Statewide Finfish and Supplemental Issues (3/20/2026)

All right, folks, just to let you know that we are still working on a little bit of substitute language, as is often the case. We are going to postpone beginning deliberations until about 10:00 a.m. So relax. Grab a cup of coffee, and, um, we'll get going about 10. Just want to give that extra time.

Thank you.

All right, everybody, thank you for your patience. The time is 10:47. The day is March 20th. I think today is Friday and we're going to go ahead and get underway with deliberations of Group 1. Group 1 is commercial fisheries.

There are 13 proposals and 3 stock of concern action plans in this group. Any announcements before we get started? I'd also like to welcome Commissioner Lang to the table. Thanks for joining us. Any comments?

No, thank you. I'm looking forward to it. Glad you could. Sorry I missed the first couple of days. Well, we're glad you're here now.

Any—. Anything else? All right, let's giddy up. Let's go ahead and begin with proposal number 11, please. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board.

For the record, my name is Nat Nichols. I'm the area manager for commercial shellfish and groundfish fisheries in the Kodiak, Chignik, and South Alaska Peninsula areas. This is proposal 11, 5AAC 28.650, closed waters in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands. Madam Chair. Madam Chair, move the board take no action on Proposal 11.

Second. If I could speak to that. Please. Thank you. So Proposal 11 and the next 3 proposals all deal with trawl issues, but I'm going to specifically speak to Proposal 11 because that's the motion that's on the table.

We've heard a lot from the public. There's been a lot of public comment. Um, there's a lot of information that affects state waters and federal waters specific to some of the requests in these three proposals. The board has the ability to use what is called the Joint Protocol Committee, which is rarely used, frankly. Which is made up of a mem— of 3 Board of Fish members and 3 members from the, from the council.

So it's an open public meeting just like this. But the reason that I think that it's important that we go down this route for these proposals at this time is that there seems to be, at least in my opinion, a lot of confusion on does the board have authority to implement some of these because of the fiscal notes that are attached. And there's a lot of knowledge that I believe that the council staff, which works on these issues on a very regular basis and presents to the council too on a lot of the subject matter that is including in these proposals. And I think as a board member myself, the reason that I'm, I think this is the most appropriate approach at this time, is I believe it's the board's duty to do as much due diligence before they take proposals, quite frankly, that we don't usually deal with all that often. This is kind of out of the realm a little bit.

We don't— I don't know a lot about trawling compared to many other things and subjects around the state. And maybe that sentiment is felt from other members on the board. So the intent would be to create to call— I'm the chairman of that committee— and to call a meeting with the council. And the subject matter that is included in these proposals, specifically to Proposal 11, which is, you know, we heard from the proponent that this is a habitat issue, quite frankly. Well, we've really heard nothing about the habitat specific to this proposal.

And I know that the council staff has a lot of information specific to habitat in the Bering Sea pollution island area. So the other parts of this request, I'll just, I'll just kind of go through some of the things that are laid out. There's new performance and monitoring standards that are talked about in some of these proposals. There's bottom contact sensors.

There's monitoring and monitoring requirements for pelagic trawl gear. So there's a lot of things and a lot of like very clear and concise definitions that would have to be created in this forum. And I personally just don't think that I'm capable with the amount of knowledge that I have on this subject matter at this time to move forward. And so That is why I made the motion to take no action. And that is the way that I think is the best way to proceed at this time.

So I'll leave it at that. Other board discussion?

Mr. Wood and then Commissioner. Yeah, thank you. I, I really appreciate that motion. I feel like the parallel waters fishery is an important kind of segue to understanding the state and the federal and how we're going to interact. The more questions I continue to have about this seem to be answered through the process that's already been initiated through the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council.

I've heard from the proponents or opponents of this that the council's moving too slow and taking no action, and that the board will just get caught up in that. I don't feel that is the process. I think the Joint Protocols Committee could do a really good job of educating themselves and moving forward as the state feels that is best for them and for their waters and their habitat and their fishery. And I also, since this process is there and available to us, I really believe that we should use that to our advantage. There are studies coming out like the GEAR Initiative program that'll shed a lot of light on this and amount of impact we're having on the habitat through their modeling.

And I really personally look forward to understanding that. Like a rescue situation, you don't wanna just rush in and do something. Sometimes you should just stand there and make sure you don't do something wrong. And I really feel like we could potentially be in a position of just running in and doing something wrong. And I'd really like to educate myself on this and to move forward in the best, most durable way forward to make sure that whatever actions are taken are done correctly.

Commissioner. Yeah, I've given this a lot of thought. Trawl is a huge issue across the state, no doubt about it. At the— I sit both— give broad direction to the North Pacific Fish Management Council as well as to this Board of Fish and some guidance to you guys. We've heard loud and clear about bottom contact.

We have plans underway at the council right now. Both National Marine Fisheries Service and State of Alaska are fully in concurrence that we need to get a better definition of what acceptable levels of bottom contact is with plagic gear, because what we've done at the council level is in areas where we have habitat concern, we've eliminated bottom trawl gear. But we now realize that we have some contact with the bottom with plagic gear. We're working very closely with, with industry and with universities to try to figure out how we can minimize that bottom contact and get actually an enforceable and measurable performance standard associated with it. That work is underway.

I got briefed on it. As early as about 2 weeks ago. There'll be a full briefing to the council members at their June meeting, which unfortunately is not in the state. It's—. I think that one's down in Seattle someplace.

But a lot of work is being done on bottom contact with pelagic gear and getting a definition. I worry that the board here takes an action and then we have parallel fisheries and then we have incongruent regulations between the two of them. So I think it's good that you two work together to try to resolve these issues and become aware of what each one of the entities are doing to address the issue. So I think this is a proper course of action. But I want you all to know that we've heard the issues with trawl fisheries.

We've also heard the issues with, with bottom contact. And there is a lot of work undergoing to try to get enforceable and measurable standards in place. And hopefully when we have those, they'll be adopted by both regulatory bodies because we have fisheries across jurisdictions.

Mr. Irwin. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Member Carpenter, for bringing this motion forward to the table. So I'm having a little bit of a difficult time with this just because I do believe that it's reasonable for the public to assume and expect that this board has the knowledge to be able to take action on these, on these proposals. However, I do think that it is imperative to recognize that if this—.

This—. The members of this body are acknowledging limitations in our understanding currently and are willing to add another meeting that will specifically go through these issues, provide additional time for us to be thorough, effective, and create meaningful enforceable action. I do believe, I do believe that this is a positive path forward. In no way do I see this as a deferral or a delay tactic for action. I'm very interested in better understanding how bottom contact with the seabed floor is affecting habitat, how potential bycatch is affecting habitat, and how we can continue to innovate and create new gear types and technologies so that we can provide opportunities for our fishermen while still ensuring that habitat restoration is taking place.

So I just wanted to quickly reference in the Sustainable Salmon Policy, it does read, where actions needed to regulate human activity that affect salmon and salmon's habitat are outside of the board's authority or the department of the board, shall correspond with the relevant authority, including the governor, relevant boards and commissions, commissioners and chairs of the appropriate legislative bodies, to describe the issues and recommend appropriate action. Now, many of these are things that the board does have authority to take on, but as mentioned before, there are these parallel fisheries and these overlapping interests. And so I think that it is prudent that this board take the time that it needs to meet with the relevant bodies to come up with the, the most informative action possible. Thank you. Mr. Chamberlain.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So stepping into the business world, we get a lot of things that you like in, in my, my line of work where we, we have to make decisions on, on issues where we have incomplete information. And a lot of times the best you can do is the best you can do. And one of the big— one of my big fears, and this is something that's very prevalent in the business world, is paralysis by analysis. There is such a thing as studying something to death or being filibustered by analysis to— as a me— and, you know, in one of my frustrations with the council is, yeah, it takes a lot of time to analyze things.

And sometimes, you know, by the time the analysis is done, so is the damage. And this is one of the concerns I have on this one. And I do like— I'm not going to object to that on this motion. There is a lot that we need to know, and there are holes we need to fill as board members. But one of my big concerns on, on foregoing action is I, I don't want to— I don't want to risk allowing harm to be done to either the environment or to the fisheries for the sake of analysis and further studies.

Sometimes the best course of action is to take action and study at the same time, and then you can course correct down the road. But that said, on this one, you know, I think— I don't think the analysis— I don't think that this is going to have that strong of an effect over the short term to the point where I'm willing to forego analysis and take action on this particular proposal. So that— yeah, I'm okay with this. Thank you, Mr. Chamberlain. A couple of thoughts I would like to put on the record and we can continue the conversation.

I want to talk about it from a procedural standpoint for a minute. A no-action motion means that the proposal is effectively dead.

And I want to speak to Mr. Chamberlain's points too, and also to Ms. Erwin's points, is that I think that— The perception of a delay tactic is real. But from my perspective, I was initially kind of willing to move forward on some of these things. Whether they would pass or not, I don't know. But I think that the points that Member Carpenter brought up are legitimate. And I think it does allow for this body to do a little bit more due diligence on some of the issues and outcomes that could be— could happen, I guess, the results of if we did take action on some of these favorable actions on these proposals.

I would like the opportunity to talk about in committee the opposition from the department as it currently is written and have more conversations with the department through the committee process about what your current capabilities are. And better, have better and more specific information about what needed or necessary resources the department would need from a State Waters Management perspective in order to incorporate or monitor, implement some of the, the, the.

The monitoring requests, that is something meaningful that actually provides information and provides some level of— I don't know if comfort is the right word, but legitimacy to people that are concerned about what the impacts these fisheries might be having on habitat and other species, non-targeted species. So Practically speaking, procedurally speaking, again, getting back to some of Member Chamberlain's comments, it would be my preference that through the committee process, the board work with the department and stakeholders on a potential board-generated proposal. And I don't know if that would be I mean, that's part of the conversation that I would like to see happen at the joint protocol and certainly amongst members of this board about whether or not that would be something that could be an outcome of that committee process to be worked on over the interim, i.e., the summertime, potentially through the committee or not, and, and possibly come up with some kind of language that addresses some of the issues brought forth in these proposals. By the next work session, which could potentially then be noticed properly through the APA and scheduled next cycle. I don't know if that's possible, but that's something that I wanted to make sure to put out there, that stakeholders know procedurally that is, that is a path forward to getting hopefully some of the decision points that you're looking for out of this body.

Any Additional board comments. Mr. Wood. Well, I appreciate you talking about the board-generated proposal. I think that is a good way to put this back into the state's hands in terms of a timeline and show our commitment to, you know, the users that showed up here and spent all this time and energy to be here and to be heard. And that's not lost.

I mean, because it's taken a huge amount of effort. And I really think I do hear that people are afraid that they'll be— that this will just be lost it will be delayed, and I very much want to assure that that will not be the case. And so I'm committed to that as well. Appreciate your comments. Mr. Carpenter, I'll call the question.

Commissioner Lang. So you had a lot packed into your comments there, Madam Chair. So a couple of things. There were things in these proposals that requested us to do all kinds of work. And we didn't— we don't— we haven't had time to work through the governor's office and request that as part of a budget that caused us some degree of concern that, that you were expecting to have work done that we just simply don't have funded or we haven't identified as a priority moving forward.

So that's one issue. Number 2 is there were calls for bottom sensors and salmon excluders, and there's a lot of work going on. And what is a bottom contact sensor? You know, is it electronic? Is it a— ball that disappears, you know, because it's rubbing against the bottom.

Those are all going to require definitions. So we saw the board potentially saying we're going to exclude— we're going to have bottom sensors and salmon excluders. Well, there's a lot that goes with salmon excluders. At some point in time, you may want to— you have bycatch concerns. You may want to know how many fish are being intercepted, that salmon are being intercepted, rather than just having excluded out, not knowing what those are.

So there were just a lot of fundamental questions that that, that go into those things that made us nervous, that we just felt it was premature to make those, those decisions at this board meeting. That said, those decisions need to be made. We fully agree with that. But we just want to make sure that as these fisheries overlap, that, that we have kind of a congruent approach in dealing with them and realizing that we're not going to be able to go out and do some of the science. Probably it's going to be done by National Marine Fisheries Service or other people.

Having the protocol committee do that is a, is a much better approach. So We're not opposed to doing those things. But in getting back to your response, we kind of were nervous in our, in our positions on these moving forward. There's also the issue— there's two issues out there with trawling. The first one is bycatch, which we're all concerned about.

Federal government has a very robust bycatch program that has observers, electronic monitoring. The state doesn't have some of those tools. We're working, trying to work to get some of those tools in our fisheries. But the state doesn't have the same tools in its toolbox that the federal government has. So again, how you deal with that bycatch catch issue is going to be congruent between those, between those.

The other is the bottom contact issue, which I addressed earlier. And again, we just want to be consistent in our approach because we, we eliminate bottom contact where we have concerns with habit species or habitat concerns. But again, we don't— we want to make sure we're doing that similarly. So we just don't end up with the law of unintended consequences coming back to bite us. So we want to work on those definitions.

We want to work with you on those definitions, but we want to have those enforceable and also manageable to the fleet. So thank you. And I just kind of wanted to also, in response to that, just that there is a message here, at least from my perspective, of expediency, especially for some of those that are simpler, right? Salmon excluders are currently being used in the federal fisheries. It shouldn't take a lot of time to figure out what that means and how to how to require them and write a definition for it for state regulations.

The sensors, I understand that there's work that's being done on them. But again, I think that these are things that, you know, if you can— people will figure out how to use them if they're required to do so. They will innovate, and they need— and to the extent that there is an incentive, a necessary incentive to be able to get to those innovations, I think that that's kind of one of the things that we're looking to push forward here. Not to be prohibitive necessarily, but we want to make sure that people are doing what they're saying that they're doing. Trust but verify.

Did you have a response? Comment? Yeah, if I could. We did try to do electronic monitoring for those fisheries there, and we tried to do that through the legislative process. And well, I think there's more steps moving forward on that one during the session.

So hopefully we'll get there. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that because I've read some, you know, maybe some conflicting legal opinions about whether or not this board and the state, what does or does not have the ability to require electronic monitoring. It sounds like, you know, from what I've heard in public testimony in Prince William Sound and also at this meeting, that it's not onerous necessarily. People are doing it, especially those that are participating in the federal fisheries already have that equipment on board.

And it shouldn't be— I don't see that as being overly burdensome. And I think that would go a long way. To moving these conversations forward. Anything else? With that, the question has been called.

Director Nelson, please call the roll on the motion to take no action on Proposal 11. Irwin? Yes. Chamberlain? Yes.

Godfrey? Yes. Svenson? Yes. Wood?

Yes. Carlson-Vandort? Yes. Carpenter? Yes.

Motion carries 7-0, Madam Chair.

All right, proposal number— well, proposal number 163. Madam Chair, proposal 163, 5A(C)39.105, types of legal gear. Madam Chair, move the board take no action on proposal 163 based on action taken on 11. Second that and ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, the board will take no action on Proposal 163.

Proposal 164. Proposal 164, 5A(C), 39.105, types of legal gear. Madam Chair, move the board take no action on Proposal 164 based on its action on Proposal 11. Second that and ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, the board will take no action on Proposal 164.

Proposed number 165. Madam Chair, proposal 165, 5 AAC 39.105, types of legal gear. Madam Chair, move the board take no action on proposal 165 based on its action taken on proposal 11. Second that and ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, the board will take no action on proposal number 165.

Proposal number 166. Madam Chair, proposal 166, 5 AAC 39.105, types of legal gear. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please.

Yes, Madam Chair, this proposal seeks to amend the statewide definition of a mechanical jigging machine to include a maximum dimension of the reel not to exceed 15 inches by 7 inches. Currently, the size of the reel is not restricted. Is the department's understanding that this size was chosen by the proposal author to be large enough to accommodate continued use of all current commercially available jig machines, but small enough to exclude longline reels and net reels. The department interprets this proposal to be somewhat of a companion to Proposal 167, which seeks to restrict vessels to carrying only jig gear on board while participating in state-managed groundfish jig gear fisheries. Fishery participants indicate that some vessel operators may use longline reels as jig machines, and adding a maximum reel size definition for jig gear would end this practice.

It's unclear to the department to what extent vessel operators use longline reels as jig machines. So the effects of this proposal are largely unknown. The department is neutral on this proposal. Madam Chair. Thank you.

And you might pull that mic a little bit closer. Your voice isn't projecting super well. Thank you.

Thank you. Board discussion. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to the department for that.

I guess I'll just get this out of the way right now. I'm not a fan of statewide proposals because I think every area of the state is dissimilar. There's different ways that people do things in different parts of the state. I think this is a very straightforward proposal that defines the size of a spool. I think it's enforceable, but I didn't really hear much from people at this meeting during public testimony or Committee of the Whole that were outside of the Kodiak area necessarily.

And so we have jig fisheries in Chignik, Southeast Alaska, Prince William Sound, etc. And while I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea that is brought forth in this in regards to the diameter and the specifications for this particular issue to be dealt with, I do think it would be more appropriate that this be adopted at regional meetings. And so for that matter, I'll probably be opposed to it for that, but probably be very supportive if it came up again at a regional meeting.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I feel similarly. I'm realizing why with these, these statewide proposals that you can find where the unintended consequences of a proposal may have been. So you pass something because it applies to one area and it may really impact another area quite differently.

I, I like the proposal here because it allows for room for innovation by the fishermen, but at the same time kind of defining you know, what a real really, really is. So anyhow, I look forward to hearing what other board members might have to say about this.

Mr. Irwin. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Carpenter, for some of your comments. I do appreciate that. And thinking about this at a regional versus a statewide level, I fear Like we said, there were a lot of public comments, but I do fear going any further without there being some sort of definition in place for this gear type for the purposes of both the correct usage of the gear as well as enforcement and other aspects such as those.

There is a pretty clear definition that has been provided in suggested to us, and I thank the author for, for including that. And I agree with Mr. Wood as well that it keeps room for, for innovation, which I think is important, especially if we're going to adopt something at a statewide level. I want to note that the Sitka AC, the Pelican AC, Kodiak, Homer, East Prince of Wales Island, Copper River and Prince William Sound, and the Central Peninsula AC all did support this. And so I hear Member Carpenter's concerns for, for that statewide effect. However, I do see quite a few ACs that would be affected by this, did have some robust conversation and did support it.

So those are my comments for now. Thank you.

This one is kind of, kind of interesting, but I— there, there exists sort of a statewide regulatory meeting for a reason, and a lot of that is to define, to create definitions by which the department and enforcement and fishermen know what is allowed. And I think that getting too far down some of these very bespoke roads in terms of how you're defining gear for very specific fisheries or, or regions can be problematic in and of itself and also have a series of unintended consequences. What I heard in public testimony and through the committee process was that there was a lot of research done in terms of measuring of existing equipment, looking at what is available commercially currently, and then sort of adding in a little bit of a buffer, buffer in terms of what we think would be available out there commercially. We've also heard that for whatever reason, real or not, that there is people that are taking advantage of, of this fishery in a way that is not currently unable to prosecute or cite and provide enforcement over. So frankly, I mean, if, if Southeast and some of those other areas had a chance to review this proposal and are generated conversation and are okay with it, then I'm inclined to support this just to get something on the books.

And if it needs to be addressed we have mechanisms to do that in and out of cycle. So I'm inclined to support this just to get a good definition on there and to prevent bad actions. Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree.

I agree with you on this one. I think putting a definition in there for this gear type does serve a purpose statewide, and everyone was noticed on this. And so everyone's had a chance to weigh in. And I— and there's quite a disparity in the the pros and cons in this.

And I— there's a lot to also be said for uniformity throughout the state of this gear. And in line with my paralysis by analysis discussion, I think this is an ideal opportunity where the board can take action. And if further modifications are needed, we can course correct as time goes on. So I think this sets a good standard statewide on which to build. You know, this certainly doesn't have to be a final action if there are issues with the regions.

And we'll see others where I do— I don't feel gear definitions are applicable statewide, but I think this one can be. So for that, I will be supporting. Quick question for the department. Are the state jig fisheries open access fisheries?

Madam Chair, yes, they are. They are. All of them are. All of them. So I mean, I guess for that reason also, I think that that supports doing a statewide definition of what jig gear is because you can take it and do it anywhere in state waters, correct?

Correct. Mr. Godfrey.

Yeah, I can easily go either way on this one, and this is one of them where I'm persuaded by the disparity between the support of ACs in support of it versus the opposition, which was one AC. And because of that, while I generally agree with comments made by board members here, I'm inclined to go ahead and support this. Mr. Stinson.

Mr. Godfrey pretty much stated just what What I was going to say, I could have gone either way too, but with the— with what the ACs had to say, it's kind of swayed me to support this too. Thank you. And I will just add that really this is about enforcement ease for me, just having that clarity for enforcement so that everybody knows what the rule is and it's very straightforward and simple. Any other board discussion? Mr. Carpenter.

Yeah, thank you. And thanks for the board comments on that. I don't disagree with anything that anybody said there. So approval of this proposal will be expected to result in additional direct costs for a private person to participate in this fishery, and approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional cost to the department. I call the question.

Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Question has been called. Any errors or omissions? Seeing none, Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on proposal 166.

Wood? Yes. Godfrey? Yes. Carlson-Vandort?

Yes. Erwin? Yes. Chamberlain? Yes.

Carpenter? No. Svenson? Yes. Motion carries, 6 in favor, 1 against, Madam Chair.

Proposal number 167. Madam Chair, proposal 167, 5A(C)28.050, lawful gear for groundfish. Madam Chair, move the board take no action on Proposal 167 as the proponent withdrew support found in RC 127. I second that and ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, the board will take no action on Proposal 167.

Proposal 168. Madam Chair, Proposal 168, 5AAC 28.050, lawful gear for groundfish. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please.

Madam Chair, this proposal is similar to 167 but with broader scope. This proposal would prohibit vessels from carrying more than one type of groundfish gear on board when participating in any groundfish fisheries statewide. Groundfish gear regulations vary statewide, but in general, vessels may have multiple types of groundfish gear on board—trawl, pot, longline, jig—including gear types that are not legal gear for the groundfish fishery the vessel is currently participating in. Other fisheries explicitly allow for targeting groundfish using multiple gear types concurrently. Sablefish would be an example.

Conversely, some fisheries already have regulations restricting vessels to having only one groundfish gear type on board. Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet jig gear.

Fisheries. Pacific haji gear fisheries are examples there. Many groundfish fisheries across Alaska target different species with different gear types. Given its broad scope, effects of this proposal are difficult to summarize and will vary across groundfish fishery management jurisdictions and fishery management plans and individual fishing operations. Vessels that only use a single gear type and vessels that typically do not store other gear types on board while participating in groundfish fisheries would not be impacted by this proposal.

Conversely, vessels that have historically stored other gear types on on board while participating in groundfish fisheries would need to change practices by finding alternative storage options or other groundfish— for other groundfish gear. Or they may need to opt out of fisheries that prohibit multiple gear types. Restricting vessels to carrying only one type of gear on board while participating in groundfish fisheries may aid enforcement by reducing uncertainty surrounding which type of gear was used to harvest groundfish when multiple gear types are present on board a vessel.

The department is neutral on this proposal, Madam Chair. Thank you. Board discussion? Ms. Erwin and then Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Question for the department, potentially for Director Pappas, but my question is, how common is— is it common for subsistence users to carry multiple gear types? Onboard their vessels while participating in subsistence ground fish fisheries? And if, if passed, how would this affect subsistence users?

Through the chair, um, um, um, um, give me 2 minutes and I'll keep moving. I'll get some more. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. And Mr. Godfrey, thank you.

Um, this might be a question for Captain DeGroff, I was reading through the Department of Public Safety's comments on this proposal, and it's a little bit concerning. I understand the Alaska Wildlife Troopers support the idea behind these proposals, but it does call into question, especially with longline gear, that there would be needed to be further clarification For example, stating how much ground line could be on board, how many anchors, blues. And I just wondered if there's anything that you would like to expand upon, or potential problems that could arise if this proposal were to be adopted the way it's currently written. Mr. Carpenter, through the chair, yeah, we do support this proposal just due to the concerns that we've heard from the fleet. Observations that they've had.

