Herring Scrap 23

I wrote a note to myself on January 11th:

“I watched parts of the Board of Fisheries meetings in Kodiak this week. The proposal i had my eye on was #57, which would allow sac roe permit holders access to herring thru december [instead of only during spawning season — a couple weeks in springtime], to take advantage of mixed uses. The board ended up voting no action, but a lot of dust was kicked up about it and there was seemingly pretty strong board enthusiasm for it, and it isn't over. It got hung up on questions of whether it should go through CFEC or ADFG first, and so now all the permit holders for the two involved fisheries are gonna get together and see if they want to have just one big kodiak herring fishery, fish, bait, sac roe, whatever and talk about it and petition the CFEC to look at it and then, maybe even by ACR, introduce the proposal again once CFEC knows a way forward.

Sounded to me like a kind of thing likely to happen.

Of course it made me think of Sitka, and what it would be like for the same to be applied to that fishery. With many common permit holders between the Kodiak and Sitka fisheries, it would not surprise me if the Kodiak proposal is a trial for similar in Sitka.”

Now all of that is firmly in motion and there is suddenly administrative energy pouring out of the State of Alaska to make it happen. This week, the Board of Fisheries and the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission took the rather unusual step of forming and announcing a CFEC-funded joint committee, which they are calling the Herring Revitalization Committee. The Committee has it’s first meeting on April 2, and comes with three originating documents:

• Notice of Joint Committee of the Alaska Board of Fisheries and Commercial Fisheries Entry Comission on Alaska Herring Revitalization (PDF 252 kB)
• Call for Nominations and Research Topics (PDF 244 kB)

Joint Board of Fisheries/Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission Herring Revitalization Committee (PDF 79 kB)

I am here to tell you what I can about the Herring Revitalization Committee.

In the Summary Of Actions accompanying the meeting notes for the Board of Fisheries meeting held last month for Upper Cook Inlet Finfish, the Miscellaneous Business section reads as follows (links added by me):

The board received RC24 from the CFEC earlier in the meeting and following discussion with CFEC Commissioner Glenn Haight adopted RC244 (by a vote of 7-0) as a charge statement to a newly-formed Joint BOF-CFEC Herring Revitalization Committee. The board added subsistence users to the stakeholder groups to be represented. Board members Carpenter and Godfrey selected as BOF representatives to the committee. Board discussion started on 03-05-24 at 11:40:14 AM.

Recapping Kodiak:

The Proposal that initially kicked all this up in Kodiak in January - proposal #57 - was brought by Bruce Schactler of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute and Board Member of United Fishermen of Alaska. The proposal complained that Kodiak sac roe herring permit holders were missing out on other opportunities to catch herring in different seasons when their oil content is higher and more suitable for different uses. The Board’s enthusiastic response caught me by surprise.

In those meetings, member Tom Carpenter said: “I think there are opportunities around the state to utilize this very undervalued resource. It's been ignored for many, many years. And it's going to be ignored for many, many years into the future. And if the state of Alaska has a resource like this, that can bring value to communities like Kodiak and other places around the state, the board of Fisheries and CFEC is going to have to adapt to changes and people should be engaged in the process.” Other members of the seven-member Board of Fisheries agreed: John Wood said, “Totally agree with the comment that you made”; Marit Carlson Van Dort said, “Just want to say I agree 100%. With everything that member carpenter just said, 100%”; Godfrey added “I also agree with Mr. Carpenter.”

The members voted No Action knowing that the action was just beginning, with John Wood saying “I wanted it noted that the parties are talking to each other. They're, they're all astute businessman. And this makes logical sense that they get together and create this market and create this whole scenario. But to do so with all the freedom in the world, to negotiate amongst themselves to get it done.”

Recapping Upper Cook Inlet:

It’s been getting done. Less than two months later, at the start of March, the board met again, this time around Upper Cook Inlet finfish. Nothing was on the agenda to suggest that this might come up again. The formation of the Herring Revitalization Committee showed up at the end of a two week meeting, filed under “Miscellaneous Business”, in response to RC (Record Copy) 24, a memo submitted at the meeting by Former Executive Director of the Board of Fisheries and current CFEC Commissioner Glenn Haight.

Meanwhile, originating proposer Bruce Schactler offered his vision of how such a committee should look. He wrote that “everything is in play and the table is set for Wild Alaska herring” and that he saw the committee as a pathway to a “Restructuring of the Alaska Herring Resource”:

Haight entered the meeting, gave direction to everybody in the room (well received), and the Board voted 7-0 to form a committee as recommended. with the inclusion of the word subsistence added at the behest of John Wood, who said: “all of us who have been through a Sitka meeting understand the importance of incorporating that segment of the harvest into any discussions of this nature”. Marit Carlson Van Dort agreed. They asked Haight if it was a problem, adding subsistence harvesters to the committee, and he answered: “If it would be better for you to have that that voice on the board, that that's fine with me; our matters at CFEC are really dealing with the commercial fishery side of things, but we certainly appreciate your need to be cognizant of that group.”

In the end, the word subsistence got added to the call for nominations, and the Board members demurred from Glenn Haight’s suggestion that they adjust the current call for proposals to encompass ALL state of Alaska proposals, but otherwise, as John Wood put it to Glenn Haight after the vote, “You got most of the stuff you came here for.”

A couple key takeaways:

Everybody’s in (except who’s out)!

This is designed to be a Industry + State working group directed towards expanding the opportunity experienced by Alaska’s limited entry herring permit holders. The goal seems to be setting up a unified front for the 2025 Board of Fisheries meetings (Southeast Alaska in January and Statewide in March) to transform herring fishing practices in Alaska while continuing to favor legacy permit holders. This is from CFEC Commissioner Glenn Haight’s explanation of the CFEC position in sponsoring this committee on March 5, 2024: “And it just seemed to me that would be good to take, take it take some time to really look at the herring industry, look at current markets, look at potential markets, look at some of the legal challenges that we may need to accomplish to help set the industry in a direction where it could take advantage of those markets. And then and then act accordingly. So that's that's generally the idea. I think that the committee could look at, again, current markets and potential markets, look at the interesting regional differences, not just in the fisheries, but in the fish themselves. And then some of the legal challenges that we face, I think most of those legal challenges are probably with CFEC, the board is pretty has a pretty good flexibility to create these fisheries. And I want to make sure that what that we what we do supports you.”

The End of A Product-Forms Basis for Permitting

This meeting seems to swing around one main regulatory idea: the removal of limitations of product-specific permit types for herring. Glenn Haight wrote in his RC24, “This is not done with other fisheries in Alaska. Should this change, and how can we do that while protecting existing limited entry permit holders?” By hosting this meeting, the CFEC is more or less declaring a readiness to make product-form permitting go away, likely radically expanding the entitlements of permit holders.

The thing is that changing the product type means changing when the herring are fished, which means changing where they’re fished, which means that going into Board of Fisheries 2025, the rules are subject to change without notice.

How’s that for a primer? There’s more to say but that’ll do for now.