2025 Statewide Shellfish, Prince William Sound Shrimp, and Supplemental Issues (3/12/25)

Good morning, everybody. Time is 8:44 a.m. The day is Wednesday, March 12th. And we are back on the record. And before we get started with public testimony, I wanted to invite Ms.

Crystal Leonetti, the Director of the Office of Subsistence Management, forward to introduce herself and say hello. Welcome.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, board members and staff. Hi, waka, chisgookawa. That means what's up. My Yup'ik name is Chisgook. I also go by Crystal Leonetti.

I was born and raised in Homer and Anchor Point, Alaska. My parents are Al and Grace Poindexter from Anchor Point.

I am married to my best friend, Ed. We have two daughters in college and high school here in Anchorage. We live in Anchorage, where I always said I would never live.

I grew up on a little farm in Anchor Point and setnetting in the summers in Bristol Bay at my grandma's permit setnet site in Queens Slough. And I have worked for the federal government for 30 years in conservation. At the U.S. Department of Agriculture and then the Department of Interior U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And I just started this job as director of the Office of Subsistence Management in January.

So I'm happy to be here, honored to be working across Alaska for Alaskans and doing subsistence work. And I'm joined by Robin Levine, our policy coordinator, and also we have an incoming a new Deputy Director, Scott Ayers, who's here in the audience. And so we're getting settled in our new administrative location. So we— Office of Subsistence Management last summer moved out of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service administratively.

We're now located with the Office of the Secretary based out of Washington, D.C. We are situated in the Office of Policy Management and Budget, so it's the Assistant Secretary for Policy Management and Budget, or PMB, and then under the office— or the Division of Policy and Environmental Management. So my direct supervisor is a political appointee, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for PEM. Everyone in OSM will remain in Anchorage. Excuse me. And all of our operations will remain the same.

We're just supervised a little bit differently. And it has already improved some efficiencies and getting things through to final publication. So that's been really helpful. I'll let Robin say a little bit more about that. Our new public board members and upcoming meetings.

Thank you. Please. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the council. Again, this is Robin Levine, and I'm the subsistence policy coordinator for OSM. I think I was here with an update in the fall, briefly letting you know of all the changes.

And as you can probably imagine, they continue. And one of the changes that we are— that wasn't actually really a change, but an early change that became permanent was Crystal's hire as director, because of course she was acting, before all of the changes really started taking place. So we're really grateful to have her. And as Crystal said, our move was administrative, but the chart, the, you know, the staff chart, the org chart, the public process that we go through in the Federal Subsistence Management Program remains unchanged. As you know, in February we welcomed new public board members Raymond Oney of Alakanuk, Benjamin Paiana of Nome, and Frank Woods of Dillingham.

Their first federal subsistence board meeting was our fisheries regulatory meeting that we held in early April. Or— oh, sorry. Right. January. What year is this?

We haven't even— reached April yet. But yes, so it was in early, early February, actually the first two weeks of February. It's important to note, though, the expansion of our board and the board composition, its authority, powers, and duties has not changed. And speaking of meetings, aside from our completion of our fisheries regulatory cycle this last February, The Federal Subsistence Board will hold a summer work session July 23rd and 24th of this year, and our work sessions typically discuss annual report replies, council correspondence, and council nominations, and sometimes we tack on special issues as they emerge over the summer. We have tribal and ANCSA consultations on the wildlife regulatory proposals that we are soliciting Now, in this particular cycle, this— our next regulatory cycle is a wildlife one, so we're holding tribal consultations August 23rd and 24th on those proposals.

Times for these consultations still haven't been determined, but those are the days. And for next year, we're looking at the weeks of January 28th and 29th, or the weeks of February 4th and 5th, for the Federal Subsistence Board's Fisheries Resource Monitoring Program work session. So we always hold that usually like the end of January or the beginning of February of every other year. So that would be in the even years. And so look for the final dates on that soon.

And we're also looking at the weeks of April 6th through the 10th or April 13th through the 17th of 2026 for the next wildlife regulatory meeting. I bring these meetings up because I think we've all had some challenges with our meetings, our state meetings, our federal meetings, meetings of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, meetings of the— well, a number of them overlapping, right? And we have a lot of people in our natural resource management programs in state, federal, and non-governmental agencies that really are required on all of them. And, um, and I, and I know it's tough, and I know you all, like us, don't have a lot of wiggle room. Um, and so I'm talking about our meeting up— meeting, uh, cycles and our meetings in the future.

They're projected— I could say because we have a, a pretty concrete regulatory cycle that really doesn't change much. Um, we've got these short windows of time that we can be flexible within. So our next fisheries regulatory cycle will start with a call for fisheries proposals for it to change fisheries regulations in the early spring of 2026. And then we can expect the next Fisheries Regulatory Board meeting to be scheduled in late January or early February of 2027. We're going to work on keeping those windows— they won't be exact dates, but those windows of times that we can have some flexibility for these meetings.

We'll keep that posted on our website so that it can help everybody with coordinating and figuring out when and how they're going to split their staff and their expertise. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Appreciate those updates. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for introducing yourself and letting us know how things are going administratively with your move. That's kind of a big deal. So, and with respect to the meetings, thank you for your, you know, your proactivity, I guess, in trying to schedule. And I'll do my best, and we always try and take a look at that calendar. And similarly, our, our tentative dates for next year are posted, and I think the ones for the year after will be posted soon, as soon as we can secure venues.

So we try and set our meeting dates 3 years out. So, so we're, we're very sympathetic in that space as well because it does split stakeholders and they have to make choices about where they want to go. And that's less than ideal, right? So, um, are there any questions from members of the board? All right, well, thank you so much for being here.

Appreciate you.

All right, we're going to go ahead and pick up with public testimony, um, here this morning. Just a reminder to folks that, um, if you intend to sign up for public testimony, the deadline to do so is today at 10:00 AM. So if you want to provide testimony, please grab a blue card at the back of the room and, um, bring it on up to Board Support here and get get signed up. When we ended last— yesterday evening, we did the first call for Darryl Spaeth. So I will do the second call for Darryl this morning.

Is Darryl Spaeth in the room?

Okey doke. Darryl is not here. Nathan Hoff. Good morning, Nathan. Following Nathan will be David Capri and Corey Cole, Linda Kozak, and Phil Sheraton.

Whenever you're ready, go ahead and turn your mic on and put yourself on the record, please.

Good morning. My name is Nathan Hoff. I'm a commercial fisherman in the Cook Inlet. For starters, there was one thing that came up yesterday. It was— I think it was regarding scallops.

You're talking, I think, with regarding traps, and they were talking about two draggers, a number of independent boats. I would hope that that gets some kind of a commissioner's permit, and if the understanding of that were to go forward, that, you know, those independent bullets would build into their plan, you know, buying out the Dragers' economic interest, I think seems very fair. But I think that that is a good thing to move forward on. Maybe it's just the way the politics are played, but, you know, I had to totally change my testimony overnight. I had a chance to phone a friend because of something else that came up in the meeting.

And I get the impression that there might be some desire to keep the closure for the commercial fisheries at July 31st, and that is absolutely and completely wrong. It's definitely the board's job to manage these fishery stocks. And when you're talking about the potential runs for the sockeye as they're coming in, those fish are, you know, that alone. So you have already gear types that are— have already proven to have viable release, and I think you can use the rest of these meetings to really work on that. For instance, I caught in my dip nets 2 coho salmon.

I released one viable. The other one I happened to have, you know, hit a little bit because I wasn't paying close attention. So I reported it with the intention of having discussion about that, because you do come up with better practices. And one of the better practices for our boat is to say that, you know, one person would always be in charge of identifying fish before you're going to harvest it. You know, so that's a simple, a simple thing.

So anyway, July 31st is a no. I mean, that is, that is a nonstarter. And I hope that you can just you know, not be confronted by that. I mean, that should be a very, very obvious thing to everybody in this room, and I hope that you can use that to build upon that for the rest of the meeting. Unfortunately, I won't be able to be here for a while till we actually talk about my issues, uh, um, this weekend.

But, um, you know, so I don't, I don't mean to be a negative thing, but it is a no. That's a non-starter.

Okay. Any board questions? Thank you, Nathan. Appreciate your testimony today. Thank you.

Thanks. David Capri, Corey Cole.

Are you gentlemen signed up to testify simultaneously or one after the other? Together. So 3 minutes. Okay, got it. Hi, my name is David Capri.

I'm representing the Alaska Trojan in support of Proposal 278 and 279. I submitted these comments marked as PC5.

I'm Corey Cole, the captain of Alaska Trojan, and I've been involved in the fishery since 1994. And I'm also here in favor of both those proposals, and my remarks are PC45. I'm here today because I have been involved in the golden king crab fishery since 1981. Many years. I have a great appreciation for the health and sustainability of the stock.

This fishery has few participants and has been working very well throughout the years. Each vessel has been able to catch her quota within this window of the season.

And the issue of 278 is not something that I ever thought would be necessary until recent years. It has become apparent over the past 2 years that some vessels just want more pots used as placeholders to prevent others fishing specific areas. Pots can be used for preempting the ground and are being used for that purpose. Thank you for this opportunity.

I'm in support of 279 because of the, the way the, the gear sharing was originally purposed was for emptying out gear at the end of the season, and it's been used for not what it was intended to be used for in the past couple years. So I think it needs to be amended to be properly used for what it was intended to be used for when originally made. That's it. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.

How many pots do you fish? 1,982. Have you always fished that many? Nope, it's the most I've ever had.

I guess, uh, how'd you— how'd you land on 2,500 then? Uh, some guys have fished that many in the past. I never would. I don't think you need that many, but we just felt it was a fair number.

I will never personally fish that many pots. I guess the only other question that I'm interested in, and I know that there's probably not a lot of people involved with this fishery, can you kind of tell me roughly how many people participate? 5. So you have 5 votes? 5 Votes.

In all of the Bering Sea, and you think that it's necessary for 2,500 pots to be limited? Yep. All right, thank you. Any other board questions? Mr. Wood?

Okay, are you guys on the— it's divided in the east and west. What side are you on? We're in the west, the western. West starts at 174 West. Yep.

Okay, and are there only 5 boats in western, or 5 boats total western and east? There's, well, there's 5 permits, but there's usually only 2 boats out west, but there has been as many as 4 in the last couple years. Okay.

But 5 total for all areas. Yeah. Okay, one other question is, how often are, is there any regs saying that you need to, how often you need to check your pots? Uh, I believe there is. I'm not sure if it's enforced.

It's supposed to be every 2 weeks, I do believe. Every 2 weeks to check, uh, 2,500 pots? Yep. All right, thanks.

Thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate your testimony. Thank you for being here today. Thank you.

Linda Kozak.

Good morning, Linda.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Linda Kozak. I live in Kodiak, and I'm testifying today on behalf of the Alaska Trojan. My public comment are in PC149, and again, I'm supporting the adoption of proposals 278 and 279. It's kind of ironic that I'm up here doing this because we were proponents of allowing the gear sharing provision in 279, and we were proponents of doing away with pot limits in the Bering Sea.

And when rationalization first came in, and so it's, it's not an easy thing to put these proposals in to restrict the fishery, but we feel that it's important to have a level playing field for all of the participants. And therefore, the pot limit and the gear sharing provision were introduced by my clients.

In regard to the pot limit, we have made attempts to compromise with the other vessel in the Western Aleutian Golden King crab fishery, and, and we're not there yet, and we're not sure that we're going to be able to reach an agreement or a compromise in order to try to resolve the issue without having the board intervene and to assist on this matter. And the pot limit of 2,500 pots, we feel, is very generous. Compared to the average of around 2,000 pots that have been fished in this fishery. In regard to the gear sharing provision, we think that the intent needs to be clarified to only allow gear sharing at the end of a fishing season. Now, these vessels are rationalized under a rationalized fishery.

They have a set number of pounds they're allowed to catch under the IFQ program, and because of that, when one vessel is finished, they might not be finished working all of their gear. And the gear sharing provision in our— when we proposed this, was intended to be a way to— for resource conservation, to allow for a vessel to come in and pick the remainder of that gear. And so you wouldn't have unnecessary dead loss or waste in the fishery. So we wanted to amend The proposal 279 would amend the gear sharing provision to only allow it to occur at the end of a season, of a vessel season, rather than at the beginning when possibly two vessels could come out and throw a whole bunch of pots out to preempt grounds for another vessel that had just a single boat in the fishery. So I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have.

Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Any board questions? Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you.

Um, would these pot limits be for both eastern and western? Thank you. Through the chair, that's a good question. The proposal is for the entire fishery.

My clients fish almost exclusively in the western area, and we understand that an RC will be submitted to amend that to remove that from the EAG, the eastern area, that it would just apply to the western area. And we're not going to oppose that, um, RC, if, if it's submitted.

Okay, to just— so if there's 5 boats and 2 of them are on the west and there's 3 on the east, it separating it to accommodate the west is, you see, a valid thing to do. Thank you. Through the chair, yes, Board Member Wood yet it is very, very important that we have a level playing field. We believe that it's important to be good neighbors, particularly in such a small fishery. And we're experiencing a lot of gear conflicts, a lot of animosity between the skippers, if you will, and the vessel owners.

And it's really difficult and And that's exactly why we feel it is necessary in the Western Aleutians to have this pot limit and the gear sharing provision modified. Thank you. Mr. Swenson.

Seems to me that it's sure a shame that people would go to the thrown out pots to keep others off it. So I guess there's a big area out there, but Obviously some areas are better than others, and I guess that for 5 boats they can't move around enough or enough different areas to not get into this throwing out pots in certain areas that they're just trying to tie up. Is that the case? Thank you. Through the chair, it, it's, it's about 700 miles, square miles of area, but when you're looking at the bottom topography you have a very steep slope.

And the pots are laid out in longline gear, 35 to 40 pots in a string along the edge of the slope. And so when you start to look at the actual fishable area and you're attempting to avoid the areas where the females hang out, the juveniles hang out, because they kind of almost separate themselves, if you will. And you have to remember in the Western Aleutians they have to travel all the way back to Dutch to deliver, and that's a 3-day run with crab in the tanks. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to fish in the productive grounds to avoid unnecessary fuel costs. The closer, the better.

And there are traditional areas where golden crab are more prolific, if you will, for the legal size for for the fishery to occur. And there are what's considered prime fishing grounds that are coveted, if you will, by various boats. Whoever gets there first gets the bite at the apple. And so it would seem just from the amount of area that there's tons of places to fish, but there really aren't.

Okay, thanks for educating me on that. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Linda. Thanks for being here.

I mean, I got to, I got to say that this one is interesting. I mean, we're talking about a rationalized fishery that hasn't always been a rationalized fishery. It's at one point in time there were competitive fisheries in Alaska. And when they were competitive, there were far more people participating. And it just seems strange to me that the competitive nature that doesn't exist anymore, that we have a proposal before us to limit pots.

And when you throw out the number of 2 to 5 boats, I'm just looking at the practicality of it. And I understand you said somebody submitting an RC to clarify the east-western portions of this fishable area, but I guess my question is, is it— is just, is this really that necessary? I mean, I understand what you said about the amount of fishable ground versus the amount of area in general, and I, and I tend to agree with you on that. But we're talking about so few boats, and it's really hard for me to get my head around. So maybe if you have something to add to that, please try and clarify it for me.

Thank you. Through the chair, I've been working— privileged to work on golden king crab issues for about 35 years, prior to, during the rationalization discussions, and since then. And you're correct, there were more vessels, but not that many more vessels. This is a very highly specialized fishery. The average skipper's experience out there is 15+ years.

You need to know what you're doing to fish these areas. And yes, there was some competition, but there were so few vessels actually in the western area prior to rationalization that that's why we now have what we have with the, the number of 5 companies basically that control— or 4 companies that control the majority of the fishery. And, and yes, it goes against our nature to ask for this. It really does. And I, I I concur with everything that you said.

They should be able to get along. They should be able to work out their differences. It's been a, it's been a very difficult time for the Alaska Trojan, which is actually the larger of the vessels. And so it's not like big brother's coming in and taking over. It's, it's, it should be a gentleman's agreement to be able to, to know where you're going to be setting your gear and when when you are going to be sharing your gear.

Unfortunately, as previous testifiers have indicated, in the last couple of years things have degenerated to the point where we were forced to put these proposals in.

Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you. Phil Sheridan. Following Phil Sheridan, we will do Kirk McGee and Alan Crookston. Good morning, Alan.

Phil. Yes, good morning, board members. My name is Phil Sheridan. Over the last 40 years, I've been involved in Cook Inlet almost every capacity. I started out as a Department of Fish and Game biologist in the '80s and then went into commercial fishing.

I have been a fish tenderman. I've seined in Lower Cook Inlet, long-lined mostly. I've— last 20, 30 years I've been a setnetter, and now I'm a drifter so that I could continue to be a fisherman. I'm here in support of Proposal 313, beach seining for sockeye, because I can't imagine that there's going to be any other alternative gear type that's going to allow for selective harvest like the beach seine method. The great thing about a seine is the fish are never really caught initially, you know, they are simply trapped.

They free swim until the net is condensed to a point that fish can easily be identified and unwanted species released. The Gabriel Project proved without a doubt that sockeye harvest is in good numbers was possible and never harvested a single king salmon.

I hope you'll focus on the data compiled by their observer, because I think he did a fantastic job of compiling data set by set. And fishing all summer without harvesting a single king salmon is super exciting to me. Where I would be fishing is perfect for beach scenes in that there's little current The water is shallow and it's extremely rare for kings to be anywhere near the beach in my location. They tend to swim offshore in deep waters. So I'm confident we would be able to refine our system beautifully to harvest sockeye and never king salmon or silver salmon.

My crew is super experienced and I kept them with me so that now we're drifting, but if we were at a beach, saying they'd be valuable because, you know, they can spot a king or a silver amongst 100 sockeyes in seconds. And I'd also like to point out that this fishery would probably be the most transparent fishery over drifting, dipnetting, or even sport fishing. Every single fish we place in a tote would be observed easily by any person that just takes a walk down the beach.

And then the last thing I'd like to talk to you about is the urgency to get some of these sockeye escapements under control. I know you can exceed escapement goals here and there without too much damage to the fishery, but over-escapement year after year eventually does lead to diminished returns. And ADF&G just released a pretty large sockeye run projection, and without the setnetters fishing in some capacity, I think we're going to have some ugly sockeye numbers that exceed escapement goals by a mile. The problem with this current system is, you know, drifters can't fish within 2 miles. And once, especially like in the Kasilof case, most of the fish are within 2 miles by the time they've moved past Nanalchik.

So they're not going to be touched unless something like this goes into place.

I think collectively the setnetters know that the most important thing now is not to catch king salmon and But more important than how many sockeyes you catch is just not catching kings. And I think that's a great place that we're at now. Thank you. Any questions from the board? Thank you for being here.

Appreciate your comments. Kirk McGee.

Kirk here.

Alan Crookston.

Morning, Alan.

Good morning. I don't need to hit the button, do I? Okay. Yeah. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the Board of Fisheries.

I'm Alan Crookston, an Eastside setnetter, an SO4H permit holder, and a small business owner in the setnet sector. I am in support of proposals 3:13 and 3:12. Please review my previously submitted RC 15. My family, my family and crew have always taken satisfaction in providing fresh, good local salmon to various markets. Still to this day, my children and I always stop by the seafood section of the grocery store to see if our fish is being sold.

I am now the owner of a 60-year family fish site. Every year I spend tens of thousands of dollars in the local community running this business. The blue-collar work ethic out of the Kenai Peninsula is fabulous, and every summer I hire several local workers to help me run my operation. The people I hire are good workers, and I pay them as fairly as I can, and they are grateful for the work. Last summer, my operation vigorously participated in the commercial dipnet fishery and I was able to make some money.

Although it was a rather small profit, it was enough to keep me from going out of business. One thing I learned in doing the commercial dipnet fishing is that the big days are gone. The only way to make more modest income with this method of fishing is to have more fishing days. When you consider the projected sockeye forecast this year and the trickle-down economics on the community by harvesting these salmon instead of wasting them, I feel that supporting Proposal 312 is the responsible thing to do. In regards to Proposal 313, the Set Beach Seine, this proposal would allow me to take my existing setnet lines and hang in seine webbing to them.

It would also allow me to use my existing equipment and gear to have a more efficient harvest of sockeye while protecting the kings. Based on the information we saw yesterday from the Gabriels, if you combine the Hollier and Gabriel's sockeye— captured sockeye to captured large king ratio, it's 20,000 captured sockeye to 1 captured large king. 20,000 To 1 captured, and that 1 captured king was released unharmed.

The other glaring fact was that there were zero kings killed. A zero king mortality is zero. That was not by chance, that was deliberate. And this deliberate method has been shown that it can be replicated on multiple beaches. I am 100% confident that I can replicate this on my beach with a zero king mortality.

I also strongly believe that the two gear types, the set beach seine and commercial dip nets, can coexist effectively and keep these small family fishing businesses viable. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. Any questions from the board? Thank you for your comments this morning.

Appreciate you being here. Jacob Ivanoff.

Hey, Jacob.

Following Jacob, we'll have Mike Supernott and Forrest Jenkins. Welcome, Jacob. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. Glad to be here.

Like I said, she said, my name is Jacob Ivanoff. I am the chairman to the Southern Norton Sound Advisory Committee, and I will be speaking on proposals 272, 3, and 4. We met in November of 2024 to discuss these proposals. Uh, our Southern Norton Sound Advisory Committee is opposed to Proposal 272, changing the dates from June 15th to July 15th— or July 1st, I'm sorry, June 15th to July 1st. And we feel that with moving the dates later in the year, um, it's going to have a negative impact on the Eastern Norton Sound commercial fishermen.

As we get— if we have a harder time catching the quota, it makes it— the season longer, pushing it down towards the end of July to beginning of August. And with the current climate changes that we're experiencing, it makes it nearly impossible for the Eastern Norton Sound crabbers to go out on the stock. And we ran into some counters to where it was hard to retrieve our pots at the end of the season due to the waves.

But by changing it, it would have a negative consequence on us.

But we are open to changing the dates by a week from June 15th to June 20th or 25th in that timeframe. We haven't seen any changes in the meat fill. That's what Charlie spoke of yesterday. And so I feel that with the opening of the 15th, it's still viable because there's no concerns with the meat fill on the crabs. And one of our committee members was a crabber that had his own buyer, and they were starting June 15th, and their buyer did not have any issues with the meat fill, um, with a start date of June 15th.

So I don't feel that changing the date from June 15th July 1st is a good time to change. Moving on to Proposal 273 to modify— I'm sorry— the winter crab fisheries. I think by giving the department the ability to open the winter fisheries by an EO based upon the ice conditions— we've been experiencing horrible ice conditions in the wintertime. And right now, Nome's ice has been going in and out off the shore, so making it nearly impossible for anybody to go any— do any kind of commercial harvest in the winter. In the eastern Norton Sound, we really don't get a chance to do any kind of winter commercial fisheries because our ice has been unstable in the front of Unakleet.