It would help us enforce this particular fishery. The 166 that just passed is a good first step in clarifying some of that gear. If it were to pass as is, it would certainly help. I think we could come up or clean this up perhaps in a few years to see how the the fleet reacts to it and what, what issues come from it or how it puts us at ease a little bit, or the fishermen, and some of the potential reported abuse that came our way. So if it were to pass, yeah, it would be a big help for enforcement as is.

And if we needed to clean it up later, we could.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I guess the other thing, just, I guess, a comment, you know, we did hear from people specifically, I believe, that fish from Yakutat into Southeast Alaska. And I know that this occurs a lot more now than maybe it used to because basically the invention of slinky pots has— have given a lot of fishermen the ability to carry different kinds of gear far more easily.

But I completely understand the idea of this being an enforcement problem, which I'm definitely a fan of alleviating that situation. But I guess I'm looking to hear comments from other people. So—. Mr. Godfrey. You know, I'll dovetail off of what Board Member Carpenter said.

You know, first of all, looking at the opposition and support, the AECs are almost awash, slightly more opposition than support for this proposal. But I was moved by a person during Committee of the Whole, who specifically indicated— which is in the department's comments here, the cost analysis— they essentially explain what that individual indicated, how this wouldn't be practical for him. It would— it was certainly— he would incur more expenses in transit to participate in fisheries going from essentially this part of the state to southeast, including Yakutat, he referenced. And so I can appreciate enforcement and standardizing enforcement and making it easier for the state to engage in enforcement, but there's also a practical reality that has to be balanced. And I'm very sympathetic to that individual, and I'm sure that he's not the only individual that has this situation where he would definitely incur increased costs for gear storage and transit time to and from to retrieve gear and switch gear.

So for that reason alone, I will be opposed to this.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I, I recognize the inconvenience of fishermen not being able to carry two types of gear or fish with another type of gear on board. But I think that what we heard specifically from Kodiak in particular is that's been really taken advantage of. And I, I'm inclined to support this.

I mean, for that reason, I guess I don't know how you could get around the inconvenience to the fishermen, if there would be a way to go to port and offload that gear before you go fishing so it wasn't on board, how logistically that would work. But I mean, since it's pretty evident that people have taken advantage of this situation, it does seem to a) clarify legal and stop this problem from happening.

Mr. Chamberlain. Yeah, thank you. I agree with Board Member Wood wholeheartedly, and Captain DeGraaff's statements have, you know, only have just further driven home the fact that, you know, having clear, clear-defined rules and boundaries of what fishermen can and can't do can eliminate a lot of those gray areas that some people may be tempted to operate in. And, and, and prevent some abuse in this. So with that, yeah, I'll be, I'll be supporting this wholeheartedly.

Questions for the department. Where does most of the jig fishing in the state of Alaska occur?

Madam Chair, I would say Kodiak, the Kodiak State Waters Pacific Cod Jig Gear Fishery is probably the largest fishery in the state. This year the quota is 4 million pounds and we've Currently got 70-ish vessels working on it. And my question to the department also is, have you seen a trend or any anomalous years in terms of the rate at which that GHL is harvested? Madam Chair, yes, but not, you know, through a lot of different factors. The Kodiak jig gear fishery has a, has a track record of not catching the quota in, I think, most years.

I can look at my notes here if we need a number of seasons. But that, you know, that's influenced predominantly by factors of how available Pacific cod are to the jig fleet. They're small boats. They like to fish near shore in good weather. Sometimes we have seasons where the biomass of cod is simply out near the shelf or out in areas that just aren't acceptable to the jig fleet.

So we do have a lot of years where The jig fleet stays— the jig fishery stays open all year. And then we have years, you know, the last few years are good examples where the Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod stock is rebounding somewhat from some lows we've seen in previous years. And we're seeing aggregations of fish that are in nearshore near the Port of Kodiak, making them accessible to the jig fleet. And so in those years, we see a lot of effort And, and we see those quotas getting caught in, you know, the fishery opens January 1st. We've—.

We saw a closure last year, I think in early April. And, you know, this year the weather is really slowing us down, but I expect to close this year as well. Madam Chair, thank you. And where's— and this might be a good Mr. Bauer's question too. I know you're specific to a region, but where are the other sort of concentrations of jig fishing on, on cod happening?

Jig allocation in the state besides Kodiak, if any? Yeah, Madam Chair, that's a good question. So I believe the South Alaska Peninsula has a jig allocation. There's— the board established a small allocation in the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict Pacific Cod Fishery. I'm not sure if Chignik has a jig allocation.

Mr. Nichols confirmed that there is one there as well. And then Cook Inland, Prince William Sound also. Okay, thank you. Mr. Stancil. And Madam Chair, if I could, I could offer an answer to the question that Mr. Irwin posed to Mr. Pappas earlier regarding—.

We can't hear you very well. Oh, I'm sorry. Thanks.

I'd offer an answer to the question that Mr. Irwin posed to Mr. Pappas earlier. So, yeah, it's very common for subsistence users to carry multiple groundfish gear types on board during the same trip. For example, in Southeast, a person might set a halibut skate and pull sablefish pots on the same trip. Okay. Mr. Stinson.

I guess the department could answer this. So obviously there's people doing things that they're not supposed to be doing with extra gear.

How does that— what do they do? I mean, that's— I don't understand this very well, so I'm just curious about that. Certainly, Mr. Stetson, through the chair, um, I do have a bit of background here that I could offer on this issue if it's helpful. This is a sort of a— I think, as has been mentioned, this is a long— you know, the root of this is a long-standing issue that's specific to the Kodiak area state-managed Pacific cod jig gear fishery.

So the department understands that it's based, you know, on concerns related to that fishery.

The concern coming from from participants in that fishery is that vessels are registering for the jig gear fishery. They are buying jig permit cards. They are putting jig machines on. And they are— again, I want to be very clear, this is the, the thought from the users. We really have not much evidence of this, certainly not from a management perspective.

There may be an enforcement thought there that we could follow up on. But the idea is that these vessels are registering to fish with jig gear. They may be fishing with jig gear, but they may also be either putting out longline hook and line gear or longline pot gear, you know, maybe at night, maybe some other time, and then delivering all that fish as if it was all jig caught. And I think we heard from the public, you know, the, the suspicions people get suspicious when they, they feel like a load of fish is too big for a boat that's only got one jig machine on board but also happens to have a lot of longline gear or slinky pot gear on board. And that just raises people's suspicions.

So that is sort of the basic outline of what I think the concern is here.

So is that pretty much specifically to Kodiak and not the rest of the state?

Through the chair, my understanding is that this issue is specific to the Kodiak area Pacific cod jig fishery, and that is the main push for these three proposals, is to fix an issue that is specific to Kodiak. But we've heard from the proponents of this that, you know, they feel the potential for this problem exists in other areas of the state, and for that reason they're pursuing a statewide regulatory change. Thank you. That, that helps a lot. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you to Mr. DeGraff. Captain DeGraff, have you had incidents of this in other places throughout the state? Mr. Wood, through the chair. Yeah, first, our comments would line up with what the department just said in regards to how this is being reported. But we do run into this in Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet from time to time as well.

Okay, I guess I'd be inclined to take this area by area and see, and so Kodiak is next year, maybe this is more apt to be addressed right there specifically because it could really inconvenience other areas where this isn't being abused. So Specifically, also the thought that, you know, that there's a rebounding of cod, and so the jig fishery is becoming more possible. If the stock is actually rebounding, then it would be really good to make sure that it's not being long-lined, that it's only being jigged. So just for conservation of that as well as it rebounds. So I, I do see the need to want to make this happen, but it might be more appropriate to adjust during next year's cycle in Kodiak.

I have a question, I guess, as I'm thinking through this. I understand that this tends to be a regional issue. The question is, if there's restrictions put on in a region by region, are we going to push those actors out into other regions where they can continue to do this? Chignik, South Penn, you know, those are adjacent fishing areas, you know, down in the Aleutian Islands. Around, you know, so that's the only issue that I have with doing this, you know, region by region is that if it doesn't get done region by region or it takes years to do it, again, I worry about pushing, since it's an open access fishery, you can just move somewhere else and longline for cod when you're supposed to be jigging them.

I was initially inclined, as I'm sitting here thinking, talking to myself, to do this Kodiak. And my question, I guess, is, do you think it's a matter of convenience? For the reason that at least the accusations are that this is occurring more frequently in the Kodiak area, do you think it's because it's easier to fish at night or in and come into port quickly? Why do you think that it's occurring more frequently in Kodiak? Possibly, allegedly.

Madam Chair, thank you for that question. I think really the root of it here is that the Kodiak Pacific cod jig fishery is really the most competitive jig fishery, at least in my region, and I would, I would guess probably in all regions. This is the fishery that has the most participation, the biggest jig quota, and the longest track record of actually being caught and closing out that fishery. South Peninsula has 10% of the effort. I mean, we often see 6 to 10 boats out there, and that fishery, I cannot even— I've— we've closed it a few times, but generally it stays open.

And a lot of that is due to availability of markets. You know, there's just not the processors out there. So even if the quota is available and the boats want to catch it, they may not have a market for it. Chignik, as Director Bauer says, does have a jig allocation. We have not seen a jig landing in Chignik in maybe 15 years, that fleet does functionally not exist.

Kodiak, on the other hand, they take 50% of the jig fleet in Kodiak, is allocated 50% of the state waters GHL, so it's evenly split between pot and jig. That's the biggest allocation split of any of the areas that I manage. Chignik is 10%, South Peninsula is 15%, so Kodiak has a big— the Kodiak jig fleet has a big chunk of the pie. They have a lot of participants and they have a history of closing this fishery, especially in years when fish are available. So that's why these concerns about, I think, bad actors or cheating are more prevalent in the Kodiak area because it is competitive.

Thank you, Mr. Wood. Yeah, one last thought. So because it begins in January, does a lot of this— if there is illegal behavior— happen potentially at night when it can't be observed? That's another problem. So if the fishery was to occur during daylight hours, I mean, would that help solve the problem?

Well, that was my question about the daylight, if that is the problem. Mr. Wood, through the chair, I see you looking at me, so I assume you're asking that question of me. But that is the— that is the belief when it would be happening, when it is very hard to see or contact people during the night. All right, thank you.

Long night. Mr. Carpenter, then Mr. Irwin. Thank you. I appreciate all the comments, appreciate the department's perspective on this.

I'm very sympathetic to this Kodiak situation. This is a statewide proposal once again, and I'm not really familiar with other parts of the state where this issue exists in a, in a broad spectrum, quite frankly. I mean, I can give you a perfect example. In Prince William Sound, they have a state waters black cod fishery. You cannot fish that fishery anymore without pots.

Too many whales. And that was the invention of slinky pots that help people harvest their portion of the GHL when it came to that fishery. But the way this regulation will be written, those people also have halibut to catch. They could not have longline gear and slinky pots on at the same time, so they would be running around way more often than necessary. And so this gets back to my point about regional proposals.

I do think there's a problem in Kodiak, and I do want to address it, but I don't think that the proposal, the way it's written, even though it would very much help enforcement right now, and I'm very much in favor of helping them, I just don't think this is the appropriate avenue.

Mr. Owen. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter, for your comments. I'm actually in alignment with quite a few of them. I also, um, am concerned and want to make sure that we always provide more clarity for enforcement, um, and for, for fishermen themselves.

Um, it's sounding to me also like this is a very Kodiak-specific issue that's going on, and my concern comes from the response from the department that.

This is very common for subsistence fishermen, and we heard from some Southeast fishermen that this is part of their practices. Part of subsistence activities are characterized by efficiency and economy of effort and cost. And so for me, I believe this could have unintended consequences on subsistence users who are trying to be effective— cost effective and efficient in their methods and means in alignment with Chapter 99 of subsistence uses. I'm going to choose to have really good faith in the fishermen on this issue and hope, um, and, and make note that, that this is an issue. This is what happens whenever we have people who are not doing the right thing.

It comes up at a statewide issue, and then all of a sudden there's these blanket regulations that apply to every single person. And so just reiterating, if we're all good stewards and fishermen, then we don't have to be having some of these conversations. So Thank you. Thanks. I will also just note that I appreciate the fact that the department included sort of the history of actions in this, in your comments about sort of this coming up and how we recently discussed this at the work session and the reasons why the board chose not to take action in the form of an agenda change request.

And I tend to agree that this does seem to be a Kodiak area specific area issue. And I am inclined to address it there initially and then continue to monitor and see from the public if the issues persist elsewhere. Although I do appreciate the department's request for easier, more clear enforcement, I think that if we focus it, start it in Kodiak and see how it goes. We can move—. Take action elsewhere.

Any other discussion? Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Approval of this proposal could result in additional direct costs for a private person to participate in the fishery if a vessel opts to pay more for remote port gear storage. Should storing multiple gear types on board be prohibited?

Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional cost to the department. I'd call the question. Questions been called? Any errors or omissions? Seeing none.

Director Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on proposal 168. Carlson, VanDort. No. Carpenter.

No. Wood. No. Godfrey. No.

Svensson. No. Chamberlain. Yes. Irwin.

No. Motion fails, 1 in favor, 6 against, Madam Chair. Proposal number 169. Madam Chair, Proposal 1695AC39.105, Types of Legal Gear. Voodoo it up.

Second. Staff comments, please. Yes, Madam Chair. This is a department-submitted proposal that would define collapsible coil spring groundfish pots, commonly known as slinky pots, into regulation. Traditional pot gear typically consists of a heavy rigid pot that is fished single-pot fashion, each pot with its own buoy.

In recent years, collapsible coil spring pots, or slinky pots, have become increasingly popular because they are lightweight and easier to deploy, particularly for small vessels. This is a relatively new gear type that is becoming more common. Slinky pots have gained broad acceptance in sablefish fisheries as an alternative to hook and line gear. And that fishery has been increasingly subject to whale depredation. So the pot gear is a way to sort of mitigate against that.

This is also— there's also been increased increased interest in using slinky pots in Pacific cod fisheries in areas where pots are permitted to be longlined. This would provide a concise definition of an emerging groundfish gear type to aid management and enforcement of fisheries where slinky pots are used. The department submitted this proposal and supports it. Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter.

Thank you. I appreciate the department bringing this forward. You know, as we've heard over the last couple of years, this is obviously a gear type that's very effective easy to use for small boats especially.

And the important part about Slinky Pots is, is a very significant reduced bycatch rate, especially when it comes to rockfish. So I think that's all very important for conservation reasons across the state when it comes to that. So I'm very supportive of this. I think this is the kind of thing that is an appropriate statewide proposal. Because it's something the board's been asking for and the department provided it.

And I appreciate that. Mr. Wood. Yeah, I am super pumped that the slinky pot has a definition, especially with the use of the word slinky. I think that as time moves on, if there's problems with it, we can have, you know, fishermen kind of submit proposals to change it. But I think it's a— this is a really great solution to fishing effectively and So I'm super supportive of it, and thank you to the department for finally creating the definition.

Um, so one of the things that I heard in Committee of the Whole, and I am very supportive of this, we've been asking for this for a long time, and so I'm happy to see this on the call. One of the things that we did hear was that in opposition to creating this definition is that it would prohibit innovation. And my question to the department is, is what— or is there a mechanism for users to— individual users to tinker or experiment with configurations of slinky pots or not? Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Yeah, we—. The department has the ability to issue experimental permits for gear testing. Order to explore new commercial fishing opportunities. So yeah, there is an opportunity to evaluate other gear types. Thanks.

Thank you. Any other board discussion? Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional truck costs for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional costs to the department.

I call the question. Question's been called. Any errors or omissions? Seeing none, Director Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on Proposal 169.

Irwin? Yes. Chamberlain? Yes. Godfrey?

Yes. Svenson? Yes. Wood? Yes.

Carlson-Vandorten? Yes. Carpenter? Yes. Motion carries 7-0, Madam Chair.

Proposal number 173. Madam Chair, for the record, my name is Troy Tinas. I'm the Regional Management Coordinator for Division of Commercial Fisheries in Southeast. Proposal 173, 5 AAC 39.291, boundary markers. Move to adopt.

Second. Staff comments, please. Madam Chair, this proposal would clarify that when boundary markers are not present, boundary marker locations may be defined by emergency order, which would result in less ambiguity in fishing boundaries, would better— and would better reflect modern practices of defining fishing boundaries using lat/longs. Without using regulatory markers. The department has historically used just regulatory markers to identify fishing boundaries.

With the advent of global positioning systems and mapping software providing highly accurate locations, the department has moved away from placing regulatory markers for many fishery boundaries because placing, removing, and maintaining regulatory markers is expensive and no longer necessary. Most fishing vessels have the capability of locating and marking fishing boundaries on their navigation software, handheld GPSs, or smartphones. Department submitted and supports this proposal. Madam Chair, thank you for discussion. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you. I think this helps. I mean, this speaks to today's practical, you know, application. I mean, we all know where we are with the GPS, and if it saves time and energy for staff going out and putting actual markers down, I'm super supportive of that.

Ms. Irwin and Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thank you very much. It seems that this will provide clarity to the department and to the fishermen. And I will just note, I think there were over 15 ACs who supported this and none that didn't. So we have support from our local ACs on this as well.

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. I'm supportive of this. I think me personally, I, I know that there's plenty of examples in areas where I've fished in the past where GPS locations, coordinates have been used. And I think it's, you know, You know, it's the modern age, modern technology, everybody has it, and I think this is definitely a cost savings to the department to not have to keep going out and putting wood signs on trees.

So for that matter, I'm supportive.

Well, I'm— to that point, I guess my question to the department is, would the department then stop placing physical regulatory boundary markers? Mr. Powers. Madam Chair, we wouldn't necessarily stop placing physical markers. You know, there's, there's some places where, you know, markers are— physical markers are an important aid in managing the fishery.

But this, this proposal, you know, is kind of getting at the situation where markers degrade, you know, over time through weather, and it allows us to use GPS coordinates if we haven't been able to replace them.

Place that marker. But there are, there are definitely places where markers remain an important tool. And I ask that because the other question that I have is specific to commercial fishing boundaries only.

In some cases, the boundaries— so, so this proposal does lie in commercial fishing regulations in Chapter 39.

But there are some cases where subsistence fisheries use those same boundaries. Yeah, and that's what I'm asking, you know, because, you know, I guess if you have invested in a commercial fishing operation, I think it's reasonable to have an expectation that you would have GPS equipment to be able to mark where you're, where you're at. That's part of the responsibility. But if you are a layperson, whether a sport fisherman or a subsistence fisherman, and you want to make sure that you're fishing legally, those boundary markers are helpful because the cost of a GPS handheld unit may be out beyond the bounds of some people's abilities. Yeah, and that's a good example.

I mean, there are places where, you know, say the Buskin River in Kodiak, where there is a lot of subsistence fishing effort, and we use physical markers there. There's a lot of other examples, but yeah, so where you might have a high level of participation participation and, um, yeah, folks that may not have this technology, we, we do place markers. Certainly. I mean, but I wouldn't want it necessarily to be precluded by just a high level. So give the Kodiak example, isn't it?

What's on the other side? There's that salt chuck, uh, Saltry. Saltry. That's what I'm thinking of. Yeah.

I mean, those kind of areas that are a little bit more remote, and I know that there's subsistence activity that occurs over there. Just on Kodiak, I'm just thinking. But, you know, I'm just thinking about some of the more remote areas. I just, I wouldn't want to go down the road that the expectation is that everybody should have a GPS unit. Right.

Commissioner? Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I think there are places that we certainly want to have markers, you know, like near a weir, and we want to have very clear delineation so that enforcement can say, yeah, you're fishing in a closed area, not have somebody come back and say, you look at my phone, I'm off by I'm 2 feet on the other side of it. So I think there are places where we definitely want to have signs. And so, yeah, I don't think this wants to be replacing of signs across the entire state.

Thanks. I just, I just wanted to have that conversation on the record. I'm supportive of this generally. I just want to— wouldn't, you know, just want to make sure where the department is at on that. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you adding that to the conversation, actually, because I can see specifically in my own area, I feel that it's important to have boundary markers for like the dip net fishery on the Susitna. I mean, and having those placed out every year is very important because most people probably wouldn't know unless they could see two markers on either side of the river where to go. They would easily be illegal. But then down at the mouth, I mean, the river shifts so much and over time that year to year they shift.

So being a certain distance away from the mouth to set net is important. So in that case, GPS, you know, is better because, because it changes with time. So for those reasons, I appreciate where the department's at with that, but I still think there's a really practical use to the signage. Thank you. Any other discussion?

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam. Thank you, Madam Chair. Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional cost to the department. I'd call the question.

Question's been called. Any errors or omissions? Seeing none, Director Nelson, call the roll. Final action on Proposal 173. Chamberlain.

Yes. Carlson-Vandort. Yes. Erwin. Yes.

Svenson. Yes. Godfrey. Yes. Carpenter.

Yes. Wood. Yes. Motion carries 7-0, Madam Chair. Proposal 174.

Madam Chair, Proposal 174, 5AEC 39.260, same specifications and operations. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please. Madam Chair, this proposal would allow the engine of either a commercial purse seine vessel or the vessel support vessel power skiff to be off while the net is deployed.

The department saw a significant increase in the number of fishermen setting their seines as, as fish traps in the early '80s. As a result, the board adopted regulations in 1985 to explicitly prohibit this practice and then followed up with the current regulation in 1987 to further clarify.

To help clarify regulations adopted in 1985 prohibiting the use of seine as traps, the department opposes this proposal. There have been citations issued in recent years citing purse seine vessels configuring their seines to be used as fish traps. This regulation continues to help clarify and solidify regulations preventing purse seines from being used as fish traps. Madam Chair. Thank you.

I'd like to ask enforcement to comment too. I believe you have some comments on this. Yeah, Madam Chair, kind of stole the words out of my mouth a little bit. I would agree with what, with what he said there. There has been a few citations in recent years on that.

Uh, we went back and talked with a bunch of our troopers and folks that were retired as to why it was created and what was the effect and what we're seeing now. And our conclusion is that We think one of the reasons we have such a small rate of citations is that this, because it's been in effect for a long time, has essentially closed a loophole and people are not committing these violations and that the regulation is effective. So we too oppose this.

Other board discussion? Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thank you. Thank you to Captain DeGraff for putting on the record. That's what I was going to kind of talk about that, but I don't, I don't think I need to.

I mean, we heard public testimony from people that talked about fuel savings and things like this. But look, I mean, when you're operating a purse seine vessel with your motor off, you're not seining at that point. It becomes a fish trap. And I think the way the regulation is now and with the opposition the department and public safety both have, I agree with the conclusions that they both reached. So I'm not in favor of this.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I was just trying to think of the difference between, you know, shutting your purse seine vessel off versus the skiff that towed the net. And, um, you know, I know, like, in setnetting, we often just turn the boat off and hook it to the net and wait for it to fish. And in some drift fisheries, you set the net in places where you just back out and operate it kind of like a set net as I've seen in Bristol Bay.

And so I'm just wondering, I mean, if there is any savings to this.

Just thoughts, I mean, from the— but given what the department has said, especially Captain DeGraaff and the troopers, I can see the problem with this.

Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I mean, to your point, Mr. Wood, I think the very difference between setnetters and drifters is, you know, a setnetter's net is anchored and the necessity to have a boat running is irrelevant at that point. The same with the drifter. The idea is that you're drifting and you can't— you cannot functionally operate a seine effectively the way seining works with both the skiff and the seine boat turned off.

And if you are, you're doing it in a situation with very shallow water where basically the seine is anchored on the bottom and then it becomes a trap. And so I think that's the distinct difference. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. This is a perfect example where the comments of our colleagues really help figure out the way we're thinking.

Appreciate it. Not to mention, I mean, I guess the other thing I'll just throw in there is kind of a safety issue too. I mean, I don't think it's very likely that an engine would seize on either end, but if it did while you were actively seining with the deployed seine and you're fishing in close quarters to other people, either drifting back or forward depending on the tide, the wind, and all the other variables that require some horsepower with a seine, it just doesn't— and hydraulics nonetheless, it just doesn't— it just doesn't seem to be a good practice for all the reasons that I've heard. In addition to that, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional direct cost for a private person to participate, and approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional cost to the department. I call the question. Question's been called. Errors or omissions? Director Nelson, call the roll.

