2025 Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, Bering Sea, and Chignik Pacific Cod Meeting (10-30-25)

All right, good morning everybody. The time is 8:53. The day is Thursday, October 30th, and we are here today to take up the Alaska Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, Bering Sea, and Chignik Pacific Pacific cod. New day, new topic, new meeting. My name is Margaret Carlson VanDort.

I am the chair of the Alaska Board of Fisheries. And at this time, I'm going to go ahead and have my fellow members introduce themselves just for funsies. Let's start at this end of the table today. Good morning. My name is Olivia Henahi Irwin, and I'm from Ninana.

Good morning. My name is Curtis Chamberlain. I live in Wasilla. I'm originally from Aniak and Bethel on the Kuskokwim River. It's good to see everyone.

Good morning, everyone. Tom Carper. I'm from Cordova.

Good morning. It's Greg Swenson. I was born and raised in Anchorage. Welcome, all you people, and we'll have a good talk.

Good morning, everyone. Jared Godfrey. I live in Eagle River. Good morning. I'm Mike Wood.

I live in Chase, Alaska, and I'm excited to talk about something other than salmon.

And like I said, I'm Mara Carlson-Vandort. I live in Anchorage by way of Chignik and Juneau. All right, Commissioner, would you please introduce yourself? Good morning, I'm Commissioner Doug Vincent Lang, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and with me today I have Israel Payton, Forrest Bowers, and George Pappason. They'll introduce our staff.

Good morning, Israel Payton, and I'm a Staff of One today for Sport Fish.

Good morning. Forrest Bowers with the Division of Commercial Fisheries, and we have Shaleen Hutter, our Regulations Program Coordinator here. Carla Bush, Extended Jurisdiction Program Manager. Mark Stickert, Westward Region Shellfish and Groundfish Management Coordinator. Cassandra Whiteside is Assistant Area Management Biologist for for Kodiak, Chignik, Alaska Peninsula groundfish and shellfish.

And then also joining us, we have Alyssa Cole, who works in our Homer office, and she is in the Master's of Marine Policy program at UAF, and she's here as part of her internship working on groundfish fisheries. Thank you.

Good morning. George Pappas, Division of Subsistence, and I'll be the only one from the division here. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll probably be taking off this afternoon. Thank you.

Department of Law. Good morning, Madam Chair. Edward Lee for the Department of Law, and with me as always, Mr. Aaron Peterson.

Public Safety. Good morning, Captain Derek DeGraff, Alaska Wildlife Troopers. Thank you. And I'd also like to note that we have CFCC Commissioner Rick Green in the back there with his staff member. And, um, Board Support, Director Nelson.

Good morning. My name is Art Nelson. I'm executive director for the Board of Fisheries. And with our board support staff, we have Annie Bartholomew, our publications specialist, Layla Williams, our advisory committee coordinator for the South Central Region, and Natalie Rommel, our Southwest Region coordinator. We also have Carlin Hoblett with the False Pass AC here and Patrick Brown with the Sandpoint AC here.

Madam Chair. Thank you. Did we miss anybody? Hopefully not. Okay, moving on.

Couple of things. We have heard over the last couple of days that the public has had a little bit of trouble hearing us. So I just remind folks around the table to try and speak close into your mic, not screaming into your mic, but close. But if you still have trouble hearing, please let one of the board support staff know. We also have headsets available that tie right directly into our sound system.

So if you have continued trouble hearing the microphone and the sound, please let us know and we'll get you some equipment to help you out.

Please turn off your cell phones at this time. And I guess what we'll roll into is ethics disclosures. So at this time, we'll go ahead and go through member ethics disclosures, put those on the record. And we'll begin in the same order in which we introduced ourselves. Ms. Erwin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Olivia Henahí Erwin. I live in Ninana, Alaska. I work as a community liaison for the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association. I am a Doyon Corporation shareholder and receive a dividend each year.

I am also an Evansville Native Corporation shareholder and receive a dividend each year, both formed by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. I will receive a stipend for my service on the Alaska Board of Fisheries. I have a resident sport sport fish and trapping license. My immediate family consists of my 4 siblings, only one of whom resides in Alaska, along with 2 aunts and 4 uncles who also reside in Alaska, none of whom are currently involved in fisheries work or business. My Aunt Marie Monroe retains 2 commercial fishing permits for the Tanana River, net and fish wheel.

However, she has not fished the permit or financially benefited since 1993. As I work for a fisheries organization, I do have a personal and financial interest with the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association. However, no action I take on this board will directly benefit myself or my employer personally or financially. Neither I nor any member of my immediate family or my employer have any affiliation with any business or Fish and Wildlife organizations that may be affected by the proposals before us. No member of my immediate family, myself, or my employer are involved in any lawsuits against the state, department, or board of fisheries.

I certify that this disclosure statement is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge. Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Irwin. Any questions from the board? Hearing none, I rule that you can fully participate on the agenda items before us at this meeting.

Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Curtis Chamberlain. I am— I live— reside in Wasilla, originally from Maniac and Bethel. My current job is Deputy General Counsel with Chalista Corporation.

I also own a controlling interest in Neon Law Group Incorporated, which is no longer doing business and winding down. I'm a shareholder of the Kuskokwim Corporation, which is a village corporation created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and Chalista Corporation, the regional corporation created under the same. I hold fishing, hunting, and trapping licenses for the state of Alaska. Neither I nor anyone in my family have any interest in any business or any organization related to Fish and Wildlife, or may be affected by any of the proposals before the board. My father owns a commercial drift net permit for the Middle Kuskokwim that hasn't been utilized since approximately 1995.

Neither I, anyone in my family, or any organization I belong to are involved in any lawsuit against the state, the board, or the Department of Fish and Game, or where the department is a party to the lawsuit. This statement is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge.

Any board questions? Seeing none. Mr. Wood. Thank you. Hopefully now's the right time.

Anyhow, I just want you to educate me on something though, and I'm sure that maybe there's no relevance, but as your position is working for Chalista and Chalista has ownership or connection to 2 out of the 6 CDQ groups in the Bering Sea, we have before us 4, 11 proposals rules that could potentially switch allocation from the CDQ groups to the state fisheries. Is there any financial or personal connection between your position at Chalista and the CDQ groups and decisions that could be made at this board with reallocation that could affect the CDQ groups that are affiliated with Chalista? Thank you for the question. That's actually a wonderful question. So this is going to be a slightly long answer, so bear with me.

So I'm— Chalista Corporation was— is a regional Alaska Native corporation created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. My membership in Chalista, like my membership, is devised as— is because of my relationship to one of the original— being a descendant of one of the the original shareholders, or you can be a devisee by a will or inherit original shares. And so when you're looking at the class for Chalista Corporation, our shareholders are actually spread throughout the world. The majority of our shareholders don't reside in the region. CDQ groups— and I may be inaccurate on a few things, so the department can correct me me if they're in a position.

But they were created under the Magnuson-Stevens Act to benefit those communities. And your membership in a CDQ group or your ability to benefit from a CDQ group is based on your residing in that community at that time. So with that, these are completely separate entities created under different statutory schemes, and the only overlap we have at this point really is geographic. To the best of my knowledge, there is no contractual relationship or mutual ownership between Chalista Corporation or any CDQ groups, the two in our region being the Coastal Villages Relief Fund or Yukon River Or Yukon River Delta Fisheries? Yeah.

Yeah. Mr. Ahlstrom runs it. And I do apologize to him for butchering the name. But yeah, the real only nexus we have is a lot of the user groups we have overlap, but there are no contractual or financial ties. Chalista owns— has no shared ownership, to the best of my knowledge.

In any businesses or any business relationships with any CDQ groups, or vice versa, that any CDQ groups have— hold any business interests associated with Chalista. Our views do run concurrent in a lot of things, but there are no business or financial ties. Thank you very much.

Follow-up question in terms of, you know, just the membership of Chalista, and I think I heard you mention that most of the shareholders don't live in region, so may not be direct beneficiaries of any of the CDQ programs. How many shareholders does Chalista have in its, in its corporation? At this point in time, we just surpassed 39,000 shareholders, and I— and the largest shareholder base is actually here in Anchorage. Any additional questions?

Based on the information that there are no financial investment or ties from Telus Corporation, your employer, with the CDQ groups and the large class of shareholders, which, uh, what I heard was the majority of which are not in region and would be benefiting directly from those programs, I'm going to go ahead and rule that there is no conflict. And, um, are there any other questions? Mr. Chamberlain, you can fully participate in the meeting today. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Swenson.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Hi, my name is Greg Swenson. I was born and raised in Anchorage and married with one daughter and one grandson. My wife and I are retired school teachers, and my daughter is an assistant principal in the Anchorage School District. We both receive income from teacher retirements from the state, PFD, CD interest, investment, and residential rental income, and I get a stipend from the state for my service on the board. Neither I nor my immediate family have any financial interest in the fisheries.

Nor are we involved in any lawsuits with the State of Alaska Department of Fish and Game or the Board of Fisheries. I also have licenses for hunting and fishing and a private pilot's license. This information is true and correct to the best of my abilities. Thank you. Any questions?

Hearing none, Mr. Swenson, you can fully participate in the meeting. Mr. Godfrey. My name is Jared Godfrey. I'm a lifelong Alaskan. I was born in Juneau.

My family is originally from the Kodiak Islands. I'm a shareholder of Kodiak Regional Corporation, Fognek Native Corporation, and Uzinke Native Corporation. I'm an elected tribal council member of the Native Village of Port Lyons. I live in Eagle River. I have two children, 21 years old and 19 years old.

Professionally, I'm a consultant with various clients, primarily in the broadband space and economic development, but nothing pertaining to fisheries. My son participated in the commercial fisheries of Bristol Bay and Kodiak earlier this year as a deckhand. I have no conflicts to declare regarding any matters in front of the Board of Fisheries during this meeting. Neither I nor any member of my family as a party directly or indirectly to a lawsuit with the state of Alaska or any agencies of the state. These statements are factual and true to the best of my knowledge.

Any questions? Hearing none, Mr. Godfrey, you may fully participate. Mr. Wood.

Right on. Thank you. Uh, my name is Mike Wood. I live in Chase, Alaska, 5 miles north of Talkeetna on the Susitna River. I am a self-employed carpenter and do contract work for the Alaska Mountaineering School, Antarctic Logistics, and Expeditions and other clients.

I have an SO4H Setnet permit in Cook Inlet, and I own Sue Salmon Co., a small-scale commercial salmon fishing business that supplies fresh salmon to locals. I am the volunteer chair of the Susitna River Coalition and chair of the Chase Community Council. My wife Molly is an independent consultant. We both receive the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend. I have a current hunting, fishing, and trapping license.

Neither my wife or I are involved in any lawsuits against the state, the board, or the department, and I certify that this disclosure statement is true, correct, and complete. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Any questions? Seeing none, you can fully participate in the meeting agenda. Thanks.

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Tom Carpenter. I reside in Cordova, currently retired. I've divested myself completely of all businesses, including limited entry permits and IFQs.

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

No member of my family is involved in any lawsuits against the state of Alaska or the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. And I believe this statement to be true, correct, and complete. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Any questions? You may fully participate in the matters before the board.

And I turn the chair over to you. Thank you, Ms. Carlson. And, Dora, would you please put your ethics statement on the record? Roger. My name is Marit Carlson-Vandort, born and raised in Alaska, currently live in Anchorage.

I am employed as the President and CEO of Far West Incorporated, which is the village corporation for Chignik Bay formed under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. I'm also a shareholder in Bristol Bay Native Corporation and Inupiat Native Corporation. I receive a State of Alaska permanent fund dividend and purchase a resident sport fish license annually. I will receive a stipend for my service on this board. Neither I, members of my immediate family, nor my employer have any financial interest in fisheries.

Similarly, neither I, members of my, my immediate family, nor my employer are involved with any lawsuits, uh, with the State of Alaska, the ADF&G, or the Board of Fisheries. Mr. Chair, this information is true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge. Thank you. Any board questions?

Seeing none, I rule that you can fully participate with the matters before us, and I will turn the chair back to you. Thank you, sir. Okey-doke. Let's talk a minute about, um, access to board members. I'm going to go through some some information here about our meeting process and our agenda and how that's going to roll.

As you all know, as board members, we're available to you for the purpose of receiving added information. It doesn't work without your help. You guys are the, the knowledge holders about these fisheries, and we need to hear from you. Many of us meet with stakeholders informally during the breaks, both before and after daily meetings. Again, we're here to serve you and benefit from your input.

There is a line called the sanctuary line that you are likely familiar with. It's right up here at the front of the tables. I'm not quite sure what color it is, if it's yellow—. Yellow and black—. Yellow and black this time around.

We ask that you please don't cross that during our meetings and our breaks. However, if you do wish to try and talk with one of us and we're behind that line, try and get our attention. If you can't get our attention, talk to one of board supports, one of the department staff, anybody that's kind of in waving distance or earshot, and they'll come get one of us and and, um, and we'll come meet with you on the other side of that line. Um, please keep in mind that it's during these breaks, both before and after the daily meetings, that we're catching up on all the reading material that's been submitted during the meeting. So be patient with us, and, um, we'll, we'll, we'll do our best to make time to make sure we have a chance to, to talk with you and get information.

In order to ensure that, uh, this process process works and the public is fully informed. The board, the chair, the vice chair, and the executive director, Director Nelson, are happy to answer any process questions that you might have during the course of this meeting. It's hoped that the practices of the board that I'm outlining right now will help to maximize public participation in this process. And certainly the board is in agreement that an informed and engaged public can only result in better conservation and development of our fisheries. The ADF&G and the Alaska Board of Fisheries are united in supporting a respectful workplace.

We're committed to ensuring that our workplace is free from negative, aggressive, and inappropriate behaviors. Harassment of any type is not going to be tolerated and generally isn't an issue, and certainly we appreciate everybody's assistance in helping us have a respectful and smooth meeting. In accordance with the Open Meetings Act, the Board staff published a notice in the online— Alaska Online Public Notice System and in the statewide newspaper, posted the notice on board's websites and our designated posting place, and also distributed to a list of our email recipients. I'm not going to take the time to read the notice, but the copies of the notice are in the meeting notebooks at the back of the room or are available from Director Nelson if you would like to see the complete text. Again, it's also available on the website.

The public notice and proposals were distributed to the local Fish and Game Advisory Committees. They're posted online. They were sent by email to all interested organizations and individuals that I assume signed up or requested to be notified in an email listserv. Public comments were solicited, and the board members have received copies of all of the on-time written public comments. The timely public comments and the timely advisory committee comments are available for the board's use and also available to the public in the workbooks also at the back table.

Copies of all those meeting materials are updated frequently throughout this meeting, um, and can be seen on the board's website and on the web page specific to this meeting. So I'd encourage you guys to keep checking that, um, if you have any questions about changes to the agenda or, um, timing. Copies of the tentative agenda for this meeting can also be found on that table in the back. The agenda is subject to change throughout this meeting, but an attempt will be made by the board to generally stay on the agenda. The board encourages the public to submit written public comments on specific proposals or issues during the meeting.

Written public comments submitted before deliberations begin— okay, before deliberations— are limited to 10 single-sided or 5 double-sided pages in length. Please make sure that your written comments clearly include the name, your name, the organization that you represent if there is one, and what proposals your RC is addressing at the top of the document. That helps us a lot in terms of organizing and orienting what we're looking at and getting those materials before us when you're either speaking in Committee of the Whole during your public testimony and most certainly when the board is deliberating those proposals. However, once deliberations on those proposals begin at the meeting, the board will only accept written public comments that are not more than 5 single single-sided pages or the equivalent double-sided, unless very specific information is requested by the board that requires more pages than allowed under the standard. And that is a paper management exercise almost more than anything else, since once we get into deliberations, there's very little time to go through extensive documents.

And that time would have been allowed prior to deliberations. The board is accepting RCs submitted electronically as either a Word document or PDF only through the board's website. A link to the submission portal is prominently featured on the meeting's web page where all the materials for this meeting are posted. You can also turn in written materials to the board support staff at the end of the table. However, please note that you only need to turn in one copy now.

But if you would like to have or are printing or submitting materials that are in color and you want to have those color copies available to the board, then you have to submit those in color to the board support staff, and we need 20 copies of those. We don't have a color printer here for RCs, so if you want something in color, you need to submit those 20 copies to board support staff so that they can distribute to members. With no exception, all materials that are submitted to the board for its consideration must be presented to the record keeper at the end table here for distribution and posting and uploading on our website. Please do not give documents directly board members, as those documents will be handed back to you and the board member is going to request that you submit it for the record. All documents that are received at this board meeting will be assigned a log number called an RC.

All written materials will be retained for the permanent record of the board. The record keeper will generally distribute RCs in the morning before the meeting begins, at the noon break, and if there is an evening session after the dinner break. This ensures that there is regular distribution of all those, uh, written materials to all board members, as well as proper retention for the public record.

If we get a— I'm not anticipating a really high volume of RCs submitted during this meeting, so I will work with board support staff if RCs are coming in to try and take breaks to allow members to have access to those. But, you know, generally speaking, if we're in a high-volume meeting, we try to set a schedule for those RCs so as not to overwhelm the board support staff if there's a high volume. Um, about testimony committee and deliberations, so those who wish to provide public testimony at this meeting must fill out one of the blue cards that are located at the end of this table and turn it into the board support staff. The tentative cutoff time to sign up for oral testimony at this meeting is noon today. Okay, so at this meeting, the public will be given 3 minutes to testify.

Traditional Knowledge reports advisory committees and Regional Advisory Council representatives will be given 10 minutes. To my knowledge, there have been no signups for Traditional Knowledge reports at this meeting. Following public testimony, there is one session on the board's Committee of the Whole. We intend to go through the proposals in numerical order during the committee's discussion. Everyone present is allowed to participate participate.

There's no need to sign up for that. And the agenda, which is available online or in the materials at the back, also show where we tentatively plan to deliberate the Committee of the Whole session, which is tomorrow morning. And while this agenda is subject to change, I'll do my best to provide you updates along the way if that— if there are any changes to the agenda. And again, if you have any questions about the process, feel free to ask myself, Vice Chair Carpenter, or Director Nelson. And I believe for Committee of the Whole chair, it will be Mr. Godfrey today.

If you decide to sign up for public testimony, when your name is called, please come forward to the mic and we'll state your name and all that, all that good stuff. I'll give you a little bit more instruction on that when we get to that portion of the agenda. So I think I'll pause here before we get into the rest of that and We'll get set up for staff, staff reports. I think we have a couple today. And so let's take about 5 minutes to get transitioned and get ready for staff reports and then we'll come back on the record.

Thank you.

Okay, the time is 9:24 and 33 seconds. We are back on the record and ready to hear all about Pacific cod fisheries. Mr. Commissioner. Yeah, just before we start, I thought I'd throw a few interesting facts about cod on the table here just to get us switched out of salmon. They can live to be 30 years of age.

They can change their color to blend in with their surroundings. They have a barbel, a whisker-like appendage on their chin that helps them locate food. They communicate with each other making sounds using drumming muscles. They are the classic fish used in fish and chips and bacalhau. And the term codfish is a playful insult used by Peter Pan to belittle Captain Hook.

So it's always good to get, get get our minds switched away from those species that we're most used to focusing on and getting into the new ones. So with that, I'll turn it over to staff and help us walk through cod. I mean, Halloween is tomorrow, Commissioner. We have some expectations now.

Welcome.

Thank you and good morning. For the record, my name is Cassandra Whiteside. I work for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. I'm the Assistant Area Manager for Shellfish and Groundfish Fisheries for the Kodiak, Chignik, and South Alaska Peninsula areas. Cassandra, can you pull your mic just a little bit closer to you?

Closer? Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you so much. Sure. With me here today is Mark Stickert.

He's the Regional Management Coordinator for Shellfish and Groundfish Fisheries. And today I'm going to provide a Pacific cod fisheries overview. This oral report can be found in RC3, and staff comments can be found in RC2.

So this is an outline of what I'll be talking about today. I'll go over a list of fishery terms, jurisdiction terms, the differences between federal, parallel, and state Pacific cod fisheries. And Pacific cod harvest allocations. I'll, I'll then pause, uh, if there's any questions up to that point before I move on to state waters fisheries and overview of proposals.

So a list of fishery terms that you're going to be hearing a lot today. Uh, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council is the decision-making body that develops fishery management plans and regulations, and the National Marine Fisheries Service is the implementing agency that administers those decisions. ABC, TAC, and GHL are all harvest limits. So ABC is— you can think of as a ceiling. It's the total allowed catch within a given year for that species.

So for this species, Pacific cod, that's the maximum that can be taken out of the water in a given year. Uh, TAC, total allowable catch, is the federal parallel catch limit. GHL, or guideline harvest level, is the state waters catch limit. Sectors are the federal fisheries user groups. The TAC is allocated to sectors defined by different gear types or processing capabilities.

FFP is a federal fishing permit. LLP is a license limitation program, so it's a federal program that's equivalent to the state's limited entry program. SSL, Stellar Sea Lion, and VMS is Vessel Monitoring System.

Continuing on with terms, we're going to talk about jurisdiction. Federal waters are all waters from 3 to 200 nautical miles offshore under federal management jurisdiction. There are 5 federal Pacific cod groundfish management areas. In this overview, I'll be focusing on the Western Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, and Aleutian Islands. State waters are waters from 0 to 3 nautical miles offshore under state management jurisdiction.

There are 8 state Pacific cod groundfish management areas. And in this overview, I'll be focusing on the South Alaska Peninsula area, Dutch Harbor subdistrict, and Aleutian Islands subdistrict.

