2025 Statewide Shellfish, Prince William Sound Shrimp, and Supplemental Issues (3/11/25)

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for your patience. We're getting started here. The time is 8:47 AM. The date is Tuesday, March 11th.

My name is Marek Carlson-Vandort. I am the chair of the Alaska Board of Fisheries. This morning we have 6 of 7 members present. And before we go any further, I'll go ahead and get introductions started. I'd like my members to introduce themselves to the folks here and online, starting with Mr. Zurey.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Stan Zurey, and I live in the village of Tanana up on the Yukon River, and pleased to be here. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Mike Wood.

I live north of Talkeetna and Chase, and I'm excited to be here for the last meeting of this season. Good morning. Tom Carpenter. I live in Cordova.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Curt Chamberlain. I live in Wasilla. I'm originally from Antioch.

Good morning. Good morning, everybody. My name is Greg Svenson. I live in Anchorage. Glad to be here and hope we have a good meeting.

Thank you. And like I mentioned before, I'm Marit Carlson Van Dordt. I currently live in Anchorage, grew up in Juneau and Chignik Bay, and we do not have our commissioner here today. So I guess I'll start with the division leader staff and you can go ahead and introduce yourselves and your staff present here today, please. Mr. Payton.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Israel Payton. I'm director of Sport Fish, and I'll ask staff to raise their hand as I introduce them. So helping the board and public navigate this meeting will be Tom Talby, the Deputy Director. I have Jason Dye, the South Central Regional Supervisor.

Matt Miller, he's the Cook Inlet Regional Management Coordinator. Michael Booze is the Lower Cook Inlet Area Management Coordinator. Holly Dixon is the Lower Cook Inlet Assistant Area Management Coordinator, or Management Biologist, sorry. Brittany Blaine Roth is the Prince William Sound and North Gulf Coast Area Management Biologist. And Don— Donnie Arthur is the Prince William Sound North Gulf Coast Assistant Area Management Biologist.

Trying to give some people some promotions on the record there. Sorry.

And I'm Forrest Bowers, Acting Director of the Division of Commercial Fisheries. Here today from the division, we have Carla Bush, Extended jurisdiction program manager. Shaleen Hudders, our regulations program coordinator. John Linderman, AYK regional supervisor. Aaron Tiernan, AYK regional management coordinator.

Kevin Clark, Norton Sound/Kotzebue area.

Management Biologist. Ethan Kelso, Norton Sound, Kotzebue, Assistant Area Management Biologist. Nick Segalkin, Westward Regional Supervisor.

Mark Stickert, Westward Region Shellfish Groundfish Management Coordinator. Ethan Nichols, BSAI, Bering Sea Aleutian Islands, Area Management Biologist. Nat Nichols, Kodiak-Chignik, Alaska Peninsula area shellfish, groundfish management biologist. Heather Skinnell is a Bristol Bay, Prince William Sound salmon and herring regional management biologist. Martin Schuster, Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound groundfish, shellfish, groundfish area management biologist.

Andy Pollack, Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, shellfish, groundfish, assistant area management biologist. Alyssa Cole, Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, groundfish and shellfish biologist. Travis Allison, Naknek, Kwijak, area management biologist. Colton Lipka, Cook Inlet, salmon and herring area management biologist. And Lucas Stumpf, Cook Inlet, Area Salmon Herring Assistant Area Management Biologist.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, members of the board, those folks joining us here in the room this morning. Sorry, it sounds like nobody can hear me. And those online, good morning. I'm Amy Wita.

I am the Deputy Director of the Division of Subsistence, and joining me for this— all of us for this meeting is Jackie Keating, our division's lead subsistence resource specialist for the South Central Region. Thank you very Thank you very much. We have a new face at the table. Mr. Stone, please introduce yourself. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board.

Uh, my name is Jared Stone. I am a fisheries biologist with the Office of Subsistence Management. I'm here today acting as the state liaison for the Office of Subsistence Management. Joining me this morning, we've got the Regional Director Crystal Leonetti and the Deputy Regional Director Scott Ayers. Thank you.

Welcome. Thank you for being with us. Department of Law.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Aaron Peterson with the Department of Law, and also with me this morning is Cheryl Brooking. She's my counterpart with the Board of Game, and she's training her replacement, her successor, Kimberly Del Frate. Uh, Ms. Brooking is retiring in the near future, so, but she'll be covering part of this meeting for me and you'll be in good hands. She's done this for longer than I have.

Congratulations on your upcoming retirement. Department of Public Safety, please. Good morning. Captain Derek DeGraaff, Alaska Wildlife Troopers. I am the Southern Detachment Commander.

Good morning. Morning. Director Nelson, please introduce board support staff and yourself. Good morning, Madam Chair. My name is Art Nelson.

I'm the executive director for the Board of Fisheries. And with our board support staff here at this meeting, we've got Annie Bartholomew, our publications specialist. Down past Annie is Layla Williams. She is our South Central Region Advisory Committee coordinator. And there at the far end of the table is Natalie Romo from the Dillingham office, and she is our Southwest Region AC coordinator.

I'd also like to do a quick introduction of the advisory committee representatives that we have here at this meeting. If you could just wave or stand up quickly. We have Jacob Ivanoff with the Southern Norton Sound AC, Charlie Lean with the Northern Norton Sound AC, Thomas Hagberg with the Homer Advisory Committee, Brett Wilbanks with the Prince William Sound Valdez Advisory Committee, Gordon Scott with the Whittier AC. Josh Hayes with the Cooper Landing AC, Ernie Weiss with Anchorage AC, Herb Mansavage with the Mat-Valley AC, George Wilson, Naknek Kweejak AC, and Julie Cavanaugh with the Kodiak AC. And I'm sure we have some other advisory committee representatives here.

These are just the ones that were— that are here representing their ACs. Madam Chair, thank you.

Yes. All right, thank you very much. Um, just briefly for those that are here in the meeting, if you have trouble hearing us, if the mics aren't coming through, um, number one, please let us know. But number two, we also have hearing or wireless headsets that tie into the sound system available to you if you'd like to be able to hear a little bit more clearly. Also, just a reminder for those in the meeting room and sitting around this table Please turn off or silence your cell phones.

I was also just commenting that it looks like we're down a normal staff table at the back there. I see staff kind of sitting in unusual places around the room. And so we're going to work on trying to get you another table back there so that you have some space to set up and work. Just FYI. Okay.

That brings us to ethics disclosures. So we'll go ahead and we'll go around the table and get our ethics disclosures. Disclosures out and before us. And I think we'll start this end of the table and we'll work our way this way this time. So, Mr. Svensson.

Good morning. I'm Greg Svensson. I was born and raised in Anchorage and married with one daughter and one grandson. My wife and I are retired schoolteachers and my daughter is an assistant principal in the Anchorage School District. We both receive income from teacher retirements, from state PFD CD interest investment, and residential rental income.

I get a stipend from the state for my service on the board. Neither I nor my immediate family have any financial interest in fisheries, nor are we involved in any lawsuits with the State of Alaska Department of Fish and Game or Board of Fisheries. I also have licenses for hunting, fishing, and a private pilot's license. This information is true and correct to the best of my abilities. Thank you.

Are there any questions from the board? Seeing none, I rule that you have no conflicts and can fully participate in the matters before us at this meeting. Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Curt Chamberlain.

I was raised on the Kuskokwim River. I'm currently employed as Deputy General Counsel with Chalista Corporation. I'm a shareholder in the Kuskokwim Corporation and Chalista Corporation. In the past year, I've received residual income from the sale of a law firm and rental properties. I currently own a controlling interest in Neon Law Group Incorporated, which is currently winding down and not conducting business.

I will receive a stipend for my service on the board. I currently hold an Alaska hunting, fishing, and trapping license. Neither I, my family, nor my employer have a financial interest in fisheries. I have no interest in business or fish and wildlife organization that may be affected by any of the proposals or agenda change requests discussed in this meeting. My father owns a commercial drift net permit for the Middle Kuskokwim that hasn't been used since 1996.

Neither I, any member of my immediate family, nor my employer are involved in any lawsuit where the state, the board, or the department is a party to any lawsuit. This information is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge. Are there any board questions for Mr. Chamberlain? Hearing none, Mr. Chamberlain, I rule that you have no conflict and may participate fully on the agenda for this meeting. Mr. Zareh.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Stan Zareh, and I live in the village of Tanana on the Yukon River, 730 miles from the mouth. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved to Alaska in 1973. I am married with 4 children, 3 of whom reside in Alaska. I've made most of my living over the years as a contract fisherman for research projects for the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife in managing my own fisheries research grants from the Office of Assistance Management and the Yukon River Panel.

Presently, my income is derived from mechanic and equipment work with the Tana Tribal Council. I and no member of my family are involved in a lawsuit with the State of Alaska. I am currently not on any boards or organizations associated with fisheries issues. I receive a stipend for my service from this board and also my permanent fund dividend. I have a permanent Alaska hunting, fishing, and trapping license.

I currently hold a CFEC Yukon River Fish Wheel Permit, and my son has a commercial setnet gillnet permit. Neither have been able to be used for years now because of the Yukon salmon crisis. I see no personal or economic potential conflicts with any of the proposals currently before the Board of Fisheries, and I believe any personal or financial interests I or a family member may have in the proposals before us are insignificant. I hereby state that the above is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Serray. Any questions from the board? Seeing none, I rule that you may fully participate in the matters before us at this meeting. Mr. Wood.

Okay, sorry for this long drawn-out presentation on who I am, but it's necessary because of the Attorney General's ruling. So here we go. My name is Mike My first year in Alaska was 1989. I came to Alaska as an outdoor educator for the National Outdoor Leadership School, NOLS, based in Palmer, and I also worked as a Denali climbing guide for Alaska Denali Guiding based in Talkeetna.

Talkeetna. I worked as a carpenter and fisherman during the off-season and eventually transitioned from guiding to full-time work as a self-employed builder, fisherman, and occasional guide. I live with my wife Molly in the house that we built on the Susitna River on a remote property in Chase, which is about 5 miles north of Talkeetna. Molly is a senior partner in the Meridian Institute, a nonprofit organization, and works remotely from our home office. I am the chair of the Chase Community Council and a founding board member of the Susitna River Coalition, where I continue to play a significant role in protecting the river and advocating for all the water that the watershed has to offer to support healthy communities, fisheries, and wildlife.

Through this role, I became active in the Matsu habitat issues, and in 2013, I was appointed to the Matsu Fish and Wildlife Commission and served for 9 years, 6 of which I chaired. I was the only commercial fishing representative on a diverse board, and I was able to bring balance and objectivity to the Commission, especially on habitat and conservation issues. In 2017, my wife and I purchased a piece of property on the mouth of the Susitna River, 105 miles below our home. We purchased a Cook Inlet Sedna permit and leased a fishing site from DNR at the mouth of the Susitna River in the area of the Sioux Flats Game Refuge. Each year we register to fish in the Northern District of Cook Inlet and get our catcher, seller, and direct marketer license.

Our business model is to sell high-quality fresh fish to a local market. Our Our business mission is to educate people about the value of the Susitna River through their stomach. We believe that by increasing the awareness of the value— valuable source of sustainable local food, we can help create a stronger connection to the Susitna River and the resources it offers to our community. We have created a sustainable, low-volume fishing business by targeting local customers in the Mat-Su Anchorage and catching only what is ordered. We have about 120 regular customers.

Typically, we fish the top of the incoming tide during two 12-hour openers a week. Regulations impacting the west side setnetters of the Northern District have a direct impact on our business, our ability to fill our orders, and our finances. Our finances— regulations regarding fisheries on the east side of Cook Inlet have never had an impact on our business. This is a very niche market and brings modest financial gains. In 2023, our net income was under $5,000.

In 2024, it was— we brought a whole new load, a low volume, uh, was well under $5,000. We own several properties now, and all around, and collect our food from the Susitna Watershed. My history, my identity, and my commitment is first to the Susitna Valley. My fishing business is tied explicitly to the Susitna Valley. I do not have any intention to move my permit elsewhere in Cook Inlet or elsewhere in the state.

To be conservative, I intend— well, in the other— last year's Upper Cook Inlet, I recused myself of several proposals that were before us because they could have directly impacted me. Here I do not see that being the case. Additional details on my current work: I will continue to work for the Alaska Mountaineering School as a contract employee and guide training U.S. military special forces in winter survival. I'm a contract builder for a variety of projects. My wife and I both receive permanent fund dividends.

Neither my wife nor I have any— have ever been involved in any lawsuits, including with the State of Alaska Department of Fish and Game or Board of Fisheries. And this information is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Um, has the value of your permit changed over the course between, um, 2024 or 2023, 2024, 2025?

Value of my permit has not changed Okay. Any other board questions for Mr. Carpenter? Thank you, Mr. Wood. You highlighted that at the Cook Inlet meeting that you refrained from participating in specific proposals because you thought that you had a potential conflict with those. But specific to the King Salmon Management Plan that was created during that meeting and ultimately passed by the board, Did you have any involvement in helping to create that document?

And also, did you ultimately vote on the final product that was passed by the board? Yes, I did vote on that final product that passed the board. And I would say that with the help of the department, both commercial and sport fish, we were able to help create a significant portion of the King Salmon Management Plan that we ended up voting on.

Other board questions? All right. So as you'll also recall, I objected to the chair's ruling on your conflict at the Upper Cook Inlet. I maintain that objection because of the definition of financial interest primarily, but also personal interest. So I believe that what's defined under the Ethics Act is that a public officer is prohibited from using state time, property, equipment, or other facilities to benefit personal or financial interests and may not take or withhold official action in order to affect a matter in which the public officer has a personal or financial interest.

And a personal interest is defined as an interest held or an involvement by a public officer or the officer's immediate family member or parent, including membership, organization, whether fraternal, nonprofit, or profit, charitable, political, yada yada yada. A benefit is anything that is to a person's advantage or self-interest or from which a person profits "regardless of the financial gain," unquote. And a financial interest is further defined as an interest held by a public officer or an immediate family member, which includes an involvement or ownership of an interest in a business, including a private property ownership, or a professional or private relationship that is a source of income or from which or as a result of which a person has received or expects to receive a financial benefit.

In the— AG's opinion that I think has been cited and was submitted for the public record is RC-13 at the Cook Inlet meeting. The opinion states that Mr. Wood has a personal interest in the possession of an SO4H permit and a financial interest in its use. And so, you know, in the past, and the question I think that was raised by the AG's opinion, in my opinion, and we can look to law for clarification, is really sort of the board's process in terms of how or whether or not it considers that interest substantial, whether it exists in the first place and whether or not it's considered substantial. The way I looked at it in Cook Inlet is consistent with the way I'm going to look at it now, in that I consider an aggregate financial interest of approximately $20,000, and you can correct the number Um, if I'm incorrect, I don't know exactly what your receipts were for the 2024 season, but if the permit value hasn't changed the last time, um, I think that was noted was a little north of $15,000. Um, so for that reason, um, that's about, about $20 grand.

I consider that, in my opinion, and I am the ethics supervisor for this board, to be substantial. Um, I think that is a substantial amount of money to me and, and also to the average Alaskan. I have no idea what percentage of your overall income that is. That hasn't been presented to, to the, to the board or to the public. But I'm going to rule that you are conflicted in participating for proposals number 312 and 313 because of the fact that you have an SO4H permit in Cook Inlet that can be used anywhere within the inlet and therefore sold to anybody at some point if, if you so choose or needed to.

And therefore could, could affect the value of your permit or the use or where it's being used. I recognize that this is, you know, geographically you're on the other side of the inlet from those two proposals or where those two proposals are affecting primarily. But I have no way of determining how much or the substantial nature of, of fish that could be harvested within that area that might traverse north into the area in the northern district where your operations are, Mr. Wood. So, you know, I tend to look at this more conservatively. I know that folks may disagree, But, um, but that is the basis for which I'm going to, um, uh, declare a conflict.

Any board discussion? Madam Chair, I object. Okay, would you like to state the nature of your objection? Yeah, I'll state the nature. Um, I guess I object for a couple reasons.

Um, and I understand that the chair's ruling and that board findings in regards to board ethics disclosures and conflicts that this board and the ruling of this chair cannot be held to future chairs. But I think when I look towards consistency, specifically in regards to the ethics disclosures that members bring before the public and the board, that I think that this strays significantly far from at least what I.

Consider a reasonable interpretation of consistency that has been brought before the board in the very, you know, in close proximity to this particular meeting. I think we do have an opinion by the Attorney General. I think that that's imperative to this conversation. I think that the word substantial is something that obviously the chair and this board needs to interpret. I think that when I look back at, from my recollection, recollection, past board conflicts that have allowed participation, I can think of a couple examples.

Number one, Mr. Woods most recently, but number two, there was a situation in Bristol Bay years ago where You know, the substantial portion of the conversation revolved around the $5,000 mark. And in my opinion, it seems to me that Mr. Wood has demonstrated that he did participate. He did vote at the Cook Inlet meeting last time when the King Salmon Management Plan was put in place. So I think it would be very inconsistent at this point in time to not allow him to participate. Seeing that he did that then.

But I think it really gets down to me what the word substantial is, because I don't think that, at least from my— in my opinion, that what he has disclosed publicly today and in the past amounts to anything substantial. So I'll just leave it at that. Any other board discussion? Thank you for your comments, Member Carpenter. I will just add that in my tenure on this board, the ruling that was last year— made last year— was inconsistent largely with a lot of the, the rulings on financial interest and conflicts therein.

So in the interest of consistency, and I've made as chair in previous years similar, declared similar conflicts of interest for members that have held permits in particularly in the, in the fisheries under which the proposal was either changing or being considered. So from my perspective, and it is my perspective only, I thank you for sharing yours. Last year's Cook Inlet ruling was inconsistent and therefore I'm going to maintain the conflict. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you.

If I could, Madam Chair, I do have a question for Mr. Peterson, if you feel that that would be appropriate at this time. And I guess my question to Mr. Peterson is, obviously we are a volunteer board to a certain degree, and when a member makes his ethics disclosure, and is there any sort of liability that could exist to board members if they were— they were to participate in something that falls outside the lines of guidance from the Attorney General's office or from the Ethics Chair, which happens to be the Chairman of the Board. If you could maybe touch on that.

Sure. Through the Chair, Mr. Carpenter, there is personal liability for violations of the Ethics Act if it's done in violation of the statute and the regulations, regulations that are set up to enact the Ethics Act. So that is, and I know all of you are familiar with the process here for this board, if there is a ruling by the chair who is the ethics supervisor for the board members and a member disagrees with that ruling on whether there is a substantial or significant impropriety, then the board votes. And if the board decides as a body that there would be no substantial impropriety or substantial significant— I don't have the exact language here. I can pull it up, but then the member is indemnified from that personal liability.

And there are some regulations that go into further detail. I cited here for the record, it's 9 AAC 52-120(b). A member of the Board or Commission who takes or withholds official action will not be held liable if the action is taken or withheld in accordance with the determination of the Chair as designated supervisor of the Board under the procedures set out in the relevant Ethics Act statute. The member fully discloses all facts reasonably necessary to the determination of the chair or board, and the Attorney General has not advised a member, chair, board, or commission that the action violates the Ethics Act or this chapter. So I think that directly addresses your question, and I'm happy to answer any others.

No, that is— I just think it was an important part to put on the record, because I'm not sure that people that might be serving on a board like this understands the potential problems that could arise. And I just wanted you to state that for the record so that everybody knew. So I appreciate that.

Okay. Any other board discussion? So we're going to vote on whether or not the conflict exists. We have an objection to the chair's ruling. So just for clarity's sake, what is a yes vote and a no vote mean, please?

Uh, well, I guess as long as everybody is clear in their understanding of it, um, I would— Madam Chair, I would suggest that a yes vote would be to sustain the chair's ruling, um, and a no vote would be to agree with the objection. Okay, is that clear for everyone? Okay, seeing no further discussion, um, and for clarification on this, Mr. Wood will not vote on, on this. That's correct.

The, uh, the procedure lines out that the involved member may not vote. Mr. Peterson— I mean, sorry, Nelson, please call the roll.

Godfrey is absent. Chamberlain?

Yes. Zeray? Yes. Carpenter? No.

Svenson? Yes. Carlson-Vandork. Yes. The chair's ruling stands by a vote of 4 in favor, 1 against, Madam Chair.

Thank you. So just for clarity, we'll go ahead and recuse yourself from 312 and 313. Thank you. Mr. Carpenter? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Tom Carpenter. I reside in Cordova. I'm currently retired. I've divested myself completely of all businesses, including limited entry permits and IFQs.

My wife is employed by the Cordova School District as an educator. I receive the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, as do my wife and daughter, and receive a stipend for serving on this board. I purchased an Alaska sport fish hunt license each year and hold a Copper River subsistence permit annually. Neither I nor anyone in my immediate or extended family have any financial interest in a business which relates to fish and wildlife resources or belong to any organizations to which any financial gain can be attributed. There are no proposals before the board that will benefit myself nor anyone in my immediate or extended family.

No member of my family or extended family is involved with any lawsuits against the State of Alaska or the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. And I believe this statement to be true, correct, and complete. Thank you. Are there any board questions for Member Carpenter? Seeing none, Member Carpenter, I rule that you may fully participate on the agenda items for us at this meeting, and I will turn it over to you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Would you please put your ethics disclosure on the record? Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Marient Carlson VanDort.

I was born and raised in Alaska, currently reside in Anchorage. I am employed as the president and chief executive officer of Far West Incorporated, which is the village corporation for Chignik Bay, formed under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. I am also a shareholder, an angsta shareholder, in Bristol Bay Native Corporation and Koniag Native Corporation. I receive a State of Alaska Permanent Fund dividend and also purchase a resident sport fish license annually. I will receive a stipend for my service on this board.

Neither I, members of my immediate family, nor my employer have a financial interest in fisheries. Similarly, neither I, members of my immediate family, nor my employer are involved with any lawsuits with the State of Alaska, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, or the Board of Fisheries. Mr. Chair, this information is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge. Thank you.

Any board questions? Seeing none, I rule that you have no conflict and can participate fully with the matters before us. And I would turn the chair back over to you. Thank you very much. Okay.

Some housekeeping information for folks that are present and in the room and online. With respect to access to board members, so we are here and available to you for the purpose of receiving added information. This process doesn't work without you. Many of us often meet with stakeholders informally during breaks, both before and after daily meetings. We're here to serve you and benefit from your input.

There is a line we call the sanctuary line at the front of the tables, across from which— across which the public may not come during our— during our meetings or our breaks. However, if you want to.

Talk to one of us or try to get our attention, or just ask someone with staff to notify whomever you wish to speak with, and we'll come out and chat with you. Please keep in mind, however, that it's during these breaks that we get a chance to read our RCs, catch up on language, and, and also information that comes in over the course of the meeting. If you have any process questions, please feel free to ask them. We want to make sure that the public is fully informed on the board process. So myself, the chair, the Mr. Carpenter, Vice Chair, and the Executive Director are happy to answer all of your process questions that you might have over the course of this meeting.

And it is hoped that the practices of the board that I'm outlining will help maximize public participation, as the board believes that an informed and engaged public will only result in better conservation and development of our fisheries resources. The Alaska Board of Fisheries and ADF&G are united in our support of fostering a respectful workplace. We're committed to ensuring our workplace is free from negative, aggressive, and inappropriate behaviors. Harassment of any type is unacceptable and won't be tolerated. And of course, we appreciate everyone's assistance in joining, joining us in this important effort.

In accordance with the Open Meetings Act, the board staff published a notice in the Alaska Online Public Notice System and in a statewide newspaper, posted the notice on the board's website as our designated posting place, and also distributed it to a list of our email recipients. I'm not going to read it here, but copies of the notice are in the meeting notebooks at the back of the room or are available from the executive director for those who are interested in the complete text. The public notice and proposals were distributed to the local Fish and Game Advisory Committees. They're posted online and were also sent by email to interested organizations and individuals. Public comments were solicited and the board members have received copies of all on-time written public comments.

The timely public comments and timely advisory committee comments are available for the board's use and are also available to the public in the workbooks on the table. Also at the back of the room, copies of all of the meeting materials updated frequently throughout the meeting can be found on the board's website on the web page specific to this meeting. Copies of the tentative agenda for this meeting can also be found on the table at the back of the room. The agenda is subject to change throughout the meeting, but I will make an attempt to try and stay on it as, as best as possible. And if there's any deviations from the agenda, I'll make sure to announce it with as much heads up as I possibly can.

Record copies. The board encourages the public to submit written comments on specific proposals or issues. Written public comments submitted before deliberations begin are limited to 10 single-sided or 5 double-sided pages in length. Please make sure that your written comments clearly include your name, the organization you represent, if any, and what proposals your RC is addressing at the top of the document. Once deliberations on proposals begin at this meeting, the board will only accept written public comments that are not more than 5 single-sided pages or the equivalent double-sided pages, unless very specific information is requested by the board that requires more than that, um, under the standard.

The board is accepting RCs submitted electronically as a Word document or PDF through the board's website. A link to the submission portal is prominently featured on the meeting page of our website where all of the meeting materials are posted. You can also turn in written materials to the board support staff at the end of the table. Please note that you only need to turn in one copy. However, board support staff will not be printing submitted materials in color.

So if you have something that you would like the board to have before it in color, please turn in 20 copies, color copies, to the board support staff at the end of the table. With no exception, all materials which are submitted to the board for its consideration must be presented to the record keeper for distribution or uploaded through the website. Please do not give documents to board members directly. If you do so, those— the board member will hand those documents back to you and request that they get submitted for the record. All documents received at this board meeting will be assigned a log number, which is called an RC.

All written materials submitted will be retained for the permanent record of the board. The record keeper will distribute RCs in the morning before the meeting begins, after the noon break, and if there's an evening session, after the dinner break. This practice will ensure regular distribution of all written materials to all board members, as well as proper retention of board records. And I would just note that while you have the right to submit up to the maximum number of pages, please keep in mind that we're quite busy during these meetings and sometimes unable to read everything immediately. We literally receive hundreds of documents consisting sometimes of thousands of pages.

So please be concise. The fewer pages it takes to say what you need, the better the opportunity we'll have to read it and also sort of understand it. At this time, we're about ready to begin our staff reports. We will do traditional knowledge reports and public testimony that will follow the staff reports. And for those who would like to provide public testimony, you must fill out one of the blue cards also located on that table at the back of the room.

And turn it into the board staff at the end of the front table. The tentative cutoff time to sign up for oral public testimony is 10 a.m. tomorrow, Wednesday. And at this meeting, the public will be given 3 minutes to testify. Traditional Knowledge reports, advisory committees, and regional advisory council representatives will each be given 10 minutes. Following public testimony, there will be 3 sessions of the board's Committee of the Whole.

The committee roadmap shows which proposals will be considered in each committee session. Everyone is allowed to participate and there is no need to sign up for participation in Committee of the Whole. The agenda, which is available online or in the materials at the back, show where we tentatively plan to deliberate in between committee group sessions. While that agenda, as I mentioned, is subject to change, I will do my best to provide updates along the way. So, um, keep an ear open for announcements.

