An unprecedented set of new policies from Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game are changing the way Yukon commercial and subsistence fisherman have been fishing their entire lives. Some residents are using Kenai River style dip nets for the first time and catching lots of fish. Besides fisherman on the lower Yukon, this may be the first time anyone has heard a Yup’ik fisherman releasing a King Salmon back into the river.
That’s James Isidore and his cousin Felix Patrick, two commercial fishermen from Alakanuk, a village about 10 miles downriver of Kwik’pak fisheries in Emmonak.
By now, Isidore and Patrick are used to fishing restrictions, especially when it comes to King salmon. A 1998 King population decline saw the 300,000 average King salmon run size plummet to half that. And this year, run projections, even towards the high end, are less than 150,000. There’s a host of possible reasons for the dwindling King population but no one knows for sure.
“Well, they’re trying to save the King so I’m for that,” Isadore says. “So my kids and their kids can eat Kings some day, freely.”
But even so, Isidore says, the idea of not keeping even the few they’re used to catching is unsettling. Read more….