Shown here are Alaska waters and those federal and state boundaries. Again, we're going to be focusing on this area here, the state boundary of the South Alaska Peninsula area. Is inside the federal Western Gulf of Alaska area. The state Dutch Harbor Subdistrict is in the federal Bering Sea subarea. The state Aleutian Islands Subdistrict is in the Aleutian Islands subarea for the federal boundary.

Uh, there are 3 Pacific cod fisheries in Alaska. There's a federal fishery that occurs in federal waters and is guided by the council process. Harvest is deducted from the federal TAC. There is a parallel fishery that occurs in state waters concurrent with the adjacent federal fishery and generally adopts federal regulations and management measures. In practice, the parallel fishery authorizes prosecution of the federal fishery in state waters under state jurisdiction.

The state has emergency order authority to open and close a parallel fishery and impose area closures, gear and vessel size restrictions, and bycatch control measures as guided by the board process. And parallel fishery harvest is deducted from the federal tax. There is a state waters fishery, or sometimes called GHL fisheries. That occurs solely in state waters, guided by the board process. Harvested is deducted from the state GHL.

And before I move on, I'm going to talk quite in detail about the similarities and differences between these three fisheries, but why do we have three fisheries for cod is kind of a question that you might ask. As Mr. Commissioner noted, these cod are bottom-dwelling predators. They sexually mature at 5 to 6 years of age and can live up to 30 years. They're highly migratory and sensitive to temperature changes, moving seasonally to and from spawning and feeding grounds and in and out of state and federal waters. And so we have one group of fish that's moving across these jurisdictional boundaries and they don't recognize these lines that we have made for them.

So both federal and state agencies manage the species within their respective jurisdictions, and therefore management is coordinated into these three Pacific cod fisheries.

This slide is a visual representation of how the fishery harvest limits are established. ABC is the total amount of removals allowed for each federal management area in a given year. Exceeding the ABC risks overfishing of the stock. Therefore, federal and state fishery managers coordinate to ensure the ABC is not exceeded. In this example, we review how the Western Gulf of Alaska ABC is divided between main user groups.

70% Of the ABC is set aside as total allowable catch for federal and parallel fisheries, is then further divided 60% into an A season, 40% into a B season, and each one of those seasons is then further divided into between 5— or excuse me, 6 federal sectors.

30% Of the ABC is set aside as guideline harvest level for South Alaska Peninsula state waters fisheries. There's no A or B season, it's just one season, and that is allocated 85% to pot gear and 15% to jig gear.

So this slide is an overview of the regulations for the Western Gulf of Alaska Federal Pacific Cod Fishery. The fishery occurs in federal waters. The harvest limit is based on 70% of the federal Pacific cod ABC, and gear sectors are trawl catcher vessel, trawl catcher processor, longline catcher vessel, longline catcher processor, pot and jig gear. Uh, there are These are split between A and B seasons that typically start January 1st and September 1st. There are no gear limits in this fishery.

This fishery is limited access, so only a limited number of participants can participate in this fishery, and an FFP and an LLP is required.

There are generally no vessel length limits for this fishery, but your vessel length is limited by your LLP.

There are no fishing zones and VMS, Vessel Monitoring System, required for the protection measures of steller sea lions, and there are observer requirements in this fishery.

The South Alaska Peninsula area parallel Pacific cod fishery occurs in state waters. It's open concurrent to the federal fishery by state emergency order. Harvest is deducted from federal TAC. The same gear that it's allowed in the federal fishery is allowed in the parallel fishery. However, most state waters are closed to non-pelagic trawl gear.

The fishery has A and B seasons and no gear limits, but vessel length is limited to 58 feet. This fishery is open access, which means anyone can participate, and an FFP and LLP are not required.

No fishing zones and VMS for protection measures for Steller sea lions are still adopted in this fishery. And observers are required for federally permitted vessels, and they are not required if you do not have a federal permit.

The South Alaska Peninsula State Waters Pacific Cod Fishery occurs in state waters. Harvest limits, the GHL, is based on 30% of the federal Pacific Cod ABC. And seasons open after the federal and parallel fisheries close, after the A season closes. Gear is limited to pot and jig gear only, and gear limits of 60 pots or 5 jig machines. Vessel lengths are limited to 58 feet.

This fishery is an open access fishery, so anyone can participate. However, there is an exclusive registration requirement by the state, and what that means is once you sign up to participate in an exclusive registration area, you cannot participate in another exclusive registration area fishery. So you have to choose each calendar year where you want to fish.

Stellar sea lion protection measures are still in place, but they are for rookery protection only, and there are no observer requirements.

And before I move on to Pacific cod, state waters Pacific cod fisheries, are there any questions thus far, Madam Chair? Going around the table. Miss Irwin. Yeah, thank you very much. Um, I was wondering what the Steller sea lion rookery protection means.

So if you look at the map, it's just The black areas are closed to no transit and no fishing zones. The federal and parallel, if I go back another slide, has larger zones that are no fishing allowed. Those red zones for federal and parallel don't allow certain gear types within those zones. You can transit them, but you can't fish in them.

State waters. You just can't transit those black no fishing zones, no transit zones. Thank you.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks. On, on slide 9, I had— my question was, why are they closed, those areas, both the no, the no fishing zone for, for pot and the no fishing zone for longline and pot?

Mr. Withrow, the chair. Thank you for that question. For the record, Mark Stickert. Under federal ESA standards, Steller sea lions are listed, and with that comes a suite of protection measures, both, you know, seasonally as well as area. You know, it's, I think, fairly widely accepted that Pacific cod are a food source, an important food source for sea lions.

And in the case of the black dots here, those are known rookeries. And so they just want to keep boats away from disturbing, you know, young sea lions. And then the red zones are really designed to prevent fishing for directed cod or pollock or other species in those areas as a competition for food for sea lions in areas of high density.

Okay, that's all. I, I understand that. So, so that's not because it's like a spawning ground or something for the cod? It's strictly off limits just so the stellar sea lions have a food source? It is specific to stellar sea lions and, and not, not relate to the distribution of cod in those areas.

Wow. Okay, thanks, Mr. Swenson. Can they subsistence hunt the sea lions in those areas?

Madam Chair, so when a species is listed under the Endangered Species Act, take is prohibited. And take can be the direct take of those animals as well as take associated with other impacts to those animals that result in their malnutrition or anything else. What you're seeing here is the biological opinion that was written by National Marine Fisheries Service to allow fishing to continue for these species that potentially affect Steller sea lions, in this case the food sources, in a way that protects them around their, their, their brookeries and their breeding— and the Steller sea lion breeding ground, but still allows fishing to occur outside that area. If we were to fish in those areas, we'd probably lose our incidental take permit that allows fishing to occur in other areas. Yes, there is some allowance for customary and traditional take of steller sea lions, but they are listed as endangered.

It's very minor in that area. This is not like the eastern stock, which has been delisted.

And one last question about the exclusive registration and open areas. Are we looking at an exclusive area on page 10 directly, or are Are there grids or boundaries drawn in on another map that you got to register for? Through the chair, this is an exclusive registration, the entire area. You don't have to subset this area. I'll bring this up as we go along further.

The South Alaska Peninsula area is exclusive. The Dutch Harbor subdistrict is exclusive. Exclusive. You can't fish north and south at the same time, but this entire area is open under one registration.

Okay, thanks. But that's only for state, state water boats, right? You have to sign up, but federal boats could go from one, can go from one to the other. Through the chair, that's correct. The federal is limited by their FFP and LLP where they can and can't fish.

Okay, thank you. Any other questions? I just want to note that we must have a bunch of Peninsula folks around because you brought your geologic action with you, and I got to give Cassandra credit for talking right through a 5.6 without missing a beat. So I didn't see anything falling, so I figured we were okay. Doing good.

All right, go ahead and Continue, please. Thanks.

Moving on to an overview of current state waters fisheries. This is a side-by-side comparison of the South Alaska Peninsula area and Dutch Harbor Subdistrict state waters fisheries. The South Alaska Peninsula area GHL is 30% of the Western Gulf of Alaska ABC ABC. There is no step-up, step-down provision. It is a fixed 30% that does not change.

And for reference, that 2025 GHL was 5.8 million pounds. Looking at the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict, the GHL is 10 to 15% of the Bering Sea Subarea ABC. That does have a step-up, step-down provision. So every 2 years, if the GHL is met, the percentage will go up by 1%, and then if 2 years in a row that GHL is not met, the percentage goes down 1%. And for reference, that 2025 GHL was £44 million, which was 13% of the Bering Sea subarea ABC.

South Alaska Peninsula area has both pot and jig gear. Pot is allocated 85%, jig is allocated 15% of that GHL. Pot opens 7 days after the federal fishery closes or March 7th, whichever is later. That typically means that that fishery opens on March 7th. Jig gear opens 2 days after the federal fishery closes, or March 15th, and that fishery typically opens on March 15th.

There is a GHL rollover date. So after the federal Pot B season closes, if there's any GHL remaining for either gear type, that allocation between gear types goes away. And so you can use pot or jig gear to catch that remaining GHL. For the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict, pot gear is allocated 100% of that 44 million pounds. That fishery opens 7 days after the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands federal sector closes.

That typically means that the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict fishery opens in early February. There is no GHL rollover date because there's no allocation between gear types. And as mentioned before, these are both exclusive registration areas, so once a vessel signs up for one of these areas, they cannot fish in the other. They have to choose. Vessel length is limited to 58 feet for both areas.

Vessel count on average in the South Alaska Peninsula area for pot is 26. Jig, on average, 14 vessels participate in the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict. On average, 29 vessels participate in that fishery.

The State Waters South Alaska Peninsula Management Area boundary extends to 170 degrees west longitude However, the majority of state waters harvest occurs east of Unimak Island near the communities of False Pass, King Cove, and Sand Point. Vessels from these communities participate in other local fisheries including state-managed salmon, shellfish, and groundfish fisheries. On average, 54% of South Alaska Peninsula state waters Pacific cod participants participants also participated in the Western Gulf of Alaska federal parallel Pacific cod fisheries.

This slide shows the South Alaska Peninsula area Pacific cod pot gear effort guideline harvest level and harvest by year. Harvest in millions of pounds are on the left, number of vessels are on the right. And year along the bottom. This fishery began in 1997. The South Alaska Peninsula GHL has been 30% of the federal Western Gulf of Alaska ABC since 2000.

However, the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod stock sharply declined due to warm waters in the Gulf of Alaska and resulted in greatly reduced ABC and state-managed GHL since 2018. The South Alaska Peninsula pot gear GHL has been achieved in all but the 2003 season, and the pot gear GHL is typically achieved in 1 to 2 weeks of fishing effort.

This shows the same, uh, figure but for jig gear. So it shows effort, GHL, and harvest by year with millions of pounds on the left, number of vessels on the right, and year along the bottom. The jig gear GHL has been achieved 9 out of 29 seasons, and on an annual basis, it harvests an average of 32% of their GHL allocation.

So this is transitioning north To the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict fishery, this fishery occurs in state waters and shares a boundary with the South Alaska Peninsula area in the Gulf of Alaska. The majority of the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict pot gear harvest occurs adjacent to Unimak Island, and most, if not all, of the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict pot gear GHL is achieved by mid-April. So the fishery generally lasts 10 to 12 weeks.

This figure shows Dutch Harbor Subdistrict state waters Pacific cod pot gear effort, GHL, and harvest by year. Millions of pounds of harvest on the left axis, number of vessels on the right, and year along the bottom. The Dutch Harbor Subdistrict fishery began in 2014. Since 2017 and has achieved its GHL every year. By regulation, a GHL is achieved if 90% or more is harvested.

And just for reference, the 2024 fishery achieved or caught 91% of the GHL, and in 2025 to date, or at least through September 1st, 95% of the GHL was caught.

And before I move on to proposals, I can pause again for questions, Madam Chair.

Any questions? Mr. Wood. On slide 12, when it has opening dates and there's a period of like 7 days before you can start fishing in another area. Was there any— is— was— why was 7 set as opposed to 3 or 14 or whatever? Through the chair, I'm not quite sure why 7 was chosen, but in general it provides opportunity for people to deliver their harvest and put away extra gear.

There are no gear limits in the federal parallel fisheries. So you can have in excess of 60 pots, so it gives time to get extra gear out of the water.

Thank you. Okay, please continue.

During this meeting, the board will consider 11 proposals. 8 Proposals seek to increase the GHL allocation for the South Alaska Peninsula area. Two proposals seek to change the Dutch Harbor subdistrict management, and one proposal that we'll hear today seeks to implement trawl gear restrictions on the Aleutian Islands.

So this table shows the similarities and differences of the 8 proposals seeking to increase the South Alaska Peninsula GHL allocation percentage of the ABC. And to note, this table is also Table 1 in staff comments.

Proposals 1 and 2 seek to increase the South Alaska Peninsula Pacific cod GHL from 30 to 50% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod ABC.

Proposals 3 and 4 seek to increase the South Alaska Peninsula Pacific cod GHL from 30 to 40% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod ABC, with a 5% step up to occur annually, not to exceed 50% of the Western Gulf Pacific cod ABC. And to note here, this step-up is based on the total GHL allocation, so pot and jig gear combined.

Proposals 5 and 6 seek to increase the South Alaska Peninsula area Pacific cod GHL from 30 to 40% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod ABC, with a 5% step-up to occur annually if the pot gear GHL is achieved by May 31st, not to exceed 50% of the Western Gulf Pacific Cod ABC. And to note here, this step up is based on the harvest of pot gear GHL allocation only. The jig gear GHL would also increase regardless of if the jig gear GHL allocation was achieved.

Proposals 7 and 8 seek to increase the South Alaska Peninsula State Waters Pacific Cod GHL from 30 to 50% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific Cod ABC, with a 5% step up to occur annually if the GHL was— is achieved not to exceed 60% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific Cod ABC. And this proposal, to note, step-up is based on the total GHL allocation, pot and jig combined. So just kind of as a recap, decisions facing the board is whether or not to increase the South Alaska Peninsula GHL allocation. If so, by how much? Should there be a step-up provision?

And if so, should the step-up be based on the total GHL harvest or pot gear only?

Further considerations for proposals 1 through 8: any increase to the state GHL means the federal TAC will decrease to maintain removals before— below the ABC. So if your vessel is less than or equal to 58 feet or you do not participate in federal parallel fisheries, your operation would likely benefit from an increase in GHL. If your vessel is over 58 feet or you do not participate— do not operate a gear type allowed in GHL fisheries such as longline or trawl gear, your operation would lose opportunity.

Additionally, an increase in state waters GHL may trigger a reconsultation under the Endangered Species Act.

So shown here is a map of the South Alaska Peninsula area where the state waters Pacific cod harvest occurs during the parallel fishery. The black no transit zones and the red crosshatch pattern no fishing zones are in effect. When the parallel fishery closes and the state-managed fishery opens, the no fishing zones for pot gear, so the red crosshatch pattern, are no longer in effect. So those go away and fishing is allowed in those areas in the state-managed fishery.

So if the State Waters GHL increases, it's possible for additional harvest to occur occur in these areas that would otherwise be closed. The department can't give an estimate on the potential increase. We collect harvest on a statistical area level, which includes surrounding waters to these areas. But we can say that approximately 48% of pot gear harvest occurs in the state-managed fishery in these statistical areas where these closure areas are found.

Co-management considerations for proposals 1 through 8.

These proposals, there are no step-down provision if annual State Waters GHLs are not achieved during a calendar year. So there are no— there's no mechanism in place to then reallocate back to the federal system if GHLs are not being caught in a given year.

Federal sector allocations may become too small to support directed fisheries. This table shows 2025 GHL and TAC allocations for reference. As you can see, some of those TACs, once they get split between A and B season, those numbers get quite small. So how small is too small to support directed fisheries? I'm not sure, but they could— that is a potential.

And then lastly, there is ongoing research that may be used to evaluate current stock boundaries and area apportionments between the Gulf Alaska and the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands. Currently, the stocks are evaluated as separate stocks and are apportioned separately.

Proposal 9 seeks to create a State Waters Pacific Cod No Fishing Zones that separates the South Alaska Peninsula area and Dutch Harbor Subdistrict State Waters Pacific Cod fisheries adjacent to Unimak Island.

This figure shows Unimak Island and the proposed no fishing zones and average harvest by statistical area for the last 5 years. Dutch Harbor Subdistrict is in the dark blue to the north. South Alaska Peninsula area is in the light blue to the south. And in the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict, 2 statistical areas would be fully closed and 1 statistical area would be partially closed. These 3 areas combined, um, an average of 71% of Dutch Harbor Subdistrict harvest is taken from these 3 statistical areas.

And no harvest, uh, in the proposed South Alaska Peninsula area has a occurred in the last 5 years, and very little harvest has occurred historically.

Proposal 10 seeks to amend the pot gear season open date for the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict State Waters Pacific Cod Pot Gear Fishery to open 7 days after the federal Bering Sea Fishery closure. Or March 7th, whichever is later. So this seeks to align the South Alaska Peninsula area and Dutch Harbor subdistrict opening triggers. Currently in regulation, South Alaska Peninsula area opens 7 days after the federal sector closes, or March 7th, whichever is later. So that means typically the average opening date of this fishery is March 7th.

And the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict, the fishery opens 7 days after the federal fishery closes. So that— between federal and state fisheries.

And this figure shows Dutch Harbor Subdistrict state waters Pacific cod pot gear fishery harvest before and after that proposed new start date of March 7th by year for the last 10— or excuse me, for the whole duration of this fishery. Um, on average, 55% of harvest in the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict state waters fishery occurs prior to the new start date of March 7th. So quite a bit of harvest occurs in February up to March.

As such, it may be difficult for the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict fishery to achieve its GHL if it's opened on March 7th.

And moving on to Proposal 11, I'll turn this over to Mark Stickert.

Thank you, Cassie. So Proposal 11 moves us to the west and moves us away from state-managed pot cod fisheries, and it seeks to close all state waters in the Aleutian Islands District west of 170 west longitude to groundfish fishing with all— for all trawl gear, both midwater and bottom trawl gear. As noted in the proposal itself, it was submitted by Rationalize Aleutian Golden King Crab participants, and it's based on their concern about bycatch, trawl bycatch, and interactions with, with their preferred species. And again, as we note in the staff comments, it covers a fair bit of ground and actually meets the call for several proposals this meeting. So specifically, it, it would affect trawl gear vessels in the state-managed Aleutian Islands Subdistrict Pacific Cod Fishery and would also impact trawl vessels that participate in federal and parallel fisheries across a fairly wide spectrum.

So we decided that we were going to bring this proposal up at this meeting, really focus our comments here on the cod impacts for the state-managed cod. And then you as the board will do final deliberation in March, which is sort of a time to wrap everything up.

So the next figure here is just a map. As you can see, 170 is on the right, the western boundaries on the left. That's about 700 linear miles. So we cover a lot of real estate in this proposal.

Specific to, to this meeting, there is a state-managed Pacific cod fishery that happens in this area, and it's mostly focused around the ADAC section. There's been a longstanding effort to create opportunity for Pacific cod catcher vessels in particular to put fish into ADAC. The history of having and maintaining a shore-based processor there is ephemeral at best. I think the takeaway is when a shore-based processor is operating ADAC, we tend to have a fishery. When, when the shore-based processor is not available, we tend not to have a fishery in that area just because of market availability.

Next slide. So because this proposal specifically would eliminate trawl gear, here's just a table of of, you know, recent trawl effort in the state-managed Pacific cod fishery in the Aleutian Islands District. As you can see, you know, relatively low participation. And because of a limited number of boats and processors, unfortunately we can show you, you know, not a lot of annual catch. But we tried to roll it up and summarize that in general over the last 5 or 6 years, you know, we see harvest around, you know, averages about 1 million pounds a year for 4 or 5 vessels.

So again, relatively low-density fishery. And this is mostly currently prosecuted by catcher processors or vessels that are delivering to a mothership, as there's no local onshore processing capacity. Next slide. And that's all I have for proposal. I'm happy to entertain any questions.

Thank you. Mr. Carpenter, thanks. I appreciate that presentation from both of you. I just have a couple questions. The first question is, so when the ABC is set and then the TAC is derived from that, and then, and then from the TAC you pull out the 70% to the federal side and the 30% to the state side, and then it's broke— broken down into the two gear groups, there's a buffer buffer that is usually between the ABC and the TAC.

Is that a standard buffer? Is it— maybe if you could touch on that, and if I'm wrong, please correct me.

Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter. So up next, we're going to see a presentation from some North Pacific Fishery Management Council folks, and they're going to touch more on that. You're on the right path. There's a buffer between an ABC and OFL. We didn't talk about an OFL, which is sort of the maximum harvest limit that would jeopardize likely the long-term productivity of the stock.

And there's a buffer between that number and the ABC to account for uncertainty in calculating OFL. And we'll hear a fair bit of that in detail if we can stand by for a few minutes. Sure. No, I appreciate that. Not a problem.

The other question I had is you talked about unharvested GHL, there's no mechanism to put that back. But so I guess my question is, when I look at the harvest rates and the consistency in which the GHL is caught or could be caught, however you want to look at it, is that really an issue?

Mr. Carpenter, through the chair.

So historically, for the South Alaska Peninsula fishery in particular, no, this is a fairly productive fleet and they have a history of— in particular, the pot sector, as you saw in that figure, all but one year since 1997 has caught their GHL. You know, obviously there's some scaling there at some point. You know, could the GHL get large enough to where the pot fleet would be unable to catch it? In theory, it's possible. But, you know, Given the, the history of having the GHLs based on either 25 or 30% of the Western Gulf ABC, they've not struggled to achieve that benchmark.

