Alaska Board of Fisheries: Committee on Board Process, Management, and Research Needs Meeting (9/25/2026)

I mean, there's a lot of similarities that hatcheries have around the state, but there's also a variety of differences, and in some cases big differences is, and you have very small hatcheries and very big hatcheries, and production levels are varied considerably. And so, um, I think production-based proposals in general, just flat-out production-based proposals, are very appropriate every 3 years at a statewide meeting. And I think those can be communicated through the hatchery meeting that would precede that statewide meeting. I think, I think that's a good idea. I think, you know, for whatever reason, technical changes to boundary lines or permitting or THA or SHA designations, etc., etc., I think those are much more simple, very non-allocative for the most part, and they can be very easily taken up at a normal meeting cycle.

So thanks, that's helpful. Mike, any comments? Yeah, no, I would just like to agree pretty much with everything Tom said, especially after the last few years of just getting inundated with the same hatchery proposal time and time again, and it just went nowhere. I think for— and I also think it kind of fits into the stock of concern thing. I think once every 3 years, do it, looking at it and closely is super important.

We've got our regional advisory boards for them that can also deal with some of these issues too for hatcheries, and I think 3 years is very appropriate, and along with the timeline of the biology that we're dealing with, and to keep bringing it up repetitively and spending the state's resources on that when we could spend it on so many other things, It's crazy. So I am fully supportive of it being either statewide. I even thought Southeast because maybe Southeast is where it belongs because that's where the majority of the hatcheries, but after a 2-week hatchery, you know, 2-week board meeting in Ketchikan, I would not want to add hatcheries to that. So I think the workshop or workgroup is perfect for that statewide. So at any rate, I like, I like what, where that's going.

Thanks. Any other comments before I open it up for the public comment? All right, is there anybody online that would like to comment on this one? Thatcher, go ahead.

You are muted, sir. You're talking, I can't hear you.

Apologies. There you go, now we got you. Okay, yeah, apologies. I'll start over. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee.

For the record, my name is Thatcher Brower, and I'm the new director of the United Fishermen of Alaska. We submitted written comments that can be found at their PC21. In regards to this agenda item, agenda item number 4, our comments are largely aligned with Board Member Carpenter's. We believe that production-related proposals should be taken up at the statewide meeting, and then the smaller PHA and SHA proposals should be taken up in region. And that's all I have.

Awesome. Thank you for your comment. Congratulations on the new position. Thank you. Looking forward to seeing you at meetings in that capacity.

Yeah.

Any questions for Thatcher before we move on to the Mr. Fisher?

All right, thank you for being here. Kevin Fisher followed by Dan Norman.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to echo the same sentiment, basically. I'm a member of KRAA and then also on the UFA, and I think that it's really caused our association and I think other hatcheries around the state a lot of money and time and anguish trying to, uh, defense a lot of the same proposals that just you have to keep doing the same thing, but it, you know, It's cost a lot of money and a lot of time, and so it really would be beneficial, I think, to the whole state if we can, you know, set that into a reasonable thing where it's every 3 years on the state level. Thank you. Cool.

Thank you. Any questions for him? All right, Dan, welcome back.

Yeah, Madam Chair. Yeah, I agree with Member Carpenter. Every 3 years works great. You know, I would support a committee meeting kind of workshop prior to a statewide meeting if that came to it. If, you know, if we need kind of more information that state meeting kind of ran too long, maybe split some of it off, but every 3 years it would work well.

Thanks. So one of the things that I, as I'm listening to the convo, one of the things that I've struggled with over the years with respect to the committee meeting, the Hatchery Committee meeting in and of itself, is developing an agenda that is useful and informative for all folks that are interested. So I agree that I think it makes a lot of sense to sort of parse out the— how the board accepts hatchery-related proposals between statewide and the individual regional meetings in the way that Member Carpenter described. But—. And I think that it's useful to sort of orient new members, especially that may or may not have experience with hatcheries prior to that meeting in the form of the committee meeting.

But I've always kind of struggled with what's relevant and how do we make that a useful time for people? And how do we educate the board on hatcheries and some of those various aspects? So that's something that I would be really interested in getting additional feedback on. I know that the department, and I'm gonna call on you in a second, Commissioner, I see your hand up. The department has reports and studies and stuff that they shared with the board in the past.

I think that to a great extent that's relevant, particularly for new members who may have not been exposed to that. But some of those studies are quite dated and somewhat repetitive. So if there's been additional work that has built on some of those studies, I think that would be a good place to sort of talk about that, but I'm interested in your thoughts, Commissioner, please. Yeah, if I could just— I think this is one of the frustrations that I hear from my staff continuously. What is the focus and what does the board want to hear in our hatchery reports?

Because we typically give the same reports every time and the questions go in different directions. So I think having some meaningful dialogue— is it food competition in the ocean that you're worried about? Is it strain that you're worried about, what kind of focus you want the department to give, and given terms of focus on presentations would be incredibly useful to us. And a lot of that stuff is not— it doesn't change year to year. So I think getting in on a 3-year cycle is a good approach because a lot of information is going to take 1 or 2 or 3 years to collect.

So rather than do that every year, get, you know, getting in those larger topics 3 years, that's when the science will be able to catch up and there'll be new science out there. Do you think that would be a useful conversation to have with the board at like the work session prior to the statewide and prior to when that committee meeting would be scheduled? Should that be a separate committee meeting just to try and gauge and get feedback and input from the board about what they're looking for in a committee meeting agenda or from staff? When do you think that would be a good time to try and parse that out? Well, I think Staff need about a couple months to prepare what they're going to give to you guys.

So sooner rather than later. So yeah, have some time at the work session and talk about it. Be good. They just have it like a standing agenda item on those statewide work session years. Yeah.

Okay, thanks.

Thoughts? Any other, um, comments? I got one thought. Go ahead, Mike. Yeah, I, I guess it's kind of in line with the traditional knowledge thing, and I As a board member, I think it's imperative that we kind of educate ourselves on all these different aspects.

And I know we can't— it's tough to be able to afford to go on trips to see things and understand them better, you know, and meet people on their own ground. But especially the hatchery stuff. I mean, it's so important to— they've been— people have been, or the hatchery operations have been very forthcoming about trying to get people there to educate board members and taking them up on that and learning that. And understanding how it all works, or just going to an advisory meeting that is held locally. It, I mean, it's, it's not, it's not an isolated thing, you know.

People invite you to do this stuff, and taking the initiative to do it, I think, is kind of the onus of board members to do. Be sweet if we get paid to do it, but, you know, or at least here's a plane ticket. But sorry, I know it ain't happening either. But anyhow, it's, uh, it sure does help you better understand the whole perspective. Of things.

And so I think that's also on just board members too. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. Go ahead, Dan.

Yeah, Madam Chair, if you're going to have this work session meeting, I'm not going to be there. I know there's no public input at that meeting, but so I guess I'll just take a moment here to say it. When we're talking about hatcheries, you know, there's got to be an impact to the 14 stocks of concern for Chinook salmon across the state. That's my personal opinion. So when you're kind of giving some direction on where you want your research to go, you know, a lot of things that point to poor ocean survival, well, what does that, what does poor ocean survival really mean?

Is it predation or is it a food chain thing? So I think it's related to hatcheries. That's my personal opinion. There's some studies out there to support it, you know. Anyway, just worth considering.

No, I think that's really valuable. Appreciate that comment. And it does— you bring up an interesting point too, that we don't typically take public comment prior to work sessions. For work sessions, we do accept RCs in the work session, I believe. Is that right, Art?

I'm pretty sure we do.

