In spring of 2022, what would be another abysmal fishing season was about to begin for communities that historically rely on the Yukon River as a vital food source. That’s when Holly Carroll, the federal subsistence fisheries manager for the river, noticed a discrepancy in the regulations. She discovered that if and when the Yukon opened to fishing of certain salmon species, the coastal communities of Scammon Bay, Hooper Bay, and Chevak would be severely limited, as they were only federally qualified to harvest fall chum salmon.
“I was looking at the table of who are federal qualified users. And that's when I was like, wait a minute, why aren't the coast, why don't they have all salmon?” Carroll said. “They use all salmon. They just have fall chum. That's weird.”
So Carroll took action to remedy the situation, which meant informing those communities that they needed to submit a proposal in time for the Federal Subsistence Board to make the needed changes.
“This is what we would call a regulatory cleanup,” Carroll said.
The subsistence board did not approve the changes until January 2023. And that delay meant that the three communities couldn’t fish for coho, or silver salmon, when the opportunity arose in fall 2022.
“I knew individuals who called me from Hooper [Bay] who would have liked to have gone and fish in the Black River. They said they've always fished coho in the Black River and they couldn't go. They had to rely on sharing with someone else,” Carroll said. “So no, we couldn't fix it in time for the 2022 season.”
But as the 2023 fishing season kicked off, the delays weren’t over. Given that the changes have yet to be written into law, the board needed to issue an emergency special action to temporarily enact the changes, which they announced in a June 12 press release.
“I told them again, hey, if we go fishing, you know, they really shouldn't be left out of these opportunities. And so they recognized that, hey, the action, the intent was to pass it to give them that status,” Carroll said.
The language in the June 12 announcement may have been hard to comprehend. It said that the action allows the three communities to “harvest salmon in the Yukon River drainage if a harvestable surplus is available and opportunity is provided by the Federal Manager.” It also said that the action would take effect on June 20.
“Unfortunately, there's a mention of a date. There's a mention of harvestable surplus. And people, maybe they got hopeful, maybe they got confused,” Carroll said. “They thought it meant they could go fishing now, but fishing was still closed and it is still closed now.”
Four days later, a Facebook post appeared on the Alaska Federal Subsistence Management Program page to address the confusion the announcement had apparently generated. It explained the federal action in plain English, and it spelled out that salmon fishing was unlikely to be opened at all during the 2023 summer season. Carroll, who had set the ball rolling in the first place, also did her part to help address confusions.
“We got a lot of questions. [The Alaska Department of] Fish and Game were quick to tell me there was a lot of questions. I put out an email to all three coastal communities,” Carroll said. “We put out a radio announcement. And I think we nipped it in the bud.”
While salmon fishing prospects on the Yukon River appear grim, Carroll said that the changes are important and hopefully now clear. They mean that all the communities that have historically relied on the fisheries will now have access to federal subsistence openings if the situation ever improves.
On June 23, a small improvement did come about when fisheries managers announced limited opportunities to fish for summer chum on the Yukon River. For residents of Scammon Bay, Hooper Bay, and Chevak, this opportunity would not have been available had the “regulatory cleanup” not taken place.