Okay. And then I guess the final component to that question would be the jig gear doesn't necessarily always catch their portion of the GHL, but that uncaught portion would roll over so that opportunity would exist to continue to harvest that. Am I correct?

Uh, through the chair, that is correct. Thank you. A couple quick questions and then I'll move on to Swenson. And yes, you can, Commissioner. I think the question of stranding kind of raises the question of how much could be stranded depending upon the cod abundance.

You know, we're at a relatively low abundance level right now, but if the abundance crawls back up to what it was in 2016, you could potentially result in stranding if you reallocate fish, because you could double the biomass and that could double the TAC.

Thanks for that question, because I was curious about that. And then, is— what are the requirements for a State Waters Cod Fishery participant to participate in the parallel federal fishery?

Is there a permit requirement? Is what— what is the requirement? Is there anything that— I guess what I'm getting at is, is there anything that precludes a state waters fisherman, cod fishermen, from participating in the federal fishery? I mean, I know that the reverse is, you know, there's a vessel length threshold, but I'm just kind of curious how it works the other way around. Right.

So you're correct. So it's a— there's a vessel length restriction. If you are a pot gear vessel, VMS, Vessel Monitoring System, is required. But otherwise, there are no additional permits needed if you stay within state waters and participate in the parallel fishery as a vessel outside of the federal system. Say that one more time.

Sorry, the, the parallel fishery gets complex. If you are a federal vessel, if you have federal permits, you can't decide to then not be a federal vessel and participate outside of the federal system. So if you're a federal boat, you have to follow federal rules regardless of whether you fish inside or outside of state waters. But if you don't have any of those federal permits, you still can participate in the parallel fishery. It's open access.

Anyone can participate. Jig gear, you do not have to have a vessel monitoring system. Pot gear, you do. So there isn't really anything that precludes somebody that is participating in the state waters fishery from participating in the federal fishery? No, you can participate state and both.

Okay, thank you. And then my last question, and I don't know if you'd have an answer to this, but I'm curious of the percentage of state water fishery land, um, fisheries codfish, um, that are landed. Are they processed locally, landed and processed locally?

I don't have specific numbers, Madam Chair, but most of them, I believe so, are, are either in, um, one of those three communities, uh, False Pass, King Cove before the processor shut down and Sandpoint. Thank you. Mr. Swenson and then Mr. Wood.

So what is the— what is the bycatch— what is the trawl fleet that— I see there's not very many of them out there, but what do they bycatch out there?

Mr. Swenson, to the chair.

Unfortunately, we're struggling from the shutdown here. We had originally planned on having federal, our counterparts in the federal sector here to speak on behalf of federal fisheries and present that information. We're obviously missing that due to the shutdown. So it's not really within the state's purview to kind of provide that information.

Federal fishery participants Participants are subject to observer requirements at varying levels. And so there are observer data available for federal trawl fisheries. There are typically caps on the amount of halibut in the bottom trawl fisheries and Chinook salmon in the pollock fisheries that happen in these areas. You know, so bycatch management's been a big focus in the federal sector for the last couple of years. You know, I don't have the bycatch amounts or species available right now, but perhaps we could direct you towards some information available on the federal website to provide some information on that, Madam Chair.

Okay, thank you. Chamberlain. So just following up on your comment, can you elaborate what the difference between state and federal observer requirements and standards are?

Mr. Chamberlain to the chair. So the short answer for state, you know, there's only pot and jig fisheries, and the state of Alaska does not have or require observers on pot or jig gear vessels during state-managed Pacific cod fisheries. For vessels that fish in a federal, you know, federally permitted vessels that fish in a federal or parallel fishery, there are regulatory observer requirements for those fisheries. And perhaps we can hear more from that in the following presentation. Observer deployment is sort of geared and, and scaled to each individual fishery and gear type.

So, you know, for instance, trawl catcher processors or catcher processors in general will have 100% observer coverage, meaning there's an observer on board, you know, 100% of the time. The catcher vessel fleet has partial coverage categories depending on your target species. So for bottom trawl fisheries that might target Pacific cod, you know, that those, those range from less than 100%. And then if you're in a midwater pollock fishery, they have shifted towards electronic monitoring of varying different degrees. So it really depends on your target and your operational sector, whether you're a catcher vessel or a catcher processor.

And those standards sort of vary, and we might be able to get some more detail from the next presentation. Thank you. Thank you. I'll hold up my following questions for the next presentation then. Mr. Irwin, then Mr. Wood.

Thank you. I had a question on proposal number 9. I wanted to make sure I wrote this down correctly. Was it stated that 71% of the Dutch Harbor subdistrict harvest occurs in those areas that are proposed to be closed? Through the chair, that's correct.

So 71% comes out of those 3 statistical areas. 2 Of those statistical areas would be closed completely and 1 would be a partial closure. So not all of that percentage for that last one would, you know, essentially be reduced.

Thank you, Mr. Wood. Thank you for your patience. All right, sorry. So I was trying to tag on to the chairperson's questionings earlier as well, but, um, I'm trying to understand the mechanics of opening and closing areas. So on page 10, there's the picture of where the exclusive registration takes place, and if you have exclusive registration in this area, does that mean you can still fish the parallel fishery or the federal fishery but just in those waters?

Mr. Wood, through the chair. So registration exclusivity only applies to state-managed fisheries. There's no overlap with the federal parallel fisheries. As Cassie had noted, these— there's been a long-standing effort to maintain open access state-managed fisheries, but also a recognition that you need to control the flow of boats in and out of areas in order to sort of maintain the efficacy of those fisheries in each of those areas. So each, you know, in this case, the South Alaska Peninsula and the Area O fishery both have exclusive registration that applies specifically and only to those areas.

So if I were a vessel that registered for Area M, I would not be able to use my boat in any other state waters fishery in the state during that calendar year and vice versa. It does not preclude me from fishing in the equivalent parallel fishery in either area. There are no exclusivity requirements for that. And to the Chairwoman's point, you know, there are no specific barriers to entry for the parallel fishery that are or are not in place for the state waters fishery. It gets a little bit confusing if you have a federal fishing permit and relative to requirements, but if you were a boat that wanted to fish in a parallel fishery and subsequently fish in a state waters fishery, it's functionally the same requirements to do so, and registration requirements would not allow you to, or would not prevent you from making those choices.

Okay, so On page 10, and we look at the South Alaska Peninsula area waters, that's Area M. And then we go to slide 16, the Dutch Harbor subdistrict is O. Okay, so you're either fishing one or the other. And then when you go to slide 28, that just had more detail. If, if you are exclusive, you're in one of the Area O or Area M, But if you're fishing in the federal waters, you can go, say, from one across that line and until— and fish. It doesn't really matter.

Like, and then the— so I guess I'm wondering, I should look at the closure dates, like when things are open and closed, you know, that 7-day period. But I'm wondering, can you just hover out there, go one to the other and then bump back in?

Mr. Wood, thank you for that question to the chair. So, you know, one of the challenges of Pacific cod fisheries is the level of coordination. And as Cassie had mentioned, in these areas in particular, most boats fish in both the federal season and the state season. And the management agencies are well coordinated. We do not want to have a fishery for the same species with the same gear type open up at the same time.

That kind of creates chaos. And so we're pretty well coordinated. In this case, the federal fisheries tend to open up on January 1st. So the federal fisheries open, they, they run their course, and when they close, the state season is coordinated and that we open up for that same gear type in the same relative area, in this case a week later. So that way it keeps catch accounting pretty clean, it keeps the enforcement fairly clean, and it allows boats to transition from one fishery to other.

They don't have to pick and choose, and they can fully capitalize on both the opportunity in the federal system and then in the state system. So in general, there's a fair bit of behind-the-scenes coordination, but, you know, we work hard to not have current fisheries for the same species and for the same gear type. Each area has slightly different flavor. But to your question, you know, and then that gets compounded by, you know, we have— we've got sort of 4 fisheries that can happen on either side of this line, and they all sort of open and operate at different times. But the way the state system works is we require you to come in and register with us, and the The regulations state that if you are registered for a state season, you cannot participate in any other Pacific cod fishery at the same time, even if a federal season was open.

So you generally kind of have to pick one. So we don't see a lot of real-time exchange. But I'm not sure if that gets to your question.

You did. And I'm just trying to figure this out, but that has If you're a state fisherman or if you're a fisherman fishing in state waters, so probably based locally, you need to find your— you register in your exclusive area. But if you're a federal— it's like if you're out there in the federal fishing, primarily federal waters and not really returning to, say, a home port, and what can you go into either state water since you— because you're— because you're from a distant place? You're not registering, say, out of Sandpoint.

Mr. Wood, through the chair, if I understand your question correctly— so I'm sorry, just to make— just to make this— that fishery best represents my interests at that time. Again, there's no real barriers to entry. I could enter either one of those fisheries, but when I choose one, I am locked into that fishery. Thank you. So just to follow up on that, and what I was going to get at was that aside from personal choice Aside from whatever makes the most sense for your vessel, your business, whatever.

I mean, you have those options available if you are a vessel that is eligible to fish in state waters, i.e., under 58 feet. Yeah. And it has been the tradition of this board to keep those fisheries, state waters fisheries, open access, flexible and accessible to state waters users. And most, as you know, Cassie had put up those side by side, you know, they're they are generally follow the same format in terms of who can do what and where.

All right, thank you. I don't see any other questions. Let's go ahead and take about Mr. Commissioner. Yeah, I just wanted to thank staff for this presentation. This is a complex fishery.

Um, there's a shift between federal and state. There's potential to strand cod, and on top of that, we have the biological implications of an ESA shift. So I just want to kind of summarize a few things that you may want to consider. The larger the reallocation of cod into state water fisheries, the higher the potential for reopening of the buy-up, as most western DPS steller sea lions utilize state waters for foraging. So you just want to be very careful in where you cross that line.

We can't tell you where that line is because it's a federal buy-out, but that's a concern. Larger shifts in allocation could strand tack dependent upon the tach levels, as I said earlier, and result in loss of fishing opportunity and result in economic value. We encourage you to ensure cod and tach is not left unharvested as you shift allocation. And finally, we do support state water fisheries, of course, as a state of Alaska, but I want to do tell you that Alaskans participate in both federal and state water fisheries as you make those allocation shifts. And just for clarification, BIOP is the Biological opinion that's issued within the ESA process?

Yes. Thank you. Mr. Wood, would you just repeat number 2?

What I said is larger shifts in allocation could strand total allowable catch levels. That is, you know, if you, if you take too much from this federal fishery and put it in state fishery and you, and make the tax so small that they're, they're not harvested, that could result in loss of economic opportunity. Mr. Godfrey, you may not know this off the top of your head, Commissioner, but what percentage of Alaska residents participate in the federal fishery, and what is the total participation in the federal fishery there? I don't know that. I'll look to staff.

Maybe they may know. Yeah, um, thank you for the question to the chair. I don't have it off the top of my head. We might get some insight on the next presentation about sort of fleet profiles and their residency in general. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Any other questions? Let's take a break, come back on the record around 10:40, 10:45. Thank you.

All right, welcome back. The time is 10:50. We're back on the record and we're going to roll into the federal stock assessment and management presentation. Mr. Bowers, would you like to introduce our guests, please? Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

So here to present on federal Pacific cod stock assessment and management, we have Dr. Diana Stram and Sarah Sarah Cleaver from the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. Thank you. Welcome, ladies. Thank you for being with us today, and the floor is yours. Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. Um, as Mr. Bowers said, Sarah Cleaver and I work for the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. We are the plan coordinators for the fishery management plans for the Bering Sea Aleutian Islands groundfish, which I am the plan coordinator for, and And Kleber is the plan coordinator for the Gulf of Alaska groundfish. And so we're going to walk through some information on how stocks are managed federally, the process for setting OFLs and ABCs. You heard a little bit of this in your presentation earlier this morning from state staff.

We'll walk through sort of what that means in terms of the federal process, as well as how TAC's total allowable catch is set and, and for And from that, obviously, the GHL is derived. We'll also walk through the stock status for the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska cod management, some information on western— focusing more on western Gulf Pacific cod federal management and fishery participation, and then a little touch on some information that we have on Pacific cod movement and research updates that is very very preliminary and not anything that's actionable at this time. So just to remind you, there are 3 federally managed stocks: the Bering Sea cod stock, the Aleutian Islands cod stock, and the Gulf of Alaska cod stock. As we'll talk about at the end, there is some interaction, um, particularly between Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Western Alaska Gulf cod, but currently those are managed as 3 separate stocks. So just to walk you a little bit through our annual groundfish stock assessment cycle, for all 3 of those stocks we have annual stock assessments.

So every year the council is presented with an updated stock assessment for all 3 of those federally managed stocks. We are right in the stock assessment cycle currently, and that begins in the summer with the different surveys and reading of the data. We then have— we have stock assessment plan teams for both the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea. We meet jointly in September, and at that time we receive presentations on new data and methodologies for stock assessments. In general, each stock assessment, if there are modeling changes, those are recommended in September, and then they go to our Science and Statistical Committee, which meets at the October council meeting, which is the meeting that we just had.

Earlier this month, and we received— the SSC and the council received presentations of these stock assessments and make recommendations as to which models should go forward and be brought forward in the final assessment. Then moving into November, which is what we would be doing soon, we would then have another stock assessment plan team meeting. At that point, we would meet separately to review each of these stock assessments, and the plan team is the beginning of the peer review process on those assessments to make the final recommendations to the SSC on the catch specifications, which I'll go through in a second for OFL and ABC. At that point, that SAFE report— stock assessment fishery evaluation report— would then be compiled and provided to the SSC, AP, and our council for final specification decisions in December. Because of the, the federal shutdown, we will not have updated assessments this year.

So we will be relying on the information that we had in the previous year in order to make those determinations at the December meeting. We will not be having a November planning meeting of our groundfish, but we will still have our stock assessment review that will occur at the SSC and to the Council. So going into that, then this is what our scientific review process looks like for setting catch specifications. Again, it begins with the stock assessment and author recommendations, moves through our plan team peer review to our SSC, and then final recommendations from the SSC to the Council to set OFL and ABC that I'll walk through in the next slide. And then the Council recommends the, they receive the recommendations from the SSC on OFLs and ABCs and then sets their, their TACs, their total allowable catch specifications.

That process will still unfold in this year. We will just be— we will just not have the updated assessment to the plan teams and the plan team review, but the SSC will still receive the best available scientific information at our December meeting.

You heard some of these terms in your previous presentation. I'm just going to walk through them a little bit in terms of what they, what they mean. We have an overfishing limit, which is the OFL. That is the maximum harvest limit that can be, that can be set. So fisheries will close as they approach an OFL limit.

The acceptable biological catch, which is the ABC, is is the— takes into account the scientific uncertainty in the OFL. So the intention of the buffer between an OFL and an ABC is accounting for the scientific uncertainty in the ABCs or in the OFL so that the, the ABC is the amount that the fishery is managed towards, and that is intended to be set so that it will account for potential uncertainty in the, in the point estimate of an OFL. The total allowable catch then is the target catch that the council sets. And so I'll move to this slide to just show the difference between them. The, the role of science is in setting that uncertainty between an OFL and an ABC.

The role of management is to set the difference between the ABC and the TAC. For cod stocks, there is no buffer between the ABC Bering Sea and the TAC, the only buffer that we have is due to the GHL. So the council does not set a— there is not an additional buffer that is put into place there between those two. The buffer that we have for cod stocks in both the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, and in the Aleutian Islands is due to accommodating the, the GHL. There is not additional buffering that occurs there.

I'll walk briefly through some stock status information, and then I'll turn it over to Ms. Cleaver to go over the Western Gulf of Alaska cod fishery and participation. In terms of the Bering Sea, so these are— this is catch information that we provide to the council annually. This is based on the last year's assessment. So the top left gives you the total catch in the fishery from late '70s through 2024. To the right is the total biomass.

The green dotted line is the mean over that time frame, just for reference. On the bottom left then, you have age 0 recruitment, and you can see what the different recruitment was in, in recent years. And then to the right, on the bottom right, is the spawning biomass, and then the red line is, is the biomass at MSY maximum sustainable yield, is the target level. So that, that is the, the level that you're trying to keep stocks at or above if possible. And so that just gives you the overall spawning biomass in relation to that target level.

So for the Bering Sea cod stock, it is above its target level and doing well. For Aleutian Islands, then, same catch statistics. Catch is very low in the Aleutian Islands. In general for a variety of reasons. The overall biomass is below its mean.

Recruitment has been sporadic recently, but the overall spawning biomass is below its target level, and this isn't a fishing effect. This is most likely due to climate and poor recruitment progressing over multiple years. Before we get into the Gulf Pacific cod stock status, I just wanted to walk you through a little bit. The, the graph that you see to the right gives you in red how we calculate our OFL and in blue the ABC control rule. The important part of this is that depending— so on the x-axis is your biomass, the y-axis is your fishing mortality rate, and our control rules for the— for federally managed fisheries are set on a very conservative basis.

So the target level would be that dotted line that you see, um, that would be the, the 35% of biomass. Our control rules actually ramp down before that so that they provide for automatic rebuilding. So as soon as our stocks are below a biomass of 40%, by definition the target catch level goes down, and that is to provide for automatic rebuilding of those stock so that the catch cranks down as the biomass declines. We have an OFL level and then we have an ABC level for cod stocks as well as akamaker and pollock. We also have a 20% cutoff to the directed fishery.

So if, if the— and this happened in the Gulf of Alaska in recent years— if the biomass goes below 20% of the target level, the directed fishery is closed. And that's for steller sea lion measures. So that's how our control rules are formulated, and they're exceptionally— they're very conservative. And the council has the ability to set the catch levels below that, and the SSC can recommend catch levels below that, but that is the maximum amount that they can set the catch levels at, or based on those harvest control rules.

Do you want me to Madam Chair, for the record, this is Sarah Cleaver. I'm also council staff, as Dr. Stram mentioned. I'm the Gulf of Alaska Fishery Management Plan team coordinator. So just stepping back, one other thing I wanted to highlight on this slide is the, the title should link to the most recent Pacific cod assessment. Assessment.

As Dr. Stram mentioned, we will be looking at whatever information we do have this year at our upcoming SSC meeting. However, because of the government shutdown, we won't have full assessments as planned. We will use whatever information we're able to use by the time of our SSC meeting, which actually is one day delayed in case anybody's tracking that, that starts a day later than planned. The thing on this slide is, is it just shows each of the— get this laser pointer— each of these points marks a specific year. And so for the 2024 assessment, projects forward for where the stock would be at in 2025.

And it's kind of hard to see, but Recent years, the stock has been right around here, which as we say is on the ramp. So the fishing mortality rate has been ratcheted down because the spawning stock biomass levels are lower than the maximum that, the maximum catch that would be allowed under the ABC control rule. So we are right around here at, this is at 28.6, 27% of what the unfished spawning stock biomass would be. So for Pacific cod, we specifically, due to those Stellar Sea Lion regulations, make sure that Pacific cod is— it has to be above B20, or Gulf Pacific cod has to be above B20 in order to not close the directed fishery, and we are at 28.7.

This is another summary figure. It has the same metrics that Dr. Stram provided for the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. You can see in 2020 where the spawning biomass did go briefly below the BMSY before the fishery was reopened in 2021. And overall, when we look to our stock status definitions, the Pacific cod stock is not being subject to overfishing. It's not currently overfished, and it's not approaching a condition of being overfished.

So that's typically the terms that our stock assessment scientists provide to us when they're looking at our— what our stock statuses are.

And I also should say, I think— I don't know if he's presented here before, but Dr. Pete Holsen is in charge of the Gulf Pacific Cod Assessment, and so those are— all this information is taken from his assessment or associated presentations from last year.

Moving into some information specific to the Western Gulf, a little bit more detail on our federal management and participation within, within the Western Gulf. These first two slides here just show the catch in our federal fisheries. So this first one is catch specifically by trawl gear in the federal fisheries, And I should note, for those not familiar with our federal management areas, 610 is the Western Gulf, 620 and 630 are both part of the Central Gulf, and the darker the color, the darker the red, the higher the catch in those specific hexagons. So you can see kind of the distribution of where the majority of the Pacific cod catch by trawl gear occurs.

This is a similar figure, just noting that it is for the fixed gear fisheries, the non-trawl gear. So this is our pot, our hook and line, and jig sectors, and you can see some of the differences in the distribution in the higher densities of effort over in some areas in the western Gulf.

This shows the Pacific cod ABC TAC and where the state GHLs are for this year on the water for 2025, as well as the apportionments of ABC as they get distributed to each federal area across the Gulf. So the Gulf-wide ABC Um, over here for 2025, around 32,000 is first apportioned by each area, and both the ABC and these apportionments come out of the stock assessment information, which is then reviewed by our SSC. The SSC has the ability to, depending on which model that they choose, the SSC may adjust— these numbers may get adjusted depending on which model is chosen by the SSC.

For the spatial apportionment, the methods that are used can change. Recently, they, they have not changed for, for a couple of years. These apportionments are essentially based on modeled survey biomass estimates coming out of the Gulf of Alaska Bottom Trawl Survey. And so these, these numbers include the bottom trawl survey estimates up until 2023.

We would have had some 2024 numbers this year, but we won't, we won't be getting our full assessment.

So the current percentages, and I don't have these on the slide here, but for the Western Gulf, 27% of the total ABC is allocated to the Western Gulf. So in 2025, you can see this was 80— about 8,700 metric tons. And as indicated earlier in Ms. Whiteside's slides, 30% is taken out of that apportionment and goes to your state GHL. And that— the remainder from that ABC is then our federal tax, which in 2025 is around 6,000 tons. That's that remaining 70%.

