2026 Bristol Bay Finfish Meeting – (1/13/2026)

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A'ight, good morning everybody. My name is Marit Carlson Van Dordt. I am the chair of the Alaska Board of Fisheries. The date is January 13th. The time is 8:45 AM.

Before we get too much into it, I would like to go ahead and have my fellow members introduce themselves, and then we will do other staff introductions. So let's start with the far end of the table here. Good morning. My name is Olivia Hinahi Irwin. Good morning.

My name is Curt Chamberlain. Good morning, everyone. Tom Carpenter from Cordova.

Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Jared Godfrey, Rigo River. Mike Wood, Talkeetna. Awesome.

And we'll go ahead and go around the table. And I've got the Deputy Commissioner here. Will you please introduce yourself and any staff you'd like to? Thank you, Madam Chair. Ben Mulligan, Deputy Commissioner for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Just keeping the seat warm for the Commissioner as he is in travel status. Will be back here on Friday. Just want to say thank you to everyone who showed up today. It's a very public process and one we appreciate. In talking to other states, they don't have quite the public process.

Not everybody can put in a proposal. Those are generated from their commissions and boards. So it's, it's good to see how much more, I would say, open and transparent we are. I'll just introduce the directors and then have them introduce their staff. So to the left of me, is Director Peyton, Director of Sport Fish, Director Bowers, Director of Commercial Fisheries, and everybody knows George, Director of Subsistence.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Mulligan. Director Peyton, would you please introduce your staff that's here today, please? Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board and members of the public. My name is Israel Peyton.

I am Director of Sport Fish. Assisting here at the meeting today, I have— and I'll ask staff to raise their hand and stand up real quick. I have Jason Dye, the Division Operations Manager. Jason was a previous sportfish manager in Bristol Bay and longtime Bristol Bay resident.

New to the regional sup position today, we have Christine Dunker here. She's a supervisor for the Region 2, which covers Bristol Bay and Southcentral. Way in the back, we have the new research coordinator, Nick Djokovic. He handles all the research for South Central and Southwest. We have our management coordinator, Jay Baumer.

He supervises all the managers for Southwest, Bristol Bay, and South Central. And we have Lee Borden, the Bristol Bay Southwest area management biologist. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Director Peyton. Director Bowers.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Here from the Division of Commercial Fisheries, we have Shaleen Hutter, Regulations Program Coordinator. Jack Erickson, Regional Research Coordinator. Heather Scannell, Regional Management Coordinator. Stacy Vega, Igigik Yugashik Area Management Biologist.

Travis Ellison, Naknek Kwijak Area Management Biologist. Tim Sands, Westside Area Management Biologist. Cole Weaver is a Bristol Bay Area Research Biologist. And Jasmine Terry-Schendelman, Bristol Bay Assistant Area Research Biologist. Thank you.

Thank you. Director Pappas. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board, staff, and public. Uh, with us today, we have a total of 4 individuals, including myself. We have Lauren Sill, the Regional Program Manager for the Southern Region of Alaska.

A new hire, Dr. Greg Russell, he is the subsistence research specialist for Southwest Alaska. And we have a very incredibly talented Deputy Director, Dr. Amy Wieda, behind me here. So—. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Looking for a great meeting.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. And from OSM. Good morning. Jared Stone, fisheries biologist for the Bristol Bay and Seward Peninsula regions.

With the Office of Subsistence Management. And I believe I'm not here with any federal staff today, so I'm here by my lonesome. It's very brave of you. Just kidding. Department of Law.

Yes, good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. Eddie Lee for the Department of Law. And Department of Public Safety. Good morning, Captain Derek DeGraff, Alaska Wildlife Troopers. Thank you.

Thank you. And Director Nelson, will you please introduce Board support staff and yourself. Good morning, Madam Chair. My name is Art Nelson. I'm the executive director for the Board of Fisheries, and with board support staff here, we have Annie Bartholomew, our publications specialist.

Next over there is Sam Kirby. She's our Arctic Region Advisory Committee coordinator. And there at the far end is Natalie Romo. Natalie Romo, she's out of the Dillingham office, and she's our Southwest Regional Coordinator. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. Thanks for all the staff being here, and of course, all members of the public that have joined us for the week, hopefully. For those of you that are here in the meeting room, just want to let you know that if you have trouble hearing or need a little bit of extra help with the audio, um, board support does have wireless headsets that will tie into our sound system that might help you hear a little bit better. Just ask any of the board support staff and they'll make sure to hook you up. Lastly, a reminder for those also in the meeting room and around this table, I advise you to turn off your cell phones or at least silence them, please.

Okay. Time for ethics disclosures. I'll go ahead and take ethics disclosures in the same order we did introductions, beginning with Ms. Erwin.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning. My name is Olivia Henahi Erwin. I live in Nenana, Alaska. I am a Doyon Corporation shareholder and receive a dividend each year.

I am also an Evansville Native Corporation shareholder and receive a dividend, both formed under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. I work as the community liaison for the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association. I will receive a stipend for my service on the Board of Fisheries. I have a resident hunt, fish, and trapping license. However, I have not participated in any of the fisheries being addressed at this meeting.

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 two 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. Any questions for Ms. Erwin from members of the board?

Seeing none, I rule that you can fully participate in this meeting's agenda. Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Curt Chamberlain. I was raised on the Kuskokwim River.

I am currently employed as Deputy General Counsel with Chalista Corporation. I am a shareholder of the Kuskokwim Corporation and Chalista Corporation, both Alaska Native corporations, and receive distributions from each— both entities each year. In the past year, I have received residual income from the sale of a law firm and rental properties. I currently own a controlling interest in Neon Law Group, which is currently winding down and not conducting business. I will receive a stipend for my service on this board.

I actually, I do not currently hold a fishing license, so I don't have to yet. Welcome to the new year. Neither I, my family, nor my employer have a financial interest in fisheries. I have no interest in any business and fish or wildlife organization that may be affected by any of the proposals or agenda change requests discussed in this meeting. My father owns a commercial drift net permit for the Middle Kuskokwim that hasn't been used since 1996.

Neither I, any member of my immediate family, nor my employer are involved in any lawsuit where the state, the board of the board or the department is a party to, to the lawsuit. This information is true, correct and complete to the best of my knowledge. Thank you, Mr. Chamberlain. Any questions? Seeing none, I rule that you can fully participate for this entire meeting.

Mr. Swenson.

Good morning.

My name is Greg Swenson. I was born and raised in Anchorage and am 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 state— from the state PFD, CD interest, investment, residential rental income. And I get a stipend from the state for my services on the board.

Neither I nor my immediate family have any financial interest in fisheries, nor are we involved in any lawsuits with the state, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, or Board of Fisheries. I also have licenses for hunting, fishing, and a private pilot's license. This information is true and correct to the best of my ability. Welcome to the meeting. Thank you, Mr. Swenson.

Any questions? Seeing none, I rule that you can fully participate. Mr. Godfrey. My name is Jared Godfrey. I'm a lifelong Alaskan.

I was born in Juneau. My family's originally from the Kodiak Islands. I'm a shareholder of Koniag Regional Corporation, Foggan Native Corporation, Yuzinki Native Corporation. I'm an elected tribal council member of the Native Village of Port Lions. I live in Eagle River.

I have two children, 21 years old, 19 years old. Professionally, I'm a consultant with various clients, partially in broad— primarily in broadband and economic development spaces, but nothing pertaining to fisheries. I'm the campaign manager for candidate for governor Shelley Hughes. My son participated in the commercial fisheries of Bristol Bay and Kodiak last year as 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 is party directly or indirectly to lawsuit with the state of Alaska or any agencies of the state. These statements are factual and true to the best of my knowledge.

Thank you. And just to put it on the record for this meeting, we had a conversation at the last meeting about your services in the capacity of a campaign manager. It's been determined by myself and the Department of Law that there aren't any conflicts of interest associated with your service on this board in that capacity. However, certainly you'll keep us apprised as fundraising and policy statements come out from the candidate. So I just wanted to make sure that was on the record.

Any other questions from the board members. All right, Mr. Godfrey, you may fully participate in this meeting. Mr. Wood. Okay, my name is Mike Wood. I live in Chase, Alaska, 5 miles north of Talkeetna on the Susitna River.

I'm a self-employed carpenter and do contract work for 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 business that supplies locals. I am the volunteer chair of the board of 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, and neither my wife or I are involved in any lawsuits against the state, the board, or the department, and I certify that this, uh, uh, disclosed statement is true, correct, and complete. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Any questions for Mr. Wood?

Hearing none, I rule that you may fully participate. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. My name is Tom Carpenter. I reside in Cordova.

I'm currently retired. I've divested myself completely of all businesses, including limited entry permits and IFQs. I receive the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, as does my daughter, and I receive a stipend for serving on this board. I hold an Alaska sport hunt license. I also hold annually a Copper River subsistence permit.

Neither I nor anyone in my immediate or extended family have any financial interest in any business which relates to fish and wildlife resources or belong to any organizations to which any financial gain can be attributed. There are no proposals before the board that will benefit myself or anyone in my immediate family. No, no member of my family or extended 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? Seeing none, I rule that you can fully participate, and I'll hand the gavel over to you, sir. Thank you, Madam Chair. Would you please put your ethics statement on the record. All right, well, my name is Margaret Carlson Van Dort, born and raised in Alaska.

I currently reside in Anchorage, um, grew up in Chignik Bay and Juneau. I'm 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 am also a shareholder in the Bristol Bay Native Corporation and in Koniag Native Corporation. I receive a State of Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, and I annually purchase a resident sport fish license. I will receive a stipend for my service on this board.

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

Any board questions? Seeing none, I rule that you can fully participate in the matters for us, and I will hand the chair to you. All right. Thank you very much. And I am going to go into my spiel here, give you guys some sort of overall direction and information about how this meeting is going to progress and, you know, how you can participate fully.

I will say that I just lost my train of thought completely. Anyways, for those of you that have been here, you can, you know, put up with it for a minute, and for those of you that haven't, there is some information in here. So as board members, we are available to you for the purpose of receiving added information. This process doesn't work without you. Many of us often meet with stakeholders before and after the meetings, informally during breaks, and we're here to benefit and serve you and certainly benefit from your input.

On the floor, there is a— I believe it's black and yellow today— striped line that we call the sanctuary line in front of the tables, across which the public may not cross during our meetings or our breaks. However, if you wish to talk with any one of us, try to get our attention or just ask someone, staff, board support staff, um, to let us know that we— that you'd like to chat and we'll come out across that line to you. Please keep in mind that it is during these breaks and both before and after the daily meetings that we find time to read all of the RCs and materials that have been submitted during the meeting. If you have any process questions about how this meeting is being conducted, We want to make sure that you are fully informed, and the chair, myself, the vice chair Carpenter, the executive director Nelson, are happy to answer any process questions that you might have or that come up during the course of the meeting. Certainly, it's hoped that the practices of the board that I'm outlining will maximize public participation and that you remain informed and engaged so that we can hopefully have a productive meeting.

Similarly, the Alaska Board of Fisheries and the Department of Fish and Game are united in support of fostering a respectful workplace. We are committed to ensuring our workplace is free from any negative, aggressive, or inappropriate behaviors. Harassment of any type is not acceptable and won't be tolerated. And we appreciate everyone's assistance in making sure that we have a, again, a relatively drama-free meeting. In accordance with the Open Meetings Act, the board staff published a notice in the Alaska Online Public Notice System and in a statewide newspaper, posted the notice on the public website as our designated posting place and also distributed it to our list of email recipients.

I'm not going to read it, but copies of the notice are in the meeting notebook at the back of the room or are available from the executive director for those who are interested in the complete text. The public notice and proposals were distributed to the local Fish and Game Advisory Committees. They were posted online and were sent by email to interested organizations and individuals. Public comments were solicited, and the board members have received copies of all on-time written public comments. The timely public comments and timely advisory committee comments are available for the board's use and are also available to the public in the workbooks at the back of the room.

They're also posted online. Copies of all the meeting materials are updated frequently throughout the meeting and can also be found on the board's website on the web— web page specific to this meeting. Also, copies of the tentative agenda for this meeting can be found on the table at the back of the room. The agenda is subject to change throughout the meeting, but I will make my best attempt to try and generally stay on this agenda. Record copies.

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

The board is accepting RCs submitted electronically as a Word document or a PDF through the board's website. A link to the submission portal is prominently featured on the meeting page of our website where all of the materials for this meeting are posted. You can also turn in written materials to the board support staff at the end of the table. Please note, however, that you only need to turn in one copy, um, but, uh, board support staff will not be printing submitted materials in color. So if you have something that you want in color Please turn in 20 copies to the board support staff at the end of the table.

Without exception, all materials which are to be— all materials are to be submitted to the board for its consideration must be presented to the record keeper for distribution and uploaded through our website. Please do not give documents to board members directly. You certainly can look at them, but those documents will be handed back to you and you'll be asked to submit them for the record. All documents received at this Board meeting will be assigned a log number, which we call an RC, and all written materials submitted will be retained for the permanent record of the board. The record keeper will distribute RCs in the morning before the meeting begins, after the noon break, and if there's an evening session, after the dinner break.

We hope that this practice ensures regular distribution, distribution of all those written materials to the board members, as well as proper retention for records. Again, I just A note: while you have the right to submit up to the maximum number of pages, keep in mind that we're very busy and are sometimes unable to read everything immediately. We appreciate brevity as we will be receiving literally hundreds of documents consisting sometimes of thousands of pages at these meetings. So the fewer pages it takes to say what you need to say, the better, right? At this time, we're about to begin our staff reports.

Following staff reports, we'll hear our traditional knowledge reports and public testimony. Those of you who wish to provide public testimony must fill out one of the blue cards located at the end of the table and turn it into the board support staff. The tentative cutoff time to sign up for oral testimony is 10:00 AM tomorrow, so 10:00 AM Wednesday. At this meeting, the public will be given 3 minutes to testify. Traditional Knowledge reports, advisory committees, and Regional Advisory Council representatives will each be given 10 minutes.

And following public testimony, there will be 4 sessions of the board's Committee of the Whole I encourage you to look at the roadmap to see which proposals will be discussed in each of the committee sessions. Everyone present is allowed to participate. There is no need to sign up for committee. And the agenda, which is available online or in the materials at the back of the room, will show tentatively where we plan to deliberate between those committee group sessions. So again, while the agenda is subject to change, I am going to do my best to make sure that I provide you updates if there are any deviations from the agenda.

But again, if you have questions about the process, please feel free to ask me, Vice Chair Carpenter, or Director Nelson. So I think we'll pause here, take about a 10-minute break, and we'll get set up for staff reports and we'll get into those next. Thank you.

[Speaker:JENNIFER] All right. We're just trying to make the large screens just a little bit more visible for folks. But let's go ahead and get started again. Back on the record, 9:22 a.m. with the review of salmon escapement goals. Welcome, gentlemen.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board, public. For the record, my name is Jack Erickson, and I am the regional research coordinator for the Division of Commercial Fisheries in Southcentral Alaska. With me today are Cole Weaver and, and Nick Dukovich. Cole is the Bristol Bay research biologist for the Division of Commercial Fisheries, and Nick is the regional research coordinator for the Division of Sport Fish. This past year, we led an interdivisional team of staff from Fish and Game in a review of salmon escapement goals for Bristol Bay, and we presented our findings to the directors of Sport Fish and Commercial Fish earlier this year.

This presentation summarizes these goals, the review, and its findings. Hard copies of this presentation are available in RC3, uh, tab 5. Additionally, the full written report of this escapement goal review with detailed methods and findings is available in RC3, tab 1.

The objectives for today's talk are to introduce and reference the policies upon which the review was built, describe the approach of the review team, and finally summarize the results and present the findings that were given to the directors. For your reference, a list of current escapement goals and department findings for Bristol Bay salmon can be found in Table 3, which is on page 16 of the written report. That's in Tab 3— our— our RC3 Tab 1, but on page 16, it's a table of that. The state of Alaska has two small policies that speak directly to salmon escapement goals.

The first is the policy for the management of sustainable salmon fisheries. And the second is the policy for statewide salmon escapement goals. Together, these policies ensure that stocks in Alaska are conserved, managed, and developed using the sustained yield principle.

To orient you to the region, Here is a map of Bristol Bay that identifies the river systems with current escapement goals.

For sockeye salmon, there are, there are 8 escapement goals based on tower counts, as identified by the blue dots.

And for the Nushagak River, as identified by the red dot, there are escapement goals based on sonar counts for for each of the 5 species of Pacific salmon.

Currently, there are 13 sustainable escapement goals, or SEGs as we often refer to them as, in the Bristol Bay management area. Going down this list, we have 1 king, 1 chum, 1 coho, 1 pink, and 9 sockeye salmon goals.

First, we're going to go through the review process and the committee findings for sockeye salmon, and then we'll move on to the other species.

For this escapement goal review, the committee went back and reviewed the stock recruit analyses conducted back in 2012. 2012. At that time, department findings were presented to the board, which then decided to hold off on any changes until an advisory panel could assess the biological and economic implications of the proposed increases to the sockeye goals.

The panel asserted that changes to the existing goals should be broad enough to encompass both high and low productivity regimes, allow for management flexibility, and be economically robust. The process used to develop these goals was atypical for the department in that they were negotiated with input from the stakeholders, industry, academia, and the department. These are more in line with OEGs, in our opinion, than SEGs, but they are sustainable. Increases to the upper bounds of many of these goals were officially implemented before the 2015 fishing season and have remained the escapement goals for these systems since.

So for this review, we updated the time series to include escapements and completed the returns that have happened through 2024. And we compared the stock recruit models to when the goals were first established. And then we looked at each and reviewed the changes if there were any needs to change the goals.

Before we get into the specific analyses for Bristol Bay sockeye salmon, I'm going to walk you through how we look at what's called a basic Ricker stock recruit model.

The horizontal axis shows the number of fish that escaped the commercial fishery and made it to the spawning grounds on a given year. The vertical axis on this graph represents the number of fish that returned from a brood year, or fish that have escaped.

The diagonal blue line is what we call the replacement line. Any point above the line means the brood year replaced itself, in other words, a minimum of 1 recruit per adult. This is where we get potential yield. Anything below the blue line means the brood year did not replace itself. We had less than 1 year or 1 recruit per spawner.

This red dot is an example that represents a hypothetical escapement of 180,000 fish.

That results in 600,000 surviving adults being available for harvest or escapement in the future.

Let's take a look at Togiak River.

Plotted here are the escapements and the recruitment data for Togiak River sockeye salmon. As you can see, there is one point below the data, the replacement line, and we have quite a number of points above the replacement line. This is the time series for Togiak.

Well, how do we proceed from that as an agency? Well, our first step is to model a stock recruit curve that we call the Ricker curve to fit the data, and that's represented by that dome-shaped line. This relationship is well established for this stock and is used to predict the number of adults that make it to the fishery at a given escapement level. It is the basis for how we determine what goal ranges will maximize yield while ensuring sustainability. This model takes into account factors such as density dependence and productivity potential specific to that stock.

The area on the plot that is shaded green, which is the distance between the replacement line and that Ricker curve, is where there is potential yield.

The point where these two lines are furthest apart, represented by that MSY and the arrow, it represents what we call maximum sustained yield. So at roughly on this figure, roughly 200,000 fish would be where we think that would generate maximum sustained yield. That difference between those two lines is the actual yield on average.

For our escapement goal review for this board cycle, the committee reran all stock recruit analyses and updated our spawner recruit data and compared it to those goals that were originally developed back in 2012, 2013. 2015. And we looked for substantial differences that might warrant a change in the escapement goal.

And if you look at this next figure, you can see that the data through 2024 have been added to this— the system. And the red dots represent the 12 new points that we've seen since 12,000. Since 2012. These additional years of escapement show completed returns and were incorporated into this year's review.

As you can see, the updated model represented by the dashed line is very similar to the, the 2012 curves. For this stock, there was just simply insufficient new information to recommend changing the goal. The current goal is represented by the green shaded area of 120,000 to 270,000. So you can take a look at that. The shaded green area represents our current escapement goal for Togiak sockeye.

Curves are very similar.

While I'm using Togiak as a visual example here, this was also the case for the Ei Gushik, Nushagak, and Yugashik River sockeye stocks. Curves that did not change much.

Now I'd like to move on to a different example, and this is Wood River sockeye. All colors are the same as in the previous example, but you will notice that the Ricker relationship has changed with 12 additional years of data since the last review. Those curves are diverging from each other. And as you can see, the curve is being pulled up. That dashed line is pulled up above higher than the dark line from 2012-15.

This is due to the recent large escapements that we've experienced since 2017.

An example like this might suggest that we should increase the escapement goal for Wood River sockeye. However, large escapements since 2007 are not all reflected in this analysis. Because fish that spawned in some of the years have still yet to return. And we will find out some of this information in future summers. Soon we'll be seeing new data points that are to the far right of the curve that's being shown on this, on this slide.

During the next 4 years, we'll be seeing returns from 4 large escapements on the Wood River. That haven't been put into our model. They range from roughly $3.8 million to almost $8 million at $7.5 million. So you'll see those 4 arrows that represent the data points. We have not seen the returns, the realized returns from those 4 escapements.

We're not sure if they're gonna come in under the replacement line or if they could be similar types of the regime that we've been seeing, continued high production, if we're going to be above the replacement line for these stocks. So those are 4 new pieces of information that will be coming to the board here in the next cycle. We'll see how those curves end up. That's, that's our, that's our thoughts right now. It's time to wait rather than to make a decision here to increase something.

That's high production.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] So in summary, the current goals are working well.

The committee found no changes in sockeye escapement goals in the Bristol Bay that would be warranted. No changes are warranted at this time.

And while these analyses might suggest goal range changes in some systems, Returns from historic runs are expected to be coming in the recent— in the next few years, and we will have a much more informative model to look at.

The next stock I'd like to discuss with you is the Nushagak River even-year pink salmon.

Pink salmon escapement has been estimated as far back as 1958.

The first escapement goal for pink salmon on the Nushagak was 600,000 to 1.1 million, and it was implemented in 1992 but later removed in 2017 when the, when the sonar season was shortened to late July.

A much lower SEG was re-established in 2013 of 165,000 when the sonar operations were extended again to through late August.

The sonar site is no longer operated into late August, and typical operations currently are through July 20th. Pink salmon escapement was last assessed in 2018 And currently there is no directed fishery for pink salmon in Bristol Bay.

However, this goal could be reestablished once again if market conditions change and there is a driving reason to extend the sonar timeframe. But at this time, it's simply not cost effective for the department to estimate pink salmon escapement on the Nushagak River.

Second. The next escapement goal I would like to review with you is the Nushagak River Coho Salmon.

The department began enumerating Nushagak Coho back in 1980 and established the first SEG of 50,000 to 100,000 back in 1992. This goal was eliminated then in 2007, and a slightly higher goal was re-established then back in 2013. This was again at a time when the Nushagak sonar was operated into late August and the majority of the coho run could be accounted for.

Nusagak Coho have only been assessed 6 times since 2003, the last time being in 2019.

Commercial interest in Coho salmon has declined since this time, and there's been minimal commercial exploitation of this stock.

Again, at this time, it's simply not cost-effective to run and maintain the Nushagak Sonar Assessment Project an additional month into August.

Without an assessment, there is no way for the department to determine if the in-river goal of 70,000 to 130,000 or the SEG of 60,000 to 120,000 are currently being met. However, the goal could be reestablished if market conditions justify or if there becomes a need.

Like many stocks across the state that do not have formal escapement goals, the department will continue to manage commercial coho fishery based on harvest effort. This represents a standard approach used to manage lightly exploited Scott stocks without an assessment project.

The last goal I would like to review with you is Nushagak River King Salmon.

The current SEG range for Nushagak River King Salmon is 55,000 to 120,000 and was established in 2012.

For this review, the Ricker stock recruit model was updated to incorporate 3 most recent completed return years. The current status of the stock, along with the challenges associated with this assessment, will be discussed in greater detail in a subsequent presentation by Cole Weaver, our Bristol Bay area research biologist. I think that's the third presentation today.

The committee recommends no change to the existing escapement goal at this time. Given the uncertainties associated with the current assessment methods, the department believes that modifying the escapement goal would be uninformative and not produce— and not, not appropriate until we have some sonar-independent estimates available.

