2025 Southeast and Yakutat Finfish and Shellfish (2/1/25)

One, two, three, four. 5, 6, 7, 8. Nailed it!

Recording in progress.

All right, good morning everybody. Time is 8:39 AM. Today is Saturday, February First on deck today, we're going to go ahead and take up Committee of the Whole Group 3, and then we'll probably take a long break. We'll see how much substitute language may be being worked on, and then we will deliberate Committee of the Whole Group 3 today. And then tomorrow we'll begin with staff reports on Session 2.

So today will be wrapping up session 1 with committee and deliberations for Group 3. So Group 3 is subsistence shellfish, commercial and sport shrimp, commercial and other miscellaneous shellfish. There are 21 proposals in this group, and I will turn it over to the chair of this committee, Mr. Swenson. The floor is yours.

Good morning. Well, this morning we're going to talk about all of the the creatures that crawl along the bottom of the ocean. But the positive thing is we won't make you crawl up to testify. You can walk up. So please state your name, and if you're going to testify, come up close so we can move things along as quickly as we can.

And, uh, new information, uh, you know, we don't need a reiteration of what was talked about before. So if you have new information, come up and let us have but don't refer to anybody by name. Be respectful. And with that, let's go for it.

So I think we start with 212. And staff.

Mr. Chair, my name is Justin Breeze. I'm the assistant area management biologist in Ketchikan for commercial fisheries. Proposal 212 would allow the department to increase the number of permit holders per vessel in small fisheries from 2 to 4. Mr.

Chair.

Thank you. Does anyone wish to testify for or against this?

Jeremy?

There we go. That's better. Yeah, sorry to put this—. Your name? Your name?

Jeremy Layton. I'm harvest diver in Southeast Alaska. Sorry to put this proposal in for areas to be managed more efficiently that are far from town. There's times when the quota starts getting low and we may get a quota per person of down to like 300 pounds. In some of these areas, we have to travel 7 hours one direction to get there.

So you're sometimes in excess of $1,000 in fuel just to be able to go fish. And if it's a 300-pound trip limit, sometimes it's very low, you know, $1,500, $1,800. So most of your money is just being burned up in fuel. The ability to put more divers on a boat would allow to get percentages or share the cost of traveling to those far-off areas. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any questions?

I don't see any, Jeremy. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Matt Kurtz, commercial Gwia'tak harvest diver based out of Ketchikan. I just wanted to put in my support for this proposal. Certified. Thank you.

Thank you.

Yes, Seth Rockwell, commercial harvester here. I support this proposal also. One thing Jeremy did not mention here that we need to think about is it's a money effect. It's also an environmental effect. Just running down for these small amounts.

Goody ducks, it does behoove instead of having 20 boats run down there, having 10 boats run down there. You're literally cutting in half the amount of fuel that we're using to harvest these. And so overall, on a sustainability as far as harvest, you know, a lot of things that get talked about in these fisheries is what's the environmental impact of it. By allowing these guys to do this, we're lessening our environmental impact on the fishery. We're burning less fuel to harvest this same amount when we're stuck harvesting small amounts.

So So that's another consideration also. Thank you. Anyone else wish to testify?

Not seeing any questions. Let's move on to— sorry. This is for either of the two previous testifiers. Just in terms of like how much overhead does your operation— so I'm just trying to get an idea of like What is the fuel, the cost of your operation versus your profit margin, if you're willing to share that, just percentages? Are you talking in these trip limits of like 300 pounds, or are you talking in general?

Both. Okay, well, in general, when you get 1,000 pounds and you have to travel 7 hours, you get paid, let's say, $8 a pound, that's an $8,000 check. At 300 pounds, it's a $2,400 check. Now your expenses are the same regardless. So to travel 7 hours, it's roughly a $1,000 trip limit— or not trip limit, but a trip.

You know, you— the fuel or the food and such is all going to be about the same. And every boat's going to be different. Some boats burn a lot more fuel and some burn less. So like I say, it just makes it more equitable if we can put a couple extra divers to share those costs. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Jeremy.

Any other questions?

Okay, let's move on to 213.

Staff. Mr. Chair, for the record, my name is Quinn Smith. I am the Southeast Shrimp and Dive Research Biologist for the Division of Commercial Fisheries. Proposal 213, this would require that guideline harvest levels for ge— for geoduck fisheries be calculated as 2% of the midpoint of the population estimate instead of the current practice of 2% of the lower bound of the one-sided 90% confidence interval of the population estimate.

Thank you. Anybody wish to testify on this? Yes.

Any question? Here we go. Sorry, I had to find my reading glasses.

Good morning, everyone. For the record, my name is Kate Sullivan, and I work with the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association. In regulation for our sea cucumber and sea urchin fisheries, we have formulas in there that specify how we calculate GHL and harvest level and GHLs. For our geoduck plan, we do not, and the the practices is that they use the lower bound of the 90% confidence interval. But in the regional operation plan that they use for dive fishery stock assessment surveys in Southeast Alaska, they developed a management plan for geoducks in 1999.

The guideline harvest levels for geoducks have been calculated as the product of the lower 90% confidence limit on the biomass estimate and the annual target exploitation rate of 2%. Our harvest rate of 2% is in regulation, so we do have something in regulation that talks about how we calculate our GHLs based on a, you know, a biomass estimate and then using the 2%.

And then that's multiplied by the number of years in the rotation. Most of our fisheries are a 2-year rotation, so we don't go into a gooey duck bed every year and fish every year. So our effective rate, if we have a 2-year rotation, is a 4% harvest rate. We also have areas that are in a 4-year rotation, which means we'd have an effective 8% harvest rate. And in this operational plan that Fish and Game follows, it says that, however, because the lower bound confidence limit is used instead of the point estimate, the effective harvest rate for the population is less.

So Basically, how I read that is that they're using something that doesn't quite give us our 2% harvest rate, which is in regulation. And I understand there's a mandate in the state for conservation, but I believe there's also a full utilization clause or a maximum utilization clause where we want to, you know, if we're allowed a 2% harvest rate and the formula that they're using is not, maybe not giving us that. I think about it as a 25-year thing. So in a given harvest rotation, if we have 12 to 15 areas that we're fishing, and effectively we're not getting our 2% harvest rate, and then you multiply that over 25 years, that's a tremendous loss to the commercial fishery. And so my thing was, well then, why don't we go to the midpoint?

Maybe the midpoint would get us closer to 2%. And the department did run some numbers using the midpoint, and it increased some areas by maybe 10%, some by 20-plus percent. But maybe that's where we're supposed to be if we're using something that doesn't give us 2% of our— the 2% harvest rate that we have in regulation.

Okay, thank you, Kate. Any questions?

Go ahead. Thank you, Kate. And this is— this may not be within your scope of expertise. This may be better directed to the department later, but Uh, to the best of your knowledge, how does the increased predation we've been hearing about over the last week affect a lot of the calculations and the algorithm that's used to produce the GHL? Do you see that going down, or is that something that the formula takes into consideration?

I don't know if the formula takes it into consideration, but in areas where we have otters, we're having tremendous declines in our biomass. Or in our GHL allocation, but in areas where we don't have otters, where we have stability and increases in some cases. But that may be something that the department can address later. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Kate.

Hi, my name is Jerry Layton again. There are things to be considered when you're talking about harvest rates and all that. The way that they do their surveys for to come up with biomass in each of these areas is that we call it bed mapping. So we've gone in before fishing game, we've done logbook data, that sort of stuff. And the fishing game takes all that information.

They find the more dense beds. They're not looking at beds where It may be 1 gooey duck per square meter. It's more of the beds that are, you know, in, in the past I've seen them 25 and 30 per square meter. So those are the more prominent beds they want to look at. So these are the ones right now that they're taking into account, but there's many other beds that have lower amounts of gooey ducks on them that aren't even added into the equation of biomass.

And on top of that, they're not looking at anything you know, deeper than 60 feet. So that's the max depth that they look at. And we know that these geoducks can live down to over 300 feet. And we know that most of them live in, you know, most of them are above 100 feet, but there's a good portion between 60 and 100. So there's already some safety factors built in just to their survey methods.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeremy. I got a question. Question. Jeremy, when you go to these places, do you go to, it sounds like there's a rotation from when you can go to one place to another year to year? Correct.

And then do you ever go prospecting anywhere else to look for geoduck or is it pretty much the same spots every time? Depends on the person. I tend to try to go look for new beds.

Guys that are diving by themselves have better, better opportunity for that because a lot of the new beds that aren't already being fished are much smaller, and the fishing game doesn't tend to go after the small beds to account for biomass. So, you know, a single diver can go into a bed that's the size of, you know, this part of the room and do just fine, where if two people would need a much larger area. So a lot of us single diver boats actually do go out and look around. So when you go into a bed like that and it's just by yourself, how do you know, like, what is the right amount to take out of an area like the size of this room you were just talking about? I don't know that there's a right amount.

You know, you're not going to be there if you've taken enough to where it's too slow. You have a certain period of time. Generally, I'm trying to get my limit in 4 hours or less. If I go into a spot that it's going to take me 8 hours or till the next day, I'm going to look for a different spot. Okay, so, and that's dependent on the depth and how long you can be down there and how much room you have to put them into, like, is that kind of the parameters for—.

How much I can harvest? Yeah. More density. If you're at the right depth and using Nitrox, I mean, at 40 feet, you don't have to get out of the water in 4 hours. You can stay down.

And in the past, I've stayed down for 6 hours straight. So it really depends on the depth, but it's more about the quantity that are there. So if I can stay in the water for 4 hours straight and I can't get my limit, and that's my goal is to be done, I move to a different spot. Okay, yeah, thanks a lot. That helps.

I mean, you can only move so fast, right? You can only— like, if you're a good gooey duck digger, you can fill your basket maybe faster than others, but I think I'm getting it. Right. Thanks. Hi, thanks.

So I'm just thinking about this now and in the context of the previous proposal also. And so And I don't know a lot about this at all, and I'm just trying to draw this out for the record. If you double the amount of divers that you can have on a vessel, how would that affect your exploitation rate on some of these beds? You mentioned if I'm a single boat diver, then you tend to look for some of the smaller beds, maybe not as concentrated. You move around a little bit more.

Well, you'd— if you had more divers, you'd end up in one of the larger beds, right? Exactly. And some of these beds you can— will have 10 or 15 boats on it. You know, the numbers are incredible, the amount of güey ducks that can be on them. We've had divers that have gone to the exact same spot year after year, rotation after rotation, for— and then also week after week.

So some of these areas are open for 5 or 6 weeks in a row, and divers will go to the same bed, and 2 guys will take 6,000 pounds back when it was wide open for years. It's pretty amazing how many geoducks can fit in a small area like this. Okay, thanks.

So, and again, forgive me, I'm trying to fill some gaps in knowledge. You know, when I was first introduced to geoducks, I tried to research it and couldn't spell it right. And that was one of my biggest limitations for research. So can you give me an understanding? And my understanding within Alaska is it's a very limited range in which geoduck are harvested.

Um, is there a lot of global competition in the market for, uh, for this? As in, are there other harvest ranges? Uh, like, what's, what's the range for this population? Again, this is better for the department, but [Speaker] Well, the majority of the geoducks in Southeast— or in southern Southeast Alaska. There is some small quantities up around Sitka.

And Alaska's biomass that we harvest is probably, I would say, 5 or 10% of the total global harvest. Washington and Canada both harvest much larger amounts of geoducks. I don't know their exact quotas for each of those, but they're also fished a little bit differently. Thank you.

And Jeremy, is it safe to say then really you guys are more interested in going to the beds that are shallower than trying to go down 300 feet, I would assume? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we're definitely trying to stay as shallow as possible and be productive as possible for the time we're in the water. Okay, well, thank you. Anyone else wish to— any other questions from the board?

Anyone else wish to testify on this?

Sure, come on up. So again, for the record, Kate Sullivan with the Dive Fishing Association. I just wanted to make sure that it was clear to the board that the geoduck fishery has a weekly trip limit of 1,000 pounds total. So every diver is allocated 1,000 pounds. And, and I just wanted to make sure that that was stated at some point.

Thank you, Kate. Anyone else? Seeing none, let's move on to 214. Staff.

Mr. Chair, again, Quinn Smith of the department. Proposal 214. This proposal would give the department authority to reopen a geoduck fishery that was closed due to the most recent biomass estimate being 30% below or below 30% of the original biomass estimate after a 5-year closure. Mr.

Chair, thank you. Anyone wish to testify on this?

Hi, Jeremy Layton again.

Sardine put— put— Sardine put— the Dive Association put this proposal up. And attempts to try to get some of these areas open that have been closed to otters. And we're, you know, as I stated a couple of days ago, we're trying to look for a balance between the otters and the geese and the divers all at the same time.

Right now, the way it is, we will probably never see these opened if the wordage in the regulation states that if it hits 30%, we will get no more fishery. With the otters present, there will probably never be above 30% of the original biomass when the original biomass was taken after 100 years of zero otters.

Okay, thank you. Any questions? Anyone else wish to testify?

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Again, for the record, Kate Sullivan with the Dive Fishing Association. So Chairman Swenson, is it okay if there's a little bit of overlap between this proposal and the next one? Some of what I'm going to say now is relevant to the next proposal for consideration.

That's fine. Thank you. Um, so, um, RC019 is a colored map that I submitted the other day, and the second page is a list of areas that we've lost since 2016 on the outside. So when I talk about The outside— I'm really talking about this band where there's a lot of red, and that's the outside of Prince of Wales Island. And then in here is what we call the inside or the Ketchikan area, gooey duck beds.

And every area that we've lost has been on the Prince of Wales side, and that's 100% due to sea otters. That's been documented in all the ADFNG surveys. Every time an area is closed, It's because of otters. I also submitted RC024 because I was, I think, a little bit overwhelmed at how many times we heard about the impacts of sea otters in Southeast Alaska. And RC024 simply— I did a lot of research this summer when I was once again ruminating on sea otters and if we could do anything about them.

I did a lot of research to figure out what the intent was of these reintroductions of sea otters. And someone from Fish and Game that deals in marine mammals was able to find me 2 documents total that are digitized. She was willing to go back and go through paper files, but the one file I found that was the intent of sea otter reintroduction, which the State of Alaska Department of Fish and Game did, was for a game resource. It was for furs. It was not to have this population pretty much unchecked in Southeast Alaska.

And while I understand the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act gave these otters protections, the state intended that to be a resource for use by the people of Southeast Alaska, by coastal residents. And instead we have pretty much a fisheries disaster looming in many fisheries in Southeast because of these unchecked otters. Um, the US Fish and Wildlife Service did an updated report last year on the stock assessment for sea otters. They're saying sea otters are at 50% carrying capacity in Southeast Alaska, and I think the board heard from every fishing group in this, at least invertebrate fisheries, that if they're only at 50% carrying capacity, we're all going to extinction. All of these fisheries are going to go to extinction unless we can do something.

So our— the proposal about maybe trying to do something different is generated from this idea, as Jeremy said, We established these original biomass estimates that are our threshold for closing a fishery. When we hit 30% of that original biomass estimate, we have to close a fishery. So if that's the case, we are going to extinction. That original biomass estimate is like an old-growth forest. It was developed in a time when there was zero predation for over 100 years.

These geoducks were allowed to live and grow and and thrive unchecked. And now we're harvesting them, and we have to come to some new equilibrium, otherwise we have no fisheries. We will be out of fisheries. So I just wanted to make it clear that, you know, an original biomass estimate that no longer has any place in our current ecosystem where there are otters holds us to an impossible standard to ever be able to fish again. And also, I'd just like to make it clear, I don't know if people understand with.

Inverted— with molluscan shellfish, you have to spend a lot of money and time getting these areas classified for bacterial contamination concerns. So we have to hire a charter plane out of Ketchikan to fly out and collect water samples on the entire outside of Prince of Wales Island, and that costs us $25,000 a year to do. We have to do that year after year after year. The industry pays for that. The state does not pay for that.

So as we lose these areas on the outside of Prince of Wales Island, we are still incurring all those costs, hoping to be able to fish again. But we're kind of running into a house of cards situation here, where at some point we're going to have to decide, you know, in addition to all the red that I just showed you, I want to be clear that those other areas out there have incredibly diminished harvest levels. We have lost so much quota out there that we literally are at the house of cards situation where we're gonna have to make choices. You know, do we just decide we're gonna shut down all those areas and save $50,000 to $60,000 a year because we have inorganic arsenic testing, paralytic shellfish poisoning testing? We have to keep those areas classified for water quality standards.

Maybe if we lose 50% of our harvestable area, we stop paying Fish and Game as much, and we work with the legislature to remove the requirement that we pay Fish and Game $130,000 every year. If our GHL keeps declining and our assessment tax money goes way down while all the other expenses are going up, at some point we're going to have to make some really hard choices. And I just hope the state— we're asking— the next two proposals are really about asking the state to try to work with us to do something different so that we don't lose this entire fishery. And then also, you know, yesterday, I think it was 243 passed where, you know, we could— there was a biological threshold that's been established at 200,000 pounds for crab. And the department in that case was willing to work with that user group to find a different way maybe to manage the fisheries.

And we're just asking to try. We're not asking forever. We just want to see if it's possible. Okay. Thanks, Katie.

We have another question here for you. Sorry, I think two questions for you and you may have answered it. I was not familiar with the aerial surveys on the bacterial thing I was going to ask and you went on to mention it was— are we just talking about paralytic shellfish poisoning when they do an aerial survey? I would— I didn't know that was a technique for monitoring that. Well, so the Department of Environmental Conservation does do aerial surveys to look for point sources of pollution.

But when we charter a float plane to go out, they actually have to land in multiple spots, get out of the plane, get onto the pontoon, and actually take a physical water sample. And then we have 24 hours to get those up to the lab in Anchorage for analysis. So that's for bacterial contamination. And then there's paralytic shellfish poisoning, which is a totally different set of monitoring. Okay, and so you have to charter a plane because the efficiency of it, the 24 hours, the boat's not going to get it done.

Okay. Yeah. And then when you say $25,000, that's borne by the industry, that's the association paying. So how many user groups in the association is that divided amongst? Well, it's the, the dive permit holders.

So we have this year, I think we've had 50 Gwidduck divers. So we have about 50 permit holders that are making landings. And then they go ahead. And then the aerial survey is done once per season when you're harvesting, or is it fixed intervals? Well, so DEC does the aerial surveys.

So that's—. I want to know the water, what you have to pay for. So that water quality sampling, we have to go out to each of these harvest areas 2 times a year. So it's, you know, however many shellfish growing water classifications we have. I think there's 5 or 6 on the outside of Prince of Wales.

And then we have inside waters as well. Thank you. All right. Thanks. So when was the— and this in your— when was the biomass estimate that you want to have changed, essentially, or being not the biomass estimate, but the way it's applied to the fishery?

When was that done? Is Fish and Game allowed to answer that? I'm asking you because you made the statement that it was done before the reintroduction of otters. But the biomass estimate that we're using was before the reintroduction of otters, in which case that's like 50 years old. I'm sorry.

So I guess what I should say is that it was done before there was— at that time, I think they were done around 1998, 1999. There were otters present, but they were not in any sort of population that there were concerns about resources. I mean, all our fisheries were thriving at that point. Sorry. The clarity.

That's all. Thank you, Kate. Thank you. Any other questions? Anybody else wish to testify?

Okay, let's move on to 214. Staff.

Mr. Chair, this is Quinn Smith with the department again. Proposal 215. This proposal would give the department authority to reopen a sea otter-impacted geoduck fishery that was closed due to the most recent biomass estimate being below 30% of the original biomass estimate at a harvest rate of less than 2%.

Thank you. Come on up.

Hi, my name is Jeremy Layton. We put this one in conjunction with the other proposal, SARDFA did, and it worked. As we were saying, we're trying to find something that we can come to common ground with Fish and Game. To give ourselves some hope for these fisheries. And we're not asking for a permanent, we're going to open every area that's been closed in this proposal.

We're asking for the department to work with us to just doing some experimentation in some of these areas, maybe lower harvest levels. Right now we're harvesting at 2% and maybe dropping it to 1% in some of these areas that have been closed and just taking a look and seeing if maybe Maybe we can find a balance with the otters and the divers and somehow still have a sort of fishery on the West Coast. It would be greatly diminished in pounds, but at least it would give us a chance to still harvest.

Thanks, Jeremy. Any questions?

Anyone else wish to testify? Come on up.

Thank you, Matt Kurtz. I just had a quick statement I wanted to read in terms of Proposal 215. I support this proposal. The geoduck fishery has been managed conservatively, conservatively using a 2% annual harvest rate for many years. Districts that have not seen— been significantly impacted by sea otter predation continue to support healthy and sustainable GHLs based off of department transect survey data.

It seems reasonable to experiment with a new lower harvest rate in areas that have experienced sea otter pressure. A new lower GHL should provide a more balanced harvest reflective of the current situation, taking into account the presence of sea otters.

Thank you.

Come on up. You better sit in the front row so you can get there quick. I don't know, I gotta get my steps in somehow. For the record, Kate Sullivan again. So this proposal, I'd just like to give a little background.

So we have a counterpart industry group in British Columbia called the Underwater Harvesters Association, and they have a very cooperative relationship with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, which manages geoduck fisheries. And several years ago, one of their stock status reports really suggested that it would be worth looking at an adaptive management plan in areas where they have sea otter impacts and they also are experiencing sea otter impacts on their invertebrate fisheries. In British Columbia, they're using a model in just a couple of areas, again as a pilot project, where they have gone away from using an original biomass estimate and they're using a current biomass estimate, and they're allowing a reduced rate of harvest in areas with sea otters. And they believe that you can find some sort of an equilibrium or balance. And how they're doing it is they're allowing this managed fishery and adaptive plan, and they're going out and doing surveys more frequently to make sure that the resource is doing well.

And they're just about into 7 years of doing this, and they're getting ready to publish results. But in talking with the UHA, which we do on a regular basis, They're showing that they can have— that the stocks have been able to sustain both otter and fishing pressure. And just to be clear, it's not at the peak levels of original biomass estimates. It's at a current biomass, so it's— they might be harvesting 20% of what they were before, but they are finding that they can balance it. And there's a lot of research in British Columbia that is compelling in terms of having this DFO seems very willing to be open to trying something different, and they do have a precautionary principle there, so they are governed on being conservative of stocks as we are in Alaska.

They question the use of an original biomass altogether for a number of reasons related to geoduck life history strategies, reproductive rates, recruitment. And you know, just to be— another thing that is in the literature is that there is no demonstrated stock recruitment relationship for geoducks. So the spawning biomass in a bed is not related to subsequent recruitment in that bed. It is therefore not clear that preserving a percentage of an estimated virgin abundance confers any benefit to that bed. And I have multiple pieces.

I can submit this if, if that's helpful, but I've done a lot of research on the model that they're using in British Columbia. You know, this isn't a new thing. They've been looking at this for like 10, 15 years down there. And, and again, we're, we're just asking the state to try to work with us before we have to make some really big decisions about Do we keep throwing money at water sampling? Do we keep doing all these things?

And this may not be a prime interest to the board, but we— Alaska really wants to develop a mariculture industry, right? I mean, we hear that we want to, you know, have shellfish farms. The way that that works is someone has to do 12 months of water testing to get an area certified. And that might cost them $20,000 to $25,000 to do. At the end of that, there's no guarantee that it's gonna be approved for growing water classification, and then you have to go and submit your permit to DNR to get an actual aquatic farm site.

If a farmer right now wanted to put an oyster farm in waters that aren't gonna compete with dive fisheries, they wouldn't have to pay a dime, and they could go into the water today and start their farm today, because we have classified all those areas and we continue to. But if we're not going to be able to fish on the West Coast, we're really going to have to look at dropping that. And I think that's a great benefit to the state that maybe the state isn't aware of. But, but that's on our backs. That's on the commercial fisheries' back.

Okay, thank you, Kate. Thank you. Any questions from the board?

Anyone else wish to testify?

If not, let's move on to 216. Staff.

Mr. Chair, Beau Meredith, Ketchikan Area Manager, Commercial Fisheries. Proposal 216 would clarify language in the geoduck fishery management plan to clarify geoduck permit holders can harvest geoduck clams on mariculture sites that are not permitted for geoduck mariculture. Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Anybody wish to testify on this?

Any questions from the board?

Seeing none, let's move on to 217.

Staff.

For the record, my name is Whitney Crittenden. I'm the Assistant Area Management Biologist for Commercial Fisheries in Ketchikan. Through the chair, Proposal 217. This proposal would increase the amount of time the sea cucumber fishery would be open weekly for harvest by adding Sunday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Come on up. Jeremy Layton, the Dive Association, SARTFA. We voted to not support this proposal. That's right.

Why? We feel that right now the way that the fishery is being run is adequate for most people to get their, their pounds. And presently, when at the start of the season, you get Monday from 8 to 3 and then Tuesday from 8 to noon. And starting November 1st, the department has the authority to add days to it. So really, this would only help out for another like 4 weeks.

And we felt that with the way things are now in those first few weeks of the season are the— when the most pounds are taken. So we didn't see any reason for it. Thanks. Hang on, there's another question. Jared.

So why not just stay neutral on it? Why oppose it? I mean, what's the downside is what I'm asking. You must have run a calculus and thought, well, there's more downside than upside here. What's the downside?

The, the divers in this, the Cucumber Committee, actually voted for it, and there was, there was a few different reasons brought up. Some of them were that that we don't need more time to harvest that many pounds in the early season. I guess there was various— I didn't write notes on it, so we just decided sometimes being neutral is fine. We understand. Thank you.

Any other questions from the board? Anyone else wish to testify on this?

Yeah, Tom Carruth. So yeah, I'm opposed to 217 to extend it to Sunday because it has traditionally— the fishery has opened the first October and Monday for probably 30 years.

Later on in the season, the reason, the reason it opens, Alaska Department of Fish and Game managers have the flexibility later on to extend the fishery. They can go Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. They can increase trip limits. But opening it on traditionally Monday allows them to get a read on how many participants we have and what the catch rates are. And then they kind of go from there.

So like right now, towards the end of the season here, it is, it is on Sunday. So I'm opposed to this. I believe there was a Board of Fish proposal in 2010 to go from Fishing Monday to Monday-Tuesday, and that increased the participation, which was an unintended consequence of that Board of Fish proposal that was proposed by Mike Baines. A couple other things happened. There was, there was also the introduction of nitrox.

