Southeast Alaska commercial fishermen facing a potential shutdown of a lucrative salmon fishery are currently free to fish while NOAA Fisheries revises a biological opinion dotted with procedure errors, according to an Aug. 16 ruling from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court gives the fisheries service until Dec. 1 to produce a new biological opinion, a decision that brought relief to harvesters, but dismay to the Wild Fish Conservancy in Seattle.
However, Alaska Commissioner of Fish and Game Doug Vincent-Lang said that once the new biological opinion is released it’s “fresh for litigation” again.
Amy Daugherty, executive director of the Alaska Trollers Association in Juneau, said her organization of some 400 fishermen was very relieved “that the district court has the wisdom to reverse the lower court’s decision, because the impact would be disastrous for the entire region.”
“I was hopeful that that would be the outcome,” she added.
Appeals court judges noted that NOAA Fisheries was committed to fixing errors in its original biological.
The court noted that even the Wild Fish Conservancy’s experts conceded the economic impact of closing down the fishery, with a potential economic loss of millions of dollars for fishermen and their communities.
Wild Fish Conservancy Executive Director Emma Helverson said her organization would continue to take every action necessary to ensure the management of that fishery doesn’t continue to harm salmon recovery, ecosystems and coastal communities coastwide.
“The Court’s decision prioritizing the economic interests of one Alaskan industry over the coastwide recovery of Chinook, the survival of the Southern Resident orcas, and the cultural heritage of ecosystems and communities from Oregon to British Columbia is disappointing to say the least,” Helverson said.
“However,” she added, “the facts and science remain clear and I’ve never been more optimistic as certifiers, consumers, and communities rise up to demand sustainable and equitable harvest management that will bring their salmon home.”
Tim Bristol, executive director of SalmonState, a nonprofit dedicated to protection of wild salmon and their habitat, said the Ninth Circuit Court’s ruling “shows the Wild Fish Conservancy’s attempt to shut down all Chinook fishing by Alaska hook and line trollers was the wrong diagnosis and the wrong prescription for the endangered Southern Resident Orca’s future survival.”
“The Court rightly found the federal government is already working to update the science around the Southeast Alaska troll fishery, which we already know has little impact on SRKW,” Bristol said.
“The judges also found that the lower court also failed to adequately consider the serious economic and social impacts the WFC’s call for a shutdown of Chinook trolling would have on Southeast Alaskans,” he added.