Yeah, uh, written public comments before the meeting and then RCs during the meeting, right? And I think what I'm hearing is sort of a a suggestion to add that to the statewide cycle work session agenda, which would be 2 years from now, I think.

So, but that does bring up an interesting conundrum, just to, you know, and maybe it's not a formal PC, but that's something that can be submitted in RC at the beginning of the meeting or something like that for members to consider for that agenda item. Does that kind of get at it maybe, Dan? Yeah, I think that helps because, you know, we go to the workstation, you and the staff and the board does a lot of work, but the only engagement the public has is to, you know, maybe catch you in the hallway for a minute. So if there's, you know, some specific thing regarded to, in this case, hatcheries, you know, maybe there's a little comment period, I don't know. Yeah, no, I think it's a good point.

Thank you.

All right, um, any other comments from the public on agenda item number 4? Members, how are we doing? Do we need a little break or do we want to push through? Uh, 5 minutes. 5 Minutes.

Yeah, bathroom. Okay, let's go ahead and come back on the record at 1:30. It's 1:20 right now. Take 10 minutes and we'll, uh, We'll keep her moving at 1:30.

Thanks.

All right, Art, are we ready to giddy up?

Yes, good to go. Okay. All right, so before we move on, I see Patrick Baum, you have your hand up. Did you have anything you wanted to bring to the hatchery discussion?

Uh, okay, got it. Just wanted to make sure we didn't miss you.

Okay, um, let's go ahead and talk about agenda item number 5, and, um, this is another one where the, the wording of the agenda item is a little A little wonky, but, um, so Commissioner, I want to invite you to this discussion because this is something that you and I have discussed on and off the record for a while now, a couple, at least 2 or 3, 2 or 3, um, meetings, meeting cycles, I guess. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. So the issue, and, and I'm going to try and summarize it here and then I'd like you to correct me or add to it. The issue as I see it is that The stock of concern designation proposals are presented to— or stock of concern designation recommendations are presented to the board during each work session. And then the procedure currently is for the board to either make that determination, accept that recommendation or not.

If the board accepts that recommendation and designates a stock of concern, the department is then charged with creating an action plan or a suite of options that would then become an action plan. And ideally, that action plan discussion and deliberation would occur during that cycle's designated meeting, right? So for example, if there's a Nishnaagaa stock of concern, recommendation and it's designated at the work session, then the action plan would be developed and it would be presented and deliberated on during the Bristol Bay meeting that cycle. Um, the, the issue that we've been confronted with is sometimes the time between when that designation occurs in October at the work session and the timing of that in-cycle meeting where the action plan is considered is has been, in some cases, very tight and hasn't allowed for the department to easily be able to meet that deadline. Um, and in some cases, we've had to sort of punt that portion to a subsequent meeting.

I think we did that for, um, Bristol Bay this last cycle, or maybe 2 cycles ago, and then, um, AYK, um, last year. So, If I'm— am I characterizing that correctly? Is that the conundrum you, you see? Yeah, Madam Chair, um, thanks for the opportunity to talk about this. So yeah, that's exactly what it is, is, is there's two things.

There's the, the constraints on the department's time in putting together an action plan for your consideration. But the other aspect of this is the public doesn't have an opportunity to review the draft action plan that we have, and oftentimes the ACs don't have that opportunity. Opportunity, and they don't have the opportunity to, to weigh the context of the action plan versus the proposals that are in front of you. And if you delay the action plan because it's too tight a timing, you put it after the meeting, then, then the proposals are— that are facing that meeting are disconnected from the action plan. So we've been giving this a little bit of thought internally, and one thing that you could do that would address a lot of these concerns is take up action just put the action plan designation, the determination of a stock of concern, 1 year in advance of the meeting.

So it would basically say the previous work session would be for the previous year. You take up the next year's stock of concern debate and discussion. Now, the bad part of that is you're not going to have the most current information, but that would allow us then— in many cases, these are multiple years of data that go into determining it. You you might trigger one or other— another one. But to me, that would give then the department the opportunity to— to the public to know that this does— this concern stock has been designated stock of concern.

Give us some opportunity to get something out in advance of the proposal deadline that the public could review that and then put all the proposals in context of what we proposed, and then basically put it into the normal cycle for the next year. So that's one proposal that we thought of that could address this issue. Again, the negatives is, is it's not the most current information, but at least it brings— gives us the opportunity to put something together, gets it out to the public for their review, and then puts it into the normal cycle. So thank you for that. Um, you're, you're triggering my memories on a few things too, um, with respect to sort of the action plan and how it's developed and considered.

And then, um, there's a lot of inconsistency in that space. 2, And so maybe that warrants its own separate sort of agenda item discussion. Maybe we can add that in on the agenda for next month. But, um, the action plans, how they're presented to the board, are getting more consistent. Um, but in my tenure, they've been kind of different and all over the place about how those action plans are presented, and then how the board, um, decides what the action plan does and is, and then how that's represented in the management plan and the regulation.

So for some areas, the board has taken the action plan and, um, and, and make— turned it into reg. And in some areas that hasn't happened. There's also inconsistency with the delisting criteria, um, that we've been— certainly as chair, I've been trying to make more consistent over time, and we, we have that discussion a lot. And I see this area become more and more important as this trend, this unfortunate trend in stock of concern designation seems to be increasing rather than decreasing. So I think it's going to be something that the public and the board is dealing with, unfortunately, more often than we would like, and the department, of course.

So thoughts on that? Any of that, please? Yeah, go ahead. Just real quick. So one of the things is, I know there's a desire to put elements of the action plan into regulation.

But there are other aspects of the action plan that may not be appropriate to put into regulations that may, you know, like conduct this survey on this stream or things that the department's going to have to spend money on. So I think there's— it's worthy of having another discussion about what elements of an action plan you want consistent and what elements you want to put into regulation versus other aspects of an action plan that you, that you may wish to do. Like for instance, if one element is to try to use a hatchery program to restore a stock, I'm not sure we want to put that into regulation. I think that's something you might want to direct the department to explore, but I don't think you'd want to just pop that into a regulatory language because we may or may not implement it depending upon genetic policies and all kinds of other things.

Yeah, no, I think that's a really good point. And I think that this is an area where I would really like to see the public and the, the department and the board sort of put our thinking, collective thinking caps on and think about how do we provide some, not necessarily criteria, but, um, consistent elements of what an action plan looks like and how those are reflected in reg or not. To your point, because right now I feel like that takes up a lot of the board's time. There's confusion amongst membership, and there's also confusion, I think, in the public about what that looks like and how they are promulgating their responses to the action plan presentation and whether or not it should be in reg or how that should be, you know, recorded and implemented, right? Go ahead.

Yeah, another aspect is, you know, we may at some point in time, our action plans are around specific stocks. So you may end up with an action plan for West Side Susitna River stocks and then East Side. The action plan elements are going to be very similar. So at some point in time, you're going to have to decide whether you want a Susitna River action plan or if you want, you know, again, individualized action plans for Karlik and Ayukuluk separately, or one action plan that combines those. And I think that's a discussion we're going to have to have at some point in time too.

Are we going to continue to designate by individual stocks or by groups of stocks? Yeah, no, I agree. And I think what would be very helpful, at least initially to me, is getting a similar recommendation from the department. Like, you know, what is, what is not only the best use of your time in preparing these action plans, but what makes the most sense, um, time and resources for implementing, right? That, right?

So I think that, that brings up a really, uh, good point also. Um, Mike or Tom, you want to weigh in on this? Um, I, I think this conversation is warranted for sure. I think that to the commissioner's point, I think that what he said makes a lot of sense. I think continuing to go down kind of the road and forcing the department's hand to a certain degree on something as serious as a stocked and concerned destination, rushing to, you know, compile information to present to the board prior to a meeting, you know, 6 weeks later is really an impossible task.