Other communities can, but they do not participate in the winter fisheries. So having the ability for the department to open the winter fisheries on or after February 1st is— we approve, we agree with that because of the ice conditions have been changing and with the current climate change that we've been experiencing, it's just making the ice more unstable and it's just going to increase the amount of pot loss.

Moving on to Proposal 274, increasing the legal size from 4¾ to 5 inch. We supported that proposal. Currently, all— most of the fleet has a 5-inch measuring stick on the boat. I'm a commercial crabber myself as well, so we all, um, we all have 5-inch measuring sticks for our crab. So changing it from 3/4 to 5 would not really have any changes on the fleet itself.

And a lot of our mechanisms are set to, uh, have the 5-inch escape mechanisms on our pots. I can't speak for all, but on mine it is.

And as far— that's my testimony for the AC. Thank you, Jacob. Any Questions?

All right, would you like to give your personal testimony now? Yes, I would. Thank you. Um, again, my name is Jacob Ivanoff. I'm from Unakleet.

I am a Norton Sound commercial crab fisherman. I've been participating for a small amount of year, but I've also been a subsistence user, and I approached the Board of Fish in 2020 to close down the fisheries for the crab seasons in the season of 20 2020 due to the low count of 2019. That year was a horrible year in the crab fishing. We had hardly any crab in our pot. But with the proposal 272, the impact that it would have on me in starting a later date, and it— if we have to continue fishing later into the season, um, it's— while we're not going to be able to participate in it and be able to go out and check our pots when we can because of the winds that we get and when we experience in our area.

Um, we, we— it's unsafe. I'd have to say last year there are several times that I've gone out with my kids on the boat and we were coming back in 8 to 10 foot swells, um, and I was concerned for my kids on the boat. So by pushing this to a later date would have— could be drastic for some fishermen. I was fortunate that my boat didn't tip one year when I was coming back from pulling my pots. We were— I was pulling all 40 pots back, and on top of the deck, we were— we encountered 6 to 8 foot swells.

That was— my vessel was literally going up on the side like that. So by changing this date, once the GHL lowers then it will have a longer fishing season. And going into the end of July, beginning of August, we're going to be experiencing conditions to where it's going to make it unsafe for us to go out crabbing. So we oppose, and I personally oppose 272.

Thank you. Any questions from the board? Not seeing any. Appreciate your testimony. Thank you for being here.

Thanks for your service on the see. Mike Supernant.

Is Mike here this morning?

See you.

Good morning. Welcome. Going to have to press the button on that one. There you go. Good morning, Madam Chair, board.

I'd just like to, uh, my name is Michael Supernant. I've been a, uh resident of Alaska here since 1997, and I want to show my support for the Prince William shrimp opening. We've been counting on that shrimp, and I am unable to catch the shrimp. I'm a disabled veteran and also don't have the equipment to go out there. So we really rely on this commercial fishery to be able to support our family with the shrimp, and we really hope that we'll be able to do that this year.

Thank you for your support. Thanks, Mike. Any questions? Appreciate you being here. Thank you.

Forrest Jenkins.

Morning, Forrest.

Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Forrest Jenkins, and I am current— I currently live in Homer, Alaska. I am the Prince William Sound Setnetters Association president and a CDFU board member. I have been participating in the East Chami District setnet fishery since 2008.

In addition, I also participate in the Prince William Sound Copper River drift gillnet fishery and the Prince William Sound shrimp fishery. I look forward to continuing to work together with the board, the department, and all user groups throughout this meeting to find a solution for the Prince William Sound shrimp fishery that is centered on conservation, using the best available data from the department to ensure we have a healthy, vibrant shrimp fishery for all user groups to benefit from for years to come. We urge the Board of Fisheries and the Department to take immediate action to prevent the long-term closure of this fishery, rebuild the stock, and balance management measures across user groups. I support restricting all fishing below the department's recommendation at B20. I also suggest tying sport and commercial together at a threshold of B40 to share the burden of conservation and provide the stock the greatest opportunity to return.

If the TAH falls between B20 and B40, I feel subsistence fishing should be the only harvest taking place.

I recommend removing the triennial rotation that originated from a sea cucumber management plan in Southeast Alaska. Every 3 years, we are potentially overharvesting the least productive Area 3 by attempting to harvest the Sound-wide generated GHL out of this area. Removing the triennial rotation and harvesting shrimp sound-wide based on smaller local GHLs could be a more sustainable way to manage the fit— this fishery. Although this is more challenging with smaller TAHs, and we don't definitely know if this will solve our concerns in Area 3, we do hope the department and board continue to open be open to exploring alternative tools to managing this fishery in the future. I'm grateful for all the work that has gone into this shrimp fishery over the recent months, and hopefully we are taking a step in the right direction to strive for healthy Prince William Sound shrimp populations and vibrant— a vibrant fishery for all stakeholders.

Thank you. Thanks, Forrest. Any questions? Appreciate your testimony today.

Up next we have Paulette Moreno followed by Richard Reagan.

Is Paulette here this morning?

Good morning.

You about ready to go?

Good morning, Madam Chair, Alaska Board of Fish members, and guests. I am Paulette Moreno, T'ak'oon'yéék, of the Tlingit Nation. It is an honor to speak these words on the Dena'ina Athabaskan traditional territory. I do so with care. I'm speaking as an individual customary and traditional harvester of herring eggs.

I oppose RC 25's board-generated proposals. Recently at the Board of Fish meeting in Ketchikan, we heard over 20 herring proposals where mostly the department's proposals were successful. Yesterday, as, as I was having a cup of coffee, I noticed a news article that was released: Herring Revitalization Committee puts forward Kodiak fisheries proposal to Board of Fisheries. With that, that is the reason that I am here this morning.

We have fought the good fight, as they say in some of our traditional languages. That means that we have come forward as a people, as many different people, Alaska Native and Native Alaskans, to express our opinion on things that go forward. It was my understanding recently in Ketchikan that no action was taken on Proposal 57. So I was surprised yesterday when I read this article. There is language in this such as new opportunities and why wait for 3 years.

The reason I'd like to say with my few minutes of time here to wait on this proposal, to pause this proposal, is because even though there were some meetings held and there were parties that were within the committee that brought this forward and the other people. And I understand that you want it to be peacemakers. You wanted to come forward and have conversation take place on it. However, I don't think enough conversation has taken place. I think that this would— could set a precedence in the market, and that's always something that should be done with careful, careful consideration.

At the Board of Fish meeting, I also had the humble opportunity, Madam Chair, and to the board members to present a traditional knowledge report for 10 minutes, of which I and others had the opportunity to share what we believe is not only our traditional knowledge and equal or surpassing to scientific knowledge, but is something that we brought forward to guide the board in their decision-making processes. To open new markets is something that I understand. This is a very difficult time for many families, and I am sensitive to the fact that many people, our own people included, use commercial industries to support their families. I understand that, but I think this proposal is hasty. I think that even though some parts of it are conservative, we need to take a little bit of a longer look at it.

Concern for herring— Southeast herring were plentiful for tens of thousands of years under the management of traditional people. It is not so at this time. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Ms. Moreno. Any questions from the board?

Okay. Thank you for your testimony today. Good. Nishtish.

Richard Ragan, followed by Wes Jones and then Jim Stone.

Good morning, Richard. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to testify, Madam Chairman, members of the board. I'm a commercial fisherman in the Prince William Sound shrimp fishery. Also, I am a halibut quota holder and a participate in the state waters black cod fishery.

I'm here in support of 304. I'm also in support of a B-20 cutoff point for all fisheries and a B-40 cutoff for both commercial and sport fisheries.

Although I understand 299 is pretty broad and vague. It also is the opportunity to address some of the problems with the— or problems in the shrimp fishery, such as hit-or-miss management of the sports quota— or GHL, excuse me. I'm also in support of a sound-wide fishery. There's been proposals brought forward for statistical area, GHLs. I believe that— I believe that with an open group and having input from all user groups, I think that the Soundwide fishery is something that could be viable.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any questions? Thank you for your testimony this morning.

Wes Jones, followed by Jim Stone and Ted Crookston. Welcome, Wes.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. I am Wes Jones, Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation's CDQ manager. We are commonly referred to as NSCDC and are one of the 6 CDQ groups. Well, there are 3 proposals before you addressing Norton Sound red king crab. I'm going to spend my time today commenting on the 4 Aleutian Islands golden king crab proposals.

NSCDC has controlling interest in 2 of the 5 boats that fish for Aleutian Islands golden king crab, and we are a significant quota holder in the fishery. First, we support proposal 276, which is to increase the depth, depth allowed for pot storage. This will allow more flexibility to the fleet. This will allow boats to be more efficient when starting and ending the season. It will also allow more options for the fleet to store pots outside of the area of the Amendment 80 fleet.

Would like to fish, which we have to cooperate with, uh, to share the grounds. Uh, we do not support proposals 278 to set a pot limit and proposal 279 to limit gear sharing. These proposals do not address any conservation concern, uh, or issue in our view. We see both of these proposals as a step backwards. Both will increase burden on the fishermen while decreasing efficiency in the fishery.

These will also increase the burden on ADF&G and Fish and Wildlife Protection to track and enforce regulations for no benefit to the resource. This— these two proposals try to address issues that will be much better handled by communication and cooperation between the boat captains and vessel owners. NSCDC and our captains pledge that we will communicate and work to cooperate to address the issues the Alaska Trojan raises. To this point, there's been much talk about the need to cooperate. 4 Of the 5 vessel Golden King crab boat vessels are members of the Aleutian Islands Golden King The Aleutian Islands King Crab Research Foundation, which works to address Aleutian Islands king crab issues.

Moving on, we would like to support— excuse me— proposal 277, but as written, we cannot. This proposal to create a State Waters Aleutian Islands Golden King Crab fishery under its current configuration will possibly lead to adverse effects to the current Golden King crab fishery we participate in.

We are an organization that develops small fisheries in our region and would like to support that here in this region. As written, this is an allocation of a resource away from the current fishery. Do you have a concluding sentence? I can bring more on the state fishery. I believe that just a concluding comment is there's been a lot of discussion between the different groups that we think there's some really good points to that proposal and that we have some amendments that we believe can address that.

Thank you. Mr. Carpenter. Thanks. Thanks for being here. I have two questions.

The first one is in regards to the pot storage. And you talked about the Amemone 80 vessels that are also kind of working in the same area. So are you suggesting that moving these— the pot storage area out, that there will be less conflict with the Amemone 80 vessels? Is that what I heard you say? There is.

We will have to— we'll have to work to set those areas with the Amendment 80, but it will allow us more flexibility to be out of areas that they would like to fish. They currently like to— they like to fish areas below, or I mean shallower than the 75. So that cuts out some of our area where we can store gear. So this will allow more flexibility and more cooperation between— with the Amendment 80 fleet. Okay, thanks for that clarification.

The second question I have is In regards to the proposals that are dealing with the potentially creating a statewide golden king crab fishery, and I know the CDQ groups in the past have been supportive of providing opportunities specifically to local people, you know, in that area. And I guess my question is, if the board were to come up with some sort of a way to do this, maybe within the existing proposal or outside of it. And you don't have to answer this right now, but I would like you to think about it. If we were to set some sort of a number that wouldn't affect the federal TAC, that was small enough and really an insignificant number statistically, would your organization potentially Could you potentially get behind something like that? Um, you could think about it if you want, but thank you for the question.

I would say, uh, yes, if that— if that— if we can agree on the number, I would believe that, that we can.

All right, thank you for your testimony this morning. Jim Stone.

Followed by Ted Crookston.

Good morning, Jim. Welcome.

Good morning. Thanks for letting me testify. I'm Jim Stone with Alaska Scallop Association. We're opposed to the gear changing on Proposal 298 for obvious reasons. We're not too keen on potentially being booted off the scallop beds.

That we have fished sustainably on for decades. We have been good stewards of the resource, paying for observers to monitor catch and bycatch. We carry VMS so managers can monitor where and when we fish. We even supply at our own cost or at, at cost a scallop boat every spring for the department to use to survey some of these beds that we'd potentially be leaving. We, we have always stopped fishing when we reach the department's guideline harvest level.

Usually we are within 50 to 100 pounds of that GHL—unheard of targeting in most fisheries. We do not know of any experiments with pots on weather vanes. We do not believe that a person could overcome expenses to fish in that way, to kick boats out of—out for an unlikely experiment. Hardly seems fair to us. And it was testified to yesterday that our— that this— that the state water fishery is not an important part of our fishery yet.

And it is. It's generally 10 to 20, 20%. I'll be available all meeting for any questions and of course at the committee. Thank you.

Thank you. Any board questions? Appreciate your testimony this morning. Thank you. Ted Crookston.

Morning, Ted. Welcome.

Press— turn the mic on there, please. There you go. My name is Ted Crookston. I'm a lifelong set netter in Kenai. I am here today to speak in support of Proposal 313 for Set Beach Seining.

This board voted unanimously to accept this ACR because of the extreme importance and urgency this proposal has as a viable solution to the king salmon, sockeye salmon crisis and the devastating impacts of the total closure of the Eastside Setnet fishery. The extensive, even Herculean effort put forth by the Setnet fishermen over the last two seasons has advanced this methodology to a level where whereby the principal objectives listed in the prior presentation have been demonstrated and documented. Nearly 300 set beach swings, 16 kings successfully released unharmed, nearly 20,000 sockeye harvested, and zero king mortality. Compelling results indeed. The question now before all of us is, what do we do now?

What is the next important step? How do we proceed from here? How can this industry refine, perfect, and effectively implement broader application of this harvesting method while gathering more data. The answer is this: this must be put into a regulation that provides a baseline methodology that fishermen can duplicate and adhere to while refining and perfecting the system and gathering even more data through experience. Putting the beach seine into— as tested into a workable regulation at this time will accomplish the following benefits.

It'll establish a consistent methodology fishermen can duplicate and follow. It'll enable the department's local area biologists, Colton Lipka and Lucas Stump, to officially engage in the implementation and management of the process. It will provide an effective tool enabling more meaningful harvest capability and to help mitigate the extreme over-escapement of the upper Cook Inlet rivers. It will allow the infrastructure to— of gear suppliers and processors a way that they can help retool and gear up in an orderly fashion. And very importantly, it will provide a framework for uniform, uniform, consistent implementation that can be assessed over the next 2 years and fully establish either the full functionality or the weaknesses of the set beach sanding at the regular board cycle in 2027.

How cool is that? Any action by this board at this meeting that falls short of establishing this will have the following undesirable consequences. Rather than perhaps 40-ish consistent regulated set beach scenes, there will be 40 or more likely applications of commissioner's permits, each being potentially subject to variation and inconsistency. The commissioner will be put in an impossible situation with no framework to manage such a scenario. And it would leave the fishing community and processors as well in a state of limbo and unable to gear up or plan.

And it would delay and confuse the implementation process. Um, and it would also prevent the local biologists from being able to officially engage in help creating a strategy to control and utilize this harvest tool. Now is the critical time for this board to provide a necessary and expected leadership Finish. Go ahead. To implement and adopt a manageable implement— regulation for this fishery.

Thank you. This is a win-win-win-win proposal. Thank you, Ted. Any questions from members of the board? Thank you for your testimony this morning.

We've got about 10 minutes before the cutoff for public testimony. Just wanted to let folks know, uh, remember 10 AM is the deadline. Welcome, Shannon.

Uh, good morning, Madam Chair and members of the board. For the record, my name is Shannon Martin and I'm the executive director of the Kenai River Sport Fishing Association. I'm a born and raised Alaskan. I currently live in my hometown of Soldotna with my husband and our 3 children. I'm here today to testify on behalf of CRISA in opposition to Proposals 312— or I'm sorry, uh, 313.

Our public comment is PC139. The Kenai River Sport Fishing Association is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to ensuring the sustainability of the Kenai River. Conservation of Kenai King salmon is our identity. Since 1984, CRISA has advocated for sport fishing opportunity and access. We have a diverse 20-person board of directors and a professional consulting team with over 100 years of combined fishery management experience.

Today we have over 3,600 members. The CRSA board of directors met to discuss Proposal 313 and voted to oppose as written. This decision was reached after speaking with stakeholders in the community, and like all of our positions, our organization takes. They're data-driven. The sustainability of the Kenai River King Salmon has always been and will remain the foundation of our organization, and it's our obligation to protect this resource.

It's hard to express the loss our community feels over the decline of Kenai Kings. We want to see our neighbors find a solution to selectively harvest sockeye, but cannot support this experimental gear type being put into regulation at this time. While their work underneath the commissioner's permits last summer is commendable, it's not nearly comprehensive enough to allow large-scale commercial opportunity. Furthermore, Chris is concerned about any proposal for increased harvest of Kenai kings while they're designated as a stock of concern and in a recovery plan that was just implemented one year ago. It's also important to understand that we're in a lot worse shape now than we were just one year ago.

With 2024 being the lowest return on record of 6,930 large Kenai King fish. In conclusion, CRIS is opposed to Proposal 313. Our organization has an obligation to protect Kenai Kings. We'll be here for the remainder of the meeting, and thank you for the opportunity to testify. Thank you, Shannon.

Any questions? Appreciate your testimony today. Up next is Ray Beamsdorfer. Morning, Ray.

Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Ray Beamsdorfer. I'm a fishery scientist for the Kenai River Sport Fishing Association. Today I'm going to be speaking with reference to RC 16, which provides an update on the Kenai King Salmon status. For this meeting, Carissa asked me to review the current Kenai King Salmon numbers from the department to inform their considerations and the board's considerations on proposals 312 for Dibnet Fishery and 313 for Beach Saints. Back at the 2024 Upper Cook Inlet board meeting, the board adopted a stock of concern action plan for Kenai Late River King Salmon.

And that plan included some pretty significant restrictions and closures. At the time of that meeting, the Kenai Late River Kings had failed to reach the minimum escapement goals for 5 years in a row. We were looking at a record low forecast of 13,600 for 2024. And as I recall from that meeting, we spent a lot of time talking about whether we should have fishing opportunities, you know, around when we're between like 14,250 or 15,000, around that. But since then, things have gone from bad to worse, not just worse but much worse.

The 2024 king escapement was just 6,906. That's the lowest ever recorded. It was just half of the forecast. We've been consistently over forecasting, and it was less than half of the recovery target of 14,250. And this year's run forecast is for more of the same bad news.

It was 8,742, which is the lowest forecast that's ever made. If the run comes in at that, that would be the second worst on record. Under the action plan, of course, both the In-River Sport Fishery for kings and the East Side Setnet commercial fishery were closed in 2024, and these closures prevented the fisheries from driving the king numbers even lower. Any additional fishing mortality is going to dig that hole lower, and it's going to make it harder to climb out of the hole if conditions improve. If conditions don't improve and we continue to see poor production from the recent low escapements, the king— Kenai kings are going to be approaching critically low levels, and we'll be back here next year talking about what level constitutes a conservation concern.

And so that's the basis for Chris's concerns about the incidental king mortality associated with the potential expansion in the— with dip nets or beach seines in the commercial fishery. So thank you very much. Thank you. Any board questions? Mr. Swenson.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Thanks for coming in. Is Carissa concerned about the silvers? Uh, through the, through the chair, Mr. Svenson, my understanding, uh, well, certainly, uh, Carissa is concerned about silvers. Uh, uh, silvers have been traditionally a sport priority according to management plans in Cook Inlet, and, uh, all indications that I'm hearing are the silver numbers are down.

And so the 2024 board adopted some additional restrictions to protect silvers. And so the level of concern is not as acute. It's more of a yield-based concern for silvers than it is for kings, which were, you know, was more of a— we're getting into conservation zone. But I, I don't speak for Chris, but I would be surprised if they weren't concerned about the coho potential catches, the coho and the expanded commercial fishing opportunities. Okay.

Thanks, Ray.

Thank you for your testimony this morning. I think we'll take one more before a break. Don Witzel.

Is Don here this morning? How about Dina Sutherland?

Sherry Everidge.

I'm going to guess Jason Everidge isn't here either. Is Jason here?

How about Russell Clark? Is Mr. Clark here this morning?

My batting average is going down. Uh, Hannah, pull us out of the hole. Where's Hannah Hauenbach? I saw her here today. Oh, we got somebody here.

It's on. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to come and testify on these proposals. My name is Russell Clark and I represent my family, which holds 8 setnet permits in Cook Inlet. I'm an East Side setneter.

My wife is a Northern District setneter. Setnetter, and some of what we're discussing today affects the Northern District also.

I have been setnetting in Cook Inlet for 24, 25 years. I have also commercial fished the Mississippi River, Cumberland River, and the Tennessee River for invasive Asian carp.

I also participated in the dip net fishery, commercial dip net fishery last year. I was really against it at the beginning and after I participated in it, I've become a big proponent of it.

We made money at it. It was difficult. But we feel that with further implementations of possible improvements on techniques, that— and also implementing our crew, which I did not fish any of my crew except for one day— we found— we think that we can make this a viable fishery for all fishermen. One thing I did find is that I reduced the size of my net and my dip net. And I had a lot less entanglements.

I used herring gear. I was able, whenever I got a fish in, I was able to just easily flip the fish out, reduce the time. So I think that that would be one thing that could also improve the capture rate in the commercial dipnet fishery.

On 313, I am opposed. I am— although I am a beach fisherman, I have a shore fish release down at Naniilchik. There's areas of concern that myself and many other fishermen have, and I'll read these off.

Okay, mortality.

So far nobody has spoken about mortality of any studies or anything like that on kings or coho. Studies show that Chinook salmon, when caught as bycatch in beach seine fisheries, have a mortality rate ranging from 29.9% to 38.1%. This is from a Google AI overview and a study by Oregon Department of Fish and Game in the Columbia River, 2011, 2012, 2013. The coho mortality studies from 2009 to 2011 in the Fraser River, Canada, beach seine fishery averaged 39% over the 3-year period. There was a 3% immediate mortality, 19% by 48 hours, and 39% to spawning.

Another study had a combined post-release mortality of 57.5%. There was a 27.5% immediate rate and a 30% delayed rate. The Northern District has been shut down the past 2 years due to low coho numbers. Now, in these studies—. Sir, your time is up, but I'm very— I'm going to allow you some latitude because I'm very interested in what you're saying here.

So my question will be is like, what are the— what's going on with cohos in the Northern District? Okay, we've been shut down in the Northern District for low coho numbers, and we target cohos in the Northern District. We have a coho fishery. Uh, we don't like being shut down, but we understand it because there is a problem. Um, through these studies, what's going to happen— the cohos generally run, uh, whenever we're catching them along the beach.

So if, uh, the cohos have a higher incidence of mortality whenever they're captured in beach sands, So we're concerned that, you know, coho retention and coho capture and everything is going to increase coho mortality.

If I'm— I've got several other points, but if I'm out of time, I—. Are you going to be here for Committee of the Whole? Pardon? Will you be here for Committee of the Whole for this? When is that?

And I can be here probably Saturday. Yes, I'll be here Friday, Saturday, kind of depending. Um, I suspect we got some questions. Mr. Carpenter. Thanks.

