do not go far enough to address the issue, Tlingit and Haida supports these proposals that are a step forward. Excuse me, I lost my place here just for a second here.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Supports any proposals that allow for accountability of the state-managed pullout fleet that puts the sustainability of all resources as primary objective of that fishery. While not currently designated as bottom trawl fishery, bycatch data shows that again there is significant contact with the seafloor. This results in degraded habitat in the wake of these vessels. We maintain that These proposals do not go far enough to address the issue. Klinken Haida supports these proposals as a step forward for more effective management.

Our people have slowly been losing access to these resources of inequitable regulatory changes with both state and federal management systems. This is a direct result of indigenous knowledge being excluded from tables like these for decades. However, the Board of Fish creates time to hear comments such as this. We are moving in the right direction, but there's so much, there's so much further to do and go forward on. Madam Chair, on behalf of Klinkenheide, I would like to thank you and the Board of Fish for putting this as part of the agenda to take tech information and to be able to use that to go forward on while you are deliberating on different proposals on fisheries.

So that is my time, and I I know I have a— my accent really carries, you know, people know who I am before they even see me. So it's all good. Any questions? Yeah, I have a question for you, Rob. So, you know, in terms of the transport, is it, um, is it common in Southeast for people to, you know, get— pay somebody to transport them to their fishing grounds?

Or to their harvest areas? In my experience, Madam Chair, when we are out gathering and getting food for our villages, I'll say Craig Heidelberg and just the areas that I am very common. We, first of all, do not really, unless I was sending something that was legally caught and dressed and getting ready for shipped, like fad to ship it to Ketchikan, you know, they would check it out. You'd have to put your fish boxes on the IFA ferry. But as far as personal ownership of the vessel, I've never seen anybody charge anybody anything to get to and from fishing grounds and get what was legally caught and transporting it back home.

If I understand your correction— if I understand your question correctly, Madam Chair. Yeah, you did answer it. Thank you. Yeah, because I know Southeast, it's you got to have a boat to move around. So I just was kind of curious how that worked in your neck of the woods there.

Yeah, you know, before the road system, before— and again, I could only speak to the areas that I really fished in most of my life— in southern Prince of Wales, Craig, south all the way to Cape Shakun, and then out on the outside coast, Noyes Island, down from Addington all the way to Cape Shakun. On Prince of Wales Island, all the harvesting that we've done out there commercially for subsistence use, we've always shared. We've never charged people for anything. Times have changed. I've seen people now where they're selling things, you know, and, you know, I don't know their story, so I'm not gonna, you know, be talking ill of anybody.

You know, everybody has a reason for something, and But as far as what I've seen and what I've lived through, sharing is the best way to go if you have enough to share. It was demanded that we share. So, yeah. Thank you. Ms. Erwin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Sanderson, for providing the testimony for Tlingit and Haida. And I want to thank you for all of your years of work in the public process as well. It's good to see you. My question is, I heard you mention that Tlingit and Haida opposes limiting the salmon hatcheries because it'll put additional pressure on the harvesters in Southeast.

My question is, is Tlingit and Haida concerned with hatchery interactions with wild populations and any additional pressure that those hatchery fish put on the wild stocks in terms of straying or availability of marine food? And that's a good question too. And you know, while I do not really I don't have the numbers that are put out in the pink salmon stock. I heard it's in the billions, you can correct me if I'm wrong, in Prince William Sound. Now the fisheries that, and the salmon, the Chinook and the chum salmon hatcheries in Southeast Alaska, really in a lot of our opinions don't really mess with the natural stock.

I mean, you take Hidden Falls, you know, and you take Herring Cove, those are small operations, right? They don't pump them out into the billions like they do, as I'm told, up in Prince William Sound. So our king hatcheries in southern southeast Alaska, see, there's a small one in Ketchikan that used to be owned by Ketchikan Indian Community, now it's back to the state. They do king. And then you got Sarah at the south end of the road system in Ketchikan, Herring Cove.

They do, I believe, Chinook and coho. And also you got the dog salmon fishery up by Sitka along Chatham Straits. I have a hard time believing that those hatcheries do play a major role in taken from the wild stock. Now I could be wrong on this. I don't know if our Southeast Chinook salmon, our chum, our silver salmon even migrate— maybe they do all the way up into the Bering Sea or not.

But I do know that a lot of the fish that are in Southeast Alaska tend to migrate in the eastern Gulf of Alaska. As I've been told. And also for the Eunuch River kings, and this is not hatchery related though, I've learned through many meetings that I've attended that one area, one river, the Eunuch River, the kings that come out of that river primarily tend to stay within the region and not make that migration route through the North Pacific. It tends to stay over towards Dixon Entrance and further west a little bit, and that is their area, as I'm told. And I learned that at a fishery meeting in Ketchikan.

So yeah, thank you.

Thank you for your testimony today. Appreciate you being here. I don't see any other questions. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, thank you for allowing the tribes to do their tech reports.

We, we love to do that. Thank you. Peter Olson with Koniag.

Is Peter with us today? Ah.

Welcome. Yep, right there. Just hit the button when you're ready to begin, please.

Well, good morning.

My name is Peter Olson, and I am here to give testimony on behalf of Koniag and I think a lot of the fishermen in the Kodiak area. I'm catching my breath because I had to hustle. You guys started earlier than I thought you would. So a little bit about myself. I'm Raised in a large family in Kodiak.

At the tender age of 8 years of age, I began fishing commercially with 2 of my brothers and my dad on our little 32-foot wooden salmon seiner. And I did that up until I graduated from high school. From that point, I attended Oregon State University, the College of Forestry. Graduated from there and came back and have been working in the forest and the natural resources disciplines ever since. I spent much of my career on Afognak Island and on Kodiak and did a, a brief stint in interior Alaska for about 3 years working with a nonprofit working with villages with respect to forestry and resource management.

I am now the Director of Lands and Natural Resources for Konyag, and I have now about 45 years of experience in natural resource management. And I say all of that. I know that there's, uh, 3 proposals that basically would limit hatchery production and capabilities. And I am here to encourage this board, this body, to, to reject them. And I'm going to tell you why.

If you work in natural resources, you realize that virtually any, irrespective of of whether you're fisheries biologist or in forestry or wildlife, that it really takes multiple years to get anything really done. It takes time to collect information.

All of us are trying to improve how we do things to get better results. And it's been my experience that in many cases you take 5 or 10 years really to to get much of anything done. And I think that's true of the fisheries as well.

My mother was born and raised in the village of Afognak. And in 1964, we had a— as many of you know, we had an earthquake and a tsunami that drastically affected the Kodiak Island Archipelago and especially the village of Afognak where my mother was born and raised. And as a result, they, through a number of processes, they relocated that village to what is today known as Port Lyons. So when I came back to work with my village corporation, Afognak Native Corporation, I worked in forestry and There were some very controversial times because it was really, in those days, the timber activities were new to the area. And many of my colleagues, some of which may be listening to me now, were concerned about my efforts as a forester and what it could possibly do to impact fisheries in and around Fog Neck Island.

And especially the Katoibay Hatchery, which is a very productive hatchery on, on Afognak Island. And it was a very divisive time, and there were a lot of concerns. We had a very big public community meeting about it and had a lot of discussion. And through the years, I ultimately ended up with my position to where I am now. As the Director of Lands and Natural Resources.

And I've learned that the best way to come to good resource management decisions is by interacting with people, especially those that might have opposing views than you do. And if the will is there, it's been my observation and it's been my experience that better decisions are made there rather than legislatively or by regulation.

Today, our— the Konyag people, we recognize that when our resources are put in jeopardy, when our lifestyles are put in jeopardy, that we sometimes have to consider options that maybe we wouldn't have if we weren't facing challenges. And just like my mother's native village that decided to relocate the village rather than put the village at risk for another, perhaps another event, in that part of the island, it sunk 6 feet. And so it was a very real consideration that Nobody knew what was going to go on. And so they made a very difficult choice to relocate the village.

Today, I work with the local Kodiak Regional Aquaculture Association and other corporations on that own land on Afognak. And we strongly believe that a collaborative effort between the landowners and forestry and the fishery interests, particularly hatchery, if we have our heads together, that, that we can produce better results than if we didn't have our heads together.

We know that there are consequences to all of the decisions that we make, and I'm not here obviously to talk about the data. I think I'm aware of the data on hatcheries, I'm aware of the issues on it. There are other people that are more disciplined and more familiar with that. I'm not here to necessarily speak to that, but I would like to speak to the human element of this. And that is, is that while it might look like on the surface that reducing hatchery production by 25% might not be that big a deal, when you look at the business sides of these things, It's uncertain, you're taking a great risk at putting the capacity of some of these hatcheries to do what they do efficiently.

And even though I'm not here to talk about the data, I know that the risk of reducing their capacity is much greater than whatever possible reward that might come from this. We've been around, the hatcheries have been around us for decades now. We see that they add stability to, frankly, a struggling part of the fishing community. And I suspect strongly that if reductions were to, in fact, take place, that it would be very difficult to measure success. I just don't think that the data supports this kind of an action at this point.

So I would encourage you to allow the resource managers to continue to do their work, allow the hatcheries to contribute to the local economies and the fisheries. And if there are challenges and there are disagreements, then so be it. Let's work on those. Let's find— if there is in fact a problem, then let's find the solution. I just think that, that at this point, the, the probability of success by reducing hatchery production is, is very, very limited at best.

And so with that, I would also like to speak about the, the Karluk King Salmon fishery. Like many places throughout the state, On Kodiak Island, our natural king salmon runs are in jeopardy. Runs that used to total over 10,000 king salmon on the Karlik system in the last 2 years haven't got to 100.

We are very engaged, Koniag, in helping because we are the upland owner essentially for probably 85% of that drainage. And we're actively engaged with Fish.

Folks. We're very concerned about that. We know that if this isn't addressed successfully, that it could have much wider range effects around the island than just on king salmon. But we're optimistic that we can find a way to restore that run. It's really one of the runs that— a situation that Alaska, we haven't faced up until now.

And so I think it's going to take some creativity. It's going to take a lot of discussion. It's going to take a lot of work. And I am absolutely convinced that the ability to help that run to a restoration includes the hatchery capabilities that we have in our region. And so I think there's yet a lot to gain.

I think that the in our area particularly, we know that it's brought stability. We believe in our hatcheries and we are predisposed to look in the long term and to utilize those professional capabilities to the benefit of our region. And I think that must be my 10-minute marker. It is. Thank you, Peter.

Appreciate your testimony today. How is Konyag engaging with the You said fishery folks, so who is that and how are you engaging with the, you know, in terms of the resources? That's a very good question. On two fronts, I meet the KRA manager, Tina Fairbanks is in the room, and we talk about possible fisheries work that could include hatcheries. There's multiple runs around the island that are total hatchery produced.

And because they use lakes and streams that aren't anadromous. And there's a number of opportunities on Afognak Island to increase that through our road systems, et cetera. And to collaborate with the Katoy Bay Hatchery there. So there's some things that we're discussing there. Most of our conversation is around the Karlek king salmon restoration effort.

And so we discuss those. I attend the meetings with biologists and, you know, looking at that challenge in that system. And I'm told the local sport fishery biologist who's very engaged with the king salmon issue as well is that this would be really, really difficult without the cooperation of Konyag as the upland owner because we can support infrastructure and utilize offer support out in the field, actually, that will help facilitate these. So I think the short answer is we engage in, and we're open to any conversations that might lead to productive dialogue. Thank you for that.

And not to get too far into the Kodiak region, but outside of hatchery supplementation, is Kodiak engaged in any other discussions or outreach about how you might help restore the Karluk runs outside of hatcheries? Well, of course, these conversations are in their infancy, and we've had them quite for quite some time. But Koniag is the regional corporation for the Kodiak Archipelago. And so a number of our own shareholders are in villages, and some of them still own fishing permits, et cetera. And so it's part of our information dissemination to our shareholders and especially those inside the region that this is something that we're working on.

There's multiple collaborators here and I love to charge ahead, but this is really somebody else's lead.

We're there to support. And so I just make sure that folks that are, that are involved with this process are aware that, that CONIAG is supportive of it and we're looking for ways to help, help move to a successful restoration of that particular run. Great. Thank you, Mr. Swenson. And then, Mr. Irwin.

Thanks for your presentation. It was very interesting. So are the hatcheries interested in working on the Karluk? Absolutely.

Good, thank you. Sirwin. Yeah, thank you, thank you very much for your testimony and for traveling. My question is, in your experience, has the hatchery program supported the rehabilitation of other wild stocks within Kodiak? I heard you say that your desire for the Karluk King Salmon fishery is in jeopardy is that potentially hatcheries could help and benefit that population.

Have you seen that be the case in other species within Kodiak? Well, to my knowledge, and I'm gonna be careful with semantics here, restoration, this is really the most severe case of a run being in jeopardy. And so there's other enhancement things that have gone on over the years, like lake fertilization and so forth. Which I'm aware of, and I know that KRA has been involved with that. But in terms of direct hatchery intervention for a run that's at risk, I think this is clearly the most critical one that we've had.

And so I think in terms of actual restoration as opposed to enhancement, they're two very different things. Things in this conversation. And so we're basically trying to rescue a run that we think is completely at risk of complete failure. And so there's been other efforts that I'm aware of, and I suppose the fisheries folks can be more specific than that. But we know that several important sockeye fisheries that would not exist around the island, on Spirit Inn, for example— and again, I'm not the expert on this, but I'm aware of it— is that annually sockeye fry are put into the Spirit and Lake system, which is like 500, 600 feet elevation.

There's no return or spawning in there. And it creates a very, what's become a very important sockeye source for both commercial fishery and subsistence. In Port Lyons, there's a longstanding similar kind of a situation where sockeye are put in there and those fish come directly into Port Lyons. And it's a very important subsistence resource. The village of Usinki has an example like that as well.

And these don't compete with natural runs.

It gives some reprieve in terms of the pressure on some of these natural runs there as well. So however you consider whatever, whether that's, Whatever you want to label that as, it— we think it's good.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. Thank you for those examples. I guess my question would just be, Konyag is saying that they think that the hatcheries could help the king run. Is there any examples that Konyag has of hatcheries working to help replenish the depleted wild king stocks? I heard you say sockeye examples, but are you guys basing this on any other example of it working anywhere else in the state?

Not in the same application of what we have. Okay, thank you. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate your perspective as somebody that has been in the resource development world, especially with logging or forestry management, like you're saying.

And it seems— have you noticed whether we're talking about hatcheries or other logging or other industries that impact habitat, like what are the What are the trade-offs? Like, have you seen in this— because of course clear-cutting comes with a really bad, you know, people have opinions about that, you know. But would you just expand upon that? Like, what are the consequences of these decisions and the rewards, as you mentioned? Well, obviously that's a very deep rabbit hole, and I could speak to that for longer than you want to hear me speak.

But what What we believe, what I believe as a resource manager, as a forester, is that done properly, the fish basically don't know that you did that. If I've done my job well, then that run doesn't really know what we're doing. Mistakes can be made, and I'm sure there are some in that regard, as there isn't any resource. But what I, I took a different view on Fog Neck Island. I didn't see timber development as a liability to fisheries.

I saw the infrastructure as an opportunity if we decide to take a hold of it, which to some degree we have, and I'd like more, is that we can actually leverage fisheries interests in collaboration with the timber operations. Every logger that I've known, every forester that I've known, are.

Also fishermen and hunters, they're not, none of us are there to not do our job well. And so I think it's a change of perspective and with a little bit of creativity and a lot of elbow grease, there are opportunities for fishery habitat work and whatever opportunities might be available on site-specific basis.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you.

Mike Weber, City of Cordova, followed by Gayla Hassett.

Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. [Speaker:CHIEF_HAROLD] I'd like to thank the board giving me this chance to speak to you about traditional knowledge.