Again, if you have any questions about the process, please feel free to ask myself Vice Chair Carpenter or Director Nelson. So I'm going to pause here and we will go ahead and set up for staff reports and, um, get going. So we'll take about a 10 or 15 minute break. Thank you.

Okay, welcome back. Time is 9:39 and 57 seconds. So we'll go ahead and get into staff reports. So please put yourself on the record and tell us where to find your presentation and get started. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board.

My name is Martin Schuster, and I'm the area management biologist for groundfish and shellfish in Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet. Here with me at the table are Donny Arthur, assistant area management biologist for the Division of Sport Fish for Prince William Sound and North Gulf Coast, as well as Brittany Blaine Roth, area manager for Prince William Sound and North Gulf Coast. We also have Jacqueline Keating from Division of Subsistence.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] As a note, this presentation is available as a hard copy under RC3, tab 6, and additional information can be found in our Prince William Sound Area Management Report. Today we'd like to present to you information on commercial and non-commercial shrimp pot fisheries in Prince William Sound.

First, we'll briefly mention the proposals you'll be deliberating at this meeting. The first proposal asks the department to develop a comprehensive management plan for Prince William Sound spot shrimp and to form a shrimp task force. There's also a proposal to restrict non-commercial harvest to commercial shrimp management areas, to modify the total allowable harvest, delay the commercial and non-commercial seasons, restrict the number of pots on non-commercial vessels, require daily reporting in the commercial fishery, align start times between commercial and non-commercial fisheries on opening day, reduce pot limits, remove the commercial area rotation, and to allow catcher vessels to operate as tenders in the commercial fishery.

The board was presented with spot shrimp life cycle information in Juneau, but we'll discuss the basics again as a refresher. Prince William Sound is the northern extent of spot shrimp distribution, resulting in a lifespan of 7 to 10 years, longer than their more southerly counterparts. Spot shrimp reach sexual maturity at an age between 3 and 5 and marketable size between 3 and 4 years old. Spot shrimp are also protandric hermaphrodites, meaning they begin life as males and transition to female once they reach a certain size and age. In Prince William Sound, transition takes place between 5 and 6 years old, later than for other spot shrimp populations.

This means that most, if not all, females are susceptible to harvest when they transition sex.

This figure shows the general life cycle of spot shrimp. We'll begin in March at the end of the egg development period when eggs are ready to be released. Release occurs mostly before April, though recent port sampling data from the department shows that there are egg-bearing females present in the harvest during the early weeks of the fisheries, which all begin April 15th. Port sampling data show that in April up to 36% of female spot shrimp are egg-bearing and that this decreases to approximately 5% by early May. This is relevant because there is a proposal to move the beginning of the season for commercial and non-commercial fisheries to May 1st from April 15th.

Beginning in July and August, shrimp start to molt, though we have no data that indicates whether the timing of the molt is different in the Sound due to its northerly location. Molting is a sensitive time for shrimp as they are eating less and are more vulnerable to natural mortality. Reproduction takes place after the molt and it can occur between August and and April, with the highest occurrence of egg-bearing females in the fall. Data from our fall shrimp survey indicate that in October, 94% of female shrimp are egg-bearing.

Prince William Sound spot shrimp fisheries are managed using data collected during an annual shrimp pot survey. Unlike in Southeast Alaska, where port sampling and survey data are used to qualitatively set GHLs, In Prince William Sound, survey data are used in a surplus production model to estimate the biomass of shrimp and set an allowable harvest. The Prince William Sound survey takes place on the ADF&G research vessel Solstice and has been prosecuted each October since 1992. At each of 9 survey sites, 4 strings of 11 pots are fished with a soak time of 24 hours. The most important data collected during this survey is catch per unit effort, or CPUE, measured in the number of shrimp per pot, which is a critical input to the surplus production model used to estimate the total allowable harvest.

Additional data collected during the survey include the sex and size of shrimp and the presence of eggs for female shrimp.

The shrimp pot survey takes place annually each fall in 3 areas shaded in orange, green, and blue on this map. These areas are rotated annually in the commercial fishery. Waters with diagonal lines on the map are closed to commercial shrimp fishing but are open to non-commercial sport and subsistence fishing. An important take-home here is that the areas of highest non-commercial harvest outside of Whittier and Valdez are not regularly surveyed at this time. As we mentioned previously, catch per unit effort, or CPUE, is the most useful indicator of stock status collected from the shrimp pot survey.

This figure here shows CPUE in pounds of shrimp per pot on the vertical axis by year on the horizontal axis from 1992 to 2024. CPUE for marketable size shrimp, seen as the gray line on this figure, is one of three inputs into the surplus production model used to assess TAH. In this figure, we can see that CPUE in the survey steadily increased from 1999 to 2008. This increasing productivity, along with increased success in the non-commercial fisheries, led to the opening of the modern commercial fishery in 2010. From 2010 through 2020, the shrimp stock in Prince William Sound was in a period of very high productivity, well above the carrying capacity of Prince William Sound for shrimp.

Beginning in 2021 and continuing through 2023, survey CPUE began to decline as the stock responded to being over the carrying capacity for shrimp in the Sound. During the most recent survey in 2024, CPUE began to increase, and the next survey is scheduled for October 2025.

Survey CPUE and harvest from the commercial and non-commercial fisheries are used to estimate TAH using a surplus production model. This figure does not show actual harvest, but what the TAH values were from 2010 through 2024, The dotted black line running horizontally at 110,000 pounds represents the minimum regulatory TAH to open a commercial fishery. This threshold of 110,000 pounds was set in 2009 and is no longer biologically relevant. Recent work by department staff suggests that the surplus production model used from 2010 through 2024 is not responsive to the status of the shrimp stock. For example, as we saw in the previous slide, from 2013 to 2020, the shrimp stock was in a period of increasing productivity while TAH remained stable as estimated by the model.

In the red box on this slide, not responding to increases in production as estimated by the survey.

Beginning in 2021, the stock entered a period of lower productivity as it came out of a period of high productivity. With survey CPUE in 2023 being 20% of the maximum in 2020, as illustrated on the previous slide. The model did not respond sufficiently to this decreasing productivity, and in 2024, the department set TAH at 117,000 pounds, while the old surplus production model would have set the TAH at 138,000 pounds. After the 2024 fishery, work began on developing a new model which provides estimates of TAH that are more responsive to stock status. Mr.

Arthur will discuss the dynamics of the new model at the end of this presentation. This figure provides historical context and shows shrimp pot harvest for all species of shrimp on the vertical axis in pounds, with commercial harvest in gray and non-commercial harvest in black. The highest harvest of shrimp in Prince William Sound occurred in the commercial fishery during the 1980s, with harvest and effort decreasing substantially after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 and the commercial shrimp fishery closing in 1991. The non-commercial fishery continued, though harvest estimates are not available until 2002 when the non-commercial shrimp permit was instituted. In 2009, a proposal was adopted by the board to open a commercial fishery.

As mentioned previously, spot shrimp were in a period of very high productivity throughout the 2010s, and harvest in the commercial and non-commercial fisheries grew through 2020, then began to decrease coming out of that period of high productivity.

Here we'll zoom in on commercial harvest from 2010 to 2024. The red lines represent the commercial GHL, which is targeted very accurately due to the comprehensive management tools we have in regulation currently. The years in which the GHL was not achieved in 2012, 2015, and 2024 were all in commercial Area 3 in southwestern Prince William Sound, which is less productive than Areas 1 and 2, as we'll present in the next slide.

The 3 text boxes in bold on this map show average commercial fishery CPUE and season length for each area. Oh, excuse that. Areas 1 and 2 in northern Prince William Sound in green and red are the most productive with fishery CPUE of 2 pounds per pot and 1.7 pounds per pot respectively. Areas 1 and 2 have average season lengths of 72 and 61 days. Area 3 in blue is less productive than Areas 1 and 2 and has a lower CPUE at 1.4 pounds per pot and a much longer season averaging 121 days for all years combined.

The department has a variety of tools outlined in regulation to manage the commercial shrimp pot fishery. The commercial season.

Opens on April 15 and closes either by emergency order or on September 15. The maximum pot limit is 100 pots. However, pot limits are generally set between 25 and 35 pots by emergency order preseason. Reporting requirements include post-trip call-ins and logbooks. The commercial GHL is set at 40% of TAH, unless TAH is estimated to be below 110,000 pounds.

In which case the commercial fishery will not open. Additionally, no more than 50% of the commercial GHL may be harvested from any one statistical area. Commercial fishing areas are rotated on a triennial basis, with each area open for one season and closed for two seasons. Next, Mr. Arthur will present information on non-commercial management, harvest, and also the new modeling work and how it could be used to make decisions on the proposals to be deliberated at this meeting. We'll stand by for commercial fishery questions at the end of the presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Schuster. Madam Chair, members of the board, for the record, my name is Donald Arthur and I am the Sport Fish Assistant Area Manager for Prince William Sound area. Also, I appreciate your patience as we transition between speakers. In the second part of this presentation, I am going to talk about the non-commercial shrimp pot fishery. The non-commercial shrimp pot fishery is composed of subsistence and sport shrimpers.

Prior to 2016, personal use shrimping was also included into this group, but was later repealed and absorbed into the sport portion. The sport users are required to have a valid sport fishing license, but subsistence users do not. In regulation, the ANS, or the amount reasonably necessary for subsistence uses of shrimp in Prince William Sound, is defined as 9,000 15,000 pounds of usable weight of shrimp. In Prince William Sound, all saltwaters are open to non-commercial shrimping except for the Valdez Non-Subsistence Use Area, which is closed to subsistence users.

Unlike, unlike the commercial fishery, there is no threshold in place for this fishery to occur, and the commercial users are allocated 60% of the total allowable harvest, or TAH. The season dates for the non-commercial shrimp fishery are April 15th to September 15th, and the pot limit is, per regulation, is 5 pots per vessel with no bag limit or possession limit on the amount of shrimp harvested. Harvesting effort is tracked through a harvest recording form, also known as the Prince William Sound, Prince William Sound Shrimp Permit, which is reported online post-season. Unlike the commercial shrimp fishery, we have little in-season management that occurs in the non-commercial shrimp fishery. The management for the non-commercial shrimp fishery occurs preseason based on previous year's participation, harvest, and effort levels.

Before we look at information that can be gained from the shrimp permit, let's take it— let's take a look at the shrimp permit itself. On the right-hand side is an example shrimp permit. All participants, whether sport or subsistence, are required to get the same permit, and the permit is free and available online. Non-commercial shrimpers must fill out information on the permit before leaving the fishing site, and shrimp is reported— shrimp is reported in gallons of whole shrimp with heads attached, and the total harvest of gallons is converted to pounds post-season.

The permit is required to be reported online no later than October 15th, which is 30 days after the close of the season. And in 2022, the board adopted the failure to report process for the Prince William Sound non-commercial shrimp fishery. If a permit holder does not report their harvest before the deadline and provide an appeal, they will be prohibited from getting a permit the following year.

Here's a graph of the number of non-commercial shrimp permits issued since 2002. I will note that permits were not required between 2006 and 2008, so you'll see this gap in data throughout the presentation. An average of 4,100 permits have been issued annually since 2016, when the permits first became available online. The number of permits issued peaked in 2020 at around 4,500 and has slightly declined since. Most recently, 4,121 permits were issued in 2024.

On average, 86% of permit holders have an Alaskan-based address, and of all the permits issued, 89% of the non-commercial shrimp permits are reported on. And while we have seen an increase in shrimp permits since 2016, the percentage of permits that have fished has remained relatively stable at 58% of permits reporting at least one set of shrimp pots.

Now let's look at a summary of the non-commercial harvest and effort. On the vertical axis of this graph is effort in pot days and harvest reported in pounds of whole shrimp. Across the bottom horizontal axis are years. The non-commercial harvest is the gray bars and the dashed black line with the black boxes is effort associated with each year. And before I explain more, I'd like to explain what the measure of effort in the non-commercial fishery means.

A pot day is the equivalence of a single pot set and soaked for a 24-hour period. Now I'm going to start in the early years and work my way to the present, providing useful, useful information as we go. Just a reminder that each year's management action is performed pre-season and is based on the information gathered from the prior year. The non-commercial fishery has a long history in Prince William Sound, but permits were not established until 2002. The fishing— the fishery was growing in popularity and fishing— shrimping efficiency was improving in those early years.

Essentially, participants were catching more shrimp with less effort. Again, I want to point out the gap in data from 2006 to 2008. During this time, the fishery was managed using the statewide harvest survey data and it is not comparable to permit data and therefore it was left out of this figure. 2009 Was the first year the non-commercial fishery management plan was implemented. And with that, a permit requirement was reestablished.

In 2010, the pot limit was raised by emergency order to 8 pots per vessel, creating a noticeable peak in effort and harvest. The department no longer has this authority to increase pot limits by emergency order, like was done in 2010. After the peak in 2010, the harvest generally increased while the effort steadily decreased in the fishery. In 2016, the results from the 2015 pot survey provided for a lower GHL and as a result, the department reduced the pot limits to 4 for the first time. Even though effort decreased, harvest slightly increased from the prior year.

Oop. And in order to stay within the allocation levels defined in the management plan, the department has reduced the non-commercial shrimp pot limit in attempt to stay within the established DHL ever since 2016. In 2017 and 2018, the pot limit was also 4. In 2019 and 2020, the pot limit was 3. And in 2021, the pot limit was reduced to 2 pots per vessel in order to manage for the GHL.

Most recently, emergency orders in 2022, '23, and 2024 decreased the pot limits to 3 pots per vessel, except that only 2 of those pots may be used near Whittier and Valdez. It was expected that in these years, allowing the use of 3 pots Prince William Sound-wide and near the ports would result in a harvest exceeding the GHL. Before I move on, I want to note that while 86% of the permits are issued to Alaska residents, residents account for 97% of the harvest presented in these plots. Now let's look at other information that can be gleaned from the non-commercial shrimp permit, such as time and area of harvest. The board will address two proposals regarding season and time within the Prince William Sound shrimp fishery.

Proposal 304 seeks to change the starting date from April 15th to May 1st for both the non-commercial and commercial fisheries, and Proposal 307 seeks to change the start time for the non-commercial fishery on April 15th from midnight to 8 AM. Non-commercial shrimpers must record harvest by set date every time they drop pots. So from that data, we can estimate the harvest by date. On the left vertical axis is the daily percent of the total season harvest harvested on any single day, and on the bottom horizontal axis is date— the date of the season. The back— the black line represents the daily contribution to the total harvest for that respective date.

Starting with the season opener on April 15th, you can see an initial jump in the harvest right as the season opens. After a long winter, non-commercial shrimpers are eager to get out and get their first shrimp for the year. So we see higher daily harvests on the opener and the 2 to 3 days following. Around 1% of the total season harvest occurs each day around the opener, and then it drops off for a few weeks in late April. In the first 2 weeks of the season between April 15th May 1st, approximately 9% of the total, total season harvest has occurred.

And as you can see from this, as you can see from the consistent peaks in the graph, the majority of the shrimp are harvested in the non-commercial fishery between May 16th and July 15th. In the last 2 months of the season after mid-July, the daily harvest noticeably falls off.

Now let's look at where the non-commercial shrimpers' harvest occurs. The board will address Proposal 300, which seeks to divide the non-commercial GHL among the 3 commercial areas. Here you can see Area 1, Area 2, and Area 3, similar to what Mr. Schuster presented for the commercial shrimp fishery. I will work from north to south. Area 1 in pink receives the second highest amount of harvest of any area.

About 34% of the non-commercial harvest occurs in Area 1, or about 29,000 pounds each year. Area 1 contains Valdez and the highly productive area of Unakwik Inlet.

57% Of the total harvest occurs in the area, in Area 2 in green, or just under 49,000 pounds each year. This area is easily accessed by boat from Whittier, so it receives the most effort and is also fairly productive for shrimp, hence the highest harvest amongst areas. Area 3 in lavender or blue, depending on what screen you're looking at, sees the lowest amount of harvest of any area at 3,500 pounds, or just 4% of the total non-commercial harvest. This area is the furthest, furthest from all 3 ports and receives less effort. And typically if a user isn't in this area, they are targeting other species such as halibut, rockfish, or lingcod.

And so shrimp, shrimp tends to be an afterthought for non-commercial shrimpers. All other areas outside of Area 1, 2, and 3, or the area in white in this map, receives the 3rd most harvest of any area. All other areas contribute to about 5% or 4,000 pounds of the total annual non-commercial harvest. The area in, the area in white or outside of Area 1, 2, and 3 is not as productive but is still accessed and utilized by users from the town of Cordova. Moving on to the over—.

An overall summary of the non-commercial fishery. Here is the non-commercial harvest relative to the target GHL. The non-commercial annual harvest is the solid gray bars and the GHLs are the single black dashed lines. In the last 11 years, with the exception of 2016 and 2024, the GHL for the non-commercial fishery has been approximately 100,000 pounds.

The non-commercial shrimp fishery has exceeded the GHL 6 out of the past 16 years. 2010 Was the first year the GHL was exceeded. This was the only year that the pot limit was increased by EO, which likely explains the harvest above the GHL. 2016 Was the first year the number of pots were reduced by emergency order, yet the effort stayed similar to the prior year and harvest slightly increased, which resulted in a harvest exceeding the GHL for the second time. 2018, The pot limit was kept at 4 pots for the third year in a row.

Effort and harvest increased from the prior year and the GHL was exceeded. In 2019, based on prior year's information, the pot limit was reduced to 3, and in that year the harvest level exceeded the GHL by only 1%. In 2020, the— based on prior year's information, the pot limit was again reduced to 3 pots, but in 2020 the harvest and effort increased to do— increased due to COVID-19 because most non-commercial shrimpers are Alaskan residents. This year also had the highest CPUE ever recorded in the non-commercial fishery. Together, this information explains why the GHL was exceeded this year.

And lastly, in 2024, the harvest was 77,832 pounds. This was the third year in a row that the pot limit remained at 3 pots, with the exception that only 2 pots could be used near Whittier and Valdez. Effort slightly increased, and the CPE also increased from 2023 to 2024, possibly explaining why the GHL was exceeded last year. Since the beginning of the non-commercial fishery management plan in 2009, the non-commercial fishery has harvested 99% of the GHL on average.

The next figure shows the combination of the commercial and non-commercial harvest in pounds for the years that both fisheries occurred. The commercial fishery are the dark gray portions of the vertical bar and the non-commercial are the light gray portions. Also in this figure are the established total allowable harvests or TAH for each year. They are represented as the horizontal blue lines. As you can see, in most years, or 11 out of the 15, we have not reached or exceeded the TAH.

Based on the survey and CPUE from both fisheries through 2024, the TAH in 2025 was calculated at 80,646 pounds, which is the lowest TAH in the last 16 years. Now I'm going to take some time to explain in depth the surplus production model and management in 2025 and going forward. So take a minute to digest what you've been presented so far and remember the 2025 TAH of 80,646 pounds. What I'm about, what I'm about to show you will be detailed, but it will help you make informed decisions on proposals that will be in front of you at this meeting. We want to discuss with you the surplus production model and how the TAH was set for the Prince William Sound spot shrimp fishery this year.

But before I explain the blue surplus production line on this graph, I want to explain the axes first. On the x-axis or horizontal axis of this plot is population size or the biomass in pounds. So as you go up on that— or if you guys, you go up or to the right on the x-axis, you go from less shrimp to more shrimp in the population. On the vertical y-axis, you have surplus production or harvest in pounds. So as you go up on the vertical axis, you go from less harvest or surplus production to more harvest or surplus production.

Now this blue curve represents the—. Our updated surplus production model. The surplus production model uses harvest from both fisheries and survey CPUE in a similar way that we have done in the past, except this version of the model responds to changes in biomass much more realistically. The surplus production curve in blue shows how the population's growth rate changes with biomass or population size, and there are key features of this blue curve that can tell us a lot about the population. Starting with K, or carrying capacity, is the unfished biomass of shrimp that the environment can support if we never fished.

In theory, this is where the population would want to settle over time if all harvest ceased. K, or unfished biomass, is estimated at just under 3.4 million pounds of shrimp. The next important variable is BMSY, which is the biomass level or population size that yields maximum sustainable yield, or MSY, It is estimated at just under 1.7 million pounds of biomass. At low levels of biomass, or to the left of BMSY, the population growth rate is slow, and that's because there are less individuals reproducing. So the blue surplus production curve goes down to the left.

Biomasses above BMSY, or to the right of BMSY, the population may become crowded and start leading to competition for resources such as food and habitat. And therefore this population growth slows. This is where the curve starts to drop at high biomasses or to the right of BMSY. And finally, maximum sustainable yield or MSY. MSY is the highest surplus production that this population can produce.

MSY for the population is estimated at about 98,400 pounds. From this curve, we can determine harvest levels that can ensure long-term sustainability. Let's introduce the FMSY line. The FMSY line, or the dashed purple line here, effectively shows the harvest level limits or fishing rate at which we can fish. At harvest above this line, we risk overfishing, which will lead to stock depletion and long-term trends in downward trends in biomass.

In this case, we are treating FMSY as not a target but a limit. It's the boundary we should avoid crossing, and particularly at low biomasses. If we fish too aggressively above this purple line, the shrimp population size will decrease and pop possibly into an overfished state. Our goal is to keep the fishery below this limit, which will ensure a healthy population and sustainable harvest. By fishing below this FMSY line, it also allows us to account for uncertainty and low productivity years.

Now we add the COBI plot. These colored zones show stock status or biomass on the x and fishing pressure on the y. They shows these two variables together. The green area means healthy— it means the, the stock is healthy and there is no overfishing occurring. Yellow means there is a healthy stock but overfishing could be occurring, and orange indicates the stock is overfished but overfishing is not actively occurring.

The orange area is often viewed as a rebuilding state where the stock is low, and so fishing harvest is reduced to help rebuild the stock back into the green area. Red is overfished and overfishing. This is the area as managers we want to avoid. The COBI plot with the surplus production curves lets us see quickly if we're in a safe zone or if we're pushing the stock too hard. As you can imagine, simply put, green is good and where we want to be, and red is bad, and as managers we want to avoid that area, with yellow and orange being areas of concern.

Next, here is the 75% FMSY line. It's a fishing rate that ensures that we stay in the green area when the population is good, and if the population is low, it allows the har—. Allows harvest that will ensure rebuilding. 75% FMSY is below the FMSY line, and in 2025, we use 75% FMSY to set the total allowable harvest. Harvesting on this line provides a buffer, and harvesting at this rate will help reduce the risk of overfishing if conditions change.

By staying below full FMSY, we leave a safety margin that can help the stock remain healthy even if there is an unexpected downturn.

Finally, let's overlay some real data from historic, historic years in the fishery onto the COBI plot. With each added red dot, showing the actual biomass and harvest for that year. When I overlay these points, please remember that this is purely a retrospective look at where historic harvest would land with our current understanding of the stock dynamics.

We'll start in 1986. 1986 Was the peak of the commercial fishery that had been executed throughout much of the 1980s. Fishing was at a high level and in 1986 the harvest was nearly 300,000 pounds. The population had already been depleted to this point and eventually the population crashed due to high harvest and the commercial fishery was eventually closed in 1991 shortly after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Throughout the 1990s, the stock was in a poor state and harvest had dropped significantly with the closure of the commercial fishery.

This is evident in the biomass being low and the harvest being low in 1994. In 1994, we are in the orange at a low stock status and just a small non-commercial fishery was occurring, so low harvest, which was allowing the stock to rebuild. Fast forward to 2001 and 2002, we we can see the beneficial effect of allowing the stock to rebuild. In fact, we see the biomass increase from a point of being in the orange or below BMSY in 2001 to the green area in 2002. The stock continued to rebuild through the 2000s, and in 2009, the Board of Fisheries passed regulations allowing to bring the commercial fishery back online and also passed the Noncommercial Shrimp Fishery Management Plan.

In 2010, the reintroduced commercial fishery was executed, so we can see— we see harvest increase from 2009 to 2010, but generally we were at a very good biomass, well into the green. In fact, the population had rebuilt to a point that it was above carrying capacity, or K. Throughout the 2010s, the stock was in a very productive state, and so while harvest was high, the stock continued to grow due to really good recruitment to a peak biomass around 2017.

Since the peak in the shrimp stock, the population has shifted out of a state of high productivity, and so as a result, the environmental conditions and harvest have resulted in a population decline from 2020 to 2024. It has declined to a point where harvest has been above FMSY line and in the yellow in 2022, 2023, and 2024, and the population is on the trajectory, trajectory to be below BMSY or into the red if the harvest strategy does not change. And that brings us to the present coming out of the 2024 season and going into the 2025 season. So let's focus on the present. So coming out of the 2024 season, the current biomass is just below 1.9 million pounds.

This is shown as the vertical dashed line and where it meets the horizontal axis. If we look at where this line crosses the, crosses the 75% FMSY line, we can demonstrate how the total allowable harvest was set in 2025. This is shown as the white dot with the red outline. Adding a horizontal line to where it is on the vertical y-axis, we can see the current biomass intersects the 75% FMSY line at 80,646 pounds of harvest opportunity, which was presented as the 2025, uh, TAH a few slides ago. As you can see, the TAH is below FMSY and in the green area, which should allow for sustainable harvest and in theory, at average productivity, increase the population size while allowing this harvest.

So after presenting how the TAH was set and presenting a TAH of 80,646 pounds, there will be management actions forthcoming for this upcoming 2025 season. Sport Fish has issued a press release announcing potential restrictions are coming for the non-commercial fishery, but they have not yet been established by emergency order as they are— we are pending the outcomes of this board meeting. It is planned that the non-commercial fishery will have a pot limit reduction from 5 pots per vessel to 2 pots per vessel. This is one of the most restrictive pot limits that the non-commercial fishery will have seen. In addition, to manage for the non-commercial GHL of 48,388 pounds, we will be introducing a season restriction by EO for the first time ever.

The season will be restricted to May 15th through July 31st, which is a delay of the start by 1 month and ending the season early by a month and a half, for a total 2.5-month reduction.

Okay, thanks, Mr. Arthur. So as presented earlier, the 2025 TAH was approximately 80,000 pounds, which is well below the 110,000-pound minimum threshold in regulation to to open a commercial fishery. And for this reason, the commercial fishery will not open during the 2025 season. Now, before I present the final slide, just like to thank you guys for bearing with us here, and I'm going to attempt to synthesize all the information that's been presented and make it relevant for the decisions that you'll be making.

As we've discussed, the threshold for prosecuting a commercial fishery was set at 110,000 pounds in 2009. There is no threshold for prosecuting the non-commercial fishery.