Um, the comments that you were reading in your testimony there, have you submitted those? Um, uh, and if so, do you know the number? And if, if, if not, I'd be interested to read what you have written down there, if you wouldn't mind submitting that with the staff over here as an Okay. My online comments were number 44. Now, I did not submit this data in my online comments.

Okay. If you wouldn't mind, if you have it written down there, I would like to read it. If you wouldn't mind getting with the staff over there and they can help you to be able to submit something. And I have copies of the studies. Also.

All right, thank you. Any other board questions? Mr. Ziray. Thank you. Excuse me.

Thank you, ma'am. And I just— I would like to, just as Mr. Carpenter would like to hear about those studies, I would too. So I encourage you to definitely— okay, thank you. Thank you. Mr. Swenson.

I'm the same. I'd like to see those too. We will work on getting a mercy.

Any other questions? Thank you, sir. Appreciate your testimony today. Just note that the time to sign up for public comment has passed, and we are going to take a break, compile that list, and come back on the record at 10:30.

All right, welcome back everyone. The time is 10:40. We are back on the record continuing with public testimony. We've got the finalized list available. I believe that they are posted on the doors, and if they're not yet, they will be.

Um, so we will begin, um, with number 36, Hannah Heimbach. Hannah, are you here? Hi, welcome.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Hannah Heimbach. I am the policy director for Cordova District Fishermen United and here to talk to you about shrimp. I am also a lifelong Alaskan commercial fisherman and subsistence harvester. I own and operate a setnet site in Kodiak.

You can find additional details on CDFU's positions in PC 47, but for But for now, I wanted to highlight some of the pieces that I think are most important at this meeting. One, I think we should align closure triggers with conservation, guided by the updated model you heard about during staff reports. Fishery closures should use the best available science to be both conservation-focused and accurate. Currently, the commercial fishery closes when the TAH is under 110,000 pounds. I think the department staff gave really clear feedback that the 110 number is no longer biologically relevant.

Particularly under their new and significantly improved model. We know there's a harvestable surplus under 110 because the larger user group stays open and because the model is now showing us that clearly. The commercial fishery is currently closed for 2025, and we want to ensure that when this fleet and their Alaskan customers are, are not able to access that resource, that we are using the best available science for that trigger. So I would ask in your deliberations that the management number you focus on is the one that this new model indicates as a line for conservation. A concern at which point we need to narrow focus to subsistence and stock rebuilding.

Staff indicated that under this model, B40 is a level that may offer a metric for additional caution, and that B20 would be an appropriate level to eliminate all harvest in favor of stock rebuilding. Second thing I think would be good to consider is whether the closure trigger balances user access. CDFU members prioritized and asked to tie the commercial and sport closure trigger together, because we believe Alaska's well-established standard to treat sport and commercial as equal priority are important, even if they have different allocations, which in this case they do. Commercial is 60— or sport is 60 and commercial is 40. Um, we also prioritize this topic because we believe all users are responsible for conservation of the fishery resources, and, and that responsibility should be shared in regulation.

So as the board deliberates the TAH trigger and user access, I just ask that you consider all of the very important user groups that depend on this resource and enjoy food from it, and consider if the— whatever, you know, direction you choose is equitable access for those user groups. And then lastly, we should prioritize subsistence and conservation. It's important that our regulations in any fishery articulate those two priorities without clutter from overlapping sectors. The overlap in this fishery between subsistence use and sport use is the very reason we need to affirm subsistence access as the priority, or else that priority gets confused and conflated with sport access, which I think kind of has implications across our management spectrum. And so my ask there is that you consider how your updates and the implementation of the new model can balance the needs of varied users while emphasizing the priority for conservation and the priority for subsistence.

All of these user groups are important and valuable to Alaska, and I appreciate Thank you for your time and consideration. Happy to answer questions. Quick, quick question for you, Hannah, and I might have misheard you, or perhaps I'm just not tracking. With respect to the piece that you were talking about, the sport and the commercial harvest closures happening simultaneously, I'd like to understand why you think that's necessary. If we have a GHL and we have an allocation within the GHL, why would you want to close one simultaneously with if, you know, one meets their allocation level.

Is that what you're proposing? No, actually. Appreciate the question. Thanks. Through the chair.

So I'm not proposing changing the management of the allocation right now. That £110,000 is a trigger to close commercial access entirely. So under that number, the allocation goes to, you know, sport is able to harvest their 60% and commercial harvest goes to zero. And so I'm proposing that instead of having an allocative trigger, we have a conservation-based trigger beyond which we manage to that 60/40 split. Okay, that's helpful.

Thank you for that. Other questions? Appreciate your testimony today. Thank you. Edward Paulson, followed by John Schandlmayr, Jamie Gohan, and Corey Leschner, and Dan Norman.

This is Edward here. Good morning.

Members of the Board of Fish, my name is Edward Paulson and I'm here to provide a statement from Rick Alvarez, who is my business partner and skipper and could not be here today due to weather constraints. So in Rick Alvarez's words, I'm a resident of Unalaska and longtime Alaskan commercial crab fisherman since 1985. I'm a part owner-operator of two commercial crab fishing vessels, the Aleutian Number One and the Patricia Lee, both of which are homeported in Dutch Harbor and participate in both the eastern and western golden crab fisheries in the Aleutian Islands. We are partnered with the Norton Sound CDQ Group and the good people of the Norton Sound region. I strongly oppose proposal number 278.

The proposal target clearly targets my vessel, the Aleutian Number One, as we are the only other vessel harvesting in this area and fishery beside the Alaska Trojan. I believe the Trojan group are trying to use abortive fish to limit our efficiency and productivity, not for the good of the fishery, but for their own competitive benefit. The claim that we are trying to preempt the fishing grounds is simply not supported. We start August 1st every year by hauling our gear out of storage and running baited strings out to the known fishing spots. This is exactly how the Trojan does it.

We've been fishing 2,700 pots, which is how many pots we can haul during one trip. Fewer pots than this is not efficient for us, and more pots are challenging to haul in a trip. There is no good reason for a pot limit of any sort, as it is a massive area for just two boats and we should be able to share ground. The cost of enforcing this potential regulation clearly doesn't make sense. The assumption that we employ too many pots to clear is a reason— in a reasonable amount of time is not true.

Their description of our operation is inaccurate and in bad faith. We rarely haul empty pots with the escapement mesh blowouts. This alone demonstrates we are able to clear all of our pots in a reasonable amount of time. The conservation element of concern is unwarranted. I also strongly oppose Proposal 279 with similar, similar reasoning.

The claims of abusing the gear sharing provision and again trying to preempt the fishing grounds are unsupported. The Trojan is frustrated that we fished our other boat, the Patricia Lee, as well as the A1 at the start of the season 2 years ago. We fished 2 trips and turned the gear over the A1. We did not use the gear sharing provision until the second trip. Anyone can come into the fishery and compete, and that's what we did with our other boat.

The gear sharing provision exists for good reason, to help boats with unforeseen circumstances such as breakdowns, and helps to mitigate rail dumping and unnecessary pot lifts. This provision has been a success in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. There's no supportable reason to amend it. Finally, I must refute Mr. Capri's claim that the Alaska Trojan Group has made an effort to work with us toward resolving conflict or disagreement on these issues. I'm the owner who physically operates a vessel in the area, and not once has anyone in the Trojan Group reached out or contacted me about any of this.

In fact, quite the opposite. On July 13th, 2024, I contacted the captain of their vessel, Corey Cole, specifically seeking cooperation and agreement over fishing spots, and he pointedly in writing refused to work with me or any other, other golden crab captains from our vessels or the Earl N for as long as he is in the fishery. This is exactly the opposite of Mr. Capri's claim, and perhaps his complete lack of awareness of the events and communication on the grounds can be explained by his current long-distance relationship to the fishing operations. As they're approached— as—. Sir, I love a little attitude, but we do not use names at this table.

I'm sorry. So, you know, we're not engaging in any kind of personal or attacks or impunements. So I will open I will open it up to the board to see if they have any questions for you.

Thank you for your testimony today.

John Schandelmeier.

John Schandelmeier. Paxson, Alaska. I'm here to comment on proposal 314. I've been a Kwee'jak fisherman for in excess of 50 years. I know the Kwee'jak pretty well.

I've had the proposal as written just basically ask for help with the Kwee'jak or the Naknak harvest or potential harvest and allows for fishing in the Kwee'jak when the Naknak needs to be closed for escapement. Reasons. So I have a couple of comments to make on the ADF&G comments and proposal that this proposal generated. And one, it asks for a 3-to-1 drift to set net opening, and I find that a little more problematic because right now The gear ratio is 3:1 as is, and so if you allow 3:1 openings, that makes the gear ratio 9:1, even if— and if you do it with, as the proposal is written, allowing setnetters to fish half of their— or three-quarters of their gear, 37.5 fathoms. There's a couple of factors with that.

It still skews the ratio of net in the water, but it also makes it a little tough for setnetters to hold 37.5 fathoms in the Kwee Jack. They're going to need substantial anchoring devices. They're only allowed to fish one net. So those anchoring devices are going to be required to be pulled at the end of a setnet opening. And I'm not sure that there's a lot of places you can hold a 37.5 on a big tide coming up the Kwee Jack.

So the other factor that I think is worthy of mention in support of a 1-to-1 ratio or a concurrent fisheries ratio is one of the things we're hearing is king salmon problems in Cook Inlet. We're also hearing that about seeing that in the Nush where the sockeye harvest is is changed at the opening dates to allow a few more kings to go up. So in the Kwijak District, there's a late king run that usually occurs toward the end of July, and then there's an early king run, which is in early June. So there's also, of course, fish during the season. So by allowing a 25 fathom to 75 ratio keeps a little less net in the water for the setnetters, but allowing a 1-to-1 ratio allows a lot more window for kings to go up.

Setnetters can't target the kings very well. Most of them are set on the beach. The kings run shallow water, deep water. And one of the things that's going to happen in the Kwee Jack is if you have 3 drift openings in a row, they're going to fish some small tides whether you want them to fish small tides or not. There's not much room in the Upper Kweejack to fish with a drift boat 75 fathoms except in some of the deep water along the mouth of the Lagnac and the cut bank below the mouth of the— below Diamond J, the old Diamond J Cannery.

That's where the kings are going to run. So we know that kings run deep water. We know that if they're picked up in a drift net, they may never come aboard because they'll fall out before they come over the roller. So we don't know what king mortality is, but we know there's gonna be more cod. Okay.

So that's one of the things I wanna address. Okay, well, your time's up. And I could go much longer. Well, your time is up. I will ask and see if there are any questions around the table.

And then I would encourage you to participate in Committee of the Whole Group 3 when we get there, because that is when we will be getting into this proposal more. Thank you for your testimony today. You bet. Thank you. Jamie Gowan, Corey Leschner.

Welcome.

Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the board. We represent Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a nonprofit trade association representing harvesters of King, Snow, and Tanner, also called Bairdi crab, in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands crab rationalization program. There are approximately 55 vessels in this fishery. I'm Jamie Goehn, executive director, and with me is Corey Lesher, science advisor and policy analyst. We'll be speaking to proposals 277, 283, 287, and 288.

We'll start with the proposals that Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers submitted, which is 287 and 288. 287 Is on smaller tanner crab and the harvest strategy. We submitted this proposal and we support it with an amendment We heard concern from ADF&G about leaving the department the flexibility to define the industry preferred size as problematic. Therefore, we propose amending the proposal to specify a 4.5-inch industry preferred size for the harvest strategy, but only in the West, keeping the Eastern industry preferred size at 5 inches. This amendment is the same as proposed by PINSIAC, the Crab Industry Advisory Committee, in their public comment number 192.

We propose to only change the size in the west because that's where there's a bigger difference between industry preferred and legal size. They're nearly the same in the east. This change better aligns with the biology of the resource where the males tend to be smaller in the west, and this proposal may spread fishing pressure across a broader range of sizes other than just the largest males. This could potentially reduce discards, especially during the pulse years when there are lots of males under 5 inches. Inches.

Note that processors requested smaller tanner crab this year, including down to 4.5 inches in the West. Our understanding is that ADF&G opposed this proposal as written, but this amendment addresses that issue. Proposal 288 on smaller snow crab in the harvest strategy. We submitted this proposal because snow crab is entering markets from other countries at sizes below 4 inches, and because there seems to be a trend for smaller size at maturity for males. Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers understands that further work is ongoing to best determine snow crab maturity, either by shell width or claw size, that affect the stock assessment and harvest setting.

We understand that a management strategy evaluation is planned for this harvest strategy, similar to what was done for Bairdi in recent years and resulted in a harvest strategy improvement with less fishery closures and more stability. We would like to see the snow crab MSC completed before the next Board of Fish shellfish cycle. Moving on to Proposal 283 on longlining pots in the Bering Sea. We oppose this proposal until the effects are better understood and the proposal is further vetted among the fleet. We understand the maker of the proposal submitted substitute language in RC 13 to request a commissioner's permit to explore this gear use in the Bering Sea.

For Proposal 277 on Aleutian Islands State Waters Golden King crab fishery. We oppose this proposal as structured. It has the potential to harm the well-established Golden King crab rationalized fishery and reduce their TAC. We would like to end by thanking the department and Westward Region's exceptional staff. We value their collaboration with the industry and their dedication to keeping crab stocks sustainable.

Thank you. And happy to answer any questions. Thanks. Any questions from the board? Mr. Carpenter.

Thank you. Thanks for being here. I'm going to ask you the same question that I asked the gentleman earlier, specific to the idea of creating a state water— state water access. If that number were set at a low level that didn't affect the federal tax statistically, could you potentially get behind that idea?

Through the chair, thanks for the question. I think we would need more discussion in our group before we come forward with an answer. I don't know if you have further thoughts on that.

Any further questions? Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you. Dan Norman, followed by Colby Engstrom, Greg Johnson, and Gary Hollier. Welcome.

Hey, good morning, Madam Chair, fellow board members. My name is Dan Norman. My family runs a setnet operation in Kenai and a direct marketing business delivering wild sockeye salmon to customers in and outside the state of Alaska. Comments from my direct marketing customers in support of Proposal 313 can be found in PC 11, 20, 91, 97, 121, 158, and 184. My wife and 3 kids also support a version of 313.

Their comments are 118, 119, and 120. My oldest daughter and permit holder supports 312 and 313, but like a typical teenager, she didn't get her homework done on time and missed the deadline. Regardless, we're a fishing family committed to sustainable fisheries. Approval of Proposal 312 and the substitute language for 313 found in RC 24 is going to help our community, our fishery, and our other Alaska businesses like mine who provide sockeye to customers and processors who rely on it, especially in this time of uncertainty with all the processor moves in the state. The last meeting, the board encouraged alternative gear methods, and we delivered with clear data.

Through a commissioner's permit, we proved that the effectiveness of these beach seines— at my family site, 5,228 sockeye were harvested and zero Chinook. We caught and immediately released 3 unharmed, lively Chinook, all of which were small jacks. That's an interaction rate of 0.0057% of a Chinook per sockeye. The other test permit caught over 15,000 reds and zero Chinook mortality. There's a total of 13 Chinook interactions, not harvests but interactions, and only one of those was a large Chinook.

That's 0.00005 large Chinook per sockeye. 500 Thousandths of a sockeye or of a Chinook per sockeye is pretty good fishery. And still zero mortality, as that one large fish was released very much alive and unharmed. I believe that even if 40 seine operations interact with one, two, maybe even three large Chinook over the course of a season, that the information gathered from that fishery as well as the positive impacts are well worth it. Remember, these are interactions, not harvest.

This is one of the cleanest fisheries by any standard that we have in our state. Our ability to quickly sort and release Chinook with zero mortality proves conclusively with, with third-party data that this fishery should continue. There's approximately $880,000 in 2018 Eastside Federal Disaster money allocated for research. I believe there's plenty of ways for the department to submit a bid, or any other agency to submit a bid that can allocate some of that money for research in the beach seine operations. The beach seine is the preferred method to catch fish for research.

You have to catch fish in order to research them. Appreciate the board's support for the experimental gear and urge continued backing for additional commissioner's permits in the future to improve our techniques and allow those without beach leases to try and figure out a way how to do it offshore. Thanks. Thanks, Dan. Any questions?

Thank you for your testimony today. Colby Engstrom.

Good morning.

Thank you, Madam Board— Madam Chair and board— for this opportunity. I am a Cook Inlet, Upper Cook Inlet, setnet fisherman. I have a couple of comments comments that I'd like to make. I have an interesting perspective. I also fish out of New Zealand where my family lives, and the conservation in New Zealand takes much more priority than monetary benefit does.

I think that we have reached that point in the Cook Inlet. We are addressing the concerns of stock and also the amount of monetary gain by that stock. I believe that we've reached the level where we need to not consider the monetary losses to fishermen, which I am, so I understand, and I know that this is not a popular opinion, but what we have seen in the last several years is such an immediate decline in the resource that bringing on experimental gear set, which we have limited data, which has only been done in a certain type of weather conditions on one site, I believe would be shooting ourselves in the foot. There's few things that are of concern about it to me. Firstly, it would only benefit a small amount of the Cook Inlet setnet fishermen, approximately 10% of them, because of the type of terrain that you need to do to operate an operation of that type.

The other thing is that by increasing the net length from 200 feet to 600 feet, while we might be able to mitigate the mortality of kings, we're also damaging the stock of the other species and what the escapement to the other rivers may be. A 600-foot net has the ability to catch an entire school of fish instead of allowing escapement around the ends. By having a seine net of that length, especially if they were staggered down the beach, with any kind of onshore wind, there is a very solid possibility that none of the upper Cook Inlet rivers would reach their escapement goals because of the amount of additional fish taken by that gear type. The other thing to consider is that Mr. Clark named several studies that were done in the Columbia and Fraser Rivers as to the mortality of kings caught in the seine net. Each one of those studies was done on a per-net basis.

So when you talk about a 29 to 38% mortality, that is per net. When you look at the fact that this gear regulation change would allow 40+ people to have this type of gear, we're starting to look at mortality numbers that are not conducive to try to bring back what we're trying to save. Um, another thing I think we should be taking into consideration, if this is decided to be a viable gear source, I believe it needs more research. It needs to be done in varying weather conditions, and it needs to be done on different sites to see what other factors come into play. But one of the large things that we're dealing with this year is that we have record-level low snowpack, which means we're going to have record-level outflows, which means we're going to have increased river temperatures.

All of those things hamper the ability to fish and for the fish to reach where they need to go to spawn. I don't think that we should be implementing a somewhat experimental gear change while we also have these environmental considerations to take into place. Another thing that I think needs to be highly considered is if you look at the numbers and the science that we have, in the first 3 weeks of the trawl season this year, their bycatch numbers were the amount of kings that at the 2023 harvest level would take all Cook Inlet fishermen 15 years to achieve. So we are addressing regulatory changes that affect small fishermen that live in Alaska and support their families and keep their money here, and we are supporting large corporate entities that are taking our ability to control what we can do by science. Okay, and your time's up.

Okay, it's elapsed. I'll if there's any questions around the table. I didn't hear you wrapping up there. I kind of heard you winding up. So are there any questions?

Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you. Greg Johnson.

Oh, Greg. How about it? Greg Johnson. Yeah. Thank you.

Welcome. Good morning.

Good morning, Chair. Good morning, board. My name is Greg Johnson. I'm a setnetter, fish directly center in between the Kasilof and Kenai Rivers. We fish 7 licenses.

So under this, I support both 3.10, 3.12 as written, and 3.13 however the final RC looks.

I would like to say in regards to— it was brought up about what the harvest power potentially is in this. So I— we fish 18 nets regularly and we're going to switch to 1 beach net. That's 5.5% of what we normally do in a piece of gear. Now I would expect it to be more efficient, but not even approach nearly what, what we could do. So I think it's a pretty conservative fishery in that manner.

The other thing, my background is I come from Vancouver, Washington. I fish on the Columbia River. The mention of these studies involved— so I was a test fisher in the feasibility portions of those studies in 2009, '10, and '11.

Just to hit a little bit on that, we harvested in kind of an average year between those years. I think we harvested like 2,000 Chinook— didn't harvest, we caught 2,000 Chinook and about 700 coho and another 400 steelhead. All were released because it was just a feasibility study to see We had about a 98.5% survival. There was most of the— so 1.5% immediate mortality. Most of that occurred in jacks that were rolled up in the net.

We were allowed to do whatever we wanted with that gear, and we were fishing too much depth at the time. The other thing, I serve on the alternative gear group that's been ongoing for 17 years— or 15 years. I'm very familiar with these studies. I participated in the study that was referenced early as a catcher, and I'm quite familiar. We don't have enough time to go through that.

I talked to staff at the end of last week, both Oregon and Washington, in regards to these studies. And the two Columbia River managers from Oregon and Washington, they're referenced to me was, after explaining this fishery, is that's a non-applicable— you cannot apply the two. And here's a few reasons. So the time, time of set in this fishery is 10 to 15 minutes. On the Columbia River, it was between 45 minutes an hour.

The sort time, which is really critical, that we need to hammer down on here, is it's taken— I had Mr. Hollier's— or Mr. Hollier had his as an observer, breakout the sort time, the time in which somebody can get out there and start processing, moving a fish out of the net, and then from the time that they finished moving that fish out of the net, that's a sort time, and that was 2 minutes. On the Columbia River, it was 15 to 20 minutes.

The release population, so in this, I'll just finish up real quick. The release population in this fishery, you're looking for literally one fish. So you've got all eyes focused on a large Chinook or a silver, and on average, because you're not going to see more than one on average. On the Columbia River, if you had 100 fish set, we either— it's a range. In a fishery, you have to release 70 to 30%, 30 to 70% of those fish because those are the population that are wild and need to be released.

So my time's up. Thank you. Questions? Appreciate your testimony today. Thanks.

Gary Hollier, followed by Terry Corson, Bruce Bowman, and Aaron Schreier. Hi, Gary.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. I'm Gary Hollier, 71-year-old lifelong resident of Kenai. I've set net in North K Beach for 53 years. In 2023, I participated as a subcontractor for Katama Research testing various depth nets in the set net fishery, trying to figure out, figure out if it was possible to harvest red salmon and not king salmon. In this study, I fished 15 22-29 mesh deep nets.

I fished 19 days Total in 19 days, we harvest 10,000 sockeye and 6 large kings. I thought this was excellent data for proceeding with new regulations to have a limited setnet fishery. The Board of Fish did not agree, as one dead king was too many. The data was not used. In 2024, I received an experimental beach seining permit.

I have submitted PC-117 that has my report in it. I use existing setnet gear that most all beach setnet fishermen have. I had many setnet fishermen from one end of the upper subdistrict, that's Nenilchik, to the other end, the East Forelands, come and watch my beach seine operation. They all said they could do something similar on their sites. Where I fish, the tide goes out quite far.

We never had fished the flats on the ebb or flood, making sure there was always plenty of water for the salmon to swim in. The total cost for building a 50-fathom seine was $1,200. We fished a 35-fathom seine for 12 and 2 and a half days and a 50-fathom seine for 4 and a half days. I believe my gear could have handled a 70-fathom seine. We made 98 sets, harvested 5,000+ reds, 205 pinks, 36 coho, all released alive, and 3 small kings, all released alive.

