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

Recording in progress.

All right, good morning everybody. My name is Marit Carlson-Vandort. The time is 9:04 AM. Today is Sunday, February 2nd. We have 6 of 7 members present at this time.

I expect the 7th to join us shortly. Welcome to part 2 of the Southeast Alaska Yakutat Finfish and Groundfish meeting. Technically, this is all part of the same meeting that began on Tuesday, but since we're changing subjects and there's new staff and new public, we're going to do another round of introductions. So this would be like another little mini session within this one. So starting at this end of the table, would you introduce yourself, please?

Hello, my name is Stan Zurey, and I live in the village of Tanana on the Yukon River. And nice to see everybody here this morning, and thank you.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Mike Wood. I live north of Talkeetna and Chase, and really excited to be here in Southeast, learning a lot already. Learned about the very bottom dwellers last week. Now we're going to talk about mid-column.

So thanks for the education. Morning everyone, Tom Carpenter. I live in Cordova.

Good morning everyone, my name is Curtis Chamberlain. I grew up in the Kuskokwim River in Aniak and Bethel. I currently live in Wasilla. Good morning everyone, Greg Swenson, born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. Happy to be here and I've learned a lot about a lot of things, especially the bottom dwellers.

Thank you. Good morning. My name is Jared Godfrey. I live in Eagle River, lifelong Alaskan. And like I said, my name is Marit Carlson-Vandort.

Grew up in Juneau and Chignik Bay, currently live in Anchorage. And we now have 7 of 7 members present, just for the record. And Mr. Commissioner, would you like to introduce your, your staff, please? Yeah. So I'm Doug Vincent Lang, the Commissioner, Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

With me to the left are the directors of the various divisions. I'll let them introduce themselves and their staff. And thank you all, public, for coming to the meeting. This is your resource and we're looking forward to seeing your insights into how we should be managing that sustainably.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the public. My name is Israel Payton. I'm division director and I'll introduce staff and ask them to raise their hand or stand up. We have about 4 or 5 staff that I'll read off here, but they're not quite here yet today, though they're arriving. I have Tom Talby, the Deputy Director behind me.

Judy Lum is the Southeast Regional Supervisor. We have Patrick Fowler, the Southeast Regional Management Coordinator. Jeff Nichols, the Southeast Regional Research Coordinator. Jason Pollack is the Yakutat Area Management Biologist. Troy Tydenko is the Sitka Area Management Biologist.

Dan Teske is the Juneau Area Management Biologist. Jessica Etheridge is the Juneau Assistant Area Management Biologist. Craig Schwanke is the Prince of Wales Area Management Biologist. Jeff Rice, Petersburg Area Management Biologist. Kelly Reppert, the Ketchikan Area Management Biologist.

Matt Katerson is the Regional Enhancement and access coordinator. Phil Richards is the lead for our marine creel program. He's the coordinator. And visiting from South Central is Holly Dixon. She's the Lower Cook Inlet assistant management biologist, and she's here to fulfill her internship for her marine policy master's degree that she's in.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning. I'm Forrest Bowers, acting director of the Division of Commercial Fisheries.

Here to assist you today is Shaleen Hutter, Regulations Program Coordinator. Danny Evanson, Extended Jurisdiction Program Manager. Ann Reynolds-Mani, Regional Supervisor for Southeast. Troy Tinas, Salmon and Herring Management Coordinator for Southeast. Ed Jones is a Regional King Salmon Research Coordinator.

Andy Piston, Regional Salmon Research Supervisor. Justin Priest, Regional Research Biologist.

Teresa Fish, Pink and Chum Research Biologist. Grant Hagerman is a Regional Troll Management Biologist. Beau Meredith, Ketchikan Area Management Biologist. Justin Brees, Ketchikan Assistant Area Management Biologist. Whitney Crittenden, also a Ketchikan Area Management Biologist.

Katie Taylor, Petersburg Area Management Biologist. Scott Forbes, Juneau Area Management Biologist. And Anthony Wallach, Sitka Assistant Area Management Biologist. Kyle Hebert is a Regional Herring and Dive Fishery Research Biologist. And Online at various points in the meeting will be Aaron Dupuis, who is a Sitka area management biologist, and Sherri Dressel, who's a statewide fishery herring scientist.

Arriving later in the meeting will be Rick Hoff— Rick Hoffman, who is our Yakutat area management biologist, and C.L. Roberts, who's a herring biometrician in headquarters. Thank you.

Good morning, members of the board. Good morning, everyone joining us here in Ketchikan this morning and those listening remotely online. I'm Amy Wieda. I am the head of subsistence for Fish and Game, and I'm located in our Anchorage office. Joining us all from the Division of Subsistence for this meeting are Lauren Sill, our Southern Region program manager, and Emily Dahl, our lead subsistence resource specialist for Southeast Alaska.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you. Good morning. Mr. Pappas. Good morning.

George Pappas, Office of Assistance Management, State Assistance Liaison, Department of the Interior, Secretary's Office, Policy Management and Budget. I will— we will have the Regional Advisory Council spokesman, Calcasas, be calling in tomorrow for part of this meeting representing the Southeast REC. Thank you, Madam Chair. It's good to be here. Thank you, Mr. Pappas.

Mr. Peterson.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Aaron Peterson with the Department of Law.

Good morning. My name is Derek DeGraaff. I'm a captain with the Alaska Wildlife Troopers Southern Detachment. And to my left here is Sergeant Mark Finsest, Ketchikan Post Supervisor. Thank you.

Welcome, everyone. Thank you for being here this morning. Mr. Nelson, will you please introduce yourself and staff? Yes, thank you. Good morning, everyone.

My name is Art Nelson. I'm the executive director for the Board of Fisheries. And from our board support staff here at the end of the table, we have Annie Bartholomew, She's the Board of Fisheries Publications Specialist. Next over there is Savannah Hollingworth. She's the Board of Games Publications Specialist, and she's here to help us out.

And there at the end, collecting RCs and blue cards, is Samantha Kirby. She is one of our Regional Advisory Committee Coordinators. I'd also like to take a minute to recognize some of the advisory committee representatives that we have here. I don't know if everyone's in the room at the moment, but if you are, please raise your hand. From our host community here, the Ketchikan AC, we have their chair, Beau Dale.

From the Craig Advisory Committee, we have Ellen Hannan. From East Prince of Wales AC, we have Will Patterson. From the Elfin Cove AC, Patrick Baum. From the Juneau Douglas AC, Richard Yamada. From the Pelican Advisory Committee, Patricia Phillips.

Petersburg AC, Max Warhatch. Sitka AC Stacy Wayne, Wrangell AC Chris Guggenbichler, and the Yakutat AC Casey Mapes. And I'm sure we probably have some other AC reps or AC members in the room. So thank you all for your service, Madam Chair. Thank you very much, Director Nelson.

I'm just— a couple little notes. Or if you're here in the meeting room and you have trouble hearing the meeting, or you just need an extra little help, we have some wireless headsets that will tie into the sound system that will help you hear a little better. If you like, just ask any of the board support staff and they'll and they'll get you hooked up. Also, just a reminder to please silence your cell phones. At the beginning of this meeting on Tuesday, we did all of our ethics disclosures.

We're not gonna go through that exercise again. There were no known ethics disclosures that would prohibit any member of this board at this time from fully participating in all the items on our agenda. For those of you who have been here all week, bear with me. You have either the privilege or, you know, the dissatisfaction of listening to me go through all of this information again. But for the new folks here, bear with me.

I just kind of wanted to make sure that everybody's up to speed on how we're going to run this session and how we'll conduct this meeting. With respect to access to board members, we're available to you for the purpose of receiving added information. Many of us often meet with stakeholders informally during breaks and before and after daily meetings. We're here to benefit from your knowledge. And however, we do kind of draw a little distinctive boundary, and that's called a sanctuary line.

It is right up front here. We ask that the members of the public please don't come beyond that. If you want to get the attention of a board member who is back here and you can't wave us down, please just grab any member of staff and they will come let us know that you are interested in having a conversation.

Let's see.

If you have process questions, please let myself, Vice Chair Carpenter, or Director Nelson, no, we want to make sure that you are fully informed on the board's process. And we want to make sure that we do our best to answer any questions that you might have during the course of the meeting. It is hoped that some of the practices that I go through here now and that we discuss on the record over the course of the meeting will help keep you informed and engaged, since that is really the best possible outcome for better conversations and hopefully development of our policies. The Alaska Board of Fisheries and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game are united in fostering a respectful workplace, and we're committed to ensuring that workplace is free from negative, aggressive, and inappropriate behaviors. Of course, harassment is not going to be acceptable and will not be tolerated, and just really appreciate everyone's assistance in joining us in that important effort.

This meeting was noticed in accordance with the Open Meetings Act. The board staff published a notice in the Alaska Online Public Notice System and in the statewide newspaper, posted notice on board's website, in our designated posting place, and also distributed to our list of email recipients. I'm not going to read it here. I'll spare you that. But copies of the notice are in the meeting notebooks at the back of the room or are available from Mr. Nelson for those who are interested in seeing the complete text.

The public notice and proposals were distributed to the local Fish and Game Advisory Committees. They're posted online. They were sent out via email to all 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, are also available to the public again in the workbooks at the back table of the room. Copies of all the meeting materials, frequently updated throughout the meeting, can also be found on our Board of Fisheries website and on the web page specific to this meeting. And I would encourage everybody to familiarize yourself with that web page since that's going to give you the most really the most up-to-date information.

If you're not right here in this room, copies of the agenda for this meeting can also be found on the Board of Fisheries webpage and on the info tables at the back of the room. The agenda is subject to change throughout this meeting, but an attempt will be made by the board to generally stay on the agenda. Board support staff will post regular updates about the meeting progress on the board's homepage. So You know, as we get into it, sometimes substitute language is being developed. Sometimes there's delays.

Sometimes the board has more or less questions. And so we might move at various paces, but I will do my best to kind of keep everybody updated and make sure that that web page is frequently updated so people know what's happening here. Let's talk about record copies for a second. So the board encourages the public to submit written comments on specific proposals or issues And now that we're into the second session, written public comments submitted before deliberations begin again and are limited to 10 single-sided or 5 double-sided pages in length. Once the board begins deliberations on proposals— so once we start deliberations on Group 4— the page limit will drop down to 5 pages for the remainder of the meeting.

Please make sure that your written comments clearly include your name, the organization you represent, if any, and what proposals your RC is addressing at the top of the document. The board is accepting RCs submitted electronically as a Word document or PDF through the board's website. A link to the submission portal is prominently featured on the meeting page for our website where all the materials for this meeting are posted. You can also turn in written materials to the board support staff here at the end of the table. Please note that you will only need to turn in one copy.

However, board support staff will not be printing submitted materials in color. So if you have something that you would like the board members to see in color, you're going to be responsible for turning in 20 copies to the board support staff at the end of the table. With no exception, all materials which are to be submitted to the board for its consideration must be presented to the record keeper for distribution or uploaded through the website. Please do not give documents directly to board members. If you do so, they'll, they'll hand them back to you and ask you to submit them for the record.

All documents received at this board meeting are assigned a log number called an RC. All written materials.

Submitted will be retained for the permanent record of the board, and 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. And this will ensure that regular distribution of all written materials to all board members, as well as proper retention of board records, occurs. Just note, while you have the right to submit up to the maximum number of pages, just please keep in mind that we got a lot of paper in front of us. We're reading a lot of things and can get very busy during these meetings and sometimes aren't able to read everything immediately. So please keep that in mind and have a little sympathy that we have got literally hundreds of pages in front of us.

So the fewer pages that it takes to say what you need, the better the opportunity that we will have to read the material in a timely manner. A little information about testimony, committee, and deliberations. At this time, We're about ready to begin our staff reports. Following the staff reports will be the traditional knowledge reports and then advisory committee reports and public testimony. Advisory committee reps and those who wish to provide public testimony must fill out the blue cards located at the table at the back of the room and turn it into the board support staff here at the front of the table.

Advisory committee representatives can provide both their own AC report and their personal testimony, but you must fill out a separate blue card for each. And you can also choose to give your AC report at the beginning or the end of the public testimony period. Just please indicate that to the board support staff. Currently, the tentative cutoff time to submit or to sign up— I'm sorry— for public testimony for this session is Tuesday, February 4th at 10:00 AM. I will note this is subject to change, and I will announce updates as often as possible if it's necessary.

At this meeting, the public will each be given 3 minutes for public testimony. Traditional Knowledge reports advisory committees and regional advisory council representatives will each be given 10 minutes. Following public testimony, there will be 3 sessions of the board's Committee of the Whole on non-groundfish finfish topics, and the committee roadmap will show which proposals will be considered in each of the committee sessions. Everyone present is allowed to participate. There's no need to sign up.

There might be some adjustments to the roadmap, but I will certainly make those announcements and make sure that everybody is apprised of any adjustments or changes made to the roadmap. And the agenda, which is available online and the materials at the back of the room, also shows where we tentatively plan to deliberate in between committee group sessions. Again, I'll just reiterate that this agenda is subject to change and the public should pay close attention to the board's progress. And like I said a couple of times, I will do my very best to keep you updated of any agenda or roadmap changes. And one more time, if you have any questions about the process, I'm happy to try and answer them, and I know that you can also direct those questions to Vice Chair Carpenter or Director Nelson as well.

Mr. Nelson, is there anything I missed? No, nothing you missed, but there is something I missed, and my apologies to Curt Whitehead. I overlooked him as I was going through the list of AC reps. Curt serves on multiple ACs in different capacities, and he is here representing the Klawock AC at this meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Director Nelson, and thanks, Curt.

Um, okay, at this time I think we'll go ahead and transition to staff reports. We'll give you a couple minutes to get set up and then we'll get going. Thank you.

Okay, time is 9:25. We're back on the record and we will go ahead and begin with staff reports, beginning with our subsistence overview. Welcome, ladies. Please introduce yourself. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the board, and members of the public.

For the record, my name is Emily Dahl. I'm the lead Southeast subsistence resource specialist for the Division of Subsistence. With me today is Lauren Sill, who is a Southern Region Program Manager for the division. Thank you for the opportunity to present. Today we will build on our earlier presentation and discuss the harvest and use of both salmon and non-salmon fish.

First, we will share a brief ethnographic background on salmon in Southeast, as well as available search, harvest, and use data. Next, we will outline the most prominent non-salmon fish in the region. Finally, Lauren will discuss the importance of herring and herring eggs as a subsistence resource within Southeast.

Archaeological and ethnographic research demonstrate that salmon have been an important food source for Southeast residents for thousands of years and remain important in the present day. In the distant past and the more recent history, salmon have played a key role in the development of Southeast Alaska. For the indigenous Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people of Southeast, who have harvested fish in these waters for over 12,000 years, salmon not only serve as an important food source but hold symbolic and spiritual significance. For many Southeast residents, salmon fishing is characteristic of life in this region. Harvesting salmon is a group activity, as, as division data indicates, that most households throughout the region fish with at least one other household.

Additionally, sharing fish is an important part of food security in Southeast communities. The majority of community households engage in sharing or receiving salmon. Historically, residents of the region harvested salmon in the late summer and early fall with rectangular wooden traps set in salmon streams, or with spears, harpoons, hook and line, and gaff hooks. Today, a variety of methods are used to harvest salmon for home use. A combination of subsistence and swargi are utilized, and commercial fishermen retain salmon from the commercial catch for home use.

Once harvested, salmon are processed to ensure preservation over time. The fish are frozen, smoked, dried, and jarred for year-round use. Preservation methods are often linked to resource availability and species. While some species, like Chinook or Coho, are filleted and frozen, Others, like chum or pink salmon, may be canned or dried. All salmon species are sought after and used throughout the region.

However, sockeye salmon are the most prominent and the focus of subsistence use and management.

The Southeast Yakutat Region includes all waters.

Between Cape Suckling in the north and Cape Muzon in the south. Within the region, there are two large non-subsistence areas around Juneau and Ketchikan. Non-subsistence areas are areas that have been defined by the Joint Board of Fisheries and Game as areas where dependence upon subsistence is not a principal characteristic of the economy, culture, and way of life. In these areas, subsistence fisheries cannot be authorized. On this map, non-subsistence areas are shaded in gray.

Positive C&T findings for salmon are present throughout the region. C&T refers to the 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. This map illustrates positive customary and traditional use findings for salmon present throughout the Southeast region. The areas shown in blue indicate positive C&T findings for all salmon, while the light green portions of the map indicate positive C&T findings for all salmon except sockeye.

ANS is short for the amounts necessary—. Amounts reasonably necessary for subsistence. It is not a quota, but it does provide the board with guidelines on typical numbers of animals harvested for customary and traditional uses under normal conditions. Based on permit data, the board has determined ANS ranges for salmon at the district or management area level. In the majority of Southeast districts, ANS ranges were established in 1993, with revisions in 2006 and 2015.

In Southeast, a variety of gear types can be used to engage in subsistence fishing, including drift gillnets, set gillnets, gaffs, spears, beach seines, dip nets, cast nets, and hand pursanes. The permit issued for each area specifies the allowable gear type in that area. For example, gaff hooks are allowed— are allowable gear type in the Haines Management Area, and hook and line is an allowable gear type in the Readout System in the Sitka Management Area. Seasons are managed at a system level for each species of salmon. Managers in the department have time and area authority to respond to annual variations in salmon populations.

Seasons typically occur in the summer and fall months and can range from as short as 1 month to as long as 6 months. Limits are specified in regulations and range from roughly 5 to 40 fish. Limits vary by system, by stream system, and are managed at a management area level.

The board may recognize this map. We included it in our earlier presentation and wanted to show it again today to provide context, context for the data we will be showing shortly. Comprehensive surveys are one of our standard data gathering methods, and much of the information we'll be presenting today are results from these surveys. This map indicates the most recent survey year for each Southeast community. Bright purple dots indicate communities last surveyed in 1987.

Communities surveyed between 1996 and 2000 are shown in yellow. Communities surveyed between 2010 and 2019 are shown in red. And communities most recently surveyed in the past 4 years are shown in green. You may note that neither Ketchikan nor Juneau are shown on this map due to their size and their location within non-subsistence areas. We have never surveyed these 2 communities.

Ideally, comprehensive surveys are administered in a given community approximately every 10 years. This time frame allows us to document trends over time and avoid survey fatigue. The division prioritizes updating community data in each research cycle. As you can see, only a small number of Southeast communities have not been surveyed since the late 1980s. Our most recent survey— surveyed communities are Tenakee Springs, Gustavus, and Pelican, where we are awaiting community data review and updated data for the 2023 study year will be available by 2026.

This map displays all available search and harvest mapping data for salmon throughout the region. This is not just salmon harvested under subsistence regulations, but includes all non-commercial harvesting reported in household survey data. As you can see, residents rely on the majority of Southeast waters for harvesting salmon. While a few proposals at this meeting are to change subsistence regulations, we wanted to show the extent of Southeast area waters that residents use to harvest wild foods.

Due to the scale of the Southeast region, throughout this presentation we will discuss harvest data at a management area level. This map indicates how the region is divided into management areas. For the purpose of this presentation, the Prince of Wales Management Area is included in the Ketchikan Management Area. The southeast management areas range from— in size from one community in the Yakutat Management Area to 14 communities in the Ketchikan Management Area. It is important to note that because the communities of Juneau and Ketchikan are within non-subsistence areas, They are not included in our household survey data and will not be represented in the data discussed today.

This figure shows the average composition of harvest by resource category for each management area. The management areas are labeled on the x-axis with the number of communities indicated in the parentheses below the management area name. For example, Yakutsat Management Area, there is only one community. Which is indicated by n 1. The number of communities for both the Juneau and Ketchikan management areas do not include either Juneau or Ketchikan as they are within non-subsistence areas and we do not have comprehensive household harvest data available for them.

Percentages are measured from the total usable harvest shown on the y-axis.

As you can see in the dark and light blue, salmon and non-salmon fish make up more than 50% of total harvest across all management areas. Salmon make up between 17 and 37% of the total harvest across Southeast management areas. In the Yakutat, Haines, and Ketchikan management areas, salmon account for the highest percentage of the total harvest out of all resource categories.

This figure uses household survey data from the most recent comprehensive study year for all communities within, within a management area. The y-axis shows percentage of households, and x-axis categorizes households by each management area. The x-axis displays the percentage of households using fish in blue, the percentage of households harvesting fish in orange. Again, for each management area, we have indicated the number of communities for which we have included data. In all management areas, more than 50% of households are actively harvesting salmon.

The percentage of households harvesting ranges from 60 to 80%. But you can see that the percentage of households using salmon is higher, ranging from 91 to just under 100%. This demonstrates the importance of sharing. Sharing occurs both between harvesters and from harvesters to non-harvesters.

All species of salmon are used by Southeast residents in each management area. This figure illustrates the harvest composition of salmon species at a management area level by percentage. The y-axis indicates the percentage of total harvest, and the x-axis categorizes harvest by each of the 6 management areas. Sockeye are shown in dark blue, coho in light blue, Chinook in green, pink salmon in orange, and chum salmon in yellow. This figure includes salmon harvested under all regulations, not only subsistence.

As you can see, sockeye and coho are harvested across all management areas at a high rate. While there is more variability in the harvest of Chinook salmon. Across Southeast, both chum and pink salmon are harvested in smaller amounts relative to other species.

Subsistence salmon fishing in Southeast is managed under a permit system that specifies harvest limits, allowable gear types, and open areas and seasons. Salmon permits are managed by the Division of Commercial Fisheries, and harvest reporting is mandatory. Harvest reports offer important information about trends over time. Permits are available online and in person at ADF&G offices. There are approximately 3,000 permits issued in Southeast annually, with an 80% return rate.

Drawing from permit data, this figure displays estimated salmon harvest over time. Permits have been in place since 1986 in the majority of Southeast. 1989 In Yakutat. Lower estimated harvests in the late 1980s and early 1990s are likely attributed to the novelty of the permit system. Reported harvests on permits vary from year to year, but since the early 2000s, estimated harvests remain in a consistent range between 50,000 and 60,000 salmon.

For the most recent year we have data, 2022, sockeye accounted for 89% of the salmon reported on permits. Which is an increase from the historical average of 85%.

This map displays all the available search and harvest mapping data for non-salmon fish throughout Southeast. This is not just fish harvested under subsistence regulations, but includes all harvesting reported in household survey data. The search and harvest area for non-salmon fish spans across the entirety of the region.

The board has made positive customary and traditional use findings for non-salmon fish, including halibut, hooligan, smelt, bottomfish, dolly varden, steelhead trout, and herring. Halibut is the primary non-salmon fish harvested by Southeast residents. Halibut can be harvested in Southeast waters year-round and is an important subsistence resource for the region. Subsistence halibut harvest is managed under federal regulations.

Herring is a traditional subsistence food and the only non-salmon fish with an ANS determination in Southeast. Next, Lauren will share more about the historic and contemporary importance of herring and herring eggs as a subsistence resource in Southeast Alaska.

Thank you. Again, for the record, my name is Lauren Sill. I'm the Southern Region Program Manager for the Division of Subsistence.

Each spring, herring return to the nearshore waters of the Pacific Northwest and Southeast Alaska. The event heralds the end of winter and a return to the abundance and vitality of spring and summertime. For Indigenous communities along these coasts, herring and herring eggs have been a mainstay of the subsistence round. Ethnographic and historical accounts document the nutritional and cultural importance of this keystone species. Herring have been harvested, processed, consumed, and traded for thousands of years.

While herring and herring eggs have been harvested throughout Southeast Alaska in the past, Sitka Sound has always been important for the herring egg harvest, in part because of the sheer abundance of herring, but also because of the length of the spawning period. Historical accounts from the 1800s discuss the influx of Tlingit from Southeast Alaska into Sitka Sound for the purpose of harvesting herring and herring eggs. Herring and herring spawn feature in the oral history of Sitka Tlingit. For subsistence resources in general, not all households participate equally in the harvest of resources. For herring eggs, the harvest is more specialized than many other subsistence resources.

To be successful requires knowledge, time, and specific skills. Because of this, there are relatively few harvesters in Sitka Sound, but their harvest is the main source of herring eggs for residents around the state. The distribution and exchange of herring eggs is extensive. Harvesters share eggs with others in Sitka and send them out to communities around the state and beyond. Often, herring eggs are shared multiple times before finally being consumed, allowing these distribution networks to stretch far and wide.

Herring eggs are also exchanged for other specialized foods, such as hooligan and dried hooligan, berries, dried seaweed, or mountain goat meat. Historically, herring eggs were air-dried or packed in salt for storage and later distribution. Since freezers have become readily available, Vacuum sealing and freezing is a preferred method. Herring eggs are also consumed fresh.

For these next few slides, I wanted to try and give a sense of what the subsistence herring egg harvest looks like in Sitka Sound. Spawning herring turn the shores of Sitka Sound milky white, which you can easily see from the air. Herring eggs are traditionally harvested after they've been deposited on hemlock branches, kelp, or seaweed. When it's time for the herring spawn, harvesters scout forests to find suitable hemlocks to harvest and set in the intertidal zone. Depending on the size of the boat, the amount of help, and the magnitude of the desired harvest, harvesters will set either whole trees or just hemlock branches.

They can be put down alone or tied together in a set. Either way, the trees or branches are weighted with a rock to keep them on the bottom and potentially marked with a buoy. People set branches in areas most likely to result in a good harvest. That means locations without sandy substrate and that aren't subject to a lot of wind and wave action. If the bottom gets too stirred up, it can cause the eggs to be sandy or otherwise contaminated, which is not desirable.

Additionally, how far harvesters will travel from Sitka considers the size of the boat, the weather, and the expense. And finally, there needs to be active spawning in the location where branches are set. Many harvesters will put them out just prior to the spawn in locations they anticipate will receive spawn and then move them if necessary. Trees can't be left in the water too long though, or they'll start to get algae deposited on them, making them unfit for harvest.

Once all the preparations and setting of branches is complete, ideally there's active herring spawn on your branches and you can go back out and harvest. Generally, people haul the branches up out of the water onto the deck using a grappling hook to snag the branch. For harvesters who can set trees, usually they're in bigger boats, like the commercial vessels that have a winch and can haul the trees up that way. When there's good spawn deposition, these covered branches are quite heavy. Minimal processing happens at this point, perhaps lopping off part of the trunk or branches that don't have needles on them to reduce the amount of waste you're bringing back to the dock.

As we'll mention later in this presentation, multiple thousands of pounds of herring eggs are harvested from Sitka Sound. Despite the magnitude of the harvest, it's a small percentage of the trillions of eggs that are deposited throughout the sound.

These photos come from Sitka Tribe of Alaska's harvest and processing events, but they're representative of herring and processing in general— of harvesting and processing in general. Once the eggs are back on the docks, that's when the processing begins. How the eggs are processed depends on what the final product is going to be. If you're putting them in wetlock boxes to ship out of town, most of the branches that don't have egg deposition will get discarded, but you might leave the larger branches intact. If the eggs are going into smaller bags, like grocery bags to distribute, or vacuum-seal bags to freeze, most of the particularly rigid branches will be removed, leaving just the eggs on the pliable hemlock branches.