According to our refined model, which more accurately reflects the dynamics of the shrimp stock, a TAH of 110,000 pounds restricts harvest at a healthy stock status at an estimated biomass of 2.5 million pounds of shrimp and is not biologically relevant. Additionally, As Mr. Arthur outlined for you, the 75% FMSY approach in the new model, represented by the dashed diagonal line, is an inherently conservative approach to setting TAH and represents an exploitation rate of approximately 5% of shrimp biomass annually. It is also important to note that using this conservative harvest rate, you can harvest shrimp anywhere on this 75% FMSY line, even where it enters the orange zone, and the population will recover. However, in fisheries management, a common biomass trigger where harvest should be curtailed to allow the stock to recover is referred to as B20, as you can see on the horizontal axis of this figure. B20 equates to 20% of the carrying capacity of the stock, which also equates to a total allowable harvest of approximately 30,000 pounds of Prince William Sound shrimp.

Now, it's up to the board to decide at which point to implement conservative management measures, but a threshold TAH over 75,000 pounds is unnecessarily restrictive, and we should not have a TAH lower than 30,000 pounds, or B20. Additionally, the shrimp stock did show signs of stabilization in the 2024 department survey, and based on what we saw from 2010 to 2020, the stock has the ability to grow from low biomass very high biomass in the presence of sustainable fishing pressure. As a final reminder, Proposal 301 seeks to close the non-commercial fishery at 110,000 pounds in addition to the current commercial closure in regulation at 110,000 pounds, and Proposal 303 seeks to remove the TAH threshold for the commercial fishery entirely.

So with that, we'd like to thank you for your time and attention. Additional information is also available in our published, published report. And at this time, Mr. Arthur and I would gladly answer any of your questions. Oh boy, do I have questions. But I will let my other board members go first.

Mr. Carpenter.

Thank you. Yeah, lots of questions. So a couple simple ones to start off with. On the reporting form that you showed for the non-commercial side of things, and maybe I couldn't see it on my computer, but when you fill out that form, does it— do you have to pick and choose on that form whether you're participating in a sport or subsistence fishery? Through the chair, Board Member Carpenter.

Yes, the way the permit is distributed now, it is explicit in that you select a sport or subsistence permit. Historically, it used to be if you simply left the sport fishing license field blank, it would default, and you were an Alaska resident, it would default you to a subsistence. But now it is an explicit choice. Okay, and then a quick follow-up on that particular question. I don't know how long that's been the case, but do you have any way to look at the information in regards to reporting, let's say, over the last 10 years?

And is it possible to give a breakdown on what percentage, you know, over those years were people that were participating in subsistence fisheries versus sport, or do you just not have that information that goes back far enough? We at least— oh, through the chair, Board Member Carpenter— we at least have some recent years that we could provide data that showed pretty consistent trends just over a couple years. I can tell you that on average the last couple years, say the last 5, the average participation in sport is 80% of the non-commercial fishery and about 20% subsistence. Okay, and Specific to the, the report reporting form, is there any— some— is there any sort of restriction that if you fail to report that you can— can you, can you get a permit the following year? Through the chair, Board Member Carpenter.

Yeah, so the board implemented the failure to report.

Process in 2022. Since then, if a subsistence or sport user does not report on their permit by October 15th and provide an appeal, they will be, um, they will not— they would be prohibited from getting a permit the following year. That being said, it is a household permit, so someone in your household could get a permit and just label you as a household member, but you yourself could not get a permit if you did not report. Okay. And I will ask one final— I will just make a statement and then I will let other people ask questions.

And I asked you about this earlier, but just for the record, I think it is probably most relevant to slide 37 where you talk about B20 and where 75% of FMSY is. I would like to see this particular chart that also showed where B40 was. And so if you wouldn't mind providing that as an RC at some point in time, I'd be appreciative.

Mr. Wood. Okay. I have a lot of questions too. First of all, on slide 15, you show that it's close to subsistence around the Valdez area. Why is that close to subsistence around there?

Thank you for the question. For the record, jakukating division of subsistence. Through the chair, Mr. Wood, that's the Valdez non-subsistence area, so that is not open to harvest under subsistence regulation. But why?

Through the chair, that is a non-subsistence area that is determined by the Joint Board of Fisheries and Game. And so that's one of the 5 current non-subsistence areas that we have in the state. It applies for all subsistence regulation. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I was reading the law, McDowell and whatever, this morning, trying to better understand how this subsistence/non-subsistence part works.

And the fact that non-subsistence and personal use and sport, I'm trying to understand why why the terminology is being used the way it is. And I, I actually don't want to get too hung up on it, but it really appears that all Alaska residents are qualified for subsistence in Prince William Sound. Is that— only non-residents need the sport. Is that accurate?

Uh, through the chair, Mr. Wood, under state regulation, all Alaska residents are eligible to participate in subsistence harvest in areas that are outside of non-subsistence areas. Okay, thank you. Secondly, I don't— or lastly, I'd like to say, uh, while we're on it, that I like the fact that there's online reporting, and I really also appreciate the reminders that we get from the department to report.

Any other board questions? All right, um, so Some of my, my questions, I think, sort of been addressed, but just for historical sense on slide 8, how was that carrying capacity? I know you referenced the previous model. We had several slides explaining the model going forward, but how is that previous carrying capacity determined? Please.

Madam Chair, yeah, so carrying capacity is estimated within the surplus production model. And so each year the catch per unit effort from the survey is converted into biomass, and we knew during that period from about 2015 to 2020 we were above that carrying capacity of 3.4 based on the CPE here. And just looking at the CPE on the graph, you can see it's much higher than the rest of the time series during that period, and much higher than when we started the survey. Okay, so, all right, so you explained the new modeling. We've got the current regs where you're setting the GHL.

First of all, how, how does it— you got the, the total allowable harvest, right? And then you have the GHL. How are those different? Because you mentioned, you know, that 99% of the GHL is being taken by the non-commercial. So what is, what is the relationship between those two terms?

Madam Chair, the total allowable harvest is the surplus production of shrimp available to harvest in the Sound for all users combined, and then 40% of that harvest is allocated to the commercial group and 60% is allocated to non-commercial users. I'm not sure if that answers the question that you were trying to ask. Yeah, Kind of, but it is— I guess the relationship is still kind of confusing to me. Number one, I am going to have a question about, you know, if you have any knowledge about why that 60% was allocated to the non-commercial users. First of all, that is one question.

But then if we are using the TAH as a threshold potentially to be shutting this down, or it had been previously set at 110, we are looking at potentially 30 or another number, maybe, I don't know. But I'm just trying to, I'm trying to understand the relationship between what you're using as the THAH as a management tool and the GHL within that. So if we're at a THAH of 30,000 pounds and that's being used as a threshold to shut down the commercial fishery, will there be a non-commercial fishery allowed if there's, I mean, up to 60% of that THAH?

I'm just trying to figure out the relationship between that. Maybe I'm missing something, but it's confusing to me. Yeah, Madam Chair, um, the TAH is what we set as the allowable harvest for all users, and then 60% of that goes to the non-commercial, which is our GHL. So that is what it— the GHLs are specific to the non-commercial and commercial fisheries. Um, and so yeah, currently as it is, the non-commercial does not have a threshold.

So no matter what level of TAH basically zero to infinity, the non-commercial fishery could occur as it, as it stands right now. So with respect to the, the new model, how will the new modeling affect the current regs, and why didn't the department submit a proposal to sort of address some of these issues?

Madam Chair, our recent modeling work was pretty late in the game for, for this meeting. We, we began that work in late December and really haven't solidified our understanding of that model till pretty, pretty recently. So that's the reason we did not submit a proposal, um, in 2024. Our—. What we were seeing in the survey did not quite match what we saw in TAH.

So that's why what initially spurred us to move to this new model. And I think you also were wondering what the relevance is of the new model in comparison to regulations that we have in place. Is that correct? So the TAH of 110 set in 2009, from the model that we're working with now, we don't believe that that TAH is a biologically relevant spot to curtail harvest. Um, our model is showing us our— what we, what we know about the stock now, that at a TAH of 110,000 pounds, the stock is doing quite well.

And to curtail harvest at that point would need other, other purposes behind it other than based on the biological health of the stock. Did I just hear you say that the TAH at 110 represents a population that's doing quite well when we've seen it precipitously drop off after 2020, 2021?

Madam Chair, I did say that the TAH this year is 80,000, so it's, it's lower than, than the 110. But this, this decrease in the population of shrimp in the Sound that we've seen is most likely the result of the population being well over carrying capacity from 2017 through 2020, and in that situation, you would expect a natural contraction of the stock with or without fishing pressure. So this fishery is managed entirely by EO?

I mean, if you're moving the TAH around and you're moving the pot limits around and you're— I mean, is it— what are the regs? I mean, how are you managing it? Because it seems like it's all set by EO.

Madam Chair, Brittany Blingroth, area manager, for the record. So we've had to manage by EO since 2016, reducing pot limits in the non-commercial fishery because our allocation, our our GHL has been at a level that we needed to curtail harvest. And that wasn't necessarily— it was a product of an, you know, increase as they presented. Catch per unit effort has gone up. We've had more productivity.

So we've had to— what our allocation was for the non-commercial, we had to really limit the pot limits to be able to not exceed our GHL. But if the non-commercial is shut down, If there's a lower TH, then presumably 60% of 0 is 0. Would there be a non-commercial harvest under 30,000? So, um, Madam Chair, one way to think about this is— put up the, um, the figure with the diagonal line. So currently when.

You hit 100— let's say the, the TH was 100,000 pounds, or we'll start with 110,000 pounds, 111,000 pounds. The commercial fishery gets 40% of whatever that number is. We get our 60% in the non-commercial fishery. All of that is harvestable surplus. We, we believe you can harvest, you know, the total, total allowable harvest.

There's no buffer. Everything on the y-axis is your harvestable surplus. The board said that at 110, you now take 40% off the table. Get it, go to 37 and explain it to me from that one. When you get to what we're recommending at this point is we don't want to see any harvest below a biomass that's 20% of carrying capacity, which equates to 30,000— a TH level of 30,000 pounds.

So we don't want any harvest when we hit 30,000 pounds. Above that, at any point in time, we believe that you can harvest the total, total allowable harvest, the total amount of the total allowable harvest. So you're proposing 80,000. So anywhere along that diagonal dashed line, the 75% FMSY, we've built in a buffer because you've got your, your FMSY that they presented and then you've got your 75%. That's our buffer that's built in now.

Okay, on slide 19, just kind of looking at the timing of the shrimp harvest graph, and noted that I think in your presentation you said it kind of drops after July 15th. Is that because of the participation change, or is that become— or because of a decrease in CPUE? Madam Chair, our general report from non-commercial shrimpers is that they've shifted to other species such as sockeye arriving on the Kenai, coho arriving through, you know, to rivers and the ocean. They've just shifted to other fisheries. A lot of folks focus their effort between Memorial Day and Fourth of July.

The seas tend to be better during those months. And then, you know, basically in late July, August, and into September, this, you know, the weather isn't as good. So that's kind of— those are kind of the two driving factors: shifting to other fisheries and just destabilization in the weather in the early fall.

Okay, and then on slide 21, um, so for the non-commercial pot fishery, shrimp fishery, there's no in-season management, right? Okay, Madam Chair. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Oh, apologies, Madam Chair.

Apologies, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Um, [Speaker] No, we do, we manage the non-commercial fishery preseason by EO. Mainly up to this point since 2016, mainly the lever we've been pulling is the pot limit, but we have other tools such as changing season dates as well, time and area. [Speaker] Thank you. I'm looking at slide 21 there and it seems to be pretty hit and miss in terms of meeting the G— or meeting that GHL or not.

And I'm just kind of curious. You went over it in 2024, and I think I'd just like to have a better understanding, absent a proposal by the department, what your management actions will be in 2025 specifically. Madam Chair, yes. So with the Uh, we— our GHL would be 60% of 80,000 pounds roughly, which is about 48,000 pounds. So the management actions we would— if we were to issue an emergency order right now and the board wasn't deliberating this week, um, so assuming no changes regulations, we would set a pot limit of 2 and shorten the season by 2.5 months.

You think that'll keep, keep you under half of what you caught last year? Yeah, based on our estimates, it would put us in around 40,000, 41,000 pounds. So we're allowing a little a little bit of buffer because we know that the stock is increasing. So based on the 2024 survey, so we anticipate that anglers— or sorry, shrimpers— will probably have a better catch per unit effort. And we want to apply a buffer because there's other factors we can't, you know, account for— weather, fuel prices, stuff like that.

So we're prepared to have a buffer in there with our current anticipated emergency order. Thanks. And then my very last question is on, again, back to slide 37. And I'm sure I'm going to have more questions as the meeting progresses on this this particular slide. Be interesting to see this applied to salmon, side note.

But B, 20%, how was that number determined by the department to represent sort of the no-go zone? Like, why was, why was 20%? How was that? Madam Chair, B20, or 20% of carrying capacity, is a very common reference point used in fisheries management. There's probably hundreds examples out where they use this as a trigger to shut down fisheries because out of concern for conservation.

At levels below this, you end up on a slippery slope with the population if it keeps going down that you can severely crash it. So that is like a very— it's in management theory, it's a very common trigger. Shrimp management theory, perhaps. Thank you for that. I appreciate that.

And I will say that your explanation of the model and the slides that you provided to sort of illustrate that was very clean, very helpful, very easy to understand. So appreciate it, Mr. Swenson. And then Mr. Wood.

I just have one question. If all Alaskans are considered subsistence, then why do we have 80% buying sport licenses and fishing under the sports side than the subsistence?

Through the chair, Board Member Swenson. Yeah, so when— let's just assume someone comes to our front counter to get a non-commercial shrimp license. They have the choice to pick a sport or subsistence. They are told that they can't fish in the Valdez area under a subsistence permit because of the Valdez non-subsistence use area. So they see that as more restrictive, so oftentimes they do opt for the sport in that sense.

Yeah, so that's mainly the driver. There's a lot of participation in Valdez, and so in order to shrimp in Valdez, you have to have a sport. Permit. Okay, thank you. That makes a lot of sense.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. And, and also to clarify that, it sounded like if you're out-of-state resident, you can't have the subsistence, you can't mark subsistence, you have to have sport as a non-resident. Um, on page 18, or page 8 of the slide, um, when you look at that graph Is that basically the equivalent of overescapement in the shrimp world? And like, in using that number, 1/10 since 2009, is it possible that the department's been way conservative and actually overescapement, and then we're seeing a decline in the shrimp fishery?

Through the chair, I can't speak to it being the same as overescapement, but we definitely know from our, our new modeling work that the stock was overcarrying capacity between 2017 and 2020, and it is possible that the decline that we saw after that was due to competition among shrimp because the population was so large. Okay, thank you. And so the confidence in the old model versus the new model, it really sounds like it's comparing apples and oranges, is that correct?

Through the chair, that is correct. My last one is, is, um, I really like putting it in the context of the B, B whatever, like you put B30, uh, or as, or B, yeah, B30, because it, it really does make more sense, uh, in terms of just terminology. B30, is that actually B75 that you have there? 75% FSMNY, or what is that? What would that be?

Be—.

Bingo!

Through the Chair, B-20 is the reference point that we've put here for a lower limit under which we would not want any fishing to take place, and that equates to a TAH of roughly 30,000 pounds.

Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a couple questions. First thing I want to do is look at the validity, validity of the information we're getting at. Uh, there, there was a prior reference to carrying capacity.

Uh, when you're looking at the shrimp and doing their test fisheries, are there other indicators of other, of outside stressors you'd expect to see for, uh, exceeding carrying capacity? Like, I don't know how you do this with shrimp, but you know, in salmon, age at weight, or other indicators that you can look to see that the shrimp are being stressed by outside factors.

Through the chair, yes, there, there could be other indicators. You could look at the length composition of shrimp in the survey, for example, from year to year. And one of the main differences between our management and that of Southeast Alaska for shrimp is that they have a more subjective management strategy where they do use information from historic port sampling data and historic surveys versus what they find in recent years. And because our— we're a little bit more data limited than in Southeast, we tend to limit our assessment to the.

Model itself, but there are other indicators that we could use to assess the health of the shrimp stock. One more. So, um, and I'm looking at this, if we— one of the things that's kind of picking at me is we knew— if we knew we were over carrying capacity, you know, and I would, I would like to look at other indicators for that, but wouldn't it be better for the health of the stock if you are far exceeding your— the carrying capacity to have a more adaptive and reactive model to curtail, curtail biomasses that far exceed the carrying capacity to avoid that sharp drop-off on the back end. Although I don't know that it's that sharp, but I, and I understand there's data, there's limited modeling and limited data, but But I feel like as we go further up, maybe that diagonal line we're looking at at 70% could go down a little further because I don't know, I'm getting into deliberations a little now, but I— that the math on that seems a little arbitrary and maybe not as reactive to real life situations as I'd like to see. Thank you.

[Speaker] Yeah, well, is there alternative modeling that could account for that, the excesses we've seen in recent years? [Speaker] Board Member Chamberlain through the Chair. Yeah, so we basically, with what we've done this last year is we've changed two things. We've changed the model. It's a surplus production model.

It's just run a little differently. The second thing we changed is how we set our total allowable harvest. It used to be from 2009 to 2024, we set it at MSY. Irregardless of what biomass or stock status we are at. And now with this 75% FMS Y line, it's a ramp up.

So when you are at low biomass, it sets the TAH low. And as it goes up, say to carrying capacity and beyond, it goes, the TAH is gonna get set higher and higher because of this slope rather than it being a flat line like it was set historically. And that's why our TAH has in the past didn't respond, is the way we were setting it. This is as responsive as it gets. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter.

Thank you. Couple questions. Slide 21. So when I look at this and I look at the years where the TAH has been exceeded, and I know the regulations and I know the emergency authority that the Sport Fish Division has. You know, in regards to what the board has allowed them to do to set pot limits from 5 to 0, basically.

It's pretty clear to me that the use of 4 pots and obviously a long time ago, 8 pots, those were the primary years where the, the THC was exceeded or the GHL was exceeded on that side. Excuse me. Is there any reason, you know, looking at this, because pretty much from 2019 to 2024, it's been either 3 pots or 2 pots. Is there any reason to ever go above 3 pots again when you look at the past history? Through the chair, Board Member Carpenter.

So as you can imagine, as, as there's more shrimp out there, non-commercial shrimpers are going to catch more for less effort. So we give them one pot, they're gonna— when there's a lot of shrimp out there, they could catch as much with one pot as they can with five when there's not a lot of shrimp out there. So there is a circumstance that actually, if we got to lower biomasses and lower TAHs, and it's just they're not as abundant and catch per unit effort goes down, that we could allow for five pots. But shrimpers are— have become, one, efficient, but two, there's just a lot more shrimp out there now than there ever was prior to the 2000s. So they're catching the GHL faster, and that's why we have to drop the pot limit.

Understood. Thank you for that. Um, just a quick follow-up question on, um, let me find the slide here real quick. I believe it's slide 34.

So when I consider the new model, and I'm not going to talk about B20 or B40 And I'm going to continue to look at, you know, what you suggest be basically be 75% of FMSY. And I look at this chart and I look at 2020, '21, and now we're creeping into '22, '23, '24, which is in the yellow, which is what you don't want it to be. And I guess my question is, And I asked this earlier, but I think it's important to state for the record: 2011, '12, '13, '14, '15, '16, and '18 and '19— they're not on here. And I understand you didn't do it because you didn't want to clutter the chart, but would most of those years fall above or below the horizontal axis in regards to what your new model calls for.

Through the, uh, Board Member Carpenter, through the chair. Yeah, so if we had thrown those same, those extra years in there that we left out to declutter the plot, they would all kind of fall within the same vicinity, probably right at carrying capacity, slightly above, um, as far as stock status. And the harvest kind of bounced around, but you you know, 130,000 to 180,000 pounds those years. So it would kind of cluster together between, in those, between 2021, 2009, 2020, 2017. Those other years that I left out would cluster right around there.

Okay. And that's, that's ultimately my question. And I'll try and keep this as non-deliberative as I can. But when we look at the threshold, and I know we're kind of talking about both commercial and sport here, so I'm not trying to confuse anybody. But do you think, looking at this model now compared to the old model, do you think that with all those years that were above carrying capacity or close to carrying capacity, what sort of an impact do you think that's had on the decline of shrimp over the last 3 or 4 years?

Through the chair, if we had fished at the 75% FMSY line that's provided in this figure, we would have had higher TAHs from 2017 through 2020 than we did, and it may have helped to keep the stock more in check. It may have resulted in a lower jump over carrying capacity and a less steep decline. Okay. And then, and just to be clear, and I want this on the record, the 75% of MSY, when I look at this, it's a much more conservative approach than it was before. Am I correct?

Board Member Carpenter, through the chair, it is more conservative at low biomasses and at high biomasses because it can go up 'cause it's that diagonal slope, it's actually more aggressive at high biomasses. We're comparing a flat line that, well, flat line that would go basically at 150,000 pounds on average, right, right across the chart, left to right. It would be overly aggressive, the old way we set the TAH would have been overly aggressive at low biomasses, but left yield on the table. So that's why this is responsive. So it's depending on the biomass whether it's conservative or not.

Right. Okay. But in, but in years when we were above carrying capacity and the TAH would have been set at a much higher number, you would have been able to harvest a lot of those shrimp potentially that you couldn't necessarily do with the old model. Am I correct?

Through the chair, Board Member Carpenter. Yeah, that is correct. Because this— because of this 75% of FMSY ramps up we can, yeah, the TAH would continue to go higher as the biomass went higher and we could start to harvest those shrimp. You know, and we, that's, you know, that's our strategy, harvest strategy there. And the managers have some authority.

They could go to FMSY as well at high biomasses to, you know, to knock the population back from carrying capacity. But the managers have that flexibility as is. And our primary harvest strategy is that 75% FMSY and it ramps up. Which would allow us to tackle those shrimp above carrying capacity. Thank you.

Mr. Wood. All right, thanks. Slide 12. When we're looking at spreading the fishing out among 3 different areas, but you've been able to get most of your harvest out of just the 2 areas, Area 1 and Area 2, does that say a lot for the habitat, or is it the fact that there have been a lot of shrimp there, perhaps more than, uh, than were accounted for, since, since all that effort is really focused in these two areas?

Through the chair, it, it says a lot about the environmental conditions and the habitat, which, which one, um, we're not exactly certain of. But when we look at CPUE, catch per unit effort,.

From our survey, which is run in each of these 3 areas. Area 3 has a CPUE that is lower than Areas 1 and 2. So 1 and 2 are pretty close to each other in terms of CPUE, and Area 3 is just less productive. There's a lot, there's a lot of area in Area 3 and a lot of habitat, but it's just lower quality than that of what you find in Areas 1 and 2.

Thank you.

All right, I think you've exhausted our questions. Well done, everyone. Appreciate you. And we're going to go ahead and take about a 15-minute break, and then we'll come back on the record and continue with staff reports. Thanks.

All right. Welcome back. We're back on the record. The time is 11:21. We are still progressing through staff reports, and I will turn it over for our second report on Norton Sound red king crab fisheries.

Gentlemen, whenever you're ready.

Thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, I'm Ethan Kelso, shellfish management biologist for Norton Sound. Joining me here today is Norton Sound area manager Kevin Clark. This oral report provides an overview of Norton Sound red king crab fisheries.

This report can also be found under RC3, tab 7. Norton Sound summer, winter, community development quota, and subsistence fisheries take place in Area Q, encompassing waters north of Cape Romanzoff, east of the International Date Line, and south of the 66-degree north latitude. For the summer commercial fishery, waters are open in all of Norton Sound except in two situations: any of the nearshore waters from Nome to Unukleet, segregated by the black line in the figure, and a 10-mile radius around certain islands such as King Island and St. Lawrence Island. Subsistence summer fishermen may fish anywhere in Area Q And areas most often fished in the summer are marked with red and white stripes. Winter commercial crabbing takes place nearshore in Norton Sound and is a through-ice fishery.

The area highlighted in orange on the figure denotes this. Additionally, in Nome, during the winter, an area roughly 2 miles west to 3 miles east of town and extending approximately 4 miles offshore, is closed to commercial fishing and reserved for subsistence users, though they are not confined to this area.

In Norton Sound, commercial fishing has taken place since 1977. Initially, the harvest was dominated by large outside fishing vessels with tremendous fishing ability. Boats were averaging hundreds of pots and season lengths would sometimes only last 2 days. In 1994, the designation of Super Exclusive to the Open Access Fishery was adopted. Boats are limited to either 40 or 50 pots based on length, and season length is from June 15th through September 3rd, or unless amended by emergency order.

Additionally, boats over the 32-foot in length must have a Federal License Limitation Program license. Fishermen from Nome dominate this fishery, and there has been little outside entry since the super exclusive adoption. It should also be noted that the region's major buyer will not buy product from non-local fishermen.

This chart shows how harvest rates and participation has changed since the start of the fishery in 1977. Initial harvest was extremely high. In 1982, a more restrictive guideline harvest level was adopted to allow for more subsistence fishing opportunity. Since that time, harvest rates have remained relatively steady. Participation has also varied widely over the years, with a major spike in 1994 after the designation of super exclusive.

The last decade has seen around 25 to 40 permits fish per year. Note that the fishery was closed in 1991 due to staff constraints, and in 2020 and 2021, the season was open, but no buyer registered and no fishermen participated.

A winter commercial fishery has existed in Norton Sound since 1978. Season dates have changed several times and are currently from February 1st through April 30th. Participants may utilize handlines or pots, excuse me, with pots making up the majority of the fishing gear. By regulation, the GHL is 8% of the total commercial GHL. Fishermen based on the Nome account for most of the harvest due to sea ice and market conditions being most favorable.

The region's major buyer has not purchased winter crab since the 2020 season. Fishermen act as catcher sellers for their local communities or use other marketing programs to ship whole live crab to Anchorage. To combat previously high pot loss, permit holders are limited to 20 pot tags and may not get replacements for lost pots.

Participation in the winter crab fishery has varied widely since its inception. Almost opposite of the summer fishery, Harvests had remained under 30,000 pounds until the region's major buyer started to buy winter caught crab, both CDQ and open access. This drastic increase in participation set a cap on the GHL at 8%, incentivized a pot limit, and changed the law on pot tag replacement.

Looking at the last 10 years, fishery effort has coincided with harvest trends with the highest number of pot pulls occurring when the region's major buyer was purchasing winter crab, setting record ex-vessel prices almost double of what was previously paid per pound. Since purchasing has ceased, effort and participation has plummeted.

As you can imagine, as participation effort has decreased in the winter and the implementation of regulations regarding pot loss have gone into effect, less pots are lost in this fishery. As of the past 5 years, subsistence pots make up most pots lost. It should be noted that commercial winter pot loss has only been recorded since the 2009/2010 season.

Finally, to put all harvest in perspective, here's a comparative chart of the summer and winter harvest. I'll give a reminder that the winter season can only account for 8% of the GHL and in the past few years, that 8% hasn't even been fully harvested.

I'll take a little time to talk about our subsistence fishery in Norton Sound. Starting the same year as the inception of the summer commercial fishery in 1977, subsistence users have been required to obtain permits and report their catch. Currently, subsistence crabbing is open year-long with two seasons. Summer, which is from June 1st through November 30th, and winter season, which is from December 1st through May 31st. In this fishery, any length, sex, or amount may be retained.

