Regarding Mike Heimbuch’s commentary (ADN, Aug. 4) and Greg Svendsen’s response (ADN, Aug. 10), I want to add that the Department of Fish and Game has the technology to track any king salmon caught in the ocean to the river it came from and is heading back to from its DNA. We allow commercial fishermen to self-report the king salmon they kill and throw back, without checking to see where kings caught, for example in the Bering Sea, were heading. That is like asking a crook to provide evidence against himself.
Fish and Game will claim global warming, sea lions, etc., are the reason salmon numbers are declining. How about allowing commercial fishermen to intercept salmon in Cook Inlet before they get back to their spawning grounds, and then lamenting we didn’t get enough escapement back to the rivers in upper Cook Inlet? The point is they don’t know, and the question remains: Why don’t they? One year, commercial fishermen reported they killed and threw back 55,000 kings in the Bering Sea. What if those fish were heading back to the Kenai or Southcentral rivers?
The point is, Fish and Game is not doing their job, or I should say the policymakers at the top are not using the resources and manpower they have to find out why there is a decline, not just surmise what it might be. There should be a public hearing, here in Anchorage with the biologists and leaders of Fish and Game answering questions about their policies. They should be questioned by the people they work for, you and me, and be held accountable.
— Jack Olive
Anchorage
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