Hopefully in your printouts or looking closely on your slide you can see this. It's hard to fit in on the slide. But this essentially shows how after the area apportionments of the TAC, the TAC then gets allocated by season and sector. And this is Specific to the Western Gulf, I pulled out the, the specific Western Gulf allocations. So currently 3.5% of the Western Gulf TAC gets allocated to the jig sector, and that comes off first, it comes off, off the top.

And by regulation, 60% of that is allocated to the A season and 40% of it is allocated to the jig B season. And, uh, of the remaining TAC after you pull off that 3.5% for the jig allocation, about 64% goes to the, um, the A season for the remaining non-jig sector. So all of the other sectors that are not jig here get 64% of the TAC goes to goes to the A season and about 36 goes to the B season. After those two numbers are— after those percentages are allocated to each season, then the allocation is then based on gear type and operations. So you can see on the left here the different sectors that we have and where their allocations for 2025 ended up based on these allocation percentages.

Moving a little bit into the, the fishery, specifically looking at— I have 2025 in this figure, but Some of the— most of the data that I present in the following slides is a summary kind of of 2024 information since we don't have our full year of 2025 yet. This slide shows the vessels that caught peacod in the federal fishery as well as the number of vessels that caught peacod in the state fishery specific to the Western Gulf. Both of those are specific to the Western Gulf. So you can see over the years how the federal cod catch as well as the state catch have, have declined, and our federal vessel and state vessel counts are in the orange and yellow lines, and those counts are on the right, and the, the catch of Pacific cod is shown in the numbers on the left.

This slide provides the percent of the catch caught by each sector in the Western Gulf. This document, or this, this image is from our report that we get every December from our NIMPS in-season management team. You can see that the pot hook and line and catcher processors, as well as the trawl CVs, harvest kind of the majority of the Western Gulf catch. So by year, the percentage of the catch that's caught by each sector is, is shown up here and then reflected by the, the line graph below.

Again, as a reminder, this is specific to the Western Gulf. This is specifically looking at catcher vessels and is again from our, our NIMS in-season managed report. This is our— the number of vessels targeting Western Gulf Pacific cod by gear type. So you can see that in 2024, there were 15 trawl catcher vessels, 7 pot vessels, and excuse me, pot catcher vessels and 4 jig catcher vessels that were active in the Western Gulf Federal Pacific Cod Fishery.

This shows the percentage that is harvested by sector, both in 2024 on the right and 2025 on the left. And I do want to clarify on this slide. So this was pulled from our most recent council meeting from the in-season management report that was provided then. And that was in October. And in those October reports, the, the 2025 data that's presented here only represents the 2025 data up until September 11th that they pull— or September 20th, excuse me.

Excuse me, they pulled the data from catch up until September 20th, and that is then compared to the catch during the same time frame from 2024. So these numbers are reflective of how much of the TAC was taken by September 20th of each year. And I should have on the slide, unfortunately, I I didn't get it on there, but by the end of 2024, rather than 60% of the TAC being taken in total across all gear types, it was 73% of the Western Gulf federal TAC was taken. So there was a bit more of the TAC that was taken after September 20th in the year.

Some of these sectors also aren't open to directed fishing because the allocation, as you can see, for hook and line catcher vessels and for trawl CPs, the annual allocations really aren't large enough to, to allow for a directed fishery. And so those fisheries get closed on the starting dates. January 1st is the opening date of the fishery for hook and line CVs, and the 20th of is the opening date for, um, trawl CPs. So those fisheries just did not open because that, um, their allocation amounts do not allow for, for a directed fishery to take place.

Moving into some participation information specifically for 2024, and hopefully this and the next slide will answer some of the questions that came up during the prior presentation. This slide shows participation by, by vessel types and some dependency information on the bottom. Again, specific to 2024, there were 46 vessels that participated in the Western Gulf Pacific Cod Fishery, and 32 of those 46 vessels were 58 feet or less. So there were 17 vessels that were over— or 17 vessels that were over 58 feet.

In 2024, 10 of the 19 vessels— and again, I wish that I had included this on the slide, but we got some of our data kind of late in the game, so I apologize for not including this on the slide. 10 Of the 19 vessels that were active in the state Pacific cod fishery in the Gulf were also active in the federal fishery. That's 10 of them. Um, that was 7 pot vessels and 3 jig vessels participated in both fisheries in 2024 in the Western Gulf.

Uh, walking through a little bit of the information here on the slide, the Western Gulf peacock fishery in 2024 had an ex-vessel value of $2.5 million, uh, and a wholesale value of $9.6 million, uh, and the $2.5 million figure, that is 10% of the total federally managed groundfish value for the Western Gulf, and the wholesale value of $9.6 million is about 18% of the total federally managed groundfish value in the Western Gulf, just to give you some perspective of, um, where those numbers fall.

The pot and CP hook and line sectors have the, uh, highest wholesale value of, of all the sectors, each around $3.2 million, followed by the trawl CV sector at $3 million. Moving down the slide, um, 5.6 of participating catcher vessels and 1.9% of the participating catcher processors' total annual revenue came from Western Gulf Pacific Cod. So that gives you a sense of kind of how much revenue those boats receive from this specific fishery in relation to the other fisheries that they are— that they participate in. And I've included a couple links here to our ACFIN dashboards that were, I think, created as, as a result of a Pacific cod allocation review for the Gulf that was completed in 2023. Those links are updated through 2024, and they really just provide some of this information by year, so you can take a look at some specific figures and dig in a little bit more to the trends over the years of that data if if you are interested in looking at that.

Looking at— so for, for these data, we looked at CFEC ownership address for vessels, and looking at that information, 28% of the catcher vessel sector in 2024 in the Western Gulf had ownership addresses in Sandpoint. Similarly, 23% of those had ownership addresses in Kodiak. And you can see the other numbers for Seattle and King Cove. But if we look at a more— at kind of a higher level, a broader spatial level, at state residency, by state, 77%— and these are just the Ketcher vessel numbers for now— 77% of the catcher vessels that participated in this fishery in 2024 were owned by Alaska residents, 18% were owned by Washington residents, and 5% were owned by residents of other states.

There were shoreside deliveries, um, in Akutan, Dutch Harbor, False Pass, and Sandpoint. They all received deliveries in 2024 of Western Gulf Pacific cod And the last bullet down here indicates that 100% of the catcher processor ownership has vessel ownership addresses from Washington State. But there is a caveat here that partial ownership, so any organizations that have partial ownership in a vessel, that type of ownership information is not included in the CFEC data. Data that we pull. So CDQ groups may have partial ownership in any of these vessels, but we don't have access to— so we don't have access to that partial ownership information.

You may be able to hear that from public comment. We, we do know just in terms of common knowledge that, that I know one CDQ group has partial ownership, has 25% ownership in, um, hook and line CP, and that has been since 2022. So that's the only one that, um, I'm so far aware of, but hopefully in public comment you can get more information on that since that's, um, not information that we could, we could see in, in the data that we looked at.

The last slide on more of the management and participation part of the Western Gulf Peacod Fishery, looks at the reallocations. So our federal regulations allow for the National Marine Fisheries Service to reallocate TAC that is projected to be unharvested, um, to other sectors. And this essentially provides an opportunity for the full harvest of our Pacific cod TAC Uh, and it provides a specific hierarchy for how the reallocations should occur. So in regulation, the reallocations should first be considered to the catcher vessel sectors. After that, they should be considered to the combined CV and CP pot sector, and then after that, to all other CP sectors.

And you can see over the last 10 years reallocations in the Western Gulf typically come from the trawl CV sector and are, are reallocated to other sectors. Additionally, underages or overages by sector can then be applied to the next season. So if you, if a sector does not harvest all of their A-season allocation, it can be rolled over to their B-season allocation.

I'll pause since that's the last piece on kind of management that I have to see if there are any questions.

Questions. Thank you. Quick question.

I was just talking offside with Member Carpenter about this. So this is All of this data in your presentation is wholly focused on the Western Gulf of Alaska.

Most of the presentations that we're considering— or I'm sorry, the proposals that we're considering are Western Gulf related, but the one that I think is going to be kicked out for deliberation in March has to deal with some Bering Sea. Are we going to get a similar presentation on Bering Sea numbers, or is this it? Madam Chair, so we were asked to mainly focus on the, the Western Gulf for those proposals since those seem to be the ones that were— we were told most impacted in terms of federal management side. So we don't have any further information on Bering Sea related to management. We do discuss Bering Sea Aleutian Islands stocks in terms of our research update, but not in terms of any other management information.

Thank you. Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. So related to the, um, the proposal that, that will be taken up in March dealing with the Aleutian Islands, that proposal only affects the fishery in state waters. So there isn't the same nexus with the federal fishery that we have in the Western Gulf proposals that are seeking relocation.

Thank you. I would just put it out there that if board members were seeking some of that contextual information, while it may not be a direct nexus, just let us know.

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Yeah, I asked a question earlier and I think you clarified it.

Is the buffer between the OFL and the ABC, is that a rigid number or does that fluctuate based on different characteristics that you might find, survey information, etc., etc.? Thank you through the chair for the question. Um, that, that depends on the tier level. So we have different tiers of information that we classify stocks according to. Um, I believe that all of our cod stocks are in our Tier 3, so there is a maximum, uh, there is a max control rule that is applied for the OFL and the ABC.

So the— our SSC can set the ABC at a lower level than the, the calculated buffer would be, but the maximum ABC is, is set by, by calculation. But there are instances where SSC sets it below that based on a variety of different information, but that's not a, that's not a specific numerical calculation The max ABC is the, the one that results from the control roll. Okay, I appreciate that. One other question.

The ABC— we'll just talk about the Western Gulf because that's what we're focusing on, obviously. Is the TAC set at the level that the ABC is for Western Gulf Alaska peacod? Through the chair, so currently the— there is Currently, yes, it— there is, other than the GHL, there is no— the council has the opportunity to set the TAC. They, they could, kind of referencing what Dr. Strand mentioned earlier, there is no explicit tax— explicit buffer between the TAC and the ABC, but the council always has the opportunity specifically based on any information that they get regarding socioeconomics to set a TAC that's lower than the ABC. But currently, I believe, for 2025, Pacific Cod is set without any additional buffer other than accounting for the state's GHL.

Thank you.

Mr. Owen. Thank you for your presentation. I'm looking at Slide number 12 and just trying to understand a little bit more about the, this assessment and the population there. I, my first question is looking at this around 2007-2008, there was an, the downward trend ended and we started seeing an increase in that biomass and the spawning biomass. And you've mentioned that none of this, this decline has been to overfishing and and referred to the water temperature.

What event happened in 2007, 2008, around that time that allowed for that increase in the total biomass and spawning biomass? And then since then, what around 2013 or '14 caused that other decline? You mentioned a 2018 increased water temperatures, but I'm wondering about those points, reference points before that time. Thank you. Through the chair, I'll see if Dr. Stram has any more information on this.

I would have to look back at the assessments to see what exactly caused that trend. However, I was having a conversation the other day and someone reminded me of— I don't want to butcher it, but I at one point had heard there was that Pacific cod in some of the indigenous cultures is referred to as— I wish I didn't have to butcher it, but something about the fish that either was or wasn't there. And so that over time we have heard that it's— there have been these observed changes in the population seemingly to be to natural circumstances. But for the specifics of those years, I would have to look to the stockist assessment, and I can point you to where that would be.

Thank you for that answer. Um, so with— given that, that this is some— a kind of relatively normal historic trend, it seems the, the total biomass is lower than anything that is shown on this graph prior to or since 1977. Is there a concern for the population at this time in Gulf of Alaska for Pacific cod? Through the chair. So yeah, I think that that's a great question since we are looking at some of these trends where over time the stock really does— the spawning biomass is lower than what you see back in the '90s, as well as the total biomass.

When we have our plan team meetings and we get presentations from the stock assessment authors, we We get this information from them, but we also kind of get a feel for, even if we don't have the resulting stock assessment that we usually receive in November, a feel for based on the previous year what their take on kind of the overall health of the stock is. And in 2018, we saw that large decrease in spawning stock biomass. I think it was somewhere above 60%.

As the— as we moved away from that kind of warm blob period in the Gulf, the stock did start rebounding and now seems like it is on more of a trajectory that is more positive. And while the stock in 2024 was at around 28% of the unfished spawning stock biomass, and we typically try to make sure that our fishing mortality rates are— our targets are more at 35%. It is lower than that, but but it does seem like there are, the stock is on a kind of rebounding trend, so there isn't a specific concern for it at this time. Okay, thank you very much. Commissioner.

Yeah, so how far out can you forecast Pacific cod abundance? We know these things live to be 25, 30 years old. I'm presuming this is some kind of catch-at-age model you're using to, to fork, to, to set your ABCs and your, and your overfishing limits. How far out can you reliably forecast tax— I mean, ABCs and overfishing limits? Through the chair.

So Gulf Pacific Cod is, it's an age-structured model, a single-sex age-structured model, and the information that we get from our stock assessment authors is we get projections for 2 years.

Not being a stock assessment author by any means, I can't answer any further into, you know, their confidence looking at their projections ahead of time. They do, they are able to kind of project and look at those trends, but I can't speak to the confidence of that information. Quick follow-up. I understand that because I understand that cod are very sensitive to temperature changes in. You could forecast out potentially 5 years of the catch-at-age model, but you probably have buffers built into that to deal with the uncertainty associated with warming, warming events.

Through the chair, yes, and that's actually a, a good segue. Um, I'll pause to see if there are any other questions, but there was a piece of information in the research update we were given at the plan team that was specific to warming temperatures as well in the research.

All right, my question is, um, what are the dates for the A and B season specifically?

Madam Chair, so for, um, for trawl, the A season begins on January 20th.

The B season, I have to double-check on this, I believe it begins September 1st or November 1st. Does anybody else know? I might be able to offer some insight. So yes, January 20th for trawl. I believe the split between A season and B season is June 10th, but the directed fisheries, in particular for trawl, other fisheries usually begin September 1st to try and avoid processing conflicts with with salmon in the Gulf.

And Madam Chair, for the, for the non-trawl fisheries, they begin on, on January 1st, or the A season begins on January 1st, and similar September 1st for the B season for our fixed gear fisheries. And is there a closing date? Is there a date by which they close?

When either the tax are achieved or the end of the calendar Got it. Thank you. Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thanks. I just have one question.

You might not be able to answer it. The information might not be available, but when I looked at the, the graph, um, the Pacific cod assessment graph for 2024, um, above B20, it was 28.7%. Um, is there any information right now that you could project or that you might know from the most recent survey information where that number might potentially lie outside of what we're looking at right here? Through the chair, so the 2025 number, you're right, is right around here, um, [Speaker] Not— we are not using the most recent survey information yet because that information came just this summer and we had a preview of that information at our September plan team meeting, but none of that data has been able to be analyzed yet. However, from our 2024 assessment, because the scientists do— they do 2-year harvest projections, The 2026 number that came out of those projections, which in a typical year would certainly be updated by the end of this year with, uh, with that new survey information— we don't know yet where that, um, which information will, will be used overall to determine any new 2026 numbers, but the 2026 number that we have from Last year's assessment is also right around here.

I believe you can see the 26. I can quickly look up the— at the SAFE to find the percentage, though, for you to be more specific. But it's right around this same area. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks.

I didn't see it at first, but now that you pointed it out, I generally see it's at a very similar level. So thank you.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. Um, on page 12, looking at the Pacific cod assessment, um, given the how long they live and you look at how low we are right now in the biomass, spawning biomass and recruitment, is there, um, like concern or a level of like, man, this is really low compared to all of the other years, so back to 1977, with how much harvest should be taken off of these, especially like with rockfish. They live a really long time and it takes a long time for them to mature. Are we dealing with a similar situation?

Through the chair, so this is one I really wish we had the fortune of having our federal counterparts here to speak more to the stock assessment. The only information that I can really give you based on the information we have is if you look at the recruitment information, it is trending in a positive direction. And so that may lend some information to the stock assessment author in terms of how confident they are that whether or not there's a reason for concern. So unfortunately, I can't give you a really good answer on that one.

Any other questions?

Thank you very much for being here, and appreciate your presentation and your time. And I think what we'll do is— Is there more? Madam Chair, there are just 2 or 3 remaining slides on the summary of the Pacific cod research. I got caught up in questions. I'd love to have you here, but yeah, go ahead.

Sorry. He's like giving me the look and I'm like, why am I getting the look?

So at our recent plan team meeting in September, we had a presentation from several different authors and researchers on Pacific cod movement, genetics, and some kind of preliminary thoughts on apportionment in the future assessment plans. The presentation or that PowerPoint is linked on this slide.

We, Dr. Streem and I, were a little bit hesitant to try to dig in too much and present to you their information, one, because we are not them, and also because it is very preliminary information. And even at the plan team meeting, there was a lot of caution from plan team members about how to interpret some of the preliminary data because the data are still being analyzed. So we are just going to speak to a very high level of some of that information, noting that there, there will be future research that can, can better inform inform either the board or within our own council process in the future. So after the 2017 to 2019 warming period, which changed a lot of the cod distributions, the stock assessment scientists noted that there was a need for kind of looking into these distributions a little bit more. And this is— this was a presentation provided by Dr. Steve Barbeau, Pete Holsen, Julie Nielsen, and Ingrid Spies.

But they had a lot of other collaborators on the projects that they described, the first of which was a tagging project in collaboration with industry. And that project, they were able to tag Pacific cod and release some of them during the summer, some of them during the winter, and they were essentially trying to reconstruct the migration pathways for those fish to see where they moved over the course of the year and, and what the seasonal movement looked like. Based on the information that, that they, that they presented, they indicated that there is evidence of migratory as well as resident Pacific cod populations in the western Gulf. So some of the fish that they looked at move a lot within the western Gulf. Some of the fish moved very far out of the western Gulf.

So about 50% moved from the western Gulf to the Bering Sea, and they're still looking at how to really best analyze that tagging data so that they can make some better inferences from those samples to the greater population. They also realize there's a seasonal component to that movement from the Western Gulf to the Bering Sea. From the summer to the winter, those fish seem to move from north to the south, and from winter to summer, those fish moved west and north. And there are some maps and figures included in their linked presentation. We didn't provide them here.

But they, they are available for you to look at that shows some of this information. But really, while this research is very preliminary, it, it just highlighted the connectivity of the Bering Sea and the western Gulf Pacific cod stocks. And then there was some further genetics work that looked at genetic markers that were predictive of cod survival in different temperatures. So that, that information was presented by Ingrid Spies, and I think there might be, if not a paper in publishing about that one, there is— there are papers about some of the other genetic projects that we heard about that are in publication. So you can keep an eye out for some of the genetics work that was related to the specific cod survival in different temperatures, as well as some projects that were more regarding the different genetic composition of certain stocks of Pacific cod across the Bering Sea and the Gulf.

There essentially was evidence of genetically distinct winter and spring spawning components of peacod in the Gulf, so that information was provided to us as well. And I think the only other The last thing we wanted to note about this part of the, the presentation was just that they're really looking more into movement and what the impacts of that research could be in terms of apportionment across the Gulf and the Bering Sea. They're really in the brainstorming phase for apportionment options, and a lot of it depends upon funding. And any changes to apportionment that would eventually come out of this research would first need to go through our plan team review and our SSC process before there are any changes to apportionment made in the future. So that is the information that we have related to that research update.

And now that's the end of our presentation. Okay, final questions. Well, appreciate your time. Thank you for being here. It was a great report and really was helpful.

So good luck on the next couple of months. All right, the time is 11:43. There's about 15 minutes, a little over 15 minutes to sign up for public testimony. Just as a reminder, that closes at noon. So if you haven't signed up and you would like to please grab a blue card and get that into board support staff in the next 17 minutes or so.

Let's go ahead and break for lunch. My intent is to come back on the record at 1:30, begin with public testimony, take a short break, and move into committee of the whole, and then conclude for the day. We will still plan to deliberate in the morning, tomorrow morning. All right. We'll see you back at 1:30.

Thank you.

Okay, welcome back. The time is, uh, 1:41 PM. We're going to begin with the public testimony portion of our agenda. A couple things about public testimony. Of course, when your name is called, please come forward to the microphones here at the the front of the table and state your name for the record and who you represent if you're representing any organizations.

If you have written materials for the board, please identify those materials by either the RC, PC, or AC number. I'll give board members an opportunity to get the paperwork in front of them, and that time isn't going to be charged to you or against you, I should say. At the meeting, the public will be given 3 minutes. ACs and Regional Advisory Council representatives will each be given 10 minutes. When you begin your testimony, the executive director will give you just a brief time to introduce yourself before he starts the timer.

When your time is up, you will hear a beep. Please stop speaking when the timer goes off. If you don't stop speaking, I will ask you to stop speaking. When you're finished, please remain seated in case we have any questions for for you. We ask that you confine your oral testimony to the subjects under consideration at this meeting in as concise and direct manner as possible.

Its intent— it is the intent of the board to deal with the merits of the proposals based on the general principles used by the board. We don't deal in personalities, and I ask testifiers not to refer by name to any person, staff member, or board member. ACs and Regional Advisory Council reps should also fill out a blue card. We've already gone through that. For the ACs and the RACs, please confine your testimony to the positions that the committees took on your proposals or issues and give minority opinions of the committee if there were any.

Certainly, if you would like to provide your own personal testimony, hopefully you filled out a blue card and submitted it to board staff, and I won't— you don't need to combine those times. If your name is called and you are not present to testify, I'll give you a second call at the end of the list. If you miss both your first and second calls, you won't be able to testify at this meeting. And I don't know that we'll run into tomorrow for public testimony, but if you If you didn't make your second call, I think by the end of the day, by the end of when we conclude testimony, that will be it. So I will do first calls and then I will take second calls when I make it through the list.