Most harvest takes place in the winter, where access is easier for most individuals fishing through holes or cracks in the ice. Similar to the commercial fisheries, harvest varies based on weather, biomass, sea ice conditions, and fishery participants.

There are 3 proposals submitted for Norton Sound shellfish this board cycle. Proposal number 272 is to amend the start date of the summer crab season from on or after June 15th to on or after July 1st. Proposal number 273 addresses the start of the season, this time with the winter commercial crab season. Calling for the fishery to start on or after February 1st based on sea ice conditions. Currently, the winter fishery opens by regulation on February 1st and lasts until April 30th unless closed by emergency order.

And finally, finally, Proposal 274 aims to change the size of legal male commercial crab carapace width from 4¾ inch to 5 inch. Any questions?

Mr. Carpenter, thank you. I just have one question, just out of curiosity. On slide 2, the areas that are open near Nome and Unalakleet in the summer subsistence fisheries, why are— why is it only in those two areas? Is it just— is that the way it's always been? Have the other communities along that particular area not asked for it, or maybe just a little brief history there.

For the subsistence fishery, those areas that are in the white and red, those are the most common areas fished for the summer subsistence.

But they're not restricted to just those areas? Ah, through the chair, for the record, my name is Kevin Clark. I'm the area manager for Norton Sound. Yes, the subsistence fishery is open in all waters of Norton Sound. Uh, the areas you see with the white and the red stripes are the areas that are most frequently used by subsistence.

Fishermen during the summer season in Norton Sound. Thank you. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I get it.

I'm just— maybe this might have something to do with super exclusive, but why is the fishery— well, I can imagine why it's dominated by Nome residents, but the idea of not being able— Nome won't buy the product. Could you elaborate on that a little bit more? Is that part of the super exclusive, or how— are there other permits that come into this area from the Aleutians or other area spots? Yeah, through the chair, basically we have a single buyer that operates and has been operating in Norton Sound for the last several years. That buyer is affiliated with a CDQ group, and so that CDQ group only will buy crab from local area residents or members of their communities.

One follow-up: is that crab sent out, like, states? Just— is it just local, statewide, or is it exported out around the rest of the globe? Through the chair, the crab generally is, especially for the catcher sellers locally, it's mainly harvested locally. Now, the processor there can send the crab anywhere. Historically, there has been live crabs shipped.

Uh, Korea was a major market for several years, but that hasn't happened recently. Currently, like during the winter season, we generally just have catcher sellers that are selling locally and/or potentially shipping the crab in-state. We don't have anybody right now that is currently licensed to ship internationally or out of state. Thank you.

Other board questions? What is the average vessel length that participates in the summer commercial crab fishery? You noted that they were significantly smaller. Is it limited?

Through the chair, boats that exceed 32-foot in length must obtain the Federal License Limitation Program license. In Norton Sound, most of the boats that participate are smaller, you know, below that 32-foot length, just so they don't have to obtain one of those permits. Mr. Swenson, I don't know if I can ask this question or not, but what is the reasoning to changing the opening dates?

Yeah, through the chair, I think that, I think that question would be best addressed from the people who proposed it and not necessarily us. Okay, thank you.

Any other board questions? Okay, let's move on.

Thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

Oh, I see. I got you. Like, there's— it's in here twice. Is that what's going on? Ah, that's what's going on.

Sorry. Didn't mean to dismiss you so just sort of bluntly. I thought we had more to your presentation. Okay. Let's go ahead and move on to the proposal overview for Chignik, Kodiak, Alaska Pen, and Bering Sea Aleutian Islands areas, please.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, my name is Ethan Nichols. I am the area management biologist for Bering Sea Aleutian Islands commercial groundfish and shellfish. And with me is Nat Nichols, area management biologist for Kodiak, Chignik, and Alaska Peninsula commercial groundfish and shellfish. This morning we will provide a proposal overview for the Kodiak, Chignik, Alaska Peninsula, and Bering Sea Aleutian Islands areas.

Staff comments can be found in RC2. In this oral report, we found RC3 tab 8.

Outline for the presentation this morning will provide a brief area overview and then jump into fisheries and proposal review. We have several groups of proposals here. Bering Sea crab, Aleutian Islands golden king crab, onboard observer program, Kodiak and South Peninsula Tanner crab, Area J Dungeness, and state waters weather vane scallops and shrimp.

[Speaker:JASON] To orient everyone, the Bering Sea Aleutian Island area is highlighted in blue here and Kodiak, Chignik, Alaska Peninsula in green. I've highlighted some of the major communities in the regions.

For Bering Sea crab proposals, these will be relevant to red king crab, Tanner crab, and snow crab. We have 5 proposals pictured here. For your reference is a typical Bering Sea crab vessel.

Bering Sea crab fisheries are rationalized or IFQ fisheries co-managed by the department and the National Marine Fisheries Service. The big 3 fisheries are Bristol Bay red king crab, Bering Sea tanner crab, also known as bear die. And Bering Sea snow crab, also known as opilio. Bering Sea crab fleet consists of approximately 65 vessels, 90 to 180 feet in overall length, using single pot gear with no pot limits in these fisheries. These are fall and winter fisheries with harvest typically occurring March— October through March, and most vessels participate in each of the big three fisheries within a given season.

Fishing trips typically last 1 to 3 weeks, and vessels can hold and transport 125,000 to 450,000 pounds of crab at a time. So these are large, high-capacity crab vessels. We've seen recent stock uncertainty with closed seasons and reduced fishery size for Bristol Bay red king crab and snow crab. To give a sense of the size of the current year fisheries, The TAC, or total allowable catch, for Bristol Bay red king crab was 2.31 million pounds. That fishery concluded— or harvest concluded, rather, in November of last year.

For Bering Sea tanner, TAC is 6.27 million pounds, and snow crab is 4.72 million pounds. Both of these fisheries are currently ongoing with vessels harvesting on the grounds as we speak. These fisheries all have mandatory at-sea observer coverage ranging from 20 to 50% of the harvest, and the delivery and processing of this crab takes place in the ports of Akutan, Dutch Harbor, King Cove, and St. Paul Island. I will note that recent consolidation in processing availability has meant that all crab is being processed at processors in Dutch Harbor this season.

Proposal 283 would allow commercial snow and Tanner crab pot gear to be longlined in the Bering Sea District. Currently, vessels must use single pots only. Vessels are typically fishing 100 to 300 square or rectangular pots. And again, there are no pot limits established for rationalized Bering Sea snow and Tanner crab fisheries. If adopted, this would allow vessels to operate either single or long-lined pots.

Vessels long-lining pots would likely or potentially switch to stacking cone pots and operate more gear. Pictured here are typical stacking-style cone pot used in Norwegian, Canadian, and Russian snow crab fisheries. This gear would have the potential for a higher CPE, or catch per unit effort, lower discarding, and potentially for improved vessel safety. It may, however, increase gear conflicts on the Bering Sea grounds between other gear types.

Proposal 287 would modify how the department sets annual Tanner crab tax or total allowable catch by including smaller size crab and the harvest strategy calculation. Currently, the legal size for Tanner crab in the western area of the Bering Sea, that's west of 166, is 4.4 inches carapace width, while east of 166 is 4.8 inches carapace width. However, in both fisheries, vessels have traditionally targeted and retained a larger size crab at 5 inches or larger. The department sets annual tax in part based on this exploited population. Which are those male crab 5 inches or larger.

If adopted, there would be added management uncertainty as no new preferred size.

—Was specified in the proposal. It was instead proposed that the department would calculate this annually based on the retained catch from the previous season. Generally, including smaller crab in the harvest strategy calculations could provide for higher tax than otherwise computed using the current preferred size of 5 inches. We would expect to mainly see increases in tax in the western area. This could reduce discarding of legal size crab and improve overall fishery CPUE, but it may negatively impact market preference and fishery value.

This could require annual changes to escape mesh or rings on the pot gear itself. Note that consensus between harvesters and processors on the industry preferred size is necessary to prevent high grading.

Proposal 288 is a companion proposal. This would modify how the department sets annual snow crab tax by including smaller size snow crab in the harvest strategy calculation. The legal size for male snow crab in the Bering Sea is 3.1 inches carapace width, but similar to Bairdi, vessels target and retain crab at a larger size, and it's 4 inches carapace width or larger for snow crab. The department sets annual tax based on this exploited population of 4-inch crab. If adopted, there would be added management uncertainty, particularly for snow crab.

There's high uncertainty in the stock status and management due to recent snow crab population collapse. There was no new preferred size specified in the proposal, and so annually calculating the preferred size could be challenging and add management uncertainty. The department recommends that any change to preferred size occur concurrent to a comprehensive harvest strategy review, given the current low stock status for snow crab in particular.

Proposal 291 is a department-submitted proposal. This would formalize the closure of Bristol Bay waters east of 163 west longitude to directed Tanner crab fishing. Currently, the Eastern Bering Sea Tanner Crab Fishery has no eastern boundary line specified in regulation. This is due to an error where it was inadvertently removed. However, current and historical tanner crab management preclude directed fishing east of 163 west longitude due to concerns of high bycatch of female and sublegal male red king crab in these inner Bristol Bay waters.

If adopted, This would provide increased transparency and management, and in practice there would be no change or effect on the directed Eastern Tanner crab fishery itself.

Proposal 275 is another department-submitted proposal. This was submitted to provide opportunity to revise and update the Bristol Bay red king crab harvest strategy used to set annual harvest limits. However, exploration towards this effort indicates that a more comprehensive analysis is needed to effectively provide options and recommend changes to the existing management strategy. There is work ongoing with crab industry partners and our federal co-managers, but the scope of this work extends beyond what could be accomplished this regulatory cycle. So the department recommends taking no action on this proposal at this time.

Next, we'll be moving on to Aleutian Islands crab proposals. Each of these 4 proposals are specific to the golden king crab fishery. In the Aleutians.

The Aleutian Islands golden king crab fishery is a rationalized IFQ fishery, co-managed between the department and National Marine Fisheries Service. Aleutian Islands golden king crab is considered a single stock but managed as two separate fisheries, east and west of 174 west longitude, which corresponds to the community and island of Atka. We have a separate tax set for each fishery east and west of 174. The Aleutian Islands golden king crab fleet consists of approximately 5 vessels ranging from 110 to 130 feet in length, using longline pot gear only. And there are no pot limits in these fisheries.

The fisheries have a long regulatory season running from August 1st to April 30th. And the majority of these Aleutian Islands golden crab vessels only harvest Aleutian Islands golden king crab and do not also participate in other Bering sea crab fisheries. To give a sense for the size of the current year fisheries, in the east, east of 174, the tag this year is 3.76 million pounds, and in the west, west of 174, it's 1.12 million pounds. Note that there have been recent declines in the western area tags.

These fisheries have mandatory at-sea observer coverage at 50% of the harvest. And fishing trips typically last 1 to 3 weeks. And these vessels again can hold and transport a large amount of crab. These are large, high-capacity vessels. The delivery and processing for Aleutian Islands golden king crab primarily occurs in Akutan and Dutch Harbor.

Again, this season, due to processor— limited processor availability, all that crab is being processed in Dutch Harbor.

Proposal 276 would increase the pot storage depth to 100 fathoms or less for longline king crab pot gear in the Aleutian Islands golden king crab fishery. Currently, longline pot gear may be stored in waters 75 fathoms or less with doors open and unbaited. Pots can be stored in these waters year-round. Again, longline pot gear is the only legal gear type for the Aleutian Islands golden king crab fishery. If adopted, this would provide vessel operators additional area and flexibility to store longline pot gear in the Aleutian Islands Golden Crab Fishery.

Storing gear in these deeper waters further from shore may improve safety for vessels sheltering from weather in the lee of the islands that may be prone to entangling with stored gear close to shore. But it could reduce— both reduce and increase the spatial overlap of stored gear with adjacent groundfish fisheries, depending on which groundfish fisheries in the area.

Proposal 277 would establish an open-access state waters golden king crab fishery in the waters of Registration Area O east of 169 west longitude. 169 West longitude is pictured here and corresponds roughly with the community of Nikolski on Umnak Island. What is proposed is a fishing season from September 1st through April 30th. With a GHL not to exceed 100,000 pounds of golden king crab. This would be limited to vessels 58 feet in length and under using single pot gear with a 90-pot vessel pot limit.

Gear would only be operated from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, and this would close state waters east of 169 to longline king crab pot gear. Currently, this area is part of the rationalized IFQ fishery. Again, that runs August 1st to April 30th with longline pot gear, no pot limits, no vessel length restrictions, and harvest occurs in state and federal waters with 50% observer coverage. If adopted, this would be a new state-managed only fishery which would allocate a portion of the existing fishery to vessels 50 feet and less, and it could result in lower Eastern Aleutian Islands golden king crab tax in some years.

Proposal 278 would establish a 2,500-pot limit for the Aleutian Islands golden king crab fishery. Currently, there are no individual vessel pot limits. Pot gear can only be operated as longline gear. Vessels can operate each other's gear while both vessels are registered for the same fishery. These are our cooperative gear regulations.

And on average, vessels fished 1,854 pots in the eastern area and 1,947 pots in the western area during the last 5 seasons, with one vessel in each area fishing more than 2,500 pots over the last 5 years. If adopted, this would limit the amount of gear available to each vessel. It would restrict gear sharing, and it may decrease harvesting efficiency for the vessels. Has the potential to reduce gear interactions and grounds preemption amongst the fleet. I'll note that given the vast expanse of these fishing grounds and limited enforcement presence in the area, it would be difficult to enforce a pot limit.

This proposal is largely a fleet preference.

Proposal 279. This would prohibit vessels from sharing and operating cooperative pot gear while both vessels are participating in the Aleutian Islands gold king crab fishery west of 174. So that's highlighted on the map here. We're just talking about the western area for this proposal. Currently, vessels may file a gear co-op form with the department to operate each other's gear while both vessels are registered and active in the same fishery, and there are no pot limits.

If adopted, vessels fishing west of 174 would only be able to operate their own pot gear.

This would reduce the amount of gear available to each vessel and may decrease harvesting efficiency. Again, it has the potential to reduce gear interactions and grounds preemption amongst the fleet. But this is largely a fleet preference proposal.

The next two proposals are pertinent to the shellfish onboard observer program.

And these are both department-submitted proposals. Proposal 280 would remove the regulatory performance standards for at-sea observer providers. So not the observers themselves, but the provider companies. Currently, observer provider companies must achieve a 65% deployment rate on total observer days annually with certified observers. This would shift performance standards to contractual agreements between the observer companies and the state of Alaska.

Allowing for more responsive and flexible observer program oversight. There would be no impacts to the vessels selected for observer coverage or to the coverage rates themselves. Proposal 281, again, department-submitted proposal. This would modify observer trainee qualifications by removing the statistics course requirement. Currently, observer trainees must have a bachelor degree or higher in biology or similar, including a minimum of 30 hours in applicable biological sciences and the successful completion of at least one course each in mathematics and statistics, with a minimum of 5 semester hours total for both.

Removing the statistics course requirement would broaden the applicant pool while maintaining all other relevant qualifications for observer trainees. There would be no impacts to the vessels selected for observer coverage or to the coverage rates themselves.

With that, I'm happy to take questions on the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands crab proposals before handing it over to Nat for Kodiak Reac and South Peninsula Tanner crab proposals. Thanks, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Couple questions.

First, on Proposal 277, do you know what the percentage of the TAC currently is being harvested in the area that's requested in this proposal? Yes, through the chair, in recent years, 0% of the TAC has been harvested in this area within 3 miles east of 169. Okay. And then in regards to the proposal that talks about longlining pots in the red king crab fishery, did you say that allowing this would potentially lower the discard rates, or did I misunderstand you?

Through the chair, that's correct. This Proposal 283 is— would only be for Bering Sea snow and Tanner crab fisheries, not for the red king crab fishery, but it does have the potential, we think, to— or rather, the proposer thinks that it has the potential to lower discarding based on the fact that with these cone pots, the entire mesh of the pot could be made to be escape mesh. Instead of having individual rings or escape panels, the entire pot would be webbed with escape mesh.

Okay, so understanding that they're cone pots, is— would there be any limitations based on the proposal the way it's written that you would have to use cone pots? I mean, I know that you can longline other pots too. I mean, is that part of this, the way you read this?

Through the chair, this proposal would allow vessels to choose between either operating the traditional square single pots or they could longline pots. It wouldn't be forcing everyone to move to longlining pots. Currently, longlining pots or longlining gear is not allowed in any of the Bering Sea rationalized crab fisheries. Right. And just one quick follow-up to that.

You know, I understand why when you're fishing for golden king crab, I understand why the pots are longline. It's just a function of the way it's— the fishery exists. But I'm just trying to figure out when you talk about discard rates, to me, longlining pots— and you also said the CPU rate is going to definitely go up because the effective nature in which you can haul pots is much faster. I just don't know that if you have the choice to use different kind of pots, but anyway, it's just kind of a statement. I'll save that for later.

Other questions? Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you.

Back to slide 14 and that proposal 277 that you were just commenting on. Would that open access state waters— would participation in that be from other crabbers that are out there already that would be going into that?

Participation in this fishery is expected to be new entrants into the golden king crab fishery in this area. The thought is that it would be local vessels to Dutch Harbor.

Based on it being limited to 58 feet and less, none of the current vessels harvesting golden king crab in the rationalized fishery meet that criteria. Hmm, okay. Thank you. And then one last question in terms of ignorance here, but on slide 17, that— those piles of crab there that are like just out of the water, that's That's what they do? They just ball up like that and stay alive?

Yes, through the chair. So pictured here is the tank onboard a crab vessel after the water's been pumped down during the offload. These are golden king crab, and that's an observer there conducting biological sampling. So yes, when the offload takes place, or before the offload takes place, these are circulating seawater tanks keeping the crab alive, and then there's a, brief period where the tanks are completely emptied of seawater while the crab are thrown into brailer bags at the processor. Cool, thanks.

It looks messy.

Mr. Chamberlain. Okay, I'm gonna start with the simpler question. What is grounds preemption? Sorry, I'm an in-river fisherman, so if you could explain that to me. Yes, through the Chair, what I mean by grounds preemption is, you know, if a vessel is heading out to the west there and they're ahead of other vessels in the area, given that there are no pot limits and these vessels are fishing a large number of pots, they can sort of stake out their areas where they want to get their gear fishing.

So I think the idea with the proposal to put in pot limits is that fewer number of pots will have boats not preempting each other's grounds by their gear. Okay, thank you. My next question is, 287 and 288 are seeking to reduce the legal sizes for, for tanner and snow crab. How will those reductions affect reproduction rate for the crab in those populations?

Through the chair. So this— these proposals are intending to reduce the industry preferred size. But, you know, the legal size is not changing. So currently, harvesters are taking— are choosing to take a crab that's much larger than the legal size, which is based on, you know, reproductive biology and allowing the crab, you know, at least a year to mate before being harvested. So it's— We have a fleet taking a, a large, a very large size crab.

And, and what's proposed here is to maybe loosen up on that and take some smaller size crab that are still well above the current legal size.

So usually— and forgive me of my ignorance, but as Larger crab would have more opportunity to reproduce, right? Before they hit that size, the 5-inch carapace, or the 4.5, 4.8— sorry, I'm trying to read as I'm talking, asking the questions. I'm doing a terrible job at both. But are there a number of reproductive cycles that it takes to hit those, and are we cutting out reproductive cycles for the crab to hit that length? And then I have one question after that.

Yes, through the chair. So the crab at the larger— those larger sizes are thought to be more competitively— have a competitive advantage when it comes to mating.

Part of the— part of the struggle with this proposal or these two proposals is that a a new industry preferred size was not specified. So the department was not really able to provide a full analysis on what the—.

Effect would be of a smaller industry preferred size because that number was not specifically specified.

Okay, so that's a little alarming to me. The other question I have is, how does taking a smaller industry preferred size affect the net value of the fishery? As in, I know other areas or other parts of the world do buy these crab at smaller size. How do How would that— is there a predictive value change in our fishery as a result of that?

Through the chair. Yes, we note that, you know, it may negatively impact the market preference and the fishery value because, you know, our Alaskan snow and Tanner fisheries, the market is, is based around the fact that the fleet is harvesting these, these very large-sized crabs. So The Alaskan market is a bit of a niche, and reductions to that may, may have our Alaskan crab competing with imported Canadian and Norwegian snow crab that are at more traditional legal crab size.

One last question. Have we ever failed to hit our total allowable catch for, for these crab on the years other than the crash, of course. Well, for snow crab, Bering Sea snow crab, no, I believe TAC has always been achieved. For the Bering Sea tanner crab fisheries, it is, it is common that the TAC will not be fully achieved before the regulatory closure date. That's usually due to seasons where we have a large snow crab fishery and the fleet sort of focuses efforts on snow crab and getting their snow crab quota caught and then transition to catching Tanner crab.

And sometimes it just works out that the snow crab fishery is large enough that it provides sort of a distraction to getting the Tanner crab tack fully harvested. Thank you. So sticking with that line of questioning, what is the current criteria used for setting the legal size size limit for those crab, both crab.

Madam Chair, my name is Mark Stickert. I'm the regional management coordinator. I can step in here and put a little context. So these are complicated fisheries. There's complicated regulations.

I presume you're talking about snow and Tanner crab preferred size. So I think it's good to focus a little bit on sort of what we call management currency. The existing board-approved harvest strategies instruct the department to set the tax based on mature male abundance. So this is a legal male-sized fishery. So we predominantly focus on the breeding population of mature males, and we set the tax.

Snow and Tanner crab have unique life histories that are— complicate this because they demonstrate what we refer to as a terminal molt. So they grow, grow, grow, and then their last growth phase, they molt to maturity. So once they transition from being immature to sexually mature, they stop growing and stop molting for the rest of their life. They put all of that extra energy into reproduction. And so we see these big cyclical waves of crab that come to the population.

You see a pulse, they're all growing at the same time. Year, you know, year 4 or 5, they're all immature, and then the next year they're all mature. And so we see these big pulses of crab that come into the population. So we have a harvest strategy that sort of accommodates this sort of boom-or-bust cycle. Um, throughout most of the crab history, industry has preferred— based on what Ethan said— is they prefer to target larger size crab because they're worth more money.

That allows them to better compete in a market space that's dominated by the larger Canadian and Norwegian fisheries. So we set during most years, the, the tack on mature size. The legal size is designed to ensure that a mature crab has big enough to the point where we're never going to put an immature crab in a tank and take it out of the population. Because the size of maturity changes over time and space. It's not always the same size every year.

It depends on temperature, depends on growth, depends on food availability. So it's always a moving target. And we assess the size at maturity from year to year to make sure we're failing tax to changes in the environment. Legal size is not really a fixture in these fisheries because industry has decided they want to select a big crab. We set the tax based on size at maturity, based on biology.

So there's 3 different management currencies that are hard to keep in place. And so, so to answer your question directly, the size at— the legal size is our best estimate to ensure that a crab, let's say, in the Baird Eye fishery in the west, a 4.4-inch crab, which is a legal size crab there, will have had— will have more than likely molted to maturity, will not be removed from the population before it had an opportunity to mate. So we don't— even though we don't set any of the tax based on that size, it's entitled to— it's intended to sort of ensure that we're not removing in the fishery crab that haven't had opportunity to mate. Madam Chair. Thank you.

So if the legal size specifications are a function purely on biology, correct? Not on market? Correct. Okay. But the TAC that is set is then sort of starts to pull in some of these, I guess, economic aspects based on what the fleet wants and what the processors want?

Because it just seems unusual to me that the TAC isn't set on a legal size population. Well, so, Madam Chair, I'll take it one step further. So there's, there's the harvest strategies for both snow and Tanner crab have two components. The first thing we do is we go through a stock assessment process. We identify the biomass of mature male abundance or mature male biomass.

Then we apply that towards an exploitation rate and we set a tag. But because we know that they're only harvesting the largest of animals, And if we're in this scenario where we— I described before— we have a recruitment pulse coming in, and we might have a lot of crab that are mature but not 5 inches in size. And if we set a TAC based on mature male abundance, but they were only harvesting 5-inch animals, we have during some years potential to really apply really high exploitation on 5-inch animals and larger. We know those 5-inch animals are important. To the population.

They seem to be the dominant breeders. And so every year when we set our tag, we, we look, we compute what we call a max tag. We basically look at the abundance of 5-inch animals, compare that to the abundance of, of mature size animals, and we choose the lower of those two tags to ensure that we're not inadvertently focusing really high exploitation on the largest animals of the population. So there's a governor in there based on industry's choice to harvest animals of a certain size to ensure that if you choose to take the biggest animals, we accommodate that in our decision-making to ensure, to the extent that we can, there's no downstream biological impacts from them. And so if you change your choice, then we would need to adjust that in the harvest strategy.

Again, we try and scale exploitation to the animals that are coming out of the water. And so if you change behaviorally what animals are coming out of the water, we want to make sure that we accommodate for that in our annual conservation conversations and setting TAC. Have you experienced or observed in the data any kind of— I guess I'm just looking for some kind of visual representation of the TACs, the history of the TACs and the biomass. There's, I don't think hardly any, I don't know if there's any graphs in this presentation, which is kind of, again, it's sort of unusual. But, you know, I'm just trying to visualize that relationship if one exists at all.

I mean, because do we— have we had experienced problems with Verdi or with Tanner populations outside of that normal cyclical pattern that you just described? Madam Chair, so I guess talking on different scales. [Speaker:DR. MICHAEL WILSON] I think most of us are aware that we experienced a massive collapse of the snow crab stock.

After the fact and after a lot of work, I think we mostly understand that 2018-2019, we essentially didn't have sea ice in the Bering Sea. We had extremely warm weather in the Bering Sea. As snow crab suggests, they are a cold and ice-affiliated species. When the ice goes away, so do your snow crab. And so we experienced a 90% decline, you know, unprecedented collapse in the snow crab fishery or the stock, 2018, 2019, 2020.

We subsequently closed the fishery. It's under a federal rebuilding plan. We cautiously reopened the fishery again this year. It gets annual survey. Again, we have a harvest strategy.

There's a federally-led stock assessment process. So lots of eyes on these decisions.

I don't think, and I have not seen any.

Indication that exploitation rate, so the size of the fishery, sort of specifically precipitated or resulted in any of the collapse of the stocks that we've seen recently. They seem to be all environmentally driven for the extent that we understand them. And so, to your question, the TAC and the biomass are gonna be scaled because the harvest control rules are sloping control rules in the case of snow crab, We set the TAC based on 10 to 22.5% of the mature male biomass. So when biomass of male crab go up, so does exploitation rate up to a cap of 22.5%. When it goes down, it slides back down that control rule.