Those, those created a faster-paced fishery. The quota came out faster. That was rougher for the processors. So when, when you have like a good intention, like I think this proposal is, there's unintended consequences and it should be discussed with the processors if that's going to be more product for them. Also, is the product going to be held on board for a longer period of time, having a less quality product for the Southeast Alaska sea cucumber brand overall.

And that's my comments.

Are the processors open on Sunday also?

I think they're processing more after the fleet comes in, so they're, they're probably 7 days a week, but they're They're probably more on when, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I'm not sure exactly. You'd have to ask them. Okay. Thank you, Tom.

Welcome.

Anyone else wishing to come on up?

Yes. Seth Rockwell. I'm a dive harvester, and I could also speak a little bit to the processing side of this for you guys. I work with RSC Foods. I'm not only a harvester, but I'm a tender.

And talking with RSC Foods, one of the issues they were seeing with lengthening this is an economic issue, because the thing is, tendering sea cucumbers is very expensive compared to salmon. When you're looking at salmon, you're talking maybe 5 to 15 cents a pound goes into tendering. When you look at sea cucumbers, quite often the tender cost is in excess of a dollar a pound. So for you to go from a fishery that's a Monday-Tuesday fishery and add a third day, you're adding another day of tendering. You're increasing your tender costs by almost 30% in that early season when there's no reason for it.

The harvest levels by the divers in that two-day fishery is just fine. You know, most divers get it. The new guys that are just learning don't, as they're learning. Guys that aren't as well don't get it. Sometimes, you know, if you're injured or whatever, you know, you have something, things happen.

Not everybody gets it every day. It's not our right to get 2,000 pounds. It's our right to have ability to get 2,000 pounds. But there's a lot more consequences to adding this third day than just, oh, we're just trying to help these guys that, you know, because maybe they're older, maybe they're not a strong swimmer, maybe they haven't learned how to catch cucumbers. Because it's not just go down there and they're all over the ground.

There's a lot to learn. There's a huge learning curve in this. Even on the, uh, even on the side of like, uh, enforcement, you know, they don't understand everything that transposes underwater. It's a whole different thing from any other fishery I've done. I've been involved in fisheries, Bering Sea, all over the place.

Dive fisheries are extremely unique and different from every other fishery we have. And, you know, cost-wise, from a cost standpoint, we start raising our tender costs. That cost is going to have to come out of the divers. So there's not really a good benefit to it. And like you've heard here before, come November, after most of the effort's gone because the bulk of the quota is caught and you're getting on to scratchier things, that's when we have the opportunity.

For Fishing Game to expand it to 3 days because, you know, guys have been jumping on all these spots because guys run around with cameras and they find a pile here, pile here, pile here, and they just want to jump on those piles. They don't swim an entire beach. And so there's all this other scratchier stuff where there's still biomass, but there's not a pile of cucumbers right here. There's a cucumber by her, a cucumber by you, a cucumber over here, and you have to swim your rear end off to get them. And so Going to 3 days in the beginning just doesn't make sense, you know, because there is, there's just no reason for it.

You know, all you're going to do is make more cost. And when there's, you know, majority, you know, I think if you look at them average, and so when you say average, you're talking with the people that are getting their ton, and then you got your new guys that are down there. I mean, I had a guy this year 300 pounds for the opener. He's learning. It's part of it, you know.

And that's all part of the average. The guys that don't do that, guys that never done well over all the years. And I can't, you know, because I tender, so I see it all. And you'll have a group of guys that they get their ton every week all the way to the end and then maybe drop a little bit. And then you have a group of guys that get their ton for the first 2, 3 weeks and then they're down to 1,000 pounds because they haven't learned how to hunt.

They've learned how to use a camera to find piles. And this regulation kind of seems to me more like it's the guys that haven't really learned how to go out and hunt and swim want more time because they want more time to go try and find little piles and go to this pile and go to that pile and go to that pile. And like I said, for that reason, it doesn't make sense to us that work our rear end off to start peeling off more quota because you're going to bring that up a little bit. And also it's not going to help us out overall price-wise if our tender costs are higher. I quite often cut my tender price to our market because I'm a diver and I'm trying to make it work for both the divers so we could still fish in there.

There's times, there's times that I as a tender don't make any money to tender. I'm just getting the processor to cover my fuel and my bare expenses so that way late season when we don't have a lot of product coming in, we could still keep this fishery going. If you guys add the third day to this fishery, now you don't have that early season where we're getting these larger loads cost averaging out over here because we have this more poundage. But instead of having this more poundage for 2 days of tendering, now you have it for 3 days of tendering. So you've increased that early tendering cost by a third.

And so on this backside here where the, you know, the tendering costs are super high, we don't have that extra third over here to cost average this out. And then all of a sudden it's going to happen where there's nothing. I, I can't— I could only go so low. I can't be paying an exorbitant amount of fuel to be running cucumbers to town and back if we can't even get enough tender money out of this, because what we had for cost averaging at the beginning is now gone for this extra 30% of tender costs that we had for the first 4 weeks that we never had. So that's on a cost side, that's another thing to look at.

And like I said, I think that the divers don't realize too that if you're increasing that tender cost, the other thing that's gonna happen is our fish cost is gonna have to go down. We gotta find balances. Everything has to balance. And so the upside versus the downside, there's a lot more downside to this than there is potential upside.

That's all I have. Okay, thank you, Seth. Yep.

Anyone else wish to testify?

Yeah, I just wanted to add one thing to that. You know, we have a trip limit. It's not an individual quota. It's a trip limit. So it's a management tool and it's not used as an IFQ.

Thank you, Tom. Anyone else?

Seeing none, let's move on to 218. For the record, Whitney Crittenden through the chair. Proposal 218. This proposal would allow the department the ability to extend the sea cucumber fishery season past the regulatory closure date, March 31st, if there are areas with remaining guideline harvest level. Mr.

Chair, thank you. Anyone wish to testify to this?

Yeah, Tom Carruth. So I wrote the proposal and it just, it just adds one paragraph to the Part B of the sea cucumber management plan to allow the department to— they may extend passed March 31st. So they may extend it in April, they may extend it in September. It's up to the department. They may not extend it at all.

It's up to them. However, this is kind of similar to what BC does. So other, other jurisdictions do this. So that's it. Any questions?

Seeing none, Tom, thank you. Anyone else wish to testify to this one?

Seeing none, okay, Kate. You're gonna get your steps in, that's for sure. For the record, Kate Sullivan again. I just wanted to say that there are, I think, some valid protection of spawning times with extending past March 31st. But there are a lot of direct marketers now who are, you know, direct marketing 1,000, 1,500 pounds on an opener.

When we talk about extending the season, may extend the season on a week-by-week basis, we're really talking about a handful of people. We understand Fish and Game is busy with other fisheries, but this is not like the 150 permit holders. This might be 6 or 8 permit holders, so the workload issue to me is you know, give or take. And then just as a point of reference, other places, their commercial harvest season for these same sea cucumbers is August, September. So when we move more towards the later time, we may not have worries about impacting spawning activities.

Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else wish to testify to this?

Having no questions, and let's move on to 219.

Staff, for the record, my name is Katie Taylor and I'm the area management biologist for commercial fisheries in Petersburg. Through the chair, proposal 219. This proposal would clarify when a sea cucumber permit holder is in possession of the product they harvested. Anyone wish to testify to this?

Yes, Seth Rockwell. I put this proposal and Proposal 220 in. They're basically the same proposal. One's affecting the diver, one's affecting the man in the skiff or on board the vessel. Unfortunately, this has come out of necessity in a recent couple of years.

We haven't had a ticket yet, but we've had some discussions with troopers that would— the way the troopers are trying to interpret possession would actually make several forms of diving that are listed as legal forms of diving in the regulations illegal. And I'm gonna have to kind of give you the story to explain this. I personally dive out of a skiff. We put a compressor in the skiff, we swim down the beach, we fill up bags, we tie the bag off, we put a cork on it. At the end of the day, after we're done, we go back, we collect bags, we take them back to the boat.

There's a bunch of different ways this happens, you know, and then there's people that drag or on hose that'll— their skiff, their guy will go in a skiff, go to the end of the hose, grab it, bring it back to the boat. There's all different manners and forms which this takes place, and so it's kind of hard to get an ultimate in shorts, but I'll give you long and short here. What happened is skiff man's dragging the bags back to the boat, trooper says, well, there's no permit holder on, that's illegal. And I said, no sir, because when we're diving, if the skiff man, you know, like a lot of times the bags are coming up, the guys are poking the cucumbers during day while you're in the water. I said, no, sir, if they're poking these cucumbers on the boat when you're in the water, we're not in possession.

He says, oh, but that doesn't count, you're attached to the boat by a hose. I said, no, sir, scuba diving is legal. You're not attached to the boat. He says, oh no, that doesn't count either, they're in the direct vicinity of the boat. I said, no, sir, that doesn't work either because you're allowed to have two divers.

You get one diver dropped off in one cove, you get another dropped off a quarter mile away in another cove, And depending on which way they were swimming, they could be a half mile apart. You know, you got a guy running back and forth. What's happened here is they're trying to go to general regulations and take possession and take something in the dive fishery that's so different than everything else and lump it in there with them. And like I said, I never got a ticket both times because it turned into, well, I want you to do this. And the problem is it can't be I want you to do this.

There needs to be some regulation there to protect us from this. Because it's, you know, it's— you're leaving it to open interpretation of "I want," not, "Okay, where is the law here that's saying that you can or you cannot?" So that's kind of the long and short of that one. Well, thank you, Seth. That's interesting.

Anyone else? Anyone else wish to testify?

Seeing now, let's move on to 221.

Staff, for the record, Katie Taylor, through the chair. Proposal 220. This proposal would clarify that crew members of a registered.

Dive vessel may be in possession of sea cucumbers harvested by the sea cucumber permit holder during and after commercial fishery opening.

Thank you. I guess I screwed up the numbers again. Bear with me. Anyone who wish to testify to this one?

Seth Rockwell. And basically my testimony just now. It's the same thing. Like I said, these two regulations are intertwined. One is in regard to the diver himself, one is in regard to the guy that's in the skiff or on the vessel tending the divers.

So these are two hand-in-hand regulations to protect both people. Thank you, Seth.

Any questions? Anybody else wish to testify?

Okay, well, let's move on till 2:22. 221. I get this straight. For the record, Whitney Crittenden, through the chair, proposal 221. This would prohibit aquatic farms from being permitted to rear sea cucumbers in areas that support commercial sea cucumber fisheries.

Mr. Chair. Thank you. Anybody wish to testify to this?

Any questions? Oh, Katie, you coming up? Why don't you sit in that front row? I'm just a bad penny today. I'm sorry.

For the record, Kate Sullivan. So we submitted— or Dale Stanley submitted this proposal, and the Sea Cucumber Committee voted to support it. The reason for this is that we had a Specific example where there was an oyster farm that got situated in shallow waters directly over a commercial sea cucumber area that's pretty fairly productive. And then they started to notice that there were a lot of cucumbers settling into their gear, and it's allowable in the state of Alaska for them to capture those and then add them as a species of culture onto their aquatic farm permit. And basically we feel that they are intercepting lar— juvenile sea cucumbers that should have settled to the bottom and become part of the common property resource, but instead they're allowed to intercept them and make those a farm product.

And we feel like because we already have an established commercial fishery, and under regulation, if there is the ability to support a commercial fishery there should not be an aquatic farm doing or claiming that as a species of culture if that area can support a commercial fishery. The other issue with this is that because these are invertebrates, we can't mark these sea cucumbers. So there's no way to distinguish what is actually a farmed sea cucumber and what is a wild sea cucumber. So someone who has a farm could potentially just be going out and grabbing them off the bottom and selling them as farm product. And there's no way to know that.

There's no way to delineate between the two. And again, it's not— they're not buying juvenile sea cucumbers from a hatchery and putting them in their gear. They're intercepting the wild population of sea cucumbers that should be allowed to go to the bottom and settle and be part of the common property resource. So from our point of view, we feel like it's taking the sea cucumbers away from the wild fishery and allowing a farm to just privatize them.

Thank you, Kate.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, Kate, is there a way of— are these areas where the cucumbers are recorded in a way? And maybe this is a department question, but I mean, is there documentation of it? Yes. Yep.

And I guess it's a question for somebody else. I'll hold off on it. But do you do the permitting process? Is that through the department? Say if you wanted to put another, you know, a farm or oysters or whatever on top of it, is that through the department or like DNR?

DNR does the permitting for aquatic farms. Other agencies are consulted during that process. And once in a while, a farm gets situated somewhere. It's through a 30-day public comment. And if you miss that 30-day public comment, sometimes things happen and a farm might get cited.

But technically, we can still dive for sea cucumbers on an oyster farm, you know, so it's just a matter of getting around their gear and other things. It's, it's, it's dangerous. It's not very good for the commercial fishery, but it does happen. It has happened. And does that help to answer the question?

It does. I guess you're saying that overlap is fine. To some degree, uh, is okay. Yep. Thank you.

Thank you, Kate. Any other questions? Anybody else wish to testify?

If not, let's go on to 222.

Staff.

Good morning. For the record, my name is Scott Forbes. I'm the Juneau area manager for the Division of Commercial Fisheries. Proposal 222. This proposal would adopt seasonal closures for subsistence, sport, and personal use shrimp fisheries to protect shrimp during a sensitive time in their life cycle where eggs develop and hatch.

Shrimp could be taken in pot fisheries May 1 through February 28 and would be closed in March and April. Mr. Chair, thank you, Scott. Anybody wishing to testify on this?

Ellen Hannan, Craig AC. We were unanimously opposed to this because it's a good opportunity for our year-round families to get out and harvest while doing other activities. We would support it as amended if you would allow subsistence fishing in during that time.

Thank you.

Anybody wishing to testify on this?

All right. Curt Whitehead representing the Klawock AC. The total catch for the subsistence fishery for these 2 months, if this passed, the 2 months being March and April closure is only about 3%. This would negatively impact subsistence users that are largely year-round residents that need food security, and this will prohibit them from harvesting shrimp in the months of March and April. And the Klawock AC was adamantly opposed to it.

Thank you. Thank you, Kurt.

Nicholas Orr. I'm on the— I can represent the Juneau AC as well as territorial sportsmen, and I'll delineate those testimonies. Juno AC supported this 10 to 1 with the idea that they felt that it was important to protect the shrimp during their spawning period. And TSI can support this as well, as long as it's coupled with support of 224, 225, because a March and April closure leaves a 14-day window before the commercial opener happens, which is— doesn't really provide for reasonable access for personal use shrimpers. Thank you, Nick.

Hi, Chair. Chris Kugelmichler, Rangel AC. Yeah, we also oppose this for the lack of resident shrimp opportunity at the time, but we also noted that this would preclude commercial guys from test fishing at that time for that fishery. Thank you.

Hi, Stacy Wayne. I'm the chair of the Sika'ac, and we talked about this proposal. We were in support of it. A lot of us do a lot of subsistence-type shrimping, but we felt like the benefit to the sustainability of the shrimp population, you know, that we needed to be a part of that, and not be shrimping on them during their egg-laying and egg-bearing time, and that there was plenty of opportunity for subsistence and personal use shrimping during the rest of the summer. You can shrimp when the commercial fleet is shrimping.

There's no, you know, there's no closure, other closure time for subsistence shrimping or personal use shrimping. Thank you. Thank you, Stacy. Anyone else? Yeah, Curt Whitehead.

I'll reflect what the East PWA— see, all 5 communities— Kasaan, Hollis, Storm Bay, Kaufman Cove, Whale Pass— have seen an increase in the shrimp with the change in the commercial fishery. So we all felt that this would be jumping the gun. Looks like the change in the commercial fishing from the fall fishery to the spring fishery has really increase of stocks, and that was reflected in one of the commercial shrimp fishers on the Craig AC as well. So thank you. Good question.

Mr. Carpenters.

Yeah, thanks. Just a quick question. So all the communities that you said supported the idea behind this, are they also willing to forego subsistence harvest for the benefit of protecting the shrimp populations during this particular time? No, those, those— sorry, I might have misspoken. The communities are against.

Largely because you're only talking about 3% of the harvest. What they saw is that the shrimp stocks have increased pretty dramatically since they've changed the commercial opener. So additional cuts on top of it seemed like we're jumping the gun. Okay, I understand now. Thanks.

Thank you.

Anyone else wishing to testify here?

If not, let's move on.

223. For the record, William Patterson with the East POW/AC. If this is changed, we'll be able to use these shrimp pots that are made here in Alaska that have a 2-inch by 2-inch square hole. Excuse me, did staff read this? Oh, it's—.

Let's get staff on there first. Sorry about that. Mr. Chair, for the record, my name is Quinn Smith. I am the regional shrimp and dive fisheries research biologist for the Division of Commercial Fisheries.

Proposal 223. This proposal would increase the maximum size of shrimp pot tunnel openings from a 15-inch perimeter to a 16-inch perimeter in Southeast Alaska's subsistence, sport, and personal use fisheries. Mr. Chair. Thank you.

Who would like to testify? Okay. William Pettis with the East POW/AC. So, so you guys can see this a little better.

The opening facing you has rigid bars every 2 inches in it, so it reduces bycatch. These pots are made in Alaska. The current regulation And method used is with a stainless ring of this size. So if this is changed, you'll have actually smaller openings and you reduce bycatch with snails and octopus and other stuff. You know, in experience of using a shrimp pot with a standard stainless ring of 4.75-inch ring, which is the current law, you even get rockfish in there.

When you go to these pots, you don't get the bycatch of small rockfish and stuff like that. So, well, that's cool. So you can— but you can use either one, huh? You can use either one, but this will get people using more of these versus the standard. That's good.

Thank you.

We have— we have a question for you, Mr. Commissioner. So, so what is the opening then in these modified pots? Must not conform with the existing regulations. So is it larger? It's larger by 2 inches on the entire perimeter, but for the structure of it, they put in every 2 inches a small little bar in there.

It's kind of probably hard to see from where you're at, but yeah. And so right now people do use these, but they have to block off probably about a third of the tunnel. That's in there.

And how much of a cost or how much of an effort is that to block off to come into compliance? It depends. Some people use zip ties. This one that I rigged before the meeting, I just use zip ties on. But you got to make sure that they always stay in there.

They don't fatigue and fall out on you. You know, most wildlife troopers, you know, they'll see one side's done if one breaks on the other side, and they usually leave you a note. Saying, you know, you gotta fix it or something like that. It's just trying to make it compliant where people don't have to modify them and keep them modified. Okay, thank you.

Can you buy the new ones already modified, or do you have to modify them all? Currently you can't buy them modified. Uh, most of these pots are made for the Prince William Sound fishery where there is no requirement on the size of the tunnel. Okay, thank you. Any questions?

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you for making the effort to bring one in personally to show us. They say a picture's worth a thousand words. That's even— that's probably a million. Yeah, I can leave it here.

I'll set it right over here to the side then.

Anyone else wishing to testify or any other questions?

Okay, let's move to the next one, which is 223. 224, Staff.

Mr. Chair, for the record, Quinn Smith. Proposal 224, this proposal would change the opening of the Southeast Alaska commercial shrimp pot fishery from May 15th to October 1st.

Thank you. Anyone wishing to testify to this?

I'm Louie Holst. I'm in support of 224 and for that matter 225. The Dingle Bar troll fishery opens May 16th. When the shrimp season was moved to May 15th, I was effectively removed from the pot shrimp fishery. This has been devastating to my family and my crew's bottom line.

With that COVID and the change of venue, that, that meeting was really poorly attended. And I feel like I'm just really disenfranchised by that decision. Please return the shrimp pot season back to October 1st. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else wishing, wishing to testify here?

I'm Craig Norheim from Petersburg, and I'm opposed to this proposal. I've fished since the '80s, and when the board changed the rule in the '90s, late '90s, they changed it to the October fishery and then imposed the 8-to-4 fishery on us, which kind of defeated the purpose of shrimping to me. But I think that this fishery is going to rebound in the May fishery because it's been detrimental in the October fishery. We're catching so many shrimp that are full of eggs. I fished a 75-day opening 3 years ago because my little postage stamp of an area was open, and I didn't see eggs starting to come back into the shrimp till the third week of July.

And that's all noted on fish tickets, if they ever care to look at them. And I just— I oppose this proposal. Thank you.

Anyone else wishing to testify?

Thank you, Board. Alan Rees, Wrangell-Eskimo. I think you guys are my last ditch effort here to get some information across that the Board of Fish seems to be overlooking. I have RC033. This is logbook data that's collected in my area, 7-20.

That's around Wrangell. Wrangell has 3 areas that border the island itself. Has I contacted about myself 21 permit holders around Wrangell. That's just about, I think we might have 25 altogether. 2 Processors.

They're all supporting this proposal to switch it back to October.

Basically, the shrimp fishery has attracted abuse something fierce. It's like when we went limited entry, there was about 50 permits fishing at the time, and they, they messed up and said that we're gonna, we're gonna go limited entry, but you got 2 months or so to fill out fish tickets. So we ended up with about 270 permits that are transferable, or between transferable and non-transferable. So we have that hanging overhead. And it's, we've several pots.

I went up and back and forth with several pots. But this last decision, this the board made, It had Fish and Game support and to do a spring fishery. And I'm like, how did they do that? Because they, they have a survey in my area and they— the way it works, when we fished October, they would go down 2 weeks before we did and they would fish in their spots.

And they'd always come back at least 3 years before we switched to the spring. They would come back and they couldn't find a shrimp there, the stocks were down and yadda yadda. And then the fleet would open up and we go catch the shrimp every year. It's like same poundage, same boats, permits, we'd catch the shrimp. So this proposal come in to switch it in the spring, they had no information.

They had no information. They didn't go survey ahead of time so we would know what we're going to go fishing on. Nothing.

Had from another country. We want to do what they're doing. And it's like, this is, this is the people that are managing me, that are supporting a proposal that's going to benefit some fishermen and not others. And you're going to hear that with the people behind me. It's like, it just doesn't seem fair that my managers are, are supporting the issue.

They have no information of what they're going to do to us. Okay, so then we— they instantly— the board voted, we adopted it. We're, we're not going to fish for a year now. We got a free egg spawn. That's what they wanted.

All the shrimp in Southeast, which if you can take $10 a pound times 420,000 pounds We didn't go fishing. So, and in my area, it was, we were averaging every year between 80,000 and 90,000 pounds in October. And all the shrimp, all the depths that I've ever caught shrimp in, pretty much a piece of cake. So there's 17, 18 boats, there's a lot of area. They can all fish, everybody's pretty happy, nobody's crowding each other.

So we left 80,000 pounds on the grounds, got a free egg spawn, the next year we got a fish in the spring. Okay, we went, they closed it off at 79,000 pounds, or 69,000 pounds.

And I have on this RC033, I have the logbook data from when we fished in October. And you can see the numbers consistently. There is a point there, N/A in there, that there isn't enough boats participate in the logbook where it doesn't show you the information. I personally brought my fish tickets in here And it shows the same thing that, that the, that the N/A that, that you can't see, the numbers will, will show up on my fish tickets. So it's a consistency that I fished, other boats fished in my area consistent in October when the survey boats couldn't find the shrimp.

Keep that in mind, they couldn't find the shrimp. So So, and the next year we fished, which was just last year, it dropped to 64,000 pounds. And we left, you keep in mind, we left 80,000 pounds on the first year that nobody fished on. And that happened all over in Southeast Alaska. So you might understand how I'm losing confidence in the people that are managing this thing.

They sold this to you guys with no information of what they were going to do to us. And they're not— and they're managing on the information they're getting off their data that they're fishing on, and they can't find the fish or the shrimp. I had an incident this year that the people were picking up my basket of shrimp. They come by once a year, they take our basket. Keep in mind This survey shows me that I went in October fishing 55% males, 45% females.

When I went out, keep in mind, we left 80,000 pounds of shrimp on the deck. So in May of '23, I went from Let's see, 55 pounds or 55% of the large to, and 45% of the females to 80% females. That's what I caught in the spring. And I lost the males. And I lost the males last year.

I feel they're still down there, but they're not feeding, and that's the point. They're putting us so close to this spawning, the egg hatch, then they molt, and then they stay hidden on the bottom until they firm up, and then they come out and feed. So that's what they're saying. You go fish this time, because this other country fishes this time. This time.

And so that's what we're doing. We got no choice. We're, we're fishing that time. And I'm telling you, it's like we went to 80%. We went from—.

Let's keep it, you know, you're kind of repeating yourself here, so okay, let's stick to— and we have a question here too. Yeah, yep. So, so anyway, that's what I lost. I lost large. In the spring opening.

The people that come out of the Bradfield, which is in my area, they come out of there, they took my basket of shrimp, I said, "How's it looking?" They said, "Well, we lost the shrimp, we lost the male shrimp." It's like, we're thinking about closing the season down. Or closing that area down, which would put that boat's fish back in there on top of me. [Speaker:CHAIR] Okay, well, thank you. Let's get to your question here from Mr. Godfrey. So two questions.

One, on your RC33, and I'm probably obtuse, and, and that's why I'm asking this, because I'm trying to figure out what it is, what, what's the point you're trying to illustrate, you know? And I'm, I, I'm probably just not getting it. So if you could explain that to me when I look at it, because I'm looking at the spring fishery and I see deviation from all the fall fisheries. But I also see outliers in the XL and XXL where they're way higher than the fall fisheries, and I see them lower in other categories. What is it?

What's the illustration here we're supposed to be getting from the RC? Okay. From the RC, what, for instance, if I, if I was catching 1,000 pounds of shrimp in the fall, it would be 550 pounds of, of large. Okay, the rest of females, half and half basically. Okay, when I— when they made me fish in the springtime, I lost them males.

The males that I was harvesting, I'm not harvesting very few of them now. If I— if I— on 1,000 pounds, I would get 2 pounds of mediums, the smaller shrimp. That's— there's 2 sorts that I fish on. They're down there, but I can't catch them because they're not either I don't know, but they're not there, and I've always been able to catch them in October. So you're seeing in the fall you could catch them, in the spring they're hard to harvest.

And if I could tell you clearly, it's like October is the best time to catch these. All the different depths, fish, they're firm, they do have eggs, the big ones have eggs. But sir, it's like if I kill a female in the spring, And it's— I look at this like a spawned-out steelhead is what I look at them in there. They went through all this stuff, they're spawned out and everything. It's like, yeah, they got a new tuxedo on them, but they still went through hell, you know?

Excuse my language. Then my other question is, so when this was changed, you don't know what the— there wasn't market forces or market reasons or processor reasons or anything else as far as you know? It seemed arbitrary to you as far as you know? You bet. They wanted what another country wanted.

