Legislature(2011 - 2012)CAPITOL 120
02/01/2011 05:00 PM House FISHERIES
| Audio | Topic |
|---|---|
| Start | |
| Overview: Department of Fish & Game - Commercial Fisheries Division | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
HOUSE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES
February 1, 2011
5:00 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
Representative Steve Thompson, Chair
Representative Craig Johnson, Vice Chair
Representative Alan Austerman
Representative Bob Herron
Representative Lance Pruitt
Representative Bob Miller
MEMBERS ABSENT
Representative Scott Kawasaki
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
OVERVIEW: DEPARTMENT OF FISH & GAME - DIVISION OF COMMERCIAL
FISHERIES
- HEARD
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
No previous action to record
WITNESS REGISTER
SUE ASPELUND, Acting Director
Division of Commercial Fisheries
Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G)
Juneau, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Provided the overview of the Commercial
Fisheries Division, for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game
(ADF&G).
ACTION NARRATIVE
5:00:43 PM
CHAIR STEVE THOMPSON called the House Special Committee on
Fisheries meeting to order at 5:00 p.m. Present at the call to
order were Representatives Thompson, Herron, Pruitt, Miller and
Austerman. Representative Johnson arrived while the meeting was
in progress.
^OVERVIEW: DEPARTMENT OF FISH & GAME - COMMERCIAL FISHERIES
DIVISION
OVERVIEW: DEPARTMENT OF FISH & GAME - DIVISION OF COMMERCIAL
FISHERIES
5:01:18 PM
CHAIR THOMPSON announced that the only order of business would
be an overview of the Division of Commercial Fisheries, by the
Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G).
5:02:00 PM
SUE ASPELUND, Acting Director, Division of Commercial Fisheries,
Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), paraphrased from a
written statement, and projected a power point/slide series, to
provide an overview of the division, beginning with the mission
statement. The division's mission is grounded in Article 8 of
the Alaska State constitution, as well as Title 16 of Alaska
statute, subject to allocations of the Alaska Board of
Fisheries. She said read the mission statement [original
punctuation provided]:
Manage, protect, rehabilitate, enhance, and develop
the fisheries and aquatic plant resources in the
interest of the economy and general well being of the
state, consistent with the sustained yield pr8inciple
and subject to allocations established through public
regulatory processes.
MS. ASPELUND elaborated that the Division of Commercial
Fisheries manages all commercial fisheries in state waters, with
the exception of halibut, which is managed under an
international treaty. Specific salmon runs in the Southeast
region and on the Yukon River are also subject to international
treaty. The division also manages particular species classified
as federal fisheries under delegation from the federal
government. She said these are species which are found in
waters up to 300 miles off Alaska's shoreline, and include:
scallops, crab, and certain groundfish. In addition, the
division manages subsistence fisheries in the Arctic-Yukon-
Kuskokwim and Southcentral Alaska, and subsistence and personal
use fisheries in marine waters in the Southeast and Westward
regions. She recognized the commercially important wild species
of fin and shell fish in Alaska, which are: five species of
salmon, seven species of crab, four species of shrimp, Walleye
pollock, Pacific halibut, Pacific cod, Sablefish, herring,
flatfish and rockfish, lingcod, geoducks, sea cucumbers, and sea
urchins. Additionally, Alaska based aquatic farms produce
oysters, littleneck clams, and geoducks.
