Alaska Peninsula / Aleutian Island / Chignik Finfish (2/24/2026)

Recording in progress.

What's your name again? Chrissy. Chrissy. Okay, so just count. Yep.

Okay.

Okay, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. 19, 20. Sounds good. Sounds fine from up here, but yes, I guess tweak it up just a tiny bit, Kyle. Okay, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33.

34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57. Thank you so much, Chrissy. No problem.

Good morning, everybody. The time is 8:41. What is today? Tuesday. Tuesday, the 24th of February.

We are going to do the remaining Committee of the Whole work today. So we are going to begin this morning with Committee of the Whole Group 3, and then move into 4 and 5. We will build in a lunch break and all the things around that. So just a reminder on how we do committee work here. We follow sort of the New England town hall meeting style.

We are looking for new information, dispute resolution. This is not a time for debate nor a platform for repeating information that we have already heard.

AC representatives can represent both their own opinions and that of the ACs. Just make sure you are identifying which one that is. Please don't refer to anyone by name or in a derogatory manner. New information only. If you start repeating the same points, the committee chair is going to move on.

And if substitute language is being developed or you feel that it should be being developed, please speak to what you think it should say. And again, please come up towards the mic and form a line if you would like to speak. And also state your name for the record every time you approach the microphone. So with that, I will turn it over to Chair Chamberlain. Thank you, Member Carlson-Vandort.

So this is to the public. What I'm envisioning for Group 3, there's a lot of overlap in the June management plan. So I'm going to take the June management plan up as a block. And I'm planning on roughly about 2 hours to discuss this. If you want to speak to one particular proposal or any proposal in particular, address that when you do that.

I also want to keep this moving along at a swift pace. So what I would like is I'd like a line to form along the screen to my left, your right, behind the speaker. And as soon as that line is empty, I'm going to assume we're done. If I raise my hand while you're speaking, that's my signal. I want you to stop for a moment so either we can get a question in, address a point, or this is just taking too long.

So with that said, new information only. Do not name other people by name. I don't want personal attacks. I don't want anything. Anything of that sort going on.

We're here to keep it professional, keep it focused on the merits of these proposals or to amended language. So with that, I will have the department read in. Since we're having it a block, I'll let you decide how you want to read that in. So we're touching the June management plan would be 127 through 134. Well, I'll let you— the June management plan.

So I'll turn it over to the department for now.

Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board. For the record, my name is Matt Keyes. I'm the area management biologist for the South Alaska Peninsula. And along with me is Jeff Spallinger.

I guess, do you want me to just read maybe 127 first and then— as how, I guess, how would you like to block this together? Let me ask this. Is it all the same AAC number in the June management plan?

So in this group, just, just for clarity's sake, in this group we've got the South Alaska Peninsula salmon. There are 20 proposals in this group. They are broken up in the roadmap between South Alaska Peninsula salmon June management plan with 11 proposals and South Alaska Peninsula Salmon Post-June Management Plan with 9 proposals. Are there different AACs? I think that other than that, we can just speak to all of the, the proposals within the June management plan.

I think that's pretty clear for the purpose of committee. I think that for deliberations we can get into the specific sections of code, but for committee we're talking about proposals 127 133, 131, 132, 136, 129, 128, 130, 134, 137, and 135. Is that clear? Madam Chair, if I—. Mr. Bowers.

Thanks. Yeah, I think so. I think all of the proposals that you mentioned from 127 to 137 reference the same administrative code with the exception maybe of 135, which looks like it's trying to create a new regulation, and then we might need to look at 128 also. It's not clear to me right now which administrative code that's referencing, but, you know, with the exception of those two, I think all the others reference the June plan. Thank you.

So 135 and 128, you said? Okay, so maybe we'll just talk about the June plan and we can pull those out towards the end and talk about them specifically. Does that work for you, Mr. Chair? Yes, that works for me.

Thank you. Is that clear as mud to the public? Okay, good.

Okay, so, uh, we— yeah, let's go through all of those excluding 135 and 128 as a block.

Oh, okay. So this block of proposals is 5AAC09.365, South Unimak and Shumigan Islands June Salmon Management Plan.

Okay, so with that, we'll move to the first speakers.

Brian Ridley, Chief Chairman for the Tanana Chiefs Conference. I'm going to keep this first section short and as respectful as I can.

So this is new information in regards to all of our advocacy on all of these proposals.

But two nights ago, racist derogatory comments were made about me. The same has happened to my other tribal leaders. I respect all of your fishermen, Native people, and youth who've done a great job advocating for your area. We can fight like hell for our people and regions without racist or derogatory comments. We all need to do better.

I expect better in and around a state meeting. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Vivian Korthius. I serve as AVCP Chief Executive Officer. I want to bring something out to this board. Both Brian and I have been personally attacked while advocating for our respective regions.

Our elders say, "Leave them alone. It will come back to them." I have chosen to address this to the board directly. I ask myself, how can I stand up for our people when I don't stand up for myself? No one should be personally attacked at these meetings. So here I am standing up in front of you, the board, asking for the same consideration in the process that the board is responsible for.

[Speaker:JENNIFER] Our people place us in leadership roles. We do the best we can to advocate with integrity. We are professional and our goal is to lift up our people at home, fight for them and our way of life here at this meeting. I am charged with this responsibility to represent the 56 federally recognized tribes on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. This board has an opportunity to fulfill the promise made to make subsistence a priority.

Let's move forward with this goal in mind. Thank you. Vivian, we need to keep this to new information. I want to give a little bit of latitude on this, but we've got to stay focused on the issues here. So thank you.

Appreciate that. Thank you for listening.

Okay, I had to change things up since we're doing it all as a block, so that makes it a little different. Um, so specific to all these proposals, what we're looking for is the maximum amount of time of closures. Oh, sorry, give your name once again. So since you're coming up, and for the public, when you come up and speak, uh, give your name right away. Brian Ridley, Chief Chairman for the Tanana Chiefs Conference.

I represent 42 communities and 20,000 tribal members.

So what we're looking for is the biggest stand-down closure, whatever you want to call it, to let our fish through the area. And I leave that up to the board on what you think is appropriate or not appropriate. Obviously, we want the longest time possible. And when it comes to the full month of June, the 30-day, I'm sure people are pretty irate about that. But I believe in the early 2000s, correct me if I'm wrong, something similar to that was done either by the board or by a strike.

So I want to make that clear that this isn't something that has never been done. In addition, I heard a number of folks talk and really minimize how much of our fish are caught in the area and how good their current management is. So I want to point out, in 2024 alone, they caught 122,000 of our fish. Now, while that may be a drop in the bucket to some folks, 122,000 more fish to Western Alaska, all up and down the coast, is huge, and I do not want to minimize that one bit.

When I come here advocating, oftentimes all I'm looking for is fairness and equality from all of you, and I really don't feel like we've had that up to now. And so I just want to make that clear. And my last point I'll make right now will just be, I don't think anybody wants us talking ESA on endangered species. But if we can't get meaningful action at this board, which I don't feel like we got 3 years ago, That might be something that we have to push before all of our salmon are gone in our rivers. Thank you.

Masicho.

Member Carpenter. Yeah, Brian, thanks. When you talk about, you know, something meaningful that the board has done, I'm just curious what the action the board took yesterday was. Was that meaningful? I appreciated the comments that were made at the board.

I feel like in the comments and actions that were taken that you're starting to go in the right direction. I heard board members that I never thought would say the words, we need to help these fish, we need to conserve and try to get these fish through. 3 Years ago, I didn't feel like I had that. And so I do feel like you're taking the steps in the right direction, and that's That's what I'm looking for. That's what we're looking for.

Because 3 years ago, we didn't have that. And 3 years ago, the closing comments from 2 of the 4 no votes were, it's all about the money. That was the hardest thing to swallow here.

So thank you.

Okay. I see no further questions. Thank you, Chief Ridley. Thank you.

Good morning. George Anderson, Chignik Intertribal Coalition. Yeah, I can say I agree with everything said thus far in committee. It's probably the first time I can ever say that. So moving on, I want to talk about all the proposals read into the record in general.

Okay.

Absent a conservation tie One of the tools you guys have in front of you are these windows. Historical practice for at least the last 7 cycles or 2 decades, how to control time in these areas that we're talking about. So we have a big suite of proposals in front of us, ranging from 10 or 12 days all the way down to Closures of 178 hours. It's up to you guys to make the decision what passes the most fish. That's up to you guys.

I want to point out what I heard yesterday.

Some folks get wrapped around the axle a little bit about non-retention, mandatory retention, and whatnot. I like to really look at things very simply. If you do not have gear in the water or you're not retrieving gear, it's less time that you need to worry about interacting with the species of fish or stock of concern, weak stock management that we're talking about here. Keep that in mind. So I just like to keep it that simple.

If you're worried about non-retention, We're looking at year 10 for Chignik for non-retention. We've been doing it since '16. So I have a lot of issues with it. We're not going to solve them today, but I'm just saying, less we have to interact with these fish, probably the better. So that's all I had.

Thank you, Mr. Anderson. I don't see any, any questions. So yeah, we'll take the next speaker.

Thank you, Chair. For the record, Ernie Weiss. I work with the Aleutians East Borough. Long time. I live in Anchorage.

Long time resident though of King Cove and one-time mayor there. There's been discussion about borough revenues and I think they're being kind of conflated with in particular the the town of King Cove, and I wrote some things down. I hope you don't mind if I read. Please stop me if it's inappropriate. Yeah, if you could, uh, if you're going to read something into— read something, I'd submit it as an RC.

I can do that. Yeah, I— yeah, I don't— we don't have time for it. Okay, I won't read too much, but I just wanted to say, you know, borough revenues are largely dependent on Pollock, but that's different than, say, the, the community of King Cove and the fishermen of King Cove, which are all at least 58 feet and under. They're all salmon fishermen. Some have diversified to peacod, and when the seasons— the salmon season haven't panned out, they're fishing Dungeness.

And, you know, as you know, the Peter Pan plant there has been closed going now on 3 years, and students are leaving. There's less availability of produce, and it just seems like closing down the June fishery, which is some of the proposals in this section would do, would not only just be insult to injury for this community, but it would almost be a death knell. And so I'll submit these comments as an RC, but that's really all I have. Okay, so I have a question, Mr. Weiss. Are there any processing plant— is there any processing plants in King Cove right now?

No, no. So are there any fish taxes being generated in King Cove right now? I'm not sure. I, I know that the fishermen have found markets with another processor over in False Pass or Sandpoint, but the community is dying a slow death. Okay, and was that processing plant related to regulations, or was that a global market?

Thing or consolidation of the industry? So it was a market problem when the cannery was sold. In my estimation, the reason for the failure was the seller did not sell the pollock and the crab quota that they had, and so they were really literally didn't have the revenues to do it. I mean, one time the Peter Pan plant was the largest salmon cannery in North America, and now it's just been dormant for a couple years. Thank you.

Seeing no further questions, we'll move on to the next speaker.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and board. My name is Charles M'nadeluk. And I work for Quirk. And I'd reference RC 165 and 89.

I'm going to read a— Please paraphrase. If you want to read things into the record, submit them as an RC. We did. I did. Okay.

These are RCs. Please paraphrase that. Paraphrase. Okay. Okay.

First, I'd like to ask you to clarify. I didn't know that we were going to be doing a block of comments on all the proposals, and I don't know if everybody knows that. So, you know, if we missed testimony, like people that misunderstood you, would they be able to have another chance to speak up? So— Yes. Yeah, there is— So yeah, the public can come up multiple times as long as you're bringing new information.

You know, come in and do this. I'm— we're setting aside roughly 2 hours for this block. And so yeah, take the time you need, not too much time, but gather what you need and come up. Okay, thank you. Paraphrasing, I will say that it's not our intention at CORC to prevent commercial fishing.

Far from that. You know, we support commercial fishing when it's responsible and sustainable. But the most important thing I wanted to bring up and I wanted to highlight to this board is you guys have already done something similar at the AYK meeting. You set aside 3 extra days for the fall chum salmon season in the Yukon to allow more, more fish to get to Canada. Okay, so you're already doing something similar.

You have, you have, you know, that precedent, and you also have the authority to delegate the emergency closure to the commissioner.

And in paraphrasing, until both regulatory bodies, the State Board of Fish and the Northern Pacific Fishery Management Council recognize that they are regulating the same population of Western Alaska salmon, it will be almost impossible to regulate Western Alaska salmon to once numerous and healthy populations. Okay, so in essence, you're both taking out of the same population. Just two more, two more paragraphs I wanted to paraphrase.

I wholeheartedly support science, but it needs to be peer-reviewed and independent. ADFNG should be the one that sponsors that research and should be directed by you to obtain it. And it should be independently reviewed and that data be made public so that, you know, I can take a look at it. I also support adaptive management when it is genuine and in the best interest of a species. While it looks good on paper, the main doubt I have that it is working is the 9 citations that the Alaska State Troopers cited for landing— throwing landed salmon overboard.

And in closing, I would also like to highlight the fact that both of these fisheries, the area and fishery and the federal fishery, which takes salmon by intercept or bycatch, have the potential to eliminate an entire salmon population for a particular year and river system. You understand what I'm saying? Well, there just aren't that many salmon. I, I said it at my testimony, and I, I truly believe that. So we really need to— you know, my biggest fear is that in 3 years, by the next, uh, by the next cycle, there will be no salmon.

In our rivers anyway. Again, it is not my intention to be inflammatory or even derogatory, but that I intend only to highlight the truth as I see it as a subsistence program director, a subsistence user, and for your purposes, an Alaska resident. Thank you. Thank you, Charles. I have a quick question for you.

Um, I'm, I'm not terribly familiar with the Kwark Region. How many villages and how many people are in that are part of that group. There are 20 tribal councils that we can— that work consists of. It's roughly— used to be 15,000 people, but I think it's around 10 now.

And I stated in my past testimony that we have 14 rivers that the state of Alaska monitors and counts. And I will say this, I did this sort of in Um, of those 14 rivers that the state of Alaska counts through their weir systems and through their aerial surveys, over from 2018 to 2023 saw an 80% drop in population. Okay. You know, whether you realize it or not, the area consists of salmon that are from a terminal fishery. All those fish come come to our rivers to spawn, and they're not coming.

I will give this piece of testimony. I myself go to the beaches all summer long to monitor and look for dead animals and birds for my job, okay, to document them. But what I saw last year was every year there's, you know, 100 to 200 salmon at each river system's mouth. Last summer there were none. All summer, okay?

None. And I suspect the main reason is there's no salmon. They didn't come back until the fall time, October, when the tomcod started running. So I just wanted to put that out there, and I hope I answered your question. You did.

Thank you very much. I should have asked that of Lieutenant, our chiefs in ABCP while they were up there, but thank you very much. I see no further questions. We'll take the next speaker. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, Kylie Thompson. I'm president of the Area M Saners Association. For the expediency of this process, I want to address the adaptive management plan that the same fleet is doing in Area M. I think we've heard plenty of testimony and everybody understands how it works. I think one thing that needs to be pointed out is that with large time and area restrictions, the plan cannot continue.

The benefit of the adaptive management plan is putting seawack chums through Area M. That's the only responsibility we can control. We can't get more fish to the Yukon, the Kuskokwim, Nushagak, any of the thousands of systems that make up the CWAC reporting group, but we can get fish through Area M. We could get static closures, we can get different windows, but where— when the chum pass through, there needs to be people not fishing for them. And what's most important is not fishing for them when they're passing through, and that's what we are currently doing. Our chum harvest has fallen dramatically over the last 3 years, and we hope we can continue that. And I think we're improving on it constantly.

There's been several comments about not enough transparency in the program. We have been in contact because of those comments with Sea State, and we're going to develop a third-party auditing or reconciliation system for the data to build confidence in the program, similar to the Bering Sea pollock fisheries IPA program.

I also wanted to comment on non-retention of kings. I think sciencing something to death is the wrong way to do it. I think the entire Area M seine fleet feels that. We do have high king harvests some points in the season. There's— we can't control the ocean.

I— hatchery production, all those things affect the fish that are in our area. And in order for the fleet to make a living, at some point it is going to harvest kings. The mature kings that need to get back to their systems and have the highest possibility of survival need to be returned. Next slide. Question for Member Carlson.

Kylie, thanks, thanks for your comments. I really appreciate them. But I do— you caught my attention with the scienceing something to death. Comment, as you probably expected. And, you know, I've been at these meetings for a couple of rounds now, and I remember that your group had a sign outside that said, "Trust the science." And how do you trust the science if you don't continually inform the science?

I would support Mr. Svenson's amended proposal that, you know, dead or injured. Yeah, we need to take genetic— we need to do genetic and we need to do science, I absolutely agree. But if we can put one more king in a river system, then I think that's the most important. Kings are in a situation throughout Alaska, and they're one fish that we can probably, maybe make a difference on. Shouldn't we try?

I mean, that's kind of my— what do we find from the science? We know we killed fish that went to System X, I mean, that's all we're finding with genetic work. We keep doing genetic work on chums in Area M. Siwak is Siwak. We haven't, all we find is proportions. We still haven't tried to figure out where those fish are going.

I think further work down that road, that kind of science, but sciencing something that's so close to death, to death, doesn't seem to be the way to me. Okay, thank you. Member Irwin. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Kylie, for coming up and speaking on the adaptive management.

My first question is with your non-retentive, your retention points. Do you feel that the board should be putting the idea of, or the concept of what is injured on the fishermen? Do you think that's going to be like widespread understanding of what injured means. Obviously dead fishermen can tell what's a dead fish, but that's pretty ambiguous. And so I guess my question is, would you have faith in fishermen to know the difference between what kind of fish could actually survive being released versus an injured one that, that's not going to live?

So making the decision on what, what's— absolutely. I mean, fishermen are responsible. And maybe you can— I hear laughter behind me, but I don't want to throw something in the way that's wasted. We just— that's not— yeah, I really don't have anything else to say with that.

And then I— yeah, I have one more question for you. So I really appreciate the adaptive management program being responsive to the concerns that have been raised at this meeting and It's good to hear that Sea State is going to be working on a third party. I really, I appreciate the responsiveness from the fleet in terms of what's being said and testified to at this meeting. I think that's really, really helpful and going to continue to encourage transparency in this process and build trust. I have a question for you though.

I am, I'm seeing that from 2022 to 2023, there was a significant decline in the number of specifically seawack chum that was taken out of this area. And overall, I agree with you, I've seen the numbers. Your total take of chum has been decreasing, but between '23 and '24, there was almost double the amount of seawack, specifically chum, taken. And I'm just wondering if there was a difference in the fleet's behavior or adaptive management strategy between '22 to '23 and '23 to '24 that could give us some indication as to why was that number in '24 so high? Are we talking about strictly seawack harvest?

We are. In 2023, the seawack harvest alone was 60,000, and in 2024 it was 120,000. The only person that can answer that question is Seawack Chum. Okay, thank you. Then we only harvest chum.

They're— they don't come with a label. We're trying to avoid chum. Okay, thank you. Member Swenson. Kylie, do you feel that releasing the, the dead kings that are over 28 inches— I mean, not releasing, but keeping the dead kings over 28 inches and the jack kings that are under 28 inches— is, is a good enough for the Fish and Game to get a good genetic idea of where these fish are going?

I can't really comment on what they need for genetic samples, but I'll just refer to my previous comment that if we can save one, we don't need the genetic data. If it— the genetic data makes it back into the system by it spawning. I have a follow-up question on that. So the studies have kind of shown that the migrating— the ones migrating to the terminal rivers in June tend to be larger and more destined to the Yukon and Kuskokwim. If you're throwing away the larger migrating chums to those terminal rivers, doesn't that throw off the statistics on the point of destination for that if you're only throwing away one subgroup?

I guess I don't know what the question is. What I'm saying is, if the— okay, but I'll refer to my answer to Miss Irwin's question. They don't come with labels. We're releasing large kings so that they can go back and spawn and move those genetics into the future. I have no idea what subgroup they're in when I release, if I release them.

I'll accept that answer. I don't see any further questions. I'll— we'll go— oh, Member Wood. Thank you, Kylie. So there's been a really long history in Area M of different management plans, super long.

And how is this one compared to all the others the last 3 years? This one is trying to save chums. The adaptive management plan is actively trying to save chums. Every other management plan since I've been involved in the fishery was trying to— it— trying to save chums. I— from the board's perspective, but from the fleet's perspective, it was now's when you fish and you better fish when you can.

And sometimes there was caps and sometimes there was not caps, and— but the fleet only fished when it could. That's what it was directed to do. In 2022, we— the fleet came together and decided This isn't how we're going to move forward. We're going to move forward by trying to avoid chums and catch sockeye. Sadly, our sockeye harvest has fallen nearly the same as our chum harvest, but it's something the fleet's committed to.

I mean, the fleet's committed to making sacrifices to save— to pass chums through the area and fishery.

Go follow up. So am I hearing you say that the caps and the parameters of time has what is kind of instigated higher harvest? It can, yeah. Yeah, I would absolutely. Thank you.

Okay, I have a follow-up question, then we'll probably move on. I, so I'm looking at the statistics and I'm seeing the wild sockeye numbers are declining. You mentioned, you just mentioned that. The wild king numbers are declining. It seems to be, you know, a lot of the hatchery-supplemented fisheries may be making up a larger portion of that.

And with the chum, you've got the wild chum that are declining, but you've got Asian hatchery fish that are making it up. And the sockeye is particularly enlightening to me because they They don't, you know, they're doing well everywhere in the state, but in area M they're going wrong. Is there, are there any wild populations that are going through area M where the wild populations are doing well?

I don't, I don't get the question. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

My name is Leah Woods, tribal administrator for the Manly Village Council. I have 3 things to share, new information. So I wanted to let the board know that Native people aren't going to go anywhere. Tribes, we aren't going anywhere. We are the first people of this land and the waterways.

Second, what I consider new information is that the fish, they don't come from the rivers down to the ocean. They come from the ocean and go up the rivers. And third, for the first time, You guys have an opportunity to actually abide by state law and prioritize subsistence. Thank you.

Thank you, Leah. I— oh, we have a question for Mr. Member Irwin. Yeah, thank you, Leah. Um, when's the last time anyone in your village had their subsistence needs met?

It's been 6 years, and prior to that, stipulations, regulations, so ever since I can remember.

Thank you, Leah. I don't see any further questions. We'll move to the next speaker.

Janet Woods for the record. What I wanted to say was, you know, in looking at the reports, and this is a preliminary report from 2025, the sonar pilot station Chinook salmon was 60,407.

Of those estimate, 24,900 were Canadian origin.

The Eagle Sonar estimated 23,806 Nooksalmon, way under the target of 71,000 to meet the obligations that we had committed to.

And out of those 23,000, let's just say half are female.

And they're smaller now. So out of those half, they're going to— they lay between 3,000 to 15,000 eggs. And because they're smaller, let's just cut that in half. And out of that half, only 15% are hatched and fry make it down, and some don't even. So just 15% of that 23 are going to make it down.

And if we don't stop and have longer periods of shutdown as the fish are moving up We're not going to have any salmon. There is not going to be any more Chinook salmon in our rivers. So now I just urge the board to really take a good look, a good honest look with integrity, and hopefully bring those salmon up. And like I said, there's not going to be any more. And I know there has been Studies.

I could remember 3— for 3 summers, long time ago, they studied fish wheel in Rampart. I'm not sure what the study was, but they've been studying— the state of Alaska has been studying these fish for years. What happens to those reports? We don't see them. I never saw the report from Rampart when they did the fish wheel study for 3 years.

You know, they've been we're studying the salmon, the salmon, but it's not making a difference. We're not getting our fish up the river. Thank you. We have a question. Member Irwin.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Miss Woods. Thank you, Janet, for those numbers. So you had said that 24,000 Canadian were estimated to be Canadian origin from Pilot Station, correct? And then 23,860 26 made it past Eagle.

Yes. So I'm seeing that almost, almost 100% of fish are making it through the river all the way to Eagle that are checked at pilot station. Is that correct? Showing that in-river harvest is, is minimal to zero. Yeah, correct.

Thank you, Janet. You're welcome.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good morning, my name is Arlene Gunderson. I'm with the Palafox Tribe in Sandpoint, and I'd like to say that first I've heard a lot of reference to 2020 salmon crashes and not enough about the 2023 to 2025 improvements that have been seen in the areas in Chicknick and in up, up Aykay. And a lot of that has to do with our adaptive management plans that we've been working on. The fishermen have been going above and beyond to support conservation. They've accepted caps, closures, and closed, uh, lost fishing opportunity and have worked cooperatively with managers to protect salmon stocks.

