After deliberation on Saturday the Alaska Board of Fisheries rejected a proposal to scrap the Southeast Alaska management plan for Dungeness crab fisheries.
The BoF is currently convened in Sitka for its meeting on the region’s shellfish and finfish regulation change proposals. It meets every three years, the last one being held in Wrangell in January 2015. Starting its shellfish meeting on January 11, members took testimony for 155 different proposals related to crab, shrimp and other miscellaneous shellfish.
A late comer to this year’s slate of proposals, Proposal 235 had been put forward by the board itself late last fall. It proposes repealing the Southeast Alaska area Dungeness crab fishery management plan and replacing it with a model used elsewhere in the state. The proposal follows a disappointing crab fishery for 2017, which had resulted in shortened openings in the spring and fall.
In place since 2000, currently the Dungeness management plan in Southeast specifies a modified size, sex and seasonal approach for the fishery. Season length is determined by projecting total season harvest using effort and harvest from the first two weeks of the season as the fishery’s performance indices. The projected total season harvest is compared to regulatory thresholds and length is set to one of three as specified in the plan.
Opponents to the current plan note that these thresholds were adopted based on harvest levels observed during the late 1990s, and that increased predation of Dungeness crab in the years since has changed the population patterns to the point where the current thresholds may no longer be appropriate. Southeast’s Dungeness fishery is the largest in the state and the only one conducted under this modified model as opposed to a simple sex, size and season approach.
Representing a group of 19 other crabbers from the Wrangell area, fisherman Mike Lockabey voiced the group’s support for doing
away with the current management model in favor of the 3-S approach. In a record copy submission they had submitted, they proposed an amended version of the board’s own proposal.
“Very close to what you had,” Lockabey testified.
In Area A, legal size male Dungeness crab could be taken or possessed during set seasons, from 8 a.m. June 15 through 11:59 p.m. August 15 for the first opening, and between 8 a.m. October 1 and 11:59 p.m. November 30. The area management plan would be directed by 3-S.
“We believe size, sex and season is the norm up and down the coast. We believe it works for us,” Lockabey said.
“Our problem is not our harvest methods and means. The
problem is predation on all sizes and genders of crab, and the compression of the fleet from loss of area to predation.”
The culprit in depleted crab numbers was sea otters, he said, which were growing in number around the region. Lockabey added that this was not the first time he had approached the BoF with a complaint about otters, and was hopeful for its support in seeking protections on the species rolled back to allow for a wider hunt.
After being hunted to extinction in Southeast Alaska and elsewhere during the 19th century, sea otters were one of the marine mammals protected from further commercial harvest under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. Specimens from Southwest Alaska were relocated to Southeast during the 1960s, and a population of 400 has since regained a foothold. While sea otters living in Southwest are listed as threatened by the US Fish and Wildlife Service due to overall declines, the population in Southeast is under no such protection.
Lockabey’s group was not the only party to speak on sea otters, accompanied in a joint letter by the Southeast Alaska Fishermen’s Alliance, SE Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association, Petersburg Vessel Owner’s Association and Shellfish Preservation Alliance being submitted advocating similar support from the board. Letters to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Alaska’s congressional delegation and Gov. Bill Walker were
recommended, citing threats that an expanding population of otters have posed to the sea urchin fishery in Sitka Sound and sea cucumbers on Kuiu Island, both of which have since been closed.
Lockabey added that he has already submitted letters to Zinke and President Donald Trump asking for their support in changing the Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow for a more liberalized harvest of sea otters. Currently only Alaska Native hunters are legally permitted to hunt the animals for subsistence and crafting purposes.
“The reason I wrote them is because I’ve been encouraged by their actions in the North Pacific marine conservation zones,” Lockabey said of the administration. “They’ve opened five up by executive order. I’m also encouraged by the actions they took in Utah, opening up parks and monuments to fishing and hunting and commercial hunting – guiding, if you will.
“They’re acting to reduce these regulations and right wrongs,” he continued. “What’s happened with this is wrong. Nobody in my coalition wants to see the eradication of otters. But we want to see a balance.”
Deliberating the proposal on Saturday, the board ultimately voted down Proposal 235. The Department of Fish and Game were opposed to it, even after BoF substituted in language it had recommended. ADFG director Scott Kelley had pointed out there were reasons for the differences between the Dungeness crab fishery as it is done in Southeast Alaska and the rest of the state.
Board member Israel Payton noted the management plan had a good track record in Southeast, with only two of the past 17 years’ harvests having trouble.
“It seems the department is managing that very well,” he said. “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”
“The sense that I get is they’re pretty uncomfortable with taking this approach,” board member Robert Ruffner added.
The group voted against the proposal in a 1-6 vote. The Board of Fisheries wrapped up its other shellfish proposals Sunday, and began hearing finfish proposals the following day. The meeting is scheduled to continue through next Tuesday.
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