An emergency petition that would have increased closures and restrictions on the Copper River commercial salmon fishery now underway was defeated May 17 during a special meeting of the Alaska Board of Fisheries in Anchorage.
The board also approved changes in the Bering Sea Tanner crab fishery that allowed for more flexibility in determining management strategy.
The Fairbanks Fish and Game Advisory Committee had submitted the petition asking the board to require the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to publish an additional emergency order on commercial fishery management actions to be taken to assure the sustainable escapement goal for king salmon for the Copper River in 2017. ADF&G Commissioner Sam Cotten responded to the petition earlier, saying that he concluded that the situation did not warrant such action.
The Copper River fishery is a directed sockeye salmon commercial fishery, with incidental harvest of Chinook salmon, so the number of fishing periods a week and hours allowed are primarily designed for sockeye management, with inside closures for management of kings, Cotten said.
In recent years the department has restricted all Copper River non-subsistence salmon fisheries using its emergency order authority to reduce harvest, due to lower returns of king salmon to the Copper River.
Cotten said that the low forecast for the Copper River commercial fishery is not an unforeseen or unexpected event, and the department’s proposed management strategy for 2017 also is not unexpected.
ADF&G biologists said the agency does not expect this year’s king salmon run forecast and anticipated low level of king harvests to affect the long term sustainability of Copper River king stocks. The agency has adequate tools with the existing management plans and its emergency order authority to manage the king salmon stocks in the Copper River in 2017 to meet the sustainable escapement goal, he said in his memo to the fisheries board.
The fisheries board also approved substitute language from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game regarding management strategy for the Bering Sea District tanner crab fishery.
What the board did was to use some fairly basic statistics and new calculations to identify surplus males in a time of low female abundance that would allow the Department of Fish and Game to proceed with a fishery on those surplus males that would have not been allowed under the old harvest strategy, said Mark Stichert, regional management coordinator for the ADF&G western region groundfish and shellfish. The board’s action incorporates survey uncertainty calculations into the decision making process, he said.
