Among the 159 proposals to go before the state Board of Fisheries at its meeting in Ketchikan starting this week is one to reduce Southeast Alaska hatcheries’ chum and pink egg take by 25%. Supporters say it would help wild salmon stocks by reducing their competition with hatchery fish for food.
The Wrangell advisory committee to the Board of Fisheries “adamantly opposes” the proposal, said Chris Guggenbickler, committee chair.
“The hatcheries around here are pretty beneficial to everyone,” he said. “If we didn’t have them,” a lot of people in the fishing industry would suffer financially due to reduced harvests.
The committee voted unanimously Dec. 17 to oppose the proposal, which will come before the state board at its meeting scheduled for Jan. 28 through Feb. 9.
The committee resolution is explicit: It urges the board to reject the proposal “to prevent detrimental impacts on Southeast Alaska’s hatchery programs, coastal communities and fishery-dependent livelihoods.”
The resolution further states that reducing the egg take — and production — of pink and chum salmon presents “a significant risk to the hatchery-supported ecosystem in Southeast, threatening the stability of salmon resources relied upon by commercial, sport and subsistence harvesters.”
The proposal — which has come before the board at past meetings and has always been rejected — was filed by Fairbanks area resident Virgil Umphenour, a former Board of Fisheries member.
There were only a few public comments in support of the proposal among the few dozen opposition statements received by the board’s comment deadline.
The Department of Fish and Game opposes the proposal because it likely would “have little effect on marine competition among salmon species,” although the department acknowledged that “straying” Southeast hatchery chum “have impacted the ability to assess the status of wild chum salmon returns in some areas.”
Ketchikan’s advisory committee also voted unanimously to oppose the proposal.
Umphenour has campaigned for decades to regulate pink and chum salmon production by restricting the number of eggs that hatcheries can rear and release. Since the late 1990s, he’s backed about a dozen proposals, contending that hatchery salmon produced in Alaska and Asia compete with wild salmon on consumer markets and in the marine environment, weakening genetic diversity and otherwise exacerbating threats to wild salmon stocks.
From southern Southeast to Kodiak Island, Alaska’s private nonprofit aquaculture associations operate 26 facilities. Statewide, hatchery salmon generate about 16% of salmon fishermen’s combined earnings, according to an economic impact study prepared for the hatchery industry.
The first few Alaska salmon hatcheries started out in the 1950s and 1960s. The state began operating hatcheries in 1971; the nonprofits emerged in 1975 and have led the growth in the industry.
Most Alaska hatchery output comes from chum salmon in Southeast and pink salmon in Prince William Sound.
The Ketchikan-based Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association operates hatcheries and release sites on Etolin and Mitkof islands in the Wrangell area. The nonprofit opposes the proposal and hopes it won’t gain traction during the Ketchikan meeting, but with “so much is on the line, you can’t take anything for granted,” General Manager Susan Doherty told the Ketchikan Daily News.
She cautioned that some newer members of the state board “aren't necessarily favorable to hatcheries in general.”
The seven-member board is comprised of residents from Anchorage, the Interior and Prince William Sound. There are no Southeast residents on the board, which is appointed by the governor.
Anna Laffrey of the Ketchikan Daily News contributed to this report.
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