Ninth Circuit upholds federal Cook Inlet salmon management against drift fleet challenge

Cook Inlet's commercial salmon harvesters lost again in federal court on Tuesday, leaving in place the split federal-state management regime governing the drift fleet's offshore harvest. A three-judge Ninth Circuit panel, Judges Callahan, Bea and Bumatay, affirmed a district court ruling upholding Amendment 16, which placed the Cook Inlet exclusive economic zone under federal management, rejecting every Magnuson-Stevens Act claim brought by the United Cook Inlet Drift Association and the Cook Inlet Fisherman's Fund. The two groups have argued Amendment 16 wrongly splits one fishery into separate federal and state fisheries and fails to achieve the optimum yield the act requires. The panel heard argument in Anchorage on Aug. 10 and issued an unpublished memorandum, which is not precedent.

NMFS barred commercial salmon fishing in the Cook Inlet EEZ from Aug. 5 through Aug. 15 after harvest approached the 2026 aggregate coho salmon catch limit of 16,619 fish.

The Alaska Supreme Court entered final judgment against the Cook Inlet Fisherman's Fund on Oct. 29, 2025, and the US Supreme Court declined on May 12 to hear the group's follow-on petition, filed March 20, which argued on behalf of 1,345 Upper Cook Inlet set net and drift net fishermen that Alaska's resident-only personal use fishery and its 34-inch size threshold for Kenai River kings violate the Commerce Clause and the Magnuson-Stevens Act. The petition put annual losses to interstate commerce at just under $50 million in first wholesale value and said regional processors have fallen from 15 to three. The East Side Set Net fishery was closed outright in 2023 and 2024.

Those closures trace to ADF&G's management of the Kenai River late-run king salmon as a stock of concern: setnet openings occur only when a recovery goal of 14,250 large kings is projected, sport king fishing in Upper Cook Inlet was closed May 1 through Aug. 15, and personal use dipnetters may not keep kings. ADF&G has described these restrictions as necessary to rebuild the run.

The courts have now settled who manages Cook Inlet's federal waters, not who gets the fish inside them. That fight moved back to the Alaska Board of Fisheries, which last year voted 4-2 to restrict the drift fleet with new windows and a two-mile shoreline buffer, and which has scheduled Proposal 186, which would further cut Central District drift opportunity, for its Statewide Finfish and Supplemental Issues meeting. Regulations adopted in March remain under Department of Law review; the 2026 season ran under the old rules.