And when I'm speaking traditional knowledge, I'm really kind of speaking on more of a personal level. And I wanted to let you know that because there's a lot of history here. And so what I am doing is I am sharing my traditional knowledge. My name is Mike Webber. I'm a Kaliak Haa Gwaan Taan Yeti.

My Tlingit name is Keeya'ahu. This means a new beginning. This name was given to me in a potlatch at my grandfather's celebration of life. Several Tlingit leaders came to our town to give me this name 28 years ago. Ke ya'ahu will come to life in different ways in this presentation.

Kaliak Kaagwaantaan gives you the area where my ancestors fished, hunted, gathered, and lived for thousands of years. The great chiefs gave this river to my ancestors, our family. This is our family's river. Yeti means generations. I am very happy with our clan's name.

It gives me purpose to say where I am from, where my ancestors are from. I am a Kaliak Kogwantan Yeti.

I've been running my bowpicker in the Lost Coast River for 20 years. The knowledge it takes to run the ocean run the rivers with a 100-foot-wide mouth to get in from the ocean into the rivers is a knowledge, and it's like a traditional knowledge that was given to me, and I accepted that because my ancestors have been doing this.

Once you get into the rivers, it's another And it's another ball game once you get in there. Rivers like the Seal River, the Siou River, the Kaliak River requires a lot of local knowledge, the same knowledge my ancestors used to get into these rivers in their dugout canoes. This knowledge has been shared with my family and to my families for hundreds of generations. So I am lucky enough to have that knowledge bred into my soul from my ancestors. The Kaliak River was gifted to us from the great chiefs, and what a gift that was.

I feel my ancestors' presence. They guide me through my 130-mile one-way boat ride, get me into the safe waters. They help me navigate the shallow, very swift waters.

In which it's hard just to keep your anchor down because the water runs anywhere between 5 to 15 knots of currents in those 3 rivers. I have fished the Siou Kaliak River for 9 years. Almost every day the channels change. Big tides will erase channels more than 100 yards almost daily.

Our GPS entrances from one year to the next can be up to a mile difference just to get into the opening of the river. The Kaliak has moved almost 15 miles since the 1964 earthquake. The Siou is a stubborn river that is less than a foot deep and runs at speeds of 8 to 10 knots. The Siou is the only river that runs to the east Every river from Yakutat to Kurova, the Lost Coast, all these rivers move to the west.

I learned about my ancestors and their traditional knowledge, but it came to me in a horrible accident that paralyzed me. I was wrapped up in my deck winch on my sailboat and almost severed my spinal cord. I did not wiggle a toe for 3 months. I was paralyzed. But one day, a toe moved and gave me hope.

3 Months later, doing some severe rehab, I learned to walk again. I was very weak and I still am. Spinal cord injuries do not heal. I have lots of time on my hands and I studied Native arts and history. Read hundreds of books and learned about the Northwest Coast art and how it was done.

Reading these books gave me connections to build a new life.

I have been carving the lost artifacts that were taken from the Lost Coast from the explorers. Carving the past to the future is my winter job. But this is where I learn how to connect with my ancestors was through art. They guided me when I carved over hundreds of masks, bowls, paddles, halibut hooks, panels, and totem poles. My Tlingit name, Kayohu, is a new beginning.

Whether it is carving, drift gillnetting, setnetting on the Kaliak River, I have the gift of traditional knowledge that was handed to me after my accident, but it took me 20 years to figure that out.

But I was chosen by my ancestors to bring the past to the future. I accept my new role in my new life.

I am 65 years old. I've been commercial fishing for 59 years.

It is now my job to represent my ancestors and to tell their stories, but also to fight to keep my ancestral rights fishing on the mouth of the Kaliak River. I hope the directors heard my story and my message.

Let me keep what is given to me, the gift of the Kaliak River and the riches it gave to my ancestors for thousands of years. If you guys have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them, but if not, um, thank you for your time. Thanks, Mike. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Mike.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for the testimony. Um, you know, you touched a little bit on, uh, I guess your family's history in regards to the Lost Coast, the North Gulf Coast of Alaska, and the rivers that have that were handed to your family. And when you talk specifically about the Kaliak and the differences that present you sometimes daily, sometimes monthly, sometimes annually in regards to how those rivers shift, can you talk about the difference maybe how much the shift takes place more significantly on the east side of Cape Suckling versus the west side? Because in my experience, those smaller rivers down there tend to move in a much greater fashion, much more quickly.

If you could just touch on that. Yes, thank you. That's a great question. Basically, in my mind, well, been fishing for 59 years. I have the knowledge, so, and I have the local knowledge, and local knowledge is more valuable than anything in my mind.

So I say the Lost Coast because the Lost Coast represents a large area of the North Gulf Coast. Speaking of the lower Lost Coast, it's more of a gravel bar scenario versus like the Copper River is more sand. So the gravel tends to move more quickly and it's not as solid as just say a sand-based sandbar like on the Copper River. So the change is inevitable. It happens.

Big tides, storms. You'll come back after a storm and the.

Mouth of the river could totally relocate a quarter mile in like, in a matter of a few days. So change is one thing that you have to accept down there. And 20 years ago when I ran there, my mark is like 5 miles difference from where the mouth of the river is now. And why is the Siouxsie moving to the east when all the rivers are moving to the west? That one kind of throws me for a loop.

But all rivers all the way up to the Copper River are constantly moving to the west. All the west bars are getting chewed out. Currents are obviously changing in the ocean and it's— and it's taken its toll on all the west entrances of the bars, which are moving them farther to the west. I hope that answers your question. Yeah, it does.

Thank you. And maybe just a quick follow-up to that. You know, some of these rivers east of Cape Suckling, from my experience, and maybe you can elaborate on if you've seen this or not, sometimes in the spring when the water flow in some of these rivers has been low throughout the winter, it really does take a pretty massive storm to open up those river mouths again. And from time to time, if those storms don't exist, there really is an entry problem to a certain degree from fish getting into these rivers till these storms do take place. And maybe can you just elaborate a little bit on, you know, because I know you're mainly down there fishing in the fall when the weather tends to be, you know, usually a lot worse than it is in the summertime.

How difficult it is to just make that trek down there and fish in those rivers and, and to be able to like get back out based on the weather to even try and deliver your fish. And could you maybe touch on how difficult that is? Yeah, sure. Yeah, the east of Cape Suckling is a whole different animal. And speaking in terms of the ocean, the ocean is way more violent.

The waves are very close to each other. It's very unlike what the Copper River is. You could count like 5 to 10 seconds or even 25 seconds depending on where you are on the bar when the next wave's gonna come. But you got 1 to 2 seconds when you get down east of Cape Suckling. So yeah, it's a, you're doing all ocean traveling to get there.

You gotta go past, once you come around the reef, leaving the Copper River area, the Controller Bay area, you got to go through the Suckling Reef, which is very shallow and the rocks are, reefs are sticking up all over the place. You're going past this kind of like landmines of reefs and rocks that are sticking out of the water and the surf's breaking over them. And once you make it past that, then you got to get, once you go around Suckling, you come into the Seal, past the Seal River. And my knowledge on the Seal River is pretty extent because I probably made over 100 trips into that river dropping freight off for the sport fishing lodges down there. And you got icebergs that come through there.

It's the mouth of the Vitus Lake, which is the biggest glacier, the Bering Glacier on the northern continent. And the river is violent, it's vicious. On a minus tide, you'll get 19 knots of current current by the mouth of the river. Um, it's, uh, local knowledge getting in there, but whatever knowledge you have is going to be different every time you go in there. But going past the Seal River, it creates its own weather pattern because the amount of water that comes out of the river— I understand it's the third largest river by volume in Alaska, so that even The average speed is 9 knots of current coming out of this river that's like 1,000 feet wide.

So it creates its own weather pattern when it enters the ocean. It makes a fog bank because the glacier water is so cold and it hits the ocean water, it creates very dense, thick fog. We have to run through that fog almost every time we go past it. If you don't have fog, it's very rare. Then you gotta watch out for the icebergs that come out into the ocean as well.

And then it's another 30 miles to get you down into the Sioux-Kalliyak area. And I drove past the Sioux probably for 10 years before I ever even seen the river. So that's how small these rivers are. Getting into the Kalliyak, All you could really do is you could find the cut banks and the cut banks kind of tell you where the rivers are, but you don't know where the sandbars are and the channel is as wide as this building. So you're pretty much going in and then when you're on the last wave before you start to get close to the river, you make your final adjustments to, get dumped into the river and you can't go very far up the river because the river and the Kaliak and Sayu are like, if you get in 3 feet of water, that's kind of like a deep hole.

Maybe on the tide it might be 5 feet deep. So the rivers are very shallow. So it's, you know, all my speech, I really feel like my ancestors guide me in there. I really feel like I have that help and I, you know, I would be very, I'm always nervous going in there, but it's, I would be even more nervous if I didn't feel like my family's been fishing there for 1,000 years. You know, it would be a difficult task.

Thanks, Mike, thanks for your perspective. Yeah, thanks. Ms. Erwin and Mr. Swenson. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for your detailed report.

I really appreciate all the context that you're providing, and I apologize if I missed this in your report, but do you have thoughts on Proposal 187? Yes, of course. I really didn't. I was speaking on—. I'm sorry, I think we can wait for public testimony.

Sorry, go ahead. Yes, I totally oppose Proposal 187, and I felt like I just really wanted to give you the traditional knowledge, and I did a written report, and I got a personal speech too. Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Weber. All right, thank you. Mr. Swenson, then Mr. Wood.

Mr. Wood? Yeah, thank you. How many people do this? And for how long have you been doing this as a commercial fisherman? I mean, this sounds pretty intense.

Well, you know, it runs in my family. My Uncle Jim fished it before the earthquake. My grandmother fished there for just the riches and wealth that the rivers offered them. But myself, I've only been fishing there for 9 years, but I've been running those rivers for 20 years, dropping freight off to the Sport fishing lodges, right? So it was, yeah, it's nothing that is simple or easy in any terms.

How many other people besides you? Yeah, thank you. There's a small group of fishermen, there's like 3 to 4 of us that fish there and we run our fish out and through the surf and get it to Cordova. And it takes like 16 hours to run our fish back home. And it's a 7-hour, 7 to 9 hour trip just getting there.

Thank you. Mr. Swenson. Those rivers, Kaliak and the Siou, they're strictly a coho fishery, is that correct? Yes, it's pretty much strictly coho. Okay, thank you.

Thanks, and my question to you is, are you drift fishing in there? Yes, I am still fishing in there. Yes, the drift. I think I heard you mention set. Yes, been in there for 9 years.

I'm set netting, right? Are you drift netting, drift fishing, or set netting? Just set netting. Got it, right? It's all of Area 4D is set net only, right?

Good. Thank you. I don't see any other questions. Thank you for your testimony today. Appreciate you being here.

All right. Thank you for your time. If you guys have any more questions, I'll be around. Thank you. I don't think I see Gayla in the room.

Is she here?

Darryl James and Matthew Andersstrom with the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe. Are you coming forward to testify? Okay. Just checking. I wasn't sure if you're just Stretching your legs.

Okay, folks.

When you're ready, please press the button to turn your mic on and begin. Okay, thank you.

Good afternoon, members of the panel. My name is Matthew Andersstrom. I'm speaking today on behalf of the Ak-Den Klickit Tribe in strong opposition of Proposal 187. For our people, the Siu is not just a fishery. It's part of who we are.

Yakutat Tlingit tribal members have fished these waters for generations, long before state management systems existed. Some of our members have fished the Siu long enough to hold native allotments in the area. That's not just history. That's living continuity, culture, and identity tied directly to this place. Proposal 187 would close the river to commercial fishing while allowing sport fishing to continue.

This is deeply concerning, not only because of the economic harm it would cause, but because it disregards the longstanding relationship our people have with this fishery and creates an unequal access to the shared resource. We also want to be clear, escapement has never been an issue on the Sayu. The fish populations have remained healthy under current management. There is no demonstrated conservation crisis that justifies eliminating commercial fishing, especially for one user group while another remains.

In recent years, the river has actually been fished less on the commercial side, not because of conservation concerns, but because of the high cost and limited availability to transportation to access the area. Even so, it remains an important source of potential revenue for permit holders in the region. Those permits represent real investments and opportunities that people rely on, even if they cannot fish every season. At the same time, the Sayu River continues to be used for subsistence. For our tribal members, that means food security, cultural practice, passing knowledge to the next generation.

These uses are interconnected—commercial, subsistence, and cultural. And should not be separated or diminished by management decisions that favor one group over another.

Commercial fishermen in our community are not separate from subsistence users. They are often the same people. They're stewards of this resource with direct stake in ensuring its long-term health. Closing the river to commercial fishing while allowing sport fishing prioritizes recreation over livelihood, culture, and subsistence. That is not equitable management.

If there are concerns about the fishery, then we should be working together on balanced, data-driven solutions, adjustments that apply fairly across all users, not a blanket closure that targets one group. The proposal overlooks the reality of a healthy fishery and reduced recent fishing pressure, deep cultural and economic importance of the Siu to the Ak-Tak Tlingit people. We respectfully ask that you reject Proposal 187 and instead pursue a path that honors sustainability, fairness, and rights and traditions of our tribe. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I thank you for your time. Will you pause it for a second, please?

Thank you. I just kind of want to reiterate, I've been a little lax here, but traditional knowledge is not the time to take positions on proposals. It's to tell us about your area. To talk about it. I understand the context in which you're doing it, but it's not, it's not an up or down kind of thing.

That's not the purpose of this, of this forum. That's a good discussion to have in public testimony, but not necessarily. But I hear where you're coming from. I'm going to let it go. But just for folks that are coming up, we want to— we're trying to get information about your area, about your fishery that you are recognized as holding not necessarily just proposals up and down.

Thank you for your testimony though. Go ahead and— Mr. Anderstrom.

I'm Darrell James. I'm Yakutat Tlingit Tribe Vice President and former mayor of city and borough of Yakutat, 3 terms. This area was annexed by the borough a few years ago to protect their resources for all users, not just specific ones. And this Sayuk Elliott was— has been commercially fished since 1932, about 1932, uh, different time periods. It's a place that's pretty hard to get into and long distance travel.

And this area has a number of Native allotments.

There's 5 on the Kalliat.

And 3 on the Sayu, and hopefully they'll be— these families will be able to use those and all resources into the future. Generations of time have been— it has been used particularly for salmon, and I just stated that this area is doesn't have, to my knowledge, a resource problem. And to close this area to— as that proposal looks at setnet fishery, it reaches into the Subsistence Use Fishery Act that uses gillnets set gillnets for subsistence use on all our rivers from Dry Bay to Cape Suckling. That's the borough boundaries.

And hopefully on into the future, it will, it will be continued to be used.

In 1986, This fishery sustained 44 setnet fishermen in that area.

I started the fishery in 1966 in the Keliat River on a Seafood Processor, the Kayak. It was a canning vessel. And there was another one in the river at the same time, and it was a freezer boat. Both of them were old, were World War II military surplus vessels.

And So the use of this area has been continuous as long as we had means to get there by yakdat.

And this traditional knowledge of the area is very important to Yakutat.

That was one of the primary reasons this area was annexed to the borough.

This is just another cultural war that has been going on in Alaska for a number of years since colonization. At its core, it is a fight for our way of life and for access to the resources. And the way this proposal is phrased, that Access is attempting to eliminate subsistence use.

For generations, Tribes have fished freely to sustain their families and pass down cultural knowledge. Today subsistence fishing is restricted to limited days and tightly defined areas, very tightly defined areas.

You don't see the equity in it when The sport fishery has no limit of take.

They say 6 a day, but that's not enforced.

I'll give you an example. There's one lodge that had an individual that was managing it that told a client that he came in with the fish in the morning and the manager says, "You can't go back out, you have your limit for the day." She was not there the following day. She was released from her job. These restrictions continue to grow while other user groups are allowed access 24 hours a day.

7 Days a week.

Subsistence fishermen in Yakutat are restricted to a 24-hour period.

