Board of Fisheries reverses decision to double up meetings

After the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the normal Board of Fisheries meetings, the members were left with a choice: delay all meetings by a year, or double up in the next cycle and try to catch up?

On March 8, the board decided to reverse an earlier decision and postpone its meetings scheduled for the 2021-22 cycle to the following year, and conduct the meetings moved back from 2020 to its 2021-22 meeting slots. That means the normal interval between meetings will be delayed by an extra year, but it avoids the board members, staff, and members of the public from having to jam two cycles into the space of one.

Now, the Southeast and Yakutat finfish and shellfish meeting, the Prince William Sound/Upper Copper and Upper Susitna Rivers finfish and shellfish meeting, and statewide shellfish meetings will be held in early 2022. That gives the board and staff enough time to put out a call for proposals and plan to hold meetings in person.

Regular Board of Fisheries meetings are busy, often-crowded affairs. Stakeholders come from all over an affected region and participate in committee meetings, talk personally with the board members on breaks, and work in private groups on proposals during the meeting days. In the larger regions, like Cook Inlet and Southeast, the meetings can stretch up to two weeks at a time, with meetings running all day.

In the fall, the board members opted not to hold this year’s meetings via teleconference or with limited attendance because of issues with equitable access. But in January, to avoid a yearlong delay, the board members voted to hold two meetings at once.

During a meeting March 8, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang emphasized that the department does not have the money to do that. Estimates place the cost to do that at about $500,000, he said. The governor has not proposed extra money in the ADFG budget for that purpose.

“It is not my intent to rob Peter to pay Paul to double up on meetings,” he said. “From the chair I’m sitting in, I’ve heard a lot of consternation and potential concern about doubling up on meetings next year.”

Many of the public comments raised concerns about the plan. A number of fisheries trade groups, including the United Fishermen of Alaska, Kodiak Seiners Association, Southeast Alaska Gillnetters Association and North Pacific Fisheries Association, wrote to ask the board to delay the next meeting cycle by a year rather than double up.

Multiple commenters said they thought the doubling up would leave the ADFG staff and citizen Advisory Committees without enough time to evaluate and comment on the proposals within the cycle.

Several processors also opposed the move to stack meetings, including OBI, Icicle, Silver Bay Seafoods, and the Pacific Seafoods Processors Association. They cited similar concerns as the fishermen, including a lack of time for public process and the additional funding for ADFG.

“With stakeholder input unnecessarily compromised and ADFG limited in its ability to present data, Alaskans would be left without the regulatory system that traditionally based decisions on broad public input and the best available science,” wrote Abby Frederick, Silver Bay Seafoods’ Director of Communications.

A handful of commenters did support the stacking, including the Chignik Intertribal Coalition. Chignik has experienced near-complete sockeye run failures in two of the last three years and the community wants the board to address the run failure sooner rather than later, wrote Chignik Intertribal Coalition President George Anderson in a letter. If the board does not double up on meetings, Chignik’s meeting will not come up until the 2022-23 cycle.

“In Chignik’s fishing history never has there been such a collapse of both its sockeye salmon runs,” Anderson wrote. “Chignik is in economic and cultural peril. Time is not on our side.”

Several of the board members who initially supported doubling up changed their minds, in part because of the cost problem.

Board member Gerard Godfrey said during the meeting that he didn’t want to hinge the decision on the Legislature possibly approving funds.

“I’m not interested in playing that game myself,” he said. “I’m not interested in waiting a number of months to find out whether or not this is feasible. And the overarching (issue) is that this situation is nobody’s fault, but the most equitable way to deal with it is to not double up.”

Several other members commented that they would change their vote for similar reasons and because of the strain on staff to prepare. Several others noted that the board does have an emergency process, where if a fishery has a legitimate emergency come up out of cycle, stakeholders can petition the board to deal with it sooner, as long it as it meets the criteria of being unforeseen and a threat to the fishery. The decision to delay the meetings originally set for 2021-22 passed unanimously, and dates for the upcoming meetings in 2022 are still to be determined.

Elizabeth Earl can be reached at [email protected].