You're saying the board, we did this 3 years ago? Yep.

And the cost, if you figure £80,000, £85,000 in October. So, so the year we didn't fish £80,000 and it was normally £85,000 in October. And it went to 69,000. So there's 10,000, 15,000 pounds we lost. I got 65,000.

I have no confidence. It's like if— it's like we're losing money every year. Thank you. I have one, just one quick question. It was, it was changed from October to spring to save the egg-laying females, correct?

Right.

So You would rather take the egg-laying females then in October? And we've seen, I'm just curious, I mean, we've seen that this change has made a deal, a big deal in the prolific of the shrimp. What you got out of that, okay? Okay. That's fine, I just, okay, thank you.

What you got out of that and what we got out of that for leaving 420,000 pounds of shrimp in Southeast to hatch. That's what you got. Okay, you got a free hatch. I see them coming up. Okay, they're coming up through the fishery.

But once they hatch, that's what you got. They molted and then they were fishing. Okay, right then. All right. Well, thank you.

Any questions? Any more questions? Mr. Wood. Yeah, I'd also just, on a big scale, you're talking about your area and what you caught. How variable do you think it is, say, from as far away as Prince William Sound to within,.

100, You know, get closer, within 100 miles of you, 50 miles of you, can you just comment on the variability of what might be happening with the shrimp and when they're, when the eggs are there or not? Great question, because I can tell you a story. When we did put an egg hatch on, because we'd fish, I used to fish 12 months a year. I fished through the summer and everything. There's some nightmares I could tell you there.

But, but basically what it was is we were at the end of February, we were still heading shrimp and everything. We rinsed them and I was lazy, wouldn't, wouldn't change the rinse water. There was literally baby shrimp swimming in the water overnight. They were literally hatching. So it's like, like, let's, let's close it off for 2 months.

And I had to fish, so I went to Stevens Patch. It was about 80 miles away. Went there, started fishing, wasn't even close. You couldn't see the eyes in the eggs. It wasn't even close to hatching.

That's 80 miles away. So every— you're going to find out every area can be different within a month or two. That's what scares me about them saying, switch is the spring, you're fishing May 15th. We fish May 15th. These shrimp, like I said, they're, they're more like a spawned-out steelhead with a tuxedo on them.

They have no— they're— because the way a molt works is the animal's going to grow, it blows up, sheds its shell, another shell, and then they got to grow into that shell. And that's where they could— I mean, the difference between a shrimp that's clean and everything, wait even 2, 3 months in the summer, they're going to be a lot fatter. They're going to have that energy back in them. They're going to start filling out that shell. I mean, that's why I say the best time— I fish through the summer.

I had to go in between seine boats and everything else. Thanks for answering the question. You answered the question for me. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else wishing to testify? Uh, good morning. My name is Reed Johnson with the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission. Just some Information for you guys. When we first issued limited entry permits in this fishery, there were about 310, split 50/50 between non-transferable permits and transferable permits.

Hmm. In 2021, before the start date of this fishery was moved, the average permit price was about $17,500, and today it is $32,100.

Just some information for you. Thank you.

Would you repeat that? Couldn't hear you very well. Uh, right, so $17,500, that was the average permit price in this fishery in 2021. Today it is $32,100. The permit price had been fairly consistent over the previous few years before the change was made in the start date.

Are— and is that— are those values for both the transferable and the non-transferable permits? And are those numbers about the same? Non-transferable permits can't be bought or sold, so that is just for transferable permits. One more point, out of the 157 or so non-transferable permits that were originally issued in this fishery, about 64 our left.

Thank you. Thank you. Any questions from the board?

Hi, Stacy Wayne here. Um, I just wanted to talk a little bit about, uh, why the board decided last time to move the shrimp fishery from October to the spring. Some of you were here and you heard at the time a lot of testimony of fear— what would happen if we did that to the quality of the product. And you voted to go ahead and do that because you were concerned about the sustainability of the fishery. As you heard testified, the guideline harvest limits have been steadily going down and the surveys were showing missing year classes of recruiters.

And what that means is that there was like some— they were finding big shrimp, but they weren't finding certain like 1-year-old or 2-year-old shrimp were in all areas of Southeast. There was— their surveys were showing those were highly reduced or even missing in some areas. So they, they saw that as a signal that the population could really be in trouble and could crash. And so that was why they were in support of moving the shrimp fishery to the spring to allow the shrimp to lay their eggs and reproduce before they were fished. And we've been— we've heard testimony on the part of the surveyors that they are seeing some recovery in the population.

They're cautiously optimistic that this is working. They need more time and more surveys and more years to see it work. And then we heard from the Craig person that the outside area of Prince William Island that, you know, anecdotally they're seeing a recovery in the shrimp population there. So that, that was a history of why that change was made. And it— I do understand that it created hardship for people to— who'd always fish in October to have to move their fishery to the spring.

And I think we're hearing that from people. The ACs across the region talked about the move and what the response has been. And the only AC that approves or wants to move it back to October is the Wrangell AC. The rest of the ACs, the shrimpers in their area felt like the move was a beneficial one. We just heard testimony that the value of a shrimp permit has increased quite a bit because of the change of season, or at least at the same time.

I'm not sure if that's the cause, but, and that may have to do with the fact that the price of shrimp that we're getting now because we're shrimping them in the spring, is a lot higher, almost double what it used to be. And the quality of the shrimp is very good. We wouldn't be getting that price if the quality of the shrimp was poor. The last speaker, or the— we just heard some testimony that they are spawned out and they're not of good quality, but that's not what I've been hearing or I've been seeing. I commercial shrimp as well, and I the quality is very good.

The molt of the shrimp actually happens in August and September, not prior to the shrimp fishery. I wanted to draw your attention to RC 59, and in that RC you'll see a graph that shows the year-long life cycle of the shrimp. And I think that visual that was prepared by the department is a really good illustrator of why it's more sustainable to conduct this fishery in the spring. And you'll see in that graph, the, the, they mark the yellow and red times of year as slow down or stop fishing, and then the green time is the most optimum time, starting on the 1st of May, to start procuring this fishery. And we wait until May 15th, so I just wanted to be really clear with all members of the board that when we fish on May 15th, it does vary a little bit across the region, but it's pretty difficult to find any shrimp that have eggs on them by May 15th.

I've heard the highest percentage quoted was maybe 5% have eggs on them, and in October it used to be about 50%. So it's a real change. Most of the shrimp, if not all, have been able to spawn by May 15th when we, when we do the fishery. I also wanted to draw your attention to public comment 21, was by a Wrangle shrimper who was saying that they felt like the spring fishery was beneficial to their family and to their income, and that they would like to keep it then. Thank you.

Any questions?

Thank you, Stacy. Anyone else wishing to testify? I'm sorry, Stan has a question here. Stacy, what was that PC number? Public comment 21.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks again. Matt Kurtz. I just— I read a statement on Wednesday that detailed my opposition on this proposal, so I don't want to reiterate that entire statement. I believe the May fishery aligns better with the reproductive biological cycle of the shrimp resource and that the GHLs and the fishery will benefit from this over time and that we need more time to determine all this. So I'm sorry, that's where I stand on that.

Thanks. Thank you.

Come on up. Ellen Hannan, Craig AC. We were unanimously opposed to this proposal. We have an AC member who fishes pot shrimp, and we based a lot on his personal opinion and what he saw. But his feeling was it was improving and we need more data needs to be gathered on the current season.

We only have.

Seasons under our belt of data. Thank you. Thank you, Ellen.

William Patterson with the East POWAC, uh, representing, uh, Whale Pass, Coffman Cove, Kasaan, Hollis, and Thorn Bay. The subsistence and personal use fishermen have noticed an increase in being able to catch more shrimp in a pot with this change so far, and they're also noticing larger shrimp. With the current sea otter population moving to the inside of POW and causing stress on the dungeny fishery, it has allowed users to focus on another means of food to put on their table, such as shrimp. And having more shrimp available for them has really helped.

Any questions?

Thank you.

Craig Norheim, Petersburg. The history lesson here is that in the '80s and '90s we shrimped year-round, and then when they went limited entry— and the main purpose of it was that they needed a new year class— but the main thing that happened was there was a different method of processing the shrimp. They started dipping them in a solution so that the Japanese market could be handled a little better, where you could freeze the whole shrimp And when it thawed, the head wouldn't turn black. Problem with that scenario was that you couldn't sell that product in the United States because the FDA didn't approve it. That's still going on.

And most of the boats at that time were— that entered the fishery that last year group were the bigger boats that had the facilities to dip the shrimp. Well, when you're dipping shrimp, you can't be hauling gear. So that's where the 8-to-4 kind of came in. Because they needed time to process their shrimp, and they wanted it to be fair and equal that everybody else wasn't hauling their gear. We used to haul our gear 24/7.

I have lights on my boat. I can haul my gear at night. I tend not to, but I can, and everyone can. But that was one of the big leading factors, was the different method of marketing and dipping the shrimp so that market could then be handled. Today there aren't too many boats that are dipping.

There are some that do. I think some of the Wrangle boats dip and some of the Ketchikan boats, Petersburg boats as well. All bigger boats, they're all freezer processors, and they dip their shrimp. They also jungle pack their shrimp, a lot of them. So we're not seeing the differences in sizes on the fish ticket because they jungle pack them, which is just everything goes in the box.

So that's, that's my take on it. Thank you. Any questions?

Hang on, Mr. Woods got a question. Craig, in your experience, are you seeing a difference in size or quality or quantity, quantity of spring versus fall? It's night and day difference for me. I'm catching some beautiful shrimp, some of the biggest shrimp I've caught in my 30 years of shrimping. I'm getting 8 counts all day long.

There's no eggs in them in May, June, and July. I fished some good seasons. Last year I fished 15 days because the quota was caught up in my area. The Fish and Game report said that they're realizing that maybe those quotas need to be increased, but that's not been talked about here at all today or this last week. That report is in my specific area, which is 106 Sumner Straits, and there's an abundance of shrimp there.

Thank you.

Thank you. Come on up. My proposal is 225, but I kind of feel for this— they're similar enough that maybe I could testify in this one and we could maybe not take up 225 or just apply it to 225. I don't know if the chair is OK with that, but— Thanks, Nick. OK, for the record, I'll introduce myself.

I'm Nicholas Orr with Territorial Sportsmen. We're a nonprofit or conservation advocacy organization. Today I'm going to provide some testimony from both perspectives, but before I do, I just want to Before I start, the gentleman that gave some testimony about the price increase on the— what I believe it's the permits— this is not something we have a stake in, but it occurred to me that you're— it's indicating an increased demand for those permits. And you have— I don't know exactly how many, but I know about 90-something got fished, and I believe you have a couple hundred out there that could potentially be fished. So again, from the personal use standpoint, this isn't about me, but you are potentially introducing or creating it.

There's, there's demand and you may see more participants in the future. It doesn't matter to me. There's a GHL, but something to think about from a commercial fisheries perspective. So the first thing I would like to do, I got a couple of points, but I know we've made a lot of references to the Canadian fishery and I've had some kind of extensive conversations with Mike Atkins. He's the executive director of the Pacific Prawn Fishermen's Association in Nanaimo.

And I would like to just read a few things so we are kind of all on the same page about how they prosecute their fisheries. It won't take that long. I don't want to be up here all day. But so on how they execute the fishery, he said no samples are conducted by DFO— that's the Department of Fisheries and Oceans— ahead of time. All monitoring for the spawner index values are done in season with at-sea observers collecting real-time data during the execution of the fishery.

Once the at-sea observers encounter sub-areas with insufficient counts of females coming up in the traps, then that sub-area is closed. Once enough sub-areas are closed, it becomes difficult to manage the fishery, gear concentrations, catch, etc. Then DFO will shut down the commercial— that's his emphasis— fishery down for the season. The observers are trained to sex the prawns, which is the largest chore. All the prawns hatch as males and transition to females during year 2-3.

The Canadian— this is an aside— the Canadian fishery assumes that every fish, every shrimp is dead after year 4, so they just go after them They, they feel like they got to harvest them immediately. There will always be more males than females in the population. The observers sample every second or third trap over the course of a few strings, 50 traps a string. They count the number of males, transitionals, and females for each trap and take an average. If the average number of females is less than the target spawner index value— changes throughout the season but is around 4 females per trap on average during the season— then the area will be closed.

Just like making sure there's enough salmon to spawn, to head up a stream to spawn, this escapement model ensures that we have enough females on the ground to spawn healthy future generations. On how they select the start date, because I know that's also a contentious issue around here, especially since it's kind of a large geographic area. He said, DFO are the gatekeepers of the opening date. We are planning on a May 14th start. However, DFO doesn't officially announce the opening date until early April.

The earliest commercial season can open in BC is May 1st. This is due to the high presence of spawning buried females. In the population over the winter. So that's the 222 that he's talking about that they want to avoid. They don't want to fish them while they have eggs.

I get that. During the COVID season, this was delayed by about 1 month while we sorted out safety protocols for observers, etc. This later start just happened to be one of the best years for landing, so beg the question, is there an advantage to starting later? Some consideration for a later start— catches may be improved by starting later in the spring, beyond early May, but the longer it is open to recreational and First Nation harvest before the commercial opening, the more pressure on the stocks before before the commercial fleet gets their turn. Many prawn harvesters also work in other fisheries, so some like to be done as early as possible to get into the next fishery.

All these factors are discussed each year between the DFO and stakeholders, and we work to consensus on recommended opening date. The last few years, the balanced— to balance the desires, some go late and some want to go early. Can you RC this instead of reading all this to us, please? I'm almost done. I know, I know.

So anyways, basically they figured out that they're going to be on May 15th and that works for everybody. And then as far as releasing buried females, I'll just read the last thing. We suspect— we could not account for mortality from predation from released females. We suspect it's high. And then my own personal statement here, or for Territorial Sportsman, and I'm not reading this, I apologize for the first part.

Um, from a conservation perspective, I'm going to reiterate, we do not support the taking of very females with eggs, even at a 3 to 7% rate, you can get into like whether you should take the female in the, in May or in October, but you're still taking a female, you're still reducing next year's reproductive value. The only thing, and this is kind of one of the things that the AC looked at on our, the Juno AC, was they were really swayed by, well, maybe we should be harvesting some of those, uh, those shrimp that are going to molt, because we were under the impression that that molt happened. I know the The lady from Sitka said that it happens in the fall, but we were under the impression that was happening in the spring from the department. So anyways, we want— there was a desire to protect those females as they were molting or harvest them because some of them are going to die. So the other thing I was going to say is like, this is my first Board of Fisheries meeting and I've learned a lot about crab biology and the prosecution of crab.

Fisheries, and as a layperson, it seems like they do a pretty good job of not targeting— let's see what I was going to say.

I was just going to say they did— the stewardship is pretty admirable, but I think that's admirable, but my finance background makes me think that the reason that the crabbers return those soft-shelled crabs to the grounds is because they don't get money for them. In the shrimp fishery, shrimpers get more money for the bigger ones, which is, I think, what you're hearing from some of the people that have said, I've had an awesome season here. They're catching big females which are out, and the department has some limited data. I believe it's an RC-033 that shows that they're catching more females in the spring as well. And finally, from an advocacy standpoint, we feel like.

Holding the season on May 15th, the personal use shrimper doesn't get a reasonable opportunity to access the resource. For the vast majority of personal use shrimpers, a reasonable opportunity is going to be during the summer, in basically June, July, and first part of August. I'd like to point out that the reason that TSI proposed multiple dates is because we wanted to show that we were flexible, uh, and that there are other dates that for a commercial opener that we believe would also accommodate the personal use user.

There you go. And then my own personal thing, I know a number of ACs came up and said they were in opposition to this and with the rationale, let's wait and see how it goes. In my area that I like to go to in District 10, I don't need to wait and see how it goes. I have to go down after commercial open and there's not a lot of biomass left. I get that they get 86%, I have a problem with that, but it just kind of stinks for me.

So, and I will say it does get better, like maybe about the first part of September, but then I'm weathered out. So in summation here— OK, Nick. Yep. I'm good then. We're good.

I'm just saying we can live with the commercial guys. We also want a chance. OK. All right. Well, thank you.

I'm sorry. Thank you. Anyone else wish to testify to this? Any questions? OK, we're going to take a— [SPEAKING SPANISH] No, we're going to take a break now.

We'll come back. We're going to take a 15-minute break here. Thank you.

Okay.

How are we doing, Annie? Okay. Time is 10:50. We are back on the record and we are still in Committee of the Whole Group 3. Mr. Swenson.

Okay. So 224 and 225 are pretty much the same. Uh, so I can— we can take testimony on 224, but we need to read into the record too on 225. So why don't you read that in? Why don't you read that into the record, if you would?

Mr. Chair, for the record, my name is Quinn Smith. Uh, proposal 225. This proposal would change the opening of the Southeast Alaska commercial shrimp pot fishery from from May 15th through October 1st or another start date in late summer or early fall. Mr.

Chair. Okay, thank you. So let's take whoever wants to testify, come up on 224 and 225 here.

Alan Reeves. 224, I support that one.

Just, there's a lot of people around Wrangell that really put a lot of effort into this last year and after it got done. And they're really, right, reason why they're not here is they're just burned out on it. This, like I say, the shrimp fishery has been really crazy. But a question I've always, you know, it was kind of, I felt insulting when the board in its huge footprint supported this proposal. And as you can hear, it benefited some areas and not others.

And I would have felt that, I really strongly feel if they wouldn't have put their foot on or supported this issue, it probably wouldn't have passed. It was just a vote. That separated them. So I question that, and it concerns me that the people that manage me are willing to do this. And you'll see the difference this fishery has, and it's always went up and down with the markets and everything else.

So I really felt insulted and the impression that they have the power that they have, and it just seems like it came from down from the top and the The people that I really relate to couldn't say anything. We lost our office in Wrangell. We got, you know, anyway. So that and—. All right, so let's kind of wrap this up.

Okay, okay, you got it. The difference is in the fall, we're going to catch more pounds of shrimp in the fall than in the springtime. And I got fish tickets that, that on the NAA, if anybody wants to see it. So thank you for, for this process. All right, well, thank you.

Any questions?

And this was— has anybody been waiting to testify on 225? Because they are pretty just pretty much the same thing. Okay, seeing none, let's move on to 226.

Staff. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, this is Quinn Smith again. Proposal 226 would reduce all shrimp pot guideline harvest levels in Registration Area A by 20%, reduce the number of pots allowed to be operated by a registered shrimping vessel by 40 to 50%, and eliminate the large shrimp pot size over the next 3 years.

Is the original proposer here? Is there— anybody else want to testify to this?

Any questions from the board?

Okay. Well, that concludes—. Oh, I'm sorry.

I missed you. How could I miss you?

Folks, if you intend to talk, please come towards— because we don't always see you. And like I said, there's a lot of time that's taken watching you walk up the aisle. So just come on forward if you intend to talk so that we make make sure we see you and we don't miss you. Yeah, Craig Norheim from Petersburg. The reports I've seen is that the shrimping is increasing and our time on the shrimp is less and less every year.

Some places close in 10 days out of an entire year. My district closed in 15 days last year, whereas 2 years before it was 75 days. That's determined by pressure and what they're seeing on the grounds. But there's an abundance of shrimp. The reports from Fish and Game say there's an abundance of shrimp.

Maybe we should be upping these quotas a little bit, let us fish a little longer. That's my take on it. Thank you. Any questions?

Who's up next?

Chris Guggenmichler, Wrangell ACE. We oppose this proposal. Like we heard today, the shrimp stock supposedly going up. We're trying to give this other management plan opportunity to see how it works.

We are— we've also heard recently about efficiency and fuel and all of that. We don't want to be less efficient. It takes time. We're trying to do other fisheries and, and enjoy our life too. And so we don't want to be less efficient by having less gear.

Personally, I fish the large pots as well. I don't want to be forced into buying a new string. I've got less than the other guys and I like how they fish. They sit on a steeper bottom better. And so, yeah.

Oh, thank you. Okay. Thank you.

Anyone else wishing to testify?

Okay. Seeing none, that concludes Group 3.

Where are we here?

Oh man.

Oh boy, I'm having—. I'm having fun today, let me tell you. All right, staff, would you get us into 227?

Mr. Chair, for the record, this is Scott Forbes, proposal 227. This proposal would allow more than one CFEC shrimp pot permit holder in Southeast Alaska to fish from the same vessel and jointly operate all the allowed pots for the base permit and up to 50% of the allowed pots for the second permit. Mr. Chair, thank you.

Is the original proposer here on this?

Someone— anybody wishing to testify?

Okay, let's move on to the next, 220. 8.

Mr. Chair, for the record, Scott Forbes. Proposal 228. This proposal would allow collapsible coil spring slinky pots to be used in the Southeast Alaska commercial shrimp pot fishery. Mr.

Chair. Thank you. Is the original proposer here? All right, have at it. For the record, Jared Bright.

I put this proposal in because a lot of people are using these slinky shrimp pots in the personal use fishery, but due to the specific definition of a commercial shrimp pot in regulation, they're not legal for commercial use. Some permit holders were trying to use them, they couldn't. So anyway, we put it in there. I would like to direct your attention to RC 47. In the— there were several ACs that supported this, but one, the East Prince of Wales, that did not.

But they corrected that through RC 47. It was just a misinterpretation of the minutes. There will be an RC forthcoming. Worked with managing— with the department to come up with language for regulation that would be more acceptable to some of the concerns that they have in their department comments. The number isn't out yet, but it will be.

Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? Anybody else wishing to come on up?

For the record, Joe Willis, CFAA. Our organization reached out to the trollers in it. They were split down the middle on whether they supported or not. The ones that Who did support it asked that when you guys finally get the verbiage for the definition of the notorious and famous slinky pot, you guys can make sure that the definition is clear whether it specifies it's a small or large pot for that permit. Thank you.

Any question? Mr. Commissioner, so everybody's saying you need this definition of slinky pots. Is industry actually come up with a draft definition of slinky pots that would form as a draft for discussion and debate?

Whoever wants to try to answer that question. Oh, I thought they were addressing it at the next Groundfish.

Industry has not come up with a definition. We will be working with with the department when coming forward with that definition that I believe they said a year and a half, I think it's going to take to get there. But we have been included in the discussion. Yes. Thank you.

So I think the discussion would most appropriately happen at statewide finfish, but I'm increasingly kind of uncomfortable with all of these proposals that You know, we've got definitions. We have the potential, depending on what the board does with the proposal, like 228, to have all these rando definitions all over the reg books. So I don't know if maybe it's something we should be dealing with sooner than later. Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair.

So all of the previous discussion on slinky pots related to finfish. So fishing pots used to catch fish. This proposal relates to pots for shrimp, so it will have an inherently different definition than— or description of the gear than the fish pots. So there is substitute language that is being developed for this proposal, should be coming out soon. And then as we've mentioned earlier, we're working on a proposal for statewide finfish that would do well.

There's the finfish one. And then, I mean, what's our meeting next month is statewide shellfish, shellfish and shrimp, excluding Prince William Sound. Is that what it was? I can't remember. Statewide, including Prince William Sound and Prince William Sound shrimp.

Okay. So is the potential there to do something like a BGP if we needed to? I mean, I'm not a big fan, but that would be one option. Okay. So do we— I should know this, but I don't— do we have a definition for personal use slinky pots, or we just say slinky pots can be used in personal use fisheries?

In writing these proposals, I tried to— contacted many department personnel to find a definition for slinky pot. There is no definition that I could find. There's a definition of the escape mechanism required, but not actually what a slinky pot is. Mr. Bowers. So yeah, Mr.

Bright is correct. So the way we have dealt with these slinky pots in other fisheries in the past, you know, the first challenge we faced was this, the escape mechanisms. So we have— we've written definitions for a number of fisheries on the escape mechanisms, where they're located on this cylindrical pot, you know, the biodegradable twine, things like that. Well, what hasn't been defined is the exterior dimensions, you know, how long, how wide, what, you know, circumference, whatever, how you're going to define it. Whereas like for, for king crab, there's a statewide definition that provides a maximum external size of the pot.

So that's— those are some of the things we need to work out. Okay. Well, to be continued. Perhaps we can continue the conversation later. I don't mean to hijack it here.

So 228. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the latitude. Anybody else want to testify here on 228?

Any questions? Okay, let's move on to 229.

Staff. For the record, Scott Forbes, Proposal 229. This would repeal redundant descriptions of Southeast Alaska districts and sections in 5 AAC 31.105, update 5 AAC 33.200 with District 10 section descriptions, add Section 6E to District 6 shrimp pot fishing areas, and update regulations that refer to 5 AAC 31.105. 105, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Anybody wishing to— is the original proposer for this here?

This is— oh, this is us.

I wonder if I can figure out any other ways to screw this up today.

Okay, anyway, wishing—. Geez. Testified at 229.

Any questions?

Okay, let's move on to 230. For the record, this is Scott Forbes. Proposal 230, this would create a directed jig fishery for Magister armhook squid in the waters of Southeast Alaska. Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Richard Yamada, and I'm the proposer of this proposal. And it was also supported by the Juno Douglas AC, and they signed on as a sponsor of the proposal as well. I did submit some— I just flew in from Vancouver, so I submitted some RCs, but it doesn't have a number yet. And now I haven't been able— so I got some hard copy, but I'm trying to get it into a PDF so that you folks all can see it in color form.

Just basically, I did get a grant to see, investigate if there's a market for the Alaska squid. And I've been spending about a year doing that, going exploring different markets for the squid. This Magister squid is very particular to northern waters. It's the most abundant squid in Alaska waters but very underutilized. There was a big squid fishery in Alaska before we kicked the foreign fleets out.

And I've been investigating a couple things. One is the role, the ecological role this squid performs in our coastal ecological systems. That's why I originally got involved in it, because I think— and I did do some research with the University of Alaska that has shown it is predating on some of our juvenile salmon species and very important herring species. So twofold, one is to— if we opened up a commercial fishery, we would be able to control the population of this predator as well as give commercial fishermen another fishery to pivot on in times where their needing to have some other fishery to support their portfolios. So I'm going to specifically report on the marketing efforts.

There's a worldwide demand for squid now. Most of the squids have moved into northern waters, and they're being exported by China and Russia. And due to geopolitical issues, those doors are closing, both to Japan, which is a major user of that, and European Countries like UK and other European Union like Spain, Portugal, they use a lot of squid. But they're having a lack of squid right now. So squid, and there's an opportune time for Alaska to get into the squid market because of the economies and the lack of high demand.

