2025 Board of Fisheries Work Session - Day 2 (10-29-25)

Good morning, everyone. Um, the time is 8:57 AM. The day is Wednesday, I think, October 29th, and, um, we are picking back up in our work session agenda on agenda item number 8, which is to review the memo on non-responsive proposals for the 25-26 call for proposals and the rejected agenda change requests. There is a memorandum in your RC1 binder under the miscellaneous tab, and I will turn it over to Director Nelson to walk us through it. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, as it was just mentioned, everything we're going to walk through here for the next 4 agenda items is behind the miscellaneous tab in your RC1 workbook. The first thing in there is the committee assignments, and you went through those yesterday. So the next stapled packet in there is my memo on non-responsive proposals and rejected ACRs. Again, as most of you will remember, when we do the call for proposals, you know, we often get proposal submissions that are not ultimately included in the proposal book for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes there are things submitted for the wrong meeting cycle. Sometimes there are duplicates submitted by the same individual. Sometimes during the call for proposals, somebody will resubmit and ask to replace a previous submission, and we certainly allow that if the call for proposals is open. But every submission we have gets a log number assigned, and so we try to track all of those. And so this is kind of the accounting of the proposals that were deemed non-responsive.

In last year's— in the call for proposal for this cycle, we had 202 logged submissions, and 18 of those were deemed non-responsive, again, for a variety of reasons. This is actually a decrease in the non-responsive proposals from last year, just for comparison. Again, it was about 9% of the proposals received this year were deemed non-responsive. Uh, last year it was about 13%, and quite a few more— I mean, there were a lot more proposals overall last year as well, but just for a little comparison for you. Um, uh, Figure 1, the pie chart there, um, gives you a little bit of a breakdown of the reasons why, uh, the proposals were deemed non-responsive this year.

You see one of the— you know, the big chunk here is, uh, uh, concerning board authority or lack of board authority over what is requested But again, you see there were a couple that were non— the wrong cycle or were duplicates or also are non-regulatory requests. And we do get those regularly where they ask— they're asking the board to do something, but they're not asking for a regulation change. And that's what the call for proposals is about, you know, requests for proposed changes to the regulations. Then following the pie chart, there's a table that summarizes all of them and gives a brief, um, explanation of the reason why it was, uh, rejected. Uh, there was also one agenda change request that was not included in the ACR packet that you're considering today, um, because that was requesting the board to consider an issue that's already in cycle this year.

And in our agenda change request instructions, it, it clearly says we won't accept ACRs for things that are in cycle because essentially It's just a late proposal, a proposal that missed the April deadline. And so that one is, is on the table, and it's also at the end of the, of the packet. So then following the table, we've just got all of the agenda change or the proposals that were deemed non-responsive this year. So anybody can, can look at the text, and, and this is kind of an opportunity for the board to have any discussion about any of them, to get a better understanding of it. If there's issues raised in any of these, the board can certainly pick those up and either put them into a committee.

You could also you know, vote to kind of resurrect any of these proposals, and we could put them back in for the cycle this year depending on exactly what they're asking for. So, um, you, you may have noticed, I think, in the, the written comments, there were at least two of the proposal authors that kind of brought some points up. Um, one was the, uh, oh, I think it's number 10 in the list from Mr. Ball, and it regards freshwater logbook, reinstating the freshwater logbook program for, for the Nushagak. And then the other one is the, uh, the number 18 on the list near the end there from the Sitka AC. And, and, and that has actually come before us in another form previously and also been not included because a lot of what has been asked for is either out of the board's authority or non- non-regulatory aspects of their request.

So, um, if, if board members have any questions or want to talk about any of this, that's— this is, this is the time to do it. Madam Chair. Thank you, Director Nelson. And just sort of procedurally, what happens when these, um, proposals come and the department reviews all of them and takes a look at them and creates this log and makes recommendations about the non-responsive? That gets shared with the Department of Law who reviews them, and also the chair, and sometimes we'll confer about some of that stuff.

I'm, you know, the chair might have some questions about why this was non-responsive or whatever. And then that's how this, this sort of list, this table that Director Nelson just walked us through, is prepared. But also, like he said, this is an opportunity for the board to take a look at that, discuss any ones that they want to discuss, and decide whether or not the decisions made or the recommendations made were appropriate. And just, just to follow up a little bit more on the point you raised about the process that we go through on this, you know, usually a lot of these, you know, the proposals are often flagged by the area or the regional staff as possibly being non-responsive. I will occasionally flag some if they jump out at me when I've been going through them.

But ultimately, you know, the discussion when we are getting ready to kind of finalize this list, you know, we include Mr. Peterson with the Department of Law is involved. He will review them all to make sure that we are being consistent. And as well, Madam Chair, yourself get involved and ultimately, you know, kind of make the final decision on which of these proposals are going to get deemed that way. It is not just me doing it. It is not just other staff making it.

It is kind of a group decision on this.

Any board discussion on the non-responsive proposals memorandum? Mr. Swenson.

The one that's proposed to have those logbooks, and, and what my understanding is, they just want to do it in Bristol Bay, and, uh, And they have alternate financing that would cover some of— would cover costs that the Fish and Game would— could get, you know, in having to do this. So I don't know whether this should be heard with— that's just my question, I guess. Do we want to hear this within Bristol Bay, or is there a need to talk about this now?

Mr. Peterson, you have comments or thoughts? Madam Chair, I wasn't—. I'm not really clear on what the question is. Is if the board would like to resurrect any of these proposals, as Director Nelson indicated, then the board could vote to do so and put it on that meeting. Director Nelson would then notice the public that it will be included.

Yeah. So, I mean, the question is, Member Swenson, is whether or not you think it should be resurrected. And if you do, I would encourage you to make a motion and then we can discuss it. Well, I'd make a motion that we resurrect it. Is there a second?

Second. Discussion? So, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you.

You know, I'm, I'm all about reporting. I think it's important, but I do agree that this should have been left out of the book because, you know, ultimately it's at the commissioner's discretion. It's—. This is something that has to be funded, and I'm not for creating a situation to where we put something back on the books that may or may not happen. I just don't see that it's worth it.

So I'm not going to be in favor of it.

Other discussion? Mr. Wood. Thank you. I recall these discussions now multiple times where we've gone round and round about the recording that the commercial fishery has to do versus the sport fishery and the frustration that the sport fishery is often a delay in recording. However, that doesn't really seem to impact the management all that greatly, but But mostly what I realize is that it's a huge expense and the department's not at a place like we can't ask for better recording with our cell phone and ask for more WIRS all at the same time.

So for the time being, I think it's appropriate that it's left out and down the road we can work on a better solution.

Other discussion? Question. Question has been called. Director Nelson, will you please call the roll?

On the motion to restore the proposal, and I'm just going to mention the log number, it was EFF 26092. It's number 10 on the list and also in the package. So on the motion to restore or resurrect that proposal, a yes vote would be to to basically pluck it out of the fire, and then we would schedule it for the Bristol Bay meeting. Uh, Godfrey? No.

Wood? No. Chamberlain? No. Irwin?

No. Carpenter? No. Svenson? Yes.

Carlson-Vandort? No. Motion fails, 1 in favor, 6 against. Madam Chair, any other discussion on the non-call? Mr. Commissioner?

Yeah, I just want to put on the record for, for the meeting in Bristol Bay, I respect what you guys just did, but we are going to be talking about different ways of trying to account for what the sport fish harvest is in that river. And when we come to the Bristol Bay meeting, we'll have that discussion with the board.

Thank you. Any other discussion on the non-respondents?

Mr. Nelson. Madam Chair, I just want to bring another item to the board's attention, and I, I don't think this needs a motion. I'm just informing the board that just yesterday it was brought to my attention that there was one of the proposals we received that was not deemed non-responsive but that did not make it into the proposal book. And that's one of the things that our, our reviewer letter in the proposal book urges people, that if you please take a look through here, and if you submitted something and you don't see it get in touch with us. And that's what happened yesterday.

So I do plan to— it's a Bristol Bay area proposal. It was requesting the board to create a king salmon management plan for the Naknek River. And so we will— I'll assign it, you know, I guess the number at the end of the list, and we'll figure out where to tuck it in for the Bristol Bay meeting. But it should have made it in the book. So again, I don't think that needs any board action.

I'm just letting you know that I will make sure that gets in there.

All right, any other discussion? Okay, let's go ahead and move on to reviewing and approving the 2026-2027 call for proposals. Mr. Nelson. Madam Chair, this one's, uh, fairly straightforward. Uh, this is, uh, you know, every, every work session you, uh, review the call for proposals for next year's meetings, and that's when we will come back to the Cook Inlet area, lower and upper, and Kodiak as well.

So this call for proposals is exactly like the one that you approved last year with just the areas under consideration being updated.

Yeah. Madam Chair, what day— what day of the week is April 10th? It's a Friday. Okay, thank you. Do you need action on this or are you just—.

I would like board approval on this. There is one aspect that perhaps the commissioner can speak to on this that we didn't include, but we had considered including it in this draft for you, for your review. So, Madam Chair, the governor issued Administrative Order 360. Which is calling for regulatory review of all regulations within the, within the state of Alaska and a call for the public to look at them. We're in discussions with the governor's office how that applies to the Board of Game, Board of Fish regulations.

I understand pretty clearly how it applies to my regulations and how I can do that. But to have an open call on all Board of Fish and all Board of Game regulations and then have a meeting scheduled for anything statewide would be comprehensive. So we're, we're in discussions with them. We're supposed to have a meeting before this, this, this work session, but it got postponed till later. So right now the call for proposals is as it's written and we're trying to figure out what they intend to do with the Board of Fish and Board of Game Regulations.

Okay. Thank you for that. So if there are any proposed changes based on those discussions or directives, um, that will come before? And when does the— when is the typical time for, um, sending out this notice, Madam Chair? I— this is usually issued sometime before the end of the year, a lot of times, you know, kind of mid-December or something like that.

So I guess if, uh, if we— yeah, obviously if we, if we were going to, uh, try to incorporate anything regarding AO-360, I think we would bring it back to the board to consider that change, hopefully before we issue the call for proposals in December. So it could be, it could be something that we ask you to consider at the Fairbanks meeting. So it's our hope to use the existing 3-year cycles of the board to address the issues that were raised in Administrative Order 360. That's what we're discussing with them right now. So, okay, I appreciate that because But frankly, the idea of a kitchen sink board meeting is a little daunting.

And hopefully the governor's office would have a very clear understanding of the fiscal impacts of that. We've alerted them. All right. Thank you for that. Other questions?

I just wanted to add one more thing. And it could be, you know, once— if we get the guidance and decide to bring the board a revised call for proposal to consider, we may also need to work on our proposal form to, you know, maybe have a checkbox for, you know, are they— are you submitting this proposal under AO 360, something like that. So if, if we get that opportunity and decide to do it again, we'll bring that back to the board for consideration. Thank you. All right, at this time I would go ahead and entertain a motion for the board to approve the call for proposals for 26-27 meeting cycle as written, with the understanding that it may be amended at some point in the relatively near future.

Madam Chair, move to adopt the recommendations from Director Nelson in regards to call for proposals for 2026-27, with the understanding that it— something might be brought back to the board to change if something is needed. I second that and ask for unanimous consent. Okay, hearing no objection, that's been approved. All right, moving on, let's talk about tentative meeting dates and locations for 27-28. I I can't even believe we're saying those dates out loud.

It's amazing. Director Nelson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, again, as most board members will remember, we, we typically try to set our calendar about 2 years out. That gives us adequate time to go out and make sure we can secure an adequate facility, adequate hotel room blocks for board members and advisory committees and department staff.

And so this is the time to, you know, for the meetings that we held last year, the Southeast and Prince William Sound meetings, where and when are we going to do those meetings for the '27-'28 meeting cycle? And so I've prepared a pretty lengthy memo, and I would— I mentioned this to the board members when I sent it to you. I really appreciate any thoughts. You know, largely I've kind of just been updating and bringing forward the memo template that Executive Director Haight had done previously. And I just curious if this is more information than you need or if it's fine.

But largely what you're looking at in the memo is a bunch of meeting statistics about the number of proposals, the number of agenda change requests received over time, just so you can kind of see if there's any trends to consider, especially as it relates to the number of days for each meeting. Can we, can we get away with reducing them by a day, or do we need to consider adding a day? And as well, I've got some long-term information in there for you about where these meetings have been held in the past so that you can kind of see the pattern and where we've done it. And, you know, obviously most of these communities that have hosted it previously could certainly host them again. Um, one thing I do want to bring to your attention, if you're looking at the southeast communities, is that For the last 3 board cycles, the Southeast meeting has been a single meeting for all finfish and shellfish, whereas prior to the last 3 cycles, so like 2015 and previously, they were done as 2 separate meetings, one for shellfish and one for finfish.

And the shellfish meeting doesn't have quite as much attendance and And a lot of times the board was able to get into some of the smaller Southeast communities for that meeting. You'll see, you know, Rangel and Petersburg were in there. But I don't know if those communities could have the space to host a full meeting of finfish and shellfish just as far as the number of hotel rooms that would be needed. The venue, the facilities might have it. I'm just not sure about rooms.

And so That's something to consider for the Southeast meeting.

And then the— oh, there's also some guidance. It's not binding, but that previous boards have put together for you to consider about whether, you know, what they— what the boards would like to make sure that the communities that host a meeting are able to provide as far as phone service. You know, obviously some of this is a little older because a lot of this is definitely available now in a lot of the communities, but things to consider. So there's that list of 14 items on page 5 that was put together in, in 2009. And as well, I've also included in the appendix a previous board finding, uh, 91-126-FB, and that's the board's long-term goals.

And there's, there's more good information for you to consider when you're, when you're scheduling these meetings and, and deciding where they're going to be. But what I do have in there are the dates, and, and I do quite a bit of digging on, you know, what other, especially fishery-related meetings, are likely to be scheduled around those times, and we do our best to avoid them. Fortunately, by scheduling these meetings 2 years out, we kind of get ahead of other groups and the meetings that they may put together so that we kind of get first claim on the calendar. But we do— the ones that are held typically around the same times of year, like the treaty, Pacific Salmon Treaty-related meetings, are typically held on very discrete kind of times relating to the calendar. I believe what I've got here avoids any likely conflicts with treaty meetings.

It avoids, I believe, the common spring break holidays. I think it avoids the Super Bowl, as somebody asked about this morning. I'm pretty sure we will not be meeting Super Bowl is February 13th, 2028, and I'm pretty sure I avoid that, uh, on here, but someone can please double-check me on that. Um, I also try to avoid for any Anchorage meetings the, the Fer-Rendezvous and, uh, and Iditarod start days because that can make downtown a little chaotic. But we have made those work in the past.

