Board of Fish lets pink salmon stocking plan proceed; commercial fishing supporters celebrate

The Alaska Board of Fish voted 4-3 Tuesday afternoon to let a planned additional stocking of hatchery pink salmon in Prince William Sound go forward.

The board did not take public comment.

It was standing room only at the Egan Center in Anchorage to hear the Board of Fish take up that emergency request from the Kenai River Sport Fishing Association to block the stocking of another 20 million pink salmon in Alaska waters.  The vote was to determine if that stocking, given low salmon runs this year and increasing incidence of hatchery pinks straying into other watersheds and perhaps harming wild runs, constituted an emergency.

Supporters of the pink stocking plan at Tuesday’s Board of Fish meeting. Photo by United Fishermen of Alaska.

Board members Al Cain, Robert Ruffner, Fritz Johnson and chairman John Jensen voted that the stocking did not constitute an emergency, letting the stocking go forward, while members Reed Morisky, Israel Payton and Orville Huntington voted to stop the stocking.

That vote follows a common split on the board between members suppporting commercial fishing versus those supporting sport fishing.

Director of Commercial Fisheries Scott Kelley, who fielded most of the board’s questions on the proposed stocking, repeatedly cited that the department doesn’t have finite data on most of the core issues including how hatchery fish compete with wild fish and how many pink salmon stray from their stocking locations to spawn in other waters.  Board member Huntington, before the vote, voiced concern after seeing stray pinks appearing in his home waterways near Huslia in rural Alaska. 

Opponents including KRSA say too many pinks are eating forage that would otherwise support other more popular salmon species.

Pinks, by far the most numerous of salmon in the Alaska commercial catch, have little appeal to sport or personal use fishermen. A significant portion of all commercially caught salmon in Alaska are spawned in hatcheries.

The audience included a large contingent of commercial fishing supporters, including some carrying signs touting the importance of hatcheries and of commercial fishing as family business.

Board and ADF&G staff comments both reflected the lack of knowledge about just how much straying of pinks happens, as well as just how much hatchery salmon compete with wild

Most of the board members agreed that more data is needed to make better decisions on complex topics like this.

KRSA exective director Ricky Gease pointed out after the vote that, by deciding the stocking, potential straying and more competition for forage didn’t consistute an emergency, the department was defacto planning for exactly those results.

A recording of the whole meeting is available online at:  http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=fisheriesboard.main.

The board will next meet October 15-19 in Anchorage and board members pledged to revisit the core questions to this debate then.