Escapement goals are biological standard for conservation And those goals are being achieved. Thank you.

Thank you, Arlene. I don't see any further questions. Stanley, come on up.

Morning, Madam Chair, board members. My name is Stanley Mack, born and raised in King Cove, fished all my life. Started fishing when I was 5 years old. And I haven't stopped. I come to you with some new information that no one has ever talked about here at the board meeting.

And that is what type of king salmon, Chinook salmon, are we talking about? Is it the white king or is it red king? There is a difference in the two fish.

The sonar at Pilot Station can only identify the number of fish that go through there. They cannot identify the species, nor can EGLE. So we don't know exactly how many chums, cohos, or chinook is going up there. And we don't, definitely don't know whether they're a white king or a red king. I have not heard anything about that.

But there's a tremendous difference. Being said, I drift gillnet and here I am. And as far back as I can remember, I would catch maybe one or two. Kings, and I can identify those kings by what they look like because they have a black mouth. They're called a black-mouthed king and they're white.

Now I haven't heard what type of king is going up the Yukon and do they mix? I haven't seen that in my years of fishing, the red king and white king together. And to this day, with all the activity out in the ocean, the fish are small, real small. So we went to a smaller mesh gear and we managed to get the sockeye. And we've had very few chums.

Being said again, The chum fishery out there, as the previous gentleman spoke, doesn't have a name on it. And I'm going to Bristol Bay, I'm going to Togiak, I'm going to Yukon-Kuskokwim.

The problem is, is that every year I go fishing up at Port Molar, and outside of Port Molar, There's a test fishery going on there to monitor the route and the amount of fish or reds that are going to Bristol Bay. And I've been after this for years and I've talked to some of your board members about this. Why haven't they extrapolated the numbers of chums that pass through there?

Lo and behold, I find out that— I was told, as a matter of fact, yesterday that the state doesn't have any control over that. And I'm wondering, that's strange. Well, it's sponsored by the Bristol Bay Group, I guess, what they do. But it puts a burden on me and the area and fishermen. Because we're catching AYK and the Yukon chum.

That's unfair, totally unfair, because outside of Port Moller, we have a chum area in Port Moller, Harrington Bay, Frank's Lagoon, all these places. There's there's chum areas. We catch some that come back. And the king salmon area, there are sports fishermen that come down there every year doing salmon fishing. So some of those kings are coming to our area in Port Moller.

And they're red kings. They're not the black. Stanley, we're going on 5 minutes. Oh, I'm sorry. Let's try to wind up.

I didn't get that. OK. Alright, I'll stop. We have a question for members. Fenson, I can shed a little light on this white and red king for you. Thank you.

Okay, the only difference genetically between a white and a red king is that the white king does not absorb keratin, therefore they are white. Okay, all the white kings are Canadian kings, so in AYK I mean, I'm sorry, those fish going up the Yukon can be both.

Thank you. Thank you. I understand that, and I believe that, you know, the Yukon is what's changed, but the activity is in the tributaries of the Yukon. Stanley, I think we're moving away from the topic at hand. In closing, I would like to say that we've in Area M have been burdened and tried to cooperate and conserve and help other areas.

I don't see that happening anywhere in the state of Alaska other than Area M, and I think that's a little unfair. And you're cutting us back, cutting us back, and it's really unfair.

Thank you, Stanley. I see no further questions. We will move on to the next speaker.

Madam Chair, members of the board, Andrew Manos, a senator based out of King Cove. Two things I wanted to talk about, non-retention and this idea of conserving time. You know, we're not, we're not here to conserve time. We're here to conserve chum that are headed back to the AYK region. And it's not— we're not— you don't have a mandate to conserve time.

We're trying to conserve these fish so they can get back. And when you take time and when you take area, you put that entire fleet into a box and you just squeeze it. And the more you squeeze it, the less we can do to avoid these fish. We don't know when they're going to come. No one knows when they're going to come.

Maybe they know when they're going to come, but I don't think they do. It depends on how the winds are blowing and how the tides are going. When they're there, if we can stand down and get away from them, that's the best thing we can do for these fish. You guys are not going to be able to pick the times that they're transiting that area. I can't pick the times.

I don't think there's a person in this room that knows when they're coming through. So reduction of time and area is not, not going to help us serve save these fish. The second thing, I guess, some new information on king retention. I've heard some frankly disappointing testimony on how effective a seiner can get a king over. Speaking for myself, it's, it's a priority.

It's important. I have a lot of respect for these fish, and I don't want to kill them. When one comes on deck, when you roll a king over the rail, I can smell it. It's got a smell. It's the biggest fish on deck and it's flapping around.

And I wade into the fish, grab it with two arms and throw it back over the side when I can, when I'm allowed to do that. When I can't do that, it hurts. When you got to take this big vibrant fish that's full of life and put it in your fish hold, that's 100% mortality. I don't think we have to kill them to count them. I think there may be a way that we can get your data without killing these fish.

And I've heard, well, okay, there's someone behind you, you let it go and it just gets caught by him. 2 Years ago I was fishing and my brother was right behind me and he was, he was closing up around me and, and I see this big king on deck and I go down there and I grab it and it's plop in, and I take it to the rail and dump it in. And I look back and my brother's boat's here and his skiff's here, and I called him up and I said, hey man, sorry, I just threw a big king in your net, you know, uh, you're probably going to catch it. He didn't. It— they're not always caught by the boats behind us.

I don't know how often they live. I know there's been a lot of different numbers there, but I know how often I get them off and they swim away.

7 Out of 10, 8 out of 10, you can see that fish and it's a priority. And if you're willing to go in there and grab that fish and handle it carefully like a baby, like a football, I think they, they swim away. I don't know if they make it, but they swim away.

Thank you, Andrew. I have a question. Uh, can you go through the process for those of us who are aren't familiar with seining, like how that works, the time that happens, and then how you load the fish onto deck and then wood sort. Just a little bit of the process, how that works. Yeah, so just real quick, you know, we close up, we purse up, um, pretty fast.

It's about 10 to 12 minutes from when the ends are together. We purse up and the fish get collected into what we call the bag or the bunt or the rolling wedge. And then whatever volume's in there gets rolled over the rail. Generally, I leave my hatches closed specifically because we're constantly monitoring what is in our catch, especially in June. So they come over anywhere between, you know, 30 fish to 10,000 fish— pounds, excuse me.

And they come over and they go on deck, which is, you know, from me to Matt here. About this wide. And, and when there's a king there, it's the biggest fish, the ones we're trying to save, and it, it comes to the top. Okay, thank you. Uh, seeing no further questions, we'll move to the next one.

Thank you.

Madam Chair, board members, uh, I'm Julian Minos, I'm his brother. So I guess I'm sort of corroborating the story you just said about king salmon retention. And in 2024, that was in July, we were required to throw them over. And I was kind of pissed off when he did it, but that's the only way we were required to throw king salmon over, 28 inches over. And so he did it, and he did it fast.

That's why he didn't wait to get out of my net, because what's the point? You try to save the king, you do it as quick as you can. So he came up and he said, sorry, dude. And I said, thanks, man. I said, something a little worse than that, but ah, I didn't catch the king.

Like, I don't know what to say. I know it seems crazy, but I saw it go shooting away. That's how close we were. And I was like, well, I guess I'm going to deal with it next. Scoop it over.

And then I heard mention of, do you think you can do it safely or, you know, responsibly? Yes. Like, we've been taught that by our dad from children. It doesn't matter if it's a king or a sockeye or anything. You don't grab it by its gill plate.

You don't grab it by its tail. That'll kill a fish, right? The same thing with like longlining. We don't have any halibut. You have to release halibut.

You don't grab halibut by its tail and swing it over, you know, you're just going to kill it. You slide it over. And those can be a pain. They're usually not very big, but there's, there is an effective way to do it safely. And if you're asking if we can do that, I would say yeah.

And we hammer it into our crews and we hammer it into ourselves. It's been hammered into me since I was a little kid.

Another new piece of information, when I was leading the program in 2024, I know we've heard a lot about how much we've cut, yada yada yada, but just to give you an idea, in that first period we had the 10th, the 11th, and 12th, and we did not fish the 10th, we test fished. So we were able to fish the 11th and the 12th. I was in the Shumian Islands. I made 5 sets for those 2 days. A lot of guys made 3 because they were in bigger lineups.

Some guys made more. To give you an idea, some fishermen could have made 50 sets in those 2 days. That's probably not me because I don't like making that many sets, but you know, other people could have made 30 in those 2 days. I made 5. I can show you my fish tickets, but it's kind of embarrassing.

And then lastly, I heard mention of, of, is there any wild sock that's come going through the area that's doing well? I think Bristol Bay's been doing pretty well for the last 10 years. I know that we do intercept Bristol Bay sockeye in her area, and over the last 10 years they've done pretty well. I know they've had some real highs and lower than that, but overall that's a wild stock that's done really well in the last 10 years.

Thank you. Members, Fedson. Julian, did you only make 5 sets? Why did you only make 5 sets? Um, well, it was because we are adapting motion management program.

Like, as a group, we said— this was in the Shumigans— we said, hey, this isn't right, there's too many chums. And so we shut down all of the Shumigans. So that's why it's not like someone else next to me got to make 10 or 20. We all made between 5. I think I made more than some of the guys that like Red Bluff because they were in a 10-boat lineup, so they probably only made 2 or 3.

Yeah, yeah, well, thank you for that. Yeah. All right, I see no further questions. Thank you, Julian. Thank you.

All right, next up. Good morning, my name is Raymond Donnie. I come from the village of Lahlukwunamotsu Yukon. First of all, I want to say that we stand behind the two leaders that spoke in front of us. At the beginning of this session, and this is the reason why I'm here today as a Village Council President and also a committee, Subsistence Committee for the Tribal Consortium that I serve on.

I was born in the territorial days. I've seen the richness of the resources that were provided to me and my parents and my grandparents, and today we After the state, after we became a state, things started to dwindle. And from 1959 to the '80s, that's what, 20 years? In 20 years, we've seen resources dwindle. And the people that spoke in front of me, we notice in our rivers that we used to have 2 types of king salmon, but now, because of the moratorium, we don't know what's there anymore.

And as for the chums, we need to consider conservation. I know the REM people are trying to make that effort, but we're here still today trying to get at least one fish on the table. One fish.

And it's really hard. We have a lot of elders that passed on, a lot of them since maybe 20 years. We could come up with number of people that have passed on that haven't gotten a chance to taste the king, and they're, they're crying to their graves. So I want you to consider seriously conservation, not only for your sometimes to come back, but to be able to have this resource for everyone, everyone, every M, the sport, the commercial, and for us, 'cause we relied on resources for many, many years, and we were thankful that when Alaska became a state, that amount of fish was still there. And like I said, over the years we've seen it dwindle.

Thank you. Thank you, Raymond. See no further questions. We'll move on to the next. Oh, yeah.

Thank you. OK. Yes.

Board members, my name's Rick Eastlake. I wanted to— two points I'd like to make. In the '60s and '70s, Dr. Rogers from the University of Washington was studying migration patterns and run timing. And he determined that 80% of the western Alaska stocks don't even run by our area. That said, I can tell you we're the best fishermen in the world.

And up to 20% of Bristol Bay fish would run through our area. A lot of years less than that. But even at that, We were trying to get 8.3% of the Bristol Bay run and very rarely did we ever catch that. So even if a percentage of fish would run through our area, the amount that we would catch would be a lot less. Then in 1987, there was a little study by a Dr. Yeager and it was limited in scope in one year.

But after he presented his results to the board, he testified that the stocks caught, the harvest rate out of Area M was so insignificant that it would be, you know, not even detectable up on the Yukon. That brings me to my first point, and that is in the '90s we were under the the caps. And in 1991, it was a good year for chums, and that chum cap was reached in— I'm talking about the Shimmican Islands— a total of 42.5 hours that year. And to validate Dr. Yeager's comments, There was— that year they saw no detectable bump, nothing to indicate that Area M had only fished 42.5 hours. Which brings me to the second time, and that was in 2001.

You heard earlier that there was a strike. The processors came out with a 42 cents a pound, and we— there's no way. So the fishermen that were Trident and Peter Pan, we stood down. We stood down until the 8th of July. There was— and so you see a tiny, tiny little bit of fish that were caught.

A family of drifters and a couple of their friends had their own little processor. And that— and so they had their own market. So they weren't, you know, scabs or breaking the strike or anything like that. So again, in 19— in 2001, there's absolutely no indication that the actions taken in Area M were reflected in any kind of a bump, you know, up on the Yukon. Now I'd like to make my second point, and that is the Bering Sea, generally speaking, is about 6 degrees colder than the Gulf of Alaska.

And when you got this warm Japanese current coming up, it becomes quite volatile. And you have these two large bodies of water separated by this little skinny arm. Now in the northern Chilikof, up that area, you're talking a land mass of 40 to 60 miles wide. As you get down towards Chiknik, you're talking close to 20 miles. Yes, sir.

Yeah, just saying we're running out of time. Let's wind up. All right. All right. The weather is so severe in our area.

We had the screams across— I heard yesterday, like they have a monopoly on bad weather. Well, let me tell you, you know, in the Shimmican Islands, I have a proposal asking for additional 24 hours. I told you that the maximum effort in one day was 12. But during the whole month of June, there was only 20 different setnet permits used in that area. But the average was 6, 7 because the wind's blowing on this side of the island.

So these guys might be able to go fishing, but I use 5 anchors on my nets and, you know, so if it's blowing in my area, you know, I'm laying on the hook somewhere. Thank you, Rick. Member Wood has a question for you. Yeah, back to the— when you were referring, I think, to 2001 to 2003, whatever that was, and that was— what was that, the number of hours that you cited? And was that all the hours you got for, for that June?

In, uh, 1991, uh, 1992, it was 42.5 hours total. For the Shimmican Islands. The jump gap was achieved and there was nothing left. And then the other one I referenced too was the strike in 2001, and there was no effort whatsoever until the 8th of July. Thank you.

Member Irwin has a question. Yeah, thank you very much for your testimony. Did you get a chance to review RC-129 with some UCONN index information on the latest genetic studies. This is a— it includes the latest genetic studies and it's a— it's an abundance. I would encourage you to look at the spawner recruitment rate because it is the highest that it was after 2001.

I'll end there. Sorry, sorry, Mr. Chair. And I'll just say that all the chum systems in our area are really, really healthy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Eastlake. We'll move to the next speaker.

Yes, Mr. Chair. My name is Alvin Osterback. I'm the mayor of the Aleutians East Borough. I'm a lifelong commercial fisherman in Area M. I'm also part of the Chugach Taiga'gunaan tribe.

I'm Aleut and all that. So anyway, Adaptive management. So a little bit of background on how we got to where we are right now. Back 40-odd-some years ago at a shellfish meeting, I was head of the Sand Point Advisory Committee at the time, chum salmon popped up in the AYK. That was the very first time we knew there was a problem up there.

They felt like they had a problem. Since then, everybody's tried to figure out how to fix this. Well, when we first started out, they put in chum caps. So we had a 5,000-fish chum cap to start with, and then it got reduced down. They didn't think it was working, so we went to windows, time and area closures.

We've tried everything. We even, for years, I served on the Peninsula Marketing Association back then, and we thought, well, How can we prove to these people that we're not targeting your fish? So we went to the companies and we said, okay, here's what we want to do. We only want 5 cents for dog salmon. And we did that for a few years, you know, to say, okay, look at why would we be targeting something that we, that we're not getting paid for?

We're getting— we had to have something on the fish ticket, so we got a nickel. So we moved on through time with all these different scenarios and none of them seem to be working well. I think today, in the last few years, actually, we've got two people I think that we should really appreciate. One is Charlotte, who works for the Lucian's Eastborough and is working on this adaptive management. Mayor Oosterbeek, please don't name names.

New information and no names. Yeah, okay. So in the other one is some guy that invented satellites that's going up around there that give us really high-speed internet that's instantaneous. So working, uh, with the borough, with our staff, the Board of Fish, the state of Alaska, uh, we have been moving forward trying to figure out the best way to manage our fishery and not harvest chum salmon. So I think it's, it's new, it's in its infancy.

A lot of the other areas don't trust us, but as we work forward, I think it's pretty imperative that the state of Alaska also let the other fishing areas know that this is something that they are partnered with us in. And that's a new project. It— all the other things that we've tried over the years haven't worked. I think this is going to work because the fishermen, the whole fleet stands down and the fish go through the area. So it's not going to be instantaneous that it's going to show up that it worked.

But I think this is the best shot that we have at doing— of correcting this. If we go back 20, 30 years and start going back into rolling closures, windows, time and area because of different weather patterns and everything else that's out there. That'll never work. It's always been proven that it doesn't. So one other thing, I guess.

So I've served on the Salmon Summit with the Secretary of Commerce, and the last time I was down there, he basically put a stop to everybody's bitching and moaning that was going on and said, if you're going to come to me with a problem, come to me with a solution. And I think if you take a look around the room, everybody's griping about something. We've always come back saying, this is what we're doing, we think this is working.

We have another shout-out to basically is the rest of the fisheries that we have in the area. Yes, the Aleutians East Borough makes money off of them. Oh, just, uh, see if you could wind up in the next— I'm winding up in a second. So, so anyway, we use that money to fund the research things that we're doing along with the money we get either from the federal or the state. But we are one area that's moving forward and trying to solve this problem.

We don't want to see our fishery shut down, and we sure don't want to see any other fishery in the state of Alaska shut down. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I don't see any questions, so we'll move on to the next speaker. And again, let's keep it to new information, people.

New information. I got on Facebook and I've seen Trawlers of Alaska, and I was pretty impressed with the fleet that you can state your name, please. Peter Devine Jr., Sandpoint, Alaska. And I have a real problem with, uh, Them trying to shut down the June fishery in the Chimpkin Islands while we're only catching 3% in the draggers in the Bering Sea fleet, which most of them are catching for the Yukon, or throwing up to 20% away.

I was in Squamish Harbour. I was 5 years old when that used to have a shrimp plant and a crab plant, canning processing. I was in Chicnik. I was 15 years old when they had 2 canneries gone. And I mean, it was— The Chicknic Pride, I was there when they formed that and seen the villages come together and get that running and seen it go.

I would hate to see Sand Point— I mean, my parents brought us from Oonga to Squaw Harbor, and that shrimp fishery, it provided for jobs for everybody up and down the chain.

Peter, can you— this has to relate to something, so can we get— bring it in? Yes, I don't want to see us, you know, become another ghost town. Okay, thank you.

Good morning, Joe Spader representing Bering Sea Fishermen's Association. I direct you to RC-221, which is new information provided this morning.

This identifies this transition from 58% average proportion of chum salmon in the June fishery down to 24.6%. But the, the key point here is that the estimated harvest of coastal western Alaska and upper Yukon taken in the South Alaska Pen is 274,000. The point here is that there is no harvestable surplus as a finding of fact, there can be no arguable surplus available to commercial harvest from these, these stocks. And that is the standard that the board has been operating on in, in your deliberations. And harvesting— knowing harvest when there is not a harvestable surplus is simply the process of managed overharvest.

Member Carpenter, during his comments yesterday on Proposal 149, stated his concern with these nets that, that there would be an impact from an intercept fishery on terminal areas. That is the same point being made here in this suite of proposals that we are speaking to, 127 through 132. My second brief point in terms of new information addresses the— what we've learned in recent days, even this morning, about the adaptive management. The leadership of the department has vigorously defended the state's right to manage against federal fisheries in transboundary regions.

Turning over management to, to self-management in this adaptive management plan is an abdication of state's authority. The standard at which this is being managed is completely different than what this— how the state manages. They require an annual management report, operational plans, action— management action plans, and none of that is being required. What we have from Area M is a short 2-page summary. So my point here is that there is a double standard.

The state manages and takes great pride in being the most sustainable salmon fisheries, meeting MSA requirements, and then the state abdicates their high standard for management and transparency By turning this over to self-management, a group of 7 fishermen are managing themselves and calling the shots in, in a system that can only be called just trust us.

So I urge action on reducing nets in the water rather than a effort to keep nets in the water and simply ask the board and the department to just, just trust me. Thank you, Dr. Spader. I see no questions. I will move— oh, Member Wood, do you have a question? Yeah.

Thank you, Dr. Spader. I'll reference Member Erwin's RC129. And if you look back at 2000 to 2003, and where in the management plan we had back then and you look at it currently, do you agree, or well, what is your take on that, the management plan back in those days compared to how it's been managed currently?

The— sorry, tell me the dates of the management plan. Well, in one of the graphs here we have an RC Page 129, Figure 16, it shows a dramatic spike, but at the lowest point of harvest between 2000 and 2003 is very comparable to where we are in between 2022 and 2025. And we had two very significantly different plans then. I just wondered if you had an impression on that that you could share with us.

I can't speak to that directly, but I can speak to the actions the Board of Fish took in '99 to put in a set of closures. And then secondly, in terms of evaluating the management plan right now, the department says specifically that their— the action under this self-management plan has been effective. To reduce coastal Western Alaska chum salmon in the June harvest. That's a quote. But the department has provided no evidence of that effectiveness.

In fact, as member Erwin pointed out, um, in their second year of operation, the Seawack stocks were higher. And the point is the double standard between how the department manages and the transparency with which they provide— they document their management actions versus the actions of this adaptive management plan, which is simply behind a curtain. And there's a very different transparency, public transparency process.

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Spader. I see no further questions. We'll move to the next speaker.

Good morning. For the record, my name is Jasmine Bent, and I'm from Housli, Alaska, in the Koyukuk River. My comments are in reference to new information I will be entering into the record regarding the Department's memorandum summarizing the results of the stock of concern evaluation for Arctic Yukon-Kuskokwim Region salmon stocks for the 2025 Board of Fisheries regulatory cycle, which recommends that Yukon kings move from a designation from stock of yield concern to a stock of management concern, and that Yukon chum be designated as a stock of management concern. I will also be entering the summary of action from the 2025 work session in which they discussed that. And in regards to that, we know without a doubt that Yukon kings are caught in this fishery.

We can reference the 2014 Chinook genetic study found that 20.5% of Area M Chinook harvests are from western Alaska, including Yukon stock of origin. These were grouped into the Eastern Bering Sea stock reporting group. And for both Chum and Chinook, you cannot accurately separate out Yukon fish, only Upper Yukon. So within that, many assumptions are made. We know that Chinook and Chum migrate through this area.

That's known, and they haven't changed their migratory routes. And that's in reference to the Fish and Game report and the first one to do a genetic study in Area M with— and that was in 2016. And as we all know, Yukon River kings have zero harvestable surplus because they are currently at historic lows. Every river system is not meeting Chinook escapement aside from the Kuskokwim, thanks to the co-management efforts by tribes. And the 2024-2025 Chinook salmon genetic study found very few harvests of Yukon River king salmon because there are so very few fish out there.

It's proportional and making it all more important that every salmon really counts. And the board and the state of Alaska have a legal and treaty-based obligation to reduce the impact to Yukon River Chinook salmon in the Area M. I think we all know that. And within the U.S.-Canada Yukon moratorium, in that agreement it states Alaska will maintain efforts to increase the in-river run of Yukon River origin Chinook salmon by reducing marine catches and by—. Jasmine, that's already been covered. Okay.

To conclude, I'll just note that the, you know, with all this information, the only way to reduce impact to migratory stocks in this fishery, which is directed at salmon, in which there is zero independent monitoring, is by getting nets out of the water and through extensive time and area closures, as our subsistence needs are not being met. Thank you. Thank you, Jasmine. See no questions. Move to the next speaker.

Madam Chair, Board, Group Lead Chamberlain. My name is John Lamont. During my public testimony, I introduced myself wrong. I'm a displaced traditional commercial king salmon fisherman from the mouth of the Yukon River. My dad was the very first salmon processor in the early 1900s, and he processed salmon.

He mild cured king salmon. Our family after that, after dad passed, continued to mild cure and smoke and sell slabs until the Department of DEC shut them down in the early '90s. And those salmon were harvested commercially. Being a displaced Chinook salmon traditional fisherman, the last year I got to fish Chinook salmon was 1992. I sold, in 31 hours of commercial fishing time, I sold almost 1,000 Chinook.

That was it. After that, I showed my— I had a job with the the state, so I showed my boys how to fish. They weren't interested. To this day, only one is still interested. I have a Norton Sound herring permit that's worth nothing.

I have a Yukon SO4Y permit that's worth nothing. I have no alternative fishery that I can depend on like other areas. Our people in the mouth of the Yukon River, as you know, we can't even eat our own food, as heard through public and traditional knowledge reports. So let's keep it to new things, please. Yes.