The Bristol Bay Research Institute has re-established aerial surveys of spawning grounds, installed two weirs in the Upper Nushagak River, and we'll be initiating a mark recapture project prior to the next Board of Fish to independently estimate spawning escapement at the sonar. These efforts will support our development of a run reconstruction-based escapement goal as well as a post-season escapement estimate. These will be— hopefully be substantially more robust than the current— than just using the current sonar data.

To summarize the review process and the findings by the committee, all, all salmon escapement goals were reviewed and considered by the committee.

The sockeye and king salmon assessments were updated. While the, the analyses might for sockeye suggest goal ranges be up up increased returns from historically— historic large runs are expected in the upcoming years and will be more informative. It's time to wait.

For Chum, Pink, and Coho analyses, these were not updated. We really had no new information to add to these stocks, and so no analyses were done to see if the goals could be modified. Finally, the committee recommended that the escapement goals for Nushagak River pink and salmon— for pink and coho salmon be eliminated this cycle.

That concludes our presentation on Bristol Bay escapement goals. A special thanks and shout out to Hamishan Hamazaki, who developed the applications we are using for many of these analyses. And the committee as well for their thoughtful thought, for their thoughts and inputs and suggestions to our escapement goal recommendations. And we are now here to answer your— try to answer your questions relating to escapement goals. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Swenson.

How long has the current sonar system been used? How many years?

We've— Mr. Through the chair, Mr. Swenson, we've been operating the sonar system, and Cole will maybe be able to help me on the exact dates and changes, but we've been operating the, uh, a sonar system of some sort for, I would say, roughly 40-plus since 1980. But we went through multiple versions of software, went from, from very simple things to on our sonar to the current things, what we call DIDSON or ERA sonar, that are much more high quality. But it's changed over time. But since the '80s, we've been doing some kind of a sonar-based assessment.

Do you think that in 40 years there's an accuracy in the inaccuracies? By what— this is what I mean by that is you've had 40 years of watching what's going on. Now, I agree that the sonar system there is, you know, it's on two sides of the river because I've fished it a number of times. And there's fish going up the middle and there's shadowing and there's all of this stuff happening.

But when you fly rivers to get an idea of what the escapement is, you never get the exact escapement. But you know from all that data that whether that run is a good run, an average run, or a great run, is that not correct? Through the chair, Board Member Svenson, I'd say overall that's a, that's a pretty good assessment. We, we have sonars. They're not our first tool of choice.

Sonars are typically placed into systems where we're unable to visually count, like at our towers. You saw that we have 8 other systems, 8 or 9 other systems in Bristol Bay for sockeye where we're able to enumerate through clear water to count. It's more of a census. It's not— that's a cheaper and we feel a more accurate tool for assessing and counting.

One of the problems we have as managers and an agency is that we have to be able to provide current estimates, not post-season, to make management decisions and to have some quantifiable number for abundance estimates. The sonar system that was set up on the new Shegag, although not ideal, we think has been a good index of abundance, and it doesn't respond currently. We never anticipated this large number of sockeye. In the—. For example, the Nushagak, the sonar system just can't see through all those fish when a walleye fish comes through, and Cole's going to talk to that in a following presentation.

But it's at least an index. And having this— the perfect assessment, we want it almost immediately after the commercial fishery so that we know that there's little time between the assessment— or between the fishery and the assessment project. So that we don't either put too many fish in the water or in the river or not enough. It's a balance. We've looked at where we can place it, and we think that for the sonar, this is about as good a place as we could do.

Any further upstream in the clear water would be too late to make potential decisions. Downstream, we have more turbidity and more issues and braiding. There's no single solution for— or simple solution that will give us, I think, an accurate account on the Nushagak at this time.

What I don't particularly like about this whole deal is that you're saying that's been pretty accurate over 40 years. I wouldn't say it's been accurate. It's been an index of abundance. Well, okay. And every time we have changed our technologies, we've tried to make a conversion.

The units don't always line up to try to make an apples-to-apples comparison. And so that adds another step of uncertainty. But during times of low abundance, I think the Ares sonar produces— performs well. It makes it a lot more— less uncertainty during times of lower abundance. During times of high abundance, it's tough.

Well, it's a little disheartening to hear that, you know, yeah, the number of kings have gone way down at $34,000— $34,000 fish last year. And it's a little disheartening to hear that, "Well, you know, the sonar isn't really doing its job. There's shadowing. There's this. There's that.

There's all these other things." You know, and the reds have increased dramatically, of course. So what happens is the reds are fished a lot more, thus hurting the kings. Thank you.

Miss Irwin. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for the presentation. Is the department's suggestion to eliminate the Nushagak River Coho SEG solely based on declining commercial interest, or is there a biological reason to eliminate the goal? Are we meeting or exceeding those goals, and will the board be presented that information at this meeting through the chair, Mr.

Irwin. We haven't assessed Coho for, I believe, since 2000. I'd have to go back and look in our notes here, but I think 2018 or '19 on Coho. It really comes down to Coho are a later return than the sockeye and the kings. And so we don't get the bulk of the run in our current assessment.

Right now, we, we can look back on the records. We do not have any conservation concerns in terms of meeting the escapement. And we've looked at the lower harvest from the commercial here recently.

We have other stocks like this. We've— if we're no longer assessing it, have a goal on the books, we find being less than needed, we can bring it back if we do. Keep the complexity of regulations to a minimum. But right now we have no concerns on managing this coho fishery without an escapement goal. Thank you.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. Slide 4. Um, I'm— with such a massive area of the state that brings in so much economic benefit, Why is it that there are 9 sockeye sites, 9 sockeye escapement goals, and only 1 other escapement goal for the entire area? And I guess I wonder that because of a place that brings in so much cash, why hasn't there been more investment in figuring out the escapement in some of these other rivers?

When it comes to the other species? Through the chair, Mr. Wood. Bristol Bay sockeye have driven the system in terms of certainly with economics. We have in the past had other goals for coho in the past. It's expensive.

It's truly just expensive to put a crew out there and do these surveys. We have to prioritize with the budgets we have and the stocks. We used to have some additional king salmon aerial surveys.

The department prioritizes based on what we look at in terms of for commercial, the values, the overall economics. We would love to be able to, you know, have information on all stocks across the state. That's just not possible. And with declining budgets, we are in the situation that we focus on our core priorities, which right now are these systems, the major sockeye producers, that are harvested at a high rate.

Thank you. In reading the literature before coming here, I guess it was back in 1987, there was a Michael Nelson that, or I think I believe that was the paper I read. And I mean, they were really, the department was just asking for more science, more escapement. And that was back in '87. And here we are finding, trying to make the decisions up here right now based off of escapements.

The Nushkak luckily has all 5, has escapement goals on all 5 species in the Nush. Nothing else. You know, and I'm sure there are kings going up other rivers other than the Nushagak. And so I just— is there a reason? Is it just a monetary reason or is it a staffing reason why we don't have more information on escapement goals in this entire Bristol Bay area?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood, it is a staffing issue. It is a— it is It is a monetary issue.

The department has to prioritize. We can't be all places everywhere for all stocks. And we have to prioritize. And this is how we look at what we think is the priorities. Both divisions try to do the best they can and focus on stocks that they feel are highly exploited.

Higher or have high exploitation rates so that we can make and use for in-season management. We use these assessments for in-season management. You look back on the curves that I showed you earlier. I look at those and I think the department looks at those with pride. And when we say that we are— almost all those points that you see are above, above the replacement line.

To me, that's a sign of good management for the stocks that we are looking at. And we're working on the Nushagak on Kings, and that's a tough one.

So I appreciate Member Wood's question because I had the same one. Like, it really is glaring that you have these other species escapement goals for the Nushagak only, and yet there's several river systems. And respectfully, I don't really buy that we don't have enough money. Excuse excuse because the state hasn't been broke for 45 years. So, and that is going to be sort of lead to some of the questions that I have around the elimination of these SEGs, um, and heartburn that I, at least at first glance, have with that.

I've been pretty vocal about that in other areas where these escape goals have been eliminated. And the fact that the excuse of the commercial-driven entity at several places in this in this presentation. You've restated it several times. How does that align with the responsibilities of the department to the Sustainable Salmon Policy?

Madam Chair, I think I'll let the director take that question because that gets into policy and budgets, and I don't know if Forrest can help us out here. Mr. Bowers, please. Thanks, Madam Chair. [Speaker:MICHAEL] So I think one thing to keep in mind regarding escapement goals is that they're a management target. So while there are many stocks of salmon in Bristol Bay where we haven't established goals, you know, it's our perspective that those stocks are lightly exploited.

Their stocks, you know, where we've eliminated goals, they're goals that we found were not useful for fishery management. We weren't taking emergency order action based on achievement or not achievement of those goals. So the goals that you see represented in this presentation are the department's representation of what is needed to manage the fisheries in Bristol Bay. But part of management is having data, and you can't manage without data. So if you are looking to eliminate data for whatever reason, pick a reason, then how is that informing good management?

I'm not sure I follow the eliminating data. I mean, we, you know, as was stated earlier, we haven't been assessing coho or pink salmon in the Nushagak for a number of years. So that's not a new situation. But that's based on the excuse that it's not commercially viable. At least that's what the presentation you know, said to the board.

So do we not have a responsibility to be enumerating and to be monitoring stocks irrespective of whether or not there's a commercial incentive under the Sustainable Salmon Policy?

In a perfect world, yes, we would be assessing more stocks. But, you know, statewide we have 250 escapement goals. Roughly. There are thousands of salmon stocks in Alaska that don't have goals that are managed sustainably. You know, you— we can manage a fishery sustainably without a goal.

It's an interesting statement, Mr. Powers, but I appreciate it and thank you for that. But, you know, I guess I'm getting at, again, back to the policies that govern the decisions that we make and and how the department manages. You know, does it not— should it— is it a part of the department's conversation to do something like a triannual review? Like, okay, so we can't do it annually, whether it's for weather, whether it's for budget, whatever reason it is, lack of staff.

But is there some kind of a commitment to at least try and maintain some amount of data for these separate stocks, especially in a dynamic system like Bristol Bay, and that's what we're talking about here today. But I mean, recognizing, yeah, there's thousands of salmon stock, but they're also not, um, they're not subject to the pressures that you see in Bristol Bay. Now, great sockeye are doing wonderfully, but we— do we not have a responsibility to other species of salmon?

We do, Madam Chair. And, you know, I would, I would— it's our position that Given the run timing of, say, coho, for example, and what we know about commercial fishing effort, the timing of that in Bristol Bay, coho appear to be very lightly exploited. How do you know that? Well, I mean, you can take a look at Table 54-1 in RC2. This is for the Nushagak in particular.

So I think Jack said that peak coho run timing in the Nushagak is mid-August, roughly. So I'm looking at Figure 54-1, and, you know, in mid-August, there's— the average effort is 3. Permit holders.

We, you know, and with the escapement data that we've collected in the past where we set an escapement goal that's, you know, what was it, 50,000 to 100,000, you know, the harvest information that I see and the effort information combined with our prior knowledge of escapement suggests to me that it's a lightly exploited stock. Okay, that's primarily based on harvest data, right? So I mean, 3 permit holders, but if you don't know what to compare the harvest to, you kind of feeling around and maybe with one eye open, one eye shut. Shifting gears, let's talk about the sonar data in the Kings for a moment. And you said in your presentation that, you know, essentially the sonar data is less than reliable at this point for a variety of different reasons, mostly because of the pulses of sockeye that are coming in on that, and that the department has a plan to sort of, I guess, hopefully get more refined data with the mark recapture program.

Is that correct? Madam Chair, that is correct. Is that something that is meant— is that going to be a one-time assessment Or is that a commitment to sort of ongoing efforts to make sure that you are using the best enumeration techniques on king salmon in the Neush? Madam Chair, I want to make it clear that the efforts to pull and make this mark recapture project happen, the credit has to really— for most of this has to be given to BB, the Bistrel Bay Science Research Institute. They are coming up with the funding.

They realize the need for this to have an independent estimate of, of abundance. And they are, they are planning with their multiple weirs to be able to conduct a mark recapture analysis for a number of years starting prior to the next Board of Fish. How many years they can do it, this is going to be based on how much funding they have available as to how well these estimates line up between the sonar and the mark recapture and how, how consistent they are. We think it's going to be useful. Is there anything the department can do?

And I don't disagree with you. I think it'd be very useful. And I appreciate the work that they're doing and the commitment that they financially and otherwise are making to have that happen. Is there anything that the department is considering brainstorming, thinking about in terms of how to improve the king salmon enumeration in river beyond just the sonar? Because as you said, in times of low abundance, it's, you know, it's better, and in high abundance it's not.

But that's the environment that we're in right now, is high abundance. Madam Chair, through the process— and we'll get more into this with Mr. Weaver's presentation— Having in the last 5, 6 years to have postseason aerial surveys in the Clearwater systems upstream— this is after the season— to enumerate the spawning fish in the major tributaries as an index also feeds into what we call this run reconstruction approach. That's been useful. We have multiple signals for what the size of that Chinook run is, that king run is. Based on, you know, commercial reports, based on subsistence reports, based on in-season reporting by anglers and guides and operations.

We have multiple signals, but no signal seems to be the perfect signal that we can quantify and say it's spot on, here's the number of fish. Fair, and I appreciate that, and thank you. My intent here is not to antagonize, but understand in the context of all the proposals that we have before us, especially one that is proposing to eliminate a management plan. So, you know, in that vein, kind of also the time to wait statement that you made is definitely caught my attention because can we wait?

You know, again, these are things that I am pondering and looking forward to having conversations with public about over the course of this meeting because I'm not sure that it's going to help to wait. But any other questions? Mr. Wood and then Mr. Chamberlain. Yeah, thank you. On slide 17, why was the goal for Nushkat Koho eliminated in 2007 and then brought back up in 2013?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood, for the same reasons that we have now with the reduction in the time, this assessment project on the new Shegag system has had longer— had shortened seasons, longer seasons, and the money available to run it through later season when we had it, we had the goal. And when a month is a, is a big time difference for Coho, that later run timing, when we have the money, have the resources, we were able to bring her back.

And as the co— uh, I was looking back at your report, uh, Appendix C1, page 2 of 3. I was just looking at the escapement for Coho It's— has it been pretty consistent? It looks—. Well, it looks like it's been pretty consistent over the years, but it looked— it's hit some low points too.

Is— was there any— I mean, was it beneficial at that time to have that escapement information to realize that it was getting quite low? Through the Chair, Mr. Wood, I'm not the manager at the time when that happened. But coho across the state, I'll say within the region that I'm familiar with, you'll notice that we have— do not have a large number of coho goals, or do we do preseason forecasts. They're a hard fish to predict on returns. They have— in wet years they can come back really strong, and the next year not and recover.

Ups and downs are, I say, pretty typical in the escapement where we do assess coho. And we do see a variety of escapements as well as harvest patterns, especially if you look at the— as Director Bowers referred to in our staff comments on proposal number 54. I think that has a pretty good synopsis of what the harvest has been associated with escapement. But there are certainly ups and downs in terms of escapement for coho. Hard to predict.

One more. Okay, sorry for asking so much. Slide—. Uh, gosh—. Wood River sockeye salmon.

Why is there a— 11, 12, I guess, is what I'm looking at. Nope, slide 12. So are we— is it possible now that we're seeing these, the 4 red arrows here that we could be seeing over-escapement and we're waiting to see because of the, the numbers that have come in in the Wood River in particular. Through the chair, Mr. Wood, over-escapement, as it comes to a nuance of how you define it, does over-escapement mean fail to reproduce or fail to replace itself? Other times people have referred defined over-escapement as above the current escapement goal.

First of all, we have to make sure which definition we're using.

Right now, those 4 years that you're seeing on this Figure 12 are some large escapements that we had not seen in, you know, the 70, 80-year time series. Those are, you know, those red dots, those 5 red dots, or 5 or 6 red dots, are numbers we've never seen that far to the right. We've never seen recruits return up in that 25 million range.

That's, that's new uncharted territory for us. And to think, well, how good does that curve really fit something that looks like a scatter back on the left-hand side to who knows where those points are going to land on the right-hand side. I hope that helps your question. Thank you. Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Swenson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to go back to the questions regarding non-target species that Member Wood and Chair Carlson-Vandort very adroitly addressed. I'm looking at chum— the chum harvest for the Bristol Bay and over the last few years. Last year, roughly 490,000, uh, year before 506,000, 2050, 929,000 chum salmon. And we're not indexing them in Native Dena'ina Rivers in this.

And given what's happening in western Alaska, that's not an insignificant number of salmon that are being harvested, um, especially of that species. What— and so what I want to get to is, what is the department doing to identify where those salmon are coming from and what's being done to assure that in the, in the 8 of the 9 streams we're not indexing, that we're not— that those commercial fishing efforts are not crashing the non-target species.

Through the chair, Mr. Chamberlain, and I may need some help. This gets a little bit beyond my— quite a bit beyond my expertise in terms of genetics. We don't— and maybe a former geneticist here can help us out on that. But there was a study done on western Alaska for chum salmon genetics. It's my understanding that the genetic structure, they say, is shallow, and being able to identify specific stocks of chum is more difficult out there than, let's say, sockeye or king salmon in most systems across the state.

Currently, the only goal we have, our assessment project for for chum in terms of escapement is on the Nushagak River because we have the ability to do some apportioning and not make that visual count. Is that a chum or not a chum? That's— I think the managers feel that the Nushagak is probably the biggest chum producer in Bristol Bay that we have, but we do not have an assessment elsewhere. All we have is the harvest records. But I don't believe we have that ability like in so many other stocks to specifically say in the commercial stock, these are Nushe versus these are Togiak Chum.

I just don't think we have that ability, and I can get back with more information on that.

Okay, and but like looking at not even just the genetics but managing, how do we know that Agigak or any of the other rivers that we hit, and apologies for my pronunciation if they're off.

Yup'ik is what I grew up in, but it's still difficult.

If one of those rivers is experiencing a crash or something catastrophic happening, what I'm seeing in this modeling is there's no way of identifying weaknesses within those rivers. And that this— and it alarms me that we're managing this entire system is almost like kind of an intercept area where you're just, you're hitting every one of these, you know, you're operating in broad numbers and not looking at whether there are individual streams or tributaries that are experiencing difficulty or where we need to pay attention to anything other than the money fish. And from a management standpoint, if I'm operating from a place of ignorance, I feel almost compelled to operate on a conservative basis based on that. Because, you know, under the Sustainable Salmon Policy, you know, and bioethics, simply first do no harm. This, just the lack of information here is hard for me to chew on because how do I— I just don't get how to manage and not without— where I don't know if these management decisions we're making are harming these non-target species.

And we've seen in area after area everywhere we go in the state seeing damage or harm to non-target species. Cook Inlet, Southeast, the Aleutian Peninsula, everywhere we're going, we're seeing non-target species facing large-scale crashes in some instances. And I, and I, I'm very alarmed by the, the absolute dearth of information I'm getting here. And so, yeah, that's where I, where I have a whole lot of heartbreak. Permanent.

So I'll leave it at that.

Good. Madam Chair, for the record, I'm Travis Ellison, area management biologist for the Naknak Kwijak District Commercial Fishery. Um, in Bristol Bay, all of our fishing districts are terminal districts. They're in the bays, um, close to the mouths of the rivers. Um, so this is not a general big area.

These are specific. The most of the fish caught in the districts are going back to the rivers that feed into those districts. As far as chum salmon, Nushagak River is by far the largest producer of chum salmon in Bristol Bay. Um, because we assess with a sonar and we have apportionment, we are able to get an estimate of escapements there. So we do assess chum salmon in the Nushkiak, which is, like I said, the biggest.

We do have chum salmon in all 9 rivers, although their numbers are much lower, particularly when compared to sockeye salmon. Our management, our intensive management decisions are typically based around sockeye because, for example, in the Naknak-Kweejak District, we average in harvest harvest of around 10 million sockeye salmon and about 200,000 to 300,000 chum salmon. So even 200,000 to 300,000, yeah, that's a lot of fish, but it's a needle in a haystack compared to sockeye salmon. Unfortunately, our counting towers are designed to count sockeye salmon because— and they work really well for sockeye salmon because sockeye swim up the banks of the rivers in these clearwater streams below the lakes. Chum salmon typically don't go into the lakes in the same kinds of numbers.

Like in the Naknak-Kweejack District, the largest population of chum salmon is in the Alagnak River. They spread throughout the drainage and typically migrate in the middle of the river, so the towers aren't great counting tools there. However, for management, our fishery The market, the effort is all focused on sockeye. And the run timing is different between the chum salmon and the sockeye salmon. By the time the chum salmon hit their peak, the sockeye run is very far tailing off.

And just kind of as an anecdote, you'll hear fishermen say, oh, well, the run's almost over because we're catching a lot of dogs over on the west side. Where they go up the Lagnac. So by the time we even reach the peak of the chum run, the fishery is almost over. There's some people that fish later, but the majority of effort is already done. Manager.

Mr. Swenson, thank you for your patience.

So is there anybody— did the commercial fishery target those coho at all in the Nushigak? You said there were 3 permits or something. Or did I misunderstand that? Are there 3 permits that fish those, or is there anybody that's fishing them? Through the chair, Mr. Swenson, you know, it varies from year to year.

I think it's been a long time since we've had a large-scale directed coho fishery. But in the Nushagak, even the Naknek-Kwijak District, there are permit holders that do fish for Coho salmon and they have a direct market. Typically these are small custom processors that are catching the fish, processing them, and selling them themselves. We don't have the major processors right now out there looking to harvest Coho. Do you keep track of how many Coho these guys catch?

Yes, we keep track of all salmon caught in the commercial fishery through fish tickets. So if there's a lot of them being caught, then you— would you take any, uh, I mean, I guess you— I don't know, you can't count the coho because you don't— man, this is a bucket of worms. I mean, through the chair, Mr. Spenson, uh, across the state we manage a lot of fisheries based on harvest, on harvest statistics, and so we'd use that as our primary tool to— if we got to a point where a market developed and the effort was at a level where we had some concern that our exploitation rates could get high on coho salmon, we do have the ability through emergency order to reduce fishing time.

Well, that's good to know. You guys don't count the Naknek kings either. Nobody knows how many kings run up the Naknek either, as well as the Nushigak. I don't know. I understand the budgeting and all of this kind of stuff, but I don't know how much it costs to run that, for example, the Inushigak for another month.

I don't know what the cost of that is. I don't know whether you guys are getting enough money and not putting it where you ought to put it, or you're not getting enough money, period. So it's just hard to understand, and it's hard for us or for me to make a decision on some of this stuff when I— nobody knows how many fish are going up there. There. Thank you, Mr. Wood.

And then we're going to wrap it up. Okay, for Mr. Ellison, would you clarify, are these chum all considered part of this Coastal Western Alaska chum group, CWAC chums?

Yeah, I believe they all fall into that category. And, and as Jack was saying, they're unlike sockeye, which we have great resolution on the genetics especially coastal western Alaska chum, not very good resolution, hard to tell them apart. Fall chum, like on the Yukon and Kuskokwim, are more genetically distinct. Great, thank you. Okay, gentlemen, thank you.

Appreciate your patience with us. And let's go ahead and move on to the next presentation, which I believe is an overview of the commercial salmon fishery.

All right, let's go ahead and proceed. Welcome. Please put yourself on the record and begin. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Stacy Vega.

I am the management biologist for commercial fisheries in the Igigiq and Yugashik districts. With me today are Travis Ellison, the Naknek-Kwijak management biologist, and Tim Sands, the Nushagak and Togiak management biologist. I will be presenting an overview of the Bristol Bay commercial salmon fishery. This oral report can be found in RC— oops, sorry— RC3 tab 6, and the corresponding written report is RC3 tab 2.

Here's a little what you can expect from this presentation. I'm going to give an overview of the commercial districts and the assessment projects we have in each, then present some historical information on harvest and price. I'll then talk about some of the important commercial fisheries regulations we have in Bristol Bay and the basics of how the fishery is managed. I'll finish up by presenting some unique aspects with respect to the Bristol Bay salmon fishery.

Okay, so first I'd like to orient you to Bristol Bay and its commercial fishing districts and the 9 major salmon-producing river systems that drive the commercial fishery. We'll begin on the Lower East Side and move to the west.

