The Alaska Board of Fisheries has approved some of the most severe restrictions on salmon fishing in the Area M fishery in decades.
On Feb. 25, the board approved a proposal to reduce June salmon fishing times in the area along the western Alaska Peninsula and Eastern Aleutians in a 4-3 vote. It pencils out to a loss of 136 hours for the drift fleet and 94 hours for the seine fleet. The reductions come during periods when vulnerable chum salmon stocks are present, but also when commercial fishermen are busy scooping up sockeye.
It’s a move welcomed by Western Alaska tribes and stakeholders who have faced years of record-low chum salmon returns on the Kuskokwim River, and complete salmon fishing closures on the Yukon River.
But they also say the reductions don’t go far enough. The original version of the approved proposal was submitted by Bethel’s tribe, and it called for a 10-day closure in the June fishery.
In hours of public testimony, Western Alaska stakeholders called for maximum protection of Area M salmon. Vivian Korthuis heads the Association of Village Council Presidents, representing the interests of dozens of communities on the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers.
"Our communities have sacrificed everything. Area M continues to interrupt salmon bound for our rivers, salmon we desperately need for escapement and for food. If our salmon are to be rebuilt, conservation must be shared," Korthuis said.
But members of Aleutian tribes, like Unga tribal member Madison Thompson of Sand Point, told the board that further restrictions are an existential threat for communities that rely on commercial salmon fishing.
"To believe those in my region will be minimally affected by the proposal set forth today is harmful and untrue," Thompson said. "When you talk about fishermen, you are talking about my grandfather, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, people sitting behind me, real people. I refuse to let our shared identity and humanity be stripped away."
Mike Wood of Talkeetna was one of three board members to vote no on the proposal. He said that ocean conditions should be given greater consideration in the discussion over Area M.
"There's just some places that fish just can't go anymore, and we can't control that, and they're not able to get back and reproduce, or make it out and do what they need to do to an ocean that is increasingly more inhospitable," Wood said.
Vice chair Tom Carpenter of Cordova pointed out that the existing system for avoiding chum salmon is led by the fishing fleet and includes hard caps on the number of chum salmon can be caught. He said that moving away from that system is misguided.
"The potential to harvest more chums, based on the way this proposal is written, is substantially higher, substantially higher, because the adaptive management plan will most likely fall apart and there's no cap to manage it to," Carpenter said.
Board member Olivia Henayee Irwin of Nenana said that numerous factors are at play in crashes for both chum and chinook stocks across Western Alaska. But she said it is time to rein in the Area M fishery.
"I cannot make any decisions about warming, water temperatures, ichthyophonus, global market prices, the demand for fish on a domestic and global scale. We cannot control habitat," Irwin said. "But today, what we can make a decision on is whether or not we are going to protect and preserve these stocks that are in abysmal numbers."
In 2023, the board voted down another proposal that would have also resulted in reduced fishing time during the June Area M fishery.
