Cook Inlet drift fleet limited to Area 3 for a single 12-hour opener Thursday

<title>Cook Inlet drift fleet limited to Area 3 for a single 12-hour opener Thursday</title>

Upper Cook Inlet drift gillnetters get a 12-hour opener limited to Area 3 this week, under an emergency order the Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued Tuesday. Fishing runs from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 6, in state waters of drift gillnet Area 3 only, with harvest recorded under statistical codes 245-70, 245-80 or 245-90. The fleet also fished a 12-hour period Monday, Aug. 3, in the Expanded Kasilof, Expanded Kenai and Anchor Point sections under an earlier order.

The driver here is coho, not sockeye. Federal coho harvest in the Cook Inlet Exclusive Economic Zone exceeded both the total allowable catch and the acceptable biological catch, and the department said that overage, "in combination with recent year trends and inseason indicators of abundance, indicates these restrictions are warranted to conserve Northern Cook Inlet and Kenai Peninsula coho salmon." Acting Area Management Biologist Lucas Stumpf signed the order, which was issued under the Central District Drift Gillnet Fishery Management Plan.

Fishermen and processors are reminded of the legal requirement to report all commercially harvested salmon on a fish ticket, whether sold or kept for personal use, using the correct statistical fishing area or areas, under 5 AAC 39.130(c)(7).

The National Marine Fisheries Service prohibited all commercial salmon fishing in the Cook Inlet EEZ from 7 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 5, through 7 p.m. Aug. 15, to keep the fishery from exceeding a 2026 coho total allowable catch of 16,619 fish. The two agencies describe the same limit in slightly different terms: the state announcement says the federal coho harvest exceeded the TAC and the ABC, while the federal agency determined the TAC for the coho complex had been or was about to be reached. The federal agency said the fishery harvests mixed stocks and cannot target one species, so the whole EEZ closes. It waived notice and comment, citing harvest data that only became available July 31.

The order follows a stretch of sockeye-driven openings. Alaska News previously covered a July 27 opener in which the department added 12 hours as Kasilof sockeye escapement ran more than double its goal, and earlier coverage of the Alaska Board of Fisheries voting 4-2 to narrow drift time and area for northern coho. United Cook Inlet Drift Association described Area 3 in a 2014 board document as "a coho fishery rather than a sockeye fishery."

The announcement carries only the department's account, and no fleet response appears in it. Drift fleet advocates have argued in public forums that federal and state limits together have narrowed their access: "Now that the feds have closed the EEZ, the drift fleet has lost a huge portion of their historic fishing area," one commenter wrote in a Reddit discussion of Cook Inlet closures, adding that "these restrictions don't just impact fishermen, they impact the processors and the communities that rely on these fisheries." A post in the Kenai Peninsula Fishing Update group supporting the board's action framed the tradeoff differently, saying the rules were adopted "to protect these Northern Coho stocks and pass more fish to the Northern District."