Salmon populations have changed dramatically. Fish are smaller.

Runs are weaker.

And what is now considered, quote, normal, unquote, was once unheard of.

These outcomes show that the current management is not focused on protection of the resource but on allocation to different user groups. And too often one user group is favored over another.

Tribal harvests are small, sustainable, and do not threaten salmon runs. We take only what we need, as we always have. This fight is not about recreation or profit. Subsistence fishing is about feeding our families, sustaining our communities, and preserving a way of life that includes teaching the coming generations how to take care and manage the land and the resource around us, just as our ancestors have for countless generations.

Salmon are one of the last remaining resources This battle is about ensuring future generations have the same opportunity to gather food, teach culture, and live in a balance with the ecosystem.

Thank you, sir. Your time has elapsed. I think we have a couple of questions for you, Mr. Sensen. I just have one quick question. Can you catch those fish beyond a quarter mile of this river, of these rivers?

If you're on the ocean, yeah, you can. Do they run the shore or do they run in the ocean? They run in the ocean or the shore. So you could— they can be fished further out then? Yeah.

Okay, thank you. All the river systems you can fish further out. Any other questions? Thank you both for being here today. I appreciate you and your testimony.

Thank you. Thank you. Right. I think it's just about lunchtime, so we'll take a break until 1:30. I will then, I think, probably dive into public testimony unless we have our last couple of traditional knowledge testifiers in town.

So we'll see you all at 1:30. Thank you, Madam Chair. Real quick, Mr. Payton. Thank you.

I'd like to make a quick announcement. Sport Fish and Comfish staff, some of us are going to do a working lunch. It's back in the break room to your right behind the door. I welcome any stakeholders that want to meet some new Sport Fish or Confluence staff to swing by and say hi. So we'll be here over the lunch hour.

Appreciate it. Thanks, Mr. Payton. See you guys at 1:30.

Okay, welcome back. The time is 1:41. We are back on the record and we're going to go ahead and get started with public testimony this afternoon.

Um, when your name is called on the list, please come forward to the microphone, state your name for the record and who you represent. If you have written materials for the board, please identify those materials by RC, PC, or AC number. I will go ahead and provide members an opportunity to get the paperwork in front of them. And that time won't be charged to you— or against you, I should say. At this meeting, the public will each be given 3 minutes to testify.

As I stated this morning, advisory committee and regional advisory council representatives will be given 10 minutes. When you begin your testimony, the executive director will give you just a couple moments to introduce yourself before starting the timer. When your time is up, you will hear a beep. Please, please stop talking when the timer goes off, or I will have to instruct you to stop talking. When you're finished, please remain seated so if we have any questions, we can ask you them.

And of course, we ask you to confine your oral testimony to the subjects under consideration here at this meeting in as concise and direct a manner as possible. It is the intent of the board to deal with the merits of the proposals based on the general principles used by this board. The board does not deal in personalities, and we ask ask that testifiers please not refer people by name, any person, any staff member, certainly any board member. If your name is called and you are not present to testify, a second call will be made. If you miss both of your first and second calls, you won't be able to testify at this meeting.

If your first call happens in an afternoon session like this afternoon, your second call will either occur at the end of the testimony list or the beginning of the next day's morning session, whichever comes first. And I'll do my best to make regular announcements about these second call opportunities. So if I call your name this afternoon and you're not here, I'm going to call your name for your second call first thing tomorrow morning. If you're not here tomorrow morning, then you're SOL for testifying at this meeting. But again, I will go ahead and make sure that I give announcements to that fact.

I also will ask public testifiers that I'm going to sort of batch names. So I'm going to, I'm going to ask, invite somebody to come forward, and then I'll give you the next 3 or 4 names on my list. And so if you're on the list and you know you're coming up soon, we ask that you either move forward to the front of the room or be prepared to kind of quickly move up to the seat to testify. I'm trying to avoid long walks down the hallways as that just kind of tends to eat a lot of time. Okay.

Clear as mud. Ready for go. Okay. Let's go ahead and get started with public testimony. The first person on my list this afternoon is Trey Lossie.

Trey Losi, and I'm sorry if I mispronounced your name. Welcome.

When I signed up as first, I didn't know I'd be actually first. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Trey Losi. I'm the chair of FISH for the Copper River Prince William Sound Advisory Committee. Our AC comments can be referenced in on-time advisory committee comments.

AC-8. Our AC consists of 15 seats and an additional 2 alternate seats. Our AC does not have designated seats, but our current members consist of local tribal members, sports fishermen, commercial gillnetters, sanders, and longliners, subsistence fishermen, a big game guide, hunters, trappers, and photographers. With most, if not all, AC members fitting more than one of these descriptions. The AC met and discussed the proposal before you on February 10th, with a continuation of said meeting on February 12th.

Jumping into our positions on.

Proposals. The AC voted unanimously in support of all ADF&G's proposals on the basis that they appear to be proposals seeking to clarify regulations and definitions, as well as basic housekeeping proposals. The AC voted unanimously in support of Proposal 162 on prohibiting commercial transport services and subsistence fisheries. Our AC has consistently held the stance that subsistence is inherently non-commercial. And that allowing commercial services for subsistence is contradictory to that.

On trawl proposals 163 through 165, the AC voted in support, with 2 members voting in opposition of proposal 164. AC members voiced support for taking proactive steps to increase monitoring and minimize bycatch without shutting down fisheries. Those in opposition had concerns that the technology required wasn't yet available and that harvesting pollock that prey on salmon fry has a positive impact on fry survival. The AC opposed Proposal 168 to prohibit vessels from having more than one type of groundfish gear on board. The AC has concerns that this would limit vessels from simultaneously participating in longline and pot fisheries.

At the last Board of Fish meeting in Cordova, there was much discussion about the benefits of utilizing pots in state water fisheries. This proposal seems to be attempting to address a region-specific gear conflict issue. RAC unanimously opposed Hatchery Proposals 170 through 172. It was noted that these proposals have been brought up and defeated multiple times at regional meetings. During our RAC meeting, a member read ADF&G staff comments on the effect, if adopted, of Proposal 78, a region-specific but otherwise identical proposal to Proposal 170 that was submitted by an individual at the December 2024 meeting in Cordova.

Although the department's current language has been softened in their comments on 170, the earlier staff analysis captured the reality of these proposals and the concerns of our AC. At that time, regarding proposal 78, the department stated, imposing this cap will have a significant negative impact on the local economy, will not likely to result in any positive effects on wild salmon stocks. This would likely have a negative impact on the viability of salmon processing operations in Prince William Sound, jeopardizing their ability to purchase wild salmon, to purchase wild stock salmon harvests, and participate in groundfish, shellfish, and herring buying. These potential ramifications are obviously alarming in a community that depends on the seafood industry. The AC voted in support of 174, allowing the engine of a purse seiner or skiff to be shut off when a seine is deployed.

As this could reduce unnecessary wear on equipment. Members also mentioned that it would be useful in certain situations in terminal harvest hatchery fisheries. They voted in support of 175 to modify dipnet mesh size and configuration with the stance that reducing mesh size could reduce mortality on catch and release salmon, which would aid in Chinook conservation. On proposals 176 through 178, the AC was unanimously opposed. Pertaining to pooling bag and possession limits.

Members felt this would unnecessarily encourage operators to limit out everyone on their boat, on their boat, regardless of who actually caught the fish in question. RIC was opposed to Proposal 178 and 179, proposals seeking to set a statewide annual bag limit for king salmon. Members who participate in our local sport winter king troll fishery voiced concerns that these proposals are unnecessarily restrictive. It was also pointed out that the majority of Chinook harvested in these fisheries are of hatchery origin. A committee member also brought up concerns that if he reached his limit after the first of the year, he would not be able to fish when he started targeting kings again in the fall.

Half here, so half here. So our fault on the act-out ACs than it is yours, so I apologize for that. Okay, no worries, we got you straightened out and you got to finish, so thank you so much. Let me see if there's any questions. Not seeing any.

Thank you for your service. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Good afternoon, sir. Welcome.

Good afternoon, everyone. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, um, my, uh, my proposal is, uh, Proposal 166, and, uh, it, it came as a response to, uh, reports that, that some jig fishermen were using longline gear and slinky pots and In fact, in one case, the cannery was pulling the cold snaps out of the codfish and saving them for the fishermen. And so in speaking to troopers and to Fish and Game, the question became if it was real. Salmon runs in Kodiak and providing specific salmon releases to subsistence users, such as their sockeye and coho releases at the Uzinke Harbor on Spruce Island.

A reduction in hatchery leases could greatly impact our fellow tribe in the native village of Usinky.

Wrapping up, excuse me, I would ask the board to strongly consider retaining the enhancement of salmon runs in our region under the oversight of the regional planning teams and oppose these proposals which lack scientific basis on the broad level, recognizing that the nonprofit hatcheries are run through a public process through the planning teams which have both experience and expertise to make informed decisions about sustainable fisheries management. Kiana, thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Any questions? Appreciate your testimony today.

Earl Krieger. Good afternoon, Earl. Good afternoon, Madam Chairman, members of the board. My name is Earl Krieger. I'm here representing myself, my children, my grandchildren.

I have a proposal, 180, which proposes a limit of 5 Chinook salmon on an annual limit and requires e-reporting on an annual harvest record. I propose a limit of 5 more is to get people's attention and think about what really we have as limits and how they affect the management of the resource. I assume that the board will— discussion will arrive arrive at a biological and cultural annual limit that's acceptable. My main objective for the— is for the— of this proposal is for the development of an accurate and usable Chinook salmon harvest assessment, much like ADF&G's personal dip use net fisheries for sockeye in Cook Inlet, where when the season closes on July 15th, July 31st, you only have 15 days in which to file electronically to the department. And if you don't file, you do not qualify to fish the following year.

This is the type of teeth we need in an annual limit. What is needed is— this is something that was needed in sport fishery to match the 21st century reporting systems. Poor reporting corrupts stock assessment and harvest modeling. When bycatch or harvest goes unrecorded, total fishery mortality is systematically underestimated. This results in allowable catch limits being set too high for struggling stocks, and we clearly have struggling Chinook stocks.

Thank you. Thank you, Earl. Any questions? Mr. Owen. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Earl, very much for presenting your proposal and for submitting one forward. I guess my question would be, um, looking at the department's comments, King stocks are currently managed by area, and my question would be, would your expectation of a 5 King limit, um, is your expectation that individual management plans would be able to supersede that if, for example, there wasn't enough to provide for Five Kings, that only one would be available, which would be superseded by the management plan. Yeah, I think the first words of the line says, except as provided for under authority, there is an annual statewide limit. So it assumes that, you know, that like in Cook Inlet, where I fish in most of the areas of the state and have over the years, Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, Southeast, out in Kodiak, I fish all those areas. And, you know, one of the things I see is an awful lot of fish being taken.

I have friends that can Chinook salmon. They take so many. Okay, thank you for clarifying. Thank you for your testimony today. Linda Kozak.

Morning. I mean, sorry, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Linda Kozak from Kodiak. I submitted proposal number 11 and PC 260 is my public comment letter.

I've worked in the golden king crab fishery representing harvesters since the 1990s, and it's been a privilege and an honor to work with these Golden King crab guys who fish out in this very remote area in the western Aleutian Islands. And I submitted the proposal to prohibit groundfish trawling inside of state waters west of 170 west longitude. And I'd like to just say that this proposal is not about bycatch, although we are concerned and have.

Expressed concern, the crab plan team has expressed concern about unobserved mortality. The proposal is not about gear conflicts, although gear conflicts do occur primarily in federal waters. This proposal is about benthic habitat protection for golden king crab and other species.

PC-10 has some great information on the impacts of bottom trawling with some great citations if you have, uh, some time for light reading. The state of Alaska has a history of habitat protection. All of Southeast waters are closed, both state and federal, to all trawling except for a small beam trawl shrimp fishery. Most waters in the Gulf of Alaska are closed to bottom trawling for crab habitat protections, and that includes all the waters around Kodiak Island. There are nearshore areas in the Bering Sea closed.

And as a precautionary measure, the federal government closed about 95% of the Aleutian waters for trawling, bottom trawling. In the staff comments on Proposal 11, Table 11-4 lists the areas that are currently open in the Aleutian Islands inside state waters for various species to trawl. And so I think that's going to be a very important piece of information for you to have because we're asking for the other areas that are currently open to be closed inside state waters. We're sympathetic to the small boat catcher vessels that have fished for Pacific cod in the Aleutians, primarily those out of Sandpoint and some out of Kodiak. I'm also sympathetic regarding the situation at ADAC.

They haven't had a processor there since 2020, but hope to in the future. And so in speaking with industry and with department personnel, um, we are prepared to modify the proposal to allow for catcher vessels, uh, less than 100 feet to be continued to allow to fish for Pacific cod inside state waters. These are small areas, they're a limited period of time, and these vessels are, um, I would say they don't have quite the horsepower or the catchability or the, the bottom degradation that we can see in other, uh, the factory trawl vessels. Thank you very much. Thank you, Linda.

Any—. Mr. Wood?

Yeah, thank you, Linda. Um, I have two questions for you. Um, when the Golden King crab proposal— or people were in front of us, I think a year ago— we heard a lot about pots and how much these pots cost. And then in PC 75, submitted by David Capri, there's a whole list of the itemized list of how much these pots cost. Could you give me an idea of the scale of the size of these pots, how many they are, how many there are, and how those touch bottom when it comes to habitat, the impacts they have?

I think for specific pot dimensions and how many pots they're fishing, I think it's less than 2,000, but I believe that he's going to be testifying and would be the a better person to answer that. I can tell you about footprint. The North Pacific Council staff has estimated that the footprint for the entire Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands pot fishery, crab pot fishery, is less than 1 square nautical mile annually. The footprint for trawl, on the other hand, is about 30,000 square miles. So there's a little bit of a difference in when we're talking about with in regard to footprint.

The other thing about the golden crab pot fishermen is that because many of these guys, most of them have fished there since the '90s or even earlier, they are very aware of where the sensitive coral habitats are. They're very aware of where the sub-legals and the females hang out. They avoid those areas because it's in their best interest to do so. And so in regard to your question about, uh, pot dimensions, I think it's best, uh, for— there will be some industry people testifying later, and if you could save that for them, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

My other question was, um, how many other crab boats are fishing that area? Golden King crab is a very specialized remote fishery. There are 3 companies basically Well, actually there's 4. The, the one company was going to sell out and they didn't, but there's, there's 3 to 4 companies right now that are out there prosecuting that fishery. 2 Of them are CDQ-owned vessels.

And so you have 5 boats, I believe, total that have been in the fishery, but it's a very small fishery. Okay, thank you. So are they having problems with gear conflicts out there as well? [Speaker:DR. MARGARET WILSON] There's a— years ago we were having significant issues, and so I actually initiated conversations between the factory trawl fleet and the Golden King crab fleet to try to come up with some kind of a protocol. And a protocol was established, agreed to by both sectors, in order to have what we call uploading of the line files to a Google Docs.

And while that system is not perfect, And there have been trawl interactions with golden crab pots, and there have been some relief skippers that may not have put the line file in exactly when they were supposed to in a timely manner. For the most part, that protocol is working very well, but there are still some gear conflicts. But those, again, as I said, are primarily in federal waters.

Thanks for now. Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thanks, Linda.

So I got a couple questions. Um, and I've talked to you about this before, so I don't think it's going to be surprising. Um, when you talk about increased factory trawl activity in this area, how can you demonstrate that to me?

That's an excellent question. Through the chair, I, I think what we're talking about is increased encroachment into state waters. With factory trawl vessels moving in and out and moving into state waters during the prosecution of their fishery. And some of our concern is specific to female and sublegal crab, where they hang out, and some is specific to crab habitat, which is very, very important. Obviously, the golden crab are an interesting species.

