Dozens of proposals are up for consideration at the Alaska Board of Fisheries (BOF) meeting in Anchorage from Feb. 20 to Feb. 25, with hot topics ranging from escapement management for subsistence and commercial fisheries to potential interception of chum salmon by Area M harvesters.
A new report on Alaska’s South Peninsula intercept fishery will be out in plenty of time for those interested to read up on in advance. Concerns include which of the fish being harvested in western Alaska were headed toward Bristol Bay’s Nushagak area, the Kuskokwim River, summer run Yukon River, and Norton Sound.
“A big issue on the agenda is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s (ADF&G) single goal for sockeye salmon management, rather than separate goals for managing the early and late portions of the run,” said Art Nelson, executive director of the BOF.
Others include concerns over Area M fishermen catching harvests meant for other areas.
“This year’s project was fashioned after the Western Alaska Salmon Stock Identification Program,” said Bill Templin, chief fisheries scientist for the ADF&G. “We are looking at when and where chum salmon from Western Alaska are harvested in South Peninsula fisheries. This will inform the department, Bord of Fisheries and stakeholders when seeking solutions to the problem.”
The Chignik area is one of several in the state where the potential impact of bycatch and fish harvested accidentally to the targeted species has long been an issue of controversy — along with the impact of hatchery-raised salmon. Other issues, including rising ocean temperatures and ocean pollution ranging from plastics to now-banned manmade carcinogenic chemicals, complicate drawing conclusions.
On Dec. 22, the ADF&G issued its 2023 Chignik and Alaska Peninsula salmon forecasts, which predicted a weak run and a weak harvest. The Chignik commercial fishery has been weak for several years, said M. Birch Foster, a long-time finfish research biologist for that area.
“But it was better this year, and we expect it to increase again in 2023,” he said. “What we saw historically is zooplankton population decreases.”
Since then, that zooplankton population — a critical food source for these salmon at this stage of their lives — has rebounded. When that happens it can take up to seven or eight years for the zooplankton, which are tiny organic organisms that eat other plants and animals to survive, to regain their own population strength.
Why zooplankton have such population cycles is an unknown, Foster said. Still, he added, there is no current data showing or suggesting that hatchery fish are the cause of the declining numbers of Chignik salmon.
The total sockeye salmon forecast was 1.1 million for the Chignik area for 2022, of which commercial fishermen caught 291,000 reds, a harvest Foster identified as weak and below average. For 2023, the new forecast predicts a run of 1.5 million red salmon.
Veteran University of Washington fisheries researcher Daniel Schindler, an ecologist who studies causes and consequences of dynamics in aquatic systems, has spent years studying Bristol Bay, Chignik and Alaska Peninsula fisheries. His team makes salmon forecasts for Bristol Bay, Chignik and the Alaska Peninsula, and he said they are not looking pretty.
“The commercial and subsistence fisheries out there are hurting,” Schindler said. “They have been almost entirely shut down for the last five years and next year is looking no better. Since 2018 the Chignik fleet has mostly been sitting on the beach, waiting for some fishery openers. Last year they fished a bit, but it was well below what can be considered normal, particularly for sockeye. They open opportunistically for pinks and chums as well.”
Chignik fishers have been closed for most of the last five years while they see interception fisheries on the South Peninsula continuing to hammer away, and Chignik communities are carrying all of the conservation burden, he said.
As for the diminishing size of the salmon, it is very clear that hatchery pink and chum salmon compete with wild sockeye throughout Alaska. This is due mostly to the overabundance of chum salmon and pink salmon in the North Pacific Ocean, most of which is produced from hatcheries, Schindler said. The millions of hatchery salmon interacting with wild fish are the product of the United States, including Alaska, Japan, Russia, the Republic of Korea, and Canada.
To Schindler’s knowledge, there is not enough reliable data on marine zooplankton to say anything about their relevant trends in abundance of food for sockeye in the ocean, but sockeye growth rates tell the story, he said.
“There is not enough food out there to produce the body sizes in sockeye that we saw 30 years ago,” Schindler said.
BOF proposals for the February meeting are online at https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=fisheriesboard.meetinginfo, and the deadline to submit comments is Feb. 3.