First up is the Ugashik District. This district is fed by the Ugashik River and Ugashik Lake. There's a main fishing district seen in red and the Ugashik Village section, which is unique in that it's up the river, disconnected from the main district, and only set gillnets are allowed here. The department operates an in-river test fishery at Ugashik Village and a sockeye salmon counting tower just below the outlet of Ugashik Lake. Proposal 70 seeks to expand the north line of the main district to the 3-mile state waters boundary from its current 1-mile offshore limit.

As we move north, we come to the Igigiq District. Bashiroff Lake feeds into the Igigiq River, which is the primary sockeye-producing river feeding the district in orange. The King Salmon River flows into lower Igigiq— into the lower Igigiq River and produces sumchum and king salmon. There is a special harvest area within the district that closes the outer portion to fishing. This is designed to reduce, reduce harvest of fish bound for other east side districts when the conservation need arises.

Proposals 52 and 53 have to do with the current special harvest area and creation of a new special harvest area. The department operates an in-river test fishery just above the district and a sockeye salmon counting tower below the outlet of Bashiroff Lake.

Moving north, we come to the Naknek-Kwijak District. The town of Naknek is located at the mouth of the Naknek River, and this is where most of the fish processing in the bay takes place. The Naknek-Kwijak District is divided up into the Naknek section and the Kwijak section so that harvest can be focused on different river systems. There's also the Naknek River Special Harvest Area, or the Nersha, Alagnak Special River Harvest Area, or the Arsha. And these are used to harvest Naknek and Alagnak River fish while conserving Kwijak River fish.

The newly adopted Kwijak River Special Harvest Area, or Kershaw, is used to harvest excess fish in the Kwijak River while conserving Naknek fish. Proposals 48, 49, and 51 deal with regulations within the Kwijak River Special Harvest Area. The department operates an in-river test fishery on the Kwijak River in the village of Levalock. And there are counting towers located on the Naknek, Kwijak, and Alagnak Rivers.

The three previous districts we just saw make up what is commonly known as the east side of Bristol Bay, and they're managed out of the King Salmon Office. We're now going to move to the west side, which is managed out of the Dillingham Office.

First, we have the Nushagak District. The main sockeye-producing rivers are the Nushagak, Wood, and Agushik Rivers. The district is divided up into the Eiugushtuk section and the Nushagak section. There is also the Wood River Special Harvest Area, or WSHA, and it is used to focus harvest on the Wood River stock. The Snake River section is closed by regulation because the Snake and Weary Rivers have limited salmon production.

There are counting towers located on the Eiugushtuk and Wood Rivers, and we have a sonar project on the Nushagak River. The Nushagak River has the largest runs of king, chum, pink, Coho salmon in Bristol Bay. Proposals 54 and 55 look to repeal the Nushagak River Coho Salmon Management Plan. Proposals 61 through 6— oops, sorry, 61 through 69.

Got happy there. See changes to the Nushagak District commercial and sport regulations as well as the King Salmon Stock of Concern Management Plan. We're going to hear more about this in the next presentation.

Finally, this is the Togiak District. Unlike other districts where commercial fishing is allowed up to the district line, the Togiak District is divided into terminal river sections where commercial fishing is legal. From west to east, they are the Slug, Osviak, Mataguk, Togiak, and Kalukuk sections. The Togiak District is managed based on a fishing schedule that can be liberalized or restricted based on run size. The Togiak River is the primary salmon-producing river in the Togiak District, and we operate a counting tower located on the Togiak River just below the outlet of Togiak Lake.

Okay, now that we've oriented to the geography of Bristol Bay, the management area, I'm going to move on to some of the specifics about the commercial fishery.

Bristol Bay is primarily a sockeye salmon fishery and has the largest sockeye salmon runs in the world. 95% Of the annual harvest is sockeye salmon with a 20-year annual average harvest of 33 million fish. Chum salmon make up about 4% of the annual harvest with a 20-year average of 1.1 million fish. And king and coho salmon make up less than 1% of the total harvest with a 20-year average of 35,000 king and 97,000 coho salmon. Pink salmon runs occur in even-numbered years in Bristol Bay.

And the most recent 20-year average harvest is 523,000 fish. The majority of king, coho, and pinks are harvested in the Nushagak District, as I stated earlier.

This is a look at the commercial harvest by district in millions of fish back to 2003. Before around 2017, the largest harvest contributors were the Naknek, Kuijak, and Igigiq Districts. You'll notice that starting around 2015 to 2017, harvest began to increase. And so you'll see beginning in 2017, the Nushagak District has seen an especially large increase in their production and harvest. While most districts have seen some level of increase during this time period, the Nushagak component of total Baywide harvest has gone from an average of 6.6 million before 2017 to 15.7 million since 2017.

You should notice that the Togiak District is significantly smaller than the other districts in Bristol Bay. Togiak is a smaller, more local fishery, which is made up of mostly watershed residents. And because of that, you'll see throughout this talk that Togiak is the exception to many of the regulations. Just a precursor.

Bristol Bay has seen record total runs in recent years. The total inshore run sizes have increased from about 18 million in 2002 to a record 80 million million in 2022. The average total inshore run from 2015 to 2025 was 60 million fish. In 2026, our inshore salmon forecast is 44 million. I'm saying inshore run here because they're— these are fish that return to the districts and rivers in Bristol Bay.

There is a small percentage of Bristol Bay sockeye that are caught in the South Alaska peninsular fishery, and these are accounted for, um, in the forecast.

The increase in sockeye salmon abundance has resulted in a higher value of the fishery. This table has averages broken out by board cycle for escapement, harvests, dollar per pound, fishery ex-vessel value, and fish permits by gear type. In the most recent cycle, from 2023 to 2025, Escapements to all rivers averaged 16 million sockeye salmon. The harvest averaged 38 million fish with an average value of $1.03 per pound. The ex-vessel value during this period averaged $193 million.

Just a note that these values are not adjusted for inflation, and all but the 2025 average price per pound include postseason adjustments paid to fishermen, though we expect the 2025 price to be closer to $1.70 per pound. In 2022, sockeye salmon harvest of 60 million was the highest on record, and the ex-vessel value of $352 million was also the highest on record. You'll notice since then, price paid and ex-vessel values have decreased as 2023 and 2024 were years with low ex-vessel values. Drift gillnet participation has been relatively consistent since had been relatively consistent since 2010 with over 1,700 permits registered each season, but that has declined slightly in the past 3 years. Set gillnet participation has also remained relatively consistent in recent years with an average of 837 permits fished.

Onto some regulations. There are 2 legal commercial gear types in Bristol Bay: drift and set gillnet. Drift gillnet operations are allowed 150 fathoms of net, and set gillnet operations are allowed 50 fathoms. Drift gillnets must register for a district before beginning to fish, and there is a 48-hour waiting period of transferring between districts during which fish may not be harvested. In all districts besides Togiak, this transfer period is waived at 9:00 a.m.

On July 17th, or when escapement midpoints have been reached in all river systems in that district, whichever comes comes first. Proposal 95 puts forth an option to unregister for a district before June 25th. Setnets are only required to register in the Nushagak District.

And there is a 32-foot limit for drift gillnet vessels that was established in 1949. Proposals 82 through 91 seek to edit vessel specifications.

The main objective with respect to managing commercial fisheries in Bristol Bay is to achieve escapement goals and to provide for escapement throughout the run.

The next consideration is allowing opportunity to harvest fish surplus to escapement needs. Subsistence harvest does have the priority when surplus is available.

Then the department attempts to allocate the available commercial surplus in accordance with district-specific specific management and allocation plans, Togiak District being the exception here. We'll talk about allocations a little later in this presentation, so just bear with me there. Achieving these objectives can be challenging because of the intensity and variability of the Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run, as well as fleet dynamics.

The abundance of fish that come in on each tide can vary greatly. There have been days with million, million-plus escape in some systems. So the department uses tide-by-tide management to achieve these objectives.

The department has a large suite of run assessment tools that it uses to make management decisions, and I'll discuss each of these listed here individually in the chronological order we use them for management as the run progresses in season.

The preseason forecast is the first piece of information that helps the department plan for using an aggressive or conservative management strategy before even a single fish is returned. This was the 2025 forecast with the Bristol Bay total inshore run forecast of 49.8 million. The actual run came in closer to 57 million.

The Port Molo Test Fishery is operated by the Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute in cooperation with Department. This project provides the first piece of in-season run information. The test fishery operates about 150 miles west of the fishing districts and provides an index of run abundance. These numbers highlighted on the map are the test fishing stations. Under good conditions, these stations are fished every day, and we use the catch per unit effort from test fishing as an index for relative fish abundance and run timing.

Scales are taken for aging and genetic samples are taken for in-season stock composition analysis.

This is the RV OceanCat. It was one— it's one of two test fishery vessels that BBSRI has used for this test fishery. The two boats fish apart in opposite directions, then come back towards each other across the 260-mile-long transect. Genetic samples, once combined after the two vessels meet up mid-transect, are processed on board and in short order.

So here's a picture of the genetics lab, that white Conex box being unloaded to the boat, and the picture of what it looks like inside that genetics lab. Once genetic samples are ran, the data from the lab— from that lab is sent to Anchorage Fish and Game genetics staff for final data analysis. This process can take— can provide genetic information to fisheries managers every 2 to 3 days in season, barring any weather delays or other issues that may arise. At sea, so it's pretty quick.

Genetic stock analysis of the Portmuller test fish catch provides greater insight into which rivers the fish are headed to. It takes about 1 week, give or take, to travel from the test fishery to the districts. This is the stock composition estimate from June 23rd and 24th last season, and as you can see, the Igigiak and Nushagak systems were the majority in this sample, which we would expect to see in the earlier part of the season because these rivers have the earliest run timing to the Bay. We see these stock compositions change throughout the season as rivers with later run timing become more prevalent.

District test fishing is used to assess the abundance of fish in a district when fishing is closed. When fishing is open, commercial catch information is used to assess abundance. Deck loads like these tell us the catch will be big and likely so will escapement.

Age, sex, length data is collected from the commercial catch and escapement projects. In-season age compositions are compared to the forecast to see if there are any age classes that are under or overperforming in a given season. And this age data is also used in brood table development, which is the basis for our understanding of salmon production. It also is used in our escapement analysis and forecasting future runs.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] In 3 East Side River systems, we have in-river test fishery projects which use catch per unit effort to estimate how many fish have made it beyond the fishing district but have not yet been counted by a tower project. So we may know what to expect to see at the tower in subsequent days.

Aerial surveys can be flown below counting towers to get more timely escapement data. This video clip shows sockeye swimming up the Kwijak River. They appear as dark spots between— you can't see my mouse— between the shoreline and the deeper water.

Plane's kind of passing beyond them right now.

Escapement data from counting towers is the final piece of run assessment data, and it provides the foundation for all management decisions. Fish counts, as seen in this video, are done for 10 minutes on each riverbank each hour for all 24 hours of the day and are used for escapement estimates throughout the season. Okay, that wraps up our assessment projects and how we use them in season to manage. Now we'll kind of move on to some of the more— the issues unique to Bristol Bay.

As mentioned earlier, the Bristol Bay— there are allocation plans for all districts except Togiak. These plans specify how to distribute harvest among the two gear groups. The allocation period is between June 1st to July 17th. On July 17th, district registration ends and the fall schedule begins on the east side district— in the east side districts. The department may use separate gear group openings, differential timing of fishing periods for each gear group, and differential fishing periods by section to attempt to achieve allocations set forth by the board.

The Naknek River, Alagnak River, and Kwijak River special harvest areas are separate from the district. Allocation plan. Proposals 46 and 47 would change the end date for calculating the allocation in the Naknek-Kweejak District from July 17th to July 22nd. The Wood River Special Harvest Area is included in the Nushagak District allocation plan when the full district is open to harvest surplus sockeye salmon, but not when the full district is closed to protect Nushagak stocks. Proposal 59 and 65 deal with the Wood River Special harvest area allocation plan.

Meeting escapement goals and managing for those goals takes priority over allocations. Meeting the percentages established in each management plan can be difficult to achieve for a variety of reasons. These allocations were set in a time where there were more boats fishing and therefore more nets catching, making it easier to manage for allocations more precisely. As I spoke about earlier, in recent years, while the Nushagak system has been— seen a boom in their runs, there has been a decrease in effort in the east side districts with similar run timing like Igigic and Naknek. Large runs have also brought about real impacts to the processing capacity that some companies can handle, occasionally suspending their buying ability in some areas, which can affect allocation as well.

There's also other factors that contribute to management difficulty, including late or compressed run timing of stocks how and where fish enter the fishing districts, and the size of fish that return.

So just to get a basic idea of how drift fleet dynamics have gone in recent years, I'm going to walk you through the start of a season and just kind of a general overview. So depending on a few factors like the preseason forecast, early portmuller test fishery genetic information, and how fish seem to be entering Bristol Bay at the start of the season, Most drift boats usually register to fish in the Iggiak and Nushagak districts as they have earlier timed runs to the bay. Since the King Salmon Stock Concern Management Plan was implemented in 2023, many boats wait to fish the Nush opening whenever triggers are hit. This means boats will either wait and start fishing in the Nushagak district once it opens or start in an east side district and then head to the Nush during their 48-hour transfer period. Once the plan triggers are imminent.

Because Igigiq has the earliest run timing and has been the only area consistently open at the start of the season since 2023, many boats who want to fish early will start there. When boats shift to the west side, the east side districts have few boats to control escapement and manage for allocations.

Mm-hmm. As the season progresses and the Nushagak run starts to die down in early to mid-July, Many boats will try to perfectly time their 48-hour waiting period to be between the slowdown in the Nushagak and before the ramp-up in the runs to the east side districts. This causes vessels to move from west to east where there are later timed runs like the Kuijak and Ugashik Rivers. Igikik also has a steady tail late season and can see increased effort as well at this time. Usually by this point, the allocation period is reaching its final week and little can be done to correct skewed harvest percentages between gear groups.

Togiak has a small local fleet and is separate from all of this activity until the transfer period into the district is waived once the Togiak River escapement midpoint is reached.

As mentioned in a previous slide, drift gillnet operations are allowed 150 fathoms of net. However, an additional 50 fathoms is allowed with a second permit holder on board. This is called a dual operation or a DO. Boat. In 2025, roughly 28% of drift permits fished were dual operations.

Dual drift gillnet operations are allowed in all districts except for Togiak, which is again smaller, more local fishery. Permit stacking is when one individual owns two permits and is allowed to fish additional gear with the use of that second permit. Proposals 75 through 78 seek to allow drift gillnet permit stacking in Bristol Bay. It is not currently Drift permit stacking is currently only legal in Cook Inlet. Permit stacking was permitted in the setnet fishery between 2010 and 2012, and Proposal 80, while not permit stacking, looks to allow setnet joint ventures in Bristol Bay.

Permit stacking in the drift gillnet fishery would reduce the number of boats in the water, and you'll see in the next slide why that might be appealing to some people. People.

Bristol Bay is known for its line fisheries, and the Johnson Hill line in Naknek and the North Line of Igigiq can be particularly intense. This video is of the Johnson Hill line. It demonstrates how boats compete to have the first net in the water as fish enter the district before their net gets corked off by another boat. The wildlife troopers spend much of their limited resources enforcing the lines and maintaining order in the fishery. Proposal 53 deals with heavy line fishing in the Igikik District in an attempt to reduce the frequency of closed water violations.

In 2004, a large preseason forecast prompted the board to adopt a plan allowing for the use of a general district to help provide additional harvest opportunity early in the season outside of the terminal harvest districts. This is a map of the general district that was used in 2004. That year, approximately 1.7 million sockeye were were harvested in the general district between June 7th and June 22nd. About 45% of those fish were harvested in the central general district that surrounds Igigiak here. The plan had a sunset date of December 31st, 2004, and that was the only season it was used.

Proposals 71 through 74 would create a new general district on the east side of Bristol Bay and allow drift gillnet fishing late in the season depending on escapement levels. Each proposal varies on area specifics and escapement levels that would trigger the general district.

Coastal erosion and its effects on fishing sites has been a topic of conversation at recent board meetings. There are two proposals that seek to rectify altered tide lines used to measure set gillnet offshore distance. There's Proposal 56 at Ekuk Beach in the Nushagak District and Proposal 79 in Ugashek Village in the Ugashek District.

And that's what I've got. Thanks for your time, and we'll be happy to answer any questions you all might have. Thank you. Mr. Swenson.

So the set netter is only required to register in the Nushigak District. What is the reason for that?

Good afternoon, or good morning still, I guess. For the record, Tim Sands. Historically, there was requirement for setnetters to register in all districts, and then, um, say around 2009, the most of the setnetters came forward and asked that, that to be removed. The department didn't need it, but the Nushagak District setnetters wanted to maintain the registration requirement so that there would be a transfer period between different areas in the Nushagak District for setnet fishing.

So another question I have. So how does this allocation between the drift setnetters— not the drift setnetters, but the drifter drift gillnetters and the setnetters— how is this arrived at? I mean, and it seems like that the drift gillnetters get quite a bit more of the allocation. Is that because— and they have longer nets and so on— is that because you allow them to fish more to get more of these fish out of the system? I mean, caught.

Yep, through the chair. So the allocation plans, I believe, were developed in the late '90s, and the, the different user groups got together and hashed out based on historical harvest levels what the allocation should be. Um, it was before my time, so I'm not super familiar with the process, but, but there was a process where everybody kind of got in a room and hashed it out. Certainly the, the drift gillnetters, they have more, more net. There's more drift permits than setnet permits.

So they, they catch much more of the fish, and, and the allocation change varies from district to district. In the Nushagak District, we're at 74% drift and 26% set is the goal, but it's different in each district. So those were just decided in the '90s, correct? Yes. So shouldn't some of those allocations be looked at now?

It seems like in reading some of the stuff that I've read that the setnetters are getting a lot fewer fish and we've had these huge runs.

Okay. So I was just curious as to how you— yeah, anyway, how you allocate that and since the '90s, I guess, are you going to be looking at this allocation for a change. Well, we, I guess— go ahead. Thank you. Through the chair, a couple things there.

In the Nushagak District, where we've had increased effort from the drift gillnet fishery and also with restrictions laid out in the— sorry— Chinook-Sammasaga Concern Management Plan, the setnetters have been behind in allocation. On the east side districts, like particularly the Naknek-Kweejack District in recent years, since about 2017-18 when the Nushagak got big runs, the setnetters have been ahead in allocation, sometimes significantly. That has a lot to do with where the drift effort goes. As far as reevaluating the allocations, you know, that's a Board of Fisheries decision and the Department is going to be neutral on those kinds of things, and I would assume it would take a proposal asking for those to be evaluated and changed. Thank you.

Mr. Bowers? Thank you. Okay. A couple questions. Seeing none, on slide 13, maybe it is just our copies, there is a blue data point on the graph that I am not sure is explained.

Yes, Madam Chair, that is the 2026 forecast of $44 million. And the forecasts, are those revised in season or as we get into the beginning of the season? The preseason forecast is used preseason. That's, that's what it's used for. That gives industry an idea of what we can expect to be seeing in a given year.

The forecast generally goes out the window once fish start showing up, you know, And we have run assessment and we can see what's, what's there and what's actually, actually hitting the districts. Thanks. In terms of the Port Moller test fishery, what are the time series, or are there— is there a time series that that test fishery occurs and genetics are derived from? So is there like one, are there several? Does it go throughout the year, or I mean, not the year, but the season?

Yes, Madam Chair. The Portmola Test Fishery starts operations, I believe, on the 10th of June every, every year, and they fish through July 10th. Yeah, I think it's an exact month. And we get genetics information every 2 or 3 days. So we have about 11 to 13 genetic runs in a given season depending on the need.

If it's a late run, we We usually kind of try and get some more at the end there. If it's early and we know what we've got, usually they can kind of cease operations a couple days early if that suits us. So yeah, that's the timeframe. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER ARKOOSH] Thank you. And then my last question kind of goes back to this issue of allocation.

And what I would like to have produced, if it's not already somewhere, is— well, first of all, how many systems within Bristol Bay have allocation plans? All—. Madam Chair, all the districts besides Togiak, so Nushagak, Naknek, Kujak, Igigiak, and Ugashek all have allocation plans. So what I'd be interested in taking a look at is a table of the allocation splits by district and by year.

I believe that is in our— we have those in our annual management report. I believe also in our stock status report, the overview of the commercial salmon fishery report, RC to tab 3 has that information for the last 3 seasons. Okay, I might have you pull that out and RC it separately. Okay, if you have that consolidated. Okay, thank you.

Yes, Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. Um, having traveled out there last year, kind of right in the middle of it, um, to Naknek, and I, I was completely blown away at the management. And so what you— my hat's off to what these managers do, because it doesn't appear to be just managing fish or people. It's like all the way down to when you take time off on the tides so that the processors can get the fish in there unloaded, and the ConExes can— the freezer ConExes can have room to go south.

And I mean, it It was kind of mind-blowing to see the orchestration behind what managing a fishery looks like, not just for escapement. And I really don't know how you do it. One question I had was— or I have two questions about them being able to manage as well as possible, especially for escapement. First question is, Aleutian Islands sockeye fishery, is that at all an indicator of the fish that are coming your way pre-Port Moller test fishery?

Uh, thank you, uh, through the chair, Mr. Wood. It, it can help, and, uh, it does come in before Port Moller test fish information. Historically, it was, I think, leaned on a little bit more. Um, it seems to be a one-way indicator, as in Some years— so if we see a large harvest of sockeye in the South Peninsula fishery, that tends to indicate a large return to Bristol Bay. If we see a poor harvest in the South Peninsula fishery, it pretty much means nothing because those fish some, some years will go around those districts and don't go through where they can be harvested, and we'll still see a large Bristol Bay run, if that helps.

Great, thank you. One last question is when you— hold on, I'll pull it together. So that was— it was that— so I know what I wanted to ask. When you're managing this over the years, I mean, this is a— finally, this is a Rolls-Royce engine now. Being run out there with all the different moving parts, and you guys have fine-tuned it over time.

Are you finding that you have the—. The—. The—. We always want more information, but do you have the information needed to make the decisions just in terms of escapement, like the number of weirs, the number of escapement, uh, indices and whatnot out there? Is it I mean, I'm gonna— I know your answer is yes, we always need more, but, um, how has it evolved for you out there with escapement numbers and, and, uh, investments in money to have better sonar or get more sonar?

Uh, through the chair, Mr. Wood, um, I guess the short answer is yes, we generally do have the tools that we need. To manage particularly the sockeye fishery, which is where nearly all the commercial focus is. You know, in 2015, the state was in a financial crisis and many of our basic assessment projects were cut from the state general fund. And we were approached by the Bristol Bay— they created a group called the Bristol Bay Fisheries Collaborative. And we got together as research biologists, management biologists, and came together and came up with a list of what we need.

At the time, we called it a Cadillac management system. And that's basically what we have now. There are quite a few years there where industry paid for much of that assessment. I think there's still some of that going on, but in the most part, I think it's under the general fund these days. Thank you.

Mr. Swenson.

My last— when I answer that question before, I'm aware that we allocate, but how have the Fish and Game been pretty successful in making those allocations for the two different groups?

Through the chair, you know, some years it really depends. Some years it's pretty easy to get those allocations in and they kind of end up there on their own. Their own. Um, you know, other years, no matter what we do as managers, we can't get there. For example, there's been years in the Naknek-Kwejack District— in the Naknek-Kwejack District, the allocation is 84% drift gill net and 16% set gill net.

Um, on some big runs, like around 2019 and 2020, we were fishing maximum fishing time with drift gill nets, which is 19 hours. They're restricted fishing time for king salmon conservation. So there's some other sidebars within the management plans that sometimes conflict with managing for those allocations. Okay, thank you.

All right, thank you for your presentation, and let's go ahead and take about a 15-minute break and shoot to come back on the record at 10 after 11. Thank you.

Welcome back. Back on the record. The time is 11:20. There's no such thing as a short break at Board of Fisheries meetings. So we'll go ahead and resume staff reports with the Nushagak River King Salmon Stock of Concern update.

We are on pins and needles, gentlemen. Whenever you're ready. All right, let's start. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, my name is Cole Weaver.

I'm the Bristol Bay research biologist for the Division of Commercial Fish. With me is Tim Sands, he's the area management biologist for commercial fish, Lee Borden, the area management biologist for sport fish, and Jack Erickson, the division or regional research coordinator for commercial fish as well.

