WILL ENDANGERED SPECIES PETITION DISRUPT ALASKA'S SALMON FISHERIES?

 

I’ll always remember a couple of days spent fishing for salmon on Alaska’s Kenai River.

It was during July 2004, when my wife, two friends, and I were enjoying some time at a lodge in Soldotna.  The river was out back, the sockeye run was on, and after dinner we’d take a walk down to the water and cap off the day’s action catching larger fish by hooking a few sockeye in the unending light of the sub-Arctic summer.

But we hadn’t come to Alaska for little salmon.  We came for halibut, big lingcod, rockfish and, of course, for that largest of salmon, the Chinook, which the Alaskans refer to as “kings.”

On our first fishing day, we were on the river, back-trolling plugs draped with skeins of salmon eggs.  We had high hopes, because in Alaska, where salmon are part of the culture, the fish are intensively managed, and our first day on the Kenai was on one of those days of the week when it was illegal to deploy gill nets at the river’s mouth, so the Kenai was flush with fresh-run fish.

We caught a lot of salmon that day, but were slow to put any in the fish box.  In order to limit fishing mortality, Alaska requires that, once someone keeps a Kenai king salmon, they must immediately note that fish on their license and stop fishing for the rest of the day.  We were having too good of a time, amid some beautiful country that we had never seen before, to be forced to head in early.

But eventually each of us caught a Chinook worth taking home.  Mine went 43 pounds, our largest of the day, but none were particularly small.  We then spent a couple of days by running out of Lighthouse Point for Cook Inlet halibut, and making a 70-mile run from Seward to the fertile bottom fishing grounds of Montague Island at the edge of Prince William Sound, but on our last outing of the trip, we returned to the Kenai for one more shot at the kings.

The gill nets were back in the river, so we knew that fishing would be slower than it was the first time we went out, but we still had our hopes.  I was in an unreasonably cocky mood, and backed myself into a corner by announcing that I wouldn’t kill a fish smaller than the 43 that I had already put on ice.  I started regretting that comment after an hour or so, when we were yet to hook our first fish, and regretted it all the more when I landed a fish that might have been in the high 20s or maybe low 30s, and was obliged to return it to the river.

Despite the gill nets, we all managed to catch something.  Theresa, my wife, put a 42 in the box, and both of our friends also scored with smaller Chinook, leaving me as the only one in the boat who still had a line in the water.  Finally, I hooked a fish good enough that I worried about losing it, that tore up the river and, as I finally worked it close, came out in a jump that bounced it off the side of the boat and, as the line went slack for a moment, made me think that my worries came true.

But the fish was finally netted and brought aboard.  Back at the launching ramp, when it was finally hung on a scale, it pulled the needle down to 51 pounds.

Just then, a little local girl maybe 10 years old walked over and asked what it weighed.  When told “51” she gave an almost-grown-up scoff before loudly declaring “That’s all?  I had a 72 this morning!” and slowly walking away.

Thus can overinflated egos be popped.

But the Kenai was like that just two decades ago. 

In our two days on the river, we probably landed between 15 and 20 king salmon, keeping our limit of eight and releasing the rest.  There’s no reason to believe that the other boats on the river—and there were a lot of them—weren’t enjoying similar success.  That doesn’t count the fish that were caught in the gill nets downstream, by anglers fishing from shore, and in the subsistence fisheries farther upriver, where Alaskan Natives depend on the salmon for food.  Returning Chinook filled the Kenai back then.

Since then, Chinook numbers have crashed.

So far this year—and admittedly, there is a lot of the year left to go—the sonar used to count salmon entering the river has counted only 271 kings.  Biologists want to see somewhere between 3,900 and 6,600 Chinook salmon escape harvest to ensure a successful spawn.

Some view the Chinook’s situation as dire, so last January, one salmon conservation group, the Wild Fish Conservancy, presented the National Marine Fisheries Service with a petition to list

“all Chinook populations that entered the marine environment of the Gulf of Alaska”

as either threatened or endangered pursuant to the federal Endangered Species Act.  That is a somewhat ambiguous request, so NMFS has

“interpret[ed] the petitioner’s request as asking NMFS to consider populations of Chinook salmon on the southern side of the Alaska Peninsula, including Kodiak Island, Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, and the [Gulf of Alaska] coastline and inside waters of Southeast Alaska to the United States/Canada border at approximately 54^o 45’ N latitude.”

The description of the area covered by the petition was not the petition’s only flaw.  Given the significance of the action requested, to both the salmon and to the many Alaskans who are connected to the commercial, recreational, and subsistence salmon fisheries, the petition was apparently a sloppy and poorly-researched effort.  NMFS has noted that

“We have reviewed the petition, the literature cited in the petition, and other literature and information available in our files.  We identified numerous factual errors, omissions, incomplete references, and unsupported assertions and conclusions within the petition.”

Yet, notwithstanding such flaws, on May 24, 2024, NMFS issued a so-called “90-day finding” which stated that

“the petition, viewed in the context of information readily available in our files, presents substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted.”