People who bring eggs back to the docks for general distribution might let people get their own eggs, processing them the way they like. In these pictures, STA staff are processing eggs into wetlock boxes in order to weigh them in preparation for the harvest survey that follows the harvest. And I'll talk more about that in a moment. The eggs in the grocery bags are ready for distribution to STA members.

As I mentioned earlier, herring eggs are harvested on hemlock branches that people set in the intertidal, as well as from naturally occurring kelp beds and hair seaweed. In each case, the eggs are not removed from the substrate during processing. The pictures on the left are of herring eggs on hemlock branches. Those on the right are of eggs on Macrocystis kelp. The quality of the harvested product depends on several factors.

Good eggs, as I mentioned earlier, are not contaminated with sand and have been deposited in thick enough layers. You can see in the bottom left picture two plates with herring eggs. The ones on the left are good quality eggs with a nice thick deposition, and the ones on the right are pretty poor quality. It's also possible to have too thick of an egg deposition. How long it takes to get the desired thickness of eggs depends on the spawning activity.

But what I've heard most often is about 3 days of spawning on average results and ideal eggs.

So then now that we've gone through what the subsistence herring egg fishery looks like in Sitka Sound, I wanted to turn to what we know quantitatively about the harvest. These data all come from a cooperative harvest monitoring program we do in conjunction with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, or STA. Funding for the project comes from a reimbursable services agreement with the Division of Commercial Fisheries, Division of Subsistence General Funds and STA funds.

In 2002, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska came to the Board of Fisheries with concerns for their subsistence harvest of herring eggs. As a result, the board requested that the department and the tribe work cooperatively to administer a harvest survey. Regulations concerning the subsistence harvest of herring eggs specify household harvest limits for spawn-on-kelp harvesters, but no limits for harvest on any other substrate. Similarly, a permit is required with harvest reporting for the harvest of spawn-on-kelp, but not for eggs harvested on other substrates. The Cooperative Harvest Monitoring Project with STA surveys all harvesters of herring eggs regardless of the substrate, but the harvest of herring eggs on branches is of the largest magnitude.

The first survey of this program was more than 20 years ago in 2002, and the effort continues today. It has been a very successful collaboration with STA. We administer surveys with households in Sitka and other Southeast Alaska communities who are identified as likely harvesters of herring spawn for subsistence. The length of this list of harvesters varies from year to year, but recently has been around 90 households. From year to year, researchers keep track of who has attempted to harvest herring eggs.

And then once a household on the list hasn't attempted to harvest for 3 years, or we can't contact them for 3 years, or they've told us that they no longer harvest, we remove them from the list of potential harvesters. New households are added to the list when they attempt to harvest herring eggs in Sitka Sound during a study year.

From these harvest surveys, we produce estimates of the total pounds of herring spawn harvested on hemlock branches, macrocystis kelp, hair seaweed, or other substrates annually. The survey also identifies general areas where herring spawn is harvested and includes questions about various characteristics of the harvest effort. The results of each year's surveys are written up in a report that is posted in the division's online technical paper database. The 2024 report was recently published and has been provided to the board. The next few slides are going to highlight some of the findings from this project.

So here we have the estimated harvest from Sitka Sound over the past 22 years shown in the solid blue bars. The dashed gray line is the lower end of the ANS range and the dotted red line is the higher end of the range. The board revised ANS in 2009 based on the results of the first 8 years of the project. The 2024 harvest in this is this bar on the far right, and you can see that after several years of relatively low harvests, harvests in 2022, 2023, and 2024 have improved. Estimates for these years have relatively wide confidence intervals, and this likely stems from a combination of factors, including high variability in harvest amounts among surveyed households.

These blue bars are the same as the previous slide, the estimated harvest of herring eggs in Sitka Sound since 2002. The dotted line here shows the number of harvesters, both successful and unsuccessful. The pounds of herring eggs are on the left axis, and the number of harvesters are on the right. You can see there's variability from year to year in the number of harvesters. Things like work conflicts, the expense of harvesting, or perceived poor conditions all play a role into why some harvesters choose not to harvest in any given year.

Looking at these data, it appears that the number of harvesters isn't a very good predictor of the harvest amount on its own. There were more harvesters in 2024 than in 2023, which was more than in 2022, but the harvest did not increase commensurately. Years like 2010 or 2017 show similar disparities between the number of harvesters and the total harvest. When thinking about overall harvest amount, more factors than just the number of harvesters need to be considered, such as the location of the spawn, the duration of the spawn, or the weather. For example, the particularly low harvest in 2018 and 2019.

Likely reflect the fact that herring spawned relatively far from town and were concentrated in the more northern reaches of the Sound.

During surveys, we ask people about the location of their harvests. Unlike our comprehensive surveys, where we mark exact locations on a map, for these surveys we ask people to apportion their harvest based upon a list of common locations. This map is displaying the number of harvesters we have documented on household surveys using these areas over the last 13 years. It only shows the number of harvesters using an area, not the amount of the harvest that was taken from the area. While we did collect some spatial data prior to 2011, it wasn't done consistently.

So this just shows 2011 through 2024. And you can see that most harvesters use the area around Middle and Cassiana Islands over this time period, which is generally where the commercial closure is in place. There are also many harvesters going to Eastern or Promisla Bays, the Siganakas or Magoon Islands area. We've also documented occasional effort in various locations in the southern portions of Sitka Sound.

As I mentioned earlier, herring eggs have always been widely shared. This table highlights how geographically extensive herring egg sharing is currently. These numbers in the right-hand column indicate how often a community within the, within the region has been listed as a recipient community for at least one household's sharing of eggs on surveys for the last 13 years. It doesn't quantify how many eggs are shared or how many households indicated sharing with a particular community. Unsurprisingly, communities in Southeast are shared with the most frequently, but eggs have also been shared with communities in every region of the state and outside of Alaska.

The majority of herring harvesters share at least a portion of their harvest. The surveys we conduct are only with herring egg harvesters, so this is an incomplete picture of herring egg sharing. We know that recipients of herring eggs further share them, but we don't currently have a solid understanding of what these secondary and tertiary levels of sharing look like. Anthropologist Tom Thornton has conducted ethnographic studies on the distribution of herring eggs from Sitka Sound and describes a resilient distribution network that moves thousands of pounds of herring eggs through dozens of communities and thousands of recipients. As part of his work, he collaborated with our harvest monitoring program to add additional questions to our surveys for 2 years, 2018 and 2019.

And STA has also done some preliminary studies to characterize sharing of herring eggs from Sitka Sound through non-random surveys, and their results generally support Thornton's findings. Further investigate— investigation into the distribution of herring eggs from Sitka Sound is a topic we'd like to further pursue.

I said in the previous slide that most harvesters share a portion of their harvest. As you can see from this pie chart, the majority of the harvest weight is shared each year. This slide is showing results for 2024, but these are pretty consistent with years past. A small portion of the harvest weight, around 10%, is kept by the harvester for their own use. Of the remaining 90%, about half is usually shared with Sitka households and half is shared beyond Sitka.

If you look at the table on the bottom right, there are more details about the types of herring eggs that are shared. The left-hand column is the type of substrate herring eggs were harvested on. Across the top are columns for eggs kept for the harvester's own use, eggs shared within Sitka, and eggs shipped out of Sitka. The first row is the total harvest of herring eggs on any substrate, and these percentages match the pie chart. The next row down is herring eggs harvested on hemlock branches.

About 8% of this harvest by weight was kept for the harvester's own use. Slightly less than half was shared within Sitka, and slightly more than half was shipped out of Sitka. If you look down at the next row, you'll see that this is different than for herring spawn on kelp, where about one quarter of the harvest was kept for the harvester's own use, and the majority of the remainder was shipped out of Sitka. For herring spawn on hair seaweed, the last row on the table, about one third was kept by the harvesters, half was shared with Sitka households, and 20% was sent out of Sitka.

These next two slides are some examples of the types of assessment questions we ask on the survey. I haven't included all of the ones that we ask. The first question concerns vessel sizes used for the herring egg harvest in 2024. We ask about vessel size probably because it helps us understand how the fishery is conducted. Where you can go and how much you can harvest at one time varies if you're talking about a skiff or a big commercial vessel.

How big of a factor weather is can also be related to what size vessel you're in. In 2024, most harvesters were in skiffs and vessels less than 24 feet in length. This is pretty consistent with past survey years. The second question concerns efficiency in harvesting. We know that lack of equipment and the cost of harvesting are two challenges people have explained to us for why they didn't harvest in a particular year.

We also know that sharing sometimes takes the form of providing labor or equipment in exchange for a share of subsistence resources. And we know that many households harvest with the intent to share with other households. So in 2024, 66% of households harvested with another household. While every year a substantial number of households harvest together, the percentages seem to vary quite a bit from year to year. We haven't had a chance to assess whether there are any trends in answer to these questions or if there are correlations between the percentages of households responding in the affirmative and other factors.

Finally, we ask questions about whether the household got enough herring eggs. This is a pretty tricky question because there's not really an objective definition of what enough means. The way the question is asked has changed over the years. We currently have a multi-part question. Did the harvester get enough herring eggs and did they get enough to share?

One caveat to these questions has always been that we've asked them right after the harvest was finished, and it's possible that circumstances change over a year that would change the answers. So beginning with the 2022 survey, we've asked harvesters to think back on the previous year and answer these questions for that year. So in 2024, we asked harvesters whether they had enough eggs during 2023. Harvesters should have a better assessment of whether their 2023 harvest was sufficient for their needs at the end of the year rather than at the beginning. Approximately three-quarters of respondents said they got enough eggs for their own use and for their sharing needs.

This was a higher percentage of households than answered in the affirmative on the 2023 survey.

Um, also beginning in 2022, we added a third part to this series of questions. We asked harvesters if they were asked for eggs during the year that they couldn't supply. The point of this question is to try and gauge broader community need for herring eggs. It's not a perfect proxy, but we recognize the limitation of our survey is that we only talk to harvesters, and we really can't characterize how the subsistence harvest of herring eggs meets the needs of consumers. As we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of households that rely on sharing networks for resources they depend on, and we're not capturing those people with this survey.

So this is our attempt to see what we can learn. Approximately one quarter of households we spoke to in 2024 said they were asked for eggs that they couldn't supply during 2023, and three quarters were not. As I mentioned earlier, all of this plus the rest of the results of the 2024 survey year are published in our most recent technical paper, which can be found in RC3, Tab 11.

And that's all we have for our subsistence overview for Southeast. As we mentioned the other day, we're in the middle of a few new projects updating comprehensive harvest data for three Icy Strait communities. And conducting an in-season monitoring project on the Kellogg River. We should be publishing results from both of those within the year. And you'll hear from us time and again that we could not do the work we do without partnerships and the knowledge, trust, and involvement of the residents of the communities we work in.

We'd like to thank all the organizations who have partnered with us, the residents who have participated in research over the years, and thanks to the board for the opportunity to share this information. We're happy to take any questions. Thank you. Board questions. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you. So I've got 3 questions. One was on the map on page 3, you have the blue areas positive, or blue, green, and gray. I kind of wish that map was a little bit bigger to better identify some spots, but I can tell it would take up a lot of pages. The reason is, is if you go to slide 6, You reference one of the areas you surveyed was Thorn Bay.

And so to me, like yesterday was through deliberations, it would help to clarify some of those issues regarding subsistence and letting us know ahead of time, speak up to when we're not getting it. That would be great. The other thing, so that was one thing. Secondly, I want to go to slide 16. And I was wondering where else other than— where else do they harvest hooligan in Southeast other than— what are the different areas?

You know, one place you had here was way up on the Chilkat River. I'm forgetting the name of the village, but—. Through the chair, Member Wood. Yeah. So hooligan is harvested in Yakutat.

There's some rivers up there where hooligan go in along Klukwan. Is the community of Klukwan harvests a lot of hooligan in the Chilkat. There's also hooligan down in the Yuniq around Ketchikan. And there are a few other places, I believe, in around Petersburg, Wrangell, that there is some hooligan harvest. Are all of— is all of that hooligan?

Well, do people use that pretty When it's running, do they put it away everywhere? Through the chair, member Wood. Yeah, the communities we've been in where there is hooligan harvest, there are a small number of people who harvest a lot of hooligan and they share it pretty widely within their community. And also like hooligan in particular has a lot of sharing between Sitka. So herring eggs get shipped up and hooligan gets shipped down.

And so there's a lot of sharing for those sort of resources. That's cool. I like hooligan. And then the last part was on slide 22. You mentioned that there are 90 households harvest.

It was in the Sitka area. Through the chair, remember, would there are 90 households currently on our list of harvesters that we talked to, so not all of those people will harvest in any given year, but that's the, the sort of universe of who we think might be harvesting in Sitka Sound. OK, cool. I'm just trying to get up.

I like kind of a clear picture because I was there last May to check all of this out, and it seemed like just about everybody in Sitka was going out to try to get kelp or branches or, or the hair seaweed. And, uh, it seemed like more than 90 to me, but so I was just clarifying.

Other board questions? I have just a couple. Um, on slide 25 Kind of '24, '25, either one works. Obviously we see the dip in 2020 and you've explained that that's due to COVID.

And then you also mentioned in '20s, I think it was 2017, 2019, or maybe 2018, 2019, that that dip you mentioned that there's sort of multifactor issues, but that it was perhaps due to where the spawn occurred farther away from town and just maybe less spawning occurred. What was going on in 2022? How come you saw that spike?

Madam Chair, that's a good question. It's always trying to figure out what's going on and why people, why people are choosing to harvest, not harvest. I know some things in 2022, we had a lot of new harvesters who decided to harvest that year. I know there was a kweks in town and there's a lot of herring that get harvested for that. So there was definitely some effort involved with that herring harvesting eggs for that purpose.

It's hard to say whether— I mean, the last few years I feel like there have been a lot of new harvesters showing up in our survey. And so I don't know if there's just a generally trying to make more of an effort or more interest in harvesting eggs again. I'm not sure. Yeah, I was kind of curious if there's any proximal factors associated with that. And then my question on 27.

I, you know, I know that this is just from the— I'm assuming just from the surveys that you got. I was shocked to see Anchorage not in there somewhere. Is that lumped in with the Matsu? Okay. And then maybe it's not for— I'm just trying to reach back in my memory.

Maybe it wasn't around Sitka Herring. Maybe it was Arctic Yukon. But the sort of the splatter, the scatter map that shows sort of the network of sharing and how far and broad it goes. Do you have something similar for that for herring? Madam Chair, so there are a couple— what we have, what we do have is a map that just kind of shows arrows that go out of Sitka to the different places.

Yeah, but we don't have— sometimes the Arctic, they have some sharing network of like this household shared with this household. We don't have sharing networks down to that, that level. We just have sort of where it goes, what communities it goes to. If you have that map available, I'd love to have that RC'd. Yeah, I think I can find it and do that.

And yeah, I mean, at some point that network map would be a really interesting exercise for Sitka Herring, and I would love, love, love to take a look at that sometime. Dr. Rita, and then Mr. Vincent Lane. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just going to add that our sharing network projects are specific research, research projects that we do, and we're very interested in doing more of those. It's a matter of securing funding to be able to do that.

And we agree with you. That would be fantastic. Thank you, Commissioner. Can you walk me through what a frequency of sharing means? Like, what is, what is a frequency of 152 versus a frequency of 2?

Right. So this is basically, I just went back through all of our surveys for any given year. So in 2024, if there was a household that said they harvested, they shared their eggs with a house in Southeast, it got a 1. If there was a household that said they shared eggs with a community in the interior, it got marked as a 1. So this is just Just looking through the surveys and seeing how many times different communities showed up as being HART shared with in that year.

Does that make sense? Yeah, so it depends upon the number of households you surveyed. You might have surveyed a lot more houses in Southeast versus the Matsu. That's what I'm struggling with. Are these directly comparable based on some ratio of surveyed to unsurveyed houses, or just, just you surveyed more in the Sitka area, you would have a higher frequency?

Through the chair, Commissioner. So not necessarily, because I think if, if, say, if— and we do, we do. I mean, we are doing these surveys in Southeast. And so if we, if, if during 2024, 10 households shared with Juneau, Juneau would still just get one mark for 2024. It wouldn't show up 10 different times.

So it doesn't exactly— it's not exactly that because we're, we're harvest, we're because we're serving Southeast residents. For sure, Southeast communities are shared with more frequently, but this one is just showing, did a Southeast community get shared with in 2024 just once? And it's just, it's a 1 or a 0 kind of thing. Is that—. I'll talk to you off the record.

Yeah, I'm a little bit confused. And the origin of some of these other areas of the state, I know there's a lot of sharing going on, like in the Aleutians, and it just seems like 3 is really low for that compared to Southeast Alaska. Madam Chair, thank you for that. I said one of the, the, I think the limitations of our survey is that we're only talking to the people who harvested from Sitka Sound. So they might have shared with someone on Alaska, and then the person on Alaska would share to a whole bunch of other households.

And so the sharing continues, but we don't pick up on that. Yeah, and that's, yeah, I think the survey origin was Sitka, right? Yeah. Okay, any other questions? Thank you for your presentation.

[Speaker] I think next up is salmon stock status and escapement goals in Southeastern Yakutat, I believe.

All right. Whenever you're ready, please put yourself on the record and begin.

Madam Chair, members of the board, good morning. For the record, my name is Jeff Nichols. I'm the regional research coordinator for the Division of Sport Fish in Southeast Alaska. With me today are colleagues from the Division of Commercial Fisheries, Ms. Teresa Fish and Mr.

Justin Priest.

In August of 2023, we formed an interdivisional team of staff from the Divisions of Commercial Fisheries and Sport Fish in a review of Southeast Alaska salmon escapement goals. The full team and smaller focal groups, groups continued to meet and advance products through the remainder of 2023 and into 2024. These efforts led to publication of the Escapement Goal Review memo, which presented the committee's findings to the directors of Sport Fish and Commercial Fisheries, and subsequently an oral presentation was given at the October 2024 work session.

Our presentation today summarizes this salmon escapement goal review and associated findings. Our oral presentation is found in RC3, tab 23. And in addition, a detailed written report summarizing escapement goal review and stock status is provided in RC3, tab 4.

Our presentation will briefly introduce escapement goal policies, provide current escapement goals and stock status of salmon in Southeast Alaska, and summarize recommended escapement goal revisions. I will present the information related to king salmon. Ms. Fish will present the same information for pink and chum. And finally, Justin Priest will present sockeye and coho information, as well as providing a regional summary for all the species.

Our escapement goal review was guided by the policy for the management of sustainable salmon fisheries. And the policy for statewide salmon escapement goals. In addition, we also reviewed escapement goal performance for the potential stocks of concern as defined in the policy for the management of sustainable salmon fisheries. Collectively, these policies exist to ensure Alaska salmon stocks are conserved, managed, and developed under the sustained yield principle. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] The last aspect of policy we call attention to relates to transboundary rivers.

Transboundary river salmon runs are co-managed through the Pacific Salmon Treaty. This level of co-management dictates that escapement estimates, projections, and goals for transboundary river stocks undergo additional review by the Pacific Salmon Commission, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, as well as the Alaska Department of Fish and Game through technical committees and panels within the Pacific Salmon Commission.

Escapement goals for Southeast Alaska— for salmon in Southeast Alaska were classified as either biological, sustainable, or optimal escapement goals as defined by the Policy for the Management of Sustainable Salmon Fisheries. A biological escapement goal, or BEG, is defined as the escapement that provides the greatest potential for maximum sustained yield, or MSY.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] BEGs are expressed as a range with upper and lower bounds driven by stock productivity information and the range between informed by data uncertainty.

Of the 47 escapement goals evaluated for Southeast Alaska, 29 were BEGs. And BEGs are in place for all species of salmon in the region except chum salmon.

A sustainable escapement goal, or SEG, is defined as a level of escapement indicated by an index, estimate, or value that provides sustained yield over a 5- to 10-year period and used in situations where a BEG cannot be managed for or developed. Application and use of SEG range or lower bound SEG is largely informed by data uncertainty.

And of the 47 escapement goals evaluated in the region, 18 represented SEGs.

This slide, uh, presents current escapement goals for the 11 stocks of king salmon which are surveyed annually and the associated BEG range. The listing of stocks in the table is arranged in a north to south orientation And the map to the right shows the distribution of each of the systems in Southeast Alaska.

This distribution of 11 King Salmon Index systems in the region includes a nearly contiguous stretch of Southeast Alaska and represents most of the known wild stock production in the region.

We have one more slide here providing a bit of context and description of the 11 King Salmon Index systems in Southeast Alaska before moving on to stock status. The 11 stocks of king salmon monitored for escapement represent a diversity of life history strategies, assessment programs, and management structure, which this slide is attempting to convey. Southeast Alaska king salmon stocks include those that rear and mature in the Gulf of Alaska, and the arrow pointing— the red arrow is suggesting this.

And we also have inside rearing stocks that don't have a significant migration outside of Southeast Alaska. And this would be represented by the, the blue circle. And it's not intending to circle the stocks that are inside rearing. We're just pointing out that Southeast Alaska is where the inside rearing would occur.

The stock assessment program in Southeast Alaska is robust and well-established, leading to sampling and estimation methods appropriate for individual systems and stocks. In addition to the annual estimates of escapement and age, sex, and length for all 11 systems, 4 stocks are coded wire tagged and provide full stock assessment parameter estimation. The full indicator stocks in the region include the Chilkat, Taku, Stikine, and Unuk Rivers, equally representing the two different ocean rearing patterns.

Finally, the management structure for King Salmon involves 3 transboundary river stocks shown here in yellow, and these are co-managed with Canada under the jurisdiction of the Pacific Salmon Treaty.

Our evaluation of King Salmon stock status for this presentation focuses on performance with respect, respect to established biological escapement goals annually and across the time series. Over the last 10 years, king salmon stocks achieved the lower bound of the established biological escapement goals just over 50% of the time.

We explore these escapement trends in the following slides with individual and regional counts and identification of current stocks of concern, which are also listed here for initial context.

Our colleagues Ed Jones and Andy Piston will be, will be presenting presenting an overview of the stocks of concern and associated action plans following this discussion.

In the following 3 slides, I'll be presenting escapement trends for each of the 11 king salmon indicator stocks in Southeast Alaska, again relative to the, the current biological escapement goal. And I realize there's a lot going on in these graphs. I'm just going to walk you through the layout. Each of the individual graphs have a consistent horizontal axis, time series through 2024, while the vertical axis, estimated spawning escapement of large king salmon, varies in scale across the systems.

A legend at the bottom describes the two different colors of vertical bars, with years represented by bright orange identifying when escapements were below the goal, and those with dark blue being years when the lower bound was met or exceeded.

Each graph also contains the specific biological escapement goal that represents total escapement in the upper right corner. This range depicting the upper and lower bounds is illustrated by the two horizontal black lines in the graph across the time series.

I, I pointed this out before, but I'll say it again. I want to point out that these escapement trends are presented relative to the current BEG ranges. Also, as identified previously in slide 6, the escapement being monitored and assessed in these 11 systems represents the vast majority of wild king salmon production in the region.

This first slide portrays escapement trends relative to the BEGs for the Situk, Elsec, Chilkat, and Taku Rivers. The Elsec and Taku Rivers are both transboundary river stocks with co-management between Alaska and Canada.

I'll note that the Chilkat and Taku Rivers are currently designated stocks of concern.

This slide portrays escapement trends for the King Salmon River, Stikine River, and Andrew Creek. Andrew Creek is a tributary to the Stikine River within the U.S. Side of the watershed. Each of these three stocks are generally located in central southeast Alaska, and each are also currently designated stocks of concern. Lastly of note, the Stikine River is a transboundary river stock managed bilaterally under the Pacific Salmon Treaty by Alaska and Canada.

The last slide portraying individual system escapement trends includes— include those for the further south systems exiting into the waters of Beam Canal, and these include the Eunuch, Chickamauga, Blossom, and Keeda Rivers.

Although these southernmost systems perform collectively better than central and northern southeast systems, 2 of the 4, those being the Eunuch and the Chickamauga Rivers, are currently designated stocks of concern.

King salmon runs for all 11 of these indicator stocks, stocks met or exceeded the lower bound of the escapement goal approximately 56% of the time over the last 5 years, compared to just over 51% for the previous 10-year period.

We reviewed the biological escapement goals for each of the 11 king salmon stocks and did not find basis for any revisions. This concludes the king salmon portion of the presentation. And before turning it over to my colleagues for the rest of the salmon species, we'll pause if there's any questions for king salmon. Thank you. More questions on kings?

Quick question. On slide 7, you articulated 4 systems. And I believe those were the SeaTac, Taku, Unuk, and there was another one. Chilkat, maybe. Madam Chair, why did you call those out again?

I just was trying to take notes on that. Yep. So, Madam Chair, the 4 systems I was calling attention to were the full— the CodeWire stock systems. These are systems that we get full parameters for stock assessment. But those 4 systems are the Chilkat, Taku, Stikine, and Unik, going from north to south.

Thank you. And then on the next slide, in terms of the escapement goal performance, King Salmon runs met or exceeded, is that all 11? Or is that— does that include the SOC systems in that calculation as well? Madam Chair, that includes all 11 systems. Thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay, let's move on. All right. For the record, sorry, one last question. I just came to mind. In terms of all of the king salmon escapement goals, are those managed individually?

Those are assessed and managed individually. There is no indexing of that necessarily.

Madam Chair, there is no aggregates if that is what you are asking. That is what I was asking. Thank you. I just wanted to get that out there. Thank you.

Mr. Wood. Sorry, it took me a few seconds to find the page. But on slide 7, again,.

And I just want to clarify a few things because terminology being thrown around. You— that blue circle you mentioned is inside rearing. Is that inside meaning that inside rearing of the stock, the wild stocks coming down and hanging out where you're doing your survey? Through the chair, Member Wood. Yeah, let me clarify quickly.

Inside rearing stocks are stocks that generally mature and rear within Southeast Alaska. But we— these stocks can also go to the Gulf of Alaska and for further north. The outside rearing stocks, based off of 25 years of coded wire tag data, they've built— we built a record that these stocks primarily rear to the north. But these stocks also include a smaller component that might rear within Southeast Alaska. It's not a perfect 100%, but it gives us an idea of life history strategies at play.

Mr. Wood. Okay, so you're, you're just looking at the wild stocks coming out, or when you do your genetic data, does it— are the other stocks from other places throughout the Pacific, uh, the Gulf, from Pacific Northwest all the way up to here? Through the chair, Mr. Wood, I think you're asking if, uh, if our stocks in the Gulf of Alaska include stocks South of Alaska, and that is true. Okay, and do you have good numbers on, on the percentages of those?

Through the chair, Mr. Wood, um, I might refer to, uh, presentations given at the work session, uh, from the council, and this would be some estimates of bycatch, and there is a little bit of genetic information in those reports that were provided to you at the work session. Okay, thank you. Mr. Zarey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, yes, uh, I was wondering on the— on, uh, 9 and 10, um, you got 7 different systems there, escapement projects.