We are here to give an update on the status of Nushagak River King Salmon population and how they have done under the SACCA Concern Management Plan adopted in 2023. This oral report can be found in RC3 Tab 7, and the written report is RC3 Tab 3.

All right. We will start with a brief background on the data ADFNG collects and the different types of escapement goals for Nushagak River King Salmon. Then we will look at the changing run size to the Nushagak River and discuss the evidence that the Nushagak index is lower than previous. After that, Tim and Lee will present on the management plan and how it has performed over the last 3 years.

I want to start by describing the different types of data we collect for Nushkat King Salmon, how they are combined to estimate the population, and how escapement goals fit into that process. Escapement and total run are the foundation of fishery management. These estimates allow us to create brood tables, calculate returns per spawners, and set escapement goals. To calculate them, we need two pieces of information. In-river abundance, and harvest.

In-river abundance is measured at the Nushagak sonar site, located about 40 kilometers upstream of the Green commercial fishing district.

This is the only estimate of how many king salmon have entered the river, and it is used daily for in-season management. However, because the sonar is located close to the fishing district, harvest must be split into two parts. Harvest above sonar and harvest below sonar.

Harvest below sonar includes kings caught in the green commercial fishing district and kings harvested in the dark blue section of the Nushagak through sport and subsistence fishing. Fish harvested in the commercial district are reported on fish tickets and are available to managers during the season. While sport and subsistence harvested kings come from the statewide harvest survey and subsistence permit reports. These are not available for at least a year, so for this presentation, all 2025 sport and subsistence harvest estimates are based on the most recent 3-year averages.

Harvest above sonar is shown in the light blue section of river and includes sport and subsistence harvests in all upstream tributaries.

To calculate spawning escapement, we subtract the upstream harvest from the number of kings estimated at the sonar.

The sustainable escapement goal for Nushagak King Salmon is 55,000 to 120,000 fish when calculated this way. There's also a board-adopted in-river goal of 95,000 king salmon estimated directly at the sonar. This goal directs the department's in-season management to provide sufficient in-river passage to support sport and subsistence harvests.

To calculate total run, we add the harvest below sonar to the number of kings estimated at sonar. I'll be focusing primarily on the in-river sonar and spawning escapement estimates, while Tim will cover total run. In the next few slides, I'll discuss some of the challenges and uncertainties in estimating Nushagak King Salmon escapement, but for now it's important to understand that there is significant uncertainty in both the in-river abundance and harvest estimates.

This graph shows the in-river King Salmon sonar passage and the escapement on the Nushagak River. On the y-axis, we have the number of fish, and on the x-axis, the last 20 years of data. The black bars are the in-river estimate at sonar, and the gray bars are the king salmon escapement. This means the orange 95,000 in-river goal line corresponds to the black bars and is used in season. Similarly, the two red lines are the sustainable escapement goals and correspond to the gray bars.

To meet our SEG, the gray bar should be between the red reference lines. From this graph, it's clear to see why Nushkat King Salmon were designated a stock of concern, as we have failed to meet either goal since 2018.

We will focus on the black in-river estimate as it is measured directly at Sonar and available to managers in season. However, I want you to take a quick notice of the gray escapement bars. They are only slightly below the black in-river estimate, indicating the sport and subsistence harvest upstream of Sonar are are relatively small. So it makes it so we can just look at the black bars going forward.

This is the same graph as before, but we made two changes. First, we are only plotting the black in-river king salmon estimate bars from the previous slide. The second change is the y-axis was rescaled to fit Sockeye Passage as counted at Nisquex Sonar. We still have number of fish on the y-axis and in the last 20 years of data on the x-axis. Changing the scale made the black bars for king salmon counted at sonar much smaller.

I'm going to add in sockeye passage at sonar to demonstrate how relative species abundances have changed and help to visualize the scope of the problems facing king salmon enumeration at sonar.

Now when we add sockeye passage at sonar, the orange bars, the size of recent runs should stick out. Take a moment to look at the relative run size of King Salmon and Sockeye Salmon and see how they have changed.

The record Sockeye runs have made it harder to accurately count King Salmon. Prior to 2017, Sockeye Salmon runs were much smaller and the proportions of Sockeye Salmon to King Salmon made it easier to estimate abundance. From 2006 to 2016, there were an average of 6 sockeye for every king counted at the Nushagak sonar.

Compare this to the last 9 years, the average number of sockeye to kings increased to 46 with a high of 72 in 2021.

We know king salmon population is decreasing as all indicators of king salmon abundance, including the sonar estimate, but also commercial sport and subsistence harvests show a declining trend. As you, the board, are weighing appropriate actions, it is important that you understand the shortcomings of our king population estimates so you can make informed decisions. All right, jumping into sonar a little bit here. To create daily sonar estimates for Nushkeag king salmon, we measure two pieces of information. First, we use the sonar to count the number of fish swimming past.

We are unable to identify the species of salmon from the sonar files. Second, we use drift gillnets to determine the percent of each species in the run. Large sockeye runs significantly, significantly affect both of these components. In the sonar counts, extremely high sockeye abundance can lead to shadowing, where fish obscure one another in sonar images. This makes it difficult to detect and count every fish, resulting in underestimates.

The Tusk fishery faces similar challenges. When there are hundreds of thousands of sockeye in the river, it becomes much harder to catch and accurately apportion the relatively few king salmon present. Nets fill quickly with sockeye and drifts can get cut short, which likely biases away from kings. Unfortunately, we can't separate the impacts of having fewer kings in the river from the reduction in our ability to estimate them.

The third area of impact is the consistency of the King Salmon Index.

The Nushkegak sonar covers just under one-third of the river's width. During large sockeye runs, King Salmon may be pushed offshore by dense sockeye schools and could result in an underestimate when compared to historical counts. Together, these three factors—sonar shadowing, species apportionment challenges, and index consistency—are key sources of uncertainty in estimating king salmon escapement, and all three have been affected by the large sockeye runs in recent years.

I'd like to give an example of how sonar counts look under typical conditions and how they've changed with large sockeye runs. Remember, sonar can't determine the species, so all we can get from these sonar files is the total number of fish swimming past.

This image is called an echogram. It is a visual representation of sonar data that allows us to count passing fish. We are looking at a snapshot of about 30 seconds of our 10-minute sonar file. Imagine the sonar sitting on the riverbank pointing across the river with fish swimming past. As fish swim past, they show up as a light mark.

Even though the fish are swimming close together, the sonar can easily distinguish individual fish, which the crew can count. You'll notice a pink mark on each fish. This indicates the sonar crew counted it. As we look down the screen and further offshore from sonar, we see dark shadows behind the school of fish. The shadows show areas where the sonar sound waves are being blocked by passing fish.

Generally speaking, it takes a lot of shadowing to completely hide a fish as they tend to pop in and out of view and are only partially shadowed. However, looking at the amount of shadowing can help us understand how likely we are to miss fish.

At this amount of shadowing, we we are very confident in our ability to accurately count fish swimming past. This sonar file is an example of normal passage levels. The vast majority of the season consists of days like this where sonar performs well and undercounting due to shadowing is unlikely.

Here is an example of a sonar file from what would have been considered high passage prior to 2017.

This file shows a snapshot of a 1,200-fish file. Before 2017, we would only see a few hours with passage like this in an entire season. Some years maximum counts never got this high. We are still confident in our ability to accurately count fish passages when they get around this level.

First, let's look at the school of fish near shore. At this density, we often see a continuous stream of fish moving past the sonar. However, if you look closely at the marks, you can still distinguish individual fish.

Moving beyond the nearshore school, we start to see more shadowing, but the background is still visible in many areas. Let's look at the fish marks out here. Although some may be partially obscured, we can still reliably distinguish individual fish. While it is possible some fish could be hidden in the shadows, the department remains confident the accuracy is close to the true level of passage at this level.

Here's, here's an example of a sonar file from a high passage day in 2024.

There were over 4,300 fish counted in this 10-minute file. But as we'll see, that number is far below the actual number of fish that passed. This is one of our most extreme examples of sonar shadowing, and it helps demonstrate the challenges of accurately counting fish during massive sockeye runs.

Looking at the inshore school of fish, you'll immediately notice how much more crowded the fish are. While we have spent a lot of effort to increase our high passage counting accuracy at sonar, We know there is more uncertainty in counting these files.

If we look offshore in the shadowed section, you can see that it's almost entirely black. The background is never visible as it is blocked by the dense wall of fish.

Although a few fish were marked, it's clear that many fish swimming in this area are going undetected. This level of passage is unprecedented. Before the recent surge in sockeye runs, we simply didn't see files like this. Even now it's rare, passage like this may only occur for a handful of hours a season. In 2023 and 2024, there were about 6 hours with passage like this where the number counted was definitely below the actual passage.

In 2025, passage never got this high, but it was still higher than historical observations.

During these short windows of high passage, many more fish are swimming through the river than we can detect. The sonar performs well until passage reaches a saturation point where we cannot quantify how many more fish are there. It's important to understand that this limitation leads to an underestimate of passage for all species, not an overestimation.

This creates a catch-22 for understanding king conservation. When commercial fishing is restricted, more king salmon enter the river, which is good for escapement. But at the same time, the large volume of sockeye that enter the river reduces our ability to accurately count them towards the SEG.

I wanted to revisit this slide. We focused on sonar counts because we can clearly demonstrate they're underestimated and they can help us visualize how large sockeye runs affect both drift gillnetting and the consistency of the King Salmon Index. Now imagine running a drift net through each of the previous sonar passage examples. This project was designed for sockeye, but became the default estimate for kings when runs were more balanced. Independent of sonar issues, we know there are inherent problems with apportioning species that are too small a percent of the run.

Since the large sockeye runs starting in 2017, king salmon have averaged only 2% of the salmon estimated at sonar when they historically average 10%. So we're unable to determine the exact impact on the index from apportionment.

The sonar cannot evaluate what portion of the King Run passage passes within the insonified area each year. We believe that king salmon get pushed offshore from large schools of sockeye, making it unlikely this would increase the king salmon counted at sonar.

We will continue to investigate and improve sonar where beneficial. But the department's long-term plan is to continue using sonar as the primary in-season assessment tool, but shift to a post-season run reconstruction approach to estimate total run size. This method uses all available data to produce more robust population estimates and escapement goals.

While we do not have the information to accurately quantify how much we are undercounting Nushka King Salmon, We do have one piece of evidence to help provide context on how the sonar estimate has changed with the large sockeye runs.

Here's a map of the entire Nushagak River drainage with the sonar located here. The Noyukuk River is one of three major tributaries to the Nushagak River and is a site of a historical ADF&G sockeye counting tower, which is here.

The Bristol Bay Science and Research Institute resumed operations of the counting tower in 2023 and has been providing estimates of sockeye escapement that we can compare to Nushagak Sonar's sockeye escapement. Although this is a sockeye project, it is still useful evidence to understanding the sonar's performance. It is the only other project to estimate Nushagak salmon escapement that is historical and recent data allowing us to compare to sonar estimates.

This graph compares sockeye estimates from the Noatakuk Tower to the Nushagak sonar. We have number of sockeye on the y-axis and years across the x-axis with Nushagak sonar estimates in blue and the Noatakuk Tower estimate in orange. We have summarized historical data by averaging across decade where both projects had overlapping counts. The Noyukuk Tower did not operate after 2010 until BBSRI restarted it in 2023.

As we've seen before, recent years show much higher sockeye abundance than anything observed historically.

Looking at historical relationships between the two projects, we see the Nushagak sonar always produced produced a higher estimate than the Noyukuk Tower. This is expected. There should not be more sockeye counted in a tributary than in the mainstem. By decade, the Noyukuk Tower accounted for 22 to 77% of the Nushkek sonar estimate.

While this pattern has historically been variable, the stark change in relationship between projects is further evidence of underestimation at the sonar site. In 2023 and 2024, the Noyukuk Tower counted more sockeye than the sonar, with the last 3 years accounting for 94 to 134%.

This suggests the sonar undercounted a substantial portion of the run, likely due to shadowing effects we've discussed earlier.

To reemphasize, this comparison only reflects one tributary and we don't know how the Noyukuk Run proportion has changed over time. So while we can't use this to quantify the total undercount of sockeye or kings, it does help us assess the relative accuracy of the sonar estimate year to year. In this context, the 2025 sonar estimate appears to be a more moderate undercount compared to the substantially larger undercounts in 2023 and 2024. But the stark departure from historical relationships is evidence the sonar is underestimating salmon passage.

During the last board cycle, the department emphasized that it would take time, 10 to 15 years, to gain a clear understanding of the Nushkat King Salmon abundance. Over the past 3 years, the department and its collaborators have made meaningful progress toward understanding the king salmon estimate during large sockeye runs, and we remain committed to continuing that work.

The department's top priority is the continued operation of the Nushagak sonar to provide daily estimates of sockeye, chum, and king salmon for in-season management. Tested incremental improvements are the only option that keeps the index consistent with the escapement goals and until we have a better understanding of the population.

As noted earlier, our long-term strategy is to, to transition to a run reconstruction-based escapement goal and post-season population estimates, as done in other parts of the state. Achieving this will require ongoing collaborations with the Bristol Bay Research Institute through the Bristol Bay Fisheries Collaborative.

Over the past 3 years, ADF&G and BBSRI have collaborated on several initiatives to improve our understanding of Nushagak King Salmon. These efforts include incremental improvements to the sonar netting program, implementation of new sonar software and data processing workflows, enhanced quality assurance, quality control procedures at the sonar site, resumption of aerial surveys of king salmon spawning grounds, expanded age-sex-length data collection in sport and commercial harvests, installation of two upstream weirs by BBSRI, and implementation of a creel survey by the Sport Fish Division.

Among these efforts, BBSRI's upcoming The mark recapture project is expected to be the most informative for assessing the health and sustainability of the Nushkat King Salmon population. The department does not feel comfortable transitioning to a run reconstruction model until we have multiple years of high-quality sonar-independent King Salmon estimates to support it.

We've covered a lot of information, so I want to take a moment to summarize the key points. The Nushagak King Salmon population is down. All indicators of abundance show a declining trend.

Recent large sockeye runs on the Nushagak River have created significant challenges for accurately enumerating King Salmon. These are complex issues and there is no simple solution.

The department is confident that these estimates have led to fewer kings being indexed compared to historical estimates.

At this time, we do not have the ability to quantify how much the King Index has changed. Developing robust long-term solutions will take time, but we are actively working toward them. And with that, I'll hand it over to Tim, and we'll do questions at the end.

All right. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, my name is Tim Sands. I'm going to talk just briefly about subsistence as it pertains to the Stock Concern Plan. Then I will talk about the plan and the management of the commercial fishery over the last 3 years.

After that, I will give it to Lee Borden to talk about sportfish.

So before I jump into the commercial fishery discussion, I want to quickly touch on subsistence. There is a positive ANS finding for salmon in Bristol Bay, and you will We'll hear more about that in the subsistence presentation. When the Stock of Concern Plan was developed, there was considerable discussion about including options for the restriction of the subsistence fishery in the Stock of Concern Plan. Ultimately, no subsistence restrictions were included in the Stock of Concern Plan. Based on that, no subsistence restrictions were implemented in the last 3 years.

In the Dillingham area and surrounding waters outside of the commercial fishing district, salmon may be harvested for subsistence purposes at any time. In practice, subsistence fishing for salmon starts in late May and is usually done by September. The department does have the ability to restrict time and area for subsistence fishing, but not mesh size or net length. Net length on Dillingham beaches and in the commercial fishing district is 10 fathoms and is 25 fathoms in other areas. The department is also required to provide additional opportunity in the commercial fishing district during periods of extended closure.

This means we put out an announcement at the end of May to allow subsistence fishing inside the commercial district until we are about to have commercial openings. As it stands now, subsistence fishing is always open in the Dillingham area and adjacent waters. The 3-day-per-week fishing schedule that was previously in regulation was removed in 2018.

There is no limit on the amount of fish that can be harvested or the mesh size that can be used. Most participants use set gill nets and folks are starting to use dip nets in allowed areas. Drift gill nets are only legal in the commercial district and use of them is minimal. The subsistence staff will be giving a presentation later that will discuss effort and harvest in the subsistence fishery. While the beaches around Dillingham are the most heavily used for subsistence, there is certainly subsistence fishing that takes place along the Nushagak River, up at Lake Aleknagik, and the commercial fishing district, especially prior to the commercial fish reopening.

So the language in the stock concern plan talks about sockeye salmon projected by the sonar or tower. I want to take a second and hopefully explain what that means. First, let me point out the Wood River Special Harvest Area. The Wood River Special Harvest Area was originally created to allow harvest of Wood River-bound sockeye salmon while protecting Nushagak River coho salmon. It was used in the late '90s and into the 2000s to protect weak Nushagak River sockeye salmon while still providing harvest opportunity on the plentiful Wood River sockeye salmon after they have passed through the regular commercial fishing district and separated from the majority of Nushagak-bound stocks.

Now you can see the Wood River Tower and the Nushagak sonar sites on the map. There's a separation between the commercial district boundary and where fish are counted. Here, the commercial district is in green and the northern boundary is below Dillingham. There can be large numbers of fish in the transition area between the top part of the commercial fishing district and where the fish are counted. I figure it takes a fish about 18 to 24 hours to get from the commercial district boundary to the Wood River Tower.

If the fish is Nushagak bound, I estimate 36 to 48 hours from the district to the sonar. Fish between the commercial district and the counting station are what we are referring to with the projected terminology.

In 2023, the board developed a stock concern plan. The first check in the plan is whether or not we are predicting a total king salmon escapement of less than 95,000 past the sonar. This has been the case the last 3 years where we predicted total king escapements below the 95,000 in-river goal. This means we implement the 5.5-inch mesh or smaller restriction and continue following the stock concern plan. That plan gives us 2 main tools.

Sockeye salmon triggers that direct department when the commercial fishery can be opened. These triggers delay the start of the commercial fishery relative to when it would have started prior to the development of the Stock Concern Plan. This delay allows for additional unfished passage of king salmon into the Nushagak River.

And an optimal escapement goal that changes the upper end of the Nushagak and Wood River sockeye salmon escapement OEGs, or objective goal ranges. Without these OEGs, the department would be obligated to try and control sockeye salmon escapement within the established SEG ranges. This would mean almost wide-open commercial fishing once a trigger that allowed fishing had been met. These OEGs direct the department to have more closures in the commercial fishery to allow additional king salmon escapement and allow the department to be much more conservative in the fishing opportunity provided. Again, trying to balance king salmon conservation with controlling sockeye salmon escapement.

So talk about the triggers. 3 Different triggers were developed, meaning any one of which allows the department to open the commercial fishery. One is when 6% of the Nushagak River sockeye salmon run based on the preseason forecast is projected past the sonar. Another is when 10% of the Wood River sockeye salmon run, again based on preseason forecast, is projected past the Wood River Tower. If neither of these triggers has been satisfied, then fishing can open after 9 AM on June 28th.

Optimal escapement goals. In addition to delaying the start of the commercial fishery with the triggers, there are optimal escapement goals, OEGs, for the Wood and Nisquagak Rivers. As I mentioned before, these OEGs are a big part of the King Salmon Conservation Plan. By raising the upper ends of the escapement goal ranges, these OEGs direct the department to allow additional sockeye salmon escapement by having more closures in the commercial fishery. These breaks will also allow more king salmon escapement.

These OEGs add 15% of the preseason forecast to the upper end of the Wood and Nushagak Rivers escapement goal ranges. For example, the 2026 forecast for Nushagak River sockeye salmon is 11.4 million. 15% Of 11.4 is 1.7. Add the 900,000 upper end of the Nushagak River sockeye salmon escapement goal, and now the upper end of the OEG range for the Nushagak is 2.6 million. The department attempts to to keep sockeye salmon escapement below the upper end of this optimal escapement goal range.

I'm going to talk about king salmon run timing to help get you oriented for the next few slides. This graph shows the daily percentage of king salmon that pass by sonar on average. This is just the average proportion, so it doesn't represent a specific number of fish. If we have 40,000 escapement or 100,000 escapement, the proportions are the same on average. The run starts out slow with counting usually starting on June 6th.

You can see the daily proportion increases steadily until June 21-ish or so, when you— when we expect to be about 25% of the way through the king salmon escapement. You can see the vertical bar labeled 25% here to represent that. The escapement rate starts dropping, but you can You can see we go from 25% of escapement to 50% of escapement by June 27th. At this point, the daily proportion or rate of passage of kings is decreasing, and by July 4th, 75% of the king salmon escapement should be past the sonar.

Here we combine the average daily proportion in black with the 2025 actual proportion in red. You can see there is much more volatility in the 2025 numbers. This is because every year is different. When we use the historical average, it is a much smoother line. In any given year though, the fish return more erratically than the average.

This is compounded by the apportionment issues Cole described earlier. Other factors like wind events have a big impact on when fish move into the river as well. A big wind event can result in lots of fish moving all at once. I have listed here the date at which 50% of the king salmon escapement was past the sonar in each of the last 3 years. Also remember, there is travel time for fish to the sonar.

For example, in 2025, that means fish that were passing through the district before the opening on June 22 would pass the sonar on June 24.

So how did things work out? Let's start with 2023. Before I get into the management details, the left side of this slide has a scorecard for the year. In 2023, commercial fishing opened on June 25th in the afternoon based on the stock concern plan and meeting both the Wood and Ishigaki River triggers. Had we been managing under previous regulations, commercial fishing would have opened on June 22nd, so we had 3 additional days of no fishing because of the stock concern triggers.

We counted 10,000 king salmon pass the sonar during the additional closed time. This is not saying those fish would have been harvested, we're just saying they passed through the district without being fished on because of the stock concern plan. In 2023, the proportion of escapement that was past the district by the time fishing started is estimated at 66%. At the end of the season, we had 2.6 million sockeye salmon escapement in the Wood River with a 700,000 to 3 million OEG range. The OEG for Nushagak salmon was 370,000 to 2 million in 2023.

The Nushagak River sockeye salmon escapement index at the sonar was 1.8 million, but as Cole mentioned, the Noyukuk tower count was 2.4 million sockeye, and that does not account for additional sockeye salmon escapement in the other Nushagak tributaries. However, the sonar count is a number we have in season and what we base management decisions on. We did not meet the 55,000 lower end of the king salmon goal in 2023. Our final king salmon index was 31,497. Just to note, the king salmon escape numbers I used here are the actual in-season numbers.

There are postseason adjust— adjustments made to the numbers, so you might see different numbers in the written report, but I thought it more appropriate to use the numbers I had in season here.

2024, Commercial fishing opened on June 26th in the afternoon based on the stock concern plan and meeting both the Wood and Ishigeki River triggers. Had we been managed under the previous regulations, commercial fishing would have opened June 21st. So we had 5 additional days of no fishing because of the stock concern triggers. We counted 11,000 king salmon passed the sonar during the additional closed time. Again, this is not saying those fish would have been harvested.

We're just saying they passed through the district without being fished on because of the Stock Concern Plan. In 2024, the proportion of escapement was past the district by the time fishing started is estimated at 48%. At the end of the season, we had 4.4 million sockeye salmon escapement in the Wood River, well above the 700,000 to 3 million OEG range. This failure is not intentional, it is just difficult to manage the fishery when the daily passages can be so volatile, and again shows how we tried to err on the side of conservation. The OEG for Nushagak sockeye salmon was 370,000 to 1.4 million in 2024.

The Nushagak River sockeye salmon escapement index at the sonar was 1.7 million, but as in 2023, the Nayakuk The tower count was 2.4 million sockeye, and that does not account for additional sockeye salmon escapement in the other Nushagak tributaries. Either way, we failed to control Nushagak sockeye salmon escapement. We also did not meet the 55,000 lower end of the king salmon goal in 2024. Our final king salmon index in season was 41,920.

2025, Commercial fishing opened on June 22 in the morning. Based on the stock concern plan and meeting both the Wood and Nushagak River triggers. We more than doubled the 625,000 Nushagak River trigger before opening commercial fishing.

Had we been managing under previous regulations, commercial fishing would have opened on June 20th, so we had 2 additional days of no fishing because of the stock concern triggers. We counted 8,000 king salmon past the sonar during the additional close time. In 2025, the The proportion of escapement that was past the district by the time fishing started is estimated at 52%. At the end of the season, we had 2.7 million sockeye salmon escapement in the Wood River within the 700,000 to 3 million OEG range. The Wood River forecast was very consistent these 3 years.

