Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer, on Friday sent a letter to the State Board of Fisheries “demanding” it “clarify its stance on the future of our drifter and setnet fisheries in Cook Inlet.”
The move comes after what she describes as “alarming” recent actions at meeting of the board in Anchorage this month where they declined to support a proposal by local setnetters to fish with beach seines — the group has in recent years been wholly restricted for fishing amid low king salmon abundance — and one member said he wanted to see no setnets or drifters operating in the inlet at all.
Brian and Lisa Gabriel, setnetters from Kenai, last summer operated a test fishery for set beach seines that they said were able to operate without killing any king salmon and while catching enough sockeye salmon to be economically viable. They successfully petitioned the board to hear their proposal out of cycle — Upper Cook Inlet fishing issues aren’t set to be heard by the board until 2027 — but the motion was failed by the board on March 15.
Before failing on a 3-3 vote, members of the board authored new language and amended the proposal to replace setnets in the current management plan with the beach seines, while retaining a policy that would keep the local commercial setnet fishery from operating even with the seines.
Area Management Biologist Colton Lipka confirmed that, if enacted, the proposal would strip setnets from the currently enacted action plan entirely, meaning setnets could not be used until Kenai River kings were declassified as a stock of management concern.
Board member Greg Svendsen said in advocating for the move “I do not want to see setnets in the inlet again — if I had my way, there’d be no setnets in the inlet period, drifters or setnets.”
Svendsen in an email to the Clarion on Sunday reaffirmed that he does not support gillnetting.
“I’m all for dip netting and voted to increase their days,” he wrote. “I’m all for beach seining with more information on mortality along with releasing the kings and silvers. I’m against gill netting as it is indiscriminate and kills most of the fish that contact it.”
Brian Gabriel told the Clarion last week that the “whole point of the exercise” was to see opportunity for his fishery, and that he wanted to see the proposal killed after it was changed to cut setnets from the plan.
Fishers, including in the coastal communities of the lower Kenai Peninsula who are represented by Vance, she writes, see their “livelihoods, heritage, and very identity” tied to the local commercial fisheries.
She specifically targets Svendsen’s call to eliminate setnets and driftnets from Cook Inlet — “not just a personal opinion; it was a public gut punch to the families I represent.” In the letter, she asks the board to publicly state it doesn’t intend to shutdown the commercial drift and setnet fisheries in Cook Inlet.
“The people of Homer, Kenai, Kasilof, Ninilchik, Voznesenka, and beyond have a right to hear, in no uncertain terms, that their way of life is not being targeted for extinction,” Vance writes.
She also encourages the board to support “innovative” proposals like the one brought forward by the Gabriels.
As of Monday evening, Board Chair Märit Carlson-Van Dort did not respond to a request for comment emailed Saturday.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