I was wondering, uh, you mentioned that the, uh, BEG range is what is presently used. Um, has that changed, uh, just kind of generally, uh, has that changed much for any of these 7 different systems here over the years? Through the chair, uh, members array, uh, the last revisions for king salmon occurred at the 2018 meeting. Uh, at that point in time, we changed 3 systems. That was the last revision for King Salmon Systems.

Were they— was it much of a change? The change in— through the chair, members array— the change in 2018, it was a change in— previously it was an indexed number. The change reflected to total watershed abundance for the spawners.

And one more, Madam Chair. So, and in on 10, well, actually in all of them, those 7 different escapement projects, prior to the mid, approximately prior to the mid-'80s, You have a number of places where you were below the goal. Is there any kind of— you know, I know back in those times maybe monitoring was different or there— was there a biological or— would you say biological or monitoring issue that would have made those been low?

Through the chair, Mr. Zareh, as I mentioned, we're displaying the current escapement goal through the time series with 11 systems at play and noting that there was some changes in the revisions to escapement goals. It's kind of— I can see how that would be difficult to track. What I can say is, is that relative to the existing biological escapement goal going back in time, The orange bars would represent an escapement that was below the current goal. The reasons why, which I think was another aspect, it would be specific to each stock. I wouldn't want to generalize.

Members, are they good enough? Thank you, Commissioner. Yeah, a lot of questions regarding king salmon are probably going to be best addressed in a subsequent presentation you're getting up. A lot of these stocks are covered under the Pacific Salmon Treaty. Our ability to independently adjust escapement goals is really constrained by the treaty process.

And many of the stocks that you have that are intercepted in Southeast Alaska, also stocks of origin of Canada in the lower 48, for which we— especially those endangered species— we have very confining abilities to manage our fisheries based on the exploitation rate of those stocks in our fisheries. So some of these questions are going to be answered, I think, a little bit later moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. Jeff, could you return to slide 8?

I believe it is regarding the stocks of concern. I believe at the work session, Eunuch Chickaman and Chilkat were delisted. Is that correct?

Through the chair, Mr. Bowers, that's correct. Okay. Thanks. Just want to clarify that. Okay, let's move on.

Sorry about that. Excellent. All right, good morning. For the record, my name is Teresa Fish. I'm a research biologist for commercial fisheries in Southeast Alaska, and I'll continue our presentation starting with pink salmon.

Pink salmon spawn in at least 2,500 streams throughout Southeast Alaska. Because of this broad distribution, aerial survey observations are the primary tool used to assess pink salmon abundance. The abundance assessments we use are escapement indices, which are based on peak aerial survey counts to aggregates of index streams in the 3 broad subregions seen on the screen. It's the southern southeast subregion, circled in blue on the map, which includes all waters from Sumner Strait south to Dixon Entrance and has 366 pink salmon index streams. The northern southeast inside subregion is circled in red and includes all inside waters north of Sumner Strait.

It has 295 index streams. And the northern southeast outside subregion, circled in black, includes all outside waters of Chichagof, Baranof, and Kurusoff Islands and includes 41 index streams. In total, there are more than 700 index streams surveyed annually to assess pink salmon spawning abundance relative to the biological escapement goals shown in the table on the lower left. Following our escapement goal review, we did not find reason for any changes to the pink salmon escapement goals, but I'll cover escapement goal performance next.

The 3 charts show annual pink salmon escapement performance in millions of index fish compared to the biological escapement goal ranges, which are shown as the gray shaded areas on each chart. Escapement indices that met or exceeded the goal range are colored pink, and those that fell below goal are highlighted in orange. First, let's look at the Northern Southeast Outside subregion at the top left. Escapement indices have been within or above goal range since the mid-1990s. Similarly, on the bottom left, escapement indices in the Southern Southeast subregion have been within or above the goal range since the mid-1970s.

Escapement indices in the Northern Southeast Inside subregion on the top right have been more variable. Odd-year escapements have consistently met goals since the late 1980s, apart from 2019, and there was a period of poor even-year escapements from 2008 to 2020. However, even-year escapements have rebounded recently, with both 2022 and 2024 escapements falling within the goal range. And odd-year escapements have also rebounded strongly, with 2021 and 2023 meeting and exceeding the goal range respectively. Overall, pink salmon escapement trends in the three Southeast Alaska subregions are generally strong.

If there are any questions for pink salmon, I can pause, or we can go on to look at chum salmon.

Quick question on pink. So how does the department distinguish between wild and hatchery-raised stocks with these escapement indexes? I'm gonna—. Through the chair, I'll kick that to Mr. Piston. Through the chair, for pink salmon in Southeast Alaska, there really isn't much for hatchery pink production, so You know, if you look at the harvest, it's 98% wild fish.

And there's a little bit of pink production on southern Baranof. And we did do some sampling at an index stream nearby a couple of years back, and we didn't see much for strays there. And that's where if you were going to have an issue, it would be there. So it hasn't been an issue in southeast Alaska for pink salmon. Thank you.

Let's talk about chum, then, shall we? Excellent. So similar to pink salmon, chum salmon production is widely dispersed, with known spawning in more than 1,200 streams in Southeast Alaska. Chum salmon populations are divided into two runs based on migration timing. Summer-run chum salmon spawn from mid-July to late August, and fall-run chum salmon spawning typically peaks in September and later.

The table shows the scheme of goals for chum salmon, which are broken into summer-run on top and fall-run goals on the bottom. For summer-run chum.

Chum salmon lower bound sustainable escapement goals are based on peak aerial or foot survey counts to aggregates of index streams in the same 3 subregions we just discussed for pink salmon. Again, the southern southeast subregion circled in blue, the northern southeast inside subregion circled in red, and the northern southeast outside subregion circled in black. The black dots on the map show the summer-run chum salmon index streams. For fall-run chum salmon, we have sustainable escapement goal ranges for 5 stocks that have supported directed fisheries in the past. These stocks are named on the map, bound in white boxes, and the associated streams are shown as white dots.

Escapement goals for fall-run fish are also based on peak survey counts, with the exception of Chilkat River, which is based on expanded fish wheel counts. Following our escapement goal review, we found grounds for changes to 3 chum salmon escapement goals, which are highlighted in the table in blue bold text. That's the northern southeast inside and northern southeast outside subregion summer-run, and the Chilkat River fall-run chum salmon stocks. We'll discuss each change following the escapement goal overviews they pertain to.

The three charts show escapement indices for summer-run chum salmon in thousands of index fish relative to the lower bound sustainable escapement goal, which is shown as the horizontal dashed line for each subregion. Years where the index was above goal are shaded purple and years below goal are highlighted in orange. Escapement indices to the northern southeast outside subregion shown at the top right are based on 9 index streams and have been poor in recent years. All 5 past years and 7 of the last 10 years have been below the lower bound sustainable escapement goal. This stock was designated at a stock of management concern at the October work session and will be discussed in detail in following presentations.

Below that on the bottom left is the Southern Southeast subregion escapement index. It's based on 15 index streams. Escapement indices here have shown considerable variability but have generally been above the lower bound sustainable escapement goal. Since the mid-1980s. The past 10 years have all been above goal, with the highest index on record occurring in 2023.

The Northern Southeast Inside subregion, which is on the top right, is based on 63 index streams. Eskimo indices in this subregion have a more pronounced cyclical pattern. The mid-1990s to mid-2000s were a period of high abundance, and since then Eskimos have generally been lower and more variable. Escapement indices have been above the lower bound sustainable escapement goal in 2 of the past 5 years and 6 of the last 10 years. A quick reminder, this slide presents the escapement indices and escapement goals as they stood before the October work session.

And both the Northern Southeast Inside and Northern Southeast Outside subregions adopted revised lower bound sustainable escapement goals after the removal of 14 total index streams. In the following few slides, I'll discuss the changes by subregion.

So the northern southeast inside summer-run chum stock is again composed of an aggregate of index streams found on inside waters in northern southeast Alaska, which is circled in the map on black. The escapement is assessed using the sum of peak aerial or foot survey counts to all index streams. The red and black dots on the map show the 63 index streams that represent the stock and contribute to the current lower bound sustainable escapement goal, of 107,000 index fish. Working with ADF&G managers, we decided to eliminate 13 index streams in the subregion to improve the quality of the escapement index. These 13 streams are shown as red dots on the map.

The streams were removed for several reasons that limited the dependability of the counts, including poor visibility or findings of high proportions of stray hatchery chum salmon in particular streams. Poor visibility was related to continual issues such as glacial water, overhanging vegetation, or masking by pink salmon. Since the run timing of summer chum and pink salmon overlaps, masking can occur when chum salmon escapements are small relative to pink salmon escapements, and chum salmon are essentially hidden from view on surveys. Such visibility issues potentially decrease the quality of our survey counts. Similarly, high proportions of hatchery salmon in an index stream means escapement counts for those streams may not be representative of wild stocks.

While straying of hatchery-produced chum salmon into these streams is not necessarily an indicator of diminished wild chum salmon production in the drainages, the presence of hatchery-produced fish makes it impossible to estimate wild chum salmon abundance from aircraft or foot surveys alone. Additionally, the 3 streams removed from the index primarily due to hatchery chum salmon accounted for only 2% of the total index on average over the last 30 years. The Escapement Goal Review Committee found the goal was improved by removing the 13 identified index streams and recalculating the escapement goal of the Northern Southeast Inside Subregion, summer chum stock.

This slide shows the escapement goals and index trends both before and after the removal of the 13 index streams. The existing escapement goal of 107,000 index fish based on 63 index streams is shown on the left. For both charts, the lower bound sustainable escapement goal is displayed as the horizontal dashed line. Years where the goal was met are purple and years below are orange. After removing the 13 index streams, The remaining 50 were used to recalculate the lower bound sustainable escapement goal.

The finding of the Escapement Goal Review Committee based on this recalculation, shown on the right and bordered in blue, is to revise the lower bound sustainable escapement goal to be 95,000 index fish. As shown, this revision retains much of the same properties as the existing goal and does not affect general trends, in part because approximately 3/4 of the index values from the removed streams were interpolated. Or in other words, based on counts observed at surrounding streams.

The second revision for summer-run chum salmon stocks is for the Northern Southeast Outside subregion. The stocks return to index streams located on Baranof, Chichagof, and Krusof Islands in the outer coast waters of Northern Southeast Alaska. Similar to the previous stock, Northern Southeast Outside subregion chum are assessed using the sum of all peak aerial foot surveys or sorry, all peak aerial or foot survey counts to an aggregate of index streams. The 9 index streams are shown on the map as black circles, and the current lower bound sustainable escapement goal is 25,000 index fish. Recently, a chum salmon hatchery release site in Crawfish Inlet, highlighted as a red triangle on the map, resulted in a high proportion and quantity of chum salmon in the nearby index streams just to the north, labeled on the map West Crawfish, Northeast Armhead.

This has meant that index counts at this stream are no longer representative of wild escapement, and counts of hatchery fish in these areas could greatly inflate the entire subregion index. Prior sampling has shown generally low proportions of stray hatchery fish at the remaining 8 index streams in the Northern Southeast Outside Subregion, particularly in the 7 streams north of Sitka Sound. Again, straying of hatchery-produced chum salmon into West Crawfish index stream is not necessarily an indicator of diminished wild chum salmon production in the drainage, but the presence of hatchery-produced fish makes it impossible to estimate the abundance of wild chum salmon from aircraft or foot surveys alone. The escapement goal review committee found the goal was improved by removing the one index stream that closely was associated with the new hatchery release site and recalculating the escapement goal of the Northern Southeast Outside Subregion summer chum stock.

This slide shows the Northern Southeast Outside Subregion escapement goals and index trends. Both before and after the removal of the one index stream. The existing escapement goal of 25,000 index fish is based on 9 index streams shown on the left. Again, the lower bound sustainable escapement goals for both charts is the horizontal dashed line. Years where the goal was met are orange— excuse me, are purple, and years below goal are orange.

After removing one index stream, West Crawfish, Northeast Armhead, the remaining 8 streams were used to recalculate the lower bound sustainable escapement goal. The finding of this recalc— sorry, the finding of the Escapement Goal Review Committee based on this recalculation, shown on the right and bordered in blue, is to revise the lower bound sustainable escapement goal to be 19,500 index fish. This revision retains similar properties as the existing goal and does not affect general trends.

Moving on to Fall Run Chum Salmon, the 5 charts show the Fall Run Chum Salmon escapement performance and thousands of index fish for the stocks that have formal escapement goals, shown as the gray shaded area on each chart. Years where the escapement goal— the escapement index met or exceeded the sustainable escapement goal range are shown in blue, and those below are highlighted in orange. The Chilkat River escapement index at the top left is based on expanded fish wheel counts and was within or above goal for nearly all years an estimate was produced. The 4 remaining Fall Runchum salmon indices are evaluated using the sum of peak aerial or foot survey counts to the stock's index stream or streams. Overall, the sustainable escapement goal ranges have been met consistently for Security Bay and Chalmers Sound, the bottom outside figures, but less consistently for Port Camden in the bottom middle, and particularly Excursion River.

Excursion River, the top middle, has been below goal in 4 of the past 5 years. But unless a directed fishery is opened in Excursion Inlet, the harvest rate on this stock is likely near zero. Excursion River fall chum were not listed as a stock of concern at the October work session due to potential survey timing bias in recent years. And moving forward, the department will ensure that survey effort continues until at least September, and we'll reevaluate the stock at the 2028 board meeting. Again, this slide presents the escapements and goals as they stood before the October work session, at which the Chilkat River escapement goal was eliminated, which we'll move on to now.

The Chilkat River has the largest fall-run chum salmon stock in the region. Escapement was estimated using two fish wheels on the Chilkat River by multiplying the fish wheel counts by an expansion factor. The expansion factor was based on 5 years of comparative fish wheel counts and mark recapture escapement estimates, but the relationship between the fish wheel counts and the estimated escapement was very poor.

Leadership and research staff conducted a review of the Fish Wheel Project in winter 2024 and determined it was not essential to existing king, coho, or sockeye salmon projects and was a poor indicator of chum salmon escapement. So at that time, it was decided to eliminate the Fish Wheel Project, and it did not operate in the 2024 season. Although the escapement index has been used to maintain a goal for the stock, it's likely a poor reflection of actual escapement, and the finding of the Escapement Goal Review Committee was to eliminate the sustainable escapement goal for Chilkat River fall-run chum salmon. Madam Chair, that completes my section of the report. Thank you.

We can pause now for any questions on chum salmon.

Mr. Swenson, is there or has there been any study really done? How much difference is there between the hatchery chum and the wild chum in their straying? Are they about the same, or is there more in one than the other? Or do we know?

I think we don't— through the chair, we don't know exactly for— there's probably a diversity of different rates of strain between stocks throughout Southeast Alaska, but we have done some estimates. There's a paper that, through a lot of our strain research, was published a few years back, and we tried to estimate the proportion of of the hatchery aggregate that was straying, and it was summer, it was low, it was 1 or 2%. That equates to a lot of fish, obviously, but I don't think we have for Southeast any estimates of the proportion of a wild stock that would stray to another stream. That'd be a pretty difficult number to get at. Can you identify yourself for the record, please?

Yeah. Andy Piston. I'm the regional salmon research supervisor for Southeast. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I guess whoever can answer this question the best, by all means.

So on slide 8, on page 18, or slide 18, whatever you want to call it. I'm looking at the, the map of the northern southeast outside region. You have 9 index streams which start in the southern part in Whale Bay and move all the way up to the northern area of the Black River. Can you give us a general idea about how many miles that is?

Through the chair, looking at the legend on the map, I'm going to say that's about 50 miles, maybe 70. And so most of the index streams are on the northern side besides the two down below. And when I look at the previous slide on 17, I'm looking at the you know, overall productivity in that 50 miles, I guess, if we're going to use that for a number. And it seems that the escapement levels across the index range has obviously been pretty consistent in declining over time. Can you attribute that to anything specifically?

Through the chair, I would say for the North and Southeast outside subregion, if you— a few slides back, if you look at the Summer-Chem indices, all three of them together, one thing to note with— yes, that one. You can see that for North and Southeast inside and Southern Southeast, you had some periods of lower productivity in the 1970s, for example. The Northern Southeast Outside Escapement Index, because of the availability of consistent survey data, starts in 1982. So you lose that time period, but probably I would say what we're seeing here with the trends in abundance probably reflect what we're seeing over all of Northern Southeast waters. And you see that for pink salmon too.

You see, in fact, if you look at just harvest trends of all salmon in Southeast Alaska over time, you see— if you go back to the 1920s, you see very high abundance in the 1930s and '40s, and then it declines to very low levels in the 1960s and '70s. And then you see everything bounce back tremendously in the '80s and '90s, and then you see a general declining trend. And I think it just reflects just environmental conditions over a broad scale that's impacting everything. And the other thing I would point out for north and southeast outside is because the index, you know, it's based on a simple percentile method, so it's pretty conservative. We're setting the goal to the 25th percentile of those historical escapements.

But that data set also doesn't include some of those periods of lower productivity. So I guess when I look at north and southeast outside escapements, I just think of it more in terms of that, you know, we're just in a period of lower production. It's not a conservation concern. And it just tells us that in these conditions, we should probably try to reduce harvest rates a bit. But it's not a— I don't see it as a conservation issue.

I think it's more of just the overall trends we've seen in salmon production in all these areas over time. And I know we're talking about chum salmon specifically here, but Do you see, do you see varying production levels in regards to pink salmon that would also occur in these areas as well, you know, over time? Yeah, well, for northern and southeast outside pinks, it's a little— it's kind of interesting when you look at pinks in the northern southeast outside. They skyrocketed in abundance in the mid-1990s. Both our harvest and escapement increased tremendously.

And while it's been variable since then, they basically stayed at those higher levels. Yeah, there's an example of that. You can see in the mid-'90s, suddenly everything just increased out there. So we've seen pink salmon in that subregion generally performing extremely well for whatever reason for the last, you know, 4 decades or 3 decades. In northern Southeast Inside Waters, you know, we've seen more variable production with pinks and especially in recent even years, we went through a period of, but it's very, I guess it's highly variable between species and areas.

Thank you. You just said that the trending lower production is not a conservation issue. Yeah, well, and that's a, you know, in a general assessment, you know, most of our escapement goals are set at some effort to achieve maximum sustained yield. And I think sometimes people interpret the term stock of concern as being a, conservation concern, which people tend to mean the stock's at risk of, you know, going extinct or suffering severe trouble. Whereas for most of our escapement goals, you're setting them at a level that's trying to provide maximum yields in future years, which is a different thing, I guess.

It doesn't mean there's not a concern and we want to reduce harvest rates to meet the goals, but as far as interpreting What that means, there's—. Okay, so I understand what you're saying, but at this table and for the public, if you've got a trend below your escapement goals, what other indicators do we have to use a potential conservation problem?

What other— well, the escapement performance is the main one, precisely, which is why— yeah, which is why we have it as a stock of concern and will certainly take management actions. Well, yeah, I'm looking at northern southeast inside escapement index specifically right here. So let's go back a little minute—. A minute, if I could. So you, you identify stocks of management concern.

It doesn't necessarily mean we have—. I understand the distinction—. Concern. We just want to get back by controlling harvest, get back to that yield that has historically been provided. I understand that.

My question was lacking that, any— what other actions or indicators does the board have? And when you see a trend of consistently being below the escapement goal, what other indicators do we have to assess that there may be an issue that the board needs to address or ask the department about? Well, there's all kinds of— you could look at, for instance, hatchery strain. You can look at size at age. You can look at the proportion of females.

There are different indices you can use, but I'm just coming back to this —this presentation. And so that's why I'm asking the questions. So on slide 14, I have a question about slide 14. So the blue text in the box has no correlation to the blue outline on the map. Can you please remind me what the blue text is supposed to be highlighting, indicating?

Yeah, through the chair, this is indicating the stocks that had revisions. Or eliminations in the case of Chilkat River to their escapement goals. So just— I'm not trying to pick on you guys, but when I'm looking at these and I'm reviewing them prior to these presentations, that's telling me nothing. And so when I'm looking at blue, I'm looking at blue. And so it's a little confusing.

So having some kind of a color key is really helpful to help inform us as we're taking a look at these. I'm going to ask the same question with respect to slide 15, and for that matter, I guess, any of the subsequent slides for each of the regions.

And again, just for the record, how does the department distinguish between those wild and hatchery stocks within the escapement goal index? How are you— or are you trying to apportion or enumerate any between those, if, if at all? Yeah, through the chair, we are not apportioning hatchery into this escapement index. Our goal here is to monitor wild chum salmon runs. How are you doing that?

And with the amount of chum salmon, hatchery-produced chum salmon in southern Southeast, that you have a degree of confidence in your wild stock numbers? Yeah, through the chair, we have historically done chum salmon straying studies and at the subregion level or across Southeast have found overall low portion, low proportions of stray hatchery chum salmon in these index streams. However, that has changed recently, which we went over in this. Does that answer your question? Yeah, kind of.

What do you define as relatively low? Great question. Um, 2%, uh, uh, is what I would define as low. That was the subregion levels from the 2012 publications that the department put out. And when we say high proportions of chum salmon in the context of this presentation and potentially removing escapement or index streams, referring to more than 50%.

That defined somewhere, is that subjective to department opinion?

That is written out in a presentation in an RC that you'll see the action plan for Okay, thank you. On slide 16, kind of same, same request. Without hearing your oral presentation, I have no idea what red indicates, right? So now I know that they're the removed streams from the index, but that would have been just useful information as I was taking a look at this. And then on the subsequent slides 17 and 19, When were those index streams removed?

Can you repeat that? On slide— let's start with 17. You mentioned that you removed 13 index streams that had various limitations and recalculated the SEG on the remaining 50. Does it tell me somewhere on this graph, and maybe it does and I'm missing it, when those 13 index streams were removed and it was recalculated? Well, we did that before the October work session.

So the 13 streams were removed from both time series that you see presented in front of you. We removed the streams and then recalculate the entire thing. Entire time. Does that make sense? It does.

OK, thank you for that. And same, same with— is that the same on slide 19 as well? That's correct. OK. And then on slide 18, when we're looking at some of what was going on in certainly the crawfish area, Do you— are you sampling in those streams? How are you— how are you getting an idea of the number of strain?

Again, the strain information that we have for this subregion comes from studies the department put on where we were sampling from 2008 to 2012, and then another study continued and sampled through 2015. We sampled again in 2018 and 19— 2018 through '20, after the Crawfish Inlet returns came and we noticed something different happening in West Crawfish, Northeast Armhead. Is there somewhere that's presented either or will be presented where those percentages are illustrated? Like, yeah, increased percentages. They are in RC— I'm going to guess for the— in the written report.

Yeah, the stock status of chum salmon. That's not highlighted anywhere in the oral reports. Yeah, apologies. Noted. Madam Chair, I would also note that NCRW has been collecting otolith samples at the West Croft Stream over the last couple of years, so they have additional information.

Well, but there are, you know, but that's— but you're presenting to the board, so that's, that's helpful information. But I mean, I'm not sure I'm going to be digging it out of NSRA's information here at this table right now. Mr. Wood. Okay, thank you. I just need some clarification on a few things.

If you could go to slide 16, and you mentioned out of 63 index streams, 13 were eliminated, and that's for the northern southeast inside region. And then on slide— 18, we have the Northern Southeast Outside. And how many stream— index streams have been removed from the outside? Or is this— or is that 13, like, combined? Through the chair, it's 13 index streams in the Northern Southeast Inside subregion and 1 stream in the Northern Southeast Outside subregion.

1 Stream. Okay. And with these streams, are they all So they're all experiencing a lack of return escapement, correct? That's why you're choosing— they were eliminated as index streams? That is not correct.

They were removed because of challenges of getting reliable information from these particular index streams. That was mostly due to visibility issues or high rates of stretch— hatchery stray fish in the index streams. Okay, so all of the ones that were removed that we see, the ones on the outside and the inside, were removed for that same reason?

The streams were— yeah, they're removed for either poor visibility or high rates of hatchery stream. Poor visibility. And is that poor visibility based on the time of year or just the other fish that could be on top of them?

It's, it's related to a number of things. It could be like the forest around it, if there's a ton of overhanging vegetation, really tannic water, turbid water, or regular occurrences of turbid water or glacial water. And as you are maybe alluding to, really high proportions of pink salmon can, can occlude chum salmon. Yeah, that's, that's partially what I was getting at too. When you look at the kind of the high numbers of pinks that are coming back in the area and you're doing seeing these from the air, and depending on the time of year, how confident are you that, you know, of— I'm just trying to assess the confidence level, especially when I see all of the index streams that were removed, they're so widely spread out.

So I guess I'm trying to understand, you know, from the inside to the outside. I guess that's not widely spread out. But I'm just trying to understand the connection between that. And then you answered two of my questions. I'll end it there.

Thank you.

Mr. Chamberlain. I would like to visit slide 18. I don't know if I have an opportunity to address this more in presentation, so I will I'll start my questions now. You referenced the issues with the crawfish and hatchery release site straying into the West Crawfish Northeast Armhead. In your last—.

Or in your observations, what percentage of those fish in the West Crawfish Armhead were hatchery releases?

Through the chair. It varies from year to year, but it varies through time. In the initial years, in 2018 and '19, it was very high proportions by late August, and especially once you get into September, it was 90% plus. In other more recent years, we've had some estimates around 60% in late August.

So it's been variable, and the run size there, you know, in the first couple of years of returns at Crawfish, they had huge returns. Since then, survival rates have gone to more typical of what you'd see for a chum release, and we've seen, I guess, fewer strays in numbers. And we've also been having terminal fisheries to try to reduce the number of fish available to stray. But in general, though, it's been consistently high. So since those high numbers were, were discovered in 2018, what efforts, either through the RPT process or through management strategy, were taken to mitigate the straying or reduce the number of strays in that stream?

Sure. So, well, once returns started and we realized there was an issue, we first started sampling the stream again just to document what was going on. Once we determined there was large numbers of strays present, then we took management actions in the Seine fishery to try to, try to harvest some of those excess hatchery fish that were moving into West Crawfish. And then more recently, department is conducting an internal review of the crawfish release, and that's— that review is described in regulation under 5 AAC 48.6. And then the RPT was directed by the commissioner to review chum salmon release.

Sites in Southeast Alaska over the next year. Um, another thing that's being done in the RPT process is they're starting to take up the issue of wild stock sanctuaries. And I think at the spring meeting they're going to bring up some potential sites for discussion. And while that doesn't correct this situation, it's a step that may result in avoiding this type of situation in the future. And then obviously we have— it's part of the action plan too, so that— and I would also mention, you know, NCRWRA has— they've been conducting some juvenile migration studies in Crawfish Inlet to try to see how those fish are migrating out of Crawfish Inlet.

And they also have some plans to conduct some studies to try to improve homing to the site. It's hard to predict the result of that, but yes. So the, the increased harvest efforts on, on the hatchery, on the hatchery fish, does that also— would that also correlate to an increased harvest effort on, on the wild stocks, or is there a way to differentiate them where you're targeting hatchery stocks and not, not wild stocks in that? Well, they're trying to target those fisheries in areas where they're seeing buildup of mostly hatchery fish, and they're trying to time it to avoid the wild run, which is on average a little bit earlier in timing. But there's likely some level of increased harvest due to, due to that.