We reduce harvest as the population senesces. And down to 10%, at which point we have thresholds that close the fishery. And we were at those thresholds in the last couple, 2022, 2023, when we closed the season. So, so I could say the relationship between TAC and biomass is your TAC is going to be between 10% and 22.5% of your biomass as it's moving up and down these pulses. What is the rebuilding function in that?

I mean, if it's just sledding and it's just tracking together the entire time, where does the rebuilding component come into that? Where is that demonstrated and where the TAC is set? Yeah, Madam Chair, that's a great question. So, you know, there's not that many levers that we can pull. We can very, you know, we can change our abundance-based management or we can close the fishery.

So, you know, we can't make crab and we can't make crab or save crab when they are predominantly, in this case, using the example of the stock, they're predominantly starving to death. Right. I mean, I think that the population was experiencing a crash because of physiological response to warm water. Water. So we close the fishery.

All, you know, that's all that we can do with respect to a fishery matter given the tools that we have right now, Madam Chair. So what I'm hearing you say is that you either can track with the biomass or you shut it down.

Well, Madam Chair, you know, in addition to the third leg to that stool is a lot of ongoing research to improve our predictive power, to both predict and improve our capacity to track track crab. But yeah, and, you know, I suppose the board or industry could, you know, impose further restrictions to create efficiencies or inefficiencies in terms of how they fish when we do set a TAC. But yeah, for the most part, we, we have an abundance-based management control rule with appropriate triggers to both cap harvest to ensure that we don't sort of threaten our ability to maintain BMSY, or we close the fishery if we think that we're at a point where it can no longer sustain itself. So, okay. Mr.

Swenson, do those crab ever migrate or would the warm water just kill them? I mean, they just don't reproduce. I thought I read somewhere that they migrated sometimes or they thought they did. I don't know. Yeah.

Mr. Swenson, to the chair. So Bering Sea is a big spot. It depends on what stock we're talking about. If we're going to stay in the theme of snow crab, they are the most, or the more northerly related species, and so they tend to find those in the Pribilof Islands and north. And again, there's a broad area in the Bering, eastern Bering Sea shelf, so fairly flat, fairly homogenous shelf, and so there's a pretty wide distribution of crab there.

Yes, it's our understanding, and certainly we, you know, you can find a snow crab all the way up in the Bering Strait if you look, right? But you know, as water gets colder, body size gets smaller, and so those crab are sort of finding a physiological sweet spot based on what we think is about 0°C temperature. Sort of most informs their existing life history. And so yes, when the— I think we saw a defined and very distinct shift to the north in our summer surveys, that the center of biomass for those crab during those warm years had certainly shifted, you know, quite a ways north. And so they are, you know, choosing in a sense to move with respect to where those preferred habitat, in this case it's water, occurs.

So yes, they are moving, and so they can sort of self-buffer. But at some point, you know, the warming pool or the warming event that we saw in 2018 and 2019, we essentially didn't see sea ice all the way up to the Bering Strait. So I think their capacity to move is limited by the really long distances. And if they're already I think the evidence suggests that cold-blooded animals, your temperature increases, your metabolism increases, there's not enough food for them to eat. And it happened to also correspond with a period we had really, really high density of crabs.

So there's a lot of competition across snow crab in addition to a physiological stress. And considering it's many hundreds of miles of area, their capacity to sort of move out of the warm area was, was, you know, limited effect. Mr. Swenson. Thank you. Last question, hopefully an easy one.

Beginning on slide 13 but continuing farther through the presentation, there's that little map in the bottom right-hand side corner. And what is— what's the mileage, what's the distance between Cape Sarachev and the U.S.-Russia maritime boundary line? How many miles are we talking about in there? Roughly.

I believe approximately from Cape Sarichef to the maritime boundary would be about 700 miles, 800 miles. Cool, thank you. All right, I don't see any more questions. I think what I'd like to do, gentlemen, is pause here and maybe go take a lunch break, come back and complete the remainder of the presentation, if you're comfortable with that. Okay, let's go ahead and do that.

And so we'll come back together at, let's say, 1:45, and we'll, we'll pick up the rest of your presentation. Thank you.

All right, welcome back. The time is 1:55. We are still in staff reports, and I think when we paused, we were just about ready to talk about Kodiak and South Pen Tanner crab proposals. Welcome back to the mic. Please put yourself on the record and begin when you're ready.

Certainly. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Nat Nichols. I'm the area manager for commercial shellfish and groundfish fisheries in the Kodiak, Chignik, and South Alaska Peninsula areas. Gonna walk through the proposals here that are relevant to those areas And the first set that we're going to look at are 7 proposals related to Kodiak and South Peninsula Tanner crab fisheries.

For some background on, on these fisheries, they both followed a similar trajectory in that they developed in the late '60s, harvest peaked in the '70s, declined through the '80s, and then both fisheries were closed in the '90s. The current harvest strategies were adopted in 1999 for both these areas and then updated as recently as 2022. The current harvest strategy from 2000 through present, as you can see in these figures, has produced lower harvest than, than historically during the peaks in the '70s. On the bottom left-hand of this figure, I have some fishery statistics just for the last 20-plus years. This is the time period of the current harvest strategy, 2001 through '24.

Kodiak, during that time period, has had 19 seasons. On average, 80 vessels have participated, harvesting 1.2 million pounds annually. An important distinction here, the Kodiak fishery is a limited entry fishery, and there's 179 permits, and you can see that roughly half of those fish on average. South Peninsula in that same time period has had 13 seasons, 34 vessels harvesting 715,000 pounds annually, and South Peninsula is an open access Tanner fishery.

This figure here is abundance trends for both, both of these districts. So these are figures of male Tanner crab. Kodiak is on the left, South Peninsula District is on the right. Gulf of Alaska Tanner crab have a very cyclical recruitment pattern that they've gone through. Since 2001, we've seen 5 large recruitment events in the Gulf.

What I have highlighted here— well, I first— I'll orient you to this figure. We have the survey years on the left-hand vertical axis, and on the bottom axis we have the size of crab in millimeters, with small crab on the left, large crab on the right. The vertical black line, that's the legal size. So crab to the right of that are legal and available to the fishery. What I've got highlighted here is this is the 2018 cohort of crabs.

So this is the most recent group of crab that we've been fishing on. You can see that the survey does a really good job of tracking these crab as they move through the fishery. Every year they move to the right a little bit as they get larger, and there are fewer of them as they die through natural mortality before they reach a legal size. So what I've got circled here is, is the seasons that that 2018 cohort produced. So we fished on that 2018 group for 4 years in both of these districts.

The '22 through '25 seasons.

The harvest in Kodiak for all 4 of those seasons combined was about 11 million pounds and 2.5 in South Peninsula. I'll note here that the scale of these figures are not the same. So when we look at that 2018 group where they started there in Kodiak, that, that estimate on the 2018 line, that's about 261 million crab. And if we look at the 2018 line on the South Peninsula figure, that's only about 60 million crabs, so about a fourth. And then you can see as those tracked through and we got time to fish on those crab, we harvested similar numbers.

So they survived similarly in that we had a harvest in Kodiak that was about 4 times that of South Pen when you add all those seasons together. But the main takeaway from this figure is that the survey does a really good job of tracking these crab as they move through the population. And I will jump into the proposals. First off is Proposal 282. This would amend the escape mechanism requirements for Kodiak District commercial Tanner crab gear.

Currently, all pots must have either a third of a vertical surface of escape mesh or 4 escape rings. So your choice right now is mesh or rings. This proposal, if adopted, would require rectangular and pyramid pots to use mesh exclusively. Cone pots would still be allowed to use either mesh or rings, but if they chose to use rings, they would need to use 8, which is twice the current amount. One of the effects of this, if adopted, is that some pot gear in the Kodiak District would need to be reconfigured to meet these new requirements.

And the general idea here from the proposer is that increasing the surface area on the pot through which non-target crab can escape is, is going to be good. And non-target crab in this scenario would be sublegal male crab and female crab, Tanner crab. Proposal 284, this would allow Tanner crab vessels in the Kodiak District to concurrently harvest crab and tender crab. Currently, you need— you can do one or the.

A vessel can be a catcher vessel or a tender vessel, but not both simultaneously. If adopted, that would be allowed. Um, one outcome may be that smaller vessels could benefit from additional landing opportunities. It may make it more financially feasible for vessels to transport crab outside of the area. Tendering crab, as I said, is currently allowed and it does happen, but it's not particularly common.

Harvesting and tendering simultaneously is not allowed in any other crab fishery, except that in 2009 the board allowed just that to happen in the Kodiak District, uh, Dungeness crab fishery. So Kodiak Dungeness vessels currently are allowed to tender and catch at the same time. One note that I wanted to bring up is, as we were working through staff comments here and looking at the way this proposal was written, we realized that there may be an opportunity for vessels to circumvent registration requirements if they registered as a catcher and a tender and then delivered to themselves for the purposes of satisfying registration requirements. I don't believe that that was the intent of the proposal, but we did identify that when we were working our way through this, and it would be the department's recommendation that if adopted, that specifically not be allowed.

Proposal 285, this would replace the South Peninsula Tanner Crab Harvest Strategy with the Registration Area A. Southeast Alaska Tanner crab harvest strategy. This proposal has a lot of pieces to it, so I will try my best to walk you through them. The current harvest strategy in South Peninsula is an abundance-based strategy, and as I mentioned, it was updated in 2022. It— the, the 3 primary components are minimum abundance thresholds. We have a ramped harvest control rule that takes into account mature male and mature female abundance, and then we have minimum GHL thresholds.

If adopted, this proposal would seek to take the Southeast Alaska Plan and put it in place in South Peninsula. I am unable to tell you what the effects of that would be because the Southeast Plan has a lot of pieces to it and many of them do not readily translate to South Peninsula. And those alternatives were not specifically provided in the proposal. So there's just a lot of unanswered questions about how this would be implemented, and without having those questions answered, I can't fully explain what the effects of this would be if it was adopted.

Proposal 286 is along a similar vein. This would replace the South Peninsula Tanner crab harvest strategy with a size-sex-season, or 3S, management regime. A 3S management regime is, is commonly used in Dungeness fisheries, and that would mean that in terms of using that in South Peninsula for Dungeness, it would mean that we would have a, the current season, and it would be 5.5-inch male crab, and those would be the only controls on the fishery. As I said in the previous proposal, we have an abundance-based strategy that was recently updated in South Penn. If this proposal was adopted, that would go away.

We would have a 76-day-long season where 5.5-inch male crab could be retained. There would be no GHL, so essentially no harvest limit. As I mentioned earlier, South Peninsula is an open access tanner crab fishery, and that would mean that there would be no limit on the number of vessels that could participate. So the combination of having a 76-day-long fishery with no harvest limit and no limit on participation— participation— I think the likely outcome of that would be the rapid depletion of the South Penn tanner stock. And for that reason, the department would not open this fishery under a 3S management regime.

Proposal 289. This is seeking to amend pot limits in the Kodiak District commercial tanner crab fishery. Currently, the pot limits are a two-tier structure based on the size of the GHL. If the GHL is less than 5 million pounds, it's 20 pots per vessel. If the GHL is over 5 million pounds, it's 30 pots per vessel.

This proposal is seeking to just go to one pot limit regardless of the GHL. It would be 20 pots per vessel. And the department expects this to have minimal effect if adopted because since 2000, this proposed change would have resulted in a different pot limit only once, 2023. And that year we had a 5.8 million pound GHL, so that triggered the 30 pot limit, but minimal effect overall.

Proposal 290 seeks to amend the Kodiak District commercial Tanner crab fishery dates. Currently, the season is January 15 to March 31. This proposal is seeking to move the start date 36 days later in the season so that the season would be February 20 to March 31. This would reduce the maximum length of the season from 76 days to 40 days. I think that would increase the likelihood of hitting that regulatory closure date prior to catching the full GHL because On average, the season lasts 35 days.

So if you're asking a season— if you're asking to put a season that lasts typically 35 days into a 40-day window, you're going to have seasons where it exceeds that. This year is a good example. The Kodiak season this year went for 42 days.

It's difficult to predict the effects of this because it's going to be specific to individual vessels and vessel operators.

Multiple overlapping fisheries occur in the winter in Kodiak, and on average, 35% of the Kodiak Kodiak Tanner vessels participate in some other winter fishery. So what your winter schedule looks like is, is going to depend how this proposal could potentially impact individual operators.

Proposal 292 is seeking to amend landing requirements for Area J commercial Tanner crab fisheries. This is a department-submitted proposal. Currently, the regulations say that vessels must deliver crab within 24 or 72 hours of a fishery closure. That's depending on which district or subdistrict talking about.

The department identified some regulations that could benefit from being updated, and that's the reason we've submitted this. If adopted, vessels would still be required to proceed directly to port and deliver crab after the closure, but without a strict timeline. This would provide vessel operators with more flexibility to travel to port when conditions are favorable, and vessel operators will also be relieved of the responsibility for missed delivery timelines due to circumstances beyond their control. An example of that would be in Kodiak. Sometimes we have week-long wait times to get vessels offloaded because the processors are backed up.

So in that scenario, vessel operators are not able to comply with the 24-hour delivery requirement. The prohibition on operating gear after the closure with crab on board would remain. That's largely an enforcement-type piece where it makes it very clear that a vessel is not fishing while they're out pulling that gear if there is no crab on board. One of the reasons that we put this forward is that improvements in, in at-sea communication and vessel monitoring have just made these strict delivery timeline requirements unnecessary in the department's view.

This next set of proposals, and there's 5 of them, all relate to Area J Dungeness crab proposals, or the Dungeness crab fishery. A little overview of the fishery. As I mentioned before, the, the Dungeness crab fisheries, these are what we call 3S fisheries, so size, sex, season. So it's male crab, 6.5 inches, and the seasons are May through October depending on which district we're talking about. And then below that, I've listed some statistics on the fisheries.

Proposal 293 This would seek to amend season dates for the Kodiak District commercial Dungeness fishery. Currently, the northern portion of the district opens on May 1st and the southern portion of the Kodiak District opens on June 15th, and everything closes on October 31st. This proposal is, is asking that the season be moved to June 1st through November 31st. So that would be a unified season for the whole Kodiak District. That would result in a 1-day shorter season in the northern portion of the district and a 45-day longer season in the southern portion of the district.

One outcome of this, if adopted, is that vessels that also fish salmon may lose the opportunity to transport and set gear prior to the salmon season opening. So currently the season is open through the month of May. Vessels that also want to participate in salmon sometimes use that month of May to get their gear out. And get it in the water where they want it to be prior to the salmon season opening in June. Another outcome of this that we'd like to note is that gear loss may increase if we push this season farther into the fall and weather just deteriorates.

Big storms can roll a lot of this dungee gear up on the beach, or the weather can just deteriorate to the point where vessels are having trouble getting out to their gear to retrieve it. So the further this season gets pushed into the fall, something to keep in mind is that it increases the potential of losing gear.

Proposal 294 would establish a vessel length limit for the Alaska Peninsula District commercial Dungeness crab fishery. Currently, there is no vessel length limit. If adopted, this would establish a 58-foot limit. Vessels greater than 58 would no longer be able to participate, and this could increase competition in other adjacent fisheries. Because those vessels may look to a fishery that doesn't have a limit, and it— they could move into other fisheries and increase the competition there.

Vessels less than 58 could benefit from the exclusion of larger vessels just through increased catch due to reduced competition by having fewer of those vessels. For some background here, since 2002, there have been 8.

Vessels greater than 58 feet that have participated in this fishery, and no more of— no more than 2 of those vessels have participated in any one given year.

Proposal 295. This would amend season dates for the North Peninsula District commercial Dungeness crab fishery. This is a department-submitted proposal that's seeking to unify the season dates with the other Area J Dungeness seasons. So currently the season in North Peninsula is May 1 through October 18. If adopted, this would make the season May 1 through October 31, so 14 days longer.

It would make it the same as the other, other Area J districts. And this again is a department-submitted proposal just looking to kind of clean up and unify some regulation. Proposal 296 would amend vessel inspection requirements for Area J commercial Dungeness crab. This again is a department-submitted proposal. Currently, tank checks are required in the Dungeness fishery, but almost always waived.

And just for a little background, tank check is typically when the department inspects a vessel's hold to ensure that it's empty prior to the season beginning to make it— it's essentially a way to check that the vessel hasn't been fishing prior to the season opening, that they don't already have crab on board. So tank checks are currently required but almost always waived. The new language that the department's put forward here would, would make it so that tank checks would not be required, but the department would maintain the option to require them by emergency order if needed in the future. Really no effect if adopted here because we've been waiving these tank check requirements for over a decade already.

Proposal 297 would amend pot gear operation requirements for Area J commercial dungeness crab fisheries. This Again, is a department-submitted proposal looking to update some regulations that haven't been looked at in a while. And this is a two-part proposal. It does functionally two separate things. And this one's a little bit difficult, so I'll try and take my time here.

Currently, if a vessel wants to fish Dungeness crab, they are not allowed to operate any pot gear in the 14 days prior to the Dungeness season opening. Except that there, there are exemptions for vessels that want to fish Dungeness crab in Kodiak, Chignik, and South Alaska Peninsula. Those vessels have an exemption allowing them to fish Pacific cod pot gear in the 14 days prior. So right up until Dungeness season, they can't fish both at the same time, but they don't have to do this 14-day stand down. And I think that regulation is a, is an acknowledgment that historically that, that the Pacific cod pot gear fisheries occur in the spring and so do the Dungeness fisheries.

And there are participants that have historically participated in both. So this exemption has been on the books for some time. This proposal is seeking to extend that exemption to the rest of Area J, which in this case would be the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands area. And it would simply just unify this regulation across all of Area J. The second part of this proposal is that currently, if a vessel is participating in Dungeness crab pot gear fishery, They are not allowed to operate any other types of pot gear.

So what is happening is we have vessels that fish Dungeness crab in the summer. Those vessels often fish in other fisheries at the same time, whether it's salmon or IFQ, either halibut or sablefish longline fisheries. And what's happening is the sablefish IFQ fishery is transitioning from a hook and line gear to a pot gear to address whale depredation. And so there is the potential in the future that you have participants that have historically fished in Dungeness crab fisheries and IFQ sablefish fisheries during the summer concurrently. But because the sablefish fishery is transitioning to a pot gear, they could, they could not be allowed to continue that practice because the pot gear regulations say you, while you're Dungeness fishing, you can't fish another type of pot gear.

So in this proposal, the department has put forward language that would allow a specific exemption for sablefish pot gear. It would say functionally, while you're fishing Dungeness crab, you can't fish another pot gear except for sablefish pot gear.

These are the last two I have for you. There's a scallop one and a shrimp one. Proposal 298 would amend the State Waters Weathervane Scallop Management Plan, and this proposal also has a lot of pieces to it, so I'll Try to walk through it slowly. Currently in the scallop fishery, the only legal gear type is dredge gear.

Vessel monitoring systems, or VMS, and onboard observers are required, and there are no trip limits. That's the current regulations. This proposal, if adopted, it's, it's requesting that all of state waters be closed to dredge gear, that the VMS and onboard observer requirements be removed, and and that an 800-pound weekly trip limit be established.

One of the effects of this is potentially is many of the scallop beds extend into state waters, and if, if the state waters portion of those beds are closed to dredge gear, the current participants are likely just to redirect that effort to the federal waters portions of those beds, which would concentrate effort and possibly lead to localized depletion. Removing the VMS and onboard observer requirements would reduce costs for participants, but it would also reduce the data available for management and enforcement. And just for some background, about 22% of the annual scallop harvest comes from state waters annually. And since the inception of the State Waters Weathervane Scallop Management Plan, there has never been a state waters only scallop boat. All scallop boats that have participated in the fishery have also held— had federal permits allowing them to fish in both federal and state waters.

So there's never been a state waters only boat since the inception of the, of the fishery.

And this is the final one. This is Proposal 309 that's seeking to amend the season dates for Area J commercial shrimp fisheries. Before I start into this one, just because this meeting has a lot of shrimp proposals in front of it, I'd like to point out that Area J shrimp fishing is, is different than the Prince William Sound proposals you'll see in front of you. For one thing, These are different species. We're typically talking about pink shrimp and side stripe shrimp in Area J.

We're also talking about a different gear type. So in Area J, this is trawl gear, either door trawls or beam trawls. And it's a much different level of harvest. So these fisheries, the shrimp fisheries in Area J were really big in the '70s and '80s, hundreds of millions of pounds annually. And they completely collapsed in the late '80s.

And there has been no shrimp fishing in Area J since the '80s, except for in the Kodiak District, where some harvest has continued, but minimal, sporadic, not every year.

So just minimal harvest. The current season dates— after that little background, the current season dates on Area J shrimp are June 1st through February 28th. This proposal is seeking to move the season 2 months earlier in the year so that the season dates would be April 1st through December 31st. But it would remain a 9-month season. The department does have some concerns about this one, as shifting the season earlier could adversely affect these shrimp stocks by allowing harvest in the spring, which we know is a sensitive time in the reproductive cycle of these shrimp.

The spring is when females are, are heavily bearing eggs and hatching those eggs. And this, this 3-month closure in the spring has been in place since the '70s specifically to protect those females. In what we know is a, is a time of year where they're vulnerable. It's the department's position that the current 9-month-long season with the minimal effort that's already taking place is sufficient to offer opportunity without needing to go into that time of the year, which we know is pretty important for shrimp reproduction. That is the last proposal I have for you, Madam Chair.

And with that, I am happy to do my best at fielding questions. Thank you. Any board questions? Mr. Carpenter. Thanks.

Could you touch on proposal 286 again? I think it's slide 26.

So explain to me why 3S management is okay for Dungeness crab and not Tanner crab. Through the chair. Excellent question. There's two pieces in my mind that, that come into play here. The first is the reproductive biology of these two animals.

Dungeness crab mature faster. You'll get a legal Dungeness crab in 3 or 4 years. Tanner crab take almost twice that long. So you're going to have a Tanner crab that's a legal male, maybe 5, 6, 7 years old. So An animal— well, and the second piece of that is the way they aggregate.

Dungeness crab tend to be more loosely aggregated. You, you won't find pots of 100+ Dungeness crab. I mean, it happens, but it's very rare. Whereas tender crab tend to aggregate in, in preferred habitats, and those are known areas, and they are highly susceptible to overharvest because they are so densely aggregated. So the combination there where you have the Tanner crab, which is a slower to mature, older animal that's densely aggregated, makes it much more susceptible to overharvest when you compare it to a Dungeness crab that's faster to mature, faster to reproduce, and less densely aggregated.

One of— maybe one way to think about it is almost an example of where Tanner crab might be sort of like a rockfish, where they're slower to mature and they have a lot of site fidelity.

They want to stick to that one rock pile. Tanner crab could be thought of in that way. They're slower to mature, and the known high concentrations of tanner crab in Kodiak, Chignik, and the South Peninsula are known. Those areas that have produced a lot of tanner crab are known year after year. So I think what— the way they aggregate, you could get a tanner crab that you could have really strong fishing on these groups of tanner crab right up until you sort of get to the end of them, catch them all.

Dungeness crab are much more loosely dispersed so that I think fishing, it's a little bit self-regulating in that fishing would become uneconomically viable before you caught them all, whereas I don't think that's necessarily the case with Tanner crab. Thank you.

Other board questions? Forest. Thanks, Madam Chair. And just, just to add one more point to that, Excellent answer that Mr. Nichols provided you. You know, with, with Tanner crab, we're generally able to survey those stocks and generate an abundance or biomass estimate that allows us to set a conservative guideline harvest level.

And we're typically not able to do that for Dungeness crab. So that's our preference in managing Tanner crab is to manage them through a GHL. Thanks.

Caught us after lunch. Lucky you. Looks like questions are over. Thank you for completing the presentations today.

All right. We'll go ahead and welcome Brian and Lisa Gabriel to the table. They are going to present by invitation of the board some information about Commissioner's Permit test fishery using beach seines in Upper Cook Inlet, what they participated and, and drove last summer. So we're looking forward to hearing from you, and when you're ready, please put yourself on the record and begin.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, my name is Brian Gabriel, and I'm here with my wife Lisa and our observer Robert Bagich. And first of all, I would like to say thank you for allowing us to present to you today. Our presentation is on the findings from testing completed this summer from ADF&G Commissioner's Permit UCI-2024-01. And we'll also touch on UCI-2024-03, which was used— was issued to Gary Hollier.

Both of these permits were issued to test said beach sands in Upper Cook Inlet. And pictured here are the families that helped with our project. We have the Everys, Hudkins, and Gabriel families and crews in that picture.

So just want to really quickly cover the stipulations of the permit that was issued. And I'd also like to thank Commissioner Doug Vincent Lang for issuing the permit for us, and also Colton Lipka, the area commercial fisheries manager, and ADF&G staff for their help with the project. So our observer qualifications were they had to have a biology degree or 2 years of field work. We were lucky enough to get retired ADF&G biologist Robert Begich to act as our observer. We were required to communicate with ADF&G prior to fish days and allow access to the fish testing site.

Since we fronted the initial cost for this project, we were allowed to sell our catch for cost recovery only on days that were open for commercial fishing, commercial dipnet fishing. Which, as you recall, was 3 days per week. We were also allowed to test on every other day. On those days, we were required to release all fish alive. In the case of dead loss, we were required to process the fish at our expense and donate to charities such as a food bank or senior center.

And just so you know, we tested for 3 days outside of the 14 cost recovery days, twice on North Kalafonskee Beach and once on Salamanca, and we experienced no dead loss.

So one of the things we had to— as we put this together, come up with elements, or in, um, we call elements recess, but try to get an idea of how we would do this. So just so you know, we weren't aware of anybody actually trying this fishing method, so we really didn't know what to expect when we drug a seine out into the second strongest tides in the world. And obviously we wanted to be prepared for that, so We realized we needed plenty of resources and we reached out to the Evry and Hudkins fishing operations for that help to combine resources. We also visited multiple beach and surveyed beach areas because part of our permit allowed us to move along the beach and test other areas. And that was the sort of encompassing of this test.

Ultimately, we had time to test at 3 sites. We also went down to Nielczyk and surveyed a site down there for possible use. And what I mean by survey is you want to go down there, make sure that the area is free from, you know, boulders or trap piles and that sort of thing. And we did find one site down there, but unfortunately we weren't able to make that work through with the— or he was— he wasn't able to get his running lines out. And as you remember, since last year was mainly going to be closed for gillnetting, really it was tough.

Most people did not put their running lines out for that. The other thing we did was we did outreach, talked to fishermen all summer, invited them, encouraged them to observe our tests and also to provide insight, input. You know, safety of the crew was going to be very important. So we identified job hazards and communicated those to the crew as well as trained the crew. And one of the things we wanted to do was define best management practices as we, as we tested this.

So, and there'll be a video here in a minute. You'll see, we'll kind of go over through those. But real quickly, some of the ones that we identified were to evaluate the weather and surf before setting the gear. One day you'll see when we get to the data, we had one set on July 4th. It was a very nautical day.