Zero kings were killed. The Department of Fish and Game and the Board of Fishes asked the setnet fleet to come up with some way to harvest sockeye, not kill kings. Beach seining is the simplest and most cost-effective way to achieve those two goals. In two experimental beach seine fisheries this last summer, in excess of 20,000 sockeye were harvested and zero king salmon mortality. Two words I dislike as a fisherman are hope and potential.

I want the real deal. Yet I would hope that the Board of Fish would see the potential in using beach seines while late-run king salmon are stock of concern. I'm trying to wrap up here, so I have some comments about fishing rough weather, but I am in support of 312 and some version of 313. But I would be remiss if I did not bring up Kenny Coleman. Kenny passed in his sleep on May 7th, 2024.

Kenny was a major participant in 1978 when the Upper Cook Inlet Management Plan was adopted. Kenny was a strong advocate for the setnet fisheries disagree, yet would always come into this forum with common sense and respect for the process. Kenny was a great friend and will be sorely missed. So I guess I have time. I looked at my data here.

We fished only one day with a Southwest 15. Southwest 15 could be flat calm or 4-foot rollers coming in on North Cave Beach. The reason why we didn't fish many rough days is that the manager, area manager, had the ability to to cancel days or close days for the dip net fishery. And so that's why we didn't fish rough weather. We did fish on the 15th.

There was a couple 2.5, 3-footers rolling in there, and we didn't have a problem identifying the fish that was in our gear. And thank you for your time. Thanks, Gary. Appreciate that, and appreciate your comments. One about Kenny.

Yeah, and, and thank you. And secondly, about about sort of your experience in fishing your site in sort of that less than ideal weather. Do you think that, you know, you had compared to what the Gabriels had done, sounds like it was a little bit smaller net. Do you think that you would have had significantly more trouble in the weather and in the winds if you had used a longer net, longer than 50 fathom? I think we, we could have still handled, uh, the one day we had with Southwest 15, and we could have fished a longer net.

Obviously, with 3 or 4-footers rolling in there would be, uh, make a challenge. And, uh, but I think it is manageable. And I really appreciate the department having the flexibility to open and close seasons based on some type of weather, which is huge for this, uh, for our test fishery, and would be huge for a semi-beach seine fishery too. And thanks for the question. Mr. Carpenter, thank you, Gary.

So the one question that I have, and obviously you've been participating in this fishery for a long time, you understand the different beaches and challenges associated with beaches in the, in this particular area. When I look at the total amount of people that will have access to a potentially new fishery. What percentage of the areas, understanding that most of it is— most of this sand beach sanding would take place, you know, half tide to high water, something to that effect. How many people do you think will actually be able to utilize the lease sites that they currently have to be able to execute something like that? Uh, through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, I, I would think that North K Beach has— there's 29 beach nets on North K Beach owned by 9 different families.

I would imagine that out of those 29 beach nets, which is basically, uh, what is that, 10 permits, those families own 7, uh, 40-some permits that fish beach nets and offshore. Those families will, I would think, would fish one beach seine per family. If you take 9 sets on North Cape Beach, I can't speak for South Cape Beach, but I'm knowing most of the fishermen there, 3 or 4 people would fish down there, that'd be 12. Salamatoff, maybe you'd have another 12, is 24. From the Kasilof River south, maybe there's 10 or 15.

So let's call it 35 to 40 fishermen might participate in this beach seine fishery. It's not an easy thing to do. But with smaller, with some smaller gear, I had many fishermen come up and said they could fish the way I was fishing with existing structure. So to answer your question, 35 to 40 fishermen might fish out of 435 East Side SedNet permits that are active. Less than 10%.

Thanks. Any other questions? Thanks, Gary. And I, you know, I just want to thank you on the record for, you know, all the work that you've done in trying to, trying to figure out a solution here and trying to provide opportunity on Sakai. And, you know, obviously the work that you did with the Kintama study and allowing that to happen at your site, I was disappointed that it only had one year.

I would like to see it have a little bit more time. But yeah, I just, again, I want to just on the record state thank you for working towards some kind of a hopeful solution. I know you hate that word, but I just wanted to recognize and acknowledge it. Thank you. Well, thank you, Madam Chairman.

Right now I'll take hope any day. Anyway, thank you. Fair enough. Mr. Swenson has a question for you, I guess. Gary.

So when you're releasing the fish out of the nets or out of the same.

What kind of things do you use in terms of any special kind of gloves, or do you use any special kind of a net, a small net that you could net these fish out without handling them? Through the chair, Mr. Swenson, thanks for asking. I kind of had a skeleton crew, a couple guys my age, my daughter, and a couple grandkids.

So we were very careful when we pulled our leads up to make sure the cork line was maybe out in the water to that table. And the observer would go out there and then we'd try to get some corks over and try to identify sockeye, reds, and coho. So after talking to fishermen that have been involved with this, we went to these nitrile gloves, which do not, when you handle a coho, it does not, The scales do not come off as easily, sir. And then I didn't— I wasn't smart enough to think about— I'm not much of a sportsman, but they've got these little dip nets that when you catch a rainbow and you want to release it, that you scoop that out. So if I'd have used that, I would think that that would be even less chance of mortality.

I will say we harvested 36 coho, and we were very careful to handle them carefully, and they all swam away going yahoo, because they wouldn't have done that in a gill net, I can guarantee you. Conrad, also, are there some of the nets that are a little bigger that are, say, plastic made that, that, you know, you could dip a larger king out of with, without, you know, without— with less impact? I would imagine that there's a— through the chair, Mr. Sunstein— that there's catch and release practices on the Kenai River. I'm sure there are dip nets that can handle a 40-pound king, you bet. That are made of this type of material so there's less scale loss on them when they're released.

But I'm not familiar with it, but I'm sure I could find out.

Thanks, Gary. And I too, I've known you for a long time, and I too really appreciate all the work that you've done to try to, you know, for the set, you know, for the beach staining and so on, and all the work you've done in trying to make some alternative fishery work. Thanks. Well, thank you, sir. Yeah, we're just right now trying to stay alive with the best practices available.

So thank you for your time. Thanks, Gary. Next up is, um, Tom— I'm sorry, Terry Corson, followed by Bruce Bowman and Aaron Schreier.

Hi, Terry. Welcome. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to thank you, Madam Chairman, and board for being here, and that I recognize this being a challenging issue because it is an emergency. We're not even supposed to be here.

I like listening to crab and I like listening to shrimp. Made me hungry. But in this, I qualify myself as a commercial fisherman. I've grown up on the beach all my life. I actually fished Gary's site when I was a kid, and I was— I'm just south of Frostedters.

I call them Frostedters because that's Sarah's dad, and they fished there for eons too. So I've been around, and I think my take, because I really think you need something new, my take on this is We had a management plan where we had a minimum and a maximum, and the minimum was supposed to be the lowest numbers that we catch that's still going to produce fish. And the maximum, to me, was always the maximum that the system could recover from, meaning our return. Okay, that's, that's just kind of how I always took this. And what I, what I'm seeing is we're talking numbers, but we're not talking the right numbers.

We've been tied by our hands over a minimum number, and the maximum number on our species is overexceeded. Theoretically, we are a stock of concern. So I come to you as a concern. I really wasn't for any other type of fishery. For two reasons.

We've established a net system with its regulations, its separations and everything, and we can see data on how it works. And I understand people's problems with this because I had that problem too. But what I'm seeing is even much worse. And I hope you see this, that the maximum number is never, ever even going to come close, even if we went back to net fishery because of the yo-yo effect of this system and how it's being managed. And I don't mean it's— everybody's trying to do their best, I understand.

But even if you put nets back in the water, there's no way our industry is going to bounce back to catch that. And another thought is there isn't a producer around that's going to be able to process this many fish. I don't know if you've been watching that, but they're all gone. So if you have questions or problems about that, you kind of understand why this is an emergency. Even the processors moved out.

Even our workers have left. Even our equipment has aged. So what I'm saying is, is I'm for Proposition 313 and Proposition 312. Any way that you can lower the stock And I do believe in conservation, but I got to say one thing on that conservation. I'm going to use the Kasilof River as a model.

And also, I can't— I wish you would talk to me about that. For a question, we'll have Committee of the Whole for you to, you know, provide some additional context and information. So that's if you'll be here later this week, that will be happening. I'm not sure I can. Okay.

Um, is there— are there any questions at this time? Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you for your testimony today, and I'm sure we'll chat more. Bruce Bowman.

Welcome.

Is that on? Yep. Good morning, Madam Chair, board members, and department staff. Thank you for your consideration today. I am Bruce Bowman, and I present my views to you, the board, as a 30-year participant in many state and federal subsistence opportunities, as well many personal use and sport fishing endeavors.

I have been in the commercial Prince William Sound pot shrimp fishery since its reintroduction in 2010.

I serve on the Whittier AC and I'm secretary of the Valdez AC. Additionally, I co-chair the independent organization Shrimp Bros.

I wish to share my support regarding, regarding 3 proposals of which I'm co-author. 299, 304, And 307. 299 And RC-8. I'm hopeful the RC has provided further clarification for the board as to the creation of a comprehensive fisheries management plan.

304. I strongly support this opening date change. To protect egg-bearing shrimp. 307 Could potentially be a moot point given potential developments at this meeting and would not have a purpose this season. I also support 301.

While being— I believe the restriction and modification of the non-commercial fishing areas may be challenging to achieve, this proposal is supportive of in-season reporting for support and subsistence, which I believe could address the variability of the group's ability to achieve the targeted GHLs with more consistency.

I'm in favor of 303, which supports a realistic TAH as well as the definition of triggers in response to the carrying capacity milestones. Such as B-40 and B-20, which I hope address an equal burden of conservation among user groups as we move forward. I oppose 308, seeking to make pot reductions defined in regulation. The department has operated in that range historically by emergency order under current regulation.

I oppose 311, which I believe may have substantial negative impacts on the Prince William Sound shrimp pot fishery. Lastly, I would like to call attention to RC 25, which was not accepted as a proposal, but I believe is worth pursuing. I would ask for the board to consider any measures of support in directing a concept of a resource-directed sport and/or personal use user fee in the Prince William Sound pot shrimp fishery as it, as it is presented to the legislature and public.

It appears the department would appreciate financial support in expanding test sites and potential in-season management options.

Thank you. And just for clarification, when you say RC 25, you're You are referring to RC 25 from the Prince William Sound finfish meeting in December? Or this meeting? [Speaker:BRUCE] I submitted it this meeting. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER ARKOOSH] Okay.

We don't have that uploaded yet. We will probably get that later this afternoon. But thank you for that clarification. Any questions? All right.

Thanks, Bruce.

Erin Schreier, followed by Brent Johnson and Herb Mansavage.

Welcome.

First, I'd like to thank Madam Chair and the board for letting me speak today. My name is Aaron Schreier, and I've setnet in the Naknak Kwijak District for the last 27 seasons. I'm currently vice president of the Kwijak Setnetters Association, but today I'm speaking on behalf of myself. I'm here to address Proposal 314, the creation of the Naknek River Special Harvest Area. In general, I support the creation of the district and the language used in RC-17, but only with certain amendments.

I agree with AC-10, the Naknek Kwijak Advisory Committee's proposed change to the allocation of fishing time should be 1 to 1 between drift and setnet gillnets. For some background, I feel like I have to support the creation of the Kersha because the Naknak River Special Harvest Area saved the vitality of the Cuijac River and its subsequent runs, as well as gave my family the opportunity to keep fishing while the Cuijac was being restored. Now the roles have been reversed and the Cuijac has a surplus and the Naknak may be in danger. I strongly support creating tools for area biologists to better manage this complex district. This would allow them to conserve and protect one river system while also targeting another surplus.

Last year, it was believed that surplus by our— the time that we had the whole district was shut down might have been around 2 million sockeye. Fishing time allocation wouldn't matter as much if everything happened as predicted, but the Kershaw if the Kershaw is only open for a few days, setnetters would have a couple tides, the drifters would have 5 or 6 tides, and we'd be better off than if we were closed completely. But things just don't always happen the way that we like, and if the season started in the Kershaw or if it lasted a couple weeks, it would be detrimental and ruin the setnetters. When I was a kid, there were several years that we spent the entire season in the Naknek Special Harvest Area, and when that was managed on a 1-to-1 ratio, we were able to make a season. But as regulation changed and we lost that, it wasn't really economically viable for us, and many setnetters sold or left.

Um, for perspective on fishing time, a normal season, setnetters usually need more fishing time to catch less than drifters. Um, I crunched some numbers of total possible fishing time between the gear types over 3 seasons from 2021 to 2023. 2024 Hadn't been published yet. Um, from July 1st through 17th, the drifters had about 75% less fishing time than setnetters did—290 hours versus 389. Um, the modern drift fleet has the ability to be extremely mobile, and it is very common to follow fish.

With low projected run size in the Naknek River, it's very possible that drift participation would also be low. Um, setnetters don't have that same luxury of being mobile. The same 337 set permits would most likely stay in the district for many, many years to come without that number changing by a couple permits. Another reason that the 3-to-1 ratio doesn't work is the timing of when the Kersha would be enacted. Um, in recent years, the Naknek Weejack District I'll give you a concluding sentence, please.

Thank you very much. The Naknak Kwijak District is very popular for drifters to finish the season, but not to start.

You know, on that same averages of that I was referring to earlier, July 1st only had 303 boats, July 5th had 383 boats, and on July 10th, 464. So if the Kershaw was enacted in early June, there would be less drifters than there were setnetters. So 3 to 1 would not make any sense. Sorry, early July. Okay.

In your recollection, why was it shut down last year? Why was it shut down? Yeah. Why was it shut down? Why are we having this conversation right now?

The Naknek River is having just less than normal runs. It hadn't really been a problem since I've been fishing, but they struggled to get their minimum escapement. And once that was realized that that wasn't going to happen, area biologists decided to shut the whole, the whole district down completely. And that happened to be during peak Kwee Jack run. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions? Mr. Swenson. How would this affect the king salmon?

So a lot of, a lot of the science hasn't been done with this, but generally speaking, it's my belief that the 3-to-1 ratio would have a higher opportunity for kings to be caught because the drifters have the ability to fish in the deeper water. And when they're going to be fishing in the Kwijak special harvest area, is just by the nature of the district. The river is narrower and choked down, and there's lots of sandbars and flats. And really, some of the only spots for them to fish is the deeper water. So a 1-to-1 ratio would encourage more kings getting up.

Thank you. Hey, thanks for your testimony today. Brent Johnson.

Madam Chair, members of the board, thanks a lot for letting me speak. I'm Brent Johnson. I have set net for 57 years. My wife and I have made the bulk of our income during our life set netting. Um, I've got a couple of things that I can share with you that we have done We got a commissioner's permit for something we called a selective harvest module back in about 2016, I think it was.

The selective harvest module used SANE. It was a SANE lead that led out to a bag. In your mind, imagine a windsock. So the lead went out to the bag, was like a windsock. The lead was 190-foot long.

The width of the sock was 20 feet, so it matched a set net. The fish followed the lead out, went into the bag, and we emptied it by putting a skiff under it, forcing the fish to the end, which is where they were anyway, and then just dumped them over the corkline. So we didn't ever touch a fish.

That was fairly successful in the sense that we, we only fished it twice, but the Assistant management biologist Aaron Dupree or something like that came down and took photographs. So Fishing Game has some pictures of our contraption. In addition to that, we went to the research biologist in our area, Mark Willette, and I said to him, for my Sentinel operation, I was releasing kings. I said, Mark, give me some tags. I want to tag the kings I'm releasing to find out if they're getting anywhere.

He gave me tags. We fish from— we fish 33 nets with 11 permits. We fish, uh, with 4 skiffs, and so we only had one tagging device. We put it in my boat. I tagged about 10 kings that year, um, that we released.

4 Of them were recaptured, so that's like a 40%, uh, recapture rate. Recaptured in other fisheries. Not a single one of them was caught in a setnet fishery Um, I'm in favor of Proposal 313. I think it's great what Gabriel Family and Gary Hollier have done testing this device. I think that it is a something that we can build on.

Again, we fish 33 nets. If we have a permit to, or if we're allowed to use a beach seine, we will use one beach seine. We will We won't catch nearly as many fish in the one beach seine as we did with our others, but we'll catch some. We got to stay alive, like Gary Hollier said, so that we can work on developing methods. And I think that we can release kings from that and, um, and that they'll get away and be fine.

And really, that's all I have. Thanks. Thank you. Any questions? Appreciate it.

Herb Mansavage followed by Corey Arnold.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, this will be my personal testimony, although if it's the wishes of the board, I can do committee testimony as well. What is your preference? I just— I can do mine later in the day, and I don't know if it's going to go till tomorrow, but I can do the committee testimony after my personal testimony if preferred. We'll just take it in the order that you're signed up.

Sounds good. Go ahead, Herb. Okay, it's just some shrimp proposals, 299, 300, and 305. 299, I'm, I'm kind of back and forth on this one, but I do see the idea of being— having a proactive plan established on 299, um, as long as it doesn't change or, you know, modify the, the sport fishery as it stands right now. I do see potential for concern of the allocation perspective of emergency closures and such, but it's working right now.

And as long as it's not disrupting the sport fishery, I think the board could implore looking at, uh different proactive ways or a different management strategy that could be more efficient. Proposal 300, I'm opposed, as this really complicates and restricts non-commercial fishermen from participating in the fishery. This would, this would really be a hardship for a lot of people that go out. And, you know, a lot of people are just trying to get a gallon or two of shrimp a year. And in many cases, it's just, it's all whether or not their schedule lines out.

So having something like this would really be detrimental for those just trying to engage in what is— the Prince William Sound is a hobby for a lot of people. So I'm very supportive of supporting that non-commercial aspect of Prince William Sound. And with 305, I'm opposed to this.

That being said, I'm going to kind of mirror what our committee said, and that's we amended it to include only 2 extra pots. I like that idea because there is an issue with, unfortunately, theft, but more so just loss of gear. And so I think having something where you had a limit of 2 pots extra would be easy, easy to enforce. But, you know, through pretty anecdotal evidence, uh, there was things that were said at our meeting that referenced bigger boats being able to take a large amount of pots out and returning with none. And, you know, so I don't want to get into that, but, you know, it would just at least have some sort of limit so that bigger boats, you know, non-commercial boats that can only carry a couple pots anyway, it still allowed them to have 2 pots on board.

So that concludes my testimony. Thanks, Herb. Any questions? Don't see any. Appreciate you.

Thank you. Corey Arnold, followed by Travis Every.

Welcome, Corey.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair and board members, for the opportunity to participate in this process. My name is Corey Arnold and I'm a settler in the Kwaijak River, and I'm acting president speaking on behalf of the Kwee'jak Setnetters Association, or KSA. We're an association that represents the interest of Kwee'jak setnet fishermen with an annual average of 45 paying members and regular communication to about 140 setnetters in the Kwee'jak. I'm here today to discuss Proposal 314, the creation of a Kwee'jak special harvest district in Bristol Bay.

The KSA supports Proposal 314. With amendments. Last season, due to the Naknek River being behind on escapement, we experienced a 72-hour complete closure of the Naknek Cuijak District during the peak of the Cuijak run to conserve the flailing Naknek run. An estimated 2 million surplus sockeye escaped in the Cuijak during this period. And to put this into perspective, 2 million fish was nearly 23% of the total the Kwijak and Alagnak Rivers for the entire year.

The sockeye run in the Kwijak is fast and furious, and it's not uncommon for us to catch more than half of our annual harvest in less than a week. Therefore, a multi-day closure during the peak of the run can make or break a season for us. We appreciate the board's willingness to address this situation out of cycle due to another low-forecasted sockeye run in the Naknek River in 2022. 2025. It's essential to urgently provide ADF&G the management tools they don't currently have to allow harvest of surplus Kwijak River sockeye when the Naknek needs to be shut down.

We submitted a public comment, PC-153, that we believe offers the best solution for maximum harvest of fish surplus in the Kwijak River for both set and gillnet groups groups in the event— in that event. Our plan is to create a more dynamic special harvest district that provides maximum harvest opportunities of surplus Cuijac fish for both gear groups. We have a plan that allows setnets to fish the current Cuijac district sites concurrently with drifters open in the newly formed Cuijac River special harvest district, and we feel that the catch We feel that the catch of Naknek-bound fish by Kweejack setnetters in their current location is minimal, and both gear groups would benefit from concurrent openings. But should the situation become more dire and the Naknek River has not even received half of its minimum escapement, then both drift and setnet fleets would be confined to fishing in the newly formed Kweejack Special Harvest District with alternating openings between between Drift and Set. In this situation, the KSA would like to stress that either a dynamic ratio of Drift to Set based on Drift participation in the district would be the most fair course of action, or to simplify, a ratio of openings of 1 to 1 alternating between Set and gear groups provides a fair split for all stakeholders.

Give you one concluding sentence, please. Okay, um, basically we support, uh, RC, uh, we, we support the Naknek-Kweejack AC who unanimously voted, uh, to amend RC-17 with a 1-to-1 ratio. Um, we support RC-17 with just two simple changes. 3:1 To 1:1 and from a 300-foot separation between nets to 150. Thank you.

Any questions? Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for providing your organization's opinion on this.

Obviously, I was the one that submitted the language in RC-17.

But the thing that I— the thing that I'm curious about, you realize, don't you, that you're taking basically an action from the board to create a tool for the department based on a conservation concern on the Nacnek River, and you're trying to turn it into an allocation battle out of cycle, don't you? I just want to make sure that you realize that. It's not that I'm trying to turn it into a battle. I just I fished the— in 2018, we were confined to the Naknek River when the Kweejak had a concern, and I couldn't believe that there was— I didn't realize there was a 3-to-1 ratio in place set to drift, and it felt extremely unfair that we didn't have an equal opportunity to catch the fish. I just feel like that's an outdated— that was an outdated ratio that needs to be amended in the, you know, the next Board of Fish.

But we have an opportunity now to get it right first, in my opinion. And so, you know, we strongly support a creation, you know, the passing of some sort of Creejack Special Harvest District, but we prefer to try to get the details right up front. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Swanson. So, um, when it's 3 to 1, was it 3— I'm— you're, you're referring to the periods of opening, correct?

That's right. Okay, so when it's 3 to 1, then the setnetters have had 3 times as much time as the drifters? No, the opposite. The drifters The drifters were able to fish 75 fathoms of net and get 3 tides to our 1 tide, and we're fishing with half the net. You know, in a river that's, you know, these in-river fisheries, the rivers are quite tight, and sometimes there's an issue with if it's a low tide, a low-high tide, the drifters can't even get, you know, they don't have a lot of fishing time in there.

It's more ideal place to set net in. And so when we were just allowed 1 out of 4 tides to fish, it was just— there's no way we can make that economically viable. In the case that the Special Harvest District was open, you know, needed for many days in a row like it has been for the Naknek in the past. So if the drifters are out there 3 times as much, they're going to be catching more kings, aren't they? Because they're catching kings out there more than you're catching them on the shore, correct?