That's not a, that's not a hard block on something that we try to avoid. So They are largely very similar to the same dates on the calendar of the meetings last year. The only one that I shifted a little bit earlier was the dates for the Southeast meeting. It was— the end of the meeting was getting kind of close to the shellfish fishery in Southeast, and so that's why we put the shellfish at the beginning of that meeting, was to try to stay as far away from it as possible. But in looking at the calendar, I, I was able to find some dates a little bit earlier to get just further away from that, and it still avoids the treaty-related meetings that are kind of the other significant conflict for the timing of that meeting.

So those are all there for your consideration. Again, I don't propose locations for you. I just have a, a single proposed date and either one or two backup dates that I would like the board to approve as well in case I can't secure the, uh, the, the preferred or the proposed dates. At least the backup dates have been acknowledged and we'll move to those as we're trying to, to secure the venue. And you want motion?

So I think we'll just do it meeting by meeting. Yeah. Um, so then we'll need to do a work session.

Madam Chair, I move that the board set the October 2027 work session, which includes ACR cycle organization and stock concerns, for October 27th through 28th in Anchorage. Backup dates would be October 20th and 21st, also in Anchorage. Second. Second. Yep.

And ask unanimous consent. Hearing no objections, so moved. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair.

I move that the board adopt the dates for December 2027, Prince William Sound, Upper Copper, Susitna River, finfish and shellfish. With the exception of shrimp, the proposed dates as presented, December 1st through 7th in Cordova, with the backup date being December 8th through 14th in Cordova. Second that. Ask unanimous consent. Oops, sorry.

We got a second and an objection. I have an objection. Would you like to speak to your objection, please? Well, the last two meetings at least have been in Cordova. I think the meeting should be in Anchorage, and the reason I feel that way is that Cordova is the southern end of, as I look at it, the Copper River.

Anchorage is kind of in the central area part of it, and then Fairbanks is in the northern area. I think that it should be held in Anchorage. We have a lot more places to stay, places to eat, all these things. And so I think that meeting should be held in Anchorage.

Miss Erwin. I also object and would like to suggest that the Prince William Sound meeting be held in Fairbanks. I recognize that Fairbanks is not within the Copper River drainage and would leave out certain user groups make it more difficult for them to travel. However, the last 2 years the meeting has been in Cordova. The only meeting that has ever been in Fairbanks in the last couple of years is the AYK.

It's the second largest city in the state and represents a large number of users from multiple fisheries, including heavy participation in the Copper River personal use and sport fishery. People of the Tanana drainage have not been able to directly subsistence fish for salmon for 5 years and now rely on the Copper River dipnet fishery for personal use and subsistence, uh, purposes. Fairbanks is accessible by plane and road system. There's ample lodging, um, and spaces for us to hold our meeting. Thank you.

Mr. Godfrey, I've said this every time we discuss this, whenever this comes up, you know, from my perspective, it makes the most sense and it's the fairest for the board of fish to go proximate to where the majority shareholders are and proximate to where the actual fishery is. Uh, Fairbanks makes no sense to me at all. Um, the Kenai, when I've asked when I first got on the board, why in the world are— you know, we spent an abundant amount of time discussing the Kenai and multiple rivers on the peninsula, especially the Kenai. Why don't we go down there?

And the previous executive director explained The logistical problems, the lack of accommodations, the need for every board member to either be shuttled around or we would all need rental cars. So there's no budget for it. There's no meeting place proximate to eating places, proximate to lodging places. All makes sense. So that's why we do that here.

Anchorage is the most centralized, easy-to-access location in the state. Anywhere you are in the state, you can get to Anchorage in the least amount of time versus most other places in the least amount of expense because you almost always have to go through Anchorage to go anywhere else. So being that as it is, Cordova, the last two times we went there, I voted to go there because that's where the Copper River is and a good amount of stakeholders are there and others can travel there, spend a good amount of time there fishing even if they don't live there. I will say the accommodations have been challenging and certainly coming out of COVID it was very difficult And I wish that we didn't go to Cordova then because the restaurants, the few that were there, hadn't ramped back up. And to boot, we got weathered in for an extra 24 hours or so.

Be that as it may, if we can't go directly to the place where the fishery is geographically and most stakeholders are, then the centralized location of Anchorage still makes the most sense. It's the most cost-effective and centralized transit point for anyone to get to. While it may not be fair, it's the fairest of all things considered.

Mr. Chamberlain, then Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, excuse me. I'm a strong proponent of meeting our stakeholders where they are. And I did go to Cordova last year and I I actually found it to be a wonderful place.

It was one of my favorite places I've ever been in this state. But that said, we had a large number of stakeholders that had difficulty and were unable to actually make it out to Cordova. It is remote, and so I think while we do want to operate within that space as much as we can and meet the stakeholders where they are, if we were to have it Cordova for the third cycle in a row, I think we would be alienating a large number of user groups that would otherwise not be able to. I have no problem with Fairbanks, but given the discussion on this with this group, I think Anchorage would be the more reasonable accommodation of the three since it is more centralized to all user groups. I personally would rather go to Valdez, but I know that has a lot of challenges to to it.

But at this point, I would probably recommend Anchorage. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. I won't belabor this, but there is a motion on the floor, and unless Mr. Swenson would like to amend the motion, I think we should either— we should deal with the motion. Yeah, I agree, and I think we will deal with the motion, and then depending upon how that vote goes, we will go, you know, take up the other locations that have been suggested.

Mr. Nelson. I just have one clarification for Mr. Carpenter as the maker of the motion. This was— this meeting was one where I actually put two proposed— two backup dates down there. The other backup date was November 16th through 22nd, and that wasn't in his motion. And if that was deliberate, that's fine.

I just wanted to get clarification on that. So Mr. Nelson, it was not deliberate, but I just chose the dates in December because that's typically where they've been. And I guess if there's a problem down the road, the board can address it at that time.

OK. Director Nelson, we have a motion, we have an objection, and let's go ahead and call the roll on whether or not to hold the meeting with the proposed backup dates in Cordova.

Uh, on the motion. Chamberlain? No. Carlson-Vandort? No.

Irwin? No. Svenson? No. Godfrey?

No. Carpenter? Yes. Wood? Yes.

That motion fails, 2 in favor, 5 against, Madam Chair. All right, so now I'm looking for a motion for I'm not sure what motion you want now. I'm a little confused with it all. The motion is either for Fairbanks or for Anchorage. We had discussion on both.

And the dates. I would make a motion that we hear it in Anchorage on the dates that have been proposed by Mr.— by Art. Second.

Is there an objection?

Hearing no objection, unanimous consent. And I ask for unanimous consent. Hearing no objection, so moved. Anchorage it is.

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. For the Southeast Yakutat finfish shellfish for January 2023, 2028. I move that the board adopt the dates of January 19th through 20— or through 31, with a backup date of January 26th through February 7th, and that the meeting be held in Sitka. Second that and ask unanimous consent.

Hearing no objection, um, so moved. Sitka with the dates, um, uh, as described it is. And then we have one more, I believe. Mr. Carpenter.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, for the final selection of dates for March 2028, which are remaining statewide shellfish, Prince William Sound shrimp, and supplemental issues. I move the dates of March 22nd through 28th with backup dates of March 1st through 7th and the meeting to be held in Anchorage. Second that and ask for unanimous consent. Point of clarification, I think, Member Carpenter, did you mean March 22nd through 27th?

Yes, I did. Okay, thank you.

I object.

Yes. So we have an objection. Would you like to speak to your objection? Yes. Um, so for the next cycle, that would mean that there would be 3 meetings in Anchorage.

I'm going to suggest that the March statewide meeting be held in Fairbanks.

Would anybody like to speak? I would like to ask if that's an amendment. Are you asking to amend the motion? Yes, thank you. Okay, I'd like to amend the motion.

All right, so we have a motion to amend the original— or a request to amend the original motion to have the March 2028 statewide shellfish and Prince William Sound shrimp and supplemental issues on the dates described, but instead of Anchorage to Fairbanks. And Mr. Swenson, would you like to speak to that? Well, I would, I would object to that. I think that for all the reasons we've been talking about, that Anchorage is the easiest place to get here and more economic and on and on. So I think it should be held in Anchorage.

Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thank you. While I appreciate the amendment, I think that when you look at the, the material that's going to be talked about at that particular meeting, statewide shellfish, I think that Anchorage seems to be the most centralized location for people to come from all over the state that want to address shellfish issues. And shellfish issues are very coastal. So I think that's important to consider.

So I would be opposed to moving into Fairbanks for those reasons and would stick with my original motion.

All right. So let's go ahead. Is there any more discussion? Mr. Nelson, let's vote on the amendment, please. On the amendment to change the meeting location to Fairbanks.

Again, this is just an amendment on it. If the amendment carries, we will come back to the amended final, uh, amended motion for, for a final vote. So if the amendment fails, we go back to the original? Yes, you're right. But if it passes, yes, we then we, we will still come back to final, need to do a final action on this either way.

But this would change the location to Fairbanks if the amendment passes. Godfrey? No. Wood? No.

Chamberlain? No. Irwin? Yes. Carpenter?

No. Svenson? No. Carlson-Vandork? No.

That motion fails, 1 in favor, 6 against. Madam Chair, we're back to the original motion with the dates as originally described by Mr. Carpenter and the location of Anchorage. Please call the roll.

On the motion to hold the March shellfish meeting, uh, in Anchorage with the dates as provided in my memo.

Carlson, Van Dort. Yes. Carpenter. Yes. Wood.

Yes. Godfrey. Yes. Svenson. Yes.

Chamberlain. Yes. Irwin. Yes. That motion carries 7-0, Madam Chair.

Okay, moving on to agenda item number 11, review of the 2025-26 cycle workload. Mr. Nelson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, as one— another one of the regular work session items is to take a look at, um, the meetings we have planned for this year and whether the dates are adequate for the number of proposals. So for instance, if we had a lot more proposals than we anticipated, or a lot less, then the board could consider adding or removing days from a meeting. Um, you know, I, I've provided some information in here showing you the number of proposals we have for each of the meetings under consideration this year, um, and with some historical perspective. I, I'm not recommending any changes to our meeting durations this year.

I think Everything appears to be manageable. I—. If you'll recall, when we picked the dates and locations for these previously, we did add one day back into the Alaska Peninsula Aleutian Islands meeting since that went— since previously that was planned for 6 days and we went 2 days over because of a very high volume of public testimony. So we, we put that meeting back to 7 days. And I think, I hope that's adequate this year.

I guess we will just have to see how that goes. So the only question I'm posing to the board is that it's been suggested that the board may want to consider holding a meeting of your, your Hatchery Committee meeting prior to the March statewide finfish meeting. If you'll recall, at our Cordova meeting last year, the board made the decision to, to move any proposals considering changes to hatchery production levels to the statewide finfish meeting once every 3 years. So that will be in cycle at this meeting. And again, does the board want to add a hatchery committee meeting prior to that meeting?

What I have in my memo explains that I was not able to get an additional day on the front end of our current reservation at the Egan Center, but I was able to get a day added to the back end if the board chooses to do this. So, so what if the board does want to do a Hatchery Committee meeting in conjunction with the March meeting? Essentially, you would need to scoot the March meeting back by one day in order to put the Hatchery Committee meeting at the front. Madam Chair, Mr. Carpenter, then Mr. Wood. Thank you.

I have a few points here. Um, I think generally speaking, I think this all makes sense. Um, the one, the one that I'm kind of thinking about is, is the Bristol Bay meeting. And you know, while the Bristol Bay meeting and the Alaska Peninsula meeting have the possibility of being quite contentious, especially with some of the proposals that are going to come before us. I really wonder if the Bristol Bay meeting is enough time because there is going to be substantial amounts of potential substitute language that needs to be worked on, et cetera, et cetera.

And I expect there to be a lot of people here to participate in public testimony and committee as a whole. So that's just something for the board to consider. I guess the final point in regard to the Hatchery meeting, I think the Hatchery meetings are absolutely not productive. I think that obviously putting it on the end of a meeting after we've dealt with Hatchery proposals makes no sense. And it's a non-regulatory meeting.

And even if we move the dates forward to accommodate having that meeting first. I think that what we're going to get out of that is we're going to hear the same thing in the work session that's going to be repeated at the meeting, and I just don't see that that's very productive. So I think dealing with the hatchery proposals that come at that meeting, I think the normal cycle and the normal way we've handled those in the in the past seems adequate to me. So I don't have the dates. Mr. White.

Okay. Yeah, I'm just trying to pull this all together in my head too, because for this year is one of the— is the busiest year for meetings. I agree that potentially Bristol Bay, we should add a day to that in order to do it right. On top of that, we did make the motion, or we did make the clear that we wanted to have the hatchery stuff in statewide again. We did that because we kept hearing the same hatchery proposal repeatedly and we just needed to save time and move it to statewide.

I also am not sure that it's going to be very productive. However, if we do do it, we'll have to add it to the end of the— we'd have to add a day to the statewide dates. Finfish, it sounds like, at the end. And then on top of that, we— if any ACRs are accepted, we'd also have to add days for those as well this, this year. Am I correct in that?

So we could continue to add to the time frame that we need to do based on if we do the hatchery meeting and if any ACRs are accepted to this already busy cycle. Is that what you're—. Sorry, What was the question? I'm sorry, what was the question? So at the end here, for the statewide finfish, we're talking about adding days to that, and, and we'd have to add one for the Hatchery Committee stuff, and then if any ACRs are accepted, we'd have to add more days to that as well to hear them.

Mr. Nelson. Thank you. Um, well, at least in my memo, I wasn't suggesting that we add days to the regulatory March meeting. My suggestion was if you want to do a Hatchery Committee meeting prior to that, I would need to add a day to our Egan reservation in, and we would scoot the meeting, the regulatory meeting, back by one day, keep it the same duration, in order to put Hatchery Committee meeting prior to that meeting. Okay, does that make sense?

That does, but then is there still the potential addition of I mean, at least I guess it would depend on what, if any, ACRs get accepted by the board, whether you think that justifies adding a day to it. That probably would be a discussion better held until after that you guys go through the ACRs, and we could revisit it. I do want to note that the previous statewide finfish meeting, I believe, finished in 4 days, even though it was scheduled for 5, so we probably have a little bit of wiggle room. But that was also before, um, the decision to move all proposals relating to hatchery proposal into that meeting. So thank you, Mr. Chamberlain.