That is why the OEG range stayed the same. The OEG for Nushagak sockeye salmon was 370,000 to 2.5 million 2025. The Nushagak River sockeye salmon escapement index at the sonar was 3.3 million. There was a big Nushagak sockeye salmon forecast in 2025, and the run was more variable over these 3 years, so the OEG range changed significantly each year. Again, we did not meet the 55,000 lower end of the king salmon goal in 2025.

Our final king salmon index was 34,134.

To kind of summarize all that, this table shows the date we would have opened commercial fishing under previous regulations and the date of the actual opening that was due to the stock concern triggers that we have here. It summarizes what the king salmon escapement in the Nushagak River was at midnight prior to the opening during the past 3 seasons. The lagged escapement is how many fish we presume to be between a commercial in the district in the sonar at the time of the opening based on the subsequent escapement. Again, we didn't know what the number was until later after the fish passed the sonar. Some— these two numbers for the cumulative escapement that passed the commercial district without commercial fishing pressure.

I want to talk about where king salmon go as far as use is concerned. This graph shows the last 20 years. It shows escapement in red on bottom. Next is the commercial harvest in green, then the subsistence harvest in yellow, and at the top is the sport harvest in blue. You can also see the escape goal range lines as well as the 95,000 in-river goal line.

The whole bar represents the total king salmon run estimate for each year. There is variability over time, as one would expect, but since 2019, we have been at a lower total run regime. Taking the same graph we just looked at and zooming in on the king salmon returns since 2019, we can see our combined harvest rate on king salmon has dropped off significantly since 2019. In 2019, we harvested about 50% of all king salmon between commercial, sport, and subsistence harvest. That is, in 2019, the red bar that is escapement is about 40,000, and the other bars are also about 40,000.

40,000 Harvest out of 80,000 total run is 50% exploitation. For the last 3 years, the harvest from all users is a quarter or less of the total run index, but the total run index is less than 55,000, lower end of the escapement goal range. This graph shows that in 2023 to 2025, we could have not opened the commercial fishery in the Nushagak District and foregone harvest on millions of sockeye salmon and still likely fail to meet the 55,000 lower-end king salmon goal as indexed at the SONAR.

We still face challenges. We remind processors and fishermen in our outlook announcements and other communications of the importance of reporting all king salmon harvested, whether they are sold or kept for personal use. Still, there is a definite, a definite but unknown amount of underreporting that happens. The same is true at the sonar. We always knew the sonar represented an index for all species, but with the large sockeye salmon runs, the ability to consistently index the same proportion of kings as we used to index has diminished significantly, but also by an unknown amount.

3 Years ago, this plan was developed from the many options offered. The board asked, would this be the solution? We couldn't guarantee anything, of course, and clearly we are not where we want to be. What we did say was these restrictions would provide meaningful king salmon conservation. We have gone above and beyond what the plan calls for and making decisions for the commercial fishery these last 3 years, trying to err on the side of conservation and still follow the plan.

King salmon runs throughout Alaska continue to be poor. This is important to understand because it points to a broader problem than just commercial fishery Nushagak District. What is the right balance between king salmon conservation and controlling sockeye salmon escapement?

This ends my present portion of the presentation, and I will now hand it over to Lee Borden, the Bristol Bay Sport Fishery Management Biologist. Madam Chair, members of the board, Good morning, board. For the record, my name is Lee Borden. I'm the Bristol Bay area manager for the Division of Sport Fish. I'll give you a quick summary of sport fish management since the Stock of Concern plan.

So obviously, as we all know, in 2023, the Nushagak King Salmon was designated as a stock of management concern, and the Stock of Concern management plan was established. In this plan, the sport fishery annual limit for fish over 28 inches length was reduced from 4 fish to 1 fish.

After the meeting and going into the 2023 season, we began operating an annual king salmon creel survey that provides managers, Tim Sands and I, with in-season information on sport fishing effort success and harvest composition.

On this slide, there's a graph showing Nushagak River sport fishing effort in angler days as well as king salmon harvest for the past 10 years. What you'll notice here is the declining trend in both effort and harvest. We've seen harvest in the, in the sport fishery on the Nushagak decline from a pre-2019 average of about 6,500 fish harvest down to a harvest post-2019 of about 3,000 fish, so less than half of what was harvested prior to 2019.

So I'll just summarize some of the sport fish management actions that have been taken. So just overall, we have issued emergency orders in 8 out of the last 10 years. So we issued emergency order in 2017 and then every year since 2019.

Um, and we've also issued emergency orders every year since the Stock of Concern Management Plan was implemented. So we went beyond what the plan called for with that bag limit reduction and issued emergency orders in '23, '24, and '25 that you can see summarized here. And there are bag limit reductions and non-retention emergency emergency orders that also prohibit the use of bait.

And at this point, we will take questions.

Okay, um, before we get into questions, I just want to say, um, this is a really good presentation. Thank you. It was excellent. Um, before I open it up, just real quick, I have one question related to Slide 13.

And is it possible— so, you know, this was the slide that was looking at the Nushagak River sockeye estimate versus the Nayukuk River sockeye estimate and sort of that shift that we've seen in more recent years. Is it possible to calculate a margin of error based on that?

That would be inappropriate because the amount of sockeye that are going to the Noyukuk relative to the other tributaries is unknown and how that's changed. There's no consistency to look at there. So you could put a number that wouldn't really mean anything and then multiplying that through probably wouldn't be very helpful. In what context? Like, if— I mean, it would have— so helpful to what?

I guess. Like, what are you making that statement based on? I think if I'm understanding your question correctly, would— can we understand anything from the relationship and how it's changed, um, the Sakaiyat, the Nushkak Sonar, to the Noyukuk? No, no, that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking if it's possible to calculate a margin of error of the passage of Nuxchagak Sakai based on what the passage is of the Nayikuk?

Not whether— not qualifying it and how you would use it, but whether you can make that calculation. I think that requires us to say one of them is the correct estimate, so you could see how much different they are between each other. And you could see how much different they are between each other, but since they're measuring different things, it's being able to interpret that is where it's inappropriate, I think. Fair, fair, fair. Thank you for that.

And then my last question is on the very last slide related to sport management action. And my question is, given sort of where the King escapement estimates were in 2025, why wasn't there a non-retention order issued?

Madam Chair, so we take a lot of factors into consideration when we're issuing our emergency orders. So we, we don't base it solely on the sonar. We base it on a number of things, some of them being anecdotal reports that we're getting from operators on the river, the anecdotal reports I'm getting from my crew on the river, as well as the hard data they're providing me from the creel survey. Factor in subsistence catches, commercial success, or I'd be— excuse me, commercial harvest of king salmon, as well as weather, things like that that push fish. So there's a lot to go into it.

And at the time that these emergency orders were issued, the information that we were receiving was that the fishery was performing better than what the sonar number might have indicated that season. Obviously, it was a huge season for sockeye, pushing kings offshore, confounding the apportionment at the sonar. And so when we factored in everything that, that we were hearing from users on the river, as well as the creel data we were receiving, things in the sport fishery didn't seem as dire as what the sonar might have indicated at the time that these decisions were being made. So we elected to do bag limit reduction for 2025. That's an interesting call given the history of the two previous years.

Mr. Swenson and then Mr. Carpenter. So the sport harvest has gone down by 50%. How much is the commercial harvest gone down?

Through the chair, Mr. Swenson, I I don't have it off the top of my head. I think our 20-year average harvest for commercial fisheries around 30,000 king salmon, and it's probably the recent 3-year average is 6 or less. 6,000 Or less? Yes. So it's gone down drastically too.

Absolutely. Just one other question. Do you think we have 10 to 15 years to figure this out? We may not have any kings in 10 or 15 years. Is that possible?

It wouldn't be because of the fishery. If it's— if there's ocean things that are going on that are making king salmon not return at the historical rates, that might be a problem. But we're not killing the that many king salmon in the fishery. 40,000 King salmon or 30,000 king salmon in the Nushagak River is still sustainable.

Mr. Carpenter, thank you. Thank you. I wasn't going to ask this question, but the chair brought up an interesting point in regards to why the EO was issued the way it was this year. And please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the management plan states that if the projection is going to be under 55,000, that the department shall restrict to catch and release only. And so I guess I'm kind of wondering how much variance there is at play here when it comes to things in regulation where it says shall.

Yeah, through the chair, Mr. Carpenter. Um, the Stock of Concern plan has "may" language in it, and the management plan has "shall" language in it. So there's a little bit of a conflict there. Um, and this was definitely a point of conversation, uh, for staff over the past few years as well. Um, but for anything beyond that, I would maybe kick to Israel if there's anything that he might want to add here.

Mr. Payton. Thank you, Madam Chair. So yeah, the two plans are kind of in conflict of each other. So once again, we've went above and beyond at our own direction to protect the Chinook stocks beyond the action plan that the board set out for sport fisheries. So it's a little bit unclear which plan we were supposed to manage for.

Just quick. I mean, I think that's a fair fair statement. And obviously, at least from my opinion, we probably relaxed the action plan in regards to trying to keep the language similar to what's actually in the current— the actual management plan. So that's just— that's interesting. I'm going to go back to the Sonar for a little bit.

You know, when you kind of look at the historical perspective of the Sonar, And there's kind of a general understanding that about 40 to 60% of the kings are getting counted at the sonar. And when I look at the sockeye escapement, especially the last 3 years, partly because we— the last several years we have, we have an OEG that allows you to put an extra 15%. But when you have these massive runs, And you have, you know, the restrictions that are in place in the action plan in regards to when you can allow fishing based on the triggers are met. Is there any way to estimate when you're putting 3, 4 million fish into a river what the actual percentage of kings that you might actually be counting based on the volume? Because there's no way it's even 40%.

Through the chair, Mr. Carpenter. It's very difficult. It's an unknown unknown, so it's hard to get your head around it. We can't just, you know, we missed 30% of the sockeye that went past the Noyukuk Tower. We can't just apply that 30% rate, that number, to the king number.

It just doesn't work that way, and we don't have a a good way of getting a handle on that. I think that's fair. And I guess the follow-up to that would be, you know, you come up with this number at the sonar. What does the aerial survey information or what has it shown since it's been reintroduced? What does that information show relative to what the actual number was assessed at the sonar was?

Yeah. The last couple years of the aerial survey, our estimates of that have been in line with the lower estimates that it had historically. So, um, the aerial surveys don't do a really good job of giving you a lot of detail. It's more of kind of a broad stroke of how accurate you are, and in that context, um, they show that the King numbers are down as well. I guess my question is, is there a number that was placed upon that survey?

Surveys the last several years? Yes, we do come up with a number when we do the surveys. And could you tell me what that is? I can, um, let's see.

Can I get back to you with that? Sure. Okay, thank you. Mr. Irwin, then Mr. Wood. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for your presentation. And, um, Cole, I want to thank you also for explaining, um, when you— on slides 4 and 5, when you switch switched from one of the graphs to a different one and you changed the y-axis. I appreciate you explaining that to the board because oftentimes we get those types of graphs and there might be a purpose for a shift in that baseline. So thank you for explaining that to us so that we understood it. Um, I have questions also about the sonar.

I had the opportunity to see this sonar and see firsthand how difficult it is to, to count when that shadowing happens. So you said that only about 6 hours in 2024 were so overshadowed that you had difficulties counting. You mentioned that there is a way to account for the shadowing. Is that a formula, like a mathematical formula you have? Is that assumptions you make based on how many Sockeye have gone through?

How do you, like, technically account for that shadowing?

Um, yeah, two parts there. Uh, the first part, the number of times— well, maybe let me back up. Passage is a continuum, so this is one of our highest ones we've seen, and I think from this image it's pretty clear that there's a lot more going on out there than we can accurately count. Um, that being said, you see passages a little bit less, this a lot less than this, so I kind of broke it up into three parts. To try to give you some examples, but there's a continuum through there.

So the amount of time where we had this kind of level is— was very short in 2024. Um, and that— yeah, and what was the second part of your question? The second part was, how do you technically account for that shadowing? Do you have a mathematical formula? Do you assume so much passage per so much Sakai passage?

Yeah, so we don't have a way to correct for shadowing. In that context, we know it's happening, but we can't guess at how much more is out there. And part of that is why we shared the Noyukuk Tower, which obviously it's measuring a different thing, but is kind of our only other metric we have on the Nushagak to kind of try to put context to really what we're missing out there due to— and it's shadowing, but it's the other, other areas too. But yeah, all together.

Yeah, thank you. Um, and then my other question is, when at this— at— in this area, you guys also are running the Drift Gillnet Test Fishery. So do you— is it beneficial? Would it even help? But during those times where there's really high shadowing, do you increase, increase the amount of times or drifts that you do to get an idea of an apportionment?

I mean, I'm sure it would be difficult because obviously this is indicating that there's an enormous amount of sockeye, right? But do you guys increase that drifting during times where you're noticing we can't get a good reading right now?

Yeah, so our apportionment effort and the kind of the whole program is based off of all the different factors that are playing into that, but passage is Absolutely a big one, and over the past few years we have spent a lot of time kind of evaluating that and trying to see if we can make improvements on it. Um, specifically here, I think when you get big passage, what we see at sonar is the nets fill up with sockeye so fast that you have to pull them, you have to get them in. And although our estimate for apportionment does take in length of time fishing with CPWE. Um, when that happens, you— I guess we don't have a way to evaluate, but it's possible that causes more bias. And so it's kind of all wrapped up in there.

But yeah, we, we're constantly trying to improve apportionment, being one we spent a lot of time on the last couple years. Thank you. Mr. Wood. All right, thank you. Um, I got 3 questions.

Um, but did I hear you say you can't tell the species Through the sonar? That's correct. Okay, so years ago, was there ever a time when you could tell the species when there was less sockeye and you could see larger fish?

Not on the Nushagak. There's— and that has to do with— a lot of it has to do with the size of the different species. So I know different sonar in this state they do use— they're using size apportionment, I think specifically in the Copper River, and they can measure the size of the fish on the screen. And then if there's a big enough difference between species size, you can use that to apportion. Because our— not only king, but we also have chum and sockeye— there's a lot of overlap in size.

You couldn't measure anything on the sonar to get that, and so there's nothing we can get from the sonar our data specifically to get the species. All right, thank you. My other question is, how does this plan affect the allocation between drift and, um, yeah, through the chair, Mr. Wood, um, it definitely has an effect where, you know, historically before, before we had the Stock Concern Plan, we would almost use the setnetters as a test fishery. We'd let them fish, uh, earlier and see what kind of movement we have of fish through the district, and then we would add in drift fishing as needed and kind of build, ramp things up from there.

Now, because of the, the plan, we, we can't really do that. We have to start both gear types on the same day, basically. We still try and start— we start to set netters first, but because we're trying to control sockeye escapement, the amount of differential fishing time is reduced.

Thank you. So do you see a larger pulse of Chinook coming in at the beginning of the tide, or is it kind of spread throughout the tide? Do you have any observations on that?

No, I would say that the biggest factor in when the kings move is the wind. And so if there's a wind event, we'll see— the first thing we'll see is an uptick in subsistence harvest on the beaches. And then, you know, a day and a half, 2 days later, we'll see that at the sonar. Okay, thanks. My last question is on slide 31.

You mentioned the challenges. And one of the— at the top you said the idea of reporting and potential underreporting you mentioned. So what does the department have an estimate of how many Kings are underreported or dropped out that you use in your formula?

Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. I'll let Tim provide some details on this, but I just wanted to make a few overarching comments about reporting in the commercial fishery. So statewide, our standard for reporting commercial harvest is on fish tickets. And, you know, our database structure is all built around, you know, an individual permit holder making a fish ticket or making a delivery and then a fish ticket being generated from that.

And that's what's recorded in the database. So because we're aware of the underreporting of commercially caught king salmon in the Nushagak District, we have been exploring alternative methods to estimate commercial harvest. And so we started doing that, I think, in 2021. And we've asked the processors to provide weekly reports of, of the actual number of king salmon that they have in their facilities. And we've had a lot of really good cooperation from the processors on that.

So Unfortunately, because of the way that data comes in, it's different than what we get on fish tickets. So we— what you've seen reported in here in this presentation and what you'll see in our staff comments and our other reports, it's all fish ticket information. The— these production reports that Tim's going to talk about They are aggregated information that comes in from processors, and there isn't a way to assign that to an individual fish ticket. So, so that's why you only see fish ticket data reported here. But we have been exploring this alternative methodology, and we just don't quite have a way to formally incorporate that into our fish ticket database, but Tim can speak to the details on the numbers on it.

Thanks.

Go ahead, Tim. Did you have anything to add?

Madam Chair, yeah, I saw that Mr. Wood had his hand up, so I didn't know if he had a follow-up question. I get to recognize whom, so I'm asking you if you had any follow-up to that first, and then I'll get to Mr. Wood. Okay, sorry. Yeah, so So right, in 2021, noticing that there was a disparity in between what the harvest was and what was on the fish tickets, I started requesting information from processors so I could better understand what the actual commercial harvest of king salmon is.

And they've been very cooperative, and I have that data. Um, you know, it's not perfect. I, I feel like it's better than what's on fish tickets, but there's, you know, because there's been changes in the industry, processors have been bought out, new people have come in, uh, the data is not perfect. It's, it's an evolution. Um, but I do have data and I can talk about it more if you want.

Thank you, Tim. Mr. Wood, follow-up. Yeah, thank you. I think you answered the question that I was going to ask.

Was it— it was that a combination of just fish tickets and processors, or have you compared one to the other, um, to get that percentage of, um, of underreporting? And so I guess, uh, I guess ultimately I— you did answer that question, but is there a percentage that you work Wiz to figure out, to kind of understand how much isn't reported? Yeah, through the— to the chair, Mr. Wood, I would— is we're getting about, uh, 33 to 50% of the king salmon harvested are showing up on fish tickets. So again, it varies from year to year, varies from company to company.

But that's, that's numbers and it's getting better. So I'd say it's closer to 50% now because the processors are definitely making an effort with their fleets and their tenders to get those fish written down on fish tickets. Mr. Swenson.

So you said both the commercial and the drift and the set nets. They both start at the same— on the same day, right? The last 3 years— through the chair, Mr. Sensen— yeah, the last 3 years that's been the case because of the stock concern plan. Prior to that, there might have been even a day or two that we had— we'd open up the setnets and see how they did, and if the setnet fishing was slow, we'd just close it and wait for the next day. Do you allow anybody now Do you open the drift earlier than the setnet, like on the flood tide?

No, we never open the drift before the set. The set's always fishing before the drift because we're always behind on allocation with the setnets. We have—. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Did you have anything to follow up? Yeah, I did.

Is so with the fish tickets, the fish tickets, the fishermen's responsibility. Responsibility. At least it is in my— where I fish. And so when you have fish ticket data, but who fills out the fish ticket in Bristol Bay? Is it the fishermen?

Is it the tender? I'm just trying to guess, like, figure out responsibility-wise, is it the fishermen's responsibility to have an accurate fish ticket, or are you actually pushing that onto the processor?

Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. So, Mr. Wood, in your case, you might be doing the fish ticket because of your direct marketing operation, but if you were selling your fish to a processor, then it's the processor's obligation to, to complete that fish ticket. In Bristol Bay, a lot of the fish you know, are delivered to tenders, the tenders are acting as an agent for the processor and the tender operator completes the fish ticket. Now, a person, you know, there's Catcher-Seller Operations, direct marketers, where in that case, you know, the fisherman is the processor essentially and they're completing their own fish ticket.

But most of the fish tickets are completed on the tender by the processor's agent, who's the tender operator. But those fish tickets are signed by the CFEC permit holder affirming that they're correct. Correct. Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to follow up on the reporting a little bit.

So just by the nature of the way the Bristol Bay sockeye fishery works, it's understandable how there could be some small kings specifically that get put in sockeye bags and may not be delivered. But at the processing facility, irregardless if they're on a fish ticket or not, they are being accounted for there, and those numbers are be— being given to you. So in actuality, don't you really— outside of the idea of home pack or subsistence reporting, etc. Don't you really have a very true number of how many kings were harvested because of the processing numbers?

Yeah, through the chair. We have a much better idea, but again, it's kind of an unknown unknown. And I've tried to do different mathematical checks, if you will. For example, I look at the number of sakai per king salmon reported. And if everybody was reporting equally and catching equally, then everybody would have the same number of— so 1,700 sockeye for every king salmon that they caught.

But it doesn't work out that way. And sometimes, you know, it's 5,000 sockeye for every king salmon. And then it makes me kind of scratch my head and try and figure out what I'm, what I'm missing or or what's going on. Does that make sense? I mean, yeah, thank you.

It does. I mean, I mean, personally, I think that there's a lot of variables that you probably have to take into account when you speculate about what that ratio might be, whether specifically tide, etc., etc. So, okay, I just generally wanted to ask that question. Thanks. I guess I'm gonna just add one thing here.

I struggle to understand why is the ratio of king salmon caught to the ratio of sockeye relative when you're just trying to get straight king numbers? Why do we care? I mean, I get it for the management in terms of like the, the, the passage and the escapement management, but why is that number or relative from a processor or a fish ticket. Yeah, Madam Chair, like I said, it's all new for me, and I was just trying to think of a way I could come up with a check that would, would provide consistency between the different processors, because it made sense in my head at least that if, if people are catching both sockeye and kings at equal rate I would see that in the numbers.

And that's why I was looking at the king per sockeye number as just a double check on if I'm getting good numbers from this processor or that processor. Yeah, I see where you're coming from, but I mean, I guess at the end of the day, the number is the number.

Anyways, I don't want to belabor it. And we're going to wrap this up quickly. So Mr. Swenson, then Mr. Wood. Forrest, did you have anything to add there? Okay, Mr. Swenson.

I just have one quick question. Do subsistence report the kings they catch?

Yeah, through the chair, Mr. Swenson, there is a reporting system for subsistence. They— everybody's supposed to get a subsistence permit and return those permits at the end of the year, and then the subsistence division processes accesses that information, and the subsistence numbers are reported in our comments in the AMR. Thank you. Mr. Wood. Thank you.

So if I'm hearing what you're saying, like the math you're using, Tim, that you're almost apportioning the harvest from at the processor's point of view. So if you caught this many sockeye, then you probably caught this many kings. Am I hearing you directly.

It— through the chair, it's more of a, did this processor give me good numbers, or am I, am I missing something? You know, like Mr. Carpenter said, varies on different factors. If there's a lot of setnet fishermen, maybe they catch less kings for delivery or per sockeye, or If they're mostly a fleet that fishes out towards the line, maybe they're catching less kings in their effort. And so there's, there's no hard and fast rule. I'm just trying to explore the data and see if there's something I can tease out that will make me want to follow up with the processor or somebody to say, ah, maybe you're missing something.

Maybe fish got hauled out to a different plant and they're not showing up. In the report, something like that. Yep. Thank you. Okay, thank you, gentlemen.

Appreciate, um, the presentation. It was like I said, it was excellent. And we're going to go ahead and break for lunch, and we'll come back on the record at 2 PM.

All right. Welcome back from lunch, everyone. The time is 2:06. We are back on the record. We have 6 of 7 members present with us.

And we're going to go ahead and continue with staff reports. I believe we're looking forward to a subsistence overview right now. So whenever you're ready, please put yourself on the record and begin. Thanks.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board, members of the public. For the record, my name is Lauren Sill. I am the Southern Region Program Manager for the Division of Subsistence at ADF&G. With me today is Greg Russell, who is the Lead Researcher for the Southwest Region. Thank you for the opportunity to present.

Our presentation this afternoon is going to provide a brief overview about the Division of Subsistence and the work we do, followed by an overview of subsistence harvesting and uses of fisheries in Bristol Bay. Slides associated with this presentation can be found in RC3 Tab 8, and there's a written report to accompany it, which is in RC3 Tab 4.

Our division is mandated by state statute to conduct studies to to gather information from residents of communities throughout Alaska on all aspects of the role of subsistence hunting and fishing in the lives of state residents. The information we collect is to be made available to the public, agencies, and others. As a research division, subsistence staff engage in all research and regulatory arenas in all regions of the state, and we serve both the Board of Fisheries and the Board of Game. This means that staff work to become knowledgeable about subsistence practices concerning both fish species and game species, as well as about how both fish and wildlife populations are managed and the regulations concerning all resources. The research we conduct in communities concerns both fish and wildlife resources.

