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Copper River Fishing Rights

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 May 2006, 18:04 CDT

By Margaret Bauman, Alaska Journal of Commerce, Anchorage

May 8--Commercial fishermen who harvest the world-renowned Copper River king and sockeye salmon have filed suit in Alaska Superior Court in hopes of retaining critical early run harvest rights.

"We do not take this lightly," said James Mykland of Cordova, who has fished the lucrative Copper River fishery for three decades. The harvest of the oil-rich chinooks and reds begins in mid-May.

The gillnet division of Cordova District Fishermen United felt they had to take the matter to court April 21, after the Alaska Board of Fish imposed mandatory commercial fishing restrictions for the first two weeks of the fishery, no matter what the abundance of fish, he said.

Early-run kings and reds in the first salmon run of the year command the highest prices per pound for fishermen.

Without relief from the court, the drift gillnet fleet stands to suffer losses of $4.9 million to $8.3 million, according to the lawsuit.

A major concern, said Mykland, who co-chairs the gillnet division of CDFU, is that the state Department of Fish and Game no longer has flexibility to manage the return in times of high abundance.

Mykland said his organization has tried since the measure passed in December to resolve the matter to no avail with the board of fish and Department of Fish and Game.

The board limited commercial fishing inside the Barrier Islands, a target area for kings, to one opening a week in one small area, allowing for more king salmon to escape upriver. No changes were made on the harvest of sport or personal-use fisheries.

Preliminary state reports on the 2005 commercial fishery show that kings fetched an average of $4.67 a pound, compared to $1.67 a pound for sockeyes.

"This is an agenda pushed forth by the commercial sport guides, who are taking more and more of the Copper River chinook salmon upriver for non-resident sport anglers," Mykland said. "Their clients are predominantly non-resident sport anglers."

Resident commercial fishermen, who make up the bulk of the drift gillnet fleet, should have priority over non-resident sport anglers, he said.

Stephen Daugherty, an assistant attorney general for the state of Alaska who represents the Board of Fish, acknowledged the changes. Still, the board significantly pared down the original proposal that would have prohibited all commercial driftnet fishing within the Barrier Islands for the first three weeks of the season, he said.

"We believe that the board considered all the issues, that the regulations are valid and they will withstand challenge," he said.

According to Daugherty, much of the demand for change came from subsistence users upriver. "There was extensive testimony before the board that upriver subsistence users were not able to meet their subsistence needs for all salmon, primarily for kings," he said. "They said they were seeing fewer and fewer kings upriver."

The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction on the grounds that the board of fish and the state violated the law in enacting and implementing the new regulations for the Copper River and Prince William Sound.

The plaintiff fishermen would suffer significant and irreparable financial harm in the short and long term if these regulations are enforced, said attorneys Peter Van Tuyn and Lee Goodman.

"As an initial matter, drift gillnet fishermen stand to lose a significant portion of their yearly catch and, thus, yearly income," the lawsuit argues.

"Further, the highly successful Copper River salmon branding and marketing effort could be harmed in the long run with even a one-year significant disruption in supply. Finally, Cordova itself stands to suffer significant harm, given how heavily its economy is founded on the Copper River and Prince William Sound fisheries."

The fishermen's organization also objects in the lawsuit to amendments in the Prince William Sound management and salmon enhancement allocation plan, which allocates salmon among purse seine, drift gillnet and set gillnet user groups.

The board narrowed the plan to include only salmon produced by the Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corp., which operates five hatcheries, of which two produce pink salmon, two produce sockeye and one produces pink and chum salmon. The plan excludes wild stocks and salmon produced by the Valdez Fisheries Development Association, which runs one hatchery producing pink salmon.

The pink salmon fisheries are historically purse seine fisheries, while sockeye and chum fisheries are historically harvested by gillnetters. After removing 4 percent for the set gillnet fleet, the new Prince William Sound management plan now allocates 50 percent of the enhanced stocks respectively to the drift gillnet and purse seine fleets. Gillnetters said this plan would deprive them of significant harvests in the upcoming season.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Alaska Journal of Commerce, Anchorage

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Source: Alaska Journal of Commerce

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