So would it be fair to say that there's also an increased harvest on wild stocks in an effort to reduce hatchery straying in this, in these streams, or am I misinterpreting that? That's probably fair. It might be minor, but it certainly could be happening and it's hard to document. So yes. When were the— when were the sites for release permitted in the Crawfish Inlet area?

The first— I'm not sure of the exact year on the permit. Roughly. Well, the first returns I think were 2017-18, so probably around 2014. So from that time period on, do you have information on the percentages of strays in those nearby areas? Yes, and we have a table in the action plan that shows those proportions.

Okay. Okay. Do you know where— like, can you tell me specifically, or can you just RC that page again for me, please? Yeah, well, if you— for sampling that's occurred beyond— are you asking about—. What I'm looking for is the— I would like to see the, the percentages of strays that you've found over time since the first release and whether—.

What the—. What's, what's happening there. I'd like to see that in a graph. Okay, does that make sense? Yeah, and we do, we do have that table when we pull up the action plans that has year-by-year proportions of stray hatchery fish.

And I guess, so my other question then is going to be sort of in response to these numbers that the department saw that were— sounds to be pretty high if you're saying upwards of 90% in some sites. You indicated a management strategy to increase harvest or opportunity for harvest. What other management strategies? Was there any reduction in sites? Was there reduction in in broodstock production that was directed by the department in response to the high numbers that you were seeing?

There hasn't been any change to the release. Okay, thank you.

Okay, I'm going to switch gears very quick. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Swenson, go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Do we— does it— I don't know, I'm just thinking this through. Does this— does the department do any studies on some of these streams that are close to the hatcheries or that have this strain. I mean, are there some streams where these fish can live together without the hatchery fish, for example, over time overtaking the wild fish? I mean, I know this has to differ from stream to stream.

Some streams can accept more fish, others can't take as many fish.

I just wonder, is there anything ever done to decide which streams that it's maybe not a big issue with of a mix versus others that it is?

Through the chair, I would say there's, you know, in part of the Alaska Hatchery Research Group, some of the studies that have been going on, they have tried to look at you know, relative reproductive success of, you know, hatchery by hatchery and hatchery by wild spawning in the wild. And that information, they're kind of in the final stages of that project. So hopefully in the next year or two, we'll get some southeast-specific information from a few streams. And that's mostly up in northern southeast inside, a couple streams up there. But right now we don't.

I mean, ideally we avoid that situation. We don't, don't see stray levels like that. But we are, we do have some projects to try to at least assess what would be happening in a situation like that. Okay, thank you. Yeah, thank you.

I have two questions. Since we're digging in on the West Crawfish site in particular, I'm wondering, you were, we were talking about the chum and the, the wild chum that were there, where it was a summer chum. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay.

And then the hatchery chum that seemed to be commingling with them was a— is a fall chum? That's correct. Okay. So hopefully— ideally, the timing was supposed to be spread out. And then we've also noticed on the map that the actual release site is quite a bit further away from the stream that we've eliminated from the index.

So, and who knows why they do that, the fish. But I'm curious why, like with these other streams in slide 16, we pointed out the West Crawfish Hatchery site and the release site, sorry, the West Crawfish, or the crawfish release site and the West Crawfish index stream. Are there, in these other ones that have been eliminated, Are there other remote leases— releases close to there that could be attributed to the same kind of problem, or is that just an observation problem? Like, you can't attribute this as much to hatchery overlay as you can just branches in the way or poor water color, I guess is what I'm asking. Well, for the streams that were eliminated due to visibility issues, there's no Relation to the hatchery releases, but the ones that were removed due to high proportions of stray hatchery fish or because of proximity to a release site.

Okay, so in slide 16, you know, I don't see any spots that are pointed out as hatchery release sites, I guess is what I'm saying. So, okay, but there are on slide 18. So I'm just wondering if there's—.

Sure, through the chair, if we go back to slide 17, the one showing the— sorry, the one we were on right before you flipped. So on this one, the primary stream that was removed due to high proportions of hatchery strays was Dry Bay Creek, which is on the lower right of the circled area, and that's by a new release site at Thomas Bay. And then up in Lynn Canal in the very northern part, there was a stream up there and there's two release sites right in the vicinity of those red circles. So those are the primary areas where there was index stream removed because of high proportions of hatchery strays. Thank you.

Just to dovetail off that a little bit then, so we're looking at the Chilkat foal chum salmon. Under your last slide, I think it's slide 21 in this series, we eliminated the SEG there. Is there any— and the Fish Wheel Project.

Is there going to be any effort by the department to sort of keep an eye on that or continue to assess how that's going and how would you do that? Yeah, absolutely. Madam Chair, we have been talking with our managers in the Haines area and we did have funding This year we had her do some helicopter surveys up on the spawning grounds, and we're going to try to develop an index area where we can consistently, hopefully with helicopters, get good consistent index of abundance up there on the spawning grounds each year. That's our plan right now moving forward. Good, thank you.

Mr. Swenson. I just want to compliment you guys on— you've been on the hot seat here with a lot of questions, and I think you've done a doggone good job of it. Answering most of the, you know, all the questions that I've heard come forth. Thank you for that. I agree.

Mr. Commissioner? Yeah, we'll have another opportunity to review this during the action plan, so I'm saving some of my comments for.

Keeping your powder dry.

Thank you. All right, let's, uh, let's pause for a few minutes, um, and take a quick break and then come back and complete the, complete the presentation with Koho and Sakai. Thanks.

One, two.

One, two.

Okay, welcome back. The time is 11:23. We're back on the record, and, um, I think we'd like to try and up this presentation. So let's go ahead and pick up where we left off. Thank you.

Madam Chair, members of the board, members of the public, for the record, I'm Justin Priest. I'm the regional research biologist for commercial fisheries in Southeast Alaska. I'll wrap up our presentation with a summary of our coho and sockeye salmon escapement goal reviews. We currently maintain escapement goals for 13 coho salmon stocks in Southeast Alaska. One of which is the transboundary Taku River, which is managed through the Pacific Salmon Treaty.

The Taku River is shown with the yellow label on this map. Also shown is a table of current escapement goals for these stocks, including one highlighted in dark blue for which the Escapement Goal Review Committee found basis for changes to the goal. Coho salmon escapements in the region are variously assessed through weir projects, mark recapture studies, survey counts to individual streams, and survey counts to aggregates of index streams. For the aggregate counts, we have 5 index streams in the Sitka area and 14 index streams in the Ketchikan area that are each assessed as aggregates. Those streams are circled on this map.

The next 3 slides show annual escapements of coho salmon compared to current escapement goals.

We'll now show escapement goal performance for coho salmon stocks. The 5 stocks shown here are what we call indicator stocks. Koasam and smolt at all of these systems are coded wire tagged, then recovered in commercial and sport fisheries when they return on their adult migrations. The horizontal black lines in these charts represent the escapement goal ranges. The dark blue bars represent escapements that met or exceeded goals, and the orange bars represent escapements that were below goal.

Coded wire tagging information has provided comprehensive long-term information on smolt production, total harvest, total run size, and harvest and survival rates. This information is useful for abundance-based management of fisheries that are directed at harvesting Coho salmon. For example, commercial troll fisheries and terminal drift gillnet fisheries. As you look over these charts, you can see the escapement goal performance for these Coho salmon stocks has been very good. Few escapements have been below goal.

In general, these high-quality datasets show that escapements are typically within the escapement goal ranges in recent years.

Next, these are 5 additional stocks. These 5 Coho salmon stocks are monitored by variously survey counts to individual streams, such as the top 2 shown on the left here, 2 sets of aggregate index streams counted on multiple systems shown on the right, and also the Klawock weir count on the bottom. Note again the generally good escapement goal performance, though counts at Peterson and Montana Creeks have been below average in recent years.

Finally, we also maintain escapement goals for 3 Yakutat area stocks, which are monitored through survey counts. Obtaining survey counts for these systems has been hit or miss the last 3 years due to persistent stormy weather during the fall, so that there are some recent gaps in the charts shown here. These gaps are shown with a small asterisk.

To summarize coho salmon escapement goals throughout Southeast Alaska in the Yakutat region, over the past 10 years, goals were met 88% of the time on average. Very few coho salmon stocks have underperformed for any length of time, and we did not identify any coho salmon runs as stocks of concern.

We'll now review the Escapement Goal Review Committee's finding for the Klawock River coho salmon stock. The Klawock River is located on Prince of Wales Island near Klawock and Craig, Alaska. The Klawock Hatchery is located on the river itself, 3.5 miles upriver from the estuary, and has released coho salmon since 1980. The hatchery and weir are both currently operated by the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association.

There's a weir across the river, and currently an escapement schedule is used to pass a portion of Coho salmon upstream of the weir into the lake to spawn naturally. The remainder are used for broodstock and cost recovery. Odolus sampling conducted from 2013 through 2015 indicated that nearly all Coho salmon that passed as escapement in those years were first-generation hatchery fish. The current SEG is set to limit hatchery fish upriver to maintain optimal spawning densities and historic run timing. The committee's findings were therefore to eliminate the SEG.

This would not affect the escapement schedule, which would remain in place.

I'll pause there as that's the conclusion of Coho Salmon. If anyone wants to review Coho Salmon or ask questions, let's keep moving.

Moving on to Sockeye Salmon. We currently maintain escapement goals for 12 stocks in the region. 4 Of those goals are for stocks located in transboundary rivers, which are managed through the Pacific Salmon Treaty. As before, the names of these locations are shown here with yellow labels. Also shown is a table of current escapement— current escapement goals for these stocks, including 2 highlighted in dark blue, for which the Escapement Goal Review Committee found basis for changes to the goal.

Sockeye salmon escapements in the region are variously assessed through weir projects, mark recapture studies, survey counts, and Ditsen sonar counts.

These next two slides show annual escapements of sockeye salmon compared to current escapement goals. Compared with other species of salmon, sockeye salmon runs have exhibited quite a bit of variability over time. On this first slide, most of the stock— first group of stocks have done well. Of particular note, are the record returns at Readout Lake in recent years, outlined here on the left. Readout Lake returns in recent years have far exceeded the upper bound of the escapement goal.

On this next slide, we again see variability in the returns. For sockeye, we've seen more runs with escapements below goal than we've seen for other species of salmon in the region. Note that there are two current sockeye salmon stocks of concern, which will be outlined in orange. More information about these stocks will be in the following presentation, but I'll show them briefly here. The McDonald Lake sockeye salmon run, shown at the bottom right, has been below goal in 7 of the last 8 years.

It was designated as a stock of management concern at the 2018 Board of Fisheries meeting.

The Hugh Smith Lake sockeye salmon run in the middle right will be discussed more as part of the stock of concern presentation as that stock was recently listed as a management stock of concern during this meeting cycle. In addition to these two existing or two current stocks of concern, one stock was recently delisted. The Klukshu River, shown in the center left here, is the Canadian tributary of the transboundary Alsek River and was designated as a stock of management concern at the 2020 Board of Fish work session and delisted at the October 2024 work session. Additionally, there are two escapement goals that the Escapement Goal Review Committee found basis for revising. These updated goals are shown here on the top two charts and are with updated goals in blue and will be covered more in a minute.

The two systems with the revised goals are the Talltan Lake and Mainstem Stikine River stocks. We'll now go into further detail about both revisions.

Both sockeye salmon goals that the Escapement Goal Review Committee found basis for revisions to are stocks located in the Skeen River drainage. The first of the two goals I'll review is the Tallten Lake and River stock. The Tallten Lake or River is a tributary to the Skeen River and a distinct stock. Review and assessment of the escapement goals was conducted by a bilateral Skeen working group, which reviewed all assessment and escapement data. The working group included representatives of ADFNG, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, DFO, and the Taltan First Nation.

The findings from their working group were then reviewed by staff from the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, the Pacific Salmon Commission Transboundary Technical Committee, TTC, and the Pacific Salmon Commission Transboundary River Panel, TBR. The previous B.E.G. Was 18,000 to 30,000 fish. The finding was to modify the BEG to 11,000 to 25,000 fish. This updated goal was adopted prior to the 2023 fishing season.

The figure on the right shows the previous goal in solid black lines and how that compares to the updated goal in dashed blue lines.

The second Stikine River sockeye salmon stock to review is the Stikine mainstem stock. Similar to the Talltan, assessment of this escapement goal was conducted by the same bilateral Stikine Working Group. Again, the findings from this working group were reviewed by the same group of staff as the previous stock, including ADF&G and Pacific Salmon Treaty Panel and Committee members. The existing biological escapement goal is 20,000 to 40,000 fish. The committee's finding was to modify the BEG to 13,000 to 33,000 fish.

This updated goal was adopted prior to the 2023 fishing season. The figure on the right shows how the previous goal in solid black lines compares to the updated goal in dashed blue lines.

To summarize sockeye salmon escapement goals over the past 10 years, goals throughout the region were met 75% of the time on average. There are two existing sockeye salmon stocks of concern, with one recently delisted and 1 stock enlisted. The Escapement Goal Committee found basis for revisions to the escapement goals of 2 sockeye salmon stocks.

That concludes the species-specific escapement goal summaries. To summarize escapement goal changes for all the species we've discussed today, the Escapement Goal Review Committee found basis for changes to 6 escapement goals, 3 chum goals, 2 sockeye goals, and 1 coho goal. The remaining 41 escapement goals remain status quo. Madam Chair and members of the board, I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have at this point. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Swenson.

I know Ms. VanDort has asked this question in other proceedings, but why do you drop the BEG in the SACAI? I don't understand that. What's—. Yeah, explain it to me, please. Through the chair, Member Swenson, thanks for that question.

So the original— for the Stikine River, the original goals were set in 1987 and 1993 for the Stikine River and Taltan River respectively, and those were originally set on just a few years of escapement data. And so as we've collected, we had about 30 more years of data to add to the brood years, and so we got a better understanding of what the true productivity to maximize yield was for those stocks.

Okay, thank you. Are you using the same methodology in terms of how you're establishing the goals?

Madam Chair, can you clarify? For— are you speaking—. So there's a couple different ways that you guys establish goals, right, in terms of modeling? Is that— am I incorrect? I'm trying to think of the the two that were— can you help me first think of the two different ways?

Madam Chair, so I think you're referring to the percentile approach. And then, you know, there's various spawner-recruit relationship-based approaches. That's the one. That's what I was looking for. So are you— are the method that you're applying— I don't know if it's— are you using the percentile approach, or how are you establishing them?

Madam Chair, we are using the same methodology, which is not the percentile approach. It is a full spawner-recruit return, which would be a big, I guess. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thanks. And this, this is kind of a collaboration between ADFNG and scientists from Canada as well. Through the chair, Member Wood. Yes, for the Stikine River and all transboundary rivers, the goals are set bilaterally, so they are worked on together with members from both delegations. On those two systems, I'm just looking at your finding that these were adopted prior to the 2023 fishing season.

Was that sort of out of— or unusual for how you guys do your normal escapement goal review cycle? And if so, why?

Oh no, but it seems usually kind of do your escapement goal review and you present those at the work session prior to the in-cycle meeting, and this seems to be done a little bit earlier. Madam Chair, I confess I don't know the answer to that, but I would love to look that up. I believe that is— I'm not going to speculate, I guess. Yeah, if you don't know, that's cool. Last question for me is on— with respect to sockeye, and this is a terrible problem to have— Redoubt Lake looks to really be performing well in the last couple years.

Are there any department concerns about overescapement?

Madam Chair, at this point the management staff have been opening the fishery as wide open as possible to address those potential concerns, but we are not concerned necessarily with overescapement for that stock. Okay, thank you. Any other questions?

All right, well, thank you for your presentation. Thank you for your patience with our questions.

The next slide looks to be getting into SOC action plan review and looks to be fairly lengthy. So I— what I think I'll do is take an early lunch break and then come back and get into the SOC and action plan reviews for the Southeast region. So let's go ahead and take a break, come back at about 1:15, and we'll get going. Thank you.

The other thing I just kind of wanted to remind folks of too is that there is a reception this evening at 5 PM at the hotel that's hosted by the Southeast Alaska Hatcheries and Seafood Industry leaders. I'll make another reminder announcement here at the end of the session, but I encourage you to check it out.

Okay, welcome back everyone. Hope you enjoyed your lunch and got to take advantage of some of the nice weather we have here. Let's go ahead and proceed with staff reports. And I believe we're at Southeast Region Stock of Concern and Action Plan Review. So, gentlemen, please take it away.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and board members. I'm Andy Piston, regional salmon research supervisor for the Division of Commercial Fisheries. And with me is Mr. Ed Jones, statewide Chinook salmon research coordinator for the Division of Commercial Fisheries. In this presentation, we will start by providing an overview of the Stock of Concern designation process that has taken place to date, and then we'll go with the next steps in the process. Next, we'll provide brief updates for continuing Stocks of Concern and for stocks that were delisted at the October work session.

And finally, we will summarize stock status and information for two newly designated Stocks of Concern and briefly introduce objectives and potential actions described in the action plans drafted for discussion at this meeting. Additional presentations for each action plan will be given near the end of department oral reports. And our presentation is listed in RC3, tab 24, and the draft written action plans in RCs 4 through 6.

First, we'll start with a quick definition of some key terms. The Sustainable Salmon Policy outlines different levels of concern. We have yield concern, management concern, and conservation concern. The southeast stocks presented today were all designated as stocks of management concern, which is defined as a chronic inability to meet escapement goals despite the use of management measures implemented to reduce harvest. A chronic inability means that an escapement goal is not met over a 4- to 5-year period.

An action plan for a stock of concern is developed by the board and the department that outlines actions that will be taken to reduce harvest and meet escapement goals over a specified period of time.

Steps in the stock of concern process that have been taken to date include the department reviewed escapement goals and recommended stock of concern status for underperforming stocks at the October 2024 work session. At that time, the board adopted stock of management concern status for Hugh Smith Lake sockeye salmon and the northern southeast outside summer-run chum salmon stocks. In November and December, the department drafted action plans for the board, which include options for reducing harvest on these stocks. The next steps in the process include reviewing the draft action plans, and area management biologists will present on each action plan to help inform discussions. The board can then take regulatory action if deemed necessary, and final action plans will then be approved by the board and implemented by the department.

This map shows the locations for stocks we will mention in our presentation. 9 Of these stocks were already designated as stocks of concern. 5 Of the stocks labeled in orange will be continuing as stocks of concern. 4 Stocks labeled in yellow were delisted at the October work session. The 2 new stocks of management concern are shown with the blue labels, and that's Hugh Smith Lake sockeye salmon and the Northern Southeast Outside summer-run chum salmon.

I will provide stock of concern updates for sockeye and chum salmon stocks, and then Ed Jones will cover stock of concern status for Chinook stocks in the region, and I'll stop for questions between our 2 portions of the presentation.

First, we'll provide a brief update on Klukshu River sockeye salmon, which was adopted as a stock and management concern at the 2020 work session and delisted at the October 2024 work session. The Klukshu River is a Canadian tributary of the Alsek River, which flows into the Gulf of Alaska southeast of Yakutat. Like other transboundary river stocks, Alsek River salmon runs are managed through provisions of the Pacific Salmon Treaty. The current escapement goal is a biological escapement goal range of 7,500 to 11,000 fish that was established in 2013 and is shown on this chart by the two horizontal black lines. Since being adopted as a stock of concern, the Klukshu River has had very large returns of sockeye salmon, and escapements were above the upper bound of the escapement goal range in three of the past four years, including the second and fourth largest escapements on record in 2022 and 2021.

Next up, we'll provide a brief update on McDonald Lake sockeye salmon, which was designated as a stock of management concern during the 2018 Board of Fisheries cycle. This chart shows historic escapement estimates and the sustainable escapable range of 55,000 to 120,000 fish, which is shown by the two horizontal black lines. The action plan for this stock reduced time and area for many net fisheries in southern Southeast Alaska and resulted in a nearly 50% reduction in harvest rates for this stock. Escapements began improving in 2021 and 2022, and the escapement goal was met in 2023 and 2024. Stock of concern status and management actions will continue for this stock, but recent trends have been encouraging.

Next, we'll look at two new stocks of management concern, and we'll start.

Hewsmith Lake sockeye salmon, and the Hewsmith Lake action plan is RC6.

Hewsmith Lake's located on the mainland of southern Southeast Alaska in Boca de Quadra Inlet. Hewsmith Lake sockeye salmon migrate primarily around the south end of Prince of Wales Island, as indicated by gray lines on this map, and the largest harvests typically occur in District 1 in the waters surrounding the entrance to Boca de Quadra. With significant harvests occurring in District 4 in some years. Few Hu Smith Lake sockeye salmon move around the north end of Prince of Wales Island, and harvest in other districts is typically very low.

The department has operated a weir at the outlet of Hu Smith Lake annually since 1980, and escapements have been highly variable over the past 44 years. Beginning in the early 1980s, the lake was the subject of sockeye salmon enhancement and rehabilitation efforts. That included lake fertilization from 1981 to 1984 and fry stocking from 1986 to 1997 and a pre-smolt stocking program from 1999 through 2003. The current optimal escapement goal was established in 2003 that included hatchery origin fish from enhancement efforts that were ongoing at the time. The escapement goal is based on a risk analysis and theoretical stock recruit analysis.

Since 2014, we have been getting consistent harvest estimates for the stock and are building brood tables and can conduct more rigorous stock recruit analyses once we have more years of data. Hughes Smith Lake sockeye salmon were previously listed as a stock of concern in 2003 following a period of very low escapement from 1998 to 2002, and then they were delisted in 2006. And escapements had consistently met or exceeded the goal range from 2003 to 2017 before dropping abruptly in 2018.

The 2013 brood year had very poor survival and we saw very few two-ocean fish in 2017, but we still had strong numbers of 5-year-old fish from the 2012 brood year. In 2018, the escapement numbers dropped abruptly as returns from the 2013 and 2014 brood years made up the majority of the escapement.

Most recent returns were impacted by a marine heat wave that impacted the Gulf of Alaska from late fall of 2013 through 2016, and again in 2018 and 2019. In addition, the small escapement in 2018 coincided with drought conditions in the fall of 2018, and the primary spawning tributary Bushman Creek was mostly inaccessible through most of the normal peak spawning month of September. We've also seen reduced size at age in the dominant age classes, as well as skater scale patterns that suggest poor growth at sea in many of these years. Recently, we've seen some signs of improvement, beginning with a jump in smolt numbers in 2023 and 2024 and continuing with high counts of Jack sockeye salmon in 2024, which follows that 2023 bump up in smolt numbers. This coming summer, we'll see if that translates into larger return— larger returns of two-ocean fish.

The action plan the board will be discussing at this meeting is similar to the 2003 action plan and outlines three options for reducing commercial harvest. Harvest rates on the stock have always been high due to its location in the center of some of the most productive pink salmon runs in the region, and it averaged approximately 66% based on Coteau tags and genetic-based estimates. Since 2014, the average harvest rate has been estimated at 67%, with a range of 38 to 88%, and detailed harvest estimates are provided in Tables 1 through 3 of the action plan. Recommended fisheries actions focused on the areas nearest the mouth of Boca de Quadra and include portions of the District 101 purse seine fishery and adjacent drift gillnet fishery. Recent information confirms that the timing of actions from weeks 29 to 33 are appropriate, although we note the harvest rates have remained high while implementing the action plan closures from 2019 to 2024.

Options to reduce harvest presented the action plan, including using EO authority to manage based on in-season assessment, continuing to implement the 2003 action plan closures annually, or expanding the action plan closures to their full extent for the entire time period of statistical weeks 29 to 33 and increasing the closure area in the purse seine fishery. Guidelines for removing stock of concern status follow most recent action plans in requiring at least 3 consecutive years meeting goal or 4 of 6 years before considering delisting. And there's only one proposal that may have an impact on the stock, and that is proposal 167 to increase the length of purse seine nets by 50 fathoms.

This map shows the location of 2003 action plan fisheries restrictions at their full extent in the vertical and diagonal lined areas near the center of the map. The actions in weeks 29 and 30 only impact the purse seine fishery right at the mouth of Boca de Cuadra and then expand north and south in weeks 31 to 33 and include the northern 1 nautical mile of the District 101 drift gillnet fishery in those weeks as shown on the map. Option 3 would expand the purse seine closures to include the triangular-shaped area between the gillnet and seine fisheries, which currently allows for some effort in that zone between those two areas. Previous studies have shown the proportions of Hu Smith Lake sockeye are highest in fisheries near the mouth of Boca de Quadra, and that peak harvests occur between weeks 29 and 33 as outlined in the 2003 action plan. Additional slides related to this action plan will be provided during action plan presentation to help inform the process and provide more visual reference to the various options as you work through them.

Next, we will look at the Northern Southeast Outside Subregion Summer Run Chum Salmon. The Northern Southeast Outside Summer Run Chum Salmon action plan is listed in RC5.

The Northern Southeast Outside subregion includes summer-run chum salmon index streams on the outside waters of Chichagof and Baranof Islands in northern Southeast Alaska. There are currently 8 index streams in this subregion following the removal of the West Crawfish index stream. And these streams represent escapement performance for all summer-run chum systems in the region. There were 42 streams in the northern Southeast outside subregion with at least one count of greater than 1,000 fish in the ADFNG database prior to 1985, and additional streams with smaller runs. Wild chum salmon in this area are primarily harvested incidentally in targeted pink salmon fisheries, and harvest rates are unknown and likely highly variable between streams and between years.

This slide shows the escapement goal performance for the former and recently revised indices and escapement goals. The existing escapement goal based on 9 index streams is 25,000 fish, as shown on the figure on the left. And after removing the one index stream, the remaining 8 index streams were used to recalculate the lower bound SEG of 19,500 fish on the right. Escapements over the past 15 years have generally been close to the lower bound sustainable escapement goal, with lower escapements from 2020 to 2023. And although escapement performance is slightly better for the revised index, it's still below goal in 4 of the past 5 years.

Due to the wide geographic area and numbers of streams covered in the Northern Southeast Outside subregion, The primary option recommended for commercial fisheries is to use EO authority to reduce harvest of summer-run chum salmon in weeks 27 through 34 and could involve time and area restrictions tailored for each specific area based on current conditions. The timing of summer-run chum salmon is earlier than pink salmon, so harvest rates on the first half of the run are likely low. Harvest rates are also likely highly variable between streams and years. 3 Options are provided— are also provided regarding hatchery chum salmon releases at Crawfish Inlet. That includes status quo, reducing the size of the release through commissioner action, and eliminating the release site in Crawfish Inlet through commissioner action.

It is important to note that these options would primarily impact the West Crawfish area, and northern Southeast outside chum salmon would still qualify as a stock of concern using the updated index with the West Crawfish stream removed. Like Hugh Smith Lake, guidelines for removing stock at concern status follows most recent action plans in requiring at least 3 consecutive years meeting goal or 4 of 6 before we consider delisting. And similarly, only one proposal may have an impact on the stock, and that is Proposal 167 to increase the length of purse seine nets by 50 fathoms.

