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.
“We just had some grave concerns about this specific proposal and the impacts on our hatchery programs here in southeast Alaska,” said Bynum, “and we are obviously getting a lot of feedback at our offices. And we just want to make sure that there is a thorough science-based result that comes from any decisions that are being made here today.”
The politicians want to see more research on the issue – and so do the scientists. Keenan Sanderson, with the Tlingit & Haida Community Council, has a degree in salmon ecology. He thought the proposal’s 25-percent cut in hatchery production was ill-conceived.
“If the objective is to get rid of these hatcheries, you don’t do it 25-percent at a time,” he said. “There’s going to be severe and dramatic negative impacts in the ecosystem, both from the top down and the bottom up. And you’re not going just to see a reduction in salmon, but you’re going to see a reduction in marine mammals. You’re going to see a reduction in salmon sharks and pretty much everything that has that uses salmon as a food resource.”
Others testified that more than the ecosystem would be affected. Steve Reifenstuhl is the former general manager of the Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association, one of two large hatcheries in the area. He felt that the economics of fishing would change.
“Overall, any cut would affect coho and chinook production,” said Reifenstuhl. “They don’t pay the bills. They’re very expensive. They don’t really return one-to-one. It’s less than one-to-one terms of benefit cost. So that has to come from somewhere. So a cut in pink and chum would result in lowering budgets for coho and chinook.”
Reifenstuhl reminded the board that over 100 pages of scientific literature had been submitted showing that there was no linkage between Southeast hatchery production and salmon returns to the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers.
But board member Curtis Chamberlain disagreed. He believed there was a growing correlation between the size of hatchery releases in Southeast, and the weight and ages of wild stocks harvested elsewhere around the state.
“None of the scientific articles cited in opposition to proposal 156 disputed this correlation, but instead cited other causes of mortality there that are not within the board’s control,” said Chamberlain, “Or correlations that don’t really touch on the broader carrying capacity issue.”
Chamberlain offered a compromise: Rather than cutting pink and chum releases by 25-percent across the board, he proposed (RC 176) cutting pink production by only seven percent and chum by 20-percent.
Southeast seiners probably wouldn’t miss that seven-percent of pinks, since the fleet targets mainly the region’s abundant wild pink stocks. But Tom Meiners, with the Southeast Alaska Seiners Association, said even these cuts would likely mean the elimination of some smaller hatchery programs – including one very important program in Sitka.
“You know, one of the people that would feel the pink salmon impact would be the Sitka Sound Science Center,” said Meiners. “It’s not a production hatchery. They do research, they do education, with tourism they do outreach. They tell people the story of what happens in Southeast Alaska, and I think that’s really important. And to have such an outsized impact on them would be really a disservice.”
When the Board of Fish met in full the following day to vote on the proposal, most members found the idea of any reduction in hatchery production to be arbitrary. Member Tom Carpenter, from Cordova, remained unconvinced.
“I have yet to hear any scientific rationale for using these numbers,” he said, “and I think that it’s imperative that the board, when they make decisions like this, have some sort of scientific rationale for doing so.”
Member Gerad Godfrey, of Eagle River, agreed, saying he thought the proposal was “an egregious approach.” He added that until he saw a demonstrable, negative impact, “I will continue my time on the board defending the hatchery program.”
Only member Stan Zuray, from Tanana, joined Chamberlain in supporting the reduction. Zuray has a 25-year history watching the emergence of hatchery programs, and observing changes in the ecosystems and economies on the rivers.
“I am very frustrated as I read the preponderance of peer-reviewed studies showing possible harm from the present Alaska hatchery biomass in the ocean,” said Zuray. “So many Alaska fishermen’s lives and families now depend on hatcheries. I do not believe this is what the original intent of hatcheries was.”
Zuray said that Alaska’s hatcheries should never have been allowed to grow to the point where they were needed to sustain Alaska’s fisheries.
Proposal 156 failed 2-5 with members Zuray and Chamberlain in favor.