They don't act like other crab. They mate whenever they want, they molt whenever they want, and they don't really travel in packs too much. And they're throughout the entire range— the entire range is their habitat. And so in regard to our concern right now, the, the staff comments in this— in the staff reports, the factory trawl catch inside state waters is 0.07% or 0.7— I'm not a mathematician— it's less than 1%. And they are, um, not dependent on state waters fisheries.

But what we're concerned about is that if there is no action taken to prohibit them from those state waters that we feel are extremely important for not only, uh, crab but other species as well, We're concerned that some type of an emergency action might need to be taken in the future, and we would like to forestall that as a precautionary measure, similar to what the North Pacific Council did when they closed about 95% of the Aleutians. And so while it's maybe not a day-to-day event, it is happening, and it's beginning to happen more frequently, and we're concerned about that. Okay, thank you for that. So it's not necessarily something that is a giant problem at the moment. You're trying to be proactive is the way I take it.

And I guess the reason I asked that question is, is because in your proposal you talk specifically about how golden king crab fishing areas have been overrun by large trawlers. And that's not exactly what I'm hearing you say right now. And so I'm— I'd like to give you the opportunity to maybe clarify that because it's very confusing to me. Through the chair, that's again an excellent question. And when we're talking about golden king crab areas being overrun, I probably should have specified that that's both state and federal waters.

And but as I said, we're seeing more and more effort coming into state waters and we are seeing more Areas where traditional Golden King crab fisheries have occurred, where factory trawlers have been active, some of those areas are not producing crab anymore, and that's of concern to us. Okay, thank you for that. Thanks for that clarification. If I can, Madam Chair, so when I look at the I guess bycatch in regards specific to golden king crab, when you're talking about encroachment into these critical habitat areas for golden king crab, can you— do you know what the number is on average that the— what that number of bycatch on golden king crab is annually through the.

Chair, as I said in my comments, and I believe in my public comment letter, the bycatch of golden king crab is minimal. Our concern is about habitat. However, there are significant concerns about unobserved mortality, and there will be someone coming behind me that will describe a little bit about what the rock hopper gear that is being used in these areas, what it looks like and the size of tires and things that they use in order to, um, travel along in these rocky areas to be able to prosecute their fishery. And I think that that is, is a concern that the crab plan team has addressed, and it is a high priority to begin to work on research, if you will, to try to find out How do we— how do we determine what's going on with the unobserved mortality? And this is not just for this fishery, but others as well.

But the crab plan team has addressed it and sent it forward to the council as a high priority. Okay. Thank you for that. I, I agree with you. The number is very low.

I think the number is 66 crab. But I guess maybe to touch on one final thing in regards to what Mr. Wood kind of asked this question, but I kind of like to ask it again. Understanding that you, the crab fishermen and the trawlers that typically fish in this area, have had an understanding for quite a, quite a long while, maybe unwritten to a certain degree, about, you know, providing information so that you can avoid these gear conflicts, etc., etc. And it's my understanding that these meetings typically take place annually. Do all the participants always commit to being at those meetings and trying to stay in touch with one another so that these gear conflicts can be avoided?

Or are there some that don't show? Uh, through the chair, the protocol agreement is in place in perpetuity. It's not a year-to-year agreement. The meetings that you're referencing, there are typically meetings that Fish and Game will hold with the golden king crab harvesters, and there are side meetings that some of the golden king crab harvesting companies arrange with the trawlers to discuss their issue. I cannot speak to whether, uh, the people that I work with have attended every single meeting, but the protocol that you're referencing is not a year-to-year thing.

It's into perpetuity. Okay, thank you.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you for that. I, I'd like to follow up on that though, because like on PC 99 that was submitted, it talks about how as, as recently as May 2025, ahead of the start of the golden king crab season, at this meeting we discussed the storage of king crab pots and identified other areas, depths, and utilized, utilized by golden king crab fleet. So you're saying that that doesn't happen on a yearly basis, that that's like a once a year agreement, or Does the Trojan participate in these meetings too? Or is— could you explain what you're saying?

Yeah, through the chair, and that's a good question, and there will be people who represent the Trojan that can speak to their communications that they've had. There's a difference between pod storage where gear is being stored and the line files where they are operating their gear. And they are— the protocol says that they're going to provide information on both. When you store your gear, you'll upload your lat/longs where you've got your gear stored. And when you're fishing, as you're moving your pots or your gear, you'll go ahead and process that information along as well.

I think that the gear storage line files, if I'm not mistaken, are probably less contentious than than maybe sometimes when a relief skipper isn't uploading where his pots are being deployed during the season. Now I do know of an instance a couple of years ago when another vessel, a different company, had a vessel problem and they had pots stored in an area that didn't— it caused a serious problem, and that wasn't the Trojan. And so there's a difference in pot storage and gear deployment, but the protocol is for the same, and there is no— unless the trawlers want areas where pots are traditionally stored not to be stored there because they want to fish there, there is no reason for an annual discussion, if you will, about uploading their line files of where their gear is stored.

Thanks. Thank you, Linda. Thank you. Teague Banach, followed by Melvin Larson and Gunnar Davis. Good afternoon.

Welcome.

You going to do your AC first or your personal? The AC, please. Got it. Thank you.

Madam Chair and board members, my name is Teague Vanek. I'll represent the Central Peninsula Advisory Committee. It's, it's made up of commercial fishermen, guides, just individual sport fishermen, hunting guides, but really just about everybody there does most of the activities that, that we talk about.

First, I'll cover proposals 186, 170, and 171 because they elicited the most discussion and had greatest importance to our AC. Then I'll report our voting on the other proposals. On proposal 186, to permanently eliminate some drift openings in the middle of the inlet, we voted unanimous— unanimously against.

ACR 5 that generated this proposal was strictly allocative and did not meet the criteria for an out-of-cycle ACR. It should have been rejected and the author should have been told to submit it in the regular Cook Inlet cycle, which is next year. ACR 5 was submitted by an anti-commercial fishing advocate and was not based on any science or on an accurate or reliable Coho salmon escapement account. We suspect that this action of approving an allocative ACR that doesn't meet the criteria and is not an emergency will set a precedent of an overwhelming number of other allocative ACRs being submitted to the board. The department opposed ACR-5 and has said there is not an emergency and not conservation concerns on coho.

Susitna drainage streams got or exceeded their salmon escapement goals. The Little Susitna in 2025, during the peak of the return, had 12 days of no coho counts at the weir because of high water. Yet the department did not extrapolate any coho passage numbers for those 12 days. The final escapement goal is arbitrary, incomplete, and unreliable with an extremely high margin of error. The Deschutes River Coho escapement counts has the same issues as the Little Sioux counts.

These arbitrary escapement goals should not be used as an indicator of run size or for implementing management plans. Most all respondents were opposed to ACR-5. This sets a bad precedent by approving the unqualified ACR 5 and then developing this proposal 186 that opens up the drift plan out of cycle. People lose faith in the system and Board of Fish process when this happens. It also puts an unnecessary burden both financially and emotionally on the fishermen and others to testify that the board not pass this proposal in an out-of-cycle meeting.

Current regulations and management already has the most of the drift area closed or highly restricted. The EEZ has very low TAC of less than 16,700 coho. If this proposal passes, it will have very little effect on northern-bound salmon, but it will have a catastrophic effect on the department's management ability and goal to harvest the surplus salmon. And will result in once again a huge waste of salmon and commerce from gross over-escapement.

On Proposal 170 to reduce the hatchery egg takes, we voted unanimously against— sorry, I got to get to that page here.

I'm following our notes from the discussions we had. All right. 170. This proposal subject has been submitted.

Submitted 4 years ago and 2 years ago by anti-hatchery proponents and was rejected both times. It is not based on science or fact. No hatchery has asked for or received an increase in their permitted egg take for decades. Aquaculture associations are in the best position to know what a facility can produce and what is needed to be viable. They have to go through multiple state agencies, genetics, regional planning team, etc., every year to approve their plans that are approved by being scientifically, genetically, and biologically sound.

Mother Nature fortunately has straying to naturally populate streams, and the straying studies have shown overall hatchery straying to be minimal. History shows that natural straying brought salmon from Asia to North America. Otherwise, we wouldn't even have salmon.

On Proposal 162 to prohibit commercial transport services in subsistence fisheries, we voted unanimously in, in favor. We agree— shoot, I'm on the wrong page. I'm sorry.

162. We agree with the proposer that this— that increase in commercial transportation services and state subsistence fisheries is inconsistent with customary and traditional patterns of harvest. And use of salmon. It needs to be stopped now or will only increase. On Proposal 11 to prohibit trawling in state waters west of 170 degrees, we voted unanimously in favor.

The trawler bycatch is large and negatively affects fisheries that depend on those bycatch species like salmon and halibut and other bottom fish.

On proposals 163 and 164, defining trawl gear as non-pelagic and establishing bottom contact monitoring, we voted unanimously in favor. We, we agree with the proposal justification and solutions. On proposal 165, establishing salmon excluder requirements on trawl gear. We voted unanimously in favor. This sounds reasonable.

Excluders work and they are continually being modified to be even more efficient, which will even further reduce the bycatch problem and issue.

On proposals 166 and 167 to amend the definition of jig gear and prohibit jig boats from having other groundfish gear on board. We voted unanimously in favor. We, we felt this would help make sure other gear types wouldn't be used in the jig fishery. On proposal 169 to define slinky pots, we voted unanimously in favor. It seems like a housekeeping proposal and clarifies the definition of the gear.

On proposal 173 to provide authority to define Fishing boundaries, we voted unanimously in favor. On proposal 174 to allow purse seiners to shut off motors while fishing, we voted unanimously in favor.

This makes common sense. We agree with the proposers' justification that were reasoned by his seining experience. It is important to implement fishing regulations that increase efficiency and that save fuel.

On proposal 175 to modify dipnet rules, we voted 1 in favor and 10 against. There would have been more in favor if it didn't include the commercial setnet dipnet fishery.

The yes votes agreed. The no votes said that it should not apply to the commercial setnet/dipnet fishery. This would be another expensive, unnecessary burden and hardship on the east side setnet fishery that has already been closed for 3 years.

On proposal 176 to allow pooled bag limits and possession limits, we voted 1 in favor 10 against. Most people want to catch their own fish. They should have the opportunity to catch a fish, not the guarantee that they will. On some charters, some of the clients don't even catch a fish even though they paid and wanted to because the boat limit for the number of clients has been met by others that were lucky enough to catch the fish, and the boat was in a hurry to get the boat limit.

On Proposal 179 and 180 to establish statewide annual limits on king salmon, we voted unanimously against. It should not be a statewide regulation. Each area and system have their own unique Chinook size and carrying capacity. On Proposal 181, to align regulatory and statutory language for sport fishing, we agreed unanimously in favor. On proposal 182 to allow bow fishing for certain species, we voted unanimously in favor.

We felt this could help harvest invasive species like pike. On proposal 183 requiring keeping fish whole on board, I'm almost done. We voted unanimously against.

And that's about it. Thanks. Thanks. Quick question for you. I might have missed it, but 170— oh, you did talk about 171, didn't you?

170 And 171 together? Yeah. Okay, got it. Yeah, the Hatchery proposals. Yeah, yeah, we voted unanimously against all of those.

Okay, perfect. I just want to make sure my notes were correct. Any questions? Would you like to give your personal testimony? I would.

I've got it right here. Okay, whenever you're ready. Okay. Madam Chair and board members, my name is Teague Vanek. Again, I am a lifelong Cook Inlet drift fisherman.

I am asking you to please reject Proposal 186. It is an allocated proposal which should have a which would have a huge impact on our fishery and should not have been considered out of cycle. By taking up this proposal, is the Board of Fisheries opening up this type of allocative proposal for every area, every year, in every statewide meeting? It could, could happen. If passed, this proposal would take away the last of the few remaining opportunities we have to fish in the middle of the inlet during the time when the fish are most abundant.

Time and again, I hear supporters of this type of proposal say they are worried about the next generation won't have fish to catch in the river. Well, look what they're trying to do to the next generation of commercial fishing in a long-standing industry. These last vestiges of our once robust fishery are only a handful of open fishing days, but they are extremely important days. Without them, the already huge problem of overescapement will get even worse. We have essentially lost the help of the setnetters in curbing overescapement and supplying fish to the processors.

Our industry is already struggling to keep the processors in our area. Decreasing production from the drift fleet will make it even less attractive for the remaining processors to continue risking investment in our area. Anyone proposing that the Board of Fish permanently close access to the commercial fishing grounds is simply proclaiming, "Those fish are mine, and the fish-buying public shouldn't have any right to have any." It should be rejected for being blatantly greedy, even if it weren't— if it were in the regular Cook Inlet cycle. I didn't see the proposal say that any sport fishing areas ought to be permanently closed.

I have fished Cook Inlet for a long time, my whole life in fact. For many years, the drift fleet fish through the whole season with regular periods that were inlet-wide, and there were often additional inlet-wide fishing time beyond the regular 2 days per week. I don't remember there being closures during those years for the sport fishermen. In fact, I hear supporters of this proposal talk about how great the fishing was way back when. Now, with all the draconian restrictions the commercial fishermen face, and practically no inlet-wide openings and just very few chances left to fish in the middle, there seems to be not enough fish for sport fishing.

That should tell you it's not our fault.

And I'm almost done, but again, I have down here one more.

Time. It's not our fault. Loud and clear. Thank you. Thank you.

Any questions? Thank you for your testimony today, and thanks for being here to rep the AC too. Thank you.

Melvin Larsen.

Hi, Melvin. Hi again.

Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Melvin Larson. I represent myself and I'm one of the observed Western Gulf fish, or the boats fish. I am against proposals 163 and 164 and 165. We lost our king crab fisheries in 1982 and the tanner crab in 1988. Back then there was no disaster money to survive.

We used our crab money to invest in cod trawling. After a lot of time and money invested, we figured out how to make the small 58-foot seiners work for trawling. To keep the plant at capacity and the large Bering Sea boats out, we had to invest in wide-body seiners with stern ramps to compete. The state of Alaska also opened up waters at Kupiánov and Sanak for 58-foot seiners. This was done for safety reasons and to compete with the larger trawlers to protect against bycatch.

The fishermen use stand-downs and catch shares and fish only when fish are abundant, resulting in less bycatch. These small 58-foot boats also fish for salmon, crab, and halibut. There is no way they would want to kill a dollar fish off for a nickel-and-dime bottom fishery. The first year I went pollock fishing, I fished for 10 days and had the net on the dock 6 times. These nets are designed to stay off the bottom, but sometimes you need to get under the pollock to get them to go into the net.

These fishermen also stand down and have catch airs to avoid bycatch. The boats are observed with one camera on at all times, and two more cameras come on when the hydraulics are on. They also have an observer 30% of the time. The fishermen, the state of Alaska, and the North Pacific Council need to manage the fishery with science and common sense, not some politicians trying to get votes. If these proposals were to pass, the small 58-foot local boats would lose the pawlik asis.

And salmon are feeders and move around in the water column to find food. Most of the bycatch probably occurs when the nets are setting out, hauling back, and hauling back and turning.

When the cod fishery first started, the trawlers got 100% of the quota. Now the pie is divided between the state water pots, federal pots, longline, and jigging. We also have the CDQ free money pot fishing and longlining in the western Gulf. As you can see, trawlers only harvest about 25% of the cod quota today. I ask the board to listen to the fishermen, follow science, and use common sense.

The proposers don't know anything about fishing in Alaska. That's all they want is political votes and to turn Alaska into a park. Thank you. Thanks, Melvin. Any questions?

Appreciate your testimony today. Oh, sorry, Mr. Wood. Melvin, um, the bycatch that you're talking about, does that— when you're fishing with your pelagic net in the water column, uh, it— I've been hearing from fishermen that depending on where that net is in the water column, if it's too high, you could be catching smaller pollock and salmon, versus lower, you're catching larger Paula, could you explain if that's what you're talking about when fishing those pelagic nets? I think it depends upon the time of the day and where the feed are at in the water column. But I honestly believe— I haven't been fishing, bottom fishing for a few years, but I believe it could have a different effect.