We had probably 5-foot rollers. We threw the seine out there. We basically called it a load test to see if anything would break, and we were able to successfully deploy and retrieve the seine. We also had a fish day on July 6th that we did not fish because it was, it was too rough. We, we also identified slow deployment and retrieval of the seine as being a best management practice.

Walking behind and beside the seine to scan for kings while retrieving and lifting the seine web. As that middle bag comes to the beach, you'll see that we trained all our crew to be alert to kings and quickly stop retrieval if kings were suspected or seen. And in those cases, the retrieval vehicles would stop, back up, and help facilitate rolling the king over the corkline. We, to keep the kings in the water prior to release, utilized wet gloves or rubber gloves when handling kings and also to minimize the handling of the kings. So before we play the video, I want to just really quickly give us a little bit of overview of, you know, when you see the video, you're going to see some moving parts here.

And I think this might help. You guys try to understand what's happening there. This is what we use when we set gillnet. And the idea, the concept is simply instead of pulling a set gillnet out into the water, we're going to pull a seine out in there, out in the water. So we're not using a boat, but we're also using the current and water depth to billow the seine to actually take the shape.

So what we have here is you'll see we have two upper stakes.

Yeah, up— these are above the waterline. Here's the waterline. We're depicting a flood tide here. We have two stakes seaward. Those are about as far out as you can get on a low tide, on a minus tide.

And on those stakes are pulleys, and with a running line, a line that's run through there and spliced on itself, creating a complete loop. So when you start the process, you would put the seine on the shoreline above the waterline, take your vehicle, hook onto the running line, and pull in the direction you want deployment. This is exactly what we do when we gillnet as well. The big difference between seining and gillnet, or setbeat seining and gillnet in this case, is what we would do in this case if we were gillnetting is we tie the end of the inside end of the gillnet off to the running line with a rolling hitch and then that would allow us to move that gill net in and out with the tide throughout the day. In this case, we actually anchor it to a vehicle and hold.

Once we've completed our hold time, we reverse the pull on the running line and the same outside end of the same comes back to shore. So that's just kind of the real quick tutorial on that. And I think you'll find it just helpful when you see what's happening with, with the video. Just want to let you know before we show the video, because we did do quite a bit of outreach to ACs and other stakeholder groups, and when we showed them the video, the first thing they said is, wow, that seems like a lot of equipment, a lot of people to be able to do that. Will people, normal sites, be able to handle that?

And again, what we did is we combined resources to not fail, and we did a lot.

A lot of testing. We did, um, we, we struggled at first, I'm going to be honest with you. It took us 4 or 5 openings to kind of figure out what we were doing and, and, uh, kind of get it dialed in. So we know that we feel that we can— if we were able to fish the scene on our site, we would be able to use our crew and our equipment that we'd normally use gill netting to prosecute that scene. So I just want to give you a heads up as you watch this, and I will go ahead and show the video at this time.

What's that?

And for the record, we did test this yesterday afternoon and it worked just perfectly. Always.

So we got Layla, her—.

In 2024, Doug Vincent Lang, the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, issued a Oh, here we go.

In 2024, Doug Vincent Lang, the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, issued a commissioner's permit to test set beach sands in Upper Cook Inlet. The purpose of this permit was to determine if set beach sands could be used as an alternative gear type who harvest sockeye salmon and release king salmon alive.

The set begins between the upper stakes where the driver pulls the running line in the direction of the seine deployment.

You will notice here that the seine is being pulled seaward from the shore with the running line. The significant difference between this technique and other forms of beach seining is that no boats are used in the deployment or retrieval of the seine. Once the seine is fully deployed, sufficient water depth and current are required to billow and form the desired shape of the seine. Once the desired shape is achieved, it's held for a short time to allow for buildup of fish.

As you can see here, we have achieved the desired shape of the seine and are preparing for retrieval. During testing, our hold times range from 4 to 15 minutes. With an average of 10 minutes. We found that longer hold times did not equal more fish. The fish get nervous and escape the seine.

They figure it out. Here you can see the buoy returning back to the shoreline. This is accomplished by reversing the pull on the running line. The length of this seine is 70 fathoms or 420 feet, which is the equivalent of 2 set gillnets tied end to end. The depth is 105 mesh, which is approximately 30 feet.

The mesh size is 3.5-inch. This particular set is happening close to high tide. As you can see, the available beach and work area is fairly small. Once the tide gets too high, we run out of space to operate the seine.

Once the outside buoy is above the waterline, the seine is closed and no longer fishing. You will notice that the anchor vehicle will begin moving toward the bluff. We found that retrieving the seine too quickly resulted in this corkline submerging, as you can see here, which could lead to loss of fish over the corkline. Another purpose of slow retrieval, which we identified as the best management practice, allows fish to swim freely within the seine until we could identify and remove kings if they are present. To continue the retrieval process, the tractors are moved into position to take bites of the seine and move toward the bluff.

As you can see here, the lead line and cork line are being cinched together as we retrieve the seine. This is important to maintain the profile of the seine as it is being brought back to shore.

As the seine is being retrieved, all crew members are screening for king salmon. Approximately 99% of the fish end up in the center bag as they seek deeper water. Shown in the net on this particular set are flounder. We'll see that as the seine comes out of the water.

If a king were to be detected at this point, the retrieval would immediately stop, equipment would back up to allow the corkline to be pulled back, allowing the crew to quickly release it over the corkline.

Following our 3 king releases, much care was taken to identify kings and remove them as quickly and safely as possible.

As kings were identified and possibly considered as large, a measurement was taken by the observer prior to release. Length of fish that were obviously not over 34 inches were estimated.

Kings management practices were identified during testing. These include: all crew watching for kings throughout the entire retrieval process, slow retrieval of the seine, moving into the water behind the seine as soon as it is safe to do so, lifting the webbing as the center bag approaches the shore, removing kings as soon as possible with minimal handling.

The concept of the set beach seine was to prove that this gear type could be a viable alternative gear to harvest sockeye salmon while releasing king salmon alive. Testing of the set beach seine project in Upper Cook Inlet was a success. We harvested approximately 15,300 sockeye, 58 pink, and 15 coho salmon. We encountered 13 king salmon, with one being over 34 inches. All king salmon were released alive and in good condition.

We tested three different locations, two on North Kalafonski Beach and one on Salamanoff Beach. We encourage other fishermen to be involved and give input.

We would like to thank our crew the Every and Hudkins crews, and our observer Robert Bagich. We'd also like to thank Commissioner Vincent Lang and his staff for their support on this project.

Madam Chair, at this time I'd like to cede the floor to our observer Robert Bagich. We found another way to help GCI customers go faster. Technically. Introducing GCI's 10,000 miles per hour giveaway. With 10,000 Alaska Airlines miles to be won every hour.

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Yep, there we go. Okay, here we go. Madam Chair, at this time I'd like to cede the floor to observer Robert Bagich to cover the data he compiled. This information is found in the report titled Experimental Set Beach Seine Fishery Report Summary, which is RC4, and I would like to point out that this presentation was submitted under as RC5. With that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Paget.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the board. I'm Robert Paget. As Brian said, I was the observer and collected the data and authored the report. This is Table 1 from the experimental beach seines fishery report, and I'd like to summarize the information provided in the table and point out information to help better understand the summary. Beginning with the date, the date header, The beach sand was fished June 30th, July 1st, July 2nd, July 4th at the Gabriel site located in the North Key Beach section south of the Kenai River mouth.

July 6th, as Brian mentioned, it did not fish due to weather. July 9th, the fishing operation moved to the Every site.

Also in the North Key Beach section south of the Kenai River mouth. Based on fishing results through July 9th, a new seine was constructed and fished July 13th and was fished all the remaining days. On July 21st, the seine was tested at the Hudkins site located at the— in the Salamanoff section north of the Kenai River mouth. Based on results, the seine was also fished on the 23rd at the Hudkins site. During July 25th and July 27th, the seine was fished in a split-shift fashion at both the Hudkins and Every site, where either the flood or ebb tide was at one location and the gear and equipment moved to the other location to fish a different tide stage.

The column header Open Period refers to whether or not the dates fished were open to commercial dipnet fishing. A no on June 30th, July July 21st indicates all fish captured were released as stipulated by the permit, whereas a yes indicates cost recovery occurred and salmon permitted to be harvested were retained. For the remainder of the table, the information is summarized each day fished. We have location, next are the number of sets conducted each day, followed by the catch of salmon species for all salmon encountered, sockeye, pink, coho, both small king and large king. At the bottom of the table, you see the totals for the number of sets conducted for the entire fishery as well as the total number of salmon captured by species, harvested and released for all beach seining activities.

A total of 15,425 sockeye were encountered, of which 15,294 were retained. Total of 12 small king salmon and 1 large king salmon were encountered and released live. Moving on to the top of the table header, hold time defines the daily total amount of time in hours and minutes the seine was held in a stationary position after being deployed prior to the start of the net retrieval. For example, on July 9th—.

Top one. Just below that one. Okay, sir.

On July 9th, the hold time was 3 hours and 10 minutes, which is equivalent to, uh, 29.39% of the 12-hour fishing period. The final two columns summarize the active net time, which is defined as the amount of time in hours and minutes from the end of the hold time until the corks of the free end of the seine got to the beach. Going back to July 9th, you can see that the total active net time was 43 minutes, which is equal to 5 point— 97% of the total fishing period. All this data is further summarized in the written report for each date, location, as well as by date, location, and tide stage. In addition, Appendix A of the report contains data for each set conducted under the all permit activities, which include weather, tide stage, salmon encountered, and 5 timestamps for each set.

Next slide.

Similar information is also summarized in the report for the Hollier permit, which is also in the North K Beach section. For the Hollier permit, the beach seine net was converted to the maximum length allowed by permit after, after the first couple of days fishing. A total of 3 small king salmon were encountered and released alive at the Hollier site, and 31 coho salmon were encountered, all of which were released alive. Next slide.

Back to Table 1 to provide a brief summary of the king salmon encountered during fishing under the Gabriel permit. King salmon were identifiable while the net was in the water and each fish was able to be measured briefly by placing a straight stick along the fish while it was in the water with length measures of interest on the stick.

These measures of straight line interest were 34 inches, 20 inches, and 16 inches. One king salmon was estimated to be over 34 inches or greater in total length. Three king salmon were 20 inches or greater but less than 34 inches in total length, including one hatchery fish. Six were greater than 16 inches but less than 20 inches in total length, and three were less than 16 inches in total length. Salmon harvest by species was 15,294 sockeye, 58 pink salmon, and 15 coho salmon.

And finally, the king salmon to sockeye salmon encounter or contact ratio was 0.085%. Or rounding up, it's 9/10,000 of a king salmon of any size encountered to each sockeye salmon. Harvested. That concludes my part of the presentation.

Thank you, Robert. I wanted to just provide a little bit of context on the amount of fishing time. As I stated earlier, we have this— in order to operate the seine, you need current and you need water depth. And we have quite, quite a bit of tide differential. And, you know, that varies by day.

But what I wanted to point out here is you look at this highlighted time here, and I took out the days that we were really struggling and kind of started with July 9th where we were kind of hitting our stride. And when you add up the whole time and the active net time, which is essentially the amount of time that the seine is actually fishing, we came up with 53 hours and 12 minutes. Now, those were 12 days fished times 12 hours a day. That's 144 hours. So the able— the out of 12 days of fishing, we were able to fish about 37% of that time because once you run out of water on the beach, you're pretty— you're just sort of done until that tide goes all the way back out and comes back in.

You can almost discern from the number of sets we made and the amount of time we got, like around July 30th, you'll see that we were at about 55% total fishing time. That was, I think, one of the highest days we had, but the tide differential would have been very minimal there. That's what would have allowed us to have that amount of fishing time.

This is our last slide, real quick. So we, you know, we we sort of wanted to get an idea, or we asked ourselves, what are questions that the board members would need to have answered to move this from regulate, or from test fishery into regulation? So we came up with 6 questions. I'm sure you might have more than that. But the first one was, could existing infrastructure hold a 600-foot seine without breaking or damaging?

We did do that with the day we load tested was a 600-foot seine. As Robert mentioned, we built a new seine, and that's what we fished for most of the season. That seine was 420 feet or 70 fathoms, and it was— the original seine we started was 215 mesh deep, which is about 60 feet compared to 30 feet for the one we built. Number 2, could existing infrastructure equipment be easily transitioned and easily and affordably transitioned from setnet to beach set seines. We found that to be true because you can literally swap out your beach seine to a gillnet within minutes.

You know, you just pull this— you, if you were going to, you know, like pit stop it, you could pull up the beach seine and literally have a gillnet ready to go and have it set very quickly. Our cost to build the new seine, we didn't have time to hang it, so we had Bulletproof Nets hang that down in Homer. Which was about $6,600. But out of that, all but $2,000 was labor. So if we would have decided to hang it ourselves, that would have been about a $2,000 bill.

Number 3, could enough sockeye be harvested to be economically viable? We found that yes, we could, as long as you— it's like anything. If you're— if you get the fishing time to prosecute and to harvest fish, then, then yes. The other benefit that we, we added to this is these fish are really good high-quality fish because they simply go from the water right into a tote. And so there's hopefully some added value to that.

Number 4, could a set beach seine be adapted to different beaches? Yes, we tested in 3 sites. And what I would say that there's a little caveat there, this little nuance, but because we did find that when we went to Salamanca, their beach was a little bit different and we realized that each beach would probably be having a different type of— not really type of seine, but different in the fact that it might be shorter, less depth, and probably less weighted lead line to facilitate movement. There's some areas where you don't— we use 4-pound leads. Those were two set gillnets that we stripped out, had that we took.

Down to bulletproof nets. And there's probably a lot of sites that don't need that amount of weight in there, so would hang their— hang their seines with less weight. 5, Could a beach seine be utilized within existing lease and traditional fish locations? Yes, we found that we could stay on our lease. In cases where people may not have the room that they need, that they would probably just need to go to a little bit shorter saying to be able to fit that on their lease.

And number 6, the big question is, could we successfully harvest sockeye and release salmon that were alive? And yes, we could do that. So with that, I will— we will stand for questions. Thank you for the presentation. Board questions?

Mr. Swenson.

Hi, Brian. I liked your presentation. So you would be also releasing the Silvers as well as the Kings, is that correct? Through the chair, Board Member Swenson. Yes.

So we have proposal 313 where we will be dropping our C language, substitute language for that. That would include an August component that would have us releasing silver salmon, correct? Another question I have is, how many people do you think would be wanting to do this beach seining? Do you have any idea of that? Which I know that's a tough question.

Through the chair, Board Member Svenson, we, we war-gamed this, and that's an excellent question because it's an answer we wanted to know because we knew everybody else would want to know that. And What we've hoped is that people, if this is allowed, that if they're unsure or unwilling to do it, they combine resources. That worked out very— with other sites, that worked out extremely well for us. I think that was honestly why this was successful, because of the outreach we had. That being said, we're thinking that you would be looking at probably about 45 to 50 scenes from Nenilchik to Boulder Point.

And one other question I had. So the— how much time when you have a gillnet in the water versus the seine, how much time differential is it? Gillnet, I'm assuming, is in the water quite a bit longer than the beach seine is. Is that correct? Through the chair, Board Member Svenson.

Yes. So we fish on our operation. We have 4 beach nets, but we have 5 offshore nets. On any given day that we had a fully prosecuted gillnet fishery, we would be fishing all of our nets. Once our beach nets went dry, which they would do in certain days or tides, like we say with the beach, we're still fishing 5 nets throughout the day.

And those would fish from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. normally, if that was the opening. And that's typical of, of all the operations on the east side. So you—. So your gillnets would be in the water a lot longer than your seine nets are going to be in. Through the chair, 100%, yes.

Okay. Thank you. Mr. Carpenter, then Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you. Thank you for the present— excuse me.

Thank you for the presentation. The one question I have is, so you guys tested this on your beach, and I know Mr. Hollier also had a commissioner's permit to test at his beach. Can you tell me the differences between the gear types that both of you used? Yes, through the chair, Board Member Carpenter, our permit allowed us to go fish up to a 600-foot seine. That seine we started out with, we didn't know what we were doing.

We started and we got a seine from my brother who was seining in Prince William Sound. That was why it was a deeper, heavier seine. And, you know, we had to sort of adapt on the run there. Mr. Hollier's permit, I think, had him starting out with a 200-foot seine, which he fished I think for 3.5 days, and then he switched to a 300-foot, which was a maximum for him, which would be 50 fathoms and 100 mesh deep, which is the same depth. I think he used a little bit— he hung his, his own seine, and I think if I remember right, looking at what he had supplied as written testimony, that he think— I think he spent like $1,200 to hang that, and it was a little bit different mesh.

We went with a heavier chafing for the 50 fathom or 50 mesh, excuse me, on the bottom of the net and then a 23 weight seine web on the top half. So, and on those notes, what we would be asking for in substitute RC language, I guess I won't get into that, Madam Chair. I guess I'll address the RC language. Yeah, I think that's generally what I was looking for. And I, I'll look at those numbers that you presented during your report a little closer because I think that, you know, comparing the harvest levels that you might have achieved using the same that you used versus what he did, you know, will be a little bit different.

And so I'll take a look at that a little bit closer. The other question that I had was you talked about the fact that the current really needed to be running, either ebbing or flooding, to billow the seine because you kind of have some restrictions as to how you can control the shape. You know, it's very different than seining off of a vessel. So in practical terms, would you base— would you say that at high water slack and at low water it's practically not a function of the beach seine to be effective?

Through the chair, board member Carpenter, just to touch briefly on your first part, the side-by-side data on Sakai, my wife has that already. We can submit that as an RC for you. And yes, you're absolutely right. You can— once you get to high tide, the net's static. And once you get to a point where you've lost the water depth as it falls off the beach, it becomes static.

We did actually try to get out there and pull the seine over using our people. It just doesn't work. Now, um, yeah, that's the, the components that you need to make that work are just current and water depth. So once you run out of those, and certainly at high water when we had the net out there and we had all that water depth but no current, it's even as the tide swinging, it's sort of, it's just static. So It's like a chain-link fence out there is actually what it is.

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Zarek. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Gabriel, I know we had discussions previously and you've answered a lot of my questions. I'm very excited about this. But one of the questions I had watching the video is how long were I guess I'm trying to calculate the time that the fish are kind of held.

How long does it take to pull that seine in at the speeds you go in?

Through the chair, Board Member Chamberlain, we could, we could glean that from the data because that active net time is that is an hour is the time that takes from you pulling the net outside buoy in 'til the time it contacts the beach. So we could derive some averages out of that. I'm not sure, but it's not more— I guess I could defer to Mr. Baggett, but not more than 4. Through the chair, Mr. Chamberlain. Yeah, we've— 3 to 4 minutes was a pretty regular active net time from the time the hold ended until the Cork got on the beach.

And then something that's not summarized in the table I showed you but is in the report, we have start time of the net deployment, hold time, start and stop of the hold time, active net time, and then we have last fish out as well in the report. So that's— and it's just a few— it's just a couple minutes. Thank you. Looks like I have a lot of reading to do. Mr. Zarey.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, just a— I was just curious, the— when you say like a seine net, do you mean— is it— is there a standard mesh size of that seine? I know it's not a gill net, but I, you know, is there— is everybody— would everybody be using the same size mesh? What is that mesh? Through the chair, board members, right?

Yes, 3.5-inch maximum throughout the whole body of the seine, including any shaping or border strip that you would have. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that was just curious on that. Yeah, thank you. I got a couple of questions.

So thank you for the video. It was really neat to be able to sort of see that in action. It looked like you had a beautiful day to do that too. Are you able to sort of adjust the hook with the tractor while you're, while you're holding? Madam Chair, yes, that, that is a little bit tide dependent.

Um, when you, when you saw what we had, the hook that we had in there, as I mentioned in there, it's close to, it's fairly close to high slack, so the tide has diminished somewhat. If you're setting in a mid-tide, that would be more, that, that would be more straight out, and you, you really can't manipulate that outside.

Buoy, you know, when you pull that net in, it wants to weather vane with the tide. So it pretty much stays straight until it comes back to the beach. But as the tide slackens, yes, you can start manipulating the shape of better. That's kind of interesting. And then what was your sort of average— and I'm sure this is in the report— but your average hold time with that hook, if you're able to achieve one?

So the times were, you know, from the time the buoy was finished being deployed. And we ran— what we found is when we had higher concentrations of fish, far less hold time. You know, we were cycling it. And you'll see that if you look in the data on the number of sets per day, that you can kind of dial in on that number and see sort of how quickly we were turning it over. But we averaged— our hold times was from 4 to 15 minutes, with our average being about 10 minutes.

[Speaker:COMMISSIONER ARKOOSH] And then, noticing the beautiful day that you had that day, and I appreciate the notation of wind and weather and tide conditions in your report. How did that work in inclement weather where you had winds and, you know, beach swell and breakers? And related to that, did or how did that affect your ability to successfully release non-sockeye?

Madam Chair, we did on the 4th of July. We had— it was a fish day and it was very nautical. And that was the day we— it was kind of even marginal for gillnetting, to be honest with you, in the surf. Like if you had a gillnet in that surf, you know, you'd be getting pounded pretty hard if you were picking that. But like I said, we wanted to load test it.

As you saw in the video, you see where we have observers that are walking the length of the seine as they get in position on 5-foot rollers. That, that is a safety issue. I think you're going to find where we only caught on that day, I think we caught 9. It was a very quick set. We pulled it out there, we pulled it in.

We had 9 sockeye, no, no kings. And there was a little bit of a wash that was going up onto the beach, which I think would affect what you're talking about. So, you know, for those reasons, if you, you know, that's a decision you obviously would— I would want— wouldn't hope that people would be out there, you know, doing this when there's 5-foot rollers. Although we did have days where we had, you know, a couple foot and we were able to manage that, you know. So again, on the 6th of July, we just didn't fish at all because it was too rough.

Did, you know, when you had those rollers and even not necessarily on the worst day, but did you have trouble releasing? Was it as easy as it looked or as clean as it looked in the video that you showed? And do you have video in those inclement days? So that's a good question. And what I have to kind of preface this by saying that we made, we made 249 sets and encountered 13 kings.

So if It was very low incident rate of interaction. So it wasn't like we had— we tried to grab phones and videotape because we wanted to see that and how that would work. I can tell you this, that the smaller the kings, it's a little bit tougher. Like you said, we had ones under 20 inches, but we were able to identify those while they're in the water. There's just, you know, long enough fisherman experience, you can pick your eye like a silver or whatever.

But I will tell you this, that one 36-inch king we had, everybody was yelling king, even the people up on the— by the vehicles that were unhooking. That was— those were very evident. So the bigger the king, the further out you're going to see that king out in the water. I mean, they're— they stand out like a sore thumb. And the other ones we caught that were around 30 inches were easily spotted and released.

But my question is not necessarily whether you can identify them, but are they— I mean, what is the impact on them when you're trying to release and that kind of thing? You know, you're pulling them out under the corks, kind of out of that bag a little bit. They're in relatively shallow water and out of the water in some cases. I mean, I'm just kind of curious if we're entertaining the idea or the discussion about multiple, you know, sets and permit holders being able to utilize this gear. And we've got the king conditions that we do.

These are some of the reasons that I'm asking this question is because that's something that the board— certainly I want to consider carefully. Certainly. And Madam Chair, what I'd just like to— how I can answer that is to say that, you know, when you— when you encounter the king, once you— everybody stopped and we even talked about even going with an air horn or something like that, you could even add to the mix. And the key is that everybody understands exactly what they need to do when that happens. And in that case, we identify to stop and back up the cork line so you could pull that back and then push the corks down and roll the king over.

So we didn't have any, I would say, difficulty in releasing the kings once they were spotted. Great. That's super helpful. Mr. Bagish. Yeah, Madam Chair, one of the— one piece of information I wanted to try to collect was the number of fish that we lost.

After the corks got to the beach. But it's difficult because you do lose fish over the corks or when you pull them up on the beach. And in the chop weather, that happens even more so. So it's— the effectiveness of capture diminishes pretty steeply when you have the inclement weather, the nautical weather that Brian was talking about. But as far as the chinook goes, the large ones, the large fish we did see stuck out like a bull in a china shop, and the other ones weren't a problem.

And I think that based on how we prosecuted the fishery, I don't think if we had encountered more kings during rough weather, I think we would have had the same result and got them up real easily. Thank you. Any other board questions? Mr. Swenson. So, Brian, how much more difficult is it going to be to release the silvers?

Through—. Or is it more difficult? Through the chair, board members, Benson, you know, I would defer probably to Gary Hollier. His crew did release every silver. We didn't.

We weren't required to. I don't think he was required to as well on his permit. I think we just kind of honestly didn't really think about it much. But now that you said that, I mean, I don't— it wouldn't have been a problem as you— if you've seen a silver next to a red, I mean, there's a difference that your eye can pick out pretty quickly. And that's the whole point of this is saying, okay, once you get to that point where you can start seeing these fish and stopping if you had to, like what I would do is actually, you know, spend a little bit more time if we were encountering large numbers of sockeye or I'm sorry, Koho, that you would actually stop and back up and you could screen then as well.

Okay, thank you.

All right, thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you for your initiative and all the work that you and your crews and the folks that worked with you undertook this last summer to start fleshing this out. So greatly appreciated and looking forward to continuing the conversation this week. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks.

Let's take about a 10-minute break and we'll come back on the record at about 3:20, and we will begin with traditional knowledge reports.

[Speaker:COMMISSIONER ARKOOSH] All right, everyone. Welcome back. The time is 3:30, and we are going to go ahead and transition into our traditional knowledge report section and also following that, public testimony. We have a relatively new agenda item in the board's process, which is the traditional knowledge report, which is the inclusion of those reports from members of the public. The board recognized that local knowledge and traditional knowledge is an important aspect of best available science, and as such, access to these knowledge systems should be an important part of informing the board's decisions through their close proximity and intimate, often longstanding relationships with fish resources, the environment, and the ecological systems that are critical to fishery sustainability.

The board has endeavored to incorporate traditional knowledge more intentionally into its process by seeking and inviting traditional knowledge holders recognized by their community, tribe, or other organization to share their experiences, values, alternative and/or independent observations and data collections directly with the board. For the purposes of this meeting, the invitation has been made through a new agenda item, and the board provided the opportunity to, to sign up to provide traditional knowledge relevant to the proposals and subject matter under consideration at this meeting. The time allowance is 10 minutes, and the board through its process committee also welcomes feedback on this approach and suggestions for how it might be improved for future regulatory board meetings. So this was something that was piloted and sort of started last year. We are fully incorporating traditional knowledge reports into our process for this meeting cycle, but as As mentioned, I'm interested in hearing feedback and input from the public about what is working, what is not working, and how this might be— how this section might be improved upon, because I do believe that it has provided some valuable insights and context in the meetings in which it has occurred.

So we have one individual that has signed up. To provide traditional knowledge report, and that individual is Mr. Evan Evans with the Native Village of Nonwalak and Chugach Regional Resources Commission. Evan, welcome. You can go ahead and come on up to the table.

