February 11, 2024 — The hatchery debate touches on the biggest unknown in salmon ecology: What occurs in the ocean between a salmon’s birth, and when it returns to spawn?
Proposal 156 was submitted to the Board of Fish by Virgil Umpenhour, a member of the Fairbanks Region Fish & Game Advisory Committee, and some form of this same idea has come before the board at least four previous times. Umpenhour believes that the millions upon millions of chum and pink released into the wild by hatcheries in Southeast Alaska every year are affecting the marine environment, to the detriment of wild stocks of other species, like chinook in Western Alaska. He proposed that the Board of Fish cut back hatchery releases in Southeast by 25-percent.
Stakeholders in Southeast packed the board’s meeting last week (2-7-25) to oppose the plan. “Just line up, folks, because we got a long room,” said member Mike Wood as chair of the “Committee of the Whole.” This committee allows the board to step away from the agenda for a bit to take a deeper dive into related proposals. Proposal 156 generated only ten favorable comments from the public, and 400 opposed.
Sitka troller Jacquie Foss was one of them.
“Like any operation, you need diversification in order to be profitable,” said Foss. “And this would take a major pillar from our ability to be profitable.”
The short story is that while king salmon make the headlines, hatchery-produced chum salmon have become an economic mainstay in the Southeast troll fishery. They’ve increased significantly in value over the last decade or more, and some of the returns have been just staggering – millions of chum returning to a release site in West Crawfish Inlet in 2018, was a bonanza for trollers from around the region.
Many stakeholders objected that someone from Fairbanks would try to roll back this kind of economic opportunity.
“Heather Bauscher, Petersburg, AC,” Heather Bauscher formerly chaired the Sitka Advisory Committee, but has since moved to Petersburg. “We were in unanimous opposition to this. Initial concerns were that the proposer is not from this region and doesn’t understand the impacts that this would have for communities.”
And communities are pushing back, in any way they can. In an extraordinarily rare move, a member of the Alaska Legislature testified before the Committee of the Whole. Rep. Jeremy Bynum (R-Ketchikan) joined the House of Representatives about a month ago, representing Ketchikan. He and three other legislators signed a letter opposing the proposal, including Sen. Jesse Kiehl (D-Juneau), Rep. Andi Story (D-Juneau), and Rep. Sara Hannan (D-Juneau). Rep. Rebecca Himschoot (I-Sitka) wrote a separate letter with similar concerns.