This map shows the primary purse seine fishing areas in relation to index streams and hatchery release sites. Each specific area is unique and management actions would reflect the local chum salmon escapements and developing pink salmon runs. Restrictions would not be implemented in Sitka Sound due.

The high number of hatchery-produced chum salmon in the area and the absence of northern southeast outside summer-run chum index streams. Additional slides related to this action plan will be provided during the action plan presentation to help inform the process and provide more visual references to the various options as you work through them. That includes the sockeye and chum portion of this presentation, and I'd be happy to answer questions before we move on to Chinook. Thank you. Board questions?

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Andy. Specific to Sakai, let me find where I'm at here.

And McDonald Lake, it seems like you've, you've had some pretty high levels of escapement in the past, and it seems to have had some sort of an impact on returning fish, you know, over time, and then it's— it kind of would rebound. How much of it— how much of an— how much of the escapement level in this particular system, based on limnology or whatever else you have to inform your decision, does an impact of high levels of sockeye escapement have, you know, for future years of production. Yeah, through the chair, I think with McDonald Lake, it's kind of interesting. I think it reflects a lot of those same long-term production dynamics we're seeing for a lot of species because, you know, when our stock assessment program began at McDonald Lake, the runs were very large and we consistently, you know, we were getting very large returns off those large escapements initially. And then, you know, since that time, things have gradually declined.

And that, you see that exact same pattern in just harvest of sockeye going going back, you know, to 1960, you see the cyclical pattern. And, and you also see that pattern in stocks like in northern British Columbia, the Skeena and Nass rivers. They both, if you look at their escapement trends through time, they both build up to really high levels, you know, in the 1980s, 1990s, and then, then you see that decline. So I think it's, um, for McDonald Lake, you know, clearly at a time those large escapements were producing huge returns. Now not so much.

But I think it's really just driven by what's going on in the marine environment with marine survival. Thank you. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks, Andy. Just to clarify right off the bat, uh, for us learning this stuff, when you do— when you— the definition of stock of concern, is it 3 different grades?

Like, you begin with stock of yield, stock of management, and then stock of conservation? Is that how that works, or does that— can you go straight to stock of management and bypass yield? Um, for Southeast Alaska, all our stocks of concern have been stocks of management concern, and I think the yield concern would more depend on specific situation of the stock. Maybe, for example, if the, you know, yield concern I think might be more appropriate if that one specific stock drove the entire fishery. And to your question of conservation concern, we don't have any stocks of conservation concern.

In the area, but that would be much more severe than a stock of management concern. Okay, so it doesn't necessarily follow a stepped process forward or unwinding it either, like when you decide to delist it. It doesn't go from like stock of management down to stock of yield. We haven't taken that route in the past, no. Okay, thank you.

Commissioner. Yeah, so Madam Chair, before we— I don't know if there's more board discussion on this, but I want to read into the record what I intend to do with the chum salmon action plan under my authority. So be patient with me. The department recognizes that string of hatchery-produced chum salmon in Southeast Alaska has impacted the ability to assess the status of wild chum salmon returns in some areas. We also recognize that research about hatchery and wild chum salmon interactions is ongoing, and at this time, the impacts of these interactions interactions is not definitive.

However, the presence of hatchery chum salmon, which are part of the stock that is not meeting sustainable escapement goals, has, in my opinion, resulted in a stock of concern listing and the development of an action plan to ensure wild chum salmon stocks of concern are recovered and removed as a stock of concern. The interaction between hatchery chum and wild chum salmon is not definitively known to be the cause of the wild chum salmon decline production levels, but to reduce the presence of hatchery chum salmon in the Crawfish Inlet area seems appropriate to me. In combination with increased sampling in this area by the hatchery operators, a reduction in releases at Crawfish Inlet will help us better assess and understand the impacts to wild chum salmon in this area. Therefore, I am taking the following actions as a commissioner to address hatchery impacts to wild chum salmon stocks of concern. Recognizing that the eggs have already been taken and incubated, marked, and releases were approved under the 2024 Sawmill Creek Hatchery Hatchery Annual Management Plan, all prior to the designation of the stock of concern.

I will approve the current FTP for this year's fry release at Crawfish Inlet. Based on discussion with hatchery operators, fry releases are estimated to be 830,000 fry below the 2024 levels. Starting in fall 2025, I will reduce the FTP permitted chum salmon egg take for releases at Crawfish Inlet by 25% under the Sawmill Creek Hatchery PNP permit, from 30 million eggs to 22.5 million eggs. This reduction will be evaluated at the April 2025 Regional Planning Team meeting for their comments on how this reduction will impact hatchery operator cost recovery and allocation within the user groups. And that will be sent to me prior to the FTP application review process.

I will also consider increasing chum egg take by 7.5 million for release at Deep Inlet on the Sawmill Creek Hatchery PNP permit or release at Bear Creek Bear Cove at the— I can never say this right— Mendive Creek Hatchery PNP permitting pending commissioners' review and approval of a plan that demonstrates that the increased releases will not impact the stocks of concern. That is, if it cannot be demonstrated to my satisfaction that the increased releases at these sites will not impact the identified stocks of concern, I will not permit those increased releases. Finally, I am directing the Joint Southeast RPT to conduct a review of chum salmon release strategies, release numbers, and release locations and report back to me by December 31st, 2025, their findings and recommendations regarding what is working well, what is not working well, impacts on wild salmon stocks, and the potential improvements to the Salmon Fishery Enhancement Program in Southeast Alaska. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Commissioner.

And There's a lot in there. I appreciate that. I will put this in an RC. Thank you. But just a question, and I think you said that it was going to be evaluated over the course of this year, but as part of— you know, I heard the numbers in the egg takes and the production and that portion of it, but what's the consideration in terms of the release sites, at least in the near term?

Are you going to be potentially reducing some of those release sites, particularly where you're seeing more acute problems? Well, what I'm saying is that we're going to reduce by, by 25% the fish that are going to Crawfish Inlet. If the hatchery operators can demonstrate that they can release those safely in a way that doesn't impact the stocks of concern in other areas, I'll consider that. But I won't consider it unless they can demonstrate that. I don't want to move the problems of Crawfish Inlet to another area.

So I'm giving them the opportunity to prove that. And if they can't prove it, then I'm not going to do it, is what I'm telling you. Appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Commissioner.

One of the things I— we always— and it's been going back and forth here and in Prince William Sound— what is the— when we were talking about, you know, the adverse levels of hatcheries and you were speaking to certainty and you were looking at level of satisfaction for approving increases and releases and and this release, what is the burden of proof on that one as far as how certain do they need— does it need to be that, uh, that the, the release will not impact wild stocks? Is it certain or is it probably, or— I, I just want to— there, that's a sliding scale on there, so I'd just like to know where we land on that. Well, if, if the increased releases, for instance, in Deep Inlet is going to result in the request to remove a stock at existing stream from the index, that would cause me deep concern because that's exactly what we did that led us into the problem we're having right now. So I don't think there's a definitive layer of proof, but clearly if the net result of that is that it's going to probably end up straying— high rates of straying into other deep inlet streams, that's going to result in us coming back and asking to remove that stream from the index. That would not allow me— that would trigger me to say no, we are not going to do that.

One other question, Commissioner, for you or your staff or anyone. What is the public engagement process in the RPT?

I have attended one or two RPTs, but maybe we can get Flip up here and he can walk through what the RPT process is about and how the public can get engaged in that. I think they are open to the public. Yeah, I know that they're open to the public. I'm just kind of curious.

Curious, you know, how and when are they noticed, where are they noticed, what is the opportunity for the public to participate or weigh in on some of these issues. I'm just— I don't know a lot about it, so I'm just kind of curious. Yeah, so I will commit to doing more than we do by publishing something in the newspaper, getting out that this is out there. And I think at least in Southeast Alaska, there's a pretty good awareness of what's happening right now and interest in this process. So We will get those out on our ADF&G website in addition to— and get it out to the ACs and a variety of other people.

Hi, Flip. Welcome.

Hi. For the record, Flip Prior. I'm the Aquaculture Section Chief with Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Commercial Fisheries. I'm going to do a whole presentation on the RPT process a little later, and I'll bring up all the public involvement at that point. Thank you.

Appreciate it. We'll look forward to it. Okay. Any other questions? Mr. Wood?

Yeah, thank you. I, I like— it's interesting. I don't even know what the right word is. I'm glad the commissioner made the statement that he did. I— this West Crawfish area in particular, I think, is a pretty interesting experiment because the whole process appears to have been approved by the hatcheries and the state back in the day.

The inlet in Southeast Alaska seems like an awesome place for these dead-end fjords to be able to release hatchery fish without impacting other streams. And then these hatchery fish just happened to go completely up an entirely different inlet that happened to have an index stream in them, somewhat unintentionally. And why is that? Which begs the question is, when you're looking at strain in general throughout all of Alaska, why are they strain? And so I think this is, you know, sometimes you got to think about how do you turn lemons into lemonade in a way.

And it could be an awesome opportunity to better understand why this strain happens and put the onus, burden of proof, or whatever on the state and the hatcheries to figure this out, which I think is where you were leading in, in making the decision you have. So At any rate, I understand that you gotta— in hindsight is 20/20— you gotta look backwards and figure out how to deal with a problem or a situation that maybe didn't go as expected. But it also shouldn't be a lost opportunity, I would think, to better understand why these fish are doing this, is all I wanted to add.

Mr. Chamberlain. So, uh, Feeding off Mr. Wood's comments and elaborate in touching on this, how in the West Crawfish site there was evidence of stringing in 2018 and we're addressing it in 2025. Sorry, way too much in my head. How do we go, if we do this, how do we make sure that if we identify high evidence of straying, how do we avoid making this mistake? Because I'm a firm believer that, you know, it's sound business practice and even better environmental practice if you're going to make a mistake, make it once.

How do we ensure that if we do incur— encounter high straying rates that it's not— we're not sitting on it for 7 years before action is taken? Yeah, I think that's a very good point. I think that's what I'm asking for in the review of the whole process moving forward because clearly we ended up at a place where where we didn't take an action until we identified a stock or concern, then the reaction to the stock or concern was to remove index streams that were problematic from that. And that, from my chair, wasn't an acceptable solution to the problem, just simply covering your eyes and moving forward. Now, really, some of those index streams are very minor contributors to the overall stock or concern.

You can have that scientific argument one way or the other, Clearly, the strategy that I didn't find acceptable is we'll simply just remove the problematic streams and just move forward. So that's not going to happen in the future, but we shouldn't have to wait until we get to a stock of concern to have that discussion. You're right. So that's why I've asked for a more thorough review of the release strategies moving forward and recommendations on how to improve that.

Thank you. All right, let's move on.

Members of the board, Madam Chair, my name is Ed Jones. I'm a Fish and Game coordinator with the Division of Commercial Fisheries based out of Juneau, and today I'll be providing an overview of the status of king salmon stocks of concern in Southeast Region.

There are 34 known stocks of king salmon in Southeast Alaska, and the department monitors escapement in 11 of those stocks using a variety of methods including weirs and marker capture studies and observer survey counts.

As everyone is aware, We have been experiencing poor king salmon production since about the mid-2000s. And this production, this poor production stemmed from the Yukon essentially down to the Nass and Skeena Rivers in northern BC.

And due to this poor production and resulting poor escapement goal performance, the board took action beginning in 2017 when 3 stocks of king salmon in Southeast Alaska were designated as stocks of management concern. The production woes continued, and in 2020, the board designated an additional 4 stocks of king salmon as stocks of management concern. So in total, we had 7 stocks of— 7 of the 11 escapement indicator stocks identified as stocks of management concern after the 2020 board meeting. But since that time, escapement goal performance has improved for a handful of these stocks, and the board has now delisted 3 of those. And today we have 4 king salmon stocks remaining as listed as stocks of management concern.

And now I'm going to go into some details for each of those 4 stocks.

Beginning with the Taka River in the north, the first thing to note that in Southeast Alaska, king salmon escapement goal performance is specific to large king salmon. Those fish are essentially 28 inches in length, in total length, or larger. This originated in the 1970s when most of the escapements were monitored using observer counts, and staff realized that they were not very accurate at counting smaller size king salmon. So we made our counts exclusively germane to the large component of the spawning abundance. And also having those goals specific to larger fish essentially made the goals specific to the escapement containing the eggs and the bulk of the females as a result, since, since they come back as older age fish, the larger fish.

Whoops, there we go. The Taku River King Salmon were first designated as a stock of concern at the October 2020 work session. And since then, escapement goal has continued to be poor, failing to attain the lower boundary escapement goal in 5 of the most recent 6 years.

On average, the Taku River produces the largest run in the region. And this river is located just northeast of Juneau. And the Taku stock is one of 3 transboundary river stocks in the region, the other 2 being the Stikine, which I'll describe shortly, and the Allsek. The Taku stock spawns exclusively in Canada, and fish are classified as outside rearing, meaning that once juveniles leave the river in the spring, they essentially head out to the Gulf of Alaska to rear. So as a result, these fish are only accessible to fisheries in Southeast as mature-run fish, and that's between March and early July.

Standardized escapement surveys Date back to 1973 for this stock, and about half the fish are in the river by essentially the end of May. We also mark and codewire tag juveniles, which allows estimates of smolt abundance, marine survival, marine harvest, and exploitation.

This figure is pretty complicated, but it's also very informative. In this case, each bar represents the calendar year run. And the bars in green represent the years in which the lower bound of the escapement goal was achieved. The bars in red are the years the lower bound was not achieved. The horizontal lines represent the upper and lower bounds of the escapement goal.

And again, the escapement goal for Southeast Alaska King Salmon is in terms of large fish. So the blue section at the top of each of those bars is the harvest. And the percent noted at the top of the bar is the actual harvest rate, or the proportion of the run that was harvested in, in the fisheries that year. So for instance, looking at the bar on the far left, in 2015, the run was about 28,000 fish. The escapement was about 23,000 fish.

So about 5,000 of those fish were harvested. And that represents a harvest rate of about 18%. Also in this figure,.

To the far right is a bar in yellow which represents the forecast for the upcoming season. And this year we have an optimistic forecast that the river will see 40— or the run will be 40,000 large fish. Another thing to note in these figures, in the harvest rates, you can see that beginning in about 2019, the harvest rates decreased dramatically. This is a direct result of the conservative management actions. That started as a result of the downturn in production and conservative management action that was implemented.

So harvest rates since 2019 for the Taku stock have averaged about 7%. And prior to that in this figure from 2015 to 2018, they averaged, they averaged 23%.

And I thought it was worth sharing this map. I'll do it for the Stikine as well because we have the information. But this is a— these are all the CodE-A-Wire tag recoveries, when and where they— well, where they were recovered for this stock. And you can see that these fish are harvested in the troll fishery, which is depicted in red on the outer coast, and the sport fishery harvest depicted in green are more centrally located around Juneau, which makes sense, and the drift— as are the drift gillnet fisheries depicted in blue. Intaku Inlet and Lynn Canal to the north.

Moving on to the King Salmon River stock, this stock was originally designated as a stock of management concern at the October 2017 work session. And since then, the escapement goal performance unfortunately has continued to be poor, failing to attain the lower bound of the escapement goal in 4 of the most recent 6 years. The King Salmon River stock is a small— well, the King Salmon River is a small river that flows into Seymour Canal just south of Juneau. And it produces a small stock of king salmon. And they're very unique, and it's the only island population of king salmon in the region.

Unlike the Taku stock or the Stikine stock, stock assessment information is very limited. And escapement is monitored today using observer counts. And also unlike the Taku stock, this stock is inside rearing. That means the bulk of the population is available or accessible to fisheries harvest throughout their lifespan. Now standardized aerial— or excuse me, standardized escapement estimates date back to 1975.

And about half the fish are in river by the first week of July. Juveniles are not tagged, so we do not have direct estimates of harvest for the stock, but we use nearby Crystal Lake hatchery releases of Andrew Creek brood as a surrogate for harvest rates.

Moving on to Stikine River King Salmon. These were first designated as a stock of concern at the October 20 work session. Uh, since that time, escapement goal performance has not been good. It's failed to achieve the escapement goal in 6 of the most recent— actually 9 straight years.

And on average, the Stikine River produces the second largest run of king salmon in the region. This river is located near the towns of Wrangell and Petersburg, and the Stikine stock again is a transboundary river stock with most of the spawning occurring in Canada. Like the Taku stocks, Dekeen fish are outside rearing and thus only accessible to fisheries from essentially March through mid-July on their mature runs. And we have standardized escapement estimates dating back to 1975 for this stock, and about half the fish are in the lower river by the first week of June. Like the Taku, we also mark and cotoar tag juveniles, so again, that allows estimates of smolt abundance, marine survival, marine harvest and exploitation.

And in Southeast Alaska, it was noted earlier by Mr. Jeff Nichols that we Codawire tag stocks in the Chilkat, Takustakine, and Unuk. And outside of one other system down on the Columbia, that's the only place on the planet that wild Chinook salmon are Codawire tagged. So it's very unique information. And again, here's that very complicated figure. Um, as was the case for the Taku stock, you can see the effects of the conservative management measures that began in 2018.

In this case, since 2018, harvest rates have averaged 10%, whereas from 2015 to 2017, as an example, they averaged 29%. And the forecast for the upcoming season is not good. It's at 10,000 large fish.

And here's that map showing recoveries of the Stikine River Kotovar tags. Like the Taku stock, these fish are harvested in the troll fishery on the outer coast. They're also picked up more central in the region in the troll as well as the sport and the gillnet fisheries in the more terminal areas.

And moving on to Andrew Creek. This stock was originally designated as a stock of concern at the October 20 work session, and since that time, escapement goal performance has been poor. It's been— it's failed to attain the lower boundary escapement goal in 4 of the most recent 6 years. Andrew Creek is a small tributary in the lower Stikine River. Stock assessment information, like the case for the King Salmon River, is very limited for this stock, and today, as a— today, escapement is monitored using using observer counts.

Fisher inside rearing, like the case for the King Salmon River, and they're acceptable to fisheries throughout their lifespan. Standardized escapement estimates date back to 1975, and about half the fish are in river by the first week of July. Juveniles are not coded or tagged or marked, and so in this case we use nearby Crystal Lake and McCauley Hatchery releases of Andrew Creek brood as surrogates for harvest rates and exploitation. And for each of these stocks of management concern, management has been effective at passing the bulk of the run to the spawning grounds. Really, most of the issue with production has been due to poor marine survival.

And on that note, you know, so hopefully the production is going to turn around. But on that note, I figured it was worth producing or showing you the forecast for the upcoming season.

Kind of got a little out of order there, didn't I? So we forecast runs for 5 stocks in the region: the Situk, the Chilkat, Taku, Stikine, and Unuk.

In this upcoming season, The only stock with a run forecast that's below the lower bound of the escapement goal is the stikine stock. And that hap— this year that happens to have the most uncertainty associated with it. And it wouldn't surprise me if it's actually underestimating reality at the end of the day. So with that, I'll wrap up, ask, see if there's any questions. Be glad to answer them.

Or try to answer them. Mr. Swenson.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Well, that's great news for the Taku. So tell me, how do you decide that the Taku or any stream is, in this case the Taku, is going to have this huge uptake in this year?

Through the chair. It's a great question, and we— that's— that information or those forecasts are made possible by the fact that we estimate the abundance of not only large fish in the river, but also the medium-sized fish. And in some years, we've even got estimates of small-sized fish. So what, what I'm getting at is we have run reconstructions annually that include, in this case, ocean age 2 jacks. And as well as ocean age 3 and ocean age 4, ocean age 5 fish.

But we use a sibling model to forecast production of the ocean age 3, 4, and 5 fish that come off of the younger ages. So for instance, this upcoming season, the bulk of the forecast is for 5-year-olds, ocean age 3 fish. Well, that is primarily driven by a good run in 2024 of ocean age 2 fish. 4-Year-olds. And that's a great question because it actually— we saw that throughout the region this year.

There was a lot of ocean-age 2 fish on the spawning grounds in every one of the systems we monitored. And that's a good sign for the following year. It generally is a good sign for the following year that that brood year is going to show strength the next year. And that's what we're banking on. So my next question is, Why is that one so, why is that doing so well and the other ones aren't?

Because we basically are always, seems like always saying that, well, would this lead to say that it's an in-river problem with these other stocks? Because they're all coming from out in the ocean. And we say that we don't know what's going on in the ocean, that's what's bringing them down. But the taku is gonna, hopefully do well. So are the other rivers— is that an in-river problem with spawning that's causing those stocks to stay down?

Through the chair, what we've seen is that the production woes in Southeast and for the.

Most part along the coast have been the result of poor marine survival. This upcoming season, which is a good change for— finally we're seeing what looks like a positive turn, which I would, I would suggest is probably due to an uptick in marine survival. It's just that simple. So you need two pieces to— of the equation to get production. You need to have adequate number of spawners, and then you need some good marine survival.

And in some cases we failed to attain the escapement goal, but that has less of a bearing on overall productivity than marine survival. The marine survival changes have been dramatic where we would see an average years ago, say in the '90s as an example, average marine survival was 3 to 4% for Taku. Well, during this downturn in production, marine survival has dipped down to half a percent or 1%. So it has a bigger role in the productivity equation than say smolt production. Because we've seen smolt production cycle up and down and doesn't seem to be causing any of these issues.

That's not really what's driving it. You might have half the number of smolt this year as you did last year. But what makes the biggest difference again is marine survival. If that marine survival is double or triple, that's going to have the biggest play.

Okay, thank you. Well, this is interesting. I'm not quite sure I share your optimism. I love it, but I would hope to see a banger year for king salmon throughout the state of Alaska and not just specific to the Taku. And it's, I think, to Member Swenson's point, I think that Laying that against your forecast, for example, the Stikine, begs a lot of questions, right?

I don't know that I want to get into it too deeply right now, but at least in terms of the marine survival portion of things, but if you're expecting this great forecast this year, what is the intention for management for escapement goal? Would it be to the lower bound, the midpoint, the upper bound of the escapement goal? If you're going to get this great return year, are you going to bank any of those? What's your plan for that? Madam Chair, the plan is status quo this upcoming season.

Does that mean status quo, please? So for the action plan that's established for the Taku, those guidelines are going to be adhered to. Now, we do have some flexibility to respond and maybe relax some of the king salmon restrictions depending on In this case, if we see actual fish in the river and the forecast looks like it's panning out to be productive, then maybe we can, you know, after 95% of the runs in the river, we can start concentrating on sockeye and maybe shift, switch gears a little bit. So, but it's a good question because, you know, we deal with Canada as well in the treaty arena and they're watching us very closely. And so right now, going into the season, we don't, we don't have any intention of, of changing what we've been doing for the recent— well, since 2018, essentially.

So, and the forecast is optimistic for the Chilkat, the Situk, the Taku, and the Unik. The Stikine is the one that's the outlier. So we're actually seeing good forecasts for 4 of the 5. Okay, do you have SMSY calculations for the Taku and the Stikine? Yes, the Taku SMSY is 25.5 and the Stikine at 17.4.

And those are large fish. Yeah, that was going to be my next question, if these were large fish goals. And these, these are large for both the Taku and the Stikine. Those are large. Large king escapement goals.

That's correct. So then, Commissioner, and then I have one more question after that, and then I'll move around the table. So these are still— these are forecasts. These aren't— we haven't met any escapement goals. We haven't met the criteria in the Stock of Concern memo to basically— or Stock of Concern action plan to make us suddenly realize we've got a bunch of fish here that we can go fish on.

Until I see that there's more fish actually in the river and that we're actually have that in a series of years according to the action plan, are we not going to— we're going to continue with the action plan to rebuild these stocks moving forward. That with the fact that Mr. Jones did say is that, you know, we're not going to suddenly start opening up fisheries on our side of the border that just causes Canada to release fish, open up fisheries on their side of the border because there's a lot of linkages there that, for instance, if we were to open up a subsistence fishery in our waters, they would open up 1,500 fish. There's a lot of reasons to, based on a forecast, to not start fishing hard until we actually have delisted this as a stocking concern. You're reading my mind, Commissioner. Good job.

Thank you. But my last question is kind of along those lines, is that even in these instances in the Taku and in the Stikine, more concerningly in the Stikine, I think you see these fairly significant harvests underneath the SEG.

I would personally consider 17% not insignificant when you're not meeting an escapement goal and you're nowhere near SMSY. So my question is, why is that occurring? Madam Chair, those harvests and harvest rates, the harvest in total numbers of fish, are not alarmingly high. The problem is the run's low. So the run's small, every little bit adds up, and those harvest rates blow up as a result.

So, um, and the other thing to note is we've really pulled the reins back in the terminal area on the Stikine and the Taku, and, and a good chunk of those harvests are non-terminal. In nature, as well as Canadian harvests incidental to their sockeye fishery. Or, you know, their incidental harvest is what I'm saying. Um, let me ask you then, why is it on a Stikine River large king salmon? I mean, I— perhaps this is the complication in the graph, but I would assume that the harvest that's represented in this graph specific to Stikine River large king salmon are Stikine River large king salmon and not ones of other terminal areas or non-terminal areas or non-origin U.S. origin fish.

So I don't get it. Help me. What I meant, Madam Chair, what I meant was the harvests on, in this case, on this figure that I'm showing, those are harvests that are terminal Stikine River large and non-terminal Stikine River large. And some of that terminal Stikine River large is also by Canada, Canadian harvest. This is total harvest wherever caught.

And the other thing that I think is important to note is those forecasts, Taku as an example for 40,000 large, that's still below the historical average. A historical average run in the Taku, just the average was 50,000 large. How historical? '90S, '80s and '90s. 30 Years.

Yeah, about the mid-2000s is when it started to take off and dip. Yeah. But that's still several life cycles and a dip. Okay. Mr. Carpenter.

Thank you. I want to touch on the marine survival rate a little bit. And when I look at the stikine and the taku, and then I look at the graphs that you presented us specific to, you know, what you're looking at for this upcoming year, obviously those two are very significantly different numbers. I'm not suggesting that the two river systems have, you know, similarities. They probably all have their unique qualities, but what I'm trying to figure out and what I don't really understand is if all these outmigrating smolt from both of these river systems are entering a very similar marine environment why one is outproducing the other.

And if you could maybe expand upon that a little bit, I'm just not quite following what you're saying. Through the chair, so in this case you're asking about the disconnect between Taku, Chilkat, Unuk, and Situk versus Stikine. Because the Stikine is the one that has the low forecast of the mix. Well, reality is the forecast for the Stikine is not based on a sibling model this upcoming season. The other 4 stocks were based on sibling models where we look at the production of those ocean age 2 to predict the ocean age 3 and so on and so forth.

The Stikine, the data was so limited this year and we have a— we're kind of hamstrung in the treaty arena where we're supposed to get forecasts out by December 1st. That was the best forecast that we could come up with for the Stikine. But like I said early on, it had the most uncertainty associated with it. That's why I tend to believe it's for— it's going to underestimate reality. That's my guess.