There would likely be a lot more net in the water while the kings— while the drifters are fishing. Yes. Okay. The setnetters usually stay more towards the shore and there's a lot of open water for fish passage. So definitely a lot more fish are going to get past our nets.

Thank you, Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks. You just said it'd be less economically viable, but it still would be more economically viable than not fishing at all on the Nagnik, right? For sure. Okay.

The worst case scenario would be no special harvest district created. Okay, thank you.

Thank you for your testimony today. Travis Every, welcome back, Travis.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Travis Every. I'm a third-generation Upper Cook Inlet commercial fisherman. My family and I were fortunate enough this past summer to get asked by the Gabriels to assist in testing the, the new set beach seine that was deployed.

We were able to test it on 3 different locations, all with very positive results being achieved regardless of the location or the the tide that day, or, you know, there has been some talk about some weather days where it will affect it if it's too rough.

But I'm going to go back a little bit. I mean, since 2012, the board members, members of the department have come to the Eastside Setoneters and asked us to think outside the box and come up with something that— a new tool for them that is biologically responsible, non-lethal, and is a selective harvest method in an effort to be able to harvest abundant sockeye and release Chinooks.

This alternative harvesting method accomplished exactly what the board and the department has asked us to come up with. It provided the ability to release Chinook as well as Coho salmon while harvesting sockeye. There's been some discussion on beach seines and is it the right type of gear? I mean, you know, the Department of Fish and Game uses beach seines as a method in various fish studies. The reason they like using that method is because that they can It's easy.

You can easily identify the fish while they're still in the water. You can easily release them and there's minimal stress to the fish. So I'm just going to ask the board to please support Proposal 312 and 313 with the substitute language found in RC 24. Thank you.

Thanks, Travis. Any board questions? Thank you for being here and thanks for your help with the experimentation last summer. Roger Roland.

Hi, Roger. Welcome.

I think it's still morning. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the board. Roger Roland. I live in and fish out of Unalaska. I am the writer of Proposal 277, hoping to create a new state water golden king crab.

Say that fast 3 times. Golden king crab fishery. I understand the— I've been talking with the department this morning. They do have language crafted. I did not take it upon myself to try to craft actual language for you guys, but I understand there is language that will be submitted if it hasn't been already.

I'm happy to participate in the Committee of the Whole process and answer any questions you would have at this time. Thank you. Board questions.

Do you want to talk a little bit about why you submitted the proposal in the first place? Well, sure. I suppose I could. More— more— now, of course, I'm going to lose my, my words. More opportunity for small boats.

And some of the bullet points— I didn't want to take the time to run through all the bullet points we put in there, but some of them are specific to try to keep it so some of what we call Super 8s can't just come in and, and scoop it all up, actually keep it for some of the local fleet. Like single potting instead of long lining. Some of the Super 8s have some really nice— I have a long line system on my boat, but it's not robust enough to do brown crab where some of the boats do much bigger vessels, bigger platforms.

But more opportunity for locals was our main— and there's a start date in there of September 1st where the federal fishery opens on August 1st. Again, a lot of boats of the smaller salmon size variety are salmon fishing, and so we didn't want someone to come in while salmon season was still open and try to scoop it all up. We want to leave it for different people that had salmon fisheries to get back and be able to participate. So I could go on and on and on, but I do not want to waste your time. I believe you.

Thank you.

Any questions? All right. Well, we'll look forward to the discussion in committee. Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much.

Randolph Alvarez.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is— board members of the Board of Fish and Staff, my name is Randolph Alvarez. I live in Iggyagik, Alaska. That's up on the end of the Kwijak River. I'm kind of here to give you some history of the Naknek Weejack District, especially when it comes to the Naknek Special Harvest Area and allocation.

I served on the Lake Iliamna Fish and Game Advisory Committee for almost 30 years. I didn't renew my— I told the village it's time for somebody else to do it last year. So I'm, although I'm still the alternate, but I served, I was the chairman of the Lake Iliamna AC when allocation was implemented and also the Naknek Special Harvest Area.

And that was probably about 20 years ago. And when the NACNIC special harvest area was implemented, the setnetters and the drifters got equal fishing time, one opening for each gear group. But after that year, the allocation that same year came out to 16% of the harvest should go to the setnetters and 84% for the drift fleet. But after that year of in the Naknek River special harvest area, the 1-to-1 openings, the allocation was about 50% for each. So the next 2 Board of Fish cycles, we worked to ADF&G and a lot of testimony for 2 cycles to get it more fair reflecting on what historical catches were.

So after the second cycle, it came out to 3-to-1 openings for the drift fleet to the setnet. And also they changed the amount of gear each group could use in the special harvest area from 15 and 25 fathoms per drift setting it to 75 and 37.5. And it has worked since then. It has worked great. And now with the new, you know, I wish we would have had this Kweejack opening, Kweejack River open for a special harvest area so we wouldn't have to sit out the season last year.

I fished in the Naknek Kwijak since I was 6 years old, started with my father. And last year was the worst season I've ever had drifting. And because of the Kwijak, Naknek Kwijak was closed because of the Naknek River and the Kwijak River was not, didn't have a special harvest area. So it made a great impact on, I probably had my worst year in 40 years of drifting. And so hopefully the board will rectify the situation where we can fish up in the Kwejak.

And I support the proposal the way it's written. I think that's kind of reflective of how it is in the Naknek River special harvest area. And I was hoping the board would kind of implement the same same scenario because it's worked so well since it was— for probably at least 15 years, almost 20 years since, uh, since this was— it was last amended. So, um, that's kind of basically all I had to say. Thank you.

Thank you, Randy. Thank you for being here, um, and providing some of that context that I think certainly I appreciate and need. And also for your 30-plus years on the Iliamna, Lake Iliamna AC. So just, just so that I understand that you, your, your opinion is that you're supportive of the special harvest area, but you don't want to tweak the ratios. No, you're right.

I, I'm supportive of the, of this the way it's written up, and it should stay the same. As it's written up in the 314 because that's similar to what has been and what is and has been in the Naknek Special Harvest Area and that's worked well.

One of the other guys mentioned that the last year we were in the Naknek Special Harvest was 218 and that was only for one opening. The drifters fished and had one opening in the Naknek Special Harvest Area but the Dussetna did not go into the special harvest area, NACTIC special harvest area, because they, they moved everything, everybody back out into the district. So it was only for one opening for the drifters. My next question to you— thank you for that— is in terms of, um, you know, the, the issues that I hear frequently at this table of over-escapement, in your opinion, is there Do you have concerns about over-escapement into the Kwaijak?

Madam Chair, yes, we do. Although the Kwaijak is different probably than any other river in Bristol Bay. It's cyclic. All the other river systems seem to have the same escapement. Numbers year after year, but the Kwijak, we have high years and low years and medium years.

And so you have to take into account some years there's going to be barely enough run to meet the escapement, and some years there'll be a lot more fish available for harvest and for going up the river. So the department kind of takes that into consideration. So we have a— the Cree Jack has a— the escapement goal for the Cree Jack is a minimum of 2 and the high end is 10 million. But I don't agree with the 10 million. It doesn't— we don't need to be that much.

I was there. When I've seen 24 million up the Kwijak escaped and the lake was stink. In fact, a lot of it, there was a poor return after that because there was too many fish up in the lake. So it does have a high and a low, and I think my opinion was 6 million probably for at the top end would probably be enough for the Kwijak, and last year we had over 7 By the time they quit count— counting towers quit counting, and I think it might even have got up to 8 because there's always fish going by, seemed like it. So it made a big impact on people that fish in the Kwijak or Naknekwijak.

I fished there since I was 6, but the last 20 years I've been processing fish, taking fish home for my wife to process. I was a direct marketer, but then she also got her own processing license so she can buy fish from other people if I don't bring her enough. And if she does get some, buy some from setnetters, you know, once in a while they'll have a king that, because the processors don't want to pay very much for those kingstons. She'll give them a better— a lot better price for those. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Swenson. So then, do you support the 1-to-1 ratio? Is that— No, you support the 3-to-1?

No, sir. I, I support the 3-to-1. We— when, when the Naknek Special Harvest Area was first implemented a little over 20 years ago, it was 1-to-1. But then at the end of the season, the harvest ended up being 50% for each gear group when the allocation was 16% and 84%. So it took 2 more board cycles to tweak the numbers so that it more reflect on what historical Ketches were.

Okay, thank you.

All right, thank you for your testimony and thank you for being here. Oh, Mike, I'm sorry. Yeah, thank you. I just, I really appreciate the time that you take to be here and provide this information because like out of the blue, not knowing a whole lot about this area, you shed a lot of light on things. Thank you.

Thank you. I'd like to be on the committee as a whole if I could also. Absolutely. We look forward to you participating in committee. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Appreciate your time and your testimony. And with that, I think we'll take a lunch break and come back together at 1:30. Thanks.

All right. Welcome back, everybody. I hope you had an enjoyable lunch, got some fresh air, some sunshine. The time is 1:36. We are back on the record and are going to proceed with public testimony.

First calls from this morning and any first calls from this afternoon will be done at the end of the day today, and we will see if we get through the full public testimony list. We will be adjourning for the day at 5:00, pausing for the day at 5:00 p.m., so we won't be going past 5:00 p.m. So we will just kind of play it by ear and see how far down the list we get. I have to step out for about an hour, but I'm going to go ahead and turn the gavel over to Vice Chair Carpenter to take us through public testimony until I return. So, Mr. Carpenter.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So we left off before lunch. We're going to continue with public testimony. The first person up is Richard Persson, followed by Nate Rose, Brian Blaudin, and Raymond May. So, Mr. Persson, put your name on the record and you have 3 minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the board. My name is Richard Persson.

I'm here to testify on Prince William Sound shrimp and UCI salmon.

I am supporting the RC that the staff has submitted with the new threshold language in it, B-20 and B-40. I don't know if you've gotten that yet. They didn't have a number when I was preparing my testimony, so I can't reference the RC number, but I'm sure you'll recognize it when you get it, if you haven't already.

There's a few proposals for shrimp, but I really think this is the most important piece of regulatory work that you'll be doing on the shrimp— commercial shrimp fishery today, or this, this session. So I'm encouraging your support. I know there's a lot of work that's been gone in by the staff to get these numbers together. It seems very conservative and sustainable, and really hoping these regulations can be applied to this season's fishery. As far as Upper Cook Inlet salmon, I've been an Eastside setnetter for over 50 years, and believe me, it's a little cringy for me to introduce myself as an Eastside dipnetter, but I'm working on it.

It is the gear we have to use currently. My family is going to give it our best shot this summer. Last year we did some experimentation, decided it worked better than we thought it would, and we're going to go all in on it. That's my two sons, both of their households and mine, will be combining at our fish camp where we have for their whole life and my whole life. And giving it a hard go.

When we were setnetters, our motto was, to have a decent fishery, we need time in the water.

We had a lot more gear when we were setnetters. Suffice it to say, we need time in the water with these dip nets to make them work. They're much more subject to tides and weather. I know last year the staff tried to do a good job opening us on the 3 days that we were open when the weather was good and the tides were good. That's pretty tough for us, for a manager to do in Soldotna.

There's Long Beach, a lot of different weather patterns. I really would like to see, um, 312 go through with 7 12-hour openings so we can do the ones, be the ones choosing when to fish. Uh, I've heard talk that there's people think there's got to be a window. If there has to be a window, a 36-hour window, Friday 7 p.m. to Saturday 7 a.m. or Thursday, excuse me, 7 p.m., we could certainly work with.

But if you want us to try and catch some of those extra sockeye, we again are going to need time in the water. So I appreciate that and I'll stop right there. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Any questions from— Mr. Zareh has a question.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

If you had 7-day-a-week fishing, do you, you know, like weather and waves and stuff like that, would you think that it would be normal for there to be less time than 7 days a week fishing? Well, I'll tell you right now, I, uh, Mr. Member Zuri, I just filed for Medicare. So the idea is of 7, 12-hour days in a skiff doesn't make me happy at all. I'm willing to do it, but they wouldn't be full days.

They would be when the tide's right. And this is something I was talking to my son. This, this is a huge paradigm shift for us because as setnetters, if we were open, we were fishing. In this situation, we're going to be— times where we're going to be open and we're going to have to decide, are we going to deploy gear or not? Is this worth the effort?

You know, because obviously if a dip net is coming out of the water, you know, and the boat is plunging up and down over the seas, it's It's going to be marginal. So no, I don't think we'd ever end up with 7 days of fishing. It would just give us the ability to choose which days would be the best. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you.

You know, when I thought of this idea of the dip nets, you know, originally when I did the work on it, I, I was— I would have been fine, and I still am with no time restrictions at all because of the amount of fish that you'd potentially be catching. There was absolutely no problem of like overfishing and catching too many fish, you know.

And so, yeah, so that I'm kind of leaning— anyway, I, that's why I asked the question. Mr. Zarek, did you Please keep in— keep your question to— in the form of a question.

Any other board comments? Thank you, sir, for being here today. Okay, thank you. Next up is Nate Rose.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name is Nate Rose. I'm a fisherman from Kodiak. In 2024, I participated in the Tanner crab fishery, pot cod fishery, jig cod fishery, rockfish jig fishery, halibut longline, salmon seining in Kodiak, and then right back to halibut longlining in the fall. Thank you for the opportunity to comment on Proposal 316, which seeks to change the season dates of the two herring fisheries in the Kodiak area.

This proposal is the outcome of a year-long process within the Herring Revitalization Committee created by this board due to objections from CFEC during the 2024 Kodiak Fin Fish meeting while dealing with a similar proposal. Proposal number 57. This proposal would provide opportunity to an already existing group of permit holders that have watched the evaporation of market demand for a herring product that drove the initial creation of a CFEC limited entry fishery for herring. This would allow that group of permit holders to harvest herring during a time of year when fishermen and processors alike can gain the most value from the herring resource. Additionally, this proposal does not ask for more fish, as staying within the conservation guidelines already established within the GHL is vitally important to the herring resource.

It warrants attention that the proposal before you differs slightly from the RC 67 you voted on in Ketchikan. The defining component that is missing in the proposal as written is the closure between the proposed A and B season for Sacro that would still give the food and bait fishery its exclusive GHL and exclusive time frame sufficient enough to harvest the GHL. The time frame selected for the shortened food and bait fishery was chosen specifically to encompass historical harvest patterns for the fishery. I would also like to note that the vessel that has harvested the food and bait fishery on behalf of the co-op style fishery is also a participant in the Sacro fishery. And is afforded every opportunity under this proposal to harvest herring outside of the proposed designated food and bait fishery.

An RC with substitute language developed in coordination with the department and CFEC will be forthcoming addressing the aforementioned concerns. The environment we are currently operating in has drastically shifted given processor consolidation in Kodiak. We as fishermen have had to adapt But processors are also looking to adapt, and the flexibility this proposal would provide could drive product and market innovation such as tinned or canned kippered and pickled herring. Thank you for consideration of Proposal 316 with substitute language. If I may add, I would caution the board on adoption of the draft policy to allow remote participation by board members.

One of the hallmark components of the board process is access to board board members in a public transparent process. This could open a Pandora's box with the general public requesting the same consideration if it was adopted. So thank you. Thank you, Nate. Any, uh, board questions?

Seeing none, thank you very much.

Uh, Brian Blauden.

Turn your mic on. Good afternoon. It's Brian Blondin.

I'm from Kodiak and I commercial fish cod, Tanner crab, herring, Dungeness, and salmon. I'm against Proposal 293 that is trying to change the start and end date. —Of our Dungeness crab fishery. Kodiak Crab Festival, held during Memorial Day weekend, is a critical event for our community, and fishermen rely on being able to sell their crab live. Shifting the fishery season could jeopardize the tradition.

A part of this fleet also engages in salmon. That could open as early as June 1st. Not likely. But that would give us the proper time to get our pots in the water and get them fishing.

It's a little troubling also that ADFNG has stayed neutral on this. They, uh, this agency has changed the date 2 different times because of gear loss and gear left in the water in the months of November, December.

So I'm not against fisheries starting at the same time. Right now the south end is June 15th and we're May 1st. You know, keeps people from hammering one section and going to the next. I think that was changed a long time before I was fishing. I think, uh, they should start at the same time.

Maybe May 15th, but, uh, let's see.

I also support Proposal 316.

I thank the board for bringing this back. We've been a part of it, herring fishing, for 20 years, maybe 15. The last 5 years, ADF&G has put out these herring bids for the Sacro permit holders in the fall time. To harvest. Uh, for the last 3 years, I was able to find a buyer, and, uh, unfortunately, I was only awarded one lot in 2023 that didn't meet the buyer's needs, but it was something to be caught.

This means I've had to have or tell my buyer multiple times that I couldn't catch the fish that was available, available to be caught. It's incredibly frustrating to have the resource in demand.

I think last year there was thousands of tons, maybe 5,000 tons available that didn't get caught at the Sacro, that if we were able to catch it in, say, September, we would be able to catch. And that's still only 10% of the resource that's actually out there. So it's not giving us more fish, it's giving us different times to catch those fish. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

Any board questions? Thank you. Thanks.

Raven May.

Good afternoon, board members, chair. My name is Raymond May. I'm here to oppose proposal 272 on modifying the fishing season start date from June 15th to July 1st in Norton Sound red king crab.

One of my largest reasons for opposing this is king crab can't live above 55 degrees. I'm sure you can get department biologists to kind of work with you on that if you want to find out more about it. The— I was able to participate in this fishery last year. When I got there, the water temperature was 36 degrees when I started, June 15th. When that season closed, July 13th, my water temperature was 53 degrees.

It's challenging to try to get those— keep those things alive. I don't, I don't think they understand that the proposer understands how detrimental that could be to that fishery in the future. Um, we can go down the market road and talk about getting some of the first crab in the market that summer. Uh, you got the brown king crab in the Bering Sea that is to start competing with that crab if you get some of that stuff out right away. This all kind of collides to, I think, diminishing the possibilities there or minimizing your possibilities if you change that season date.

I'm also opposed to 274. Uh, in Norton Sound, changing that crab size from 4¾ to 5-inch. All the markets are going to require 5-inch or bigger. It just gives us a little grace period if a small one gets inside there so that we're not dealing with a different trooper every time they come and measure your crab. That's my only reason for that.

I'm just trying to stay away from a legal issue. Other than that, I think 5-inch is a very respectable size for everybody to keep, and markets kind of keep us honest on that.

Obviously, I am the proposer of 289, and I support that. We can take that up more in committee as a whole. Uh, 290, I do not support that over market reasons. 290, I've been a part of that Kodiak crab committee over the years. I'm still a member.

We have looked at trying to change those season dates a lot of times and nothing works because we run into— we're not going to have a market. Other fishers are going on, they can't process. We've looked at going earlier, later. Where it's set is where it probably needs to be for us to maximize our value there. I'm also in favor of Proposal 284 on catcher vessels being able to possibly tender Tanner crab in the Kodiak area.

Thank you, Ray. Any questions? I had a question on Proposal 284. You know, this, this issue has come before the board before, but not in the form of a proposal. I think it was an emergency petition a few years back.

And can you talk about any sort of a brief description of the history behind why this has been in place in Kodiak. I mean, the Dungeness fishery has different regulation in regard to tendering. Do you have any idea why the current regulation exists specific to the Tanner crab fishery? I don't believe I have enough history for that, but I can tell you— I guess I can give you my opinion on what I think is healthy for this proposal is it's helping small boats and big boats. In general, whether it's weather, product value.

But as far as history, why Tanner crab hasn't followed the same regulations as Dungeness crab, I think that's somewhat of the intent of the proposers to try to follow that regulation. Right. Okay. Thank you for that. Anything else?

Thanks for being here today, Ray. Michael Han.

Mr. Chairman, members of the board, my name is Michael Hand. I'm from Cordova. I participate in Prince William Sound salmon, sablefish, and shrimp fisheries. I currently serve as a board member for CDFU. Prince William Sound fishery— shrimp fishery is a unique small-scale fishery for our area.

Most participants, including my family, direct market their catch. I operate a tender processor that buys shrimp from other shrimpers who don't direct market. Our shrimp are frozen at sea, packaged, and ready to sell. We return to Cordova when the opener is over and have dock sales. Where we sell most of our catch to people from town.

Since Cordova is far from the area of the Sound with shrimp populations, often our catch is the only access for many of these Alaskans to have shrimp. I support the alternative language that is being created for Proposal 303 that creates these new thresholds for harvest. I believe that the new management model presented by staff will protect the stock from overharvest and allow for its quick recovery in times of low abundance. Using B20 as a cutoff with no— where no harvest is allowed is what management wants to ensure the sustainability of the resource. B40 is the next TAH threshold that needs to be in place to limit harvest.

I believe this should be used as a trigger for closing both commercial and sport fisheries. If this were the case, subsistence fishing would still be allowed to take place. Sharing the burden of conservation in times of low abundance is vital for the health of our fisheries around the state.

If this commercial fishery were to occur at these lower TAHs, I believe that Proposal 306 should be passed. This requires daily reporting in the commercial fishery. This is a common requirement in small quota fisheries around the state. Last year I took place in the Kodiak Tanner fishery. Often there are over 100 boats participating, or at least last year there was over 100 boats participating in the Kodiak Tanner crab fishery, and each is required to report their catch each night so managers can manage to that GHL.

This should be required in our shrimp fisheries so that we can have efficient openers managed to the GHL. Currently, tenders and catcher processors are required, required to report daily. So asking the remaining participants to report is not too much of a burden. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate the work both the sport and commercial managers did, as well as members of the board, to solve our shrimp issues at this meeting.

So thank you. Thank you, Michael. Any questions? Thanks for being here today.

Christopher Johnson.

Hello, Chair, board members. My name is Christopher Johnson. I am a second-generation fisherman from Kodiak. I own an operation down there with my wife. I participate in the cod, rockfish, salmon, Tanner crab, and sea cucumber fisheries.

I also own a roe herring gillnet permit and all the subsequent gear. I'm here to speak or to voice my strong support for Proposal 316 with the substitute language provided by RC 38. I'm not sure if you've had a chance to see that yet.

I've been participating in the Board of Fish process for about 15 years, and each time that I'm here, I find myself advocating for the same things: access and opportunity. My support for Proposal 316 with its substitute language stems from the same ethos. Fishery access is the lifeblood of rural coastal communities, and any proposal that has a reasonable chance of increasing access I think is something that I will support. In the face of current market dynamics, these, these different opportunities are what keeps fishermen and fishing communities resilient in the face of pretty strong headwinds right now. And this board has a great opportunity here at this meeting to bolster kind of the embattled small, small boat fleet in Kodiak by evolving the current herring management plan to allow Sacro permit holders to harvest their allocation when the market demand is high.

This would have profound benefits to our community as a whole. That's it. Thank you for allowing me the time and the opportunity to provide my input. Thank you, sir. Any questions?

Thanks for being here.