But my proposal is simple. You close it down for 3 weeks. You use research money and pay those fishermen not to fish for those, what, 48 hours, 96 hours, I'm not sure how long, to not to fish. But they have all other, all these other commercial fisheries that they can fish beside those 3 weeks in June that they're shut down. John, respect the— these points have been covered.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. And I'll hand the chair briefly back to Member Carlson-Vandork. Okay, everybody that's in line, I want you to look to your left and look at the person that's standing next to you. Look to your right.

Look at the person that's standing to your right. Remember those faces because we're going to take a 10-15 minute break, quick bathroom break. And I want you to line up in the same order. So I'll see you back in about 10 minutes.

I was all like—. I had to line for 15 minutes.

So we're getting started in about 45 seconds. So if you're not in line, please get so.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Okay, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna start, uh, just with one cautionary thing. We're, we're over half our time allotment for this and we're not even a fraction of way through the line. I'm going to start getting very strict on new information. Um, and, and so if we, we know about adaptive management, we know the fish aren't getting into the rivers. Um, I, I want to hear very new information.

I'll give you one warning: if you get into areas that have been covered a second time, I'll cut you off and we'll move on to the speaker. We've got a very limited amount of time to get to this. Um, and I'll give about another 30 seconds for those people who are already in line. To get so. Because yeah, so we've got— we don't have a lot of time and— [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Yeah, and so if you want to speak, get in line.

If you're not standing in line in the next 30 seconds, we're going to cut off the line from whoever I see at the end. So we'll start in We'll go ahead and get started with the next speaker.

Hello. Oh, sorry. Mickey Sharp from Twin Hills, Bristol Bay. Fisherman, drift fisherman. I fish in the Togiak area.

The slow run every year. The lowest run every year for 2026. It's— it was supposed to be better than '25, the run. And then a month later they were saying it's going to be lower than 2025. And I remember back in 1988— Mickey, how does this— this has to relate to something new.

Sorry, I'm getting strict with Yes, 1988, Area M was closed for about a week and that was one of the best years for Togiak Bay. That's all.

Thank you, Mickey. Any questions from the board? Seeing none, thank you so much. Mr. Ivanoff, come on up.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For the record, my name is Jacob Ivanoff. From Uniclate. I want to bring up that I didn't get to speak on during my testimony that underneath MSA National Standards number 8, it states that we need to account for the importance of fisheries resources for fishing communities, and that includes all fishing communities along the Yukon, Kuskokwim, and Norton Sound.

And my grandfather fished until he was at the age of 92. My dad is 75 years old and he's still commercial fishing. I fished with my dad my entire life until I was able to get my own permit, and I'm wanting to do the same thing for my children. They've been fishing since they were 5 years old, and I'm concerned that if we allow our fish to continue getting harvested in Area M, that we will be putting— placing our king salmons on the ESA, and if they get stuck on the ESA, it's going to be harder to get off of the books than it is to have it on the records with the Board of Fish. And so with proposals 127 and 131 to reduce the fishing time is a way to do it, but it also needs to include that once we are able to make the escapements in our river and to provide subsistence needs for our communities it could then be switched over to Proposal 132 with the hours of fisheries.

And I want to also state that the comment made on this sonar pilot station and the species apportionment, I know is relatively accurate because I was the one that started the Shakhtulek sonar project working with, alongside the Department of Fish and Game. And I was able to see that we had our counting tower in place with our sonar. And I was able to compare the numbers on the Shaktoolik River with the sonar species apportionments with the actual data counted on the tower. And there was a 3 to 5% error. And it was either above or below.

So in the, over the time, they equal out. But I still— we need to have to where we can meet our escapement and our subsistence. As a fisherman, I agree that we all want to fish, and I understand that the Area M fishermen are taking standards on themselves, and I appreciate that. I really do. I really appreciate what they're doing.

But all it takes is one bad apple to ruin it for everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Jacob. Seeing no questions from the board, we'll move on to the next. Okay.

Whoever the— yeah, we'll stop the line where we're at now. Oh, Chief Charlie Green, you're the last speaker. Kick anyone else in line behind you out. So, Miss Cortez, go ahead.

Turn your mic on. Hello? Good. Thank you very much.

This morning I'm going to speak on—. Vivian, can you put your name on the record first? Yes, my name is Vivian Korthuis, AVCP Chief Executive Officer. This morning I want to speak to the Yukon River salmon.

Because of the status of our Chinook and chum salmon on the Yukon River, The 7-year moratorium has forced people, our people, to adjust and switch to fishing in new areas, even out into the open ocean. We have family members, especially the young men at the mouth of the Yukon River going into the Bering Sea up to 70 miles seeking other resources, other fish other than salmon. And that's forcing our small 24-inch skiffs compared to the big ships that are fishing in the Area M region to put our young men at risk out in the ocean.

We are fishing for other species. We are changing our diet. [Speaker:JULIE] And we are changing our gear, so we are being forced because of this situation to adapt and succeed in places where we are not normally subsisting. In recent years, we've been allowed to use 4-inch mesh for gear for local freshwater fish. What that means is that we are getting the local whitefish and putting it up away for our community and our families to eat with smaller gear, inch mesh.

Now concern for our chum has ever— even led to restrictions to the 4-inch gear. So everything is getting smaller. We are changing our tradition and our way of feeding for subsistence. So therefore, we need maximum protection of all the salmon as they go through Area M. And that is my last statement. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Cortez. And seeing no questions from other members, I have one. Just for the board's purposes, can you tell me how many villages are in the ABCP region and the relative population of that region? Yes, in the ABCP region we have 48 villages located on the Lower Yukon and Kuskokwim and Bering Sea coast with 56 tribes in our region and approximately 30,000 people. Thank you, Vivian.

You're welcome. Seeing no further questions, we'll move to the next speaker.

Speaker:CHARLIE DUSCHKIN] Okay. Hi, I'm Charlie Duskin. I'm a local commercial fisherman to the waters of Alaska. And just to touch up the memory, since this meeting has been going on, no one's brought up bycatch reports of the Bering Sea pollock fisheries or the cod fisheries. If you look on the NOAA website, the NOAA.gov fisheries, You will literally find bycatch reports of chums and Chinook salmon, and the numbers will baffle you.

So no one is— no one has brought that up. How is this pertinent to what is the closest body of water to the Kuskwim and Yukon?

Okay, thank you. See no further questions from the board members. Thank you. Thank you.

My name is Earl Kreiger with the Chicknick Intertribal Coalition. I wanted to bring to light one of the factors that I have dealt with in my career, and that is that there's a very significant history of management of fisheries a great distance from natal streams in, in 1990, my staff, when I was working with Fish and Game, put together the first closures for Chinook and Coho salmon in the, in the North Pacific on pollock fisheries. That's continuing today with the new one in 2026. In 1985, when I sat on, on Pacific Salmon Treaty, when we implemented that, the first steps were to put into place some rolling closures, uh, for over along Southeast Alaska to pass fish based on Robinson Creek Hatchery and other hatchery stock tags. We did this for stocks that were natal streams up to 1,000 miles away.

Lastly, the last one, what's the last one? The last one is the, oh, Pacific Council. I sat on the Pacific Council for a main closure in 1995. We closed the coast from Oregon north of Cape Blanco up to the Canadian border to protect king salmon into the Columbia River. The fishermen weren't causing the problems, the dams were, but the council could only manage fishermen.

So they closed that for, I believe, 6 or 8 weeks. Weeks in the summer of 1994. Then in 2023 and '24, similar closures have happened from the Mexican border to Cape Blanco to protect king salmon. So those are some impacts that you should think about. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Krieger. I don't see any— oh, Mr. Irwin has a question. Really quick, Earl, where did— what council or body did you say made those decisions? That was the Pacific Fisher Management Council. Okay, thank you.

So I sat on that, the North Pacific Fisher Management Council, and the Salmon Commission.

Thank you. Go ahead. Good morning. Lena Hoblet, Aleutian Tribal Liaison for the Eastern Aleutian Tribal Fishery— Aleutian Fisheries Coalition. Our fisheries are not simply a business venture.

They sustain our families and our communities. Earlier, a comment A comment was made suggesting that this process is only about money and insinuated this narrative supported by board members at the last cycle. I believe that comment may have been misunderstood. For a region, this is not about profit alone. It's about sustaining a way of life.

The fish we harvest do not just generate income, they help feed our families and support the well-being of our communities. Member Irwin stated yesterday repeatedly that we need to work alongside one another and engage community members when proposals are being developed. The Aleutian Region tribes from False Pass, King Cove, and Sandpoint have made efforts to do exactly that. They reached out to Kwarak to request a friendly discussion among tribal leaders, not fishermen, but tribal leadership, with the goal of building understanding and creating the opportunity to learn about who we are as a region. And to date, that request for a meeting has gone unanswered.

Thank you. Thank you. I don't see any other questions or questions from board members, so we'll move to the next speaker. Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning. For the record, my name is Therese Vicente. I'm with the Kuskokwim River Intertribal Fish Commission, and what I'd like to speak to today First is that I'm hearing a lot about uncertainty in the data, uncertainty in where fish are, uncertainty in how to identify fish in season, certainty about how fish abundance is changing or decreasing over time. Um, when there's high levels of uncertainty, this board is required to implement high levels of precaution. This is in the Sustainable Salmon Policy, and I think it's also backed up by findings for the mixed stock policy of this board in 1993.

And I don't think this has been read into the record yet, so I just want to read part of this. So in this policy for mixed stocked fisheries management, stocks are considered to be species, subspecies, geographic groupings, or other categories of fish manageable as a unit. Decision should be made— decision should be based upon the best information available, but with no expectation that such information will always be accurate or precise, meaning that there's uncertainty inherent in, in fisheries management information. But this idea of managing stocks as a unit is one that's employed by the department and other managers across the state. It's employed within our Kuskokwim River fisheries.

And I think the key point here is that if we're looking at managing the unit of western Alaska king salmon and chum salmon that move through the area, M50 fisheries, and you're looking at the uncertainty and the variability year to year that happens as these fish are migrating through, you— this board must employ a higher level of precaution, um, to manage these stocks as a unit. And the way in which to do this in the June fishery is by getting nets out of the water for extended periods of time. There's certainty that these fish are moving through in the month of June And I think the strongest proposal before this board is Proposal 136, which would get nets out of the water the entire month of June when those declined and potentially endangered stocks are present in this fishery. Thank you.

Thank you, Therese. With your time on the Kuskokwim River Intertribal Fish Commission, have there any been stock-specific actions that target Chinook within that river system, just as an example. Yeah, thank you, Member Chamberlain. There have been, for example, year after year, and I believe this was a practice developed by the department with input from the Kuskokwim River Salmon Management Working Group, the first part of June, even going into May in some years, back, um, there's an implementation of front-end closures. These are intended to protect headwaters-bound Chinook salmon stock, so those going the furthest up the river, which traditional knowledge and Western science identifies as the first king salmon to come up our river.

Those are the ones that are going the furthest. So there's rolling closures implemented starting at the mouth of the river all the way on up to protect that I suppose you could call it that unit of headwaters-bound Chinook salmon that are migrating through, through our river.

There's also been a practice in recent consecutive years to implement a time and area closure in front of the community of Aniak, which is at the mouth of the Aniak River, which is one of the largest tributaries— or the largest— it's a tributary with one of the largest productions of Chinook salmon as well as chum salmon, particularly in the Cusco Cum drainage. So there's a section of the river right in front of the community of Aniak that residents have relied on for generations, um, to subsist on these Chinook and chum salmon, but it's closed down. No nets can be in the water because that's where the Aniak River Chinook salmon are swimming through. So in that, like, to sum that up, the department and now the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Intertribal Fish Commission co-management team have implemented this, this time and area closure to protect the Anyac River Chinook salmon stocks. I hope that answers your question.

Yes, thank you. Member Carpenter. Yeah, thank you for your testimony.

So I was looking at your— you guys put out a report and it talked about different harvests on the Kuskokwim specifically. And kind of understanding how some of the closures and things that you were talking about work, can you tell me roughly where the harvest that is taking place within that drainage is taking place? Because I think last year there was 45,000 kings that were harvested. And I'm just kind of— I'm trying to get a geographic, like, where are they? Where is that harvest taking place?

Thanks for that question. As in many river systems, roughly 80 to 90% of the harvest occurs in the lower portion of the Kuskokwim River, which is also where 80 to 90% of our drainage's population lives. So we have more people down there, we do have more nets in the water, and that's why there's a higher level of precautionary management employed in the lower river to keep those nets out of the water, knowing that the stocks are moving through through to headwater spawning grounds and also headwaters subsistence communities. Okay, I appreciate that. So I guess what I'm getting at is, is most of the harvest taking place in the new area that's managed by the federal government?

Is that the area that it's mainly happening in, or is it other parts of the river?

Well, I would first say that it's not a new area that that fish are harvested by communities in the lower portion of the Kuskokwim that was managed by the Department of Fish and Game for many, many years.

But like I said, the majority of our watershed's population lives in the lower stretches of the river, and those fisheries have occurred down there for thousands of years. Where I live, Bethel, the traditional Yup'ik name for that community is Mumtuyhukmut. That means the place of many fish caches. For generations going back 10,000 years, people have lived in that area in the summertime to put fish away in that area in the lower part of the river where Bethel is. And that goes all the way upriver and all the way downriver.

So it's not a new fishery and it's not, not an intercept fishery. Those are still still terminal fisheries where people have relied upon those salmon and taken those salmon for, for many, many years, and they continue to do so when they have the opportunity to put their nets in the water to do so. And that has declined because of precautionary management principles employed by fisheries managers in our river. Um, and I think I'll leave it at that. Hopefully that answers.

I appreciate that. And just a Quick follow-up to that. What I'm trying to get at is, and I understand that there's been closures in the lower river to put more fish, that, that's very evident to me. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, with these closures and with these different management strategies that are in place, have people that live in that drainage migrated to the— there's a demarcation line for federal management on that river. Have they migrated to that portion of the river to conduct a lot of this harvest?

That's really the question.

So if I could clarify, you're asking if, say, people from upper portions of the river have migrated downstream to be able to harvest salmon when they first come up? Is— I just want to make sure I'm understanding what you're trying to get at. Have people from upriver or downriver where there have been closures, rolling closures, are people fishing in the federal boundary lines now to harvest fish more than they used to when the state managed things, everything? That's, that's the question.

I would say no. I think people are continuing to fish in their traditional areas. They may be going further away and having to spend more money and more time to try to harvest fish when there are openers, but I wouldn't say people from, say, communities within federal waters are going to state waters and vice versa to try to harvest fish, to the best of my knowledge.

Okay, thank you. I see no further questions, but I do want to commend you on the enunciation of that. I couldn't do it myself, so congratulations. Okay, next speaker. Carlin, come on up.

Good morning, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I have a couple points to make, but first I wanted to expand on the Kings and Assaynet as being a Sainer myself.

Can you put your name on the record first? Carlin Hoblett. I don't know exactly how heavy a 28-inch king salmon is, but a lot of times when they're in the seine after we get the bottom of the net closed up, those things are— you know when they're in there, they're, I'll say, full of piss and vinegar. They're And it's not uncommon for a large healthy king to get cradled up in the net because it's not hanging out with the other fish that are in the net. And they'll be close to the side of the boat there where there's an opening.

And that— if we were able to release them, you know, we could just as easily run over to the side of the boat while we're still hauling net in, pull on a piece of web, and that thing will be back in the ocean. Just wanted to help you understand, I guess, and, and that when they are that size, I guess, you know, those big healthy animals, they're, they're, they're strong and, and they're not hard to find. They're not hard to get back in the water, I don't think. Um, another point I wanted to make is that we, we as St. Mary's are not self-managed. There, there are triggers that were put in place, as you all know, in 2023.

So we are not self-managed. We are voluntarily doing this program, and any further restrictions is going to disincentivize cooperation and therefore undermine— We need to get into new information. That portion's been beat to death. Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do have some new information. I have some RCs that I wanted to expand on as well. My ACRC98, I remember you asked about the— the graphs, but then I have RC-172. I was able to expand on the fleet a little bit. The, uh, the rough count of one of the fleet's makeup, I counted 27 vessels out of 35 vessels that are in region, locally owned resident boats.

27 Of 35 that sit idle for, I would say, 6-8 months a year. So not all the vessels. I don't want there to be a skewed perception of fishermen in the region that we all have something to fall back on, because a lot of them don't. So just to point out the, you know, the importance of June and the opportunity to harvest. Like, for instance, I spoke with another fisherman.

He told me there could be some years when 90% of his income would come in the month of June. And those years would be when, say, like the terminal harvest, the terminal harvest don't pan out. Like if it's an even year and there's no pinks or there's no cohos or there's no chum. Which I would also note that we have lost access by action yesterday, we've lost access to terminal stocks already in our region.

Thank you, Harlan. I see no— oh, Ms. Irwin has a question. Yeah, Karlan, thanks very much. I just want to know what terminal fisheries did the board take action on that are now going to restrict your harvest of those? There are healthy terminal stocks in the Volcano Bay section that in the July months boats are fishing on in that area.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Axel, coming up. Thank you.

I'll try to be quick here.

Axel Copin here. I just want to talk about the adaptive management thing that's been— again, I'd like to have you look at RC-131, and the graph that is located at the end of, end of that. And what it shows you is the true adaptive management. If there's a lot of sockeye, there's a lot of chums caught. If there's not a lot of sockeye, they stand down.

And if you look at that graph, the trend lines, the chum harvest impact is almost flat. The sockeye trend line has dropped steeper. A proper adaptive management that was functioning and working properly, you would see the trend line for the chum salmon would drop steeper, and the sockeye trend line, if it didn't match it, would be less— would be less steep. So you can see right in the middle, in 2024, the sockeye were around in more abundance. The chum catch went up because it's not about Avoiding chums.

It's about avoiding a cap. And they stand down when there's not that many sockeye there. So there needs to be management for this. It's just impossible. I mean, we can say all this stuff, but the fish travel together.

I mean, when the reds are there, the chum are there. There may be ends of the runs, but it's— you can't separate these fish when you're out there making hauls off a cape. When I set my net out, if there's chums and reds and pinks going by, I'm going to catch them.

You know, that's why you shallow your nets up to try to avoid some of the chums and the kings, because you can catch them all when they're coming by if you— so either avoid the areas completely and then you're giving up a lot more sockeye and— but anyway, and then the other thing I wanted to talk about is this idea of with the kings, I heard guys say, oh, you carry them like a football. That's a tiny king if you're carrying it like a football. I don't know who played football, but if you look at the genetic study, the average king was 22 inches. That's, you're talking this, that's a humpy. You're gonna tell me you put, I mean, I fish.

I've fished everything. I've fished crab, I've fished salmon, halibut, the whole works. You're going to take 10,000 pounds and put them on the deck of your boat, and you're going to, "Oh, I can see that king right away." They caught, what, 15,000 kings after June last year in a mixed, mixed fishery. You're going to spot all those hundreds of kings in the mass of 10,000 pounds on the deck? You're going to pick out kings that big?

No way. It's not happening. 10,000 Pounds or more. These hauls are bigger than that too, by the way, that time of year. It's not going to happen.

It's just not realistic. And the other one last thing I want to make the point on, they said chums don't come with labels. None of these fish come with labels, right? We all know that. Anybody who knows anything about fishing knows that.

The only way you're going to avoid harvesting these fish is to not have nets in the water. But you can look for all these magic formulas and all these things. The only way you're going to avoid it is to not have nets in the water. There's literally nothing else you can do. And that's why when we're, you know, we get managed on our local stocks, escapement.

When we're not getting escapement, we close because otherwise we'd be catching those fish and we wouldn't make escapement. So you take the nets out of the water, more fish go by. There's nets in the water, fish are getting caught. Kings, chums, reds, whatever it is.

And then the last thing is with these king salmon, something that I have not heard brought up yet by anybody, not a scientific study, not the department, not a board member. Every year you're out there, you're fishing on multiple age classes of these King Salmon stocks, right? You've got 1-year fish, 2-year fish, 3-year fish. However, you've got your ones that are heading back to their streams of origin. Now, those 1-year fish, they get hammered, say, in 2023.

The ones that survive, now they're 2-year fish, they come back and they get hammered in 2024. And then if the ones that make it come back and the 3-year fish get hammered, what's left of them get hammered in 2025. And now those fish are going to get hammered again in 2026. By the time you go through all those age classes, those fish have been fished on from the time they were small, 22 inches, little fish, all the way through. So how many even make it to get big enough to get back to their streams?

Same thing happened with our shrimp fisheries and our crab fisheries in the state of Alaska. The state said, "Oh man, there's so many of them." We can never overharvest. My dad and my grandpa fished crab and shrimp. My grandpa was fishing crab in the '40s.

These big boats came in, "Oh, we need more crab, we need more," and they wiped them out. And you get to the point where there's so few of them that the predators like salmon sharks, sea lions, killer whales that target the bigger kings, there's so few of them left that the predatory aspect of this wipes them out. And a seine is a predator. A gillnet is a predator. You have to look at them as predators, and you wipe them out.

And that's science. That's not— it's science. That predator-prey relationship in abundance, that's vulnerable. So sorry if it went too long, but— thank you, Axel. Member Svendsen has a question for you.

Axel, maybe I misunderstood you, but you were talking about trying to find these small kings in a pile of fish. Well, they don't have to find them. They have to keep them. So, I mean, I don't know why— is that not the case? Okay, you're talking about thousands of pounds of fish coming on board.

I dare anybody to put 10,000 pounds of— by the way, if it's really nasty out, I mean, maybe they got— I mean, I guess they all got Super Sainers, so I guess it doesn't matter, but But you're fishing a smaller boat and you put 10,000 pounds of fish on board and it's nasty out and bad weather, you're an idiot. Well, I guess, I mean, you're not answering my question. Yeah, no, you're not going to find those fish. Well, you don't have to. You're keeping them all.

So they're all going to— They're not all under 28 inches though. That's the thing. You're catching a whole range of them. Okay, but the ones that are over 28 inches are going to be a lot easier to see. Anyway, thank you.

You guys can keep believing that. It's up to you. You're the board. OK, so let's move on to the next speaker.

For the record, Warren Wilson, Mayor of King Cove, Alaska. I'm a descendant from Mushovi Village, Bilkowski, and Sanak Island. My grandfather trapped and fished fished in Pavlof Bay. Yesterday this board put two fishermen out of business with their ruling on the Dolgoi section. And Mayor Wilson, can we keep it to issues pertaining to this, this group?

Well, okay then, I'm going to talk about the King Cove economy. It's collapsing. What— to the loss of our fish plant. The size of the fishing fleet in King Cove has about maybe 5 bigger 58-foot seiners, and the rest are the 42-foot seiners that you see in Chicknick area.

The economy— economic driver for the state of Alaska from the fishing industry is 5%. The oil is drying up. All of our jobs here are based on salmon. We see our test fisheries funded by the salmon caught in those test fisheries, in our drift gillnet fleet on the North Peninsula, in our South Peninsula with the, with the red salmon season. And talking about the— well, you know, what we just heard here is if Chignik is going to drive the whole state, the whole state economy because of their red salmon run, we need all the residents in our communities able to survive whether it's on subsistence or a business with the fishing industry.

On—. From—. For Sandpoint and King Cove, we've been getting hit hard ever since I started my salmon business venture back in 1985. My net has shallowed up from 120 meshes to 70 meshes yesterday. If I could live with that, I wouldn't know.

But I know that, you know, there's so many aspects here that I could be up here all day talking about. But anyway, our fishermen are really resilient.

And with the measures that are taken that the department does not have to spend money to do for the adaptive fishery management in Area M, We are helping all we can. We're cut back to— Mayor, we're not getting into new information here. Do you have any new information? New information is that my community is dying as we speak. I understand.

If we're going to keep on this trend, we will be a ghost town as the communities that I just spoke of. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you.

Madison Thompson, Unga Tribe Council Member, Sandpoint resident. I'm here to correct language used in a slew of RCs and testimony since the start of the meeting. I'd like to say that area operates as a mixed stock fishery, and the term intercept fishery and bycatch has been used heavily at the meeting. This is not what it is officially recognized as. The term bycatch is being thrown around when it is not.

Bycatch would be a jellyfish. A salmon caught in a mixed salmon stock fishery is not bycatch. So I think this is important to put on the record. This rhetoric is— and terminology is harmful to local indigenous fishermen like myself. I'm not here to speak on management capabilities of the department.

I'm just here to clear the record on what a mixed stock fishery is. Thank you, Ms. Thompson. I see no further questions. We'll move to the next speaker.

My name is Tom Wooding. I'm referring— my comments referring to RC-155.