And I don't think that that's something that we should continue to do. I think that from my point of view, I think I would look forward to hearing a formal recommendation from the department at the work session about how we move forward with this idea. And, you know, let's talk about it and let's put something in motion so that we don't continue to, you know, follow the same path that we're following now. Because I think there's a lot more stock and concern designations and there's a lot more things the department has to consider on a day-in and day-out basis. And I think this is one way to probably give the department more time to bring the best information to the public, allow them to comment.

And I think allowing the public to comment on these things is very important, and allowing them to review, the ACs to review, everybody to review, I think that's important part of this process. So that would be my suggestion.

Thanks, Tom. Mike, thoughts?

Did we lose Mike? You're muted, Mike. Oh, unmute. You got me now. I'm clear.

At least I didn't get in trouble saying something I shouldn't. So anyhow, I think it takes a long— it appears it takes a long time to get into stock of concern, and there's criteria for that. And then once you're in it, there's different levels of whether it's yield management or conservation. So there's time and, and, and, um, kind of goalposts to watch in there. I've had the most frustration with the unwinding of the stock of concern and how that all works out when, um, when we start to improve, like on Suzitna with Sockeye.

And, um, and then the other part of it is, um, just streams that are still listed and, um, they have been forever and they like they don't exist. So in terms of like the Lewis River, or we're still looking at Theodore and whatnot, and anyhow, the point is stock of concern doesn't seem immediate, and to ask the department to work immediately on some of this stuff is not necessary. And I also think that the debate whether this should be in regulation or not is warranted, But, you know, I think managers would have a lot to say about that too. Do they need it written in regulation, or do they understand how to act and react based on the stalker concern? So, yeah, thank you for that.

One of the things that just kind of popped up that you reminded me of, Mike, is those levels of designation and the lack of definition for the stock of conservation concern threshold.

So that's something that I just kind of want to throw out there too for the public's consumption and for the department. And I guess, you know, for in terms of moving forward in the relatively near term, I think what I would like folks to consider, and I'd be interested in departmental feedback on this idea too, is if we were having this discussion now, we're going to open it up for public thoughts here in a second. Um, I want to take elements of this discussion and build on it and probably create a more specific agenda item for this for our October process meeting. And then I would encourage the department in the meantime to start looking at sort of what that action plan policy or what that schedule looks like, the plan that would be presented perhaps as Tom talked about to the board at the work session. But I want to have the, you know, the public respond, have an opportunity to sort of inform this and respond to it because, you know, they get, they have a bunch of ideas that are way better than anything that we can come up with for sure.

And then, as opposed to the department sort of starting that process after all of those public comments have come in, maybe sort of draft it out now, sketch it out now, we get that feedback. And does the department think it would have enough time to sort of maybe put a couple of ideas together for us to consider or talk about at the work session? I mean, I'm not saying that we necessarily have to take action at the work session on any of this. This might warrant additional discussion, right? But I want to make some progress on this so that we, you know, maybe take it up as— put it on a miscellaneous agenda item at a subsequently noticed meeting or something like that, because I don't want this to languish because I think it's disruptive enough in sort of how the cycles and the meetings work that we need to address it sooner than later.

Madam Chair, we'd be glad to put something together for your session. I'm just thinking ahead of this meeting. Have an October meeting, third week of October, and we're going to have a December meeting on Lower Cook Inlet. And there might be a sock turn. It's going to be incredibly hard for my staff to put together an action plan in that short period of time and get the ACs to review it and bring it to you guys.

So I'd like to figure out how we can get this so the public can engage in what we put together and we have adequate time to put that together so everybody has a chance to look at it. In terms of the proposals that are out there. So we'll be glad to put something. Yeah, part of that, Commissioner, I think what would be really helpful is the department sort of sketching out or outlining a schedule for implementation, right? Because there's going to be a transition time about how this works, and there's— it's going to be a little wonky, and I want to make sure that the public is aware of it and has the opportunity to either sort of— I wouldn't say necessarily bless it, but say acknowledge understanding and try and work with us through it.

Yeah. In one year, you're gonna have that current year and the next year, and then after that—. And the next year. Exactly. I mean, and, you know, as you go into the lower Cook Inlet, if there are, you know, the board doesn't know, the department does know ahead of time whether or not you're gonna have those recommendations for the work session.

So can you front end any of that action plan work because it is— it's more likely that the board will accept your recommendation for an SOC than not, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And I think those aren't the ones that are more concerned. Sometimes we get actually the board itself designates things that we haven't done and we haven't done any work on those. So yeah, no, that's, that's 100% fair for sure.

Okay. We'll get something together. Okay. Or put that things that get done.

Any, any other comments before I ask the public if they got thoughts? Are we going to talk about the— before you take public? Oh, yes. Are we going to talk about the agenda change request stuff? Yeah, let's do that.

Let's do that right now. You want to kick that off, Tom, or I've got lots of thoughts. I mean, I've thought about this a lot over the last couple years, and, um, you know, I have my own thoughts about the agenda change request process, um, that I don't really need to go into right now in depth. But, um, I think for this particular item, I think this has generally been something that the department has brought forward to the board The department is the arbiter of the information, the, the, the management body, um, when it comes to these things. And I think that taking up agenda change requests regarding stock concerns, at least in my opinion, would be a big mistake.

And I think what we've just outlined right now Getting into a better flow of how these things come before the board and the public while giving the department more time between meetings, you know, to schedule this out, I think is a much more appropriate thing than accepting them in the form of an ACR. That's my comment. Okay. Mike, you got thoughts? Yeah, I just would like to say that I, I would like to reference some of the comments I made before to that last point on the agenda, because I, I just want to be clear that I don't think having a stock of concern as an agenda change request is appropriate because of the whole timeline of things.

And I got more to say about ACR stuff, but in terms of stock of concern alone, That's— I really don't feel like it's, it's an emergency that warrants the criteria of an ACR. Well, let me ask you guys this. Let me throw this out there. So let's just take this in, first of all, in the context of what we just talked about in terms of how the timing of these SOCs would happen and that you're not using, to the Commissioner's point, perhaps the most relevant or recent information. And one of the things that we, I think, have encountered with, um, with these requests for SOC designations, and I don't even know that they need to be a specific SOC designation.

It could be a regulatory change request in response to a public conservation concern, which, you know, could have the effect of being the same thing, right? So number one, I'm, I'm worried about restricting the opportunity of the public to bring forth conservation concerns. On stocks out of cycle, first of all. And secondly, the way I've seen this play out, um, before is that it comes forth because the cycle lands, let's say, in the fourth year of what could or could not designate a stock of concern. So you need 5 years of not meeting the SEC to meet the designation criteria, and maybe that comes up in cycle in year 4 of that, and you're asking the public to then bide their time and wait until year 7 of missing the SEG before it's addressed by the board or the department.

And, um, and that concerns me a little bit, and I You know, the board has its ability to do that, but the really the only way the board can do that is through a BGP. Um, or the public can come at it again through an emergency petition, whose criteria is oftentimes even more rigorous, and, um, and the timing of that, you know, can be subject to commissioners' delegating the authority to the commissioner. So I kind of wanted to throw that out there for the discussion also, because I have a little bit of consternation or heartburn with kicking that can down the road and not allowing the public to address their conservation concerns with the board directly and not through the department. I, I don't think there's anything that prevents an individual from making a regulatory change based on a conservation concern for a stock. I guess the question is, is right, are you going to open up the, the stock of concern designation?