We make the summarized data we gather publicly available shortly after the conclusion of projects, and these data are used by the boards, by the department, and by communities for a variety of applications, including community planning, regulatory changes, and C&T and ANS findings. For members of the public or anyone in the audience who may be unfamiliar with these two terms, I want to take a minute here to define them. C&T refers to customary and traditional uses of resources, which means the non-commercial, long-term, and consistent taking of, use of, and reliance upon fish or game in a specific area. A&S is short for the amounts reasonably necessary for subsistence. It is not a harvest quota, but it does provide the board with guidelines on typical numbers of animals harvested for customer customary and traditional uses under normal conditions.

There are several ways that we gather information about the customary and traditional uses of resources. Our research focus and methods are determined by identified information needs or data gaps, funding availability, and community input. Most of our projects are partnerships. We work with community entities, regional nonprofits, and other agencies. I can't emphasize enough how important these partnerships are.

We couldn't do what we do without their support and participation, especially from the communities we work with. In general, our research takes place in the more rural areas of the state, but Alaskans living anywhere in the state are eligible to hunt and fish under subsistence regulations. Information on the subsistence harvests of all state residents living in rural and urban areas is available through various permit programs. In Bristol Bay, the Division of Subsistence administers the subsistence salmon permit program. And Greg will be presenting data from those permits later in the presentation.

Our work is guided by the Alaska Confidentiality Statute, the National Science Foundation's Principles for the Conduct of Research in the Arctic, and the Alaska Federation of Natives' Guidelines for Research. All of our research projects are based on voluntary participation, informed consent, confidentiality, and respect for the privacy and dignity of the people we work with and learn from. Toward this end, We utilize procedures to preserve the anonymity of subjects in our records so that information cannot be tied to identifiable persons. Informed consent is obtained from each participant in the research as well as from the community at large. At the end of our projects, we return to communities with draft data for their review and feedback.

Comprehensive surveys are one of our standard data gathering methods, and we'll, we'll be presenting some of the information that that result from these surveys. As their name implies, the surveys are comprehensive. Through them, we collect information on every type of wild food a household might harvest and gather details such as the methods of harvesting and processing, amounts harvested, the areas households traveled to harvest, and the prevalence of sharing. Our goal is to gain a holistic understanding of subsistence ways of life in these communities. Most of the places we work with have a mixed cash subsistence economy, meaning wages from jobs and other income are used to augment and support subsistence activities.

So we also document demographic details of the household, income and employment specifics, as well as food security information. For all of our projects, we conduct these surveys face-to-face, usually in people's homes. In smaller communities such as many of Bristol Bay, we'll attempt to survey every permanent household, but in larger communities like Dillingham, we conduct a random sample because we are attempting to present a complete picture of harvesting activities within a community. And because all state residents are subsistence users, all permanent households of a community are eligible to participate in the surveys regardless of the ethnicity of household members or their status as federally qualified subsistence users. We also document harvesting activities under state or federal subsistence regulations, as well as commercial retention and sport and personal use regulations.

These surveys are completely voluntary and the data collected are stored and reported anonymously. We present data at the community level, not the individual household level.

Ethnography is another of our standard data collection methods. Broadly speaking, ethnographic fieldwork is the way that we attempt to understand other people's ways of knowing. We use several established social science methods of ethnographic fieldwork and data analysis. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with knowledgeable active or former subsistence harvesters, processors, or community members. The interviews follow thematic protocol but can accommodate variability in the experiences and expertise of the respondents.

Participant observation provides a chance for researchers to participate in and observe different harvesting or processing activities, giving researchers the opportunity to gain experiential knowledge. Life history mapping is an opportunity to speak with long-term community members and, through the use of maps, document and discuss changes in habitat, resource populations, and social structures. For each of these approaches, we use rigorous scientific methods accompanied by data analysis in order to provide meaningful and useful information.

Um, I want to make sure that the board and public are aware that all this information and the data that we collect are available through our online Community Subsistence Information System, the CSIS, and our technical paper series. The CSIS is a data portal that provides access to all the division's community-level harvest and use data that has been collected over the past 40 years, along with summaries of demographics, economics, and research methods for each community and project. The technical paper series houses all of our published reports where we analyze and discuss survey and ethnographic research results.

And then finally, before we get started with Bristol Bay data, I wanted to provide a little information about the people who work in our division. As I mentioned earlier, our staff are responsible for research and regulatory work concerning both fish and wildlife throughout the state. Despite the large geographic scale on which we work, we are a small group. We're broadly divided into the northern region and the southern region, with the Alaska Range being the major geographic boundary. The southern region itself is split between the southeast, south-central, and southwest regions, and we have a small staff that specializes in each.

Um, in the southwest, Greg Russell is our lead subsistence researcher, and he works closely with Maddie Christiansen, In each of these regions, staff are assisted by subsistence resource specialist ones who work throughout the region and short-term Fish and Wildlife techs hired during our field season. And with that, I'm going to hand this over to Greg for more information about subsistence in Bristol Bay.

Good afternoon. Again, for the record, my name is Greg Russell and I am the lead Southwest subsistence resource specialist for the department. Today I will offer a brief ethnographic background on the use of salmon and non-salmon fish by Bristol Bay residents and share some of the household-level survey data and subsistence salmon permit data for the area. Bristol Bay is world-renowned for its commercial fisheries and its sport fishing opportunities, with subsistence uses of wild renewable resources composing the most consistent and reliable component of local community structure. Each year, subsistence fishing, hunting, and gathering provide hundreds of pounds of highly nutritious food for Alaska residents.

Much of the seasonal round of activities is shaped by the natural cycles of fishes, birds, mammals, and plants. Knowledge that is fundamental to making a living in the region is preserved and communicated through gathering and processing wild resources, including fishing and hunting activities. Practices that support families and communities express, emphasize, and teach the values that support a subsistence way of life through the harvest, preparation, and sharing of wild foods. In the 20th century, significant economic, social, cultural, and demographic change took place in Bristol Bay during the evolution of its economy, which is a mixture of cash and subsistence sectors. Today, subsistence activities and values remain a cornerstone of area residents' way of life, a link to the traditions of the past, and one of their bases for survival, sustainability and prosperity.

The human population of the entirety of Bristol Bay area numbers just over 6,000 people, the majority of whom are Alaska Native. There are 26 inhabited communities ranging in size from 3 people in Ugashik to the regional center of Dillingham with just over 2,000 people. In general, the cash economy is seasonal in nature, driven largely by participation in commercial or sport fisheries. Subsistence fisheries play an important role in this mixed cash subsistence economy.

Throughout this presentation, we'll be presenting information from household harvest surveys and from subsistence salmon permit data. To begin with, we have a harvest composition pie chart presenting results from recent household harvest surveys conducted in every Bristol Bay community. Comprehensive survey data document information on the harvest of all resource and allow us to consider the harvest of salmon and other marine resources in relation to other wild foods. This pie chart shows the average composition of harvest by resource category for all communities combined. Percentages are measured from the total usable harvest.

Because not every community is surveyed every year, this chart includes the harvest data from the most recent survey year in each community. The majority of our harvest data in Bristol Bay is from the last 20 years, but we have not surveyed we've surveyed Ekwaaks since 1987. As you can see, salmon in dark blue accounts for nearly 60% of the overall harvest in edible weight, followed by non-salmon fish in light blue, which contributes another 9%. Land mammals are also a substantial contributor to total harvest, accounting for approximately 21%. Other resources such as marine mammals, shellfish, birds and eggs, or vegetation compose the remaining 12% of the harvest.

Again, this is the average of all communities. And at the community level, you would see some variation. Along with community demographics, potential variables that influence harvest include geographic location, such as proximity to the marine environment, economic conditions like fuel costs or more or less commercial retention, and environmental factors such as the presence of winter ice. [SPEAKING CHINOOK LANGUAGE] During the last major glacial period, most of the Bristol Bay region was covered by glaciers. Evidence of human occupation dates to the retreat of these glaciers approximately 10,000 years ago.

Salmon have played an important role in the lives of Bristol Bay residents for as long as the area has been inhabited. European exploration began in the late 1700s, bringing the establishment of a fur trade and missionary activity. As the fur trade declined in the late 1800s, 1900s, after the purchase of Alaska by the U.S., commercial salmon fisheries began in the area. This became the dominant export industry in the region. Up until the Second World War, commercial fisheries had hired outside labor but began hiring local residents during the war, and many regional residents became established as fishermen in the commercial fishery.

By the mid-1960s, most adult men in the Nushagak River communities participated in the fisheries as salmon fishermen.

Traditional patterns of hunting and fishing have been maintained in many Bristol Bay communities while at the same time incorporating participation in the commercial fisheries and other wage-earning activities. The commercial salmon fishery is a preferred source of income because of the similarities to traditional hunting and fishing and because it is a short and intense period of activity that causes less disruption to traditional harvesting practices but provides enough income for the year. In many communities, commercial fishing is a primary source of monetary income supplemented by income from local governments or services. Today, Bristol Bay residents harvest and use every species of salmon, but the main focus of harvesting efforts is on sockeye salmon, including spawning or spawned-out sockeye, locally referred to as redfish. Both the timing of harvest and the gear used depend on the species sought and their location.

Kings are the earliest salmon to return, arriving in mid to late May, followed by reds, chums, and pinks. Silvers are the last to return to rivers. The harvest of spawned-out sockeye occurs into October. Different species of salmon serve different roles in the diets of Bristol Bay residents. Kings are eaten fresh, frozen, or made into strips.

Sockeye are mostly split and dried, sometimes frozen. Chums are preferred by some older people because they have less fat and are easier to dry. Silvers are eaten fresh or frozen, though some are also salted and dried. Although not harvested and processed in every community, fall redfish are a preferred food in some places. While subsistence gear such as gillnets and seines is predominant throughout the region, In some communities and for some species, rod and reel is also an important gear type.

The removal of salmon from commercial catches can be a primary means for residents to obtain fish for home use.

Depending on location, residents access salmon fishing grounds with an ATV or skiff or by using their commercial fishing boat. A lot of salmon fishing occurs near communities or fish camps. Meaning often in rivers and lakes. But marine fishing along the coast also occurs, especially in areas like Dushagak Bay. Most subsistence fishing in the Bristol Bay area is a structured activity of extended family groups with roles assigned by age and gender.

The youngest children learn by watching, then by assisting others, and finally becoming full participants. For more recent arrivals to the region, Harvesting groups look slightly different, often being composed of nuclear family members, work associates, and friends. For all groups, though, subsistence activities can provide participants with a feeling of belonging, a means of developing friendships, and strengthening kinship ties and other relationships.

Sharing of subsistence foods when they travel to another community for harvesting activities or to visit. Subsistence foods are shared within a community, between communities in the region, throughout the state, and beyond. One important component of Bristol Bay subsistence fisheries is the use of fish camps for harvesting and processing activities. Historically, fish camps varied in size, location, permanence, and infrastructure. In general, fish camps were organized around extended family groups and were occupied for the entirety of the fishing season.

While many fish camps are still in operation and are an important component of subsistence harvesting activities, their use looks different. Today, with the accessibility of faster boats and broader societal changes, it is more likely that people will make day trips to fish camps for harvesting, returning home to sleep. Processing activities are also more likely to happen in the community rather than at fish camp.

There is a positive customary and traditional use finding for overall finfish, including salmon, in the Bristol Bay area. The board has determined an amount reasonably necessary for subsistence uses of salmon of 157,000 to 172,171 salmon. This finding includes 55,000 to 65,000 Kwijak River drainage sockeye salmon, but this does not include Alagnak River salmon stocks. As mentioned earlier, all Alaska Alaska residents can participate in subsistence fisheries anywhere in the state. In the Bristol Bay area, the majority of participants in the subsistence fisheries are residents of the region.

We'll pick this topic up again in a few slides.

In order to fish for salmon under subsistence regulations, a household must obtain a permit prior to fishing and return that permit at the end of the season. This is the main way the department collects annual harvest data. Previously, we talked briefly about the types of gear used to harvest salmon in the Bristol Bay area. Contemporarily, these gear choices are heavily influenced by regulations. In Bristol Bay, allowable gear and seasons differ based on fishing location, generally divided between waters within a commercial fishing district or waters outside of those boundaries.

Within commercial fishing districts set in drift gillnets are the only legal subsistence gear. Outside of commercial districts, set gillnets are the main type of legal gear, but additional gear types are authorized in specific locations within the region. These gear types include dip nets, beach seines, and spears. Outside of commercial districts, subsistence fishing is generally open year-round. Within districts, between June 1st and September 30th, subsistence fishing periods are open when commercial fishing is is open.

There are generally no limits on the subsistence harvest of salmon, except that there is a limit of 200 sockeye salmon for the Naknek River after August 15th.

As we've noted, salmon play an important role in the lives of Bristol Bay residents. Most households in the region participate in salmon fishing activities. On this chart, each of the bars represents the percentage of households within a community that fish for salmon. Across the bottom are each of the communities, and along the y-axis is the percentage of households. This is displaying the most recent year of household survey data that we have for each community, ranging from 1987 for Ekwock to 2023 for Menecotick.

As you can see, approximately 60% of households or more fish for salmon in each community, with some places showing 100% participation. As we mentioned earlier, with these surveys we are trying to gain a holistic perspective of fishing activities within a household and community. Therefore, these bars represent any type of non-commercial salmon fishing, including subsistence, sport, and personal use fishing that fall under state and federal regulations.

This figure is similar to the previous except it shows household use of salmon. Again, communities are listed along the bottom and the y-axis is the percentage of households. You can see that a higher percentage of households are using salmon than are fishing for it, with a minimum of 85% of households using, and many communities with 100% use. This higher level of use than fishing is one indicator of the prevalence of sharing within the region. Households share salmon with other community households and with family and friends in other communities, within the region and beyond.

This map also draws data from our comprehensive household harvest surveys. Here we are showing all the areas used for non-commercial salmon fishing during the last study year for each Bristol Bay community. You can see that fishing locations are focused on the major river systems, including the Togiak, Nushagak, Naknek, Kwijak, and Ikigik rivers. Marine fishing locations are also represented in multiple bays, especially the Togiak and Nushagak Bays.

Because this map is displaying only one year of data collection for each community, it likely represents only a minimum of fishing areas in the region. There could be year-to-year variation in where households fish based on a number of factors such as salmon run performance, social constraints such as free time or economic considerations like the cost of fuel or the availability of working equipment.

So far in this presentation, we've been presenting data resulting from comprehensive household harvest surveys. I'd like to turn now to discussing the other main source of subsistence salmon harvest data. As noted in an earlier slide, households are required to obtain a subsistence salmon permit prior to fishing in Bristol Bay. Permits are available at ADF&G offices, area vendors, and since 2020 online. The permit consists of information about the households, the locations intended to fish, and a harvest calendar for the households to record their harvest by day.

Permits are due back to the department at the end of October in each year. There are approximately 1,100 permits issued annually for the area. Through the 1990s and early 2000s, closer to 1,200 permits permits were issued annually. And in the last 5 years, fewer have been issued on the order of 800 to 1,000. Permits have been required since statehood.

Since 1985, we have averaged an annual return rate around 85%. But this has also been decreasing in recent years. Over the past 5 years, there has been an average return rate of 65%. Unlike household harvest surveys, which do may not occur every year in any one community, permits provide a time series of annual data. So they are particularly useful for analyzing trends over time.

This figure shows the per— percent of permits issued to residents of the region versus non-local residents. I know there is a lot going on with this graph, but the details are less important than the overall point I'd like you to take away here. Which is that the majority of permits are issued to area residents. The year is along the x-axis with percentage of permits along the y-axis. The blue represents permits issued to area residents and the orange at the top is permits issued to non-local residents.

There is year-to-year variability in the distribution of permits and in recent years, a slightly higher percentage of permits are going going to non-local residents, but that percentage remains below 30% of the total.

This is a similar graph as the previous slide, but here we are looking at the percentage of salmon harvest by residency of the permit holder. Given that the majority of permit holders are area residents, it is unsurprising to see here that the majority of the subsistence salmon harvest is also from Bristol Bay residents. Until the early 2010s, area residents area residents harvested 88% of the overall subsistence salmon harvest.

Since then, non-area residents have harvested an increasing percentage of the total harvest, and in 2024, it accounted for 22%.

Before we get into more of the specifics of salmon harvest in Bristol Bay, we're going to start with what the composition of the salmon harvest is. Over the last 10 years from 2015 through 2024, approximately 80% of the salmon harvest on average comprises sockeye salmon, including spawning sockeye. Another 10% of the harvest is made up of kings. Coho, pink, and chum compose the remaining 10% of the harvest. This sockeye salmon dominance of the harvest is characteristic of Bristol Bay subsistence salmon harvest in any time period.

This figure is showing the total number of salmon harvested as estimated from subsistence salmon permits for all residents of the state. While sockeye salmon runs to the region continue to be strong and regulations have not limited subsistence harvests, over time the number of salmon harvested has decreased. The historical average shown by the dotted blue line is approximately 133,000 salmon. This decreased to an average of 106,000 fish for the most recent 10-year average shown shown by the dashed orange line, and further decreased to 91,000 salmon during the most recent 5-year average shown by the dashed gray line. There are likely multiple factors contributing to this decline.

Based on permit returns and ethnographic interviews, there's been a decrease in the number of people fishing. Salmon harvests per permit have been declining, potentially indicate— indicating a decline in the productivity of subsistence fishing. Changes in household participation in commercial fishing activities may also be affecting subsistence harvesting practices.

Rather than looking at the total number of salmon harvested over time, we can look at how many salmon are harvested per permit as an indicator of fishing effort or productivity. Similar to harvests, but of a smaller magnitude, the number of salmon harvested per permit has also decreased over time. Over the past 5 years, Residents have harvested an average of 91 fish per permit compared to historical average of 121 salmon per permit and a 10-year average of 99 salmon. These numbers are for the entirety of Bristol Bay subsistence salmon harvest, but there is variation at the sub-regional level. For example, fishers in the Naknek, Kwiijak, and Togiak Districts harvest more salmon fish per permit than average, closer to 120 fish per permit on average over the last 10 years.

While fishers in the Ugaxiuk and Igigiuk District harvest closer to an average of 60 fish per permit. Nushagak District's harvests are about in the middle with an average of 85 salmon harvested per permit over the last 10 years.

Also, over the last 10 years, the majority of the subsistence salmon harvest has been from the Nushagak and Naknek-Kwijak Districts, which is 5% of the harvest coming from Togiak and less than 2% coming from the Igugik and Ugashik Districts. This is mainly a factor of the size of the salmon runs to these districts plus the variation in human population of these watersheds. Similar to the pie chart shown As I mentioned a few slides ago, sockeye salmon composed the majority of the subsistence salmon harvest from each district. In the Naknek-Kweejak District, the harvest is nearly all sockeye salmon. While sockeye salmon is the most harvested in every other district, the Nushagak District has a higher proportion of kings at nearly 20% of the total.

The Togiak District also has a higher percentage of kings, whereas the Igigiq and Yugashik Districts have higher percentages of coho salmon harvested.

Before we finish our presentation, we wanted to touch briefly on non-salmon fish within Bristol Bay. Although salmon is harvested in greater quantities and is the main focus of subsistence activities, especially in the summer, non-salmon fish are also important to Bristol Bay residents. Our household survey data shows there are several types of non-salmon fish that are harvested, and there are geographic differences areas in which non-salmon fish are harvested more heavily than others. Non-salmon fish can be harvested year-round, though usually residents focus on their harvest in the spring before salmon return or in the fall and winter after salmon season is over. Many non-salmon fish can be harvested close to communities, although people will travel some distance if they have preferred locations for harvesting specific species.

When they do have to travel from the community, people use skiffs to access harvesting locations or snow machines if they're fishing in the winter months through the ice.

There are few regulations limiting the subsistence harvest of non-salmon fish in Bristol Bay. A variety of gear types are used depending on the species being sought. Some common methods include seines or other nets in open water, jigging through through the ice or traps. At fish camps, fishers will sometimes mix milt and small pieces of entrails with water and dump them into the river in order to attract non-salmon species for harvest in some areas of Bristol Bay. While fishing can take many shapes, traditionally harvesting units vary depending on the species.

For example, fishing for Alaska blackfish was traditionally done by a group of related males, whereas fishing through the ice would involve mixed gender groups or just groups of women that included relatives and friends. People of all ages jig for freshwater fish from young to old. In comparison, processing non-salmon fish has traditionally been the responsibility of women. Preservation methods for salmon fish share some commonalities with salmon. Again, depending on the species of salmon fish, they are dried or half-dried, salted, smoked, frozen, or simply eaten fresh.

This figure shows harvest and use information for non-salmon fish in 8 communities for which we have recent household survey data. The percentage of households using non-salmon fish is shown in blue, and the percentage of households fishing for them is in orange. Across the bottom, you can see community— the community community represented and the year. There are generally high percentages of use. Port Alsworth has the smallest percentage of households using non-salmon fish, and still more than 60% of households were using these species in 2021.

Nearly all households in Togiak and Manokotik use non-salmon fish. More than 40% of households fish for non-salmon fish during the year noted, ranging from 46% of Dillingham households to 82% of Togiak households.

This chart shows the composition of the non-salmon harvest. Rather than providing details of each species of non-salmon fish, this chart is divided into marine versus freshwater fish. Marine fish such as halibut are shown in blue, and freshwater fish such as burbot are shown in orange. Again, we are showing data for 8 Bristol Bay communities with recent data. Most communities harvest both marine and freshwater species, though the percentage of marine harvest varies considerably between communities.

The closer the community is to the ocean, the more likely its harvest comes from marine fish. But even in more inland communities like Igiagig or Port Alsworth, some marine fish are harvested. Community household harvests— any community households harvested anywhere from less than 10 pounds of non-salmon fish per capita in Igiagik and Port Alsworth to more than 70 pounds per capita in Twin Hills.

This map displays all the non-salmon search and harvest areas we've documented in the most recent survey year for all Bristol Bay communities. Similar to salmon, many residents fish for non-salmon fish in the rivers and lakes all throughout Bristol Bay. Significant portions of Nushagak Bay and surrounding marine waters are also used.

And lastly, we'd like to share upcoming and ongoing subsistence research we are working on in Bristol Bay. We are currently finishing writing up the results of comprehensive household harvest surveys we conducted in Kaukaunak and Igiagig, which was a project funded by the National Park Service. The Office of Subsistence Management funded a project to update comprehensive survey data in Manakotak, and we are in the process of finishing up that report. Looking forward, there are several research priorities in the region for which we are actively pursuing funding. One priority is to investigate the role of sharing networks for salmon and other subsistence resources in Bristol Bay communities.

This would include looking at local sharing networks within the region, but also the role of salmon exchange between Bristol Bay communities and urban centers like Anchorage. For 20 of the 26 communities in the Bristol Bay region, or 77%, the most recent comprehensive subsistence harvest data is at least 20 years old. So an updated survey in each of these communities is needed. And finally, there are There are questions about subsistence salmon permits that we would like to better understand. In a few Bristol Bay communities, we have conducted permit analyses to gauge the performance of the subsistence salmon permit program.

Through these limited analyses, we found that most residents who were fishing got and returned permits, but that spawning sockeye were not always reported and that there is potentially reporting of household participation based on how the permit is filled out. In light of falling permit returns and a shift to a higher percentage of non-local permit participation since about 2013, we see a need to conduct a more systematic study in communities throughout the region to improve the accuracy of harvest estimates and our understanding of potentially shifting fishing patterns in the region. And because permit participation appears to be decreasing in the region, we will be increasing our outreach efforts in Bristol Bay communities. With funding from the Division of Commercial Fisheries, each spring we will be visiting a couple of Bristol Bay communities to talk about the importance of permits and work on strengthening community relationships. We will also spend time in the fall making phone calls trying to increase permit returns.

For all these projects, We intend to continue working in a partnership with area organizations. We have a strong working relationship with the Bristol Bay Native Association, who has worked with us on many of our projects in the region. The success of Bristol Bay projects is tied directly to these relationships and the assistance and cooperation of local tribal organizations and governments. Thank you to the board for the opportunity to share this overview. We are happy to take any questions.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Mr. Swenson.