And Mr. Swenson, so I, I understand the, the comments, uh, Member Carpenter and Member Wood both made. The one thing I want to make sure we do have an opportunity to do is to, is to make an informed decision. I know there's going to be a lot of information at the hatchery, and we're combining 3 years of hatchery regulations throughout several different areas into one meeting. And so with that, I would support doing as Mr. Nelson recommended of or discussed a possibility of adding a Hatchery Committee meeting to the beginning and scooting everything down a day, or maybe having that— and I don't know that the Hatchery Committee meeting would take an entire day. Maybe we just add it to the front end of the agenda and then start the meeting as soon thereafter as possible.

But to the discussion of how the ACRs go. I think the board has demonstrated in the past the ability to manage the pacing and the speed of the meetings and to accomplish its goals within the time allotted. So with that, I— yeah, I don't know that it would pose that large of a burden, but I would recommend it. And in fact, I move to add the Hatchery meeting to the beginning of the agenda. And have the board meeting start right as soon thereafter as possible and add the additional day if need be.

Okay. I'm going to recognize Member Swenson before I recognize the motion. Thank you, Mr. Swenson. Well, it becomes kind of tough when you start changing dates around. I know I have travel plans close to this time for the Bristol Bay, and I agree with Mr. Carpenter.

I don't think we need to hear anything more on the hatcheries. To add an extra day. It seems like most of the time we get done, many times we get done a day early. I know Bristol Bay is gonna be, can be contentious. There's lots of things to talk about.

I think if we added a day it would, and I don't have my travel plans in front of me, but I'd rather see it, I think, added on the front end than the rear.

So, Mr. Carpenter— Member Carpenter and I had a discussion. I'll be withdrawing my motion and allow Mr. Carpenter to make the substitute motion. Here, before we get into motions, let me put some thoughts on the record here. So I agree. I think that we may be very hard pressed to complete our business with Bristol Bay only at 5 days, looking sort of at the numbers of proposals that we have dealt with in in the past and the numbers of testifiers relatively consistent for the past couple cycles.

However, right before the last Bristol Bay cycle, we had a trooper memorandum that came forward about enforcement issues on boat length in Bristol Bay that really created a lot of interest and buzz and question about how the board should consider that. I expect that that's gonna generate a lot of discussion probably a lot of committee time. And I agree with Mr. Carpenter, there could be some, you know, several versions of substitute language that are developed over the course of that meeting. And we all know that that can take some time if it's particularly complex. So I would also be in favor of adding an extra day if possible to the Bristol Bay meeting for this cycle.

Switching gears to hatcheries.

The Hatchery Committee meeting, I've asked in the past as chair members of the public to give the board feedback on the utility of the Hatchery Committee meeting. For the folks that have shown up, it's been a mixed bag in terms of the response. People have told us, or told me, that they thought it was useful. Other people have told me that they didn't feel it was so useful. With the direction that the board has taken at the Cordova meeting with considering all of the hatchery proposals once a cycle prior to the statewide finfish meeting, I wonder if having a particular hatchery committee meeting, a non-regulatory committee meeting right before a regulatory committee where we're going to be dealing with all that, makes any sense.

I think that there's some merit to what Member Carpenter has brought up in that space. I can also speak that as the chair of that committee for the last several years, I have certainly struggled, and I've worked with the department in earnest on, you know, a couple of different times, and with stakeholders directly on both sides of sort of the issues. What does the agenda look like? And what if we're going to have this meeting, what do folks want to talk about? And it has been a source of consternation and, and a struggle, frankly, to try and to come up with an agenda that sort of scratches the itch and gets at some of the issues that we repeatedly sort of encounter with respect to the Hatchery Committee.

So, you know, given that, I kind of remain on the fence and sort of waffle back and forth about whether it has utility. Clearly there are issues around hatcheries, but unless there is a very specific issue that the board can take up with respect to the hatcheries. Sort of a retread of the presentations within a committee only to have, you know, the necessity to do it in the regulatory meeting the next day seems duplicitous and probably not a good use of everybody's time and money. So I think that it is important to brief the board on hatchery issues if the board is going to consider them once every 3 years at the statewide finfish meeting. Now, that's, as I mentioned, I think, or I've had thought about before, that's not in any kind of a formal policy.

It was a motion that was made at the Cordova meeting. And I would encourage members, if they believe strongly that that's how hatchery issues should be dealt with, to consider something under miscellaneous business at one of the meetings in this cycle just to sort of formalize that or have the— give the public an opportunity to weigh in on that and inform the board if we're going to find or make a policy or make that sort of change to our procedures and processes. So those are my thoughts on it. If we do do away with the Hatchery Committee meeting for the purposes of the cycle, that is not, in my view, would not constitute not communicating that information to the public or to members, but it would be incorporated into the agenda at the statewide finfish meeting. And as such, I think it would require additional time.

So I think that either way, adding an additional day to the statewide finfish meeting to accommodate the additional information that would be required to, to deal with hatchery issues and to brief the board and the public on that is prudent. Mr. Wood. I actually agree with everything you said. And I feel like if we're going to just deal with another hatchery proposal, we've already— I mean, it's been like Groundhog Day with these things. It's been the same thing time and time again.

And so we actually, if there's going to be anything to deal with hatcheries, it's understanding what the board's actual capacity to deal with hatcheries is all about, because so much of it is the commissioner's authority. We have so limited authority on hatcheries. And then if all we're gonna do is debate state hatcheries versus hatchery impacts globally, I'm like, where are we going here? So I really feel like that if hatcheries are discussed, it need— we need to have a very well-thought-out agenda in order to to, you know, not waste people's time and again and again and again. So I really appreciate what you said, Chairwoman.

Mr. Godfrey. I don't typically like to restate over and over what's been stated over the years a number of times, but for the sake of emphasis on this one, I will. And I've said it time and again. You know, I see when it comes to proposals that attack the hatchery program, they come with at best pseudoscience, but usually no science. They lack credibility and merit.

And the stakeholders having to mobilize, not knowing what direction the board will go, our conversation or committee of the whole will go, public testimony will go regarding the hatchery program is really not fair. To the stakeholders engaged with and operating the hatcheries, as well as those who benefit from the hatcheries. And all user groups benefit from the hatcheries. Therefore, having people come to a meeting where a proposal that's adverse to hatchery programs is going to be discussed and contemplated by the board, and there's very low likelihood that it's going to pass, but they don't know that, or get adopted by the board, so they have to come and defend the program, engage in committee of the whole, and give public testimony, written comments. That's onerous, it's cumbersome for them, it's, it's unnecessary.

It's usually the same type of attacks dressed up with slightly different semantics or different hatchery and what have you. The reality is it's also onerous and cumbersome for the board, and we have enough serious business to contend with versus spending time on silly, you know, wrong-headed attacks on a program where they lack the science to substantiate and support their positions that attack the program. So I'm all for less focus on the hatcheries unless it's something new and something within the jurisdiction and substantive that the board can actually do about it. So I am supportive of both the previous two comments by the board members.

Any other comments? Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. Um, before I make this motion, uh, Director Nelson, um, specific to the Bristol Bay meeting, adding a day before or on the end, is that— is either one of those going to be a problem?

Well, that was a question I was going to pose if a motion came before you, is I don't know if we will be able to, but that was going to be a question, is my first attempt would be to add a day to the back end of the meeting, if that's available. If it's not, is it okay with the board for me to add it at the front of the meeting? If I can't change it at all at the Egan, where we are currently booked, I could look at the Denina. I think that's probably the only other venue we could potentially move it to if there's the space for the additional day. And I just want to get your input on that, and then, you know, we would go out and do our best to do it.

And you know, there's a chance we may not be able to change it at all. And I certainly report back to you what ended up happening. So, okay, in light of that information, I will move to add one additional day to the Bristol Bay meeting for, uh, 2026. Um, rationale: all the things that have been included here, and I basically understand that there's some discretion that has to be given to the executive director to look on both ends for the most appropriate place. I second that and ask for unanimous consent.

Before I recognize the second unanimous consent, Mr. Swenson.

Like I said, I have some travel plans there and I, I just got the dates again on from, uh, Art. I can't make it on the far end. I could if you add it to the beginning, that would work. The far end, I can't make that one. So I don't know how that affects things, but—.

Okay, thank you for that input. There was no objection or anything though, right? Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. So hearing no objection, so moved. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Specific to the statewide meeting, the discussion that went on with the Hatchery Committee meeting, I think that The potential for an additional day at the statewide meeting versus having a hatchery meeting seems more appropriate at this time because the whole meeting would be regulatory then.

So I move that the board add one day to the statewide finfish meeting scheduled for 2026 in Anchorage. I second that and ask unanimous consent.

Hearing no objections, so moved. Mr. Nelson, is there any other sort of housekeeping or administrative issues before we get into the rest of our agenda? Madam Chair, no, I think that, uh, takes care of all the administrative stuff I needed to bring to you. Thank you. Okay, well, let's take about a 20-minute break and come back on the record around 10:15-ish, and we'll get into ACRs.

Thank you.

All right. Welcome back. Time is 10:25. We are going to get into deliberation of agenda change requests before the board. I believe there are— is there 11 of them?

9. And we're just going to kind of roll through these like we would ordinary deliberations. I'll ask the department to read the ACR into the record and then we'll go from there. All right. ACR number 1.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. For the record, Heather Scannell, management coordinator for Prince William Sound Copper River. ACR 1, delay opening of the Copper River District 5AAC 24.310. Madam Chair, moved to adopt. Second.

Staff comments, please.

This seeks to delay opening of the Copper River District commercial salmon fishery to June 1st, uh, and 20 December 2024 Board of Fish meeting, the board delayed the Copper River District commercial fishery from May 15th to May 22nd. This was to allow for more early-run sockeye salmon and king salmon to reach the upper sections of the river. To further reduce harvest, particularly of king salmon, the department uses discretionary authority to expand the time and area of inside water closures beyond what is regulation. Expanded inside water closures have frequently been implemented throughout the entire king salmon run timing. In 2025, an expanded inside closure was implemented until the king salmon run was 96% complete, and additionally, closed waters were expanded offshore of the Berry Islands for 5 fishing periods during the historic peak of king salmon run timing.

The staff assessment of this agenda change request. Is there a fishery conservation purpose or reason? No. Does the agenda change request correct an error in regulation? No.

Does the agenda change request address an effect of a regulation on a fishery that was unforeseen when that regulation was adopted? No. Madam Chair. Thank you. Board discussion.

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. We are dealing with ACRs here, and so there is you know, criteria that the board needs to look at and form their basis around that. And so when I look at this ACR, obviously we just dealt with a lot of this stuff in December, so not that long ago, really. The staff has not really had the time appropriate at this point in time to even evaluate what happened this season in regards to their management decisions.

I mean, the season just got over. Copper River. But sticking to criteria A and fishery conservation being the rationale for bringing this forward, the one thing that I question a lot, and I questioned in December, is the way we enumerate kings on the Copper River. And we've used the Fish Wheel Project in conjunction with the Native Village of Yakt for some time now to enumerate that. But the state has spent a lot of money.

People have spent a lot of money to put this very amazing sonar in there that can differentiate between species. And reading some of the stuff in the staff comments, I think it's clear that the department— and I think the commissioner has stated this to a certain degree on the record— doesn't really feel as comfortable as they used to about the way this is happening. And so when I look at the idea of conservation, I think that some of the information that was presented in December in regards to did we meet the escapement goal or did we not, when you include and look at the error rate that was associated with that, and then you look at the escapement number, the mark recapture information that was that was derived from the Fish Will project this year, and then you compare that to what the department kind of understands to be what the sonar is telling them in regards to escapement. I'm not—. I'm not— I'm not positive that we have a conservation concern to the level of moving some— an ACR forward as written.

So that's my opinion. Mr. Owen. May I ask the staff a question? I'm sorry if I missed this, but could you share with us out of the last 5 years how many times the Copper River King Salmon has met escapement?

Through the chair, Ms. Irwin, the Copper River Kings have not met escapement 2024, 2021. I'm going to go back a little further just because that's how far the last escapement goal report went. 2020, 2016, And 2014. 2019. 2025, We do not have the final escapement number from the mark recapture experiment yet.

Thank you. Do you have an estimate on the 2025 numbers? Madam Chair, we have an estimate from the sonar large goal, and that is about 28,300 large fish past the sonar. We do not have the mark recap estimate. Estimate yet.

Right. And with the sonar estimate, what's the current escapement goal? 21,000 To 31,000. Thank you. Any other board discussion?

Mr. Swenson.

My biggest concern for the Copper River is that those sport fishermen upstream have hardly had an opportunity to fish for these kings. The Gold Can, I think was open, I know it was open for a short time this year, but then of course it was shut off. And you have the Clutina and you have the Tonsina. And I just think that, you know, and the other thing that we don't have a handle on is there's a lot of fish wheels up there. And those people can also take as many kings as they can get in their fish wheels.

I don't think there's any limit on a number like there is in some of the other areas, like here in South Central. There's a limit that these families can take. So I'm just concerned. I wish that we could delve into that. And I know everything we can do to conserve these kings is something we need to do.

Thank you, Miss Irwin. And remember, the, the, the— and I remember Carpenter stated it, and I was remiss, I forgot to say it at the beginning of the discussion, but I just want to remind people that we're not necessarily talking about the merits but the criteria. Thank you, Miss Irwin. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair, for that reminder. I'll speak to the criteria number 1, the conservation concern.

Since the escapement has not been met in 2020, 2021, or 2024, and unknowing exactly what our 2025 numbers are, I don't believe that we're at a state where maybe the species is completely unable to replenish itself. However, seeing the trends of kings throughout our state, it does— it is a cause for concern for me. So I'm seeing this as meeting the conservation concern potentially, but willing to continue to hear others during deliberation. Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Wood, Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yeah, there's a lot to chew on on this one. But when we had the meeting in Cordova last year, this one issue was debated extensively and thoroughly vetted by the board. And so— and we did take action on amending this. This, the plan of, or the fishing, the fishing schedule for the user groups, uh, for all user groups, uh, last year. And, and specifically the changing the, the start date, um, and the, the fish, the schedule for the commercial fishing, uh, the commercial, the drift net, uh, was, was addressed specifically, and there were changes made to that.

So I don't see that there is anything going to— see, I don't see that there's anything unforeseen because the board did vet this and there were no errors in there. The real question comes to conservation, and we took large-scale steps in Cordova to address the conservation measures. Just about every user group took it in the chin. And with that, so I would like to see this, our current plan, flesh out and see how we're doing before I take any further action. Mr. Wood.

