Session Chair Contact Information-Session Description

Allocation among Fisheries Users: “How to Divide up Alaska’s Fish Pie?”
 

Session Chair: Audra Brase; Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Division of Sport Fish, Fairbanks; audra.brase@alaska.gov; (907) 459-7244

Alaskan fisheries are allocated among many user groups including subsistence, commercial, personal use, and recreational fishermen. Allocative decisions are among the most difficult to make and the outcomes are almost always controversial. The goals of this session are to examine the evolution of various Alaskan fisheries, how and why allocations have changed over the years, what can be learned from those changes and what may be expected in the future. Suggested fisheries to examine include, but are not limited to: Pacific halibut; Chinook salmon throughout the state (Southeast, and Copper, Kenai, and Yukon Rivers); Bering Sea king crab and Southeast rockfish.

Chairs: Trent Sutton and Aaron Dupuis; University of Alaska Fairbanks, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences; tsutton@sfos.uaf.edu or a.dupuis@sfos.uaf.edu

Alaska supports a diverse assemblage of Coregonine fishes (hereafter termed whitefishes), with eight recognized species in the genera Coregonus. Whitefishes are broadly distributed throughout Alaska in a variety of freshwater, brackish, and marine environments. Many whitefish species are abundant year round, and consequently support important subsistence, commercial, personal use, and recreational fisheries. Whitefishes are also an important component of the trophic food web, serving as prey for a variety of piscine, avian, and mammalian predators. Although many species in Alaska exhibit similar life history attributes, there is significant variability within and among species in life history strategy, including freshwater-migratory, anadromous-migratory, and non-migratory strategies. Given this variability, there is limited information on the basic biology of most whitefish species, including distribution and abundance, migratory behavior, spawning, nursery, and feeding habitats, stock structure and dynamics, and early life history. This information is particularly crucial for whitefish because they are harvested year round and at different phases of their migration. Species identification based on morphological measurements and meristic counts can be difficult, particularly for larval and juvenile life stages. Because of the challenges associated with species identification, regardless of life stage, species groups are often combined in harvest reports and management plans. Further, there is limited information about the extent to which harvest affects whitefish populations, which may vary on both temporal and spatial scales. The increased harvest of whitefish in recent years from subsistence and commercial fisheries has raised concerns about the status of their populations in Alaska and their long-term sustainability. In this symposium, we will explore the current state of knowledge and information gaps for whitefishes in Alaska.

Chair: Jeff Adams; Fish and Wildlife Field Office, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Jeff_Adams@fws.gov; (907) 456-0218

With the increased recognition of the value of habitat restoration to fisheries conservation, managers, researchers, and the public need to become aware of the appropriate methods and approaches used for restoration activities. This session will spotlight current and historic activities and describe the successes and failures of fish and aquatic species passage and riparian, wetland, and upland restoration projects in Interior Alaska. To provide insights about evaluating specific sites for restoration and to better educate all stakeholders for future involvement, the session will also include presentations concerning pre-and post-treatment habitat and population assessments to assist with prioritizing projects. Although focused on applications in Alaska’s Interior, presentations from other states and regions will be considered.

Session Chair: Lisa Stuby; Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Sport Fish, Fairbanks; lisa.stuby@alaska.gov; (907) 459-7202

To better understand why fish species in Alaska and elsewhere show varying distributional and habitat needs, it is important to understand where, how, and why they evolved the characteristics that are necessary for their survival. With modern techniques such as genetics, much can be gleaned on the phylogeny that could only have been assumed from fossils years ago in more traditional cladistical analyses. As different techniques become available with greater sensitivity and accuracy, the evolutionary relationships between species will become clearer.

Chair: Milo Adkison; University of Alaska Fairbanks, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences;  milo.adkison@uaf.edu; (907) 474-1811

This session is intended to highlight the broad array of quantitative tools applied to fisheries research and management problems in Alaska. Novel techniques and novel applications of existing techniques are encouraged. Speakers should plan on incorporating an educational component in their talks; i.e., discuss the potential uses, best implementation, and limitations of their methodology.

Session Chair: Ann Knowlton; University of Alaska Fairbanks, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences; knowlton@sfos.uaf.edu

Nearshore areas provide important ecological and biological services for Alaska’s natural marine resources, as well as economic and recreational opportunities for local communities. This session will highlight the biodiversity of Alaskan coastal waters including habitat function and community processes. This session will give an expansive perspective, to include both commercially exploited and unexploited species, and will provide an integrated, broad-scale view of ecosystem functions and services.