Final action on Proposal 174. Carpenter. No. Erwin. No.

Godfrey. No. Carlson-Vandort. No. Wood.

Nope. Svenson. No. Chamberlain. No.

Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair.

Okay, proposal number 186, please. Excuse me, Madam Chair, time to recuse myself. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Record will reflect that Mr. Wood has recused himself and has left the table. Proposal number.

96. Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, I'm Colton Lipka, the Upper Cook Inlet Regional Management Coordinator for Commercial Fisheries. Proposal 186, 5AAC-21-353, Central District Drift Gillnet Fishery Management Plan. Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, move to adopt Proposal 186 with substitute language found in RC-161. Second.

I'd like to ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, the board has before it RC-161 language in lieu of the original proposal. Staff comments, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, RC-161 would amend the Drift Gill Net Fishery Management Plan by by restricting areas open to the expanded Kenai section and expanded Kasilof sections. Additionally, it would establish maximum daily fishing times to 16 hours. Additionally, it would establish Tuesday and Friday windows.

This would include restrictions to the additional time, also limited to the two previously mentioned sections at run strengths for the Kenai River in excess of 2.3 million fish.

And then for the later portion of the summer, RC161 from August 1st to August 15th would amend the current 1% rule to a 3% rule.

Additionally, this would establish the 2-mile prohibition on drift gillnet fishing within 2 miles of the Kenai Peninsula shoreline.

If adopted, this proposal would reduce the harvest of salmon by an unknown amount in state waters of the Central District drift gillnet fishery. As such, this would likely increase the number of salmon moving into the Kenai and Kasilof Rivers, the Northern District, and northern Cook Inlet freshwater systems, subsequently— and subsequently reduce the department's ability to achieve sockeye salmon escapement and in-river goals in the Kenai and Kasilof Rivers. The restrictions in this proposal or this RC would be limited to state of Alaska waters. National Marine Fisheries Service administers a federal fishery management plan that regulates salmon fishing in the exclusive economic zone within Upper Cook Inlet. District-wide Area 1, Area 4, the expanded Kasilof and Anchor Point sections contain some amount of EEZ waters.

For the purposes of this RC, the only waters remaining that would be open would be those in the expanded Kasilof section. As this would remove district-wide Area 1, Area 2, and Anchor Point as areas that would be options for management of the drift gillnet fishery.

For the department comments, the department has concerns about being able to consistently achieve the Dushka and Little Susitna River Coho Salmon escapement goals and has managed all fisheries conservatively to allow for passage of Coho Salmon to these and other northern Cook Inlet drainages. Increased drift gillnet fishing opportunity in years with large Kenai and Kasilof River sockeye salmon runs exacerbates coho salmon conservation efforts. The department supports adoption of regulations that improve coho salmon conservation. Regulations and catch limits in the federally managed drift gillnet fishery in the Central District affect stocks independent of state management. Impacts of both state and federal fisheries should be evaluated in tandem when considering how coho salmon are managed.

The department is neutral on the allocative aspects of this RC. Madam Chair, thank you. Can you pull your mic a little bit closer to—. Sorry, some reason—. There, that's much better.

Thank you. Mr. Svenson, would you like to speak to your substitute language? Yes, I would.

The substitute language found in 161, RC 161.

There's been a lot of talk about how you know, this is an allocation thing, and it really isn't. It's a conservation issue on 186. It's kind of close to my heart. I was born and raised here. I've watched the numbers of coho over the last 20 years just becoming less and less, and due to, in my opinion, lack of conservation.

The problem is Northern Cook Inlet coho numbers have declined with increased use of Central District drift gillnet fishery to harvest large runs of Kenai and Katsiloff sockeye in the recent years. Coho escapement goals are not being achieved despite significant sport fishery restrictions and closures in area rivers. Management of the drift gillnet fishery has also been complicated by the federal management of portion of Cook Inlet waters in 2024. Revision to the Central District gillnet management plan are necessary to ensure effective conservation of northern Cook Inlet coho and address unforeseen effects of record large sockeye runs in combination with federal management of a portion of the fishery which was solely managed by the state of Alaska.

Fully implement— also fully implement the conservation corridor for northbound stocks. Now staff is also in line with, you know, feeling that we need to get more silvers in northern Cook Inlet.

This last year, the Cook Inlet drifters caught 87,000 coho. Drifters had their best year in 30 years with catching 3.5 million reds.

In their— excuse me— this is their best year in over 30 years with 3.5 million reds caught with an overall ex-vation vessel value of $30 million, double the 10-year average. While the Deshka and the Little Sioux have not reached their escapements, well, the Deshka in the last 6 years and the Little Sioux in the last 4 years.

9 Other streams also that are walked or flown by the department are also below their long-term averages.

This is also complicated, I think, by the fact that two-thirds of the population now live in south-central Alaska. That's 500,000 people, and that consists of Anchorage, Kenai, Eagle River, Girdwood in the valley. So this becomes really an important part of conservation. The Sustainable Salmon Policy states that you can't overfish a weak stock while fishing a strong stock.

This is exactly what is occurring in the sockeye fishery. We're overfishing this weak stock because we're trying to catch more of this strong stock.

There's been a lot of talk too about over-escapement. Well, in the last 6 years, these rivers have over-escaped, and all that happens is these runs keep building. So I don't personally believe in this over-escapement. There is some point obviously, that you could over-escape a system. But I don't believe that in this system that we have reached that by any means, because you have Kenai Lake, Skeelak Lake, Tustumena Lake, all big lakes that can handle a lot of, a lot of reds.

The mixed salmon policy also states the burden of conservation shall be shared among all fisheries in close proportion to their respect in harvest of the stock of concern. Well, this conservation burden has been on the northern Cook Inlet disproportionately.

I now want to read into the record, which is found in 131, the potential plan revisions. Eliminate Area 2 from state water regulations. Provide a— this provides a conservation corridor through the center of the inlet to pass sockeye and coho northward. Number 2, restrict the drift gillnet fishery in state waters to expanded Kenai and Kasilof sections. These terminal harvest areas have proven very effective for focusing harvest on abundant Kenai and Kasilof stocks.

Third, provide windows in the drift net gill net openers now limited to the expanded Kenai/Kasilof sections. These windows are necessary to reduce excessive catch in the northern-bound coho in years when the Kenai and the Kasilof sockeye are abundant.

Regular periods, 12 hours a day, as prescribed in current regulation. 5, Increase triggers for the season from 1% to 3% in combined catch in the state and federal waters.

This provides additional protection for the cohos when the sockeye run is effectively over. 6, Eliminate Area 1 from state waters. Area 1 is now effectively the federal portion of the inlet. Use of the remaining state waters in northern portion of Area 1 erodes protection afforded by the conversation— conservation corridor. 7, Eliminate the Upper Sakai steer in the drift management plan.

There's no utility in Upper Sakai steer in light of other changes. 8, Restrict gillnet fisheries to 2 miles from shore. This restriction is current practice to protect king salmon during the period of historic low abundance. And finally, 9, placing regulation, the exclusive participation between the state and federal fisheries on the same day. This mirrors the federal management plan.

In conclusion, if we don't do something about the coho stock of concern, which can certainly be implemented next year, This could close the whole inlet.

Obviously this wouldn't benefit any of the user groups— commercial, sport, or subsistence. And you see how the stock of concern with the Kenai has changed in the fishery. Finally, I'd like to say that we need to deal with this now before this happens, thus being proactive and not reactive. So, uh, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Stinson. Other board discussion?

I have a couple of questions. So could the department please, um, tell me first of all where we're at with the escapement goals of coho in the, in the upper— I mean, in the Sissetona. And Deshka, where are we at with those? I know you have it. Can you just walk through some of those escapement goals?

It's kind of tough to read in staff comments because the shading isn't coming up really well. So if you could just talk about where we're at in terms of number one, are there any current stock of concern designations and are we on the brink of any?

Madam Chair, for the record, Patrick Fowler. I'm the Sport Fish Management Coordinator for Cook Inlet.

If I had to characterize the coho abundance status in northern Cook Inlet, I would say it's below average in general. We have a mixed bag. So the, the last 3 years, the Deshka and the Little Sioux have not met their SEGs.

I think the board heard some commentary about the weirs being trouble to maintain through the duration of the season. Yokohama are difficult to assess in that regard where we have high water events. But I think the message is, even if those weirs had been in place for the last 3 years, the department still expects that we would not have met the SEGs in the Desch and the Little Sioux.

As referenced, we also have the Jim Creek weir, the— and, or sorry, two other SEGs, Fish Creek and McRoberts, which associate with Jim Creek. Those have met the goal. That's your Fish Creek in two of the last three years, and McRoberts has met the goal in each of the last three years. In addition, we have those nine foot surveys, visual counts that happen, uh, you know, post-season. And those have generally aligned with what we're seeing in the, in the WEIR data.

In the instances where you have met the goal, is it by like a decent margin, or are you just barely making it?

Uh, so to draw attention to the areas we have met the goal in, Fish Creek, um, and well, if I had to generalize, the 2023 and 2024 years were low, below average in general. 2025, We saw an increase, but still overall below average. So 2025, Fish Creek was pretty close to the midpoint of the goal there, 3,398, whereas the McRoberts was essentially in the middle of the goal for the last 3 years.

That answer your question, Madam Chair? It does, thank you. And then my last question, I think, well, maybe it's my last question, maybe it's not. Do you think that this is a predictivity problem? And the way I would get that perhaps is an answer from both the Comfish and the Sport Fish side.

Is it, is it a problem with coho like we're experiencing experiencing with kings where we think it's an ocean condition issue? Is it an environmental issue? Is there a productivity problem? What is the, the commercial catch data reflecting? Are they not showing up in the commercial catch data, or are they there but for some, for whatever reason, they're not making it back to their streams?

Thank you for the question, Madam Chair. Um, so if we use Last year, as the example, the commercial catch data was telling us that we were looking at probably about average abundance of coho. It was similar to what we had seen in previous years when we were comparing those indexes in season. This is our main tool for assessing coho when they begin to enter the inlet.

We have another example in 2024. Where those indexes were low, and that was apparent, um, well below what we had seen before, and we ended up seeing that around the region as well. When we're approaching Coho for cook-in, that we do have some benefits and that there are some earlier indicators from out around the corner and other places in the state. So I haven't seen as dramatic of a decline when we talk in respect to the Deshka and the Little Sioux. And so going back to last year where we look at what we saw in Jim Creek and Fish Creek, that lined up with what we saw in our commercial indexes where Little Sioux and Deshka did not.

Our additional information from last year was the OTF boat, which while that project is designed for sockeye salmon, we do also provide an index of coho. And in last year's case, the boat actually showed us what appears to be what actually happened with coho as far as a below average and earlier run timing for coho.

And I note that you had provided some supplemental information on coho genetics. And what do those results reveal? Where are these of fish that were captured in Upper Cook Inlet, where were they headed predominantly, or what is the breakdown of origin? Yeah, and so this information presented in two places. We have within the staff comments 186-5 through 186-10, which is the previous genetics look.

And then last year was the first year of another round of taking a look at stock compositions in general with the drift fleet. To summarize it, It's Northern District, Northern Cook Inlet coho that are caught by the drift fleet. It's about 90%, and that's been pretty consistent across time when we have taken a look at the stock compositions. Thank you. So what I'm hearing is we're struggling to meet escapement goals.

In recent years, we have relatively average abundance of coho, and that 90% of the coho caught in the drift fleet are northern bound. Is that a succinct characterization? Yes, Madam Chair. Thank you. Mr. Commissioner, then Mr. Swenson.

Yeah. So I think the other thing that's missing here is we're— we basically shift to coho management in the northern district fisheries. You know, for instance, we are very cognizant of coho, and that's basically because we're watching escapement and the weir counts. And we typically are taking very precautionary or cautionary management of that Northern District salmonid fishery. What surprised us this year is, is at the end of the day, we, we had assumed that the corridors were passing cohos north, but when we actually looked at the data, we were— the genetics data that we collected— we were actually surprised to find out that there were a lot of Northern District cohos in those corridors.

And because we were fishing the corridors more heavily to tackle sockeye, you know, we now have new information to suggest that we possibly should be a little bit more conservative. We're trying to move coho north in the use of those corridors as a tool to move fish north. So I think we haven't looked there. We've been using the corridors on the assumptions that the corridors were passing fish north. But now with the genetic information, we have new information to suggest that may not be as as good of a tool as we thought it was.

Mr. Swenson. Colton, how many coho did the, uh,.

Commercial fleet, the DRIFT fleet, catch last year?

Through the chair, Member Svenson, I believe it was about 85,000.

Thank you. I think it was 88,000, but I forgot to mention that, and I— that's why I wanted to get that on the record. Thank you. Mr. Godfrey, I'd like to ask the staff, um, In staff comments where it says what would be the effect if the proposal were adopted, in the first paragraph it says this would reduce the harvest of salmon by unknown amount in state waters of the Central District commercial drift gillnet fishery.

As such, this would likely increase the number of salmon moving into the Kenai/Kasilof Rivers and northern district, northern Cook Inlet freshwater systems, and subsequently reduce the department's ability to achieve sockeye salmon escapement in-river goals in the Kenai and Kasilof Rivers. Um, I'm, I'm must be reading this wrong, or I just need this explained. Or if you could explain to me how a reduction of harvest, which would lead to a higher number of salmon ending up in the Kenai and Kasilof, how that would reduce the ability to achieve escapement. Or does that just mean over-escapement would occur more likely?

Through the Chair, Member Godfrey. Yes. So with the current situation in Cook Inlet, the drift fleet being the primary harvester of sockeye, we— it would reduce the department's ability to harvest those sockeye. We have had escapements over the top end of the escapement goals in both of those rivers for several years now. Does that answer your question?

So it's the over-escaping is the problem then? I'm just— it was the way it was worded was a little perplexing to me, but I just wanted to verify that that was what we're talking about here. Okay. Yes. That answers it.

Thank you very much. I just want to—. Commissioner. We're not concerned about over-escaping. I think what the measure would be that we're concerned about going over the upper end.

We haven't yet seen a loss of productivity with over-escaping. Thank you. I appreciate that clarification, Commissioner. I, my other comment here is my colleague to the right who submitted the substitute language.

I know as board members there's always a balancing act when we're dealing with any kind of allocation, but I'll remind my colleague to the right, a year ago in March last year, he said if he had it his way, he would eliminate all commercial fishing in Cook Inlet. So I tend to look at this as not taking into consideration all stakeholders equally here and all user groups equally. In light of his comment a year ago, and I won't be supporting this. Mr. Svenson, then Mr. Chamberlain.

In response to my colleague to the left here, that was a misspoke, and I explained that to a couple legislators, and then they said, oh, now we understand. I said I was in favor of eliminating gillnets, not all fishing, commercial fishing in Cook Inlet. Gill setnets is what I referred to.

Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. And following my two colleagues to the left, if we're doing a set here. So what I'm seeing here is something that I'm, I'm seeing statewide is a lot of mixed stock fisheries are intercepting a lot of fish going elsewhere. It's a hard thing to deal with.

And what I'm seeing with this proposal is what I like seeing, is there is a very tailored approach here to isolate that mixed stock fishery to harvest as close to the high productivity rivers as possible while not interfering with the more marginalized streams to the north. And I, for one, I live in Wasilla. I'm 200 miles from the Little— or 200 yards from Little Sioux. The Matsu Valley is huge, so either could be true. But yeah, being 200 yards from that river, in the 6 years I've had that house, I've yet to set a hook in that river.

If I want to go fishing, I go down to these 2 rivers that we're focusing on, and I'm— as often as not, I'm still practicing conservation while I'm fishing for coho. But I— what I really like to see is this— the effort here is being focused on these very high-productive areas and leaves areas that are less determinant. And the Cook Inlet, the upper Cook Inlet, is a prime example of a mixed stock fishery where you've got high-perform— a large number of streams, many are— or a few are high-performing and many are low-performing. And it's a solid example of where if If you put too much effort in focused on those high-performing streams, you can wipe out the lower end of those streams, especially when they get to a point where recouping that has efforts all the way up and down the food system. You know, the predators that feed on those fry are going to have less to go after.

They're going to go make a more concerted effort on those. And then you have compounding effects on the the distressed runs. So with this, I think this is what responsible mixed stock fishing should be. I don't want to starve any fishermen out. As I've said time and time again, I— my life calling was to be a fisherman.

And then my fishery closed and I had to change gears at 18 years old. This preserves commercial opportunity and focuses on 2 extremely high-producing streams, which are a rarity in this state. And I think if we want to do this and we want to, to capitalize on the high-productive streams and, and give the other streams that are not performing as well a chance, I think this is a great example of how we do it responsibly so that we're making the decisions not that other streams are getting distressed to the point of extirpation and then you get, you know, we're looking at, you know, ESA challenges and then other people are making those decisions for us. This is— I view this as us getting ahead of the ball game. And I really applaud this and I hope the drift fleet is able to keep capitalizing and these rivers keep producing at high levels, because that is a very bright spot in a very grim state situation when it comes to the river.

So with that, I will be supporting. Mr. Carpenter, then Ms. Erwin. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I guess before I talk about the merits of the proposal, I'd like to ask the Department of Law a couple of things. So originally this proposal came in the form of an ACR, which the board adopted.

One of the primary aspects of an ACR, which I guess is left to each board to interpret, quite frankly, because I don't think there's clear delineation of what that constitutes.

So we have this proposal before us that this language in RC 161 is quite different from the ACR language. And so I just want to make sure the board is on firm footing before we do anything that maybe we shouldn't. And that's why I'm asking these questions. Does this— does this substitute language go far enough past the language that was presented to the public in the original ACR that would cause us any problems? Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter.

No, I don't believe at this point the notice requirements would be offended. I think the proposal was noticed up all the topics, all the areas, all the species, everything like that. I think that is fine insofar as the ACR process. I do believe, if I recall correctly, that the board noted a conservation concern when adopting this ACR originally with the language that was proposed then. To the extent that the board believes that the new RC language is no longer premised on conservation, I do want to note that the, the ACR policy in 5AEC 39999, uh, subsection 2, um, that the board can still address an ACR that is predominantly allocative in nature, um, in the absence of new information that is found by the board to be Excuse me, I just misread that.

I'll just say that the board can address an allocative ACR if the board does not believe that the conservation concerns that it considered at the work meeting are present in this new language. I don't see an issue with the board making a finding that there is compelling new information that is driving the board's consideration of this RC language. Thank you for that. And I guess my second question to you would be, um, in light of the policy surrounding the board's ability to adopt an ACR where it talks about predominantly shouldn't be allocative, um, I understand that the board moved this proposal forward based on conservation, and I don't.

I don't necessarily disagree with that to a certain degree. But because this substitute language has now become very allocative, which is in a very different form in which the ACR was moved, is there any legal jeopardy? Is there anything that would bring into question the board acting on this language because of that particular situation?

Mr. Carpenter, through the chair, no, I—. I think the board can make a finding now through this discussion as to whether or not the board believes this to be predominantly allocative or if it still remains the board's intention to address this out of conservation concerns. Okay. I just wanted to put that on the record so that we didn't, you know, have the public or, you know, anybody on the board question that. I do have a couple questions for the department.

So this is a, you know, pretty dramatic change. And I guess my question is, you know, thinking of allocation specifically, the changes that are reflected in RC-161, is there any way to estimate what the potential sockeye harvest that would be lost if you use last year as an example based on the area that is being changed, the windows that are being enacted, the 3% rule that's included. Is there any way to like quantify that at all?

Through the chair, Member Carpenter. So for last year, it'd be about a million fish, give or take, possibly just pulling it off the top there. A lot of this will depend on how sockeye move into the inlet. The last 2 years we have seen a very strong eastern run pattern where they, they come in and they stay close along the coast. In any given year, through my best judgment, that would probably be the heaviest dependent factor on how successful these areas are for commercial harvest.

Okay. And then I guess if I can, Madam Chair, follow up, I just want this to be put on the record. The last line in RC-161, talks about the commissioner.

This line is being struck, which is 5A21-.363(e).

Does— will the commissioner or the— and the department still have the ability to adjust if needed if this is removed from regulation, and maybe the commissioner can just talk about that on the record. Yeah. So we've given that a little bit of thought. So what this RC does is give us a prescribed fishing schedule with windows, which is done across the state, and it's kind of irrespective of, of run sizes to a certain extent. And when we're sitting at these run sizes right now, this, you can kind of estimate what it does to sockeye harvest.

The question that we're struggling with a little bit is what does this do when sockeye numbers are low? Because we got in-river objectives that are set by this board to put fish into the, into the Kenai River for different purposes. If we have a low run size and we have this prescribed windowed and hours of fishing, can I restrict those hours and prescribed times to meet those in-river goals. And I just want to make sure that we have that. We eliminated E. I understand why we— you might have eliminated E, but I want to make sure that the board understands that I may— it may be necessary for me to take fishing time out of that prescribed schedule to meet a non-conservation objective, which is an OEG that you've established for the in-river fishery.

So I need a little bit of guidance from you on that one. I understand I could do that under the umbrella plan, but that's— I don't really like doing things under the umbrella plan. I'd much rather have it in the, in the plan itself to make sure that I have clear guidance from the U.S. to what you expect. Because again, at the high runs, it's not an issue. But when you get down to a lower run where you're trying to move fish in to meet that OEG, that could be problematic at the current— at this scheduled time frames you have.

Well, thank you, Commissioner, for putting that on the record, because that is one of the concerns I had, and I discussed it with the the proponents.

But I am, in my opinion, not just in this situation but in many, I am not in favor necessarily of taking some of this authority out of the commissioner's hands. And so my intent would be, even if little e is struck and if this proposal passes, that the commissioner does have the ability, specifically in the situation that he describes, to still be able to react if necessary. Other board members can speak to that. I want to speak— I got a question maybe for the Sport Fish Division. When we talk about this proposal being based mainly on conservation, and that's kind of the reason it was brought forward, have there been conservative— you know, I'm going to speak to coho specifically.

We know what the commercial catch was, 85,000. Has there been any restrictions in either the sport fishery in lower Cook Inlet when it came to coho harvest or anywhere else in the, in the Cook Inlet drainage that would potentially be having an impact on the deshka, little sioux, etc., etc.?

Through the chair, Member Carpenter, speaking to the saltwater fisheries, there hasn't been restrictive action taken in the sport fishery. The majority of that harvest happens around the vicinity of Homer on a broader selection of stocks than the— what you see in the genetic sampling in the Cook Inlet commercial fishery. The in-river fisheries have been restricted, speaking specifically to those weir systems that indicate that the run is not going to achieve its SEG. So typically what that looks like is we have our standard regulations that are in place at the start of the season. And generally by the first week of August, you know, about the 20th percentile of the run gives us the ability to project forward what we think the ultimately the coho run strength is going to be.

And so in the last 3 years, what— how that has played out is we've taken restrictive action initially to move the bag limit in some of these systems down to 1 fish per day. And then by, you know, another week of returns give us a little bit more information in which it's indicated that the systems were not projected to meet their escapement goal. And so we've closed the sport fisheries in those cases. Thank you, Patrick, for putting that. I think that's part and part of this conversation, you know, because if we're talking about conservation, you know, of course we want to put those fish into the Susitna drainage.

That is important to me as it probably is many people in this room. And how we do that, I think the department needs to consider all reasonable avenues to make sure that that happens. So I guess where I'm at on this proposal is this: I did not vote to move this forward based on the criteria that the ACR— I just wasn't in favor of that at the moment. And part of it was due to the fact that the Cook Inlet cycle is this next, next winter. Similar to some of the positions I've taken with other— with the Kodiak jig fishery.

I just think that there's such close proximity to when this proposal, in my opinion, should probably be normally dealt with.