I believe if you go up in the water column where the salmon are most likely feeding, they're not bottom fish. Salmon are not bottom fish. They're They're salmon. They're in the midwaters. So I believe if you take the trawl off the bottom, put it up in the midwater, you're going to do more harm than you're going to do good.

You're going to catch more salmon. That's what I believe. But I haven't been out there in a few years.

No, thank you. That, that jives with what I've been hearing too. Thank you.

Thanks, Melvin. Governor Davis.

Hi, Gunner. Welcome.

Good afternoon, Chair and members of the board. My name is Gunner Davis. I am 16 years old. I live in Cordova. I am a tribal member of the native village of Yak, and I am speaking in opposition to Proposal 187, 170, 171, and 172.

I am a young Alaska Native who has fished my entire life. Subsistence, seining, and gillnetting with my family. This is the life I was raised in. It is how I was taught to provide, to respect the water, and to carry on the knowledge passed down from my father and from generations before him. Last year, I took a big step and purchased my own commercial fishing boat.

I did that because I want to continue this way of life, to follow in my father's footsteps and to keep that connection alive for future generations. These proposals make me question what that future will look like for me. Closing the Siouxsie River to commercial fishing and reducing hatchery production by 25% could take away opportunities that people like me depend on, not just for income, but for identity, culture, and survival. These changes don't just affect numbers on a paper. They affect real people, families, and communities who rely on these fisheries every year.

I depend on salmon for both subsistence and commercial fishing. It feeds my family, supports my livelihood, and connects me, connects me to who I am. I worry that decisions like these will make it harder for young fishermen like myself to stay in this way of life and continue what our parents and ancestors worked so hard to pass down. I'm asking you to please consider the long-term impacts, not just on the resources but on the people. We need balance.

We need sustainability, and we need opportunity. I respectfully urge you to oppose these proposals and to protect a future where young fishermen like me can continue to live this life. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thanks for being here, Gunnar. Congratulations on buying in.

That's a big deal. Any questions? Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you. Well done.

I think we will go ahead and take our afternoon break about this time. So let's go ahead and stretch our legs and come back together about 3:15. 3:15.

All right. We're ready to go. Time is 3:24. We're back on the record and we're going to continue with public testimony. Next up on my list is Mr. Matt Miller, followed by Millie Fox Hill, Hannah Heimbach, and Mabel Waterman.

Hey Matt, welcome back.

3 Minutes, huh?

Madam Chair, members of the board, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure, I am Matt Miller, retired biologist with the state of Alaska. I worked for Fish and Game for about 35 years. I was enjoying retirement and did not have any plans to come back to this table, but here we are. I had a very elegant, eloquent message to share with the board about potential threats to wild stocks and statutory, regulatory, and policy direction to minimize minimize negative impacts from hatchery programs on wild stocks. But my 3 minutes is nearly up, so I will set aside the bits about the P&Ps and RPTs and focus on another threat to wild stocks: department policy.

According to the stocking plan, the department plans to increase stocking king salmon smolt across the board— nearly— including systems where they stock hatchery king smolt on top of wild stocks. In the Nilchik, the increase is for 43%, and at Crooked Creek, over 100%, going from 70.

And smolt to 140,500 for the next 5 years. So let's stick a quarter in the Wayback Machine when the department stocked Crooked Creek at higher levels previously. We know that that resulted in hatchery king strain into the Kenai River, into Slycock Creek. That resulted— and that was a big deal. The department established a weir on Slycock to monitor strain and reduce the stocking levels in Crooked Creek to mitigate.

Now the department is knowingly going to encourage that to happen again. I am baffled. The department is also considering stocking Kodiak roadside streams with Ship Creek stock. That clearly violates the genetics policy and also flies in the face of best practices. But perhaps the most egregious violation of the policy for management of sustainable salmon fisheries are plans to write off the wild king salmon stocks at Crooked Creek and the Nilchik by no longer separating the management of hatchery and wild stocks.

No separate goals, no complicated management scenarios, no culling of fish at the weir, and larger escapements to avoid stock of concern designation. That may benefit leadership, but it's to the detriment of wild king salmon stocks. When policymakers intentionally ignore genetics policy best practices and the Sustainable Salmon Policy, then you have traded science for personal agenda and are in danger of policy that potentially does irrevocable harm to wild stocks. I'm concerned that ill-conceived stocking policies are being implemented by leadership that likely won't be here to defend those decisions to the board next year, leaving that odious task to staff who largely don't support them in the first place. I'm always willing to open up to the unlikely possibility that I am wrong.

Perhaps a budget-strapped department can stock its way out of an ocean productivity issue. Perhaps being concerned for wild salmon stocks is an outdated rearview mirror way of thinking about management of Alaska's fish stocks. Maybe the best way forward is to manage Alaska salmon is to mimic the failed management of Washington and Oregon. But great idea or idiotic idea, not only do these violate the SSFP, but these are major changes with likely negative impacts to wild king salmon stocks, and the board and the public should weigh in on them. My 3 minutes are up, so I'd gladly answer any questions, provide more details, and suggest ways to stop this madness.

Thank you. Thanks, Matt. Questions? Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Matt.

You mentioned the Washington and Oregon hatcheries and how those, how those, those fouled them up. Can you elaborate on that and explain how that's relevant here in Alaska? Yeah, gladly. Thank you for the question. I'd, I'd classify those as failed management systems.

So let's keep in mind that what we see down in Washington and Oregon and a lot of the Pacific Northwest states are large salmon and hatchery productions because they don't have any wild salmon anymore because of either dams or because of habitat destruction or overfishing. They've worked them in many cases down to ESA listing. And we're told by the federal government, you need to do mitigation. And so they've gone to hatcheries for a lot of that. We shouldn't be holding that up as a light, as a standard of how to manage Alaska's wild stock fisheries.

Those are failed policies. Those are failed management things that they're now mitigating for. And then beyond that, the differences between what are being proposed to do here in Alaska and what they've done down there, largely with federal money, is completely day and night.

Okay, and thank you for that. And so from a scientific viewpoint, I want to focus largely just on the more local levels and up here in Alaska. Looking at the literature, you know, we've heard it referred to as junk science, a lot of the, like, Ruggeroni's articles and some of the ones on the The interaction, is that junk science? That, you know, the competition and those aspects, and the string, are those minimal impacts or is that something the board should be paying stronger attention to? [Speaker] Yeah, thank you.

Through the chair, I am not an expert on that, and so I'm not gonna be able to sit up here and say one way or another. I can tell you though that many of these ideas have been reviewed by department staff, by scientific minds who are much bigger brains than I have.

And I am familiar with quite a bit of the literature talking about the potential long-term effects of strain and how it can over time decrease fitness. This is even under the best circumstances. This is where you are, as the department is doing right now at Crooked Creek and the Neehlchik, culling out fish, marking every hatchery fish that you put in, making make sure there's not more than one generation. But if you throw all of that away and just say we give up on the wild stocks, which you cannot legally do— of course, I'm looking at Department of Law on that, that's their call— then, you know, the game's wide open. You've completely changed it.

That kind of answer your question? That does, thank you. The short answer is yes, I think the board should be very concerned about lacks hatchery policies. Thank you. Mr. Irwin.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Miller, for all of your service to, to the department. My question is, when, when you were at the department, did the department have a policy that identified the acceptable stray percentage consistent with the legal requirements for hatchery practices to not harm wild stocks? Yeah, thank you. And hi.

I haven't met you yet. That is a great question, and there— it's kind of a complicated one. There is a genetics policy, and I'll look over to Director Bowers. He can correct me on this one if I misspeak, but I think it was created in 1985. It is woefully out of date, just like the SSFP, and staff simply, when we've had discussions about it when I was there, were like, we don't have the time or the money to update this.

So what they've done is they kind of update it with white papers and other research papers and say, okay, so this is the best practices. So there are genetics policies. There are some things, though, that if you go to the genetics staff and say, is this against the policy? It isn't technically, but it's against what we now know or refer to as best practices. And so when I was with the department and was supervising those activities there at Crooked Creek and the Niltchik, What we often did was said, look, we wanna go do this, and how do we proceed to do this?

And we get direction. There's a couple tools. Sorry, I don't mean to ramble with you, but one of them is called the PNI, which is proportion of natural influence. And that's one of the things that we had looked at to make sure that, for example, at Crooked Creek there's a weir, and you count every fish that goes through there, and you make sure that only a certain percentage of those hatchery fish go back up and spawn with the naturally spawning fish. So you're— you've got sideboards on that.

In addition to that, best practices says you should also have what's called a PHS, which is the proportion of hatchery-produced spawners. So my understanding is the recommendation from fisheries scientists and genetic staff is we shouldn't be walking away from these programs. We should be leaning heavier into Putting more sideboards on there. So as I said, I'm not saying that what's being proposed is necessarily a bad idea. I think there's some good ideas in there.

I am really concerned about the department just going out and doing them. I mean, for example, we went with the big fish goal in the Kenai. That was another big deal. It was a year of talking to people about it and getting information and going— you just don't get rid of how you're managing mixed stock fisheries like that without any assessment. Or in the worst case here, knowing what's going to happen because we've done it before at Crooked Creek.

Thank you, Mr. Sensen. Hi, Matt. Hi, Greg. I got it. So if you take the eggs that belong out of the fish that are in that river and use those, you basically— do you see that as being an issue?

Through the chair, my understanding, and I would pass that on to genetic staff who are here at this meeting, can answer that, is over the long term, yes, there are sideboards, as was mentioned before, that, that geneticists put on there as best practices about how even if you're taking stock from that system and replacing it with it, that there are still sideboards and you could still negatively impact the fitness of those fish over time. Okay, so one other question. What happens if you get a stream that gets so far down that you can't get enough fish out of it to do that? Now, isn't putting hatchery fish in there better than nothing? Yeah, Mr. Smithson, again, I, and I'm not saying that some of these are bad ideas.

I would say that if you're in a scenario— let's take Karluk— that is so far down. If there's a system in the state that I think we ought to be looking at rehabilitation, that would probably be it. But that doesn't mean the department or an agenda-driven individual should be making decisions on how that's going to happen. That should be stock of concern. It should go before the board and say, we need an action plan.

And on how to rehabilitate the system. And after public discussion and weigh-in and board comments, then following through on that.

Okay, thanks, Matt. Hey, we miss you, buddy. Thank you. Thanks for your testimony today, Matt. Thank you.

Millie Foxhill.

Welcome.

To my Madam Chair, board members of Board of Fish, thank you for meeting today and providing and letting me provide my testimony. My name is Millie Foxhill. I grew up in Cordova, Alaska, beautiful commercial fishing town nestled in the Prince William Sound. I'm a Chugach Alaska Corporation shareholder. Also, too, I'm the vice I was the president of shareholder services with Chugach Alaska Corporation, and I was recently appointed to the Prince William Sound Agricultural Corporation, so I'm new to that group.

My Supiaq and Unangan heritage extends back thousands of years. My father was a commercial purse seiner and gill netter in the Prince William Sound, and I was a crew member. Elders often discuss how crucial salmon harvesting is for subsistence, commercial, commercial fishing and sports fishing for all coastal communities. And I'm here to stress to the Board of Fish, reducing the percentage of salmon egg take will have a negative effect on fish returning for current and future generations. And I'm here to explain why this change would be harmful for the coastal and the river communities.

In 1871, The U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries was established because there was a decrease in salmon in the state of Alaska. Hatcheries have served a critical resource for fishers across the Prince William Sound and all the coastal communities, supporting sustained future fish populations and reliable returns. Did you know all salmon harvest— hatcheries were originally built to boost salmon population after periods of low return? That's 155 years of hatcheries within the state of Alaska or in Alaska.

I want to address why your proposal of reducing the egg take by 25% could mean moving forward. There's a balance between scientific knowledge, and I appreciate the scientific knowledge, but also to embrace the traditional wisdom regarding environment and what benefits coastal communities most. Reducing hatchery harvests isn't the solution. If this proposal succeeds, it would lower fish harvests, decrease coastal food supplies, cut income for heating and meals, negatively impact local businesses, potentially turning vibrant communities into ghost towns. I don't think that's what you're aiming for.

The hatcheries, 155 years in the state of Alaska.

That's something to think about. The hatchery program should continue indefinitely for communities facing limited returns. Smolt could be transferred to— for 2 weeks of saltwater rearing to encourage salmon return, or a new hatchery could be built. Simply waiting or relying solely on scientific studies for decades likely won't restore fish population, but hatcheries might offer the best answer. Thank you.

Thank you. Questions? I have a question for you. So I've heard it a couple times today, and I'm struggling to reconcile in my mind this notion of hatcheries and traditional fishing practices, calling on your indigenous background. Can you help me with that?

Yeah, well, you know, 155 years ago when hatcheries started in Alaska, there was a reason for it, and that reason was because there was a decline in salmon. Traditionally, Alaska Native people, Ananguansupiaq, all Alaska Native people harvested fish for the winter, for the summer, for the spring to feed their families. Now, if that hatchery didn't happen, and the other subsequent fish hatcheries that happened thereafter— in the late 1800s, Kodiak was another area that had the hatcheries developing— if that wouldn't have happened, I think we could have had a shortage in food, which would have depleted our population. That's where I tie the two together. The hatchery is providing that resource and that fish.

And our people are Alaska Native people, and people in general live off of the fish. Okay. Gwiana, check. Mr. Chamberlain has a question. Yes, please.

Gwiana, for your testimony, you made a comment that, you know, hatcheries are great for restoring it. And there is, there is large historical precedent for the, the benefit they've done for the coastal communities. But when you look at some of the odd years we've had recently, we've had some of the highest salmon harvests on record in terms of pounds, but some of the lowest economic value as well. I— and when we look at the river systems throughout the state, you're looking at a bit of an imbalance where the coastal communities are catching large volumes of fish and the river systems throughout the state are largely having trouble. Do you feel that hatcheries are beneficial to all rivers throughout the state and all people throughout the state?

[Speaker:DR. MELISSA] I think, thank you for the question. The question, the thing is, is that for hatcheries, if a hatchery could be placed in an area of closer to the river that's having that challenge, That might be a position to be able to look at. I don't have the answers, but I tell ya, taking away from a hatchery, I don't think is the answer. Because, you know, this has been going on for 155 years, and we're starting to take away from the hatcheries itself. Then there's a challenge, and it's not just impacting today, but we're talking about generations.

So your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren down the road. The thing is, is that let's not focus so much on today, but focus on the future of our family members.

Because they're the ones who are going to be impacted more than, than we would be. So that's what I'm looking for. That's what I'm looking at 100 years from now. What does that look like? And if you decrease that population in the hatcheries, it's not looking good, in my opinion.

Guayana. Guayana, Chuck. Mr. Swenson, yes please.

Hi, Millie. Thanks for your presentation. So have, have, have we had huge runs wild runs happen in these last 155 years while we've had these hatcheries? I think it's been a combination. The thing is, is that I don't know.

I'd have to do more research on that. You're, you're calling me out on something that I haven't researched completely, and I don't think everybody has the answer here either. I think that's why we're having testimony, and there's scientific knowledge, there's individuals with all the scientific history, but also too, you have to keep in mind the traditional history too. It goes hand in hand. It's not one one or the other.

It's two. It's like two worlds coming up with a solution. And the solution is not always scientific. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony today. Hannah Heimbach followed by Mabel Waterman, Andrew Hall, and Ernie Weiss. Hi, Hannah. Good afternoon, Chair and board members.

My name is Hannah Heimbach. I sit net in Kodiak. And today I'm speaking on behalf of myself. Regarding pelagic trawl proposals 163 and 164, I want to just emphasize a few core principles. We manage pelagic and non-pelagic trawl fisheries separately, and in theory, a defining difference is whether or not they operate on bottom.