Yeah, out of cycle, because again, that then triggers all kinds of additional actions and discussions moving forward. So if you do that, I would again If you're going to take that up in an October meeting and schedule it for a December meeting, that's just going to be very hard on us. So I would put that on the same cycle. If you're going to do that on a cycle, you basically take it a year in advance so the public has an opportunity to look at what that action plan is and provide inputs into it. But nothing again prevents an individual from addressing a conservation concern through an ACR rather than making it an action plan requirement.

Fair. And so maybe it's an exercise in definition, right? Because I feel like these, these terms and these actions are a little conflated at times, right? So maybe it's just doing a better job of defining what those actual processes are and how the board takes action on them or reacts to them. Versus what, you know, what kind of action the public can propose through the agenda change request or the emergency petition route.

I don't know. What do you guys think? I think that's generally where I was going with that, is that, you know, ACRs come in in August and the board takes them up at their October work session, and it's a similar situation. Instead of coming from the department in the form of a stock of concern they want the board to take up so they can create an action plan, it's coming from the public. And, and, and that's a very warranted process.

Yeah. But it still puts the department in the same situation of if an ACR comes in and the board accepts it, it puts the department in the same— they're, they're kind of hamstrung to the point where then they're rushed to get this done in a certain amount of time. And I don't think so. And so that, that's kind of why I say, you know, once I think we, once we see something that the department has come up with about how we can move forward with stock of concern designations from them, then I think the ACR process will follow along because it's going to like put the, the flow with the public and the department kind of the same, on the same timelines. And I think the process will get better.

And if an ACR, for example, with conservation concerns is accepted by the board, I see that as really informing that stock of concern designation discussion and then policy development, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, no, I think that makes sense. Um, any other comments before I open it up?

All right. Let's go ahead and open up the discussion to the public on agenda item 5, SOC designations. I see Kathy Hansen with your hand up. Go ahead, Kathy.

Kathy Hansen, Executive Director for Southeast Alaska Fisherman's Alliance. I like the idea of being a year advance and having the action plans in time for advisory committees and the public to be able to comment to them.

I don't like the idea of specific proposals saying they want a stock of concern and an action plan being submitted out of cycle. And the reason I say that is if the department is getting concerned about a stock, they're already starting to take the management steps that they would put into an action plan. Every action plan I've seen has usually duplicated what they've been doing a year or two before because they started getting concerned about that stock. So I don't think you need to worry about where it falls in the year, in the, you know, cycle, you know, it's year 7 instead of year 4. Because I think the department is taking that action.

And thank you. Yeah, thank— thanks, Kathy. Um, I think that's, um, I appreciate where you're coming from, and my personally, I think that that by and large is, is correct. But I, I also know that that is a subjective opinion, um, and I know that sometimes there are board members that feel that the department isn't, and other members of the public, isn't taking enough conservation action. I think that's where that starts, that conversation starts to manifest.

Any other comments, questions? Thatcher, you're up.

Thank you, Chair Carlson. Again, Thatcher Brower, Executive Director of United Fishermen of Alaska, for the record. UFA, comment on the second part of this agenda item. And the board doesn't support taking up agenda change requests that are out of cycle for stocks of concern that are brought forward by individuals. They support the science-based management and determination that's made by the department for these out-of-cycle proposals.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. Any other or any questions for Thatcher? Comments. Okay, appreciate your comments.

Any other public comments on this agenda item? I'll just jump in and reiterate, if you're, if you're on by phone and you're trying to use the raise hand feature, you use push star 9 to raise your hand.

Second before we move on, just because if folks are anything like me, you're switching screens to get to your number screen and all the things.

So just to sum up, so we're, we're all on the same page, we'll bring something to you to the work session in October on, on, on what we see as a path forward based on this discussion. Yeah, I, I think so, and I, and I appreciate that. And the other thing, um, Commissioner, just again to sort of revisit the convo, I want to make sure that folks have an opportunity to think about the conversation that just occurred, right? And the elements of that. And so for the, for what the process committee meeting that I'm envisioning for mid-October prior to the work session, I think you're going to see a fairly similar agenda, you know, just kind of give people an opportunity to sort of weigh in on any things that we talked about here, because there wasn't a lot of context for these agenda items.

And then if they're— if the department has anything that's ready for primetime, or elements that they have questions about that they would like some guidance or feedback on, that process committee meeting would be a good place to do that before presenting your— I guess what I would consider a final draft at the work session. Would that work? Yep. All right, all right. I'm not seeing any other comments on, on this agenda item.

Let's go ahead and move on to agenda item number 6. And this one I'm imagining probably raised some eyebrows, and it was not necessarily intended to do so. But I will say that as the chair over the last several years, from you, Commissioner, from from a couple of board members. You've brought concerns to me as the chair about what I think is perceived as redundancy in the board's process at board meetings for receiving public input. And so I have been reluctant, very reluctant to make any changes.

In fact, I haven't done so to either the time of allotted for public testimony, the existence of the oral public testimony piece into the— in the board's agenda, or how we incorporate or do not incorporate a committee in the board's agenda. So these are all things that have been brought to me from multiple people over the last, you know, several years. And I think that it's rooted in, um, I don't know if a complaint or frustration that there's a lot of repeat information that is coming out, um, in the committee process, and that that is perhaps not the best use of the board's time. Um, so I wanted to put it on a process committee agenda item and talk about it a little bit more publicly and get input from the public about what that means to them and where they find the most value in communicating with the board, um, and how they communicate with the board. I will say that, um, for me, the committee process can be very redundant, but I think it also serves a really important purpose in that we are able to sort of suss out more nuanced issues that may not be really obvious during, you know, public comment, whether that's written or oral, as well as giving that opportunity to hopefully get a look at substitute language that may or may not— that may be developed around, ideally around some kind of compromise or consensus among stakeholders.

But as board members have access to additional information, again, perhaps more in-depth or nuanced understanding of issues, I think that that committee process has been valuable. As a matter of fact, it was really sort of illustrated to me or illuminated to me when we did our last joint boards meeting where we had a whole bunch of proposals or comments for the joint boards that were complaints about not being able to review changes to language that occurred from real, like, initial proposals, and I didn't completely understand why that was coming forth until I understood that the Board of Game doesn't have a committee process, and there isn't any opportunity for the public, I think aside from RCs, to respond to proposed changes in language from proposals. Uh, not to mention that sometimes proposals in and of themselves aren't submitted to the board in regulatory speak, if you will. Um, and so if that's something an individual board member wants to take up and thinks is a good idea, typically we'll work with staff to develop regulatory language, um, that reflects hopefully what we think reflects That's the proposer's intent. So sometimes we get it right, sometimes we don't.

So I— these are all kind of things that I've been thinking a lot about in terms of how the public engages and informs the board process. Is there a point on which it's too much? Where is that? Is there too little? Where is that?

And And how do we manage that? How does a chair manage that in within the confines of time and budget? So I kind of wanted to throw that out there. And, and again, this is in response to a lot of comments that I've had over the years from staff and from leadership and from other board members. So I'll open it up now for other.

Committee member comments or thoughts. Well, I'll say a couple things.

I guess I've attended a lot of Board of Game meetings over the years, not, not as much recently, and obviously the Board of Fish. They're very different processes.

Speaking for myself as a board member, um, by the time we get to Committee of the Whole, I'd say there's tremendous amount of overlap from public testimony. And I know it's encouraged by the committee chairs to make sure they alert the public to bring new information forward, but And maybe it's a lack of each committee chair being, you know, strict enough to enforce that rule. Um, that, that's also a frustration of mine. Some, some do better than others. Um, and I've thought about, do we need both?

