Commercial Fishing for Wild Alaskan Salmon
It’s inevitable that old outboards (much preferred to the new, electronic ones which don’t stand up well to being submerged in salt water) need fixing. Tom’s picking up one of his outboards from the best mechanic ever – Luke Moore of “Cool Hand Luke’s”.
Luke and Tom at Luke's engine repair shop
Welcome back to the two Daves – “Animal” and “DJ” and introducing greenhorn Danny Johnson, who is Tom’s nephew. Check out The Crew page for more photos of 2011 crew for both the F/V Dolly B and the F/V Melissa B.
At the dock for delivery - Dave, Danny & DJ - 2011
All positions are filled and if you emailed me, I am saving it for next year for when we hope to add another boat. Best of luck to all & many thanks!
Commercial Salmon fishing vessel looking for reliable, hard working, skiffman. Must be available NOW to August 31st. Requires boots, raingear & commercial fishing license. Here’s your chance at the job of a lifetime! SMALL BOAT! If you’ve been watching Deadliest Catch – forget it. Salmon fishing is safer but the boats are smaller. Ability to cook a huge plus. NO DRUGS OR ALCOHOL TOLERATED. NONE and you better believe that I mean it. Alcohol and drugs will be destroyed and you’ll get thrown off the boat at the first port entered. Email me and tell me about yourself if you want the job. Skipper will be hiring this week & weekend.
Jenny Neyman, of The Redoubt Reporter does a good review of the current [dire] state of Cook Inlet Aquaculture, with a good lead in story here.
Her first story investigates the loss of fry at Trail Lakes Hatchery, one of two run by CIAA. Part Two in her series of stories reviews the history of how millions of dollars in federal grants have been used on project after project that brought little to no benefit to fishermen.
For a related issue, check out this story on The Bear Creek Weir [operated by CIAA] Weir Attracts Brown Bears – Bear Mauls 12 Year Old Child On His Way to the School Bus Stop. Particularly revealing are the quotes in the article from local Seward residents about the weir and the danger it poses to this heavily populated [especially with young children] area. for instance, “Bear Creek Resident” writes:
I have lived on Bear Creek for 35 years, directly downstream from the weir. I camped and fished on Bear Creek every summer as a kid, starting in 1957. I see most of the brown bears that fish in Bear Creek often enough to recognize them individually. When the fish weir on Bear Creek has let enough salmon into Bear Lake for “available habitat” and Cook Inlet Aquaculture Corp.l (weir owner) has sufficient salmon eggs (taken from salmon in Bear Creek/Bear Lake) to run their hatchery at mile 30, they close off Bear Creek at the weir and trap all remaining salmon (potentially thousands of fish) below the weir in Bear Creek. This creates a static, artificiallly provided food source for the bears that they can’t resist. The bears stay in the area until the fish are gone, months longer than they would stay with a natural salmon run and without the trapped fish.
The week of November 15-18 brings CIAA back before the Board of Fish to ask for full allocation of all reds in Katchemak Bay as well as continuing to take the full harvest of all reds in Resurrection Bay, a STEAL of a deal that the Board of Fish awarded CIAA in early 2009, despite widespread protest by Lower Cook Inlet Seiners, who’ve lost their “money run” of early reds for two years to this failing and flailing aquaculture association. CIAA liked 100% allocation to them so much that their proposal is to keep all the reds forever to benefit their organization, with NO common property fishery.
We’ll be there ‘with bells on’ to protest any further unfair allotment of this public resource (oh yes, CIAA has a proposal to STOP SPORT FISHERMEN TOO in Resurrection Bay) to this single user. Please join us or send your comments to the Board of Fish Opposing Proposal #12. Here’s a link to the proposal download link pages, they are large PDF files.
I am proposing to the Alaska Board of Fish that 5 AAC 21.310(b)(6). Fishing seasons be changed as follows:
In the Outer and Eastern Districts in the Lower Cook Inlet commercial salmon opener, the season will be open from [JUNE 1 TILL CLOSED BY EMERGENCY ORDER].
I proposed this change because I’ve been fishing in this area for 39 years and since the late 1980’s many of my traditional fishing areas have not been surveyed or opened for commercial fishing. I’ve tried every avenue I can think of to get ADF&G to monitor the runs and open them for fishing and nothing I’ve tried is working.
