Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Cook Inlet Fish Wars- Johnstone Hearings

There is so much going on below and above the water in these cases and the managers have done shut a horrible job of maintaining fish stocks that it certainly looks like it should be someone else's turn to give it a try.

There is so much going on below and above the water in these cases and the managers have done shut a horrible job of maintaining fish stocks that it certainly looks like it should be someone else's turn to give it a try.

Agreed! There’s so much wrong that finding a place to start would be daunting. I’d start with the by-catch and require that salmon, halibut, cod, etc be kept and processed onboard the trawlers so as to be marketable. The bycatch from large trawlers is incredible and dumping dead salmon or halibut over the side because it’s not the targeted species makes no sense to me and is counterintuitive to conservation. If they were made to keep it and process the fish properly they might lose storage in their fish holds and they might not be able to make as many McFish sandwiches or meet their corporate mandated numbers but they would NOT be allowed to sell it, instead it could offset the IFQ’s of those on the “list” for the corresponding species. After a certain number or tonnage of bycatch is met then that vessel is done fishing and returns to port to give their bycatch to the smaller IFQ owners. Some of those smaller operators might never need to leave port all season but still make money as if their season was great. The trawler might be targeting pollock for the McFish sandwich but if they haul in a load of say King salmon then they would be required to care for those fish FIRST so they bring fair market value to someone holding that IFQ. Any discrepancy in quality and lower than market price would be the responsibility of the company to make up the difference to the IFQ holders. It would essentially “buy down” the amount of fish left to catch. Observers on every boat with a minimum of 2 and going up from there depending upon the size of the vessel paid for by the trawler but NOT employed by the trawler. Massive fines for the law breakers, so massive that it’s a major disincentive to fug up. Those fines should be reinvested into real fisheries management and/or to buy out the yearly IFQ of individual owner operators of smaller vessels, it would not go to the state or feds! Because of the offset between by-catch and IFQ holders those boats that don’t need to fish because it was done for them means less/no fuel costs and less carbon emissions from the vessels that stay in port. 😉

The by-catch could also be used to support subsistence fishermen during times of depleted returns. I’d also like to see less exportation of our resources to Asia with a cap on the exportation of fish and raw wood products. Asia has an insatiable appetite for everything and they’ll exterminate entire ecosystems to feed their greed. Let those without the natural production of these valuable American resources eat farmed fish and buy finished wood products from us, reopening mills that employ Americans and increasing the standard of living in communities that only have fishing or logging as their primary economic driver.

We need to take care of ourselves first and that includes jealousy guarding our natural resources.

If only they could "manage" mosquitoes.

Whatever you do, don't shut the hatcheries down.

Hatcheries are fine... UNLESS they are adding humpies and dogs to the mix. How many hundred billion extra humpies are being added to the ocean every year?

Depends on what you consider "extra"


Overall the hatchery system puts in less than 2 billion humpies yearly

A lot of your motives and thoughts are sound, unfortunately they run to the naive. And that is not intended as an insult. Salmon do not have IFQs, for example. And we DO NOT want them there either!

The reason draggers do not have to bring in their halibut bycatch is simply because it would then be documented and would reveal the far larger scope than is currently accepted.

The observer program is a joke. The Captain picks the drags they get to look at, for example.

It is complex.

Didn't you also mention that one observer couldn't even recognize Salmon?

Only one hatchery in SE produces pinks.

Hatcheries don't produce kings because they lose money on them, it costs too much to raise them vs what they make back when they return. Unfortunately no hatchery will produce just coho/kings without some outside support from a hatchery that produces pinks/chums or government funding (Little Port Walter).

There is a guy that keeps trying to start a king hatchery at Baranof warm springs, he wants to do something like 100 million kings. Keeps getting rejected and gets a lot of opposition from locals because "they don't want to look at a hatchery". It is a good spot for a hatchery and it could be successful.

Port Armstrong is doing something groundbreaking with their coho production. They send half their production to saltwater before the fish smolt, at around 5 grams. The limiting factor for raising coho is freshwater rearing space. If they return well, it could mean that hatcheries could ramp up their coho production without changing their freshwater rearing space. This will be the first year for a return from about a 2.5 million smolt release of these fish so it will be interesting to see how they return.

Releasing coho smolt straight to the salt seems like a good idea that could work eventually and allow hatcheries to produce many coho for a reasonable amount of money. Back in the late 80's to early 90's I spent a lot of time in Karluk lagoon on the West side of Kodiak Island. At one time 2/3rds of the red salmon pack in the world was coming from this 20 mile long river. When returns inevitably started to fall off they built a cannery but located it on the lagoon which is tidal. The smolt were released straight into the lagoon as they did not understand why a lake was necessary for reds. When I was there 80+ years later there were a few red salmon that returned to the lagoon every year and successfully spawned in the brackish lagoon right in front of the long gone hatchery. I spoke with fish and game when they were beach seining some sockeye there to sample. They said that they would use the fish for brood stock if there was a low enough incidence of some virus that sockeye carry naturally. Speaking to the guys the following year they said there was too much of the virus to use these unique intertidally spawning fish for stocking other rivers.

If the powers that be would just spend an hour in this forum section, all the worlds problems would be solved.

And yet you still haven't gotten a clue...….

If I was looking for one I wouldn’t look here, or expect it to come from you.

Crysgale is simply doing her best.

Hint..................