It's not as solid as the other forecasts. Okay, I understand. I understand more clearly now what you're talking about, and I— and that makes more sense to me. Obviously, you know, we all hope that this number is quite different than what's reflected in this particular chart. And so I will take that obviously.

Into consideration when we move forward. But I think the interesting part of this conversation, and I don't want to stray too far from king salmon, is, you know, the marine environment has impacts on all species of salmon. And so when we get into this conversation down the road, I think we need to keep that in mind. Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair.

There's a lot of information here which is bringing up even more questions as we go, but I'll try to stay brief. The first question I have is how reliable has past, have past forecasts been? I, you know, I'm seeing promising results, or promising forecasts for the Taku River, and, but I'm also seeing high harvest rates on the Stikine and a few others. The real, the question I'm wondering here is, is there, what's the likelihood of overestimating the harvest and potentially overharvesting there. So I guess, how accurate have past forecasts been?

Through the chair, that's a great question. We actually do have measures of uncertainty on 4 of the 5 forecasts. The Stikine is the one in this case where the measure of uncertainties— the method is not as robust, I should say. For the other 4, the measures of uncertainty suggest that these forecasts, you know, are— we actually have a lower bound associated with the forecast. So I'll use the Taku as an example.

Right now we're forecasting 40,000 large fish. The lower bound of that forecast, the 95% confidence interval on that forecast, is for a run that's at least 23,000 fish. So that's above the lower bound of the escapement goal. Now, how is the— how have the forecasts performed? Formed.

It's a— it's something we monitor annually. And historically, say 10, 15 years ago, when we saw this production dip start, um, we were over-forecasting. We were wrong. Well, since that time, we've adjusted. We have some correction factors that we apply to these forecasts to rein them in and be more accurate.

And so We're generally within 15% or so of reality. It's not a perfect game we're playing here. I guess game's a bad word to use, but it's not perfect science. All forecasts are wrong. But, you know, we're generally these days within 10-15%, I would say.

That said, I expect what will happen, and we've seen this historically, is we will tend to over-forecast, and then it'll shift and go the other direction and we'll under-forecast. And a lot of it has to do with we're chasing the tail on marine survival, and we haven't quite accounted for the changes in marine survival which affect these forecasts. Thank you. And moving on to marine survival, there's a cut— two-parted question. I And I'll start with the easy one.

Is there inside rearing and outside rearing groups of salmon? Is there a difference in the marine survival rates between the inside rearing and the outside rearing? And then for the larger scale on the marine survival, what are the largest causes to the department's best knowledge? And I know it involves a lot of It may involve some speculation. I don't like speculation, but what are the large mortality causes in the marine survival rate?

And to the extent it's poor rearing habitat, are we seeing increase— similar age-at-weight problems between the inside and outside rearing? So I'm just trying to get a more concrete picture on what in the marine, marine environment is causing the distress for the Chinook? Through the chair, we have estimates of marine survival for the Chilkat, Taku, Stikine, and Unuk, and two of those are inside rearing, two are outside rearing. The two outside rearing stocks are the Taku and Stikine, and, and the inside rearing Unuk and Chilkat. What we've seen with the inside rearing stocks, they seem to have slightly performed better in marine survival, but not a lot.

And it bounces around, but it looked like the outside rearing stocks, Taku and Stikine, actually took a bigger hit to the traditional long-term average marine survival than those other two stocks. But we have those estimates for the entire time series I can make available. I can dig that up and provide that. Offhand, that's kind of the trend. I'd say to be safe, they've kind of cycled together.

But, you know, my inclination, just thinking back, is that the inside had slightly better. And we're not talking a lot of a difference here. This is a small difference. And then the other part of your question was? What are the largest causes of— to the largest source of marine mortality?

So through the chair, so I always describe this as we, we have a pretty good— we're pretty good at being in some cases at estimating the number of adults back. In some cases, like in, in Southeast where we've actually got the programs to estimate the smolt abundance, we're pretty good at that. But we don't have any inclination on the stuff in between. So when these fish go out to sea, it's all a guessing game at that point. Now obviously we have some assumptions, and with some of the work that Dr. Katie Howard's done up off the Yukon and Kuskokwim, there's some— you combine that with some of the work we've done here, we strongly believe that a good chunk of this marine survival is driven by their first few months in the ocean after they leave as smolt.

But that said, there's salmon sharks, there's halibut, marine mammals, and people that all like to eat big fish. So that certainly exacerbates the issue. Mr. Wood. Okay, I got two questions. Um, about the taku, you said one of the reasons for the really good forecast is that there was a lot of H2 fish.

Could, could you explain that a little bit deeper? And then I have one more question. Through the chair. Yeah, it's ocean age 2, which are 4-year-olds. So that brood year, that production— so in 2024, we saw a lot of 4-year-olds, higher than what we have seen recently.

The abundance of 4-year-olds was up, and that's off the spawning event in 2020. So the production of that brood year, that parent class, looks to be good. That said, You plug that into the, the model and it's going to show as 5-year-olds or ocean age 3 the following year, this upcoming season. So our forecast is looking good this upcoming season, primarily driven off of the 3-ocean or 5-year-old component, off the 2-ocean or 4-year-old component in 2024. Okay, thanks.

And so kind of drawing off of that, I'd like your impression, like say over the last 10 years, of The fish, back to marine survival, but the fish that are returning after 4 years or 5 years at sea, their size, and in relation to their size and fecundity, the actual amount of eggs being put back in the gravel, if you're seeing any impact from just from that, because, I'll leave it there.

Yeah, through the chair. So one thing that is being talked about in this, in the community, scientific community, especially in the recent years, is size and age changes in these stocks and the loss of older age fish. In other words, they're coming back younger. So when we look at this, I'll keep it simple. When we've looked at it, size at age, uh, for the most part appears to slightly be decreasing over time, but it's not what's driving the issue with smaller fish these days.

What's driving the issue with smaller fish is they're simply coming back younger. So as a, as an example, back in the '90s, about 40% of the, of the return of a batch of eggs would come back as 6-year-olds. Today, that's down around 10%. So we've lost the older age. Back in the '90s, we'd see 5% 7-year-olds in the region in all the stocks we looked at, about 5% 7-year-olds, 5 ocean fish.

Today, they're all but missing.

Right. And these graphs that you presented are only capturing maybe 1 or 2 age classes for 10 years look back, and that's not very much. And so what my request is going to be is to give us these graphs with the full time series and an overlay of the forecast confidence intervals on top of that. Does that make sense?

Madam Chair, we can bring in the— we can certainly do that, but it sounds like you want the Broodier tables, which would be the production of these stocks by age. Yeah, maybe there's two RCs that I'm looking for. One that represents what you have here, but with a longer age. This— you only gave us 10 years here, and I.

I just don't think that that's a very complete picture. And then, yeah, I'd be interested in just seeing what your forecasts are off of this information and the confidence intervals that you applied to each of those forecasts in those years. Oh, okay, yep, that's easy enough to do. Thank you. Mr. Swenson.

My quick question is, well, why are they coming back so early? I mean, are they— Hungry? Are they, you know, what makes them come, what would drive them to come back early? Would not getting enough food out there, would that do that? Through the chair, that's something we're all scratching our heads on.

But some of the answers, and when I asked some of the great scientists this question, their answer is generally, If the ocean's too friendly, you'll come back early as a fish. If it's too— if it's the other end of the spectrum, too harsh or unfriendly, you'll come back early. So the reality is we do not know. And we do believe it's a natural shift. There's some evidence to suggest that.

But there's definitely a shift towards younger age fish. And so it's, it's complicated our modeling, to say the least. Mr. Wood, you get the last question, then we're going to conclude this presentation. And please keep it to the presentation. Well, I'm sorry, but I wanted to finish what I was asking you before.

So with the escapements, and you see these smaller fish coming back potentially with less eggs compared to big eggs, does that make you think of the escapement goals versus lower or higher in order to get, based on the size of the fish, to get the same same number of eggs in the gravel?

Through the chair, we've looked at that in a couple stocks where we can actually apply fecundity to our spawners. And, you know, inherently you're going to have a lower fecundity with smaller fish, but the results in terms of spawning recruit analysis haven't been that meaningful. It it certainly has resulted in a change in the, in the escapement goal, but they've been subtle at best. So we're actually looking at exploring that, but right now there's nothing to suggest that we would suggest a recommendation to an escapement goal change based on that. So thank you very much.

Go ahead and Shift gears to our next presentation. Appreciate your, uh, presentation, gentlemen.

Okay, Ms. Evanson, whenever you are ready, you have the floor.

Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, my name is Dani Evanson. I am an extended jurisdiction program manager with the department. And this is your Pacific Salmon Treaty Overview, 2025 edition. And you can find that in RC3, tab 25.

It's hard to talk management in Southeast Alaska without talking about the treaty. The two are incredibly interlinked, and the treaty is pervasive throughout just about all of our fisheries. So in this presentation, I'm going to give you an overview of what the treaty is, what the treaty does, what Alaska's obligations are under the treaty. And then I'm going to shift gears and talk about our obligations under the Endangered Species Act and what considerations there are there. We're going to briefly touch on Magnuson-Stevens Act considerations.

And because there's so much to unpack here, and, you know, I'm going to be pointing out along the way highlighting things that are outside the purview of the board and what's within the purview of the board that are related to the proposals we will be entertaining this week. But I'm going to summarize at the very end all of the management constraints so we can track all these different parts and pieces. I also put together an RC for your convenience, RC 8, that has every single salmon, actually all the proposals for the week, and a checkbox of whether they have an additional consideration of Treaty, Endangered Species Act, Magnuson Act, for convenience.

Okay, what is this treaty thing and why do we have one? The fundamental goals of the Pacific Salmon Treaty is twofold. First, to conserve Pacific salmon in order to achieve optimum production. And second, to divide the harvest so that each country reaps the benefits of investment— of its investment in salmon management. Or more simply put, We share the burden of conservation and the available catch.

It is essentially one big mechanism to manage interceptions. If we didn't have interceptions, we would not need a treaty. It is a treaty between the United States and Canada, and as such, it supersedes other authorities, including domestic authorities.

There are 6 general principles laid out in the treaty. Those are conservation and sustained yield, preventing overfishing, providing for optimum production, fair sharing of the resource, which we refer to often as the equity principle, avoiding undue disruption of existing fisheries, and where practical, reducing interceptions.

So what's the scope of the treaty? The treaty runs from east of Cape Suckling in Alaska, which is near the top of the screen, down through north of Cape Falcon in middle Oregon. It runs 1,276 linear miles. And the arrows you see on this slide are actually indicative of Chinook migratory patterns. Another reason we have a treaty, Chinook stocks from the Oregon, Washington coast, Columbia River, West Coast, Vancouver Island, also mount into the Gulf of Alaska where they take advantage of our rich waters to feed and grow before returning home down the coastline.

So we could very quickly and unapologetically catch too many of them. So we have a treaty in place for this.

Each treaty chapter is— I'm sorry, each treaty agreement is good for a 10-year period. This one began in 2019 and is running through 2028. And negotiations are already getting underway for this new agreement. The detailed fishing regimes are set forth in 8 chapters of the treaty. Alaska is heavily involved, of course, of those.

So Chapter 1, the Transboundary Rivers Chapter. Chapter 2 is the Northern British Columbia and Southeast Alaska Boundary Area. 3 Is Chinook Salmon. And 8 is the Yukon River Panel. The Yukon River actually operates independently under its own set of bylaws.

So that's not going to be part of the subject of this presentation. We also have some minor obligations under number 7, the general obligations for coho. But by and large, Alaska has been really fortunate and has kept ourselves out of restrictive coho obligations.

So the treaty is set up kind of— the Pacific Salmon Commission is set up so sort of spoke wheel with the commission at the top. We have— it's a 16-member body with 4 commissioners from each delegation and 4 alternates. Everybody reports in. Alaska is involved in everything on the left side and in the top panel. So we're involved in the Salmon Commission, the Chinook Technical Committee, Restoration and Enhancement Fund, Transboundary River Panel, and Northern Panel.

Each of these panels have technical committees that report to it. And again, the Yukon does not report into the commission. They have their own bylaws and function independently. I put this slide in because of its importance to the culture and economy of Southeast Alaska. Alaska is heavily invested in this treaty.

We have a 59-person delegation. Staff are in green, shaded in green. We have 35.

5 Staff members, 7 representatives of NOAA Fisheries, and 17 industry representatives involved. The commissioner sits at the helm and is assisted by an industry alternate commissioner named Bill Auger. Commissioners are appointed— they are nominated by the governor and actually confirmed by the by the President of the United States. Industry panel appointments are nominated by the governor with deference to the gear groups and are confirmed by the Secretary of Commerce.

The entire treaty team works hard to protect Alaska's interests. Unlike here around this room where there's allocative battles, when we come together at treaty, we are one team fighting for Alaska's best interests. And I do want to recognize that there's at least 20 people in this room today that are part of the treaty team and are heading to Portland on Sunday to go fight again for our fair share.

Fisheries subject to the treaty.

Trolling sport fisheries particularly are subject to a Chinook catch limit. And then there's a Dickson, Dickson entrance coho trigger, which is rarely triggered, but it's there. We have our District 104 persane fishery. Drift gillnet fisheries in the terminal area of the Taku, the Stikine, Prince of Wales in District 106, and Three Point near the border with Canada in District 101. Also have set gillnet fisheries.

And then we have a set of fisheries that are not under the purview of the state of Alaska but are still part of the treaty, and that is Annette Island Reserve. That's Metlakatla Indian Community, Manette Island Reserve catches. Those subtract directly off of our Chinook harvest limits. We also have a Stikine federal subsistence and a new beginning last year, Taku federal subsistence, federal subsistence fishery that is still being worked out with the details. Again, not under our purview.

Like we spoke about back in October, I was able to distill this— everything the treaty says— into 4 basic requirements, and these play out differently in each chapter. One, we need to manage to achieve bilaterally agreed to escapement goals for Chinook, Coho, and Sockeye stocks. And Escapement goals are set bilaterally, and generally they underpin all harvest sharing arrangements. Because the treaty supersedes all domestic authorities, being the highest law of the land and all that, it would be inadvisable for the board to set an OEG for these stocks. It would really complicate management.

Number 2, we need to manage consistent with catch sharing arrangements. 3, We need to collect the data. We have to conduct the stock and fishery assessments to get the data to implement the treaty. That is very data-intensive and budgets— we get grants in excess of $12 million a year to run all these programs. And fourth, we have to coordinate bilaterally and cooperate bilaterally, and you can't underestimate the amount of time.

That that takes. So walking through chapter by chapter, I did take feedback from the last time I gave this presentation from the board that, you know, less detail on the front end, more detail on the back end when it comes to Chinook. So Chapter 1 is the Transboundary Rivers chapter. Its scope is defined as salmon that originate in the Canadian portion of a transboundary river. So in this case, the Alsek, the Stikine, and the Taku Rivers.

It is important to understand that this chapter only applies to Canadian-origin fish from these three rivers. It does not apply to spawn— to salmon that spawn and hence originate in the U.S. portion of the drainage. This is overseen by the Transboundary River Panel, who has a technical committee that reports to it. Fisheries are confined to Canadian and U.S. inriver fisheries and U.S. marine fisheries in Districts 106, 108, and 111. So fisheries near the terminal areas of these rivers.

So the one other notable thing, again, we have a lot of cooperation on this chapter because we share the river. We have cooperative development and implementation of abundance-based management programs. We actually do in some cases share field camps and, and staff. And then there's also a Transboundary River Sockeye Enhancement Program that is the backbone of bilateral coordination and cooperation in terms of harvest sharing in this chapter.

Moving on to the Northern Boundary Area. The Northern Boundary Area, the scope as written into the treaty runs from Cape Caution on the central BC coast up to Cape Suckling off the coast of Southeast Alaska, but in practice it's focused closer to right where the boundary is.

The species of concern here are primarily sockeye-focused, also pink, and then this panel oversees the coho, the minor coho requirements that are set forth in Chapter 7, the general obligations. The fisheries subject to this are District 104 seine and gillnet, and to a lesser extent, troll and sport for those coho requirements. And I'd like to show this photo. It's from July 20th, 1997. In Prince Rupert, where we had the blockade by Canadian fishermen preventing the Alaska State Ferry Malaspina from leaving the dock.

And the fishermen were protesting American fishing, intercept fishing of sockeye salmon. And it was contentious then, and it remains contentious today. We hear about this a lot. So Chapter 2 is predominantly focused on sockeye management of northern BC stocks. I put this map up to show why this could be an issue.

We have in blue on the left-hand side of your screen the District 104 purslane fishery. On the right in black here is the tree point gillnet, District 111, and here is our disputed border with Canada. A lot of this management centers around sockeye coming out of the Nass River and the Skeena River, and being so close to the border— and salmon don't respect those things— is why there's an issue. And the District 104 purse seine fishery is a pink salmon-targeted fishery, but they do catch a lot of sockeye. District 104 just happens to be where the catch and the effort is the highest, and because we're right across the border, we pick up some Canadian stocks.

So why is sockeye such an issue? This graph shows the production of sockeye from major systems on the coast, Fraser River, and it's scaled by the amount of fish produced. So what you can see is Fraser, Skeena, Nass, they swamp the production that we have in southern Southeast Alaska. So no matter how many sockeye we catch, this is always going to be an issue because a high proportion of our catch is going to be Canadian-origin sockeye fish.

All right. Moving on to Chinook, everybody's favorite.

Chinook runs the entire scope of the treaty from Cape Falcon in the mid-Oregon coast to Cape Suckling, and the treaty defines our fisheries as sport, troll, and net. And again, this also includes Metlakatla Indian Community and Net Island Reserve catches.

Some unique attributes about this chapter. One, it's a shared resource coast-wide. So as such, there's no panel that oversees it. It is negotiated by directly by the commission itself. The treaty rules when it comes to Chinook are more stringent from Southeast Alaska than anywhere else.

Part of that is because of our highly mixed stock nature. Our stocks don't go south, so we're not contributing stocks into the mix, but we are harvesting. It's also the most highly complex chapter of the agreement and the most contentious. The other thing I'd like to point out is north-south sharing. This is the Baldridge stipulation, which was a continuation.

Of a sharing arrangement with the Pacific Northwest tribes that satisfies stays of litigation that seek to bring the harvest of salmon originating from the Pacific Northwest under the legal framework of U.S. treaty obligations with the tribe. So the Baldrige Stipulation provides that all fisheries targeting far north migrating Chinook may be closed in the absence of an agreement between all the U.S. interests. And I bring this up because there are some folks in the room who think, well, we have a sympathetic federal administration, we can simply walk away from the treaty. We can't, or we risk litigation and federal preemption of fisheries. The other thing I'd like to point out is that this is the only salmon fishery, at least that I'm aware of, in Alaska that's managed to a harvest limit.

Again, this is an example of why we have a treaty. Chinook are highly migratory. In the green and the yellow is— represents where— this is one tag code, one release group from one hatchery. The green and the yellow indicates where it was raised and released. In this case, it was released just below the 9th dam on the mainstem Columbia River.

And all of these red circles show where these tags were recovered. So this is one year, one release group. And you can see they go all the way across the coast. Part of the reason why we have so many recoveries in Southeast Alaska is also attributable to our high sampling rates, not just the abundance in our waters, but this This is an example of why we have a treaty in place. And for those of you who can actually see the numbers inside the circles, that's an indicator of the number of tags that were recovered.

Okay. This slide shows the average stock composition of the troll catch. There are 7 stocks that make up stock complexes that make up the lion's share of our fisheries. By far and away, Columbia River in green is the largest contributor. We saw that on the slide before.

That's their upper Bright and Summerstocks. Others are Oregon Coast, Washington Coast in purple, some component stocks of the Fraser River, West Coast Vancouver Island has always been a big contributor, North and Central British Columbia, And then we have our Southeast Alaska transboundary river stocks at 16%. And everything else is parked in an other category. And that includes minor contributors such as Endangered Species Act listed stocks from Puget Sound. This has changed through time because we have shaped fisheries to avoid wild stocks in Southeast Alaska.

And when you're managing to a catch limit, you're necessarily shaping onto something else. But I do note, uh, in recent years where it used to be that the sport fishery catch composition was very different, um, because of how and when they were fishing. Now that we have spring fisheries closed in the way those two fisheries are prosecuted, they're very similar.

So what are our obligations under Chapter 3? They're a little more nuanced here and a little more prescriptive. We have to manage to not exceed a preseason catch limit set under the treaty. If we have an overage, we have to pay that back the following year, so it would deduct from our annual catch limit. We have to manage to achieve escapement goals for 6 stocks, uh, 3 Southeast Alaska and 3 Transboundary River.

And the operative word here is manage. We just have to demonstrate we are managing, because if there aren't that many fish out there, we might not have any fisheries and we're still not going to meet them. So the word— the operative word is manage. We have to manage incidental mortality not to exceed 59,400 fish. And there's this commitment to discuss significant management changes that a party is considering that may alter the stock and/or age composition or incidental mortality of the catch.

And I'll come back to that.

Because I've received a lot of questions on this one, just wanted to briefly touch on how our catch limits get set. Beginning in 2024, we are back on the Pacific Salmon Commission Chinook model. So it's based on outputs from their, their model. It is a multi-stock, multi-fishery cohort analysis. It has 48 fisheries and 41 stocks, and they throw that in a hopper with terminal run forecasts, recent average survival, projected maturation rates, and a bunch of other things, and they turn the meat grinder and it spits out a number that we call an abundance index.

And the preseason abundance index is the metric by which harvest limit is determined preseason. And there's a formula in the treaty that converts that into a catch. So it's in the treaty. And then postseason, they run the model again to see how well the model performed. And it's the metric by which harvest limit is determined postseason, used to evaluate model error.

The graph up there just shows how well that model's performed through time. Anything— any bars below the line are an underforecast, and anything above the line is an overforecast. Not optimal performance. I think you can file that one under the category of all models are wrong, but some are useful. Or not.

So 2024, it spit out an abundance index of 1.44. And for the math in the treaty, that equates to a catch limit of 211,400 fish.

And we had— we were under our limit the year before, so we didn't have to pay back any. So that's where the board comes in, in the board allocation scheme. So we take that 211,400 fish and the allocations are on the right and we apply, we take out pursein and set gill net at 4.3% and 2.9% respectively. 1,000 Comes out for set gill net and the remainder, remainder is 80/20 troll sport.

So, and then we come back at the end of the season and say, okay, how did we do? And so this just shows how we would do a performance evaluation. We take the allocation, same as last table, what they actually caught and what the difference. But at the end of the day, we were under here by almost 3,600 fish. So we do not have to pay back next year.

And our performance has been pretty good since 2019, since this payback provision got put in, taking it up as close to the line as we possibly can without going over.

So treaty catch, how do we calculate that? We take our all-gear catch, everything everybody caught, and we subtract out what's called an Alaska hatchery add-on. Most Alaska hatchery-produced Chinook don't count against this limit. There's a few penalties that subtract off that, so it's not all of them, but most of them don't count against the limit. We also have certain terminal exclusion areas we get to remove.

These are areas like the SeaTac, certain hatchery terminal areas, and some exclusions for Taku and Stikine-directed terminal fisheries. And that's how we arrive at what the treaty catch is.

I put this slide in to explore incidental mortality just a little bit because this is a new obligation under the 2019 treaty agreement and maybe a new concept. Incidental mortality occurs when fish are encountered by fishing gear but are not landed. It also occurs when Chinook are caught in non-retention periods or the Chinook are below legal size limits and released. The figure shows the fishery performance relative to the limit. As you can see, we've been under in all 5 years that we've had this limit in place, but in some cases we've been a little bit close.

This has required some active management, particularly for seine fisheries. And really what drives our incidental mortality is when the preseason catch limit substantially underestimates actual abundance. So there are more fish swimming around in our waters than the model said they were and that our catch limit reflects. So we reach our catch limits far more quickly and we're forced into non-retention sooner.

And the other thing I wanted to point out about this is we have no in-season estimates of incidental mortality. That's a post-season exercise. So we do the best we can.

There are some accountability provisions as well in the treaty. So if we exceed the post-season catch limit exceeded for 2 consecutive years, or incidental mortality limit is exceeded. In both these circumstances, it ends up in the hands of the Commission to determine what happens next, next, and if fishery adjustments are needed and to recommend remedial action. So this is a situation we don't want to be in. We've tightened the screws on our management successfully and have been avoiding that.

So what's next in the treaty? We're moving towards negotiation. The current treaty expires in 2028, and we'll have a new treaty agreement for 2029 through 2038. We're actively starting the steps towards developing an Alaska position, and another piece that we're working on is the development of a new model to set catch limits. We're channeling a lot of brainpower and energy into that because we might not all agree on most things when it comes to Chinook.

But I don't think anybody on the Trinity team or any of our stakeholders would disagree with me when I say nobody likes the Pacific Salmon Commission Chinook model. So we are working on that. Madam Chair, this is a convenient place to pause and ask questions at your discretion, or I can plow through to ESA.

We will pause for just a few questions. We would like to keep them very focused on the presentation, please. Mr. Swenson. I just have one quick question. What was the— what is the total allocation with the the troll, the sport, and all the rest, what is our total allocation?

I missed that figure.

Through the chair to Mr. Swenson. So our allocation changes every year. It's set based on output from the PSE Chinook model, so it varies every single year based on abundance of stocks and fishery, of stocks that contribute to our catch. And then it's your job to allocate that, that number that we get each year. The total number is $211,400.

Thank you. I was pretty close. Mr. Commissioner, that was from— yeah, that was the 2024 number. Yeah. And that's, that's the amount of the catch share we have.

We get add-ons to that from our hatchery programs and other things. So yeah. Mr. Carpenter, thank you, Danny. Thanks for the presentation so far. So I'm interested in the incidental mortality.

That you guys do post-season to come up with that number. What, what percentage do you— does the treaty use to come up with incidental mortality? Do you know that offhand?

Through the chair to Mr. Carpenter, no, I don't have that information offhand. We do— we have had some studies in the past that we used to develop our same numbers that we use. I— we have coast-wide standard from the literature that we use for sport and different for troll, but I don't have the specifics on with me. Okay, thank you.

Mr. Wood. Yeah, thank you. I was— may I follow up on that question? Reading into this, it looked like what struck me was that the percentage for mortality for incidental mortality in the ocean was higher than, say, in river. So it caught my attention.

I thought it was somewhere up around 16% for maybe— so, and I'm— and what I'm thinking is like when you shake a fish or something, like that's what they're meaning is the incidental mortality. So with that, why is there a difference if that's a higher number than in river? Can you explain why why that would be.

I actually skipped that last part, but as far as the percentage goes, is a higher percentage in ocean rather than in river?

It depends— through the chair— it depends on the gear type you're using and a variety of factors. Generally, I believe that it is higher in river. Than it is in the marine environment. So this year our limit was set on the second highest year between a suite of years. I think it was '99 to 2016.

So we got the second highest was our limit. What drives it? It's, it's different for each gear type. But what drives the train here is predominantly troll. And when, when they have long prolonged periods of Chinook non-retention and sane fisheries for the same reason.