And then we are going to move on tomorrow. All right. Any questions? Let's go ahead and begin public testimony. The first name on my list today is Max Heggie.

With Ocean Bay Fisheries, and I apologize in advance if I mispronounced your name. All right, good. Well, welcome.

Sorry, my name is Max Heggie. I'm representing Ocean Bay Fisheries out of Kodiak. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I want to start by saying that I support state water fisheries.

It matters a great deal to coastal communities in Alaska. It creates access, it keeps working fishermen on the water, and it supports local economies. I don't think anyone here wants to undermine that. What I'm asking you to consider is balance. Right now, the South Alaska Peninsula state water cod fishery gets 30% of the Western Gulf.

Allowable harvest. Proposals 1 through 8 would raise that to 40, 50, even 60 in some cases, percent. In some cases through an automatic stair-step. When that share goes up, the federal share goes down. We're not talking about new fish.

We're talking about the same total harvest being divided differently without any mind to where the fish actually are. And that has real consequences for vessels, skippers, and crews who participate in the federal Gulf fishery and don't have access to the state fishery. We can't just move into state waters if the federal, federal share is reduced. But many boats in the state water fleet can fish in both state and federal waters. So if we shift too far, too fast, one group absorbs almost all of the impact.

And it's a group that only has one place to fish. Those operations have years of history and investment in that fishery. The current 30% structure was built to do two things at once: give meaningful opportunity in state waters especially for smaller boats, and still maintain a viable fishery for fisheries offshore. It was meant to reflect biology, access, and geography. It was meant to be stable.

The proposals in front of you move from stability and toward acceleration. They make a large and in some cases automatic reallocation at a time when the overall TAC has been relatively low. That is exactly when pressures are highest and tensions are sharpest. And I would suggest that moments like this when the resource is just starting to come back are not the right moments to rewrite the formula. And the stakes are not theoretical.

Given where cod tax have been, moving to 50% and certainly 60% could be tantamount to not having a meaningful federal fishery at all for the vessels that depend on it. I'd also point out that we're seeing this— that we're seeing in the stock itself, recent survey work is showing encouraging signs. That's a promising signal that the stock is rebuilding. As the biomass rebounds, the total catch will increase and the state water quota will increase with it. So some relief is already on the way without making dramatic changes to the allocation.

That's why I'm urging caution. Let's not get ahead of the resource or ahead of the people depending on these fisheries. Let's protect opportunity in state waters without hollowing the federal fishery that many families rely on. For that reason, I respectfully urge you not to adopt Proposals 1 through 8. Thank you.

Thanks, Max. Good timing. Are there any questions?

Thanks for being here to testify. Appreciate it. Thank you. Next up is Ernie Weiss with the Aleutians East Borough.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the Board of Fisheries. Good afternoon. My name is Ernie Weiss, and I've been employed with the Aleutians East Borough for 15 years now as director of the Natural Resources Department. I've lived and fished for many years in the borough community of King Cove. I currently reside in Anchorage, and I'm a member of the Anchorage Advisory Committee, testifying today on behalf of the Aleutians East Borough.

The borough submitted PC2 supporting proposals 1 through 10. Submitted by local fishermen and advisory committees. The borough is situated on the Alaska Peninsula and eastern Aleutian Islands between the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea, includes the fishing communities of Akutan, False Pass, King Cove, Nelson Lagoon, Sandpoint, the processing plant at Port Moller, and the sport fishing destination of Cold Bay. Subsistence fishing is also important to all of our community residents. Existence.

Fisheries are the lifeblood of the Aleutians East Borough. The borough was formed 38 years ago to support education, improve infrastructure through projects including ports and harbors that are important to the local and state fishing industry. To do this, the borough levies a 2% tax on all raw fish delivered to our ports for processing. Proposals to increase the Alaska Peninsula Pacific Cod GHL would potentially increase borough fish tax. Virtually all local vessels that participate in the South Pen State Waters fishery deliver fish to local shore plants or tenders that deliver to these plants, and each local vessel in the South Pen Peacod fishery supports several local families.

Raising the GHL gives more opportunity to local pot jig fishermen. Over 20%, as you've seen in the presentations and staff reports, 20% of the federal TAC is allocated to sectors that never delivery— deliver locally onshore. And even though the majority of the federal TAC that is allocated to trawl, catcher vessel, and pot vessels, some but not all that product is delivered locally. These proposals to increase the GHL are supported supported by fishermen who fish both the federal and state fishery because the state— the South Penn Peacock fishery gives more opportunity to local fishermen, which helps local communities' economies. Lucian Eastborough urges the board to increase the South Penn Peacock guideline harvest level for the benefit of local communities in the state of Alaska.

Thanks for the opportunity to testify and I can answer any questions. Thanks, Ernie. Mr. Owen. Thank you, Mr. Wise, for your testimony and for being here today.

I was wondering, that 2% of the, the borough tax that— or the, the 2% of the fish tax that the borough receives, um, what does that go— what does that funding go into for the borough? Sure. Well, we obviously support schools, education. We take on a lot of projects that build infrastructure and then we take on bond debt and we're currently trying to pay off that bond debt as our revenues have been decreasing. Those are the main things that are paid for.

Thank you.

All right. Thanks for your testimony today. Robert Mack.

After Robert, we'll hear from Dale Peterson and Tiffany Aguiar and Price.

Welcome, Robert.

Thank you. I'm a member— Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Robert Mack. I am from King Cove, Alaska. I'm here today to support the proposals 1 through 8. I started fishing Pacific cod in the South Penn, Alaska in 2005.

Since 2018, I have not been able to to participate as much due to the market shifts and cuts in the GHL. Can you get a little closer to your microphone? I'm sorry to interrupt you. There you go. Thank you.

Through cuts in the TAC, the vessel I currently fish pots with is 47 feet in length, which is considered a small boat for that fishery. Weather conditions affect travel with gear to the fishing grounds. Raising the GHL is better economic opportunity for the community and vessels of my size. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mr. Wood, uh, what's your gear type that you fish? Pot? Yes. Okay, thanks. Mr. Owen, thank you for your testimony.

Mr. Mack, are there any other fisheries, um, that you're able to participate outside of the, the Pacific cod fishery? Yes. And what are— oh, sorry, follow-up. And what are those, um, other fisheries that you participate in? Uh, through the chair, I participate also in salmon.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony today. Appreciate you being here. Dale Peterson.

Is Dale with us today? Going once. Okay, first call.

Next is Tiffany Aguiar and Landry Price.

Oh, I think I know what you were asking me. I didn't realize she was here. Did you want two individual— I mean, are you, are you, are you testifying together or separately? Uh, together, but I'm Anchorage Basin, she's in region for the CDQ group, Yukon Delta Fisheries. Okay, I, I, sorry, we had a converse, a sidebar conversation.

I thought that, yeah, 3 minutes, but you each would get 3 minutes, I guess, is what I was saying. Yeah, we shouldn't go over much over 3, but okay, appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. All right, uh, good afternoon, Madam Chair, and Board members, for the record, my name is Landry Price of Anchorage, Alaska, and with me is Tiffany Aguiar of Aluknuk, Alaska, one, uh, a community on the lower Yukon Delta.

We are here speaking on behalf of Yukon Delta Fisheries Development Association, otherwise known as YDFDA, which is one of the 6 CDQ groups, or Community Development Quota groups. That serves 6 of the 65 Western Alaska CDQ communities. We are asking that the Board of Fish to delay consideration of Proposals 1 through 8 due to current management uncertainties with the cod stock highlighted, highlighted in the CDQ comment letter, and the significant allocative consequences for Alaskan stakeholders participating in the Pacific cod federal fisheries, including YDFDA. And the other CDQ groups. Briefly, the CDQ program is a non-governmental collection of Alaskan communities that receives an allocation of rationalization— rationalized fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands and are federally mandated to invest in fisheries-related investments.

These 65 communities utilize the fishing rights granted to them to provide direct economic benefits to roughly 30,000 Alaskans, connecting Alaskan residents to federal fisheries. Since inception in 1992, the CDQ groups have become significant owners in all of the Alaska federal fisheries, including the Gulf of Alaska hook and line catcher-processor sector. Whereas Proposals 1 through 8 request the Board of Fish to substantially increase the state waters GHL in the South Alaska Peninsula Area M. Why? DFDA acknowledges that the Board of Fish is tasked with developing state water fisheries, and while we fully support this, we are concerned that taking action to increase the South Alaska Peninsula Area M GHL would have a negative impact as it hurts more Alaskan participants than it helps, as 90% of the Western Gulf of Alaska of Hook and Line CP TAC goes to Alaskan-owned operators. YDFDA and the other CDQ groups rely heavily on their federal fisheries investment returns to fund their in-region programs that support economic development and to alleviate poverty in western Alaska.

If the Western Gulf of Alaska GHL were to be increased, it would come at the direct expense to YDFDA and the other CDQ groups that are significantly invested in the federal GOA fishery, inhibiting our ability to return the much-needed funding to our coastal communities. I would like to now hand over the microphone to Tiffany so that she may speak to her personal experience, as she is a direct beneficiary of the CDQ program. Hi everybody, I've, I've directly benefited from the program almost my whole life, and I'm currently employed by YDF In the past, I've had the opportunity to work from 2 of the 3 wholly owned subsidiaries that are located in our communities. We have a welding shop, a construction company, and a commercial fisheries plant, but it hasn't been— it hasn't processed fish for the past few years. But we have been doing our best to utilize the campus grounds with a seasonal store and other services that help our local residents.

My son also takes advantage of the seasonal jobs provided by YDFDA's Youth Agriculture Program and the Youth Employment Program, helping shape his future. With that, we may—. We—. With that, we would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you both.

Any questions? Ms. Erwin. Thank you for your testimony. My question is for the boats that YD FDA has investments in. Are you— do you know how many of those working on those boats are from your— are your shareholders or are your stakeholders or are from local communities from the CDQ represents?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Irwin, for the question. Through the board or through the chair, uh, we currently have one LLP, YDFDA, actually two, one that's 100% owned and one that is partially owned, and it varies year to year on what in-region folks work in offshore fisheries.

Recently, since the decline in the cod, Gulf cod, we haven't personally been able to utilize our own vessels to prosecute that fishery. And I think you'll hear more about that later. But so since the cod crash, no, we have not had any of our local residents be able to work on our boats. Okay. Thank you.

Follow up. And my next question is, you mentioned the GOA hook and line catcher processor. So does— why are any of YDFDA's boats that they're invested in produce any landing taxes for the state of Alaska?

Thank you, Mr. Owen, again. And through the chair, at the time when one of our boats had been fishing in the Gulf, yes, from my understanding, there would be the resource landing tax of 3% that would go to the split 50/50 with the state and the— this state, 50% of the state, 50% to, I think, the borough or the location of the landing, and then the half percent to ASMI. Okay, thank you. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks.

I have a couple questions. What is your gear type? You fish in the Gulf of Alaska?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Wood, for the question to the chair. Uh, ours specifically is hook and line, so ground line, uh, through the catcher processor sector. So bigger boats, um, again, ground line with hook and line on the CPs. Okay, and then Throughout the year, what are the other options that your boat has for harvest throughout the— for your sea? Like, what is your portfolio, I guess, besides just the Gulf of Alaska?

And do you use that same gear type throughout the Bering Sea? Yes, thank you for the question, Mr. Wood, through the chair. For our— for the boats that we specifically hold an LLP in the Gulf of Alaska. Those boats fish also in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands for cod.

That's specific to our ownership. They also, not through YDFDA's ownership, but I know they do some sablefish fishing both in the BSAI and Southeast Alaska. As well as crab. But again, that's not necessarily tied to that LLP that's associated to the Western Gulf. Okay, thank you.

All right, thanks for your testimony today. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. Linda Kozak, followed by Paul Wilkins and Emil Mobeck.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Hi, Linda. Welcome.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Linda Kozak. I'm from Kodiak, and I represent the Alaska Trojan, a golden king crab harvesting vessel that fishes in the Western Aleutian Island golden king crab fishery. I submitted proposal number 11, which I understand you will not be addressing at this meeting, but I wanted to introduce myself and let you know that I'm here and I will be at the committee if there are any questions or discussion regarding that proposal. But I do also plan to be at the March meeting as well.

Thank you, Linda. Any questions? All right, appreciate you being here. Amal—. Or I'm sorry, Paul.

Paul Wilkins next.

Hi, Paul. Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Paul Wilkins and I am the quota manager for Coastal Villages Region Fund, CVRF. CVRF is a nonprofit community development quota, or CDQ group, working for 20 villages and more than 9,000 residents in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region. Communities we serve include Kipnuk, Kwangillingok, Knightmute, and Napaskiak, four of the many communities that have been devastated from the recent Typhoon Halong.

CVRF communities are also served by Chalista, YKHC, AVCP, and others, and as we are unaffiliated with them, CVRF strives to supply programs and benefits that complement the great work of those organizations. CVRF signed a letter with other CDQ groups, PC5, and I'm here to echo those concerns with proposals 1 to 8, and I encourage the board to delay action on Western Gulf of Alaska GHL increases. For more than 30 years, CVRF has used revenues generated from the CDQ program and our investments in Alaska commercial fisheries to promote economic development and provide social benefits in our communities. Our federal mandate— support— supplement our allocations. CVRF has made investments in quota and harvest processing capacity in Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska fisheries, including full ownership since 2010 and 2 freezer longline vessels which have access to western Gulf of Alaska cod.

But as noted in PC5, we have collaborated with other vessels to take that fish out of the water. CVRF's fishing revenue funds creative and versatile programs catered to community need, including a youth summer job program, maritime job training, vocational and college scholarships, GIS mapping and addressing program, and support for local fisheries and subsistence access. Our People Propel program helps residents acquire the power equipment they need for subsistence, and our Mechanic Welder program operates 18 shops throughout our region and helps keep those critical equipment in service. Since proposal submission deadline, there has been new information related to Pacific cod biology and abundance that we believe warrants the delay in consideration of proposals by, um, uh, by the board to the next cycle. The council's, uh, September groundfish plan team meeting, as noted by Ms. Cleaver, reviewed recent genetic and tagging studies, some of which was collected in partnership with our Freezer Longline Coalition vessels, and they have helped lead to a better understanding of how Western Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea cod stocks interact.

Federal scientists have indicated that they may initiate changes to the stock assessment of Pacific cod in the coming years to this— to the— due to this new information. Setting the Western Gulf ABC as a component of a single distinct Gulf of Alaska cod population may be phased out, and in the next few years, federal scientists could focus on developing Pacific cod assessment models for 4 distinct genetic groups, a single Eastern Bering/Western Gulf of Alaska group, a separate Northern Bering group, an Eastern Gulf of Alaska and an AI genetic group. How these groups are distributed spatially, how much overlap occurs, and how much of that varies each year is yet to be determined, but there could be significant impacts on Western Gulf biomass estimates. While we do not know yet whether these will, these will lead to increases or decreases increases in Western Gulf Pacific cod—. Go ahead and finish your statement—.

ABC, or subsequently the GHL. If the board makes decisions now based on historical abundances and allocations, they may not be representative of future circumstances. Thank you, Paul. Are there any questions? Mr. Chamberlain.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, thank you, Mr. Wilkinson. Um, CVRF is— I'm sure you're aware, and the public may or may not be aware, services about 20 communities in the lower Kuskokwim along the Bering Sea coast. Can you give a description or tell how many of those communities were impacted by Typhoon Halong and what the challenges those communities are facing briefly and what CVRF is doing to work on those— assist with those efforts? Sure.

Through the Chair, Mr. Chamberlain, thank you for the question.

About 10 of our communities had significant damage to structures due to the recent typhoon. In particular, as I mentioned, Kibnok and Kwangileagok have kind of gotten a lot of press attention, but other communities have significant issues too. There are issues with the sewage lagoons. There's issues with, with water and sewer piping. There's issues with generators in various communities.

CVRF itself is a very small part of that, that, that response. There's obviously federal and state as well as the various local and community groups As I mentioned, YKHC and AVCP, they're doing quite a bit. CVRF itself has devoted a lot of staff time in particular and resources to putting together shipments of supplies to some of the various communities. We've had multiple of our in-region employees in the various communities helping out with damage assessment and repairs. For example, electric wiring, rewiring houses and that kind of thing.

So quite a bit. Our general focus on programs is scholarships and our different sort of benefits programs, People Propel and welding shop repairs. All of that manpower is really associated with trying to help out with these— with the very difficult situation that those communities have been dealing with. Thank you for the question. Thank you.

Mr. Wood. Thank you. I'm going to be redundant in my questioning because I mostly am trying to understand understand, like, what, what the— trying to provide opportunity for local fisheries throughout the state and then trying to understand the portfolio, so to speak, of the CDQ groups and, and the opportunities you have. And I'm trying to put it together. But so first of all, the gear type that you fish when you're in the Gulf is what?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood, thank you for the question. Uh, we We have two vessels that participate in the bottom longline catcher processor freezer longliner sector. Our vessels as of late have not been participating in that sector. So as a sort of a group, there's several vessels that have been participating and we've had a sort of a quota leasing scenario to get some of that fish out of the water. But our vessels specifically haven't been participating in that fishery for quite a while.

Okay, thanks. And then do you have opportunity elsewhere throughout the year with different gear types to help support your CDQ group? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Through the chair, Mr. Price with Yukon Delta.

Phil Fisheries Development Association. He mentioned that he has his vessels participate in the Bering Sea Pacific cod longline freezer fishery. We have two vessels out there currently, sort of northwest of the Pribilofs, that are fishing Pacific cod for us. And we, we, we, we acquired those vessels in 2010 as part of a sort of a redemption from the sort of American Seafoods Company. And so we've got 100% ownership of those two vessels, but they're currently out fishing in the Bering Sea.

And are you predominantly focused on Pacific cod, or do you also go after pollock or anything else? Your CDQ group. Mm-hmm. Thanks for the question. We are highly diversified in many different fisheries.

We have two vessels fishing crab currently. We also have the longliners, as I mentioned, and we have some interests in some pollock catcher processors, as well as catcher vessels in the, the pollock fleet, and as well as in the Gulf of Alaska cod fleets, the former Icicle boats that were that sort of long, long-running Alaskan company. We've, we've got an interest in that company as well. Great. Thank you for your answers.

Mr. Owen. Thank you, Mr. Wilkins, for your testimony. And my heart goes out to your region. They're, they're in all of our thoughts. My question for you is going to be similar to mine to Tiffany's.

My first question is going to be for those boats that you mentioned ownership of. Do you have an idea of how many stakeholders or local folks work on those boats versus non-residents or outside of the state? Through the chair, Ms. Erwin, thank you for the question.

I don't know the number offhand. We have tried for many, many years to try and encourage folks to participate in our offshore fisheries. And to go out to sea and, and do the act of catching fish. There hasn't been a lot of success. There's a lot of folks that prefer to spend the vast majority of their time at home and, and not necessarily sort of spend that time away.

A lot of the fishing season occurs during various subsistence seasons, whether it's wintertime fishing through the ice or other ice seals, that kind of thing, versus summertime salmon seasons and that kind of thing. So it's been fairly tricky, but we've done our best to try and sort of increase the amount of employment in our region, in our communities. Our mechanic welder shops, we have 4 or 5 employees at each of those shops in our communities. We also have community service centers that assist people with tax preparation, operation or sort of grant applications or whatever assistance or whatever it might be. And so we have like permanent employees associated with those different programs and, and communities.

And though all of that is funded through the, the fisheries operation, I will say actually there's a little bit of, of additional shop time that we we sort of receive income from, but at the mechanic welder shops. But for the most part, it's, it's all sort of supplemented by, by fisheries funds.

Thank you for that answer. It sounds like there's quite a bit of economic opportunities that are being provided in your region. My other question is, you mentioned having catcher processor and catcher vessels. Are there any— do you participate in any inshore processing or provide any landing taxes to the state of Alaska?

So each of our operations follows whatever the particular rule is for that fishery. For example, our crab fishery, we have landing taxes that come in to the processing plants. We have some processing capacity there that we also pay fisheries business taxes through. Specifically in the cod fishery, we pay the 3% landing tax and then the 0.5% marketing tax as part of every pound of round fish that we land.

Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you for being here with us.

Amal Mobek, followed by Buck Lekaitis and Patrick Brown. Welcome. All right, thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. I'm Amal Mobek. I'm a community member and fisherman from the town of Sandpoint.

I'm testifying today to be a voice to be being able to get back fishing an increase of the South Alaska Peninsula state cod quota. And I'll explain why. I mean, being able to go back fishing. I own a 46-foot fishing vessel that is sitting on the beach. 60 Pots sitting on the beach, not for the choice of wanting to, but for the logistics of fishing for such small quota.

To where by the time I get to start fishing and get my pots in the water, that the season is almost over in the South Peninsula state cod season. I just can't do it anymore to make a living. Raising quota in state fishery will get my boat off the beach and pots in the water to help bring tax dollars into the communities to help keep the lights on.

As a small boat and with what is happening to us in the summer with salmon in Area M, with time taken away from us, I am in very much support of any increase of quota in the South Peninsula state cod season. Thank you.

Any questions? Thank you for being here. Thank you for your testimony. Bucklekitus.

Welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. My name is Buck Lakaitis. I want to thank the board, the department, and all the stakeholders behind me.

I have a great deal of respect for this process and for all of you. I have two boats that participate in Area O pot fishery.

I want to speak about Proposals 9 and 10. And in my opinion, there's no amount of duct tape that can fix those two proposals.