There are aspects of this proposal that I like. I do think fisheries and most fisheries around the state, especially commercial fisheries, are operated with windows. I think that there's lots of examples of that. And so suggesting that putting windows into some of these areas is a bad idea, I don't necessarily disagree with that. And I understand that the 3% rule or the 3— the change from 1% to 3% You know, I think that there, there probably is some merit to that too.

You could pick a date and time to make it easy on the department, but I think that a percentage is probably more valuable in this situation because, you know, runs fluctuate and, you know, opportunity could be lost or gained based on that. And so I think that that's a fair tool to use. I think the part that I'm really frustrated with at this time about this particular proposal is, A, we have substitute language that I didn't get until this morning. This proposal has been out for a while. People that are in the audience that came here to comment on this, in my opinion, and I try and do this personally, is provide the public with substitute language as early as I possibly can.

Most of the time I try and do it for Committee of the Whole. Because we're not talking about the proposal that was originally submitted that people commented on during the public testimony portion. We're talking about something very different at this time. And I think that the public process is lost to a certain degree in the ability for the public to talk about the merits.

Of the substitute language because it was delivered after the Committee of the Whole. I think that I have a real problem with that part of the process. And so I would encourage the public and board members in the future to try and, and I know it can't always happen, but if there's time and it's the ability to do that, I think that that's an important feature that demonstrates the board's ability to provide that access to the public. So having said that, I'm not going to support this proposal at this time. But I do like some of the things that are in— that are the aspects that are included here.

I just feel that it would be better dealt with in a normal Cook Inlet cycle. And for those reasons, I'll be opposed. Mr. Owen.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I had some other comments, but Member Chamberlain spoke, spoke, spoke to a lot. My, my comment then, I guess, would just be my concern is that if we wait for a Cook Inlet meeting, that this— we're going to have a recommendation from the board before us for a stock of concern designation, which will trigger an action plan, which will continue to trigger more and more down the line. And so I see this as an opportunity from the vast amount of information that's been gathered through this deliberation already with the amount of fish that were caught this year, um, the, the escapement numbers that we're seeing, um, and the restrictions on bag limits and sport uses that we've already been discussed, um, I believe that, uh, we need to take some action right now and avoid a stock of concern designation, which then would trigger additional closures. So at, at, at some point, there's going to have to be some restriction when we're not seeing these escapement goals being met.

So do we do it here right now before we have 1 or 2 more years of bad stocks or run sizes, or do we wait until that point when it's in a designation?

Commissioner. Yeah, Madam Chair, I just want to put one thing on the record too, is that North Council, when they set the tax this year for the EEZ fisheries, which the federal government now sets, they had a tax in front of them when they came out of the SSC that they actually further reduced on a precautionary principle based on the data that we had. So they set a lower TAC for coho than, than they had, than they had set coming out of recommendation. So all the different fisheries are being looked at to try to move cohos north. So I see that as a recognition that there is, there's an issue.

Director Payton. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just going to follow up on Member Carpenter's question about the saltwater fishery, give a little context there. So I pulled the numbers from 2024 sport harvest survey. And for all of Cook Inlet, including, you know, Ketchumak Bay, all that shore-based, boat-based fisheries, is about 4,400 coho.

And that is a pretty mixed stock fishery, including hatchery fish. Specifically from Upper Cook Inlet, like Gore Point North, Anchor Point North, Anchor Point North, the harvest was about 1,500. It's, it's a pretty low Not a lot of people go out there to fish for coho typically in the saltwater, but there is, there is harvest out there. So I wanted to put that in context of scale for you. Oh, Commissioner, just one last thing I just want to get on the record is that we've been managing the drift net fishery now that we don't have a set net fishery to harvest sockeye.

And I think that— and we've been trying to do that with the corridors, as I said earlier. I'm glad the board's having this discussion here because it takes me out of a position next year moving into that fishery and how I would manage that fishery now with the genetic information that we're having in front of us that's saying that, yeah, the corridors may not be as good as a tool as we thought it was to move Northern District coho through those fisheries. So I was intending this, at least this upcoming year, to probably take further measures to not use those corridors as much as I have in the past based on the genetic information. So given the implications of what that means, I'm glad you're having this discussion now.

Mr. Spencer. No.

My comments, and I've, I've listened to the discussion and I put my— I did vote in favor of this ACR for the conservation reasons that we've discussed already. I tend to agree with Member Erwin's comments that the board has gotten into this pattern, certainly in my tenure, of stock of concern designations followed by action plans, which procedurally in and of themselves are problematic based on sometimes the timing of the meetings. Ergo, that we are looking at UConn stuff right now. That is something the Commissioner and I have talked about, and I would like to continue to talk about in the Process Committee later this spring.

But it kind of then boxes in the department's flexibility and also access for the various user groups. So I think we have an opportunity to try and get ahead of it a little bit here. And I appreciate that sometimes with a conservation focus, there can be allocative consequences. But for me, the focus is on avoiding future problems and compounding future problems with coho not meeting their escapement goals.

You need those fish up there to be able to create more fish. And again, I think that we have an opportunity kind of to try and get ahead of that curve a little bit. Maybe me waiting another year would make a difference. Maybe it wouldn't. There's— this is also a unique situation that's compounded by the EEZ component.

But I think that if the federal fishery managers are lowering the tack, that is also recognition, as we just discussed that there is a potential real problem that is going to continue to brew and potentially get out of our ability to address. So I think I am leaning in being supportive of this. Mr. Swenson. I just have one last comment. Conservation and allocation become really closely mixed in many, many constraints.

You can't have an allocation without conservation. So that's what I think is the issue here. I'll also just kind of note here in the existing language that there's kind of something a little funky that I see under D1 on the— on page 1, where it's describing a regular fishing period that's more than 12 hours. And I think I think that that's a mistake. Colton, could you— a regular— do we need to make a change to make sure that that's consistent language in reg?

Madam Chair, yes, this was a discussion that was occurring before that there were board members looking at amending that to a 12-hour regular period. Thank you. Mr. Carpenter. And just so I'm clear, Colton, that would be in D1, that the adjustment would have to be made correct from 11 p.m. to 7 p.m. in both places? Through the chair, Member Carpenter.

Yes. So it would read regular fishing periods are from 7 a.m. Monday until 7 p.m. Monday and from 7 a.m. Thursday until 7 p.m. Thursday. And our understanding would be then if additional time was warranted, that could be up to 16 hours per that day. Okay, so stating that and just making sure we give the department the correct guidance, if this were to pass, I would, I would move to amend the language found in RC 161, number D, or letter D, number 1, to read: Regular fishing periods are from 7:00 AM Monday until 7:00 PM Monday, and from 7:00 AM Thursday until 7:00 PM Thursday. Thursday.

Second. I'm sorry, and ask for unanimous consent.

Hearing no objection, so moved. Which brings the amended language before us. Is there any other board discussion? Mr. Carpenter? Yeah, I, I guess maybe this is a question for the commissioner because we now have this EEZ fishery in the middle of Cook Inlet, which is complicated this greatly for all of us, quite frankly.

I'm not a real big fan of how the council sets a TAC similar to something that they do for a peacock fishery in the Gulf of Alaska. But having said that, if the board were to pass this and we were to have, let's say, potential of— there's going to be lost harvest opportunity for sockeye. Is there a risk that the council would in the future would change the restrictive nature in which they set the sockeye harvest or the TAC for the EEZ? And if they did do that, would that also potentially— most likely, I would think would be the word— increase the harvest of coho in the EEZ where the TAC.

Could be met and the EEZ fishery would close. Commissioner, through the chair. So I think they're facing the very similar kinds of discussions you're having about weak stock management. The TAC is fairly high for sockeye salmon in that EEZ fishery, but the TAC for coho is low. So there is a potential that they could reach the TAC for coho and lose some harvest opportunity for sockeye out in that fishery.

They're going to go through that every year. They're going to look at the data and the scientists will make a decision that they bring forward. And then the managers will, will take a look at that and decide whether they want to add buffers on top of it. But that's an annual basis. The fishery management regime is set under the Fishery Management Plan, so it would be very hard for them to grant additional opportunity outside that without a plan change.

Thanks. Appreciate that discussion because it brings forth the graph in 86-3, and that was also presented to us in RC 20 and I think that that's kind of supportive of it. So I would— I mean, if I were one in the middle and I had a high tack on sockeye and a lower tack on coho, I would be concentrating my effort in the EEZ in the, you know, the time period between about July 4th and July 19th-ish. And to a point that came up, I think it was in committee, looking for additional time to harvest sockeye, which is predominantly sockeye before the coho show up, and trying to avoid those coho. They're looking for potential for additional time periods in that time where we see sockeye peaks approaching the sockeye peak and stocks building in the inlet.

And so I think that that is a really relevant and ripe discussion that I would like to have next year in cycle, but is not necessarily relevant or not as relevant, I should say, to the conservation issue related to COHO before us. But I think that that is something I would, I would like to look at and would encourage folks before the deadline to maybe create some language or some, some, some things for the board to consider in that space for next year. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Before I read costs and call the question, I do think it's important because I do think this is a highly allocated proposal.

I'm not in support of the proposal, but I do think it's important to put some of that on the record. I think in the, in the allocation statute, the history of personal use, sport guide, and commercial fishery in this, in this area, I don't think that any of those goes without question. And so I think that that's important for the board to consider. I think the other parts of the allocation criteria were the importance of, of this fishery and the sport fishery to the state of Alaska is very important. And, you know, while making decisions that are going to affect local economies potentially, I think that the board should take that into account.

And then the other part of it is the importance of the economy in the region or location which the fishery is located. I mean, there will be a significant amount of lost harvest to the commercial fleet, specifically with sockeye. And the very nature in which industry is consolidated and loss of opportunity for certain regions to be able to sell their product This is definitely going to have an impact on that. And so I just, I just think that those are important points to raise and put on the record before we vote. Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional cost to the department.

I call the question. Commissioner? Yeah, I just have one question to ask staff. So according to this plan, It basically says additional fishing periods may be granted when it runs strength greater than 2.3 million sockeye salmon in the Kenai River. What do we have a run projection yet for the Kenai River for this year?

Through the chair, Mr. Commissioner, yes. For the forecast for sockeye for Kenai this year, we're looking at about 4.45 million. Okay. And the reason I ask that question is to get back at the question that I asked earlier. If we had a poor run strength, I would want to basically come to the board.

So we will think through some language, bring to the regular Cook Inlet board meeting to address the issue that I raised earlier, which is what happens if you have something under 2.3 and you're not meeting the OEG? Do we have to follow this prescribed fishing plan? But we can— we're not— that's not facing us this next year. Thank you. Right.

Thank you, Commissioner. And I would echo Member Carpenter's intent with respect to that. And I would also reference AAC— what is it— 21.363.6E, which is that authority in the umbrella plan. And in the last part of that, basically establishes the, the commissioner's authority and says AS 16-05060 to achieve— it's essentially your authorities to achieve escapement goals for the management plans as the primary management objective. And for the purposes of this subsection, escapement goals includes in-river goals, biological escapement goals, and sustainable escapement goals, and optimal escapement goals as defined to find and yada, yada, yada.

So I just wanted to make sure that that was clear for you. Any other discussion? Question has been called, errors and omissions. Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on Proposal 186 as amended.

Godfrey. No. Wood. Oh, pardon me. Should have crossed that one off.

Chamberlain. Yes. Erwin? Yes. Carpenter?

No. Svenson? Yes. Carlson-Vandork? Yes.

Motion carries 4 in favor, 2 against, Madam Chair.

Proposal number 187.

Madam Chair, proposal 187, 5AC 30.320 fishing periods, 5AC 30.331 gillnet specifications and operations, and 5AC 30.350 closed waters. Madam Chair, move the board take no action on Proposal 187 as the proponent withdrew support found in RC46. Madam Chair, I'm back. I second that and ask for unanimous consent. Thank you.

I was just about to recognize that Member Wood has rejoined us at the table. I have a second. Unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, the board will take no action on Proposal 187. Proposal 175.

Madam Chair, Proposal 175, 5 AAC 39105, Types of Vehicle Gear. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please. Proposal 175 would reduce the maximum allowable dipnet mesh size from 4.5 inches to 3.5 inches for subsistence, commercial, and personal use fisheries statewide.

Additionally, this would prohibit the use of a rope attached to the handle which is used to extend the reach of the dipnet or stabilize it in the water. The effects of this proposal will vary by fishery and target species and would require commercial and subsistence dipnet gear to be modified. A smaller proportion of fish caught would be entangled or gilled within the mesh. If adopted, this would require all participants in dipnet fisheries that are utilizing a mesh size larger than the proposed maximum to obtain new webbing in order to participate. Prohibition of using a line to support the net would likely result in a decrease in participation, efficiency, and harvest because less physically able participants would not be able to hold an unattached net.

The department is opposed to modifying the maximum mesh size in dip nets because a 4.5-inch mesh size is sufficient to reduce incidental mortality of non-target salmon. The department is opposed to restricting the attachment of dip nets to a vessel without a known conservation or management benefit. The proposal is ambiguous in the description of how the line attaching the dip net to the boat would be restricted. And the department recommends the board clarify if adopted the proposed changes to gear represent restrictions to subsistence. To meet the board's statutory responsibility to the subsistence law, it should consider whether subsistence regulations continue to provide a reasonable opportunity for subsistence uses if this proposal is adopted.

Madam Chair, thank you. For discussion, Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I think this is a proposal that is specific to the area that it's being proposed in. I don't think it's statewide.

I think it— because of the app, because of how it would apply to other areas such as the Yukon, Cook Inlet, and whatnot. So for that, I don't like it. I also don't like the fact that, you know, I know I have dip nets that I've had for 30 years and keep mending them, and they have to can those to put new web in. I don't see that happening. So the expense to the user group would be pretty high for everybody.

And as we heard in some public testimony, some places can't even get web in there. Like, they have to get special trips into their village to get the web. Lastly, I think the whole idea of not being able to tie a line to your net is crazy. And for all these applications, you may be in an eddy and you need to hold it there, so you tie it to a rock or a log or something. And so you need that line.

And in fact, that line might save your life if you did fall in. You'd still be able to crawl out your net into your rope. So for that, I'm definitely not in favor of this proposal. Miss Irwin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Question for the department. You know, in my region, whenever there's salmon conservation measures taken, usually the mesh size goes down to about 4 inches. So is 4.5 for a dip net already some form of salmon conservation size for the net? Through the Chair, Member Erwin.

Yes, that's a small enough size, especially if you're looking at conservation of larger species like Chinook. Okay, great. Thank you very much for that. Mr. Carpenter, thank you. Um, once again, I'll reference my comments on statewide proposals.

I also think that the Alaska Wildlife Troopers' comments, um, there's some concerns that resonate with me. There's some ambiguity and some very unclear language that exists. That would make enforcing something like this kind of difficult. And I guess to Mr. Wood's points, I think that we did hear concern from people around the state about costs that would be associated with, you know, quite frankly, more in the very more rural parts of the state than others. But I think that that is an impact that I think the board should avoid when it can.

And I think it's avoidable here. And we also have to take into account, I mean, look, on the Yukon River and some of the places restrictions have been put in place for subsistence. This is basically the— the 4.5 is basically the legal gillnet size that's currently being used. I mean, so for those reasons, I won't support it. Mr. Chamberlain.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, this one I'm actually— I'm with Member Carpenter on the statewide issue. I've fished the Copper— I've dipnetted the Copper River. I've also dipnetted the Kuskokwim. They're very different rivers in the The Copper River's got a much bigger pucker factor, and it's, it's a scary river to be in.

Um, the Yukon River is deeper. Uh, there's a lot— there are a lot of nuances between these rivers, and I think especially when you're looking at something as personal to, uh, to the fishermen as a dip net You know, there's, there's, there's a lot of difference between these rivers and in Southeast as well. You've got to pay attention to the dynamics of those specific rivers. And here I think a more region-specific proposal is— would be, or would be in order here because dipnetting is a young man's game. It's hard as you get older and I've dipnetted the Chitina River above the bridge and below.

And when I walk the beach, I fear I'm sacrificing my ACL, my good one, when I'm doing it. And when I go into the water, I'm, you know, it's— there are a lot of dynamics to take into consideration when you're doing this. Your response times vary on those rivers. In some of these rivers, when you're dipnetting the Kenai or Fish Creek, You're using longer poles, different sets, and, and there are a lot of individual dynamics that you have to take into consideration as a fisherman. And so I think a statewide proposal based on the needs of one river would be inapplicable.

I understand the intent behind it and I completely sympathize with it. But when we're looking at the realities of applying this across the state as large as Texas, or as large as Alaska, it, it makes a big difference. And so we have to, we have to take those considerations. I will be reluctantly opposing this. Mr. Nguyen.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Really quickly, just some additional comments is I recognize the proposers' desire. From what they've seen, they see this as a conservation concern. But from what's been presented to me as a board member, I haven't quite seen that. And in a time in which we many of our stocks are so depressed and many people's subsistence needs are, are not being met throughout the state and they're struggling to meet those needs.

I would be remiss to see this go through right now because for me, at a statewide level especially, the benefit, the potential benefits, I don't see those weighing the actual outcome, negative outcomes of the hardship that this is going to put, especially on subsistence users who are down to, for example, in the Yukon, we're down to about 4 different selective gear types of very, very limited opportunities. And so for that reason, I would be happy to revisit this at a regional meeting if the proposer is interested in that. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just going to reference the subsistence review real quick before I do cost.

Is this in a non-subsistence area? We're talking about a statewide proposal here. So while the majority of fish stocks occur outside the non-subsistence area, some fish stocks do pass through non-subsistence areas and some are taken within them. Is there a stock that's customary and traditionally used? Yes, the board has many positive customary and traditionally used findings for fish stocks outside of non-subsistence areas.

Can fish be harvested consistent with sustained yield?

Yes. Amounts reasonably necessary for subsistence, the board has made many findings around the state. Specifically talking about ANFs. Are there reasonable opportunities for subsistence uses? I believe there are.

Is there necessary to reduce or eliminate? I don't believe so at this time. Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any direct cost to the department. I'd call the question. Questions been called.

Errors and omissions? Seeing none, Director Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on Proposal 175. Irwin? No.

Chamberlain? No. Godfrey? No. Svenson?

No. Wood? No. Carlson-Vandort? No.

Carpenter? No. Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair. All right, I don't know how everybody else's bladders are doing, but I think it's a good time to take a lunch break and come back and complete deliberations on Group 1 with the action plan. So let's come back together at 2:30 to complete complete deliberations.

And once we do that, we'll move right into Committee of the Wholes Group 2 and Group 3. Thank you.

All right, everyone, welcome. We are back on the record. We are going to complete deliberations of Group 1. Left to discuss are the Yukon River Chinook Salmon Action Plan, the Yukon River Fall Run Chum Salmon Action Plan, the Kwiniak River Chinook Salmon Action Plan. Let's take these up one at a time, beginning with Yukon River Chinook salmon.

Mr. Tiernan. Yeah, Madam Chair, Yukon River King Salmon Action Plan.

So as presented, we had a few options here. I don't know if it's necessary to walk through them or just kind of throw it out there for the board to discuss. Miss Irwin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So as the board, I would refer you to RC162, which was language that, that I developed and prepared as an action plan. And I'll be— while we won't be voting on that as a regulatory language today, I wanted to speak some things into the record to share my intent and what I would like to see come from department. To begin with, I, you know, there is in action plans, in working on writing this action plan, I recognize that there is going to be some pieces of this that are referencing existing language or existing management tools and strategies. And I think it is imperative that whenever a new department member, a new board member, or a member of the public wishes to see what are those actions being taken by the department during this time of a stock of concern designation, that it is very laid out very clearly what those actions actions are and would be.

Um, and so I think that it's imperative that we reference and include, uh, recognition of regulations and statutes such as the Sustainable Salmon Policy, the Mixed Stock Fisheries Policy, um, Alaska Statutes, uh, 1605-258, um, and with the Kings as well as the Pacific Salmon Treaty and Seven-Year Agreement. Um, when considering the options that the department had provided us, I do believe that the fish-friendly fish wheel idea is a very good idea. There exists a definition already in regulation, actually in the commercial regulations, that further clarifies what a more conservative fish wheel looks like. And so I would suggest that the department refer to that and adopt that as a definition to be used as a selective gear type during times of salmon conservation, as well as ensuring that it's very clear that other selective gear types like dip nets and, and hook and line are opportunities are going to be able to be provided. I think something that's really important that I've noticed, you know, we got presentations from the Kuskokwim Intertribal Fish Commission in November at the AYK meeting, and two really important pieces of their management strategy that I've really been thinking about is they aim for the midpoint of the escapement goal, and they ensure that discrete stocks and tributary escapements are being met before other opportunities on the mainstem are provided.

And so I think that with the unique discrete stocks that exist also within this area, I, I would implore the department to prioritize ensuring that tributary and discrete stocks are also meeting their escapement goals and that those populations are rebounding in addition to the mainstem goals within this time frame. Um, in addition to that, um, the, you know, the criteria of aiming for the majority of the lower bound of the escapement goals, I would like to see the department while the department cannot pick an OEG or a new goal, I, I would like for the intention to be beyond simply the bare minimum of reaching the low end of the escapement goal and be taking management measures that aim to really truly rebuild that stock and aim for a little bit higher than that. Um, and then something that I included in my substitute language that I'd like members to take a look at is B2, which states, um, that the department may recommend the removal of designation at the first AYK Board of Fish meetings if the following conditions exist. Number 2 is if annual leads or harvestable surpluses are below the historic range, the department may recommend changing the stock of concern designation to a stock of yield concern. So I just want to speak to this for a minute.

The reason why I put this stipulation in here is because I, I want to see this action plan be used towards true rebuilding. And what I don't want to see is we barely meet this criteria and then it goes from a stock of management concern and then it gets off the books as there's no stock of concern whatsoever, and there's no specific management or tailored management to continue to manage in a conservative way. And so this is almost giving a step-down approach that basically gives the stipulation that even if we meet those lower bounds of the escapement goal in 1, but we're unable to give a true harvestable surplus of the hist— in the historic range, that it still remains in a stock of concern designation. So I guess that's where I'll leave it, and I'm happy to hear questions and other members' suggestions on where this action plan should go. Thank you, Ms. Norman.

Commissioner, do you have any thoughts? So through the chair, yeah, I appreciate this. I had a couple thoughts, and we discussed this this morning when we were drafting this together. First, there is a treaty and a 7-year agreement that is kind of outside the board but kind of dictate how this moves forward, and one of the things I was concerned about is putting recovery objectives into here that remove the tools under the management plan that are put in place. So I would hate to get to the point where you remove the management— you meet the recovery objectives for the board stocks and then you remove those tools that I need to meet treaty obligations going forward.

So I appreciate this restructuring of this to consider that. And now the mentioning of the treaty objectives in the 70-year agreement, my intent And I understand we're probably not going to be doing this as regulation at this meeting, but my intent would be to use this as the elements of how we manage, similar to how we manage the action plan for the Taku or Stikine River that's not in regulation. This would guide our management moving forward. And I think the addition of the fish wheels and the understanding that we're going to basically provide subsistence, even though we might not be meeting all the escapement goals in certain areas based on a case-by-case basis, so that we're preserving culture as we build these stocks, that those are good allowances and good guidances to us. The last thing I'll mention is that under the 7-year agreement, we basically told the Yukon panel to work on a recovery plan, and I think that recovery plan is going to really inform how you're doing this, this stock plan, as it comes out in the next year, year and a half.

And I think we'll have another opportunity to revisit this when we come back up into the AYK region again. But there's going to be a lot of elements in there that are going to help as an action plan of how we rebuild both Kenai River— I mean, Yukon River king salmon stocks as well as fall-run chum salmon stocks. So thank you. I have a question, Commissioner. So, you know, in looking at several of the action plans that we've taken up over the course of the last few years, you know, there's, there's a bit of a miscellaneous in terms of what these delisting criteria looks like.