5:03:50 PM
MS. ASPELUND elaborated on four core services provided by the
division, which are: harvest management - control the harvest
of fishery resources for subsistence, commercial, and personal
uses according to plans and regulations, and subject to
allocations of the Board of Fisheries (BOF); stock assessment
and applied research - maintain ongoing programs for the
enumeration, assessment, and understanding of salmon, herring,
groundfish, and shellfish stocks; aquaculture - permit and
provide regulatory, technical, and planning services to aquatic
farmers and private nonprofit hatchery operators; information
services and public participation - develop and maintain
dissemination of data, analyses, and publish reports. Returning
to the topic of harvest management, she said that four other
facets of this service include: supporting the BOF in
establishing regulations and management plans, opening and
closing fishing areas and setting fishing times, colleting
harvest and biological data, and writing annual management
reports to synthesize information. These four tasks are
performed specifically to keep the division consistent with
department regulations 5 AAC 39.220 and 5 AAC 39.223; the
policies for management of sustainable fisheries and statewide
escapement goals respectively. Finally, she said the management
required is extremely diverse, extending from small boat near-
shore fisheries to high seas locations.
5:07:35 PM
MS. ASPELUND projected a series of slides to illustrate how
stock assessment and applied research is handled showing various
weir settings, tag and scale sample activities, underwater
transects to estimate abundance via dive surveys, aerial herring
spawn estimations, intertidal clam assessments, and crab and
prawn pot sampling. Pausing on a slide of the Frazer River fish
pass, on Kodiak Island, she said it is home to a successfully
introduced sockeye salmon run, supported in a previously barren
lake back in the 1950's. Since the mid 1980's, about one
million sockeye salmon are harvested from this area annually.
Another slide of note portrayed the Port Moller processing
plant, on the north side of the Alaska Peninsula. This plant
supports a test fishing operation that provides entry
information on the sockeye salmon running into Bristol Bay.
5:10:14 PM
MS. ASPELUND said the division permits/provides technical
assistance and oversight to thirty-four private nonprofit salmon
hatcheries, one aquatic shellfish hatchery, and numerous
shellfish farms throughout the state. Regarding the information
services and public information that the division provides, she
said that this function is a means to keep the public and
policymakers informed, as well as to share findings with a wide
range of scientists, and staff biologists. The department data
systems provide salmon forecasts, harvest summaries, fish
prices, exvessel values, and wholesale values. To a committee
member's question, she explained that the exvessel value
pertains to the initial sale price attached to a product as it
arrives from the harvest vessel.
5:11:29 PM
MS ASPELUND, continued, stating that the division has two
additional functions that support the core services: laboratory
support and data processing. The pathology, coded wire tag and
otolith aging, and genetic stock identification labs provide
critical information. The data processing aspect is comprised
of eight, diverse, primary database systems. She called
attention to the innovative eLanding electronic catch reporting
system, to explain how the "share-matching" component of this
database allows the deliveries in the rationalized crab program
individual fishery quotas (IFQs) to be efficiently matched to
available processor-held quotas. This represents the most
complex quota program the division manages and precise tracking
of accounts is required. The successful eLanding program has
been expanded into the groundfish harvest, and pilot programs
for salmon fisheries began last summer. Expansion of this
program will result in real-time reporting of harvest data,
reduce manual fish ticket data entry and improve overall
efficiency.