Oh, I've been to a lot of board meetings and, you know, the process has changed a bit. The faces have changed a bit. But one thing that hasn't changed is the misconception of the June fishery. It fishes in a very small part of the 1,200-mile Aleutian Islands. And the NPAFC has had decades of research showing the migration patterns are all throughout the islands.

And that's one of the reasons when you look on RC 155 that the catch of fish in our area is less than 10% of the error in counting the run. And so the geography is directly related to that fact. Thanks.

Thank you very much. I see no further questions. Next speaker. Come on up, Eva.

Thank you. Eva Dawn Burt, for the record. I work for the Yukon River Intertribal Fish Commission, and I need to touch on a couple of things because I think it's important. I'm just going to say it: capitalism is the strongest drug. And the person who put— I'm not going to say the person, but the people who've put in proposals that are asking to shut down the June fishery are the same people who wouldn't even consider limiting on the Yukon commercial fishery.

Same groups of folks that wouldn't stop their own intercept of Chinook salmon on the Yukon in a mixed stock fishery because they wanted to prosecute chum fisheries. So I think it— and then these are the same folks that come to this room and ask for limitations in this fishery and then are in the North Pacific Fishery Management Council saying they can't do anything, they can't take any cuts. So I just want to kind of give that little bit of background about how people are flipping on the flop depending on which space they're in. I'm still hearing derogatory comments in the audience after some of our speakers are talking. I think it's really unprofessional, and I'm hearing it from youth, which is really sad because all our youth have ever done is come here and be respectful, caring, considerate, and they're trying to share the burden of conservation.

I don't think I've heard one of my people ask to shut this June fishery down. I do not believe in shutting this June fishery down myself. I need to correct some things. The herring bycatch action that was taken yesterday, they're seeing an increase of herring in the North Pacific as bycatch. Can we stay on proposals before today?

I am, but I'm just going to say like they're trying to reduce the biomass and that— so some of these proposals that are coming in are intertwined in other fisheries. The lower Yukon SONAR project, it has a test fishery, so they do determine species, they do genetics, eggs, age, sex, length. I want to clarify the genetics. I think people are confusing what Yukon genetics are. The Yukon summer chum are lumped under CWAC.

They're lumped under Coastal Western Alaska, and together Coastal Western Alaska genetics and Upper Yukon make up Western Alaska chum, the index that I showed you. And I'd also like to note that within this fishery in 2023 and 2024, there were thousands of Upper Yukon fall chum taken, and these were taken at times when we have very, very low Upper Yukon fall chum numbers. So again, when Seawack is swimming with Upper Yukon fall chum It is very— they could be swimming together. That could be Yukon summer chum and fall chum. And the ages of chum caught in this fishery.

In the North Pacific, they catch a lot of age 3 and 4, and those they do an AEQ, age equivalency analysis, and they determine that once a fish, a chum salmon is about age 3, it's most likely going to survive. So they just assume that all of their bycatch is is going to survive. And I think what we see in the age genetic for coastal western Alaska fish here, it really— it strengthens my argument that the age 4 fish are migrating through Area M, then they're migrating through the pollock fishery, and they're accompanied by age 3 fish that they're teaching these routes and migration feeding patterns. And migrations vary year to year depending on the currents, depending on depending on sea ice. So there is interannual variability.

I think with the IPAs, I have a real issue that they're not in regulation, and you could refer to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council action that was just taken, where their incentive plan agreements have 6 specific provisions that are in the Code of Federal Regulations, and some of them are requiring outlying require provisions to identify vessels that have high or poor chum salmon performance, require the IPAs to provide weekly reports of the amount of chum catch and wear to tribes, and require IPAs to prohibit fishing in areas with very high bycatch rates. And I think that's the issue I have in here, is using a 2-to-1 sockeye-to-chum ratio as a rate It's, it's not really effective in this fishery. And also, you, when, if you're going to be doing this IPA, we really need to be breaking down the seawack component per statistical area. Because really it's two statistical areas that are making up the majority of chum bycatch: 28540 in Unimak and 28211 in the Southeast Southcentral District. And most importantly, the IPAs have 100% observer coverage, 100% retention, and every single salmon is counted.

1 Out of 30 are tested for genetics. In the genetic study here for 2022 to 2024, only 1 in 84 chum salmon were sampled. So I, I kind of think we— there are a lot of uncertainties and errors in here. And I really think that many others have said is the only way to reduce— I think Axel spoke to it perfectly— is like, they're having an issue with sockeye in the June fishery right now. And the more sockeye they catch, the more chum they catch.

And really what we need to be doing to lower Western Alaska chum is probably honing in on those two stat areas. To bring that number down. In the pollock fishery, they still have to operate under the assumption that at least 20% of the chum that they're encountering are most likely of coastal Western Alaska. So you still have to operate with that assumption until you have more data. And I think that's all I have.

Thank you, Eva. Member Wood has a question. Yeah, thank you, Eva. Hey, To your theory that— thanks for pointing out that the summer chum, the upper Yukon chum, and even Kotzebue chum are kind of swimming together. But as we learned in Fairbanks at the Interior meeting, the run timing is different.

So do you account for the lower numbers based on just the lower numbers of chum period, or saying that they're swimming together, migrating together, or is that— how are you putting that together like they're all swimming together going to the same place when we're looking at run timings coming in separately on that river through Pilot Station?

Thank you for the question through the chair. Mr. Wood, as I testified to earlier, the salmon swim together. The Chinook and summer chum are coming in together. Their midpoints overlap. And similar with summer and fall chum, you'll have fall chum mixed in with that summer.

That's why you move the date back. And so you can't really say— it's kind of like they're overlapped here, they're overlapped here. And so if you see Yukon fall chum, what you're seeing not only in June, but you're seeing it in post-June in some years, it's probably on the tail end of that summer chum. You see what I'm saying? It's mixed in.

And they're in a migration pattern. They're, they're on their way home if they're 4-year-olds. Thank you. And I also want to add something about the kings. The last time that we saw a high amount of kings in both the Yukon and Kuskokwim-Bristol Bay was 2019.

And in this fishery, that's when they caught 10,000 kings. So it's, it's really important to notice that the number of kings might be a lot lower right now, And we really need to be protecting every king salmon in this fishery. When you save chum salmon, you save Chinook because they swim together. And that's exactly what the Pollock fishery found out. They have actual, like, you're going to save X amount of Chinook if you save X amount of chum.

So it's a direct correlation. Thank you. Thank you, Eva. I see no further questions. We'll move on to the next speaker.

Patrick Brown, Sandpoint AC. I'm a seiner. I spent 30 years setnetting as well up to this point. I think we can all agree since 2020 things have been pretty dire in the fisheries, but 2019 was actually a great year. A'ryam harvested 549,000 chums in the month of June.

And before you extrapolate numbers and wonder how much that could have helped the Yukon River, in 2019, the escapement of the summer run was 1.4 million. That was 200,000 above the upper escapement goal. And similarly, in that same year, the fall run was 240,000 above its escapement goal. Bristol Bay also harvested 1.4 million chumset. Summer.

There's also a lot of ecological things that were happening in that timeline. We've heard on the record 2019, the river was warm, the coastline was warm. I've heard testifiers, I've talked to people that have seen, talking about fish just floating down the river belly up for whatever reason. But we're now, we're living with the consequences of this environmental factors. Just to show that even though we did harvest that amount of chums in that year, it did not hurt those systems.

People were still allowed to fish. Now we're dealing with the consequences, but we are not the problem. And cutting back time and area any further is not going to get those fish up. Thank you. Member Carlson-Vandoren has a question.

What systems were escaped by over a million? What are we—. What are you are you talking about? This is, this is an RC-25 I submitted for the AC. The summer run, Yukon summer run, was $200,000 above its upper end escapement goal.

And like I said, the fall run was $240,000 above its upper escapement goal. So you're speaking to the Yukon Chum? Yes. Summer run only? I said fall—.

Summer, summer and fun. Summer was $200,000 more. Fall was $240,000. That's a $440,000 over-escapement on that system. Yeah, we all know what happens when systems over-escape.

Do we? I mean, anyway, we're looking at the science. I don't know, are we? I appreciate that though. Thank you.

Thank you for bringing that to my attention. And that was in RC 25. Got it. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Patrick. Next up.

Hi, my name is Jamie Wertz, for the record. I just— I submitted RC-157 yesterday. It was just in reference to regulations in Kodiak and Southeast Alaska in relation to king salmon over the size of 28 inches. I think we've gone over that plenty. I just have a new point.

Or a new reference that might be interesting to the board. I've been seining since I was 16 in the state of Alaska all the way down into Puget Sound. In Puget Sound, Chinook salmon are listed as an ESA stock of— it's not listed as concerned, it's threatened. They have decided that it is important to continue to seine pink salmon, sockeye salmon, chum salmon in those respective fisheries. The Department of— there's the Department of Fish and Wildlife in Washington State has implemented a booklet that everyone is required to review.

All seiners participate on best practices of handling Chinook salmon and the release of Chinook. And as well as coho in their fisheries.

I feel like I have participated in this and we've done a good job releasing fish alive. Not every king salmon you catch can be released alive, but some can. The department in Puget Sound puts observers and biologists on the boats and they do it randomly. They don't need to give you notice. They just come out.

They're collecting length, sex, size, genetic data, scales. They can do that. It's not mutually exclusive to killing the fish and bringing it to the plant to get data.

You know, I think that was just a valid point I wanted to bring up.

Member Irwin has a question. Yeah, thank you very much, Jamie. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. That's a really interesting example of something happening in another area. My question is, do you think that program would still work if there weren't— there wasn't the capability of having observers on board?

Yeah, I think fishermen inherently want to conserve and protect the resource available to them. I don't see any fishermen in my experience that are out there to do anything other than that. Um, I also want to reference there's an RC that Kylie Thompson submitted. I don't have the number yet. It was more recent, in 2024.

We asked the department for just more enforcement. We want accountability. We want Transparency. That doesn't just relate to 2024. I'll say it for all of the area MSA'ners right now.

We would love to see more enforcement and, you know, more transparency, more coverage. We're fine with that. Yeah. Thank you. And thank you for that comment, Jamie.

I do appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Wirth. I don't see any other questions. Steve, come on up.

Thank you. My name is Steve Reifenstahl, ARIEM Sainers. I'll try to be brief here. I think the science is clear with the genetic studies from the WASP years to the '22 and then '23 to '25. There's lots of great data.

I'm not going to review that again, but I think we have good good science there. And then you put on top of that tagging studies, which we should do new ones, but even from '87. It's very informative of what is happening, what's transiting and where they go to. And as a side note, I just talked to a University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist. They're finding sea whack chum up on the north slope.

Up by Colville. So those fish are actually going up there now. He's gonna— there'll be a paper published on that in about a month or two.

But I would like to spend just a little bit of time, and I'll try to be brief, but I think it's important that there's a couple studies or documents that came out in 2025. So one is the YRDFA document on the preseason. Which really just mirrors what was done by peer review studies done by the Canadians the same year. So they didn't confer as far as I know. But the— what's listed in there is the highest risk issues on the Yukon.

They just coincide. So lethal spawning temperatures. And I'm not going to go into— there's a lot of detail in each one of these, but I'll just be brief. So, you know, increase in ichthyophomus. Severe warming events.

Permafrost melt. That's only happening in the Yukon in terms of the release of sequestered heavy metals.

Increase in predators. That's— now I'm not just talking about from what I think. I'm talking about either peer-reviewed studies or what's in the Yurtford document as what they see as the problems, the inherent problems for the salmon on the Yukon.

And then there's ice sheet retreat, which we've heard a little bit about that. But it turns out that it's the— again, empirical studies demonstrate that that's a bigger problem for the eastern Bering, where the Yukon comes out, than it is for the western Bering, the Asian stocks, particularly pink salmon on the Asian side. They're seeing 6 times normal survival.

So I think that those are the main things I wanted to cover. Now, we had guidance from the Chair through the department that we were not going to talk about non-retirement intention that we were going to bring that up when we talk about 135. So I just want to make sure I should hold what I have to say about that because many people have spoken to it. But I'll respect what was given as the guideline as long as we are going to talk about 135 later.

Yes, we will be talking about 135 later. Okay. Thank you. Seeing no questions, we'll take the next speaker. Good morning, Chair, Board.

[SPEAKING IN INUKITUTQ] Good morning. My name is Stanislaus Shepherd. My Eskimo name is Udook. I was born and raised in Mountain Village on the Lower Yukon. I'll be referring to RC053, and I didn't really have time to explain my pictures that I feel I better have more time to do it here.

In this time space.

And the first page is a map showing where Mountain Village is. You can see how far— Dennis Loss, can we keep it pertinent to the proposals at hand and how they speak to them? And I think we've gone through the map before. Yes. I think this would refer to Proposal 136 and 131.

Okay? It— I didn't learn this over one summer. It took me about 2 years, 3 years to figure out how to adjust to putting up cheefish and whitefish compared to our chum and kings. Now, the first picture is Dominica cutting whitefish in 2025.

The second picture is showing how we hang them up on the fish rack. The third— Dennis, I think we've gone through the pictures before. Okay. Yeah, you walked us through these. Yeah, okay, thank you.

I do apologize. Now, it's gonna be hard to continue this putting up Chiefess and Whitefish.

Number one, they take a longer time and more work after putting up years and years of Summer Chum and Kings. So if there's a reduction somehow, some way, I think it would bring more chum and king back into the Yukon. Now, going back to when Mr. Stan was talking about two different kings in the Yukon, white meat and red meat, I know for a fact I fished on the Yukon River Since 10 years old, 53 years, I haven't seen a white king salmon, all red. So, and now we're getting mixed.

Sometimes the chum coming first and then the kings. It used to be king salmon, chums, silvers, cohos. Thank you. Thank you, Stanislaus. I don't see any questions from board members, so we'll move to the next speaker.

Good morning, Chair and the board. My name is Martin Hunter, representing the ABCP region, and I'm going to be referencing— we know, we all know the stock of concern here is CHUM, and I just I wanted to share a personal story, uh, which I didn't share in this whole meeting process at all. Uh, over the years, um, I've been a subsistence fisherman for well over 50-plus years on the Kuskokwim River, and I watched the species, uh, uh, go record high in our river systems, and I've also seen crash. And I wanted to share— and also I'd like to mention, you know, for the record that we're very appreciative of all the area and fishermen, of all the efforts that they're partaking in reduction— into trying to reduce taking of the chum salmon, which are a stock of concern. Now, I wanted to share with you last summer, we all know there's no more 5-footers, 5-footer kings, or those big chums on our river system, as well as the chum king— pardon me, kings.

There's hardly no more 4-footers, a lot of 3-footers, and we all know the numbers on the chum And I wanted to share, in my fish camp personally this summer, for well over 50-plus years, the chum salmon used to be the predominant species that would be on our small drying rack as well as in our small smokehouse. But last year, I was very concerned when we just put away 3 chum salmon the whole summer.

And seeing the stock go from record high numbers down to dwindling down to near nothing for subsistence. And I just wanted to share that story because we all don't want to— if any of the fish keep dwindling down, The last thing we would like to do is, you know, go to that ESA route, and that would just hurt everybody. So I just wanted to put that on record, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. Thank you, Martin. Questions from the board?

Okay. Thank you. Virgil, come on up. New information.

Virgil Lempfenauer for the Fairbanks ACE. In March of 1995, there was a Board of Fish meeting. And we were addressing the same issue, except then it was the chum cap. And northern Norton Sound subsistence fishing for chums was totally closed. And so I was advocating to lower the chum cap from 700,000 down to something less.

Anyway, I said we do not have any liberations. I said we do not have any yield. So we're in violation of our constitution, which says we will manage for sustained yield. And one of the board members says, "No, that's not right. We have a yield for the bears and the seagulls." And so I was really upset over that.

And that one thing is what caused us to start the Sustainable Salmon Policy. That one thing right there. Anyway, so now I want to move away from that and talk about the genetic tagging studies that have been done, recent ones. And that's the WASP study and then the one that's been done recently. And in the WASP study, it was 58% coastal western Alaska and Yukon.

And now it's 24.6%. And so the point that I want to make about this is that the population of the chum salmon for the WASP study compared to the population of chum salmon now for this recent study is 20% less chum salmon. I don't know about the whole region. I do know about Norton Sound and I know about the Yukon. It's 20% less.

And the Chinook salmon, although they only have one thing done on Chinook, but the Chinook salmon populations now are at approximately 16% of what they were, the long-term average. And so That means the harvest rate now has more than doubled. That's what I want to— that's the point that's of real interest. And then the person that has a fish camp in the rapids has been on the board, has been going to Bear Creek, which is just the first drainage upriver from the rapids that has summer chum going into it. It never has been a big run, but he has not seen one summer chum for 6 years, which basically means they're extirpated now.

There are systems in northern Norton Sound that have been extirpated of chum salmon. And so that's the situation we're in right now. And there's only one thing that counts because there's a lot of controversy over who manages what and fish tickets and stuff like that. I'm not going to address any of that. I'm just going to say one thing.

There's only one thing that counts to get more fish upriver or past a point, and that is get the gear out of the water. That's the only thing that counts. Thank you. Thank you, Virgil. See no questions.

We'll move on to the next speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Thomas Tolan. I am a fisherman in Bristol Bay. I also have seined in the past herring.

But I wanted to point out some things that I think that have been overlooked during this whole process. I really firmly believe that the AYK failure has been an alarm clock for us. I was reading a book just recently in regards to the decline of salmon in America. And you can see as it makes its way north that it's basically because of a miscalculation by the fish managers and, of course, pollution and overharvest. And I think that's some of the things that we have to look at.

And I think the other thing that we sometimes don't look at is the science behind how how these fish swim, and I'm talking about buoyancy. As a young boy fishing with my dad for kings, he put me on the lead line, and when I was on the lead line, I was right under the rower, and those kings would come over and clobber me in the head. Well, it didn't take me long to figure out that those kings were down at the bottom of the net, and the buoyancy of the king was way down there. And so the heavier the fish, the lower the fish swims. And you will see that with the seine fishermen, how they fished.

When we're asking for you to lower or shorten the seines of the seine fishermen, that's to save the kings. The kings have a heavier buoyancy, they're down on the bottom. The chums are also heavier than reds. If Area M is after reds, they should be ashamed or should even hesitate to shorten those things to be able to catch the reds. The other thing that I wanted to point out was Area M and the Alliou Corporation has some very nice pictures on the Facebook page about their fishery, about saving their fishery, their culture, and their way of life.

And when you look at those pictures and you compare them to another site on Facebook called Boats of Sandpoint, and you will see that the Boats of Sandpoint at one time were 32 feet or less. And that's how they used to, that's how they used to fish. But their boats now are huge, humongous. Now you add horsepower to that, you add sonars to that, you add huge seines to that, you talk about the efficiency of being able to catch fish. It has jumped up dramatically.

Then let's go to the '70s. Let's go to the '70s to take a look at what happened with limited entry. Limited entry gave all of the same fishermen a permit. Oh, but they also gave them a drift permit and a setnet permit. Now all of a sudden you have more people fishing that intercept fishery.

And those things, those things have to be calculated when we start considering, you know, trying to save our fish. Because alarm clock has gone off. I'm watching Sierra Club, an international organization, standing outside the door wanting to come in to declare our king salmon an endangered species. And if that is allowed, believe me, We're all going to be in trouble, and I don't want that to happen. I, I want us to be able to do something, to be able to fix the situation.

And yes, if it meets cutting back, everybody better cut back. Everybody be able to save. I grew up on the Nushagak River. I could remember fishing. Thomas, we, we're going to have to wrap up.

We've got it. We've— we're getting close to 3 hours and we need to— we need to move on. So take about, uh, 15 seconds to conclude and then we've got to move on. Okay. No, I'm gonna— I'm gonna go ahead and, and wrap it up.

And I, I want— I want to say, you know, uh, the final thing I want to say is, in listening to the AYK folks and, and the hunger that they feel and the suffering that they're feeling, I really hope that you take that into consideration. And the final thing is that, you know, self-regulation. I rode in the cab today. We're driving down the road in the 45-mile-an-hour zone. A cop is right beside us.

We're doing 55. No, self-regulation don't work. Sorry. Thank you, Thomas. Okay, next speaker.

George Gunnerton.

We all know that AYK talk has been cut throughout Alaska, and I could see where you're coming from. I believe Grant pointed right behind you. I was wondering if you'd ask the department if they think any AYK tribes are being cut. Crystal Bay.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Drayton Newman. I'm a settler fisherman in area, and I just wanted to make the board aware and something to keep in the back of your minds moving forward. Our fleet is incredibly small.

You know, there's a good portion of us that have crew, and then there's a good portion of us like myself where we, we don't have crew. Um, it's just financially irresponsible. There was a gentleman up here a couple days ago talking about how he wanted to get Chicknick Lagoon opened up to— for safety for the smaller boats. I'm Coast Guard documented 27.5 foot. I fish Unga Cape primarily, which is the southern side of Unga.

There's a lot of open water behind, you know, just out there. He also spoke on the, you know, 400+ hours we have. South side, we get a lot of southern winds, a lot of southwest winds. My fishing time weekly is probably in the 30s. You know, 20s, if not less.

So I just wanted to make you guys aware moving forward that, you know, we're not big. Thank you. Okay. Oh, we have a question. Mr.

Godfrey, how many of you don't have crew, roughly? Um, just down my float, there's probably 5 of us. When you say it's financially irresponsible, do you just mean you can't afford a crew, or what do you mean Exactly. So when I started, it was roughly 4 years ago, um, the mainland was never opened up. Everyone talked about, oh, it's so great, it's so great, and I never seen it personally.

It has been opened up since, but, uh, financially I think it, it helped out the Setnet fishermen a lot, like more than a lot of people realize, and I, I just never seen the benefit from it yet. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Newman. See no further questions. Chief Ridley.

I'll try to go quick. Brian Ridley, chief chair for TCC, and I'll bypass how many people and area I represent. What I did, because of what I think you're trying to get to, is the entire West Coast that we've come together on this. From Bristol Bay all the way up. We represent 148 communities and 70,000 people.

So the points I wanted to make that I didn't get to previously— the North Pacific's taking action. We expect you to take strong action. I heard the Seiners talk about we need to get more kings into the rivers. I agree, but I think how we do that is by having those shutdown periods during the peak of the run.

I hear fishermen talk about, oh, but it's only 3% of what we catch. When I was here 3 years ago, the State of Alaska reports and my advocacy, I think at that time we were 10 or 12% of their catch, but we had previously, when our run was strongest, we were 18% or almost 1 in 5 fish. I haven't heard anybody talk about that.

The one thing I don't understand, and I know I can't ask you questions, is how we got so far away from subsistence priority. It just seems so backwards, I'll say. I'll keep the other part out of it. And finally, I've got a joint statement from, uh, Senator Scott Kawasaki and Mike Cronk. So not only are we unified on the West Coast, but we're apparently bringing together Democrats and Republicans on this issue.

Either the Board of Fisheries or the legislature will have to come up with a meaningful solution to protect western Alaska Chinook and chum.

Is theirs, that if you don't do it, they'll step in. And then finally, I'll conclude the last new RC from Mike Kronk. I'll just read the last line. This is unacceptable, and the Board of Fish must do all in its power to protect future resources for all Alaskans. Thank you.

Masi cho.

Thank you, Chief Ridley. Seeing no questions, we'll move to the next speaker.

Hello, my name is Brenda Wilson. I'm from the Ogden tribe in King Cove, Alaska.

I just wanted to clarify. I kept hearing through every day of this testimony that we have no salmon creeks in our region, and I was really questioning Did I really raise my family in that area? Because we've got pictures all the way from when I was pregnant and when we got married and that's where we got our dried fish, was our cohos and silvers and humpies, so, and even occasionally king salmon. My daughter was scared of a king salmon even in the creek because of the repercussions of getting a king salmon on the boat. She was terrified of them.

She would scream and holler. It had to go back over. It was alive. And she— that was embedded in her and it still is today. I think the thing that I have a really hard time with is right now you guys are sitting there loaded with loaded guns pointed at our families, at my family in particular.

We've fished there for all our lives. And to say that's not traditional, that's not cultural, is not respecting who we are. And I need to apologize for people who felt they were disrespected in the room. I was also yesterday, I was called a white dog. I'm Unangan.

I'm a proud Aleut woman. And I will continue to be. I'm smart. I'm intelligent. And I'm going to make sure that our people have the right to do what they have done for millennia.

I just think, I look back at the research in our area. Where caves have been found where there's 10,000 dried fish in there, and there's mummies of our past culture. And to say we are not water people, of the water— we are on a little tiny slip of, slip of land, and there's so much in between us and them. Please take that into account when making your decisions, because I think that decisions you might make today may be the death of the family that I know. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Wilson. Oops. Sorry, almost took everything with me. Okay. Next up.