And, and I appreciate B2 particularly. I think that that makes A good sense just to kind of belt and suspenders, making sure that we're truly demonstrating recovery versus, you know, just kind of bouncing in and out of stock of concern designations potentially, which is one of the reasons I think in some of the other action plans and delisting criteria that you've— that we've passed and that we've discussed and seen is sort of this idea of hitting an MS, you know, the midpoint or sort of the MSY point in other action plans. And I'm wondering if that's what your thoughts are on that in the context of this, particularly with the treaty, because I'd like to see more consistency built into the delisting criteria for these various action plans as the board moves forward and delists and also hopefully takes on less SOCs. Yeah, this is a good discussion because we've got to, as we develop these action plans and we put them in regulation or we basically use them to guide recovery, like in the Susitna River for sockeye salmon, you know, we got that stock recovered in the Susitna River. So the question then is, What do we do with the management measures we got to get us to recovery?

And everybody didn't want to eliminate the stock of concern because if you did that, all the management measures that you put in place to get there were going to be abandoned and you went back to the existing regulatory regime. And the board's going to— and us are going to have to struggle with what plans do you want to have for maintenance measures so you don't.

Fall back into a stock of concern versus what do you do moving forward and providing some additional opportunity. And, you know, I think we had the same thing with Chicknick to a certain extent. We met recovery objectives, you know, but we met them through those actions that we took. So how do we then leave a baseline regulation that doesn't make you slide right back into it? So I think it's a very good discussion.

As we get more action plans, it's going to be— we're going to be facing that with the TACU too, because we're going to probably be meeting a a point where we're gonna have harvestable surplus, but we got there because we had these restrictions. So what restrictions do we replace, or do they automatically repeal? If you put them in regulations, they kind of automatically go away. [Speaker] Well, let me ask you this. So in, for example, the Kenai River late-run king stock of concern action plan, the delisting criteria Indicates that you have to eat 3 of 5 or whatever, 4 of 6 or whatever it is, and then one of those years has to hit SMSY.

It's kind of a weird one because I think because of that large King goal, the SMSY number is a little bit different than what the MSY number would be, but typically that's where it's at or somewhere near around the midpoint of the range, the escapement goal range. So if we inserted some kind of language around meeting, you know, the midpoint or some, some established point in the SEG or the BEG range. Does the department view that as an OEG?

And would they manage it as an OEG? Yeah, so I've been thinking a lot about this. So what would happen if we met the recovery goal for late-run Kenai kings? Would we go back to the existing East Side Setnet Fishery Management Plan and potentially be right where we were? I think maybe as part of the recovery objective, we should have when you meet recovery objectives, it should not be back to all those tools going away.

Maybe it, it triggers a board discussion of what the regulatory regime for the fisheries that are impacting that stock do moving forward. And maybe that's a recovery goal you put into those goals other than just meeting a specific number, so it doesn't vaporize everything that got you there. Oh, I appreciate that. And I think that that's one of the things maybe I'd like to explore a little bit more when we talk about action plans in the process committee and how that has been tricky sometimes with timing. Yeah, we built the tool.

Now we have to learn how to use it. That's right. That's right. Okay. Other board discussion?

Uh, Mr. Irwin, and then Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I just really wanted to quickly— I forgot to mention something. Was included in this language is 93.212, which is the new cultural and educational permit. And so I just wanted to make it clear and known as well what the intention is, that obviously that's an authority for the department and the commissioner, but that, that those opportunities are continually provided whenever, whenever available, and that it's being tracked.

I don't know what kind of system you guys have created quite yet. I know it's new and developing, but that, that we're keeping track of how many fish are being caught in those and who they're being disseminated to and continuing to develop how, how it's determined who gets those permits is, is I think a continued conversation for us. And I think it is related to this action plan because it might be the only opportunity for anybody to get fish in the next 7 years. Commissioner. Yeah, yeah, we, we, we have reporting requirements.

We have, we have different conditions on that permit. The only thing I'll just notice on that is that I didn't catch it until now. It says can be relaxed in specific tributaries within Alaska under the 70-year agreement. We can provide some of those fish in the mainstem in addition. So, Mr.

Carpenter, thank you, Madam Chair. Specific to the Yukon River king salmon stock of concern. I move that the— I move the board's intent, giving direction to the department while managing for the Yukon River salmon during a stock of concern, that the language found in RC-162 is the direction in which we would prefer that the department consider while managing this plan.

I second that and ask for unanimous consent.

Hearing no objections, so moved. That brings us to the Yukon River Fall Chum Salmon Action Plan. Yeah, Madam Chair, and excuse me, for the record, Aaron Tiernan, AYK Regional Management Coordinator, Yukon River Fall Chum Salmon Action Plan. Madam Chair. Thank you.

Just, just in case anybody's wondering, there is an awkwardness about this right now. Typically there's a a mix of when you find action plan and delisting criteria either in reg or not in reg. That's another aspect of consistency that I would like to address going forward. We did hear these action plans up at AYK. At the time, Member Erwin had regulatory language, but there were some issues with that.

We needed to actually have an action plan before us on which to take action on. So the timing of it was awkward, and so we have the action plans as we discussed at AYK here before us for this— at this meeting, which is why it's a little wonky. However, there was not a supplemental notice that went out that specifically stated that we could take regulatory action on the AYK piece of things. And so what we're doing here is we're looking at regulatory language and throwing it—. Or—.

And discussing it as intent for action plan language because as has been done in other places like in Southeast. So I just kind of wanted to just make that very clear why this might seem a little strange or the motions might seem a little different is because we didn't have the regulatory notice to be able to actually create regulations for this. That being said, we are discussing options if Ms. Erwin does want to continue to put this into actual regulation about what that would look like. Those are why the motions are the way they are, just for board members around the table and also for the public and clarity. Any questions on that?

Okay, let's talk about Fall Chump. Miss Irwin. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you very much for, for clarifying that for the public. So, and there, there is an opportunity to further discuss what this looks like getting into regulation. There are some options in the future that can go that route, but right now we are discussing them in terms of action plans that the department will develop.

So The language, regulatory language that, or the language that I wrote up is a lot of the changes are a little bit similar to the Kings. Now, B, for the boards to see, B through E are actually already written into the management plans. So it's reiterating what we voted on. B is reiterating what we voted on at AYK. That decision was made for us to shift the fall, the start of the fall season up 3 days.

It used to be July 16th and it's now July 13th. And so it is simply reaffirming that this, this plan will be implemented for those additional 3 days. And the— for any members of the public who weren't at that meeting, the reason behind that movement was to try to put— allow 3 extra days kind of salmon to get through the Yukon and further upstream. See-through— see-through E is just reiterating what's in the current management plan. And so again, as I stated before, while sometimes regulatory language and plans can get really complex and long and refer to other, uh, you know, regulations and that sort of thing.

I think it's important for somebody to be able to look at this, at this action plan, whether it be a board member, department staff, or member of the public, and see all of those different fisheries that are being affected and the gear types and how the department is addressing those. And so that was my intention on, on reiterating the commercial, sport, and personal use. But those are, um, those are no different than the current regulation. And just for clarity, you're speaking to RC-160? RC-163.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, I'm speaking to RC-163. Thank you very much. And then the, the criteria for, for delisting is, is similar to that which was in the initial, the King Salmon Management Plan. It takes upon the department's recommendation to achieve the lower bound of the drainage-wide escapement goals for 5 consecutive years and includes that stipulation that that if annual yields and harvestable surpluses are below historic range, the department may recommend changing the stock of concern designation to a stock of yield concern.

This action also outlines the specifics of the fish wheel, and that was simply because if this was going to be referred to in— if this was going to be codified, the existing regulation specified kings. And so for this one, that's the reason why it's written out. So if any board members are interested in what that language currently looks like that's written in regulation, that Section A are the stipulations of.

Of the fish wheel. And then the only other measures is that it includes also the culture and educational permit and specifies that management measures could be relaxed for subsistence fisheries within specific tributaries that are doing well in meeting their escapement goals. So I'll leave it at that and see what the rest of the board has to discuss. Thank you. Are there any board— additional board questions, discussions?

Is it clear to the department what the intent is? This is very clear to the department, and we'll use this as guidance. Any other—. The same things I said on the UConn regarding, you know, we still are nervous about how we meet state achievement goals versus we'd like to keep these tools in place until we meet our treaty obligations.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I'm looking at the backside of this H1 where you're defining fish wheels, and I, I just wanted to be sure— consists of smooth bottom and closed-cell foam-lined sides, and B, returns fall-chum salmon immediately to water. So is there a definition of what that box is that is holding those fish? And if It does say that it should be present, but is— does it say anything about the size of the box or what's padding it or that there's water in it or anything like that?

Sir, when—. Yeah, thank you. And I'll have Mr. Tiernan if he has anything to add to the record. But from what I understand, one of the big purposes of this, this definition is that there is no live box, that there's actually a chute that's actually— you're manned. And so the fish is actually in a consistent pattern coming out of the box back in.

The goal is to be going back into the water, as far as I understand it. Aaron, could you clarify? Yeah, through the chair, Mr. Wood. So yeah, with the purpose of these fish-friendly fish wheels, there's not exactly a live box present. I mean, there can be, but there needs to be a chute, as it states in number 2, or a slide.

So where the operator can then, you know, if he sees a king in the back or a fall chum, for that matter, in the basket, he can redirect that fish to the chute so then it immediately goes out to the river and it bypasses any sort of live box or holding box that there may— there might be on the fish wheel.

Okay, so I'm pretty familiar with fish wheels, and I was curious, like, what does that look like? I can imagine, you know, that fish flopping around in the basket and then diagonally down into, you know, at that— at that point where they diagonal Where, where, what part does the chute interfere with the box?

Like, is this tested? This works? Yes, this is standard operating procedure. Yeah. So through the chair, Mr. Wood.

So I am not an expert on fish wheels by any stretch of the imagination, but this language and this operation was developed through quite a bit of time that was put in through stakeholders. In the middle and upper Yukon River. And yeah, so this is something that can be easily done for folks. Okay, I guess just to clarify, like, I'm very familiar specifically with Stanserays and Ruth and Charlie Campbell's up there, having visited it numerous times. And so I understand, like, how those fish come down and into a box.

Either dry or with water in them, and then how they need to be handled to come out of the box and then put back. So, and in their case, the chute, if you shot them out, would potentially not go in the water. It could, in some cases, go on land. So I was just trying to wonder, like, just the handling of the fish from the time it gets put in the basket and then down to the chute and box, like, what is the gentlest, most efficient way to put that fish back in the water unharmed?

Yeah, through the chair, Mr. Wood. So I— how I understand it is that there wouldn't be any handling of the fish from the operator, is that there might be a chute that may go over the top of the box. So the fish just comes down and gets diagonally like it would be.

That's just how I understand it, right? So yeah, I have a question. So I'm looking at RC6, number slide 18, and it's talking about those fish wheel specifications and it's in your option 2 and you adopt a fish-friendly subsistence fish wheel specifications to soft mesh materials used for baskets, foam-lined chutes or slides. And then the third bullet on that slide is already in place for commercial fish wheels in Subdistrict 4A and District 6, 5AAC05362J. So this isn't anything particularly new.

This is already recognized.

That's correct, Madam Chair. It's already in the commercial portion. So, Mr. Wood. Okay, yeah, but the fish wheels vary so much in size, and, and, and if it's already— you— I, I just think that— well, I won't get wrapped up in this, but I think there is a potential to— even though it's a fish wheel and things can be returned, the— from the point of time that that fish is caught and returned could be somewhat complicated depending on the definition of somebody's fish wheel. I mean, whether something that takes chain hoists to put up or something that's very simple like a small, much smaller one could have a measurable effect on the live return of the fish is all I'm saying.

I don't think it should just be assumed that they're all the same. I'm gonna guess it's a lot nicer than a seine. Mr. Carpenter? I'm not here to argue that part. I'm just trying to be cautious of the return part of the fish once it's been caught.

Not all fish wheels are the same. I'm teasing you, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just, just to remind the board that this is not regulatory language, that this is intent from the board to the department. So I think it's within the department's discretion once the motion is made to work with users to figure out the best way.

Also specific to the Yukon River fall chum salmon, I move that the board board's intent with direction to the department found in the contents found in RC-163 be directive measures the department should consider when managing the Yukon River Fall Chum Salmon when the Stock of Concern Management Plan is in place.

I second that and ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objections, so moved. That brings us to the Quinniac River King Salmon Action Plan. Yeah, Madam Chair, Koyukuk River King Salmon Action Plan.

All right. What can you just briefly review with us what the options presented by the department were? Yes, Madam Chair. So there's two options found within this action plan. Option 1 would be for status quo management of the fisheries in that area of Norton Sound.

Currently, subsistence fishing in Subdistrict 3 is allowed in marine freshwaters of the subdistrict with gear restricted to gillnets, beach seines, fish wheels, hook and line attached to a rod pole, cast nets, dip nets during times the department closes to other gear types for the conservation of a salmon species. With non-retention requirements. Additionally, Subdistrict 3 is part of the Norton Sound household salmon permit system. Commercial fishing is contingent on whether there is a harvestable surplus of chum salmon or any of the other species identified.

And yeah, so that'd be option 1. Option 2 would be to maximize king salmon escapement by reducing time, allowing gear— allowed gear and fishing opportunities in the subsistence sport commercial fisheries. So this would require closing the subsistence gillnet fishing in the marine and freshwaters until July 15th.

Yep. And only allow beach seines, cast nets, and dip nets with non-retention of king salmon. And requiring the live release of any king salmon caught. Also requiring the live release of hook and line or live release of king salmon if folks are using hook and line in the freshwater of the subdistrict. And commercial fishing would be delayed until at least July 15th or until escapement projections for the Quinniac River indicate there's a harvestable surplus of king salmon above escapement and subsistence needs.

Madam Chair. Thank you. Question for you. Under Option 2, when you're talking about live release of king salmon with hook and line subsistence— that's the subsistence. Never mind.

I was thinking about sport fishing. Is there any current sport fishing that's occurring in that area right now for non-Chinook salmon species?

Here, just to clarify, so you're curious whether there's sport fishing activities geared towards other fish than king salmon? That's correct. I may pass that over to Director Payton.

I'd have to ping staff on, on for the other species. I think it's pretty small. If so, for king salmon, I can say there's been no reported sport harvest since 1999. 4, And there's been no reported catch for king salmon since 2002. So likely sport fishing for the other species is very minuscule, but we can follow up and get you that information.

Thank you. And when you say there's no directed king salmon fisheries, does that include or not include subsistence? That includes subsistence, Madam Chair. I don't see what what Option 2 would really add to what, you know, you are doing in Option 1. So I guess my recommendation, for what it is worth, would be to just, you know, adopt Option 1 and also the delisting criteria and conditions as recommended by the department, which would be that if the lower bound of the SEG isn't met in 5 consecutive years expected to be met, the goal ranges in future years, and that management measures could be relaxed if updated stock information indicates restrictions are no longer needed to ensure the SEG is met, that being that the SEG still exists.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I mean, given this is such a small river and it's a northern extent of the King Salmon Lake, area and what testifiers— just, uh, the information coming from the public testifying, I'm very comfortable with continuing the status quo, Option 1, based on that information that they have given us. So, Miss Irwin, then Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, question for the department: when does the commercial fishing season begin right now?

Yeah, through the chair, Ms. Erwin. So generally, well, recently commercial fishing has been delayed a little bit because we've— in that area, there's been a period of low abundances of chum and pinks as well. And so that typically hasn't been occurring until early to mid-July anyways. Okay, great. Well, thank you.

That helps me— that helps reaffirm some things that I've been actually hearing from public members on side conversations who said that the action plan actually— or the management plan is pretty good. It just needs— we just need to follow, you know, the management plan and ensure that it's working properly. And so I think that I'm also comfortable with the small system that this is, knowing the limited usage, to keep it status quo. I would just put in that in order to create continued consistency among these plans. And as I mentioned, and the Commissioner has also kind of mentioned, having these, you know, figuring out ways to have sideboards to ensure that we just don't rebuild this stock and then the next year it plummets as soon as we get out of a stock of concern.

So I would just reiterate that I would like to see in the delisting criteria, if the annual yields or harvestable surpluses are below the historic range, the department may recommend changing the stock of concern designation to a stock of yield concern, similarly found or suggested in the Yukon-Chum and King plan.

Aaron, can you refresh my memory? Is this a management concern stock or a yield concern stock right now? It is currently— oh, it was adopted as a management concern stock, management concern, Madam Chair.

Member Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Specific to the Quinniac King action plan, I move the board adopt option 1, status quo management, continue management with current current regulations and management plan, and also included the delisting criteria as laid out in RC-006. I second that and ask for unanimous consent. And just for on-the-record clarity, is that clear for—.

That's very clear. Okay, excellent. So hearing no objection, so moved. All right, that completes deliberations on committee— the Group 1. Let's take about a 15-minute break, switch over, and we will get set up for Committee of the Whole Group 2, which is Hatcheries.

All right, we're back on the record, I think. Where's Annie? Oh, there she is.

Okay, we are on the record, 3:31. We're beginning Committee of the Whole Group 2. There are 3 proposals in this committee. It is about hatcheries. Um, I'll let the chairman talk about how he wants to run this committee, but before we get into that, we're going to give a little bit of information first.

So gentlemen, please walk us through your presentation, then we'll get into the committee discussion.

Alright, Madam Chair, members of the board, I'm Flip Prior. I'm the Aquaculture Section Chief. For Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and I'm headquartered at the Juneau headquarters office. This presentation can be found as RC124. It's broken into 6 parts.

One's a brief history of how we got here. One is the guidance, mainly statutes and regulations. Three is planning, which has been brought up with RPTs. Then I get into historical production. And then permitted capacities.

And then finally, there's a couple slides on the AHRP project you've been hearing about.

All right.

Getting into this, why do we need an enhancement program? Well, the short answer is the legislature directed the Department of Fish and Game to create one. Because when Alaska became a state in 1959, the salmon abundance was low, and management actions alone were not increasing abundance quickly enough.

This is graphically represented here, showing where Alaska became a state and under management that was strictly managing the fisheries.

Alaska took an integrated approach to recovering the Alaska salmon fisheries. As I mentioned, starting in 1960, in-season escapement-based management was used to manage the fisheries themselves. In '71, Fisheries Rehabilitation Enhancement and Development Division, or FRED, was created. And FRED did a lot of innovating in the hatchery programs themselves and built several hatcheries. And really was tasked with figuring out how to make production hatcheries.

In '72, there was a constitutional amendment that allowed limited-entry commercial fisheries and also promote efficient development of agriculture. There's also the '76 Magnuson-Stevens Act, which restricted foreign fishing to outside the 200-mile limit.

Looking specifically at the PNP Hatchery Act of '74, the intent of the act was to authorize PNP hatcheries to contribute by artificial means to the rehabilitation of the state's depleted and depressed salmon fishery.

And looking at again, the purpose is recovery and support of fisheries. It wasn't an idea of depleted stocks. It was for the fisheries and provide an economic engine to support and grow coastal communities.

Looking into the guidance that first starts with the constitutional amendment, and which again created the, the no exclusive fisheries and to promote the efficiency and development of the aquaculture, aquaculture state, in the state. Guidance and statutes, I won't go into these too much, but there is quite a few of them that include both powers and duties of the Commissioner as well as the Board of Fisheries. And then I'll touch more heavily on the two highlighted, which is the FRED statute and the salmon hatcheries themselves.

So looking at the Fisheries Rehabilitation and Development Act, again, it The legislature directed Fish and Game by saying the department shall, and then, do all things necessary to ensure perpetual and increasing production and use of food resources.

The statutes concerning salmon hatcheries are 1610.375 through 480. And there's even a provision, 1610.430, which, uh, if an alteration suspension or revocation is, um, could be done by the commissioner, it directs the commissioner to ask the RPT to review before taking action.

Additionally, the enhancement program is run under regulations and policy, and those policies do include the mixed stock fishery policy and the sustainable fishery policy, as well as regulations 40.005 through 0.990, which is private nonprofit salmon and shellfish hatcheries. That was changed recently when the legislature approved shellfish hatcheries in the state.

Additionally, we have fish transport permit regulations to follow, and those, those fall under— for each project transporting eggs or fry from one location to another. And also the genetic policy comes into play.

Okay, getting into planning. The Alaska enhancement program is stakeholder-driven. The users of the resource determine what fishery enhancement is desirable, and Fish and Game determines what is appropriate with their mandate to sustain natural production. The mechanism for this cooperation is the regional planning team and the process developing a regional salmon enhancement plan.

Here we break down the regions of the state that were developed by the commissioner for the purpose of salmon enhancement. The active areas of the regions of the state producing fish are Southern Southeast, Northern Southeast, Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet, and Kodiak.

Looking specifically where the hatcheries are located on here, the— there's a blowup for what's known as South Central, which includes Cook Inlet and also Prince William Sound on top. And on the bottom is the Southeast blowup with the hatchery locations. Kodiak Island does not have a blowup, but you can see the two hatchery locations in the middle Middle figure.

Regional planning teams. The primary responsibility of RPT is to develop a comprehensive salmon plan. The RPTs are advisory to the commissioner, and this is similar to the ACs are to the board. The RPT has— does not have the authority to approve or deny a permit. They merely make a recommendation to the commissioner whether a permit should be issued or denied.

Breaking this down graphically, how it works. The RPT is made up of Fish and Game staff, 3 members from the department, 3 members from the RAA. RAAs are required to have at least 1 representative from each user group, but that is determined at the RAA level. The public is involved in our— the RPT process. And again, what comes out of the RPT is advisory to the commissioner.

Looking at the comprehensive salmon plan itself, comprehensive salmon plans usually contain historic harvest and production as well as goals and opportunities to plan the goals and objectives. Production goals by species, area, and time is the only regulatory requirement in a comprehensive salmon plan.

Now we'll get into production. We got two graphs in a row that were produced by the Northern Pacific and Adromus Fish Commission, and they show— this one shows the production for all of the North Pacific by species. And you can see since around 1988, the production has been relatively flat at around 5 billion.

This is the same data as presented in the previous slide, but this is now broken into country. What is produced in each country?

Looking specifically at Alaska, this is the production, uh,.

By species as well as permitted capacity. The permitted capacity is in eggs, not fish released. You can note here a couple things. Since 19— or 2019, releases, releases have varied, but the permitted capacity has stayed the same. The other thing to note is the primary production from Alaska hatcheries is pink and chum.

So looking at specifically pink production within the state, this graph shows the capacity and the egg take. And again, our permits are— the standard of our permits is egg take, not release. But you can see even egg take goes up and down year to year, either due to broodstock availability, or it can also be survival in the hatchery if you have a bunch of already bad eggs or water-hardened eggs, that kind of thing.

And this is the same graph done for chum salmon.

Now getting into permitted capacities, I won't get into these too heavy, but I did, in making these tables, well, they're pulled directly from the enhancement report, the annual enhancement report. But I did keep the statewide release at the bottom. This is kind of handy. If you look at, say, Southeast, and look under the pink column, you'll see Southeast has a very small percentage of the overall statewide pink release, but if you look at chum salmon, you'll see they have the majority of the release. Breaking it into the other regions, South Central, which includes Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet put together, but this one right here has Prince William Sound.

Note that they have a very significant number of pinks and Oh, getting ahead of myself. All right, we can go again. And then Cook Inlet as well, and in this graph I kept the south-central together as well as the state release. Lastly, Kodiak broken down in itself and then the state wide. Now, this circles back to the original graph and adds the years since the hatchery program began.

And I'm going to hold this slide while I read the next slide and just say, from the beginning of the program in the mid-'70s through 2025, the program has provided 1.7 billion salmon to the fisheries of the state and resulting in substantial economic value to coastal communities and a continued robust harvest of wild salmon.

Now, last slides. Uh, just an introduction to the Alaska Hatchery Research Project. Uh, all this information can be found on our website, and I included this slide shot because If you want to find this specifically, the hatchery research page, it's under fisheries, scroll to hatcheries, to the dropdown menu of research. This page will come up. And on my slide, I have circled the findings because we have the findings there.

And then the last slide.

I was asked 3 questions to describe the study. I went with 4. Specifically to point out who is doing the study, the science panel is made up of current and retired scientists from ADF&G, University of Alaska, aquaculture associations, and the National Marine Fisheries Service. This is important because while ADF&G does a lot of the heavy lifting, this is not solely an ADF&G project. What is the study?