5:13:01 PM
MS. ASPELUND delineated the regions that the state is divided
into to accomplish the management tasks, which are: Southeast -
Dixon Entrance to Yakutat, with offices in Juneau; Central -
Prince William Sound (PWS), Cook Inlet, and Bristol Bay, with
offices in Anchorage; Westward - Aleutian Islands, Kodiak,
Alaska Peninsula, and the Bering Sea, with offices in Kodiak;
and AYK: Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers, and Norton and Kotzebue
sounds, with offices in Anchorage. The department is
headquartered in Juneau. She then provided a breakdown of the
767 positions, as well as the offices and vessels,
employed/utilized by the division. These include: 314
permanent, 450 seasonal, and 3 intern staff; 20 permanent and 84
seasonal offices/field camps; and 6 large research vessels. She
explained that it is through these means that the division
accomplishes the division's goals, comprised of four top
priorities. The first is to maintain a $1 billion exvessel
value for commercial harvests and mariculture production; a
target that has been exceeded every year since 2001. The second
priority is to achieve escapement goals for more than 80 percent
of the monitored stocks, but, she reported, this has been a
challenging target to attain, and projected a slide to
illustrate the four year period, 2006-09. Although the division
has exceeded the measure for coho and pink salmon, in recent
years, the goal has not been achieved statewide for the sockeye,
chum, and Chinook species. The department uses an
interdivisional approach to developing scientifically-defensible
escapement goals for roughly 290 salmon stocks statewide. She
reported that it is well known that Chinook stocks have
experienced declines throughout much of the state. Contributing
factors may include bycatch activities, ocean conditions, and
possibly climate change. It is interesting, she noted, that the
Chinook decline is not consistent statewide, an example being
Chignik where Chinook escapement goals have been met for thirty
years running. However, the broad-scale decline points to
issues that are not necessarily stock or river-specific,
possibly reflecting some larger scale influences. She offered
that the sockeye and chum salmon runs are naturally variable and
show highly inconsistent trends across the state. To mitigate
poor runs, managers allow commercial access to any surplus
stocks, and, where possible, monitored escapement activities
while fisheries are being processed and prosecuted. Based on
the in-season run projections, fishing effort can be adjusted
with openings and closures to ensure that adequate numbers of
fish are reaching the spawning grounds. However, due to data
gaps, many of the goals become post season report cards. This
is due to escapement projects being distant from the fisheries,
or the species goal in question may not be a target for a
specific fishery. She explained that when this occurs it is
referred to as a mixed stock fishery; a fishery comprised of a
number of individual runs. To manage these fisheries, she said
the division employs additional assessment tools including
abundance estimates, and stock identification methods to measure
impacts in real time. When goals are not met, it does not
necessarily constitute a threat to sustainability. However, she
cautioned, that a chronic inability to achieve goals does raise
concern; that is not meeting goals for four out of five years.
When this happens, in addition to taking restrictive management
measures, the department recommends "Stock of Concern" status to
the BOF, and implements a series of corrective actions that
include more restrictive management measures, research plans,
and habitat analysis.
5:17:55 PM
REPRESENTATIVE AUSTERMAN asked if there was a particular region
that did not meet the goals in 2008-09.
MS. ASPELUND responded that AYK has not met fall chum goals and
Chinook goals have been down throughout the state. To a follow-
up question she said the major sockeye fisheries have done well
and offered to provide statewide information regarding this
fishery. Ms. Aspelund addressed the third target area, which is
to develop baselines of DNA-based markers for 100 Alaska salmon
stocks for sockeye, chum, and Chinook salmon, and reported that
this goal has been met or exceeded in all areas since 2008.
5:19:52 PM
REPRESENTATIVE AUSTERMAN asked how much of the stock assessment
data reflects information for the Bering Sea.
MS. ASPELUND answered that the Western Alaska Stock and
Identification Program (WASIP), is being utilized from the
western Gulf of Alaska, as far north as the mouth of the Yukon
River. She said she is not able to speak to the remainder of
the gulf, but offered that the North Pacific Council is fast
tracking an analysis and regulation package in an effort to
reduce the large Chinook by-catch occurring in the gulf.
Included in that effort are DNA studies specific to state
waters. To a follow-up question, she said that the baseline
projects are being accomplished and suggested that the person
responsible for the project could provide a progress report to
the committee. Ms. Aspelund continued to the final target, for
missions and measures, which is to ensure that all aquatic farms
operate with current permits; a goal that is being met. She
presented the FY12 budget request, which totals $66,159,700;
65.4 percent unrestricted general funds, 5.0 percent designated
general funds, 16.3 percent federal funds, and 13 percent from
other funding sources. She called attention to a slide
illustrating the economic impact of the seafood industry on
Alaska's economy in 2007; the most recent report available. The
industry generated 78,519 jobs related to seafood harvesting and
processing. Alaskan residents filled about one half of these
positions, earning approximately $237 million, from a total
direct labor payout of $774.7 million. Total product sales of
$3.6 billion, represented more revenue contributions to the
state general fund than any other industry, save oil and gas.
