The budget impasse with Alaska legislators is wreaking havoc on salmon fisheries across the state, and the industry is bracing for the possibility of a complete shutdown in some regions.<\/p>\n
If lawmakers can\u2019t agree on a budget by June 1, all state workers will be on notice for layoffs starting July 1. That includes 750 full-time and seasonal workers in the commercial fisheries division, many of whom are the boots on the ground for salmon management.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe word that comes to my mind is catastrophic,\u201d said Scott Kelley, director of the state commercial fisheries division.<\/p>\n
It is budget delay d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu for state workers and the salmon industry, but unlike last year, no remaining dollars are in the fishing till.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year we had some partial funding remaining. This year there is no funding at all. We have to think about a hard shutdown on July 1,\u201d said Kevin Brooks, deputy commissioner for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.<\/p>\n
Right now, instead of managing and planning for fisheries, Brooks said staff is preparing to pull salmon counting weirs, towers, sonars and other assets.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere Fish and Game differs from most departments is we have staff in remote locations around the state not connected by road, and we get them out there by boat or airplane. For us to have an orderly shutdown on June 30, we\u2019ll have to start a couple weeks prior pulling weirs out of the water and closing cabins and field camps where we have our staff stationed for three to four months every summer. We\u2019ll have to get those things buttoned up and pulling them back to a duty station so we can give them a lay off and close the doors on the first of July. Likewise, getting our five research vessels back to port for tie up,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Brooks said it will be \u201cbusiness as usual while they can,\u201d but as salmon fisheries get underway across the state, managers are closely watching the calendar.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s going to be point of no return for us as far as getting things pulled out of the water. And in many cases they will have just been put in a few weeks prior. It\u2019s kind of mind boggling,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Brooks agreed that if Alaska lawmakers can\u2019t resolve the state budget in time, it could cancel salmon season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere you\u2019re actively managing in-season and looking at daily catch statistics and things like that,\u201d he said, \u201cI think there\u2019d be foregone harvest for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, other state managed fisheries besides salmon will be affected, including summer crab fisheries from Southeast to Norton Sound, cod, pollock and other groundfish.<\/p>\n
Are Alaska lawmakers aware of the havoc their budget deadlock is having on the state\u2019s seafood industry?<\/p>\n
\u201cFisheries are so complicated it\u2019s not apparent to all of them. Some are more aware than others, such as Bryce Edgmon (D-Dillingham), Paul Seaton (R-Homer) and Louise Stutes (R-Kodiak), but I think generally they know the disruption is not good,\u201d Brooks responded.<\/p>\n
Brooks and Kelley both said they were preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.<\/p>\n
The total commercial fisheries budget for FY 2017 from all state and federal funding sources is about $64 million, a drop of $10 million over two years.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Permit impacts<\/strong><\/p>\n Alaska began issuing limited entry permits for salmon fishing in 1975. Originally 1,372 permits (out of 2,758) were issued to residents of Bristol Bay; by 2007, only 735 permits remained under local ownership. An ambitious project is underway to find out how the system has played out over 40 years for the people of Bristol Bay.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there is a sense that the permit system was in some ways a necessary evil and it protected the resource. Some people feel misled about the way it was implemented, and felt like they didn\u2019t understand the way permits were being allocated. Those feelings still come out to this day,\u201d said Jennifer Meredith of Eagle River, now a development economist at the University of Washington.<\/p>\n Meredith, with assists from tribal councils and locals, has been doing random surveys since March with people throughout the Bristol Bay region.<\/p>\n \u201cWe started in Aleknagik, Iliamna, Togiak, Naknek, King Salmon, South Naknek, Kaliganik, Manoktotak and we\u2019re finishing off now in Dillingham,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The survey targets original permit holders from 1975, those who have fished more recently, and those who have never held fishing permits.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re really trying to measure where do you live now, where do your descendants live, what occupation do you have now if there is not a permit in the family. We also talk about ties to subsistence fishing, their social networks and we do household assets,\u201d Meredith explained.<\/p>\n The response so far, she said, has been \u201cincredible\u201d \u2013 an 80 percent success rate with nearly 700 participants before Dillingham.<\/p>\n \u201cI think part of the reason people have been so willing to cooperate is we really are there in the community to hear their stories, and to allow them to give voice to the way their permits affected them,\u201d Meredith said, adding that there is a great deal of optimism throughout the Bristol Bay region.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are scrappy and they are going to find a way to make it work,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are committed to their traditional way of life, to subsistence and they are definitely committed to the commercial salmon fishery in a big way. There is definitely a sense that programs are needed that allow locals to get back into fishing and that the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation is trying to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n As she headed out for another survey, Meredith said, \u201cI\u2019m here for your voice to be heard. My intention is to have some evidence of how this system has affected you and your family, for good and for bad.\u201d<\/p>\n Meredith hopes to finish her report within a year and has promised to reveal the results in Dillingham. Her project is funded by the Marine Resource Economic Scholarship through WA Sea Grant and NOAA.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Fish board update<\/strong><\/p>\n The Alaska Board of Fisheries proposal process will remain as is, for now.<\/p>\n During a May 24 teleconference meeting, the board considered streamlining the way it reviews proposals that seek management changes to commercial, sport, personal use and subsistence fisheries. The board reviews 400-500 proposals during its annual meeting cycles. The meeting was live streamed via the internet.<\/p>\n The Board was considering moving to a consent agenda format for technical proposals, whereby they could be approved all at once. But written comments from fishermen and organizations swayed them otherwise.<\/p>\n Kelly Stier, a Bristol Bay driftnet fisherman, summed it up best: \u201cI understand the drive for making the Board of Fish process of reviewing proposals more streamlined as I sat through the painful hours of public testimony in December,\u201d he wrote. \u201cHowever, I do not agree with changing to a \u2018consent-agenda concept.\u2019 One of the things that became apparent while attending the BOF meeting was that seemingly small issues can often greatly affect large numbers of participants. It is clear that those issues are best understood by the end user.\u201d<\/p>\n Board member Fritz Johnson of Dillingham called the current process \u201crobust,\u201d and said he didn\u2019t want to change it right now. Sue Jeffrey agreed, saying \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be comfortable right now putting this in place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The budget impasse with Alaska legislators is wreaking havoc on salmon fisheries across the state, and the industry is bracing for the possibility of a complete shutdown in some regions. If lawmakers can\u2019t agree on a budget by June 1, all state workers will be on notice for layoffs starting July 1. That includes 750 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[149],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-5458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-outdoors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5458"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=5458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}