Thank you. I appreciate Member Chamberlain's comments. I think there was a lot of consternation and effort put into this by the board, but mostly by the public, and this was vetted very hard by the public, especially for the need for conservation for Kings and the early-run sockeye, it was very significant, the compromise that we came up with. And that the beauty of the board process is that it's every 3 years, so we can see if this experiment works over time. I don't think— and then on top of it, given the fact that the sonar and the marked recapture might have some discrepancies as well, that'll give it time to figure out over the next 2 years.

So I don't think it meets any of the criteria put before us to reconsider this ACR. Member Carpenter, then Member Godfrey. Yeah, thank you. I won't belabor this much, but maybe Heather, you can answer this, or Forest. You know, specific to 2024, we don't have the information from the market capture yet, but we do have a SONAR estimate.

And I think you stated that very clearly. But in regards to 2024, when you look at that as making or not making the escapement goal, understanding the sonar numbers that showed fairly clearly that it really could have probably been made by quite a, quite a number, is there an asterisk? Do you consider that a year with an asterisk And do you consider years like possibly this year as an asterisk when you evaluate the mark recapture project because the error rates are just so extremely high and so many problems occurred in keeping that project going in a very normal fashion?

Yeah, so I think it's becoming apparent that as we try to monitor king salmon, we probably need a multitude tools. And I think we're learning more about the mark recapture experiment as we move forward, and we're raising some questions regarding that. I think you saw that in the staff comments.

I'm becoming more and more convinced as Commissioner that, that there are issues with the mark recapture, and I'm leaning more and more on the sonar count as an estimate. So I don't know if we're gonna put asterisks in those tables or what, but I think we're gonna look at multiple types of ways to assess a escapement. And we'll bring that to the board when we come to regular meetings and say what the— what we believe and not believe at that time. But right now we're just— we're evaluating and we're uncovering certain issues. Thank you, Commissioner.

Mr. Godfrey, for the initial comments that— pardon me, just cough there— that Tom and Curtis stated earlier. I would concur as well as Board Member Wood. I'm— this doesn't rise to me to dig into the merit for those reasons, uh, and the same reason the department cited, it doesn't rise to the level to adopt as an ACR. So I'll be voting no.

Thank you. I'm going to put my thoughts on the record. So I think it was my substitute language that sort of was generated as a carefully crafted compromise that that many of the parties came together in earnest and in good faith to try and address some of the concerns around Copper River king salmon at the time, especially given the 2024 numbers. So while there is a, a need to keep a close and watchful eye on what those king salmon are doing for the purpose of conservation, I don't think it meets that level of criteria for the ACR. I don't believe that there's an error in regulation.

Again, the board deliberated it thoroughly and the public informed the board thoroughly. And like I said, that substitute language was the result of discussions with subsistence stakeholders, commercial stakeholders, and also the personal use dipnetters.

That were present at the meeting, and I think that to change that now really undercuts those efforts. And so I don't believe that there was any kind of error in regulation in that space. And furthermore, I don't think there was anything unforeseen. I think that everybody had a pretty good understanding at that meeting what the effects were going to be, whether they liked them or not. I think that there was a pretty good grasp on that.

So I don't I personally believe that it meets any of the ACR criteria, and I will not be supportive. Question. Member Irwin. Um, sorry, before we go to question, I just wanted to put on the record that 3 ACs supported this. There were 3 public comments in support of it, 2 ACs opposed it, and 13 public comments were in opposition of this proposal.

Question's been called. E&O. Director Payton. No, Madam Chair. Director Bauer.

No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on ACR 1.

Svenson? Yes. Wood? No. Chamberlain?

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

Irwin? Yes. Godfrey? No. Motion fails, 2 in favor, 5 against, Madam Chair.

Okay, moving on to ACR number 2.

Madam Chair, ACR number 2, closed waters of the Copper River District inside the barrier islands to commercial fishing for salmon, 5 AAC 24.350. Madam Chair, moved to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please. This ACR seeks to close the inside waters portion of the Copper River District as defined in 5 AAC 24.350.

50.1(B). Currently, inside waters are managed under the Copper River King Salmon Management Plan, which limits the number of commercial openings inside the barrier islands to no more than one 12-hour fishing period during statistical weeks 20 and 21.

The department further uses EO authority. They've expanded inside water closures beyond what is defined in regulations. In 2025, they were closed throughout the entire king run until the king run was 96% complete. And additionally, closed waters were expanded offshore of the Barrier Islands for 5 fishing periods during the historic peak of king salmon run timing. Madam Chair, for discussion, Mr. Carpenter.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for those staff comments. This has a similar tone to ACR-1, although it's dealing with, you know, closing in regulation statistical opportunities inside the barrier island. I think that what the board did in December has, like I said earlier, has not really— there hasn't been enough time yet to kind of see the management actions that the board kind of moved forward to, to give to the department to try some new things this year. I think that's important to consider.

I think when you talk about the conservation of salmon, that's also important to consider. I won't belabor the discussion we had on king salmon, but specifically to sockeye, you know, when you look at the sockeye escapement on the Copper River the last many, many years. It's, it's been, it's been very well managed, and I believe the department has put fish in each statistical week to the best of their ability to have a very diverse run. And I think that that is something important. So do I believe there's a conservation concern?

No, I don't. I think what this does is it ties the hands of the department and takes away the flexibility. And I think that the way they manage the fishery this year and in the past, they have that flexibility, and I think that's important. So I, I just don't feel that this ACR meets any of the criteria. Mr. Wood.

Yeah, thank you. One of the great things about traveling to the communities where you make these decisions is you get to see firsthand the, the boats, talk to the fishermen, actually see the beaches in order to know what they're talking about. Luckily, nowadays we have video and you can watch the video of the waters on the inside versus the outside, and you can understand why they fish the way they do. I think, um, so that is— that can't be understated how important it is to go to these communities and listen to the people that actually fish them. On top of that, I'd also say that the area manager there is very very capable of managing this fishery and has done so well for a very long period of time, even considering the delay between the time that the fish are actually in these areas that they want to fish versus where the sonar is.

So for that reason, I don't believe that this meets any of the criteria for this ACR, and I'm not in favor. Mr. Godfrey.

So, you know, when it comes to these, I think with a little creativity, somebody can make a tortured and contorted argument that there's a conservation purpose at play here. So that's not terribly compelling on me most of the time when I'm considering ACRs. It takes very little creativity to make that argument. On its face, I don't see that compelling here. But I also don't see this as being unforeseen.

I don't think this was remotely unforeseen by the department or the board at the time. Therefore, there's no error in regulations. So I'm unmoved by this and I'll be opposing it. Mr. Swenson, how many kings were caught in that one opening in the barrier islands?

Through the chair, Mr. Swenson, I believe you're referring to The June 23rd opening was the first time we opened up the barrier islands.

I would have to look it up, but I believe— I would have to look it up. I want to say 600, but that might be high. 500. 500. So I, you know, I hear all the talk about there's no conservation issues.

But it sure would be nice to put 500 more kings up that river. We can— it seems like we consistently manage to the low end, and if we can make the low end of the Escapement, we're really happy. But how about putting some more fish up these rivers so that we can build the runs?

Thank you. I have a question. So, and I'm trying to reach way back into my memory from you know, last December. And I remember a subsistence proposal that came before the board and the board deliberated it and they did not pass that proposal. And it was inside waters subsistence availability or opportunity.

Is that the same area that was opened in those stat weeks?

Madam Chair, that those waters you're referring to that were brought up in that proposal, those are the waters that were opened up on June 23rd of this past season. So the board restricted, deliberately restricted subsistence opportunity in that area, and then it was opened up per the management plan for under sockeye, I'm assuming, to, to, to prosecute a commercial fishery in that area. Is that correct? Am I— is that correct? So I believe, Madam Chair, that that subsistence proposal— and I'd have to look back, but I believe the intent of that proposal was to open up the inside waters earlier in the season, late May, early June.

Um, by the time we opened up these inside waters this past season, the King Run was 96 complete to harvest through the commercial district. So it is the same waters, different timing. Was there subsistence opportunity at that time available to those in those inside waters for king salmon? Madam Chair, subsistence opportunity coincides with commercial opportunity, so that period would have been open to both commercial and subsistence. Assistance.

Thank you. I will reference my comments on the previous ACR. Member Chamberlain. Thank you. I'll be quick with this.

Yeah, uh, we did discuss this one. This one hits a lot more, a lot closer. But when you— when we're calling balls and strikes, uh, this was deliberated extensively and examined in, uh, the Cordova meeting. So I regardless of the merits, I think that it doesn't meet any of the 3 criteria. And so with that, I will also not be supporting this.

Ms. Rowan. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I'll refer to Mr. Svenson's comments about the 500 Kings on June 23rd as well. That's concerning for me with an inability for us to get as many Chinook back to the responding grounds as possible. I'll also mention that 3 ACs were in favor of this, 4 public comments were in support, 2 ACs opposed it, and 12 public comments were in opposition.

Thank you. Question. Question's been called. E&O. Director Payton.

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

Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on ACR 2. Wood? No. Godfrey?

No. Carlson-Vandork? No. Erwin? Yes.

Chamberlain? No. Carpenter? No. Svenson?

Yes. That motion fails, 2 in favor, 5 against, Madam Chair.

ACR number 3.

Madam Chair, ACR number 3, closed waters of the Copper River District, commercial fishing for salmon inside and outside side, the Berry Islands, from May 21 through June 30, 5 AAC 24.350. Madam Chair, moved to adopt. Second. Staff comments.

Madam Chair, this would establish a closed water area from May 22nd to June 30th that extends offshore of the Copper River Berry Islands. Um, in 2025, an expanded inside water closure was implemented until the king salmon run was 96% complete. Additionally, closed waters were expanded offshore of the Berry Islands for 5 fishing periods during the historic peak of King Salmon run timing. Staff said— staff assessment of this agenda change request: Is there a fishery conservation purpose or reason? No.

Does the agenda change request correct an error in regulation? No. Does the agenda change request address an effective regulation? On a fishery that was unforeseen when that regulation was adopted. No, Madam Chair.

More discussion? Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I agree with the department's assessment on this. I think that this ACR even goes farther than the last one in regards to restrictions.

As Mr. Chamberlain and others have said, we debated all of this very thoroughly in December, and so I won't belabor the point. So I reference my comments in the prior ACRs. But one thing that this ACR will do is it will tie the hands of the department in such a big way that it could create a problem that the board, the board might not see that could exist. And so I caution the board on that.

Any other board discussion? Mr. Wood. Yeah, just, just to add to the record, I just, I agree with Member Carpenter. I think this is even more extreme than the other two that we just discussed. And I'll reference all my comments on the last two ACRs.

Thank you, Member Wood. I will also reference my previous comments. Mr. Carpenter. Question. Question has been called.

You know, Mr. Payton. No, Madam Chair. Mr. Bowers? No, Madam Chair. Peterson?

No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson? Final action on ACR 3. Godfrey? No.

Wood? No. Chamberlain? No. Irwin?

Yes. Carpenter? No. Svenson?

No. Carlson-Vandorp? No. That motion fails, 1 in favor, 6 against. Madam Chair.

ACR number 4.

Madam Chair, ACR number 4, adopt an optimal escapement goal for Copper River sockeye salmon, 5AC24.360. Madam Chair. Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please.

Madam Chair, this would adopt an optimal escapement goal for Copper River sockeye salmon based on the 2024 Miles Lake sonar management objectives for May and June. The department manages for a daily salmon passage objective. That is the number of fish needed to pass the Miles Lake sonar to meet the in-river goal based on historical run timing. The last time the upper river— the upriver sockeye salmon goal was not achieved was 1980. Staff assessment of the agenda change request.

Is there a fishery conservation purpose or reason? No. Does the agenda change request correct an error in regulation? No. Does the agenda change request address an effect of a regulation on a fishery that was unforeseen when that regulation was adopted?

No, Madam Chair.

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. I mean, this, this ACR is asking to create an OEG, and OEG is obviously at the discretion of the board.

It talks about needing the OEG to meet the sockeye and the king salmon goal. And I think it's been discussed quite eloquently today that they have— they were met this year, and most likely they were last year as well. So I think creating something like this at this time, it just— it doesn't meet any of the criteria. And unfortunately, that's what we have to look at. When we move these things forward.

Mr. Wood. Uh, Ms. Connell, would you repeat the last time it missed escapement? What year was that? To the chair, Mr. Wood, uh, 1980. That's what I thought he said.

Thanks. Uh, I think there doesn't seem to be anything we missed here in last year's, uh, deliberations. I feel like, um, the— again, the department Department has all the tools they need to manage without us getting in the way. They're doing it well. And the ability to look at the Saukay Escapement and the King Escapement and manage it accordingly is important.

I don't think there's any merit to this ACR and I don't think it meets any of the qualifications. I will be a no.

Um, Miss Irwin, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, I also don't see this proposal as meeting the criteria and will note that, uh, 2 ACs were in support, 3 public comments were in support, 2 ACs opposed, and 13 public comments opposed.

Mr. Godfrey, you know, regarding the ACs, and I— there's nothing wrong with putting it on the record, and I appreciate Board Member Irwin doing that. This is not something historically anyone does on AC's agenda change requests, because it's essentially— if you're for it and you support it, it's like a penalty kick in soccer, an extra at-bat in baseball, or free throw in basketball. You have nothing to lose if the board's willing to circumvent their— its own process to get an issue you support out of cycle and in front of the board to debate ahead of schedule versus in cycle. If I'm on an AC and I support the proposal, I'll be in support of this too.

So the board will circumvent the process so I can get my proposal in front of the board sooner than later and then advocate for it and hope the board passes it. So I couldn't care less what the ACs say on the ACRs. Doesn't matter to me because if I'm with them, I would be all about it too, or opposed to it. If I'm opposed to it, I don't want the board to circumvent process. If I support it and the board wants to circumvent their process, woo-hoo, it's a free throw, man.

I'll take it. What does this have to do with the ACR, please? I'm not moved by that. So moving forward, that's my point here. Yeah.

So I want to put that on the record. Okay. Thank you. Let me just respond to that for a second. I mean, if you're moved by it or not moved by it, it's certainly the prerogative of the board member.

I appreciate his stating on the record. I will just encounter to that, I appreciate any time that the AC chooses to meet and inform the board's deliberative discussion, whether it's on an ACR proposal, whether it's regulatory, non-regulatory. It's a public process and I appreciate it. Mr. Swenson.

I'd have to agree with you.

I like hearing it. I like to hear what the ACs have to say and so on and so forth. I'm certainly all for that. Thank you, Olivia, for doing that.

