Area M's June chum catch was near average as fish board moves to reconsider voided limits

Commercial fishermen on the Alaska Peninsula caught a near-average number of chum salmon in June under rules that didn't require any cuts, according to state figures released Monday, as the Alaska Board of Fisheries moves to reconsider stricter limits the state threw out in May.

The fishery, known as Area M, is fished mostly by people from the Aleutians East region, including Sand Point and King Cove, according to the borough. It targets sockeye in June but also catches chum and king salmon headed for the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, which have had no commercial salmon fishing since 2020 and deep cuts to subsistence fishing.

In February, the board voted 4-3 to cut June fishing time by about 30% for seiners and 39% for drift gillnetters, including a 10-day closure between June 10 and June 23. The rules never took effect.

The Aleutians East Borough, the Native Village of Unga and two fleet groups sued in April, saying board members with undisclosed conflicts of interest had cast deciding votes. In May, the acting attorney general voided five of the rules after finding that board member Curt Chamberlain's ethics disclosure was incomplete, and the plaintiffs dropped their suit. The June fishery ran under the board's 2023 plan instead.

On Oct. 29, the board voted 4-3 to take up five requests to restore those rules outside its normal schedule. Board Chair Märit Carlson-Van Dort, Chamberlain, Olivia Irwin and Blair Hickson voted yes. Tom Carpenter, Mike Wood and Paul Cyr voted no.

Carlson-Van Dort said the rules were voided "by a legally questionable and unprecedented action by the Department of Law." Carpenter disagreed. "To me, new information is not something that was thrown out by somebody at the Department of Law," he said.

The requests came from the Orutsararmiut Native Council, Bethel's tribal government, and the Fairbanks Fish and Game Advisory Committee. Two would bring back the 10-day June closure for seine and drift gillnet gear. The others would tie fishing after June to king salmon caps, limit gillnets to 70 meshes deep and shrink seines.

Under the 2023 plan, seining is cut back if the June chum catch reaches 300,000 by June 18 and closes if it hits 450,000 by June 23. This year's June catch in the South Unimak and Shumagin Islands fishery came to 492,866 chum, just under the 10-year average of 501,337, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's season summary. The department said no closures or cuts happened because the catch didn't reach those triggers by their dates.

The Orutsararmiut Native Council said throwing out the February rules led to "a much higher bycatch in 2026 of depleted chum stocks in the Area M June fishery." The state hasn't released genetic data showing where this year's chum were headed. The Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission estimated that Area M caught 144,434 to 172,833 chum bound for Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim rivers this year, up from 89,587 in 2025 by its count. It called those minimums because they rely on self-reported catch and leave out discarded fish.

Department staff told the board that, aside from cuts in 2023 and 2024 to protect Chignik sockeye, every reduction in June fishing since 2023 has been voluntary. The Aleutians East Borough has said the seine fleet stood down an average of 291 hours a season under a program developed with state biologists, and that the fleet cut its average June chum harvest in half compared with the previous five years. About 1.1 million Yukon summer chum passed the Pilot Station sonar this year, within the river's goal, though Irwin noted that chum passage at the Canadian border still fell short.

Staff also found that the closure requests didn't meet any of the board's criteria for acting outside its schedule: a conservation purpose, an error in regulation or an unforeseen effect. Reopening them "reallocates opportunity away from local Area M fishermen without new compelling biological information that requires immediate action," Sand Point fisherman Dale Pedersen wrote to the board.

Overall, Area M fishermen caught 8.83 million salmon worth a preliminary $47.9 million, compared with a 10-year average of $36.1 million.

The board has tentatively looked at Dec. 13 to 16 or February for a special meeting on the requests, likely in Anchorage. The Aleutians East Borough has asked that it be held in Sand Point or King Cove, saying most of the fishery's fishermen are from the region.