More particularly, NMFS stated in the 90-day finding that

“we find that some of the information in the petition, in particular the missed escapement goals in recent years for many stocks in the petitioned area, and evidence of decreasing size and age at maturity, would lead a reasonable person to believe that the petitioned action may be warranted.”

Now, NMFS is soliciting scientific and commercial information from any interested party, which it will consider when making its final decision on whether to list Gulf of Alaska chinook.

It is far from certain that such listing will occur.  In its 90-day finding, NMFS seemingly expressed some skepticism that information justifying a listing would be received, noting that it made its recent decision

“In light of this uncertainty [about the number and structure of sub-populations of Chinook in the area covered by the petition] and the low statutory standard at the 90-day stage,”

thus implying real doubt that the same information leading to the finding would be adequate to meet the more rigorous standards that govern the final decision.

Nonetheless, there is concern that any listing of Chinook salmon would have a severe negative impact on fisheries for other salmon species.  A recent article in the National Fisherman observes that

“the listing could severely curb fisheries directed toward Alaska’s other four species: sockeyes, chums, cohos, and pinks.  This would be an endangering blow to the commercial fishing industry.

“In regimes to protect weaker stocks such as the chinooks, which return en masse with other species, the listing could force managers to close fisheries directed for the harvest of lucrative sockeyes and plentiful pinks at Kodiak, Cook Inlet, the Alaska Peninsula, and Prince William Sound.”

It’s also possible that the impact could spread well beyond the Gulf of Alaska salmon fisheries.  

There has been a long and ongoing debate about the number of Chinook salmon taken as bycatch in mid-water pollock trawls.  Currently, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council has set a hard bycatch cap of 60,000 Chinook salmon each year, which is divided among different sectors; the pollock fleet is effectively governed by a smaller, 47,591 Chinook maximum.  But not all, and probably a minority, of the the Chinook caught by the trawlers come from the Gulf of Alaska, so there are smaller, region-specific caps in effect there, with pollock trawlers limited to a total 24,999 Chinook limit, which is broken down between the Central and Western parts of the Gulf, while trawlers seeking other groundfish may kill another 7,600 Chinook, distributed across three sectors of the fleet.

Should Gulf of Alaska Chinook be listed, some or all of such bycatch would be considered an illegal take, and the relevant fisheries shut down unless and until they could obtain permits that allowed a limited number of Chinook to be taken incidentally.

Given the impacts of a listing, the State of Alaska is not pleased with the conclusions of NMFS’ 90-day finding.  A spokesman for the state declared,

“The petition was clearly drafted by people with little knowledge of Alaska and Alaska salmon stocks.  It was rife with significant factual errors, omits important data that are widely available, and does not accurately describe the status of chinook salmon in Alaska.  It is mind boggling that NMFS could make a positive finding based on cherry-picked data to support a pre-determined viewpoint.”

Alaska argues that the escapement numbers are a poor criteria to use when considering a threatened or engangered listing.

“Simply failing to meet an escapement goal that is calculated to meet maximum sustainable yield does not mean a stock is at risk of extinction,”

an argument that might well be justified provided that fishing mortality can be effectively eliminated, and only the survival of the Chinook is a consideration when determining how many returning fish may be sufficient.

Of course, in March of this year, despite the plight of the Kenai’s Chinook, Alaska’s Board of Fisheries voted to reduce the escapement goals for late-run fish in the river, in order to create more commercial fishing opportunities for other salmon species.  Thus, the state’s views on Chinook escapement probably ought to be read with a big grain of salt.

Still, Roland Maw, a director of the United Cook Inlet Drift Association, a commercial fishing group, also questions using the escapement data as an indication that the Kenai run, in particular, may be endangered.  He notes that the figures emphasize the number of three, four, and five year old fish returning to the river, individuals typically measuring between 32 and 34 inches in length.  He opines that

“It is highly probable that, in the Kenai, the spawning escapement goals are being achieved and possibly exceeded when all age classes of chinook are enumerated.”

Whether that’s true, or whether it is just an argument based on hope, is something that NMFS will ultimately need to figure out.

In the meantime, it’s clear that if at least one run of Chinook in the Gulf of Alaska is found to be either endangered or threatened, however unlikely that finding might appear right now, that decision will have a big impact on people and resources outside of the Chinook fishery.  

Thus, it’s probably appropriate to ask how and why a fishery that seemed to be thriving just twenty years ago has gotten to the point where an endangered species listing is, if not probable, then at least a real possibility.  And it's also appropriate to look back and ask whether there is anything that fishery managers might have done to keep the fishery--and the Chinook population--from falling so far downhill.

For while it is not at all certain that NMFS will list the Chinook under the ESA, the one thing that is certain, beyond any reasonable doubt, is that the Chinook will not be the last species of fish to be subject to a listing position.  For that reason alone, we should try to learn from the Chinook's situation, to better understand how things go wrong, and how mistakes may be averted, to perhaps prevent other species of fish from sharing the Chinook's fate.