Just as hundreds of fishermen begin pouring into the Aleutian Islands ahead of its most productive season, a conflict over restrictions on commercial salmon harvests has erupted.
After the Alaska Board of Fisheries passed restrictions on the Aleutian commercial fleet to protect salmon bound for Western Alaska spawning streams, Alaska’s acting attorney general, Cori Mills, invalidated the measures last month.
Now, subsistence advocates say they may try to win the restrictions back in a lawsuit against Mills.
The board’s new regulations, pushed by subsistence fishermen for years as Western Alaska salmon runs declined, would have shortened the number of days and size of the harvest that commercial fishermen could make in the Aleutians, widened a regulated area and added some restrictions on net depths.
The threat of a lawsuit follows the subsistence advocates’ attempt to re-implement the regulations ahead of the commercial fishery opener on June 6. The advocates tried to join a lawsuit originally filed by the commercial fleet and its allies that challenged the restrictions — but the judge threw out the suit Monday.
June is when salmon, after fattening themselves for years in the North Pacific Ocean, squeeze through narrow channels between the Aleutians on their way back to the waters where their lives began as eggs in gravel beds.
Some are headed for spawning streams in rural Western and Interior Alaska — regions where Indigenous subsistence fishermen have seen salmon populations crash for over a decade, making it difficult for residents to put food on their tables.
The conflict over these salmon pits the mostly Indigenous subsistence fishermen, along rivers like the Yukon and Kuskokwim, against the commercial fleet in the Aleutians, which hails from all over Alaska and the lower 48.
Each group says the salmon is critical to maintaining their way of life, their community and their culture. The commercial fishermen say their income has taken a big hit in recent years, due in part to falling fish prices — but also because they have been voluntarily regulating their own fishery, closing down on some days in an attempt to let salmon pass through to Western Alaska subsistence rivers.
The issue heated up ahead of the February meeting of the Board of Fisheries. After years of pressure from the subsistence fishermen and Tribal leaders, the board adopted more restrictive measures targeting the June salmon fishery in a section of the Aleutians known as Area M.
After the most contentious proposed restrictions passed in a 4-3 vote, the Aleutians East Borough, along with six local Tribes aligned with commercial fishing interests, filed two ethics complaints against several of the board members in the majority.
The complaint alleged that Olivia Irwin, Märit Carlson-Van Dort, and Curtis Chamberlain had conflicts of interest. It also alleged that Chamberlain made a “materially false statement” when he denied having advocated for Western Alaska fishermen against Area M commercial fishing interests in his role as a lawyer for the Calista Corporation, the Alaska Native regional corporation for the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region.
That lack of disclosure, the complaint alleged, violated both Alaska’s Executive Branch Ethics Act and its Administrative Procedure Act.
After the borough said its ethics complaint went “unanswered for 42 days,” it filed a lawsuit in April in Anchorage Superior Court asking a judge to strike down the new regulations on the basis of a lack of scientific evidence — as well as based on Chamberlain’s alleged “materially false statement.”
Other groups joining the borough’s lawsuit included an Aleutian tribal government and two Area M commercial fishing organizations.
Weeks later, on May 19, Mills, the acting attorney general, sided with the commercial fishermen in their ethics complaint — rejecting most of the board’s regulation changes because, she ruled, the vote to pass the regulations was improper. A spokesman for the state Department of Law did not respond to multiple requests for comment about Mills’ decision.
The Aleutians borough and the commercial fishing groups then dismissed their lawsuit, given that the attorney general had nixed the regulations they challenged.
In a last-ditch effort, though, a group representing Western Alaska subsistence harvesters, the Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association, filed a formal objection to the dismissal. After the judge overseeing the case, Herman Walker Jr., rejected the request, the subsistence group said it may try to appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court.
Mike Kramer, a lawyer for the subsistence groups, complained at the lack of public rationale the attorney general gave in her short letter siding with the commercial fishermen on the ethics violations, as well as the judge’s subsequent rejection — typed in a single word, “denied,” on the groups’ motion.
“I would hope he would have spent a little more time and actually typed up his own order denying our motion,” Kramer wrote in an email.