I thank you for that, very informative. So 65% of the people are not returning their permits or reporting. Then if they don't return it, do they get another— they— I'm assuming that you don't allow them next year then to subsistence fish. Fish. Is that true?

What does that make sense? Um, so it's 60—. Through the chair, Member Simpson, um, 65% of permit holders are returning their permits, so it's 35% aren't. All right, so if they don't— if they don't return them, what happens? They don't return them, they go to get another permit.

I would have to double-check before I say this for sure, but I believe that they do still get a permit. They may be asked to return an affidavit of whether they fish or didn't fish. But I do believe that we still issue permits. I know for Tier 2 permits, if you don't report, you don't get one the next year. Wouldn't that help getting people to return them?

Through the chair, Member Simpson, it may help, yes. And it may just be that we would delay the return. If you had to return— if you had to get a— if you had to return your permit before getting a new one, we might not see permit returns come in, you know, until until they're ready to get a new permit. So it might delay that. But yeah, it may, it may be a worthwhile thing to look into.

Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Yep, that was a similar question that I had because I know that in some parts of the state there is, there is that restriction and it does very much help, help the numbers and the information that's derived from the subsistence fishing, especially for information purposes for making decisions here. So on, on slide, I guess, 20, where it breaks out, breaks down the harvest composition for salmon, obviously sockeye, but looking at the king number, 10%, and that's over basically a 10-year period. Do you have the king salmon breakdown per drainage on what the dependence is for king salmon in any one area, or is it just a holistic view that you have?

Through the Chair, Member Carpenter, we do have it per a breakdown from particular drainages. Yes. And the majority of it is coming from the Nushagak. There is much smaller harvest in any of the other drainages. And then— and that's kind of what I'd like to see is what that breakdown is for the Nushagak, because that's what we're talking a lot about here.

There's very few restrictions in regards to where you can subsistence fish, which is generally a good thing. But are there any restrictions above a certain point in any of these river systems near the spawning grounds, let's say, for example, where there are any restrictions in place specific to king salmon through the chair. Member Carpenter, I know there are closed waters. I am not personally very familiar with the Bristol Bay drainage, so it may be that somebody from commercial fisheries or from the Bristol Bay region might be able to say if any of those closed waters are up near their spawning streams. I'm not sure.

I'll ask somebody. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. On slide 12, you note that the entire Bristol Bay area is has a all finfish C&T finding. And then you note the ANS for sockeye only in the Kujak River.

Are there other ANSs for salmon or other fish in the Bristol Bay region? Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. So the ANS for the Bristol Bay region is 157,000 fish to 172,171, and then there is a specific finding just for the Kujak River sockeye, but no other specific findings for species or drainage. [Speaker:COMMISSIONER ARKOOSH] That, that makes sense. And then on Slide 17, where you show us an example of a subsistence permit, is there any exercise for verifying eligibility?

I see there, there's a line for an authorizing officer signature, but are we checking eligibility in terms of residency? Madam Chair, no, we are not. Okay, I see that, you know, you're attesting and certifying that it's all factual and whatnot, but I'm just kind of curious if you— if there's an authorizing signature required for that. And then I want to pull on this HomePAC thread because we have a proposal in front of us. How is HomePAC captured?

And this might be a broader question because it's— I don't know if it's captured in the subsistence How do we know what the use is there, Mr. Bowers?

Thanks, Madam Chair. So the, the board has authorized commercial fishermen to retain part of their commercial catch for their own use. So that, that's kind of the language that's used in the regulation the board adopted. And that catch that's retained for a person's own use must be reported on an ADF&G fish ticket. That is colloquially referred to as home pack.

So, so it's reported on fish tickets. We, we know that around the state there probably are varying levels of accuracy in that reporting. We've, we've heard that about this fishery. You know, there's been citations issued in other fisheries where people failed to report home pack. So that, that's the, that's how that information is captured.

And it's, and it's not, it's while it may be used for In a way that's similar to fish that are caught for subsistence purposes under subsistence regulations, it's commercial catch. It's caught during a commercial fishery by a commercial permit holder. It's just not sold. It's retained.

Interesting. Can you give me the reg citation for that authorization at some point during this meeting? [Speaker:JOHN] Yes. [Speaker:JULIE] Um, because it's very curious to me in that proposal, for example, and I'm bringing it up during the subsistence section, just, um, that they're seeking potentially to restrict subsistence. We've got this HomePAC that is, air quotes, commercial, although it's not being sold, and it's going to people who would not otherwise be eligible there's no— they would not be eligible for subsistence permit in many instances, in some, nor would they— there's no personal use fishery in this area because it's a subsistence designated subsistence area.

So there's a rub there.

I guess I'm thinking out loud here a little bit, but I was curious how that was captured. And in the fish ticket, is there a specific line item enumeration of home pack, or is it included with all the catch?

Madam Chair, yeah, so there's a— I think it's called a disposition code on the fish ticket where the person reports how much fish they retained for their own use. It's given a specific code and written on the fish ticket, supposed to be separate from the fish fish that are sold. And has the department issued any orders that would restrict or— yeah, well, would restrict the amount of kings that are allowed to be retained in home pack?

No, we haven't done that, and I, I would have to explore our authorities to, to do that. I'm—.

Yeah, I can't think of a situation where we've, you know, restricted the amount of fish an individual permit holder could take in a commercial fishery. Somebody else probably can think of one, but I'm having trouble thinking of one right now. No, we haven't done that. No, I appreciate that. And I'm just trying to think of like if it is a question of authority, if that is something that the board would have authority over and would need to provide that direction specifically to the department, or if the department currently has that authority to do so by EO or other method.

I think we need to explore that authority question. Thank you.

Mr. Swenson.

I have a friend that's a commercial fisherman, and we talked about this, and he said, you know, I said, well, how many kings did you catch last year? And he said, eh, more than normal, 20. But he said a lot of them were just, you know, jacks. And he said, you know, if they want to say you don't take a home pack, we'll just claim it as subsistence. So, I mean, I guess you could catch them if you were right there and he had a bunch of kings.

Some of these kings in, but otherwise, I mean, they just call it subsistence, I think. [FOREIGN] Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, in line with where Member Carlson-Vandort was going, I, I'm wondering, does the department have that home pack data broken up by resident and non-resident? So could we be the retention of the HomePAC numbers for residents and non-residents alike?

Through the Chair, Ms. Erwin, we have not published the data that way, and I, you know, I don't think we have ever looked at commercial catch data by residency, um, that might be pretty difficult to get at, but—. Okay, thank you. I think it would just be interesting because it seems as though this is a way for almost a subsistence— almost subsistence take, um, by— and by resident or non-resident if it's commercial, uh, considering what this home pack is kind of ending up doing, retaining without any retaining it if there is no need to sell or intention to sell. So thanks. Let me follow up on that a little bit.

Does the department do anything with the HomePAC data? It is not in any of the presentations. I don't recall ever seeing it presented to the board in my tenure.

Yeah, it is published in the staff comments for this proposal. Okay. It is published in the staff comments for this proposal. Okay. Published in a lot of the annual management reports.

I'm not going to say it's published in every annual management report. Okay. But it's— yeah. Yes, thank you. Because I need to read a little bit more closely.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. Do— if you're living— if you're a resident of Dillingham or wherever, and, and— but you're a resident and you've got a commercial permit, can you claim your subsistence harvest as your commercial fishing? Like, just say—. I'll let you answer that.

Through the chair, Member Woods, no. The commercial harvests are separate from subsistence harvests. Thank you. And one more. And the restrictions on subsistence time area, but the net, You're there.

What's— is there any restriction on size mesh of the net being able to be used? So, Chairman Wood, no, there's not.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you for your presentation. Looks like you've exhausted our questions.

And while you switch out there, we'll wait to talk about sport fisheries.

Whenever you're ready, gentlemen, please begin. All right, thank you, Madam Chair. Um, for the record, my name is Lee Borden. I'm the Bristol Bay Area Management Biologist for Division of Sport Fish, and here at the table with me is Jay Baumer. He's the Regional Management Coordinator for Region 2 for sport fish.

Today I'll be presenting an overview of sport fisheries in the Bristol Bay Management Area. This presentation can be found RC3 tab 9.

So first I'd like to take a minute to orient everyone to the sport fisheries management area for Bristol Bay. You can see that here outlined in black with all the main river drainages in different colors. It's a very large area. It's approximately 40,000 square miles or roughly the size of the state of Virginia. A lot of ground to cover there.

From Cape Newenham in the west to Cape Menchikoff in the east and everything that drains into the bay between those two points. We break these— we break the management area up into three different sections just for ease of discussion. So here I have circled the east side drainages, including Ugashik, Agagak, Naknak, Alagnak, and Kwijak River drainages.

And in that circle, we have the central area, and that is primarily Nushigak and Wood River Lake systems.

And out in the west, we have Togiak, as well as Kaluukik and Osviak and other systems. So on this next slide, I have effort for Bristol Bay Management Area broken down by section for the past 10 years. You can see here that the eastern section is the main driver of effort for Bristol Bay. Generally hovers between 60 and 70% of the effort for Bristol Bay. In yellow there, you can see the central section generally falls around 30%, just maybe a little bit below 30% sometimes for the central section.

And then the remainder of the effort for Bristol Bay is in the western section.

In this graph, we have the total effort in angler days for the past decade for the whole Bristol Bay management area. You can see, you know, obviously 2020 was an outlier. You know, we all know why, you know, travel restrictions and such. So aside from 2020, you can see that effort has remained relatively stable. You know, 2019 and prior generally hovered between 70,000 and 80,000 angler days a year.

Post-COVID, it bounced back to approximately that. And then the more recent years, it's between 60,000 and 70,000 angler days a year. So relatively stable effort. If anything, just a little bit of dip in effort in the last handful of years.

Next, I will discuss the proposals that we have in front of us at this meeting for sport fish. I've kind of grouped them here just for ease of of the user here. We have 3 proposals in regards to Nushagak King Salmon that were taken up by Sport Fish Division. That would be Proposal 63, 66, and 67. We have 6 proposals that were in regards to methods and means, 96, 97, and then 101 through 104.

We have 3 proposals that were for salmon species other than Nushagak King Salmon, 98, 105, and 185. And we have two miscellaneous proposals that didn't fit neatly into those categories, which would be 99 and 100. The remaining slides in this presentation are meant to provide information that would be helpful for these proposals.

So we'll start off here with Nushagak Mulchatna River drainage. This is the sport fish regulatory map. This can be found in the regular regulatory handbook for sport fish regulations.

You can see here that the entire river drainage closes to sport fishing for king salmon on July 31st to protect spawning king salmon. But in addition to that, all the waters that are in blue right there above that arrow from the Iowa the Iowithla River mouth upstream, including the Iowithla, all close earlier on July 24th to additionally protect spawning king salmon.

In addition to that, we have these two circled areas here, the Kokwok River and then the Nushagak River above its confluence with Harris Creek, that are closed to king salmon fishing year-round.

Moving on to some data for Nushagak River king salmon. Now, this data would be relevant for proposals 63, 66, and 67. Here we have the last 10 years of sport fishing effort and angler days, as well as king salmon catch and harvest. As mentioned in the previous report, or oral report that I was giving earlier, You can see that effort, catch, and harvest are all down.

It's a downward trend that we've been seeing essentially since the run decline started. So just one note here also is that angler days of effort are for all species. We can't really separate that out. But for Nushagak River— for the Nushagak River specifically, a majority of the effort is for king salmon.

And for Proposal 67 specifically, I kind of pulled out the Mulchatna River and the Stuyahok River as they're addressed specifically in that proposal. You can see here there's a little bit of an outlier for 2024 for catch for Mulchatna River. I chatted with the folks over in statewide harvest survey program. There was a couple responses that were a little bit above average what we would expect to see, and they kind of made that number jump to 2,000 for that year, but that is kind of a statistical outlier. Main takeaway here is that k'etch harvest effort for Molchatna is relatively low.

You know, like I said in the earlier slide, that effort there is not primarily for king salmon. Folks fishing up in that region aren't generally targeting kings, they're targeting other species. Rainbow trout, coho salmon, things like that. So you can see catch is relatively low, harvest is relatively low, and in fact 2023 and 2024 was reported to have no harvest on the Mulchatna. For the Stuyahok River, there's often not enough responses in the statewide harvest survey to get data for it, and that just kind of goes to show that there's not a ton of effort on the Stuyahok River itself.

Generally speaking, it's small groups, small float groups targeting rainbow trout, other species like that. So that's why you'll see almost no catch and harvest of king salmon on the Stehehawke River.

Next, we'll bounce over to Naknek River drainage. Yet again, we have regulatory map for sport fish here, can also be found in the reg handbook. I just want to point out some areas here that have special regulations. This big circle here, it's also the area that has the white cross-hatching there, is only unbaited single-hook artificial lures year-round. And so that's for Naknek Lake and most of the tributaries pouring into it.

Here in this smaller area with the purple circle here, you have the special regulatory area for upper Naknek River. That's where a majority of the rainbow trout fishing takes place, and the regulations there are to protect rainbow trout. We have a spawning closure there, and it's also closed year-round to fishing for king salmon. Additional protection for king salmon comes in the form of no retention allowed on Big Creek. So I've circled that here.

Big Creek is one of the main spawning tributaries for king salmon in the Naknek River river drainage and is protected with non-retention currently. And then this blue circle here, we have Paul's Creek and King Salmon Creek. They're closed year-round to fishing for king salmon. And King Salmon Creek, as, as the name would suggest, is also another main spawning tributary, the Naknek, for king salmon.

So if we zoom in here on that upper regulatory section This map should help you out with Proposal 99 and 100, which essentially propose to do the same thing, which is to add that crosshatched area in the map to that upper river regulatory area. And that would bring with it the special regulations for rainbow trout and king salmon. So this would move the marker from Rapids Camp down to an area known on the river as Rainbow Bend.

A little bit of data here for Naknek River. This should help with proposals 96 through 100 and 185. This is the last decade of effort. You can see other than 2020, it stayed pretty stable, hovering between 12,000 and 14,000 or 12,000 and 16,000 angler days.

One thing to note here is this is effort for all species. But through some creel surveys we've been doing over there, we can see that even though effort has stayed relatively stable, there has been a shift in what the effort is directed at. There's quite a bit less effort for king salmon over there now than there had been prior. A lot of that effort has shifted towards resident species like rainbow trout. So while effort has stayed relatively the same for the past decade or so, there has been a shift in what that effort is, is targeting.

And then we'll talk a little bit about regulations for rainbow trout and Arctic char/dolly varden in the Naknek River as they are discussed in Proposal 96 and 97. So all flowing waters of the Naknek from March 1st through November 14th are only unbaited artificial lure or fly. Bag limits for char and dolly varden are pretty conservative in the, in the high season from June 8th to October 31st with 3 fish. And then in the slower season, November 1st through June 7th, it's liberalized to 10 fish. And that is to allow for some harvest in the slower season that generally is primarily utilized by watershed residents.

Rainbow trout bagging possession limits during the busy season, June 8th through October 31st, is a 1-fish limit, must be less than 18 inches. And then in the slow season over the winter and into the spring, November 1st through June 7th, that bounces up to 5-fish limit to allow some harvest that is primarily utilized by watershed residents there. In that upper regulatory section that was circled in purple earlier, the special reg area at the, the upper portion of the river, you have unbaited single-hook artificial lures or flies year-round, and all sport fishing is closed April 10th to June 7th for rainbow trout spawning closure.

Some more data here for Naknek River rainbow trout. This is a size composition for 1999 on the left, and on the right you'll see 19 and 2019 and 2020. So the main takeaways here are the bimodal distribution of size in the sport catch, which indicates a healthy population. So you'll see these peaks here. You have a peak for bigger fish, a peak of smaller fish, and in the middle you have a depressed cohort.

This is what we would expect to see in a healthy population. You have a cohort that has, um, good, uh, conditions for survival that comes about. They survive at a high rate. In turn, they outcompete the fish that are just beneath them, so the cohort just beneath them in size gets outcompeted and ends up being suppressed. That suppressed cohort then gives space and room for the next cohort coming in behind them, so they come in strong, and so on and so forth through time.

This— these bimodal graphs will just progress through time over and over continuously. So this is exactly what we'd expect to see in a healthy population.

Some data here for Naknek River king salmon for Proposed '98. This is the last 10 years. It's angler days, catch, and harvest.

So for Naknek River, as I said before, this— the effort is for all species. And on the Naknek River, a majority of the effort is towards species other than king salmon. So the effort hasn't declined like you would expect to see it decline if that effort was just for king salmon. But we can't really separate that out of the statewide harvest survey. But you will see that catch and harvest have declined, as we would expect with the recent declines in, in king salmon in the bay.

So yeah, you can see up to 2019, catch and harvest are kind of staying stable. There's a little bit of bounce around in that catch, but the harvest stays pretty stable. And then 2020 and onward, catch and harvest are decline.

Next, we'll jump over the Togiak River drainage. Yet again, we got another regulatory map here, can also be found in the regs summary booklet. All waters that are red are closed year-round to king salmon sport fishing, and there's a proposal on the table that would open up this section right here from Gishik Creek up to Pine Pungo Kepuk Creek to fishing for king salmon and then potentially also the Pungo Kepuk itself.

On this slide, we have some data for Togiak River king salmon. You can see here angler days catch and harvest are displayed and you can see the decline that you would expect for— that we would expect to see in pretty much all the drainages.

In 2024, actually, there was no recorded harvest in the statewide harvest survey. So harvest has declined to a point where there's no longer even reported harvest. And as you can see there, catch has also declined significantly.

Next, we'll go through some sport fishing regulations for Agaikik and Ugashik drainages as they're addressed in Proposal 101. For all species other than rainbow trout and Arctic grayling, the regulations are found in bay-wide general regs. For rainbow trout, the bag and possession limit during the busy season, June 8th through October 31st, is 1 fish with no size limit. And during the slow season, November 1st through June 7th, it's a 5-fish limit, only 1 of which can be greater than 20 inches. This provides some harvest opportunity during that slow season, and that opportunity is primarily utilized by local watershed residents.

Egegik River drainage, Arctic grayling, the Pesharof Lake outlet, including lake waters and the Egegik River within a quarter mile of the outlet, there's no retention of Arctic grayling, and the remainder of the drainage has a 2-fish limit. In the Ugashik River drainage, the Ugashik Narrows is a no-retention area for Arctic grayling. The Ugashik River itself is closed to fishing for Arctic grayling year-round, and the remainder of the drainage has a 2-fish limit with no size limit. So you can see pretty conservative regulations there.

Proposal 103 is in reference to chumming regulations, so I just thought I'd summarize those for you here. The current regulation, as it stands is that in waters closed to the use of bait, sport fishing guides and guided anglers are prohibited from placing in the water any substance for the purpose of attracting fish by scent.

And here we have a list of the drainages in Bristol Bay that do have bait restrictions. So within these drainages, there are areas where this regulation applies: the Ungalithluk, Wood, Nushugak, Kweejaq, Lagnak, Naknek, and Togiak River drainages.

And lastly, here we have sport fishing regulations for Moraine Creek, Kulik River, American Creek, and Brooks River, as they're addressed in Proposal 104. For species other than rainbow trout and coho salmon, the regulations are in general regs for bay-wide regulations, and there are bag limits allowed retention for all salmon species— char, grayling, and northern pike— in these systems. This table, I kind of summarize the regulations that are in place for these systems. You can see here that they all have spawning closures, April 10 to June 7, to protect spawning rainbow trout during the busy season. In, in the middle of the summer and into the fall, most of them have unbaited single-hook regulations, and all of them have prohibition on retention of rainbow trout.

And during the slow season over the winter, they all have liberalized bag limits to allow for some harvest. And like I've said before, that generally speaking is utilized by, by folks in that area and those drainages.

And with that, I can take some questions.

Mr.

Owen. Through the chair, thank you very much for your presentation. My question is on page or slide number 13. It's looking at the Naknek River rainbow trout, and I just had a question about the graphs because the one on the left goes up to frequency of 60 and the one on the right goes up to a frequency of 30. Now, when we're presented this data in this way, it looks as though we can do a side-by-side comparison.

However, if you were to overlay that with just one axis, you would see that there would be a strike difference in the frequency of each of these. So why did you choose to do it that way?

Yeah, through the Chair, Ms. Erwin, There was— it was just a function of the 1999 survey being designed slightly differently and more samples were obtained. So, you know, I believe that if we obtained the same number of samples as they did in 1999, that bimodal representation would still be present. And that's primarily what we're looking for. So, yeah, even if we added an extra 30, 40, 50 fish to our sampling in those years, we still would have seen this bimodal presentation of size. So that is essentially a signal of a healthy population.

So it was just a function of less samples for those years.

Question on slide 7, please.

So my question is, is that earlier today you presented that there was non-retention of kings in the Nushagak River ordered by EO, um, for '23 and '24, and yet there's both harvest and catch. Can you explain that to me, please? Uh, yeah, Madam Chair, that would be harvest. Um, well, so for the catch aspect, non-retention would still allow for catch and release, so we would still see some catch, and the harvest that took place would have been harvest that occurred prior to the emergency orders being issued.

So at what point was the emergency orders issued? What date do you recall? Um, I can get that for you. I don't have that right in front of me at this moment. Okay, let me, let me, let me put this a little bit differently.

Maybe what I'm looking I'm looking for is a better illustration of the angler days. And so this is a helpful graphic and I like it, but what if we sort of took the angler days of the month and showed the catch and the harvest rates associated with each day of the king salmon season so that I can see when are the most productive days, when is the catch happening, and doing that for— I mean, ideally I'd like to see it for like 10 years so that it captures a little bit before we ran into the SOC buzzsaw, but also certainly the last 5 years I think would be particularly helpful. Can we do that? Madam Chair, yes. So we do have creel survey data that, that I can put together for you that would get at that.

I'm not sure I can, I can put it together in the exact format that you're asking for, but I can put together some information from our creel surveys. So we have data from a 2007 creel survey, a 2019 creel survey, and then '23, '24, and '25 creel surveys. The '23, '24, and '25 creel surveys were submitted as additional reports reports, so they should be available to you guys. But I will put— I will work on putting something together for you. Yeah.

Thank you. And what I'm sort of envisioning is something that looks very similar to this, right? So that you would have the number on the y-axis, but instead of the year on the x-axis, you would have the day of the month. And then, you know, the— there would be a bar essentially for each year that you did have data. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense. I'll see what I can do. Great, thank you so much. Any other questions? All right.

Thanks, gentlemen. Appreciate your presentation today. Thank you.

All right, let's take about a 20-minute break or so and we'll get set up for our— I believe we have traditional knowledge reports coming up, and then we'll see how much time time allows for getting into public testimony this afternoon. So about 20 minutes or so. Thanks.

All right, welcome back, everybody. The time is 3:53. We are back on the record, 7 members present, and we're going to go ahead and roll into our traditional knowledge portion. I just had it in front of me of the agenda. So for those that are curious, the list of traditional knowledge reports that signed up is located on RC 13.

There are 4, I believe, 3 of which we'll hear from this afternoon, as far as I know. So traditional knowledge reports are relatively new to the board's process, certainly since the last Bristol Bay meeting, and it, it is a recognition from this board that local knowledge and Traditional knowledge is an important aspect of best available science. As such, access to these knowledge systems should be considered an important part of informing the board's decision through their close proximity and intimate, often longstanding relationships with fish resources, the environment, and the ecological systems that are critical to fishery sustainability. The board endeavors to incorporate traditional knowledge more intentionally into its process by seeking and inviting traditional knowledge holders recognized by their community, tribe, or other organizations to share their experiences, values, alternative and/or independent observations and data collections directly with the board. For the purposes of this meeting, the invitation was made through a new agenda item.

The board has provided the opportunity to sign up to provide traditional knowledge relevant to the proposals and subject matter under for consideration at this meeting. The time allowance will be 10 minutes. And again, this is intended to be a continuation of the trial or pilot approach that the board has been practicing, experimenting with, and incorporating this very specific information into our process. I will also note that the board, through its process The committee may solicit additional feedback on this approach and suggestions how it could be improved for future regulatory board meetings. So if you have thoughts on that, please let me know.

I would welcome them. OK, so let's go ahead and begin with our traditional knowledge reports. The first person on my list is Ms. Leilani Luerz of the Togiak Tribe. And I would invite you to come forward, place yourself on the record, and give your report, please. Welcome.