For squid. And so I took squid over to Japan several times and had it compared with the available squid available internationally. And we had very favorable— in fact, superior results. And so I've even brought chefs to Alaska to have workshop— I'm actually planning a workshop this fall. But I brought them last summer.

And they were very impressed with the quality of our squid. So I'm sending you some marketing materials we're developing. I've been to— had a workshop in Little Tokyo in LA and had invited local area sushi chefs to come and work with the squid and then taste test the squid. And so these are— they're ready to have this squid put into their restaurants. We just— The main question I always get is, is there a commercial fishery for this squid up in Alaska?

And what's the price going to be to them? And those two questions I always have a problem with. We do have experimental— we have commissioner's permits that I've been operating on to collect squid and distribute them for samples. But I think to get investment in the infrastructure of the squid from processors all the way down to the handling, the whole supply chain. They need assurances that the state is supporting this kind of a fishery.

So that's the reason I'm here, to elevate the awareness that this is an underutilized fishery. And if we did open up a commercial fishery, and whether it's a full-blown commercial fishery or just a region-wide experimental fishery, It would give me a little bit more support in trying to get investment into opening to this industry. Once you get that established, I think investors— a couple of things happen when you do that. One is it does bring money into the infrastructure, but also provides money for investment into the research end of it because if you don't have a— If the fishery isn't producing any money, there's not going to be much money for research grants. So— and I heard some of the comments from staff that we don't have a way to set a tack or look at the— how much squid can we take out of the water.

The squid only lives for 1 year. And in the beginning part of their life cycle, food source for a lot of other fisheries, including mammals, seabirds. But they grow really fast. We encounter them at about 8 ounces in the squid fishery, I mean recreational fishery. But then in the summer, they're 4 pounds.

So they're eating a lot of protein in that short period of time. And I think the way they Internationally, there's no scientific biomass like other fisheries. Like halibut, you have surveys. Because these other fish live a long time and have a long life cycle. And you can actually look at recruitment.

And you can look at a lot of things that you can base your decisions to set tax. Well, squid live so short, the risk of doing anything dramatic in the fishery is very limited. And I think Dr. Navarro submitted a letter to this board regarding that his— and he worked with market squid, which is a different species down in California. And I think the board entertained a proposal several years ago for a market squid fishery in Alaska. And very low risk of overharvest or biological concern.

And that they usually use a catch per unit effort to set the harvest levels. So you set a harvest level and you see how the commercial fishery does. The cost to that collection of data is already being done because you're already collecting commercial effort from the commercial fisheries. It'd just be another line on their reports that they report how much squid they caught. And the analysis of that is very simple.

And I think Wouldn't cost a lot to do an annual stock assessment because there's nothing— we're just using catch records. We're not having to do a biological age sampling or size sampling or distribution. So for those reasons, I think a squid fishery would have a lot more benefits than the risk that it could have in the ecosystem. But with that, I'll just open for questions.

Thank you.

Jared, go ahead. So I have two questions for you. The first is, how do you— I've caught an octopus on accident commercial fishing when I was younger, or you go look for them under rocks at low tide on certain types of geological basis. How do you target squid? How do you target them?

So I discovered that somebody from Petersburg sent me some pictures and they were catching squid for halibut bait. It makes excellent halibut bait. So I tried. I live in Juneau. So I said, I'll go out there and try it.

And in one night, I caught 200 pounds of squid. And it was no matter where I dropped in Lynn Canal— and it's a 25-mile.

Mile Channel, I was catching squid. And so we use jigs. They're barbless hooks. And we catch them now just mostly recreationally with these jigs. And they're more productive at night than during the day.

But at the current moment, we're catching them during the day for our guests. They really love the squid. And so we go down 600 feet with just a 4-ounce little squid jig, and we catch them. Commercially, I went to Japan and went on a commercial squid jigging boat. And they're very all automated.

So they have these squid tumbler lines that tumble off a tumbler. And this gentleman I went on with was 70 years old. He's been in the squid fishing since he was 15. He runs the boat by himself. It's a 62-foot boat.

And he has 22 lines going down. His cockpit looks like a cockpit from a Boeing 747. It's just— they have everything from drift currents, from depths to— he can see every machine operating and control every machine remotely. If he has a tangle of buzzer, he can go out there and he just switches lines and he gets that working right away.

Normally in the past squid was always done by trawl and the quality was poor. So there's history of Magister squid, which is this species, Berituthis magister, in Japan. So I went over there to check their records and as I said, when they used to have this fishery it was a very poor quality because these ships didn't have the freezer capabilities. It was mostly used over there for fried and never used for sashimi or raw. And they had the local squid being the only squid used for that.

This time I took squid over there that was cured properly and they said it was excellent. So a lot has to do with the volume is going to be done by automation. So I did go and I didn't get a grant for production side, which is the other side of the coin, but I did on my own dime buy some machines from Japan and from Sweden. And here's my other question. So the market, because other places, I don't know, I think you said Portugal or something like that, it's not producing like it usually is.

Is this a sustainable market in your opinion? And it's not necessarily just in reaction to other markets being down right now, or other producing areas being down right now. And the other thing I would ask in the totality of your response is, what's the estimatable size of this market? How many tons, how many tons a year could be produced and bought out of Alaska in your estimation? Because you seem to know a lot about the market.

Yeah, I think the demand has been around for some time because all the squid around the world have been going to northern waters. They're no longer around Japan. They existed a few years in China, and now they're up in Russia. So unless something changes with our climate change and the water changes temperature all of a sudden, the squid are going to be out of the reach of the countries that use squid a lot. And Japan is one of the biggest consumers of squid.

And the US has been growing in the sushi market. The palates of the United— the domestic market has been growing. It's becoming more popular. So I think the demand is growing. It will always be there.

So I don't think it's going to disappear. Price is going to be some— we have no estimates of production until we start the commercial fishery. It's like when we first started sea urchins and geoduck. I mean, who knows who's going to be the biggest market? How much are we going to produce in geoducks and sea urchins?

We're going into right now mariculture. We're farming seaweed. Oysters. Until you open up the commercial fishery and have some history in it, it's hard to predict how big the market is. But I think it is a huge market.

Mr. Carpenter, looking for a very simple answer here. What's the lowest level of harvest in tons that you think would be necessary to execute this fishery for market capabilities and for investment? On the East Coast, they harvest around 40, uh—. I'm looking for how many pounds or tons of fish or squid in Alaska would be the lowest level that you think would be necessary to harvest to execute this, what you're asking. I mean, we don't have an answer for that because I don't know what the— how much we really can produce.

I would say if we had, you know, 40,000 pounds, I mean, one container that can go out, you know, once a month out of Alaska, that would be a good—. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So Richard, I applaud looking for new fisheries. I really do. I think it's a great idea. But usually when we come in with creating a new fishery, you know, we usually have some kind of a management plan structure that's coming forward to the board, and unfortunately nothing's been presented for what that management plan would be, so we'd be crafting one on the, on the go here.

I also noticed that you have a $230,000 SK grant that you're going to get over and probably implement over the next 2 or 3 years that's going to collect more information on this. And from my seat, I'm more than willing to continue the application of the commissioner's permit as you learn more and we develop a management plan moving forward. I guess, is that an acceptable pathway forward from your perspective? Sure. I think, I think, you know, I'm not that familiar with what the elements of a management plan need to be.

I know you need to have some kind of a, you know, SOC assessment, obviously. And so I'd be willing to work with the department if in developing a management plan and what the elements of that would be. Yeah, well, the elements would have to be— you have to set how you're going to set your quota, how you're going to assess that quota, then what kind of gear is legal to do that. So there's a variety of pieces that need to go into that. So yeah, I think all that information is going to be readily available.

Thank you again. Thank you for looking for new and creative ways to take our resource. Thank you. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks.

I had just one last short question. Is once it's on board, in your experience, once you pull it on board, what's the best way to take care of it for the highest quality of meat, especially for transport? Yeah. So we've found out that the squid from the Japanese, if you can keep them in a live tank, which is hard to do— like, I think if we do RSW, they'll stay alive in a suspended state. As long as they're alive, they're OK.

But as soon as you take them out and they die, you need to get them flash frozen really quick. It's sort of like dealing with arrowtooth. Before, if you handle them too long, they start getting acids that develop, lactic acids in their system, and they start decaying. The other thing we found out that they don't like their fish— and this is almost all their fish— touching any water after they die. And so we've done two things.

One is we get the squid and we kill them right away. We used to use a process called ikijime where we We sever the spine, but you can do a karate chop on the top of the squid head and they change color and they die instantly. But you cannot put them back into like icy water. So we've been— as long as they die quick and you set— where we've been putting them in big plastic bags and then putting them in slush water. Then we take them and then get them vacuum packed right away or flash frozen.

So The less touching water after they die preserves the quality and the quicker you can get them to a processor. So it's going to be something that's going to either be people that have freezing capability on their boats or really close to a processor within 3 or 4 hours. So it's not going to be, you know, for right now, you know, to keep the quality up, it's going to be you catch them at night, you deliver them in the morning. And then we're still working out the processor side. I met with some processors in Juneau and they—.

Great, thank you. That was, yeah, this is all new information. So fascinating, but I think we've gotta cut it off. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions? Anyone else wishing to testify? Thank you. Hi, Seth Rockwell. I'd like to support his idea of a limited fishery.

Sometimes when things are stuck with commissioner's permits, the volumes are set too low for somebody beyond somebody with a research grant to do anything. He's talking about a jig fishery, which is very low-impact fishery, has very low chance of overharvest. And so opening up a jig fishery may expand this out just a little bit more to allow them to get more data, to allow this to move to the next step to be a viable fishery. We're not asking for— he's not asking for something, you know, for them to come out and trawl where you can take large chunks of biomass. You're asking for boats to be out there jigging with jigs.

So it's very low impact, very low.

Chance of having a major issue by allowing a little bit more of the fleet to go out and try this and make it actually a commercial venture as opposed to a venture that's just being supported by grant money.

I just wanted to voice support for this proposer and his proposal as well. RAC talked about this. I remember it was really late at night. It was our last—. Stacy, for the record, will you read your name?

I'm sorry, this is Stacy Wayne, for the record. And we didn't understand a lot a lot about the proposal. And so we voted 5 to 10 against just because we didn't feel like we had enough information. And I feel like we did the proposer a disservice. I wish he'd been there with us to explain things.

So I was really impressed with his presentation. Thank you. Thank you.

Any other questions? Anybody else wishing to testify on this?

Seeing none, we'll move to 231, which is basically the same thing. Staff, read it in.

For the record, Scott Forbes. Proposal 231. This would create a directed jig fishery for Magister armhook squid in the waters of Southeast Alaska. Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I'm assuming no one else is ready. We've covered this, so let's, let's move on to 232.

For the record, Whitney Crittenden, Assistant Area Management Biologist for Commercial Fisheries in Ketchikan. Through the Chair, Proposal 232. This proposal would allow vessels registered to fish for miscellaneous shellfish the ability to be in possession of both red and green sea urchins at the same time. Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Jeremy Layton, Sardine Dive Association, is in support of this proposal. It allows right now the Greens are under a governor's permit, so it's very limited to the number of people that can do it. The red urchin fishery is an open access fishery with, well, by limited entry. And this would allow people to go out and harvest both species instead of, you know, the limited amount they can for, for the green urchins and make it a little bit more equitable. Thank you.

Thank you, Jeremy. Any questions? Mr. Wood. Jeremy, real quickly, can you explain like the sea urchin fishery a little bit? Like, are we still talking the size of this room, or how far do you have to go?

How quickly does it take to harvest them? They're just a quick and dirty—. That's kind of tough. So in the urchin fishery, you really have to concentrate on a feed line, so you end up covering a lot of ground in a day most of the time. And with the otters coming in, you end up having to cover even more ground.

They're kind of slimming the amount of product that's actually there to harvest. So in the— in a 1-acre spot, generally right now, if you could get 1,000 pounds, you'd be really lucky, and that'd probably be over the course of a few hours. Okay, and are they mixed in together, the two species? They can be mixed in together. But they are in the same areas.

Generally, the greens will get really shallow, but they can literally be side by side. But generally, no, you're not gonna pick one here and one here. You're gonna be more, you know, little pockets. The greens tend to group together when they're on the bottom, and the reds are spread out, so. Okay, and are they about the same size?

Negative. Oh. The harvestable size of a red urchin is generally between about 3.5 to 5 inches, and a green, the harvestable size is under 3.5. You know, you're talking maybe 2.25 to 3 inches.

Okay, thank you. I'll have to read more into this, but that would mean that you've got to harvest more if you're going by the pound, right? More to catch your Correct. All right, thank you.

Any other questions? This— Fendort. Yeah, I was just reading in your proposal that you mentioned the urchin populations declining because of sea otter populations and declines in kelp abundance. Why would you— why do you suppose that kelp abundance is declining? Typically, that's not what you see with high populations of sea otters and low populations of urchins?

I think that's a better discussion with the Fish and Game. I mean, it could be— anecdotally, from your experience, if you had any ideas or what? Um, water temperatures, acids in the water. There's lots of reasons that it could be. Okay, thanks.

Any other questions? Anybody else wish to testify to this?

Well, thank you. I think now we have concluded this presentation. Thanks for your— for what? Thanks for your indulgence. Thank you, Mr. Swenson.

Let me get just a couple minutes to kind of poll members and staff to see if there is language being worked on and then I will announce when we come back in for deliberations.

All right. So we do have a little bit of language getting worked on. Tentatively come back for deliberations beginning at 1:30, but we will kind of check in. It might be closer to 2:00. But I will give you an update at 1:30 if we are not ready to get going.

All right, we'll see you at 1:30. Enjoy your lunch.

Hi folks, still walking some substitute language around, so I think it's going to be closer to 2. So thank you for your patience, but I think we'll be closer to 2.

All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for your patience with us while we're getting some substitute language finalized. The time is 2:08. We are back on the record and we're going to go ahead and begin deliberations of Committee of the Whole Group 3, or I should just say Group 3, which includes subsistence shellfish, commercial and sport shrimp, commercial and other— and sport other miscellaneous shellfish.

So to kick it off, we'll begin today with proposal number 212, please.

Madam Chair, my name is Justin Breeze. I'm the Assistant Area Management Biologist for Commercial Fisheries in Ketchikan. Proposal 212, the 5AAC38-142 Southeastern Alaska Geoduck Fishery Management Plan.

Madam Chair, move to adopt Proposal 212 with substitute language found in RC 73. I second that and ask for unanimous consent.

Hearing no objection, the board has before it the language in RC 73 in lieu of the original language in Proposal 212. Staff comments, please.

With the amended language that allows 4 divers on a vessel with a total weekly harvest limit of 500 pounds or less and limits to the divers in the water to 2 divers at a time for safety reasons. Madam Chair, thank you. More discussion? Mr. Spencer, would you like to speak to your language?

Well, Yeah, to me it, it makes sense. And also the, the troopers seem to like the idea too, so I'm all for it.

Does enforcement have any issues with the language as written? Madam Chair, no, we don't.

Mr. Swenson, were you able to talk to industry members or stakeholders that this would affect?

Yes, and they all seem to be in favor of it, the ones that talked to me.

Other board discussion? Mr. Wood? Yeah, I really like the idea, especially when it's such a low level of harvest and such a long distance to go, to make it more convenient for people to, you know, kind of gather up and share the expense of being down there. It definitely makes the trip way more worthwhile. And, and the RC that's submitted, I like as well because it just adds to the safety factor.

So for that, I'm, I'm in favor of it. Mr. Carpenter. Oh, Mr. Mr. Chamberlain. I likewise will be supporting this. We've heard a lot in this meeting about the downward pressure that this fishery is facing due to increased predation, due to sea otters, and, and potentially facing lower harvest numbers.

It makes sense to consolidate expenses to the greatest extent to the extent possible. Mr. Carpenter, thank you. Uh, just a point of clarification, just want to put it on the record. I'm assuming that this language applies to all of Southeast Alaska so that it's a uniform regulation. Am I correct about that?

That would be correct. Thank you. I'll go ahead and do cost approval. This proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval The proposal is not expected to result in additional cost to the department. If there's nothing further, I'd call the question.

Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Question's been called. Errors and omissions? Director Payton? No, Madam Chair.

Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair. Director Wieda? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson?

No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraff? No, Madam Chair. Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on Proposal 212 as amended.

Godfrey? Yes. Wood? Yes. Chamberlain?

Yes. Ziray? Yes. Carpenter? Yes.

Svensson? Yes. Carlson VanDork. Yes. Motion carries 7-0.

Madam Chair. Proposal number 213. Madam Chair, my name is Quinn Smith. I'm the regional dive and fisheries— or dive and shrimp fisheries biologist. Proposal 213, 5AAC 3138.142, Southeastern Alaska Geoduck Fishery Management Plan.

Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please. This would require guideline harvests be calculated as 2% of the midpoint of the population estimate instead of the current practice of 2% the lower bound of the one-sided confidence interval of the estimate. The geoduck fishery management plan describes how guideline harvest levels shall be calculated and requires two values: the harvest rate of 2%, um, there's a value that has been assumed to be sustainable in Alaska when adopted in 1985, This was not based on Alaska— on data from Alaskan geoducks, but rather decremented from a value from the Washington geoducks.

It was decremented to 2.0 from 2.8 because populations in Alaska are at the extreme northern end of their range.

And therefore thought to be less productive than the southern stocks. The department estimates biomass for each fishery area using geoduck data collected during dive surveys of transects systematically laid out on the length of known geoduck beds. Because geoduck distribution is often patchy, the transects might be laid out in a variety of density zones ranging from very high to zero. A midpoint or mean estimate can easily be calculated as a product of density and bed area, but does not reflect the uncertainty of the estimate that arises from a highly patchy distribution of geoducks or from transects landing in disproportionately in areas that do not necessarily well represent the true density simply due to chance. To express that uncertainty, a one-sided confidence interval is calculated with a lower bound, which is the lower end of the range, such that the department would be 90% sure that the true mean value of the population is greater than that used to calculate the GHL.

The department opposes this proposal. Uncertainty in biomass estimates will always be present and sometimes high. The current method is a precautionary approach that is an effective way to help protect against setting unsustainable harvest levels and is in regulation for both sea cucumbers and urchin fisheries. Geoducks are long-lived animals with low and irregular recruitment rates. Making them particularly vulnerable to overfishing.

Therefore, it is important, important to be conservative when using uncertain values to estimate sustainable harvest levels. The point estimate of the biomass is used in the British Columbia fishery. However, the harvest rate applied is substantially lower than 2%, ranging from 1.2 to 1.8 depending on productivity of the stock. Because like Washington, British Columbia stocks are thought to be more productive than those in Southeast Alaska, Applying a higher harvest rate on Southeast Alaska stocks and British Columbia stocks would be inadvisable. Madam Chair.

Thank you. Board discussion, please. Mr. Ziray. Thank you, Madam Chair. There were no ACs in favor of this proposal, and the Craig AC, the East Prince of Wales Island AC, the Ketchikan AC, and the Sitka AC were opposed to it.

Thank you. Mr. Carpenter, then Mr. Ward. Thank you. To the department, um, I was reading through this, um, specifically about how British Columbia does their stock assessment, and, uh, you know, that they have obviously have a range of 1.2% to 1.8% depending on productivity. Approximately what is the— what, what's the harvest range like in the Southeast geoduck fishery?

Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, are you referring to the, the poundage of harvest or—.

Well, like, like it says here, the harvest rate applied, applied to the biomass estimate in British Columbia is lower than 2%, ranging from 1.2 to 1.8% depending on productivity. Generally speaking, what is that percentage in the fishery that is conducted Through the chair, Member Carpenter, I understand the—. Because the surveys are done slightly differently, it's not really possible to directly compare our harvest rate to theirs. When I recalculate our harvest using a midpoint, or they would tend to be someplace between 15 and 20% higher than they are now. Does that answer your question, sir?

Kinda. Let me think about it. Let me follow up on that for a second because I think I was thinking— had a question along the same lines. I guess the question— so BC develops their GHL around a midpoint, is that correct? Is that what you are saying?

Madam Chair, that is correct. So they use the midpoint GHL which would inherently probably be higher, maybe, maybe not. Never mind. But, but they're— but their harvest range is lower. Madam Chair, that's correct.

They've effectively used a different method to add conservatism to their harvest, and they've done that by decreasing the harvest rate and going to the midpoint. We have done that by maintaining the same harvest rate and going to the lower bound of the 90% confidence interval.

Mr. Wood. Okay, and I'm going back to the historical, like, what, in 1985 when, when this was adopted, and trying to put it into context with the sea otters and, and how things have changed over time. And it appears that they were reintroduced back in Alaska about right around 1968. And so probably in '85 when you were doing this, they were probably at a much lower level. And now they're at a much higher level.

How—. When you look at that 2%, do you think that is actually cautious enough considering the higher density of sea otters? Through the chair, Member Wood. So in The geoduck fishery did not start in 1985 to the extent that it is now. It was much smaller in areas around Ketchikan.

It wasn't really until the management plan was implemented in 2000 that we started seeing the large expansion of the fishery and including a lot of these surveys. So a lot of the areas we were surveying, you know, those original biomass estimates are only 25 years old. So as was pointed out earlier today, there was some level of otters in the areas that currently have otters, or not all the areas, but some of them were brought in or were first surveyed with some level of otters there.

We know that those numbers have increased since then. So in terms of what is an appropriate harvest rate in otter areas, that's, you know, not what this proposal deals with, but we have— we'll talk about it in the next ones. But we have seen that consistently in areas with otters, DHLs go down, populations go down in the presence of fishing pressure, and from the evidence we have in the areas without fishing pressure. Follow-up? Thank you.

Yeah, I'm just looking at that with that kind of historical perspective. It seems that, you know, whatever is the most conservative number based on the fishermen and the sea otter take which seems to be increasing, is important to be able to make sure that these things continue to come back with a 100-year lifespan. So that's pretty impressive. And anyhow, I'm definitely in the mindset of more conservative with these, especially with the increasing X factor of otter. [Speaker] Commissioner.

Yeah. So what this proposal is asking for is for us to go to the midpoint and maintain a 2% harvest rate. We would not be comfortable with that as a department. You made us go back to the midpoint, then we would probably go to a much lower harvest rate. It's a trade-off going downward.

So we feel a much better approach to managing this fishery is to manage it based on the lower confidence interval, knowing that we are capturing 90% with 90% probability what's there. So if you adjust It would be irresponsible in my eyes to adjust, to have maintained the 2% harvest rate and then ask us to do the midpoint. That would be unsustainable in our eyes. Thank you, Commissioner. I would agree with that.

That's kind of how I read this proposal. How is the GHL calculated every year?

Madam Chair, the GHL is calculated every time there is a new survey. The regulations require that gooey duck areas are surveyed at least once every 12 years. Then gooey duck areas, once surveyed, are not open every year. They're open every 2 to 4 years, but that GHL remains in place during that time until they're resurveyed. I'm just curious, where did that 12-year survey cycle number come from?

Madam Chair, that came with the Gooey Duck Management Plan. That's part of that plan. As for why that was, I believe that was the cycle from— do you know? Yeah. Madam Chair, this is Justin Breeze.

That number was, when it was set up in the original management plan, was the maximum possible that we would ever want to extend and have a fishery on something without having a resurvey. We often have resurveys more conservative than that, and we try to survey sooner than 12 years. But at 12 years, we would no longer have a fishery. Madam Chair, well, that's an interesting way to do it. Considering that, I mean, you've only had 2 surveys since the management plan was implemented.

Yikes.

Other board discussion? Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would say in light of that, And I understand, you know, that a lot of this is fiscally oriented and the department, you know, has limited resources to do this. I mean, it obviously behooves the department to do it as often and as frequently as they can, but I believe that I can't support this proposal at this time just because of— for a multitude of reasons that have been stated already.

So, yeah, that's kind of my position there.

So I'll go ahead and do cost approval. This proposal is not expected to result in additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional direct cost to the department. And if there's nothing further, I'd call the question. I have just one other question, kind of along those lines. So if you've done two surveys in the last 24, 25 years, Was one done very, very recently?

Madam Chair, to clarify, the management plan was implemented in 2000. We had surveyed a number of areas before that because we had, again, the 2% harvest rate and some level of harvest has been going on for 15 years before that. Okay, let me rephrase. When was the last survey done? We surveyed areas last summer.

We survey areas almost every summer, but It depends on the area and the cycle they're in, and sometimes we try to get them in earlier when we can, but that depends on scheduling and staffing. Thank you.

Seeing no other board discussion, the question has been called. Errors and omissions? Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers?

No, Madam Chair. Director Lita? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair.

Captain DeGraaff? No, Madam Chair. Call the roll, please. Final action on Proposal 213. Carlson-Vandork.

No. Carpenter. No. Wood. No.

Godfrey. No. Svensson. No. Chamberlain.

No. Zarey. No. Motion fails 0-7. Madam Chair.

Proposal 214.

Proposal 214, 5AAC 38.142, Southeastern Alaska Geoduck Fishery Management Plan. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please. This proposal would authorize the department to reopen fisheries in areas that are currently closed under the Southeastern Guiduck or Guiduck Fishery Management Plan due to biomass falling below the threshold of 30% of the original biomass.

Proposal 214 would allow reopening any area after 5 years of closure with the standard 2% harvest rate. The, the current fishery threshold of 30% of the original surveyed biomass was first adopted into regulation in 2000 with the Alaska geoduck fishery management plan to conserve essential broodstock when populations are at very low levels and to allow population recovery. When compared to other geoduck fisheries, the 30% threshold is liberal, as British Columbia regulations require closure of the fishery area if biomass reaches 40% of the original unsurveyed biomass. Based on department surveys, all geoduck fishery areas where the biomass fell below 30% of the original biomass were those with heavy sea otter predation. In the fishery area and— we surveyed after closure, the population continued to decline even in the absence of fishing pressure for 4 years.

This was also observed in a control area that is closed to commercial fishing and surveyed to understand the effects of fishing on the stock. The pattern observed by the department indicate that there is not a sustainable harvest surplus for geoduck in those areas. The department opposes this proposal. It would result in unsustainable levels of harvest. The department will continue monitoring populations whose biomasses are under threshold and will reopen them if there is sufficient evidence of harvestable surplus.

Thank you. Board discussion. Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you. And for the department, I'm, I'm looking at the history of these, and as I think the record's already clearly demonstrated, When the original assessments were done on these stocks, I think the original biomass was at an abnormally high level given the lack of predators.

