Alaska's Seafood Task Force, which was formed by the state legislature earlier this year, holds its final meeting today on Dec. 11. Over the last year lawmakers have been looking at ways to aid all sectors of the state’s seafood industry, which faced a number of struggles. But the group could also address the outmigration of fishing permits and unequal fishing access in rural Alaska communities.
The eight-member task force is made up of four representatives from the state House and four from the Senate. Their first meeting was held on Sept. 18 & 19, with each subsequent meeting held once a month and now the fourth and final pair of meetings is set for Dec. 10 & 11.
Since September, the task force has heard about poor seafood market conditions, environmental factors negatively affecting multiple species and economic barriers for commercial processors and fishermen.
One such barrier, especially for younger and rural fishermen, is limited entry permits. These permits were created in Alaska by state law in the early 1970s, during a time of great distress in commercial fisheries. In 1972 Alaska voters approved a constitutional amendment to allow limited entry and in 1973 the state Legislature passed the Limited Entry Act. One of the intentions was to keep fishing rights in the hands of Alaskans, especially rural residents who depend on fisheries.
Rachel Donkersloot, a social scientist based in Aniak, told task force members last month on Nov. 13 that despite the intended goal, limited entry has basically had the opposite effect.
“Our primary focus is on the large loss of limited entry permits in Alaska fishing communities and how to think about specific design elements of potential policy solutions to the ongoing outflow of economic opportunity and wealth from our fishing communities, and from our state," she said.
For example, Donkersloot cited a 54% decline in local set net permits in Bristol Bay since the mid-70s, one of the two main commercial fisheries for salmon in the region. The vast majority of those permits were held by Bristol Bay Native Corporation shareholders according to Donkersloot’s research. At the same time, non-residents’ set net permit holdings in the area have increased by 135% since 1975.
Courtney Carothers is also a social scientist, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences. Carothers told lawmakers at the same meeting that part of the reason for this outmigration of permits is because many were sold off by local, rural residents. Especially, she said, if the permits were too costly to maintain, then it was more economically viable to sell the permits rather than pay hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars in the 1980s to keep them.
“But also the migration," Carothers said. "If a permit holder leaves a community, those are no longer in that community. So I think part of the issue here, with this policy that makes the permits transferable; they’re not linked to a region or a community, they’re linked to a person.”
Carothers went on to say that transferring the permits out of Alaskan communities tends to adversely affect mostly young, rural and Indigenous fishermen. As well as those who have low incomes, are fishing on a small scale and those new fishermen trying to break into commercial fishing.
She has studied the topic of limited entry permits for more than two decades, and said this has created a “crisis of access” in communities across the Kodiak Archipelago and elsewhere in Southeast. 80% of about 1,300 Koniag shareholders who responded to a recent survey Carothers did, agreed that their communities are in crisis because of lost access to fisheries. And the vast majority, 90% of total respondents, said that their survival depends on access to fisheries.
In Ouzinkie, north of Kodiak on Spruce Island, for example, only a few commercial fishing permits for salmon are currently held by residents in the community according to the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission database.
Carothers suggested the state could help address this inequity through new law and policy changes.
“So I think some big changes are needed within the system, but also in addition to a new system or some sort of alternative," she said. "It seems to me to be a very big crisis at the moment.”
Other possible solutions the scientists urged the task force to consider include creating a new permit class based on location and economic needs, restructuring the permit transfer process to encourage younger and new fishermen, and allowing local organizations to acquire permits and hold them in trust to remain within that specific community for new fishermen who meet certain criteria. Donkersloot and Carothers said these options all build on existing legal concepts or constitutional language in Alaska and could potentially be passed as state legislation.
Alaska Seafood Task Force chair state Senator Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican, said the group will have to work on implementing legislation that affects the entire state, not just one area or another.
“I do believe that things have been mentioned," he said. "There are things we can do in the short term and things we can do in the long term.”
Stevens mentioned in a press statement released by the Alaska Senate Majority on Nov. 15 that, “It has become clear that the legislature has a number of levers that can be pulled to support new infrastructure, provide tools to modernize an aging fleet, and encourage emerging technologies to suit the needs of fishing in the 21st century,” said Sen. Stevens.
“This, along with increasing opportunities for access, we can provide long-term sustainability for the industry along with increased economic opportunities for Alaskans.”
The task force is holding its last public meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 11 where the group is also expected to hear about Alaska Workforce Development programs, a presentation from the City of Sitka Assembly, and Alaska Sea Grant’s support for the seafood industry. Then the legislative group is scheduled to bring recommendations and action items to the full Alaska Legislature next month by Jan. 21, 2025.