Well, there's 3 primary questions that are be asked And that is the genetic stock structure of pink and chum salmon in each of Prince William Sound and Southeast Alaska. The extent and annual variation of straying of pink salmon in Prince William Sound and chum salmon in Southeast. And the impact of fitness measured in productivity on wild pink and chum salmon due to straying. When will the study be complete? Well, the data collection is complete.

That means all the field sampling is done. The results from the genetic structure part of the question are submitted for publication. The results for extent and variation of straying were published in 2021, and those are available on the website. All the papers are available on the website. The preliminary results from question 3, which is impact on fitness, measured in productivity, and Prince William Sound pink salmon was published in 2022, and more recent results are currently in publication, in preparation for publication.

Synthesis of the data, which is causal analysis and results, and formation of policy conclusions is ongoing. Final technical reports are scheduled to be completed in late 2006. With a presentation of final data planned for 2027.

When will the department act? The department will, will form policy conclusions once full technical results are available. The department has used and will continue to use results from technical studies. An example would be last year when results from a Southeast chum salmon straying study influenced the decision to modify chum releases in Southeast Alaska.

And that is it. Thank you for the presentation. Quick couple of questions. With respect to your final bullets there on this slide, so I find, however, the AHRQ work will not be complete until context is provided for the set of answers to the questions 3, and the department has reached policy conclusions. What does that mean?

Um, Madam Chair, this is for the record. My name is Bill Templin. I'm the Chief Fisheries Scientist for the Commercial Fisheries Division of the department, and I am the last remaining member of the department who was there from the original beginning of this project.

What that means is the AHRP project will continue to— while we will be presenting the results, and those will be published in peer-reviewed publications in 2026, the work of the people of the project, the science panel, will continue until we can provide context for those numbers. So there is a lot of other work that will be necessary to understand what the number means that you get from these papers. What does it mean to have 4 to 15% of the pink salmon in Prince William Sound be hatchery origin strays? What does it mean to have a— A return per spawner for a hatchery fish in a wild stream when compared to wild fish. Those are the types of questions that, that will continue from this project.

Okay, thank you. And then I guess to the last bullet point in terms of when will the department act, I think this gets to the heart of, I think, the issues that we continue to experience, right? And that there's this what I, what I consider to be a sense of people running out of patience. These programs have been in place for decades, and these— the study has been going on for quite a few years. And so I think that's why you're seeing, in my opinion, why we're seeing sort of this ramp up and this continued effort to change these things through the board.

And so I guess, when will the department act? Does that mean that there's going to be, based on the results of this research project, reviews of the permits? What does that mean, that we'll continue to, continue to form policy conclusions? Is there going to be a review of the current department policies that will be, and then changed or updated and then reported out as a result of this research project? How is this is this data really going to be used in a policy context?

And how, you know, is this just something that's going to sit on a shelf and collect dust for a while? I mean, I guess my question is, is what is the process by which the department will use this information? And how— when is that intended to occur?

Madam Chair, yes, that is a question I get quite often. First of all, it is a long-term project. For the pink salmon, while pink salmon.

A 2-year life history. We've taken it out to the point where we can get to the grandchildren of the hatchery fish, the F2 generation. And so what that has done is allowed us to get beyond what is the effect of being just born in a hatchery and spawning in the wild. Now we've gotten it— is there a potential inheritance of this lower productivity? And that's a huge step, but it's taken quite a long period of time.

The portion about what do we do with this will be to understand— when we talk about understanding the context, we want to get a good idea of what the mechanisms are that cause this lowered productivity, or if there is harm to the populations, what is the mechanism for that harm. Once you know that, that kind of gives you an idea of what things you can change in the program. And that's where it starts to become more applicable to changes in policy, changes in production, changes in permitting. When you know, will a, say, for instance, a 25% decrease in hatchery production, will that have an effect on reducing the stray rate, or the strays in the streams by 25%? Is that the— is that the correct thing to do, or is there another mechanism that could be taken?

So is it—. Is the department developing like a template, you know, or something, the XYZ or the things that we're going to be reviewing in the context of this project or the results of the project? Mr. Commissioner? Yeah, let me— let me try to take a shot at this. So hatcheries, it's like trawling.

It's a big issue right now. So there's a bunch of issues associated with hatcheries. One is how they affecting our management of our wild pink and chum salmon stocks. Number 2 is how are they having impacts genetically through strain? And then there's the whole concept of whether we're having food competition out in the ocean.

And they all get intertwined together, but they're all fundamentally a little bit different. We're— you know, when we found out that crawfish inland in Southeast Alaska was jeopardizing our ability to manage wild chum salmon stocks, I— ordered a review. I did a cap on it. I actually reduced it. And now I got a report on my desk that I just haven't had time to go dig down into.

But in my eyes, I took one kind of look, close look at it and said, well, it's still— the releases we're having is still having an impact on a wild index, chum index stream. That's not acceptable. So we're taking action, not just waiting for this stuff to go forward. The The questions that I haven't had a chance to go dig down into the genetic impact. We know chums and pinks stray higher than other stocks.

So I don't want to get to a point where we're just a stray rate itself is the thing. We got to have enough information in front of us that it's a stray rate from a hatchery stock that's causing— and is it actually causing an impact, you know, generationally on those salmon? That question I still think is being answered, and I haven't gotten a complete answer to that one yet, but I'm reluctant just to go, well, let's just take a random number, 15%, and apply that. I think we need to have some information as to what those stray rates are in those streams, and then the data that they're giving to us as to whether or not it has a genetic implication is how we're going to set that standard. Then the food competition one is a whole different issue.

So are we ready to take action? I think we are taking action. We've put the RPTs on alert that we're going to be looking at these issues and we're are going to be coming forward. In the meantime, I've put a moratorium on egg takes. I capped that until we get the science straightened out.

And you can see that that egg take graph was going up and up and up until just 6 or 7 years ago, it flattened out. So I've taken some actions until we get some of this science figured out. So when, I can't give you an exact date. But some of those things are happening now, and they're ongoing. Other things, like the genetic one, I would like to see the peer-reviewed science come back and figure out whether we're really there or not before taking an action that may or may not have a benefit.

Thanks, Commissioner. I don't want to belabor the issues right now because we got a lot of work to do. But, you know, I guess this, this could be more fodder for, you know, I don't know if it's a Hatchery Committee meeting or some iteration thereof at some other point in the relatively near future, because I think that, you know, for putting this much stock and this much energy and this much time and resources into this research project, I would like to see at some point, you know, each permit being reviewed by the elements that have been researched. And I don't expect that to occur all at once, but I think that having that outlined and how the department will, will do that work, I think would be very helpful just in terms of transparency.

Quickly, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Owen. Okay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So quickly, I want to get in— I'm looking at the hatchery research project, and Bill, you and I had a discussion last week and we discussed this a bit. One of the big things I want to look at is since the implementation of hatcheries, there's been a discussion on the issue of food competition between wild and hatchery fish in the marine in the marine waters. And what I'm not seeing is any analysis, or— and can you go into an explanation of what the department's research on this has been and why we're 30 years in and there hasn't been a study looking at this conclusively within the Pacific Northwest? They have— or they have them all over the Pacific Northwest but none up in Alaska.

And so I want to look at why this— why this hasn't been evaluated as closely as other as such as straying is being now? Because there's been a lot of study on that, but there hasn't been a— from outside the state, but I haven't seen enough within the state. And can you expand on that a little?

Through the Chair, Member Chamberlain. There have been some small studies done comparing between hatchery and wild chum in Southeast Alaska. There have been some studies on pink salmon in Prince William Sound and parts of the northern Gulf of Alaska. But trying to do something on a large enough scale that you can describe what's happening in the North Pacific or maybe even just a little bit smaller in say the eastern Bering Sea or in the Gulf of Alaska require large-scale efforts. One of those was the IYS, the International Year of the Salmon, which you received some presentations on a couple of years ago.

It was a large 5-nation multi-ship survey of the Gulf of Alaska during the winter. That's where we— those types of efforts are where you can collect enough information to make generalizations about what are individual species of salmon eating? How do those overlap among species? How many potential fish are out there? Where are they distributed?

All of that information then feeds into a better understanding of, say, potential competition in the ocean. And along those lines, the department and the state of Alaska have instituted what's known as the Salmon Ocean Ecology Program. Which is a series of surveys that look at juvenile salmon just like has been happening for years in northern Bering Sea and also happens in northern southeast Alaska. We are connecting those two ends of the salmon rearing zone with a survey in southern Bering Sea looking at Bristol Bay and Kuskokwim and then on the southern peninsula up to Cook Inlet. So looking at western Gulf of Alaska.

With these types of efforts over several years, we can then get a much more comprehensive look at the experience of Alaska's juvenile salmon in the ocean as well as a sense of how their food overlaps, what their condition factor is, how many there might be in the ocean. And with that kind of information, we are much better situated to address these questions of competition. Thank you. And so if we were to look at a timeline to when we can realistically expect an answer, a well-founded and researched answer, what would— how long would I— would the public be expecting to get there? If, you know, from now, what's a realistic timeline to when that question gets answered within the state of Alaska.

Again, through the chair, some of this work is already actually being published. There are some recent publications in Eastern Bering Sea that have come from long years of study with the Northern Bering Sea Juvenile Salmon Survey, and the Southern Bering Sea Salmon Survey is feeding into that. So what they've done in looking at plankton and different— well, nekton and else down in the food chain.

They've used information also on oceanography, temperatures, currents, et cetera.

And have begun to put together a trophic understanding of these waters, a food web understanding of these waters. For the western Gulf of Alaska, it's kind of an unstudied area. So I'm going to say we've already got the first year in. Second year is getting ready to go in the water. It could be—.

We could have some papers out from those first years. And this— hopefully this next year. But, you know, I think over the next 5 years we would be getting in installments, not waiting for a single large effort to complete, we'd be getting some publications out and an understanding and information for the public.

Commissioner? Yeah, that's a very interesting question, Chris. So how long is it going to take to understand food web ecology out in the ocean? I wish I could give you an answer. It's beyond my control, definitely, because I don't have a big ocean ship that— like the NOAA white ships that go out and do that kind of research, nor do I have the money to do that.

As Mr. Templin said, we have instituted an ocean marine science program to look kind of fundamentally at that nearshore area. We're finding out that juvenile salmon survival in that first The factors affecting juvenile salmon survival in that first couple months out at sea really affect how many are going to return back as adults into those rivers. That's starting to piece together questions. When you start talking about ocean competition, you've got to fundamentally decide what's competing against them. If you're worried about king salmon, is it pinks that are competing against them?

Is it chums? Or more likely, it's probably ocean releases of Chinook salmon from other jurisdictions that are maybe feeding killer whales and things that are out there. So you not only have to know the overlap of those species out in the ocean, you also have to understand the genetic composition. For instance, in the Bering Sea, we know from the genetic sampling it's not Southeast hatcheries that are showing up in the, in the Bering Sea that are competing in those early life stages with juvenile chum salmon. It's probably Russian and Asian-origin chum salmon.

So it's a very complex issue. Again, if I had evidence to suggest that our hatchery programs was directly competing and causing those chum and chook salmon declines, I'd take an action. But I just don't see that data yet. When am I going to have it. I'm not sure.

The other piece of it is that when, when I get briefed by my staff, the percentage of pink salmon, for instance, that's in the ocean from our hatchery program that's competing on a food web basis is less than 1% of the pink salmon biomass out in the ocean. So it's hard to, in my mind, to make a justification. We're going to take a significant hit on pink salmon production that's adding economic components when in fact, even if that was not in the ocean, we'd probably still be having some issues out there. So It's— I can't give you an answer, but I can just tell you we're looking at, we're thinking about it, but it's complex.

Mr. Owen. Thank you, Madam Chair. In regards to the questions that— the priority questions that were raised, I'm wondering why was the question not raised, is the hatchery program supporting the rehabilitation of the state's depleted and depressed salmon fishery stocks as it's intended in the legislature's intent from 1974? And if it's not being asked here, is anybody asking that question.

Commissioner? Okay, I'll take a shot at that first. We are asking that question, but we're asking that question in the context of how the world has done with rehabilitation of salmon stocks. For instance, in the Columbia River, there was a lot of stocking that went on with the goal of basically either protecting or rehabilitating salmon stocks. What it did is it kept harvest rates high on fisheries, and meanwhile you're having those weak stocks being exploited and having some incidental mortality as they were released.

So we certainly do not want to repeat that experience in Alaska that we, that we saw in the Columbia River. However, that said, there are going to be some instances in some systems where we may need to do rehabilitation, but we're going to do it very carefully under the genetics policy to make sure that we're putting that stock back in place and rehabilitating it. So Yeah, I— in the Yukon, we're going to have to be very careful because we certainly don't want to put a hatchery for king salmon halfway up that river, then have lower river stocks taking those stocks and then intercepting Yukon origin Chinook salmon in between there. So those programs need to be carefully thought out and designed before they're implemented. But there is a role for rehabilitation hatcheries in Alaska.

Okay. Thank you for the presentation. And I think we'll go ahead and pull lights up and get into committee work. Appreciate the slides, gentlemen.

Mr. Carpenter, turn it over to you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We get the lights turned on and set a few ground rules and make it clear to everyone how this committee is going to work. Excuse me. So we're going to take these 3 proposals up as a group. First thing I'm going to do is if the proponents of any one of these three proposals are in the room, I'm going to allow them to speak first.

The first three people, if they choose to do so.

But having said that, it's 4:00 and we have a lot to do today. There's probably about 90% of the people in the room have been up here at Committee of the Whole before. On this exact topic. So if you have an AC comment that has been published and recorded, you don't need to repeat that. Assume the board has read it.

Similarly, if there's an RC that the public has put in, you can reference it, but also assume that the public— the board has read it. And we're not going to read verbatim at that, at that podium over there. It's going to be new information and new information only. And I'm going to be strict about that because we're going to move through this as quickly as possible. While giving the public the ability to present what they think the board needs to hear.

So having said that, we're going to go ahead and introduce the 3 proposals. I'll have the department read those into the record, and then if the 3 proponents of either of these proposals want to get in line, I'm going to allow them to speak first, and then people that would like to speak after that, please get in line and we'll move this process along. So if the department would read the 3 proposals into the record. All right, Mr. Chair, Flip Prior, Aquaculture Section Chief, Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Proposal 170, 171, 172, 5AAC40, new regulation. Mr. Chair, thank you. Any of the 3 proponent proposed or authors of these proposals like to speak? Yes, sir.

Please state your name for the record and which proposal you are speaking to. Obviously you support it if you wrote it. Go ahead. You have to turn the mic on. There you go.

Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. My name is Mike Kramer. I formerly served on the Fairbanks AC, the submitter of 170. I understand we are going to address all three proposals. Now we're not going to take them one at a time.

I had wanted to address southeast issues, particularly Crawfish Inlet first, and then when 171 came up for Prince William Sound straying, I wanted to address specifically Prince William Sound straying, in particular straying from the AFK hatchery in the southwestern part of the sound. That's the biggest contributor to Cook Inlet straying. I'd like to start with some new information regarding some of the questions that were asked in the presentations made by Mr. Prior and Mr. Templin. I myself don't think that we're going to get an answer or the department's going to take any position at all on competition at sea in my lifetime.

There's just too many variables, too many reasons to kick the can down the road for that. And frankly, it's not going to satisfy this high burden of proof that some people would put on. Is there harm to wild fish from hatchery strays? When you're talking about competition. I'd like to focus on straying, and I hope the board understands that straying is an issue where there's not much reasonable scientific controversy over.

Straying is first identified by the department in a paper written by Brenner et al., department biologist, in 2012 based on straying studies done in '09, '10, and '11, where they found very large proportions of hatchery strays in the wild escapements. Brenner recognized that that confounds wild escapement goals and counting because they only count at weirs and aerial. They projected a 15% region-wide stray rate of hatchery pinks in Prince William Sound, and they said that confounds escapement goals because we're counting these fish as wild. Um, in 2012, the department says we're going to launch the AHRP. The initial timeline for the AHRP answering those three questions they were up on the board.

I believe they started out, you know, we're going to do this study in 2013, 2014, 2015. We're going to collect carcasses, check otoliths, do all this stuff, and we'll have reports, answers to these questions within a few years. That can has been kicked down the road many times. But importantly, in 2019, the AHRP published its first report on genetic fitness— or I'm sorry, impacts on relative reproductive success. And then in 2019, they recognized that hatchery strays Spawning with wild fish in Prince William Sound streams produced less than 50% returning offspring.

They republished those results with some additional information in 2010.

2022, And they recently just in January gave a presentation to a fisheries council— um, can't remember the name of it— where they reported the results of the second generation study, which you've seen in some of the RCs submitted by some other folks here, which showed that the second generation of hatchery strays, hybrids if you will, produce 16% less fish. So we know that hatchery strays, particularly in Prince William Sound, contribute to the decline of our wild fish genetics through introduction of inferior genes and crossbreeding, uh, introgression of hatchery genes into our wild stocks. And that's been occurring since the late '70s, and it's only been ramped up as you see the production ramped up. And, uh, I'll briefly touch on, on Crawfish Inlet, 'cause that was an issue I haven't heard much about at this meeting. Um, and yes, the department finally took some action, uh, the first time that they've ever said no to a— in my research, to a request by a PRP to increase production.

And actually, the first time they've ever reduced existing production. And that only came after the stock of concern for the entire outside area of Southeast was declared because they failed to meet wild escapements for 4 straight years and 8 out of the last 10. The department had to take action and the commissioner took action through that RC that you guys got last February 2025. And the commissioner said, well, how we do— how do we deal with this? Well, let's reduce their capacity for release at Crawfish Inlet by 25%.

You often hear the question, where does 25% come from? That's arbitrary. That's too big. Well, the department itself, when they finally recognized that we got a big problem in Crawfish Inlet because of this ill-advised remote release of 30 million chums in an area that previously only had wild streams, they had a huge problem, 99% stray rates. In some of the surveys that were done on West Crawfish Inlet, a wild stream, formerly an index stream.

They had to remove that as an index stream. West Crawfish Inlet is not going to have wild fish ever again based on the returns that came back in 2018. They projected 375,000 fish would come back to Crawfish Inlet in 2018. 3.5 Million came back and they flooded many nearby streams, wiping out the index stream in West Crawfish Inlet and causing that whole area to become a stock of concern because Once those hatchery fish swarmed the spawning beds of the wild streams in West Crawfish Inlet and some other nearby streams, they reduced the genetic integrity of those wild stocks. And, and we saw those in the returns from '21— I'm sorry, from 2020 to 2024, when the first generation of those hybrids did not come back.

Fish and Game has known about the straying problem and its impact on wild fish since a 2012 Brenner Brenner report. They knew about Prince William Sound strain and Cook Inlet since 2018 when Otis published his paper. And I'm only focused on ADF&G research here. I realize if I start invoking Ruggerone or other scientists from outside, there's going to be lots of controversy. All those guys don't know what they're talking about.

They're studying some other fish, and, and, uh, you know, we do our own biology up here. So look at the Brenner report, look at the Otis report. I submitted both of those, or at least abstracts of them, because of the 10-page limit, um, in our seas. But the department's known about the problems in Prince William Sound and, to a lesser extent, Southeast for many, many years. They've done nothing about it until they were forced to take action just last year by reducing one remote release site by 25%.

Proposal 170 requests a statewide 25% reduction. I understand that has no chance of getting 4 votes out of this board. 171, However, focuses on Prince William Sound—25% reduction in Prince William Sound. That's the place where we know we have the most science from the department itself showing widespread harm to wild stocks over decades, multiple generations, because pinks are 2-year fish. And we're still counting wild escapement, and these escapement goals were set after the hatcheries ramped up production.

So I submit that the escapement counts were originally built on a large number of hatchery strays. Focusing on the AFK hatchery, the Armand Koenig Hatchery—. Mike, you're gonna have to start wrapping this up. Well, I think I'm still giving new information. I understand time's limited.

I'd be happy to answer any questions. Let me give one minute on Arnab Ghone, because I would suggest if there's not 4 votes to do a Prince William Sound reduction by 25%, you guys have authority too. I'd like to address that. I know there's been some confusion interjected by, by some whether you have the authority to do that. To me, it's absolutely clear from the AG's opinions that you've been receiving since '97.

It was reiterated in 2000. The department even produces a flowchart, which is in RC 61, you know, that specifically shows, okay, the commissioner grants the original permit under 1610.400. 1610.430 Is fish transport permits and annual management plans. And the flowchart shows that Board of Fisheries on this side has the ability to amend those fish transport permits and the egg takes. The department admits this.

It's hard to believe reading their white paper that they're questioning whether the board has authority. The only thing the board doesn't have authority to do is rescind or revoke, which means take them down to zero. 25% Is not taking them down to zero. I think the AG would agree with me on that. Arnold— Armand Koenig used to have production of 162 million pinks.

They petitioned the department to raise that to 217. The department said, "No, that's too much." But we'll give you 190 was the ultimate thing they agreed on in 2017. I've submitted minutes from 2010 where they first asked to increase that to 190, and the department fought back hard. They said, no, we got widespread straying. We're worried about Cook Inlet impacts from the Koenig Hatchery.

We're not going to increase your egg take authority. No one can explain what happened in those ensuing 7 years. It certainly wasn't that straying was reduced or that there was less concerns raised. About the impact on wild stocks in those 7 years. The other department just rubber-stamped that request, boosted Arnold Koenig up to $190 million.

I would suggest that you maybe reduce Arnold Koenig back. If you do one thing at this meeting, take them back to their 2010 level of $162 million pinks. Okay, Mike, I think we're going to let the next— well, first of all, we'll see if anybody has any questions for you. Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Mike.

You and I sat in on an RPT meeting earlier this year. Can you tell a little more about what happened happened in there? It wasn't this welcoming public process that you've heard about. I was there, Nancy Hillstrand was there, and everyone else was, was hatchery folks, commercial harvesters, and department staff. The reason why I attended that meeting is because the commissioner had ordered that RPT to do a complete review of all remote release sites in Southeast and to report to him as to what, what they found about these other remote release sites, because we knew about the debacle at Crawfish Inlet.

You know, he said, what's going on at these other remote release sites we've been approving blindly for the last 20 years? Not one of the RP— not one of the PMPs produced a report on the remote release sites pursuant to the commissioner's order. And I think the department would agree with me on that. The first meeting they showed up and said, we don't want to talk about straying, we don't want to talk about remote release sites. And Flip Prior said, well, you guys have to.

The committee— or maybe I said it and Flip Prior agreed. Please do not refer to people by their name. I'm sorry. Mr. Prior said that, you know, the department would write that part of the report.

And it did. So they came back for a second meeting. The PMPs had nothing to do with the report on remote releases. In fact, so the department wrote about 2 pages that shows up in the minutes. Of the joint RPT meeting for Southeast from early 2026, because the hatcheries wanted to— none of the hatchery folks at that RPT wanted any discussion about straying or the commissioner's order to review remote release sites.

They wanted to talk about economics. All right, thank you. And we were told we didn't know what we were talking about. All right, appreciate it. We're going to go ahead and go to Virgil next.

So Virgil, he basically gave the summation of the Fairbanks AC. There's only one Fairbanks EC meeting, so new information if you would, if you want to like talk about your proposal. I'm here representing the Fairbanks AC. In 1999, the board met in Valdez. And if you look at RC 12, that's a hatchery committee report.

From October of 1999, written by Dan Coffey, who was chair of the board, and then I was on it, and a person from Southeast. Anyway, if you look at page 4 on there, it says— they're talking about the carrying capacity of the North Pacific, and it says that NOAA is doing a study on that, and the results will be out in 7 years. That would have been 2006. Well, I haven't seen anything about that, the carrying capacity. But also at that meeting, We were at that time, we had been formed in 1997 to address Elfin Cove's proposal that had been deferred.

Excuse me. And so we were taking, the committee was taking testimony from the public at all our meetings for a period of 3 or 4 years. Starting in '97, because we weren't going to address it until 2001. Anyway, another employee of the department, a biologist, he gave me a report, and the report was 5 streams.