That's why we have a substantial bottom trawl closure area still open to pelagic trawl. But we now know that pelagic gear bottom contact occurs substantially, and limitations of it are currently unenforceable. While the parallel trawl fisheries follow federal management, it's important that the state's public process inform that management at times. Not wait for the federal process to tell us whether or not and how they might address it. And I say might because I don't feel that we are much closer in the federal system to a willingness to meaningfully address bottom contact than we were when I first started testifying about it 4 years ago.

And despite how complex this will quickly get, at the center are actually 2 really simple yes or no questions. One is, pelagic gear intended to operate in contact with the seafloor? And two, when pelagic trawl gear does make contact, does it matter? The next questions get gradually harder. How much does it happen?

What are the impacts to habitat? What are the right approaches to enforce limitations? But to get to any of that, we need to answer those two questions about.

About intent first. As an example from another fishery, I'm a setnetter. My gear definition requires my net to be fixed to a point shoreside and a point seaward. I'm required to have buoys with my permit number and name marking the attachments so enforcement can periodically check for compliance. We can't, for example, detach our net and drift with it.

Different fishery, but the management principle of enforcing lawful gear is similar. To me, these proposals aren't intended to create unwieldy new programs, and they should not be treated as a mandate for closure. They are a signal that there is a meaningful gap between regulation and enforcement, and Alaska has a responsibility to take steps addressing it. And then regarding hatcheries, I'd like to align my comments with those from Cordova District Fishermen United. I'd ask that you take no action on 170 to 172.

Alaska's hatchery programs are critical tools for salmon research, management, access, and resilience. They're part of a nuanced, regionally driven approach to fisheries stability. For instance, in Kodiak, I don't directly harvest hatchery fish, but I benefit from the programs. Hatcheries on the island support research that improves sustainable management. They help distribute fishing opportunity and directly fund weir projects in my area.

They are resilience tools. They provide flexibility, infrastructure, research, and investment that help fishing communities adapt to vulnerability, to variability, implement rebuilding programs, and maintain critical infrastructure. I think their management is and should be complex, and for that reason needs to stay firmly grounded in the state management process with substantial regional input and guidance, and with those nuanced targeted changes where that local knowledge and scientific research can be weighed together. So in closing, I urge the board to avoid the blunt reductions and mandates of these proposals and instead preserve hatcheries as a tool that can be applied carefully and adapted appropriately region by region with the localized nuance—. That's my own part—.

With the localized nuance needed for sound management. These proposals do not achieve that, in my opinion. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Hannah. Any questions?

Thanks for your testimony today. Oh, Mr. Wood, you got—. Sorry, it was late. Um, Hannah, I guess I got two questions. One is, um, how much— when you talk about this contact with the bottom habitat, something that I really love talking about, um, how Is there— are there areas, or is there places where that is acceptable?

Through the Chair, I mean, I think there may be. I think that we need to clearly answer that question. That's— it's kind of this core— because I think we've operated with the presumption that Pelagic is intended to be off bottom, and so therefore they have access to areas closed to bottom trawling. I think it's a passive way of managing that gear interaction, and so I think we need to answer that question about intent. Is it supposed to operate on the seafloor?

And does it matter? And maybe, maybe it doesn't matter as much in all areas, right? I don't think this is going to be a blanket management system, you know, once we finally deal with this. I think that there can be nuanced answers to that for sure. But I think it's prudent of us to actually answer that and have our management be intentional and specific.

And then lastly, just the enforcement part of it. I'm trying to wrap my head around this idea of sensors that somebody was going to sell and we all had to have to buy, kind of thing. As a carpenter, that's like having to use Simpson clips on everything now when you're being a builder. I wish I had stock in Simpson. I could not be a carpenter.

So I have questions about this technology. But nonetheless, even if you had it, say, is there, in terms of enforcement, is there like you hit the bottom once, you hit the bottom twice, you hit the bottom 3 times, and you're out?

Like how is the state expected to treat this enforcement? Through the Chair, I don't think that the fine details of that, you know, how you enforce that regulation can happen at the table. I think you can set some guidelines for it. I guess the way that I envision it would be the ability to trust but verify that operation. That you would have some sort of ability to spot-check, you know, the let's say a logbook.

Let's say that you put a single net set or single sensor on the foot rope, and you have, you know, readouts that tell you whether and when that contacts the bottom. And then maybe there's a requirement to keep a logbook that says that, and then there's— that data is periodically accessible to enforcement to spot-check whether the logbooks are accurate and whether there's substantial contact occurring. And I think the framework you put around, you know, how much is okay, how much results in some sort of consequence, that needs to be determined. And I, I I see this as the start to that conversation. My interest after years of testifying at the council about this is that those questions get answered collaboratively and with strong guidance from this public process.

Okay. One last one. But if the point is at the state level is to jumpstart the feds to make a decision, I don't— I just— you know, we're learning about this right now. We're trying to understand all this. It appears there's already a federal process that's been trying to understand this as well.

Are you saying that that's just taking too long and that we're trying to encourage the feds to step it up? Through the Chair, I don't see it as a jump start. I think there's substantial fishing that happens in parallel waters that are state waters, and I think while the federal system is also grappling with this, I think we as a state also have a responsibility to set some expectations around maybe what that, what ultimately what those management processes will look like. And, you know, my frustration with the federal process is that several years into this, we still haven't answered the question of, is pelagic trawl gear intended to touch the seafloor, and does it matter? And, and so I, I feel that we are behind in addressing that because we haven't even, you know, agreed on the core question.

And I don't mean that for the state to jump ahead of the federal process, but it certainly doesn't have to wait for that to be fully ironed out to affirm the gear definition and the intent of the operation and maybe some expectations around how that should be managed. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Hannah. Thanks. Mabel Waterman.

Welcome. I think it's on. All right. As a year-round fleet manager in Sandpoint, working closely with vessels across the Aleutians East Borough, many of the vessels I work with are 58-foot combination boats participating in the pollock and Pacific cod fisheries in the western Gulf of Alaska, using both trawl and pot gear. Many of those same vessels are also ones that depend on the area and salmon fishery during the summer.

I'm here today in opposition to Proposal 11, 163, 164, because these proposals— man, I'm doing it again— would significantly, significantly reduce access to fishing grounds that the small boat fleet relies on to survive. I always get so nervous up here. As you will hear from the vessel operators, the 58-foot trawl fleet depends heavily on access to state waters. For pollock and cod harvesting. These nearshore areas are not a small part of our operations.

They are essential. They allow smaller vessels to fish safely, move between areas, and adjust to weather and bycatch conditions. Larger vessels can move farther offshore and continue fishing. Smaller boats based in Sandpoint, King Cove often cannot. So while these proposals may appear to target large trawl operations, In reality, they will fall hardest on our locally owned 58-foot fleet that supports communities across the Gulf.

And I think it's important to say something that often gets lost when people talk about trawlers. When most people hear that word, they picture large industrial vessels. They don't picture the small boats tied up in Sandpoint or King Cove. They don't picture the fishermen who kiss their kids goodbye in the morning and head out to go fishing. But those are the fishermen these proposals are actually going to hurt.

I want to address some concerns about pelagic trawl gear and bottom contact. There is active work underway at APU through the Gear Innovation Initiative, collecting detailed, real-world data on how this gear performs with full participation from my local fleet. This project is designed to provide objective, science-based answers to the exact questions being raised here. Given that, I strongly urge the board to not make any regulatory decisions based on assumptions before that data is available. Fishermen in the Aleutians East Borough are exhausted.

Over the past several years, we have watched the fisheries our communities depend on disappear piece by piece. Opportunities shrink, areas close, restrictions stack on top of each other. Each change may look small on paper, but for us it adds up. And I want to remind the board, just last month I was sitting in this same chair asking you to make decisions based on science. Since then, we've continued to lose opportunity.

At some point, there's just not much left to give. These aren't just harbors. These are our homes. And when access is taken away, the impact is immediate in those communities. We are doing the work.

We are participating in the science, and we are investing in better practices. What we need from the board is stability and decisions grounded in real science.

For those reasons, I respectfully urge the board to not adopt 11-163 or 11-164, and I ask you to remember this when you vote. The fishermen you are affecting are not statistics on a page. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Any questions?

Mr. Wood. Thanks, Maeve. Are they out fishing right now, trawling? Have they been, or are they currently? Or— Yeah, so I actually flew from Sandpoint yesterday, and I'm flying back tomorrow.

My fleet are all actively fishing right now. And when they are, they, they're in just— they're in state waters given the weather, the cold, the wind. They're in state waters now. Are they going out to parallel or are they going out to federal? How— where are they?

Well, actually, right now, state pot cod's going on. So we all switched over from cod trawl, put our pots on, and we're trying to survive this pot season right now. It's -22 in Sandpoint right now with the wind chill. So when will the pollock fishing begin? So we already started a season.

Some of my fleet is— we're participating in a catch share right now. So the fleet has decided to equally distribute the pounds amongst each other. So right now, 2 of my fishermen have finished, but they're going to continue fishing into April probably to catch it. Thank you. Mr. Owen.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mava, for coming again and testifying. I have two questions for you. The first one was kind of— you answered a little bit of it with Mr. Wood's question, but you were talking about these combination boats that have trawl and pot gear and how they participate also in the Area M salmon fishery, some of those. Could you give me an idea of all of those fisheries that those combination boats usually take part in?

Yeah, of course. So my fleet is very diverse in their fishing. They all salmon fish. When we had Tanner crab fishing in the Western Gulf out of there, they all— a lot of them participated in that. They trawl for pollock, they trawl for cod, they do dungee pot fishing in the summer.

We jig cod. Trying to think. I think that's mostly it. I'm probably forgetting one of them, but—. Awesome.

Thank you so much. And then my next question was, I'm interested in your perspective. I haven't spoken to like a smaller boat trawl fisherman with these 58-foot boats, so this might be a naive question, but when you pull your net up, are there ever any signs that you did make bottom contact by either your— any bycatch or any, any marine habitat, floor, kelp, grass, anything, is there any way for you as a fisherman to see that you maybe touched the bottom or not? That's a great question.

I think it's super important to talk about the differences with 58-foot trawling.

When you're pollock trawling, say, on a 58-foot combination vessel, which I've done a lot, You don't want to touch the bottom because you're not in a big factory trawler. Even if it was an accident, if you get your pelagic trawl hung up on the ground when you have a 58-foot boat, it's dangerous. It's scary. I've been on a boat when the net got stuck on a rock we didn't know was there. It's not like the net was set to be that low.

There's just a pinnacle, so we got stuck. And the entire stern of the boat started to go underwater as we were trying to get off the snag. And I think that's a big difference people don't really realize is these small boats that are family-owned and ran in these small communities, you know, they don't have the horsepower to tow a big net and dare touch the bottom when they're not cod trawling.

Thank you for your testimony today. Andrew Hall. And I didn't swear this time.

And Ernie, followed by Ernie Weiss. And again, folks, please, if you know your name is getting called, please come forward to the front. Be ready. Welcome.

Good afternoon. My name is Andrew Hall. I'm from Anchorage, Alaska, and I'm a career commercial fisherman. I'm a permit holder and vessel owner in the Area E drift gillnet fishery, and I participate in longline and pot fisheries throughout the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea. I'm testifying today to voice my opposition for Proposals 170, 171, and 172.

These are speculative, sweeping reductions that have no guarantee of benefiting wild salmon stocks but ensure a negative impact on all user groups by destabilizing the hatchery systems that provide sport subsistence and commercial opportunity. The annual average ex-vessel value of statewide hatchery pink and chum salmon production over the last 10 years has totaled over $90 million. The 25% reduction in egg take suggested in Proposal 170 would lead to over $23 million in direct economic losses in ex-vessel value alone. With total losses being much higher as impacts ripple through coastal communities. Lower revenue from chum and pink production means less money circulating through fishing communities and slimmer margins for fishermen who are already struggling to navigate variable market conditions, higher operating costs, and labor shortages.

Proposal 170 also cites a literature review that examines interactions between hatchery salmonids and wild salmonids. Claiming 83% of studies find adverse or minimally adverse impacts. However, this figure is incredibly misleading. Of the 206 studies that this review examines, only half are even from the U.S. The most commonly researched species in this review is brown trout, with steelhead being the second most studied and Atlantic salmon being the fourth most studied.

Less than 30% of the studies focused on species of Pacific salmon, with fewer than 7% looking at chum salmon and only 4% looking at pink salmon. None of the 206 studies considered sockeye salmon at all. Furthermore, the vast majority of these studies only examined hatchery effects in freshwater, with only 11% of the studies looking at hatchery effects in the ocean. I say all of this to show that the results of this study that Proposal 170 is based around cannot be extrapolated to the Alaska hatchery system and should serve no basis for policy decisions. Hatchery management needs to be not only data-backed and science-driven, but the science needs to pertain to salmon species in Alaska.

Thank you. Thanks, Andrew. Any questions? Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Andrew.

Uh, can you go in a— into a little detail on, uh, the other economic factors that are affecting your, uh, your fisheries where you're talking about international market or the market value of your fisheries and, and a lot of that? Just fill us in, elaborate a little on that if you will. Uh, yeah, well, I mentioned that we have variable market conditions, um, and, and higher operating costs and tariffs and fuel costs are— tariffs have driven the cost of a lot of supplies way up and fuel costs have gone a lot higher. And then just the nature of fishing is that markets are very variable and you have years of big supply which can drive down prices in future years. There's competition from foreign supplies of salmon, you know, salmon from Russia or farmed Atlantic salmon.

So there's just constantly a lot of, a lot of factors that affect market prices, and it's the loss of kind of the, the consistent hatchery production would just be one more factor that we would have to deal with. Thank you, Andrew.

Thanks for your testimony. Ernie Weiss, followed by Avery Hoffman, Forrest Jenkins, and Daniel Billman. Hi, Ernie. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. I guess I'll just do the AC testimony, if that's all right.

I would point to AC-1, just the first 8 of the 49 pages, which is the Board of Fish, Stuff. And I'm just going to go through all the proposals. Well, I would say we have a diverse stakeholder group, 15 members and 2 alternates. As I mentioned at the Bristol Bay meeting, we have a fish subcommittee which recommends votes to the whole AC. And the fish subcommittee meeting was on January 27th, and then the AC meeting on February 3rd.

So on 162, we opposed that unanimously.

On transport services, we thought it's more— it's cost effective to pay someone to transport you, and transporters are merely providing transportation. And not providing any other assistance beyond that. On 11, the vote was 11 to 0 with 1 abstention. A discussion on the effects of trawl activity statewide needs to be had was part of the discussion of that. On 163, it was supported by 11, 1 opposed.

The majority supports efforts to reduce trawl bycatch and operating in state waters, but we would need to refine the definitions that are presented. Also, the board does not have fiscal jurisdiction over the department.

Water trawling is less invasive, but it doesn't address the issue with the big factory trawlers that operate in federal waters. I'm going to save the opposed message for my personal because that was mine and there needs some explanation there. 164, Then we took no action, but we pointed to the comments on 163. Same with 165, pointing to the comments on 163, no, no action. And I'll save those opposed comments as well.

If you please, the chair. 166, We took no action. 167, No action. 168, No action. 169, The department proposal, we supported 12 to 0.

On slinky pots, we support the department's decision on that. 170, To reduce the permitted egg level, supported 11 to 1. Trying to— everything to conserve kings. If we're limiting everything else, it seems reasonable to limit hatcheries. 171, We said look at the comments at 170 and 172, same thing, both hatchery proposals.

Then on 173, another department proposal supported 12 to 0. It makes sense and we support the department as needed. 174, We supported 12 to 0 on allowing the engine of a purse seine vessel or skiff to be shut off. Seems to make sense. No harm in it.

On 175, modifying dip net mesh size and configuration, we opposed unanimously. The mesh size has been the same since it's been adopted, and use of a line to hold the net into place on the vessel makes it safer. So it makes sense to allow it. Sport fisheries on 176. We opposed allowing anglers fishing from the same vessel to pool bag and possession limits.