Hello. Thank you, members of the board, to give me an opportunity to speak.

For the record, my understanding is new information.

The new information is back in late '70s, '80s, and '90s, there were nobody from Norton Sound or AYK or even Togiak. That we're here talking about subsistence activities. The reason being is that all those river systems are losing their salmon. They're not putting up subsistence salmon anymore.

The only thing back then we talked about was commercial fisheries. But all these years we have seen different types of studies, scientific studies, tagging, scale sampling. But still we've seen decline in the terminal fisheries. Terminal Rivers. So my, so my thought is that you as a board being new, research what happened in the past.

Subsistence activity or subsistence proposals were unheard of. But now that we were But now that we're seeing decline, predominantly Yukon being dead, we are asking more to protect the terminal rivers.

So therefore, I ask you to closely look at sooner or later, we're not going to have no more salmon. Thank you. Thank you, Moses. Uh, I don't see any other questions. All right, next speaker, come on up.

Mr. Chair, for the record, my name is Charlotte Levy. I'm the fisheries analyst with the Aleutian Eastborough. Um, quite a lot of stuff that I could talk about, um, but for your sakes, I'm going to try and keep it focused. Um, you guys have a suite of proposals before you, um, and there's been a lot of talk about the adaptive management plan.

There's been a lot of reference to other similar types of adaptive plans that have been in place in other places and other fisheries. I would just start by noting that you, you very carefully, when considering what may have just happened at the council action, to be very careful about drawing similarities and differences, because while we're both trying to achieve the same thing and using very similar tools, that is a different fishery. It's in a very different place, much closer to the Siwak area. It's a different bathymetry. So I would just, I would just say use some caution and do your research.

The other thing I want to note and be very clear about is that this program, the adaptive management program, has always operated under the authority of the Department of Fish and Game. At this last meeting, which many of you were at, we were given very explicit objectives that were outlined outlined in regulation, and we formalized this plan to achieve those objectives, which is what we did. We, we didn't even come close to hitting those objectives for a variety of reasons, but mostly because that they were harvesting less chum deliberately, which also in turn reduced their sockeye harvest. And, and it's of course something we're still learning how to do and kind of figuring out how to optimize one while reducing the other is kind of a, is kind of a growing process. But at any point in time, the department had the authority to, to close this fishery if they felt that any of those objectives were not being achieved, even in advance of that date.

So they, you know, preemptively look at data prior to those two trigger dates to make sure that there's no chance that those would have been achieved. But I just want to be clear that we were given objectives and we achieved those. And I, and I think it's a little bit unfair to, um, to say that there were no metrics of success, um, because they were laid out for us in regulation and we did everything we could to achieve those. The second thing I just want to note is that, and I hope you all have it, I didn't see it online yet, but I did submit an RC. I do hear a lot of calls for transparency, and that's something I think we came into this meeting knowing we wanted to do better, and we wanted to find ways to communicate this information, to make it more timely, maybe distribute it in a way that it would reach the people who are most interested in this information.

And I, I think the public will get to see it soon, but you all have a color copy in front view of the data portal that we use. One thing I want to dispel is that this is kind of a, you know, laissez-faire operation that we, you know, it's a radio group. And sure, it's a little bit of a radio group, but it's a lot more. The portal that you see before you was upwards of $40,000 that the borough spent out of their own pocket to hire a software engineer to develop infrastructure so that we could formally document all of the closures that we do and to use a suite of tools. So the image on the left that you're seeing is basically like any website.

You get a drop-down menu, and every single thing that you see in that drop-down menu is a, is a wealth of information that the fishermen are using to make decisions. So I hear this 2-to-1 ratio thing come up as a metric, and While it's still not super clear, um, there is a variety of information that they have to use pretty much on the hour to make these management decisions. And then when they make those decisions, you'll see on the right side, that figure there is a real example of the first week in 2024. So what you're looking at are closures. I hear a lot of calls time and area windows.

What you're looking at are windows, and I just, I want to echo, and I know this might be a repeat, but the truth of the matter is that the people who are gonna see what's happening on the grounds from year to year and account for variability, the first people who are gonna see that are the fishermen. And if you want windows, which is what the suite of proposals is asking for, You're not going to get a better window, a more educated window, than the ones that they're putting on themselves right away. And I, I believe there are ways to improve this program and to provide more transparency. We can talk about metrics, how to track those. Um, Charlotte, can you wrap up?

We're running low on time. Yes. Um, but for the sake of transparency, you now have kind of an idea of what we're working with here. And short of closing the entire fishery which I don't think anybody wants. And assuming everybody here supports healthy fisheries for all user groups instead of commercial fisheries, I would really focus on the behavior aspect that you are going to benefit from in perpetuity, even after other systems are rebuilt.

Thank you. What's your RC number, Charlotte? Um, I, I don't actually have it yet because I, I didn't submit it. Okay, we'll look for it. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Member Wood. Yeah, thank you. Is there a way to like mathematically quantify the time that is spent down?

Like if you just put into regulation 5 days no fishing, how many fish went by at that time versus you know, 48 hours of no fishing because you saw fish there, and then because you're seeing fish there, you're not fishing. So therefore you're adding up those hours. So if it does— if it ends up being 5 hours or 5 days worth of hours because the fish were there, does that— you see what I'm saying? It's like you could choose 5 days just on the map on the calendar versus the how you— this adaptive management program is working to account for those days in the fish passage, especially because you're seeing fish. Is there any way to quantify that?

Um, Member Wood, I, um, I think that's a tricky question, um, and I'm hesitant to try to give you a yes or no answer. I mean, I think I think that's something you need a group of people and statisticians and people, mathematicians to really look at how you would come up with that kind of analysis. And whether it's actually useful, how many assumptions you would have to make, which I imagine are probably a lot. But, and also the one thing I wanted to add, please read PC-118. That was the 6-page report not a 2-page report, and it did break down by period and by the 2 districts.

Please read that and please talk to me if you have questions. Thank you. Thank you, Charlotte. I don't see any other questions. We'll move to the next speaker.

Thank you. Through the chair, the chair and the chair, a lot of chairs. Uh, Carrie Stevens, Upper Yukon. I do have new information, uh, Member Chamberlain. I will try to keep it brief.

I have comments in both biological and economic, and they are new I will try to keep it as brief as possible. To the point of the health of the river and where we are in these rivers, I just want to point out that the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force report of 2024, of which Board of Fish members sat on, clearly identifies bycatch and intercept as major factors factors in rebuilding, and is also listed in the ADF&G Division of Comfish October '22, Understanding Factors That Limit Chinook Salmon Productivity, under likely suspects driving poor Chinook salmon and abundance. And it's listed as a secondary cause affecting rebuilding. We all know, we are at every forum, there are multiple biological factors, but been made clear by yourselves and your department, this is a primary contributing factor. My last biological point is on abundance and health.

I'm so grateful that was finally brought on the floor today. Uh, it's not just the number of fish. I think everybody in here is a fisherman, fisherwoman like myself. My hands are happiest on fish. We see the fish not returning in numbers, but the fish we do see, we all know, are much smaller and much less healthy.

In reference to the abundance we saw with the 2017, they were pushed by climate, and we saw them push out massive amount of fish. Those fish were very skinny and yellow and they were not well. And so we saw the lowest spawner recruitment ratio for that push that was mentioned in '08. So as you all have identified environmental factors affecting the up and down of the fishery, so have we. And it's a lack of correlation here.

Between the years of stand-down, the cycles of the fishery and their life cycles, and what is coming back. And so in this uncertainty, again, precautionary is the metric. To economics, I do not think it has been mentioned. I have several colleagues texting me from around the state, and I just want to point out out that we know much of this is driven by the economic viability of the processors who we have seen in the hallways but not in the room at this entire meeting. And we can look to communities throughout the Southeast such as Kiks Kwaan, Kake, Alaska.

Their cannery has been closed and it is now a beautiful renovated cultural hub where they have carved their first traditional canoe in years. Everyone is adapting to changes in fisheries collapses across the state, and we're just asking that these burdens are shared and economically shared. Everywhere there were canneries across Southeast, there are not. And those people are healthy and strong and wealthy with bougie fur and nice earrings, and they have good incomes and good lives, and they don't have canneries. So that has not been put on record.

So, um, I just wanted to bring up this point, um, it I have a couple new points on this issue, so I will try to get to them, and I appreciate your patience. Is that there is grave concern about your legal vulnerability as a board and a department, having abdicated your authority to a group that is financially conflicted We have sat through your ethics disclosures, your financial closures, but yet we have a fishery run that you have abdicated your authority to, to the exact people who are profiting from that fishery. And where is the disclosure of their 7-member board that's making the decisions? There is no public transparency. We just saw a whole portal put into the RC and again told that the public will not have that data.

So there's a real legal concern there regarding your authority and this grave conflict of interest on the floor. Now I, I just want to point out, I'll skip over several points, I just have like 2 closing points here that have not been highlighted. Public comment 118, I agree we'd love for you to to, uh, look at that. In the overview from 2022 to 2025 Adaptive Management Plan, it says, despite significant and increasing conservation efforts, harvest levels remained volatile and generally below historical averages, leading to the conclusion that external abundance factors are primary drivers of seasonal outcomes. You could also draw the conclusion there that adaptive management does not work to be responsive to the variability of chum or Western Alaska chum or Chinook.

This is the main takeaway here. And that clearly their stand-downs on sockeye harvest show that they're standing down for reds because they're losing money, but not when chums are present. Those are two separate variables. Wrap up in 15 seconds. Okay, my last point is really important, and it is that 30% of the Drift Fleet, which is a very significant, uh, second largest capture of Western Alaska chum, is only participating in this plan 30% of the fleet.

This is not coverage. This is not legal coverage. It is less than— it's one-third of the fleet, which is the second largest contributor. So thank you for letting me get that on record. I just want to say this action is for 3 years.

We need to be conservative now. We'll all be back in 3 years. Thank you. Thank you, Carrie. I think we have a question.

Member Carpenter. Thank you, Carrie.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I guess it's a question to the statement you made about the board's vulnerability, and I'm curious about what you mean by that. Are you suggesting that if the board doesn't do what you're asking, that you're going to sue us? I mean, I'm just curious if you could maybe define that a little more.

I personally do not have the capacity to sue the board. No, Tom. Excuse me, Member Carpenter. I apologize. I mean no disrespect.

It's not a threat. No, absolutely not. I think it is a consideration of your duty to work in the best interest of Alaska's people and Alaska's fish for all future generations. And I think that it is absolutely not a threat for me. I think that people are just very concerned that We need action that is legally defensible for the state of Alaska, as we're hearing from our legislators.

And there is an egregious conflict of interest, and it's apparent.

I appreciate you clarifying that statement. I agree with you. There's apparent conflicts of interest all over the place. So thank you for clarifying. Thank you, Member Carpenter.

Okay, thank you, Carrie. Next speaker. For the record, my name is Janet Woods. All new information. Traditional knowledge.

We know through traditional knowledge when our fish are coming. We see it's been passed down for years. The birds, the cotton, the butterflies, all that plays in, in the birds, especially the gwaalgus, knowing when you have to set your net. They know when the fish are here. And I only say that because my dad said, "We never start fishing until after the Fourth of July because," he said, "we've got to let that first pulse go through.

Those are the strongest fish and they're the scouts. So we always let those fish go through and would start fishing the second pulse." The other thing that I wanted to say was we used to fish right after the salmon. We used to fish silvers, what we call silvers, but coho, we don't see that in our rivers anymore coming up the Yukon River. So those are gone to us. And because we are in the middle of the Yukon River, we don't get all those species that they do at the lower river.

The only thing that we get is the salmon. We used to get the coho and the chum, we can't fish anymore. And then later the burbot, but those are with hooks, not with net, but that's all we have. In the summer, the chinook salmon is all we have. The other thing that I wanted to say for the record, new information, that the Rampart School, the second time is on the verge of closing, and the school employs 4 people from Rampart.

The economy is very bad in some of the small, small villages. So, but this all due to the way we were used to living.

The other thing, and to— the other thing that I wanted to say was, you know, we are— we were born and raised here.

After the outside interest leaves, when there's no more fish, we'll still be here. We're not going anywhere.

And I hope you take that into consideration. And in closing, the AC for Tanna Manly Rampart supports Proposal 132 because it shares the same strong rationale as Proposal 136 131. Furthermore, we endorse the elimination of caps and triggers, which is— which are ineffectual in the Area M fisheries. Since endorsement in Area M is not meaningful, caps and triggers cannot be effectively implemented. And the other thing that, in just closing, I wanted to say that, you know, you can't have 2, 3 days of closure because in those 2, 3 days the fish are going to pool up somewhere and they'll go get those.

In order for the fish to go through, we've got to have longer closures. To let them through. 10 Days or more. We've got to have those closures in order for the Chinook salmon and all the species to go through. Thank you.

Thank you, Janet. I'll take the next speaker.

Good afternoon, management board chair, [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Thomas Naglaska, Keltic Commissioner. I got two points today that new information that I just want to bring up. First one is accuracy and abundance through the sonar station.

Last summer in the village of Keltic, there was 2 belugas swimming up the Yukon River. And the only time you see those belugas is when they're following salmon. So we know there's salmon out there, and my point I'm trying to get across is I don't know who's managing the sonars down there, but how can you miss something that big?

My second point here is management and jurisdiction. You know, the board here, I'd like to say thank you. You have a big responsibility. But in any time in our federal jurisdiction under an ALCA, we can pull out if we request from the Secretary of the State if our subsistence priorities are not met. And, you know, last 6 years we got nothing really to show for it.

And, you know, if we have to go that route, we can just easily request assistance. To get a hand in help, a helping hand to get our subsistence priority met. Thank you. Thank you, Thomas. I don't see any other questions.

We'll move to the final speaker. Thank you, Chair and Council. My name is Charlie Green. I'm the Chief of Loudoun, also sit on the executive board for TCC for the Middle Yukon Mikwakan. And I'm speaking in reference to 131, Proposal 131, and just the importance of the windows that, you know, we as Native people in the middle Yukon, you know, when we hear the first pulse of our fish coming up the river, you know, we as, even as our tribe, we don't let anybody to, you know, when the main pulses of fish are coming up.

And we practice that, all of us, you know, even as our own tribe. We don't even need to state anybody. We don't let anybody practice any cultural anything because the importance of them windows for to getting as many fish up that river as we can. I buy fish, $110,000 worth of fish exactly, and I think it's July 3rd, 4th when we usually get some king salmon is when we cut them. But we fly from Prince of Wales Island, have it all the way shipped, you know, all the way to our hometown.

All the little things that's going to make sure that we get our fish up the river. So, you know, when we talk on these proposals, that we're not asking anybody to do something we're not doing. We're not asking anybody to stop their traditional ways down in Sand Point. You know, you hear them talking about that we're jeopardizing their subsistence rights. We're not.

We just want them fish to, you know, to get up the river, protect them, and all the things that we do as Native people. We're stewards of this land. We are the only people that can protect these fish. Them fish can't protect themselves. You know, we could kill all them fish.

I could trap the country out, whatever. But, you know, if them fish are going to survive, it's going to have to be up to us. We got to figure this stuff out. You know, get out here and and get them up the river. So, you know, when we hear all this kind of stuff about, you know, self-regulating is working, you know, just real fast, you know, look at the Anvik River.

It's the biggest spawning chum river on the whole Yukon. So you can just reference one river. 2017 Was the last time it met its quota, over 350,000 chum. 2018, 50,000. Under and then just tanked the whole— and now it's tanked.

We're down to 45,000 chum going up the Anvik River. That's all we have now. And it's the lowest it's been in history this last year. So, you know, just real simply, I don't have to be the scientist, I don't have to be any fancy anything. It's just real simple.

There's no fish coming up. You know, it's just getting lower and lower. Whatever is happening is not working. So— Thank you, Charlie. And real fast, RC, I, I submitted a letter.

I hear sometimes people are saying the river cannot— is, is polluted. There's a letter you can reference. It doesn't have a number yet, but it's submitted in the RC for— from the Yukon Watershed Commission that they test the water. This water is drinkable on the Yukon because I've heard some people say I've— I'm, I'm not telling the truth by saying we don't drink our water. We do, and it's tested by scientists, water scientists.

Thank you. Okay, thank you. Okay, so I think— any question? No questions. I think next up we have 128.

Well, it's, it's after lunch. I mean, after what we typically break for lunch. So I think what I'd like to do is take our lunch break. We're going to come back, we're going to do 128, 135, roll into post-June, and I'm going to hold you hold you to your time limits on the post-June. We don't— we went way over this time.

We want to make sure we have a full discussion, but we, we've got to get through this today. Okay, so we'll see at 1:30.

Welcome back, everyone. We're going to get started. We've got 128 and 135 to knock out from Group 3. So we're going to get started on that. We're going to move through those quickly.

128 Is kind of a rehash of a lot of things we've discussed earlier. So I don't expect it to move quickly. For everyone's discussion, we are on a time crunch, so I am going to be moving people through more quickly. If you're going to be speaking about history, I expect you please say why it's relevant first. I don't want to go through 10 minutes of history without a nexus.

So I'm going to be a little meaner on this one, and I'm sorry for that, but we've got to get through quickly. With that, we'll start with 128.

Yeah, through the chair and board members, for the record, my name is Matt Keyes. Proposal 128, 5AAC09.365, South Unimak and Shumagin Island's June Salmon Management Plan.

Okay, do we have anyone commenting on that? Oh, come on up. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Carlin Hodler for the record. Just want to point out some facts about this proposal and how vague it is, really. But there are terminal stocks of chum, coho, and king salmon in Area M. And throughout the proposal, it— you all know this— that it It mentions it all as bycatch, which is obviously false. So that's all I have to say about it.

Oh, thank you. I don't see any questions from other board members. Thank you, Carlin. All right, seeing no other commenters, let's move to 135.

Proposal 135, 5AAC09.365, South Unimak, is Summerton Island's June Salmon Management Plan.

Okay, does anyone wish to speak on 135?

Go ahead, Carlin. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Carlin Robert, for the record, I'd just like to refer to my previous comments. Just, uh, you know, we as fishermen know how to successfully release.

Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Kayla, come on up. Hi, thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the board. On 135, as you guys know that we have real, real strict restrictions on us on the Nishnabeg River to retain our kings, to either donate or sell, to either sell them or donate. And for, for us to see this proposal of possibly tossing kings overboard doesn't sit well with me.

And if that was going to be the case, why wouldn't that be the case in the the Nishnaabeg River when they only have about 60 to 70 nautical miles to go and spawn. And so I'm not for push— throwing any fish overboard, that it needs— either needs to be delivered or retained, period. And like everybody's been saying, but I just have to say it, is that we need a— we need to manage for subsistence, period. But thank you. Can you put your name on the record?

Kayla Hassett. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Mr. Marinkovich, come on up.

Push your button. Fred Marinkovich with Bristol Bay Fishermen's Association. We oppose this. Just on the accountability, even with the substitute language put in there, it sounds good, but the accountability just doesn't seem feasible, like it's going to happen. So thank you, Fred.

All right, next speaker. Oh, uh, Fred, I think you have a question. Uh, Mr. Svenson.

I just want to make the comment that, uh, I have questions, please. I'm just going to talk about the substitute language. Just, it's RC149, so if you have any, uh, comments to that too, you can talk to me or RC. Thank you.

Okay, go ahead. Patrick Brown, Sandpoint AC. Just want to point out in regards to previous comment that releasing a gillnet-caught salmon is not the same as releasing a seine-caught salmon. I mean, there's a derogatory term for gillnet, it's fish choker. So in a choke a fish half to death and then, you know, you catch them, you know, if you got to pick along the gill line, you're going to risk popping a gill.

So sane release— releasing sane-caught kings is not as detrimental as gillnet-caught. Thank you.

Thank you, Patrick. I don't see any questions. Next speaker. Go ahead, Steve. Steve Reifenstahl, area.

So I wanted to refer to RC187 and provide some additional information. So we talked about the studies by Candi and several other authors, Rouse and Van Allen. And we spoke about them individually, pretty rough I'd say. But I think that the important point here that's new is that Chinook Technical Committee, which is part of the Pacific Salmon Treaty, they reviewed all these studies. So in the '97 document, which is reported here on 187, you can find all that information plus an analysis that the Chinook technical team made on all these different studies.

So what I would like to focus on briefly is really some of their findings. So that's why we— the 28-inch and larger was arrived at is because of all these different studies and what the mortality rate was by size. So the large Chinook, based on the Chinook Technical Committee, is 51%, and survivals range from lower than that But there were survivals by Ruggioni who saw 99% where they— these Chinook were within 4 to 6 weeks of spawning. The Candy study, and this again is larger fish, 77% survival. And then there was a big range on the Van Allen study which was from '86 which was from 43 Treaty, uh, 90%.

The point is that they did look at all these, then arrived at what they would accept within the treaty agreement. Uh, so, and that is, uh, 49%, uh, survival of large fish released. So that's the gist of what I wanted to say. And I would say like anything else, we did electrophoresis genetics back in the '80s. We've made big improvements on them.

They're like anything, if you really put your mind to it, you can make improvements. My belief is, and you've heard this from a number of fishermen, that we can do better than 49% on large fish. Fish. And I think with proper handling techniques, best management practices, we can improve on that. Bottom line, we can still save half of these large fish and get them back to the spawning ground.

Okay, I have a question for Mr. Irwin. Yeah, thanks, Steve. Thanks for submitting that RC. On the second page, you cite the— some sport fishing regulations that require the fish not be removed. From the water and released immediately.

Am I looking at the right RC, right? 187? Yes. So my question is, I think I know the answer for this, but as a— you are a SANE, correct? Is that correct?

No, I don't SANE. Oh, I'm sorry. Never mind then. My question is just that is there any way that King's release could not be removed from the water in a SANE, or would it have to be brought on board to be released? In most cases, it would need to be brought on board.

Not in all cases. I mean, I already talked to one fisherman that has seen a fish during a non-retention period, and they were able to get it over the net. But it, it's very circumstantial. So at times they could, at other times they could not. Okay.

Yeah, it seems like it would be hard for me. Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that. Okay.

Okay. Steve, I have one question. What's the longest distance and timeframe that was in the Pacific Salmon Treaty, if the— of studies that was cited? The longest distance that they had to go after they were tagged? I don't know the total distance.

I think it varied dramatically depending on where, you know, they were sampled. Okay. I mean, some of them are running way up the Columbia River, like the Johnson Strait study. Okay. Thank you.

Go ahead, Virgil. Yeah, Virgil Imfanaar for the Fairbanks AC. There have been lots of studies done on the Yukon River on catch and release and holding fish. In an enclosed space. And the enclosed space was a fish wheel with a live box.

And it had to have a certain amount of water running through it and all that, et cetera. Earlier today, someone spoke about a fish wheel in front of Rampart for 3 straight years. That was one of those recovery test wheels. And it was run by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Anyway, all of those studies say that when a fish are held And in an enclosed space like that, even if it's just for an hour or 30 minutes, it has a difference, a big difference on whether they make it to the spawning grounds.

And the reason why so many studies are done there is because of research for the Salmon Treaty. That's why they were done. But anyway, in all of them, there's a certain amount of mortality for fish that get caught, even the ones that get the transmitters stuck down their throat, but those are the least. But the Fairbanks AC is totally opposed to that, and everyone here heard what the commissioner said about it. He wants them brought on board.

He does not want no catch and release of any salmon, especially king salmon. And I feel the same way. The Fairbanks AC feels the same way. And currently, The regulation in the June fishery is all fish caught must be retained and marked on the fish ticket. And I know that they're not doing that, and it just annoys the hell out of me that the department doesn't cause them to do it because we don't— the numbers are not accurate.

Thank you. Thank you, Virgil. Seeing no questions, we'll We'll move to the next speaker.

My name is Bob Murphy. Um, thank you. I, I, my previous life I was a technician. I started working as a technician in the mid-'80s and retired in 2022. So for 38 years, for a lot of those years, in the early years especially, I was a technician.

And a lot of what we did as a fisheries research and management, just see migration patterns of fish or mark recapture studies to estimate populations, you had to tag fish. I personally have tagged thousands of fish, and I'm sure a lot of these biologists here have also tagged a lot of fish in their earlier days before they became upper-level biologists. So fisheries research has been using tagging since the 1870s, and we have to net these fish, we have to take biological data from them, usually a length measurement, a scale sample, and maybe even a tissue sample, and then put a tag in it and release them. And a lot of times we recover those tags for years. It's been used all across the world in all kinds of species, from out in the ocean to marine environments and estuaries and freshwater systems.