Streams in Prince William Sound that were supposed to be wild fish streams. And they had direct— they were taking the otoliths in them and examining them to see how many hatchery— what the percent of hatchery strays were in those 5 index streams. The total, the average for all 5 of them was 67% direct hatchery strays of pink salmon. In those streams. That was 1999.

Of course, that wasn't presented to the board, but that was there, given to me. And so this issue's been going on since 1997. That's when the first proposal was published to restrict the hatchery proposals to the original intent of rehabilitation of depressed wild stocks. The can has just been kicked down the road ever since then. That is now 29 years I've been involved in this issue, and as I said earlier, it's just common sense and the board needs to take action.

Thank you. Thank you, Virgil. Any questions? Thank you for your testimony. Mr. Delaney.

Mr. Chairman, Kevin Delaney, a representative of Kenai River Sport Fishing Association. We are the Authors of Proposal 171 and 172. 171 Addresses straying of pink salmon from Prince William Sound hatchery origin into Lower Cook Inlet and points out that those stray rates are in excess of established policy. Proposal number 172 asks for a moratorium on hatchery releases until The research that has been discussed here provides us with a clear picture of an appropriate path forward. I'm going to end by just saying there's two things I heard from the folks at the table here today that I would like to emphasize.

One is there is a level of impatience, and I think you can feel that. And number two, we're very appreciative of a couple of actions that the department through the commissioner has taken. The one down in Crawfish Inlet and the other to establish a commissioner policy for a moratorium that was pointed out here. They're both good, constructive items. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Any questions? Okay, so we've heard from the Authors, if anyone else would like to contribute to this conversation, please keep it to new information. And Mr. Reifenstuhl. Thank you.

My name is Steve Reifenstuhl. First, I would like to say that there are 50 or 60 people that want to say something, have new information. We talked about that. We have pared that down to less than 10 to be respectful of the time I know we're getting to the 11th hour.

But I have to start with— I was one of the originators of the research program started in 2012. I mean, we have timelines. On the computer disk of Fishing Game, it was expected to take 12 years when you talk about 2 chum salmon life cycles. So it was fully expected to take that long, and then there's compilation of data. Analysis and publication.

Okay, so I have about 10 points here. What I did was I took notes during the testimony and questions that the board had, and I wanted to answer some of those. And I may leave some of these out so it doesn't go on too long. But I think the chair asked a question about tipping point, and I think I know what the context was. But I think that most often we hear about tipping point in terms of climate change.

There's going to be a tipping point. I don't think that's what you were asking in particular. But we have reached the tipping point on the Yukon River with lethal temperatures driven by climate change. That is an example where we have reached a tipping point. I do believe we're thinking more about when is enough enough, or Are we reaching ocean carrying capacity?

Perhaps. And there have been other questions about that this afternoon. I would again say many of the questions that were asked of the presenter up here, there's a 25-well-researched page document on high ocean carrying capacity that answers a lot of those questions. And I would agree with What the commissioner said and what the speaker of the proposal said, we're not going to get to the ocean carrying capacity, it's too dynamic, it's too large. But there have been many papers that try to take a piece of the Bering Sea or a piece of the North Pacific and have addressed it to some extent.

But it's almost an impossible thing, it's so big. And I think the most important point is that The total nekton when compared to all salmon in the ocean is less than 1%. Okay, so I think another tipping point that has occurred because of climate-driven temperature increases, 2 to 3 times the number of marine mammals Salmon sharks have really increased. That's somewhat climate-driven, but those predators have an effect particularly on king salmon. We know that they go after the largest king salmon, and that's one of the reasons, not the only reason, that we're not seeing many age 5 and age 6 Chinook.

Mr. Woods asked about where does the buck stop. And I think this was, you know, in context of who is the ultimate arbitrator. So I think there's two answers to this. One is that it's the commissioner. He has taken action.

He has created moratorium. We have agreed to that. But I think another one that has been mentioned here and some of the data was presented earlier is that the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission looks at this on an annual basis. They— all 5 countries get together at a meeting every year. There are panel members that are sitting behind me and over to the side that participate in that.

And they look at the total number of fry from all programs put into the ocean. And they do— I've written about this. It's in my PC 13. About some of the conclusions they've come to. I'm not going to go into those, but it is there.

There was a question about outreach.

So this—. In today's age, it seems maybe strange, but NSRA and other organizations publish a newspaper, actually in old-fashioned newsprint. And that is available to anybody that wants it, can sign up and they'll get it for the rest of their life unless they tell them to stop. But I think more importantly, I've been involved with the American Fisheries Society for 40 years. And I think it's appropriate that the science community within aquaculture goes to those meetings and makes presentations and has discussions and we I mean, I've run a number of sessions so that we can discuss these issues.

All these questions that have been raised today have been discussed or have had separate panels to discuss them in the light of current science and new research.

There was a question from Mr. Curtis about— "Are there any streams with healthy salmon?" Now, I believe the context was any streams with king salmon. I think that's what he meant. So I'm gonna address that. So the closest one to us here right now would be Copper River, especially in context of what we're talking about, pink salmon. So that has 5 species in it.

There's ups and downs like every salmon stream, but the king salmon is not a stock of concern there. And there are healthy populations, and that of course is right there in Prince William Sound with the largest pink salmon program in Alaska.

But there are other king salmon programs— I'm sorry, not programs, but healthy stocks. So for example, in Southeast, the Eunuch, Chickamin, and Chilkat were taken off stock of concern. And of course we have big chum salmon programs but no pink salmon programs, or virtually no pink salmon programs in Southeast.

So a couple other big rivers there, Blossom and Keta, are also healthy, not on stock of concern, and have healthy have healthy species in there as well besides king salmon.

There was also a question, I think the—.

Thought was that pink salmon are going into streams perhaps and competing with Chinook salmon. And I might be wrong about that interpretation, but that's really not what happens because they, you know, they go to different areas of the stream for spawning. They're not eating the same food. And of course, pink salmon are going in and dying and have to go to shallower water, smaller riffles, where king salmon are in much deeper water. I mean, there's not really a competition at that stage.

The sad thing happened this past year is that Little Port Walter, which is a part of the NOAA fisheries system, they closed down Little Port Walter, which has been in operation since the 1940s, did cutting-edge work with Chinook salmon. And NCRW stepped up to carry a part of that program forward doing experiments with Keta River. Last thing I have, the 2% figure. So I wanted to take that on in terms of a stray rate. That was put into the comprehensive salmon plan, I believe, in Southeast Alaska and also in Prince William Sound.

That came from— in the context of coho. The important thing is those are plans, they're not policy. It's not a policy document, it's a plan. And I described in my testimony, and it's been submitted, about the stray rates for the different species. So I won't cover those again, but that's where the 2% stray rate came.

And if it's going to go into policy, for example, if you wanted to put it into the genetics policy or transport policy, some other policy, then I think you would need to look at it species by species. And now In today's age, there's been enough research. There's a fairly good idea of what those stray rates are. I don't think it's perfect, but that's where we're at. Thank you.

All right, Steve, thank you. Ms. Carlsmann-Dordt has a question, then Ms. Erwin. Yeah, Steve, obviously you are a very good note-taker. Thank you for your comments. A couple of things that you said kind of caught my attention because I think they may have been related to things that I have said or concerns that I've raised with respect to the pink impacts on Chinook.

It wasn't Chinook so much that I was concerned about, it was coho. And the reason being is that they're coming in after the pinks. And in the events that, you know, those— the cost recovery activities aren't enough to get the amount of— round up the amount and catch the amount of pinks, what are those impacts on cohos that are coming in afterwards to clogged, choked anoxic environments potentially because of all of the pink salmon presence. That was one of the issues that I have been concerned about. And with respect to the tipping point, that was me.

And I think you did a really good job of trying to guess what I was getting at. But as I have thought about it, really what I was trying to get at was what is the— it came I think after the 40% economic impact number that was given I think by a PISWAC or a fisherman or something, I can't remember exactly, but the tipping point that I was kind of mulling was the tipping point where the biological tenets that we use in policies and otherwise, in conscience, are compromised by the economic pressures and desires and demands. And that is much more nebulous, I think, and whatnot, but that's the tipping point that I was referencing in that comment. So I don't know, I'm not necessarily looking for a response, but I'm happy to give you a shot at one. I mean, I'm happy to try to answer, but we're time-crunched.

I'd like to take on the coho. I mean, the coho come in well after the pink salmon. They hold in the stream and pull deep pools, and then when there's a freshet, they shoot upstream. And so I— if anything happens, the coho would be spawning over top of the pink salmon rather than vice versa. And— but coho tend to go up to the very top end of the systems in the small rivulets.

I mean, they couldn't even swim up a lot of those if it's not raining hard and have high water. So I don't really think there's an impact that way. And if you want me to go for the economic one, I will. I don't want to— I'm not going to shy from it. But if you want me to sit down I will.

Okay, thank you. One more question, Steve. Yeah, thanks, Steve, so much. I think that I heard you— correct me if I'm wrong— I think I heard you say you agreed with the commissioner's action on a moratorium. I don't know if you were referring to the West Crawfish reduction or another scenario, but I thought I heard you say you agreed with one of the commissioner's actions to edit the egg take, and I wanted to know why.

I was saying that in reference to the permitted capacity that you saw on the grass. And why do I agree with it? Because he's the boss.

Great answer. Thank you. All right, Steve. And if you want more, I mean, I am one of three people that started this Alaska Hatchery Research Program. It was not the department that pushed it.

It was 3 people in the PNP that have been working here on these issues and on the program for 50 years now. And we care about wild salmon, and we care about whether we have a deleterious effect or not. And it was time to take a look at it. The department agreed and the commissioner at the time agreed and we had to raise effectively $25 million over the course of that 12-year study to get this work done. We take what we do seriously and I'm proud of that.

Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Mr. Muller.

Oh, Mr. Wood. Okay, quick question. Is the work—. Have different countries kind of peer-reviewed each other's process in terms of the hatcheries throughout the Pacific Rim, like Japan, Korea, Russia? Probably don't talk to them much.

Not anymore. So they're peer-reviewed in the sense that the Russians and the Japanese, Kariyama, and a couple Russian researchers that are involved in the anonymous commission. They publish lots of work. I mean, they're scientists that are publishing many papers a year. And so in that sense, there has been peer review.

I'd say that the Japanese enhancement program for CHUM is heavily, heavily researched. They have been over here. They visited the department. They visited us in different programs, and there's been robust discussions about what we do and the effect. And I'd say I don't think there's anybody better at it than the Japanese, but you've got a person sitting right there who's actually talked to them and could inform you better.

Thank you. All right. Thank you, Steve. Mr. Muller? If anyone else wants to talk after Mr. Muller, please get in line.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll keep it real brief. John Mueller, Juneau, Alaska. I'm a 20-year chum salmon hatchery fisherman. Well, at least I was.

My son's taken over now. My comments are related to Proposal 172, and I would reference RC-172, which is the Governor's Administrative Order 360. That's a Administrative order, just the title of it is to reduce regulation and grow economic base is part of the purpose behind it. And I would just suggest that from my perspective, Proposal 172 seems to be contrary to the governor's administrative order. I would also like to comment on the ocean carrying capacity discussion that's going on and the the potential relationship between that and hatchery release.

It seems to me at least that understanding that is extremely complex and it's pretty obvious we know very little about it. And I just want to make a point on the SSC, the Scientific Committee for the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council.

You know, they, when they go through their stock assessments and whatnot, In the pollock fishery, they are telling council members that they can set TACs and remove over 1 million metric tons of pollock, of which we are not setting in the TAC because of the 2 million metric ton cap that is, that is in regulation under the Magnuson-Stevens Act. So I would just reiterate the fact that the carrying capacity of the ocean is complex. We know very little about it, but I also think that You know, we need to take into account there's other species that are not managed under this particular body that may be also.

Impacting that carrying capacity in the ocean. So I thank you for the opportunity here. I'm open for any questions. Thank you. Any questions?

Thank you, sir. Next, state your name for the record, please.

Tom Miners here. And just sort of following Steve's lead, I'm going to see if I can answer a question that came up earlier from a board member. And the question was, are we looking into the question as to whether or not the hatcheries have rehabilitated rehabilitated fisheries? And I would say that the answer to that question, whether or not the fisheries have been rehabilitated through the hatchery program, is evident by the people that are in this room that fish, that really care about these programs, and that have helped create, you know, viable sustainable fisheries for us. And the next question is to— are we dependent on the hatchery input of these fisheries?

It's like, well, after 50 years of having that, maybe we've come to expect it as an addition to our wild stocks. I mean, we fish wild stocks and hatcheries as well, and 50 years in, Have we come to expect that it's going to be there? Yeah, it's part of our business plan. It's part of how we operate. So thank you.

Thank you. We have a question from Ms. Carlson. So I think I made the comment and the question was not whether or not it's rehabilitated the fisheries, it's whether or not the stocks that had been overfished had been rehabilitated. Oh, I'm sorry. I understood that the actual intent— or that the actual language stopped at the word fisheries and doesn't have stocks.

I haven't seen stocks in the presentation earlier. Also stopped at fisheries. So I think it's, I think it's related to the underlying statute. Okay, so I guess maybe I'd push back on that and say that addition— well, additionally, we call this program enhancement, right? We don't call this program rehabilitation.

We've talked about how rehabilitation is something that the hatchery programs can offer, but it's fisheries enhancement. So we are trying to make the fisheries better, and we've, we've built these programs to try and make fishing more viable. If you talk to the guys who were around in the '70s and you look at the graph as far as how much fish was available at the time, both wild stock and hatchery. We're currently at a time when we have both more wild stock fish and more hatchery fish that we can catch. And so we have enhanced those fisheries.

No, I appreciate that. And I can't keep up with the semantics of it because for a long time I was told that enhancement was a no-no word. So I'm— I don't— I don't know. But my point is, is that, you know, I thought these were intended to rehabilitate overfished stocks. And that is exactly to my point.

My question is like, you know, at what point was the statute intended to rehabilitate stocks or was it to create economic dependency? And I think we have a bit of both, and that was what my tipping point question was about. I would say economic development, maybe not dependency, but I think there are people in line that can speak to the actual intent that were there at the time it was started. So thank you. I'm not sure that intent is, you know, we might be past intent at this point, you know, after as many years and decades as you say.

So I guess it's the, what lens are we looking at it through? Does that mean the initial language doesn't matter? No, I don't think so. But I mean, the language is what guides us, but intent is pretty open. Intent isn't always reflected in language.

And I think that we've seen that. So it's not a semantic argument at this point. We got a lot to do and a lot of people standing behind you. Thanks.

Yes, sir. And remind everybody, new information, something we have not heard since we've been here. Hello, my name is Chris Rozier. I've been a fisherman in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound most of my life. I want to point out that hatcheries have been used since the early 1900s up and down the West Coast and Alaska for enhancement of fish and keeping fish resources strong.

I've been asking for 45 years to the Department of Fish and Game, where do our salmon go in the winter? And this is the first year that I actually got an answer. The commission said we've got some ocean studies going on out there trying to figure out where our fish are going, whether they're intermixing or not. Nobody really knows those questions. And, you know, to point out a good illustration was the Columbia River.

You know, they had their hatcheries, and the wild king salmon were running up. They had the gates closed on the fish ladders in the '90s. Well, nobody let the king salmon go by. Those king salmon turned around and went downstream and went upstream into many streams down below that never had a king run in them and spawned around those areas, and they maintain those species. They finally got the gates open and they're getting healthier runs of fish stocks down south due to hatchery enhancement.

Washington State, another prime example. Here in Alaska, uh, we seem to have a new buzzword, straying. Alright, well, natural fish runs have been known to stray for years, whether it be storms, lack of water so they can't get into the creeks, uh, water issues. Uh, fish will go into other streams, natural fish. Now I'm not talking hatchery fish here.

So what I'm saying with that is that I like the science, and I think Fish and Game should go slowly in their decisions upon important issues like this and make scientific studies and complete those studies to figure out if what they're doing is on the right course. We can't just say, oh my gosh, some fish straight into Cook Inlet streams, and they were pinks from Prince William Sound. Well, if those fish had been cohos or sockeyes, we wouldn't be talking about it. You know, I like the science. Let's stick with the science and do things slowly so we don't step ahead of ourselves and kill the fish runs.

All right. The 25% reduction in hatcheries is ridiculous. We need to just keep it going until we have science to promote that reduction. Thank you, sir. We have 3 proposals, one about 25% reduction, one about a straying rate, and one about moratorium.

So please keep your questions— or excuse me, statements projected in those directions. Taylor Scott, answer employee. I'll keep this very brief. To piggyback on what Steve was saying about enhancement— or excuse me, about outreach— we've submitted an RC 173, which gives a pretty comprehensive list of the various outreach programs that us as operators are doing. The very, very short version is, you know, DIPAC and— and Sitka Sound Science Center operate aquariums and visitor center hosting thousands of visitors, cruise ship visitors every year.

We host field trip tours for K-12 students, Salmon in the Classroom programs, and provide local fisheries for village and native corporations. And You know, in addition, one more thing. We do host student interns and present to college-level vocational fisheries programs, and we do serve on their academic advisory committees to support the curriculum development for aquaculture programs. So while we, we do a lot, you know, we haven't done a good job showing it, but we, we are actively working to expand that presence. Thank you.

Thank you, Taylor.

Go ahead and state your name, please. Hi, Jackie Foss. I oppose all 3 proposals. I am an RPT member. I'm a new RPT member.

I've been on there for a year and it's been a busy year from what I understand from other RPT members where we were tasked by the commissioner to complete a report. And this RPT includes both operators, fishermen like me, and department staff. And I want to say that the PNP hatcheries showed up to provide information in this report, plus we collaboratively worked on a document in a December meeting and with a follow-up subsequent meeting. And I don't know that everyone gets everything they want out of a report, but considering that this was the first of such report ever requested of an RPT in the state, I think we put forth a good effort. My next meeting, we're going to review our first hatchery production increase, and it's for coho.

And I don't take this lightly. I know that we're not the decision-making body, but to be a recommending body is very, very significant. And for me, always, even though coho is something that are commercially important to me and would impact my bottom line if we had more production, what always, always comes first are existing wild stocks and the habitat where we're putting any of these, any of these releases or increasing. So I just wanted to set the record that The people who are also on these RPTs are invested and care. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Yes, ma'am.

Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. My name is Amy Jo McCauley Minors, and I just wanted to add a brief little bit of historical context, tagging on to Flip's present— or the presentation that was delivered earlier. Back in the '70s, there were town hall meetings held. Specifically, I know my dad participated in the one in Juneau. The '70s, a time of horrible economic collapse in our, our small communities especially.

And they were brainstorming sessions on what are all the possible ways we can— what can we do to diversify our economy? How can we support livelihoods of the people who live here? And one of the committees that came out of that was for DIPAC was the fish hatcheries. And it was about preserving both preserving the wild stocks and enhancing.

Fisheries to build, to support that diversity within the economy. And while the video clips of those town halls are a little dry to watch, they're also really heartwarming to watch all those people in the community come together to address a problem and to work for a solution of it. It wasn't meant as a single bullet to correct, but it was about enhancing the fisheries and diversifying that economy. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much.

Forest. Forest Jenkins, and I'll be speaking on behalf of CDFU and many other fellow fishermen. One thing we haven't heard yet today is a summary of stakeholder feedback submitted at this meeting. Of the 510 public comments submitted at this board, more than 350 directly address hatchery proposals 170, 171, and 172. Volume and consistency stands out across sectors, with more than 90% of those comments opposing.

15 Municipalities, 21 seafood businesses, 32 industry organizations, 10 tribal entities, all opposed. And then there are several hundred independent harvesters that also opposed. Multiple scientific and technical submissions are aligned in opposition. And articulate the extensive ongoing research aimed at refining and improving hatchery systems. The record reflects overwhelming stakeholder opposition and extensive scientific and technical input defending Alaska's science-based adaptive hatchery management.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, sir.

Hi, good evening. My name is Ben Adams and I'm with NSERRA and, uh, Out of respect for time, I am going to try and keep this brief, but I do have two pieces of information I'd like to bring. I was the one that presented the economic exercise that, you know, brought up a lot of questioning and that 46% figure. I want to acknowledge that Mr. Chamberlain had a line of questioning and that the kind of at the core of which was, can this volume of fishing, this economic engine, somehow mask, you know, potential overharvest of the wild stocks. I believe that was the intention of his questioning, and I can say two things.

One, you know, I presented the economic argument because it's important, because it's part of what we do, also on behalf of a board member of ours that could not be here. I would also— I would like to now give a little bit of context in terms of the actual composition of the harvest in Southeast Alaska, of which the majority, 65%, estimated— and this is all information that the department has generated and made available— is wild pink salmon. Um, pink salmon support the fisheries in Southeast Alaska still, and chum salmon pale in comparison in terms of volume. So it's opposite of what the economic figures are, given the, the higher value for the chum salmon. Um, I could go into detail on the differences between the wild stocks.

I think I'll save that for sake of time, but I want to make clear that there is a healthy population of wild pink salmon supporting the fishing in Southeast Alaska. And for context to this, chum salmon hatchery production is available as an alternative for the fishermen who would otherwise be exclusively targeting those for the pink salmon— sorry, the persane fishery. And the other thing I'd like to highlight is it was brought up, a lot of the research that we do in our department and as organizations. But what probably didn't come across clearly enough was the work we put in to otolith sample the chum salmon throughout all of Southeast Alaska. We put technicians in place and biologists across the region sampling roughly 30,000 fish a year, chum salmon, with otoliths so we can determine their origin.

Every migration corridor, test fishery, terminal harvest area, interception fishery, mixed stock fishery. There's a tremendous amount of resources that the PMPs are putting into this. And it is the only real body of science data that we can use in determining the migration, the composition of these chum salmon returns in the wild and the hatchery components in each district. Again, that's something that is funded by the chum salmon cost recovery, and I believe it's something very valuable because the department, you know, effectively does not collect data on chum salmon in Southeast Alaska. It's very pink salmon-centric.

So I hope that helps some context. I'm happy to answer extra questions on that, but out of respect for time, I won't go into any additional detail. Yep, thank you very much, sir. All right, Justin, bring it home.

For the record, my name is Justin Peeler. I'm an NTRA board president, RPT member of Southeast, and a commercial fisherman. I wanted to answer a question. To start off, I have two things, but I wanted to start with asking you guys a question. Do you guys want to know more about our permitting process and the review process?

I got three bullet points on it. I don't want to waste your time, Tom. Is it in any of the publicized or recorded information? Um, I think it, it's in a lot of them, but I, I felt like it was missed by— in, in, uh, okay, you have 2 minutes to touch on. Oh, I'll, yeah, okay.

So first, when a hatchery is, is, uh, started, it's a basic— it's a BMP, basic management plan. So that's in that plan is facilities operations during the initial years, permitting and outlining. Then there's an annual management plan, or AMPs. Those are reviewed every year. Those are reviewed by ADF&G management biologists, ADF&G permitting department, pathology, and genetics.

So every year that gets opened up and reviewed. Then we have our fish transport permits. Those permits are egg take numbers, transportation, release numbers, permitted hatchery production. Typical FTPs are 5 years. The commissioner and all those that I listed before look at those.

In that, I would say that, you know, such, there can be programs attached to those, such as the one we did for Coho at Salmon Lake, in which we did a 20-year project and we basically, we operated a weir, Nsra operation, rated a weir on Coho strain. So that's what I had on the permits. I just wanted to make sure that you guys knew they were reviewed. I appreciate that very much, Justin. Thank you.

I have one more statement. Okay. It's clear to me listening the last few days that the way the Board of Fish receives information about our hatchery programs is broken. It's also clear to me over the courses of the years that I've been involved that the Hatchery Committee process doesn't work either. It's not getting you guys the right information.

The PMPs were started not to make problems, but to solve them. We want to solve the problems of salmon in Alaska and make them healthy for all users.

Thank you, sir. Thank you. Okay, Nancy, I guess it's appropriate that you're last on this subject, so go ahead. Thanks so much. And I agree with him.