When you're ready, please turn the mic on, introduce yourself, and begin. Welcome.

Hello, Madam Chair and Board of Fish. My name is Evan Evans and my Aleutic name is Awakum, after my great-grandfather. I'm a tribal member from the native village of Ninwalek and I come from a long, proud line of hunters, gatherers, and fishermen, both subsistence and commercial.

I myself am a subsistence hunter and fisherman providing subsistence-caught foods for much of my community. Today, today I am here to talk to you about the traditional use of Dungeness crab in the Lower Cook Inlet area, more specifically in the area of Nanwalek and Port Graham, also known as Balluik.

Historically, Dungeness crab has been a staple food source for my people and was harvested year-round from the lagoons, bays, and reefs up and down the coast. This knowledge has been passed down through to me through a plethora of stories from my ancestors and elders, from, from observations from community members in the past 15 years. The crab have been returning to our lagoons and bays. They are commonly seen in abundance on the bottom floor, oftentimes being caught incidentally in different gear types, mainly in salmon gillnets, but also purse seines, Tanner crab pots, and even eating the bait off our subsistence halibut skates.

We also catch a lot of halibut with Dungeness crab in their stomachs. Our tribe has increased— our tribe has increased harvest and management of the sea otter population in our region, and we believe this will dramatically increase the stocks of Dungeness crab. We often observe Dungeness crab being eaten by the otters, and so do neighboring community members in the region who report— in the region who report that Cordova sea otters can eat as much as 6 crab an hour. After visiting other communities, like comparatively in Chignik and the South Peninsula area, where sea otters are not as prevalent, They have a much wider variety of subsistence foods at a much higher density.

We also have seen an increased number of harbor seals and steller sea lions coming into our lagoon and then waluk, eating the Dungeness crab, which previously was very, very rare to see.

For over 25 years, my people, due to regulatory closures, have been unable to partake in the harvest of Dungeness crab, a once staple food source to our people.

Like I said before, in the past 15 years with larger pink salmon returns, we have seen an increased— increasing number of crab coming into the lagoons and bays, and my people are excited to see this as a potential to responsibly harvest this food source we had once relied on.

We had relied on traditionally for food security once again, both villages of Nanwalek and Port Graham. And from my own observations, all local residents rely largely on subsistence-gathered foods, and to have Dungeness crab to be harvested once again would be tremendous help for many families for food.

Uh, that's all I had for that.

Okay. Thank you for your report. Are there any board questions? Mr. Wood? Yeah.

Thank you, Evan. Could you explain a little bit more about that, seeing more crab coming into the lagoons and stuff and how that relates to the pink salmon? I didn't totally get that. But could you explain that a little more? Yeah.

On the larger years, we have more pink salmon. We're noticing more crab coming into the lagoon. Like, you just see them on the bottom of the lagoons and the bays. And going on the skiff, look down, like, When I was a kid, we used to— we'd never see any of that. We'd never see any crab.

Thank you. Yeah, I imagine there's more for him to eat. Yeah. Any other questions? Mr. Carpenter.

Thank you. Thank you for being here today. I just have a— I have a question for you, but I can save it until later. Are you going to be here for the rest of the meeting for public testimony or Are not? Yes, I'm going to be.

Okay. I'll ask you the question then. Thank you. Okay.

Mr. Ziray. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'd just like to— I'd like to talk to you too. Alrighty.

All right. I don't see any more questions. Evan, thank you for your report today. Appreciate your being here. Thank you so much for your time.

Appreciate you. Okay, let's go ahead and shift gears to public testimony. And I've got an initial list here that we'll start working off of. But a little bit of information on public testimony. When your name is called, please come forward to the microphone and state your name for the record and whom you represent.

If you have written materials for the board, please identify those materials by RC, PC, or AC number. Um, I will go ahead and provide the board members an opportunity to get that paperwork before them, uh, so that they can follow along with your testimony, and that time will not be charged to the person or AC representative who is testifying. As I mentioned this morning, the public will be given 3 minutes to testify. Advisory committee and regional advisory council representatives will each be given 10 minutes. When you begin your testimony, the executive director will give you a couple moments to introduce yourself before starting the timer.

When your time is up, you will hear a beep. Please stop talking when the timer goes up, or I will instruct you to stop. When you're finished, please remain seated so the board members can ask you any questions if they have some. We ask that you confine your oral testimony to the subjects under consideration in as concise and direct a manner as possible. It is the intent.

—Of the board to deal with the merits of the proposals based on the general principles used by the board. The board does not deal in personalities. Thus, public testifiers will be admonished and asked not to refer by name to any person, any staff member, or any board member. Advisory committee and regional advisory council representatives should also fill out a blue card and indicate whether or not they will testify at the beginning or at the end of public testimony. Please note on the card which advisory committee you are representing and be prepared to describe the general membership of your committee.

Confine your testimony to the position the committee took on the proposals or issues and give minority opinions of the committee if there were any. If you wish to provide your own personal public testimony, please fill out a separate blue card and submit that to board staff. If your name is called and you are not present to testify, a second call will be made. If you miss both your first and second calls, you will not be able to testify at the meeting. If your first call happens in an afternoon session, your second call will occur at either the end of the testimony list or the beginning of the next day's morning session, whichever comes first.

And I will do my best to make regular announcements about those second call opportunities. So hopefully people will be able to provide their testimony if they wish to do so. I think that's probably it at this time. We've got a handful signed up already. And the first person on my list this afternoon is Mr. Ernie Weiss with the Anchorage AC.

Hi, Ernie. Welcome. And these lists are posted on the doors. I'll also just note that the public testimony lists that we have thus far are posted on the door, so you can check to see where your name is at and where we're at in our progression. Welcome, Mr. Weiss.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, my name is Ernie Weiss. I'm here representing the Anchor JC. I've been a member of the Anchor JC going on 11 years. I'm also a member of the AC's fish subcommittee.

We have 15 members. There are no designated seats on our, on our AC, but we have a diverse group of user groups from subsistence— for fisheries subsistence, personal, sport, commercial processors. For game, we have a lot of hunters and we also have non-consumptive users for hunt. I, to the best of my knowledge, everybody on the, on the AC eats fish, so we don't have any non-consumptive fish members. We meet generally once a month from October to April, first or second Tuesday at the hatchery, William J. Hernandez Hatchery.

You have in front of you AC01, which is our minutes from February 4th. And that's when we addressed the shellfish statewide shellfish proposals. Our process generally is the fish subcommittee will take up the proposals, and we did that on January 29th. And if there are unanimous votes, we'll take those to the, to the AC, and the AC will either accept all the unanimous votes or they can pull some for recognition. So we, we, the AC as a whole supported 9 proposals that are in the packet.

We opposed 12 and we took no action on 33 of the proposals you'll see today. So most of them were unanimous. I was going to just touch on the ones where we had divided votes, and I can certainly answer questions on any of those, if that's okay. Thank you, Madam Chair. So proposal— these are the ones that are divided.

Proposal 265 to establish season, bag possession, annual and size limits and methods and means for Dungeness crab and Cook Inlet, Resurrection Bay. We voted to support. That vote was 6 to 5. We only had 11 members at the February 4th meeting.

The people who supported it thought it was a reasonable proposal and the season length and limit. The— those opposed didn't like it because there was no data provided, although when the staff comments come out, they do provide data and no reporting mechanism. And they thought that a survey showing the number of crab would be helpful. And that was Proposal 265. Proposal 266, that would allow additional gear types like loop traps and floatable nets in the personal use crab fishery.

The AC supported 266 by a vote of 9 to 2, and the most of the majority of the members thought allowing alternative gear types would be reasonable for the personal use fishery. And the people opposed thought that those would need definitions. And I think the staff said they would provide definitions and more clarity was needed on the areas implications of using— allowing new gear types. And then finally, the divided vote was on Proposal 313, which has the majority of our comments in the, in the packet, and that is to add set beach seining nets as legal gear under the Kenai River Late Run King Salmon Stock of Concern Management Plan. This was a unanimous vote.

And then we had a member of the public come and talk to us about it who had some knowledge about it. And so the AC ended up opposing 313 by a vote of 4 to 7. The— I think to a person, all of the members are looking to find ways for the east side setnet fishery fishermen to come back and be able to participate. The— those opposed I thought that more testing was needed and maybe a more incremental approach would be helpful, allowing limited users at first and then, and then before coming into a full-fledged availability of beach seines for that fishery. And then maybe one other one I was going to mention.

You know, when we generally when we discuss proposals, we don't have the advantage of having staff comments. And so we had one proposal that we disagreed with the staff on. That was proposal 305, which would prohibit non-commercial shrimp users from carrying additional shrimp gear beyond what's legal to use, as in the commercial fishery. And the AC supported it. Staff was opposed.

We thought that it was a reasonable proposal that would alleviate uncertainty and prevent abuse. And the staff said that there is no conservation issue and it might be challenging for enforcement. And speaking of staff, really great to have Layla Williams helping us at all of our meetings and posting our meetings. And for this particular meeting, Brittany Blaine was very helpful. That's my report.

I can answer any other questions that you may have. Thank you, Mr. Weiss. Any board questions? I'm just kind of curious. I haven't reviewed the AC minutes thoroughly yet, and I hope to do so in the next couple days, but what was the initial unanimous vote on 313?

On 315? 313. 313. So we came— the FISH subcommittee had unanimous opposed, I believe. Yeah, we unanimously opposed.

And then we had a person who was actually in the public here who had some knowledge about it and talked to us about it. And it was quite a long discussion. And it seemed like there was some on it. The cost of getting into the fishery was, was a problem, especially paying for the observer and etc. But again, a lot of everybody wanted to be able to let that fishery come back.

And if beach seine was the way, then maybe that was it. Thank you for that. Any other questions? Appreciate your testimony. Thank you for the service on your— thank you.

On the AC.

Next up is Madeline Lee.

Welcome, Madeline.

Hello, Madam Chair and board members. My name is Madeline Lee. I'm the tribal fish biologist for the Chugach Regional Resources Commission, or CERC, an intertribal organization serving 7 tribes in the Chugach region. Today we have over 1,500 tribal members living in Cheney, Eyak, Nanwalek, Port Graham, Seward, Tuttilik, and Valdez. I am testifying on behalf of CERC to support proposal 263 to reopen the Cook Inlet subsistence Dungeness crab fishery.

I also received a letter of support this morning from Port Graham, and they— I did submit that as an RC. A tribal member in Port Graham reported that in her entire life of living there, she has never subsisted off of Dungeness crab. I think this is really important to note because it is such an important part of the way of life there. As remote Alaska Native communities off the road system, subsistence is not just a way of life, but it is also essential for food security, culture, economy, and tradition. Dungeness crab have always been a valued resource, and our communities seek the opportunity to responsibly harvest it once again.

The last official surveys on Dungeness crab populations in Lower Cook Inlet were conducted in 2009, and closures remain in place due to a lack of data. However, community members.

Nanwalek have reported increased sightings of Dungeness crab, signaling potential changes in population trends. Nanwalek is also participating in monitoring for invasive European green crab with the Kachemak Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in English Bay. In 2024 trapping efforts, observers found an increase in mature Dungeness crab compared to their last trapping effort in 2011. We propose changes to our originally submitted proposal based on the high number of observations of mature Dungeness Dungeness crab in Nanwalek, local knowledge interviews in Nanwalek and Port Graham confirming customary and traditional use of the resource. The recently passed Dungeness crab regulations from the Prince William Sound Board of Fish and the current subsistence regulations for Dungeness crab in Kodiak.

We urge the board to pass Proposal 263 with the following changes. One, Dungeness crab may be harvested year-round. Two, only male Dungeness crab 6.5 inches or greater, uh, may be taken or possessed. 3, The daily bag and possession limit is 12 male Dungeness crab. And 4, no more than 1 pot or ring net per person with a max of 3 pots or ring nets per vessel may be used to take Dungeness crab.

This will allow our communities the opportunity to exercise subsistence priority while contributing to the understanding and management of Cook Inlet's Dungeness crab populations. Thank you for taking the time and consideration. Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you.

So you said you submitted an RC, I guess specifying the changes that you just talked about.

How come— I mean, they seem substantially different than what the original proposal was. Can you give me an idea why your organization has decided to make these changes? Versus what they wrote initially in the proposal? Yeah. So when I wrote the proposal back in April, I didn't have as much time to go to Nanwalek and have community interviews about what they were seeing, especially this last summer with the trapping efforts.

They, you know, were getting traps, you know, they were getting Dungeness crab accidentally when looking for invasive European green crab. And then seeing what passed in Prince William Sound, it seems like we should reflect the same regulations. And I think also just wanting to, you know, work with the community and over these conversations realizing what I had initially written was too conservative. Okay. I was just curious.

Thank you.

Little off topic, but have there been incidents of observations of European green crab in the area? There haven't been any? No. They do have a very extensive monitoring effort in Kachemak Bay where they do trappings throughout the year, and they haven't detected it yet. But yeah.

And also, I just wanted to note that we haven't submitted an RC with these proposed changes, but we would like to work with Chairwoman to work with that. Okay. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks. Please do.

And will you be here for committee of a whole to talk to this as well? And then maybe those changes. Thanks. Thank you.

I will just say just quickly that it'll be helpful if you are— see, maybe those, those 4 points, I think it was a handful of points that you made, just that we can get the conversation rolling. Be helpful. Thank you.

All right, next is Evan Evans. Welcome back to the mic, sir.

Hello, Board of Fish. Long time no see. Jumai, hello.

Like I said, my name is Evan Evans and my Lutik name is Awakum. I'm a tribal member of the village of Nanwalek. And as I've said in my traditional knowledge testimony, we are seeing higher returns of Dungeness crab in my region. Dungeness crab are an important part of our traditional diet and we are wanting the opportunity to harvest them. Today I am here testifying on behalf of my people in support of proposal 263 to reopen the subsistence Dungeness crab fishery in Cook Inlet.

We support the following changes to 263: to have a year-round season for subsistence harvest, which is the time frame that we've traditionally harvested; to increase the size to 6.5 inches; to increase the bag limit to 12 per day; to have no more than 1 pot per person with a max of 3 pots per boat.

Please see these changes outlined in the RC we are working to submit to be able to bring this back to my community. The Native Village of Nenwalik and the neighboring village of Port Graham would be incredibly beneficiary to all of us.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Mr. Carpenter has a question. Thank you, Evan. Um, about how many people live in Nanwallet year-round?

Uh, I'd say about 250 to 300. And is Port Graham similar? Yeah, about, about 200. About 200. Okay.

And then, um, I understand the changes that you suggested, but the original proposal talks about a 40 crab annual limit. You've suggested a daily bag limit, and the prior testifier also did. So are you, are you also suggesting that the annual limit would go away and it would just only be a daily bag limit?

Yeah, we really don't, honestly don't take that much. Okay, we only take what we need. From the ocean and, you know, since I was a kid I've heard, "Let them grow, let them come back," you know, 'cause I remember being a kid down on the river there seeing Dungenese come in and, like, we would try to grab them and we weren't allowed. The elders all told us, "Let them grow and let them come back. They haven't been here in—" Years and years.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you. Next up is George Wilson Jr. with the Naknek Kwijak AC.

Hi George, welcome.

Hello. Thank you for allowing us— allowing me to speak here. I'm George Wilson Jr. from Naknek. I am the local AC chair out there, and I'd like to talk about Proposal 314, creating the Kweezhak River Special Harvest Area, which we supported as amended with a vote of 6 to 3. The two amendments that we wanted to make were changing the drift to setnet allocation from a 3 to 1 to a 1 to 1.

That passed 9 to 0. We had a lot of discussion on that. And then also making sure that all seaward setnet gear at the end of their period would be removed from the water. And that, that passed as well, 9 to 0.

I don't have a whole lot more unless there's some questions for, for myself and the AC.

Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Have you had a chance to look at the substitute language that's found in RC 17?

I have. And I guess I'm curious what your comments are to what's written in RC-17.

Thank you, through the chair. I don't know, I'd like to digest it a little bit more, but I agree with a lot of the language that's there other than the allocation. I feel like our group as a whole felt like it should be equal access to both user groups.

Okay. Well, yeah, digest that. If you're going to be around for committee the whole week, we can talk more about it when that point comes. And I'd like to get your, you know, I'd like, maybe I'll talk to you a little bit at a break or something as well. So thank you.

Yes, of course.

All right. Would you like to give your personal testimony at this time? Yes. Thank you. Like I said, I'm George Wilson from Naknek.

I grew up fishing out in Bristol Bay.

The— I support this proposal as well. 314 With the amendment that our local ACA has put forth. And I know several of the setnetters up at Graveyard Association.

And Cory and them suggested that, you know, maybe we change the distance between the setnetters. Right now it's written at 150 feet. There's a lot of current up there in that Huijak Special Harvest Area, and that he felt like, you know, there's a lot of potential for gear conflict within the setnetters to change that to 300 feet. And I'd support him and in those efforts as well. And as well change the allocation from 3:1 to 1:1.

But that's all I have to say on that. I'm open for any questions. Any questions for him?

Don't see any. Thank you very much for your testimony today. Appreciate you. Brian Skow.

Hi, Brian. Welcome.

Members of the chair, Brian Scow. The last, uh, board meeting in February of last year, um, you approved, uh, commercial dip netting. It's one of the few people that probably did very well at commercial dip netting. We fished a total of 12 days and I hired over 41 people to do it. Most of them only worked like a week because a couple of them were non-residents, so I only could get a 1-week commercial non-resident commercial fishing license.

And that came to $30 for the week, which is pretty doable. And during this fishing time, I did release all silvers except one. And Mr. Colton of Fish and Game texts me and says, why did I turn that silver in? And I said, I missed it. And ever since then, I had trained my crew to identify all the silvers.

And most of the time we fished in a boat. And they would scoop it in the boat and they'd see the silver tail and put it right back in. And we released all the ones after that point. I'm happy to say that we were able to do that. And on the note with Brian Gabriel, the silvers usually don't come— a lot of silvers don't come until August.

So we were done on July 31st. And we really didn't see a lot of silvers when we were doing this commercial dip netting.

And commercial dip netting, I'd like to see more time because there's a lot of times where there's terrible weather, like Brian Gabriel with the seanetting. You just can't do it. You can't get a boat in the water. The water's too rough. You can't stand on the shore because it's just beating you.

You just can't do it. So one day we just called it and left. Let's see, what else? And one other thing was in the city of Kenai, there's 11 beach leases. I have 2 of them.

And the last Board of Fisheries in February excluded those because I guess it was just an onsite. They didn't know there was— 11 Kenai Beach permits, and then there are— everyone else is a DNR, which is Department of Natural Resources. So maybe— I think Brian Gabriel is going to address that problem in a later meeting, so I'm not going to go on that anymore. And, um, what other— one more thing I'd like to see is, because I could have done better this last summer, but because I only have 3 permits total And now those permits, two of them are in my name because my daughter got divorced and I couldn't depend on her to be there because I have to have that permit holder there to be able to fish. So I would recommend if the board could somehow maybe add one commercial permit with 4 dip nets on it, it would, it would increase the productivity and I'd be able to use 12 nets instead of 8.

And, um, let's see what else. And I would just say that I'd like to invite all the board members to come to my beach. And then, and if they want to come and watch sea netting or dip netting or whatever they want to do, you're welcome to come because, you know, I guess that's it. All the time I have. Is there any questions?

Any questions? Mr. Swenson, just out of curiosity, thanks for coming in and testifying. How many did you dip net? We had 8 dip nets total because I could only have— but the reason why is I would rotate them out. And there was a few that were, like I said, could only fish for a week.

And then they'd either have to buy a whole year's license at $285 instead of $30. So I would just, OK, you got a week and you're done. And I'd get somebody else to do. But the whole season was really short because the fish don't show up in Kenai until after July 8th. And we were done July 31st.

And I know in Kasilof, they go to August 8th, personal use dip net fishery. But that's why I would recommend a lot of times in past experience in August, we catch a lot of fish that first week of August when I used to do gill netting on my beach. And so there's still a lot of fish around in August. The way I see it is in the commercial dipnetting, we're releasing all the sockeye, I mean the silvers. We never even saw one king in 12 days of fishing.

Never even saw one in the net. Never, not even one. And that goes back to when I used to do commercial gillnetting. The sockeye, I mean the big king salmon, they're not in the shallow areas. They're all getting caught offshore where it's deeper.

And they don't swim with the sockeye. I did that in the last meeting we did in February of last year. And they just don't swim together. And so I'm saying this dipnetting is a good thing because, say, down East Forelands or way down south, people that can't afford to do a seine net, and also when the fishery— so like when the fishery just starts out, say July 8th, In normal time when we used to use gill nets, we would put 7 nets out and barely get half a tote. They're just not there yet in the Kenai area.

They're just not there yet. But around the 17th of July they come in great numbers. And then there was a time we was out there dipnetting and I'm on the Kasilof Beach, I mean the Kenai Beach. But there was a time where we just had a big windstorm and the windstorm pushed all the fish down the inlet. And the very next morning I went down on the beach and the kids stuck a net in and caught 5 at once.

And I said, "Okay." We shut the tractor off. We grabbed all our dip nets, our 8 dip nets for 2 permits, and we ran over to the beach and I said, "Don't even walk in unless you got at least 4 in the net." 'Cause they'd get tired walking in and out. And we had like almost 4 totes that day. But I'm just saying that it's a good way to— keep the numbers down. I know they're expecting 7 million fish next year.

That's what they report they're expecting. And the only way to keep these overscaping sockeye from becoming the most dominant species in the river, you know, you have, you have, you know, the silvers and pinks. I used to go with my family to Eagle Rock every, on the even years, in the first 2 weeks of August, I'd go over to Eagle Rock and I would We would always catch lots of pinks. The last 2 even-number years, we haven't caught one pink there. And they're always there the first 2 weeks of August, mulling around there in Eagle Rock.

But anyways, is there any other questions? I just wanted to know, but thank you for all the information, but I was curious just how many were you able to dip net in the season? Okay.

They don't like me to tell numbers, but I'll tell you. We had 26,000 pounds. The guy next to me, between me and him on Salamantov Beach in the city of Kenai, we had over 80,000 pounds of dip netting. Well, thank you. That's—.

And that's all, Mr. Colton. You can check the records of the PacStar processing because they can see everything that's turned in in the tote. So, okay, well, thank you. Okay, thanks. You want to submit your tax return too?

No, just kidding. Just kidding. Up next is Mr. Charlie Lean with the Norton Sound— Northern Norton Sound AC.

Hi, Charlie. Good to see you.

Yes, I'm Charlie Lean, and I'm really happy to be here. I had a I had several health issues last summer and I'm still walking. So anyway, I'd like to do my AC report first and I would like to— I'm going to reference RC-11 and RC-22 either in my— and so with the AC report, I'll talk to the 3 crab proposals. And then my personal— I'll talk about 5AEC 340 point whatever. Yeah.

Okay. So I'm a former Fish and Game area manager for sport fish, comfish, subsistence, Norton Sound, Kotzebue, and the North Slope.

And then I was 5 years as an OSM fisheries manager in Northwest Alaska.

And more recently I've worked for.

NSCDC, and I'm currently a part-time employee with NSCDC.

So, so I'd like to speak to first to Proposal 272, and that's a proposal to move the opening date of the summer king crab fishery from June 15 to July 1.

And, and this was a— it's passed our AC at 7 in favor, 2 against vote.

Over the years, the opening dates of the Norton Sound fishery have varied quite a lot. August 1st for the first 10 years or so, then July 1st, then kind of back and forth with the CDQ fishery and stuff at June 15. Then we had a period when we were pretty much open by EO from anywhere late June to early July.

And that was because of meat fill that we were worried about, the amount of meat in the crab shell after cooking. And for big game hunters, you can kind of think of that as a post-rut poor condition situation where the male crab have exhausted some of their reserves and aren't, aren't as full in the shell as they could be. Usually it clears up by early July.

And then the last several years it's been, been June 15th as an opener.

So the debate in the, in the AC was we realized that Eastern Norton Sound would be badly affected because the crab move offshore there and they have to travel further and further for the crab if they're going to go commercially fishing. And there was sympathy. We did discuss possibility of a, instead of a 2-week change, a 1-week change, maybe maybe a half measure as a compromise.

Proposal 273.

So we wanted to see the winter season open. Right now it opens in a hard opening February 1st, and we think it should be opened by emergency order. February 1st or later. And again, this has varied from year to year. Back in the late '70s, early '80s, it opened on July 1st, then it, then it opened on November 15th, then it opened February 2nd or February 1st.

So it's bounced around a bit. We've also seen the tail end of the fishery move move 2 weeks up from a May 15 closure to an April 30 closure at the latest. This brings you to RC22. If you look at RC22, it's a map of ice distribution in the Bering Sea, and you can see that it's the warmest or the least ice there is in the Bering Sea this year. So it's getting less and less reliable and more and more tenuous.

And perhaps at the Committee of the Whole or something, I could show you the shorefast ice slivers along the beach. That's really getting kind of scary. And it should be— conservation is the job of the department, and they should be making some decisions sometimes when it's just not right.

That brings me to my personal testimony. I'll go into the harvest strategy, uh, RC, next. And then finally, uh, proposal 274, the changing the legal size from 4¾ to 5 inches. Um, so this proposal got cut in half. You'll see that the title talks about escape mechanisms.

There's no text about escape mechanisms. There's also no text about— or very little about the effects of not having an estimate of what's the practical fishery versus what's the legal fishery.

Norton Sound Seafood Products, the buyer has refused to buy crabs smaller than 5 inches for the past 6 years. Yet the legal limit's a quarter inch smaller. That's about half a year's worth of growth.

That in their comments, you see staff comments say that it will make no difference in 2025 whether it's 4¾ or 5 inches. And that's Absolutely correct. The— it will make a difference, probably in 2027 when we, we expect our next major recruitment. It surely would have made a difference in 2019, 2020 when the board saw fit to close most of Norton Sound because there weren't enough crab to catch to be economic. And so when you have a fishery that's targeting recruits and only recruits, you need to know just exactly how many you got to play with and you need to know when that situation is going to turn around.

And so that was the intent of the proposal. The fact that the plant only kept— keeps 5-inch and larger is— it's already addressed. I mean, the They refuse to buy small crab. So there's very few sold by catchers, sellers at that size because most of us are discriminating enough to know that that's a pretty small crab.

Anyway, I had lots more but I think I got the point across.

So I could take questions then. And perhaps go into my personal testimony next. First, um, questions. Mr. Wood. Thanks, Charlie.

Um, how many years have you fished or crabbed through the ice? I don't know. How many years? How many years? Myself?

Yeah. 1981 To present. In, in all your years of watching what's going on up there, what What do you think accounts for the cycles of lots of crab to no crab, the crash? Would you have different theories? Oh, I do.

So crab are— red king crab are cannibalistic. And so about the best you could hope for is a good recruitment every third year because the quarter-sized crab eat the dime-sized crab when they're small. And so It alternates. Good year, bad year, good year, bad year. And then when you get— when you start missing year 3, if you have a weather event, an overharvest event, or something go haywire, then it stretches out that interval between good recruitments.

