The Kenai River Sport Fishing Classic Roundtable was held at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex on Wednesday. U.S. House Representative, Mary Peltola, Governor Michael Dunleavy, along with panelists from key research, community, industry, and policy stakeholders took the stage to speak on topics ranging from the impacts of offshore energy development on recreational fisheries, to funding opportunities for conservation and sport fishing access.
During Representative Peltola’s Keynote address, she spoke on the way Russian-caught pollock is making its way into the United States, and how that impacts Alaskan fisheries.
“The Wall Street Journal has reported an estimated $1 billion worth of Russian seafood made its way into American supermarkets in 2021. That’s a billion dollars worth of North Pacific fish that could otherwise have been caught by American fishermen bringing home money on American boats for American families. I can promise you that as long as I’m in Washington, DC, we won’t stand idly by while Russian boats with much less oversight and regulation scoop up fish and undercut our Alaskan fishermen. We introduced a bill, the Senators and I, that would ban the import of reprocessed Russian fish from China. And we’re working hard to get that through Congress.”
In his closing remarks, Governor Dunleavy urged Alaskans to be unified in protecting the fish populations in state fisheries. “We just have to keep on things,” Governor Dunleavy said. “We have to keep on the research. We have to keep the discussions going. There’s a lot of competition, as we know, between the different user groups, but hopefully what we all have in common is we want more fish for Alaska. We want more fish in the rivers. There’s a political part of it, as I mentioned, but really, I think what we need to do is become leaders in the science and the data, and really hone down what it looks like now, what the history tells us, and what we can predict in the future.”
One of the topics addressed during the roundtables, which drew a lot of interest from those present, was the issue of offshore wind energy projects and their impact on recreational fisheries.
“A lot of this offshore wind energy development has fallen directly in My Portfolio,” said Mike Waine, Atlantic Fisheries Policy Director for the American Sportfishing Association. “When I was first getting engaged on offshore wind energy development, there was only 15 projects in the pipeline. In three years time, it went from 15 projects to 50 and each project is at a different stage.”
In addition to several other topics, a short film Rivers are Life- Kings of the Kenai, featuring the conservation work of Kenai River Sportfishing Association was presented for the first time.
The full Kenai Classic Roundtable can be viewed online by visiting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLj748WaWmQ.