Commentary: We should protect Alaska’s coastal fisheries in Don Young’s honor

By Melanie Brown For The Cordova Times

As the salmon fishing season opens this May, many fishermen like myself are honoring the memory of our late representative Don Young. Congressman Young always recognized the importance of salmon not only to the coastal communities of Alaska but to upriver communities as well, having first settled in Interior Alaska. My own family has benefited greatly from the lands and waters that Rep. Young labored to protect, and this spring, Bristol Bay will once more provide for us with its wholly wild salmon stocks.

Rep. Young’s concern for salmon declines and the impact to traditional and customary participants in Alaska salmon fisheries was evident; in a hearing just one day prior to his passing he laid things out pretty clearly by stating: “We’re losing our salmon. We have a great run in Bristol Bay, but we’re losing the chum salmon in the Yukon and the Kuskokwim, we lost our king salmon pretty much all over the state… I’m a little tired, Mr. Chairman, of everybody pointing their fingers at one another. That doesn’t solve the problem.  We have to look at why this is occurring and if we don’t do it, we’ve lost a great asset to the state of Alaska.”

During my board service with United Fishermen of Alaska, I was able to experience firsthand the heart that Rep. Young had for the people who make their living fishing Alaska waters. I learned of this contribution to co-authoring the Magnuson-Stevens Act and bringing forth the act from its humble beginnings on a napkin note during a conversation between lawmakers. The act brought Bristol Bay salmon runs back to health after eliminating high seas fishery interception by foreign fleets, I was always impressed by Rep. Young’s ability to communicate across party lines to update the act with critical new provisions.

He also knew when to fight back. When the AQUAA Act (Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture Act) introduced under the guise of narrowing the U.S. seafood trade deficit, eliminated a carve-out section that had protected waters off Alaska’s shores from being identified for fish farms, Rep. Young proposed an act of his own. When the Keep Finfish Free act was introduced, I had the privilege of speaking to its value for Alaskans in a congressional hearing. Don Young’s foresight in introducing this critical legislation will help ensure that Alaska’s coastal waters remain protected as a shared resource.

Young has long been recognized for his opposition to salmon farming in Alaska waters and understood that offshore finfish farms are sources of disease and pestilence that threaten to harm wild stocks near pens.  He also understood how escaped farmed fish pose additional risk to wild stocks by increasing competition stressors for food and introduction of engineered genetic combinations to wild stocks with unknown consequences.  This became evident in 2017, when a salmon farm rupture caused a spill in Washington state waters that wild fish populations are still recovering from.

Until a successor is named to assume the long-held responsibilities of our dearly departed representative, the fate of his good work and pending legislation remains uncertain.  It is my hope that Don Young’s vital work to protect our seas will not be parceled out to lawmakers who cannot possibly understand the integral relationship that Alaskans have with the natural world and the wild salmon that provide for us in so many ways.

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Melanie Brown is part of a multi-generational Bristol Bay salmon fishing family and her children, a fifth generation of fishermen in her family, now fish with her on the site that her great-grandfather established.

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