Homer Alaska - Seawatch

The CHAs were established in 1972, but there has been no management plan in place until now. Mark Fink, with Fish and Game's habitat division, said the question is not so much "why now," as "why so long?"

"We have regulations on the books in general for all of our refuges, critical habitat areas and sanctuaries," he said. "But we haven't had a separate management plan for these five areas in Bristol Bay."

The reason for that, he said, was lack of staffing.

"We have about 32 (critical habitat) areas statewide, and we only have management plans for about half of them," he said. "We've had a loss of staff for many years, and just the last couple of years got back staffing to work on those plans."

Bristol Bay quickly rose to the top of the pile with proposals to open offshore areas to oil and gas leasing.

"We focused our planning areas on areas that had likely potential for human-induced impact," he said. "Bristol Bay was kind of out there, didn't seem to be threatened too much by development and that sort of thing. When the oil and gas kicked in, that said 'we gotta get back to Bristol Bay.'"

Fink said that these CHAs could not have any effect on the proposed Pebble Mine, because they start on the southern edge of Bristol Bay at the Egigik River, which is geographically separate from the Naknek/Kvichak drainage that is potentially threatened by Pebble development.

The draft plan is clearly laid out with management plan goals, proposed policies, issues covered by proposed policies and an evaluation of the policy's effect. It is further broken down into topics such as motorized vehicles, recreational and harvest activities, cabins and structures, and habitat and population enhancement, among many others.

Also included in the draft plan are the results of several public meetings held in the Bristol Bay area in November, including public comments from those meetings.

Find the draft management plan as well as instructions for submitting comments at www.adfg.state.ak.us/news/2010/2-23-10_nr.php.

Halibut continues to trickle in, slowed considerably by weather, which has helped keep the price in the record range.

While not as eye-popping as the opening price of $5.95-$6.25 per pound, the second week of the season was still seeing prices well above anything paid last year, at $5 to $5.55 per pound.

Southeast Alaska and the Central Gulf of Alaska continue to be the only areas with fish crossing the docks. As of Monday, landings were considerably higher in Seward than in Homer or Kodiak, common for the early part of the season when the boats with black cod and halibut IFQs fish the Seward Gully and deliver in Seward, where there is a processing plant to process the black cod.

Halibut in other ports are generally de-headed and put into cardboard totes for travel down the highway, where black cod are processed and frozen at the Icicle Seafoods plant in Seward before being shipped to market.

As of Monday, area 3A, central Gulf of Alaska, has seen total landings of 759,092 pounds since the season opened March 6, with 51 percent going to Seward, 25 percent to Homer, and 4 percent to Kodiak.

In area 2C, Southeast Alaska, 151,540 pounds has been landed, 3 percent of the total quota for the area.

While the landings seem scarce, they are actually higher than last year, which also opened to stormy weather, and saw only 700,000 pounds landed in the first two weeks of the season.

It is, however, considerably different than previous years. From 2000 to 2008, the average deliveries for the first two weeks of the season were 2.6 million pounds.

This week's milder weather will undoubtedly increase deliveries and result in lower prices.

The release of the National Marine Fisheries Service biological opinion on the status of Stellar sea lions has been delayed, awaiting the return of the head of NMFS in Alaska.

Jim Balsinger has been acting head of NMFS nationwide and is returning to his position as head of the Alaska region. He has asked for time to fully review the opinion and talk to stakeholders and scientists before releasing it to the public.

The opinion was scheduled for release last week, and was anxiously awaited by the fishing industry, which has faced multiple restrictions due to the endangered status of the sea lions.

There is currently no schedule for its release, although it is still tentatively on the schedule of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council's April agenda.

Cristy Fry has commercial fished in Homer since 1978. She also designs and builds gear for the industry. She currently longlines for halibut and gillnets salmon in upper Cook Inlet aboard the F/V Realist. She can be reached at realist468@gmail.com.