User groups must band together to help kings

Regarding the article “Kings need our help” that ran in the Anchorage Daily News, 7/26/18.

In his letter Mr. Fjelstad says 1.5 billion hatchery pinks will result in lower returns of red and king salmon.

First of all red and king salmon don’t even eat the same food as pink salmon. And secondly, silvers, chums and kings, being three, four and five year returning species, move much deeper and further out into the Gulf of Alaska’s upwelling than do pink salmon and reds. Kings being much larger and containing more fat are able to move well into the Pacific becoming vulnerable to multinational trawler fleets whose record of violation of international fishery law is well documented.

As well, we have the U.S. trawlers with their alleged incidental catch records. The answer to the king problem is the same as with all other salmon species whose numbers come in at lower counts each year. For the sport fish lobby to suggest denying ay other user group their constitutional right of access to a common resource will put the sport and commercial user groups right where the politically powerful international packing corporations want them — at each others’ throats. Closing any king salmon fishery to any user group will only enhance the harvest levels of king, silver and chum salmon for the foreign fleets. So all user groups of the above mentioned species must now be prudent enough to move the federal court for declaratory judgment against joint foreign and U.S. packing companies as well as to enjoin the North Pacific Fishery Management Council as third-party defendant for criminal acts in the management of U.S. fishery resources.

Anything less at this point in time will lead to the eventual loss of all of the above salmon species, coast-wide, in little more than a decade.

As Mr Fjelstad stated in his letter, “I don’t think future generations would appreciate or understand why we allowed Alaska’s king salmon populations to be decimated.”

John A. Anderson

Kenai