Task Force Short Report

November 28 Task Force Meeting.

The meeting was attended by over 50 people including ADFG personnel and SEAS board members. The Petersburg seiners, along with a few gillnetters were out in full force.
This was the best attendance we’ve ever seen at a Purse Seine Task Force meeting.
Last year in Ketchikan was the 2nd best attendance. Looks like we’re having the meeting in Sitka next year.

2007 Forecast: The ADFG prediction gets into the 40 plus million range, although the NMFS guys forecast falls to 38 million SE wide. Joe Orsi of NMFS just completed year 2 of sampling fry outmigration patterns in Clarence Strait. Icy Strait has several more years of sampling than Clarence.

McDonald Lake: The department laid out their plans to return more sockeye to McDonald Lake and it includes major reductions in time and area in lower and outer District 7B, late start on District 6 and then a closure of Lincoln Rock and Marsh and Screen Islands, and partial closures on Gravina Island as well as the Ship Island shore.
Weakness in McDonald Lake is going to reshape the 2007 Clarence Strait fishery.

Kanalku subsistence: Ben Van Allen from USFS joined us in Petersburg. Among his many claims are that upper Chatham is a new fishery with too much fishing occurring there since the late-1990’s. It is apparent that there is a major obstacle to sockeye salmon getting from the stream to the lake as over 60% of Mr. Van Allen’s tagged sockeye did not make it to the lake from the stream. It is also apparent that Mr. Van Allen’s statistics and science had no basis in fact but that won’t preclude the RAC from attempting to justify Extraterritorial Jurisdiction if they are so convinced.

Hatcheries: Exceptional 2006 contributions across the board, especially to the seine fleet from NSRAA and SSRAA.

Anita Bay: As it turned out, seiners and gillnetters caught a fairly even split of Anita Bay chums. However, the seiners caught most of theirs in the bay and the gillnetters caught most of theirs in front of the bay. Discussion was had regarding the mixed stock corridor fishery in front of Anita Bay.

4 on 1 off management: Discussion occurred about our most recent management regime. There was no move to revoke this management but the point was made several times that there should be a divide when one region of SE isn’t doing as well as the others, i.e., Clarence Strait and the south end. This point may be made for us with the closures for McDonald Lake.