Question. Okay. My thoughts on this one quickly. With respect to OEGs, you know, my time on this board, granted, isn't a ton, but the OEG to be taken up out of cycle, I mean, OEGs I think are relatively rare to begin with, but to take up an OEG out of cycle is extraordinary. In my opinion.

And for that reason alone, I think there would have to be a very high, high conservation concern demonstrated in order for me to be supportive of such an action. I don't think that's met here. And it's definitely not supportive of ACR number 4. Mr. Carpenter. Question.

Question's been called. You know, Mr. Payton. No, Madam Chair. Mr. Bowers. No, Madam Chair.

Mr. Peterson. No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on ACR 4. Carlson-Vandort.

No. Carpenter. No. Wood. No.

Godfrey. Nope. Svenson. No. Chamberlain.

No. Irwin. No. Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair. ACR number 5, please.

Little switcheroo here.

Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, I'm Colton Lipka, Upper Cook Inlet Area Management Biologist for Commercial Fisheries and Acting Regional Management Coordinator, ACR5. Reduce commercial salmon fishing opportunity with drift gillnet gear in the Central District of the Cook Inlet area. 5AAC-21353. Madam Chair, moved to adopt.

Second. Staff comments, please.

ACR 5. This ACR seeks to reduce fishing opportunities for drift gillnet commercial fishing in Drift Gillnet Area 1 from July 9th through July 31st at all Kenai River late-run sockeye salmon run sizes. The Central District drift gillnet fishery in state of Alaska waters is regulated under the Central District Drift Gillnet Fishery Management Plan. Drift gillnet Area 1 may be opened on regular Monday and Thursday period once or twice per week depending upon date and Kenai River late-run sockeye salmon run size. The drift plan directs the department to manage the mixed-stock drift gillnet fishery to primarily harvest Kenai and Kasilof River sockeye salmon stocks while also minimizing harvest of Northern District coho, late-run Kenai River king, and Kenai River coho salmon stocks.

This is implemented through time and area restrictions that are based on preseason forecast and in-season run strength information sources. In recent years, the Deshka and Little Sioux Sitna River coho salmon weirs have experienced flooding or early ending of projects due to funding. Because of that, those counts are considered minimum and incomplete estimates of Coho salmon and river abundance. For the Deschutes River Coho salmon weir counts, these have been incomplete since 2020. Little Susitna River Coho salmon weir counts have been incomplete since 2022.

Fall weather and high water makes consistent operation of these weirs difficult. Despite incomplete counts, the most recent seasons have generally been categorized as low abundance for Coho salmon and the Deschka and Little Sioux. As an update to 2025, since these comments were written, Coho salmon weir counts on the Deschka River are considered minimum count and incomplete due to flooding. However, it is likely the SEG was not achieved. Coho salmon SEG for Jim Creek and the SEG for Fish Creek were both achieved and the Little Susitna River SEG was not achieved.

Staff assessment of the agenda change request: Is there a fishery conservation purpose or reason? No. Does the agenda change request correct an error in regulation? No. Does the agenda change request address an effect of a regulation on a fishery that was unforeseen when the regulation was adopted?

No. Madam Chair. Discussion. Mr. Swenson.

In speaking to support of AR-5 or ACR-5, to hear it out of cycle, I think there's conservation and unforeseen circumstances to take this up. First of all, this year 115,000 silvers were caught in Central and Upper Cook Inlet by the commercial fishery, which is the drifters. 87,000 Of these were caught by the drifters, and that's 76% of the total of that run. Also, the department used the drift fleet It's changed how the drift fleet was used because of this, because of the large run of reds and because the East Side Gillnet fishery is closed to protect kings. Also, the expanded Kenai and Kasilof sections were fished 24 out of 25 days between July 8th and August 1st.

This was an attempt to concentrate the harvest of Kenai and Kasilof reds while also protecting the norther-bound on silvers, reds and silvers. At the same time, the northern Cook Inlet fisheries were restricted, the sport fisheries were restricted or closed because of conservation worries of the counts of the coho reaching the streams. The Little Sioux and the Deshka have not met their escape goals in the last 3 years, and if that occurs again next year, it would be a 4th year, and that would make them a concern for— what's the word? I lost it here. It'll be a concern of that—.

Jeez.

Stock of concern, thank you. It could become a stock of concern for this area. Now if that is adopted, a stock of concern, that's gonna affect all the user groups, not just the sport fisheries, but everybody. I think this is a real reason why the conservation comes to play here as one of the main criteria.

Unforeseen circumstances is the next criteria that is, of course, important here. And this year, a record— sorry, turned my thing off there. There's a record number of sakai. They were forecast to be 6.9 million, and of course it came in at 10 million.

This is for the Kenai and the Sealof Rivers. Also, the new federal EEZ was— the EEZ became under federal control, and the fishing patterns of the drift fleet leading them to concentrate a lot more in state waters, where a lot of incidental catch of the silvers while trying to targeting the reds.

Another unforeseen deal circumstance here was the EEZ red count was added to the state count, which influenced the 1% rule, and that had a— that's an unforeseen circumstance also.

The drift gillnets were also unexpectedly effective in expanded Kenai and Kasilof sections in 2025, where in the past these were effective in targeting reds and avoiding northern-bound silvers because they traveled in the central inlet. So they caught a lot more silvers in these areas, partially because there's a lot more silvers that were running in this, this cycle.

This year's large coho catches suggest that coho protection benefits of the corridor may be substantially offset by intensive daily fishing in the expanded Kenai and Kasilof areas. So in summary, I would like to just ask this ACRB herd out of cycle for conservation and unforeseen circumstances that have occurred, which are too important certain criteria in hearing an ACR out of cycle. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Swenson. Other board discussion?

I have— Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. I understand some of the concerns Mr. Swenson has.

You know, one of the things that I look at, it's, you know, I look at the escavement goals. I look— I typically look at them all summer long in different parts of the state. But I spent a lot of time this summer looking at the king salmon and the coho escapement goals in the Susitna drainage. And I know that's what Mr. Svenson is really concerned about. And I am too, to a certain degree.

But I'm kind of concerned about it because it's very hard for the department to assess these areas based on some of the information they provided us with different weirs not working correctly, weirs getting blown out, you know, flooding, high water conditions, etc., etc. And so there is a bit of information that we really are lacking when we talk about a conservation issue. I'm not suggesting that the escapement levels and up in the Susitna drainage have been great. But when I like to make these kind of decisions, I like to be able to look at the numbers, and there's just— there seems to be some, some information that's lacking, to no fault of the department. It's just environmental conditions have made it very difficult to assess some of these areas.

And so when I look at the conservation issue, I'm kind of— I understand where he's coming from, but I'm also concerned that we really don't know for for sure. And, and that's one thing that I'm kind of hesitant on, so I'll leave it at that. Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, like Member Carpenter, I've been on the fence.

I don't see that the new information would— is, is terribly unforeseen, um, especially, you know, as it relates to the EZ and a lot of that that's been going on forever. Uh, but yeah, I, I similarly have I'm on the fence on the conservation on the first criteria, and that is a very hard one for me, for me to grapple with. I've been on— I've been leaning both sides on this one. And yeah, I would welcome other board members' comments on this one, but I'm slightly leaning yes on this one, but it's very close.

Mr. Owen. Yeah, thank you for those comments, Mr. Chamberlain. Um, when I'm looking at the, uh, ACR, the original ACR, it mentions that in 2025 the DESHCA COHO count, uh, through August 27th was only 2,408 compared to the SEG calling for 10,000 to 24,000. I'm assuming that that's not the full complete count. However, at that time it is— seems drastically low, um, with what seems to be maybe some incomplete information I am going to refer to the Sustainable Salmon Policy, Section C, management of fisheries by the state should be based on the precautionary measure.

So I'm going to— I think I'm going to be voting yes on this one. I have a question. So did the department— let's talk about sort of the districts and how it was managed, because I also I'm troubled by this, the impacts and the chronic inability, I guess, our concerns around getting coho up into the Sissetona Drainage's tributaries.

Drift Area 2, is that— that hasn't been utilized. For the past few years, with the exception of last year. Is that correct? Madam Chair, that is correct. So what, what was the— what did the department allow in Drift Area 2 last year?

Um, Madam Chair, there was one 12-hour commercial period that took place on July 28th in Area 2. And what was the silver catch at that time? Madam Chair, a specific number would be difficult, but I did look at this earlier and it was about 8,700 coho. So the board sort of restored the ability for the fleet to be in Drift Area 2, which is I think why you opened it and utilized it. Realized it.

I'm trying to remember. Can you help me? Madam Chair, some of that history will escape me, but the only time that Area 2 may be opened in late July is at the upper tier of Kenai River late-run sockeye run sizes, so runs greater than 4.6 million, and it is limited to one regular period of Monday, Thursday per week once we've determined that the Kenai run size is that large. Thank you. And since the implementation of the federally managed EEZ fishery, has it been the department's practice to consolidate the full catch between the federal fishery and the state-managed fishery to determine the 1%— whether or not the 1% rule applies?

Madam Chair, Yes, beginning last year with the new situation. The regulation currently reads that the total drift catch will be evaluated for less than 1% over 2 periods. And so we did combine for state and federal waters. Okay. So that was last year was the first year that that was done.

Correct. Okay. That's That's kind of what I was thinking about. And that certainly wasn't discussed at any length in the previous cycle because we didn't know what the effects were going to be of how that fishery was going to be managed by the federal government and how the state was going to sort of then interact with that management. I don't remember that discussion at that time, but that's why I'm kind of asking some of this.

And this gets for me to the criteria of unforeseen a little bit. Mr. Commissioner. Yeah, and I had similar types of concerns, so I asked staff to run those numbers both separately and as a combined number. And if Colton, if you can remember right, I don't think it would have changed the outcome in terms of the 1% rule if they were run without or with the federal numbers.

Mr. Commissioner, for this year or last year? For this year, for this year, I believe the difference for if we had just used State of Alaska water harvest only, the drift fleet would have been 1% at one period earlier. Thank you for that. And so I think it did kind of have, at least from the board's perspective, my personal perspective, kind of an unforeseen effect because I didn't have a good idea of what about how the 1% would be applied with the federal fishery. This one is giving me a little bit of pause, frankly, in terms of whether I think it has— it's much that unforeseen piece of things.

And I'm not concerned certainly about the sockeye. I think there's, you know, abundance of sockeye in the area. And I understand that the use of Drift Area 2 in the expanded sections was to try and get at some of that sockeye. Particularly given the restrictions that are on in the Setnet fleet. But I do think that there may have been a bit of an unforeseen impact on the COHOs, and I'm kind of leaning towards accepting this.

I'm interested in other board comments. Mr. Carpenter, then Mr. Swenson. Thank you. Um, I appreciate everybody's comments on this one. Um, I guess the one thing that I'm looking at right now, and Colton, please expand on this, um, question, I guess, the way you see fit.

But, um, if this ACR were to move forward, you know, obviously, but the potential impacts on this, how would something like this kind of tie your hands in regards to how you would like manage this fishery? Is there like anything that like stands out to you, like you could look back at this year and say, okay, if this was the case, that this would have been a really big problem. And if there is one, please, please tell me.

Through the chair, I guess I'll take a quick stab at an effect statement. If the ACR was adopted, if area one-time was reduced, then potential harvest of salmon in that area would be reduced. The corridors generally catch less fish in general than when Area 1 is open. So if you reduced the area but we still had same amount of time, you're still catching less fish. Would—.

Off the cuff, that's about what I could come up with.

Mr. Swenson, or Commissioner, and then just have a follow-up question. So this ACR deals specifically with Area 1. So what's the additional harvest that was occurring in state water Area 1 fisheries when the federal— when the Area 1 district, Area 1, was open this year?

Commissioner, um, in more of a general statement, area— when Area 1 is open, because Generally, the, the corridors in Area 1 are open at the same time. The way that regulation set reads is that for these regular periods, they will be restricted to one of the following areas or all of, right? So Area 1, expanded Kasilof, expanded Kenai, Anchor Point. And generally, when Area 1's open, you will see that harvest increase depending on timing. If this is right during the general peak of that run in July, we can see Area 1 harvest be 100,000, 150,000 fish greater than a previous day's corridor period.

But it is heavily influenced by timing and how the fish are moving. I could follow up. What this would do would just simply close the state waters of Area 1. The federal waters of Area 1 would remain open under federal regulation. Mr. Commissioner, correct.

This would remove the Area 1 option from the regular periods. So I guess what I'm asking you is how much of the harvest occurs in that additional state water in an Area 1 opener?

Mr. Commissioner, I don't have that figure offhand. Sorry, we're getting into debating the merits of what the proposal actually is requesting versus the criteria. So, Mr. Swinson. I just have one more comment on this. This sustainable salmon fishing policy for the state says you should not be overharvesting non-targeted fish when harvesting targeted fish.

And this goes on in Cook Inlet quite often. And I'm not blaming anybody for that, but I'm just saying this is the, sustainable salmon fish policy for the state. Is that, you know, we have to be looking out for these non-targeted fish when we're targeting these targeted fish, catching these targeted fish. Thank you. If there are any more comments, again, I'm going to focus them to the ACR criteria, please.

Mr. Wood. Okay, thank you.

I want to focus on the conservation part of this because for 40 years of my life I've lived up on the Susitna River, 100 miles from the mouth, and I have taken fish out of the tributaries, which are like little capillaries, and I live on a vein of the river. And I've done that 40, almost 17 years of my life. I've been paying attention to coho up there a lot over the years. I've seen kings go away, and I bought that setnet site or fished the mouth of the river because I wanted to know what it was like to put my fingers on the aorta of a river to see what comes in and out of it and compare that to what I see upriver. In that process, I've learned a lot.

I was—. And I was able to be on the Fish and Wildlife Commission in the Mat-Su for 10 years. Where I was mentored by Larry Engel, who was a severe conservationist and advocated for, you know, allowing that mixed stock pass through the middle of the inlet so that the entire inlet north of Calgon Island could potentially receive more fish. Over the years, I realized that I learned a lot. There's probably But what I've come to realize with the history of all this, of conservation, is that this department currently knows more about the conservation of coho in particular for the Matsu in the Northern District than it ever has before.

The, the commissioner himself is probably one of the most knowledgeable people on coho in the state, and I know for a fact, working with the department throughout the summer season, that they are paying super close attention to the amount of fish being intercepted and all fisheries. And I might add that, um, it hasn't done anything for us because it just— we continue to be restricted, restricted, restricted. That being said, this is emotional, and the Northern District has the Little Sioux and and the Deschka River that have had a hard time with returning escapement. I would not say that about other rivers in the Mat-Su, as shown by the Jim Creek weir and others. So what's wrong with these rivers?