We have a saying, you know, there is a saying that anyone can tear down a house. It takes skill and care to build one. And in our house where I live in Homer, we try to honor those who came before us. You ever go through that, like in the state of Alaska? Alaska.

Just think of where we'd be without the Alaskans who built boat harbors, our roads.

The state constitution and Magnuson Act created those. And I'm here to tell you the Statewater GHL cod fisheries are performing exactly like fishermen, the board, and the department envisioned. We're using sound science. They're easy to manage. There's low bycatch, and the products are delivered to Alaska communities.

Almost 20 years ago, in 1996, former Commissioner Denby Lloyd, working then for the Aleutian East Borough, people in Kodiak, Alaska Marine Conservation Council, myself, many, many people in this room developed a proposal. It was very controversial. There were, you know, people rolling around in parking lots in Kodiak about developing a statewide GHL cod fishery. It started at like 10 or 15%.

We needed an architect, and that was Danby. He understood the state and federal process, and we were fishermen just trying to, you know, we wanted access to local resources. The GHL was built. It grew. The fishery was built and then it grew and stood the test of time.

It's been reaffirmed by many boards in the, in the last 20 years.

What we got out of it was Alaska resources managed in state waters for Alaskans. There are pot limits. It's really simple. Pot limits, clean gear, minimal bycatch, and area registration. By my, by my accounts, I haven't— I could prepare it if you're interested, but it's like 80% in Area O.

Now, I'm not talking about people live in PO boxes. 80% Alaska residents, either by boat ownership or captains. Many, many, many crew participate in the Area O and similarly in the Area M GHL cod fishery. So about 10 years ago, a friend and I proposed the area state-managed fishery. Again, very controversial.

I think it started at 2% originally. I thought the state water cod fishery should go from Point Lay to Dillingham and Dillingham to Dutch Harbor and Dutch Harbor all the way out to Adak. I ran out of time.

It ended up being in the Dutch Harbor subdistrict. So I gave you a little history. For some people who haven't been through this fight before. So that's all I have. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Buck. Any questions? Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks, Buck. So what's your gear type that you fish?

We're, we're pot fishermen. Okay. And out of the time that you've been doing this, seems like you got some history here over the years. Have you seen an increase in the state water fishing the participation more, or have you seen more of an increase of these, the CDQ group boats coming in from federal waters? And is there any comparison whatsoever or overlap?

Madam Chair, thank you, Mr. Wood, for the question. So I, you know, boat— well, let me just say a little bit about where Area O fishery takes place. It's mostly Unimak Pass. And I lived around Unimak, I lived in Falls Pass for 25 years. I love the area, but it's considered— I consider it, I think God would consider it his least favorite place.

It's really, really a hard place to fish. I mean, it's 4 or 5, 6, 7 knots of current running through Unimak Pass in the winter. It takes, it takes kind of a special person to want to go out in that, that fishery. I mean, it's kind of you fish where the fish are and that's where the fish are. The Bering Sea biomass is 5 or 6 times bigger than the Gulf biomass.

That's just the way it works. But so we see boats coming and going in Area O. I mean, it's maybe 20 boats a day. 27 Or 30 boats. It's, it's provided an outlet for King Cove and Sandpoint boats that don't really want to go there, but when the GHL was low enough, they tried it and they went out. And, you know, including us, like, I'd rather fish somewhere else, but it's where the fish are.

And so I don't see a big influx one way or another. It's kind of metastasis where And I don't see a big number of what you considered CDQ boats. I think you're referring to a few 58-footers, you know, are legally licensed. You know, it's about a $100,000 permit. One of my boats has one, one doesn't.

It hasn't to participate in the federal Western Gulf. You know, it's a license limitation program. LLP. They're expensive. Some boats have them, some boats don't.

Some choose to go to the Western Gulf, some don't. But that's a federal fishery, what you're referring to. I don't see a— there's not a whole lot more boats coming, to answer your question. Sorry for the long-winded— and, and that's just like I said, it's just Mother Nature. It's just a tough place to fish, whether it's Western Gulf or Area O.

Thank you. Thank you for your testimony today. All right. Up next, let's hear from Patrick Brown, followed by David Osterbeck and Carlyn Hoblet.

Hi, Patrick. Welcome.

Press the button, please, so we can hear you. Sorry. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members of the board. Thanks for listening to us today. My name is Patrick Brown, and I'm the chair of the Sandpoint Advisory Committee.

We submitted Proposal 3, which aims to increase the state water's GHL from 30 to 40%, with stair-step provisions that could bring us up to 50%.

As you can see, there's an overwhelming support to increase the GHL. DHL by Proposals 1 through 8 from the local communities of the Aleutians East Borough. The great thing about the state of Alaska is that it has shown to be incredibly competent in managing its fisheries. These proposals simply aim to give the state more authority in managing our resources.

The federal sector has been overwhelmed with red tape. It's harder and harder for small vessels to get involved in the federal sector. Vessel monitoring systems, observer programs, electric monitoring, and of course federal fisheries permit requirements are all roadblocks for smaller boats to participate in the federal fisheries. The state fishery is the only avenue a boat who lacks these requirements has to enter a fishery.

Sector splits in the federal sector have favored two main gear types: trawl and pots. Fishing cod with pots has been shown to be one of the cleanest methods, and overwhelmingly the fishery has favored this method. Even local 58-foot trawlers from our area would like to see more of the quota moved into the state fishery to be fished with pots, as well as jig, I suppose, you know, would come along with that.

Effort in the state pot cod fishery has fluctuated widely since inception. From a high of 65 boats in 2000 to a low of 9 in 2024. Generally speaking, the average participants number around 30, but since the decline of the cod stocks in 2018, the numbers have been less than average, more like 20.

Increasing the state GHL will likely increase participation by local boats in the fishery, which will increase jobs Between 1997 and 2017, participation of vessels in the state cod fisheries ranged between 37 and 65. This is a stark contrast to the current situation. The impact of the decline of the cod stocks has had a detrimental effect on our local Aleutians East Borough communities. Less fish means less participation, means less boats, which equals less jobs. Less fish means less fish taxes, which our communities rely on.

More GHL in the state sector will likely add stability to our local processing sector as well, which in turn could help operating costs and the fishermen's bottom line, as well as the processors.

In regards to Proposal 9, we voted to oppose the proposal after we learned False Pass AC had rescinded their support support for this proposal, which they submitted. And as for Proposal 10, we also voted to support this proposal with an amendment that the Area O fishery would open 3 days after the Bering Sea quotas caught instead of 7.

Proposal 11, we opposed because of the history of trawl catcher vessels in the ADAC area when there was a land-based processor. This area was frequented by local catcher vessels from areas as well. And just because there isn't currently a local market, it doesn't seem prudent to shut this area down altogether. If and when the market ever reemerges, it's important to keep this avenue open, I believe. We all believe.

Thank you.

Thank you, Patrick. Any questions? Appreciate your being here. Thank you for Thank you for your service on the AC. Thank you.

David Osterbeck.

Welcome. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Good afternoon, Madam Chairman.

Board of Fish members, my name is David Osterback. I come from Sand Point, a local fisherman out there, and I participated in every fishery that we ever had out there. And all of our fisheries have gone through very turbulent times. Sometimes we seem like we can fish, other times It seems like we can't fish because they belong to somebody else. The cod fishery, when it was developed as a bottom fishery along with pollock, seemed to be a new entity that we could all get involved in and make some money to take care of our families and take care of our communities.

But even this is getting run over. Just a few short years ago, I was fishing for cod that had like somewhere around 30,000 or 35,000 metric tons of fish to catch. And the very next year, it went down to 3,400 metric tons. And it took us 3 days to catch it. Prior to that, it would take us 2 to 3 months to catch it.

And all of a sudden it drops down and we go out and we fish for 3 days. If bad weather came up, we couldn't fish. I have a 58-foot wood seiner. I pack 65,000 pounds of fish. There's boats out there that are— well, what did I do now?

Oh, you're great. Oh, just a little bit closer. I didn't want to spit on it. I don't think you'd be the first one.

Anyway, so it's a very volatile situation that we're in today, and we wanted to be treated equitably, just like the fishery was intended to when it was started. Everybody got good quotas, and they weren't very different from each other. You have a community like Sandpoint Our population rate has probably dropped 20-30% because of all the politics we have to enter into and try and save what we have to keep our communities going. Kinko is the same way, False Pass.

So we struggle.

We're asking this Board of Fish to give us our cod fishery back as to what it was intentionally done in the first place.

We need an equitable share and we need to be able to fish long enough in order to not just make some money but to be able to pay the expenses $0.35 or $0.40 a pound for codfish, and you pay $4 or $5 a gallon for fuel, and you pay in excess of $1 a pound for bait. Thank you, Madam Chairperson. Thank you, David. Any questions? Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thanks. Is—. So is your current 30% not enough to to make it worthwhile to go out fishing? 30 Cents? Oh, for cod?

The 30%, like what you're allocated already. Like, because we're talking about an increase. Yes. So is the 30%, it's not, it's, you're not able to make it work? No, it doesn't work at all.

If we get bad weather, you know, a lot of our smaller boats were done before we get started.

So maybe I never heard your question right. Are you saying there's going to be an increase of 30%? No, you're at 30%. Like, you have an amount you can go catch right now, and I'm asking, is it not enough to make it worthwhile to go out? And are the days too short?

Is there too limited of time to catch the amount that you have currently? We don't have 30% of the cod. We go out and we have 3,500 metric ton to catch. It takes us 3 days to catch it. We used to have 35,000 metric ton and it took us 3 months to catch it.

We fell down a hole and we're trying to get out of it. Thank you. You help me figure that out. Thanks.

Thank you for your testimony today. Appreciate you being here. Thank you. Carlin Hoblet.

Hi, Carlin. Welcome. Are you going to give your AC testimony or your personal testimony first? I will be giving my AC testimony first. Excellent.

And go ahead and feel free to pull that a little bit closer so we can hear you well.

Thank you. Madam Chair, members of the board, for the record, my name is Carlin Hoblett, chair of the Falls Pass AC. In my AC comments, I will be referencing staff comments, Table 3, RC9, and RC7.

To expand on AC-9, there has been a mischaracterization of conflict between Area M and Area O when the underlying issue is between Bering Sea Aleutian Islands and the Western Gulf of Alaska stock assessments. The challenge before us is not regional rivalry, but an urgent need to address stock structure and an imbalanced due to federal management boundaries that separate interconnected ecosystems, a challenge that is best addressed on a different stage.

The original proposals 9 and 10 risk being brash and premature, particularly with new tagging and migration data still in their early stages of analysis.

Acting without the full picture may cause greater harm than help, undermining both the scientific efforts being put forth and the stability of a small boat fishery that depends on responsible, reasonable, localized management.

Here today, you have the ability and the authority to make an immediate and measurable impact in strengthening the state-managed South Peninsula fishery by increasing the GHL.

If you direct your attention to Table 3, I'll toot the department's horn a little bit, if I may. The average percentage of GHL harvested in the South Peninsula State Waters pot sector is 99% since inception.

Couple that efficiency and effectiveness with the fact that pot gear fisheries are the cleanest and as easily managed fisheries as you can get.

But only if it can remain viable.

Staying on Table 3, I expanded on some of this data.

Since the crash in 2018, the average number of participants in the South Peninsula fishery, pot fishery, was 22, a far cry from earlier years when it easily doubled that. In that same time period, 2018 to the present, the average X vessel value per vessel comes out just shy of $85,000.

Now, every operation is different, but I'll just give you a generic breakdown.

Fuel costs are more than likely, or most likely, $1,000 to $2,000 a day, and we'll say bait is right in there as well, $1,000 to $2,000 a day.

For a season that averaged 11 days, that's since 2018, you're looking at anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 right off the bat with your two major expenses.

And a typical deal, if you don't own the boat, 50% goes to the boat owner.

The rest of that, the rest of it that's left is what you have to pay the skipper and at least 3 or sometimes 4 other crewmen. Keep in mind that this 11 days doesn't include the time spent on gear work, preparing the gear, hauling the gear in or hauling the gear out, back and forth from the grounds.

These margins are very skinny and don't take much bad luck or bad weather for any participants to end up on the wrong side of their pocketbook.

Without a bear die fishery in the near future for the South Penn, inconsistent salmon runs, and the constant scrutiny of Area M salmon fisheries, every opportunity carries significant weight.

With that, the False Pass AC is in support of proposals 1 through 8 with an emphasis on 6.

And as RC 9 states, we support RC 7, the amended language.

And I would also like to add that we would be in support of an amended step-down provision in regards to proposal 6.

False pass. AC took no action on proposal 11, and I will be here for the Committee of the Whole. Thanks. I'm furiously scribbling notes on your comments. Any questions?

Uh, thank you, Carlin, for your AC report, and we'll go ahead and switch you over to your personal for your testimony when you're ready.

I'm flattered by your notes.

They're good ones. Again, Madam Chair, members of the board, for the record, my name is Carlin Hoblett. I grew up in Falls Pass. I'm a lifelong commercial fisherman. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.

I've put myself in some ambivalent positions here today. I don't want to take from fellow fishermen, but I'm all for honest competition.

Although I would have to label Factory Hook and Line and Trawl Catcher Processors very distant fellow fishermen, because I have never personally known a crew member on any of these vessels from organizations whose mission is to, in quote, "provide economic opportunities in rural villages." This is where I feel awful.

False Pass literally lies on the boundary between the Bering Sea and the South Peninsula.

I'm the beneficiary and community member of a CDQ group.

But as I've told others here in the room, at the end of the day, we're all businessmen. We're looking to protect our investments and our livelihoods.

I also read a public comment stating hypotheticals of 65 boats participating in last year's state water fishery.

Show me 65 participants that would want to divide 4.8 million pounds of 30-cent cod and I'll show you 65 failing businessmen.

You can see by the comments and by public testimony who this allocation increase is up against. It's CDQ groups and Kodiak trawlers. I've heard that 75% of the western Gulf trawl sector tak was harvested by the Kodiak trawl fleet. And like I said, I'm all for fair competition, but these boats were out there last year scraping away at quota when the local fleets had the sense to stand down while waiting for bycatch numbers and production to increase— bycatch numbers to drop, sorry. And production to increase.

Increasing State Water's participation in harvest opportunity doesn't just benefit the local communities, it benefits the resource itself by shifting effort away from indiscriminate gears and towards sustainable small-scale operations that land what they catch and value every fish. This board has the power and the responsibility to strengthen that model. Supporting state-managed fixed-gear fisheries is not a political move. It's a scientifically sound, economically responsible, and necessary action to protect Alaska's fisheries resources for future generations.

By increasing the state waters GHL, you can directly reduce the level of bycatch generated by large-scale offshore fleets and federal trawl operations.

I have—. Do you have a concluding statement? Yes, I do. Thank you. I urge you to act within your jurisdiction to expand the state's GHL, bolster fixed gear opportunity, and send a clear message that Alaska remains committed to clean, science-based, and accountable fisheries management.

Fisheries that provide direct benefit to local fishing communities and their families.

Thank you. Questions? Mr. Godfrey. Yeah, Carlin, um, I tried to get the quote when you said it. I think it was in the first minute of your testimony.

It came after you said, but distant fellow fishermen, or something like that, because then you went on to say, I've never known any of them to Am I ringing a bell? Yes. Can you, can you read that sentence or a couple sentences again and then elaborate for me on what you mean by that?

Through the chair, uh, yes, I will elaborate and I guess simplify. Or I don't personally know a crewman that works on a CDQ vessel.

That's where I was going with that. Okay, thank you. Then I think you answered my question, because my question I was going to ask specifically is, have you known anyone from your own community that has? So the answer is no, no, not ever that you know of. Okay, not that I can think of.

Thank you.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks. Um, what's your primary gear type? And, and then on top of that, then the number of boats you said it could handle up to 65, but that's unrealistic. What is it now?

How many boats now? How many boats participate now? Yeah, fishing now for this GHL.

The average since 2018 was 22, I believe.

And you asked gear type? I fish pots.

Did that answer your participation question? It did. And I guess if we— out of those 22 boats, if you increased your GHL by like 10%, do you still have the capacity with 22 boats to harvest all that, or would more boats be added to the fleet? Through the chair, sorry. Yeah, as I said, I'm all for fair competition, but we need the poundage there for their to even be a competition.

So yes, if we can get more percentage in the GHL, I'm not going to cry about more boats entering the fishery, if that answers your question. Yeah, but I guess what I was wondering, even if you had more GHL with the boats you have right now, Could you, could you catch it all? Most definitely. Thanks. That's what I was getting at.

Mr. Owen, thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Mine's kind of a follow-up on capacity to Mr. Wood's question. Is there a processing plant in Falls Pass? And if so, would there be capacity to process this increased GHL if it were to happen?

If there's not a processing plant, then there are the plants that are usually used, would they be able to, um, to process an increased GHL? Yes, through the chair, thank you for the question. And yes, there is a fairly new state-of-the-art facility that was recently built in Falls Pass, and they would have no problem handling an increase in this GHL.

Great. Thank you for your testimony today. Thank you. All right, let's go ahead and take just a very brief break, about 5, 10 minutes, and we'll come back on the record and, um, pick back up with Hannah Heimbach.

All right, welcome back. Time is 3 PM. Back on the record, continuing with public testimony. The next up was Hannah Heimbach. Hi, Hannah.

Hello, afternoon board members. For the record, my name is Hannah Heimbach. I'm a Kodiak setnetter, a resident of Palmer, and here today representing the Under 60 Cod Harvesters. Our members are vessels under 60 feet that participate in state and federal pot cod in the Bering Sea and the Gulf, and their regular participants in the Dutch Harbor fishery. I have several members that were unable to be here after Kodiak flight cancellations but wanted to flag that they'll be submitting some RCs for their testimony.

And to summarize our comment letter, we're neutral on proposals 1 through 8, opposed to proposals 9 and 10, and supportive of proposal 11. My understanding is that proposal 9 was pulled by the authors, so I'll hold my comments on that one. On 10, we're opposed to a start date delay because the most The effective aggregations of cod are in the early season, largely February, so a delay to March would substantially decrease opportunity and efficiency for this fleet, which in peacod fisheries can be really important. Margins are often tight, and when you start spending more on fuel and other operating expenses when the CPE goes down, it can really change the viability of the fishery. The earlier part of the season is also when cod are the highest quality.

That's important for Alaska's cod market overall. For our fleet in particular, we have several boats that are investing substantially in onboard quality innovations that allow them to be more competitive in the marketplace, so that access timing is super important to them as well. Beyond that, and maybe more importantly, there's not really a pathway for a reduction of time or area for the Dutch Harbor fishery to increase quota in the Western Gulf. And that's for two reasons. First, because they are genetically distinct stocks that are managed totally separately.

There's no management mechanism to make a change in the Bering Sea equal an increase in the Western Gulf. The second reason is that a time and/or area restriction to Area O doesn't mean that people won't be fishing on those stocks. When the Area O fishery is closed, parallel state waters in those same proposed closure areas are open to multiple federal sectors. So while I absolutely want the Western Gulf Fleet to be successful, and our group is very supportive of state water fisheries, the potential for benefit here is really slim, while the potential for negative impact is very high. I'd also note that a delay to March would almost guarantee that additional boats would feel pressure to move to the Gulf in February to fish federal quota.

They really can't afford to sit on the dock for 5 to 6 weeks and wait for Area O to open, so it might even exacerbate the kind of the issue. That's what I have today, and happy to answer any questions. Thanks, Hannah. Any questions?

Don't see any. Appreciate you being here. Next up is Todd Hoppe, Steve Ricci, and Tom Hoblett.

Hi, Todd. Hey, good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of council. My name is Todd Hoppe. I reside in Homer. Um, I fish strictly with pots now.

On a 58-foot vessel. And the state cod fisheries have been a very big part of my income every year. Very grateful for those fisheries and the job that you do here. I'm here to oppose proposals 9 and 10. I'll speak more to 10 and the new amended language.

I think there's—. They're trying to fix a problem that I don't see exists. If I'm going to go to Western Gulf, if I make my fish plan, if I'm going to go to Western Gulf and fish federally, I'm going to go to Western Gulf and fish federally regardless of what. Maybe I start in the Bering Sea federal fish. When that closes, jump over like a lot of guys do.

Narrowing that window down to 3 days is not going to change that. I feel you're compromising small boat safety when you do that. All the state water fisheries have 7-day window to get gear out of the water and move it to state waters.

There is some small boats in the Bering Sea. I'm not a super big boat. I cannot move as many pots as a lot of guys. And last year I was actually late getting to state waters. I fished federal right to the end, which you could look at was maybe a mistake.

On my part, but by the time I got in line at the pod dock in Dutch, I had 3 loads of gear and I needed to get a load and a half to state waters. Where I fish federally was 14 hours away from where I fished on the north side of Unimak Pass. So in 3 days, I'm going to forgive something. Either I'm going to forgive some GHL fishing or I'm going to quit federally fishing early in order to get everything moved and shuffled. So I just thought maybe I'd clarify some of that and give you a little bit of understanding how the fisheries work.

You know, it was an earlier testimony, it is not a very nice place. I do not enjoy fishing Area O. It's a tough, tough place. I'm trying to figure out right now this year of maybe somewhere else to fish. I'm getting a little too old for there.

But for that, that's all I have. And the last thing, since I want I won't be here in March because I'll be cod fishing. I support proposal 11, Linda Kozak's proposal. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thanks, Todd.

Any questions? Mr. Godfrey.

Yeah, you may have said it in your opening and I may have missed it, but what size is your vessel? 58. 58. So you're right at the limit. And how far off how far off the coast do you go into federal waters with a 58-foot vessel into the Bering Sea?