In fact, in 1993 Jeff Hettrick, the manager of the Trail Lakes Hatchery operated by Cook Inlet Aquaculture, told me “You’ll never see another commercial opening in Resurrection Bay” for any other harvest – not pinks, and not any of the runs I traditionally fished. It’s been CIAA’s goal to keep all harvesting in Resurrection Bay limited to their farmed reds and now, in other proposals, they want to keep all the reds to themselves too, effectively forever.
To add injury to insult, in the ADF&G 2010 Report [RC 3 – October 2010] on Salmon Stocks in Resurrection Bay the department acknowledges that they rarely monitor Resurrection Bay and they propose to drop all escapement goals and monitoring 4 viable streams that used to produce a significant amount of pink salmon.
I know these runs like the back of my hand and I’ve commercially fished them since I was 12 years old. The streams had a hard time because of the 1986 flood and the 1989 oil spill and after that, CIAA came in and ADF&G pretty much stopped monitoring the streams – even when I called in to report significant returns, my “on the ground” reports were ignored.
According to the ADF&G “2006 Lower Cook Inlet Annual Finfish Management Report” from 1980 to 1986 586,000 pinks were commercially harvested in Resurrection Bay. I continue to monitor these streams and take photographs of the returns and even the eggs in stream.
No amount of failure to monitor is going to change the fact that there really are fish there and ADF&G staff just doesn’t want to spend the time or money monitoring them.
In 1996 the ADG&G biologist created an imaginary line down the middle of the Bay and abandoned all responsibility for management of the creeks on the west side of Resurrection Bay. Not because of conflict with sport fishing boats – we seiners have sport fishing boats weaving around our nets all the time, every year, on the east side of the Bay and there’s no conflict. Boat traffic spreads out as soon as it clears the breakwater, so there’s no conflict there either.
I have asked ADF&G to add another biologist to their staff, if the burden of monitoring the entire 4 districts is too much for a single individual, and received back ambiguous replies that neither address the specifics nor suggest alternatives. They offer to solve nothing at a time when I am being economically impacted due to the BOF granting CIAA ALL the legally commercially harvestable fish in Resurrection Bay.
I continue to protest a lack of attention to the Outer and Eastern District to every level of ADF&G and am given many excuses, but the bottom line is that I am prevented from fishing my traditionally fished areas by bureaucracy and not due to lack of fish.
Opening up Eastern and Outer Districts on June 1st will allow ADF&G to monitor the early catches via fish ticket to determine run strength in all areas fish are caught in because they have no intention of monitoring in person or aerially. If they fear over fishing, they can put stream guards in place.
It makes openings in the Lower Cook Inlet harvest area consistent with each other. Currently Kamishak District opens on June 1 and that works well for that district and I believe it will work just as well in the other two districts.
Additionally, it will encourage fishermen to return to traditionally fished areas that have not been surveyed or fished in years, if there is adequate return. It would allow fishermen to timely harvest early return males, which would prevent the full escapement from being mostly male fish, as it is now, and allow the fishermen to receive top dollar for those early caught fish.
I will not give up trying to re-open wild Alaskan stock of pinks that have been traditionally and historically harvested by Lower Cook Inlet seiners.
Please join me at the Board of Fish meeting in Homer, AK Nov. 15-18 and SUPPORT Proposals #2 & #3. Here’s a link to the proposal download link pages, they are large PDF files.
Tom
Loading the skiff for running
After a late start, the boat left for Pt. Dick and it was less than a week later that I got the dreaded call. There are just a few calls that are dreaded – breakdown, injury, or crew quitting. This one was the latter. A kid we’ve fed and housed for six weeks, waiting for the season to open, quit after less than a week of work.
I just don’t have words for how useless I think this person is. There are better young men than him dying every day halfway around the world, and he “doesn’t feel like working”. Those were his words.
The good news is that when Jeffery Buchanan, Steve’s youngest son, heard that there was an opening on his uncle’s boat, he jumped on it!
Here’s Jeff (in the green) and DJ after pitching the catch of reds just few days ago.
DJ & Jeffrey take a break from pitching
I updated the recipes page with pics of a recent canning session. Our friend Jason is visiting and he helped Tom catch enough reds to make up a batch of red salmon for canning.
Jars packed with red salmon
The small jars on the left are heavily peppered with fresh cracked pepper – yummmmmmmm!
The Buchanan family gained a son when Melissa married Trent Foldager on June 26th, 2010. The ceremony had a pirate theme that all the Buchanan fisherman felt right at home with! Trent is a skipper on a charter fishing vessel but lures are out to bring him into commercial fishing 🙂
Steve, Tom, Melissa, Trent, Perry, Dolly, Thomas
