In a 5-2 vote, the Alaska Board of Fisheries rejected a proposal to cut by 25% the allowable egg harvest for Southeast salmon hatcheries.
The proposal, submitted by former board member and North Pole resident Virgil Umphenour, sought to “reduce the permitted egg take of pink and chum salmon of each applicable Southeast hatchery … by 25%.”
The board voted Feb. 8, the next-to-last day of its 13-day meeting in Ketchikan.
Similar proposals to significantly cut the egg harvest at Southeast hatcheries have come before the board at least four previous times — all have been defeated.
The Wrangell advisory committee to the Board of Fisheries was unanimous in its opposition to the proposal.
Umpenhour believes that the millions of chum and pink salmon released into the wild by hatcheries every year are affecting the marine environment, to the detriment of wild stocks of other species, like king salmon in Western Alaska. His answer is to reduce the egg take, which would reduce the number of young salmon released by hatcheries.
Southeast residents packed the board meeting to oppose the plan. “Just line up, folks, because we got a long room,” said member Mike Wood, who chaired the session that included public comments the day before the board vote on the proposal.
Umpenhour’s proposal generated only 10 favorable comments from the public, with 400 opposed.
Many stakeholders objected that someone from Fairbanks would try to roll back the economic opportunity that hatcheries provide in Southeast.
“We were in unanimous opposition to this. Initial concerns were that the proposer is not from this region and doesn’t understand the impacts that this would have for communities,” said Heather Bauscher, of Petersburg.
Board Member Curtis Chamberlain, of Anchorage, said he believes there is a growing correlation between the size of hatchery releases in Southeast and the weight and ages of wild stocks harvested elsewhere around the state.
Chamberlain offered a compromise: Rather than cutting pink and chum releases by 25% across the board, he proposed cutting pink production by 7% and the chum egg take by 20%.
When the board met to vote on the proposal, most members found the idea of any reduction in hatchery production to be arbitrary. Member Tom Carpenter, from Cordova, remained unconvinced.
“I have yet to hear any scientific rationale for using these numbers,” he said, “I think that it’s imperative that the board, when they make decisions like this, have some sort of scientific rationale for doing so.”
Member Gerad Godfrey, of Eagle River, agreed, saying he thought the proposal was “an egregious approach.” He added that until he saw a demonstrable, negative impact, “I will continue my time on the board defending the hatchery program.”
Only member Stan Zuray, from Tanana, joined Chamberlain in supporting the reduction. “I am very frustrated as I read the preponderance of peer-reviewed studies showing possible harm from the present Alaska hatchery biomass in the ocean,” said Zuray. “So many Alaska fishermen’s lives and families now depend on hatcheries. I do not believe this is what the original intent of hatcheries was.”
Zuray said Alaska’s hatcheries should never have been allowed to grow to the point where they were needed to sustain Alaska’s fisheries.
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