Chair: R.D. Nelle, USFWS-Mid-Columbia River Fishery Resource Office, rd_nelle@fws.gov; Bianca Streif, USFWS-Oregon Office, bianca_streif@fws.gov

The Pacific Lamprey Conservation Initiative is an effort led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to coordinate and develop a Conservation Plan that will lead to restored Pacific lamprey populations and improvement of their habitat throughout their range, which extends from Japan along the Pacific Rim to Baja Mexico. This session will include a presentation on the Conservation Initiative as well as Pacific lamprey research from the lower 48 including the Columbia and Klamath River basins. Presentations about research and conservation on all lamprey species in Alaska, western Canada and states along the Pacific Ocean are invited and welcome.

Session Chair: Stewart Grant; Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Commercial Fisheries Division, Anchorage, william.grant@alaska.gov; (907) 267-2130

The use of genetics to manage fisheries has come along way since its beginnings in the 1960s. One major application has been the resolution of population limits, and in the case of salmon, the identification of the population components in mixed stock fisheries. The development of molecular markers has progressed considerably since the first use of immunology in the 1960s to describe genetic differences among populations. Each marker has progressively led to greater resolution of population structure, or to more rapid turnaround times, so that in-season results are now commonly used to support harvest management. The development of statistical methods has kept pace with the large amount of data being produced by genetic analysis. Genetic considerations are also important in the development of salmonid and marine invertebrate broodstocks to prevent the loss of genetic diversity and to limit as much as possible hybridizations between outplanted and wild individuals. Well-managed hatchery operations and the use of triploid individuals for release help to reduce the potential for these hybridizations. One important application is the use of quantitative genetics and experiments lasting generations to better understand how captive breeding might influence adaptive traits. The application of genetic principles will continue to play an important role in conserving Alaska’s still abundant fishery resources.

Chair: TBD

Session Organizer: Jonathan Kamler; Seventeenth Coast Guard District; jonathan.w.kamler@uscg.mil; (907) 463-2213

Geospatial analysis tools and models have become key to understanding and managing Alaskan fisheries given changing movement and migration patterns, uncertain species distribution especially in the context of quickly changing oceans. This session will cover the array of geospatial analyses being applied to the freshwater and saltwater Alaska marine environments. The session combines elements of several fields including fisheries, oceanography, geographic information systems, spatial statistics, and remote sensing. The session will offer the opportunity to present both methodological developments as well as specific findings and case studies. The implications will be discussed based on the various tools and techniques applied and the scale of the application (e.g., individual stream vs entire watershed, near-shore versus off-shore, etc). The advantages, disadvantages, and data collection (and availability) difficulties will be discussed including recent technological developments and specialized marine-based extensions to common, off-the-shelf tools, such as (but by no means limited to) ArcGIS. The session will be inclusive of both remotely-sensed and field-collected spatial data analyses. Applications of geospatial analyses which address specific management problems and drive resource allocation decisions will be given special consideration. Case studies from both salt-water and fresh-water environments are encouraged and welcomed. If possible, speakers should plan to incorporate cross-discipline implications in their discussions, with particular consideration to the implications of climate change.

Session Chair: Ray Reichl; U.S. Coast Guard, District Seventeen Response-Enforcement Branch, Juneau; raymond.j.reichl@uscg.mil; (907) 463-2288

Fisheries enforcement (in both sport and commercial fisheries) is often described as the third leg that supports the three-legged stool of fisheries management. While a great deal of attention is paid to the legs of science and policy, enforcement is often lost in those discussions. The complexity of fisheries enforcement requires applying the intricacies of a vast array of regulations, providing a presence to deter and apprehend violators, and cooperatively litigating the cases within the court system. Enforcement also requires a great deal of public relations building in order to help deter and avoid violations. Sport, commercial, and subsistence fisheries in Alaska are a mix of overlapping (and sometimes conflicting) state and federal jurisdictions and regulations. Commercial fisheries add additional significant levels of complexity in that international relations, regulations, and treaties all play roles in developing enforcement goals, policies, and on-the-water strategies. In fact, the international complexities even extend to some Alaskan sport fisheries (halibut, for example), which are cooperatively state and federally enforced but ultimately regulated pursuant to an international treaty. This session will provide an overview of Alaska fisheries enforcement with the objective of providing a better understanding of how fisheries enforcement along with policy and scientific research support that three-legged stool of fisheries management.

Chair: Dani Evenson; Commercial Fisheries Division, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Anchorage; dani.evenson@alaska.gov; (907) 267-2135

Contributed Papers and Contributed Poster Sessions

Contributed Papers Session Chair: Toshihide "Hamachan" Hamazaki, Commercial Fisheries Division, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Anchorage,  toshihide.hamazaki@alaska.gov; (907) 267-2158

Contributed Posters Session Chair: Cecil Rich, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Sport Fish, Anchorage,  cecil.rich@alaska.gov; (907) 267-2333

Presenters with topics that do not fit the subject matter of other sessions are encouraged to submit their abstracts to these sessions. Please indicate preference for Paper or Poster