And I personally have tagged chum salmon and king salmon on the Tanana River at the mouth of the salty to see them migrating upriver. So just want to pass that on, that it's possible to tag fish and handle fish correctly and let them go, and they'll last for years. So thank you. Thank you, Bob. Gala, come on up.

State your name for the record and then go on. Thanks. Gala Hossett. I wanted to get up here. I don't know how long the line would be, but to reiterate, you know, in the Nishnaabegak, if anybody eats a king salmon during the commercial season, if they catch a king in their net in the Nishigak River, are criminals now with what passed at Bristol Bay Finfish Meeting.

And we, you know, we talked about people smoking, smoking kings on their vessels. Those same restrictions should be applied to Area M because those kings are going to areas that have stock management concern. And I'm opposed to RC-149. Thank you. Thank you, Gayla.

Next speaker.

Thank you. I spoke earlier on this, so it'll be quick. I just wanted, for reference, I've taken part in some of these tagging studies and we're gluing a golf ball to the head of these fish before they go back in the water. And I think if one of those fish dragging a golf ball can get all the way back to its river, there is some validity to releasing these fish. I think we can do to do it.

Thank you. Seeing no questions, Axel, come on up.

Yeah, Axel Coburn. I just want to say catching and releasing a fish isn't really technically conservation. Conservation is not catching them in the first place. That's all I got. Thank you.

See no questions, no further speakers. Let's move on to Group 4. Or I'm sorry, the post-June fishery.

So for the post-June fishery, just to be clear, that includes proposals 138, 146, 139, 142, 144, 145, 140, 141, 143, I think the first 6 deal with the same administrative code. So that would be 138, 146, 139, 142, 144, and 145 that we could possibly take up as a block and then do 140, 141, and 143 individually. Is the department comfortable with that?

Madam Chair, yes. Okay, Mr. Chair.

Okay, let's go through the, the first block of 138 through 145, minus 140, 141, and 143.

The 5AAC09.366 Post-June Salmon Management Plan for the South Alaska Peninsula. Okay, I'll take the first speaker.

I'm Amo Movik, Setnahtern area. I'm the one that proposed— proposed one— author of 138, referencing RC 31. Everything is in there. Just asking to add, of course, no After all what we've gone through this morning, wanting to add extra days on to July. We're out there for 36 hours.

And as you can see in pictures 1, 2, and 3, that time like— that's at my site. And at times like this, you know, could come up in the middle of the night and then I have to deal with this. It's a safety concern. I'd be able to move to anywhere else when weather is bad, and that's why I'm asking for this 24 hours onto each additional ones for setnet fish only. And, uh, and as we could see on page 2, that setnet fishing, setting a gillnet fishing is only 2.2% of the July harvest, or post-June, should I say, which goes from July 1 to October 31st.

And for the whole Southeastern District, it's 2.8%. Our, our setnet value X value. Reference RC 115 of Setnet fishermen in the, I guess, South Alaska Peninsula area. And the new schedule would end up looking like the last one up on RC 31, the last page.

Additional information that I had brought up, brought along for this proposal, we will find in RC-223, and that shows the set gillnet for the Alaska Peninsula post-June for Chinook salmon, of catching them 0.2%, 0.3%, we've got 2.2%, um, an average of 1.2% for, um, 2015 to 2024. And on the second page, for chum salmon, we have a lot of local stock which goes through in July also that we catch out there but it's 4.2%, 6.1%, 3.9% of this same fishery. The average, 9.9%.

The run for Kuskokwim is through the area, and this time it actually is the second run of Chicknick, which is, uh, not a stock of concern. And just, just looking out for the safety of being able to get out there. And, you know, you got to move, you know, 100-fathom net, anchors, lines. You know, you've got running lines that you do run out, but you still need to move your gear to go to different places. When the weather doesn't permit.

So really you're not gaining much for catching, but you're being able to get out to be able to get into more shelter areas.

Thank you. Thank you, Emil. I don't see any other questions. We'll move to the next speaker. Carlin, come on up.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Carlin Hobart for the record. And just, is 142 in this block, just to be clear?

I can speak on it anyways, I guess, just in case. But yeah, just, just as it states in the proposal, you know, we're asking for permission for the department to utilize the fishermen as a resource, as, you know, eyes on the ground. And, and then as a A bit, might be a bit of new information for some of you, but in regards to the satnetters, action on 126 yesterday has greatly affected the satnet fleet in Area M. So further restrictions on that is going to be detrimental. That's all I have. Thank you, Carlin.

Thank you. Seeing no Board questions, we will take the next speaker.

Mr. Chairman, Edgar Smith, the senator in area. I'm the proposer of Proposal 139. Here again, it was opposed by Fish and Game because they said it would lose their authority with prosecuting the August fishery with escapement and stuff. But I have since rewritten it and actually written it to a verbiage of a regulation in RC 149 41. And I think, I believe it gives the power back to Fishing Game to control it by EOs no matter what.

The only difference in the, in this proposal is a lower BEG for the setnetters and the Chumigans to start fishing earlier under the lower, the lower thing of 1.75 million pinks that escape the South Peninsula. The average start date in August in the past 10 years was between the 11th and 13th in the Chippewa Gans. The earliest was last year and the latest was the 15th, and that was the average running. And like out of the past 10 years— Can I interrupt? Can I have you put your name on the record quickly?

Edgar Smith. Thank you, Edgar. In 2016 and '18 were weak runs, and so this probably wouldn't even did anything because it was shut down. 2017, '19, '21, '22, '23, And '22 is an even year, and '25 were really strong runs. And even then, the start dates are past the 10th on all of them except for the '23 and '25 were on the 7th.

And on the medium runs in 2020 and '24, those are kind of midterms where you still got your escape, and all of the years there was a harvest of pinks ranging from, I think, 500,000 all the way up to 16 million. But, uh, and probably a lot of these have varying difference between why fishing game opens or not. My thing as well is probably to have escapement in the, in the creek, but then they have low water on the outside and they have their escapement, but they're not opening till it goes up. And here sometimes it's northwest and dry for 10 days and they're not gone up, but they still have their escapement. Then as a setnetter, I mean, we prosecute our fishery on the Cape, so there's a little bit of tide and the fish are bright and moving.

But if as you get later in August, they're milling and gone closer to the freshwater and getting ready to go up, and it gets— they just don't gill in the setnetter like in the early part of August. Then I have another comment on There's 3 proposals in this block, but of the, of the setnetters, I mean, there's only 24 setnetters fishing in the Chippewa Gans. And of those, there are 6 bow pickers, 18 boat skiffs, and of the 5, 5 of them are by themselves, 2 family operations. I mean, it's very minimal. And why did And why did I pick the Chumigans?

The Chumigans has the least amount of migrating fish that's going to harm anything. They're out there, they're catching a lot of different fish and there's very little terminal fisheries. It's off the mainland. And I think it's— I mean, at least it's something. Thank you.

Thank you. Member Carlson-Vandort has a question. Hi, Edgar. Thanks. So I was just looking at your RC and I think it was 161 you said, right?

141. 141. And so you are suggesting to change the escapement goals in this? Yes, that's the main thing is to do 30% of the lower BEG of $1.75 million. And in the past it seems like, and I've listened on the radio and stuff, the fishing game wants to get to the lower end the BEG, which is a $1.75 million humpies escapement.

And I mean, sometimes you get it, and like I said, if they're laying outside the creek, they have it and they don't go up. I mean, it's a lot of different factors, but all I'm asking for is a little cheating in the start date so we're down farther down the block. So essentially, I just want to make sure that we're clear in terms of process that what you're suggesting is that the board develop an optimum escapement goal that is lower than the department's BEG? Yes. Typically there is a lot of science that supports that usually.

So I am just curious if there is any other RCs that you could help point us to, to consider that. Well, isn't there already an escapement goal? The lower end is 1.7 and $4 million is the top end. Right. Are you asking us to change the escapement goals?

No, no, not to change, just, just to lower, uh, instead of them shooting for the lower end of the BEG for everybody to go, just give us a little bone so we can go on 30% of it, of the BEG. Okay, thank you. Okay, next speaker.

Board, my name's Rick Eastlick. I'm the proposer of 146. This proposal would— after the first 3 openings in July in the Chimmican Islands, starting on the 4th when the period would close, the setnet fishermen would be given an additional 24 hours. First of all, if there was a Bristol Bay fish around with run timing, it wouldn't make it back to the bay before that season was over. If there was a Chicknick fish around, this would be again on the second run and timing to get up to Chicknick.

So primarily what this would do for me is I have a fairly, by our standards, a large pink system right up there in Archidine Bay. It's called Apollo. And given this 24 hours, you know, at this time of year, I can get 6, maybe 8 bags of pinks a day, which I know doesn't sound like a lot, but, you know, we're talking, you know, $1,500, something like that. So over the 4 days, You know, this could put anywhere from $6,000 to, you know, maybe $8,000, $10,000 more dollars, which on a little operation, there's me, there's one— I have one crew member, and like I said earlier, you know, I have 5 nets to move and all that. So, you know, I really want to stay out over the closure, which I'm more inclined to do if I only have to sit out 36 hours.

Instead of laying out there on the hook for 60 hours and waiting for the next opening. So thank you. Thank you, Rick. Seeing no questions, we'll move to the next speaker.

Patrick Brown, Sandpoint AC. Are we dealing with 140? I kind of missed the number catch, but okay. Well, just in regards to these proposals before us. Sandpoint AC was in support.

And, you know, short of having weather stipulations built into the management, there's a lot of time being lost with the inclement weather and whatnot, you know, gale force winds, storm warnings, whatnot. So this is something to take into consideration for what setnetters have to deal with in this area. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. Seeing no questions, we'll take the next speaker.

John Foster, senator from Maryam. New information would be proposal 126, which displaced a lot of fishermen yesterday. Okay, let's Let's stick to proposals. Well, that is part of the proposal. Okay.

And now those senators that traditionally fish there can't fish there anymore, so they have to go find new places to fish, especially King Cove. So a little extra time in July, extra days will help them out a lot. And the other thing you just heard on is weather. We might get a 2-day opening and it can be blowing for 2 days and you can't get your gear in the water. I said Senators.

One extra day would help out, you know, sometimes you will get 3 days, sometimes you might get 1 day out of that. Time is the biggest factor for being successful at Senate editing. Thank you.

Thank you, John. Axel, come on up.

Yeah, Axel Cope, and I am talking on behalf of the Chignik AC, not my personal. Last year in the post-June fishery, just after July 25th, actually, area M fishermen caught 682,000 sockeye from July 26th to August 31st. That's more sockeye than Chignik harvested all of 2014, 2018, 2019, 2020, '21, '22, and 2024. So it's, it's a pretty substantial amount of sockeye to harvest in that amount of time.

So I, they seem to be doing fine, and it's a little concerning to add more time to that fishery when they have the ability to catch that many fish. And we are totally dependent on our second run right now. We're getting our escapement on our first run, but it's not like we're out there making any money off of it. So So right now, if our second run shows up, we have some fish to catch. If it doesn't show up, we're sitting on the beach.

So thank you. Thank you, Axel. Seeing no questions from board members, next speaker.

Hi, my name is Jamie Wirtz. For the record, I just want to speak to proposal 142. It being able to separate gear types in the time that they're allowed to fish during a directed opening. We support it because it would allow the, you know, setnet fishermen. It just takes them more time and effort to get their sites up and running.

And in the beginning part of the local stock management, If there is inclement weather or not enough data yet to give a full, like, 36-hour or larger opening for St. Vrain Fleet, the management has decided to wait until they have more aerial surveys, and sometimes a successful tool is just getting some in-season data from, you know, what's coming in run timing-wise. This would allow, for example, the department to give seiners a 6-hour fishing window or an 8-hour fishing window— you get the idea— while simultaneously allowing a setnet fisherman to fish like a 24-hour window. Right now the hours have to be tied together.

Thank you, Jamie. I don't see any questions. We'll move on to the next speaker. Oh, there are no more speakers, so I believe that concludes— oh no, oh yep, 140. Let's do 140.

Proposal 140, 5AAC09.200, description of districts and sections, and AAC 09.366, Post-June Salmon Management Plan for the South Alaska Peninsula.

Okay, come on up, Carlin.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Carlin Hoblett, for the record. Uh, don't support 140 or the amended language, and I just keep, keep having to refer back to 126, and, and I feel that 126 and 140 are very contradictory proposals. I just found the map in the comments and, you know, trying to split sections into inner and outer when 126 just went in and wiped out a terminal area for Area M. So that's all I have to say.

Thank you, Carlin. Don't see any questions. Axel.

Yeah, hi, Axel Copeland. I put this proposal in. If you look at the districts, like 15 miles offshore, I have a tough time seeing that as a terminal harvest area when you're 15 miles away from the capes. That's a, that's a long ways for calling it a terminal harvest. So the regulations speak to a terminal harvest area.

So it just made sense to make it actual, more like a terminal harvest area rather than just being wide open. And I'll just leave it at that. Thank you, Axel. I don't see any questions. Virgil, come on up.

New information.

Fairbanks Fish and Game Advisory Committee feels the same way. I know back when I was on the board, they actually did have terminal harvest areas for area M, and I know that historically that's what the fishery was. It was not a Cape fishery and went fishing way the heck out there, and because their history is much different, I know that a lot of the first The fishermen that fished in Area M were not local people. They were Italians, and then they went from there over to Bristol Bay. That was a codfish saltery is what it was, not a salmon fishery.

Thank you. Thank you, Virgil. I don't see any board questions. We'll go to the next speaker.

Kylie Thompson, Area M Seniors Association. Are we speaking just to 140 or 145? 140, Just 140, just 140. Okay. The area— M. St. Ann's is not in support of 141 as written.

Understanding terminal fisheries in another fisherman's area is not something I would like to do, and I'd ask others not to do, especially with terminal fisheries. There's been a lot of conversation about that, but the amended language— but I had to write it on my hand— RC 159 Area M Zaners Association is in support of the, the amended language by Member Wood. There is seawack harvest in the Sanak Island section in the month of July, which we just learned that from the latest genetic work, and the harvest at Sanak Island is almost entirely chum, and we feel it's the responsible thing to do is to remove it from the management plan. I have a question for Member Erwin. Yeah, thanks, Kylie.

I haven't had a chance yet to review that RC. Could you just give me a generalized understanding of what's different from the original 140 language that made you guys want to support it? Well, it's substitute language, so in my assumption, and please correct me if I'm wrong, it removes Proposal 140 as written and substitutes it substitutes it with the language that's in RC-159, which is the closure of the Snack Island section in July. Yes, I understand how the process of substitute language works. I was wondering about your personal opinion on why you guys opposed 140 and now you support the language in 159.

I was just wondering what the difference was from the original language. 140 Addresses pink salmon and chum salmon terminal harvest areas. The substitute language addresses migrating chum salmon. Perfect, thank you so much. I would also just note that Member Carpenter and Member Wood just joined us.

All right, I don't see any further questions. We'll take the next speaker.

Patrick Brown, Sandpoint AC. We're opposed to Proposal 140 seems like another tactic from outside groups coming to play housekeeping and stuff, and certainly not asked for. But I appreciate the intent, and I suppose in a way, or we do, but I just feel the need to get up here and say our piece because I think we kind of missed that opportunity. On Proposal 126, and it kind of got shuffled through. And usually seems like when people don't stand up for their proposals, they kind of just get whisked away.

And that wasn't the case. So I'd be remiss if that happened again. Thank you.

Thank you, Patrick. Francis, come on up.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. My name is Francis Thompson, President of the Algata Tribal Government. As in my testimony, we are moving forward to go subsistence fishing this summer, and we had asked in the testimony that the fish— this board seek $150,000 chum, up to $200,000 chum to move to the district so we can hybrid. Moving on, Proposal 140, I support that. As you note, as we note in 2019 management strategy there, um, you look at 2001 and 2003, there was a big dip in the honey hole there.

So that means that any reductions in gear and area proved that you save salmon. In that situation, about approximately half their fishing time was cut off. So thank you. Thank you, Francis. I don't see any questions from the board.

We'll take the next speaker. Hi, I'm Charlie Dushkin. I'm from Area M, Kinko, Alaska, and I'm with the Area I'm opposing Proposal 140. It becomes an abuse of power under Section 242, Title 18 of the United States Constitution. Just wiping out a terminal area, that's not okay.

Thank you, Charlie. Carlin, all right, jog if you're that far away. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to point out, in reference to the miles Away from thermal systems, when pink salmon school up and the wrong wind comes, fishermen in the area all know that big schools of fish can be— big schools of terminal fish can be blown miles and miles offshore.

And they can be harvested there. So in reference to a previous comment about being too far off a cape, to harvest terminal fish.

That's all I wanted to point out. Okay, we have a question from Ms. Irwin. Yeah, thanks, Carlin, for bringing that up. I haven't actually heard that yet in testimony, so I appreciate that local knowledge. Does that happen also with sockeye?

I would say if they were a— yes, with With local terminal stocks, yes, weather can affect local terminal stocks. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks for that. That's really good local knowledge that I haven't heard before. Ms. Carlson-Bendort.

How are you guys identifying when they're out that far? Like, how would you know where to go when they're 15 miles offshore and those big, you know, what you're describing? Maybe I'm not following you, but But if what you're describing when they get blown that far offshore, how— that seems like a needle in a haystack. Maybe I'm just being super impressed. Maybe I'd correct that and say 15 miles from the terminal.

Because they, you know, you can find them. If you find them in a lee spot or, you know.

Okay, thank you, Carolyn. I don't see any more questions. Virgil, come on up.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] For the Fairbanks IC. I left out just a teeny bit a while ago. That is spawning time for Tanana River fall chums. They're the last group of Tanana River fall or Yukon River fall chums that come in and they are distinct genetically from the rest of the fall chums. They are spawning plum up into December.

They're swimming up, some of them up under the ice. And the cohos, the majority of the cohos to the Yukon River drainage spawn in the Tanana River drainage. And they spawn up into February. But, and there they spawn in all the clear water streams. And the fall chums, a lot of them spawn Most of them spawn in the mainstem Tanana River.

And they spawn where there's upwellings of warm water, where it's deep. And the way they discovered that, they didn't realize where they were spawning, is they put radio tags on them, I think in 1988, and they used my fish wheel to do it. Thank you. Thank you, Virgil. I don't see any questions or— Oh, oh.

Hold on, Virgil, one more. Member Wood. It's Mike. Would you support the closure of Sanak Island in July for chum conservation? I'm not sure where Sanak Island is, except that I think it's in the area somewhere around— I'm not sure exactly where.

It's okay. I'll come to you with the proposal so you can check it out. Okay, okay, thank you. Thank you, Virgil. I don't see any other questions.

We're all coming up. Hi, Earl Kreiger, Chicknick Coalition. I just wanted to say that in terminal areas, if the fish are blown offshore, if they're really terminal, they're going to come back to the terminal area. You don't have to go chase them offshore where you're going to get into mixed stocks. Pretty simple.

Thank you, Earl. I don't see any other questions. Next speaker.

Thank you, Chair, members of the board. Julian Manos representing myself again. So we're talking about 140, and then I believe substitute language from 159. Is that correct? Someone correct me.

RC 159. Okay, that would be closing Snack Island, which is an island off of the— off of, well, south of King Cove, about 60 miles. And Carlin was talking about 140 itself, which is a much larger area which includes Minnows Creek and a lot of different area. But when it comes to RC-159, in closing Snack, I have fished out there once. In my life, so I don't have a lot of experience.

A lot of other people from our fleet in King Cove, I know fish out there and it's important to them in July. So it's, it's hard for me to say that I support that because it kind of pisses off the people that I fish around and work with in King Cove. But I understand for conservation that if that needs to be done, then I guess Yeah, okay. I'll support without substitute language. I don't like it.

I'm going to get yelled at after this, but— and that's specific to that language.

Okay. Thank you, Julian. I don't see any questions. Thank you. Next speaker.

Mayor, come on up.

Yes, Warren Wilson of King Cove. Go back a few years here where we were here before the board discussing the overall post-June salmon fishery in the Chippewa and area. So we were on the terminal areas back then, and we also had a cannery. We also did H&G frozen fish. We designed our July fishery for the quality of the salmon that brings in the most money for the fisher.

Not only the fisher, not in that we could get the tax dollars off of that, so that goes to the city and ultimately, ultimately to the state of Alaska in order to manage the fisheries. Since then, we have been cut by time to— we've been cut by too much time to be able to harvest the fish when they are at the top quality. So we have to really think here of what we are pursuing to do. We're being managed. We are trying to be— our fishery is trying to be conducted not fisheries trying to be managed by another area.

From the time I started the fishing out there, Area M has only managed their fishery maybe 3 cycles to be able to make our fishery better for our own fishermen. Otherwise, we've been bombed with proposals to manage our area by some other user group not in our area. And sometimes— I talked to the biologist out of Coal Bay many times, my uncle Arnie Shawl, and he was mentioning that if you have a big western migration of red salmon, those salmon are going to go down along the coast and they are going to be like stuck in Pavlof Bay, for for Chignik fish. Those fish are in that bay. We're talking about run timing for them to turn around to go to Chignik.

The only way you get the data is from the fish that were caught in Pavlov Bay. That's where they come up with the data that the fish were there from Chignik. You almost want to think that the fisher— fish— the fish in Pavlov Bay are a lost salmon.

From Bristol Bay catch, red salmon, fishing in July and August where I fish down in the Unimak area, drift gillnetting. We have years where there's ghost fish going by. They were lost salmon that were caught in the bay.

So when you move all the way down from Kupreanof to Pavlof Bay into Volcano Bay, those fish can be lost. Now if those fish were going from the west, sometimes now that we look at it that way, coming from the west going to east, then we could say that those fish are not lost. But who's to know here? If we get a big run of fish going to Cape Igvak heading for Chignik, they're also the interceptors of those salmon. But the way we designed the July fishery before was for the quality of that salmon.

And now that it has to go in a bag because the only cannery in our area is a, is a freezer cannery, they only freeze the fish. We begin to wonder now how that's going to be presented on the, on the store shelf. Whereas the cannery in King Cove can those salmon if they are a little bit watermarked you get way more money for that fish. So I think that's all I have to say.

Thank you, Mayor Wilson. I don't see any other questions. So, Axel, let's finish up with you. Thank you, Axel. I just want to make it clear, we don't— the fishing periods established in July and everything like that, they've been there for a long time.

We're not, not talking about those fishing periods in July. It's just— there was just— if you're catching terminal harvest fish, you don't need to be 15 miles offshore. We have plenty of terminal stocks in Chignik. If they're 15 miles offshore, I'm not going to go chase them 15 miles offshore. I'm going to wait till they come in to the bay they're coming to.

So it's just an idea of if they're managed on terminal stocks. That's, that's the opening enclosures. They were managed on terminal pinks and chums and the little bit of sockeye they have of their own in that area. In August month, they caught 600 and some odd thousand sockeye being managed on local pinks and chums. So that's if you're terminal harvest, a terminal harvest area should be a terminal harvest area.

It should be short. For the fish that are going to that area. If you look around the state, when you draw lines for terminal harvest areas, whether it's Kodiak, Chignik, other places, they're up inside the capes. They're not 15 miles offshore. It's that simple.

Thanks. Okay. Actually, we have a question from Member Erwin. Yeah. Hey, Axel.

So how far offshore do you, do you harvest terminal, terminal fish? And it's different than air area, but in the CMA, how far offshore will you go out to catch terminal harvest fish? Not at all. Right off the beach or the rocks or whatever that are right there at the bays they're going into, or the capes along the way. Okay.

We don't go— we can't go that far offshore. Member Carpenter. Yeah, thanks, Axel. How far offshore is the outer boundary of the CMA? 3 Miles.

3 Miles. Okay, that's most— most fisheries are like that. This one's different. I don't know. Okay.

Okay, let's move to 141.

Proposal 141, 5AAC09.366, Post-June Salmon Management Plan for the South Alaska Peninsula. Hey, would anyone like to speak to 141?

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Patrick Brown, Sandpoint AC. AC is opposed to this proposal. The department did some emergency order actions last summer in order to address Chinook concerns, which I feel they seem like they're pretty new. I mean, the the numbers, the harvests have been up and they address that. And I think the department's doing a good job.

I don't think this language is necessary, or we don't. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. I don't see any questions. We'll take Axel.

Come on up.

Hi, Axel Copeland speaking for the Chignik AC. So in the last 15 years, the South Peninsula post-June fishery has caught 235,658 king salmon. That's what's been reported. So that's the minimum number. If you look at RC 190, you can see where these king salmon have been harvested over that time period.

