The paper also reviews state policies and regulatory structure, describes how the resource is managed and provides outputs from the management program including harvest levels and values, the number of fishermen involved, and the current status of Alaska’s salmon stocks.
Detailed information is provided for each of the 11 commercial fishing areas in the state. It also provides information on funding levels and sources that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has used to support its salmon management and assessment programs.
Challenges faced by the state in maintaining and improving resource management and by the state and industry in improving fishery profitability also are discussed.
The report covers the history of salmon fishing and fishery regulation in Alaska from the Russian American Company’s first attempts to control natural resources in the territory in 1799, through the purchase of Alaska from the Russians in 1867, the federal attempts to regulate the resource and the canneries’ attempts to bypass that regulation in the early 1900s, up to modern times.
In 1972, the state Constitution was amended to allow a limited entry program, changing wording that was put into the Constitution due to the special privileges granted to the salmon canning industry by federal fishery regulators prior to statehood, particularly the ownership and use of fish traps, which were quickly outlawed after statehood. The new language made way for the current limited entry program, established by the state legislature in 1973 and a main tool in resource management.
The paper covers another important organizational change that improved fishery management: the opening of numerous Alaska Department of Fish and Game offices in towns and villages across the state that were staffed with area management biologists who were given the authority to address the rapidly changing in-season fishery management needs.
In sharp contrast to the beginning of federal management in 1868 when one treasury agent and an assistant enforced the law and monitored salmon fishing along 34,000 miles of coastline, these area management biologists have been a key ingredient in the recovery of the salmon fisheries state-wide.
The report goes on to cover the history and importance of the state Board of Fisheries, the 2000 Sustainable Fisheries Salmon Policy adopted by the Legislature, and the importance of the work done to establish over 270 separate escapement goals for established salmon stocks or stock aggregates around the state.
It boasts that in contrast to the dismal state of many salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest, Alaska’s salmon stocks are in excellent shape. No stocks have been identified as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and only three have been identified as stocks of management concern under the Sustainable Fisheries Salmon Policy.
Authored by John Clark, Andrew McGregor, Robert Mecum, Paul Krasnowski and Amy Carroll, the report can be found online at http://www.cf.adfg.state.ak.us/.
Cristy Fry has commercial fished in Homer since 1978. She can be reached at cristy-fry@excite.com.
According to the report, salmon fisheries across the state have rebounded by phenomenal numbers under state control, with an average harvest of 172 million fish per year in the 1990s, compared with an average annual harvest of 41 million fish in the 1950s, the last decade of federal management. It describes how these once-depleted fisheries have been rebuilt over the past 45 years into one of the strongest and most sustainable fishery resources in the world.
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