State opens comment on $5.8 million Cook Inlet setnet relief plan

Cook Inlet's East Side setnetters can weigh in on how the state splits up $5.8 million in federal disaster relief before the plan is locked.

The money answers the 2023 salmon disaster on the East Side set gillnet fishery, where closures and weak returns cut permit holders and their families off from a season's income. Alaska opened comment Wednesday on a draft spend plan built with fishermen, processors and NOAA. Processors are eligible too, since a bad run means less fish through the plant and less revenue with it.

The fleet knows this drill. Federal relief has come before, for the 2018 setnet and 2020 Upper Cook Inlet disasters, and that round steered about 62 percent of the money to harvesters. This $5.8 million is Alaska's slice of a $123.6 million national package covering six declared disasters across four states and the Squaxin Island Tribe.

The timeline behind it is its own story: Gov. Mike Dunleavy asked for the declaration in January 2024, the Commerce Secretary declared the disaster that May, and NOAA didn't allocate the dollars until June 2025, roughly two and a half years after the bad season. Comments now shape where they finally land.