56% Of that 235,000 have been caught in one single stat area, 282-11.

And then you go through other stat areas, and actually the Southeast District mainland, even though it's been closed in 7 of the last 15 years, they actually are the 5th highest king salmon producing harvester in the South Peninsula fishery. So I think there's— we lost Metrophania for 2 months. This board just did this the first day. You closed down our spot where we catch average a little over 2,000 kings a year. You took it away from us till July 31st.

And I'm sitting here looking at 235,000 kings caught. The top 8 harvest spots in the South Peninsula post-June fishery for king salmon is the Shoemaken Island stat area. As you go around the island and the different stat areas, top 8 producers. So, and actually you include the June fisheries in this. This includes all the kings.

This, this is June too. I didn't mean after only post-June. So you've got the June King salmon harvests are included in those numbers. They're dwarfed by what happens in July. So if we're going to get shut down for 2,700 kings a year average, I, I think it only makes sense for the largest king harvesting area on the peninsula, including Kodiak.

There needs to be something done. I don't know what it is. That's your problem and up to you. But there should be some kind of king salmon plan, conservation plan statewide. Each area should have one.

And it only makes sense that this kind of production— something's got to be done. So thank you. Thank you, Axel. I don't see any questions. Virgil, come on up.

This goes back to when I got— I'm Virgil Imphenauer, representing Fairbanks AC. I tried for about 5 years to get a fish ticket printout for Area M, and the department can do that, and they assign each individual permit a specific number. They're the only ones that know who that is. And then it goes by stat areas and what's on fish ticket data. And I know that the area he's talking about, Popoff Head, is in it.

And I can distinctly remember from when I got those things 25 years ago, that really stuck out in my mind. And that's where the troopers put their OP, they put up. Without the fishermen knowing it, and they caught a bunch of people pitching fish overboard and videoed it from Popoff Head. Anyway, the Fairbanks AC totally supports doing something about this. King salmon in the Yukon River are only at about 16% of their long-term average.

That's coming into the river measured at the sonar. Thank you. Thank you, Virgil. I don't see any other questions. Next speaker.

Patrick Brown, Sandpoint AC. I'd just like to point out Stat Area 282-11. It's about 30+ miles long and contains about 10 different sane hook-off points or Probably, you know, most of the local fleet fishes there. Probably, you know, over half of the fleet fishes there. So losing this area would— there would be nowhere to go after that.

ADFNG has instituted their emergency order authority, and, uh, there's no more area. I mean, there's no sediment. You could— you shut down 282-11, that's the whole local fleet. Thank you.

Thank you, Patrick. I don't see anyone else. Steve, come on up. Steve Riefenstahl. So I've heard on this particular one over and over, we need to do something for the king salmon.

And we agree as an alternative, non-retention in this area will save a lot more king salmon than the numbers that we're reviewed here from what happened in the last 10 years. We're suggesting to cut that as dramatically as you possibly could. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Seeing no questions, next speaker.

Charlie Dushkin from Area M. I just as well wanted to point out before going into making any decisions, the Pacific Salmon Treaty under Article 15, Annex 4, it only talks about the Yukon River being shared between the countries of Canada and the United States. It does not mention Area M in this treaty. So before going into making a decision and making things harder for fishermen of Area M and Area L, please read the treaty. Thank you.

Thank you, Charlie. Come on up. My name is Jamie Wirtz. I just want to speak to the proposal at hand. And oh my God, sorry.

I just had a brain fart.

Oh, you know, we are talking a little bit about The king, the king salmon harvest in the stat area and the Shumigan Islands, it's high. But, you know, if you look through the Fish and Game landings data and all the rest, what you'll also see is that's where the majority of the Sandpoint fishing fleet fish out of. They fish there. So your chum harvest, your pink harvest, your sockeye harvest, it's all going to be statistically one of the highest areas. Areas, because that's where it is, essentially kind of like the picnic lagoon of Area M.

The Department of Fish and Game has, I believe, I don't want to speak for them, but, and they can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the understanding is a lot of the terminal fish in Area M move around the Schumacher Islands as they're getting ready to make their final ascent up the the creeks and rivers. And that's why in August when they manage on local stocks, we're not out fishing the capes in the Shoemaking Islands while they wait for escapement in the whole area. So it is essentially a terminal harvest area.

Thank you, Jim. I don't see any questions from the board. We'll go to the next speaker.

Chairman, board members, Stanley Mack. I want to at this time clear up a few misconceptions about the Chum Stock, Chum Run, and the Shumagin Islands. It appears that there's a mindset in here that all the chums pass by the Shumigan Islands, which is wrong. There are several terminal chum areas in the South Peninsula. Just to name a few: Pawlof Bay, Canoe Bay, Olson's River, Check it out.

Is a big chum river. We go east. Beaver Bay, big river, chum area. Balboa Bay, chum area. That's going east.

Stepivak Flats, going east, large chum area. So these are terminal areas. And if I go west, I can go from Pavlov Bay to Volcano Bay, huge chum area. I've fished in every one of these areas except Stepivak. I'll be honest with you.

And I've caught chums, fall chums, spawning chums. And if I go a little further west, I've got Cold Bay, I've got Marshovi Bay, huge chum areas. And as I go around— Stanley, I think we're getting the picture. Can you wind up? These are some of the misconceptions.

And I'm sorry about it. But we do have terminal fisheries here. And the other conception is that in one of my RCs, I did identify some of the terrible areas in the Yukon. And one of those is Eielson Air Force Base. We heard testimony that the Tanana River is— We don't need to revisit that.

We've already covered that. I'm sorry. But I just wanted to let you know that Tanana River is a part of the Chena River where Eielson Air Force Base is located, and it's contaminated. Thank you. All right.

Thank you, Stanley. Okay. Seeing no questions, Francis, come on up.

Francis Thompson with the Allagatah Tribal Government as chair.

We support proposal 141. As we know, September 29, 2025 Chinook was deemed management concern, and the Yukon is imposed to 75,000 chum to pass through Canada. And in listening to 107, there's no indication to where 10,000 to 15,000 Chinook are going, but yet are still able to harvest Sakai there and Ketching Chinook as interception, but we don't know where they're going. It was stated by department, and yet 141, same thing, mentioned 235 over the course of 14 years. We don't know where they're going, and yet we're allowing the industry to fish.

So what we need done is a very serious study as to where these Chinook salmon place of origin before we look at catching anymore. Article 6, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. Thank you. Thank you, Francis.

We'll take the next speaker and then Eva will finish with you.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I just want to talk to you for a moment about the luckiest fish I've ever heard of. And here on this east side of Popoff, they start up here where we call the Red Bluff and goes down to the middle and then down onto Popoff Head. And anyway, years ago they was doing a tagging study and they end up tagging this one fish here in the middle. And it was about 5 weeks later they caught that fish just over by Kelly's Rock, which if you look at a chart, you'll see on Corvin, it comes over and then goes down. It's almost like stair steps.

Comes down, then comes down the east side of Popoff and then swings over towards Onga and comes down to South Head. But I just thought it— we couldn't believe it. That this one fish was tagged and 5 weeks later caught it right around the corner when you have all these seiners and all this effort in this local area where our fleet primarily concentrates. Thank you. Thank you, Rick.

Don't see any questions. All right, Eva.

Good afternoon. Eve Domburg for the record. I just came in to clarify that in fact the fall chum, the upper Yukon chum, are protected by treaty. It's already been said in Appendix 4, Section 8, Part 12, the parties shall maintain efforts to increase the in-river run of Yukon River origin salmon by reducing marine catches and bycatches of Yukon River salmon. They shall further identify, quantify, and undertake efforts to reduce these catches and bycatches.

I just wanted to make sure that was known and that yes, in July 2023, there were almost a couple thousand upper Yukon chum taken. And I can't remember the district, but I know it's in our RC. Thank you, Eva. All right. That concludes 141.

We'll move on to 143.

Proposal 143, 5AAC09.366, Post-June Salmon Management Plan for the South Alaska Peninsula. Okay, would anyone like to speak to 143?

Come on up, Axel.

Axel Cope, NCHiGNC-AC. We did not support the proposal as written. In the AC. The language was weird. It only spoke to king salmon.

So the test fishery currently does immature chum and sockeye and kings. So I don't— we didn't know why that was taken out as written. So we have an amended version of it. It's in the AC minutes. So I just wanted to speak to that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Axel.

Patrick, come on up. Patrick Brown, Sandpoint AC. We were opposed to this proposal. It didn't sound like the department was in favor of it either. But, you know, there's already a lot of definitions surrounding it about how this fishery is prosecuted.

How the test fishery is done. It's gone on for years and we've lost a lot of time on this in this section because of it. And, you know, that is what it is. We have to eat that. But now this new regulatory language, it doesn't really sit with— it doesn't seem like it goes along with the department.

But thank you. Thank you, Patrick. I don't see any questions. Virgil.

Thank you. Virgil Emphanor for the Fairbanks AC. The Fairbanks AC supports this proposal, although I don't know what the department calls an immature salmon. But I did see a video today of a seiner hauling their net in. There were hundreds of immature salmon.

I don't— we couldn't tell what they were stuck in the web. And the way they were just piling up the fish on the deck, if you were going to try to release any of those fish, they would have— the chances of them surviving would have been, I think, next to zero. Thanks.

Thank you, Virgil. I don't see any questions. Axel? Yeah, Axel Copen, Chignik AC. I just got told that I left something out.

The Chignik AC, when it amended the proposal, instead of just counting the fish the way the fresh test fishery is done now, it's just the gillers that get counted as immature. So the little guys. But does anybody here— since non-retention, 28 inches and over, you get to keep the little ones. So the proposal said anything under 28 inches would be counted as an immature as well instead of just counting the Gillers. So it would get a better representation of the immature king salmon in the area.

Just wanted to add that. Thank you. Okay. Member Wood.

Thanks, Axel. I just look into this proposal. It's, it's tying the Gillers that you're talking about in seine web to a setnet web. What are the chances of these Gillers getting caught up like that in setnet web? Well, they have 25 meshes of seine web, 25 fathoms of seine web now.

So you have 25 fathoms of seine web that is before you get to the gill net. So those fish can very easily swim into that seine web and get gilled. When you get into immatures, they don't really care when they're traveling if they're in close off a rock pile or something like that, they get gilled in the seine. They don't They don't just get gilled in certain parts. If you watch that video, they're continual throughout the whole Seine.

So if you have 25 fathoms of web hanging there, they're moving, you know. Oh, a Seine is— well, these fish are moving. So something stationary there and they run into it, they get gilled. Thanks. So, yeah.

Thank you, Axel. I don't see any other questions. Next speaker.

There we go. Kylie Thompson, Area of Stainers. I guess I'll rebut the previous speaker. I sat in edit for a long time even though I'm a stainer, and we did have shorter leads then, and immature fish tend to stay a little bit farther offshore. For a setnet or even a setnet farther offshore.

The fish aren't pursed at all, they just bounce off of, they're not gilled. Very rarely would it be gilled. More, actually probably more likely to gillnet a trout in a piece of seine web than a sockeye or a king or, but anyway. More to the test fishery, we have an operating test fishery, we've been there a long time. We work closely with the department.

I wish the other, one of our other guys who does it almost every single year, which is good because we keep continuity of gear. I am the fill-in when he doesn't do it, and it works great. We get closures quite frequently, sometimes from half of the month of July based on it. I mean, if we just keep adding small fish, small— larger, larger fish, I, I don't even know if we're learning anything. Pink salmon at this time in early July are quite a bit smaller at sea than they are a month and a half later.

And measuring 16-inch or 20-inch fish is going to take the department about 2 days to process the volume sometimes that the fish test fishery catches sometimes. So that's all I really got, unless you have any questions about how the fishery operates, because we do. Member Wood. Yeah, Kylie, I'll ask you the same question. Is this— this is tied to the set gillnet fishery.

And so apparently due to the lead, is there a difference between that lead being in the water and fish being able to either to just swim through it or hit it and turn, or, or the fact that the, the seine web is going up through a block getting pulled in a different direction?

Is there a higher chance because they're getting pulled up? I mean, I would completely— the likelihood of a seine catching an immature salmon is so low. I mean, a purse seine is cupped. The shape of it in the water is cupped. It's moving.

There's a lot of different reasons why a fish would gill in a seine but not a gill net. Thank you. Thank you. I don't see any further questions. Next speaker.

Edgar Smith. I did come on and comment before on how a seine web, I mean, a lead for a set net worked. I mean, it's on the shore. There's no immatures on the shore. They're running a little deeper.

And second, we had a lead since 1968. I mean, what's 15 pounds going to do? This proposal says we're just starting with a lead. No, it's been over 50 years we've been using the lead. Another thing is, is, is the 28 inches a 1-3 fish?

Is a 1-2 fish a mature fish? Yes, it is. I mean, if I were you, I'd let these seniors dump these 1.3 fishes and— or let them go, and then they can grow up to be a little bigger fish. You could always test your smaller ones, the 1.2s and 1.1s, to see what you're genetically doing. I mean, you got to start doing a little bit logic behind all this stuff.

Thank you.

Thank you, Edgar. Uh, seeing no further speakers, uh, that concludes 143E, and that also concludes Group 3. So I'll turn the chair back over to you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Member Chamberlain. Thanks to everybody for participating in the committee.

Let's go ahead and take about a 20-minute break, come back on at 3:15, and we will begin Committee of the Whole Group 4.

Okay. Welcome back. The time is 3:30. We're going to go ahead and begin with Committee of the Whole Group 4. Group 4 constitutes the North Alaska Peninsula salmon.

There are 6 proposals in this group. Group, and I will hand it over to Chair Svendsen.

Thank you, Ms. VanDort. So we got 6 here. A lot shorter than the last one, that's for sure.

Make sure that you state your name. You know, come up and you're getting ready to testify, please come up and try to sit in that front row. So we don't have to take more time. We're trying to get through these as quick as we can.

No names, new information only, please. And so if you're not getting new information, I might have to cut you off at the knees.

All right.

So with that, We'll ask the AFNG for their talk.

For the record, my name is Charles Russell. I'm the North Alaska Area Management Biologist. Proposal 116, 5acc09.320 fishing periods and 5ac09.369 Northern District Salmon Fisheries Management Plan.

Thank you. Would anybody— does anybody wish to speak to this?

Well, that'll move it along.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Proposal 116, essentially for the drift gillnet fleet, is extremely restrictive. It asked for a 4-day windows closure and only fishing out to a mile and a half. The proposal basically reduced the harvest that's currently on the North Peninsula by about 57%.

The last 3 years for the drift gillnet fleet have been extremely poor years, some of the worst 3 years in, in most more recent memory. So concerned AM fishermen were representing that's about 100 drift gillnetters is opposed to it just because of the restrictive nature of it and it's not needed. Wasup data shows that there aren't typically a lot of Nelson River fish that are in this area. This area stretches from a closure basically of about a 130 miles from the Bear River section all the way up to the outer Port Huyden section. So we are opposed to proposal 116.

Thank you. Hey, Bob, did you put your name? Did you state your name? I did. Yeah, Bob Murphy.

Okay, thanks.

Next.

Hello, Mr. Chair and members of the board. My name is Angela Johnson. I've got a couple notes. I, I wanted to hit my points.

So Nelson Lagoon AC proposal 116 with our RC 76 RC 236 and corrections made in RC 211 is written to put the North Area M fleet in the terminal areas of the fishery and create a mandatory window to allow fish to pass to make it to their spawning streams. A point I'd like to make is that if fish are able to pass, we would hope that Bear River will be able to open as well, and this will create another section for them to be able to fish in. During those other closures, the mandatory closure. Also, I'd like to mention in our proposal we state that, um, let me get to this other point here with ADF&G comments. So ADF&G comments to the proposal speaking to the, um, that our proposal will result in loss of harvest opportunities and surplus escapement and would not allow for in-season management based on real-time estimates.

But our proposal states that if the escapements are met, these terminal areas can be opened by emergency order. Um, the, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game also mentions over-escapement, and I'd like to reference the Public Comment 183 by Dr. Daniel Schindler. This comment states that over-escapement is a myth. There's no evidence that over-escapement depresses sockeye salmon recruitment. If anything, there's a tendency for large escapements to produce high recruitment.

And I'd also like to reference a paper done by Dr. Carl Walters, which is also involved in my RC 240. That, um, based on over 50 years of data, the classic Ricker stock recruitment model still holds true. The Ricker model predicts declines in spawner success as spawning numbers grow very large due to a variety of compensatory factors that naturally keep large populations in check. However, misinterpretation of the model can lead to the conclusion that not harvesting surplus salmon can result or can cause harm to the run. But in that same paper, it is stated the impact of overescapement, and this was a study done in British Columbia, the impact of overescapement, the spawning of an unusually large number of salmon from a given population or a run is examined in data from 21 British, British Columbia sockeye stocks and 2 pink salmon stocks.

While there is evidence of a decrease in spawning efficiency at high spawning numbers, there is no evidence for anything like a collapse or near collapse of production following runs with very large numbers of spawners.

Thank you.

Thank you for your testimony.

Mark McNeely, Houston Lagoon AC. Good evening, Madam Chair, Board. Wait a minute now, don't call me Madam. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'd like to bring your attention to RC-220.

And this was put in by Tom Wooding from Camp. It's interesting that he used this graph because we pointed out that you could see OPH opened here and you can see the run struggling from up here where he was showing all these good years here. And then struggling, struggling, and then it bottomed right out. And then rolling closures was instated and it jumped right up. And then until the rolling closures were sunsetted and then it went back down.

The entire conservation and escapement goals being met are 100% by Nelson Lagoon. We have only 4 days of fish, and only if our escapement levels are up enough to where Fish and Game feels that there's, uh, like, giving us an extra day, maybe a Friday. So we go fishing Monday morning and on Thursday night, and then we sit on a beach until next Monday. So with that downtime, that allows fish to pass up and achieve our escapement goals. So we're not fishing 24/7, but at the same time, OPH and ILNIC are 24/7 fishing.

And it appears that Fish and Game doesn't, doesn't care if Nelson Lagoon is struggling or not. They don't shut them down. Only unless there's no fish at all, and then they will close the entire area. But if they're— Nelson Lagoon is not achieving its escapement goals, Nelson Lagoon will be shut down while OPH continues and ILNA continues.

Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? Mr. Carpenter. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark. Excuse me. You got a question? I'm just curious if you could tell me how often the Nelson River usually makes its escapement goal. Well, it depends on how, you know, if we're fishing and the fish are coming in, we usually catch about 50% of the, you know, the escapement goals will be equal to the amount of harvest.

And then you can look back into years of charts. What was the question again? I asked how often does the Nelson River meet its escapement goal, meet or exceed its escapement goal? Yeah, well, like I was saying, is that we could achieve it if there's fish there, but we sometimes we have to be shut down. We were actually shut down, I think, one time for like 11 days during one of the prime, you know, during our peak of the season.

Do you remember how long ago that was? No, not off the top of my head. I'm hoping that some of the data will, will show that. Thank you.

Any more questions? Oh, Chair, members of the board, my name is Robert Mack. I'm an area drifter. I fish out of King Cove. I would I don't— I oppose this proposal as it is very restrictive to me for my size vessel, putting me in the mile and a half.

There's a bar on the inside, be on beach, and if it blows northwest, that's going to be very dangerous and it restricts me to basically a mile. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions?

Jared Danielson for the record, REM Drifter. So to answer Tom's question there, they met the— the escapement goals have been met or exceeded 52 out of the last 53 years. Years. 2011 Was the exception. It missed its goal by 8,000 fish.

Thanks, Jared. Any other questions for Jared?

Seeing none.

Tom Wooding. I have been a permit holder for about 42 years, and not one season I was fishing 24/7. There's quite a bit of closures during the season, some years more than others. And I also want to— you talked about OPH. OPH and '07, we caught, by WASP numbers, 4,500 out of the 630,000 fish run.

And in '08, there were zero estimate— the median estimate was zero. Also, during WASEP, the 3 years, WASEP, 86— between 86 and 97% of the run either returned— returned to Nelson either in escapement or harvest in the lagoon. And that's similar numbers to other places in the state, especially in Bristol Bay there. Like Bristol Bay, the same year as Agaagiek returned 81 to 84%, ended up returning either escapement or catch in the district. And Ugashik, about 75 to 88% was the medium estimate of the run returning to Ugashik, either catch or escapement.

Any questions for Tom? Thank you, Tom. Oh, there's Tom. How many— give me an idea of how many boats are surrounding you when during these openers, like what's the— how many people are out there harvesting? Well, recently it's gone down a little bit.

I believe it's probably between 80 and 110 at any given time, less than that in earlier this season and a little less than that late in the season. It drops off. There is a concentration of boats at the north lines when they're open because most of the fish are traveling from the north to the south. But a lot of the boats are spread out. The tender will start off on one end of the district and, and work his way from the south to the north.

Generally, there's probably a boat every mile or so at least, and then there's concentrations around the the Ilnik section around the Ilnik opening and concentrations at— if there's a line closure generally on the line, just like there is in Bristol Bay. Okay, so there's a tender, maybe a couple tenders. The tender— you deliver to the tender. Yeah, after the opener. And then that tender goes where?

It goes to False Pass now. It used to go to Port Moller when that plant was open, but now they travel to the False Pass. Okay, thanks.

Thank you. Any other questions?

Thank you.

Thank you. Bob Murphy. This proposal was written to limit the harvest of fish on the outside beach, hoping that some of those would go into Nelson Lagoon. And in the last 2 years, Nelson Lagoon in 2024, their escape was about 754,000 fish. That's sockeye.

The upper goal is 219,000 sockeye. In 2025, they had about 550,000 fish upriver. Again, the upper goal is 297,000. Both of those years in the last 2 years are the highest escapements ever recorded at Nelson River. There is no biological concern at Nelson right now.

They've been fishing 24/7. Their fishery typically opens about mid-June June, and they fish continuously 24/7 for 6 straight weeks. So those are just some of the things that are— that this proposal are trying to achieve is put more fish into Nelson. And obviously with those type of numbers, there's not more fish needed. So just want to pass that on.

Thank you. Uh, Mr. Wood has Member Wood has a question for you. Thanks, Bob. So are these fish smaller or larger? Is there a size difference to some of these fish that are coming in in such large escapements?

Mr. Wood, they're— the fish overall in the state of Alaska last few years have been small, as we hear, like Bristol Bay and other places. But their, their age class that has occurred at Nelson River the last 2 years are a lot of 2-ocean fish and 3-ocean fish. That's a normal adult sockeye salmon. They're not age 1 fish, which are mainly jacks. These are adult— these are adults, 2- and 3-year fish, saltwater fish, and those would be susceptible to gillnet gear.

Some years they're bigger, some years smaller, but they're not jacks. They would be harvestable fish. And at Nelson River the last 2 years, it's been One year has been about 97% adult fish, and the other year was 98%. Typically for sockeye salmon in a river, if you're under 10% jacks, that's fairly normal. And Nelson River, the last two years, they've been 2% one year and 3% the other.

Thank you. Thank you, Bob. Any other questions?

Thanks. Thank you.

Hello, this is Angela Johnson. Um, I'd like to refer the board to RCs 120, 121, 122, 123 with our corrections in RCs 195 and 196, RC 240, and RC 242. When it comes to the escapement in Nelson Lagoon and the reason for this Proposal 116 and our amended language. We have had a decade— decades-long issue in our river and with our river— within our river system that, with the data that we have submitted, it shows clearly how it has— how it has affected Nelson Lagoon negatively. Certain regulations that have been passed and such.

And when we're talking about the 2024 salmon season, that was— we were— we've got a summary report from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game that they stated that 87% of those salmon in 2024 were 1- and 2-year fish. And none of us in the river were fishing in a small enough mesh to catch those small fish. And that is our argument to why so many escaped and why they got past a lot of the other fishermen.

Yeah.

Mr. Wood has a question for you. How many people are harvesting fish right in Nelson Lagoon itself, both with gear and different gear types? I don't know a number off of the top of my head. Um, 20, 20 of us in the river. Okay, thank you.

And are you finding you're having a difficult time like catching enough fish, or you don't have the right web? Like, what— give me a chance. So tell me what's going on. So the problem is And I think, you know, we're meeting our escapement goals, and that's clear to see in the data. We've been meeting our escapement goals every year except for 2012.

In 2012, it was in the 80,000s at the end. And in, um, in 2022, we would have missed our escapement goal as well, except the weir was left in 3 weeks later than usual. The weir usually gets pulled in July around the 22nd to the 27th, right in there. One time it got pulled on August 5th. This time we didn't make our escapement goal and the weir was left in until August 24th, and which I, you know, I think that's kind of weird because—.