Sarah Hudkins.

Thank you to the chair and to the board for your time today. My name is Sarah Hudkins. I'm a third-generation commercial fisherman. Our family has been fishing on Salamatoff Beach and Cook Inlet for over 100 years now. I'm a Kenaitze tribal member, and I'm proud to continue our family's legacy fishing along alongside my children and 3 grandchildren.

I'm a better fisherman than I am a public speaker, so excuse me. My family and I support Proposal 313. This summer, my husband and I and our family were honored to work with the Gabriels and the Everys to test the set beach seine on our historical beach site. Fishing with a set beach seine is a biologically responsible and clean way to harvest salmon. It allows fishermen the ability to harvest a target species while also allowing for the live release of all non-targeted species.

This gear type must be constantly tended to be fished properly, which equates to the net being 100% observed by the operators and crew. The Eastside Setnet fishery has been tarnished by its reputation of fishing with non- discriminative set gillnets. It's that very reason our fishery has been severely restricted since 2012. We have been asked by the board and members of the department to work on a solution and feel that we have done just that. With the guidance of the board, we would love the opportunity to expand on this clean harvest method.

Over the past 100 years, our fishery has changed a lot. We've gone from fish traps to set nets to dip netting, and now with the hopes of evolving even further. We feel our data proves again that we can harvest a surplus of sockeye salmon while prioritizing the release of king salmon using a set beach seine. I want to thank you all for your time today and look forward to having further discussions. Thank you.

Any questions? Thanks for being here today. Thank you. Monty Roberts.

Good afternoon, Chairman, members of the board. My name is Monty Roberts. I'm resident of Soldotna. I'm the president of the Kenai River Professional Guide Association, and I'm here today to talk about proposals 312, 313, and 316, and more than just my opposition to those. I, I appreciate the efforts that the— my neighbors went to to try to find a clean fishery.

I sat through a couple of presentations that they put on and I applaud their efforts. But at the end of the day, I ended up with more questions than I had answers. And I'm not sure that we've got there yet. So I would encourage caution in moving forward slowly maybe more research and figuring out before we, we open this, you know, potential can of worms. And then on top of that, there's a couple of proposals that look to increase effort on forage fish, herring and shrimp.

They, they end up affecting us as well. You know, the kings eat both of those things. We're having problems getting kings back, and I would say that it's mostly due to ocean survivability and not enough food to eat. And so I don't think that right now is the right time to be increasing harvest on what's perceived, you know, plentiful species when we know we're not getting kings and silvers back. And then lastly, I'm against the, the catch and release of silvers in the nearshore fishery.

We can't catch and release silvers in river below the bridge because Commissioner Lang did a study and they had very, very high mortality rates when they're doing that that switch over from marine environment to in-river environment. And, you know, his, his study had like 60% mortality rate in that estuary environment. So I'm, I'm not in support of, of, uh, catch and release silvers in this. So those are the main reasons I'm here today. Thank you, Monty.

Any questions from anyone? I guess just one question.

You know, depending on board action, would you be in support of, you know, continuing to look at the beach sanding opportunities through a commissioner's permit over the next 2 or 3 years to see what kind of more information can be possibly built out of that? Chairman, yes, I totally support them researching it more. I heard a testifier earlier talk about tags. You know, it would be interesting to find out what number of those kings that were released from the seine did end up on spawning beds. That would be helpful.

And I'm not saying that I'm not convinced that this might not be a future solution, but I think it's early to jump in and say, yeah, we're gonna test it and find out, because we're in dangerously dangerous territory in both Kings and Silvers. All right, thank you for that. Anything else? Appreciate you being here today. Thanks.

Brian Gabriel.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, members of the board. For the record, my name is Brian Gabriel, and the purpose of my testimony is to speak to RC 24, which is substitute language for Proposal 313. RC 24 submitted and proposed regulatory language with the first section containing red text that explains is the purpose of this section. The proposed language would be a new Section 6 contained in the Stock and Management Concern immediately following the commercial div net regulations.

New Section 6 starts with defining the seasons from June 25th through August 15th. This is a change from Proposal 313, which started the season on June 20th. Section 6A through the remainder of 6D authorizes the use of set beach seines as an alternative type while in the stock and management concern. Also defining the season start for the Kasilof District on or after June 25th, North Kalafonski Beach on or after July 1st, and Salamonoff East Forelands beaches on or after July 8th. The season and start times correspond to what is currently in the Kasilof and Kenai sockeye management plans.

Section 6(e) states that seines may not be fished concurrently with gillnets in the case the department projects 14,000— greater than 14,250 large late-run Kenai kings. Section 6(f) asks for 3 openings per week, 12 hours per day, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., with additional time by emergency order based on— based on abundance. Section 6(g) stipulates that a permit holder can only fish one beach Sane Section 6H is a significant, significant change from Proposal 313 in that it would reduce the length of the sane from 100 fathoms or 600 feet to 70 fathoms or 420 feet. Additionally, the sane depth would be reduced from 215 mesh or approximately 60 feet to 110 mesh or approximately 30 feet, including shaping and border strips. The mesh size remains at 3.5-inch.

References to lead line weight was removed, and I will note that these are maximum dimensions and fishermen will be allowed to fish gear less than these dimensions. Section 6(i) states that retention of king salmon is prohibited. Section 6(j) prohibits retention of coho salmon after July 31st. This was added to address concerns of coho abundance. Section 6(k) defines that seines will be set from shore or waterline with one end anchored anchored in the outside and must be set and retrieved back to shore waterline using a running line.

Section 6L defines that seines must be set from the State of Alaska DNR-issued lease, City of Kenai-issued lease, or historically fished locations. Section K and L provide for an orderly fishery, fishery, and protect leaseholders where some fishing locations have been family-owned and operated for over 100 years. Section 6M iterates what is already in regulation, and that's for other commercial fishing gear cannot be within 600 feet from each other. Section N clarifies that a beach seine has stopped fishing when the entire lead line is above the waterline. And finally, Section O addresses concerns that the seine must be attended at all times.

I will be available during the committee as a whole. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gabriel. Any questions from anyone? I have one question on letter G. It states in your RC that an SO4H commercial set net CFEC permit holder may not operate more than one set beach seine per permit.

So let's just use you for an example. Let's say you had 6 set net permits, you had one site, could you technically operate 6 beach scenes? Mr. Chair, no, just because the way this is designed. And it's a good question because there's 400-some set nets or set gillnets permits in our area.

So will you be seeing 400-some scenes? No, you won't. We have 4 beach nets. We own 3. Permits.

We can fish 9, normally 9 gillnets. We have 4 beach net locations. We would fish 1 seine. And I think as Mr. Hollier testified, on North Cave Beach where there's 30 setnets, you would see about 6, maybe 8 seines in that section. So yeah, no, the answer, the answer is no.

And the other, the other part to this that I just want to touch on, if I, if I may, is that We've heard about fairness, and I just want to point out about 80% of the permits in the Eastside Setnet fishery are tied to beach locations. Most of the people that have beach sites have expanded out through their family and their operations. So this would provide opportunity to approximately 75 to 80% of the operations that fish on the Eastside. Thank you for that. Any other questions?

Thanks for being here. We'll look forward to you in Committee of the Whole. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Next up is Earl Kreiger.

Er, he'll be here for second call. Okay. Next up is Axel Koppen.

No Axel. Steve Reiser.

Tony Zock.

Steve Reaser.

Okay. Adelia Myrick.

Hi, Adelia. You got a taker.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the Board of Fish. For the record, I'm Adelia Myrick, speaking in my role as president of the Northwest Setnetters Association, which represents Kodiak's Northwest districts set netters. Our organization submitted Proposal 315, formerly ACR 14, as a housekeeping item to fix this issue that was simply overlooked at the last minute at our Board of Fish meeting in January 2024. Our public comment is PC 186.

At that January Board of Fish meeting, a last-minute RC was taken up after public comment had closed. Which added 25 fathoms of web for setnetters in our district. This changed 5 AAC 18.331, Gillnet Specifications and Operations. That regulation includes subpoints A, B, C, D, E, and F, which delineate how set gillnets in Kodiak operate. While the language in Point A was changed, it escaped everyone's notice that point E regarding joint ventures also addresses length of gear and should have been changed to follow along.

Since 1985, joint ventures have always mirrored the total length of fathoms per permit holder, and those of us involved in the meeting last January assumed that changing the number of fathoms per permit holder would automatically update the joint venture language to follow along. What that oversight created was a problem where fishermen who want to utilize the joint venture provision are not able to fish the full length of gear allowed all permit holders in our district. We are here out of cycle because until this language is fixed, the setnetters in our district are losing out on the joint venture tool. Why would they voluntarily fish 25 fathoms less than other permit holders in order to configure their gear? With another set netter.

The number of joint ventures registered with ADFNG has dropped from a 10-year average of 11 down to only 4 in 2024. As I mentioned, this came up after public comment period had ended, and there were no questions to the department about this when it could have been addressed and fixed. Now is the time that we can do that, and I would like to thank you all for voting unanimously to take this up when we came to you with the ACR 14 in October. We would appreciate having the joint venture tool back to support our fishery that is struggling. No one meant to throw a monkey wrench into joint ventures.

This was simply an oversight. I appreciate greatly your assistance in fixing this problem, and I'm available for any questions and will be here during Committee of the Whole. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here. Any questions From anyone?

Yeah, I mean, thanks for bringing it to the board's attention, and we'll obviously take this up. And if you're going to be here for committee of the whole, then we can talk more about it then. So thank you.

Jane Petrich.

Good afternoon, members of the Board of Fish and the chair. My name is Jane Petridge, and I'm here in support of Proposal 315. I am a Kodiak Island Westside setnetter. During the 2024 Board of Fish meetings in Kodiak, the Board of Fish voted to increase the aggregate length per permit of our gillnets from 150 fathoms to 175 fathoms. Due to an oversight at that meeting, the joint venture provision in regulations, which allows two set net permit holders to form a joint venture, was overlooked, and the aggregate length of nets for permit holders forming a joint venture remained at 150 fathoms and was not updated to reflect the additional 25 fathoms per permit.

My family has used the joint venture tool for the past 20 years but chose not to form joint ventures last season as it would have meant fishing 50 fathoms less gear for each venture. Economically, setnetters are holding on by our fingertips in this fishery on Kodiak Island. We need to take advantage of every tool that is available to us. Please correct this oversight and bring the aggregate length of gear we are allowed to fish with a joint venture to 300 fathoms and thus reflects the regulation as approved at the 2024 Board of Fish meetings in Kodiak. Thank you for your time and your support of this proposal.

Thanks for being here. Any, any board questions? Thank you.

Uh, let's see, next up is Tom Weischer.

Don't see him.

Eric O'Brien.

Darren Platt.

Landry Price.

Sam Munch.

Hello, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. My name is Sam Much.

Today I'm representing the Kodiak Food and Bait Herring Association.

We are presenting a solution and compromise to Proposal 316. Substitute language is attached in RC 37.

Kodiak's fall food and bait season has been limited entry for 24 years. We've worked together to expand our markets, and in recent years we are shipping 50% of our harvest out of Kodiak. We are the only herring fishery in the state that has harvested the GHL for the past 5 years. Our fishery would be adversely affected if Proposal 316 as written was adopted. It would allow up to 60 seine permits and as much as 6,000 tons of herring to be rolled into our existing limited entry fishery.

Our market share and fish value would decrease. The fishermen in support of expanding the sacro permits into the fall limited entry season have given testimony about herring food markets that they would like to access.

The Kodiak Food and Bait Herring Association proposes the following solution to allow access to our local herring stock for food. No fisherman ever purchased a Kodiak sacro herring permit with the expectation of fishing for fall food and bait.

With the adoption of the substitute language for 316, the Kodiak food and bait limited entry fishermen will unanimously support our sacro fishermen by agreeing to allow the sacro fishermen to have a food product code endorsement added to their sacro micro permits. All 9 permit holders agree to this solution. This will help get past the legal hurdles of adding a product code to a fishery where a limited fishery— limited entry fishery already exists. This will allow them to harvest food herring after the roe season. The attached substitute language allows the traditional fall food and bait fishery to continue to harvest bait and allows the Sacro fishery the addition of accessing their herring for the food markets.

Based on the 2025 Kodiak herring GHL, there would be an estimated 6,000 tons of unharvested roe herring to be evenly split between the two groups. This is a win for both sides. After 24 years, the Kodiak food and bait fishery would have enough quota for more than one of its permit holders to participate in the fishery as regulated by ADFNG. G in the past. The new Sacro and food fishery will be able to harvest herring for an additional 5 months for food.

The Kodiak food and bait season shall stay the same dates from September 1st to February 28th.

And I'll be around for the Committee of Whole as well. Thank you. Thanks, Sam. Any questions? Yeah, I think we just got this RC, so we're going to need a little time to digest it.

At least I am personally. So thanks for bringing it to our attention. And if you're going to be for committee, I'm sure we'll have more questions for you at that time. So thanks.

Dan McDonald.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Mr. Chairman, members of the board, can you hear me? Okay, thank you. Yeah, I'm Dan McDonald, and I've been working with Sam Much on this alternative compromise proposal that you just got. And first of all, we understand the distress that the Sacro fishery has experienced, and they've done it— sounds like a lot of work trying to develop these new food markets, and we're in support of all that effort and hope it goes well for them.

We as food and bait permit holders have not been able to find those markets, and so we take our hat off to them and wish them luck. And as Sam said, at the same time, we don't think it's fair to let an unspecified number of participants participants into the bait fishery. And it's a developed fishery, been operating as a combine since 2001. That was even before limited entry. And it was mandated by the department that we fish that way, one boat at a time.

So I know there's been a lot of resentment toward the combine, but until 2024 when the announcement came out, I think it was October 1st, that we could go fishing, none of us knew up to that point that the combine wasn't gonna be required. So it caught the rest of us off guard and didn't give us time to muster up an operation, and so we let the combine go forward. And if there is more fish to catch, well then, yeah, there could be more opportunity for all of us.

So our proposal would keep the number of food and bait herring permits at the existing number, 5 per seine, 4 trawl, and it would retain the exclusive access to harvest bait herring with purse seine or trawl gear. And if there's a compromise achieved between us two groups, then there would simply be no more need for action by the board or CFEC in our opinion.

The combine's been operating in a very efficient manner for most of the recent years. It's organized. Based on market orders, and the market really is the whole thing. And it generally has happened when processors in Kodiak have finished their bee season, pollock. The plants are still open, and that's when they want the herring caught.

And so in the original proposal 316, it specifies 36 days of fishing opportunity for us, but throughout the history of the fishery, it's been much larger than that.

And then it would be, of course, up to you guys and CFEC to decide how many new entrants to allow into the new food sacro fishery. And we are, as Sam has already said, suggesting amendments regarding seasons and allocation. Dan, your time's up. It is? Yep.

Oh, sorry. Goes quick. Yeah, I have a couple other things, but I would appreciate a chance at the committee, please. You're going to be here for the committee? Yes.

Okay. I'll be here all week. Let's see if there's any questions from anyone. Okay, seeing none, we'll see you during committee of the whole. Thank you.

Thanks for being here. Thank you.

Mike Hagren.

Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you for being here. I know the cost you have to your personal lives just to sit there. Mike Hargren.

Been pooten bait fisherman since 1980. Been involved in the season for a long time. It's a— there's a lot of fallacies that were brought out by CFEC and ADF&G. I just wanted to address some of those. They're using 120-ton average for the trawlers in all of their presentations to you board members explaining the fishery and how they can't restrict the trawlers.

And that's what's wrong. I own the largest trawler that was permitted, and it only carries 90 ton, and the other vessels are 60 to 75 tons. And with the midwater gear and electronics we have, we know exactly what we're catching. A lot of our market orders would be for 30 or 40 ton, and that's what we'd harvest. So there really isn't a problem with overharvesting.

The fishery is different than a typical sacro fishery and whatnot because most of the fishery takes place in the deeper waters and offshore in the Shilohkof and the Aleutak and East Side, and that's where the trawlers actually worked well at. However, then the Sacro-Sainers came in and have adapted to the fishery also. And I don't have any problem with the Sacro. It's just that I don't believe that we should have the fishery taken away from the trawl sector. The reason that there aren't— haven't been any trawlers for the last 25 years is when they had the problem with the Sainers back in around '99, Peter Basco, the regional director, closed the fishery and said that fishery would not open again until a co-op was formed and we figured it out.

And they started the limited entry and they said the only way you're going to go ahead with it is with a co-op. And if you recall back then, the price of salmon was pretty low. Strollers. We had the pollock fishery and whatnot going on and let the Secro guys go and— or the same guys go and harvest the fish. We created a co-op.

Everything's worked. It's actually worked very well since, until we got caught off guard here this fall. But that wasn't a problem. Anyway, it's a market-driven fishery. In the past, back when king crab started on September 15th, we'd usually catch some product for that opening.

Then when those dates went to October 15th, we'd catch product that'd be shipped out to Dutch. And then the remainder of the product was normally caught in December and January for the Tanner crab fisheries and whatnot. And so that's part of the reason why the fisheries only takes place. I mean, the harvests are tied to when the processor wants it. It's not tied to the calendar.

And that's just some of the reasons. I mean, I just wanted to kind of correct a few of those fallacies that are written there. Thank you, Mike. Your time's up. Any questions from anyone?

Thanks for being here, and I don't know if you're going to be here for Committee of the Whole, but But if you are, we will look forward to talking to you more about it then. Thank you. Max Mutch, not here.

Next up is Tom Hagberg.

Tom, are you going to be doing your personal testimony first or your AC? Okay. Go right ahead when you're ready.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thomas Hagberg. I'm the vice chairman of the Anchor Point— or excuse me, of the Homer Fish and Game Commission. You'll see in the past you probably talked to somebody else.

He got a job out of state and is no longer involved. So as they say in the business, I'm it.

The Homer AC has 14 members, usually filled. We have setnetters, we have drifters, gillnet drifters, seiners. Currently on the board, some charter fishermen, myself included, although I just retired. I also have a permit to jig cod. Quite a diverse— we also have the past chairman of the Anchorage Autobahn Society.

So you can believe we know about birds. And our next meeting in April, right after that we'll have some new elections and there will be some new members on the board. It's been several years now since we have not had an 8-person quorum as we had at our meeting last night. Some of the issues that we talked about: Proposal 263, which was to allow the subsistence villages on the end of the peninsula to have a small dungeness season. These are true subsistence villages.

They're not competing with anybody, and we're all in favor of support on 263.

I have two proposals in there myself, which I'll talk on my personal time. One that we were in support of was the razor clam proposals. I might point out that reduce the razor clam limit as follows to lower it down to 15. I've been at three of these meetings trying to reduce it. 60 To 30.

Always the department said there was plenty of clams, and the board supported them on a 60 clam limit, uh, until there were no clams. So now we're down to 15 clams, which I put in that proposal. I put mine in before the Fish and Game proposal. It's heartening to see that they finally realize that the Lower Cook Inlet is not going to support a 60 clam limit. Uh, their proposal 270 modify the sport and personal use fishery.

Uh, we had a choice between July and August. Uh, the majority of us chose July. If you want to know why, look at the tide book. There's some monster tides there in early July. It's good for digging.

So we supported that for Fish and Game with a July opening.

Forest proposal 267 went— modify the non-commercial Tanner crab fishery. That was a split vote, 5 for, 5 against. The people that were opposed to it is because it involves a trawl survey. They haven't done one in there since 2019, that trawl survey for most of us, we had a shrimp fishery in there based on that trawl survey. Lasted a few years.

There has not been a fishery in over 30 years in that trawl survey. And when you want to know why they want to do it, let's see if there's enough crab for a commercial tanner crab fishery. They were doing that survey When we had one, we overharvested. There hasn't been a commercial Tanner crab fishery in a long time. There has not been a Tanner crab fishery in a long time.

And this was all based on that trawl survey. So some of us are adamantly opposed to starting up that trawl survey. If some of you have not seen the results of one of those trawl surveys, I would like you to take a ride on one and see what comes up. Some of the bottom mud down there.

The rest of this stuff, those were the main issues. Razor clams, lower the limit, give us a limited fishery, don't do the trawl survey, give Port Graham down there and Nonwalleye their Tanner crab fishery. If there's no questions, Mr. Chairman, on the the Homer Fish and Game Commission part. I'll give my own personal testimony.

All right, let's see if anyone has any questions real quick. I don't see any. Go ahead and give your personal testimony. I put in two proposals. One was to allow, uh, Tanner crab, uh, well, I'll do proposal 268 to start with.

That was to prohibit harvest of Tanner crab from the charter vessel as follows. I've been a charter operator for 42 years. What I'm doing is giving access to people that don't have boats but want their share of the resource. We already have one of the tightest regulations in the state. There's 2 pots per boat, 3 crabs per person, 20 person crab limit per year.

Uh, get a permit, write it all down. So I did not favor the prohibit of Tanner crabs from a charter vessel. People need to be able to access the resource. Uh, again, 271. Over the years I've seen razor clams limit the size and the percentage of clams in the harvest go down, down.

I've also seen people raised up, and four-wheelers has become a big issue. You can cruise that beach with 4 people on a quad, and the clams get no place to hide. 15 Clams is what we want. The other proposal on Dungeness crab was to allow the retention of 1 Dungeness crab in your 3 clam 3 crab limit, and as part of your 20 crab a year harvest, 5 Dungeness could be harvested. It was simply to get something in the paperwork and start a small harvest.

It won't amount to much, but it will give personal fishermen a chance. The people that were opposed to that were commercial fishermen who have permits, limited entry permits, 40 or 50 of those. If they can't catch crab, they didn't think anybody else should be able to. Yeah, I'm somewhat opposed to that attitude, but, uh, and I will be here for the rest of the program.

That looks like it for right now, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, sir. Any questions from anyone? Thanks for being here today.

You're welcome. Uh, Julie Kavanaugh. You're going to do yourself, uh, your personal first. Okay. Yes, please.

Red means on.

Good afternoon, Chairman and board members. My name is Julie Kavanagh. I'm from Kodiak, Alaska, and our family is 100% dependent on fishing for income. I'm in support of Proposals 282, 284, 292, 293, 296, and 296. Today I'll be speaking to Proposals 284 and 293.

Proposal 284, which allows which would allow catcher vessels to tender tanner crab. We support the AC's amendment to provide a management tool to account for catch before changing districts. This proposal, if adopted, would provide access to additional markets, improve vessel value, prevent or erase potential backlog of deliveries, improve quality, and reduce dead loss. The Kodiak tanner crab fishery is a well-established limited entry fishery. Even though tendering is allowed, vessels designed to hold crabs are not always available, and individual harvests are not always large enough to support these large tender vessels.

Allowing catcher vessels to also tender fills a need, provides for— provides safety for smaller vessels and cost savings to the fleet. Proposal 293. The following is a letter from the author of of this proposal.