We— there's the way you get your information. It's just all piecemeal and we need to somehow be able to get it together. The one little piecemeal too is when the presentation was given, if you look on page 3, it stops after the reason of the hatcheries was rehabilitation of the state's depleted and depressed salmon fishery. And so Are pinks depressed and depleted? You know, that's the question we might want to ask.

But it goes on and it should have been there for you because it's so important for how I feel. And it says hatchery programs shall be operated without adversely affecting natural stocks of fish. And that doesn't mean salmon. That means all fish. And then, and under a policy of management that allows reasonable segregation of returning hatchery-reared salmon from naturally occurring stocks.

I just wanted to add that because I was surprised that they didn't put that in there. It's really important you see that because it's such an important part of the intent. And so we've gone way beyond the point of rehabilitating depressed stocks in the lines of the, the pinks and chums. You also, I hear you say, the burden of conservation shall be shared by all constituents or something like that. I've heard that all through this.

And the reason I'm here is for 171 because I'm down in Ketchumac Bay and I, I have an RC 171 for you. I showed when the hatcheries started to Release fish, and we— and I have a big one here because I did this years ago, but it shows when the— what the crab, shrimp, miscellaneous shellfish, clams— I mean, we had an amazing fishery, many fisheries, very diverse down there, with millions. I mean, we had 6 million pounds of shrimp we were taking in. Did we overharvest them? Absolutely.

But then we released While we still had those, we started releasing hatchery fish on top of that. Down went the shrimp and the crab. Of course, we had— you know, there's other things involved in this. I'm not just blaming hatcheries, but then that suppresses the recovery of the shellfish. So what do we do to get the shellfish back?

I mean, we're so busy going, oh my gosh, the salmon. But we're— we've become so salmon-centric in the state of Alaska and Ketchumak Bay and Lower Cook Inlet.

In that area, it's a, it's a shellfish habitat. And the habitat's not just rocks and stones, it's also the biological attributes, which means the zooplankton. So when we have straying fish coming in from Prince William Sound, it adds to this problem of us not being able to recover our fisheries. And I think it'd be really important we start looking at that because we have the National Estuarine Reserve, and I've been working with Mr. Wood on this Unfortunately for you, but you know, because we have many different scientific organizations down there that could get the information, work with Fish and Game, and start rehabilitating our stocks, and not with hatcheries, but by looking at the habitat, stopping things that are causing the problems in there, and try to rebuild it. An $18 a pound spot shrimp, that's how much I'm paying for them right now.

And you know, it's just— anyway, I've put in RC's I don't even have RC 102, which is the one, the oldest one there. And it shows the actual critical habitat area and it shows exactly where the shrimp spawning concentrations are. The Dungeness crab reproductive concentration areas are, you know, I mean, this is right smack dab in the middle of where we're— all these hatchery fish are going. So I'm just— I think we need to reprioritize what is an important, high-valued fish to have for the people of the state of Alaska. So, all right.

Thank you so very much. Appreciate it. Okay. I'd like to thank the public. Oh, Mr. Swenson has a question.

Nancy, excuse me. Go ahead.

Yeah, it wasn't for you. It was for someone else. Excuse me. Oh, was it? Okay, great.

Thanks. Okay, I'd like to thank the public for its expediency, and I'd also like to thank everybody for being respectful to each other. And I guess before I turn the chair back over, I would just like to tell Mr. Wood that that is how you run a committee. And I will turn the chairman back over to you. Gauntlet's been thrown, man.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. I don't think I need to compliment you on running your committee. I think you did. Anyways, appreciate everybody's input in that.

And we're going to go right into Committee of the Whole Group 3, which is subsistence and sport fisheries and gear. There are 10 proposals in this committee, and the chair is Ms. Erwin, and I will hand it over to her to run Committee of the whole Group 3. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much, everyone. Before we begin, I just wanted to say we're going to be batching a couple of these proposals due to the similarity in nature.

So please make sure you're paying attention to those, those proposals that are grouped. Again, for brevity, please just come up, state your name for the record, and let the board know what your new information is, and we'll get going here. So staff, whenever you're ready, proposal 162, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Colton Lipka, regional management coordinator for Cook Inlet. Proposal 162, 5AAC01.010, methods, means, and general provisions. Madam Chair. Thank you.

Does anyone wish to speak to this proposal? Proposal 162. Wow, did I clear out the room? Okay, if there is no comments on 162, we'll move on to, uh, we're going to batch Proposal 176 and 177. Madam Chair, for the record, Patrick Fowler, Cook Inlet Management Coordinator for the Division of Sport Fish.

Proposals 176 and 177 both allow anglers fishing from the same vessel to pool bag and possession limits. Madam Chair, thank you. Does anyone wish to speak to Proposal 176 or 177?

Please go ahead and come forward and state your name for the record.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Forrest Braden testifying for Southeast Alaska Guides Organization, or SEGO. We support the general intent of proposals 176, and I think there was a withdrawal of 77 and then 178. And my information, new information applies to both of those. We ask also that you take the opportunity, that the board takes the opportunity to reference RC-165, which posted today.

And just in brief, you can read it, but just in brief, it switches the ownership trigger for a fish being kept or retained for a bag limit from the hooking events to fighting and landing. And as far as new information goes, we found out that law enforcement had issues with the idea of a pooled bag limit for a boat limit. This RC was an approach to trying to solve that problem and still keep a clear definition and trail of legality to an angler, to an individual angler. We'll also note that most of the definitions across the nation do not refer— not exclusively, but most do not refer to the hooking event as the ownership trigger. For fish in a bag limit.

Mostly it talks about retention, possession, and landing, and that includes no definition for both halibut and other species.

So we have heard in public testimony that one of the intents of these group of proposals is that we would reduce release mortality. That is certainly a strong core principle for SEGO. But there's another part of this that we'd like to introduce and maybe reinforce if it hasn't come up to the board's attention, and that's that this is a recreational fishery and there's a quality element to it, an experiential element to it. And there are a lot of instances that the board may not be aware of where it's very difficult to avoid infractions of law based on the hooking of a fish. And I would like to give some examples, if I might.

One would be we have— we're fishing for halibut a lot on marine waters. Of course, this could apply statewide to both fresh and salt, and we are sensitive to different natures between the two. But oftentimes, if you have halibut rods in a rod holder, which is very typical, you have anglers that literally cannot get the rod out of the holder. When you get a big fish bite, and that would be an instance where a guide or deckhand would help get the rod out of the holder. Technically, that would probably qualify as the hooking event and be illegal in terms of law enforcement if there was undercover on the boat.

There are also instances— many times boats will use downriggers for trolling, and there are instances where fish bite and they go underneath the boat and you got to get the rod around the motors, etc. Anyway, there's— people need assistance. Two-thirds of the fish that are caught in the marine waters, whether it's local residents fishing with a guide or with their own boats, or two-thirds— sorry, that's about a third of the recreational harvest, marine harvest. Two-thirds are people that come up from the lower 48 and they simply aren't avid fishermen. They simply don't know what's going on and they need a lot of assistance.

We have guides, we have people that are getting into trouble this way, and it's because of a definition. And so we'd like the board to consider not only the— which has been spoken to— the conservation goals of a change in definition, but also the recreational experience. I think most people on the board have had some experience bringing out young people, old people, people with varying levels of difficulty. And I've seen white-collar workers that are smart as they get, and they have no dexterity or common sense. They just can't figure out how to do what they need to do.

And a lot of times that they, they need some assistance there. So as you think through this, if you'd consider those points, bag and possession limits and what they mean and what kind of experience they're causing on the water, we would appreciate it. Thank you. Open for any questions. Thank you very much.

Any questions from the board? Okay, I think we're good. Thank you very much.

Virgil Lempfenauer for Fairbanks AC. The Fairbanks AC is vehemently opposed to this proposal. It would affect a lot of our constituents. Thank you.

Skyler Mace, resident sport fisherman, representing myself, um, Just for brief new information, I guess, which hasn't been talked about, is— but both of these proposals, there's no discrepancy between residents and non-residents. I live here year-round. I have different bag limits than non-residents, and when these are pooled, I don't feel I'm being weighed or given— I'm given more opportunity being a resident here, and I guess I value that. That's all I have to say.

Hello, my name is Chance Miller. I'm a charter operator in Seward and current president of the Seward Charter Boat Association. Speaking in support of Proposal 176, there's nuance to 176 that I think is important to discuss, and it's in response to a question during testimony by the board regarding why people are allowed to continue fishing after harvesting their limit. And this is likely inspired by the closing line of a submitted commentary in RC-10. In practice, anglers encounter fish they're not targeting, they may have already reached a bag limit of, while legally fishing.

Fishing for other species. With recent EOS from state, both black rockfish and king salmon, there's understandable concern of a risk associated with regulatory changes that may result in additional harvest. And I believe that as a collective, the charter fleet's not interested in allowing clientele to wantonly harvest a charter or a boat limit. Not only is this currently illegal, it does not provide an enjoyable experience for anglers, and we're marketing an experience, not a fish guarantee. Under existing individual limit structures, there can often be unnecessary catch and release, which contribute to avoidable release mortality across multiple species.

We fish in areas with a biodiversity. And while we change our gear, size up or down baits, or to interest or disinterest certain species, fish often will eat what they want regardless. I've released large yelloweye for guests fishing for halibut 3 or 4 times, utilizing 7 to 10 pounds of lead just to have to bring them in to submit to local OLE as an overlimit when there was a willing angler on board who would have taken that fish. I've released king salmon for guests who don't have king tags that are lethargic after an aggressive fight that were otherwise not injured or bleeding at all and watch them sink, and it's awful. I now always have someone with a net ready.

And speaking for myself, this is an example of how personally I would find in a utility in 176. And it would be wonderful to, after attempting to release a fish once or twice, to be able to legally offer it to a willing angler on board. I feel we are specifically not interested in 76 for the purposes of increasing harvest and having shorter day. The benefits that it should be— it should not be illegal to transfer a fish that is unlikely to survive to willing fishermen who has not yet harvested their limit. And it is.

It's my understanding that Halibut would not be under the authority of 176 without additional North Pacific Council or IPHC action. If I can speak to 178, somebody let me know. Otherwise, I can come up when you guys address that. We'll go to 178 next, Chance. Does anybody have questions for Chance while he's here?

Okay, thank you very much. Thanks.

I know, I just realized. Emily Scott representing the Sika Advisory Committee. We opposed all of these proposals. We opposed 176, 1 to 14. We had extensive conversation.

If you want to read any of that, it's in AC number 6. Is there any new information being provided? We have your AC minutes. Okay, great. I was just going to emphasize that this is something that when we concluded, we really think that bag limits are the way to continue to manage this and that this is a really slippery slope and should not be statewide, if at all.

Thank you. Any questions? Okay, next. Come on up, Brian. Brian will be the last unless there's anybody who hops in right now.

Okay, Kevin, I think, I think we have one or two more back there. For the record, my name is Brian Ritchie. I own and operate charter fishing vessels in Homer, and I'm the author of Proposal 176. Speaking on behalf of the Homer Charter Association and bringing information from them, though I'm not a member. To save everyone's time, I will be speaking in support of both 176 and 178 at this time.

Most Homer Charter Association members and Homer area charter operators do not believe that these proposals or actions coming from them would significantly increase harvest in the Lower Cook Inlet. 80% Of anglers who harvest a single black rockfish harvest a limit. The Homer Charter Association does not believe that this other 20% would be realized as a result of any action based on these proposals. So far as non-pelagic rockfish go, since last year The Lower Cook Inlet charter— in the Lower Cook Inlet, charter anglers may not legally retain yelloweye rockfish until July 1st, and after that, the daily bag limit is 1. Brian, did Homer Charters Association submit this as an RC or a PC?

No. Okay, okay, go ahead and continue then. Thank you. So any angler who retains a yelloweye rockfish retains a limit. When targeting yelloweye or other non-pelagics, most charter vessels try to harvest each person on the vessel a limit.

The Homer Charter Association believes that there is not substantial room for growth in these removals. That said, I do want to acknowledge that this is not a uniform opinion amongst Homer area operators. A few have expressed concerns that there could be an unanticipated increase in rockfish harvest for Chinook in Cook Inlet from April 1st through September 15th. The daily bag limit is 1. So during that time, which is much of our season, 100% of anglers who harvest a single Chinook harvest a limit.

Typically, when a vessel is targeting Chinook, the goal is to harvest each person on the vessel a limit, and with a bag limit of 1, this goal is often achieved. I think this indicates that there's little room for growth, growth in Chinook harvest. Further, these fisheries are mostly managed through EO. Currently, charter vessels have e-logbooks with timely analysis. Thanks to the hard work of logbook staff, the majority of catch data from charter vessels is available within 3 to 7 days of when a fishing trip occurs.

Southeast has been using this timely data to manage charter removals of Chinook for a while now.

Any regulation resulting from Proposals 176 or 178 would not remove the ability of the department to continue to use EO authority as a management tool. If any change in regulation regarding cumulative bag limits or changing the regulatory definition of who catches a fish, which is part of 178, results in an unacceptable or unexpected spike in harvest, it's my understanding that the department could use EO authority to adjust bag limits, or even to close retention, maintaining, maintaining the sustainability of marine recreational fisheries. Hey, Brian, I've let you go on, but this is really more of a testimony. You're reading off your paper. If you have a concluding thought that you can just summarize, that's okay, but I've let you go on for quite a while.

Okay, um, I don't think I have any more information that I could bring forward, so yeah, I guess I would just see if there's any questions. Thank you, Brian. Does anybody have any questions? I'd be happy to read that if you are seated though. Yeah, go ahead, Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you. Could you just summarize the— you talk about the conservation aspect of this in terms of mortality, and we talk— address specifically like the idea of the bag limit and sharing like a yellow rockfish for a black rockfish or whatever we—.

Like an anecdote of what might happen? Yeah, so in a scenario, just to illustrate this, If we were fishing together and I had a yelloweye rockfish and you had 2 black rockfish, which is the current limit, and you reeled up a black rockfish and I reeled up a yelloweye and they were both bleeding, we would still have to release those fish. We couldn't just keep them and then go home. We would have to release dead fish. Okay, so in your mind, like, that's the conservation part of this.

It's like when in fact the reality is if you just kind of whew, You could have just traded fish, but that would be illegal. Yes, yes, that's correct. Copy. Thank you. Thank you, Brian, and thank you for your service on the North Pacific.

Come on up, Kevin.

Kevin Delaney representing Kenai River Sport Fishing. I didn't get a chance to address these earlier. Kenai River Sport Fishing opposes both of these proposals. We agree with the department's assessment that it would undermine existing and well-proven management practices. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Kevin. Okay, we're going to move on to Proposal 178, please. Madam Chair, Proposal 178. This would modify the definition of bag limit. Madam Chair, thank you.

Does anyone else wish to speak to this proposal? Thank you. And please remember to keep it to bullet points. We can't be reading off of papers right now. I'm sorry, folks.

Go ahead. Madam Chair, Forrest Braden testifying for Southeast Alaska Guides Organization. Again, this is not a repeat of the last testimony. It's in response to maybe some misconceptions the board may now have because of prior testimony here. The amended language or substitute language or whatever you want to call it suggested in the RC, really it does not change bag limits for residents or nonresidents.

Those would stay the same. It's just the qualification of what would qualify for that. So if I was a non-resident and I were to hook my own fish or the rod was handed to me after a downrigger bite, it would still apply to that bag limit. And if the bag limit was 1 annual, that would— I'd be done. And if you were a resident and you had a 2-fish bag limit daily with no annual limit, it would still be the same.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Any questions? Yeah, Mr. Svenson.

Forrest, if you're fishing with downriggers and And do you let the guy fishing set the hook, or do you set the hook? If you set the hook and hand him the rod, what's that legally say? So thank you for the question through the chair, Mr. Spencer. I currently— the law is that you can't set the hook. It's because, well, you could and that person could pull it in, but then you'd have to be forced to release that fish.

Because it couldn't go in their bag limit. And in most cases in Southeast, I can't keep a fish, so I couldn't keep it under my bag limit because I don't have one. Yeah, that's what I thought. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, Chance, new information, please.

Hi, my name is Chance Miller. I'm here to speak in support of Proposal 178, specifically the amended language in RC 165. New information here is we already have heard that if you set a hook on a fish and you hand it to a client, that's illegal. It's illegal right now. If there's a disabled person on the boat, somebody sitting in a wheelchair, my boat's a landing craft, I take a lot of disabled people out, children.

Currently, if you have an inspected passenger vessel, the mandated federal rail height of that boat, and you'd have to have a child standing on a cooler or something in order for them to even fish in the rod holder. So if I hand a child or an elder elderly person a rod, I've broken the law. This is an enforced, um,.

Regulation.

If somebody passes the rod and there's a misunderstanding about when that fish is hooked, then that's the— it's the guide's fish. The person that passed that rod, it belongs to them. And if that's not logged in a logbook, that's a Class A misdemeanor for not logging that fish properly in the Fish and Game logbook. I believe that if the amended language was changed to RC 165, that a person standing on an enforcement vessel could witness, videotape through binoculars with their eyes, who fought and landed that fish versus trying to ascertain who hooked it at the bottom of the ocean, which is frankly a very challenging thing to prove or do even in the best of intentions.

That's, I think, what I have to say about that. Great. Thanks, Chance. I think we have a question for you. So, and maybe this is an enforcement question, I don't know, but With respect to kids or folks that may not be able to handle the rod initially on their own, as long as they have a hand on it, can you assist them?

You know, that is a good question for law enforcement. I know what's, what's interesting is that if your 90-year-old grandmother's on the boat and there's a rod in a rod holder and she gets a bite, she's standing right in front of it, she takes 2 cranks and she's tired, she can't reel that fish up, it's completely legal for me to reel that fish up for her. I'm much stronger than your 90-year-old grandmother is. It's more likely that I'm going to get that fish in the boat. I can aid her, right?

She hooked the fish. It's her fish. But if the other thing is true and I make her reel that fish up because RC-165, for example, was adopted, it's probably likely that fish will get away. So who do we want in charge of getting the fish in the boat, I guess, is a question that I have. So I guess— I don't know.

I mean, my question would be like, What about the, you know, the kid under 5 feet tall that wants to ride the ride? Like, there has to be some sort of physical capability to do the activity that you are paying to do, I would think. Usually if the kid doesn't reach this high, then they can't get on the ride. You know what I mean? If you physically can't do it, should you be allowed to do that?

That's great. That's a really— that supports, I guess, what I'm trying to say is if If you aren't physically capable of reeling that fish up because you're disabled or you're elderly or you're just not strong enough, and you could take 2 cranks on the rod when the rod's bent down, it's completely legal for the deckhand to aid you in reeling that fish up. Should you be taking their money for a charter if they can't do it? Who am I to say who should try to enjoy the— or try—. It's business decision, right?

They can go out for a ride. I respect your perspective. That's very interesting. Maybe we should have more we shouldn't allow disabled people or Make-A-Wish Foundation kids or any of these other people that we take fishing to go fishing or to go out on the water or see what we have to offer. You're right, we should restrict the opportunity for those people.

Hey, I didn't say that. Don't put words in my mouth, all right? No, you're right. I'm asking questions. Sorry, this is my first time.

I get emotional about this. I apologize. Okay, I'm going to end this right now unless anybody else has a question for Chance. Okay, thank you. Kevin.

Madam Chair, very quickly. Kevin Delaney, Kenai River Sport Fishing Association. Didn't get a chance to address this one in public testimony. We are in full agreement with the department. We oppose this.

It undermines a standard fishing practice that's been in place for decades. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. Okay, we're going to move on to proposal. We're going to group 179 and 180, please.

Madam Chair, my name is Jay Baumer. I'm the regional fisheries biologist, and Proposal 179 and 180 would establish a statewide annual limit for king salmon. Madam Chair, thank you. Does anyone wish to speak to 179 or 180?

For the record, Paul Warta submitted Proposal 179. Um, the rationale behind the proposal, I was thinking about annual limits for on the game side of things, if you have a stock that's— if you have a population that's reduced, you harvest an animal from a different population, you might not be able to harvest the more restricted stock.

Apply it to fish, king salmon stocks are really down across the state. It was a way to add an additional restriction that would target sport fish restriction, kind of pairing with all the commercial fishing restrictions we've seen. And it would also be easily enforced and consistent across the state. I think I briefly mentioned in the proposal itself, I discussed it broadly with area managers, area managers for local areas as well as Southeast. There was concern from Southeast about reducing or messing with treaty allocations and how much sport versus guided sport versus commercial is allowed.

Ultimately, my conclusion of those discussions was a 10-fish limit would avoid most of the major issues with that but still provide protection across the area. And any limited stocks of the terminal fisheries that were overly reduced, overly restricted from this fishery, that would be providing protection for all the other stocks that are need protection and would just allow more protection for kings across the area. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Delaney. Thank you. Kevin Delaney, King River Sport Fishing Association. We are opposed to these proposals. As we go around the state and take part in meetings discussing management of king salmon on a system-by-system or region-by-region basis.

We have plenty of opportunity to examine an annual limit for those areas and tailor it to the stock assessment and stock health needs that need to be addressed. So we oppose these. Thank you. Thank you, Kevin. Okay, we'll move on to the next proposal.

Proposal 181 would align regulatory and statutory language for sport fishing gear. Madam Chair. Thank you. Does anyone wish to speak to Proposal 181? Come on up, Kim.

Madam Chair, I will keep this very short because it has become very obvious that our chair— or that our board likes to read RCs, and I really typically appreciate that. Um, in RPC 440, we have opposed this because of some lack of clarity around specifically the use of downriggers and electric reels. We have since submitted an RC that we have— we asked you to look at that provides our understanding after talking with the department stating that neither of those things will be affected. It's more about drones and motorized devices not attached to that rail. So I just wanted to put that on the record and ask that if that is the intent of the board, that that be clarified for enforcement issues.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Kim. Hey, do you have that RC number?

I do, Madam Chair. 166. Thank you, ma'am. Are there any other questions? Okay, thank you.

Anyone else wish to speak to 181? Going once. Okay, moving on. Staff? Ma'am Chair, proposal 182 would establish bow fishing as a lawful sport fishing gear for species without a bag or possession.

Thank you.

For the record, Paul Huerta submitted this proposal. Um, there was a little confusion I saw on the RCs regarding the intent of the proposal. It was to establish the for species that did not have any limit, not to establish a season without a limit. And the general premise was that it would just allow opportunity for species that we don't have a conservation concern of, as if we had a conservation concern, there should be either limit or a closed season for them. And additionally, this proposal was initially conceived after the last South Central or last Upper Cook Inlet meeting where I submitted a proposal that was adopted by the board that had some unintended consequences.

And this would just level the playing field and clarify the language. Thank you. Thanks, Paul. Any questions? Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, I don't see anybody else. Let's move on to the next proposal. Ma'am Chair, Proposal 183 would amend regulations requiring conditions of fish available to inspection while in possession. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, staff.

Does anybody wish to speak to Proposal 183? Okay, we're going to move on to Proposal 184 then. Madam Chair, Proposal 184. This would align the sportfish definition of rockfish with the statewide definition used in commercial fisheries. Okay, does anyone wish to speak to Proposal 184?

No. Okay, with that, we end Committee of the Whole Group 3. And before I pass the mic back to the chair, Mr. Carpenter, that is how you run a committee.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I like it.

All right. That concludes Committee of the Whole Group 3. Thanks everybody for sticking around and completing that and providing input to the board. We are going to begin tomorrow morning with deliberations on Group 2, followed by deliberations on Group 3. Much like this morning, I would like to begin deliberations at 9:00 AM and make sure that any RCs that are being worked on, substitute language, are ready to submit into the portal by 9— I'm sorry, by 8:00 AM.

So if you're working on something over this evening, make sure that it's gone around, it's had the staff review,.

Ready to submit by 8:00 AM so that we can get them distributed and read prior to beginning deliberations at 9:00. So we will see everybody tomorrow at 9:00 unless there is any additional announcements. Okay. See you tomorrow. Thank you.