And does Nelson Lagoon like direct market, or do you use a tender to bring it— use the same tender that the drifters are to bring it to False Pass. Yep, we have a tender that is stationed in the river. They go out and pump off into another tender that takes it down to False Pass. Oh, that's good. All right, well, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Angela.

Mark McKinney, Nelson Lagoon AC. Mr. Murphy is correct, 24 and 25 was 24/7 fishing.

But like I stated before, is that depends on the escapement goals. And if we were meeting our period of escapement, we're allowed to fish. Rarely in some of the years she's pointed out that if, if we're not meeting those goals, we don't get any extra days fishing. We are definitely Monday through Thursday fisheries.

Thank you, Mark. Any questions for Mark? Mr. Carpenter? Yeah, thanks, Mark. I'm trying to wrap my head around this.

I heard what you just said, and when I look at the escapement goals over the 50 years that I have data for, and there's only been one year that hasn't met its escapement goal, aren't you fishing a lot compared to what you're— what Is that what you're saying? Because I mean, you're saying when the escapement goals are met, you're fishing 24/7. I'm trying to quantify this. No. What I'm saying is in '24 and '25, there was a huge amount of fish and we weren't catching many of them.

They were going through the net. We fished— most of us fished 4 7/8, which is actually smaller than we'd like to.

But so we start on a Monday. We go, we go fishing Thursday if the escapement allows. And if they're— if the periodic statement goals are not being met, we are closed down for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And a lot of the escapement goals are achieved by these 3-day closures every week. Okay.

Thank you, Mark.

I'd like to clarify something. This is Angela Johnson. The, the point of Mark's statement about— I guess we're not supposed to use names, sorry— the point of the previous person's statement is that we run on this schedule. We are at the first week of fishing, we're open for 3 days unless of course we're meeting our escapement, they extend us a day or two. We're closed for a weekend.

We end and then we start on a regular 4-day schedule. Then if the escapement goals are being met, we are able to be extended. That is the point of our, um, the, the way that the, uh, Ilnik and Outerport Hyden sections are managed is a little bit different than how we have a, uh, we have a set schedule. We're supposed to be a 4-day-a-week schedule unless the escapement allows for extension. And I believe that our proposal says the same thing.

As long as everybody's meeting their escapement goals, the other fisheries fishing sections will be able to be extended.

Any questions for Angela?

Hearing none, next. Thank you, Angela.

Monty Mack, son of Stanley Mack. Um, I just want to clarify, they have Area M permit just as well as we do. They can go wherever they want. They can go from False Pass all the way up to OPH, just like we have to. Now they got the comfort of their home and their village right there, but I'm telling you, they're not shut down and that's all they got.

They got the whole ocean out there.

Thank you, Mark. Any questions for Mark?

Hearing none, next.

Mark McNeely, Nelson Lagoon AC.

Yeah, so the point of that I don't really see because yes, some of us— there's very few anymore that are capable of going out and fishing, and that would be just the drift guys that are drifting. The, everybody else, the fishes in there don't have the capability to go anywhere. But also too is that why are we having to go when anywhere else when those fish are supposed to be, supposed to be returning to Nelson Lagoon? And There's been times where there hasn't been enough fish that I had to leave before the peak because it was so dried up in there. Okay, thank you, Mark.

Any other questions?

Next, let's go to 113.

Proposal 113, 5AC093310, fishing seasons. 5AC09350, closed waters. Thank you. I should have asked you to— thanks for picking it up.

Who's next? Up.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Proposal 115 was submitted by Kamp, and yesterday— I don't have the exact RC number in front of me, but we submitted an RC to withdraw Proposal 115.

We're on 113. 113? Okay, sorry about that. We'll get to you in a minute. It was 115.

113, Kamp did submit that one too. That is for the Caribou Flat section, and it's a lot lot of what we just talked about as far as the escapement at Nelson with the high levels the last 2 years and just trying to control that escapement level. We know that from excessive numbers of escapements that occur at some rivers, there's some rivers— Nelson River has a history of this where we had large escapements and you can see on the graph in PC41 on our proposal comments on Figure 1, that a few years later, 4 or 5 years later, you see a decrease with large escapements. So what happened in '24 and '25 with those excessive number escapements, it's likely that in a few years we're going to see a big decrease at Nelson. And there's about the last 2 years, there's about 800,000 extra fish that swim up— sockeye salmon that swam up Nelson River.

And this proposal seeks to basically control some of that harvest. If the upper escapement goal is expected to be exceeded at Nelson River, then the Caribou Flats could open by emergency order from the department, uh, and to harvest some of those excess fish. Nelson Lagoon would still remain open inside, and that's what this proposal seeks to do, is just to control the harvest inside Nelson Lagoon. Okay, thank you, Bob. Any questions?

Mr. uh, Member Wood. So how, how long has this, uh, Caribou Flat section been closed for? Since 1989. 1989. And what, what was the reason for the closure?

I think it back then it was, um, I don't know because it was before my time exactly, but I believe it was for— there was a— it was open and then there The fisheries slowly started to get going out there. A few folks started to try to prospect, if you will. And essentially, the Nelson Lagoon folks submitted proposals to get it closed. So it has been closed since 1989. Okay.

And so is your— are your openers tied to the openers within the lagoon, or do they run concurrently? Is there— Are you referring to Caribou Flats in this proposal? Just fishing periods in general, like Bear River section and whatnot. No, they're separate and independent. Nelson Lagoon's its own thing.

It's based on escapement into Nelson and Bear River and Three Hills and Ilnik and Outer Port Haiden sections are based on escapements to Bear River, Sandy River, Ilnik, and Meshick River. There's about a 130-mile difference between, say, the Nelson Lagoon and the outer Port Huyden section. So it's a vast area and they're totally separate fisheries. They're not linked at all. Okay, thanks.

Thank you, Bob. Any other questions? Next.

Hello, Angela Johnson for the record. Um, so pertaining to Proposal 113 and a board member's question to Nelson Lagoon testimony, we were asked how the is supposed to manage over-escapement, because obviously 113 is put in to help try to mitigate over-escapement. The answer is to open up the forks that are up in Nelson River. That's right in the terminal area. This makes the most sense so fishermen can harvest these salmon within the terminal area.

Also, Nelson Lagoon has one of the only healthy Chinook runs on paper in the state. Threatening to open Caribou Flats is a major cause for concern for Nelson Lagoon's king salmon run. And you know, that was a section that was put in closed for almost 40 years now that we know of. I just— we haven't had any problems with it being closed this whole time, so I don't understand why there would be anything in there to try to open that up. Thank you, Angela.

Any questions? Member Wood? Yeah, what are the forks that you're referring to? The forks is a section that is closed. You're not allowed to fish up there.

It's farther up the river. It's just a— so like the section, like Caribou Flats is named Caribou Flats. The forks is the forks. That's why it's called— it's just called that up the river, up Sapsucker Nelson River. Kate, thanks.

Member Irwin would like to ask you a question. Yeah, thank you, Ms. Johnson, for all of your testimony. My question is, do you know about when your— that those local Nelson River Chinook stocks are running through that Caribou Flats area? They run all the way from June into mid-July. Thank you.

Any other questions? Thank you, Angela. No, I have a question. Oh, I'm sorry. I have a question.

Member Carpenter. Kind of to that question that Miss Erwin— I mean, Caribou Flats been closed, like you said, for 40 years. I'm curious, how do you know when they're running through the Caribou Flats? Oh, that was the question, was running through Caribou Flats? I thought it was running up the river.

I don't know when they run through Caribou Flats. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Angela. Next.

Mr. Chair, Carlin Hoblett. I just wanted to provide some input, I guess, or information. If you— back in 2024, there was— when it grossly exceeded escapement goals, I, as a seiner, working with the area biologist and with the department's blessing, went and did a cost recovery experimental fishery in the Caribou Flats section. And I was essentially unsuccessful at culling the run.

However, you know, if I had brought different gear or had more area, I feel like I could have been successful.

I'm hesitant to say I support it, but I'll just go back to some of my previous comments is that I support the utilization of a healthy stock and the opportunity to harvest it, especially when it's in excess. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Just a question. Did you catch any kings when you were in there?

I did not.

I couldn't. I'd have to look back to see on the dates I was there. I didn't catch any kings. Caught just enough fish to fill the smokehouse. Okay, thank you.

Member Wood would like to ask you a question. Yeah. What was the reason you couldn't do it? You couldn't catch fish in there.

Uh, they weren't that abundant, and I was fishing right outside the mouth. But I will note that in the days after we tried, that escapement numbers continued to climb. So they were not going in the mouth, you know, so I didn't have access to them, or I didn't have You know, I was in my— with my big purse saying, not with a beach saying, you know.

So was it too shallow?

No, I just don't think that the numbers were abundant where we were trying. We were trying in the Caribou Flats, you know, we weren't trying in Nelson Lagoon or we weren't trying in the Heron Bay section, which I don't think I would have been able to anyways in the I don't think the fish were running right there when we were there at the time. They were all— thank you— them or going a different route. Thanks, Carlin. Any other questions?

Next. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chris Clemens for the rest. Thank you.

Yeah. Regarding kings in the Nelson Lagoon section, I have harvest records. It's just a snapshot from last year, which was a big run of sockeye. But from June 29th to August 9th, there was only 46 Chinook salmon harvested within the lagoon. And I don't think there'll be much out on the Caribou Flats.

That's my opinion. Yeah. Thanks, Carlin. Any questions for Carlin? Chris.

Oh, Chris, I'm sorry. It's all right. Sorry, Chris. All right.

All right, Angela. Hello. Are you wearing yourself out yet? No, never. So, um, just to reference 2024 season as well, we did have two outside boats come in from a different fleet that tried to fish in the river because of the over-escapement, right?

The skateboarding was booming. We had a couple boats come in. They fished all over, upriver, downriver, all over where they could go. They never went to deliver once. I don't know why.

Assuming they didn't have the right kind of gear or something like that. Just like us. The fish were so small, they were blasting right through our gear. Also, when it comes to harvesting king The processor doesn't care for our kings. They don't ask for them or want them.

So that's why we're not harvesting a bunch of kings. Thank you, Angela. Any questions?

All right, thank you. Then next.

Good afternoon, Chair. I'm Tim Waker, member of the AC for Nelson Lagoon.

I oppose 113 just, just because it's— it just seems like another tactic to, you know, to intercept and create another mixed dock fishery. It's been closed for 40 years. My family's been fishing in the lagoon for 30 years, and, and we don't— I mean, we don't target kings in the lagoon, and obviously that's why we have a healthy run of kings. But if you go out there to try to experiment in Caribou Flats, either the nets are a lot deeper, they're 70 mesh deep. In the lagoon, they're 29 mesh deep.

So, you know, and it's a shallow flat out there. I mean, you could really do some damage to kings if, uh, you know, if you're just going to try this to try to catch, you know, some super small surplus fish that have, you know, over-escaped the lagoon the last couple years. But those fish are, you know, they truly are hard to catch. We've been doing it for 30 years in there. I mean, I've been fishing salmon for 48 years, so I mean, I know how to catch fish.

We dropped our mesh size all the way to 4.5-inch those years to try to harvest those fish, and they were hard to catch, and it didn't make a lot of difference from 5 to 4.5. The fish were super small. So it's, it's, it's hard to create another new fishery on basis on that. You know, because if we were really loading up in there and harvesting a bunch of fish and still having that escapement, then I could see some merit to it. But I just don't see that.

I see it's another tactic to, you know, mess with the lagoon. And, and a lot of this started 20 years ago with OPH. This is when the fight began. And the board did it. They allowed OPH.

And that's when it all started. So you can go back and look, look in the RCs, you can see the graphs, how the fisheries at Poquillon— and it's, it's sad to say that, but that's really where it's at. And this is just another tactic, I think, to make matters even worse. We're not fixing nothing, we're just causing more problems. So that's where I'm at.

Okay, thanks, Tim. Thank you. Oh, Mr. Carpenter has a question for you.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying about 2024 and the fish being small. I mean, that does happen periodically, but when I look at the escapement over, let's just say, 20 years, were the fish small every year? Because the escapement goals were met or exceeded all 20 years with the exception of one. And so I'm trying to figure out If the reason the fish weren't harvested is they were small, how do you just— how do you answer the question on the other years when they probably weren't? Well, through the chair, a lot of those years since OPH has been implemented, the fish were— were— the escapement was met, but it was met, you know, barely.

Was it like huge escapement years? And those fish are different when they run through fisheries. They get scared. They're scared fish. They enter the river totally different than schooled fish, fish that haven't been seen by nets that are coming fresh from the ocean.

Nice schooled fish jumping, going back home, totally different. So I've been in there a long time. You just— it's just a different— you have to experience it to understand it. So, you know, and if you looked at when OPH started. Look at the 6 pre— the 6 start of the years, how the lagoon went downhill.

And then you guys put rolling closures in, right? Started to climb back up. So the windows, the rolling closures, however you want to call it, obviously help tremendously. So I don't know, you know, all the answers. But I do experience it and see it, and it looks good on paper.

Escapement every year for 52 years out of 53 years. But trust me, the quality of the escapement makes the huge difference of what this— what it shows on paper. So these kind of fish, you can put escapement every year in there, doesn't mean it's a good fishery. And if you ask Fish and Game, because I've talked to this for 20 years, our job is not to have a fishery. Our job is to get escapement, and that's what we do for— well, just to get escapement doesn't, you know, make it a viable fishery.

You know, if you look at Bear River, they haven't fished there for quite a while. My brother fished there for a long time. He had to quit. So I'm just saying is that the quality— the numbers don't always match. So that's the way I look at it, and that's the way I see things.

No, I appreciate that. I'm just trying to figure out if the quality of escapement, like you say, isn't good, then you would think you'd see diminishing returns, wouldn't you? Yeah, but the interesting thing of this is the last 2 years in Nelson, the— I mean, obviously they're small fish, which is great. They're escapement. They'll still do their job.

And hopefully come back as bigger fish when ocean conditions change. So, and currents do change, and wind— you've already heard lots of testimony about wind and currents, how they move fish around. Been super lucky to get that escapement. Don't know how. It's, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's great.

But I don't think I want to see a Caribou Flats open because of a couple good years of escapement with, with fish that were hard to catch. So they're super small, but I You know, talking with biologists, they can reproduce and hopefully come back bigger. So it's not a bad thing. So I think we're on the right track to rebuild that lake because I was told numerous times the lake is dead. So you spend 5 years talking, you know, in a row about when the runs are declining to the biologists, it just, you know, it just gets you to, you know, thinking about what could happen.

Okay, Tim. Thank you. We're going to cut this off after Angela here. We've been on this a half hour or more.

Thank you, Bob Murphy. Just regard to OPH and the Nelson Lagoon harvest in the WASP study in '06 and '07-'08, it did find Nelson Lagoon fish up in Outer Port Haydn. '06 Was— the fishery was not open, so the harvest rate of '06 is obviously zero. Uh, '07, that's when the fishery did start in the Outer Port Haiden section. The harvest rate on Nelson Lagoon stocks in 2007 was 0.7 fish, which basically means 99.3 out of every 100 fish made it to somewhere else and not Outer Port Haiden.

So it's less than 1%. And then in '08, the harvest rate on Nelson fish up in the Outer Port Haiden section again was zero, and there was a fishery. We've had a fishery the last few years. Every year we have a fishery in the Outer Puget Sound section, and obviously Nelson Goon is doing extremely well. Just one little clarification with regard to the king numbers: if this proposal were to be adopted, it'd probably kick in somewhere about the first week on a very, very strong run at Nelson.

It probably kicked in about the first week of July, and that's when the top-end at Escape McQueen goal could be exceeded. And when that happens, basically, the Nelson Goon is still open. And just to give you an example, last year, Nelson River had a very good king run. They had about 4,500 fish upriver. The escapement goal is 2,500 to 5,000, 2,400 to 5,000.

And the harvest from the first week of July till the end of July was about 17 king salmon. 17 Fish in that 3-week period, of which were harvested in Nelson Lagoon. That fishery would still be open. So the king run is already upriver. There's already sockeye.

There's already measurement— measure things in the management plan for king salmon in Nelson Lagoon. They had prior to July— June 15th, they only fish 2.5 days a week, and then they start getting into sockeye management in mid-June. So the harvest on king salmon when this fishery would occur would be negligible because the fish are already upriver. Okay, thank you, Bob. Any questions for Bob?

Okay, Angela, you are the last gasp. Closing comments. So just to refer to everybody's comments about the Nelson Lagoon having tremendous years, like we said, on paper, yeah, we meet our escapement goals, but referring to all of the science that has submitted by the Nelson Lagoon AC. It shows that we have not been doing well as a fishery and as a community, and we've been dwindling. And, you know, opening Caribou Flats first week of July is gonna kill us.

Thank you. Okay, thank you.

We'll move on to 115.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm on target on this one. Now, we, we can't submit this proposal, and we put an RC in yesterday to withdraw it on 115.

We passed you up there. Hang on a second. Me again. Sorry. Proposal 115, 5AC, 5AAC 09.369, Northern District Salmon Fisheries Management Plan.

Thank you. Go ahead, Bob. I guess I'll reference my comments. Bob Murphy, can't pull Proposal 115. Thank you.

Thank you.

Let's go to 117 and 118.

Proposal 117 and 118, 5AAC 09.369. Northern District Salmon Fisheries Management Plan.

Thank you. Anybody wish to speak to this?

Hearing none, I think we're done. Oh, we got another one. Oh, it's not in order. It's 114.

Proposal 114. 14, 5AAC09.369, Northern District Salmon Fisheries Management Plan.

Thank you. Anybody wish to speak to this?

Hearing none, we're— that's the last one. Thank you. Well done, Member Swenson. Thank you for walking us through that. And I think we're doing okay around the table, so let's So let's go ahead and move into Committee of the Whole Group 5 at this time.

Group 5 is subsistence salmon sport fishing. There are 8 proposals in this group and the chair is Mr. Godfrey. I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Looks like pretty much everybody that was in the room for the previous group is still the ones in the room right now for this group. I think you guys know the rules pretty well at this point. I will ask after I have staff read the proposal, the proposer would come up and speak to it. And if the proposer is not here or doesn't want to speak to it, if anyone wants to speak in support of it, please come up.

Do identify yourself as usual, but also when you come up, please state whether you are supporting a proposal or opposed to it before you share your commentary. With that said, staff, please Keys, first proposal in the suite.

Uh, yes, Mr. Chair, for the record, my name is Matt Keys. Proposal 1065AAC01.360, fishing seasons. Thank you, staff. Is the proposer in the room?

Would someone like to come up and speak in support of this?

Would someone like to come and speak in opposition to this? Seeing none, we'll move on to the next proposal. Staff, please.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, my name is Tyler Pollum. I'm the area sport fish biologist for the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands. Proposal 161 is 5AAC65, new section.

Thank you, staff. Is the proposer in the room? Would someone like to come up and speak in support of this? Would someone like to come up and speak in opposition? Seeing none, staff, please.

Proposal 157, 5AAC 65022, special provisions for bag possession and annual limits and methods and means in the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands area. Thank you, staff. Is the proposer in the room? Would someone like to come up and speak in support of this proposal?

Would someone like to come up and speak in opposition? Virgil, do you just want to come up and talk about something? We couldn't understand the numbers you said because our AC voted on a couple of these. Okay, was the first one— name for the record real quick, Virgil. Virgil Imfenar, Fairbanks AC.

Correct, it was 161, then 157. No one spoke on those. Now we're on 158, and you broke our streak. Fairbanks AC was in support of Proposal 161. I don't need you to go on the record.

We already have that. You have any new information? We know where they— that we know where they— okay, you've got our— you got it. You've got our correct AC report. It's in there.

They supported a couple of these proposals. One of the ones we supported was reporting steelhead that are caught in commercial fisheries was one of these proposals, and then one was adopting the King Salmon Management Plan. And those are the two that were important to us. Thank you, Virgil.

Would anyone else like to speak? Okay, staff, moving on to the next. Okay, Proposal 158 is the same, 5AAC 65022, special provisions for bag possession, annual limits, and Methods and Means in the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands area. Thank you. Is the proposer in the room?

Would anyone like to speak in support of this? Anyone like to speak in opposition? Seeing none, staff will move on. Proposal 159, 5 AAC 65022, Special Provisions for Bag Possession and Annual Limits and Methods and Means in the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands area.

Is the proposer in the room? Would anyone like to come speak in support of this? Opposition? Seeing none, we'll move on. Staff, please.

Okay. Proposal 160, 5AAC 65022, special provisions for bag possession and annual limits and methods and means in the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands area. Proposer in the room? Would anyone like to speak in support of this? Any opposed?

Any opposed? Seeing none. Staff, please.

And Proposal 156, 5 AAC 65022, Special Provisions for Bagged Possession and Annual Limits and Methods and Means in the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands Area. Is the proposer in the room? Yes, Bob.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Bob Murphy. I submit a proposal 156. 56.

There's been the previous proposal— proposals before you. Much of us met with Sport Fish Division about 6 weeks ago through a teleconference to discuss some of these proposals. And I— there is language, substitute language. I don't know if we— we just— but I'm looking at basically there's— there's some issues going on with sport fisheries in the North Peninsula, a lot of our rivers have no retention. They have different types of regulations.

Sandy River has something, Ilnek— or excuse me, Bear River and King Salmon have no retention. Nelson has no retention. But there's some rivers like Meshick and Cinder River, as well as North Creek and some other smaller ones, like in Black Hills section of North Creek, that there's lodge owners that are actually coming down from Bristol Bay to target those systems. They're relatively small king runs. They don't have escapement enumeration on them except for aerial surveys.

So this proposal that I submitted was essentially just to make them in line with some of the other regulations that we have on the north side of the Alaska Peninsula. That's Proposal 156. Mr. Chair. Thank you, Bob.

I see no questions. Would anyone else like to speak in opposition or support of this?

Hi there, my name is Kyle Kolodziejski. I'm representing one of the more frequent users for the sport fish lodge— lodges on the Alaska Peninsula. I'm here to support Proposal 156 as amended in RC 146. We feel that the, the changes in the language are kind of more suitable to meet the needs of our objectives for clarifying the regulations on the North Peninsula. Peninsula to move more towards a single hook, no bait for those smaller systems, North Peninsula-wide, which would be, I think, a great benefit and make the, the regulations more consistent to read across the peninsula and not have so many special regulations.

Um, yeah, that's really all I had to say about that, but, you know, I was a part of the group with Bob that he mentioned that Sport Fish brought together to talk about these proposals that were submitted for Sport Fish, and they're all pretty similar, and we feel that the— or I feel that the RC-146 would be a suitable compromise to the proposal 156. Thank you. Thank you. I've got a question for you. Board member Irwin, go ahead.

Yeah, thank you. Sorry, just really quick, I missed your name. My name is Kyle Kulajewski. OK, thanks, Kyle. You're welcome.

Thank you, Kyle. Anyone else want to speak on this? Seeing none, staff, please.

OK, Proposal 155, 5A, C65022, Special Provisions for Bag Possession and Annual Limits and Methods and Means in the Alaska Peninsula and Aleutian Islands Area. Thank you, staff. Seeing as how the department proposed this, would anyone like to speak in support of this from the audience? Anyone like to speak in opposition? Seeing none, going, going, gone.

I'd like to tell my fellow board member, Mr. Chamberlain, this is how you run a really efficient Committee of the Whole. Madam Chair, it's back to you.

No arguments here.

All right. Thank you, Member Confray. Efficiency. Yes, definitely. Let's take just a couple of minute break while I discuss sort of with the executive director and members here how we're going to deal with deliberations tomorrow and what time we're going to start and when we're going to put in the deadlines for substitute language.

So stand by for just a couple of minutes before we pause for the day.

All right, thanks everybody. Just for the purposes of deliberations and substitute language for deliberations, if any is being developed, I'd like to have substitute language RCs and all RCs in by 7:30 in the morning so that we can distribute them by 8:00 and give members a chance to read them so that we can begin deliberations at 8:30 in the morning. So again, if you have RCs, please get them in this evening or by 7:30 in the morning so that we can distribute at 8:00 and start deliberations at 8:30. We're going to deliberate all 3 groups tomorrow, so it's going to be a long day. We're going to begin with Group 3 and then move into Groups 4 and 5, and then we'll take up miscellaneous business and adjourn.

The intent is to complete all of our work tomorrow because I know it's been a long week. So just wanted to put all that out there on the record, and please get your RCs in as soon as possible. Thank you all. Have a good evening, and we'll see you in the morning.