Is it something to do with habitat? Is it water temperature? Is it water quality? Is it the fact that the weirs are there and they keep getting blown out? Cohos are runners.

When it rains, they big boogie. They go right by you. And when it's not raining and there's no water, you don't see them. This year I was down there in October and there were belugas chasing sockeye or coho up onto the beach in October. There I was seeing them jumping over beaver dams on my trail up into the upper creeks when the flooding came in August.

Prior to then, there was nothing. Coho are a super crazy species and it's hard to figure them out. But when it comes to conservation and the grand scheme of things, I don't believe that it meets the criteria in this ACR. But that's not to say that I don't think there's a conservation issue in the Little Sioux and Deshka that at some point will need to be addressed in, say, next year's board board cycle. So, and then as far as the unforeseen stuff, I, I think at our last Cook Inlet meeting, we didn't know how they were going to blend federal management with state.

I think these guys have worked incredibly hard and diligently to make sure that they have had a good balance of that, and I really applaud them for that. Um, and then To correct an error in regulation, there's no correction needs to be made. So with that, I'll end my—. Mr. Godfrey, I think this one, you know, warrants and has warranted a deeper dive. And I appreciate Board Member Svenson's advocacy for it.

And I actually think it could make for a pretty grand discussion when in cycle. However, taking it out of cycles and ACR, I still don't necessarily think it hits that bar for me. You know, we use the term was, you know, this or that unforeseen at the time when the board took this action or the department took this action or failed to take this action or that action.

Well, I don't know that you can ever say every board member foresaw this eventuality or this event occurring or that, or the staff members saw this or that, but was it reasonably foreseeable foreseeable. That's probably a more reasonable question in my mind. That's not the terminology we use. And I don't think anything here was unforeseeable, or probably not unforeseen. And, you know, so it doesn't get there on that.

And the other page where, where the header is, what will happen if this problem is not all prior to the regular cycle. Again, not speaking on the merits of this proposal, but taking it out of cycle, I look at the very last sentence in that paragraph and it states, this is a festering and recurring problem that should be adequately addressed with more permanent regulation rather than a single year of discretionary ADF&G commercial management. The first half of that sentence acknowledges it's a festering and recurring problem. Therefore, this is not new. This isn't something that came out of the blue.

It's an ongoing problem. And therefore, I don't— this could have been or might or should have been addressed in cycle and should be because it's been festering and recurring. So I don't see any variables here at play that would necessarily take this out of— justify taking out of cycle. So I'll be opposed to it. Okay, I'm going to put my final thoughts on here and then I'd like to wrap up the discussion.

But in listening to the discussion around this table, I think for me it's actually pushed me harder into the unforeseen because of how the federal fishery was going to be applied and the fact that if when those numbers were melded, it would have closed the fishery potentially if it was only considering the state waters fishery. Industry and the 1%, it would have closed it earlier, which, you know, one could glean might have had the effect of moving more fish north and silvers with that.

This has been a festering and recurring problem around the coho issues. But I certainly didn't have an idea of how the change to the 1% rule, which is also a frequent flyer at the Upper Cook Inlet meetings in terms of proposals that get submitted. I, I wasn't anticipating how the department was going to consider that. So I think for me, it's actually pushed me a little bit more in favor. Any other discussion?

Mr. Carpenter? Question. Question's been called. You know, Mr. Payton? No, Madam Chair.

Mr. Bowers? No, Madam Chair. Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, please call the roll.

Final action on ACR 5. Irwin. Yes. Chamberlain. Yes.

Godfrey. No. Svenson. Yes. Wood.

No. Carlson-Vandork. Yes. Carpenter. No.

That motion carries, 4 in favor, 3 against, Madam Chair.

Pardon me, I had Godfrey Wood and Carpenter as nos. Did I record any of those wrong? Did you vote no, Mike?

Okay, I'm sorry, I must have misheard that. Sorry.

Let's move on to ACR number 6, please. Madam Chair, I'm going to recuse myself from the table. Thank you, Member Wood. Let the record show that Member Wood has recused himself. ACR number 6.

Madam Chair, ACR 6, establish paired restrictions for the Little Susitna River Coho Salmon Sport Fishery and Northern District Commercial Set Gillnet Fishery to conserve Little Susitna River Coho Salmon, 5AAC-21358. Madam Chair. Move to adopt. Staff comments. This ACR seeks to establish a series of—.

I need a second, I got ahead of myself. Second. All right, there we go. Sorry, go ahead, Colton. Apologies, Madam Chair.

This ACR seeks to establish a series of paired management actions between the Little Susitna River in-river sport fishery and the Northern District Set Gillnet commercial fishery. The Northern District Set Gillnet fishery is managed under the guidance of the Northern District Salmon Management Plan. There are currently no paired restrictions between the sport and commercial fisheries under that plan. The commercial set gillnet fishery is managed using in-season indicators of abundance and restricted if necessary with gear, time, and/or area reductions. The sport fishery is managed using the same in-season information with the additional authority to reduce bag limits and implement catch-and-release fishing.

From 2023 to 2025, 2025, the department has implemented in-season restrictions to both the sport and commercial fisheries to reduce the harvest of Coho salmon due to assumed low abundance. Despite minimal or incomplete counts based on catch and harvest levels and anecdotal reports, the most recent years have generally been categorized as low abundance for Coho salmon in the Deschutes and Little Sioux. Staff assessment of the ACR agenda change request. Is there a fishery conservation purpose or reason? No.

Does the agenda change request correct an error in regulation? No. Does the agenda change request address an effect of regulation on a fishery that was unforeseen when that regulation was adopted? No. Madam Chair, thank you.

For discussion, Mr. Swenson. Well, I refer my comments on 5 because I think this will be taken up when we take up ACR 5. Thank you.

Mr. Carpenter. Thank you.

I mean, when I look at this ACR, I reflect back to maybe not exact proposals that came before the board very recently, but something that would accomplish the same goal. And I believe this ACR is trying to do that. The board took unanimous opposition to doing this similar thing. And so I think when I listen to the department talk about meeting the criteria, I think they're absolutely right about that. And I absolutely think that there's very, very little merit to doing this at this time.

Thank you. I concur with Member Carpenter's comments. Other board discussion? Mr. Carpenter? Question?

Yeah, no. Member, uh, Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bowers? No, Madam Chair.

Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on ACR 6. Chamberlain?

No. Carlson-Vandort? No. Irwin? No.

Svenson? No. Godfrey? No. Carpenter?

No. And Wood is not there. Motion carries— or sorry, motion fails, uh, 0 in favor, 6 against. Madam Chair, thank you very much. Let's move on to ACR number 7.

Madam Chair, members of the board, my name is Jay Balmer. I'm the regional sport fish biologist for Region 2. ACR 7 prohibits the sport fishing technique of flossing and the use of bear hooks in Ship Creek. 5AAC Fish 9.122. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Move to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please. Madam Chair, this ACR seeks to prohibit the fishing technique of flossing and the use of a bear hook in Ship Creek. Ship Creek sport fisheries for king and coho salmon are enhanced and are managed and seasoned by emergency order in order to meet broodstock needs and provide more harvest opportunity.

Broodstock goals specific to Ship Creek have always been achieved, and currently there are no conservation concerns for king or coho salmon in Ship Creek. To the staff assessment of the agenda change request: Is there a fishery conservation purpose or reason? No. Does the agenda change request correct an error in regulation? No.

Does the agenda change request address an effect of the regulation on fishery that was unforeseen when the regulation was adopted? No. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Board discussion.

Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thank you. To the criteria, I mean, when I look at this proposal, this seems to be more of a philosophical or a social problem that I think could be well vented at a normal board cycle. I don't think this meets the criteria at all. And so I will be against this one.

Member Erwin. Thank you, Madam Chair. I agree with Member Carpenter's comments. I don't see— the department has said there's not a conservation concern, and I haven't seen anything else submitted by the author or any public comments that would lead me to think there was a conservation concern. I don't see an error in regulation or correcting an effect on a fishery that was unforeseen.

Thank you. Quick question. Has the department had any problems getting broodstock on this enhanced— 100% enhanced, I think— fishery? Madam Chair, we've always had replacement for Ship Creek itself. There has been a couple of years where we've had to modify where we're stocking some places, but we never had any issue getting replacement.

And you can manage that? Yes, this is a heavily managed fishery and it's the— we constantly were down there walking the streams on a regular basis and monitoring this fishery. Mr. Swenson, I'm just saying I concur with my other board members on this one too. I don't think there's a reason to hear this.

Yeah, I agree with, with Member Carpenter particularly. I mean, you know, I'm on the record not loving the idea of snagging your perspective, but I think this is something that should be taken up in cycle more appropriately, taken up in cycle. I'd be interested in having that discussion there, but any other, any other board discussion on the question? Question's been called. E&O member or Mr. Payton?

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

Director Nelson? Call the roll, please. Final action on ACR 7. Carpenter? No.

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

No. Wood? No. Svenson? No.

Chamberlain? No. Motion fails 0-7, Madam Chair. Okey-doke. ACR number 8.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks, Madam Chair. ACR 8 seeks to close the Siuslaw River and all waters within 1/4 mile of the Siuslaw River and the Kaliak River confluence to commercial fishing for salmon. 5 AAC 30.320, 5 AAC 30.331, and 5 AAC 33.350. Move to adopt. Second.

Staff comments. Mr. Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. So this ACR seeks to close the Siuslaw River to commercial fishing for salmon and restrict commercial fishing for salmon in the Kaliak River. Historically, commercial salmon fishing occurred in both the Sayu and Kaliak Rivers.

However, commercial fishing effort has not occurred in the Sayu River since 2021 due to lack of the availability of an air carrier that could transport commercial harvest to market. From 1985 through 2021, commercial coho salmon harvest from the Sayu River river averaged over 36,000 fish. The Kaliak River has historically received less consistent commercial effort and harvest, but since 2018 has been consistently fished with an average harvest of about 8,900 salmon. So the mouth of the Kaliak River has been progressing northward. The Yakutaga area is very has a very fluid and dynamic landscape, and these rivers run through sand substrate, so they shift course frequently.

In 2024, the Kaliak and the Siou River essentially shared the same mouth, and now in 2025, the Siou has become a tributary of the Kaliak. And that might change in the future if, if the Kaliak pushes through the beach berm and establishes a new mouth that could be miles away from where it's at now. In any case, um, in response to this, uh, changing geomorphology there, the department, uh, began closing waters around the confluence of the Sayu and Kaliak Rivers to conserve Sayu River Coho Salmon. The department assesses escapement of Coho Salmon into the Sayu River annually. The escapement goal range is 10,000 to 29,000 fish, and the average escapement for the last 15 years is 31,630 fish.

So the average escapement exceeds the upper end of the goal range. Range over the last 15 years. Escapement in 2025 was 17,200 Coho salmon to the Siou River. In regard to the assessment of the agenda change request criteria, is there a fishery conservation purpose or reason? No.

Does the agenda change request correct an error in regulation? No. Does the agenda change request address an effect of a regulation on a fishery that was unforeseen when the regulation was adopted? No. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Board discussion. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, thanks for that information, Director Bowers.

I'm very familiar with this area. Probably very few people in this room that have even been down there. It's a very remote place between Cordova and Yakutat. The landscape is very unforgiving. It's predominantly glacier-fed rivers with miles and miles and miles of sand dunes, basically.

And because of that, because of the variance in these glacier-fed rivers into the Gulf of Alaska, these rivers tend to change probably more often than maybe anywhere in the state, quite frankly.

The important thing for me to consider is two things. One, it's been demonstrated, I believe, by the department that there is no conservation concern here, having that— those rivers meet the escape angle. But the one thing that is very obvious to me, and that the criteria specifically talks about is that an agenda change request cannot be predominantly allocative in nature. This is probably the most allocative thing that is on the docket today, and I think that if it needs to be debated, fine, but doing it out of cycle based on a river that might change back 6 months from now. I think if the board goes down that road, I said, I think we could spend a lot of time all over the state creating and writing and changing regulations based on what the weather might do.

So that's my general take of it. And I'll listen to other board members. So, but I'm opposed to this. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks.

I love how the ocean moves beaches around and changes the mouth. Pretty awesome. It's amazing how it's out of our control. That being said too, I think the department has pointed out that it's definitely not of conservation concern. It's been meeting escapement.

So I wouldn't be worried about that. I'm familiar with rivers that have gone, you know, stopped running to the ocean, run into another river right now, and they're still a stock of concern even. So I think there's issues out there that need to be addressed, but this does not meet the criteria for adopting it as an ACR, so I'm a no vote. Other board comments? Put my thoughts on the record here.

This one's a little tricky, but unlike my fellow board members' comments, the changing geomorphology around which we have absolutely no control whatsoever in my opinion, is precisely within sort of the unforeseen criteria and probably had a lot to do with what was being considered when the criteria were set. Now, the frequency of that change doesn't really matter to me, frankly. If it's kind of dynamic, then there's still a change and how that changes can have effects on management and allocation. I don't disagree with Member Carpenter that there are, you know, very allocative sort of consequences potentially. But for me, I think that the fact that that river has changed, the mouth of the river has changed, and that it has now become a tributary I think merits consideration, you know, through this request.

Now, if there had been no request, I mean, clearly it's not of concern and wouldn't have been before us. But I think that the fact that how this changes, that it has changed, I don't know what, you know, the speed or of when and how it's changed or over for how much time this has occurred, but the fact remains that it's here in front of us today. And I don't think when, when the management plan or, or the regs are put into place, you could, you could anticipate that. So the fact that the request is made, and personally, I think that the criteria, at least the unforeseen, is clearly met in this circumstance. Mr. Swenson, Mr. Godfrey, and then Mr. Mr. Chamberlain.

With all that change going on, so let's just say it changes and it all becomes one tributary at the mouth. Are you going to allow the commercial guys to fish that? I mean, how close— right now, how close can they fish to the mouth of those streams? Okay. Criteria, criteria.

Okay. Relate it to the criteria, please.

Well, I agree there's some unforeseen circumstances here, and the unforeseen circumstances could change year by year. So I am curious as to how that would affect the commercial fishing.

Bowers. Thanks, Madam Chair. Mr. Swenson, as I mentioned, in 2025, the department closed an area, essentially the, the delta of the Sayu River where it enters the Kaliak. You know, the Kaliak River is, is a much larger river than the Sayu, at least where at the confluence, and it's a glacially occluded river. Most of the fishing— the fishing occurs— the commercial fishing occurs in the Kaliak River.