And it takes You know, 7 years for a crab to mature. So it's— you have another 4 years or so before they start to senesce from old age.

You can only miss 1 or 2 years and then you start to really feel the effects.

So we've— in Norton Sound, when I first started working as a manager in '81, We were— we statewide were harvesting in 40 and 60% of the legal male biomass in a given year. Norton Sound was no different. We had a couple of 40s and a 60% harvest, and it knocked the socks off the population. And it, you know, then we got it under control. We brought it down to 20%.

Now they fish at 10%, but 20% was a big step in the right direction. Things smoothed out, but then 7 years down the road, we had a crater in the population and it came back. But it was cause and effect, as far as I'm concerned, with the overharvest there. And I think it's happened again more recently. Yeah, last one.

It was mentioned earlier that sea ice and the effects of food and just where the sea ice for snow crab, but are you noticing any effects of the amount of sea ice and crab density?

Yeah. So that's the map I'm trying to show you. But So up into the mid-'90s, Norton Sound had a lot more sea ice— shorefast ice, not pack ice. And shelf ice creates a freshwater lens underneath it. King crab are totally intolerant of freshwater, so it killed the crab if you brought them to the surface, even in July.

We had real problems up until the mid-'90s of fishing eastern Norton Sound. And then the ice started to decline and the freshwater poisoning got less.

And so in effect, Norton Sound saw an increase in habitat because there was more salty water in eastern Norton Sound than there had been. And so for the next 15, 20 years, we did pretty well.

More recently, we've seen some ups and downs, a little more variation in our recruitment. That could well be due to, to less, less plankton that grows in the ice, less ice algae that feeds zooplankton that feeds the clams and worms on the bottom that feed the crab. So there's a strong possibility we're starting to see effects from that, but it's not— I can't hang my hat on it.

Thanks, Charlie. Would you like to begin your personal testimony?

Turn your mic on, please. There you go. Thanks. Again, I'm Charlie Lean. I've lived in Nome more than 50 years.

Before me, my father worked there in World War II. I have a long history as a biologist in Northwest Alaska.

As a child, I worked as a— at 14, I was a deckhand on a crab boat in Juneau for the next— for most of my high school. What I'm talking about is something that I think should be in the reg book and was taken out. So if you look in the older handy-dandies for the last 30 years, from 1990 to about 3 years ago, the last 3 pages of the book were the policy on king and tanner crab resource management. And I've RC'd a copy RC-11 back to you. I think that's a really important nuts and bolts, real, real brief, real succinct, plain English reading of what's expected of king crab managers.

And I think it should remain in the book. And it is a board-generated policy that later transformed into a regulation.

And it's continues to be a regulation in the book. And so, uh, that speaks to sea ice instability and how you should close the season if you think you're going to lose pots. It talks about focusing your harvest on more than one age class, not just one age, not just the recruit age class. Um, it talks about a lot of things. And all of them are pretty valid points.

And a little history about how this policy came to be was, you know, it took about a 5-year, 6-year evolution. But if you remember back in the mid-'80s when king crab were collapsing all over the Gulf of Alaska coast and all the way up the Bering Sea, we were all in a panic, speaking as a manager.

There was a lot of self-criticism and people trying to figure out what went wrong and what could be done better. And this policy was an effort by the board at the time and the crab managers of the day to try to set the record straight so it wouldn't happen again. And so I strongly advise you to put that back in the reg book. And I think it's a— you know, what's the point of having a reg book if you don't know what the regulations are? So anyway, I'm— that's a pet peeve of mine.

Thank you. Thanks, Charlie. Any questions?

Thank you for being here. Appreciate your testimony today. Thanks.

Next up we have Mark Henkel, followed by Susan Doherty and Joseph Person. Is Mark here?

Hi, Mark. Welcome.

Hi, my name is Mark Henkel. My family and I own the fishing vessel Irla N. We participate in the Eastern Golden King Crab Fishery, and my testimony today is in opposition of Proposal 278, which is requesting a pot limit of 2,500 pots for each vessel in the fishery.

It's—. I don't quite understand why the proposer actually requested the pot limit to be in both the eastern and the western golden king crab fishery. There's— they're very different. They're different fisheries. They have different tax and they have very different CPUs.

And the concerns that the proposer brought forth with regard to dead loss and grounds preemption certainly does not apply to us. We're only a regular participant in the EAG. We don't, don't do any of those things. Our CPU is in the high 30s to low 40s each year. Our dead loss is less than half of 1%, and we run 2,800 pots.

So, and those pots, as you might know, are extremely expensive. It's a very expensive fishery to prosecute. They actually cost about $2,500 apiece now. So we're definitely not leaving pots anywhere. We're focused on getting— being as efficient as we possibly can.

The vessel Harvest is going to harvest over 3 million pounds of Eastern golden king crab this year through our collaboration with Norton Sound and SCDC. And we're very focused on, you know, having a very efficient orderly fishery and working together with the other participants in the east. So I would just ask you to, as you're evaluating this proposal, perhaps, you know, perhaps— I don't know if the proposer's points are valid in the west, but they're certainly not valid in the east and completely unnecessary. We've had the highest, some of the highest CPUs in the last couple years as a result of being able to have so many pots on the grounds and managing them effectively. And what that's allowed us to do is have fewer ground contacts over time.

You know, we— if we get a 40 CPU versus a 20, that's half as many pots hitting the bottom. So we need the pots we have. We want to continue using them. And an arbitrary limit that's less than what we're currently using efficiently seems just wrong. Thank you.

Mr. Carpenter, then Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you. I'm going to ask you to speculate a little bit. Do you think that this proposal, the intention of this proposal, is a function of somebody with a smaller boat that can't pack as much gear, has to make more trips to haul gear out, that is worried about getting access to certain golden king crab areas before the bigger boats have, you know, kind of covered the ground? Through the chair.

I, I don't believe so. The proposer also has a very large, beautiful boat that can fish in any conditions. He did a sponson project on his to make it bigger and safer, just like I did to mine in 2022. I think what, what the proposal is, is come about— there have been some conflicts between that boat and one of the other boats in the grounds that fish in the western fishery, and I think that's what came about and For all I know, like adding the east into this proposal may have just been an oversight. Okay, thanks.

Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mark, how long does it take you to cycle through your 2,900 pots or to go through that, to lay them down and pick them up? Through the chair. So our trips typically are 7 days and we're either getting through all the gear, we're getting through all the gear depending on how good fishing is.

In 3 or 4 trips. So, but as I mentioned, you know, our dead loss is less than 0.5% and our fishing grounds are much closer to town. So it's different than the western fishery. So, you know, we've got what I believe is a very efficient, the most efficient kind of fishery plan that we can have out there. And it's going really well.

Thank you. Mr. Wood. So just to clarify, so you've, um, 2,900 pots, you check, you're able to check them all in kind of like a 3-week rotation? Through the chair, yeah, 3 to 4 weeks depending on how, how good fishing is and if there's a lot of weather. So is there conflict with the fact, is that the way most people do it out there with 2,900 pots and they have that same rotation, or is it Is it— are other people thinking that people aren't carrying— checking those pots as often as they should be, so they're just out there taking up space?

Through the chair, I believe that that's one of the concerns of the proposer in.

The WAG fishery, but we participate in the eastern fishery, and that is absolutely, to my knowledge, that's just not the case. We just don't leave gear out.

Last one. Is there a recommendation for like 2,900 pots? Like, if it takes you 3 weeks to get through them, do you have to get through them in 3 weeks, or you're just a really efficient boat and that's the standard amount of time, or can some sit out there for a whole lot longer? Through the chair, they can sit out longer, but we've designed, we've designed our operation and frankly our boat and our gear pile to be as efficient as possible. And this is the kind of the program that we've landed on.

And, you know, we've, we've taken it beyond just trying to be efficient on our own. You know, there was another Eastern Golden King crab boat that Norton Sound owned and operated, and the last 2 years they've collaborated with us and we're chartering the boat to them and all of our gear. So when we're done fishing in October, there's all the gears in the water, there's no rail dumping, they can come in and take over the boat and fish their crab and be done. And it's, it's a very efficient way to prosecute a very expensive fishery. Thank you.

So, um, you mentioned you utilize approximately 2,900 pots. I think the proposal is considering 2,500. What is the time on the Delta? So you're describing the efficiency of your fishery And I'm just trying to figure out what is the practical effect, time and/or otherwise, of that, that loss of the— your ability to fish 400 pots. Through the chair, I believe what would happen if we were limited to 2,500 pots, it would take us longer to prosecute the fishery and our operational costs would go up and there would be a concern potentially that we may not be able to catch it all.

The way we've designed our operation now, we can— we're catching 3 million pounds on one boat over the course of 6, 7 months. So if we were limited arbitrarily because of pot limits, that could limit our ability to have these efficiencies. We might have to go back to adding another boat in because we may not have the time to catch all the crab. Why would 400 pots less require more time to catch? To deal with.

Through the chair, because if you've got fewer, it's just fewer. If there's 40 crab in each pot and you've got 4, call it 400 fewer pots, those rotations, you're not going to get as much, not going to get as much crab, and you're not going to be able to spread the crab out over enough areas to continue having good CPUs and, and make it in time to— it just, it just increases the time, just like if we had 1,500 pots, it would take significantly longer. Every, every decrease in pots increases the time it takes to catch the total amount of crab. Okay.

Mr. Wood. So to that, is 2,900 kind of like the sweet spot? Like you can go out with a boatload of pots and put them in in that first week of fishing and then bring out another load? Or is it— I mean, why wouldn't it be like 3,500?

Pots. Is it because of what the boat can carry, or is it because it's what you can pick in a week-long period of time or over in a 3-week rotation? Through the chair, yes, that's, that's, I think, the most accurate way to portray it. It's how much you can get through in the amount of time that you need to get through your rotation. And, you know, I don't— I'm not saying that 2,900 pots is the absolute correct number.

I don't know, you know, I don't know what it is, but that's a very efficient number of what we have now. And things are going great. I mean, the CPU is really the highest, some of the highest CPUs we've ever had in the fishery. So that's really our goal is to be as efficient as possible. And the other participants in the eastern fishery, I haven't heard any issues or any concerns about that.

We work together. And we work out our differences and try to, uh, not take up too much of your time.

Thank you.

Thanks for your testimony today. Appreciate it. Susan Doherty.

Madam Chair, board members, my name is Susan Doherty. I'm the general manager for Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association in Ketchikan, Alaska. I'm here to speak on the delegation of authority. I want to make it clear that we're not against the transfer of the delegation of authority to Fish and Game. We're opposed to the sentence in that delegation that would allow for the importation of fish from outside of Alaska, which is currently prohibited.

The, the legis— the legislation that was passed in House Bill 295, there was clear intent that these fish that were going to be stocked in potential lakes around Alaska were to come from state hatcheries inside Alaska. Senator Bishop in his statement refers to state hatcheries 5 times. I submitted RC-12 with Senator Bishop's statement and a link to his video of his floor address. Additionally, he specifies that this transfer would happen under existing policies. The prohibition of transportation of— to import fish from outside is one of the current policies, and it's a policy for a very good reason.

Certified disease-free does not mean that these exotics won't transfer disease to our native populations. Number one, certification does not test for every disease that's known or ones that we don't know about. Two, some diseases only express themselves at certain life stages of fishes. So if they're transported at certain stage, they— the— even though they're carriers, it could be below detectable levels for them to pick it up. And third, only a subsample of the fish are certified for certification of disease-free.

It's a lethal test, so it's just a subsample of the population that would be transported. It's very likely that some of these fish that are transported would be carriers of pathogens from their area. Once, um, an infectious agent from geographic area A is transported to B, Alaska, it may infect native fish with a greater virulence than normal because our native populations have no immunity to these pathogens. There's many examples of this have— having happened in the lower 48 and other places around the world. A lot of them are viral diseases which are very serious, and this all could have been avoided by not importing the fish in the first place.

The fact that they're landlocked is of little comfort, because if any of you watched Jurassic Park, life finds a way. By human nature, people think they're cool and want to take them home. Animals, birds can transport them to other water bodies that were not intended. So it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when this will happen. And what is the gain?

To what gain? What individual need or want is worth risking our native fish populations? Thank you. Thanks, Susan. Quick question for you.

Would those— in your opinion, would those risks exist irrespective of where the fish come from, whether they're coming from outside of the state of Alaska or one of the in-state hatcheries? I mean, if you're moving, you know, animals around, do you risk that, especially where they don't currently exist? I'm just kind of curious what your thoughts are on that. Well, existing policy for fish transports has a geographic location that they wouldn't be allowed to be transported outside of. So that's one.

You have the similar pathogens that occur in regions as each other. So, and even if— and, and when fish, fish are allowed to be transported If they have a known pathogen that that system already has, it's not a problem because they already either have immunities to them or things like that. So it's the fact that these exotics have potentially never been seen in our environment, and our fish don't know how to react and can't react. And you have an explosive epizootic, it's called, And the fish die and they transmit that to other fish. You can't stop it.

That's the problem. You can't stop it once it starts. It's Pandora's box. You just opened it and you can't put the lid back on. And so my question is, what is the gain?

What is so all-important to risk this? Okay, Mr. Wood, and then Mr. Swenson. Susan, thank you for being here, because a meeting without discussing hatcheries would be so boring. Um, so I— that being said, has— with this legislation that came up and talking about importing fish from out of the state, has there been any discussion among the department or legislature— legislators, I guess— about using just Alaska hatcheries or Alaska.

Fish instead of this importing them. Have, have you been brought into the loop on any of this at all? That you meaning that the hatcheries folks? Well, the House bill that was passed making this necessary to who's going to regulate this action that's going to happen, the stocking, who's going to regulate it, the delegation of authority was that legislature that allowed this was— it says 5 times, it within the— within the state of Alaska, Alaska hatcheries. At no time does it say anything about importation.

There is no implication, no legislative intent that this was going to happen come hell or high water. And as a regional, as a manager of Sarah, no one has ever approached me about would I sell them fish. I mean, I would assume they would come to me and I would go to my board. But as far as I know, I have not been approached. Kodiak has not been approached.

Diepack has not been approached. I haven't talked to everyone, but I don't know where the need stems from to put this— to put our salmon at such risk. Mr. Swenson, thanks for— thanks for testifying, Susan. Isn't this just an oversight that was never really meant to be?

I can't imagine anybody wanting to import fish from out of Alaska into Alaska. So are you basically just asking that we— or that this statement within that is eliminated? Isn't that what you're asking? Correct. In the delegation of authority to the change of regulations that's available on the website, that you will be considering, there is a sentence in here that says specifically, this delegation authorizes the commissioner to consider at the commissioner's discretion, adopt and amend regulations to the import— to the— to incorporate an additional exemption to the prohibition on the importation and release of live fish to stock Alaska lakes.

Under 5 AAC 41.070. It is not or hasn't been allowed to happen as long as I am familiar with. I've been in the business 45 years. I don't know if it started at statehood, but it's close to statehood that this has been a prohibition on the books, which I'm very concerned about if it goes away. You mean, or it doesn't go away?

The prohibition goes away. Okay. It's prohibited currently under policy. Okay. So you just want that language taken out.

That's what you're—. Yes. And it's my understanding that you are going to deal with this at this meeting, and that language is in the delegation of authority. If that language were to come out, I wouldn't have any qualms. I think the department is the perfect vehicle to regulate any of this activity that would happen with stocking of lakes.

Okay, well, thank you. I just want to get— yeah, I understand what you're saying, but it is a little confusing, and I just wanted you to state exactly, you know, what you wanted. Yeah, I guess the point is that currently under policy, it's prohibited to bring fish from outside the state. The language in this delegation would open the door to exempt that prohibition. Okay, thank you.

Yep. Great. Thanks, Susan. Appreciate your testimony. Joseph Persson, followed by Tom Gilmartin and Darrell Spathe.

If the board could reference page 37 of R3— RC3, tab 6, the last graph in the department's report on the shrimp, PWS shrimp.

Go ahead, whenever you're ready. Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Joseph Persson. I live in Anchor Point and I'm a lifelong participant in a variety of small boat fisheries. I have 4 proposals at this meeting for consideration.

At the moment, I am going to talk about Prince William Sound shrimp.

It has been a known issue for several years now in this fishery. I have participated in it since year 1. So for the entire 15 years this fishery has been prosecuted, I've participated extensively both as a commercial fisherman and as a non-commercial fisherman.

The model that we were using before was clearly not doing a great job of responding to what we were seeing in the population, and I was fully supportive of the department developing a new model that would be more reactive and would allow us to set TAHs that would be more appropriate for current populations and to try to like basically do a good job managing the fishery. A year ago, when we had to write proposals for this meeting, we did not have a model like that. I knew the department was planning on working on it, but at the time, we— I kind of had to basically put in placeholder proposals. So something that you'll see on almost all of these shrimp proposals is that the proposals as written do not properly address what they need to do. That's just a function of what we had at the time we were writing them.

In general, I think that the most important aspects to address at this meeting are to put in new thresholds at the new model that represent, you know, the appropriate actions for management decisions to be made.

The department's own numbers that they're recommending of 30,000 pounds at 20% of the carrying capacity biomass, or B20, seem very appropriate as a position to close all fisheries so that no harvest happens below that. That is, that is a point where we would be very, very concerned. Now, do we expect to ever hit that number? No, actually, we would hopefully never hit that. But if we ever did, yes, it should be completely closed.

As far as a new threshold for closure of the commercial fishery, I think that the most appropriate position would be at B40 in these sort of models. That is a pretty normal place where production starts dropping off rapidly. At B40, production is still 96% of maximum. So that is a place where it's fairly safe to fish too. So I would recommend— and I'm, you know, modifying my proposal 303 that removes the commercial threshold to instead move the commercial threshold to B40.

Other than establishing these thresholds, Proposal 304 addresses the season dates. This really should happen just for conservation reasons. I think it's pretty clear at this point we probably shouldn't be fishing on these shrimp in April. And so I fully support moving the season dates. Other than this, I really think those are the important things and we should pass them and then we should prosecute this fishery for 3 years and see how it looks under the new model before we do any other complications.

Thank you. Thank you, Joseph. Good timing. Mr. Swenson and Mr. Carpenter, you also then agree with no shrimp fishing after the 1st of October, is that correct?

Through the chair to Board Member Swenson, currently all seasons in Prince William Sound close on September 15th by regulation already. In fact, I would support closing them September 1st. My experience in the non-commercial fishery is that a great— that last week of the fishery and, you just prior to closure on September 15th are actually significantly higher than egg rates in April.

There's not a lot of discussion about this, primarily because very little harvest happens in September. The commercial fishery is almost always closed by then, and only 4% of the non-commercial harvest happens in September. But I would support closing those weeks. Okay, great. Thank you.

Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thanks, Joseph. Thanks for your testimony. You know, I know you are aware, but I am working on some substitute language with the department right now to address both of the issues that you brought forward in regards to B-20 for an overall closure and then also the threshold being set. So please, when that comes out during Committee of the Whole, tell me what you think about it at that time.

But I just wanted to kind of I just wanted to put that on the record that it's kind of being worked on. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks, Joseph. We've discussed these numbers at length, but I think one thing that I was most struck by was your impression of— we just came from Southeast where we talked a lot about shrimp there, and Prince William Sound seems to be a very different fishery. A lot of the public comment we had was from people supporting direct marketers, small-scale fishermen all around the inlet.

That are all around the Sound. And then also its accessibility to, you know, the most urban part of Alaska. But would you dive into that just a little bit and explain why this fishery is so unique and how the non-commercial and commercial seem to work together? Or not necessarily work together, but how it works out there.

To Board Member Wood through the chair. So yes, this— the primary difference between this fishery and Southeast, which is very relevant, is just one of scale. Um, like this year we're, we're talking about a GHL of 80,000 pounds, or a total allowable harvest of 80,000 pounds, which translates to a non-commercial GHL of 48,000 pounds and a commercial GHL of 32,000 pounds. These are just small numbers. So in this commercial fishery, it's historically been prosecuted by relatively small boats with very low pot limits.

And because of its access to population centers and the value of these shrimp, the vast majority of the harvest has been direct marketed or gone to value-added, you know, sources. At this point in the fishery, this— it's pretty well established. It works pretty good. And almost no shrimp is being sold through, you know, large processors. There's not enough scale for the large processors to bother buying, and it's just more valuable to other sources.

You know, this direct market aspect has some management implications, you know, as far as supporting it potentially. But the truth is, is like, I'm pretty content with the management of this fishery. I would like to see not very many changes and to just mostly see it updated to the new model, which is going to be far smaller harvests you know, and fish at these lower levels for a few years and see what the effect on the population is. Thank you.

Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Persson.

So we had a discussion offline about, you know, kind of going into the math of a lot of these things. One of the things I concern myself on And I'd like your input on is the reliability of the data that we're— that we base the 40% that we'd be looking at B40.

If—.

And I don't have this information, but I'd like input. If there's a variability based on the reliability of the test data for this, if our numbers are off for this, what's the— what is the likelihood or risk we run of actually overharvesting or maybe crashing the shrimp population if we drop down below 40, or if we're harvesting higher at a B40 than we should have. And so I want to, you know, it sounds like B40 is right on the cusp here at 96% recruitment. Forgive me if I'm using the wrong language, but how do we— does that put enough of a guardrail in that if our math is off, we're not we're not crashing the harvest in this system. So in the current model, the intention of the department is to set total allowable harvests at 75% of FMSY.

So there's already a substantial sort of safety buffer built in largely because of that, that we don't, we don't know for sure how good this model is going to be. It's, it's the best that we have at the moment, and it should be better than the other model, but, uh, you know, so that's, that's part of where there's that conservative action coming from. So 40% is a normal place to start, start taking reductions. Reducing harvest by taking out the entire commercial fishery at B40 would be an additional 40% reduction in harvest. So at that point, at B40, we would be harvesting 60% of 75%, which, you know, we start getting a little bit complicated here, but basically that's 45% of FMSY.

Reducing harvest to 45% of FMSY at B40 is actually very conservative, you know, in the way these models normally work. That, that is actually a severe reduction in harvest below what the model is saying, because the model is actually recommending harvest at 100% of FMSY. That's what it thinks is surplus production.

Thank you, Joseph. Thanks for your testimony today. Thank you. Tom Gilmartin.

My name is Tom Gilmartin. And I'm a self-marketer. I used to have a boat called the Arctic Storm, and I got rid of it 10 years ago. And now I've got another one called the Michelle Lee that's going to start operations in April. I'm mainly here today about the scallop fishery.

I discovered some articles from England where they've found a way to put LED lights into pots, and the scallops go to the lights underwater like moths do to your back porch light. So I approached Fish and Game in Kodiak, the statewide scallop biologist, and asked him if I could try the pots while I was running a research boat out to Nome and back that summer of '23. And he told me absolutely not. He was not interested in a new gear type for the scallop fishery. And I'm just talking for state waters now.

So I'm here. I want to ask the board if they can make pots legal gear in state waters to try and see if our scallops will react to the LED lights in pots as they have in England and Ireland. Okay. That's what I'm here for. Okay.

Questions? Mr. Wood. Yeah. So how do you— right now, how have you traditionally been getting your scallops versus the [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Well, I've been a trawlerman for 47 years and I've worked on the scallop boats here and on the East Coast. And we drag a dredge around from 6-foot wide to 15-foot wide.

And they— a small dredge maybe weigh 1,500 pounds and a large one up to 3,000. And we drag that dredge around. It's got shoes on it. It lifts a cutting bar about 3/4 of an inch off the bottom. And it's got a chain across the mouth of it, and the chain touches the scallops and they jump up and go in the dredge.

Everything else goes under the dredge, and if it survives or not, we don't know. So typically, scallop dredge is the way it's been done. And there's only two boats fishing in Alaska right now. And I did speak with one of the skippers about the pot fishery in state waters, and he told me there was no scallops in state waters anymore. And I owned a scallop permit for 7 years back in the mid, like '99 to '07.

So I know there's scallops in state waters. So if he doesn't think there's any there, I put a proposal in to ban dredges in state waters, means there's nothing there for him to catch anyway. That's why that's part of my proposal. Okay. So you basically hang a glow stick in a pot or something and, and see if they make it in there.

Is there a special pot? They're just catching them in lobster pots in Scotland and Ireland. And if you, if you Google scallops disco LED light UK, you'll get the stories, and there's like 7 stories there on that. Okay, and it's, it's pretty amazing. If our scallop species goes to those lights, you'd be creating a whole new fishery.

I would call it a stake fishery if you limit the guys to 800 pounds of week, once a week or twice a week. I mean, you could put the fishery right in the hands of Alaskans on small boats rather than two giant scallopers that are fishing it right now. Okay.

Thank you. That was a great way to end the day. Are you done with me? Um, well, I guess my— you answered my question. My question was if your proposal was intended to exclude dredge as an allowable gear type, and I think you answered it clearly.

So—. Well, it's not that I want to eliminate the gear type, it's that if we prove that the pots work with the LED lights in them and we catch scallops, well then those guys with the dredges are going to come there and wipe that bottom out and we won't have that. You know, and the LED light pots, according to the articles, need pretty clear water to work. It's— if it's cloudy water like over at Augustine Island or in Cook Inlet, they probably won't work. But a lot of these back bays and up at Kachemak Bay and down in Beaver Inlet and Unimak Bight, that's all clear water and they probably work there real good.

And I think the Sandpoint boys could really use that right now with the state of the fisheries down there with the canneries going out of business and everything. So I think it'd be a good thing all the way around. Have you had conversations with the department about utilizing a commissioner's permit perhaps, or if that— is that an option? Um, well, according to the statewide scallop biologist, he's managing the whole state. There's only one gear type allowed in the state of Alaska, and that's a scallop dredge by regulation.

And he's not interested in any new gear type. He only has to manage 2 boats right now. So if he turns around and OKs pots, he's going to have hundreds of boats to manage, you know. So I think that's why he doesn't want to see a new gear type. Okay.

Thank you for answering my questions. I don't see any additional questions. So I appreciate you being here today. Do I need to be back this week at all? Yeah, we will get into Committee of the Whole and certainly would encourage you to stick around if you are available to, to participate in the discussion on this proposal in committee.

Do you know when the committee days will be? We can talk on the side here. I will have to check.

Agenda. Thank you. Last person is Darrell Spaeth.

Is Darrell here today? Okey doke. We will take our first second call in the morning with Darrell and then we will proceed with Nathan Hoff and David Capri and Corey Cole beginning at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. And I would also, before we break, just would like to announce that Cordova Fisherman's United is hosting a gathering that is in, you know, the public is invited to and board members. Well, that is located upstairs at Tent City Tap House beginning at 6:30 PM tonight.

Tent City is located on the corner of 6th and D here in Anchorage, just a couple blocks away. So I just wanted to let everybody know that event and would like to thank CDFU for the invitation, and we'll see everybody tomorrow at 8:30 AM. Thanks.