Madam Chair, if I could just— the rates were set by a review by the Pacific Salmon Commission. We— that's a trigger in the, in the treaty. Everybody wanted to make sure we're using the most accurate rates and they were consistent across the jurisdictions. So I think 2 or 3 years ago they did a review of those rates. And had our— they have a technical committee called the Chinook Technical Committee that reviewed those, made recommendations.

So those are the rates we're using for those fisheries.

Okay, let's talk about ESA, please.

Well, fun. Okay. Endangered Species Act, or ESA. The purpose of the ESA is straightforward: to recover species that are threatened with extinction and not let them go extinct. An endangered species is a species that is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range.

There are examples in Alaska, uh, such as Cook Inlet belugas, western steller sea lions, western North Pacific humpback whales. A threatened species is a little less severe. It's a species that is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future. And examples in Alaska include things like polar bear, the Southwest Alaska population of northern sea otters, wood bison, and of course there's a pending listing for Pycnopodia, the sunflower sea star. We do not have any Alaska origin fish listed under the ESA, so that's why this is a new topic for many of us, and we would like to keep it that way.

So species listed under the ESA of salmon and marine mammals occur in Southeast Alaska. Alaska, and this requires permits for take of these listed species. The biological opinion is the document that provides us with that coverage and allows our fisheries to continue when ESA fish are present in our waters. Um, it covers all of our gear types and all of our salmon species in Southeast Alaska, and this document was just revised in 2024. It was published October 2nd with new requirements.

And that's because of the Wild Fish Conservancy litigation. They challenged our former 2019 biological opinion document. And after 3 years of litigation, the only outcome was the document got punted back to the National Marine Fisheries Service to fix their flaws. And we have a new document in place. And what's called the no jeopardy biological opinion is required for our fisheries because Our fisheries harvest small numbers of ESA-listed Chinook salmon from the Pacific Northwest because our Chinook fisheries harvest some fish that would otherwise become prey for southern resident killer whales.

Those killer whales don't come into our waters, but we catch some of their food that might otherwise be prey. And the other reason is all our fisheries have the potential to interact with ESA-listed humpback whales and stella sea lions.

This slide has a list of the listed species that we needed coverage for. Those include Puget Sound, Lower Columbia, Upper Willamette, and Snake River Chinook salmon. Again, the southern resident killer whales, Mexico humpback whales, which is only 2% of the humpback whales in Southeast Alaska. The rest are Hawaii and quite healthy. And western steller sea lions, which again is only a small percentage of the, the steller sea lions.

I included the federal definition of take. You do not have to kill a critter in order for it to be.

Considered take. Take is to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, collect, or attempt to engage in any such conduct.

So just want to talk about the nuances and the requirements in this new biological opinion. The incidental take statement specifies the impact of any incidental taking of endangered or threatened species. Since we manage to a catch limit that is an absolute number of fish but is not stock-specific, the new buy-up specifies hard cap limits for the four listed Chinook salmon stock groups. So in the last go-around, they said, hey, as long as you're compliant with all the provisions in the Chinook chapter of the treaty, you're good. This go-around, they added some new hard caps.

So in a nutshell, we cannot exceed the highest exploitation rate observed in the 20-year period between '99 and 2018 for 6 exploitation rate indicator stocks. And staff are conducting analyses to fully grasp what practical effect this has on Southeast salmon fisheries. And I did request a suite of analyses to support us for this week, recognizing we— there might be some changes. And this recognizes that the Chinook salmon fishery is very much a mixed stock fishery with different stocks moving through Alaska's coastline at different times. So in a general sense, this may limit the state's authority to significantly adjust the timing of fisheries.

The next piece that they changed significantly was the incidental take for southern resident killer whales. Again, in the last opinion, we just have to be compliant with the treaty, and this time they made— they added something on top of it, recognizing that not all the stocks we catch would actually go near where the killer whales are. So they, they put in a new limit of percent prey reduction level that we can't exceed. So we can't exceed the maximum of 2009 that was observed during 2009 and 2018. We're still working to understand this one, but I've been told it's a softer limit.

So what are the key points here?

Again, the biological opinion covers all of our gear types and all salmon species in Southeast Alaska. It is— the new biological opinion is more stringent than the last one. We have new exploitation rate limits on ESA-listed king salmon. We have new limits on southern resident killer whale prey reductions. And I wanted to flag another one that was the only other one I could think of that had bearing for us this week.

And we have a new requirement for catch monitoring and sampling effort. The Coastwide Standard for Treaty Fisheries is 20% of the catch. And I bring this up because, one, it's new, and two, there are proposals for new fisheries or substantially changed fisheries for Chinook, and we need to ensure that ADF&G is able to maintain sampling levels commensurate with those used in recent years. And that's harder for some fisheries than others. So just flagging that for you.

Without ESA— this type of ESA coverage, there are few salmon fisheries that could be prosecuted by the state. So again, potential to limit the state's authority to significantly adjust the timing or location of fisheries. And really, it is to our advantage to comply comply with all these provisions of both the treaty and the biological opinion to maintain this coverage so we can enjoy uninterrupted fisheries.

Shifting gears a hair, um, because of the volume of questions and requests I've had for public engagement, this is not part of the existing biological opinion. But as most of the folks in this room know, Wild Fish Conservancy, the same folks that sued over the last biological opinion didn't get what they wanted. So they attacked our markets, and then they submitted a petition to list all Chinook in the Gulf of Alaska as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. So just wanted one slide update on where we are with that, because I've been getting questions. At this point in time, this has no bearing on Southeast Alaska.

Finfish, but if something does come to pass, we might be revisiting things. So the petition was submitted on January 11th last year, filed again by the Wild Fish Conservancy, a Washington State-based environmental group. Uh, it was poorly conceived of with multiple errors, omissions, and unsupported assertions, yet the National Marine Fisheries Service said yes, um, on May 23rd, 2024, uh, which is called the 90-day finding. It's actually 132 or 133 days, but they said yes, which indicates that they believe substantial information indicates that listing may be warranted, uh, and they cited missed escapement goals and decreasing size and age at maturity as the rationale for this. So once they say yes, that kicks off a 1-year status review.

But the clock started ticking on January 11th. So statutorily, they have 1 year to finish their status review. They haven't done that. The status review is in process. What happens is they establish a status review team.

That's a team of federal scientists who get to evaluate this. We were able to get 2 state scientists on this since we're the ones that have all the data and the management expertise. However, they are non-voting members. So they gather data and synthesize information. And the first step in their process is where do we draw the boundaries?

What are our listable units? So Gulf of Alaska is pretty broad. Is it like one stock aggregate or is it multiple? And the state really believes it should all be one. You know, we haven't been ice-free that long.

We don't have that much differentiation. But it could be as small as late-run Kenai. Or it could be, you know, so we don't know, right? It could be a mix of stocks lumped together. It could be— there could be a lot.

There could be all one. The more— the smaller— the larger the number— sorry. The more units we have, the smaller the units become, the more risk. So that's in process. We expect to see a status review, the formal status review sometime this spring.

Moving target. Again, it's a federal document. And then there will be a decision following that. The decision could be one of three categories. It could be Warranted but precluded, which means the agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, thinks it should be listed.

They're finding that, but they have other priorities right now and can't get to it. So they're going to keep it on the candidate list and revisit it every year. It could be warranted, in which case we see a proposed rule, and then within 30 days, and then it takes effect a year later. Or it could be not warranted.

And I'm just going to keep driving straight ahead, Madam Chair, unless they're okay.

Briefly touch on Magnuson-Stevens Act. Information was provided earlier this week under RC 3, Tab 17, but we'll try and speak to it relative to salmon and for the benefit of the public. What is it? It's the principal law governing marine fisheries in the United States. It is applicable to all fisheries in the EEZ.

That's generally 3 to 200 nautical miles, with the exception of the states of the Gulf Coast of Florida and Texas, or the Gulf of America coasts. Everyone else is 3 to 200 nautical miles. This does not apply to state waters, which is 0 to 3 nautical miles, and that does include all internal waters of Southeast Alaska. So there are no what you would might call donut holes for areas where you're 3 miles from land but on the inside, Inside Passage, which would create an untenable patchwork of jurisdiction. So we're fortunate that NOAA has promulgated regulations to that effect.

NOAA Fisheries is, is responsible for managing fisheries within the EEZ, Exclusive Economic Zone, and individual states are generally responsible out to 3 miles. And NOAA Fisheries works closely with 8 regional.

Fishery Management Councils, who are— and then these councils prepare what's called fishery management plans that are implemented by NOAA Fisheries. When it comes to salmon, Alaska has delegated management authority for Southeast Alaska salmon. It's written into the fishery management plan for both troll and sport fisheries, and only those two.

Magnuson-Stevens Act was named after Warren Magnuson here on the left and the late great Senator Stevens. I couldn't resist this photo of them from 1973. The act— this was them working on this and it was implemented in 1976. Okay. At issue here is national standard for allocations.

In a nutshell, conservation and management measures shall not discriminate between residents of different states. In other words, the Magnuson-Stevens Act prohibits discrimination among citizens of the U.S., and it's not legal to have an Alaskan resident priority in federal waters. Again, this does not apply in state waters. This primarily affects sport fisheries and would affect subsistence and personal use fisheries in federal waters if we had them.

So, and as you know, the state has managed state and federal waters as one unit. This provision of Magnuson is at issue because NOAA Fisheries received a petition for consistency review of Chinook salmon sport fishing regulations from a group of California sport fishermen pursuant to the Salmon Fishery Management Plan. Since it's a federal fishery, essentially the regulations must be consistent with federal law, including National Standard 4. The petitioner— the petition was initially denied because the petitioners need to exhaust all regulatory options before submitting, and now they have with Proposal 105, which calls out Chinook salmon, rockfish, sablefish, and lingcod. It is in the best interest of the state to have regulations consistent with Magnuson for all state-managed fisheries incurring, occurring in federal waters, or we risk losing our management authority.

And the Commissioner has made a strong policy call that we do not want to lose this delegated management authority for these fisheries. Again, this can be handled in one of two general ways. The regulations can be converted to charter and non-charter, recognizing that charter is mostly non-residents and non-charter is mostly residents. Or even simpler, the regulations can simply be made the same. And again, the board can still provide a resident priority in state waters.

So key points: it's in our best interest to comply with this to retain our ability to manage out beyond the 3-mile limit. Uh, I also want to point out that there is an Endangered Species Act nexus, uh, because, uh, the federal nexus for our biological opinion was actually delegation of management authority to the state of Alaska for salmon fisheries occurring in the EEZ. So the two are tied together. Um, again, federal waters, non-resident and resident limits must be the same. But the state— the board may continue to provide for priority for residents in state waters.

So, and really the background and state comments in Proposal 105 really help clarify this issue. And state staff will be helping you through all those proposals. Okay. Final slide. So this is a list of all our Chinook constraints and things to consider as you, you deliberate on these proposals.

Again, we have to manage to meet treaty escapement goals. That's a requirement of the treaty. It's also a requirement under the ESA and our biological opinion. We have to manage to not exceed that preseason catch limit. Again, treaty and ESA requirement.

We need to manage to not exceed incidental mortality limit of 59,400, and that's treaty and ESA. We have to sample our fisheries consistent with the coast-wide standard for Chinook, and that's again in both documents. We need to avoid substantial changes to fishery timing and area beyond those observed between '99 and 2018. That's reflected somewhat in the treaty, but in the ESA, we have those hard caps on the ESA-listed stocks, and we want to make sure we're not increasing the risk that we're exceeding them, because that is a hard trigger and it cracks open the entire document. And then again, resident limits— resident and non-resident limits in federal waters must be the same.

And that is under Magnuson-Stevens Act and ESA. And with that, Madam Chair, that concludes my presentation. I am happy to take additional questions. Thank you. We will take questions from the board on ESA and MSA portion of the presentation.

Questions?

Swivel? All right. Thank you, Danny. Appreciate it. And we're going to take a break for about 20 minutes and come back.

This is— this is the kind of stuff that makes a manager have nightmares. You're trying to manage to state your board regulations, treaty regulations, ESA regulations, and now finally Magnuson-Stevens. It should make Alaskans have nightmares. Yes. Thank you.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Okay, welcome back. The time is 3:45. We're back on the record and we're going to roll into Southeast Alaska King Salmon Sport Fishery presentation. Mr. Fowler, take it away, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Patrick Fowler, Southeast Alaska Management Coordinator for the Division of Sport Fish. I'll be providing an overview of Southeast Alaska king salmon in the king salmon sport fishery, and this presentation can be found in RC3 tab 26.

This presentation will provide a short background framing the management of king salmon in Southeast Alaska, along with the current harvest and effort trends, and with an emphasis on the topics the board has before it during this meeting.

To frame the context of this presentation, displayed here are the 7 sportfish management areas of Southeast Alaska, which extends from Cape Suckling in the north to Dixon Entrance in the south. And the sport fisheries in Southeast Alaska are unique in that most of the effort occurs in saltwater. So the 10-year recent trend is 84% of sport fishing effort occurs in saltwater. And many of our species are managed on a region-wide basis as opposed to specific regulations for individual management area.

So king salmon in the region is complex and involves regulatory processes in both international and domestic venues. The department's first priority is to manage for sustainable wild stocks, followed by compliance with the provisions of the Pacific Salmon Treaty, which establishes the annual all-gear catch limit and also includes specific chapters directing the management of terminal areas of transboundary rivers.

Finally, the department seeks to provide harvest opportunity for returning Alaska hatchery-produced king salmon in terminal waters near hatchery release locations and in accordance with various management plans, broodstock collection goals, and when those actions would not endanger the conservation of wild stocks.

So since 2017, region-wide conservation measures have been implemented in the sport fishery, recognizing that many Southeast Alaska king salmon stocks and transboundary river stocks are experiencing a period of poor productivity. This map displays the conservation measures implemented in the sport fishery in recent years, including those which have been embodied in the King Salmon Action Plans. With the delisting of the Eunuch, Chickamin, and Chilkat River as stocks of concern, Southeast Alaska region will now have two King Salmon Action Plans: the Stikine and Andrew Creek, and then the Taku and King Salmon River Action Plans. And while the escapements have improved in the delisted stocks, The broad regional conservation measures implementing non-retention in the spring months will continue until these stocks can support increased harvest while continuing to meet escapement goals. And by design, these conservation measures reduce harvest opportunity in the areas and times where Southeast Alaska wild and transboundary river stocks are most prevalent in the sport fishery.

This includes the use of non-retention for all the inside waters of Southeast Alaska from April 1st to June 15th, which is represented by the light blue area in this map, while longer periods of non-retention or closed areas are applied in the terminal areas immediately adjacent to wild stocks. These conservation measures are also— meet the international obligations for management in the terminal areas of both the Stikine and Taku Rivers. And I'll reference that it's become common terminology to refer to the inside and outside waters of Southeast Alaska. Which the light blue area could be loosely defined as inside waters.

The next layer of management is where additional opportunity is provided in terminal hatchery areas. In these areas, additional opportunity is provided through the use of increased bag and annual limits, the removal of size limits, or through increased fishing time. And again, these actions are taken in accordance with the various management plans that guide the management in these areas and with consideration of hatchery broodstock needs and when increased opportunity will not endanger wild stocks through increased interceptions.

Now the remainder of the marine sport fishery in the Southeast Region is guided by the Southeast Alaska King Salmon Management Plan. And in order to discuss the King Salmon Management Plan, we have to back up to the Pacific Salmon Treaty. At the international level, the augur catch limit for Southeast Alaska King Salmon fisheries is established under the term of the Pacific Salmon Treaty, as Ms. Evenson's prior— prior explained. And then harvest is then allocated amongst Alaska fisheries in accordance with the allocation plan developed by the board embodied in 5 AAC 29.060. In this allocation plan, shares are allocated to net fisheries are taken off the top with the remainder split between the commercial troll and sport fisheries at 80% and 20% respectively.

Regional king salmon sport fishing regulations are then established in accordance with the Southeast Alaska King Salmon Management Plan, which specifies specific management measures to be implemented based on the available allocation to the sport fishery.

So this table presents the management measures that are implemented at each allocation range. The board has historically provided more opportunity for resident anglers through the use of higher bag limits and by not establishing an annual limit for residents. The non-resident regulations are almost identical across the management tiers, with a 1-fish bag limit that is always in effect, while the annual limit begins at 3 and declines across time to 2 and then 1. This declining annual limit was designed to provide harvest opportunity in the early season before other sport species are available to the fishery. In addition to these bag possession and annual limits, the King Salmon Management Plan also includes provisions allowing for the use of 2 rods per angler in the wintertime, which is permitted for all anglers at highest allocation levels and for residents only in the middle allocation levels.

The borders also provide additional opportunity for residents in the inside waters of Southeast Alaska, which are subject to the conservation measures discussed earlier. That when those inside waters open to harvest, residents have an increased bag limit of at least 2 fish. So this would only apply in the low allocation tiers where residents have a 1 fish limit.

Now, the King Salmon Management Plan has gone through several modifications since its inception in 1992. The last major revision occurred during the 2022 Southeast Alaska Board meeting, And the catalyst for this change was as a direct result of the renegotiated Pacific Salmon Treaty, which included that payback provision, whereas if Alaska exceeds the all-gear catch limit in the following year, we reduce our catch limit by that overage.

So to summarize the fundamentals of the 2022 revisions, the plan was not designed to achieve the sport allocation on an annual basis, but was expected to achieve the allocation by averaging over time. To avoid exceeding the all-year catch limit, the harvest— a harvest sharing agreement was adopted, whereas if the sport fishery is over allocation, the commercial troll fishery is reduced by that amount. But conversely, if the sport fishery is under allocation, the commercial troll fishery may receive that allocation. Next, the sport fish management measures were adjusted, which decreased opportunity when allocation is high and and increased opportunity when allocation is low, again with the intent to balance over time. Sport fish management measures are then established at the beginning of the season and do not change unless needed to avoid exceeding the all-year catch limit.

Uh, a resident priority was established, and then finally a sunset clause was established timed for this meeting.

And in addition, in 2023 at the Lower Cook Inlet meeting, the board modified the management plan to remove the references to the now outdated winter troll CPE and replaced it with the actual allocation to the sport fishery. So our management actions that we implement in the sport fishery are actually based on the numbers of fish allocated to the sport fishery.

And for some of those that are more familiar with fishing in other areas of the state, Southeast Alaska has some unique regulations that shape the king salmon sport fishery. King salmon fishing in freshwater is closed region-wide except in the Yakutat area and some special exemptions for hatchery terminal harvest areas. Additionally, no more than 6 lines may be fished from a vessel, and then the number of lines fished from a charter vessel must be equal to the number of paying clients, but not to exceed the 6-line regional limit.

Now before going on to present some harvest and effort data, I'd like to briefly introduce the 3 primary tools which inform sportfish management. First, we have our statewide harvest survey, and this is our mailed survey which comprehensively collects data from a selection of sportfish license holders. And the disadvantage of the statewide harvest survey is the data is not available until approximately 1 year after the season.

Now unique to Southeast Alaska, We have the Southeast Alaska Marine Harvest Creel Project, and this project is where we have samplers stationed at all major ports across Southeast that are interviewing anglers as they return at exit points of the fishery, such as harbors, docks, and boat launches. And in 2024, we had 31 technicians across the region that collectively conducted approximately 15,000 interviews. This project allows us to see and touch the harvest, physically collecting biological data such as genetic samples, recovering coded wire tags, and recording lengths. This project provides fisheries performance data in real time throughout the season and allows us to monitor and project king salmon sport harvest. Then finally, we have the charter logbooks, and under this program, all charter trips are required to submit information including the number of anglers, harvest, release, location, hours fished for every trip.

And digital reporting for char logbooks has been required in Southeast Alaska since 2021. An example of the information collected is presented in Appendix B of the written report, Overview of Sport Fishery for King Salmon in Southeast Alaska, and that's in RC3, tab 4.

So moving on to trends in effort. So this graph represents Southeast Alaska trends in angler effort as measured by the number of days fished in saltwater by both resident and non-resident anglers from 1996 to 2023. To generalize, resident effort has been a slight decreasing trend while non-resident effort has been on a slight increasing trend. Non-resident effort experiences a greater interannual variability and is more susceptible to social and economic factors that impact the visitor industry in Southeast Alaska. Notably in this figure, in 2020 is the 38% drop in effort due to the COVID pandemic concerns and associated travel restrictions.

In the three most recent years of data, '21 to '23, residents have averaged 34% of saltwater effort.

To talk about patterns in the guided sportfish sector, uh, has also experienced periods of growth and decline following those of the greater trends of the visitor industry in Southeast. The number of businesses, vessels, guides, and total trips taken has peaked in 2007 but has been growing in the recent years following the recovery trends post-COVID. And one dynamic that we notice is changing is we see more trips completed per vessel as some ports are increasingly catering to cruise ship passengers by conducting two half-day trips rather than one long trip. The total number of anglers— the total number of angler days generated in the guided sector is now approximately equal to the peak that was observed in 2007 at about 160,000 angler days.

So this graph represents Southeast Alaska king salmon harvest by residency from 1987 to 2023. The top line represents the percentage of harvest by non-residents. And while management measures have changed over time and generally provided more opportunity for residents, the proportion of non-resident harvest has increased across this 36-year time frame.

So to further explore the harvest trends by angler type, here we present a pie chart with king salmon harvest, the 10-year average by guided non-residents at 51%, unguided residents at 31%, unguided non-residents at 17%, and the smallest sector is the guided resident at less than 1% of the king salmon harvest.

So collectively, the 10-year average is resident harvest is averaged 32% of the king salmon harvest.

Now this figure displays king salmon harvest timing in recent years, 2017 to 2024, and excludes 2020 as an outlier year. In both the outside waters, which is indicated here in the solid black line, and then the inside waters, which is the gray line, in general catch rates are much higher in the outer coast, and these areas are not subject to the spring conservation measures Approximately 30% of the harvest occurs in outside waters before the inside waters open on June 15th. Harvest happens fast with peak catch rates in mid to late June, and typically 60 to 70% of the harvest has been completed by July 1st.

So now this graph depicts the Southeast Alaska sport fishery allocation and then the sport harvest of Treaty King Salmon For the prior treaty annex period, 2009 to 2018, then the 3 years where in-season management was implemented to keep the sport fishery with an allocation, 2019 to 2021, and then the 3 years since the current King Salmon Management Plan has been in effect, 2022 to 2024.

So in the years prior to 2019, the sport fishery was managed to achieve an allocation on average across years. Often underharvesting the sport allocation during high abundance years and exceeding the allocation in low abundance years. Between 2019 and 2021, the management plan called for the sport fishery to be managed in-season, and during this time the sport fishery was actively managed with in-season changes in order to not exceed the sport allocation.

Since the implementation of the current management plan, the sport fishery has been under allocation in 2022 and then overallocation in both 2022 and 20— sorry, both 2023 and 2024.

Now, to present the same data in numbers, during the last treaty annex period, 2009 to 2018, when the sport fishery was managed to achieve an average allocation, the sport fishery achieved approximately 20.7% of the combined sport troll allocation. Which was slightly over the targeted 20%. For the 3 years of in-season management, the sport fishery averaged 18.1% of the sport troll allocation. And then for the 3 years that the current King Salmon Management Plan has been in place, the sport fishery has averaged 22.4% of the sport troll allocation.

And the overages in the sport fishery in the last 2 years were greater than expected and required a significant reduction in harvest opportunity in the commercial troll fishery. In the 2024 season, the entire sport fishery was closed August 26th to September 30th in order to reduce the risk of exceeding the all-gear catch limit.

So to summarize the collection of items that the board has before it during this meeting, first up is to review the performance of the 2022 kingsham management plan. Second is to align the non-resident and resident regulations in the EEZ Third is to consider changes to the King Salmon Management Plan, which the board has the 14 proposals before it that would do that. And then fourth is to update or remove the sunset clause that without action the regulatory language guiding the king salmon sport fishery will cease to exist. And finally, consider changes to the conservation measures implemented for king salmon action plans, which are listed in proposals 122 to 1— 2028.

And congratulations, you've just completed the first item on the list to review the performance of the management plan.

Now, in a perfect world, we would have a stable sport fishery that would not exceed the annual allocation. We'd have a stable and predictable sport fishery that we wouldn't have to change regulations in season, and the allocation would be sufficient to supply the needs for all the user groups. And the problem is, to prevent exceeding the all-year catch limit, the sport fishery needs either an allocation sharing agreement— if the sport fish does go over, it has to come from somewhere— or in-season adjustments to achieve the annual allocation.

And then secondly, when the sport fish allocation is low, closures are required to keep the sport fishery within allocation.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Now to complicate things, we have some inherent challenges in managing the sport fishery. And as discussed earlier, the timing of the harvest is weighted early in the season, and the desire to have the highest annual limits in early season combines to create a fast-paced fishery. So to change the outcome of the season, action must be taken quickly and when catch rates are the highest. Next, we have limited precision to achieve a harvest target. Because we can't implement a bag and annual limit less than 1, and we have roughly 130,000 individual anglers, which makes it challenging to communicate changes in sportfishing regs and time to implement those changes.

And then finally, we have limited harvest power to increase harvest during high abundance.

And then in addition to that, as Ms. Evenson mentioned earlier in her slide, that harvest rates may not always align with the all-gear catch limit. So in other words, we see more fish than the preseason abundance index would suggest.

Now, while in-season management is used for conservation purposes and for providing opportunity for Alaska hatchery king salmon, in-season management is not currently used to achieve the sport allocation. So managing in-season to achieve an allocation target requires the department to continuously project the the end of season sport harvest and adjust regulations based on fisheries performance. This creates a regulatory environment where sport fishing regulations can change frequently and sometimes dramatically throughout the season. And as an example, I'll walk through the 2021 season, which was the last year we implemented management action by using in-season management action to achieve the sport allocation.

So in 2021, beginning with the sport fish allocation announcement, the sportfish allocation was 37,900 treaty king salmon. And per the management plan at that time, the sport fishery was implemented with a 3-fish resident limit, a 1-fish non-resident limit, and annual limit of 4. Now, as harvest begins occurring in the first weeks of the fishery, are largely because of our Marine Creole sampling project, we're monitoring the fishery and And we see that harvest rates were higher than expected.

Now as the season progressed, by June 15th, when our first in-season management projections become statistically viable, the department recognized that we were looking at exceeding the sportfish allocation and revised the sportfish regulations. So as these new regulations take effect, our projected harvest declines across time, but then greater than average harvest green effort occurred. There was a lot of fish in the water. That required a second revision to sportfish management actions that finally, as the tail of the season, resulted in sportfish projections declining.

So the best analogy I could come up with in explaining how we'd manage the sport fishery in season is really this is steering a supertanker rather than a 16-foot skiff, and the fact that we have to be forward-looking and take action early in order to affect the change.

So to summarize, the department has the tools in place to collect the data and produce in-season harvest projections. These will always be subject to error as the observed conditions change. Several of the driving factors of sport harvest are outside of the department's control, such as changing sport effort, changing king salmon harvest per unit effort, or fluctuating.