Dear Chair and members of the board, my name is Garrett Kavanaugh. I am 26 years old and have been fishing Dungeness and Kodiak for 6 years. Dungeness were always my dream fishery since we tendered for the fishing vessel Point Omega, who gave— whom gave me my first taste by taking me on deck for a pick. This fishery has treated me well and I have been able to invest in the fishery, purchasing 100 pots, which was a $180,000 expense. I submitted this proposal to change the dates for economical and biological reasons.

The recently implemented pot limit has reduced our catching ability and reduced our harvests. Extending the season would provide additional opportunity for current participants and potential additional vessels when the salmon season ends. Changing the start date to June 1st islandwide provides a fair start for all vessels and would encourage the fleet to spread out. The later start date— the late— later start date is also intended to avoid soft-shelled crabs that are seen in early May. I have heard that a later end date may lead to increased gear loss, and I strongly disagree.

The recent pot limits have dictated that vessels set more manageable amounts of gear and are now— and pots are now extremely expensive, and neither owners nor crew want to lose gear. Gear loss is commonly deducted from the gross, and no one wants to see that. I would also note that the subsistence and sport Dungeness and Kodiak is open January 1st through December 31st, providing year-round access. This fishery has been approximately 50% of my income, and I am highly dependent on it. I appreciate your consideration, and I believe and Mrs. Kavanagh could take any questions you have.

Thanks, Julie. Anybody have any questions for Julie? I don't see any. Julie, you want to go ahead and give your AC comments? Yep, I'll switch hats.

Again, my name is Julie Kavanagh, for the record. I'm the vice chair of the Kodiak Advisory Committee. We took up about 11 proposals, and I'll briefly go through them and see if you guys have any questions. We took up Proposal 282. We were unanimously in favor of requiring Tanner crab escape mechanisms in pots, and it will— this— these escapement rings are particularly effective at excluding the female Tanner crabs, so there'd be less sorting of those animals.

Animals. Proposal 284, we supported as amended, and this is a— this would be to allow vessels to simultaneously harvest and tender crab. The amended language is basically so that a boat that is a catcher and a tender cannot tender its own crab. And the reason for this is different districts. And if you're going to switch districts, they— the— I believe management wants a tool to be able to ensure that those crabs are accounted for in the right district.

So the— that amendment is pretty important.

There is quite a bit of written notes if you want to read fleet through them. There was one opposed, and they felt that it would primarily, primarily benefit larger crab boats and could further encourage development of a capitalized mosquito fleet. 289, Reduce Tanner pot limit around Kodiak to 20 pots regardless of the GHL. We supported that unanimously. Right now, if, if the GHL is high enough, you can go up to 30 pots, but leaving it at 20 pots for all GH levels will help with management and catch rates, we believe.

Proposal 290 changed the season date from January 15th to February 20th for the Tanner crab, reducing the season to 40 days. We unanimously opposed this. We see a lot of conflict with other fisheries. One would be in Kodiak that is important is the pollock fishery that has been starting around the middle of February. Also, we foresee that such a short season might lead to foregone harvest and opportunity.

Proposal 292, streamline, streamline Tanner crab landing requirements. Supported that unanimously. 293, Change season dates for Kodiak Dungeness crab fishery. That vote was slightly split, 12 to 2. There was an amendment to change the season end date to November 15th instead of November 30th.

That was a compromise. It was just a number that someone picked out because there was a little bit of concern from the two opposed that there would be more competition in the fall for the subsistence and sport users.

There, there's some comments on there if you want to go through it, or if you have any questions on that proposal. The, the actual amendment, or the actual motion as amended felt that having a unified start date would benefit, and a later start would, is a benefit for fairness, and a later start date.

Oh, I also forgot that under the supported amendment, the notes under that, there's a typo. It was supposed to say June 1st and it says June 15th, so that was a mistake. I checked with the secretary to make sure that I could state on the record that that was not intended to be June 15th. The only amendment was the end, the end time of the season, not the beginning. So make sure that that's there.

I'll just go ahead and go on to 296, repeal vessel inspection requirement for Area J, Dungeness. That was unanimous. 297, Expand exemption from prohibiting on operating Pacific cod gear during the Dungeness crab fishery. That passed 11 to 2 in support of that. There was very little chance that Pacific cod would be caught in Dungeness gears or that Dungeness crab would be caught in Pacific cod gear and that there was no conservation concern for either species.

And there is almost no overlap between the two fisheries. Fisheries. Opposed, there was a concern that the regulation would create an incentive to participate in both fisheries, particularly federal pot cod participants in the open access Dungeness fishery. Proposal 298, amend scallop management plan to prohibit dredge gear. The Kodiak AC amended by substitution, and I'll go ahead and read that into the record.

The Kodiak AC recommends that the last Alaska Board of Fisheries grant the authority to the Commissioner of Fish and Game to issue a commissioner's permit when appropriate for a state water scallop fishery. And basically the AC does not support disrupting the ongoing scallop fishery. And there's a few other comments on that. Proposal 309, change Area J shrimp season dates, including moving the start date from June 1st to April 1st. We unanimously opposed that.

315, Align joint venture set gillnet limits. We unanimously supported that. And 316, change the Kodiak sac roe season to herring season and extend the herring season 7 months. That passed as amended 11 to 2. The amendment read that the amended A season end date would be changed from January 1st to October 25th, and that was to separate out the two fisheries, the, the existing food and bait from the potentially new just herring fishery.

And we had a lot of discussion on this. And so if anybody has any questions on our minutes, I'd be happy to address them. Thank you, Julie. I have one question about the Tanner crab tendering proposal. Could you just touch— I believe you said that the AC had some sort of amendment that they wanted to include in that.

Could you just reiterate what you said specific to that? Yeah. So I'll— yeah, thank you. Through the chair, we had an amendment on 284 and the language read, um, catcher tender vessels prohibit catcher tender vessels from tendering their own catch for the purposes of satisfying delivery requirements related to switching in in-season section registration. And during the meeting, we had some comments from staff department, and we felt like this amendment would cover that.

There might need to be a little bit of language cleanup if it was— if that amendment was going to be used. The Tanner crab fishery is separated into districts, and when a district is fully harvested, you have to unregister and register in a new area. And you have— there's landing requirements, and if you're a catcher vessel, you can meet that requirement by delivering to a tender or a land-based processor. But we want to prohibit a catcher tender if, if it becomes allowed from cutting that, doing their own landing ticket, because they want to be able to account for the crab in the right district. Okay, that's, that's good clarification.

And then I assume that there was department staff there at your meeting, and I assume they You know, was there any commentary from them in regards to the amended language? Did that satisfy some of their concerns that, you know, the local managers had? They let us fly with it. I don't know that they actually fully endorsed it, but I think we captured the concern that they had. And I think I'd be more comfortable having asking them if, if that captured all the concerns they had.

I don't recall them saying, "Yay," that's the right language. Yeah, no, I don't want to hold you to anything. I can certainly check into that a little bit, but thanks for bringing it to our attention for sure. Any other board questions for the Kodiak AC? I don't see anything.

Julie, I don't know if you'll be here for Committee of the Whole or not, but if so, we'll talk to you later, and thanks for being here today. Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate it. Um, appreciate all the time you guys put into this. I know it's a lot of reading.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

So before we, before we move on, I think we're going to take a 15-minute break and we'll come back on the record about 3:05. Thanks.

Welcome back, everyone. Time is 3:17. Back on the record, continuing on with public testimony. We're getting towards the end of our list here, and then we'll go back and do the, um, second calls from those that were missed earlier today. Um, so next up is Gordon Scott with the Whittier AC.

Hi Gordon, welcome.

Right, I'm Gordon Scott, uh, representing Wood Ear Advisory Committee, and we had a meeting on January 16th, it was, to go over the proposals. I'm going to cover two CRAB ones really quickly to start with. They were Proposal 266. Basically, didn't seem to like it, but didn't know a whole lot about it. Thought it would be hard to enforce and just tabled it with no action at all.

And Proposal 268, also Tina Crabb, and this one, some people were adamantly opposed to it as it sets precedent for charter owners. We get a motion to support which failed 5 to 1, 5 to 1 abstain. So no action on that.

Okay.

The rest of the meeting was about the shrimp, Prince William County shrimp proposals. To go back, the advisory committee makeup of that meeting, there were 3 commercial in sport shrimpers there. And there were 2 charter and sport operators and one— I think he's charter and sport, but I know he's at least sport. Those are the people present at the meeting. And the department had a good strong presence that was very much appreciated.

There were 4 people from the department and there were 3 public there.

Okay. I'll just go through the proposals. 299 Was one. It was co-authored by the Woodyard Advisory Council and Valdez one back last April. And comments we heard about this, there was a lot of discussion at this meeting.

There was some precedent for this down in Southeast Alaska with a task force. This is kind of an attempt to get conversations going.

A standout comment was the department, you know, said that basically they wouldn't be unwilling to work with the stakeholders to improve management.

And that was really nice to hear.

Some people thought that the intentions of this is to make closures in the sport fisheries. I think the intentions were more enforcement-driven to try to keep the sport fisheries to their GHL. You know, there was talk that it's not a proposal in front of the board except within this idea of everybody getting together and realigning everything. There was a lot of talk that a bag and possession limit on the non-commercial fisheries would be really good and it would be an enforceable tool. Which there really aren't any on that side now, or very minimal.

There was comment that people have seen sport people coming in with 100-quart coolers full of shrimp, and they can't do that legally, even though they haven't seen them pull the pots.

Yeah, there was a lot of things that went on.

And we ended up bringing it to a vote and it was voted to support unanimous. So, and then throughout the rest of the meeting, it's like, how do we deal with these other proposals if we like 299? It kind of covers everything, but we kind of realized that if the board does not support or does no action on 299, we should take positions on all of these others. And now that mantra was not really totally followed. But anyway, we'll go through them one by one.

Proposal 300, which makes the— you know, I didn't really understand it that well, but basically The department summarizes to divide the non-commercial GHL amongst the 3 commercial areas and wouldn't allow take from other areas. And ended up, we just decided that we really don't want to comment on this, and we voted yes for no action. That passed 3 to 2.

So that's a no action. Proposal 301, um, this is to close the non-commercial if the TH is less than 110,000. Um, weren't a whole lot of comments about this, and there was questions about what this would do with subsistence fishing, you know. And eventually we voted to oppose this and it went 1 to 5. So actually we failed to oppose it, oppose it.

So that we said was no action.

Proposal 302 to set the TH at $150,000 for commercial. Basically, the department and pretty much everybody there agreed that the department needs to manage this in a reasonable way with a reasonable TAH. So we voted to oppose this and opposed it 6 to 0. So it's an opposed position. 303, To drop the TAH threshold for the commercial fishery.

This created a bunch of discussion, people changing positions with other people explaining, you know, people think it's a burden of conservation issue.

Arbitrary floor— there was talk that we still need a floor, maybe not $110,000. So we voted, we ended up putting a motion to support with the amendments, and the amendment was to create a new floor or threshold that would affect both user groups. And the vote went It's not clear on this. 303.

Vote went to support that motion, 5 to 1, with amendment.

Okay. 304.

304 Is to delay the openings until May 1st for both fisheries. And this is a conservation issue because those first 2 weeks, the egg carrying percent is a lot higher than after that. And basically biological reasons should release— have allow a lot more young shrimp to eventually get recruit. So this was a vote to support this motion, this proposal, and it was voted 5 yes and 1 abstain. So that was the vote to support.

305 Is One about spare pots on the non-commercial vessels.

Ideas on this mentioned were it supports, you know, helps prevent poaching. It's actually an enforceable thing. One of the points made was that pot gear is remotely deployable. It can fish without the angler, unlike somebody with a rod and reel, so which makes enforcement hard. So this was a vote to support the proposal and it passed 5 to 0 for support.

Commercial 306, which for daily reporting of commercial, basically the department and everybody agreed that they have good reporting routines already and the department doesn't need it. Any further. So we had a motion to oppose and that was unanimous.

Proposal 307 changed the start time to 8 a.m. on the opening day of the non-commercial to align it with the non-commercial— with the commercial. This one was co-authored also by Whittier and Valdez ACs a year ago. The thing is, it works both ways on enforcement. It's difficult for enforcement now to keep commercial guys from going early. Also, you know, it creates less— the idea was to create less conflict because the commercial guys come out— oops, I missed my time.

Okay. I'll let you finish your sentence there and then And then I'll ask if the board has questions. Okay. Yeah, I'll finish this proposal. Okay.

So the idea was it might irritate a lot of the sport fishermen and it only has effect for 8 hours of the whole season. And then ended up we voted, we made a motion to support, which failed. So becomes a no action. Okay, that's interesting. Are there any board questions?

Thank you for your AC report. Would you like to give your personal testimony at this time? Sure. Sorry, I missed 3 of them there, I guess, but we'll go—. We have you the AC report, so we can— we can take a look at it.

It's in alignment with that. Okay, thank you.

Okay, for changing hats, going to my personal testimony. I'm Gordon Scott. I fish commercially and sport for Prince William Sound since 1983, amongst other fisheries. See Public Comments 217 for my positions.

Madam Chair and members of the board, there's an extraordinary opportunity for ADFNG and stakeholders to collaborate and create a management plan, a holistic one. I've been active before the board since the early '90s regularly. And I'll be injecting a little fishery history into the next couple minutes. The modern commercial fishery framework was hammered out in a late-night meeting in December 2008 in Cordova. A 3-area rotation was championed by one of the ADFNG statisticians as an experiment to be evaluated in the future by science.

It's been used someplace else. So now, after a dozen years, it should be evaluated by science as was intended.

One of the main reasons for Proposal 299 is the technical lack of fishery management plan. The history of the PWS commercial pot shrimp fishery is well documented. Namely, it was prosecuted in the '80s and earlier. There was a management plan in statute. Then in the 2000s, there was a push through 4 different biocycles to get it back open.

This was stymied and held back for several cycles. So in around 2001, the fishery was closed by regulation inside that management plan. Biggest reason was that post-Exxon Valdez, the department had to EO it closed every year. So now they just closed it. There seemed to be no hope for the department, for the fishery returning.

Time passed, the population rebounded, the framework of the current fishery was hammered out in that meeting in Cordova and passed by the Board of Fish in March of 2009. So in 2009, they repealed the management plan to make room for this set of regulations.

Yesterday, I heard the chair wondering on the record how the 46 make the allocation happen. I have some information about that if you'd like to discuss it later. There have been many proposals to amend these regulations since. It is proposed to create a management plan with the elements of such a plan encompassing all stakeholders in the department. It should allow for dealing equitably with the normal— [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] species in a holistic manner.

And both fisheries must be allocated and managed equitably to prevent overharvest. I leave you with an unanswered question. Last year, the non-commercial fishery went 7,600 pounds over quota. Would we have a commercial fishery this year if these pounds were put into the model as part of the current biomass, not as an overharvest?

Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, Gordon. Um, questions from the board? I am curious about your recollections around the 4060, if you've got a minute to explain that to me. Okay.

Um, and we can talk about it more in committee too, but I'm just—. Since you brought it up, I'll try to be real short here, and we can talk later if you want. Okay, please. Um, basically That night, it was— everybody was in the room, law, biologists, commercial and sport interests. And we came out with a lot of stuff, everything that you know to be regulations in this.

I didn't like a lot of it, but it was the only way we were going to get a commercial fishery. OK. It ended at 3:00 AM. And then the meeting started at 8:00 or 9:00 or whatever time. And they had it printed up for the board.

And on the allocation line, they had blanks. Waiting for somebody to put numbers in there. As I understand it, there's a process in regulation for how you regulate allocations, determine allocations. Okay, that stayed like that all day and it was brought up and talked about a little bit that day.

And at the end of the day, that document looked the same. There were these empty spaces. The next morning at 8 o'clock, those spaces had 40 and 60 handwritten in there. The only thing I can say, I can't say who wrote them here. I have suspicions.

I won't ever name names. But the— I do know it did not follow the public process as supposed to. It's been a bone in the back of my head for a long time. What it means now, I don't know. Okay, so that's helpful.

Thank you for Thank you for that context. If that helps you. It does. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you.

Since the history lesson is here, I got a question. So it's commercial and non-commercial. Non-commercial seems to pertain to sport, subsistence, or personal use. Why did they use the word subsistence? And sport interchangeably in, in this.

Now, I've read the legal details of subsistence and all that, but, and I'm somewhat fascinated with how subsistence, the word, gets moved around in different ways. So can you recall that during those deliberations?

Well, that decision was or it first showed up in writing after that night meeting. So that was talked about at the meeting. I don't remember exactly the talk about it, except the big line was commercial and non-commercial. Now quickly I started realizing that, you know, and to be honest, we realized the next day there was a huge problem because here we are, we're trying to create this commercial fishery with a management plan with numbers, there was no non-commercial management plan at all. So it's like, and I pointed out to them, okay, to do this, to hold the commercial fishery to here, you need to hold the non-commercial, you know, the three elements to their part.

So they end up crafting the non-commercial management plan between the two meetings.

Subsistence to me, with the legal definitions, and I've heard probably less than you, but a lot, still mystifies me the way things are applied. And I think the idea with this was to simplify it commercial and non-commercial. And that's how it was managed for a number of years until, as I understand now, personal use, at least for this fishery, doesn't exist.

I don't know how well I answered your question.

Thanks for the history lesson, but no, my question's not answered. Thanks.

Thank you. I don't see any other questions. Appreciate your testimony. Testimony. Thanks for your service on the AC as well.

Okay, thank you. Up next is Brett Wilbanks.

Hi, Brett. Are you going to be beginning with your personal or your AC report? I'd like to start with my personal Testimony. Okay, whenever you're ready. Thank you, Madam Chair, the board, and department staff.

My name is Brett Wilbanks. Uh, well, when digging up to tell you a little about me, I realized that I started, uh, fishing on a seine boat in Valdez 42 years ago. I was a little shocked about that number, but I've been a subsistence and sport shrimping user in Prince William Sound over the years. And I entered into the commercial shrimp pot fishery in 2010, participating since then up to this year. I'm also the chairman of Shrimp Pros Association, and that's a small group of some of the longest-tenured commercial shrimp fishermen in the Sound.

I also do marine electronics, so I see a lot of sport fishermen and non-commercial fishermen as well and get get a chance to talk to those shrimpers as well. So I've seen these issues from many sides. Shrimp Pros is focused on Prince William Sound shrimp and has been taking a leadership role in resource stewardship to now include field sampling. And our group aims to have a fishery in the future by proactively taking steps to enhance, maintain, and access Prince William Sound shrimp. It's in all of our best interest to do the right thing for the resource as we enjoy it.

ShrimpPro's proposal 304 intends to delay the season start date to May 1st. This was also proposed in 2018 through the Whittier AC. Based on our field observations, there's two short— there's a short two-week period at the end of April where we can stop taking shrimp that have eggs, and we've seen that to be about a 30% 26% density of the shrimp that are taken at that period of time are egg-bearing.

In PC 221, we have some detail on the methods and results from those observations.

Some of the commercial shrimp— Prince William Sound shrimp proposals in this cycle are focused on fast exploitation of the fishery by increasing the tempo and rapid execution of the season. I'm sorry, I lost my place. But I sort of think that this is a very attainable thing to just a 2-week delay is something that should be achievable and tolerable. Let's see here. Anyway, I'll just move on.

So I thank the department for initiating the change of MSY calculation, the use of biomass for appropriate trigger levels. This includes the removal of the 110,000-pound commercial floor in Proposal 303. This was also proposed in 2018 by the Whittier AC, and I proposed it myself in the 2022 cycle. And it's been shown, or at least expressed in this cycle, that there's no real biological reason for that TAH floor. As far as the other proposals go, I support a comprehensive management plan in Proposal 299.

I think it could also be accomplished with an ad hoc working group, something that might be collaborative with the department on a recurring annual basis or something of that sort.

And I believe that the department staff that I have talked to may be supportive of that as well.

Some of the new information the department reported the other day leads to—. Sir, I'm going to ask you to conclude, please. Concluding statement, if you have a sentence that you'd like to just sort of summarize quickly. Thank you for the time. I'd like to move on to the Prince William Sound Valdez Advisory Committee report.

Very good. For the record, Brett Wilbanks. This is from our February 13th meeting. We had present user group. We had Fish and Game staff, several of them.

We had several guests that attended, both commercial and sport users in that assembly. All the members of the AC are subsistence users, sport users, and commercial operators.

As we move through our business, we took up item 2. Proposal 266 was to allow additional gear types in the personal use crab fishery. This was supported unanimously as additional opportunity. We moved on to proposal 68, which was to prohibit the harvest of Tanner crab from a charter vessel.

It was brought up in this discussion that the opportunity to target multiple incidental species at the frequency that the charter vessels were operating, perhaps daily, placed substantial additional pressure on those incidental resources, so that was the focus of the discussion. There was talk about any consideration for the qualifying user position who might be the charter guest, which were they of subsistence or personal use or a sport fishing guest or client on that boat. And it brought up discussions about remotely deployable gear fishing opportunity as incidental to the targeted operation of angling. As the motion was made to support this proposal and it passed 4-0, and it was also noted though that if this did not necessarily carry, that access to incidental harvest should at least be limited to personal use or subsistence user groups. Okay, 299.

Here we go. So that gets us to Proposal 299, I believe. This was to develop a comprehensive Princeton Sound Management Plan.

In the end, this did pass in support 4-0, and it was noted that there were, like, several reasons for this, 3 key motivating reasons for this. I think the driver for that was after analysis of all of the proposals that have come before the board with regard to shrimp, that they all boil down to 3 distinct categories. And those were also put in in our RC as more explanation for Proposal 299.

Let's see, Proposal 300. Motion was made to support, which carried unanimously.

There was a lot of discussion about amendment for— and this is to modify, basically rotate non-commercial GHL between the 3 commercial administrative harvest areas. I think the intent in this was to lower harvest effort in the sport allocation GHL that's happening in concentrated areas. That was communicated as the reason why. There were questions about how the eastern side of the Sound would fit into this. It did carry, but this was voted more in intention and not affect.

I think that I want to note that the department report released does show that 55% of the non-commercial take happens in Valdez Arm and in Passage Canal. So that represents more than half of the non-commercial take.

We did talk about— let's see here. I'd like to move on to Proposal 301. Motion to support. Of support carried unanimously for all fishing activity to close at the 110,000-pound level.

There was also an opinion of support of equal burden of conservation where all fishing would shut down to level the playing field of that burden.

There was also discussion that led to talking about the non-subsistence zone in Valdez and how that, that there was not one near Whittier, and if that would affect the harvest and/or people potentially moving over into subsistence use if sport fishing was shut down and how that would impact the area. We moved on to 302, which which was to modify the GHL to an upper limit of £150,000. The motion to oppose passed unanimously.

It just— there was no— there was no support for that. Proposal 303, which was to modify the Prince William Sound guideline harvest level.

Notes. Eliminate— to eliminate the 110,000-pound floor. This was an interesting one because this was opposed and it passed unanimously. The reason that it failed was because there was a feeling that there needed to be an actual floor, that we just couldn't remove and have no levels to shut off to shut fishing down. So that's why this failed.

And let's see here. That's 311, 304. Sorry, I get out of order here. Oh, here it is.

