![]() The fishery was valued at $2 billion dollars in 2019. In the nearly 50 years since the change, the value of Bristol Bay’s fishery has grown exponentially. (Photo by Brian Venua/KDLG) Fishery growth left some locals behind There was nothing to stop them from migrating, as any property does, towards those with more wealth.” Water washes over fish in a subsistence net on Kanakanak Beach. And if they weren’t transferable, they ran into constitutional problems. “When they established the system, became transferable. “The problem of course was that they couldn’t say stay there,” he said. But limited entry meant that permits were freely transferable - so they could be bought, gifted, or inherited. It created the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission as part of the new system, which held legal hearings in rural Alaska to address legal challenges. The state tried to address those problems, Torrisi said. “So they had this point system, and it was based on - did you have a gear license in 1969 and 70, what percentage of your income came from fishing and those sorts of things.”ĭuring the application period in the early 1970s, Torrisi said, there was poor public outreach to Bristol Bay communities, so some people weren’t aware of the change. “It was meant to determine who really needed a permit, who really had been relying on it in the past,” Torrisi said. Torrisi said permit eligibility was determined by a point system. It was well understood that commercial and traditional harvest of fishing resources - that was the major source of economic livelihood in all of these Alaska Native communities in the bay.”Īccording to Donkersloot and other researchers, the permit application was supposed to favor rural fishermen, but it fell short. “They were somehow trying to address crises in our salmon fisheries. “At the time of limited entry, they had increasing pressure on stocks, rising participation of non-residents, and a lot of concerns in the state,” she said. The 40-page report, called “Righting the Ship,” was commissioned by the Nature Conservancy and published last year. Rachel Donkersloot, an anthropologist who focuses on fisheries in Alaska, headed the latest study on the impacts of the state’s limited entry system. (Photo by Sage Smiley/KDLG)ĭecades of research shows that across the state, rural and Alaska Native fishermen face significant economic and cultural barriers to commercial fishing. And then it was sort of like a piece of property: You could transfer it to somebody else, or you could use it, but without one you couldn’t fish,” he said. “Limited entry was a major switch in that you got once, based on your past performance and economic reliance on the fishery. He said before limited entry, anyone could fish as long as they had a gear license. And with the out-migration, you can see the effect that it has on the monetary return to individual village people through their commercial fishermen.”įred Torrisi came to Dillingham as a lawyer with the state’s legal services in the 1970s. “They hired their local people from their village to participate with them. “In the early years, there were many people who were participating in a fishery,” said Johnson, who lives in Dillingham and is a member of the Curyung Tribe. But it also fundamentally changed how local people were involved in the industry - and how the industry affected communities closest to the state’s fisheries. Limited entry was meant to address some of those problems, and supporters say it did. ![]() He said fishing in the 1960s and 70s was tough - the runs were low and there was steep competition. He worked on drift boats before he eventually bought his own. He grew up commercial fishing with his mother in Igushik. Johnson finished his sixty-second year captaining his own boat last summer. Residents now own around one-fifth of drift permits. But since limited entry began, local permit ownership in Bristol Bay has declined by 50%. The original permit applications were also meant to favor rural residents. Its purpose was to reduce pressure on the state’s fisheries and help financially sustain fishermen who depended on them. This system restricted the number of commercial fishing permits in areas around the state, including Bristol Bay. Propelled by years of low salmon returns and more people coming to the state to fish, Alaskans voted in 1972 to amend the state’s constitution and implement a limited entry system. Local permit ownership has declined sharply, and research shows that’s due in part to a regulatory change to Alaska’s fishery management from the 1970s. But over the past half-century, there has been a dramatic shift in who fishes commercially in Bristol Bay. This summer 79 million sockeye salmon returned to Bristol Bay, the largest run on record.
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