Contributions of Alaska hatchery king salmon. And each of these can be anticipated, but each introduces a source of error into projections. And the 2022 to 2024 seasons are a great example of this, as we had identical sport fishing regulations across those 3 years and our harvest ranged over 21,000 fish different.

And then finally, uh, the need to consider the error surrounding in-season harvest projections requires a conservative management approach that will more often result in underages in the sport allocation.

Now here's a quick summary slide to categorize the 14 proposals that address the King Salmon Management Plan into those that contain a harvest sharing agreement versus those that direct the department to do in-season management.

Now a separate but interrelated topic that I'll take the last slide of this presentation to highlight is that the department is recommending a modification to our allocation management plan that's in 5 AAC 29.060. And this is— RC is under development, will be submitted to the board shortly. But the current language within the allocation management plan specifies that the commissioner may transfer any unused allocation to the commercial troll fishery. And this change would allow the commissioner the ability to transfer unused allocation to any gear group. So this provides flexibility to adjust for an unintended overage in any group and allows the commissioner maximize the benefit to all Alaska fisheries without exceeding the all-gear catch limit.

Madam Chair, this concludes the presentation. I'm happy to accept any questions.

Commissioner, I just want to add a couple things. I hadn't seen this presentation before because I was at a different meeting, but First off, when you established a resident priority at the last meeting 3 years ago, you established that not with directions to me to ensure the sport fishery never closed. You asked us to develop a set of regimes that allowed higher bag limits and possession limits and seasons for residents versus non-residents. The problem this year is that when we, we provided that resident priority by having that higher bag limit throughout the entire season, but when we came to the end of the season, we ran out of allocation for the sport fishery as a whole. And as such, I had to close it.

And I had no ability to use unused quota from other fisheries to provide that resident priority. So as you deliberate moving forward, one of the issues you're going to have to struggle with is if you want me to provide an uninterrupted resident priority, you're going to have to provide me guidance as to how to do that. Then the second thing I just want to talk about real quickly is when we put together the— when Patrick did it 3 years ago, put together the tables of of regulatory changes according to the tier of the treaty. What we found out over the last 2 years is when our preseason number has been set, but the actual abundance of fish is much higher, our fishing power is much higher than what that table does. And I think he's correct in stating it, that our ability to predict what the end of the season catch is, is not as strong as it is with a fish ticket with the commercial fisheries.

So we're, as a result, having— especially when these conditions happen when there's more fish in the water than what our regulations are, we're going to have to close much more earlier just to be precautionary so we don't reach that cap.

Thank you. Questions for Mr. Fowler? Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Patrick. Um, so I'm trying to wrap my head around Slide 22 or page 22 a little bit, and I think I understand what this chart is explaining.

So in years when the treaty number or the state allowance for harvest is, is a lower number, obviously it's, it's much more difficult when the actual— what's actually proved on the fishing ground completes— is something completely different. And I'm looking at this table here specifically, like, you know, in May, early June, and then July.

Has the effort switched to an earlier portion of the season in this particular industry? Is that part of the reason why you saw, outside of the fact that there were more king salmon around than was projected, but is that also having an impact on, on the way this, the flow of this chart is being relayed to me? Through the chair, Member Carpenter, I, I would probably characterize as the sport fishing power is consistent throughout the season. There's a lot of sport anglers that fish in between, uh, roughly beginning mid-May all the way through the end of August. So I think what we're seeing here is a combination of the sport fishing catch rates— that just the number of king salmon that are available to the fishery are highest in that mid to late June window.

But I would say I don't see a significant change in effort, as in more anglers, uh, present in the in the region in that early season window. But the current King Salmon Management Plan does recognize that there's more harvest opportunity provided in that early season window through a higher annual limit for non-residents. So the, you know, season starts with 3 and then drops to 2 and then 1 as the season progresses. And that is reflecting the desire to have that higher annual limit early in the season Once we get into mid-July and coho are present, for example, the fishery has other sport species to target. So I guess just a quick follow-up to that.

So obviously projecting these numbers and coming up with these forecasts are very inaccurate science, and obviously you have to use something for management. But considering that the earlier portion of the season has higher bag limits, when that number is out, when the fish, fish that come back outperform that number significantly, that is, that appears to me that it's having an impact on the earlier portion of the season. And I just want to make sure I'm looking at this correctly. Is that, is that accurate? I guess I would, through the Chair, Member Carpenter, I would characterize it.

It is a management challenge in that the catch rates are highest at the same time that you would need to observe a certain portion of the fishery in order for our projections to be accurate. The farther we along are in the season, the more accurate our projections will be. And that's basically occurring about the same time. By, by June 15th, we have, you know, more than 20% of the fishery is complete and the ability to have some confidence in our forward-looking projections. And that's also the same time that we see the highest catch rates in the fishery.

And really, in order to change the outcome of the sport harvest, we need to be able to take action very quickly at that time. All right, I appreciate the information.

Okay, um, quick question for you on slide 5. Does this map— I'm assuming this map represents the conservation measures prior to the delisting, or no? Madam Chair, this represents the conservation measures that we've implemented for the last several years. So these— it embodies what is captured in the current management action plans. And now that we have an absence of those couple management plans, you know, broadly speaking, this is, as Mr. Jones spoke to earlier, what we intend to start this season with is still maintaining a very conservative approach.

Thank you. Next question I had was related to slide 12.

Oh no, no, I'm sorry, slide 11.

My question is on the Creole project. Are you— is that just docks? Are you visiting lodges in the area? Do you and do site visits?

Madam Chair, we don't sample specifically at lodges. There are locations that have private docks. We do need permission to access private property. And when we're designing our sampling program, it really— it's all about how we sample proportionally across the harvest. So we're trying to attempt to sample equal proportions across time and space for the region.

And our goal is to sample 20% of all king salmon harvested in the sport fishery. Do you get good compliance with your, with your creel survey? Generally very, very good compliance. Yes, ma'am. And then last question I have for you.

I think maybe there's one more, but slide 12, that decreasing in-resident effort, is that Why is that occurring in your opinion? Does that have anything to do with the stock of concern designations and the inside closures, or why, why are we seeing that decrease happening in your opinion? Madam Chair, I would just be guessing, but I think that that probably does play into it, you know, the— with the reduction in opportunity for king salmon and especially those inside closures, that will have an impact on resident effort.

And then I guess it wasn't really a question, I suppose, but so I just did some super quick math here.

Average out the averages that you present here.

That's 20.4 over time. That's like— you can't get any closer to the allocation than that. I don't think reasonably. It's more of a statement, I guess, than a question. Any other questions?

Thank you. Appreciate it. And let's go move on to Southeast Yakutat commercial salmon troll fishery presentation, please.

Welcome.

Ah, thank you, Madam Chair. Let me get this loaded here real quick.

Okay. Well, thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, I'm Grant Hagerman. I'm the Southeast Alaska Commercial Troll Fishery Manager, and I'll be presenting an overview of the Southeast Troll Fishery.

This presentation can be found on RC3 tab 27.

So to begin, my apologies, a little redundancy here with Ms. Evanson and Mr. Fowler's presentation going into abundance-based management, but I'll try to push through some of the redundancies here. But I'll start with that, just the abundance-based management used for managing the king salmon fisheries throughout the region and how the harvest limits are set each year. From there, I'll give an overview of our seasonal troll fisheries in winter, spring, and in summer.

So the Southeast Alaska Yakutat King Salmon fisheries are managed to the provisions of the 2019-2028 Pacific Salmon Treaty Agreement under an abundance-based management regime. Currently, the annual all-gear total allowable catch is determined for Southeast Alaska and Yakutat based on measures of coast-wide Chinook salmon abundance using the Abundance Index, or the AI, output from the Pacific Salmon Commission Chinook model. The AI is then translated to pre-seasonal allowable catch from an allowable catch table that's defined in accordance with Chapter 3 of the treaty. Under the Southeast Alaska King Salmon Allocation Management Plan, the treaty harvest limit is then allocated amongst the gear groups with Chinook salmon accounting year spanning October through September of the following year.

So the all-gear king salmon harvest limit is allocated among the gear groups as follows, with 4.3% allocated to purse seine, 2.9% to the drift gillnet, 1,000 to the set gillnet gear. After the net fishery is subtracted, the remaining allocation is then divided between the commercial troll and the sport, with 80% going to commercial troll and 20% going to sport.

So in this graph, this is the all-gear king salmon harvest and the harvest limits going back to 1985. The blue portion of the bars indicate the treaty harvest, while the red portion indicates that the non-treaty harvest or the Alaska hatchery harvest. The black line represents the, the annual treaty harvest limits. So you can see here, for the last 9 consecutive years, the Southeast Chinook managers have remained within the treaty allocation.

So the Southeast fishery primarily targets king and coho salmon, though chum salmon and hatchery chum salmon have become a more important target species over the last 5 to 10 years. The 20-year average is about 1,000 troll permits fished, though that has declined each of the last 10 years to record lows in 2023 and in 2024. The fishery is pretty much open year-round with 3 seasons: the winter, spring, and the summer fishery.

So the winter fishery by regulation opens October 11th and may continue through April 30th or until the guideline harvest level is reached. However, in 2018 through 2021, to help conserve wild Southeast Alaska and transboundary river king salmon and reduce encounters, notwithstanding any of the remaining portion of that guideline harvest level, the fishery closed between March 16th and April 30th.

From 2022 to 2024, the fishery closed in all inside waters beginning March 15th, and we had openings provided in select outer coastal areas through late March and early April. And I'll give a few more details on that in a following slide. The winter fishery targets king salmon and is restricted to the waters inside the winter boundary line or the surf line. You can see on the map here, it's kind of a point-to-point line that runs down the coast. Generally, most of the waters east of that line are open throughout the fishery, with the exception— or it's what's shaded in black here— and those are near the terminus of the Southeast Alaska or transboundary river systems, and those remain closed throughout the season.

So this graph shows the harvest and landings for the winter fishery going back to 1985. The number of king salmon harvested is on the y-axis, years on the x-axis. The number of landings is on the secondary y-axis. The blue portion of the bars is the treaty harvest. The red portion represents the Alaska hatchery harvest.

The number of landings each season is indicated by the black line. So the harvesting effort in the winter fishery has varied widely over the years. You can tell by the graph here, and it's in an October through April fishery, weather can have a strong influence on that effort, but as well as distribution of fish abundance and prices. And since 2018, stock of concern plans have affected early seasonal closures or closures of inside waters. So since 2018, on average, about 15% of the annual troll king salmon harvest for the troll fishery was taken in winter, with a near record high in 2024 of 32%.

So this graph shows the genetic mixed stock analysis and Codawar tag-based estimates of the number of wild Southeast Alaska king salmon that were harvested in the late winter fishery going back to 2005. So the decline in the wild Southeast Alaska king salmon harvest since 2013 coincides with the beginning of a current period of low productivity in wild king salmon stocks throughout the region, and since 2018 has included conservation measures to reduce encounters as directed per the Stock at Concern plans. So the early seasonal closure directive for all the waters of late winter during 2018 through 2021 helped to reduce the wild Southeast Alaska king salmon harvest by 59% when compared to the 2013 through 2017 5-year average, when productivity kind of began to decline and just prior to the stock of concern actions.

So in 2022, the board adopted action plans giving the department direction through emergency order authority to identify and implement actions to provide conservation of the Southeast Alaska and Transboundary River King Salmon while continuing to identify harvest opportunities to the troll fishery that maintain conservation of those stocks. And so during the late winter fisheries from 2022 to 2024, we provided opportunities in late March and in early April to harvest remaining winter guideline harvest level in select waters of the Outer Coast. That had historically lower proportions of wild Southeast Alaska King Salmon.

So moving into the spring troll fisheries in May and June, spring fisheries generally open May 1st and can continue through June 30th. Most of the spring fisheries are designed to target Alaska hatchery-produced King Salmon, though tree kings are also harvested. Since 2018, stock and conserve conservation measures have limited spring areas to near directly adjacent to hatcheries or hatchery release sites.

The harvest of treaty king salmon is limited according to the percentage of Alaska hatchery fish taken in each fishery. So as the proportion of Alaska hatchery fish increases in the catch, so does the allowable treaty harvest in those, providing additional opportunities for the trawlers to catch those hatchery fish.

Each one of the spring fisheries are managed on a weekly basis by emergency order. Hatchery-produced chum are also targeted during the spring, and there are 4 proposals that suggest changes to the spring fisheries that look to liberalize time, gear, or length requirements.

So this is just a slide— this is a visual of the troll king salmon restrictions that were implemented in the spring fisheries.

Between 2018 and 2024. You can see here, though, the slide to the left indicates the number of spring troll areas open for king salmon retention prior to stock of concern actions in 2018. And to the right are the current opportunities that are being provided for king salmon. So roughly two-thirds of the fisheries have been closed.

So this graph shows the spring troll king salmon harvest from '86 to 2024. The bars indicate the number of king salmon each year, and the black line represents the Alaska hatchery component of the catch. So the annual spring king harvest for the region has fluctuated with abundance of both Alaska hatchery origin and treaty fish, and beginning 2018 has been reduced to historically low levels resulting from the, the stock-at-concern actions.

So this graph shows the genetic mixed stock analysis and Codeware tag-based estimates of the number of wild Southeast Alaska King Salmon that are harvested in the spring fisheries going back to 2005. As mentioned in the previous slides, beginning 2018, conservation measures to reduce encounters of our wild Southeast Alaska stocks were provided in action plans, and since that time, the wild Southeast Alaska King harvest in spring has been Reduced by 82% when compared to that 2013 to 2017 average when region-wide productivity kind of began to decline and prior to any stock of concern actions.

Just kind of switching gears to chum salmon here. So this map depicts the, the areas that are included in our District 9, 10, 12, and 14 enhanced chum salmon management plan. And areas during the summer in the Summer Chum Salmon Troll Fishery Management Plan. So the gray areas here are what are provided in mid-June to target hatchery chum salmon in the spring fisheries. The areas in black here are directed fisheries for chum during the summer.

So this graph shows the harvest and effort for the spring and the summer directed chum fisheries from 2000 through 2024. The bars are the number of chum salmon harvested each year. The black line represents the number of permits. So you can see that, you know, from both these spring and these summer fisheries over the years since 2000, there's been a wide range of harvest and effort occurring here.

So moving into the summer fishery, when the summer fishery opens July 1st, harvest and effort in troll fishery are at their peak levels and most of the waters of the region are open. The first king salmon opening, which opens July 1st by regulation, targets 70% of the king salmon that are remaining on the troll allocation after winter and spring fisheries end. So once the winter and spring treaty harvest is calculated. That number is subtracted from the annual all-year, uh, treaty harvest limit, and what's remaining is provided in two retention periods during summer, the first of which opening July 1st. The second, uh, generally opens around mid-August should there be any allocation remaining after the first opening.

Uh, the summer fishery— trollers primarily target coho. And as I mentioned before, have of the last 5 to 10 years have had directed chum fisheries as well. There are 3 proposals in summer that look to liberalize gear, reallocate king salmon within the summer openings, and extend opportunities for limited harvest fisheries during summer.

So this is just kind of a spatial extent. This is a map showing the waters that are east of the longitude of Cape Suckling and north of Dixon Entrance that are provided in the summer fishery. So with the exception of some terminal areas, there's about 115,000 square miles that are open for trawlers to fish. State regulations apply to the waters of Alaska within 3 miles of the outer coast, as well as the adjacent waters of the Exclusive Economic Zone. So this seems like a very large area, but the majority of the trawl effort does occur probably within 5 to 10 miles of shore with, with some trawlers during some parts of the summer fishing as far as 30 miles out.

So this graph shows the genetic mixed stock analysis and the CodE-O-Ar tag-based estimates for the number of wild Southeast Alaska kings harvested in the summer fishery for the first retention period going back to 2005. So again, like the other seasons, beginning in 2018, conservation measures to reduce encounters of wild Southeast Alaska and TBR kings were implemented by emergency order during the first retention period. So the summer conservation measures focused at reducing encounters in more of the terminal areas of the migration corridors as the run timing of most of the Southeast Alaska kings indicate that mature fish are near river or in river by that time of the season. So the conservation measures were focused more terminally. So since 2018, the harvest of wild Southeast Alaska king salmon during that first retention period has declined by 32% when compared to that 5-year average of 2013 through '17, when productivity began to decline and prior to the stock at concern actions.

So as I mentioned before, the coho salmon are primarily target species during the summer. Although retention does begin in June, the majority of the harvest of coho begins after July when the summer season opens. The fishery may continue until late September. There are coho present in over 2,500 systems throughout the region. The fishery is managed to ensure escapement goals are met and to achieve the Board of Fish allocation guidelines between the gear groups over time.

The area near the U.S.-Canada border is managed in cooperation with Canada. Under terms of the Pacific Salmon Treaty. And our coho run strength is assessed 3 times in season during the summer fishery, one in the beginning of July, another beginning of August, and then again towards the end of the season in the middle of September.

So this graph shows the troll coho harvest from 1980 through 2024. The majority of troll coho harvested in Southeast are wild Southeast Alaska stocks. Which are represented by the— the total harvest is represented by the bars here. The Alaska hatchery component of the catch is represented by the black line. Um, the 20-year average for the Alaska hatchery harvest is about 24%.

The more recent 10-year average is about 28%. So we are seeing an increase in the proportion of, of Alaska hatchery coho in the harvest.

That concludes the presentation. I will take any questions, Madam Chair. Well done. I think this is the first presentation where I don't have anything flagged for questions. Very comprehensive.

Mr. Wood.

Slide 11.

I guess my question about that one is This is— these are the restricted— this is where the restricted areas are now where the troll fishery can fish to avoid the stocks of concern. Through the chair, Mr. Wood, correct. So what you're seeing on the right here are the current opportunities provided during May and June. May and June. So this maybe is a different question for, uh, Mr. Fowler, but where can the Can this— can the sport fishery go out in the areas that— can they go anywhere?

Uh, that would be probably a question, but, but, uh, what you're seeing here are opportunities on the outer coast, which the sport fishery is open during May and June in these areas. This— I believe the sport fishery restrictions at that time are on inside waters. The opportunities we're providing here are on the outer coast near adjacent to hatcheries and hatchery release sites. These just happen to be on the outer coast, which the sport fishery is providing opportunities concurrently. Thank you.

Member Wood, I would direct you to page— slide 5 of the previous presentation, I think, for some of the sport info you're looking for.

Any other questions?

All right, thank you very much.

All right, I'm looking at the next presentation on the net fisheries. I'd kind of like to complete this suite. There's about 17 slides in here. You got about a minute per slide. Just kidding.

Good luck. I'm just kidding. Take the time you need. We'll get there.

Okay, minute per slide. Here we go. Um, Madam Chair, board members, my name is Troy Tinnis. I'm Region 1 Management Coordinator for the Division of Commercial Fisheries in Southeast Alaska. Today I'll be giving an overview of the commercial purse seine, drift gillnet, and set gillnet fisheries.

This report is found in RC3, tab 28. The most recent salmon annual management reports for the purse seine and drift gillnet, for set gillnet, as well as overview of the commercial personal use and subsistence fisheries are found on the Board of Fish website. I'll begin the presentation with the ex-vessel values by gear type. Next, I'll give brief overviews of the purse seine and drift gillnet fisheries, followed by terminal harvest areas, hatchery cost recovery, and contributions of hatchery and wild origin salmon to the region's net fisheries. And finally, an overview of the Yakutat set gillnet fishery.

This graph shows the ex-vessel value of common property salmon, purse seine, troll, drift gillnet, and set gillnet fisheries in the Southeast region since 1975. Values are in millions of dollars on the vertical axis. Each bar represents the annual common property value of all fisheries. Purse seine is on the bottom of each stacked bar. Troll is next in blue.

Drift gillnet is in dark red, set gillnet is in black, and finally cost recovery is green on top. Values and prices increased from lows in the early 2000s, peaked in 2013 with record ex-vessel value of $228 million, and have been generally decreasing over the past 10 years as prices and runs have decreased.

Districts in Southeast Alaska are numbered south to north from 1 to 16. The purse seine fishery is open by emergency order in the areas shown in color and includes area in all districts except 8, 15, and 16. The fishery is managed out of the area offices in Ketchikan, Petersburg, Juneau, and Sitka, and fishing periods are regionally coordinated. Escapements of pink salmon are indexed by indirect observation from aerial surveys of over 700 streams in these areas. Management of the District 4 purse seine fishery along the outer southern coast is subject to provisions of Chapter 2 of the Pacific Salmon Treaty.

This graph shows annual purse seine harvest represented by bars and effort levels as a solid black line since 1975. The vertical axis on the left shows the total harvest in millions of fish and the right is number of permits fished. Purse seine harvest is predominantly wild pink salmon. Chum salmon are a substantial component and all salmon species are harvested. In 2006, the even-year pink salmon return was at its lowest since 1988, and strong even-year fluctuation returns and, and harvest followed.

The 2020 pink salmon harvest of 6 million fish was the lowest since 1976. Pink salmon harvests have improved since 2020, with over 44 million salmon harvested in 2021 and 2023, and even-year harvest improved as well, with 15 million harvested in 2022 and 24.9 million harvested in 2024. However, effort has remained low with historical low number of permits fished in 2022 with 194. Prices dramatically decreased in 2023 and 2024. The Southeast Alaska Purslane Fishery's ex-vessel value in 2023 was $114 million and is estimated to be $74 million in this past year in 2024.

The recent 10-year average value is $113 million. There were 2 buyback permits two permit buybacks that reduced permits from 415 to 279 permits. The number of persane permits reduced was again reduced in 2008 from— sorry, there's something covering my notes here— from 100 permits through permit buyback, fleet reduction, and pro— fleet reduction program. In 2012, an additional buyback program administered by the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service further reduced the number of permits by an additional 36. There are two proposals that are specific to the purse seine fishery.

This map shows locations of traditional drift gillnet fisheries. Traditional drift gillnet fisheries occur in the Tree Point area in District 1 in southern southeast, the Prince of Wales areas in District 6, the Stikine area in District 8 in central southeast, Taku Inlet, Sneddarsam areas in District 11, and Lynn Canal area in District 15 in northern southeast. Fisheries generally begin in June and can continue into October. Fisheries are managed out of the Ketchikan, Petersburg, Juneau, and Haines area offices and are regionally coordinated. Since 2005, gillnet fisheries can start in May in Districts 8 and 11 when there's a directed fishery for transboundary river king salmon returning the Skeena or Taku Rivers.

All fisheries target sockeye salmon in June and July. Management is directed at pink salmon in Districts 1, 6, and 8 in August. Fall chum and coho salmon are targeted in September and October in all areas. The District 1 drift gillnet fisheries are managed in accordance to Chapter 2 of the Pacific Salmon Treaty, and District 6 and 8 and 11 drift gillnet fisheries are managed in accordance to Chapter 1 of the treaty. District 1 is managed under the pink salmon management plan beginning in July.

This graph shows the annual drift gillnet harvest represented by the bars and effort levels as a solid black line since 1975. Harvest is in millions of fish shown on left vertical axis, and the number of permits fished is on the right. Note the increase in harvest of chum salmon over the past 30 years, shown in the lowermost portion of each bar. Chum salmon comprised about 70% of the drift gillnet fishery ex— ex-vessel value in 2024, of which a majority can be attributed to hatchery fish. In 2024, 319 drift gillnet permits fished and made landings, the lowest number of permits fished since limited entry began in 1976.

Ex-vessel value of drift gillnet fisheries in 2024, based on the initial fish ticket data, was $18.5 million. This ranks 20th compared with CFC value estimates since 1976. There are two proposals that are specific to the drift gillnet fishery. This map shows locations of hatchery terminal and special harvest areas. Terminal harvest areas are areas where common property fisheries occur to provide access to surplus hatchery runs in locations largely segregated from wild stocks.

Most THAs are described in regulation. Special harvest areas are locations where hatchery cost recovery harvest takes place. An area can be both a THA and an SHA. The gear type or types allowed to fish in a THA are defined in regulatory management plans and designated by hatchery organizations based on allocation. This graph shows common property harvests and terminal harvest areas.

These harvests have ranged from 2 to 7 million fish since 1993. The majority of the harvest is chum salmon. Hatchery runs are harvested as they pass through traditional area fisheries, and the remainder of the surplus returns are harvested terminally by purse seine, drift gillnet, and troll gear. In 2024, 56% of the purse seine chum salmon harvest and 14% of the total seine harvest of all species were from terminal harvest areas. In comparison, 41% of the drift gillnet chum salmon harvest and 37% of the total gillnet harvest of all species were from terminal harvest areas.

Hatchery cost recovery is an important component of commercial harvest in the region. Hatchery cost recovery harvest totaled 5.4 million salmon in 2024 and averaged 3.5 million salmon over the recent 10-year period. In 2024, 87% of the cost recovery was chum salmon. Value cost recovery harvest in 2024 is estimated at $19.6 million, with 80% of the value was from chum salmon. Cost recovery represented about 26% of the total commercial salmon value of $74.4 million for the region.

Hatchery production is a significant component of the commercial salmon fisheries in Southeast Alaska. This slide shows the component of total value in millions of dollars from wild and hatchery production for the purse seine and drift gillnet fisheries. Enhanced salmon comprise a much larger proportion, proportion of the annual ex-vessel value from gillnet when compared to seine. There are 5 proposals that would affect commercial net fisheries.

This map shows the fishing areas within the Actat area. The Akutaka District includes the Siu and Kaliak Rivers. The Yakutat District includes Yakutat Bay and the Situk and Alsek Rivers. This graph shows the annual set gillnet harvest represented by the bars and effort levels as a solid black line since 1975. Harvest is in numbers of fish shown on the left vertical axis, and number of permits fished is on the right.

Note the large reduction in harvest over the beginning— over the beginning in 2018. This was due to a combination of a series of poor sockeye runs, the major processor pulling out of dry bay in its mouth, the Alsek River, and not returning, and a decline.

And subsequent decline in effort. In 2024, 91 permits fished and made landings, the second lowest since participation— second lowest participation since 1975. Based on initial fish ticket data, the estimated net vessel value for 2024 Yakutat Set Gillnet Fishery was $1.2 million from harvest of 191,000 fish. 52% Of the value was from sockeye and 45% was from coho salmon. There are 2 proposals that affect commercial setnet fisheries.

That concludes my presentation, and I'll try to answer any questions. And can I get a time?

I think you did about 30 seconds per slide, so take a deep breath.

Well done, Troy. Board questions?

Just one question on your last slide, just there. Following the Yakutat, you said there was 91 permits fished in 2024? Yeah. Okay. All right.

Any, any questions on the net fisheries? Well, double well done.

All right. I think that's a good stopping point for today in terms of the presentations. My plan is to begin tomorrow morning and get into the staff reports on hatcheries, the RPTs, and then into the— I think it's the action plan reviews. So again, I just want to announce and extend the invitation on behalf of the Southeast Alaska Hatcheries and seafood industry leaders to join the reception beginning in about 10 minutes over at the lodge. And hopefully we'll see you all there.

And we'll begin tomorrow morning at 8:30 in the morning. Thank you.

Hey, happy birthday, Doug! I just found out.