3— Where are we at? 304. Okay. Sorry, I'm losing my place. So 304 was the proposal for delaying the season by 2 weeks.

That we just discussed. This motion passed a unanimous motion to support, passed unanimously. I'll move on. Proposal 305 we took up. Motion to support is amended, passed unanimously remotely.

This Proposal 305 is to limit non-commercial pots on sport boats to the regulatory max allowed. The discussion came in that there's a lack of enforceability with the current regulation of having unlimited pots on a non-commercial boat. It did come up that it's remotely deployable gear is specifically susceptible to misuse. And then there were— there was a comment that allowing a small, small number, like an additional pot as a spare might be an option. We took up Proposal 306.

And that is a commercial reporting requirement every 24 hours. This was opposed unanimously, thinking that the department has current, frequent, and accurate reporting. There's pre-trip reporting. Landing reporting and fish ticket submittals within 7 days for the commercial fleet.

Although it did come up in conversation about this may be needed if some of the other proposals such as eliminating the area rotation were to pass, that more frequent reporting on a 24-hour This may be a requirement for that, but we moved on and took up Proposal 307, which was to align the start time for the opener, the Derby opener of Shrimp in Prince William Sound.

This, let's see, was supported unanimously.

My note here from Department presentation shows that there is only 35% of the sport participation effort is outside of Valdez Arm and Passage Canal. So that puts only one-third of the sport fleet out into the same grounds that the commercial fleet would be operating in any one year. There was discussion about confusion with seeing buoys in the morning before commercial opening, and the note was that it is safety and enforcement benefits by having a unified start time for a full season opener.

We moved on to Proposal 308, which was opposed unanimously. There was no— this 308 was to limit commercial pots to 25, and there were no perceived benefits to this. In fact, it seemed to take away options from the department for management. We took up Proposal 310, and that was to spread the commercial harvest across all, all 3 of the administrative areas to make it all fishable within a single season.

This was opposed unanimously.

Deliberation resulted in uncertainty given the proposed outcome. So it was not— it was because there were more questions than answers in that. And again, this is one of those interrelated proposals that has impact. Just for instance, the 24-hour reporting requirement may be required in this case. So it was opposed on those basis of not being fully fleshed out.

And that brings us to the end of your time, 311, which we considered, and it failed unanimously to allow shrimp vessels to also be tenders. There were several issues that were seen with that. Enforcement operations with dual interest was perceived as complex and difficult to enforce. Distinction between fishermen and buyer/processor operations involves point of sale, chain of custody, which is challenging to validate. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER_MARTINEZ] Okay.

That's a summary of the AC proposals that we took up in Valdez. Thank you very much. Good summaries. Appreciated that extra information. Are there any board questions?

Brett, thanks for your service on the AC and appreciate your report today. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Next up is Herb Mansavage with the Mat-Su Valley AC.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board, and department staff. Um, for the record, my name is Herb Mansavage. I chair the Matanuska Valley Advisory Committee. I'll be giving testimony on behalf of the committee. Um, start with proposals 263, 264, and 265.

Um, we only, we only tried to center around proposals that our constituents participate in from a very— that's a broad statement, but things that from a more broad perspective of, um, sport and less commercial, obviously. But that being said, there was a lot of discussion that we had around Dungeness crab and in the past meetings in Cordova. And so we actually had a lot of support from the staff about these proposals. But starting with 263, we opposed that unanimously. We just felt like it was too high of a take with 40.

So for 264, we amended 264 unanimously, and that was to lower it from 7 inches to 6.5 inches. And that— we do have some commercial guys on the committee. So we took into consideration the bag limits and all that from a sense of how many boats would be out there and participating in this fishery. And that number seemed to be a good average and it fell in line. Excuse me, not average, but good number that fell in line with 265 as well.

So Proposal 265, we did prefer this one a little bit more. That was Board 11-1. And essentially, it just— valuable information could be gathered from the department or for the department by allowing this Dungeness fishery. I referenced the meeting in Cordova as it was something we got a little stuck in the weeds on. But the reason was, is we look at the aspects of what can the department gain from, you know, something like Dungeness that we don't know a lot about.

But a lot of times it seems we're pretty careful on whether we should open a fishery or not. And I think a lower limit and— but an ability to record that and get it to the department. So, you know, in lieu of studies, in lieu of a lot of things that would be ideal but aren't possible possible, at least we can have some opportunity while providing that information to the department.

Moving on to the Razor Clams 269. This was a pretty contentious debate. It was opposed 5-6.

Essentially, the two sides of it were, you know, it's something that a lot of constituents from the Missoula Valley participate in that fishery, a lot of it from with use of airplanes, or used to, excuse me. And, you know, everybody wants to see that come back. And so first, the side that wanted it wants to see some harvest take and some ability for that resource to be used. On the same side of that, It's that harvest, you know, obviously wasn't because of it's been closed, so something's going on. So it's, we do have to be very careful with it.

Um, but that being said, we do get a lot of constituents asking that the book doesn't get any bigger, and so a lot of times that falls in line with registration permits, whether it's game or fish, but That being said, the committee is opposed to this proposal in regards to biological concern with the number of clams on the east side. Since this has been closed, it can be assumed that harvest was not reflective of these numbers. Also, there was opposition towards regulation book being thicker. So at the same time, it goes back to what I was talking about with Dungeness. If we can get that information to department and it's valuable, that was the support for that reason.

Proposal 270. We had a really good discussion about this. We had a lot of department support from understanding. We actually tabled this one and brought it to a second meeting. The idea was we wanted to make it a little bit earlier because the colder waters is a little bit safer from the sense of red tide.

And with that, we wanted to make sure that the department had plenty of time to get their studies done and surveys done to make sure that those were in place before a season could start. And from the department's perspective, we felt that the May 15th timeframe would be— toward the end of June would be appropriate, and that was passed 11-1 as amended.

Proposal 280, we got a little stuck on the in the weeds with this one too, but it was more from a principal perspective. And that was— no offense to the department, it was just a little bit tricky of a proposal to read. And we just went back and forth on what exactly is this observer requirements and what is the observer doing. You know, as soon as we start talking about contracting out or not being required, we immediately kind of have red flags. This was kind of synonymous with how we felt about the trawling aspect in the Cordova meeting.

But the committee supported the proposal 8.2. After we tabled discussion, there was concern that the way the proposal was written as to what the requirements were, and after hearing it mirrored what the Bering Sea observers had done, and we trusted the department with their generated proposal.

281 Is very similar to that. We just wanted to make sure, was there really something that statistics needed to be involved with the education needed for the requirements of that observer? It was, it was an interesting discussion. It seemed like yes and no to some degree, but that, that observer does have to have some knowledge of what's going on in the boat or the vessel.

299, We were adamantly opposed unanimously as well, 0-12. The committee did not support this as clear the department does not— does already, excuse me, does already have an allocative plan in place and that would only further complicate the restrictions on non-commercial. We don't have a lot of consistency for the commercial side of things, but we do have a severe amount of constituency regarding the sport and the non-commercial. And so we believe that, you know, we understand there might be a proactive perspective that could be entertained from the board, but from our perspective, the allocation methods that are used right now are appropriate. Proposal 300 was opposed unanimously as well.

The committee was opposed to proposal as it would only restrict and complicate the management plan for non-commercial. This would limit the access for the fishery for non-commercial fishermen. You know, again, a lot of our constituents have smaller boats and it's very recreative. And so this type of plan would make it very difficult for the average guy woman to go out and just get shrimp.

We didn't get too far into it, but it was a pretty just basic statement that it doesn't need to be complicated anymore for, for non-commercial.

Proposal 305 was supported 11-1 as amended. This was back and forth as well. There was a little bit of anecdotal Evidence of commercial vessels that were not shrimp commercial vessels that were able to carry more shrimp gear. And sometimes those vessels were observed coming back without that shrimp gear. And so the concern for abuse was pretty apparent and while acknowledged anecdotally, We just wanted to still allow for non-commercial to be prepared for theft of gear or loss of gear in the Sound.

And so we came up with having 2 extra pots to the legal limit would be what we thought was fair to accommodate if somebody was out. You know, many of us are coming from the Matanuska Valley, Anchorage, and surrounding areas. Not many people want to go back all the way and grab one pot because they came back and they can only fish now one pot. So 2 would still be able to allow that ability while not creating abuse of power and would be enforceable or more easily enforced by the troopers. And lastly, Department— or excuse me, Proposal 313.

This is to add the set beach seine nets. Brian and Lisa Gabriel came up and gave a really good presentation, as you guys saw, to our committee. And, um, you know, we— the Matanuska Valley is extremely concerned with the king salmon stock right now, as everybody is. With that said, um, we had a lot of— we had a great discussion regarding it. We've commended them for putting together a lot of hard work and you know, something that seems possible.

So we supported that 9-3. Um, you know, it allows— it— I, I think it was pretty clear it would allow for a safer method for releasing kings. But also, you know, there's questions about whether it's appropriate now. If there is a king return, would that go away? Um, you know, I think it's a great start, and that's how the committee felt.

And supported it. And that concludes my testimony. Well done, sir.

Any questions from the board? All right, thanks, Herb, for your excellent report. That concludes my list, but I'm going to go back and take first calls from earlier today, uh, this time. So we're going to do some second calls for a handful of folks. And, um, the first second call is Kirk McGee.

Is Kirk here?

No Kirk?

All right, moving on. The next second call is for Don Witzel.

Is Don here?

How about Dino Sutherland? Second call, Dino Sutherland.

Sherry Everidge.

Jason Everidge. Oh, hi Jason, welcome. Glad you made it.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board. I'm here representing myself, an Alaska resident, and I'm— wow, for all that stuff that you guys do, very impressive. But the main reason that I'm here is to communicate to the board, to you guys, that the only access that I have to the Prince William Sound shrimping or sport prawns is through commercial fishing fleets, and I'm so grateful for them. I don't have the knowledge, the equipment, or the boats to go out there and to enjoy some of the harvest, but because of the commercial fishing fleet, we've been able to enjoy that. And so I want to encourage the board to continue to take measures to ensure that the commercial fish fleet has the opportunity to provide the product for all of us Alaska residents that are just unable to obtain any prawns for ourselves.

And I'm so grateful for that. So I am trying to be— I don't know, have a little bit more knowledge about the sustainability and all that. So I am investing in some time to learn more about that because it is very intriguing, because I, I enjoy the long-term idea and the approach that so many present. So thank you, and thank Thank you for your time. Thank you, Jason.

I appreciate your perspective. Any questions? Thank you for being here today.

Next second call I have on my list is Earl Kreiger.

Welcome, Earl.

Press the button. Turn the mic on, please. There you go. Chairwoman, members of the board, I'm Earl Craigor, Chignik Intertribal Coalition. I'm here to speak on proposal 312.

Well, this proposal addresses alternative harvest acts set access, it does so under 5AAC 21.382, Kenai River Late Run Stock of Concern Management Plan. There have been a number of very new EOs recently implemented, and this proposal is the only opportunity to address Chinook salmon protection for this stock of concern. This plan mostly describes protections to the terminal late run spring through September period. Terminal run protections should not be the only concern. Outmigration of juvenile stocks coming out of Cook Inlet, turn right, go to Kodiak, the peninsula of the Bering Sea, to grow further.

Kodiak has maybe 2 to 3 rivers with small escapements that in the past 20 years have mostly not been met. Certainly these rivers are not big enough to produce the 20,000 to 30,000 Chinook harvests that have been observed in a few years. The same may be said for Area M, where king salmon harvests as high as 51,000 Chinooks in one pen season occurred. Yet they have only 2 to 3 marginal king runs on the North Peninsula. Areas K and M have no restrictions like those placed on Chignik this year to restrict statistical areas where king salmon are mostly caught.

ADF&G has nearly 50 years of statistical area data harvest— harvest data that they could use to place time and area restrictions to protect Chinook salmon. Chinook bycatch data from the Gulf of Alaska pollock fisheries show kings— king salmon are largely non-local in the Gulf. But they are stocks that also are not reaching their own escapement. 75 To 80% are BC and lower 48 in origin. That leaves 20 to 25% Alaskan stocks, most of which are not reaching their escape.

We believe the board should consider requesting the commissioner to implement time and area restrictions similar in area to Area L in Areas K and M to protect Chinook salmon. Thank you. Thank you, Earl. Questions from the board? Thank you for your testimony today.

Axel Copen.

Red means on. Okay. I should know this after all these years. I'm going— I provided RC-28 as something for reference during this testimony.

Anyway, Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Axel Copen and I'm here today at the request of the Chignik Intertribal Coalition. While we don't have a dog in the fight regarding Proposal 313, we commend the board for taking a long look at this proposal and exploring other options to to maintain commercial fishing opportunities while conserving depressed king salmon stocks at the same time. But the real question in all of this, however, is how do we protect these stocks outside their terminal areas? As we all know, all salmon species spend very little of their time once they hit saltwater in their terminal harvest areas.

Non-retention is just a fancy word for chinook chucking. And especially in the larger volume fisheries. And in the end, it just, it doesn't give management any real idea of how many king salmon are being caught or how many actually survive this non-retention. It's basically a don't ask, don't tell policy. And instead, we can use historic data of where significant king salmon numbers are caught and when they are caught and adjust fishing time in these areas at those times.

And it's a far better way to manage king salmon harvest than just a blanket non-retention mandate. Non-retention is very dependent on individual behavior. Behavior as to how successful it is and how it's undertaken. I've seen some various ways it's been approached.

Regardless, it's plain to see the efforts taken in the last several years to conserve king salmon haven't worked. Iakulik hasn't made its minimum king salmon escapement goal in 14 of the last 19 years and hasn't made it at all in the last 8 years. Since 2016.

In fact, the king salmon escapement goals for both Eyakulik and Karlik on Kodiak Island have only both made their escapement goals in the same season 3 times in the last 19 years, that both achieved their minimum escapement goal in the same season. Chignik has only made its minimum escapement goal once in the last 7 years. And in two of those years, we didn't even fish at all. And one year we didn't fish till August when our king salmon run is already up the river.

Just restricting terminal harvest areas for kings isn't enough.

In 2018, the South Peninsula caught just over 17,000 king salmon. In 2020, they caught over 21,000 king salmon. We didn't fish in 2020 and 2018 in Chignik, and we still didn't make our king salmon escapement goals. We couldn't do any more to get our king salmon up the river. The department has the data broken down by stat areas and dates.

We have a concluding sentence. Yeah. Which can be used to institute more specific management in these commercial fisheries like Kodiak, Chignik, and Area M. To protect the passage of kings at the times they move through these areas while still allowing commercial harvest. Thank you. Thanks, Axel.

Any board questions? All right. Thank you for your testimony today.

Steve Ricci.

Hi, Steve. Welcome.

Okay, good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the Board of Fisheries. My name is Steve Ricci. I am an Alaskan resident working for and representing the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation, better known as BBDC. My comments are in opposition of Proposal 277 as currently written. BBDC is one of 6 CDQ groups.

The CDQ program derives revenue from federal fisheries like the golden crab fishery to support community and economic development in 65 western Alaskan communities. This is one way Alaskans have direct ownership of the federal fisheries. Since its inception over 30 years ago, the program has provided hundreds of millions of dollars for critical community needs. CDQ also supports Alaskan residents in the state commercial fisheries and subsistence license fisheries. Currently, about 40% of the harvesting quota in this fishery is controlled by the CDQ sector.

That includes a 10% allocation through the program and 30% through additional investments in quota shares. CDQ groups have a significant interest in 3 of the 5 vessels harvesting this stock. CDQ groups have made substantial investments in the harvesting side of this fishery and in turn provide direct benefits to 30,000 Alaskan residents. The proposal intends to provide small vessel access to the Golden Crab Fishery in state waters. As written, we are concerned that this fishery could lead to much more— to a much more significant reallocation from the rationalized fishery, jeopardizing CDQ investments and reducing the overall revenue distributed to Alaskans through this program.

Every dollar generated in this fishery goes into our communities. We also feel that the proposal as written does little to ensure that the small community-based vessels will have adequate access over the long term. We also have concerns about the lack of a market for these crabs. The fishery, as it is currently proposed, the fishery would result in small periodic deliveries that processors may not be able to take on demand, increasing dead loss and reducing the overall value of this fishery. Reducing the overall GHL to a fraction of the current proposal would allow participants to explore this experimental fishery while markets are developed and gear is tested.

Introducing an overall pot limit in the fishery may help protect small vessel interest. I would also suggest moving the start date to run concurrently with the federal fishery on August 1st. This could increase the market opportunities and fishing in more favorable weather. To be clear, we support small community-based vessel access to fisheries. At BBDC, we support local Bristol Bay fishermen with gear permit and vessel loans.

We are concerned about jeopardizing these meaningful and highly functional programs for some unknown benefit in a highly experimental fishery. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Any board questions? Thank you for your testimony today.

Tony Zoc.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board. I appreciate the opportunity to testify today. My name is Tony Zock. I live in Dillingham, Alaska, and I'm the Regional Fisheries Director for the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation, BBEDC. I'm also a Bristol Bay setnet permit owner and commercial fisherman.

I'm testifying today in opposition to Proposal 277 as written. BBEDC is one of 6 community development quota organizations established in 1992 through the Magnuson-Stevens Act. We serve Alaskan residents in 17 communities throughout Bristol Bay. We offer benefits to our communities like annual community block grants that promote sustainability and regional economic development and offer programs to assist residents with entering the Bristol Bay salmon fishery. We also offer programs that upgrade or modernize fishing operations once they are established.

We offer educational scholarships and funding for vocational training and we have many more programs. And that's just BBEDC. There are 6 CDQ groups in total that offer benefits to 65 Western Alaskan communities and their residents. BBEDC is also a major funder of the Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute, which manages the Port Moller test fishery and many other important projects throughout Alaska. CDQ groups are nonprofit organizations that make their revenue from resources, one of which is golden king crab.

This revenue is then distributed to tens of thousands of Alaskan residents through various programs. I'm concerned about the potential allocative components of Proposal 277, particularly if this should grow in the future and the implications it could have on the communities of western Alaska. That said, we think small boat fisheries like this are important but that there are other avenues such as a commissioner's permit for an experimental fishery, or possibly a chance to compromise on this proposal, as you've heard from previous testimony. Thank you again for this opportunity. Thanks, Tony.

Any board questions? Appreciate your testimony today. Thank you.

Tom Weischer.

Wisher, Weicher, no Tom.

Eric O'Brien.

Darren Platt. Hey, Darren.

My name is Darren Platt. I'm here to represent the Kodiak Saners Association, primarily in support of Board-generated Proposal 316. But I would be remiss not to let the board know that the department has already announced that virtually the entire Kodiak June and early July sockeye fishery will be closed for the, for the purpose of conserving king salmon. And we have voiced no objection to that closure.

We are currently working with the Department of the CFTC on crafting substitute language for Proposal 316 that we believe will address the regulatory concerns with the proposal as it's currently written. And so we ask that you look at RC38 to see that substitute language. I'd also like to thank the Board for considering this proposal. Many of us were disappointed when the Board chose to take no action on a similar proposal at the Kodiak Finfish meeting due to regulatory uncertainties surrounding the suddenly competing authorities of the board and the CFEC. These were uncharted waters that are unique to this Kodiak fishery.

But really, every year that we delay this change is a lost season for a group of fishermen who cannot afford to squander any opportunities. In my mind, this should be an easy one. We're not asking for any sort of reallocation of fish. Sacro-Pomerod holders are just asking that they're able to harvest the resource that they are already allocated and be able to harvest it when it's most economically viable. On some years, that may mean large harvests in the spring when the Sacro market demands it.

On other years, more fish may be caught in the fall. But please just let us respond to markets as they exist rather than forcing the board or the department or the commission to speculate on how these fish need to be sold. Currently, Alaska has hundreds of millions of pounds of harvestable surplus of herring locked in an economically inefficient management structure because 35 years ago, sac roe was the hot thing in the state. I wasn't around for that. I've seen the boats, they're still out there, that were built for this fishery.

I hear stories from the old-timers, and I've looked at the numbers, and it's obvious why so much attention was focused on the spring component of this fishery. But when the current management structure was formed, no one thought about a post-Japanese sacro gift box future for, for our resource. Once again, no one seemed concerned with how future fishermen would inherit this program. And so here we are once again locking an entire generation of fishermen out of a reasonable ability to make a living from a resource that that is sitting on their doorstep and that has already been allocated to them.

It is important to consider the magnitude of the herring resource statewide. Every penny of additional value that we can derive from our state's herring resources translates into millions of dollars added to our seafood economy. And I think Kodiak should be considered ground zero for Alaska's herring revitalization. We have a host of processors with a resident work force and year-round high-volume production in a fleet of small boats with young, ambitious skippers who would work 8 days a week and 13 months of the year if you would let them. So please just give us a chance to turn the fishery around.

Thank you. Thanks, Darren. Any board questions? All right, thanks.

Lindsey Price— or Landry Price.

Welcome.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on Proposal 277. For the record, my name is Landry Price. I'm a quota manager for one of the 6 CD CDQ Group's Yukon Delta Fisheries Development Association, YDFDA. I reside in Anchorage, Alaska, and briefly, just to begin, the CDQ program is an immense program that provides millions of benefits back to the member villages.

Annually, they receive an allocation of rationalized BSAI fisheries, Bering Sea Aleutian Island fisheries, that they use to reinvest into their member communities.

Since inception, the CDQ program has become major owners of these rationalized fisheries and specifically the Eastern Aleutian Island Golden King crab fishery with over 40% of the harvesting shares, which includes the 10%, uh, CDQ allocation. So I'd like to briefly speak to YDFDA's position with respect to Proposal 277 as written. Foremost, YDFDA has great concern over the proposal, as this action could potentially have an adverse effect on its ability to return the much-needed benefits back to its in-region western Alaska communities, even though we do understand the importance of small boat fisheries for Alaskans. The main driver is that, as it is currently written, the 100,000 pounds will be derived from the ABC TAC buffer and could potentially be a reallocation away from the federal fishery. That has historically been relied upon by the Alaska participants.

With this being said, this needs to be considered in understanding the economic impacts of how this might affect the current historical participants moving forward. For example, at lower abundances, the buffer between the ABC and the TAC will begin to shrink, making it more likely that the proposal has a direct reallocation effect. In addition, the current cost recovery fishery harvest also comes out of the established buffer between the ABC and TAC. This exacerbates the potential impact at lower abundances that would be a direct reallocation of the resource.

With this said, YDFA reiterates that we understand the importance of small boat fisheries and would be open to modifications to the the current proposal so that we can continue to rely— sorry, to continue to protect and rely on our longstanding CDQ ownership in the Golden King crab fisheries. With that, I'll take any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions?

I don't see any. Thank you for your testimony today.

Max Much. Is Max here?

All right. Seeing that we have no max, that will conclude our public testimony portion of this meeting. And so my intention is to break for the day and to resume tomorrow morning at 8:30 to begin Committee of the Whole Group 1 work. So we will see you tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM. Thank you.