Is that— would that be an accurate assessment or am I misreading this?

Through the Chair, Mr. Chamberlain, at— if you look at a long-term timeframe, as in there were once otters here before they were extirpated. The assumption would be that at that point that there would be a lower level, lower standing stock of gooey ducks than with otters absent. That being said, there's lots of variables in ecosystem, and we don't have, you know, a record to say exactly what it was. Okay. What I'm looking at is— 30 years ago, the— I don't know when is the original biomass calculated for the purposes of this?

What years are we looking at? Through the chair, Member Chamberlain, it depends on the stock. So some areas were surveyed, you know, starting in the '90s. Other areas weren't surveyed until, you know, the first year in 2007 or 2008. So it depends.

Basically, the geoduck fishery is an amalgamation of 39 different individual fishery areas that have their own GHLs that started— were first surveyed at different times. So my, my broader concern here is that— and, and I certainly want to be conservative in, in how this is managed, but if we were looking at assessing these, these stocks at a time of, in some cases, possibly abnormally low levels of predation. And as we reach a homeostasis between— once the sea otters and other predators and people find a lower kind of a carrying capacity and the stocks even out, is there a possibility that we'll never hit that 30% threshold once the sea otters are here to stay, because all indicators are their numbers are still climbing. And the, and the record shows that even, even after fishing stopped, a lot of these fisheries are going down. What I want to— and so I just want to get a clear answer on the record.

Are we running the risk if we stick to the 30% of original biomass of closing areas to fisheries to never reopen, to possibly never reopen? Through the chair, Member Chamberlain, we don't know what the future is going to bring on that. We don't know what, you know, when an equilibrium is, is come to, which, you know, will eventually happen. We don't know the population looks, will look like then. We do know that as of right now, with in the absence of fishing pressure with GHL— with, sorry, with population estimates still declining, that we're not at that level.

And that if they cannot sustain— if there's no harvestable surplus, if the populations are continuing to go down when surveyed in the absence of fishing pressure, there's not currently a harvestable surplus. In the— to step back a little bit and talk about otters, we're still looking at a relative, you know, reinvasion of a predator into a, you know, predator-free area. And what usually happens is that the populations of that predator will go up until they reach their carrying capacity of that area and then continue to move into virgin habitat and to move into new area. So if that holds true at other new predator invasions, at some point there will be a level of otter presence that is probably lower than it is now on those stocks. This is why Monterey Bay still has a Dungeness crab fishery despite having, you know, otters for a very long time, is that they're at that lower, lower density than they are during the invasion.

So what that may look like in, you know, 30 years from now, I can't say. But all we can say is that we can continue monitoring, and as populations stop declining and level out or start increasing, can look at potential harvest levels then.

So with that, with that stated, I'm, I'm not sure where— I'm leaning slightly against voting for this, but one of the, one of the things I'd like to see is something of a more adaptive management plan to account for the uncertainty and fluctuation in population levels of pegging a harvest guideline to an arbitrary number that may not be representative of the overall value gives me a lot of concern. And I think, I think a lot of the fishermen's concerns here are very well founded, that, that there may be— that, that may be there. And so I would like to see a management plan that that gives a little more variability and accounts for the long-term projections of the stock, which I agree are completely uncertain right now. And there's a lot of work to be done on this. And I'm open to discussion from other board members, but the metrics and the standards by which this management plan operates gives me a little pause.

Mr. Wood. Um, besides otters and humans, is our— with the way things are going with the water temperature and stuff, are— is it possible that geoducks could be doing better in the future coming north? And, um, and is— what, what else is out there in terms of water quality or food that could affect them?

Through the chair, Member Wood.

In a changing environment, it is hard to predict. You are, you know, like many of the other species of invertebrates we deal with, you— there is a phase where the larvae of.

Of geoduck clams are pelagic. That is, they spawn, gametes are formed, they float in the water column for a period of time, and then they're, you know, quite vulnerable to things like change of currents, change of acidification, change of salinity. So there's certainly some potential, you know, issues there. We're also seeing, you know, recently we talked about this during the presentation on— with cucumbers, but with the sea star wasting disease and the loss of Pycnopodia. When any kind of marine invertebrate that lives called benthic that lives on the bottom settles, you know, the sea stars are major predators of theirs.

So with that lack of sea stars recently, we may be seeing a, you know, a potential recruitment, but that would very much depend on if there happened to be larvae that settled, that spawned well that year and settled on the spot that time. So again, we have a highly variable recruitment. So, you know, sometimes the stars will align and you could have a huge recruitment event, and other times for years you might have nothing. Thank you.

Mr. Zarey. Thank you, Madam Chair. The Ketchikan AC was in favor of this, and opposed was the Craig AC, the East Prince Wales Island AC, the Sitgreave Sea, and that's it. Thank you. So here's a couple of my thoughts on it.

So 30% could be argued as arbitrary or not. I'm not real solid on the history of that number, but we do know that these areas are surveyed. You told us that, and they're sort of cycled through, or these 39 different areas that you try and get information on over the years and what your Staff comments say is that in the areas where this 30% biomass, or the biomass fell below 30%, is where you saw a lot of otter activity and otter presence, correct? That may or may not be the reason. It's a pretty obvious one, but who knows.

Um, but the bottom line is, is that we have no jurisdiction over otters. There's nothing that we can do about them. But we— what we do have jurisdiction over is the fishing pressure that is applied in those places irrespective of the presence of otters or not. And what you're telling me, that in areas where there is absolutely no fishing pressure for several years, i.e., 5, you're still not seeing those populations recover. We can attribute them to otters, but we're not super sure about that.

Um, but either way, those populations are not recovering. So it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me, although I really appreciate the spirit in which this is offered. Is why would, would be, why would we be increasing pressure, fishing pressure potentially, in these areas that are surveyed, maybe not as frequently as people would like them to be surveyed. How does that represent the precautionary principle? In my opinion, it does not.

And so I can't be supportive of this proposal, although I really understand why they, why these are being offered, and I I'm sympathetic to the fact that, look, I mean, unless something changes with the trend that we're seeing with otters or other things that we may not be super aware of at this time, it's going to continue to have effects on the fishery. But we have to conserve the resources that are being used or exploited, whatever word you want to use. So from my perspective, I don't see that the board, if it's doing its job, would be opening— liberalizing this at this time since we haven't even think we've come close to reaching the capacity, carrying capacity of otters in this area. That's a whole nother discussion in my opinion, but that's not one that the board should be having here necessarily because we have no authority over it. Commissioner.

Yeah, what we're facing here is a dynamic situation. Sea otters are expanding, and hopefully at some point in time you'll reach an equilibrium. And when you reach that equilibrium, I think we can redefine what that status quo is. Unfortunately, we're not at that equilibrium yet. I, I sympathize.

I think at some point in time we are going to reach a new equilibrium. It's going to be a much lower amount of harvest that's out there, but at that point in time we can probably get to a point we're setting a sustainable harvest strategy. Just because we're so dynamic right now, we're just not quite there yet. Thanks. And I mean, are we going— is the department going to continue to survey these predated areas just to continue to try and get an idea if there's anything else going on, or if it's just sort of a lost cause in terms of, well, the— when the presence of otters are high, or what's the frequency that you kind of resurvey these, these areas that have been closed?

Is that still on sort of a similar cycle? Madam Chair, yes, the current cycle is to continue to survey them at least once every 12 years. There is discussion after discussions with industry yesterday. We are looking at the possibility of doing more consistent studies, more common, more frequent studies, excuse me, in a few representative areas. If we can get that into the schedule in order to get better data definition on population changes.

Thank you. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I believe my sentiment has been expressed very well by the Chair. I think that in light of everything that is going on and the sympathy that I do express to the user groups in this particular situation, there is a lot beyond the Board's control, and I believe a cautionary approach is prudent at this time. So that's my position. Approval of these proposals is not expected to result in additional direct costs for an individual to participate in the fishery. An approval of this proposal is not expected to incur any additional costs to the department.

If there's nothing further, I'd call the question. Question's been called. Errors and omissions? Director Payton? No, Madam Chair.

Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair. Director Wieda? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson?

No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraff? No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on Proposal 214.

Zareh? No. Chamberlain? No. Godfrey?

No. Svensson? No. Wood? Nope.

Carlson-Vandort? No. Carpenter? No. Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair.

Proposal number 215. Proposal 215, 5AAC 38.142, Southeastern Alaska Geoduck Fishery Management Plan. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please.

This proposal would authorize the department to reopen fisheries in areas that are currently closed under the Southeastern Alaska Gwiyak Fishery Management Plan due to biomass below the threshold of 30% of the original biomass. Proposal 215 would allow reopening of sea otter impacted areas at a reduced harvest rate.

The current fishery threshold of 30% of the original surveyed biomass was first adopted into regulation as part of the Southeastern Alaska Geoduck Fisheries Management Plan in 2000 to conserve essential broodstock when populations are at very low levels and allow population recovery. When compared to other geoduck fisheries, the 30% threshold is liberal, as British Columbia regulations require closure of a fishery if the biomass reaches 40% of the original surveyed biomass. Based on department surveys, all geoduck areas where the biomass has fallen below 30% the original estimated biomass were in areas of heavy sea otter predation. The fishery area that has been resurveyed after closure, the population continued to decline even in the absence of fishing pressure. This is also observed in a control area that is closed to commercial fishing and surveyed to understand the effects of fishing on a stock.

The patterns observed by the department indicate there is no sustainable harvest surplus of geoducks in these areas. The department opposes this proposal. It would result in unsustainable harvest levels. The department will continue monitoring populations whose biomasses are under threshold and we will reopen them if there is sufficient evidence of a harvestable surplus.

Mr. Carpenter, thank you. Like the conversation we had with the prior proposal, my sentiment follows a similar line in regards to this. I think conservative management is prudent at this time. So my position will be a no. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, I, I as well, I'll reference the comments I made actually during 2013 as well, but they, they hold true to 2014 and 2015 about the sea otters and just being super conservative given their increase in, in population. And I think being conservative right now is the very best thing we can do. And the Department is doing that. Mr. Chamberlain. Likewise, my position on this is the same as the earlier proposal.

I will not be supporting this, but I do look forward to finding— look forward to someday having a leveling off of the predation and being able to develop a new model for harvest. I'm going to reference my comments in the previous proposal as well, and just a falling GHL is, I think, significant indicator in and of itself.

Any other board discussion? Mr. Carpenter. Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for individuals participating in the fishery. And additional— additionally, approval of this proposal is not expected to incur any additional cost for the department.

And I'd call the question. Question's been called. Errors and omissions? Director Payton? No, Madam Chair.

Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair. Director Vito? No, Madam Chair. Peterson?

No, Madam Chair. Captain McGrath? No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on Proposal 215.

Chamberlain? No. Carlson-Vandort? No. Zareh?

No. Svenson? No. Godfrey? No.

Carpenter? No. Wood? No. Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair.

Proposal number 216.

Madam Chair, Beau Meredith, Ketchikan area manager for commercial fisheries. Proposal 216, 5AAC 38.142, Southeastern Alaska Geoduck Fishery Management Plan. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please.

Madam Chair, current regulations in the Geoduck Management Plan closes waters under all permitted mariculture sites to commercial geoduck harvest. Currently, there is only one permitted geoduck mariculture site in an open commercial geoduck fishery, which the department closes by EO when this fishery opens. Department supports clarification of existing regs.

For discussion, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you.

So understanding that there's only one mariculture site that currently exists exist. Is there any idea if there's a lot of interest in this or pending permits or the possibility of this being expanded rapidly in Southeast?

Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, there are several other permitted geoduck mariculture sites in a closed commercial geoduck area since it fell below the 30% threshold. When these geoduck mariculture sites were permitted, it was quite a while ago, and we don't have the existing sideboards in place that we do now. So there are statutory definitions for standing stock that, you know, it has to— you can't have too many wild stock geoducks for an area to be permitted for a geoduck mariculture site. Mr. Thank you.

Other board discussion?

Mr. Carpenter. I mean, in light of that and the idea that the department supports clarifying the existing regulation, I don't see any reason not to move forward with this at this time. I think that this gives clear enforcement direction, and I think it also allows the department to clearly identify this, and I think it's going to be much easier for the public to understand. So for those reasons, I would support this.

Yeah, I guess I'm just kind of curious that, I mean, given that we've seen all this predation, given we've seen these significant impacts, you mentioned several mariculture sites in those areas where the threshold is below that 30%. Is that correct?

Yes. And I guess to back to Member Carpenter's question, is there a lot of interest in developing these mariculture sites particularly in areas that have seen a lot of predation and there's not a lot of gooey ducks present at this time? I guess I'm kind of asking, where's industry going with this? Director Bowers. Yeah, through the chair, regarding interest in future mariculture sites, there is interest, but they're, you know, they're And that's, you know, partly why you saw the Governor's Mariculture Task Force.

There's certainly interest in various mariculture activities throughout the state. There are some barriers, one of which is, you know, the ability to produce seed stock for new farms. But with the legislation that was recently adopted into law, allowing for shellfish fishery, fishery enhancement programs, including hatcheries. At some point, we may see some of those barriers fall away. But yeah, there's, there's certainly interest in, in geoduck farming.

And just one quick follow-up. There's recently— we just approved a new geoduck mariculture site about 20 miles south of Ketchikan on the mainland. So there's still interest. 20 Years ago, there was a lot of interest and it hasn't materialized, but it's— there's still interest for sure. Okay, thank you.

Well, I mean, if it provides clarity and regulation, then that's usually a good thing. So I will be supportive. Mr. Wood? Yeah, listening to the conversation also convinces me that this could provide a really good opportunity for people down the road. And if it was to work out and plus the fact that the department supports it and there's oversight, I think it's a decent idea.

So I'm in favor of it.

Mr. Carpenter, approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this proposal will not result in an additional direct cost to the department. And I'd call the question.

Question's been called errors and omissions. Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair.

Director Rita? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraff?

No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson? Call the roll. Final action on Proposal 216. Carpenter?

Yes. Zareh? Yes. Godfrey? Yes.

Carlson-Vandort? Yes. Wood? Yes. Svensson?

Yes. Chamberlain? Yes. Motion carries 7-0. Madam Chair.

Proposal number 217.

Madam Chair, my name is Whitney Crittenden. I'm the Assistant Area Management Biologist for Commercial Fisheries in Ketchikan. Proposal 217, 5AAC 38.140, Southeastern Alaska Sea Cucumber Management Plan. Move to adopt. Second.

Staff comments, please. Madam Chair, this proposal would increase the amount of time the sea cucumber fishery would be open weekly for harvest by adding Sunday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. from the beginning of the season, which in regulation currently starts on the first Monday in October. The standard sea cucumber fish weekly fishing period currently is Monday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Tuesday, 8 a.m. to noon. Current regulation gives the department the ability to extend the weekly fishing period beginning November 1st. The department is neutral on this potentially allocated proposal.

Expanding the hours of the fishery is expected to increase weekly harvest, close areas sooner, and shorten the sea cucumber fishery season. And the Alaska Wildlife Troopers may have additional comments, Madam Chair. Thank you. Captain. Madam Chair, we do have a concern in terms of enforcement challenges this could bring.

This would add another day to a 4-day cycle, or 2 days for cucumbers, 2 days for gooey ducks, at the same time while there's high pressure in the deer hunting that's going on at the same time in the same area. So this would spread us more thin during this time by adding that, that Sunday on there. It's always a balance of where do I put people, where do we put boats, how many people do we bring in from other areas. So it would have a tendency to thin us out more if this was passed. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. I think we heard quite a bit about this in Committee of the Whole. There seemed to be pretty significant opposition to this.

And thinking back on some of the conversations that were had during the committee, specifically in the in regards to, you know, executing this fishery and, you know, considering the idea of, you know, being able to move that product to the marketplace in a cost-effective manner so that those costs could be kind of associated over the course of the year, I think are important for, at least for me, to consider. And so considering the opposition and I don't, I don't believe that there's a conservation concern. They do have weekly trip limits, but for those reasons, I won't be supportive of this. Mr. Wood. Yeah, I as well.

I was mainly struck by the fact that even the—. All the—. Most of the comments from the fishermen were they didn't want it. So that said a lot. And so for that reason, I'd be saying no to this.

Mr. Chamberlain. I likewise will be voting against this. The overwhelming testimony was against it. Some of the testimony was opposed to increased participation, which didn't carry a lot of sway with me, but the department's comments on enforcement And the tender's opposition I found to be particularly persuasive. So based on those arguments, I will be voting no.

Mr. Ziray. Yeah, I make note of the similar thing about not being good for the process, as I heard that.

For the record, the Ketchikan AC and the Sitka AC were in favor of— oh no, no, excuse me. There were no ACs in favor of this, and the Prince— East Prince of Wales Island AC and the Ketchikan AC and the Sitka AC were all opposed. Mr. Carpenter. Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this The proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost to the department. And I call the question.

Question has been called. Errors and omissions, Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair.

Director Mehta? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraff?

No, Madam Chair. Please call the roll. Final action on Proposal 217. Svendsen? No.

Wood? No. Chamberlain? No. Carpenter?

No. Carlson-Vandort? No. Zareh? No.

Godfrey? No. Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair.

Proposal 218.

Madam Chair, Proposal 218, 5 AAC 38.140, Southeastern Alaska Sea Cucumber Management Plan. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments. Madam Chair, this proposal would allow the department the ability to extend the sea cucumber fishery season past the regulatory closure of March 31st if there are areas areas with remaining guideline harvest level.

The beginning date of the sea cucumber fishery has shifted throughout the years, with the most recent change occurring at the 2022 Board of Fisheries meeting when it was adjusted from, from October 1st to the first Monday in October. The end date of the season, March 31st, has remained static since the Southeastern Alaska Sea Cucumber Fishery Management Plan was adopted by the board in 1991. The current season closure corresponds with the sea cucumber reproductive cycle, and with spawning documented in Southeast Alaska as early as April. The department is opposed to this proposal, which would lengthen the season and potentially overlap with sea cucumber spawn timing. The effects of harvest during this time are unknown, and a precautionary approach should be taken.

Madam Chair. Thank you. Mr. Swenson. I'll be opposing this mainly because of— certainly wouldn't want to overlap with the sea cucumber Sea cucumbers spawning time.

So I heard in Committee of the Whole, obviously, this would allow for potential later openers. There probably wouldn't be a ton of permit holders participating. I think maybe a half dozen or so. But my question, I guess, is sort of to the biology of it. Is there a significant spawn timing difference or a difference at all in the higher latitudes around this area versus BC, Washington?

Or is it pretty much the same time? Does it differentiate by a couple weeks or a month? I'm kind of curious. Madam Chair, Moe Meredith. I think it's highly variable, and I think after some discussion with industry divers, our stance has kind of softened.

I think the one case where we documented spawn in April was, you know, around here. Most of our documentation that we see on our dive surveys happens in late May, June, July. Unfortunately, the proposer wasn't here to address this while we were on break, but I think our stance has softened a little bit for small opportunities in April.

Okay.

And when you say small opportunities in April, would you be considering like a week, 2 weeks? Madam Chair, it would be, you know, more of a direct marketer situation where a diver contacts us and we would go with, you know, the normal established hours and regulation, potentially with a day extension. And it would be, you know, on a case-by-case basis. If a diver reached out to us and had interest and had a market, I think it's something that we could feel comfortable accommodating. And you currently don't have that flexibility or authority in reg?

Madam Chair, no. The, the regulations— the season ends March 31st. Mr. Carpenter, then Mr. Wood. Thanks. And maybe to that point, and I know this is going to vary from year to year, but generally, how much of the GHL is caught prior to that date currently?

Nearly all of it. Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, nearly all of it. In recent years, we've had one area that had a significant amount of GHL left. And then, as you've heard, you know, through other testimony, the pycnopodia disease had a profound impact on the cucumber GHLs. And we've seen, you know, record GHLs.

You know, prior to 5 or 6 years ago, the cucumber season very rarely lasted through New Year's. Okay, maybe a follow-up to that. Um, using that area that you were talking about, where there was a significant portion of the GHL left, Is that in an area that currently isn't impacted by— is it in an area that is just not utilized as much because of the geographic location by divers, or is there some other factor that I'm missing?

Through the chair, and the 2022-2023 season, we had a significant portion of GHL left in Back Beam. Which is pretty far away from Ketchikan. It also had smaller sea cucumbers which were not desired by the market. So it was taking divers longer to get cucumbers that were desirable. Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Wood. Yeah, a basic question, but it fits in, I guess, is that how often— how old— like, what's the lifespan of a sea cucumber and how often do they reproduce?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood. As far as the longevity, I'm a little unclear, maybe 11 years. They become sexually— it's thought they become sexually mature at 4 to 5.

Thank you.

Mr. Carpenter. Thanks. Uh, you know, I'm kind of on the fence on this one, to be honest with you. You know, when I read through these originally, you know, there was opposition from the department. I think that that's been clarified.

It also seems to me that considering the time of year and considering the harvest that takes place, you know, over the course of a season, there could be some opportunity left. And I guess that would vary from year to year, and it would obviously be up to the department of the discretion if they would exercise this authority. But I'm— I don't want to necessarily preclude people from harvesting a GHL that is available to them, either through self-marketing or whatever, what other way they seem. So having said all that, I guess I'm leaning towards yes on that because the department feels comfortable, and if this gives them another tool to be able to give users some opportunity at a time which very few would most likely participate. I'll be supportive.

Well, let me ask this. I'm looking at the language in 218, and this is talking about Mondays and Sundays and all kinds of things. So there's kind of a regular sea cucumber schedule, right, that we've already talked about. Um, is, is this proposal seems to be seeking to change that schedule? Is that the case, Madam Chair?

It would just extend the fishery past March 31st. The department has EO authority for area and time, so we can extend at this point. Generally, if we have fisheries open late— this late in the season, generally they're open for 3— 2 full days or 3 days. Okay.

Hi, Paul. Madam Chair, point of clarification, and I apologize, we had a busy lunch and we do not have substitute language prepared at this time, but I would clarify that if we were going to do this, it would extend through April and that would be the end. And I think it could be accomplished with a simple B4 insertion to the department may open in, you know, through April 30th. Why would you be proposing April 30th as opposed to like April 15th?

Madam Chair, for most of our documentation that we see, active spawn is, you know, May, June. Um, whether if, if a mark— if a, if a cucumber diver wants to participate, you know, it allows him to establish where he's going to send these, these cukes. I, I don't think it would be a processor purchasing these cukes. It would be a diver, you know, direct marketing his product. Right.

I guess I'm just confused a little bit by the department's stance. Okay, so originally you had spawn concerns. There's less spawn concerns. A little bit earlier you told me that there were some in April. So I'm just kind of— now you're suggesting potentially the end of April.

Feels like it's a little all over the place, respectfully.

Madam Chair, I apologize.

Mr. Wood, then Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Swenson. Okay, to the department, with your EO authority, if we pass— if this was to pass, with your EO authority, you'd be able to extend the season a little further to harvest excess GHL if it's out there, and you would monitor that right up until that date that you, you would put in the books. Is that how that would work?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood, yes. Okay. Yeah, I mean, to me that seems way more under control than— and understandable— than reading the proposal and even the department's comments, which you guys were opposed to this at first. But if you feel like you can actually manage it at that really small scale, to pick up the rest of it. I'm more comfortable with that.

Mr. Chamberlain, then Mr. Swenson. So to the department again, I want to nitpick on words. When the department says their opposition has softened, are they still opposed to it, just not as vigorously, or are they neutral or in favor now? Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair.

So what I heard you say is that Spawning in April has been documented in limited areas, but the, the most commonly observed spawn times are in May and June and maybe even later. Would—. If this proposal were to pass, would you use EO authority to only open areas where you hadn't seen documented spawn in April? Through the Chair, Forest, we could certainly look at that. I think the one documented spawn was south of Ketchikan, you know, as far south as you can get without being, you know, in Canada.

Mr. Swenson. Well, I'm a little confused because you said first you didn't have that authority, and then I thought She said that you did have the authority now to change it. So do you need a yes on this to have that authority to change this or not? They have authority within the season, but they do not have the authority to extend the season beyond March 31st.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Godfrey.

Yeah, I think the more I've listened to this one, the more confused I've gotten. Um, just to be clear, this, this is not— this language, if the board adopts this, this is not compulsory. So it's a tool and it's an opportunity, but inherently, if the department's opposed to in principle and they have the tool, they just won't execute it, right? Through the chair, Mr. Godfrey, that's correct. I imagine it would be something as simple as the department may, by emergency order, open up an area through April 30th if GHL warrants.

Okay, that's all I need to know. I'll support it. Mr. Carpenter. I don't like making amendments on the fly, but I'm going to try and accomplish that right now, and I'm going to— I'm going to try and use the words that you just stated. So I move to amend Proposal 218 in the description, which in it would read extend the sea cucumber fishing season through April 30th.

Is that satisfactory?

Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, can you repeat the first portion of that one more time, please?

The, the amended language would be just basically just changing the date, but it would say extend the sea cumber fishing season through April 30th.

The proposal asks to give the department the authority to extend beyond March 31st, and I'm making it very specific that you can go through until April 30th. Per your recommendation.

Madam Chair, Mr. Carpenter, my recommendation would be allow the department the ability to make that call in April based on where GHL is remaining. And it would be maybe a B4 substitute as the department may by emergency order extend the season through April 30th if GHL warrants. Well, having said that, Madam Chairman, I'm going to withdraw my amendment and I would like to stand down for 5 minutes. And if the department wants some exact language, I would like them to hand that to me. Okay, let's take 5 minutes.

Okay, we're back on the record. Time is 3:12. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the public for being patient. I move to amend proposal 18 with additional language that says the department may extend the sea cucumber season through April 30th.

I second the amendment and ask for unanimous consent.

Hearing no objection, so moved. That brings us Proposal 218 with the amended language before us. Any additional board discussion? I think my questions have been answered. I think my thoughts on it are clear.

There's, you know, GHL that can be captured, and this will allow the department the flexibility to extend the season if it's so warranted, and there are no conservation concerns. I'll be I'll be supportive. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll also be supportive.

Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery. Approval of this proposal could result in some additional direct cost to the department. And I would call the question. Question's been called. Errors and omissions.

I think it just touches Mr. Director Bowers. No, Madam Chair. My little routine here. I just like to say your names. Mr. Peterson?

No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraaff? No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, please call the roll.

Final action on Proposal 288— or sorry, 218 as amended. Ziray? Yes. Chamberlain? Yes.

Godfrey? Yes. Svenson? Yes.

