Board of Fisheries passes new Kenai king salmon plan

New management policies for Kenai River king salmon mean that sockeye bag limits in the river are up, and commercial setnet fishing is likely to be closed for the foreseeable future.

Kenai River late run king salmon are now officially designated a stock of concern, which means a host of changes in the management plan. The Alaska Board of Fisheries finalized the designation at its meeting in Anchorage on March 1, and as part of it, revised the management plan for the fishery to help conserve more of the fish.

King salmon in general have been in trouble across coastal Alaska. The Kenai River run of kings has been declining for more than a decade, with increasing restrictions on sportfishing and commercial fishing in the area. Commercial setnet fishermen, who fish off the beach on the east side of Cook Inlet, were closed entirely in 2023, while sportfishing for kings was entirely closed because of low returns. The management plan, which the Alaska Department of Fish and Game uses to determine what regulations to set on the run, provided a number of tools to conserve the run, but the numbers of fish returning have continued to decline.

At its October 2023 meeting, the board reviewed the Stock of Concern designation for the late run, which covers July and August in the Kenai River. At its March meeting, the board decided how to change the management plan to help rebuild the run over time.

The main issue in Cook Inlet is the complex web of different user types and how they affect the kings making their way upriver. The Kenai River is one of the most heavily fished systems in Alaska, with drift gillnetters fishing in Cook Inlet, setnetters fishing the beaches up and down the Kenai Peninsula, personal use dipnetters fishing the mouth of the Kenai in July, and sportfishermen lining nearly all 87 miles of the Kenai River. Most of them target sockeye salmon, but kings are coming back during the same time, and are inevitably caught as well.

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The new plan sets an escapement goal of 15,000-30,000 large king salmon — fish at least 75 centimeters from mid-eye to tail fork — to help the stock recover. It also sets achieving the lower end of the goal as a priority over exceeding the goal, or achieving either end of the sockeye salmon goal for the Kenai River.

For the sportfishery, it allows the commissioner to prohibit the keeping of king salmon, expand the sockeye bag limit to six per day with twelve in possession, and open an area of the Kenai River to motorized private fishing that is normally closed. Fishing for kings will also be closed in the salt waters of Cook Inlet north of Bluff Point, which is in Anchor Point. Personal use fishermen are no longer allowed to keep king salmon of any size.

Commercial setnet changes are significantly more restrictive. Because setnetters fish on the shore and have historically caught more king salmon than other commercial fishermen, they have been significantly limited by Fish and Game since kings started declining. In 2023, they were closed entirely because of a low king salmon forecast; in 2022, they fished for about five days before being completely closed.

The new plan allows setnetters to open if the in-season projection for king salmon is higher than 14,250 large kings, which is between the lower end of the sustainable escapement goal and the slightly higher recovery goal. However, the run has not achieved that number in at least the last four years, according to Fish and Game data. Even if they do open, they are limited to one net per person, with fishing periods varying from mid-June to mid-August, when the fishery closes.

The drift gillnet fleet will also not be able to fish within 2 miles of shore.

The Upper Cook Inlet meetings are some of the longest and most contentious in the state, with competing interests and hundreds of proposals being debated in the two-week-long meeting. Gary Hollier, a Kenai setnetter who says he has attended every board meeting since the 1980s, said he didn’t feel the setnetters got a fair process this time. For one, two of the board members that regularly support commercial fishermen — Gerad Godfrey and Tom Carpenter — were not there in-person, and for another, the final proposal that made all the changes to the management plan was generated by the board and pushed through too quickly, he said.

“We didn’t get a really fair shake at representation as I would like to have seen it,” he said.

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The limitation to one net per person significantly cuts the gear for setnetters — many setnet operations have stacked permits, meaning one person or family owns multiple permits. Hollier said that that part of the plan effectively cuts his gear allowance down to 10% of its full capacity. The board did allow setnetters to use handheld dipnets to fish commercially, but those are not capable of catching the volume of regular setnets, Hollier said.

“We are hanging on by a thread, and we didn’t get a lot of support from this board,” he said.

Travis Every, who is also an east side setnetter, said he also felt the board came forward with the final proposal unfairly because the fishermen weren’t expecting it to come up so quickly and didn’t get to weigh in on it. Because king salmon runs have been low in recent years, the threshold for opening will likely keep the setnet fishery closed, and the setnetters don’t have much recourse past the Board of Fisheries, whose members are politically appointed. Fish and Game’s 2024 forecast for Kenai River late run king salmon predicts about 13,689 large fish to return, which is less than the threshold required for setnets to open.

Every said the Kenai Peninsula is not only losing the economic benefit of the commercial setnet fishery, which has been operating for about a century, but also the cultural aspect of it.

“It’s more than just a summer hobby,” he said. “This is how a lot of people identify themselves.”

The board did revise the threshold for setnet openings down from 15,000 large kings to 14,250. The Kenai River Sportfishing Association, a Soldotna nonprofit that advocates for sportfishing and fishery conservation, criticized that decision in a statement on March 1.

“The Board’s decision to lower the escapement goal prioritizes short-term commercial interests over the long-term health and sustainability of Kenai kings,” said Shannon Martin, KRSA’s executive director, in the statement. “This is a dark day for conservation in Alaska, we’re essentially signing off on the managed decline of a species that has defined our region.”

Martin said in an email that the final plan included a majority of KRSA’s recommendations for the final plan. However, she said the plan allows setnets to be open when king salmon sportfishing is closed, which shifts more of the conservation burden to the sportfishery. She pointed to state statute, which requires that the burden of conservation to be shared among user groups.

“The setnet fishery will fish even when the sport fishery for kings is closed,” Martin said. “Catch in the limited set gillnet fishery is expected to be several hundred large kings. The plan effectively allocates a larger share of the conservation burden to the sport fishery even in the unlikely event of liberalization to catch and release.”

The Board of Fisheries wrapped up its 2024 Upper Cook Inlet meeting on March 5.