It seems like it would increase the harvest of all fish, which might be an unintended consequence. 177, Same kind of a proposal. We said see the comments on 176. 178, Similar— similarly, we opposed 0 to 12. The definition of a bag limit seems to work fine, and it would just allow the person who is more skilled to increase the ability of everyone to take their limit.

179, We supported 10 to 2. With the annual limit of king salmon of 10 fish. The support for this— king salmon overall are declining and there is no annual limit statewide. Those in opposition didn't want a blanket limit across the diverse areas. Some areas need more than 10 king salmon, apparently.

180, We oppose that one 4 to 7 and see the comments on Proposed 180, but one abstention. 181, Department proposal supported 12 to 0, allowing sport fishing gear statutory and regulatory language. 182, Allowing bow fishing as a lawful sport. We supported this. This was a member of the AC's proposal, but we said we need to clarify some of the language.

On 183, department proposal, 9 to 2, we supported it. We thought there is a need for enforcement of leg length requirements, but if you can't fillet and ice properly, then your quality is going to decline, was the opposition. 184, Supported 12 to 0, the definition of a rockfish, the department proposal. 186. Reducing the commercial salmon fishing opportunity with drift gillnet gear.

We supported 7 to 5. The argument is for supporting— is for to protect weaker stocks. But the department has consistently maintained they cannot manage coho, and we took no action on 187. And that's the report. Thank you, Ernie.

Ms. Irwin. Thank you. Thank you, Ernie, for giving the AC testimony. My question is, I'm looking at your comments on AC-1 on Proposal 162, and your AC had a discussion on the difference between transporters and guides. Could you tell me more, a little bit more about that conversation and how you guys came to decide the opposition is what you're going to vote for on this one.

Sure. Through the chair, thank you, Ms. Erwin. So there are transporters, and I don't think the— there are people that currently do it and don't add any assistance for the fishing part of it. And taking away somebody's— paying somebody to transport, that's already going on. It takes away a business opportunity that's already going on.

I think that was the main discussion And again, it's more effective for some people rather than having their own boat or plane to get where they need to go. Okay, thank you. And just to follow up for that then, so would it be reasonable to infer that the AC doesn't see transportation as commercial? As people have been— we've been concerned about maybe this is adding a commercial interest into subsistence, but In your opinion, transport doesn't involve commercial when it's applied to subsistence?

Well, it apparently is commercial if you're paying somebody to get there. Not everybody does get paid, but again, it's more cost-effective for some people to get there by use of paying somebody. Okay, thank you. Thanks.

All right. Would you like to give your personal testimony? Yes, please. Madam Chair, members of the board, for the record, Ernie Weiss with the Aleutians East Borough. In respect to the comments on Anchorage AC minutes opposed to Proposal 163, they apply to the Western Gulf and South Alaska Peninsula fisheries where nearly all state waters are closed to bottom trawl for cod.

Except for two discrete areas near Sanak Island and near Andronika Island to the east and to the west for safety. I was not aware that other areas allowed larger vessels in, I guess, say, Prince William Sound anyway. So I wanted to clarify that. But those comments stayed in.

Plus, South Alaska Peninsula state water fisheries are open only to fishing by vessels 58 feet and under. Local vessels to Sand Point, King Cove, and False Pass, although the parallel pollock fishery is open to larger vessels in the western Gulf. This action would hurt the small— the local small boat fleet that keep these towns alive. The midwater pollock fishery and the non-pelagic cod fishery feed many locals' families and allow the processors the ability to provide markets for even smaller vessels. And fisheries through most of the year.

While the tax— the fish tax revenue generated by these fisheries is important, more valuable is the families and communities supported by these fisheries. As mentioned earlier, most captains and crews can't be here today. Most are currently participating in the local cod using pot gear state water fishery. And then regarding the Anchor JC comment that I added on Proposal 165 on excluders. Again, the prevailing thought is for these smaller vessels, the low horsepower tows seem to work as well as excluders in allowing salmon to escape.

I would also point to PC-19 by my colleague at the Bureau. I agree with and support those comments. And then we agree with staff comments on Proposals 163, 164, and 165. 5. The department calls these proposals inactionable and recommends coordinating efforts to address trawl effects across federal parallel fisheries with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, National Marine Fisheries Service, fishery stakeholders, and state and federal fisheries law enforcement agencies prior to adopting these proposals.

And that's all I have. I can take any questions. Thanks. Any questions? Seeing none, appreciate you being here today.

Thanks. Thank you. Avery Hoffman, followed by Forrest Jenkins, Daniel Billman, and Boyd Salinas.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board and staff, for the opportunity to provide testimony. My name is Avery Hoffman. I was born and raised alongside the Cusco River and currently live in Bethel. I serve as the Natural Resource Director for the Ulu Ts'elmu Native Council and sit on the Bethel Advisory Committee.

ONC opposes Proposal 175, which would reduce dip net mesh size and prohibit the use of rope to extend the net beyond the rigid handle. On the Kuskokwim, our river is managed under multi-salmon species. While we continue to conserve for chum and chinook, We have an abundance of sockeye, which we have been allowed to fish, which we've been allowed to harvest with dip nets. Dip nets are nets that.

Dipnetting is an essential selective gear type that allows harvest of these abundant sockeye. It allows for locals to fish at their convenience and is one of the last unrestricted fisheries. Families like mine and many others up and down the Kuskokwim have only recently begun using dipnets in the last several years. Proposal 175 would place an additional financial burden on rural subsistence users who are already navigating complex conservation measures. In closing, subsistence users from ONC want to see the board take region-specific action on dip net gear change so that our food security, culture, and way of life may continue.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Thank you. Any questions? Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you. Forrest Jenkins.

Madam Chair and members of the board, my name is Forrest Jenkins and I'm the president of the Prince William Sound Setnetters Association that has been advocating for Area E setnet fishermen since 1993. I also hold seats on both the CDFU and PISWAC boards. I've been participating in the East Chamaey District setnet fishery since 2008, and I am an active permit holder in the Prince William Sound drift gillnet, setnet, and shrimp fisheries. Today I'll be speaking on behalf of the Prince William Sound Setnetters Association in opposition to proposals 170 through 172 and in opposition to 187. With regard to the anti-hatchery proposals we are discussing today, We have to look at what is at risk and what is to gain.

If passed, these proposals would impact coastal communities around the state, and the socioeconomic trickle-down would be devastating. Hatchery operations, processors, and small boat commercial fishing operations would take a huge hit, of course, but all user groups and surrounding communities would be hurt. Sport and subsistence opportunities would feel the effects through Lost Sockeye, Coho, and King programs. King and Coho stock restoration projects would no longer be viable through assistance of PMPs. What is to gain?

It appears that nothing is to gain. While there are hopes of saving King stocks across the state, there is little to no science to support this agenda-driven claim, and the majority of the inconclusive science used to fight this argument is centered on wild and hatchery pink salmon interaction. Not king salmon. We should also be looking at where these proposals originated and what they're being used for today. They originally came from the Sport Fish User Group and were an attack on commercial fishermen in our state.

Today, these same proposals are being used to blame commercial fishermen and PMPs for causing the decline of salmon stocks hundreds of miles away. These proposals haven't passed in multiple past meeting cycles for good reason. And they should not pass today in an attempt to solve a multifactorial problem without causation. We acknowledge that there are struggling communities that are centered on the existence of now struggling salmon stocks, but none of these proposals are going to save them. We need to actually learn what is happening in our rivers and oceans so we can make a valid collaborative attempt at doing what's best for our biological resources and communities.

Hatcheries can help support and provide this research and data and should be supported as the conservation tool that they are, rather than being attacked. Lastly, we strongly believe that Proposal 187 is here today due to a significant misuse of the ACR process, as natural shifts in glacial river flows on sandbars of the Alaska coastline are not unforeseen. This river has been changing course naturally and will continue to do so. This proposal to close down the Siu to commercial setnet fishermen, including both the Yakutat and Prince William Sound setnet permit holders, is clearly just another allocated proposal with zero biological concern. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Thank you. Any questions? Appreciate you being here. Thanks for your testimony. Daniel Billman.

Welcome. Thank you.

Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Dan Billman. I have been— I should say I'm moving swiftly into my second 50 years of fishing setnetting here in Cook Inlet. And I've been an Alaska resident since birth. I've been working with the Northern District Setnetters Association for since the mid-1980s, and I'm not testifying on behalf of that group.

Steve Braun, our president, will be here tomorrow to do that. I'm testifying as just myself, to be clear, but I am a member of that board, and I want to point out— and our— my testimony is written— is in reference to Proposal 186. Our group and I have been advocating for any management strategies the board can give the department to move fish into the Northern District of Cook Inlet since I have started working with the Northern District setnetters in the mid-'80s. We've advocated, lobbied, and actually sued the department at one time to move more fish north. Mm-hmm.

More fish north will result in more opportunity for spawners to increase the runs, more fishing opportunity for personal use, subsistence, sport, and commercial fisheries. Moving fish north is only a good thing. Proposal 186 has methods of doing that. I'm looking forward to your discussion of that proposal and what you choose to do with it. But I advocate fish moving north.

Thank you very much. Thanks, Dan. Any questions? Appreciate your testimony today.

Boyd Salana. Oh, there you are. How you doing, Boyd? Good to see you. How are you?

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Boyd Solanoff, and I'm a tribal member and an IRA council member for the Native Village of Chenega. I'm also a commercial fisherman, a subsistence fisherman in Western Prince William Sound. On behalf of the Chinook IRA Council, we respectfully submit the comment in opposition to Proposals 170 through 172, which would reduce production statewide. Chinook IRA Council is a federally recognized tribe serving the Suukpiak people of Chinook.

Chinook is located in western Prince William Sound on Evans Island.

[Speaker] Oh, thank you.

Okay, the Chinook people have historically subsisted on fish and other natural resources throughout Prince William Sound for thousands of years. We are strongly dependent on subsistence fishing and harvesting to support food security for our community, as well as to retain our ties to our culture and heritage.

The Chinook people are also active in local commercial fisheries, in particular as it relates to salmon fisheries. We have a number of tribal members who participate in commercial fisheries as well, who maintain setnet sites in Prince William Sound. A healthy and thriving fishery is essential to all our community members, whether it relates to subsistence harvest or commercial fisheries, which connects— creates economic opportunity for our region. Hatcheries also play an important role in supporting subsistence and sport fishing opportunity in many regions of Alaska and in Prince William Sound particularly. Hatchery production helps stabilize access to salmon for food security, cultural continuity, local harvesting traditions, which also contribute to community vitality.

Sudden blanket reductions in hatchery production risk reducing fishing opportunity and shifting pressure back onto already vulnerable wild production stocks. It also undermines the role of communities, including remote indigenous communities like Chinooka, in the stewardship of their own resources and access rights. In many regions, hatcheries operate in close participation— partnership with local and independent organizations supporting community-based enhancement, local stewardship, shared infrastructure. These partnerships strengthen local capacity and allow communities to participate directly in sustaining nearby salmon resources. Policies that weaken hatchery system risk undermining these longstanding collaborative relationships.

In addition, we, we support proposals 163 through 165, which offer improvements to Alaska, Alaska pelagic trawl. It addresses several of our concerns around groundfish management, including reductions in salmon bycatch impacts to ocean habitat, as well as the accountability tools for groundfish fleet. 163 And 164 are necessary to bring the pelagic fleet into compliance. And I won't finish that because I beeped, but as opposed to, uh, we also oppose.

Proposal 187, which would limit me directly from fishing the Sioux. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Thank you, Boyd.

Could you just touch briefly on some of the opportunities that PISWAC provides? Chaniga specifically, in regards to remote releases in close proximity to the village, and maybe how important that is. To provide for opportunities that you might not otherwise have? It's— thank you for the question. We actually are a 2-minute skiff ride away from AFK, Armidale-Foehning Hatchery.

Their hatchery is on our island. We have made an agreement. I don't know when it was established, forgive me, but In return for that, we actually— Pizwack and AFK provide us with 50,000 king smolt and 50,000 coho smolt to put right in a— directly in our harbor, rear them for the time frame, and then release them to try to stock those local rivers right in the village. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Mr. Irwin. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much, Boyd, for your testimony. My question is trying to understand a little bit of the stewardship that you were talking about, how these proposals passing could undermine, you know, rural stewardship of your own resources and rights. And so I guess my question is, is there any concern for the potential of hatchery populations affecting wild stock and the ability for traditional practices to be continued on those wild stocks versus hatchery.

Is there any conversation going on, um, in the village or with the community about that? Does that concern arise, or just wondering a little bit more about that dynamic between stewardship of your wild stock versus stewardship of, you know, enhanced stocks? Yes, ma'am. Thank you for the question. Um, we, we as a council try to constantly talk with our local people there.

The concern is, is 25% reduction in hatchery fish. That's 25% less subsistence opportunity. That's 25% less opportunity to support our subsistence youth program. As you know, while taking— it's also 25% less that there's freezer opportunity. Freezer opportunity meaning fill up the freezers.

We are an off-the-grid village. We— it is boat or plane, and we're trying to fill the freezers to make it through the wintertime. If you have to buy food from town, $100 worth of food instantly turns into $200 to $300 with shipping costs alone. So As to are there concerns about reduction in hatchery for our village? Yes, ma'am, absolutely.

Okay, thank you. So just to be clear, your concerns are like rely around the reduction in opportunities, not necessarily the sustainability or rebuilding of wild stocks? Sustainability, I think, is always going to be an issue. That's— and it's several people prior to me have said Sustainability to us is too much, no good. Got enough, just right.

But there's never an idea of overharvest. There's never an idea of— it's always focused around sustainability. That way, when you have young gentlemen like the 16-year-old that gave a great little testimony, These are who we're protecting. The people that we're also protecting are our Ammas, our Angas, Apas, all those people. That's the— the sustainability of the salmon is crucial to culture, to education, to subsistence lifestyle.

If you lose this fish, you're seeing cultures and villages disappear. We've got 39 people in our little teeny village, but they're 39 strong people. So we're very always, always concerned with sustainability and just being good stewards of our land and waters and stuff like that as well. Thank you. Thank you very much, Boyd.

Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. If that 25% went away and you couldn't focus on the hatchery fish, would you have to turn to the wild stocks to try to make up for that 25%?

What other option is there? I fish in— we have setnet sites. I believe 7 members of our village have setnet sites in the Ishami District, which is, I would say, the bulk of what we fish are hatchery, directly hatchery related. Yes, of course, we're going to have to turn to wild stocks if those hatchery stocks aren't providing. But protecting those hatchery stocks for us is of utmost value.

Commercial is wise as well as we take— we have several villagers who directly go up to these hatcheries to get their subsistence harvest for the summer, sockeye. We get plenty of pinks around the island and stuff, so—. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Thanks for your testimony today. Thank you very much. You guys have a great day. You too. Rob Sanderson, followed by Trovan Martyshev, Michael Hand, and Robert Wolf.

Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I thought it was one more person down, so I apologize for not being close to the mic. Again, you know what, it's coming to the reading glasses era, so.

Again, thank you, Madam Chair. Rob Sanderson. I serve as the third vice president of the Tlingit and Haida Central Council, Tlingit Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. Our written comments can be referred to by PC 94 also. Tlingit Haida proposal, I mean, Proposal 162, we oppose.

And Proposal 163, we support.

Proposal 164, we support. Proposal 165, we support. Proposal 171, we oppose.

And I'm going to come back to these real quick, like, ma'am, and then just give you a reason why. 177, We oppose. 179, We oppose. On 162, I'll bring this a little closer to me. 162, We oppose Proposal 162.

This would prohibit the use of commercial transportation services for substance use activities, harvest activities. 163, We support. We support proposal 163. This proposal would require vessels to prove their trawl gear stays off the ocean bottom in order to be classified as pelagic trawl vessels.

