March 23, 2023 — Some tribal and subsistence advocates are criticizing Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s nomination of a rural fisheries executive for an influential federal management post — another sign of the rising polarization and stakes in Alaska fish politics amid historic crashes in salmon stocks.

Dunleavy last week announced Rudy Tsukada as his preferred nominee for an open seat on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. That’s the entity that oversees the huge harvests of Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska crab and whitefish stocks worth hundreds of millions of dollars — and that’s under pressure to reduce accidental catches of king and chum salmon, species that have all but disappeared from the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers in Southwest Alaska in recent years.

Tsukada is chief operating officer for Coastal Villages Region Fund, one of six Community Development Quota, or CDQ, groups established by Congress three decades ago.

The nonprofit CDQ groups play a unique role in Alaska fisheries and politics. They received whitefish quota when the program was established in the 1990s, so they participate in the trawl fisheries that have accidental catches of Southwest Alaska salmon stocks.

But the CDQ groups are also charged with creating economic development and providing social benefits for Western Alaska residents — and supporters say that mission makes the groups’ leaders responsive to the regional crisis that’s developed amid closures of subsistence and commercial salmon fisheries.

Supporters of Tsukada’s nomination note that Dunleavy passed over other candidates that included an employee of Trident, a for-profit seafood company with investments in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska trawl fisheries.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon