SEATTLE (AP) — A ruling from a federal judge in Seattle could effectively shut down commercial king salmon trolling in Southeast Alaska — a valuable industry that supports some 1,500 fishermen — after a Washington state-based conservation group challenged the harvest as a threat to endangered killer whales that eat the prized fish.
The state and the Alaska Trollers Association filed a notice of appeal on May 3, the day after the judge’s decision. The state is asking for a stay of the ruling, pending the appeal.
Wild Fish Conservancy, which brought the lawsuit, said the ruling would help more than just the southern resident orcas of British Columbia and Washington state. The group said that a stop to Southeast king trolling also would help struggling king salmon populations recover along the West Coast, as most of the kings caught in Southeast Alaska spawn in rivers to the south.
But fishing organizations condemned the ruling, saying it threatens Southeast Alaska with economic disaster and would do little or nothing to benefit the orcas.
The summer troll season is scheduled to start July 1.
Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang told the Ketchikan Daily News that he thinks the judge’s ruling is limited to directed troll fisheries on chinook, so troll fishermen could still target other salmon species during the summer while the state’s appeal plays out.
Tom Fisher, a commercial troll fisherman and president of the board of the Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association, has been catching salmon around the area since 1973. He said he was “flat dumbfounded” when he heard of the judge’s ruling.
“Currently I’m at my boat in Wrangell,” Fisher told the Daily News during a phone interview last Thursday. “I was slated to get hauled out of the water today, I’ve cancelled my haul-out. I’ve canceled some work that I was going to have done.”
Fisher estimates he would have spent $2,000 to haul out his boat and prepare for the summer troll season.
“I’m 63 years old and I'm sitting here looking at my livelihood washing out the door.”
On May 2, U.S. District Judge Richard Jones in Seattle ordered the National Marine Fisheries Service to redo a biological opinion that is required for the Southeast king fishery to take place.
Officials have known for months the ruling was a possibility, and the federal agency has been working to draft a new biological opinion, said Linda Behnken, director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association. The industry is hoping it will be released in time to allow fishing this year or that the judge’s decision is put on hold pending appeal.
It remained unclear how likely either scenario was.
“All we can say at this point is that we are reviewing the ruling and considering next steps,” NOAA Fisheries spokesman Michael Milstein said in an email.
Meanwhile, people who work on the boats, at fish processors or in support businesses such as fuel stations and grocery stores in Southeast Alaska are waiting to see if the season will occur or whether they must find work elsewhere for the summer.
“There is so much stress in the lives of every family that relies on this industry,” Behnken said. “We’re in a real quandary until we know whether we can have a fishery.”
Emma Helverson, executive director of Wild Fish Conservancy, said she is sympathetic to the communities’ plight and hopes the government will make emergency funding available to support them. But she also said the industry had long overharvested the fish, also known as chinook.
“Chinook populations are crashing coast-wide, and we need a coastal recovery effort,” she said.
Officials in April canceled commercial and most recreational king salmon fishing off California and much of Oregon for the second time in 15 years after the fish returned in near record-low numbers to California’s rivers.
King salmon are the largest and priciest of the Pacific salmon species, and the Southeast Alaska troll fishery provides them to restaurants and grocery stores around the world.
They also make up the bulk of the diet for endangered orcas in the waters of the Salish Sea between Washington state and Canada. Due to overfishing, dams, development and pollution, chinook runs in the Northwest are at a small fraction of their historical abundance, and the orca population has suffered in turn. Just 73 whales remain, inbreeding is a severe problem, and scientists are warning of extinction.
While the endangered whales don’t typically venture as far north as Alaska, a huge amount of the king salmon caught in the Southeast Alaska troll fishery originate from rivers in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. If those fish weren’t caught, many would be available for the orcas to eat as the salmon migrate to their rivers to spawn, the Wild Fish Conservancy argued.
In 2019, NOAA Fisheries approved the most recent decade-long plan for the commercial troll fishery for chinook in Southeast Alaska, with harvest limits set during negotiations between the U.S. and Canada.
The agency acknowledged the harvest was likely to hurt the orcas and protected Puget Sound and Columbia River king salmon stocks, but it said it would offset the harm by spending about $100 million on habitat restoration and increasing hatchery production of chinook by 20 million smolts per year, thus providing more food for the whales.
Last year, a magistrate judge who reviewed the case, Michelle Petersen, took issue with that, finding that under federal law, NOAA Fisheries could not rely on hypothetical mitigation measures to offset actual harm to protected species. Because the funding for the restoration efforts was uncertain, because there were no binding deadlines for the mitigation measures, and because the agency did not actually study what effect an increase of hatchery production would mean for wild salmon stocks or orcas, that mitigation was legally insufficient, Peterson said.
The question then became whether fishing could continue while the agency addressed the legal errors. Under the judge’s ruling May 2, the answer was no.
Paul Olson, a Southeast Alaska troller who lives in Plain, Washington, noted that the fishery has existed for well over a century — evidence that it is sustainable, he said.
And, he said, even as the industry has seen catch limits dramatically reduced over the years, the endangered orcas have not recovered — suggesting that the problems plaguing orcas have little to do with a fishery in Southeast Alaska made up of small operators who catch and handle each fish individually, far removed from massive factory trawlers scraping the ocean clean.
“We should be the poster child of the kind of fishing that everybody wants to have,” Olson said.
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