So it's likely that some Sayu fish are caught in this fishery that occurs around the confluence of the two rivers, but And there's a— there's been a history of when the commercial fishery occurred in the Sayu River, there was a history of conflict between sport anglers and commercial fishermen. And that came before the board many times. That conflict has essentially gone away because there wasn't any commercial fishing in the Sayu River. Now what's happening is there are anglers that are fishing at the mouth of the Sioux. They can see the commercial fishery occurring, but there isn't really that direct conflict that used to happen in the past.

So we, we heard some comments about that this summer, and to try to alleviate some of these concerns over the conflict, we closed that area around the confluence. It wasn't so much— the closure wasn't so much done to address escapement concerns because we consistently meet escapement and often exceed the escapement goal in the Siouxsie, but it was, it was to kind of get ahead of this concern over user group conflicts. And we can continue to use that authority. You know, we expect to do that in an area like this where we're flying a lot of aerial surveys and we know that it's a very dynamic system. So that would be our expectation, is that we would continue to use authority to address any concerns, whether they're over escapement or over user group conflicts.

Thanks.

Well, if they're allowed to fish, how close then can they fish to those mouths of those rivers commercially?

Through the chair, Mr. Swenson, as I said, the fishery occurs in the river. In the river? Yeah. Thank you. And so the closure— it's in the Kaliak River.

The closure that we implemented through EO is about a 100-yard closure around the mouth of the Siu. And you're not concerned that they can take a huge majority of those fish being that close? And no, you know, the fishery is regulated through, through time. So, so we restrict the amount of time that's allowed to fish. The amount of gear that's used is relatively limited.

You know, it's a 25-fathom gillnet. It's a relatively small net. They can't obstruct the entire waterway. You know, the nets can't block the entire river.

And, you know, the, the, the time that's allowed for commercial fishing opportunity has proven to allow for adequate escapement as as evidenced by consistently meeting or exceeding the escapement goal. Okay, thank you, Forest. Mr. Godfrey. I would say that this is probably the definition, to your point, of unforeseen or unforeseeable. Sure, you know, winter storms and storm surges can change the mouth or the nature of a river and its tributaries its openings and such, but to do it precisely this way with an impact, however large the impact is or is not, this— I'm pretty conservative when it comes to ACRs, but I would say to your point, Madam Chair, that you make a compelling argument because I was also listening to prior speakers and inclined not to vote in support of this, but I think this is the very nature of unforeseen.

So I think I'm going to go ahead and support this one. Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, I like, like the chair and Mr. Godfrey, this is the exact definition of unforeseen for circumstances, and we're living in an era where environmental factors are having a larger effect on the environment and how these fisheries operate. Temperature change, a lot of things, and you're going to get more acute, acute changes to this.

The offsetting thing here is, is there a conservation purpose? It looks like these rivers have been well managed over a long period of time. But that gets into the merits. I think one of the— but when we're getting to this, I don't think we can discount changes Mother Nature has on this. And so with that, it does come to a hard— I'm a hard yes on C, because I do think this is something that the board has to be able to account and adapt to in these rapidly changing times.

And if we were to say, well, it can change back, you're not being responsive as a board to environmental changes. And we have to be responsible stewards of this resource. And so calling balls and strikes, regardless of the merits of this, it's a hard yes on C. So I am inclined to lean yes on this. Mr. Owen. Thank you for those comments, Member Chamberlain.

I would concur with, with them. I want to speak to the fact that there's quite a bit of public comment and ACRs that are in opposition of this. I believe that's due to the nature, the potential allocative nature of this proposal. The important thing to recognize is that most all proposals can be skewed and looked at as allocative in some way, and the important piece of number 2 of our, um, number 2 in the Board of Fish policy for changing the agenda is that the request is not predominantly allocative in nature. I do not believe this to be predominantly allocative in nature, and I concur with the rest of my board members who have made note of, um, C, to correct an effect on a fishery that was unforeseen.

And to Mr. Chamberlain's comments, um, I believe this board does need to be responsive to the changing climate and start addressing how we're going to move forward with these changing landscapes. Thank you. Mr. Wood, Mr. Carpenter. You know, I would like to think about this unforeseen thing. I mean, if we— unforeseen to me is like we created some language or something that prevented somebody from doing something, or it was— that would be the unforeseen.

Unforeseen part. When we're dealing with nature and all of a sudden there's a landslide that covers, say, the Kenai River or something, that was unforeseen. That might be an emergency, but it was unforeseen. I mean, the fact that nature moves beaches and they push the mouths right into each other, it's not unforeseen. It happens.

The Lewis River has not flown into Cook Inlet for 5 years and it's still a stock of concern. It's flowing into the Ivan. I mean, that, that could have been foreseen. So I, I kind of question a little bit of like what is unforeseen here, and especially when you're talking about Mother Nature. I'm scratching my head on that.

And so I do get the definition of unforeseen here, but did we create a regulation or something that made this like, oh, that was bad? And lastly, I do think that the allocative part of it is important because we wouldn't care if these rivers were flowing together right now if there weren't two user conflicts on it because they are making escapement. Mr. Carpenter, Mr. Godfrey, and then I'd like to wrap this up. Yep. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good discussion.

I think the department has demonstrated several things here. One, this river always makes the escapement or exceeds the escapement goal. So there's apparently zero conflict with the two user groups having ample opportunity to utilize this resource. That's the first thing. The second thing is, is in number two, The board will not accept an agenda change request that is predominantly allocative.

Now, you can come up with your own definition of what predominantly is, but what I'm trying to demonstrate right now to the board is that it isn't predominantly, it is 100% allocative because you are completely eliminating one of the user groups out of cycle not following the guidance that is provided in this agenda change request policy. And so that— I'm just going to leave it at that. But this— there is, there is nothing biological. There is nothing that can't be dealt with in a normal board cycle. And not following number 2 I think is a very, very big problem.

Godfrey. Well, I think Mr. Carpenter makes a really good point right there. I'm not sure that's going to move me off of supporting this, but prior to the vote, I'll contemplate that. And I just wanted to speak to Board Member Wood's comments. I think he makes really good point as well.

Nature does things, events happen. And I guess the way that I would be contemplating this is if at the time the department or the board adopted a certain regulation that was going to have a certain impact on user groups on a certain river, and if we had an oracle that allowed us to see 12 months later an event was going to happen tectonically or hydraulic— hydro— hydraulically or whatever, that changed the impact of what we did. Would we have done something differently had we foreseen that precise event? And I see this as being— if we had the power of that kind of, you know, amazing foresight, that would— had we— would have adopted or promulgated a different regulation or the department with that type of foresight. And I am here— I do say we would if we had that ability to know that was what's going to happen.

So I guess that's where I try to create some sort of bright line distinction for me between foreseen, foreseeable, and the impact had we known it was going to impact it that way when it was adopted or pushed forward. So I'll make up my mind before I vote, given what Board Member Carpenter said, because he made a very, very valid point that I had not considered previously.

And he did. And I agree. And, you know, I'm considering— I'm sitting here thinking about this, but it is unforeseen. The geography has changed. And the question about whether it is predominantly allocative or not would depend on what the current allocation is and whether or not those people are still able to harvest within those allocations.

I don't know that we are necessarily asking— there isn't a request to change potentially the allocation underneath the criteria. And we don't know, you know, if this is accepted, what the language would look like in the context of what the allocation— allocative implications could be. Or not be, as the case may be. Maybe the allocation remains precisely the same but the management has adapted to maintain the current allocation given the way that the geography has changed. I guess that's kind of how I'm looking at it.

I think I'm going to maintain my support. Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. Member Carpenter's comments don't fall on deaf ears. I am very cognizant of that.

But what we're dealing with right now is you've got two unique stocks of fisheries that are now merged into a mixed stock fishery. And so with that, the board is now looking at managing these under the mixed stock fishery policy. And you have to— and there are guidelines for that.

I— and with respect to the end result, is that going to result in the closed— the closure of this? I don't know that that would. Be, you may be able to modify the existing regulations to accommodate fishing within that area that complies with the mixed stock policy and responsibly manage that. But when you are merging two unique stocks into a mixed stock fishery, we can't say that this is an unforseen— this is not an unforeseen circumstance. And so utilizing the precautionary principle of the Sustainable Salmon Policy, I think it is incumbent upon the board at least to take a look at this and make sure that we are not inadvertently doing long-term harm by failing to accommodate or recognize unique vulnerabilities of those two unique stocks by fishing a mixed stock policy under a uniform policy.

So with that, I, yeah, I do maintain my my support. And, uh, with—. And I'm finished. Thank you, Madam Chair. One comment before I call the question.

This is not a mixed stock fishery, first of all. This is coho, very, very close proximity. And specific to the idea of allocation and the question that some board members have in regards to that, if this is adopted and moved forward, you're eliminating one user group. That—. You cannot be more allocative than that.

And I'll leave it at that. I call the question. Question's been called. E&O, Director Payton.

E&O, errors and omissions. No, Madam Chair. Uh, Director Bowers. No, Madam Chair. Mr. Peterson.

No, Madam Chair. Director Nelson, please call the roll. Final action on ACR 8. Svenson? Yes.

Wood? No. Chamberlain? Yes. Carpenter?

No. Carlson-Vandort? Yes. Irwin? Yes.

Godfrey?

No. That motion carries, uh, 4 in favor, 3 against, Madam Chair.

Hey, rounding out the ACR Section ACR number 9.

ACR number 9, Madam Chair. Good morning. My name is Mark Stickert. I work for the Commercial Fisheries Division as the regional management coordinator for shellfish and groundfish fisheries. ACR 9, prohibit carrying other groundfish gear types on vessels registered for the Pacific cod jig fishery in the Kodiak Management Area, 5AAC28.430.

Moved to adopt. Second. Staff comments, please. Thank you, Madam Chair. This ACR seeks to restrict vessels to only carrying mechanical jigging and hand troll gear on board the vessel while registered for the Kodiak Area State Waters Pacific Cod Jig Fishery.

This fishery is an open access fishery that operates under a longstanding and prescriptive fishery management plan. This management plan outlines provisions such as registration requirements, season dates, the types of gear that can be used, the amount of gear that can be used. It specifically sets the annual harvest limits. And I'll note that it explicitly identifies that vessels while jigging can have on board other groundfish gear types or the equipment needed to operate other gear types specific to the fishery itself. I think it's fair to suggest that this is kind of a feast or famine harvest pattern type fishery, as we noted in the comments that the GHL for the jig fishery has only been harvested in 12 of 29 seasons.

Jig vessels in Kodiak in particular tend to be fairly small in size, you know, 30 to 45 feet in length. Oftentimes it's a single owner-operator on board or maybe one or two crew members with them. You know, by definition, jigging gear is pretty low impact. It's a fairly physically demanding fishery.

And relative to other groundfish fisheries, their harvest capacity is relatively limited. However, when conditions are right, when the fish are close to town, weather cooperates, cod are aggregated during spawning, market conditions are good, jig vessels can harvest a fair amount of cod in a small amount of time. And for the last 3 seasons, the jig fishery has caught their full GHL. And I think the 2025 fishery was one of the shortest seasons on record. It closed in early April, which is unusual.

You know, leading up to that closure, we were hearing from traditional jig vessels suggesting that some participants had other groundfish gear types on board and had made the suggestion that perhaps they were using that gear to harvest jig cod. And, you know, the harvest strategy, even though it allows for other gear types to be on board, it does say that if you are jigging, you can only retain cod with jigging gear. So the department passed those concerns along to the Department of Public Safety, and, you know, I think they followed up to the extent that they could. So that leads us up to, to this request. The staff assessment of the agenda change request, is there a fishery conservation purpose or reason?

No. Does the agenda change request correct an error in regulation? No. Does the agenda change request address an effect of a regulation on a fishery that was unforeseen when that regulation was adopted? We assessed no.

Madam Chair, thank you. More discussion? Mr. Swenson.

So when they When they have this other gear on board and they have the jigs also, can they use all—. Does it—. Are they just— are they just supposed to use the jig gear, or can they use the other gear also? Madam Chair, Mr. Benson, it is specifically identified in the harvest management plan that they are to only use mechanical jig or hand troll gear when registered for that fishery. So they can have the other gear on board, but it's not legally permissible to be used while participating in the jig fishery.

Make it a lot easier than not to allow it on board, I guess. I don't know. I'll think about that.

Mr. Chamberlain. Thank you, Madam Chair. So looking at this, this is a really interesting and unique I think it's a really interesting question, but if we're breaking it down to the criteria, I just don't see that it hits any of these. This is something I'd definitely love to entertain in cycle, but I don't see a conservation purpose or an error in regulation, and I don't— it appears to me I haven't seen anything on the record that shows that when these regulations were adopted, that, that this was an unforeseen circumstance. So with that, I— calling balls and strikes, I just don't see that it hits any of those three.

So based on that, I will not be supporting this. Mr. Carpenter. Thank you. I'll make this brief. I agree with Mr. Chamberlain.

This is a— this is exactly the problem with this process, in my opinion. There is no emergency here. There's been no declaration by the Department of Public Safety that something like this needs to be addressed. The Kodiak cycle is next year, and I think it's more well suited to hash that out at that time. So I'm opposed.

Just a quick couple of quick clarifying questions for me.

The regulation hasn't changed. What? Anything has changed that is producing this issue? Is it a gear type change? What, what's occurring that is promulgating, in your opinion, this issue coming forth at this time?

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. So I think, as I noted, you know, we're in a cycle of, of good availability of fish, and, you know, jig fishing is quite frankly good. And the seasons are short. And this is a fishery that's specifically designed to allow for a lot of flexibility and a lot of ease of entry. All right.

It's a very low-capital fishery to engage in. So when fishing is good, people tend to dogpile into the fishery. It tends to happen in, you know, April, May, June, that shoulder season when boats don't have a lot of other things to do during that time of the year. And so, you know, when harvest is good, they tend to go fast. And so I think it's partly that it's a short season.

And, you know, I think demographics of, of jig vessels and fleets in general change over time. I think there's a newer, younger demographic of vessels that have entered the fishery. They operate maybe differently, and they often engage in multiple fisheries at once. You know, for instance, you may have a boat that comes down from Homer, and they will fish in a federal fishery, they will fish in IFQ fishing, they will fish in a state jig fishery, and they oftentimes will bring down all those gear types with them to do that rather than traveling back and forth to their home port, because they can portfolio together a number of fisheries to string together a season. So I think partly there's a demographic change in sort of who is fishing in the jig fishery historically, as well as just competitive and good fishing in recent history.