And, you know, in my opinion, I think giving the, the public the most opportunity to get their ideas and thoughts in front of the board is, is a good idea. And I think that, you know, with the additional addition of TK, I think that's another avenue that, you know, the board is able to have information and thoughts about a concern brought, brought before us.

For a long time, I thought we could get rid of public testimony and just have Committee of the Whole, um, because I think it's a— I think personally it's a better forum. But there's a lot of people that— there's a lot of people that don't even feel comfortable getting up to the table and giving public testimony.

And then there's a lot of people that could give public testimony for a few minutes, read something off a piece of paper, but are not gonna feel comfortable standing in front of a microphone kind of in a debate setting. And then there's other people and definitely organizations that are gonna be very well versed in that. And so I think of the competitive advantages in all 3 of these situations and I think that they're all valuable. I, I think that probably one of the things, and I, and I'd be curious to hear what both of you think and the public, is that substitute language specifically that's being worked on throughout the meeting on, you know, with a board member with an organization, with a person that has a proposal that they've submitted, sometimes for small technical changes, sometimes dramatic changes. I think to allow the public to have the most input, keeping all three of these things in place, but trying to push the envelope on submission of the most complete form of substitute language prior to that Committee of the Whole starting, because that's the last venue that the, the public has to get in front of the board, is of utmost importance.

And I think I have heard more people complain about things happening at the very last minute and then brought up in the morning where they didn't feel like they had the ability to get with a board member or in front of the board and comment about the substantive changes that have been made. So I'll leave it at that for now. I'm curious to, to hear what the public has to say about that. But, um, I mean, for right now, I think that the 3 forms and written public testimony— I think so, 4 forms in which the public can bring stuff before the board— I think while I wish it could be shortened or changed, I don't know that it's probably a good idea to do that at that time. But I, but I do think stressing to board members that are running committees, we need to be more strict and we need to hold people to new information.

And I think that's not the public's problem. That's each board member's problem while running the committee. So I'll, I'll leave it at that. Thanks, Mike. You got any thoughts?

Yeah, I've got a lot on this one.

I think, I— last year was batted around, uh, not, you know, get rid of public testimony or Committee of a Whole. I think it is the board could use the public's time more efficiently by— if we're going to have substitute language, have it out there so that the people can comment on that language during Committee of a Whole. I think substitute language being delivered the morning of deliberation is, is not the most efficient way for the public to understand what's going on, or for the board member who's, who's putting forward the substitute language to get feedback on whether it's the best way to proceed with a regulation. So I think, um, there are ways over the last 2 years where we we really could have used that to our advantage for the public to have more input would be by simply just getting that substitute language out there, because 99% of these proposals don't require a lot of substitute language. But we all know there's that 1 or 3 that do, and you show up at the meeting already having talked about this and figured it out.

And if you think you got a solution, get with Shaleen, get it in regulation, and then get punched in the face if people don't like it and them change it. So I just think that, that, I mean, the public isn't given enough opportunity by the board to comment on these things, and that's how we could use committee of a whole to our advantage.

Thanks, Mike. You guys bring up some really— and I've been thinking a lot about this too, like maybe you just restrict committee of the whole to discussions of substitute language. But what about the instance in which that substitute language is derived out of conversations that happen in Committee of the Whole.

And that happens a lot too, that you can— you start to hear sort of, again, some of the more nuanced aspects of the issue in committee that then sparks either hopefully some kind of consensus building, or a member decides how they think it's best to respond to that through substitute language. I don't know if that— I'm not quite sure how to get at that. And the other part of this too is that the department, I think, plays an important role in this issue of terms of how substitute language has the opportunity to get reviewed and commented on by the public and when. Um, because there's also been frustration over the years about the department's review process of board members' generation of substitute language ideas. And I think that the department does as best job they could, and I think that there has been significant improvement in terms of like staff has been better about checking in with members before they take off for the day to make sure that, you know, there isn't any language that needs to be worked on.

So that's been a definite improvement, but there's a couple of different bottlenecks that I've started to see. One is in that sort of circular review process where you have all these people that need to sign off on it. Some of those people are sitting there, some of them are back in some random room, some of them are in the bathroom, some of them customer at lunch and it slows down that review process that the department wants in terms of the substitute language development. And the other thing is that poor Shaleen is one person that is fine-tooth combing all of these, you know, all of this language. And she kind of gets inundated and overwhelmed, in my opinion.

Now she may feel differently. So I think that that slows down the development of that substitute language process and the ability of the membership then to get it out so that the public can get eyes on it. I've done my best, and, you know, as I can as chair. It's a difficult position to be in because I want to provide that time and opportunity for that language to get worked out. Sometimes it can be done in an hour.

Sometimes it takes lots of hours and days to work through some of the technicalities and the language and the issues that, you know, the whack-a-mole issues that come up that are unanticipated.

So I've tried to move Committee of the Whole and deliberations around to allow for that if there's something really big that's getting worked on. I've done constant and consistent reminders of members to, if you're working on substitute language, do it early, get it in, get it out there. But I can't, I don't have, you know, I don't have a stick necessarily to compel members to do that as the chair. So, and I've given a lot of thought about sort of the, to your point, Tom, the written oral committee, the whole TK. Opportunities for the public to get in front of the board.

Is the oral portion redundant because we have written and that's all that we're required by law to take or to receive or solicit, I should say. But I also agree with you that I don't think it's the right move to reduce that. But how do we make better use of that time and how do we deal with those instances where substitute language is coming out of committee discussion, and then how do we address the bottlenecks that, that occur as we're trying to develop it and get it out for public review?

I, I've tried to think of a good solution to this problem, but it's very challenging because prior to a meeting, an agenda is set, but typically not every meeting, but most meetings, there's 4 or 5 things that are going to be the big hot topics. Drivers, yeah, that are probably going to generate the most work with the public organizations, et cetera.

I think one possible way to deal with that would be, and this would obviously be at the behest of the chair when putting the agenda together, um, maybe to just allow for these 4 or 5 things to play out throughout the 4 or 5, 6, 7-day meeting, whatever it is. Maybe those things need to be scheduled on the last day and then the last Committee of the Whole, even though they may not fit in with the rest of the topics, because that would potentially allow people, board members and the public, to work on things a little bit longer while still being able to have— being able to have whatever that substitute language in, in its closest to final form prior to that last Committee of the Whole starting. It, it would maybe give the public more time to digest and to be able to comment on that LACSC committee, and then the board could take action. I don't know if that's a solution. It's just something that I've kind of been thinking about because timing is of the essence.

And, you know, like the commissioner said earlier, is that, you know, the more things we add to our plate towards the end of the meeting, we have less time. So if you're taking some of these really big hot topics and putting it at the end of the meeting, then are we rushing more? So it's a problem. But I do think that we need to really think about this and, you know, consider some option to allow the public to digest something before the Committee of the Whole. At all costs.

So like a last chance committee of the whole— last chance committee? Yeah, I, I don't, I don't know what the answer is, but I think, I think that from what I've heard from the public, and I don't disagree with them, and it doesn't happen all the time, but on a very complex issue, I think the public on the most complex issues would really like to be able to say something in front of the board before before we act on it. And I think that this is also potentially a solution to some of the other issues that we're all going to be talking about here in October. And maybe it's just something for us to think about until October, until we have our next work session meeting. Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

I think those are good ideas, good comments.

Okay, go ahead. So we're being forced to deal with this. And especially in the last couple years, and you know, when, when there's a rush process, when there's a bad process, there's bad decisions. When there's a good process, there's good positions or decisions. And when board members have to put language out there, they need to be able to defend that language.

