JOHN OR JANE Q. Public will have the chance to offer input during three short comment periods at Friday and Saturday’s state Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting in Port Angeles.
The commission, a citizen panel appointed by the governor to set policy for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, will meet at the Red Lion Hotel, 221 N. Lincoln St., at 8 a.m. both days.
Open public comment on issues not listed on the meeting’s agenda (available at tinyurl.com/PDN-WDFWMeet) will run from 8:15 a.m. to 8:35 a.m. and 2:20 p.m. to 2:50 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. Saturday.
These public comment periods often restrict each speaker to a pre-determined time limit — 3 minutes has been the norm at past commission meetings I’ve attended.
Potential speakers should be aware of these time limits and try to condense their comments if at all possible. If that task is impossible, send an email to commission@dfw.wa.gov and ask if your message could be sent to all commissioners and included in any meeting minutes.
Halibut season
Some items of interest that are not listed on the meeting agenda: the initial 2018 halibut season schedule proposal, which would allow halibut fishing every Saturday and Sunday in May and the first four weekends in June, a 16-day season.
But that proposal would require anglers abide by a one-fish daily catch limit, and a seasonal bag limit of just two flatties total.
Current regulations provide a one-fish daily catch limit and two-fish possession limit in the field. Through the 2017 halibut season, there was no seasonal bag limit.
If implemented, I would imagine this rule change would upset halibut anglers around the state, including here on the North Olympic Peninsula. It might even cause anglers to put down their poles and avoid buying fishing licenses as a form of protest.
Putting further pressure on the financial bottom line of an agency that entered the 2017-19 biennium with a $15 million gap “between projected revenue from fishing and hunting licenses and the corresponding spending authority provided by the Legislature in the operating budget” may be the best (and worst) way to express displeasure with Fish and Wildlife decision making.
Fish and Wildlife Director Jim Unsworth will discuss the department’s budget when he speaks early on in Friday’s meeting. He’ll also tackle the Douglas County PUD’s decision to terminate a management contract with Fish and Wildlife for a number of fish hatcheries following reports of an investigation into sexual harassment that resulted in termination among top-ranking employees at one of the facilities.
Atlantic salmon
Unsworth also will discuss the combined response to the escape of Atlantic salmon from a net pen containing 305,000 fish last month near Cypress Island in the San Juans, provide an update on wolf packs in the state and discuss some law enforcement successes by the agency.
There’s no public comment period listed for Unsworth’s report, so there might not be a chance to inquire about why marine areas previously closed to salmon fishing such as Marine Area 6 (East Strait of Juan de Fuca) were not reopened for Atlantic retention once it was determined escaped fish were heading west.
With the way the state reacted to the escape — giving the go-ahead to tribal commercial fishing boats to net thousands of fish in and around the pen area (and near river systems closed to protect returning coho stock) and imploring recreational anglers in open marine areas to help out and catch as many as possible, it seemed like a good idea to allow anglers in closed waters to conduct an emergency opening for the non-natives with a severe penalty for any anglers caught with kings or coho.
Port Angeles angler Michael Craig envisioned a scenario similar to the movie “Dunkirk,” with thousands of small boats prepared to volunteer to fish solely for Atlantics in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Craig made the point that Marine Area 6 anglers that wished to help can only stand idle during some of the best fishing weather of the year —September and the first half of October.
“The Department of Fish and Wildlife often publishes emergency closures,” Craig wrote. “Now is the time for them to publish an emergency opener. The state can have boats, personnel, equipment and fuel free … if they want. Give fishermen this opportunity to perform a Dunkirk moment, at no cost to the state.”
Craig heard back from Fish and Wildlife salmon fisheries manager Mark Baltzell.
“… Because we receive a permit from NOAA fisheries to allow us to fish recreationally in Puget Sound, we cannot just open areas that were previously scheduled to be closed because NOAA has not evaluated the impacts of opening those areas to endangered stocks,” Baltzell replied in an email to Craig.
Baltzell mentioned endangered Puget sound chinook and coho stocks returning to the Skagit and Stillaguamish rivers this year as “expected to be well below our goals that are set for spawning escapement.”
It seems strange that NOAA would allow almost unimpeded netting near those terminal areas with potential adverse risk of endangered or threatened by-catches, but not to allow hook-and-line anglers to have a go of things in waters previously closed to salmon. The potential negative impacts of returning coho being swept up in a commercial net would seem to far outweigh recreational impacts — even factoring in a 10-percent fish mortality rate for released salmon.
Fish and Wildlife’s Brett Barkdull mentioned low coho return to those same rivers in a reply to Craig, and suggested anglers should fish the open sections of Marine Area 7 (San Juan Islands) which are open to chinook, pink and sockeye retention through Sept. 30.
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-417-3525 or mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
