The 2023 commercial pot shrimp fishery in Southeast Alaska will open May 15. Fishermen targeting pot shrimp missed out on their usual October opener last year following a season change set by the Alaska Board of Fish.
Fishermen expressed frustration over the season change during a preseason meeting held Feb. 1 by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. About 70 people from across Southeast attended the Zoom meeting to review the department’s shrimp surveys and catch-limit estimates.
In previous years, the pot shrimp season ran from Oct. 1 until end of February. During its March 2022 meeting in Anchorage, the Board of Fish passed a proposal put forward by the Sitka Fish and Game Advisory Committee that changed the season to open May 15.
Proponents of the season change said that fishing shrimp in the spring and summer instead of the fall and winter will benefit shrimp populations in Southeast by allowing mature female shrimp to lay their eggs before they are caught by fishermen.
Frustrated fishermen said last week that the change limits their fishing opportunities.
“You turned our world upside down with no data. You have no data on shrimp in May. It’s a bad time to try to fish in May,” Wrangell fisherman Alan Reeves told the department during the meeting. “They might not have eggs, but they’ll still be hiding under a shelf because they’re soft-shelled.”
Fishermen also expressed concerns about the quality of spot shrimp meat during spring and summer months; about competition between commercial, sport and subsistence shrimp harvesters at the same time; and market competition with spot shrimp fishermen in British Columbia who participate in a commercial opening at about the same time.
Shrimp biologist Max Schoenfeld said Alaska Department of Fish and Game surveys show shrimp stocks are in bad shape across Southeast. In comments to the Board of Fish last year about the proposed May opener, Fish and Game said changing to a spring season would lend itself to biological conservation.
“Fishing on the stock in the spring would also allow females carrying eggs in the fall to brood and hatch their eggs before being subject to fishing mortality, which may enhance long-term stock resilience,” the department wrote in support of the proposed season change.
This change in timing would mean a larger shrimp population and therefore a higher cap for pot shrimp harvest in the future, the department wrote.
But during last week’s meeting, Fish and Game shrimp biologist Quinn Smith said the department will cut the pot shrimp fishery’s guideline harvest level ahead of the May opener.
The projected harvest reduction is meant to account for the fact that shrimp bearing no eggs in the spring will weigh less than shrimp harvested in fall. About 3% of total poundage of shrimp caught in the fall pot fishery comes from the eggs, Smith said.
The department will meet in March to set catch limits for the spring shrimp pot fishery areas based on Fish and Game’s surveys of those areas.
Chris Guggenbickler, a fisherman and chair of the Wrangell Fish and Game Advisory Committee, expressed frustration about the expectation of tighter catch limits.
“This (spring season) was sold as a benefit to the fishery that there may be more (shrimp) available for harvest,” Guggenbickler said. “Because we know less about fishing at this time of year, because we know less about the distribution, it’s going to lead to precautionary approaches and it’s going to lead to less shrimp being harvested. Who knows what the market will do, because at the end of the day, that’s where the value is achieved for us as fishermen.”
Overall pot shrimp harvests have declined along with the decline in shrimp populations, Fish and Game wrote in a 2021 fishery management report. During the 2003-2004 season, fishermen caught more than 1.1 million pounds of shrimp. During the 2021-2022 season, fishermen caught 476,441 pounds of shrimp, according to department reports.
The pot shrimp fishing season will begin May 15 and close at the end of July. Individual management areas will close when the guideline harvest level is reached for an individual area.
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