They need to understand what they're doing, how it affects it affects people. We need to build the record for the department on why do we think this is a good decision or don't think it's a good decision. And then that creates that board intent. So when they go back to law and they deal with this afterwards, they know what we meant. And if you can't do that, then, then you're on shaky ground.

You don't have a good foundation. And I, I think when the process gets rushed, You sometimes lose the ability. Some people don't do that. And you— and if all you got is 4 votes, you don't have to do it. But I'm just saying, it's like you have to understand the implications of this, put it out to the public and have them comment on it so that everybody understands that even if you made a bad decision, you made it the best possible way you could.

So, and I think that's being missed sometimes right now. And anyhow, yeah, that's— I'll leave it at that.

Madam Chair, can I just say something? Yeah, go ahead, Doug. I know we had a lot of discussion about the role of the department coming up with language and a variety of other things. Some of the things I want to point out is that we're a little frustrated with that too, because as we draft language, we start circulating it, there's changes to that language that are often brought into another board member. So that slows down the process.

To me, the fundamental issue here is that— and I think you guys are getting to it— is that decisions are being made at the end of a meeting without an adequate amount of public opportunity to review what's being voted on, from their perception. Sometimes after the Committee of the Whole. And that gets back to my point in time is that, you know, we've provided the public a lot of opportunity to talk in advance of the meeting, in advance of the proposal development or substitute language, whatever you want to call it, but we don't give them enough time to look at what that means in terms of language to actually develop and the compromises made. So either we got to extend the meeting, you know, to accommodate that or we have to readjust the— take away some of the public opportunity early on so they get to have a good view and discussion and understanding of what you're actually voting on as substitute language. So I don't think we can slow down.

We can expedite a little bit the process of developing the actual regulatory language, but that process has to be at least relative. It takes a little time to get that language developed so that it passes through the Department of Law regulatory structure at the end of this thing. So I don't want to, I don't want to rob that time too much, but I want to provide enough time so that the public has an opportunity to look at what's actually the compromise language that everybody came up with to address the language out there. And that, that seems to not be happening right now just because we run out of time at the end of the meeting. Yeah, no, I mean, it's super frustrating, you know, as the one who's managing the meeting time.

And I— what I'm hearing is frustration from the chair's perspective, frustration from department perspective, frustration from board member perspective, and frustration from the public. So clearly it's not working very well. So I wanted to start this conversation and again really ask people to think about it. I'm sure that there's a solution, imperfect or not, that we could start experimenting with at least this year to see if that alleviates any of these issues or improves them a little bit. I don't know, but that's something that I'd like to see happen.

So, but I'm really interested in how the public perceives this issue, what their experience on that side of the table is. And I'd like to talk about it some more. And this is another space where I would really, really like folks to, to write into the board and let us know, think about it and write in. And this is going to be, you know, again, an agenda item that I'd like to see. Well, perhaps repetitive.

I really want to give people the opportunity to think about it and respond to this conversation right now. A little bit more if they need that, a little bit more time to cogitate and think about it. Any other comments before I open it up?

It's—. I'm not able to get to all the chats, okay folks? So it's much easier if maybe you just raise your hand. I will try to get to it. So I got 2 comments in here right now that I'll just read out.

It's very intimidating to get in front of the Board of Fish and Board of Game. I've heard people sit down after giving their testimony and say, oh, I should have said this and this. Having the committee of the whole gives them that chance to get that information that they didn't get in testimony. So it may be a longer process, but is a good thing in the end, or might be a longer process, but having multiple chances to speak is a good thing in the end. I agree with that comment also because The time constraint is 3 minutes is not a long time, and I know that there's a lot more good information than can be brought forth in just 3 minutes.

Carmen Daggett submitted that in the instance of the committee of the whole and substitute language issue, could you allow a public poll happen to get a sense of support for that language if there is strong opposition or high division of feelings, perhaps use that as an indicator for need for a further Committee of the Whole. Interesting. Okay. I'll go ahead and open it up. Thatcher, I see you have your hand up.

Go ahead.

Again, Thatcher Brower, Executive Director, Unangax̂em Navajo Nation, and thanks again for the opportunity to comment. And regarding this agenda item, generally United Fishermen of Alaska does support the public process that's provided for both the opportunity to provide oral and written comments. More specifically about the concerns you've discussed here today, UFA does share those concerns that sometimes the language in the final proposal is different from what people had an opportunity to comment on, and one suggestion that the board came up with is that that if there is a change to the language, maybe there's another call for public comment, or maybe that decision on that proposal is delayed to a future meeting. And that's all I have on this agenda item. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Heather Bauscher, then Dan Norman. Go ahead, Heather.

Hi there. Thank you so much for this conversation, and I really appreciate, uh, the comments from Mike and Tom especially. I've, uh, a lot of the consternation I've heard from the people that I work with reflect a lot of that. Um, I think the Committee of the Whole is really important. I really love the Committee of the Whole.

And as was mentioned before, when there's substitute language or RCs are brought in, if you don't have the opportunity to speak during the Committee of the Whole, you don't really get to weigh in on that. One challenge I've experienced as a chair for an advisory committee was, you know, trying to weigh in on language that was changed but not being able to run that by my committee. And the best that I was able to do in those situations was at least speak to the components of it that I felt were in alignment with what my committee reported. So having greater guidance for chairs to be able to figure out how to navigate that would be really helpful, because otherwise it starts to feel like you're almost circumventing the advisory committee role in things. And I don't know the answer to that, but that's how it's felt in the past, and that's a lot of the public feedback that I've heard as well.

So those, those are my main points, and I just love the Committee of the Whole So I hope you wouldn't take that away. Thanks, Heather. No, you bring up a good point. It's how do the ACs, the reps, get back to their ACs and communicate to the board? It's a good point.

Go ahead, Dan.

That took a second to unmute. I believe all 4 forms of public engagement, you know, they're important.

Important. The trade-off is efficiency and brevity, right? So like I said earlier, it's a hard job on that committee chair, but being diligent and enforcing the new information will help. Also setting deadlines for comments and publishing a proposal roadmap kind of ahead of time, deliberation schedule is helpful. Member Carpenter is spot on too with this comment that there's hundreds of proposals at least in my region, and it boils down to 4 or 5 really impactful proposals.

So, you know, for those pushed to the end, that would help.

I reject the notion of a public poll. My fleet is limited entry, and we have limited voices. It doesn't mean we have less meaning to the process or access to the resource under the state constitution.

Kind of regarding the public access, you know, this is great that's on Zoom. I'd like to see that expand so we can avoid some travel costs, you know, for regulatory meetings as well in the future.

And, you know, the process matters to our fleet, and it's sort of kind of what we're all ref sick of, so I'll just be direct. Like, board-generated proposals that come after the committee whole, it really disenfranchises um, and is why a lot of the things we're dealing with now, I think, are, are brought to light. So, you know, having the public testimony, the advisory committee's engagement, those are all important. And when all that's bypassed for a board general proposal after everyone's got a chance to speak their piece, uh, it really kind of undermines what historically has been, you know, um, paramount in this board process. You know, a public process is It's hard.

I'm not just taking that away from anyone. It's a hard process, but it's incredibly important to get stakeholder involvement.

So, anyway, I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you. Thanks, Dan. Any questions for him? All right, Paul Clark, you're on.

Hi, thanks, Madam Chair, board members. I'm Paul Clark. I am with a planner with the Matsu Borough and just really appreciate the struggle and the challenge of trying to get this, the public engagement and participation right. And definitely appreciate that this past Board of Fisheries meeting was my first one. So I was fresh to the experience and where I saw, heard the most redundancy was probably between reading all the written comments and then the first round of oral testimony.