Does it have anything to do with the, you know, the sort of move towards, for example, slinky pots being more ubiquitously used and then more traditional pot gear being on board? I'm sorry, Madam Chair, I didn't quite catch that. I'm just asking about, does the gear, aside from just, you know, the fact that you can more easily carry a slinky pot gear, is that being used more ubiquitously than traditional pot gear?

Enforcement isn't here. It seems to me that this is primarily an enforcement issue. I mean, I've heard anecdotally that, you know, whatever. But like, it strikes me as being more an enforcement issue. But they're not here to address that, and whether that's something that—.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Working in reverse, so yes, we understand this is really a request for an enforcement tool to allow for that. Obviously, you know, you can have gear on that boat, but in order to prove that someone is using that gear, you really have to catch them on the grounds. And even though this is a fairly localized fishery, it's still a big ocean, right? And then to your, your comment or question about other gear types?

Yes, right. So sablefish, IFQ fishing, and, you know, slinky pots has been in front of you on a number of occasions. And so there's a new, cheap, mobile, easy-to-use gear type that has sort of come forth in recent years. And, you know, that could be underlying some of this issue, is that, you know, you have boats that are engaging in multiple fisheries, and one uses slinky pots And one uses jig gear. And having both on board would certainly create the opportunity at intersection to not follow the rules accordingly.

But the rules or regulations are clear that they are not to use that. Thank you for that. I think for me this boils down to an enforcement issue. And while I'm sympathetic to the reason behind the ACR, I'm not sure that it meets the criteria as I see it. And I do agree with Member Carpenter that this would be taken up next year in cycle, and that would probably be the best place to hear it.

Mr. Godfrey. Yeah, I mean, I'll just piggyback on what you said. I, I feel like we talked to AST on this and asked about enforcement. The department said they didn't see this as necessarily unforeseeable.

I, I know that the board brings up how realistic or practical is enforcement if we allow this gear type and that gear type in this area and that area. For the life of me, I can't remember exactly if this was what we had discussed with the captain, but, um, the department didn't see this as unforeseeable. And if, you know, DPS went on record saying that, well, this could be a problem, it might be a problem, I'm not sure it's unforeseeable, but it does sound like at least anecdotally there's data here to indicate it's definitely happening and it's problematic. Perhaps I don't— it doesn't sound like there's the support amongst the board to adopt this But I'm sympathetic to it nonetheless. Question.

Question has been called. You know, Director Payton? No, Madam Chair. Director Bauer? No, Madam Chair.

Peterson? No, Madam Chair. Okay, um, Director Nelson, call the roll, please. Final action on ACR 9. Wood?

Nope. Godfrey? No. Carlson-Vandork? No.

Irwin? No. Chamberlain? No. Carpenter?

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

Um, so I think the board just accepted— is it 3 ACRs? 2. Um, ACR number 5 and ACR number 8. One dealing with Upper Cook Inlet, one dealing with Southeast. And looking at the board schedule and considering the discussion that we had earlier about adding a day to Bristol Bay to deal with Bristol Bay issues, what looks to be a full agenda for the Alaska Peninsula, Chignik, Aleutian Islands.

I'm not inclined to schedule these ACRs here. My inclination is to schedule them for the statewide meeting, which we just added an extra day to. And so I'm just asking the membership if they have any consternation around that. And I think that would give most of the time for the public to get geared up for it. I just have a quick question.

Maybe Director Nelson can answer this. Do ACRs that are taken up at the work session have to be put on the agenda for that current year?

I don't know if they have to, but the whole purpose of ACRs is to consider whether there are issues that need to be added to the board's agenda for this year. So yeah, I mean, we'd need a way to keep it alive or carry it forward to the next year if that was the board's decision. But okay, I'm just curious. I didn't— I've never seen anything formally that says that you have to do that. So, but what you said makes sense.

So Thank you. Okay, hearing no other discussion or concerns raised, we're going to go ahead and schedule ACR number 5 and ACR number 8 for the statewide finfish meeting in March in Anchorage. Um, we'll take about a maybe a 10-minute— Mr. Commissioner, there was a lot of discussion on ACR 5, and I'm just, uh, I want to make sure staff is prepared for the discussion that you're going to have. ACR 5 when you read it in the book, is pertinent to time and area, but then I heard a lot of discussions about the 1% rule and other things.

What would you like staff to be prepared to talk about? The ACR that's there or a broader discussion of drift management? I think a little bit of both, but definitely the proposal as it's written. Okay, thanks. Yeah.

I think that they'll both play in, as you heard. Today. Um, okay, let's take about a 10-minute— let's come back on the record at 12:20 and consider any miscellaneous business if, uh, if there's an agenda to be received. Thank you.

Alright, thank you. Back on the record. The time is 12:23. We have— we're at the miscellaneous business portion of our agenda. We just RC'd the miscellaneous business agenda.

It is RC 23. There are two items. One, at the request of Member Carpenter, an agenda change request criteria discussion. And number two, include state residents on the the public testimony list, which was brought forth at this meeting in a request of— in RC 19. So beginning with Member Carpenter, I'll go ahead and turn it over.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Don't need to belabor this point a whole lot, but over the course of the time I've been on the board, I've seen the ACR process turn into something completely other than what it was meant to be when it was formed. And I think a perfect example is this, at least in my opinion, is something that just happened. But, um, there— and I— and that's why I brought it up. I would like to hear board members' opinions, and possibly maybe this could be dealt with in committee to get the public's opinion.

But bringing something to the attention of the board really out of cycle needs to be pretty imperative. And I don't think that the last several board cycles that's been the case. And I think it's being used as a way to get something in front of the board out of cycle. Typically from— it's a reaction to something that happened at the last board cycle. And I just think that we need to look at the criteria and we need to look at the framework of the regulatory language in regards to the policy.

Is it— do we need to make any changes to that or not? Because I think this is only going to continue to happen, and I don't think that was the nature in which this process was set up. Thank you, Mr. Carpenter. Other board thoughts? Mr. Godfrey.

I think Board Member Carpenter's points are valid. I would agree with them. I think when initially was— when I was on the board my first term, it probably wasn't until 2 years in I started realizing this is a way to circumvent the process if you can get the board to take it. And the board— the board has standards by which they will they will take an ACR and adopt it, but if on occasion they lower their standards or don't ask certain questions that maybe would have caused them not to or had information that would cause them not to, the success rate of an ACR, I don't know what it is collectively, but if we accept 1 out of every 10 and it gets to the point it's 2 out of 10, we're gonna keep getting more. Because what do you have to lose?

Worst case scenario, you just wait till it's in cycle. So let's go ahead and give it a shot and see if you're batting.200, you know, it means 2 times out of 10 you might get lucky and the board takes it. And I agree with Board Member Carpenter, to take it out of cycle, it should be a very, very high bar.

And that's, part of the transparency, the predictability of the public process is allowing stakeholders to know when they need to mobilize to engage on an issue for their region. And being uniform and standardized and predictable that way is really important for a public process. So I think unforeseeable correcting, you know, regulatory issue or things of that of that sort are a bar that we need to adhere to. Obviously, we all have, you know, slightly different interpretations on that. There's some subjectivity there.

But I don't know what the cure is. I just really believe keeping a high bar is really important on ACRs.

Mr. Swenson, then Mr. Wood.

Well, as I saw the statistics, 20% are accepted. I guess I would say that things are heard in cycle every 3 years.

If whoever is putting out the ACR feels that it could be 2 years, if it was just heard, it would be 2 more years or a year. I guess it all depends on how you think of that. I think you have to have a high bar, but I also think that there's only 20% of them that are accepted, and I think that process needs to be, you know, I think that's acceptable. Mr. Wood. Yeah, thanks.

I think the criteria is good, and I think it does keep things pretty concise. I think the problem is too is that, like the allocation criteria, everybody kind of interprets it differently. Differently. And so I think that just even choosing what ACR gets heard versus not before we even make a decision is an important step. And I'm not sure how to go about that.

What I'm realizing about this process is, you know, it's a hurry for the people. It's in nature— nature has its own pace. And so for us, though, it seems to be a firestorm. I think what's tough about these ACRs is all of a sudden you have to direct your attention to something outside of what you were dedicated to put your attention into for that year. Especially in two different areas that just had that full dedication the year prior or the year after that.

That and the public, the user groups, I mean, people that have to come all the way from these remote areas now to come in and speak to something that we decided to do today because we decided it was important is a heck of an inconvenience. And, and then the cost to the department. I mean, we all want weirs, we want observers, we want all this stuff, and then all of a sudden we got to ask them to spend more time putting together the paperwork and all this out of cycle. Anyhow, I think there are some real shortfalls to it, and I think it would be really nice to make— keep the criteria but make it more concise and less up to interpretation. Mr. Chamberlain.

So I, I understand, uh, the board's desire to avoid unnecessary, uh, or, or dealing with repetitive, uh, petitions to take things out of cycle. But one of the things we do have to consider for the board is things change, and a lot of times, you know, we may get things wrong or circumstances may change or a conservation concern arises that we need to address in a quick manner. And I feel that the ACR process represents a good, a good way to do this. Of course, we do get, we do get proposals that don't really meet the criteria. And I, the way I felt the board handled them appropriately.

The ones that didn't meet the criteria were dismissed quite quickly. And there were ones where the board members did disagree, or in some cases agreed over the criteria, and we moved appropriately with them. So I don't want to act in a way that makes things convenient for the board but alienates the public in a way that they lack access to get a quick remedy when an emergency or an urgent situation comes up or things simply change to where the rules are not applicable. I think the board has to balance efficiency versus access to the public. And I think the current process strikes a quick balance.

We knock these, these ACRs out in, in a couple hours. I think that's something we can take to look at and find and, and weed out and identify seperate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to emergent situations. So with that, yeah, that's my two cents. Okay. A couple of thoughts.

I don't disagree with anything that I've heard here. I think that the ACR process can be a bit rife. That being said, you know, I'm very interested in what what a proposed change would be. Thinking about how would we vet them in advance, for example. But that puts a lot of that decision-making with a single person, and that being the chair primarily.

And it doesn't get the sort of the public vetting that may or may not be warranted amongst the full membership. So, you know, I'm open to having a discussion. I agree with Mr. Carpenter that I think perhaps the Process Committee might be a good place to do that. And if a member would like to make that request and have that committee meeting held, then I would also encourage them to come with some ideas about what the committee and what the public should be considering in that process change. And then, you know, our general sort of procedures that if the committee has recommendations or anything is generated out of that committee, then it comes before the full board for consideration in the form of a finding or letter or whatever it happens to be and would be taken up in front of the public and on the record in likely a miscellaneous business agenda item.

But open to the discussion. I think it is interesting and I think that the board does need to consider its process and whether or not it should evolve or change, you know, as as the fisheries change, as our technology changes, as the meeting changes, as the participation changes. And I think that discussion is warranted. And so I appreciate Member Carpenter for bringing it forward. I know that in my experience, things associated with process changes around this board are very sensitive.

So whatever the discussion is, I want to make sure that it's public. Public and that everybody has an opportunity to listen and/or weigh in when the discussion is held. Mr. Carpenter. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate everyone's comments.

I think the thing that I consider, you know, in most circumstances, that engaging the public in just about everything we do is very, very important, and I think it needs to be extremely transparent. But this is a board policy. This was created by the board. This allows something to come in front of the board basically at a— out of cycle. And I think there are some small changes that could be made here.

But, um, and quite frankly, and I'm not going to belabor this point, I would like to see it possibly taken up by the Process Committee, and we can talk more about that down the road because I think there are a few other things we might be discussing. But I think specifically to number 2 in the policy, I don't— I think the word predominantly needs to be struck. And I think the board during this process committee needs to think about that and what the actual interpretation of allocative is versus predominantly allocated, because I think that's very confusing and it's left up to each board member to interpret what they feel predominantly means. I think we need a clear definition when it comes to that, because I think by defining that to a certain degree or eliminating that word takes a lot of ambiguity out of it and really clarifies to the public in regards to which ACRs they they may or not bring forward. So I will leave it at that.

And thank you for putting it on the agenda. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Commissioner? Yeah, and maybe just like we do on our proposals, cost to the individual and cost to the department.

Commissioner? Yeah, I think I was— the department could use a little guidance in developing its staff recommendations, especially around the word unforeseen. Discussion we had around this table today, I don't think we ever considered, um, the change in a stream mouth is unforeseen. And in those kinds of environmental changes that we're going to increasingly see, what— so I think a little definition around unforeseen would help us develop staff recommendations coming forward. Thank you.

Any other comments? All right, moving on to agenda item number 2, which is to include state of residence on public testimony list as requested in RC 19. So for those who may not have that in front of them, the request came in to ask the board to consider what could be a small change to the procedure, which would be during all regulatory meetings, the board members should have a list of the people who are going to testify, which we do. And that list should include information on whether they are a resident of the state of Alaska or or not. I don't know if there's any legal considerations in that space.

It's an interesting request. I mean, I don't know. Mr. Peterson, do you have any thoughts? Madam Chair, I— nothing springs to mind as being problematic about asking people where they're from when they're making public comments at the Alaska Board of Fisheries. Um, you know, I suppose I could conjure a situation where it could be applied improperly when you're talking about commercial fisheries.

But I think, I think the board members understand the requirements with respect to residency related to commercial fisheries. So I don't expect that would be a problem. Thank you. Other discussion? I guess my thoughts, this would kind of for me I would consider this also appropriate to discuss in a process committee type environment, among the other things, but I just certainly wanted to get it out there and sort of take the temperature amongst members who may or may not be on the process committee of whether or not this is something they'd like to see come forward.

Mr. Godfrey.

Yeah, I— makes sense to me. We already asked for people's names when they submit. Or publicly testify. More information is better than less, and it's not—. It's—.

There's no time burden to it. Takes a second to say where your state of residence is, so it's not going to add anything to, you know, the duration of our meetings. So I think that would be helpful because there's a number of times where that's consequential, I think, to board members knowing someone's state of residence.

OK, any other question, discussion? Anything else to come up under miscellaneous business that's not on the agenda? Going once, twice. All right, I think that concludes the miscellaneous business agenda items. I will just take the opportunity to again thanks for the opportunity to chair the board again for this cycle.

We got a lot of work to do. Thanks for staff, as always, showing up prepared and informative, and looking forward to spending the next 26 days in the next 4 months or so with you all. Uh, I might not feel the same way at the end of those 26 days, but we're, we're gonna go for it. All right, any, anything else? Any other comments from the board?

No, you're good. Okay, all right, with that said, uh, work session, uh, for the 2025 year is adjourned at 12:39. I'll see you all in the morning at 8:30 to begin the PCOD, um, regulatory meeting. We're adjourned.