Yes. Carlson VanDork. Yes. Carpenter. Yes.

Motion carries 7-0. Madam Chair. Moving on to Proposal 219.

For the record, my name is Katie Taylor and I'm the area management biologist for commercial fisheries in Petersburg. Proposal 219, 5 AAC 38140, Southeastern Alaska Sea Cucumber Management Plan. Move to adopt. Second.

Staff comments, please.

Madam Chair, the sea cucumber management plan states that sea cucumbers may be harvested by hand and placed in bags with either scuba gear, a tethered umbilical surface-supplied system, or a snorkel. Divers have never been required by regulation to be physically present with the sea cucumbers or tethered to the vessel.

Up to the— two divers can dive from a registered sea cucumber vessel. The divers will either send a float to the surface attached to the bag of sea cucumbers where the vessel will then come pick them up, attach the bag of sea cucumbers to a downline from the registered vessel, or bring the bag to the surface themselves where the vessel will come pick them up. The fishing vessel picks up the bag while the diver continues to harvest sea cucumbers until the permit holder has reached the 2,000-pound trip limit or the weekly fishing period closes. Therefore, it is common practice in the sea cucumber fishery for the diver to not be physically present on board the vessel with their sea cucumbers while the fishery is open. This proposal seeks to clarify in regulation that divers do not need to be in the immediate vicinity, in immediate possession of the harvested sea cucumbers during or after a fishing period.

The department is neutral on this proposal. If the board chooses to define possession in the sea cucumber fishery, it should also be defined for the geoduck and sea urchin fisheries. It should also be noted that the Alaska Wildlife Troopers commented on this proposal. Thank you. Captain DeGraaff, please speak to the AWT concerns.

Yes, Madam Chair. AWT opposes this due to enforcement concerns. We believe clarification is not needed. A statute prohibits that people other than the permit holder can't possess commercial products under the circumstances presented by the proposer. Possession of a product at all times by permit holder is not required.

However, possession by licensed crew and non-permit holders is restricted in state statute and CFEC regulations, and possession is defined already as to possess. And AS 1181.900 means having physical possession of or the exercise of dominion or control over property. With that said, with your permission, I would like to call up Sergeant Mark Finces here, who has about 23 years of experience in Southeast Alaska, provide a little more context than I can for the board. Yes, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, I'm Mark Finces. I am sergeant supervisor here in Ketchikan. As Captain DeGraaff stated, the department's opposed to this proposal. And as he said, we have no issue with the current regulation.

I think it's important for the board to understand how this fishery takes place in the field, and it may help you make a decision better. When the sea cucumber fishery is being executed, there's two types of gear that are in the water. You have a hookah fisherman, which is basically an air hose attached to a diver that's attached to the boat as well, which is limited by the distance of the air hose to the fishermen. And you have scuba fishermen, which is being self-contained with a tank. And our current enforcement strategy and policy is the scuba fishermen can we look at as a scuba fisherman can basically be about the same distance as what a hookah fisherman could be from their boat exercising their practice.

It— what the proposal recommends is that the fishermen could be, you know, miles away from the practice, which currently about what we see is maybe 600 feet with a with the hookah from the boat. And so that's kind of quite a bit outside the industry standard and presents a couple problems. First, the consistency and the equal opportunity for the fleet would, would stay the same if we— if this proposal were opposed and allow equal opportunity for every fisherman. The second one, which is as important or more, is the safety, the safety standard to the fishery. If a diver surfaces and needs to call his skiff over, his boat to come help him, he can't do that 2 to 3 miles away in a different bay.

He can do that if he's in what we would consider immediate proximity, and that immediate proximity is going to be set by the basic practice of what distances a hookup fisherman does. And throughout the fleet and throughout the history of enforcement of the fleet, we have not come across what's being proposed here. This is, this is rather unique, and it kind of goes against the basic fundamental of a commercial fishing permit and being in possession of a permit and being with your crew or your operation while you're in the field. And given all that, that's why we're opposed to this proposal. I'd be happy to take any questions.

Thank you. Board questions for the sergeant? Mr. Wood? No, I just want to say thank you for that. I mean, that really helps to clarify.

I mean, to come down here and learn about all these different creatures and then how they're harvested are two different balls of wax. So that did clarify it for me in a major way. And I— so I'm very much not in support of this proposal.

No, you may not. It is out of order, sir.

Any other board questions for the sergeant or board discussion?

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. I think that made it crystal clear for me as well. I think that I understand what the proposer is trying to do now, and I think that at a future time, if he were to write the proposal differently, I might be able to consider it at that time. But the way it's written, and in light of what Public Safety's had to say about their ability to enforce the way the regulations are written now, I see— I see no reason to move forward with this this time.

So I won't be in support.

Any other board discussion? Mr. Zarey. Yeah, for the record, I just note there was only one Ketchikan AC in favor of this, and there's only one opposed, the East Prince of Wales Island AC. Thank you, ma'am. Mr. Carpenter.

Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional direct costs for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional cost to the to the department. I call the question. Question has been called. There's no missions. Director Bowers?

No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Kathy DeGraff? No, Madam Chair.

Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on Proposal 219. Chamberlain? No. Carlson-Vandort?

No. Zareh? No. Svensson? No.

Godfrey? No. Carpenter? No. Wood?

No. Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair.

Proposal number 220.

For the record, my name is Katie Taylor. Through the chair, proposal 220, 5AAC 38140, Southeastern Alaska Sea Cucumber Management Plan. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please.

Madam Chair, this proposal is similar to 219, but specifies that crew members specifically may be in possession of the harvested sea cucumbers while the diver is neither on nor attached to nor in the immediate vicinity of the vessel. The department is neutral on this proposal. If the board chooses to adopt this proposal to define crew members may, may be in possession of harvested sea cucumbers, then the board should consider this for Gugaduk and sea urchin fisheries as well. It should also be noted that the Alaska Wildlife Troopers commented on this proposal. Thank you.

And either to the captain or the sergeant, if you'd like to weigh in, if there's any new information or differing explanation. This one is specific to crew. If you would speak to that aspect, please. Yes, Madam Chair. Briefly, we do oppose this due to enforcement concerns.

With allowing permit holders to leave products with crew members. It's our understanding if passed as written, a permit holder would be allowed to depart the fishing grounds and return to port while a crew member brings the vessel back with product on board. This would leave or provide a defense in cases where AWT suspects a permit holder was not present during a fishery. And I would ask Sergeant Finches if you grant him the ability to provide a little more context in regards to this situation. Sergeant?

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, currently.

I think it's important for the board to realize that what we're stating here doesn't affect the ability for the crew member that's operating the skiff and inside the parameters that I just discussed on the previous proposal to be in possession of the cucumbers. That we're saying is acceptable. If it's immediate proximity while they're conducting diving operations during the fishery, that's okay. We have not said that that's a problem. And so I don't think that the confusion there should be that we don't allow that to happen at all.

After the fishery, though, we think that that immediate proximity discussion, distance during a fishery would go away. And there's really no circumstance where the permit holder shouldn't be on board collecting the product at that point, at that time. There's, there's no acceptable reason other than he should be there involved in the process. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Questions? Mr. Wood. Yeah, I just say that I, even in my own fishery as a setnetter, I've often been confronted with this because you got to be within on the riparian zone of where you set your net. And so even though you're not necessarily out there fishing, you'd better be close by. To make sure everything goes okay.

And I think this applies to this as well. And so again, because of the troopers' recommendations, and honestly, probably it won't change much at all, I'm just going to be a no on this.

Mr. Chamberlain. Yeah, I likewise, I'm, I'm not interested in overturning statute on at the board level, so I'll be voting no.

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. I also will be voting no and reference my comments in the prior proposal, and it's been made pretty clear to me that crewmen in possession within proximity, there's an allowance there, and I think that this, this proximity allows this dive operation to execute and try and do what their, their end goal is. Their approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this proposal proposal does not expect to result in any additional direct cost to the department. And I'd call the question.

Question's been called. Errors and omissions? Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson?

No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraff? No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on Proposal 220.

Chamberlain? No. Carlson-Vandort? No. Ziray?

Nope. Svenson? Go. Godfrey? No.

Carpenter? No. Wood? No. Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair.

Proposal number 221. For the record, Beau Meredith. Proposal 221, 5AAC 41.285, aquatic stock acquisition on an aquatic farm site, and 5AAC 41.235, determination of insignificant population. Madam Chair. Second.

Staff comments.

This proposal seeking to prohibit aquatic farms from being permitted to rear sea cucumbers in areas that support commercial sea cucumber fisheries. Currently, all aquatic farms are reviewed and permitted under the Commissioner's authority. With statutory authority, the Commissioner can deny or restrict an aquatic farm operations permit if wild stock acquisition will impair sustained yield of the proposed species or will unreasonably disrupt established use of the resource. Um, the Commissioner Excuse me. An aquatic farm may culture wild stock that naturally sets on their gear if the species is on the aquatic farm operations permit, which is what this proposal is seeking.

In 2023, there were 5 aquatic farms and 2 aquatic farm hatcheries permitted to rear sea cucumbers in Alaska, and to date there have been no reported sales. The department is neutral on this allocated proposal, Madam Chair. For discussion, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. When I first read this, I didn't quite understand it, and I talked to some people in the industry and I kind of got a better handle on it a little bit.

And the only thing that really concerns me, and obviously the commissioner when he's approached with somebody that wants to create some sort of mariculture opportunity with sea cum— or With sea cucumbers, where there is currently wild stocks available on the sea floor, the way that the spawning distribution happens with sea cucumbers and the way that they settle and the way that these farms accumulate that spawn to incorporate that within their, their, their business model, I would assume that you would have to take into account before you issue those permits the impact on collecting that spawn would have on the wild reproductive ability of the sea cucumbers in that location. Am I correct?

Mr. Chair, yes. However, you know, if you look at the map of the sea cucumber rotations throughout Southeast, there's very little area that does not have a sea cucumber fishery. So it's difficult not to have, you know, some impact in that regards with an aquatic farm. The question here is, you know, what to do with permitting that said species, right?

No, I hear what you're saying there, and I'll go ahead and listen to other board discussion. Mr. Peterson. Thank you, Madam Chair. It's worth noting there's a statute on the books, 1640-120, that states the commissioner shall deny or restrict a permit under this section upon finding that the proposed harvest will impair sustained yield of the species or will unreasonably disrupt established uses of the resources. Um, and it goes on to say the commissioner shall inform the Board of Fisheries if that occurs.

Um, I would defer to you all if that's ever been reported to you, but, um, that is what is currently required by the statute, and that sort of Goes to the question that Mr. Carpenter just asked.

To my recollection, I don't believe that's ever been reported to the board. I don't know if Director Bowers has anything in your tenure or your experience with department comes to mind.

Madam Chair, I don't recall a specific report to the board on that. I think there were I think the department does prepare an annual aquatic farm report that's required by statute, but I'm not sure that that's specifically distributed to the board annually. I'll have to look into that. Thanks. So I guess I'm struggling with a couple things here.

So I guess it's— I see it as one thing if there's a mariculture farm for oysters or some other species.

Or that was permitted for sea— legally permitted for sea cucumber farming.

But that's— I don't think that was what I heard described necessarily in its entirety during Committee of the Whole, and I could be mistaken. But what I heard was, you know, wild sea cucumber spawn perhaps would be accumulating on the site and on the gear that was then being added to the permit and then harvested in direct competition with the commercial fishers that were there after the fact. So if in that case, I understand where that angst would come from. That was not the intention of the farm. They're— that's not what they were permitted for.

And so I can appreciate where the wild— where the wild harvesters would take umbrage with that. For me, that seems to be a different scenario than if there was a permitted in the, and the primary purpose of that permit was to establish a sea cucumber farm. Those seems to be, to me, to be two very different scenarios.

And so I'm leaning in support of this for that, for those reasons, but I'm interested in hearing additional discussion on that point. Mr. Wood. Yeah, just to clarify, I mean, when you're talking about a farm, is it— could be for oysters and other stuff and these cucumbers are on them, or is this directly a cucumber farm? Through the chair, Mr. Wood. Yeah, predominantly oyster, kelp farms.

To my knowledge, there's no sea cucumber directed farming operations in Alaska.

No cucumber farming in Alaska. Okay, so it sounds like this— if they're out there harvesting a sea cucumber or two on their oysters or whatever, that— has it been recognized that that's ever been a problem? Like there's enough of them to sell at any quantity? Through the chair, Mr. Wood, today there has been no sales from cucumbers from an aquatic farm that have settled out on their product or their equipment. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Just a point of clarification, there are 5 aquatic farms and 2 aquatic farm hatcheries permitted to rear sea cucumbers, and they currently have an inventory of 250 sea cucumbers. That was in 2023. How does that— maybe this is a legal question too, but how does that compare with the purchase of a CFEC permit?

Because these, you know, CFEC permit is an entry into the harvest, and it seems to me that the farms might be kind of skirting that in terms of the ability to harvest and directly compete with the CFEC permit without a CFEC permit.

Well, certainly if they— if you had an aquatic farm that was raising you know, a product that's hard— that also has wild harvest, they would potentially be a competitor. And that's what's being described here. That's what you just confirmed. Yeah. Although they're— the farms have not produced any sales to date.

Mr. Godfrey. So as I see this, it's basically going from discretionary for the commissioner compulsory with the department. Um, I, I can understand the concerns with the commingling of stocks in proximity to each other. I, I don't have a problem being sympathetic to this proposal. I'll be supporting it.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, I, I don't really know if you've got a cucumber, you know, sea cucumber farm, how you tell the difference between a— what the the one that's being farmed and the one that's wild. And I mean, so, it seems very impractical. And to that point, it seems like you'd have to be licensed to be able to harvest both. Unless I'm missing something.

Other board discussion? Mr. Wood and then Mr. Carpenter. Maybe they should turn them orange like carrots. Mr. Carpenter. I guess where this falls down to me is this.

If a person has been permitted to raise oysters and that's the only permit he has for mariculture to raise oysters and he— and there is some sort of sea cucumbers that develop in that facility, if he also doesn't have a site or a permit to raise sea cucumbers, does that person that just has the mariculture permit for oysters have the ability to legally sell sea cucumbers without that CFEC permit? Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, no. If it's not on his permitted— if it's not— if the species is not listed on his permit, no. So then basically we're dealing, as Mr. Bauer stated, with very, very few people that would even have the ability through legal means to sell this product.

Wait a second. I thought I heard that they can add it to their permit after the fact. They can add the species to their permit after the fact. So cucumbers show up, they can add it, they can request it to be added to their permit. Is that correct or incorrect?

So we would, we would have to go through that permitting process and that Mr. Meredith described and evaluate, you know, whether or not there was an insignificant stock there, the permitting process that's described in AS 1640-120. So to add that, to add that species.

But it's clearly an issue because the proposal has been brought to us. Yeah, I think I, I believe so. There are 5 farms that are permitted for sea cucumbers, and I believe this proposal arose because of an issue with 1 or 2 of those farms. Is that correct, Mr. Meredith?

Yeah, there was— through the chair, Mr. Bowers— there was an incident a few years ago where one of the local aquaculture sites and divers had a difference of opinion on access to cucumbers underneath said site. Um, the situation has since been resolved, but I think that's The origination of this proposal, Madam Chair. How is it resolved? And then Mr. Chamberlain, I'll get to you.

Madam Chair, the person that was on watch at the aquaculture site was unaware that the cucumber divers needed access and were allowed to harvest cucumbers near, under the permitted aquaculture site. Divers were told to leave. It escalated and has since been resolved through education. Mr. Chamberlain. So the way I'm reading this is there are statutes addressing this, the CFEC permitting addresses this, and there are, there are laws addressing who has access to the aquaculture site.

I don't view this as a board problem. I think there are other avenues where this can be dealt with. And I— yeah, I think this would better go in front of a different forum if this dispute were to come in front of us because a lot of our questions have nothing to do with allocation or regulation. I think there are other avenues to to deal with. So from, from my standpoint, I think this would better be resolved elsewhere.

And so I'll be voting no on it.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, again, I'm just sitting here trying to think of all the scenarios. And I mean, you get permitted to have a cucumber aquaculture site that maybe through the permitting process there's no wild cucumbers there. And then all of a sudden, while cucumbers start coming in there, and is there's with no way to prevent them, probably no fence around it or anything. I mean, I just don't understand how this would work.

It, it, to me, it seems like, you know, caribou missing, mixing with reindeer, you know, it's, it, I don't quite, I don't really understand what, what we can do about this. It seems like it's out of our control.

I don't know. I think the proposal is within our control. Any other board discussion? Mr. Carpenter? I guess the last comment I would make is, you know, it clearly states that in current regulation, the commissioner can deny or restrict aquatic farm operations if wild acquisition or it impairs sustained yield.

And I'm not suggesting that that's happening at this time, but it also suggests that that permitting these particular farms in areas where wild resources are harvested should definitely be taken seriously into consideration because depending on where a permit is allowed, um, could have impacts on other, on other, on other users. And apparently that's something that's happened here in the past. So, um, for right now I won't be supporting this proposal, but I can I totally sympathize with the idea behind it. Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in this fishery, and approval of this proposal will not result in any additional direct cost to the department. And if there's nothing further, I'd call the question.

I think I'm just going to put my last comments. Fundamentally, there's something that seems wrong about how these are being permitted or allowed to exist in wild harvest areas. And so I will be supportive of this. I think questions have been called. There is no— Mr. Director Bowers?

No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraff? No, Madam Chair.

Director Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on Proposal 221. Carpenter? No. Zareh?

Yes. Godfrey? Yes. Carlson-Vandort. Yes.

Wood. No. Svenson. No. Chamberlain.

No. Motion fails, 3 in favor, 4 against, Madam Chair.

Let's go ahead and take about a 15-minute break. We'll come back at just about 4. Thanks.

Okay, welcome back. We are on the record, 4:05. We are going to continue with deliberations in Group 3. We are at proposal number 222. Staff.

Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Scott Forbes. I'm the Juneau area management biologist for the Division of Commercial Fisheries. Proposal 222, 5 AAC 2.110, subsistence shrimp fishery, 5 AAC 47.020, general provisions for seasons and bag possession, annual and size limits for the saltwaters of the Southeast Alaska area. And 5 AAC 77.660, Personal Use Shrimp Fishery.

I move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please.

Adopting this proposal could encourage healthy recruitment and benefit the sustainability of Southeast Alaska shrimp pot fisheries. It would also allow the subsistence, sport, and personal use fisheries opportunity to harvest for 2 weeks before the opening of the commercial fishery on May 15th. Commercial shrimp pot fisheries have a seasonal closure from March 1 through May 15, established as part of the Southeastern Alaska Area Pot Shrimp Fishery Management Plan that mandated protecting the stock during biologically sensitive periods of the shrimp's life cycle, including the egg hatch period. The magnitude of the regional subsistence, sport, and personal use harvest of spot shrimp was largely unknown until 2018, when a permit with harvest reporting was required for these fisheries. Recent harvest data show that collectively these fisheries make up approximately 20% of the total annual spot shrimp harvest.

An average of 3% of the sport fishery and 8% of the combined personal use and subsistence shrimp harvest occurs during the proposed closure period. The department submitted and supports this proposal. Adopting a shrimp— adopting a seasonal closure during egg hatching is likely to benefit the sustainability of Southeast Alaska shrimp pot fisheries and is especially pertinent given recent regional declines in spot shrimp abundance and would align with the conservation efforts in the commercial fishery. Madam Chair. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you. In that— in the percentages of 19 to 26%, that is a combination of subsistence, personal use, and sport. Is that correct? Through the chair, Member Wood, that's correct. What would that percentage be if it were just subsistence?

Can you tell me?

Yeah, we have subsistence broken out in slide 14 of RC3 tab 20. Mr. Smith is helping me out here.

Well, breaking out subsistence from by itself is not reflected in this table. That's subsistence and personal use combined and sport. The area that's open to subsistence in Southeast Alaska is actually not that large. The customary and traditional findings have been found in District 7 and 8, which is around Petersburg and Wrangell. District 15, which is Linn Canal, the northern part of the district, and then parts of District 13.

The vast majority of the harvest between subsistence and personal use is personal use harvest in the region.

Madam Chair. Mr. Carpenter.

Well, part of what Mr. Wood asked was part of my question, but I think you were pretty clear on answering that. So when I think of Southeast Alaska as a whole and I look at the subsistence review specifically where it underlines the District 7, 8, 13, parts of 15 that have C&T determinations, and considering that the sport harvest— sport subsistence harvest a certain percentage of the overall take. I'm trying to— I'm trying— because it— because I take this part very seriously when I go around the state. When we look at closing subsistence fisheries down specifically, when I look at the areas that are technically open specific to Southeast Alaska, what's the real justification in your eyes to try and put this portion in this proposal? Because The overall subsistence harvest in the areas that are actually available for subsistence harvest, like you said, are very small.

So is it really worth the effort to restrict subsistence people for these very small areas?

For the record, Troy Tinas, Area Management Coordinator for Division of Commercial Fisheries. Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, I would say when we were looking at putting this proposal, it was with all 3 fisheries combined and without allocative measures between those fisheries. That would be a board determination. And I appreciate you saying that. And yes, that is the board's main job, is to allocate.

And so we will obviously take that into consideration depending on the final product that comes out of this. But I think When I look at sustainability and I look at how long the season is for the commercial season, the sport and the personal use and the subsistence, when I look at this very small area and I think about the potential harvest, in my eyes, I do not see that keeping subsistence open in these particular areas will reflect negatively on the sustainability of the shrimp fishery. And so if the department has concerns, I would like them to broadcast that to me right now because I'm considering doing something and I need I need to know that before I do.

So I had this— similarly, this jumped off the page at me too, that the department is recommending the closure of a subsistence fishery, and I have yet to hear the biological justification for restricting that access. If there's a conservation concern, where is it when we're talking about relatively numbers that you haven't even articulated or broken out with respect to subsistence and Furthermore, in your comments, in your subsistence reg review section, in number 3, it says, can a portion of the stock be harvested consistent with sustained yield? And the answer the department wrote was yes. So I'm confused. Mr. Bowers.

Thanks, Madam Chair. So, so this proposal is— was submitted to close to protect shrimp during this sensitive time period. To the question, and as Mr. Tinnis described to you, you know, we chose to include sport, personal use, and subsistence fisheries because to single out two of those fisheries for closures would, would have an allocative implication. And so would there be a biological harm to leaving subsistence open during this time period. Given the magnitude of subsistence harvest and the description of the areas that is open to subsistence, the answer to that is no.

Not to mention the legal priority. I think the question comes down to if you close it, is there still reasonable opportunity for subsistence users? I don't think you— it doesn't necessarily mean you can never close a subsistence fishery. It's whether or not you're still providing reasonable opportunity opportunity even in spite of that closure moving forward. From my perspective, I think this ties less with whether there's a conservation issue as to whether or not there's really— even if we close it, whether there's still reasonable opportunity to go out and participate and meet your subsistence needs.

Specific. And the period of time in question is that relatively short amount of time. Okay, Mr. Wood. Yeah, well, that was kind of what I was getting at, and I didn't, but Tom jumped, Mr. Carpenter jumped in and finished what I was thinking. But to that point, I mean, the ACs that were opposed to this were the ones that are more remote.

So, and so that kind of struck me. And the two non-subsistence area, Ketchikan and Juneau, okay, I mean, they might be able to travel to get fish to go to a subsistence area if they want it, but we would be talking about all areas of Southeast except for Ketchikan and Juneau, is that correct? Through the chair, Member Wood. No, they could still fish under personal use regulations in those areas.

Not under the proposal. Not during those 2 months, ma'am. Right. Okay. I didn't mean to sandbag you, but yeah, thank you for that.

So any—. Thank you, Mr. Swenson.

Well, it seems to me that I'm glad what the commissioner said, that the subsistence people still will have their opportunity, because it seems to me the most important thing is the conservation of the shrimp. And I think that every— all of the users should be taking this into consideration. And I would hope that, you know, if we let one group go in and not the others, when that group can still fulfill their subsistence stuff. I think that would be a mistake.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, I just want to note though, during testimony from the Kwakwaka'wakw, their estimate was about only 3% of what was being taken was by subsistence users. So that's why I wanted to hear from the department what their percentage was. I don't know if that's true or not. I mean, I just am looking for a good reason to not also restrict subsistence is all.

Mr. Godfrey. To the department, is this practice in different areas of the state?

The biologically sensitive time of the life cycle of a shrimp closure.

Through the chair, Mr. Godfrey, yes, in other parts of the state we do have closures. For shrimp fishery zone. For this, for this reason. So this is not unprecedented, correct?

Any more discussion?

Mr. Carpenter. Uh, Mr. Bowers is correct. There are other parts of the state where fisheries take place, shrimp fisheries specifically, there are closures in effect for the idea behind spawning. I can't reflect right now, and I'm trying to, in regards to how those particular closures affect subsistence.

I'm very close to making an amendment to address that situation, but I'm a little bit hesitant because I do think that it's important that the board be consistent in the way they adopt regulations around the state. And so from my— at least my recollection in Prince William Sound, I believe that this regulation exists there for that biological reason. I think the big difference is that it's not broken up and there's not very small C&Ts in Prince William Sound that It's an overall area closure, which is much different than what's being looked at down here.

So for the time being, I'm not going to make the amendment. Mr. Godfrey. Yeah, just to piggyback on that. Yeah, I guess what I struggle with and I— and this comes up probably every board meeting on one topic or another is a standard approach to standard things when lots of things we evaluate and face or put in front of us is not standard. It's, it's not just because it's the same species.

There's unique factors and variables that play at different parts of the state. So it's really difficult to consistently approach user groups and species across the state and keep it standard. But on this one, I struggle with, you know, based on what Mr. Byers said, and I think Board Member Carpenter, you know, where he's at is, I struggle with the idea that if we already do this where it's biologically sensitive part of the life cycle, why would that apply in one part of the state when it's equally biologically sensitive part of the shrimp's life cycle in this part of the state? And in that instance, I'm struggling to see why it's nuanced over here but not over there. And I really wasn't fully understanding what Board Member Carpenter was explaining about the approach to Prince William Sound on this.

But, you know, a vulnerable shrimp at a certain time in its life cycle should be protected and conserved for a few weeks in one part of the state. Seems to me it should in the other part of the state too. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] My thoughts on this a little bit. So Southeast is nothing if not exceptional for a lot of different reasons. And my recollection of part of that discussion around Prince William Sound is that the subsistence fishery is also very accessible to the state's largest population bases.