When I fish Kodiaks, 50, 60 miles. I think in the Bering Sea I was up in front of Akutan, I think, looking at a chart, maybe 16 miles. 16? From land, yeah. Yeah, that's—.

It might have been a little bit closer than that. And that's with how many pots? I only had 100 last year. I got more pots out there now. Federal fishing.

I moved some this summer. Thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it. Thank you for your testimony today. You bet.

Thank you. Steve Ricci.

Welcome.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the Board of Fish. 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 to proposals 1 through 8. BBDC is one of 6 CDQ groups providing benefits to roughly 30,000 Alaskans.

The CDQ program derives revenue from federal fisheries such as the Gulf Pacific Cod Hook and Line Fishery to support community and economic development in 65 western Alaskan communities. The CDQ program is a vehicle for which— by which Alaskans have direct ownership of federal fisheries. Since its inception 30 years ago, the program has provided hundreds of millions of dollars for critical community needs. BBDC has a substantial interest in the Gulf CP hook and line sector through both quota and vessel ownership. Other CDQ groups have also made significant investments in fishery.

CDQ participants purchase these harvesting rights. They are not part of this CDQ allocation. One of the programs that BBDC created and continues to support is the Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute. Many of you are familiar with BBSRI. For over 20 years, BBSRI has been working with ADF&G and NIMP staff to fill research and management gaps, generating benefits for state water participants broadly.

BBSRI is most well known for the Port Moller test fishery, which supports all harvesters and processors in the Bristol Bay sockeye fishery. The work BBSRI does to predict run strength and timing helps maximize the benefits of the fishery, including tax revenue for the state. Most recently, BBSRI has been operating the genetics lab in Dutch Harbor to support Western Alaska chum salmon bycatch reduction efforts. BBSRI acted quickly to develop and implement implement this tool. To have this kind of agility and rapid response, BBSRI requires flexible funding, which is why BBDC— BBDC provides the majority of the organization's budget.

Additionally, we support the Freezer Longline Coalition's investment in cooperative research with the Alaska Science Center, including cod tagging and other projects. Federal participants are actively engaged in supporting science, which has broad benefits. To be clear, We support small community-based vessel access to fisheries. At BBDC, we help local Bristol Bay fishermen with gear, permits, and vessel loans and ensure that resources are available for our community members to engage in subsistence activities. We are concerned about jeopardizing these meaningful and highly functional programs by reappropriating biomass to a fleet that has been foregoing access to the resource through the federal pot cod allocation.

As written, the change in the proportionment may leave insufficient biomass to open the federal fishery. This is not a simple reallocation but will potentially shut out federal fleets and strand some of the resource. BBDC asks that the board delay action at this time.

Thanks, Steve. Any questions? Miss Irwin. Thank you very much for your testimony. Um, I was wondering, you mentioned the Gulf of Alaska hook and line fishery that BBEDC has quota and vessel ownership in.

What other fisheries does BBEDC have investments or participation in? Sure, so we participate in most of the Bering Sea federal fisheries. We have interest in the Bering Sea crab fishery outside of the CDQ allocation, and then in the Bering Sea cod allocation as well. And yeah.

Okay, thank you for your testimony today.

Tom Hoblett, followed by Lena Hoblett, Luke Fanning, and Rebecca Skinner.

Welcome, Tom.

Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Tom Hoblett. I'm a lifelong fisherman, False Pass. I've spent my career working in the state water peacock fishery And I want to speak briefly about the importance of supporting clean, sustainable, and community-based fisheries like ours. The state pod fishery for Pacific cod is one of the cleanest and most selective fisheries in Alaska. Our gear is stationary and we target cod directly.

When we haul, we bring up live fish that can be sorted on deck, and anything we don't keep can be released unharmed. We have virtually zero bycatch of halibut, crab, or salmon. There is no discard waste, no habitat destruction, and no ghost fishing. That's a big contrast to what happens in the federally managed trawl fishery and longline fleets. The trawl fleets encounter halibut, crab, rockfish, salmon, and most of that incidental catch doesn't survive.

Even in a longline fleet, halibut and other non-targeted species are often caught and wasted in the process. Meanwhile, our pot fishermen land clean product and protect the habitat and support our local communities. Every fish we catch gets used. Every fish we don't— every fish we don't is released alive. Supporting the state management fixed gear fisheries like pots, jig, and small boat operations is the best way to reduce bycatch and maintain Alaska's reputation as a global leader in responsible fishing.

Increased state water harvest opportunities would directly reduce waste from offshore sectors and keep more fish of the value right here in the Alaskan communities. The communities of King Cove, The people of Port Hope and Sandpoint have expressed strong regional support for the False Pass Initiative. Recognize that the challenges faced by one— one Aleutian East community affect the stability of all. Both communities have shared a vested interest in maintaining a healthy local managed cod fishery and have voiced alignment with False Pass' position to strengthen state water fixed gear opportunities that reduces bycatch. Thank you for your time and continued representation of this valued, clean, sustainable, community-based fisheries like ours.

Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Are there any questions? Appreciate your being here today and thank you for your testimony. Thank you.

Lena Hamlet.

Good afternoon, Board of Fisheries. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Lena Hoblett and I am from the Arctic Yukon Kuskokwim, the AYK region, from the community of Holy Cross. And I share the concerns of all Alaskans who depend on healthy fisheries. My perspective reflects the commitment to science-based fishery management and fairness across all regions.

I'm here on behalf of the Native Village of False Pass, a federally recognized tribe located in the Aleutians East Region, where I serve as the tribal administrator. I come before you representing people of the land and the sea whose culture, livelihoods, and traditions are deeply connected to the fisheries that sustain our community. For generations, our people have lived in harmony with these waters. Harvesting responsibly, protecting what feeds us, and passing on knowledge so that future generations can do the same. We believe in sovereignty, stewardship, and science-based management as a path to fulfill stability and prosperous region.

Our tribe is committed to enhancing our community and expanding the opportunities before us, not only for our fishermen, but for our youth, our elders, and the families who depend on these resources. The prosperity of False Pass reflects the important work brought upon our community by this board. We want to thank the Board of Fisheries for upholding the policy and procedures that, that ensure sustainability and responsible management of Alaska's fisheries. We appreciate the difficult work that goes into balancing science, conservation, and community needs. Additionally, the tribe stands with the False Pass Advisory Committee in supporting the state-managed small boat fisheries, as in pot and jig sectors.

These fisheries are among the cleanest and most sustainable in the world. They protect our marine habitat, avoid unnecessary catch of non-target species, and uphold Alaska's reputation as a global leader better and responsible fishing. Supporting pot and jig sectors aligns perfectly with the Board of Fisheries' goal of sustainable harvest, low environmental impact, and community-based economic development. Expanding state water opportunities for these gears is a science-based, ethical, and economically sound policy decision. By increasing state water harvest opportunities, The board can directly reduce waste from offshore sectors, promote cleaner fishing practices, and keep more of the economic value in Alaska's tribal and coastal communities.

These measures strengthen local economies, empower our people, and protect the resources that define who we are.

On behalf of the Native Village of False Pass, we urge this board to continue relying on science, fairness, and the voice of the communities who live within these decisions every day. We thank you for your continued service and for recognizing the importance of working in partnership with tribes to sustain Alaska's fisheries for generations to come on science-based fishery management. Together as Alaskans, we can rely—. Go ahead and finish your statement. It's the last sentence.

Um, rely on our connection to the sea, to one another, and to the communities that call these waters home. Thank you. Thank you, Lena. Any questions? Appreciate your testimony today.

You're good. Uh, Luke Fanning.

Hi, Luke.

How about now? Okay, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Luke Fanning, and I'm testifying on behalf of APTICDA, which is the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association. We're one of 6 CDQ groups.

We respectfully urge the board not to take action on Proposals 1 through 8. While we strongly support state waters fisheries and have invested in them ourselves, including building and operating the Bering Pacific Seafoods plant in False Pass, These proposals raise serious concerns for our Gulf hook and line— hook and longline cod investments, which is critical to funding community development work and where over 90% of the ownership in our sector is Alaskan. CDQs are mandated to invest in federal fisheries. The revenue from these investments supports numerous programs including job creation, essential infrastructure, helping to keep schools open, and supporting fisheries access. It also ensures that communities that don't have processing plants still benefit from fisheries.

That mission puts us in a difficult position today, balancing support for local fisheries with the need to protect the federal investments that sustain all 6 of the communities that we serve. The proposals before you would significantly increase the GHL from 30% to as much as 60%. For comparison, the largest cod GHL fishery is 35% in the Aleutians, and I know that that's a much less complex fishery with fewer sectors. You received a letter from NMFS today, and you heard from the department that under certain GHL increases and cod abundances, the agency may not be able to open a directed fishery. In this case, the federal fisheries wouldn't just be reduced, but, but could be completely preempted, leading to foregone harvest and loss of revenue to the state and CDQ program and impacting our ability to service debt that we've incurred to acquire quota and build vessels.

I'd be happy to elaborate on that further if you like. Vessels like the Arctic Prowler, which is the largest and only vessel of its kind ever built in Alaska. We also think it's premature for the board to act on these proposals because, as you heard earlier, changes to stock assessments which may be occurring within the next 2 to 3 years, could impact or even expand state water access. So the conditions under which you're basing your decision may be changing in the coming years, to say nothing of the fact that many of the federal fisheries scientists were unable to be here today. We completely understand that declining quotas have negatively impacted participants.

However, reallocating now could have long-term consequences for Alaskans who depend on state and federal fisheries, both of which are critically important to, to economies throughout Western Alaska. I want to conclude by noting that the state is responsible for conducting a decennial review of the CDQ program for our effectiveness, including our financial performance. This puts the state in a unique position, responsible for assessing our performance and also for potential reallocations which in effect harm our ability to perform conform to those standards. I want to thank you, and I'm happy to answer questions. And now that I finished without my microphone being cut off, I'll note that I'm a lifelong Alaskan.

I'm also the owner of a 32-foot fishing vessel that I operate for salmon and halibut in my spare time when I'm not working for APTA. Thank you. Thanks. Any questions for Luke?

Luke, you referenced the debt service. Can you— like, I'm assuming that's an investment that APTA has made in the fisheries. I don't know if those are the cod fisheries specifically, and what, what, what kind of position does that put the organization in, in terms of being able to make payments, and what are the consequences of that? Thank you, Madam Chair, for the question. As a matter of practice, I typically don't discuss specific financial details for obvious reasons, but today I'd like to make myself and our organization a little bit vulnerable.

And I'll share with you that when we bought out our partners, which were out-of-state interests, and we Alaskanized Prowler Fisheries, which is our largest investment, we incurred a significant amount of debt to do that. We have millions of dollars in loans. That loan, the largest loan, matures on December 20th. We are actively discussing with our bankers how to handle that. So a reallocation of quota from one fishery country to the other does inhibit our ability to service that debt, and it affects the cost at which we borrow debt for other projects.

Now, why incur debt for a project like that? In part, it's so that we can preserve our cash to make investments like we've made in communities like False Pass, where assets are much more difficult to finance. So it's important for us to keep financing on the financeable assets so that we can use cash for our community development projects. Okay. Thank you.

Appreciate your testimony today. I don't see any other questions.

Thanks. Oh, Mike, do you have a question or not? Yeah, I'll keep it brief. You got to be honest. I promise I'll be.

So you were talking about a different plant. I was going to ask you specifically about the plant that you've invested in in Foltz Pass and because it sounds like this CDQQ group is the 6 communities you represent is along the Aleutian chain, but you're still fishing up in the Bering Sea predominantly. What was that investment in False Pass? Yes, through the chair, Mr. Wood, thank you for the question. The history of that plant in False Pass is that in the early 1980s, the Peter Pan plant burned down and that left the community of False Pass without a seafood processing plant.

In the late '90s, Apikta came in and in an effort to build market opportunities for fishermen, came in with a floating processor barge. Not gonna lie, it was tough financially and it took a lot of years and a lot of losses to build up the capacity there. From there we built an onshore plant. We also built a fuel plant and over the years, steady as she goes, we built up our capacity there. In 2018, we were able to attract investment from both Trident and Silver Bay Seafoods with the infrastructure that existed there.

We then sold our interest in the plant, and then last year we bought it back. A big part of the reason that we brought it back was the collapse of Peter Pan left a lot of seafood companies strapped. It left no Port Moller, no King Cove. So we wanted to partner with Silver Bay to expand that capacity capacity in an effort to buy fish from the local fishermen in the region. And we're very pleased that we've done that and very happy that that plant was able to process fish from communities including Chignik, process fish from Bristol Bay, process fish from King Cove, and also Port Moller— excuse me, Nelson Lagoon, which used to sell to Port Moller.

Thank you.

Okay. Thanks, Luke. Is Rebecca Skinner online?

And just so folks know, Rebecca Skinner is the representative from the Kodiak AC. She was weathered out this morning, so I've made the exception to allow an AC remote testimony.

Hi, Rebecca, can you hear us? All right, am I coming through? You are. Go ahead and begin. Am I coming through?

Yes. Okay, thank you. All right, my name is Rebecca Skinner. I am providing the Kodiak AC report, and I wanted to voice my great appreciation for allowing me this opportunity to testify via Zoom since the planes out of Kodiak were canceled. Our AC minutes were submitted on time, and they're in that report.

AC-2. The votes and rationale that I'm going to reference are in the table starting on the third page of our minutes report. So, I'll start with proposals 1 through 8. We took all of these up as a group. And the first question that the AC discussed was whether there we supported the concept of increasing the state GHL.

And because overall we didn't agree with that, we didn't get to the other questions. So some of the specifics in the proposals. So we opposed proposals 1 through 8. And we did have a fair number of abstentions. The people who abstained abstained cited a lack of knowledge about the fisheries and a desire to support state-managed fisheries in general, but being unable to vote in favor of the steep increases in GHL being proposed.

There was one vote in favor. The rationale there was a desire to support state-managed fisheries, particularly open-access smallboat fisheries that are very important to small coastal communities. The rationale in opposition is that this proposal will hurt Kodiak-based fishermen. Both Kodiak and the South Peninsula cod fisheries are both exclusive registration areas, so if you register to fish around Kodiak, you can't go register for the South Pen cod fishery.

Kodiak boats that traditionally go to the western Gulf and fish in the parallel cod fishery could lose that opportunity under this proposal, particularly if the federal TAC gets too low to open a directed fishery, and, and that could preclude a parallel fishery. It's not in the minutes, I realize, but I do want to note that the gear types from Kodiak that were present at the meeting that go out to fish in the western Gulf include trawl vessels and pot vessels. Including under 60-pot vessels that are eligible to fish in the state fishery.

Okay, so that was proposals 1 through 8. Proposal 9, the AC opposed, and the opposition rationale is that number 1, the area proposed for closure is one of the most productive fishing grounds and closing this area would push boats out into less productive areas and extend the season. And there is already a concern with a lack of accessible markets as you get toward the end of the fishing season. At least 15 to 16 Kodiak boats would be displaced and would have to travel farther to markets in order to deliver fish. This increased distance has negative impacts on vessel safety as vessels are forced farther away to the east or to the west.

And finally, noting that we understand tagging studies are currently underway and the data on cod movement is still incomplete and that any action should wait until after that data is available. Also, there was a concern that closing this area would be likely to strand cod. And the area is established closed waters adjacent to Unimak Pass during the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict and South Alaska Peninsula Area State Waters Pacific Cod Fishery. Proposal 10, the AC also opposed. Proposal 10 is changing the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict State Waters Pacific Cod Potgear Fishery season open date to 7 days following closure of the federal BSAI pot longline vessel under 60 feet season or March 7th, whichever is later.

The rationale in opposition is that this proposal would upend the fishery and create a hardship for boats that travel out west with crew and then have to stand down for 3 to 4 weeks waiting for the fishery to open. It was noted that boats currently travel from Kodiak, Ketchikan, Homer, Seward, and False Pass to participate in this fishery. Currently, most harvest occurs before March 7th, and there's a huge risk of stranding cod. Again, changes to the fishery should wait until the cod tagging study is complete.

And proposal 11, we had some discussion. We ultimately tabled it, so the vote to table is what's listed in the minutes. The rationale in favor of tabling Proposal 11 is that this is a complex issue and we wanted to have the benefit of the staff presentation that will come. I guess maybe that was at this meeting. And we also would benefit from hearing what the board discussion was at this meeting before we actually took action on it.

The opposition to tabling notes that this proposal will have significant negative impacts on the viability of trawl fisheries west of 170. But again, the vote on that was just on the motion to table, not on the actual proposal.

And that concludes my report. I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you, Rebecca. Any questions? Questions from around the table here.

I don't see any. Thank you for trying to be here in person, and I'm glad we were able to hear your AC report. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Okay, that concludes the list. We have one missed call. Um, is Dale Peterson here?

Second call for Dale Peterson.

All right, that concludes our public testimony portion of the agenda. Let's take about a 10-minute break while we set up for committee of the whole, and then we'll get going.

Okay, thank you very much, everybody. The time is 3:45. We're back on the record. We're going to go ahead and begin our one and only Committee of the Whole process for this meeting. A little bit about Committee of the Whole work.

Parliamentary procedures for committee work will follow the New England town meeting style. Committees are intended to provide opportunities for additional for information gathering and at times, hopefully, for dispute resolution. They are not a forum for debate, nor is it a platform for repeating information that's already been received through the public testimony. And that means oral and written public testimony. During board committee meetings, advisory committee representatives may express both their official positions of their committee as well as their personal views.

Please just identify which of those positions you are stating. The board recognizes AC reps as knowledgeable fisheries leaders and believes that they must be able to function freely during the Committee of the Whole sessions. During the committee meeting, public will come forward and use the microphone near the front table. Where is that one? Oh, it's the standing one right there.

If you intend to speak, please move towards the front of the room. You may form a line behind the speaker at the podium in order to minimize the waiting time between the comments. When you speak, please clearly start by stating your name for the record, even if you've already done so earlier. So every time you come up to add to the committee discussion, please make sure you state your name for the record. Please do not refer to anyone by name in a derogatory manner.

Again, we're looking for new information only. Please don't repeat what's already been said in public testimony. If people start repeating the same points, the committee chair is going to move on to the next proposal. If substitute language is being developed or you feel it should be developed, please speak to what the substitute language says or what you think it should say. Okay.

With that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Mr. Godfrey. And before we do that, quickly, Director Nelson. I just wanted to mention, you guys all have a new RC 12 in front of you. We had misinterpreted one of the AC's support or oppose on this, so this replaces the one that you got earlier. So throw the earlier one out and use this one for the, uh, comment matrix.

Okay, Mr. Godfrey, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over, and if you just let people know how you plan to group the proposals. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Madam Chair. So I think most of you are probably familiar with the process.

Because of the similarity of a number of these proposals, I'm going to block them together. Staff will read the preamble to the proposals, and normally after they read the preamble, I would ask for anyone, uh, this— the person who proposed it. If that person's not here, I would ask for someone who wants to speak in support of it in absence of that person, and And from there, we'd move on. In this instance, while the verbiage isn't identical, I'm going to ask staff to go ahead and just read the preamble on each one, 1 through 8, all at once. And we're going to take them as a block.

So when you do come up to speak, please be sure to do what the chair had already told you to do, but also be sure to clarify which proposal you are going to speak on in support of or in opposition to. And if it's all of them, For the record, please do that for the benefit of the board members. Thank you, staff. Please.

For the record, my name's Cassandra Whiteside. Proposal 1 would increase the South Alaska Peninsula area state waters Pacific cod guideline harvest level from 30% to 50% of the western— the federal Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod acceptable biological catch.

Proposal 2 would increase the South Alaska Peninsula area state waters Pacific cod guideline harvest level from 30 to 50% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod ABC.

Proposal 3 would increase the South Alaska Peninsula area state waters Pacific cod guideline harvest level from 30 to 40% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod acceptable biological catch. A step-up would also be proposed such that if the total GHL is achieved during a season, the GHL would increase by 5% the following year, not to exceed a maximum of 50% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod, ABC. As proposed, the GHL would not step down if the total GHL was not achieved during the season.

Proposal 4 would increase the South Alaska Peninsula area state waters Pacific cod guideline harvest level from 30 to 40% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod, ABC. A step-up provision is also proposed. If the total GHL is achieved during a season, the GHL would increase by 5% the following year, not to exceed a maximum of 50% of the Western Gulf Pacific Cod ABC. As proposed, the GHL would not step down if the total GHL was not achieved during a season.

Proposal number 5 would increase the the South Alaska Peninsula area state waters Pacific cod guideline harvest level from 30 to 40% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod acceptable biological catch. A step-up provision is also proposed that if the pot gear GHL allocation is achieved during a season, the GHL would increase by 5% the following year, not to exceed a max to a maximum of 50% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific Cod ABC. As proposed, the GHL would not step down if the pot gear GHL allocation was not achieved during a season.

Proposal 6, this would increase the South Alaska Peninsula area state waters Pacific— Pacific Cod guideline harvest level from 30 to 40% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific Cod Acceptable Biological Catch. A step-up provision is also proposed that if the pot gear GHL allocation is achieved during a season, the GHL would increase by 5% the following year, not to exceed a maximum of 50% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific Cod ABC. As proposed, the GHL would not step down if the Potgiir GHL allocation was not achieved during a season.

Proposal 7 would increase the South Alaska Peninsula area state waters Pacific cod guideline harvest level from 30 to 50% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod acceptable biological catch. A step-up provision is also proposed that if the total GHL is achieved during a season, the GHL would increase by 5% the following year, not to exceed a maximum of 60% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific Cod ABC. As proposed, the GHL would not step down if the total GHL was not achieved during a season. Season.