There was a substantial amount of overlap, so it's possible there could be an opportunity to reduce redundancy there. I don't have the answer or even a recommendation personally, but maybe it's— it can be one or the other, especially if they're the same thing. The, the work session, the Committee of the Whole, seemed very valuable and is set up to bring in different information. And then in the cases where there are substantive changes around the deliberation time point, if the board has the opportunity to open up for comments on those substantive changes specifically, and we can save enough time up front, then that might be a great opportunity and reduce the concern, the concerns that changes are sprung upon the board and the public without even a chance to comment or really analyze them. That was all I had.

Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Appreciate your comments. Any questions? All right, we got a comment in the chat that I'll read.

Where'd it go? This is from Lena Hoblet. The Committee of the Whole is a valuable part of the Board of Fisheries process because it gives stakeholders, advisory committees, department staff, scientists, and other subject matter experts an opportunity to discuss proposals in detail and provide information directly to the board. However, that purpose is undermined when the committee concludes and materially different substitute language is introduced the following morning without a meaningful opportunity for the public or affected stakeholders to review and comment before deliberation. When substitute language substantially changes the proposal, the people who participate in the committee may have provided testimony and technical information on language that is no longer before the board.

New language can also raise biological economic allocation enforcement and unintended regulatory consequences that were never evaluated during the public process. Um, recommendation is that new substitute language is introduced after Committee of the Whole has concluded. The Board provide a defined opportunity for review and comment for deliberation. I'm paraphrasing here a little bit. Um, this could include reconvening the Committee of the Whole for that proposal, provide a short public comment period, or establishing another process that allows affected stakeholders and technical experts to address the changes.

Substitute language is an important tool and should remain available to the board. The concern is not the board's ability to amend proposals, it's ensuring that significant changes do not effectively bypass the very public process of committee of the whole is designed to provide. If community input, stakeholder expertise, and best available science are intended to inform board decisions, these voices need an opportunity to address the actual regulatory language and the board that the board is considering, not simply the language that existed the day before. Excellent comment, Lina. Thank you.

Any other public comments on this agenda item? I think it's a really good conversation. I appreciate it. I'd like to build on it again and put this out for folks to comment on more. Substantively if they'd like before the next process committee meeting.

And the other thing that I'm thinking about adding, you know, as part of this discussion, as part of what I read in the written public comments that we received for this meeting, is a discussion about virtual participation. That's another one that I've struggled with, and I've gotten a lot of requests for over the years. It's been a difficult thing to think about managing. Because number one, we would get calls from all over, and if we have hundreds, if we have 300 people showing up at a meeting, showing up in the room, I could imagine that number doubling or even tripling if we opened it up virtually, and that would obviously constitute extensive additions of days and time to our meetings. In the past, during a COVID year when we had to move the meeting out of Southeast to Anchorage because, well, various reasons were associated with that decision, but we did do a virtual online participation, but folks had to show up to an ADF&G office to provide that testimony.

I just, it's something that I see repeating itself. I've heard about it. It's something that I've been approached with in the past. I see it a lot in a lot of the public comments that we received for this meeting. And so I anticipate probably adding a little dovetailing off on this conversation and probably asking folks for, and department thoughts on how the board could or could not add virtual participation.

The way I see that is really through the written public comment exercise right now.

But it's sort of this ability to participate in real time. The only option for folks that are not physically at the meeting is through the RC process, which has been improved because you can now submit electronically. You don't have to to be at the record keeper's desk with 20 physical copies of your RC. But I kind of want to throw that out there for people to think about and consider as we continue this discussion and revisit it here in a few weeks. Mr. Norman, I see you have your hand up.

Go ahead.

Yeah, Madam Chair, kind of regarding that, maybe a good kind of middle road would be remote participation for some of the out-of-cycle things. If it's in cycle and we're— like, I know I'm going to be in Anchorage this coming March because it's been on the calendar for years. Some of the out-of-cycle things would be helpful, I think.

That's a good idea. Thank you.

Board comments on this? Any other comments on this agenda item?

Okay, seeing none, we've talked about— we're sort of punting agenda item 7 to our next process committee meeting, which I'm anticipating to be on or around October 14th. I'll work with Art to get that noticed hopefully by next week so that people have plenty of time to take a look at it and plan for it and submit comments. Are there any other comments from department board staff right now before I open it up to final public comments? No, I think this has been a very good discussion, Madam Chair. I think we tackled a few issues that have been high on my frustration list as stock concerns and how we can get the final language, have an opportunity for the public and the department to really understand and the board to really understand what you're probably— what you're going to be voting on.

So this is a very good discussion, and I look forward to trying to resolve some of these issues over the next couple weeks. Thanks, Doug. I really appreciate you carving out time of your schedule to be here and be able to participate. Um, I know, I know yours is stacked, so thank you for being here. Trying to navigate an ambler road right now.

Well, we're gonna stay out of that one. Have fun. Any other comments before I open it up one time finally for the public?

You go ahead, Mike. Well, I just, I appreciate the talk of the process. I think it's super important. I think what's historically been the best thing about the Board of Fisheries and I believe it, it's, um, you know, we've heard from people that it's been problematic recently, and, and I appreciate, um, that you taking the time to look into this by having this meeting and, uh, all the efforts that are being put into it by the public and, and board and others to look into it to make sure this process continues to be— have the integrity that it deserves, and, um, so that good decisions are made and they're not made on the fly. So I'm, I'm grateful to be back and I really look forward to addressing this to make sure that integrity is maintained.

Yeah, thanks for your comment, Mike. Yeah, I'm glad we were able to have the, the, the meeting too. This is a list that has been growing and Art can attest to this, you know, over the course of the last couple of years, at least the last year and a half in terms of sort of these issues sort of keep emerging during our meetings, and we finally were able to carve out a little bit of time, albeit maybe not ideal, to talk about it. It's hard to find an ideal time, you know, we're either meeting actively or the fishing seasons are occurring or like all the things. So appreciate folks that showed up to participate on the line or through their written comments, and I would really encourage folks to, to do so for our next meeting too.

And hopefully we can at least get some ideas about how we might, experiment with this year's cycle if, if folks are willing to try and make this process a little bit, better, um, given the feedback that we have heard, um, today. Uh, I'll go ahead and open it up for public comment. Finally, before we adjourn here, is there anybody who would like to make any final comments today?

I see Andy Wink with your hand up, followed by Paul Clark. Go ahead, Andy. Okay, can you guys hear me? Loud and clear. Great.

Madam Chair, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Andy Wink. This summer I spent several weeks monitoring I'm John Krasner, monitoring Chinook harvest at Alaska's Best Seafoods plant in Ecook. My comments today echo the needs touched on in written comment PC4. In a nutshell, I'd request that the board incorporate more economic cost-benefit analysis, both prior to implementing management changes and to monitor the effects of those changes, at least for a reasonable period of time.

These sorts of analyses are critical to ensure fishery resources are being utilized in a manner that are consistent with Alaska's Constitution. Just a real quick summary of what I saw play out in the Nushkeag District. The board has put in various changes that have effectively pushed back the start of commercial fishing later and later with the goal of increasing Chinook escapement. In 2026, Nushkeag sockeye exceeded the upper SEG goal by about 2.4 million fish. This equates to roughly $20 million in foregone vessel value and more in wholesale value.

