Governor Mike Dunleavy released the list of eleven Alaskans who will serve on the Alaska Bycatch Review Task Force, which aims to better understand the untended bycatch of fish such as halibut and salmon caught in both state and federal waters. The two remaining seats on the task force will be non-voting seats filled by members of the Alaska Legislature.
One of the governor’s appointees include city of Kenai Mayor Brian Gabriel who spoke with KSRM:
“There’s specific seats to this task force. There’s a trawler seat, a north pacific management council seat, fish and game commissioner seat, a bunch of stakeholder’s seats, and then there was also a coastal community mayor’s seat. I was made aware of this. It interested me. I went ahead and applied and interviewed in early December and then they just announced here this last week. Moving forward, it looks like we’ll probably be having our first meeting sometime around the end of January, from what I understand. For the specific tasks of this, honestly there’s going to be some things, I think, that we’re going to have to drill down on to sort of distill and focus on, some of the things that what this is sort of addressing. First off, they want to study the impact bycatch has on fisheries; evaluate and recommend policies informed by a better understanding of the issue of bycatch of high-value Alaska fishery resources; ensure state agencies are leveraging available resources to better understand the issue of bycatch; and utilize best available science to inform policy makers and the public about these issues.”
Mayor Gabriel also said that the intent is to hopefully make some recommendations that the governor can turn into administrative orders:
“Yeah, I think there’ll obviously be some recommendations. One of the things I don’t really know exactly, I’m sure there’s probably a plan, how you recognize the correlation between state fisheries and federal fisheries because they’re managed by different bodies. This taskforce was formed by the state government and you’re dealing with fisheries that have bycatch in federal waters that are federally managed. That’ll be an interesting angle.”
In making the announcement, Governor Dunleavy said that bycatch has remained a contentious issue of concern for all Alaskans.
Click here to read the administrative order.