Proposal 8 would increase the South Alaska Peninsula area state waters Pacific cod guideline harvest level from 30 to 50% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific cod acceptable biological catch. A step-up provision is also proposed that if the total GHL is achieved during a season, the GHL would increase by 5% the following year, not to exceed a maximum of 60% of the Western Gulf of Alaska Pacific Cod ABC. As proposed, the GHL would not step down if the total GHL was not achieved during a season. Mr. Chair, thank you very much.

Do I have the proposer of Proposal 1 in the room who would like to speak to this? Do I have anyone who would like to speak to this in support of it? Anyone in opposition?

Proposal 2, do I have the proposer in the room? Does anyone want to speak in support of it? Does anyone want to speak in opposition? Proposal 3, same question.

Uh, Patrick Brown, Sandpoint AC. We authored this proposal.

Is there anything you want to say that hasn't been said on the record already? No, sir, other than we still support it. Okay, I'm glad to see you're standing behind it. Thank you. Does anyone else want to speak in support or in opposition Are you coming up to speak?

Okay.

Yes, members of the board, Madam Chair, I'm in support of—. Name? Tom Hoblet. I'm in support of proposal number 6. Thank you.

Thank you. Does anyone want to speak in opposition? Seeing none. Proposal 4. Is the proposer in the room?

Does anyone want to speak in support of it? Opposition?

Proposal 5, same question.

If you do know you're going to want to speak, considering it's not a very crowded room, if you don't mind making your way up to one of the front row seats. It will save kind of the time of walk of shame kind of thing. Come on up if you are ready.

Appreciate being spared a walk of shame. Any time I can get one. For the record, my name is Luke Fanning. I work for APTA. I spoke earlier today.

I'm going to speak in general terms because so many of these proposals are related and just speak once if that's All right, Madam Chair, we heard some testimony previously about these fisheries, and I want to preface everything I'm going to say by saying I'm not here to throw stones at any fishery. I think I'm not a big fan of the circular firing squad, and we get plenty of that in fisheries as it is. But there were some comments that I think require some clarification and some nuance, and that is that when it comes to the federal CP fishery in particular, that is a 100% observed fishery. So all of those fish, all of the halibut, for example, being counted are being visually counted by observers. And when we shift fisheries between federal and state waters, we are shifting from an observed fishery to an unobserved fishery.

And the— there were a lot of statements made about the cleanliness of various fisheries. And I just would like for it to be on the record that the longline CPs typically have much lower rates on halibut mortality, that's different from rates of bycatch, right? But on mortality, the total mortality is typically much lower for the longline CPs than for the pot boats, for example. Year to date, 2025, that is about 31 metric tons for the pot boats in the federal fishery versus 15.2 for the longline CPs, which I think gives a good proxy for what we see when we look at that information played out over the years. So I just want to be clear that it's not as if the longline CP fishery is a dirty fishery.

I'll take nothing away from the pot boats. I think they do a good job, but there is a difference there that I'd like folks to know. Um, second comment I'd like to share is there were some questions about participation levels of CDQ boats and how we create jobs and economic opportunities that I'd like to address. I'll acknowledge right off the bat that we have in all of our contracts, uh, job opportunities for residents are a priority. What we found over time is that we, as you heard from Landry earlier, oftentimes we don't have a lot of applicants for those jobs.

The kinds of jobs and opportunities that many of our residents prefer are those that are closer to home in the fisheries, and we work very hard to create small boat fishing opportunities. A good example would be Nelson Lagoon lost the Port Moller Peter Pan plant last year. They had no access to ice. So we built an ice house to provide ice to their small boat fisheries and partnered with Silver Bay to make sure that they had access to ice so they wouldn't lose their market. And the way that we create those job opportunities is all funded by federal fisheries.

And the money from those goes to supporting a wide range of small boat activities. Last year we donated 3 boats to the St. George Fisherman's Association. Those are all under 30-foot boats, mind you. So we have to have this yin and yang between the federal fisheries income that's generated and the small boat fishing opportunities that we— that are so important to our residents. Thank you very much.

Look, I— so in considering all these proposals kind of together, I mean, the requests are anywhere, um, and the proposals are anywhere from increasing the GHL from 30% to between 50 and 60%, right? And I'm trying to understand exactly what those implications are. Um, you know, I'm very sympathetic to small boat fishermen. I'm very sympathetic to local fisheries. I'm trying to understand understand what the margin is.

I mean, how thin is that margin for your organization or other CDQ groups in terms of the percentage? And I might be putting you on the spot here, and I don't mean to be, but I'm really trying to understand what does that— what does a 10% increment really mean? What does a 5% increment mean? Are you sitting right on the edge? And it's unfortunate that we're, you know, having this conversation and and staring down the barrel of a deliberative process here without having the full complement of the information that we'd like to have.

But I'm trying to understand what is— how thin is that margin for those organizations? Thank you, Madam Chair, for the question. It's an excellent question, and I'm going to do my best to answer that. In part, the answer to that question depends on what the TAC is going to do over time. But I will point to recent history.

In 2020, the fishery was shut down completely. In 2018, it was operating at a very minimal level. So you have multiple triggers here. One of those triggers is what happens if the feds don't have enough fish to open up the fishery, right? That's a hard stop.

Any of those years around 2018 through 2020 could have likely put us in that very position. The second trigger for us is at what point does it no longer make sense to send a boat out. You heard testimony from another CDQ earlier, in fact multiple CDQs, that they already made the decision not to go to the Gulf, and that's why they've stacked so much quota onto the boat that we own. There are now— we're down to 2 boats in the freezer longline sector still making trips. We make a trip in the A season, we make a trip in the B season, and all the other boats have had to stack quota onto that, that boat.

We are very close to not being able to send that boat out. The economics of the fishery not— are not such that we can go send a boat out and come back with a fraction of a load. So that is very much a concern. There is a trigger, and I don't know exactly where that is. It depends on the tack at which we can't justify sending the boat out.

We have no opportunity at all. How many years out of a 10-year span is that going to be is really difficult to say. I wish we had the federal biologist here to help us with that.

And so I guess in terms of my questions about impacts, you couldn't say definitively exactly where that line is for you, but you're, you're pretty darn close to it now. Is that what I heard? We're very close to it now, as evidenced by—. At the, at the current GHL of 30%. Correct.

Yeah.

Board Member Irwin. And then Carpenter. Yeah, thank you so much for your testimony and for coming up again. It's a follow-up to Member Carlson-Vandort's question. So you mentioned the impact of the stacking of the quota and almost not being able to send out that boat.

Would a 10% or 5%— this is increase in GHL— would it also affect your ability to continue those social services? That the CDQ groups also provide to folks, such as those scholarship opportunities, those— we heard about the welding areas and those other types of social opportunities that are provided. Would this affect the ability to follow through on those? Thank you. Yes, through the chair, Ms. Irwin, that's an excellent question.

The short answer is yes. Every dollar ultimately has to come from somewhere. Our estimate of the present value of some of these proposals are up to $5 to $10 million, depending on your assumptions about, you know, how high it goes and what the TAC is. Those are dollars that ultimately must come from somewhere. And in our case, that's some form of community and economic development in some community.

Exactly how we would sort that out is not a question I'm looking forward to dealing with. In my role, I'm going to do the very best job I can to outrun it, but that's the reality of an uncompensated reallocation.

Mr. Carpenter. Thanks. I appreciate your explanation. I guess I just kind of want to maybe throw something at you here a little bit and see what you think. So when we talk about margins and profitability, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, your organization or the CDQ groups are not necessarily any different than an individual that owns a vessel that participates in a fishery.

Everybody has expenses. And when people invest into a fishery like you have and others have and individuals have, there's always an expectation that you're going to be able to fish more sometimes, you're going to be able to fish less sometimes. And those are decisions— those are business decisions. And I understand that the— what the CDQ groups and what they provide to coastal Alaska communities. But I also have to weigh the effects of these individual operations that also have to provide similarly but at a different level.

How is the board supposed to look at this situation? And it's a very complex problem, quite frankly. And I'm kind of looking to see if you maybe have any insight into that. Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter, that's a great question.

I think it begins with the understanding that all of us are in a similar boat in some way. Everybody here has been hurt badly by the loss of caught opportunity. It's how we navigate that, that, that matters the most. I'll take nothing away from— we have some of the hardest working and toughest community members that I respect so much for the fishing that they do. And we want badly for them to have opportunities.

That's part of why we've made the investments that we have. At the end of the day, there's just not enough cod for everybody to get what they need. From the board perspective, you're in a very difficult position. You are weighing which group of Alaskans you are going to advantage and disadvantage. And I don't envy your position.

And to be honest, I don't envy mine on this one either. Thank you. Mr. Swenson, if you'd like to be recognized.

Well, Ms. Erwin had an interesting thought to this, and I'm wondering, what if there was a 10% allocation from, you know, from the feds to the smaller villages with a 5% step down if they didn't reach that allocation? Was that something that would make any sense.

Through the chair, just to clarify my understanding, so a 10% increase from 30 to 40, which would be a 33% overall increase for the state waters fishermen, is that— am I following the math right? Yes.

That would put us in a difficult position. I don't know how I would explain that to my banks necessarily. Necessarily. And this is not just— it's not a one-off, right? We've had this— we heard earlier testimony about Area O.

We've had multiple rounds of Area O. So it's not a one-time scenario when we go down the path of these reallocations. That's a difficult concept to explain.

I don't— I'm not prepared today to say exactly what that impact would be. What I can tell you is We have modeled the higher numbers and they are significant. I haven't modeled the 10% that I have that I can speak to you about today. I would be happy to talk about that any time, though. But if it was 5%?

I think we would have to give that some thought. I also want to be clear that I don't represent everybody here in the room. I'm in a tough spot. I've got communities in communities out, so I certainly can't today speak for the whole sector. Okay, thank you.

I have a question regarding your hiring preferences for people in the community. So is that all things— is the approach for hiring community members, all things being equal, they get hired over someone who's not from the community, or is it all things even not being equal, you have someone with experience that's applying and someone with no experience from the community, do they get elevated the opportunity despite not having experience? And that's just one example, but that's the easiest one. If you could just tell me what that looks like. Yeah, that's a great question.

Through the chair, Mr. Godfrey, um, the answer is it depends somewhat on the area within the company. We go to great lengths to hire in region on many of our jobs. And there are some jobs that are ones where we don't necessarily have the ability to weigh community over life, health, and safety. Obviously, you want to have both, right? So if you're going to work on one of the other boats, you're going to have to conform to those criteria and expectations where oftentimes, and especially in Region, we will craft positions around what that individual would like to do.

A great example would be our longest-serving employee, Jimmy Procopio from ATCA. He's worked on our boats, but we try to make sure that Jimmy has a chance to go home when he needs to so that he's not out to sea 6 months, 9 months a year. And so we have to take all that in and translate that into community development and employment that makes sense for the individual and the organization.

Luke, thank you. Very much. I don't see any other questions from the board. You, um, can return to your seat. Thank you.

Thank you. Are you just trying to keep this interesting? All right, Mr. Woods. I used all my chips on the first go-round, so— but I, I just want to ask you, um, um, God, I had so many things in my brain. Uh, okay, I'll pass.

I'll I'll find you, I'll hunt you down. Sorry. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you, Buck Lekaitis. Kind of in response to this last issue, I'm looking at the NIMS reporting for seasonal non-sideboard catch reports. And so when I go down the list of all the fisheries that are going on in the Gulf and percent taken or harvested at this point of the season, my point is there's a lot of slop. This isn't accounting. It's not like everything has to add up to 100.

There's, there's, for instance, Western Gulf of Alaska, Pecod hook and line, CP, 57% caught, you know, 30, 30-some— or what, I don't do math on the mic, but it's 43% uncaught. And granted, some of these, um, numbers are suspended at September 20th, so I can't say these are all accurate. And I think September 20th maybe was the government shutdown, so there, there's some more probably still being caught. But my point, I can go down this whole list and there's 55% caught, 42% caught, 63% caught, 24%. We're pretty late in the season.

And so my point is, everybody's got these operational difficulties. We don't all— for instance, my boat is trying to catch CDQ halibut in the Bering Sea. It's only 29% caught this year. I mean, CDQ revenues are— we left 70% of the halibut in the Bering Sea in the water. We try to catch it.

We like the income. CDQ groups want the income from the lease fee as well. But it's not a perfect world. The fish are extremely hard to catch. And so I'm having a hard time connecting that what you're doing here by increasing a GHL by 5 or 10% or 3% or 1% or incrementally can exactly relay back to CDQ revenues because there's so much uncaught fish.

And the last thing I'll say is I know in the Bering Sea, fisheries managers always try to do rollovers for P Cod. They'd like— managers want to get it all caught. And so if, if a sector doesn't It's projected that a sector might not catch all their fish. The managers try to roll it over, and usually CP longliners are the recipients of large rollovers. That's a good thing.

It wasn't going to get caught. One sector, for whatever reason, didn't have the participation. They receive rollovers, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's a good thing, but I don't think you can equate 100% cost accounting, everything has to equal, because that's not how fisheries work. There's a lot of things that don't get caught out there for a lot of different reasons.

And I'm just having a hard time connecting a small allocation increase in Area M with revenues to CDQ groups. Thank you. Thank you, Buck. Board Member Wood. Yeah, Buck, you're saying that there's some fishery, that some of these fisheries that are out there prosecuting them aren't catching their quota, so it's basically stranded.

So these are just, this is fish left in the water. That's what I'm trying to say, and I'm not discounting Mr. Fanning's testimony at all. We're all facing this. But I don't think you can, I don't think the burden should be put on you that you're gonna tip somebody over into, you know, not profitability in the Gulf. And, you know, like I think I said in my public testimony, the Bering Sea cod resource is 500 times bigger than the Gulf.

I mean, the pot of gold is in the Bering Sea. CP Longliners working in the Gulf is— that's just, you know, that's not the primary. I mean, we all need the things around the edges to make our business work, but you know, the primary reason that CP longliners were rationalized was for the Bering Sea. It's not because of the Gulf. That's kind of an afterthought in my opinion.

Thank you. Thank you, Buck. Okay, this was such a good discussion, I lost count of what proposal initiated this. I think it was 5.

6 Or 6? That was 6 when Luke came up. Okay, 5. Stop it. All right, that's—.

Yeah, you want to speak on 6? Go for it. I believe that's what you're on. Yes, that's what I should clarify. Madam Chair, members of the board, for the record, my name is Carlin Hoblett, Falls Pass AC, and I just wanted to clarify that We are in support of Proposal 6, and we also authored Proposals 9 and 10 and wanted to clarify while I'm up here, we oppose Proposal 9 and support Proposal 10 with the amendment.

If I may inject on some of your previous questions, I guess, and just direct you to RC-13, it lays out hypothetical 10% allocations. And just also, I'm here to answer any questions if I— or help answer any questions, I should say.

Board Member Irwin. Thank you, Mr. Godfrey. Thank you for coming back up to the mic. How do you feel the false pass AC would feel about the board providing an increase, say 10%, however, instead of a step-up provision, offering a step-down provision if the GHL is not met.

Through the chair, Member Erwin.

I want to clarify, I guess clarification on your question. If the board were to offer 10% increase without a step up and only a step down? Correct. If we increase from 30% to 40% with the provision of a 5% step down if the GHL was not met in a given year.

Uh, I can't speak for everybody. Um, I can't speak with confidence that I don't think the fleet would worry about a step-down provision.

But also, I don't know how happy the fleet would be immediately being capped at 40% for the remainder of the— or until the next meeting cycle or possibility of it changing, I guess.

I don't see any other questions. Carlin, thank you very much. Thank you. Does anyone else wish to speak? Proposal 7.

Is the proposal— the person who proposed it in the room want to speak on this? Anyone want to speak in support of it? In opposition? Seeing none. Proposal 8.

Is the proposer in the room?

Anyone want to speak in support of it? Anyone in opposition? Now is your chance.

Hello, board. Max Heggie, Ocean Bay Fisheries out of Kodiak. I think probably more Kodiak faces would have shown up today had there not been weather. And I guess I feel that it's important to speak on the fishermen's behalf in terms of just how important some of these fisheries can be, even though it's a small aspect of the kind of broader fishery in Alaska for us. Um, in terms of just kind of the opportunity cost for us, and in terms of what it would be for the state fishery, I don't think it's really been emphasized enough.

A lot of numbers being thrown out at 30% as if that's like the only fishery, or the only amount that can be caught for boats that are under 58 feet, and not enough emphasis on the opportunity that comes with a parallel fishery. So a 10% jump in terms of GHL might have a marginal impact on, on state boats strictly because of how low the stock is, but it could basically preclude preclude us from having any fishing opportunity, which I think is important to at least mention. Thank you.

When you say precluding any fishing opportunity, you're talking about specific to the parallel? So I'm basically making mention to what has been talked about in terms of the stock assessment and the implications for raising the state GHL. As a direct decrease in the federal TAC. And if it is lowered to a certain point to where there's no federal fishery for us, then we have no ability to even participate in the fishery at all in the South Alaska Peninsula. Got it.

I understand. Thank you very much.

I see no other questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. So that was our block of 1 through 8. Proposals 1 through 8.

Understand the proposer withdrew Proposal 9. I'm not going to ask the staff to read it unless anyone wants to speak on it. Okay, we'll go ahead and read into the record then.

For the record, Proposal 9. This would create a state waters Pacific cod no fishing zones east and west of the boundary line on Unimak Island that separates the South Alaska Peninsula area and the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict state waters Pacific cod fisheries. Mr. Chair, thank you. Does anyone wish to speak on that despite it being withdrawn?

Seeing none, proposal 10, please, staff.

Buck, are you coming to speak on— I just, I just wanted to go ahead and put your name on the record. Buck Lokaitis. So Of course, I was opposed to the Proposal 9. I'm glad it got pulled. I hope that it's pulled and pulled because I'm not exactly sure how those things go.

But I just wanted for the record to just clarify that I believe there's fish that move around in migration. It's like, I'm a fisherman. I understand that all, and I would, um, so, you know, because there's some heartburn over, um, you know, opposing proposals and having them, because basically it would have closed half the area of fishery. So I think the right route for that is not the Board of Fish, obviously. It's through the groundfish plan teams.

You, you make a lot of decisions in an information deficit, just the world we live in. But we have a lot of information about cod. There's, you know, there's like 32 different models that some really smart people project out. There's the Groundfish Plan Team, the SSC, the whole council process. And whether we like it or not, we're riding on that.

The coattails of that because the department doesn't do the primary science work. I mean, we've made an agreement to use the federal work, and that's a good thing. So I think there's a route to really get to— there's been some good work by the Aleutian East Borough and others to get to some, you know, some migration things, but it's not through this this process, and there's a way to do it, and it's probably spending a lot of time at the groundfish plan team. But I needed to say that because I, I was— I'm very opposed to 9 and 10 because it's closing, deconstructing the fishery for no good benefit to the Gulf, because you can't mix and match between the Bering Sea management plan and the Gulf. So that's, that's— I just wanted for the record.

Thank you, Mark. Appreciate it. Staff, Proposal 10, please.

Proposal 10 would amend the season opening date for the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict State Waters Pacific Cod Fishery to more closely align with the season opening date of the separate but adjacent South Alaska Peninsula State Waters Pacific Cod Pot Gear season. Mr. Chair. Thank you. Is the proposer in the room?

I'd like to speak to this. Anyone want to speak in support? Go ahead. Carlin Albert, Falls Pass AC, the ones that submitted. That's all.

I just want to let you know that I'm here for to help answer any questions. Thank you. I don't see any questions right now. Does anyone want to speak in opposition?

Buck Lekitis again. So I asked the enforcement officer if before you deliberate on the RC to go from 7 days to 3 days, that we have a very clear understanding of the mechanics of how pot gear will be removed from federal waters. And how we start the state water fishery. And I could support a 3-day closure. I don't— we don't go to the Bering Sea to want to sit around, but I don't want to be put in a position to force people to move gear.

We heard public testimony from Mr. Hoppe. I don't want to force my boats to have to move gear. So as long as you are comfortable and have a very good understanding of how the mechanics of— typically we have more than 60 pots in federal waters, so there's going to be an excess number of pots that need to be moved into the 3-mile— inside the 3-mile line to start the state water season. As long as you're comfortable that you're not forcing boats into a dangerous situation I think you've done your job. I think you should hear from the enforcement officers of their understanding, have a little bit of chance for some feedback from fishermen who are actually are going to ask questions like, what if?

And what about? And if we can do that, you know, the revised proposal is— I'm not going to speak for anybody else except my own two votes, I think that's fine. But I, again, I don't want to be in the position to endanger anybody, and it's a very real deal. So that's all I have. Thank you, Buck.

Okay, I don't see anyone else standing up, so we will move to Proposal 11, which we will hear again, but go ahead and read that into the record. Proposal number 11 would amend closed waters for the Aleutian Islands District to close all waters of Alaska 0 to 3 nautical miles west of 170 degrees west longitude to groundfish fishing with pelagic and non-pelagic trawl gear. Final deliberation of this proposal is scheduled for March. Mr. Chair, thank you.

Is the proposer in the room? No. Anyone will speak on this? Seeing none, Madam Chair, that concludes Committee of the Whole, one and the one and only for this meeting. Thank you, Chair Godfrey.

Um, okay, well, we've concluded Committee of the Whole, and I think we'll break for the day, and we will resume at 8:30 AM to deliberate these proposals. If you're working on substitute language, I encourage you to get with staff, get with law, all the things, and try and get it submitted well in advance of our start time tomorrow. Are there any other announcements? Okay, we'll see y'all at 8:30 in the morning. Thank you.

So.