OPINION: Alaska’s fishery outlook is darker than the state claims

In his July 24 opinion, Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game used marketing slogans to show how great Alaska fisheries fare under Fish and Game management. Meanwhile, the entire Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim, or AYK, region has had severe reductions or closures because of extreme salmon declines on the edge of collapse.

Alaska’s fisheries management is not the rosy global model it professes. It is riddled with politics instead of science, ignoring mandatory precautionary management approaches, such as not considering ecosystem food webs, and not managing, as required by law, for the weakest stock in a mixed-stock fishery. Just saying our fish are sustainable does not make it true.

Silencing Fish and Game staff and narrowing debate in the Board of Fisheries and Legislature has closed healthy scientific inquiry. Focusing management to maximize only larger production of wild and hatchery fish, dismisses sustained yield for local Alaska community fisheries.

Undetected collectives of smaller wild runs are masked and lost in these large mixed stocks. This has caused many wild salmon populations and subsistence cultures to dwindle.

Science-based analysis is not encouraged in Fish and Game when it differs from its “one-voice” policy. Competing on the global stage, instead of focusing on domestic food security, devotes management to international corporate interests for the highest bidder, overwhelming diverse local fisheries. This creates economies that benefit wealthy non-residents, while destabilizing many Alaskan fishing communities.

Instead of addressing causes of declines, Fish and Game management often promotes “shifting baselines” by lowering sustainable escapement goals to make populations look healthier than they are. Just changing numbers further exacerbates decline. Instead, we need to investigate problems affecting the runs and track all escapements in relation to history.

Simultaneously, over-capitalized Limited Entry fleets tax the ability to manage for conservation. While “sustainability” is enshrined in our state constitution, we allow profit to get in the way of precautionary principles.

The Marine Stewardship Council, or MSC, evaluates and sets standards for sustainable fishing around the world. MSC is designed to protect the integrity of sustainability for consumers as well as supporting healthy genetics and ecosystems. Unfortunately for Fish and Game’s political goals, MSC makes it harder to cut sustainability corners. To circumvent MSC’s independent review of policies and practices, Fish and Game’s response was to create an “in-house” certification process, much too closely aligned with management, called Responsible Fisheries Management, or RFM.

Fortunately, retail customers demand and trust MSC certification, urging Fish and Game to comply with MSC’s superior standards. The letter the department wrote to MSC regarding the Russian situation was a diversionary tactic away from the responsibility of sustaining the last viable wild salmon on Earth — a responsibility the department is failing without unbiased science for future generations.

Nancy Hillstrand owns and operates Coal Point Seafood Co., a quality custom seafood processor serving local small-boat operators for local and domestic markets located on the Homer Spit.

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