The department— excuse me— the department says that this proposal is unworkable. Klinkenheide believes it is. We do not find it unreasonable to require that trawl gear stay off the bottom. Without a healthy habitat, many stocks of various fisheries cannot remain sustainable, let alone to be allowed to go back to historic levels. Proposal 164, we support.

We support 164 as it introduces objective enforcement mechanisms. Compliance cannot be verified without monitoring. This proposal provides a mechanism for the department to determine that trawl vessels are staying in compliance with the Board of Fish statute. If Proposal 163 has a chance of working, there must be a way to enforce that to happen. Adding this type of technology helps maintain accountability of the trawl fleet.

Requiring these devices may come at a cost, but it is not unprecedented commercial fishers across any fisheries to have all sorts of gear requirements. This is no different. This proposal improves transparency, habitat protection, and enforcement credibility. Proposal 165 support. We support Proposal 165.

This proposal would require salmon excluder devices. Any modifications to trawlers that will help reduce bycatch in this fishery must be be required. Similar requirements are already required in the federal fishery, are already required. So it is possible and isn't unprecedented. Chinook and chum salmon encountered in the trawl fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest stocks, even low interaction rates contribute to cumulative mortality.

Proposal 170, opposed. Dang. Okay, that's it. So anyway, Madam Chair, I'm just going to go ahead and finish off and.

Read what else we oppose here. Uh, proposal—. Let me ask you the question, what do you oppose? Okay, uh, proposal 170. Okay, and we do have written comments, as I said.

And so we oppose 171, and we— proposal 172, we oppose. Proposal 176, we oppose. 177, We oppose. 179, We oppose. 180, We oppose.

And these are in the written comments, Madam Chair. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Rob. Any questions? Appreciate your testimony today.

I really have to talk fast here, so I appreciate it. It goes fast.

Up next is Trofa Mardashev.

Welcome.

Good afternoon, board members. My name is Trofa Martyshev. I'm a third-generation Cook Inlet fisherman. I'm here to oppose Proposition 186. It doesn't make sense to me to close it down when two of the four rivers make the escapements.

I'm talking about the coho up in the Mat-Su. As a fisherman of 30-plus years, I fished with my father as a kid. I've known my sorting before I knew my ABC alphabet. With the Area 1 being shut down and being restricted, I don't know what the outcome of my children going to be. Will I make enough money to save for the Alaskan winters and save for their future, save for their schooling and college funds?

This year I'm taking my 8-year-old daughter to go fishing with me so she can learn the trade and maybe be a 4th generation fisherwoman. But with the 186 proposal, it will be a sucker punch to the gut. So I'm here to reject the 186 proposal as we are restricted to corridor most of the season while the fish swim past us and flood the rivers. There's enough fish for everyone to be happy. All we have to do is work together and not point fingers at each other if we get one bad season and blame one fishery after another.

So no to 186. Thank you for your time and please reject 186. Thank you for your testimony. Any questions? Not seeing any.

Thanks. Michael Hand. Followed by Robert Wolf, Tyee Losey, and John Hillsinger. Welcome. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Michael Hand. I sane for salmon in Prince William Sound and longline in the Gulf of Alaska. I live in Cordova. I'm here today on behalf of Cordova District Fishermen's United.

We represent commercial fishermen from across Prince William Sound and coastal Alaska. For further reference, please, and detail, please reference PC-121. That has our full positions on this meeting's proposals. I'll be focusing my time here today on expressing our opposition to proposals 170, 171 and 172. I'd like to bring your attention to how these hatcheries provide opportunity for all user groups in the Sound.

When I think about Prince William Sound hatchery systems, a few scenes come to mind. First is the king salmon— er, it's a kids salmon derby in Cordova that takes place outside town. There's a small remote release of king and coho salmon that come back, and it also provides sport and subsistence users easy access. Next, I think of sunny days in July off of Bullhead, which is in the middle of the Sound. If you were there, you'd see a few seiners making sets for pink salmon headed for the Valdez Hatchery or one of the many bays or coves in eastern Prince William Sound.

That time of year, we get a mixture of stocks, but without VFDA, there wouldn't be enough surplus salmon to have any sort of consistent fishery. Also off of Bullhead, you'd see dozens of small recreational vessels trolling for salmon. These boats are targeting predominantly hatchery coho bound for Valdez or Esther Island. Hatchery coho in the Sound is not just a terminal fishery. They're accessed by sport fishermen throughout the summer and across the Sound.

There's also, of course, when you think of hatcheries, there's the THA openers where all the boats set, set their net quickly in a tight space hoping for one big score. Usually I'm far away from this chaos making sets by myself hoping it adds up to a big score. Either way, all fishermen, commercial fishermen rely on these hatcheries in the Sound to provide ample harvest opportunity so that we can all make a season. The point I want to get across is that we have a balanced situation taking place in the Sound. Commercial seiners and gillnetters have expanded opportunity to harvest surplus hatchery salmon throughout the summer, spreading the fleet out and reducing pressure on wild stocks.

All the while, sport, personal use, and subsistence users have opportunity throughout the Sound to harvest king, sockeye, and coho for program— from programs that are fully paid for by commercial fishermen. Any cuts to chum and pink production in the Sound would jeopardize this balance across user groups. So the question is, who would benefit from these potential, potential cuts? The proposal— the proposals identify no specific stocks, establish no measurable biological target, and provide no evidence that reducing hatchery production would increase survival of any other salmon population. I urge you to not reduce hatchery production that supports thousands, thousands of Alaskans across all user groups.

Thanks. Questions? Thank you for your testimony today. Robert Wolf.

Welcome. Thank you, Madam Chair and board. My name is Robert Wolf. I've been a Cook Inlet fisherman for 46 years. I run a direct market facility out of Homer where I sell my catch to tourists, residents, and people who don't sport fish and dip net.

I urge the board to take no action on Proposal 186. I oppose 186 for the reasons UCEDA has submitted. I hope this board is aware of the chaos and loss fueled by limited processor capacity and limited ice availability in July of last season as a result from poor management over the past decades. I sure hope this board is aware of last season's gross over-escapement in the Kenai and Kasilof Rivers and unnecessary, unnecessary waste of 4+ million salmon totaling $50 to $60 million in loss to the local harvesters, our community, and the nation.

How can you be letting this many tomatoes rot in the field? This proposal is the absolute opposite of what this board should be considering. We need more time and area for access to harvest the surplus available. We need fishing schedule increase in Area 1, not more arbitrary restrictions permanently closing it. A restricted and limited EEZ harvest all but guarantees that the run harvest will now be concentrated in the northern part of Cook Inlet.

Restrictive and limited harvests in state waters these past 10 seasons prove the drift fleet can only harvest a portion of available surplus in medium to small runs with these unnecessary unnecessary restrictions. The middle rip is where our efficiency needs to be focused early and more often. The switching of state fishing days to Tuesday and Friday would give managers a better understanding of the run strength and timing earlier. Last season's result— results prove a fishery in free fall, an easy fishery that does not have the harvest capacity to catch the existing TAC triggers its complete closure. For quality and an orderly fishery and what is another excellent forecast, this board here at this meeting has to decide if they are going to let $50 to $60 million in tomatoes rot in the field again.

Or is this board going to work towards harvesting a good portion of this valuable harvest for the benefit of our communities and the nation? We are eager to work with you as This is very troubling episode in Cook Inlet management. What's happening at this management happening at this time, driven by past poor management of the Cook Inlet commercial salmon fishery. Okay, thank you, sir. Any questions?

Appreciate your testimony today. Thank you for being here. Thank you. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Hi.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the board. Thank you for this opportunity to share my testimony with you. My name is Tyee Losey. I'm from Cordova. I'm an NVE tribal family husband and father.

I am a subsistence, sport, and third-generation commercial fisherman. I am once again here in front of you defending my community, my livelihood, and my state from the same detrimental proposals that we have all seen before. Proposals 170, 171, and 172. These proposals bypass the process that is already in place for this through ADF&G and the RPT. Alaska hatchery-produced pinks and chums make up an incredibly small percentage of the salmon in the North Pacific.

Around 2%. Pinks and chums fund hatchery programs for Chinook, Coho, and sockeye salmon fisheries that provide countless opportunities statewide for subsistence, sport, and personal use fisheries. Cuts to chum and pink production would force hatcheries to cut other salmon programs that are funded by pink and chum returns. We don't have any metric to measure how many salmon existed in Alaska prior to fish traps. We don't know what ocean carrying capacity is, and we can't just make up numbers because they serve an interest group and fit an agenda.

I would encourage the board to let the process that is in place to regulate hatcheries and hatchery production do its job. It is based on science, it is vetted, and a lot of work goes into this process. In regards to Proposal 162, I support Ahtna Intertribal Resource Commission's proposal. I don't believe guiding services should be commercializing subsistence. Subsistence lifestyle should not be for profit.

I also support proposal 175. I believe that mesh size restrictions would make release of king salmon easier and reduce mortality in the fishery. If this reduces mortality, it is a win for all user groups and it does not impact users' abilities to catch sockeye salmon in this fishery. I also oppose proposals 176 through 178. These proposals to pool bag limits go against the whole reasoning behind bag limits in the first place.

An individual bag limit is for the individual, not the group. If there is mortality because limited-out individuals keep fishing after limiting out, then this is the problem that needs to be addressed. Thank you for your time. Thanks for your testimony. Any questions?

Thank you. Thank you.

John Hillsinger.

Welcome. Madam Chair, members of the board. Thank you for this opportunity. My name is John Hillsinger. I live in Anchorage.

I've been involved in crab research and management for over 50 years. 32 Of those with the Department of Fish and Game, where I retired as the Director of Commercial Fisheries. Today I'd like to encourage you to adopt Proposal 11. I've been able to look at all the comments in opposition to this proposal, and I see that they— there's kind of 4 main arguments against it. The first one is that it's just an issue between a few boats and they ought to go off privately and solve it.

This argument ignores the impacts to habitat, which is the whole reason for the proposal. The reason that the issues of grounds preemption and gear loss came up is that That proves that the trawl fishery is occurring on golden king crab habitat, and that refutes testimony that we heard at the crab planting meeting where people said that they were not trawling in deep water. That crab fishery occurs in water deeper than 150 fathoms, and which I would define as deep.

Crab, of course, live on the bottom. The things they eat are largely non-mobile items that live on the bottom, like worms, snails, clams, mussels, sea stars. Those things cannot escape a trawl. And so, The golden king crab in that western Aleutian area have declined dramatically in recent years. And even though trawling may not be the cause of the decline, it certainly is not going to help rebuild that population.

The second argument, that closing those waters would shift effort to other areas and cause problems in those areas. The average trawl catch in state waters in that area is less— well less than 1% of the total trawl catch. And last year it was less than a quarter percent. And so it's unlikely that shifting that effort would even be noticeable. Third, that the bycatch of crab in the trawl fishery is minimal.

I think that's because the gear that's used in that trawl fishery is highly unlikely to catch crabs.

And the other part of that issue is that the observers only count a crab as being caught if it's a whole crab. If a half a crab comes up in the net, it doesn't get counted as bycatch.

Is that my bell? It is. Do you have a quick concluding statement, please? Yeah. Sentence.

The last one is that there's no proof that trawling is damaging the benthic habitat, but the board has already closed the state waters of Southeast Alaska all the way around Kodiak Island and the entire Alaska Peninsula from Kameshak Bay out to the tip of Unimak Island. And I'm sure that the board felt like they had adequate justification when they did that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Yeah.

Thank you, John. Thanks for your testimony and all the experience that you've got talking about this subject. I think something was just very interesting to me. You said the last part of your statement that there's no proof that trawling is causing any damage. But you're also sitting here telling us to close something.

And I guess I'm trying to understand that. Madam Chair, Mr. Carpenter, I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. The argument against the proposal by many of the opponents is that trawling has not been proven to be detrimental. I believe it is detrimental, as I said, because of the potential impacts of the things, things like golden king crab eat. Okay, I maybe I misunderstood what you said, so thanks for clarifying that.

And then I have another question. Obviously you have experience in managing crab fisheries around the state.

When you set a string of 40 1,500-pound golden king crab pots on a longline, on a shelf— typically that's where golden king crab are living— is there any habitat damage that occurs when you rip those pots off the water in the formation of a longline with massive amounts of hydraulics? Well, it's certainly possible that there is some. They obviously, they hit the bottom and, and sit there for a while, but Each of these pots is about 6 feet square. And so, it's not a tremendous footprint. And the other thing I think is that the pots are covered with mesh.

And so, things, you know, the mesh is actually only going to touch even a little bit smaller footprint on the bottom. Okay, well, thank you for that. And then just one final question, I guess. Um, when you talk about, um, you know, protecting vital nursery habitat or critical habitat for golden king crab rearing areas, etc., etc., um, are there any restrictions that you know of, or have there ever been, when you were kind of managing these fisheries in regards to Can these vessels that own these— this quota, can they set their gear in those areas?

Mr. Carpenter, they could. They— as much as they know where those areas are, they don't. They don't want to set in, for instance, coral gardens, which I think would probably rip up their gear. They don't want to set in areas where there's large amounts of female and sublegal males. They know where those areas are.

And actually, I asked one of the skippers and he said when the boats are trawling and he can see where they're at, he can tell based on his 30 years of experience and knowing where those female and sublegal male areas are, he knows when they when they're in areas where those crab predominate. And those are not areas that he would fish. But that's also kind of based on the honor system, and somebody that has, you know,.

Worldly experience in that particular area that they choose not to fish there, but there's no restriction that they can't. And so I guess my— I guess maybe my final statement or question would be, would it be prudent if these areas are such important critical habitats that maybe they ought to just be off limits to everybody? Well, it's possible, I suppose, that through the federal essential fish habitat studies that, that those areas potentially could be mapped and, and actions could be taken. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Irwin.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hillsinger, for all of your time dedicated to the department as well and taking the time to be here today. My question is, I'm not as familiar with these crab pots. So on those long lines with those crab pots, are they also being dragged for miles on the sea floor?

They're not being dragged. They fish about 35 to 40 pots on a longline. They're required to fish that way under regulation, and they have buoys on both ends so that it maximizes the possibility of getting the the pots back. So lost pots are not generally a big problem, although they do have that problem sometimes if the trawls go through them. But then they're over the— the boat is over the pot and the string and picking it up.

So I don't think that they drag them very far. Okay, so they're remaining stationary on the bottom? Yes, yes. Thank you. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you. Sorry, I missed the first part of that, but when, when you're talking about, um, the setting the crab pots in coral or areas and whatnot, and, um, maybe I didn't quite understand you, but you're also saying that you try not to fish there, or you see these pelagic nets, these trawlers going through those same areas?

In these high coral areas where, where you're also setting or not, will you please—. Mr. Wood, the, the crab fishermen would not set in those areas because it would be detrimental to their gear and they don't want to damage the coral any more than anybody else does. The, the areas that I was referring to are areas with high abundance of females and sublegals. Where the crab fishermen also would not fish because they don't want to waste their time sorting females and sub-legals and throwing them back overboard when they could be catching legal crab. Okay, thank you.

And one last question, if I may. So are you aware if the state has worked with the feds to define any of this critical habitat currently? I'm not aware of what's gone on in that regard. If the state's worked with them, I know there's essential fish habitat efforts in the federal system that looks at that kind of thing.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you for being here. I think we will pause public testimony here. It's 5 o'clock. I believe there's an announcement.

Mr. Nelson. Yeah, I just wanted to let people know that the trawl industry is inviting everybody to a discussion at Sullivan's Steakhouse from 5 to 7 tonight.

There you go. Just passing that along. There's flyers around the room and I think outside. So. Okay, thank you.

All right, so we'll see you all tomorrow morning and we'll pick up with Paul Clark, Andy Couch, Keith Probasko, and Gabe Kidder. So we'll start, start there in the morning at 8:30. Have a good evening, everyone.