Over the same season, the ABS plant bought about 4.3 million pounds of sockeye and chum, and the Ikuk commercial fishermen averaged just 3.6 kings per site, and this includes personal use harvest. Of the kings that were bought, only 12 of those weighed over 10 pounds and averaged just 4 4.6 pounds on a head and gutted basis. And these last figures come from production line accounting, which had camera surveillance, so they are very accurate. In the early window that management delayed in the season—. Andy, can I— can you tie this to our agenda items, please?

Well, I think the, the, my comment has to do with, with process and data and research. That I feel is lacking. Got it, got it, that's right, fair.

Go ahead, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. That's okay.

So basically, you know, had this fishery opened a few days earlier, you know, it looks like the sockeye harvest would have been about 1 to 2 million pounds higher for this operator without any material impact on Chinook. So I think it's just a, an example of how, you know, there can be unintended consequences. I don't think this is an uncommon situation. And so kind of to the point of what I'm going after here, you know, I think I'd like to see the department incorporate deeper economic research into its process. Specifically, that could include 3 things.

First, when a management plan or an action plan calls for a restriction, it could estimate how many Chinook that restriction is expected to save and what harvest it will forego. Second, after the season, the department could report what each restriction actually achieved compared to what was projected. And without that, restrictions tend to accumulate and never really get, you know, retested or, or analyzed. Third, where the data support it, perhaps managers could use area-specific triggers like a king Sockeye encounter ratio so the low impact areas can fish while high impact areas stay closed. And just finally, I'll try to be really quick, but I'd ask the board to confront hard reality.

You know, Chinook abundance and size are being driven by a lot of factors outside the board's control, and it can really only pull the, the one lever of in-river harvest. And so when that lever is, that you control, is small relative to the problem. Pulling it harder can impose large certain costs on Alaskan families for small uncertain benefits to the stock of concern. So I think this is really important and would like to see that the— you know, I think the board needs to take this controllability factor more into account in its own decision-making process and would ask that the board consider options for how to do that. So with that, I'll leave it there.

Thank you for the time. Thank you, Andy. Appreciate your comments there. Paul Clark followed by Heather Bauscher and Dan Norman. Go ahead, Paul.

All right, thank you, Madam Chair, Board Committee members. So this is tied to the, the proposal submission rules, but a little bit tangential. And maybe, again, being new to it, maybe this is an unusual situation, but in the case of the upcoming Board of Fisheries meeting and the fact the proposals were due on April 10th, the context tied to the Central Cook Inlet Drift Gillnet Management Plan changed, but from before April 10th to where we're at now in that those regulations, you know, still undergoing review and did not, and did not go into effect. So Part of my role is working with the Matsuburo Fish and Wildlife Commission, and as we're preparing for the upcoming Board of Fisheries, we're just not sure how to respond and how that— the issue of the regulations that we're going to go in effect, but we work with the status quo regulations. So the process question is there is when the— when the context substantially changes before and after the proposal submission deadline, what are stakeholders— how do stakeholders move forward and prepare for the upcoming conversation?

That's a good question. Thank you.

Heather Bauscher?

Um, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak one last time. I'll be real quick. I have 2 points, and I just really appreciate this whole conversation and taking the time to do this and allow us to weigh in. Um, one, in, uh, building upon some comments regarding what people sometimes call board-generated proposals, maybe having greater sideboards. It's completely understandable that that you all have to take multiple proposals that are similar and combine them together to create something else.

But at times it is felt that there's other components that are brought in that maybe should be proposals from the beginning. So figuring out ways to have greater sideboards there would be helpful to the public. And then second, as you're able to come up with greater guidelines for participation in different components of all of this, um, I know funding for everything is hard. But more support for resources, training, public education. I think people would really appreciate that, and finding ways to work with partners or others to do that would be really helpful for the public to feel better able to participate, more comfortable, and maybe more effective in the process.

Thank you so much. Thanks, Heather. And Dan, go ahead.

Yeah, just one more time again, just thanks for doing this. I think it's really important. I'm just going to hit on a little bit on the research and data, right? So habitat, priority, escapement goals, harvest restrictions assume a healthy habitat. I don't know if that's always the case.

So, you know, Cook and Litzen, a bunch of restrictions that haven't produced increased stocks. So it's got to be happening somewhere else in the life cycle, so it's got to be, or a different user group. So whether that's in river or farther out in the ocean, we talked a little bit about hatcheries, maybe that's part of it, maybe it's some of the shore fleet. It's several factors and all of those need to be considered as part of the process and using good science. Additionally, something that I'd like to highlight is some enforcement data.

Where are the violations taking place? Those violations that are over their limit harvesting or wasting or removals that are never captured anywhere. So I'd ask the troopers where they're spending their hours and resources in proportion to whatever fishery they're enforcing and kind of just getting some information on where the bad actors are, and maybe that'll glean some light on some issues.

Additionally, when commercial harvesters harvest Chinook salmon in years past, it's been a long time for, for my family that have done that, but they're on the fish ticket, there's a spot where it says under 10 pounds and there's another spot that says over 10 pounds. Well, we compile all that data and then it goes to the department and then they commingle it together for one overall Chinook harvest. That's good data to have on trends of size of fish that has been collected for a lot of years that never really gets reported. So I'd like to see that come back just so we have a real accurate picture on the size of the fish, and maybe that'll help bring some light to the issues, and all in the name of research. Thank you.

All right, thanks, Dan. Appreciate those comments. I agree with a lot of them there. Any other comments? From members of the public.

I'm not seeing any additional hands up. I think I'll just kind of— do you have a comment, Mike? Nope. Your face just likes to pop up on my big screen here, so I think you have something to say. I'm just going to kind of— my takeaways from the written public comments and what I've heard today Man, there's a lot of stuff.

I think there's more stuff that we agree on than we don't agree on in terms of how to improve the process with the board. I just, you know, sort of summarizing some of the things that I've read and heard, I think that there is a recognition, at least from my part, that a lot of these changes that are being contemplated and recommended could very likely require a significant investment. And public prioritization of resourcing the fisheries regulatory process. And communication should not just stop with the board and this committee, but also extend to the legislature, to commissioners, and to governors that come forward. So I just really want to just say thank you.

I think that there's I've read in the public comments some excellent, excellent points and recommendations, ones that I wish I could implement immediately. But Commissioner, I hope you're reading and hearing some of this as well. And I know that you are constricted by budgets and, and administrative priorities. I appreciate that. But I think what we're by and large hearing is a call that We need additional resources to be able to make these meetings more productive, to make board members better board members, and also to supply the science that everybody wants us to use.

It's very difficult as a member of the board to be wanting to make decisions based on the best available science when it doesn't exist.

So those are just some of the things that I think I've heard and that I'm thinking about, and I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation here in 2 or 3 weeks prior to the work session. So any last comments?

Go ahead once. You look like you got something almost on the tip of your tongue, Doug. Well, we got a great public process, you know, we should be proud of it. We, compared to many other states, the public has an adequate opportunity to kind of really weigh in. They can submit a proposal on any fisheries and we should be pretty proud of that, but that doesn't mean we can't improve the process that we have.

I think we've kind of gone in many respects way beyond what other people do in terms of getting, like the legislature even getting comments before passing a law. But that said, I think we can improve on how we can do that final step of that public process to make sure everybody's at least aware of what, what's happening at the end of it. And that may end up having to extend meetings, but we may be able to improve our process so that we don't add a significant amount of cost. But we— I certainly don't want to end up at the end of this with less opportunity for the public to weigh in, basically refining how they can best way in. So I think this is a great discussion.

Appreciate those, those comments. And if I'm not seeing any more, I think we've talked a little bit about next steps. Art, just, just to make sure that you're tracking here, I'd like to work with you over the course of the early next.