It's shaping up to be another record low year for king salmon on the Kuskokwim. We’re halfway though the run, and numbers from the Bethel Test Fishery show king salmon numbers similar to 2012 and 2013 when the king population crashed. People here remember those years as the lowest ever recorded. Each year saw about 100,000 kings. Since then tight fishing regulations have followed.
The state Fish and Game department shared these low numbers at a meeting on Wednesday in Bethel. Attending were a group of Kuskokwim residents who advise the state on salmon management.
The news to the standing-room-only crowd, and to those participating via phone, did not come as a surprise.
“Traditionally by now, over half my fish is in my smokehouse, smoking," said Walter Jim, President of the Bethel Orutsararmiut Native Council.
“But if you look across the river at any of these fish camps in these sloughs," he continued, "there’s no smoke coming out of these smokehouses. I prepared my fish camp for nothing.”
There hasn’t been a gillnet fishing opening on the Kuskokwim in more than a week and a half. That’s when the feds took over management of king salmon from the mouth of the Kuskokwim upstream to Aniak. Prior to that, gillnet fish openings under the state were sparse.
Frustrated, residents sent a clear message to managers at Wednesday’s meeting: “Let us fish.”
Ivan Ivan traveled from Akiak to attend. He said that without fish, people were in “mental anguish.”
“We are fish people. We need fish. They’re desperate right now,” said Ivan.
The meeting featured special guests Hazel Nelson, the Director of the Division of Subsistence, and Sam Cotten, the Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
To these visitors, Sandra Nicori of Kwethluk tried to convey the importance of salmon to people living on the Kuskokwim, comparing it to shopping for food in a city grocery store.
“If we restricted people from buying meat, anything from the store, then they’d see how desperate we are,” Nicori said.
Managers reminded residents that other forms of fishing remain open, like rod and reel, fish wheels, and dipnets: methods that allow kings to be returned to the water alive to reach their spawning grounds.
But residents said that these methods, along with years of being limited to four-inch mesh gillnets for periods, could be depleting whitefish, which are smaller than salmon.
And the list of concerns continued.
People predicted combat fishing would occur amid limited openings. Callers said that people were stealing fish from drying racks, and were worried that more desperate acts could follow. People warned that without openings, people who attempted to fish would become criminals.
Others worried that the Bering Sea Pollock fleet was catching king salmon headed to the Kuskokwim as by-catch. Some also had concerns about the way the state collects salmon numbers.
And the question was asked again and again: what will people eat during winter if they’re not getting enough fish during summer?
State Commissioner Sam Cotten said that their concerns were not falling on deaf ears. However, he reminded the crowd:
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that one of the primary responsibilities in my job, and with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, is to protect the fish. To make sure we get escapement, that we don’t overfish.”
Then Cotten asked, regarding Kuskokwim Kings:
“Who else is going to bear that burden of conservation besides you?”
Why the king salmon numbers are so low, managers say, is still unknown. But they do know that kings mostly return to the Kuskokwim as four to six-year-olds, and the parents of this run's four and five-year-olds were part of the 2012 and 2013 crash. During those years, the kings did not meet escapement goals that the managers felt were necessary to replenish fish stocks, and many kings did not reach their spawning grounds.
General unrest filled the tightly packed room. Ken Stahlnecker, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says that they’ve seen fishermen complying with the restrictions so far, but federal law enforcement in the area has told him that they don’t think it can last.
“They have been sensing more resistance."
Federal managers will be meeting with the state and the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission on Friday to consider opening a gillnet opportunity.