She continued, stating that in 2008, according to the National
Marine Fisheries Service's commercial landing report, Alaska
upheld its position as the top ranked fishing state in the
nation; harvesting more than 54 percent of the fish taken in the
U.S, up 32 percent from 2007, and accounting for 39 percent of
the total U.S. exvessel value. She presented a graph indicating
the exvessel value for commercial fisheries from 1977 to 2010.
Exvessel value refers to the postseason adjusted value at the
point of the first purchase of the harvest of commercial
fishermen; the amount received by fishermen when selling their
catch to processors. The exvessel value of salmon has increased
in recent years, while groundfish value has decreased. The
preliminary exvessel value of the salmon fishery in 2010 was
over $533 million. In addition to the economic value of the
state fisheries, the value to subsistence and personal use
harvesters is inestimable, she opined, in both cultural terms
and in food replacement costs.
5:25:16 PM
REPRESENTATIVE PRUITT noted the employment of non-Alaskans to
fill more than half of the jobs generated in the fishing
industry, and asked for an explanation.
MS. ASPELUND responded that there are a number of non-resident
fishermen harvesting Alaskan products, and added that the
processing sector hires many non-residents and aliens to fill
the seasonal positions.
5:26:36 PM
REPRESENTATIVE MILLER inquired whether the escapement
determinations made by the Division of Commercial Fisheries are
used for the management of the other fishery divisions.
MS. ASPELUND responded no. She clarified that the BOF
establishes fishery allocations and the divisions of ADF&G
implement those allocations. The divisions may collaborate on
research findings and share management information.
REPRESENTATIVE MILLER commented that the efforts may be
redundant, and asked whether management conflicts occur in areas
of overlap, such as during escapement counts.
MS. ASPELUND explained how the divisions work together to come
to agreement in areas of shared management. To a follow-up
question, she described how the BOF provides directives to the
divisions.
REPRESENTATIVE MILLER returned to the topic of non-resident
employees and commented that it would be good to see more
Alaskans being employed.
MS. ASPELUND said that the Department of Labor (DOL) provides an
economic trend report, which would be of interest to committee
members.
5:32:12 PM
REPRESENTATIVE AUSTERMAN concurred that the recent DOL report is
available, which provides hiring statistics. Further, he
relayed that, historically, the commercial fisheries and fish
processing industries have employed non-resident and alien
workers to fill the approximate 30,000 seasonal positions; a
practice that also occurs in the seasonal tourism industry.
Additionally, he said the escapement goal modeling is a
difficult picture to follow and opined that every major stream
should be counted to establish better base numbers. Providing
the effort to establish these counts would require a budget
request, something which he recalled having suggested to the
department in recent years. He asked whether this will be taken
up by the division in the current fiscal year.
MS. ASPELUND said the information will be made available.
5:37:43 PM
CHAIR THOMPSON announced the up-coming meeting.
ADJOURNMENT
There being no further business before the committee, the House
Special Committee on Fisheries meeting was adjourned at 5:37
p.m.
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 Div Commercial Fisheries Overview.pdf |
HFSH 2/1/2011 5:00:00 PM |
|
| Labor - Economic Trends - Nov 08 - Seafood Industry.pdf |
HFSH 2/1/2011 5:00:00 PM |
|
| Labor - Economic Trends - Nov 10 - Seafood Industry.pdf |
HFSH 2/1/2011 5:00:00 PM |
|
| Labor - Nonresidents Working in Alaska - 2009 Report.pdf |
HFSH 2/1/2011 5:00:00 PM |
|
| Div Comm Fish Overview - 02-01-11 - Director Notes.pdf |
HFSH 2/1/2011 5:00:00 PM |
|
| Rep Austerman responses 2-1-11 HFSH DCF Overview.pdf |
HFSH 2/1/2011 5:00:00 PM |