And I recall that as being part of the discussion. I could be conflating it with something else, but you have a lot of people there with a lot of accessibility through the ports of Whittier and Valdez and Seward and all other— lots of areas. Maybe Seward a little less so.

And throughout this meeting and prior Southeast meeting that I have participated in, I mean, there's all these little There's lots of exceptions, and we have created additional ones at this meeting thus far, frankly.

It is not a long period of time that the closure is being proposed. I understand the reason behind it, but I think that there are pretty small numbers, and I just am struggling with the idea of arbitrarily— or perhaps not arbitrarily— restricting a subsistence fishery if I haven't had the real good presentation that that amount of subsistence use is going to affect the resource's ability to sustain itself. Mr. Chamberlain.

I likewise, I'm very sensitive to subsistence needs of the people. However, I'm always a firm believer in best practices, and I think Best practices, if they can be accessed across user groups, and especially if you maintain the subsistence criteria where there is reasonable access to the resource, given this restriction— I think this restriction, roughly about 6 weeks, is within the subsistence user group's ability to do this. We did it with salmon, where you bank them in the summer, eat them in the winter.

I don't view this, or I haven't heard anything saying that people aren't going to be able to have shrimp. There's not the, you know, yes, they won't be as fresh if you have to freeze them, but I feel like my duties to the resource and the best practice for the resource is to allow, give the shrimp a break during this sensitive time. So I will be supporting this. Mr. Zirrey, then Mr. Godfrey. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I am, I think Mr. Chamberlain just spoke for me.

You know, I totally believe, you know, all my life, you know, and the subsistence priority and subsistence fishing comes first and all that. But, you know, in the Yukon River, we have an 8-month closure, you know, on salmon fishing and stuff like that, just because the fish aren't there, you know. And for this, I think it's not— I don't see this as a burden on subsistence people to just do what everybody else does and just not fish during this critical period.

Yep. And let's see, just for the record on this one, the Juneau Douglas AC, Ketchikan AC, Sitka AC, Upper Lynn Canal AC were in favor. The East Prince of Wales Island AC and the Pelican AC with amendments. And then in opposition was the Craig AC, the Klawock AC, the Petersburg AC, the Wrangell AC. And thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Godfrey. To also reflect on what Board Member Chamberlain has said, as a board member with an ultimate priority to the.

Source. In theory, if we adopted this and it's implemented, in theory you have a more sustainable future yield of shrimp and/or a greater abundance for harvesting when the time comes, because the whole point is reducing mortality and allowing them to thrive for a block of time when they're vulnerable. So from that standpoint, I was thinking about it with Board Member Chamberlain's comments. And while it is a restriction for sure, it's for the long game in theory for sustainable yield or a larger yield and sustainable yield. So I feel even better about it now.

Mr. Wood. Okay. Thanks. I was just looking through the regs book, 1605.258. And subsistence use and allocation of Fish and Game.

And under 3A, determine the portion of the stocks or populations that can be harvested consistent with sustained yield. I think with this one in particular, we, we have recognized that harvesting shrimp— the shrimp have been at a low, low level, like we've been cautious. And then on top of that, this time of year that we're asking for it to not be fished We also have determined that it's kind of a critical time of year to not be harvesting these shrimp. So, and we are only talking a small percentage, I believe, back to where I originally started. And so it's a small percentage, and hopefully the impacts to the subsistence user for 2 months won't be overwhelming.

But I appreciate having this conversation.

Mr. Carpenter, thank you.

Before we move forward, I'd like to— I've put on the record part of the subsistence regulation review. We talked about the districts associated with C&T's. We talked about the ability for these shrimp species under sustained yield. There is no amount that's been determined by the board reasonably necessary for subsistence uses. And I, and I think to the Commissioner's point, does this Does this regulation provide reasonable opportunity for subsistence users?

For the majority of the year, yes, the opportunity does exist. So I think, I think that, I think that was a good discussion, and I think, I think I'm comfortable with moving forward with this. So approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for an individual to participate in the fishery. And approval— additionally, the approval of this proposal is not expected to incur any additional direct cost for the Department. And if there's nothing further, I'd call the question.

Thank you. I just want to make clear that it would have been my preference to remove subsistence from this proposal. But that being said, there was no motion to do so, and so I will be supporting it as written. Question has been called. Errors and omissions.

Director Payton. No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair. Director Wieda?

No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraaff? No, Madam Chair.

Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on Proposal 222. Svensson? Yes. Wood?

Yes. Chamberlain? Yes. Carpenter? Yes.

Carlson-Vandort? Yes. Zareh? Yes. Godfrey?

Yes. Motion carries 7-0, Madam Chair. Proposal 223.

For the record, my name is Quinn Smith. I'm the Southeast Regional Shrimp and Dive Research Biologist. Proposal 223, 5AAC02.110, subsistence shrimp fishery. 5AAC47.035, method, means, and general provisions shellfish. And 5AAC77.660, personal use shrimp fishery.

Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please. This proposal would increase the maximum size of shrimp pot tunnel openings from 15-inch perimeter to a 16-inch perimeter in the Southeast Alaska subsistence, sport, and personal use fisheries. Pot size restrictions were first implemented in non-commercial fisheries in 1986, including tunnel eye opening sizes, with each opening having a perimeter of no longer than 15 inches.

This restriction has— was designated to reduce bycatch and prevent targeting of other species, including Dungeness Tanner king crabs, while using shrimp pots. The department opposes this proposal. Increasing the perimeter of the tunnel eye opening by 1 inch would allow more and larger bycatch species to enter the pot. Shrimp pots manufactured with tunnel eye openings larger than 15 inches can easily be modified by closing a portion of the tunnel using braided twine or stainless steel wire. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Swenson.

Well, for me, we're trying to save the shrimp, and I— and also the department opposes this, but I will be opposing this also because I think we need to just do whatever we can do to keep the shrimp— get as many shrimp as we can. Thank you. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. I will also oppose this proposal, specifically Through the department's comments, these tunnel eye openings have been standardized since the mid-'80s, and being able to interpret the fisheries data and allow for escapement, I believe, is important.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, I as well am not inclined to mess with anything that's been working already. I do see the point in it. It's, it's good to get creative and it might work, but I think there may be some unforeseen problems with it. So I'm not going to be supportive.

Are the existing regulations consistent throughout the state in terms of gear allowed dimensions?

Madam Chair, for the record, Troy Tunis. I don't know the answer to that question. Mr. Bowers, do you know if the POT dimensions and all the things that are addressed here are the same as, for example, in Prince William Sound?

Madam Chair, I believe that the tunnel eye entrance is the same, but there's other, uh, POT descriptions that in Southeast that are different, like the We've got the small and large pot issue in the commercial fishery here. But yeah, I believe the tunnel eyes are the same. Okay. Any other board discussion? Mr. Carpenter.

Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct costs for individuals. Additional— additionally, approval of this proposal is not expected to incur any additional direct costs to the department. I call the question.

Question's been called. Are there any omissions? Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers?

No, Madam Chair. Director Ueda? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair.

Captain DeGraaff? No, Madam Chair. Please call the roll. Final action on Proposal 223. Wood?

No. Godfrey? No. Carlson-Vandort? No.

Zareh? No. Chamberlain? No. Carpenter?

No. Svensson? No. Motion fails 0-7. Madam Chair.

Proposal 224.

For the record, Quinn Smith. Proposal 224, 5AAC 31.110, Shrimp Potfishing Seasons and Periods, Registration Area A. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments.

This proposal would change the opening of the Southeast Alaska commercial shrimp pot fishery from May 15th through October 1st. Shrimp were first commercially harvested by pot in Alaska, in Southeast Alaska, in 1962. The first management plan put into regulation in 2000. This included an October 1st through February 28th season with the ability to reopen May 1st through July 31st if the quota was not harvested in the fall/winter season. The March 1st through May 15th closure in the commercial fishery was established to protect the stock during the egg hatch period.

Fishery timing was chosen to reduce competition with larger spring-summer Canadian fisheries and allow participants to also participate in other summer fisheries. The fall-winter season was in regulation until 2022, when the board responded to proposals from multiple advisory committees and individuals supported by the department, shifted the opening date of the Southeast Alaska shrimp— pot shrimp fishery season to May 15th through July 31st. With the ability to reopen from October 1st to February 28th. The main purpose of this change was to improve the reproductive potential of shrimp stocks to help maintain the shrimp populations or to help the shrimp populations increase. The department is neutral on the allocative aspects of this proposal, but opposes reverting the pot shrimp season to a fall/winter season.

The spring/summer season allows the majority of shrimp to be harvested at a more biologically appropriate time after egg hatching and before the increased natural mortality for large females that comes with molting and mating. The majority of reports the department has received from commercial fleet in the past two seasons with the spring-summer start indicate that shrimp captured in the fishery are of high quality and robust markets exist for them. The spring season has not yet been in place long enough for the shrimp population to.

Benefit from an increased reproductive potential inherent in fishing in the spring. An additional 2 to 3 years will be necessary to allow new cohorts of shrimp to reach the size in which they can most easily be captured in the fishery. However, evidence of these cohorts was seen during the department's fall 2024 fall shrimp survey that utilizes sublegal mesh in order to detect smaller individuals. But at this point, it is not known if that is directly in from a spring fishery or, or a natural occurrence.

Discussion, Mr. Wood. Sure. Okay. I love the life cycle of a shrimp. I've learned more about shrimp here than I ever knew, and I'll never forget it.

I think what I've learned more than anything is that People are pretty, pretty passionate about these little guys and quite a dependence on them. And the point is, we're trying to make sure that they have the best success at multiplying. There's been a lot of different— I just, I guess what I wonder from the department is, is it, is it possible to have surveys prior to openers to to be sure that the— of what you're catching. Is that even an option?

Through the chair, Member Wood, um, preseason, directly preseason surveys to look at things like amount of eggs, soft shell, or of course theoretical possibilities. Other places have, have done them. It's not something we have the staffing or current funding to, to do in this fishery. Thank you. I thought that would be the case.

And I also think that given the amount of ACs and, and support leading to this proposal being in May and changing it from October is— looking back at the history of it all was, was compelling, along with the possible success, you know, it seems like overwhelming success people have been seeing in the fishery with the, with it change to spring. I know there's— that seems to be the discussion, is it successful or not? I mean, the only time I've ever shrimped, I was kind of appalled at the fact that I called up so many with eggs, and that period of time was in September, you know. And so I was, I was bummed, but that was Prince William Sound. And so I'm just trying to figure out how things vary around the state, but I think what I'm hearing is that there's been success with this May fishery.

And I'll leave it at that right now.

Mr. Carpenter, thank you. Um, so during public comment, I made a few statements specific to my own interpretation of how the shrimp fisheries are managed around the state. And, and a lot of that was because of my personal observations, albeit a different geographical location in Southeast Alaska. So there are circumstances that I have seen that might not pertain to down here. And I understand that the Canadian government, which is in a closer proximity, manages their shrimp fisheries in a certain way.

And in this— and they, they do manage similar to what they do in Southeast.

I've observed eggs in Prince William Sound many, many times well into June, which is not what I've necessarily heard down here. So I have to put my personal opinions aside and, and look at the overall benefit biologically for the resource. The one thing that kind of sticks out in my eyes, and the one thing that I kind of stare at a little bit from time to time, is when I look at what's in RC 33 and I look at the size of the extra-large and XXL shrimp in this particular document that were harvested on average when it was conducted in the fall versus the size of the shrimp that were harvested in the spring down here. And there's significant differences here. And maybe I'm interpreting this wrong, but it appears to me that there's significantly larger shrimp that are harvested in the springtime which typically means that most of those shrimp are females.

And so that's what gave me a little bit of pause. But I understand that the department is trying to manage these things around the state in a uniform fashion, and, and I'm not going to stand in the way of that. But I really hope that, that you guys keep an eye on this down here, because over time, these, these dates might be need to be adjusted a little bit depending on what surveys show. Um, Madam Chair, just a point of clarification on, uh, RC33. Uh, this is the, the department's logbook information.

Uh, this actually jives quite well with what we have seen in our pre— our fall surveys the, the last number of years. This was— we brought this, uh, to the board 3 years ago that we were seeing region-wide recruitment failures of possibly multiple years, ended up being about 3 years or so, and we were seeing those in the, in the survey for a couple of years then. We have continued to track that through the survey, and what was originally the very small shrimp then became the small shrimp, then the medium shrimp, and the large shrimp, and the timing of this law, you know, this seeming loss of the small and medium tracks perfectly with that missing cohorts we saw in the survey. So one explanation of this that would go with our survey data is that what we're seeing in the catch now is what we've been seeing in the survey, again using sublegal mesh we saw earlier going on through the fishery. And there's one other I wanted to speak to Mr. Wood, this is a point of clarity.

Um, although we're very gratified to hear that shrimp populations seem to be rebounding in some parts of the state, it is too early to claim that it's from the spring— the shift to the spring fishery. The first spring fishery was in 2023, so the shrimp spawned that year would be a year and a half old, which would be too small in almost all cases to be being caught in, in personal use and, uh, in sport gear.

Thank you for clarifying that. Another board discussion?

I guess, you know, I can appreciate the spirit which is— which the proposal was offered. I understand the hardship that has been expressed with the loss of a season entirely or a year entirely.

But I, I'm reluctant to vote for this, particularly at this time, because of sort of— we don't have enough time under our belts yet to assess whether or not the actions the board took a couple of years ago are actually impactful in the way that we want them to be. So I would like a little bit more time to evaluate that and be very curious about what happens, whether I'm on this board or not, 3 years from now.

In terms of sort of how that's, that's borne out over time. So at this time, I won't be supportive. Mr. Wood. Yeah, I'd like to say, I think that's kind of the beauty of a 3-year cycle. As painful as it may be, things don't change overnight.

So we implement— this was implemented 3 years ago. We're not even sure if we're seeing, totally seeing the results from it, as you noted. But it seems like to reverse it drastically right away would not— end of experiment, you know, we won't know. And is it worth it? I think it is because, you know, we've seen a decline in these guys.

So I think being conservative right now for the sake of the resource and letting this play out is worth watching. Mr. Godfrey, I think the rationale that the chair put on the record here as to why she's going to oppose it makes a lot of sense to me. So I will— while I was vacillating, I'm going to go ahead and oppose it for the same reasons. Mr. Carpenter, approval of these proposals are— excuse me, approval of this proposal is not expected to result in the additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery. An approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional direct cost to Department.

I call the question. Question's been called. Errors and omissions. Director Payton? No, Madam Chair.

Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair. Director Weida? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson?

No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraff? No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on Proposal 224.

Godfrey? Nope. Wood? No. Chamberlain?

No. Zareh? Nope. Carpenter? No.

Svensson, no. Carlson-Vandort, no. Motion fails 0-7. Madam Chair. Proposal number 225.

For the record, Quinn Smith. Proposal 225, 5AAC 31.110, shrimp pot fishing seasons and periods registration area A. Madam Chair, move the board take no action on proposal 225 based on the action the board took on proposal 224.

4. I second that and ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, the board will take no action on proposal number 225. Proposal number 226.

Madam Chair, once again for the record, Quinn Smith. Proposal 226, 5AAC 31.115, shrimp pot guideline harvest ranges for registration area A and 5AAC 31.124, lawful shrimp gear, pot gear for Registration Area A. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please.

This proposal would reduce all shrimp pot guideline harvest levels in Registration Area A by 20%, reduce the number of pots allowed to be operated by a registered shrimping vessel by 40 to 50%, and eliminate the large shrimp pot size class over the next 3 years. The department opposes a 20% reduction in GHLs across the entirety of Registration Area A. Systems are already in place to reduce GHLs based on negative survey results and/or fishery performance. These practices are designed to maintain a range of shrimp age classes, ensuring the long-term viability of stocks and reducing depends— dependence on annual recruitment. Because GHLs are not in regulation, GHRs, or guideline harvest ranges, would have to be lowered to reduce maximum GHLs, and in doing so would constrain the department's ability to increase harvest on these stocks in the future.

The department is neutral on the pot reduction and elimination of large size class aspects of this proposal. There may be benefits in slowing the pace of the fishery in some areas. However, the department has generally been able to effectively manage the faster-paced fisheries and achieve GHLs. The department is concerned that by reducing the number of pots may increase the incidence of hauling pots twice a day, which would increase the handling mortality of small shrimp. Madam Chair.

Thank you. More discussion?

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you.

Generally, for the reasons that the department just stated in their comments, I will oppose at this time. I think the department has the ability to take action if they, if they feel that there's a biological reason to do so. And so I will not support this. Mr. Sarray. Thank you, Madam Chair.

For the record, there were no ACs in favor of this proposal. The Craig AC, the East Prince of Wales Island AC, the Ketchikan AC, the Petersburg AC, the Sitka AC, the Wrangell AC were all opposed to it. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yeah, I mean, I think I'm going to reference my comments on, on proposal number 224 on this one. I mean, we've already sort of taken action this afternoon to be conservative, and I just don't see the need for this at this time, particularly if the department has the ability. So I'm not going to be supportive. Other board discussion? Mr. Wood.

I'm with you. This isn't in the vein of conservation, so I won't be supporting it. Mr. Carpenter, approval of this proposal could result in additional direct costs for a private person to participate in the fishery, as those participants who currently utilize large class pots would need to purchase new smaller gear. Approval of this proposal is not expected to incur any additional direct cost to the department. I call the question.

Question's been called. Errors and omissions? Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers?

No, Madam Chair. Director Wieda? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair.

Captain DeGraaff? No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, please call the roll.

Final action on Proposal 226. Zareh? No. Chamberlain? No.

Godfrey? No. Svenson? No. Wood?

No. Carlson-Vandork? No. Carpenter? No.

Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair.

Proposal 227.

For the— excuse me— for the record, Scott Forbes, Proposal 227, 5AAC 31.124, lawful shrimp pot gear for Registration Area A. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments. If the proposal were adopted, 2 permit holders could operate commercial shrimp pot gear from the same vessel and use a maximum of 210 small pots or 150 large pots instead of the 140 small or 100 large pots that one permit holder can currently use.

The total pots fished would likely increase due to more permits being utilized in the fishery. This fishery has a large amount of latent permits that would likely become active if dual permit operation with gear stacking was allowed. That could increase the pace of the fishery with added participation. The current pot sizes and limits have been in regulation since 1997 and were implemented to help reduce fleet efficiency thereby slowing the overall pace of the fishery and allow for gear standardization so fishery performance data can be utilized by managers. The department opposes this proposal due to the potential to increase the pace of this fishery with increased participation from latent permits, but is neutral on the allocative aspects of this proposal.

More than half the permits are not being fished, and dual permit operations could result in substantially increased effort that would be contradictory to the intent of this proposal. Madam Chair. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. I think before I go into my questions, I think this is a question for Mr. Peterson.

If I remember something from the Prince William Sound meeting, would this proposal, the way it's written, would it generally be considered a stacking proposal?

Through the chair, Member Carpenter. I think that's a term that's generally applied to multiple permits. And I guess just to follow up on that, I believe the guidance from the Department of Law at our last meeting was that the board doesn't have the authority to allow stacking outside of salmon or finfish fisheries. Am I correct?

Through the Chair, Member Carpenter. Yeah, I had to look it up. I remember this conversation that we had. I know there's a statute that allows it specifically for salmon, and I'm not aware of any such statute that allows it for shrimp. So, I mean, in light of that, because I kept thinking about that as I was reviewing all these proposals, in light of that, I think the board should be cautious in how they handle that because I don't think that there's clear direction for the board.

And so for those reasons and others stated by the department, I'll be not supporting this. Mr. Wood. Okay, with that, and given the fact that the department's comments was the potential to increase the pace of the fishery and increase participation, is it once again not in the vein of being conservative? So I am not supportive of this.

Yeah, I'm not supportive of it either, if for no other reason than just for what whether or not the statutory authority even exists in the first place, but I was confused. I think this is the same proposer with the previous proposal, and they seem to be contrary to each other unless I'm reading them incorrectly to some extent. So I will not be supportive of this proposal. Mr. Carpenter. Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional cost to the department, and I call the question.

Question has been called. Errors and omissions. Mr. Payton? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Bowers?

No, Madam Chair. Dr. Wieda? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair.

Captain DeGraff? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on Proposal 227. Chamberlain?

No. Carlson-Vandort? No. Zarey? Nope.

Svenson? No. Godfrey? No. Carpenter?

No. Wood? Nope. Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair. Proposal number 228.

For the record, Scott Forbes. Proposal 228, 5AAC 31.124, lawful shrimp pot gear for registration area A. Move to adopt proposal 228 with substitute language found in RC 71. I second that and ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, the board has the language in RC 71 before it in lieu of the language in proposal, the original proposal 228.

Staff comments, please.

If the proposal were adopted, slinky pots, that are long cylindrical pots that sit on the ocean floor without a true top or bottom, could be used in the commercial shrimp pot fishery in addition to the cone, cube, or short cylinder pots currently used and described in regulation that sit on an end or bottom. The current pot sizes, limits, and fishing periods in the Southeast Alaska commercial shrimp pot fishery have been in regulation since 1997. These measures were collectively implemented to reduce fleet efficiency, resulting in a slower-paced fishery and more orderly fishery. Slinky pots provide advantages over traditional rigid pots as they are lightweight and collapsible, allowing vessels with limited deck space or hydraulic power more access to pot fishing. Slinky pots are currently allowed in subsistence, personal use, and sport shrimp pot fisheries in Southeast Alaska, but the extent to which they are used is unknown.

The department is neutral on this proposal, and the language that is presented in RC 71 minimizes any issues with this gear type being utilized in the commercial shrimp pot fishery. Madam Chair. Mr. Carpenter, could you restate the part? So they currently are legal in the sport and personal use fishery? Is that what you said?

Through the chair, Member Carpenter, yes, that is correct.

Any kind of description for those slinky pots that are used in the PU and sport?

Madam Chair, no, there's not.

I'm glad to see something in front of us. Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. So in the statewide general provisions for, for law relating to lawful gear for shrimp, shrimp may be taken by either pots or trawls. And the, the regulation further goes on to say— describe the 15-inch tunnel opening that we've talked about.

And then within area-specific regulations, there are more details provided on the gear, such as the diameter of these large and small pots, the escape mechanisms, and so forth. And so under the general provisions, slinky pot, you know, they're a type of pot. So, so what this RC is attempting to do is provide similar language to ensure that the escape mechanisms are in place similar to the standard pots. Thank you for that. Mr. Chamberlain.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to ask for a point of clarification on subsection 5(c) within RC 71 says may not have more than one tunnel eye opening on each vertical end which individually do not exceed 15 inches in perimeter. I had a trial judge who hated double— two negatives in the same sentence. So I just wanted to get a clarification. Is it the intent of this substitute language to limit any, any tunnel eye opening to not more than 15 inches in diameter or in perimeter.

I just want— sorry, I'm a textualist. Yeah, through the chair, Member Chamberlain, that is correct. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Yeah, I thought this was going to be an exciting new unveiling of slinky pot description.

To end the day. But we're gonna go through it just like gonna drag our feet. But still, nonetheless, I'm pretty pumped about this. Here we have a new slinky pot for the shrimp fishery. So start putting your orders in, I guess.

But anyhow, it hasn't— it's not legal gear yet for in Registration A. And so this description is trying to make it so. And we checked with the troopers and and I'll just verify with them if they're okay with this description. Mr. Wood, through the chair, yeah, we have no objections. So with that, now you don't gonna have two clinky pots taking up room in your boat if you pass it.

So anyhow, I like the description. It is an ingenious way to catch shrimp, and I don't see any reason— it's used in so many other fisheries with success. I think it could be well used in the shrimp fishery as well. And that's why I kind of sponsored this. So thank you.

They did good work on it.

Thank you, Member Wood. Mr. Carpenter. Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional direct costs for a private person to participate in the fishery. And approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional costs to the department. I call the question.

Question's been called errors and omissions. Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair.

Director Rita? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Captain?

No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on proposal 228 as amended. Svenson? Yes.

Wood? Yes. Chamberlain? Yes. Carpenter?

Yes. Carlson-Vandork? Yes. Zareh? Yes.

Godfrey? Yes. Motion carries 7-0. Madam Chair, proposal number 229. For the record, Troy Tinas, proposal 229, 5 AAC 31.105, description registration area A districts and sections, 5 AAC 31.115, shrimp pot guideline harvest ranges for registration area A, 5 AAC 33.200, fishing districts and sections, 5 AAC 32.105, descriptions registration area A districts.

5 AAC 38.076, Alaska Scallop Fishery Management Plan, and 5 AAC 38.105, Description, Registration Area, and Districts and Sections. Madam Chair, move we adopt Proposal 229 with substitute language found in RC 72. I second that and ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objections, so moved. We now have the language in RC 72 in front of us in lieu of Proposal 229.

Its original language. Staff comments, please. Uh, Madam Chair, the language found in RC 72 would just replace part of the original proposal 229, and that part is specific to the descriptions of the District 10 sections, in sections specifically to Section 10A and 10B. And it would simply move just those section lines from making more of a straight line that follows our statistical area lines. It would have no effect on any fisheries, current fisheries, and would hopefully help us out in managing future fisheries, in particular salmon, salmon fisheries.

Speaking to the proposal in general, this was There was two redundant descriptions and regulation for districts and sections, and the— and most of regulations referred to the district sections in the salmon chapter. And this proposal seeks to eliminate the one of those districts and sections in the shrimp chapter and refer all regulations to just one description, district sections, and hopefully to simplify. Obviously the department's submitted this and supports this proposal as well as the amendment. Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, I'll just speak to the substitute language portion first. I think this is just a change that was done for not only ease of management but also ease for users. It makes the boundary line much easier for people to understand. And so I think that was an important an important change to make while we had this opportunity.

In general, I support the proposal. This is something that is going to simplify things and clean up some of the language that currently exists.

Other board discussion? I concur with Member Carpenter. Thank you for simplifying it further, it looks like. Hopefully it'll make things easier for participants, public, and the department. Other board discussion?

Mr. Wood. As a carpenter, I like straight lines, not a lot of angles, so I really approve of this.

Mr. Carpenter. Approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional direct cost for a private person to participate in this fishery, and approval of this proposal is not expected to incur any additional direct cost to the department. I'd call the question. Question has been called. Errors and omissions.

Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair. Director Wieda?

No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraaff? No, Madam Chair.

Director Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on Proposal 229 as amended. Godfrey? Yes. Wood?

Yes. Chamberlain? Yes. Zareh? Yes.

Carpenter? Yes. Svenson? Yes. Carlson-Vandort?

