Consider natural wealth of Yukon king salmon

JOHN LAMONT

April 18, 2008 at 12:18PM AKST

For The Tundra Drums

I am a salmon fisherman on the mighty Yukon River. I also serve on the U.S./Canada Panel as an alternate from the Lower Yukon River.

I would like to thank the panel for trusting that I will bring a message to the body that regulates our Bering Sea fisheries. It will be a simple message.

I would like to take this time to explain in my own terms the impact that salmon bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery has on the people of Western Alaska and the Yukon River in Alaska and Canada .

Traditional commercial and subsistence fishermen on the Lower Yukon River have depended on salmon, especially chinook, for the past 900-plus years (this history is from my immediately family only). There is no money value that can be placed on it.

Every early summer, I take my family to Bugumowick, our fish camp at mile 17.7 on the south mouth of the Yukon River.

Money cannot express the looks on all my children’s faces when they see the first king salmon that is pulled into the boat each summer.

Money can’t explain the feelings I have within myself when I head and gut that first king salmon and begin cutting it into strips, splitting the head and boning the back bone.

Money can’t explain the feeling of soaking the strips in a salt brine nor can it explain this: the strips hanging on drying racks next to our cold-smoke smokehouse, the silver-skinned and red-meat strips that reflect the evening sun, the glazed dark brownish orange as they are hanging amidst light blue smoke in our smoke house and finally the rich taste of those strips in the middle of winter with a piece of Sailor Boy pilot bread and a hot cup of Labrador tea.

How much is that worth?

Imagine more than 40,000 of our aboriginal people from the Bristol Bay drainage, Kuskokwim River drainage, Norton Sound, Kotzebue Sound, Canada and Alaska Yukon River drainages go through this ritual on an annual basis.

There is no money value that can account for all the annual traditions, sustenance, cultural and spiritual activities that all our people take into account when the salmon return at that cycle in our seasonal rotation of this spacecraft we call Earth.

Now you have scientists that understand the biomasses of many species of fish out in the Bering Sea. You can regulate that fishery with simple rules. You can stop it when the Steller’s sea lion is at risk.

But now let me ask you, can you stop it when hundreds and thousands of people are at risk of losing their main food source? Neither Money, nor anything else, can replace that salmon in the spawning grounds or all the traditional and cultural processes that go along with its harvest for the survival of our people.

You can stop a fishery when the spectacled eider is at risk. You can also close that fishery when one or two short-tailed albatross are accidentally caught in the hooks of a long line.

Why can’t you put severe enough caps on the pollock fishery when Western Alaska salmon, especially the Yukon River king salmon, are at risk?

I know you can put a stop to the bycatch of salmon, but what would it do for the pollock fleet and fishermen? Well, simply put, they will learn how not to catch chinook and chum salmon in their trawls or other fishing gear.

You can implement sector and fleet hard caps on individual fishing vessels and areas. You can regulate the amount of salmon bycatch that the total fleet is allowed to harvest in its pollock fishery. You can also do nothing and let the fleet continue to impact the salmon bound for Western Alaska and the Yukon River drainages in this state and Canada.

I don’t think that would be a popular choice, but you have the authority to do that through regulation as it stands now.

It is time to take a different look at how our pollock fishing fleet can be regulated to harvest the highest amount of pollock with the least amount of salmon bycatch bound for Western Alaska and Yukon River drainage in Alaska and Canada drainages.

It can happen, and sooner than we all think.

I would like to thank you for allowing me this time to make my plea on behalf of all the users of salmon in all the Western Alaska and Yukon River drainages both in Alaska and in Canada.

I would like to relay a message from a member of the Selkirk First Nation People in Canada; who said "the importance of salmon management at the head waters of the Yukon River is what maintains their (salmon, especially king) returning on a yearly basis and the impacts of intercepting them in the Bering Sea pollock fishery can kill off a whole spawning area with an A or B season incidental bycatch."

Working together we – fishers, managers, regulators and predators – must figure out how best to stop the incidental bycatch of salmon bound for Western Alaska and other drainages.

John Lamont’s testimony to the North Pacific Management Council at its April meeting in Anchorage. The council is considering a resolution on salmon bycatch by the pollock fishing trawling industry. See more about salmon bycatch reduction at the Website of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council at www.fakr.noaa.gov/npfmc/current_issues/bycatch/bycatch.htm.