Emergency Order Period

The Emergency Order Period is the ~ one month period starting in the last week of June and usually extending through the third week of July when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) manages the commercial fishing fleet very carefully. This is necessary because more than any other fishery I know of, these salmon run. This year, they're expecting 46.6 million, and 90% of them will probably blast through here in a two week period. It's hard to say which two week period, but they are almost certain to appear during the Emergency Order Period. When the fish come in such a huge wall, ADF&G takes on the significant challenge of making sure that enough fish get up their respective rivers to spawn, and that all the rest are harvested to feed a hungry world.

Fish and Game's overarching mandate is to manage the fishery for the maximum benefit of Alaskans. To do this, their #1 priority is to protect the resource for future generations and their second priority is to manage the harvest of the surplus by subsistence, sports, and commercial fishing efforts. Each of those user groups is managed separately and by different regulations.

Alaska residents are eligible for a subsistence license and are allowed to fish during fixed months and during fixed days of the week in those months, until they catch what the state figures they would need for their subsistence for the year. I think it's 300 salmon per license.

Sports fishermen are also licensed and I think they have annual limits on the number of king salmon they can take. I don't know the regulations on other type of salmon.

The commercial fleet is managed on a tide by tide basis, sometimes in four hour increments. I think from the perspective of the biologists at Fish and Game, we're a big sponge that they can dip in to soak up the salmon that aren't needed for future generations. But we're a big, absorbent sponge, so they have to be careful.

The biologists start the season with a prediction of run size and a prediction of how that total return to Bristol Bay will be distributed among the different rivers (Ugashik, Egegik, Nushagak (and its many sub-rivers), Naknek, and Kvichak (and the Alagnak)). Based on the predicted return and their understanding of each system's capacity and need, the biologists set escapement goals for each river, figuring the surplus is for harvest. They set up counting towers where, as I understand it, they have staff watching the actual fish swimming by and they count 'em. One at a time. From the perspective of the fishing fleet, those fish are home-free. From the perspective of the salmon, they still have many critters to feed on their way to the spawning grounds.

Fish and Game probably has a graph of the expected return plotted over time. Of course, they don't know whether the run will be early, late, or "on time." So if a whole bunch of fish come through early, they have to figure out whether it's an early smaller run or an "on time" bigger one. Fish and Game wants to maximize the diversity of the spawners, so they let us fish intermittently and shut us down intermittently so some segment of early fish and late fish make it up to spawn. If we catch too many or the return just slows down so that escapement falls below the expected curve, they will shut us down and let a few more escape, then once escapement catches up, they'll give us another fishing period. If fishing dwindles off unexpectedly soon, they shut us down to try to squeeze out their minimum escapement for the river. The Kvichak has definitely fallen short of its minimum escapement goals over the years, but as far as I know, the Naknek never has. The biologists have many tools to improve their ability to manage the fishery. There is a test fishery in Port Moller where fish on their way to Bristol Bay swim past 6-9 days before reaching our rivers. They also fly aerial surveys which allow them to see big schools of fish milling around, and they send out test boats. As the season progresses, they make in-season adjustments to the pre-season predictions so that they can ensure escapement and catch appropriate to the actual run size.

The biologists at Port Moller work hard to provide information to help the ADF&G biologists manage the run, and to help everyone prepare. They post results of their test fishing daily and as soon as they begin to get enough fish though, they begin to take tissue samples to send off for genetic testing, so that interested people downstream know about how many of that big spurt of fish that just went by were Egegik fish how many were Kvichak fish and how many were Naknek fish.

They also compare the early catch pattern with the catch patterns of other years to give us an idea of whether they looks more like 2015 or more like 2011. Of course, we won't be sure until August.