Yes. That motion carries 7-0, Madam Chair. Proposal 230.

For the record, Scott Forbes. Proposal 230, 5AAC38.XXX, Southeastern Alaska Squid Fishery Management Plan. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please.

Currently, squid may be taken for commercial harvest only under the authority of a commissioner's permit. Commissioner's permits have been issued for the experimental harvest of market and Magister armhook squid in Southeast Alaska since at least the early 1990s. The purpose of these permits is to allow a limited harvest to determine— excuse me— to determine species distribution and abundance, obtain biological data, test market conditions, and to evaluate operational and catch characteristics of gear. A maximum allowable harvest of 10 tons of Magister armhook squid has been permitted squid in the Ketchikan area fishery annually, with individual permits issued for 1 ton of squid. More recently, in the Juneau area, a maximum allowable harvest of 5 tons of Magister armhook squid, with individual permits issued for 1 ton of squid, have been issued.

Region-wide harvest of Magister armhook squid from Commissioner's permit fisheries have totaled approximately 2.5 tons whole weight from permits issued from 2012 to 2023. The moderate harvests in this fishery are likely due to small domestic markets rather than low abundance, as sport fishermen have been successfully targeting Magister armhook squid by rod and reel for decades throughout the region, although catch estimates are unknown. The department opposes this proposal. The department does not have a stock assessment program for Magister armhook squid and lacks the biological information needed to establish a management plan that would result in a sustainable fishery. There continues to be opportunity to commercially harvest Magister armhook squid under terms of a commissioner's permit where harvest and effort.

Remain low. There have been no inquiries from fish buyers or processors regarding increased need of squid harvest to fulfill market demands. At this stage of the fishery, a regulatory management plan is not needed. Madam Chair, thank you. This was very interesting to me.

You know, it was one of the more interesting components of the discussion that we had earlier today, and I was very intrigued by the idea of a magister squid jig fishery. Most of the squid fisheries that I'm familiar with are used— use a seine. I've hand-jigged for squid before, so I'm intrigued and kind of, I guess, kind of excited about the idea of sort of this relatively niche market that the proposer seems to be working on establishing. So I think it's very interesting. I tend to agree with the department that I'm not quite sure it's ripe yet, but I would like to have a little bit of a discussion about what the elements of a management plan would be for a future fishery.

Certainly how we could conduct stock assessment and if it's necessary if this were an open access fishery, or how will we start to wrap our heads around what potential numbers are. As it was presented, it seemed, like I said, it seemed to be pretty specialized and niche market, but also I think one of the elements that I would like to see presented perhaps in the future, because I, I don't know that I can support it at this time, but I'm really, really interested in this, is what the harvest need would be to sort of establish a market and production requirements and all the things. So I just kind of wanted to have a little bit of a discussion with the department on the record about, from your perspective, from a manager's perspective, what kind of elements would you need to see so that perhaps as the the grants the proposer spoke to and some of the pioneering that he's doing with markets, how would that come together in a way that they might be able to have a successful fishery at some point in the future, and also whether or not there would even be CFEC requirements if in fact it were an open access. I don't know what the department would be sort of thinking about in that space, but I'm kind of curious like what how we could encourage this.

I will take a shot at answering that. So I'm very excited too. I think, you know, in this time of market uncertainty and the conditions facing markets and commercial fisheries in general, it's always good to have a new opportunity out there. Everything I heard, this is an exciting new opportunity. My responsibility as commissioner is to make sure that I'm managing the resources sustainably in the best interests of the economy of the state.

We don't have the sustainability piece of this one quite figured out yet. I'm looking forward to hearing what my staff has to say in terms of elements of a management plan. But clearly I think we can probably do something in a couple years where we figure out that sustainability piece and also the market piece. I think there's some fundamental questions. How much squid do we need to develop this market moving forward?

I intend to continue operating a commissioner's permit on this fishery to help Mr. Yamada try to figure out what— that there's at least some certainty for the next few years that he's going to be able to have some access to this resource to be able to figure out those fundamental questions. So, no, I'm excited. And I think we'll have staff working over the next several years on what a sustainable management plan would look like. I can't sit here and tell you what all those elements are, but you have to have something with gear. Would have to have some kind of aspect, this area, some kind of aspects on how much resource we can take out of it given the life history.

I didn't realize these things all die in a single year. So there's just a lot of fundamental questions that we'd have to put together. But we can put our heads together. We got bright people and we can put a management plan together. But I don't think we can do it at this meeting.

Thank you, Commissioner. Yeah, and again, my intent is to try and provide a little bit of information to interested participants at some point in the future about what they would need to be thinking about and what kind of information they would need to collaborate with department on. Mr. Chamberlain.

Like the chair, I, I found this to be a very pleasant surprise in this meeting, and I hadn't given this much thought when, when I initially read through it, but during the Committee of the Whole, the presentation that was given was quite captivating. I, I also agree this may not be ready for prime time. There's a few details that need to be ironed out because if you do it wrong, you can do a lot of long-term damage. There is a potential, but I really like this. So I'm a no, but we're not far away from something else.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, this was really cool. And I think what fascinates me more than anything is How do you use it? And so finding out that it's alive for really only a year, and it also might voraciously eat salmon, that was really interesting. But the other part of it is having to ship them live to a place that is this really super value-add market.

It doesn't look like it opens it wide up for the potential of just overwhelming the market, you know, because it seems like there's very limited taste for it right now. And you're not just killing them and throwing them in a hull and shipping them off. The whole process, like the other creatures we've talked about today, of having to keep them live and ship them so that they receive them live and in good quality really adds to the, I don't know, just the pace of the fishery, what it would look like. So anyhow, I really look forward to the department working with the proposer to make something happen. So I won't support it for now, but I'll be paying attention.

Mr. Carpenter, approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional direct cost for a private person to participate in the fishery, and approval of this proposal could result in additional direct cost to the department if the department were to have to assess the squid biomass. And I would call the question. Not quite ready to hear the question yet, but one of the things I mean, the— just to get on the record again, the Commissioner made mention of gear definition area, you know, harvest, whether that's a GHL or whatever the mechanism would be. Is there anything else that comes to mind? I mean, immediately for me, is there bycatch issues that could occur in this fishery?

Is that something that would— how and when that would need to be considered? But I'm just kind of— I'd throw it out to smarter folks than I on this one, just to get some stuff on the record. So I'm a— I think gear is an important definition. I was doing a little bit of research over lunch hour and I found out there's, there's mechanical jigging going on for this that could be almost a market kind of condition versus a hand gear, hand jig. I think there's a lot of little pieces of this the board would want to go through when they— before they adopt a real fishery.

So agreed, Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. Earlier you had mentioned CFEC permitting, and I just note for the board and public's information that CFEC already offers an octopus squid permit statewide for longline pot gear and mechanical jig gear. $75 A year right now. Interim use permit.

Screamingdale. Mr. Godfrey. I'm not one usually given to symbolism or acts of symbolism, but I'm very encouraged by this, was very pleased with the discussion during Committee of the Whole. And I don't expect this to pass, and I think enough board members have already indicated they're going to oppose it. But for the symbolic purpose of encouraging this proposal and the department's expediency in bringing this about and facilitating it for a very future ripe fishery, I will be voting in support of it.

Question's been called. Errors and omissions. Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers?

No, Madam Chair. Director Wieda? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair.

Captain DeGraaff? No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on proposal 230. Carlson-Vandort?

No. Carpenter? No. Wood? Nope.

Godfrey? Yes. Svenson? No. Chamberlain?

No. Zareh?

Yes. Motion fails, 2 in favor, 5 against, Madam Chair.

Motion number 231.

For the record, Scott Forbes.

Proposal 231, 5AAC38.XXX, Southeastern Alaska Squid Fishery Management Plan. Madam Chair, move we take— the board take no action on Proposal 231 based on the action the board took on Proposal 230. I second that and ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, the board will take no action on Proposal 231. Moving on to Proposal 232.

For the record, Whitney Crittenden, Assistant Area Management Biologist for Commercial Fisheries in Ketchikan. Through the chair, Proposal 232, 5 AAC 38.090, unlawful possession of miscellaneous shellfish aboard a vessel. Madam Chair, move we adopt Proposal 232 with substitute language found in RC 74. I second that and ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, we have language in RC 74 in lieu of the original language in 232.

Staff comments, please. Madam Chair, this proposal would allow vessels registered to fish for miscellaneous shellfish to be in possession of both red and green sea urchins, two separate species, at the same time. The current statewide regulation allows for only one species of miscellaneous shellfish to be on board a vessel at a time. The Red Sea Urchin Management Plan was adopted in 1997, and a commercial red sea urchin fishery has occurred annually. Green urchins may be harvested under commissioner's permit and are landed under the same Southeast Alaska Sea Urchin Permit.

As Red Sea urchins. The department supports this proposal, which aims to increase the efficiency of commercial divers by allowing the harvest of two species of urchins concurrently. Madam Chair. Thank you. I offered some substitute language, which I think provides kind of an exemption to a statewide reg to allow for this.

Speaking of exceptional circumstances in Southeast Alaska. But I think that the— my understanding is that the green sea urchin harvest is quite small. Obviously, the species are visually distinguishable, and I would agree with the department's comments in support of the language. Any other board discussion?

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. I support the substitute language. I think it's an opportunity that currently doesn't exist, and I think that having No conservation concerns. I think it gives more opportunity and affects efficiency and things like that.

And so I'll be supportive.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, is there a harvest limit difference between the red and the green?

Through the chair, for the commissioner's permit for the green urchins, management staff determines by district what the harvest limit is. And for red sea urchins, we have a GHL based on area. So slightly different. OK, thanks. Yep, I'm supportive of this as well.

And the RC, and I look forward to voting for it. Yeah, I think that the harvest of the green is pretty limited and pretty small, so it didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to have to have separate trips and all the things. So, Mr. Carpenter, approval of this proposal is not expected to result in additional direct costs for a private person to participate in this fishery, and approval of this proposal is not expected to result in any additional cost to the department. I call the question. Question has been called.

Errors and omissions. Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair.

Director Wieda? No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Captain DeGraff?

No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on Proposal 232 as amended. Carpenter? Yes.

Zareh? Yes. Godfrey? Yes. Carlson-Vandork?

Yes. Wood? Yes. Svenson? Yes.

Chamberlain? Yes. Motion carries 7-0, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. That concludes deliberations on Group 3. Tomorrow's Sunday, isn't it? Tomorrow is Sunday.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] I will take the opportunity to thank staff. You guys talked us through geoducks, sea cucumbers, shrimp, squids, and all urchins, things this board really doesn't deal with across the state. And you walked us through with taking the time to walk us through the different life histories and things. So thank you very much for getting us in there. We look forward to you tackling next step, king salmon.

Indeed, it'll be so easy. Um, just a quick announcement, uh, tomorrow evening there's a reception that's being hosted, um, by— I don't have the flyer in front of me. Oh, here, wait a second, bear with me. Oh, by the Southeast Alaska Hatcheries and seafood industry leaders. They're welcoming members of the public, board members, department staff to a reception at the Cape Fox Lodge in the room.

I'm sure you'll find it. And say, what's that? The first floor room at 5, beginning at 5 PM immediately following the meeting.

Oh yeah, that's fun. Before we leave, we have a BGP to consider. But so we're going to go ahead and take that up. But I will also just note for the public, we'll begin tomorrow with staff reports at 9:00 AM. And we have a BGP— what's the RC number for it?

67.

So, um, the note that was just handed as a reminder to me is that Member Godfrey has submitted RC67, which is the request for a board-generated proposal. There is criteria for the development of a board-generated proposal found in tab 7 of your board members' frequent use policy. I will just sort of remind folks that the criteria established by the joint boards to consider board generator proposals, which are typically unusual circumstances, is number one, is it in the public's best interest, e.g., access to the resource, consistent intent, public process? Number two, is there an urgency in considering the issue, i.e., the potential for fish and wildlife objectives not being met, or if there is a sustainability in question? Criteria number 3 is, are processes insufficient to bring the subject to the board's attention?

I.e., reconsideration policy, the normal cycle proposal submittal, the agenda change request process, or petitions, emergency petitions. And lastly, will there be reasonable and adequate opportunity for public comment? I.e., how far do affected users have to travel to participate? The amount of time for affected users to respond. And the reason that we're taking this up today, number one, is that there is a time component that if the board does agree to, to generate this, this board proposal, potentially that it will need to be— supplemental notice will need to be issued so that the proposal could be heard at the board's meeting next month in March.

Anything you would add, Director Nelson?

No, I can speak later on the timing aspects if you guys want more examples, but I do have a couple extra copies of the board-generated proposal policy. If you guys don't have your frequently used policies book in front of you, just let me know. I can bring you one.

Okay. Member Godfrey, would you like me to go through the criteria first or make a motion to get it on the floor? Motion, please. I'd like to make a motion to, uh, for a board-generated proposal, RC67. The languages within that, near the end of that, is specifically— Second.

This member, Godfrey, if you'd like to speak to the criteria, please. Yes. So criteria 1, is it in the public's best interest? Yes, it is in the public's best interest because this is about a foregone harvest opportunity that if not addressed is gonna continue to go unharvested and there's a market for it. Number 2, is there urgency in considering the issue?

Yes, because if we wait till in cycle, it's back in cycle, it'll be multiple harvesting opportunities that have once again passed. Our current process is insufficient to bring the subject to the board's attention.

For the reasons I said, we created a Herring Revitalization Committee last spring, and Board Member Carpenter chaired it. I also was on it. Members of the, of the public, fishermen, and industry processor personnel were there as well. And we held 2 meetings that were well informed by industry One in Kodiak and the other via call-in. And I think we exhausted what our mission was.

The takeaway essentially is here's an opportunity in front of us, but to wait until Kodiak's back in cycle, we have something actionable now, but we can't really do anything with it if we don't move on it. That was kind of the point of the hearing revitalization committee. And the fourth criteria, will there be reasonable adequate opportunity for public comment? Yeah, that was why the time component moment was at play here so we could get it publicly noticed before the March meeting.

And I, I can elaborate if you'd like right now just on the, the, uh, the market in particular that we're, um— so the USDA had reached out to, uh, one of the processors and asked about, hey, do you guys have any herring? Because we literally— the feds will buy all you have. You're looking at 8,000 tons, they would be entitled about 7,000 tons, and sacro is just going to go unharvested.

But the market's there as well as overseas and a bait market. There's food security markets, there's overseas emergency food market, and then there's bait markets as well. That demand far outpaces the supply, but the market is there and the market can be secured and the buyers can be, you know, authorized when they want capture to take place.

Board questions, discussion? Mr. Carpenter as chair. Thank you. Before I speak to the language found in the board-generated proposal, because I'm still looking through that, and before I speak to the criteria, just a general background.

The board formed a dual committee with CFEC and a few people, myself and Mr. Godfrey from the Board of Fisheries, to look at herring in Alaska, to look at the underutilized resource that's becoming— that's become more compound around the state. Not as much in Southeast Alaska, but certainly Prince William Sound, Kodiak, Dutch Harbor and Togiak specifically.

There was a multifaceted representation from subsistence users to sport to commercial to industry. We had department staff there. And we held one meeting in Kodiak in person. And we held one meeting on Zoom. The general conversation was the overall health of herring in Alaska, per se.

But a lot of the conversation and the drive behind it was, you know, how do we look at the economic viability of this resource in the state? And how can the board, when it receives proposals from the public, look at not only the sustainability of the herring around the state, but also the economic opportunities that could be lost. And one of the big points was, and some of the information that Mr. Godfrey spoke to in regards to, you know, being contacted through USDA and, you know, asking how much herring do you have for sale, ASMI has done quite a bit of work in the last 10 years specific to herring. They've bought equipment to try and utilize and come up with new forms of food products for the domestic and international markets. Some of that equipment is sitting idle right now because, you know, in places like Kodiak, for example, which a lot of the conversation surrounded, this equipment is sitting in King Cove, Alaska, and could be utilized in Kodiak.

But because Kodiak was such a specific and unusual circumstance, because the food and bait permits in Kodiak are limited entry permits and the rest of the state is not a limited entry, limited entry situation. So when the proposal came before the board, there was confusion, quite frankly, and there was some conflicts between CFEC and the board and the board's authority and CFEC's ability ability to be able to move permits from the Sacro spring fishery and allow harvest in the fall. I think the general synopsis from that particular meeting was that, um, the board has the authority to allocate, and if the board feels that they need to allocate, then the board can do that. And it's CFEC's part to react to what the board does specific to allocation. So the board did not take action on this proposal in Kodiak, and I believe that's why we're seeing this brought forward at this time in this form.

And partially due to the understanding that the Kodiak Board of Fisheries cycle isn't for several years, there's, there's been demand from industry and from the United States government, quite frankly, to look at this as an alternative food source and how can the state of Alaska best provide opportunity. So that's the general synopsis. In specific to what those committee meetings had, we— like I said, we had two, and then we basically thought that, you know, that was really all we needed to do at the time. I think the other reason that this is probably coming before us now, even though the circumstances are quite different, The board's action in Prince William Sound to change season dates and allow for unused sac ro allocation to be moved into the fall food and bait fishery to maximize the opportunity of participants and to provide a harvestable surplus to the marketplace, I think that that also comes into play in this particular circumstance. When we were in Kodiak, Kodiak, the board had not taken action on that, and so I think it all comes into play.

So I'll leave it right there for now. I don't I don't want to speak to the criteria necessarily at this moment. I want to read through this a little bit further. And I'm interested to hear what other board members have to say.

Mr. Wood. Okay. So last year in Kodiak, I totally recall this coming up and the discussion that was around it. And the proposer, you know, talking about this and seeing the hurdles that needed to be overcome. With that, I was able to get more educated on herring by taking a trip to Sitka last year, last— or this last May.

That was to just see all the different ways that herring are being used by the people and by the commercial fishermen and whatnot, and just educating myself on the herring. I think one of my, my biggest takeaways from this is that for in the bait industry in particular, a lot of people are having to buy bait from overseas. Philippines and otherwise. And it's kind of incredible to me that they don't have access to bait in their own, you know, right in front of their house. So to me, that seemed like one of the most compelling reasons to want to look into this, and so that they can just get bait for themselves and to potentially sell.

It didn't sound like it would be in massive quantities because it would be relatively spread out through Alaska, but anything to keep from having to buy it from overseas was Pretty exciting. So—. Mr. Wood, we need to speak— we need— we got—. Okay, wrapping it up. We need to speak to the criteria at this point.

Oh, okay. Well, then I will speak to the criteria. Access. Is the public— is it in the public's best interest for the reasons I just said? Yes, I believe it is.

Access to the resource, so the sooner they get it, the sooner they don't have to buy bait from the Philippines. Is there urgency in considering this issue? Apparently there is, because it needs to be noticed. And there's still pitfalls that lie ahead. So who knows what will happen there.

Do I need to address all 4? Yes, please. Okay. Our current process is insufficient to bring the subject to the board's attention. Insufficient in the case that time is of the essence here.

And to delay— there's no other way to speed this up. Will there be reasonable or adequate opportunity for public comment? I think that's yet to be determined. I think that's why we're sitting here tonight after everything we've done to get this moving forward. Hopefully there is, because this should not move forward if there isn't adequate opportunity for the public to comment.

Thank you, Mr. Wood. Other board discussion? Mr. Chamberlain. So I wasn't on the board for this, and I can, I can see where Mr. Godfrey makes his point on, on 1 and 2. My, my only question is I can see even with 3, even within ACR you're losing out on a season.

But given the short time, I do have a very real concern about 4 where we're putting something in front of— up for a vote with about a month.

I'd need a very compelling reason on this one and I don't have the background information on this one to make that. Lean on the other board members. But as to point 4 in particular, I, you know, I'm struggling with it this time. I'm going to put some of my thoughts on the record with respect to the criteria. Is it in the public's best interest?

We've heard that there is, you know, herring available for this use. I'm not quite sure to the urgency of it. I think that there— that is certainly subjective, you know, that hasn't been— it hasn't been utilized in years. I think this is a fairly recent, at least in my limited knowledge of it, opportunity that's been presented. I can understand the impetus or the will to move quickly.

However, there, as is noted in the BGP, there was opposition to this. Are there current processes insufficient to bring it to the board's attention? I don't believe so. I don't believe that it's necessary to.

Rush this as a board-generated proposal. It would have certainly been my preference to see an agenda change request come at the, the work session and be scheduled for next year. I think that would have been probably a better avenue in my opinion, or would be a better avenue in my opinion, because it does give adequate time to generate language that is well vetted. I'm not quite sure how vetted this language is. I haven't had an opportunity to really absorb it.

Certainly haven't had any department input on it. Um, so I think that it would be a better avenue to do an agenda change request, have it considered and potentially scheduled next year. I do recognize that the Kodiak cycle is a couple years out, so I can appreciate that, but I'm, I'm not sure that a BGP is the correct mechanism for addressing this issue, in my opinion. And to the— that speaks directly to whether or not there is reasonable and adequate opportunity for public comment, a month is a pretty quick turnaround time. Again, that would require sufficient time for the department to give input on this in ways that I haven't yet been exposed to, at least.

So I am— I don't know that I would be supportive of a BGP at this time. Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, I have a question for Mr. Peterson specific to the criteria and the 4 bullet points. And I'm curious what— is this supposed to be strictly interpreted that to meet the criteria for board general proposal that a member voting in the affirmative feels that all 4 of those criteria, or is it just generally a guideline? Through the chair, Member Carpenter, that's a good question.

I mean, these are— this is a policy developed by the Joint Board.

I've said to this board before that while the board has a policy against repealing its own policies, it could repeal that policy and then change any of its policies that it wants. So it's really up to the will of the board, how you interpret it. Thank you. Mr. Godfrey. Just for the benefit of Board Member Chamberlain, because you'd asked for further input or explanation, this is not a new market.

It's a historical market that went away because the market went away. So it has been, this has been prosecuted historically in the past. It just hasn't been for a very long time. So from that perspective, I just wanted to point out it wouldn't be like, say, when we're discussing squid, when we haven't done that before. This was a historical catch.

Would it require CFEC action if it was a historical fishery? I do not have the answer to that. Again, I think these are important things that will need to be vetted, and I'm just not convinced that one month's time is sufficient enough to inform the board and the public about what it would entail. Any other board discussion? Mr. Ziray.

Well, I guess I better say something about this. I mean, I really am in support of doing something.

You know, I don't know how much of a pressing need there is to do it immediately. I think, you know, we do need time for notice, response, and stuff like that. But I just like to say I am very much in support of this. I was when this was first brought up.

And, uh, yeah, I'll just leave it at that. Okay, any other board discussion? Mr. Carpenter? I, I appreciate all the comments from the board, and I think in this particular situation, I really would like to hear what Mr. Swenson has to say. And I know I can't publicly pressure him to do that But I think that it's important that all board members put on the record how they interpret the criteria that we're looking at.

So if you would like to do so, I would appreciate it. If you don't, I understand.

Well, I'm a little confused. You know, I'm a little, you know, I don't know really which way to go because There's a lot just has been brought up. Like Mrs. Van Dort said, there's, you know, it's a month rushing into this. I guess the whole idea is they want to do something this next season. Is that correct?

Correct. Yeah. So I don't, I don't, I mean, I'm in favor of the, of the herring fishery, but I also wonder, I, and I guess this This is something that has to be decided afterwards, how much of that herring you take, because you don't have any idea at this point how much herring is going to be taken, right?

I mean, to the staff? For the criteria, please, whether or not—. Not the merits of the language. Well, I don't know what else to say about it at this point.

It's what?

Yeah, Mr. Carpenter, um, I just want to put it on the record just so that it's clear. I'd like to ask Mr. Nelson to speak to the idea of public notice and if he could demonstrate to the board if he has the ability to do that in a legal fashion or not.

Sure. Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, you know, generally we need a month, 30 days notice. That includes publication in statewide newspaper. We typically use the Anchorage Daily News. It also has to be mailed out to everyone who has signed up onto our mailing list, and it also has to go out by, by email.

That's actually the easiest part of the whole thing. So the steps into doing this, you know, the notice has to get drafted. We've certainly got previous supplementals drafting the notice. You know, we've got Mr. Peterson here to review it. There might be a couple other people we'd like to bounce it off, but that's probably a day or two to develop that.

The printing in the Daily News, as most of you know or may know, the Daily News is now only running print editions twice a week on Wednesdays and Sundays, and those are the days we would have to put the legal ad into the Daily News. There's a little bit of complication there about getting it in quickly. But it should be doable. The mailing is another one that has some delays with it. Once we have the notice drafted, we can send it off to the mailing service that we use that does the printing and the mailing.

But then, of course, that takes several days even after that before it starts landing in people's mailboxes. I do believe this is doable if the board decided to do this today. And that was one of the reasons that I think we're discussing this now was because if this was held to miscellaneous business at the end of the meeting when we traditionally cover all of the potpourri of other things, then I don't believe I would have had sufficient time to get a legal notice out to cover the board considering it at the March meeting at least. So does that answer your question, Mr. Chairman? [Speaker:CHAIRMAN BRYANT] It does very much.

Thank you.

Commissioner. Yeah, and I just want to clarify the record that department comments on this would be issued 2 weeks before that meeting, so they would not go out as part of the public notice. They would go out 2 weeks before they— before the meeting begins. Thank you, Mr. Chamberlain. So as is the new guy on the board and the only one who wasn't there for this meeting, I'm on point 4.

I haven't heard something compelling enough for me without my basis of knowledge to justify this. And I understand there was opposition to this. So I have to take that into consideration. So, and I think for someone, propounding this, they bear the burden of demonstrating how we meet these 4 criteria because this is a very large and very short notice action for the board. I cannot make a decision on the merits of this and I understand how important this is, but to justify that urgency, I haven't heard anything that pushes that for me.

So for that purpose and that purpose only, I'll be, I'll be voting no on that procedural basis. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE].

Well, I, I don't have a problem with voting to bring this up in the next month.

Question. Question's been called. Director Nelson, please call the vote on the motion. On the motion to create a board-generated proposal from the language found in RC 67. So a yes vote would be, of course, to create the board-generated proposal.

Svenson? Yes. Wood? Yes. Chamberlain?

No. Carpenter?

Yes. Carlson-Vandort? No. Ziray? Yes.

Godfrey? Yes. Motion carries, 5 in favor, 2 against, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. And with that, I do believe that concludes today's business.

Looking forward to a nice reception tomorrow, and we'll begin with staff reports tomorrow morning at 9 AM. Thank you.