ADF&G issues Sand Point commercial salmon fishery advisory #05

The Sand Point seine fleet is fishing the 2026 South Peninsula June season under contested terms — but not the ones the Board of Fisheries adopted in February. Those new restrictions were thrown out two months ago over conflict-of-interest violations, before they could ever take effect.

This week the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's commercial division limited seine gear in the Shumagin Islands Section to a roughly 33-hour window, June 16 at 6 a.m. through June 17 at 3 p.m. Drift and set gillnet fisheries in South Unimak and the Shumagins, and seine areas outside the restricted section, are open on wider schedules.

What the season is not operating under are the tighter rules adopted in February. In May, Alaska's acting attorney general disapproved five contested Area M regulations under the Executive Branch Ethics Act, after a lawsuit alleged board members with undisclosed conflicts of interest cast deciding votes at the February meeting. The voided measures were specific: Proposals 126 and 127, both passed 4–3, would have sharply cut open fishing time and area for South Peninsula seine and gillnet gear; Proposal 141 imposed post-June closures tied to chinook catch thresholds; and Proposals 147 and 148 changed maximum net depths beginning in 2027. None can be filed or take effect unless the Board readopts them through a new process from the start.

That leaves the years-long fight between Sand Point's seine fleet and Western Alaska's chum and Chignik's sockeye users unresolved — and resolved, for now, in favor of the status quo, on procedure rather than on the merits of how hard to constrain the fishery. Sand Point's economy leans heavily on the South Peninsula fisheries, and the city has warned that Area M restrictions would bring "economic distress." On the other side, weak Chignik runs have forced commercial and subsistence cutbacks in recent years and triggered federal disaster aid, and Western Alaska tribes have argued for years that Area M intercepts salmon bound for the Yukon and Kuskokwim.

The open question now is not whether February's reductions are working — they were voided before the season began — but whether the Board will re-run a clean process to reinstate any of them.