Madam Chair and members of the board and fisheries, my name is Leilani Lourdes and I'm originally from Togiak, Alaska, located in Bristol Bay. This is my first ever testimony, so I'm really nervous. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I was formally nominated by the traditional council Togiak to speak on the importance of the traditional knowledge and management of the herring fishery. For the people of Togiak and their surrounding Yup'ik communities, herring are not just a resource.

They are foundation to our food system, our culture, our responsibility to the future for future generations. Our relationship with herring goes back thousands of years. Sorry, we're struggling with our timer here. We're good. Sorry about that.

Please continue. Thank you. Our relationship with herring goes back thousands of years. Long before statehood, long before modern fisheries management, our people depended on careful observation, restraint, and respect to ensure the herring would return year after year. Traditional knowledge is not outdated information.

It is living knowledge passed down through experience, practice, and close attention to the ecosystem. Our elders taught us that when herring are ready, they— where they spawn, how weather, ice, and currents affect them, and when to leave this alone. The knowledge comes from generations of watching the same bays, the same shorelines, and the same spawning grounds over a lifetime. In Togiak, we do not measure abundance only in numbers. We measure it by timing, by behavior, by body condition, by how herring move, and by how other species respond.

We know when herring spawn is early or late. We know when it is thin hatchery are stressed. We know when predators arrive sooner than usual or when herring avoid places they once used. These observations cannot always be captured by datasets, but they are critical warning signs. Our people have always practiced conservation.

We take only what we need. We avoid harvesting when conditions are poor. We protect spawning areas because we understand that herring are a keystone species. When herring are healthy, everything else benefits salmon, sea birds, seals, whales, and ultimately the people who depend on all of them. When herring decline, the damage does not stop at the fishery.

It ripples through the entire ecosystem and through our communities. Food security is reduced. Cultural practices are interrupted. Elders lose the ability to pass on knowledge through practice. Young people lose the opportunity, responsibility on the land and water.

Our knowledge teaches us that because we can harvest, does that mean we should? Restraint is a form of respect. Leaving fish in the water is sometimes the most important management decision we can make. The Togiak Herring Fishery is especially important because it has already experienced dramatic change in the past. Our communities remember what happens when pressure exceeds the systems can support.

These memories are not abstract. They are lived experiences that continue to guide how we think about management today. We have not had a market in several years that have aligned with the values of that— of our community, a community that shares with its elders first, then families who need it, oftentimes sharing with communities across from Alaska, from the Chigniks to Utqiagvik. Our region generally picks pond kelp, whole herring, in areas that— areas in and outside of commercial management areas. The harvesting period for subsistence The most consistent spawn on kelp usually fall between the 1st of May and the second week of June.

When decisions move farther away from community-based observations, people lose trust in the process. Effective management depends on the trust and cooperation of the people and the people who manage our fisheries. When local people feel ignored, the system weakens. Incorporating traditional knowledge is not about rejecting science, it's about strengthening it. Traditional knowledge and the Western science are most effective when they work together.

One provides long-term place-based understanding, the other provides tools for measurement and analysis. Our elders often remind us that borrowing these resources from our grandchildren, that teaching carries real weight in how we approach hearing. We ask the board to approach this decision with the same mindset. In closing, I ask that you to— I ask that— I ask you to listen to not just numbers, but to the people who live and fish year after year. Listen to the knowledge that has sustained herring long before modern management existed.

Liana, and thank you for your time and consideration. Liana, Leilani, thank you for your report today. Quick question for you. Do you have any or observational data that is fairly recent about the health of the Togiak herring? Within the last 4 years, we have harvested harvested one of the— some of the thickest herring roe and kelp.

Whether that's due to it being commercially fished or not, but it's some of the healthiest herring roe and kelp we've harvested. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you for being here today. Appreciate you.

Did you— did you have one, Olivia? Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Ms. Raulston. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was trying to think of it. Do— do you or the Togiak Tribe have any any concerns or comments about the proposal 188, which is with regards to the hearing management plan. And if not, I hope you're around for Committee of the Whole and maybe we could hear from you then. We do.

We strongly oppose the 15% catch of hearing. Thank you for your report. Swenson, I just have a quick question for you. Thank you for that information.

I didn't understand until a year or so ago the herring go back to sea if they're not kept. So what if you put out— I mean, is there any advantage to putting out these collections that can collect the— you know, like build almost a dock, and then you put the kelp on it, and then the herring come, put their eggs on that. You get the eggs, and they go back to sea. Has that ever been considered? Considered?

No, because our kelp grow relatively quickly after, like the next year. And when we go to the same rookeries, they wouldn't spawn in our bay either. And to build a dock, okay, just, it's not okay. Thank you. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you. Um, in terms of the marine mammals, uh, and walrus in particular, is how much of a connection connection is there between the walrus and where they're hauling out and the herring? Are they using that as a food source? Is it supplemental to the shellfish?

I know when we've harvested walrus during the herring season, we notice herring eggs on their whiskers. Similar to the seals.

I personally have not cut open the guts to look at to see if they're eating actual herring. Maybe one of my— the ones that hunt the walrus and would actually cut into the guts would know that, but I personally do not know if they're eating herring. But I wonder if—. I'd have to look. Thank you.

All right, thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you for the opportunity. And the next person on the list is Mr. Everett Anderson. I understand he will be here tomorrow, so we will pick him up at the conclusion of the public testimony portion of the agenda. Is Tim Troll here?

Hi, Tim. Welcome.

Nope, just make sure that the red light comes on when you push the button.

Hello, my name is Tim Troll. Uh, Madam Chairman, members of the board, I'm the executive director of the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust, and I also coordinate what's called the Southwest Alaska Salmon Habitat Partnership, one of 22 national partnerships recognized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But I'm here mostly just today on a fun fact to let everybody— the board and members of this— people here— that Bristol Bay is approaching this year a very significant anniversary. 75 Years ago in 1951, the Bristol Bay fishery transformed from a power— from from a sailboat fishery to a power fishery.

1951 Was the first year that powerboats were allowed in Bristol Bay. That year there were probably only 85 sailboats— 85 powerboats versus 600-some sailboats. By 1952, the number of powerboats had increased tenfold to about 850, 200-some sailboats left. By 1954, there were no sailboats left. So 75 years is a remarkable period of time over that fishery because from 1884 to 1950, it was exclusively a sailboat fishery.

In 2022, we restored one of those sailboats in Homer and sailed it back to Bristol Bay. It now resides in Naknek. We're slowly trying to restore the traditional way of fishing in Bristol Bay with sailboats. So if it ever gets too busy for you here and you would like to return to a sailboat fishery, we have one available and you'd only have to manage one boat. So, uh, but I primarily wanted to make you aware that this is a significant year in the history of Bristol Bay's fishery, because the change to power, of course, changed everything.

So that's my testimony. Thank you, Mr. Troll. Is that sailboat less than 32 feet? That's why they're— that's how the 32-foot limit came out. Yeah, it's 20, 28 feet long.

Interesting. Thank you. I've long wondered that. Thanks for that. Mr. Wood?

Yeah, I just want to say I visited the Naknek the museum in Naknek and even went to a board meeting, watched that process, and it's an awesome place. What a resource. I learned so much being at that museum and checking out the history. So I'm glad that's in the community. Yes, the boat now belongs to the Bristol Bay Historical Society.

We did get it back in the water this year just to swell it up. We haven't— we did fish it in 2022, just briefly, uh, the biggest year ever in Bristol Bay. And we hope to get it back in the water and have it at least sailing for people to get a chance to see it and be in it at least once a year. So, but look for it out there. It's a beautiful boat.

All right, I don't see any other questions. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. Next on the list we have Gayla Hosseth, Frank Woods, and Tommy Tilden of the Choctaw Young Tribal Council.

Welcome. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the board. My name is Gayla Hossett and I'm the first chief of Chugach Tribal Council located in Dillingham, Alaska. And with me I have Thomas Tilden, who's our second chief, and Frank Woods, who's a member chief. The Chugach Tribe consists of 3,216 tribal citizens.

Chugach is a Yup'ik name of the place now known as Dillingham, Alaska, located at the at the mouth of the Nushagak and Wood Rivers. For thousands of years, this location has been an essential gathering place for Alaska Native peoples due to the abundant salmon runs, access to freshwater and marine resources, and its role as a travel corridor between river systems. The people of Chilkoot are primarily Yup'ik, with longstanding cultural, familiar, and economic ties to the Nushagak River watershed. Salmon, particularly Chinook, Sockeye, chum, coho, and pink are fundamental to subsistence, to our subsistence life identity and intergenerational knowledge that has been handed down to us from generation from generation, emphasizing on respect, sharing, and sustainability. During the 19th century, Russian contact and later American governance brought profound changes.

Commercial fishing expanded rapidly in Crystal Bay, and Chief Tilden and Chief Woods are going to emphasize a little bit more on that during our testimony. The tribe has constantly provided testimony to the Alaska Board of Fisheries to document historical use, advocate for subsistence priority, which is so important to uphold the state of Alaska subsistence priority in our region and throughout the state of Alaska. If we manage for subsistence, everyone will have a piece of the pie. We need to find a healthy balance for subsistence commercial, sport, and personal use so that everybody has access to fish. Ensuring escapement goals remain— that we need to also make sure that escapement goals remain and that we bring back escapement goals to all of the river systems in Alaska are essential for management of fish and protecting all of our salmon stocks.

Chugachng always emphasized that salmon are not merely a resource but a way of life. The tribe continues to assert that sustainable management must account for cultural survival, food security, and long-term health of salmon runs for future generations. And I'll turn it over to Chief Tilden. Thank you very much. My name is Thomas Tilden.

I've been fishing, commercial fishing, since 1965. I've been a subsistence fisherman forever, and it wasn't too— it wasn't too long ago that in order to subsistence fish at either Fish Camp down on the Gushik River, or if you belonged to Karkswent or Ekuk, you would have to go 1 mile above the fishing line in order to subsistence fish. If you fished within the district, you had to hide, and a lot of folks couldn't afford to run up to the fishing area to subsistence fish, and they would hide. They would hide in the grass and catch their fish and process it and hang it. Times have changed.

It's the Board of Fish and Staff that has made it easier for us to be able to subsistence fish within the fishing zone. And one of the things that traditional knowledge has contributed to saving the fishery in a lot of ways, when you look back in the days of the traps. It was the Alaska Native people that wrote to the federal government asking that the fish traps stop and allow them to be able to catch their traditional fish. We were also able to utilize our village power government-to-government talks with the federal government to stop the mine, the Pebble Mine. It was traditional knowledge that was able to take a look at some of the science that was behind that Pebble Mine and say, "No, that's wrong," or, "You didn't give enough information." I'll just use pinks as an example.

When they did their fishery assessment up on the Koktuli River, they eliminated the pinks. They said there was no pinks up there. But we know as Alaska Native people that a lot of pinks go up there. But traditional knowledge can be used hand in hand with both the Fish Board and the staff. But thank you very much.

For the record, my name is Frank Woods. I'm a Dillingham resident, lifelong. Commercial fishing since I was 17, owned and operated a commercial boat since 1985. That's 40 years of traditional knowledge in the Bristol Bay area you're talking boat. In RC 21, there's a picture of a modern boat in 1979.

It's a 29-30-foot Coslin Cole wooden vessel that was modern at that time. In 1980, they came out with fiberglass, Modgetex, Rawsons, and aluminum shoreboats. At that time, when you owned a Rawson or a Modgetex or a shoreboat, you were a high-class fisherman.

If you— I have a picture in my office where a Majitek looks like a skiff. My last bow picker was 13.5 wide. It looks like a modern vessel. I own— now own a 15 wide. Looks like a monster of a boat.

And even that boat getting too small.

I say that with some zealous because number one, the fisheries has changed and how commercial fisheries is important to subsistence. In RC22, there's a— it's Technical Paper 116 written by John Wright and Molly Chikluk. I'm going to reference a bunch of material there in the subsistence harvest of the herring togiaq. Kelp Togiak District of Bristol Bay is one of the very first technical papers in the early '90s that was presented to this board. I read it and I was impressed with all the technical detail, the history of the whole area, the importance of subsistence herring, and the methods and means and its impact on the local village of all of Bristol Bay.

So the report provides information on the subsistence use of herring spawned on kelp in the Togiak District of Bristol Bay. Information and gathering during the time of May in 1983. That's the year I graduated high school. An anchor point area in the Klu Kuk/Meterwik, and this all was taking place in the areas of concern under the Togiak Herring Management Plan. In addition, the report includes data from systematic survey of a commercial fisherman in Togiak, interviews with key residents at Twin Hills, Togiak, Manokotak, Aleknagek, Dillingham, Clark's Point, King Cove, Sand Point, Chignik, and Petersburg.

It's a pretty detailed report. It's 78 pages long. It's an RC22, I believe.

So this report references a whole list of things. The main one is, for me, is this purpose. The purpose of the document, a customary and traditional use of the herring spawn on kelp in the Togiak District of Bristol Bay. Addressing the particular criteria and defining subsistence use identified by the Joint Boards of Fish and Game.

Information was gathered by observing and participating activities in the Togiak District by herring season in May of 1983 and through interviews and residents in Northwest Bristol Bay area. This report provides information on the subsistence use of herring spawn on kelp in the Upper Bristol Bay. Information gathered during this time was a sample of kelping groups in the Anchor Point area and the Kluukuk Bay is where where the majority of the information came from.

I'll get to my important main points. As we all, we all seen pictures of Bristol Bay and what Togiak looks like. Togiak Herring Management Plan is still in effect. They just removed the rule on the rule provision for herring definition of commercial fisheries.

So when I'm, when I'm talking, I'd like to— in this report, it outlines the importance of commercial fishing and how that group of people with underlimited entry helped subsistence activity by providing methods and means, transportation to and from the area.

In the '80s, we were still migratory people for subsistence. There was Lewis Point For king salmon on Nunavut, there's camps all over. Asviak, Matagewik, Kluukuk, where my grandmother was raised. There was fish and harvesting camps all over Bristol Bay. You don't see that anymore because the outmigration of permits removed that tool for people to access resource.

There are now 730,000 people in Alaska. 140,000 Live, um, are natives, but about half of those, almost 100,000, live in Anchorage. A prime example would be our village, um, our village corporation, which isn't a tribe, our for-profit corporation. Half our shareholders live in Anchorage surrounding. So that means out of 11,000 shareholders, we have 5,000 living in Anchorage that we got to help supply a steady supply of subsistence food.

That subsistence food is not just important for what we, what we eat, it's how we practice and live that lifestyle.

And what I've seen the commercial fishery done is the depermits have increased the and triple the production. If you don't— oh, I'm sorry, I'm looking at, I, I'm looking at the big picture. I'll refer back. The fishery has changed so, so aggressive that that commercial fishery is no longer viable for the average local resident. It's even less viable for the native population that depends on the resource to live.

About 10 years ago, I I did an income by zip code. Manakotak, Togiak, Stuyahok, Dillingham— King Salmon's the richest community in Bristol Bay by zip code. Those villages that depend on resource— moose, caribou, fish, and subsistence— are actually growing, and there's actually population in the study. The pop— the villages that are dying have less access to resource and don't have a limited entry system to help fund that activity. So, Madam Chair, I appreciate your— I was tasked with this this morning.

I hope I did a good enough job to pass on information. There's a whole list of stuff that we could be presenting. I thank you for your time. Thank you, all three of you, for being here to, to, to speak with us. Quick question for you.

All— I don't know if it's quick, but, you know, I'm looking at 150-plus years, probably conservatively, of knowledge of the area right now in front of us. And my question is related to king salmon on the Nushagak specifically, and whether or not there's any observations that either of you have about any subsistence impacts. Have there been any felt in recent years, or has it been largely mitigated or you're not feeling those Chinook subsistence impacts. Thank you, Madam Chair. Since I'm primarily the subsistence user on the beach when they're out there commercial fishing, I have a set subsistence net on Kanak Inak Beach in Dillingham.

And over the years, what we do, as we've seen the decline of king salmon that come come on the beach. Of course, kings are what is always what is mainly the prize. It's the gold when we're putting up fish for strips. For so many years, I've been catching maybe 10 for the whole season, but how that comes in is I'll catch one on one tide, maybe two on another tide, and when I'm fishing, so at least my goal is to catch 10. I'm lucky if I catch 10.

Kings on the beach on Kenaqanak. And then once I catch 10, then that's when I'm able to fill my smokehouse so I could make sure that I'm not— they smoke differently than the sockeye. So we're seeing decreases on that. I know that on the beaches this summer, there was just a couple of tides when the wind blows right that they hit the Dillingham beaches, or where people are able to get kings. But that was the first time in over a decade that we were able to get that many kings on Kenaqanak Beach.

And it just depends on which way the wind is flowing on the king salmon harvest. And a lot of people rely on, you know, we were talking about the home pack, or you guys were talking about those questions earlier, and a lot of times as these guys are out there commercial fishing, because we aren't getting our king salmon on the beach for subsistence, people will hold their kings for the ladies on the land to put up king salmon for the winter months. So it's a whole check and balance of I really want to emphasize too that during the commercial fisheries, I come from a family background of commercial and subsistence fisheries. My family has been involved in commercial fisheries since my grandparents, and when my grandmother was out there fishing, that's what they did. They would take their kings, they would put them in the freezer.

My grandma was side-by-side fishing with my grandpa, and when they were done fishing for the season, then she would go and smoke her fish after fishing fishing was over. So it's just a matter of what do we have available to us at the time. And also, you know, coho are really important to us as well. So when we're not getting kings, coho is the next best thing for strips. And then so a lot of people will save— if we're not catching kings, people will then smoke coho for the strips.

And that's why it's really important, you know, as they're talking about some of the coho management plan and escapement goals specifically to, specifically to that of how important that is, because we do rely on silvers as well, just as much as king salmon. How's the silver harvest been in recent years? Have you been able to get enough?

There has been no commercial directed fishery for the last probably 5 years at a minimum. Last year was really anomaly where normally silvers come through pretty heavy. I spent a week and got 7 fish until the next wind. And of course you wait for the wind, but during that storm I got 16 where I should have got about 50 to 100. They're intermittent and maybe different year run timing and run strength are different, but there are— since nobody's monitoring, I don't think we have a really healthy pulse on how that is managed.

But yeah, I agree that there— I mean, silvers are a real important another resource for the area. Okay, thank you. Mr. Tilden. Yeah, if you promise not to tell ICE, uh, I'm an immigrant to Dillingham. I grew up along the Nushagak River and subsistence fish down in the Degushik River.

And as a young boy back in the '60s, I could remember going down to the beach with my long birch pole and my line and hook, and I would catch a king and run up on the beach. Kings were very thick along the Nushagak River back in the '60s. You got to do that now. It's like the Kenai River battleground. And so the kings have definitely changed and people who catch them have changed over my lifetime.

And the same thing goes with the silvers. And you know, both the king salmon and the silver fish are really prized by the Alaska Native people, basically because of the oil content and the fatness in it and the size of it. Because if you end up not being able to catch enough kings to put up strips, you're able to do that with silvers. And so those two fish species are really prized by the village folks because of those. And then the way we take care of them is also really important because both the silver and the kings have really huge heads, which we salt and have salurks, salted fish.

And we also salt the bodies in addition to drying them. And smoking them, canning them, and freezing them. So those are really high-priced fish. But I really think it's important to remember that no matter how much fish we catch, I believe that there are studies to show that it is 1% of the total catch. And I think it's really important to remember that.

When you're making decisions regarding subsistence and the way that we use it in our way of life. Thank you. Ms. Erwin, Mr. Godfrey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Kweyana, for your, your traditional knowledge report, thank you very much for all that you shared.

I'm thinking also about the Nuxalayat Kings and this issue that we're having with trying to figure out how to manage this mixed stock fishery and providing opportunity, but also recognizing the need to conserve populations and species that aren't doing as well. Are there traditional values or traditional knowledge that you could share with us that could aid in our our journey to try to figure out how to best manage, continue to best manage this mixed stock fishery.

Through the chair, cooperation, share the burden. Native people have been really known for sharing not just experience but resource. We are resource poor in Bristol Bay, resource poor in a human aspect. That we can't provide enough information, enough technical assistance and resources to help all the influence that we have in Bristol Bay.

The Lower Kuskokwim Intertribal Council manages the Togiak fishery under co-management agreement. The state, the feds, I believe, and the tribes along the Lower Kuskokwim is successful.

I know that I have family on the Bethel area and Kuskokwim where the, that cooperative management between the 3 entities, including the sportsmen and the commercial fisheries, help each other. They all share the burden of concern. We still have that. I'm still worried that number one, any changes to the plan are going to deviate from a, a lower in the bar. We just keep lowering until it's almost gone.

The traditional knowledge that we only use what we— in the next phase with this, I hate to say it, but boards— I've been on the board and different boards and Board of Game, Board of Fish and Estate Management. Example is Togiak took a moratorium on the moose population. 5 Years later, they had enough moose to feed the whole region. I would hate to have the Nushagak villages curtail subsistence activity to save the kings.

That'd be the last thing I want to do because those villages depend on it to feed their families. It's also a cultural activity that keeps people and families together, but it's also a resource they depend on. So anything you could do to either operate under a co-management agreement, keep all the villages informed, keep us as tribal members, citizens, engaged, we're there to help. So yeah, thank you. Kayla, and then Mr. Godfrey has a question.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and through the chair, specifically with the King Salmon Management Plan, our tribe has a position position is status quo, that there's no changes to that management plan, to let that plan work. Um, and, and for the life— it hasn't even gone through a life cycle of a salmon yet. Uh, and, you know, with the burden of conservation, I mean, subsistence is the last to go. Um, you know, for making sure that our subsistence needs are being met and looking at the ANSs specifically for salmon, we don't even have an ANS specifically for king salmon. But specifically on that for the King Salmon Management Plan.

Our tribe has a position of just leave it be for right now. Mr. Godfrey, this question is for you on the subsistence topic. Again, on that target of 10 kings average, when you get those 10 kings, what's the average weight of them? That depends.

We're not getting the big king— oh, through the chair, excuse me. That just depends on the year. I mean, I'm basically catching jacks on the beach at Kennebec, about this big maybe. They're about this size. I mean, we're lucky if we get one this big.

They fit in my freezer, in my stand-up freezer, if that helps kind of give you a perspective. I'm not putting it in my deep freezer, but they're not as big as they used to be back in the day.

All right, thank you, Mr. Tilden. I just wanted to make a comment in regards to, um, the amount of kings that are coming back and declining them. And, and what I see that is lacking— every cycle we come here and we listen to the reports in regards to the information that staff has. But I really feel as though that there's a missing link.

And that missing link is the lack of science in regards to some of the other waters, freshwater species that prey on king salmon eggs, silver salmon eggs, red salmon eggs, is that within the, within the freshwater system, there is a huge number of pike, grayling, trout, whitefish, and those are predators. Those are predators of the smolt and of the eggs. And that has always been lacking. And I really think if you're really gonna do a complete scientific picture, you have to include that information. You have to watch those numbers too, because on good years, those species increase too.

And so if you have a dip in a year that comes, comes in, that affects the amount of fish that are coming back. So I really think that at some point in time that we have to look at the whole picture and include that information too.

All right, bring it home, Mr. Wood.

Through the chair, there was a question earlier on the herring, and then my study was based on the herring, raw, and kelp. The herring provide a great ecosystem for the marine mammals, the birds, the fish, and the whole ecosystem that feed the bottom of the ocean Nick, I am the chairman of the Kossack Waters Commission. I've been involved since 1997. We are tasked with helping the ecosystem within that whole watershed, dependent on what the species you're talking about is that feeds. I've caught herring in August in a 6-inch salmon net.

They migrate through all year. It never stops. The ecosystem never stops producing and reproducing itself. What that herring does is it feeds the bottom, that feeds the clams, that feeds the walrus. So with that, thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. Appreciate your being here and thank you for the informative conversation.

All right, let's see, what time is it? It's about 4:30. 4:33. I think what we'll do is pause for the day and begin with public testimony tomorrow morning at 8:30. So we'll take up public testimony section of the agenda at 8:30 in the morning, beginning with the first person on our list, which is Mr. George Wilson from the Naknek Klijak AC at 8:30 in the morning.

So I think we'll break for the day at this time. Any announcements or anything that I need to share, Mr. Nelson? All right, we'll see you all tomorrow at 8:30. Thank you very much.