The Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission on Friday announced a proposed regulation change to allow the use of a beach seine under set gillnet permits in the Cook Inlet set gillnet fishery.
The change is contingent, per the announcement, on the State Board of Fisheries similarly authorizing beach seines in the fishery by adopting Proposal 313 at its Statewide Shellfish meeting in Anchorage next month. That proposal was generated after the board last year decided to accept an agenda change request by Brian and Lisa Gabriel calling for beach seines as an alternative gear type in the east side setnet fishery.
Last summer, the Gabriels led a test fishery operated under a commissioner’s permit to explore beach seines as an option to harvest target sockeye salmon without killing king salmon. They told the Clarion in July that they’d seen their nets work successfully — that they hadn’t killed a king salmon, that they could adapt the nets to different sites, and that they’d caught enough sockeye to be economically viable.
Their request to the board is for the use of set beach seine nets as a gear type in the east side setnet fishery. Their proposal describes a fishing season from June 20 to Aug. 15, with the use of one set beach seine net per permit, used with shore-based infrastructure. The nets may be up to 100 fathoms in length, 215 mesh deep with a maximum mesh size of 3-and-a-half inches. If gillnet fishing were allowed by regulation, a permit holder would have to fish one or the other.
The board is set to decide on the proposal during their meeting from March 11-16.
The CFEC’s proposed regulation says only that it would allow “the use of a beach seine under a set gillnet permit in the Cook Inlet set gillnet fishery as authorized by the Board of Fisheries.”
Comment will be accepted on the proposed regulation until 5 p.m. on March 21.
Written comments can be sent by email to DFG.CFEC.PublicQuestions@alaska.gov.
Consideration of seines for the local setnet fisheries by the CFEC joins the ongoing consideration of dipnets — which the CFEC last year gave emergency authorization before rejecting. The commission in October said it would reconsider dipnets in response to new petitions for the gear, and a public comment period ended in November, but the group has yet to act on that proposed regulation.
This story was updated on Wednesday, Feb. 19 after the CFEC amended the public notice to remove a previously scheduled action meeting on March 26.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
