Trawl industry employee reappointed to Alaska fisheries management council

The Biden administration has rejected a nominee for a key Alaska fisheries management post who could have tipped decisions toward the interests of tribes and conservation groups and away from the priorities of the large-boat, Seattle-based trawl industry.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo skipped over the top choice of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, conservation advocate Becca Robbins Gisclair, and instead reappointed the last-ranked nominee on a slate of four candidates that Inslee offered: Anne Vanderhoeven, a trawl industry employee who has been on the panel for several years.

Raimondo’s choice for the open North Pacific Fishery Management Council seat, which was confirmed July 30 by Inslee’s natural resources advisor Ruth Musgrave, comes after what advocates describe as weeks of intense lobbying by supporters of both Gisclair and Vanderhoeven.

The council regulates lucrative commercial fisheries for pollock, cod and other species off Alaska’s North Pacific coast and has been the site of polarized, emotional debate in recent years over the trawl industry’s unintended harvest — known as bycatch — of chum and king salmon that spawn in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers in Western Alaska.

Populations of Yukon and Kuskokwim salmon have crashed in recent years, and while scientists largely attribute the declines to warming ocean temperatures, tribal advocates have also pushed the council to tighten bycatch limits on trawlers.

Vanderhoeven is the director of government affairs at Seattle-based Arctic Storm Management Group.

Gisclair has worked directly with Yukon residents, tribes and conservation advocates and now is senior director for Arctic programs at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy. One trawl official had said that if she was appointed, she would make his industry “squirm for a while.”

“This is a loss for the North Pacific, which Alaskans care about and subsist on,” said Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a former Democratic state representative from Sitka who advocated for Gisclair’s appointment. “I think this is bad for Alaska, and Becca would have been better for the prudent management of resources on the North Pacific.”

A spokesman for Inslee, Mike Faulk, declined to comment, as did officials with the two largest trawl industry trade groups, the At-Sea Processors Association and United Catcher Boats.

The North Pacific Council has 11 voting members — five nominated by the governor of Alaska, two nominated by the governor of Washington, and four of whom are top fisheries regulators from Alaska, Washington, Oregon and the federal government.